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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14036 ***
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+Vol XII, No. 30.
+
+SEPTEMBER, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] by EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    III.--The Feast Of Saint Athanasius.
+  TWO MOODS by MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+  THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT by MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+  SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL. [Illustrated]
+    I.--The Count De Beauvoir In China.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE by WILLIAM BLACK.
+    Chapter XIV.--Deeper And Deeper.
+    Chapter XV.--A Friend In Need.
+  ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS by FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+    Concluding Paper
+  A LOTOS OF THE NILE by CHRISTIAN REID.
+  ECHO. by A.J.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] by MARGARET HOWITT.
+    Chapter IX.
+    Chapter X.
+  COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK by S.C. CLARKE.
+  THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY by MARIE ROWLAND.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS by SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    Chapter VI.
+    Chapter VII.
+    Chapter VIII.
+    Chapter IX.
+  HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY by EDWIN DE LEON.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    The Californian At Vienna by PRENTICE MULFORD.
+    Ghostly Warriors.
+    A Warning To Lovers.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE PAULISTS.
+  THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.
+  CARDINAL BALUE.
+  AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.
+  LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.
+  LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.
+  CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.
+  BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.
+  CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.
+  THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.
+  ADMIRATION.
+  MAC MEURTRIER.
+  THE BLACK DOMINO.
+  TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.
+  THE CROOKED MAN.
+  THE GRAVITY ROAD.
+  THE ANIMATED CELLS.
+  THE TRAVELER'S REST.
+  PALACE AT STRASBURG.
+  THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.
+  HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.
+  AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.
+  CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.
+  VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.
+  COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
+  A PROCESSION.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+III.--THE FEAST OF SAINT ATHANASIUS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE PAULISTS.]
+
+
+As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to empty
+the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of tired
+soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the old
+proverb of Aretino came into my head: "Truly all courtesy and good
+manners come from taverns." I grasped my botany-box and pursued my
+promenade toward Noisy.
+
+The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in history.
+One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the inventor
+of the famous gibbet of Montfauçon, and in the poetic justice which
+should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his own gallows.
+He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by the common
+executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none of his
+ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in meeting a
+guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular coincidence another
+lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long detention in an
+iron-barred cage--one of those famous cages, so much favored by Louis
+XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from the records of the time,
+had the patent-right for invention, or at least improvement. Once
+firmly engaged in his own torture--while his friend Haraucourt, bishop
+of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in a similar box, and the foxy
+old king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead--we
+may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
+fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.
+
+[Illustration: THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.]
+
+These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice I
+took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full domain
+of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern road
+separate--the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The sight of
+the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and of the
+frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly endeavored
+to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It was on
+this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung and the
+cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory. "Small
+choice," said I, "whether the bars are perpendicular or horizontal.
+You lose your independence about equally by either monopoly."
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL BALUE.]
+
+I crossed the Canal de l'Ourcq, and watched it stretching like a steel
+tape to meet the Canal Saint--Denis and the Canal Saint-Martin in the
+great basin at La Villette--a construction which, finished in 1809,
+was the making of La Villette as a commercial and industrial entrepôt.
+I meant to walk to Bondy, and after a botanic stroll in its beautiful
+forest to retrace my steps, gaining Marly next day by Baubigny,
+Aubervilliers and Nanterre. "The Aladdins of our time," I said as I
+leaned over the soft gray water, "are the engineers. They rub their
+theodolites, and there springs up, not a palace, but a town."
+
+[Illustration: AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.]
+
+"Who speaks of engineers?" said a strong baritone voice as a weighty
+hand fell on my shoulder. "Are you here to take the train at Noisy?"
+
+"Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary, to get
+away from it."
+
+"Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Épernay?"
+
+"What do you mean, Épernay?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint Athanasius?"
+
+"What do you mean, Athanasius?"
+
+The baritone belonged to one of my friends, an engineer from Boston.
+He had an American commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the
+part of a company formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and
+dig a ship-canal from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made
+his inspection the excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel,
+during which time the company had exploded, its chief financier having
+cut his throat when his peculations came out to the public.
+
+[Illustration: LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.]
+
+"Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest possible
+duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have the
+remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have in
+addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary baptism;
+and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole renegade
+from the vow which you have extracted from the others."
+
+The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
+a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
+pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.
+
+We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I have
+some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I could find
+a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor if I
+had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little restaurant
+Ober, near the Odéon, with a small party of medical students, to which
+order Grandstone's friends mostly belonged. We were all young that
+night; and truly I hold that the affectionate confusion of two or
+three different generations adds a charm to friendship.
+
+[Illustration: LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.]
+
+At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian names.
+I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that their
+historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment forgotten,
+their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and William no longer
+carried the thoughts back to the English kings--Joseph and Reuben were
+powerless to remind us of the mighty family of Israel.
+
+"I have no complaint to make of my own name," I protested, "which
+has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor. That was at Würtemberg,
+gentlemen. 'You are from America,' the old man said to me, 'but you
+have a German name: Paul Flemming was one of our old poets.' The
+thought has been a pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest
+idea what my ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality
+my Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to desire."
+
+[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.]
+
+I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I set
+up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in any
+company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out "Paul!"
+through the doorway, six husbands at least would start and say,
+"Coming, dear!" I computed the Pauls belonging to one of the grand
+nations, and proved that an army recruited from them would be large
+enough to carry on a war against a power of the second order.
+
+"If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls," I declared, looking
+toward my young host, "Russia itself would tremble.--Are you to make
+your start in life with no better name?" I asked him maliciously.
+"Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not
+the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not
+have been called by something rather less oecumenical?"
+
+"You may style me by what title you please, Mr. Flemming," said
+Grandstone nonchalantly. "I am to enter a great New York wine-house
+after a little examination of the grape-country here. Doubtless a
+Grandstone will have, by any other name, a bouquet as sweet."
+
+The idea took. An almanac of saints' days, which is often printed in
+combination with the _menu_ of a restaurant, was lying on the table.
+Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose was within an ace of
+being chosen, but Grandstone protested against it as too short,
+and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that presented. Our
+engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket a vial of
+water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships' bottoms; and with that
+classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the bottle being
+broken on poor Grandstone's crown as on the prow of a ship.
+
+"You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius," I said. "If you
+remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you. Meantime, let us
+vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint Athanasius and hold a
+love-feast."
+
+We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next day
+I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas. And
+my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to the
+rude reminder given by my engineer.
+
+"I had quite forgotten my engagement," I confessed. "Besides,
+Grandstone is living now, as you remind me, at Épernay--that is to
+say, at seventy or eighty miles' distance."
+
+"Say three hours," he retorted: "on a railway line we don't count by
+miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to satisfy your promise
+and report yourself for the feast of Saint Athanasius? If you are not
+bound for Épernay, where _are_ you bound?"
+
+"I am off for Marly."
+
+"You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow. You can be
+at Épernay sooner."
+
+"And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow," I continued, rather
+helplessly; "and Josephine my cook is there this afternoon boiling the
+mutton-hams."
+
+"Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or even
+at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
+railroads--a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
+engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
+soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the locomotive,
+offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone and Hohenfels.
+Come, get your ticket!"
+
+[Illustration: BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.]
+
+And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
+like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
+head. I could reach Épernay by five o'clock, returning at eight, and,
+notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the champagne-country, I
+could resume my promenade and modify in no respect my original plan;
+and I could say to Hohenfels, "My boy, I have popped a few corks with
+the widow Cliquot."
+
+Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me in
+their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite unexpectedly.
+
+From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard's, the landscape spun
+out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to visit at all
+events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs of its ancient
+château, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of the Renaissance,
+and whose alternately round and square pavilions, tipped with steep
+mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay visitors in the
+costume of the _grand siècle_. Then came the cathedral of Meaux,
+before which I reverently took off my cap to salute the great
+Bossuet--"Eagle of Meaux," as they justly called him, and on the
+whole a noble bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
+exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
+a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was
+a crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of
+a hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.]
+
+"Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of wine stood
+upon end?" he said--"those donjons at the corners, tapering at the
+top, and presenting the very image of noble bottles? There needs
+nothing but that palace to convince you that you have arrived in the
+champagne region."
+
+"I do not know the building," I confessed.
+
+"Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer storm, when
+the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of mason-work, and
+the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a whole basket of
+champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the château of Boursault,
+apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really a marvel of
+yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a lyre, like the
+towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable bottles, causing to
+resound all over the world the name of the widow Cliquot."
+
+At length we entered the station of Épernay. There I received my first
+shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy was one
+which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme suburbs of
+Paris at three o'clock in the morning.
+
+Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of Épernay
+with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse, received
+us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed into plain
+James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would bear fruit.
+Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the date. The
+feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar shoved beneath
+a quantity of vintners' cards on his study-table, fell on the second
+of May, and could not be celebrated before the evening of the first.
+It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited us, then, for the next
+day at dinner, warning us at the same time that the evening of that
+same morrow would see him on his way to the Falls of Schaffhausen.
+This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled me.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.]
+
+We both laughed heartily at the engineer's mistake of twenty-four
+hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.
+
+Athanasius--whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives him, as
+I maintain, a more distinct individuality,--Athanasius happened to
+be driving out for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was
+about to accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner.
+He contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
+his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
+even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
+us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
+when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there without
+being overheard.
+
+Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city of
+Épernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce, flanked
+with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
+a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
+contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
+environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
+has this peculiarity--its veritable spring, its pride of May, arrives
+in the autumn.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRATION.]
+
+One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a beggar. He
+was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we emerged. Aged hardly fourteen,
+he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes coming up from the
+kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence that amused me. The
+maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and the remainders of
+our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and
+intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he laid by the
+biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same time he
+produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass, nicked at the
+rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his bowl, he drank to
+the health of the waitress with the easiest politeness it was ever my
+lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo
+by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French.
+I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot,
+cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him five francs.
+
+[Illustration: MAC MEURTRIER.]
+
+We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
+its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They
+are subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
+colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
+Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
+religion are they the representations? They are cellar-doors.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK DOMINO.]
+
+It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars, said
+Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of the
+most renowned.
+
+I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found the
+Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+[Illustration: TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.]
+
+In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
+middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
+other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
+approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.
+
+Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his hands
+a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The latter
+met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still, but the
+twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh retained
+with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less beautiful Norma,
+to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical strokes. A strong,
+pealing bass voice came from the interior: "Who dares knock at this
+door?"
+
+"A night-bird," said the man in the cloak, who took the part of
+spokesman. "What has the night-bird to do with the eagle?" replied the
+strong voice. "What can there be in common between the heathen in
+his blindness and the Ancient of the Mountain throned in power and
+splendor?"
+
+"Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to plunge."
+After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the red-nosed man was
+quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at the door, where a
+flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden plunge.
+
+"What nonsense is this?" I said to Athanasius.
+
+"The man in the iron mask," he explained, "is in that respect what we
+shall all be in a minute. Without such a protector, in passing amongst
+the first year's bottles we might receive a few hits in the face."
+
+"And do you know the new apprentice?"
+
+"No: some stranger, evidently."
+
+[Illustration: THE CROOKED MAN.]
+
+"It is not hard to guess his extraction," said one of our
+dinner-party. "In the East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each
+eye. For his part, he seems to be braced with two pans in each
+knee. He is long in the stilts like a heron, square--headed and
+square-shouldered: I give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,"
+he added, "I have seen his likeness somewhere--Ah yes, in an engraving
+of Hogarth's!"
+
+The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
+gentleman, at whose side I had dined--a man of sharpness and wit, for
+which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated finally into
+the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with iron railways
+for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by heavy wagons and
+Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding wonders was distracted
+by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the unfortunate red nose.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVITY ROAD]
+
+The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful exploding
+noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were marching
+through the catacombs.
+
+Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
+foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
+pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the wine-frames,
+came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O'Shanter. At a new outburst
+of resonant noises, which we could not help offering to the general
+confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed twice or thrice the attitude
+of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The figure of the man, still
+rigid, flew up into the air like a stick that pops out of the water.
+The Terrible Brothers received him in their arms.
+
+Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced in
+the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and the
+barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined tramway.
+His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with indignation and
+horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his eyes flew off,
+and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a rate of speed
+continually increasing.
+
+He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
+arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers
+quite disheveled with laughter, said, "Fellows, we had better stop
+somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
+in the rôle of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain we are
+wanted. I always knew there was a Society of Pure Illumination at
+Épernay. It is not a Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes,
+its grips, and in a word its secret. I have recognized among
+these gentlemen some active members of the order--among others,
+notwithstanding his disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here,
+Fortnoye."
+
+"You cannot have seen Fortnoye," said one of the party: "he is at
+Paris."
+
+"And who is your Fortnoye, pray?" I asked.
+
+"The best tenor voice in Épernay; but his presence here does not give
+_me_ an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure Illumination has
+its rites and mysteries more important than everybody supposes,
+and probably complicated with board-of-trade secrets among the
+wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us go and visit
+another cellar."
+
+There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
+expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.
+
+"My dear boys," I said, "as the grayest among you I may be presumed to
+be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be myself. I have received
+to-day a succession of unaccustomed influences. I have been dragged
+about by an impertinent locomotive; I have been induced to dine
+heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps to the limit of my
+measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am naturally thoughtful,
+studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is for me an unfaded
+morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at pleasure, and read
+within its tube legends written in dusted gold. But the Present to the
+true philosopher is also--In fact, I never was so much amused in my
+life. I am dying to see what they will do with that Scotchman."
+
+[Illustration: THE ANIMATED CELLS]
+
+Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
+could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
+was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
+ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
+out after long service and leaning against a wall.
+
+Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could see
+everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries, sitting
+in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral tests.
+Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white bandage
+which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still perfectly
+white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master arose--I should have
+said the Reverend--his head nodding with senility, his beard white as
+a waterfall: he appeared to be eighty years of age at least. He was
+truly venerable to look at, and reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of
+dalmatica embroidered with gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly
+marked on the aspect of this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing
+the spy, and felt inclined to return humbly to the good counsel of
+Athanasius, when the latter, pushing my elbow behind the shelves,
+said, referring to the Ancient of the Mountain, "That's Fortnoye: I
+knew I couldn't be mistaken."
+
+I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
+Épernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
+only of listening.
+
+"The barleycorns of your native North having been partially cleaned
+out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted steeds--the steed
+you bridled without a head, and the steed that ran away with you
+without legs," said the Ancient--"we have brought you hither for
+examination. We might have gone much farther with the physical tests:
+we might have forced you, at the present session, to relieve yourself
+of those envelopes considered indispensable by all Europeans beneath
+your own latitude, and in our presence perform the sword-dance."
+
+"So be it," said the disciple, executing a galvanic figure with his
+legs, his countenance still like marble.
+
+"If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring it in?"
+
+"I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth," replied the red nose. "Give me
+the daggers."
+
+"We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful to a man
+of such evident sensibility as yours." The red nose bowed. "What is
+your name?"
+
+He pronounced it--apparently MacMurtagh.
+
+"In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier."
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the Scotchman in a tone of abstraction.
+
+"No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?"
+
+"I am a homoeopathic doctor."
+
+"Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that the
+Ancient of the Mountain hears what you say."
+
+The Scot held up his hand: "I believe in the learned Hahnemann, and
+in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself; but," he added,
+"homoeopathy is a science still in its baby-clothes. I have invented
+a system perfectly novel. In mingling homoeopathy with vegetable
+magnetism the most encouraging results are obtained, as may be
+observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh, near Edinburgh--"
+
+"Enough!" cried the Ancient: "circulars are not allowed here. Forget
+nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired with the pious ambition
+of becoming our brother?"
+
+"At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the wine-houses.
+I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the lodge of
+Épernay--"
+
+"Silence! The words you use, _lodge_ and _Free Mason_, are most
+improper in this temple, which is that of the Pure Illumination, and
+nothing less. Will you remember, Meurtrier?"
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the novice again. The last proofs were now
+tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was
+made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the
+bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish,
+a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack
+of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke
+out from all sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.
+
+Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of that
+fatal honeycomb!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRAVELER'S REST.]
+
+They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or other,
+and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion the
+wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was to
+follow, and the semicircle of purple faces was quite blackening with
+bottled laughter, when Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour
+for departure was come, and I had not a minute to spare.
+
+[Illustration: PALACE AT STRASBURG.]
+
+Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph: as
+we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the voices
+exclaim in concert, "It is the Pure Illumination!"
+
+Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were perfectly
+Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast establishments,
+where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward from the wine in
+store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and dismiss him as an
+Anacreon.
+
+Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe's
+conversation with his soul, "serious and sober." In the cellar no drop
+had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I entered: I came
+out in a species of voluptuous dream.
+
+All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very much
+touched with the attention. It was who should carry my botany-box, who
+should set my cap straight, who should give me the most precise and
+statistical information about the train which returned to Paris, with
+a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I chanted snatches of old
+songs, and mingled together in a tender reverie my recollections
+of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my theories of Progressive
+Geography.
+
+"Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to the
+city."
+
+"Don't let them carry you beyond Noisy."
+
+"Come back to Épernay every May-day: never forget the feast of Saint
+Athanasius."
+
+"Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come, man,
+bundle up! they are closing the barrier."
+
+I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. "Adieu," I said, "my dear
+champanions--"
+
+I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep directly.
+
+Next day I awoke--at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening before,
+making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had traveled beside
+me in the adjoining car.
+
+My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
+clustered around me.
+
+"Ah, boys," I said, "I have too many griefs imprisoned in this aching
+bosom to be much put out by the ordinary 'Horrid Hoax.' But you have
+compromised my reputation. I promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly:
+children, bankruptcy stares me in the face."
+
+Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: "You wished to
+dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you mistook the
+day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he voluntarily deceived
+you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have concocted a little
+conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit in fact, when you
+are not in your _lubies_ about the Past and the Future. We wanted
+you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen you at Noisy, Cethigus
+tucked you into a car with the intention of making use of you at
+Schaffhausen."
+
+"Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not to
+revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn promise, a
+consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will not carry me
+to Schaffhausen."
+
+He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know that no
+great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for Bâle. For
+my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional duties, such
+as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital of Alsace. In
+his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were to meet each
+other shortly.
+
+It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
+railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
+counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
+the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
+five hours and three-quarters to spare.
+
+One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor opinion,
+is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps, cleared
+the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it might be,
+I was glad of everything. I was glad the "champanions" were departed,
+glad I had a stolen morning in Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my
+domestics would be uneasy for me at Marly.
+
+In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
+detention in the city.
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOODS.
+
+
+  All yesterday you were so near to me,
+    It seemed as if I hardly moved or spoke
+  But your heart moved with mine. I woke
+    To a new life that found you everywhere,
+  As if your love was as some wide-girt sea,
+    Or as the sunlit air;
+  And so encompassed me,
+    Whether I thought or not, it could not but be there.
+
+  To-day your words approve me, and your heart
+    Is mine as ever, yet that heavenly sense
+    Of oneness that made every hour intense
+    With Love's full perfectness, is gone from thence;
+  And, though our hands are clasped, our souls are two,
+  And in my thoughts I say, "This is myself--this you!"
+
+MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.
+
+The Ride of Prince Geraint.
+
+
+    And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard
+    The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,
+    A little vext at losing of the hunt,
+    A little at the vile occasion, rode
+    By ups and downs through many a glassy glade
+    And valley, with fixt eye following the three.
+
+                                           _Enid_.
+
+  Through forest paths his charger strode,
+  His heron plume behind him flowed,
+  Blood-red the west with sunset glowed,
+  Far down the river golden flowed,
+    And in the woods the winds were still:
+  No helm had he, nor lance in rest;
+  His knightly beard flowed down his breast;
+  In silken costume gayly drest,
+  Out from the glory of the west
+    He flashed adown the purple hill.
+
+  His sword hung tasseled at his side,
+  His purple scarf was floating wide,
+  And all his raiment many-dyed,
+  As if he came to seek a bride,
+    And not the combat that he sought;
+  Yet rode he like a prince, and one
+  Native to noble deeds alone,
+  Who many a valiant tilt had run,
+  And many a prize of tourney won
+    In Arthur's lists at Camelot.
+
+  Cool grasses and green mosses made
+  Soft carpet for his charger's tread,
+  As 'neath the oak boughs dark o'erhead,
+  By belts of pasture scant of shade,
+    Into the Castle Town he rode:
+  He heard, as things are heard in dreams,
+  The sound of far-off falling streams,
+  The shriller bird-choir's evening hymns:
+  He saw but only helmet-gleams,
+    The smith that smote, the fire that glowed,
+
+  The sheen of lances, and the cloud
+  From many a field-forge fire, the crowd
+  Of gay-clad squires, and, neighing loud,
+  The war-horse with rich trappings proud,
+    That arched his neck and pawed the ground;
+  Old armorers grave and stern in stall,
+  Where low-crowned morions, helmets tall,
+  Shone gilt and burnished on the wall;
+  And, shining brighter than them all,
+    The eyes of maidens sun-embrowned.
+
+MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.
+
+
+I.--THE COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.
+
+
+Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates, and
+China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
+the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
+country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
+systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
+French travelers in the East, each tinged, in a measure, with the
+national spirit of their respective countries. In the case of the
+traveler, as of the astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the
+personal equation, has to be made in receiving the accounts of his
+observations.
+
+[Illustration: THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.]
+
+The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in company
+with the duke de Penthièvre, son of the prince de Joinville, is
+entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the travelers
+by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to obtain the
+best conditions for investigating various matters of interest.
+
+On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the
+quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his
+rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of
+the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector--as martial and as
+authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population
+here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese
+farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, lean, and slightly
+clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy as children and fat
+as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or five pelisses, worn
+one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so that a single man smelt
+like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of dress was this: half a
+dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with a single overcoat with
+extremely long sleeves, falling down to their knees. These garments
+made them resemble balls of wool rather than men.
+
+By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the town
+devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of fortune,
+from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled with these
+latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars, hardly
+human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow upon the
+ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention. The cause
+of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in one of the
+gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness of these
+people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered about this
+fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious deference
+strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower stratum,
+however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
+obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
+politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
+poverty, was wanting.
+
+A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
+Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
+road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals.
+On both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
+surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
+grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
+fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
+in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
+dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may be
+imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the dead
+is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of the
+telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai had
+built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the mail, but
+in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred places--at
+all the points where its shadow from the rising sun fell upon the
+coffins lying on the ground.
+
+At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and, dressed
+in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes, received their
+visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are divided into three
+classes. The first consists of the children of the neighboring towns
+who have been deserted by their parents and left to die of hunger.
+The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or less perfectly
+cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution they are
+thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They receive an
+industrial as well as a literary education. In one building they
+are taught to read and write, and in another are the schools for
+shoemaking, carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that,
+being received at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they
+are launched upon the world with an education and a trade.
+
+There are about four hundred children in this class, and the activity,
+the order and organization of the workshops, and the exquisite
+cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see. Near at hand
+is a school of a higher grade, to which the most promising pupils
+are transferred for the study of Chinese literature. The system of
+teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required to study aloud,
+and the din is in consequence deafening and incessant. Then there is
+the highest class, consisting of about two hundred and fifty youths,
+the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily for their instruction.
+These are destined to become rhetoricians, and, step by step,
+bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins and members of the
+governing class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and
+the Fathers have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese
+language, as well as its written characters, but also the nice
+critical points of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with
+authority the poetry and legends and the commentaries upon the
+writings of Confucius. This they have done for the purpose of having
+an opportunity to convert the orphans they have adopted, and thus
+by degrees introduce into the government an element which will be
+essentially Christian. Thus far, the profession of Christianity is
+not essentially incompatible with the office of mandarin, though it
+is impossible to hold this position without performing some idolatrous
+rites.
+
+[Illustration: HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.]
+
+On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
+navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
+Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
+commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
+functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
+of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
+a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
+of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally got
+off after the removal of a part of her cargo.
+
+The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the narrowness
+of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course. Frequently the
+steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and fastened round
+a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and witnessed a review of
+some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon Tartar ponies, with high
+saddles and short stirrups. The warriors wore queues and were dressed
+in long robes. Their moustaches gave them, however, a fierce martial
+air, and they were armed with English sabres and American revolvers.
+
+Tien-Tsin ("Heaven's Ford") is a city of about four hundred thousand
+inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the Imperial Canal with the
+Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about three days' journey by
+land, is sandy, and the trip is made a very disagreeable one by the
+clouds of dust, which blind the traveler and effectually prevent any
+examination of the country passed through.
+
+The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by two
+mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow made
+of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard long,
+furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down in
+them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be placed
+in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however, they
+are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the left
+shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat the
+mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in front,
+with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel. As they
+are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends chiefly
+upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the road;
+while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught is
+always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.
+
+At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal button,
+sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin, Tchoung-Hao, with
+a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During the rest of the
+journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart drawn by a fine
+black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the route displayed
+his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an immense pair of
+spectacles, the glasses of which were about three inches in diameter.
+At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the middle of the day,
+and was photographed by one of its members. The curious crowd of
+spectators which gathered in every village to inspect the "foreign
+devils" scattered when the camera was posed, and for a few moments our
+travelers were freed from their intrusiveness.
+
+[Illustration: AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE
+EMPERORS.]
+
+Starting next morning at daylight, at three in the afternoon the party
+entered Pekin. The relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for
+one of the paved ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of
+the city struck the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the
+Celestial Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof
+of green tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which
+grinned the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as
+could be seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built
+partly of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
+battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
+impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
+grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
+archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
+Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
+carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.
+
+Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
+important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
+before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
+twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
+into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
+Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
+high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
+the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone masonry
+resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built of a solid
+core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved with tiles,
+and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of which are
+fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances of about
+one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which are in the
+Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the partition wall
+between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is an enclosure,
+also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this another,
+called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial palaces and
+pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each other at right
+angles, run through the whole city, which in this respect is very
+unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the Tartar city near its
+north-west corner divides into two branches, which enter the Imperial
+City and surround the Forbidden City, and then uniting again pass
+through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.
+
+The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
+on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
+promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
+whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
+examination, comes to the following conclusions: "This immense city,
+in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden under the
+severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly disintegrating,
+and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of this slow
+decomposition is sad, since it promises death more certainly than the
+most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will exist no longer; it
+must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will be discovered, like a
+second Pompeii, buried under its own dust."
+
+The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
+the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of
+the Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
+attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
+harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
+favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
+this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
+six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
+death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
+built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
+seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
+fantastic dragons, and are still in good condition, though they
+have been exposed to the open air all this time. One of them was a
+celestial sphere eight feet in diameter, containing all the stars
+known in 1650 and visible in Pekin.
+
+[Illustration: PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.]
+
+Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the Lamas,
+that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin pass
+quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell in the
+world--the great bell of Moscow has never been hung--twenty-five feet
+high, weighing ninety thousand pounds, and richly sculptured.
+
+The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a stranger
+to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese, which can
+be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the applicant
+should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance, make
+himself a Chinese. Even then, complete success is gained only by a
+fortunate combination of circumstances. The streets devoted to
+shops of all kinds afford, however, to the traveler a never-ending
+succession of changing and interesting pictures. Yet the general
+spirit of the Chinese leads them also to be sparing of all outward
+decoration, reserving their forces for interior display. The
+Forbidden City even, though marvelous stories are told of its
+interior splendors, has outside a mean appearance. "A pagoda of the
+thirty-sixth rank has more effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son
+of Heaven."
+
+In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility, the
+party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of disdain
+on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere the
+curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
+themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
+higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
+them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
+the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
+that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
+farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince's cart they are so
+far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule. Palanquins,
+carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another and the most
+convenient means of locomotion used in China: this method is, however,
+forbidden except for princes and ministers of state.
+
+In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands of
+scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles raised
+in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels, coolies,
+soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to the
+confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old men
+carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of the
+scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
+with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
+sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
+the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin are
+frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which is
+secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so that
+in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This curious,
+indistinct note had excited the count's attention, and he learned its
+cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet, having in its flight
+struck itself against the cord of one of the kites. Their use was
+explained by the natives as a protection against the hawks which are
+very common in Pekin.
+
+Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked to
+see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public gaze,
+labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such sights as
+this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities, the squalid
+suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with indigence and
+disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently suggest to
+European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is hopeless.
+Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every European
+capital, and the same causes which have led to their cessation there
+are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce the same results.
+
+The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
+of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
+thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
+government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
+the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
+which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
+business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in
+use under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
+custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
+lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads and
+telegraphs and to open the coal-mines of the empire. Success in
+these reforms means bringing China into the circle of inter-dependent
+civilized nations; and so far all the steps in this direction have
+been sure and successful ones.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.]
+
+On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of China,
+which lies about three days' journey from that capital, on the route
+to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of transportation on
+this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full of tricks as they
+were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts for carrying the
+money of the expedition. The whole of this capital amounted to about
+one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of hundreds of thousands of
+the copper coins of the country, made with holes in their centres and
+strung by the thousand upon osier twigs. This is the only money which
+circulates in the agricultural portions of China, and a "barbarian"
+has to give a pound weight of them for a couple of eggs. The country
+soon began to become hilly, with the mountains of Mongolia visible in
+the distance. Trains of camels were passed, or could be seen winding
+in the plain below.
+
+The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These are
+the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant dynasties of
+Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which opens out from a
+great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks and granite
+domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The grandeur of its
+dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation make it a fit
+resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native dynasty. At
+the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic tombs, encircled
+with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five majestic portals,
+about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance to the tombs. From
+the portico giving entrance to the valley to the tomb of the first
+emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue is marked first
+by winged columns of white marble, and next by two rows of animals,
+carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are, on either side,
+two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel standing, one
+kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one dragon standing,
+one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors, courtiers, etc. The
+lions are fifteen feet high, and the others equally colossal, while
+each of the figures is carved from a single block of granite.
+
+At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
+them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
+porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
+or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
+severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet long
+by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet high,
+and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single stick of
+teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were brought
+for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have been in
+position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as when first
+posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure suffered in any
+degree.
+
+The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and the
+dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes the
+vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
+memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
+access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage
+built of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
+structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
+tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
+back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
+somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
+precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
+desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
+while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
+spot, in order further to preserve the secret.
+
+[Illustration: CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.]
+
+From this gigantic effort to preserve the memory of the dead our party
+hastened to the Great Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the
+living from the incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps
+nowhere in the world are to be found in such close proximity two such
+striking evidences of the waste of human labor when undirected by
+scientific knowledge. The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as
+worthless for the purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are
+for obtaining immortality for the bodies they enclose.
+
+Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at the
+entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
+which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
+grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
+by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
+appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built
+over the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
+following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
+Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance, climbing
+rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so without its
+aid. The count was convinced that it would be as difficult to climb
+it for the purpose of defending it as it would be to do so in order to
+attack it. This first support of the wall is in itself a giant work.
+
+As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
+crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
+situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200 B.C.
+as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been built
+in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the materials
+at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth, pounded, and
+faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles and furnished
+with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the facing was
+made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones. Where the
+rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid masonry,
+tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole length it
+is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet. Every
+mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower. At
+present the wall is in various conditions of preservation, according
+to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys, which were
+the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere heap of
+rubbish, which the plough year by year still further scatters.
+
+The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
+organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
+illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
+party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
+camera was placed upon the wall itself.
+
+On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
+Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
+porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins. Only
+two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in China,
+remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry them
+away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a dozen
+bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel of
+the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it was
+situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it. Looking
+at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this wonderful
+collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages of
+civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
+truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
+his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
+exclaiming, "Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot, where
+the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came to China
+as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of mercy,
+but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling us
+barbarians."
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+DEEPER AND DEEPER.
+
+
+Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure when
+she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step
+out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run round
+and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him.
+How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this
+monstrous fashion!
+
+"Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?" she said,
+with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded him of many
+a pleasant morning in Borva.
+
+"I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought you some
+flowers," he said; but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face,
+and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had
+brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right,
+and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his universal
+kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.
+
+"Frank is up stairs," she said, "getting ready some things to go
+to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had
+breakfast?"
+
+"Oh, you were going to Brighton?"
+
+"Yes," she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, "but
+not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you
+will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot
+understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great
+surprise to me, I am sure of that."
+
+"Ay, Sheila," he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally,
+"you will find it different from Borvabost. You will have no
+scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair flying
+about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even;
+and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will go."
+
+"Oh no," she said with a quick look of disappointment, "you will not
+go yet. If I had known you were coming--But it was very late when we
+will get home this morning: two o'clock it was."
+
+"Another ball?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl, but not very joyfully.
+
+"Why, Sheila," he said with a grave smile on his face, "you are
+becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can't keep up an
+acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all these grand places and
+knows all sorts of swell people; so you'll have to cut me, Sheila."
+
+"I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes," said the girl
+with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened:
+"But it is not kind of you to laugh at me."
+
+"Of course I did not laugh at you," he said taking both her hands in
+his, "although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and
+talked very wild English. Don't you remember how vexed you used to be,
+and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by
+getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about 'A young calf ate a
+raw egg'?"
+
+"Can you say it now?" said Sheila, with her face getting bright and
+pleased again. "Try it after me. Now listen."
+
+She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any
+language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her.
+She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
+in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
+Highlander.
+
+"But what are _you_ now?" he asked. "You are no longer that wild girl
+who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was
+the excitement of a storm coming on."
+
+"Many times," she said slowly and wistfully, "I will wish that I could
+be that again for a little while."
+
+"Don't you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?"
+
+"I try to like them."
+
+"And you don't succeed?"
+
+He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her
+head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and
+entered the room.
+
+"Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It's a
+pity we can't take them to Brighton with us."
+
+"But I intend to take them," said Sheila firmly.
+
+"Oh, very well, if you don't mind the bother," said her husband. "I
+should have thought your hands would have been full: you know you'll
+have to take everything with you you would want in London. You will
+find that Brighton isn't a dirty little fishing-village in which
+you've only to tuck up your dress and run about anyhow."
+
+"I never saw a dirty little fishing-village," said Sheila quietly.
+
+Her husband laughed: "I meant no offence. I was not thinking of
+Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can't you run down and see us while we
+are at Brighton?"
+
+"Oh do, Mr. Ingram!" said Sheila with quite a new interest in her
+face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her
+knees and begged this great favor of him. "Do, Mr. Ingram! We should
+try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall
+we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till the
+Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you
+come down."
+
+Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
+Lavender added, "And we shall introduce you to that young American
+lady whom you are so anxious to meet."
+
+"Oh, is she to be there?" he said, looking rather curiously at
+Lavender.
+
+"Yes, she and her mother. We are going down together."
+
+"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
+which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
+stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
+associate.
+
+However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
+they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
+Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
+discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
+her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
+it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
+with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
+other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
+of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
+was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
+with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
+concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
+open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
+foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
+boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
+friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
+their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
+nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
+apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
+their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
+dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
+smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from
+that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and
+a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure
+and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that
+might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days
+gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.
+
+"You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?"
+said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired,
+grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright
+gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong
+and in such good spirits."
+
+"How happy you must be always!" said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger
+lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," said Sheila, blushing somewhat and
+not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had
+not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have
+occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.
+
+On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each
+other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small
+pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best
+of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she
+said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large
+gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very
+nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not
+understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume
+an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless
+talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a
+kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite
+her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the
+girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She
+wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers
+away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out
+what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and
+for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward
+the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were
+upon her. At last she so persistently stared out of the window that
+she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the
+farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her
+as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs.
+Kavanagh's chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear
+as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side
+of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was
+greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood
+of London--the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so
+forth--and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about
+Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed
+by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight: then they
+pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of
+granite) and rumbled through the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse
+of a great mass of gray houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up
+the bare green downs beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.
+
+"Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?" her husband said to
+her with a laugh as they were driving down the Queen's road.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"It is not like Borvabost, is it?"
+
+She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her with a
+vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray city
+was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not disappear
+somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks and the
+boats?
+
+They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was another
+thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great interest. But
+the next moment there was a quick catching of her breath, which almost
+resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang into her eyes. Here
+at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare she could
+catch a glimpse of a great green plain--yellow-green it was in the
+sunlight--that the wind was whitening here and there with tumbling
+waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind in-land--there
+everything seemed asleep--but here there was a fresh breeze from the
+south, and the sea had been rough the day before, and now it was of
+this strange olive color, streaked with the white curls of foam that
+shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold scent of sea-weed, too,
+blown up this narrow passage between the houses? And now the carriage
+cut round the corner and whirled out into the glare of the Parade,
+and before her the great sea stretched out its leagues of tumbling and
+shining waves, and she heard the water roaring along the beach, and
+far away at the horizon she saw a phantom ship. She did not even look
+at the row of splendid hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed
+folks on the pavement, at the brilliant flags that were flapping and
+fluttering on the New Pier and about the beach. It was the great
+world of shining water beyond that fascinated her, and awoke in her a
+strange yearning and longing, so that she did not know whether it was
+grief or joy that burned in her heart and blinded her eyes with tears.
+Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were going up the steps of the
+hotel, and said in a friendly way, "I suppose you have some sad
+memories of the sea?"
+
+"No," said Sheila bravely, "it is always pleasant to me to think of
+the sea; but it is a long time since--since--"
+
+"Sheila," said her husband abruptly, "do tell me if all your things
+are here;" and then the girl turned, calm and self-collected, to look
+after rugs and boxes.
+
+When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
+to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
+stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
+sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
+could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
+flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
+people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
+sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats that
+were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which she
+knew there was no use placing before her two companions.
+
+"Brighton seems to surprise you very much," said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+"Yes," said Sheila, "I have been told all about it, but you will
+forget all that; and this is very different from the sea at home--at
+my home."
+
+"Your home is in London now," said the elder lady with a smile.
+
+"Oh no!" said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly. "London, that
+is not our home at all. We live there for a time--that will be quite
+necessary--but we shall go back to the Lewis some day soon--not to
+stay altogether, but enough to make it as much our home as London."
+
+"How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the Hebrides?"
+said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and friendly inquiry in her
+eyes.
+
+"It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place so
+much," said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she added with
+growing courage, "for you must not think he is always like what he
+is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no day that is
+nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he is up very
+early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a salmon-rod.
+He can catch the salmon very well--oh, very well for one that is
+not accustomed--and he will shoot as well as any one that is in the
+island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there will be in the
+island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much chance--not
+any whatever--of his being lonely or tired when we go to live in the
+Lewis."
+
+Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
+earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
+considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
+she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
+subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as
+to whether she said _like-a-ness_ or _likeness_, or whether she said
+_gyarden_ or _garden_. Indeed, she forgot more than that. She was
+somewhat excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered
+sound of the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the
+North, and about her husband's stay there, and how they should
+pass the time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
+Lavender's injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
+cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household
+at Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
+understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
+and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
+father's shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they were
+very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a far
+from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite charmed
+with Sheila's descriptions of her island-life, and wished she could
+go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when she spoke of
+visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were staying there,
+Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome as the daughter
+of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have been.
+
+"And will you go out in a boat now?" said Sheila, looking down to the
+beach.
+
+"In a boat! What sort of boat?" said Mrs. Kavanagh.
+
+"Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats they
+are, as far as I can see."
+
+"No, thank you," said the elder lady with a smile. "I am not fond of
+small boats, and the company of the men who go with you might be a
+little objectionable, I should fancy."
+
+"But you need not take any men," said Sheila: "the sailing of one of
+those little boats, it is very simple."
+
+"Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help me."
+
+"And what would you do if you went out?"
+
+"We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are, but we
+would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the lines. You
+would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the morning."
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "you don't know what you propose
+to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in these waves--we should
+be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you don't know what sea-sickness
+is?"
+
+"No," said Sheila, "but I will hear my husband speak of it often. And
+it is only in crossing the Channel that people will get sick."
+
+"Why, this is the Channel."
+
+Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of course
+this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the South
+became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble creatures.
+Her speculations on this point were cut short by the entrance of her
+husband, who came to announce that he had not only secured a carriage
+for a month, but that it would be round at the hotel door in half an
+hour; whereupon the two American ladies said they would be ready, and
+left the room.
+
+"Now go off and get dressed, Sheila," said Lavender.
+
+She stood for a moment irresolute.
+
+"If you wouldn't mind," she said after a moment's hesitation--"if you
+would allow me to go by myself--if you would go to the driving, and
+let me go down to the shore!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "You will have people fancying you are only
+a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all
+those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pocket or throw stones at
+you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian: now do, like a good
+girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It
+won't hurt you much."
+
+So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress, and
+he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.
+
+Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
+nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up
+and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of
+carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet
+of this still summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a
+distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of
+her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while
+driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds
+were drawn and candles lit, and still their conversation murmured
+around her unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
+smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
+a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
+abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
+yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
+sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
+and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
+million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
+beach.
+
+"Mayn't we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?" said
+Sheila.
+
+"You couldn't go out walking at this time of night," said Mrs.
+Kavanagh in a kindly way: "you would meet the most unpleasant persons.
+Besides, going out into the night air would be most dangerous."
+
+"It is a beautiful night," said Sheila with a sigh. She was still
+standing at the window.
+
+"Come," said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and putting her hand in
+her arm, "we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to
+be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we
+can do to amuse you."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to be amused!" cried Sheila almost in terror,
+for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. "I would
+much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it
+is very kind of you," she hastily added, fancying that her speech had
+been somewhat ungracious--"it is very kind of you indeed."
+
+"Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked to the table
+and sat down.
+
+Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with
+some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in
+which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were
+soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had
+been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the
+room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened
+to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He
+went over to her and sat down by the piano.
+
+"Here," she said, "I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I
+am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a
+second to me: how can one learn without practicing? And there are some
+of those duets I really should like to learn after what you said of
+them."
+
+"Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?" he said.
+
+"And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must have
+left you in a very amiable mood."
+
+"Well, suppose we try," he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll
+of music which she had brought down.
+
+"Which shall we take first?" he asked.
+
+"It does not much matter," she answered indifferently, and indeed she
+took up one of the duets by haphazard.
+
+What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh's companion suddenly lift her eyes
+from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the
+room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets,
+and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine
+who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no
+great power--
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
+
+and it was she to whom the answer was given--
+
+  He in thy snowy bosom strays;
+
+and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
+them sing together--
+
+  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
+  And walks the mazes of thy hair.
+
+She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
+music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practicing
+these duets--her duets--with some one else. For presently they sang
+"When the rosy morn appearing," and "I would that my love could
+silently," and others, all of them in Sheila's eyes, sacred to the
+time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room at Borva.
+It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect
+acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back
+over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being
+striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these
+things. It was not as a music-master that he sang with her. He put as
+much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old
+days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that
+this woman should have taken Sheila's own duets from her to sing
+before her with her own husband.
+
+Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could
+not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and
+even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very
+tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and
+Lavender had just discovered another duet which they felt bound to try
+together as the last.
+
+This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained
+by her husband's attentions to this young American lady; and yet she
+would not admit to herself that he was any way in the wrong. She
+would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her
+heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she
+had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and
+resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the
+injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural
+than that Frank should recommend to any friend the duets of which he
+was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady
+should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them?
+and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion
+of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very
+friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all
+her resolves.
+
+"Sheila," said her husband, I don't think I ever asked you whether you
+rode."
+
+"I used to ride many times at home," she said.
+
+"But I suppose you'd rather not ride here," he said. "Mrs. Lorraine
+and I propose to go out presently: you'll be able to amuse yourself
+somehow till we come back."
+
+Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her mother
+was with her.
+
+"I suppose I may go out," said Sheila. "It is so very dull in-doors,
+and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and she is not going
+out."
+
+"Well, there's no harm in your going out," answered Lavender, "but
+I should have thought you'd have liked the comfort of watching the
+people pass, from the window."
+
+She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out.
+Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her husband
+and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down stairs
+without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great
+hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.
+
+It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle
+chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and
+motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy
+sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used
+to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air
+and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face
+wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of
+the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves
+hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along
+the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men
+putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long
+after the boat was launched. She would not confess to herself that
+she felt lonely and miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was
+melancholy. It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had
+always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging
+and rushing before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and
+calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as
+was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a
+blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade,
+and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull
+blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.
+
+She returned to the King's road a trifle tired, and sat down on one of
+the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse her; and now
+the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed folks, and the
+centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant going and coming of
+riders. She saw strange old women, painted, powdered and bewigged in
+hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and down the level street, and
+she wondered what wild hallucinations possessed the brains of these
+poor creatures. She saw troops of beautiful young girls, with flowing
+hair, clear eyes and bright complexions, riding by, a goodly company,
+under charge of a riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow
+sweeter when they came into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and
+wondering and speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders
+whose appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well,
+so did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
+attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
+could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
+and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them saw
+Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in the
+other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been there
+for many a day.
+
+What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing round
+a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin, and
+playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that attracted
+Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about the timid,
+pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded her of little
+Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her heart seemed to
+be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no thought of the
+people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the pavement, and
+found that the small girl and her companion were about to go away.
+Sheila stopped the man.
+
+"Will you let your little girl come with me into this shop?"
+
+It was a confectioner's shop.
+
+"We were going home to dinner," said the man, while the small girl
+looked up with wondering eyes.
+
+"Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back in half
+an hour?"
+
+The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of her,
+and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand and led
+her into the confectioner's shop, putting her violin on one of the
+small marble tables while they sat down at another. She was probably
+not aware that two or three idlers had followed them, and were staring
+with might and main in at the door of the shop.
+
+What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed
+lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things with her
+own hands, and asked her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and
+sweet voice? There was not much in Sheila's appearance to provoke fear
+or awe. The little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank,
+and told her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced,
+the number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the
+small incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too,
+and her photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well
+content: she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did
+not often get tired.
+
+"Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?" said Sheila.
+
+"We go out every day when it does not rain very hard."
+
+Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have some
+tea with me: would you like that?"
+
+"Yes, very much," said the small musician, looking up frankly.
+
+Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
+appeared at the door.
+
+"Don't hurry," said Sheila to the little girl: "sit still and drink
+out the lemonade; then I will give you some little parcels which you
+must put in your pocket."
+
+She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met the
+eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come out,
+after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and down the
+pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops, caught sight
+of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom she had picked
+up in the streets.
+
+"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said to Mrs. Lorraine. "In
+open day, with people staring in, and she has not even taken the
+trouble to put the violin out of sight!"
+
+"The poor child means no harm," said his companion.
+
+"Well, we must get her out of this somehow," he said; and so they
+entered the shop.
+
+Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband's look,
+though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed, acted
+quite thoughtlessly--perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to speak to
+some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.
+
+"Hadn't you better let this little girl go?" said Lavender to Sheila
+somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice for his companion.
+
+"When she has finished her lemonade she will go," said Sheila meekly.
+"But I have to buy some things for her first."
+
+"You have got a whole lot of people round the door," he said.
+
+"It is very kind of the people to wait for her," answered Sheila with
+the same composure. "We have been here half an hour. I suppose they
+will like her music very much."
+
+The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
+stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
+then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
+Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
+little thing.
+
+They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
+the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in
+a humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
+beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
+to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
+Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal (during
+the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course, for she had
+already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and was bent on
+making himself as agreeable as possible to his two companions. Their
+talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two ladies on the
+Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in Munich; from
+that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy transition, to the
+ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one of his most impulsive
+and brilliant moods--gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic by turns,
+and so obviously sincere in all that his listeners were delighted
+with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed them as
+implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance, saw and
+heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the far North
+when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the infection
+of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked, too--telling
+the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in his own
+rough--and--ready translations--while there was no self-consciousness
+in his face, but a thorough warmth of earnestness; and sometimes, too,
+she would notice a quiver of the under lip that she knew of old,
+when some pathetic point or phrase had to be indicated rather than
+described. He was drawing pictures for them as well as telling
+stories--of the three students entering the room in which the
+landlady's daughter lay dead--of Barbarossa in his cave--of the
+child who used to look up at Heine as he passed her in the street,
+awestricken by his pale and strange face--of the last of the band of
+companions who sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and
+drank to their memory--of the king of Thule, and the deserter from
+Strasburg, and a thousand others.
+
+"But is there any of them--is there anything in the world--more
+pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?" he said. "You know it, of
+course. No? Oh, you must, surely. Don't you remember the mother who
+stood by the bedside of her sick son, and asked him whether he would
+not rise to see the great procession go by the window; and he tells
+her that he cannot, he is so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking
+of his dead Gretchen? _You_ know the story, Sheila. The mother begs
+him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims
+going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of
+God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame
+people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they
+make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
+healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
+out of it, and says to her son, 'Take that to the Mother of God, and
+she will heal your pain.' Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand,
+and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running
+down his face, he says, 'O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to
+tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near us lived
+Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart:
+heal the wound in my heart.' And then--and then--"
+
+Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
+"What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no
+idea of it--of its simplicity and tenderness--"
+
+"But pray let us hear the rest of it," said Mrs. Lorraine gently.
+
+"Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother
+and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber
+and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart.
+Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this
+in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly.
+The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the
+morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her
+hands, and says--"
+
+He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the
+window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to his:
+he took it.
+
+"The next time I try to translate Heine," he said, making it appear
+that he had broken off through vexation, "something strange will
+happen."
+
+"It is a beautiful story," said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been
+crying a little bit in a covert way: "I wonder I have not seen a
+translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be
+after four."
+
+So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
+still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
+perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out
+her heart to him, and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings.
+He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so
+roughly: surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and
+begging for sympathy and compassion.
+
+"Frank," she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head
+to hide the color in her face.
+
+"Well?" he answered a trifle coldly.
+
+"You won't be vexed with me," she said in a low voice, and with her
+heart beginning to beat rapidly.
+
+"Vexed with you about what?" he said abruptly.
+
+Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
+which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
+that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
+approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said, "Are we
+to go to Lady Leveret's?"
+
+"Of course we are," he said, "unless you would rather go and see some
+blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so
+forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop?
+It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people
+you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the
+wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you
+are a woman, and not a child--that people will talk about what you
+do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her
+daughter do any of these things?"
+
+Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
+ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
+awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
+warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
+to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
+definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.
+
+"I will try to do better, and please you," she said; and then she went
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED.
+
+
+Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl's mind, and now held
+full possession of it--that she was in a world with which she had no
+sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that
+the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her
+husband's love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away
+from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the
+unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question
+her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she
+was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight
+that pressed on her heart.
+
+Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
+Leveret, who was one of Lavender's especial patrons, and to whom he
+had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
+she was a stranger, an interloper, a "third wheel to the cart." She
+scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost
+grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and
+monotonous thing--not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with
+its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and
+rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white
+cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged
+shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the
+sea-life of the place: she did not know where the curers lived;
+whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the
+people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could,
+in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod
+and the skate fetched; where the wives and daughters sat and spun
+and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of
+cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of
+asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished
+some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some
+little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
+sea-life down in the South.
+
+And as they drove along the King's road on this afternoon she suddenly
+called out, "Look, Frank!"
+
+On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
+face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
+pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.
+
+"It is Mr. Ingram," said Sheila.
+
+"Which is Mr. Ingram?" asked Mrs. Lorraine with considerable interest,
+for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. "Not that little
+man?"
+
+"Yes," said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that Ingram had had
+some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the
+main thoroughfare of Brighton.
+
+"Won't you stop and speak to him?" said Sheila with great surprise.
+
+"We are late already," said her husband. "But if you would rather go
+back and speak to him than go on with us, you may."
+
+Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
+Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
+pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.
+
+But next morning she said to him, "I suppose you will be riding with
+Mrs. Lorraine this morning?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there," she
+said.
+
+"Ladies don't generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but
+of course you don't care for that."
+
+"I shall not go if you do not wish me."
+
+"Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of professing
+to keep observances that you don't understand? And it will be some
+amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and
+ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of
+flowers for his horse."
+
+The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
+very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
+pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend
+to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
+gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
+blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in the
+sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray sky or
+the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling
+in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame
+so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would
+have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled down the side of
+the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She
+did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the
+steps, opened the door and entered the square hall. There was an odor
+of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather
+confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter.
+Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but
+that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room
+with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came
+forward to her with amazement in his eyes.
+
+"Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?" he
+asked.
+
+"He is not here," said Sheila. "I have come for you by myself."
+
+For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
+directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, "Well, that is very
+good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?"
+
+So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and
+the roar of the waves.
+
+"Well, Sheila," he said, "this is very good of you, really: where is
+Mr. Lavender?"
+
+"He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning."
+
+"And what do you do?"
+
+"I sit at the window."
+
+"Don't you go boating?"
+
+"No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And yesterday
+it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him nothing
+about the people here or the fishing."
+
+"But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would like to
+know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their wool, and
+so on; but you would find the fishermen here don't live in that way at
+all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their clothing in the
+shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye with it, either.
+However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At present I suppose
+you are returning to your hotel."
+
+A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as she
+turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her eyes.
+
+"I came to see you," she said. "But perhaps you have an engagement. I
+do not wish to take up any of your time: if you please I will go back
+alone to--"
+
+"Now, Sheila," he said with a smile, and with the old friendly look
+she knew so well, "you must not talk like that to me. I won't have it.
+You know I came down to Brighton because you asked me to come; and my
+time is altogether at your service."
+
+"And you have no engagement just now?" said Sheila with her face
+brightening.
+
+"No."
+
+"And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and the nets?
+Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles? It is a
+very good wind."
+
+"Oh, I should be very glad," said Ingram slowly. "I should be
+delighted. But, you see, wouldn't your husband think it--wouldn't he,
+you know--wouldn't it seem just a little odd to him if you were to go
+away like that?"
+
+"He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine," said Sheila quite simply. "He
+does not want me."
+
+"Of course you told him you were coming to see--you were going to call
+at the Old Ship?"
+
+"Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not return for
+a long time."
+
+"Are you quite sure, Sheila?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure."
+
+"Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with you. I
+shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have one
+of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive charge.
+I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and hold you
+responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for
+whatever may befall."
+
+"Oh no," said Sheila. "You must work very hard, and I will see if you
+remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if we can have some
+long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay more than thirty
+shillings for their long lines in this country?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ingram. "I believe most of the fishermen here
+live upon the shillings they get from passers-by after a little
+conversation about the weather and their hard lot in life; so that one
+doesn't talk to them more than one can help."
+
+"But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?"
+
+"I don't know that, either. I suppose there is some good fishing in
+the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big shoals of
+mackerel."
+
+"It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of the men of
+the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been very lucky
+all through the last season, and it was near six thousand ling they
+got."
+
+"But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or other up
+about Habost?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to them. And
+it is a very good boat whatever."
+
+That unlucky "whatever" had slipped out inadvertently: the moment she
+had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward her companion,
+fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could she have made
+such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most particular about
+the avoidance of this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know
+that from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
+with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
+of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
+much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
+with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
+perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
+any fashion whatsoever.
+
+By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
+sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when the
+pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
+over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
+boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
+boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
+handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
+the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
+business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
+did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
+obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The man
+put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not a
+little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
+merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
+delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
+which she accomplished it.
+
+"Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?" Ingram
+called out to Sheila when they had fairly got under way.
+
+She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
+critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
+then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
+said, "If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout,
+I will put on my gloves."
+
+She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and,
+with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.
+
+"You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your hands,
+Sheila," said her companion.
+
+"I do not now," she said, "but Frank would be displeased to see my
+hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands."
+
+What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender's delicate hands he was not
+going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment
+to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great
+satisfaction and content.
+
+And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this
+brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away
+to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of
+smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard: the only
+sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at
+the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The
+south wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white
+sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed
+strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a
+town close by--that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the
+noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to
+windward, there was no more trace of city life--only the great
+blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far
+horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the
+line where the sky and ocean met.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?" said Ingram,
+getting out his pipe.
+
+"Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must attend to
+the boat."
+
+"Don't you feel at home in her yet?" he asked.
+
+"I am not afraid of her," said Sheila, regarding the lines of the
+small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, "but she is very narrow in
+the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose
+they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and
+no narrows to go through."
+
+"It doesn't remind you of Lewis, does it?" he said, filling his pipe
+all the same.
+
+"A little--out there it does," she said, turning to the broad plain of
+the sea, "but it is not much that is in this country that is like the
+Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a stranger when I go back to the
+Lewis, and the people will scarcely know me, and everything will be
+changed."
+
+He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
+which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, "I want you to tell
+me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking about many
+things, and especially about your home in the North, in that sad way.
+You did not do that when you came to London first; and yet it was then
+that you might have been struck and shocked by the difference. You had
+no home-sickness for a long time--But is it home-sickness, Sheila?"
+
+How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of giving
+him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it occurred to her
+that she would be wronging her husband in seeking such sympathy from a
+friend as she had been expecting, and expecting in vain, from him.
+
+"Perhaps it is home-sickness," she said in a low voice, while she
+pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. "I should like
+to see Borva again."
+
+"But you don't want to live there all your life?" he said. "You know
+that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your husband could manage
+it; and I don't suppose he can. Surely your papa does not expect you
+to go and live in Lewis always?"
+
+"Oh, no," she said eagerly. "You must not think my papa wishes
+anything like that. It will be much less than that he was thinking of
+when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do not wish
+to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to London--none at
+all--only that--that--" And here she paused.
+
+"Come, Sheila," he said in the old paternal way to which she had been
+accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their
+friendship, "I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the
+matter. I know there is something wrong: I have seen it for some time
+back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on
+my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and to
+myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?"
+
+She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still doubtful
+as to what she should do.
+
+"You look on me as an intermeddler," he said with a smile.
+
+"No, no," she said: "you have always been our best friend."
+
+"But I have intermeddled none the less. Don't you remember when I told
+you I was prepared to accept the consequences?"
+
+It seemed so long a time since then!
+
+"And once having begun to intermeddle, I can't stop, don't you see?
+Now, Sheila, you'll be a good little girl and do what I tell you.
+You'll take the boat a long way out: we'll put her head round, take
+down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till
+you tell me all about your troubles, and then we'll see what can be
+done."
+
+She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
+anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge
+into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at
+her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand.
+She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She
+knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he
+fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced
+so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness,
+she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure
+her was right for her to do.
+
+How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs
+above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
+and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
+sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King's road and all its
+carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the
+white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to
+be close in shore; the two piers were fore-shortened into small dusky
+masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant
+and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small
+white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched
+that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp
+gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.
+
+Ingram took his seat by Sheila's side, so that he should not have
+to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little preliminary
+nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to
+sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters
+stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble
+might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and
+explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He
+let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and the girl spoke to
+him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply
+she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love
+for her husband had never altered for a moment--that all the prayer
+and desire of her heart was that they two might be to each other
+as she had at one time hoped they would be, when he got to know her
+better. She went over all the story of her coming to London, of her
+first experiences there, of the conviction that grew upon her that her
+husband was somehow disappointed with her, and only anxious now that
+she should conform to the ways and habits of the people with whom
+he associated. She spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how
+heartsick she was with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which
+he showed. She spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of
+the way in which he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her
+showing him, so long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she
+had in her heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love
+involved. And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and
+here it seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband's
+conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
+unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
+could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a large
+number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was the most
+natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so out of
+communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an especial
+friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at times it
+hurt her to be left alone--But here the girl broke down somewhat, and
+Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.
+
+These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were difficult
+to answer. But out of these revelations--which rather took the form of
+a cry than of any distinct statement--he formed a notion of Sheila's
+position sufficiently exact; and the more he looked at it the more
+alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of her than her husband
+did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her
+submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland
+birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive
+and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some--possibly
+unintentional--wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving
+girl--who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or
+limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to
+be gentle and obedient--was to be cast aside and have her tenderest
+feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous,
+shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila's
+waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed
+his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly
+wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy
+with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever
+cost.
+
+"Sheila," he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she
+were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the
+Borva rocks, "you are a good woman."
+
+He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife
+he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no
+imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however
+true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.
+
+"And, after all," he said in a lighter voice, "I think I can do
+something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a
+thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and
+put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there
+is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has
+been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you
+know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put
+the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope
+to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work,
+and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get
+him to go away from London altogether--get him to take to serious
+landscape painting on some wild coast--the Galway coast, for example."
+
+"Why not the Lewis?" said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as
+naturally as the needle.
+
+"Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels
+and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you
+would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know."
+
+"You make me so happy in thinking of that," she said, with her eyes
+growing wet again.
+
+"And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic
+about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to
+make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned
+money. And you might have a boat like this."
+
+"We are drifting too far in," said Sheila, suddenly rising. "Shall we
+go back now?"
+
+"By all means," he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas
+again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.
+
+"Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn't it?" said Ingram.
+
+"Yes," said the girl, with her face full of hope.
+
+"And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and
+making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me, and say I made
+all the mischief to begin with."
+
+"Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?" she said in a low
+voice.
+
+"Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks
+who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between
+two people who are married--that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what
+you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out
+of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English
+you prefer?"
+
+"I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends,
+and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me."
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see."
+
+When they got back to shore it was half-past one.
+
+"You will come and have some luncheon with us?" said Sheila when they
+had gone up the steps and into the King's road.
+
+"Will that lady be there?"
+
+"Mrs. Lorraine? Yes."
+
+"Then I'll come some other time."
+
+"But why not now?" said Sheila. "It is not necessary that you will see
+us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I
+should come at once."
+
+"And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?" said Sheila with a smile. "She
+is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to dislike her."
+
+"But I don't want to meet her, Sheila, that is all," he said; and
+she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that there was no use
+trying to persuade him further.
+
+He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable stream
+of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor she seemed
+to remember that his costume--a blue pilot-jacket, not a little worn
+and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat that had seen a
+good deal of rough weather in the Highlands--was a good deal more
+comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left her at the hotel,
+"Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at half-past three,
+and that I expect to see him in the coffee-room? I sha'n't keep him
+five minutes."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
+appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
+He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
+in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for Lavender
+was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry for the
+wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to set it
+right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He ought to
+go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin working hard,
+to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and then, in this
+friendly solitude, he would get to know something about Sheila's
+character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable were these
+genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces such as
+might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt to
+know the worth of an honest woman's perfect love and unquestioning
+devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he would go and do
+the right thing, as he had many a time done before, in obedience to
+the lecturing of his friend.
+
+Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room. There
+was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of the
+small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the King's road
+and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely taken his seat when
+Lavender came in.
+
+"Hallo, Ingram! how are you?" he said in his freest and friendliest
+way. "Won't you come up stairs? Have you had lunch? Why did you go to
+the Ship?"
+
+"I always go to the Ship," he said. "No, thank you, I won't go up
+stairs."
+
+"You are a most unsociable sort of brute?" said Lavender frankly.
+"Will you take a glass of sherry?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Will you have a game of billiards?"
+
+"No, thank you. You don't mean to say you would play billiards on such
+a day as this?"
+
+"It _is_ a fine day, isn't it?" said Lavender, turning carelessly to
+look at the sunlit road and the blue sea. "By the way, Sheila tells
+me you and she were out sailing this morning. It must have been very
+pleasant, especially for her, for she is mad about such things. What a
+curious girl she is, to be sure! Don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by curious," said Ingram coldly.
+
+"Well, you know, strange--odd--unlike other people in her ways and her
+fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her to see some friends
+of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out of the house somehow
+(I suppose their talking did not interest her), and when they went in
+search of her they found her in the cemetery crying like a child."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why," said Lavender with a smile, "merely because so many people had
+died. She had never seen anything like that before: you know the small
+church-yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions in Norwegian and
+Danish and German. I suppose the first sight of all the white stones
+at Norwood was too much for her."
+
+"Well, I don't see much of a joke in that," said Ingram.
+
+"Who said there was any joke in it?" cried Lavender impatiently.
+"I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are. You are always
+fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I never do anything of
+the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have every reason to be
+satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out."
+
+"_Has she_?"
+
+The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in
+which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender's careless
+flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise,
+and then he said, "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I will tell you what I mean," said Ingram slowly. "It is an
+awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I
+am aware--he gets something else than thanks for his pains
+ordinarily--but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks. Now,
+you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward
+your marriage in the North; and I don't remind you of that to claim
+anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am
+called on to speak to you now."
+
+Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated. He
+half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
+in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
+before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
+and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
+sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
+little man was perhaps too much addicted.
+
+"I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?" said Lavender
+hotly.
+
+"You may suppose what absurdities you like," said Ingram quietly; "but
+it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently,
+and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have got to say. It
+is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that is not of easy
+remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better
+position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the
+opinion of your friends."
+
+"You are a little roundabout, Ingram," said Lavender, "and ornate. But
+I suppose all lectures begin so. Go on."
+
+Ingram laughed: "If I am too formal, it is because I don't want to
+make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A long time before you
+were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive
+notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the
+dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth.
+These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but
+you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to
+alter any of her beliefs in that direction."
+
+"And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don't care what
+a washerwoman pays for her candles?" said Lavender with impetuous
+contempt. "Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she
+is grieved at heart because I can't make hobnailed boots, it seems
+to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of
+going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his
+sympathy in the character of an injured wife."
+
+For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
+quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself;
+but he kept quite calm, and said, "That, unfortunately, is not what is
+troubling her."
+
+Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room, and
+said, "If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it from
+herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a third
+person to humor her whims and fancies."
+
+"Whims and fancies!" said Ingram, with that dark light returning to
+his eyes. "Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that,
+while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and
+dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are
+breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims
+and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever could have--"
+
+He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent words
+to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between husband
+and wife; but Ingram's blaze of wrath, kindled by what he considered
+the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of Sheila, had
+swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, was much
+cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, "I
+am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think
+you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the
+part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure
+that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to
+relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I
+am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has
+any complaint to make she must make it to me."
+
+Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.
+
+"Lavender," he said, "it does not matter much whether you and I
+quarrel--I was prepared for that, in any case--but I ask you to give
+Sheila a chance of telling you what I had intended to tell you."
+
+"Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite confidences.
+When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready to listen.
+But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as they are at
+present."
+
+"God help you, then!" said his friend, and went away, scarcely daring
+to confess to himself how dark the future looked.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+
+
+Americans have an impression that the English think it a considerable
+distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony of presentation
+has entirely ceased to have any social significance in England. Any
+young gentleman who imagines that the door of English society will
+be thrown open to him on the publication of his appearance at a
+drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress and carriage and
+stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social success, the money
+which a robe will cost might be expended to equal advantage anywhere
+else in London. However, a lady's dress may be worn again, and men may
+hire a court-suit for the day at a very small cost. Your tailor, if
+you get a good deal of him, will patch you up something tolerable for
+very little; so that sartorial expenses are comparatively light. One
+can get for the afternoon a two-horse brougham, with a coachman and
+footman, for a sum less than ten dollars. Still, going to court costs
+something, and its only possible advantage is that the spectacle is a
+fine and an interesting one. One has therefore to consider whether the
+sight is worth the fee.
+
+A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
+Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
+presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
+many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the privilege
+of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any clergyman, any
+officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an attorney, even
+a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister, or, for
+that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of more
+consequence than a curate or a poor soldier. The court has scarcely
+any social significance in England. I once asked a young barrister if
+presentation would help him in the least in making his way in society.
+He said, "Not a bit."
+
+In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
+cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
+East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
+The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is
+no part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
+consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
+in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
+gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed away.
+They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not already
+in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly make his
+appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard a family
+who went down to London to be presented made the target for the
+ridicule of the whole neighborhood.
+
+On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in the
+diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and levees at
+Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, and was invited to the court balls
+and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities are given only
+to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle. It must be
+understood that there is at every court in Europe a select and elegant
+and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come in. Along with
+them enter also the ministers of state and the household officers of
+the Crown. The general circle, as it is called, includes everybody
+else. Another entrance and staircase are provided for it, and in that
+way all of British society, from a duke to a half-pay captain, gains
+admittance to the sovereign. When one is in the inside of Buckingham
+or St. James's Palace the same distinction exists. The room in which
+the members of the royal family receive the public is occupied during
+the entire ceremony by the diplomatic circle. Other persons, after
+bowing to the queen, pass into an antechamber.
+
+Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman to
+be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
+attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
+at Buckingham and St. James's Palaces. At present the queen holds
+drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of Wales
+at St. James's Palace. The latter are attended only by gentlemen,
+and, though not so grand as the queen's, are pleasanter. Trousers are
+allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and stockings which must be worn
+at all court ceremonials where there are ladies. At two o'clock--for
+the prince is very punctual--the doors of the reception-room are
+thrown open, and the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the
+ambassadors. It must be remembered that there is a wide difference
+between an ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The
+original difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
+transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
+a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy must
+see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have any
+practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and no
+doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the sovereign.
+It is still true, however, that an ambassador is accredited to
+the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign secretary.
+Practically, the difference is that an ambassador represents a bigger
+country, has better pay, lives in a finer house, and gives more
+parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has precedence of everybody
+in the country in which he resides, except the royal family.
+
+There are five countries which send ambassadors to England--Russia,
+France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These ambassadors enter the
+reception-room at the prince's levee in the order of seniority of
+residence. The Turkish ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
+years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the
+others following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
+distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
+dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
+one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
+typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
+deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical! The
+duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of my
+visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed much
+the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and intellect:
+the distinction of the other continental "swells" was usually one of
+stomach and whiskers.
+
+Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After the
+ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves from
+an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales awaits
+them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the duke
+of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
+old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right, stands
+Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each detachment
+as it approaches--"Austrian ambassador," "the Spanish minister," "the
+United States minister," etc. The prince shakes hands with the head
+of the embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
+diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
+their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic
+circle, and such as have the _entree_ to it, remain in the room: the
+Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
+the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
+were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as
+if the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
+collection.
+
+One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
+manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
+know he is somebody--if he shakes hands with all five or six of the
+princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives the
+princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and
+runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay colonel
+or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be inferred from
+the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to decipher the name
+of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed him. If he scans
+it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him and says "Major
+Te--e--e--bosh--bow," then in a loud voice, "Major Tebow," you will
+be safe in thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of
+warriors or largest of landed proprietors.
+
+The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
+whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
+very pleasantly. There is a great deal of _esprit de corps_ among
+them, and perfect equality. Attachés, secretaries and ministers walk
+about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors are
+rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
+diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
+the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
+a sort of after-glow of the royalties.
+
+At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
+there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
+increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen's levees are
+very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
+ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as
+I have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
+shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
+warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
+like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
+draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
+many of the large rooms of the palaces huge fireplaces, with great
+logs of wood, roar behind tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of
+these, the courtier who isn't a Scotchman feels as if he would never
+care to go away. Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer,
+but the first of them come in February, and London is often cool well
+up into June.
+
+The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as that
+at a prince of Wales's levee. The spelling-class of royal ladies stand
+up in a rigid row. On the queen's right is the lord chamberlain, who
+reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left, is Alexandra,
+then the queen's daughters and the Princess Mary of Cambridge. Next
+to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx which stretches
+entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up in battle array,
+stand three or four ranks of court ladies.
+
+The act of presentation is very easy and simple. Formerly--indeed,
+until within a few years--it must have been a very perilous and
+important feat. The courtier (the term is used inaccurately, but there
+is no noun to describe a person who goes to court for a single time)
+was compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, bowing, out of the
+queen's presence. For ladies who had trails to manage the ordeal must
+have been a trying one. Now it has been made quite easy. There is
+but one point in which a presentation to the queen differs from that
+already described at the prince of Wales's levee. You may turn your
+back to the prince, but after bowing to the queen you step off into
+the crowd, still facing her. There (if you have had the good luck to
+be presented in the diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most
+interesting pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very
+amusing, though they evidently have their little joke afterward over
+anything unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should,
+of course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
+amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
+and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
+the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
+ask "Who is this?" and "Who is that?" The lord chamberlain announces
+each person as he or she appears. You hear the most heroic and
+romantic names in English history as some insignificant boy or wizened
+old woman appears to represent them. They are not all, by any means,
+insignificant boys and wizened old women. Many of the ladies are
+handsome enough to be well worth looking at, whether their names be
+Percy or Stanhope or Brown or Smith. The young slips of girls who come
+to be presented for the first time, frightened and pale or flushed,
+one admires and feels a sense of instinctive loyalty to.
+
+The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain: "The
+duchess of Fincastle," "The countess of Dorchester," "Lady Arabella
+Darling on her marriage," etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to
+whom the queen gives her hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee
+to the carpet. No act of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated,
+her behavior being so modest and the sympathy with her so wide and
+sincere; but ladies very nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member
+of the royal family, not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so
+strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately
+mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit
+of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The
+curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling
+and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural
+districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be
+knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It
+astonished me, I remember, at a court party, to see one patrician
+young woman--"divinely tall" I should describe her if her decided chin
+and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her character had not
+put divinity out of the question--shake hands with a not very imposing
+young prince, and bend her regal knees into this curious and sudden
+little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days afterward in
+a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!), directing with
+her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop. It struck me
+she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a chariot with
+three steeds abreast.
+
+The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court ceremonials.
+There are besides the court festivities, the balls and concerts
+at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given in a
+season--two balls and two concerts. The balls are the larger and less
+select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of the palace is a
+large rectangular apartment. At one end is the orchestra--at the other
+a raised dais on which the royalties sit. On each side, running the
+length of the hall, are three tiers of benches, which are for ladies
+and such gentlemen as can get a seat. The tiers on the left of the
+dais are for diplomatists. English society has the tiers upon the
+other side. By ten the ball-room is usually filled with people waiting
+for the appearance of the royalties. The band strikes up, and the line
+of princes and princesses advances down the long hall leading to the
+ball-room. The queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at
+these balls. The queen does not come now: the prince and princess of
+Wales take her place.
+
+First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them come
+the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales advances
+first, with a naïve, faltering, hesitating step, a strange and quite
+delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in her
+manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen. Then
+approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and very
+jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile, which
+she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
+follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
+wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
+suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
+she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes' duration.
+Before curtsying, she stops and seems to "shy," and looks at the
+ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the object which alarms
+him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the ground, and recovers
+herself with the same slowness. It would seem that such a genuflection
+must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is not so in the least: it
+is quite successful, and rather pleasing. After the ladies come the
+prince of Wales and his suite. The royalties then all go upon the
+stage, and after music the ball begins.
+
+There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
+ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
+space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
+the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
+diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
+rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
+always dance the same step, the _deux temps_, and the aim of the
+dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible.
+They make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
+_trois temps_, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say, without
+any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance in
+England, you are safe.
+
+The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There are
+many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men are
+"flaming in purple and gold." There is every variety of magnificent
+dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from head to foot.
+Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark crimson of
+the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards' clubs in gold and
+scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach above their knees,
+clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about, and exhibit legs of
+which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging gait, wanders the
+queen's piper, a sort of poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
+plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to the
+music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of the
+orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel the
+festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.
+
+Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
+through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
+curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight, on
+the lakes and fountains of the gardens, "the watery ways of palaces."
+I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they are a trifle too
+romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of flirting in
+the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very pleasantly, the
+refreshment-room, which was kept open during the evening till
+supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold coffee, champagne,
+sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy in the least. I
+can't say so much for the supper, though by waiting a little one could
+always get something. The princes went first, then the diplomatists,
+and then everybody else. The jostling was such that when young ladies
+asked for a plate of soup you wished they had wanted ham and chicken.
+A young American, I think, would very much dislike to go up to a table
+and eat a solitary supper with ladies looking on, and young and pretty
+ones, too. But I have seen a young guardsman, with an enormous helmet
+and boots as big as himself, stand up at the table and "solitary and
+alone" work his jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling
+the whole of his paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry
+courtiers, whom his gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility
+of supper, and who revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations
+aside upon the length and heartiness of his meal.
+
+"Concert" is an expression which to a hungry man has a strong
+suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives you such a
+supper as only a night's dancing is ordinarily supposed to entitle
+you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room of the palace, and are
+much more select than the balls. The royalties occupy very slight gilt
+chairs placed just before the orchestra. There they sit with grace and
+an appearance of comfort through the whole of it, while happier
+and humbler mortals may walk about and whisper, or seek the
+refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They have very good music,
+the best singers are provided, and some pretty familiar songs, like
+"Home, sweet home," are sung.
+
+Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to the
+bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few civil
+things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow and
+look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost queens
+when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of praise
+and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in European
+capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to put
+themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
+artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
+century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
+in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing the
+old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly notions.
+The cord stretched between the guests and the performers used to be a
+feature of musical entertainments at private houses. Grisi went
+once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington at his
+country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine. "Oh, when
+you do," she said. He saw her mistake and did not correct it; so it
+happened that she dined at the same table with the guests, and the
+incident, it is said, excited considerable horror among people of the
+old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how utterly uncivilized, is
+such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute each other, but it seems
+inconceivable that a man and a gentleman could have entertained such a
+sentiment.
+
+Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball, only
+there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales, and to
+a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and make
+a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil. "The
+Prince," as he is commonly called, takes advantage of the suppers
+at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule is, let
+me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you before
+speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to turn
+away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the interview
+yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always expected
+to call him "Sir." The queen is addressed as "Ma'am." It is not
+understood in this country that to call a man "sir" is a confession
+of your inferiority to him. But it is so in England, and the fact
+illustrates the strong hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms
+have upon the British mind. No gentleman in England says "sir"
+to another, unless it be a very young person to an old one. [1] A
+subordinate in an office might "sir" a superior, but he would not
+"sir" a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he had no
+connection. "Sir" is the term applied by any Englishman of whatever
+rank to a member of the royal family. Our committees, when princes
+visit America, usually address them in notes as "Your Royal Highness."
+But "Your Royal Highness" is not a vocative: it can be used only
+in the third person. However, the princes are then in America, and
+perhaps we are under no obligation to know everything of their ways at
+home. Should the reader ever meet a prince in that prince's country,
+I should advise him to do just as other people do there. He will
+probably question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the
+implied inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore
+action is to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously
+decided from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not
+the prince's fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
+and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
+Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his equality.
+The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he probably has
+thought through the mistake under which the republican stranger is
+laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an American may reflect
+that he will probably have very little in life to do with princes, and
+that his interview with a prince has been an "experience." It would be
+about as foolish to assert one's dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the
+Matterhorn.
+
+Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen's and prince
+of Wales's breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off about 3
+P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the court
+entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season, and out
+of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited. There are
+certain persons who are always invited, and others who are eligible
+and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic corps
+are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or two
+secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a queen's
+breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of legation can
+touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the minister himself
+only goes once a year, and he "not without shedding of blood."
+
+The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one, and
+anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light trousers.
+The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now compelled to
+wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs a word of
+mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited, somewhat
+prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know very little.
+Congress, at a distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought
+itself competent to decide what sort of court dress an American
+diplomatist should wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward
+a measure, and, once proposed, it was certain to go through,
+because to oppose its passage would have been to be aristocratic
+and un-American. Mr. Sumner's bill required Americans to go in the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." There was no attempt to
+indicate what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had
+worn the uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other
+countries. This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon
+it, white breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.
+
+An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
+interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued
+a circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
+uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
+the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
+consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
+the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
+fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
+United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
+distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
+government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
+and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
+which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
+far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. "Tell that very
+distinguished personage," said Mr. Buchanan, "that not only will I
+wear a sword, as she requests, but, should occasion require it, will
+hold myself ready to draw it in her defence." This strikes me as in
+just that tone of respectful exaggeration and playful acquiescence
+which a gentleman in this country may very becomingly take toward
+the whole question. Neither Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe,
+heeded the request of the Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is
+said, subsequently repudiated it.
+
+But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr. Marcy's
+time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe how very
+uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
+of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
+unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
+exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and the
+khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable people
+at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody else
+is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
+exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
+scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the secretaries
+said to me: "I am afraid to wander off by myself among these ladies:
+they inspect me as the maids of honor in the palace of Brobdingnag did
+Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel mother who won't dress
+me like these other little boys." It would require more than ordinary
+courage to attempt to dance in this rig. I should think that our
+representatives would huddle together in the most unconspicuous
+portion of a room, and never leave it. Said the secretary above
+quoted: "I always feel here that I am of some use to my chief: I
+am one more pair of legs with which to divide the gaze of British
+society."
+
+The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a plain
+dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
+slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." The dress is not so ugly as
+it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest and
+liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not so
+excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party given
+in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to the
+Empress Eugenie's private parties came got up in that manner. But
+in London it was not till recently that American diplomatists were
+allowed to go to court even thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe
+the legations were admitted in evening dress, the concession of
+knee-breeches not having been required. But at Buckingham Palace there
+are two or three very old men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria
+was a baby, and who still control the court etiquette. These aged
+functionaries, who can very well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers
+remembered the American Revolution, put down their foot, and would
+admit no Americans without the proper garments. The consequence was,
+that our legation was compelled to stay at home. This state of things
+continued until Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called
+"the Breeches Protocol." Owing to the unreasonable state of the public
+mind during his term of office, this was the only measure which that
+good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The compromise which Mr.
+Johnson's good-humor and the friendly impulse of the British public
+toward us at that time wrung from these ancient chamberlains and
+gold-sticks (for you may say what you will, public opinion is
+irresistible), was to allow the minister and the two secretaries of
+legation to appear in the breeches above described. Americans who are
+presented at court, and who get invitations to the festivities, are
+all required to wear a court dress. Of what good compelling the poor
+diplomatists to make scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know.
+Mr. Sumner's proposition was just one of those absurdities to which
+men are liable who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor.
+Senators and Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be
+un-American, and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or
+(in matters of this sort) very scrupulous.
+
+[Footnote 1: The rule, more correctly stated, is, that "sir" is never
+used except to indicate a difference of age or position so great as to
+forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social equality. It
+may be employed by the elder in addressing the younger, and by the
+superior in addressing the inferior, as well as _vice versa_. Hence
+the saying, in English society, that only princes and servants are
+spoken to as "sir."]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+
+An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
+Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
+the most splendid of Oriental cities.
+
+Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
+_nárcodah_ (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel Barrie.
+He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always to
+mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
+had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
+Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
+day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so
+we had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
+Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
+and we were set down on the Barrie's quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
+sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was weighed.
+
+The monsoon was favorable, and seven days' sail brought us to the
+river's mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the nárcodah's
+boat to the "city of kings."
+
+Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the abundance,
+variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are found those
+of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being transplanted to
+this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in this fruitful soil
+far more productive than in the sterile regions of Persia and Arabia;
+while numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
+united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
+list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
+clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
+productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
+The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
+millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second
+king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud
+and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at
+the merest trifle of expense a table may be supplied during the entire
+year with forty or fifty specimens of fresh, ripe fruit. Among these
+are many varieties of oranges and pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks,
+pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains, durians, jack-fruit, melons,
+grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts, pomegranates, soursaps, linchies,
+custard-apples, breadfruit, cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds,
+mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of others for which we have no
+names in our language. Tropical fruits are generally juicy, sweet with
+a slight admixture of acid, luscious, and peculiarly agreeable in a
+warm climate; and when partaken of with temperance and due regard
+to quality they are highly promotive of health. For this reason
+Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit tree as quite an act of
+sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a heavy malediction on
+those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One who has tasted the
+fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the soil that produces
+them can form no conception of the real flavor of plums and grapes
+that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our northern clime; of
+oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and eaten fresh while the
+morning dew still glitters on their golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare,
+rosy pomegranate juice, luscious as nectar.
+
+After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at the
+head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance. The
+fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
+a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
+half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three species
+of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the _Garania mangostina_, is
+the fruit edible. The others are valuable for timber, and the bark
+for the manufacture of a dye that resists the attacks of every sort of
+insect.
+
+Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (_Anona
+squamosa_), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions of a
+medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its apex
+directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black seed.
+The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked custard, and
+in flavor very like strawberries and cream.
+
+The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
+larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
+(_Nephelium lappaceum_) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but when
+the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent pulp is
+revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that a blind
+man would be unable to distinguish them.
+
+Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but are
+in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
+four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
+bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
+delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
+had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
+harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the trouble
+he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should not
+be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the price
+demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
+ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
+medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
+sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for extortion.
+
+One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit (_Artocarpus
+integrifolia_), growing in all its immensity of thirty or forty pounds
+weight directly out of the largest branches or on the stem of the huge
+tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green coat: internally, it has
+a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are embedded a dozen or more
+smooth, oval seeds about the size of large chestnuts, which they
+strikingly resemble in flavor.
+
+The mango (_Mangifera Indica_) is a drupe of the plum kind, four or
+five inches long, and three at least in diameter. Greenish-colored
+outside, and not very inviting, you are most agreeably surprised at
+the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow pulp that adheres like the
+clinging peach to a large flat seed.
+
+The gamboge tree (_Stalagmitis Cambogioides_) grows luxuriantly in
+Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed leaves, a
+yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even the stem has
+a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is obtained
+by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves and young
+shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white foreigners
+for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced into Europe
+early in the seventeenth century.
+
+The plantain (_Musa paradisaica_) is one of the best gifts of
+Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
+many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
+as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
+palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
+the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh
+from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green
+cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about
+twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the
+elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
+flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
+beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
+glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
+breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
+around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
+leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till there
+come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred plantains,
+weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth bunch is the
+sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit is plucked the
+stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same root; and it
+is thus constantly renewed for many successive years. The incalculable
+blessing of such a tree in regions where the intolerable heat renders
+all labor oppressive may be conceived from the estimate of Humboldt,
+who reckons the surface of ground needed to the production of four
+thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice for the raising of only
+thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes. What
+would induce the indolent East Indian to make the exchange of crops?
+
+The cassew-nut (_Anacardium occidentale_) is remarkable as the only
+known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A full-grown tree
+is twenty feet high, with graceful form and widespread branches. The
+leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson flowers grow in clusters.
+The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish color outside and bright
+yellow within; and the seed, which is in the form of a crescent, looks
+just as if it had been stuck on the bur end, instead of growing there.
+When roasted the kernels are not unlike a very fine chestnut.
+
+The guava (_Psidium pomiferum_), of which the noted Indian jelly
+is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar pears--pale,
+yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when opened, a soft,
+rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste and odor are
+very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till after long use.
+
+The tamarind tree (_Tamarindus Indicus_), a huge growth, with trunk a
+hundred feet tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches
+extending widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite
+leaves, very nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The
+flowers, growing in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint
+veined with red; while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung
+all over the branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves,
+blossoms and fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth
+as to appear almost ludicrous, yet the _tout ensemble_ is "a thing of
+beauty" never to be forgotten.
+
+It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
+plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
+every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps' estate, one of
+the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
+acres, including three picturesque hills--Mount Sophia, Mount Emily
+and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty bungalow--and from
+these avenues radiate, intersecting every portion of the plantation.
+Here were planted some five thousand nutmeg trees, and perhaps a
+thousand of the clove, besides coffee trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg
+is an evergreen of great beauty, conical in shape, and from twenty
+to twenty-five feet in height, the branches thickly decorated with
+polished, deep-green foliage rising from the ground to the summit.
+Almost hidden among these emerald leaves grows the pear-shaped
+fruit. As it ripens the yellow external tegument opens, revealing the
+dark-red mace, that is closely enwrapped about a thin black shell.
+This, in turn, encloses a fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce.
+Both leaf and blossom are marked by the same aromatic perfume that
+distinguishes the fruit.
+
+The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
+similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
+beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure white
+and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every branch and
+twig almost to the summit of the tree. The cloves--"spice nails," as
+they are often called--are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem
+being the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as
+we see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass
+in curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
+transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
+in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in Singapore,
+Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan Archipelago.
+
+One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget to
+mention--the flat peach, called by the Chinese _ping taou_, or "peach
+cake." It has the appearance of having been flattened by pressure at
+the head and stalk, being something less than three-fourths of an
+inch through the centre from eye to stem, and consisting wholly of the
+stone and skin; while the sides, which swell around the centre, are
+only an eighth of an inch in thickness. Its transverse diameter is
+about two and a half inches.
+
+The camphor tree (_Laurus camphora_) grows abundantly in China and
+Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that supplies
+the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the trunks and
+chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the ravages of
+moths and the still more destructive white ant of the tropics. This
+tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a circumference of about
+eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from seven to nine feet in girth.
+In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered branches are cut in small
+pieces, and steeped in water for several days, after which they are
+boiled, the liquid being constantly stirred until the gum, in the form
+of a white jelly, begins to appear, when the whole is poured into
+a glazed vessel, and becomes concreted in cooling. It is afterward
+purified by means of sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a
+conical cover placed over the boiling liquid while at its greatest
+heat. There is another species of camphor tree (_Dryobalanops
+camphora_) growing in Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island
+of Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even amid the huge growth
+of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this species is found
+occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a half in the heart
+of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep incision in the trunk
+about fifteen inches from the ground with a _b'ling_ or Malayan axe,
+in order to ascertain whether the gum is there; and when it is found
+the tree is felled and the impregnated portion carefully extracted.
+The same tree, while young, yields a liquid oily matter that has
+nearly the same properties as the camphor, and is supposed to be the
+first stage of its formation. Some eight China catties (eleven pounds)
+of this oil may be obtained from a medium-sized tree, which, after
+having been cut off for the purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if
+left standing for a few years, produce abundantly an inferior article
+of camphor.
+
+In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
+beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
+color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
+hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
+crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
+incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
+these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
+by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
+opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
+the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
+purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
+gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.
+
+The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse under
+which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an opium
+shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds its
+victims fast bound--mind, heart, soul and conscience, all absolutely
+dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing thirst for
+the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once, but I
+can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that "place of
+torment." The apartment was spacious, and might have been pleasant
+but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of unutterable woe--the
+footprints of sin trodden deep in the furrows of those haggard faces
+and emaciated forms. On all four sides of the room were couches
+placed thickly against the walls, and others were scattered over
+the apartment wherever there was room for them. On each of these lay
+extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some few were old--all were
+hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and cadaverous countenances; many were
+clothed in rags, having probably smoked away their last dollar;
+while others were offering to pawn their only decent garment for an
+additional dose of the deadly drug. A decrepit old man raised
+himself as we entered, drew a long sigh, and then with a half-uttered
+imprecation on his own folly proceeded to refill his pipe. This he did
+by scraping off, with a five-inch steel needle, some opium from the
+lid of a tiny shell box, rolling the paste into a pill, and then,
+after heating it in the blaze of a lamp, depositing it within the
+small aperture of his pipe. Several short whiffs followed; then the
+smoker would remove the pipe from his mouth and lie back motionless;
+then replace the pipe, and with fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke
+slowly through his pallid nostrils. As the narcotic effects of the
+opium began to work he fell back on the couch in a state of silly
+stupefaction that was alike pitiable and disgusting. Another smoker,
+a mere youth, lay with face buried in his hands, and as he lifted his
+head there was a look of despair such as I have seldom seen. Though so
+young, he was a complete wreck, with hollow eyes, sunken chest and a
+nervous twitching in every muscle. I spoke to him, and learned that
+six months before he had lost his whole patrimony by gambling, and
+came hither to quaff forgetfulness from these Lethean cups; hoping, he
+said, to find death as well as oblivion. By far the larger proportion
+of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying
+poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and we passed
+out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought of these
+infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving families at
+home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given up, and
+from three to five years' indulgence will utterly wreck the firmest
+constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated, the eyes more
+sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the brain ceases to
+perform its functions, and death places its seal on the wasted life.
+
+On "Araby's plains" I saw for the first time the beautiful wild palm,
+the "lighthouse of the desert," always an object of intense desire to
+the weary traveler as he traverses those sterile regions, for as it
+looms up in the distance, sometimes in groups, but more generally
+standing in solitary grandeur near a tiny bubbling spring, its waving
+plumes tell him not only of shelter and needed rest, but of water also
+to bathe his tired limbs and quench the burning thirst that oppresses
+him almost to death. Should the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he
+will find food also--a dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome
+and nourishing--ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
+traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
+and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
+Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap, gather
+the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of the
+plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus improving
+the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty or more
+varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
+seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
+delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
+Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
+the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year
+by keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
+Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
+until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
+ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across the
+deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried and
+needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water, and so
+eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined to the
+fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn from the
+trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent timber;
+the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous part, when
+stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are of use--the
+fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to account--in Egypt
+for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture of Indian ink, and in
+Spain for making the tooth-powder known as "ivory black." The date is
+indigenous to both Asia and Africa: it was introduced into Spain by
+the Moors, and some few trees are still found even in the south
+of France. But the most extensive forests are those of the Barbary
+states, where they are sometimes miles in length. When growing thus in
+groves the palms are very beautiful, their towering crests waving in
+unison as they seem to form an immense natural temple, about which
+vines and creepers wreath their graceful tendrils, while birds of
+varied plumage sing their matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile
+the golden fruit that grows in clusters at the very summit of the
+tree. The Arabs' mode of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The
+trunk, sixty feet high, has not, it must be remembered, a single
+branch to hold on by or furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole
+stem is rough with thick scales or horny protuberances, not very
+pleasant to the touch of fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed
+across the climber's back and under his armpits, and then, after being
+passed around the tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The
+rope is next placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of
+an old leaf, while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits
+toward the middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of the
+shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then with hands and knees he firmly
+grasps the trunk, and raises himself a few inches higher; when, still
+holding fast by knees and feet and one hand, he with the other slips
+the rope a little higher up the tree, letting it rest on another of
+these horny protuberances, and so on till the summit is gained. When
+the fruit is reached it is easily plucked with one hand, while the
+gatherer maintains his position with the other, and the clusters are
+thrown down into a large cloth held at the corners by four persons.
+
+The far-famed banian or Indian fig (_Ficus Indica_) is perhaps the
+grandest of tropical trees--the most beautiful of Nature's products,
+even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the sun's rays, where she
+sports with such profusion and variety, clothing the earth in gorgeous
+flowers, variegated mosses and feathery ferns, till it seems to
+groan beneath the manifold treasures of beauty and fragrance lavished
+thereon. This noble tree grows wild in many Eastern countries and
+islands, and sometimes attains to a size and an extent that are
+marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are everywhere thrown out toward the
+ground from the horizontal branches, increasing in size as they tend
+downward, till at last they strike into the ground and become stems.
+From these shoot new branches, which in their turn extend and form
+roots and new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent
+of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as
+"a pillared shade high overarched." And as they are thus continually
+increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of
+decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant's hand may come
+in time to cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the
+noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river
+Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful
+tree, named after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that
+exceeds two thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number
+three or four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand,
+though some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away
+not only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
+itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
+over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
+branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
+repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
+_seven thousand_ people could find ample shelter under its widespread
+branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming hunting or
+shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks together
+beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were frolicsome
+monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks, wood-pigeons and
+singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the thick foliage,
+and plentiful sustenance from the small, scarlet-colored figs that
+hang pendent from every branch. The banian tree may be regarded as a
+natural temple in Oriental regions, and the Hindoos especially look
+upon it with profound veneration. Tiny, fancifully-adorned temples
+and pagodas are erected beneath its shadowy boughs, where are pleasant
+walks and long vistas of umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from
+the fierce rays of the tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire
+lives within these quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek
+them for rest and recreation. The banian is styled also "the tree
+of councils," from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
+magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
+civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
+tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It
+is indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
+legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
+the Cubber Burr's sheltering boughs with a merry party of picnicking
+maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves to roam among
+its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy windings of the
+hoary banian of Nerbudda's isle.
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A LOTOS OF THE NILE.
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on a night of clear July starlight. The heat
+of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows were
+assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool, if such
+a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed, however,
+for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless, and the
+fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible approach to
+a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the river was
+distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky bed,
+distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim, mysterious
+look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White dresses,
+shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and then the
+glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it was even
+possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were the only
+clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with light
+streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and globe-like
+lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming effect.
+
+Everybody had been silent for some time--that is, for half a
+minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances--when Mrs.
+Lancaster's voice broke the stillness. "Oh for a whiff of mountain-air
+or a sea-breeze!" she said. "I came to spend two weeks with you, dear
+Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a month--who ever _did_ leave The
+Willows when they meant to do so?--but I really must be thinking of
+taking flight. Suppose we get up a party for the White Sulphur?--it
+is always so tiresome to go away by one's self. Who will join it?
+Eleanor, will you?"
+
+"I am not going to the White Sulphur this year," answered Eleanor
+Milbourne.
+
+"Not going to the White Sulphur!" repeated Mrs. Lancaster in a tone of
+surprise. Then she laughed. "How stupid I am!" she said. "Of course
+I might have known that the temptation to break the pledge of total
+abstinence from flirtation would be too great in that paradise of
+flirtation. Besides, Mr. Brent's yacht is homeward bound, is it not?"
+
+"I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr. Brent's yacht
+and my decision about the White Sulphur," answered Miss Milbourne
+haughtily. Then she turned to the person next her, a recumbent figure
+lying at full length on the grass. "I don't know anything of which
+one grows so weary as of watering-place life when one has seen much of
+it," she said. "Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip,
+all oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don't think I shall ever
+go to a watering-place again."
+
+"Take care!" said the recumbent. "Don't make an abstinence pledge of
+that kind: you will only be tempted to break it, for what will you do
+with yourself in summer?"
+
+"I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense desire to see
+the world and the wonders thereof."
+
+"With a yacht such a desire would be easily gratified."
+
+"But I have no yacht," said she with a sharp chord in her voice. It
+was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly expressive in this
+dim, mysterious starlight.
+
+"Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to place it at
+your service."
+
+"You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent."
+
+"I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a fleet it
+should be subject to your command."
+
+"You are very generous," said she; and now there was a little ripple
+as of pleasure in her tone.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
+like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up recruits for the
+White Sulphur. "Major Clare!" she said at last: "where is Major
+Clare?" Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne
+his airy fleet responded lazily, "Here!" she added, "_You_ will go,
+will you not?"
+
+"I regret to say that it is impossible," he answered. "I have danced
+my last _galop_ at the White Sulphur. This time next month I shall
+probably be _en route_ for Egypt."
+
+"For Egypt!" she repeated; and a chorus of voices instantly echoed the
+exclamation. "For Egypt! Nonsense! You are jesting."
+
+"No, I am not jesting," said Victor Clare, lifting himself on one
+elbow: "I am in earnest. I received a letter from ----" (naming a
+distinguished officer) "to-day, offering me a position if I would join
+him in Cairo. I say nothing about what the position is, because my
+mind is not yet made up to accept it; and even if it were, such things
+should not be published on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a
+fancy for joining the army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a
+few important particulars."
+
+Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under Mrs.
+Lancaster's banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies shrugged their
+shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare sank back in
+the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.
+
+"There is nothing else for me to do," he said in an argumentative
+tone. "I only waste money on the impoverished acres of that old place
+of mine. The house itself is falling down over my head. What remains,
+then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune to do her best--or worst? At
+least the profession of arms has been in all ages the calling of a
+gentleman."
+
+For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the starlight
+a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan with a
+slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to answer.
+But at last she spoke in a very low tone: "Yet you said you had not
+decided."
+
+"No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in idleness and
+indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared enough about
+myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to
+think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no
+right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt
+it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned the old
+place."
+
+"I think it would," said Miss Milbourne.
+
+"No, it would _not_" was the obstinate reply. "I should take care
+to find a lotos as soon as I reached the Nile. Whoever eats of that
+forgets his past life, you know. I have scant reason for wishing to
+remember mine," he added a little bitterly.
+
+"Memory is certainly more often a sting than a pleasure," said Miss
+Milbourne. "It is strange," she added, "that we should both have
+thought of obtaining forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr.
+Brent asked me what he should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of
+the Nile. If he fulfills his promise I will share it with you."
+
+"I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for forgetfulness to
+Mr. Brent," said Victor Clare ungratefully.
+
+He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and would
+have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she desired
+to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already turned to
+her neighbor on the other side and plunged into conversation. "Is it
+not strange that Egypt should be waking from her sleep of centuries?"
+she said; and--while the gentleman whom she addressed took up the
+theme readily--Mrs. Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to
+where Victor Clare was lying.
+
+"Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk," she said. "I think the
+policeman's motto is right--'Keep moving.' When one stops to think
+about anything, even about the heat, it makes it worse."
+
+Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by a
+pretty woman who stands imperiously over him, the chances are that he
+obeys. So it was with Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go
+with Mrs. Lancaster, and quite as assuredly he _did_ want to stay just
+where he was, with the hem of Eleanor Milbourne's dress touching him
+and a pervading sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged
+stupid people to expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question.
+Yet he found himself walking away with the pretty widow before five
+minutes had passed.
+
+"I know you are not obliged to me," she said when they had gone some
+distance. "But your divinity is talking commonplaces, or listening to
+them, which amounts to the same thing; so I fancied you might spare me
+ten minutes. I want to know if that was a mere assertion for effect a
+minute ago, or if you are in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?"
+
+"I never talk for effect," said Victor with a hauteur that was spoilt
+by a slight touch of petulance. "I always mean what I say, and I
+certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"I am surprised that you should need to ask. One's friends usually
+know one's affairs at least as well as one's self--sometimes much
+better. Everybody who knows me knows that I am a poor man."
+
+"Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a fortune,
+however," said she, stopping short and looking at him keenly.
+"Confess," she added, "that you are about to expatriate yourself in
+this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne means to marry Marston
+Brent."
+
+"Your acuteness has carried you too far," said he laughing, but not
+quite naturally. "Miss Milbourne's matrimonial choice is nothing to
+me. I have thought of this step for some time. General ----'s letter
+is a reply to my application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the
+answer has come," he went on, "I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
+it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
+inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound 'Boots and saddle'
+again."
+
+"But why rust out?" she asked impetuously. "Are there not careers
+enough open to you?" Then, after a minute, "Are there not other women
+in the world besides Eleanor Milbourne?"
+
+"Perhaps so," a little doggedly. "There are other stars in the heavens
+besides Venus, but who sees them when she is above the horizon?"
+
+"How kind and complimentary you are!" said Mrs. Lancaster with a
+slight tone of bitterness in her voice.
+
+"Forgive me," said he after a minute. "I am a fool on this subject,
+and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No doubt there are
+other women in the world even more beautiful and more charming than
+Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to me."
+
+"In other words, you are determined to believe that the grapes above
+your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in existence."
+
+"At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it is an
+hallucination."
+
+"But you may harm yourself more than you imagine," said she with a
+nervous cadence, in her voice. "For the sake of a hopeless passion for
+a woman who has no more heart than my fan you will sacrifice more than
+you are aware of--more, perhaps, than you can ever regain."
+
+She laid her hand--a pretty, white hand, gleaming with jewels--on his
+arm at the last words, and it was fortunate, perhaps, that she could
+not tell with what an effort he restrained himself from shaking it
+impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion came over him like an
+electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat flattered, somewhat
+amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by the favor which the
+beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly accorded him; but now
+in a second he felt that thrill of disgust which always comes to a
+sensitive man when he sees a woman step beyond the pale of delicate
+womanhood. If he had been one shade less of a gentleman, he would have
+said something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have forgotten. As it
+was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak carelessly. "I was
+never quick at reading riddles," he said. "I am unable to imagine what
+sacrifice I should make by indulging the 'hopeless passion' for Miss
+Milbourne with which you are kind enough to credit me."
+
+"With which I credit you?" she repeated eagerly. "Am I wrong, then? If
+you can tell me _that_, Victor--"
+
+But he interrupted her quickly: "You ought to know, Mrs. Lancaster,
+that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to one woman;
+but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject, there is
+nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact that, however
+hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is the very
+essence of my life, and can only end with my life."
+
+"We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very much in
+love," said Mrs. Lancaster coolly--whatever stab his words gave the
+kindly darkness hid--"but I think you are more than usually mad. If
+she is not already engaged to Marston Brent, she will be as soon as he
+returns. I know that her family confidently expect the match, and in
+any case" (emphatically) "Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the
+world whom a penniless man need hope to win."
+
+"I know that as well as you do," said Clare. "I have no hope of
+winning her, and I am going to Egypt next month."
+
+He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject, but
+it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
+that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
+attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
+the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
+standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.
+
+"Who can have arrived?" said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry, perhaps, for a
+diversion. "I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was expecting any one."
+
+"Who has come, Ellis?" Victor said carelessly to a young man who
+emerged from the house as they approached.
+
+"Marston Brent," was the answer. "It seems the Clytie made a very
+quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of course her owner has
+come at once to report his safe arrival at head-quarters."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare's arm, felt the quick
+start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet woman,
+and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah steps
+and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back to
+Claremont.
+
+"I understand why you will not remain," she said; "but do not make any
+rash resolution about Egypt--above all, do not _commit_ yourself to
+anything." Then she bent forward and touched his hand lightly. "Tell
+me when you come again that you will join my party for the White
+Sulphur," she said softly. "It will be the wisest thing you can do."
+
+The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
+reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
+down and wrote to General ----, accepting the position he had offered,
+and promising to report in Cairo as soon as possible.
+
+After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier was
+seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during this
+interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to banish
+all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from his
+mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was impossible to
+say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting Eleanor Milbourne
+with her accepted lover by her side, or from the thrill of disgust
+with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster inspired him. He buried
+himself in listless idleness at Claremont for some time: then ordered
+his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town and made arrangements
+for the sale of his property with much the same feeling as if he had
+ordered the execution of his mother. It was when he returned weary and
+depressed from this excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
+awaiting him.
+
+"DEAR MAJOR CLARE" (it ran), "why have you forsaken us? We have looked
+for you, wished for you and talked of you for days, but you seem to
+have determined that we shall learn the full meaning of the verb 'to
+disappoint.' Will you not come over to dinner to-day? I think you have
+played hermit quite long enough.
+
+"Truly yours, L.M.B."
+
+To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
+saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
+glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
+leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
+long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
+Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from the
+only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should have
+some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every inquisitive
+fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him. Why should
+he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter in Egypt.
+As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe distance from
+_her_, even if she had not gone to the White Sulphur, as he hoped to
+heaven she had.
+
+This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person whom
+he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The Willows was
+the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits, not to
+mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most becoming
+mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found himself
+gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid to Mrs.
+Brantley--a fact which may serve as a small proof of the weakness
+of man's resolve, and his general inability to fight against fate,
+especially when it is embodied in a woman's bright eyes.
+
+"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked after the first
+salutations were over. "Have you been taking counsel with solitude on
+the Egyptian question? Or have you decided like a sensible man to go
+to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the cause of your absence,
+you have at least been charitable in furnishing us with a topic of
+conversation. I scarcely know what we should have done without the
+'Victor Clare disappearance,' as Mr. Ellis has called it, during the
+last week."
+
+"I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then," Clare said, flushing
+and laughing. "Assuredly I could not have furnished you with a topic
+of conversation for a whole week if I had been present."
+
+"Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your fate," she
+went on. "One party has maintained that, rushing away in desperation
+when you heard of Mr. Brent's arrival, you started the next day for
+Suez; the other, that you were hanging about the grounds, armed to the
+teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to dare your rival to deadly
+combat."
+
+"How kind one's friends are, to be sure, especially when they are
+in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to amuse
+themselves!"
+
+"But what _have_ you been doing? I should like to know, if you do not
+object to telling me."
+
+"I have been very busy making my final arrangements for leaving the
+country," answered he, stretching a point, it must be owned.
+
+"You are really going, then?" she asked after a minute's silence--a
+minute during which she was horribly conscious that her changing
+countenance might readily have betrayed to any looker-on how deeply
+she felt this unexpected blow.
+
+"I wrote to General ---- on the night I saw you last, accepting his
+offer," Clare answered. "Of course I am in duty bound, therefore, to
+report in Cairo as soon as possible."
+
+"And you will sell Claremont?"
+
+"I have no alternative."
+
+She said nothing more, but he saw her hand--the same white jeweled
+hand that had gleamed on his arm in the starlight--go to her throat
+with a quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion
+which he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over
+him now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
+and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman's folly. He
+appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
+child of fortune all her life--a queen-regnant, to whom all things
+must submit themselves--and he felt how bitter must be this first
+sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on which she had
+set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his voice almost
+gentle when he spoke again: "You must not think that I am ungrateful
+for your kind interest in my behalf. You can imagine, perhaps, how
+much I hate to part with Claremont, which has been the seat of my
+family for generations; but when a thing must be done there is no use
+in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my life to a tradition
+of the past; and that would be what I should do if I clung to the old
+place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp stroke and swimming
+boldly out to sea."
+
+"But you might stay if you would," said she with that tremulous accent
+which the French call "tears in the voice."
+
+"No, I could _not_ stay," said Clare resolutely. "I have no money, nor
+any means of making any in America."
+
+This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring and
+willful as she was, could not say, "_I_ have money--more than I know
+what to do with: take it." Her eyes said as much, but Clare did not
+look at her eyes. A minute longer passed in embarrassed silence. Then
+somebody came up, and Victor was able to walk away. As he crossed the
+room he saw Eleanor Milbourne for the first time since his arrival.
+He had not even inquired if she was still at The Willows, and her
+unexpected appearance, for he had begun to fear that she was gone,
+filled him with a rush of feelings of which the first and most
+prominent was delight. After all, did it matter whether or not she was
+engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to look at her was enough to fill a
+man's soul with pleasure, to steep him in that "dewlight of repose"
+which only a few rare things on this earth of ours are capable of
+inspiring. Did any sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when
+she held her court all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he
+could not possess her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not
+at all highflown to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He
+had always entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning
+the woman; and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have
+held that Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne.
+She was an adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship
+from a distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun
+himself in the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in
+their blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm
+and bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
+Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
+hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
+to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
+satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
+from Miss Milbourne.
+
+After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
+there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
+neighborhood--a hill of considerable eminence known as Farley's
+Mount--to the guests of The Willows. But it was distant twelve miles,
+What did Major Clare think of their starting early, breaking the ride
+by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then going on to the mountain,
+making the ascent, and returning by moonlight?
+
+"It will not do at all," said Victor. "Twenty-four miles is too much
+to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of pleasure. You would
+break yourselves down and see nothing. I propose an amendment: Take
+two days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If
+you have never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth
+experiencing, and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length,
+you know. Then the sunrise is magnificent."
+
+"That is exactly what we will do," cried Mrs. Brantley, clapping her
+hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being submitted to the
+company, was unanimously carried.
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the soft
+summer twilight on the lawn.
+
+"You should not press me so hard," she said as they paced slowly to
+and fro. "I fear I can never give you what you desire, but I cannot
+tell yet. Grant me a little time."
+
+"A little time! But think how much time you have had!" the gentleman
+urged, not without reason. "You said when I went abroad that you were
+not sure enough of your heart to accept me then, but that you would
+give me a final answer when I returned. You had all the months of my
+absence to consider what this answer should be, and when I came for
+it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying on the road, I found
+that it was not ready for me--that I had yet longer to wait. Eleanor,
+is this kind? is it even just?"
+
+"It is neither," said Eleanor, turning to him with a strange
+deprecation on her fair proud face. "I know that you have been
+everything that is patient and generous, and I am sorry--oh I am more
+than sorry--to have seemed to trifle with you; but what can I do?
+Remember that when I decide, it is for my whole life. You cannot doubt
+that I will hold fast to my promise when it is once given."
+
+"I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above all
+things."
+
+"But you would not desire the letter without the spirit?" said she
+eagerly. "I dare not bind myself--I _dare_ not--until I am certain of
+myself."
+
+"But, good Heavens!" said Marston Brent, who, although usually the
+most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly driven to
+vehemence, "when do you mean to be certain of yourself? Surely you
+have had time enough. Can you not love me, Eleanor?" he asked a
+little wistfully. "If that is it--if that is the doubt that holds you
+back--say so, and let me go. Anything is better than suspense like
+this."
+
+But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
+a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
+eyes. "You are right," she said. "This must end. I may be weak and
+foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my weakness and
+my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night whether or not I
+can be your wife. You will give me till then, will you not? It is the
+last delay I shall ask."
+
+"I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything which I
+should not be glad to grant," said he, a little sadly. "For Heaven's
+sake, do not think of me as your persecutor--do not force yourself to
+answer me at any given time. I can wait."
+
+"You _have_ waited," said she gratefully--"waited too long already.
+Do not encourage me in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you
+to-morrow night my final decision."
+
+Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
+Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather unexpectedly,
+and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended her hand.
+
+"Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your friends,
+Major Clare?" she said with a smile which was bright but rather
+tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water. "You have not
+even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an air as if you had
+said good-night to the rest of the company."
+
+"So I have," answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly from the
+pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of her
+glance, "but it is no fault of mine that I have not been able to speak
+to you: I have found no opportunity."
+
+"But I thought you always said that; people made opportunities when
+they desired to do so?"
+
+"Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a general
+rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take advantage of
+them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the present," he
+added smiling.
+
+"But I thought you were going home?"
+
+"I _was_ going home a minute ago, but so long as you will let me talk
+to you I shall stay."
+
+"It is a very small favor to grant," said Eleanor, blushing a little.
+"But why were you leaving so early?"
+
+"Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I am not
+a 'young duke' to pencil a line to my steward and know that a princely
+collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a hundred, or even
+for a dozen or two people."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, for though she caught the allusion to
+Disraeli's rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her.
+
+"I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan," he answered, and at once
+proceeded to detail it.
+
+She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
+gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.
+
+"I shall be glad to see your home," she said quietly. "I have heard so
+much of its beauty and its antiquity."
+
+"It is pretty, and it is old," said he, "but it will not be mine much
+longer. I am negotiating its sale now."
+
+She started: "What! you were in earnest, then? You are really going to
+Egypt?"
+
+"Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer
+me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action."
+
+She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and
+startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and
+gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good
+thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do
+what you please and go where you please--to seek action and to find
+it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did
+not make you a woman!"
+
+"I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But
+you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected
+to hear such rebellious sentiments."
+
+"I am not rebellious," said Eleanor more quietly. "What is the good of
+it? All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have
+no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But nobody was ever more weary of
+conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action
+than I do."
+
+It was on the end of Victor's tongue to say, "Then come with me to
+Egypt," but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to imagine that "the
+beautiful Miss Milbourne"--a woman at whose feet the most desirable
+matches of "society" had been laid--would end her brilliant career
+by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her
+country and her kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor
+did not quite understand, as he said: "Where is your lotos? It ought
+to make you more content with the things that be."
+
+"I have it," Eleanor said with child-like simplicity. "Mr. Brent
+remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten my promise to
+share it with you."
+
+"Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then," said he quickly. "Let
+us eat it together there. I should like to link _you_ even with my
+farewell to the past."
+
+And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
+understanding.
+
+The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont--a
+stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of
+conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain
+significant signs of decay--when his guests arrived in formidable
+procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of
+welcoming them--a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of
+them as at once very perfect and very charming.
+
+"The man suits the house, does he not?" said Mrs. Brantley to Mrs.
+Lancaster. "It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle.
+We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass
+decanter."
+
+"I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners," said Mrs.
+Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more. She
+felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and
+prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its
+owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly
+in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent
+upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt.
+The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the
+quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had
+been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how different things
+might be! She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its
+formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of
+cedar. "He will change his mind before the month is out," she thought.
+"A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home
+of his fathers without a struggle."
+
+This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when,
+a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking
+earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and
+were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that distance
+there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was
+there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a
+riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. "If she is engaged to
+Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation
+as this," Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth. "If he were not blind
+or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she
+would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so."
+
+An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that
+it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster
+had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and
+had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have
+received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism. They had
+paused in a square near the heart of the garden--a green, shaded
+spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed
+fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken the stillness
+for many a long day. Round the margin of this still ran a seat on
+which Eleanor sat down. Victor remained standing before her. A lime
+tree near by cast a soft, flickering shadow over them, and the tall
+hedges of evergreen which enclosed the square made a sombre but
+effective background.
+
+"You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you here,"
+Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his voice. "But if
+you had courage enough to end the life which you despise, to cut loose
+from all the ties which bind you in America, and go with me to Egypt,
+_there_ I might have a future and a career for you to share--_there_
+at least, you would find freedom and action and life."
+
+A flush came to Eleanor's cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly in her
+eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it fascination;
+but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly. "You are of my world,"
+she said: "you ought to know better than that. I am not so brave as
+you think. I must do what is expected of me, and I am expected to
+marry Marston Brent."
+
+"Forget the world and come with me."
+
+"That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I would; but
+there are others of whom I must think." She was silent for a moment,
+then looked up at him piteously. "They have sacrificed so much for me
+at home," she said, "and they are so proud of me. They hope, desire,
+count on this marriage: I cannot disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself
+has been most kind and patient, and he does not expect very much. I am
+a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?"
+
+Again he said, "You can come with me."
+
+Again she answered, "It is impossible. Do you not see that it is
+impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for you
+to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to marry a
+poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For Heaven's
+sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can do is to
+forget that we have ever talked of it at all."
+
+"Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth could be
+harder for me."
+
+"No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my strength to do
+it. God only knows," putting her hand suddenly to her face, "how I
+shall live if I am _not_ able to do it." Then passionately, "Why did
+you speak? Why did you make the misery greater by dragging it to the
+light, so that we could face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did
+you do it?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff than
+other women," said he almost sternly. "In my maddest hours I never
+dreamed of speaking, until--what you said last night. Thinking of that
+after I came home, I resolved to give you one opportunity to break
+through the artificial trammels of your life, and find the freedom you
+professed to desire. It was better to do this, I thought, than to be
+tormented all my life by a regret, a doubt, lest I had lost happiness
+where one bold stroke might have gained it."
+
+"And now that you have found that I am _not_ brave, that I am like all
+the other conventional women of my class, are you not sorry that you
+have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?"
+
+"Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of you I
+cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it is
+something to have faced it together--it is everything to know that you
+love me, though you refuse to share my life."
+
+"You must not say that," said she, starting and shrinking as if from
+a blow. "How can I venture to acknowledge that I love you when I am
+going to marry Marston Brent?"
+
+"_Are_ you going to marry him?"
+
+"Have I not told you so?"
+
+He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the square.
+Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and indignant,
+without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable the laws
+of society are with regard to women than to men. _He_ could put
+Mrs. Lancaster's fortune aside and go his way--to Egypt or to the
+dogs--without anybody crying out against his criminal folly, his
+criminal disregard of the duties and traditions of his class. But
+if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent's princely fortune aside and
+disappointed all her friends, what remained to her but the bitter
+condemnation of those friends in particular and of society in general?
+
+When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
+remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
+by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
+intense azure of the summer sky above.
+
+"Let us go," she said. "By prolonging this we only give ourselves
+useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing remains now but to
+forget; and that can best be done in silence. Victor, let us go."
+
+There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
+herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
+her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
+the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
+Marston Brent's figure appeared at the end of the vista, advancing
+toward them, and it was this apparition which first made Clare speak:
+"If you will not think me fanciful--I am sure you will not think me
+presumptuous--promise me that before you give that man his answer
+you will share the lotos with me of which you have spoken. I may be
+superstitious, but I feel as if we shall gain new strength with which
+to face the future after we have together renounced the past."
+
+She shook her head. "I am not superstitious enough to think that it
+will enable us to forget one pang," she said. "But if you desire it, I
+promise."
+
+When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The Willows
+set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a little before
+sunset, making the ascent in time to see the day-god's last radiance
+streaming over the fair, broad expanse of country beneath them. There
+was a small cabin on the summit which was to be devoted to the
+ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon sparkling brightly the
+gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the blankets with which they
+were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile, the party, dividing into
+groups and pairs, were soon scattered here and there, perched on the
+highest points of rock, enjoying the cool, fresh air which came as a
+message of love from the glowing west, and chattering like a chorus of
+magpies.
+
+When the evening collation was over--a gypsy-like repast for which
+every one seemed to have an excellent appetite--Mr. Brent asked
+Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of the
+mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain what to
+say, Clare's voice spoke quietly at her side. "Miss Milbourne has an
+engagement with _me_," he said. "I fear you must defer the pleasure of
+admiring the moon in her society for a little while, Mr. Brent." Then
+to Eleanor, "Shall we go now?"
+
+She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
+naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some slight
+irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.
+
+"It strikes me that Major Clare's manners decidedly lack polish," he
+said with an air of grave reprehension. "Is it true, as I am told,
+that he is going to sell that fine old place where we spent the day,
+and emigrate to Egypt?"
+
+"He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum," said Mrs. Lancaster, who
+was standing near. "But, whatever his folly may be, I certainly do
+not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that his manners need any
+improvement."
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, "You should not have spoken so curtly
+to Mr. Brent."
+
+"If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again," Clare answered.
+"Don't let us talk of him. I did not bring you away to discuss anybody
+we have left behind, or anything of which we have talked before. We
+are to be like immortals--to forget the past and live only in the
+present."
+
+"Where are we going?" she asked.
+
+"Round to a point from whence we can overlook Claremont."
+
+She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
+mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent, they
+sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From this
+point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded before.
+The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like
+a panorama at their feet--shadowy woods melting into blue distance,
+streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with
+cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread.
+To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing
+landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless
+sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked
+at his companion. "How beautiful you are!" he said abruptly. "I wish
+I had a picture of you as you sit there now. It would be worth
+everything else in the world to me. But perhaps, after all, the best
+pictures are those which are taken on the heart."
+
+"You have forgotten," said Eleanor, trying to smile, "that we are
+going to eat the lotos in order to efface all pictures."
+
+"Nay," said he. "I thought it was to enable us to forget everything
+but the present, and this _is_ the present."
+
+"But it will be the past in a little while," said she, "and we must
+forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we _must_ forget! They say that
+all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do that."
+
+For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with something
+like a groan, "Would to God I could die here and now, or else that
+there _was_ some spell by which one could make memory a blank!"
+
+"Let us try the lotos," said Eleanor. "See, I brought it as you told
+me."
+
+From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
+contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
+Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
+reverence. "It came from Egypt," she said: then she added, "where you
+are going."
+
+"We will see if there is any magic in it," said Clare.
+
+So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them, smiling
+a little sadly at each other as they did so.
+
+"Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, 'and all the grounds round
+it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of lilies which the
+Egyptians call lotos, in the water,'" said Clare. "He adds that this
+flower, especially the root of it, is very sweet. If this is the same,
+it has certainly changed its flavor since that time."
+
+"It is not disagreeable," said Eleanor. "But I fear we shall not find
+the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the lotos fruit that
+Homer and Tennyson have written."
+
+"And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an Egyptian,
+aquatic; but since we desire to link _our_ fancy with the flower of
+the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins. After all, we
+only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the past on which
+we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed resolve to leave the
+past behind us from this hour, and face our future together?"
+
+He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of replying
+she put her hand to her head. "How strangely dizzy I am!" she said.
+"Can it--do you think it can be the lotos?"
+
+"Dizzy!" he repeated. "Then I must take you from the edge of this
+precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It could not have
+been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me lead you round
+the rock."
+
+But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
+strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
+heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
+he sank back against the rock.
+
+"Do you feel it too?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, putting his hand also to his head. "What can
+it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in that plant? The lotos
+itself is harmless, either flower or fruit. Eleanor, my darling!" he
+cried with sudden alarm. "Good Heavens! what is the matter? How pale
+you look!"
+
+"I--I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must have been
+some poisonous plant," said she faintly. "This giddiness and numbness
+increase." Then she held out her hands tremulously. "Hold me," she
+said. "The earth seems slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it
+should be fatal?"
+
+"Do not imagine such a thing," he said. "It is impossible! The plant
+has probably some narcotic property which affects you temporarily.
+Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad I was to have suffered
+you to eat it!"
+
+"Do not blame yourself," she said, clinging to him, her fair head
+drooping heavily on his breast. "It was I who spoke of it--who sent
+for it--"
+
+She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
+where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at her
+face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before. Partly
+this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of the plant
+which they had shared between them _was_ fatal--one of the swift and
+terrible agents of death which abound in the East--and a sense too
+horrible to be dwelt upon came to him, warning him that aid, to avail
+at all, must be summoned quickly.
+
+But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the party
+were far from them. He had purposely led his companion to this remote
+spot, where, even if he had been able to raise his voice, there was
+none to hear. As for leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk
+ten steps. He felt sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he
+should reel and fall like a drunken man.
+
+Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
+lessened the hope of its success--with every pulse-beat he felt the
+awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
+his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
+losing hers.
+
+"My darling," he said, striving vainly to unclasp the arms that clung
+to him, "I must go--I must call assistance: this may be more serious
+than I thought. Try to rouse yourself, Eleanor: I must go!"
+
+Alas! it was easy to say--it was awfully impossible to do. Even when
+Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and he strove
+to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the requisite
+power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort failed: he
+sank back hopelessly.
+
+Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
+to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
+Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
+girl beside him--the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to his
+breast.
+
+"Eleanor," he said, "it is hopeless. If this _is_ poison we must die!
+Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O my God, send us help! Eleanor,
+can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not speak to me?"
+
+For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself, and
+the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like eyes.
+The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July heaven, shone
+full on her face as she said, "Kiss me."
+
+For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were cold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a fragment
+of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston Brent had
+ignorantly plucked for a lotos.
+
+
+CHRISTIAN REID.
+
+
+
+
+ECHO.
+
+FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.
+
+
+  Roars there ever a beast in his forest den,
+    Hear we thunder in heaven, a horn among men,
+  On the hill sings a maiden now and then,--
+          Sound what may,
+  Answer through space thou mak'st again
+          With small delay.
+  Aware of the thunder's rattling roll,
+  Of the winds and the waves when without control,
+  Of the cries where the village shepherds stroll,
+          Reply thou giv'st;
+  Yet thou thyself, without one answering soul,
+          A poet liv'st.
+
+A.J.
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
+then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
+or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
+legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
+interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
+belief of the Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.]
+
+Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday and
+Thursday were witches' days, and Wednesday was also evil, seeing Judas
+hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive cattle to the
+Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two persons sneezed
+together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for witches and ghosts,
+he knew enough about them too. Did not the witches still dance every
+night at eight o'clock on their meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His
+brother Jörgel could have told us about that if he would. The pächter
+Josef had likewise experiences which he might relate were he not so
+shy. "Josef was returning through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and
+had just crossed over the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom
+he greeted in God's name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as
+a Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
+when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
+boldly a 'God greet you!' but again silence. The figure had vanished.
+Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a third, and,
+waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round looked fixedly
+at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer, gypsy, ghost or
+witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as a tree, grinning
+at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next day the black cow
+went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef's hobgoblins were fir
+trees."
+
+Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef's phantoms, he could not help telling
+us in his turn a tale which he considered much more noteworthy: "There
+was no denying that one winter's night a huntsman, losing himself in
+the deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
+hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
+by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the
+hut, but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
+accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
+a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
+strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
+was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
+and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
+to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
+before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
+comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
+for his kind hospitality, adding, 'May God reward you!' 'Oh,' replied
+the other, uttering a great sigh of relief, 'may God in His mercy
+equally reward you for those words! When I walked on the earth I
+laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back in the spirit to toil
+until some mortal should thank me in God's name for what I had done
+for him. This you have done, and now I am free;' and so saying he
+vanished."
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "these tales are as true as the gospel. You know
+Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father some years since went
+on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to Maria Zell. Arriving
+late one night at a solitary farm-house, they rapped at the door,
+requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused himself: it was from
+no evil intention, he said, but he could not take strangers in. The
+three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their condition if left in
+the fields all night. Still the bauer made no other reply, until, on
+their pressing him, he finally declared, half in anger, that they must
+themselves be responsible for their night's rest. He wished to treat
+them well, but could offer them no better bed than the top of the oven
+in the stube. This offer they willingly accepted, but hardly had
+they lain down when a peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and
+brushes. In spite of their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away
+all night, and hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing
+her, she began scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the
+cleaning lasted the livelong night, until in the early morning the
+maid-servant entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls
+being, to their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before.
+Whereupon they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor.
+'Do not accuse me,' he replied 'of inhospitality: this is a strange
+matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
+been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who thus
+scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain, when
+she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not even go
+to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home and clean.
+So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white, she seems
+unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to continue her
+work. Even masses don't seem to help her.'"
+
+Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or in
+the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn at
+night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her too
+horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any moment
+drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over her own
+tale.
+
+One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we determined
+to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of fir wood
+rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see what lay on
+the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating climb we learned
+that the mountain was but a huge overhanging shoulder, the rocky head
+of the giant rising up in the midst of wide sweeping moors some six
+miles distant. We changed, therefore, the object of our excursion,
+determining to visit the highest Olm of the district, Ober Kofel.
+Turning to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half
+an hour we had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly
+closed, but a pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently
+down, were sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could
+not well be conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles
+growing by the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone
+rushing on until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin.
+Tawny, dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the
+_trät_ or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to
+a platform of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain
+rhododendron grew, presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view
+outward embraced the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far
+beyond the black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across
+the evening horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high,
+peaked with snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was
+to the left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
+Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
+peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
+forth from this desert of snow.
+
+We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the wind
+playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just been
+promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man flitted
+in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved to be the
+solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the domain, and
+moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes ere he sat
+on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he began talking
+to Moidel about the military exercises which were to begin again this
+week.
+
+"The Ausserkofers," he said, "went down for the drilling immediately
+after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I was not drawn."
+
+Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the morrow
+for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel's son, would
+arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.
+
+The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
+lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
+keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
+several faces.
+
+Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
+of the group began: "Of course you have heard of the clever Tyrolese
+peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?"
+
+Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both pricked
+up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a little
+farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of lying
+on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river given to
+inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge in his
+neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door, and
+almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he must
+make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss of
+time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
+sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
+evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind.
+He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be
+carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aërial car? He
+bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two
+parallel lines across the river, fastening the four ends very firmly;
+constructed a bench on iron rollers, which, sustained by the wire, ran
+across the river in a trice, and his aërial car was a reality. Here,
+indeed, was a triumph. It worked admirably, and the whole neighborhood
+became excited and astonished about the air-railway, as they called
+it. The news spreading, it brought finally some gentlemen from the
+town of Dornbirn, who were wild to have a ride across the river. Hans
+Jakob refused it: he doubted the strength being sufficient for more
+than one passenger; but they persisting in their urgent demand, he at
+last reluctantly consented. They would not, or else they could not,
+go without him. So, the party being seated on the bench, he unfastened
+the hook, when they should have been instantly whirled across. But,
+alas! his fears proved true: the wire gave way, and down they
+all went, plump into the wild rushing river. A great fright and
+wetting--that was all, for the time being, until the gentlemen,
+although they had promised not to say a word on the subject, having
+whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no part uncolored, the
+town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad peasant's audacity. The
+authorities took it in hand, and a solemn gendarme visited Hans Jakob
+with strict orders from government to desist from such perilous,
+hairbreadth inventions for the future. Poor Hans! he now regarded
+himself not only as the laughing-stock of the whole country, but as
+a ruined man. He had spent all his savings on his first venture; but
+neither official reprimand nor loss of his money could keep his
+busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved plan, which, having
+perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out. Instead of two simple
+iron wires, he employed two double coils, with a single wire in the
+centre and six feet higher. He stretched across two other strong
+parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with two seats and a
+cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the awning he fastened
+rollers, so that the car was propelled across both above and below.
+The weight which it would bear he proved to be fifteen hundredweight,
+and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept it to the bank, the car
+ran across in a few seconds with an easy, agreeable motion. Practice
+and a close investigation proved it now a perfect success. All the
+censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it proves at the present
+time both convenient and amusing to the gentlemen, ladies and children
+of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob willingly conveys them across the
+river in his flying car. He will, however, receive no fixed payment.
+He constructed it simply for his own use: were he to make a trade of
+it, he must either take out a patent, or else make some concessions to
+government, neither of which he has any inclination to do.
+
+The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had understood
+every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob before, there
+was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an almanac which the
+senner owned to having had by him for the last eight months--another
+noticeable instance how tales and good advice in print are lost upon
+a people who, hitherto quietly slumbering, find for their hearts and
+minds enough to do in carrying on their slow agriculture and pattering
+their prayers. I believe that popular lecturers conversant with the
+dialect would be of infinite service in the rural districts of the
+Tyrol.
+
+The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality of
+his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before us
+in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men of
+Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to carry
+a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug been
+fortunately remembered.
+
+The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle, arrived
+at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning, making
+the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop. Franz
+therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour earlier
+than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to initiate his
+successor into the various advantages of the several Alpine pastures,
+to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to introduce Martin to
+Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the other cows, as well
+as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We set out to accompany
+them, but the cattle were too far away on distant heights for us to
+continue long in the scramble. We therefore sat on a breezy mountain
+platform watching the athletic young men grow ever smaller, more
+indistinct, whilst Jakob's voice was borne to us on the rarefied air
+as he called lovingly, "Krudeli, Krudeli" to the calves, and "Köss,
+Köss" to the cows.
+
+"It is a miracle," said Moidel, "how Martin, who was so weak and
+consumed away by his accident, should thus have recovered."
+
+"What accident?" asked we.
+
+"Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his very
+name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg--he who wears
+the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being cold weather,
+wore three cock's feathers gained in wrestling-matches--strutted
+down the Edelsheim street, arm in arm with his great friend, the
+fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a rude young churl, praising each
+other for their strength of limb and good looks. Martin at the time
+was leaning against his father's door. 'The devil!' said Niederberg:
+'why do you stay at your father's, when there is better wine and
+company at the Blauen Bock?' Martin, however, replied that he was a
+hard-working man, who could only spare time to see his old father and
+sick sister on a festival. 'No,' said Heinwiese in anger, 'thou art
+nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
+at a dance.' 'But,' put in Niederberg, 'we'll teach thee to dance
+and sing;' and so saying, he suddenly plunged the blade of his big
+pocket-knife below Martin's ribs.
+
+"Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they were lost
+in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet village. A doctor
+was sent for, who at first declared Martin's wound to be mortal. Then
+his young wife and little children were fetched with many tears from
+the tileyard, and the priest came with the Holy Death Sacrament. But
+the prayers and viaticum saved Martin. Still, for many months he had
+a frightful illness, and even in March he was so weak you could have
+knocked him down with a feather. Niederberg was immediately taken into
+custody, and was sentenced to sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the
+Baptist's Day, fully six months, to pay the doctor's bill, and two
+hundred gulden to Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded
+youth, though rich, he has never paid. He will leave that to
+Heinwiese, he says, who put him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man
+who had recovered? He would have stood the funeral and settled with
+the widow. However, father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he
+must not thus despoil patient Martin."
+
+Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than cooler,
+quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam still
+moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.
+
+Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
+bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn's moss, and
+showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which they
+had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little insignificant
+plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and prized by them
+far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being that when dried
+it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which reason the housewives
+place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a mountain dryad, his
+broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered with purple Michaelmas
+daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery edelweiss, falling round
+in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob and Martin, we had the
+gratification of gathering edelweiss ourselves, always a notable feat.
+Martin really had most miraculously recovered. After those twenty-four
+miles of hard walking, followed by a climb of several thousand feet,
+we left him felling a pine tree as we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to
+leave very early in the morning.
+
+A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
+course we had none: Martin's arrival had been an immense event. Thus,
+as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great masses
+of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the lantern,
+forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a cheerful
+voice wishing us "Good-night and sweet repose" through the door.
+Immediately, believing it to be the pächter's moidel, a young lady
+usually engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the
+voice to enter--an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect
+good faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw
+hat, who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding
+perhaps to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but
+certainly not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she
+attacked us with a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel,
+however, was up to the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed
+to get the unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her
+to bolt and bar it well, for after this call we were afraid of more
+lurking intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The
+woman was neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
+_Bachernthalerin_, whose hut was generally under water. It was
+accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging milk
+at the senner-huts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
+might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
+expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
+to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with the
+pächter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing Ignaz.
+It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at an Olm?
+
+Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but pleasant
+descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first halting-place. It
+was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the mountains rising in all
+their impressive majesty, but for a time all our powers of admiration
+and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the sight of meek sheep led to
+the shambles at the very window.
+
+We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we had
+rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors' book,
+besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at all
+perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
+preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
+his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
+door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
+that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
+actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
+at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in red-handed,
+and proved a botanist. It was a _Woodsia hyperborea_--that was the
+Latin name--and was rare in those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft
+should come earlier for flowers. July was the month. Then there was
+geum, and pale blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow
+violets, the white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both
+excellent medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and
+grass of Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes.
+There were four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas!
+like the gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.
+
+His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
+Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful gentians,
+common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.
+
+"Ladies," replied the botanist with emphasis, "you know not the
+reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which is not torn
+up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is good when
+rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better lotion; and
+a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another of sleep at
+night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every peasant daily;
+but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were bits of heaven
+scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their roots are better
+for schnapps distilling than those of other plants, or even than
+bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little moderation, cutting the
+roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the ground the plant springs
+up again. 'Poor as a root-grubber' is the proverb. I'm glad it is.
+For if they were not so wanton, they would not be so poor. They mostly
+come from the Zillerthal. It's a special trade. The men climb the
+mountains as soon as the snow melts. They build themselves rude huts,
+and spend the summer searching for and digging up roots. Now, however,
+as they have cut their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often
+to high mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather
+fine roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my
+wrist. In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian
+roots, which they carry to the distilling vats, where the _Enzian_, so
+dear to the Tyroler, is made."
+
+[Illustration: COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.]
+
+And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the gentians, rose
+to return to his occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable
+position which he held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a
+surgeon or soldier would be in a higher class, that the butcher was
+to them. In this case, too, we joined in respect--a feeling we might
+entertain for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity
+of judging. But we must onward.
+
+Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat, ornamented
+with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company with Moidel,
+giving us, however, equally the benefit of her conversation, whilst
+she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in Rein, she told us, and
+had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a second time about perpetual
+stitching pains in her throat. The doctor said it was quinsy, and
+arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she could bring herself to
+smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein, she might keep the
+mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a female, and it made
+a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born in such a village
+as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were badly built, the
+kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly cold in winter,
+though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze in them. In
+fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then all the family
+must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there. When Nanni
+Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and grandchildren must
+lie down together; and then all the neighbors had to visit her, unless
+they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was how the typhus spread.
+Fortunately, her husband and she were alone: they had no burdens.
+Still, life was hard--a vale of tears or a vale of snow. If the gentry
+could see the Reinthal in the winter, choked up with avalanches, they
+would say so. Her man had, however, enough to keep them. He had a
+license for the shooting of gemsen and other game, which he might use
+from holy Jakobi's Day to Candlemas. He had this year killed only
+five gemsen so far. The Post at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now,
+and bought up every ounce of the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the
+pound--bought snow-hens, too, at forty kreuzers each, and would never
+let her husband's gun be idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no
+longer shoot, then he worked in their fields; for we might not think
+it, but he, being a thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought
+some land. But oh the labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was
+subjected! If his land lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must
+slave and toil like beasts of burden, for what would be the help of
+horse or cow for riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright
+land? "The holy watch-angels help us!" she said. "Look up there and
+you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you."
+
+Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small figure
+of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet above
+us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a triangle
+of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out the
+figures of two women helping him.
+
+"That's Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down their green
+oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the eldest girl,
+working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far over the
+precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better fortune, I pray
+God, awaited her than the cruel trials of Reinthal."
+
+Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
+gloomy a view, probably occasioned by "her stitching pains." Still,
+she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life in every season of
+the year save summer.
+
+In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within sound
+of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest of our
+party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us. At a
+quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery possessing
+a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer meadows beyond,
+kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for nine. All were
+unanimous, however, that the ample supply was sufficient for ten,
+and the good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
+gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
+helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
+morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
+least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
+as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady's handbag.
+Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
+mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.
+
+For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
+clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a burnished
+gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep shadows of
+the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive sheds, and
+a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the artists, who
+busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the great crimson
+bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the rippling sound of a
+mad, merry little mill-brook.
+
+How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and climes
+to those serviceable creatures, bees!
+
+  The little citizens create,
+  And waxen cities build.
+
+Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
+and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than "citizens." Formerly they
+delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings which they could
+devise for them, helping them in their constant toil by planting balmy
+thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around the hives. These
+were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy monograms and
+devices to add a blessing and security to the provident labors of the
+little inmates. They were, in fact, _beatified bees_, who had to be
+solemnly invited to attend the death mass when the owner died, else
+they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a swarm of bees hung to a
+house, it was simply as a warning that fire would break out there.
+
+The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
+flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
+pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
+beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
+falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
+peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
+lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees--a fact
+difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous veneration
+and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the freshness and
+simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the discarding of
+their picturesque costumes.
+
+As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the walls
+of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain still
+several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather to
+explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of Taufers.
+
+But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
+deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the
+view, finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
+prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the rain
+steadily pattering against the casements.
+
+Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
+wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
+band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
+been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
+clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
+bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
+however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
+tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
+their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
+their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
+there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
+these were only a few amongst the endless figures of the tragic band,
+on a long, unceasing march.
+
+Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in Alpine
+meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may be seen.
+Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient Italians fleeing
+from a buried city, wandering Israelites,--such and many others are
+the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn, hay or clover assume,
+all combining to act as one vast funeral procession of the summer that
+is no more.
+
+[Illustration: A PROCESSION.]
+
+In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in the
+distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually the up
+stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined reserved
+for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long coats down
+to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers from the
+mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence, and really
+the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the landlord and
+landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as ever. We were
+soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out not only by
+the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare which
+was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
+incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
+flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
+mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These
+were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom
+it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid
+wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not have
+been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an apparent
+falling away from the singularly bright example which a good man, born
+only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of Mühlen, had once
+set them.
+
+The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
+clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
+goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the Tyrol.
+A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness, he acted
+as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire Bible, which he
+had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally by heart. Birds,
+flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring sermons, and his
+evening conversations with his pupils were fraught with the most
+beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy and the power he
+unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the conscience. Sorrows were
+met invariably by him with a cheerful "Dominus providebit" or "parcat
+Deus." Cheating and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore
+rejoiced to become acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious
+officials and religious soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never
+troubled him. He walked like a child through the world. When unable to
+wear his scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with
+cheerful urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat,
+his pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella.
+His old coat of an antique cut still bore on the under side of a flap
+the dyer's mark. His waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted
+wool. On festive occasions, however, he fastened to the back of
+his coat collar a fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was
+something humorous in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it,
+and yet, says one of his pupils, "though we joined in the laugh, his
+whole person and demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not
+of this world."
+
+Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory of
+this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once his
+pupils, in the upper stube?
+
+The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners, Moidel,
+fearing that her important services must be missed at the Hof, bravely
+defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the afternoon,
+utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters to
+Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne through
+mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.
+
+Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming from
+the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann were
+at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure, somehow,
+that we should come.
+
+The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
+absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
+not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
+according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
+dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
+our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E----. We felt that
+we had come home--to our home in the Tyrol.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED]
+
+
+
+
+COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.
+
+
+On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a sister--Sepia, an
+artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who is the narrator--left
+Chicago by the North-western Railroad, bound for Denver in Colorado,
+about eleven hundred miles west. The first day we were climbing the
+gradual ascent from the Lakes to the Mississippi, which we crossed
+at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty years which had elapsed since I
+first traversed this region had changed it from wild, unbroken
+prairie to a well-cultivated country, full of corn-fields, cattle and
+flourishing towns. Then I traveled in a wagon four miles an hour,
+and had to find my own meat in the shape of a deer from the grove, a
+grouse from the prairie or a duck from the river. Now we rushed across
+the State in six hours, stopping fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine
+brick hotel, metropolitan in charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when
+we arrived at the great river, we waited two or three hours for the
+ferry-boat, and finally had to cross in a "dug-out," which seemed but
+a frail vessel to stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the
+Mississippi. Now we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost
+more money than all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the
+first method of traveling was the more interesting.
+
+Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
+prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
+great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness:
+we made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and
+we were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
+panthers screamed around our camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat,
+and our only visitors in two weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who
+disapproved of our intrusion upon their hunting-grounds.
+
+At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
+the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
+Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
+military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now
+it is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
+rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.
+
+Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
+Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its charges.
+On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about four
+cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation Congress
+gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to build the
+road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This may arise
+from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes to all
+Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes, so that,
+half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay double. Not
+only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra baggage. Like
+the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin, this great
+corporation is able to give free passes to a whole legislature or to
+charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of extra baggage.
+
+From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
+States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here
+talk about going to the "States." All the region hereabouts, from the
+middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the French _Les
+Mauvaises Terres_, or "Bad Lands," and was eloquently described by
+Irving in _Astoria_ as the Great American Desert. "This region,"
+he writes, "resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and
+spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy
+wastes, which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient
+floor of the ocean countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat
+against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where
+no man permanently abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is
+no food either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and
+withered, the streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the
+deer have wandered to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast,
+uninhabited solitude."
+
+But this "land where no man permanently abides" is rapidly being
+settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by the simple
+process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring of Eastern
+farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the immigrant, and,
+like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.
+
+On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new town
+of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains fifteen
+hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels, churches,
+schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This aspiring town,
+4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those colony towns
+so successful in the West, and on which we must depend for rebuilding
+society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile farms,
+and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected by
+irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
+Platte--one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty thousand
+acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the town and
+five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated now, in
+midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched herbage, which,
+however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet hay, dried and
+preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and antelope, and now
+cropped by the flocks and herds of the white man.
+
+Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight thousand
+inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which fully
+believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation of
+five thousand feet. It was said of old "that the meek shall inherit
+the earth," but it was not by _that_ quality that the Denverites
+obtained their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and
+a mint: five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of
+freight per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory
+numbers, and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars' worth of
+goods per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858,
+and has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water,
+and almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
+pretty smart specimen of a Western city.
+
+We ride in a 'bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
+fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
+worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
+South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
+wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
+line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
+foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good pair
+of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but owner
+of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the precocity of
+the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and loaded, so
+as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have a tent and
+camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and Scribe, and
+the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.
+
+So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
+Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
+with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus--no verdure
+except along the canals, where several species of _Artemisia_ and a
+prickly poppy with a large white flower grow profusely. We then begin
+to mount the bare foot-hills, among which are curious masses of red
+rock as large as city churches, and washed by the storms of ages into
+various fantastic forms. We then enter a ravine or cañon through which
+flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the Platte.
+
+Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised, and
+butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this region
+makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I never tasted
+poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as sweet and
+fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States. The time
+will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the Atlantic
+cities: at present there is no surplus made.
+
+We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side: it
+was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one carriage,
+with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so that
+we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a wagon.
+Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had to keep
+behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other side to a
+strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the night, having
+come twenty miles from Denver.
+
+_August_ 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn bread
+and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha Ranch;
+then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland's Ranch, five miles, and
+Bailey's, five miles, on the North Fork of the South Fork of the
+Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully clear and
+bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky ravine, down a
+wooded cañon, then through little parks, surrounded by high hills and
+set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with fresh grass and
+abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the mountain-sides the road
+was narrow, but we were lucky and met nothing, although we frequently
+overtook the immense wagons drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, and
+driven by the most ferocious-looking teamsters whom I have ever seen,
+brandishing enormous whips, which crack like rifle-shots in the woods.
+We found, however, that, being civilly entreated, they would always
+turn out of the road to let us pass. We were now at an elevation of
+probably six thousand feet, having been constantly ascending since we
+left Denver; and this evening we rose still higher, having climbed a
+long mountain which overlooked the head-waters of the Platte.
+
+Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us to
+the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper of
+trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
+delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
+morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
+the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
+and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
+ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods and
+followed the example set us by Simon Peter.
+
+The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
+away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
+rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look; so
+we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell walked
+down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as to leave
+a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright and hot,
+and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They were darker
+and less brilliant in color than our _Salmo fontinalis_, and were, I
+think, _Salmo Lewisii_, which inhabits these waters. The valley was
+about half a mile wide, and shut in on each side by mountains of red
+granite, crowned with pines. Bailey's people were making hay in the
+valley, and I sat down on a fragrant haycock to await the return of
+my companion. Presently I observed a horseman coming up the valley:
+he was a hunter, followed by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a
+mountain-sheep, or bighorn (_Ovis montana_), on the saddle in front
+of him. He told me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was
+taking it to Bailey's for sale. It was an animal something in color
+like a deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very
+large curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous
+in these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
+lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work.
+I asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
+themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
+their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
+never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
+it, he replied that he reckoned they _could_, but would be smashed
+if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly bears, he
+replied that there _were_ grizzlies hereabouts, but that he never
+hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.
+
+In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for a
+mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
+Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
+effective water-color sketches of the scenery.
+
+_Aug_. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the Platte
+Valley five miles to Slaight's, through a very picturesque region.
+Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the mail-stage
+coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at a gallop: we
+were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which they did in
+a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the long-bearded,
+red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight's, with two houses and some
+fields of oats. Then eight miles to Heffron's, at the forks of the
+river, where there are a post-office and one house. Two miles beyond
+we stopped to feed our horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest
+of sugar pines. This species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern
+States, with the same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches.
+Many of them had been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner
+bark, which is a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in
+these mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
+birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
+color of _Tetrao cupido_, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the
+bushes at the roadside the mountain-rabbit (_Lepus artemisia_), which
+from its large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron's we
+continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we got
+the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin, some
+hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high mountains.
+
+The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
+again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
+feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be seen
+the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray's Peak, Pike's
+Peak, Mount Lincoln, and
+
+  Other Titans, without muse or name.
+
+The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
+like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
+in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
+game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
+white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
+have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
+pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
+the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the mines
+in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to which a
+stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.
+
+In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
+Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
+continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
+an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long: among
+them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to the
+size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so entirely
+from those usually visited and described by travelers, the Alps, the
+Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can scarcely
+believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten thousand feet
+above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains approach more nearly
+to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from fourteen thousand to
+seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at twelve thousand feet,
+and increases in quantity to the extreme height of the tallest peaks,
+about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty feet, though even these
+are often bare in August. In these parks the cattle live without
+shelter in winter, and the timber is large and plentiful at eleven
+thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting, but instead we have the
+rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains, the pure, dry and balmy
+atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a softness of color which can
+hardly be equaled on earth.
+
+Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the mountain
+which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of the
+sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along the
+level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at sunset
+near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to lie down
+on the floor under shelter.
+
+It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters and
+a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family lived,
+with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made one
+hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents a
+pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the cattle
+for the winter in certain sheltered regions called "the range." They
+were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear to stay here all
+alone for days at a time while their brother was galloping about the
+Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did not keep tavern, but
+were often obliged to take in benighted travelers like ourselves, to
+whom they gave the shelter of their roof and the privilege of cooking
+at their stove. The house was about forty by twenty feet, all in one
+room, though one end was parted off by blankets, behind which they
+admitted the lady of our party. Sometimes they were visited by Utes,
+who are not unfriendly, though, like most Indians, they are audacious
+beggars. "They try to scare us sometimes," said Jane: "they tell us,
+'Bimeby Utes get all this country--then you my squaw,' but we don't
+scare worth a cent." Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles
+away, who is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
+peace.
+
+_Aug_. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner's. Passed some
+deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed and scarred
+by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks and a
+red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the brow of
+a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on the hill
+to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a trout-brook of which
+we heard flattering accounts. It was a very pretty stream, winding
+through the prairie with the gentle murmur so loved by the angler and
+poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it perfect. It was rendered
+somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that if the trout were there
+they could not see our flies. We are told that trout are plenty on the
+other side of the mountains. "Go to the Arkansas," they say, "and you
+will find big ones."
+
+  Man never is, but always to be, blest.
+
+We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She told us
+that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In 1864, most of
+the men being away in the Union army, they found the house one morning
+surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had come up from
+Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines. They were a
+savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led by a man who
+had formerly worked for her father, and whom she recognized. They took
+what money and gold-dust was in the house, and seized all the
+best horses about the place; but when she saw them taking away her
+saddle-pony, she cried out, "Oh, Tom Smith! I didn't think you was
+that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn't you always well treated here?"
+He seemed to relent at this appeal, and not only restored her horse,
+but two of her father's also. The people collected and pursued the
+robbers, most of whom were captured or killed, but the leader escaped.
+Mrs. Lechner said she was glad he got away. "Tom must have had some
+good in him or he wouldn't have given me back my pony."
+
+_Aug_. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the sight of
+a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the delicate
+tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which suffuse these
+summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch them, but what
+human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at seven, and drove
+to Bailey's, thirty-five miles, before sunset, stopping an hour at
+noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we were caught in a
+furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail, with terrific
+thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by. And here I must
+pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our horses--steady,
+prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for them to climb, no
+precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the pelting of that
+pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We found Bailey's house
+apparently full, but they made room for us. A handsome buggy and pair
+arrived soon after, from which descended a well-dressed gentleman
+and lady, whom we found to be the superintendent of a silver-mine
+at Hamilton and his wife. They told us that there was a very good
+boarding-house at that place, with fine scenery all around, which we
+ought to have seen. But in truth we had as much fine scenery as we
+could contain: we were saturated with it, and a few mountains more
+would have been wasted.
+
+_Aug_. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping to drive
+through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen miles one of
+the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary to replace,
+the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction, where was
+a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper, farmer and
+blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a man of such
+various talents. Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he
+looked for the hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that
+little Johnny had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and
+finally brought, but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so
+essential to our progress. "Look for it, Johnny," said the blacksmith;
+and he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
+dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe with
+the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had been
+lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
+taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
+three miles down Bear's Creek Cañon to the house of Strauss. The
+good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper
+of venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
+where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife milks
+thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a churning.
+Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many varieties of
+bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.
+
+Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at 90°,
+and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for Chicago.
+
+I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small part
+of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble travelers,
+unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad potentates: we
+were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted up Gray's Park,
+or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw enough of the new
+and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of Colorado and the
+South Park.
+
+S.C. CLARKE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.
+
+
+"Do you know anything about this 'grange' business?" asked a lady
+from the city the other day; and she added, "I can hardly take up a
+magazine or newspaper without falling on the words 'grange,' 'Patrons
+of Husbandry,' 'farmers' movement,' and all that."
+
+"Why, I am a Patron myself," I replied.
+
+"What! you have a _grange_ here in this little New Jersey sandbank?"
+she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with a storm of questions.
+
+It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
+answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters,
+and quoting Mr. Adams's treatise on the _Railroad Systems_ and other
+authorities to explain the present war between producers and carriers;
+and, believing that there are many others who, like my friend, are
+disposed to look into this "grange business," I will give them the
+substance of our conversation. A great deal of that which has found
+its way into the press touching our order is more characterized by
+confidence than correctness of statement. In a late magazine article
+it is stated that the organization known as the _Patrons of Husbandry_
+"was originally borrowed from an association which for many years
+had maintained a feeble existence in a community of Scotch farmers in
+North Carolina." This statement has no foundation in fact. The
+order is not the out-growth directly, or even indirectly, of any
+pre-existing organization. It is the result, so far as it is possible
+to trace impulses to their source, of the suggestion of a lady,
+communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H. Kelley, the present secretary
+of the National Grange, and the person who has done more than any
+other to establish the order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was
+in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a
+national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley
+seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret
+society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the
+farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant
+disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to
+abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed,
+as it did all his time and energy. But he persevered against every
+discouragement, and to-day he may well be proud of the results of his
+devotion.
+
+The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called the
+"North Star Grange," and it is one of the most efficient subordinate
+granges in the country to this day. Another was organized in
+Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio, another in
+Illinois, and a few others during the same year in different places.
+This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time they have been
+constantly increasing--at first slowly, then with a rapidity unheard
+of in the history of secret or any other organizations in this country
+or the world. We can hardly count three years since the order fairly
+began to grow, and now the granges are numbered by the thousand. Ten
+States on the twenty-fifth of June last had over a hundred granges,
+and seven of these between two and five hundred. Iowa to-day has
+seventeen hundred and ten, and others in process of organization.
+Thirty-one of the States and Territories had subordinate or both
+subordinate and State granges, according to the June returns. There
+were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three in Vermont, five in
+New York State, three in New Jersey, two in Pennsylvania, and one in
+Massachusetts. Up to this time there has been little effort made to
+extend the organization into the Eastern and Middle States, but at
+present deputies from the National Grange are being sent to these
+"benighted regions," and the leaven is working finely. To show how
+rapidly the order is extending it will be only necessary to add that
+seven hundred and one charters for new granges were issued during the
+single month of May.
+
+The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by common
+consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much this
+one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of different
+sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that on one
+or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have been
+wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together with
+great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more than the
+surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and women
+are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the seven
+degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and the
+higher in the State granges or in the National Grange--the seventh
+in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court of
+impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the order.
+All officers are chosen by ballot--those of the National Grange
+for three years, of State granges for two years, and of subordinate
+granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees are
+respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
+Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
+initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
+really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
+which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
+societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
+conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
+only by the most strenuous efforts.
+
+Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
+machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
+sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
+and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
+simple feasts. Two fundamental objects of the organization are social
+and intellectual culture. The widespread realization of the importance
+of these among the people is the first great step toward securing
+them, and the first unmistakable sign that such step has already been
+taken is the rebelling against pure drudgery. Said the Master of the
+National Grange, Mr. Dudley W. Adams, in a late address: "It will
+doubtless be a matter of surprise to them" (editors, lawyers,
+politicians, etc.) "to learn that farmers may possibly entertain
+some wish to enjoy life, and have some other object in living besides
+everlasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining
+them from their own life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of
+weary children and worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a
+new Declaration of Independence. We must do something to dispel old
+prejudices and beat down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal
+to labor from morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but
+abominable heresy."... "We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
+the 'hardened hand of honest toil,' the supreme glory of 'the sweating
+brow,' and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which covers
+a form bent with overwork."... "I tell you, my brother-workers of the
+soil, there is something worth living for besides hard work. We have
+heard enough of this professional blarney. Toil in itself is not
+necessarily glorious. To toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate
+broad acres, pile up treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at
+the same time bow and starve the god-like form, harden the hands,
+dwarf the immortal mind and alienate the children from the homestead,
+is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a
+brute."
+
+Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
+drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
+while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
+less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
+have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
+to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
+by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
+in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable,
+be just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful
+in bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
+portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
+beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
+and you will find that the farmer's sons who are regularly engaged in
+one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing, are
+great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are, in
+comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their address;
+and simply because, though their labor has been as unremitting, it has
+been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they go from one thing to
+another, and through a great variety of muscular exercises from hour
+to hour.
+
+It is no wonder, then, that the farmers' sons, to get rid of the
+terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
+tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
+third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
+youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
+virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
+opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of
+as possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
+attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
+reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of grange
+halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of degrees,
+the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep young men on
+the farm unless something is done to render the labor less monotonous
+and disagreeable.
+
+One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
+predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
+better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that within
+a few years we shall see magnificent social palaces, something like
+the famous one at Guise, in many places in this country; and he went
+on to show how social and industrial life might be organized so as
+to secure the most complete liberty of the individual or family,
+magnificent educational advantanges, remunerative occupation and
+varied amusements for all, with perfect insurance against want for
+orphans, for the sick and the aged. Each palace was to be the centre
+of a great agricultural district exploited in the most scientific
+manner, and through the varied economies resulting from combination
+all the luxuries of industry and all the conditions for high culture
+were to be secured to all who were willing to labor even one-half
+the hours that the farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and
+certainly very entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one
+of the company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.
+
+But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of the
+Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and that
+they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through agents
+appointed from among their members, now purchase their machinery and
+farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by wholesale.
+That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way, and Missouri,
+through the executive committee of her State grange, has just
+completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All members
+of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at greatly
+reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty granges,
+with a larger membership than in many other States, this is a very
+important item.
+
+Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally supposed
+the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly, to the
+outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West seem
+to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of three
+bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and the whole
+world knows that they have been burning their three-year old crops as
+fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it seems clear that
+there is not too much corn raised, since a great famine has just swept
+over Persia, and others are threatening in different parts of the
+world.
+
+The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by the
+farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates for
+carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that the
+road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
+the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
+sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
+the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
+a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
+Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
+reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
+Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
+patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson's pithy
+apothegm, that "where combination is possible competition is
+impossible." The two great companies combined, became consolidated
+into one, and, having their victim completely in their power, swindled
+him without pity and divided the spoils between them.
+
+The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation. But
+nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
+monopolies and "rings," or from organizing to circumvent their
+schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing intelligence
+of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people so conscious of
+their power--never so fully aware that in this country the machinery
+for correcting abuses lies in the degree of concentration with which
+public opinion can be brought to bear in a given direction. Once let
+the people become fully aroused to the existence of an evil or abuse,
+and there is no interest nor combination of interests that can
+long hold out against them. The trouble heretofore has been the
+multiplicity of conflicting opinions everywhere disseminated, and the
+consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a great
+number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of certain
+ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the Patrons of
+Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the eastern shores of
+the country, and yet still widening and extending in the West, where
+it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving army of the people
+so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed problems of labor
+and capital by a sudden but peaceful revolution.
+
+The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
+accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
+scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet unused
+documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of the
+movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.
+
+Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges have
+increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Twenty-nine
+new ones were organized during the week ending July 24. Over one-third
+of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or controlled by
+the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped over five
+million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and hogs in vast
+quantities; and the reports received from these shipments show an
+increased profit to the producers of from ten to forty per cent.
+over that of the old "middlemen" system; and by the complete buying
+arrangements which the Western granges have effected it is calculated
+that the members save on an average one hundred dollars a year each.
+Large families find their expenses reduced by three or four hundred
+dollars annually, aside from amounts saved on sewing-machines, pianos,
+organs, reapers, mowers, corn-shellers and a hundred other costly
+articles; all of which any member of any grange can obtain to-day at
+a saving of from twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in
+quantity from the manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of
+the West, and a single order even from a member of a new-formed
+grange in Vermont will be incorporated in the general State order. The
+granges of the Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged
+in the work of organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary
+advantages accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and
+entirely cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain
+unfortunate middlemen, who find their "occupation gone," and
+themselves obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of
+the numerous small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the
+movement.
+
+MARIE ROWLAND.
+
+
+[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
+proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
+point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of
+an enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
+throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
+in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement
+has been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
+state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
+The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
+combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and agricultural
+implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very startling character;
+and if this can be attained at no greater cost or trouble to the
+individual "Patrons" than that of "decorating the granges" and taking
+part in the singing and the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage
+will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is
+to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of
+productions, should have become the _bête noire_ of the producers, are
+points on which more definite information would seem to be required.
+But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress,
+we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such
+announcements are calculated to inspire.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+I had a busy week of it in New York--copying out instructions, taking
+notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day
+a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me:
+all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent
+the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side
+by side.
+
+I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would be
+the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
+raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
+separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the plan.
+"I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday's steamer: say yes, dear
+child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from here."
+
+I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped to be
+married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came "No,"
+simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my darling's graceful
+hand.
+
+Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would surely
+yield when she saw me faithful to my word.
+
+"I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed
+myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we
+were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all the clerks had
+gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half asleep on a
+chair in the hall.
+
+It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and thrust
+them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least. "Bill, you
+may lock up now," I said, tapping the sleepy porter on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here's a card for yees," handing me a lady's
+card.
+
+"Who left it, Bill?" I hurriedly asked, taking it to the flaring
+gaslight on the stairway.
+
+"Two ladies in a carriage--an old 'un and a pretty young lady, shure.
+They charged me giv' it yees, and druv' off."
+
+"And why didn't you bring it in, you blockhead?" I shouted, for it
+was Bessie Stewart's card. On it was written in pencil: "Westminster
+Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South
+to-night. Come up to dinner."
+
+The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine!
+
+"Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no
+account, and that I was to bring in no messages."
+
+"Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"
+
+"About five o'clock--just after you had shut the dure, and the clerks
+was gone. Indeed, and they didn't wait for no reply, but hearin' you
+were in there, they druv' off the minute they give me the card. The
+pretty young lady didn't like the looks of our office, I reckon."
+
+It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders like
+a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to the
+Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there was a
+mistake, and would wait for me.
+
+But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
+clear hand, Bessie's hand, "Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and maid; Miss
+Bessie Stewart." They had arrived that afternoon, must have driven
+directly from the train to the office, and had dined, after waiting a
+little time for some one who did not come.
+
+"And where were they going?" I asked of the sympathetic clerk, who
+seemed interested.
+
+"Going South--I don't know where. The elder lady seemed delicate, and
+the young lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go
+on in the morning. But no, she would go on to-night."
+
+I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not go
+farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.
+
+I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the city,
+and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my memory
+suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day. They were
+either not in the city or most securely hid.
+
+And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
+waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on Monday
+noon.
+
+It ran as follows:
+
+  "WESTMINSTER HOTEL.
+
+  "Very sorry not to see you--Aunt
+  Sloman especially sorry; but she has
+  set her heart on going to Philadelphia
+  to-night. We shall stay at a private
+  house, a quiet boarding-house; for aunt
+  goes to consult Dr. R---- there, and
+  wishes to be very retired. I shall not
+  give you our address: as you sail so
+  soon, it would not be worth while to
+  come over. I will write you on the
+  other side.
+
+  B.S."
+
+Where's a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr. R----? I find him,
+sure enough--such a number Walnut street. Time is precious--Monday
+noon!
+
+"I'll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that will do as well.
+Can't help it if they do scold at the office."
+
+To drive to the Cunard company's office and make the transfer took
+some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed as I
+again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden Monday
+afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley,
+with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and
+the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his
+huge sides over some broad burlesque.
+
+The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R----, was not at home in answer to my
+ring on Monday evening.
+
+"How soon will he be in? I will wait."
+
+"He can see no patients to-night sir," said the man; "and he may not
+be home until midnight."
+
+"But I am an _im_patient," I might have urged, when a carriage dashed
+up to the door. A slight little man descended, and came slowly up the
+steps.
+
+"Dr. R----?" I said inquiringly.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get an address
+from you."
+
+He scanned me from head to foot: "Walk into my office, young man."
+
+I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
+caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
+feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.
+
+I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address of
+one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
+as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
+Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye. "Mrs.
+Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor."
+
+The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little silver
+bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The servant
+appeared at the door: "Let the carriage wait, James."
+
+Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
+lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
+scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
+his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, "Certainly, here it
+is--No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia."
+
+Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
+Sunday's search.
+
+"I will take you over," said Dr. R----, replacing the book in his
+pocket again. "Mrs. Sloman is on my list. Wait till I eat a biscuit,
+and I'll drive you over in my carriage."
+
+Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
+designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.
+
+"Till he ate a biscuit?" I should think so. To his invitation, most
+courteously urged, that I should come and share his supper--"You've
+just come from the train, and you won't get back to your hotel for two
+hours, at least"--I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
+hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.
+
+But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
+glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
+until I could scarce conceal my impatience.
+
+"Do you chance to know," he said carelessly, as at last we rose from
+the table and he flung his napkin down, "Mrs. Sloman's niece, Miss
+Stewart?"
+
+"Excellently well," I said smiling: "in fact, I believe I am engaged
+to be married to her."
+
+"My dear fellow," said the doctor, bursting out laughing, "I am
+delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I saw you were a
+lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made up my mind
+that you had come over to badger the old lady into making her will. I
+congratulate you with all my soul--and myself, too," he added, shaking
+my hand. "Only think! Had it not been for your frankness, I should
+have taken a five-mile ride to watch you and keep you from doing my
+patient an injury."
+
+The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion of
+his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious vehicle
+over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.
+
+I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down any
+but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me with
+a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was natural,
+was herself, and only too glad, after the _contretemps_ in New York,
+to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a tired child
+when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to Philadelphia, and
+laughed outright at my interview with Dr. R----.
+
+I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the journey--_our_
+journey--I knew I should prevail. It was a deep wound, and she shrank
+from any talk about it. I had to be very gentle and tender before she
+would listen to me at all.
+
+But there was something else at work against me--what was
+it?--something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was not
+altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.
+
+"I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R---- wishes her to remain in
+Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That settles it, Charlie:
+I must stay with her."
+
+What was there to be said? "Is there no one else, no one to take your
+place?"
+
+"Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there were."
+
+Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession of
+me. I seemed to read in Bessie's eyes that there was a thought between
+us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover. I could
+see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life, had the
+shadow come? _Between_ us, surely, it could not be. Even her anxiety
+for her aunt could not explain it: it was something concealed.
+
+When at last I had to leave her, "So to-morrow is your last day?" she
+said.
+
+"No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday steamer."
+
+The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue eyes
+wear such a look of scrutiny.
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked laughingly as I looked straight into her
+eyes.
+
+"The Saturday steamer," she said musingly--"the Algeria, isn't it? I
+thought you were in a hurry?"
+
+"It was my only chance to have you," I explained, and apparently the
+argument was satisfactory enough.
+
+With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed a
+subject, "Then it isn't good-bye to-night?" she said.
+
+"Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on Thursday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,
+harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard
+to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment
+came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and
+implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October
+morning.
+
+I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
+ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with
+me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I
+had chosen I felt like a widower.
+
+It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth
+and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future
+with dreams. "I must have a genius for castle-building," I laughed.
+"Well, the reality is cold and empty enough. I'll go up on deck."
+
+On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered trunks
+marked M----. I remember now watching them as they were stowed away.
+
+But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the dock,
+that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face with
+Fanny Meyrick.
+
+"You here?" she said. "I thought you had sailed in the Russia! Bessie
+told me you were to go then."
+
+"Did she know," I asked, "that _you_ were going by this steamer?"
+
+On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my question
+concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment,
+and looked up gayly: "Oh yes: that was fixed months ago. I told her
+about it at Lenox."
+
+"And did she tell you something else?" I asked sharply.
+
+"Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
+congratulated, won't you?"
+
+Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick's way.
+"Good prospect!" Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement
+with Bessie?
+
+I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering
+expression of the situation had it been any other woman. But a
+lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to
+Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else
+joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.
+
+It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
+altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
+most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
+carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
+poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
+or be amused.
+
+I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the _Trois
+Mousquetaires_ for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
+engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
+Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.
+Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?
+
+Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was only
+one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the
+Hudson River. I did not know.
+
+Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
+introduced me on our third day out--Father Shamrock, an Irish priest,
+long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he had
+obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy,
+fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.
+
+"Pshaw!" thought I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common
+antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance
+prepossessing--one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked
+down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad
+beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
+mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
+kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.
+
+A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he
+seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
+They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
+reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
+jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.
+
+Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship's company. Perfectly
+suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it than the
+distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash of
+manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
+tongues, rattling off a gay little _chanson_ or an Irish song, it was
+a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time at
+the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
+Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.
+
+He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on the
+Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest Protestants.
+Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an introduction.
+"Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How _can_ Miss Meyrick walk with
+him and present him as she does?" But the party of recalcitrants grew
+less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.
+"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
+the trouble to try."
+
+And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
+evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
+famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
+I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
+to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.
+
+We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
+of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left
+the dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
+Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
+only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone
+on one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
+terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
+state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.
+
+When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
+But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
+very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
+went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
+woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he
+the only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
+family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.
+
+"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him
+when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she
+had expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw
+herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy
+vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she
+would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.
+
+"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my
+feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not
+wear them again--or if I do not find him.'
+
+"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a
+time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home
+with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;
+but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the
+world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and
+charity."
+
+"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes, "did she not
+die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
+heart!"
+
+"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation
+to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I
+have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half
+deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for
+spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices
+of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her
+calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here
+a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of
+consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no
+thought of herself."
+
+"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A
+shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read
+a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:
+they were very brilliant."
+
+"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was
+called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the
+sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and
+poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when
+I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:
+she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,
+'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it
+would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or
+ball.' She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly
+sufferer!"
+
+The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should
+the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if
+in warning?
+
+Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her
+life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the
+sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,
+uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.
+
+The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
+Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.
+
+He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the
+world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the
+confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.
+Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,
+to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? are
+we so true to our ideals? But one glance at the young priests as they
+sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling their beads and crossing
+themselves with the vehemence of a frightened faith, was enough.
+Father Shamrock was no type. Very possibly his own life would show but
+coarse and poor against the chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He
+had the dramatic faculty: for the moment he was what he related--that
+was all.
+
+Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
+drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator's voice sank into silence
+she said with effusion, "Well, _you_ are a good man, I guess."
+
+But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away, and, to
+break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep on deck,
+to see if there was a star in the heavens.
+
+There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the ship's
+motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown light, shone
+in the distance.
+
+The Father was to leave us there. "We shall not make it to-night,"
+said the sailor. "It is too rough. Early in the morning the passengers
+will land."
+
+"I wish," said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening from a dream,
+"that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the sea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London. The
+Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
+settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
+arrangements unhampered. So I carefully eliminated Clarges street from
+my list of lodging-houses, and finally "ranged" myself with a neat
+landlady in Sackville street.
+
+How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the banker's
+clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the heavy envelope
+I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that fluttered away
+from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I feared to open it
+there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope, nothing more.
+
+So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to the
+law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
+printed slip, cut from some New York paper--a list of the Algeria's
+passengers.
+
+"What joke is this?" I said as I scanned it more closely.
+
+By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
+Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie
+has denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
+out--not a penciled word even!
+
+The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia was
+clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie
+with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to
+sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
+Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was
+going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might
+have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.
+
+Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had
+given it room to grow.
+
+My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
+Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's
+pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!
+
+And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were
+engaged. _Had she not_?
+
+My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.
+Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those
+pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I
+should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office
+said "Stick to it," and I stayed.
+
+Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
+affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
+work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
+a patient holding of my end of the clue.
+
+In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
+envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
+wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
+Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
+that his father was in Florida--that he had communicated with him,
+but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart's present
+address.
+
+Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long
+since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud.
+She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring
+myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between
+us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was the
+unconscious cause.
+
+At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we were
+in the new year, I could bear it no longer. "Come what will, I must
+know if Bessie writes to her."
+
+I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the Meyricks'
+parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting alone, reading
+by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in the doorway. A
+little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me, but her manner
+changed as she took my hand.
+
+"I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for staying away
+so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn't you send us word
+that you were ill? Papa is a capital nurse."
+
+"But I have not been ill," I said, bewildered, "only very busy and
+very anxious."
+
+"I should think so," still holding my hand, and looking into my face
+with an expression of deep concern. "Poor fellow! You do look worn.
+Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let me take care of
+you. You need rest."
+
+And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the soft
+crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a friendly
+voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered with a
+tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a delicious sense
+of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing over me.
+
+"I can't imagine what keeps papa," she said, chatting away with
+woman's tact: "he always smokes after dinner, and comes up to me for
+his cup of tea afterward."
+
+Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and fragrant, "I
+should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on board the steamer if
+I had known it was going to end in this way."
+
+_This way_! Then Bessie must have told her.
+
+"End?" I said stammering: "what--what end?"
+
+"In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took that
+long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great thing
+for a young lawyer to have such responsibility."
+
+Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
+jumped to my feet: "Was that _all_ she told you? Didn't she tell you
+that we were engaged?"
+
+For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek, the
+steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left her
+pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver sugar-tongs
+that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were fixed on me
+with a wild, beseeching expression.
+
+"Did you not know," I said in softer tones, still standing by the
+table and looking down on her, "that day at Lenox that we were
+engaged? Was it not for _that_ you congratulated me on board the
+steamer?"
+
+A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, "Indeed, no! Oh dear! what have I
+done?"
+
+"You?--nothing!" I said with a sickly smile; "but there is some
+mistake, some mystery. I have never had one line from Bessie since I
+reached London, and when I left her she was my own darling little wife
+that was to be."
+
+Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering to
+herself. "Heavens! To think--Oh, Charlie," with a sudden burst, "it's
+all my doing! How can I ever tell you?"
+
+"You hear from Bessie, then? Is she--is she well? Where is she? What
+is all this?" And I seated myself again and tried to speak calmly, for
+I saw that something very painful was to be said--something that she
+could hardly say; and I wanted to help her, though how I knew not.
+
+At this moment the door opened and "papa" came in. He evidently
+saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took in the
+situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the future
+son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.
+
+"Oh, papa," said Fanny, rising with evident relief, "just come and
+talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he wants to take with
+him."
+
+It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
+shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
+all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
+school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to
+have his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of
+the English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
+brought me to England.
+
+"A very unpresentable son-in-law," I read in his eye, while he was
+evidently astonished at his daughter's prolonged absence.
+
+Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
+Fanny again appeared.
+
+"I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so long
+waiting, but there were some special directions to go with the packet,
+and it took me a long time to get them right. It is for Bessie,
+papa--Bessie Stewart, Mr. Munro's dear little _fiancée_"
+
+Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick's neatly turned
+felicitations--and that the satisfaction he expressed was genuine I
+was prepared to believe--hurried home to Sackville street.
+
+My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me--close draperies
+to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed--and I closed the door
+and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.
+
+The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
+wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:
+
+"What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did before me,
+nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most innocently made. What
+must you have thought of me that day at Lenox, staying close all day
+to two engaged people, who must have wished me away a thousand times?
+But I did not dream you were engaged.
+
+"Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew nothing of
+Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner once or
+twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were _interested_
+in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant, that I thought it
+was only a notion of my jealous self.
+
+"Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary time? Do you
+know that the year before we had spent it together, too?--September
+28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox's funeral, but we had
+walked together, and I was happy in being near you.
+
+"For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson River that
+you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid gayety of
+my first winter--from the flats of fashionable life. You had given me
+an ideal--something to live up to and grow worthy of.
+
+"Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper harm I
+have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.
+
+"Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove together in the
+afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to find out what you
+were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant, that I fancied
+there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if you had cared for
+her at all, that she had been indifferent to you.
+
+"Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and when she
+told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very happy, for
+I thought then that I should have you all to myself.
+
+"When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you had changed
+your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I write it,
+thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a little note
+to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don't know where you were
+when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember it, what I
+wrote:
+
+"'DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have changed his
+passage to be with us. I know from something that he has just told
+_me_ that this is so, and that he consoles himself already for your
+coldness. You remember what I told you when we talked about him. I
+shall _try_ now. F.M.'
+
+"Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what a weak,
+weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought, that Bessie
+did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought you _had_
+cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his manner--you
+weren't of an old Knickerbocker family, you know--and had given you to
+understand that your visits were not acceptable.
+
+"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put
+that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa
+always looked so decidedly _queer_ whenever your name was mentioned.
+
+"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed
+that in due time you would come back to me.
+
+"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her
+answer."
+
+Pinned fast to the end of Fanny's letter, so that by no chance should
+I read it first, were these words in my darling's hand:
+
+"Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be traveling
+about so much that you need not write me the progress of your romance,
+but believe me I shall be most interested in its conclusion. BESSIE
+S."
+
+It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited, had
+given her leave "to try."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate
+unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had
+taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case
+would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D----
+must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no
+longer.
+
+No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her
+save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers
+till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."
+
+But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
+what few women in the world would have had the courage to do--shown
+her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would be an
+embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out that
+morning that it was too early yet to call.
+
+To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
+_perdu_ and in wait for me.
+
+"A letter, Mr. Munro, from D---- & Co.," said the brisk young clerk.
+They had treated me with great respect of late, for, indeed, our claim
+was steadily growing in weight, and was sure to come right before
+long. I opened and read:
+
+"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic--what you
+have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger
+sails at once, and will report himself to you."
+
+"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's
+young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.
+
+And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the
+steps in Clarges street.
+
+"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of
+Parliament, who opened the door--"Miss Meyrick, I mean."
+
+"Yes, sir--in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a
+flourish.
+
+Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for
+on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.
+
+Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.
+
+"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard
+and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then--did you?--that I
+cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched
+me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you,
+sir--none at all. Can you?"
+
+Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
+together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,
+and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.
+I had dreaded the _rôle_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and,
+I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played
+out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a
+late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all
+my little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,
+etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.
+
+For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,
+in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I
+should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and
+in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and
+calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being
+beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.
+
+But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe
+I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.
+
+But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact
+which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the world--the
+_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a
+difficult bar.
+
+It _was_ delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father,
+and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.
+
+I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.
+
+But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as
+I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs. D----,
+with a large traveling party. They came straight to London, and
+summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.
+
+I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom
+I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers
+who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.
+
+"Mr. D---- charged me, Mr. Munro," she began after our first
+ceremonious greeting, "to give this into no hands but yours. I have
+kept it securely with my diamonds, and those I always carry about me."
+
+From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the paper
+I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was strongly
+perfumed with violet powder.
+
+"You see, I was coming over," she proceeded to explain, "in any
+event, and when Mr. D---- talked of sending Bunker--I think it was
+Bunker--with us, I persuaded him to let me be messenger instead.
+It wasn't worth while, you know, to have any more people leave the
+office, you being away, and--Oh, Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!"
+
+As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the _surprised_ look in her
+eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to me, I
+thought that the reason for young Bunker's omission from the party was
+possibly before me.
+
+Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices! Her
+maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor young
+clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
+at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
+ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
+one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
+it on the morrow for home.
+
+"Bessie is in Lenox, I think," Fanny Meyrick had said to me as I bade
+her good-bye.
+
+"What! You have heard from her?"
+
+"No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends this
+morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church steps."
+
+I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.
+
+"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it
+was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"
+
+"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY.
+
+
+The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of faith,
+and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from Christian
+lands. Thus, the impunity--nay, the protection and sympathy--afforded
+to the street-beggar, and the way in which the very poor divide their
+crust with those still more poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise
+the stranger who observes the scene in the open streets. Then, too,
+the public fountains, which are charitable offerings from pious
+persons, are more numerous in Constantinople than in any other city in
+the world. Nor does the law of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam
+has anticipated Mr. Bergh, and "The Society for the Prevention
+of Cruelty to Animals" had as its founder in the Orient no less a
+personage than Mohammed, whom "the faithful" revere as the Messenger
+(Résoul) of God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran
+specially inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly
+does the Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with
+homeless, masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will
+not abridge by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more
+curious because the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the
+true believer. Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does
+more than throw him a bone or scraps of food.
+
+Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his master
+does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him there to
+die "when it pleases Allah." The same sentiment runs through the
+whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested in religious
+foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans or
+caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
+khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
+Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
+creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of commercial
+travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and protection
+from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The hospitable doors
+were ever open, but the apparition of "mine host," ready to offer you
+board and lodging for a reasonable compensation, was undreamt of in
+the early Turkish philosophy. Every traveler literally "took up his
+bed and walked "--or rode--away in the morning, leaving the room he
+had tenanted as bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own
+cooking utensils, provender and materials for making a fire.
+
+What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to effect
+for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people, who leave
+legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers, before or
+after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity. Many a
+wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly religious men
+or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a long
+day's ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of rain
+characteristic of the same region.
+
+Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
+cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
+when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
+meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
+bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
+camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
+most melancholy to the untrained ear.
+
+But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
+bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
+lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
+the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the primal
+necessity of Oriental well--being, taking precedence even of tobacco,
+which, however, always accompanies it. There is always a bazaar close
+by, at which you can purchase savory _kibabs_ of mutton and other
+cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
+are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals _al
+fresco_ at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after prayers.
+
+Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
+repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
+without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
+rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
+shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly
+in his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping
+the feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law,
+is reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
+uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
+shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
+ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
+circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
+as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
+to our Turkish or Arab brother.
+
+Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of nationalities
+and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the absence of other
+hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the poor; only, as
+every man brings his own things with him, you find more luxury and
+comfort in some of the arrangements than in others. You may see rich
+merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles of costly cushions,
+attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking perfumed Shiraz out
+of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes are tipped with
+precious amber and encircled by rows of precious stones worth a
+prince's ransom. Huddled together, in striking contrast to this
+picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and smoking the
+common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also enjoying
+themselves after their fashion.
+
+These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling merchant,
+Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares, without
+seeming to care much whether you buy or not.
+
+The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
+rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
+as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
+store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
+residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
+away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
+in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
+whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
+suspicious persons.
+
+The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
+enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose
+ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
+Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
+and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the _sââb_
+were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion
+of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the
+interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving
+ragged versions of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_ for the
+delectation of the tireless native listeners.
+
+In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
+slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
+purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit
+all tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
+compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
+in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
+the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
+will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
+Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the proceedings.
+This restriction has taken away from the khans one of their former
+great attractions.
+
+To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury and
+profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more comforts
+than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment for man and
+beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is enjoyment in it
+when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and "such small deer," and
+one is accustomed "to roughing it," and blessed with a good appetite
+and digestion.
+
+Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
+best--more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses, especially
+to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from Turkish
+or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the close
+contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses named more
+pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental, generally making
+it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores
+stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as
+necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak
+comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose
+again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most
+diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.
+
+Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
+but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
+resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
+sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
+system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
+retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
+a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at Messeir's
+or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European plan.
+
+At Messeir's in Constantinople, or at Shepheard's hotel in
+Cairo--places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
+descriptions of travelers like the authors of _Eothen_ and _The
+Crescent and the Cross_--a most motley medley of Western nationalities
+may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists and wanderers of the
+world congregated there during the winter months, and presenting a
+panoramic view of all the peculiar phases and contrasts of European
+civilization, more antagonistic there than elsewhere. There you see
+the German savant with his round spectacles, round face and round
+figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the imperturbable Englishman,
+drinking his bottled beer under the shadow of the Pyramids; and the
+angular American, more curious, but more cosmopolite, than any of
+them. The returning Englishman or Englishwoman who has spent twenty
+years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate
+and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast
+the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with
+the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which
+characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these
+_tables-d'hôte_, where conversations are being carried on in every
+European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and
+English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there
+is no better field than one of these European hotels in the East--none
+where the lines of difference can be found more sharply defined;
+for travel and contact with strangers appear only to bring out the
+contrasts more clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead
+of softening down or assimilating them, as one might expect.
+
+Very few travelers see the city khans--fewer still ever venture to
+pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of desert-travel
+the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting their own tents
+for the stone walls, and confiding in the arrangements made by their
+dragomen or guides, who contract to make the necessary provision for
+all their wants for a stipulated sum--one-half usually in advance,
+the balance payable at the expiration of the trip. To do these men
+justice, as a rule they provide liberally and well in all respects,
+their reputation and recommendations being their capital and stock in
+trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that
+this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient
+and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much
+opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be
+seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house
+is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan
+that a glimpse of his mode of life can be obtained.
+
+The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of the
+East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing tide of
+European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer aspects
+of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more essential
+features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the hat, which
+they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of chibouques, and
+drink "gaseous lemonade" (champagne), in defiance of the Prophet's
+prohibition; the women may send from the high harems for French
+fashions, and "fearfully and wonderfully" array themselves therein;
+but in other respects the people will stubbornly adhere to their own
+social system and habits of life.
+
+It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners
+and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view
+if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels
+we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of
+the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a
+few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.
+
+EDWIN DE LEON.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.
+
+
+I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue.
+It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am
+lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk
+to another. The _commisionnaire_ does not understand more than half I
+say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most
+trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some
+blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper!
+paper! für die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher--er: ink no dry;
+what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of
+paper--letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried
+to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The
+shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he
+discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously.
+I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five
+minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed the matter with
+the _portier_. The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass
+buttons. The commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what
+I require, but is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of
+blotting-paper! It is so with everything. Every little matter of
+every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical,
+here costs so much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone
+when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast
+and dinner task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from
+established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like
+a wrong figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to
+convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer
+for dinner. He would bring beer. I would say, "I don't want beer!
+I want my--some dinner." He would depart and take counsel with the
+head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for
+which I ought to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches
+and exclaims with domineering voice, "Vat you vants?" I reply with
+meekness, "Dinner, sir, if you please." He brings me an elegantly
+bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look at
+it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
+finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
+functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to an
+underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in the
+dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese. Tongues,
+plates, knives and forks clatter inside--wheels roll, rumble and
+clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my soup. Hours
+seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life is too busy
+and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.
+
+The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath
+his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He
+knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every
+signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To
+appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with
+the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at
+different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this
+man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows
+as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna
+restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
+bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
+requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed _de rigueur_,
+condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough.
+There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner
+resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities--the
+other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England.
+One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open
+a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and
+gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if
+possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He
+said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be
+opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few
+common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?
+
+You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable
+rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner,
+so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an
+egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und
+egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English
+accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who
+attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the
+culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter
+of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for
+next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up
+and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You
+understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came
+about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I
+resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more
+force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the
+nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the
+free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling
+monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be
+produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and
+totter.
+
+I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
+kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer
+under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and
+keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week--any
+length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
+brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
+want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and
+savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement
+in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.
+
+The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer
+and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
+English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
+The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
+people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's
+stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain
+longer in their bodies.
+
+I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two
+hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a
+glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table on
+the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake,
+drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is
+occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then
+more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am
+aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese
+life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time
+is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling
+America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the
+street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour
+after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill.
+Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life
+about them.
+
+The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze
+forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
+street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
+"Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it
+up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin
+equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of
+holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.
+
+The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
+particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose--a most refreshing
+sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in
+this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to
+have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is
+very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more
+dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut
+"by the lifts and braces."
+
+Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
+about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
+pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering
+back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
+kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
+black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened
+herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow.
+I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind.
+Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen
+sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to
+fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over
+the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will
+attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar.
+Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no
+lock on the door--nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe
+in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has
+left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings,
+long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over
+their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On
+subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I
+rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.
+
+The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
+disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
+offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with
+very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
+despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
+visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
+have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
+apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
+proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
+passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
+egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where
+I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
+looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
+right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
+this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting
+around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old
+gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering
+nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however,
+this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I
+was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the
+strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry,
+and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.
+
+I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern
+justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork
+Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which
+millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into
+pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and
+going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their
+business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs
+scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted,
+hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy
+and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a
+little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of
+clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a
+patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps,
+with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American
+department.
+
+It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
+general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
+our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our
+greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
+opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
+torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago
+or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were
+the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent,
+he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the
+pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles
+out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a
+reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes
+and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a
+few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps
+of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks
+and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up
+realistically and artistically.
+
+PRENTICE MULFORD.
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTLY WARRIORS.
+
+
+So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval
+Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's _Battle
+of the Lake Regillus_, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of
+the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the
+extract from the _Vida de San Millan_ given in the _Poets and Poetry
+of Europe_, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets
+whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the
+monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred
+subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the
+Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror
+of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful
+those."
+
+  And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,
+  Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;
+  And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,--
+  Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.
+
+  They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,
+  And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,--
+  And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;
+  They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,
+  And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.
+
+  The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;
+  They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,
+  And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins,
+  And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins.
+
+  And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground,
+  They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around;
+  Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks among,
+  A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng.
+
+  Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky,
+  The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody fight;
+  Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half-dead with fright:
+  Full sorely they repented that to the field they came,
+  For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on,
+  Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;
+  And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,
+  Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood.
+
+Turn now to the _Battle of the Lake Regillus_. In a series of
+desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
+worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
+upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion, Herminius--"who
+kept the bridge so well"--has been slain, and his war-horse, black
+Auster, has barely been rescued by the dictator Aulus from the hands
+of Titus, the youngest of the Tarquins.
+
+  And Aulus the Dictator
+    Stroked Auster's raven mane;
+  With heed he looked unto the girths,
+    With heed unto the rein.
+  "Now bear me well, black Auster,
+    Into yon thick array;
+  And thou and I will have revenge
+    For thy good lord this day."
+
+  So spake he; and was buckling
+    Tighter black Auster's band,
+  When he was aware of a princely pair
+    That rode at his right hand.
+  So like they were, no mortal
+    Might one from other know:
+  White as snow their armor was:
+    Their steeds were white as snow.
+  Never on earthly anvil
+    Did such rare armor gleam;
+  And never did such gallant steeds
+    Drink of an earthly stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  So answered those strange horsemen,
+    And each couched low his spear;
+  And forthwith all the ranks of Rome
+    Were bold and of good cheer:
+  And on the thirty armies
+    Came wonder and affright,
+  And Ardea wavered on the left,
+    And Cora on the right.
+  "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus;
+    "The foe begins to yield!
+  Charge for the hearth of Vesta!
+    Charge for the Golden Shield!
+  Let no man stop to plunder,
+    But slay, and slay, and slay;
+  The gods who live for ever
+    Are on our side to-day."
+
+  Then the fierce trumpet-flourish
+    From earth to heaven arose;
+  The kites know well the long stern swell
+    That bids the Romans close.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And fliers and pursuers
+    Were mingled in a mass:
+  And far away the battle
+    Went roaring through the pass.
+
+The scene of the following stanza is at Rome, where the watchers at
+the gates have learned from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the
+day:
+
+  And all the people trembled,
+    And pale grew every cheek;
+  And Sergius, the High Pontiff,
+    Alone found voice to speak:
+  "The gods who live for ever
+    Have fought for Rome to-day!
+  These be the Great Twin Brethren
+    To whom the Dorians pray!"
+
+Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay was
+consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was at
+the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out how
+certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might fairly
+be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long before
+Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren. He has
+even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary appearance
+of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the resemblance just
+pointed out. "In modern times," he wrote, "a very similar story
+actually found credence among a people much more civilized than the
+Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortez,
+writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico, ... had the
+face to assert that, in an engagement against the Indians, Saint James
+had appeared on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers.
+Many of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. One
+of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition....
+He says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with
+a man on his back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de
+Morla, and not the ever-blessed apostle Saint James. 'Nevertheless,'
+Bernal adds, 'it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
+glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
+unworthy to see him.'" Other striking instances of identity between
+classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord Macaulay
+in the learned and interesting general preface to his _Lays of Ancient
+Rome_. But the reappearance of this particular story in such remote
+times and places, and with such marked similarities and variations,
+would entitle it to a place among the indestructible popular legends
+collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his _Curious Myths of the Middle
+Ages_.
+
+
+
+
+A WARNING TO LOVERS.
+
+
+"Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin', triflin', owdacious,
+contrary piece that ever lived."
+
+"Oh, ma!" sobbed Matilda, "I couldn' help myself--'deed I couldn'."
+
+"Couldn' help yourself? That's a pretty way to talk! Ain't he a nice
+young man?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Got money?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And good kinfolks?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And loves you to destrackshun?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Well, in the name o' common sense, what did you send him home for?"
+
+"Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s'pose, though I'd
+ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and
+ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then
+it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and _his
+gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin'_, I till I thought in my soul
+somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and
+that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me
+do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the
+harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came
+to me that it wasn't nothin' but his gallowses; and then I bust out a
+laughin' fit to kill myself, right in his face. And then he jumpt
+up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain't comin' back no
+more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!"
+
+"Metildy," said the old woman sternly, "stop sniv'lin'. You've made
+an everlastin' fool of yourself, but your cake ain't all dough yet. It
+all comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses--' 'spenders'
+I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny,
+tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
+pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never do creak."
+
+"Yes, ma," said Matilda, brightening up; "but let _me_ knit 'em."
+
+"So you shall, honey: he'll vally them a heap more than if I knit 'em.
+Cheer up, Tildy: it'll all be right--you mind if it won't."
+
+Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were married,
+and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a
+stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is
+particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger."
+Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the
+days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but
+it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of
+harmony between odors and colors--a theory which might never have been
+dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the
+boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if
+we may believe Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new
+refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and
+quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according
+to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially _de
+rigueur_, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to establish
+a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she carries
+and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is to say,
+gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the stuff
+of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if light
+yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda (which has
+such a run at present for ladies' costumes), the chosen perfume
+will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the other flowers
+corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh ball-toilettes.
+Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between different odors and
+different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be
+as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and
+costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art
+rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of
+the drawing-room, it will die out before the science is fairly
+established.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _enfant terrible_ plays an important rôle in literature as in
+society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a
+good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.
+
+A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees,
+when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh,"
+says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I
+was in the ark?"
+
+"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"
+
+"Oh no, I'm not Noah."
+
+"Ah, then you're Shem."
+
+"No, not Shem, either."
+
+"Oh, then I suppose you're Japhet."
+
+"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."
+
+"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of
+his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."
+
+Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one
+Sunday for the first time.
+
+"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his
+tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many
+people come here to pray to God?"
+
+"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.
+
+Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
+crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
+slap.
+
+"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her
+indignation getting the better of her judgment.
+
+"Oh yes, I paid her back _before-hand_!"
+
+Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
+schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
+giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.
+
+"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break,
+poor things!" says papa.
+
+"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism
+was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and
+fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of
+the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with
+Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs.
+Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading
+articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort
+commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of
+maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the
+comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore;
+but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which
+politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his conduct and his
+reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by English flattery," said
+this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance,
+His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of
+'Ushter wa Dirâz-kush,' from the 'Baharistân' of Jaumy." In ordinary
+times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable
+is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for
+granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistân of Jaumy was as
+familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole,
+our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah.
+Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close
+application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has
+lately been flooded.
+
+  How various his employments whom the world
+  Calls idle!
+
+says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah
+in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly
+represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example
+(a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then
+Captain Shaw was presented to the shah--likewise Colonel Hogg; and
+then, according to the _Morning Advertiser_, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly,
+Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing
+before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed
+highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from
+the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
+Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
+Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
+from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
+Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
+wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and
+princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance
+at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste--namely,
+gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah"
+on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious
+combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be
+supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious
+guest.
+
+A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
+America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
+fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,
+we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
+fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he outwitted
+the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues make
+artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
+(which does not appreciate ingenuity of that sort) lately gave
+six months in prison to some makers of sham coffee-grains, thus
+interfering with a business which was earning twenty thousand dollars
+a year. Some of the Paris pastry-cooks make balls for _vol-au-vent_
+with a hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and
+partridges for pâtés are constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly
+shaped to represent those birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell
+marshmallow paste made out of Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts
+the eyes of a fresh mackerel in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp
+customers; and as to drinks, one dyer boldly puts over his door
+"Burgundy Vintages!" They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds
+of glass. Adulteration on adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is
+adulteration!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating as
+many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many
+years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It
+possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected
+with the experiments--the source, we suppose, of the eagerness shown
+by Professor Wise and his associates to _fly_ to evils that they
+know not of. Perpetual motion received its quietus from the blasts of
+ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe to encounter. It may survive
+the attacks of gayety, but it will succumb, we fancy, to the
+resistless force of _gravity_.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York: Holt
+& Williams.
+
+The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
+adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
+with some versions from among his prose works by another Philadelphian
+translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine's prose, delicate in its
+pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be held too precious
+by the interpreter. The latter must have all his wits about him, or he
+will not find English at once simple enough and distinguished enough
+to stand for the original. To get at Heine's prose exactly in another
+language must be almost as hard as to get at his poetry. The principal
+selection made by Mr. Stern is a long rambling rhapsody called
+"Florentine Nights," in which the author professes to pour into the
+ears of a dying mistress the history of some of his former amours and
+exaltations, the natural jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus
+in the recital. His first love, however, is an idealization--a Greek
+statue which he visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning's poem
+does the
+
+                          Shrinking Caryatides
+  Of just-tinged marble, like Eve's lilied flesh.
+
+This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator almost
+as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an interpreter of
+poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to struggle with, yet
+there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and waft of feeling in the
+metre which lends him wings and helps him on. If Mr. Stern does not
+encumber his style with a betrayal of the difficulties he has got
+over--if he does not give us pedantry and double-epithets, so common
+in vulgar renderings from the German--he certainly shows no timidity
+in turning the polished familiarity of Heine's prose into our
+commonest vernacular. "What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;"
+"for the men, lots of patience:" trivialities of expression like these
+are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine would
+have written if he had been writing in English, at least the fault
+of familiarity is better than the fault of hardness; and these
+translations are never at all hard or uncomfortable. When we add that
+Mr. Stern gives us an index without showing what works the extracts
+are taken from, and that he gives us an article on Heine without any
+mention that we can discover of Heine's wife, we have vented about all
+the objections we can make to this welcome publication; and they are
+very few to find in a collection of hundreds of "scintillations."
+
+The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so liberally
+and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a complete exhibit
+of Heine's mind on nearly all the topics he occupied himself about. We
+have his views on French and German politicians; on French, German and
+English authors; on art and poetry; on his own soul and character; on
+religion; besides a great deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite
+persiflage surely that ever was heard, which flutters clear away from
+the regions of sense and information, yet which only a man of sense
+and information could have uttered.
+
+Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
+everything "charming." His wit is a little cheap, perhaps, when he
+calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg "the necropolis in which
+the mummies of perjury are embalmed;" at least it becomes tiresome to
+hear his constant disparagement of the politics which he chose to live
+under, and which protected him so agreeably; but he is his own keen
+self where he observes that the signs of the revolution of 1830,
+what he calls the legend of _liberté, egalité, fraternité_ at the
+street-corners, had "already been wiped away." Victor Hugo, for his
+part, did not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have,
+in relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
+where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody "la
+grandeur révolutionnaire." The cooler spectator from Hamburg inspects
+at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without
+much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and
+his white locks--at different places, however," for the latter were
+in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates
+"the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner." The age
+of industry, commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite
+suited to the poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine's admiration
+of Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
+"Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
+emperor," he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects Napoleon
+as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers ought to
+have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat precipitated
+the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the world after his
+death was "at the best to be bored to death by the monotony of a
+republic." Ardent patriots in this country need not go for sympathy to
+the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of a commonwealth he had small
+love: "That which oppresses me is the artist's and the scholar's
+secret dread, lest our modern civilization, the laboriously achieved
+result of so many centuries of effort, will be endangered I by the
+triumph of Communism." We have drifted into the citation of these
+sentiments because many conservatives think of Heine only as an
+irreconcilable destroyer and revolutionist, and do not care to welcome
+in him the basis of attachment to order which must underlie every
+artist's or author's love of freedom. "Soldier in the liberation of
+humanity" as he was, that liberation was to be the result of growth,
+not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but "hunger, _envy_
+and death." It has but one faith, happiness on this earth; and the
+millennium it foresees is "a single shepherd and a single flock, all
+shorn after the same pattern, and bleating alike." Such passages are
+the true reflection of Heine's keen but not great mind, miserably
+bandied between the hopes of a republican future, that was to be the
+death of art and literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose
+conditions sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought,
+scratched and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the
+politics he was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when
+he turned his attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully
+impartial. He hated the English for "their idle curiosity, bedizened
+awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant delight
+in all melancholy objects." As for the French, they are "les comédiens
+ordinaires du bon Dieu;" yet "a blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle
+more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman." And Germany:
+"Germany alone possesses those colossal fools whose caps reach unto
+the heavens, and delight the stars with the ringing of their bells."
+Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side, Heine is shown "in
+action" by this little cluster of "scintillations," and the whole
+book is the shortest definition of him possible, for it makes the
+saliencies of his character jut out within a close compass. It can be
+read in a couple of hours, and no reading of the same length in any
+of his complete writings would give such a notion of the most witty,
+perverse, tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt &
+Williams.
+
+Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
+without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
+them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
+eminently made to appreciate the best kind of "high life" which London
+has offered in the present century; and he has been able to avail
+himself of it to his heart's content. The son of a Yorkshire squire in
+affluent circumstances and of high character, Monckton Milnes was not
+spoilt by finding, as he might have done had he been the heir to a
+dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the same time all the good
+things were within his reach by a little of that exertion which does
+so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of them. From the period of his
+entry upon London life he displayed that anxiety to know celebrities
+which, though in a somewhat different way, was a marked feature of
+his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb Robinson; and the story
+illustrative of this tendency which gained him the _sobriquet_ of "the
+cool of the evening" will be always associated with the name he has
+since merged in a less familiar title.
+
+Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons, during
+which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every social and
+literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having regard to this
+circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a polished and graceful
+style of expressing himself, one would naturally expect a great deal
+from this volume of reminiscences. Nor will such expectations be
+entirely disappointed. The monographs are eight in number, and will be
+read with varying degrees of interest, according to the taste of
+the reader, as well as the subjects and quality of the papers. The
+portrait which will perhaps be the newest to American readers is that
+of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the second Baring who bore that
+title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord
+Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave
+of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little
+to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an
+unaffectionate education"--a sentence reminding us of a remark in
+the London _Times_, that "with certain noble houses people are apt
+to associate certain qualities--with the Berkeleys, for instance, a
+series of disgraceful family quarrels." Lady Ashburton appears to us
+from this account to have been a brilliant spoilt child of fortune,
+who availed herself of her great social position to do and say what,
+had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu with the pittance of a poor
+nobleman's daughter, she would hardly have dared to do or say. It
+is one of the weak points of society in England that a woman who has
+rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives to surround herself with men
+of wit to whom she renders her house delightful, can be as hard and
+rude as she pleases to the world in general. Fortunately, in most
+cases native kindness of heart usually hurries to heal the wound that
+"wicked wit" may have made. This would scarcely seem to have been so
+with Lady Ashburton, for Lord Houghton tells us that "many who would
+not have cared for a quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her
+victory," one of them saying, "I do not mind being knocked down, but
+I can't stand being danced upon afterward." Lord Houghton,
+however, defines this "jumping" as "a joyous sincerity that no
+conventionalities, high or low, could restrain--a festive nature
+flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life." And it must be
+owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a nature
+which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal capacity
+for warm and disinterested friendship.
+
+In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
+full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
+reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
+with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
+names.
+
+But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
+letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her
+childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself,
+wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that
+covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we
+have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
+comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
+his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
+as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
+thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for
+example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and
+its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his
+works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the
+malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been
+exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among
+these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial
+origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of
+society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and
+after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient
+element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a
+philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had
+still to be fought out.'"
+
+Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
+Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
+biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
+while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt
+whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information
+he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege
+of Lyons occurred under the _Directory_--which it preceded by a year
+or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered
+the navy, was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,
+_subsequently_ enlisted "in the Army of Italy, then flushed with
+triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits"--language
+indicating the campaign of 1796-97; that "soon after his enrollment in
+the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers
+in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise
+[acquired apparently on shipboard] was of the greatest use and
+_brought him into general notice_"--making him, we may infer, a
+special favorite of Bonaparte;--we can easily believe that these
+things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity,"
+and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to
+more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of
+a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on
+the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented
+to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army as
+soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to intercept, were out of
+sight." Lord Houghton has evidently not read the best and most recent
+criticisms on the Waterloo campaign, but he should at least have known
+that Grouchy was sent, not to intercept, but to follow the Prussians
+in their retreat from Ligny, and that, if he lost sight of them,
+it was because, instead of falling back on their own line of
+communication, as Napoleon had expected them to do, they turned off to
+effect a junction with the English army.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+
+Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every
+species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent
+north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six
+steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By Elliott
+Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem: Naturalists'
+Agency.
+
+Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New
+Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.
+New York: James Miller.
+
+The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By C.C.P.
+Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker & Godwin.
+
+On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the Russian
+by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt & Williams.
+
+The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz
+Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.
+
+Harry Coverdale's Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
+Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.
+Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14036 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14036 ***</div>
+
+  <h1>LIPPINCOTT&#39;S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+  <h3>OF</h3>
+
+  <h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+  <hr class="short" />
+
+  <h4>SEPTEMBER, 1873.<br />
+  Vol XII, No. 30.</h4>
+  <hr class="short" />
+  <br />
+  <br />
+
+  <h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h3>
+
+  <div class="toc">
+
+    <a href="#illustrations">ILLUSTRATIONS.</a>
+
+    <p><a href="#hyperion">THE NEW HYPERION</a>
+    [Illustrated] by EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#feast">III.&#8212;The Feast Of Saint
+    Athanasius.</a> (249)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#twomoods">TWO MOODS</a> by MARY STEWART
+    DOUBLEDAY. (261)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#ride">THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT</a> by
+    MARTIN I. GRIFFIN. (262)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#sketches">SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.</a>
+    [Illustrated]</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#count">I.&#8212;The Count De Beauvoir In
+    China.</a> (263)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#thule">A PRINCESS OF THULE</a> by WILLIAM
+    BLACK.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxiv">Chapter XIV.&#8212;Deeper And
+    Deeper.</a> (275)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxv">Chapter XV.&#8212;A Friend In
+    Need.</a> (285)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#english">ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES</a>
+    (294)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#rambles">RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND
+    FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS</a> by FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#ramblesconclud">Concluding Paper</a>
+    (302)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#lotos">A LOTOS OF THE NILE</a> by
+    CHRISTIAN REID. (309)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#echo">ECHO.</a> by A.J. (321)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#tyrol">OUR HOME IN THE TYROL</a>
+    [Illustrated] by MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchix">Chapter IX.</a> (322)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchx">Chapter X.</a> (327)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#colorado">COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK</a>
+    by S.C. CLARKE. (332)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#patrons">THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY</a> by
+    MARIE ROWLAND. (338)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#churchsteps">ON THE CHURCH STEPS</a> by
+    SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschvi">Chapter VI.</a> (343)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschvii">Chapter VII.</a>
+    (346)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschviii">Chapter VIII.</a>
+    (348)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschix">Chapter IX.</a> (352)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#turkey">HOW THEY &quot;KEEP A HOTEL&quot;
+    IN TURKEY</a> by EDWIN DE LEON. (354)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#gossip">OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#vienna">The Californian At Vienna</a> by
+    PRENTICE MULFORD. (357)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#ghostly">Ghostly Warriors.</a> (360)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#warning">A Warning To Lovers.</a> (362)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#notes">NOTES.</a> (363)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#literature">LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</a>
+    (365)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#books">Books Received.</a></p>
+    <hr />
+    <br />
+    <a name="illustrations" id="illustrations"></a>
+
+    <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0001">THE PAULISTS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0002">THE REWARD OF AN
+    INVENTOR.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0003">CARDINAL BALUE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0004">AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0005">LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0006">LE RAINCY: THE
+    CHATEAU.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0007">CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0008">BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF
+    CLIQUOT.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0009">CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0010">THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK
+    CHAMPAGNE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0011">ADMIRATION.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0012">MAC MEURTRIER.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0013">THE BLACK DOMINO.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0014">TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S
+    RIDE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0015">THE CROOKED MAN.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0016">THE GRAVITY ROAD.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0017">THE ANIMATED CELLS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0018">THE TRAVELER&#39;S
+    REST.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0019">PALACE AT STRASBURG.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0020">THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S
+    CART.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0021">HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT
+    HO-CHI-WOU.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0022">AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO
+    THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0023">PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE
+    EMPERORS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0024">THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO
+    PASS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0025">CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER
+    PALACE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0026">VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0027">COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE
+    BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0028">A PROCESSION.</a></p><br />
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum">[pg 249]</span>
+  </div><a name="hyperion" id="hyperion"></a>
+
+  <h2>THE NEW HYPERION.</h2>
+
+  <h2>FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="feast" id="feast"></a> III.&#8212;THE FEAST OF SAINT
+  ATHANASIUS.</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 PAULISTS." /></a>THE PAULISTS.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to
+  empty the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of
+  tired soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the
+  old proverb of Aretino came into my head: &quot;Truly all courtesy
+  and good manners come from taverns.&quot; I grasped my botany-box and
+  pursued my promenade toward Noisy.</p>
+
+  <p>The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in
+  history. One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the
+  inventor of the famous gibbet of Montfauçon, and in the poetic
+  justice which should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his
+  own gallows. He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by
+  the common executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none
+  of his ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in
+  meeting a guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular
+  coincidence another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long
+  detention in an iron-barred cage&#8212;one of those famous cages, so
+  much favored by Louis XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from
+  the records of the time, had the patent-right for invention, or at
+  least improvement. Once firmly engaged in his own torture&#8212;while
+  his friend Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 250]</span> a similar box, and the foxy old
+  king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead&#8212;we
+  may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
+  fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.</p><a name=
+  "image-0002" id="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_1.jpg" alt="THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice
+  I took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full
+  domain of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern
+  road separate&#8212;the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The
+  sight of the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and
+  of the frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly
+  endeavored to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It
+  was on this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung
+  and the cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory.
+  &quot;Small choice,&quot; said I, &quot;whether the bars are
+  perpendicular or horizontal. You lose your independence about equally
+  by either monopoly.&quot;</p><a name="image-0003" id="image-0003">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_2.jpg" alt="CARDINAL BALUE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CARDINAL BALUE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I crossed the Canal de l&#39;Ourcq, and watched it stretching like
+  a steel tape to meet the Canal Saint&#8212;Denis and the Canal
+  Saint-Martin in the great basin at La Villette&#8212;a construction
+  which, finished in 1809, was the making of La Villette as a
+  commercial and industrial entrepôt. I meant to walk to Bondy, and
+  after a botanic stroll in its beautiful forest to retrace my steps,
+  gaining Marly next day by Baubigny, Aubervilliers and Nanterre.
+  &quot;The Aladdins of our time,&quot; I said as I leaned over the
+  soft gray water, &quot;are the engineers. They rub their theodolites,
+  and there springs up, not a palace, but a town.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0004" id="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_3.jpg" alt="AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Who speaks of engineers?&quot; said a strong baritone voice
+  as a weighty hand fell on my shoulder. &quot;Are you here to take the
+  train at Noisy?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary,
+  to get away from it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Épernay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean, Épernay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint
+  Athanasius?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean, Athanasius?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The baritone belonged to one of my <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  251]</span> friends, an engineer from Boston. He had an American
+  commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the part of a company
+  formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and dig a ship-canal
+  from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made his inspection the
+  excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel, during which time
+  the company had exploded, its chief financier having cut his throat
+  when his peculations came out to the public.</p><a name="image-0005"
+  id="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_1.jpg" alt="LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest
+  possible duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have
+  the remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have
+  in addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary
+  baptism; and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole
+  renegade from the vow which you have extracted from the
+  others.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
+  a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
+  pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.</p>
+
+  <p>We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I
+  have some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I
+  could find a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy
+  Taylor if I had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little
+  restaurant Ober, near the Odéon, with a small party of medical
+  students, to which order Grandstone&#39;s friends mostly belonged. We
+  were all young that night; and truly I hold that the affectionate
+  confusion of two or three different generations adds a charm to
+  friendship.</p><a name="image-0006" id="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_2.jpg" alt="LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian
+  names. I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that
+  their historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment
+  forgotten, their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and
+  William no longer carried the thoughts back to the English
+  kings&#8212;Joseph and Reuben were powerless to remind us of the
+  mighty family of Israel.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 252]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have no complaint to make of my own name,&quot; I
+  protested, &quot;which has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor.
+  That was at Würtemberg, gentlemen. &#39;You are from America,&#39;
+  the old man said to me, &#39;but you have a German name: Paul
+  Flemming was one of our old poets.&#39; The thought has been a
+  pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest idea what my
+  ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality my
+  Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to
+  desire.&quot;</p><a name="image-0007" id="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0004_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0004_1.jpg" alt="CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I
+  set up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in
+  any company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out
+  &quot;Paul!&quot; through the doorway, six husbands at least would
+  start and say, &quot;Coming, dear!&quot; I computed the Pauls
+  belonging to one of the grand nations, and proved that an army
+  recruited from them would be large enough to carry on a war against a
+  power of the second order.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls,&quot; I
+  declared, looking toward my young host, &quot;Russia itself would
+  tremble.&#8212;Are you to make your start in life with no better
+  name?&quot; I asked him maliciously. &quot;Must you be for ever kept
+  in mediocrity by an address that is not the designation of an
+  individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not have been called by
+  something rather less oecumenical?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You may style me by what title you please, Mr.
+  Flemming,&quot; said Grandstone nonchalantly. &quot;I am to enter a
+  great New York wine-house after a little examination of the
+  grape-country here. Doubtless a Grandstone will have, by any other
+  name, a bouquet as sweet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The idea took. An almanac of saints&#39; days, which is often
+  printed in combination with the <i>menu</i> of a restaurant, was
+  lying on the table. Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose
+  was within an ace of being chosen, but Grandstone protested against
+  it as too short, and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that
+  presented. Our engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket
+  a vial of water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships&#39; bottoms;
+  and with that classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the
+  bottle being broken on poor Grandstone&#39;s crown as on the prow of
+  a ship.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius,&quot; I said.
+  &quot;If you remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you.
+  Meantime, let us vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint
+  Athanasius and hold a love-feast.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next
+  day I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas.
+  And my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to
+  the rude reminder given by my engineer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I had quite forgotten my engagement,&quot; I confessed.
+  &quot;Besides, Grandstone <span class="pagenum">[pg 253]</span> is
+  living now, as you remind me, at Épernay&#8212;that is to say, at
+  seventy or eighty miles&#39; distance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Say three hours,&quot; he retorted: &quot;on a railway line
+  we don&#39;t count by miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to
+  satisfy your promise and report yourself for the feast of Saint
+  Athanasius? If you are not bound for Épernay, where <i>are</i> you
+  bound?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am off for Marly.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow.
+  You can be at Épernay sooner.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow,&quot; I
+  continued, rather helplessly; &quot;and Josephine my cook is there
+  this afternoon boiling the mutton-hams.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or
+  even at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
+  railroads&#8212;a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
+  engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
+  soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the
+  locomotive, offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone
+  and Hohenfels. Come, get your ticket!&quot;</p><a name="image-0008"
+  id="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0005_1.jpg" alt=
+    "BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
+  like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
+  head. I could reach Épernay by five o&#39;clock, returning at eight,
+  and, notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the
+  champagne-country, I could resume my promenade and modify in no
+  respect my original plan; and I could say to Hohenfels, &quot;My boy,
+  I have popped a few corks with the widow Cliquot.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me
+  in their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite
+  unexpectedly.</p>
+
+  <p>From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard&#39;s, the
+  landscape spun out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to
+  visit at all events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs
+  of its ancient château, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of
+  the Renaissance, and whose alternately round and square pavilions,
+  tipped with steep mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay
+  visitors in the costume of the <i>grand siècle</i>. Then came the
+  cathedral of Meaux, before which I reverently took off my cap to
+  salute the great Bossuet&#8212;&quot;Eagle of Meaux,&quot; as they
+  justly called him, and on the whole a noble <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  254]</span> bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
+  exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
+  a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was a
+  crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of a
+  hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
+  Middle Ages.</p><a name="image-0009" id="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0006_1.jpg" alt="CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of
+  wine stood upon end?&quot; he said&#8212;&quot;those donjons at the
+  corners, tapering at the top, and presenting the very image of noble
+  bottles? There needs nothing but that palace to convince you that you
+  have arrived in the champagne region.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not know the building,&quot; I confessed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer
+  storm, when the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of
+  mason-work, and the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a
+  whole basket of champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the château
+  of Boursault, apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really
+  a marvel of yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a
+  lyre, like the towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable
+  bottles, causing to resound all over the world the name of the widow
+  Cliquot.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At length we entered the station of Épernay. There I received my
+  first shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy
+  was one which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme
+  suburbs of Paris at three o&#39;clock in the morning.</p>
+
+  <p>Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of
+  Épernay with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse,
+  received us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed
+  into plain James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would
+  bear fruit. Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the
+  date. The feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar
+  shoved beneath a quantity of vintners&#39; cards on his study-table,
+  fell on the second of May, and could not be celebrated before the
+  evening of the first. It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited
+  us, then, for the next day at dinner, warning us at the same time
+  that the evening of that same morrow would see him on his way to the
+  Falls of Schaffhausen. This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled
+  me.</p><a name="image-0010" id="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0006_2.jpg" alt="THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We both laughed heartily at the engineer&#39;s mistake of
+  twenty-four hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.</p>
+
+  <p>Athanasius&#8212;whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives
+  him, as I maintain, <span class="pagenum">[pg 255]</span> a more
+  distinct individuality,&#8212;Athanasius happened to be driving out
+  for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was about to
+  accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner. He
+  contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
+  his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
+  even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
+  us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
+  when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there
+  without being overheard.</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city
+  of Épernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce,
+  flanked with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
+  a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
+  contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
+  environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
+  has this peculiarity&#8212;its veritable spring, its pride of May,
+  arrives in the autumn.</p><a name="image-0011" id="image-0011">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_1.jpg" alt="ADMIRATION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      ADMIRATION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a
+  beggar. He was sitting on Grandstone&#39;s steps as we emerged. Aged
+  hardly fourteen, he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes
+  coming up from the kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence
+  that amused me. The maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and
+  the remainders of our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme
+  breadth and intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he
+  laid by the biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same
+  time he produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass,
+  nicked at the rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his
+  bowl, he drank to the health of the waitress with the easiest
+  politeness it was ever my lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of
+  Murillo&#39;s, courteous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he added a grace
+  and an epicurism completely French. I thought him the best possible
+  figure-head for that opulent spot, cradle of the hilarity of the
+  world. I gave him five francs.</p><a name="image-0012" id=
+  "image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_2.jpg" alt="MAC MEURTRIER." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      MAC MEURTRIER.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
+  its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They are
+  subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
+  colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
+  Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 256]</span> religion are they the
+  representations? They are cellar-doors.</p><a name="image-0013" id=
+  "image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_3.jpg" alt="THE BLACK DOMINO." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE BLACK DOMINO.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars,
+  said Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of
+  the most renowned.</p>
+
+  <p>I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found
+  the Eleusinian mysteries.</p><a name="image-0014" id="image-0014">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0008_1.jpg" alt="TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S RIDE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S RIDE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
+  middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
+  other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
+  approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.</p>
+
+  <p>Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his
+  hands a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The
+  latter met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still,
+  but the twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh
+  retained with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less
+  beautiful Norma, to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical
+  strokes. A strong, pealing bass voice came from the interior:
+  &quot;Who dares knock at this door?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A night-bird,&quot; said the man in the cloak, who took the
+  part of spokesman. &quot;What has the night-bird to do with the
+  eagle?&quot; replied the strong voice. &quot;What can there be in
+  common between the heathen in his blindness and the Ancient of the
+  Mountain throned in power and splendor?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to
+  plunge.&quot; After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the
+  red-nosed man was quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at
+  the door, where a flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden
+  plunge.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What nonsense is this?&quot; I said to Athanasius.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The man in the iron mask,&quot; he explained, &quot;is in
+  that respect what we shall all be in a minute. Without such a
+  protector, in passing amongst the first year&#39;s bottles we might
+  receive a few hits in the face.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And do you know the new apprentice?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No: some stranger, evidently.&quot;</p><a name="image-0015"
+  id="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0008_2.jpg" alt="THE CROOKED MAN." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE CROOKED MAN.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not hard to guess his extraction,&quot; <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 257]</span> said one of our dinner-party. &quot;In the
+  East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each eye. For his part,
+  he seems to be braced with two pans in each knee. He is long in the
+  stilts like a heron, square&#8212;headed and square-shouldered: I
+  give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,&quot; he added,
+  &quot;I have seen his likeness somewhere&#8212;Ah yes, in an
+  engraving of Hogarth&#39;s!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
+  gentleman, at whose side I had dined&#8212;a man of sharpness and
+  wit, for which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated
+  finally into the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with
+  iron railways for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by
+  heavy wagons and Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding
+  wonders was distracted by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the
+  unfortunate red nose.</p><a name="image-0016" id="image-0016">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0009_1.jpg" alt="THE GRAVITY ROAD" /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE GRAVITY ROAD.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful
+  exploding noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were
+  marching through the catacombs.</p>
+
+  <p>Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
+  foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
+  pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the
+  wine-frames, came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O&#39;Shanter.
+  At a new outburst of resonant noises, which we could not help
+  offering to the general confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed
+  twice or thrice the attitude of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The
+  figure of the man, still rigid, flew up into the air like a stick
+  that pops out of the water. The Terrible Brothers received him in
+  their arms.</p>
+
+  <p>Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced
+  in the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and
+  the barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined
+  tramway. His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with
+  indignation and horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his
+  eyes flew off, and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a
+  rate of speed continually increasing.</p>
+
+  <p>He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
+  arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers quite
+  disheveled with laughter, said, &quot;Fellows, we had better stop
+  somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
+  in the rôle of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 258]</span> we are wanted. I always knew
+  there was a Society of Pure Illumination at Épernay. It is not a
+  Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes, its grips, and in a
+  word its secret. I have recognized among these gentlemen some active
+  members of the order&#8212;among others, notwithstanding his
+  disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here, Fortnoye.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You cannot have seen Fortnoye,&quot; said one of the party:
+  &quot;he is at Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And who is your Fortnoye, pray?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The best tenor voice in Épernay; but his presence here does
+  not give <i>me</i> an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure
+  Illumination has its rites and mysteries more important than
+  everybody supposes, and probably complicated with board-of-trade
+  secrets among the wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us
+  go and visit another cellar.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
+  expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear boys,&quot; I said, &quot;as the grayest among you I
+  may be presumed to be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be
+  myself. I have received to-day a succession of unaccustomed
+  influences. I have been dragged about by an impertinent locomotive; I
+  have been induced to dine heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps
+  to the limit of my measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am
+  naturally thoughtful, studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is
+  for me an unfaded morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at
+  pleasure, and read within its tube legends written in dusted gold.
+  But the Present to the true philosopher is also&#8212;In fact, I
+  never was so much amused in my life. I am dying to see what they will
+  do with that Scotchman.&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="60%" src=
+    "images/0010_1.jpg" alt="THE ANIMATED CELLS" /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE ANIMATED CELLS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
+  could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
+  was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
+  ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
+  out after long service and leaning against a wall.</p>
+
+  <p>Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could
+  see everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries,
+  sitting in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral
+  tests. Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white
+  bandage which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still
+  perfectly white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master
+  arose&#8212;I should have said the Reverend&#8212;his head nodding
+  with senility, his beard white as a waterfall: he appeared to be
+  eighty years of age at least. He was truly venerable to look at, and
+  reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of dalmatica embroidered with
+  gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly marked on the aspect of
+  this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing the spy, and felt inclined
+  to return humbly to the good counsel of Athanasius, when the latter,
+  pushing my elbow behind the shelves, said, referring to the Ancient
+  of the Mountain, &quot;That&#39;s Fortnoye: I knew I couldn&#39;t be
+  mistaken.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
+  Épernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
+  only of listening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The barleycorns of your native North having been partially
+  cleaned out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted
+  steeds&#8212;the steed you bridled without a head, and the steed that
+  ran away with you without legs,&quot; said the Ancient&#8212;&quot;we
+  have brought you hither for examination. We might have gone much
+  farther with the physical tests: we might have forced you, at the
+  present session, to relieve yourself of those envelopes considered
+  indispensable by all Europeans beneath your own latitude, and in our
+  presence perform the sword-dance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So be it,&quot; said the disciple, executing a galvanic
+  figure with his legs, his countenance still like marble.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring
+  it in?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth,&quot; replied the red
+  nose. &quot;Give me the daggers.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful
+  to a man of such evident sensibility as yours.&quot; The red nose
+  bowed. &quot;What is your name?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He pronounced it&#8212;apparently MacMurtagh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;MacMeurtrier,&quot; muttered the Scotchman in a tone of
+  abstraction.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am a homoeopathic doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that
+  the <span class="pagenum">[pg 259]</span> Ancient of the Mountain
+  hears what you say.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The Scot held up his hand: &quot;I believe in the learned
+  Hahnemann, and in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself;
+  but,&quot; he added, &quot;homoeopathy is a science still in its
+  baby-clothes. I have invented a system perfectly novel. In mingling
+  homoeopathy with vegetable magnetism the most encouraging results are
+  obtained, as may be observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh,
+  near Edinburgh&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Enough!&quot; cried the Ancient: &quot;circulars are not
+  allowed here. Forget nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired
+  with the pious ambition of becoming our brother?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the
+  wine-houses. I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the
+  lodge of Épernay&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Silence! The words you use, <i>lodge</i> and <i>Free
+  Mason</i>, are most improper in this temple, which is that of the
+  Pure Illumination, and nothing less. Will you remember,
+  Meurtrier?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;MacMeurtrier,&quot; muttered the novice again. The last
+  proofs were now tried upon him, called the &quot;five senses.&quot;
+  For that of hearing he was made to listen to a jewsharp, which he
+  calmly proclaimed to be the bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made
+  to feel by turns a live fish, a hot iron and a little stuffed
+  hedgehog. The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, and announced
+  gravely, &quot;It sticks me.&quot; The laughs broke out from all
+  sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of
+  that fatal honeycomb!</p><a name="image-0018" id="image-0018">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0011_1.jpg" alt="THE TRAVELER&#39;S REST." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE TRAVELER&#39;S REST.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or
+  other, and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion
+  the wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was
+  to follow, and the semicircle <span class="pagenum">[pg 260]</span>
+  of purple faces was quite blackening with bottled laughter, when
+  Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour for departure was
+  come, and I had not a minute to spare.</p><a name="image-0019" id=
+  "image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_1.jpg" alt="PALACE AT STRASBURG." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      PALACE AT STRASBURG.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph:
+  as we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the
+  voices exclaim in concert, &quot;It is the Pure
+  Illumination!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were
+  perfectly Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast
+  establishments, where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward
+  from the wine in store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and
+  dismiss him as an Anacreon.</p>
+
+  <p>Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe&#39;s
+  conversation with his soul, &quot;serious and sober.&quot; In the
+  cellar no drop had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I
+  entered: I came out in a species of voluptuous dream.</p>
+
+  <p>All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very
+  much touched with the attention. It was who should carry my
+  botany-box, who should set my cap straight, who should give me the
+  most precise and statistical information about the train which
+  returned to Paris, with a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I
+  chanted snatches of old songs, and mingled together in a tender
+  reverie my recollections of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my
+  theories of Progressive Geography.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to
+  the city.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t let them carry you beyond Noisy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come back to Épernay every May-day: never forget the feast
+  of Saint Athanasius.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come,
+  man, bundle up! they are closing the barrier.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. &quot;Adieu,&quot; I
+  said, &quot;my dear champanions&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep
+  directly.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day I awoke&#8212;at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening
+  before, making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had
+  traveled beside me in the adjoining car.</p>
+
+  <p>My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
+  clustered around me.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 261]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, boys,&quot; I said, &quot;I have too many griefs
+  imprisoned in this aching bosom to be much put out by the ordinary
+  &#39;Horrid Hoax.&#39; But you have compromised my reputation. I
+  promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly: children, bankruptcy stares me
+  in the face.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: &quot;You
+  wished to dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you
+  mistook the day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he
+  voluntarily deceived you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have
+  concocted a little conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit
+  in fact, when you are not in your <i>lubies</i> about the Past and
+  the Future. We wanted you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen
+  you at Noisy, Cethigus tucked you into a car with the intention of
+  making use of you at Schaffhausen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not
+  to revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn
+  promise, a consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will
+  not carry me to Schaffhausen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know
+  that no great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for
+  Bâle. For my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional
+  duties, such as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital
+  of Alsace. In his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were
+  to meet each other shortly.</p>
+
+  <p>It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
+  railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
+  counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
+  the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
+  five hours and three-quarters to spare.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor
+  opinion, is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps,
+  cleared the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it
+  might be, I was glad of everything. I was glad the
+  &quot;champanions&quot; were departed, glad I had a stolen morning in
+  Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my domestics would be uneasy for
+  me at Marly.</p>
+
+  <p>In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
+  detention in the city.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="twomoods" id=
+  "twomoods"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>TWO MOODS.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">All yesterday you were so near to me,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">It seemed as if I hardly moved or spoke</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">But your heart moved with mine. I woke</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To a new life that found you everywhere,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As if your love was as some wide-girt sea,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Or as the sunlit air;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And so encompassed me,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Whether I thought or not, it could not but be
+      there.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">To-day your words approve me, and your heart</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Is mine as ever, yet that heavenly sense</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of oneness that made every hour intense</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With Love&#39;s full perfectness, is gone from
+      thence;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And, though our hands are clasped, our souls are
+      two,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And in my thoughts I say, &quot;This is
+      myself&#8212;this you!&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY. <span class="pagenum">[pg 262]</span>
+  </center><a name="ride" id="ride"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">A little vext at losing of the hunt,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">A little at the vile occasion, rode</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">By ups and downs through many a glassy glade</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">And valley, with fixt eye following the three.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p class="i16"><i>Enid</i>.</p>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Through forest paths his charger strode,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His heron plume behind him flowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Blood-red the west with sunset glowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Far down the river golden flowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And in the woods the winds were still:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">No helm had he, nor lance in rest;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His knightly beard flowed down his breast;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In silken costume gayly drest,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Out from the glory of the west</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">He flashed adown the purple hill.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">His sword hung tasseled at his side,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His purple scarf was floating wide,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And all his raiment many-dyed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As if he came to seek a bride,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And not the combat that he sought;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Yet rode he like a prince, and one</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Native to noble deeds alone,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Who many a valiant tilt had run,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And many a prize of tourney won</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">In Arthur&#39;s lists at Camelot.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Cool grasses and green mosses made</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Soft carpet for his charger&#39;s tread,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As &#39;neath the oak boughs dark o&#39;erhead,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">By belts of pasture scant of shade,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Into the Castle Town he rode:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">He heard, as things are heard in dreams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The sound of far-off falling streams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The shriller bird-choir&#39;s evening hymns:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">He saw but only helmet-gleams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">The smith that smote, the fire that glowed,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The sheen of lances, and the cloud</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">From many a field-forge fire, the crowd</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Of gay-clad squires, and, neighing loud,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The war-horse with rich trappings proud,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That arched his neck and pawed the ground;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Old armorers grave and stern in stall,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Where low-crowned morions, helmets tall,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Shone gilt and burnished on the wall;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And, shining brighter than them all,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">The eyes of maidens sun-embrowned.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p class="center">MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  263]</span> <a name="sketches" id="sketches"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="count" id="count"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> I.&#8212;THE
+  COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.</h3>
+
+  <p>Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates,
+  and China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
+  the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
+  country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
+  systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
+  French travelers in the East, each tinged, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  264]</span> in a measure, with the national spirit of their
+  respective countries. In the case of the traveler, as of the
+  astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the personal equation, has
+  to be made in receiving the accounts of his observations.</p><a name=
+  "image-0020" id="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0015_1.jpg" alt="THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S CART." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S CART.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in
+  company with the duke de Penthièvre, son of the prince de Joinville,
+  is entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the
+  travelers by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to
+  obtain the best conditions for investigating various matters of
+  interest.</p>
+
+  <p>On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing
+  &quot;on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over
+  his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and
+  full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector&#8212;as martial
+  and as authoritative as in his native land.&quot; The appearance of
+  the population here struck our travelers as different from that of
+  the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored,
+  lean, and slightly clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy
+  as children and fat as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or
+  five pelisses, worn one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so
+  that a single man smelt like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of
+  dress was this: half a dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with
+  a single overcoat with extremely long sleeves, falling down to their
+  knees. These garments made them resemble balls of wool rather than
+  men.</p>
+
+  <p>By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the
+  town devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of
+  fortune, from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled
+  with these latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars,
+  hardly human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow
+  upon the ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention.
+  The cause of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in
+  one of the gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness
+  of these people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered
+  about this fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious
+  deference strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower
+  stratum, however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
+  obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
+  politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
+  poverty, was wanting.</p>
+
+  <p>A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
+  Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
+  road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals. On
+  both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
+  surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
+  grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
+  fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
+  in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
+  dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may
+  be imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the
+  dead is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of
+  the telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai
+  had built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the
+  mail, but in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred
+  places&#8212;at all the points where its shadow from the rising sun
+  fell upon the coffins lying on the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and,
+  dressed in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes,
+  received their visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are
+  divided into three classes. The first consists of the children of the
+  neighboring towns who have been deserted by their parents and left to
+  die of hunger. The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or
+  less perfectly cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution
+  they are thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They
+  receive an industrial as well as a literary education. In one
+  building they are taught to read and <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  265]</span> write, and in another are the schools for shoemaking,
+  carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that, being received
+  at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they are launched
+  upon the world with an education and a trade.</p>
+
+  <p>There are about four hundred children in this class, and the
+  activity, the order and organization of the workshops, and the
+  exquisite cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see.
+  Near at hand is a school of a higher grade, to which the most
+  promising pupils are transferred for the study of Chinese literature.
+  The system of teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required
+  to study aloud, and the din is in consequence deafening and
+  incessant. Then there is the highest class, consisting of about two
+  hundred and fifty youths, the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily
+  for their instruction. These are destined to become rhetoricians,
+  and, step by step, bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 266]</span> and members of the governing
+  class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and the Fathers
+  have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese language,
+  as well as its written characters, but also the nice critical points
+  of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with authority the poetry
+  and legends and the commentaries upon the writings of Confucius. This
+  they have done for the purpose of having an opportunity to convert
+  the orphans they have adopted, and thus by degrees introduce into the
+  government an element which will be essentially Christian. Thus far,
+  the profession of Christianity is not essentially incompatible with
+  the office of mandarin, though it is impossible to hold this position
+  without performing some idolatrous rites.</p><a name="image-0021" id=
+  "image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0018_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0018_1.jpg" alt="HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
+  navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
+  Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
+  commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
+  functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
+  of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
+  a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
+  of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally
+  got off after the removal of a part of her cargo.</p>
+
+  <p>The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the
+  narrowness of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course.
+  Frequently the steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and
+  fastened round a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and
+  witnessed a review of some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon
+  Tartar ponies, with high saddles and short stirrups. The warriors
+  wore queues and were dressed in long robes. Their moustaches gave
+  them, however, a fierce martial air, and they were armed with English
+  sabres and American revolvers.</p>
+
+  <p>Tien-Tsin (&quot;Heaven&#39;s Ford&quot;) is a city of about four
+  hundred thousand inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the
+  Imperial Canal with the Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about
+  three days&#39; journey by land, is sandy, and the trip is made a
+  very disagreeable one by the clouds of dust, which blind the traveler
+  and effectually prevent any examination of the country passed
+  through.</p>
+
+  <p>The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by
+  two mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow
+  made of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard
+  long, furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down
+  in them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be
+  placed in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however,
+  they are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the
+  left shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat
+  the mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in
+  front, with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel.
+  As they are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends
+  chiefly upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the
+  road; while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught
+  is always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.</p>
+
+  <p>At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal
+  button, sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin,
+  Tchoung-Hao, with a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During
+  the rest of the journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart
+  drawn by a fine black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the
+  route displayed his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an
+  immense pair of spectacles, the glasses of which were about three
+  inches in diameter. At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the
+  middle of the day, and was photographed by one of its members. The
+  curious crowd of spectators which gathered in every village to
+  inspect the &quot;foreign devils&quot; scattered when the camera was
+  posed, and for a few moments our travelers were freed from their
+  intrusiveness.</p><a name="image-0022" id="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 267]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0021_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0021_1.jpg" alt=
+    "AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Starting next morning at daylight, at <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  268]</span> three in the afternoon the party entered Pekin. The
+  relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for one of the paved
+  ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of the city struck
+  the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the Celestial
+  Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof of green
+  tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which grinned
+  the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as could be
+  seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built partly
+  of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
+  battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
+  impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
+  grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
+  archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
+  Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
+  carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.</p>
+
+  <p>Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
+  important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
+  before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
+  twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
+  into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
+  Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
+  high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
+  the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone
+  masonry resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built
+  of a solid core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved
+  with tiles, and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of
+  which are fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances
+  of about one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which
+  are in the Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the
+  partition wall between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is
+  an enclosure, also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this
+  another, called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial
+  palaces and pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each
+  other at right angles, run through the whole city, which in this
+  respect is very unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the
+  Tartar city near its north-west corner divides into two branches,
+  which enter the Imperial City and surround the Forbidden City, and
+  then uniting again pass through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to
+  empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.</p>
+
+  <p>The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
+  on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
+  promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
+  whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
+  examination, comes to the following conclusions: &quot;This immense
+  city, in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden
+  under the severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly
+  disintegrating, and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of
+  this slow decomposition is sad, since it promises death more
+  certainly than the most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will
+  exist no longer; it must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will
+  be discovered, like a second Pompeii, buried under its own
+  dust.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
+  the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of the
+  Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
+  attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
+  harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
+  favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
+  this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
+  six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
+  death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
+  built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
+  seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
+  fantastic dragons, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 269]</span> are
+  still in good condition, though they have been exposed to the open
+  air all this time. One of them was a celestial sphere eight feet in
+  diameter, containing all the stars known in 1650 and visible in
+  Pekin.</p><a name="image-0023" id="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0024_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0024_1.jpg" alt=
+    "PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the
+  Lamas, that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin
+  pass quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell
+  in the world&#8212;the great bell of Moscow has never been
+  hung&#8212;twenty-five feet high, weighing ninety thousand pounds,
+  and richly sculptured.</p>
+
+  <p>The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a
+  stranger to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese,
+  which can be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the
+  applicant should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance,
+  make <span class="pagenum">[pg 270]</span> himself a Chinese. Even
+  then, complete success is gained only by a fortunate combination of
+  circumstances. The streets devoted to shops of all kinds afford,
+  however, to the traveler a never-ending succession of changing and
+  interesting pictures. Yet the general spirit of the Chinese leads
+  them also to be sparing of all outward decoration, reserving their
+  forces for interior display. The Forbidden City even, though
+  marvelous stories are told of its interior splendors, has outside a
+  mean appearance. &quot;A pagoda of the thirty-sixth rank has more
+  effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son of Heaven.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility,
+  the party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of
+  disdain on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere
+  the curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
+  themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
+  higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
+  them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
+  the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
+  that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
+  farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince&#39;s cart they
+  are so far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule.
+  Palanquins, carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another
+  and the most convenient means of locomotion used in China: this
+  method is, however, forbidden except for princes and ministers of
+  state.</p>
+
+  <p>In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands
+  of scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles
+  raised in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels,
+  coolies, soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to
+  the confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old
+  men carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of
+  the scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
+  with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
+  sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
+  the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin
+  are frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which
+  is secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so
+  that in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This
+  curious, indistinct note had excited the count&#39;s attention, and
+  he learned its cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet,
+  having in its flight struck itself against the cord of one of the
+  kites. Their use was explained by the natives as a protection against
+  the hawks which are very common in Pekin.</p>
+
+  <p>Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked
+  to see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public
+  gaze, labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such
+  sights as this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities,
+  the squalid suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with
+  indigence and disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently
+  suggest to European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is
+  hopeless. Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every
+  European capital, and the same causes which have led to their
+  cessation there are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce
+  the same results.</p><a name="image-0024" id="image-0024">
+  <!--IMG--></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 271]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0027_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0027_1.jpg" alt="THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
+  of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
+  thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
+  government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
+  the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
+  which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
+  business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in use
+  under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
+  custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
+  lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads
+  and telegraphs and to <span class="pagenum">[pg 272]</span> open the
+  coal-mines of the empire. Success in these reforms means bringing
+  China into the circle of inter-dependent civilized nations; and so
+  far all the steps in this direction have been sure and successful
+  ones.</p>
+
+  <p>On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of
+  China, which lies about three days&#39; journey from that capital, on
+  the route to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of
+  transportation on this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full
+  of tricks as they were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts
+  for carrying the money of the expedition. The whole of this capital
+  amounted to about one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of
+  hundreds of thousands of the copper coins of the country, made with
+  holes in their centres and strung by the thousand upon osier twigs.
+  This is the only money which circulates in the agricultural portions
+  of China, and a &quot;barbarian&quot; has to give a pound weight of
+  them for a couple of eggs. The country soon began to become hilly,
+  with the mountains of Mongolia visible in the distance. Trains of
+  camels were passed, or could be seen winding in the plain below.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These
+  are the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant
+  dynasties of Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which
+  opens out from a great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks
+  and granite domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The
+  grandeur of its dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation
+  make it a fit resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native
+  dynasty. At the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic
+  tombs, encircled with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five
+  majestic portals, about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance
+  to the tombs. From the portico giving entrance to the valley to the
+  tomb of the first emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue
+  is marked first by winged columns of white marble, and next by two
+  rows of animals, carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are,
+  on either side, two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel
+  standing, one kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one
+  dragon standing, one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors,
+  courtiers, etc. The lions are fifteen feet high, and the others
+  equally colossal, while each of the figures is carved from a single
+  block of granite.</p>
+
+  <p>At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
+  them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
+  porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
+  or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
+  severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet
+  long by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet
+  high, and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single
+  stick of teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were
+  brought for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have
+  been in position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as
+  when first posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure
+  suffered in any degree.</p>
+
+  <p>The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and
+  the dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes
+  the vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
+  memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
+  access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage built
+  of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
+  structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
+  tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
+  back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
+  somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
+  precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
+  desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
+  while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
+  spot, in order further to preserve the secret.</p><a name=
+  "image-0025" id="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  273]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0030_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0030_1.jpg" alt="CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>From this gigantic effort to preserve <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  274]</span> the memory of the dead our party hastened to the Great
+  Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the living from the
+  incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps nowhere in the world
+  are to be found in such close proximity two such striking evidences
+  of the waste of human labor when undirected by scientific knowledge.
+  The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as worthless for the
+  purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are for obtaining
+  immortality for the bodies they enclose.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at
+  the entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
+  which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
+  grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
+  by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
+  appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built over
+  the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
+  following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
+  Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance,
+  climbing rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so
+  without its aid. The count was convinced that it would be as
+  difficult to climb it for the purpose of defending it as it would be
+  to do so in order to attack it. This first support of the wall is in
+  itself a giant work.</p>
+
+  <p>As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
+  crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
+  situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200
+  B.C. as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been
+  built in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the
+  materials at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth,
+  pounded, and faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles
+  and furnished with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the
+  facing was made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones.
+  Where the rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid
+  masonry, tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole
+  length it is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet.
+  Every mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower.
+  At present the wall is in various conditions of preservation,
+  according to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys,
+  which were the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere
+  heap of rubbish, which the plough year by year still further
+  scatters.</p>
+
+  <p>The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
+  organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
+  illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
+  party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
+  camera was placed upon the wall itself.</p>
+
+  <p>On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
+  Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
+  porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins.
+  Only two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in
+  China, remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry
+  them away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a
+  dozen bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel
+  of the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it
+  was situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it.
+  Looking at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this
+  wonderful collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages
+  of civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
+  truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
+  his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
+  exclaiming, &quot;Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot,
+  where the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came
+  to China as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of
+  mercy, but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling
+  us barbarians.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 275]</span>
+  <a name="thule" id="thule"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A PRINCESS OF THULE.</h2>
+
+  <h3>BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF &quot;THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
+  PHAETON.&quot;</h3><a name="thulechxiv" id="thulechxiv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+  <h3>DEEPER AND DEEPER.</h3>
+
+  <p>Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure
+  when she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram
+  step out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run
+  round and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to
+  receive him. How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget
+  herself in this monstrous fashion!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?&quot;
+  she said, with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded
+  him of many a pleasant morning in Borva.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought
+  you some flowers,&quot; he said; but there was a sort of blush in the
+  sallow face, and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion
+  that he had brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was
+  right, and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his
+  universal kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Frank is up stairs,&quot; she said, &quot;getting ready some
+  things to go to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have
+  you had breakfast?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you were going to Brighton?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said; and somehow something moved her to add
+  quickly, &quot;but not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is
+  many a time you will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis,
+  but I cannot understand a large town being beside the sea, and it
+  will be a great surprise to me, I am sure of that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ay, Sheila,&quot; he said, falling into the old habit quite
+  naturally, &quot;you will find it different from Borvabost. You will
+  have no scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair
+  flying about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here
+  even; and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will
+  go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; she said with a quick look of disappointment,
+  &quot;you will not go yet. If I had known you were coming&#8212;But
+  it was very late when we will get home this morning: two o&#39;clock
+  it was.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Another ball?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the girl, but not very joyfully.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, Sheila,&quot; he said with a grave smile on his face,
+  &quot;you are becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I
+  can&#39;t keep up an acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all
+  these grand places and knows all sorts of swell people; so you&#39;ll
+  have to cut me, Sheila.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes,&quot;
+  said the girl with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then
+  she softened: &quot;But it is not kind of you to laugh at
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course I did not laugh at you,&quot; he said taking both
+  her hands in his, &quot;although I used to sometimes when you were a
+  little girl and talked very wild English. Don&#39;t you remember how
+  vexed you used to be, and how pleased you were when your papa turned
+  the laugh against me by getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence
+  about &#39;A young calf ate a raw egg&#39;?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can you say it now?&quot; said Sheila, with her face getting
+  bright and pleased again. &quot;Try it after me. Now
+  listen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that
+  any language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow
+  her. She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
+  in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
+  Highlander.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But what are <i>you</i> now?&quot; he asked. &quot;You are
+  no longer that wild girl who used to run out to sea in the
+  Maighdean-mhara <span class="pagenum">[pg 276]</span> whenever there
+  was the excitement of a storm coming on.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Many times,&quot; she said slowly and wistfully, &quot;I
+  will wish that I could be that again for a little while.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go
+  to?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I try to like them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you don&#39;t succeed?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away
+  her head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs
+  and entered the room.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers!
+  It&#39;s a pity we can&#39;t take them to Brighton with us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I intend to take them,&quot; said Sheila firmly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very well, if you don&#39;t mind the bother,&quot; said
+  her husband. &quot;I should have thought your hands would have been
+  full: you know you&#39;ll have to take everything with you you would
+  want in London. You will find that Brighton isn&#39;t a dirty little
+  fishing-village in which you&#39;ve only to tuck up your dress and
+  run about anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I never saw a dirty little fishing-village,&quot; said
+  Sheila quietly.</p>
+
+  <p>Her husband laughed: &quot;I meant no offence. I was not thinking
+  of Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can&#39;t you run down and see us
+  while we are at Brighton?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh do, Mr. Ingram!&quot; said Sheila with quite a new
+  interest in her face; and she came forward as though she would have
+  gone down on her knees and begged this great favor of him. &quot;Do,
+  Mr. Ingram! We should try to amuse you some way, and the weather is
+  sure to be fine. Shall we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday
+  and stay till the Monday? It is a great difference there will be in
+  the place if you come down.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
+  Lavender added, &quot;And we shall introduce you to that young
+  American lady whom you are so anxious to meet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, is she to be there?&quot; he said, looking rather
+  curiously at Lavender.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, she and her mother. We are going down
+  together.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I&#39;ll see whether I can in a day or two,&quot; he
+  said, but in a tone which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she
+  should not have her stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of
+  her old friend and associate.</p>
+
+  <p>However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and
+  when they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
+  Sheila&#39;s eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
+  discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
+  her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
+  it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
+  with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
+  other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
+  of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
+  was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
+  with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
+  concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
+  open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
+  foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
+  boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
+  friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
+  their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
+  nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
+  apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
+  their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
+  dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
+  smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed
+  from that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All
+  these and a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might
+  procure and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the
+  sea, that might be added to the little museum in which she used to
+  sing in <span class="pagenum">[pg 277]</span> days gone by, when he
+  was busy with his pipe and his whisky.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last
+  night?&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the
+  slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked admiringly at the girl&#39;s
+  fresh color and bright gray-blue eyes. &quot;It makes one envy you to
+  see you looking so strong and in such good spirits.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How happy you must be always!&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine; and
+  the younger lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her
+  mother.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am very well, thank you,&quot; said Sheila, blushing
+  somewhat and not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that
+  she had not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as
+  would have occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.</p>
+
+  <p>On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite
+  each other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of
+  small pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly
+  the best of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest
+  thing she said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in
+  the large gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say
+  something very nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if
+  she could not understand that there was any effort on the part of
+  either to assume an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and
+  listened to this aimless talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat
+  watching the gambols of a kitten, but generally she devoted herself
+  to Sheila, who sat opposite her. She did not talk much, and Sheila
+  was glad of that, but the girl felt that she was being observed with
+  some little curiosity. She wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those
+  observant gray eyes of hers away in some other direction. Now and
+  again Sheila would point out what she considered strange or striking
+  in the country outside, and for a moment the elderly lady would look
+  out. But directly afterward the gray eyes would come back to Sheila,
+  and the girl knew they were upon her. At last she so persistently
+  stared out of the window that she fell to dreaming, and all the trees
+  and the meadows and the farm-houses and the distant heights and
+  hollows went past her as though they were in a sort of mist, while
+  she replied to Mrs. Kavanagh&#39;s chance remarks in a mechanical
+  fashion, and could only hear as a monotonous murmur the talk of the
+  two people at the other side of the carriage. How much of the journey
+  did she remember? She was greatly struck by the amount of open land
+  in the neighborhood of London&#8212;the commons between Wandsworth
+  and Streatham, and so forth&#8212;and she was pleased with the
+  appearance of the country about Red Hill. For the rest, a succession
+  of fair green pictures passed by her, all bathed in a calm,
+  half-misty summer sunlight: then they pierced the chalk-hills (which
+  Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of granite) and rumbled through
+  the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse of a great mass of gray
+  houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up the bare green downs
+  beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?&quot; her
+  husband said to her with a laugh as they were driving down the
+  Queen&#39;s road.</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not like Borvabost, is it?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her
+  with a vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray
+  city was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not
+  disappear somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks
+  and the boats?</p>
+
+  <p>They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was
+  another thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great
+  interest. But the next moment there was a quick catching of her
+  breath, which almost resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang
+  into her eyes. Here at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow
+  thoroughfare she could catch a glimpse of a great green
+  plain&#8212;yellow-green it was in the sunlight&#8212;that the wind
+  was whitening <span class="pagenum">[pg 278]</span> here and there
+  with tumbling waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind
+  in-land&#8212;there everything seemed asleep&#8212;but here there was
+  a fresh breeze from the south, and the sea had been rough the day
+  before, and now it was of this strange olive color, streaked with the
+  white curls of foam that shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold
+  scent of sea-weed, too, blown up this narrow passage between the
+  houses? And now the carriage cut round the corner and whirled out
+  into the glare of the Parade, and before her the great sea stretched
+  out its leagues of tumbling and shining waves, and she heard the
+  water roaring along the beach, and far away at the horizon she saw a
+  phantom ship. She did not even look at the row of splendid hotels and
+  houses, at the gayly-dressed folks on the pavement, at the brilliant
+  flags that were flapping and fluttering on the New Pier and about the
+  beach. It was the great world of shining water beyond that fascinated
+  her, and awoke in her a strange yearning and longing, so that she did
+  not know whether it was grief or joy that burned in her heart and
+  blinded her eyes with tears. Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were
+  going up the steps of the hotel, and said in a friendly way, &quot;I
+  suppose you have some sad memories of the sea?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila bravely, &quot;it is always pleasant
+  to me to think of the sea; but it is a long time
+  since&#8212;since&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; said her husband abruptly, &quot;do tell me if
+  all your things are here;&quot; and then the girl turned, calm and
+  self-collected, to look after rugs and boxes.</p>
+
+  <p>When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
+  to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
+  stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
+  sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
+  could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
+  flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
+  people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
+  sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats
+  that were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which
+  she knew there was no use placing before her two companions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Brighton seems to surprise you very much,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Sheila, &quot;I have been told all about it,
+  but you will forget all that; and this is very different from the sea
+  at home&#8212;at my home.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your home is in London now,&quot; said the elder lady with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly.
+  &quot;London, that is not our home at all. We live there for a
+  time&#8212;that will be quite necessary&#8212;but we shall go back to
+  the Lewis some day soon&#8212;not to stay altogether, but enough to
+  make it as much our home as London.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the
+  Hebrides?&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and
+  friendly inquiry in her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place
+  so much,&quot; said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she
+  added with growing courage, &quot;for you must not think he is always
+  like what he is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no
+  day that is nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he
+  is up very early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a
+  salmon-rod. He can catch the salmon very well&#8212;oh, very well for
+  one that is not accustomed&#8212;and he will shoot as well as any one
+  that is in the island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there
+  will be in the island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much
+  chance&#8212;not any whatever&#8212;of his being lonely or tired when
+  we go to live in the Lewis.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
+  earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
+  considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
+  she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
+  subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as to
+  whether she said <i>like-a-ness</i> or <i>likeness</i>, or whether
+  she said <i>gyarden</i> or <i>garden</i>. Indeed, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 279]</span> she forgot more than that. She was somewhat
+  excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered sound of
+  the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the North,
+  and about her husband&#39;s stay there, and how they should pass the
+  time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
+  Lavender&#39;s injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
+  cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
+  Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household at
+  Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
+  understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
+  and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
+  father&#39;s shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they
+  were very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a
+  far from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite
+  charmed with Sheila&#39;s descriptions of her island-life, and wished
+  she could go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when
+  she spoke of visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were
+  staying there, Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome
+  as the daughter of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have
+  been.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And will you go out in a boat now?&quot; said Sheila,
+  looking down to the beach.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In a boat! What sort of boat?&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats
+  they are, as far as I can see.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you,&quot; said the elder lady with a smile.
+  &quot;I am not fond of small boats, and the company of the men who go
+  with you might be a little objectionable, I should fancy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you need not take any men,&quot; said Sheila: &quot;the
+  sailing of one of those little boats, it is very simple.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by
+  yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what would you do if you went out?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are,
+  but we would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the
+  lines. You would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear child,&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh, &quot;you don&#39;t
+  know what you propose to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in
+  these waves&#8212;we should be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you
+  don&#39;t know what sea-sickness is?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila, &quot;but I will hear my husband
+  speak of it often. And it is only in crossing the Channel that people
+  will get sick.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, this is the Channel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of
+  course this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the
+  South became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble
+  creatures. Her speculations on this point were cut short by the
+  entrance of her husband, who came to announce that he had not only
+  secured a carriage for a month, but that it would be round at the
+  hotel door in half an hour; whereupon the two American ladies said
+  they would be ready, and left the room.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now go off and get dressed, Sheila,&quot; said Lavender.</p>
+
+  <p>She stood for a moment irresolute.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If you wouldn&#39;t mind,&quot; she said after a
+  moment&#39;s hesitation&#8212;&quot;if you would allow me to go by
+  myself&#8212;if you would go to the driving, and let me go down to
+  the shore!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, nonsense!&quot; he said. &quot;You will have people
+  fancying you are only a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach
+  by yourself among all those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your
+  pocket or throw stones at you? You must behave like an ordinary
+  Christian: now do, like a good girl, get dressed and submit to the
+  restraints of civilized life. It won&#39;t hurt you much.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress,
+  and he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
+  nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 280]</span> so. They drove up and down the Parade for
+  about an hour and a half, and the roar of carriages drowned the rush
+  of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet of this still summer
+  evening, and she could only see the sea as a distant and silent
+  picture through the windows, while the talk of her companions was
+  either about the people whom they had seen while driving, or about
+  matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds were drawn and
+  candles lit, and still their conversation murmured around her
+  unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
+  smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
+  Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
+  a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
+  abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
+  yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
+  sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
+  and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
+  million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
+  beach.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mayn&#39;t we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his
+  cigar?&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You couldn&#39;t go out walking at this time of night,&quot;
+  said Mrs. Kavanagh in a kindly way: &quot;you would meet the most
+  unpleasant persons. Besides, going out into the night air would be
+  most dangerous.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a beautiful night,&quot; said Sheila with a sigh. She
+  was still standing at the window.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come,&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and
+  putting her hand in her arm, &quot;we cannot have any moping, you
+  know. You must be content to be dull with us for one night; and after
+  to-night we shall see what we can do to amuse you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, but I don&#39;t want to be amused!&quot; cried Sheila
+  almost in terror, for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of
+  parties. &quot;I would much rather be left alone and allowed to go
+  about by myself. But it is very kind of you,&quot; she hastily added,
+  fancying that her speech had been somewhat ungracious&#8212;&quot;it
+  is very kind of you indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn&#39;t
+  I?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked
+  to the table and sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening
+  with some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game,
+  in which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies
+  were soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs.
+  Lorraine had been for some little time at the big piano at the other
+  side of the room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she
+  happened to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to
+  wake up. He went over to her and sat down by the piano.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Here,&quot; she said, &quot;I have all the duets and songs
+  you spoke of, and I am quite delighted with those I have tried. I
+  wish mamma would sing a second to me: how can one learn without
+  practicing? And there are some of those duets I really should like to
+  learn after what you said of them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?&quot; he
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must
+  have left you in a very amiable mood.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, suppose we try,&quot; he said; and he proceeded to
+  open out the roll of music which she had brought down.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Which shall we take first?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It does not much matter,&quot; she answered indifferently,
+  and indeed she took up one of the duets by haphazard.</p>
+
+  <p>What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh&#39;s companion suddenly lift her
+  eyes from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end
+  of the room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own
+  duets, and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs.
+  Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained
+  voice of no great power&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Love in thine eyes for ever plays;</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum">[pg 281]</span>
+
+  <p>and it was she to whom the answer was given&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">He in thy snowy bosom strays;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
+  them sing together&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">He makes thy rosy lips his care,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And walks the mazes of thy hair.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
+  music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been
+  practicing these duets&#8212;her duets&#8212;with some one else. For
+  presently they sang &quot;When the rosy morn appearing,&quot; and
+  &quot;I would that my love could silently,&quot; and others, all of
+  them in Sheila&#39;s eyes, sacred to the time when she and Lavender
+  used to sit in the little room at Borva. It was no consolation to her
+  that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect acquaintance with them; that
+  oftentimes she stumbled and went back over a bit of the
+  accompaniment; that her voice was far from being striking. Lavender,
+  at all events, seemed to heed none of these things. It was not as a
+  music-master that he sang with her. He put as much expression of love
+  into his voice as ever he had done in the old days when he sang with
+  his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that this woman should have
+  taken Sheila&#39;s own duets from her to sing before her with her own
+  husband.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh
+  could not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed,
+  inattentive, and even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila
+  said she was very tired and would go. And when she got her candle,
+  Mrs. Lorraine and Lavender had just discovered another duet which
+  they felt bound to try together as the last.</p>
+
+  <p>This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely
+  pained by her husband&#39;s attentions to this young American lady;
+  and yet she would not admit to herself that he was any way in the
+  wrong. She would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no
+  jealousy in her heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect
+  faith? And so she had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these
+  tentative feelings, and resolved that she would do neither her
+  husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice of being vexed with them. So
+  it was now. What more natural than that Frank should recommend to any
+  friend the duets of which he was particularly fond? What more natural
+  than that this young lady should wish to show her appreciation of
+  those songs by singing them? and who was to sing with her but he?
+  Sheila would have no suspicion of either; and so she came down next
+  morning determined to be very friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down
+  all her resolves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; said her husband, I don&#39;t think I ever
+  asked you whether you rode.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I used to ride many times at home,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I suppose you&#39;d rather not ride here,&quot; he said.
+  &quot;Mrs. Lorraine and I propose to go out presently: you&#39;ll be
+  able to amuse yourself somehow till we come back.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her
+  mother was with her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose I may go out,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;It is so
+  very dull in-doors, and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and
+  she is not going out.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, there&#39;s no harm in your going out,&quot; answered
+  Lavender, &quot;but I should have thought you&#39;d have liked the
+  comfort of watching the people pass, from the window.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go
+  out. Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her
+  husband and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down
+  stairs without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through
+  the great hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in
+  Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a
+  trifle chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and
+  light and motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 282]</span> and noisy sea. Yet she had none
+  of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house
+  at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight on her
+  cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the
+  King&#39;s road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her;
+  and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a
+  distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the
+  beach. She stopped and watched some men putting off a heavy
+  fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long after the boat was
+  launched. She would not confess to herself that she felt lonely and
+  miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was melancholy. It seemed
+  so different from the sea off Borva, that had always to her a
+  familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging and rushing
+  before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and calm and sad,
+  and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was the sound of
+  the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a blind and
+  unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade, and could
+  see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull blue
+  plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.</p>
+
+  <p>She returned to the King&#39;s road a trifle tired, and sat down
+  on one of the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse
+  her; and now the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed
+  folks, and the centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant
+  going and coming of riders. She saw strange old women, painted,
+  powdered and bewigged in hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and
+  down the level street, and she wondered what wild hallucinations
+  possessed the brains of these poor creatures. She saw troops of
+  beautiful young girls, with flowing hair, clear eyes and bright
+  complexions, riding by, a goodly company, under charge of a
+  riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow sweeter when they came
+  into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and wondering and
+  speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders whose
+  appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well, so
+  did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
+  attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
+  could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
+  and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them
+  saw Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in
+  the other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been
+  there for many a day.</p>
+
+  <p>What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing
+  round a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin,
+  and playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that
+  attracted Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about
+  the timid, pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded
+  her of little Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her
+  heart seemed to be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no
+  thought of the people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the
+  pavement, and found that the small girl and her companion were about
+  to go away. Sheila stopped the man.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you let your little girl come with me into this
+  shop?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was a confectioner&#39;s shop.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We were going home to dinner,&quot; said the man, while the
+  small girl looked up with wondering eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back
+  in half an hour?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of
+  her, and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand
+  and led her into the confectioner&#39;s shop, putting her violin on
+  one of the small marble tables while they sat down at another. She
+  was probably not aware that two or three idlers had followed them,
+  and were staring with might and main in at the door of the shop.</p>
+
+  <p>What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet
+  sad-eyed lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things
+  with her own hands, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 283]</span> asked
+  her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and sweet voice? There
+  was not much in Sheila&#39;s appearance to provoke fear or awe. The
+  little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank, and told
+  her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced, the
+  number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the small
+  incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too, and her
+  photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well content:
+  she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did not often
+  get tired.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We go out every day when it does not rain very
+  hard.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have
+  some tea with me: would you like that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, very much,&quot; said the small musician, looking up
+  frankly.</p>
+
+  <p>Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
+  appeared at the door.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t hurry,&quot; said Sheila to the little girl:
+  &quot;sit still and drink out the lemonade; then I will give you some
+  little parcels which you must put in your pocket.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met
+  the eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come
+  out, after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and
+  down the pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops,
+  caught sight of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom
+  she had picked up in the streets.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you ever see the like of that?&quot; he said to Mrs.
+  Lorraine. &quot;In open day, with people staring in, and she has not
+  even taken the trouble to put the violin out of sight!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The poor child means no harm,&quot; said his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, we must get her out of this somehow,&quot; he said;
+  and so they entered the shop.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband&#39;s
+  look, though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed,
+  acted quite thoughtlessly&#8212;perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to
+  speak to some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hadn&#39;t you better let this little girl go?&quot; said
+  Lavender to Sheila somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice
+  for his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When she has finished her lemonade she will go,&quot; said
+  Sheila meekly. &quot;But I have to buy some things for her
+  first.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You have got a whole lot of people round the door,&quot; he
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is very kind of the people to wait for her,&quot;
+  answered Sheila with the same composure. &quot;We have been here half
+  an hour. I suppose they will like her music very much.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
+  stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
+  then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
+  Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
+  little thing.</p>
+
+  <p>They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
+  the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in a
+  humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
+  beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
+  to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
+  Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal
+  (during the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course,
+  for she had already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and
+  was bent on making himself as agreeable as possible to his two
+  companions. Their talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two
+  ladies on the Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in
+  Munich; from that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy
+  transition, to the ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one
+  of his most impulsive and brilliant moods&#8212;gay and jocular,
+  tender and sympathetic by turns, and so obviously sincere in all
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 284]</span> that his listeners were
+  delighted with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed
+  them as implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance,
+  saw and heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the
+  far North when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the
+  infection of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked,
+  too&#8212;telling the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in
+  his own rough&#8212;and&#8212;ready translations&#8212;while there
+  was no self-consciousness in his face, but a thorough warmth of
+  earnestness; and sometimes, too, she would notice a quiver of the
+  under lip that she knew of old, when some pathetic point or phrase
+  had to be indicated rather than described. He was drawing pictures
+  for them as well as telling stories&#8212;of the three students
+  entering the room in which the landlady&#39;s daughter lay
+  dead&#8212;of Barbarossa in his cave&#8212;of the child who used to
+  look up at Heine as he passed her in the street, awestricken by his
+  pale and strange face&#8212;of the last of the band of companions who
+  sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and drank to their
+  memory&#8212;of the king of Thule, and the deserter from Strasburg,
+  and a thousand others.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But is there any of them&#8212;is there anything in the
+  world&#8212;more pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?&quot; he
+  said. &quot;You know it, of course. No? Oh, you must, surely.
+  Don&#39;t you remember the mother who stood by the bedside of her
+  sick son, and asked him whether he would not rise to see the great
+  procession go by the window; and he tells her that he cannot, he is
+  so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking of his dead Gretchen?
+  <i>You</i> know the story, Sheila. The mother begs him to rise and
+  come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims going to
+  Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of God.
+  Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame people
+  have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they make a
+  waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
+  healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
+  out of it, and says to her son, &#39;Take that to the Mother of God,
+  and she will heal your pain.&#39; Sighing, he takes the wax heart in
+  his hand, and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears
+  running down his face, he says, &#39;O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I
+  am come to tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near
+  us lived Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this
+  wax heart: heal the wound in my heart.&#39; And then&#8212;and
+  then&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
+  &quot;What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can
+  have no idea of it&#8212;of its simplicity and
+  tenderness&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But pray let us hear the rest of it,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lorraine gently.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the
+  mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the
+  chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on
+  his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has
+  seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are
+  barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is
+  dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the
+  mother folds her hands, and says&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to
+  the window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to
+  his: he took it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The next time I try to translate Heine,&quot; he said,
+  making it appear that he had broken off through vexation,
+  &quot;something strange will happen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a beautiful story,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, who had
+  herself been crying a little bit in a covert way: &quot;I wonder I
+  have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we
+  were not to be after four.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
+  still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
+  perhaps, in her simple <span class="pagenum">[pg 285]</span> way, as
+  to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him, and tell him
+  all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply
+  moved by the story he had told so roughly: surely now was a good
+  opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and
+  compassion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Frank,&quot; she said, and she rose and came close, and bent
+  down her head to hide the color in her face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well?&quot; he answered a trifle coldly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You won&#39;t be vexed with me,&quot; she said in a low
+  voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Vexed with you about what?&quot; he said abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
+  which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
+  that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
+  approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said,
+  &quot;Are we to go to Lady Leveret&#39;s?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course we are,&quot; he said, &quot;unless you would
+  rather go and see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad
+  of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for
+  example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never
+  satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you
+  must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you
+  can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a
+  child&#8212;that people will talk about what you do if you go on in
+  this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of
+  these things?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
+  ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
+  awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
+  warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
+  to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
+  definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will try to do better, and please you,&quot; she said; and
+  then she went away.</p><a name="thulechxv" id="thulechxv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+  <h3>A FRIEND IN NEED.</h3>
+
+  <p>Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl&#39;s mind, and
+  now held full possession of it&#8212;that she was in a world with
+  which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a
+  home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely
+  stealing from her her husband&#39;s love and confidence? Or was this
+  longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that
+  surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient
+  jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points.
+  She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not
+  tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart.</p>
+
+  <p>Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
+  Leveret, who was one of Lavender&#39;s especial patrons, and to whom
+  he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
+  she was a stranger, an interloper, a &quot;third wheel to the
+  cart.&quot; She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she
+  had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a
+  melancholy and monotonous thing&#8212;not the bright and boisterous
+  sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and
+  rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with
+  the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see
+  something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet
+  made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place: she did not know
+  where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and
+  cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back
+  of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the
+  wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the
+  wives and daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they
+  knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to
+  herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such
+  things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left
+  Brighton she would have <span class="pagenum">[pg 286]</span> some
+  little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
+  sea-life down in the South.</p>
+
+  <p>And as they drove along the King&#39;s road on this afternoon she
+  suddenly called out, &quot;Look, Frank!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
+  face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
+  pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is Mr. Ingram,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Which is Mr. Ingram?&quot; asked Mrs. Lorraine with
+  considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his
+  friend. &quot;Not that little man?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that
+  Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a
+  place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Won&#39;t you stop and speak to him?&quot; said Sheila with
+  great surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We are late already,&quot; said her husband. &quot;But if
+  you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you
+  may.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
+  Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
+  pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>But next morning she said to him, &quot;I suppose you will be
+  riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still
+  there,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ladies don&#39;t generally call at hotels and ask to see
+  gentlemen; but of course you don&#39;t care for that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall not go if you do not wish me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of
+  professing to keep observances that you don&#39;t understand? And it
+  will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will
+  immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you,
+  or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
+  very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
+  pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend to
+  whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
+  gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
+  blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in
+  the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray
+  sky or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was
+  mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her
+  whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in
+  Borva, she would have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled
+  down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand
+  below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the
+  hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door and entered the square
+  hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several
+  gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance
+  at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have
+  found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she
+  saw Ingram himself come out of a room with a cigarette in his hand.
+  He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her with amazement
+  in his eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for
+  me?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is not here,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;I have come for you
+  by myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
+  directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, &quot;Well, that is
+  very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband
+  comes?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air
+  and the roar of the waves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;this is very good of you,
+  really: where is Mr. Lavender?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what do you do?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I sit at the window.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  287]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you go boating?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And
+  yesterday it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him
+  nothing about the people here or the fishing.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would
+  like to know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their
+  wool, and so on; but you would find the fishermen here don&#39;t live
+  in that way at all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their
+  clothing in the shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye
+  with it, either. However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At
+  present I suppose you are returning to your hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as
+  she turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I came to see you,&quot; she said. &quot;But perhaps you
+  have an engagement. I do not wish to take up any of your time: if you
+  please I will go back alone to&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now, Sheila,&quot; he said with a smile, and with the old
+  friendly look she knew so well, &quot;you must not talk like that to
+  me. I won&#39;t have it. You know I came down to Brighton because you
+  asked me to come; and my time is altogether at your
+  service.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you have no engagement just now?&quot; said Sheila with
+  her face brightening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and
+  the nets? Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles?
+  It is a very good wind.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, I should be very glad,&quot; said Ingram slowly. &quot;I
+  should be delighted. But, you see, wouldn&#39;t your husband think
+  it&#8212;wouldn&#39;t he, you know&#8212;wouldn&#39;t it seem just a
+  little odd to him if you were to go away like that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine,&quot; said Sheila
+  quite simply. &quot;He does not want me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course you told him you were coming to see&#8212;you were
+  going to call at the Old Ship?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not
+  return for a long time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you quite sure, Sheila?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I am quite sure.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with
+  you. I shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have
+  one of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive
+  charge. I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and
+  hold you responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare
+  me for whatever may befall.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;You must work very hard, and
+  I will see if you remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if
+  we can have some long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay
+  more than thirty shillings for their long lines in this
+  country?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know,&quot; said Ingram. &quot;I believe most of
+  the fishermen here live upon the shillings they get from passers-by
+  after a little conversation about the weather and their hard lot in
+  life; so that one doesn&#39;t talk to them more than one can
+  help.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know that, either. I suppose there is some good
+  fishing in the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big
+  shoals of mackerel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of
+  the men of the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been
+  very lucky all through the last season, and it was near six thousand
+  ling they got.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or
+  other up about Habost?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to
+  them. And it is a very good boat whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>That unlucky &quot;whatever&quot; had slipped out inadvertently:
+  the moment she had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward
+  her companion, fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could
+  she have made such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most
+  particular about the avoidance of <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  288]</span> this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know that
+  from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
+  with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
+  of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
+  much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
+  with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
+  perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
+  any fashion whatsoever.</p>
+
+  <p>By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
+  sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when
+  the pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
+  over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
+  boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
+  boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
+  handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
+  the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
+  business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
+  did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
+  obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The
+  man put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not
+  a little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
+  merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
+  delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
+  which she accomplished it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper
+  hatchways?&quot; Ingram called out to Sheila when they had fairly got
+  under way.</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
+  critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
+  then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
+  said, &quot;If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good
+  lookout, I will put on my gloves.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care,
+  and, with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your
+  hands, Sheila,&quot; said her companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not now,&quot; she said, &quot;but Frank would be
+  displeased to see my hands brown. He has himself such pretty
+  hands.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender&#39;s delicate hands he
+  was not going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at
+  this moment to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air
+  of great satisfaction and content.</p>
+
+  <p>And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on
+  this brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay
+  away to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint
+  cloud of smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was
+  unheard: the only sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing
+  of the waves at the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water
+  along the boat. The south wind blew fresh and sweet around them,
+  filling the broad white sails and fluttering the small pennon up
+  there in the blue. It seemed strange to Sheila that she should be so
+  much alone with so great a town close by&#8212;that under the boom
+  she could catch a glimpse of the noisy Parade without hearing any of
+  its noise. And there, away to windward, there was no more trace of
+  city life&#8212;only the great blue sea, with its waves flowing on
+  toward them from out of the far horizon, and with here and there a
+  pale ship just appearing on the line where the sky and ocean met.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?&quot;
+  said Ingram, getting out his pipe.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must
+  attend to the boat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you feel at home in her yet?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not afraid of her,&quot; said Sheila, regarding the
+  lines of the small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, &quot;but she
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 289]</span> is very narrow in the beam, and
+  she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose they have
+  not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and no narrows
+  to go through.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It doesn&#39;t remind you of Lewis, does it?&quot; he said,
+  filling his pipe all the same.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little&#8212;out there it does,&quot; she said, turning to
+  the broad plain of the sea, &quot;but it is not much that is in this
+  country that is like the Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a
+  stranger when I go back to the Lewis, and the people will scarcely
+  know me, and everything will be changed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
+  which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, &quot;I want you to
+  tell me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking
+  about many things, and especially about your home in the North, in
+  that sad way. You did not do that when you came to London first; and
+  yet it was then that you might have been struck and shocked by the
+  difference. You had no home-sickness for a long time&#8212;But is it
+  home-sickness, Sheila?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of
+  giving him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it
+  occurred to her that she would be wronging her husband in seeking
+  such sympathy from a friend as she had been expecting, and expecting
+  in vain, from him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps it is home-sickness,&quot; she said in a low voice,
+  while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet.
+  &quot;I should like to see Borva again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you don&#39;t want to live there all your life?&quot; he
+  said. &quot;You know that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your
+  husband could manage it; and I don&#39;t suppose he can. Surely your
+  papa does not expect you to go and live in Lewis always?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, no,&quot; she said eagerly. &quot;You must not think my
+  papa wishes anything like that. It will be much less than that he was
+  thinking of when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do
+  not wish to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to
+  London&#8212;none at all&#8212;only that&#8212;that&#8212;&quot; And
+  here she paused.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, Sheila,&quot; he said in the old paternal way to which
+  she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old
+  days of their friendship, &quot;I want you to be frank with me, and
+  tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong: I have
+  seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility
+  of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to
+  your papa and to myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you
+  understand?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still
+  doubtful as to what she should do.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You look on me as an intermeddler,&quot; he said with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, no,&quot; she said: &quot;you have always been our best
+  friend.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have intermeddled none the less. Don&#39;t you
+  remember when I told you I was prepared to accept the
+  consequences?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It seemed so long a time since then!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And once having begun to intermeddle, I can&#39;t stop,
+  don&#39;t you see? Now, Sheila, you&#39;ll be a good little girl and
+  do what I tell you. You&#39;ll take the boat a long way out:
+  we&#39;ll put her head round, take down the sails, and let her tumble
+  about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles,
+  and then we&#39;ll see what can be done.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
+  anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first
+  plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a
+  feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be
+  at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own
+  father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt
+  if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having
+  experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and
+  thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that
+  he could assure her was right for her to do.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 290]</span>
+
+  <p>How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green
+  downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
+  and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
+  sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King&#39;s road and
+  all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made
+  out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown
+  fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were
+  fore-shortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the
+  sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here
+  to the side of the small white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the
+  lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with
+  here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark
+  blue-green.</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram took his seat by Sheila&#39;s side, so that he should not
+  have to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little
+  preliminary nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She
+  told it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed
+  how matters stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her
+  trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be
+  reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like
+  corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and
+  the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness
+  which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she
+  told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a
+  moment&#8212;that all the prayer and desire of her heart was that
+  they two might be to each other as she had at one time hoped they
+  would be, when he got to know her better. She went over all the story
+  of her coming to London, of her first experiences there, of the
+  conviction that grew upon her that her husband was somehow
+  disappointed with her, and only anxious now that she should conform
+  to the ways and habits of the people with whom he associated. She
+  spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how heartsick she was
+  with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which he showed. She
+  spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of the way in which
+  he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her showing him, so
+  long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she had in her
+  heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love involved.
+  And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and here it
+  seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband&#39;s
+  conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
+  unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
+  could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a
+  large number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was
+  the most natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so
+  out of communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an
+  especial friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at
+  times it hurt her to be left alone&#8212;But here the girl broke down
+  somewhat, and Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.</p>
+
+  <p>These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were
+  difficult to answer. But out of these revelations&#8212;which rather
+  took the form of a cry than of any distinct statement&#8212;he formed
+  a notion of Sheila&#39;s position sufficiently exact; and the more he
+  looked at it the more alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of
+  her than her husband did. He knew the latent force of character that
+  underlay all her submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of
+  pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might
+  happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into
+  rebellion by some&#8212;possibly unintentional&#8212;wrong. And this
+  high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl&#8212;who was gentle and
+  obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but
+  because she considered it her duty to be gentle and
+  obedient&#8212;was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings
+  outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained
+  woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila&#39;s waiting-maid.
+  Ingram <span class="pagenum">[pg 291]</span> had never seen Mrs.
+  Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion,
+  based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if
+  that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to
+  interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; he said, gravely putting his hand on her
+  shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild
+  with him about the Borva rocks, &quot;you are a good woman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the
+  wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would
+  suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her
+  presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to
+  know it to be true.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And, after all,&quot; he said in a lighter voice, &quot;I
+  think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank
+  Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when
+  you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him
+  what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and
+  straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He
+  has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware
+  of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you
+  will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up
+  this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live
+  for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London
+  altogether&#8212;get him to take to serious landscape painting on
+  some wild coast&#8212;the Galway coast, for example.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why not the Lewis?&quot; said Sheila, her heart turning to
+  the North as naturally as the needle.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away
+  from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all
+  day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could
+  rent, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You make me so happy in thinking of that,&quot; she said,
+  with her eyes growing wet again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or
+  idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is
+  likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some
+  well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We are drifting too far in,&quot; said Sheila, suddenly
+  rising. &quot;Shall we go back now?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;By all means,&quot; he said; and so the small boat was put
+  under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy
+  water.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn&#39;t it?&quot;
+  said Ingram.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the girl, with her face full of hope.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable
+  together, and making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me,
+  and say I made all the mischief to begin with.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?&quot; she
+  said in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two
+  young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to
+  interfere between two people who are married&#8212;that is a certain
+  quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila,
+  and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is
+  it Gaelic or English you prefer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good
+  friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, well, we&#39;ll see.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>When they got back to shore it was half-past one.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You will come and have some luncheon with us?&quot; said
+  Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King&#39;s
+  road.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that lady be there?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I&#39;ll come some other time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why not now?&quot; said Sheila. &quot;It is not
+  necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we
+  have been talking over?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  292]</span> Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at
+  once.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?&quot; said Sheila with
+  a smile. &quot;She is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to
+  dislike her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I don&#39;t want to meet her, Sheila, that is all,&quot;
+  he said; and she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that
+  there was no use trying to persuade him further.</p>
+
+  <p>He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable
+  stream of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor
+  she seemed to remember that his costume&#8212;a blue pilot-jacket,
+  not a little worn and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat
+  that had seen a good deal of rough weather in the Highlands&#8212;was
+  a good deal more comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left
+  her at the hotel, &quot;Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop
+  in at half-past three, and that I expect to see him in the
+  coffee-room? I sha&#39;n&#39;t keep him five minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
+  appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
+  He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
+  in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for
+  Lavender was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry
+  for the wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to
+  set it right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He
+  ought to go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin
+  working hard, to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and
+  then, in this friendly solitude, he would get to know something about
+  Sheila&#39;s character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable
+  were these genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces
+  such as might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt
+  to know the worth of an honest woman&#39;s perfect love and
+  unquestioning devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he
+  would go and do the right thing, as he had many a time done before,
+  in obedience to the lecturing of his friend.</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room.
+  There was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of
+  the small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the
+  King&#39;s road and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely
+  taken his seat when Lavender came in.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hallo, Ingram! how are you?&quot; he said in his freest and
+  friendliest way. &quot;Won&#39;t you come up stairs? Have you had
+  lunch? Why did you go to the Ship?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I always go to the Ship,&quot; he said. &quot;No, thank you,
+  I won&#39;t go up stairs.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are a most unsociable sort of brute?&quot; said Lavender
+  frankly. &quot;Will you take a glass of sherry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you have a game of billiards?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you. You don&#39;t mean to say you would play
+  billiards on such a day as this?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It <i>is</i> a fine day, isn&#39;t it?&quot; said Lavender,
+  turning carelessly to look at the sunlit road and the blue sea.
+  &quot;By the way, Sheila tells me you and she were out sailing this
+  morning. It must have been very pleasant, especially for her, for she
+  is mad about such things. What a curious girl she is, to be sure!
+  Don&#39;t you think so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know what you mean by curious,&quot; said Ingram
+  coldly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, you know, strange&#8212;odd&#8212;unlike other people
+  in her ways and her fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her
+  to see some friends of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out
+  of the house somehow (I suppose their talking did not interest her),
+  and when they went in search of her they found her in the cemetery
+  crying like a child.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What about?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why,&quot; said Lavender with a smile, &quot;merely because
+  so many people had died. She had never seen anything like that
+  before: you know the small church-yards up in Lewis, with their
+  inscriptions in Norwegian and Danish and German. I suppose the first
+  sight of all the white stones at Norwood was too much for
+  her.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 293]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I don&#39;t see much of a joke in that,&quot; said
+  Ingram.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who said there was any joke in it?&quot; cried Lavender
+  impatiently. &quot;I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you
+  are. You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I
+  never do anything of the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have
+  every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned
+  out.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Has she</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The words were not important, but there was something in the tone
+  in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender&#39;s
+  careless flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some
+  surprise, and then he said, &quot;What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I will tell you what I mean,&quot; said Ingram slowly.
+  &quot;It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband
+  and wife, I am aware&#8212;he gets something else than thanks for his
+  pains ordinarily&#8212;but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or
+  kicks. Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping
+  forward your marriage in the North; and I don&#39;t remind you of
+  that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain
+  why I think I am called on to speak to you now.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated.
+  He half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
+  in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
+  before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
+  and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
+  sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
+  little man was perhaps too much addicted.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?&quot;
+  said Lavender hotly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You may suppose what absurdities you like,&quot; said Ingram
+  quietly; &quot;but it would be a good deal better if you would listen
+  to me patiently, and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have
+  got to say. It is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that
+  is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a
+  much better position, both as regards your own estimation of
+  yourselves and the opinion of your friends.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are a little roundabout, Ingram,&quot; said Lavender,
+  &quot;and ornate. But I suppose all lectures begin so. Go
+  on.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram laughed: &quot;If I am too formal, it is because I
+  don&#39;t want to make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A
+  long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very
+  keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to
+  perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of
+  a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and
+  absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of
+  her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that
+  direction.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I
+  don&#39;t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?&quot; said
+  Lavender with impetuous contempt. &quot;Well, be it so. She is
+  welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I
+  can&#39;t make hobnailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well
+  come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her
+  wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the
+  character of an injured wife.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
+  quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to
+  himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, &quot;That, unfortunately,
+  is not what is troubling her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room,
+  and said, &quot;If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it
+  from herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a
+  third person to humor her whims and fancies.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Whims and fancies!&quot; said Ingram, with that dark light
+  returning to his eyes. &quot;Do you know what you are talking about?
+  Do you know that, while you are living on the charity of a woman you
+  despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you,
+  you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in
+  England? Whims <span class="pagenum">[pg 294]</span> and fancies!
+  Good God, I wonder how she ever could have&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent
+  words to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between
+  husband and wife; but Ingram&#39;s blaze of wrath, kindled by what he
+  considered the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of
+  Sheila, had swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender,
+  indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of
+  carelessness, &quot;I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about
+  Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some
+  time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then
+  you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As
+  it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further
+  explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own
+  affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make
+  it to me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Lavender,&quot; he said, &quot;it does not matter much
+  whether you and I quarrel&#8212;I was prepared for that, in any
+  case&#8212;but I ask you to give Sheila a chance of telling you what
+  I had intended to tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite
+  confidences. When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready
+  to listen. But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as
+  they are at present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;God help you, then!&quot; said his friend, and went away,
+  scarcely daring to confess to himself how dark the future looked.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="english" id=
+  "english"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES</h2>
+
+  <p>Americans have an impression that the English think it a
+  considerable distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony
+  of presentation has entirely ceased to have any social significance
+  in England. Any young gentleman who imagines that the door of English
+  society will be thrown open to him on the publication of his
+  appearance at a drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress
+  and carriage and stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social
+  success, the money which a robe will cost might be expended to equal
+  advantage anywhere else in London. However, a lady&#39;s dress may be
+  worn again, and men may hire a court-suit for the day at a very small
+  cost. Your tailor, if you get a good deal of him, will patch you up
+  something tolerable for very little; so that sartorial expenses are
+  comparatively light. One can get for the afternoon a two-horse
+  brougham, with a coachman and footman, for a sum less than ten
+  dollars. Still, going to court costs something, and its only possible
+  advantage is that the spectacle is a fine and an interesting one. One
+  has therefore to consider whether the sight is worth the fee.</p>
+
+  <p>A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
+  Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
+  presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
+  many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the
+  privilege of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any
+  clergyman, any officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an
+  attorney, even a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister,
+  or, for that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of
+  more consequence than a curate or a poor <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  295]</span> soldier. The court has scarcely any social significance
+  in England. I once asked a young barrister if presentation would help
+  him in the least in making his way in society. He said, &quot;Not a
+  bit.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
+  cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
+  East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
+  The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is no
+  part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
+  consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
+  in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
+  gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed
+  away. They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not
+  already in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly
+  make his appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard
+  a family who went down to London to be presented made the target for
+  the ridicule of the whole neighborhood.</p>
+
+  <p>On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in
+  the diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and
+  levees at Buckingham and St. James&#39;s Palaces, and was invited to
+  the court balls and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities
+  are given only to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle.
+  It must be understood that there is at every court in Europe a select
+  and elegant and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come
+  in. Along with them enter also the ministers of state and the
+  household officers of the Crown. The general circle, as it is called,
+  includes everybody else. Another entrance and staircase are provided
+  for it, and in that way all of British society, from a duke to a
+  half-pay captain, gains admittance to the sovereign. When one is in
+  the inside of Buckingham or St. James&#39;s Palace the same
+  distinction exists. The room in which the members of the royal family
+  receive the public is occupied during the entire ceremony by the
+  diplomatic circle. Other persons, after bowing to the queen, pass
+  into an antechamber.</p>
+
+  <p>Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman
+  to be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
+  attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
+  at Buckingham and St. James&#39;s Palaces. At present the queen holds
+  drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of
+  Wales at St. James&#39;s Palace. The latter are attended only by
+  gentlemen, and, though not so grand as the queen&#39;s, are
+  pleasanter. Trousers are allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and
+  stockings which must be worn at all court ceremonials where there are
+  ladies. At two o&#39;clock&#8212;for the prince is very
+  punctual&#8212;the doors of the reception-room are thrown open, and
+  the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the ambassadors. It
+  must be remembered that there is a wide difference between an
+  ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The original
+  difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
+  transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
+  a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy
+  must see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have
+  any practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and
+  no doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the
+  sovereign. It is still true, however, that an ambassador is
+  accredited to the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign
+  secretary. Practically, the difference is that an ambassador
+  represents a bigger country, has better pay, lives in a finer house,
+  and gives more parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has
+  precedence of everybody in the country in which he resides, except
+  the royal family.</p>
+
+  <p>There are five countries which send ambassadors to
+  England&#8212;Russia, France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These
+  ambassadors enter the reception-room at the prince&#39;s levee in the
+  order of seniority of residence. The Turkish <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 296]</span> ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
+  years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the others
+  following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
+  distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
+  dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
+  one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
+  typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
+  deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical!
+  The duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of
+  my visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed
+  much the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and
+  intellect: the distinction of the other continental
+  &quot;swells&quot; was usually one of stomach and whiskers.</p>
+
+  <p>Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After
+  the ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves
+  from an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales
+  awaits them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the
+  duke of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
+  old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right,
+  stands Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each
+  detachment as it approaches&#8212;&quot;Austrian ambassador,&quot;
+  &quot;the Spanish minister,&quot; &quot;the United States
+  minister,&quot; etc. The prince shakes hands with the head of the
+  embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
+  diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
+  their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic circle,
+  and such as have the <i>entree</i> to it, remain in the room: the
+  Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
+  the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
+  were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as if
+  the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
+  collection.</p>
+
+  <p>One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
+  manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
+  know he is somebody&#8212;if he shakes hands with all five or six of
+  the princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives
+  the princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them,
+  and runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay
+  colonel or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be
+  inferred from the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to
+  decipher the name of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed
+  him. If he scans it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him
+  and says &quot;Major Te&#8212;e&#8212;e&#8212;bosh&#8212;bow,&quot;
+  then in a loud voice, &quot;Major Tebow,&quot; you will be safe in
+  thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of warriors or
+  largest of landed proprietors.</p>
+
+  <p>The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
+  whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
+  very pleasantly. There is a great deal of <i>esprit de corps</i>
+  among them, and perfect equality. Attachés, secretaries and ministers
+  walk about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors
+  are rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
+  diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
+  the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
+  a sort of after-glow of the royalties.</p>
+
+  <p>At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
+  there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
+  increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen&#39;s levees
+  are very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
+  ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as I
+  have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
+  shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
+  warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
+  like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
+  draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
+  many of the large rooms of the palaces <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  297]</span> huge fireplaces, with great logs of wood, roar behind
+  tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of these, the courtier who
+  isn&#39;t a Scotchman feels as if he would never care to go away.
+  Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer, but the first
+  of them come in February, and London is often cool well up into
+  June.</p>
+
+  <p>The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as
+  that at a prince of Wales&#39;s levee. The spelling-class of royal
+  ladies stand up in a rigid row. On the queen&#39;s right is the lord
+  chamberlain, who reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left,
+  is Alexandra, then the queen&#39;s daughters and the Princess Mary of
+  Cambridge. Next to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx
+  which stretches entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up
+  in battle array, stand three or four ranks of court ladies.</p>
+
+  <p>The act of presentation is very easy and simple.
+  Formerly&#8212;indeed, until within a few years&#8212;it must have
+  been a very perilous and important feat. The courtier (the term is
+  used inaccurately, but there is no noun to describe a person who goes
+  to court for a single time) was compelled to walk up a long room, and
+  to back, bowing, out of the queen&#39;s presence. For ladies who had
+  trails to manage the ordeal must have been a trying one. Now it has
+  been made quite easy. There is but one point in which a presentation
+  to the queen differs from that already described at the prince of
+  Wales&#39;s levee. You may turn your back to the prince, but after
+  bowing to the queen you step off into the crowd, still facing her.
+  There (if you have had the good luck to be presented in the
+  diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most interesting
+  pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very amusing,
+  though they evidently have their little joke afterward over anything
+  unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should, of
+  course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
+  amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
+  and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
+  the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
+  ask &quot;Who is this?&quot; and &quot;Who is that?&quot; The lord
+  chamberlain announces each person as he or she appears. You hear the
+  most heroic and romantic names in English history as some
+  insignificant boy or wizened old woman appears to represent them.
+  They are not all, by any means, insignificant boys and wizened old
+  women. Many of the ladies are handsome enough to be well worth
+  looking at, whether their names be Percy or Stanhope or Brown or
+  Smith. The young slips of girls who come to be presented for the
+  first time, frightened and pale or flushed, one admires and feels a
+  sense of instinctive loyalty to.</p>
+
+  <p>The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain:
+  &quot;The duchess of Fincastle,&quot; &quot;The countess of
+  Dorchester,&quot; &quot;Lady Arabella Darling on her marriage,&quot;
+  etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to whom the queen gives her
+  hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee to the carpet. No act
+  of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated, her behavior being so
+  modest and the sympathy with her so wide and sincere; but ladies very
+  nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member of the royal family,
+  not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the
+  kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft
+  maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross
+  young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a
+  prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer
+  genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the
+  props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and
+  they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It astonished me, I
+  remember, at a court party, to see one patrician young
+  woman&#8212;&quot;divinely tall&quot; I should describe her if her
+  decided chin and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her
+  character had not put divinity out of the question&#8212;shake hands
+  with a not very imposing young prince, and bend <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 298]</span> her regal knees into this curious and
+  sudden little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days
+  afterward in a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!),
+  directing with her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop.
+  It struck me she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a
+  chariot with three steeds abreast.</p>
+
+  <p>The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court
+  ceremonials. There are besides the court festivities, the balls and
+  concerts at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given
+  in a season&#8212;two balls and two concerts. The balls are the
+  larger and less select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of
+  the palace is a large rectangular apartment. At one end is the
+  orchestra&#8212;at the other a raised dais on which the royalties
+  sit. On each side, running the length of the hall, are three tiers of
+  benches, which are for ladies and such gentlemen as can get a seat.
+  The tiers on the left of the dais are for diplomatists. English
+  society has the tiers upon the other side. By ten the ball-room is
+  usually filled with people waiting for the appearance of the
+  royalties. The band strikes up, and the line of princes and
+  princesses advances down the long hall leading to the ball-room. The
+  queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at these balls. The
+  queen does not come now: the prince and princess of Wales take her
+  place.</p>
+
+  <p>First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them
+  come the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales
+  advances first, with a naïve, faltering, hesitating step, a strange
+  and quite delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in
+  her manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen.
+  Then approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and
+  very jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile,
+  which she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
+  follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
+  wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
+  suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
+  she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes&#39;
+  duration. Before curtsying, she stops and seems to &quot;shy,&quot;
+  and looks at the ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the
+  object which alarms him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the
+  ground, and recovers herself with the same slowness. It would seem
+  that such a genuflection must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is
+  not so in the least: it is quite successful, and rather pleasing.
+  After the ladies come the prince of Wales and his suite. The
+  royalties then all go upon the stage, and after music the ball
+  begins.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
+  ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
+  space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
+  the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
+  diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
+  rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
+  always dance the same step, the <i>deux temps</i>, and the aim of the
+  dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible. They
+  make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
+  <i>trois temps</i>, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say,
+  without any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance
+  in England, you are safe.</p>
+
+  <p>The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There
+  are many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men
+  are &quot;flaming in purple and gold.&quot; There is every variety of
+  magnificent dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from
+  head to foot. Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark
+  crimson of the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards&#39;
+  clubs in gold and scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach
+  above their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about,
+  and exhibit legs of which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging
+  gait, wanders the queen&#39;s piper, a sort of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 299]</span> poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
+  plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to
+  the music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of
+  the orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel
+  the festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.</p>
+
+  <p>Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
+  through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
+  curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight,
+  on the lakes and fountains of the gardens, &quot;the watery ways of
+  palaces.&quot; I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they
+  are a trifle too romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of
+  flirting in the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very
+  pleasantly, the refreshment-room, which was kept open during the
+  evening till supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold
+  coffee, champagne, sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy
+  in the least. I can&#39;t say so much for the supper, though by
+  waiting a little one could always get something. The princes went
+  first, then the diplomatists, and then everybody else. The jostling
+  was such that when young ladies asked for a plate of soup you wished
+  they had wanted ham and chicken. A young American, I think, would
+  very much dislike to go up to a table and eat a solitary supper with
+  ladies looking on, and young and pretty ones, too. But I have seen a
+  young guardsman, with an enormous helmet and boots as big as himself,
+  stand up at the table and &quot;solitary and alone&quot; work his
+  jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling the whole of his
+  paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry courtiers, whom his
+  gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility of supper, and who
+  revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations aside upon the
+  length and heartiness of his meal.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Concert&quot; is an expression which to a hungry man has a
+  strong suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives
+  you such a supper as only a night&#39;s dancing is ordinarily
+  supposed to entitle you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room
+  of the palace, and are much more select than the balls. The royalties
+  occupy very slight gilt chairs placed just before the orchestra.
+  There they sit with grace and an appearance of comfort through the
+  whole of it, while happier and humbler mortals may walk about and
+  whisper, or seek the refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They
+  have very good music, the best singers are provided, and some pretty
+  familiar songs, like &quot;Home, sweet home,&quot; are sung.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to
+  the bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few
+  civil things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow
+  and look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost
+  queens when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of
+  praise and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in
+  European capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to
+  put themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
+  artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
+  century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
+  in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing
+  the old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly
+  notions. The cord stretched between the guests and the performers
+  used to be a feature of musical entertainments at private houses.
+  Grisi went once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington
+  at his country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine.
+  &quot;Oh, when you do,&quot; she said. He saw her mistake and did not
+  correct it; so it happened that she dined at the same table with the
+  guests, and the incident, it is said, excited considerable horror
+  among people of the old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how
+  utterly uncivilized, is such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute
+  each other, but it seems inconceivable that a man and a gentleman
+  could have entertained such a sentiment.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  300]</span>
+
+  <p>Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball,
+  only there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales,
+  and to a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and
+  make a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil.
+  &quot;The Prince,&quot; as he is commonly called, takes advantage of
+  the suppers at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule
+  is, let me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you
+  before speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to
+  turn away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the
+  interview yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always
+  expected to call him &quot;Sir.&quot; The queen is addressed as
+  &quot;Ma&#39;am.&quot; It is not understood in this country that to
+  call a man &quot;sir&quot; is a confession of your inferiority to
+  him. But it is so in England, and the fact illustrates the strong
+  hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms have upon the British
+  mind. No gentleman in England says &quot;sir&quot; to another, unless
+  it be a very young person to an old one. [A] A subordinate in an
+  office might &quot;sir&quot; a superior, but he would not
+  &quot;sir&quot; a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he
+  had no connection. &quot;Sir&quot; is the term applied by any
+  Englishman of whatever rank to a member of the royal family. Our
+  committees, when princes visit America, usually address them in notes
+  as &quot;Your Royal Highness.&quot; But &quot;Your Royal
+  Highness&quot; is not a vocative: it can be used only in the third
+  person. However, the princes are then in America, and perhaps we are
+  under no obligation to know everything of their ways at home. Should
+  the reader ever meet a prince in that prince&#39;s country, I should
+  advise him to do just as other people do there. He will probably
+  question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the implied
+  inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore action is
+  to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously decided
+  from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not the
+  prince&#39;s fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
+  and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
+  Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his
+  equality. The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he
+  probably has thought through the mistake under which the republican
+  stranger is laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an
+  American may reflect that he will probably have very little in life
+  to do with princes, and that his interview with a prince has been an
+  &quot;experience.&quot; It would be about as foolish to assert
+  one&#39;s dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the Matterhorn.<a id=
+  "footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a> <a href=
+  "#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen&#39;s and
+  prince of Wales&#39;s breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off
+  about 3 P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the
+  court entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season,
+  and out of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited.
+  There are certain persons who are always invited, and others who are
+  eligible and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic
+  corps are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or
+  two secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a
+  queen&#39;s breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of
+  legation can touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the
+  minister himself only goes once a year, and he &quot;not without
+  shedding of blood.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one,
+  and anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light
+  trousers. The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now
+  compelled to wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs
+  a word of mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited,
+  somewhat prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know
+  very little. Congress, at a <span class="pagenum">[pg 301]</span>
+  distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought itself competent
+  to decide what sort of court dress an American diplomatist should
+  wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward a measure, and,
+  once proposed, it was certain to go through, because to oppose its
+  passage would have been to be aristocratic and un-American. Mr.
+  Sumner&#39;s bill required Americans to go in the &quot;ordinary
+  dress of an American citizen.&quot; There was no attempt to indicate
+  what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had worn the
+  uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other countries.
+  This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon it, white
+  breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.</p>
+
+  <p>An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
+  interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued a
+  circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
+  uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
+  the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
+  consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
+  the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
+  fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
+  United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
+  distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
+  government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
+  and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
+  which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
+  far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. &quot;Tell
+  that very distinguished personage,&quot; said Mr. Buchanan,
+  &quot;that not only will I wear a sword, as she requests, but, should
+  occasion require it, will hold myself ready to draw it in her
+  defence.&quot; This strikes me as in just that tone of respectful
+  exaggeration and playful acquiescence which a gentleman in this
+  country may very becomingly take toward the whole question. Neither
+  Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe, heeded the request of the
+  Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is said, subsequently
+  repudiated it.</p>
+
+  <p>But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr.
+  Marcy&#39;s time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe
+  how very uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
+  of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
+  unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
+  exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and
+  the khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable
+  people at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody
+  else is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
+  exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
+  scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the
+  secretaries said to me: &quot;I am afraid to wander off by myself
+  among these ladies: they inspect me as the maids of honor in the
+  palace of Brobdingnag did Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel
+  mother who won&#39;t dress me like these other little boys.&quot; It
+  would require more than ordinary courage to attempt to dance in this
+  rig. I should think that our representatives would huddle together in
+  the most unconspicuous portion of a room, and never leave it. Said
+  the secretary above quoted: &quot;I always feel here that I am of
+  some use to my chief: I am one more pair of legs with which to divide
+  the gaze of British society.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a
+  plain dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
+  slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
+  &quot;ordinary dress of an American citizen.&quot; The dress is not
+  so ugly as it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest
+  and liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not
+  so excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party
+  given in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to
+  the Empress Eugenie&#39;s private parties came got up in <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 302]</span> that manner. But in London it was not till
+  recently that American diplomatists were allowed to go to court even
+  thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe the legations were admitted
+  in evening dress, the concession of knee-breeches not having been
+  required. But at Buckingham Palace there are two or three very old
+  men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria was a baby, and who still
+  control the court etiquette. These aged functionaries, who can very
+  well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers remembered the American
+  Revolution, put down their foot, and would admit no Americans without
+  the proper garments. The consequence was, that our legation was
+  compelled to stay at home. This state of things continued until
+  Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called &quot;the
+  Breeches Protocol.&quot; Owing to the unreasonable state of the
+  public mind during his term of office, this was the only measure
+  which that good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The
+  compromise which Mr. Johnson&#39;s good-humor and the friendly
+  impulse of the British public toward us at that time wrung from these
+  ancient chamberlains and gold-sticks (for you may say what you will,
+  public opinion is irresistible), was to allow the minister and the
+  two secretaries of legation to appear in the breeches above
+  described. Americans who are presented at court, and who get
+  invitations to the festivities, are all required to wear a court
+  dress. Of what good compelling the poor diplomatists to make
+  scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know. Mr. Sumner&#39;s
+  proposition was just one of those absurdities to which men are liable
+  who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor. Senators and
+  Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be un-American,
+  and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or (in matters
+  of this sort) very scrupulous.</p>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b> <a href=
+    "#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>[The rule, more correctly stated, is, that &quot;sir&quot; is
+    never used except to indicate a difference of age or position so
+    great as to forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social
+    equality. It may be employed by the elder in addressing the
+    younger, and by the superior in addressing the inferior, as well as
+    <i>vice versa</i>. Hence the saying, in English society, that only
+    princes and servants are spoken to as &quot;sir.&quot;]</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <h2><a name="rambles" id="rambles"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> RAMBLES
+  AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.</h2><a name=
+  "ramblesconclud" id="ramblesconclud"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CONCLUDING PAPER.</h3>
+
+  <p>An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
+  Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
+  the most splendid of Oriental cities.</p>
+
+  <p>Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
+  <i>nárcodah</i> (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel
+  Barrie. He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always
+  to mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
+  had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
+  Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
+  day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so we
+  had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
+  Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
+  and we were set down on the Barrie&#39;s quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
+  sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was
+  weighed.</p>
+
+  <p>The monsoon was favorable, and seven days&#39; sail brought us to
+  the river&#39;s mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the
+  nárcodah&#39;s boat to the &quot;city of kings.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the
+  abundance, variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are
+  found those of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being
+  transplanted to this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in
+  this fruitful soil far more productive than in the <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 303]</span> sterile regions of Persia and Arabia; while
+  numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
+  united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
+  list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
+  clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
+  productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
+  The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
+  millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late
+  &quot;second king&quot; of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a
+  single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several
+  different stages. Thus, at the merest trifle of expense a table may
+  be supplied during the entire year with forty or fifty specimens of
+  fresh, ripe fruit. Among these are many varieties of oranges and
+  pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks, pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains,
+  durians, jack-fruit, melons, grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts,
+  pomegranates, soursaps, linchies, custard-apples, breadfruit,
+  cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds, mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of
+  others for which we have no names in our language. Tropical fruits
+  are generally juicy, sweet with a slight admixture of acid, luscious,
+  and peculiarly agreeable in a warm climate; and when partaken of with
+  temperance and due regard to quality they are highly promotive of
+  health. For this reason Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit
+  tree as quite an act of sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a
+  heavy malediction on those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One
+  who has tasted the fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the
+  soil that produces them can form no conception of the real flavor of
+  plums and grapes that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our
+  northern clime; of oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and
+  eaten fresh while the morning dew still glitters on their
+  golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare, rosy pomegranate juice, luscious
+  as nectar.</p>
+
+  <p>After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at
+  the head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance.
+  The fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
+  a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
+  half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three
+  species of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the <i>Garania
+  mangostina</i>, is the fruit edible. The others are valuable for
+  timber, and the bark for the manufacture of a dye that resists the
+  attacks of every sort of insect.</p>
+
+  <p>Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (<i>Anona
+  squamosa</i>), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions
+  of a medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its
+  apex directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black
+  seed. The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked
+  custard, and in flavor very like strawberries and cream.</p>
+
+  <p>The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
+  larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
+  (<i>Nephelium lappaceum</i>) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but
+  when the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent
+  pulp is revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that
+  a blind man would be unable to distinguish them.</p>
+
+  <p>Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but
+  are in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
+  four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
+  bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
+  delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
+  had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
+  harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the
+  trouble he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should
+  not be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the
+  price demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
+  ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
+  medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
+  sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for
+  extortion.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 304]</span>
+
+  <p>One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit
+  (<i>Artocarpus integrifolia</i>), growing in all its immensity of
+  thirty or forty pounds weight directly out of the largest branches or
+  on the stem of the huge tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green
+  coat: internally, it has a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are
+  embedded a dozen or more smooth, oval seeds about the size of large
+  chestnuts, which they strikingly resemble in flavor.</p>
+
+  <p>The mango (<i>Mangifera Indica</i>) is a drupe of the plum kind,
+  four or five inches long, and three at least in diameter.
+  Greenish-colored outside, and not very inviting, you are most
+  agreeably surprised at the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow
+  pulp that adheres like the clinging peach to a large flat seed.</p>
+
+  <p>The gamboge tree (<i>Stalagmitis Cambogioides</i>) grows
+  luxuriantly in Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed
+  leaves, a yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even
+  the stem has a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is
+  obtained by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves
+  and young shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white
+  foreigners for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced
+  into Europe early in the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+  <p>The plantain (<i>Musa paradisaica</i>) is one of the best gifts of
+  Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
+  many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
+  as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
+  palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
+  the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked
+  fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a
+  green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to
+  about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of
+  the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
+  flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
+  beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
+  glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
+  breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
+  around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
+  leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till
+  there come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred
+  plantains, weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth
+  bunch is the sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit
+  is plucked the stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same
+  root; and it is thus constantly renewed for many successive years.
+  The incalculable blessing of such a tree in regions where the
+  intolerable heat renders all labor oppressive may be conceived from
+  the estimate of Humboldt, who reckons the surface of ground needed to
+  the production of four thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice
+  for the raising of only thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine
+  pounds of potatoes. What would induce the indolent East Indian to
+  make the exchange of crops?</p>
+
+  <p>The cassew-nut (<i>Anacardium occidentale</i>) is remarkable as
+  the only known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A
+  full-grown tree is twenty feet high, with graceful form and
+  widespread branches. The leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson
+  flowers grow in clusters. The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish
+  color outside and bright yellow within; and the seed, which is in the
+  form of a crescent, looks just as if it had been stuck on the bur
+  end, instead of growing there. When roasted the kernels are not
+  unlike a very fine chestnut.</p>
+
+  <p>The guava (<i>Psidium pomiferum</i>), of which the noted Indian
+  jelly is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar
+  pears&#8212;pale, yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when
+  opened, a soft, rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste
+  and odor are very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till
+  after long use.</p>
+
+  <p>The tamarind tree (<i>Tamarindus Indicus</i>), <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 305]</span> a huge growth, with trunk a hundred feet
+  tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches extending
+  widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite leaves, very
+  nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The flowers, growing
+  in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint veined with red;
+  while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung all over the
+  branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves, blossoms and
+  fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth as to appear
+  almost ludicrous, yet the <i>tout ensemble</i> is &quot;a thing of
+  beauty&quot; never to be forgotten.</p>
+
+  <p>It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
+  plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
+  every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps&#39; estate, one of
+  the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
+  acres, including three picturesque hills&#8212;Mount Sophia, Mount
+  Emily and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty
+  bungalow&#8212;and from these avenues radiate, intersecting every
+  portion of the plantation. Here were planted some five thousand
+  nutmeg trees, and perhaps a thousand of the clove, besides coffee
+  trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg is an evergreen of great beauty,
+  conical in shape, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in height, the
+  branches thickly decorated with polished, deep-green foliage rising
+  from the ground to the summit. Almost hidden among these emerald
+  leaves grows the pear-shaped fruit. As it ripens the yellow external
+  tegument opens, revealing the dark-red mace, that is closely
+  enwrapped about a thin black shell. This, in turn, encloses a
+  fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce. Both leaf and blossom are
+  marked by the same aromatic perfume that distinguishes the fruit.</p>
+
+  <p>The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
+  similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
+  beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure
+  white and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every
+  branch and twig almost to the summit of the tree. The
+  cloves&#8212;&quot;spice nails,&quot; as they are often
+  called&#8212;are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem being
+  the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as we
+  see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass in
+  curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
+  transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
+  in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in
+  Singapore, Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan
+  Archipelago.</p>
+
+  <p>One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget
+  to mention&#8212;the flat peach, called by the Chinese <i>ping
+  taou</i>, or &quot;peach cake.&quot; It has the appearance of having
+  been flattened by pressure at the head and stalk, being something
+  less than three-fourths of an inch through the centre from eye to
+  stem, and consisting wholly of the stone and skin; while the sides,
+  which swell around the centre, are only an eighth of an inch in
+  thickness. Its transverse diameter is about two and a half
+  inches.</p>
+
+  <p>The camphor tree (<i>Laurus camphora</i>) grows abundantly in
+  China and Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that
+  supplies the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the
+  trunks and chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the
+  ravages of moths and the still more destructive white ant of the
+  tropics. This tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a
+  circumference of about eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from
+  seven to nine feet in girth. In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered
+  branches are cut in small pieces, and steeped in water for several
+  days, after which they are boiled, the liquid being constantly
+  stirred until the gum, in the form of a white jelly, begins to
+  appear, when the whole is poured into a glazed vessel, and becomes
+  concreted in cooling. It is afterward purified by means of
+  sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a conical cover placed over
+  the boiling liquid while at its greatest heat. There is another
+  species of camphor tree (<i>Dryobalanops camphora</i>) growing in
+  Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 306]</span> Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even
+  amid the huge growth of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this
+  species is found occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a
+  half in the heart of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep
+  incision in the trunk about fifteen inches from the ground with a
+  <i>b&#39;ling</i> or Malayan axe, in order to ascertain whether the
+  gum is there; and when it is found the tree is felled and the
+  impregnated portion carefully extracted. The same tree, while young,
+  yields a liquid oily matter that has nearly the same properties as
+  the camphor, and is supposed to be the first stage of its formation.
+  Some eight China catties (eleven pounds) of this oil may be obtained
+  from a medium-sized tree, which, after having been cut off for the
+  purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if left standing for a few
+  years, produce abundantly an inferior article of camphor.</p>
+
+  <p>In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
+  beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
+  color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
+  hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
+  crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
+  incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
+  these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
+  by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
+  opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
+  the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
+  purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
+  gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.</p>
+
+  <p>The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse
+  under which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an
+  opium shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds
+  its victims fast bound&#8212;mind, heart, soul and conscience, all
+  absolutely dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing
+  thirst for the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once,
+  but I can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that
+  &quot;place of torment.&quot; The apartment was spacious, and might
+  have been pleasant but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of
+  unutterable woe&#8212;the footprints of sin trodden deep in the
+  furrows of those haggard faces and emaciated forms. On all four sides
+  of the room were couches placed thickly against the walls, and others
+  were scattered over the apartment wherever there was room for them.
+  On each of these lay extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some
+  few were old&#8212;all were hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and
+  cadaverous countenances; many were clothed in rags, having probably
+  smoked away their last dollar; while others were offering to pawn
+  their only decent garment for an additional dose of the deadly drug.
+  A decrepit old man raised himself as we entered, drew a long sigh,
+  and then with a half-uttered imprecation on his own folly proceeded
+  to refill his pipe. This he did by scraping off, with a five-inch
+  steel needle, some opium from the lid of a tiny shell box, rolling
+  the paste into a pill, and then, after heating it in the blaze of a
+  lamp, depositing it within the small aperture of his pipe. Several
+  short whiffs followed; then the smoker would remove the pipe from his
+  mouth and lie back motionless; then replace the pipe, and with
+  fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke slowly through his pallid nostrils.
+  As the narcotic effects of the opium began to work he fell back on
+  the couch in a state of silly stupefaction that was alike pitiable
+  and disgusting. Another smoker, a mere youth, lay with face buried in
+  his hands, and as he lifted his head there was a look of despair such
+  as I have seldom seen. Though so young, he was a complete wreck, with
+  hollow eyes, sunken chest and a nervous twitching in every muscle. I
+  spoke to him, and learned that six months before he had lost his
+  whole patrimony by gambling, and came hither to quaff forgetfulness
+  from these Lethean cups; hoping, he said, to find death as well as
+  oblivion. By far the larger proportion of the smokers were so
+  entirely under the <span class="pagenum">[pg 307]</span> influence of
+  the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and
+  we passed out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought
+  of these infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving
+  families at home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given
+  up, and from three to five years&#39; indulgence will utterly wreck
+  the firmest constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated,
+  the eyes more sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the
+  brain ceases to perform its functions, and death places its seal on
+  the wasted life.</p>
+
+  <p>On &quot;Araby&#39;s plains&quot; I saw for the first time the
+  beautiful wild palm, the &quot;lighthouse of the desert,&quot; always
+  an object of intense desire to the weary traveler as he traverses
+  those sterile regions, for as it looms up in the distance, sometimes
+  in groups, but more generally standing in solitary grandeur near a
+  tiny bubbling spring, its waving plumes tell him not only of shelter
+  and needed rest, but of water also to bathe his tired limbs and
+  quench the burning thirst that oppresses him almost to death. Should
+  the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he will find food also&#8212;a
+  dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome and
+  nourishing&#8212;ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
+  traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
+  and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
+  Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap,
+  gather the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of
+  the plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus
+  improving the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty
+  or more varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
+  seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
+  delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
+  Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
+  the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year by
+  keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
+  Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
+  until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
+  ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across
+  the deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried
+  and needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water,
+  and so eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined
+  to the fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn
+  from the trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent
+  timber; the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous
+  part, when stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are
+  of use&#8212;the fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to
+  account&#8212;in Egypt for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture
+  of Indian ink, and in Spain for making the tooth-powder known as
+  &quot;ivory black.&quot; The date is indigenous to both Asia and
+  Africa: it was introduced into Spain by the Moors, and some few trees
+  are still found even in the south of France. But the most extensive
+  forests are those of the Barbary states, where they are sometimes
+  miles in length. When growing thus in groves the palms are very
+  beautiful, their towering crests waving in unison as they seem to
+  form an immense natural temple, about which vines and creepers wreath
+  their graceful tendrils, while birds of varied plumage sing their
+  matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile the golden fruit that
+  grows in clusters at the very summit of the tree. The Arabs&#39; mode
+  of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The trunk, sixty feet high,
+  has not, it must be remembered, a single branch to hold on by or
+  furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole stem is rough with thick
+  scales or horny protuberances, not very pleasant to the touch of
+  fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed across the climber&#39;s
+  back and under his armpits, and then, after being passed around the
+  tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The rope is next
+  placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of an old leaf,
+  while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits toward the
+  middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 308]</span> the shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then
+  with hands and knees he firmly grasps the trunk, and raises himself a
+  few inches higher; when, still holding fast by knees and feet and one
+  hand, he with the other slips the rope a little higher up the tree,
+  letting it rest on another of these horny protuberances, and so on
+  till the summit is gained. When the fruit is reached it is easily
+  plucked with one hand, while the gatherer maintains his position with
+  the other, and the clusters are thrown down into a large cloth held
+  at the corners by four persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The far-famed banian or Indian fig (<i>Ficus Indica</i>) is
+  perhaps the grandest of tropical trees&#8212;the most beautiful of
+  Nature&#39;s products, even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the
+  sun&#39;s rays, where she sports with such profusion and variety,
+  clothing the earth in gorgeous flowers, variegated mosses and
+  feathery ferns, till it seems to groan beneath the manifold treasures
+  of beauty and fragrance lavished thereon. This noble tree grows wild
+  in many Eastern countries and islands, and sometimes attains to a
+  size and an extent that are marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are
+  everywhere thrown out toward the ground from the horizontal branches,
+  increasing in size as they tend downward, till at last they strike
+  into the ground and become stems. From these shoot new branches,
+  which in their turn extend and form roots and new stems, till at
+  length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove,
+  appropriately characterized by the bard as &quot;a pillared shade
+  high overarched.&quot; And as they are thus continually increasing,
+  seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny
+  sapling borne to the spot in an infant&#39;s hand may come in time to
+  cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the noted Cubber
+  Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda,
+  near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful tree, named
+  after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that exceeds two
+  thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number three or
+  four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand, though
+  some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away not
+  only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
+  itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
+  over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
+  branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
+  repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
+  <i>seven thousand</i> people could find ample shelter under its
+  widespread branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming
+  hunting or shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks
+  together beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were
+  frolicsome monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks,
+  wood-pigeons and singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the
+  thick foliage, and plentiful sustenance from the small,
+  scarlet-colored figs that hang pendent from every branch. The banian
+  tree may be regarded as a natural temple in Oriental regions, and the
+  Hindoos especially look upon it with profound veneration. Tiny,
+  fancifully-adorned temples and pagodas are erected beneath its
+  shadowy boughs, where are pleasant walks and long vistas of
+  umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from the fierce rays of the
+  tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire lives within these
+  quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek them for rest and
+  recreation. The banian is styled also &quot;the tree of
+  councils,&quot; from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
+  magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
+  civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
+  tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It is
+  indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
+  legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
+  the Cubber Burr&#39;s sheltering boughs with a merry party of
+  picnicking maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves
+  to roam among its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy
+  windings of the hoary banian of Nerbudda&#39;s isle.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  309]</span> <a name="lotos" id="lotos"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A LOTOS OF THE NILE.</h2>
+
+  <p>It was nine o&#39;clock on a night of clear July starlight. The
+  heat of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows
+  were assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool,
+  if such a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed,
+  however, for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless,
+  and the fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible
+  approach to a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the
+  river was distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky
+  bed, distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim,
+  mysterious look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White
+  dresses, shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and
+  then the glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it
+  was even possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were
+  the only clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with
+  light streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and
+  globe-like lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming
+  effect.</p>
+
+  <p>Everybody had been silent for some time&#8212;that is, for half a
+  minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances&#8212;when
+  Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s voice broke the stillness. &quot;Oh for a whiff
+  of mountain-air or a sea-breeze!&quot; she said. &quot;I came to
+  spend two weeks with you, dear Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a
+  month&#8212;who ever <i>did</i> leave The Willows when they meant to
+  do so?&#8212;but I really must be thinking of taking flight. Suppose
+  we get up a party for the White Sulphur?&#8212;it is always so
+  tiresome to go away by one&#39;s self. Who will join it? Eleanor,
+  will you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not going to the White Sulphur this year,&quot;
+  answered Eleanor Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not going to the White Sulphur!&quot; repeated Mrs.
+  Lancaster in a tone of surprise. Then she laughed. &quot;How stupid I
+  am!&quot; she said. &quot;Of course I might have known that the
+  temptation to break the pledge of total abstinence from flirtation
+  would be too great in that paradise of flirtation. Besides, Mr.
+  Brent&#39;s yacht is homeward bound, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr.
+  Brent&#39;s yacht and my decision about the White Sulphur,&quot;
+  answered Miss Milbourne haughtily. Then she turned to the person next
+  her, a recumbent figure lying at full length on the grass. &quot;I
+  don&#39;t know anything of which one grows so weary as of
+  watering-place life when one has seen much of it,&quot; she said.
+  &quot;Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip, all
+  oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don&#39;t think I shall ever
+  go to a watering-place again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take care!&quot; said the recumbent. &quot;Don&#39;t make an
+  abstinence pledge of that kind: you will only be tempted to break it,
+  for what will you do with yourself in summer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense
+  desire to see the world and the wonders thereof.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With a yacht such a desire would be easily
+  gratified.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have no yacht,&quot; said she with a sharp chord in
+  her voice. It was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly
+  expressive in this dim, mysterious starlight.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to
+  place it at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a
+  fleet it should be subject to your command.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are very generous,&quot; said she; and now there was a
+  little ripple as of pleasure in her tone.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
+  like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 310]</span> recruits for the White Sulphur. &quot;Major
+  Clare!&quot; she said at last: &quot;where is Major Clare?&quot;
+  Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne his airy
+  fleet responded lazily, &quot;Here!&quot; she added, &quot;<i>You</i>
+  will go, will you not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I regret to say that it is impossible,&quot; he answered.
+  &quot;I have danced my last <i>galop</i> at the White Sulphur. This
+  time next month I shall probably be <i>en route</i> for
+  Egypt.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For Egypt!&quot; she repeated; and a chorus of voices
+  instantly echoed the exclamation. &quot;For Egypt! Nonsense! You are
+  jesting.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I am not jesting,&quot; said Victor Clare, lifting
+  himself on one elbow: &quot;I am in earnest. I received a letter from
+  &#8212;&#8212;&quot; (naming a distinguished officer) &quot;to-day,
+  offering me a position if I would join him in Cairo. I say nothing
+  about what the position is, because my mind is not yet made up to
+  accept it; and even if it were, such things should not be published
+  on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a fancy for joining the
+  army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a few important
+  particulars.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under
+  Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies
+  shrugged their shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare
+  sank back in the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;There is nothing else for me to do,&quot; he said in an
+  argumentative tone. &quot;I only waste money on the impoverished
+  acres of that old place of mine. The house itself is falling down
+  over my head. What remains, then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune
+  to do her best&#8212;or worst? At least the profession of arms has
+  been in all ages the calling of a gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the
+  starlight a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan
+  with a slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to
+  answer. But at last she spoke in a very low tone: &quot;Yet you said
+  you had not decided.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in
+  idleness and indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared
+  enough about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot
+  bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a
+  penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments.
+  If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart
+  speculator owned the old place.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think it would,&quot; said Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, it would <i>not</i>&quot; was the obstinate reply.
+  &quot;I should take care to find a lotos as soon as I reached the
+  Nile. Whoever eats of that forgets his past life, you know. I have
+  scant reason for wishing to remember mine,&quot; he added a little
+  bitterly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Memory is certainly more often a sting than a
+  pleasure,&quot; said Miss Milbourne. &quot;It is strange,&quot; she
+  added, &quot;that we should both have thought of obtaining
+  forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr. Brent asked me what he
+  should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of the Nile. If he
+  fulfills his promise I will share it with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for
+  forgetfulness to Mr. Brent,&quot; said Victor Clare ungratefully.</p>
+
+  <p>He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and
+  would have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she
+  desired to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already
+  turned to her neighbor on the other side and plunged into
+  conversation. &quot;Is it not strange that Egypt should be waking
+  from her sleep of centuries?&quot; she said; and&#8212;while the
+  gentleman whom she addressed took up the theme readily&#8212;Mrs.
+  Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to where Victor Clare
+  was lying.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk,&quot; she said.
+  &quot;I think the policeman&#39;s motto is right&#8212;&#39;Keep
+  moving.&#39; When one stops to think about anything, even about the
+  heat, it makes it worse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by
+  a <span class="pagenum">[pg 311]</span> pretty woman who stands
+  imperiously over him, the chances are that he obeys. So it was with
+  Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go with Mrs. Lancaster, and
+  quite as assuredly he <i>did</i> want to stay just where he was, with
+  the hem of Eleanor Milbourne&#39;s dress touching him and a pervading
+  sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged stupid people to
+  expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question. Yet he found himself
+  walking away with the pretty widow before five minutes had
+  passed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know you are not obliged to me,&quot; she said when they
+  had gone some distance. &quot;But your divinity is talking
+  commonplaces, or listening to them, which amounts to the same thing;
+  so I fancied you might spare me ten minutes. I want to know if that
+  was a mere assertion for effect a minute ago, or if you are in
+  earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I never talk for effect,&quot; said Victor with a hauteur
+  that was spoilt by a slight touch of petulance. &quot;I always mean
+  what I say, and I certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to
+  Egypt.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;May I ask why?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am surprised that you should need to ask. One&#39;s
+  friends usually know one&#39;s affairs at least as well as one&#39;s
+  self&#8212;sometimes much better. Everybody who knows me knows that I
+  am a poor man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a
+  fortune, however,&quot; said she, stopping short and looking at him
+  keenly. &quot;Confess,&quot; she added, &quot;that you are about to
+  expatriate yourself in this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne
+  means to marry Marston Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your acuteness has carried you too far,&quot; said he
+  laughing, but not quite naturally. &quot;Miss Milbourne&#39;s
+  matrimonial choice is nothing to me. I have thought of this step for
+  some time. General &#8212;&#8212;&#39;s letter is a reply to my
+  application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the answer has
+  come,&quot; he went on, &quot;I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
+  it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
+  inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound &#39;Boots and
+  saddle&#39; again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why rust out?&quot; she asked impetuously. &quot;Are
+  there not careers enough open to you?&quot; Then, after a minute,
+  &quot;Are there not other women in the world besides Eleanor
+  Milbourne?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps so,&quot; a little doggedly. &quot;There are other
+  stars in the heavens besides Venus, but who sees them when she is
+  above the horizon?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How kind and complimentary you are!&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lancaster with a slight tone of bitterness in her voice.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Forgive me,&quot; said he after a minute. &quot;I am a fool
+  on this subject, and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No
+  doubt there are other women in the world even more beautiful and more
+  charming than Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In other words, you are determined to believe that the
+  grapes above your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in
+  existence.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it
+  is an hallucination.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you may harm yourself more than you imagine,&quot; said
+  she with a nervous cadence, in her voice. &quot;For the sake of a
+  hopeless passion for a woman who has no more heart than my fan you
+  will sacrifice more than you are aware of&#8212;more, perhaps, than
+  you can ever regain.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She laid her hand&#8212;a pretty, white hand, gleaming with
+  jewels&#8212;on his arm at the last words, and it was fortunate,
+  perhaps, that she could not tell with what an effort he restrained
+  himself from shaking it impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion
+  came over him like an electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat
+  flattered, somewhat amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by
+  the favor which the beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly
+  accorded him; but now in a second he felt that thrill of disgust
+  which always comes to a sensitive man when he sees a woman step
+  beyond the pale of delicate womanhood. If he had been one shade less
+  of a gentleman, he would have said <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  312]</span> something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have
+  forgotten. As it was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak
+  carelessly. &quot;I was never quick at reading riddles,&quot; he
+  said. &quot;I am unable to imagine what sacrifice I should make by
+  indulging the &#39;hopeless passion&#39; for Miss Milbourne with
+  which you are kind enough to credit me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With which I credit you?&quot; she repeated eagerly.
+  &quot;Am I wrong, then? If you can tell me <i>that</i>,
+  Victor&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But he interrupted her quickly: &quot;You ought to know, Mrs.
+  Lancaster, that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to
+  one woman; but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject,
+  there is nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact
+  that, however hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is
+  the very essence of my life, and can only end with my life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very
+  much in love,&quot; said Mrs. Lancaster coolly&#8212;whatever stab
+  his words gave the kindly darkness hid&#8212;&quot;but I think you
+  are more than usually mad. If she is not already engaged to Marston
+  Brent, she will be as soon as he returns. I know that her family
+  confidently expect the match, and in any case&quot; (emphatically)
+  &quot;Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the world whom a
+  penniless man need hope to win.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know that as well as you do,&quot; said Clare. &quot;I
+  have no hope of winning her, and I am going to Egypt next
+  month.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject,
+  but it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
+  that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
+  attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
+  the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
+  standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who can have arrived?&quot; said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry,
+  perhaps, for a diversion. &quot;I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was
+  expecting any one.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who has come, Ellis?&quot; Victor said carelessly to a young
+  man who emerged from the house as they approached.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Marston Brent,&quot; was the answer. &quot;It seems the
+  Clytie made a very quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of
+  course her owner has come at once to report his safe arrival at
+  head-quarters.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare&#39;s arm, felt the
+  quick start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet
+  woman, and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah
+  steps and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back
+  to Claremont.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I understand why you will not remain,&quot; she said;
+  &quot;but do not make any rash resolution about Egypt&#8212;above
+  all, do not <i>commit</i> yourself to anything.&quot; Then she bent
+  forward and touched his hand lightly. &quot;Tell me when you come
+  again that you will join my party for the White Sulphur,&quot; she
+  said softly. &quot;It will be the wisest thing you can do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
+  reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
+  down and wrote to General &#8212;&#8212;, accepting the position he
+  had offered, and promising to report in Cairo as soon as
+  possible.</p>
+
+  <p>After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier
+  was seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during
+  this interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to
+  banish all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from
+  his mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was
+  impossible to say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting
+  Eleanor Milbourne with her accepted lover by her side, or from the
+  thrill of disgust with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster
+  inspired him. He buried himself in listless idleness at Claremont for
+  some time: then ordered his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town
+  and made arrangements for the sale of his property with much the same
+  feeling as if he had ordered the execution of his mother. It was when
+  he returned weary and depressed from this <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  313]</span> excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
+  awaiting him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;DEAR MAJOR CLARE&quot; (it ran), &quot;why have you forsaken
+  us? We have looked for you, wished for you and talked of you for
+  days, but you seem to have determined that we shall learn the full
+  meaning of the verb &#39;to disappoint.&#39; Will you not come over
+  to dinner to-day? I think you have played hermit quite long
+  enough.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Truly yours, L.M.B.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
+  saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
+  glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
+  leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
+  long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
+  Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from
+  the only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should
+  have some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every
+  inquisitive fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him.
+  Why should he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter
+  in Egypt. As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe
+  distance from <i>her</i>, even if she had not gone to the White
+  Sulphur, as he hoped to heaven she had.</p>
+
+  <p>This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person
+  whom he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The
+  Willows was the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits,
+  not to mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most
+  becoming mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found
+  himself gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid
+  to Mrs. Brantley&#8212;a fact which may serve as a small proof of the
+  weakness of man&#39;s resolve, and his general inability to fight
+  against fate, especially when it is embodied in a woman&#39;s bright
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What have you been doing with yourself?&quot; she asked
+  after the first salutations were over. &quot;Have you been taking
+  counsel with solitude on the Egyptian question? Or have you decided
+  like a sensible man to go to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the
+  cause of your absence, you have at least been charitable in
+  furnishing us with a topic of conversation. I scarcely know what we
+  should have done without the &#39;Victor Clare disappearance,&#39; as
+  Mr. Ellis has called it, during the last week.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then,&quot; Clare
+  said, flushing and laughing. &quot;Assuredly I could not have
+  furnished you with a topic of conversation for a whole week if I had
+  been present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your
+  fate,&quot; she went on. &quot;One party has maintained that, rushing
+  away in desperation when you heard of Mr. Brent&#39;s arrival, you
+  started the next day for Suez; the other, that you were hanging about
+  the grounds, armed to the teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to
+  dare your rival to deadly combat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How kind one&#39;s friends are, to be sure, especially when
+  they are in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to
+  amuse themselves!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But what <i>have</i> you been doing? I should like to know,
+  if you do not object to telling me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have been very busy making my final arrangements for
+  leaving the country,&quot; answered he, stretching a point, it must
+  be owned.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are really going, then?&quot; she asked after a
+  minute&#39;s silence&#8212;a minute during which she was horribly
+  conscious that her changing countenance might readily have betrayed
+  to any looker-on how deeply she felt this unexpected blow.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wrote to General &#8212;&#8212; on the night I saw you
+  last, accepting his offer,&quot; Clare answered. &quot;Of course I am
+  in duty bound, therefore, to report in Cairo as soon as
+  possible.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you will sell Claremont?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have no alternative.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing more, but he saw <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  314]</span> her hand&#8212;the same white jeweled hand that had
+  gleamed on his arm in the starlight&#8212;go to her throat with a
+  quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion which
+  he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over him
+  now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
+  and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman&#39;s folly. He
+  appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
+  child of fortune all her life&#8212;a queen-regnant, to whom all
+  things must submit themselves&#8212;and he felt how bitter must be
+  this first sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on
+  which she had set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his
+  voice almost gentle when he spoke again: &quot;You must not think
+  that I am ungrateful for your kind interest in my behalf. You can
+  imagine, perhaps, how much I hate to part with Claremont, which has
+  been the seat of my family for generations; but when a thing must be
+  done there is no use in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my
+  life to a tradition of the past; and that would be what I should do
+  if I clung to the old place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp
+  stroke and swimming boldly out to sea.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you might stay if you would,&quot; said she with that
+  tremulous accent which the French call &quot;tears in the
+  voice.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I could <i>not</i> stay,&quot; said Clare resolutely.
+  &quot;I have no money, nor any means of making any in
+  America.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring
+  and willful as she was, could not say, &quot;<i>I</i> have
+  money&#8212;more than I know what to do with: take it.&quot; Her eyes
+  said as much, but Clare did not look at her eyes. A minute longer
+  passed in embarrassed silence. Then somebody came up, and Victor was
+  able to walk away. As he crossed the room he saw Eleanor Milbourne
+  for the first time since his arrival. He had not even inquired if she
+  was still at The Willows, and her unexpected appearance, for he had
+  begun to fear that she was gone, filled him with a rush of feelings
+  of which the first and most prominent was delight. After all, did it
+  matter whether or not she was engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to
+  look at her was enough to fill a man&#39;s soul with pleasure, to
+  steep him in that &quot;dewlight of repose&quot; which only a few
+  rare things on this earth of ours are capable of inspiring. Did any
+  sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when she held her court
+  all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he could not possess
+  her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not at all highflown
+  to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He had always
+  entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning the woman;
+  and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have held that
+  Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne. She was an
+  adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship from a
+  distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun himself in
+  the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in their
+  blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm and
+  bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
+  Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
+  hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
+  to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
+  satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
+  from Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
+  there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
+  neighborhood&#8212;a hill of considerable eminence known as
+  Farley&#39;s Mount&#8212;to the guests of The Willows. But it was
+  distant twelve miles, What did Major Clare think of their starting
+  early, breaking the ride by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then
+  going on to the mountain, making the ascent, and returning by
+  moonlight?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It will not do at all,&quot; said Victor. &quot;Twenty-four
+  miles is too much to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of
+  pleasure. You would break yourselves down and see nothing. I
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 315]</span> propose an amendment: Take two
+  days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If you have
+  never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth experiencing,
+  and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length, you know. Then
+  the sunrise is magnificent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That is exactly what we will do,&quot; cried Mrs. Brantley,
+  clapping her hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being
+  submitted to the company, was unanimously carried.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the
+  soft summer twilight on the lawn.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You should not press me so hard,&quot; she said as they
+  paced slowly to and fro. &quot;I fear I can never give you what you
+  desire, but I cannot tell yet. Grant me a little time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little time! But think how much time you have had!&quot;
+  the gentleman urged, not without reason. &quot;You said when I went
+  abroad that you were not sure enough of your heart to accept me then,
+  but that you would give me a final answer when I returned. You had
+  all the months of my absence to consider what this answer should be,
+  and when I came for it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying
+  on the road, I found that it was not ready for me&#8212;that I had
+  yet longer to wait. Eleanor, is this kind? is it even just?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is neither,&quot; said Eleanor, turning to him with a
+  strange deprecation on her fair proud face. &quot;I know that you
+  have been everything that is patient and generous, and I am
+  sorry&#8212;oh I am more than sorry&#8212;to have seemed to trifle
+  with you; but what can I do? Remember that when I decide, it is for
+  my whole life. You cannot doubt that I will hold fast to my promise
+  when it is once given.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above
+  all things.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you would not desire the letter without the
+  spirit?&quot; said she eagerly. &quot;I dare not bind myself&#8212;I
+  <i>dare</i> not&#8212;until I am certain of myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, good Heavens!&quot; said Marston Brent, who, although
+  usually the most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly
+  driven to vehemence, &quot;when do you mean to be certain of
+  yourself? Surely you have had time enough. Can you not love me,
+  Eleanor?&quot; he asked a little wistfully. &quot;If that is
+  it&#8212;if that is the doubt that holds you back&#8212;say so, and
+  let me go. Anything is better than suspense like this.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
+  a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
+  eyes. &quot;You are right,&quot; she said. &quot;This must end. I may
+  be weak and foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my
+  weakness and my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night
+  whether or not I can be your wife. You will give me till then, will
+  you not? It is the last delay I shall ask.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything
+  which I should not be glad to grant,&quot; said he, a little sadly.
+  &quot;For Heaven&#39;s sake, do not think of me as your
+  persecutor&#8212;do not force yourself to answer me at any given
+  time. I can wait.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You <i>have</i> waited,&quot; said she
+  gratefully&#8212;&quot;waited too long already. Do not encourage me
+  in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you to-morrow night my final
+  decision.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
+  Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather
+  unexpectedly, and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended
+  her hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your
+  friends, Major Clare?&quot; she said with a smile which was bright
+  but rather tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water.
+  &quot;You have not even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an
+  air as if you had said good-night to the rest of the
+  company.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So I have,&quot; answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly
+  from the pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of
+  her glance, &quot;but it is no fault of mine that I have not been
+  able to speak to you: I have found no
+  opportunity.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 316]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I thought you always said that; people made
+  opportunities when they desired to do so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a
+  general rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take
+  advantage of them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the
+  present,&quot; he added smiling.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I thought you were going home?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I <i>was</i> going home a minute ago, but so long as you
+  will let me talk to you I shall stay.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a very small favor to grant,&quot; said Eleanor,
+  blushing a little. &quot;But why were you leaving so early?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I
+  am not a &#39;young duke&#39; to pencil a line to my steward and know
+  that a princely collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a
+  hundred, or even for a dozen or two people.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; she asked, for though she caught the
+  allusion to Disraeli&#39;s rose-colored romance, the application
+  puzzled her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan,&quot; he
+  answered, and at once proceeded to detail it.</p>
+
+  <p>She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
+  gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall be glad to see your home,&quot; she said quietly.
+  &quot;I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is pretty, and it is old,&quot; said he, &quot;but it
+  will not be mine much longer. I am negotiating its sale
+  now.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She started: &quot;What! you were in earnest, then? You are really
+  going to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life
+  to offer me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find
+  action.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck
+  and startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up
+  and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. &quot;Oh
+  what a good thing it is to be a man!&quot; she said. &quot;How free
+  you are! how able to do what you please and go where you
+  please&#8212;to seek action and to find it! Oh, Major Clare, you
+  ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a
+  woman!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am glad, certainly, that I am a man,&quot; said Victor
+  honestly. &quot;But you are the last woman in the world from whom I
+  should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not rebellious,&quot; said Eleanor more quietly.
+  &quot;What is the good of it? All the rebellion in the world could
+  not make me a man; and I have no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But
+  nobody was ever more weary of conventional routine, nobody ever
+  longed more for freedom and action than I do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was on the end of Victor&#39;s tongue to say, &quot;Then come
+  with me to Egypt,&quot; but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to
+  imagine that &quot;the beautiful Miss Milbourne&quot;&#8212;a woman
+  at whose feet the most desirable matches of &quot;society&quot; had
+  been laid&#8212;would end her brilliant career by marrying a soldier
+  of fortune, and expatriating herself from her country and her
+  kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor did not quite
+  understand, as he said: &quot;Where is your lotos? It ought to make
+  you more content with the things that be.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have it,&quot; Eleanor said with child-like simplicity.
+  &quot;Mr. Brent remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten
+  my promise to share it with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then,&quot; said he
+  quickly. &quot;Let us eat it together there. I should like to link
+  <i>you</i> even with my farewell to the past.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
+  understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of
+  Claremont&#8212;a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself
+  with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery,
+  despite certain significant signs of decay&#8212;when his guests
+  arrived in formidable procession. There was something of the
+  &quot;old school&quot; in his manner of welcoming them&#8212;a grace
+  and courtesy which struck more <span class="pagenum">[pg 317]</span>
+  than one of them as at once very perfect and very charming.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The man suits the house, does he not?&quot; said Mrs.
+  Brantley to Mrs. Lancaster. &quot;It is like a vintage of rare old
+  wine in an old bottle. We fancy that it has an aroma which it would
+  lose in a new cut-glass decanter.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners,&quot;
+  said Mrs. Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything
+  more. She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring
+  wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old
+  house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest,
+  so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne&#39;s statue-like face, so
+  insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the
+  viceroy of Egypt. The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her
+  hair before the quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which
+  the ladies had been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how
+  different things might be! She walked to a window which overlooked
+  the garden with its formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and
+  summer-houses of cedar. &quot;He will change his mind before the
+  month is out,&quot; she thought. &quot;A man cannot surrender all the
+  associations of his past and the home of his fathers without a
+  struggle.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however,
+  when, a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently
+  talking earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys,
+  and were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that
+  distance there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare;
+  neither was there another woman who walked with that free, stately
+  grace in a riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. &quot;If
+  she is engaged to Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to
+  such open flirtation as this,&quot; Mrs. Lancaster said between her
+  teeth. &quot;If he were not blind or mad, he might see that she is so
+  much in love with Victor that she would go with him to Egypt
+  to-morrow if he asked her to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says
+  that it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs.
+  Lancaster had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the
+  fairy-tale, and had followed the pair who had just passed out of
+  sight, she would have received an immediate proof of the truth of
+  this aphorism. They had paused in a square near the heart of the
+  garden&#8212;a green, shaded spot, in the centre of which an empty
+  basin bore witness to a departed fountain, though no pleasant murmur
+  of water had broken the stillness for many a long day. Round the
+  margin of this still ran a seat on which Eleanor sat down. Victor
+  remained standing before her. A lime tree near by cast a soft,
+  flickering shadow over them, and the tall hedges of evergreen which
+  enclosed the square made a sombre but effective background.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you
+  here,&quot; Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his
+  voice. &quot;But if you had courage enough to end the life which you
+  despise, to cut loose from all the ties which bind you in America,
+  and go with me to Egypt, <i>there</i> I might have a future and a
+  career for you to share&#8212;<i>there</i> at least, you would find
+  freedom and action and life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A flush came to Eleanor&#39;s cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly
+  in her eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it
+  fascination; but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly.
+  &quot;You are of my world,&quot; she said: &quot;you ought to know
+  better than that. I am not so brave as you think. I must do what is
+  expected of me, and I am expected to marry Marston Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Forget the world and come with me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I
+  would; but there are others of whom I must think.&quot; She was
+  silent for a moment, then looked up at him piteously. &quot;They have
+  sacrificed so much for me at home,&quot; she said, &quot;and they are
+  so proud of me. They hope, desire, count on this marriage: I cannot
+  disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself has been most kind and patient,
+  and he does <span class="pagenum">[pg 318]</span> not expect very
+  much. I am a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again he said, &quot;You can come with me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again she answered, &quot;It is impossible. Do you not see that it
+  is impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for
+  you to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to
+  marry a poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For
+  Heaven&#39;s sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can
+  do is to forget that we have ever talked of it at all.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth
+  could be harder for me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my
+  strength to do it. God only knows,&quot; putting her hand suddenly to
+  her face, &quot;how I shall live if I am <i>not</i> able to do
+  it.&quot; Then passionately, &quot;Why did you speak? Why did you
+  make the misery greater by dragging it to the light, so that we could
+  face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did you do it?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff
+  than other women,&quot; said he almost sternly. &quot;In my maddest
+  hours I never dreamed of speaking, until&#8212;what you said last
+  night. Thinking of that after I came home, I resolved to give you one
+  opportunity to break through the artificial trammels of your life,
+  and find the freedom you professed to desire. It was better to do
+  this, I thought, than to be tormented all my life by a regret, a
+  doubt, lest I had lost happiness where one bold stroke might have
+  gained it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And now that you have found that I am <i>not</i> brave, that
+  I am like all the other conventional women of my class, are you not
+  sorry that you have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of
+  you I cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it
+  is something to have faced it together&#8212;it is everything to know
+  that you love me, though you refuse to share my life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You must not say that,&quot; said she, starting and
+  shrinking as if from a blow. &quot;How can I venture to acknowledge
+  that I love you when I am going to marry Marston Brent?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Are</i> you going to marry him?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have I not told you so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the
+  square. Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and
+  indignant, without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable
+  the laws of society are with regard to women than to men. <i>He</i>
+  could put Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s fortune aside and go his way&#8212;to
+  Egypt or to the dogs&#8212;without anybody crying out against his
+  criminal folly, his criminal disregard of the duties and traditions
+  of his class. But if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent&#39;s
+  princely fortune aside and disappointed all her friends, what
+  remained to her but the bitter condemnation of those friends in
+  particular and of society in general?</p>
+
+  <p>When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
+  remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
+  by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
+  intense azure of the summer sky above.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let us go,&quot; she said. &quot;By prolonging this we only
+  give ourselves useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing
+  remains now but to forget; and that can best be done in silence.
+  Victor, let us go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
+  herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
+  her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
+  the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
+  Marston Brent&#39;s figure appeared at the end of the vista,
+  advancing toward them, and it was this apparition which first made
+  Clare speak: &quot;If you will not think me fanciful&#8212;I am sure
+  you will not think me presumptuous&#8212;promise me that before you
+  give that man his answer you will share the lotos with me of which
+  you have spoken. I may be superstitious, but I feel as if we
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 319]</span> shall gain new strength with
+  which to face the future after we have together renounced the
+  past.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She shook her head. &quot;I am not superstitious enough to think
+  that it will enable us to forget one pang,&quot; she said. &quot;But
+  if you desire it, I promise.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The
+  Willows set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a
+  little before sunset, making the ascent in time to see the
+  day-god&#39;s last radiance streaming over the fair, broad expanse of
+  country beneath them. There was a small cabin on the summit which was
+  to be devoted to the ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon
+  sparkling brightly the gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the
+  blankets with which they were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile,
+  the party, dividing into groups and pairs, were soon scattered here
+  and there, perched on the highest points of rock, enjoying the cool,
+  fresh air which came as a message of love from the glowing west, and
+  chattering like a chorus of magpies.</p>
+
+  <p>When the evening collation was over&#8212;a gypsy-like repast for
+  which every one seemed to have an excellent appetite&#8212;Mr. Brent
+  asked Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of
+  the mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain
+  what to say, Clare&#39;s voice spoke quietly at her side. &quot;Miss
+  Milbourne has an engagement with <i>me</i>,&quot; he said. &quot;I
+  fear you must defer the pleasure of admiring the moon in her society
+  for a little while, Mr. Brent.&quot; Then to Eleanor, &quot;Shall we
+  go now?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
+  naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some
+  slight irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It strikes me that Major Clare&#39;s manners decidedly lack
+  polish,&quot; he said with an air of grave reprehension. &quot;Is it
+  true, as I am told, that he is going to sell that fine old place
+  where we spent the day, and emigrate to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lancaster, who was standing near. &quot;But, whatever his folly may
+  be, I certainly do not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that
+  his manners need any improvement.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, &quot;You should not have spoken so
+  curtly to Mr. Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again,&quot;
+  Clare answered. &quot;Don&#39;t let us talk of him. I did not bring
+  you away to discuss anybody we have left behind, or anything of which
+  we have talked before. We are to be like immortals&#8212;to forget
+  the past and live only in the present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Round to a point from whence we can overlook
+  Claremont.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
+  mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent,
+  they sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From
+  this point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded
+  before. The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it,
+  lay like a panorama at their feet&#8212;shadowy woods melting into
+  blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields
+  rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a
+  spider&#39;s thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its
+  terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising
+  majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some
+  time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. &quot;How beautiful
+  you are!&quot; he said abruptly. &quot;I wish I had a picture of you
+  as you sit there now. It would be worth everything else in the world
+  to me. But perhaps, after all, the best pictures are those which are
+  taken on the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You have forgotten,&quot; said Eleanor, trying to smile,
+  &quot;that we are going to eat the lotos in order to efface all
+  pictures.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said he. &quot;I thought it was to enable us to
+  forget everything but the present, and this <i>is</i> the
+  present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But it will be the past in a little while,&quot; said she,
+  &quot;and we must forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we
+  <i>must</i> forget! <span class="pagenum">[pg 320]</span> They say
+  that all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do
+  that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with
+  something like a groan, &quot;Would to God I could die here and now,
+  or else that there <i>was</i> some spell by which one could make
+  memory a blank!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let us try the lotos,&quot; said Eleanor. &quot;See, I
+  brought it as you told me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
+  contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
+  Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
+  reverence. &quot;It came from Egypt,&quot; she said: then she added,
+  &quot;where you are going.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We will see if there is any magic in it,&quot; said
+  Clare.</p>
+
+  <p>So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them,
+  smiling a little sadly at each other as they did so.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, &#39;and all the
+  grounds round it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of
+  lilies which the Egyptians call lotos, in the water,&#39;&quot; said
+  Clare. &quot;He adds that this flower, especially the root of it, is
+  very sweet. If this is the same, it has certainly changed its flavor
+  since that time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not disagreeable,&quot; said Eleanor. &quot;But I fear
+  we shall not find the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the
+  lotos fruit that Homer and Tennyson have written.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an
+  Egyptian, aquatic; but since we desire to link <i>our</i> fancy with
+  the flower of the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins.
+  After all, we only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the
+  past on which we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed
+  resolve to leave the past behind us from this hour, and face our
+  future together?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of
+  replying she put her hand to her head. &quot;How strangely dizzy I
+  am!&quot; she said. &quot;Can it&#8212;do you think it can be the
+  lotos?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Dizzy!&quot; he repeated. &quot;Then I must take you from
+  the edge of this precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It
+  could not have been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me
+  lead you round the rock.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
+  strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
+  heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
+  he sank back against the rock.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you feel it too?&quot; she asked quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said slowly, putting his hand also to his
+  head. &quot;What can it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in
+  that plant? The lotos itself is harmless, either flower or fruit.
+  Eleanor, my darling!&quot; he cried with sudden alarm. &quot;Good
+  Heavens! what is the matter? How pale you look!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#8212;I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must
+  have been some poisonous plant,&quot; said she faintly. &quot;This
+  giddiness and numbness increase.&quot; Then she held out her hands
+  tremulously. &quot;Hold me,&quot; she said. &quot;The earth seems
+  slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it should be
+  fatal?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do not imagine such a thing,&quot; he said. &quot;It is
+  impossible! The plant has probably some narcotic property which
+  affects you temporarily. Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad
+  I was to have suffered you to eat it!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do not blame yourself,&quot; she said, clinging to him, her
+  fair head drooping heavily on his breast. &quot;It was I who spoke of
+  it&#8212;who sent for it&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
+  where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at
+  her face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before.
+  Partly this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of
+  the plant which they had shared between them <i>was</i>
+  fatal&#8212;one of the swift and terrible agents of death which
+  abound in the East&#8212;and a sense too horrible to be dwelt upon
+  came to him, warning him that aid, to avail at all, must be summoned
+  quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the
+  party were <span class="pagenum">[pg 321]</span> far from them. He
+  had purposely led his companion to this remote spot, where, even if
+  he had been able to raise his voice, there was none to hear. As for
+  leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk ten steps. He felt
+  sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he should reel and fall
+  like a drunken man.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
+  lessened the hope of its success&#8212;with every pulse-beat he felt
+  the awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
+  his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
+  losing hers.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My darling,&quot; he said, striving vainly to unclasp the
+  arms that clung to him, &quot;I must go&#8212;I must call assistance:
+  this may be more serious than I thought. Try to rouse yourself,
+  Eleanor: I must go!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! it was easy to say&#8212;it was awfully impossible to do.
+  Even when Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and
+  he strove to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the
+  requisite power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort
+  failed: he sank back hopelessly.</p>
+
+  <p>Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
+  to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
+  Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
+  girl beside him&#8212;the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to
+  his breast.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Eleanor,&quot; he said, &quot;it is hopeless. If this
+  <i>is</i> poison we must die! Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O
+  my God, send us help! Eleanor, can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not
+  speak to me?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself,
+  and the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like
+  eyes. The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July
+  heaven, shone full on her face as she said, &quot;Kiss me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were
+  cold.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a
+  fragment of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston
+  Brent had ignorantly plucked for a lotos.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">CHRISTIAN REID.</p><a name="echo" id="echo">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ECHO.</h2>
+
+  <h3>FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Roars there ever a beast in his forest den,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Hear we thunder in heaven, a horn among men,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On the hill sings a maiden now and then,&#8212;</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Sound what may,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Answer through space thou mak&#39;st again</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">With small delay.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Aware of the thunder&#39;s rattling roll,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of the winds and the waves when without control,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of the cries where the village shepherds stroll,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Reply thou giv&#39;st;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Yet thou thyself, without one answering soul,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">A poet liv&#39;st.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    A.J.
+  </center><span class="pagenum">[pg 322]</span> <a name="tyrol" id=
+  "tyrol"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.</h2><a name="tyrolchix" id="tyrolchix">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+  <p>Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
+  then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
+  or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
+  legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
+  interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
+  belief of the Middle Ages.</p><a name="image-0026" id="image-0026">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0124_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0124_1.jpg" alt="VALLEY AND BEEHIVES." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday
+  and Thursday were witches&#39; days, and Wednesday was also evil,
+  seeing Judas hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive
+  cattle to the Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two
+  persons sneezed together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for
+  witches and ghosts, he knew enough about them too. Did not the
+  witches still dance every night at eight o&#39;clock on their
+  meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His brother Jörgel could have told us
+  about that if he would. The pächter Josef had likewise experiences
+  which he might relate were he not so shy. &quot;Josef was returning
+  through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and had just crossed over
+  the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom he greeted in
+  God&#39;s name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as a
+  Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
+  when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
+  boldly a &#39;God greet you!&#39; but again silence. The figure had
+  vanished. Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a
+  third, and, waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round
+  looked fixedly at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer,
+  gypsy, ghost or witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as
+  a tree, grinning at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next
+  day the black cow went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef&#39;s
+  hobgoblins were fir trees.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef&#39;s phantoms, he could not help
+  telling us in his turn a tale which he considered much more
+  noteworthy: &quot;There was no denying that one winter&#39;s night a
+  huntsman, <span class="pagenum">[pg 323]</span> losing himself in the
+  deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
+  hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
+  by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the hut,
+  but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
+  accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
+  a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
+  strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
+  was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
+  and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
+  to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
+  before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
+  comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
+  for his kind hospitality, adding, &#39;May God reward you!&#39;
+  &#39;Oh,&#39; replied the other, uttering a great sigh of relief,
+  &#39;may God in His mercy equally reward you for those words! When I
+  walked on the earth I laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back
+  in the spirit to toil until some mortal should thank me in God&#39;s
+  name for what I had done for him. This you have done, and now I am
+  free;&#39; and so saying he vanished.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;these tales are as true as the
+  gospel. You know Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father
+  some years since went on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to
+  Maria Zell. Arriving late one night at a solitary farm-house, they
+  rapped at the door, requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused
+  himself: it was from no evil intention, he said, but he could not
+  take strangers in. The three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their
+  condition if left in the fields all night. Still the bauer made no
+  other reply, until, on their pressing him, he finally declared, half
+  in anger, that they must themselves be responsible for their
+  night&#39;s rest. He wished to treat them well, but could offer them
+  no better bed than the top of the oven in the stube. This offer they
+  willingly accepted, but hardly had they lain down when a
+  peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and brushes. In spite of
+  their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away all night, and
+  hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing her, she began
+  scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the cleaning lasted
+  the livelong night, until in the early morning the maid-servant
+  entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls being, to
+  their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before. Whereupon
+  they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor. &#39;Do not
+  accuse me,&#39; he replied &#39;of inhospitality: this is a strange
+  matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
+  been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who
+  thus scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain,
+  when she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not
+  even go to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home
+  and clean. So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white,
+  she seems unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to
+  continue her work. Even masses don&#39;t seem to help
+  her.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or
+  in the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn
+  at night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her
+  too horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any
+  moment drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over
+  her own tale.</p>
+
+  <p>One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we
+  determined to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of
+  fir wood rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see
+  what lay on the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating
+  climb we learned that the mountain was but a huge overhanging
+  shoulder, the rocky head of the giant rising up in the midst of wide
+  sweeping moors some six miles distant. We changed, therefore, the
+  object of our excursion, determining to visit the highest Olm of the
+  district, <span class="pagenum">[pg 324]</span> Ober Kofel. Turning
+  to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half an hour we
+  had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly closed, but a
+  pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently down, were
+  sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could not well be
+  conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles growing by
+  the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone rushing on
+  until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin. Tawny,
+  dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the <i>trät</i>
+  or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to a platform
+  of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain rhododendron grew,
+  presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view outward embraced
+  the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far beyond the
+  black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across the evening
+  horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high, peaked with
+  snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was to the
+  left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
+  Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
+  peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
+  forth from this desert of snow.</p>
+
+  <p>We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the
+  wind playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just
+  been promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man
+  flitted in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved
+  to be the solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the
+  domain, and moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes
+  ere he sat on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he
+  began talking to Moidel about the military exercises which were to
+  begin again this week.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The Ausserkofers,&quot; he said, &quot;went down for the
+  drilling immediately after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I
+  was not drawn.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the
+  morrow for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel&#39;s
+  son, would arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.</p>
+
+  <p>The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
+  lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
+  keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
+  several faces.</p>
+
+  <p>Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
+  of the group began: &quot;Of course you have heard of the clever
+  Tyrolese peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both
+  pricked up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a
+  little farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of
+  lying on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river
+  given to inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge
+  in his neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door,
+  and almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he
+  must make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss
+  of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
+  sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
+  evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his
+  mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his
+  tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an
+  aërial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire,
+  stretched it in two parallel lines across the river, fastening the
+  four ends very firmly; constructed a bench on iron rollers, which,
+  sustained by the wire, ran across the river in a trice, and his
+  aërial car was a reality. Here, indeed, was a triumph. It worked
+  admirably, and the whole neighborhood became excited and astonished
+  about the air-railway, as they called it. The news spreading, it
+  brought finally some gentlemen from the town of Dornbirn, who were
+  wild to have a ride across the river. Hans Jakob refused it: he
+  doubted the strength being sufficient for more than one passenger;
+  but they <span class="pagenum">[pg 325]</span> persisting in their
+  urgent demand, he at last reluctantly consented. They would not, or
+  else they could not, go without him. So, the party being seated on
+  the bench, he unfastened the hook, when they should have been
+  instantly whirled across. But, alas! his fears proved true: the wire
+  gave way, and down they all went, plump into the wild rushing river.
+  A great fright and wetting&#8212;that was all, for the time being,
+  until the gentlemen, although they had promised not to say a word on
+  the subject, having whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no
+  part uncolored, the town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad
+  peasant&#39;s audacity. The authorities took it in hand, and a solemn
+  gendarme visited Hans Jakob with strict orders from government to
+  desist from such perilous, hairbreadth inventions for the future.
+  Poor Hans! he now regarded himself not only as the laughing-stock of
+  the whole country, but as a ruined man. He had spent all his savings
+  on his first venture; but neither official reprimand nor loss of his
+  money could keep his busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved
+  plan, which, having perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out.
+  Instead of two simple iron wires, he employed two double coils, with
+  a single wire in the centre and six feet higher. He stretched across
+  two other strong parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with
+  two seats and a cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the
+  awning he fastened rollers, so that the car was propelled across both
+  above and below. The weight which it would bear he proved to be
+  fifteen hundredweight, and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept
+  it to the bank, the car ran across in a few seconds with an easy,
+  agreeable motion. Practice and a close investigation proved it now a
+  perfect success. All the censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it
+  proves at the present time both convenient and amusing to the
+  gentlemen, ladies and children of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob
+  willingly conveys them across the river in his flying car. He will,
+  however, receive no fixed payment. He constructed it simply for his
+  own use: were he to make a trade of it, he must either take out a
+  patent, or else make some concessions to government, neither of which
+  he has any inclination to do.</p>
+
+  <p>The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had
+  understood every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob
+  before, there was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an
+  almanac which the senner owned to having had by him for the last
+  eight months&#8212;another noticeable instance how tales and good
+  advice in print are lost upon a people who, hitherto quietly
+  slumbering, find for their hearts and minds enough to do in carrying
+  on their slow agriculture and pattering their prayers. I believe that
+  popular lecturers conversant with the dialect would be of infinite
+  service in the rural districts of the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p>The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality
+  of his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before
+  us in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men
+  of Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to
+  carry a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug
+  been fortunately remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle,
+  arrived at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning,
+  making the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop.
+  Franz therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour
+  earlier than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to
+  initiate his successor into the various advantages of the several
+  Alpine pastures, to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to
+  introduce Martin to Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the
+  other cows, as well as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We
+  set out to accompany them, but the cattle were too far away on
+  distant heights for us to continue long in the scramble. We therefore
+  sat on a breezy mountain platform watching the athletic young men
+  grow ever smaller, more indistinct, whilst Jakob&#39;s voice was
+  borne to us on the <span class="pagenum">[pg 326]</span> rarefied air
+  as he called lovingly, &quot;Krudeli, Krudeli&quot; to the calves,
+  and &quot;Köss, Köss&quot; to the cows.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a miracle,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;how Martin, who
+  was so weak and consumed away by his accident, should thus have
+  recovered.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What accident?&quot; asked we.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his
+  very name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg&#8212;he
+  who wears the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being
+  cold weather, wore three cock&#39;s feathers gained in
+  wrestling-matches&#8212;strutted down the Edelsheim street, arm in
+  arm with his great friend, the fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a
+  rude young churl, praising each other for their strength of limb and
+  good looks. Martin at the time was leaning against his father&#39;s
+  door. &#39;The devil!&#39; said Niederberg: &#39;why do you stay at
+  your father&#39;s, when there is better wine and company at the
+  Blauen Bock?&#39; Martin, however, replied that he was a hard-working
+  man, who could only spare time to see his old father and sick sister
+  on a festival. &#39;No,&#39; said Heinwiese in anger, &#39;thou art
+  nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
+  at a dance.&#39; &#39;But,&#39; put in Niederberg, &#39;we&#39;ll
+  teach thee to dance and sing;&#39; and so saying, he suddenly plunged
+  the blade of his big pocket-knife below Martin&#39;s ribs.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they
+  were lost in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet
+  village. A doctor was sent for, who at first declared Martin&#39;s
+  wound to be mortal. Then his young wife and little children were
+  fetched with many tears from the tileyard, and the priest came with
+  the Holy Death Sacrament. But the prayers and viaticum saved Martin.
+  Still, for many months he had a frightful illness, and even in March
+  he was so weak you could have knocked him down with a feather.
+  Niederberg was immediately taken into custody, and was sentenced to
+  sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the Baptist&#39;s Day, fully six
+  months, to pay the doctor&#39;s bill, and two hundred gulden to
+  Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded youth, though rich,
+  he has never paid. He will leave that to Heinwiese, he says, who put
+  him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man who had recovered? He
+  would have stood the funeral and settled with the widow. However,
+  father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he must not thus despoil
+  patient Martin.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than
+  cooler, quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam
+  still moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
+  bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn&#39;s moss,
+  and showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which
+  they had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little
+  insignificant plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and
+  prized by them far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being
+  that when dried it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which
+  reason the housewives place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a
+  mountain dryad, his broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered
+  with purple Michaelmas daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery
+  edelweiss, falling round in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob
+  and Martin, we had the gratification of gathering edelweiss
+  ourselves, always a notable feat. Martin really had most miraculously
+  recovered. After those twenty-four miles of hard walking, followed by
+  a climb of several thousand feet, we left him felling a pine tree as
+  we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to leave very early in the
+  morning.</p>
+
+  <p>A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
+  course we had none: Martin&#39;s arrival had been an immense event.
+  Thus, as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great
+  masses of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the
+  lantern, forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a
+  cheerful voice wishing us &quot;Good-night and sweet repose&quot;
+  through the door. Immediately, believing <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  327]</span> it to be the pächter&#39;s moidel, a young lady usually
+  engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the voice to
+  enter&#8212;an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect good
+  faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw hat,
+  who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding perhaps
+  to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but certainly
+  not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she attacked us with
+  a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel, however, was up to
+  the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed to get the
+  unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her to bolt and bar
+  it well, for after this call we were afraid of more lurking
+  intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The woman was
+  neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
+  <i>Bachernthalerin</i>, whose hut was generally under water. It was
+  accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging
+  milk at the senner-huts.</p><a name="tyrolchx" id="tyrolchx">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+  <p>Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
+  might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
+  expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
+  to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with
+  the pachter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing
+  Ignaz. It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at
+  an Olm?</p>
+
+  <p>Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but
+  pleasant descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first
+  halting-place. It was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the
+  mountains rising in all their impressive majesty, but for a time all
+  our powers of admiration and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the
+  sight of meek sheep led to the shambles at the very window.</p>
+
+  <p>We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we
+  had rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors&#39;
+  book, besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at
+  all perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
+  preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
+  his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
+  door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
+  that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
+  actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
+  at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in
+  red-handed, and proved a botanist. It was a <i>Woodsia
+  hyperborea</i>&#8212;that was the Latin name&#8212;and was rare in
+  those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft should come earlier for
+  flowers. July was the month. Then there was geum, and pale
+  blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow violets, the
+  white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both excellent
+  medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and grass of
+  Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes. There were
+  four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas! like the
+  gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.</p>
+
+  <p>His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
+  Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful
+  gentians, common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ladies,&quot; replied the botanist with emphasis, &quot;you
+  know not the reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which
+  is not torn up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is
+  good when rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better
+  lotion; and a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another
+  of sleep at night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every
+  peasant daily; but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were
+  bits of heaven scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their
+  roots are better for schnapps distilling than those of other plants,
+  or even than bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little
+  moderation, cutting the roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the
+  ground the plant springs up again. &#39;Poor as a root-grubber&#39;
+  is the proverb. I&#39;m glad it is. For if they were not so wanton,
+  they would not be so poor. They mostly come from the Zillerthal.
+  It&#39;s a special trade. The men climb the mountains as soon as the
+  snow melts. They build themselves rude huts, and spend the summer
+  searching for and digging up roots. Now, however, as they have cut
+  their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often to high
+  mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather fine
+  roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my wrist.
+  In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian roots,
+  which they carry to the distilling vats, where the <i>Enzian</i>, so
+  dear to the Tyroler, is made.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  328]</span> <a name="image-0027" id="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0135_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0135_1.jpg" alt=
+    "COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 329]</span> gentians, rose to return to his
+  occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable position which he
+  held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a surgeon or soldier
+  would be in a higher class, that the butcher was to them. In this
+  case, too, we joined in respect&#8212;a feeling we might entertain
+  for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity of
+  judging. But we must onward.</p>
+
+  <p>Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat,
+  ornamented with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company
+  with Moidel, giving us, however, equally the benefit of her
+  conversation, whilst she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in
+  Rein, she told us, and had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a
+  second time about perpetual stitching pains in her throat. The doctor
+  said it was quinsy, and arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she
+  could bring herself to smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein,
+  she might keep the mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a
+  female, and it made a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born
+  in such a village as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were
+  badly built, the kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly
+  cold in winter, though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze
+  in them. In fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then
+  all the family must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there.
+  When Nanni Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and
+  grandchildren must lie down together; and then all the neighbors had
+  to visit her, unless they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was
+  how the typhus spread. Fortunately, her husband and she were alone:
+  they had no burdens. Still, life was hard&#8212;a vale of tears or a
+  vale of snow. If the gentry could see the Reinthal in the winter,
+  choked up with avalanches, they would say so. Her man had, however,
+  enough to keep them. He had a license for the shooting of gemsen and
+  other game, which he might use from holy Jakobi&#39;s Day to
+  Candlemas. He had this year killed only five gemsen so far. The Post
+  at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now, and bought up every ounce of
+  the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the pound&#8212;bought snow-hens, too,
+  at forty kreuzers each, and would never let her husband&#39;s gun be
+  idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no longer shoot, then he
+  worked in their fields; for we might not think it, but he, being a
+  thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought some land. But oh the
+  labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was subjected! If his land
+  lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must slave and toil like
+  beasts of burden, for what would be the help of horse or cow for
+  riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright land? &quot;The
+  holy watch-angels help us!&quot; she said. &quot;Look up there and
+  you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small
+  figure of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet
+  above us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a
+  triangle of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out
+  the figures of two women helping him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That&#39;s Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down
+  their green oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the
+  eldest girl, working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far
+  over the precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better
+  fortune, I pray God, awaited her than the cruel trials of
+  Reinthal.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
+  gloomy a view, probably occasioned by &quot;her stitching
+  pains.&quot; Still, she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life
+  in every season of the year save summer.</p>
+
+  <p>In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within
+  sound of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest
+  of our party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us.
+  At a quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery
+  possessing a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer
+  meadows beyond, kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for
+  nine. All were unanimous, however, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  330]</span> that the ample supply was sufficient for ten, and the
+  good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
+  gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
+  helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
+  morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
+  least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
+  as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady&#39;s handbag.
+  Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
+  mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.</p>
+
+  <p>For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
+  clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a
+  burnished gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep
+  shadows of the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive
+  sheds, and a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the
+  artists, who busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the
+  great crimson bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the
+  rippling sound of a mad, merry little mill-brook.</p>
+
+  <p>How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and
+  climes to those serviceable creatures, bees!</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">The little citizens create,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And waxen cities build.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
+  and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than &quot;citizens.&quot;
+  Formerly they delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings
+  which they could devise for them, helping them in their constant toil
+  by planting balmy thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around
+  the hives. These were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy
+  monograms and devices to add a blessing and security to the provident
+  labors of the little inmates. They were, in fact, <i>beatified
+  bees</i>, who had to be solemnly invited to attend the death mass
+  when the owner died, else they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a
+  swarm of bees hung to a house, it was simply as a warning that fire
+  would break out there.</p>
+
+  <p>The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
+  flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
+  pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
+  beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
+  falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
+  peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
+  lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees&#8212;a
+  fact difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous
+  veneration and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the
+  freshness and simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the
+  discarding of their picturesque costumes.</p>
+
+  <p>As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the
+  walls of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain
+  still several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather
+  to explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of
+  Taufers.</p>
+
+  <p>But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
+  deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the view,
+  finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
+  prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the
+  rain steadily pattering against the casements.</p>
+
+  <p>Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
+  wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
+  band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
+  been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
+  clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
+  bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
+  however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
+  tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
+  their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
+  their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
+  there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
+  these were only a few amongst the endless figures <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 331]</span> of the tragic band, on a long, unceasing
+  march.</p>
+
+  <p>Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in
+  Alpine meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may
+  be seen. Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient
+  Italians fleeing from a buried city, wandering Israelites,&#8212;such
+  and many others are the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn,
+  hay or clover assume, all combining to act as one vast funeral
+  procession of the summer that is no more.</p><a name="image-0028" id=
+  "image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0140_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0140_1.jpg" alt="A PROCESSION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      A PROCESSION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in
+  the distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually
+  the up stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined
+  reserved for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long
+  coats down to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers
+  from the mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence,
+  and really the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the
+  landlord and landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as
+  ever. We were soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out
+  not only by the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare
+  which was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
+  incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
+  flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
+  mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers.
+  These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose
+  custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their
+  acid wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not
+  have been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an
+  apparent falling away from the singularly bright example which a good
+  man, born only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of
+  Mühlen, had once set them.</p>
+
+  <p>The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
+  clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
+  goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the
+  Tyrol. A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness,
+  he acted as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire
+  Bible, which he had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally
+  by heart. Birds, flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring
+  sermons, and his evening conversations with his pupils were fraught
+  with the most beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy
+  and the power he unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the
+  conscience. Sorrows were met invariably by him with a cheerful
+  &quot;Dominus providebit&quot; or &quot;parcat Deus.&quot; Cheating
+  and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore rejoiced to become
+  acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious officials and religious
+  soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never troubled him. He
+  walked like a child through the world. When unable to wear his
+  scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with cheerful
+  urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat, his
+  pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella. His
+  old coat of <span class="pagenum">[pg 332]</span> an antique cut
+  still bore on the under side of a flap the dyer&#39;s mark. His
+  waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted wool. On festive
+  occasions, however, he fastened to the back of his coat collar a
+  fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was something humorous
+  in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it, and yet, says one of
+  his pupils, &quot;though we joined in the laugh, his whole person and
+  demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not of this
+  world.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory
+  of this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once
+  his pupils, in the upper stube?</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners,
+  Moidel, fearing that her important services must be missed at the
+  Hof, bravely defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the
+  afternoon, utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters
+  to Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne
+  through mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.</p>
+
+  <p>Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming
+  from the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann
+  were at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure,
+  somehow, that we should come.</p>
+
+  <p>The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
+  absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
+  not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
+  according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
+  dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
+  our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E&#8212;&#8212;. We
+  felt that we had come home&#8212;to our home in the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED]</p><a name="colorado" id=
+  "colorado"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.</h2>
+
+  <p>On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a
+  sister&#8212;Sepia, an artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who
+  is the narrator&#8212;left Chicago by the North-western Railroad,
+  bound for Denver in Colorado, about eleven hundred miles west. The
+  first day we were climbing the gradual ascent from the Lakes to the
+  Mississippi, which we crossed at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty
+  years which had elapsed since I first traversed this region had
+  changed it from wild, unbroken prairie to a well-cultivated country,
+  full of corn-fields, cattle and flourishing towns. Then I traveled in
+  a wagon four miles an hour, and had to find my own meat in the shape
+  of a deer from the grove, a grouse from the prairie or a duck from
+  the river. Now we rushed across the State in six hours, stopping
+  fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine brick hotel, metropolitan in
+  charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when we arrived at the great river,
+  we waited two or three hours for the ferry-boat, and finally had to
+  cross in a &quot;dug-out,&quot; which seemed but a frail vessel to
+  stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the Mississippi. Now
+  we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost more money than
+  all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the first method of
+  traveling was the more interesting.</p>
+
+  <p>Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
+  prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
+  great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness: we
+  made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and we
+  were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 333]</span> panthers screamed around our
+  camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat, and our only visitors in two
+  weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who disapproved of our intrusion
+  upon their hunting-grounds.</p>
+
+  <p>At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
+  the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
+  Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
+  military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now it
+  is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
+  rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.</p>
+
+  <p>Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
+  Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its
+  charges. On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about
+  four cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation
+  Congress gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to
+  build the road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This
+  may arise from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes
+  to all Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes,
+  so that, half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay
+  double. Not only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra
+  baggage. Like the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin,
+  this great corporation is able to give free passes to a whole
+  legislature or to charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of
+  extra baggage.</p>
+
+  <p>From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
+  States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here talk
+  about going to the &quot;States.&quot; All the region hereabouts,
+  from the middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the
+  French <i>Les Mauvaises Terres</i>, or &quot;Bad Lands,&quot; and was
+  eloquently described by Irving in <i>Astoria</i> as the Great
+  American Desert. &quot;This region,&quot; he writes, &quot;resembles
+  one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and spreads forth into
+  undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, which are
+  supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean
+  countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat against the granite
+  bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where no man permanently
+  abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is no food either
+  for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered, the
+  streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered
+  to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast, uninhabited
+  solitude.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But this &quot;land where no man permanently abides&quot; is
+  rapidly being settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by
+  the simple process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring
+  of Eastern farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the
+  immigrant, and, like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.</p>
+
+  <p>On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new
+  town of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains
+  fifteen hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels,
+  churches, schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This
+  aspiring town, 4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those
+  colony towns so successful in the West, and on which we must depend
+  for rebuilding society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile
+  farms, and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected
+  by irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
+  Platte&#8212;one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty
+  thousand acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the
+  town and five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated
+  now, in midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched
+  herbage, which, however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet
+  hay, dried and preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and
+  antelope, and now cropped by the flocks and herds of the white
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight
+  thousand inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which
+  fully believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation
+  of five thousand feet. It was said <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  334]</span> of old &quot;that the meek shall inherit the earth,&quot;
+  but it was not by <i>that</i> quality that the Denverites obtained
+  their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and a mint:
+  five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of freight
+  per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory numbers,
+  and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars&#39; worth of goods
+  per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858, and
+  has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water, and
+  almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
+  pretty smart specimen of a Western city.</p>
+
+  <p>We ride in a &#39;bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
+  fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
+  worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
+  South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
+  wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
+  line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
+  foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good
+  pair of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but
+  owner of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the
+  precocity of the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and
+  loaded, so as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have
+  a tent and camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and
+  Scribe, and the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.</p>
+
+  <p>So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
+  Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
+  with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus&#8212;no
+  verdure except along the canals, where several species of
+  <i>Artemisia</i> and a prickly poppy with a large white flower grow
+  profusely. We then begin to mount the bare foot-hills, among which
+  are curious masses of red rock as large as city churches, and washed
+  by the storms of ages into various fantastic forms. We then enter a
+  ravine or cañon through which flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the
+  Platte.</p>
+
+  <p>Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised,
+  and butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this
+  region makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I
+  never tasted poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as
+  sweet and fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States.
+  The time will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the
+  Atlantic cities: at present there is no surplus made.</p>
+
+  <p>We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side:
+  it was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one
+  carriage, with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so
+  that we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a
+  wagon. Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had
+  to keep behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other
+  side to a strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the
+  night, having come twenty miles from Denver.</p>
+
+  <p><i>August</i> 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn
+  bread and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha
+  Ranch; then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland&#39;s Ranch, five
+  miles, and Bailey&#39;s, five miles, on the North Fork of the South
+  Fork of the Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully
+  clear and bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky
+  ravine, down a wooded cañon, then through little parks, surrounded by
+  high hills and set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with
+  fresh grass and abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the
+  mountain-sides the road was narrow, but we were lucky and met
+  nothing, although we frequently overtook the immense wagons drawn by
+  five or six yoke of oxen, and driven by the most ferocious-looking
+  teamsters whom I have ever seen, brandishing enormous whips, which
+  crack like rifle-shots in the woods. We found, however, that, being
+  civilly entreated, they would always turn out of the road to let us
+  pass. We were now at an elevation of probably six thousand feet,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 335]</span> having been constantly
+  ascending since we left Denver; and this evening we rose still
+  higher, having climbed a long mountain which overlooked the
+  head-waters of the Platte.</p>
+
+  <p>Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us
+  to the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper
+  of trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
+  delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
+  morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
+  the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
+  and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
+  ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods
+  and followed the example set us by Simon Peter.</p>
+
+  <p>The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
+  away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
+  rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look;
+  so we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell
+  walked down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as
+  to leave a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright
+  and hot, and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They
+  were darker and less brilliant in color than our <i>Salmo
+  fontinalis</i>, and were, I think, <i>Salmo Lewisii</i>, which
+  inhabits these waters. The valley was about half a mile wide, and
+  shut in on each side by mountains of red granite, crowned with pines.
+  Bailey&#39;s people were making hay in the valley, and I sat down on
+  a fragrant haycock to await the return of my companion. Presently I
+  observed a horseman coming up the valley: he was a hunter, followed
+  by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a mountain-sheep, or
+  bighorn (<i>Ovis montana</i>), on the saddle in front of him. He told
+  me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was taking it to
+  Bailey&#39;s for sale. It was an animal something in color like a
+  deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very large
+  curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous in
+  these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
+  lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work. I
+  asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
+  themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
+  their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
+  never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
+  it, he replied that he reckoned they <i>could</i>, but would be
+  smashed if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly
+  bears, he replied that there <i>were</i> grizzlies hereabouts, but
+  that he never hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.</p>
+
+  <p>In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for
+  a mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
+  Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
+  effective water-color sketches of the scenery.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the
+  Platte Valley five miles to Slaight&#39;s, through a very picturesque
+  region. Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the
+  mail-stage coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at
+  a gallop: we were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which
+  they did in a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the
+  long-bearded, red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight&#39;s, with
+  two houses and some fields of oats. Then eight miles to
+  Heffron&#39;s, at the forks of the river, where there are a
+  post-office and one house. Two miles beyond we stopped to feed our
+  horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest of sugar pines. This
+  species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern States, with the
+  same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches. Many of them had
+  been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner bark, which is
+  a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in these
+  mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
+  birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
+  color of <i>Tetrao</i> <span class="pagenum">[pg 336]</span>
+  <i>cupido</i>, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the bushes at the
+  roadside the mountain-rabbit (<i>Lepus artemisia</i>), which from its
+  large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron&#39;s we
+  continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we
+  got the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin,
+  some hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high
+  mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
+  again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
+  feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be
+  seen the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray&#39;s
+  Peak, Pike&#39;s Peak, Mount Lincoln, and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Other Titans, without muse or name.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
+  like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
+  in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
+  game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
+  white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
+  have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
+  pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
+  the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the
+  mines in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to
+  which a stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.</p>
+
+  <p>In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
+  Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
+  continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
+  an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long:
+  among them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to
+  the size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so
+  entirely from those usually visited and described by travelers, the
+  Alps, the Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can
+  scarcely believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten
+  thousand feet above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains
+  approach more nearly to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from
+  fourteen thousand to seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at
+  twelve thousand feet, and increases in quantity to the extreme height
+  of the tallest peaks, about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty
+  feet, though even these are often bare in August. In these parks the
+  cattle live without shelter in winter, and the timber is large and
+  plentiful at eleven thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting,
+  but instead we have the rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains,
+  the pure, dry and balmy atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a
+  softness of color which can hardly be equaled on earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the
+  mountain which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of
+  the sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along
+  the level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at
+  sunset near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to
+  lie down on the floor under shelter.</p>
+
+  <p>It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters
+  and a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family
+  lived, with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made
+  one hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents
+  a pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the
+  cattle for the winter in certain sheltered regions called &quot;the
+  range.&quot; They were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear
+  to stay here all alone for days at a time while their brother was
+  galloping about the Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did
+  not keep tavern, but were often obliged to take in benighted
+  travelers like ourselves, to whom they gave the shelter of their roof
+  and the privilege of cooking at their stove. The house was about
+  forty by twenty feet, all in one room, though one end was parted off
+  by blankets, behind which they admitted the lady of our party.
+  Sometimes they were visited by Utes, who are not unfriendly, though,
+  like most Indians, they <span class="pagenum">[pg 337]</span> are
+  audacious beggars. &quot;They try to scare us sometimes,&quot; said
+  Jane: &quot;they tell us, &#39;Bimeby Utes get all this
+  country&#8212;then you my squaw,&#39; but we don&#39;t scare worth a
+  cent.&quot; Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles away, who
+  is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
+  peace.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner&#39;s.
+  Passed some deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed
+  and scarred by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks
+  and a red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the
+  brow of a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on
+  the hill to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a
+  trout-brook of which we heard flattering accounts. It was a very
+  pretty stream, winding through the prairie with the gentle murmur so
+  loved by the angler and poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it
+  perfect. It was rendered somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that
+  if the trout were there they could not see our flies. We are told
+  that trout are plenty on the other side of the mountains. &quot;Go to
+  the Arkansas,&quot; they say, &quot;and you will find big
+  ones.&quot;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Man never is, but always to be, blest.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She
+  told us that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In
+  1864, most of the men being away in the Union army, they found the
+  house one morning surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had
+  come up from Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines.
+  They were a savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led
+  by a man who had formerly worked for her father, and whom she
+  recognized. They took what money and gold-dust was in the house, and
+  seized all the best horses about the place; but when she saw them
+  taking away her saddle-pony, she cried out, &quot;Oh, Tom Smith! I
+  didn&#39;t think you was that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn&#39;t
+  you always well treated here?&quot; He seemed to relent at this
+  appeal, and not only restored her horse, but two of her father&#39;s
+  also. The people collected and pursued the robbers, most of whom were
+  captured or killed, but the leader escaped. Mrs. Lechner said she was
+  glad he got away. &quot;Tom must have had some good in him or he
+  wouldn&#39;t have given me back my pony.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the
+  sight of a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the
+  delicate tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which
+  suffuse these summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch
+  them, but what human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at
+  seven, and drove to Bailey&#39;s, thirty-five miles, before sunset,
+  stopping an hour at noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we
+  were caught in a furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail,
+  with terrific thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by.
+  And here I must pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our
+  horses&#8212;steady, prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for
+  them to climb, no precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the
+  pelting of that pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We
+  found Bailey&#39;s house apparently full, but they made room for us.
+  A handsome buggy and pair arrived soon after, from which descended a
+  well-dressed gentleman and lady, whom we found to be the
+  superintendent of a silver-mine at Hamilton and his wife. They told
+  us that there was a very good boarding-house at that place, with fine
+  scenery all around, which we ought to have seen. But in truth we had
+  as much fine scenery as we could contain: we were saturated with it,
+  and a few mountains more would have been wasted.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping
+  to drive through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen
+  miles one of the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary
+  to replace, the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction,
+  where was a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper,
+  farmer and blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a
+  man of such various talents. <span class="pagenum">[pg 338]</span>
+  Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he looked for the
+  hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that little Johnny
+  had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and finally brought,
+  but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so essential to our
+  progress. &quot;Look for it, Johnny,&quot; said the blacksmith; and
+  he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
+  dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe
+  with the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had
+  been lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
+  taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
+  three miles down Bear&#39;s Creek Cañon to the house of Strauss. The
+  good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper of
+  venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
+  where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife
+  milks thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a
+  churning. Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many
+  varieties of bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.</p>
+
+  <p>Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at
+  90°, and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for
+  Chicago.</p>
+
+  <p>I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small
+  part of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble
+  travelers, unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad
+  potentates: we were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted
+  up Gray&#39;s Park, or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw
+  enough of the new and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of
+  Colorado and the South Park.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">S.C. CLARKE.</p><a name="patrons" id="patrons">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.</h2>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know anything about this &#39;grange&#39;
+  business?&quot; asked a lady from the city the other day; and she
+  added, &quot;I can hardly take up a magazine or newspaper without
+  falling on the words &#39;grange,&#39; &#39;Patrons of
+  Husbandry,&#39; &#39;farmers&#39; movement,&#39; and all
+  that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, I am a Patron myself,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What! you have a <i>grange</i> here in this little New
+  Jersey sandbank?&quot; she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with
+  a storm of questions.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
+  answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters, and
+  quoting Mr. Adams&#39;s treatise on the <i>Railroad Systems</i> and
+  other authorities to explain the present war between producers and
+  carriers; and, believing that there are many others who, like my
+  friend, are disposed to look into this &quot;grange business,&quot; I
+  will give them the substance of our conversation. A great deal of
+  that which has found its way into the press touching our order is
+  more characterized by confidence than correctness of statement. In a
+  late magazine article it is stated that the organization known as the
+  <i>Patrons of Husbandry</i> &quot;was originally borrowed from an
+  association which for many years had maintained a feeble existence in
+  a community of Scotch farmers in North Carolina.&quot; This statement
+  has no foundation in fact. The order is not the out-growth directly,
+  or even indirectly, of any pre-existing organization. It is the
+  result, so far as it is possible to trace impulses to their source,
+  of the suggestion of a lady, communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H.
+  Kelley, the present secretary of the National Grange, and the person
+  who has done more than any other to establish <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 339]</span> the order as it exists to-day. The
+  suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect
+  themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and
+  professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out
+  the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking
+  to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met
+  with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends
+  implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every
+  cent he possessed, as it did all his time and energy. But he
+  persevered against every discouragement, and to-day he may well be
+  proud of the results of his devotion.</p>
+
+  <p>The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called
+  the &quot;North Star Grange,&quot; and it is one of the most
+  efficient subordinate granges in the country to this day. Another was
+  organized in Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio,
+  another in Illinois, and a few others during the same year in
+  different places. This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time
+  they have been constantly increasing&#8212;at first slowly, then with
+  a rapidity unheard of in the history of secret or any other
+  organizations in this country or the world. We can hardly count three
+  years since the order fairly began to grow, and now the granges are
+  numbered by the thousand. Ten States on the twenty-fifth of June last
+  had over a hundred granges, and seven of these between two and five
+  hundred. Iowa to-day has seventeen hundred and ten, and others in
+  process of organization. Thirty-one of the States and Territories had
+  subordinate or both subordinate and State granges, according to the
+  June returns. There were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three
+  in Vermont, five in New York State, three in New Jersey, two in
+  Pennsylvania, and one in Massachusetts. Up to this time there has
+  been little effort made to extend the organization into the Eastern
+  and Middle States, but at present deputies from the National Grange
+  are being sent to these &quot;benighted regions,&quot; and the leaven
+  is working finely. To show how rapidly the order is extending it will
+  be only necessary to add that seven hundred and one charters for new
+  granges were issued during the single month of May.</p>
+
+  <p>The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by
+  common consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much
+  this one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of
+  different sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that
+  on one or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have
+  been wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together
+  with great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more
+  than the surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and
+  women are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the
+  seven degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and
+  the higher in the State granges or in the National Grange&#8212;the
+  seventh in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court
+  of impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the
+  order. All officers are chosen by ballot&#8212;those of the National
+  Grange for three years, of State granges for two years, and of
+  subordinate granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees
+  are respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
+  Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
+  initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
+  really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
+  which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
+  societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
+  conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
+  only by the most strenuous efforts.</p>
+
+  <p>Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
+  machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
+  sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
+  and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
+  simple feasts. <span class="pagenum">[pg 340]</span> Two fundamental
+  objects of the organization are social and intellectual culture. The
+  widespread realization of the importance of these among the people is
+  the first great step toward securing them, and the first unmistakable
+  sign that such step has already been taken is the rebelling against
+  pure drudgery. Said the Master of the National Grange, Mr. Dudley W.
+  Adams, in a late address: &quot;It will doubtless be a matter of
+  surprise to them&quot; (editors, lawyers, politicians, etc.) &quot;to
+  learn that farmers may possibly entertain some wish to enjoy life,
+  and have some other object in living besides everlasting hard work
+  and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining them from their own
+  life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of weary children and
+  worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of
+  Independence. We must do something to dispel old prejudices and beat
+  down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal to labor from
+  morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but abominable
+  heresy.&quot;... &quot;We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
+  the &#39;hardened hand of honest toil,&#39; the supreme glory of
+  &#39;the sweating brow,&#39; and how magnificent the suit of coarse
+  homespun which covers a form bent with overwork.&quot;... &quot;I
+  tell you, my brother-workers of the soil, there is something worth
+  living for besides hard work. We have heard enough of this
+  professional blarney. Toil in itself is not necessarily glorious. To
+  toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up
+  treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and
+  starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the immortal mind
+  and alienate the children from the homestead, is a damning disgrace
+  to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a brute.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
+  drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
+  while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
+  less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
+  have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
+  to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
+  by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
+  in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable, be
+  just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful in
+  bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
+  portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
+  beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
+  and you will find that the farmer&#39;s sons who are regularly
+  engaged in one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing,
+  are great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are,
+  in comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their
+  address; and simply because, though their labor has been as
+  unremitting, it has been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they
+  go from one thing to another, and through a great variety of muscular
+  exercises from hour to hour.</p>
+
+  <p>It is no wonder, then, that the farmers&#39; sons, to get rid of
+  the terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
+  tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
+  third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
+  youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
+  virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
+  opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of as
+  possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
+  attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
+  reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of
+  grange halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of
+  degrees, the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep
+  young men on the farm unless something is done to render the labor
+  less monotonous and disagreeable.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
+  predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
+  better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that
+  within a few years we shall see magnificent <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  341]</span> social palaces, something like the famous one at Guise,
+  in many places in this country; and he went on to show how social and
+  industrial life might be organized so as to secure the most complete
+  liberty of the individual or family, magnificent educational
+  advantanges, remunerative occupation and varied amusements for all,
+  with perfect insurance against want for orphans, for the sick and the
+  aged. Each palace was to be the centre of a great agricultural
+  district exploited in the most scientific manner, and through the
+  varied economies resulting from combination all the luxuries of
+  industry and all the conditions for high culture were to be secured
+  to all who were willing to labor even one-half the hours that the
+  farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and certainly very
+  entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one of the
+  company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.</p>
+
+  <p>But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of
+  the Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and
+  that they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through
+  agents appointed from among their members, now purchase their
+  machinery and farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by
+  wholesale. That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way,
+  and Missouri, through the executive committee of her State grange,
+  has just completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All
+  members of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at
+  greatly reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty
+  granges, with a larger membership than in many other States, this is
+  a very important item.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally
+  supposed the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly,
+  to the outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West
+  seem to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of
+  three bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and
+  the whole world knows that they have been burning their three-year
+  old crops as fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it
+  seems clear that there is not too much corn raised, since a great
+  famine has just swept over Persia, and others are threatening in
+  different parts of the world.</p>
+
+  <p>The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by
+  the farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates
+  for carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that
+  the road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
+  the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
+  sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
+  the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
+  a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
+  Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
+  reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
+  Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
+  patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson&#39;s pithy
+  apothegm, that &quot;where combination is possible competition is
+  impossible.&quot; The two great companies combined, became
+  consolidated into one, and, having their victim completely in their
+  power, swindled him without pity and divided the spoils between
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation.
+  But nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
+  monopolies and &quot;rings,&quot; or from organizing to circumvent
+  their schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing
+  intelligence of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people
+  so conscious of their power&#8212;never so fully aware that in this
+  country the machinery for correcting abuses lies in the degree of
+  concentration with which public opinion can be brought to bear in a
+  given direction. Once let the people become fully aroused to the
+  existence of an evil or abuse, and there is no interest nor
+  combination of interests that can long hold out against them. The
+  trouble heretofore has been the multiplicity of conflicting opinions
+  everywhere disseminated, <span class="pagenum">[pg 342]</span> and
+  the consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a
+  great number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of
+  certain ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the
+  Patrons of Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the
+  eastern shores of the country, and yet still widening and extending
+  in the West, where it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving
+  army of the people so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed
+  problems of labor and capital by a sudden but peaceful
+  revolution.</p>
+
+  <p>The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
+  accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
+  scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet
+  unused documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of
+  the movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.</p>
+
+  <p>Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges
+  have increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty.
+  Twenty-nine new ones were organized during the week ending July 24.
+  Over one-third of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or
+  controlled by the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped
+  over five million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and
+  hogs in vast quantities; and the reports received from these
+  shipments show an increased profit to the producers of from ten to
+  forty per cent. over that of the old &quot;middlemen&quot; system;
+  and by the complete buying arrangements which the Western granges
+  have effected it is calculated that the members save on an average
+  one hundred dollars a year each. Large families find their expenses
+  reduced by three or four hundred dollars annually, aside from amounts
+  saved on sewing-machines, pianos, organs, reapers, mowers,
+  corn-shellers and a hundred other costly articles; all of which any
+  member of any grange can obtain to-day at a saving of from
+  twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in quantity from the
+  manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of the West, and a
+  single order even from a member of a new-formed grange in Vermont
+  will be incorporated in the general State order. The granges of the
+  Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged in the work of
+  organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary advantages
+  accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and entirely
+  cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain unfortunate
+  middlemen, who find their &quot;occupation gone,&quot; and themselves
+  obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of the numerous
+  small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the movement.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARIE ROWLAND.</p>
+
+  <p>[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
+  proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
+  point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of an
+  enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
+  throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
+  in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement has
+  been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
+  state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
+  The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
+  combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and
+  agricultural implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very
+  startling character; and if this can be attained at no greater cost
+  or trouble to the individual &quot;Patrons&quot; than that of
+  &quot;decorating the granges&quot; and taking part in the singing and
+  the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage will no doubt have
+  been gained. How the cost of transportation is to be reduced, or why
+  the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of productions, should
+  have become the <i>bête noire</i> of the producers, are points on
+  which more definite information would seem to be required. But
+  &quot;the people&quot; being now &quot;aroused,&quot; and the
+  revolution in progress, we have only to await events in that hopeful
+  state of mind which such announcements are calculated to
+  inspire.&#8212;ED.]</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 343]</span> <a name=
+  "churchsteps" id="churchsteps"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ON THE CHURCH STEPS.</h2><a name="churchstepschvi" id=
+  "churchstepschvi"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+  <p>I had a busy week of it in New York&#8212;copying out
+  instructions, taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690,
+  and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a
+  double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client&#39;s
+  claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie&#39;s
+  decision, went on in my brain side by side.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would
+  be the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
+  raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
+  separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the
+  plan. &quot;I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday&#39;s
+  steamer: say yes, dear child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from
+  here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped
+  to be married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came
+  &quot;No,&quot; simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my
+  darling&#39;s graceful hand.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would
+  surely yield when she saw me faithful to my word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom,&quot; I thought as I
+  surveyed myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday
+  night, and we were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all
+  the clerks had gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half
+  asleep on a chair in the hall.</p>
+
+  <p>It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and
+  thrust them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least.
+  &quot;Bill, you may lock up now,&quot; I said, tapping the sleepy
+  porter on the shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here&#39;s a card for yees,&quot;
+  handing me a lady&#39;s card.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who left it, Bill?&quot; I hurriedly asked, taking it to the
+  flaring gaslight on the stairway.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Two ladies in a carriage&#8212;an old &#39;un and a pretty
+  young lady, shure. They charged me giv&#39; it yees, and druv&#39;
+  off.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why didn&#39;t you bring it in, you blockhead?&quot; I
+  shouted, for it was Bessie Stewart&#39;s card. On it was written in
+  pencil: &quot;Westminster Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave
+  on the 8 train for the South to-night. Come up to dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The eight-o&#39;clock train, and it was now striking nine!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed
+  on no account, and that I was to bring in no messages.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they
+  here?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;About five o&#39;clock&#8212;just after you had shut the
+  dure, and the clerks was gone. Indeed, and they didn&#39;t wait for
+  no reply, but hearin&#39; you were in there, they druv&#39; off the
+  minute they give me the card. The pretty young lady didn&#39;t like
+  the looks of our office, I reckon.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders
+  like a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to
+  the Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there
+  was a mistake, and would wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
+  clear hand, Bessie&#39;s hand, &quot;Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and
+  maid; Miss Bessie Stewart.&quot; They had arrived that afternoon,
+  must have driven directly from the train to the office, and had
+  dined, after waiting a little time for some one who did not come.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And where were they going?&quot; I asked of the sympathetic
+  clerk, who seemed interested.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Going South&#8212;I don&#39;t know where. The elder lady
+  seemed delicate, and the <span class="pagenum">[pg 344]</span> young
+  lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go on in
+  the morning. But no, she would go on to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not
+  go farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.</p>
+
+  <p>I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the
+  city, and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my
+  memory suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day.
+  They were either not in the city or most securely hid.</p>
+
+  <p>And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
+  waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on
+  Monday noon.</p>
+
+  <p>It ran as follows:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    &quot;WESTMINSTER HOTEL. &quot;Very sorry not to see you&#8212;Aunt
+    Sloman especially sorry; but she has set her heart on going to
+    Philadelphia to-night. We shall stay at a private house, a quiet
+    boarding-house; for aunt goes to consult Dr. R&#8212;&#8212; there,
+    and wishes to be very retired. I shall not give you our address: as
+    you sail so soon, it would not be worth while to come over. I will
+    write you on the other side. B.S.&quot;
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Where&#39;s a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr.
+  R&#8212;&#8212;? I find him, sure enough&#8212;such a number Walnut
+  street. Time is precious&#8212;Monday noon!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#39;ll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that
+  will do as well. Can&#39;t help it if they do scold at the
+  office.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To drive to the Cunard company&#39;s office and make the transfer
+  took some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed
+  as I again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden
+  Monday afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic
+  Valley, with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar
+  train, and the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and
+  shaking his huge sides over some broad burlesque.</p>
+
+  <p>The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;, was not at home in
+  answer to my ring on Monday evening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How soon will he be in? I will wait.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He can see no patients to-night sir,&quot; said the man;
+  &quot;and he may not be home until midnight.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I am an <i>im</i>patient,&quot; I might have urged, when
+  a carriage dashed up to the door. A slight little man descended, and
+  came slowly up the steps.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;?&quot; I said inquiringly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get
+  an address from you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He scanned me from head to foot: &quot;Walk into my office, young
+  man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
+  caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf. Dusty
+  and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
+  feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.</p>
+
+  <p>I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address
+  of one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
+  as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
+  Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye.
+  &quot;Mrs. Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little
+  silver bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The
+  servant appeared at the door: &quot;Let the carriage wait,
+  James.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
+  lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
+  scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
+  his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, &quot;Certainly, here
+  it is&#8212;No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
+  Sunday&#39;s search.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will take you over,&quot; said Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;,
+  replacing the book in his pocket again. &quot;Mrs. Sloman is on my
+  list. Wait till I eat a biscuit, and I&#39;ll drive you over in my
+  carriage.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 345]</span>
+
+  <p>Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
+  designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Till he ate a biscuit?&quot; I should think so. To his
+  invitation, most courteously urged, that I should come and share his
+  supper&#8212;&quot;You&#39;ve just come from the train, and you
+  won&#39;t get back to your hotel for two hours, at
+  least&quot;&#8212;I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
+  hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.</p>
+
+  <p>But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
+  glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
+  until I could scarce conceal my impatience.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you chance to know,&quot; he said carelessly, as at last
+  we rose from the table and he flung his napkin down, &quot;Mrs.
+  Sloman&#39;s niece, Miss Stewart?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Excellently well,&quot; I said smiling: &quot;in fact, I
+  believe I am engaged to be married to her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear fellow,&quot; said the doctor, bursting out
+  laughing, &quot;I am delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I
+  saw you were a lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made
+  up my mind that you had come over to badger the old lady into making
+  her will. I congratulate you with all my soul&#8212;and myself,
+  too,&quot; he added, shaking my hand. &quot;Only think! Had it not
+  been for your frankness, I should have taken a five-mile ride to
+  watch you and keep you from doing my patient an injury.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion
+  of his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious
+  vehicle over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.</p>
+
+  <p>I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down
+  any but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me
+  with a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was
+  natural, was herself, and only too glad, after the <i>contretemps</i>
+  in New York, to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a
+  tired child when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to
+  Philadelphia, and laughed outright at my interview with Dr.
+  R&#8212;&#8212;.</p>
+
+  <p>I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the
+  journey&#8212;<i>our</i> journey&#8212;I knew I should prevail. It
+  was a deep wound, and she shrank from any talk about it. I had to be
+  very gentle and tender before she would listen to me at all.</p>
+
+  <p>But there was something else at work against me&#8212;what was
+  it?&#8212;something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was
+  not altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R&#8212;&#8212; wishes
+  her to remain in Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That
+  settles it, Charlie: I must stay with her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What was there to be said? &quot;Is there no one else, no one to
+  take your place?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there
+  were.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession
+  of me. I seemed to read in Bessie&#39;s eyes that there was a thought
+  between us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover.
+  I could see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life,
+  had the shadow come? <i>Between</i> us, surely, it could not be. Even
+  her anxiety for her aunt could not explain it: it was something
+  concealed.</p>
+
+  <p>When at last I had to leave her, &quot;So to-morrow is your last
+  day?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday
+  steamer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue
+  eyes wear such a look of scrutiny.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, what is it?&quot; I asked laughingly as I looked
+  straight into her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The Saturday steamer,&quot; she said
+  musingly&#8212;&quot;the Algeria, isn&#39;t it? I thought you were in
+  a hurry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was my only chance to have you,&quot; I explained, and
+  apparently the argument was satisfactory enough.</p>
+
+  <p>With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed
+  a subject, &quot;Then it isn&#39;t good-bye to-night?&quot; she
+  said.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 346]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on
+  Thursday.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschvii" id="churchstepschvii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+  <p>The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday&#39;s
+  parting, harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for.
+  It was hard to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the
+  last moment came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering
+  horse and implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that
+  raw October morning.</p>
+
+  <p>I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
+  ship&#39;s deck. &quot;What might have been&quot; went down the cabin
+  stairs with me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double
+  state-room I had chosen I felt like a widower.</p>
+
+  <p>It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the
+  berth and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the
+  future with dreams. &quot;I must have a genius for
+  castle-building,&quot; I laughed. &quot;Well, the reality is cold and
+  empty enough. I&#39;ll go up on deck.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered
+  trunks marked M&#8212;&#8212;. I remember now watching them as they
+  were stowed away.</p>
+
+  <p>But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the
+  dock, that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face
+  with Fanny Meyrick.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You here?&quot; she said. &quot;I thought you had sailed in
+  the Russia! Bessie told me you were to go then.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did she know,&quot; I asked, &quot;that <i>you</i> were
+  going by this steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my
+  question concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a
+  compliment, and looked up gayly: &quot;Oh yes: that was fixed months
+  ago. I told her about it at Lenox.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And did she tell you something else?&quot; I asked
+  sharply.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
+  congratulated, won&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s way. &quot;Good prospect!&quot; Heavens! was that the
+  term to apply to my engagement with Bessie?</p>
+
+  <p>I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more
+  flattering expression of the situation had it been any other woman.
+  But a lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful
+  one to Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some
+  one else joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my
+  cigar.</p>
+
+  <p>It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
+  altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
+  most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
+  carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
+  poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
+  or be amused.</p>
+
+  <p>I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the <i>Trois
+  Mousquetaires</i> for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
+  engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
+  Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her
+  secret. Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of
+  friendship?</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was
+  only one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out
+  of the Hudson River. I did not know.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
+  introduced me on our third day out&#8212;Father Shamrock, an Irish
+  priest, long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he
+  had obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the
+  easy, fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pshaw!&quot; thought I, &quot;what a nuisance!&quot; for I
+  shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his
+  appearance prepossessing&#8212;one of Froude&#39;s &quot;tonsured
+  peasants,&quot; as I looked down at the square shoulders,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 347]</span> the stout, short figure and the
+  broad beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
+  mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
+  kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.</p>
+
+  <p>A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him,
+  he seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
+  They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
+  reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
+  jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.</p>
+
+  <p>Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship&#39;s company.
+  Perfectly suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it
+  than the distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash
+  of manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
+  tongues, rattling off a gay little <i>chanson</i> or an Irish song,
+  it was a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time
+  at the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
+  Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.</p>
+
+  <p>He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on
+  the Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest
+  Protestants. Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an
+  introduction. &quot;Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How <i>can</i>
+  Miss Meyrick walk with him and present him as she does?&quot; But the
+  party of recalcitrants grew less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very
+  frank in her admiration. &quot;Convert you?&quot; she laughed over
+  her shoulder to me. &quot;He wouldn&#39;t take the trouble to
+  try.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
+  evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
+  famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
+  I use the word in its essential, not in its religious
+  sense&#8212;devotion to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.</p>
+
+  <p>We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
+  of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left the
+  dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
+  Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
+  only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone on
+  one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
+  terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
+  state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.</p>
+
+  <p>When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the
+  narrator. But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and
+  was talking very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I
+  gathered, as he went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and
+  brilliant society woman. &quot;Shot right through the heart at
+  Chancellorsville, and he the only brother. They two, orphans, were
+  all that were left of the family. He was her darling, just two years
+  younger than she.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not
+  kissed him when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them,
+  and she had expected to see him again before his regiment marched.
+  She threw herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took
+  a holy vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his
+  body, she would devote herself hereafter to God&#39;s holy
+  Church.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them
+  at my feet. &#39;Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I
+  shall not wear them again&#8212;or if I do not find him.&#39;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him
+  after a time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought
+  him home with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring
+  he wore; but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to
+  leave the world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of
+  poverty and charity.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, Father,&quot; said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes,
+  &quot;did she not die <span class="pagenum">[pg 348]</span> behind
+  the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
+  heart!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bars there were none,&quot; said the Father gently.
+  &quot;She left her vocation to me, and I decided for her to become a
+  Sister of Mercy. I have little sympathy,&quot; with a shrug half
+  argumentative, half deprecatory&#8212;&quot;but little sympathy with
+  the conventual system for spirits like hers. She would have wasted
+  and worn away in the offices of prayer. She needed <i>action</i>. And
+  she had the full of it in her calling. She went from bedside to
+  bedside of the sick and dying&#8212;here a child in a fever; there a
+  widow-woman in the last stages of consumption&#8212;night after
+  night, and day after day, with no rest, no thought of
+  herself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, I have seen her,&quot; I could not help interposing,
+  &quot;in a city car. A shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in
+  her serge dress. She read a book of <i>Hours</i> all the time, but I
+  caught one glimpse of her eyes: they were very brilliant.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; sighed the Father, &quot;it was an unnatural
+  brightness. I was called away to Montreal, or I should never have
+  permitted the sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of
+  contagion and poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her
+  post. So, when I returned after three months&#39; absence, I was
+  shocked at the change: she was dying of their family disease. &#39;It
+  is better, so,&#39; she said, &#39;dear Father. It was only the
+  bullet that saved Harry from it, and it would have been sure to come
+  to me at last, after some opera or ball.&#39; She died last
+  winter&#8212;so patient and pure, and such a saintly
+  sufferer!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why
+  should the Sister&#39;s veiled figure and pale ardent face rise
+  before me as if in warning?</p>
+
+  <p>Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were
+  her life&#39;s purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait
+  of the sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion
+  unthinking, uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.</p>
+
+  <p>The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
+  Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.</p>
+
+  <p>He pictured the priest&#39;s life of poverty, renunciation,
+  leaving the world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to
+  take the confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and
+  ignorance. Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our
+  sympathies, to label them &quot;Dangerous.&quot; Why should we turn
+  the cold shoulder? are we so true to our ideals? But one glance at
+  the young priests as they sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling
+  their beads and crossing themselves with the vehemence of a
+  frightened faith, was enough. Father Shamrock was no type. Very
+  possibly his own life would show but coarse and poor against the
+  chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He had the dramatic faculty:
+  for the moment he was what he related&#8212;that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
+  drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator&#39;s voice sank into
+  silence she said with effusion, &quot;Well, <i>you</i> are a good
+  man, I guess.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away,
+  and, to break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep
+  on deck, to see if there was a star in the heavens.</p>
+
+  <p>There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the
+  ship&#39;s motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown
+  light, shone in the distance.</p>
+
+  <p>The Father was to leave us there. &quot;We shall not make it
+  to-night,&quot; said the sailor. &quot;It is too rough. Early in the
+  morning the passengers will land.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish,&quot; said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening
+  from a dream, &quot;that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the
+  sea!&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschviii" id="churchstepschviii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+  <p>Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London.
+  The Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
+  settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
+  arrangements unhampered. <span class="pagenum">[pg 349]</span> So I
+  carefully eliminated Clarges street from my list of lodging-houses,
+  and finally &quot;ranged&quot; myself with a neat landlady in
+  Sackville street.</p>
+
+  <p>How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the
+  banker&#39;s clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the
+  heavy envelope I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that
+  fluttered away from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I
+  feared to open it there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope,
+  nothing more.</p>
+
+  <p>So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to
+  the law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
+  printed slip, cut from some New York paper&#8212;a list of the
+  Algeria&#39;s passengers.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What joke is this?&quot; I said as I scanned it more
+  closely.</p>
+
+  <p>By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
+  Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie has
+  denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
+  out&#8212;not a penciled word even!</p>
+
+  <p>The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia
+  was clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after
+  Bessie with fatal emphasis, &quot;I am glad, very glad, that Fanny
+  Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side
+  for worlds!&quot; Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told
+  her that I too was going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her
+  at first! She might have been sorry, vexed, but not
+  <i>suspicious</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I
+  had given it room to grow.</p>
+
+  <p>My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
+  Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from
+  Fanny&#39;s pocket-book: &quot;I shall love him for ever and
+  ever&quot;!</p>
+
+  <p>And yet she <i>had</i> faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we
+  were engaged. <i>Had she not</i>?</p>
+
+  <p>My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had
+  expected. Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law&#39;s
+  delay in those pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working
+  for myself, I should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices
+  from our office said &quot;Stick to it,&quot; and I stayed.</p>
+
+  <p>Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
+  affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
+  work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
+  a patient holding of my end of the clue.</p>
+
+  <p>In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
+  envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
+  wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
+  Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
+  that his father was in Florida&#8212;that he had communicated with
+  him, but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart&#39;s
+  present address.</p>
+
+  <p>Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London
+  long since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too
+  proud. She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not
+  bring myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was
+  between us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she
+  was the unconscious cause.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we
+  were in the new year, I could bear it no longer. &quot;Come what
+  will, I must know if Bessie writes to her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the
+  Meyricks&#39; parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting
+  alone, reading by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in
+  the doorway. A little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me,
+  but her manner changed as she took my hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for
+  staying away so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn&#39;t
+  you send us word that you were ill? Papa is a capital
+  nurse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have not been ill,&quot; I said, bewildered,
+  &quot;only very busy and very anxious.&quot;</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 350]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should think so,&quot; still holding my hand, and looking
+  into my face with an expression of deep concern. &quot;Poor fellow!
+  You do look worn. Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let
+  me take care of you. You need rest.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the
+  soft crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a
+  friendly voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered
+  with a tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a
+  delicious sense of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing
+  over me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I can&#39;t imagine what keeps papa,&quot; she said,
+  chatting away with woman&#39;s tact: &quot;he always smokes after
+  dinner, and comes up to me for his cup of tea afterward.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and
+  fragrant, &quot;I should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on
+  board the steamer if I had known it was going to end in this
+  way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p><i>This way</i>! Then Bessie must have told her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;End?&quot; I said stammering: &quot;what&#8212;what
+  end?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took
+  that long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great
+  thing for a young lawyer to have such responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
+  jumped to my feet: &quot;Was that <i>all</i> she told you? Didn&#39;t
+  she tell you that we were engaged?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek,
+  the steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left
+  her pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver
+  sugar-tongs that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were
+  fixed on me with a wild, beseeching expression.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you not know,&quot; I said in softer tones, still
+  standing by the table and looking down on her, &quot;that day at
+  Lenox that we were engaged? Was it not for <i>that</i> you
+  congratulated me on board the steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, &quot;Indeed, no! Oh dear!
+  what have I done?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You?&#8212;nothing!&quot; I said with a sickly smile;
+  &quot;but there is some mistake, some mystery. I have never had one
+  line from Bessie since I reached London, and when I left her she was
+  my own darling little wife that was to be.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering
+  to herself. &quot;Heavens! To think&#8212;Oh, Charlie,&quot; with a
+  sudden burst, &quot;it&#39;s all my doing! How can I ever tell
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You hear from Bessie, then? Is she&#8212;is she well? Where
+  is she? What is all this?&quot; And I seated myself again and tried
+  to speak calmly, for I saw that something very painful was to be
+  said&#8212;something that she could hardly say; and I wanted to help
+  her, though how I knew not.</p>
+
+  <p>At this moment the door opened and &quot;papa&quot; came in. He
+  evidently saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took
+  in the situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the
+  future son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, papa,&quot; said Fanny, rising with evident relief,
+  &quot;just come and talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he
+  wants to take with him.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
+  shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
+  all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
+  school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to have
+  his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of the
+  English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
+  brought me to England.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A very unpresentable son-in-law,&quot; I read in his eye,
+  while he was evidently astonished at his daughter&#39;s prolonged
+  absence.</p>
+
+  <p>Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
+  Fanny again appeared.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so
+  long waiting, <span class="pagenum">[pg 351]</span> but there were
+  some special directions to go with the packet, and it took me a long
+  time to get them right. It is for Bessie, papa&#8212;Bessie Stewart,
+  Mr. Munro&#39;s dear little <i>fiancée</i>&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick&#39;s neatly
+  turned felicitations&#8212;and that the satisfaction he expressed was
+  genuine I was prepared to believe&#8212;hurried home to Sackville
+  street.</p>
+
+  <p>My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me&#8212;close
+  draperies to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed&#8212;and I
+  closed the door and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.</p>
+
+  <p>The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
+  wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did
+  before me, nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most
+  innocently made. What must you have thought of me that day at Lenox,
+  staying close all day to two engaged people, who must have wished me
+  away a thousand times? But I did not dream you were engaged.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew
+  nothing of Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner
+  once or twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were
+  <i>interested</i> in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant,
+  that I thought it was only a notion of my jealous self.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary
+  time? Do you know that the year before we had spent it together,
+  too?&#8212;September 28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox&#39;s
+  funeral, but we had walked together, and I was happy in being near
+  you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson
+  River that you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid
+  gayety of my first winter&#8212;from the flats of fashionable life.
+  You had given me an ideal&#8212;something to live up to and grow
+  worthy of.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper
+  harm I have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove
+  together in the afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to
+  find out what you were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant,
+  that I fancied there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if
+  you had cared for her at all, that she had been indifferent to
+  you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and
+  when she told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very
+  happy, for I thought then that I should have you all to myself.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you
+  had changed your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I
+  write it, thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a
+  little note to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don&#39;t know
+  where you were when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember
+  it, what I wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    &quot;&#39;DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have
+    changed his passage to be with us. I know from something that he
+    has just told <i>me</i> that this is so, and that he consoles
+    himself already for your coldness. You remember what I told you
+    when we talked about him. I shall <i>try</i> now. F.M.&#39;
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what
+  a weak, weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought,
+  that Bessie did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought
+  you <i>had</i> cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his
+  manner&#8212;you weren&#39;t of an old Knickerbocker family, you
+  know&#8212;and had given you to understand that your visits were not
+  acceptable.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that
+  I put that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because
+  papa always looked so decidedly <i>queer</i> whenever your name was
+  mentioned.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I
+  believed that in due time you would come back to me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie knew well enough what that <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  352]</span> pilot-letter meant, for here is her answer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Pinned fast to the end of Fanny&#39;s letter, so that by no chance
+  should I read it first, were these words in my darling&#39;s
+  hand:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be
+  traveling about so much that you need not write me the progress of
+  your romance, but believe me I shall be most interested in its
+  conclusion. BESSIE S.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited,
+  had given her leave &quot;to try.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschix"
+  id="churchstepschix"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+  <p>But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in
+  passionate unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that
+  night I had taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next
+  steamer. The case would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change
+  of hands: D&#8212;&#8212; must come out to attend to it himself,
+  then, but I would suffer no longer.</p>
+
+  <p>No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach
+  her save that of the detectives. &quot;I&#39;ll go to the office,
+  file my papers till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and
+  be off.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
+  what few women in the world would have had the courage to
+  do&#8212;shown her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would
+  be an embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out
+  that morning that it was too early yet to call.</p>
+
+  <p>To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
+  <i>perdu</i> and in wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A letter, Mr. Munro, from D&#8212;&#8212; &amp; Co.,&quot;
+  said the brisk young clerk. They had treated me with great respect of
+  late, for, indeed, our claim was steadily growing in weight, and was
+  sure to come right before long. I opened and read:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The missing paper is found on this side of the
+  Atlantic&#8212;what you have been rummaging for all winter on the
+  other. A trusty messenger sails at once, and will report himself to
+  you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At once!&quot; Well, there&#39;s only a few days&#39; delay,
+  at most. Perhaps it&#39;s young Bunker. He can take the case and end
+  it: anybody can end it now.</p>
+
+  <p>And my heart was light. &quot;A few days,&quot; I said to myself
+  as I ran up the steps in Clarges street.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Miss Fanny at home?&quot; to the man, or rather to the
+  member of Parliament, who opened the door&#8212;&quot;Miss Meyrick, I
+  mean.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir&#8212;in the drawing-room, sir;&quot; and he
+  announced me with a flourish.</p>
+
+  <p>Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me,
+  for on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came
+  forward.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of
+  old.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Charlie,&quot; she began impetuously, &quot;I have been
+  thinking over shipboard and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn&#39;t
+  think then&#8212;did you?&#8212;that I cared so very much for you? I
+  am so glad that the Father bewitched me as he did, for I can remember
+  no foolishness on my part to you, sir&#8212;none at all. Can
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
+  together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of
+  self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle
+  and sympathetic. I had dreaded the <i>rôle</i>; but here was a new
+  turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little
+  wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had
+  fallen, and here was I, a late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric
+  elder brother, with all my little stock of
+  property-phrases&#8212;friendship of a life, esteem, etc.&#8212;of no
+  more account than a week-old playbill.</p>
+
+  <p>For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness
+  scene, in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her
+  that I should honor her above all women for her courage and her
+  truth; and in which she would cry <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  353]</span> until her poor little heart was soothed and calmed; and
+  that I should have the sweet consciousness of being beloved, however
+  hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.</p>
+
+  <p>But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I
+  believe I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been
+  so.</p>
+
+  <p>But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare
+  tact which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the
+  world&#8212;the <i>bravura</i> style, if I may call it so, that had
+  carried us over such a difficult bar.</p>
+
+  <p>It <i>was</i> delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating
+  Father, and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that
+  acknowledgment too.</p>
+
+  <p>I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.</p>
+
+  <p>But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not,
+  as I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs.
+  D&#8212;&#8212;, with a large traveling party. They came straight to
+  London, and summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.</p>
+
+  <p>I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady,
+  whom I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye
+  terriers who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon
+  enough.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; charged me, Mr. Munro,&quot; she began
+  after our first ceremonious greeting, &quot;to give this into no
+  hands but yours. I have kept it securely with my diamonds, and those
+  I always carry about me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the
+  paper I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was
+  strongly perfumed with violet powder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see, I was coming over,&quot; she proceeded to explain,
+  &quot;in any event, and when Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; talked of sending
+  Bunker&#8212;I think it was Bunker&#8212;with us, I persuaded him to
+  let me be messenger instead. It wasn&#39;t worth while, you know, to
+  have any more people leave the office, you being away, and&#8212;Oh,
+  Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the <i>surprised</i> look
+  in her eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to
+  me, I thought that the reason for young Bunker&#39;s omission from
+  the party was possibly before me.</p>
+
+  <p>Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices!
+  Her maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor
+  young clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
+  at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
+  ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
+  one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
+  it on the morrow for home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie is in Lenox, I think,&quot; Fanny Meyrick had said to
+  me as I bade her good-bye.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What! You have heard from her?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends
+  this morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church
+  steps.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny&#39;s cheek.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You will give her my letter? I would have written to her
+  also, but it was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give
+  her that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have kept it for her,&quot; I said quietly; and the adieus
+  were over.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  354]</span> <a name="turkey" id="turkey"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>HOW THEY &quot;KEEP A HOTEL&quot; IN TURKEY.</h2>
+
+  <p>The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of
+  faith, and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from
+  Christian lands. Thus, the impunity&#8212;nay, the protection and
+  sympathy&#8212;afforded to the street-beggar, and the way in which
+  the very poor divide their crust with those still more
+  poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise the stranger who observes
+  the scene in the open streets. Then, too, the public fountains, which
+  are charitable offerings from pious persons, are more numerous in
+  Constantinople than in any other city in the world. Nor does the law
+  of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam has anticipated Mr. Bergh,
+  and &quot;The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals&quot;
+  had as its founder in the Orient no less a personage than Mohammed,
+  whom &quot;the faithful&quot; revere as the Messenger (Résoul) of
+  God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran specially
+  inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly does the
+  Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with homeless,
+  masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will not abridge
+  by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more curious because
+  the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the true believer.
+  Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does more than throw
+  him a bone or scraps of food.</p>
+
+  <p>Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his
+  master does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him
+  there to die &quot;when it pleases Allah.&quot; The same sentiment
+  runs through the whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested
+  in religious foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans
+  or caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
+  khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
+  Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
+  creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of
+  commercial travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and
+  protection from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The
+  hospitable doors were ever open, but the apparition of &quot;mine
+  host,&quot; ready to offer you board and lodging for a reasonable
+  compensation, was undreamt of in the early Turkish philosophy. Every
+  traveler literally &quot;took up his bed and walked &quot;&#8212;or
+  rode&#8212;away in the morning, leaving the room he had tenanted as
+  bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own cooking utensils,
+  provender and materials for making a fire.</p>
+
+  <p>What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to
+  effect for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people,
+  who leave legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers,
+  before or after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity.
+  Many a wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly
+  religious men or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a
+  long day&#39;s ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of
+  rain characteristic of the same region.</p>
+
+  <p>Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
+  cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
+  when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
+  meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
+  bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
+  camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
+  most melancholy to the untrained ear.</p>
+
+  <p>But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
+  bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
+  lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
+  the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the
+  primal necessity of Oriental well&#8212;being, taking precedence even
+  of tobacco, which, however, always accompanies it. There is
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 355]</span> always a bazaar close by, at
+  which you can purchase savory <i>kibabs</i> of mutton and other
+  cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
+  are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals <i>al
+  fresco</i> at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after
+  prayers.</p>
+
+  <p>Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
+  repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
+  without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
+  rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
+  shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly in
+  his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping the
+  feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law, is
+  reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
+  uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
+  shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
+  ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
+  circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
+  as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
+  to our Turkish or Arab brother.</p>
+
+  <p>Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of
+  nationalities and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the
+  absence of other hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the
+  poor; only, as every man brings his own things with him, you find
+  more luxury and comfort in some of the arrangements than in others.
+  You may see rich merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles
+  of costly cushions, attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking
+  perfumed Shiraz out of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes
+  are tipped with precious amber and encircled by rows of precious
+  stones worth a prince&#39;s ransom. Huddled together, in striking
+  contrast to this picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and
+  smoking the common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also
+  enjoying themselves after their fashion.</p>
+
+  <p>These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling
+  merchant, Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares,
+  without seeming to care much whether you buy or not.</p>
+
+  <p>The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
+  rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
+  as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
+  store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
+  residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
+  away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
+  in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
+  whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
+  suspicious persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
+  enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose
+  ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
+  Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
+  and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the
+  <i>sââb</i> were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the
+  diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still
+  were the interminable tales spun out by the professional
+  story-teller, giving ragged versions of the <i>Arabian Nights&#39;
+  Entertainments</i> for the delectation of the tireless native
+  listeners.</p>
+
+  <p>In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
+  slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
+  purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit all
+  tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
+  compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
+  in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
+  the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
+  will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
+  Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the
+  proceedings. This restriction has taken away from the khans one of
+  their former great attractions.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  356]</span>
+
+  <p>To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury
+  and profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more
+  comforts than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment
+  for man and beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is
+  enjoyment in it when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and
+  &quot;such small deer,&quot; and one is accustomed &quot;to roughing
+  it,&quot; and blessed with a good appetite and digestion.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
+  best&#8212;more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses,
+  especially to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from
+  Turkish or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the
+  close contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses
+  named more pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental,
+  generally making it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the
+  covering, snores stertorously throughout the night; so that silence,
+  which we regard as necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan;
+  and when daybreak comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has
+  broken loose again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn,
+  and make most diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.</p>
+
+  <p>Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
+  but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
+  resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
+  sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
+  system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
+  retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
+  a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at
+  Messeir&#39;s or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European
+  plan.</p>
+
+  <p>At Messeir&#39;s in Constantinople, or at Shepheard&#39;s hotel in
+  Cairo&#8212;places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
+  descriptions of travelers like the authors of <i>Eothen</i> and
+  <i>The Crescent and the Cross</i>&#8212;a most motley medley of
+  Western nationalities may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists
+  and wanderers of the world congregated there during the winter
+  months, and presenting a panoramic view of all the peculiar phases
+  and contrasts of European civilization, more antagonistic there than
+  elsewhere. There you see the German savant with his round spectacles,
+  round face and round figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the
+  imperturbable Englishman, drinking his bottled beer under the shadow
+  of the Pyramids; and the angular American, more curious, but more
+  cosmopolite, than any of them. The returning Englishman or
+  Englishwoman who has spent twenty years in India also presents an
+  anomalous type, proving how climate and mode of life may alter the
+  original; for it is curious to contrast the round, rosy faces of the
+  fresh English girls outward bound with the sharp, sallow faces and
+  flashing, restless eyes which characterize those who are returning.
+  The babel of tongues at these <i>tables-d&#39;hôte</i>, where
+  conversations are being carried on in every European language, is
+  most perplexing at first, though French and English predominate.
+  Altogether, for the student of character there is no better field
+  than one of these European hotels in the East&#8212;none where the
+  lines of difference can be found more sharply defined; for travel and
+  contact with strangers appear only to bring out the contrasts more
+  clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead of softening
+  down or assimilating them, as one might expect.</p>
+
+  <p>Very few travelers see the city khans&#8212;fewer still ever
+  venture to pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of
+  desert-travel the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting
+  their own tents for the stone walls, and confiding in the
+  arrangements made by their dragomen or guides, who contract to make
+  the necessary provision for all their wants for a stipulated
+  sum&#8212;one-half usually in advance, the balance payable at the
+  expiration of the trip. To do these men justice, as a rule they
+  provide liberally and well in all respects, their reputation and
+  recommendations being their capital and stock in trade for securing
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 357]</span> subsequent tourists. Yet it
+  cannot be doubted that this system has robbed the Eastern tour of
+  some of its most salient and striking peculiarities, and has deprived
+  the traveler of much opportunity for insight into the real life of
+  the Oriental, only to be seen while he is journeying from place to
+  place, since his own house is generally closed against the stranger,
+  and it is only in the khan that a glimpse of his mode of life can be
+  obtained.</p>
+
+  <p>The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of
+  the East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing
+  tide of European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer
+  aspects of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more
+  essential features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the
+  hat, which they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of
+  chibouques, and drink &quot;gaseous lemonade&quot; (champagne), in
+  defiance of the Prophet&#39;s prohibition; the women may send from
+  the high harems for French fashions, and &quot;fearfully and
+  wonderfully&quot; array themselves therein; but in other respects the
+  people will stubbornly adhere to their own social system and habits
+  of life.</p>
+
+  <p>It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the
+  manners and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and
+  outside view if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid
+  European hotels we have described, instead of braving the picturesque
+  discomforts of the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find
+  endurable by taking a few preliminary precautions easily suggested to
+  him on the spot.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWIN DE LEON.</p><a name="gossip" id="gossip">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="vienna" id="vienna"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> THE
+  CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.</h3>
+
+  <p>I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German
+  tongue. It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended
+  foreigner. I am lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ
+  one man to talk to another. The <i>commisionnaire</i> does not
+  understand more than half I say. What might he not be interpreting to
+  the other fellow? The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety
+  and trouble. I desired some blotting-paper. I went to a little
+  stationery shop. I said, &quot;Paper! paper! für die blot, you know.
+  Ich bin Englisher&#8212;er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas?
+  Hang it!&quot; They took down all sorts of paper&#8212;letter-paper,
+  wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried to make my want known
+  by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The shopkeeper stared at
+  me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he discussed the matter
+  with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously. I went away. I went
+  to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five minutes to explain
+  the matter to him. He discussed the matter with the <i>portier</i>.
+  The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass buttons. The
+  commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what I require, but
+  is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of blotting-paper!
+  It is so with everything. Every little matter of every-day life,
+  which at home to think of and do are almost identical, here costs so
+  much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone when I have
+  purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast and dinner
+  task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from established
+  custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like a wrong
+  figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to convince a
+  stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer for
+  dinner. He would bring <span class="pagenum">[pg 358]</span> beer. I
+  would say, &quot;I don&#39;t want beer! I want my&#8212;some
+  dinner.&quot; He would depart and take counsel with the head-waiter,
+  and I would feel as if I had been doing something for which I ought
+  to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches and exclaims with
+  domineering voice, &quot;Vat you vants?&quot; I reply with meekness,
+  &quot;Dinner, sir, if you please.&quot; He brings me an elegantly
+  bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look
+  at it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
+  finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
+  functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to
+  an underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in
+  the dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese.
+  Tongues, plates, knives and forks clatter inside&#8212;wheels roll,
+  rumble and clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my
+  soup. Hours seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life
+  is too busy and important a matter with them to pay any attention to
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is
+  beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit
+  down. He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible
+  of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard
+  him. To appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will
+  with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men
+  at different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met
+  this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my
+  fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the
+  Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
+  bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
+  requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed <i>de
+  rigueur</i>, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait
+  long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in
+  general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government
+  securities&#8212;the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the
+  Church of England. One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry,
+  I ventured to open a window. The dealer in government securities shut
+  it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I
+  said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating
+  my breakfast. He said that was against the rules of the house: the
+  windows must not be opened. There was too much dust blowing in the
+  street. What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust
+  in that dining-room?</p>
+
+  <p>You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the
+  unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a
+  certain manner, so must they ever be done. It requires almost a
+  revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first
+  meal, &quot;Ein caffee und egg mit hard.&quot; It may be seen that I
+  speak German with the English accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I
+  suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince
+  in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of
+  this new demand in the matter of eggs. It is presumable that the
+  prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still
+  soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up and said, &quot;See here! I want
+  mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You understand?&quot; The
+  nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came about one-tenth of
+  a degree harder than the previous morning. I resolved to gain my
+  point. I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit
+  and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This
+  despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and
+  enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of
+  Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though
+  the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.</p>
+
+  <p>I said on the third morning, &quot;Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
+  kitchen?&quot; Ja. &quot;And hot Wasser?&quot; Ja. &quot;And will you
+  put this hot Feuer under the said hot <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  359]</span> Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them
+  there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week&#8212;any
+  length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
+  brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
+  want mine eggs hard.&quot; Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked
+  and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some
+  improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard
+  boiled.</p>
+
+  <p>The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking
+  beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
+  English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
+  The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
+  people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down
+  life&#39;s stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized
+  to remain longer in their bodies.</p>
+
+  <p>I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires
+  two hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink
+  a glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table
+  on the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I
+  awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until
+  nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two
+  hours. Then more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire.
+  Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not.
+  This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty
+  sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as
+  in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the
+  other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit
+  there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the
+  window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only
+  sign of life about them.</p>
+
+  <p>The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you
+  gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
+  street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
+  &quot;Dienstmann,&quot; does a good business in picking it up and
+  bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a
+  copper coin equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a
+  sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.</p>
+
+  <p>The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
+  particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose&#8212;a most
+  refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general
+  dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the
+  English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed.
+  The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor
+  gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them,
+  as a sailor would say, is cut &quot;by the lifts and
+  braces.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
+  about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
+  pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back
+  and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
+  kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
+  black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and
+  burdened herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to
+  follow. I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame
+  of mind. Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She
+  spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited
+  for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I
+  pondered over the possibilities involved in a German
+  &quot;Warm-bad.&quot; Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never!
+  At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is
+  to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door&#8212;nothing
+  with which to defend one&#39;s self. I bathe in peace, however. On
+  emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. There is a small
+  towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach
+  from the shoulders <span class="pagenum">[pg 360]</span> to the
+  knees. I study over their possible use. I conclude they are to dry
+  the anatomy with. On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were
+  to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot
+  water for cold.</p>
+
+  <p>The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
+  disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
+  offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very
+  small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
+  despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
+  visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
+  have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
+  apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
+  proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
+  passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
+  egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I
+  had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
+  looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
+  right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
+  this was his first visit, but he&#39;d try. So both of us went
+  prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a
+  deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently
+  interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or
+  suggestion. I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man
+  has in this forlorn place. I was beginning to think of descending by
+  way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door
+  which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time,
+  glad to escape.</p>
+
+  <p>I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition
+  stern justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the
+  Pork Packers&#39; Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the
+  processes which millions of American hogs are subjected to while
+  being converted into pork. There are hogs going in long procession to
+  be killed, and going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they
+  knew it was their business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs
+  scalded, hogs scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides,
+  jowls; hogs salted, hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number
+  of unpainted buggy and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles;
+  not far off, a little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a
+  platoon of clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow
+  communing with a patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of
+  green iron pumps, with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit
+  of the American department.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
+  general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
+  our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can&#39;t send our
+  greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
+  opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
+  torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a
+  Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway
+  smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of
+  originality and talent, he might even now save the national
+  reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers,
+  wheel-barrows and pick-handles out of doors, and converting one of
+  the United States rooms into a reservation for the Modocs, and the
+  other into a corral for buffaloes and grizzly bears. These, with a
+  mustang poet or two from Oregon, a few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live
+  American daily paper, with a corps of reporters trained to squeeze
+  themselves through door-cracks and key-holes, might retrieve the
+  national honor, if shown up realistically and artistically.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">PRENTICE MULFORD.</p><a name="ghostly" id=
+  "ghostly"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>GHOSTLY WARRIORS.</h3>
+
+  <p>So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a
+  mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord
+  Macaulay&#39;s <i>Battle of the Lake Regillus</i>, as to justify
+  somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 361]</span> Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon
+  the extract from the <i>Vida de San Millan</i> given in the <i>Poets
+  and Poetry of Europe</i>, &quot;Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the
+  Castilian poets whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a
+  monk in the monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems
+  on sacred subjects in Castilian Alexandrines.&quot; According to the
+  poem, the Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by
+  &quot;a terror of their foes,&quot; since &quot;these were a numerous
+  army, a little handful those.&quot;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And whilst the Christian people stood in this
+      uncertainty,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and
+      fixed their thoughts on high;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful
+      and bright,&#8212;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments
+      were more white.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">They rode upon two horses more white than crystal
+      sheen,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had
+      seen.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had
+      they,&#8212;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And downward through the fields of air they urged
+      their rapid way;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and
+      angry look,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked
+      sabres shook.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The Christian host, beholding this, straightway
+      take heart again;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on
+      the plain,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And each one with his clenched fist to smite his
+      breast begins,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And promises to God on high he will forsake his
+      sins.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the
+      battle-ground,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring
+      blows around;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost
+      ranks among,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the
+      throng.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Together with these two good knights, the champions
+      of the sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore
+      and high.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody
+      fight;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some
+      half-dead with fright:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Full sorely they repented that to the field they
+      came,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">For they saw that from the battle they should
+      retreat with shame.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown
+      had on,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint
+      John;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish
+      hood,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla&#39;s
+      neighborhood.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Turn now to the <i>Battle of the Lake Regillus</i>. In a series of
+  desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
+  worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
+  upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion,
+  Herminius&#8212;&quot;who kept the bridge so well&quot;&#8212;has
+  been slain, and his war-horse, black Auster, has barely been rescued
+  by the dictator Aulus from the hands of Titus, the youngest of the
+  Tarquins.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And Aulus the Dictator</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Stroked Auster&#39;s raven mane;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With heed he looked unto the girths,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With heed unto the rein.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;Now bear me well, black Auster,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Into yon thick array;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And thou and I will have revenge</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">For thy good lord this day.&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">So spake he; and was buckling</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Tighter black Auster&#39;s band,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">When he was aware of a princely pair</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That rode at his right hand.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So like they were, no mortal</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Might one from other know:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">White as snow their armor was:</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Their steeds were white as snow.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Never on earthly anvil</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Did such rare armor gleam;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And never did such gallant steeds</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Drink of an earthly stream.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">So answered those strange horsemen,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And each couched low his spear;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And forthwith all the ranks of Rome</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Were bold and of good cheer:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And on the thirty armies</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Came wonder and affright,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And Ardea wavered on the left,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And Cora on the right.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;Rome to the charge!&quot; cried Aulus;</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">&quot;The foe begins to yield!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Charge for the hearth of Vesta!</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Charge for the Golden Shield!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Let no man stop to plunder,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">But slay, and slay, and slay;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The gods who live for ever</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Are on our side to-day.&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Then the fierce trumpet-flourish</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">From earth to heaven arose;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The kites know well the long stern swell</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That bids the Romans close.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And fliers and pursuers</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Were mingled in a mass:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And far away the battle</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Went roaring through the pass.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The scene of the following stanza is <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  362]</span> at Rome, where the watchers at the gates have learned
+  from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the day:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And all the people trembled,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And pale grew every cheek;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And Sergius, the High Pontiff,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Alone found voice to speak:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;The gods who live for ever</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Have fought for Rome to-day!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">These be the Great Twin Brethren</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To whom the Dorians pray!&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay
+  was consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was
+  at the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out
+  how certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might
+  fairly be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long
+  before Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren.
+  He has even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary
+  appearance of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the
+  resemblance just pointed out. &quot;In modern times,&quot; he wrote,
+  &quot;a very similar story actually found credence among a people
+  much more civilized than the Romans of the fifth century before
+  Christ. A chaplain of Cortez, writing about thirty years after the
+  conquest of Mexico,...had the face to assert that, in an engagement
+  against the Indians, Saint James had appeared on a gray horse at the
+  head of the Castilian adventurers. Many of those adventurers were
+  living when this lie was printed. One of them, honest Bernal Diaz,
+  wrote an account of the expedition.... He says that he was in the
+  battle, and that he saw a gray horse with a man on his back, but that
+  the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the
+  ever-blessed apostle Saint James. &#39;Nevertheless,&#39; Bernal
+  adds, &#39;it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
+  glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
+  unworthy to see him.&#39;&quot; Other striking instances of identity
+  between classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord
+  Macaulay in the learned and interesting general preface to his
+  <i>Lays of Ancient Rome</i>. But the reappearance of this particular
+  story in such remote times and places, and with such marked
+  similarities and variations, would entitle it to a place among the
+  indestructible popular legends collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his
+  <i>Curious Myths of the Middle Ages</i>.</p><a name="warning" id=
+  "warning"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A WARNING TO LOVERS.</h2>
+
+  <p>&quot;Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin&#39;,
+  triflin&#39;, owdacious, contrary piece that ever lived.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, ma!&quot; sobbed Matilda, &quot;I couldn&#39; help
+  myself&#8212;&#39;deed I couldn&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Couldn&#39; help yourself? That&#39;s a pretty way to talk!
+  Ain&#39;t he a nice young man?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Got money?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And good kinfolks?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And loves you to destrackshun?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, in the name o&#39; common sense, what did you send him
+  home for?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s&#39;pose,
+  though I&#39;d ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer
+  clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on
+  his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began
+  breathin&#39; hard, and <i>his gallowses kept a creakin and a
+  creakin&#39;</i>, I till I thought in my soul somethin&#39; terrible
+  was the matter with his in&#39;ards, his vitals; and that flustered
+  and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin&#39;. Seein&#39; me do
+  that, he creaked worse&#39;n ever, and that made me cry harder; and
+  the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it
+  came to me that it wasn&#39;t nothin&#39; but his gallowses; and then
+  I bust out a laughin&#39; fit to kill myself, right in his face. And
+  then he jumpt up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he
+  ain&#39;t comin&#39; back no more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Metildy,&quot; said the old woman sternly, &quot;stop
+  sniv&#39;lin&#39;. You&#39;ve made an everlastin&#39; fool of
+  yourself, but your cake ain&#39;t all dough yet. It all comes of them
+  no &#39;count, fashionable sto&#39; gallowses&#8212;&#39;
+  &#39;spenders&#39; I believe they calls &#39;em. Never mind, honey!
+  I&#39;ll send <span class="pagenum">[pg 363]</span> for Johnny, tell
+  him how it happened, &#39;pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
+  pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa&#39;s; and they never do
+  creak.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, ma,&quot; said Matilda, brightening up; &quot;but let
+  <i>me</i> knit &#39;em.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So you shall, honey: he&#39;ll vally them a heap more than
+  if I knit &#39;em. Cheer up, Tildy: it&#39;ll all be right&#8212;you
+  mind if it won&#39;t.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were
+  married, and Johnny&#39;s gallowses never creaked any
+  more.</p><a name="notes" id="notes"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>NOTES.</h2>
+
+  <p>Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing
+  like a stately ship of Tarsus &quot;with all her bravery on, and
+  tackle trim,&quot; is particular to note &quot;an amber scent of
+  odorous perfume, her harbinger.&quot; Perfume as an adjunct of
+  feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest
+  poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the
+  modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors
+  and colors&#8212;a theory which might never have been dreamed of in
+  the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the
+  belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe
+  Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new refinement of
+  coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and quantity of
+  perfume than in previous years, but employs it according to a certain
+  scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially <i>de
+  rigueur</i>, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to
+  establish a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she
+  carries and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is
+  to say, gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the
+  stuff of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if
+  light yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda
+  (which has such a run at present for ladies&#39; costumes), the
+  chosen perfume will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the
+  other flowers corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh
+  ball-toilettes. Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between
+  different odors and different styles of personal beauty or personal
+  traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony
+  between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due
+  to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many
+  another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the science
+  is fairly established.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The <i>enfant terrible</i> plays an important rôle in literature
+  as in society during these modern days, and although a little of him
+  goes a good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes
+  spicy.</p>
+
+  <p>A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his
+  knees, when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white.
+  &quot;Oh,&quot; says grandpapa, &quot;that&#39;s because I&#39;m so
+  old. Why, don&#39;t you know that I was in the ark?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In the ark?&quot; cries Tommy: &quot;why you aren&#39;t
+  Noah, are you, grandpapa?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, I&#39;m not Noah.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, then you&#39;re Shem.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not Shem, either.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, then I suppose you&#39;re Japhet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, you haven&#39;t guessed right: I&#39;m not
+  Japhet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, then, grandpapa,&quot; said the child, driven to the
+  extremity of his biblical knowledge, &quot;you must be one of the
+  beasts.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church
+  one Sunday for the first time.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see, Augustus,&quot; said his fond mamma, anxious to
+  impress his tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances,
+  &quot;how many people come here to pray to God?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, but not so many as go to the circus,&quot; says the
+  practical lad.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
+  crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
+  slap.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I hope you paid her back?&quot; cried the angry
+  mother, her indignation getting the better of her
+  judgment.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 364]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, I paid her back <i>before-hand</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
+  schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
+  giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would
+  break, poor things!&quot; says papa.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; replies the child: &quot;only the front row
+  cried.&quot;</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British
+  journalism was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian
+  allusions and fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every
+  pedant of the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing
+  acquaintance with Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners
+  and customs. Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations
+  for leading articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi
+  of the sort commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular
+  book of maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to
+  the comparative profundity of each other&#39;s researches into
+  Persian lore; but the climax was capped, we think, by one London
+  journal, which politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his
+  conduct and his reading. &quot;Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by
+  English flattery,&quot; said this editor gravely, &quot;with an
+  exaggerated sense of his own importance, His Majesty, as a
+  corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of &#39;Ushter wa
+  Dirâz-kush,&#39; from the &#39;Baharistân&#39; of Jaumy.&quot; In
+  ordinary times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said
+  fable is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken
+  for granted, during the shah&#39;s visit, that the Baharistân of
+  Jaumy was as familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon
+  the whole, our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing
+  the shah. Horace&#39;s famous &quot;Persicos odi, puer,
+  apparatus,&quot; has a very close application in the &quot;Persian
+  stuff&quot; with which British journalism has lately been
+  flooded.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">How various his employments whom the world</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Calls idle!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the
+  shah in England as having been a grand &quot;variety
+  entertainment&quot; would feebly represent the mixture actually
+  furnished him. One day, for example (a Monday), His Majesty began by
+  reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then Captain Shaw was presented to
+  the shah&#8212;likewise Colonel Hogg; and then, according to the
+  <i>Morning Advertiser</i>, &quot;Joe Goss, Ned Donelly, Alex. Lawson,
+  and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing before the shah
+  and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed highly
+  delighted;&quot; and next came deputations successively from the
+  Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
+  Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
+  Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
+  from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
+  Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
+  wind up the day&#39;s programme, the shah, attended by many princes
+  and princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a
+  performance at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his
+  taste&#8212;namely, gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed
+  by &quot;Signor Romah&quot; on the trapeze. All this was done before
+  dinner; and the curious combination of piety and pugilism,
+  missionaries and acrobats, may be supposed to have had the effect of
+  duly &quot;impressing&quot; the illustrious guest.</p>
+
+  <p>A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
+  America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
+  fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,
+  we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
+  fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he
+  outwitted the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues
+  make artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
+  (which does not appreciate <span class="pagenum">[pg 365]</span>
+  ingenuity of that sort) lately gave six months in prison to some
+  makers of sham coffee-grains, thus interfering with a business which
+  was earning twenty thousand dollars a year. Some of the Paris
+  pastry-cooks make balls for <i>vol-au-vent</i> with a hash of rags
+  allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and partridges for pâtés are
+  constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly shaped to represent those
+  birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell marshmallow paste made out of
+  Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts the eyes of a fresh mackerel
+  in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp customers; and as to drinks,
+  one dyer boldly puts over his door &quot;Burgundy Vintages!&quot;
+  They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds of glass. Adulteration on
+  adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is adulteration!</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating
+  as many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not
+  many years ago, or the philosopher&#39;s stone at a more remote
+  period. It possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the
+  danger connected with the experiments&#8212;the source, we suppose,
+  of the eagerness shown by Professor Wise and his associates to
+  <i>fly</i> to evils that they know not of. Perpetual motion received
+  its quietus from the blasts of ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe
+  to encounter. It may survive the attacks of gayety, but it will
+  succumb, we fancy, to the resistless force of
+  <i>gravity</i>.</p><a name="literature" id="literature">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York:
+    Holt &amp; Williams.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
+  adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
+  with some versions from among his prose works by another
+  Philadelphian translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine&#39;s prose,
+  delicate in its pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be
+  held too precious by the interpreter. The latter must have all his
+  wits about him, or he will not find English at once simple enough and
+  distinguished enough to stand for the original. To get at Heine&#39;s
+  prose exactly in another language must be almost as hard as to get at
+  his poetry. The principal selection made by Mr. Stern is a long
+  rambling rhapsody called &quot;Florentine Nights,&quot; in which the
+  author professes to pour into the ears of a dying mistress the
+  history of some of his former amours and exaltations, the natural
+  jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus in the recital. His
+  first love, however, is an idealization&#8212;a Greek statue which he
+  visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning&#39;s poem does the</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">Shrinking Caryatides</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of just-tinged marble, like Eve&#39;s lilied
+    flesh.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator
+  almost as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an
+  interpreter of poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to
+  struggle with, yet there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and
+  waft of feeling in the metre which lends him wings and helps him on.
+  If Mr. Stern does not encumber his style with a betrayal of the
+  difficulties he has got over&#8212;if he does not give us pedantry
+  and double-epithets, so common in vulgar renderings from the
+  German&#8212;he certainly shows no timidity in turning the polished
+  familiarity of Heine&#39;s prose into our commonest vernacular.
+  &quot;What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;&quot; &quot;for
+  the men, lots of patience:&quot; trivialities of expression like
+  these are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine
+  would have written if he had been writing in English, at least the
+  fault of familiarity is <span class="pagenum">[pg 366]</span> better
+  than the fault of hardness; and these translations are never at all
+  hard or uncomfortable. When we add that Mr. Stern gives us an index
+  without showing what works the extracts are taken from, and that he
+  gives us an article on Heine without any mention that we can discover
+  of Heine&#39;s wife, we have vented about all the objections we can
+  make to this welcome publication; and they are very few to find in a
+  collection of hundreds of &quot;scintillations.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so
+  liberally and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a
+  complete exhibit of Heine&#39;s mind on nearly all the topics he
+  occupied himself about. We have his views on French and German
+  politicians; on French, German and English authors; on art and
+  poetry; on his own soul and character; on religion; besides a great
+  deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite persiflage surely that
+  ever was heard, which flutters clear away from the regions of sense
+  and information, yet which only a man of sense and information could
+  have uttered.</p>
+
+  <p>Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
+  everything &quot;charming.&quot; His wit is a little cheap, perhaps,
+  when he calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg &quot;the
+  necropolis in which the mummies of perjury are embalmed;&quot; at
+  least it becomes tiresome to hear his constant disparagement of the
+  politics which he chose to live under, and which protected him so
+  agreeably; but he is his own keen self where he observes that the
+  signs of the revolution of 1830, what he calls the legend of
+  <i>liberté, egalité, fraternité</i> at the street-corners, had
+  &quot;already been wiped away.&quot; Victor Hugo, for his part, did
+  not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have, in
+  relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
+  where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody &quot;la
+  grandeur révolutionnaire.&quot; The cooler spectator from Hamburg
+  inspects at Paris &quot;the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the
+  kangaroos,&quot; without much of the vertigo of precipices, and he
+  sees &quot;M. de La Fayette and his white locks&#8212;at different
+  places, however,&quot; for the latter were in a locket and the hero
+  was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates &quot;the virtuous La
+  Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner.&quot; The age of industry,
+  commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite suited to the
+  poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine&#39;s admiration of
+  Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
+  &quot;Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
+  emperor,&quot; he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects
+  Napoleon as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers
+  ought to have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat
+  precipitated the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the
+  world after his death was &quot;at the best to be bored to death by
+  the monotony of a republic.&quot; Ardent patriots in this country
+  need not go for sympathy to the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of
+  a commonwealth he had small love: &quot;That which oppresses me is
+  the artist&#39;s and the scholar&#39;s secret dread, lest our modern
+  civilization, the laboriously achieved result of so many centuries of
+  effort, will be endangered I by the triumph of Communism.&quot; We
+  have drifted into the citation of these sentiments because many
+  conservatives think of Heine only as an irreconcilable destroyer and
+  revolutionist, and do not care to welcome in him the basis of
+  attachment to order which must underlie every artist&#39;s or
+  author&#39;s love of freedom. &quot;Soldier in the liberation of
+  humanity&quot; as he was, that liberation was to be the result of
+  growth, not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but
+  &quot;hunger, <i>envy</i> and death.&quot; It has but one faith,
+  happiness on this earth; and the millennium it foresees is &quot;a
+  single shepherd and a single flock, all shorn after the same pattern,
+  and bleating alike.&quot; Such passages are the true reflection of
+  Heine&#39;s keen but not great mind, miserably bandied between the
+  hopes of a republican future, that was to be the death of art and
+  literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose conditions
+  sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought, scratched
+  and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the politics he
+  was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when he turned his
+  attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully impartial. He
+  hated the English for &quot;their idle curiosity, bedizened
+  awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant
+  delight in all melancholy objects.&quot; As for the French, they are
+  &quot;les comédiens ordinaires du bon Dieu;&quot; yet &quot;a
+  blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a
+  praying Englishman.&quot; And Germany: &quot;Germany alone possesses
+  those colossal fools whose caps reach unto the heavens, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 367]</span> and delight the stars with the ringing of
+  their bells.&quot; Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side,
+  Heine is shown &quot;in action&quot; by this little cluster of
+  &quot;scintillations,&quot; and the whole book is the shortest
+  definition of him possible, for it makes the saliencies of his
+  character jut out within a close compass. It can be read in a couple
+  of hours, and no reading of the same length in any of his complete
+  writings would give such a notion of the most witty, perverse,
+  tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt
+    &amp; Williams.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
+  without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
+  them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
+  eminently made to appreciate the best kind of &quot;high life&quot;
+  which London has offered in the present century; and he has been able
+  to avail himself of it to his heart&#39;s content. The son of a
+  Yorkshire squire in affluent circumstances and of high character,
+  Monckton Milnes was not spoilt by finding, as he might have done had
+  he been the heir to a dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the
+  same time all the good things were within his reach by a little of
+  that exertion which does so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of
+  them. From the period of his entry upon London life he displayed that
+  anxiety to know celebrities which, though in a somewhat different
+  way, was a marked feature of his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb
+  Robinson; and the story illustrative of this tendency which gained
+  him the <i>sobriquet</i> of &quot;the cool of the evening&quot; will
+  be always associated with the name he has since merged in a less
+  familiar title.</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons,
+  during which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every
+  social and literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having
+  regard to this circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a
+  polished and graceful style of expressing himself, one would
+  naturally expect a great deal from this volume of reminiscences. Nor
+  will such expectations be entirely disappointed. The monographs are
+  eight in number, and will be read with varying degrees of interest,
+  according to the taste of the reader, as well as the subjects and
+  quality of the papers. The portrait which will perhaps be the newest
+  to American readers is that of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the
+  second Baring who bore that title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the
+  earl of Sandwich, and Lord Houghton says of her: &quot;She was an
+  instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its
+  best, although she may have owed little to the qualities she
+  inherited from an irascible race and to an unaffectionate
+  education&quot;&#8212;a sentence reminding us of a remark in the
+  London <i>Times</i>, that &quot;with certain noble houses people are
+  apt to associate certain qualities&#8212;with the Berkeleys, for
+  instance, a series of disgraceful family quarrels.&quot; Lady
+  Ashburton appears to us from this account to have been a brilliant
+  spoilt child of fortune, who availed herself of her great social
+  position to do and say what, had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu
+  with the pittance of a poor nobleman&#39;s daughter, she would hardly
+  have dared to do or say. It is one of the weak points of society in
+  England that a woman who has rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives
+  to surround herself with men of wit to whom she renders her house
+  delightful, can be as hard and rude as she pleases to the world in
+  general. Fortunately, in most cases native kindness of heart usually
+  hurries to heal the wound that &quot;wicked wit&quot; may have made.
+  This would scarcely seem to have been so with Lady Ashburton, for
+  Lord Houghton tells us that &quot;many who would not have cared for a
+  quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her victory,&quot; one of
+  them saying, &quot;I do not mind being knocked down, but I can&#39;t
+  stand being danced upon afterward.&quot; Lord Houghton, however,
+  defines this &quot;jumping&quot; as &quot;a joyous sincerity that no
+  conventionalities, high or low, could restrain&#8212;a festive nature
+  flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life.&quot; And it
+  must be owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a
+  nature which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal
+  capacity for warm and disinterested friendship.</p>
+
+  <p>In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
+  full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
+  reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
+  with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
+  names.</p>
+
+  <p>But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
+  letter from an <span class="pagenum">[pg 368]</span> English lady
+  whom Heine had known and petted in her childhood, and who visited the
+  poet in his last days, when he himself, wasted by disease,
+  &quot;seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that covered
+  him,&quot; gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we have
+  ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
+  comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
+  his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
+  as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
+  thought, as Matthew Arnold&#39;s famous essay. The following passage,
+  for example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany,
+  and its influence on Heine: &quot;The poem of &#39;Deutschland&#39;
+  is the one of his works where his humor runs over into the coarsest
+  satire, and the malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he
+  too had been exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile
+  condition. Among these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man
+  of commercial origin and literary occupation in his relation to the
+  upper order of society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here
+  there remained, and after all the events of the last year there still
+  remains, sufficient element of discontent to justify the recorded
+  expression of a philosophic German statesman, that &#39;in Prussia
+  the war of classes had still to be fought out.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
+  Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
+  biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
+  while the one on &quot;Suleiman Pasha&quot; (Colonel Selves) suggests
+  a doubt whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the
+  information he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating
+  that the siege of Lyons occurred under the
+  <i>Directory</i>&#8212;which it preceded by a year or two; that his
+  hero, then seven years old, &quot;grew up,&quot; entered the navy,
+  was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,
+  <i>subsequently</i> enlisted &quot;in the Army of Italy, then flushed
+  with triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous
+  recruits&quot;&#8212;language indicating the campaign of 1796-97;
+  that &quot;soon after his enrollment in the regiment it became
+  necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers in infantry practice, and
+  young Selves&#39; knowledge of the exercise [acquired apparently on
+  shipboard] was of the greatest use and <i>brought him into general
+  notice</i>&quot;&#8212;making him, we may infer, a special favorite
+  of Bonaparte;&#8212;we can easily believe that these things were
+  related, as he tells us they were, &quot;with epic simplicity,&quot;
+  and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to
+  more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of
+  a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on
+  the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, &quot;urgently
+  represented to that general the propriety of joining the main body of
+  the army as soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to
+  intercept, were out of sight.&quot; Lord Houghton has evidently not
+  read the best and most recent criticisms on the Waterloo campaign,
+  but he should at least have known that Grouchy was sent, not to
+  intercept, but to follow the Prussians in their retreat from Ligny,
+  and that, if he lost sight of them, it was because, instead of
+  falling back on their own line of communication, as Napoleon had
+  expected them to do, they turned off to effect a junction with the
+  English army.</p><a name="books" id="books"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3><i>Books Received</i>.</h3>
+
+  <p>Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every
+  species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent
+  north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six
+  steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By
+  Elliott Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem:
+  Naturalists&#39; Agency.</p>
+
+  <p>Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New
+  Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.
+  New York: James Miller.</p>
+
+  <p>The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By
+  C.C.P. Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker &amp; Godwin.</p>
+
+  <p>On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the
+  Russian by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt &amp; Williams.</p>
+
+  <p>The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz
+  Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.</p>
+
+  <p>Harry Coverdale&#39;s Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
+  Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.
+  Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company. Illustrated. Hartford:
+  Columbian Book Company.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14036 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14036 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14036)
diff --git a/old/14036-8.txt b/old/14036-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 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. 30. September, 1873
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2004 [EBook #14036]
+
+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. 30.
+
+SEPTEMBER, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] by EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    III.--The Feast Of Saint Athanasius.
+  TWO MOODS by MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+  THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT by MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+  SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL. [Illustrated]
+    I.--The Count De Beauvoir In China.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE by WILLIAM BLACK.
+    Chapter XIV.--Deeper And Deeper.
+    Chapter XV.--A Friend In Need.
+  ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS by FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+    Concluding Paper
+  A LOTOS OF THE NILE by CHRISTIAN REID.
+  ECHO. by A.J.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] by MARGARET HOWITT.
+    Chapter IX.
+    Chapter X.
+  COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK by S.C. CLARKE.
+  THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY by MARIE ROWLAND.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS by SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    Chapter VI.
+    Chapter VII.
+    Chapter VIII.
+    Chapter IX.
+  HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY by EDWIN DE LEON.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    The Californian At Vienna by PRENTICE MULFORD.
+    Ghostly Warriors.
+    A Warning To Lovers.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE PAULISTS.
+  THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.
+  CARDINAL BALUE.
+  AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.
+  LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.
+  LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.
+  CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.
+  BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.
+  CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.
+  THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.
+  ADMIRATION.
+  MAC MEURTRIER.
+  THE BLACK DOMINO.
+  TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.
+  THE CROOKED MAN.
+  THE GRAVITY ROAD.
+  THE ANIMATED CELLS.
+  THE TRAVELER'S REST.
+  PALACE AT STRASBURG.
+  THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.
+  HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.
+  AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.
+  CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.
+  VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.
+  COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
+  A PROCESSION.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+III.--THE FEAST OF SAINT ATHANASIUS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE PAULISTS.]
+
+
+As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to empty
+the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of tired
+soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the old
+proverb of Aretino came into my head: "Truly all courtesy and good
+manners come from taverns." I grasped my botany-box and pursued my
+promenade toward Noisy.
+
+The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in history.
+One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the inventor
+of the famous gibbet of Montfauçon, and in the poetic justice which
+should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his own gallows.
+He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by the common
+executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none of his
+ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in meeting a
+guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular coincidence another
+lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long detention in an
+iron-barred cage--one of those famous cages, so much favored by Louis
+XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from the records of the time,
+had the patent-right for invention, or at least improvement. Once
+firmly engaged in his own torture--while his friend Haraucourt, bishop
+of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in a similar box, and the foxy
+old king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead--we
+may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
+fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.
+
+[Illustration: THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.]
+
+These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice I
+took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full domain
+of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern road
+separate--the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The sight of
+the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and of the
+frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly endeavored
+to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It was on
+this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung and the
+cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory. "Small
+choice," said I, "whether the bars are perpendicular or horizontal.
+You lose your independence about equally by either monopoly."
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL BALUE.]
+
+I crossed the Canal de l'Ourcq, and watched it stretching like a steel
+tape to meet the Canal Saint--Denis and the Canal Saint-Martin in the
+great basin at La Villette--a construction which, finished in 1809,
+was the making of La Villette as a commercial and industrial entrepôt.
+I meant to walk to Bondy, and after a botanic stroll in its beautiful
+forest to retrace my steps, gaining Marly next day by Baubigny,
+Aubervilliers and Nanterre. "The Aladdins of our time," I said as I
+leaned over the soft gray water, "are the engineers. They rub their
+theodolites, and there springs up, not a palace, but a town."
+
+[Illustration: AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.]
+
+"Who speaks of engineers?" said a strong baritone voice as a weighty
+hand fell on my shoulder. "Are you here to take the train at Noisy?"
+
+"Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary, to get
+away from it."
+
+"Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Épernay?"
+
+"What do you mean, Épernay?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint Athanasius?"
+
+"What do you mean, Athanasius?"
+
+The baritone belonged to one of my friends, an engineer from Boston.
+He had an American commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the
+part of a company formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and
+dig a ship-canal from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made
+his inspection the excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel,
+during which time the company had exploded, its chief financier having
+cut his throat when his peculations came out to the public.
+
+[Illustration: LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.]
+
+"Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest possible
+duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have the
+remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have in
+addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary baptism;
+and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole renegade
+from the vow which you have extracted from the others."
+
+The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
+a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
+pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.
+
+We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I have
+some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I could find
+a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor if I
+had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little restaurant
+Ober, near the Odéon, with a small party of medical students, to which
+order Grandstone's friends mostly belonged. We were all young that
+night; and truly I hold that the affectionate confusion of two or
+three different generations adds a charm to friendship.
+
+[Illustration: LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.]
+
+At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian names.
+I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that their
+historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment forgotten,
+their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and William no longer
+carried the thoughts back to the English kings--Joseph and Reuben were
+powerless to remind us of the mighty family of Israel.
+
+"I have no complaint to make of my own name," I protested, "which
+has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor. That was at Würtemberg,
+gentlemen. 'You are from America,' the old man said to me, 'but you
+have a German name: Paul Flemming was one of our old poets.' The
+thought has been a pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest
+idea what my ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality
+my Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to desire."
+
+[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.]
+
+I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I set
+up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in any
+company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out "Paul!"
+through the doorway, six husbands at least would start and say,
+"Coming, dear!" I computed the Pauls belonging to one of the grand
+nations, and proved that an army recruited from them would be large
+enough to carry on a war against a power of the second order.
+
+"If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls," I declared, looking
+toward my young host, "Russia itself would tremble.--Are you to make
+your start in life with no better name?" I asked him maliciously.
+"Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not
+the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not
+have been called by something rather less oecumenical?"
+
+"You may style me by what title you please, Mr. Flemming," said
+Grandstone nonchalantly. "I am to enter a great New York wine-house
+after a little examination of the grape-country here. Doubtless a
+Grandstone will have, by any other name, a bouquet as sweet."
+
+The idea took. An almanac of saints' days, which is often printed in
+combination with the _menu_ of a restaurant, was lying on the table.
+Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose was within an ace of
+being chosen, but Grandstone protested against it as too short,
+and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that presented. Our
+engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket a vial of
+water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships' bottoms; and with that
+classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the bottle being
+broken on poor Grandstone's crown as on the prow of a ship.
+
+"You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius," I said. "If you
+remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you. Meantime, let us
+vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint Athanasius and hold a
+love-feast."
+
+We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next day
+I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas. And
+my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to the
+rude reminder given by my engineer.
+
+"I had quite forgotten my engagement," I confessed. "Besides,
+Grandstone is living now, as you remind me, at Épernay--that is to
+say, at seventy or eighty miles' distance."
+
+"Say three hours," he retorted: "on a railway line we don't count by
+miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to satisfy your promise
+and report yourself for the feast of Saint Athanasius? If you are not
+bound for Épernay, where _are_ you bound?"
+
+"I am off for Marly."
+
+"You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow. You can be
+at Épernay sooner."
+
+"And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow," I continued, rather
+helplessly; "and Josephine my cook is there this afternoon boiling the
+mutton-hams."
+
+"Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or even
+at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
+railroads--a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
+engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
+soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the locomotive,
+offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone and Hohenfels.
+Come, get your ticket!"
+
+[Illustration: BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.]
+
+And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
+like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
+head. I could reach Épernay by five o'clock, returning at eight, and,
+notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the champagne-country, I
+could resume my promenade and modify in no respect my original plan;
+and I could say to Hohenfels, "My boy, I have popped a few corks with
+the widow Cliquot."
+
+Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me in
+their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite unexpectedly.
+
+From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard's, the landscape spun
+out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to visit at all
+events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs of its ancient
+château, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of the Renaissance,
+and whose alternately round and square pavilions, tipped with steep
+mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay visitors in the
+costume of the _grand siècle_. Then came the cathedral of Meaux,
+before which I reverently took off my cap to salute the great
+Bossuet--"Eagle of Meaux," as they justly called him, and on the
+whole a noble bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
+exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
+a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was
+a crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of
+a hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.]
+
+"Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of wine stood
+upon end?" he said--"those donjons at the corners, tapering at the
+top, and presenting the very image of noble bottles? There needs
+nothing but that palace to convince you that you have arrived in the
+champagne region."
+
+"I do not know the building," I confessed.
+
+"Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer storm, when
+the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of mason-work, and
+the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a whole basket of
+champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the château of Boursault,
+apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really a marvel of
+yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a lyre, like the
+towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable bottles, causing to
+resound all over the world the name of the widow Cliquot."
+
+At length we entered the station of Épernay. There I received my first
+shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy was one
+which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme suburbs of
+Paris at three o'clock in the morning.
+
+Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of Épernay
+with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse, received
+us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed into plain
+James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would bear fruit.
+Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the date. The
+feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar shoved beneath
+a quantity of vintners' cards on his study-table, fell on the second
+of May, and could not be celebrated before the evening of the first.
+It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited us, then, for the next
+day at dinner, warning us at the same time that the evening of that
+same morrow would see him on his way to the Falls of Schaffhausen.
+This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled me.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.]
+
+We both laughed heartily at the engineer's mistake of twenty-four
+hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.
+
+Athanasius--whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives him, as
+I maintain, a more distinct individuality,--Athanasius happened to
+be driving out for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was
+about to accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner.
+He contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
+his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
+even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
+us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
+when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there without
+being overheard.
+
+Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city of
+Épernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce, flanked
+with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
+a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
+contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
+environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
+has this peculiarity--its veritable spring, its pride of May, arrives
+in the autumn.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRATION.]
+
+One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a beggar. He
+was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we emerged. Aged hardly fourteen,
+he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes coming up from the
+kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence that amused me. The
+maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and the remainders of
+our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and
+intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he laid by the
+biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same time he
+produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass, nicked at the
+rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his bowl, he drank to
+the health of the waitress with the easiest politeness it was ever my
+lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo
+by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French.
+I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot,
+cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him five francs.
+
+[Illustration: MAC MEURTRIER.]
+
+We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
+its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They
+are subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
+colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
+Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
+religion are they the representations? They are cellar-doors.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK DOMINO.]
+
+It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars, said
+Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of the
+most renowned.
+
+I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found the
+Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+[Illustration: TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.]
+
+In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
+middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
+other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
+approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.
+
+Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his hands
+a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The latter
+met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still, but the
+twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh retained
+with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less beautiful Norma,
+to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical strokes. A strong,
+pealing bass voice came from the interior: "Who dares knock at this
+door?"
+
+"A night-bird," said the man in the cloak, who took the part of
+spokesman. "What has the night-bird to do with the eagle?" replied the
+strong voice. "What can there be in common between the heathen in
+his blindness and the Ancient of the Mountain throned in power and
+splendor?"
+
+"Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to plunge."
+After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the red-nosed man was
+quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at the door, where a
+flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden plunge.
+
+"What nonsense is this?" I said to Athanasius.
+
+"The man in the iron mask," he explained, "is in that respect what we
+shall all be in a minute. Without such a protector, in passing amongst
+the first year's bottles we might receive a few hits in the face."
+
+"And do you know the new apprentice?"
+
+"No: some stranger, evidently."
+
+[Illustration: THE CROOKED MAN.]
+
+"It is not hard to guess his extraction," said one of our
+dinner-party. "In the East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each
+eye. For his part, he seems to be braced with two pans in each
+knee. He is long in the stilts like a heron, square--headed and
+square-shouldered: I give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,"
+he added, "I have seen his likeness somewhere--Ah yes, in an engraving
+of Hogarth's!"
+
+The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
+gentleman, at whose side I had dined--a man of sharpness and wit, for
+which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated finally into
+the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with iron railways
+for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by heavy wagons and
+Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding wonders was distracted
+by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the unfortunate red nose.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVITY ROAD]
+
+The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful exploding
+noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were marching
+through the catacombs.
+
+Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
+foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
+pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the wine-frames,
+came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O'Shanter. At a new outburst
+of resonant noises, which we could not help offering to the general
+confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed twice or thrice the attitude
+of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The figure of the man, still
+rigid, flew up into the air like a stick that pops out of the water.
+The Terrible Brothers received him in their arms.
+
+Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced in
+the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and the
+barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined tramway.
+His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with indignation and
+horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his eyes flew off,
+and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a rate of speed
+continually increasing.
+
+He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
+arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers
+quite disheveled with laughter, said, "Fellows, we had better stop
+somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
+in the rôle of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain we are
+wanted. I always knew there was a Society of Pure Illumination at
+Épernay. It is not a Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes,
+its grips, and in a word its secret. I have recognized among
+these gentlemen some active members of the order--among others,
+notwithstanding his disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here,
+Fortnoye."
+
+"You cannot have seen Fortnoye," said one of the party: "he is at
+Paris."
+
+"And who is your Fortnoye, pray?" I asked.
+
+"The best tenor voice in Épernay; but his presence here does not give
+_me_ an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure Illumination has
+its rites and mysteries more important than everybody supposes,
+and probably complicated with board-of-trade secrets among the
+wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us go and visit
+another cellar."
+
+There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
+expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.
+
+"My dear boys," I said, "as the grayest among you I may be presumed to
+be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be myself. I have received
+to-day a succession of unaccustomed influences. I have been dragged
+about by an impertinent locomotive; I have been induced to dine
+heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps to the limit of my
+measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am naturally thoughtful,
+studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is for me an unfaded
+morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at pleasure, and read
+within its tube legends written in dusted gold. But the Present to the
+true philosopher is also--In fact, I never was so much amused in my
+life. I am dying to see what they will do with that Scotchman."
+
+[Illustration: THE ANIMATED CELLS]
+
+Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
+could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
+was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
+ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
+out after long service and leaning against a wall.
+
+Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could see
+everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries, sitting
+in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral tests.
+Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white bandage
+which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still perfectly
+white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master arose--I should have
+said the Reverend--his head nodding with senility, his beard white as
+a waterfall: he appeared to be eighty years of age at least. He was
+truly venerable to look at, and reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of
+dalmatica embroidered with gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly
+marked on the aspect of this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing
+the spy, and felt inclined to return humbly to the good counsel of
+Athanasius, when the latter, pushing my elbow behind the shelves,
+said, referring to the Ancient of the Mountain, "That's Fortnoye: I
+knew I couldn't be mistaken."
+
+I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
+Épernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
+only of listening.
+
+"The barleycorns of your native North having been partially cleaned
+out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted steeds--the steed
+you bridled without a head, and the steed that ran away with you
+without legs," said the Ancient--"we have brought you hither for
+examination. We might have gone much farther with the physical tests:
+we might have forced you, at the present session, to relieve yourself
+of those envelopes considered indispensable by all Europeans beneath
+your own latitude, and in our presence perform the sword-dance."
+
+"So be it," said the disciple, executing a galvanic figure with his
+legs, his countenance still like marble.
+
+"If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring it in?"
+
+"I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth," replied the red nose. "Give me
+the daggers."
+
+"We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful to a man
+of such evident sensibility as yours." The red nose bowed. "What is
+your name?"
+
+He pronounced it--apparently MacMurtagh.
+
+"In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier."
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the Scotchman in a tone of abstraction.
+
+"No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?"
+
+"I am a homoeopathic doctor."
+
+"Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that the
+Ancient of the Mountain hears what you say."
+
+The Scot held up his hand: "I believe in the learned Hahnemann, and
+in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself; but," he added,
+"homoeopathy is a science still in its baby-clothes. I have invented
+a system perfectly novel. In mingling homoeopathy with vegetable
+magnetism the most encouraging results are obtained, as may be
+observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh, near Edinburgh--"
+
+"Enough!" cried the Ancient: "circulars are not allowed here. Forget
+nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired with the pious ambition
+of becoming our brother?"
+
+"At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the wine-houses.
+I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the lodge of
+Épernay--"
+
+"Silence! The words you use, _lodge_ and _Free Mason_, are most
+improper in this temple, which is that of the Pure Illumination, and
+nothing less. Will you remember, Meurtrier?"
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the novice again. The last proofs were now
+tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was
+made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the
+bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish,
+a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack
+of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke
+out from all sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.
+
+Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of that
+fatal honeycomb!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRAVELER'S REST.]
+
+They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or other,
+and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion the
+wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was to
+follow, and the semicircle of purple faces was quite blackening with
+bottled laughter, when Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour
+for departure was come, and I had not a minute to spare.
+
+[Illustration: PALACE AT STRASBURG.]
+
+Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph: as
+we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the voices
+exclaim in concert, "It is the Pure Illumination!"
+
+Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were perfectly
+Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast establishments,
+where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward from the wine in
+store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and dismiss him as an
+Anacreon.
+
+Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe's
+conversation with his soul, "serious and sober." In the cellar no drop
+had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I entered: I came
+out in a species of voluptuous dream.
+
+All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very much
+touched with the attention. It was who should carry my botany-box, who
+should set my cap straight, who should give me the most precise and
+statistical information about the train which returned to Paris, with
+a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I chanted snatches of old
+songs, and mingled together in a tender reverie my recollections
+of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my theories of Progressive
+Geography.
+
+"Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to the
+city."
+
+"Don't let them carry you beyond Noisy."
+
+"Come back to Épernay every May-day: never forget the feast of Saint
+Athanasius."
+
+"Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come, man,
+bundle up! they are closing the barrier."
+
+I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. "Adieu," I said, "my dear
+champanions--"
+
+I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep directly.
+
+Next day I awoke--at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening before,
+making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had traveled beside
+me in the adjoining car.
+
+My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
+clustered around me.
+
+"Ah, boys," I said, "I have too many griefs imprisoned in this aching
+bosom to be much put out by the ordinary 'Horrid Hoax.' But you have
+compromised my reputation. I promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly:
+children, bankruptcy stares me in the face."
+
+Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: "You wished to
+dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you mistook the
+day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he voluntarily deceived
+you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have concocted a little
+conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit in fact, when you
+are not in your _lubies_ about the Past and the Future. We wanted
+you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen you at Noisy, Cethigus
+tucked you into a car with the intention of making use of you at
+Schaffhausen."
+
+"Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not to
+revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn promise, a
+consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will not carry me
+to Schaffhausen."
+
+He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know that no
+great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for Bâle. For
+my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional duties, such
+as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital of Alsace. In
+his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were to meet each
+other shortly.
+
+It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
+railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
+counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
+the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
+five hours and three-quarters to spare.
+
+One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor opinion,
+is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps, cleared
+the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it might be,
+I was glad of everything. I was glad the "champanions" were departed,
+glad I had a stolen morning in Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my
+domestics would be uneasy for me at Marly.
+
+In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
+detention in the city.
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOODS.
+
+
+  All yesterday you were so near to me,
+    It seemed as if I hardly moved or spoke
+  But your heart moved with mine. I woke
+    To a new life that found you everywhere,
+  As if your love was as some wide-girt sea,
+    Or as the sunlit air;
+  And so encompassed me,
+    Whether I thought or not, it could not but be there.
+
+  To-day your words approve me, and your heart
+    Is mine as ever, yet that heavenly sense
+    Of oneness that made every hour intense
+    With Love's full perfectness, is gone from thence;
+  And, though our hands are clasped, our souls are two,
+  And in my thoughts I say, "This is myself--this you!"
+
+MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.
+
+The Ride of Prince Geraint.
+
+
+    And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard
+    The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,
+    A little vext at losing of the hunt,
+    A little at the vile occasion, rode
+    By ups and downs through many a glassy glade
+    And valley, with fixt eye following the three.
+
+                                           _Enid_.
+
+  Through forest paths his charger strode,
+  His heron plume behind him flowed,
+  Blood-red the west with sunset glowed,
+  Far down the river golden flowed,
+    And in the woods the winds were still:
+  No helm had he, nor lance in rest;
+  His knightly beard flowed down his breast;
+  In silken costume gayly drest,
+  Out from the glory of the west
+    He flashed adown the purple hill.
+
+  His sword hung tasseled at his side,
+  His purple scarf was floating wide,
+  And all his raiment many-dyed,
+  As if he came to seek a bride,
+    And not the combat that he sought;
+  Yet rode he like a prince, and one
+  Native to noble deeds alone,
+  Who many a valiant tilt had run,
+  And many a prize of tourney won
+    In Arthur's lists at Camelot.
+
+  Cool grasses and green mosses made
+  Soft carpet for his charger's tread,
+  As 'neath the oak boughs dark o'erhead,
+  By belts of pasture scant of shade,
+    Into the Castle Town he rode:
+  He heard, as things are heard in dreams,
+  The sound of far-off falling streams,
+  The shriller bird-choir's evening hymns:
+  He saw but only helmet-gleams,
+    The smith that smote, the fire that glowed,
+
+  The sheen of lances, and the cloud
+  From many a field-forge fire, the crowd
+  Of gay-clad squires, and, neighing loud,
+  The war-horse with rich trappings proud,
+    That arched his neck and pawed the ground;
+  Old armorers grave and stern in stall,
+  Where low-crowned morions, helmets tall,
+  Shone gilt and burnished on the wall;
+  And, shining brighter than them all,
+    The eyes of maidens sun-embrowned.
+
+MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.
+
+
+I.--THE COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.
+
+
+Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates, and
+China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
+the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
+country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
+systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
+French travelers in the East, each tinged, in a measure, with the
+national spirit of their respective countries. In the case of the
+traveler, as of the astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the
+personal equation, has to be made in receiving the accounts of his
+observations.
+
+[Illustration: THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.]
+
+The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in company
+with the duke de Penthièvre, son of the prince de Joinville, is
+entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the travelers
+by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to obtain the
+best conditions for investigating various matters of interest.
+
+On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the
+quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his
+rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of
+the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector--as martial and as
+authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population
+here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese
+farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, lean, and slightly
+clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy as children and fat
+as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or five pelisses, worn
+one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so that a single man smelt
+like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of dress was this: half a
+dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with a single overcoat with
+extremely long sleeves, falling down to their knees. These garments
+made them resemble balls of wool rather than men.
+
+By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the town
+devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of fortune,
+from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled with these
+latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars, hardly
+human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow upon the
+ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention. The cause
+of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in one of the
+gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness of these
+people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered about this
+fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious deference
+strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower stratum,
+however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
+obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
+politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
+poverty, was wanting.
+
+A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
+Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
+road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals.
+On both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
+surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
+grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
+fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
+in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
+dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may be
+imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the dead
+is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of the
+telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai had
+built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the mail, but
+in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred places--at
+all the points where its shadow from the rising sun fell upon the
+coffins lying on the ground.
+
+At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and, dressed
+in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes, received their
+visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are divided into three
+classes. The first consists of the children of the neighboring towns
+who have been deserted by their parents and left to die of hunger.
+The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or less perfectly
+cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution they are
+thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They receive an
+industrial as well as a literary education. In one building they
+are taught to read and write, and in another are the schools for
+shoemaking, carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that,
+being received at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they
+are launched upon the world with an education and a trade.
+
+There are about four hundred children in this class, and the activity,
+the order and organization of the workshops, and the exquisite
+cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see. Near at hand
+is a school of a higher grade, to which the most promising pupils
+are transferred for the study of Chinese literature. The system of
+teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required to study aloud,
+and the din is in consequence deafening and incessant. Then there is
+the highest class, consisting of about two hundred and fifty youths,
+the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily for their instruction.
+These are destined to become rhetoricians, and, step by step,
+bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins and members of the
+governing class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and
+the Fathers have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese
+language, as well as its written characters, but also the nice
+critical points of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with
+authority the poetry and legends and the commentaries upon the
+writings of Confucius. This they have done for the purpose of having
+an opportunity to convert the orphans they have adopted, and thus
+by degrees introduce into the government an element which will be
+essentially Christian. Thus far, the profession of Christianity is
+not essentially incompatible with the office of mandarin, though it
+is impossible to hold this position without performing some idolatrous
+rites.
+
+[Illustration: HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.]
+
+On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
+navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
+Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
+commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
+functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
+of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
+a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
+of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally got
+off after the removal of a part of her cargo.
+
+The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the narrowness
+of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course. Frequently the
+steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and fastened round
+a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and witnessed a review of
+some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon Tartar ponies, with high
+saddles and short stirrups. The warriors wore queues and were dressed
+in long robes. Their moustaches gave them, however, a fierce martial
+air, and they were armed with English sabres and American revolvers.
+
+Tien-Tsin ("Heaven's Ford") is a city of about four hundred thousand
+inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the Imperial Canal with the
+Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about three days' journey by
+land, is sandy, and the trip is made a very disagreeable one by the
+clouds of dust, which blind the traveler and effectually prevent any
+examination of the country passed through.
+
+The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by two
+mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow made
+of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard long,
+furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down in
+them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be placed
+in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however, they
+are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the left
+shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat the
+mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in front,
+with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel. As they
+are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends chiefly
+upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the road;
+while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught is
+always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.
+
+At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal button,
+sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin, Tchoung-Hao, with
+a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During the rest of the
+journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart drawn by a fine
+black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the route displayed
+his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an immense pair of
+spectacles, the glasses of which were about three inches in diameter.
+At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the middle of the day,
+and was photographed by one of its members. The curious crowd of
+spectators which gathered in every village to inspect the "foreign
+devils" scattered when the camera was posed, and for a few moments our
+travelers were freed from their intrusiveness.
+
+[Illustration: AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE
+EMPERORS.]
+
+Starting next morning at daylight, at three in the afternoon the party
+entered Pekin. The relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for
+one of the paved ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of
+the city struck the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the
+Celestial Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof
+of green tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which
+grinned the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as
+could be seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built
+partly of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
+battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
+impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
+grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
+archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
+Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
+carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.
+
+Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
+important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
+before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
+twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
+into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
+Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
+high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
+the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone masonry
+resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built of a solid
+core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved with tiles,
+and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of which are
+fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances of about
+one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which are in the
+Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the partition wall
+between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is an enclosure,
+also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this another,
+called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial palaces and
+pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each other at right
+angles, run through the whole city, which in this respect is very
+unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the Tartar city near its
+north-west corner divides into two branches, which enter the Imperial
+City and surround the Forbidden City, and then uniting again pass
+through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.
+
+The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
+on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
+promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
+whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
+examination, comes to the following conclusions: "This immense city,
+in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden under the
+severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly disintegrating,
+and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of this slow
+decomposition is sad, since it promises death more certainly than the
+most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will exist no longer; it
+must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will be discovered, like a
+second Pompeii, buried under its own dust."
+
+The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
+the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of
+the Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
+attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
+harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
+favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
+this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
+six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
+death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
+built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
+seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
+fantastic dragons, and are still in good condition, though they
+have been exposed to the open air all this time. One of them was a
+celestial sphere eight feet in diameter, containing all the stars
+known in 1650 and visible in Pekin.
+
+[Illustration: PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.]
+
+Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the Lamas,
+that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin pass
+quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell in the
+world--the great bell of Moscow has never been hung--twenty-five feet
+high, weighing ninety thousand pounds, and richly sculptured.
+
+The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a stranger
+to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese, which can
+be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the applicant
+should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance, make
+himself a Chinese. Even then, complete success is gained only by a
+fortunate combination of circumstances. The streets devoted to
+shops of all kinds afford, however, to the traveler a never-ending
+succession of changing and interesting pictures. Yet the general
+spirit of the Chinese leads them also to be sparing of all outward
+decoration, reserving their forces for interior display. The
+Forbidden City even, though marvelous stories are told of its
+interior splendors, has outside a mean appearance. "A pagoda of the
+thirty-sixth rank has more effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son
+of Heaven."
+
+In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility, the
+party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of disdain
+on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere the
+curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
+themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
+higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
+them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
+the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
+that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
+farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince's cart they are so
+far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule. Palanquins,
+carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another and the most
+convenient means of locomotion used in China: this method is, however,
+forbidden except for princes and ministers of state.
+
+In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands of
+scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles raised
+in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels, coolies,
+soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to the
+confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old men
+carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of the
+scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
+with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
+sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
+the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin are
+frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which is
+secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so that
+in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This curious,
+indistinct note had excited the count's attention, and he learned its
+cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet, having in its flight
+struck itself against the cord of one of the kites. Their use was
+explained by the natives as a protection against the hawks which are
+very common in Pekin.
+
+Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked to
+see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public gaze,
+labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such sights as
+this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities, the squalid
+suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with indigence and
+disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently suggest to
+European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is hopeless.
+Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every European
+capital, and the same causes which have led to their cessation there
+are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce the same results.
+
+The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
+of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
+thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
+government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
+the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
+which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
+business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in
+use under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
+custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
+lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads and
+telegraphs and to open the coal-mines of the empire. Success in
+these reforms means bringing China into the circle of inter-dependent
+civilized nations; and so far all the steps in this direction have
+been sure and successful ones.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.]
+
+On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of China,
+which lies about three days' journey from that capital, on the route
+to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of transportation on
+this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full of tricks as they
+were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts for carrying the
+money of the expedition. The whole of this capital amounted to about
+one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of hundreds of thousands of
+the copper coins of the country, made with holes in their centres and
+strung by the thousand upon osier twigs. This is the only money which
+circulates in the agricultural portions of China, and a "barbarian"
+has to give a pound weight of them for a couple of eggs. The country
+soon began to become hilly, with the mountains of Mongolia visible in
+the distance. Trains of camels were passed, or could be seen winding
+in the plain below.
+
+The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These are
+the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant dynasties of
+Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which opens out from a
+great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks and granite
+domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The grandeur of its
+dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation make it a fit
+resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native dynasty. At
+the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic tombs, encircled
+with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five majestic portals,
+about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance to the tombs. From
+the portico giving entrance to the valley to the tomb of the first
+emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue is marked first
+by winged columns of white marble, and next by two rows of animals,
+carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are, on either side,
+two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel standing, one
+kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one dragon standing,
+one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors, courtiers, etc. The
+lions are fifteen feet high, and the others equally colossal, while
+each of the figures is carved from a single block of granite.
+
+At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
+them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
+porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
+or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
+severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet long
+by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet high,
+and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single stick of
+teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were brought
+for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have been in
+position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as when first
+posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure suffered in any
+degree.
+
+The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and the
+dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes the
+vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
+memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
+access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage
+built of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
+structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
+tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
+back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
+somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
+precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
+desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
+while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
+spot, in order further to preserve the secret.
+
+[Illustration: CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.]
+
+From this gigantic effort to preserve the memory of the dead our party
+hastened to the Great Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the
+living from the incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps
+nowhere in the world are to be found in such close proximity two such
+striking evidences of the waste of human labor when undirected by
+scientific knowledge. The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as
+worthless for the purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are
+for obtaining immortality for the bodies they enclose.
+
+Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at the
+entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
+which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
+grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
+by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
+appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built
+over the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
+following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
+Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance, climbing
+rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so without its
+aid. The count was convinced that it would be as difficult to climb
+it for the purpose of defending it as it would be to do so in order to
+attack it. This first support of the wall is in itself a giant work.
+
+As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
+crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
+situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200 B.C.
+as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been built
+in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the materials
+at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth, pounded, and
+faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles and furnished
+with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the facing was
+made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones. Where the
+rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid masonry,
+tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole length it
+is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet. Every
+mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower. At
+present the wall is in various conditions of preservation, according
+to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys, which were
+the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere heap of
+rubbish, which the plough year by year still further scatters.
+
+The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
+organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
+illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
+party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
+camera was placed upon the wall itself.
+
+On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
+Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
+porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins. Only
+two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in China,
+remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry them
+away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a dozen
+bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel of
+the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it was
+situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it. Looking
+at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this wonderful
+collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages of
+civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
+truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
+his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
+exclaiming, "Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot, where
+the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came to China
+as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of mercy,
+but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling us
+barbarians."
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+DEEPER AND DEEPER.
+
+
+Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure when
+she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step
+out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run round
+and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him.
+How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this
+monstrous fashion!
+
+"Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?" she said,
+with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded him of many
+a pleasant morning in Borva.
+
+"I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought you some
+flowers," he said; but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face,
+and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had
+brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right,
+and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his universal
+kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.
+
+"Frank is up stairs," she said, "getting ready some things to go
+to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had
+breakfast?"
+
+"Oh, you were going to Brighton?"
+
+"Yes," she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, "but
+not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you
+will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot
+understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great
+surprise to me, I am sure of that."
+
+"Ay, Sheila," he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally,
+"you will find it different from Borvabost. You will have no
+scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair flying
+about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even;
+and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will go."
+
+"Oh no," she said with a quick look of disappointment, "you will not
+go yet. If I had known you were coming--But it was very late when we
+will get home this morning: two o'clock it was."
+
+"Another ball?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl, but not very joyfully.
+
+"Why, Sheila," he said with a grave smile on his face, "you are
+becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can't keep up an
+acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all these grand places and
+knows all sorts of swell people; so you'll have to cut me, Sheila."
+
+"I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes," said the girl
+with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened:
+"But it is not kind of you to laugh at me."
+
+"Of course I did not laugh at you," he said taking both her hands in
+his, "although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and
+talked very wild English. Don't you remember how vexed you used to be,
+and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by
+getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about 'A young calf ate a
+raw egg'?"
+
+"Can you say it now?" said Sheila, with her face getting bright and
+pleased again. "Try it after me. Now listen."
+
+She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any
+language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her.
+She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
+in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
+Highlander.
+
+"But what are _you_ now?" he asked. "You are no longer that wild girl
+who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was
+the excitement of a storm coming on."
+
+"Many times," she said slowly and wistfully, "I will wish that I could
+be that again for a little while."
+
+"Don't you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?"
+
+"I try to like them."
+
+"And you don't succeed?"
+
+He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her
+head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and
+entered the room.
+
+"Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It's a
+pity we can't take them to Brighton with us."
+
+"But I intend to take them," said Sheila firmly.
+
+"Oh, very well, if you don't mind the bother," said her husband. "I
+should have thought your hands would have been full: you know you'll
+have to take everything with you you would want in London. You will
+find that Brighton isn't a dirty little fishing-village in which
+you've only to tuck up your dress and run about anyhow."
+
+"I never saw a dirty little fishing-village," said Sheila quietly.
+
+Her husband laughed: "I meant no offence. I was not thinking of
+Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can't you run down and see us while we
+are at Brighton?"
+
+"Oh do, Mr. Ingram!" said Sheila with quite a new interest in her
+face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her
+knees and begged this great favor of him. "Do, Mr. Ingram! We should
+try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall
+we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till the
+Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you
+come down."
+
+Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
+Lavender added, "And we shall introduce you to that young American
+lady whom you are so anxious to meet."
+
+"Oh, is she to be there?" he said, looking rather curiously at
+Lavender.
+
+"Yes, she and her mother. We are going down together."
+
+"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
+which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
+stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
+associate.
+
+However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
+they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
+Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
+discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
+her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
+it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
+with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
+other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
+of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
+was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
+with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
+concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
+open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
+foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
+boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
+friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
+their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
+nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
+apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
+their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
+dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
+smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from
+that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and
+a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure
+and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that
+might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days
+gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.
+
+"You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?"
+said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired,
+grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright
+gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong
+and in such good spirits."
+
+"How happy you must be always!" said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger
+lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," said Sheila, blushing somewhat and
+not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had
+not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have
+occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.
+
+On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each
+other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small
+pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best
+of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she
+said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large
+gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very
+nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not
+understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume
+an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless
+talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a
+kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite
+her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the
+girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She
+wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers
+away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out
+what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and
+for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward
+the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were
+upon her. At last she so persistently stared out of the window that
+she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the
+farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her
+as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs.
+Kavanagh's chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear
+as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side
+of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was
+greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood
+of London--the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so
+forth--and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about
+Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed
+by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight: then they
+pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of
+granite) and rumbled through the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse
+of a great mass of gray houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up
+the bare green downs beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.
+
+"Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?" her husband said to
+her with a laugh as they were driving down the Queen's road.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"It is not like Borvabost, is it?"
+
+She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her with a
+vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray city
+was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not disappear
+somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks and the
+boats?
+
+They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was another
+thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great interest. But
+the next moment there was a quick catching of her breath, which almost
+resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang into her eyes. Here
+at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare she could
+catch a glimpse of a great green plain--yellow-green it was in the
+sunlight--that the wind was whitening here and there with tumbling
+waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind in-land--there
+everything seemed asleep--but here there was a fresh breeze from the
+south, and the sea had been rough the day before, and now it was of
+this strange olive color, streaked with the white curls of foam that
+shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold scent of sea-weed, too,
+blown up this narrow passage between the houses? And now the carriage
+cut round the corner and whirled out into the glare of the Parade,
+and before her the great sea stretched out its leagues of tumbling and
+shining waves, and she heard the water roaring along the beach, and
+far away at the horizon she saw a phantom ship. She did not even look
+at the row of splendid hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed
+folks on the pavement, at the brilliant flags that were flapping and
+fluttering on the New Pier and about the beach. It was the great
+world of shining water beyond that fascinated her, and awoke in her a
+strange yearning and longing, so that she did not know whether it was
+grief or joy that burned in her heart and blinded her eyes with tears.
+Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were going up the steps of the
+hotel, and said in a friendly way, "I suppose you have some sad
+memories of the sea?"
+
+"No," said Sheila bravely, "it is always pleasant to me to think of
+the sea; but it is a long time since--since--"
+
+"Sheila," said her husband abruptly, "do tell me if all your things
+are here;" and then the girl turned, calm and self-collected, to look
+after rugs and boxes.
+
+When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
+to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
+stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
+sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
+could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
+flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
+people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
+sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats that
+were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which she
+knew there was no use placing before her two companions.
+
+"Brighton seems to surprise you very much," said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+"Yes," said Sheila, "I have been told all about it, but you will
+forget all that; and this is very different from the sea at home--at
+my home."
+
+"Your home is in London now," said the elder lady with a smile.
+
+"Oh no!" said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly. "London, that
+is not our home at all. We live there for a time--that will be quite
+necessary--but we shall go back to the Lewis some day soon--not to
+stay altogether, but enough to make it as much our home as London."
+
+"How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the Hebrides?"
+said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and friendly inquiry in her
+eyes.
+
+"It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place so
+much," said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she added with
+growing courage, "for you must not think he is always like what he
+is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no day that is
+nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he is up very
+early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a salmon-rod.
+He can catch the salmon very well--oh, very well for one that is
+not accustomed--and he will shoot as well as any one that is in the
+island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there will be in the
+island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much chance--not
+any whatever--of his being lonely or tired when we go to live in the
+Lewis."
+
+Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
+earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
+considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
+she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
+subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as
+to whether she said _like-a-ness_ or _likeness_, or whether she said
+_gyarden_ or _garden_. Indeed, she forgot more than that. She was
+somewhat excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered
+sound of the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the
+North, and about her husband's stay there, and how they should
+pass the time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
+Lavender's injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
+cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household
+at Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
+understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
+and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
+father's shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they were
+very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a far
+from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite charmed
+with Sheila's descriptions of her island-life, and wished she could
+go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when she spoke of
+visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were staying there,
+Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome as the daughter
+of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have been.
+
+"And will you go out in a boat now?" said Sheila, looking down to the
+beach.
+
+"In a boat! What sort of boat?" said Mrs. Kavanagh.
+
+"Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats they
+are, as far as I can see."
+
+"No, thank you," said the elder lady with a smile. "I am not fond of
+small boats, and the company of the men who go with you might be a
+little objectionable, I should fancy."
+
+"But you need not take any men," said Sheila: "the sailing of one of
+those little boats, it is very simple."
+
+"Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help me."
+
+"And what would you do if you went out?"
+
+"We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are, but we
+would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the lines. You
+would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the morning."
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "you don't know what you propose
+to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in these waves--we should
+be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you don't know what sea-sickness
+is?"
+
+"No," said Sheila, "but I will hear my husband speak of it often. And
+it is only in crossing the Channel that people will get sick."
+
+"Why, this is the Channel."
+
+Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of course
+this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the South
+became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble creatures.
+Her speculations on this point were cut short by the entrance of her
+husband, who came to announce that he had not only secured a carriage
+for a month, but that it would be round at the hotel door in half an
+hour; whereupon the two American ladies said they would be ready, and
+left the room.
+
+"Now go off and get dressed, Sheila," said Lavender.
+
+She stood for a moment irresolute.
+
+"If you wouldn't mind," she said after a moment's hesitation--"if you
+would allow me to go by myself--if you would go to the driving, and
+let me go down to the shore!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "You will have people fancying you are only
+a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all
+those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pocket or throw stones at
+you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian: now do, like a good
+girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It
+won't hurt you much."
+
+So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress, and
+he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.
+
+Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
+nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up
+and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of
+carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet
+of this still summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a
+distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of
+her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while
+driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds
+were drawn and candles lit, and still their conversation murmured
+around her unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
+smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
+a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
+abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
+yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
+sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
+and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
+million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
+beach.
+
+"Mayn't we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?" said
+Sheila.
+
+"You couldn't go out walking at this time of night," said Mrs.
+Kavanagh in a kindly way: "you would meet the most unpleasant persons.
+Besides, going out into the night air would be most dangerous."
+
+"It is a beautiful night," said Sheila with a sigh. She was still
+standing at the window.
+
+"Come," said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and putting her hand in
+her arm, "we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to
+be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we
+can do to amuse you."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to be amused!" cried Sheila almost in terror,
+for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. "I would
+much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it
+is very kind of you," she hastily added, fancying that her speech had
+been somewhat ungracious--"it is very kind of you indeed."
+
+"Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked to the table
+and sat down.
+
+Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with
+some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in
+which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were
+soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had
+been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the
+room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened
+to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He
+went over to her and sat down by the piano.
+
+"Here," she said, "I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I
+am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a
+second to me: how can one learn without practicing? And there are some
+of those duets I really should like to learn after what you said of
+them."
+
+"Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?" he said.
+
+"And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must have
+left you in a very amiable mood."
+
+"Well, suppose we try," he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll
+of music which she had brought down.
+
+"Which shall we take first?" he asked.
+
+"It does not much matter," she answered indifferently, and indeed she
+took up one of the duets by haphazard.
+
+What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh's companion suddenly lift her eyes
+from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the
+room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets,
+and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine
+who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no
+great power--
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
+
+and it was she to whom the answer was given--
+
+  He in thy snowy bosom strays;
+
+and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
+them sing together--
+
+  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
+  And walks the mazes of thy hair.
+
+She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
+music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practicing
+these duets--her duets--with some one else. For presently they sang
+"When the rosy morn appearing," and "I would that my love could
+silently," and others, all of them in Sheila's eyes, sacred to the
+time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room at Borva.
+It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect
+acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back
+over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being
+striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these
+things. It was not as a music-master that he sang with her. He put as
+much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old
+days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that
+this woman should have taken Sheila's own duets from her to sing
+before her with her own husband.
+
+Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could
+not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and
+even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very
+tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and
+Lavender had just discovered another duet which they felt bound to try
+together as the last.
+
+This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained
+by her husband's attentions to this young American lady; and yet she
+would not admit to herself that he was any way in the wrong. She
+would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her
+heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she
+had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and
+resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the
+injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural
+than that Frank should recommend to any friend the duets of which he
+was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady
+should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them?
+and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion
+of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very
+friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all
+her resolves.
+
+"Sheila," said her husband, I don't think I ever asked you whether you
+rode."
+
+"I used to ride many times at home," she said.
+
+"But I suppose you'd rather not ride here," he said. "Mrs. Lorraine
+and I propose to go out presently: you'll be able to amuse yourself
+somehow till we come back."
+
+Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her mother
+was with her.
+
+"I suppose I may go out," said Sheila. "It is so very dull in-doors,
+and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and she is not going
+out."
+
+"Well, there's no harm in your going out," answered Lavender, "but
+I should have thought you'd have liked the comfort of watching the
+people pass, from the window."
+
+She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out.
+Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her husband
+and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down stairs
+without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great
+hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.
+
+It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle
+chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and
+motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy
+sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used
+to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air
+and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face
+wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of
+the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves
+hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along
+the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men
+putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long
+after the boat was launched. She would not confess to herself that
+she felt lonely and miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was
+melancholy. It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had
+always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging
+and rushing before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and
+calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as
+was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a
+blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade,
+and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull
+blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.
+
+She returned to the King's road a trifle tired, and sat down on one of
+the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse her; and now
+the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed folks, and the
+centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant going and coming of
+riders. She saw strange old women, painted, powdered and bewigged in
+hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and down the level street, and
+she wondered what wild hallucinations possessed the brains of these
+poor creatures. She saw troops of beautiful young girls, with flowing
+hair, clear eyes and bright complexions, riding by, a goodly company,
+under charge of a riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow
+sweeter when they came into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and
+wondering and speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders
+whose appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well,
+so did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
+attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
+could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
+and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them saw
+Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in the
+other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been there
+for many a day.
+
+What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing round
+a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin, and
+playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that attracted
+Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about the timid,
+pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded her of little
+Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her heart seemed to
+be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no thought of the
+people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the pavement, and
+found that the small girl and her companion were about to go away.
+Sheila stopped the man.
+
+"Will you let your little girl come with me into this shop?"
+
+It was a confectioner's shop.
+
+"We were going home to dinner," said the man, while the small girl
+looked up with wondering eyes.
+
+"Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back in half
+an hour?"
+
+The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of her,
+and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand and led
+her into the confectioner's shop, putting her violin on one of the
+small marble tables while they sat down at another. She was probably
+not aware that two or three idlers had followed them, and were staring
+with might and main in at the door of the shop.
+
+What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed
+lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things with her
+own hands, and asked her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and
+sweet voice? There was not much in Sheila's appearance to provoke fear
+or awe. The little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank,
+and told her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced,
+the number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the
+small incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too,
+and her photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well
+content: she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did
+not often get tired.
+
+"Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?" said Sheila.
+
+"We go out every day when it does not rain very hard."
+
+Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have some
+tea with me: would you like that?"
+
+"Yes, very much," said the small musician, looking up frankly.
+
+Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
+appeared at the door.
+
+"Don't hurry," said Sheila to the little girl: "sit still and drink
+out the lemonade; then I will give you some little parcels which you
+must put in your pocket."
+
+She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met the
+eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come out,
+after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and down the
+pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops, caught sight
+of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom she had picked
+up in the streets.
+
+"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said to Mrs. Lorraine. "In
+open day, with people staring in, and she has not even taken the
+trouble to put the violin out of sight!"
+
+"The poor child means no harm," said his companion.
+
+"Well, we must get her out of this somehow," he said; and so they
+entered the shop.
+
+Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband's look,
+though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed, acted
+quite thoughtlessly--perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to speak to
+some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.
+
+"Hadn't you better let this little girl go?" said Lavender to Sheila
+somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice for his companion.
+
+"When she has finished her lemonade she will go," said Sheila meekly.
+"But I have to buy some things for her first."
+
+"You have got a whole lot of people round the door," he said.
+
+"It is very kind of the people to wait for her," answered Sheila with
+the same composure. "We have been here half an hour. I suppose they
+will like her music very much."
+
+The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
+stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
+then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
+Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
+little thing.
+
+They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
+the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in
+a humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
+beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
+to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
+Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal (during
+the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course, for she had
+already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and was bent on
+making himself as agreeable as possible to his two companions. Their
+talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two ladies on the
+Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in Munich; from
+that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy transition, to the
+ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one of his most impulsive
+and brilliant moods--gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic by turns,
+and so obviously sincere in all that his listeners were delighted
+with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed them as
+implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance, saw and
+heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the far North
+when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the infection
+of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked, too--telling
+the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in his own
+rough--and--ready translations--while there was no self-consciousness
+in his face, but a thorough warmth of earnestness; and sometimes, too,
+she would notice a quiver of the under lip that she knew of old,
+when some pathetic point or phrase had to be indicated rather than
+described. He was drawing pictures for them as well as telling
+stories--of the three students entering the room in which the
+landlady's daughter lay dead--of Barbarossa in his cave--of the
+child who used to look up at Heine as he passed her in the street,
+awestricken by his pale and strange face--of the last of the band of
+companions who sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and
+drank to their memory--of the king of Thule, and the deserter from
+Strasburg, and a thousand others.
+
+"But is there any of them--is there anything in the world--more
+pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?" he said. "You know it, of
+course. No? Oh, you must, surely. Don't you remember the mother who
+stood by the bedside of her sick son, and asked him whether he would
+not rise to see the great procession go by the window; and he tells
+her that he cannot, he is so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking
+of his dead Gretchen? _You_ know the story, Sheila. The mother begs
+him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims
+going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of
+God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame
+people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they
+make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
+healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
+out of it, and says to her son, 'Take that to the Mother of God, and
+she will heal your pain.' Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand,
+and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running
+down his face, he says, 'O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to
+tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near us lived
+Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart:
+heal the wound in my heart.' And then--and then--"
+
+Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
+"What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no
+idea of it--of its simplicity and tenderness--"
+
+"But pray let us hear the rest of it," said Mrs. Lorraine gently.
+
+"Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother
+and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber
+and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart.
+Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this
+in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly.
+The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the
+morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her
+hands, and says--"
+
+He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the
+window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to his:
+he took it.
+
+"The next time I try to translate Heine," he said, making it appear
+that he had broken off through vexation, "something strange will
+happen."
+
+"It is a beautiful story," said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been
+crying a little bit in a covert way: "I wonder I have not seen a
+translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be
+after four."
+
+So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
+still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
+perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out
+her heart to him, and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings.
+He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so
+roughly: surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and
+begging for sympathy and compassion.
+
+"Frank," she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head
+to hide the color in her face.
+
+"Well?" he answered a trifle coldly.
+
+"You won't be vexed with me," she said in a low voice, and with her
+heart beginning to beat rapidly.
+
+"Vexed with you about what?" he said abruptly.
+
+Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
+which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
+that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
+approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said, "Are we
+to go to Lady Leveret's?"
+
+"Of course we are," he said, "unless you would rather go and see some
+blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so
+forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop?
+It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people
+you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the
+wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you
+are a woman, and not a child--that people will talk about what you
+do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her
+daughter do any of these things?"
+
+Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
+ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
+awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
+warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
+to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
+definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.
+
+"I will try to do better, and please you," she said; and then she went
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED.
+
+
+Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl's mind, and now held
+full possession of it--that she was in a world with which she had no
+sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that
+the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her
+husband's love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away
+from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the
+unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question
+her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she
+was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight
+that pressed on her heart.
+
+Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
+Leveret, who was one of Lavender's especial patrons, and to whom he
+had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
+she was a stranger, an interloper, a "third wheel to the cart." She
+scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost
+grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and
+monotonous thing--not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with
+its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and
+rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white
+cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged
+shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the
+sea-life of the place: she did not know where the curers lived;
+whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the
+people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could,
+in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod
+and the skate fetched; where the wives and daughters sat and spun
+and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of
+cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of
+asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished
+some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some
+little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
+sea-life down in the South.
+
+And as they drove along the King's road on this afternoon she suddenly
+called out, "Look, Frank!"
+
+On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
+face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
+pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.
+
+"It is Mr. Ingram," said Sheila.
+
+"Which is Mr. Ingram?" asked Mrs. Lorraine with considerable interest,
+for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. "Not that little
+man?"
+
+"Yes," said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that Ingram had had
+some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the
+main thoroughfare of Brighton.
+
+"Won't you stop and speak to him?" said Sheila with great surprise.
+
+"We are late already," said her husband. "But if you would rather go
+back and speak to him than go on with us, you may."
+
+Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
+Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
+pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.
+
+But next morning she said to him, "I suppose you will be riding with
+Mrs. Lorraine this morning?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there," she
+said.
+
+"Ladies don't generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but
+of course you don't care for that."
+
+"I shall not go if you do not wish me."
+
+"Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of professing
+to keep observances that you don't understand? And it will be some
+amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and
+ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of
+flowers for his horse."
+
+The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
+very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
+pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend
+to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
+gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
+blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in the
+sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray sky or
+the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling
+in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame
+so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would
+have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled down the side of
+the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She
+did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the
+steps, opened the door and entered the square hall. There was an odor
+of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather
+confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter.
+Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but
+that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room
+with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came
+forward to her with amazement in his eyes.
+
+"Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?" he
+asked.
+
+"He is not here," said Sheila. "I have come for you by myself."
+
+For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
+directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, "Well, that is very
+good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?"
+
+So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and
+the roar of the waves.
+
+"Well, Sheila," he said, "this is very good of you, really: where is
+Mr. Lavender?"
+
+"He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning."
+
+"And what do you do?"
+
+"I sit at the window."
+
+"Don't you go boating?"
+
+"No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And yesterday
+it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him nothing
+about the people here or the fishing."
+
+"But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would like to
+know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their wool, and
+so on; but you would find the fishermen here don't live in that way at
+all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their clothing in the
+shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye with it, either.
+However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At present I suppose
+you are returning to your hotel."
+
+A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as she
+turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her eyes.
+
+"I came to see you," she said. "But perhaps you have an engagement. I
+do not wish to take up any of your time: if you please I will go back
+alone to--"
+
+"Now, Sheila," he said with a smile, and with the old friendly look
+she knew so well, "you must not talk like that to me. I won't have it.
+You know I came down to Brighton because you asked me to come; and my
+time is altogether at your service."
+
+"And you have no engagement just now?" said Sheila with her face
+brightening.
+
+"No."
+
+"And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and the nets?
+Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles? It is a
+very good wind."
+
+"Oh, I should be very glad," said Ingram slowly. "I should be
+delighted. But, you see, wouldn't your husband think it--wouldn't he,
+you know--wouldn't it seem just a little odd to him if you were to go
+away like that?"
+
+"He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine," said Sheila quite simply. "He
+does not want me."
+
+"Of course you told him you were coming to see--you were going to call
+at the Old Ship?"
+
+"Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not return for
+a long time."
+
+"Are you quite sure, Sheila?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure."
+
+"Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with you. I
+shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have one
+of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive charge.
+I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and hold you
+responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for
+whatever may befall."
+
+"Oh no," said Sheila. "You must work very hard, and I will see if you
+remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if we can have some
+long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay more than thirty
+shillings for their long lines in this country?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ingram. "I believe most of the fishermen here
+live upon the shillings they get from passers-by after a little
+conversation about the weather and their hard lot in life; so that one
+doesn't talk to them more than one can help."
+
+"But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?"
+
+"I don't know that, either. I suppose there is some good fishing in
+the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big shoals of
+mackerel."
+
+"It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of the men of
+the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been very lucky
+all through the last season, and it was near six thousand ling they
+got."
+
+"But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or other up
+about Habost?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to them. And
+it is a very good boat whatever."
+
+That unlucky "whatever" had slipped out inadvertently: the moment she
+had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward her companion,
+fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could she have made
+such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most particular about
+the avoidance of this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know
+that from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
+with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
+of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
+much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
+with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
+perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
+any fashion whatsoever.
+
+By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
+sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when the
+pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
+over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
+boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
+boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
+handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
+the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
+business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
+did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
+obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The man
+put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not a
+little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
+merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
+delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
+which she accomplished it.
+
+"Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?" Ingram
+called out to Sheila when they had fairly got under way.
+
+She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
+critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
+then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
+said, "If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout,
+I will put on my gloves."
+
+She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and,
+with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.
+
+"You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your hands,
+Sheila," said her companion.
+
+"I do not now," she said, "but Frank would be displeased to see my
+hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands."
+
+What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender's delicate hands he was not
+going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment
+to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great
+satisfaction and content.
+
+And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this
+brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away
+to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of
+smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard: the only
+sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at
+the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The
+south wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white
+sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed
+strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a
+town close by--that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the
+noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to
+windward, there was no more trace of city life--only the great
+blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far
+horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the
+line where the sky and ocean met.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?" said Ingram,
+getting out his pipe.
+
+"Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must attend to
+the boat."
+
+"Don't you feel at home in her yet?" he asked.
+
+"I am not afraid of her," said Sheila, regarding the lines of the
+small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, "but she is very narrow in
+the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose
+they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and
+no narrows to go through."
+
+"It doesn't remind you of Lewis, does it?" he said, filling his pipe
+all the same.
+
+"A little--out there it does," she said, turning to the broad plain of
+the sea, "but it is not much that is in this country that is like the
+Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a stranger when I go back to the
+Lewis, and the people will scarcely know me, and everything will be
+changed."
+
+He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
+which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, "I want you to tell
+me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking about many
+things, and especially about your home in the North, in that sad way.
+You did not do that when you came to London first; and yet it was then
+that you might have been struck and shocked by the difference. You had
+no home-sickness for a long time--But is it home-sickness, Sheila?"
+
+How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of giving
+him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it occurred to her
+that she would be wronging her husband in seeking such sympathy from a
+friend as she had been expecting, and expecting in vain, from him.
+
+"Perhaps it is home-sickness," she said in a low voice, while she
+pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. "I should like
+to see Borva again."
+
+"But you don't want to live there all your life?" he said. "You know
+that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your husband could manage
+it; and I don't suppose he can. Surely your papa does not expect you
+to go and live in Lewis always?"
+
+"Oh, no," she said eagerly. "You must not think my papa wishes
+anything like that. It will be much less than that he was thinking of
+when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do not wish
+to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to London--none at
+all--only that--that--" And here she paused.
+
+"Come, Sheila," he said in the old paternal way to which she had been
+accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their
+friendship, "I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the
+matter. I know there is something wrong: I have seen it for some time
+back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on
+my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and to
+myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?"
+
+She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still doubtful
+as to what she should do.
+
+"You look on me as an intermeddler," he said with a smile.
+
+"No, no," she said: "you have always been our best friend."
+
+"But I have intermeddled none the less. Don't you remember when I told
+you I was prepared to accept the consequences?"
+
+It seemed so long a time since then!
+
+"And once having begun to intermeddle, I can't stop, don't you see?
+Now, Sheila, you'll be a good little girl and do what I tell you.
+You'll take the boat a long way out: we'll put her head round, take
+down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till
+you tell me all about your troubles, and then we'll see what can be
+done."
+
+She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
+anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge
+into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at
+her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand.
+She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She
+knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he
+fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced
+so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness,
+she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure
+her was right for her to do.
+
+How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs
+above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
+and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
+sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King's road and all its
+carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the
+white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to
+be close in shore; the two piers were fore-shortened into small dusky
+masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant
+and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small
+white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched
+that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp
+gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.
+
+Ingram took his seat by Sheila's side, so that he should not have
+to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little preliminary
+nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to
+sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters
+stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble
+might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and
+explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He
+let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and the girl spoke to
+him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply
+she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love
+for her husband had never altered for a moment--that all the prayer
+and desire of her heart was that they two might be to each other
+as she had at one time hoped they would be, when he got to know her
+better. She went over all the story of her coming to London, of her
+first experiences there, of the conviction that grew upon her that her
+husband was somehow disappointed with her, and only anxious now that
+she should conform to the ways and habits of the people with whom
+he associated. She spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how
+heartsick she was with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which
+he showed. She spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of
+the way in which he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her
+showing him, so long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she
+had in her heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love
+involved. And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and
+here it seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband's
+conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
+unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
+could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a large
+number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was the most
+natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so out of
+communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an especial
+friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at times it
+hurt her to be left alone--But here the girl broke down somewhat, and
+Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.
+
+These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were difficult
+to answer. But out of these revelations--which rather took the form of
+a cry than of any distinct statement--he formed a notion of Sheila's
+position sufficiently exact; and the more he looked at it the more
+alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of her than her husband
+did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her
+submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland
+birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive
+and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some--possibly
+unintentional--wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving
+girl--who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or
+limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to
+be gentle and obedient--was to be cast aside and have her tenderest
+feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous,
+shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila's
+waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed
+his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly
+wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy
+with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever
+cost.
+
+"Sheila," he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she
+were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the
+Borva rocks, "you are a good woman."
+
+He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife
+he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no
+imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however
+true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.
+
+"And, after all," he said in a lighter voice, "I think I can do
+something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a
+thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and
+put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there
+is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has
+been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you
+know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put
+the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope
+to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work,
+and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get
+him to go away from London altogether--get him to take to serious
+landscape painting on some wild coast--the Galway coast, for example."
+
+"Why not the Lewis?" said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as
+naturally as the needle.
+
+"Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels
+and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you
+would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know."
+
+"You make me so happy in thinking of that," she said, with her eyes
+growing wet again.
+
+"And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic
+about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to
+make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned
+money. And you might have a boat like this."
+
+"We are drifting too far in," said Sheila, suddenly rising. "Shall we
+go back now?"
+
+"By all means," he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas
+again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.
+
+"Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn't it?" said Ingram.
+
+"Yes," said the girl, with her face full of hope.
+
+"And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and
+making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me, and say I made
+all the mischief to begin with."
+
+"Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?" she said in a low
+voice.
+
+"Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks
+who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between
+two people who are married--that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what
+you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out
+of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English
+you prefer?"
+
+"I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends,
+and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me."
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see."
+
+When they got back to shore it was half-past one.
+
+"You will come and have some luncheon with us?" said Sheila when they
+had gone up the steps and into the King's road.
+
+"Will that lady be there?"
+
+"Mrs. Lorraine? Yes."
+
+"Then I'll come some other time."
+
+"But why not now?" said Sheila. "It is not necessary that you will see
+us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I
+should come at once."
+
+"And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?" said Sheila with a smile. "She
+is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to dislike her."
+
+"But I don't want to meet her, Sheila, that is all," he said; and
+she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that there was no use
+trying to persuade him further.
+
+He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable stream
+of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor she seemed
+to remember that his costume--a blue pilot-jacket, not a little worn
+and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat that had seen a
+good deal of rough weather in the Highlands--was a good deal more
+comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left her at the hotel,
+"Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at half-past three,
+and that I expect to see him in the coffee-room? I sha'n't keep him
+five minutes."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
+appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
+He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
+in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for Lavender
+was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry for the
+wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to set it
+right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He ought to
+go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin working hard,
+to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and then, in this
+friendly solitude, he would get to know something about Sheila's
+character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable were these
+genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces such as
+might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt to
+know the worth of an honest woman's perfect love and unquestioning
+devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he would go and do
+the right thing, as he had many a time done before, in obedience to
+the lecturing of his friend.
+
+Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room. There
+was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of the
+small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the King's road
+and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely taken his seat when
+Lavender came in.
+
+"Hallo, Ingram! how are you?" he said in his freest and friendliest
+way. "Won't you come up stairs? Have you had lunch? Why did you go to
+the Ship?"
+
+"I always go to the Ship," he said. "No, thank you, I won't go up
+stairs."
+
+"You are a most unsociable sort of brute?" said Lavender frankly.
+"Will you take a glass of sherry?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Will you have a game of billiards?"
+
+"No, thank you. You don't mean to say you would play billiards on such
+a day as this?"
+
+"It _is_ a fine day, isn't it?" said Lavender, turning carelessly to
+look at the sunlit road and the blue sea. "By the way, Sheila tells
+me you and she were out sailing this morning. It must have been very
+pleasant, especially for her, for she is mad about such things. What a
+curious girl she is, to be sure! Don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by curious," said Ingram coldly.
+
+"Well, you know, strange--odd--unlike other people in her ways and her
+fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her to see some friends
+of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out of the house somehow
+(I suppose their talking did not interest her), and when they went in
+search of her they found her in the cemetery crying like a child."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why," said Lavender with a smile, "merely because so many people had
+died. She had never seen anything like that before: you know the small
+church-yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions in Norwegian and
+Danish and German. I suppose the first sight of all the white stones
+at Norwood was too much for her."
+
+"Well, I don't see much of a joke in that," said Ingram.
+
+"Who said there was any joke in it?" cried Lavender impatiently.
+"I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are. You are always
+fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I never do anything of
+the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have every reason to be
+satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out."
+
+"_Has she_?"
+
+The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in
+which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender's careless
+flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise,
+and then he said, "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I will tell you what I mean," said Ingram slowly. "It is an
+awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I
+am aware--he gets something else than thanks for his pains
+ordinarily--but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks. Now,
+you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward
+your marriage in the North; and I don't remind you of that to claim
+anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am
+called on to speak to you now."
+
+Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated. He
+half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
+in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
+before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
+and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
+sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
+little man was perhaps too much addicted.
+
+"I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?" said Lavender
+hotly.
+
+"You may suppose what absurdities you like," said Ingram quietly; "but
+it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently,
+and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have got to say. It
+is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that is not of easy
+remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better
+position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the
+opinion of your friends."
+
+"You are a little roundabout, Ingram," said Lavender, "and ornate. But
+I suppose all lectures begin so. Go on."
+
+Ingram laughed: "If I am too formal, it is because I don't want to
+make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A long time before you
+were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive
+notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the
+dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth.
+These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but
+you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to
+alter any of her beliefs in that direction."
+
+"And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don't care what
+a washerwoman pays for her candles?" said Lavender with impetuous
+contempt. "Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she
+is grieved at heart because I can't make hobnailed boots, it seems
+to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of
+going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his
+sympathy in the character of an injured wife."
+
+For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
+quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself;
+but he kept quite calm, and said, "That, unfortunately, is not what is
+troubling her."
+
+Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room, and
+said, "If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it from
+herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a third
+person to humor her whims and fancies."
+
+"Whims and fancies!" said Ingram, with that dark light returning to
+his eyes. "Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that,
+while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and
+dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are
+breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims
+and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever could have--"
+
+He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent words
+to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between husband
+and wife; but Ingram's blaze of wrath, kindled by what he considered
+the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of Sheila, had
+swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, was much
+cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, "I
+am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think
+you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the
+part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure
+that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to
+relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I
+am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has
+any complaint to make she must make it to me."
+
+Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.
+
+"Lavender," he said, "it does not matter much whether you and I
+quarrel--I was prepared for that, in any case--but I ask you to give
+Sheila a chance of telling you what I had intended to tell you."
+
+"Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite confidences.
+When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready to listen.
+But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as they are at
+present."
+
+"God help you, then!" said his friend, and went away, scarcely daring
+to confess to himself how dark the future looked.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+
+
+Americans have an impression that the English think it a considerable
+distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony of presentation
+has entirely ceased to have any social significance in England. Any
+young gentleman who imagines that the door of English society will
+be thrown open to him on the publication of his appearance at a
+drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress and carriage and
+stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social success, the money
+which a robe will cost might be expended to equal advantage anywhere
+else in London. However, a lady's dress may be worn again, and men may
+hire a court-suit for the day at a very small cost. Your tailor, if
+you get a good deal of him, will patch you up something tolerable for
+very little; so that sartorial expenses are comparatively light. One
+can get for the afternoon a two-horse brougham, with a coachman and
+footman, for a sum less than ten dollars. Still, going to court costs
+something, and its only possible advantage is that the spectacle is a
+fine and an interesting one. One has therefore to consider whether the
+sight is worth the fee.
+
+A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
+Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
+presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
+many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the privilege
+of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any clergyman, any
+officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an attorney, even
+a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister, or, for
+that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of more
+consequence than a curate or a poor soldier. The court has scarcely
+any social significance in England. I once asked a young barrister if
+presentation would help him in the least in making his way in society.
+He said, "Not a bit."
+
+In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
+cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
+East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
+The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is
+no part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
+consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
+in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
+gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed away.
+They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not already
+in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly make his
+appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard a family
+who went down to London to be presented made the target for the
+ridicule of the whole neighborhood.
+
+On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in the
+diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and levees at
+Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, and was invited to the court balls
+and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities are given only
+to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle. It must be
+understood that there is at every court in Europe a select and elegant
+and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come in. Along with
+them enter also the ministers of state and the household officers of
+the Crown. The general circle, as it is called, includes everybody
+else. Another entrance and staircase are provided for it, and in that
+way all of British society, from a duke to a half-pay captain, gains
+admittance to the sovereign. When one is in the inside of Buckingham
+or St. James's Palace the same distinction exists. The room in which
+the members of the royal family receive the public is occupied during
+the entire ceremony by the diplomatic circle. Other persons, after
+bowing to the queen, pass into an antechamber.
+
+Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman to
+be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
+attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
+at Buckingham and St. James's Palaces. At present the queen holds
+drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of Wales
+at St. James's Palace. The latter are attended only by gentlemen,
+and, though not so grand as the queen's, are pleasanter. Trousers are
+allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and stockings which must be worn
+at all court ceremonials where there are ladies. At two o'clock--for
+the prince is very punctual--the doors of the reception-room are
+thrown open, and the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the
+ambassadors. It must be remembered that there is a wide difference
+between an ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The
+original difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
+transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
+a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy must
+see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have any
+practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and no
+doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the sovereign.
+It is still true, however, that an ambassador is accredited to
+the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign secretary.
+Practically, the difference is that an ambassador represents a bigger
+country, has better pay, lives in a finer house, and gives more
+parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has precedence of everybody
+in the country in which he resides, except the royal family.
+
+There are five countries which send ambassadors to England--Russia,
+France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These ambassadors enter the
+reception-room at the prince's levee in the order of seniority of
+residence. The Turkish ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
+years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the
+others following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
+distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
+dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
+one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
+typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
+deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical! The
+duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of my
+visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed much
+the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and intellect:
+the distinction of the other continental "swells" was usually one of
+stomach and whiskers.
+
+Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After the
+ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves from
+an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales awaits
+them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the duke
+of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
+old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right, stands
+Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each detachment
+as it approaches--"Austrian ambassador," "the Spanish minister," "the
+United States minister," etc. The prince shakes hands with the head
+of the embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
+diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
+their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic
+circle, and such as have the _entree_ to it, remain in the room: the
+Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
+the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
+were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as
+if the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
+collection.
+
+One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
+manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
+know he is somebody--if he shakes hands with all five or six of the
+princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives the
+princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and
+runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay colonel
+or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be inferred from
+the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to decipher the name
+of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed him. If he scans
+it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him and says "Major
+Te--e--e--bosh--bow," then in a loud voice, "Major Tebow," you will
+be safe in thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of
+warriors or largest of landed proprietors.
+
+The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
+whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
+very pleasantly. There is a great deal of _esprit de corps_ among
+them, and perfect equality. Attachés, secretaries and ministers walk
+about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors are
+rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
+diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
+the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
+a sort of after-glow of the royalties.
+
+At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
+there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
+increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen's levees are
+very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
+ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as
+I have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
+shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
+warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
+like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
+draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
+many of the large rooms of the palaces huge fireplaces, with great
+logs of wood, roar behind tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of
+these, the courtier who isn't a Scotchman feels as if he would never
+care to go away. Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer,
+but the first of them come in February, and London is often cool well
+up into June.
+
+The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as that
+at a prince of Wales's levee. The spelling-class of royal ladies stand
+up in a rigid row. On the queen's right is the lord chamberlain, who
+reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left, is Alexandra,
+then the queen's daughters and the Princess Mary of Cambridge. Next
+to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx which stretches
+entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up in battle array,
+stand three or four ranks of court ladies.
+
+The act of presentation is very easy and simple. Formerly--indeed,
+until within a few years--it must have been a very perilous and
+important feat. The courtier (the term is used inaccurately, but there
+is no noun to describe a person who goes to court for a single time)
+was compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, bowing, out of the
+queen's presence. For ladies who had trails to manage the ordeal must
+have been a trying one. Now it has been made quite easy. There is
+but one point in which a presentation to the queen differs from that
+already described at the prince of Wales's levee. You may turn your
+back to the prince, but after bowing to the queen you step off into
+the crowd, still facing her. There (if you have had the good luck to
+be presented in the diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most
+interesting pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very
+amusing, though they evidently have their little joke afterward over
+anything unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should,
+of course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
+amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
+and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
+the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
+ask "Who is this?" and "Who is that?" The lord chamberlain announces
+each person as he or she appears. You hear the most heroic and
+romantic names in English history as some insignificant boy or wizened
+old woman appears to represent them. They are not all, by any means,
+insignificant boys and wizened old women. Many of the ladies are
+handsome enough to be well worth looking at, whether their names be
+Percy or Stanhope or Brown or Smith. The young slips of girls who come
+to be presented for the first time, frightened and pale or flushed,
+one admires and feels a sense of instinctive loyalty to.
+
+The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain: "The
+duchess of Fincastle," "The countess of Dorchester," "Lady Arabella
+Darling on her marriage," etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to
+whom the queen gives her hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee
+to the carpet. No act of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated,
+her behavior being so modest and the sympathy with her so wide and
+sincere; but ladies very nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member
+of the royal family, not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so
+strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately
+mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit
+of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The
+curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling
+and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural
+districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be
+knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It
+astonished me, I remember, at a court party, to see one patrician
+young woman--"divinely tall" I should describe her if her decided chin
+and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her character had not
+put divinity out of the question--shake hands with a not very imposing
+young prince, and bend her regal knees into this curious and sudden
+little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days afterward in
+a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!), directing with
+her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop. It struck me
+she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a chariot with
+three steeds abreast.
+
+The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court ceremonials.
+There are besides the court festivities, the balls and concerts
+at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given in a
+season--two balls and two concerts. The balls are the larger and less
+select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of the palace is a
+large rectangular apartment. At one end is the orchestra--at the other
+a raised dais on which the royalties sit. On each side, running the
+length of the hall, are three tiers of benches, which are for ladies
+and such gentlemen as can get a seat. The tiers on the left of the
+dais are for diplomatists. English society has the tiers upon the
+other side. By ten the ball-room is usually filled with people waiting
+for the appearance of the royalties. The band strikes up, and the line
+of princes and princesses advances down the long hall leading to the
+ball-room. The queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at
+these balls. The queen does not come now: the prince and princess of
+Wales take her place.
+
+First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them come
+the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales advances
+first, with a naïve, faltering, hesitating step, a strange and quite
+delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in her
+manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen. Then
+approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and very
+jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile, which
+she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
+follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
+wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
+suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
+she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes' duration.
+Before curtsying, she stops and seems to "shy," and looks at the
+ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the object which alarms
+him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the ground, and recovers
+herself with the same slowness. It would seem that such a genuflection
+must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is not so in the least: it
+is quite successful, and rather pleasing. After the ladies come the
+prince of Wales and his suite. The royalties then all go upon the
+stage, and after music the ball begins.
+
+There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
+ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
+space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
+the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
+diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
+rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
+always dance the same step, the _deux temps_, and the aim of the
+dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible.
+They make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
+_trois temps_, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say, without
+any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance in
+England, you are safe.
+
+The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There are
+many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men are
+"flaming in purple and gold." There is every variety of magnificent
+dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from head to foot.
+Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark crimson of
+the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards' clubs in gold and
+scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach above their knees,
+clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about, and exhibit legs of
+which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging gait, wanders the
+queen's piper, a sort of poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
+plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to the
+music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of the
+orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel the
+festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.
+
+Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
+through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
+curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight, on
+the lakes and fountains of the gardens, "the watery ways of palaces."
+I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they are a trifle too
+romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of flirting in
+the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very pleasantly, the
+refreshment-room, which was kept open during the evening till
+supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold coffee, champagne,
+sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy in the least. I
+can't say so much for the supper, though by waiting a little one could
+always get something. The princes went first, then the diplomatists,
+and then everybody else. The jostling was such that when young ladies
+asked for a plate of soup you wished they had wanted ham and chicken.
+A young American, I think, would very much dislike to go up to a table
+and eat a solitary supper with ladies looking on, and young and pretty
+ones, too. But I have seen a young guardsman, with an enormous helmet
+and boots as big as himself, stand up at the table and "solitary and
+alone" work his jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling
+the whole of his paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry
+courtiers, whom his gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility
+of supper, and who revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations
+aside upon the length and heartiness of his meal.
+
+"Concert" is an expression which to a hungry man has a strong
+suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives you such a
+supper as only a night's dancing is ordinarily supposed to entitle
+you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room of the palace, and are
+much more select than the balls. The royalties occupy very slight gilt
+chairs placed just before the orchestra. There they sit with grace and
+an appearance of comfort through the whole of it, while happier
+and humbler mortals may walk about and whisper, or seek the
+refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They have very good music,
+the best singers are provided, and some pretty familiar songs, like
+"Home, sweet home," are sung.
+
+Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to the
+bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few civil
+things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow and
+look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost queens
+when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of praise
+and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in European
+capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to put
+themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
+artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
+century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
+in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing the
+old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly notions.
+The cord stretched between the guests and the performers used to be a
+feature of musical entertainments at private houses. Grisi went
+once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington at his
+country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine. "Oh, when
+you do," she said. He saw her mistake and did not correct it; so it
+happened that she dined at the same table with the guests, and the
+incident, it is said, excited considerable horror among people of the
+old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how utterly uncivilized, is
+such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute each other, but it seems
+inconceivable that a man and a gentleman could have entertained such a
+sentiment.
+
+Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball, only
+there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales, and to
+a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and make
+a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil. "The
+Prince," as he is commonly called, takes advantage of the suppers
+at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule is, let
+me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you before
+speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to turn
+away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the interview
+yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always expected
+to call him "Sir." The queen is addressed as "Ma'am." It is not
+understood in this country that to call a man "sir" is a confession
+of your inferiority to him. But it is so in England, and the fact
+illustrates the strong hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms
+have upon the British mind. No gentleman in England says "sir"
+to another, unless it be a very young person to an old one. [1] A
+subordinate in an office might "sir" a superior, but he would not
+"sir" a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he had no
+connection. "Sir" is the term applied by any Englishman of whatever
+rank to a member of the royal family. Our committees, when princes
+visit America, usually address them in notes as "Your Royal Highness."
+But "Your Royal Highness" is not a vocative: it can be used only
+in the third person. However, the princes are then in America, and
+perhaps we are under no obligation to know everything of their ways at
+home. Should the reader ever meet a prince in that prince's country,
+I should advise him to do just as other people do there. He will
+probably question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the
+implied inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore
+action is to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously
+decided from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not
+the prince's fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
+and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
+Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his equality.
+The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he probably has
+thought through the mistake under which the republican stranger is
+laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an American may reflect
+that he will probably have very little in life to do with princes, and
+that his interview with a prince has been an "experience." It would be
+about as foolish to assert one's dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the
+Matterhorn.
+
+Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen's and prince
+of Wales's breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off about 3
+P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the court
+entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season, and out
+of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited. There are
+certain persons who are always invited, and others who are eligible
+and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic corps
+are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or two
+secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a queen's
+breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of legation can
+touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the minister himself
+only goes once a year, and he "not without shedding of blood."
+
+The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one, and
+anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light trousers.
+The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now compelled to
+wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs a word of
+mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited, somewhat
+prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know very little.
+Congress, at a distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought
+itself competent to decide what sort of court dress an American
+diplomatist should wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward
+a measure, and, once proposed, it was certain to go through,
+because to oppose its passage would have been to be aristocratic
+and un-American. Mr. Sumner's bill required Americans to go in the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." There was no attempt to
+indicate what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had
+worn the uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other
+countries. This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon
+it, white breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.
+
+An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
+interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued
+a circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
+uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
+the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
+consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
+the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
+fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
+United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
+distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
+government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
+and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
+which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
+far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. "Tell that very
+distinguished personage," said Mr. Buchanan, "that not only will I
+wear a sword, as she requests, but, should occasion require it, will
+hold myself ready to draw it in her defence." This strikes me as in
+just that tone of respectful exaggeration and playful acquiescence
+which a gentleman in this country may very becomingly take toward
+the whole question. Neither Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe,
+heeded the request of the Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is
+said, subsequently repudiated it.
+
+But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr. Marcy's
+time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe how very
+uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
+of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
+unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
+exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and the
+khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable people
+at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody else
+is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
+exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
+scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the secretaries
+said to me: "I am afraid to wander off by myself among these ladies:
+they inspect me as the maids of honor in the palace of Brobdingnag did
+Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel mother who won't dress
+me like these other little boys." It would require more than ordinary
+courage to attempt to dance in this rig. I should think that our
+representatives would huddle together in the most unconspicuous
+portion of a room, and never leave it. Said the secretary above
+quoted: "I always feel here that I am of some use to my chief: I
+am one more pair of legs with which to divide the gaze of British
+society."
+
+The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a plain
+dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
+slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." The dress is not so ugly as
+it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest and
+liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not so
+excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party given
+in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to the
+Empress Eugenie's private parties came got up in that manner. But
+in London it was not till recently that American diplomatists were
+allowed to go to court even thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe
+the legations were admitted in evening dress, the concession of
+knee-breeches not having been required. But at Buckingham Palace there
+are two or three very old men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria
+was a baby, and who still control the court etiquette. These aged
+functionaries, who can very well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers
+remembered the American Revolution, put down their foot, and would
+admit no Americans without the proper garments. The consequence was,
+that our legation was compelled to stay at home. This state of things
+continued until Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called
+"the Breeches Protocol." Owing to the unreasonable state of the public
+mind during his term of office, this was the only measure which that
+good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The compromise which Mr.
+Johnson's good-humor and the friendly impulse of the British public
+toward us at that time wrung from these ancient chamberlains and
+gold-sticks (for you may say what you will, public opinion is
+irresistible), was to allow the minister and the two secretaries of
+legation to appear in the breeches above described. Americans who are
+presented at court, and who get invitations to the festivities, are
+all required to wear a court dress. Of what good compelling the poor
+diplomatists to make scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know.
+Mr. Sumner's proposition was just one of those absurdities to which
+men are liable who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor.
+Senators and Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be
+un-American, and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or
+(in matters of this sort) very scrupulous.
+
+[Footnote 1: The rule, more correctly stated, is, that "sir" is never
+used except to indicate a difference of age or position so great as to
+forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social equality. It
+may be employed by the elder in addressing the younger, and by the
+superior in addressing the inferior, as well as _vice versa_. Hence
+the saying, in English society, that only princes and servants are
+spoken to as "sir."]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+
+An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
+Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
+the most splendid of Oriental cities.
+
+Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
+_nárcodah_ (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel Barrie.
+He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always to
+mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
+had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
+Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
+day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so
+we had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
+Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
+and we were set down on the Barrie's quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
+sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was weighed.
+
+The monsoon was favorable, and seven days' sail brought us to the
+river's mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the nárcodah's
+boat to the "city of kings."
+
+Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the abundance,
+variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are found those
+of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being transplanted to
+this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in this fruitful soil
+far more productive than in the sterile regions of Persia and Arabia;
+while numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
+united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
+list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
+clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
+productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
+The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
+millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second
+king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud
+and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at
+the merest trifle of expense a table may be supplied during the entire
+year with forty or fifty specimens of fresh, ripe fruit. Among these
+are many varieties of oranges and pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks,
+pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains, durians, jack-fruit, melons,
+grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts, pomegranates, soursaps, linchies,
+custard-apples, breadfruit, cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds,
+mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of others for which we have no
+names in our language. Tropical fruits are generally juicy, sweet with
+a slight admixture of acid, luscious, and peculiarly agreeable in a
+warm climate; and when partaken of with temperance and due regard
+to quality they are highly promotive of health. For this reason
+Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit tree as quite an act of
+sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a heavy malediction on
+those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One who has tasted the
+fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the soil that produces
+them can form no conception of the real flavor of plums and grapes
+that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our northern clime; of
+oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and eaten fresh while the
+morning dew still glitters on their golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare,
+rosy pomegranate juice, luscious as nectar.
+
+After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at the
+head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance. The
+fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
+a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
+half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three species
+of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the _Garania mangostina_, is
+the fruit edible. The others are valuable for timber, and the bark
+for the manufacture of a dye that resists the attacks of every sort of
+insect.
+
+Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (_Anona
+squamosa_), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions of a
+medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its apex
+directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black seed.
+The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked custard, and
+in flavor very like strawberries and cream.
+
+The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
+larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
+(_Nephelium lappaceum_) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but when
+the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent pulp is
+revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that a blind
+man would be unable to distinguish them.
+
+Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but are
+in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
+four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
+bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
+delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
+had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
+harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the trouble
+he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should not
+be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the price
+demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
+ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
+medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
+sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for extortion.
+
+One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit (_Artocarpus
+integrifolia_), growing in all its immensity of thirty or forty pounds
+weight directly out of the largest branches or on the stem of the huge
+tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green coat: internally, it has
+a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are embedded a dozen or more
+smooth, oval seeds about the size of large chestnuts, which they
+strikingly resemble in flavor.
+
+The mango (_Mangifera Indica_) is a drupe of the plum kind, four or
+five inches long, and three at least in diameter. Greenish-colored
+outside, and not very inviting, you are most agreeably surprised at
+the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow pulp that adheres like the
+clinging peach to a large flat seed.
+
+The gamboge tree (_Stalagmitis Cambogioides_) grows luxuriantly in
+Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed leaves, a
+yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even the stem has
+a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is obtained
+by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves and young
+shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white foreigners
+for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced into Europe
+early in the seventeenth century.
+
+The plantain (_Musa paradisaica_) is one of the best gifts of
+Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
+many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
+as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
+palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
+the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh
+from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green
+cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about
+twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the
+elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
+flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
+beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
+glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
+breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
+around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
+leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till there
+come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred plantains,
+weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth bunch is the
+sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit is plucked the
+stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same root; and it
+is thus constantly renewed for many successive years. The incalculable
+blessing of such a tree in regions where the intolerable heat renders
+all labor oppressive may be conceived from the estimate of Humboldt,
+who reckons the surface of ground needed to the production of four
+thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice for the raising of only
+thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes. What
+would induce the indolent East Indian to make the exchange of crops?
+
+The cassew-nut (_Anacardium occidentale_) is remarkable as the only
+known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A full-grown tree
+is twenty feet high, with graceful form and widespread branches. The
+leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson flowers grow in clusters.
+The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish color outside and bright
+yellow within; and the seed, which is in the form of a crescent, looks
+just as if it had been stuck on the bur end, instead of growing there.
+When roasted the kernels are not unlike a very fine chestnut.
+
+The guava (_Psidium pomiferum_), of which the noted Indian jelly
+is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar pears--pale,
+yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when opened, a soft,
+rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste and odor are
+very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till after long use.
+
+The tamarind tree (_Tamarindus Indicus_), a huge growth, with trunk a
+hundred feet tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches
+extending widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite
+leaves, very nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The
+flowers, growing in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint
+veined with red; while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung
+all over the branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves,
+blossoms and fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth
+as to appear almost ludicrous, yet the _tout ensemble_ is "a thing of
+beauty" never to be forgotten.
+
+It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
+plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
+every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps' estate, one of
+the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
+acres, including three picturesque hills--Mount Sophia, Mount Emily
+and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty bungalow--and from
+these avenues radiate, intersecting every portion of the plantation.
+Here were planted some five thousand nutmeg trees, and perhaps a
+thousand of the clove, besides coffee trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg
+is an evergreen of great beauty, conical in shape, and from twenty
+to twenty-five feet in height, the branches thickly decorated with
+polished, deep-green foliage rising from the ground to the summit.
+Almost hidden among these emerald leaves grows the pear-shaped
+fruit. As it ripens the yellow external tegument opens, revealing the
+dark-red mace, that is closely enwrapped about a thin black shell.
+This, in turn, encloses a fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce.
+Both leaf and blossom are marked by the same aromatic perfume that
+distinguishes the fruit.
+
+The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
+similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
+beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure white
+and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every branch and
+twig almost to the summit of the tree. The cloves--"spice nails," as
+they are often called--are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem
+being the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as
+we see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass
+in curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
+transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
+in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in Singapore,
+Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan Archipelago.
+
+One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget to
+mention--the flat peach, called by the Chinese _ping taou_, or "peach
+cake." It has the appearance of having been flattened by pressure at
+the head and stalk, being something less than three-fourths of an
+inch through the centre from eye to stem, and consisting wholly of the
+stone and skin; while the sides, which swell around the centre, are
+only an eighth of an inch in thickness. Its transverse diameter is
+about two and a half inches.
+
+The camphor tree (_Laurus camphora_) grows abundantly in China and
+Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that supplies
+the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the trunks and
+chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the ravages of
+moths and the still more destructive white ant of the tropics. This
+tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a circumference of about
+eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from seven to nine feet in girth.
+In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered branches are cut in small
+pieces, and steeped in water for several days, after which they are
+boiled, the liquid being constantly stirred until the gum, in the form
+of a white jelly, begins to appear, when the whole is poured into
+a glazed vessel, and becomes concreted in cooling. It is afterward
+purified by means of sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a
+conical cover placed over the boiling liquid while at its greatest
+heat. There is another species of camphor tree (_Dryobalanops
+camphora_) growing in Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island
+of Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even amid the huge growth
+of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this species is found
+occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a half in the heart
+of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep incision in the trunk
+about fifteen inches from the ground with a _b'ling_ or Malayan axe,
+in order to ascertain whether the gum is there; and when it is found
+the tree is felled and the impregnated portion carefully extracted.
+The same tree, while young, yields a liquid oily matter that has
+nearly the same properties as the camphor, and is supposed to be the
+first stage of its formation. Some eight China catties (eleven pounds)
+of this oil may be obtained from a medium-sized tree, which, after
+having been cut off for the purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if
+left standing for a few years, produce abundantly an inferior article
+of camphor.
+
+In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
+beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
+color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
+hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
+crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
+incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
+these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
+by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
+opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
+the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
+purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
+gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.
+
+The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse under
+which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an opium
+shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds its
+victims fast bound--mind, heart, soul and conscience, all absolutely
+dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing thirst for
+the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once, but I
+can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that "place of
+torment." The apartment was spacious, and might have been pleasant
+but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of unutterable woe--the
+footprints of sin trodden deep in the furrows of those haggard faces
+and emaciated forms. On all four sides of the room were couches
+placed thickly against the walls, and others were scattered over
+the apartment wherever there was room for them. On each of these lay
+extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some few were old--all were
+hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and cadaverous countenances; many were
+clothed in rags, having probably smoked away their last dollar;
+while others were offering to pawn their only decent garment for an
+additional dose of the deadly drug. A decrepit old man raised
+himself as we entered, drew a long sigh, and then with a half-uttered
+imprecation on his own folly proceeded to refill his pipe. This he did
+by scraping off, with a five-inch steel needle, some opium from the
+lid of a tiny shell box, rolling the paste into a pill, and then,
+after heating it in the blaze of a lamp, depositing it within the
+small aperture of his pipe. Several short whiffs followed; then the
+smoker would remove the pipe from his mouth and lie back motionless;
+then replace the pipe, and with fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke
+slowly through his pallid nostrils. As the narcotic effects of the
+opium began to work he fell back on the couch in a state of silly
+stupefaction that was alike pitiable and disgusting. Another smoker,
+a mere youth, lay with face buried in his hands, and as he lifted his
+head there was a look of despair such as I have seldom seen. Though so
+young, he was a complete wreck, with hollow eyes, sunken chest and a
+nervous twitching in every muscle. I spoke to him, and learned that
+six months before he had lost his whole patrimony by gambling, and
+came hither to quaff forgetfulness from these Lethean cups; hoping, he
+said, to find death as well as oblivion. By far the larger proportion
+of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying
+poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and we passed
+out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought of these
+infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving families at
+home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given up, and
+from three to five years' indulgence will utterly wreck the firmest
+constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated, the eyes more
+sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the brain ceases to
+perform its functions, and death places its seal on the wasted life.
+
+On "Araby's plains" I saw for the first time the beautiful wild palm,
+the "lighthouse of the desert," always an object of intense desire to
+the weary traveler as he traverses those sterile regions, for as it
+looms up in the distance, sometimes in groups, but more generally
+standing in solitary grandeur near a tiny bubbling spring, its waving
+plumes tell him not only of shelter and needed rest, but of water also
+to bathe his tired limbs and quench the burning thirst that oppresses
+him almost to death. Should the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he
+will find food also--a dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome
+and nourishing--ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
+traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
+and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
+Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap, gather
+the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of the
+plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus improving
+the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty or more
+varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
+seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
+delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
+Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
+the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year
+by keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
+Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
+until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
+ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across the
+deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried and
+needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water, and so
+eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined to the
+fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn from the
+trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent timber;
+the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous part, when
+stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are of use--the
+fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to account--in Egypt
+for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture of Indian ink, and in
+Spain for making the tooth-powder known as "ivory black." The date is
+indigenous to both Asia and Africa: it was introduced into Spain by
+the Moors, and some few trees are still found even in the south
+of France. But the most extensive forests are those of the Barbary
+states, where they are sometimes miles in length. When growing thus in
+groves the palms are very beautiful, their towering crests waving in
+unison as they seem to form an immense natural temple, about which
+vines and creepers wreath their graceful tendrils, while birds of
+varied plumage sing their matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile
+the golden fruit that grows in clusters at the very summit of the
+tree. The Arabs' mode of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The
+trunk, sixty feet high, has not, it must be remembered, a single
+branch to hold on by or furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole
+stem is rough with thick scales or horny protuberances, not very
+pleasant to the touch of fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed
+across the climber's back and under his armpits, and then, after being
+passed around the tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The
+rope is next placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of
+an old leaf, while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits
+toward the middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of the
+shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then with hands and knees he firmly
+grasps the trunk, and raises himself a few inches higher; when, still
+holding fast by knees and feet and one hand, he with the other slips
+the rope a little higher up the tree, letting it rest on another of
+these horny protuberances, and so on till the summit is gained. When
+the fruit is reached it is easily plucked with one hand, while the
+gatherer maintains his position with the other, and the clusters are
+thrown down into a large cloth held at the corners by four persons.
+
+The far-famed banian or Indian fig (_Ficus Indica_) is perhaps the
+grandest of tropical trees--the most beautiful of Nature's products,
+even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the sun's rays, where she
+sports with such profusion and variety, clothing the earth in gorgeous
+flowers, variegated mosses and feathery ferns, till it seems to
+groan beneath the manifold treasures of beauty and fragrance lavished
+thereon. This noble tree grows wild in many Eastern countries and
+islands, and sometimes attains to a size and an extent that are
+marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are everywhere thrown out toward the
+ground from the horizontal branches, increasing in size as they tend
+downward, till at last they strike into the ground and become stems.
+From these shoot new branches, which in their turn extend and form
+roots and new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent
+of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as
+"a pillared shade high overarched." And as they are thus continually
+increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of
+decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant's hand may come
+in time to cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the
+noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river
+Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful
+tree, named after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that
+exceeds two thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number
+three or four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand,
+though some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away
+not only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
+itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
+over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
+branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
+repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
+_seven thousand_ people could find ample shelter under its widespread
+branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming hunting or
+shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks together
+beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were frolicsome
+monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks, wood-pigeons and
+singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the thick foliage,
+and plentiful sustenance from the small, scarlet-colored figs that
+hang pendent from every branch. The banian tree may be regarded as a
+natural temple in Oriental regions, and the Hindoos especially look
+upon it with profound veneration. Tiny, fancifully-adorned temples
+and pagodas are erected beneath its shadowy boughs, where are pleasant
+walks and long vistas of umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from
+the fierce rays of the tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire
+lives within these quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek
+them for rest and recreation. The banian is styled also "the tree
+of councils," from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
+magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
+civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
+tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It
+is indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
+legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
+the Cubber Burr's sheltering boughs with a merry party of picnicking
+maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves to roam among
+its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy windings of the
+hoary banian of Nerbudda's isle.
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A LOTOS OF THE NILE.
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on a night of clear July starlight. The heat
+of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows were
+assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool, if such
+a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed, however,
+for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless, and the
+fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible approach to
+a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the river was
+distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky bed,
+distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim, mysterious
+look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White dresses,
+shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and then the
+glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it was even
+possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were the only
+clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with light
+streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and globe-like
+lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming effect.
+
+Everybody had been silent for some time--that is, for half a
+minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances--when Mrs.
+Lancaster's voice broke the stillness. "Oh for a whiff of mountain-air
+or a sea-breeze!" she said. "I came to spend two weeks with you, dear
+Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a month--who ever _did_ leave The
+Willows when they meant to do so?--but I really must be thinking of
+taking flight. Suppose we get up a party for the White Sulphur?--it
+is always so tiresome to go away by one's self. Who will join it?
+Eleanor, will you?"
+
+"I am not going to the White Sulphur this year," answered Eleanor
+Milbourne.
+
+"Not going to the White Sulphur!" repeated Mrs. Lancaster in a tone of
+surprise. Then she laughed. "How stupid I am!" she said. "Of course
+I might have known that the temptation to break the pledge of total
+abstinence from flirtation would be too great in that paradise of
+flirtation. Besides, Mr. Brent's yacht is homeward bound, is it not?"
+
+"I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr. Brent's yacht
+and my decision about the White Sulphur," answered Miss Milbourne
+haughtily. Then she turned to the person next her, a recumbent figure
+lying at full length on the grass. "I don't know anything of which
+one grows so weary as of watering-place life when one has seen much of
+it," she said. "Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip,
+all oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don't think I shall ever
+go to a watering-place again."
+
+"Take care!" said the recumbent. "Don't make an abstinence pledge of
+that kind: you will only be tempted to break it, for what will you do
+with yourself in summer?"
+
+"I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense desire to see
+the world and the wonders thereof."
+
+"With a yacht such a desire would be easily gratified."
+
+"But I have no yacht," said she with a sharp chord in her voice. It
+was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly expressive in this
+dim, mysterious starlight.
+
+"Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to place it at
+your service."
+
+"You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent."
+
+"I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a fleet it
+should be subject to your command."
+
+"You are very generous," said she; and now there was a little ripple
+as of pleasure in her tone.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
+like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up recruits for the
+White Sulphur. "Major Clare!" she said at last: "where is Major
+Clare?" Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne
+his airy fleet responded lazily, "Here!" she added, "_You_ will go,
+will you not?"
+
+"I regret to say that it is impossible," he answered. "I have danced
+my last _galop_ at the White Sulphur. This time next month I shall
+probably be _en route_ for Egypt."
+
+"For Egypt!" she repeated; and a chorus of voices instantly echoed the
+exclamation. "For Egypt! Nonsense! You are jesting."
+
+"No, I am not jesting," said Victor Clare, lifting himself on one
+elbow: "I am in earnest. I received a letter from ----" (naming a
+distinguished officer) "to-day, offering me a position if I would join
+him in Cairo. I say nothing about what the position is, because my
+mind is not yet made up to accept it; and even if it were, such things
+should not be published on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a
+fancy for joining the army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a
+few important particulars."
+
+Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under Mrs.
+Lancaster's banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies shrugged their
+shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare sank back in
+the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.
+
+"There is nothing else for me to do," he said in an argumentative
+tone. "I only waste money on the impoverished acres of that old place
+of mine. The house itself is falling down over my head. What remains,
+then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune to do her best--or worst? At
+least the profession of arms has been in all ages the calling of a
+gentleman."
+
+For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the starlight
+a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan with a
+slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to answer.
+But at last she spoke in a very low tone: "Yet you said you had not
+decided."
+
+"No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in idleness and
+indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared enough about
+myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to
+think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no
+right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt
+it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned the old
+place."
+
+"I think it would," said Miss Milbourne.
+
+"No, it would _not_" was the obstinate reply. "I should take care
+to find a lotos as soon as I reached the Nile. Whoever eats of that
+forgets his past life, you know. I have scant reason for wishing to
+remember mine," he added a little bitterly.
+
+"Memory is certainly more often a sting than a pleasure," said Miss
+Milbourne. "It is strange," she added, "that we should both have
+thought of obtaining forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr.
+Brent asked me what he should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of
+the Nile. If he fulfills his promise I will share it with you."
+
+"I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for forgetfulness to
+Mr. Brent," said Victor Clare ungratefully.
+
+He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and would
+have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she desired
+to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already turned to
+her neighbor on the other side and plunged into conversation. "Is it
+not strange that Egypt should be waking from her sleep of centuries?"
+she said; and--while the gentleman whom she addressed took up the
+theme readily--Mrs. Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to
+where Victor Clare was lying.
+
+"Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk," she said. "I think the
+policeman's motto is right--'Keep moving.' When one stops to think
+about anything, even about the heat, it makes it worse."
+
+Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by a
+pretty woman who stands imperiously over him, the chances are that he
+obeys. So it was with Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go
+with Mrs. Lancaster, and quite as assuredly he _did_ want to stay just
+where he was, with the hem of Eleanor Milbourne's dress touching him
+and a pervading sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged
+stupid people to expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question.
+Yet he found himself walking away with the pretty widow before five
+minutes had passed.
+
+"I know you are not obliged to me," she said when they had gone some
+distance. "But your divinity is talking commonplaces, or listening to
+them, which amounts to the same thing; so I fancied you might spare me
+ten minutes. I want to know if that was a mere assertion for effect a
+minute ago, or if you are in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?"
+
+"I never talk for effect," said Victor with a hauteur that was spoilt
+by a slight touch of petulance. "I always mean what I say, and I
+certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"I am surprised that you should need to ask. One's friends usually
+know one's affairs at least as well as one's self--sometimes much
+better. Everybody who knows me knows that I am a poor man."
+
+"Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a fortune,
+however," said she, stopping short and looking at him keenly.
+"Confess," she added, "that you are about to expatriate yourself in
+this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne means to marry Marston
+Brent."
+
+"Your acuteness has carried you too far," said he laughing, but not
+quite naturally. "Miss Milbourne's matrimonial choice is nothing to
+me. I have thought of this step for some time. General ----'s letter
+is a reply to my application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the
+answer has come," he went on, "I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
+it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
+inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound 'Boots and saddle'
+again."
+
+"But why rust out?" she asked impetuously. "Are there not careers
+enough open to you?" Then, after a minute, "Are there not other women
+in the world besides Eleanor Milbourne?"
+
+"Perhaps so," a little doggedly. "There are other stars in the heavens
+besides Venus, but who sees them when she is above the horizon?"
+
+"How kind and complimentary you are!" said Mrs. Lancaster with a
+slight tone of bitterness in her voice.
+
+"Forgive me," said he after a minute. "I am a fool on this subject,
+and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No doubt there are
+other women in the world even more beautiful and more charming than
+Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to me."
+
+"In other words, you are determined to believe that the grapes above
+your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in existence."
+
+"At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it is an
+hallucination."
+
+"But you may harm yourself more than you imagine," said she with a
+nervous cadence, in her voice. "For the sake of a hopeless passion for
+a woman who has no more heart than my fan you will sacrifice more than
+you are aware of--more, perhaps, than you can ever regain."
+
+She laid her hand--a pretty, white hand, gleaming with jewels--on his
+arm at the last words, and it was fortunate, perhaps, that she could
+not tell with what an effort he restrained himself from shaking it
+impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion came over him like an
+electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat flattered, somewhat
+amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by the favor which the
+beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly accorded him; but now
+in a second he felt that thrill of disgust which always comes to a
+sensitive man when he sees a woman step beyond the pale of delicate
+womanhood. If he had been one shade less of a gentleman, he would have
+said something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have forgotten. As it
+was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak carelessly. "I was
+never quick at reading riddles," he said. "I am unable to imagine what
+sacrifice I should make by indulging the 'hopeless passion' for Miss
+Milbourne with which you are kind enough to credit me."
+
+"With which I credit you?" she repeated eagerly. "Am I wrong, then? If
+you can tell me _that_, Victor--"
+
+But he interrupted her quickly: "You ought to know, Mrs. Lancaster,
+that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to one woman;
+but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject, there is
+nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact that, however
+hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is the very
+essence of my life, and can only end with my life."
+
+"We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very much in
+love," said Mrs. Lancaster coolly--whatever stab his words gave the
+kindly darkness hid--"but I think you are more than usually mad. If
+she is not already engaged to Marston Brent, she will be as soon as he
+returns. I know that her family confidently expect the match, and in
+any case" (emphatically) "Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the
+world whom a penniless man need hope to win."
+
+"I know that as well as you do," said Clare. "I have no hope of
+winning her, and I am going to Egypt next month."
+
+He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject, but
+it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
+that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
+attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
+the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
+standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.
+
+"Who can have arrived?" said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry, perhaps, for a
+diversion. "I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was expecting any one."
+
+"Who has come, Ellis?" Victor said carelessly to a young man who
+emerged from the house as they approached.
+
+"Marston Brent," was the answer. "It seems the Clytie made a very
+quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of course her owner has
+come at once to report his safe arrival at head-quarters."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare's arm, felt the quick
+start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet woman,
+and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah steps
+and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back to
+Claremont.
+
+"I understand why you will not remain," she said; "but do not make any
+rash resolution about Egypt--above all, do not _commit_ yourself to
+anything." Then she bent forward and touched his hand lightly. "Tell
+me when you come again that you will join my party for the White
+Sulphur," she said softly. "It will be the wisest thing you can do."
+
+The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
+reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
+down and wrote to General ----, accepting the position he had offered,
+and promising to report in Cairo as soon as possible.
+
+After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier was
+seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during this
+interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to banish
+all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from his
+mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was impossible to
+say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting Eleanor Milbourne
+with her accepted lover by her side, or from the thrill of disgust
+with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster inspired him. He buried
+himself in listless idleness at Claremont for some time: then ordered
+his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town and made arrangements
+for the sale of his property with much the same feeling as if he had
+ordered the execution of his mother. It was when he returned weary and
+depressed from this excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
+awaiting him.
+
+"DEAR MAJOR CLARE" (it ran), "why have you forsaken us? We have looked
+for you, wished for you and talked of you for days, but you seem to
+have determined that we shall learn the full meaning of the verb 'to
+disappoint.' Will you not come over to dinner to-day? I think you have
+played hermit quite long enough.
+
+"Truly yours, L.M.B."
+
+To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
+saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
+glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
+leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
+long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
+Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from the
+only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should have
+some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every inquisitive
+fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him. Why should
+he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter in Egypt.
+As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe distance from
+_her_, even if she had not gone to the White Sulphur, as he hoped to
+heaven she had.
+
+This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person whom
+he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The Willows was
+the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits, not to
+mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most becoming
+mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found himself
+gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid to Mrs.
+Brantley--a fact which may serve as a small proof of the weakness
+of man's resolve, and his general inability to fight against fate,
+especially when it is embodied in a woman's bright eyes.
+
+"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked after the first
+salutations were over. "Have you been taking counsel with solitude on
+the Egyptian question? Or have you decided like a sensible man to go
+to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the cause of your absence,
+you have at least been charitable in furnishing us with a topic of
+conversation. I scarcely know what we should have done without the
+'Victor Clare disappearance,' as Mr. Ellis has called it, during the
+last week."
+
+"I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then," Clare said, flushing
+and laughing. "Assuredly I could not have furnished you with a topic
+of conversation for a whole week if I had been present."
+
+"Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your fate," she
+went on. "One party has maintained that, rushing away in desperation
+when you heard of Mr. Brent's arrival, you started the next day for
+Suez; the other, that you were hanging about the grounds, armed to the
+teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to dare your rival to deadly
+combat."
+
+"How kind one's friends are, to be sure, especially when they are
+in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to amuse
+themselves!"
+
+"But what _have_ you been doing? I should like to know, if you do not
+object to telling me."
+
+"I have been very busy making my final arrangements for leaving the
+country," answered he, stretching a point, it must be owned.
+
+"You are really going, then?" she asked after a minute's silence--a
+minute during which she was horribly conscious that her changing
+countenance might readily have betrayed to any looker-on how deeply
+she felt this unexpected blow.
+
+"I wrote to General ---- on the night I saw you last, accepting his
+offer," Clare answered. "Of course I am in duty bound, therefore, to
+report in Cairo as soon as possible."
+
+"And you will sell Claremont?"
+
+"I have no alternative."
+
+She said nothing more, but he saw her hand--the same white jeweled
+hand that had gleamed on his arm in the starlight--go to her throat
+with a quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion
+which he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over
+him now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
+and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman's folly. He
+appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
+child of fortune all her life--a queen-regnant, to whom all things
+must submit themselves--and he felt how bitter must be this first
+sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on which she had
+set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his voice almost
+gentle when he spoke again: "You must not think that I am ungrateful
+for your kind interest in my behalf. You can imagine, perhaps, how
+much I hate to part with Claremont, which has been the seat of my
+family for generations; but when a thing must be done there is no use
+in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my life to a tradition
+of the past; and that would be what I should do if I clung to the old
+place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp stroke and swimming
+boldly out to sea."
+
+"But you might stay if you would," said she with that tremulous accent
+which the French call "tears in the voice."
+
+"No, I could _not_ stay," said Clare resolutely. "I have no money, nor
+any means of making any in America."
+
+This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring and
+willful as she was, could not say, "_I_ have money--more than I know
+what to do with: take it." Her eyes said as much, but Clare did not
+look at her eyes. A minute longer passed in embarrassed silence. Then
+somebody came up, and Victor was able to walk away. As he crossed the
+room he saw Eleanor Milbourne for the first time since his arrival.
+He had not even inquired if she was still at The Willows, and her
+unexpected appearance, for he had begun to fear that she was gone,
+filled him with a rush of feelings of which the first and most
+prominent was delight. After all, did it matter whether or not she was
+engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to look at her was enough to fill a
+man's soul with pleasure, to steep him in that "dewlight of repose"
+which only a few rare things on this earth of ours are capable of
+inspiring. Did any sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when
+she held her court all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he
+could not possess her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not
+at all highflown to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He
+had always entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning
+the woman; and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have
+held that Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne.
+She was an adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship
+from a distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun
+himself in the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in
+their blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm
+and bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
+Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
+hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
+to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
+satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
+from Miss Milbourne.
+
+After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
+there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
+neighborhood--a hill of considerable eminence known as Farley's
+Mount--to the guests of The Willows. But it was distant twelve miles,
+What did Major Clare think of their starting early, breaking the ride
+by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then going on to the mountain,
+making the ascent, and returning by moonlight?
+
+"It will not do at all," said Victor. "Twenty-four miles is too much
+to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of pleasure. You would
+break yourselves down and see nothing. I propose an amendment: Take
+two days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If
+you have never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth
+experiencing, and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length,
+you know. Then the sunrise is magnificent."
+
+"That is exactly what we will do," cried Mrs. Brantley, clapping her
+hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being submitted to the
+company, was unanimously carried.
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the soft
+summer twilight on the lawn.
+
+"You should not press me so hard," she said as they paced slowly to
+and fro. "I fear I can never give you what you desire, but I cannot
+tell yet. Grant me a little time."
+
+"A little time! But think how much time you have had!" the gentleman
+urged, not without reason. "You said when I went abroad that you were
+not sure enough of your heart to accept me then, but that you would
+give me a final answer when I returned. You had all the months of my
+absence to consider what this answer should be, and when I came for
+it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying on the road, I found
+that it was not ready for me--that I had yet longer to wait. Eleanor,
+is this kind? is it even just?"
+
+"It is neither," said Eleanor, turning to him with a strange
+deprecation on her fair proud face. "I know that you have been
+everything that is patient and generous, and I am sorry--oh I am more
+than sorry--to have seemed to trifle with you; but what can I do?
+Remember that when I decide, it is for my whole life. You cannot doubt
+that I will hold fast to my promise when it is once given."
+
+"I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above all
+things."
+
+"But you would not desire the letter without the spirit?" said she
+eagerly. "I dare not bind myself--I _dare_ not--until I am certain of
+myself."
+
+"But, good Heavens!" said Marston Brent, who, although usually the
+most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly driven to
+vehemence, "when do you mean to be certain of yourself? Surely you
+have had time enough. Can you not love me, Eleanor?" he asked a
+little wistfully. "If that is it--if that is the doubt that holds you
+back--say so, and let me go. Anything is better than suspense like
+this."
+
+But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
+a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
+eyes. "You are right," she said. "This must end. I may be weak and
+foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my weakness and
+my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night whether or not I
+can be your wife. You will give me till then, will you not? It is the
+last delay I shall ask."
+
+"I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything which I
+should not be glad to grant," said he, a little sadly. "For Heaven's
+sake, do not think of me as your persecutor--do not force yourself to
+answer me at any given time. I can wait."
+
+"You _have_ waited," said she gratefully--"waited too long already.
+Do not encourage me in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you
+to-morrow night my final decision."
+
+Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
+Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather unexpectedly,
+and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended her hand.
+
+"Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your friends,
+Major Clare?" she said with a smile which was bright but rather
+tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water. "You have not
+even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an air as if you had
+said good-night to the rest of the company."
+
+"So I have," answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly from the
+pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of her
+glance, "but it is no fault of mine that I have not been able to speak
+to you: I have found no opportunity."
+
+"But I thought you always said that; people made opportunities when
+they desired to do so?"
+
+"Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a general
+rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take advantage of
+them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the present," he
+added smiling.
+
+"But I thought you were going home?"
+
+"I _was_ going home a minute ago, but so long as you will let me talk
+to you I shall stay."
+
+"It is a very small favor to grant," said Eleanor, blushing a little.
+"But why were you leaving so early?"
+
+"Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I am not
+a 'young duke' to pencil a line to my steward and know that a princely
+collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a hundred, or even
+for a dozen or two people."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, for though she caught the allusion to
+Disraeli's rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her.
+
+"I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan," he answered, and at once
+proceeded to detail it.
+
+She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
+gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.
+
+"I shall be glad to see your home," she said quietly. "I have heard so
+much of its beauty and its antiquity."
+
+"It is pretty, and it is old," said he, "but it will not be mine much
+longer. I am negotiating its sale now."
+
+She started: "What! you were in earnest, then? You are really going to
+Egypt?"
+
+"Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer
+me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action."
+
+She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and
+startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and
+gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good
+thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do
+what you please and go where you please--to seek action and to find
+it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did
+not make you a woman!"
+
+"I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But
+you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected
+to hear such rebellious sentiments."
+
+"I am not rebellious," said Eleanor more quietly. "What is the good of
+it? All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have
+no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But nobody was ever more weary of
+conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action
+than I do."
+
+It was on the end of Victor's tongue to say, "Then come with me to
+Egypt," but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to imagine that "the
+beautiful Miss Milbourne"--a woman at whose feet the most desirable
+matches of "society" had been laid--would end her brilliant career
+by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her
+country and her kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor
+did not quite understand, as he said: "Where is your lotos? It ought
+to make you more content with the things that be."
+
+"I have it," Eleanor said with child-like simplicity. "Mr. Brent
+remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten my promise to
+share it with you."
+
+"Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then," said he quickly. "Let
+us eat it together there. I should like to link _you_ even with my
+farewell to the past."
+
+And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
+understanding.
+
+The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont--a
+stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of
+conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain
+significant signs of decay--when his guests arrived in formidable
+procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of
+welcoming them--a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of
+them as at once very perfect and very charming.
+
+"The man suits the house, does he not?" said Mrs. Brantley to Mrs.
+Lancaster. "It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle.
+We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass
+decanter."
+
+"I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners," said Mrs.
+Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more. She
+felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and
+prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its
+owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly
+in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent
+upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt.
+The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the
+quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had
+been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how different things
+might be! She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its
+formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of
+cedar. "He will change his mind before the month is out," she thought.
+"A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home
+of his fathers without a struggle."
+
+This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when,
+a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking
+earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and
+were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that distance
+there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was
+there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a
+riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. "If she is engaged to
+Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation
+as this," Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth. "If he were not blind
+or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she
+would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so."
+
+An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that
+it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster
+had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and
+had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have
+received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism. They had
+paused in a square near the heart of the garden--a green, shaded
+spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed
+fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken the stillness
+for many a long day. Round the margin of this still ran a seat on
+which Eleanor sat down. Victor remained standing before her. A lime
+tree near by cast a soft, flickering shadow over them, and the tall
+hedges of evergreen which enclosed the square made a sombre but
+effective background.
+
+"You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you here,"
+Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his voice. "But if
+you had courage enough to end the life which you despise, to cut loose
+from all the ties which bind you in America, and go with me to Egypt,
+_there_ I might have a future and a career for you to share--_there_
+at least, you would find freedom and action and life."
+
+A flush came to Eleanor's cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly in her
+eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it fascination;
+but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly. "You are of my world,"
+she said: "you ought to know better than that. I am not so brave as
+you think. I must do what is expected of me, and I am expected to
+marry Marston Brent."
+
+"Forget the world and come with me."
+
+"That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I would; but
+there are others of whom I must think." She was silent for a moment,
+then looked up at him piteously. "They have sacrificed so much for me
+at home," she said, "and they are so proud of me. They hope, desire,
+count on this marriage: I cannot disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself
+has been most kind and patient, and he does not expect very much. I am
+a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?"
+
+Again he said, "You can come with me."
+
+Again she answered, "It is impossible. Do you not see that it is
+impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for you
+to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to marry a
+poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For Heaven's
+sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can do is to
+forget that we have ever talked of it at all."
+
+"Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth could be
+harder for me."
+
+"No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my strength to do
+it. God only knows," putting her hand suddenly to her face, "how I
+shall live if I am _not_ able to do it." Then passionately, "Why did
+you speak? Why did you make the misery greater by dragging it to the
+light, so that we could face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did
+you do it?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff than
+other women," said he almost sternly. "In my maddest hours I never
+dreamed of speaking, until--what you said last night. Thinking of that
+after I came home, I resolved to give you one opportunity to break
+through the artificial trammels of your life, and find the freedom you
+professed to desire. It was better to do this, I thought, than to be
+tormented all my life by a regret, a doubt, lest I had lost happiness
+where one bold stroke might have gained it."
+
+"And now that you have found that I am _not_ brave, that I am like all
+the other conventional women of my class, are you not sorry that you
+have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?"
+
+"Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of you I
+cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it is
+something to have faced it together--it is everything to know that you
+love me, though you refuse to share my life."
+
+"You must not say that," said she, starting and shrinking as if from
+a blow. "How can I venture to acknowledge that I love you when I am
+going to marry Marston Brent?"
+
+"_Are_ you going to marry him?"
+
+"Have I not told you so?"
+
+He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the square.
+Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and indignant,
+without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable the laws
+of society are with regard to women than to men. _He_ could put
+Mrs. Lancaster's fortune aside and go his way--to Egypt or to the
+dogs--without anybody crying out against his criminal folly, his
+criminal disregard of the duties and traditions of his class. But
+if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent's princely fortune aside and
+disappointed all her friends, what remained to her but the bitter
+condemnation of those friends in particular and of society in general?
+
+When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
+remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
+by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
+intense azure of the summer sky above.
+
+"Let us go," she said. "By prolonging this we only give ourselves
+useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing remains now but to
+forget; and that can best be done in silence. Victor, let us go."
+
+There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
+herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
+her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
+the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
+Marston Brent's figure appeared at the end of the vista, advancing
+toward them, and it was this apparition which first made Clare speak:
+"If you will not think me fanciful--I am sure you will not think me
+presumptuous--promise me that before you give that man his answer
+you will share the lotos with me of which you have spoken. I may be
+superstitious, but I feel as if we shall gain new strength with which
+to face the future after we have together renounced the past."
+
+She shook her head. "I am not superstitious enough to think that it
+will enable us to forget one pang," she said. "But if you desire it, I
+promise."
+
+When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The Willows
+set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a little before
+sunset, making the ascent in time to see the day-god's last radiance
+streaming over the fair, broad expanse of country beneath them. There
+was a small cabin on the summit which was to be devoted to the
+ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon sparkling brightly the
+gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the blankets with which they
+were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile, the party, dividing into
+groups and pairs, were soon scattered here and there, perched on the
+highest points of rock, enjoying the cool, fresh air which came as a
+message of love from the glowing west, and chattering like a chorus of
+magpies.
+
+When the evening collation was over--a gypsy-like repast for which
+every one seemed to have an excellent appetite--Mr. Brent asked
+Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of the
+mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain what to
+say, Clare's voice spoke quietly at her side. "Miss Milbourne has an
+engagement with _me_," he said. "I fear you must defer the pleasure of
+admiring the moon in her society for a little while, Mr. Brent." Then
+to Eleanor, "Shall we go now?"
+
+She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
+naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some slight
+irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.
+
+"It strikes me that Major Clare's manners decidedly lack polish," he
+said with an air of grave reprehension. "Is it true, as I am told,
+that he is going to sell that fine old place where we spent the day,
+and emigrate to Egypt?"
+
+"He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum," said Mrs. Lancaster, who
+was standing near. "But, whatever his folly may be, I certainly do
+not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that his manners need any
+improvement."
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, "You should not have spoken so curtly
+to Mr. Brent."
+
+"If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again," Clare answered.
+"Don't let us talk of him. I did not bring you away to discuss anybody
+we have left behind, or anything of which we have talked before. We
+are to be like immortals--to forget the past and live only in the
+present."
+
+"Where are we going?" she asked.
+
+"Round to a point from whence we can overlook Claremont."
+
+She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
+mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent, they
+sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From this
+point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded before.
+The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like
+a panorama at their feet--shadowy woods melting into blue distance,
+streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with
+cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread.
+To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing
+landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless
+sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked
+at his companion. "How beautiful you are!" he said abruptly. "I wish
+I had a picture of you as you sit there now. It would be worth
+everything else in the world to me. But perhaps, after all, the best
+pictures are those which are taken on the heart."
+
+"You have forgotten," said Eleanor, trying to smile, "that we are
+going to eat the lotos in order to efface all pictures."
+
+"Nay," said he. "I thought it was to enable us to forget everything
+but the present, and this _is_ the present."
+
+"But it will be the past in a little while," said she, "and we must
+forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we _must_ forget! They say that
+all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do that."
+
+For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with something
+like a groan, "Would to God I could die here and now, or else that
+there _was_ some spell by which one could make memory a blank!"
+
+"Let us try the lotos," said Eleanor. "See, I brought it as you told
+me."
+
+From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
+contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
+Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
+reverence. "It came from Egypt," she said: then she added, "where you
+are going."
+
+"We will see if there is any magic in it," said Clare.
+
+So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them, smiling
+a little sadly at each other as they did so.
+
+"Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, 'and all the grounds round
+it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of lilies which the
+Egyptians call lotos, in the water,'" said Clare. "He adds that this
+flower, especially the root of it, is very sweet. If this is the same,
+it has certainly changed its flavor since that time."
+
+"It is not disagreeable," said Eleanor. "But I fear we shall not find
+the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the lotos fruit that
+Homer and Tennyson have written."
+
+"And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an Egyptian,
+aquatic; but since we desire to link _our_ fancy with the flower of
+the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins. After all, we
+only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the past on which
+we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed resolve to leave the
+past behind us from this hour, and face our future together?"
+
+He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of replying
+she put her hand to her head. "How strangely dizzy I am!" she said.
+"Can it--do you think it can be the lotos?"
+
+"Dizzy!" he repeated. "Then I must take you from the edge of this
+precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It could not have
+been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me lead you round
+the rock."
+
+But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
+strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
+heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
+he sank back against the rock.
+
+"Do you feel it too?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, putting his hand also to his head. "What can
+it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in that plant? The lotos
+itself is harmless, either flower or fruit. Eleanor, my darling!" he
+cried with sudden alarm. "Good Heavens! what is the matter? How pale
+you look!"
+
+"I--I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must have been
+some poisonous plant," said she faintly. "This giddiness and numbness
+increase." Then she held out her hands tremulously. "Hold me," she
+said. "The earth seems slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it
+should be fatal?"
+
+"Do not imagine such a thing," he said. "It is impossible! The plant
+has probably some narcotic property which affects you temporarily.
+Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad I was to have suffered
+you to eat it!"
+
+"Do not blame yourself," she said, clinging to him, her fair head
+drooping heavily on his breast. "It was I who spoke of it--who sent
+for it--"
+
+She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
+where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at her
+face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before. Partly
+this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of the plant
+which they had shared between them _was_ fatal--one of the swift and
+terrible agents of death which abound in the East--and a sense too
+horrible to be dwelt upon came to him, warning him that aid, to avail
+at all, must be summoned quickly.
+
+But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the party
+were far from them. He had purposely led his companion to this remote
+spot, where, even if he had been able to raise his voice, there was
+none to hear. As for leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk
+ten steps. He felt sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he
+should reel and fall like a drunken man.
+
+Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
+lessened the hope of its success--with every pulse-beat he felt the
+awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
+his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
+losing hers.
+
+"My darling," he said, striving vainly to unclasp the arms that clung
+to him, "I must go--I must call assistance: this may be more serious
+than I thought. Try to rouse yourself, Eleanor: I must go!"
+
+Alas! it was easy to say--it was awfully impossible to do. Even when
+Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and he strove
+to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the requisite
+power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort failed: he
+sank back hopelessly.
+
+Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
+to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
+Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
+girl beside him--the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to his
+breast.
+
+"Eleanor," he said, "it is hopeless. If this _is_ poison we must die!
+Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O my God, send us help! Eleanor,
+can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not speak to me?"
+
+For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself, and
+the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like eyes.
+The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July heaven, shone
+full on her face as she said, "Kiss me."
+
+For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were cold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a fragment
+of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston Brent had
+ignorantly plucked for a lotos.
+
+
+CHRISTIAN REID.
+
+
+
+
+ECHO.
+
+FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.
+
+
+  Roars there ever a beast in his forest den,
+    Hear we thunder in heaven, a horn among men,
+  On the hill sings a maiden now and then,--
+          Sound what may,
+  Answer through space thou mak'st again
+          With small delay.
+  Aware of the thunder's rattling roll,
+  Of the winds and the waves when without control,
+  Of the cries where the village shepherds stroll,
+          Reply thou giv'st;
+  Yet thou thyself, without one answering soul,
+          A poet liv'st.
+
+A.J.
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
+then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
+or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
+legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
+interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
+belief of the Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.]
+
+Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday and
+Thursday were witches' days, and Wednesday was also evil, seeing Judas
+hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive cattle to the
+Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two persons sneezed
+together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for witches and ghosts,
+he knew enough about them too. Did not the witches still dance every
+night at eight o'clock on their meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His
+brother Jörgel could have told us about that if he would. The pächter
+Josef had likewise experiences which he might relate were he not so
+shy. "Josef was returning through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and
+had just crossed over the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom
+he greeted in God's name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as
+a Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
+when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
+boldly a 'God greet you!' but again silence. The figure had vanished.
+Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a third, and,
+waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round looked fixedly
+at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer, gypsy, ghost or
+witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as a tree, grinning
+at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next day the black cow
+went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef's hobgoblins were fir
+trees."
+
+Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef's phantoms, he could not help telling
+us in his turn a tale which he considered much more noteworthy: "There
+was no denying that one winter's night a huntsman, losing himself in
+the deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
+hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
+by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the
+hut, but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
+accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
+a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
+strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
+was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
+and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
+to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
+before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
+comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
+for his kind hospitality, adding, 'May God reward you!' 'Oh,' replied
+the other, uttering a great sigh of relief, 'may God in His mercy
+equally reward you for those words! When I walked on the earth I
+laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back in the spirit to toil
+until some mortal should thank me in God's name for what I had done
+for him. This you have done, and now I am free;' and so saying he
+vanished."
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "these tales are as true as the gospel. You know
+Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father some years since went
+on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to Maria Zell. Arriving
+late one night at a solitary farm-house, they rapped at the door,
+requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused himself: it was from
+no evil intention, he said, but he could not take strangers in. The
+three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their condition if left in
+the fields all night. Still the bauer made no other reply, until, on
+their pressing him, he finally declared, half in anger, that they must
+themselves be responsible for their night's rest. He wished to treat
+them well, but could offer them no better bed than the top of the oven
+in the stube. This offer they willingly accepted, but hardly had
+they lain down when a peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and
+brushes. In spite of their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away
+all night, and hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing
+her, she began scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the
+cleaning lasted the livelong night, until in the early morning the
+maid-servant entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls
+being, to their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before.
+Whereupon they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor.
+'Do not accuse me,' he replied 'of inhospitality: this is a strange
+matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
+been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who thus
+scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain, when
+she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not even go
+to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home and clean.
+So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white, she seems
+unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to continue her
+work. Even masses don't seem to help her.'"
+
+Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or in
+the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn at
+night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her too
+horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any moment
+drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over her own
+tale.
+
+One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we determined
+to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of fir wood
+rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see what lay on
+the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating climb we learned
+that the mountain was but a huge overhanging shoulder, the rocky head
+of the giant rising up in the midst of wide sweeping moors some six
+miles distant. We changed, therefore, the object of our excursion,
+determining to visit the highest Olm of the district, Ober Kofel.
+Turning to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half
+an hour we had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly
+closed, but a pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently
+down, were sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could
+not well be conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles
+growing by the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone
+rushing on until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin.
+Tawny, dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the
+_trät_ or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to
+a platform of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain
+rhododendron grew, presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view
+outward embraced the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far
+beyond the black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across
+the evening horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high,
+peaked with snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was
+to the left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
+Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
+peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
+forth from this desert of snow.
+
+We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the wind
+playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just been
+promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man flitted
+in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved to be the
+solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the domain, and
+moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes ere he sat
+on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he began talking
+to Moidel about the military exercises which were to begin again this
+week.
+
+"The Ausserkofers," he said, "went down for the drilling immediately
+after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I was not drawn."
+
+Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the morrow
+for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel's son, would
+arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.
+
+The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
+lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
+keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
+several faces.
+
+Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
+of the group began: "Of course you have heard of the clever Tyrolese
+peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?"
+
+Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both pricked
+up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a little
+farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of lying
+on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river given to
+inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge in his
+neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door, and
+almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he must
+make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss of
+time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
+sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
+evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind.
+He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be
+carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aërial car? He
+bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two
+parallel lines across the river, fastening the four ends very firmly;
+constructed a bench on iron rollers, which, sustained by the wire, ran
+across the river in a trice, and his aërial car was a reality. Here,
+indeed, was a triumph. It worked admirably, and the whole neighborhood
+became excited and astonished about the air-railway, as they called
+it. The news spreading, it brought finally some gentlemen from the
+town of Dornbirn, who were wild to have a ride across the river. Hans
+Jakob refused it: he doubted the strength being sufficient for more
+than one passenger; but they persisting in their urgent demand, he at
+last reluctantly consented. They would not, or else they could not,
+go without him. So, the party being seated on the bench, he unfastened
+the hook, when they should have been instantly whirled across. But,
+alas! his fears proved true: the wire gave way, and down they
+all went, plump into the wild rushing river. A great fright and
+wetting--that was all, for the time being, until the gentlemen,
+although they had promised not to say a word on the subject, having
+whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no part uncolored, the
+town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad peasant's audacity. The
+authorities took it in hand, and a solemn gendarme visited Hans Jakob
+with strict orders from government to desist from such perilous,
+hairbreadth inventions for the future. Poor Hans! he now regarded
+himself not only as the laughing-stock of the whole country, but as
+a ruined man. He had spent all his savings on his first venture; but
+neither official reprimand nor loss of his money could keep his
+busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved plan, which, having
+perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out. Instead of two simple
+iron wires, he employed two double coils, with a single wire in the
+centre and six feet higher. He stretched across two other strong
+parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with two seats and a
+cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the awning he fastened
+rollers, so that the car was propelled across both above and below.
+The weight which it would bear he proved to be fifteen hundredweight,
+and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept it to the bank, the car
+ran across in a few seconds with an easy, agreeable motion. Practice
+and a close investigation proved it now a perfect success. All the
+censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it proves at the present
+time both convenient and amusing to the gentlemen, ladies and children
+of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob willingly conveys them across the
+river in his flying car. He will, however, receive no fixed payment.
+He constructed it simply for his own use: were he to make a trade of
+it, he must either take out a patent, or else make some concessions to
+government, neither of which he has any inclination to do.
+
+The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had understood
+every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob before, there
+was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an almanac which the
+senner owned to having had by him for the last eight months--another
+noticeable instance how tales and good advice in print are lost upon
+a people who, hitherto quietly slumbering, find for their hearts and
+minds enough to do in carrying on their slow agriculture and pattering
+their prayers. I believe that popular lecturers conversant with the
+dialect would be of infinite service in the rural districts of the
+Tyrol.
+
+The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality of
+his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before us
+in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men of
+Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to carry
+a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug been
+fortunately remembered.
+
+The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle, arrived
+at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning, making
+the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop. Franz
+therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour earlier
+than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to initiate his
+successor into the various advantages of the several Alpine pastures,
+to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to introduce Martin to
+Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the other cows, as well
+as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We set out to accompany
+them, but the cattle were too far away on distant heights for us to
+continue long in the scramble. We therefore sat on a breezy mountain
+platform watching the athletic young men grow ever smaller, more
+indistinct, whilst Jakob's voice was borne to us on the rarefied air
+as he called lovingly, "Krudeli, Krudeli" to the calves, and "Köss,
+Köss" to the cows.
+
+"It is a miracle," said Moidel, "how Martin, who was so weak and
+consumed away by his accident, should thus have recovered."
+
+"What accident?" asked we.
+
+"Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his very
+name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg--he who wears
+the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being cold weather,
+wore three cock's feathers gained in wrestling-matches--strutted
+down the Edelsheim street, arm in arm with his great friend, the
+fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a rude young churl, praising each
+other for their strength of limb and good looks. Martin at the time
+was leaning against his father's door. 'The devil!' said Niederberg:
+'why do you stay at your father's, when there is better wine and
+company at the Blauen Bock?' Martin, however, replied that he was a
+hard-working man, who could only spare time to see his old father and
+sick sister on a festival. 'No,' said Heinwiese in anger, 'thou art
+nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
+at a dance.' 'But,' put in Niederberg, 'we'll teach thee to dance
+and sing;' and so saying, he suddenly plunged the blade of his big
+pocket-knife below Martin's ribs.
+
+"Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they were lost
+in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet village. A doctor
+was sent for, who at first declared Martin's wound to be mortal. Then
+his young wife and little children were fetched with many tears from
+the tileyard, and the priest came with the Holy Death Sacrament. But
+the prayers and viaticum saved Martin. Still, for many months he had
+a frightful illness, and even in March he was so weak you could have
+knocked him down with a feather. Niederberg was immediately taken into
+custody, and was sentenced to sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the
+Baptist's Day, fully six months, to pay the doctor's bill, and two
+hundred gulden to Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded
+youth, though rich, he has never paid. He will leave that to
+Heinwiese, he says, who put him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man
+who had recovered? He would have stood the funeral and settled with
+the widow. However, father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he
+must not thus despoil patient Martin."
+
+Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than cooler,
+quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam still
+moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.
+
+Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
+bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn's moss, and
+showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which they
+had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little insignificant
+plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and prized by them
+far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being that when dried
+it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which reason the housewives
+place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a mountain dryad, his
+broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered with purple Michaelmas
+daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery edelweiss, falling round
+in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob and Martin, we had the
+gratification of gathering edelweiss ourselves, always a notable feat.
+Martin really had most miraculously recovered. After those twenty-four
+miles of hard walking, followed by a climb of several thousand feet,
+we left him felling a pine tree as we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to
+leave very early in the morning.
+
+A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
+course we had none: Martin's arrival had been an immense event. Thus,
+as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great masses
+of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the lantern,
+forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a cheerful
+voice wishing us "Good-night and sweet repose" through the door.
+Immediately, believing it to be the pächter's moidel, a young lady
+usually engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the
+voice to enter--an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect
+good faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw
+hat, who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding
+perhaps to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but
+certainly not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she
+attacked us with a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel,
+however, was up to the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed
+to get the unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her
+to bolt and bar it well, for after this call we were afraid of more
+lurking intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The
+woman was neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
+_Bachernthalerin_, whose hut was generally under water. It was
+accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging milk
+at the senner-huts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
+might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
+expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
+to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with the
+pächter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing Ignaz.
+It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at an Olm?
+
+Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but pleasant
+descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first halting-place. It
+was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the mountains rising in all
+their impressive majesty, but for a time all our powers of admiration
+and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the sight of meek sheep led to
+the shambles at the very window.
+
+We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we had
+rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors' book,
+besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at all
+perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
+preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
+his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
+door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
+that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
+actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
+at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in red-handed,
+and proved a botanist. It was a _Woodsia hyperborea_--that was the
+Latin name--and was rare in those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft
+should come earlier for flowers. July was the month. Then there was
+geum, and pale blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow
+violets, the white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both
+excellent medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and
+grass of Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes.
+There were four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas!
+like the gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.
+
+His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
+Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful gentians,
+common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.
+
+"Ladies," replied the botanist with emphasis, "you know not the
+reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which is not torn
+up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is good when
+rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better lotion; and
+a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another of sleep at
+night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every peasant daily;
+but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were bits of heaven
+scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their roots are better
+for schnapps distilling than those of other plants, or even than
+bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little moderation, cutting the
+roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the ground the plant springs
+up again. 'Poor as a root-grubber' is the proverb. I'm glad it is.
+For if they were not so wanton, they would not be so poor. They mostly
+come from the Zillerthal. It's a special trade. The men climb the
+mountains as soon as the snow melts. They build themselves rude huts,
+and spend the summer searching for and digging up roots. Now, however,
+as they have cut their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often
+to high mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather
+fine roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my
+wrist. In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian
+roots, which they carry to the distilling vats, where the _Enzian_, so
+dear to the Tyroler, is made."
+
+[Illustration: COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.]
+
+And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the gentians, rose
+to return to his occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable
+position which he held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a
+surgeon or soldier would be in a higher class, that the butcher was
+to them. In this case, too, we joined in respect--a feeling we might
+entertain for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity
+of judging. But we must onward.
+
+Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat, ornamented
+with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company with Moidel,
+giving us, however, equally the benefit of her conversation, whilst
+she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in Rein, she told us, and
+had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a second time about perpetual
+stitching pains in her throat. The doctor said it was quinsy, and
+arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she could bring herself to
+smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein, she might keep the
+mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a female, and it made
+a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born in such a village
+as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were badly built, the
+kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly cold in winter,
+though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze in them. In
+fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then all the family
+must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there. When Nanni
+Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and grandchildren must
+lie down together; and then all the neighbors had to visit her, unless
+they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was how the typhus spread.
+Fortunately, her husband and she were alone: they had no burdens.
+Still, life was hard--a vale of tears or a vale of snow. If the gentry
+could see the Reinthal in the winter, choked up with avalanches, they
+would say so. Her man had, however, enough to keep them. He had a
+license for the shooting of gemsen and other game, which he might use
+from holy Jakobi's Day to Candlemas. He had this year killed only
+five gemsen so far. The Post at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now,
+and bought up every ounce of the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the
+pound--bought snow-hens, too, at forty kreuzers each, and would never
+let her husband's gun be idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no
+longer shoot, then he worked in their fields; for we might not think
+it, but he, being a thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought
+some land. But oh the labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was
+subjected! If his land lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must
+slave and toil like beasts of burden, for what would be the help of
+horse or cow for riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright
+land? "The holy watch-angels help us!" she said. "Look up there and
+you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you."
+
+Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small figure
+of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet above
+us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a triangle
+of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out the
+figures of two women helping him.
+
+"That's Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down their green
+oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the eldest girl,
+working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far over the
+precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better fortune, I pray
+God, awaited her than the cruel trials of Reinthal."
+
+Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
+gloomy a view, probably occasioned by "her stitching pains." Still,
+she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life in every season of
+the year save summer.
+
+In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within sound
+of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest of our
+party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us. At a
+quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery possessing
+a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer meadows beyond,
+kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for nine. All were
+unanimous, however, that the ample supply was sufficient for ten,
+and the good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
+gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
+helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
+morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
+least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
+as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady's handbag.
+Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
+mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.
+
+For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
+clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a burnished
+gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep shadows of
+the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive sheds, and
+a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the artists, who
+busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the great crimson
+bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the rippling sound of a
+mad, merry little mill-brook.
+
+How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and climes
+to those serviceable creatures, bees!
+
+  The little citizens create,
+  And waxen cities build.
+
+Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
+and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than "citizens." Formerly they
+delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings which they could
+devise for them, helping them in their constant toil by planting balmy
+thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around the hives. These
+were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy monograms and
+devices to add a blessing and security to the provident labors of the
+little inmates. They were, in fact, _beatified bees_, who had to be
+solemnly invited to attend the death mass when the owner died, else
+they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a swarm of bees hung to a
+house, it was simply as a warning that fire would break out there.
+
+The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
+flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
+pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
+beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
+falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
+peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
+lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees--a fact
+difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous veneration
+and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the freshness and
+simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the discarding of
+their picturesque costumes.
+
+As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the walls
+of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain still
+several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather to
+explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of Taufers.
+
+But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
+deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the
+view, finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
+prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the rain
+steadily pattering against the casements.
+
+Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
+wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
+band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
+been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
+clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
+bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
+however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
+tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
+their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
+their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
+there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
+these were only a few amongst the endless figures of the tragic band,
+on a long, unceasing march.
+
+Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in Alpine
+meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may be seen.
+Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient Italians fleeing
+from a buried city, wandering Israelites,--such and many others are
+the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn, hay or clover assume,
+all combining to act as one vast funeral procession of the summer that
+is no more.
+
+[Illustration: A PROCESSION.]
+
+In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in the
+distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually the up
+stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined reserved
+for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long coats down
+to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers from the
+mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence, and really
+the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the landlord and
+landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as ever. We were
+soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out not only by
+the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare which
+was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
+incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
+flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
+mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These
+were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom
+it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid
+wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not have
+been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an apparent
+falling away from the singularly bright example which a good man, born
+only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of Mühlen, had once
+set them.
+
+The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
+clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
+goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the Tyrol.
+A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness, he acted
+as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire Bible, which he
+had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally by heart. Birds,
+flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring sermons, and his
+evening conversations with his pupils were fraught with the most
+beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy and the power he
+unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the conscience. Sorrows were
+met invariably by him with a cheerful "Dominus providebit" or "parcat
+Deus." Cheating and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore
+rejoiced to become acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious
+officials and religious soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never
+troubled him. He walked like a child through the world. When unable to
+wear his scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with
+cheerful urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat,
+his pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella.
+His old coat of an antique cut still bore on the under side of a flap
+the dyer's mark. His waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted
+wool. On festive occasions, however, he fastened to the back of
+his coat collar a fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was
+something humorous in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it,
+and yet, says one of his pupils, "though we joined in the laugh, his
+whole person and demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not
+of this world."
+
+Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory of
+this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once his
+pupils, in the upper stube?
+
+The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners, Moidel,
+fearing that her important services must be missed at the Hof, bravely
+defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the afternoon,
+utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters to
+Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne through
+mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.
+
+Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming from
+the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann were
+at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure, somehow,
+that we should come.
+
+The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
+absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
+not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
+according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
+dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
+our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E----. We felt that
+we had come home--to our home in the Tyrol.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED]
+
+
+
+
+COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.
+
+
+On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a sister--Sepia, an
+artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who is the narrator--left
+Chicago by the North-western Railroad, bound for Denver in Colorado,
+about eleven hundred miles west. The first day we were climbing the
+gradual ascent from the Lakes to the Mississippi, which we crossed
+at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty years which had elapsed since I
+first traversed this region had changed it from wild, unbroken
+prairie to a well-cultivated country, full of corn-fields, cattle and
+flourishing towns. Then I traveled in a wagon four miles an hour,
+and had to find my own meat in the shape of a deer from the grove, a
+grouse from the prairie or a duck from the river. Now we rushed across
+the State in six hours, stopping fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine
+brick hotel, metropolitan in charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when
+we arrived at the great river, we waited two or three hours for the
+ferry-boat, and finally had to cross in a "dug-out," which seemed but
+a frail vessel to stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the
+Mississippi. Now we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost
+more money than all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the
+first method of traveling was the more interesting.
+
+Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
+prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
+great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness:
+we made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and
+we were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
+panthers screamed around our camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat,
+and our only visitors in two weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who
+disapproved of our intrusion upon their hunting-grounds.
+
+At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
+the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
+Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
+military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now
+it is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
+rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.
+
+Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
+Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its charges.
+On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about four
+cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation Congress
+gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to build the
+road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This may arise
+from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes to all
+Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes, so that,
+half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay double. Not
+only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra baggage. Like
+the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin, this great
+corporation is able to give free passes to a whole legislature or to
+charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of extra baggage.
+
+From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
+States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here
+talk about going to the "States." All the region hereabouts, from the
+middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the French _Les
+Mauvaises Terres_, or "Bad Lands," and was eloquently described by
+Irving in _Astoria_ as the Great American Desert. "This region,"
+he writes, "resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and
+spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy
+wastes, which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient
+floor of the ocean countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat
+against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where
+no man permanently abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is
+no food either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and
+withered, the streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the
+deer have wandered to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast,
+uninhabited solitude."
+
+But this "land where no man permanently abides" is rapidly being
+settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by the simple
+process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring of Eastern
+farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the immigrant, and,
+like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.
+
+On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new town
+of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains fifteen
+hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels, churches,
+schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This aspiring town,
+4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those colony towns
+so successful in the West, and on which we must depend for rebuilding
+society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile farms,
+and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected by
+irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
+Platte--one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty thousand
+acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the town and
+five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated now, in
+midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched herbage, which,
+however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet hay, dried and
+preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and antelope, and now
+cropped by the flocks and herds of the white man.
+
+Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight thousand
+inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which fully
+believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation of
+five thousand feet. It was said of old "that the meek shall inherit
+the earth," but it was not by _that_ quality that the Denverites
+obtained their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and
+a mint: five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of
+freight per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory
+numbers, and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars' worth of
+goods per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858,
+and has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water,
+and almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
+pretty smart specimen of a Western city.
+
+We ride in a 'bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
+fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
+worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
+South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
+wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
+line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
+foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good pair
+of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but owner
+of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the precocity of
+the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and loaded, so
+as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have a tent and
+camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and Scribe, and
+the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.
+
+So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
+Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
+with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus--no verdure
+except along the canals, where several species of _Artemisia_ and a
+prickly poppy with a large white flower grow profusely. We then begin
+to mount the bare foot-hills, among which are curious masses of red
+rock as large as city churches, and washed by the storms of ages into
+various fantastic forms. We then enter a ravine or cañon through which
+flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the Platte.
+
+Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised, and
+butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this region
+makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I never tasted
+poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as sweet and
+fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States. The time
+will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the Atlantic
+cities: at present there is no surplus made.
+
+We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side: it
+was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one carriage,
+with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so that
+we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a wagon.
+Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had to keep
+behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other side to a
+strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the night, having
+come twenty miles from Denver.
+
+_August_ 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn bread
+and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha Ranch;
+then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland's Ranch, five miles, and
+Bailey's, five miles, on the North Fork of the South Fork of the
+Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully clear and
+bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky ravine, down a
+wooded cañon, then through little parks, surrounded by high hills and
+set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with fresh grass and
+abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the mountain-sides the road
+was narrow, but we were lucky and met nothing, although we frequently
+overtook the immense wagons drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, and
+driven by the most ferocious-looking teamsters whom I have ever seen,
+brandishing enormous whips, which crack like rifle-shots in the woods.
+We found, however, that, being civilly entreated, they would always
+turn out of the road to let us pass. We were now at an elevation of
+probably six thousand feet, having been constantly ascending since we
+left Denver; and this evening we rose still higher, having climbed a
+long mountain which overlooked the head-waters of the Platte.
+
+Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us to
+the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper of
+trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
+delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
+morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
+the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
+and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
+ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods and
+followed the example set us by Simon Peter.
+
+The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
+away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
+rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look; so
+we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell walked
+down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as to leave
+a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright and hot,
+and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They were darker
+and less brilliant in color than our _Salmo fontinalis_, and were, I
+think, _Salmo Lewisii_, which inhabits these waters. The valley was
+about half a mile wide, and shut in on each side by mountains of red
+granite, crowned with pines. Bailey's people were making hay in the
+valley, and I sat down on a fragrant haycock to await the return of
+my companion. Presently I observed a horseman coming up the valley:
+he was a hunter, followed by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a
+mountain-sheep, or bighorn (_Ovis montana_), on the saddle in front
+of him. He told me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was
+taking it to Bailey's for sale. It was an animal something in color
+like a deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very
+large curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous
+in these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
+lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work.
+I asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
+themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
+their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
+never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
+it, he replied that he reckoned they _could_, but would be smashed
+if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly bears, he
+replied that there _were_ grizzlies hereabouts, but that he never
+hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.
+
+In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for a
+mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
+Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
+effective water-color sketches of the scenery.
+
+_Aug_. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the Platte
+Valley five miles to Slaight's, through a very picturesque region.
+Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the mail-stage
+coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at a gallop: we
+were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which they did in
+a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the long-bearded,
+red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight's, with two houses and some
+fields of oats. Then eight miles to Heffron's, at the forks of the
+river, where there are a post-office and one house. Two miles beyond
+we stopped to feed our horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest
+of sugar pines. This species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern
+States, with the same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches.
+Many of them had been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner
+bark, which is a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in
+these mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
+birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
+color of _Tetrao cupido_, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the
+bushes at the roadside the mountain-rabbit (_Lepus artemisia_), which
+from its large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron's we
+continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we got
+the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin, some
+hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high mountains.
+
+The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
+again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
+feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be seen
+the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray's Peak, Pike's
+Peak, Mount Lincoln, and
+
+  Other Titans, without muse or name.
+
+The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
+like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
+in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
+game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
+white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
+have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
+pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
+the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the mines
+in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to which a
+stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.
+
+In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
+Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
+continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
+an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long: among
+them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to the
+size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so entirely
+from those usually visited and described by travelers, the Alps, the
+Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can scarcely
+believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten thousand feet
+above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains approach more nearly
+to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from fourteen thousand to
+seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at twelve thousand feet,
+and increases in quantity to the extreme height of the tallest peaks,
+about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty feet, though even these
+are often bare in August. In these parks the cattle live without
+shelter in winter, and the timber is large and plentiful at eleven
+thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting, but instead we have the
+rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains, the pure, dry and balmy
+atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a softness of color which can
+hardly be equaled on earth.
+
+Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the mountain
+which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of the
+sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along the
+level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at sunset
+near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to lie down
+on the floor under shelter.
+
+It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters and
+a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family lived,
+with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made one
+hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents a
+pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the cattle
+for the winter in certain sheltered regions called "the range." They
+were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear to stay here all
+alone for days at a time while their brother was galloping about the
+Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did not keep tavern, but
+were often obliged to take in benighted travelers like ourselves, to
+whom they gave the shelter of their roof and the privilege of cooking
+at their stove. The house was about forty by twenty feet, all in one
+room, though one end was parted off by blankets, behind which they
+admitted the lady of our party. Sometimes they were visited by Utes,
+who are not unfriendly, though, like most Indians, they are audacious
+beggars. "They try to scare us sometimes," said Jane: "they tell us,
+'Bimeby Utes get all this country--then you my squaw,' but we don't
+scare worth a cent." Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles
+away, who is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
+peace.
+
+_Aug_. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner's. Passed some
+deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed and scarred
+by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks and a
+red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the brow of
+a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on the hill
+to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a trout-brook of which
+we heard flattering accounts. It was a very pretty stream, winding
+through the prairie with the gentle murmur so loved by the angler and
+poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it perfect. It was rendered
+somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that if the trout were there
+they could not see our flies. We are told that trout are plenty on the
+other side of the mountains. "Go to the Arkansas," they say, "and you
+will find big ones."
+
+  Man never is, but always to be, blest.
+
+We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She told us
+that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In 1864, most of
+the men being away in the Union army, they found the house one morning
+surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had come up from
+Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines. They were a
+savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led by a man who
+had formerly worked for her father, and whom she recognized. They took
+what money and gold-dust was in the house, and seized all the
+best horses about the place; but when she saw them taking away her
+saddle-pony, she cried out, "Oh, Tom Smith! I didn't think you was
+that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn't you always well treated here?"
+He seemed to relent at this appeal, and not only restored her horse,
+but two of her father's also. The people collected and pursued the
+robbers, most of whom were captured or killed, but the leader escaped.
+Mrs. Lechner said she was glad he got away. "Tom must have had some
+good in him or he wouldn't have given me back my pony."
+
+_Aug_. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the sight of
+a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the delicate
+tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which suffuse these
+summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch them, but what
+human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at seven, and drove
+to Bailey's, thirty-five miles, before sunset, stopping an hour at
+noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we were caught in a
+furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail, with terrific
+thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by. And here I must
+pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our horses--steady,
+prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for them to climb, no
+precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the pelting of that
+pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We found Bailey's house
+apparently full, but they made room for us. A handsome buggy and pair
+arrived soon after, from which descended a well-dressed gentleman
+and lady, whom we found to be the superintendent of a silver-mine
+at Hamilton and his wife. They told us that there was a very good
+boarding-house at that place, with fine scenery all around, which we
+ought to have seen. But in truth we had as much fine scenery as we
+could contain: we were saturated with it, and a few mountains more
+would have been wasted.
+
+_Aug_. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping to drive
+through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen miles one of
+the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary to replace,
+the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction, where was
+a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper, farmer and
+blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a man of such
+various talents. Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he
+looked for the hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that
+little Johnny had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and
+finally brought, but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so
+essential to our progress. "Look for it, Johnny," said the blacksmith;
+and he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
+dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe with
+the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had been
+lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
+taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
+three miles down Bear's Creek Cañon to the house of Strauss. The
+good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper
+of venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
+where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife milks
+thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a churning.
+Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many varieties of
+bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.
+
+Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at 90°,
+and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for Chicago.
+
+I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small part
+of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble travelers,
+unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad potentates: we
+were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted up Gray's Park,
+or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw enough of the new
+and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of Colorado and the
+South Park.
+
+S.C. CLARKE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.
+
+
+"Do you know anything about this 'grange' business?" asked a lady
+from the city the other day; and she added, "I can hardly take up a
+magazine or newspaper without falling on the words 'grange,' 'Patrons
+of Husbandry,' 'farmers' movement,' and all that."
+
+"Why, I am a Patron myself," I replied.
+
+"What! you have a _grange_ here in this little New Jersey sandbank?"
+she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with a storm of questions.
+
+It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
+answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters,
+and quoting Mr. Adams's treatise on the _Railroad Systems_ and other
+authorities to explain the present war between producers and carriers;
+and, believing that there are many others who, like my friend, are
+disposed to look into this "grange business," I will give them the
+substance of our conversation. A great deal of that which has found
+its way into the press touching our order is more characterized by
+confidence than correctness of statement. In a late magazine article
+it is stated that the organization known as the _Patrons of Husbandry_
+"was originally borrowed from an association which for many years
+had maintained a feeble existence in a community of Scotch farmers in
+North Carolina." This statement has no foundation in fact. The
+order is not the out-growth directly, or even indirectly, of any
+pre-existing organization. It is the result, so far as it is possible
+to trace impulses to their source, of the suggestion of a lady,
+communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H. Kelley, the present secretary
+of the National Grange, and the person who has done more than any
+other to establish the order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was
+in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a
+national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley
+seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret
+society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the
+farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant
+disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to
+abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed,
+as it did all his time and energy. But he persevered against every
+discouragement, and to-day he may well be proud of the results of his
+devotion.
+
+The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called the
+"North Star Grange," and it is one of the most efficient subordinate
+granges in the country to this day. Another was organized in
+Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio, another in
+Illinois, and a few others during the same year in different places.
+This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time they have been
+constantly increasing--at first slowly, then with a rapidity unheard
+of in the history of secret or any other organizations in this country
+or the world. We can hardly count three years since the order fairly
+began to grow, and now the granges are numbered by the thousand. Ten
+States on the twenty-fifth of June last had over a hundred granges,
+and seven of these between two and five hundred. Iowa to-day has
+seventeen hundred and ten, and others in process of organization.
+Thirty-one of the States and Territories had subordinate or both
+subordinate and State granges, according to the June returns. There
+were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three in Vermont, five in
+New York State, three in New Jersey, two in Pennsylvania, and one in
+Massachusetts. Up to this time there has been little effort made to
+extend the organization into the Eastern and Middle States, but at
+present deputies from the National Grange are being sent to these
+"benighted regions," and the leaven is working finely. To show how
+rapidly the order is extending it will be only necessary to add that
+seven hundred and one charters for new granges were issued during the
+single month of May.
+
+The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by common
+consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much this
+one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of different
+sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that on one
+or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have been
+wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together with
+great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more than the
+surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and women
+are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the seven
+degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and the
+higher in the State granges or in the National Grange--the seventh
+in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court of
+impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the order.
+All officers are chosen by ballot--those of the National Grange
+for three years, of State granges for two years, and of subordinate
+granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees are
+respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
+Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
+initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
+really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
+which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
+societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
+conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
+only by the most strenuous efforts.
+
+Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
+machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
+sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
+and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
+simple feasts. Two fundamental objects of the organization are social
+and intellectual culture. The widespread realization of the importance
+of these among the people is the first great step toward securing
+them, and the first unmistakable sign that such step has already been
+taken is the rebelling against pure drudgery. Said the Master of the
+National Grange, Mr. Dudley W. Adams, in a late address: "It will
+doubtless be a matter of surprise to them" (editors, lawyers,
+politicians, etc.) "to learn that farmers may possibly entertain
+some wish to enjoy life, and have some other object in living besides
+everlasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining
+them from their own life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of
+weary children and worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a
+new Declaration of Independence. We must do something to dispel old
+prejudices and beat down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal
+to labor from morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but
+abominable heresy."... "We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
+the 'hardened hand of honest toil,' the supreme glory of 'the sweating
+brow,' and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which covers
+a form bent with overwork."... "I tell you, my brother-workers of the
+soil, there is something worth living for besides hard work. We have
+heard enough of this professional blarney. Toil in itself is not
+necessarily glorious. To toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate
+broad acres, pile up treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at
+the same time bow and starve the god-like form, harden the hands,
+dwarf the immortal mind and alienate the children from the homestead,
+is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a
+brute."
+
+Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
+drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
+while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
+less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
+have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
+to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
+by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
+in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable,
+be just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful
+in bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
+portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
+beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
+and you will find that the farmer's sons who are regularly engaged in
+one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing, are
+great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are, in
+comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their address;
+and simply because, though their labor has been as unremitting, it has
+been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they go from one thing to
+another, and through a great variety of muscular exercises from hour
+to hour.
+
+It is no wonder, then, that the farmers' sons, to get rid of the
+terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
+tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
+third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
+youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
+virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
+opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of
+as possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
+attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
+reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of grange
+halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of degrees,
+the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep young men on
+the farm unless something is done to render the labor less monotonous
+and disagreeable.
+
+One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
+predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
+better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that within
+a few years we shall see magnificent social palaces, something like
+the famous one at Guise, in many places in this country; and he went
+on to show how social and industrial life might be organized so as
+to secure the most complete liberty of the individual or family,
+magnificent educational advantanges, remunerative occupation and
+varied amusements for all, with perfect insurance against want for
+orphans, for the sick and the aged. Each palace was to be the centre
+of a great agricultural district exploited in the most scientific
+manner, and through the varied economies resulting from combination
+all the luxuries of industry and all the conditions for high culture
+were to be secured to all who were willing to labor even one-half
+the hours that the farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and
+certainly very entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one
+of the company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.
+
+But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of the
+Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and that
+they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through agents
+appointed from among their members, now purchase their machinery and
+farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by wholesale.
+That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way, and Missouri,
+through the executive committee of her State grange, has just
+completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All members
+of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at greatly
+reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty granges,
+with a larger membership than in many other States, this is a very
+important item.
+
+Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally supposed
+the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly, to the
+outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West seem
+to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of three
+bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and the whole
+world knows that they have been burning their three-year old crops as
+fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it seems clear that
+there is not too much corn raised, since a great famine has just swept
+over Persia, and others are threatening in different parts of the
+world.
+
+The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by the
+farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates for
+carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that the
+road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
+the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
+sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
+the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
+a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
+Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
+reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
+Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
+patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson's pithy
+apothegm, that "where combination is possible competition is
+impossible." The two great companies combined, became consolidated
+into one, and, having their victim completely in their power, swindled
+him without pity and divided the spoils between them.
+
+The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation. But
+nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
+monopolies and "rings," or from organizing to circumvent their
+schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing intelligence
+of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people so conscious of
+their power--never so fully aware that in this country the machinery
+for correcting abuses lies in the degree of concentration with which
+public opinion can be brought to bear in a given direction. Once let
+the people become fully aroused to the existence of an evil or abuse,
+and there is no interest nor combination of interests that can
+long hold out against them. The trouble heretofore has been the
+multiplicity of conflicting opinions everywhere disseminated, and the
+consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a great
+number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of certain
+ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the Patrons of
+Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the eastern shores of
+the country, and yet still widening and extending in the West, where
+it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving army of the people
+so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed problems of labor
+and capital by a sudden but peaceful revolution.
+
+The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
+accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
+scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet unused
+documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of the
+movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.
+
+Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges have
+increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Twenty-nine
+new ones were organized during the week ending July 24. Over one-third
+of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or controlled by
+the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped over five
+million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and hogs in vast
+quantities; and the reports received from these shipments show an
+increased profit to the producers of from ten to forty per cent.
+over that of the old "middlemen" system; and by the complete buying
+arrangements which the Western granges have effected it is calculated
+that the members save on an average one hundred dollars a year each.
+Large families find their expenses reduced by three or four hundred
+dollars annually, aside from amounts saved on sewing-machines, pianos,
+organs, reapers, mowers, corn-shellers and a hundred other costly
+articles; all of which any member of any grange can obtain to-day at
+a saving of from twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in
+quantity from the manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of
+the West, and a single order even from a member of a new-formed
+grange in Vermont will be incorporated in the general State order. The
+granges of the Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged
+in the work of organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary
+advantages accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and
+entirely cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain
+unfortunate middlemen, who find their "occupation gone," and
+themselves obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of
+the numerous small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the
+movement.
+
+MARIE ROWLAND.
+
+
+[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
+proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
+point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of
+an enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
+throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
+in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement
+has been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
+state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
+The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
+combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and agricultural
+implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very startling character;
+and if this can be attained at no greater cost or trouble to the
+individual "Patrons" than that of "decorating the granges" and taking
+part in the singing and the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage
+will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is
+to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of
+productions, should have become the _bête noire_ of the producers, are
+points on which more definite information would seem to be required.
+But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress,
+we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such
+announcements are calculated to inspire.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+I had a busy week of it in New York--copying out instructions, taking
+notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day
+a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me:
+all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent
+the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side
+by side.
+
+I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would be
+the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
+raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
+separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the plan.
+"I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday's steamer: say yes, dear
+child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from here."
+
+I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped to be
+married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came "No,"
+simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my darling's graceful
+hand.
+
+Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would surely
+yield when she saw me faithful to my word.
+
+"I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed
+myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we
+were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all the clerks had
+gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half asleep on a
+chair in the hall.
+
+It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and thrust
+them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least. "Bill, you
+may lock up now," I said, tapping the sleepy porter on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here's a card for yees," handing me a lady's
+card.
+
+"Who left it, Bill?" I hurriedly asked, taking it to the flaring
+gaslight on the stairway.
+
+"Two ladies in a carriage--an old 'un and a pretty young lady, shure.
+They charged me giv' it yees, and druv' off."
+
+"And why didn't you bring it in, you blockhead?" I shouted, for it
+was Bessie Stewart's card. On it was written in pencil: "Westminster
+Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South
+to-night. Come up to dinner."
+
+The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine!
+
+"Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no
+account, and that I was to bring in no messages."
+
+"Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"
+
+"About five o'clock--just after you had shut the dure, and the clerks
+was gone. Indeed, and they didn't wait for no reply, but hearin' you
+were in there, they druv' off the minute they give me the card. The
+pretty young lady didn't like the looks of our office, I reckon."
+
+It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders like
+a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to the
+Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there was a
+mistake, and would wait for me.
+
+But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
+clear hand, Bessie's hand, "Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and maid; Miss
+Bessie Stewart." They had arrived that afternoon, must have driven
+directly from the train to the office, and had dined, after waiting a
+little time for some one who did not come.
+
+"And where were they going?" I asked of the sympathetic clerk, who
+seemed interested.
+
+"Going South--I don't know where. The elder lady seemed delicate, and
+the young lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go
+on in the morning. But no, she would go on to-night."
+
+I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not go
+farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.
+
+I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the city,
+and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my memory
+suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day. They were
+either not in the city or most securely hid.
+
+And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
+waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on Monday
+noon.
+
+It ran as follows:
+
+  "WESTMINSTER HOTEL.
+
+  "Very sorry not to see you--Aunt
+  Sloman especially sorry; but she has
+  set her heart on going to Philadelphia
+  to-night. We shall stay at a private
+  house, a quiet boarding-house; for aunt
+  goes to consult Dr. R---- there, and
+  wishes to be very retired. I shall not
+  give you our address: as you sail so
+  soon, it would not be worth while to
+  come over. I will write you on the
+  other side.
+
+  B.S."
+
+Where's a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr. R----? I find him,
+sure enough--such a number Walnut street. Time is precious--Monday
+noon!
+
+"I'll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that will do as well.
+Can't help it if they do scold at the office."
+
+To drive to the Cunard company's office and make the transfer took
+some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed as I
+again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden Monday
+afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley,
+with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and
+the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his
+huge sides over some broad burlesque.
+
+The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R----, was not at home in answer to my
+ring on Monday evening.
+
+"How soon will he be in? I will wait."
+
+"He can see no patients to-night sir," said the man; "and he may not
+be home until midnight."
+
+"But I am an _im_patient," I might have urged, when a carriage dashed
+up to the door. A slight little man descended, and came slowly up the
+steps.
+
+"Dr. R----?" I said inquiringly.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get an address
+from you."
+
+He scanned me from head to foot: "Walk into my office, young man."
+
+I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
+caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
+feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.
+
+I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address of
+one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
+as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
+Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye. "Mrs.
+Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor."
+
+The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little silver
+bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The servant
+appeared at the door: "Let the carriage wait, James."
+
+Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
+lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
+scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
+his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, "Certainly, here it
+is--No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia."
+
+Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
+Sunday's search.
+
+"I will take you over," said Dr. R----, replacing the book in his
+pocket again. "Mrs. Sloman is on my list. Wait till I eat a biscuit,
+and I'll drive you over in my carriage."
+
+Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
+designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.
+
+"Till he ate a biscuit?" I should think so. To his invitation, most
+courteously urged, that I should come and share his supper--"You've
+just come from the train, and you won't get back to your hotel for two
+hours, at least"--I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
+hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.
+
+But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
+glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
+until I could scarce conceal my impatience.
+
+"Do you chance to know," he said carelessly, as at last we rose from
+the table and he flung his napkin down, "Mrs. Sloman's niece, Miss
+Stewart?"
+
+"Excellently well," I said smiling: "in fact, I believe I am engaged
+to be married to her."
+
+"My dear fellow," said the doctor, bursting out laughing, "I am
+delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I saw you were a
+lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made up my mind
+that you had come over to badger the old lady into making her will. I
+congratulate you with all my soul--and myself, too," he added, shaking
+my hand. "Only think! Had it not been for your frankness, I should
+have taken a five-mile ride to watch you and keep you from doing my
+patient an injury."
+
+The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion of
+his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious vehicle
+over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.
+
+I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down any
+but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me with
+a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was natural,
+was herself, and only too glad, after the _contretemps_ in New York,
+to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a tired child
+when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to Philadelphia, and
+laughed outright at my interview with Dr. R----.
+
+I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the journey--_our_
+journey--I knew I should prevail. It was a deep wound, and she shrank
+from any talk about it. I had to be very gentle and tender before she
+would listen to me at all.
+
+But there was something else at work against me--what was
+it?--something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was not
+altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.
+
+"I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R---- wishes her to remain in
+Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That settles it, Charlie:
+I must stay with her."
+
+What was there to be said? "Is there no one else, no one to take your
+place?"
+
+"Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there were."
+
+Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession of
+me. I seemed to read in Bessie's eyes that there was a thought between
+us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover. I could
+see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life, had the
+shadow come? _Between_ us, surely, it could not be. Even her anxiety
+for her aunt could not explain it: it was something concealed.
+
+When at last I had to leave her, "So to-morrow is your last day?" she
+said.
+
+"No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday steamer."
+
+The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue eyes
+wear such a look of scrutiny.
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked laughingly as I looked straight into her
+eyes.
+
+"The Saturday steamer," she said musingly--"the Algeria, isn't it? I
+thought you were in a hurry?"
+
+"It was my only chance to have you," I explained, and apparently the
+argument was satisfactory enough.
+
+With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed a
+subject, "Then it isn't good-bye to-night?" she said.
+
+"Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on Thursday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,
+harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard
+to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment
+came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and
+implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October
+morning.
+
+I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
+ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with
+me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I
+had chosen I felt like a widower.
+
+It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth
+and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future
+with dreams. "I must have a genius for castle-building," I laughed.
+"Well, the reality is cold and empty enough. I'll go up on deck."
+
+On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered trunks
+marked M----. I remember now watching them as they were stowed away.
+
+But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the dock,
+that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face with
+Fanny Meyrick.
+
+"You here?" she said. "I thought you had sailed in the Russia! Bessie
+told me you were to go then."
+
+"Did she know," I asked, "that _you_ were going by this steamer?"
+
+On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my question
+concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment,
+and looked up gayly: "Oh yes: that was fixed months ago. I told her
+about it at Lenox."
+
+"And did she tell you something else?" I asked sharply.
+
+"Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
+congratulated, won't you?"
+
+Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick's way.
+"Good prospect!" Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement
+with Bessie?
+
+I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering
+expression of the situation had it been any other woman. But a
+lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to
+Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else
+joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.
+
+It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
+altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
+most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
+carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
+poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
+or be amused.
+
+I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the _Trois
+Mousquetaires_ for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
+engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
+Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.
+Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?
+
+Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was only
+one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the
+Hudson River. I did not know.
+
+Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
+introduced me on our third day out--Father Shamrock, an Irish priest,
+long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he had
+obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy,
+fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.
+
+"Pshaw!" thought I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common
+antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance
+prepossessing--one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked
+down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad
+beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
+mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
+kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.
+
+A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he
+seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
+They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
+reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
+jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.
+
+Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship's company. Perfectly
+suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it than the
+distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash of
+manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
+tongues, rattling off a gay little _chanson_ or an Irish song, it was
+a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time at
+the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
+Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.
+
+He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on the
+Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest Protestants.
+Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an introduction.
+"Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How _can_ Miss Meyrick walk with
+him and present him as she does?" But the party of recalcitrants grew
+less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.
+"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
+the trouble to try."
+
+And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
+evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
+famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
+I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
+to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.
+
+We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
+of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left
+the dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
+Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
+only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone
+on one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
+terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
+state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.
+
+When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
+But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
+very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
+went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
+woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he
+the only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
+family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.
+
+"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him
+when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she
+had expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw
+herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy
+vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she
+would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.
+
+"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my
+feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not
+wear them again--or if I do not find him.'
+
+"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a
+time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home
+with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;
+but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the
+world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and
+charity."
+
+"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes, "did she not
+die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
+heart!"
+
+"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation
+to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I
+have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half
+deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for
+spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices
+of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her
+calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here
+a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of
+consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no
+thought of herself."
+
+"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A
+shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read
+a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:
+they were very brilliant."
+
+"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was
+called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the
+sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and
+poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when
+I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:
+she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,
+'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it
+would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or
+ball.' She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly
+sufferer!"
+
+The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should
+the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if
+in warning?
+
+Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her
+life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the
+sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,
+uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.
+
+The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
+Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.
+
+He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the
+world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the
+confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.
+Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,
+to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? are
+we so true to our ideals? But one glance at the young priests as they
+sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling their beads and crossing
+themselves with the vehemence of a frightened faith, was enough.
+Father Shamrock was no type. Very possibly his own life would show but
+coarse and poor against the chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He
+had the dramatic faculty: for the moment he was what he related--that
+was all.
+
+Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
+drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator's voice sank into silence
+she said with effusion, "Well, _you_ are a good man, I guess."
+
+But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away, and, to
+break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep on deck,
+to see if there was a star in the heavens.
+
+There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the ship's
+motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown light, shone
+in the distance.
+
+The Father was to leave us there. "We shall not make it to-night,"
+said the sailor. "It is too rough. Early in the morning the passengers
+will land."
+
+"I wish," said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening from a dream,
+"that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the sea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London. The
+Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
+settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
+arrangements unhampered. So I carefully eliminated Clarges street from
+my list of lodging-houses, and finally "ranged" myself with a neat
+landlady in Sackville street.
+
+How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the banker's
+clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the heavy envelope
+I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that fluttered away
+from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I feared to open it
+there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope, nothing more.
+
+So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to the
+law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
+printed slip, cut from some New York paper--a list of the Algeria's
+passengers.
+
+"What joke is this?" I said as I scanned it more closely.
+
+By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
+Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie
+has denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
+out--not a penciled word even!
+
+The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia was
+clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie
+with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to
+sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
+Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was
+going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might
+have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.
+
+Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had
+given it room to grow.
+
+My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
+Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's
+pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!
+
+And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were
+engaged. _Had she not_?
+
+My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.
+Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those
+pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I
+should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office
+said "Stick to it," and I stayed.
+
+Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
+affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
+work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
+a patient holding of my end of the clue.
+
+In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
+envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
+wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
+Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
+that his father was in Florida--that he had communicated with him,
+but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart's present
+address.
+
+Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long
+since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud.
+She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring
+myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between
+us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was the
+unconscious cause.
+
+At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we were
+in the new year, I could bear it no longer. "Come what will, I must
+know if Bessie writes to her."
+
+I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the Meyricks'
+parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting alone, reading
+by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in the doorway. A
+little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me, but her manner
+changed as she took my hand.
+
+"I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for staying away
+so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn't you send us word
+that you were ill? Papa is a capital nurse."
+
+"But I have not been ill," I said, bewildered, "only very busy and
+very anxious."
+
+"I should think so," still holding my hand, and looking into my face
+with an expression of deep concern. "Poor fellow! You do look worn.
+Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let me take care of
+you. You need rest."
+
+And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the soft
+crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a friendly
+voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered with a
+tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a delicious sense
+of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing over me.
+
+"I can't imagine what keeps papa," she said, chatting away with
+woman's tact: "he always smokes after dinner, and comes up to me for
+his cup of tea afterward."
+
+Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and fragrant, "I
+should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on board the steamer if
+I had known it was going to end in this way."
+
+_This way_! Then Bessie must have told her.
+
+"End?" I said stammering: "what--what end?"
+
+"In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took that
+long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great thing
+for a young lawyer to have such responsibility."
+
+Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
+jumped to my feet: "Was that _all_ she told you? Didn't she tell you
+that we were engaged?"
+
+For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek, the
+steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left her
+pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver sugar-tongs
+that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were fixed on me
+with a wild, beseeching expression.
+
+"Did you not know," I said in softer tones, still standing by the
+table and looking down on her, "that day at Lenox that we were
+engaged? Was it not for _that_ you congratulated me on board the
+steamer?"
+
+A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, "Indeed, no! Oh dear! what have I
+done?"
+
+"You?--nothing!" I said with a sickly smile; "but there is some
+mistake, some mystery. I have never had one line from Bessie since I
+reached London, and when I left her she was my own darling little wife
+that was to be."
+
+Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering to
+herself. "Heavens! To think--Oh, Charlie," with a sudden burst, "it's
+all my doing! How can I ever tell you?"
+
+"You hear from Bessie, then? Is she--is she well? Where is she? What
+is all this?" And I seated myself again and tried to speak calmly, for
+I saw that something very painful was to be said--something that she
+could hardly say; and I wanted to help her, though how I knew not.
+
+At this moment the door opened and "papa" came in. He evidently
+saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took in the
+situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the future
+son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.
+
+"Oh, papa," said Fanny, rising with evident relief, "just come and
+talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he wants to take with
+him."
+
+It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
+shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
+all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
+school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to
+have his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of
+the English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
+brought me to England.
+
+"A very unpresentable son-in-law," I read in his eye, while he was
+evidently astonished at his daughter's prolonged absence.
+
+Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
+Fanny again appeared.
+
+"I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so long
+waiting, but there were some special directions to go with the packet,
+and it took me a long time to get them right. It is for Bessie,
+papa--Bessie Stewart, Mr. Munro's dear little _fiancée_"
+
+Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick's neatly turned
+felicitations--and that the satisfaction he expressed was genuine I
+was prepared to believe--hurried home to Sackville street.
+
+My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me--close draperies
+to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed--and I closed the door
+and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.
+
+The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
+wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:
+
+"What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did before me,
+nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most innocently made. What
+must you have thought of me that day at Lenox, staying close all day
+to two engaged people, who must have wished me away a thousand times?
+But I did not dream you were engaged.
+
+"Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew nothing of
+Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner once or
+twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were _interested_
+in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant, that I thought it
+was only a notion of my jealous self.
+
+"Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary time? Do you
+know that the year before we had spent it together, too?--September
+28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox's funeral, but we had
+walked together, and I was happy in being near you.
+
+"For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson River that
+you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid gayety of
+my first winter--from the flats of fashionable life. You had given me
+an ideal--something to live up to and grow worthy of.
+
+"Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper harm I
+have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.
+
+"Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove together in the
+afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to find out what you
+were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant, that I fancied
+there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if you had cared for
+her at all, that she had been indifferent to you.
+
+"Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and when she
+told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very happy, for
+I thought then that I should have you all to myself.
+
+"When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you had changed
+your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I write it,
+thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a little note
+to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don't know where you were
+when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember it, what I
+wrote:
+
+"'DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have changed his
+passage to be with us. I know from something that he has just told
+_me_ that this is so, and that he consoles himself already for your
+coldness. You remember what I told you when we talked about him. I
+shall _try_ now. F.M.'
+
+"Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what a weak,
+weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought, that Bessie
+did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought you _had_
+cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his manner--you
+weren't of an old Knickerbocker family, you know--and had given you to
+understand that your visits were not acceptable.
+
+"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put
+that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa
+always looked so decidedly _queer_ whenever your name was mentioned.
+
+"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed
+that in due time you would come back to me.
+
+"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her
+answer."
+
+Pinned fast to the end of Fanny's letter, so that by no chance should
+I read it first, were these words in my darling's hand:
+
+"Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be traveling
+about so much that you need not write me the progress of your romance,
+but believe me I shall be most interested in its conclusion. BESSIE
+S."
+
+It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited, had
+given her leave "to try."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate
+unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had
+taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case
+would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D----
+must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no
+longer.
+
+No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her
+save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers
+till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."
+
+But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
+what few women in the world would have had the courage to do--shown
+her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would be an
+embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out that
+morning that it was too early yet to call.
+
+To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
+_perdu_ and in wait for me.
+
+"A letter, Mr. Munro, from D---- & Co.," said the brisk young clerk.
+They had treated me with great respect of late, for, indeed, our claim
+was steadily growing in weight, and was sure to come right before
+long. I opened and read:
+
+"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic--what you
+have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger
+sails at once, and will report himself to you."
+
+"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's
+young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.
+
+And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the
+steps in Clarges street.
+
+"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of
+Parliament, who opened the door--"Miss Meyrick, I mean."
+
+"Yes, sir--in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a
+flourish.
+
+Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for
+on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.
+
+Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.
+
+"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard
+and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then--did you?--that I
+cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched
+me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you,
+sir--none at all. Can you?"
+
+Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
+together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,
+and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.
+I had dreaded the _rôle_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and,
+I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played
+out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a
+late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all
+my little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,
+etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.
+
+For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,
+in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I
+should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and
+in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and
+calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being
+beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.
+
+But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe
+I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.
+
+But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact
+which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the world--the
+_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a
+difficult bar.
+
+It _was_ delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father,
+and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.
+
+I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.
+
+But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as
+I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs. D----,
+with a large traveling party. They came straight to London, and
+summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.
+
+I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom
+I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers
+who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.
+
+"Mr. D---- charged me, Mr. Munro," she began after our first
+ceremonious greeting, "to give this into no hands but yours. I have
+kept it securely with my diamonds, and those I always carry about me."
+
+From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the paper
+I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was strongly
+perfumed with violet powder.
+
+"You see, I was coming over," she proceeded to explain, "in any
+event, and when Mr. D---- talked of sending Bunker--I think it was
+Bunker--with us, I persuaded him to let me be messenger instead.
+It wasn't worth while, you know, to have any more people leave the
+office, you being away, and--Oh, Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!"
+
+As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the _surprised_ look in her
+eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to me, I
+thought that the reason for young Bunker's omission from the party was
+possibly before me.
+
+Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices! Her
+maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor young
+clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
+at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
+ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
+one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
+it on the morrow for home.
+
+"Bessie is in Lenox, I think," Fanny Meyrick had said to me as I bade
+her good-bye.
+
+"What! You have heard from her?"
+
+"No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends this
+morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church steps."
+
+I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.
+
+"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it
+was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"
+
+"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY.
+
+
+The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of faith,
+and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from Christian
+lands. Thus, the impunity--nay, the protection and sympathy--afforded
+to the street-beggar, and the way in which the very poor divide their
+crust with those still more poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise
+the stranger who observes the scene in the open streets. Then, too,
+the public fountains, which are charitable offerings from pious
+persons, are more numerous in Constantinople than in any other city in
+the world. Nor does the law of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam
+has anticipated Mr. Bergh, and "The Society for the Prevention
+of Cruelty to Animals" had as its founder in the Orient no less a
+personage than Mohammed, whom "the faithful" revere as the Messenger
+(Résoul) of God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran
+specially inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly
+does the Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with
+homeless, masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will
+not abridge by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more
+curious because the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the
+true believer. Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does
+more than throw him a bone or scraps of food.
+
+Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his master
+does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him there to
+die "when it pleases Allah." The same sentiment runs through the
+whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested in religious
+foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans or
+caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
+khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
+Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
+creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of commercial
+travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and protection
+from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The hospitable doors
+were ever open, but the apparition of "mine host," ready to offer you
+board and lodging for a reasonable compensation, was undreamt of in
+the early Turkish philosophy. Every traveler literally "took up his
+bed and walked "--or rode--away in the morning, leaving the room he
+had tenanted as bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own
+cooking utensils, provender and materials for making a fire.
+
+What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to effect
+for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people, who leave
+legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers, before or
+after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity. Many a
+wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly religious men
+or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a long
+day's ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of rain
+characteristic of the same region.
+
+Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
+cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
+when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
+meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
+bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
+camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
+most melancholy to the untrained ear.
+
+But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
+bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
+lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
+the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the primal
+necessity of Oriental well--being, taking precedence even of tobacco,
+which, however, always accompanies it. There is always a bazaar close
+by, at which you can purchase savory _kibabs_ of mutton and other
+cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
+are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals _al
+fresco_ at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after prayers.
+
+Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
+repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
+without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
+rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
+shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly
+in his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping
+the feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law,
+is reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
+uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
+shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
+ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
+circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
+as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
+to our Turkish or Arab brother.
+
+Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of nationalities
+and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the absence of other
+hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the poor; only, as
+every man brings his own things with him, you find more luxury and
+comfort in some of the arrangements than in others. You may see rich
+merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles of costly cushions,
+attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking perfumed Shiraz out
+of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes are tipped with
+precious amber and encircled by rows of precious stones worth a
+prince's ransom. Huddled together, in striking contrast to this
+picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and smoking the
+common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also enjoying
+themselves after their fashion.
+
+These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling merchant,
+Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares, without
+seeming to care much whether you buy or not.
+
+The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
+rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
+as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
+store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
+residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
+away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
+in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
+whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
+suspicious persons.
+
+The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
+enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose
+ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
+Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
+and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the _sââb_
+were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion
+of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the
+interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving
+ragged versions of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_ for the
+delectation of the tireless native listeners.
+
+In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
+slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
+purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit
+all tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
+compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
+in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
+the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
+will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
+Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the proceedings.
+This restriction has taken away from the khans one of their former
+great attractions.
+
+To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury and
+profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more comforts
+than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment for man and
+beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is enjoyment in it
+when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and "such small deer," and
+one is accustomed "to roughing it," and blessed with a good appetite
+and digestion.
+
+Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
+best--more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses, especially
+to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from Turkish
+or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the close
+contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses named more
+pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental, generally making
+it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores
+stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as
+necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak
+comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose
+again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most
+diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.
+
+Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
+but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
+resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
+sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
+system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
+retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
+a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at Messeir's
+or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European plan.
+
+At Messeir's in Constantinople, or at Shepheard's hotel in
+Cairo--places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
+descriptions of travelers like the authors of _Eothen_ and _The
+Crescent and the Cross_--a most motley medley of Western nationalities
+may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists and wanderers of the
+world congregated there during the winter months, and presenting a
+panoramic view of all the peculiar phases and contrasts of European
+civilization, more antagonistic there than elsewhere. There you see
+the German savant with his round spectacles, round face and round
+figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the imperturbable Englishman,
+drinking his bottled beer under the shadow of the Pyramids; and the
+angular American, more curious, but more cosmopolite, than any of
+them. The returning Englishman or Englishwoman who has spent twenty
+years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate
+and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast
+the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with
+the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which
+characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these
+_tables-d'hôte_, where conversations are being carried on in every
+European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and
+English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there
+is no better field than one of these European hotels in the East--none
+where the lines of difference can be found more sharply defined;
+for travel and contact with strangers appear only to bring out the
+contrasts more clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead
+of softening down or assimilating them, as one might expect.
+
+Very few travelers see the city khans--fewer still ever venture to
+pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of desert-travel
+the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting their own tents
+for the stone walls, and confiding in the arrangements made by their
+dragomen or guides, who contract to make the necessary provision for
+all their wants for a stipulated sum--one-half usually in advance,
+the balance payable at the expiration of the trip. To do these men
+justice, as a rule they provide liberally and well in all respects,
+their reputation and recommendations being their capital and stock in
+trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that
+this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient
+and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much
+opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be
+seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house
+is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan
+that a glimpse of his mode of life can be obtained.
+
+The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of the
+East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing tide of
+European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer aspects
+of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more essential
+features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the hat, which
+they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of chibouques, and
+drink "gaseous lemonade" (champagne), in defiance of the Prophet's
+prohibition; the women may send from the high harems for French
+fashions, and "fearfully and wonderfully" array themselves therein;
+but in other respects the people will stubbornly adhere to their own
+social system and habits of life.
+
+It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners
+and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view
+if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels
+we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of
+the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a
+few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.
+
+EDWIN DE LEON.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.
+
+
+I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue.
+It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am
+lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk
+to another. The _commisionnaire_ does not understand more than half I
+say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most
+trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some
+blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper!
+paper! für die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher--er: ink no dry;
+what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of
+paper--letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried
+to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The
+shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he
+discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously.
+I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five
+minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed the matter with
+the _portier_. The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass
+buttons. The commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what
+I require, but is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of
+blotting-paper! It is so with everything. Every little matter of
+every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical,
+here costs so much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone
+when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast
+and dinner task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from
+established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like
+a wrong figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to
+convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer
+for dinner. He would bring beer. I would say, "I don't want beer!
+I want my--some dinner." He would depart and take counsel with the
+head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for
+which I ought to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches
+and exclaims with domineering voice, "Vat you vants?" I reply with
+meekness, "Dinner, sir, if you please." He brings me an elegantly
+bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look at
+it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
+finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
+functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to an
+underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in the
+dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese. Tongues,
+plates, knives and forks clatter inside--wheels roll, rumble and
+clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my soup. Hours
+seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life is too busy
+and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.
+
+The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath
+his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He
+knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every
+signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To
+appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with
+the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at
+different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this
+man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows
+as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna
+restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
+bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
+requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed _de rigueur_,
+condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough.
+There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner
+resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities--the
+other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England.
+One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open
+a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and
+gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if
+possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He
+said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be
+opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few
+common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?
+
+You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable
+rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner,
+so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an
+egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und
+egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English
+accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who
+attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the
+culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter
+of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for
+next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up
+and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You
+understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came
+about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I
+resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more
+force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the
+nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the
+free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling
+monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be
+produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and
+totter.
+
+I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
+kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer
+under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and
+keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week--any
+length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
+brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
+want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and
+savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement
+in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.
+
+The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer
+and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
+English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
+The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
+people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's
+stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain
+longer in their bodies.
+
+I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two
+hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a
+glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table on
+the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake,
+drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is
+occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then
+more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am
+aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese
+life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time
+is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling
+America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the
+street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour
+after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill.
+Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life
+about them.
+
+The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze
+forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
+street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
+"Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it
+up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin
+equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of
+holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.
+
+The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
+particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose--a most refreshing
+sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in
+this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to
+have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is
+very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more
+dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut
+"by the lifts and braces."
+
+Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
+about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
+pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering
+back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
+kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
+black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened
+herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow.
+I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind.
+Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen
+sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to
+fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over
+the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will
+attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar.
+Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no
+lock on the door--nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe
+in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has
+left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings,
+long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over
+their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On
+subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I
+rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.
+
+The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
+disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
+offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with
+very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
+despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
+visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
+have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
+apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
+proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
+passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
+egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where
+I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
+looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
+right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
+this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting
+around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old
+gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering
+nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however,
+this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I
+was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the
+strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry,
+and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.
+
+I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern
+justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork
+Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which
+millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into
+pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and
+going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their
+business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs
+scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted,
+hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy
+and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a
+little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of
+clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a
+patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps,
+with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American
+department.
+
+It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
+general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
+our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our
+greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
+opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
+torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago
+or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were
+the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent,
+he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the
+pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles
+out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a
+reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes
+and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a
+few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps
+of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks
+and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up
+realistically and artistically.
+
+PRENTICE MULFORD.
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTLY WARRIORS.
+
+
+So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval
+Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's _Battle
+of the Lake Regillus_, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of
+the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the
+extract from the _Vida de San Millan_ given in the _Poets and Poetry
+of Europe_, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets
+whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the
+monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred
+subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the
+Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror
+of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful
+those."
+
+  And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,
+  Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;
+  And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,--
+  Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.
+
+  They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,
+  And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,--
+  And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;
+  They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,
+  And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.
+
+  The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;
+  They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,
+  And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins,
+  And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins.
+
+  And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground,
+  They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around;
+  Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks among,
+  A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng.
+
+  Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky,
+  The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody fight;
+  Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half-dead with fright:
+  Full sorely they repented that to the field they came,
+  For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on,
+  Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;
+  And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,
+  Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood.
+
+Turn now to the _Battle of the Lake Regillus_. In a series of
+desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
+worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
+upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion, Herminius--"who
+kept the bridge so well"--has been slain, and his war-horse, black
+Auster, has barely been rescued by the dictator Aulus from the hands
+of Titus, the youngest of the Tarquins.
+
+  And Aulus the Dictator
+    Stroked Auster's raven mane;
+  With heed he looked unto the girths,
+    With heed unto the rein.
+  "Now bear me well, black Auster,
+    Into yon thick array;
+  And thou and I will have revenge
+    For thy good lord this day."
+
+  So spake he; and was buckling
+    Tighter black Auster's band,
+  When he was aware of a princely pair
+    That rode at his right hand.
+  So like they were, no mortal
+    Might one from other know:
+  White as snow their armor was:
+    Their steeds were white as snow.
+  Never on earthly anvil
+    Did such rare armor gleam;
+  And never did such gallant steeds
+    Drink of an earthly stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  So answered those strange horsemen,
+    And each couched low his spear;
+  And forthwith all the ranks of Rome
+    Were bold and of good cheer:
+  And on the thirty armies
+    Came wonder and affright,
+  And Ardea wavered on the left,
+    And Cora on the right.
+  "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus;
+    "The foe begins to yield!
+  Charge for the hearth of Vesta!
+    Charge for the Golden Shield!
+  Let no man stop to plunder,
+    But slay, and slay, and slay;
+  The gods who live for ever
+    Are on our side to-day."
+
+  Then the fierce trumpet-flourish
+    From earth to heaven arose;
+  The kites know well the long stern swell
+    That bids the Romans close.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And fliers and pursuers
+    Were mingled in a mass:
+  And far away the battle
+    Went roaring through the pass.
+
+The scene of the following stanza is at Rome, where the watchers at
+the gates have learned from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the
+day:
+
+  And all the people trembled,
+    And pale grew every cheek;
+  And Sergius, the High Pontiff,
+    Alone found voice to speak:
+  "The gods who live for ever
+    Have fought for Rome to-day!
+  These be the Great Twin Brethren
+    To whom the Dorians pray!"
+
+Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay was
+consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was at
+the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out how
+certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might fairly
+be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long before
+Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren. He has
+even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary appearance
+of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the resemblance just
+pointed out. "In modern times," he wrote, "a very similar story
+actually found credence among a people much more civilized than the
+Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortez,
+writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico, ... had the
+face to assert that, in an engagement against the Indians, Saint James
+had appeared on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers.
+Many of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. One
+of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition....
+He says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with
+a man on his back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de
+Morla, and not the ever-blessed apostle Saint James. 'Nevertheless,'
+Bernal adds, 'it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
+glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
+unworthy to see him.'" Other striking instances of identity between
+classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord Macaulay
+in the learned and interesting general preface to his _Lays of Ancient
+Rome_. But the reappearance of this particular story in such remote
+times and places, and with such marked similarities and variations,
+would entitle it to a place among the indestructible popular legends
+collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his _Curious Myths of the Middle
+Ages_.
+
+
+
+
+A WARNING TO LOVERS.
+
+
+"Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin', triflin', owdacious,
+contrary piece that ever lived."
+
+"Oh, ma!" sobbed Matilda, "I couldn' help myself--'deed I couldn'."
+
+"Couldn' help yourself? That's a pretty way to talk! Ain't he a nice
+young man?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Got money?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And good kinfolks?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And loves you to destrackshun?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Well, in the name o' common sense, what did you send him home for?"
+
+"Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s'pose, though I'd
+ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and
+ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then
+it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and _his
+gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin'_, I till I thought in my soul
+somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and
+that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me
+do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the
+harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came
+to me that it wasn't nothin' but his gallowses; and then I bust out a
+laughin' fit to kill myself, right in his face. And then he jumpt
+up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain't comin' back no
+more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!"
+
+"Metildy," said the old woman sternly, "stop sniv'lin'. You've made
+an everlastin' fool of yourself, but your cake ain't all dough yet. It
+all comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses--' 'spenders'
+I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny,
+tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
+pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never do creak."
+
+"Yes, ma," said Matilda, brightening up; "but let _me_ knit 'em."
+
+"So you shall, honey: he'll vally them a heap more than if I knit 'em.
+Cheer up, Tildy: it'll all be right--you mind if it won't."
+
+Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were married,
+and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a
+stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is
+particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger."
+Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the
+days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but
+it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of
+harmony between odors and colors--a theory which might never have been
+dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the
+boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if
+we may believe Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new
+refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and
+quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according
+to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially _de
+rigueur_, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to establish
+a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she carries
+and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is to say,
+gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the stuff
+of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if light
+yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda (which has
+such a run at present for ladies' costumes), the chosen perfume
+will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the other flowers
+corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh ball-toilettes.
+Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between different odors and
+different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be
+as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and
+costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art
+rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of
+the drawing-room, it will die out before the science is fairly
+established.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _enfant terrible_ plays an important rôle in literature as in
+society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a
+good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.
+
+A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees,
+when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh,"
+says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I
+was in the ark?"
+
+"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"
+
+"Oh no, I'm not Noah."
+
+"Ah, then you're Shem."
+
+"No, not Shem, either."
+
+"Oh, then I suppose you're Japhet."
+
+"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."
+
+"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of
+his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."
+
+Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one
+Sunday for the first time.
+
+"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his
+tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many
+people come here to pray to God?"
+
+"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.
+
+Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
+crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
+slap.
+
+"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her
+indignation getting the better of her judgment.
+
+"Oh yes, I paid her back _before-hand_!"
+
+Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
+schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
+giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.
+
+"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break,
+poor things!" says papa.
+
+"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism
+was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and
+fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of
+the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with
+Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs.
+Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading
+articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort
+commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of
+maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the
+comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore;
+but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which
+politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his conduct and his
+reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by English flattery," said
+this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance,
+His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of
+'Ushter wa Dirâz-kush,' from the 'Baharistân' of Jaumy." In ordinary
+times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable
+is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for
+granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistân of Jaumy was as
+familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole,
+our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah.
+Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close
+application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has
+lately been flooded.
+
+  How various his employments whom the world
+  Calls idle!
+
+says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah
+in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly
+represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example
+(a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then
+Captain Shaw was presented to the shah--likewise Colonel Hogg; and
+then, according to the _Morning Advertiser_, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly,
+Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing
+before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed
+highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from
+the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
+Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
+Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
+from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
+Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
+wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and
+princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance
+at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste--namely,
+gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah"
+on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious
+combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be
+supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious
+guest.
+
+A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
+America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
+fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,
+we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
+fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he outwitted
+the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues make
+artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
+(which does not appreciate ingenuity of that sort) lately gave
+six months in prison to some makers of sham coffee-grains, thus
+interfering with a business which was earning twenty thousand dollars
+a year. Some of the Paris pastry-cooks make balls for _vol-au-vent_
+with a hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and
+partridges for pâtés are constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly
+shaped to represent those birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell
+marshmallow paste made out of Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts
+the eyes of a fresh mackerel in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp
+customers; and as to drinks, one dyer boldly puts over his door
+"Burgundy Vintages!" They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds
+of glass. Adulteration on adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is
+adulteration!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating as
+many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many
+years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It
+possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected
+with the experiments--the source, we suppose, of the eagerness shown
+by Professor Wise and his associates to _fly_ to evils that they
+know not of. Perpetual motion received its quietus from the blasts of
+ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe to encounter. It may survive
+the attacks of gayety, but it will succumb, we fancy, to the
+resistless force of _gravity_.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York: Holt
+& Williams.
+
+The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
+adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
+with some versions from among his prose works by another Philadelphian
+translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine's prose, delicate in its
+pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be held too precious
+by the interpreter. The latter must have all his wits about him, or he
+will not find English at once simple enough and distinguished enough
+to stand for the original. To get at Heine's prose exactly in another
+language must be almost as hard as to get at his poetry. The principal
+selection made by Mr. Stern is a long rambling rhapsody called
+"Florentine Nights," in which the author professes to pour into the
+ears of a dying mistress the history of some of his former amours and
+exaltations, the natural jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus
+in the recital. His first love, however, is an idealization--a Greek
+statue which he visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning's poem
+does the
+
+                          Shrinking Caryatides
+  Of just-tinged marble, like Eve's lilied flesh.
+
+This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator almost
+as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an interpreter of
+poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to struggle with, yet
+there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and waft of feeling in the
+metre which lends him wings and helps him on. If Mr. Stern does not
+encumber his style with a betrayal of the difficulties he has got
+over--if he does not give us pedantry and double-epithets, so common
+in vulgar renderings from the German--he certainly shows no timidity
+in turning the polished familiarity of Heine's prose into our
+commonest vernacular. "What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;"
+"for the men, lots of patience:" trivialities of expression like these
+are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine would
+have written if he had been writing in English, at least the fault
+of familiarity is better than the fault of hardness; and these
+translations are never at all hard or uncomfortable. When we add that
+Mr. Stern gives us an index without showing what works the extracts
+are taken from, and that he gives us an article on Heine without any
+mention that we can discover of Heine's wife, we have vented about all
+the objections we can make to this welcome publication; and they are
+very few to find in a collection of hundreds of "scintillations."
+
+The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so liberally
+and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a complete exhibit
+of Heine's mind on nearly all the topics he occupied himself about. We
+have his views on French and German politicians; on French, German and
+English authors; on art and poetry; on his own soul and character; on
+religion; besides a great deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite
+persiflage surely that ever was heard, which flutters clear away from
+the regions of sense and information, yet which only a man of sense
+and information could have uttered.
+
+Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
+everything "charming." His wit is a little cheap, perhaps, when he
+calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg "the necropolis in which
+the mummies of perjury are embalmed;" at least it becomes tiresome to
+hear his constant disparagement of the politics which he chose to live
+under, and which protected him so agreeably; but he is his own keen
+self where he observes that the signs of the revolution of 1830,
+what he calls the legend of _liberté, egalité, fraternité_ at the
+street-corners, had "already been wiped away." Victor Hugo, for his
+part, did not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have,
+in relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
+where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody "la
+grandeur révolutionnaire." The cooler spectator from Hamburg inspects
+at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without
+much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and
+his white locks--at different places, however," for the latter were
+in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates
+"the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner." The age
+of industry, commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite
+suited to the poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine's admiration
+of Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
+"Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
+emperor," he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects Napoleon
+as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers ought to
+have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat precipitated
+the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the world after his
+death was "at the best to be bored to death by the monotony of a
+republic." Ardent patriots in this country need not go for sympathy to
+the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of a commonwealth he had small
+love: "That which oppresses me is the artist's and the scholar's
+secret dread, lest our modern civilization, the laboriously achieved
+result of so many centuries of effort, will be endangered I by the
+triumph of Communism." We have drifted into the citation of these
+sentiments because many conservatives think of Heine only as an
+irreconcilable destroyer and revolutionist, and do not care to welcome
+in him the basis of attachment to order which must underlie every
+artist's or author's love of freedom. "Soldier in the liberation of
+humanity" as he was, that liberation was to be the result of growth,
+not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but "hunger, _envy_
+and death." It has but one faith, happiness on this earth; and the
+millennium it foresees is "a single shepherd and a single flock, all
+shorn after the same pattern, and bleating alike." Such passages are
+the true reflection of Heine's keen but not great mind, miserably
+bandied between the hopes of a republican future, that was to be the
+death of art and literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose
+conditions sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought,
+scratched and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the
+politics he was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when
+he turned his attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully
+impartial. He hated the English for "their idle curiosity, bedizened
+awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant delight
+in all melancholy objects." As for the French, they are "les comédiens
+ordinaires du bon Dieu;" yet "a blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle
+more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman." And Germany:
+"Germany alone possesses those colossal fools whose caps reach unto
+the heavens, and delight the stars with the ringing of their bells."
+Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side, Heine is shown "in
+action" by this little cluster of "scintillations," and the whole
+book is the shortest definition of him possible, for it makes the
+saliencies of his character jut out within a close compass. It can be
+read in a couple of hours, and no reading of the same length in any
+of his complete writings would give such a notion of the most witty,
+perverse, tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt &
+Williams.
+
+Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
+without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
+them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
+eminently made to appreciate the best kind of "high life" which London
+has offered in the present century; and he has been able to avail
+himself of it to his heart's content. The son of a Yorkshire squire in
+affluent circumstances and of high character, Monckton Milnes was not
+spoilt by finding, as he might have done had he been the heir to a
+dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the same time all the good
+things were within his reach by a little of that exertion which does
+so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of them. From the period of his
+entry upon London life he displayed that anxiety to know celebrities
+which, though in a somewhat different way, was a marked feature of
+his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb Robinson; and the story
+illustrative of this tendency which gained him the _sobriquet_ of "the
+cool of the evening" will be always associated with the name he has
+since merged in a less familiar title.
+
+Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons, during
+which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every social and
+literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having regard to this
+circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a polished and graceful
+style of expressing himself, one would naturally expect a great deal
+from this volume of reminiscences. Nor will such expectations be
+entirely disappointed. The monographs are eight in number, and will be
+read with varying degrees of interest, according to the taste of
+the reader, as well as the subjects and quality of the papers. The
+portrait which will perhaps be the newest to American readers is that
+of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the second Baring who bore that
+title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord
+Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave
+of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little
+to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an
+unaffectionate education"--a sentence reminding us of a remark in
+the London _Times_, that "with certain noble houses people are apt
+to associate certain qualities--with the Berkeleys, for instance, a
+series of disgraceful family quarrels." Lady Ashburton appears to us
+from this account to have been a brilliant spoilt child of fortune,
+who availed herself of her great social position to do and say what,
+had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu with the pittance of a poor
+nobleman's daughter, she would hardly have dared to do or say. It
+is one of the weak points of society in England that a woman who has
+rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives to surround herself with men
+of wit to whom she renders her house delightful, can be as hard and
+rude as she pleases to the world in general. Fortunately, in most
+cases native kindness of heart usually hurries to heal the wound that
+"wicked wit" may have made. This would scarcely seem to have been so
+with Lady Ashburton, for Lord Houghton tells us that "many who would
+not have cared for a quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her
+victory," one of them saying, "I do not mind being knocked down, but
+I can't stand being danced upon afterward." Lord Houghton,
+however, defines this "jumping" as "a joyous sincerity that no
+conventionalities, high or low, could restrain--a festive nature
+flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life." And it must be
+owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a nature
+which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal capacity
+for warm and disinterested friendship.
+
+In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
+full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
+reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
+with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
+names.
+
+But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
+letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her
+childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself,
+wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that
+covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we
+have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
+comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
+his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
+as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
+thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for
+example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and
+its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his
+works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the
+malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been
+exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among
+these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial
+origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of
+society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and
+after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient
+element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a
+philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had
+still to be fought out.'"
+
+Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
+Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
+biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
+while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt
+whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information
+he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege
+of Lyons occurred under the _Directory_--which it preceded by a year
+or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered
+the navy, was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,
+_subsequently_ enlisted "in the Army of Italy, then flushed with
+triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits"--language
+indicating the campaign of 1796-97; that "soon after his enrollment in
+the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers
+in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise
+[acquired apparently on shipboard] was of the greatest use and
+_brought him into general notice_"--making him, we may infer, a
+special favorite of Bonaparte;--we can easily believe that these
+things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity,"
+and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to
+more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of
+a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on
+the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented
+to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army as
+soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to intercept, were out of
+sight." Lord Houghton has evidently not read the best and most recent
+criticisms on the Waterloo campaign, but he should at least have known
+that Grouchy was sent, not to intercept, but to follow the Prussians
+in their retreat from Ligny, and that, if he lost sight of them,
+it was because, instead of falling back on their own line of
+communication, as Napoleon had expected them to do, they turned off to
+effect a junction with the English army.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+
+Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every
+species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent
+north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six
+steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By Elliott
+Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem: Naturalists'
+Agency.
+
+Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New
+Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.
+New York: James Miller.
+
+The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By C.C.P.
+Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker & Godwin.
+
+On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the Russian
+by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt & Williams.
+
+The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz
+Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.
+
+Harry Coverdale's Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
+Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.
+Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 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. 30. September, 1873
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2004 [EBook #14036]
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+  <h1>LIPPINCOTT&#39;S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+  <h3>OF</h3>
+
+  <h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+  <hr class="short" />
+
+  <h4>SEPTEMBER, 1873.<br />
+  Vol XII, No. 30.</h4>
+  <hr class="short" />
+  <br />
+  <br />
+
+  <h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h3>
+
+  <div class="toc">
+
+    <a href="#illustrations">ILLUSTRATIONS.</a>
+
+    <p><a href="#hyperion">THE NEW HYPERION</a>
+    [Illustrated] by EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#feast">III.&#8212;The Feast Of Saint
+    Athanasius.</a> (249)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#twomoods">TWO MOODS</a> by MARY STEWART
+    DOUBLEDAY. (261)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#ride">THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT</a> by
+    MARTIN I. GRIFFIN. (262)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#sketches">SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.</a>
+    [Illustrated]</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#count">I.&#8212;The Count De Beauvoir In
+    China.</a> (263)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#thule">A PRINCESS OF THULE</a> by WILLIAM
+    BLACK.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxiv">Chapter XIV.&#8212;Deeper And
+    Deeper.</a> (275)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#thulechxv">Chapter XV.&#8212;A Friend In
+    Need.</a> (285)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#english">ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES</a>
+    (294)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#rambles">RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND
+    FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS</a> by FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#ramblesconclud">Concluding Paper</a>
+    (302)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#lotos">A LOTOS OF THE NILE</a> by
+    CHRISTIAN REID. (309)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#echo">ECHO.</a> by A.J. (321)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#tyrol">OUR HOME IN THE TYROL</a>
+    [Illustrated] by MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchix">Chapter IX.</a> (322)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#tyrolchx">Chapter X.</a> (327)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#colorado">COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK</a>
+    by S.C. CLARKE. (332)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#patrons">THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY</a> by
+    MARIE ROWLAND. (338)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#churchsteps">ON THE CHURCH STEPS</a> by
+    SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschvi">Chapter VI.</a> (343)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschvii">Chapter VII.</a>
+    (346)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschviii">Chapter VIII.</a>
+    (348)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#churchstepschix">Chapter IX.</a> (352)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#turkey">HOW THEY &quot;KEEP A HOTEL&quot;
+    IN TURKEY</a> by EDWIN DE LEON. (354)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#gossip">OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</a></p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#vienna">The Californian At Vienna</a> by
+    PRENTICE MULFORD. (357)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#ghostly">Ghostly Warriors.</a> (360)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#warning">A Warning To Lovers.</a> (362)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#notes">NOTES.</a> (363)</p>
+
+    <p><a href="#literature">LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</a>
+    (365)</p>
+
+    <p class="i4"><a href="#books">Books Received.</a></p>
+    <hr />
+    <br />
+    <a name="illustrations" id="illustrations"></a>
+
+    <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS</h4>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0001">THE PAULISTS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0002">THE REWARD OF AN
+    INVENTOR.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0003">CARDINAL BALUE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0004">AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0005">LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0006">LE RAINCY: THE
+    CHATEAU.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0007">CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0008">BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF
+    CLIQUOT.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0009">CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0010">THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK
+    CHAMPAGNE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0011">ADMIRATION.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0012">MAC MEURTRIER.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0013">THE BLACK DOMINO.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0014">TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S
+    RIDE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0015">THE CROOKED MAN.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0016">THE GRAVITY ROAD.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0017">THE ANIMATED CELLS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0018">THE TRAVELER&#39;S
+    REST.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0019">PALACE AT STRASBURG.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0020">THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S
+    CART.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0021">HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT
+    HO-CHI-WOU.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0022">AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO
+    THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0023">PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE
+    EMPERORS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0024">THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO
+    PASS.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0025">CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER
+    PALACE.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0026">VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0027">COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE
+    BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.</a></p>
+
+    <p><a href="#image-0028">A PROCESSION.</a></p><br />
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum">[pg 249]</span>
+  </div><a name="hyperion" id="hyperion"></a>
+
+  <h2>THE NEW HYPERION.</h2>
+
+  <h2>FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="feast" id="feast"></a> III.&#8212;THE FEAST OF SAINT
+  ATHANASIUS.</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 PAULISTS." /></a>THE PAULISTS.
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to
+  empty the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of
+  tired soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the
+  old proverb of Aretino came into my head: &quot;Truly all courtesy
+  and good manners come from taverns.&quot; I grasped my botany-box and
+  pursued my promenade toward Noisy.</p>
+
+  <p>The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in
+  history. One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the
+  inventor of the famous gibbet of Montfauçon, and in the poetic
+  justice which should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his
+  own gallows. He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by
+  the common executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none
+  of his ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in
+  meeting a guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular
+  coincidence another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long
+  detention in an iron-barred cage&#8212;one of those famous cages, so
+  much favored by Louis XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from
+  the records of the time, had the patent-right for invention, or at
+  least improvement. Once firmly engaged in his own torture&#8212;while
+  his friend Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 250]</span> a similar box, and the foxy old
+  king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead&#8212;we
+  may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
+  fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.</p><a name=
+  "image-0002" id="image-0002"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_1.jpg" alt="THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice
+  I took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full
+  domain of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern
+  road separate&#8212;the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The
+  sight of the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and
+  of the frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly
+  endeavored to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It
+  was on this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung
+  and the cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory.
+  &quot;Small choice,&quot; said I, &quot;whether the bars are
+  perpendicular or horizontal. You lose your independence about equally
+  by either monopoly.&quot;</p><a name="image-0003" id="image-0003">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_2.jpg" alt="CARDINAL BALUE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CARDINAL BALUE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I crossed the Canal de l&#39;Ourcq, and watched it stretching like
+  a steel tape to meet the Canal Saint&#8212;Denis and the Canal
+  Saint-Martin in the great basin at La Villette&#8212;a construction
+  which, finished in 1809, was the making of La Villette as a
+  commercial and industrial entrepôt. I meant to walk to Bondy, and
+  after a botanic stroll in its beautiful forest to retrace my steps,
+  gaining Marly next day by Baubigny, Aubervilliers and Nanterre.
+  &quot;The Aladdins of our time,&quot; I said as I leaned over the
+  soft gray water, &quot;are the engineers. They rub their theodolites,
+  and there springs up, not a palace, but a town.&quot;</p><a name=
+  "image-0004" id="image-0004"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0002_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0002_3.jpg" alt="AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Who speaks of engineers?&quot; said a strong baritone voice
+  as a weighty hand fell on my shoulder. &quot;Are you here to take the
+  train at Noisy?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary,
+  to get away from it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Épernay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean, Épernay?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint
+  Athanasius?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean, Athanasius?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The baritone belonged to one of my <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  251]</span> friends, an engineer from Boston. He had an American
+  commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the part of a company
+  formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and dig a ship-canal
+  from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made his inspection the
+  excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel, during which time
+  the company had exploded, its chief financier having cut his throat
+  when his peculations came out to the public.</p><a name="image-0005"
+  id="image-0005"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_1.jpg" alt="LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest
+  possible duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have
+  the remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have
+  in addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary
+  baptism; and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole
+  renegade from the vow which you have extracted from the
+  others.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
+  a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
+  pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.</p>
+
+  <p>We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I
+  have some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I
+  could find a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy
+  Taylor if I had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little
+  restaurant Ober, near the Odéon, with a small party of medical
+  students, to which order Grandstone&#39;s friends mostly belonged. We
+  were all young that night; and truly I hold that the affectionate
+  confusion of two or three different generations adds a charm to
+  friendship.</p><a name="image-0006" id="image-0006"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0003_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0003_2.jpg" alt="LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian
+  names. I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that
+  their historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment
+  forgotten, their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and
+  William no longer carried the thoughts back to the English
+  kings&#8212;Joseph and Reuben were powerless to remind us of the
+  mighty family of Israel.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 252]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have no complaint to make of my own name,&quot; I
+  protested, &quot;which has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor.
+  That was at Würtemberg, gentlemen. &#39;You are from America,&#39;
+  the old man said to me, &#39;but you have a German name: Paul
+  Flemming was one of our old poets.&#39; The thought has been a
+  pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest idea what my
+  ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality my
+  Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to
+  desire.&quot;</p><a name="image-0007" id="image-0007"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0004_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0004_1.jpg" alt="CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I
+  set up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in
+  any company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out
+  &quot;Paul!&quot; through the doorway, six husbands at least would
+  start and say, &quot;Coming, dear!&quot; I computed the Pauls
+  belonging to one of the grand nations, and proved that an army
+  recruited from them would be large enough to carry on a war against a
+  power of the second order.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls,&quot; I
+  declared, looking toward my young host, &quot;Russia itself would
+  tremble.&#8212;Are you to make your start in life with no better
+  name?&quot; I asked him maliciously. &quot;Must you be for ever kept
+  in mediocrity by an address that is not the designation of an
+  individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not have been called by
+  something rather less oecumenical?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You may style me by what title you please, Mr.
+  Flemming,&quot; said Grandstone nonchalantly. &quot;I am to enter a
+  great New York wine-house after a little examination of the
+  grape-country here. Doubtless a Grandstone will have, by any other
+  name, a bouquet as sweet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The idea took. An almanac of saints&#39; days, which is often
+  printed in combination with the <i>menu</i> of a restaurant, was
+  lying on the table. Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose
+  was within an ace of being chosen, but Grandstone protested against
+  it as too short, and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that
+  presented. Our engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket
+  a vial of water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships&#39; bottoms;
+  and with that classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the
+  bottle being broken on poor Grandstone&#39;s crown as on the prow of
+  a ship.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius,&quot; I said.
+  &quot;If you remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you.
+  Meantime, let us vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint
+  Athanasius and hold a love-feast.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next
+  day I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas.
+  And my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to
+  the rude reminder given by my engineer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I had quite forgotten my engagement,&quot; I confessed.
+  &quot;Besides, Grandstone <span class="pagenum">[pg 253]</span> is
+  living now, as you remind me, at Épernay&#8212;that is to say, at
+  seventy or eighty miles&#39; distance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Say three hours,&quot; he retorted: &quot;on a railway line
+  we don&#39;t count by miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to
+  satisfy your promise and report yourself for the feast of Saint
+  Athanasius? If you are not bound for Épernay, where <i>are</i> you
+  bound?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am off for Marly.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow.
+  You can be at Épernay sooner.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow,&quot; I
+  continued, rather helplessly; &quot;and Josephine my cook is there
+  this afternoon boiling the mutton-hams.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or
+  even at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
+  railroads&#8212;a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
+  engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
+  soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the
+  locomotive, offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone
+  and Hohenfels. Come, get your ticket!&quot;</p><a name="image-0008"
+  id="image-0008"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0005_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0005_1.jpg" alt=
+    "BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
+  like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
+  head. I could reach Épernay by five o&#39;clock, returning at eight,
+  and, notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the
+  champagne-country, I could resume my promenade and modify in no
+  respect my original plan; and I could say to Hohenfels, &quot;My boy,
+  I have popped a few corks with the widow Cliquot.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me
+  in their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite
+  unexpectedly.</p>
+
+  <p>From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard&#39;s, the
+  landscape spun out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to
+  visit at all events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs
+  of its ancient château, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of
+  the Renaissance, and whose alternately round and square pavilions,
+  tipped with steep mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay
+  visitors in the costume of the <i>grand siècle</i>. Then came the
+  cathedral of Meaux, before which I reverently took off my cap to
+  salute the great Bossuet&#8212;&quot;Eagle of Meaux,&quot; as they
+  justly called him, and on the whole a noble <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  254]</span> bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
+  exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
+  a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was a
+  crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of a
+  hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
+  Middle Ages.</p><a name="image-0009" id="image-0009"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0006_1.jpg" alt="CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CHURCH-DOOR, ÉPERNAY.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of
+  wine stood upon end?&quot; he said&#8212;&quot;those donjons at the
+  corners, tapering at the top, and presenting the very image of noble
+  bottles? There needs nothing but that palace to convince you that you
+  have arrived in the champagne region.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not know the building,&quot; I confessed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer
+  storm, when the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of
+  mason-work, and the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a
+  whole basket of champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the château
+  of Boursault, apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really
+  a marvel of yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a
+  lyre, like the towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable
+  bottles, causing to resound all over the world the name of the widow
+  Cliquot.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>At length we entered the station of Épernay. There I received my
+  first shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy
+  was one which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme
+  suburbs of Paris at three o&#39;clock in the morning.</p>
+
+  <p>Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of
+  Épernay with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse,
+  received us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed
+  into plain James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would
+  bear fruit. Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the
+  date. The feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar
+  shoved beneath a quantity of vintners&#39; cards on his study-table,
+  fell on the second of May, and could not be celebrated before the
+  evening of the first. It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited
+  us, then, for the next day at dinner, warning us at the same time
+  that the evening of that same morrow would see him on his way to the
+  Falls of Schaffhausen. This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled
+  me.</p><a name="image-0010" id="image-0010"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0006_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0006_2.jpg" alt="THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We both laughed heartily at the engineer&#39;s mistake of
+  twenty-four hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.</p>
+
+  <p>Athanasius&#8212;whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives
+  him, as I maintain, <span class="pagenum">[pg 255]</span> a more
+  distinct individuality,&#8212;Athanasius happened to be driving out
+  for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was about to
+  accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner. He
+  contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
+  his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
+  even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
+  us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
+  when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there
+  without being overheard.</p>
+
+  <p>Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city
+  of Épernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce,
+  flanked with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
+  a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
+  contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
+  environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
+  has this peculiarity&#8212;its veritable spring, its pride of May,
+  arrives in the autumn.</p><a name="image-0011" id="image-0011">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_1.jpg" alt="ADMIRATION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      ADMIRATION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a
+  beggar. He was sitting on Grandstone&#39;s steps as we emerged. Aged
+  hardly fourteen, he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes
+  coming up from the kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence
+  that amused me. The maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and
+  the remainders of our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme
+  breadth and intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he
+  laid by the biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same
+  time he produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass,
+  nicked at the rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his
+  bowl, he drank to the health of the waitress with the easiest
+  politeness it was ever my lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of
+  Murillo&#39;s, courteous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he added a grace
+  and an epicurism completely French. I thought him the best possible
+  figure-head for that opulent spot, cradle of the hilarity of the
+  world. I gave him five francs.</p><a name="image-0012" id=
+  "image-0012"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_2.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_2.jpg" alt="MAC MEURTRIER." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      MAC MEURTRIER.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Épernay,
+  its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They are
+  subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
+  colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
+  Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 256]</span> religion are they the
+  representations? They are cellar-doors.</p><a name="image-0013" id=
+  "image-0013"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0007_3.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0007_3.jpg" alt="THE BLACK DOMINO." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE BLACK DOMINO.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars,
+  said Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of
+  the most renowned.</p>
+
+  <p>I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found
+  the Eleusinian mysteries.</p><a name="image-0014" id="image-0014">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0008_1.jpg" alt="TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S RIDE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      TAM O&#39;SHANTER&#39;S RIDE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
+  middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
+  other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
+  approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.</p>
+
+  <p>Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his
+  hands a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The
+  latter met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still,
+  but the twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh
+  retained with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less
+  beautiful Norma, to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical
+  strokes. A strong, pealing bass voice came from the interior:
+  &quot;Who dares knock at this door?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A night-bird,&quot; said the man in the cloak, who took the
+  part of spokesman. &quot;What has the night-bird to do with the
+  eagle?&quot; replied the strong voice. &quot;What can there be in
+  common between the heathen in his blindness and the Ancient of the
+  Mountain throned in power and splendor?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to
+  plunge.&quot; After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the
+  red-nosed man was quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at
+  the door, where a flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden
+  plunge.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What nonsense is this?&quot; I said to Athanasius.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The man in the iron mask,&quot; he explained, &quot;is in
+  that respect what we shall all be in a minute. Without such a
+  protector, in passing amongst the first year&#39;s bottles we might
+  receive a few hits in the face.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And do you know the new apprentice?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No: some stranger, evidently.&quot;</p><a name="image-0015"
+  id="image-0015"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0008_2.jpg"><img width="40%" src=
+    "images/0008_2.jpg" alt="THE CROOKED MAN." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE CROOKED MAN.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not hard to guess his extraction,&quot; <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 257]</span> said one of our dinner-party. &quot;In the
+  East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each eye. For his part,
+  he seems to be braced with two pans in each knee. He is long in the
+  stilts like a heron, square&#8212;headed and square-shouldered: I
+  give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,&quot; he added,
+  &quot;I have seen his likeness somewhere&#8212;Ah yes, in an
+  engraving of Hogarth&#39;s!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
+  gentleman, at whose side I had dined&#8212;a man of sharpness and
+  wit, for which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated
+  finally into the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with
+  iron railways for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by
+  heavy wagons and Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding
+  wonders was distracted by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the
+  unfortunate red nose.</p><a name="image-0016" id="image-0016">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0009_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0009_1.jpg" alt="THE GRAVITY ROAD" /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE GRAVITY ROAD.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful
+  exploding noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were
+  marching through the catacombs.</p>
+
+  <p>Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
+  foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
+  pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the
+  wine-frames, came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O&#39;Shanter.
+  At a new outburst of resonant noises, which we could not help
+  offering to the general confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed
+  twice or thrice the attitude of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The
+  figure of the man, still rigid, flew up into the air like a stick
+  that pops out of the water. The Terrible Brothers received him in
+  their arms.</p>
+
+  <p>Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced
+  in the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and
+  the barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined
+  tramway. His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with
+  indignation and horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his
+  eyes flew off, and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a
+  rate of speed continually increasing.</p>
+
+  <p>He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
+  arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers quite
+  disheveled with laughter, said, &quot;Fellows, we had better stop
+  somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
+  in the rôle of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 258]</span> we are wanted. I always knew
+  there was a Society of Pure Illumination at Épernay. It is not a
+  Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes, its grips, and in a
+  word its secret. I have recognized among these gentlemen some active
+  members of the order&#8212;among others, notwithstanding his
+  disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here, Fortnoye.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You cannot have seen Fortnoye,&quot; said one of the party:
+  &quot;he is at Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And who is your Fortnoye, pray?&quot; I asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The best tenor voice in Épernay; but his presence here does
+  not give <i>me</i> an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure
+  Illumination has its rites and mysteries more important than
+  everybody supposes, and probably complicated with board-of-trade
+  secrets among the wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us
+  go and visit another cellar.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
+  expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear boys,&quot; I said, &quot;as the grayest among you I
+  may be presumed to be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be
+  myself. I have received to-day a succession of unaccustomed
+  influences. I have been dragged about by an impertinent locomotive; I
+  have been induced to dine heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps
+  to the limit of my measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am
+  naturally thoughtful, studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is
+  for me an unfaded morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at
+  pleasure, and read within its tube legends written in dusted gold.
+  But the Present to the true philosopher is also&#8212;In fact, I
+  never was so much amused in my life. I am dying to see what they will
+  do with that Scotchman.&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="60%" src=
+    "images/0010_1.jpg" alt="THE ANIMATED CELLS" /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE ANIMATED CELLS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
+  could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
+  was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
+  ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
+  out after long service and leaning against a wall.</p>
+
+  <p>Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could
+  see everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries,
+  sitting in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral
+  tests. Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white
+  bandage which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still
+  perfectly white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master
+  arose&#8212;I should have said the Reverend&#8212;his head nodding
+  with senility, his beard white as a waterfall: he appeared to be
+  eighty years of age at least. He was truly venerable to look at, and
+  reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of dalmatica embroidered with
+  gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly marked on the aspect of
+  this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing the spy, and felt inclined
+  to return humbly to the good counsel of Athanasius, when the latter,
+  pushing my elbow behind the shelves, said, referring to the Ancient
+  of the Mountain, &quot;That&#39;s Fortnoye: I knew I couldn&#39;t be
+  mistaken.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
+  Épernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
+  only of listening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The barleycorns of your native North having been partially
+  cleaned out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted
+  steeds&#8212;the steed you bridled without a head, and the steed that
+  ran away with you without legs,&quot; said the Ancient&#8212;&quot;we
+  have brought you hither for examination. We might have gone much
+  farther with the physical tests: we might have forced you, at the
+  present session, to relieve yourself of those envelopes considered
+  indispensable by all Europeans beneath your own latitude, and in our
+  presence perform the sword-dance.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So be it,&quot; said the disciple, executing a galvanic
+  figure with his legs, his countenance still like marble.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring
+  it in?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth,&quot; replied the red
+  nose. &quot;Give me the daggers.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful
+  to a man of such evident sensibility as yours.&quot; The red nose
+  bowed. &quot;What is your name?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He pronounced it&#8212;apparently MacMurtagh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;MacMeurtrier,&quot; muttered the Scotchman in a tone of
+  abstraction.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am a homoeopathic doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that
+  the <span class="pagenum">[pg 259]</span> Ancient of the Mountain
+  hears what you say.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The Scot held up his hand: &quot;I believe in the learned
+  Hahnemann, and in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself;
+  but,&quot; he added, &quot;homoeopathy is a science still in its
+  baby-clothes. I have invented a system perfectly novel. In mingling
+  homoeopathy with vegetable magnetism the most encouraging results are
+  obtained, as may be observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh,
+  near Edinburgh&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Enough!&quot; cried the Ancient: &quot;circulars are not
+  allowed here. Forget nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired
+  with the pious ambition of becoming our brother?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the
+  wine-houses. I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the
+  lodge of Épernay&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Silence! The words you use, <i>lodge</i> and <i>Free
+  Mason</i>, are most improper in this temple, which is that of the
+  Pure Illumination, and nothing less. Will you remember,
+  Meurtrier?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;MacMeurtrier,&quot; muttered the novice again. The last
+  proofs were now tried upon him, called the &quot;five senses.&quot;
+  For that of hearing he was made to listen to a jewsharp, which he
+  calmly proclaimed to be the bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made
+  to feel by turns a live fish, a hot iron and a little stuffed
+  hedgehog. The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, and announced
+  gravely, &quot;It sticks me.&quot; The laughs broke out from all
+  sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of
+  that fatal honeycomb!</p><a name="image-0018" id="image-0018">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0011_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0011_1.jpg" alt="THE TRAVELER&#39;S REST." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE TRAVELER&#39;S REST.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or
+  other, and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion
+  the wine of Moët: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was
+  to follow, and the semicircle <span class="pagenum">[pg 260]</span>
+  of purple faces was quite blackening with bottled laughter, when
+  Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour for departure was
+  come, and I had not a minute to spare.</p><a name="image-0019" id=
+  "image-0019"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0012_1.jpg"><img width="60%" src=
+    "images/0012_1.jpg" alt="PALACE AT STRASBURG." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      PALACE AT STRASBURG.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph:
+  as we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the
+  voices exclaim in concert, &quot;It is the Pure
+  Illumination!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were
+  perfectly Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast
+  establishments, where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward
+  from the wine in store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and
+  dismiss him as an Anacreon.</p>
+
+  <p>Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe&#39;s
+  conversation with his soul, &quot;serious and sober.&quot; In the
+  cellar no drop had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I
+  entered: I came out in a species of voluptuous dream.</p>
+
+  <p>All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very
+  much touched with the attention. It was who should carry my
+  botany-box, who should set my cap straight, who should give me the
+  most precise and statistical information about the train which
+  returned to Paris, with a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I
+  chanted snatches of old songs, and mingled together in a tender
+  reverie my recollections of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my
+  theories of Progressive Geography.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to
+  the city.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t let them carry you beyond Noisy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come back to Épernay every May-day: never forget the feast
+  of Saint Athanasius.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come,
+  man, bundle up! they are closing the barrier.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. &quot;Adieu,&quot; I
+  said, &quot;my dear champanions&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep
+  directly.</p>
+
+  <p>Next day I awoke&#8212;at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening
+  before, making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had
+  traveled beside me in the adjoining car.</p>
+
+  <p>My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
+  clustered around me.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 261]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, boys,&quot; I said, &quot;I have too many griefs
+  imprisoned in this aching bosom to be much put out by the ordinary
+  &#39;Horrid Hoax.&#39; But you have compromised my reputation. I
+  promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly: children, bankruptcy stares me
+  in the face.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: &quot;You
+  wished to dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you
+  mistook the day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he
+  voluntarily deceived you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have
+  concocted a little conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit
+  in fact, when you are not in your <i>lubies</i> about the Past and
+  the Future. We wanted you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen
+  you at Noisy, Cethigus tucked you into a car with the intention of
+  making use of you at Schaffhausen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not
+  to revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn
+  promise, a consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will
+  not carry me to Schaffhausen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know
+  that no great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for
+  Bâle. For my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional
+  duties, such as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital
+  of Alsace. In his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were
+  to meet each other shortly.</p>
+
+  <p>It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
+  railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
+  counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
+  the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
+  five hours and three-quarters to spare.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor
+  opinion, is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps,
+  cleared the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it
+  might be, I was glad of everything. I was glad the
+  &quot;champanions&quot; were departed, glad I had a stolen morning in
+  Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my domestics would be uneasy for
+  me at Marly.</p>
+
+  <p>In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
+  detention in the city.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWARD STRAHAN.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="twomoods" id=
+  "twomoods"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>TWO MOODS.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">All yesterday you were so near to me,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">It seemed as if I hardly moved or spoke</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">But your heart moved with mine. I woke</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To a new life that found you everywhere,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As if your love was as some wide-girt sea,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Or as the sunlit air;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And so encompassed me,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Whether I thought or not, it could not but be
+      there.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">To-day your words approve me, and your heart</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Is mine as ever, yet that heavenly sense</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Of oneness that made every hour intense</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With Love&#39;s full perfectness, is gone from
+      thence;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And, though our hands are clasped, our souls are
+      two,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And in my thoughts I say, &quot;This is
+      myself&#8212;this you!&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY. <span class="pagenum">[pg 262]</span>
+  </center><a name="ride" id="ride"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.</h2>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">A little vext at losing of the hunt,</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">A little at the vile occasion, rode</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">By ups and downs through many a glassy glade</p>
+
+      <p class="i6">And valley, with fixt eye following the three.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p class="i16"><i>Enid</i>.</p>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Through forest paths his charger strode,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His heron plume behind him flowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Blood-red the west with sunset glowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Far down the river golden flowed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And in the woods the winds were still:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">No helm had he, nor lance in rest;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His knightly beard flowed down his breast;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In silken costume gayly drest,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Out from the glory of the west</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">He flashed adown the purple hill.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">His sword hung tasseled at his side,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">His purple scarf was floating wide,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And all his raiment many-dyed,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As if he came to seek a bride,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And not the combat that he sought;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Yet rode he like a prince, and one</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Native to noble deeds alone,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Who many a valiant tilt had run,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And many a prize of tourney won</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">In Arthur&#39;s lists at Camelot.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Cool grasses and green mosses made</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Soft carpet for his charger&#39;s tread,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As &#39;neath the oak boughs dark o&#39;erhead,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">By belts of pasture scant of shade,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Into the Castle Town he rode:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">He heard, as things are heard in dreams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The sound of far-off falling streams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The shriller bird-choir&#39;s evening hymns:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">He saw but only helmet-gleams,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">The smith that smote, the fire that glowed,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The sheen of lances, and the cloud</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">From many a field-forge fire, the crowd</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Of gay-clad squires, and, neighing loud,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The war-horse with rich trappings proud,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That arched his neck and pawed the ground;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Old armorers grave and stern in stall,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Where low-crowned morions, helmets tall,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Shone gilt and burnished on the wall;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And, shining brighter than them all,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">The eyes of maidens sun-embrowned.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p class="center">MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  263]</span> <a name="sketches" id="sketches"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="count" id="count"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> I.&#8212;THE
+  COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.</h3>
+
+  <p>Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates,
+  and China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
+  the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
+  country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
+  systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
+  French travelers in the East, each tinged, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  264]</span> in a measure, with the national spirit of their
+  respective countries. In the case of the traveler, as of the
+  astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the personal equation, has
+  to be made in receiving the accounts of his observations.</p><a name=
+  "image-0020" id="image-0020"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0015_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0015_1.jpg" alt="THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S CART." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE MANDARIN CHING&#39;S CART.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in
+  company with the duke de Penthièvre, son of the prince de Joinville,
+  is entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the
+  travelers by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to
+  obtain the best conditions for investigating various matters of
+  interest.</p>
+
+  <p>On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing
+  &quot;on the quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over
+  his ear, his rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and
+  full of the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector&#8212;as martial
+  and as authoritative as in his native land.&quot; The appearance of
+  the population here struck our travelers as different from that of
+  the native Chinese farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored,
+  lean, and slightly clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy
+  as children and fat as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or
+  five pelisses, worn one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so
+  that a single man smelt like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of
+  dress was this: half a dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with
+  a single overcoat with extremely long sleeves, falling down to their
+  knees. These garments made them resemble balls of wool rather than
+  men.</p>
+
+  <p>By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the
+  town devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of
+  fortune, from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled
+  with these latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars,
+  hardly human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow
+  upon the ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention.
+  The cause of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in
+  one of the gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness
+  of these people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered
+  about this fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious
+  deference strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower
+  stratum, however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
+  obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
+  politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
+  poverty, was wanting.</p>
+
+  <p>A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
+  Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
+  road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals. On
+  both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
+  surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
+  grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
+  fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
+  in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
+  dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may
+  be imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the
+  dead is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of
+  the telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai
+  had built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the
+  mail, but in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred
+  places&#8212;at all the points where its shadow from the rising sun
+  fell upon the coffins lying on the ground.</p>
+
+  <p>At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and,
+  dressed in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes,
+  received their visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are
+  divided into three classes. The first consists of the children of the
+  neighboring towns who have been deserted by their parents and left to
+  die of hunger. The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or
+  less perfectly cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution
+  they are thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They
+  receive an industrial as well as a literary education. In one
+  building they are taught to read and <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  265]</span> write, and in another are the schools for shoemaking,
+  carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that, being received
+  at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they are launched
+  upon the world with an education and a trade.</p>
+
+  <p>There are about four hundred children in this class, and the
+  activity, the order and organization of the workshops, and the
+  exquisite cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see.
+  Near at hand is a school of a higher grade, to which the most
+  promising pupils are transferred for the study of Chinese literature.
+  The system of teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required
+  to study aloud, and the din is in consequence deafening and
+  incessant. Then there is the highest class, consisting of about two
+  hundred and fifty youths, the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily
+  for their instruction. These are destined to become rhetoricians,
+  and, step by step, bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 266]</span> and members of the governing
+  class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and the Fathers
+  have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese language,
+  as well as its written characters, but also the nice critical points
+  of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with authority the poetry
+  and legends and the commentaries upon the writings of Confucius. This
+  they have done for the purpose of having an opportunity to convert
+  the orphans they have adopted, and thus by degrees introduce into the
+  government an element which will be essentially Christian. Thus far,
+  the profession of Christianity is not essentially incompatible with
+  the office of mandarin, though it is impossible to hold this position
+  without performing some idolatrous rites.</p><a name="image-0021" id=
+  "image-0021"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0018_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0018_1.jpg" alt="HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
+  navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
+  Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
+  commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
+  functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
+  of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
+  a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
+  of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally
+  got off after the removal of a part of her cargo.</p>
+
+  <p>The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the
+  narrowness of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course.
+  Frequently the steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and
+  fastened round a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and
+  witnessed a review of some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon
+  Tartar ponies, with high saddles and short stirrups. The warriors
+  wore queues and were dressed in long robes. Their moustaches gave
+  them, however, a fierce martial air, and they were armed with English
+  sabres and American revolvers.</p>
+
+  <p>Tien-Tsin (&quot;Heaven&#39;s Ford&quot;) is a city of about four
+  hundred thousand inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the
+  Imperial Canal with the Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about
+  three days&#39; journey by land, is sandy, and the trip is made a
+  very disagreeable one by the clouds of dust, which blind the traveler
+  and effectually prevent any examination of the country passed
+  through.</p>
+
+  <p>The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by
+  two mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow
+  made of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard
+  long, furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down
+  in them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be
+  placed in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however,
+  they are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the
+  left shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat
+  the mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in
+  front, with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel.
+  As they are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends
+  chiefly upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the
+  road; while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught
+  is always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.</p>
+
+  <p>At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal
+  button, sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin,
+  Tchoung-Hao, with a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During
+  the rest of the journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart
+  drawn by a fine black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the
+  route displayed his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an
+  immense pair of spectacles, the glasses of which were about three
+  inches in diameter. At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the
+  middle of the day, and was photographed by one of its members. The
+  curious crowd of spectators which gathered in every village to
+  inspect the &quot;foreign devils&quot; scattered when the camera was
+  posed, and for a few moments our travelers were freed from their
+  intrusiveness.</p><a name="image-0022" id="image-0022"><!--IMG--></a>
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 267]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0021_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0021_1.jpg" alt=
+    "AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Starting next morning at daylight, at <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  268]</span> three in the afternoon the party entered Pekin. The
+  relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for one of the paved
+  ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of the city struck
+  the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the Celestial
+  Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof of green
+  tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which grinned
+  the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as could be
+  seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built partly
+  of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
+  battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
+  impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
+  grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
+  archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
+  Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
+  carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.</p>
+
+  <p>Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
+  important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
+  before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
+  twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
+  into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
+  Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
+  high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
+  the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone
+  masonry resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built
+  of a solid core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved
+  with tiles, and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of
+  which are fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances
+  of about one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which
+  are in the Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the
+  partition wall between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is
+  an enclosure, also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this
+  another, called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial
+  palaces and pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each
+  other at right angles, run through the whole city, which in this
+  respect is very unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the
+  Tartar city near its north-west corner divides into two branches,
+  which enter the Imperial City and surround the Forbidden City, and
+  then uniting again pass through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to
+  empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.</p>
+
+  <p>The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
+  on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
+  promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
+  whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
+  examination, comes to the following conclusions: &quot;This immense
+  city, in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden
+  under the severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly
+  disintegrating, and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of
+  this slow decomposition is sad, since it promises death more
+  certainly than the most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will
+  exist no longer; it must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will
+  be discovered, like a second Pompeii, buried under its own
+  dust.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
+  the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of the
+  Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
+  attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
+  harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
+  favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
+  this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
+  six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
+  death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
+  built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
+  seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
+  fantastic dragons, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 269]</span> are
+  still in good condition, though they have been exposed to the open
+  air all this time. One of them was a celestial sphere eight feet in
+  diameter, containing all the stars known in 1650 and visible in
+  Pekin.</p><a name="image-0023" id="image-0023"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0024_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0024_1.jpg" alt=
+    "PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the
+  Lamas, that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin
+  pass quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell
+  in the world&#8212;the great bell of Moscow has never been
+  hung&#8212;twenty-five feet high, weighing ninety thousand pounds,
+  and richly sculptured.</p>
+
+  <p>The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a
+  stranger to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese,
+  which can be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the
+  applicant should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance,
+  make <span class="pagenum">[pg 270]</span> himself a Chinese. Even
+  then, complete success is gained only by a fortunate combination of
+  circumstances. The streets devoted to shops of all kinds afford,
+  however, to the traveler a never-ending succession of changing and
+  interesting pictures. Yet the general spirit of the Chinese leads
+  them also to be sparing of all outward decoration, reserving their
+  forces for interior display. The Forbidden City even, though
+  marvelous stories are told of its interior splendors, has outside a
+  mean appearance. &quot;A pagoda of the thirty-sixth rank has more
+  effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son of Heaven.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility,
+  the party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of
+  disdain on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere
+  the curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
+  themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
+  higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
+  them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
+  the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
+  that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
+  farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince&#39;s cart they
+  are so far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule.
+  Palanquins, carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another
+  and the most convenient means of locomotion used in China: this
+  method is, however, forbidden except for princes and ministers of
+  state.</p>
+
+  <p>In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands
+  of scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles
+  raised in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels,
+  coolies, soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to
+  the confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old
+  men carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of
+  the scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
+  with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
+  sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
+  the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin
+  are frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which
+  is secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so
+  that in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This
+  curious, indistinct note had excited the count&#39;s attention, and
+  he learned its cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet,
+  having in its flight struck itself against the cord of one of the
+  kites. Their use was explained by the natives as a protection against
+  the hawks which are very common in Pekin.</p>
+
+  <p>Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked
+  to see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public
+  gaze, labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such
+  sights as this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities,
+  the squalid suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with
+  indigence and disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently
+  suggest to European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is
+  hopeless. Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every
+  European capital, and the same causes which have led to their
+  cessation there are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce
+  the same results.</p><a name="image-0024" id="image-0024">
+  <!--IMG--></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg 271]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0027_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0027_1.jpg" alt="THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
+  of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
+  thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
+  government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
+  the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
+  which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
+  business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in use
+  under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
+  custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
+  lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads
+  and telegraphs and to <span class="pagenum">[pg 272]</span> open the
+  coal-mines of the empire. Success in these reforms means bringing
+  China into the circle of inter-dependent civilized nations; and so
+  far all the steps in this direction have been sure and successful
+  ones.</p>
+
+  <p>On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of
+  China, which lies about three days&#39; journey from that capital, on
+  the route to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of
+  transportation on this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full
+  of tricks as they were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts
+  for carrying the money of the expedition. The whole of this capital
+  amounted to about one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of
+  hundreds of thousands of the copper coins of the country, made with
+  holes in their centres and strung by the thousand upon osier twigs.
+  This is the only money which circulates in the agricultural portions
+  of China, and a &quot;barbarian&quot; has to give a pound weight of
+  them for a couple of eggs. The country soon began to become hilly,
+  with the mountains of Mongolia visible in the distance. Trains of
+  camels were passed, or could be seen winding in the plain below.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These
+  are the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant
+  dynasties of Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which
+  opens out from a great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks
+  and granite domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The
+  grandeur of its dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation
+  make it a fit resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native
+  dynasty. At the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic
+  tombs, encircled with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five
+  majestic portals, about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance
+  to the tombs. From the portico giving entrance to the valley to the
+  tomb of the first emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue
+  is marked first by winged columns of white marble, and next by two
+  rows of animals, carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are,
+  on either side, two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel
+  standing, one kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one
+  dragon standing, one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors,
+  courtiers, etc. The lions are fifteen feet high, and the others
+  equally colossal, while each of the figures is carved from a single
+  block of granite.</p>
+
+  <p>At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
+  them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
+  porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
+  or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
+  severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet
+  long by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet
+  high, and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single
+  stick of teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were
+  brought for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have
+  been in position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as
+  when first posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure
+  suffered in any degree.</p>
+
+  <p>The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and
+  the dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes
+  the vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
+  memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
+  access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage built
+  of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
+  structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
+  tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
+  back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
+  somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
+  precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
+  desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
+  while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
+  spot, in order further to preserve the secret.</p><a name=
+  "image-0025" id="image-0025"><!--IMG--></a> <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  273]</span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0030_1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+    "images/0030_1.jpg" alt="CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>From this gigantic effort to preserve <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  274]</span> the memory of the dead our party hastened to the Great
+  Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the living from the
+  incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps nowhere in the world
+  are to be found in such close proximity two such striking evidences
+  of the waste of human labor when undirected by scientific knowledge.
+  The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as worthless for the
+  purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are for obtaining
+  immortality for the bodies they enclose.</p>
+
+  <p>Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at
+  the entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
+  which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
+  grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
+  by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
+  appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built over
+  the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
+  following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
+  Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance,
+  climbing rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so
+  without its aid. The count was convinced that it would be as
+  difficult to climb it for the purpose of defending it as it would be
+  to do so in order to attack it. This first support of the wall is in
+  itself a giant work.</p>
+
+  <p>As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
+  crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
+  situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200
+  B.C. as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been
+  built in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the
+  materials at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth,
+  pounded, and faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles
+  and furnished with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the
+  facing was made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones.
+  Where the rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid
+  masonry, tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole
+  length it is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet.
+  Every mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower.
+  At present the wall is in various conditions of preservation,
+  according to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys,
+  which were the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere
+  heap of rubbish, which the plough year by year still further
+  scatters.</p>
+
+  <p>The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
+  organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
+  illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
+  party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
+  camera was placed upon the wall itself.</p>
+
+  <p>On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
+  Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
+  porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins.
+  Only two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in
+  China, remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry
+  them away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a
+  dozen bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel
+  of the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it
+  was situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it.
+  Looking at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this
+  wonderful collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages
+  of civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
+  truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
+  his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
+  exclaiming, &quot;Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot,
+  where the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came
+  to China as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of
+  mercy, but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling
+  us barbarians.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 275]</span>
+  <a name="thule" id="thule"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A PRINCESS OF THULE.</h2>
+
+  <h3>BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF &quot;THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
+  PHAETON.&quot;</h3><a name="thulechxiv" id="thulechxiv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+  <h3>DEEPER AND DEEPER.</h3>
+
+  <p>Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure
+  when she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram
+  step out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run
+  round and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to
+  receive him. How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget
+  herself in this monstrous fashion!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?&quot;
+  she said, with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded
+  him of many a pleasant morning in Borva.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought
+  you some flowers,&quot; he said; but there was a sort of blush in the
+  sallow face, and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion
+  that he had brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was
+  right, and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his
+  universal kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Frank is up stairs,&quot; she said, &quot;getting ready some
+  things to go to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have
+  you had breakfast?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, you were going to Brighton?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; she said; and somehow something moved her to add
+  quickly, &quot;but not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is
+  many a time you will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis,
+  but I cannot understand a large town being beside the sea, and it
+  will be a great surprise to me, I am sure of that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ay, Sheila,&quot; he said, falling into the old habit quite
+  naturally, &quot;you will find it different from Borvabost. You will
+  have no scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair
+  flying about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here
+  even; and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will
+  go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; she said with a quick look of disappointment,
+  &quot;you will not go yet. If I had known you were coming&#8212;But
+  it was very late when we will get home this morning: two o&#39;clock
+  it was.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Another ball?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the girl, but not very joyfully.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, Sheila,&quot; he said with a grave smile on his face,
+  &quot;you are becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I
+  can&#39;t keep up an acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all
+  these grand places and knows all sorts of swell people; so you&#39;ll
+  have to cut me, Sheila.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes,&quot;
+  said the girl with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then
+  she softened: &quot;But it is not kind of you to laugh at
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course I did not laugh at you,&quot; he said taking both
+  her hands in his, &quot;although I used to sometimes when you were a
+  little girl and talked very wild English. Don&#39;t you remember how
+  vexed you used to be, and how pleased you were when your papa turned
+  the laugh against me by getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence
+  about &#39;A young calf ate a raw egg&#39;?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Can you say it now?&quot; said Sheila, with her face getting
+  bright and pleased again. &quot;Try it after me. Now
+  listen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that
+  any language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow
+  her. She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
+  in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
+  Highlander.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But what are <i>you</i> now?&quot; he asked. &quot;You are
+  no longer that wild girl who used to run out to sea in the
+  Maighdean-mhara <span class="pagenum">[pg 276]</span> whenever there
+  was the excitement of a storm coming on.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Many times,&quot; she said slowly and wistfully, &quot;I
+  will wish that I could be that again for a little while.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go
+  to?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I try to like them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you don&#39;t succeed?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away
+  her head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs
+  and entered the room.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers!
+  It&#39;s a pity we can&#39;t take them to Brighton with us.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I intend to take them,&quot; said Sheila firmly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very well, if you don&#39;t mind the bother,&quot; said
+  her husband. &quot;I should have thought your hands would have been
+  full: you know you&#39;ll have to take everything with you you would
+  want in London. You will find that Brighton isn&#39;t a dirty little
+  fishing-village in which you&#39;ve only to tuck up your dress and
+  run about anyhow.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I never saw a dirty little fishing-village,&quot; said
+  Sheila quietly.</p>
+
+  <p>Her husband laughed: &quot;I meant no offence. I was not thinking
+  of Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can&#39;t you run down and see us
+  while we are at Brighton?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh do, Mr. Ingram!&quot; said Sheila with quite a new
+  interest in her face; and she came forward as though she would have
+  gone down on her knees and begged this great favor of him. &quot;Do,
+  Mr. Ingram! We should try to amuse you some way, and the weather is
+  sure to be fine. Shall we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday
+  and stay till the Monday? It is a great difference there will be in
+  the place if you come down.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
+  Lavender added, &quot;And we shall introduce you to that young
+  American lady whom you are so anxious to meet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, is she to be there?&quot; he said, looking rather
+  curiously at Lavender.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, she and her mother. We are going down
+  together.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I&#39;ll see whether I can in a day or two,&quot; he
+  said, but in a tone which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she
+  should not have her stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of
+  her old friend and associate.</p>
+
+  <p>However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and
+  when they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
+  Sheila&#39;s eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
+  discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
+  her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
+  it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
+  with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
+  other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
+  of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
+  was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
+  with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
+  concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
+  open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
+  foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
+  boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
+  friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
+  their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
+  nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
+  apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
+  their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
+  dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
+  smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed
+  from that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All
+  these and a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might
+  procure and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the
+  sea, that might be added to the little museum in which she used to
+  sing in <span class="pagenum">[pg 277]</span> days gone by, when he
+  was busy with his pipe and his whisky.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last
+  night?&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the
+  slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked admiringly at the girl&#39;s
+  fresh color and bright gray-blue eyes. &quot;It makes one envy you to
+  see you looking so strong and in such good spirits.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How happy you must be always!&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine; and
+  the younger lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her
+  mother.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am very well, thank you,&quot; said Sheila, blushing
+  somewhat and not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that
+  she had not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as
+  would have occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.</p>
+
+  <p>On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite
+  each other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of
+  small pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly
+  the best of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest
+  thing she said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in
+  the large gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say
+  something very nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if
+  she could not understand that there was any effort on the part of
+  either to assume an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and
+  listened to this aimless talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat
+  watching the gambols of a kitten, but generally she devoted herself
+  to Sheila, who sat opposite her. She did not talk much, and Sheila
+  was glad of that, but the girl felt that she was being observed with
+  some little curiosity. She wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those
+  observant gray eyes of hers away in some other direction. Now and
+  again Sheila would point out what she considered strange or striking
+  in the country outside, and for a moment the elderly lady would look
+  out. But directly afterward the gray eyes would come back to Sheila,
+  and the girl knew they were upon her. At last she so persistently
+  stared out of the window that she fell to dreaming, and all the trees
+  and the meadows and the farm-houses and the distant heights and
+  hollows went past her as though they were in a sort of mist, while
+  she replied to Mrs. Kavanagh&#39;s chance remarks in a mechanical
+  fashion, and could only hear as a monotonous murmur the talk of the
+  two people at the other side of the carriage. How much of the journey
+  did she remember? She was greatly struck by the amount of open land
+  in the neighborhood of London&#8212;the commons between Wandsworth
+  and Streatham, and so forth&#8212;and she was pleased with the
+  appearance of the country about Red Hill. For the rest, a succession
+  of fair green pictures passed by her, all bathed in a calm,
+  half-misty summer sunlight: then they pierced the chalk-hills (which
+  Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of granite) and rumbled through
+  the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse of a great mass of gray
+  houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up the bare green downs
+  beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?&quot; her
+  husband said to her with a laugh as they were driving down the
+  Queen&#39;s road.</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not like Borvabost, is it?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her
+  with a vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray
+  city was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not
+  disappear somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks
+  and the boats?</p>
+
+  <p>They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was
+  another thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great
+  interest. But the next moment there was a quick catching of her
+  breath, which almost resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang
+  into her eyes. Here at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow
+  thoroughfare she could catch a glimpse of a great green
+  plain&#8212;yellow-green it was in the sunlight&#8212;that the wind
+  was whitening <span class="pagenum">[pg 278]</span> here and there
+  with tumbling waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind
+  in-land&#8212;there everything seemed asleep&#8212;but here there was
+  a fresh breeze from the south, and the sea had been rough the day
+  before, and now it was of this strange olive color, streaked with the
+  white curls of foam that shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold
+  scent of sea-weed, too, blown up this narrow passage between the
+  houses? And now the carriage cut round the corner and whirled out
+  into the glare of the Parade, and before her the great sea stretched
+  out its leagues of tumbling and shining waves, and she heard the
+  water roaring along the beach, and far away at the horizon she saw a
+  phantom ship. She did not even look at the row of splendid hotels and
+  houses, at the gayly-dressed folks on the pavement, at the brilliant
+  flags that were flapping and fluttering on the New Pier and about the
+  beach. It was the great world of shining water beyond that fascinated
+  her, and awoke in her a strange yearning and longing, so that she did
+  not know whether it was grief or joy that burned in her heart and
+  blinded her eyes with tears. Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were
+  going up the steps of the hotel, and said in a friendly way, &quot;I
+  suppose you have some sad memories of the sea?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila bravely, &quot;it is always pleasant
+  to me to think of the sea; but it is a long time
+  since&#8212;since&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; said her husband abruptly, &quot;do tell me if
+  all your things are here;&quot; and then the girl turned, calm and
+  self-collected, to look after rugs and boxes.</p>
+
+  <p>When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
+  to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
+  stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
+  sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
+  could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
+  flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
+  people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
+  sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats
+  that were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which
+  she knew there was no use placing before her two companions.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Brighton seems to surprise you very much,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Sheila, &quot;I have been told all about it,
+  but you will forget all that; and this is very different from the sea
+  at home&#8212;at my home.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your home is in London now,&quot; said the elder lady with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no!&quot; said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly.
+  &quot;London, that is not our home at all. We live there for a
+  time&#8212;that will be quite necessary&#8212;but we shall go back to
+  the Lewis some day soon&#8212;not to stay altogether, but enough to
+  make it as much our home as London.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the
+  Hebrides?&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and
+  friendly inquiry in her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place
+  so much,&quot; said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she
+  added with growing courage, &quot;for you must not think he is always
+  like what he is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no
+  day that is nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he
+  is up very early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a
+  salmon-rod. He can catch the salmon very well&#8212;oh, very well for
+  one that is not accustomed&#8212;and he will shoot as well as any one
+  that is in the island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there
+  will be in the island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much
+  chance&#8212;not any whatever&#8212;of his being lonely or tired when
+  we go to live in the Lewis.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
+  earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
+  considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
+  she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
+  subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as to
+  whether she said <i>like-a-ness</i> or <i>likeness</i>, or whether
+  she said <i>gyarden</i> or <i>garden</i>. Indeed, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 279]</span> she forgot more than that. She was somewhat
+  excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered sound of
+  the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the North,
+  and about her husband&#39;s stay there, and how they should pass the
+  time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
+  Lavender&#39;s injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
+  cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
+  Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household at
+  Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
+  understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
+  and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
+  father&#39;s shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they
+  were very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a
+  far from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite
+  charmed with Sheila&#39;s descriptions of her island-life, and wished
+  she could go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when
+  she spoke of visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were
+  staying there, Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome
+  as the daughter of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have
+  been.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And will you go out in a boat now?&quot; said Sheila,
+  looking down to the beach.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In a boat! What sort of boat?&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats
+  they are, as far as I can see.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you,&quot; said the elder lady with a smile.
+  &quot;I am not fond of small boats, and the company of the men who go
+  with you might be a little objectionable, I should fancy.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you need not take any men,&quot; said Sheila: &quot;the
+  sailing of one of those little boats, it is very simple.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by
+  yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what would you do if you went out?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are,
+  but we would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the
+  lines. You would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear child,&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh, &quot;you don&#39;t
+  know what you propose to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in
+  these waves&#8212;we should be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you
+  don&#39;t know what sea-sickness is?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No,&quot; said Sheila, &quot;but I will hear my husband
+  speak of it often. And it is only in crossing the Channel that people
+  will get sick.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, this is the Channel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of
+  course this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the
+  South became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble
+  creatures. Her speculations on this point were cut short by the
+  entrance of her husband, who came to announce that he had not only
+  secured a carriage for a month, but that it would be round at the
+  hotel door in half an hour; whereupon the two American ladies said
+  they would be ready, and left the room.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now go off and get dressed, Sheila,&quot; said Lavender.</p>
+
+  <p>She stood for a moment irresolute.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If you wouldn&#39;t mind,&quot; she said after a
+  moment&#39;s hesitation&#8212;&quot;if you would allow me to go by
+  myself&#8212;if you would go to the driving, and let me go down to
+  the shore!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, nonsense!&quot; he said. &quot;You will have people
+  fancying you are only a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach
+  by yourself among all those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your
+  pocket or throw stones at you? You must behave like an ordinary
+  Christian: now do, like a good girl, get dressed and submit to the
+  restraints of civilized life. It won&#39;t hurt you much.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress,
+  and he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.</p>
+
+  <p>Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
+  nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 280]</span> so. They drove up and down the Parade for
+  about an hour and a half, and the roar of carriages drowned the rush
+  of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet of this still summer
+  evening, and she could only see the sea as a distant and silent
+  picture through the windows, while the talk of her companions was
+  either about the people whom they had seen while driving, or about
+  matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds were drawn and
+  candles lit, and still their conversation murmured around her
+  unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
+  smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
+  Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
+  a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
+  abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
+  yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
+  sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
+  and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
+  million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
+  beach.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mayn&#39;t we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his
+  cigar?&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You couldn&#39;t go out walking at this time of night,&quot;
+  said Mrs. Kavanagh in a kindly way: &quot;you would meet the most
+  unpleasant persons. Besides, going out into the night air would be
+  most dangerous.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a beautiful night,&quot; said Sheila with a sigh. She
+  was still standing at the window.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come,&quot; said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and
+  putting her hand in her arm, &quot;we cannot have any moping, you
+  know. You must be content to be dull with us for one night; and after
+  to-night we shall see what we can do to amuse you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, but I don&#39;t want to be amused!&quot; cried Sheila
+  almost in terror, for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of
+  parties. &quot;I would much rather be left alone and allowed to go
+  about by myself. But it is very kind of you,&quot; she hastily added,
+  fancying that her speech had been somewhat ungracious&#8212;&quot;it
+  is very kind of you indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn&#39;t
+  I?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked
+  to the table and sat down.</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening
+  with some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game,
+  in which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies
+  were soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs.
+  Lorraine had been for some little time at the big piano at the other
+  side of the room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she
+  happened to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to
+  wake up. He went over to her and sat down by the piano.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Here,&quot; she said, &quot;I have all the duets and songs
+  you spoke of, and I am quite delighted with those I have tried. I
+  wish mamma would sing a second to me: how can one learn without
+  practicing? And there are some of those duets I really should like to
+  learn after what you said of them.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?&quot; he
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must
+  have left you in a very amiable mood.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, suppose we try,&quot; he said; and he proceeded to
+  open out the roll of music which she had brought down.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Which shall we take first?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It does not much matter,&quot; she answered indifferently,
+  and indeed she took up one of the duets by haphazard.</p>
+
+  <p>What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh&#39;s companion suddenly lift her
+  eyes from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end
+  of the room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own
+  duets, and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs.
+  Lorraine who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained
+  voice of no great power&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Love in thine eyes for ever plays;</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum">[pg 281]</span>
+
+  <p>and it was she to whom the answer was given&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">He in thy snowy bosom strays;</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
+  them sing together&#8212;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">He makes thy rosy lips his care,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And walks the mazes of thy hair.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
+  music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been
+  practicing these duets&#8212;her duets&#8212;with some one else. For
+  presently they sang &quot;When the rosy morn appearing,&quot; and
+  &quot;I would that my love could silently,&quot; and others, all of
+  them in Sheila&#39;s eyes, sacred to the time when she and Lavender
+  used to sit in the little room at Borva. It was no consolation to her
+  that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect acquaintance with them; that
+  oftentimes she stumbled and went back over a bit of the
+  accompaniment; that her voice was far from being striking. Lavender,
+  at all events, seemed to heed none of these things. It was not as a
+  music-master that he sang with her. He put as much expression of love
+  into his voice as ever he had done in the old days when he sang with
+  his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that this woman should have
+  taken Sheila&#39;s own duets from her to sing before her with her own
+  husband.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh
+  could not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed,
+  inattentive, and even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila
+  said she was very tired and would go. And when she got her candle,
+  Mrs. Lorraine and Lavender had just discovered another duet which
+  they felt bound to try together as the last.</p>
+
+  <p>This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely
+  pained by her husband&#39;s attentions to this young American lady;
+  and yet she would not admit to herself that he was any way in the
+  wrong. She would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no
+  jealousy in her heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect
+  faith? And so she had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these
+  tentative feelings, and resolved that she would do neither her
+  husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the injustice of being vexed with them. So
+  it was now. What more natural than that Frank should recommend to any
+  friend the duets of which he was particularly fond? What more natural
+  than that this young lady should wish to show her appreciation of
+  those songs by singing them? and who was to sing with her but he?
+  Sheila would have no suspicion of either; and so she came down next
+  morning determined to be very friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.</p>
+
+  <p>But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down
+  all her resolves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; said her husband, I don&#39;t think I ever
+  asked you whether you rode.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I used to ride many times at home,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I suppose you&#39;d rather not ride here,&quot; he said.
+  &quot;Mrs. Lorraine and I propose to go out presently: you&#39;ll be
+  able to amuse yourself somehow till we come back.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her
+  mother was with her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose I may go out,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;It is so
+  very dull in-doors, and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and
+  she is not going out.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, there&#39;s no harm in your going out,&quot; answered
+  Lavender, &quot;but I should have thought you&#39;d have liked the
+  comfort of watching the people pass, from the window.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go
+  out. Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her
+  husband and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down
+  stairs without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through
+  the great hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in
+  Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a
+  trifle chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and
+  light and motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 282]</span> and noisy sea. Yet she had none
+  of the gladness of heart with which she used to rush out of the house
+  at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air and feel the sunlight on her
+  cheeks. She walked away, with her face wistful and pensive, along the
+  King&#39;s road, scarcely seeing any of the people who passed her;
+  and the noise of the crowd and of the waves hummed in her ears in a
+  distant fashion, even as she walked along the wooden railing over the
+  beach. She stopped and watched some men putting off a heavy
+  fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long after the boat was
+  launched. She would not confess to herself that she felt lonely and
+  miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was melancholy. It seemed
+  so different from the sea off Borva, that had always to her a
+  familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging and rushing
+  before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and calm and sad,
+  and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as was the sound of
+  the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a blind and
+  unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade, and could
+  see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull blue
+  plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.</p>
+
+  <p>She returned to the King&#39;s road a trifle tired, and sat down
+  on one of the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse
+  her; and now the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed
+  folks, and the centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant
+  going and coming of riders. She saw strange old women, painted,
+  powdered and bewigged in hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and
+  down the level street, and she wondered what wild hallucinations
+  possessed the brains of these poor creatures. She saw troops of
+  beautiful young girls, with flowing hair, clear eyes and bright
+  complexions, riding by, a goodly company, under charge of a
+  riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow sweeter when they came
+  into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and wondering and
+  speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders whose
+  appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well, so
+  did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
+  attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
+  could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
+  and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them
+  saw Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in
+  the other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been
+  there for many a day.</p>
+
+  <p>What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing
+  round a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin,
+  and playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that
+  attracted Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about
+  the timid, pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded
+  her of little Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her
+  heart seemed to be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no
+  thought of the people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the
+  pavement, and found that the small girl and her companion were about
+  to go away. Sheila stopped the man.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you let your little girl come with me into this
+  shop?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was a confectioner&#39;s shop.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We were going home to dinner,&quot; said the man, while the
+  small girl looked up with wondering eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back
+  in half an hour?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of
+  her, and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand
+  and led her into the confectioner&#39;s shop, putting her violin on
+  one of the small marble tables while they sat down at another. She
+  was probably not aware that two or three idlers had followed them,
+  and were staring with might and main in at the door of the shop.</p>
+
+  <p>What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet
+  sad-eyed lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things
+  with her own hands, and <span class="pagenum">[pg 283]</span> asked
+  her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and sweet voice? There
+  was not much in Sheila&#39;s appearance to provoke fear or awe. The
+  little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank, and told
+  her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced, the
+  number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the small
+  incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too, and her
+  photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well content:
+  she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did not often
+  get tired.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?&quot; said
+  Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We go out every day when it does not rain very
+  hard.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have
+  some tea with me: would you like that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, very much,&quot; said the small musician, looking up
+  frankly.</p>
+
+  <p>Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
+  appeared at the door.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t hurry,&quot; said Sheila to the little girl:
+  &quot;sit still and drink out the lemonade; then I will give you some
+  little parcels which you must put in your pocket.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met
+  the eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come
+  out, after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and
+  down the pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops,
+  caught sight of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom
+  she had picked up in the streets.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you ever see the like of that?&quot; he said to Mrs.
+  Lorraine. &quot;In open day, with people staring in, and she has not
+  even taken the trouble to put the violin out of sight!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The poor child means no harm,&quot; said his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, we must get her out of this somehow,&quot; he said;
+  and so they entered the shop.</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband&#39;s
+  look, though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed,
+  acted quite thoughtlessly&#8212;perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to
+  speak to some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hadn&#39;t you better let this little girl go?&quot; said
+  Lavender to Sheila somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice
+  for his companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When she has finished her lemonade she will go,&quot; said
+  Sheila meekly. &quot;But I have to buy some things for her
+  first.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You have got a whole lot of people round the door,&quot; he
+  said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is very kind of the people to wait for her,&quot;
+  answered Sheila with the same composure. &quot;We have been here half
+  an hour. I suppose they will like her music very much.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
+  stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
+  then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
+  Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
+  little thing.</p>
+
+  <p>They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
+  the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in a
+  humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
+  beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
+  to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
+  Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal
+  (during the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course,
+  for she had already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and
+  was bent on making himself as agreeable as possible to his two
+  companions. Their talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two
+  ladies on the Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in
+  Munich; from that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy
+  transition, to the ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one
+  of his most impulsive and brilliant moods&#8212;gay and jocular,
+  tender and sympathetic by turns, and so obviously sincere in all
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 284]</span> that his listeners were
+  delighted with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed
+  them as implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance,
+  saw and heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the
+  far North when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the
+  infection of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked,
+  too&#8212;telling the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in
+  his own rough&#8212;and&#8212;ready translations&#8212;while there
+  was no self-consciousness in his face, but a thorough warmth of
+  earnestness; and sometimes, too, she would notice a quiver of the
+  under lip that she knew of old, when some pathetic point or phrase
+  had to be indicated rather than described. He was drawing pictures
+  for them as well as telling stories&#8212;of the three students
+  entering the room in which the landlady&#39;s daughter lay
+  dead&#8212;of Barbarossa in his cave&#8212;of the child who used to
+  look up at Heine as he passed her in the street, awestricken by his
+  pale and strange face&#8212;of the last of the band of companions who
+  sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and drank to their
+  memory&#8212;of the king of Thule, and the deserter from Strasburg,
+  and a thousand others.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But is there any of them&#8212;is there anything in the
+  world&#8212;more pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?&quot; he
+  said. &quot;You know it, of course. No? Oh, you must, surely.
+  Don&#39;t you remember the mother who stood by the bedside of her
+  sick son, and asked him whether he would not rise to see the great
+  procession go by the window; and he tells her that he cannot, he is
+  so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking of his dead Gretchen?
+  <i>You</i> know the story, Sheila. The mother begs him to rise and
+  come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims going to
+  Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of God.
+  Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame people
+  have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they make a
+  waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
+  healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
+  out of it, and says to her son, &#39;Take that to the Mother of God,
+  and she will heal your pain.&#39; Sighing, he takes the wax heart in
+  his hand, and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears
+  running down his face, he says, &#39;O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I
+  am come to tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near
+  us lived Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this
+  wax heart: heal the wound in my heart.&#39; And then&#8212;and
+  then&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
+  &quot;What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can
+  have no idea of it&#8212;of its simplicity and
+  tenderness&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But pray let us hear the rest of it,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lorraine gently.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the
+  mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the
+  chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on
+  his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has
+  seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are
+  barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is
+  dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the
+  mother folds her hands, and says&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to
+  the window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to
+  his: he took it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The next time I try to translate Heine,&quot; he said,
+  making it appear that he had broken off through vexation,
+  &quot;something strange will happen.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a beautiful story,&quot; said Mrs. Lorraine, who had
+  herself been crying a little bit in a covert way: &quot;I wonder I
+  have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we
+  were not to be after four.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
+  still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
+  perhaps, in her simple <span class="pagenum">[pg 285]</span> way, as
+  to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him, and tell him
+  all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply
+  moved by the story he had told so roughly: surely now was a good
+  opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and
+  compassion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Frank,&quot; she said, and she rose and came close, and bent
+  down her head to hide the color in her face.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well?&quot; he answered a trifle coldly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You won&#39;t be vexed with me,&quot; she said in a low
+  voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Vexed with you about what?&quot; he said abruptly.</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
+  which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
+  that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
+  approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said,
+  &quot;Are we to go to Lady Leveret&#39;s?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course we are,&quot; he said, &quot;unless you would
+  rather go and see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad
+  of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for
+  example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never
+  satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you
+  must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you
+  can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a
+  child&#8212;that people will talk about what you do if you go on in
+  this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of
+  these things?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
+  ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
+  awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
+  warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
+  to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
+  definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will try to do better, and please you,&quot; she said; and
+  then she went away.</p><a name="thulechxv" id="thulechxv">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+  <h3>A FRIEND IN NEED.</h3>
+
+  <p>Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl&#39;s mind, and
+  now held full possession of it&#8212;that she was in a world with
+  which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a
+  home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely
+  stealing from her her husband&#39;s love and confidence? Or was this
+  longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that
+  surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient
+  jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points.
+  She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not
+  tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart.</p>
+
+  <p>Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
+  Leveret, who was one of Lavender&#39;s especial patrons, and to whom
+  he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
+  she was a stranger, an interloper, a &quot;third wheel to the
+  cart.&quot; She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she
+  had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a
+  melancholy and monotonous thing&#8212;not the bright and boisterous
+  sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and
+  rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with
+  the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see
+  something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet
+  made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place: she did not know
+  where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and
+  cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back
+  of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the
+  wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the
+  wives and daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they
+  knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to
+  herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such
+  things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left
+  Brighton she would have <span class="pagenum">[pg 286]</span> some
+  little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
+  sea-life down in the South.</p>
+
+  <p>And as they drove along the King&#39;s road on this afternoon she
+  suddenly called out, &quot;Look, Frank!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
+  face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
+  pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of
+  him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is Mr. Ingram,&quot; said Sheila.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Which is Mr. Ingram?&quot; asked Mrs. Lorraine with
+  considerable interest, for she had often heard Lavender speak of his
+  friend. &quot;Not that little man?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that
+  Ingram had had some little more regard for appearances in so public a
+  place as the main thoroughfare of Brighton.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Won&#39;t you stop and speak to him?&quot; said Sheila with
+  great surprise.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We are late already,&quot; said her husband. &quot;But if
+  you would rather go back and speak to him than go on with us, you
+  may.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
+  Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
+  pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.</p>
+
+  <p>But next morning she said to him, &quot;I suppose you will be
+  riding with Mrs. Lorraine this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still
+  there,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ladies don&#39;t generally call at hotels and ask to see
+  gentlemen; but of course you don&#39;t care for that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall not go if you do not wish me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of
+  professing to keep observances that you don&#39;t understand? And it
+  will be some amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will
+  immediately go and ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you,
+  or buy a nosegay of flowers for his horse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
+  very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
+  pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend to
+  whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
+  gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
+  blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in
+  the sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray
+  sky or the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was
+  mantling in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her
+  whole frame so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in
+  Borva, she would have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled
+  down the side of the hill with him to the small bay of white sand
+  below the house. She did not pause for a minute when she reached the
+  hotel. She went up the steps, opened the door and entered the square
+  hall. There was an odor of tobacco in the place, and several
+  gentlemen standing about rather confused her, for she had to glance
+  at them in looking for a waiter. Another minute would probably have
+  found her a trifle embarrassed, but that, just at this crisis, she
+  saw Ingram himself come out of a room with a cigarette in his hand.
+  He threw away the cigarette, and came forward to her with amazement
+  in his eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for
+  me?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is not here,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;I have come for you
+  by myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
+  directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, &quot;Well, that is
+  very good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband
+  comes?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air
+  and the roar of the waves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila,&quot; he said, &quot;this is very good of you,
+  really: where is Mr. Lavender?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the
+  morning.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And what do you do?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I sit at the window.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  287]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you go boating?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And
+  yesterday it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him
+  nothing about the people here or the fishing.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would
+  like to know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their
+  wool, and so on; but you would find the fishermen here don&#39;t live
+  in that way at all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their
+  clothing in the shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye
+  with it, either. However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At
+  present I suppose you are returning to your hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as
+  she turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I came to see you,&quot; she said. &quot;But perhaps you
+  have an engagement. I do not wish to take up any of your time: if you
+  please I will go back alone to&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Now, Sheila,&quot; he said with a smile, and with the old
+  friendly look she knew so well, &quot;you must not talk like that to
+  me. I won&#39;t have it. You know I came down to Brighton because you
+  asked me to come; and my time is altogether at your
+  service.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you have no engagement just now?&quot; said Sheila with
+  her face brightening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and
+  the nets? Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles?
+  It is a very good wind.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, I should be very glad,&quot; said Ingram slowly. &quot;I
+  should be delighted. But, you see, wouldn&#39;t your husband think
+  it&#8212;wouldn&#39;t he, you know&#8212;wouldn&#39;t it seem just a
+  little odd to him if you were to go away like that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine,&quot; said Sheila
+  quite simply. &quot;He does not want me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of course you told him you were coming to see&#8212;you were
+  going to call at the Old Ship?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not
+  return for a long time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Are you quite sure, Sheila?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I am quite sure.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with
+  you. I shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have
+  one of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive
+  charge. I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and
+  hold you responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare
+  me for whatever may befall.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; said Sheila. &quot;You must work very hard, and
+  I will see if you remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if
+  we can have some long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay
+  more than thirty shillings for their long lines in this
+  country?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know,&quot; said Ingram. &quot;I believe most of
+  the fishermen here live upon the shillings they get from passers-by
+  after a little conversation about the weather and their hard lot in
+  life; so that one doesn&#39;t talk to them more than one can
+  help.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know that, either. I suppose there is some good
+  fishing in the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big
+  shoals of mackerel.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of
+  the men of the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been
+  very lucky all through the last season, and it was near six thousand
+  ling they got.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or
+  other up about Habost?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to
+  them. And it is a very good boat whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>That unlucky &quot;whatever&quot; had slipped out inadvertently:
+  the moment she had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward
+  her companion, fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could
+  she have made such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most
+  particular about the avoidance of <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  288]</span> this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know that
+  from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
+  with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
+  of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
+  much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
+  with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
+  perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
+  any fashion whatsoever.</p>
+
+  <p>By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
+  sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when
+  the pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
+  over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
+  boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
+  boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
+  handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
+  the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
+  business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
+  did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
+  obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The
+  man put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not
+  a little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
+  merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
+  delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
+  which she accomplished it.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper
+  hatchways?&quot; Ingram called out to Sheila when they had fairly got
+  under way.</p>
+
+  <p>She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
+  critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
+  then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
+  said, &quot;If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good
+  lookout, I will put on my gloves.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care,
+  and, with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your
+  hands, Sheila,&quot; said her companion.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not now,&quot; she said, &quot;but Frank would be
+  displeased to see my hands brown. He has himself such pretty
+  hands.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender&#39;s delicate hands he
+  was not going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at
+  this moment to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air
+  of great satisfaction and content.</p>
+
+  <p>And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on
+  this brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay
+  away to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint
+  cloud of smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was
+  unheard: the only sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing
+  of the waves at the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water
+  along the boat. The south wind blew fresh and sweet around them,
+  filling the broad white sails and fluttering the small pennon up
+  there in the blue. It seemed strange to Sheila that she should be so
+  much alone with so great a town close by&#8212;that under the boom
+  she could catch a glimpse of the noisy Parade without hearing any of
+  its noise. And there, away to windward, there was no more trace of
+  city life&#8212;only the great blue sea, with its waves flowing on
+  toward them from out of the far horizon, and with here and there a
+  pale ship just appearing on the line where the sky and ocean met.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?&quot;
+  said Ingram, getting out his pipe.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must
+  attend to the boat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Don&#39;t you feel at home in her yet?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not afraid of her,&quot; said Sheila, regarding the
+  lines of the small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, &quot;but she
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 289]</span> is very narrow in the beam, and
+  she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose they have
+  not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and no narrows
+  to go through.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It doesn&#39;t remind you of Lewis, does it?&quot; he said,
+  filling his pipe all the same.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little&#8212;out there it does,&quot; she said, turning to
+  the broad plain of the sea, &quot;but it is not much that is in this
+  country that is like the Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a
+  stranger when I go back to the Lewis, and the people will scarcely
+  know me, and everything will be changed.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
+  which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, &quot;I want you to
+  tell me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking
+  about many things, and especially about your home in the North, in
+  that sad way. You did not do that when you came to London first; and
+  yet it was then that you might have been struck and shocked by the
+  difference. You had no home-sickness for a long time&#8212;But is it
+  home-sickness, Sheila?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of
+  giving him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it
+  occurred to her that she would be wronging her husband in seeking
+  such sympathy from a friend as she had been expecting, and expecting
+  in vain, from him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps it is home-sickness,&quot; she said in a low voice,
+  while she pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet.
+  &quot;I should like to see Borva again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you don&#39;t want to live there all your life?&quot; he
+  said. &quot;You know that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your
+  husband could manage it; and I don&#39;t suppose he can. Surely your
+  papa does not expect you to go and live in Lewis always?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, no,&quot; she said eagerly. &quot;You must not think my
+  papa wishes anything like that. It will be much less than that he was
+  thinking of when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do
+  not wish to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to
+  London&#8212;none at all&#8212;only that&#8212;that&#8212;&quot; And
+  here she paused.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, Sheila,&quot; he said in the old paternal way to which
+  she had been accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old
+  days of their friendship, &quot;I want you to be frank with me, and
+  tell me what is the matter. I know there is something wrong: I have
+  seen it for some time back. Now, you know I took the responsibility
+  of your marriage on my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to
+  your papa and to myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you
+  understand?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still
+  doubtful as to what she should do.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You look on me as an intermeddler,&quot; he said with a
+  smile.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, no,&quot; she said: &quot;you have always been our best
+  friend.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have intermeddled none the less. Don&#39;t you
+  remember when I told you I was prepared to accept the
+  consequences?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It seemed so long a time since then!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And once having begun to intermeddle, I can&#39;t stop,
+  don&#39;t you see? Now, Sheila, you&#39;ll be a good little girl and
+  do what I tell you. You&#39;ll take the boat a long way out:
+  we&#39;ll put her head round, take down the sails, and let her tumble
+  about and drift for a time, till you tell me all about your troubles,
+  and then we&#39;ll see what can be done.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
+  anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first
+  plunge into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a
+  feeling at her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be
+  at hand. She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own
+  father. She knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt
+  if he fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having
+  experienced so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and
+  thoughtfulness, she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that
+  he could assure her was right for her to do.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 290]</span>
+
+  <p>How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green
+  downs above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
+  and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
+  sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King&#39;s road and
+  all its carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made
+  out by the white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown
+  fishing-boats seemed to be close in shore; the two piers were
+  fore-shortened into small dusky masses marking the beginning of the
+  sea. And then from these distant and faintly-defined objects out here
+  to the side of the small white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the
+  lapping water, stretched that great and moving network of waves, with
+  here and there a sharp gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark
+  blue-green.</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram took his seat by Sheila&#39;s side, so that he should not
+  have to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little
+  preliminary nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She
+  told it to sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed
+  how matters stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her
+  trouble might not be merely the result of fancies which could be
+  reasoned and explained away, was careful to avoid anything like
+  corroboration. He let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and
+  the girl spoke to him, after a little while, with an earnestness
+  which showed how deeply she felt her position. At the very outset she
+  told him that her love for her husband had never altered for a
+  moment&#8212;that all the prayer and desire of her heart was that
+  they two might be to each other as she had at one time hoped they
+  would be, when he got to know her better. She went over all the story
+  of her coming to London, of her first experiences there, of the
+  conviction that grew upon her that her husband was somehow
+  disappointed with her, and only anxious now that she should conform
+  to the ways and habits of the people with whom he associated. She
+  spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how heartsick she was
+  with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which he showed. She
+  spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of the way in which
+  he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her showing him, so
+  long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she had in her
+  heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love involved.
+  And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and here it
+  seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband&#39;s
+  conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
+  unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
+  could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a
+  large number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was
+  the most natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so
+  out of communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an
+  especial friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at
+  times it hurt her to be left alone&#8212;But here the girl broke down
+  somewhat, and Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.</p>
+
+  <p>These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were
+  difficult to answer. But out of these revelations&#8212;which rather
+  took the form of a cry than of any distinct statement&#8212;he formed
+  a notion of Sheila&#39;s position sufficiently exact; and the more he
+  looked at it the more alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of
+  her than her husband did. He knew the latent force of character that
+  underlay all her submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of
+  pride her Highland birth had given her; and he feared what might
+  happen if this sensitive and proud heart of hers were driven into
+  rebellion by some&#8212;possibly unintentional&#8212;wrong. And this
+  high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving girl&#8212;who was gentle and
+  obedient, not through any timidity or limpness of character, but
+  because she considered it her duty to be gentle and
+  obedient&#8212;was to be cast aside and have her tenderest feelings
+  outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous, shallow-brained
+  woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila&#39;s waiting-maid.
+  Ingram <span class="pagenum">[pg 291]</span> had never seen Mrs.
+  Lorraine, but he had formed his own opinion of her. The opinion,
+  based upon nothing, was wholly wrong, but it served to increase, if
+  that were possible, his sympathy with Sheila, and his resolve to
+  interfere on her behalf at whatever cost.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Sheila,&quot; he said, gravely putting his hand on her
+  shoulder as if she were still the little girl who used to run wild
+  with him about the Borva rocks, &quot;you are a good woman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the
+  wife he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would
+  suffer no imputation against her husband to be uttered in her
+  presence, however true it might be, or however much she had cause to
+  know it to be true.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And, after all,&quot; he said in a lighter voice, &quot;I
+  think I can do something to mend all this. I will say for Frank
+  Lavender that he is a thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when
+  you appeal to him, and put things fairly before him, and show him
+  what he ought to do, there is not a more honorable and
+  straightforward man in the world. He has been forgetful, Sheila. He
+  has been led away by these people, you know, and has not been aware
+  of what you were suffering. When I put the matter before him, you
+  will see it will be all right; and I hope to persuade him to give up
+  this constant idling and take to his work, and have something to live
+  for. I wish you and I together could get him to go away from London
+  altogether&#8212;get him to take to serious landscape painting on
+  some wild coast&#8212;the Galway coast, for example.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why not the Lewis?&quot; said Sheila, her heart turning to
+  the North as naturally as the needle.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away
+  from hotels and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all
+  day, and you would do the cooking in some small cottage you could
+  rent, you know.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You make me so happy in thinking of that,&quot; she said,
+  with her eyes growing wet again.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or
+  idyllic about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is
+  likely to make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some
+  well-earned money. And you might have a boat like this.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We are drifting too far in,&quot; said Sheila, suddenly
+  rising. &quot;Shall we go back now?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;By all means,&quot; he said; and so the small boat was put
+  under canvas again, and was soon making way through the breezy
+  water.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn&#39;t it?&quot;
+  said Ingram.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the girl, with her face full of hope.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable
+  together, and making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me,
+  and say I made all the mischief to begin with.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?&quot; she
+  said in a low voice.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two
+  young folks who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to
+  interfere between two people who are married&#8212;that is a certain
+  quarrel. I wonder what you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila,
+  and bidding me get out of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is
+  it Gaelic or English you prefer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good
+  friends, and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, well, we&#39;ll see.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>When they got back to shore it was half-past one.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You will come and have some luncheon with us?&quot; said
+  Sheila when they had gone up the steps and into the King&#39;s
+  road.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that lady be there?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mrs. Lorraine? Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then I&#39;ll come some other time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why not now?&quot; said Sheila. &quot;It is not
+  necessary that you will see us only to speak about those things we
+  have been talking over?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  292]</span> Lavender were by yourselves, I should come at
+  once.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?&quot; said Sheila with
+  a smile. &quot;She is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to
+  dislike her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I don&#39;t want to meet her, Sheila, that is all,&quot;
+  he said; and she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that
+  there was no use trying to persuade him further.</p>
+
+  <p>He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable
+  stream of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor
+  she seemed to remember that his costume&#8212;a blue pilot-jacket,
+  not a little worn and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat
+  that had seen a good deal of rough weather in the Highlands&#8212;was
+  a good deal more comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left
+  her at the hotel, &quot;Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop
+  in at half-past three, and that I expect to see him in the
+  coffee-room? I sha&#39;n&#39;t keep him five minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
+  appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
+  He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
+  in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for
+  Lavender was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry
+  for the wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to
+  set it right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He
+  ought to go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin
+  working hard, to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and
+  then, in this friendly solitude, he would get to know something about
+  Sheila&#39;s character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable
+  were these genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces
+  such as might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt
+  to know the worth of an honest woman&#39;s perfect love and
+  unquestioning devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he
+  would go and do the right thing, as he had many a time done before,
+  in obedience to the lecturing of his friend.</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room.
+  There was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of
+  the small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the
+  King&#39;s road and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely
+  taken his seat when Lavender came in.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Hallo, Ingram! how are you?&quot; he said in his freest and
+  friendliest way. &quot;Won&#39;t you come up stairs? Have you had
+  lunch? Why did you go to the Ship?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I always go to the Ship,&quot; he said. &quot;No, thank you,
+  I won&#39;t go up stairs.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are a most unsociable sort of brute?&quot; said Lavender
+  frankly. &quot;Will you take a glass of sherry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will you have a game of billiards?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, thank you. You don&#39;t mean to say you would play
+  billiards on such a day as this?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It <i>is</i> a fine day, isn&#39;t it?&quot; said Lavender,
+  turning carelessly to look at the sunlit road and the blue sea.
+  &quot;By the way, Sheila tells me you and she were out sailing this
+  morning. It must have been very pleasant, especially for her, for she
+  is mad about such things. What a curious girl she is, to be sure!
+  Don&#39;t you think so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I don&#39;t know what you mean by curious,&quot; said Ingram
+  coldly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, you know, strange&#8212;odd&#8212;unlike other people
+  in her ways and her fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her
+  to see some friends of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out
+  of the house somehow (I suppose their talking did not interest her),
+  and when they went in search of her they found her in the cemetery
+  crying like a child.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What about?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why,&quot; said Lavender with a smile, &quot;merely because
+  so many people had died. She had never seen anything like that
+  before: you know the small church-yards up in Lewis, with their
+  inscriptions in Norwegian and Danish and German. I suppose the first
+  sight of all the white stones at Norwood was too much for
+  her.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 293]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I don&#39;t see much of a joke in that,&quot; said
+  Ingram.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who said there was any joke in it?&quot; cried Lavender
+  impatiently. &quot;I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you
+  are. You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I
+  never do anything of the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have
+  every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned
+  out.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Has she</i>?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The words were not important, but there was something in the tone
+  in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender&#39;s
+  careless flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some
+  surprise, and then he said, &quot;What do you mean?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I will tell you what I mean,&quot; said Ingram slowly.
+  &quot;It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband
+  and wife, I am aware&#8212;he gets something else than thanks for his
+  pains ordinarily&#8212;but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or
+  kicks. Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping
+  forward your marriage in the North; and I don&#39;t remind you of
+  that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain
+  why I think I am called on to speak to you now.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated.
+  He half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
+  in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
+  before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
+  and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
+  sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
+  little man was perhaps too much addicted.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?&quot;
+  said Lavender hotly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You may suppose what absurdities you like,&quot; said Ingram
+  quietly; &quot;but it would be a good deal better if you would listen
+  to me patiently, and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have
+  got to say. It is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that
+  is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a
+  much better position, both as regards your own estimation of
+  yourselves and the opinion of your friends.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are a little roundabout, Ingram,&quot; said Lavender,
+  &quot;and ornate. But I suppose all lectures begin so. Go
+  on.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram laughed: &quot;If I am too formal, it is because I
+  don&#39;t want to make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A
+  long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very
+  keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to
+  perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of
+  a man, and so forth. These notions you may regard as romantic and
+  absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of
+  her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that
+  direction.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I
+  don&#39;t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?&quot; said
+  Lavender with impetuous contempt. &quot;Well, be it so. She is
+  welcome to her opinion. But if she is grieved at heart because I
+  can&#39;t make hobnailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well
+  come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her
+  wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the
+  character of an injured wife.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
+  quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to
+  himself; but he kept quite calm, and said, &quot;That, unfortunately,
+  is not what is troubling her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room,
+  and said, &quot;If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it
+  from herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a
+  third person to humor her whims and fancies.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Whims and fancies!&quot; said Ingram, with that dark light
+  returning to his eyes. &quot;Do you know what you are talking about?
+  Do you know that, while you are living on the charity of a woman you
+  despise, and dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you,
+  you are breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in
+  England? Whims <span class="pagenum">[pg 294]</span> and fancies!
+  Good God, I wonder how she ever could have&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent
+  words to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between
+  husband and wife; but Ingram&#39;s blaze of wrath, kindled by what he
+  considered the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of
+  Sheila, had swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender,
+  indeed, was much cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of
+  carelessness, &quot;I am sorry you should vex yourself so much about
+  Sheila. One would think you had had the ambition yourself, at some
+  time or other, to play the part of husband to her; and doubtless then
+  you would have made sure that all her idle fancies were gratified. As
+  it is, I was about to relieve you from the trouble of further
+  explanation by saying that I am quite competent to manage my own
+  affairs, and that if Sheila has any complaint to make she must make
+  it to me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Lavender,&quot; he said, &quot;it does not matter much
+  whether you and I quarrel&#8212;I was prepared for that, in any
+  case&#8212;but I ask you to give Sheila a chance of telling you what
+  I had intended to tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite
+  confidences. When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready
+  to listen. But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as
+  they are at present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;God help you, then!&quot; said his friend, and went away,
+  scarcely daring to confess to himself how dark the future looked.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><a name="english" id=
+  "english"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES</h2>
+
+  <p>Americans have an impression that the English think it a
+  considerable distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony
+  of presentation has entirely ceased to have any social significance
+  in England. Any young gentleman who imagines that the door of English
+  society will be thrown open to him on the publication of his
+  appearance at a drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress
+  and carriage and stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social
+  success, the money which a robe will cost might be expended to equal
+  advantage anywhere else in London. However, a lady&#39;s dress may be
+  worn again, and men may hire a court-suit for the day at a very small
+  cost. Your tailor, if you get a good deal of him, will patch you up
+  something tolerable for very little; so that sartorial expenses are
+  comparatively light. One can get for the afternoon a two-horse
+  brougham, with a coachman and footman, for a sum less than ten
+  dollars. Still, going to court costs something, and its only possible
+  advantage is that the spectacle is a fine and an interesting one. One
+  has therefore to consider whether the sight is worth the fee.</p>
+
+  <p>A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
+  Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
+  presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
+  many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the
+  privilege of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any
+  clergyman, any officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an
+  attorney, even a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister,
+  or, for that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of
+  more consequence than a curate or a poor <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  295]</span> soldier. The court has scarcely any social significance
+  in England. I once asked a young barrister if presentation would help
+  him in the least in making his way in society. He said, &quot;Not a
+  bit.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
+  cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
+  East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
+  The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is no
+  part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
+  consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
+  in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
+  gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed
+  away. They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not
+  already in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly
+  make his appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard
+  a family who went down to London to be presented made the target for
+  the ridicule of the whole neighborhood.</p>
+
+  <p>On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in
+  the diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and
+  levees at Buckingham and St. James&#39;s Palaces, and was invited to
+  the court balls and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities
+  are given only to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle.
+  It must be understood that there is at every court in Europe a select
+  and elegant and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come
+  in. Along with them enter also the ministers of state and the
+  household officers of the Crown. The general circle, as it is called,
+  includes everybody else. Another entrance and staircase are provided
+  for it, and in that way all of British society, from a duke to a
+  half-pay captain, gains admittance to the sovereign. When one is in
+  the inside of Buckingham or St. James&#39;s Palace the same
+  distinction exists. The room in which the members of the royal family
+  receive the public is occupied during the entire ceremony by the
+  diplomatic circle. Other persons, after bowing to the queen, pass
+  into an antechamber.</p>
+
+  <p>Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman
+  to be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
+  attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
+  at Buckingham and St. James&#39;s Palaces. At present the queen holds
+  drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of
+  Wales at St. James&#39;s Palace. The latter are attended only by
+  gentlemen, and, though not so grand as the queen&#39;s, are
+  pleasanter. Trousers are allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and
+  stockings which must be worn at all court ceremonials where there are
+  ladies. At two o&#39;clock&#8212;for the prince is very
+  punctual&#8212;the doors of the reception-room are thrown open, and
+  the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the ambassadors. It
+  must be remembered that there is a wide difference between an
+  ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The original
+  difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
+  transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
+  a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy
+  must see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have
+  any practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and
+  no doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the
+  sovereign. It is still true, however, that an ambassador is
+  accredited to the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign
+  secretary. Practically, the difference is that an ambassador
+  represents a bigger country, has better pay, lives in a finer house,
+  and gives more parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has
+  precedence of everybody in the country in which he resides, except
+  the royal family.</p>
+
+  <p>There are five countries which send ambassadors to
+  England&#8212;Russia, France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These
+  ambassadors enter the reception-room at the prince&#39;s levee in the
+  order of seniority of residence. The Turkish <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 296]</span> ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
+  years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the others
+  following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
+  distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
+  dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
+  one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
+  typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
+  deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical!
+  The duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of
+  my visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed
+  much the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and
+  intellect: the distinction of the other continental
+  &quot;swells&quot; was usually one of stomach and whiskers.</p>
+
+  <p>Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After
+  the ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves
+  from an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales
+  awaits them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the
+  duke of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
+  old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right,
+  stands Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each
+  detachment as it approaches&#8212;&quot;Austrian ambassador,&quot;
+  &quot;the Spanish minister,&quot; &quot;the United States
+  minister,&quot; etc. The prince shakes hands with the head of the
+  embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
+  diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
+  their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic circle,
+  and such as have the <i>entree</i> to it, remain in the room: the
+  Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
+  the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
+  were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as if
+  the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
+  collection.</p>
+
+  <p>One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
+  manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
+  know he is somebody&#8212;if he shakes hands with all five or six of
+  the princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives
+  the princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them,
+  and runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay
+  colonel or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be
+  inferred from the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to
+  decipher the name of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed
+  him. If he scans it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him
+  and says &quot;Major Te&#8212;e&#8212;e&#8212;bosh&#8212;bow,&quot;
+  then in a loud voice, &quot;Major Tebow,&quot; you will be safe in
+  thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of warriors or
+  largest of landed proprietors.</p>
+
+  <p>The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
+  whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
+  very pleasantly. There is a great deal of <i>esprit de corps</i>
+  among them, and perfect equality. Attachés, secretaries and ministers
+  walk about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors
+  are rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
+  diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
+  the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
+  a sort of after-glow of the royalties.</p>
+
+  <p>At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
+  there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
+  increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen&#39;s levees
+  are very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
+  ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as I
+  have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
+  shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
+  warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
+  like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
+  draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
+  many of the large rooms of the palaces <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  297]</span> huge fireplaces, with great logs of wood, roar behind
+  tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of these, the courtier who
+  isn&#39;t a Scotchman feels as if he would never care to go away.
+  Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer, but the first
+  of them come in February, and London is often cool well up into
+  June.</p>
+
+  <p>The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as
+  that at a prince of Wales&#39;s levee. The spelling-class of royal
+  ladies stand up in a rigid row. On the queen&#39;s right is the lord
+  chamberlain, who reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left,
+  is Alexandra, then the queen&#39;s daughters and the Princess Mary of
+  Cambridge. Next to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx
+  which stretches entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up
+  in battle array, stand three or four ranks of court ladies.</p>
+
+  <p>The act of presentation is very easy and simple.
+  Formerly&#8212;indeed, until within a few years&#8212;it must have
+  been a very perilous and important feat. The courtier (the term is
+  used inaccurately, but there is no noun to describe a person who goes
+  to court for a single time) was compelled to walk up a long room, and
+  to back, bowing, out of the queen&#39;s presence. For ladies who had
+  trails to manage the ordeal must have been a trying one. Now it has
+  been made quite easy. There is but one point in which a presentation
+  to the queen differs from that already described at the prince of
+  Wales&#39;s levee. You may turn your back to the prince, but after
+  bowing to the queen you step off into the crowd, still facing her.
+  There (if you have had the good luck to be presented in the
+  diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most interesting
+  pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very amusing,
+  though they evidently have their little joke afterward over anything
+  unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should, of
+  course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
+  amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
+  and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
+  the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
+  ask &quot;Who is this?&quot; and &quot;Who is that?&quot; The lord
+  chamberlain announces each person as he or she appears. You hear the
+  most heroic and romantic names in English history as some
+  insignificant boy or wizened old woman appears to represent them.
+  They are not all, by any means, insignificant boys and wizened old
+  women. Many of the ladies are handsome enough to be well worth
+  looking at, whether their names be Percy or Stanhope or Brown or
+  Smith. The young slips of girls who come to be presented for the
+  first time, frightened and pale or flushed, one admires and feels a
+  sense of instinctive loyalty to.</p>
+
+  <p>The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain:
+  &quot;The duchess of Fincastle,&quot; &quot;The countess of
+  Dorchester,&quot; &quot;Lady Arabella Darling on her marriage,&quot;
+  etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to whom the queen gives her
+  hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee to the carpet. No act
+  of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated, her behavior being so
+  modest and the sympathy with her so wide and sincere; but ladies very
+  nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member of the royal family,
+  not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so strange-looking, the
+  kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately mother or some soft
+  maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit of a boy or a gross
+  young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The curtsy of a lady to a
+  prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer
+  genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the
+  props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and
+  they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It astonished me, I
+  remember, at a court party, to see one patrician young
+  woman&#8212;&quot;divinely tall&quot; I should describe her if her
+  decided chin and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her
+  character had not put divinity out of the question&#8212;shake hands
+  with a not very imposing young prince, and bend <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 298]</span> her regal knees into this curious and
+  sudden little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days
+  afterward in a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!),
+  directing with her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop.
+  It struck me she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a
+  chariot with three steeds abreast.</p>
+
+  <p>The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court
+  ceremonials. There are besides the court festivities, the balls and
+  concerts at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given
+  in a season&#8212;two balls and two concerts. The balls are the
+  larger and less select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of
+  the palace is a large rectangular apartment. At one end is the
+  orchestra&#8212;at the other a raised dais on which the royalties
+  sit. On each side, running the length of the hall, are three tiers of
+  benches, which are for ladies and such gentlemen as can get a seat.
+  The tiers on the left of the dais are for diplomatists. English
+  society has the tiers upon the other side. By ten the ball-room is
+  usually filled with people waiting for the appearance of the
+  royalties. The band strikes up, and the line of princes and
+  princesses advances down the long hall leading to the ball-room. The
+  queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at these balls. The
+  queen does not come now: the prince and princess of Wales take her
+  place.</p>
+
+  <p>First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them
+  come the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales
+  advances first, with a naïve, faltering, hesitating step, a strange
+  and quite delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in
+  her manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen.
+  Then approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and
+  very jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile,
+  which she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
+  follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
+  wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
+  suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
+  she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes&#39;
+  duration. Before curtsying, she stops and seems to &quot;shy,&quot;
+  and looks at the ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the
+  object which alarms him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the
+  ground, and recovers herself with the same slowness. It would seem
+  that such a genuflection must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is
+  not so in the least: it is quite successful, and rather pleasing.
+  After the ladies come the prince of Wales and his suite. The
+  royalties then all go upon the stage, and after music the ball
+  begins.</p>
+
+  <p>There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
+  ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
+  space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
+  the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
+  diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
+  rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
+  always dance the same step, the <i>deux temps</i>, and the aim of the
+  dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible. They
+  make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
+  <i>trois temps</i>, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say,
+  without any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance
+  in England, you are safe.</p>
+
+  <p>The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There
+  are many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men
+  are &quot;flaming in purple and gold.&quot; There is every variety of
+  magnificent dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from
+  head to foot. Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark
+  crimson of the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards&#39;
+  clubs in gold and scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach
+  above their knees, clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about,
+  and exhibit legs of which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging
+  gait, wanders the queen&#39;s piper, a sort of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 299]</span> poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
+  plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to
+  the music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of
+  the orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel
+  the festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.</p>
+
+  <p>Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
+  through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
+  curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight,
+  on the lakes and fountains of the gardens, &quot;the watery ways of
+  palaces.&quot; I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they
+  are a trifle too romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of
+  flirting in the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very
+  pleasantly, the refreshment-room, which was kept open during the
+  evening till supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold
+  coffee, champagne, sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy
+  in the least. I can&#39;t say so much for the supper, though by
+  waiting a little one could always get something. The princes went
+  first, then the diplomatists, and then everybody else. The jostling
+  was such that when young ladies asked for a plate of soup you wished
+  they had wanted ham and chicken. A young American, I think, would
+  very much dislike to go up to a table and eat a solitary supper with
+  ladies looking on, and young and pretty ones, too. But I have seen a
+  young guardsman, with an enormous helmet and boots as big as himself,
+  stand up at the table and &quot;solitary and alone&quot; work his
+  jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling the whole of his
+  paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry courtiers, whom his
+  gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility of supper, and who
+  revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations aside upon the
+  length and heartiness of his meal.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Concert&quot; is an expression which to a hungry man has a
+  strong suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives
+  you such a supper as only a night&#39;s dancing is ordinarily
+  supposed to entitle you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room
+  of the palace, and are much more select than the balls. The royalties
+  occupy very slight gilt chairs placed just before the orchestra.
+  There they sit with grace and an appearance of comfort through the
+  whole of it, while happier and humbler mortals may walk about and
+  whisper, or seek the refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They
+  have very good music, the best singers are provided, and some pretty
+  familiar songs, like &quot;Home, sweet home,&quot; are sung.</p>
+
+  <p>Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to
+  the bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few
+  civil things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow
+  and look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost
+  queens when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of
+  praise and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in
+  European capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to
+  put themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
+  artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
+  century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
+  in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing
+  the old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly
+  notions. The cord stretched between the guests and the performers
+  used to be a feature of musical entertainments at private houses.
+  Grisi went once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington
+  at his country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine.
+  &quot;Oh, when you do,&quot; she said. He saw her mistake and did not
+  correct it; so it happened that she dined at the same table with the
+  guests, and the incident, it is said, excited considerable horror
+  among people of the old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how
+  utterly uncivilized, is such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute
+  each other, but it seems inconceivable that a man and a gentleman
+  could have entertained such a sentiment.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  300]</span>
+
+  <p>Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball,
+  only there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales,
+  and to a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and
+  make a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil.
+  &quot;The Prince,&quot; as he is commonly called, takes advantage of
+  the suppers at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule
+  is, let me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you
+  before speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to
+  turn away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the
+  interview yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always
+  expected to call him &quot;Sir.&quot; The queen is addressed as
+  &quot;Ma&#39;am.&quot; It is not understood in this country that to
+  call a man &quot;sir&quot; is a confession of your inferiority to
+  him. But it is so in England, and the fact illustrates the strong
+  hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms have upon the British
+  mind. No gentleman in England says &quot;sir&quot; to another, unless
+  it be a very young person to an old one. [A] A subordinate in an
+  office might &quot;sir&quot; a superior, but he would not
+  &quot;sir&quot; a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he
+  had no connection. &quot;Sir&quot; is the term applied by any
+  Englishman of whatever rank to a member of the royal family. Our
+  committees, when princes visit America, usually address them in notes
+  as &quot;Your Royal Highness.&quot; But &quot;Your Royal
+  Highness&quot; is not a vocative: it can be used only in the third
+  person. However, the princes are then in America, and perhaps we are
+  under no obligation to know everything of their ways at home. Should
+  the reader ever meet a prince in that prince&#39;s country, I should
+  advise him to do just as other people do there. He will probably
+  question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the implied
+  inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore action is
+  to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously decided
+  from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not the
+  prince&#39;s fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
+  and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
+  Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his
+  equality. The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he
+  probably has thought through the mistake under which the republican
+  stranger is laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an
+  American may reflect that he will probably have very little in life
+  to do with princes, and that his interview with a prince has been an
+  &quot;experience.&quot; It would be about as foolish to assert
+  one&#39;s dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the Matterhorn.<a id=
+  "footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a> <a href=
+  "#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+
+  <p>Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen&#39;s and
+  prince of Wales&#39;s breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off
+  about 3 P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the
+  court entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season,
+  and out of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited.
+  There are certain persons who are always invited, and others who are
+  eligible and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic
+  corps are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or
+  two secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a
+  queen&#39;s breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of
+  legation can touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the
+  minister himself only goes once a year, and he &quot;not without
+  shedding of blood.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one,
+  and anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light
+  trousers. The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now
+  compelled to wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs
+  a word of mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited,
+  somewhat prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know
+  very little. Congress, at a <span class="pagenum">[pg 301]</span>
+  distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought itself competent
+  to decide what sort of court dress an American diplomatist should
+  wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward a measure, and,
+  once proposed, it was certain to go through, because to oppose its
+  passage would have been to be aristocratic and un-American. Mr.
+  Sumner&#39;s bill required Americans to go in the &quot;ordinary
+  dress of an American citizen.&quot; There was no attempt to indicate
+  what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had worn the
+  uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other countries.
+  This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon it, white
+  breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.</p>
+
+  <p>An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
+  interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued a
+  circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
+  uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
+  the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
+  consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
+  the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
+  fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
+  United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
+  distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
+  government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
+  and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
+  which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
+  far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. &quot;Tell
+  that very distinguished personage,&quot; said Mr. Buchanan,
+  &quot;that not only will I wear a sword, as she requests, but, should
+  occasion require it, will hold myself ready to draw it in her
+  defence.&quot; This strikes me as in just that tone of respectful
+  exaggeration and playful acquiescence which a gentleman in this
+  country may very becomingly take toward the whole question. Neither
+  Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe, heeded the request of the
+  Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is said, subsequently
+  repudiated it.</p>
+
+  <p>But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr.
+  Marcy&#39;s time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe
+  how very uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
+  of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
+  unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
+  exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and
+  the khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable
+  people at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody
+  else is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
+  exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
+  scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the
+  secretaries said to me: &quot;I am afraid to wander off by myself
+  among these ladies: they inspect me as the maids of honor in the
+  palace of Brobdingnag did Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel
+  mother who won&#39;t dress me like these other little boys.&quot; It
+  would require more than ordinary courage to attempt to dance in this
+  rig. I should think that our representatives would huddle together in
+  the most unconspicuous portion of a room, and never leave it. Said
+  the secretary above quoted: &quot;I always feel here that I am of
+  some use to my chief: I am one more pair of legs with which to divide
+  the gaze of British society.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a
+  plain dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
+  slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
+  &quot;ordinary dress of an American citizen.&quot; The dress is not
+  so ugly as it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest
+  and liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not
+  so excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party
+  given in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to
+  the Empress Eugenie&#39;s private parties came got up in <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 302]</span> that manner. But in London it was not till
+  recently that American diplomatists were allowed to go to court even
+  thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe the legations were admitted
+  in evening dress, the concession of knee-breeches not having been
+  required. But at Buckingham Palace there are two or three very old
+  men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria was a baby, and who still
+  control the court etiquette. These aged functionaries, who can very
+  well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers remembered the American
+  Revolution, put down their foot, and would admit no Americans without
+  the proper garments. The consequence was, that our legation was
+  compelled to stay at home. This state of things continued until
+  Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called &quot;the
+  Breeches Protocol.&quot; Owing to the unreasonable state of the
+  public mind during his term of office, this was the only measure
+  which that good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The
+  compromise which Mr. Johnson&#39;s good-humor and the friendly
+  impulse of the British public toward us at that time wrung from these
+  ancient chamberlains and gold-sticks (for you may say what you will,
+  public opinion is irresistible), was to allow the minister and the
+  two secretaries of legation to appear in the breeches above
+  described. Americans who are presented at court, and who get
+  invitations to the festivities, are all required to wear a court
+  dress. Of what good compelling the poor diplomatists to make
+  scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know. Mr. Sumner&#39;s
+  proposition was just one of those absurdities to which men are liable
+  who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor. Senators and
+  Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be un-American,
+  and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or (in matters
+  of this sort) very scrupulous.</p>
+
+  <blockquote class="footnote">
+    <a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b> <a href=
+    "#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+
+    <p>[The rule, more correctly stated, is, that &quot;sir&quot; is
+    never used except to indicate a difference of age or position so
+    great as to forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social
+    equality. It may be employed by the elder in addressing the
+    younger, and by the superior in addressing the inferior, as well as
+    <i>vice versa</i>. Hence the saying, in English society, that only
+    princes and servants are spoken to as &quot;sir.&quot;]</p>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <h2><a name="rambles" id="rambles"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> RAMBLES
+  AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.</h2><a name=
+  "ramblesconclud" id="ramblesconclud"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CONCLUDING PAPER.</h3>
+
+  <p>An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
+  Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
+  the most splendid of Oriental cities.</p>
+
+  <p>Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
+  <i>nárcodah</i> (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel
+  Barrie. He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always
+  to mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
+  had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
+  Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
+  day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so we
+  had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
+  Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
+  and we were set down on the Barrie&#39;s quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
+  sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was
+  weighed.</p>
+
+  <p>The monsoon was favorable, and seven days&#39; sail brought us to
+  the river&#39;s mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the
+  nárcodah&#39;s boat to the &quot;city of kings.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the
+  abundance, variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are
+  found those of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being
+  transplanted to this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in
+  this fruitful soil far more productive than in the <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 303]</span> sterile regions of Persia and Arabia; while
+  numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
+  united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
+  list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
+  clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
+  productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
+  The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
+  millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late
+  &quot;second king&quot; of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a
+  single branch the bud and blossom, together with fruit in several
+  different stages. Thus, at the merest trifle of expense a table may
+  be supplied during the entire year with forty or fifty specimens of
+  fresh, ripe fruit. Among these are many varieties of oranges and
+  pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks, pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains,
+  durians, jack-fruit, melons, grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts,
+  pomegranates, soursaps, linchies, custard-apples, breadfruit,
+  cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds, mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of
+  others for which we have no names in our language. Tropical fruits
+  are generally juicy, sweet with a slight admixture of acid, luscious,
+  and peculiarly agreeable in a warm climate; and when partaken of with
+  temperance and due regard to quality they are highly promotive of
+  health. For this reason Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit
+  tree as quite an act of sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a
+  heavy malediction on those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One
+  who has tasted the fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the
+  soil that produces them can form no conception of the real flavor of
+  plums and grapes that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our
+  northern clime; of oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and
+  eaten fresh while the morning dew still glitters on their
+  golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare, rosy pomegranate juice, luscious
+  as nectar.</p>
+
+  <p>After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at
+  the head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance.
+  The fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
+  a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
+  half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three
+  species of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the <i>Garania
+  mangostina</i>, is the fruit edible. The others are valuable for
+  timber, and the bark for the manufacture of a dye that resists the
+  attacks of every sort of insect.</p>
+
+  <p>Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (<i>Anona
+  squamosa</i>), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions
+  of a medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its
+  apex directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black
+  seed. The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked
+  custard, and in flavor very like strawberries and cream.</p>
+
+  <p>The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
+  larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
+  (<i>Nephelium lappaceum</i>) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but
+  when the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent
+  pulp is revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that
+  a blind man would be unable to distinguish them.</p>
+
+  <p>Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but
+  are in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
+  four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
+  bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
+  delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
+  had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
+  harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the
+  trouble he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should
+  not be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the
+  price demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
+  ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
+  medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
+  sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for
+  extortion.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 304]</span>
+
+  <p>One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit
+  (<i>Artocarpus integrifolia</i>), growing in all its immensity of
+  thirty or forty pounds weight directly out of the largest branches or
+  on the stem of the huge tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green
+  coat: internally, it has a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are
+  embedded a dozen or more smooth, oval seeds about the size of large
+  chestnuts, which they strikingly resemble in flavor.</p>
+
+  <p>The mango (<i>Mangifera Indica</i>) is a drupe of the plum kind,
+  four or five inches long, and three at least in diameter.
+  Greenish-colored outside, and not very inviting, you are most
+  agreeably surprised at the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow
+  pulp that adheres like the clinging peach to a large flat seed.</p>
+
+  <p>The gamboge tree (<i>Stalagmitis Cambogioides</i>) grows
+  luxuriantly in Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed
+  leaves, a yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even
+  the stem has a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is
+  obtained by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves
+  and young shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white
+  foreigners for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced
+  into Europe early in the seventeenth century.</p>
+
+  <p>The plantain (<i>Musa paradisaica</i>) is one of the best gifts of
+  Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
+  many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
+  as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
+  palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
+  the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked
+  fresh from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a
+  green cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to
+  about twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of
+  the elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
+  flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
+  beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
+  glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
+  breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
+  around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
+  leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till
+  there come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred
+  plantains, weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth
+  bunch is the sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit
+  is plucked the stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same
+  root; and it is thus constantly renewed for many successive years.
+  The incalculable blessing of such a tree in regions where the
+  intolerable heat renders all labor oppressive may be conceived from
+  the estimate of Humboldt, who reckons the surface of ground needed to
+  the production of four thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice
+  for the raising of only thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine
+  pounds of potatoes. What would induce the indolent East Indian to
+  make the exchange of crops?</p>
+
+  <p>The cassew-nut (<i>Anacardium occidentale</i>) is remarkable as
+  the only known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A
+  full-grown tree is twenty feet high, with graceful form and
+  widespread branches. The leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson
+  flowers grow in clusters. The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish
+  color outside and bright yellow within; and the seed, which is in the
+  form of a crescent, looks just as if it had been stuck on the bur
+  end, instead of growing there. When roasted the kernels are not
+  unlike a very fine chestnut.</p>
+
+  <p>The guava (<i>Psidium pomiferum</i>), of which the noted Indian
+  jelly is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar
+  pears&#8212;pale, yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when
+  opened, a soft, rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste
+  and odor are very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till
+  after long use.</p>
+
+  <p>The tamarind tree (<i>Tamarindus Indicus</i>), <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 305]</span> a huge growth, with trunk a hundred feet
+  tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches extending
+  widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite leaves, very
+  nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The flowers, growing
+  in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint veined with red;
+  while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung all over the
+  branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves, blossoms and
+  fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth as to appear
+  almost ludicrous, yet the <i>tout ensemble</i> is &quot;a thing of
+  beauty&quot; never to be forgotten.</p>
+
+  <p>It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
+  plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
+  every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps&#39; estate, one of
+  the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
+  acres, including three picturesque hills&#8212;Mount Sophia, Mount
+  Emily and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty
+  bungalow&#8212;and from these avenues radiate, intersecting every
+  portion of the plantation. Here were planted some five thousand
+  nutmeg trees, and perhaps a thousand of the clove, besides coffee
+  trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg is an evergreen of great beauty,
+  conical in shape, and from twenty to twenty-five feet in height, the
+  branches thickly decorated with polished, deep-green foliage rising
+  from the ground to the summit. Almost hidden among these emerald
+  leaves grows the pear-shaped fruit. As it ripens the yellow external
+  tegument opens, revealing the dark-red mace, that is closely
+  enwrapped about a thin black shell. This, in turn, encloses a
+  fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce. Both leaf and blossom are
+  marked by the same aromatic perfume that distinguishes the fruit.</p>
+
+  <p>The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
+  similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
+  beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure
+  white and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every
+  branch and twig almost to the summit of the tree. The
+  cloves&#8212;&quot;spice nails,&quot; as they are often
+  called&#8212;are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem being
+  the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as we
+  see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass in
+  curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
+  transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
+  in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in
+  Singapore, Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan
+  Archipelago.</p>
+
+  <p>One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget
+  to mention&#8212;the flat peach, called by the Chinese <i>ping
+  taou</i>, or &quot;peach cake.&quot; It has the appearance of having
+  been flattened by pressure at the head and stalk, being something
+  less than three-fourths of an inch through the centre from eye to
+  stem, and consisting wholly of the stone and skin; while the sides,
+  which swell around the centre, are only an eighth of an inch in
+  thickness. Its transverse diameter is about two and a half
+  inches.</p>
+
+  <p>The camphor tree (<i>Laurus camphora</i>) grows abundantly in
+  China and Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that
+  supplies the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the
+  trunks and chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the
+  ravages of moths and the still more destructive white ant of the
+  tropics. This tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a
+  circumference of about eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from
+  seven to nine feet in girth. In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered
+  branches are cut in small pieces, and steeped in water for several
+  days, after which they are boiled, the liquid being constantly
+  stirred until the gum, in the form of a white jelly, begins to
+  appear, when the whole is poured into a glazed vessel, and becomes
+  concreted in cooling. It is afterward purified by means of
+  sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a conical cover placed over
+  the boiling liquid while at its greatest heat. There is another
+  species of camphor tree (<i>Dryobalanops camphora</i>) growing in
+  Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 306]</span> Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even
+  amid the huge growth of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this
+  species is found occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a
+  half in the heart of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep
+  incision in the trunk about fifteen inches from the ground with a
+  <i>b&#39;ling</i> or Malayan axe, in order to ascertain whether the
+  gum is there; and when it is found the tree is felled and the
+  impregnated portion carefully extracted. The same tree, while young,
+  yields a liquid oily matter that has nearly the same properties as
+  the camphor, and is supposed to be the first stage of its formation.
+  Some eight China catties (eleven pounds) of this oil may be obtained
+  from a medium-sized tree, which, after having been cut off for the
+  purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if left standing for a few
+  years, produce abundantly an inferior article of camphor.</p>
+
+  <p>In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
+  beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
+  color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
+  hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
+  crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
+  incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
+  these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
+  by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
+  opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
+  the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
+  purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
+  gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.</p>
+
+  <p>The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse
+  under which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an
+  opium shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds
+  its victims fast bound&#8212;mind, heart, soul and conscience, all
+  absolutely dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing
+  thirst for the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once,
+  but I can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that
+  &quot;place of torment.&quot; The apartment was spacious, and might
+  have been pleasant but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of
+  unutterable woe&#8212;the footprints of sin trodden deep in the
+  furrows of those haggard faces and emaciated forms. On all four sides
+  of the room were couches placed thickly against the walls, and others
+  were scattered over the apartment wherever there was room for them.
+  On each of these lay extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some
+  few were old&#8212;all were hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and
+  cadaverous countenances; many were clothed in rags, having probably
+  smoked away their last dollar; while others were offering to pawn
+  their only decent garment for an additional dose of the deadly drug.
+  A decrepit old man raised himself as we entered, drew a long sigh,
+  and then with a half-uttered imprecation on his own folly proceeded
+  to refill his pipe. This he did by scraping off, with a five-inch
+  steel needle, some opium from the lid of a tiny shell box, rolling
+  the paste into a pill, and then, after heating it in the blaze of a
+  lamp, depositing it within the small aperture of his pipe. Several
+  short whiffs followed; then the smoker would remove the pipe from his
+  mouth and lie back motionless; then replace the pipe, and with
+  fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke slowly through his pallid nostrils.
+  As the narcotic effects of the opium began to work he fell back on
+  the couch in a state of silly stupefaction that was alike pitiable
+  and disgusting. Another smoker, a mere youth, lay with face buried in
+  his hands, and as he lifted his head there was a look of despair such
+  as I have seldom seen. Though so young, he was a complete wreck, with
+  hollow eyes, sunken chest and a nervous twitching in every muscle. I
+  spoke to him, and learned that six months before he had lost his
+  whole patrimony by gambling, and came hither to quaff forgetfulness
+  from these Lethean cups; hoping, he said, to find death as well as
+  oblivion. By far the larger proportion of the smokers were so
+  entirely under the <span class="pagenum">[pg 307]</span> influence of
+  the stupefying poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and
+  we passed out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought
+  of these infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving
+  families at home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given
+  up, and from three to five years&#39; indulgence will utterly wreck
+  the firmest constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated,
+  the eyes more sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the
+  brain ceases to perform its functions, and death places its seal on
+  the wasted life.</p>
+
+  <p>On &quot;Araby&#39;s plains&quot; I saw for the first time the
+  beautiful wild palm, the &quot;lighthouse of the desert,&quot; always
+  an object of intense desire to the weary traveler as he traverses
+  those sterile regions, for as it looms up in the distance, sometimes
+  in groups, but more generally standing in solitary grandeur near a
+  tiny bubbling spring, its waving plumes tell him not only of shelter
+  and needed rest, but of water also to bathe his tired limbs and
+  quench the burning thirst that oppresses him almost to death. Should
+  the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he will find food also&#8212;a
+  dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome and
+  nourishing&#8212;ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
+  traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
+  and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
+  Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap,
+  gather the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of
+  the plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus
+  improving the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty
+  or more varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
+  seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
+  delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
+  Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
+  the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year by
+  keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
+  Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
+  until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
+  ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across
+  the deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried
+  and needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water,
+  and so eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined
+  to the fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn
+  from the trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent
+  timber; the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous
+  part, when stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are
+  of use&#8212;the fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to
+  account&#8212;in Egypt for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture
+  of Indian ink, and in Spain for making the tooth-powder known as
+  &quot;ivory black.&quot; The date is indigenous to both Asia and
+  Africa: it was introduced into Spain by the Moors, and some few trees
+  are still found even in the south of France. But the most extensive
+  forests are those of the Barbary states, where they are sometimes
+  miles in length. When growing thus in groves the palms are very
+  beautiful, their towering crests waving in unison as they seem to
+  form an immense natural temple, about which vines and creepers wreath
+  their graceful tendrils, while birds of varied plumage sing their
+  matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile the golden fruit that
+  grows in clusters at the very summit of the tree. The Arabs&#39; mode
+  of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The trunk, sixty feet high,
+  has not, it must be remembered, a single branch to hold on by or
+  furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole stem is rough with thick
+  scales or horny protuberances, not very pleasant to the touch of
+  fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed across the climber&#39;s
+  back and under his armpits, and then, after being passed around the
+  tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The rope is next
+  placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of an old leaf,
+  while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits toward the
+  middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 308]</span> the shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then
+  with hands and knees he firmly grasps the trunk, and raises himself a
+  few inches higher; when, still holding fast by knees and feet and one
+  hand, he with the other slips the rope a little higher up the tree,
+  letting it rest on another of these horny protuberances, and so on
+  till the summit is gained. When the fruit is reached it is easily
+  plucked with one hand, while the gatherer maintains his position with
+  the other, and the clusters are thrown down into a large cloth held
+  at the corners by four persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The far-famed banian or Indian fig (<i>Ficus Indica</i>) is
+  perhaps the grandest of tropical trees&#8212;the most beautiful of
+  Nature&#39;s products, even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the
+  sun&#39;s rays, where she sports with such profusion and variety,
+  clothing the earth in gorgeous flowers, variegated mosses and
+  feathery ferns, till it seems to groan beneath the manifold treasures
+  of beauty and fragrance lavished thereon. This noble tree grows wild
+  in many Eastern countries and islands, and sometimes attains to a
+  size and an extent that are marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are
+  everywhere thrown out toward the ground from the horizontal branches,
+  increasing in size as they tend downward, till at last they strike
+  into the ground and become stems. From these shoot new branches,
+  which in their turn extend and form roots and new stems, till at
+  length a solitary tree becomes the parent of an extensive grove,
+  appropriately characterized by the bard as &quot;a pillared shade
+  high overarched.&quot; And as they are thus continually increasing,
+  seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of decay, a tiny
+  sapling borne to the spot in an infant&#39;s hand may come in time to
+  cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the noted Cubber
+  Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river Nerbudda,
+  near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful tree, named
+  after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that exceeds two
+  thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number three or
+  four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand, though
+  some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away not
+  only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
+  itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
+  over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
+  branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
+  repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
+  <i>seven thousand</i> people could find ample shelter under its
+  widespread branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming
+  hunting or shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks
+  together beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were
+  frolicsome monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks,
+  wood-pigeons and singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the
+  thick foliage, and plentiful sustenance from the small,
+  scarlet-colored figs that hang pendent from every branch. The banian
+  tree may be regarded as a natural temple in Oriental regions, and the
+  Hindoos especially look upon it with profound veneration. Tiny,
+  fancifully-adorned temples and pagodas are erected beneath its
+  shadowy boughs, where are pleasant walks and long vistas of
+  umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from the fierce rays of the
+  tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire lives within these
+  quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek them for rest and
+  recreation. The banian is styled also &quot;the tree of
+  councils,&quot; from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
+  magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
+  civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
+  tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It is
+  indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
+  legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
+  the Cubber Burr&#39;s sheltering boughs with a merry party of
+  picnicking maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves
+  to roam among its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy
+  windings of the hoary banian of Nerbudda&#39;s isle.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">FANNIE R. FEUDGE.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  309]</span> <a name="lotos" id="lotos"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A LOTOS OF THE NILE.</h2>
+
+  <p>It was nine o&#39;clock on a night of clear July starlight. The
+  heat of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows
+  were assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool,
+  if such a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed,
+  however, for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless,
+  and the fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible
+  approach to a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the
+  river was distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky
+  bed, distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim,
+  mysterious look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White
+  dresses, shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and
+  then the glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it
+  was even possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were
+  the only clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with
+  light streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and
+  globe-like lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming
+  effect.</p>
+
+  <p>Everybody had been silent for some time&#8212;that is, for half a
+  minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances&#8212;when
+  Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s voice broke the stillness. &quot;Oh for a whiff
+  of mountain-air or a sea-breeze!&quot; she said. &quot;I came to
+  spend two weeks with you, dear Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a
+  month&#8212;who ever <i>did</i> leave The Willows when they meant to
+  do so?&#8212;but I really must be thinking of taking flight. Suppose
+  we get up a party for the White Sulphur?&#8212;it is always so
+  tiresome to go away by one&#39;s self. Who will join it? Eleanor,
+  will you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not going to the White Sulphur this year,&quot;
+  answered Eleanor Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not going to the White Sulphur!&quot; repeated Mrs.
+  Lancaster in a tone of surprise. Then she laughed. &quot;How stupid I
+  am!&quot; she said. &quot;Of course I might have known that the
+  temptation to break the pledge of total abstinence from flirtation
+  would be too great in that paradise of flirtation. Besides, Mr.
+  Brent&#39;s yacht is homeward bound, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr.
+  Brent&#39;s yacht and my decision about the White Sulphur,&quot;
+  answered Miss Milbourne haughtily. Then she turned to the person next
+  her, a recumbent figure lying at full length on the grass. &quot;I
+  don&#39;t know anything of which one grows so weary as of
+  watering-place life when one has seen much of it,&quot; she said.
+  &quot;Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip, all
+  oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don&#39;t think I shall ever
+  go to a watering-place again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take care!&quot; said the recumbent. &quot;Don&#39;t make an
+  abstinence pledge of that kind: you will only be tempted to break it,
+  for what will you do with yourself in summer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense
+  desire to see the world and the wonders thereof.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With a yacht such a desire would be easily
+  gratified.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have no yacht,&quot; said she with a sharp chord in
+  her voice. It was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly
+  expressive in this dim, mysterious starlight.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to
+  place it at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a
+  fleet it should be subject to your command.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are very generous,&quot; said she; and now there was a
+  little ripple as of pleasure in her tone.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
+  like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 310]</span> recruits for the White Sulphur. &quot;Major
+  Clare!&quot; she said at last: &quot;where is Major Clare?&quot;
+  Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne his airy
+  fleet responded lazily, &quot;Here!&quot; she added, &quot;<i>You</i>
+  will go, will you not?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I regret to say that it is impossible,&quot; he answered.
+  &quot;I have danced my last <i>galop</i> at the White Sulphur. This
+  time next month I shall probably be <i>en route</i> for
+  Egypt.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For Egypt!&quot; she repeated; and a chorus of voices
+  instantly echoed the exclamation. &quot;For Egypt! Nonsense! You are
+  jesting.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I am not jesting,&quot; said Victor Clare, lifting
+  himself on one elbow: &quot;I am in earnest. I received a letter from
+  &#8212;&#8212;&quot; (naming a distinguished officer) &quot;to-day,
+  offering me a position if I would join him in Cairo. I say nothing
+  about what the position is, because my mind is not yet made up to
+  accept it; and even if it were, such things should not be published
+  on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a fancy for joining the
+  army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a few important
+  particulars.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under
+  Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies
+  shrugged their shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare
+  sank back in the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;There is nothing else for me to do,&quot; he said in an
+  argumentative tone. &quot;I only waste money on the impoverished
+  acres of that old place of mine. The house itself is falling down
+  over my head. What remains, then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune
+  to do her best&#8212;or worst? At least the profession of arms has
+  been in all ages the calling of a gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the
+  starlight a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan
+  with a slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to
+  answer. But at last she spoke in a very low tone: &quot;Yet you said
+  you had not decided.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in
+  idleness and indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared
+  enough about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot
+  bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a
+  penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments.
+  If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart
+  speculator owned the old place.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I think it would,&quot; said Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, it would <i>not</i>&quot; was the obstinate reply.
+  &quot;I should take care to find a lotos as soon as I reached the
+  Nile. Whoever eats of that forgets his past life, you know. I have
+  scant reason for wishing to remember mine,&quot; he added a little
+  bitterly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Memory is certainly more often a sting than a
+  pleasure,&quot; said Miss Milbourne. &quot;It is strange,&quot; she
+  added, &quot;that we should both have thought of obtaining
+  forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr. Brent asked me what he
+  should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of the Nile. If he
+  fulfills his promise I will share it with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for
+  forgetfulness to Mr. Brent,&quot; said Victor Clare ungratefully.</p>
+
+  <p>He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and
+  would have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she
+  desired to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already
+  turned to her neighbor on the other side and plunged into
+  conversation. &quot;Is it not strange that Egypt should be waking
+  from her sleep of centuries?&quot; she said; and&#8212;while the
+  gentleman whom she addressed took up the theme readily&#8212;Mrs.
+  Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to where Victor Clare
+  was lying.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk,&quot; she said.
+  &quot;I think the policeman&#39;s motto is right&#8212;&#39;Keep
+  moving.&#39; When one stops to think about anything, even about the
+  heat, it makes it worse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by
+  a <span class="pagenum">[pg 311]</span> pretty woman who stands
+  imperiously over him, the chances are that he obeys. So it was with
+  Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go with Mrs. Lancaster, and
+  quite as assuredly he <i>did</i> want to stay just where he was, with
+  the hem of Eleanor Milbourne&#39;s dress touching him and a pervading
+  sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged stupid people to
+  expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question. Yet he found himself
+  walking away with the pretty widow before five minutes had
+  passed.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know you are not obliged to me,&quot; she said when they
+  had gone some distance. &quot;But your divinity is talking
+  commonplaces, or listening to them, which amounts to the same thing;
+  so I fancied you might spare me ten minutes. I want to know if that
+  was a mere assertion for effect a minute ago, or if you are in
+  earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I never talk for effect,&quot; said Victor with a hauteur
+  that was spoilt by a slight touch of petulance. &quot;I always mean
+  what I say, and I certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to
+  Egypt.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;May I ask why?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am surprised that you should need to ask. One&#39;s
+  friends usually know one&#39;s affairs at least as well as one&#39;s
+  self&#8212;sometimes much better. Everybody who knows me knows that I
+  am a poor man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a
+  fortune, however,&quot; said she, stopping short and looking at him
+  keenly. &quot;Confess,&quot; she added, &quot;that you are about to
+  expatriate yourself in this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne
+  means to marry Marston Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Your acuteness has carried you too far,&quot; said he
+  laughing, but not quite naturally. &quot;Miss Milbourne&#39;s
+  matrimonial choice is nothing to me. I have thought of this step for
+  some time. General &#8212;&#8212;&#39;s letter is a reply to my
+  application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the answer has
+  come,&quot; he went on, &quot;I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
+  it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
+  inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound &#39;Boots and
+  saddle&#39; again.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But why rust out?&quot; she asked impetuously. &quot;Are
+  there not careers enough open to you?&quot; Then, after a minute,
+  &quot;Are there not other women in the world besides Eleanor
+  Milbourne?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Perhaps so,&quot; a little doggedly. &quot;There are other
+  stars in the heavens besides Venus, but who sees them when she is
+  above the horizon?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How kind and complimentary you are!&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lancaster with a slight tone of bitterness in her voice.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Forgive me,&quot; said he after a minute. &quot;I am a fool
+  on this subject, and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No
+  doubt there are other women in the world even more beautiful and more
+  charming than Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to
+  me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In other words, you are determined to believe that the
+  grapes above your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in
+  existence.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it
+  is an hallucination.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you may harm yourself more than you imagine,&quot; said
+  she with a nervous cadence, in her voice. &quot;For the sake of a
+  hopeless passion for a woman who has no more heart than my fan you
+  will sacrifice more than you are aware of&#8212;more, perhaps, than
+  you can ever regain.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She laid her hand&#8212;a pretty, white hand, gleaming with
+  jewels&#8212;on his arm at the last words, and it was fortunate,
+  perhaps, that she could not tell with what an effort he restrained
+  himself from shaking it impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion
+  came over him like an electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat
+  flattered, somewhat amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by
+  the favor which the beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly
+  accorded him; but now in a second he felt that thrill of disgust
+  which always comes to a sensitive man when he sees a woman step
+  beyond the pale of delicate womanhood. If he had been one shade less
+  of a gentleman, he would have said <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  312]</span> something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have
+  forgotten. As it was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak
+  carelessly. &quot;I was never quick at reading riddles,&quot; he
+  said. &quot;I am unable to imagine what sacrifice I should make by
+  indulging the &#39;hopeless passion&#39; for Miss Milbourne with
+  which you are kind enough to credit me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;With which I credit you?&quot; she repeated eagerly.
+  &quot;Am I wrong, then? If you can tell me <i>that</i>,
+  Victor&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But he interrupted her quickly: &quot;You ought to know, Mrs.
+  Lancaster, that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to
+  one woman; but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject,
+  there is nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact
+  that, however hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is
+  the very essence of my life, and can only end with my life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very
+  much in love,&quot; said Mrs. Lancaster coolly&#8212;whatever stab
+  his words gave the kindly darkness hid&#8212;&quot;but I think you
+  are more than usually mad. If she is not already engaged to Marston
+  Brent, she will be as soon as he returns. I know that her family
+  confidently expect the match, and in any case&quot; (emphatically)
+  &quot;Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the world whom a
+  penniless man need hope to win.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know that as well as you do,&quot; said Clare. &quot;I
+  have no hope of winning her, and I am going to Egypt next
+  month.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject,
+  but it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
+  that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
+  attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
+  the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
+  standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who can have arrived?&quot; said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry,
+  perhaps, for a diversion. &quot;I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was
+  expecting any one.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who has come, Ellis?&quot; Victor said carelessly to a young
+  man who emerged from the house as they approached.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Marston Brent,&quot; was the answer. &quot;It seems the
+  Clytie made a very quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of
+  course her owner has come at once to report his safe arrival at
+  head-quarters.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare&#39;s arm, felt the
+  quick start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet
+  woman, and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah
+  steps and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back
+  to Claremont.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I understand why you will not remain,&quot; she said;
+  &quot;but do not make any rash resolution about Egypt&#8212;above
+  all, do not <i>commit</i> yourself to anything.&quot; Then she bent
+  forward and touched his hand lightly. &quot;Tell me when you come
+  again that you will join my party for the White Sulphur,&quot; she
+  said softly. &quot;It will be the wisest thing you can do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
+  reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
+  down and wrote to General &#8212;&#8212;, accepting the position he
+  had offered, and promising to report in Cairo as soon as
+  possible.</p>
+
+  <p>After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier
+  was seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during
+  this interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to
+  banish all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from
+  his mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was
+  impossible to say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting
+  Eleanor Milbourne with her accepted lover by her side, or from the
+  thrill of disgust with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster
+  inspired him. He buried himself in listless idleness at Claremont for
+  some time: then ordered his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town
+  and made arrangements for the sale of his property with much the same
+  feeling as if he had ordered the execution of his mother. It was when
+  he returned weary and depressed from this <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  313]</span> excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
+  awaiting him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;DEAR MAJOR CLARE&quot; (it ran), &quot;why have you forsaken
+  us? We have looked for you, wished for you and talked of you for
+  days, but you seem to have determined that we shall learn the full
+  meaning of the verb &#39;to disappoint.&#39; Will you not come over
+  to dinner to-day? I think you have played hermit quite long
+  enough.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Truly yours, L.M.B.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
+  saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
+  glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
+  leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
+  long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
+  Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from
+  the only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should
+  have some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every
+  inquisitive fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him.
+  Why should he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter
+  in Egypt. As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe
+  distance from <i>her</i>, even if she had not gone to the White
+  Sulphur, as he hoped to heaven she had.</p>
+
+  <p>This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person
+  whom he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The
+  Willows was the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits,
+  not to mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most
+  becoming mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found
+  himself gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid
+  to Mrs. Brantley&#8212;a fact which may serve as a small proof of the
+  weakness of man&#39;s resolve, and his general inability to fight
+  against fate, especially when it is embodied in a woman&#39;s bright
+  eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What have you been doing with yourself?&quot; she asked
+  after the first salutations were over. &quot;Have you been taking
+  counsel with solitude on the Egyptian question? Or have you decided
+  like a sensible man to go to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the
+  cause of your absence, you have at least been charitable in
+  furnishing us with a topic of conversation. I scarcely know what we
+  should have done without the &#39;Victor Clare disappearance,&#39; as
+  Mr. Ellis has called it, during the last week.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then,&quot; Clare
+  said, flushing and laughing. &quot;Assuredly I could not have
+  furnished you with a topic of conversation for a whole week if I had
+  been present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your
+  fate,&quot; she went on. &quot;One party has maintained that, rushing
+  away in desperation when you heard of Mr. Brent&#39;s arrival, you
+  started the next day for Suez; the other, that you were hanging about
+  the grounds, armed to the teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to
+  dare your rival to deadly combat.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How kind one&#39;s friends are, to be sure, especially when
+  they are in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to
+  amuse themselves!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But what <i>have</i> you been doing? I should like to know,
+  if you do not object to telling me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have been very busy making my final arrangements for
+  leaving the country,&quot; answered he, stretching a point, it must
+  be owned.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You are really going, then?&quot; she asked after a
+  minute&#39;s silence&#8212;a minute during which she was horribly
+  conscious that her changing countenance might readily have betrayed
+  to any looker-on how deeply she felt this unexpected blow.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wrote to General &#8212;&#8212; on the night I saw you
+  last, accepting his offer,&quot; Clare answered. &quot;Of course I am
+  in duty bound, therefore, to report in Cairo as soon as
+  possible.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And you will sell Claremont?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have no alternative.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing more, but he saw <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  314]</span> her hand&#8212;the same white jeweled hand that had
+  gleamed on his arm in the starlight&#8212;go to her throat with a
+  quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion which
+  he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over him
+  now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
+  and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman&#39;s folly. He
+  appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
+  child of fortune all her life&#8212;a queen-regnant, to whom all
+  things must submit themselves&#8212;and he felt how bitter must be
+  this first sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on
+  which she had set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his
+  voice almost gentle when he spoke again: &quot;You must not think
+  that I am ungrateful for your kind interest in my behalf. You can
+  imagine, perhaps, how much I hate to part with Claremont, which has
+  been the seat of my family for generations; but when a thing must be
+  done there is no use in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my
+  life to a tradition of the past; and that would be what I should do
+  if I clung to the old place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp
+  stroke and swimming boldly out to sea.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you might stay if you would,&quot; said she with that
+  tremulous accent which the French call &quot;tears in the
+  voice.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, I could <i>not</i> stay,&quot; said Clare resolutely.
+  &quot;I have no money, nor any means of making any in
+  America.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring
+  and willful as she was, could not say, &quot;<i>I</i> have
+  money&#8212;more than I know what to do with: take it.&quot; Her eyes
+  said as much, but Clare did not look at her eyes. A minute longer
+  passed in embarrassed silence. Then somebody came up, and Victor was
+  able to walk away. As he crossed the room he saw Eleanor Milbourne
+  for the first time since his arrival. He had not even inquired if she
+  was still at The Willows, and her unexpected appearance, for he had
+  begun to fear that she was gone, filled him with a rush of feelings
+  of which the first and most prominent was delight. After all, did it
+  matter whether or not she was engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to
+  look at her was enough to fill a man&#39;s soul with pleasure, to
+  steep him in that &quot;dewlight of repose&quot; which only a few
+  rare things on this earth of ours are capable of inspiring. Did any
+  sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when she held her court
+  all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he could not possess
+  her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not at all highflown
+  to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He had always
+  entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning the woman;
+  and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have held that
+  Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne. She was an
+  adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship from a
+  distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun himself in
+  the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in their
+  blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm and
+  bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
+  Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
+  hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
+  to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
+  satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
+  from Miss Milbourne.</p>
+
+  <p>After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
+  there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
+  neighborhood&#8212;a hill of considerable eminence known as
+  Farley&#39;s Mount&#8212;to the guests of The Willows. But it was
+  distant twelve miles, What did Major Clare think of their starting
+  early, breaking the ride by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then
+  going on to the mountain, making the ascent, and returning by
+  moonlight?</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It will not do at all,&quot; said Victor. &quot;Twenty-four
+  miles is too much to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of
+  pleasure. You would break yourselves down and see nothing. I
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 315]</span> propose an amendment: Take two
+  days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If you have
+  never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth experiencing,
+  and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length, you know. Then
+  the sunrise is magnificent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That is exactly what we will do,&quot; cried Mrs. Brantley,
+  clapping her hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being
+  submitted to the company, was unanimously carried.</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the
+  soft summer twilight on the lawn.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You should not press me so hard,&quot; she said as they
+  paced slowly to and fro. &quot;I fear I can never give you what you
+  desire, but I cannot tell yet. Grant me a little time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A little time! But think how much time you have had!&quot;
+  the gentleman urged, not without reason. &quot;You said when I went
+  abroad that you were not sure enough of your heart to accept me then,
+  but that you would give me a final answer when I returned. You had
+  all the months of my absence to consider what this answer should be,
+  and when I came for it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying
+  on the road, I found that it was not ready for me&#8212;that I had
+  yet longer to wait. Eleanor, is this kind? is it even just?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is neither,&quot; said Eleanor, turning to him with a
+  strange deprecation on her fair proud face. &quot;I know that you
+  have been everything that is patient and generous, and I am
+  sorry&#8212;oh I am more than sorry&#8212;to have seemed to trifle
+  with you; but what can I do? Remember that when I decide, it is for
+  my whole life. You cannot doubt that I will hold fast to my promise
+  when it is once given.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above
+  all things.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But you would not desire the letter without the
+  spirit?&quot; said she eagerly. &quot;I dare not bind myself&#8212;I
+  <i>dare</i> not&#8212;until I am certain of myself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, good Heavens!&quot; said Marston Brent, who, although
+  usually the most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly
+  driven to vehemence, &quot;when do you mean to be certain of
+  yourself? Surely you have had time enough. Can you not love me,
+  Eleanor?&quot; he asked a little wistfully. &quot;If that is
+  it&#8212;if that is the doubt that holds you back&#8212;say so, and
+  let me go. Anything is better than suspense like this.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
+  a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
+  eyes. &quot;You are right,&quot; she said. &quot;This must end. I may
+  be weak and foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my
+  weakness and my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night
+  whether or not I can be your wife. You will give me till then, will
+  you not? It is the last delay I shall ask.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything
+  which I should not be glad to grant,&quot; said he, a little sadly.
+  &quot;For Heaven&#39;s sake, do not think of me as your
+  persecutor&#8212;do not force yourself to answer me at any given
+  time. I can wait.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You <i>have</i> waited,&quot; said she
+  gratefully&#8212;&quot;waited too long already. Do not encourage me
+  in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you to-morrow night my final
+  decision.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
+  Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather
+  unexpectedly, and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended
+  her hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your
+  friends, Major Clare?&quot; she said with a smile which was bright
+  but rather tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water.
+  &quot;You have not even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an
+  air as if you had said good-night to the rest of the
+  company.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So I have,&quot; answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly
+  from the pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of
+  her glance, &quot;but it is no fault of mine that I have not been
+  able to speak to you: I have found no
+  opportunity.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 316]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I thought you always said that; people made
+  opportunities when they desired to do so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a
+  general rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take
+  advantage of them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the
+  present,&quot; he added smiling.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I thought you were going home?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I <i>was</i> going home a minute ago, but so long as you
+  will let me talk to you I shall stay.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a very small favor to grant,&quot; said Eleanor,
+  blushing a little. &quot;But why were you leaving so early?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I
+  am not a &#39;young duke&#39; to pencil a line to my steward and know
+  that a princely collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a
+  hundred, or even for a dozen or two people.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; she asked, for though she caught the
+  allusion to Disraeli&#39;s rose-colored romance, the application
+  puzzled her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan,&quot; he
+  answered, and at once proceeded to detail it.</p>
+
+  <p>She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
+  gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall be glad to see your home,&quot; she said quietly.
+  &quot;I have heard so much of its beauty and its antiquity.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is pretty, and it is old,&quot; said he, &quot;but it
+  will not be mine much longer. I am negotiating its sale
+  now.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She started: &quot;What! you were in earnest, then? You are really
+  going to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life
+  to offer me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find
+  action.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck
+  and startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up
+  and gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. &quot;Oh
+  what a good thing it is to be a man!&quot; she said. &quot;How free
+  you are! how able to do what you please and go where you
+  please&#8212;to seek action and to find it! Oh, Major Clare, you
+  ought to thank God night and day that He did not make you a
+  woman!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am glad, certainly, that I am a man,&quot; said Victor
+  honestly. &quot;But you are the last woman in the world from whom I
+  should have expected to hear such rebellious sentiments.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am not rebellious,&quot; said Eleanor more quietly.
+  &quot;What is the good of it? All the rebellion in the world could
+  not make me a man; and I have no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But
+  nobody was ever more weary of conventional routine, nobody ever
+  longed more for freedom and action than I do.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was on the end of Victor&#39;s tongue to say, &quot;Then come
+  with me to Egypt,&quot; but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to
+  imagine that &quot;the beautiful Miss Milbourne&quot;&#8212;a woman
+  at whose feet the most desirable matches of &quot;society&quot; had
+  been laid&#8212;would end her brilliant career by marrying a soldier
+  of fortune, and expatriating herself from her country and her
+  kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor did not quite
+  understand, as he said: &quot;Where is your lotos? It ought to make
+  you more content with the things that be.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have it,&quot; Eleanor said with child-like simplicity.
+  &quot;Mr. Brent remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten
+  my promise to share it with you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then,&quot; said he
+  quickly. &quot;Let us eat it together there. I should like to link
+  <i>you</i> even with my farewell to the past.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
+  understanding.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of
+  Claremont&#8212;a stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself
+  with an air of conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery,
+  despite certain significant signs of decay&#8212;when his guests
+  arrived in formidable procession. There was something of the
+  &quot;old school&quot; in his manner of welcoming them&#8212;a grace
+  and courtesy which struck more <span class="pagenum">[pg 317]</span>
+  than one of them as at once very perfect and very charming.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The man suits the house, does he not?&quot; said Mrs.
+  Brantley to Mrs. Lancaster. &quot;It is like a vintage of rare old
+  wine in an old bottle. We fancy that it has an aroma which it would
+  lose in a new cut-glass decanter.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners,&quot;
+  said Mrs. Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything
+  more. She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring
+  wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old
+  house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest,
+  so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne&#39;s statue-like face, so
+  insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the
+  viceroy of Egypt. The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her
+  hair before the quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which
+  the ladies had been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how
+  different things might be! She walked to a window which overlooked
+  the garden with its formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and
+  summer-houses of cedar. &quot;He will change his mind before the
+  month is out,&quot; she thought. &quot;A man cannot surrender all the
+  associations of his past and the home of his fathers without a
+  struggle.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however,
+  when, a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently
+  talking earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys,
+  and were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that
+  distance there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare;
+  neither was there another woman who walked with that free, stately
+  grace in a riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. &quot;If
+  she is engaged to Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to
+  such open flirtation as this,&quot; Mrs. Lancaster said between her
+  teeth. &quot;If he were not blind or mad, he might see that she is so
+  much in love with Victor that she would go with him to Egypt
+  to-morrow if he asked her to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says
+  that it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs.
+  Lancaster had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the
+  fairy-tale, and had followed the pair who had just passed out of
+  sight, she would have received an immediate proof of the truth of
+  this aphorism. They had paused in a square near the heart of the
+  garden&#8212;a green, shaded spot, in the centre of which an empty
+  basin bore witness to a departed fountain, though no pleasant murmur
+  of water had broken the stillness for many a long day. Round the
+  margin of this still ran a seat on which Eleanor sat down. Victor
+  remained standing before her. A lime tree near by cast a soft,
+  flickering shadow over them, and the tall hedges of evergreen which
+  enclosed the square made a sombre but effective background.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you
+  here,&quot; Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his
+  voice. &quot;But if you had courage enough to end the life which you
+  despise, to cut loose from all the ties which bind you in America,
+  and go with me to Egypt, <i>there</i> I might have a future and a
+  career for you to share&#8212;<i>there</i> at least, you would find
+  freedom and action and life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A flush came to Eleanor&#39;s cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly
+  in her eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it
+  fascination; but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly.
+  &quot;You are of my world,&quot; she said: &quot;you ought to know
+  better than that. I am not so brave as you think. I must do what is
+  expected of me, and I am expected to marry Marston Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Forget the world and come with me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I
+  would; but there are others of whom I must think.&quot; She was
+  silent for a moment, then looked up at him piteously. &quot;They have
+  sacrificed so much for me at home,&quot; she said, &quot;and they are
+  so proud of me. They hope, desire, count on this marriage: I cannot
+  disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself has been most kind and patient,
+  and he does <span class="pagenum">[pg 318]</span> not expect very
+  much. I am a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again he said, &quot;You can come with me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again she answered, &quot;It is impossible. Do you not see that it
+  is impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for
+  you to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to
+  marry a poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For
+  Heaven&#39;s sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can
+  do is to forget that we have ever talked of it at all.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth
+  could be harder for me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my
+  strength to do it. God only knows,&quot; putting her hand suddenly to
+  her face, &quot;how I shall live if I am <i>not</i> able to do
+  it.&quot; Then passionately, &quot;Why did you speak? Why did you
+  make the misery greater by dragging it to the light, so that we could
+  face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did you do it?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff
+  than other women,&quot; said he almost sternly. &quot;In my maddest
+  hours I never dreamed of speaking, until&#8212;what you said last
+  night. Thinking of that after I came home, I resolved to give you one
+  opportunity to break through the artificial trammels of your life,
+  and find the freedom you professed to desire. It was better to do
+  this, I thought, than to be tormented all my life by a regret, a
+  doubt, lest I had lost happiness where one bold stroke might have
+  gained it.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And now that you have found that I am <i>not</i> brave, that
+  I am like all the other conventional women of my class, are you not
+  sorry that you have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of
+  you I cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it
+  is something to have faced it together&#8212;it is everything to know
+  that you love me, though you refuse to share my life.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You must not say that,&quot; said she, starting and
+  shrinking as if from a blow. &quot;How can I venture to acknowledge
+  that I love you when I am going to marry Marston Brent?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;<i>Are</i> you going to marry him?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Have I not told you so?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the
+  square. Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and
+  indignant, without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable
+  the laws of society are with regard to women than to men. <i>He</i>
+  could put Mrs. Lancaster&#39;s fortune aside and go his way&#8212;to
+  Egypt or to the dogs&#8212;without anybody crying out against his
+  criminal folly, his criminal disregard of the duties and traditions
+  of his class. But if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent&#39;s
+  princely fortune aside and disappointed all her friends, what
+  remained to her but the bitter condemnation of those friends in
+  particular and of society in general?</p>
+
+  <p>When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
+  remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
+  by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
+  intense azure of the summer sky above.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let us go,&quot; she said. &quot;By prolonging this we only
+  give ourselves useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing
+  remains now but to forget; and that can best be done in silence.
+  Victor, let us go.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
+  herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
+  her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
+  the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
+  Marston Brent&#39;s figure appeared at the end of the vista,
+  advancing toward them, and it was this apparition which first made
+  Clare speak: &quot;If you will not think me fanciful&#8212;I am sure
+  you will not think me presumptuous&#8212;promise me that before you
+  give that man his answer you will share the lotos with me of which
+  you have spoken. I may be superstitious, but I feel as if we
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 319]</span> shall gain new strength with
+  which to face the future after we have together renounced the
+  past.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She shook her head. &quot;I am not superstitious enough to think
+  that it will enable us to forget one pang,&quot; she said. &quot;But
+  if you desire it, I promise.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The
+  Willows set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a
+  little before sunset, making the ascent in time to see the
+  day-god&#39;s last radiance streaming over the fair, broad expanse of
+  country beneath them. There was a small cabin on the summit which was
+  to be devoted to the ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon
+  sparkling brightly the gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the
+  blankets with which they were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile,
+  the party, dividing into groups and pairs, were soon scattered here
+  and there, perched on the highest points of rock, enjoying the cool,
+  fresh air which came as a message of love from the glowing west, and
+  chattering like a chorus of magpies.</p>
+
+  <p>When the evening collation was over&#8212;a gypsy-like repast for
+  which every one seemed to have an excellent appetite&#8212;Mr. Brent
+  asked Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of
+  the mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain
+  what to say, Clare&#39;s voice spoke quietly at her side. &quot;Miss
+  Milbourne has an engagement with <i>me</i>,&quot; he said. &quot;I
+  fear you must defer the pleasure of admiring the moon in her society
+  for a little while, Mr. Brent.&quot; Then to Eleanor, &quot;Shall we
+  go now?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
+  naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some
+  slight irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It strikes me that Major Clare&#39;s manners decidedly lack
+  polish,&quot; he said with an air of grave reprehension. &quot;Is it
+  true, as I am told, that he is going to sell that fine old place
+  where we spent the day, and emigrate to Egypt?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum,&quot; said Mrs.
+  Lancaster, who was standing near. &quot;But, whatever his folly may
+  be, I certainly do not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that
+  his manners need any improvement.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, &quot;You should not have spoken so
+  curtly to Mr. Brent.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again,&quot;
+  Clare answered. &quot;Don&#39;t let us talk of him. I did not bring
+  you away to discuss anybody we have left behind, or anything of which
+  we have talked before. We are to be like immortals&#8212;to forget
+  the past and live only in the present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Where are we going?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Round to a point from whence we can overlook
+  Claremont.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
+  mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent,
+  they sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From
+  this point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded
+  before. The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it,
+  lay like a panorama at their feet&#8212;shadowy woods melting into
+  blue distance, streams glancing here and there into sight, fields
+  rich with cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a
+  spider&#39;s thread. To the left Claremont, seated above its
+  terraces, made an imposing landmark. Behind it the moon was rising
+  majestically in a cloudless sky. After they had been silent for some
+  time, Clare turned and looked at his companion. &quot;How beautiful
+  you are!&quot; he said abruptly. &quot;I wish I had a picture of you
+  as you sit there now. It would be worth everything else in the world
+  to me. But perhaps, after all, the best pictures are those which are
+  taken on the heart.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You have forgotten,&quot; said Eleanor, trying to smile,
+  &quot;that we are going to eat the lotos in order to efface all
+  pictures.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nay,&quot; said he. &quot;I thought it was to enable us to
+  forget everything but the present, and this <i>is</i> the
+  present.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But it will be the past in a little while,&quot; said she,
+  &quot;and we must forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we
+  <i>must</i> forget! <span class="pagenum">[pg 320]</span> They say
+  that all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do
+  that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with
+  something like a groan, &quot;Would to God I could die here and now,
+  or else that there <i>was</i> some spell by which one could make
+  memory a blank!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let us try the lotos,&quot; said Eleanor. &quot;See, I
+  brought it as you told me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
+  contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
+  Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
+  reverence. &quot;It came from Egypt,&quot; she said: then she added,
+  &quot;where you are going.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;We will see if there is any magic in it,&quot; said
+  Clare.</p>
+
+  <p>So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them,
+  smiling a little sadly at each other as they did so.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, &#39;and all the
+  grounds round it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of
+  lilies which the Egyptians call lotos, in the water,&#39;&quot; said
+  Clare. &quot;He adds that this flower, especially the root of it, is
+  very sweet. If this is the same, it has certainly changed its flavor
+  since that time.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is not disagreeable,&quot; said Eleanor. &quot;But I fear
+  we shall not find the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the
+  lotos fruit that Homer and Tennyson have written.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an
+  Egyptian, aquatic; but since we desire to link <i>our</i> fancy with
+  the flower of the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins.
+  After all, we only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the
+  past on which we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed
+  resolve to leave the past behind us from this hour, and face our
+  future together?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of
+  replying she put her hand to her head. &quot;How strangely dizzy I
+  am!&quot; she said. &quot;Can it&#8212;do you think it can be the
+  lotos?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Dizzy!&quot; he repeated. &quot;Then I must take you from
+  the edge of this precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It
+  could not have been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me
+  lead you round the rock.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
+  strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
+  heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
+  he sank back against the rock.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you feel it too?&quot; she asked quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; he said slowly, putting his hand also to his
+  head. &quot;What can it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in
+  that plant? The lotos itself is harmless, either flower or fruit.
+  Eleanor, my darling!&quot; he cried with sudden alarm. &quot;Good
+  Heavens! what is the matter? How pale you look!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#8212;I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must
+  have been some poisonous plant,&quot; said she faintly. &quot;This
+  giddiness and numbness increase.&quot; Then she held out her hands
+  tremulously. &quot;Hold me,&quot; she said. &quot;The earth seems
+  slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it should be
+  fatal?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do not imagine such a thing,&quot; he said. &quot;It is
+  impossible! The plant has probably some narcotic property which
+  affects you temporarily. Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad
+  I was to have suffered you to eat it!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do not blame yourself,&quot; she said, clinging to him, her
+  fair head drooping heavily on his breast. &quot;It was I who spoke of
+  it&#8212;who sent for it&#8212;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
+  where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at
+  her face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before.
+  Partly this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of
+  the plant which they had shared between them <i>was</i>
+  fatal&#8212;one of the swift and terrible agents of death which
+  abound in the East&#8212;and a sense too horrible to be dwelt upon
+  came to him, warning him that aid, to avail at all, must be summoned
+  quickly.</p>
+
+  <p>But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the
+  party were <span class="pagenum">[pg 321]</span> far from them. He
+  had purposely led his companion to this remote spot, where, even if
+  he had been able to raise his voice, there was none to hear. As for
+  leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk ten steps. He felt
+  sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he should reel and fall
+  like a drunken man.</p>
+
+  <p>Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
+  lessened the hope of its success&#8212;with every pulse-beat he felt
+  the awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
+  his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
+  losing hers.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My darling,&quot; he said, striving vainly to unclasp the
+  arms that clung to him, &quot;I must go&#8212;I must call assistance:
+  this may be more serious than I thought. Try to rouse yourself,
+  Eleanor: I must go!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Alas! it was easy to say&#8212;it was awfully impossible to do.
+  Even when Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and
+  he strove to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the
+  requisite power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort
+  failed: he sank back hopelessly.</p>
+
+  <p>Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
+  to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
+  Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
+  girl beside him&#8212;the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to
+  his breast.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Eleanor,&quot; he said, &quot;it is hopeless. If this
+  <i>is</i> poison we must die! Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O
+  my God, send us help! Eleanor, can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not
+  speak to me?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself,
+  and the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like
+  eyes. The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July
+  heaven, shone full on her face as she said, &quot;Kiss me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were
+  cold.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a
+  fragment of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston
+  Brent had ignorantly plucked for a lotos.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">CHRISTIAN REID.</p><a name="echo" id="echo">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ECHO.</h2>
+
+  <h3>FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Roars there ever a beast in his forest den,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Hear we thunder in heaven, a horn among men,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On the hill sings a maiden now and then,&#8212;</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Sound what may,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Answer through space thou mak&#39;st again</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">With small delay.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Aware of the thunder&#39;s rattling roll,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of the winds and the waves when without control,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of the cries where the village shepherds stroll,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Reply thou giv&#39;st;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Yet thou thyself, without one answering soul,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">A poet liv&#39;st.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <center>
+    A.J.
+  </center><span class="pagenum">[pg 322]</span> <a name="tyrol" id=
+  "tyrol"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.</h2><a name="tyrolchix" id="tyrolchix">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+  <p>Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
+  then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
+  or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
+  legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
+  interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
+  belief of the Middle Ages.</p><a name="image-0026" id="image-0026">
+  <!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0124_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0124_1.jpg" alt="VALLEY AND BEEHIVES." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday
+  and Thursday were witches&#39; days, and Wednesday was also evil,
+  seeing Judas hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive
+  cattle to the Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two
+  persons sneezed together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for
+  witches and ghosts, he knew enough about them too. Did not the
+  witches still dance every night at eight o&#39;clock on their
+  meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His brother Jörgel could have told us
+  about that if he would. The pächter Josef had likewise experiences
+  which he might relate were he not so shy. &quot;Josef was returning
+  through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and had just crossed over
+  the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom he greeted in
+  God&#39;s name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as a
+  Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
+  when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
+  boldly a &#39;God greet you!&#39; but again silence. The figure had
+  vanished. Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a
+  third, and, waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round
+  looked fixedly at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer,
+  gypsy, ghost or witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as
+  a tree, grinning at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next
+  day the black cow went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef&#39;s
+  hobgoblins were fir trees.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef&#39;s phantoms, he could not help
+  telling us in his turn a tale which he considered much more
+  noteworthy: &quot;There was no denying that one winter&#39;s night a
+  huntsman, <span class="pagenum">[pg 323]</span> losing himself in the
+  deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
+  hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
+  by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the hut,
+  but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
+  accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
+  a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
+  strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
+  was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
+  and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
+  to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
+  before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
+  comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
+  for his kind hospitality, adding, &#39;May God reward you!&#39;
+  &#39;Oh,&#39; replied the other, uttering a great sigh of relief,
+  &#39;may God in His mercy equally reward you for those words! When I
+  walked on the earth I laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back
+  in the spirit to toil until some mortal should thank me in God&#39;s
+  name for what I had done for him. This you have done, and now I am
+  free;&#39; and so saying he vanished.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;these tales are as true as the
+  gospel. You know Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father
+  some years since went on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to
+  Maria Zell. Arriving late one night at a solitary farm-house, they
+  rapped at the door, requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused
+  himself: it was from no evil intention, he said, but he could not
+  take strangers in. The three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their
+  condition if left in the fields all night. Still the bauer made no
+  other reply, until, on their pressing him, he finally declared, half
+  in anger, that they must themselves be responsible for their
+  night&#39;s rest. He wished to treat them well, but could offer them
+  no better bed than the top of the oven in the stube. This offer they
+  willingly accepted, but hardly had they lain down when a
+  peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and brushes. In spite of
+  their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away all night, and
+  hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing her, she began
+  scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the cleaning lasted
+  the livelong night, until in the early morning the maid-servant
+  entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls being, to
+  their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before. Whereupon
+  they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor. &#39;Do not
+  accuse me,&#39; he replied &#39;of inhospitality: this is a strange
+  matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
+  been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who
+  thus scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain,
+  when she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not
+  even go to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home
+  and clean. So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white,
+  she seems unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to
+  continue her work. Even masses don&#39;t seem to help
+  her.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or
+  in the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn
+  at night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her
+  too horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any
+  moment drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over
+  her own tale.</p>
+
+  <p>One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we
+  determined to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of
+  fir wood rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see
+  what lay on the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating
+  climb we learned that the mountain was but a huge overhanging
+  shoulder, the rocky head of the giant rising up in the midst of wide
+  sweeping moors some six miles distant. We changed, therefore, the
+  object of our excursion, determining to visit the highest Olm of the
+  district, <span class="pagenum">[pg 324]</span> Ober Kofel. Turning
+  to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half an hour we
+  had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly closed, but a
+  pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently down, were
+  sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could not well be
+  conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles growing by
+  the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone rushing on
+  until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin. Tawny,
+  dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the <i>trät</i>
+  or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to a platform
+  of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain rhododendron grew,
+  presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view outward embraced
+  the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far beyond the
+  black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across the evening
+  horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high, peaked with
+  snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was to the
+  left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
+  Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
+  peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
+  forth from this desert of snow.</p>
+
+  <p>We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the
+  wind playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just
+  been promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man
+  flitted in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved
+  to be the solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the
+  domain, and moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes
+  ere he sat on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he
+  began talking to Moidel about the military exercises which were to
+  begin again this week.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The Ausserkofers,&quot; he said, &quot;went down for the
+  drilling immediately after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I
+  was not drawn.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the
+  morrow for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel&#39;s
+  son, would arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.</p>
+
+  <p>The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
+  lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
+  keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
+  several faces.</p>
+
+  <p>Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
+  of the group began: &quot;Of course you have heard of the clever
+  Tyrolese peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both
+  pricked up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a
+  little farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of
+  lying on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river
+  given to inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge
+  in his neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door,
+  and almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he
+  must make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss
+  of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
+  sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
+  evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his
+  mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his
+  tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an
+  aërial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire,
+  stretched it in two parallel lines across the river, fastening the
+  four ends very firmly; constructed a bench on iron rollers, which,
+  sustained by the wire, ran across the river in a trice, and his
+  aërial car was a reality. Here, indeed, was a triumph. It worked
+  admirably, and the whole neighborhood became excited and astonished
+  about the air-railway, as they called it. The news spreading, it
+  brought finally some gentlemen from the town of Dornbirn, who were
+  wild to have a ride across the river. Hans Jakob refused it: he
+  doubted the strength being sufficient for more than one passenger;
+  but they <span class="pagenum">[pg 325]</span> persisting in their
+  urgent demand, he at last reluctantly consented. They would not, or
+  else they could not, go without him. So, the party being seated on
+  the bench, he unfastened the hook, when they should have been
+  instantly whirled across. But, alas! his fears proved true: the wire
+  gave way, and down they all went, plump into the wild rushing river.
+  A great fright and wetting&#8212;that was all, for the time being,
+  until the gentlemen, although they had promised not to say a word on
+  the subject, having whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no
+  part uncolored, the town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad
+  peasant&#39;s audacity. The authorities took it in hand, and a solemn
+  gendarme visited Hans Jakob with strict orders from government to
+  desist from such perilous, hairbreadth inventions for the future.
+  Poor Hans! he now regarded himself not only as the laughing-stock of
+  the whole country, but as a ruined man. He had spent all his savings
+  on his first venture; but neither official reprimand nor loss of his
+  money could keep his busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved
+  plan, which, having perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out.
+  Instead of two simple iron wires, he employed two double coils, with
+  a single wire in the centre and six feet higher. He stretched across
+  two other strong parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with
+  two seats and a cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the
+  awning he fastened rollers, so that the car was propelled across both
+  above and below. The weight which it would bear he proved to be
+  fifteen hundredweight, and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept
+  it to the bank, the car ran across in a few seconds with an easy,
+  agreeable motion. Practice and a close investigation proved it now a
+  perfect success. All the censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it
+  proves at the present time both convenient and amusing to the
+  gentlemen, ladies and children of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob
+  willingly conveys them across the river in his flying car. He will,
+  however, receive no fixed payment. He constructed it simply for his
+  own use: were he to make a trade of it, he must either take out a
+  patent, or else make some concessions to government, neither of which
+  he has any inclination to do.</p>
+
+  <p>The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had
+  understood every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob
+  before, there was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an
+  almanac which the senner owned to having had by him for the last
+  eight months&#8212;another noticeable instance how tales and good
+  advice in print are lost upon a people who, hitherto quietly
+  slumbering, find for their hearts and minds enough to do in carrying
+  on their slow agriculture and pattering their prayers. I believe that
+  popular lecturers conversant with the dialect would be of infinite
+  service in the rural districts of the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p>The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality
+  of his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before
+  us in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men
+  of Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to
+  carry a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug
+  been fortunately remembered.</p>
+
+  <p>The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle,
+  arrived at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning,
+  making the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop.
+  Franz therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour
+  earlier than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to
+  initiate his successor into the various advantages of the several
+  Alpine pastures, to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to
+  introduce Martin to Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the
+  other cows, as well as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We
+  set out to accompany them, but the cattle were too far away on
+  distant heights for us to continue long in the scramble. We therefore
+  sat on a breezy mountain platform watching the athletic young men
+  grow ever smaller, more indistinct, whilst Jakob&#39;s voice was
+  borne to us on the <span class="pagenum">[pg 326]</span> rarefied air
+  as he called lovingly, &quot;Krudeli, Krudeli&quot; to the calves,
+  and &quot;Köss, Köss&quot; to the cows.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It is a miracle,&quot; said Moidel, &quot;how Martin, who
+  was so weak and consumed away by his accident, should thus have
+  recovered.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What accident?&quot; asked we.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his
+  very name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg&#8212;he
+  who wears the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being
+  cold weather, wore three cock&#39;s feathers gained in
+  wrestling-matches&#8212;strutted down the Edelsheim street, arm in
+  arm with his great friend, the fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a
+  rude young churl, praising each other for their strength of limb and
+  good looks. Martin at the time was leaning against his father&#39;s
+  door. &#39;The devil!&#39; said Niederberg: &#39;why do you stay at
+  your father&#39;s, when there is better wine and company at the
+  Blauen Bock?&#39; Martin, however, replied that he was a hard-working
+  man, who could only spare time to see his old father and sick sister
+  on a festival. &#39;No,&#39; said Heinwiese in anger, &#39;thou art
+  nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
+  at a dance.&#39; &#39;But,&#39; put in Niederberg, &#39;we&#39;ll
+  teach thee to dance and sing;&#39; and so saying, he suddenly plunged
+  the blade of his big pocket-knife below Martin&#39;s ribs.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they
+  were lost in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet
+  village. A doctor was sent for, who at first declared Martin&#39;s
+  wound to be mortal. Then his young wife and little children were
+  fetched with many tears from the tileyard, and the priest came with
+  the Holy Death Sacrament. But the prayers and viaticum saved Martin.
+  Still, for many months he had a frightful illness, and even in March
+  he was so weak you could have knocked him down with a feather.
+  Niederberg was immediately taken into custody, and was sentenced to
+  sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the Baptist&#39;s Day, fully six
+  months, to pay the doctor&#39;s bill, and two hundred gulden to
+  Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded youth, though rich,
+  he has never paid. He will leave that to Heinwiese, he says, who put
+  him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man who had recovered? He
+  would have stood the funeral and settled with the widow. However,
+  father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he must not thus despoil
+  patient Martin.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than
+  cooler, quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam
+  still moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.</p>
+
+  <p>Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
+  bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn&#39;s moss,
+  and showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which
+  they had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little
+  insignificant plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and
+  prized by them far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being
+  that when dried it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which
+  reason the housewives place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a
+  mountain dryad, his broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered
+  with purple Michaelmas daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery
+  edelweiss, falling round in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob
+  and Martin, we had the gratification of gathering edelweiss
+  ourselves, always a notable feat. Martin really had most miraculously
+  recovered. After those twenty-four miles of hard walking, followed by
+  a climb of several thousand feet, we left him felling a pine tree as
+  we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to leave very early in the
+  morning.</p>
+
+  <p>A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
+  course we had none: Martin&#39;s arrival had been an immense event.
+  Thus, as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great
+  masses of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the
+  lantern, forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a
+  cheerful voice wishing us &quot;Good-night and sweet repose&quot;
+  through the door. Immediately, believing <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  327]</span> it to be the pächter&#39;s moidel, a young lady usually
+  engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the voice to
+  enter&#8212;an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect good
+  faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw hat,
+  who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding perhaps
+  to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but certainly
+  not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she attacked us with
+  a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel, however, was up to
+  the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed to get the
+  unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her to bolt and bar
+  it well, for after this call we were afraid of more lurking
+  intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The woman was
+  neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
+  <i>Bachernthalerin</i>, whose hut was generally under water. It was
+  accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging
+  milk at the senner-huts.</p><a name="tyrolchx" id="tyrolchx">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+  <p>Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
+  might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
+  expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
+  to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with
+  the pachter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing
+  Ignaz. It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at
+  an Olm?</p>
+
+  <p>Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but
+  pleasant descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first
+  halting-place. It was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the
+  mountains rising in all their impressive majesty, but for a time all
+  our powers of admiration and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the
+  sight of meek sheep led to the shambles at the very window.</p>
+
+  <p>We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we
+  had rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors&#39;
+  book, besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at
+  all perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
+  preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
+  his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
+  door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
+  that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
+  actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
+  at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in
+  red-handed, and proved a botanist. It was a <i>Woodsia
+  hyperborea</i>&#8212;that was the Latin name&#8212;and was rare in
+  those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft should come earlier for
+  flowers. July was the month. Then there was geum, and pale
+  blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow violets, the
+  white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both excellent
+  medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and grass of
+  Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes. There were
+  four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas! like the
+  gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.</p>
+
+  <p>His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
+  Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful
+  gentians, common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ladies,&quot; replied the botanist with emphasis, &quot;you
+  know not the reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which
+  is not torn up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is
+  good when rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better
+  lotion; and a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another
+  of sleep at night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every
+  peasant daily; but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were
+  bits of heaven scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their
+  roots are better for schnapps distilling than those of other plants,
+  or even than bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little
+  moderation, cutting the roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the
+  ground the plant springs up again. &#39;Poor as a root-grubber&#39;
+  is the proverb. I&#39;m glad it is. For if they were not so wanton,
+  they would not be so poor. They mostly come from the Zillerthal.
+  It&#39;s a special trade. The men climb the mountains as soon as the
+  snow melts. They build themselves rude huts, and spend the summer
+  searching for and digging up roots. Now, however, as they have cut
+  their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often to high
+  mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather fine
+  roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my wrist.
+  In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian roots,
+  which they carry to the distilling vats, where the <i>Enzian</i>, so
+  dear to the Tyroler, is made.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  328]</span> <a name="image-0027" id="image-0027"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0135_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0135_1.jpg" alt=
+    "COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 329]</span> gentians, rose to return to his
+  occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable position which he
+  held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a surgeon or soldier
+  would be in a higher class, that the butcher was to them. In this
+  case, too, we joined in respect&#8212;a feeling we might entertain
+  for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity of
+  judging. But we must onward.</p>
+
+  <p>Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat,
+  ornamented with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company
+  with Moidel, giving us, however, equally the benefit of her
+  conversation, whilst she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in
+  Rein, she told us, and had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a
+  second time about perpetual stitching pains in her throat. The doctor
+  said it was quinsy, and arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she
+  could bring herself to smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein,
+  she might keep the mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a
+  female, and it made a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born
+  in such a village as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were
+  badly built, the kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly
+  cold in winter, though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze
+  in them. In fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then
+  all the family must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there.
+  When Nanni Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and
+  grandchildren must lie down together; and then all the neighbors had
+  to visit her, unless they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was
+  how the typhus spread. Fortunately, her husband and she were alone:
+  they had no burdens. Still, life was hard&#8212;a vale of tears or a
+  vale of snow. If the gentry could see the Reinthal in the winter,
+  choked up with avalanches, they would say so. Her man had, however,
+  enough to keep them. He had a license for the shooting of gemsen and
+  other game, which he might use from holy Jakobi&#39;s Day to
+  Candlemas. He had this year killed only five gemsen so far. The Post
+  at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now, and bought up every ounce of
+  the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the pound&#8212;bought snow-hens, too,
+  at forty kreuzers each, and would never let her husband&#39;s gun be
+  idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no longer shoot, then he
+  worked in their fields; for we might not think it, but he, being a
+  thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought some land. But oh the
+  labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was subjected! If his land
+  lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must slave and toil like
+  beasts of burden, for what would be the help of horse or cow for
+  riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright land? &quot;The
+  holy watch-angels help us!&quot; she said. &quot;Look up there and
+  you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small
+  figure of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet
+  above us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a
+  triangle of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out
+  the figures of two women helping him.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;That&#39;s Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down
+  their green oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the
+  eldest girl, working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far
+  over the precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better
+  fortune, I pray God, awaited her than the cruel trials of
+  Reinthal.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
+  gloomy a view, probably occasioned by &quot;her stitching
+  pains.&quot; Still, she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life
+  in every season of the year save summer.</p>
+
+  <p>In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within
+  sound of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest
+  of our party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us.
+  At a quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery
+  possessing a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer
+  meadows beyond, kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for
+  nine. All were unanimous, however, <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  330]</span> that the ample supply was sufficient for ten, and the
+  good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
+  gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
+  helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
+  morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
+  least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
+  as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady&#39;s handbag.
+  Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
+  mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.</p>
+
+  <p>For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
+  clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a
+  burnished gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep
+  shadows of the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive
+  sheds, and a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the
+  artists, who busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the
+  great crimson bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the
+  rippling sound of a mad, merry little mill-brook.</p>
+
+  <p>How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and
+  climes to those serviceable creatures, bees!</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">The little citizens create,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And waxen cities build.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
+  and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than &quot;citizens.&quot;
+  Formerly they delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings
+  which they could devise for them, helping them in their constant toil
+  by planting balmy thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around
+  the hives. These were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy
+  monograms and devices to add a blessing and security to the provident
+  labors of the little inmates. They were, in fact, <i>beatified
+  bees</i>, who had to be solemnly invited to attend the death mass
+  when the owner died, else they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a
+  swarm of bees hung to a house, it was simply as a warning that fire
+  would break out there.</p>
+
+  <p>The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
+  flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
+  pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
+  beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
+  falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
+  peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
+  lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees&#8212;a
+  fact difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous
+  veneration and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the
+  freshness and simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the
+  discarding of their picturesque costumes.</p>
+
+  <p>As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the
+  walls of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain
+  still several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather
+  to explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of
+  Taufers.</p>
+
+  <p>But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
+  deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the view,
+  finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
+  prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the
+  rain steadily pattering against the casements.</p>
+
+  <p>Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
+  wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
+  band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
+  been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
+  clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
+  bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
+  however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
+  tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
+  their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
+  their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
+  there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
+  these were only a few amongst the endless figures <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 331]</span> of the tragic band, on a long, unceasing
+  march.</p>
+
+  <p>Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in
+  Alpine meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may
+  be seen. Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient
+  Italians fleeing from a buried city, wandering Israelites,&#8212;such
+  and many others are the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn,
+  hay or clover assume, all combining to act as one vast funeral
+  procession of the summer that is no more.</p><a name="image-0028" id=
+  "image-0028"><!--IMG--></a>
+
+  <div class="figcenter" style="width:100%;">
+    <a href="images/0140_1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+    "images/0140_1.jpg" alt="A PROCESSION." /></a>
+
+    <center>
+      A PROCESSION.
+    </center>
+  </div><!--IMAGE END-->
+
+  <p>In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in
+  the distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually
+  the up stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined
+  reserved for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long
+  coats down to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers
+  from the mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence,
+  and really the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the
+  landlord and landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as
+  ever. We were soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out
+  not only by the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare
+  which was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
+  incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
+  flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
+  mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers.
+  These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose
+  custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their
+  acid wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not
+  have been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an
+  apparent falling away from the singularly bright example which a good
+  man, born only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of
+  Mühlen, had once set them.</p>
+
+  <p>The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
+  clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
+  goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the
+  Tyrol. A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness,
+  he acted as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire
+  Bible, which he had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally
+  by heart. Birds, flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring
+  sermons, and his evening conversations with his pupils were fraught
+  with the most beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy
+  and the power he unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the
+  conscience. Sorrows were met invariably by him with a cheerful
+  &quot;Dominus providebit&quot; or &quot;parcat Deus.&quot; Cheating
+  and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore rejoiced to become
+  acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious officials and religious
+  soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never troubled him. He
+  walked like a child through the world. When unable to wear his
+  scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with cheerful
+  urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat, his
+  pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella. His
+  old coat of <span class="pagenum">[pg 332]</span> an antique cut
+  still bore on the under side of a flap the dyer&#39;s mark. His
+  waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted wool. On festive
+  occasions, however, he fastened to the back of his coat collar a
+  fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was something humorous
+  in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it, and yet, says one of
+  his pupils, &quot;though we joined in the laugh, his whole person and
+  demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not of this
+  world.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory
+  of this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once
+  his pupils, in the upper stube?</p>
+
+  <p>The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners,
+  Moidel, fearing that her important services must be missed at the
+  Hof, bravely defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the
+  afternoon, utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters
+  to Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne
+  through mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.</p>
+
+  <p>Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming
+  from the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann
+  were at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure,
+  somehow, that we should come.</p>
+
+  <p>The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
+  absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
+  not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
+  according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
+  dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
+  our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E&#8212;&#8212;. We
+  felt that we had come home&#8212;to our home in the Tyrol.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARGARET HOWITT.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED]</p><a name="colorado" id=
+  "colorado"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.</h2>
+
+  <p>On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a
+  sister&#8212;Sepia, an artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who
+  is the narrator&#8212;left Chicago by the North-western Railroad,
+  bound for Denver in Colorado, about eleven hundred miles west. The
+  first day we were climbing the gradual ascent from the Lakes to the
+  Mississippi, which we crossed at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty
+  years which had elapsed since I first traversed this region had
+  changed it from wild, unbroken prairie to a well-cultivated country,
+  full of corn-fields, cattle and flourishing towns. Then I traveled in
+  a wagon four miles an hour, and had to find my own meat in the shape
+  of a deer from the grove, a grouse from the prairie or a duck from
+  the river. Now we rushed across the State in six hours, stopping
+  fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine brick hotel, metropolitan in
+  charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when we arrived at the great river,
+  we waited two or three hours for the ferry-boat, and finally had to
+  cross in a &quot;dug-out,&quot; which seemed but a frail vessel to
+  stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the Mississippi. Now
+  we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost more money than
+  all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the first method of
+  traveling was the more interesting.</p>
+
+  <p>Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
+  prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
+  great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness: we
+  made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and we
+  were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 333]</span> panthers screamed around our
+  camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat, and our only visitors in two
+  weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who disapproved of our intrusion
+  upon their hunting-grounds.</p>
+
+  <p>At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
+  the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
+  Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
+  military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now it
+  is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
+  rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.</p>
+
+  <p>Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
+  Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its
+  charges. On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about
+  four cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation
+  Congress gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to
+  build the road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This
+  may arise from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes
+  to all Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes,
+  so that, half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay
+  double. Not only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra
+  baggage. Like the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin,
+  this great corporation is able to give free passes to a whole
+  legislature or to charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of
+  extra baggage.</p>
+
+  <p>From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
+  States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here talk
+  about going to the &quot;States.&quot; All the region hereabouts,
+  from the middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the
+  French <i>Les Mauvaises Terres</i>, or &quot;Bad Lands,&quot; and was
+  eloquently described by Irving in <i>Astoria</i> as the Great
+  American Desert. &quot;This region,&quot; he writes, &quot;resembles
+  one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and spreads forth into
+  undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, which are
+  supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean
+  countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat against the granite
+  bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where no man permanently
+  abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is no food either
+  for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered, the
+  streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered
+  to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast, uninhabited
+  solitude.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But this &quot;land where no man permanently abides&quot; is
+  rapidly being settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by
+  the simple process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring
+  of Eastern farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the
+  immigrant, and, like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.</p>
+
+  <p>On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new
+  town of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains
+  fifteen hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels,
+  churches, schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This
+  aspiring town, 4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those
+  colony towns so successful in the West, and on which we must depend
+  for rebuilding society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile
+  farms, and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected
+  by irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
+  Platte&#8212;one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty
+  thousand acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the
+  town and five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated
+  now, in midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched
+  herbage, which, however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet
+  hay, dried and preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and
+  antelope, and now cropped by the flocks and herds of the white
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight
+  thousand inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which
+  fully believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation
+  of five thousand feet. It was said <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  334]</span> of old &quot;that the meek shall inherit the earth,&quot;
+  but it was not by <i>that</i> quality that the Denverites obtained
+  their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and a mint:
+  five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of freight
+  per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory numbers,
+  and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars&#39; worth of goods
+  per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858, and
+  has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water, and
+  almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
+  pretty smart specimen of a Western city.</p>
+
+  <p>We ride in a &#39;bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
+  fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
+  worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
+  South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
+  wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
+  line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
+  foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good
+  pair of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but
+  owner of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the
+  precocity of the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and
+  loaded, so as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have
+  a tent and camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and
+  Scribe, and the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.</p>
+
+  <p>So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
+  Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
+  with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus&#8212;no
+  verdure except along the canals, where several species of
+  <i>Artemisia</i> and a prickly poppy with a large white flower grow
+  profusely. We then begin to mount the bare foot-hills, among which
+  are curious masses of red rock as large as city churches, and washed
+  by the storms of ages into various fantastic forms. We then enter a
+  ravine or cañon through which flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the
+  Platte.</p>
+
+  <p>Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised,
+  and butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this
+  region makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I
+  never tasted poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as
+  sweet and fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States.
+  The time will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the
+  Atlantic cities: at present there is no surplus made.</p>
+
+  <p>We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side:
+  it was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one
+  carriage, with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so
+  that we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a
+  wagon. Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had
+  to keep behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other
+  side to a strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the
+  night, having come twenty miles from Denver.</p>
+
+  <p><i>August</i> 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn
+  bread and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha
+  Ranch; then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland&#39;s Ranch, five
+  miles, and Bailey&#39;s, five miles, on the North Fork of the South
+  Fork of the Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully
+  clear and bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky
+  ravine, down a wooded cañon, then through little parks, surrounded by
+  high hills and set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with
+  fresh grass and abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the
+  mountain-sides the road was narrow, but we were lucky and met
+  nothing, although we frequently overtook the immense wagons drawn by
+  five or six yoke of oxen, and driven by the most ferocious-looking
+  teamsters whom I have ever seen, brandishing enormous whips, which
+  crack like rifle-shots in the woods. We found, however, that, being
+  civilly entreated, they would always turn out of the road to let us
+  pass. We were now at an elevation of probably six thousand feet,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 335]</span> having been constantly
+  ascending since we left Denver; and this evening we rose still
+  higher, having climbed a long mountain which overlooked the
+  head-waters of the Platte.</p>
+
+  <p>Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us
+  to the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper
+  of trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
+  delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
+  morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
+  the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
+  and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
+  ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods
+  and followed the example set us by Simon Peter.</p>
+
+  <p>The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
+  away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
+  rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look;
+  so we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell
+  walked down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as
+  to leave a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright
+  and hot, and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They
+  were darker and less brilliant in color than our <i>Salmo
+  fontinalis</i>, and were, I think, <i>Salmo Lewisii</i>, which
+  inhabits these waters. The valley was about half a mile wide, and
+  shut in on each side by mountains of red granite, crowned with pines.
+  Bailey&#39;s people were making hay in the valley, and I sat down on
+  a fragrant haycock to await the return of my companion. Presently I
+  observed a horseman coming up the valley: he was a hunter, followed
+  by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a mountain-sheep, or
+  bighorn (<i>Ovis montana</i>), on the saddle in front of him. He told
+  me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was taking it to
+  Bailey&#39;s for sale. It was an animal something in color like a
+  deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very large
+  curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous in
+  these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
+  lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work. I
+  asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
+  themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
+  their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
+  never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
+  it, he replied that he reckoned they <i>could</i>, but would be
+  smashed if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly
+  bears, he replied that there <i>were</i> grizzlies hereabouts, but
+  that he never hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.</p>
+
+  <p>In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for
+  a mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
+  Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
+  effective water-color sketches of the scenery.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the
+  Platte Valley five miles to Slaight&#39;s, through a very picturesque
+  region. Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the
+  mail-stage coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at
+  a gallop: we were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which
+  they did in a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the
+  long-bearded, red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight&#39;s, with
+  two houses and some fields of oats. Then eight miles to
+  Heffron&#39;s, at the forks of the river, where there are a
+  post-office and one house. Two miles beyond we stopped to feed our
+  horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest of sugar pines. This
+  species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern States, with the
+  same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches. Many of them had
+  been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner bark, which is
+  a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in these
+  mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
+  birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
+  color of <i>Tetrao</i> <span class="pagenum">[pg 336]</span>
+  <i>cupido</i>, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the bushes at the
+  roadside the mountain-rabbit (<i>Lepus artemisia</i>), which from its
+  large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron&#39;s we
+  continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we
+  got the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin,
+  some hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high
+  mountains.</p>
+
+  <p>The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
+  again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
+  feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be
+  seen the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray&#39;s
+  Peak, Pike&#39;s Peak, Mount Lincoln, and</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Other Titans, without muse or name.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
+  like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
+  in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
+  game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
+  white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
+  have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
+  pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
+  the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the
+  mines in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to
+  which a stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.</p>
+
+  <p>In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
+  Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
+  continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
+  an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long:
+  among them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to
+  the size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so
+  entirely from those usually visited and described by travelers, the
+  Alps, the Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can
+  scarcely believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten
+  thousand feet above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains
+  approach more nearly to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from
+  fourteen thousand to seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at
+  twelve thousand feet, and increases in quantity to the extreme height
+  of the tallest peaks, about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty
+  feet, though even these are often bare in August. In these parks the
+  cattle live without shelter in winter, and the timber is large and
+  plentiful at eleven thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting,
+  but instead we have the rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains,
+  the pure, dry and balmy atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a
+  softness of color which can hardly be equaled on earth.</p>
+
+  <p>Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the
+  mountain which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of
+  the sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along
+  the level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at
+  sunset near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to
+  lie down on the floor under shelter.</p>
+
+  <p>It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters
+  and a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family
+  lived, with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made
+  one hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents
+  a pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the
+  cattle for the winter in certain sheltered regions called &quot;the
+  range.&quot; They were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear
+  to stay here all alone for days at a time while their brother was
+  galloping about the Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did
+  not keep tavern, but were often obliged to take in benighted
+  travelers like ourselves, to whom they gave the shelter of their roof
+  and the privilege of cooking at their stove. The house was about
+  forty by twenty feet, all in one room, though one end was parted off
+  by blankets, behind which they admitted the lady of our party.
+  Sometimes they were visited by Utes, who are not unfriendly, though,
+  like most Indians, they <span class="pagenum">[pg 337]</span> are
+  audacious beggars. &quot;They try to scare us sometimes,&quot; said
+  Jane: &quot;they tell us, &#39;Bimeby Utes get all this
+  country&#8212;then you my squaw,&#39; but we don&#39;t scare worth a
+  cent.&quot; Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles away, who
+  is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
+  peace.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner&#39;s.
+  Passed some deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed
+  and scarred by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks
+  and a red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the
+  brow of a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on
+  the hill to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a
+  trout-brook of which we heard flattering accounts. It was a very
+  pretty stream, winding through the prairie with the gentle murmur so
+  loved by the angler and poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it
+  perfect. It was rendered somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that
+  if the trout were there they could not see our flies. We are told
+  that trout are plenty on the other side of the mountains. &quot;Go to
+  the Arkansas,&quot; they say, &quot;and you will find big
+  ones.&quot;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">Man never is, but always to be, blest.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She
+  told us that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In
+  1864, most of the men being away in the Union army, they found the
+  house one morning surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had
+  come up from Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines.
+  They were a savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led
+  by a man who had formerly worked for her father, and whom she
+  recognized. They took what money and gold-dust was in the house, and
+  seized all the best horses about the place; but when she saw them
+  taking away her saddle-pony, she cried out, &quot;Oh, Tom Smith! I
+  didn&#39;t think you was that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn&#39;t
+  you always well treated here?&quot; He seemed to relent at this
+  appeal, and not only restored her horse, but two of her father&#39;s
+  also. The people collected and pursued the robbers, most of whom were
+  captured or killed, but the leader escaped. Mrs. Lechner said she was
+  glad he got away. &quot;Tom must have had some good in him or he
+  wouldn&#39;t have given me back my pony.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the
+  sight of a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the
+  delicate tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which
+  suffuse these summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch
+  them, but what human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at
+  seven, and drove to Bailey&#39;s, thirty-five miles, before sunset,
+  stopping an hour at noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we
+  were caught in a furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail,
+  with terrific thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by.
+  And here I must pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our
+  horses&#8212;steady, prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for
+  them to climb, no precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the
+  pelting of that pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We
+  found Bailey&#39;s house apparently full, but they made room for us.
+  A handsome buggy and pair arrived soon after, from which descended a
+  well-dressed gentleman and lady, whom we found to be the
+  superintendent of a silver-mine at Hamilton and his wife. They told
+  us that there was a very good boarding-house at that place, with fine
+  scenery all around, which we ought to have seen. But in truth we had
+  as much fine scenery as we could contain: we were saturated with it,
+  and a few mountains more would have been wasted.</p>
+
+  <p><i>Aug</i>. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping
+  to drive through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen
+  miles one of the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary
+  to replace, the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction,
+  where was a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper,
+  farmer and blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a
+  man of such various talents. <span class="pagenum">[pg 338]</span>
+  Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he looked for the
+  hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that little Johnny
+  had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and finally brought,
+  but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so essential to our
+  progress. &quot;Look for it, Johnny,&quot; said the blacksmith; and
+  he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
+  dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe
+  with the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had
+  been lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
+  taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
+  three miles down Bear&#39;s Creek Cañon to the house of Strauss. The
+  good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper of
+  venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
+  where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife
+  milks thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a
+  churning. Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many
+  varieties of bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.</p>
+
+  <p>Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at
+  90°, and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for
+  Chicago.</p>
+
+  <p>I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small
+  part of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble
+  travelers, unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad
+  potentates: we were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted
+  up Gray&#39;s Park, or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw
+  enough of the new and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of
+  Colorado and the South Park.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">S.C. CLARKE.</p><a name="patrons" id="patrons">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.</h2>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you know anything about this &#39;grange&#39;
+  business?&quot; asked a lady from the city the other day; and she
+  added, &quot;I can hardly take up a magazine or newspaper without
+  falling on the words &#39;grange,&#39; &#39;Patrons of
+  Husbandry,&#39; &#39;farmers&#39; movement,&#39; and all
+  that.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Why, I am a Patron myself,&quot; I replied.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What! you have a <i>grange</i> here in this little New
+  Jersey sandbank?&quot; she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with
+  a storm of questions.</p>
+
+  <p>It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
+  answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters, and
+  quoting Mr. Adams&#39;s treatise on the <i>Railroad Systems</i> and
+  other authorities to explain the present war between producers and
+  carriers; and, believing that there are many others who, like my
+  friend, are disposed to look into this &quot;grange business,&quot; I
+  will give them the substance of our conversation. A great deal of
+  that which has found its way into the press touching our order is
+  more characterized by confidence than correctness of statement. In a
+  late magazine article it is stated that the organization known as the
+  <i>Patrons of Husbandry</i> &quot;was originally borrowed from an
+  association which for many years had maintained a feeble existence in
+  a community of Scotch farmers in North Carolina.&quot; This statement
+  has no foundation in fact. The order is not the out-growth directly,
+  or even indirectly, of any pre-existing organization. It is the
+  result, so far as it is possible to trace impulses to their source,
+  of the suggestion of a lady, communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H.
+  Kelley, the present secretary of the National Grange, and the person
+  who has done more than any other to establish <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 339]</span> the order as it exists to-day. The
+  suggestion was in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect
+  themselves by a national organization, as do other trades and
+  professions? Mr. Kelley seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out
+  the plan of a secret society, and traveled over the country seeking
+  to arouse the farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met
+  with constant disappointment at first, and his family and friends
+  implored him to abandon a project which threatened to absorb every
+  cent he possessed, as it did all his time and energy. But he
+  persevered against every discouragement, and to-day he may well be
+  proud of the results of his devotion.</p>
+
+  <p>The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called
+  the &quot;North Star Grange,&quot; and it is one of the most
+  efficient subordinate granges in the country to this day. Another was
+  organized in Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio,
+  another in Illinois, and a few others during the same year in
+  different places. This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time
+  they have been constantly increasing&#8212;at first slowly, then with
+  a rapidity unheard of in the history of secret or any other
+  organizations in this country or the world. We can hardly count three
+  years since the order fairly began to grow, and now the granges are
+  numbered by the thousand. Ten States on the twenty-fifth of June last
+  had over a hundred granges, and seven of these between two and five
+  hundred. Iowa to-day has seventeen hundred and ten, and others in
+  process of organization. Thirty-one of the States and Territories had
+  subordinate or both subordinate and State granges, according to the
+  June returns. There were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three
+  in Vermont, five in New York State, three in New Jersey, two in
+  Pennsylvania, and one in Massachusetts. Up to this time there has
+  been little effort made to extend the organization into the Eastern
+  and Middle States, but at present deputies from the National Grange
+  are being sent to these &quot;benighted regions,&quot; and the leaven
+  is working finely. To show how rapidly the order is extending it will
+  be only necessary to add that seven hundred and one charters for new
+  granges were issued during the single month of May.</p>
+
+  <p>The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by
+  common consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much
+  this one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of
+  different sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that
+  on one or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have
+  been wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together
+  with great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more
+  than the surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and
+  women are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the
+  seven degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and
+  the higher in the State granges or in the National Grange&#8212;the
+  seventh in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court
+  of impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the
+  order. All officers are chosen by ballot&#8212;those of the National
+  Grange for three years, of State granges for two years, and of
+  subordinate granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees
+  are respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
+  Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
+  initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
+  really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
+  which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
+  societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
+  conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
+  only by the most strenuous efforts.</p>
+
+  <p>Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
+  machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
+  sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
+  and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
+  simple feasts. <span class="pagenum">[pg 340]</span> Two fundamental
+  objects of the organization are social and intellectual culture. The
+  widespread realization of the importance of these among the people is
+  the first great step toward securing them, and the first unmistakable
+  sign that such step has already been taken is the rebelling against
+  pure drudgery. Said the Master of the National Grange, Mr. Dudley W.
+  Adams, in a late address: &quot;It will doubtless be a matter of
+  surprise to them&quot; (editors, lawyers, politicians, etc.) &quot;to
+  learn that farmers may possibly entertain some wish to enjoy life,
+  and have some other object in living besides everlasting hard work
+  and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining them from their own
+  life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of weary children and
+  worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a new Declaration of
+  Independence. We must do something to dispel old prejudices and beat
+  down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal to labor from
+  morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but abominable
+  heresy.&quot;... &quot;We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
+  the &#39;hardened hand of honest toil,&#39; the supreme glory of
+  &#39;the sweating brow,&#39; and how magnificent the suit of coarse
+  homespun which covers a form bent with overwork.&quot;... &quot;I
+  tell you, my brother-workers of the soil, there is something worth
+  living for besides hard work. We have heard enough of this
+  professional blarney. Toil in itself is not necessarily glorious. To
+  toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up
+  treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and
+  starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the immortal mind
+  and alienate the children from the homestead, is a damning disgrace
+  to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a brute.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
+  drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
+  while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
+  less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
+  have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
+  to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
+  by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
+  in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable, be
+  just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful in
+  bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
+  portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
+  beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
+  and you will find that the farmer&#39;s sons who are regularly
+  engaged in one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing,
+  are great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are,
+  in comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their
+  address; and simply because, though their labor has been as
+  unremitting, it has been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they
+  go from one thing to another, and through a great variety of muscular
+  exercises from hour to hour.</p>
+
+  <p>It is no wonder, then, that the farmers&#39; sons, to get rid of
+  the terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
+  tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
+  third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
+  youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
+  virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
+  opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of as
+  possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
+  attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
+  reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of
+  grange halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of
+  degrees, the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep
+  young men on the farm unless something is done to render the labor
+  less monotonous and disagreeable.</p>
+
+  <p>One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
+  predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
+  better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that
+  within a few years we shall see magnificent <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  341]</span> social palaces, something like the famous one at Guise,
+  in many places in this country; and he went on to show how social and
+  industrial life might be organized so as to secure the most complete
+  liberty of the individual or family, magnificent educational
+  advantanges, remunerative occupation and varied amusements for all,
+  with perfect insurance against want for orphans, for the sick and the
+  aged. Each palace was to be the centre of a great agricultural
+  district exploited in the most scientific manner, and through the
+  varied economies resulting from combination all the luxuries of
+  industry and all the conditions for high culture were to be secured
+  to all who were willing to labor even one-half the hours that the
+  farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and certainly very
+  entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one of the
+  company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.</p>
+
+  <p>But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of
+  the Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and
+  that they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through
+  agents appointed from among their members, now purchase their
+  machinery and farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by
+  wholesale. That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way,
+  and Missouri, through the executive committee of her State grange,
+  has just completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All
+  members of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at
+  greatly reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty
+  granges, with a larger membership than in many other States, this is
+  a very important item.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally
+  supposed the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly,
+  to the outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West
+  seem to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of
+  three bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and
+  the whole world knows that they have been burning their three-year
+  old crops as fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it
+  seems clear that there is not too much corn raised, since a great
+  famine has just swept over Persia, and others are threatening in
+  different parts of the world.</p>
+
+  <p>The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by
+  the farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates
+  for carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that
+  the road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
+  the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
+  sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
+  the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
+  a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
+  Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
+  reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
+  Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
+  patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson&#39;s pithy
+  apothegm, that &quot;where combination is possible competition is
+  impossible.&quot; The two great companies combined, became
+  consolidated into one, and, having their victim completely in their
+  power, swindled him without pity and divided the spoils between
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation.
+  But nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
+  monopolies and &quot;rings,&quot; or from organizing to circumvent
+  their schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing
+  intelligence of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people
+  so conscious of their power&#8212;never so fully aware that in this
+  country the machinery for correcting abuses lies in the degree of
+  concentration with which public opinion can be brought to bear in a
+  given direction. Once let the people become fully aroused to the
+  existence of an evil or abuse, and there is no interest nor
+  combination of interests that can long hold out against them. The
+  trouble heretofore has been the multiplicity of conflicting opinions
+  everywhere disseminated, <span class="pagenum">[pg 342]</span> and
+  the consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a
+  great number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of
+  certain ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the
+  Patrons of Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the
+  eastern shores of the country, and yet still widening and extending
+  in the West, where it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving
+  army of the people so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed
+  problems of labor and capital by a sudden but peaceful
+  revolution.</p>
+
+  <p>The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
+  accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
+  scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet
+  unused documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of
+  the movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.</p>
+
+  <p>Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges
+  have increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty.
+  Twenty-nine new ones were organized during the week ending July 24.
+  Over one-third of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or
+  controlled by the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped
+  over five million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and
+  hogs in vast quantities; and the reports received from these
+  shipments show an increased profit to the producers of from ten to
+  forty per cent. over that of the old &quot;middlemen&quot; system;
+  and by the complete buying arrangements which the Western granges
+  have effected it is calculated that the members save on an average
+  one hundred dollars a year each. Large families find their expenses
+  reduced by three or four hundred dollars annually, aside from amounts
+  saved on sewing-machines, pianos, organs, reapers, mowers,
+  corn-shellers and a hundred other costly articles; all of which any
+  member of any grange can obtain to-day at a saving of from
+  twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in quantity from the
+  manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of the West, and a
+  single order even from a member of a new-formed grange in Vermont
+  will be incorporated in the general State order. The granges of the
+  Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged in the work of
+  organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary advantages
+  accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and entirely
+  cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain unfortunate
+  middlemen, who find their &quot;occupation gone,&quot; and themselves
+  obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of the numerous
+  small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the movement.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">MARIE ROWLAND.</p>
+
+  <p>[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
+  proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
+  point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of an
+  enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
+  throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
+  in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement has
+  been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
+  state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
+  The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
+  combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and
+  agricultural implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very
+  startling character; and if this can be attained at no greater cost
+  or trouble to the individual &quot;Patrons&quot; than that of
+  &quot;decorating the granges&quot; and taking part in the singing and
+  the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage will no doubt have
+  been gained. How the cost of transportation is to be reduced, or why
+  the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of productions, should
+  have become the <i>bête noire</i> of the producers, are points on
+  which more definite information would seem to be required. But
+  &quot;the people&quot; being now &quot;aroused,&quot; and the
+  revolution in progress, we have only to await events in that hopeful
+  state of mind which such announcements are calculated to
+  inspire.&#8212;ED.]</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 343]</span> <a name=
+  "churchsteps" id="churchsteps"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>ON THE CHURCH STEPS.</h2><a name="churchstepschvi" id=
+  "churchstepschvi"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+  <p>I had a busy week of it in New York&#8212;copying out
+  instructions, taking notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690,
+  and writing each day a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a
+  double strain upon me: all the arrangements for my client&#39;s
+  claims, and in an undercurrent the arguments to overcome Bessie&#39;s
+  decision, went on in my brain side by side.</p>
+
+  <p>I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would
+  be the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
+  raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
+  separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the
+  plan. &quot;I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday&#39;s
+  steamer: say yes, dear child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from
+  here.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped
+  to be married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came
+  &quot;No,&quot; simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my
+  darling&#39;s graceful hand.</p>
+
+  <p>Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would
+  surely yield when she saw me faithful to my word.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom,&quot; I thought as I
+  surveyed myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday
+  night, and we were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all
+  the clerks had gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half
+  asleep on a chair in the hall.</p>
+
+  <p>It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and
+  thrust them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least.
+  &quot;Bill, you may lock up now,&quot; I said, tapping the sleepy
+  porter on the shoulder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here&#39;s a card for yees,&quot;
+  handing me a lady&#39;s card.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Who left it, Bill?&quot; I hurriedly asked, taking it to the
+  flaring gaslight on the stairway.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Two ladies in a carriage&#8212;an old &#39;un and a pretty
+  young lady, shure. They charged me giv&#39; it yees, and druv&#39;
+  off.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And why didn&#39;t you bring it in, you blockhead?&quot; I
+  shouted, for it was Bessie Stewart&#39;s card. On it was written in
+  pencil: &quot;Westminster Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave
+  on the 8 train for the South to-night. Come up to dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The eight-o&#39;clock train, and it was now striking nine!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed
+  on no account, and that I was to bring in no messages.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they
+  here?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;About five o&#39;clock&#8212;just after you had shut the
+  dure, and the clerks was gone. Indeed, and they didn&#39;t wait for
+  no reply, but hearin&#39; you were in there, they druv&#39; off the
+  minute they give me the card. The pretty young lady didn&#39;t like
+  the looks of our office, I reckon.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders
+  like a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to
+  the Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there
+  was a mistake, and would wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
+  clear hand, Bessie&#39;s hand, &quot;Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and
+  maid; Miss Bessie Stewart.&quot; They had arrived that afternoon,
+  must have driven directly from the train to the office, and had
+  dined, after waiting a little time for some one who did not come.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And where were they going?&quot; I asked of the sympathetic
+  clerk, who seemed interested.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Going South&#8212;I don&#39;t know where. The elder lady
+  seemed delicate, and the <span class="pagenum">[pg 344]</span> young
+  lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go on in
+  the morning. But no, she would go on to-night.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not
+  go farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.</p>
+
+  <p>I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the
+  city, and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my
+  memory suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day.
+  They were either not in the city or most securely hid.</p>
+
+  <p>And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
+  waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on
+  Monday noon.</p>
+
+  <p>It ran as follows:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    &quot;WESTMINSTER HOTEL. &quot;Very sorry not to see you&#8212;Aunt
+    Sloman especially sorry; but she has set her heart on going to
+    Philadelphia to-night. We shall stay at a private house, a quiet
+    boarding-house; for aunt goes to consult Dr. R&#8212;&#8212; there,
+    and wishes to be very retired. I shall not give you our address: as
+    you sail so soon, it would not be worth while to come over. I will
+    write you on the other side. B.S.&quot;
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Where&#39;s a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr.
+  R&#8212;&#8212;? I find him, sure enough&#8212;such a number Walnut
+  street. Time is precious&#8212;Monday noon!</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I&#39;ll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that
+  will do as well. Can&#39;t help it if they do scold at the
+  office.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>To drive to the Cunard company&#39;s office and make the transfer
+  took some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed
+  as I again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden
+  Monday afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic
+  Valley, with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar
+  train, and the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and
+  shaking his huge sides over some broad burlesque.</p>
+
+  <p>The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;, was not at home in
+  answer to my ring on Monday evening.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;How soon will he be in? I will wait.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;He can see no patients to-night sir,&quot; said the man;
+  &quot;and he may not be home until midnight.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I am an <i>im</i>patient,&quot; I might have urged, when
+  a carriage dashed up to the door. A slight little man descended, and
+  came slowly up the steps.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;?&quot; I said inquiringly.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get
+  an address from you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>He scanned me from head to foot: &quot;Walk into my office, young
+  man.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
+  caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf. Dusty
+  and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
+  feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.</p>
+
+  <p>I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address
+  of one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
+  as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
+  Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye.
+  &quot;Mrs. Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little
+  silver bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The
+  servant appeared at the door: &quot;Let the carriage wait,
+  James.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
+  lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
+  scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
+  his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, &quot;Certainly, here
+  it is&#8212;No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
+  Sunday&#39;s search.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I will take you over,&quot; said Dr. R&#8212;&#8212;,
+  replacing the book in his pocket again. &quot;Mrs. Sloman is on my
+  list. Wait till I eat a biscuit, and I&#39;ll drive you over in my
+  carriage.&quot;</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 345]</span>
+
+  <p>Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
+  designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Till he ate a biscuit?&quot; I should think so. To his
+  invitation, most courteously urged, that I should come and share his
+  supper&#8212;&quot;You&#39;ve just come from the train, and you
+  won&#39;t get back to your hotel for two hours, at
+  least&quot;&#8212;I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
+  hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.</p>
+
+  <p>But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
+  glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
+  until I could scarce conceal my impatience.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Do you chance to know,&quot; he said carelessly, as at last
+  we rose from the table and he flung his napkin down, &quot;Mrs.
+  Sloman&#39;s niece, Miss Stewart?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Excellently well,&quot; I said smiling: &quot;in fact, I
+  believe I am engaged to be married to her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;My dear fellow,&quot; said the doctor, bursting out
+  laughing, &quot;I am delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I
+  saw you were a lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made
+  up my mind that you had come over to badger the old lady into making
+  her will. I congratulate you with all my soul&#8212;and myself,
+  too,&quot; he added, shaking my hand. &quot;Only think! Had it not
+  been for your frankness, I should have taken a five-mile ride to
+  watch you and keep you from doing my patient an injury.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion
+  of his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious
+  vehicle over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.</p>
+
+  <p>I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down
+  any but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me
+  with a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was
+  natural, was herself, and only too glad, after the <i>contretemps</i>
+  in New York, to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a
+  tired child when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to
+  Philadelphia, and laughed outright at my interview with Dr.
+  R&#8212;&#8212;.</p>
+
+  <p>I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the
+  journey&#8212;<i>our</i> journey&#8212;I knew I should prevail. It
+  was a deep wound, and she shrank from any talk about it. I had to be
+  very gentle and tender before she would listen to me at all.</p>
+
+  <p>But there was something else at work against me&#8212;what was
+  it?&#8212;something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was
+  not altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R&#8212;&#8212; wishes
+  her to remain in Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That
+  settles it, Charlie: I must stay with her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>What was there to be said? &quot;Is there no one else, no one to
+  take your place?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there
+  were.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession
+  of me. I seemed to read in Bessie&#39;s eyes that there was a thought
+  between us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover.
+  I could see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life,
+  had the shadow come? <i>Between</i> us, surely, it could not be. Even
+  her anxiety for her aunt could not explain it: it was something
+  concealed.</p>
+
+  <p>When at last I had to leave her, &quot;So to-morrow is your last
+  day?&quot; she said.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday
+  steamer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue
+  eyes wear such a look of scrutiny.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, what is it?&quot; I asked laughingly as I looked
+  straight into her eyes.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The Saturday steamer,&quot; she said
+  musingly&#8212;&quot;the Algeria, isn&#39;t it? I thought you were in
+  a hurry?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;It was my only chance to have you,&quot; I explained, and
+  apparently the argument was satisfactory enough.</p>
+
+  <p>With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed
+  a subject, &quot;Then it isn&#39;t good-bye to-night?&quot; she
+  said.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 346]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on
+  Thursday.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschvii" id="churchstepschvii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+  <p>The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday&#39;s
+  parting, harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for.
+  It was hard to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the
+  last moment came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering
+  horse and implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that
+  raw October morning.</p>
+
+  <p>I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
+  ship&#39;s deck. &quot;What might have been&quot; went down the cabin
+  stairs with me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double
+  state-room I had chosen I felt like a widower.</p>
+
+  <p>It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the
+  berth and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the
+  future with dreams. &quot;I must have a genius for
+  castle-building,&quot; I laughed. &quot;Well, the reality is cold and
+  empty enough. I&#39;ll go up on deck.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered
+  trunks marked M&#8212;&#8212;. I remember now watching them as they
+  were stowed away.</p>
+
+  <p>But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the
+  dock, that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face
+  with Fanny Meyrick.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You here?&quot; she said. &quot;I thought you had sailed in
+  the Russia! Bessie told me you were to go then.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did she know,&quot; I asked, &quot;that <i>you</i> were
+  going by this steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my
+  question concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a
+  compliment, and looked up gayly: &quot;Oh yes: that was fixed months
+  ago. I told her about it at Lenox.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And did she tell you something else?&quot; I asked
+  sharply.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
+  congratulated, won&#39;t you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny
+  Meyrick&#39;s way. &quot;Good prospect!&quot; Heavens! was that the
+  term to apply to my engagement with Bessie?</p>
+
+  <p>I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more
+  flattering expression of the situation had it been any other woman.
+  But a lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful
+  one to Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some
+  one else joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my
+  cigar.</p>
+
+  <p>It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
+  altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
+  most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
+  carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
+  poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
+  or be amused.</p>
+
+  <p>I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the <i>Trois
+  Mousquetaires</i> for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
+  engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
+  Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her
+  secret. Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of
+  friendship?</p>
+
+  <p>Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was
+  only one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out
+  of the Hudson River. I did not know.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
+  introduced me on our third day out&#8212;Father Shamrock, an Irish
+  priest, long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he
+  had obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the
+  easy, fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Pshaw!&quot; thought I, &quot;what a nuisance!&quot; for I
+  shared the common antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his
+  appearance prepossessing&#8212;one of Froude&#39;s &quot;tonsured
+  peasants,&quot; as I looked down at the square shoulders,
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 347]</span> the stout, short figure and the
+  broad beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
+  mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
+  kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.</p>
+
+  <p>A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him,
+  he seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
+  They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
+  reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
+  jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.</p>
+
+  <p>Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship&#39;s company.
+  Perfectly suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it
+  than the distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash
+  of manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
+  tongues, rattling off a gay little <i>chanson</i> or an Irish song,
+  it was a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time
+  at the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
+  Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.</p>
+
+  <p>He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on
+  the Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest
+  Protestants. Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an
+  introduction. &quot;Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How <i>can</i>
+  Miss Meyrick walk with him and present him as she does?&quot; But the
+  party of recalcitrants grew less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very
+  frank in her admiration. &quot;Convert you?&quot; she laughed over
+  her shoulder to me. &quot;He wouldn&#39;t take the trouble to
+  try.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
+  evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
+  famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
+  I use the word in its essential, not in its religious
+  sense&#8212;devotion to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.</p>
+
+  <p>We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
+  of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left the
+  dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
+  Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
+  only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone on
+  one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
+  terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
+  state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.</p>
+
+  <p>When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the
+  narrator. But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and
+  was talking very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I
+  gathered, as he went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and
+  brilliant society woman. &quot;Shot right through the heart at
+  Chancellorsville, and he the only brother. They two, orphans, were
+  all that were left of the family. He was her darling, just two years
+  younger than she.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not
+  kissed him when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them,
+  and she had expected to see him again before his regiment marched.
+  She threw herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took
+  a holy vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his
+  body, she would devote herself hereafter to God&#39;s holy
+  Church.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them
+  at my feet. &#39;Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I
+  shall not wear them again&#8212;or if I do not find him.&#39;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him
+  after a time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought
+  him home with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring
+  he wore; but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to
+  leave the world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of
+  poverty and charity.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But, Father,&quot; said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes,
+  &quot;did she not die <span class="pagenum">[pg 348]</span> behind
+  the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
+  heart!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bars there were none,&quot; said the Father gently.
+  &quot;She left her vocation to me, and I decided for her to become a
+  Sister of Mercy. I have little sympathy,&quot; with a shrug half
+  argumentative, half deprecatory&#8212;&quot;but little sympathy with
+  the conventual system for spirits like hers. She would have wasted
+  and worn away in the offices of prayer. She needed <i>action</i>. And
+  she had the full of it in her calling. She went from bedside to
+  bedside of the sick and dying&#8212;here a child in a fever; there a
+  widow-woman in the last stages of consumption&#8212;night after
+  night, and day after day, with no rest, no thought of
+  herself.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, I have seen her,&quot; I could not help interposing,
+  &quot;in a city car. A shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in
+  her serge dress. She read a book of <i>Hours</i> all the time, but I
+  caught one glimpse of her eyes: they were very brilliant.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes,&quot; sighed the Father, &quot;it was an unnatural
+  brightness. I was called away to Montreal, or I should never have
+  permitted the sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of
+  contagion and poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her
+  post. So, when I returned after three months&#39; absence, I was
+  shocked at the change: she was dying of their family disease. &#39;It
+  is better, so,&#39; she said, &#39;dear Father. It was only the
+  bullet that saved Harry from it, and it would have been sure to come
+  to me at last, after some opera or ball.&#39; She died last
+  winter&#8212;so patient and pure, and such a saintly
+  sufferer!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why
+  should the Sister&#39;s veiled figure and pale ardent face rise
+  before me as if in warning?</p>
+
+  <p>Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were
+  her life&#39;s purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait
+  of the sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion
+  unthinking, uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.</p>
+
+  <p>The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
+  Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.</p>
+
+  <p>He pictured the priest&#39;s life of poverty, renunciation,
+  leaving the world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to
+  take the confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and
+  ignorance. Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our
+  sympathies, to label them &quot;Dangerous.&quot; Why should we turn
+  the cold shoulder? are we so true to our ideals? But one glance at
+  the young priests as they sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling
+  their beads and crossing themselves with the vehemence of a
+  frightened faith, was enough. Father Shamrock was no type. Very
+  possibly his own life would show but coarse and poor against the
+  chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He had the dramatic faculty:
+  for the moment he was what he related&#8212;that was all.</p>
+
+  <p>Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
+  drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator&#39;s voice sank into
+  silence she said with effusion, &quot;Well, <i>you</i> are a good
+  man, I guess.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away,
+  and, to break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep
+  on deck, to see if there was a star in the heavens.</p>
+
+  <p>There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the
+  ship&#39;s motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown
+  light, shone in the distance.</p>
+
+  <p>The Father was to leave us there. &quot;We shall not make it
+  to-night,&quot; said the sailor. &quot;It is too rough. Early in the
+  morning the passengers will land.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I wish,&quot; said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening
+  from a dream, &quot;that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the
+  sea!&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschviii" id="churchstepschviii">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+  <p>Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London.
+  The Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
+  settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
+  arrangements unhampered. <span class="pagenum">[pg 349]</span> So I
+  carefully eliminated Clarges street from my list of lodging-houses,
+  and finally &quot;ranged&quot; myself with a neat landlady in
+  Sackville street.</p>
+
+  <p>How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the
+  banker&#39;s clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the
+  heavy envelope I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that
+  fluttered away from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I
+  feared to open it there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope,
+  nothing more.</p>
+
+  <p>So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to
+  the law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
+  printed slip, cut from some New York paper&#8212;a list of the
+  Algeria&#39;s passengers.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What joke is this?&quot; I said as I scanned it more
+  closely.</p>
+
+  <p>By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
+  Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie has
+  denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
+  out&#8212;not a penciled word even!</p>
+
+  <p>The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia
+  was clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after
+  Bessie with fatal emphasis, &quot;I am glad, very glad, that Fanny
+  Meyrick is to sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side
+  for worlds!&quot; Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told
+  her that I too was going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her
+  at first! She might have been sorry, vexed, but not
+  <i>suspicious</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I
+  had given it room to grow.</p>
+
+  <p>My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
+  Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from
+  Fanny&#39;s pocket-book: &quot;I shall love him for ever and
+  ever&quot;!</p>
+
+  <p>And yet she <i>had</i> faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we
+  were engaged. <i>Had she not</i>?</p>
+
+  <p>My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had
+  expected. Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law&#39;s
+  delay in those pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working
+  for myself, I should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices
+  from our office said &quot;Stick to it,&quot; and I stayed.</p>
+
+  <p>Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
+  affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
+  work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
+  a patient holding of my end of the clue.</p>
+
+  <p>In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
+  envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
+  wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
+  Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
+  that his father was in Florida&#8212;that he had communicated with
+  him, but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart&#39;s
+  present address.</p>
+
+  <p>Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London
+  long since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too
+  proud. She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not
+  bring myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was
+  between us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she
+  was the unconscious cause.</p>
+
+  <p>At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we
+  were in the new year, I could bear it no longer. &quot;Come what
+  will, I must know if Bessie writes to her.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the
+  Meyricks&#39; parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting
+  alone, reading by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in
+  the doorway. A little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me,
+  but her manner changed as she took my hand.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for
+  staying away so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn&#39;t
+  you send us word that you were ill? Papa is a capital
+  nurse.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;But I have not been ill,&quot; I said, bewildered,
+  &quot;only very busy and very anxious.&quot;</p><span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 350]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;I should think so,&quot; still holding my hand, and looking
+  into my face with an expression of deep concern. &quot;Poor fellow!
+  You do look worn. Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let
+  me take care of you. You need rest.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the
+  soft crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a
+  friendly voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered
+  with a tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a
+  delicious sense of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing
+  over me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I can&#39;t imagine what keeps papa,&quot; she said,
+  chatting away with woman&#39;s tact: &quot;he always smokes after
+  dinner, and comes up to me for his cup of tea afterward.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and
+  fragrant, &quot;I should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on
+  board the steamer if I had known it was going to end in this
+  way.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p><i>This way</i>! Then Bessie must have told her.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;End?&quot; I said stammering: &quot;what&#8212;what
+  end?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took
+  that long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great
+  thing for a young lawyer to have such responsibility.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
+  jumped to my feet: &quot;Was that <i>all</i> she told you? Didn&#39;t
+  she tell you that we were engaged?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek,
+  the steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left
+  her pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver
+  sugar-tongs that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were
+  fixed on me with a wild, beseeching expression.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Did you not know,&quot; I said in softer tones, still
+  standing by the table and looking down on her, &quot;that day at
+  Lenox that we were engaged? Was it not for <i>that</i> you
+  congratulated me on board the steamer?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, &quot;Indeed, no! Oh dear!
+  what have I done?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You?&#8212;nothing!&quot; I said with a sickly smile;
+  &quot;but there is some mistake, some mystery. I have never had one
+  line from Bessie since I reached London, and when I left her she was
+  my own darling little wife that was to be.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering
+  to herself. &quot;Heavens! To think&#8212;Oh, Charlie,&quot; with a
+  sudden burst, &quot;it&#39;s all my doing! How can I ever tell
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You hear from Bessie, then? Is she&#8212;is she well? Where
+  is she? What is all this?&quot; And I seated myself again and tried
+  to speak calmly, for I saw that something very painful was to be
+  said&#8212;something that she could hardly say; and I wanted to help
+  her, though how I knew not.</p>
+
+  <p>At this moment the door opened and &quot;papa&quot; came in. He
+  evidently saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took
+  in the situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the
+  future son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, papa,&quot; said Fanny, rising with evident relief,
+  &quot;just come and talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he
+  wants to take with him.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
+  shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
+  all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
+  school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to have
+  his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of the
+  English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
+  brought me to England.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A very unpresentable son-in-law,&quot; I read in his eye,
+  while he was evidently astonished at his daughter&#39;s prolonged
+  absence.</p>
+
+  <p>Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
+  Fanny again appeared.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so
+  long waiting, <span class="pagenum">[pg 351]</span> but there were
+  some special directions to go with the packet, and it took me a long
+  time to get them right. It is for Bessie, papa&#8212;Bessie Stewart,
+  Mr. Munro&#39;s dear little <i>fiancée</i>&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick&#39;s neatly
+  turned felicitations&#8212;and that the satisfaction he expressed was
+  genuine I was prepared to believe&#8212;hurried home to Sackville
+  street.</p>
+
+  <p>My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me&#8212;close
+  draperies to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed&#8212;and I
+  closed the door and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.</p>
+
+  <p>The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
+  wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did
+  before me, nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most
+  innocently made. What must you have thought of me that day at Lenox,
+  staying close all day to two engaged people, who must have wished me
+  away a thousand times? But I did not dream you were engaged.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew
+  nothing of Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner
+  once or twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were
+  <i>interested</i> in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant,
+  that I thought it was only a notion of my jealous self.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary
+  time? Do you know that the year before we had spent it together,
+  too?&#8212;September 28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox&#39;s
+  funeral, but we had walked together, and I was happy in being near
+  you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson
+  River that you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid
+  gayety of my first winter&#8212;from the flats of fashionable life.
+  You had given me an ideal&#8212;something to live up to and grow
+  worthy of.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper
+  harm I have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove
+  together in the afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to
+  find out what you were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant,
+  that I fancied there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if
+  you had cared for her at all, that she had been indifferent to
+  you.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and
+  when she told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very
+  happy, for I thought then that I should have you all to myself.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you
+  had changed your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I
+  write it, thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a
+  little note to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don&#39;t know
+  where you were when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember
+  it, what I wrote:</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    &quot;&#39;DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have
+    changed his passage to be with us. I know from something that he
+    has just told <i>me</i> that this is so, and that he consoles
+    himself already for your coldness. You remember what I told you
+    when we talked about him. I shall <i>try</i> now. F.M.&#39;
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what
+  a weak, weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought,
+  that Bessie did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought
+  you <i>had</i> cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his
+  manner&#8212;you weren&#39;t of an old Knickerbocker family, you
+  know&#8212;and had given you to understand that your visits were not
+  acceptable.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that
+  I put that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because
+  papa always looked so decidedly <i>queer</i> whenever your name was
+  mentioned.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I
+  believed that in due time you would come back to me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie knew well enough what that <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  352]</span> pilot-letter meant, for here is her answer.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Pinned fast to the end of Fanny&#39;s letter, so that by no chance
+  should I read it first, were these words in my darling&#39;s
+  hand:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be
+  traveling about so much that you need not write me the progress of
+  your romance, but believe me I shall be most interested in its
+  conclusion. BESSIE S.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited,
+  had given her leave &quot;to try.&quot;</p><a name="churchstepschix"
+  id="churchstepschix"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+  <p>But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in
+  passionate unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that
+  night I had taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next
+  steamer. The case would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change
+  of hands: D&#8212;&#8212; must come out to attend to it himself,
+  then, but I would suffer no longer.</p>
+
+  <p>No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach
+  her save that of the detectives. &quot;I&#39;ll go to the office,
+  file my papers till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and
+  be off.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
+  what few women in the world would have had the courage to
+  do&#8212;shown her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would
+  be an embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out
+  that morning that it was too early yet to call.</p>
+
+  <p>To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
+  <i>perdu</i> and in wait for me.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;A letter, Mr. Munro, from D&#8212;&#8212; &amp; Co.,&quot;
+  said the brisk young clerk. They had treated me with great respect of
+  late, for, indeed, our claim was steadily growing in weight, and was
+  sure to come right before long. I opened and read:</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;The missing paper is found on this side of the
+  Atlantic&#8212;what you have been rummaging for all winter on the
+  other. A trusty messenger sails at once, and will report himself to
+  you.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;At once!&quot; Well, there&#39;s only a few days&#39; delay,
+  at most. Perhaps it&#39;s young Bunker. He can take the case and end
+  it: anybody can end it now.</p>
+
+  <p>And my heart was light. &quot;A few days,&quot; I said to myself
+  as I ran up the steps in Clarges street.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Miss Fanny at home?&quot; to the man, or rather to the
+  member of Parliament, who opened the door&#8212;&quot;Miss Meyrick, I
+  mean.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, sir&#8212;in the drawing-room, sir;&quot; and he
+  announced me with a flourish.</p>
+
+  <p>Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me,
+  for on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came
+  forward.</p>
+
+  <p>Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of
+  old.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Charlie,&quot; she began impetuously, &quot;I have been
+  thinking over shipboard and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn&#39;t
+  think then&#8212;did you?&#8212;that I cared so very much for you? I
+  am so glad that the Father bewitched me as he did, for I can remember
+  no foolishness on my part to you, sir&#8212;none at all. Can
+  you?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
+  together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of
+  self-reproach, and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle
+  and sympathetic. I had dreaded the <i>rôle</i>; but here was a new
+  turn of affairs; and, I own it, my self-love was not a little
+  wounded. The play was played out, that was evident. The curtain had
+  fallen, and here was I, a late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric
+  elder brother, with all my little stock of
+  property-phrases&#8212;friendship of a life, esteem, etc.&#8212;of no
+  more account than a week-old playbill.</p>
+
+  <p>For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness
+  scene, in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her
+  that I should honor her above all women for her courage and her
+  truth; and in which she would cry <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  353]</span> until her poor little heart was soothed and calmed; and
+  that I should have the sweet consciousness of being beloved, however
+  hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.</p>
+
+  <p>But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I
+  believe I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been
+  so.</p>
+
+  <p>But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare
+  tact which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the
+  world&#8212;the <i>bravura</i> style, if I may call it so, that had
+  carried us over such a difficult bar.</p>
+
+  <p>It <i>was</i> delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating
+  Father, and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that
+  acknowledgment too.</p>
+
+  <p>I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.</p>
+
+  <p>But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not,
+  as I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs.
+  D&#8212;&#8212;, with a large traveling party. They came straight to
+  London, and summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.</p>
+
+  <p>I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady,
+  whom I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye
+  terriers who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon
+  enough.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; charged me, Mr. Munro,&quot; she began
+  after our first ceremonious greeting, &quot;to give this into no
+  hands but yours. I have kept it securely with my diamonds, and those
+  I always carry about me.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the
+  paper I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was
+  strongly perfumed with violet powder.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see, I was coming over,&quot; she proceeded to explain,
+  &quot;in any event, and when Mr. D&#8212;&#8212; talked of sending
+  Bunker&#8212;I think it was Bunker&#8212;with us, I persuaded him to
+  let me be messenger instead. It wasn&#39;t worth while, you know, to
+  have any more people leave the office, you being away, and&#8212;Oh,
+  Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the <i>surprised</i> look
+  in her eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to
+  me, I thought that the reason for young Bunker&#39;s omission from
+  the party was possibly before me.</p>
+
+  <p>Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices!
+  Her maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor
+  young clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
+  at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
+  ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
+  one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
+  it on the morrow for home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Bessie is in Lenox, I think,&quot; Fanny Meyrick had said to
+  me as I bade her good-bye.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;What! You have heard from her?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends
+  this morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church
+  steps.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny&#39;s cheek.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You will give her my letter? I would have written to her
+  also, but it was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give
+  her that?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;I have kept it for her,&quot; I said quietly; and the adieus
+  were over.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">SARAH C. HALLOWELL.</p>
+
+  <p class="center">[TO BE CONTINUED.]</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  354]</span> <a name="turkey" id="turkey"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>HOW THEY &quot;KEEP A HOTEL&quot; IN TURKEY.</h2>
+
+  <p>The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of
+  faith, and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from
+  Christian lands. Thus, the impunity&#8212;nay, the protection and
+  sympathy&#8212;afforded to the street-beggar, and the way in which
+  the very poor divide their crust with those still more
+  poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise the stranger who observes
+  the scene in the open streets. Then, too, the public fountains, which
+  are charitable offerings from pious persons, are more numerous in
+  Constantinople than in any other city in the world. Nor does the law
+  of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam has anticipated Mr. Bergh,
+  and &quot;The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals&quot;
+  had as its founder in the Orient no less a personage than Mohammed,
+  whom &quot;the faithful&quot; revere as the Messenger (Résoul) of
+  God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran specially
+  inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly does the
+  Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with homeless,
+  masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will not abridge
+  by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more curious because
+  the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the true believer.
+  Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does more than throw
+  him a bone or scraps of food.</p>
+
+  <p>Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his
+  master does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him
+  there to die &quot;when it pleases Allah.&quot; The same sentiment
+  runs through the whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested
+  in religious foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans
+  or caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
+  khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
+  Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
+  creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of
+  commercial travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and
+  protection from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The
+  hospitable doors were ever open, but the apparition of &quot;mine
+  host,&quot; ready to offer you board and lodging for a reasonable
+  compensation, was undreamt of in the early Turkish philosophy. Every
+  traveler literally &quot;took up his bed and walked &quot;&#8212;or
+  rode&#8212;away in the morning, leaving the room he had tenanted as
+  bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own cooking utensils,
+  provender and materials for making a fire.</p>
+
+  <p>What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to
+  effect for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people,
+  who leave legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers,
+  before or after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity.
+  Many a wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly
+  religious men or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a
+  long day&#39;s ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of
+  rain characteristic of the same region.</p>
+
+  <p>Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
+  cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
+  when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
+  meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
+  bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
+  camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
+  most melancholy to the untrained ear.</p>
+
+  <p>But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
+  bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
+  lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
+  the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the
+  primal necessity of Oriental well&#8212;being, taking precedence even
+  of tobacco, which, however, always accompanies it. There is
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 355]</span> always a bazaar close by, at
+  which you can purchase savory <i>kibabs</i> of mutton and other
+  cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
+  are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals <i>al
+  fresco</i> at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after
+  prayers.</p>
+
+  <p>Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
+  repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
+  without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
+  rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
+  shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly in
+  his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping the
+  feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law, is
+  reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
+  uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
+  shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
+  ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
+  circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
+  as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
+  to our Turkish or Arab brother.</p>
+
+  <p>Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of
+  nationalities and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the
+  absence of other hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the
+  poor; only, as every man brings his own things with him, you find
+  more luxury and comfort in some of the arrangements than in others.
+  You may see rich merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles
+  of costly cushions, attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking
+  perfumed Shiraz out of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes
+  are tipped with precious amber and encircled by rows of precious
+  stones worth a prince&#39;s ransom. Huddled together, in striking
+  contrast to this picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and
+  smoking the common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also
+  enjoying themselves after their fashion.</p>
+
+  <p>These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling
+  merchant, Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares,
+  without seeming to care much whether you buy or not.</p>
+
+  <p>The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
+  rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
+  as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
+  store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
+  residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
+  away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
+  in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
+  whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
+  suspicious persons.</p>
+
+  <p>The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
+  enlivened by the presence of the almés or dancing-girls, whose
+  ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
+  Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
+  and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the
+  <i>sââb</i> were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the
+  diversion of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still
+  were the interminable tales spun out by the professional
+  story-teller, giving ragged versions of the <i>Arabian Nights&#39;
+  Entertainments</i> for the delectation of the tireless native
+  listeners.</p>
+
+  <p>In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
+  slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
+  purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit all
+  tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
+  compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
+  in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
+  the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
+  will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
+  Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the
+  proceedings. This restriction has taken away from the khans one of
+  their former great attractions.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg
+  356]</span>
+
+  <p>To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury
+  and profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more
+  comforts than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment
+  for man and beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is
+  enjoyment in it when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and
+  &quot;such small deer,&quot; and one is accustomed &quot;to roughing
+  it,&quot; and blessed with a good appetite and digestion.</p>
+
+  <p>Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
+  best&#8212;more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses,
+  especially to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from
+  Turkish or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the
+  close contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses
+  named more pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental,
+  generally making it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the
+  covering, snores stertorously throughout the night; so that silence,
+  which we regard as necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan;
+  and when daybreak comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has
+  broken loose again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn,
+  and make most diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.</p>
+
+  <p>Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
+  but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
+  resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
+  sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
+  system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
+  retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
+  a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at
+  Messeir&#39;s or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European
+  plan.</p>
+
+  <p>At Messeir&#39;s in Constantinople, or at Shepheard&#39;s hotel in
+  Cairo&#8212;places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
+  descriptions of travelers like the authors of <i>Eothen</i> and
+  <i>The Crescent and the Cross</i>&#8212;a most motley medley of
+  Western nationalities may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists
+  and wanderers of the world congregated there during the winter
+  months, and presenting a panoramic view of all the peculiar phases
+  and contrasts of European civilization, more antagonistic there than
+  elsewhere. There you see the German savant with his round spectacles,
+  round face and round figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the
+  imperturbable Englishman, drinking his bottled beer under the shadow
+  of the Pyramids; and the angular American, more curious, but more
+  cosmopolite, than any of them. The returning Englishman or
+  Englishwoman who has spent twenty years in India also presents an
+  anomalous type, proving how climate and mode of life may alter the
+  original; for it is curious to contrast the round, rosy faces of the
+  fresh English girls outward bound with the sharp, sallow faces and
+  flashing, restless eyes which characterize those who are returning.
+  The babel of tongues at these <i>tables-d&#39;hôte</i>, where
+  conversations are being carried on in every European language, is
+  most perplexing at first, though French and English predominate.
+  Altogether, for the student of character there is no better field
+  than one of these European hotels in the East&#8212;none where the
+  lines of difference can be found more sharply defined; for travel and
+  contact with strangers appear only to bring out the contrasts more
+  clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead of softening
+  down or assimilating them, as one might expect.</p>
+
+  <p>Very few travelers see the city khans&#8212;fewer still ever
+  venture to pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of
+  desert-travel the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting
+  their own tents for the stone walls, and confiding in the
+  arrangements made by their dragomen or guides, who contract to make
+  the necessary provision for all their wants for a stipulated
+  sum&#8212;one-half usually in advance, the balance payable at the
+  expiration of the trip. To do these men justice, as a rule they
+  provide liberally and well in all respects, their reputation and
+  recommendations being their capital and stock in trade for securing
+  <span class="pagenum">[pg 357]</span> subsequent tourists. Yet it
+  cannot be doubted that this system has robbed the Eastern tour of
+  some of its most salient and striking peculiarities, and has deprived
+  the traveler of much opportunity for insight into the real life of
+  the Oriental, only to be seen while he is journeying from place to
+  place, since his own house is generally closed against the stranger,
+  and it is only in the khan that a glimpse of his mode of life can be
+  obtained.</p>
+
+  <p>The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of
+  the East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing
+  tide of European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer
+  aspects of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more
+  essential features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the
+  hat, which they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of
+  chibouques, and drink &quot;gaseous lemonade&quot; (champagne), in
+  defiance of the Prophet&#39;s prohibition; the women may send from
+  the high harems for French fashions, and &quot;fearfully and
+  wonderfully&quot; array themselves therein; but in other respects the
+  people will stubbornly adhere to their own social system and habits
+  of life.</p>
+
+  <p>It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the
+  manners and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and
+  outside view if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid
+  European hotels we have described, instead of braving the picturesque
+  discomforts of the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find
+  endurable by taking a few preliminary precautions easily suggested to
+  him on the spot.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">EDWIN DE LEON.</p><a name="gossip" id="gossip">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+  <h3><a name="vienna" id="vienna"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> THE
+  CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.</h3>
+
+  <p>I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German
+  tongue. It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended
+  foreigner. I am lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ
+  one man to talk to another. The <i>commisionnaire</i> does not
+  understand more than half I say. What might he not be interpreting to
+  the other fellow? The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety
+  and trouble. I desired some blotting-paper. I went to a little
+  stationery shop. I said, &quot;Paper! paper! für die blot, you know.
+  Ich bin Englisher&#8212;er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas?
+  Hang it!&quot; They took down all sorts of paper&#8212;letter-paper,
+  wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried to make my want known
+  by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The shopkeeper stared at
+  me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he discussed the matter
+  with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously. I went away. I went
+  to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five minutes to explain
+  the matter to him. He discussed the matter with the <i>portier</i>.
+  The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass buttons. The
+  commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what I require, but
+  is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of blotting-paper!
+  It is so with everything. Every little matter of every-day life,
+  which at home to think of and do are almost identical, here costs so
+  much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone when I have
+  purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast and dinner
+  task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from established
+  custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like a wrong
+  figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to convince a
+  stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer for
+  dinner. He would bring <span class="pagenum">[pg 358]</span> beer. I
+  would say, &quot;I don&#39;t want beer! I want my&#8212;some
+  dinner.&quot; He would depart and take counsel with the head-waiter,
+  and I would feel as if I had been doing something for which I ought
+  to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches and exclaims with
+  domineering voice, &quot;Vat you vants?&quot; I reply with meekness,
+  &quot;Dinner, sir, if you please.&quot; He brings me an elegantly
+  bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look
+  at it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
+  finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
+  functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to
+  an underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in
+  the dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese.
+  Tongues, plates, knives and forks clatter inside&#8212;wheels roll,
+  rumble and clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my
+  soup. Hours seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life
+  is too busy and important a matter with them to pay any attention to
+  me.</p>
+
+  <p>The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is
+  beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit
+  down. He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible
+  of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard
+  him. To appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will
+  with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men
+  at different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met
+  this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my
+  fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the
+  Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
+  bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
+  requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed <i>de
+  rigueur</i>, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait
+  long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in
+  general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government
+  securities&#8212;the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the
+  Church of England. One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry,
+  I ventured to open a window. The dealer in government securities shut
+  it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I
+  said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating
+  my breakfast. He said that was against the rules of the house: the
+  windows must not be opened. There was too much dust blowing in the
+  street. What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust
+  in that dining-room?</p>
+
+  <p>You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the
+  unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a
+  certain manner, so must they ever be done. It requires almost a
+  revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first
+  meal, &quot;Ein caffee und egg mit hard.&quot; It may be seen that I
+  speak German with the English accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I
+  suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince
+  in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of
+  this new demand in the matter of eggs. It is presumable that the
+  prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still
+  soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up and said, &quot;See here! I want
+  mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You understand?&quot; The
+  nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came about one-tenth of
+  a degree harder than the previous morning. I resolved to gain my
+  point. I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit
+  and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This
+  despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and
+  enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of
+  Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though
+  the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.</p>
+
+  <p>I said on the third morning, &quot;Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
+  kitchen?&quot; Ja. &quot;And hot Wasser?&quot; Ja. &quot;And will you
+  put this hot Feuer under the said hot <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  359]</span> Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them
+  there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week&#8212;any
+  length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
+  brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
+  want mine eggs hard.&quot; Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked
+  and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some
+  improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard
+  boiled.</p>
+
+  <p>The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking
+  beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
+  English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
+  The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
+  people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down
+  life&#39;s stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized
+  to remain longer in their bodies.</p>
+
+  <p>I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires
+  two hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink
+  a glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table
+  on the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I
+  awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until
+  nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two
+  hours. Then more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire.
+  Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not.
+  This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty
+  sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as
+  in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the
+  other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit
+  there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the
+  window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only
+  sign of life about them.</p>
+
+  <p>The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you
+  gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
+  street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
+  &quot;Dienstmann,&quot; does a good business in picking it up and
+  bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a
+  copper coin equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a
+  sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.</p>
+
+  <p>The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
+  particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose&#8212;a most
+  refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general
+  dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the
+  English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed.
+  The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor
+  gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them,
+  as a sailor would say, is cut &quot;by the lifts and
+  braces.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
+  about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
+  pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back
+  and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
+  kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
+  black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and
+  burdened herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to
+  follow. I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame
+  of mind. Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She
+  spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited
+  for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I
+  pondered over the possibilities involved in a German
+  &quot;Warm-bad.&quot; Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never!
+  At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is
+  to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door&#8212;nothing
+  with which to defend one&#39;s self. I bathe in peace, however. On
+  emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. There is a small
+  towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach
+  from the shoulders <span class="pagenum">[pg 360]</span> to the
+  knees. I study over their possible use. I conclude they are to dry
+  the anatomy with. On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were
+  to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot
+  water for cold.</p>
+
+  <p>The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
+  disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
+  offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very
+  small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
+  despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
+  visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
+  have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
+  apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
+  proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
+  passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
+  egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I
+  had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
+  looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
+  right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
+  this was his first visit, but he&#39;d try. So both of us went
+  prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a
+  deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently
+  interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or
+  suggestion. I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man
+  has in this forlorn place. I was beginning to think of descending by
+  way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door
+  which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time,
+  glad to escape.</p>
+
+  <p>I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition
+  stern justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the
+  Pork Packers&#39; Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the
+  processes which millions of American hogs are subjected to while
+  being converted into pork. There are hogs going in long procession to
+  be killed, and going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they
+  knew it was their business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs
+  scalded, hogs scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides,
+  jowls; hogs salted, hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number
+  of unpainted buggy and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles;
+  not far off, a little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a
+  platoon of clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow
+  communing with a patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of
+  green iron pumps, with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit
+  of the American department.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
+  general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
+  our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can&#39;t send our
+  greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
+  opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
+  torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a
+  Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway
+  smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of
+  originality and talent, he might even now save the national
+  reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers,
+  wheel-barrows and pick-handles out of doors, and converting one of
+  the United States rooms into a reservation for the Modocs, and the
+  other into a corral for buffaloes and grizzly bears. These, with a
+  mustang poet or two from Oregon, a few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live
+  American daily paper, with a corps of reporters trained to squeeze
+  themselves through door-cracks and key-holes, might retrieve the
+  national honor, if shown up realistically and artistically.</p>
+
+  <p class="author">PRENTICE MULFORD.</p><a name="ghostly" id=
+  "ghostly"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3>GHOSTLY WARRIORS.</h3>
+
+  <p>So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a
+  mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord
+  Macaulay&#39;s <i>Battle of the Lake Regillus</i>, as to justify
+  somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 361]</span> Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon
+  the extract from the <i>Vida de San Millan</i> given in the <i>Poets
+  and Poetry of Europe</i>, &quot;Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the
+  Castilian poets whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a
+  monk in the monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems
+  on sacred subjects in Castilian Alexandrines.&quot; According to the
+  poem, the Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by
+  &quot;a terror of their foes,&quot; since &quot;these were a numerous
+  army, a little handful those.&quot;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And whilst the Christian people stood in this
+      uncertainty,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and
+      fixed their thoughts on high;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful
+      and bright,&#8212;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments
+      were more white.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">They rode upon two horses more white than crystal
+      sheen,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had
+      seen.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had
+      they,&#8212;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And downward through the fields of air they urged
+      their rapid way;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and
+      angry look,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked
+      sabres shook.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">The Christian host, beholding this, straightway
+      take heart again;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on
+      the plain,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And each one with his clenched fist to smite his
+      breast begins,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And promises to God on high he will forsake his
+      sins.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the
+      battle-ground,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring
+      blows around;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost
+      ranks among,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the
+      throng.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Together with these two good knights, the champions
+      of the sky,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore
+      and high.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody
+      fight;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some
+      half-dead with fright:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Full sorely they repented that to the field they
+      came,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">For they saw that from the battle they should
+      retreat with shame.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown
+      had on,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint
+      John;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish
+      hood,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla&#39;s
+      neighborhood.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Turn now to the <i>Battle of the Lake Regillus</i>. In a series of
+  desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
+  worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
+  upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion,
+  Herminius&#8212;&quot;who kept the bridge so well&quot;&#8212;has
+  been slain, and his war-horse, black Auster, has barely been rescued
+  by the dictator Aulus from the hands of Titus, the youngest of the
+  Tarquins.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And Aulus the Dictator</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Stroked Auster&#39;s raven mane;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With heed he looked unto the girths,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">With heed unto the rein.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;Now bear me well, black Auster,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Into yon thick array;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And thou and I will have revenge</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">For thy good lord this day.&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">So spake he; and was buckling</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Tighter black Auster&#39;s band,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">When he was aware of a princely pair</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That rode at his right hand.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">So like they were, no mortal</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Might one from other know:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">White as snow their armor was:</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Their steeds were white as snow.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Never on earthly anvil</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Did such rare armor gleam;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And never did such gallant steeds</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Drink of an earthly stream.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">So answered those strange horsemen,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And each couched low his spear;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And forthwith all the ranks of Rome</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Were bold and of good cheer:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And on the thirty armies</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Came wonder and affright,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And Ardea wavered on the left,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And Cora on the right.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;Rome to the charge!&quot; cried Aulus;</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">&quot;The foe begins to yield!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Charge for the hearth of Vesta!</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Charge for the Golden Shield!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Let no man stop to plunder,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">But slay, and slay, and slay;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The gods who live for ever</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Are on our side to-day.&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">Then the fierce trumpet-flourish</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">From earth to heaven arose;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">The kites know well the long stern swell</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">That bids the Romans close.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style="text-align:left" />
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And fliers and pursuers</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Were mingled in a mass:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And far away the battle</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Went roaring through the pass.</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The scene of the following stanza is <span class="pagenum">[pg
+  362]</span> at Rome, where the watchers at the gates have learned
+  from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the day:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i2">And all the people trembled,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">And pale grew every cheek;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">And Sergius, the High Pontiff,</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Alone found voice to speak:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">&quot;The gods who live for ever</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">Have fought for Rome to-day!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">These be the Great Twin Brethren</p>
+
+      <p class="i4">To whom the Dorians pray!&quot;</p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay
+  was consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was
+  at the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out
+  how certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might
+  fairly be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long
+  before Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren.
+  He has even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary
+  appearance of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the
+  resemblance just pointed out. &quot;In modern times,&quot; he wrote,
+  &quot;a very similar story actually found credence among a people
+  much more civilized than the Romans of the fifth century before
+  Christ. A chaplain of Cortez, writing about thirty years after the
+  conquest of Mexico,...had the face to assert that, in an engagement
+  against the Indians, Saint James had appeared on a gray horse at the
+  head of the Castilian adventurers. Many of those adventurers were
+  living when this lie was printed. One of them, honest Bernal Diaz,
+  wrote an account of the expedition.... He says that he was in the
+  battle, and that he saw a gray horse with a man on his back, but that
+  the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the
+  ever-blessed apostle Saint James. &#39;Nevertheless,&#39; Bernal
+  adds, &#39;it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
+  glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
+  unworthy to see him.&#39;&quot; Other striking instances of identity
+  between classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord
+  Macaulay in the learned and interesting general preface to his
+  <i>Lays of Ancient Rome</i>. But the reappearance of this particular
+  story in such remote times and places, and with such marked
+  similarities and variations, would entitle it to a place among the
+  indestructible popular legends collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his
+  <i>Curious Myths of the Middle Ages</i>.</p><a name="warning" id=
+  "warning"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>A WARNING TO LOVERS.</h2>
+
+  <p>&quot;Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin&#39;,
+  triflin&#39;, owdacious, contrary piece that ever lived.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, ma!&quot; sobbed Matilda, &quot;I couldn&#39; help
+  myself&#8212;&#39;deed I couldn&#39;.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Couldn&#39; help yourself? That&#39;s a pretty way to talk!
+  Ain&#39;t he a nice young man?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Got money?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And good kinfolks?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And loves you to destrackshun?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes&#39;m.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, in the name o&#39; common sense, what did you send him
+  home for?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s&#39;pose,
+  though I&#39;d ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer
+  clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on
+  his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began
+  breathin&#39; hard, and <i>his gallowses kept a creakin and a
+  creakin&#39;</i>, I till I thought in my soul somethin&#39; terrible
+  was the matter with his in&#39;ards, his vitals; and that flustered
+  and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin&#39;. Seein&#39; me do
+  that, he creaked worse&#39;n ever, and that made me cry harder; and
+  the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it
+  came to me that it wasn&#39;t nothin&#39; but his gallowses; and then
+  I bust out a laughin&#39; fit to kill myself, right in his face. And
+  then he jumpt up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he
+  ain&#39;t comin&#39; back no more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Metildy,&quot; said the old woman sternly, &quot;stop
+  sniv&#39;lin&#39;. You&#39;ve made an everlastin&#39; fool of
+  yourself, but your cake ain&#39;t all dough yet. It all comes of them
+  no &#39;count, fashionable sto&#39; gallowses&#8212;&#39;
+  &#39;spenders&#39; I believe they calls &#39;em. Never mind, honey!
+  I&#39;ll send <span class="pagenum">[pg 363]</span> for Johnny, tell
+  him how it happened, &#39;pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
+  pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa&#39;s; and they never do
+  creak.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, ma,&quot; said Matilda, brightening up; &quot;but let
+  <i>me</i> knit &#39;em.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;So you shall, honey: he&#39;ll vally them a heap more than
+  if I knit &#39;em. Cheer up, Tildy: it&#39;ll all be right&#8212;you
+  mind if it won&#39;t.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were
+  married, and Johnny&#39;s gallowses never creaked any
+  more.</p><a name="notes" id="notes"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>NOTES.</h2>
+
+  <p>Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing
+  like a stately ship of Tarsus &quot;with all her bravery on, and
+  tackle trim,&quot; is particular to note &quot;an amber scent of
+  odorous perfume, her harbinger.&quot; Perfume as an adjunct of
+  feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest
+  poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the
+  modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors
+  and colors&#8212;a theory which might never have been dreamed of in
+  the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the
+  belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe
+  Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new refinement of
+  coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and quantity of
+  perfume than in previous years, but employs it according to a certain
+  scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially <i>de
+  rigueur</i>, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to
+  establish a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she
+  carries and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is
+  to say, gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the
+  stuff of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if
+  light yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda
+  (which has such a run at present for ladies&#39; costumes), the
+  chosen perfume will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the
+  other flowers corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh
+  ball-toilettes. Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between
+  different odors and different styles of personal beauty or personal
+  traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony
+  between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due
+  to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many
+  another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the science
+  is fairly established.</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The <i>enfant terrible</i> plays an important rôle in literature
+  as in society during these modern days, and although a little of him
+  goes a good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes
+  spicy.</p>
+
+  <p>A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his
+  knees, when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white.
+  &quot;Oh,&quot; says grandpapa, &quot;that&#39;s because I&#39;m so
+  old. Why, don&#39;t you know that I was in the ark?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;In the ark?&quot; cries Tommy: &quot;why you aren&#39;t
+  Noah, are you, grandpapa?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no, I&#39;m not Noah.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Ah, then you&#39;re Shem.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, not Shem, either.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh, then I suppose you&#39;re Japhet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;No, you haven&#39;t guessed right: I&#39;m not
+  Japhet.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, then, grandpapa,&quot; said the child, driven to the
+  extremity of his biblical knowledge, &quot;you must be one of the
+  beasts.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church
+  one Sunday for the first time.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;You see, Augustus,&quot; said his fond mamma, anxious to
+  impress his tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances,
+  &quot;how many people come here to pray to God?&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Yes, but not so many as go to the circus,&quot; says the
+  practical lad.</p>
+
+  <p>Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
+  crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
+  slap.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Well, I hope you paid her back?&quot; cried the angry
+  mother, her indignation getting the better of her
+  judgment.</p><span class="pagenum">[pg 364]</span>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh yes, I paid her back <i>before-hand</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
+  schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
+  giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would
+  break, poor things!&quot; says papa.</p>
+
+  <p>&quot;Oh no,&quot; replies the child: &quot;only the front row
+  cried.&quot;</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British
+  journalism was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian
+  allusions and fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every
+  pedant of the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing
+  acquaintance with Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners
+  and customs. Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations
+  for leading articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi
+  of the sort commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular
+  book of maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to
+  the comparative profundity of each other&#39;s researches into
+  Persian lore; but the climax was capped, we think, by one London
+  journal, which politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his
+  conduct and his reading. &quot;Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by
+  English flattery,&quot; said this editor gravely, &quot;with an
+  exaggerated sense of his own importance, His Majesty, as a
+  corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of &#39;Ushter wa
+  Dirâz-kush,&#39; from the &#39;Baharistân&#39; of Jaumy.&quot; In
+  ordinary times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said
+  fable is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken
+  for granted, during the shah&#39;s visit, that the Baharistân of
+  Jaumy was as familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon
+  the whole, our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing
+  the shah. Horace&#39;s famous &quot;Persicos odi, puer,
+  apparatus,&quot; has a very close application in the &quot;Persian
+  stuff&quot; with which British journalism has lately been
+  flooded.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">How various his employments whom the world</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Calls idle!</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the
+  shah in England as having been a grand &quot;variety
+  entertainment&quot; would feebly represent the mixture actually
+  furnished him. One day, for example (a Monday), His Majesty began by
+  reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then Captain Shaw was presented to
+  the shah&#8212;likewise Colonel Hogg; and then, according to the
+  <i>Morning Advertiser</i>, &quot;Joe Goss, Ned Donelly, Alex. Lawson,
+  and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing before the shah
+  and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed highly
+  delighted;&quot; and next came deputations successively from the
+  Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
+  Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
+  Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
+  from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
+  Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
+  wind up the day&#39;s programme, the shah, attended by many princes
+  and princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a
+  performance at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his
+  taste&#8212;namely, gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed
+  by &quot;Signor Romah&quot; on the trapeze. All this was done before
+  dinner; and the curious combination of piety and pugilism,
+  missionaries and acrobats, may be supposed to have had the effect of
+  duly &quot;impressing&quot; the illustrious guest.</p>
+
+  <p>A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
+  America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
+  fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Véron,
+  we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
+  fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he
+  outwitted the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues
+  make artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
+  (which does not appreciate <span class="pagenum">[pg 365]</span>
+  ingenuity of that sort) lately gave six months in prison to some
+  makers of sham coffee-grains, thus interfering with a business which
+  was earning twenty thousand dollars a year. Some of the Paris
+  pastry-cooks make balls for <i>vol-au-vent</i> with a hash of rags
+  allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and partridges for pâtés are
+  constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly shaped to represent those
+  birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell marshmallow paste made out of
+  Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts the eyes of a fresh mackerel
+  in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp customers; and as to drinks,
+  one dyer boldly puts over his door &quot;Burgundy Vintages!&quot;
+  They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds of glass. Adulteration on
+  adulteration, moans M. Véron, all is adulteration!</p>
+  <hr />
+
+  <p>The problem of aërial navigation seems at present to be agitating
+  as many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not
+  many years ago, or the philosopher&#39;s stone at a more remote
+  period. It possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the
+  danger connected with the experiments&#8212;the source, we suppose,
+  of the eagerness shown by Professor Wise and his associates to
+  <i>fly</i> to evils that they know not of. Perpetual motion received
+  its quietus from the blasts of ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe
+  to encounter. It may survive the attacks of gayety, but it will
+  succumb, we fancy, to the resistless force of
+  <i>gravity</i>.</p><a name="literature" id="literature">
+  <!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h2>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York:
+    Holt &amp; Williams.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
+  adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
+  with some versions from among his prose works by another
+  Philadelphian translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine&#39;s prose,
+  delicate in its pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be
+  held too precious by the interpreter. The latter must have all his
+  wits about him, or he will not find English at once simple enough and
+  distinguished enough to stand for the original. To get at Heine&#39;s
+  prose exactly in another language must be almost as hard as to get at
+  his poetry. The principal selection made by Mr. Stern is a long
+  rambling rhapsody called &quot;Florentine Nights,&quot; in which the
+  author professes to pour into the ears of a dying mistress the
+  history of some of his former amours and exaltations, the natural
+  jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus in the recital. His
+  first love, however, is an idealization&#8212;a Greek statue which he
+  visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning&#39;s poem does the</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">Shrinking Caryatides</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Of just-tinged marble, like Eve&#39;s lilied
+    flesh.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator
+  almost as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an
+  interpreter of poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to
+  struggle with, yet there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and
+  waft of feeling in the metre which lends him wings and helps him on.
+  If Mr. Stern does not encumber his style with a betrayal of the
+  difficulties he has got over&#8212;if he does not give us pedantry
+  and double-epithets, so common in vulgar renderings from the
+  German&#8212;he certainly shows no timidity in turning the polished
+  familiarity of Heine&#39;s prose into our commonest vernacular.
+  &quot;What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;&quot; &quot;for
+  the men, lots of patience:&quot; trivialities of expression like
+  these are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine
+  would have written if he had been writing in English, at least the
+  fault of familiarity is <span class="pagenum">[pg 366]</span> better
+  than the fault of hardness; and these translations are never at all
+  hard or uncomfortable. When we add that Mr. Stern gives us an index
+  without showing what works the extracts are taken from, and that he
+  gives us an article on Heine without any mention that we can discover
+  of Heine&#39;s wife, we have vented about all the objections we can
+  make to this welcome publication; and they are very few to find in a
+  collection of hundreds of &quot;scintillations.&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so
+  liberally and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a
+  complete exhibit of Heine&#39;s mind on nearly all the topics he
+  occupied himself about. We have his views on French and German
+  politicians; on French, German and English authors; on art and
+  poetry; on his own soul and character; on religion; besides a great
+  deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite persiflage surely that
+  ever was heard, which flutters clear away from the regions of sense
+  and information, yet which only a man of sense and information could
+  have uttered.</p>
+
+  <p>Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
+  everything &quot;charming.&quot; His wit is a little cheap, perhaps,
+  when he calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg &quot;the
+  necropolis in which the mummies of perjury are embalmed;&quot; at
+  least it becomes tiresome to hear his constant disparagement of the
+  politics which he chose to live under, and which protected him so
+  agreeably; but he is his own keen self where he observes that the
+  signs of the revolution of 1830, what he calls the legend of
+  <i>liberté, egalité, fraternité</i> at the street-corners, had
+  &quot;already been wiped away.&quot; Victor Hugo, for his part, did
+  not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have, in
+  relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
+  where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody &quot;la
+  grandeur révolutionnaire.&quot; The cooler spectator from Hamburg
+  inspects at Paris &quot;the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the
+  kangaroos,&quot; without much of the vertigo of precipices, and he
+  sees &quot;M. de La Fayette and his white locks&#8212;at different
+  places, however,&quot; for the latter were in a locket and the hero
+  was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates &quot;the virtuous La
+  Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner.&quot; The age of industry,
+  commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite suited to the
+  poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine&#39;s admiration of
+  Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
+  &quot;Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
+  emperor,&quot; he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects
+  Napoleon as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers
+  ought to have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat
+  precipitated the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the
+  world after his death was &quot;at the best to be bored to death by
+  the monotony of a republic.&quot; Ardent patriots in this country
+  need not go for sympathy to the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of
+  a commonwealth he had small love: &quot;That which oppresses me is
+  the artist&#39;s and the scholar&#39;s secret dread, lest our modern
+  civilization, the laboriously achieved result of so many centuries of
+  effort, will be endangered I by the triumph of Communism.&quot; We
+  have drifted into the citation of these sentiments because many
+  conservatives think of Heine only as an irreconcilable destroyer and
+  revolutionist, and do not care to welcome in him the basis of
+  attachment to order which must underlie every artist&#39;s or
+  author&#39;s love of freedom. &quot;Soldier in the liberation of
+  humanity&quot; as he was, that liberation was to be the result of
+  growth, not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but
+  &quot;hunger, <i>envy</i> and death.&quot; It has but one faith,
+  happiness on this earth; and the millennium it foresees is &quot;a
+  single shepherd and a single flock, all shorn after the same pattern,
+  and bleating alike.&quot; Such passages are the true reflection of
+  Heine&#39;s keen but not great mind, miserably bandied between the
+  hopes of a republican future, that was to be the death of art and
+  literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose conditions
+  sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought, scratched
+  and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the politics he
+  was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when he turned his
+  attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully impartial. He
+  hated the English for &quot;their idle curiosity, bedizened
+  awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant
+  delight in all melancholy objects.&quot; As for the French, they are
+  &quot;les comédiens ordinaires du bon Dieu;&quot; yet &quot;a
+  blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a
+  praying Englishman.&quot; And Germany: &quot;Germany alone possesses
+  those colossal fools whose caps reach unto the heavens, <span class=
+  "pagenum">[pg 367]</span> and delight the stars with the ringing of
+  their bells.&quot; Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side,
+  Heine is shown &quot;in action&quot; by this little cluster of
+  &quot;scintillations,&quot; and the whole book is the shortest
+  definition of him possible, for it makes the saliencies of his
+  character jut out within a close compass. It can be read in a couple
+  of hours, and no reading of the same length in any of his complete
+  writings would give such a notion of the most witty, perverse,
+  tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.</p>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt
+    &amp; Williams.
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
+  without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
+  them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
+  eminently made to appreciate the best kind of &quot;high life&quot;
+  which London has offered in the present century; and he has been able
+  to avail himself of it to his heart&#39;s content. The son of a
+  Yorkshire squire in affluent circumstances and of high character,
+  Monckton Milnes was not spoilt by finding, as he might have done had
+  he been the heir to a dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the
+  same time all the good things were within his reach by a little of
+  that exertion which does so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of
+  them. From the period of his entry upon London life he displayed that
+  anxiety to know celebrities which, though in a somewhat different
+  way, was a marked feature of his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb
+  Robinson; and the story illustrative of this tendency which gained
+  him the <i>sobriquet</i> of &quot;the cool of the evening&quot; will
+  be always associated with the name he has since merged in a less
+  familiar title.</p>
+
+  <p>Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons,
+  during which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every
+  social and literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having
+  regard to this circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a
+  polished and graceful style of expressing himself, one would
+  naturally expect a great deal from this volume of reminiscences. Nor
+  will such expectations be entirely disappointed. The monographs are
+  eight in number, and will be read with varying degrees of interest,
+  according to the taste of the reader, as well as the subjects and
+  quality of the papers. The portrait which will perhaps be the newest
+  to American readers is that of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the
+  second Baring who bore that title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the
+  earl of Sandwich, and Lord Houghton says of her: &quot;She was an
+  instance in which aristocracy gave of its best and showed at its
+  best, although she may have owed little to the qualities she
+  inherited from an irascible race and to an unaffectionate
+  education&quot;&#8212;a sentence reminding us of a remark in the
+  London <i>Times</i>, that &quot;with certain noble houses people are
+  apt to associate certain qualities&#8212;with the Berkeleys, for
+  instance, a series of disgraceful family quarrels.&quot; Lady
+  Ashburton appears to us from this account to have been a brilliant
+  spoilt child of fortune, who availed herself of her great social
+  position to do and say what, had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu
+  with the pittance of a poor nobleman&#39;s daughter, she would hardly
+  have dared to do or say. It is one of the weak points of society in
+  England that a woman who has rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives
+  to surround herself with men of wit to whom she renders her house
+  delightful, can be as hard and rude as she pleases to the world in
+  general. Fortunately, in most cases native kindness of heart usually
+  hurries to heal the wound that &quot;wicked wit&quot; may have made.
+  This would scarcely seem to have been so with Lady Ashburton, for
+  Lord Houghton tells us that &quot;many who would not have cared for a
+  quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her victory,&quot; one of
+  them saying, &quot;I do not mind being knocked down, but I can&#39;t
+  stand being danced upon afterward.&quot; Lord Houghton, however,
+  defines this &quot;jumping&quot; as &quot;a joyous sincerity that no
+  conventionalities, high or low, could restrain&#8212;a festive nature
+  flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life.&quot; And it
+  must be owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a
+  nature which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal
+  capacity for warm and disinterested friendship.</p>
+
+  <p>In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
+  full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
+  reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
+  with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
+  names.</p>
+
+  <p>But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
+  letter from an <span class="pagenum">[pg 368]</span> English lady
+  whom Heine had known and petted in her childhood, and who visited the
+  poet in his last days, when he himself, wasted by disease,
+  &quot;seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that covered
+  him,&quot; gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we have
+  ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
+  comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
+  his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
+  as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
+  thought, as Matthew Arnold&#39;s famous essay. The following passage,
+  for example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany,
+  and its influence on Heine: &quot;The poem of &#39;Deutschland&#39;
+  is the one of his works where his humor runs over into the coarsest
+  satire, and the malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he
+  too had been exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile
+  condition. Among these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man
+  of commercial origin and literary occupation in his relation to the
+  upper order of society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here
+  there remained, and after all the events of the last year there still
+  remains, sufficient element of discontent to justify the recorded
+  expression of a philosophic German statesman, that &#39;in Prussia
+  the war of classes had still to be fought out.&#39;&quot;</p>
+
+  <p>Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
+  Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
+  biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
+  while the one on &quot;Suleiman Pasha&quot; (Colonel Selves) suggests
+  a doubt whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the
+  information he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating
+  that the siege of Lyons occurred under the
+  <i>Directory</i>&#8212;which it preceded by a year or two; that his
+  hero, then seven years old, &quot;grew up,&quot; entered the navy,
+  was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,
+  <i>subsequently</i> enlisted &quot;in the Army of Italy, then flushed
+  with triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous
+  recruits&quot;&#8212;language indicating the campaign of 1796-97;
+  that &quot;soon after his enrollment in the regiment it became
+  necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers in infantry practice, and
+  young Selves&#39; knowledge of the exercise [acquired apparently on
+  shipboard] was of the greatest use and <i>brought him into general
+  notice</i>&quot;&#8212;making him, we may infer, a special favorite
+  of Bonaparte;&#8212;we can easily believe that these things were
+  related, as he tells us they were, &quot;with epic simplicity,&quot;
+  and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to
+  more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of
+  a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on
+  the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, &quot;urgently
+  represented to that general the propriety of joining the main body of
+  the army as soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to
+  intercept, were out of sight.&quot; Lord Houghton has evidently not
+  read the best and most recent criticisms on the Waterloo campaign,
+  but he should at least have known that Grouchy was sent, not to
+  intercept, but to follow the Prussians in their retreat from Ligny,
+  and that, if he lost sight of them, it was because, instead of
+  falling back on their own line of communication, as Napoleon had
+  expected them to do, they turned off to effect a junction with the
+  English army.</p><a name="books" id="books"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+
+  <h3><i>Books Received</i>.</h3>
+
+  <p>Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every
+  species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent
+  north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six
+  steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By
+  Elliott Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem:
+  Naturalists&#39; Agency.</p>
+
+  <p>Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New
+  Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.
+  New York: James Miller.</p>
+
+  <p>The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By
+  C.C.P. Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker &amp; Godwin.</p>
+
+  <p>On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the
+  Russian by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt &amp; Williams.</p>
+
+  <p>The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz
+  Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.</p>
+
+  <p>Harry Coverdale&#39;s Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
+  Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &amp; Brothers.</p>
+
+  <p>Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.
+  Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company. Illustrated. Hartford:
+  Columbian Book Company.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
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+</body>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8515 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 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. 30. September, 1873
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: November 13, 2004 [EBook #14036]
+
+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. 30.
+
+SEPTEMBER, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+  THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] by EDWARD STRAHAN.
+    III.--The Feast Of Saint Athanasius.
+  TWO MOODS by MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+  THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT by MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+  SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL. [Illustrated]
+    I.--The Count De Beauvoir In China.
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE by WILLIAM BLACK.
+    Chapter XIV.--Deeper And Deeper.
+    Chapter XV.--A Friend In Need.
+  ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+  RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS by FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+    Concluding Paper
+  A LOTOS OF THE NILE by CHRISTIAN REID.
+  ECHO. by A.J.
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL [Illustrated] by MARGARET HOWITT.
+    Chapter IX.
+    Chapter X.
+  COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK by S.C. CLARKE.
+  THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY by MARIE ROWLAND.
+  ON THE CHURCH STEPS by SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+    Chapter VI.
+    Chapter VII.
+    Chapter VIII.
+    Chapter IX.
+  HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY by EDWIN DE LEON.
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    The Californian At Vienna by PRENTICE MULFORD.
+    Ghostly Warriors.
+    A Warning To Lovers.
+  NOTES.
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+    Books Received.
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+  THE PAULISTS.
+  THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.
+  CARDINAL BALUE.
+  AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.
+  LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.
+  LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.
+  CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.
+  BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.
+  CHURCH-DOOR, EPERNAY.
+  THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.
+  ADMIRATION.
+  MAC MEURTRIER.
+  THE BLACK DOMINO.
+  TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.
+  THE CROOKED MAN.
+  THE GRAVITY ROAD.
+  THE ANIMATED CELLS.
+  THE TRAVELER'S REST.
+  PALACE AT STRASBURG.
+  THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.
+  HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.
+  AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.
+  THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.
+  CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.
+  VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.
+  COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.
+  A PROCESSION.
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW HYPERION.
+
+FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
+
+III.--THE FEAST OF SAINT ATHANASIUS.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE PAULISTS.]
+
+
+As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to empty
+the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of tired
+soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the old
+proverb of Aretino came into my head: "Truly all courtesy and good
+manners come from taverns." I grasped my botany-box and pursued my
+promenade toward Noisy.
+
+The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in history.
+One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the inventor
+of the famous gibbet of Montfaucon, and in the poetic justice which
+should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his own gallows.
+He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by the common
+executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none of his
+ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in meeting a
+guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular coincidence another
+lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long detention in an
+iron-barred cage--one of those famous cages, so much favored by Louis
+XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from the records of the time,
+had the patent-right for invention, or at least improvement. Once
+firmly engaged in his own torture--while his friend Haraucourt, bishop
+of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in a similar box, and the foxy
+old king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overhead--we
+may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of
+fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them.
+
+[Illustration: THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR.]
+
+These ugly reminiscences were not so much the cause of a prejudice I
+took against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy I was in the full domain
+of my ancient foe the railway, where two lines of the Eastern road
+separate--the Ligne de Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. The sight of
+the unhappy second-class passengers powdered with dust, and of the
+frantic nurses who had mistaken their line, and who madly endeavored
+to leap across to the other train, stirred all my bile. It was on
+this current of thought that the nobleman who had been hung and the
+cardinal who had pined in a cage were borne upon my memory. "Small
+choice," said I, "whether the bars are perpendicular or horizontal.
+You lose your independence about equally by either monopoly."
+
+[Illustration: CARDINAL BALUE.]
+
+I crossed the Canal de l'Ourcq, and watched it stretching like a steel
+tape to meet the Canal Saint--Denis and the Canal Saint-Martin in the
+great basin at La Villette--a construction which, finished in 1809,
+was the making of La Villette as a commercial and industrial entrepot.
+I meant to walk to Bondy, and after a botanic stroll in its beautiful
+forest to retrace my steps, gaining Marly next day by Baubigny,
+Aubervilliers and Nanterre. "The Aladdins of our time," I said as I
+leaned over the soft gray water, "are the engineers. They rub their
+theodolites, and there springs up, not a palace, but a town."
+
+[Illustration: AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER.]
+
+"Who speaks of engineers?" said a strong baritone voice as a weighty
+hand fell on my shoulder. "Are you here to take the train at Noisy?"
+
+"Let the train go to Jericho! I am trying, on the contrary, to get
+away from it."
+
+"Do you mean, then, to go on foot to Epernay?"
+
+"What do you mean, Epernay?"
+
+"Why, have you forgotten the feast of Saint Athanasius?"
+
+"What do you mean, Athanasius?"
+
+The baritone belonged to one of my friends, an engineer from Boston.
+He had an American commission to inspect the canals of Europe on the
+part of a company formed to buy out the Sound line of steamers and
+dig a ship-canal from Boston to Providence. The engineer had made
+his inspection the excuse for a few years of not disagreeable travel,
+during which time the company had exploded, its chief financier having
+cut his throat when his peculations came out to the public.
+
+[Illustration: LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION.]
+
+"Are you trying, then, to escape from one of your greatest possible
+duties and one of your greatest possible pleasures? You have the
+remarkable fortune to possess a friend named Athanasius; you have in
+addition, the strange fate to be his godfather by secondary baptism;
+and you would, after these unparalleled chances, be the sole renegade
+from the vow which you have extracted from the others."
+
+The words were uncivil and rude, the hand was on my shoulder like
+a vise; but there floated into my head a recollection of one of the
+pleasantest evenings I have ever enjoyed.
+
+We were dining with James Grandstone, one of my young friends. I have
+some friends of whom I might be the father, and doubt not I could find
+a support for my practice in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor if I
+had time to look up the quotation. We dined in the little restaurant
+Ober, near the Odeon, with a small party of medical students, to which
+order Grandstone's friends mostly belonged. We were all young that
+night; and truly I hold that the affectionate confusion of two or
+three different generations adds a charm to friendship.
+
+[Illustration: LE RAINCY: THE CHATEAU.]
+
+At dessert the conversation happened to strike upon Christian names.
+I attacked the cognomens in ordinary use, maintaining that their
+historic significance was lost, their religious sentiment forgotten,
+their euphony mostly questionable. Alfred, Henry and William no longer
+carried the thoughts back to the English kings--Joseph and Reuben were
+powerless to remind us of the mighty family of Israel.
+
+"I have no complaint to make of my own name," I protested, "which
+has been praised by Dannecker the sculptor. That was at Wuertemberg,
+gentlemen. 'You are from America,' the old man said to me, 'but you
+have a German name: Paul Flemming was one of our old poets.' The
+thought has been a pleasant one to me, though I have not the faintest
+idea what my ancient godparent wrote. But in the matter of originality
+my Christian name of Paul certainly leaves much to desire."
+
+[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX.]
+
+I was gay enough that evening, and in the vein for a paradox. I set
+up the various Pauls of our acquaintance, and maintained that in any
+company of fifty persons, if a feminine voice were to call out "Paul!"
+through the doorway, six husbands at least would start and say,
+"Coming, dear!" I computed the Pauls belonging to one of the grand
+nations, and proved that an army recruited from them would be large
+enough to carry on a war against a power of the second order.
+
+"If the Jameses were to reinforce the Pauls," I declared, looking
+toward my young host, "Russia itself would tremble.--Are you to make
+your start in life with no better name?" I asked him maliciously.
+"Must you be for ever kept in mediocrity by an address that is not
+the designation of an individual, but of a whole nation? Could you not
+have been called by something rather less oecumenical?"
+
+"You may style me by what title you please, Mr. Flemming," said
+Grandstone nonchalantly. "I am to enter a great New York wine-house
+after a little examination of the grape-country here. Doubtless a
+Grandstone will have, by any other name, a bouquet as sweet."
+
+The idea took. An almanac of saints' days, which is often printed in
+combination with the _menu_ of a restaurant, was lying on the table.
+Beginning at the letter A, the name of Ambrose was within an ace of
+being chosen, but Grandstone protested against it as too short,
+and Athanasius was the first of five syllables that presented. Our
+engineering friend, who was present, had in his pocket a vial of
+water from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships' bottoms; and with that
+classic liquid the baptism was effected by myself, the bottle being
+broken on poor Grandstone's crown as on the prow of a ship.
+
+"You are no longer James to us, but Athanasius," I said. "If you
+remain moderately virtuous, we will canonize you. Meantime, let us
+vow to meet on the next canonical day of Saint Athanasius and hold a
+love-feast."
+
+We drank his health, and glorified him, and laughed, and the next day
+I forgot whether Grandstone was called Athanasius or Epaminondas. And
+my confusion on the subject had not clarified in the least up to the
+rude reminder given by my engineer.
+
+"I had quite forgotten my engagement," I confessed. "Besides,
+Grandstone is living now, as you remind me, at Epernay--that is to
+say, at seventy or eighty miles' distance."
+
+"Say three hours," he retorted: "on a railway line we don't count by
+miles. But are you really not here at Noisy to satisfy your promise
+and report yourself for the feast of Saint Athanasius? If you are not
+bound for Epernay, where _are_ you bound?"
+
+"I am off for Marly."
+
+"You are going in just the contrary direction, old fellow. You can be
+at Epernay sooner."
+
+"And Hohenfels joins me at Marly to-morrow," I continued, rather
+helplessly; "and Josephine my cook is there this afternoon boiling the
+mutton-hams."
+
+"Fine arguments, truly! You shall sleep to-night in Paris, or even
+at Marly, if you see fit. I have often heard you argue against
+railroads--a fine argument for a geographer to uphold against an
+engineer! Now is the instant to bury your prejudice. Do you see that
+soft ringlet of smoke off yonder? It is the message of the locomotive,
+offering to reconcile your engagements with Grandstone and Hohenfels.
+Come, get your ticket!"
+
+[Illustration: BOURSAULT, THE RESIDENCE OF CLIQUOT.]
+
+And his hand ceased squeezing my shoulder like a pincer to beat it
+like a mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation was mapped out in my
+head. I could reach Epernay by five o'clock, returning at eight, and,
+notwithstanding this little lasso flung over the champagne-country, I
+could resume my promenade and modify in no respect my original plan;
+and I could say to Hohenfels, "My boy, I have popped a few corks with
+the widow Cliquot."
+
+Such was my vision. The gnomes of the railway, having once got me in
+their grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and quite unexpectedly.
+
+From the car-window, as in a panorama of Banvard's, the landscape spun
+out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which I had intended to visit at all
+events on the same day, but afoot, offered me the roofs of its ancient
+chateau, a pile built in the most pompous spirit of the Renaissance,
+and whose alternately round and square pavilions, tipped with steep
+mansards, I was fain to people with throngs of gay visitors in the
+costume of the _grand siecle_. Then came the cathedral of Meaux,
+before which I reverently took off my cap to salute the great
+Bossuet--"Eagle of Meaux," as they justly called him, and on the
+whole a noble bird, notwithstanding that he sang his Te Deum over some
+exceedingly questionable battle-grounds. Then there presented itself
+a monument at which my engineering friend clapped his hands. It was
+a crown of buildings with extinguisher roofs encircling the brow of
+a hill, and presenting the antique appearance of some chastel of the
+Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: CHURCH-DOOR, EPERNAY.]
+
+"Do you see those round, pot-bellied towers, like tuns of wine stood
+upon end?" he said--"those donjons at the corners, tapering at the
+top, and presenting the very image of noble bottles? There needs
+nothing but that palace to convince you that you have arrived in the
+champagne region."
+
+"I do not know the building," I confessed.
+
+"Can you not guess? Ah, but you should see it in a summer storm, when
+the rain foams and spirts down those huge bottles of mason-work, and
+the thunder pops among the roofs like the corks of a whole basket of
+champagne! That fine castle, Flemming, is the chateau of Boursault,
+apparently built in the era of the Crusades, but really a marvel of
+yesterday. It rose into being, not to the sound of a lyre, like the
+towers of Troy, but at the bursting of innumerable bottles, causing to
+resound all over the world the name of the widow Cliquot."
+
+At length we entered the station of Epernay. There I received my first
+shock in learning that the only return-train stopping at Noisy was one
+which left at midnight, and would land me in the extreme suburbs of
+Paris at three o'clock in the morning.
+
+Our friend Grandstone, whom we found amazing the streets of Epernay
+with a light American buggy drawn by a colossal Morman horse, received
+us with still more surprise than delight. He had relapsed into plain
+James, and had never dreamed that his second baptism would bear fruit.
+Besides, he proved to us that we were in error as to the date. The
+feast of Saint Athanasius, as he showed from a calendar shoved beneath
+a quantity of vintners' cards on his study-table, fell on the second
+of May, and could not be celebrated before the evening of the first.
+It was now the thirtieth of April. He invited us, then, for the next
+day at dinner, warning us at the same time that the evening of that
+same morrow would see him on his way to the Falls of Schaffhausen.
+This idea of dining with an absentee puzzled me.
+
+[Illustration: THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE.]
+
+We both laughed heartily at the engineer's mistake of twenty-four
+hours, and he for his part made me his excuses.
+
+Athanasius--whose name I obstinately keep, because it gives him, as
+I maintain, a more distinct individuality,--Athanasius happened to
+be driving out for the purpose of collecting some friends whom he was
+about to accompany to Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited to dinner.
+He contrived to stow away two in his buggy, and the rest assembled in
+his chambers. We dined gayly and voraciously, and I hardly regretted
+even that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when the landlord waited on
+us in his green coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by my side, and
+when I praised hotel-dinners because one can say so much there without
+being overheard.
+
+Dinner over, we went out for a stroll through the town. The city of
+Epernay offers little remarkable except its Rue du Commerce, flanked
+with enormous buildings, and its church, conspicuous only for
+a flourishing portal in the style of Louis XIV., in perfect
+contradiction to the general architecture of the old sanctuary. The
+environs were little note worthy at the season, for a vineyard-land
+has this peculiarity--its veritable spring, its pride of May, arrives
+in the autumn.
+
+[Illustration: ADMIRATION.]
+
+One very vinous trait we found, however, in the person of a beggar. He
+was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we emerged. Aged hardly fourteen,
+he had turned his young nose toward the rich fumes coming up from the
+kitchen with a look of sensuality and indulgence that amused me. The
+maid, on a hint of mine, gave him a biscuit and the remainders of
+our bottles emptied into a bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and
+intelligence spread over his face. Opening his bag, he laid by the
+biscuit, and extracted a morsel of iced cake: at the same time he
+produced an old-fashioned, long-waisted champagne-glass, nicked at the
+rim and quite without a stand. Filling this from his bowl, he drank to
+the health of the waitress with the easiest politeness it was ever my
+lot to see. Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, courteous as a hidalgo
+by Velasquez, he added a grace and an epicurism completely French.
+I thought him the best possible figure-head for that opulent spot,
+cradle of the hilarity of the world. I gave him five francs.
+
+[Illustration: MAC MEURTRIER.]
+
+We proceeded to admire the town. The great curiosities of Epernay,
+its glory and pomp, are not permitted to see the daylight. They
+are subterranean and introverted. They are the cellars. Those rich
+colonnades of Commerce street, all those porticoes surmounted with
+Greek or Roman triangles in the nature of pediments, of what antique
+religion are they the representations? They are cellar-doors.
+
+[Illustration: THE BLACK DOMINO.]
+
+It was impossible to quit the city without visiting its cellars, said
+Grandstone, and we betook ourselves under his guidance to one of the
+most renowned.
+
+I only thought of seeing a battle-field of bottles, but I found the
+Eleusinian mysteries.
+
+[Illustration: TAM O'SHANTER'S RIDE.]
+
+In the temple-porch of Eleusis was fixed a large pale face, in the
+middle parts of which a red nose was glowing like a fuse. Several
+other personages, in company with this visage, received us on our
+approach with a world of solemn and terrifying signals.
+
+Directly a man in a cloak and slouched hat, and holding in his hands
+a wire fencing-mask, extinguished with it the red nose. The latter
+met his fate with stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still, but the
+twitching cheeks of most of the spectators betrayed a laugh retained
+with difficulty. The cloak then advanced, like a less beautiful Norma,
+to a bell in the portico, and struck three tragical strokes. A strong,
+pealing bass voice came from the interior: "Who dares knock at this
+door?"
+
+"A night-bird," said the man in the cloak, who took the part of
+spokesman. "What has the night-bird to do with the eagle?" replied the
+strong voice. "What can there be in common between the heathen in
+his blindness and the Ancient of the Mountain throned in power and
+splendor?"
+
+"Grand Master, it is in that splendor the new-comer wishes to plunge."
+After this imitation of some Masonic mystery the red-nosed man was
+quickly taken by the shoulders and hurtled in at the door, where a
+flare of red theatrical fire illuminated his sudden plunge.
+
+"What nonsense is this?" I said to Athanasius.
+
+"The man in the iron mask," he explained, "is in that respect what we
+shall all be in a minute. Without such a protector, in passing amongst
+the first year's bottles we might receive a few hits in the face."
+
+"And do you know the new apprentice?"
+
+"No: some stranger, evidently."
+
+[Illustration: THE CROOKED MAN.]
+
+"It is not hard to guess his extraction," said one of our
+dinner-party. "In the East there are sorcerers with two pupils in each
+eye. For his part, he seems to be braced with two pans in each
+knee. He is long in the stilts like a heron, square--headed and
+square-shouldered: I give you my word he is a Scotchman. For certain,"
+he added, "I have seen his likeness somewhere--Ah yes, in an engraving
+of Hogarth's!"
+
+The author of this charitable criticism was a little crooked
+gentleman, at whose side I had dined--a man of sharpness and wit, for
+which his hunch gave him the authority. As we penetrated finally into
+the immense crypt, long like a street, provided with iron railways
+for handling the stores, and threaded now and then by heavy wagons and
+Normandy horses, my interest in the surrounding wonders was distracted
+by apprehensions of the fate awaiting the unfortunate red nose.
+
+[Illustration: THE GRAVITY ROAD]
+
+The gallop of a steed was heard at length, then a dreadful exploding
+noise. I should have thought that a hundred drummers were marching
+through the catacombs.
+
+Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry forked stick, wrong side
+foremost, on a frightened steed which galloped down the avenue, and
+pursued by the racket of empty bottles beaten against the wine-frames,
+came the Scotchman, like an unwilling Tam O'Shanter. At a new outburst
+of resonant noises, which we could not help offering to the general
+confusion, the horse stopped, and assumed twice or thrice the attitude
+of a gymnast who walks on his hands. The figure of the man, still
+rigid, flew up into the air like a stick that pops out of the water.
+The Terrible Brothers received him in their arms.
+
+Hardly restored to equilibrium, the patient was quickly replaced in
+the saddle, but the saddle was this time girded upon a barrel, and the
+barrel placed upon a truck, and the truck upon an inclined tramway.
+His impassive countenance might be seen to kindle with indignation and
+horror, as the hat which had been jammed over his eyes flew off,
+and he found himself gliding over an iron road at a rate of speed
+continually increasing.
+
+He was fated to other tests, but at this point a little discussion
+arose among ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young whiskers
+quite disheveled with laughter, said, "Fellows, we had better stop
+somewhere. There will be more of this, and it will be tedious to see
+in the role of uninvited spectators, and it is not certain we are
+wanted. I always knew there was a Society of Pure Illumination at
+Epernay. It is not a Masonic order, but it has its signs, its passes,
+its grips, and in a word its secret. I have recognized among
+these gentlemen some active members of the order--among others,
+notwithstanding his disguise, a jolly good fellow we have here,
+Fortnoye."
+
+"You cannot have seen Fortnoye," said one of the party: "he is at
+Paris."
+
+"And who is your Fortnoye, pray?" I asked.
+
+"The best tenor voice in Epernay; but his presence here does not give
+_me_ an invitation, you see. The Society of Pure Illumination has
+its rites and mysteries more important than everybody supposes,
+and probably complicated with board-of-trade secrets among the
+wine-merchants. We have hit upon a bad time. Let us go and visit
+another cellar."
+
+There was opposition to this measure: different opinions were
+expressed, and I was chosen for moderator.
+
+"My dear boys," I said, "as the grayest among you I may be presumed to
+be the wisest. But I do not feel myself to be myself. I have received
+to-day a succession of unaccustomed influences. I have been dragged
+about by an impertinent locomotive; I have been induced to dine
+heavily; I have absorbed champagne, perhaps to the limit of my
+measure. These are not my ordinary ways: I am naturally thoughtful,
+studious and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, is for me an unfaded
+morning-glory, whose closed cup I can coax open at pleasure, and read
+within its tube legends written in dusted gold. But the Present to the
+true philosopher is also--In fact, I never was so much amused in my
+life. I am dying to see what they will do with that Scotchman."
+
+[Illustration: THE ANIMATED CELLS]
+
+Athanasius submitted. At the end of one of the cross galleries we
+could already see a flickering glimmer of torches. There, evidently,
+was held the council. We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and
+ensconced ourselves behind a long file of empty bottle-shelves, worn
+out after long service and leaning against a wall.
+
+Through the holes which had fixed the bottles in position we could see
+everything without being discovered. The grand dignitaries, sitting
+in a semicircle, were about to proceed from physical to moral tests.
+Before them, his red nose hanging like a cameo from the white bandage
+which covered his eyes, and relieved upon his face, still perfectly
+white and calm, stood the Scot. The Grand Master arose--I should have
+said the Reverend--his head nodding with senility, his beard white as
+a waterfall: he appeared to be eighty years of age at least. He was
+truly venerable to look at, and reminded me of Thor. He wore a sort of
+dalmatica embroidered with gold. Calmness and goodness were so plainly
+marked on the aspect of this worthy that I felt ashamed of playing
+the spy, and felt inclined to return humbly to the good counsel of
+Athanasius, when the latter, pushing my elbow behind the shelves,
+said, referring to the Ancient of the Mountain, "That's Fortnoye: I
+knew I couldn't be mistaken."
+
+I was greatly mystified at discovering the first tenor voice of
+Epernay in an aged man; but the catechism now commencing, I thought
+only of listening.
+
+"The barleycorns of your native North having been partially cleaned
+out of your hair by contact with the two enchanted steeds--the steed
+you bridled without a head, and the steed that ran away with you
+without legs," said the Ancient--"we have brought you hither for
+examination. We might have gone much farther with the physical tests:
+we might have forced you, at the present session, to relieve yourself
+of those envelopes considered indispensable by all Europeans beneath
+your own latitude, and in our presence perform the sword-dance."
+
+"So be it," said the disciple, executing a galvanic figure with his
+legs, his countenance still like marble.
+
+"If we demanded the head of your best friend, would you bring it in?"
+
+"I am the countryman of Lady Macbeth," replied the red nose. "Give me
+the daggers."
+
+"We would fain dispense with that proof, necessarily painful to a man
+of such evident sensibility as yours." The red nose bowed. "What is
+your name?"
+
+He pronounced it--apparently MacMurtagh.
+
+"In future, among us, you are named Meurtrier."
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the Scotchman in a tone of abstraction.
+
+"No! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your business?"
+
+"I am a homoeopathic doctor."
+
+"Are you a believer in homoeopathy? Be careful: remember that the
+Ancient of the Mountain hears what you say."
+
+The Scot held up his hand: "I believe in the learned Hahnemann, and
+in Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than himself; but," he added,
+"homoeopathy is a science still in its baby-clothes. I have invented
+a system perfectly novel. In mingling homoeopathy with vegetable
+magnetism the most encouraging results are obtained, as may be
+observed daily in the villa of Dr. Van Murtagh, near Edinburgh--"
+
+"Enough!" cried the Ancient: "circulars are not allowed here. Forget
+nothing, Meurtrier! And how were you inspired with the pious ambition
+of becoming our brother?"
+
+"At the hotel table: it was the young clerks from the wine-houses.
+I mentioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, and the lodge of
+Epernay--"
+
+"Silence! The words you use, _lodge_ and _Free Mason_, are most
+improper in this temple, which is that of the Pure Illumination, and
+nothing less. Will you remember, Meurtrier?"
+
+"MacMeurtrier," muttered the novice again. The last proofs were now
+tried upon him, called the "five senses." For that of hearing he was
+made to listen to a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed to be the
+bagpipe; for that of touch, he was made to feel by turns a live fish,
+a hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. The last he took for a pack
+of toothpicks, and announced gravely, "It sticks me." The laughs broke
+out from all sides, even from behind the bottle-shelves.
+
+Alas! on this occasion the laugh was not altogether on my side of that
+fatal honeycomb!
+
+[Illustration: THE TRAVELER'S REST.]
+
+They had made him swallow, in a glass, some fearful mixture or other,
+and he had imperturbably declared that it was in his opinion the
+wine of Moet: after this evidence of taste the proof of sight was to
+follow, and the semicircle of purple faces was quite blackening with
+bottled laughter, when Grandstone touched me on the shoulder. My hour
+for departure was come, and I had not a minute to spare.
+
+[Illustration: PALACE AT STRASBURG.]
+
+Apparently, the last test of the red nose resulted in a triumph: as
+we were effecting our covert and hasty retreat we heard all the voices
+exclaim in concert, "It is the Pure Illumination!"
+
+Gay as we were on entering the great wine-cellar, we were perfectly
+Olympian when we came out. The crypts of these vast establishments,
+where a soft inspiration perpetually floats upward from the wine in
+store, often receive a visitor as a Diogenes and dismiss him as an
+Anacreon.
+
+Our consumption of wine at dinner had been, like Mr. Poe's
+conversation with his soul, "serious and sober." In the cellar no drop
+had passed our mouths. I was alert as a lark when I entered: I came
+out in a species of voluptuous dream.
+
+All the band conducted me to the railway-station, and I was very much
+touched with the attention. It was who should carry my botany-box, who
+should set my cap straight, who should give me the most precise and
+statistical information about the train which returned to Paris, with
+a stop at Noisy; the while, Ophelia-like, I chanted snatches of old
+songs, and mingled together in a tender reverie my recollections
+of Mary Ashburton, my coming Book and my theories of Progressive
+Geography.
+
+"Take this shawl: the night will be chilly before you get to the
+city."
+
+"Don't let them carry you beyond Noisy."
+
+"Come back to Epernay every May-day: never forget the feast of Saint
+Athanasius."
+
+"Be sure you get into the right train: here is the car. Come, man,
+bundle up! they are closing the barrier."
+
+I was perfectly melted by so much sympathy. "Adieu," I said, "my dear
+champanions--"
+
+I turned into an excellent car, first class, and fell asleep directly.
+
+Next day I awoke--at Strasburg! The convivials of the evening before,
+making for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, had traveled beside
+me in the adjoining car.
+
+My friends, uncertain how their practical joke would be received,
+clustered around me.
+
+"Ah, boys," I said, "I have too many griefs imprisoned in this aching
+bosom to be much put out by the ordinary 'Horrid Hoax.' But you have
+compromised my reputation. I promised to meet Hohenfels at Marly:
+children, bankruptcy stares me in the face."
+
+Grandstone had the grace to be a little embarrassed: "You wished to
+dine with me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but you mistook the
+day. Your engineer is the true culprit, for he voluntarily deceived
+you. The fact is, my dear Flemming, we have concocted a little
+conspiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful spirit in fact, when you
+are not in your _lubies_ about the Past and the Future. We wanted
+you, we conspired; and, Catiline having stolen you at Noisy, Cethigus
+tucked you into a car with the intention of making use of you at
+Schaffhausen."
+
+"Never! I have the strongest vows that ever man uttered not to
+revisit the Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a solemn promise, a
+consecration. You have got me at Strasburg, but you will not carry me
+to Schaffhausen."
+
+He was so contrite that I had to console him. Letting him know that no
+great harm was done, I saw him depart with his friends for Bale. For
+my part, I remained with the engineer, whose professional duties, such
+as they were, kept him for a short time in the capital of Alsace. In
+his turn, however, the latter took leave of me: we were to meet each
+other shortly.
+
+It was seven in the morning. This time, to be sure of my enemy the
+railroad, I procured a printed Guide. But the Guide was a sorry
+counselor for my impatience. The first train, an express, had left:
+the next, an accommodation, would start at a quarter to one. I had
+five hours and three-quarters to spare.
+
+One of the greatest pleasures in life, according to my poor opinion,
+is to have a recreation forced on one. Some cherub, perhaps, cleared
+the cobwebs away from my brain that morning; but, however it might be,
+I was glad of everything. I was glad the "champanions" were departed,
+glad I had a stolen morning in Strasburg, glad that Hohenfels and my
+domestics would be uneasy for me at Marly.
+
+In such a mood I applied myself to extract the profit out of my
+detention in the city.
+
+EDWARD STRAHAN.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+TWO MOODS.
+
+
+  All yesterday you were so near to me,
+    It seemed as if I hardly moved or spoke
+  But your heart moved with mine. I woke
+    To a new life that found you everywhere,
+  As if your love was as some wide-girt sea,
+    Or as the sunlit air;
+  And so encompassed me,
+    Whether I thought or not, it could not but be there.
+
+  To-day your words approve me, and your heart
+    Is mine as ever, yet that heavenly sense
+    Of oneness that made every hour intense
+    With Love's full perfectness, is gone from thence;
+  And, though our hands are clasped, our souls are two,
+  And in my thoughts I say, "This is myself--this you!"
+
+MARY STEWART DOUBLEDAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDE OF PRINCE GERAINT.
+
+The Ride of Prince Geraint.
+
+
+    And Prince Geraint, now thinking that he heard
+    The noble hart at bay, now the far horn,
+    A little vext at losing of the hunt,
+    A little at the vile occasion, rode
+    By ups and downs through many a glassy glade
+    And valley, with fixt eye following the three.
+
+                                           _Enid_.
+
+  Through forest paths his charger strode,
+  His heron plume behind him flowed,
+  Blood-red the west with sunset glowed,
+  Far down the river golden flowed,
+    And in the woods the winds were still:
+  No helm had he, nor lance in rest;
+  His knightly beard flowed down his breast;
+  In silken costume gayly drest,
+  Out from the glory of the west
+    He flashed adown the purple hill.
+
+  His sword hung tasseled at his side,
+  His purple scarf was floating wide,
+  And all his raiment many-dyed,
+  As if he came to seek a bride,
+    And not the combat that he sought;
+  Yet rode he like a prince, and one
+  Native to noble deeds alone,
+  Who many a valiant tilt had run,
+  And many a prize of tourney won
+    In Arthur's lists at Camelot.
+
+  Cool grasses and green mosses made
+  Soft carpet for his charger's tread,
+  As 'neath the oak boughs dark o'erhead,
+  By belts of pasture scant of shade,
+    Into the Castle Town he rode:
+  He heard, as things are heard in dreams,
+  The sound of far-off falling streams,
+  The shriller bird-choir's evening hymns:
+  He saw but only helmet-gleams,
+    The smith that smote, the fire that glowed,
+
+  The sheen of lances, and the cloud
+  From many a field-forge fire, the crowd
+  Of gay-clad squires, and, neighing loud,
+  The war-horse with rich trappings proud,
+    That arched his neck and pawed the ground;
+  Old armorers grave and stern in stall,
+  Where low-crowned morions, helmets tall,
+  Shone gilt and burnished on the wall;
+  And, shining brighter than them all,
+    The eyes of maidens sun-embrowned.
+
+MARTIN I. GRIFFIN.
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF EASTERN TRAVEL.
+
+
+I.--THE COUNT DE BEAUVOIR IN CHINA.
+
+
+Within the last twenty years the East has opened wide its gates, and
+China, Japan and India are as anxious to become acquainted with
+the later but more fully developed civilizations of Europe and this
+country as we are to examine their social, political and industrial
+systems. We have had accounts from English, American, German and
+French travelers in the East, each tinged, in a measure, with the
+national spirit of their respective countries. In the case of the
+traveler, as of the astronomer, a certain allowance, known as the
+personal equation, has to be made in receiving the accounts of his
+observations.
+
+[Illustration: THE MANDARIN CHING'S CART.]
+
+The journey round the world made by the count de Beauvoir in company
+with the duke de Penthievre, son of the prince de Joinville, is
+entitled to especial notice, as the attentions shown to the travelers
+by the Chinese and Japanese authorities enabled them to obtain the
+best conditions for investigating various matters of interest.
+
+On landing at Shanghai their hearts were gladdened by seeing "on the
+quay a French custom-house official, with his kepi over his ear, his
+rattan in his hand, dressed in a dark-green tunic, and full of
+the inquisitiveness of the customs inspector--as martial and as
+authoritative as in his native land." The appearance of the population
+here struck our travelers as different from that of the native Chinese
+farther south. Those were yellow, copper-colored, lean, and slightly
+clad in garments of cotton cloth; these were rosy as children and fat
+as pigs: they were besides wrapped up in four or five pelisses, worn
+one over the other, lined with sheepskins, so that a single man smelt
+like a whole flock of sheep. Their style of dress was this: half a
+dozen waistcoats without sleeves, covered with a single overcoat with
+extremely long sleeves, falling down to their knees. These garments
+made them resemble balls of wool rather than men.
+
+By accident, the party passed first through the quarter of the town
+devoted to the restaurants. Here they were for every grade of fortune,
+from the millionaire to the ragged poor. The street filled with these
+latter was terrible: it swarmed with thousands of beggars, hardly
+human in form and almost naked, though there was frozen snow upon the
+ground. A group, seeming even joyous, attracted attention. The cause
+of their happiness was a dead dog which they had found in one of the
+gutters. Even, however, in this degradation the politeness of these
+people struck our Frenchmen forcibly. The guests gathered about this
+fortuitous repast treated each other with a ceremonious deference
+strange enough in such surroundings. In a still lower stratum,
+however, among even a more degraded class, whose feasts were
+obtained from the live preserves carried upon their own persons, this
+politeness, the last quality a Chinaman loses from the degradation of
+poverty, was wanting.
+
+A few miles from Shanghai lies Zi-Ka-Wai, a colony founded by the
+Jesuits, of which our traveler gives a most interesting account. The
+road to Zi-Ka-Wai lay over a sandy plain intersected with canals.
+On both sides of the road were hundreds of coffins resting upon the
+surface of the ground. In the northern part of China there are no
+grave-yards, and the coffins were arranged sometimes in piles in the
+fields. It is said that they thus remain until a change takes place
+in the reigning dynasty, when they are all destroyed. As the present
+dynasty has reigned about three hundred years, the accumulation may be
+imagined. This traditional respect for the inviolability of the dead
+is one of the chief obstacles in the way of the introduction of the
+telegraph and railroad in China. A commercial house in Shanghai had
+built a telegraph to Wo-Soung to announce the arrival of the mail, but
+in a few days the wire was cut in more than five hundred places--at
+all the points where its shadow from the rising sun fell upon the
+coffins lying on the ground.
+
+At Zi-Ka-Wai the Jesuits have an educational institution, and, dressed
+in the Chinese costume, smoking the long native pipes, received their
+visitors with great cordiality. Their pupils are divided into three
+classes. The first consists of the children of the neighboring towns
+who have been deserted by their parents and left to die of hunger.
+The majority of them are lepers, and have been more or less perfectly
+cured by the Fathers. When brought to the institution they are
+thoroughly cleaned, being rubbed with pumice stone. They receive an
+industrial as well as a literary education. In one building they
+are taught to read and write, and in another are the schools for
+shoemaking, carpentering, printing and other manual arts; so that,
+being received at the age of five or six, at twenty to twenty-one they
+are launched upon the world with an education and a trade.
+
+There are about four hundred children in this class, and the activity,
+the order and organization of the workshops, and the exquisite
+cleanliness of the surroundings, are delightful to see. Near at hand
+is a school of a higher grade, to which the most promising pupils
+are transferred for the study of Chinese literature. The system of
+teaching here is peculiar: all the pupils are required to study aloud,
+and the din is in consequence deafening and incessant. Then there is
+the highest class, consisting of about two hundred and fifty youths,
+the sons of rich mandarins, who pay heavily for their instruction.
+These are destined to become rhetoricians, and, step by step,
+bachelors, licentiates, doctors, then mandarins and members of the
+governing class of the Middle Kingdom. The studies are Chinese, and
+the Fathers have with wonderful patience learned not only the Chinese
+language, as well as its written characters, but also the nice
+critical points of its idioms, so as to be able to teach with
+authority the poetry and legends and the commentaries upon the
+writings of Confucius. This they have done for the purpose of having
+an opportunity to convert the orphans they have adopted, and thus
+by degrees introduce into the government an element which will be
+essentially Christian. Thus far, the profession of Christianity is
+not essentially incompatible with the office of mandarin, though it
+is impossible to hold this position without performing some idolatrous
+rites.
+
+[Illustration: HALT OF THE CARAVAN AT HO-CHI-WOU.]
+
+On the 13th of March the ice was sufficiently broken to open the
+navigation of the Pei-Ho, and the party started upon the steamer
+Sze-Chuen for Tien-Tsin and Pekin. They were joined by an English
+commissioner of the Chinese custom-house, whose position as a high
+functionary of the Celestial government, together with his knowledge
+of Chinese, proved of great service. The trip to Pekin was brought to
+a sudden temporary close by the Sze-Chuen running aground on the bar
+of the Pei-Ho, where she remained nearly two days, but was finally got
+off after the removal of a part of her cargo.
+
+The navigation of the Pei-Ho is difficult on account of the narrowness
+of the stream and its exceedingly sinuous course. Frequently the
+steamer had to be towed by a line passed on shore and fastened round
+a tree. At Tien-Tsin the travelers landed, and witnessed a review of
+some imperial cavalry regiments mounted upon Tartar ponies, with high
+saddles and short stirrups. The warriors wore queues and were dressed
+in long robes. Their moustaches gave them, however, a fierce martial
+air, and they were armed with English sabres and American revolvers.
+
+Tien-Tsin ("Heaven's Ford") is a city of about four hundred thousand
+inhabitants, and lies at the junction of the Imperial Canal with the
+Pei-Ho. The country from here to Pekin, about three days' journey by
+land, is sandy, and the trip is made a very disagreeable one by the
+clouds of dust, which blind the traveler and effectually prevent any
+examination of the country passed through.
+
+The cavalcade comprised seven of the native carts, each drawn by two
+mules. Their construction may be thus described: A sort of barrow made
+of blue cloth hangs like a box upon an axletree about a yard long,
+furnished with two clumsy wheels. It is impossible to lie down in
+them, because they are too short, nor can a bench to sit on be placed
+in them, because they are too low. As a compensation, however, they
+are so light that they can go anywhere. The driver sits on the left
+shaft, where he is conveniently placed for leaping down to beat the
+mules. These are harnessed, one in the shafts and the other in front,
+with long traces tied upon the axletree near the left wheel. As they
+are guided only by the voice, the course of the cart depends chiefly
+upon the fancy they may take for following or neglecting the road;
+while from the manner in which they are harnessed their draught is
+always sideways, and they therefore trot obliquely.
+
+At Yang-Soun the party was joined by a mandarin with a crystal button,
+sent by the governor of the province of Tien-Tsin, Tchoung-Hao, with
+a profusion of passports and safe-conducts. During the rest of the
+journey this mandarin, Ching, led the way in his cart drawn by a fine
+black mule, and on arriving at the villages on the route displayed
+his function, as a man of letters, by putting on an immense pair of
+spectacles, the glasses of which were about three inches in diameter.
+At Ho-Chi-Wou the procession halted during the middle of the day,
+and was photographed by one of its members. The curious crowd of
+spectators which gathered in every village to inspect the "foreign
+devils" scattered when the camera was posed, and for a few moments our
+travelers were freed from their intrusiveness.
+
+[Illustration: AVENUE OF ANIMALS LEADING TO THE TOMBS OF THE
+EMPERORS.]
+
+Starting next morning at daylight, at three in the afternoon the party
+entered Pekin. The relief was great to leave the sandy, dusty road for
+one of the paved ways which radiate from the city. The first sight of
+the city struck the travelers as the most grandiose spectacle of the
+Celestial Empire. In front rose a high tower, with a five-storied roof
+of green tiles, pierced with five rows of large portholes, from which
+grinned the mouths of cannon; while to the right and left, as far as
+could be seen, stretched the gigantic wall surrounding the city, built
+partly of granite and partly of large gray bricks, with salients,
+battlements and loopholes, wearing a decidedly martial air. This
+impression was somewhat modified, however, by the discovery that the
+grinning cannons were made of wood. The entrance was under a vaulted
+archway, through which streamed a converging crowd of Chinese,
+Mongols, Tartars, with their various costumes, together with blue
+carts, files of mules and caravans of heavily-loaded camels.
+
+Pekin was built by Kublai-Khan about 1282, near the site of an
+important city which dated from the Chow dynasty, or some centuries
+before the Christian era. The city covers an enclosed space about
+twenty miles in circumference. It is rectangular in form, and divided
+into two parts, the Chinese and the Tartar cities. The walls of the
+Tartar city are the largest and widest, being forty to fifty feet
+high, and, tapering slightly from the base, about forty feet wide at
+the top. They are constructed upon a solid foundation of stone masonry
+resting upon concrete, while the walls themselves are built of a solid
+core of earth, faced with massive brick: the top is paved with tiles,
+and defended by a crenelated parapet. Bastions, some of which are
+fifty feet square, are built upon the outside at distances of about
+one hundred feet. There are sixteen gates, seven of which are in the
+Chinese town, six in the Tartar town, and three in the partition wall
+between these two. In the centre of the Tartar city is an enclosure,
+also walled, called the Imperial City, and within this another,
+called the Forbidden City, which contains the imperial palaces and
+pleasure-grounds. Broad straight avenues, crossing each other at right
+angles, run through the whole city, which in this respect is very
+unlike other Chinese towns. A stream entering the Tartar city near its
+north-west corner divides into two branches, which enter the Imperial
+City and surround the Forbidden City, and then uniting again pass
+through the Tartar and Chinese towns, to empty in the Tung-Chau Canal.
+
+The foreign legations are in the southern part of the Tartar city,
+on the banks of this stream. The top of the walls forms the favorite
+promenade of the foreign settlers, and from here a fine view of the
+whole city is obtained. M. de Beauvoir, however, from his more minute
+examination, comes to the following conclusions: "This immense city,
+in which nothing is repaired, and in which it is forbidden under the
+severest penalties to demolish anything, is slowly disintegrating,
+and every day changing itself into dust. The sight of this slow
+decomposition is sad, since it promises death more certainly than the
+most violent convulsions. In a century Pekin will exist no longer; it
+must then be abandoned: in two centuries it will be discovered, like a
+second Pompeii, buried under its own dust."
+
+The gates of Virtuous Victory and of Great Purity, the temples to
+the Heavens, to Agriculture, to the Spirit of the Winds and of
+the Thunder, and to the Brilliant Mirror of the Mind, occupied the
+attention of the party. They saw the gilded plough and the sacred
+harrow with which the emperor yearly traces a furrow to obtain divine
+favor for the crops, as well as the yellow straw hat he wears during
+this ceremony; and also the vases made of iron wire in which he every
+six months burns the sentences of those who have been condemned to
+death in the empire. They visited also the magnificent observatory
+built by Father Verbiest, a Jesuit, for the emperor You-Ching, in the
+seventeenth century. The instruments are of bronze, and mounted upon
+fantastic dragons, and are still in good condition, though they
+have been exposed to the open air all this time. One of them was a
+celestial sphere eight feet in diameter, containing all the stars
+known in 1650 and visible in Pekin.
+
+[Illustration: PORTICO TO THE TOMBS OF THE EMPERORS.]
+
+Visits to the theatres, to the temple of the Moon, that of the Lamas,
+that of Confucius, and to others made the days spent in Pekin pass
+quickly. Among the wonders shown was the largest suspended bell in the
+world--the great bell of Moscow has never been hung--twenty-five feet
+high, weighing ninety thousand pounds, and richly sculptured.
+
+The private life of the Chinese it is almost impossible for a stranger
+to take part in. To do so requires a knowledge of Chinese, which can
+be gained only by years of assiduous study, and that the applicant
+should, as far as possible in dress and general appearance, make
+himself a Chinese. Even then, complete success is gained only by a
+fortunate combination of circumstances. The streets devoted to
+shops of all kinds afford, however, to the traveler a never-ending
+succession of changing and interesting pictures. Yet the general
+spirit of the Chinese leads them also to be sparing of all outward
+decoration, reserving their forces for interior display. The
+Forbidden City even, though marvelous stories are told of its
+interior splendors, has outside a mean appearance. "A pagoda of the
+thirty-sixth rank has more effect than the sacred dwelling of the Son
+of Heaven."
+
+In the military quarters, and in those inhabited by the nobility, the
+party in their wanderings were struck with an expression of disdain
+on the countenances of those natives whom they met. Elsewhere the
+curiosity to see the foreigners was even greater than the Chinese
+themselves ever excited in the capitals of Europe; but at home the
+higher classes passed the foreigners without even turning to look at
+them, or else glanced at them indifferently or disdainfully. Some of
+the noble class walked, but generally they rode in carts similar to
+that of the mandarin Ching. The higher the rank of the owner, the
+farther behind are the wheels placed. With a prince's cart they are so
+far behind that the rider hangs between them and the mule. Palanquins,
+carried upon the shoulders of the porters, offer another and the most
+convenient means of locomotion used in China: this method is, however,
+forbidden except for princes and ministers of state.
+
+In the busy streets of trade the scene is most animated. Thousands of
+scarlet signs with gilded inscriptions hang from oblique poles raised
+in front of the shops. Carts, palanquins, mules, camels, coolies,
+soldiers and merchants throng the streets, while to add to the
+confusion myriads of children play about your legs, and the old men
+carrying their kites toward the walls add to the singularity of the
+scene. The kites, representing dragons, eagles, etc., are managed
+with a dexterity which comes only from a lifelong practice. They are
+sometimes furnished with various aeolian attachments which imitate
+the songs of birds or the voices of men. The pigeons also in Pekin are
+frequently provided with a very light kind of aeolian harp, which is
+secured tightly to the two central feathers of their tails, so that
+in flying through the air the harps sound harmoniously. This curious,
+indistinct note had excited the count's attention, and he learned its
+cause from a pigeon which fell dead at his feet, having in its flight
+struck itself against the cord of one of the kites. Their use was
+explained by the natives as a protection against the hawks which are
+very common in Pekin.
+
+Passing one day the place of execution, the travelers were shocked to
+see that the heads of the executed were exposed to the public gaze,
+labeled with the crimes for which they had suffered. Such sights as
+this, with the terrible filth of all the Chinese cities, the squalid
+suffering of the poor and the want of sympathy with indigence and
+disease, suggested to the count, as they too frequently suggest to
+European visitors, that the degradation of the Chinese is hopeless.
+Yet such sights were common a few generations ago in every European
+capital, and the same causes which have led to their cessation there
+are at work to-day in China, and bid fair to produce the same results.
+
+The service of the custom-house, which has been put into the hands
+of Europeans, and under the management of Mr. Robert Hart has been
+thoroughly organized, is having a great influence in civilizing the
+government, as well as in diffusing European ideas and methods among
+the people. A fixed rate of charges, an honesty of administration
+which is beyond question, prompt activity in the transaction of
+business, have replaced the depredations and the old methods in
+use under mandarin rule. It is the desire of the manager of the
+custom-house to inaugurate in China the establishment of a system of
+lighthouses, to organize the postal system, to introduce railroads and
+telegraphs and to open the coal-mines of the empire. Success in
+these reforms means bringing China into the circle of inter-dependent
+civilized nations; and so far all the steps in this direction have
+been sure and successful ones.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT WALL: THE NANG-KAO PASS.]
+
+On leaving Pekin, our party set out to visit the Great Wall of China,
+which lies about three days' journey from that capital, on the route
+to Siberia. Mongolian ponies served for the means of transportation on
+this trip. These shaggy little animals were as full of tricks as they
+were ugly. The cavalcade was followed by two carts for carrying the
+money of the expedition. The whole of this capital amounted to about
+one hundred and fifty dollars, in the form of hundreds of thousands of
+the copper coins of the country, made with holes in their centres and
+strung by the thousand upon osier twigs. This is the only money which
+circulates in the agricultural portions of China, and a "barbarian"
+has to give a pound weight of them for a couple of eggs. The country
+soon began to become hilly, with the mountains of Mongolia visible in
+the distance. Trains of camels were passed, or could be seen winding
+in the plain below.
+
+The next day the party arrived at the Tombs of the Emperors. These are
+the tombs of the Ming emperors, one of the most brilliant dynasties of
+Chinese history. They lie in a circular valley which opens out from a
+great plain, and is surrounded by limestone peaks and granite
+domes, forming a barren and waste amphitheatre. The grandeur of its
+dimensions and the awful barrenness of its desolation make it a fit
+resting-place for the imperial dead of the last native dynasty. At
+the foot of the surrounding heights thirteen gigantic tombs, encircled
+with green trees, are arranged in a semicircle. Five majestic portals,
+about eight hundred yards apart, form the entrance to the tombs. From
+the portico giving entrance to the valley to the tomb of the first
+emperor is more than a league, and the long avenue is marked first
+by winged columns of white marble, and next by two rows of animals,
+carved in gigantic proportions. Of these there are, on either side,
+two lions standing, two lions sitting; one camel standing, one
+kneeling; one elephant standing, one kneeling; one dragon standing,
+one sitting; two horses standing; six warriors, courtiers, etc. The
+lions are fifteen feet high, and the others equally colossal, while
+each of the figures is carved from a single block of granite.
+
+At the end of the avenue are the tombs, with groups of trees about
+them. Each tomb is really a temple in which white and pink marble,
+porphyry and carved teak-wood are combined, not indeed with harmony
+or taste, but, what is rare in China, with lines of great purity and
+severity. One of the halls of these tombs is about a hundred feet long
+by about eighty wide. The ceiling is from forty to sixty feet high,
+and is supported by rows of pillars, each formed of a single stick of
+teak timber eleven feet in circumference. These sticks were brought
+for this purpose from the south of China. Though they have been in
+position over nine hundred years, they appear as sound as when first
+posed, nor has the austere splendor of the structure suffered in any
+degree.
+
+The sombre obscurity well befits these sepulchral dwellings, and the
+dull sound of the deadened gongs struck by the guardians makes the
+vaults reverberate in a singular and impressive way. Behind the
+memorial temple rises an artificial mound about fifty feet high,
+access to the top of which is given by a rising arched passage
+built of white marble. On the top of the mound is an imposing marble
+structure consisting of a double arch, beneath which is the imperial
+tablet, a large slab, upon which is carved a dragon standing on the
+back of a gigantic tortoise. The remains of the emperor are buried
+somewhere within this mound, though the exact spot is not known: this
+precaution, it is said, was taken to preserve the remains from being
+desecrated in a search for the treasures which were buried with him,
+while the persons who performed this last office were killed upon the
+spot, in order further to preserve the secret.
+
+[Illustration: CHAPEL OF THE SUMMER PALACE.]
+
+From this gigantic effort to preserve the memory of the dead our party
+hastened to the Great Wall, an equally immense work to preserve the
+living from the incursions of their neighboring enemies. Perhaps
+nowhere in the world are to be found in such close proximity two such
+striking evidences of the waste of human labor when undirected by
+scientific knowledge. The wall is to-day, and was from the first, as
+worthless for the purpose it was intended to serve as the temples are
+for obtaining immortality for the bodies they enclose.
+
+Leaving the town of Nang-Kao, the party soon found themselves at the
+entrance of the pass of the same name, and during the six leagues
+which separated them from the wall the spectacle kept increasing in
+grandeur. The gorge at first was savage and sombre, shut in closely
+by the steep mountain-sides. Soon the first support of the Great Wall
+appeared in a chain of walls, with battlements and towers, built
+over the principal mountain-chain, and as far as the eye could reach
+following all the peaks. The effect of this wall is most striking.
+Like some enormous serpent it stretches away in the distance, climbing
+rocks which appear impracticable, and which would be so without its
+aid. The count was convinced that it would be as difficult to climb
+it for the purpose of defending it as it would be to do so in order to
+attack it. This first support of the wall is in itself a giant work.
+
+As the party advanced in the valley, in the far distance the
+crenelated outlines of two other similar and parallel walls appeared,
+situated also upon the crests. The Great Wall was built about 200 B.C.
+as a barrier against the Tartar cavalry. It is said to have been built
+in twenty-two years. It was everywhere constructed of the materials
+at hand. On the plains it was built of a core of earth, pounded, and
+faced with tiles, the top being also covered with tiles and furnished
+with a parapet. On the mountains of stratified rock the facing was
+made of masonry, and the core of earth and cobble-stones. Where the
+rock is such as fractures irregularly, the wall is of solid masonry,
+tapering to the top, which is sharp. Throughout its whole length it
+is defended by towers occurring every few hundred feet. Every
+mountain-pass and weak point was defended by a fortified tower. At
+present the wall is in various conditions of preservation, according
+to the materials used in its construction. In the valleys, which were
+the points to defend, it has gradually crumbled to a mere heap of
+rubbish, which the plough year by year still further scatters.
+
+The Great Wall is, however, a wonderful monument of the labor and
+organization of the Chinese nation two thousand years ago. The
+illustration is from a photograph taken on the spot by one of the
+party. In order to take a view which should be most effective the
+camera was placed upon the wall itself.
+
+On their return to Pekin the party visited the ruins of the famous
+Summer Palace, Yuen-Ming-Yuen. The avenues were formerly adorned with
+porticoes, monuments and kiosques, which are now masses of ruins. Only
+two enormous bronze lions, the largest castings ever made in China,
+remain, and these simply because the allies could not carry them
+away. To have attempted it would have required the building of a dozen
+bridges over the streams between here and Tien-Tsin. The chapel of
+the Summer Palace escaped destruction only from the fact that it was
+situated upon a rock so high that the flames did not reach it. Looking
+at the confused ruins which are all that remain of this wonderful
+collection of the most admirable products of fifteen ages of
+civilization, of art and of industry, the count de Beauvoir says
+truly that no honest man can help shuddering involuntarily. Though
+his sentiment of national loyalty is very strong, yet he cannot avoid
+exclaiming, "Let us leave this place: let us run from this spot, where
+the soil burns us, the very view of which humbles us. We came to China
+as the armed champions of civilization and of a religion of mercy,
+but the Chinese are right, a thousand times right, in calling us
+barbarians."
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+DEEPER AND DEEPER.
+
+
+Next morning Sheila was busy with her preparations for departure when
+she heard a hansom drive up. She looked out and saw Mr. Ingram step
+out; and before he had time to cross the pavement she had run round
+and opened the door, and stood at the top of the steps to receive him.
+How often had her husband cautioned her not to forget herself in this
+monstrous fashion!
+
+"Did you think I had run away? Have you come to see me?" she said,
+with a bright, roseate gladness on her face which reminded him of many
+a pleasant morning in Borva.
+
+"I did not think you had run away, for you see I have brought you some
+flowers," he said; but there was a sort of blush in the sallow face,
+and perhaps the girl had some quick fancy or suspicion that he had
+brought this bouquet to prove that he knew everything was right,
+and that he expected to see her. It was only a part of his universal
+kindness and thoughtfulness, she considered.
+
+"Frank is up stairs," she said, "getting ready some things to go
+to Brighton. Will you come into the breakfast-room? Have you had
+breakfast?"
+
+"Oh, you were going to Brighton?"
+
+"Yes," she said; and somehow something moved her to add quickly, "but
+not for long, you know. Only a few days. It is many a time you
+will have told me of Brighton long ago in the Lewis, but I cannot
+understand a large town being beside the sea, and it will be a great
+surprise to me, I am sure of that."
+
+"Ay, Sheila," he said, falling into the old habit quite naturally,
+"you will find it different from Borvabost. You will have no
+scampering about the rocks with your head bare and your hair flying
+about. You will have to dress more correctly there than here even;
+and, by the way, you must be busy getting ready, so I will go."
+
+"Oh no," she said with a quick look of disappointment, "you will not
+go yet. If I had known you were coming--But it was very late when we
+will get home this morning: two o'clock it was."
+
+"Another ball?"
+
+"Yes," said the girl, but not very joyfully.
+
+"Why, Sheila," he said with a grave smile on his face, "you are
+becoming quite a woman of fashion now. And you know I can't keep up an
+acquaintance with a fine lady who goes to all these grand places and
+knows all sorts of swell people; so you'll have to cut me, Sheila."
+
+"I hope I shall be dead before that time ever comes," said the girl
+with a sudden flash of indignation in her eyes. Then she softened:
+"But it is not kind of you to laugh at me."
+
+"Of course I did not laugh at you," he said taking both her hands in
+his, "although I used to sometimes when you were a little girl and
+talked very wild English. Don't you remember how vexed you used to be,
+and how pleased you were when your papa turned the laugh against me by
+getting me to say that awful Gaelic sentence about 'A young calf ate a
+raw egg'?"
+
+"Can you say it now?" said Sheila, with her face getting bright and
+pleased again. "Try it after me. Now listen."
+
+She uttered some half dozen of the most extraordinary sounds that any
+language ever contained, but Ingram would not attempt to follow her.
+She reproached him with having forgotten all that he had learnt
+in Lewis, and said she should no longer look on him as a possible
+Highlander.
+
+"But what are _you_ now?" he asked. "You are no longer that wild girl
+who used to run out to sea in the Maighdean-mhara whenever there was
+the excitement of a storm coming on."
+
+"Many times," she said slowly and wistfully, "I will wish that I could
+be that again for a little while."
+
+"Don't you enjoy, then, all those fine gatherings you go to?"
+
+"I try to like them."
+
+"And you don't succeed?"
+
+He was looking at her gravely and earnestly, and she turned away her
+head and did not answer. At this moment Lavender came down stairs and
+entered the room.
+
+"Hillo, Ingram, my boy! glad to see you! What pretty flowers! It's a
+pity we can't take them to Brighton with us."
+
+"But I intend to take them," said Sheila firmly.
+
+"Oh, very well, if you don't mind the bother," said her husband. "I
+should have thought your hands would have been full: you know you'll
+have to take everything with you you would want in London. You will
+find that Brighton isn't a dirty little fishing-village in which
+you've only to tuck up your dress and run about anyhow."
+
+"I never saw a dirty little fishing-village," said Sheila quietly.
+
+Her husband laughed: "I meant no offence. I was not thinking of
+Borvabost at all. Well, Ingram, can't you run down and see us while we
+are at Brighton?"
+
+"Oh do, Mr. Ingram!" said Sheila with quite a new interest in her
+face; and she came forward as though she would have gone down on her
+knees and begged this great favor of him. "Do, Mr. Ingram! We should
+try to amuse you some way, and the weather is sure to be fine. Shall
+we keep a room for you? Can you come on Friday and stay till the
+Monday? It is a great difference there will be in the place if you
+come down."
+
+Ingram looked at Sheila, and was on the point of promising, when
+Lavender added, "And we shall introduce you to that young American
+lady whom you are so anxious to meet."
+
+"Oh, is she to be there?" he said, looking rather curiously at
+Lavender.
+
+"Yes, she and her mother. We are going down together."
+
+"Then I'll see whether I can in a day or two," he said, but in a tone
+which pretty nearly convinced Sheila that she should not have her
+stay at Brighton made pleasant by the company of her old friend and
+associate.
+
+However, the mere anticipation of seeing the sea was much; and when
+they had got into a cab and were going down to Victoria Station,
+Sheila's eyes were filled with a joyful anticipation. She had
+discarded altogether the descriptions of Brighton that had been given
+her. It is one thing to receive information, and another to reproduce
+it in an imaginative picture; and in fact her imagination was busy
+with its own work while she sat and listened to this person or the
+other speaking of the seaside town she was going to. When they spoke
+of promenades and drives and miles of hotels and lodging-houses, she
+was thinking of the sea-beach and of the boats and of the sky-line
+with its distant ships. When they told her of private theatricals and
+concerts and fancy-dress balls, she was thinking of being out on the
+open sea, with a light breeze filling the sails, and a curl of white
+foam rising at the bow and sweeping and hissing down the sides of the
+boat. She would go down among the fishermen when her husband and his
+friends were not by, and talk to them, and get to know what they sold
+their fish for down here in the South. She would find out what their
+nets cost, and if there was anybody in authority to whom they could
+apply for an advance of a few pounds in case of hard times. Had they
+their cuttings of peat free from the nearest moss-land? and did they
+dress their fields with the thatch that had got saturated with the
+smoke? Perhaps some of them could tell her where the crews hailed from
+that had repeatedly shot the sheep of the Flannen Isles. All these and
+a hundred other things she would get to know; and she might procure
+and send to her father some rare bird or curiosity of the sea, that
+might be added to the little museum in which she used to sing in days
+gone by, when he was busy with his pipe and his whisky.
+
+"You are not much tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?"
+said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired,
+grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright
+gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong
+and in such good spirits."
+
+"How happy you must be always!" said Mrs. Lorraine; and the younger
+lady had the same sweet, low and kindly voice as her mother.
+
+"I am very well, thank you," said Sheila, blushing somewhat and
+not lifting her eyes, while Lavender was impatient that she had
+not answered with a laugh and some light retort, such as would have
+occurred to almost any woman in the circumstances.
+
+On the journey down, Lavender and Mrs. Lorraine, seated opposite each
+other in two corner seats, kept up a continual cross-fire of small
+pleasantries, in which the young American lady had distinctly the best
+of it, chiefly by reason of her perfect manner. The keenest thing she
+said was said with a look of great innocence and candor in the large
+gray eyes; and then directly afterward she would say something very
+nice and pleasant in precisely the same voice, as if she could not
+understand that there was any effort on the part of either to assume
+an advantage. The mother sometimes turned and listened to this aimless
+talk with an amused gravity, as of a cat watching the gambols of a
+kitten, but generally she devoted herself to Sheila, who sat opposite
+her. She did not talk much, and Sheila was glad of that, but the
+girl felt that she was being observed with some little curiosity. She
+wished that Mrs. Kavanagh would turn those observant gray eyes of hers
+away in some other direction. Now and again Sheila would point out
+what she considered strange or striking in the country outside, and
+for a moment the elderly lady would look out. But directly afterward
+the gray eyes would come back to Sheila, and the girl knew they were
+upon her. At last she so persistently stared out of the window that
+she fell to dreaming, and all the trees and the meadows and the
+farm-houses and the distant heights and hollows went past her
+as though they were in a sort of mist, while she replied to Mrs.
+Kavanagh's chance remarks in a mechanical fashion, and could only hear
+as a monotonous murmur the talk of the two people at the other side
+of the carriage. How much of the journey did she remember? She was
+greatly struck by the amount of open land in the neighborhood
+of London--the commons between Wandsworth and Streatham, and so
+forth--and she was pleased with the appearance of the country about
+Red Hill. For the rest, a succession of fair green pictures passed
+by her, all bathed in a calm, half-misty summer sunlight: then they
+pierced the chalk-hills (which Sheila, at first sight, fancied were of
+granite) and rumbled through the tunnels. Finally, with just a glimpse
+of a great mass of gray houses filling a vast hollow and stretching up
+the bare green downs beyond, they found themselves in Brighton.
+
+"Well, Sheila, what do you think of the place?" her husband said to
+her with a laugh as they were driving down the Queen's road.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"It is not like Borvabost, is it?"
+
+She was too bewildered to speak. She could only look about her with a
+vague wonder and disappointment. But surely this great gray city
+was not the place they had come to live in? Would it not disappear
+somehow, and they would get away to the sea and the rocks and the
+boats?
+
+They passed into the upper part of West street, and here was another
+thoroughfare, down which Sheila glanced with no great interest. But
+the next moment there was a quick catching of her breath, which almost
+resembled a sob, and a strange glad light sprang into her eyes. Here
+at last was the sea! Away beyond the narrow thoroughfare she could
+catch a glimpse of a great green plain--yellow-green it was in the
+sunlight--that the wind was whitening here and there with tumbling
+waves. She had not noticed that there was any wind in-land--there
+everything seemed asleep--but here there was a fresh breeze from the
+south, and the sea had been rough the day before, and now it was of
+this strange olive color, streaked with the white curls of foam that
+shone in the sunlight. Was there not a cold scent of sea-weed, too,
+blown up this narrow passage between the houses? And now the carriage
+cut round the corner and whirled out into the glare of the Parade,
+and before her the great sea stretched out its leagues of tumbling and
+shining waves, and she heard the water roaring along the beach, and
+far away at the horizon she saw a phantom ship. She did not even look
+at the row of splendid hotels and houses, at the gayly-dressed
+folks on the pavement, at the brilliant flags that were flapping and
+fluttering on the New Pier and about the beach. It was the great
+world of shining water beyond that fascinated her, and awoke in her a
+strange yearning and longing, so that she did not know whether it was
+grief or joy that burned in her heart and blinded her eyes with tears.
+Mrs. Kavanagh took her arm as they were going up the steps of the
+hotel, and said in a friendly way, "I suppose you have some sad
+memories of the sea?"
+
+"No," said Sheila bravely, "it is always pleasant to me to think of
+the sea; but it is a long time since--since--"
+
+"Sheila," said her husband abruptly, "do tell me if all your things
+are here;" and then the girl turned, calm and self-collected, to look
+after rugs and boxes.
+
+When they were finally established in the hotel Lavender went off
+to negotiate for the hire of a carriage for Mrs. Kavanagh during her
+stay, and Sheila was left with the two ladies. They had tea in their
+sitting-room, and they had it at one of the windows, so that they
+could look out on the stream of people and carriages now beginning to
+flow by in the clear yellow light of the afternoon. But neither the
+people nor the carriages had much interest for Sheila, who, indeed,
+sat for the most part silent, intently watching the various boats that
+were putting out or coming in, and busy with conjectures which she
+knew there was no use placing before her two companions.
+
+"Brighton seems to surprise you very much," said Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+"Yes," said Sheila, "I have been told all about it, but you will
+forget all that; and this is very different from the sea at home--at
+my home."
+
+"Your home is in London now," said the elder lady with a smile.
+
+"Oh no!" said Sheila, most anxiously and earnestly. "London, that
+is not our home at all. We live there for a time--that will be quite
+necessary--but we shall go back to the Lewis some day soon--not to
+stay altogether, but enough to make it as much our home as London."
+
+"How do you think Mr. Lavender will enjoy living in the Hebrides?"
+said Mrs. Lorraine with a look of innocent and friendly inquiry in her
+eyes.
+
+"It was many a time that he has said he never liked any place so
+much," said Sheila with something of a blush; and then she added with
+growing courage, "for you must not think he is always like what he
+is here. Oh no! When he is in the Highlands there is no day that is
+nearly long enough for what has to be done in it; and he is up very
+early, and away to the hills or the loch with a gun or a salmon-rod.
+He can catch the salmon very well--oh, very well for one that is
+not accustomed--and he will shoot as well as any one that is in the
+island, except my papa. It is a great deal to do there will be in the
+island, and plenty of amusement; and there is not much chance--not
+any whatever--of his being lonely or tired when we go to live in the
+Lewis."
+
+Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter were both amused and pleased by the
+earnest and rapid fashion in which Sheila talked. They had generally
+considered her to be a trifle shy and silent, not knowing how afraid
+she was of using wrong idioms or pronunciations; but here was one
+subject on which her heart was set, and she had no more thought as
+to whether she said _like-a-ness_ or _likeness_, or whether she said
+_gyarden_ or _garden_. Indeed, she forgot more than that. She was
+somewhat excited by the presence of the sea and the well-remembered
+sound of the waves; and she was pleased to talk about her life in the
+North, and about her husband's stay there, and how they should
+pass the time when she returned to Borva. She neglected altogether
+Lavender's injunctions that she should not talk about fishing or
+cooking or farming to his friends. She incidentally revealed to Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter a great deal more about the household
+at Borva than he would have wished to be known. For how could they
+understand about his wife having her own cousin to serve at table?
+and what would they think of a young lady who was proud of making her
+father's shirts? Whatever these two ladies may have thought, they were
+very obviously interested, and if they were amused, it was in a far
+from unfriendly fashion. Mrs. Lorraine professed herself quite charmed
+with Sheila's descriptions of her island-life, and wished she could
+go up to Lewis to see all these strange things. But when she spoke of
+visiting the island when Sheila and her husband were staying there,
+Sheila was not nearly so ready to offer her a welcome as the daughter
+of a hospitable old Highlandman ought to have been.
+
+"And will you go out in a boat now?" said Sheila, looking down to the
+beach.
+
+"In a boat! What sort of boat?" said Mrs. Kavanagh.
+
+"Any one of those little sailing boats: it is very good boats they
+are, as far as I can see."
+
+"No, thank you," said the elder lady with a smile. "I am not fond of
+small boats, and the company of the men who go with you might be a
+little objectionable, I should fancy."
+
+"But you need not take any men," said Sheila: "the sailing of one of
+those little boats, it is very simple."
+
+"Do you mean to say you could manage the boat by yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes! It is very simple. And my husband, he will help me."
+
+"And what would you do if you went out?"
+
+"We might try the fishing. I do not see where the rocks are, but we
+would go off the rocks and put down the anchor and try the lines. You
+would have some ferry good fish for breakfast in the morning."
+
+"My dear child," said Mrs. Kavanagh, "you don't know what you propose
+to us. To go and roll about in an open boat in these waves--we should
+be ill in five minutes. But I suppose you don't know what sea-sickness
+is?"
+
+"No," said Sheila, "but I will hear my husband speak of it often. And
+it is only in crossing the Channel that people will get sick."
+
+"Why, this is the Channel."
+
+Sheila stared. Then she endeavored to recall her geography. Of course
+this must be a part of the Channel, but if the people in the South
+became ill in this weather, they must be rather feeble creatures.
+Her speculations on this point were cut short by the entrance of her
+husband, who came to announce that he had not only secured a carriage
+for a month, but that it would be round at the hotel door in half an
+hour; whereupon the two American ladies said they would be ready, and
+left the room.
+
+"Now go off and get dressed, Sheila," said Lavender.
+
+She stood for a moment irresolute.
+
+"If you wouldn't mind," she said after a moment's hesitation--"if you
+would allow me to go by myself--if you would go to the driving, and
+let me go down to the shore!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he said. "You will have people fancying you are only
+a school-girl. How can you go down to the beach by yourself among all
+those loafing vagabonds, who would pick your pocket or throw stones at
+you? You must behave like an ordinary Christian: now do, like a good
+girl, get dressed and submit to the restraints of civilized life. It
+won't hurt you much."
+
+So she left, to lay aside with some regret her rough blue dress, and
+he went down stairs to see about ordering dinner.
+
+Had she come down to the sea, then, only to live the life that had
+nearly broken her heart in London? It seemed so. They drove up
+and down the Parade for about an hour and a half, and the roar of
+carriages drowned the rush of the waves. Then they dined in the quiet
+of this still summer evening, and she could only see the sea as a
+distant and silent picture through the windows, while the talk of
+her companions was either about the people whom they had seen while
+driving, or about matters of which she knew nothing. Then the blinds
+were drawn and candles lit, and still their conversation murmured
+around her unheeding ears. After dinner her husband went down to the
+smoking-room of the hotel to have a cigar, and she was left with Mrs.
+Kavanagh and her daughter. She went to the window and looked through
+a chink in the Venetian blinds. There was a beautiful clear twilight
+abroad, the darkness was still of a soft gray, and up in the pale
+yellow-green of the sky a large planet burned and throbbed. Soon the
+sea and the sky would darken, the stars would come forth in thousands
+and tens of thousands, and the moving water would be struck with a
+million trembling spots of silver as the waves came onward to the
+beach.
+
+"Mayn't we go out for a walk till Frank has finished his cigar?" said
+Sheila.
+
+"You couldn't go out walking at this time of night," said Mrs.
+Kavanagh in a kindly way: "you would meet the most unpleasant persons.
+Besides, going out into the night air would be most dangerous."
+
+"It is a beautiful night," said Sheila with a sigh. She was still
+standing at the window.
+
+"Come," said Mrs. Kavanagh, going over to her and putting her hand in
+her arm, "we cannot have any moping, you know. You must be content to
+be dull with us for one night; and after to-night we shall see what we
+can do to amuse you."
+
+"Oh, but I don't want to be amused!" cried Sheila almost in terror,
+for some vision flashed on her mind of a series of parties. "I would
+much rather be left alone and allowed to go about by myself. But it
+is very kind of you," she hastily added, fancying that her speech had
+been somewhat ungracious--"it is very kind of you indeed."
+
+"Come, I promised to teach you cribbage, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," said Sheila with much resignation; and she walked to the table
+and sat down.
+
+Perhaps, after all, she could have spent the rest of the evening with
+some little equanimity in patiently trying to learn this game, in
+which she had no interest whatever, but her thoughts and fancies were
+soon drawn away from cribbage. Her husband returned. Mrs. Lorraine had
+been for some little time at the big piano at the other side of the
+room, amusing herself by playing snatches of anything she happened
+to remember, but when Mr. Lavender returned she seemed to wake up. He
+went over to her and sat down by the piano.
+
+"Here," she said, "I have all the duets and songs you spoke of, and I
+am quite delighted with those I have tried. I wish mamma would sing a
+second to me: how can one learn without practicing? And there are some
+of those duets I really should like to learn after what you said of
+them."
+
+"Shall I become a substitute for your mamma?" he said.
+
+"And sing the second, so that I may practice? Your cigar must have
+left you in a very amiable mood."
+
+"Well, suppose we try," he said; and he proceeded to open out the roll
+of music which she had brought down.
+
+"Which shall we take first?" he asked.
+
+"It does not much matter," she answered indifferently, and indeed she
+took up one of the duets by haphazard.
+
+What was it made Mrs. Kavanagh's companion suddenly lift her eyes
+from the cribbage-board and look with surprise to the other end of the
+room? She had recognized the little prelude to one of her own duets,
+and it was being played by Mrs. Lorraine. And it was Mrs. Lorraine
+who began to sing in a sweet, expressive and well-trained voice of no
+great power--
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
+
+and it was she to whom the answer was given--
+
+  He in thy snowy bosom strays;
+
+and then, Sheila, sitting stupefied and pained and confused, heard
+them sing together--
+
+  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
+  And walks the mazes of thy hair.
+
+She had not heard the short conversation which had introduced this
+music; and she could not tell but that her husband had been practicing
+these duets--her duets--with some one else. For presently they sang
+"When the rosy morn appearing," and "I would that my love could
+silently," and others, all of them in Sheila's eyes, sacred to the
+time when she and Lavender used to sit in the little room at Borva.
+It was no consolation to her that Mrs. Lorraine had but an imperfect
+acquaintance with them; that oftentimes she stumbled and went back
+over a bit of the accompaniment; that her voice was far from being
+striking. Lavender, at all events, seemed to heed none of these
+things. It was not as a music-master that he sang with her. He put as
+much expression of love into his voice as ever he had done in the old
+days when he sang with his future bride. And it seemed so cruel that
+this woman should have taken Sheila's own duets from her to sing
+before her with her own husband.
+
+Sheila learnt little more cribbage that evening. Mrs. Kavanagh could
+not understand how her pupil had become embarrassed, inattentive, and
+even sad, and asked her if she was tired. Sheila said she was very
+tired and would go. And when she got her candle, Mrs. Lorraine and
+Lavender had just discovered another duet which they felt bound to try
+together as the last.
+
+This was not the first time she had been more or less vaguely pained
+by her husband's attentions to this young American lady; and yet she
+would not admit to herself that he was any way in the wrong. She
+would entertain no suspicion of him. She would have no jealousy in her
+heart, for how could jealousy exist with a perfect faith? And so she
+had repeatedly reasoned herself out of these tentative feelings, and
+resolved that she would do neither her husband nor Mrs. Lorraine the
+injustice of being vexed with them. So it was now. What more natural
+than that Frank should recommend to any friend the duets of which he
+was particularly fond? What more natural than that this young lady
+should wish to show her appreciation of those songs by singing them?
+and who was to sing with her but he? Sheila would have no suspicion
+of either; and so she came down next morning determined to be very
+friendly with Mrs. Lorraine.
+
+But that forenoon another thing occurred which nearly broke down all
+her resolves.
+
+"Sheila," said her husband, I don't think I ever asked you whether you
+rode."
+
+"I used to ride many times at home," she said.
+
+"But I suppose you'd rather not ride here," he said. "Mrs. Lorraine
+and I propose to go out presently: you'll be able to amuse yourself
+somehow till we come back."
+
+Mrs. Lorraine had, indeed, gone to put on her habit, and her mother
+was with her.
+
+"I suppose I may go out," said Sheila. "It is so very dull in-doors,
+and Mrs. Kavanagh is afraid of the east wind, and she is not going
+out."
+
+"Well, there's no harm in your going out," answered Lavender, "but
+I should have thought you'd have liked the comfort of watching the
+people pass, from the window."
+
+She said nothing, but went off to her own room and dressed to go out.
+Why she knew not, but she felt she would rather not see her husband
+and Mrs. Lorraine start from the hotel door. She stole down stairs
+without going into the sitting-room, and then, going through the great
+hall and down the steps, found herself free and alone in Brighton.
+
+It was a beautiful, bright, clear day, though the wind was a trifle
+chilly, and all around her there was a sense of space and light and
+motion in the shining skies, the far clouds and the heaving and noisy
+sea. Yet she had none of the gladness of heart with which she used
+to rush out of the house at Borva to drink in the fresh, salt air
+and feel the sunlight on her cheeks. She walked away, with her face
+wistful and pensive, along the King's road, scarcely seeing any of
+the people who passed her; and the noise of the crowd and of the waves
+hummed in her ears in a distant fashion, even as she walked along
+the wooden railing over the beach. She stopped and watched some men
+putting off a heavy fishing-boat, and she still stood and looked long
+after the boat was launched. She would not confess to herself that
+she felt lonely and miserable: it was the sight of the sea that was
+melancholy. It seemed so different from the sea off Borva, that had
+always to her a familiar and friendly look, even when it was raging
+and rushing before a south-west wind. Here this sea looked vast and
+calm and sad, and the sound of it was not pleasant to her ears, as
+was the sound of the waves on the rocks at Borva. She walked on, in a
+blind and unthinking fashion, until she had got far up the Parade,
+and could see the long line of monotonous white cliff meeting the dull
+blue plain of the waves until both disappeared in the horizon.
+
+She returned to the King's road a trifle tired, and sat down on one of
+the benches there. The passing of the people would amuse her; and now
+the pavement was thronged with a crowd of gayly-dressed folks, and the
+centre of the thoroughfare brisk with the constant going and coming of
+riders. She saw strange old women, painted, powdered and bewigged in
+hideous imitation of youth, pounding up and down the level street, and
+she wondered what wild hallucinations possessed the brains of these
+poor creatures. She saw troops of beautiful young girls, with flowing
+hair, clear eyes and bright complexions, riding by, a goodly company,
+under charge of a riding-mistress, and the world seemed to grow
+sweeter when they came into view. But while she was vaguely gazing and
+wondering and speculating her eyes were suddenly caught by two riders
+whose appearance sent a throb to her heart. Frank Lavender rode well,
+so did Mrs. Lorraine; and, though they were paying no particular
+attention to the crowd of passers-by, they doubtless knew that they
+could challenge criticism with an easy confidence. They were laughing
+and talking to each other as they went rapidly by: neither of them saw
+Sheila. The girl did not look after them. She rose and walked in the
+other direction, with a greater pain at her heart than had been there
+for many a day.
+
+What was this crowd? Some dozen or so of people were standing round
+a small girl, who, accompanied by a man, was playing a violin, and
+playing it very well, too. But it was not the music that attracted
+Sheila to the child, but partly that there was a look about the timid,
+pretty face and the modest and honest eyes that reminded her of little
+Ailasa, and partly because, just at this moment, her heart seemed to
+be strangely sensitive and sympathetic. She took no thought of the
+people looking on. She went forward to the edge of the pavement, and
+found that the small girl and her companion were about to go away.
+Sheila stopped the man.
+
+"Will you let your little girl come with me into this shop?"
+
+It was a confectioner's shop.
+
+"We were going home to dinner," said the man, while the small girl
+looked up with wondering eyes.
+
+"Will you let her have dinner with me, and you will come back in half
+an hour?"
+
+The man looked at the little girl: he seemed to be really fond of her,
+and saw that she was very willing to go. Sheila took her hand and led
+her into the confectioner's shop, putting her violin on one of the
+small marble tables while they sat down at another. She was probably
+not aware that two or three idlers had followed them, and were staring
+with might and main in at the door of the shop.
+
+What could this child have thought of the beautiful and yet sad-eyed
+lady who was so kind to her, who got her all sorts of things with her
+own hands, and asked her all manner of questions in a low, gentle and
+sweet voice? There was not much in Sheila's appearance to provoke fear
+or awe. The little girl, shy at first, got to be a little more frank,
+and told her hostess when she rose in the morning, how she practiced,
+the number of hours they were out during the day, and many of the
+small incidents of her daily life. She had been photographed too,
+and her photograph was sold in one of the shops. She was very well
+content: she liked playing, the people were kind to her, and she did
+not often get tired.
+
+"Then I shall see you often if I stay in Brighton?" said Sheila.
+
+"We go out every day when it does not rain very hard."
+
+Perhaps some wet day you will come and see me, and you will have some
+tea with me: would you like that?"
+
+"Yes, very much," said the small musician, looking up frankly.
+
+Just at this moment, the half hour having fully expired, the man
+appeared at the door.
+
+"Don't hurry," said Sheila to the little girl: "sit still and drink
+out the lemonade; then I will give you some little parcels which you
+must put in your pocket."
+
+She was about to rise to go to the counter when she suddenly met the
+eyes of her husband, who was calmly staring at her. He had come out,
+after their ride, with Mrs. Lorraine to have a stroll up and down the
+pavements, and had, in looking in at the various shops, caught sight
+of Sheila quietly having luncheon with this girl whom she had picked
+up in the streets.
+
+"Did you ever see the like of that?" he said to Mrs. Lorraine. "In
+open day, with people staring in, and she has not even taken the
+trouble to put the violin out of sight!"
+
+"The poor child means no harm," said his companion.
+
+"Well, we must get her out of this somehow," he said; and so they
+entered the shop.
+
+Sheila knew she was guilty the moment she met her husband's look,
+though she had never dreamed of it before. She had, indeed, acted
+quite thoughtlessly--perhaps chiefly moved by a desire to speak to
+some one and to befriend some one in her own loneliness.
+
+"Hadn't you better let this little girl go?" said Lavender to Sheila
+somewhat coldly as soon as he had ordered an ice for his companion.
+
+"When she has finished her lemonade she will go," said Sheila meekly.
+"But I have to buy some things for her first."
+
+"You have got a whole lot of people round the door," he said.
+
+"It is very kind of the people to wait for her," answered Sheila with
+the same composure. "We have been here half an hour. I suppose they
+will like her music very much."
+
+The little violinist was now taken to the counter, and her pockets
+stuffed with packages of sugared fruits and other deadly delicacies:
+then she was permitted to go with half a crown in her hand. Mrs.
+Lorraine patted her shoulder in passing, and said she was a pretty
+little thing.
+
+They went home to luncheon. Nothing was said about the incident of
+the forenoon, except that Lavender complained to Mrs. Kavanagh, in
+a humorous way, that his wife had a most extraordinary fondness for
+beggars, and that he never went home of an evening without expecting
+to find her dining with the nearest scavenger and his family.
+Lavender, indeed, was in an amiable frame of mind at this meal (during
+the progress of which Sheila sat by the window, of course, for she had
+already lunched in company with the tiny violinist), and was bent on
+making himself as agreeable as possible to his two companions. Their
+talk had drifted toward the wanderings of the two ladies on the
+Continent; from that to the Niebelungen frescoes in Munich; from
+that to the Niebelungen itself, and then, by easy transition, to the
+ballads of Uhland and Heine. Lavender was in one of his most impulsive
+and brilliant moods--gay and jocular, tender and sympathetic by turns,
+and so obviously sincere in all that his listeners were delighted
+with his speeches and assertions and stories, and believed them as
+implicitly as he did himself. Sheila, sitting at a distance, saw and
+heard, and could not help recalling many an evening in the far North
+when Lavender used to fascinate every one around him by the infection
+of his warm and poetic enthusiasm. How he talked, too--telling
+the stones of these quaint and pathetic ballads in his own
+rough--and--ready translations--while there was no self-consciousness
+in his face, but a thorough warmth of earnestness; and sometimes, too,
+she would notice a quiver of the under lip that she knew of old,
+when some pathetic point or phrase had to be indicated rather than
+described. He was drawing pictures for them as well as telling
+stories--of the three students entering the room in which the
+landlady's daughter lay dead--of Barbarossa in his cave--of the
+child who used to look up at Heine as he passed her in the street,
+awestricken by his pale and strange face--of the last of the band of
+companions who sat in the solitary room in which they had sat, and
+drank to their memory--of the king of Thule, and the deserter from
+Strasburg, and a thousand others.
+
+"But is there any of them--is there anything in the world--more
+pitiable than that pilgrimage to Kevlaar?" he said. "You know it, of
+course. No? Oh, you must, surely. Don't you remember the mother who
+stood by the bedside of her sick son, and asked him whether he would
+not rise to see the great procession go by the window; and he tells
+her that he cannot, he is so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking
+of his dead Gretchen? _You_ know the story, Sheila. The mother begs
+him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims
+going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of
+God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame
+people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they
+make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are
+healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart
+out of it, and says to her son, 'Take that to the Mother of God, and
+she will heal your pain.' Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand,
+and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running
+down his face, he says, 'O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to
+tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near us lived
+Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart:
+heal the wound in my heart.' And then--and then--"
+
+Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently,
+"What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no
+idea of it--of its simplicity and tenderness--"
+
+"But pray let us hear the rest of it," said Mrs. Lorraine gently.
+
+"Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother
+and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber
+and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart.
+Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this
+in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly.
+The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the
+morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her
+hands, and says--"
+
+He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the
+window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to his:
+he took it.
+
+"The next time I try to translate Heine," he said, making it appear
+that he had broken off through vexation, "something strange will
+happen."
+
+"It is a beautiful story," said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been
+crying a little bit in a covert way: "I wonder I have not seen a
+translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be
+after four."
+
+So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and
+still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering,
+perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out
+her heart to him, and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings.
+He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so
+roughly: surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and
+begging for sympathy and compassion.
+
+"Frank," she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head
+to hide the color in her face.
+
+"Well?" he answered a trifle coldly.
+
+"You won't be vexed with me," she said in a low voice, and with her
+heart beginning to beat rapidly.
+
+"Vexed with you about what?" he said abruptly.
+
+Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with
+which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible
+that she should place before him those confidences with which she had
+approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said, "Are we
+to go to Lady Leveret's?"
+
+"Of course we are," he said, "unless you would rather go and see some
+blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so
+forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop?
+It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people
+you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the
+wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you
+are a woman, and not a child--that people will talk about what you
+do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her
+daughter do any of these things?"
+
+Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the
+ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been
+awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might
+warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk
+to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more
+definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.
+
+"I will try to do better, and please you," she said; and then she went
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED.
+
+
+Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl's mind, and now held
+full possession of it--that she was in a world with which she had no
+sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that
+the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her
+husband's love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away
+from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the
+unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question
+her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she
+was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight
+that pressed on her heart.
+
+Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady
+Leveret, who was one of Lavender's especial patrons, and to whom he
+had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that
+she was a stranger, an interloper, a "third wheel to the cart." She
+scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost
+grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and
+monotonous thing--not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with
+its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and
+rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white
+cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged
+shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the
+sea-life of the place: she did not know where the curers lived;
+whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the
+people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could,
+in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod
+and the skate fetched; where the wives and daughters sat and spun
+and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of
+cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of
+asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished
+some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some
+little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the
+sea-life down in the South.
+
+And as they drove along the King's road on this afternoon she suddenly
+called out, "Look, Frank!"
+
+On the steps of the Old Ship Hotel stood a small man with a brown
+face, a brown beard and a beaver hat, who was calmly smoking a wooden
+pipe, and looking at an old woman selling oranges in front of him.
+
+"It is Mr. Ingram," said Sheila.
+
+"Which is Mr. Ingram?" asked Mrs. Lorraine with considerable interest,
+for she had often heard Lavender speak of his friend. "Not that little
+man?"
+
+"Yes," said Lavender coldly: he could have wished that Ingram had had
+some little more regard for appearances in so public a place as the
+main thoroughfare of Brighton.
+
+"Won't you stop and speak to him?" said Sheila with great surprise.
+
+"We are late already," said her husband. "But if you would rather go
+back and speak to him than go on with us, you may."
+
+Sheila said nothing more; and so they drove on to the end of the
+Parade, where Lady Leveret held possession of a big white house with
+pillars overlooking the broad street and the sea.
+
+But next morning she said to him, "I suppose you will be riding with
+Mrs. Lorraine this morning?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"I should like to go and see Mr. Ingram, if he is still there," she
+said.
+
+"Ladies don't generally call at hotels and ask to see gentlemen; but
+of course you don't care for that."
+
+"I shall not go if you do not wish me."
+
+"Oh, nonsense! You may as well go. What is the use of professing
+to keep observances that you don't understand? And it will be some
+amusement for you, for I dare say both of you will immediately go and
+ask some old cab-driver to have luncheon with you, or buy a nosegay of
+flowers for his horse."
+
+The permission was not very gracious, but Sheila accepted it, and
+very shortly after breakfast she changed her dress and went out. How
+pleasant it was to know that she was going to see her old friend
+to whom she could talk freely! The morning seemed to know of her
+gladness, and to share in it, for there was a brisk southerly breeze
+blowing fresh in from the sea, and the waves were leaping white in the
+sunlight. There was no more sluggishness in the air or the gray sky or
+the leaden plain of the sea. Sheila knew that the blood was mantling
+in her cheeks; that her heart was full of joy; that her whole frame
+so tingled with life and spirit that, had she been in Borva, she would
+have challenged her deer-hound to a race, and fled down the side of
+the hill with him to the small bay of white sand below the house. She
+did not pause for a minute when she reached the hotel. She went up the
+steps, opened the door and entered the square hall. There was an odor
+of tobacco in the place, and several gentlemen standing about rather
+confused her, for she had to glance at them in looking for a waiter.
+Another minute would probably have found her a trifle embarrassed, but
+that, just at this crisis, she saw Ingram himself come out of a room
+with a cigarette in his hand. He threw away the cigarette, and came
+forward to her with amazement in his eyes.
+
+"Where is Mr. Lavender? Has he gone into the smoking-room for me?" he
+asked.
+
+"He is not here," said Sheila. "I have come for you by myself."
+
+For a moment, too, Ingram felt the eyes of the men on him, but
+directly he said with a fine air of carelessness, "Well, that is very
+good of you. Shall we go out for a stroll until your husband comes?"
+
+So he opened the door and followed her outside into the fresh air and
+the roar of the waves.
+
+"Well, Sheila," he said, "this is very good of you, really: where is
+Mr. Lavender?"
+
+"He generally rides with Mrs. Lorraine in the morning."
+
+"And what do you do?"
+
+"I sit at the window."
+
+"Don't you go boating?"
+
+"No, I have not been in a boat. They do not care for it. And yesterday
+it was a letter to papa I was writing, and I could tell him nothing
+about the people here or the fishing."
+
+"But you could not in any case, Sheila. I suppose you would like to
+know what they pay for their lines, and how they dye their wool, and
+so on; but you would find the fishermen here don't live in that way at
+all. They are all civilized, you know. They buy their clothing in the
+shops. They never eat any sort of sea-weed, or dye with it, either.
+However, I will tell you all about it by and by. At present I suppose
+you are returning to your hotel."
+
+A quick look of pain and disappointment passed over her face as she
+turned to him for a moment with something of entreaty in her eyes.
+
+"I came to see you," she said. "But perhaps you have an engagement. I
+do not wish to take up any of your time: if you please I will go back
+alone to--"
+
+"Now, Sheila," he said with a smile, and with the old friendly look
+she knew so well, "you must not talk like that to me. I won't have it.
+You know I came down to Brighton because you asked me to come; and my
+time is altogether at your service."
+
+"And you have no engagement just now?" said Sheila with her face
+brightening.
+
+"No."
+
+"And you will take me down to the shore to see the boats and the nets?
+Or could we go out and run along the coast for a few miles? It is a
+very good wind."
+
+"Oh, I should be very glad," said Ingram slowly. "I should be
+delighted. But, you see, wouldn't your husband think it--wouldn't he,
+you know--wouldn't it seem just a little odd to him if you were to go
+away like that?"
+
+"He is to go riding with Mrs. Lorraine," said Sheila quite simply. "He
+does not want me."
+
+"Of course you told him you were coming to see--you were going to call
+at the Old Ship?"
+
+"Yes. And I am sure he would not be surprised if I did not return for
+a long time."
+
+"Are you quite sure, Sheila?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure."
+
+"Very well. Now I shall tell you what I am going to do with you. I
+shall first go and bribe some mercenary boatman to let us have one
+of those small sailing boats committed to our own exclusive charge.
+I shall constitute you skipper and pilot of the craft, and hold you
+responsible for my safety. I shall smoke a pipe to prepare me for
+whatever may befall."
+
+"Oh no," said Sheila. "You must work very hard, and I will see if you
+remember all that I taught you in the Lewis. And if we can have some
+long lines, we might get some fish. Will they pay more than thirty
+shillings for their long lines in this country?"
+
+"I don't know," said Ingram. "I believe most of the fishermen here
+live upon the shillings they get from passers-by after a little
+conversation about the weather and their hard lot in life; so that one
+doesn't talk to them more than one can help."
+
+"But why do they need the money? Are there no fish?"
+
+"I don't know that, either. I suppose there is some good fishing in
+the winter, and sometimes in the summer they get some big shoals of
+mackerel."
+
+"It was a letter I had last week from the sister of one of the men of
+the Nighean-dubh, and she will tell me that they have been very lucky
+all through the last season, and it was near six thousand ling they
+got."
+
+"But I suppose they are hopelessly in debt to some curer or other up
+about Habost?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. It is their own boat: it is not hired to them. And
+it is a very good boat whatever."
+
+That unlucky "whatever" had slipped out inadvertently: the moment she
+had uttered it she blushed and looked timidly toward her companion,
+fearing that he had noticed it. He had not. How could she have made
+such a blunder? she asked herself. She had been most particular about
+the avoidance of this word, even in the Lewis. The girl did not know
+that from the moment she had left the steps of the Old Ship in company
+with that good friend of hers she had unconsciously fallen into much
+of her old pronunciation and her old habit of speech; while Ingram,
+much more familiar with the Sheila of Borvabost and Loch Roag than
+with the Sheila of Netting Hill and Kensington Gardens, did not
+perceive the difference, but was mightily pleased to hear her talk in
+any fashion whatsoever.
+
+By fair means or foul, Ingram managed to secure a pretty little
+sailing vessel which lay at anchor out near the New Pier, and when the
+pecuniary negotiations were over Sheila was invited to walk down
+over the loose stones of the beach and take command of the craft. The
+boatman was still very doubtful. When he had pulled them out to the
+boat, however, and put them on board, he speedily perceived that this
+handsome young lady not only knew everything that had to be done in
+the way of getting the small vessel ready, but had a very smart and
+business-like way of doing it. It was very obvious that her companion
+did not know half as much about the matter as she did; but he was
+obedient and watchful, and presently they were ready to start. The man
+put off in his boat to shore again much relieved in mind, but not a
+little puzzled to understand where the young lady had picked up not
+merely her knowledge of boats, but the ready way in which she put her
+delicate hands to hard work, and the prompt and effectual fashion in
+which she accomplished it.
+
+"Shall I belay away the jib or reef the upper hatchways?" Ingram
+called out to Sheila when they had fairly got under way.
+
+She did not answer for a moment: she was still watching with a
+critical eye the manner in which the boat answered to her wishes; and
+then, when everything promised well and she was quite satisfied, she
+said, "If you will take my place for a moment and keep a good lookout,
+I will put on my gloves."
+
+She surrendered the tiller and the mainsail sheets into his care, and,
+with another glance ahead, pulled out her gloves.
+
+"You did not use to fear the salt water or the sun on your hands,
+Sheila," said her companion.
+
+"I do not now," she said, "but Frank would be displeased to see my
+hands brown. He has himself such pretty hands."
+
+What Ingram thought about Frank Lavender's delicate hands he was not
+going to say to his wife; and indeed he was called upon at this moment
+to let Sheila resume her post, which she did with an air of great
+satisfaction and content.
+
+And so they ran lightly through the curling and dashing water on this
+brilliant day, caring little indeed for the great town that lay away
+to leeward, with its shining terraces surmounted by a faint cloud of
+smoke. Here all the roar of carriages and people was unheard: the only
+sound that accompanied their talk was the splashing of the waves at
+the prow and the hissing and gurgling of the water along the boat. The
+south wind blew fresh and sweet around them, filling the broad white
+sails and fluttering the small pennon up there in the blue. It seemed
+strange to Sheila that she should be so much alone with so great a
+town close by--that under the boom she could catch a glimpse of the
+noisy Parade without hearing any of its noise. And there, away to
+windward, there was no more trace of city life--only the great
+blue sea, with its waves flowing on toward them from out of the far
+horizon, and with here and there a pale ship just appearing on the
+line where the sky and ocean met.
+
+"Well, Sheila, how do you like being on the sea again?" said Ingram,
+getting out his pipe.
+
+"Oh, very well. But you must not smoke, Mr. Ingram: you must attend to
+the boat."
+
+"Don't you feel at home in her yet?" he asked.
+
+"I am not afraid of her," said Sheila, regarding the lines of the
+small craft with the eye of a shipbuilder, "but she is very narrow in
+the beam, and she carries too much sail for so small a thing I suppose
+they have not any squalls on this coast, where you have no hills and
+no narrows to go through."
+
+"It doesn't remind you of Lewis, does it?" he said, filling his pipe
+all the same.
+
+"A little--out there it does," she said, turning to the broad plain of
+the sea, "but it is not much that is in this country that is like the
+Lewis: sometimes I think I shall be a stranger when I go back to the
+Lewis, and the people will scarcely know me, and everything will be
+changed."
+
+He looked at her for a second or two. Then he laid down his pipe,
+which had not been lit, and said to her gravely, "I want you to tell
+me, Sheila, why you have got into a habit lately of talking about many
+things, and especially about your home in the North, in that sad way.
+You did not do that when you came to London first; and yet it was then
+that you might have been struck and shocked by the difference. You had
+no home-sickness for a long time--But is it home-sickness, Sheila?"
+
+How was she to tell him? For an instant she was on the point of giving
+him all her confidence; and then, somehow or other, it occurred to her
+that she would be wronging her husband in seeking such sympathy from a
+friend as she had been expecting, and expecting in vain, from him.
+
+"Perhaps it is home-sickness," she said in a low voice, while she
+pretended to be busy tightening up the mainsail sheet. "I should like
+to see Borva again."
+
+"But you don't want to live there all your life?" he said. "You know
+that would be unreasonable, Sheila, even if your husband could manage
+it; and I don't suppose he can. Surely your papa does not expect you
+to go and live in Lewis always?"
+
+"Oh, no," she said eagerly. "You must not think my papa wishes
+anything like that. It will be much less than that he was thinking of
+when he used to speak to Mr. Lavender about it. And I do not wish
+to live in the Lewis always: I have no dislike to London--none at
+all--only that--that--" And here she paused.
+
+"Come, Sheila," he said in the old paternal way to which she had been
+accustomed to yield up all her own wishes in the old days of their
+friendship, "I want you to be frank with me, and tell me what is the
+matter. I know there is something wrong: I have seen it for some time
+back. Now, you know I took the responsibility of your marriage on
+my shoulders, and I am responsible to you, and to your papa and to
+myself, for your comfort and happiness. Do you understand?"
+
+She still hesitated, grateful in her in-most heart, but still doubtful
+as to what she should do.
+
+"You look on me as an intermeddler," he said with a smile.
+
+"No, no," she said: "you have always been our best friend."
+
+"But I have intermeddled none the less. Don't you remember when I told
+you I was prepared to accept the consequences?"
+
+It seemed so long a time since then!
+
+"And once having begun to intermeddle, I can't stop, don't you see?
+Now, Sheila, you'll be a good little girl and do what I tell you.
+You'll take the boat a long way out: we'll put her head round, take
+down the sails, and let her tumble about and drift for a time, till
+you tell me all about your troubles, and then we'll see what can be
+done."
+
+She obeyed in silence, with her face grown grave enough in
+anticipation of the coming disclosures. She knew that the first plunge
+into them would be keenly painful to her, but there was a feeling at
+her heart that, this penance over, a great relief would be at hand.
+She trusted this man as she would have trusted her own father. She
+knew that there was nothing on earth he would not attempt if he
+fancied it would help her. And she knew, too, that having experienced
+so much of his great unselfishness and kindness and thoughtfulness,
+she was ready to obey him implicitly in anything that he could assure
+her was right for her to do.
+
+How far away seemed the white cliffs now, and the faint green downs
+above them! Brighton, lying farther to the west, had become dim
+and yellow, and over it a cloud of smoke lay thick and brown in the
+sunlight. A mere streak showed the line of the King's road and all its
+carriages and people; the beach beneath could just be made out by the
+white dots of the bathing-machines; the brown fishing-boats seemed to
+be close in shore; the two piers were fore-shortened into small dusky
+masses marking the beginning of the sea. And then from these distant
+and faintly-defined objects out here to the side of the small
+white-and-pink boat, that lay lightly in the lapping water, stretched
+that great and moving network of waves, with here and there a sharp
+gleam of white foam curling over amid the dark blue-green.
+
+Ingram took his seat by Sheila's side, so that he should not have
+to look in her downcast face; and then, with some little preliminary
+nervousness and hesitation, the girl told her story. She told it to
+sympathetic ears, and yet Ingram, having partly guessed how matters
+stood, and anxious, perhaps, to know whether much of her trouble
+might not be merely the result of fancies which could be reasoned and
+explained away, was careful to avoid anything like corroboration. He
+let her talk in her own simple and artless way; and the girl spoke to
+him, after a little while, with an earnestness which showed how deeply
+she felt her position. At the very outset she told him that her love
+for her husband had never altered for a moment--that all the prayer
+and desire of her heart was that they two might be to each other
+as she had at one time hoped they would be, when he got to know her
+better. She went over all the story of her coming to London, of her
+first experiences there, of the conviction that grew upon her that her
+husband was somehow disappointed with her, and only anxious now that
+she should conform to the ways and habits of the people with whom
+he associated. She spoke of her efforts to obey his wishes, and how
+heartsick she was with her failures, and of the dissatisfaction which
+he showed. She spoke of the people to whom he devoted his life, of
+the way in which he passed his time, and of the impossibility of her
+showing him, so long as he thus remained apart from her, the love she
+had in her heart for him, and the longing for sympathy which that love
+involved. And then she came to the question of Mrs. Lorraine; and
+here it seemed to Ingram she was trying at once to put her husband's
+conduct in the most favorable light, and to blame herself for her
+unreasonableness. Mrs. Lorraine was a pleasant companion to him, she
+could talk cleverly and brightly, she was pretty, and she knew a large
+number of his friends. Sheila was anxious to show that it was the most
+natural thing in the world that her husband, finding her so out of
+communion with his ordinary surroundings, should make an especial
+friend of this graceful and fascinating woman. And if at times it
+hurt her to be left alone--But here the girl broke down somewhat, and
+Ingram pretended not to know that she was crying.
+
+These were strange things to be told to a man, and they were difficult
+to answer. But out of these revelations--which rather took the form of
+a cry than of any distinct statement--he formed a notion of Sheila's
+position sufficiently exact; and the more he looked at it the more
+alarmed and pained he grew, for he knew more of her than her husband
+did. He knew the latent force of character that underlay all her
+submissive gentleness. He knew the keen sense of pride her Highland
+birth had given her; and he feared what might happen if this sensitive
+and proud heart of hers were driven into rebellion by some--possibly
+unintentional--wrong. And this high-spirited, fearless, honor-loving
+girl--who was gentle and obedient, not through any timidity or
+limpness of character, but because she considered it her duty to
+be gentle and obedient--was to be cast aside and have her tenderest
+feelings outraged and wounded for the sake of an unscrupulous,
+shallow-brained woman of fashion, who was not fit to be Sheila's
+waiting-maid. Ingram had never seen Mrs. Lorraine, but he had formed
+his own opinion of her. The opinion, based upon nothing, was wholly
+wrong, but it served to increase, if that were possible, his sympathy
+with Sheila, and his resolve to interfere on her behalf at whatever
+cost.
+
+"Sheila," he said, gravely putting his hand on her shoulder as if she
+were still the little girl who used to run wild with him about the
+Borva rocks, "you are a good woman."
+
+He added to himself that Lavender knew little of the value of the wife
+he had got, but he dared not say that to Sheila, who would suffer no
+imputation against her husband to be uttered in her presence, however
+true it might be, or however much she had cause to know it to be true.
+
+"And, after all," he said in a lighter voice, "I think I can do
+something to mend all this. I will say for Frank Lavender that he is a
+thoroughly good fellow at heart, and that when you appeal to him, and
+put things fairly before him, and show him what he ought to do, there
+is not a more honorable and straightforward man in the world. He has
+been forgetful, Sheila. He has been led away by these people, you
+know, and has not been aware of what you were suffering. When I put
+the matter before him, you will see it will be all right; and I hope
+to persuade him to give up this constant idling and take to his work,
+and have something to live for. I wish you and I together could get
+him to go away from London altogether--get him to take to serious
+landscape painting on some wild coast--the Galway coast, for example."
+
+"Why not the Lewis?" said Sheila, her heart turning to the North as
+naturally as the needle.
+
+"Or the Lewis. And I should like you and him to live away from hotels
+and luxuries, and all such things; and he would work all day, and you
+would do the cooking in some small cottage you could rent, you know."
+
+"You make me so happy in thinking of that," she said, with her eyes
+growing wet again.
+
+"And why should he not do so? There is nothing romantic or idyllic
+about it, but a good, wholesome, plain sort of life, that is likely to
+make an honest painter of him, and bring both of you some well-earned
+money. And you might have a boat like this."
+
+"We are drifting too far in," said Sheila, suddenly rising. "Shall we
+go back now?"
+
+"By all means," he said; and so the small boat was put under canvas
+again, and was soon making way through the breezy water.
+
+"Well, all this seems simple enough, doesn't it?" said Ingram.
+
+"Yes," said the girl, with her face full of hope.
+
+"And then, of course, when you are quite comfortable together, and
+making heaps of money, you can turn round and abuse me, and say I made
+all the mischief to begin with."
+
+"Did we do so before when you were very kind to us?" she said in a low
+voice.
+
+"Oh, but that was different. To interfere on behalf of two young folks
+who are in love with each other is dangerous, but to interfere between
+two people who are married--that is a certain quarrel. I wonder what
+you will say when you are scolding me, Sheila, and bidding me get out
+of the house? I have never heard you scold. Is it Gaelic or English
+you prefer?"
+
+"I prefer whichever can say the nicest things to my very good friends,
+and tell them how grateful I am for their kindness to me."
+
+"Ah, well, we'll see."
+
+When they got back to shore it was half-past one.
+
+"You will come and have some luncheon with us?" said Sheila when they
+had gone up the steps and into the King's road.
+
+"Will that lady be there?"
+
+"Mrs. Lorraine? Yes."
+
+"Then I'll come some other time."
+
+"But why not now?" said Sheila. "It is not necessary that you will see
+us only to speak about those things we have been talking over?"
+
+"Oh no, not at all. If you and Mr. Lavender were by yourselves, I
+should come at once."
+
+"And are you afraid of Mrs. Lorraine?" said Sheila with a smile. "She
+is a very nice lady, indeed: you have no cause to dislike her."
+
+"But I don't want to meet her, Sheila, that is all," he said; and
+she knew well, by the precision of his manner, that there was no use
+trying to persuade him further.
+
+He walked along to the hotel with her, meeting a considerable stream
+of fashionably-dressed folks on the way; and neither he nor she seemed
+to remember that his costume--a blue pilot-jacket, not a little worn
+and soiled with the salt water, and a beaver hat that had seen a
+good deal of rough weather in the Highlands--was a good deal more
+comfortable than elegant. He said to her, as he left her at the hotel,
+"Would you mind telling Lavender I shall drop in at half-past three,
+and that I expect to see him in the coffee-room? I sha'n't keep him
+five minutes."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, and he saw that she knew what this
+appointment meant, for her eyes were full of gladness and gratitude.
+He went away pleased at heart that she put so much trust in him. And
+in this case he should be able to reward that confidence, for Lavender
+was really a good sort of fellow, and would at once be sorry for the
+wrong he had unintentionally done, and be only too anxious to set it
+right. He ought to leave Brighton at once, and London too. He ought to
+go away into the country or by the seaside, and begin working hard,
+to earn money and self-respect at the same time; and then, in this
+friendly solitude, he would get to know something about Sheila's
+character, and begin to perceive how much more valuable were these
+genuine qualities of heart and mind than any social graces such as
+might lighten up a dull drawing-room. Had Lavender yet learnt to
+know the worth of an honest woman's perfect love and unquestioning
+devotion? Let these things be put before him, and he would go and do
+the right thing, as he had many a time done before, in obedience to
+the lecturing of his friend.
+
+Ingram called at half-past three, and went into the coffee-room. There
+was no one in the long, large room, and he sat down at one of the
+small tables by the windows, from which a bit of lawn, the King's road
+and the sea beyond were visible. He had scarcely taken his seat when
+Lavender came in.
+
+"Hallo, Ingram! how are you?" he said in his freest and friendliest
+way. "Won't you come up stairs? Have you had lunch? Why did you go to
+the Ship?"
+
+"I always go to the Ship," he said. "No, thank you, I won't go up
+stairs."
+
+"You are a most unsociable sort of brute?" said Lavender frankly.
+"Will you take a glass of sherry?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Will you have a game of billiards?"
+
+"No, thank you. You don't mean to say you would play billiards on such
+a day as this?"
+
+"It _is_ a fine day, isn't it?" said Lavender, turning carelessly to
+look at the sunlit road and the blue sea. "By the way, Sheila tells
+me you and she were out sailing this morning. It must have been very
+pleasant, especially for her, for she is mad about such things. What a
+curious girl she is, to be sure! Don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean by curious," said Ingram coldly.
+
+"Well, you know, strange--odd--unlike other people in her ways and her
+fancies. Did I tell you about my aunt taking her to see some friends
+of hers at Norwood? No? Well, Sheila had got out of the house somehow
+(I suppose their talking did not interest her), and when they went in
+search of her they found her in the cemetery crying like a child."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Why," said Lavender with a smile, "merely because so many people had
+died. She had never seen anything like that before: you know the small
+church-yards up in Lewis, with their inscriptions in Norwegian and
+Danish and German. I suppose the first sight of all the white stones
+at Norwood was too much for her."
+
+"Well, I don't see much of a joke in that," said Ingram.
+
+"Who said there was any joke in it?" cried Lavender impatiently.
+"I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are. You are always
+fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I never do anything of
+the kind. She is a very good girl indeed. I have every reason to be
+satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out."
+
+"_Has she_?"
+
+The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in
+which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender's careless
+flow of speech. He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise,
+and then he said, "What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I will tell you what I mean," said Ingram slowly. "It is an
+awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I
+am aware--he gets something else than thanks for his pains
+ordinarily--but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks. Now,
+you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward
+your marriage in the North; and I don't remind you of that to claim
+anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am
+called on to speak to you now."
+
+Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated. He
+half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner
+in which Ingram talked. That form of speech had vexed him many a time
+before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention
+and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and
+sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow
+little man was perhaps too much addicted.
+
+"I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?" said Lavender
+hotly.
+
+"You may suppose what absurdities you like," said Ingram quietly; "but
+it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently,
+and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have got to say. It
+is nothing very desperate. Nothing has happened that is not of easy
+remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better
+position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the
+opinion of your friends."
+
+"You are a little roundabout, Ingram," said Lavender, "and ornate. But
+I suppose all lectures begin so. Go on."
+
+Ingram laughed: "If I am too formal, it is because I don't want to
+make mischief by any exaggeration. Look here! A long time before you
+were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive
+notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the
+dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth.
+These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but
+you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to
+alter any of her beliefs in that direction."
+
+"And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don't care what
+a washerwoman pays for her candles?" said Lavender with impetuous
+contempt. "Well, be it so. She is welcome to her opinion. But if she
+is grieved at heart because I can't make hobnailed boots, it seems
+to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of
+going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his
+sympathy in the character of an injured wife."
+
+For an instant the dark eyes of the man opposite him blazed with a
+quick fire, for a sneer at Sheila was worse than an insult to himself;
+but he kept quite calm, and said, "That, unfortunately, is not what is
+troubling her."
+
+Lavender rose abruptly, took a turn up and down the empty room, and
+said, "If there is anything the matter, I prefer to hear it from
+herself. It is not respectful to me that she should call in a third
+person to humor her whims and fancies."
+
+"Whims and fancies!" said Ingram, with that dark light returning to
+his eyes. "Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know that,
+while you are living on the charity of a woman you despise, and
+dawdling about the skirts of a woman who laughs at you, you are
+breaking the heart of a girl who has not her equal in England? Whims
+and fancies! Good God, I wonder how she ever could have--"
+
+He stopped, but the mischief was done. These were not prudent words
+to come from a man who wished to step in as a mediator between husband
+and wife; but Ingram's blaze of wrath, kindled by what he considered
+the insufferable insolence of Lavender in thus speaking of Sheila, had
+swept all notions of prudence before it. Lavender, indeed, was much
+cooler than he was, and said, with an affectation of carelessness, "I
+am sorry you should vex yourself so much about Sheila. One would think
+you had had the ambition yourself, at some time or other, to play the
+part of husband to her; and doubtless then you would have made sure
+that all her idle fancies were gratified. As it is, I was about to
+relieve you from the trouble of further explanation by saying that I
+am quite competent to manage my own affairs, and that if Sheila has
+any complaint to make she must make it to me."
+
+Ingram rose, and was silent for a moment.
+
+"Lavender," he said, "it does not matter much whether you and I
+quarrel--I was prepared for that, in any case--but I ask you to give
+Sheila a chance of telling you what I had intended to tell you."
+
+"Indeed, I shall do nothing of the sort. I never invite confidences.
+When she wishes to tell me anything she knows I am ready to listen.
+But I am quite satisfied with the position of affairs as they are at
+present."
+
+"God help you, then!" said his friend, and went away, scarcely daring
+to confess to himself how dark the future looked.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH COURT FESTIVITIES
+
+
+Americans have an impression that the English think it a considerable
+distinction to be presented at court. But the ceremony of presentation
+has entirely ceased to have any social significance in England. Any
+young gentleman who imagines that the door of English society will
+be thrown open to him on the publication of his appearance at a
+drawing-room had better save the expense of a dress and carriage and
+stay at home. If a lady be ambitious of a social success, the money
+which a robe will cost might be expended to equal advantage anywhere
+else in London. However, a lady's dress may be worn again, and men may
+hire a court-suit for the day at a very small cost. Your tailor, if
+you get a good deal of him, will patch you up something tolerable for
+very little; so that sartorial expenses are comparatively light. One
+can get for the afternoon a two-horse brougham, with a coachman and
+footman, for a sum less than ten dollars. Still, going to court costs
+something, and its only possible advantage is that the spectacle is a
+fine and an interesting one. One has therefore to consider whether the
+sight is worth the fee.
+
+A presentation at court is of quite as little advantage to an
+Englishman as to a foreigner coming to England. Almost anybody can be
+presented, and of those who are precluded from presentation, a great
+many occupy higher positions than many of those who have the privilege
+of going to court. Any graduate of a university, any clergyman, any
+officer in the army, is entitled to go. A merchant, an attorney, even
+a barrister, cannot; and yet in England a barrister, or, for
+that matter, a successful merchant, is apt to be a person of more
+consequence than a curate or a poor soldier. The court has scarcely
+any social significance in England. I once asked a young barrister if
+presentation would help him in the least in making his way in society.
+He said, "Not a bit."
+
+In England the position of everybody is so well fixed that people
+cannot well change it by wishing it to be changed. Thus, for a poor
+East London curate to go to court would simply make him ridiculous.
+The parsons in the West End do present themselves, but there is
+no part of the British empire where clergymen are of such slight
+consequence as in the West End of London. The clergymen, as they file
+in along with the gayly-accoutred young guards-men, have a meek and
+gentle air which makes one feel that they had better have stayed away.
+They do not look half defiant enough. No person who is not already
+in such a position as to need no pushing could becomingly make his
+appearance at court. I remember in Shropshire to have heard a family
+who went down to London to be presented made the target for the
+ridicule of the whole neighborhood.
+
+On a visit to London some years ago the writer was presented in the
+diplomatic circle, went to several of the drawing-rooms and levees at
+Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, and was invited to the court balls
+and concerts. Invitations to the court festivities are given only
+to those persons presented in the diplomatic circle. It must be
+understood that there is at every court in Europe a select and elegant
+and exclusive entrance, by which the diplomatists come in. Along with
+them enter also the ministers of state and the household officers of
+the Crown. The general circle, as it is called, includes everybody
+else. Another entrance and staircase are provided for it, and in that
+way all of British society, from a duke to a half-pay captain, gains
+admittance to the sovereign. When one is in the inside of Buckingham
+or St. James's Palace the same distinction exists. The room in which
+the members of the royal family receive the public is occupied during
+the entire ceremony by the diplomatic circle. Other persons, after
+bowing to the queen, pass into an antechamber.
+
+Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman to
+be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire
+attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities
+at Buckingham and St. James's Palaces. At present the queen holds
+drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of Wales
+at St. James's Palace. The latter are attended only by gentlemen,
+and, though not so grand as the queen's, are pleasanter. Trousers are
+allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and stockings which must be worn
+at all court ceremonials where there are ladies. At two o'clock--for
+the prince is very punctual--the doors of the reception-room are
+thrown open, and the diplomatists begin to file in. First come the
+ambassadors. It must be remembered that there is a wide difference
+between an ambassador and an envoy or minister plenipotentiary. The
+original difference was that the ambassador was supposed, by a sort of
+transubstantiation, to represent the person of his sovereign. He had
+a right at any time to demand an audience with the king. An envoy must
+see the foreign secretary. This, of course, has ceased to have any
+practical significance in countries which have constitutions; and no
+doubt a minister can at any time demand an interview of the sovereign.
+It is still true, however, that an ambassador is accredited to
+the king, while an envoy is accredited to the foreign secretary.
+Practically, the difference is that an ambassador represents a bigger
+country, has better pay, lives in a finer house, and gives more
+parties and grander dinners. An ambassador has precedence of everybody
+in the country in which he resides, except the royal family.
+
+There are five countries which send ambassadors to England--Russia,
+France, Germany, Austria and Turkey. These ambassadors enter the
+reception-room at the prince's levee in the order of seniority of
+residence. The Turkish ambassador, Musurus, who had been twenty
+years in London, came first on the occasions I speak of, the
+others following, I forget in what order. They were all persons of
+distinguished appearance. One, in particular, was singularly wise and
+dignified-looking, with an aspect which was either bland or severe,
+one could scarcely say which. Another resembled strikingly the
+typical diplomatist of romance, having a manner suave and infinitely
+deferential, but oh! so under-handed and insidious and diabolical! The
+duc de Broglie was the French ambassador in London at the time of my
+visit, and of all the corps his person and countenance possessed much
+the most distinction. His was a distinction of spirit and intellect:
+the distinction of the other continental "swells" was usually one of
+stomach and whiskers.
+
+Behind each ambassador march the secretaries of the embassy. After the
+ambassadors come the ministers. The whole diplomatic corps moves from
+an anteroom into an apartment in which the prince of Wales awaits
+them. The prince and several of his brothers, his cousins, the duke
+of Cambridge and the prince of Teck, stand up in a row like an
+old-fashioned spelling class. Next to the prince, on his right, stands
+Viscount Sidney, the lord chamberlain, who calls off each detachment
+as it approaches--"Austrian ambassador," "the Spanish minister," "the
+United States minister," etc. The prince shakes hands with the head
+of the embassy or mission, and bows to the secretaries. When the
+diplomatists, cabinet ministers and household officers have all made
+their bow, it is the turn of British society. The diplomatic
+circle, and such as have the _entree_ to it, remain in the room: the
+Englishmen pass out. The lord chamberlain in a loud voice calls off
+the name of each person as he appears, so that each comer is, as it
+were, labeled and ticketed. The observer learns quite as much as
+if the lord chamberlain was the verger and was showing off his
+collection.
+
+One may often guess the rank or importance of the courtier by the
+manner of his reception. If he shakes hands with the prince, you may
+know he is somebody--if he shakes hands with all five or six of the
+princes, you may know he is a very great person. But if he gives the
+princes a wide berth, bows hastily and glances furtively at them, and
+runs by skittishly, then you may know that he is some half-pay colonel
+or insignificant civil servant. Something, too, may be inferred from
+the length of time the lord chamberlain takes to decipher the name
+of the comer on the slip of paper which is handed him. If he scans
+it long and hard, and holds it a good way from him and says "Major
+Te--e--e--bosh--bow," then in a loud voice, "Major Tebow," you will
+be safe in thinking that Major Tebow is not one of the greatest of
+warriors or largest of landed proprietors.
+
+The ceremony lasts an hour and a half or two hours, and during the
+whole of it the talk and hand-shaking among the diplomatists go on
+very pleasantly. There is a great deal of _esprit de corps_ among
+them, and perfect equality. Attaches, secretaries and ministers walk
+about through the room and exchange greetings. The ambassadors are
+rather statelier: these do not mix themselves with the crowd of
+diplomatists, but stand up apart, all five in a row, leaning against
+the wall, chatting easily, looking quite like another row of princes,
+a sort of after-glow of the royalties.
+
+At all other court entertainments ladies are present. Of course
+there are a great many very pretty ones, and their brilliant toilets
+increase the magnificence of the spectacle. The queen's levees are
+very much longer than those of the prince of Wales. Then, at all
+ceremonials where there are ladies, men are compelled to wear, as
+I have said, silk stockings and knee-breeches, slippers and
+shoe-buckles. One can support this costume in tolerable comfort in a
+warm room, but in getting from the carriage to the door it is often
+like walking knee-deep in a tub of cold water. A cold hall or a
+draught from an open door will give very unpleasant sensations. In
+many of the large rooms of the palaces huge fireplaces, with great
+logs of wood, roar behind tall brass fenders. Once in front of one of
+these, the courtier who isn't a Scotchman feels as if he would never
+care to go away. Fortunately, most of these ceremonials are in summer,
+but the first of them come in February, and London is often cool well
+up into June.
+
+The ceremony of a presentation to the queen is quite the same as that
+at a prince of Wales's levee. The spelling-class of royal ladies stand
+up in a rigid row. On the queen's right is the lord chamberlain, who
+reads off the names. Next to the queen, on her left, is Alexandra,
+then the queen's daughters and the Princess Mary of Cambridge. Next
+to them stand the princes, and the whole is a phalanx which stretches
+entirely across the room. Behind this line, drawn up in battle array,
+stand three or four ranks of court ladies.
+
+The act of presentation is very easy and simple. Formerly--indeed,
+until within a few years--it must have been a very perilous and
+important feat. The courtier (the term is used inaccurately, but there
+is no noun to describe a person who goes to court for a single time)
+was compelled to walk up a long room, and to back, bowing, out of the
+queen's presence. For ladies who had trails to manage the ordeal must
+have been a trying one. Now it has been made quite easy. There is
+but one point in which a presentation to the queen differs from that
+already described at the prince of Wales's levee. You may turn your
+back to the prince, but after bowing to the queen you step off into
+the crowd, still facing her. There (if you have had the good luck to
+be presented in the diplomatic circle) you may stand and watch a most
+interesting pageant. To the young royalties, perhaps, it is not very
+amusing, though they evidently have their little joke afterward over
+anything unusual that occurs. It is natural enough that they should,
+of course, and the fatigue which they sustain entitles them to all the
+amusement they can get out of what must be to them a very monotonous
+and familiar spectacle. There is plenty in it to occupy and interest
+the man who sees it for the first or second time. You do not have to
+ask "Who is this?" and "Who is that?" The lord chamberlain announces
+each person as he or she appears. You hear the most heroic and
+romantic names in English history as some insignificant boy or wizened
+old woman appears to represent them. They are not all, by any means,
+insignificant boys and wizened old women. Many of the ladies are
+handsome enough to be well worth looking at, whether their names be
+Percy or Stanhope or Brown or Smith. The young slips of girls who come
+to be presented for the first time, frightened and pale or flushed,
+one admires and feels a sense of instinctive loyalty to.
+
+The name of each is called out loudly by the lord chamberlain: "The
+duchess of Fincastle," "The countess of Dorchester," "Lady Arabella
+Darling on her marriage," etc. The ladies bow very low, and those to
+whom the queen gives her hand to kiss nearly or quite touch their knee
+to the carpet. No act of homage to the queen ever seems exaggerated,
+her behavior being so modest and the sympathy with her so wide and
+sincere; but ladies very nearly kneel in shaking hands with any member
+of the royal family, not only at court, but elsewhere. It is not so
+strange-looking, the kneeling to a royal lady, but to see a stately
+mother or some soft maiden rendering such an act of homage to a chit
+of a boy or a gross young gentleman impresses one unpleasantly. The
+curtsy of a lady to a prince or princess is something between kneeling
+and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural
+districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be
+knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It
+astonished me, I remember, at a court party, to see one patrician
+young woman--"divinely tall" I should describe her if her decided chin
+and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her character had not
+put divinity out of the question--shake hands with a not very imposing
+young prince, and bend her regal knees into this curious and sudden
+little cramp. I saw her, this adventurous maid, some days afterward in
+a hansom cab (shade of her grandmother, think of it!), directing with
+her imperious parasol the cabby to this and that shop. It struck me
+she should have been a Roman damsel, and have driven a chariot with
+three steeds abreast.
+
+The levees and the drawing-rooms may be called the court ceremonials.
+There are besides the court festivities, the balls and concerts
+at Buckingham Palace. There are four or five of these given in a
+season--two balls and two concerts. The balls are the larger and less
+select, but much the more amusing. The ball-room of the palace is a
+large rectangular apartment. At one end is the orchestra--at the other
+a raised dais on which the royalties sit. On each side, running the
+length of the hall, are three tiers of benches, which are for ladies
+and such gentlemen as can get a seat. The tiers on the left of the
+dais are for diplomatists. English society has the tiers upon the
+other side. By ten the ball-room is usually filled with people waiting
+for the appearance of the royalties. The band strikes up, and the line
+of princes and princesses advances down the long hall leading to the
+ball-room. The queen and Prince Albert used formerly to preside at
+these balls. The queen does not come now: the prince and princess of
+Wales take her place.
+
+First enters a line of gentlemen bearing long sticks. Behind them come
+the princesses, bowing on each hand. The princess of Wales advances
+first, with a naive, faltering, hesitating step, a strange and quite
+delicious blending of timidity and child-like confidence in her
+manner. Then come, walking by twos, some daughters of the queen. Then
+approaches the princess of Teck (Mary of Cambridge), a large and very
+jolly-looking person, with vast good-nature and a profuse smile, which
+she seems to throw all over everybody. A German duchess or two
+follow her. The curtsies of these German princesses are indeed quite
+wonderful. After entering the hall one of them will espy (such, I
+suppose, is the fiction) some persons to whom she wishes to bow, and
+she then proceeds to execute a performance of some minutes' duration.
+Before curtsying, she stops and seems to "shy," and looks at the
+ladies as a frightened horse examines intently the object which alarms
+him: she then sinks slowly backward almost to the ground, and recovers
+herself with the same slowness. It would seem that such a genuflection
+must be, of necessity, ridiculous. But it is not so in the least: it
+is quite successful, and rather pleasing. After the ladies come the
+prince of Wales and his suite. The royalties then all go upon the
+stage, and after music the ball begins.
+
+There are two sets of dancers. The princes and princesses open the
+ball with the diplomatists and some of the highest nobility on the
+space just in front of the dais. The rest of the hall is occupied by
+the other dancers, who later in the evening find their way into the
+diplomatic set. The dancing in the quadrilles and Lancers is of a
+rather stately and ceremonious sort. In waltz or galop the English
+always dance the same step, the _deux temps_, and the aim of the
+dancing couple is to go as much like a spinning-top as possible.
+They make occasional efforts to introduce puzzling novelties like the
+_trois temps_, the Boston dip, etc., but, I am glad to say, without
+any success. The result is, that once having learned to dance in
+England, you are safe.
+
+The great hall during the waltz is a brilliant spectacle. There are
+many beautiful women, the toilets are dazzling, and all the men are
+"flaming in purple and gold." There is every variety of magnificent
+dress. Officers of a Russian body-guard are gold from head to foot.
+Hungarians wear purple and fur-trimmed robes of dark crimson of
+the utmost splendor. The young men of the Guards' clubs in gold and
+scarlet coats, and in spurred boots which reach above their knees,
+clank through the halls. Scotch lords sit about, and exhibit legs of
+which they are justly proud. Here, with swinging gait, wanders the
+queen's piper, a sort of poet-laureate of the bagpipes, arrayed in
+plaid and carrying upon his arm the soft, enchanting instrument to the
+music of which, no doubt, the queen herself dances. The music of the
+orchestra is perfect, and he must be a dull man who does not feel the
+festivity, the buoyancy and the elation of the scene.
+
+Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open,
+through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the
+curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight, on
+the lakes and fountains of the gardens, "the watery ways of palaces."
+I do not think the balconies are much occupied: they are a trifle too
+romantic for British mammas. But there is plenty of flirting in
+the halls and alcoves. One room I remember very pleasantly, the
+refreshment-room, which was kept open during the evening till
+supper-time. There one could get sandwiches, cold coffee, champagne,
+sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy in the least. I
+can't say so much for the supper, though by waiting a little one could
+always get something. The princes went first, then the diplomatists,
+and then everybody else. The jostling was such that when young ladies
+asked for a plate of soup you wished they had wanted ham and chicken.
+A young American, I think, would very much dislike to go up to a table
+and eat a solitary supper with ladies looking on, and young and pretty
+ones, too. But I have seen a young guardsman, with an enormous helmet
+and boots as big as himself, stand up at the table and "solitary and
+alone" work his jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling
+the whole of his paraphernalia. Behind him pressed other hungry
+courtiers, whom his gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility
+of supper, and who revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations
+aside upon the length and heartiness of his meal.
+
+"Concert" is an expression which to a hungry man has a strong
+suggestion of tea and maccaroons. But a court concert gives you such a
+supper as only a night's dancing is ordinarily supposed to entitle
+you to. The concerts are given in the ball-room of the palace, and are
+much more select than the balls. The royalties occupy very slight gilt
+chairs placed just before the orchestra. There they sit with grace and
+an appearance of comfort through the whole of it, while happier
+and humbler mortals may walk about and whisper, or seek the
+refreshment-room, or look at the pictures. They have very good music,
+the best singers are provided, and some pretty familiar songs, like
+"Home, sweet home," are sung.
+
+Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to the
+bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few civil
+things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow and
+look very much delighted. I wonder that singers who are almost queens
+when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of praise
+and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in European
+capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to put
+themselves in such a position. While the social status of musical
+artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a
+century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed,
+in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing the
+old societies of Europe of many of their savage and silly notions.
+The cord stretched between the guests and the performers used to be a
+feature of musical entertainments at private houses. Grisi went
+once to sing at a concert given by the duke of Wellington at his
+country-seat. The old man asked her when she would dine. "Oh, when
+you do," she said. He saw her mistake and did not correct it; so it
+happened that she dined at the same table with the guests, and the
+incident, it is said, excited considerable horror among people of the
+old sort. Think how barbarous, how savage, how utterly uncivilized, is
+such an instinct! Women, of course, persecute each other, but it seems
+inconceivable that a man and a gentleman could have entertained such a
+sentiment.
+
+Of course, a supper at a concert is just the same as at a ball, only
+there are fewer people and more leisure. The prince of Wales, and to
+a less degree the other royalties, move among the throng and make
+a point of speaking to any one to whom they wish to be civil. "The
+Prince," as he is commonly called, takes advantage of the suppers
+at balls and parties to make himself agreeable. The rule is, let
+me remind the reader, to wait until the prince addresses you before
+speaking, and to wait also for him, when in conversation, to turn
+away: it would be considered very rude to terminate the interview
+yourself. A subject in talking with the prince is always expected
+to call him "Sir." The queen is addressed as "Ma'am." It is not
+understood in this country that to call a man "sir" is a confession
+of your inferiority to him. But it is so in England, and the fact
+illustrates the strong hold these absurd and uncomfortable egotisms
+have upon the British mind. No gentleman in England says "sir"
+to another, unless it be a very young person to an old one. [1] A
+subordinate in an office might "sir" a superior, but he would not
+"sir" a man of the same rank as his superior with whom he had no
+connection. "Sir" is the term applied by any Englishman of whatever
+rank to a member of the royal family. Our committees, when princes
+visit America, usually address them in notes as "Your Royal Highness."
+But "Your Royal Highness" is not a vocative: it can be used only
+in the third person. However, the princes are then in America, and
+perhaps we are under no obligation to know everything of their ways at
+home. Should the reader ever meet a prince in that prince's country,
+I should advise him to do just as other people do there. He will
+probably question, and not unreasonably, if he should accept the
+implied inferiority; but the best of all principles for extempore
+action is to do what seems the usual thing, unless we have previously
+decided from mature consideration to do the unusual thing. It is not
+the prince's fault that he is a prince: he means to be civil to you,
+and you can do no good by making him and yourself uncomfortable.
+Indeed, a truculent person does not succeed in asserting his equality.
+The prince has been so long in that kind of life that he probably has
+thought through the mistake under which the republican stranger is
+laboring, and considers him a goose. Moreover, an American may reflect
+that he will probably have very little in life to do with princes, and
+that his interview with a prince has been an "experience." It would be
+about as foolish to assert one's dignity with the Mammoth Cave or the
+Matterhorn.
+
+Besides these balls and concerts there are yet the queen's and prince
+of Wales's breakfasts or garden-parties, which come off about 3
+P.M. These are the most exclusive and unattainable of all the court
+entertainments. There are two or three of these in a season, and out
+of all London society only a couple of hundred are invited. There are
+certain persons who are always invited, and others who are eligible
+and are invited occasionally. A large part of the diplomatic corps
+are always present. Each ambassador or minister, with one or two
+secretaries of legation, is invariably among the guests; but a queen's
+breakfast is the highest point which a secretary of legation can
+touch. No secretary ever dines with the queen: the minister himself
+only goes once a year, and he "not without shedding of blood."
+
+The dress worn by gentlemen at these breakfasts is a curious one, and
+anything but pretty: it consists of a dress-coat and light trousers.
+The dress which our diplomatic representatives are now compelled to
+wear at the other court ceremonies and festivities needs a word of
+mention. Our people in America are somewhat conceited, somewhat
+prone to be confident, upon questions of which they know very little.
+Congress, at a distance of many thousand miles from courts, thought
+itself competent to decide what sort of court dress an American
+diplomatist should wear. An able though crotchety man brought forward
+a measure, and, once proposed, it was certain to go through,
+because to oppose its passage would have been to be aristocratic
+and un-American. Mr. Sumner's bill required Americans to go in the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." There was no attempt to
+indicate what that should be. Up to that time our diplomatists had
+worn the uniform used by the non-military diplomatists of other
+countries. This consists of a blue coat with more or less gold upon
+it, white breeches, silk stockings, sword and chapeau.
+
+An attempt or two had been made before by the State Department to
+interfere with the trappings of its servants abroad. Marcy issued
+a circular requesting American diplomatists to go to court without
+uniform. This afforded James Buchanan an opportunity of making one of
+the best speeches attributed to him. The circular of Mr. Marcy threw
+consternation into the breasts of certain ancient functionaries of
+the European courts, for shortly after its appearance the lord high
+fiddlestick in waiting called upon Mr. Buchanan, who was then the
+United States minister in London, and said that a certain very
+distinguished person had heard of the recent wish which the American
+government had expressed with regard to the costume of its agents,
+and that while she would be happy to see Mr. Buchanan in any dress in
+which he might choose to present himself, she yet hoped he would so
+far consult her wishes as to consent to carry a sword. "Tell that very
+distinguished personage," said Mr. Buchanan, "that not only will I
+wear a sword, as she requests, but, should occasion require it, will
+hold myself ready to draw it in her defence." This strikes me as in
+just that tone of respectful exaggeration and playful acquiescence
+which a gentleman in this country may very becomingly take toward
+the whole question. Neither Mr. Buchanan nor any one else, I believe,
+heeded the request of the Department, and Mr. Marcy himself, it is
+said, subsequently repudiated it.
+
+But what was only a request of the State Department in Mr. Marcy's
+time is now a law. I had good opportunities to observe how very
+uncomfortable our poor diplomatists were made by this piece
+of legislation. Its object was, of course, to give them a very
+unpretending and subdued appearance. The result is, that with the
+exception of Bengalese nabobs, the son of the mikado of Japan, and the
+khan of Khiva, the American legations are the most noticeable people
+at any court ceremony or festivity in Europe. When everybody else
+is flaming in purple and gold the ordinary diplomatic uniform is
+exceedingly simple and modest; but the Yankee diplomats are the most
+scrutinized and conspicuous persons to be seen. One of the secretaries
+said to me: "I am afraid to wander off by myself among these ladies:
+they inspect me as the maids of honor in the palace of Brobdingnag did
+Gulliver. I feel toward Columbia as a cruel mother who won't dress
+me like these other little boys." It would require more than ordinary
+courage to attempt to dance in this rig. I should think that our
+representatives would huddle together in the most unconspicuous
+portion of a room, and never leave it. Said the secretary above
+quoted: "I always feel here that I am of some use to my chief: I
+am one more pair of legs with which to divide the gaze of British
+society."
+
+The dress in which our diplomats attend court at present is a plain
+dress-coat and vest, with knee-breeches, black silk stockings,
+slippers, etc. It is difficult to see in what sense this is the
+"ordinary dress of an American citizen." The dress is not so ugly as
+it would seem to be; indeed, with the help of a white vest and
+liberal watch-chain, it might be made quite becoming were it not so
+excessively conspicuous. An English cabinet minister at a party given
+in his own house usually wears it, and all persons invited to the
+Empress Eugenie's private parties came got up in that manner. But
+in London it was not till recently that American diplomatists were
+allowed to go to court even thus attired. Everywhere else in Europe
+the legations were admitted in evening dress, the concession of
+knee-breeches not having been required. But at Buckingham Palace there
+are two or three very old men who were courtiers when Queen Victoria
+was a baby, and who still control the court etiquette. These aged
+functionaries, who can very well remember Waterloo, and whose fathers
+remembered the American Revolution, put down their foot, and would
+admit no Americans without the proper garments. The consequence was,
+that our legation was compelled to stay at home. This state of things
+continued until Reverdy Johnson came out, who arranged what was called
+"the Breeches Protocol." Owing to the unreasonable state of the public
+mind during his term of office, this was the only measure which that
+good and able man succeeded in accomplishing. The compromise which Mr.
+Johnson's good-humor and the friendly impulse of the British public
+toward us at that time wrung from these ancient chamberlains and
+gold-sticks (for you may say what you will, public opinion is
+irresistible), was to allow the minister and the two secretaries of
+legation to appear in the breeches above described. Americans who are
+presented at court, and who get invitations to the festivities, are
+all required to wear a court dress. Of what good compelling the poor
+diplomatists to make scarecrows of themselves may be I do not know.
+Mr. Sumner's proposition was just one of those absurdities to which
+men are liable who have considerable conscience and no sense of humor.
+Senators and Congressmen fell in with it because they feared to be
+un-American, and because it is not their wont to be very dignified or
+(in matters of this sort) very scrupulous.
+
+[Footnote 1: The rule, more correctly stated, is, that "sir" is never
+used except to indicate a difference of age or position so great as to
+forbid familiarity or to be incompatible with social equality. It
+may be employed by the elder in addressing the younger, and by the
+superior in addressing the inferior, as well as _vice versa_. Hence
+the saying, in English society, that only princes and servants are
+spoken to as "sir."]
+
+
+
+
+RAMBLES AMONG THE FRUITS AND FLOWERS OF THE TROPICS.
+
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+
+An Arab vessel from Bombay, touching at Singapore on her way to
+Bangkok, afforded us an opportunity we had been longing for to visit
+the most splendid of Oriental cities.
+
+Dining at the house of the Malayan rajah, we chanced to meet the
+_narcodah_ (supercargo), who was also the owner, of the Futtel Barrie.
+He was a handsome, courtly, and intelligent Arab, glad always to
+mingle with Europeans; and in response to our inquiry whether he
+had room for passengers, he proffered us a free ticket to and from
+Bangkok, with the use of his own cabin. We must be on board the next
+day at noon, he said, and it was already verging toward sunset; so
+we had small time for preparation. But with the migratory habits of
+Oriental tourists it was easy to throw together a few indispensables;
+and we were set down on the Barrie's quarterdeck, portmanteaus,
+sketch-books, specimen-baskets and all, before the anchor was weighed.
+
+The monsoon was favorable, and seven days' sail brought us to the
+river's mouth, and a pull thence of thirty miles in the narcodah's
+boat to the "city of kings."
+
+Siam is verily the queen of the tropics in regard to the abundance,
+variety and unequaled lusciousness of her fruits. Here are found those
+of China, greatly enriched in tint and flavor by being transplanted to
+this warmer climate; and those of Western Asia, in this fruitful soil
+far more productive than in the sterile regions of Persia and Arabia;
+while numberless varieties from the Malayan and Indian archipelagoes,
+united with the host of those indigenous to the country, complete a
+list of some two hundred or more species of edible fruits. In this
+clime of perennial freshness trees bear nearly the year round, and so
+productive is the soil that the annual produce is almost incredible.
+The tax on orchards alone yields to the Crown a revenue of some five
+millions of dollars per annum, as I was informed by the late "second
+king" of Siam. It is not unusual to find on a single branch the bud
+and blossom, together with fruit in several different stages. Thus, at
+the merest trifle of expense a table may be supplied during the entire
+year with forty or fifty specimens of fresh, ripe fruit. Among these
+are many varieties of oranges and pineapples, pumeloes, shaddocks,
+pawpaws, guavas, bananas, plantains, durians, jack-fruit, melons,
+grapes, mangoes, cocoa-nuts, pomegranates, soursaps, linchies,
+custard-apples, breadfruit, cassew-nuts, plums, tamarinds,
+mangosteens, rambustans, and scores of others for which we have no
+names in our language. Tropical fruits are generally juicy, sweet with
+a slight admixture of acid, luscious, and peculiarly agreeable in a
+warm climate; and when partaken of with temperance and due regard
+to quality they are highly promotive of health. For this reason
+Booddhists regard the destruction of a fruit tree as quite an act of
+sacrilege, and their sacred books pronounce a heavy malediction on
+those who wantonly commit so great a crime. One who has tasted the
+fruits of the tropics only at a distance from the soil that produces
+them can form no conception of the real flavor of plums and grapes
+that never felt the frosty atmosphere of our northern clime; of
+oranges plucked ripe from the fragrant stem and eaten fresh while the
+morning dew still glitters on their golden-tinted cheeks; of the rare,
+rosy pomegranate juice, luscious as nectar.
+
+After eating the fruits of all climes, I place the mangosteen at the
+head of the list as absolutely perfect in flavor and fragrance. The
+fruit is spherical in form, about the size of a small orange, of
+a rich crimson-purple hue without, and filled with a succulent,
+half-transparent pulp that melts in the mouth. There are three species
+of the mangosteen tree, but of only one, the _Garania mangostina_, is
+the fruit edible. The others are valuable for timber, and the bark
+for the manufacture of a dye that resists the attacks of every sort of
+insect.
+
+Next to the mangosteen I should name the custard-apple (_Anona
+squamosa_), a rich and delicate fruit of the form and dimensions of a
+medium-sized quince, but made up of lesser cones, each with its apex
+directed toward the centre, and each containing a smooth black seed.
+The pulp is pure white, about the consistency of a baked custard, and
+in flavor very like strawberries and cream.
+
+The delicious soursap is very similar to the custard-apple, but of
+larger size and slightly acid in taste. The bearded, rosy rambustan
+(_Nephelium lappaceum_) looks like a mammoth strawberry, but when
+the outer hairy covering has been removed a semi-transparent pulp is
+revealed, in taste so similar to our best Malaga grapes that a blind
+man would be unable to distinguish them.
+
+Pineapples are good and abundant all over South-eastern Asia, but are
+in their perfection at Singapore and Malacca, weighing frequently
+four pounds or more. Passing, one warm afternoon, along the Singapore
+bazaar, I noticed a Chinese fruit-dealer who had among other
+delicacies outspread before him the largest and finest pineapples I
+had ever seen. As I inquired the price, the Celestial, after a long
+harangue on the extraordinary excellence of his wares, and the trouble
+he had taken to obtain them, expressed a hope that he should not
+be considered extortionate in selling them so very high, the price
+demanded for a whole four-pound pineapple, peeled, sliced, and
+ready for eating, being the equivalent of half a cent! The ordinary,
+medium-sized fruit could be purchased, he knew, at one-fifth of that
+sum, and his conscience, no doubt, was chiding him for extortion.
+
+One of the most singular-looking fruits is the jack-fruit (_Artocarpus
+integrifolia_), growing in all its immensity of thirty or forty pounds
+weight directly out of the largest branches or on the stem of the huge
+tree. Externally, it has a rough, pale-green coat: internally, it has
+a luscious, golden-hued pulp, in which are embedded a dozen or more
+smooth, oval seeds about the size of large chestnuts, which they
+strikingly resemble in flavor.
+
+The mango (_Mangifera Indica_) is a drupe of the plum kind, four or
+five inches long, and three at least in diameter. Greenish-colored
+outside, and not very inviting, you are most agreeably surprised at
+the rare, rich flavor of the bright yellow pulp that adheres like the
+clinging peach to a large flat seed.
+
+The gamboge tree (_Stalagmitis Cambogioides_) grows luxuriantly in
+Siam, and also in Ceylon. It has small narrow, pointed leaves, a
+yellow flower, and an oblong, golden-colored fruit. Even the stem has
+a yellow bark, like the gamboge it produces. The drug is obtained
+by wounding the bark of the tree, and also from the leaves and young
+shoots. The natives say that they have sold it to white foreigners
+for hundreds of years past; and we know it was introduced into Europe
+early in the seventeenth century.
+
+The plantain (_Musa paradisaica_) is one of the best gifts of
+Providence to the teeming multitudes of tropical lands, living, as
+many of them do, without stated homes, and gathering food and drink
+as they find them on the roadside and in the jungle. Under a friendly
+palm the simple peasants find needed shelter from the sun by day and
+the dews by night, while a bunch of plantains or bananas plucked fresh
+from the tree will furnish an abundant meal, and the water of a green
+cocoa-nut all the drink they desire. The plantain tree grows to about
+twenty feet in height, its round, soft stem being composed of the
+elongated foot-stalks of the leaves, and its cone of a nodding
+flower-spike or cluster of purple blossoms that are very graceful and
+beautiful. Like the palms, this tree has no branches, but its smooth,
+glossy leaves are from six to eight feet in length and two or more in
+breadth. At the root of a leaf a double row of fruit comes out half
+around the stalk; the stem then elongates a few inches, and another
+leaf is deflected, revealing another double row; and so on, till there
+come to be some thirty rows containing about two hundred plantains,
+weighing in all sixty or seventy pounds. This mammoth bunch is the
+sole product of the tree for the time: after the fruit is plucked the
+stalk is cut down, and another shoots up from the same root; and it
+is thus constantly renewed for many successive years. The incalculable
+blessing of such a tree in regions where the intolerable heat renders
+all labor oppressive may be conceived from the estimate of Humboldt,
+who reckons the surface of ground needed to the production of four
+thousand pounds of ripe plantains to suffice for the raising of only
+thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes. What
+would induce the indolent East Indian to make the exchange of crops?
+
+The cassew-nut (_Anacardium occidentale_) is remarkable as the only
+known fruit of which the seed grows on the outside. A full-grown tree
+is twenty feet high, with graceful form and widespread branches. The
+leaves are oval, and the beautiful crimson flowers grow in clusters.
+The fruit is pear-shaped, of a purplish color outside and bright
+yellow within; and the seed, which is in the form of a crescent, looks
+just as if it had been stuck on the bur end, instead of growing there.
+When roasted the kernels are not unlike a very fine chestnut.
+
+The guava (_Psidium pomiferum_), of which the noted Indian jelly
+is made, is about the size and shape of our sugar pears--pale,
+yellowish-green externally, and revealing, when opened, a soft,
+rose-colored pulp studded with tiny seeds. Both taste and odor are
+very peculiar, and are seldom liked by foreigners till after long use.
+
+The tamarind tree (_Tamarindus Indicus_), a huge growth, with trunk a
+hundred feet tall and fifteen or more in circumference, has branches
+extending widely, and a dense foliage of bright green composite
+leaves, very nearly resembling those of the sensitive plant. The
+flowers, growing in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint
+veined with red; while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung
+all over the branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves,
+blossoms and fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth
+as to appear almost ludicrous, yet the _tout ensemble_ is "a thing of
+beauty" never to be forgotten.
+
+It remained for us, on our return to Singapore, to see the spice
+plantations, with the beautiful clove and nutmeg trees, about which
+every new-comer goes into ecstasies. Mr. Princeps' estate, one of
+the largest and finest on the island, occupies two hundred and fifty
+acres, including three picturesque hills--Mount Sophia, Mount Emily
+and Mount Caroline, each surmounted by a pretty bungalow--and from
+these avenues radiate, intersecting every portion of the plantation.
+Here were planted some five thousand nutmeg trees, and perhaps a
+thousand of the clove, besides coffee trees, palms, etc. The nutmeg
+is an evergreen of great beauty, conical in shape, and from twenty
+to twenty-five feet in height, the branches thickly decorated with
+polished, deep-green foliage rising from the ground to the summit.
+Almost hidden among these emerald leaves grows the pear-shaped
+fruit. As it ripens the yellow external tegument opens, revealing the
+dark-red mace, that is closely enwrapped about a thin black shell.
+This, in turn, encloses a fragrant kernel, the nutmeg of commerce.
+Both leaf and blossom are marked by the same aromatic perfume that
+distinguishes the fruit.
+
+The clove tree, though somewhat smaller than the nutmeg, is quite
+similar in appearance, and, if possible, even more graceful and
+beautiful. The leaves are shaped like a lance, the blossoms pure white
+and deliciously fragrant, and they cluster thickly on every branch and
+twig almost to the summit of the tree. The cloves--"spice nails," as
+they are often called--are not a fruit, but undeveloped buds, the stem
+being the calyx, and the head the folded petals. Their dark color, as
+we see them, is due to the smoking process through which they pass
+in curing. The clove is a native of the Moluccas, and has been
+transplanted to many parts of the East Indies; but nowhere, not even
+in its picturesque Faderland, does it thrive better than in Singapore,
+Pulo Penang and other islands of the Malayan Archipelago.
+
+One singular-looking fruit that I saw in China I must not forget to
+mention--the flat peach, called by the Chinese _ping taou_, or "peach
+cake." It has the appearance of having been flattened by pressure at
+the head and stalk, being something less than three-fourths of an
+inch through the centre from eye to stem, and consisting wholly of the
+stone and skin; while the sides, which swell around the centre, are
+only an eighth of an inch in thickness. Its transverse diameter is
+about two and a half inches.
+
+The camphor tree (_Laurus camphora_) grows abundantly in China and
+Japan, producing a very large proportion of the gum that supplies
+the markets of Europe and our own country, as well as the trunks and
+chests so universally esteemed as protectives against the ravages of
+moths and the still more destructive white ant of the tropics. This
+tree grows to the height of twenty feet, with a circumference of about
+eighteen, and has luxuriant branches from seven to nine feet in girth.
+In obtaining the gum, freshly-gathered branches are cut in small
+pieces, and steeped in water for several days, after which they are
+boiled, the liquid being constantly stirred until the gum, in the form
+of a white jelly, begins to appear, when the whole is poured into
+a glazed vessel, and becomes concreted in cooling. It is afterward
+purified by means of sublimation, the gum attaching itself to a
+conical cover placed over the boiling liquid while at its greatest
+heat. There is another species of camphor tree (_Dryobalanops
+camphora_) growing in Borneo; and a single tree is found on the island
+of Sumatra, a very giant in dimensions, even amid the huge growth
+of those dense forests. The gum yielded by this species is found
+occupying portions of about a foot or a foot and a half in the heart
+of the tree. The Malays and Bugis make a deep incision in the trunk
+about fifteen inches from the ground with a _b'ling_ or Malayan axe,
+in order to ascertain whether the gum is there; and when it is found
+the tree is felled and the impregnated portion carefully extracted.
+The same tree, while young, yields a liquid oily matter that has
+nearly the same properties as the camphor, and is supposed to be the
+first stage of its formation. Some eight China catties (eleven pounds)
+of this oil may be obtained from a medium-sized tree, which, after
+having been cut off for the purpose of abstracting the oil, will, if
+left standing for a few years, produce abundantly an inferior article
+of camphor.
+
+In British India we saw whole fields of the opium poppy, stately,
+beautiful plants four or five feet high, the stem of a sea-green
+color, round, erect and smooth, and the gay blooms of ripe crimson
+hue. The plant is an annual, the seed being sown in autumn and the
+crop gathered in August. After the flowers have fallen circular
+incisions are made close around the capsules of the plant, and from
+these wounds exudes a white, milky juice, that is afterward concreted
+by the heat of the sun into dark-brown masses. These constitute the
+opium of commerce in its crude state; but to prepare it for smoking
+the Chinese take it through quite a complicated process, boiling,
+purifying and condensing till it assumes the appearance of a thick
+gelatinous paste of a purplish-black color.
+
+The habit of opium-smoking is unquestionably the direst curse under
+which vast, populous China groans. One who has never visited an opium
+shop can have no conception of the fatal fascination that holds its
+victims fast bound--mind, heart, soul and conscience, all absolutely
+dead to every impulse but the insatiable, ever-increasing thirst for
+the damning poison. I entered one of these dens but once, but I
+can never forget the terrible sights and sounds of that "place of
+torment." The apartment was spacious, and might have been pleasant
+but for its foul odors and still fouler scenes of unutterable woe--the
+footprints of sin trodden deep in the furrows of those haggard faces
+and emaciated forms. On all four sides of the room were couches
+placed thickly against the walls, and others were scattered over
+the apartment wherever there was room for them. On each of these lay
+extended the wreck of what was once a man. Some few were old--all were
+hollow-eyed, with sunken cheeks and cadaverous countenances; many were
+clothed in rags, having probably smoked away their last dollar;
+while others were offering to pawn their only decent garment for an
+additional dose of the deadly drug. A decrepit old man raised
+himself as we entered, drew a long sigh, and then with a half-uttered
+imprecation on his own folly proceeded to refill his pipe. This he did
+by scraping off, with a five-inch steel needle, some opium from the
+lid of a tiny shell box, rolling the paste into a pill, and then,
+after heating it in the blaze of a lamp, depositing it within the
+small aperture of his pipe. Several short whiffs followed; then the
+smoker would remove the pipe from his mouth and lie back motionless;
+then replace the pipe, and with fast-glazing eyes blow the smoke
+slowly through his pallid nostrils. As the narcotic effects of the
+opium began to work he fell back on the couch in a state of silly
+stupefaction that was alike pitiable and disgusting. Another smoker,
+a mere youth, lay with face buried in his hands, and as he lifted his
+head there was a look of despair such as I have seldom seen. Though so
+young, he was a complete wreck, with hollow eyes, sunken chest and a
+nervous twitching in every muscle. I spoke to him, and learned that
+six months before he had lost his whole patrimony by gambling, and
+came hither to quaff forgetfulness from these Lethean cups; hoping, he
+said, to find death as well as oblivion. By far the larger proportion
+of the smokers were so entirely under the influence of the stupefying
+poison as to preclude any attempt at conversation, and we passed
+out from this moral pest-house sick at heart as we thought of these
+infatuated victims of self-indulgence and their starving families at
+home. This baneful habit, once formed, is seldom given up, and
+from three to five years' indulgence will utterly wreck the firmest
+constitution, the frame becoming daily more emaciated, the eyes more
+sunken and the countenance more cadaverous, till the brain ceases to
+perform its functions, and death places its seal on the wasted life.
+
+On "Araby's plains" I saw for the first time the beautiful wild palm,
+the "lighthouse of the desert," always an object of intense desire to
+the weary traveler as he traverses those sterile regions, for as it
+looms up in the distance, sometimes in groups, but more generally
+standing in solitary grandeur near a tiny bubbling spring, its waving
+plumes tell him not only of shelter and needed rest, but of water also
+to bathe his tired limbs and quench the burning thirst that oppresses
+him almost to death. Should the friendly tree prove a date-palm, he
+will find food also--a dainty repast of ripe, golden fruit, wholesome
+and nourishing--ready prepared to his hand. But, after all, to a
+traveler over those sterile regions water is the grand desideratum,
+and this he is sure to find in the vicinity of the wild palm. The
+Bedouins, who consider it beneath their dignity to sow or reap, gather
+the date where they can find it growing wild; but the Arabs of the
+plains cultivate the tree with great care and skill, thus improving
+the size and flavor of the fruit, and producing some twenty or more
+varieties. In some they have succeeded in doing away with the
+seed altogether; and the seedless dates, being very large and
+delicately-flavored, bring always the highest price in the market.
+Date-honey is made by expressing the juice of the fresh fruit, and
+the luxury of fresh dates may be enjoyed through the entire year
+by keeping them in tight vessels, covered over with this honey.
+Date-flour, made by exposing the ripe fruit to the heat of the sun
+until sufficiently dry to be ground into fine powder, furnishes the
+ordinary sustenance of the Arabs in their frequent journeys across the
+deserts. This is food in its most condensed form, easily carried and
+needing no cooking. It is simply moistened with a little water, and so
+eaten. But the value of the date tree is by no means confined to the
+fruit. An agreeable beverage, known as palm wine, is drawn from the
+trunk by tapping; the trunks of the old trees make excellent timber;
+the leaves are used for hats and baskets; and the fibrous part, when
+stripped out, makes twine and ropes. Even the stones are of use--the
+fresh ones for planting, and the dried are turned to account--in Egypt
+for cattle-feed, in China for the manufacture of Indian ink, and in
+Spain for making the tooth-powder known as "ivory black." The date is
+indigenous to both Asia and Africa: it was introduced into Spain by
+the Moors, and some few trees are still found even in the south
+of France. But the most extensive forests are those of the Barbary
+states, where they are sometimes miles in length. When growing thus in
+groves the palms are very beautiful, their towering crests waving in
+unison as they seem to form an immense natural temple, about which
+vines and creepers wreath their graceful tendrils, while birds of
+varied plumage sing their matin and vesper songs, plucking meanwhile
+the golden fruit that grows in clusters at the very summit of the
+tree. The Arabs' mode of gathering this fruit is odd enough. The
+trunk, sixty feet high, has not, it must be remembered, a single
+branch to hold on by or furnish a foothold; and, besides, the whole
+stem is rough with thick scales or horny protuberances, not very
+pleasant to the touch of fingers or palms. So a strong rope is passed
+across the climber's back and under his armpits, and then, after being
+passed around the tree, the two ends are knotted firmly together. The
+rope is next placed over one of the notches left by the footstalk of
+an old leaf, while the man slips the portion that is under his armpits
+toward the middle of his back, so as to allow the lower part of the
+shoulder-blades to rest upon it. Then with hands and knees he firmly
+grasps the trunk, and raises himself a few inches higher; when, still
+holding fast by knees and feet and one hand, he with the other slips
+the rope a little higher up the tree, letting it rest on another of
+these horny protuberances, and so on till the summit is gained. When
+the fruit is reached it is easily plucked with one hand, while the
+gatherer maintains his position with the other, and the clusters are
+thrown down into a large cloth held at the corners by four persons.
+
+The far-famed banian or Indian fig (_Ficus Indica_) is perhaps the
+grandest of tropical trees--the most beautiful of Nature's products,
+even in that fertile soil kissed ever by the sun's rays, where she
+sports with such profusion and variety, clothing the earth in gorgeous
+flowers, variegated mosses and feathery ferns, till it seems to
+groan beneath the manifold treasures of beauty and fragrance lavished
+thereon. This noble tree grows wild in many Eastern countries and
+islands, and sometimes attains to a size and an extent that are
+marvelous to contemplate. Shoots are everywhere thrown out toward the
+ground from the horizontal branches, increasing in size as they tend
+downward, till at last they strike into the ground and become stems.
+From these shoot new branches, which in their turn extend and form
+roots and new stems, till at length a solitary tree becomes the parent
+of an extensive grove, appropriately characterized by the bard as
+"a pillared shade high overarched." And as they are thus continually
+increasing, seeming meanwhile almost exempt from the general law of
+decay, a tiny sapling borne to the spot in an infant's hand may come
+in time to cover thousands of feet of soil. Such a specimen is the
+noted Cubber Burr, growing on a picturesque little island in the river
+Nerbudda, near Baroach, in the province of Guzerat. This wonderful
+tree, named after a venerated Hindoo saint, occupies a space that
+exceeds two thousand feet in circumference. The principal stems number
+three or four hundred, and the smaller ones more than three thousand,
+though some have been destroyed by high floods, that have carried away
+not only portions of the giant tree, but of the banks of the island
+itself. The beauty and magnitude of the Cubber Burr are famous all
+over the East. Indian armies have encamped beneath its sheltering
+branches, and Hindoo festivals, to which thousands of votaries
+repair, are often held under its leafy shadow. I was told that
+_seven thousand_ people could find ample shelter under its widespread
+branches; and we often knew of English gentlemen forming hunting or
+shooting excursions to the island, and encamping for weeks together
+beneath this delightful pavilion. Their only hosts were frolicsome
+monkeys and whole colonies of doves, peacocks, wood-pigeons and
+singing birds, that find a permanent abode among the thick foliage,
+and plentiful sustenance from the small, scarlet-colored figs that
+hang pendent from every branch. The banian tree may be regarded as a
+natural temple in Oriental regions, and the Hindoos especially look
+upon it with profound veneration. Tiny, fancifully-adorned temples
+and pagodas are erected beneath its shadowy boughs, where are pleasant
+walks and long vistas of umbrageous canopy, effectually shielded from
+the fierce rays of the tropical sun. Many Brahmins spend their entire
+lives within these quiet retreats, and all ranks and classes seek
+them for rest and recreation. The banian is styled also "the tree
+of councils," from the prevalent custom of assembling legislators,
+magistrates and savants under its protecting canopy to deliberate on
+civil affairs; while all around, ensconced in every niche, are the
+tutelary gods and goddesses that make up the Hindoo mythology. It
+is indeed a quaint, weird spot, full of the witchery of romance and
+legendary lore; and though years have passed since I last sat under
+the Cubber Burr's sheltering boughs with a merry party of picnicking
+maidens, now grown to womanhood, imagination still loves to roam among
+its shadows, and build fairy castles within the mazy windings of the
+hoary banian of Nerbudda's isle.
+
+FANNIE R. FEUDGE.
+
+
+
+
+A LOTOS OF THE NILE.
+
+
+It was nine o'clock on a night of clear July starlight. The heat
+of the day had been intense, and all the guests of The Willows were
+assembled on the lawn, intent upon the effort of keeping cool, if such
+a thing were at all possible. A hopeless effort it seemed, however,
+for the heavy foliage of the trees hung quite motionless, and the
+fans which were plied unceasingly made the only possible approach to
+a breeze. Everything was so still that the voice of the river was
+distinctly audible as it fretted and surged along its rocky bed,
+distant at least a mile. The scene was full of the dim, mysterious
+look which makes summer starlight so fascinating. White dresses,
+shadowy faces, suggestive outlines of form and head, now and then the
+glimmer of an ornament: after one had looked long enough it was even
+possible to tell who was who, but at first the voices were the only
+clue to recognition. Behind the group rose the house, with light
+streaming from its lace-draped windows, the pictures and globe-like
+lamps of the deserted drawing-room making a charming effect.
+
+Everybody had been silent for some time--that is, for half a
+minute, which seems a long time under such circumstances--when Mrs.
+Lancaster's voice broke the stillness. "Oh for a whiff of mountain-air
+or a sea-breeze!" she said. "I came to spend two weeks with you, dear
+Mrs. Brantley, and I have spent a month--who ever _did_ leave The
+Willows when they meant to do so?--but I really must be thinking of
+taking flight. Suppose we get up a party for the White Sulphur?--it
+is always so tiresome to go away by one's self. Who will join it?
+Eleanor, will you?"
+
+"I am not going to the White Sulphur this year," answered Eleanor
+Milbourne.
+
+"Not going to the White Sulphur!" repeated Mrs. Lancaster in a tone of
+surprise. Then she laughed. "How stupid I am!" she said. "Of course
+I might have known that the temptation to break the pledge of total
+abstinence from flirtation would be too great in that paradise of
+flirtation. Besides, Mr. Brent's yacht is homeward bound, is it not?"
+
+"I am not aware that there is any connection between Mr. Brent's yacht
+and my decision about the White Sulphur," answered Miss Milbourne
+haughtily. Then she turned to the person next her, a recumbent figure
+lying at full length on the grass. "I don't know anything of which
+one grows so weary as of watering-place life when one has seen much of
+it," she said. "Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip,
+all oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don't think I shall ever
+go to a watering-place again."
+
+"Take care!" said the recumbent. "Don't make an abstinence pledge of
+that kind: you will only be tempted to break it, for what will you do
+with yourself in summer?"
+
+"I should like to travel. I am possessed with an intense desire to see
+the world and the wonders thereof."
+
+"With a yacht such a desire would be easily gratified."
+
+"But I have no yacht," said she with a sharp chord in her voice. It
+was an expressive voice at all times, and doubly expressive in this
+dim, mysterious starlight.
+
+"Mr. Brent has, however, and I am sure he will be happy to place it at
+your service."
+
+"You are very kind to answer for Mr. Brent."
+
+"I answer for him because I judge him by myself. If I had a fleet it
+should be subject to your command."
+
+"You are very generous," said she; and now there was a little ripple
+as of pleasure in her tone.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Lancaster was calling over the roll of the company
+like an orderly sergeant, intent upon beating up recruits for the
+White Sulphur. "Major Clare!" she said at last: "where is Major
+Clare?" Then, when the gentleman who had just offered Miss Milbourne
+his airy fleet responded lazily, "Here!" she added, "_You_ will go,
+will you not?"
+
+"I regret to say that it is impossible," he answered. "I have danced
+my last _galop_ at the White Sulphur. This time next month I shall
+probably be _en route_ for Egypt."
+
+"For Egypt!" she repeated; and a chorus of voices instantly echoed the
+exclamation. "For Egypt! Nonsense! You are jesting."
+
+"No, I am not jesting," said Victor Clare, lifting himself on one
+elbow: "I am in earnest. I received a letter from ----" (naming a
+distinguished officer) "to-day, offering me a position if I would join
+him in Cairo. I say nothing about what the position is, because my
+mind is not yet made up to accept it; and even if it were, such things
+should not be published on the house-tops. But if anybody here has a
+fancy for joining the army of the khedive, I may be able to give him a
+few important particulars."
+
+Nobody responded. The gentlemen seemed to prefer enlisting under Mrs.
+Lancaster's banner for the White Sulphur. The ladies shrugged their
+shoulders and said the idea was dreadful, Victor Clare sank back in
+the grass and addressed himself to Miss Milbourne.
+
+"There is nothing else for me to do," he said in an argumentative
+tone. "I only waste money on the impoverished acres of that old place
+of mine. The house itself is falling down over my head. What remains,
+then, but to go forth and tempt Fortune to do her best--or worst? At
+least the profession of arms has been in all ages the calling of a
+gentleman."
+
+For a minute Eleanor Milbourne did not speak. She sat in the starlight
+a graceful, shadowy figure, furling and unfurling her fan with a
+slightly nervous motion. Perhaps she was uncertain what to answer.
+But at last she spoke in a very low tone: "Yet you said you had not
+decided."
+
+"No, I have not decided. In truth, I have been rooted in idleness and
+indifference so long that I scarcely feel as if I cared enough about
+myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to
+think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no
+right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt
+it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned the old
+place."
+
+"I think it would," said Miss Milbourne.
+
+"No, it would _not_" was the obstinate reply. "I should take care
+to find a lotos as soon as I reached the Nile. Whoever eats of that
+forgets his past life, you know. I have scant reason for wishing to
+remember mine," he added a little bitterly.
+
+"Memory is certainly more often a sting than a pleasure," said Miss
+Milbourne. "It is strange," she added, "that we should both have
+thought of obtaining forgetfulness through the same means. When Mr.
+Brent asked me what he should bring me from Egypt, I said a lotos of
+the Nile. If he fulfills his promise I will share it with you."
+
+"I am not sure that I care to be indebted even for forgetfulness to
+Mr. Brent," said Victor Clare ungratefully.
+
+He was sorry the moment after for having spoken so curtly, and would
+have made amends by promising to accept a dozen lotoses if she desired
+to bestow so many upon him; but Miss Milbourne had already turned to
+her neighbor on the other side and plunged into conversation. "Is it
+not strange that Egypt should be waking from her sleep of centuries?"
+she said; and--while the gentleman whom she addressed took up the
+theme readily--Mrs. Lancaster rose and sauntered round the group to
+where Victor Clare was lying.
+
+"Come, Monsieur Indolence, and take a walk," she said. "I think the
+policeman's motto is right--'Keep moving.' When one stops to think
+about anything, even about the heat, it makes it worse."
+
+Now, however comfortable a man may be, if he is bidden to rise by a
+pretty woman who stands imperiously over him, the chances are that he
+obeys. So it was with Clare. He most assuredly did not want to go
+with Mrs. Lancaster, and quite as assuredly he _did_ want to stay just
+where he was, with the hem of Eleanor Milbourne's dress touching him
+and a pervading sense of her presence near, even when she encouraged
+stupid people to expose their ignorance on the Egyptian question.
+Yet he found himself walking away with the pretty widow before five
+minutes had passed.
+
+"I know you are not obliged to me," she said when they had gone some
+distance. "But your divinity is talking commonplaces, or listening to
+them, which amounts to the same thing; so I fancied you might spare me
+ten minutes. I want to know if that was a mere assertion for effect a
+minute ago, or if you are in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt?"
+
+"I never talk for effect," said Victor with a hauteur that was spoilt
+by a slight touch of petulance. "I always mean what I say, and I
+certainly am in earnest in thinking of going to Egypt."
+
+"May I ask why?"
+
+"I am surprised that you should need to ask. One's friends usually
+know one's affairs at least as well as one's self--sometimes much
+better. Everybody who knows me knows that I am a poor man."
+
+"Not so poor that you need go to Egypt in search of a fortune,
+however," said she, stopping short and looking at him keenly.
+"Confess," she added, "that you are about to expatriate yourself in
+this absurd fashion because Eleanor Milbourne means to marry Marston
+Brent."
+
+"Your acuteness has carried you too far," said he laughing, but not
+quite naturally. "Miss Milbourne's matrimonial choice is nothing to
+me. I have thought of this step for some time. General ----'s letter
+is a reply to my application forwarded months ago. Yet now that the
+answer has come," he went on, "I scarcely care to grasp the advantage
+it offers. Indifference has infected me like a poison. I feel more
+inclined to rust out on the old place than to sound 'Boots and saddle'
+again."
+
+"But why rust out?" she asked impetuously. "Are there not careers
+enough open to you?" Then, after a minute, "Are there not other women
+in the world besides Eleanor Milbourne?"
+
+"Perhaps so," a little doggedly. "There are other stars in the heavens
+besides Venus, but who sees them when she is above the horizon?"
+
+"How kind and complimentary you are!" said Mrs. Lancaster with a
+slight tone of bitterness in her voice.
+
+"Forgive me," said he after a minute. "I am a fool on this subject,
+and, like a fool, I always say more than I mean. No doubt there are
+other women in the world even more beautiful and more charming than
+Eleanor Milbourne, but they are nothing to me."
+
+"In other words, you are determined to believe that the grapes above
+your reach, instead of being sour, are the sweetest in existence."
+
+"At least I harm only myself by such an hallucination, if it is an
+hallucination."
+
+"But you may harm yourself more than you imagine," said she with a
+nervous cadence, in her voice. "For the sake of a hopeless passion for
+a woman who has no more heart than my fan you will sacrifice more than
+you are aware of--more, perhaps, than you can ever regain."
+
+She laid her hand--a pretty, white hand, gleaming with jewels--on his
+arm at the last words, and it was fortunate, perhaps, that she could
+not tell with what an effort he restrained himself from shaking it
+impatiently off. A quick feeling of repulsion came over him like an
+electric shock. Hitherto he had been somewhat flattered, somewhat
+amused, and only occasionally a little bored, by the favor which the
+beautiful and wealthy young widow had so openly accorded him; but now
+in a second he felt that thrill of disgust which always comes to a
+sensitive man when he sees a woman step beyond the pale of delicate
+womanhood. If he had been one shade less of a gentleman, he would have
+said something which Mrs. Lancaster could never have forgotten. As it
+was, he had sufficient command of himself to speak carelessly. "I was
+never quick at reading riddles," he said. "I am unable to imagine what
+sacrifice I should make by indulging the 'hopeless passion' for Miss
+Milbourne with which you are kind enough to credit me."
+
+"With which I credit you?" she repeated eagerly. "Am I wrong, then? If
+you can tell me _that_, Victor--"
+
+But he interrupted her quickly: "You ought to know, Mrs. Lancaster,
+that this is a thing which a sensible man only tells to one woman;
+but, since you seem to take an interest in the subject, there is
+nothing which I need hesitate to acknowledge in the fact that, however
+hopeless my passion for Eleanor Milbourne may be, it is the very
+essence of my life, and can only end with my life."
+
+"We all think that when we are young and foolish, and very much in
+love," said Mrs. Lancaster coolly--whatever stab his words gave the
+kindly darkness hid--"but I think you are more than usually mad. If
+she is not already engaged to Marston Brent, she will be as soon as he
+returns. I know that her family confidently expect the match, and in
+any case" (emphatically) "Eleanor Milbourne is the last woman in the
+world whom a penniless man need hope to win."
+
+"I know that as well as you do," said Clare. "I have no hope of
+winning her, and I am going to Egypt next month."
+
+He uttered the last words as if he meant them to end the subject, but
+it is doubtful whether they would have done so if they had not at
+that moment found themselves close upon the house, having paid little
+attention to the path which they were following. As they emerged from
+the shrubbery they were both a little surprised to see a carriage
+standing in the full glow of the light from the open hall door.
+
+"Who can have arrived?" said Mrs. Lancaster, not sorry, perhaps, for a
+diversion. "I did not know that Mrs. Brantley was expecting any one."
+
+"Who has come, Ellis?" Victor said carelessly to a young man who
+emerged from the house as they approached.
+
+"Marston Brent," was the answer. "It seems the Clytie made a very
+quick trip, and came into port yesterday; so of course her owner has
+come at once to report his safe arrival at head-quarters."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, whose hand was still on Clare's arm, felt the quick
+start which he gave at this information, but she was a discreet woman,
+and she said nothing until they were standing on the verandah steps
+and he had bidden her good-night, saying that he must ride back to
+Claremont.
+
+"I understand why you will not remain," she said; "but do not make any
+rash resolution about Egypt--above all, do not _commit_ yourself to
+anything." Then she bent forward and touched his hand lightly. "Tell
+me when you come again that you will join my party for the White
+Sulphur," she said softly. "It will be the wisest thing you can do."
+
+The result of this disinterested advice was, that as soon as he
+reached home, after a lonely, starlit ride of six miles, Clare sat
+down and wrote to General ----, accepting the position he had offered,
+and promising to report in Cairo as soon as possible.
+
+After this it was several days before the future Egyptian soldier was
+seen again at The Willows. What went on in that gay abode during this
+interval he neither knew nor sought to know. He endeavored to banish
+all memory of the place and the people whom it contained from his
+mind. They were nothing to him, he told himself. It was impossible to
+say whether he shrank most from the pain of meeting Eleanor Milbourne
+with her accepted lover by her side, or from the thrill of disgust
+with which the mere thought of Mrs. Lancaster inspired him. He buried
+himself in listless idleness at Claremont for some time: then ordered
+his horse one day, rode to a neighboring town and made arrangements
+for the sale of his property with much the same feeling as if he had
+ordered the execution of his mother. It was when he returned weary and
+depressed from this excursion that he found a note from Mrs. Brantley
+awaiting him.
+
+"DEAR MAJOR CLARE" (it ran), "why have you forsaken us? We have looked
+for you, wished for you and talked of you for days, but you seem to
+have determined that we shall learn the full meaning of the verb 'to
+disappoint.' Will you not come over to dinner to-day? I think you have
+played hermit quite long enough.
+
+"Truly yours, L.M.B."
+
+To say that Clare declined this invitation would be equivalent to
+saying that a moth of its own accord kept at a safe distance from the
+glowing flame which enticed it. As he read the note his heart gave a
+leap. He began to wonder and ask himself why he had remained away so
+long. Was it not the sheerest folly and absurdity? What was Eleanor
+Milbourne to him that he should banish himself on her account from the
+only pleasant house within a radius of twenty miles? A man should have
+some self-respect, he thought. He should not let every inquisitive
+fool see when and how and where a shaft has wounded him. Why should
+he not go? A heartache or two additional would not matter in Egypt.
+As for Mrs. Lancaster, he could certainly keep at a safe distance from
+_her_, even if she had not gone to the White Sulphur, as he hoped to
+heaven she had.
+
+This devout hope was destined to disappointment. The first person whom
+he saw when he entered the well-filled drawing-room of The Willows was
+the pretty widow, in radiant looks and radiant spirits, not to
+mention a radiant toilette of the lightest possible and most becoming
+mourning. Despite his previous resolutions, Clare found himself
+gravitating to her side as soon as his respects had been paid to Mrs.
+Brantley--a fact which may serve as a small proof of the weakness
+of man's resolve, and his general inability to fight against fate,
+especially when it is embodied in a woman's bright eyes.
+
+"What have you been doing with yourself?" she asked after the first
+salutations were over. "Have you been taking counsel with solitude on
+the Egyptian question? Or have you decided like a sensible man to go
+to the White Sulphur? Whatever has been the cause of your absence,
+you have at least been charitable in furnishing us with a topic of
+conversation. I scarcely know what we should have done without the
+'Victor Clare disappearance,' as Mr. Ellis has called it, during the
+last week."
+
+"I am sure you ought to be obliged to me, then," Clare said, flushing
+and laughing. "Assuredly I could not have furnished you with a topic
+of conversation for a whole week if I had been present."
+
+"Opinion has been divided concerning the mystery of your fate," she
+went on. "One party has maintained that, rushing away in desperation
+when you heard of Mr. Brent's arrival, you started the next day for
+Suez; the other, that you were hanging about the grounds, armed to the
+teeth, and only waiting an opportunity to dare your rival to deadly
+combat."
+
+"How kind one's friends are, to be sure, especially when they are
+in the country, and have nothing in particular with which to amuse
+themselves!"
+
+"But what _have_ you been doing? I should like to know, if you do not
+object to telling me."
+
+"I have been very busy making my final arrangements for leaving the
+country," answered he, stretching a point, it must be owned.
+
+"You are really going, then?" she asked after a minute's silence--a
+minute during which she was horribly conscious that her changing
+countenance might readily have betrayed to any looker-on how deeply
+she felt this unexpected blow.
+
+"I wrote to General ---- on the night I saw you last, accepting his
+offer," Clare answered. "Of course I am in duty bound, therefore, to
+report in Cairo as soon as possible."
+
+"And you will sell Claremont?"
+
+"I have no alternative."
+
+She said nothing more, but he saw her hand--the same white jeweled
+hand that had gleamed on his arm in the starlight--go to her throat
+with a quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion
+which he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over
+him now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment
+and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman's folly. He
+appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled
+child of fortune all her life--a queen-regnant, to whom all things
+must submit themselves--and he felt how bitter must be this first
+sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on which she had
+set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his voice almost
+gentle when he spoke again: "You must not think that I am ungrateful
+for your kind interest in my behalf. You can imagine, perhaps, how
+much I hate to part with Claremont, which has been the seat of my
+family for generations; but when a thing must be done there is no use
+in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my life to a tradition
+of the past; and that would be what I should do if I clung to the old
+place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp stroke and swimming
+boldly out to sea."
+
+"But you might stay if you would," said she with that tremulous accent
+which the French call "tears in the voice."
+
+"No, I could _not_ stay," said Clare resolutely. "I have no money, nor
+any means of making any in America."
+
+This ended the discussion. Even Mrs. Lancaster, fast and daring and
+willful as she was, could not say, "_I_ have money--more than I know
+what to do with: take it." Her eyes said as much, but Clare did not
+look at her eyes. A minute longer passed in embarrassed silence. Then
+somebody came up, and Victor was able to walk away. As he crossed the
+room he saw Eleanor Milbourne for the first time since his arrival.
+He had not even inquired if she was still at The Willows, and her
+unexpected appearance, for he had begun to fear that she was gone,
+filled him with a rush of feelings of which the first and most
+prominent was delight. After all, did it matter whether or not she was
+engaged to Marston Brent? Simply to look at her was enough to fill a
+man's soul with pleasure, to steep him in that "dewlight of repose"
+which only a few rare things on this earth of ours are capable of
+inspiring. Did any sane person ever fly from the sight of Venus when
+she held her court all alone in the lovely summer heaven, because he
+could not possess her magic lustre for his own? The comparison was not
+at all highflown to Clare, whatever it may seem to anybody else. He
+had always entertained as much hope of winning the star as of winning
+the woman; and as for an abstract question of beauty, he would have
+held that Venus herself could not have surpassed Eleanor Milbourne.
+She was an adorable goddess whom any man might be content to worship
+from a distance, he thought; and he was preparing to go and sun
+himself in the glance of her eyes, which seemed like bits of heaven in
+their blueness and their fairness, when Mrs. Brantley touched his arm
+and bade him take a newly-arrived piece of white muslin in to dinner.
+Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his
+hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known
+to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the
+satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table
+from Miss Milbourne.
+
+After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention. It seemed that
+there was a plan under discussion for showing the sole lion of the
+neighborhood--a hill of considerable eminence known as Farley's
+Mount--to the guests of The Willows. But it was distant twelve miles,
+What did Major Clare think of their starting early, breaking the ride
+by rest and luncheon at Claremont, then going on to the mountain,
+making the ascent, and returning by moonlight?
+
+"It will not do at all," said Victor. "Twenty-four miles is too much
+to be undertaken on a July day by a mere party of pleasure. You would
+break yourselves down and see nothing. I propose an amendment: Take
+two days instead of one, and spend a night on the mountain. If
+you have never camped on a mountain, the novelty is well worth
+experiencing, and these midsummer nights have scarcely any length,
+you know. Then the sunrise is magnificent."
+
+"That is exactly what we will do," cried Mrs. Brantley, clapping her
+hands with childish glee. And the proposal, being submitted to the
+company, was unanimously carried.
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor Milbourne was walking with Mr. Brent in the soft
+summer twilight on the lawn.
+
+"You should not press me so hard," she said as they paced slowly to
+and fro. "I fear I can never give you what you desire, but I cannot
+tell yet. Grant me a little time."
+
+"A little time! But think how much time you have had!" the gentleman
+urged, not without reason. "You said when I went abroad that you were
+not sure enough of your heart to accept me then, but that you would
+give me a final answer when I returned. You had all the months of my
+absence to consider what this answer should be, and when I came for
+it, spending not so much as an hour in tarrying on the road, I found
+that it was not ready for me--that I had yet longer to wait. Eleanor,
+is this kind? is it even just?"
+
+"It is neither," said Eleanor, turning to him with a strange
+deprecation on her fair proud face. "I know that you have been
+everything that is patient and generous, and I am sorry--oh I am more
+than sorry--to have seemed to trifle with you; but what can I do?
+Remember that when I decide, it is for my whole life. You cannot doubt
+that I will hold fast to my promise when it is once given."
+
+"I do not doubt it, and therefore I desire that promise above all
+things."
+
+"But you would not desire the letter without the spirit?" said she
+eagerly. "I dare not bind myself--I _dare_ not--until I am certain of
+myself."
+
+"But, good Heavens!" said Marston Brent, who, although usually the
+most quiet and dignified of human beings, was now fairly driven to
+vehemence, "when do you mean to be certain of yourself? Surely you
+have had time enough. Can you not love me, Eleanor?" he asked a
+little wistfully. "If that is it--if that is the doubt that holds you
+back--say so, and let me go. Anything is better than suspense like
+this."
+
+But Eleanor was plainly not ready to say that. She stood still for
+a moment, then turned to him with a sudden light of resolve in her
+eyes. "You are right," she said. "This must end. I may be weak and
+foolish, but I have no right to make you suffer for my weakness and
+my folly. I pledge myself to tell you to-morrow night whether or not I
+can be your wife. You will give me till then, will you not? It is the
+last delay I shall ask."
+
+"I wish you would understand that you could not ask anything which I
+should not be glad to grant," said he, a little sadly. "For Heaven's
+sake, do not think of me as your persecutor--do not force yourself to
+answer me at any given time. I can wait."
+
+"You _have_ waited," said she gratefully--"waited too long already.
+Do not encourage me in my weakness. Believe that I will tell you
+to-morrow night my final decision."
+
+Later in the evening, Victor Clare was leaving the drawing-room as
+Miss Milbourne entered it. They came face to face rather unexpectedly,
+and while the gentleman fell back, the lady extended her hand.
+
+"Have you stayed away so long that you have forgotten your friends,
+Major Clare?" she said with a smile which was bright but rather
+tremulous, like a gleam of sunshine on rippling water. "You have not
+even said good-evening to me, and yet you have an air as if you had
+said good-night to the rest of the company."
+
+"So I have," answered Victor, smiling in turn, partly from the
+pleasure of meeting her, partly from the sheer magnetism of her
+glance, "but it is no fault of mine that I have not been able to speak
+to you: I have found no opportunity."
+
+"But I thought you always said that; people made opportunities when
+they desired to do so?"
+
+"Then the time has come for me to retract my assertion. As a general
+rule, a man cannot make opportunities: he can only take advantage of
+them when they come, as I hope to take advantage of the present," he
+added smiling.
+
+"But I thought you were going home?"
+
+"I _was_ going home a minute ago, but so long as you will let me talk
+to you I shall stay."
+
+"It is a very small favor to grant," said Eleanor, blushing a little.
+"But why were you leaving so early?"
+
+"Partly because I had no hope of seeing you; partly because I am not
+a 'young duke' to pencil a line to my steward and know that a princely
+collation will be served at noon to-morrow for half a hundred, or even
+for a dozen or two people."
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, for though she caught the allusion to
+Disraeli's rose-colored romance, the application puzzled her.
+
+"I see you have not heard of our gypsy plan," he answered, and at once
+proceeded to detail it.
+
+She was not so much delighted as he expected, but a pretty, lucid
+gleam came into her eyes at the mention of Claremont.
+
+"I shall be glad to see your home," she said quietly. "I have heard so
+much of its beauty and its antiquity."
+
+"It is pretty, and it is old," said he, "but it will not be mine much
+longer. I am negotiating its sale now."
+
+She started: "What! you were in earnest, then? You are really going to
+Egypt?"
+
+"Yes, I am going to Egypt. Why should I stay? What has life to offer
+me here save vegetation? There, at least, I can find action."
+
+She looked at him with a strange, wistful expression which struck and
+startled him. He felt as if a prisoned soul suddenly sprang up and
+gazed at him out of the clear blue depths of her eyes. "Oh what a good
+thing it is to be a man!" she said. "How free you are! how able to do
+what you please and go where you please--to seek action and to find
+it! Oh, Major Clare, you ought to thank God night and day that He did
+not make you a woman!"
+
+"I am glad, certainly, that I am a man," said Victor honestly. "But
+you are the last woman in the world from whom I should have expected
+to hear such rebellious sentiments."
+
+"I am not rebellious," said Eleanor more quietly. "What is the good of
+it? All the rebellion in the world could not make me a man; and I have
+no fancy to be an unsexed woman. But nobody was ever more weary of
+conventional routine, nobody ever longed more for freedom and action
+than I do."
+
+It was on the end of Victor's tongue to say, "Then come with me to
+Egypt," but he caught himself in time. Was he mad to imagine that "the
+beautiful Miss Milbourne"--a woman at whose feet the most desirable
+matches of "society" had been laid--would end her brilliant career
+by marrying a soldier of fortune, and expatriating herself from her
+country and her kindred? He gave a grim sort of smile which Eleanor
+did not quite understand, as he said: "Where is your lotos? It ought
+to make you more content with the things that be."
+
+"I have it," Eleanor said with child-like simplicity. "Mr. Brent
+remembered and brought it to me. I have not forgotten my promise to
+share it with you."
+
+"Take it to the mountain to-morrow night, then," said he quickly. "Let
+us eat it together there. I should like to link _you_ even with my
+farewell to the past."
+
+And, since an interruption came just then, they parted with this
+understanding.
+
+The next day Major Clare was standing on the terrace of Claremont--a
+stately, solidly-built old house, bearing itself with an air of
+conscious pride and disdain of modern frippery, despite certain
+significant signs of decay--when his guests arrived in formidable
+procession. There was something of the "old school" in his manner of
+welcoming them--a grace and courtesy which struck more than one of
+them as at once very perfect and very charming.
+
+"The man suits the house, does he not?" said Mrs. Brantley to Mrs.
+Lancaster. "It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle.
+We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass
+decanter."
+
+"I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners," said Mrs.
+Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more. She
+felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and
+prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its
+owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly
+in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent
+upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt.
+The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the
+quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had
+been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how different things
+might be! She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its
+formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of
+cedar. "He will change his mind before the month is out," she thought.
+"A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home
+of his fathers without a struggle."
+
+This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when,
+a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking
+earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and
+were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that distance
+there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was
+there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a
+riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. "If she is engaged to
+Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation
+as this," Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth. "If he were not blind
+or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she
+would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so."
+
+An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that
+it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster
+had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and
+had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have
+received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism. They had
+paused in a square near the heart of the garden--a green, shaded
+spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed
+fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken the stillness
+for many a long day. Round the margin of this still ran a seat on
+which Eleanor sat down. Victor remained standing before her. A lime
+tree near by cast a soft, flickering shadow over them, and the tall
+hedges of evergreen which enclosed the square made a sombre but
+effective background.
+
+"You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you here,"
+Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his voice. "But if
+you had courage enough to end the life which you despise, to cut loose
+from all the ties which bind you in America, and go with me to Egypt,
+_there_ I might have a future and a career for you to share--_there_
+at least, you would find freedom and action and life."
+
+A flush came to Eleanor's cheek, and a light gleamed suddenly in her
+eyes, as if the very wildness of this proposal lent it fascination;
+but she shook her head, smiling a little sadly. "You are of my world,"
+she said: "you ought to know better than that. I am not so brave as
+you think. I must do what is expected of me, and I am expected to
+marry Marston Brent."
+
+"Forget the world and come with me."
+
+"That is impossible. If I had only myself to care for, I would; but
+there are others of whom I must think." She was silent for a moment,
+then looked up at him piteously. "They have sacrificed so much for me
+at home," she said, "and they are so proud of me. They hope, desire,
+count on this marriage: I cannot disappoint them. Mr. Brent himself
+has been most kind and patient, and he does not expect very much. I am
+a coward, perhaps, but what can I do?"
+
+Again he said, "You can come with me."
+
+Again she answered, "It is impossible. Do you not see that it is
+impossible? Starting forth on a new career, it would be insane for you
+to burden yourself with a wife. As for me, I am no more fit to marry a
+poor man than to be a housemaid. Victor, it is hopeless. For Heaven's
+sake, let us talk of it no longer! The only thing we can do is to
+forget that we have ever talked of it at all."
+
+"Will that be easy for you? I confess that nothing on earth could be
+harder for me."
+
+"No, it will not be easy, but I shall try with all my strength to do
+it. God only knows," putting her hand suddenly to her face, "how I
+shall live if I am _not_ able to do it." Then passionately, "Why did
+you speak? Why did you make the misery greater by dragging it to the
+light, so that we could face it, talk of it, discuss it? Oh why did
+you do it?"
+
+"Because I wanted to see if you were not made of braver stuff than
+other women," said he almost sternly. "In my maddest hours I never
+dreamed of speaking, until--what you said last night. Thinking of that
+after I came home, I resolved to give you one opportunity to break
+through the artificial trammels of your life, and find the freedom you
+professed to desire. It was better to do this, I thought, than to be
+tormented all my life by a regret, a doubt, lest I had lost happiness
+where one bold stroke might have gained it."
+
+"And now that you have found that I am _not_ brave, that I am like all
+the other conventional women of my class, are you not sorry that you
+have inflicted useless pain upon yourself?"
+
+"Of myself I do not think at all, and even when I think of you I
+cannot regret having spoken. Let the misery be what it will, it is
+something to have faced it together--it is everything to know that you
+love me, though you refuse to share my life."
+
+"You must not say that," said she, starting and shrinking as if from
+a blow. "How can I venture to acknowledge that I love you when I am
+going to marry Marston Brent?"
+
+"_Are_ you going to marry him?"
+
+"Have I not told you so?"
+
+He turned from her and took one short, quick turn across the square.
+Like every man in his position, he felt outraged and indignant,
+without pausing to consider how infinitely more inexorable the laws
+of society are with regard to women than to men. _He_ could put
+Mrs. Lancaster's fortune aside and go his way--to Egypt or to the
+dogs--without anybody crying out against his criminal folly, his
+criminal disregard of the duties and traditions of his class. But
+if Eleanor Milbourne put Marston Brent's princely fortune aside and
+disappointed all her friends, what remained to her but the bitter
+condemnation of those friends in particular and of society in general?
+
+When he came back she rose to meet him, making a picture worth
+remembering as she stood in her graceful youth and picturesque habit
+by the broken fountain, with the sombre cedar hedge behind and the
+intense azure of the summer sky above.
+
+"Let us go," she said. "By prolonging this we only give ourselves
+useless pain. All is said that can be said. Nothing remains now but to
+forget; and that can best be done in silence. Victor, let us go."
+
+There was a tone of pathos, a tone as if she was not quite sure of
+herself, in those last words, which made Clare refrain from answering
+her. He turned silently, and they entered a green alley which led to
+the foot of the terrace surrounding the house. As they walked along,
+Marston Brent's figure appeared at the end of the vista, advancing
+toward them, and it was this apparition which first made Clare speak:
+"If you will not think me fanciful--I am sure you will not think me
+presumptuous--promise me that before you give that man his answer
+you will share the lotos with me of which you have spoken. I may be
+superstitious, but I feel as if we shall gain new strength with which
+to face the future after we have together renounced the past."
+
+She shook her head. "I am not superstitious enough to think that it
+will enable us to forget one pang," she said. "But if you desire it, I
+promise."
+
+When the afternoon shadows were lengthening the party from The Willows
+set forth again, and reached the foot of the mountain a little before
+sunset, making the ascent in time to see the day-god's last radiance
+streaming over the fair, broad expanse of country beneath them. There
+was a small cabin on the summit which was to be devoted to the
+ladies, and round the camp-fire which was soon sparkling brightly the
+gentlemen proposed to spend the night on the blankets with which they
+were all plentifully provided. Meanwhile, the party, dividing into
+groups and pairs, were soon scattered here and there, perched on the
+highest points of rock, enjoying the cool, fresh air which came as a
+message of love from the glowing west, and chattering like a chorus of
+magpies.
+
+When the evening collation was over--a gypsy-like repast for which
+every one seemed to have an excellent appetite--Mr. Brent asked
+Eleanor if she would not accompany him to the eastern side of the
+mountain to see the moon rise. While she hesitated, uncertain what to
+say, Clare's voice spoke quietly at her side. "Miss Milbourne has an
+engagement with _me_," he said. "I fear you must defer the pleasure of
+admiring the moon in her society for a little while, Mr. Brent." Then
+to Eleanor, "Shall we go now?"
+
+She assented, and they walked away. Mr. Brent, thus left behind,
+naturally felt aggrieved, and turned to Mrs. Brantley with some slight
+irritation stirring his usually courteous repose.
+
+"It strikes me that Major Clare's manners decidedly lack polish," he
+said with an air of grave reprehension. "Is it true, as I am told,
+that he is going to sell that fine old place where we spent the day,
+and emigrate to Egypt?"
+
+"He is quite ready for a lunatic asylum," said Mrs. Lancaster, who
+was standing near. "But, whatever his folly may be, I certainly do
+not agree with you, Mr. Brent, in thinking that his manners need any
+improvement."
+
+Meanwhile, Eleanor was saying, "You should not have spoken so curtly
+to Mr. Brent."
+
+"If I can avoid it, I shall never speak to him again," Clare answered.
+"Don't let us talk of him. I did not bring you away to discuss anybody
+we have left behind, or anything of which we have talked before. We
+are to be like immortals--to forget the past and live only in the
+present."
+
+"Where are we going?" she asked.
+
+"Round to a point from whence we can overlook Claremont."
+
+She said nothing more, and he led her to the eastern side of the
+mountain, where, near the verge of an almost precipitous descent, they
+sat down together under the shadow of a great gray rock. From this
+point the view was more extensive than any they had commanded before.
+The rolling country, with the sunset glory fading from it, lay like
+a panorama at their feet--shadowy woods melting into blue distance,
+streams glancing here and there into sight, fields rich with
+cultivation bounded by fences that looked like a spider's thread.
+To the left Claremont, seated above its terraces, made an imposing
+landmark. Behind it the moon was rising majestically in a cloudless
+sky. After they had been silent for some time, Clare turned and looked
+at his companion. "How beautiful you are!" he said abruptly. "I wish
+I had a picture of you as you sit there now. It would be worth
+everything else in the world to me. But perhaps, after all, the best
+pictures are those which are taken on the heart."
+
+"You have forgotten," said Eleanor, trying to smile, "that we are
+going to eat the lotos in order to efface all pictures."
+
+"Nay," said he. "I thought it was to enable us to forget everything
+but the present, and this _is_ the present."
+
+"But it will be the past in a little while," said she, "and we must
+forget it, like all the rest. Victor, we _must_ forget! They say that
+all things are possible to resolution: let us resolve to do that."
+
+For some time longer they sat silent. Then Clare said, with something
+like a groan, "Would to God I could die here and now, or else that
+there _was_ some spell by which one could make memory a blank!"
+
+"Let us try the lotos," said Eleanor. "See, I brought it as you told
+me."
+
+From her pocket she drew a paper which, being opened, proved to
+contain the dried petals of a flower, evidently an aquatic plant.
+Yellow and lifeless as it was, Eleanor looked at it with wistful
+reverence. "It came from Egypt," she said: then she added, "where you
+are going."
+
+"We will see if there is any magic in it," said Clare.
+
+So, together they took the dried petals and began to eat them, smiling
+a little sadly at each other as they did so.
+
+"Herodotus says that when the Nile is full, 'and all the grounds round
+it are a perfect sea, there grows a vast quantity of lilies which the
+Egyptians call lotos, in the water,'" said Clare. "He adds that this
+flower, especially the root of it, is very sweet. If this is the same,
+it has certainly changed its flavor since that time."
+
+"It is not disagreeable," said Eleanor. "But I fear we shall not find
+the effect for which we have hoped. It is of the lotos fruit that
+Homer and Tennyson have written."
+
+"And the lotos flower of mythology is an East Indian, not an Egyptian,
+aquatic; but since we desire to link _our_ fancy with the flower of
+the Nile, we will ignore the poets and the Brahmins. After all, we
+only desire it as a symbol of the renunciation of the past on which
+we have agreed. Eleanor, what if we should indeed resolve to leave the
+past behind us from this hour, and face our future together?"
+
+He looked at her imploringly and passionately, but instead of replying
+she put her hand to her head. "How strangely dizzy I am!" she said.
+"Can it--do you think it can be the lotos?"
+
+"Dizzy!" he repeated. "Then I must take you from the edge of this
+precipice. Perhaps it is that which affects you. It could not have
+been the lotos, or I should feel it too. Come, let me lead you round
+the rock."
+
+But when he attempted to rise he found that to him, too, a sudden
+strange dizziness came. A constriction seemed gathering about his
+heart, a mist seemed rising before his eyes. Before he had half risen
+he sank back against the rock.
+
+"Do you feel it too?" she asked quickly.
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, putting his hand also to his head. "What can
+it mean? Could there have been anything wrong in that plant? The lotos
+itself is harmless, either flower or fruit. Eleanor, my darling!" he
+cried with sudden alarm. "Good Heavens! what is the matter? How pale
+you look!"
+
+"I--I do not think it could have been the lotos. It must have been
+some poisonous plant," said she faintly. "This giddiness and numbness
+increase." Then she held out her hands tremulously. "Hold me," she
+said. "The earth seems slipping away from me. Oh, Victor, what if it
+should be fatal?"
+
+"Do not imagine such a thing," he said. "It is impossible! The plant
+has probably some narcotic property which affects you temporarily.
+Lean on me until it is over. My God! how mad I was to have suffered
+you to eat it!"
+
+"Do not blame yourself," she said, clinging to him, her fair head
+drooping heavily on his breast. "It was I who spoke of it--who sent
+for it--"
+
+She stopped, gasping a little, and pressing her hand to her heart,
+where an iron clutch seemed arresting the circulation. A glance at her
+face filled Clare with a terror which he had not felt before. Partly
+this, partly his own sensations, told him that the poison of the plant
+which they had shared between them _was_ fatal--one of the swift and
+terrible agents of death which abound in the East--and a sense too
+horrible to be dwelt upon came to him, warning him that aid, to avail
+at all, must be summoned quickly.
+
+But how? The summit of the mountain was large, the rest of the party
+were far from them. He had purposely led his companion to this remote
+spot, where, even if he had been able to raise his voice, there was
+none to hear. As for leaving her, he doubted his own ability to walk
+ten steps. He felt sure that if he succeeded in gaining his feet he
+should reel and fall like a drunken man.
+
+Still, the attempt must be made, and that instantly. Every second
+lessened the hope of its success--with every pulse-beat he felt the
+awful, reeling numbness increase. How much longer he could retain
+his consciousness he could not tell. He saw plainly that Eleanor was
+losing hers.
+
+"My darling," he said, striving vainly to unclasp the arms that clung
+to him, "I must go--I must call assistance: this may be more serious
+than I thought. Try to rouse yourself, Eleanor: I must go!"
+
+Alas! it was easy to say--it was awfully impossible to do. Even when
+Eleanor relaxed her already half-unconscious embrace, and he strove
+to rise, he found that not even desperation could give the requisite
+power. He literally could not gain his feet. Every effort failed: he
+sank back hopelessly.
+
+Then he tried to raise his voice in a cry for help, but it refused
+to obey his bidding. He was not able to speak above a broken whisper.
+Finding this to be the case, he turned in an agony of despair to the
+girl beside him--the girl whom, with a last effort, he drew to his
+breast.
+
+"Eleanor," he said, "it is hopeless. If this _is_ poison we must die!
+Oh, my darling, can you forgive me? O my God, send us help! Eleanor,
+can you hear me? Eleanor, will you not speak to me?"
+
+For a minute all was silence. Then the fair head raised itself, and
+the lids slowly and heavily lifted from the blue, flower-like eyes.
+The moon, which had now risen high in the cloudless July heaven, shone
+full on her face as she said, "Kiss me."
+
+For the first time their lips met: when they parted both were cold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still clinging together, they were found. At their feet lay a fragment
+of the deadly-poisonous Egyptian river-plant which Marston Brent had
+ignorantly plucked for a lotos.
+
+
+CHRISTIAN REID.
+
+
+
+
+ECHO.
+
+FROM THE RUSSIAN OF PUSCHKTN.
+
+
+  Roars there ever a beast in his forest den,
+    Hear we thunder in heaven, a horn among men,
+  On the hill sings a maiden now and then,--
+          Sound what may,
+  Answer through space thou mak'st again
+          With small delay.
+  Aware of the thunder's rattling roll,
+  Of the winds and the waves when without control,
+  Of the cries where the village shepherds stroll,
+          Reply thou giv'st;
+  Yet thou thyself, without one answering soul,
+          A poet liv'st.
+
+A.J.
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Sometimes it was our simple hosts who led the conversation, which
+then, especially as they became at ease with us, always drifted more
+or less into the supernatural. Nor was this surprising, as the tales,
+legends, old manners and customs amongst the Tyrolese are thoroughly
+interwoven with threads of heathen mythology and with the occult
+belief of the Middle Ages.
+
+[Illustration: VALLEY AND BEEHIVES.]
+
+Franz had a wonderful credence in lucky and unlucky days. Tuesday and
+Thursday were witches' days, and Wednesday was also evil, seeing Judas
+hanged himself on a Wednesday; therefore never drive cattle to the
+Olm on that day. Moreover, he believed that when two persons sneezed
+together a soul was loosed from purgatory. As for witches and ghosts,
+he knew enough about them too. Did not the witches still dance every
+night at eight o'clock on their meeting-place by Bad Scharst? His
+brother Joergel could have told us about that if he would. The paechter
+Josef had likewise experiences which he might relate were he not so
+shy. "Josef was returning through the Reinwald one Thursday night, and
+had just crossed over the Giessbach when he met a black figure, whom
+he greeted in God's name; but the figure moved on, making no answer as
+a Christian would have done. He had not gone much farther up the wood
+when he met a second black form. Crossing himself, Josef spoke out
+boldly a 'God greet you!' but again silence. The figure had vanished.
+Josef crossed himself and prayed. Nevertheless, he met a third, and,
+waxing bold, not only greeted him, but turning round looked fixedly
+at the black figure to see whether it were sorcerer, gypsy, ghost or
+witch. And there, behold! it stood, grown as tall as a tree, grinning
+at Josef until he thought it best to escape. Next day the black cow
+went dry: otherwise you might say that Josef's hobgoblins were fir
+trees."
+
+Whilst Jakob laughed at Josef's phantoms, he could not help telling
+us in his turn a tale which he considered much more noteworthy: "There
+was no denying that one winter's night a huntsman, losing himself in
+the deep snow, took refuge in a forsaken senner-hut. Content to suffer
+hunger if only thus sheltered for the night, he was shortly surprised
+by the entrance of a black man, who not only welcomed him to the
+hut, but proposed cooking him some supper; an offer most thankfully
+accepted. Upon this, the black man lighted a fire, suddenly produced
+a frying-pan, which had been invisible before, and began cooking
+strauben and cream pancakes from equally hidden stores. When supper
+was ready the huntsman begged the good-natured black cook to sit down
+and eat with him; and a very hearty meal he seemed to make, although,
+to the surprise of the huntsman, the food turned as black as a cinder
+before it entered his mouth. Both men lay down to rest; and after a
+comfortable sleep the hunter, rising up to go, thanked the black man
+for his kind hospitality, adding, 'May God reward you!' 'Oh,' replied
+the other, uttering a great sigh of relief, 'may God in His mercy
+equally reward you for those words! When I walked on the earth I
+laughed at religion: I was therefore sent back in the spirit to toil
+until some mortal should thank me in God's name for what I had done
+for him. This you have done, and now I am free;' and so saying he
+vanished."
+
+"Yes," said Moidel, "these tales are as true as the gospel. You know
+Nanni, the maid who sings so sweetly? Her father some years since went
+on a pilgrimage with two other peasants to Maria Zell. Arriving
+late one night at a solitary farm-house, they rapped at the door,
+requesting a lodging. The bauer, however, excused himself: it was from
+no evil intention, he said, but he could not take strangers in. The
+three wanderers pleaded how ill would be their condition if left in
+the fields all night. Still the bauer made no other reply, until, on
+their pressing him, he finally declared, half in anger, that they must
+themselves be responsible for their night's rest. He wished to treat
+them well, but could offer them no better bed than the top of the oven
+in the stube. This offer they willingly accepted, but hardly had
+they lain down when a peasant-woman entered with a pail of water and
+brushes. In spite of their entreaties, she scrubbed and scrubbed away
+all night, and hardly had she finished when, the work not pleasing
+her, she began scrubbing the floor and woodwork over again. Thus the
+cleaning lasted the livelong night, until in the early morning the
+maid-servant entered and the woman disappeared; the floor and walls
+being, to their astonishment, as dry and dusty as the evening before.
+Whereupon they spoke to the bauer of their troublesome visitor.
+'Do not accuse me,' he replied 'of inhospitality: this is a strange
+matter, from which I would fain have kept you. Intolerable as it has
+been to you, it is still worse for me, knowing that the woman who thus
+scrubs, and with so much din, is my poor dead wife. Her brain, when
+she was alive, was quite turned about cleaning. She could not even go
+to church with me and the neighbors, but must stay at home and clean.
+So, being a bad manager, and not washing her soul white, she seems
+unfit for heaven, and must needs come here every night to continue her
+work. Even masses don't seem to help her.'"
+
+Such tales were either related by the hut-fire on airy mountain or in
+the fir woods. Moidel might have told us ghost-stories in the barn at
+night, but there, in the solitary darkness, they appeared to her too
+horribly real, especially with sleepy auditors, who might any moment
+drop into unconsciousness, leaving her in a dismal fright over her own
+tale.
+
+One afternoon, accompanied by this faithful companion, we determined
+to attack the summit of the mountain, which in a mantle of fir wood
+rose immediately behind the huts. We were anxious to see what lay on
+the other side, but after a hard though exhilarating climb we learned
+that the mountain was but a huge overhanging shoulder, the rocky head
+of the giant rising up in the midst of wide sweeping moors some six
+miles distant. We changed, therefore, the object of our excursion,
+determining to visit the highest Olm of the district, Ober Kofel.
+Turning to the left, we pursued the moorland plateau until in half
+an hour we had reached a solitary white cabin. The door was firmly
+closed, but a pile of fire-wood and a rake, evidently flung recently
+down, were sufficient signs of habitation. A more lonely scene could
+not well be conceived. No trees nor flowers, only some yellow thistles
+growing by the side of a murmuring brook, which had persistently gone
+rushing on until it had worn the pebbles in its bed flat and thin.
+Tawny, dun-colored mountains rose behind, but before the hut the
+_traet_ or open space, covered with the greenest turf, extended to
+a platform of rocks, where the glossy shrubs of the mountain
+rhododendron grew, presenting a scene well worth the climb. The view
+outward embraced the deep wooded gorge of the Giessbach, revealing far
+beyond the black, sinuous lines of distant mountains, cutting across
+the evening horizon. Black-brown crags some eight thousand feet high,
+peaked with snow, rose to the right; but the great snow spectacle was
+to the left. There the proud crests of the Hoch Gall, Wild Gall and
+Schnebige Nock rose out of a vast white glittering amphitheatre, a
+peculiar, bare, conical rock standing like an Alpine sphinx strangely
+forth from this desert of snow.
+
+We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the wind
+playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just been
+promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man flitted
+in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved to be the
+solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the domain, and
+moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes ere he sat
+on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he began talking
+to Moidel about the military exercises which were to begin again this
+week.
+
+"The Ausserkofers," he said, "went down for the drilling immediately
+after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I was not drawn."
+
+Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the morrow
+for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel's son, would
+arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman.
+
+The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have
+lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to
+keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our
+several faces.
+
+Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one
+of the group began: "Of course you have heard of the clever Tyrolese
+peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?"
+
+Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both pricked
+up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a little
+farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of lying
+on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river given to
+inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge in his
+neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door, and
+almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he must
+make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss of
+time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to
+sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the
+evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind.
+He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be
+carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aerial car? He
+bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two
+parallel lines across the river, fastening the four ends very firmly;
+constructed a bench on iron rollers, which, sustained by the wire, ran
+across the river in a trice, and his aerial car was a reality. Here,
+indeed, was a triumph. It worked admirably, and the whole neighborhood
+became excited and astonished about the air-railway, as they called
+it. The news spreading, it brought finally some gentlemen from the
+town of Dornbirn, who were wild to have a ride across the river. Hans
+Jakob refused it: he doubted the strength being sufficient for more
+than one passenger; but they persisting in their urgent demand, he at
+last reluctantly consented. They would not, or else they could not,
+go without him. So, the party being seated on the bench, he unfastened
+the hook, when they should have been instantly whirled across. But,
+alas! his fears proved true: the wire gave way, and down they
+all went, plump into the wild rushing river. A great fright and
+wetting--that was all, for the time being, until the gentlemen,
+although they had promised not to say a word on the subject, having
+whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no part uncolored, the
+town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad peasant's audacity. The
+authorities took it in hand, and a solemn gendarme visited Hans Jakob
+with strict orders from government to desist from such perilous,
+hairbreadth inventions for the future. Poor Hans! he now regarded
+himself not only as the laughing-stock of the whole country, but as
+a ruined man. He had spent all his savings on his first venture; but
+neither official reprimand nor loss of his money could keep his
+busy, active brain from puzzling out an improved plan, which, having
+perfected it in his mind, he boldly carried out. Instead of two simple
+iron wires, he employed two double coils, with a single wire in the
+centre and six feet higher. He stretched across two other strong
+parallel wires. He then contrived a little car with two seats and a
+cover against sun and rain. To the benches and the awning he fastened
+rollers, so that the car was propelled across both above and below.
+The weight which it would bear he proved to be fifteen hundredweight,
+and unfastened from the iron hooks which kept it to the bank, the car
+ran across in a few seconds with an easy, agreeable motion. Practice
+and a close investigation proved it now a perfect success. All the
+censures and ridicule were forgotten, and it proves at the present
+time both convenient and amusing to the gentlemen, ladies and children
+of the neighborhood. Hans Jakob willingly conveys them across the
+river in his flying car. He will, however, receive no fixed payment.
+He constructed it simply for his own use: were he to make a trade of
+it, he must either take out a patent, or else make some concessions to
+government, neither of which he has any inclination to do.
+
+The senner and Moidel listened in astonishment. They had understood
+every word. Although they had never heard of Hans Jakob before, there
+was a full account of him in the Brixen calendar, an almanac which the
+senner owned to having had by him for the last eight months--another
+noticeable instance how tales and good advice in print are lost upon
+a people who, hitherto quietly slumbering, find for their hearts and
+minds enough to do in carrying on their slow agriculture and pattering
+their prayers. I believe that popular lecturers conversant with the
+dialect would be of infinite service in the rural districts of the
+Tyrol.
+
+The senner, after this entertainment, offered us the hospitality of
+his hut. A lordly bowl of intensely rich cream was placed before us
+in the sleeping-room, with the sole option of lapping like the men of
+Gideon, seeing we were not sufficiently naturalized for each to carry
+a horn spoon in her pocket, had not a little tin drinking mug been
+fortunately remembered.
+
+The next day the young tilemaker Martin, carrying his bundle, arrived
+at about nine. He had left the Hof at three that morning, making
+the whole journey of twenty-four miles on foot without a stop. Franz
+therefore seized hold of the frying-pan, and we dined an hour earlier
+than the usual time of ten. After coffee, Jakob had to initiate his
+successor into the various advantages of the several Alpine pastures,
+to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to introduce Martin to
+Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the other cows, as well
+as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We set out to accompany
+them, but the cattle were too far away on distant heights for us to
+continue long in the scramble. We therefore sat on a breezy mountain
+platform watching the athletic young men grow ever smaller, more
+indistinct, whilst Jakob's voice was borne to us on the rarefied air
+as he called lovingly, "Krudeli, Krudeli" to the calves, and "Koess,
+Koess" to the cows.
+
+"It is a miracle," said Moidel, "how Martin, who was so weak and
+consumed away by his accident, should thus have recovered."
+
+"What accident?" asked we.
+
+"Why, does not the Herrschaft know how last November, on his very
+name-day, Martin was nearly killed? Young Niederberg--he who wears
+the finest carnations on his hat, but who then, it being cold weather,
+wore three cock's feathers gained in wrestling-matches--strutted
+down the Edelsheim street, arm in arm with his great friend, the
+fair-haired Hansel of Heinwiese, a rude young churl, praising each
+other for their strength of limb and good looks. Martin at the time
+was leaning against his father's door. 'The devil!' said Niederberg:
+'why do you stay at your father's, when there is better wine and
+company at the Blauen Bock?' Martin, however, replied that he was a
+hard-working man, who could only spare time to see his old father and
+sick sister on a festival. 'No,' said Heinwiese in anger, 'thou art
+nothing but a miserable milk-sop, never at a wrestling-match, never
+at a dance.' 'But,' put in Niederberg, 'we'll teach thee to dance
+and sing;' and so saying, he suddenly plunged the blade of his big
+pocket-knife below Martin's ribs.
+
+"Why he had become their prey none could tell, unless they were lost
+in drink. Great was the clamor in the usually quiet village. A doctor
+was sent for, who at first declared Martin's wound to be mortal. Then
+his young wife and little children were fetched with many tears from
+the tileyard, and the priest came with the Holy Death Sacrament. But
+the prayers and viaticum saved Martin. Still, for many months he had
+a frightful illness, and even in March he was so weak you could have
+knocked him down with a feather. Niederberg was immediately taken into
+custody, and was sentenced to sit in Bruneck Castle till St. John the
+Baptist's Day, fully six months, to pay the doctor's bill, and two
+hundred gulden to Martin; but the latter sum, being an evil-minded
+youth, though rich, he has never paid. He will leave that to
+Heinwiese, he says, who put him up to the deed: besides, why pay a man
+who had recovered? He would have stood the funeral and settled with
+the widow. However, father talks of dealing with Niederberg, for he
+must not thus despoil patient Martin."
+
+Here, indeed, was a stabbing worthy of hot Italy, rather than cooler,
+quieter Tyrol. It proved, too, that the serpent and old Adam still
+moved in that garden of Eden, Edelsheim.
+
+Jakob and the hero of the tragedy now returned, bright and brisk,
+bearing armfuls of edelweiss, long sprays of stag-horn's moss, and
+showing us with genuine pleasure roots of the edelraute, which they
+had gathered on the high ledges for us. This is a little insignificant
+plant, but called by the Tyrolese the noble rue, and prized by them
+far more than the edelweiss; perhaps one reason being that when dried
+it is said to emit a delicious scent, for which reason the housewives
+place it amongst linen. Jakob looked like a mountain dryad, his
+broad-brimmed beaver being completely covered with purple Michaelmas
+daisies, glowing amongst sheaves of silvery edelweiss, falling round
+in a soft gray woolen fringe. Aided by Jakob and Martin, we had the
+gratification of gathering edelweiss ourselves, always a notable feat.
+Martin really had most miraculously recovered. After those twenty-four
+miles of hard walking, followed by a climb of several thousand feet,
+we left him felling a pine tree as we bade Jakob adieu, for he was to
+leave very early in the morning.
+
+A comical scene ensued after our return to the barn. Visitors of
+course we had none: Martin's arrival had been an immense event. Thus,
+as we sat in the barn partaking of hot wine and cake, great masses
+of shadow all around, with light breaking in only from the lantern,
+forming altogether a perfect Rembrandt effect, we heard a cheerful
+voice wishing us "Good-night and sweet repose" through the door.
+Immediately, believing it to be the paechter's moidel, a young lady
+usually engaged in cutting hay, one of the party rashly invited the
+voice to enter--an invitation instantly accepted in the most perfect
+good faith by either a mad woman or a tramp in a big, flapping straw
+hat, who seated herself in the golden light of the lantern, adding
+perhaps to the breadth and freedom of this Rembrandt picture, but
+certainly not to its ease. Ravenously consuming some cake, she
+attacked us with a continuous battery of God bless yous! Moidel,
+however, was up to the occasion, and it was not long ere she managed
+to get the unacceptable visitor outside the door, we begging her
+to bolt and bar it well, for after this call we were afraid of more
+lurking intruders. Moidel, however, bade us have no fears. The
+woman was neither cracked nor a Welscher: she was only a very poor
+_Bachernthalerin_, whose hut was generally under water. It was
+accessible now, however, and the poor soul had been round begging milk
+at the senner-huts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Life in the mountains was not half so ideal as we once foolishly
+might have imagined. Still, the visit thither had surpassed our
+expectations, and it was with no little regret that we bade farewell
+to the familiar barn the following morning. We settled a bill with the
+paechter at parting, including the dinner given to the knowing Ignaz.
+It amounted to the sum of one gulden. Who would not stay up at an Olm?
+
+Again we gave the day to the ten-mile walk, now a steep but pleasant
+descent, choosing the village of Rein as our first halting-place. It
+was still early, a lovely autumn morning, the mountains rising in all
+their impressive majesty, but for a time all our powers of admiration
+and enjoyment were suddenly marred by the sight of meek sheep led to
+the shambles at the very window.
+
+We would have hurried on, if we could, without stopping, but we had
+rashly promised to write our names in the important visitors' book,
+besides paying a small bill for wine. The landlord could not at all
+perceive why, as meat had to be eaten, any one could object to a
+preliminary exhibition, especially when the butcher could only make
+his rounds at stated times, and it was so convenient by the kitchen
+door. Indeed, so deadened in delicate perceptions were these people
+that the landlord observing a rare plant in one of our hands, he
+actually called the butcher in to tell us its name. The man, having
+at that moment ended his first stroke of business, came in red-handed,
+and proved a botanist. It was a _Woodsia hyperborea_--that was the
+Latin name--and was rare in those parts, he said; but the Herrschaft
+should come earlier for flowers. July was the month. Then there was
+geum, and pale blue-fringed campanulas, and rich lilac asters, yellow
+violets, the white scented wax-flower, arnica and yellow aconite, both
+excellent medicines; there were thunder-flowers, and blood-drops, and
+grass of Parnassus, and hundreds more, all cut down by the scythes.
+There were four thousand plants and upward in the Tyrol; only, alas!
+like the gentians, many species were being perfectly exterminated.
+
+His energy interested us, and his hands were under the table. Frau
+Anna expressed great disappointment at the various beautiful gentians,
+common in Switzerland, being rare in the Tyrol.
+
+"Ladies," replied the botanist with emphasis, "you know not the
+reason? Why, there is hardly a species of gentian which is not torn
+up by the roots for the making of schnapps. Schnapps is good when
+rheumatism works in the bones: there is then no better lotion; and
+a thimbleful of cheerfulness in the morning, and another of sleep at
+night, are what I wish for our wirth, myself and every peasant daily;
+but why need they pull up all the gentians, which were bits of heaven
+scattered over the mountain-sides? I know that their roots are better
+for schnapps distilling than those of other plants, or even than
+bilberries or cranberries; but oh for a little moderation, cutting the
+roots gently! for whilst a bit is left in the ground the plant springs
+up again. 'Poor as a root-grubber' is the proverb. I'm glad it is.
+For if they were not so wanton, they would not be so poor. They mostly
+come from the Zillerthal. It's a special trade. The men climb the
+mountains as soon as the snow melts. They build themselves rude huts,
+and spend the summer searching for and digging up roots. Now, however,
+as they have cut their own throats, so to speak, they must climb often
+to high mountain-ledges, letting themselves down by ropes, to gather
+fine roots, which they still sometimes find of the thickness of my
+wrist. In the late autumn they collect their bundles of dried gentian
+roots, which they carry to the distilling vats, where the _Enzian_, so
+dear to the Tyroler, is made."
+
+[Illustration: COWS COMING DOWN THE HILLSIDE BY A MOUNTAIN STREAM.]
+
+And the butcher, who had grown quite pathetic over the gentians, rose
+to return to his occupation. It was curious to observe the honorable
+position which he held with landlord, landlady and Moidel. What a
+surgeon or soldier would be in a higher class, that the butcher was
+to them. In this case, too, we joined in respect--a feeling we might
+entertain for many more of his trade, perhaps, had we the opportunity
+of judging. But we must onward.
+
+Ere long a young woman wearing a pointed black felt hat, ornamented
+with yellow everlastings, overtook us and joined company with Moidel,
+giving us, however, equally the benefit of her conversation, whilst
+she insisted upon carrying a bag. She lived in Rein, she told us, and
+had now to consult the doctor in Taufers a second time about perpetual
+stitching pains in her throat. The doctor said it was quinsy, and
+arose from cold. Perhaps, she said, if she could bring herself to
+smoke a meerschaum, like other women in Rein, she might keep the
+mischief out; but it struck her as a disgrace to a female, and it made
+a great hole in the pocket. Those who were born in such a village
+as Rein were in an evil plight. The cottages were badly built, the
+kitchens reeked with smoke, and were so bitterly cold in winter,
+though the fowls had to roost there, that water froze in them. In
+fact, no one could stay in the kitchen in winter. Then all the family
+must crowd into the stube, living and sleeping there. When Nanni
+Muckhaus had the typhus she and her children and grandchildren must
+lie down together; and then all the neighbors had to visit her, unless
+they chose to pass as brutes; and so that was how the typhus spread.
+Fortunately, her husband and she were alone: they had no burdens.
+Still, life was hard--a vale of tears or a vale of snow. If the gentry
+could see the Reinthal in the winter, choked up with avalanches, they
+would say so. Her man had, however, enough to keep them. He had a
+license for the shooting of gemsen and other game, which he might use
+from holy Jakobi's Day to Candlemas. He had this year killed only
+five gemsen so far. The Post at Taufers was greedy for gemsen now,
+and bought up every ounce of the flesh at nineteen kreuzers the
+pound--bought snow-hens, too, at forty kreuzers each, and would never
+let her husband's gun be idle. When Candlemas came, and he could no
+longer shoot, then he worked in their fields; for we might not think
+it, but he, being a thrifty soul, had saved fifty gulden and bought
+some land. But oh the labors, the toils to which a Reinthaler was
+subjected! If his land lay on the mountain-side, he and his woman must
+slave and toil like beasts of burden, for what would be the help of
+horse or cow for riding, driving or ploughing on such steep, upright
+land? "The holy watch-angels help us!" she said. "Look up there and
+you will see, ladies, the truth of what I tell you."
+
+Pointing with her finger, she drew our attention to the small figure
+of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet above
+us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a triangle
+of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out the
+figures of two women helping him.
+
+"That's Seppl Mahlgruben and his daughters cutting down their green
+oats, too tardy to ripen. Some years since Moidel, the eldest girl,
+working on that precise point, knelt one inch too far over the
+precipice and was hurled into eternity, where a better fortune, I pray
+God, awaited her than the cruel trials of Reinthal."
+
+Moidel told us afterward that she thought our informant took too
+gloomy a view, probably occasioned by "her stitching pains." Still,
+she owned to its being a toilsome, perilous life in every season of
+the year save summer.
+
+In a broad sylvan meadow at the end of the narrow defile, within sound
+of the chief waterfall, we had the joy of seeing again the rest of our
+party, who had made an afternoon excursion thither to meet us. At a
+quiet, rural little inn just below, with an outside gallery possessing
+a view of the still, deep gorge in front and softer meadows beyond,
+kind hearts had already ordered coffee and rolls for nine. All were
+unanimous, however, that the ample supply was sufficient for ten,
+and the good woman of Rein was pressed to enter and partake. This she
+gratefully declined, adding, however, that it would be friendly and
+helpful of us to allow her to drink a cup of coffee there at six in
+morning on her return journey to Rein. Not that she had expected the
+least attention to be offered her, and hoped that it was not intended
+as a different mode of payment for her carrying a lady's handbag.
+Although we had felt that one good turn deserved another, we made her
+mind easy on that score, and she went tripping forward.
+
+For us there was still no hurry. The evening sky was brilliantly
+clear, the mountain-summits and dark fir woods shone forth a burnished
+gold, so that it seemed almost a sin to dive into the deep shadows of
+the valley below. Besides, the inn possessed some beehive sheds, and
+a view beyond which must not escape the pencil of the artists, who
+busily sketched whilst the others rested, enjoying the great crimson
+bars of sunset drawn across the dewy valley to the rippling sound of a
+mad, merry little mill-brook.
+
+How much sympathy and respect has been afforded in all ages and climes
+to those serviceable creatures, bees!
+
+  The little citizens create,
+  And waxen cities build.
+
+Unlike Virgil, the good Tyrolese, however, would call them monks
+and nuns dwelling in cells, rather than "citizens." Formerly they
+delighted in erecting the most ornamental dwellings which they could
+devise for them, helping them in their constant toil by planting balmy
+thyme and other sweet honey-yielding flowers around the hives. These
+were constructed of wood, gayly painted with holy monograms and
+devices to add a blessing and security to the provident labors of the
+little inmates. They were, in fact, _beatified bees_, who had to be
+solemnly invited to attend the death mass when the owner died, else
+they would fly away, refusing to stay. If a swarm of bees hung to a
+house, it was simply as a warning that fire would break out there.
+
+The beehives at this little inn still stood fresh, compact, with
+flowers blooming around them, the kindly woman evidently taking great
+pride in her bees. This, however, is not always the case. The grand
+beehives, like the grand old halls and castles of the Tyrol, are
+falling into decay: in both instances the paintings on the walls are
+peeling off or growing indistinct; the present generation has either
+lost its love for honey or much of its reverence for the bees--a fact
+difficult to define amongst a people with almost credulous veneration
+and intense belief in old customs. Still, much of the freshness and
+simplicity of the peasants is passing away with the discarding of
+their picturesque costumes.
+
+As a certain endurable routine had been arrived at within the walls
+of the Elephant, we agreed, before retiring to rest, to remain still
+several days there, availing ourselves of the splendid weather to
+explore more thoroughly the beautiful, varied neighborhood of Taufers.
+
+But, alas! the clear brilliant air and the deep rosy sunset had
+deceived us. The next morning mists and clouds obstructed the
+view, finally dissolving into a pitiless downfall, that detained us
+prisoners in the house, which was silent as the grave but for the rain
+steadily pattering against the casements.
+
+Weary of the wet and without occupation, our disengaged minds,
+wandering out into the mist and rain, dreamily contemplated a slow
+band of pilgrims defiling along the distant hillside. Had the day
+been bright and clear, we should have seen them as sheaves of corn or
+clover stuck to dry upon light stakes with branching arms, the upper
+bundle being placed aslant to act as shelter to the rest. As it was,
+however, in the plashing rain it required no effort to believe them
+tired, defenceless pilgrims ever wandering on. Some despondingly beat
+their arms upon their breasts, others, heavy and exhausted, fell upon
+their knees; here a woman defended her infant from the biting blast,
+there an old man with rugged hair looked mournfully backward; but
+these were only a few amongst the endless figures of the tragic band,
+on a long, unceasing march.
+
+Everywhere in the Tyrol, especially in the gloaming, whether in Alpine
+meadow or arable land of the valley, such weird companies may be seen.
+Bands of Indians, societies of cowled monks, ancient Italians fleeing
+from a buried city, wandering Israelites,--such and many others are
+the shapes which these drying sheaves of corn, hay or clover assume,
+all combining to act as one vast funeral procession of the summer that
+is no more.
+
+[Illustration: A PROCESSION.]
+
+In the afternoon a different company from these natural objects in the
+distance came to occupy our minds for the time being. Gradually the up
+stairs sitting-room, which we had foolishly perhaps imagined reserved
+for our party of nine, became invaded by priests in long coats down
+to their heels and muddy top-boots. We, the new-comers from the
+mountains, now learnt that this was the daily occurrence, and really
+the most unpleasant feature of the house, where the landlord and
+landlady remained as sleepy and unimpressionable as ever. We were
+soon, in fact, obliged to vacate the room, driven out not only by
+the fumes of bad tobacco, but by the unsatisfactory stare which
+was leveled at each intruder. The kellnerin, generally a slow,
+incommunicative mortal, now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a
+flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a
+mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These
+were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom
+it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid
+wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not have
+been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an apparent
+falling away from the singularly bright example which a good man, born
+only ten minutes from the Elephant, in the village of Muehlen, had once
+set them.
+
+The priest Michael Feichter, at his death in 1832 the head of the
+clerical seminary at Brixen, became for a time, through his extreme
+goodness and grace, the unseen regenerator of the Church in the Tyrol.
+A simple, guileless man, with intense love and cheerfulness, he acted
+as if God his friend were ever by his side. The entire Bible, which he
+had chiefly studied on his knees, he knew literally by heart. Birds,
+flowers and stones gave him subjects for stirring sermons, and his
+evening conversations with his pupils were fraught with the most
+beneficent consequences through his intense sympathy and the power he
+unwittingly possessed of diving deep into the conscience. Sorrows were
+met invariably by him with a cheerful "Dominus providebit" or "parcat
+Deus." Cheating and deceit pained him greatly, and he therefore
+rejoiced to become acquainted with honest Jews, conscientious
+officials and religious soldiers. Thoughts of wealth and station never
+troubled him. He walked like a child through the world. When unable to
+wear his scholastic gown he moved about, his serene face beaming with
+cheerful urbanity from under the shadow of a broad-brimmed cocked hat,
+his pride and delight, as it spared him both sunshade and umbrella.
+His old coat of an antique cut still bore on the under side of a flap
+the dyer's mark. His waistcoat and stockings were of black knitted
+wool. On festive occasions, however, he fastened to the back of
+his coat collar a fluttering band denoting his doctorate. There was
+something humorous in his appearance: he knew it and laughed at it,
+and yet, says one of his pupils, "though we joined in the laugh, his
+whole person and demeanor touched us deeply: we knew that he was not
+of this world."
+
+Was it strange that we felt a great discrepancy between the memory of
+this guileless man and some of the self-indulgent priests, once his
+pupils, in the upper stube?
+
+The next day, the rain promising still to detain us prisoners, Moidel,
+fearing that her important services must be missed at the Hof, bravely
+defied wet and mud and tramped resolutely home. In the afternoon,
+utterly tired out, we too determined to shift our quarters to
+Edelsheim, and, engaging a large jolting vehicle, were borne through
+mire, rain and mist from the Elephant to the Hof.
+
+Long before we reached the door we saw cheerful lights gleaming from
+the long rows of windows. Anton, Moidel, the aunt, Uncle Johann were
+at the door to receive us and our belongings. They felt sure, somehow,
+that we should come.
+
+The floors of our rooms had been scrubbed white as snow in our
+absence, but we must not hesitate to enter with our damp shoes. Were
+not the rooms our own? Letters and newspapers were carefully laid
+according to their various directions, and with flowers and dainty
+dishes covered the supper-table. Moro, the good house-dog, stood by
+our chairs or caressed the hand of his favorite, E----. We felt that
+we had come home--to our home in the Tyrol.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED]
+
+
+
+
+COLORADO AND THE SOUTH PARK.
+
+
+On the 15th of August, 1871, two brothers and a sister--Sepia, an
+artist, Levell, an engineer, and Scribe, who is the narrator--left
+Chicago by the North-western Railroad, bound for Denver in Colorado,
+about eleven hundred miles west. The first day we were climbing the
+gradual ascent from the Lakes to the Mississippi, which we crossed
+at 4.30 P.M., at Clinton. The thirty years which had elapsed since I
+first traversed this region had changed it from wild, unbroken
+prairie to a well-cultivated country, full of corn-fields, cattle and
+flourishing towns. Then I traveled in a wagon four miles an hour,
+and had to find my own meat in the shape of a deer from the grove, a
+grouse from the prairie or a duck from the river. Now we rushed across
+the State in six hours, stopping fifteen minutes for dinner in a fine
+brick hotel, metropolitan in charges, if not in fare. In 1840, when
+we arrived at the great river, we waited two or three hours for the
+ferry-boat, and finally had to cross in a "dug-out," which seemed but
+a frail vessel to stem the rapid currents and whirling eddies of the
+Mississippi. Now we crossed upon a railroad bridge of iron, which cost
+more money than all Iowa contained in 1840. Still, I fancy that the
+first method of traveling was the more interesting.
+
+Through the still summer afternoon we rushed on over the rolling
+prairies of Iowa, dotted with towns and villages and covered with
+great corn- and wheat-farms. Here in 1840 was absolute wilderness:
+we made our hunting-camp seventy-five miles west of the river, and
+we were twenty miles away from any white settler. Wolves howled and
+panthers screamed around our camp, we lived upon elk and deer meat,
+and our only visitors in two weeks were some Sac and Fox Indians, who
+disapproved of our intrusion upon their hunting-grounds.
+
+At 9 A.M. on the 16th we arrived at Council Bluffs, and crossed
+the turbid and furious Missouri in a steam ferry-boat to Omaha in
+Nebraska. For many years Council Bluffs was one of the remotest
+military posts: to go there was to be banished from the world. Now
+it is a town of ten thousand inhabitants, struggling to overtake its
+rival on the other bank, Omaha, which has sixteen thousand.
+
+Here our baggage was rechecked for Denver, for at Omaha begins the
+Union Pacific Railroad. A great road it is, and great are its charges.
+On the North-western, as on most others, the charge is about four
+cents per mile, but the Union Pacific, to which corporation Congress
+gave the usual land-grant, and more than enough money to build the
+road, cannot afford to carry you for less than ten. This may arise
+from the custom which has prevailed of giving free passes to all
+Congressmen, governors, editors and other privileged classes, so that,
+half the passengers paying nothing, the others have to pay double. Not
+only are the fares high, but you are charged for extra baggage. Like
+the elephant, who can drag a cannon or pick up a pin, this great
+corporation is able to give free passes to a whole legislature or to
+charge me twenty-five cents for five pounds of extra baggage.
+
+From Nebraska into Wyoming, and we are nearly out of the United
+States, though the old flag still flies over us. The people here
+talk about going to the "States." All the region hereabouts, from the
+middle of Nebraska, lies in what used to be called by the French _Les
+Mauvaises Terres_, or "Bad Lands," and was eloquently described by
+Irving in _Astoria_ as the Great American Desert. "This region,"
+he writes, "resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, and
+spreads forth into undulating and treeless plains and desolate sandy
+wastes, which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient
+floor of the ocean countless ages ago, when its primeval waves beat
+against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. It is a land where
+no man permanently abides, for in certain seasons of the year there is
+no food either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and
+withered, the streams are dried up, the buffalo, the elk and the
+deer have wandered to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast,
+uninhabited solitude."
+
+But this "land where no man permanently abides" is rapidly being
+settled, and is found to be rendered very fertile by the simple
+process of irrigation, which costs less than the manuring of Eastern
+farms. So the Great American Desert recedes before the immigrant, and,
+like the noble savage, is found to be a myth.
+
+On the railroad midway between Cheyenne and Denver lies the new town
+of Greeley. Although not on the maps in 1870, it now contains fifteen
+hundred inhabitants, forty or fifty stores, six hotels, churches,
+schools, and all the apparatus of civilization. This aspiring town,
+4779 feet above the sea-level, is an example of those colony towns
+so successful in the West, and on which we must depend for rebuilding
+society in the South. Greeley is surrounded by fertile farms,
+and every city lot looks fresh and green: all this is effected by
+irrigation. Two canals have been dug from the head-waters of the
+Platte--one twenty-six miles long, which will water fifty thousand
+acres; the other ten miles long, to furnish water for the town and
+five thousand acres. The prairie where it is not irrigated now, in
+midsummer, looks burned up and covered with a parched herbage, which,
+however unpromising to the eye, is really good sweet hay, dried and
+preserved by the hand of Nature for the buffalo and antelope, and now
+cropped by the flocks and herds of the white man.
+
+Denver, the capital of the Territory, contains about eight thousand
+inhabitants. It is a true specimen of a Western town which fully
+believes in itself, and blows a loud trumpet from its elevation of
+five thousand feet. It was said of old "that the meek shall inherit
+the earth," but it was not by _that_ quality that the Denverites
+obtained their location. Here are plenty of hotels, three banks and
+a mint: five railroads centre here, bringing in ten thousand tons of
+freight per month. Denver has schools and churches in satisfactory
+numbers, and her merchants sell ten millions of dollars' worth of
+goods per annum. Considering that the place was only settled in 1858,
+and has in these fifteen years been destroyed both by fire and water,
+and almost starved by an Indian blockade, it must be admitted to be a
+pretty smart specimen of a Western city.
+
+We ride in a 'bus, city fashion, to the Broadwell House, a
+fatigued-looking structure of the earlier period, but probably no
+worse than the others. Directly we begin to plan an excursion to the
+South Park, seventy-five miles distant, and going out to look for
+wagon and horses, we catch our first sight of the Rocky Mountains, a
+line of dim, misty heights, with the more pronounced outline of the
+foot-hills beneath. We engage a strong covered wagon, with a good pair
+of horses and a driver, the latter only seventeen years old, but owner
+of the team, and carrying himself man-fashion, with the precocity of
+the Western youth. The wagon is brought to the hotel and loaded, so
+as to be ready for an early start in the morning: we have a tent and
+camp-equipage, with gun and fishing-rods for Levell and Scribe, and
+the sketching-gear belonging to Sepia.
+
+So on the 18th, at 8 A.M., we drive over the bridge which crosses
+Cherry Creek, and then cross six miles of uninhabited prairie, seamed
+with gulches, and brown with withered herbage and cactus--no verdure
+except along the canals, where several species of _Artemisia_ and a
+prickly poppy with a large white flower grow profusely. We then begin
+to mount the bare foot-hills, among which are curious masses of red
+rock as large as city churches, and washed by the storms of ages into
+various fantastic forms. We then enter a ravine or canon through which
+flows Bear Creek, a tributary of the Platte.
+
+Along Bear Creek are ranches where good crops of wheat are raised, and
+butter and milk made for the Denver market. The grass in this region
+makes the most delicious butter; indeed, I may say that I never tasted
+poor butter in Colorado. In the month of August it is as sweet and
+fragrant as the very best of our June butter in the States. The time
+will come when the butter of Colorado will be sent to the Atlantic
+cities: at present there is no surplus made.
+
+We now began to ascend Bear Mountain by a road cut along its side: it
+was smooth and easy of ascent, but only wide enough for one carriage,
+with a precipice of several hundred feet on either side, so that
+we shuddered to think of the consequences of our meeting a wagon.
+Happily, we met with none, although we overtook one, and had to keep
+behind it till we reached the summit. Then down the other side to a
+strip of bottom-land on a creek, where we camped for the night, having
+come twenty miles from Denver.
+
+_August_ 19. Rose at five and breakfasted on fried pork, corn bread
+and coffee. Started at ten, and drove fourteen miles to Omaha Ranch;
+then to St. Louis Ranch, six miles, Roland's Ranch, five miles, and
+Bailey's, five miles, on the North Fork of the South Fork of the
+Platte. The weather was fine, and the air beautifully clear and
+bracing. The road wound among the mountains, up a rocky ravine, down a
+wooded canon, then through little parks, surrounded by high hills and
+set with magnificent sugar pines, and carpeted with fresh grass and
+abundant flowers. In the ravines and on the mountain-sides the road
+was narrow, but we were lucky and met nothing, although we frequently
+overtook the immense wagons drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, and
+driven by the most ferocious-looking teamsters whom I have ever seen,
+brandishing enormous whips, which crack like rifle-shots in the woods.
+We found, however, that, being civilly entreated, they would always
+turn out of the road to let us pass. We were now at an elevation of
+probably six thousand feet, having been constantly ascending since we
+left Denver; and this evening we rose still higher, having climbed a
+long mountain which overlooked the head-waters of the Platte.
+
+Our last descent of fifteen hundred feet in three miles brought us to
+the neat log tavern kept by W.L. Bailey, where we found a supper of
+trout just from the river, together with mountain-raspberries and
+delicious cream, and clean, comfortable beds. When we looked out next
+morning everything appeared so pleasant in this sheltered valley, and
+the house was so comfortable, that we determined to stay here a day
+and enjoy some sketching and fishing. Sepia took her pencils and
+ascended the hill behind the house, and we others got out our rods and
+followed the example set us by Simon Peter.
+
+The Platte, which ran through the meadow about a quarter of a mile
+away, was a brown, shallow stream, twenty feet wide, fretting over a
+rocky bed, with little pools and rapids which had a promising look; so
+we looped on a red and a brown hackle and began to cast. Levell walked
+down stream about a quarter of a mile before he began, so as to leave
+a piece of water for the Scribe. The sun shone very bright and hot,
+and only a few small trout answered my invitations. They were darker
+and less brilliant in color than our _Salmo fontinalis_, and were, I
+think, _Salmo Lewisii_, which inhabits these waters. The valley was
+about half a mile wide, and shut in on each side by mountains of red
+granite, crowned with pines. Bailey's people were making hay in the
+valley, and I sat down on a fragrant haycock to await the return of
+my companion. Presently I observed a horseman coming up the valley:
+he was a hunter, followed by a couple of hounds, with the carcass of a
+mountain-sheep, or bighorn (_Ovis montana_), on the saddle in front
+of him. He told me he had killed it on the mountain behind us, and was
+taking it to Bailey's for sale. It was an animal something in color
+like a deer, and about as heavy, though shorter in the leg, with very
+large curved horns, like those of a ram. He said they were numerous
+in these mountains, and he had killed six of them in a day, but had to
+lower them down the precipices with a lariat, which was hard work.
+I asked if the story was true that these creatures would throw
+themselves from high rocks, and, turning over in the air, pitch upon
+their horns with safety. He said he had hunted them many years, but
+never saw that performance. Being asked if he thought they could do
+it, he replied that he reckoned they _could_, but would be smashed
+if they did. Being interrogated on the subject of grizzly bears, he
+replied that there _were_ grizzlies hereabouts, but that he never
+hunted them: he had no use for grizzlies.
+
+In a couple of hours Levell returned, having fished the stream for a
+mile or more: he had got about twenty small trout. We found that
+Sepia had been more successful than ourselves, for she had made some
+effective water-color sketches of the scenery.
+
+_Aug_. 21. We started this morning at seven, and drove up the Platte
+Valley five miles to Slaight's, through a very picturesque region.
+Passed some heavy wagons bound to the mines, and met the mail-stage
+coming down the valley from Fairplay, with four horses at a gallop: we
+were luckily able to draw off and let them pass, which they did in
+a cloud of dust, through which could be dimly seen the long-bearded,
+red-shirted miners. A saw-mill at Slaight's, with two houses and some
+fields of oats. Then eight miles to Heffron's, at the forks of the
+river, where there are a post-office and one house. Two miles beyond
+we stopped to feed our horses in a lovely park-like bit of open forest
+of sugar pines. This species resembles the yellow pine of the Southern
+States, with the same rich purple trunk and widespreading branches.
+Many of them had been girdled by the Indians to obtain the sweet inner
+bark, which is a favorite luxury of the Utes. We see very few birds in
+these mountains, which are too wild for the warblers and insect-eating
+birds. We met with the mountain-grouse, a bird of about the size and
+color of _Tetrao cupido_, and one or two hawks. We also saw in the
+bushes at the roadside the mountain-rabbit (_Lepus artemisia_), which
+from its large size we at first mistook for a fawn. From Heffron's we
+continue to ascend for six miles, till just beyond a small lake we got
+the first view of the Park: it lay before us like a vast basin, some
+hundreds of feet below, surrounded with a rim of high mountains.
+
+The Park itself is 9842 feet above the sea-level, or half as high
+again as Mount Washington. The surrounding rim is some two thousand
+feet higher, while in the distance, north, south and west, may be seen
+the snowy summits, fourteen thousand feet high, of Gray's Peak, Pike's
+Peak, Mount Lincoln, and
+
+  Other Titans, without muse or name.
+
+The South Park is sixty miles long and thirty wide, with a surface
+like a rolling prairie, and contains hills, groves, lakes and streams
+in beautiful variety. It formerly abounded with buffalo and other
+game, and was a favorite winter hunting-ground of the Indians and the
+white trappers, but since the great influx of miners the buffaloes
+have mostly disappeared. Such, however, is the excellence of the
+pasture that great herds of cattle are driven up here to feed during
+the summer. Several towns and villages have sprung up around the mines
+in this vicinity, such as Hamilton, Fairplay and Tarryall, to which a
+stage-coach runs three times a week from Denver.
+
+In our old atlases, forty years ago, we used to see the Rocky
+Mountains laid down as a great central chain or back-bone of the
+continent; but they are rather a congeries of groups scattered over
+an area of six hundred miles in width and a thousand miles long: among
+them are hundreds of these parks, from a few acres in extent to the
+size of the State of Massachusetts. These mountains differ so entirely
+from those usually visited and described by travelers, the Alps, the
+Scottish Highlands and the White Mountains, that one can scarcely
+believe that this warm air and rich vegetation exist ten thousand feet
+above the sea. In climate the Colorado mountains approach more nearly
+to the Andes, where the snow-line varies from fourteen thousand to
+seventeen thousand feet. Here snow begins at twelve thousand feet,
+and increases in quantity to the extreme height of the tallest peaks,
+about fourteen thousand two hundred and fifty feet, though even these
+are often bare in August. In these parks the cattle live without
+shelter in winter, and the timber is large and plentiful at eleven
+thousand feet elevation. Glaciers are wanting, but instead we have the
+rich vegetation, the wide range of mountains, the pure, dry and balmy
+atmosphere, and a variety, a depth and a softness of color which can
+hardly be equaled on earth.
+
+Having stopped an hour to enjoy the view from the brow of the mountain
+which forms the rim of the Park, we were overtaken by one of the
+sudden rains which occur here, and had to drive six miles along the
+level bottom, till, crossing a brook, we found ourselves at sunset
+near a large log cabin, where we were glad to be allowed to lie down
+on the floor under shelter.
+
+It was occupied by some young people named McLaughlin, two sisters and
+a brother, who had come up from the Plains, where their family lived,
+with a herd of cattle, from the milk of which the girls made one
+hundred pounds of butter per week, for which they got fifty cents a
+pound in the mines. In the fall they returned home, leaving the cattle
+for the winter in certain sheltered regions called "the range." They
+were stout, healthy young women, who did not fear to stay here all
+alone for days at a time while their brother was galloping about the
+Park on his broncho after his cattle. They did not keep tavern, but
+were often obliged to take in benighted travelers like ourselves, to
+whom they gave the shelter of their roof and the privilege of cooking
+at their stove. The house was about forty by twenty feet, all in one
+room, though one end was parted off by blankets, behind which they
+admitted the lady of our party. Sometimes they were visited by Utes,
+who are not unfriendly, though, like most Indians, they are audacious
+beggars. "They try to scare us sometimes," said Jane: "they tell us,
+'Bimeby Utes get all this country--then you my squaw,' but we don't
+scare worth a cent." Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles
+away, who is the wife of Squire Lechner, innkeeper and justice of the
+peace.
+
+_Aug_. 23. Started this morning at eleven for Lechner's. Passed some
+deserted mining-camps, where the surface had been seamed and scarred
+by the diggers; then across a creek, where we saw ducks and a
+red-tailed hawk. Squire Lechner has a large log tavern on the brow of
+a hill: he was absent, but his wife took us in. Sepia went on the hill
+to sketch, and we others drove off in search of a trout-brook of which
+we heard flattering accounts. It was a very pretty stream, winding
+through the prairie with the gentle murmur so loved by the angler and
+poet, and lacked nothing but fish to make it perfect. It was rendered
+somewhat turbid by the late rains, so that if the trout were there
+they could not see our flies. We are told that trout are plenty on the
+other side of the mountains. "Go to the Arkansas," they say, "and you
+will find big ones."
+
+  Man never is, but always to be, blest.
+
+We found Mrs. Lechner a friendly person, like her sisters. She told us
+that before her marriage her father kept this tavern. In 1864, most of
+the men being away in the Union army, they found the house one morning
+surrounded by a band of mounted rebels, who had come up from
+Texas through New Mexico to make a raid on the mines. They were a
+savage-looking band, about fifty in number, and were led by a man who
+had formerly worked for her father, and whom she recognized. They took
+what money and gold-dust was in the house, and seized all the
+best horses about the place; but when she saw them taking away her
+saddle-pony, she cried out, "Oh, Tom Smith! I didn't think you was
+that mean, to rob me of my pony! Wasn't you always well treated here?"
+He seemed to relent at this appeal, and not only restored her horse,
+but two of her father's also. The people collected and pursued the
+robbers, most of whom were captured or killed, but the leader escaped.
+Mrs. Lechner said she was glad he got away. "Tom must have had some
+good in him or he wouldn't have given me back my pony."
+
+_Aug_. 24. Rose this morning at daybreak, and enjoyed the sight of
+a sunrise among these snowy peaks. Nothing can surpass the delicate
+tints of rose-color, silver gray, gold and purple which suffuse these
+summits in early morning. I called Sepia to sketch them, but what
+human colors can reproduce such glories? We left at seven, and drove
+to Bailey's, thirty-five miles, before sunset, stopping an hour at
+noon. On the top of a mountain, about 4 P.M., we were caught in a
+furious squall, attended with rain, snow and hail, with terrific
+thunder and lightning, which struck a tree close by. And here I must
+pay my tribute to the admirable qualities of our horses--steady,
+prompt and courageous; no mountain too steep for them to climb, no
+precipice too abrupt to descend; and they stood the pelting of that
+pitiless storm like four-legged philosophers. We found Bailey's house
+apparently full, but they made room for us. A handsome buggy and pair
+arrived soon after, from which descended a well-dressed gentleman
+and lady, whom we found to be the superintendent of a silver-mine
+at Hamilton and his wife. They told us that there was a very good
+boarding-house at that place, with fine scenery all around, which we
+ought to have seen. But in truth we had as much fine scenery as we
+could contain: we were saturated with it, and a few mountains more
+would have been wasted.
+
+_Aug_. 25. A fine clear morning, and we started early, hoping to drive
+through to Denver, forty-five miles, but in about fifteen miles one of
+the horses lost a shoe, which it was thought necessary to replace,
+the road being rocky; so we went slowly to the junction, where was
+a blacksmith. He proved to be a mixture of tavern-keeper, farmer and
+blacksmith, and it was considered a favor to be shod by a man of such
+various talents. Deliberately he searched for a shoe: that found, he
+looked for the hammer. Who had seen the hammer? It was remembered that
+little Johnny had been playing with it. Johnny was looked for, and
+finally brought, but was unable or unwilling to find the tool so
+essential to our progress. "Look for it, Johnny," said the blacksmith;
+and he looked, but to no purpose. After waiting an hour for reason to
+dawn upon the mind of this infant, the blacksmith put on the shoe with
+the help of a hatchet, and we proceeded; but so much time had been
+lost night overtook us twelve miles from Denver. We tried at two
+taverns, which were full of teamsters, and we were obliged to diverge
+three miles down Bear's Creek Canon to the house of Strauss. The
+good woman, after a mild protest, admitted us and gave us a supper
+of venison, with good beds. Strauss has a fine ranch along the creek,
+where he raises forty bushels of wheat to the acre, and his wife milks
+thirty-six cows and makes two hundred pounds of butter at a churning.
+Besides this, she cultivates a flower-garden, with many varieties of
+bloom, irrigated by a ditch from the creek.
+
+Arrived at Denver at noon of the 26th, and found the mercury at 90 deg.,
+and were glad to leave the crowded hotel next morning for Chicago.
+
+I have only described what we actually saw, which was but a small part
+of the wonders and delights of Colorado. We were humble travelers,
+unattached to any party of Congressmen or of railroad potentates: we
+were not ushered into the Garden of the Gods, assisted up Gray's Park,
+or introduced to the Petrified Forest; but we saw enough of the new
+and beautiful to give us lasting recollections of Colorado and the
+South Park.
+
+S.C. CLARKE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY.
+
+
+"Do you know anything about this 'grange' business?" asked a lady
+from the city the other day; and she added, "I can hardly take up a
+magazine or newspaper without falling on the words 'grange,' 'Patrons
+of Husbandry,' 'farmers' movement,' and all that."
+
+"Why, I am a Patron myself," I replied.
+
+"What! you have a _grange_ here in this little New Jersey sandbank?"
+she exclaimed incredulously, and plied me with a storm of questions.
+
+It was a quiet, rainy evening, and I devoted the whole of it to
+answering her queries, reading documents from our head-quarters,
+and quoting Mr. Adams's treatise on the _Railroad Systems_ and other
+authorities to explain the present war between producers and carriers;
+and, believing that there are many others who, like my friend, are
+disposed to look into this "grange business," I will give them the
+substance of our conversation. A great deal of that which has found
+its way into the press touching our order is more characterized by
+confidence than correctness of statement. In a late magazine article
+it is stated that the organization known as the _Patrons of Husbandry_
+"was originally borrowed from an association which for many years
+had maintained a feeble existence in a community of Scotch farmers in
+North Carolina." This statement has no foundation in fact. The
+order is not the out-growth directly, or even indirectly, of any
+pre-existing organization. It is the result, so far as it is possible
+to trace impulses to their source, of the suggestion of a lady,
+communicated some years ago to Mr. O.H. Kelley, the present secretary
+of the National Grange, and the person who has done more than any
+other to establish the order as it exists to-day. The suggestion was
+in substance this: Why cannot the farmers protect themselves by a
+national organization, as do other trades and professions? Mr. Kelley
+seized the idea with enthusiasm, worked out the plan of a secret
+society, and traveled over the country seeking to arouse the
+farmers to organize for their mutual advantage. He met with constant
+disappointment at first, and his family and friends implored him to
+abandon a project which threatened to absorb every cent he possessed,
+as it did all his time and energy. But he persevered against every
+discouragement, and to-day he may well be proud of the results of his
+devotion.
+
+The first grange was organized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and called the
+"North Star Grange," and it is one of the most efficient subordinate
+granges in the country to this day. Another was organized in
+Washington, one in Fredonia, New York, one in Ohio, another in
+Illinois, and a few others during the same year in different places.
+This was very nearly six years ago. Since that time they have been
+constantly increasing--at first slowly, then with a rapidity unheard
+of in the history of secret or any other organizations in this country
+or the world. We can hardly count three years since the order fairly
+began to grow, and now the granges are numbered by the thousand. Ten
+States on the twenty-fifth of June last had over a hundred granges,
+and seven of these between two and five hundred. Iowa to-day has
+seventeen hundred and ten, and others in process of organization.
+Thirty-one of the States and Territories had subordinate or both
+subordinate and State granges, according to the June returns. There
+were eight at that date in Canada, twenty-three in Vermont, five in
+New York State, three in New Jersey, two in Pennsylvania, and one in
+Massachusetts. Up to this time there has been little effort made to
+extend the organization into the Eastern and Middle States, but at
+present deputies from the National Grange are being sent to these
+"benighted regions," and the leaven is working finely. To show how
+rapidly the order is extending it will be only necessary to add that
+seven hundred and one charters for new granges were issued during the
+single month of May.
+
+The discussion of party politics is excluded from the order by common
+consent, as well as by the terms of its constitution. How much this
+one wise provision tends to preserve harmony among those of different
+sects and political parties needs no comment. We know that on one
+or both of these rocks most great popular organizations have been
+wrecked. So far, the Patrons of Husbandry have worked together with
+great harmony, and the slight discords have been nothing more than the
+surface ripples on a great onward-setting current. Men and women
+are received on terms of absolute equality throughout all the seven
+degrees. Four are degrees conferred in subordinate granges, and the
+higher in the State granges or in the National Grange--the seventh
+in the latter only, constituting a national senate and court of
+impeachment, and having charge also of the secret work of the order.
+All officers are chosen by ballot--those of the National Grange
+for three years, of State granges for two years, and of subordinate
+granges for one year. The names of the first four degrees are
+respectively, for men and women, Laborer and Maid, Cultivator and
+Shepherdess, Harvester and Gleaner, Husbandman and Matron; and the
+initiations are not only exceedingly impressive and beautiful, but
+really instructive. It may also be added that they are never tedious,
+which will be agreeable information to those who, in entering secret
+societies, have been dragged through long, meaningless rigmaroles,
+conscious of being made a spectacle of, and preserving their temper
+only by the most strenuous efforts.
+
+Into the initiations of the order of the Patrons there enter as
+machinery or symbols music and song, the expression of exalted
+sentiments, ceremonies replete, without exception, with significance
+and instruction, together with fruits and grains and flowers and
+simple feasts. Two fundamental objects of the organization are social
+and intellectual culture. The widespread realization of the importance
+of these among the people is the first great step toward securing
+them, and the first unmistakable sign that such step has already been
+taken is the rebelling against pure drudgery. Said the Master of the
+National Grange, Mr. Dudley W. Adams, in a late address: "It will
+doubtless be a matter of surprise to them" (editors, lawyers,
+politicians, etc.) "to learn that farmers may possibly entertain
+some wish to enjoy life, and have some other object in living besides
+everlasting hard work and accumulating a few paltry dollars by coining
+them from their own life-blood and stamping them with the sighs of
+weary children and worn wives. What we want in agriculture is a
+new Declaration of Independence. We must do something to dispel old
+prejudices and beat down old notions. That the farmer is a mere animal
+to labor from morning till eve, and into the night, is an ancient but
+abominable heresy."... "We have heard enough, ten times enough, about
+the 'hardened hand of honest toil,' the supreme glory of 'the sweating
+brow,' and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which covers
+a form bent with overwork."... "I tell you, my brother-workers of the
+soil, there is something worth living for besides hard work. We have
+heard enough of this professional blarney. Toil in itself is not
+necessarily glorious. To toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate
+broad acres, pile up treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at
+the same time bow and starve the god-like form, harden the hands,
+dwarf the immortal mind and alienate the children from the homestead,
+is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a
+brute."
+
+Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against
+drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that,
+while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no
+less degrading than pure idleness. To be sure, the sages in all times
+have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time
+to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted
+by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life
+in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable,
+be just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful
+in bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious
+portions of it never continued long at a time. To-day this fallacy is
+beginning to be generally recognized. Go into any farming district,
+and you will find that the farmer's sons who are regularly engaged in
+one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing, are
+great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are, in
+comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their address;
+and simply because, though their labor has been as unremitting, it has
+been far less monotonous. As a general rule, they go from one thing to
+another, and through a great variety of muscular exercises from hour
+to hour.
+
+It is no wonder, then, that the farmers' sons, to get rid of the
+terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling
+tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a
+third-class circus a fortunate escape. The reason why our country
+youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less
+virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has
+opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of
+as possibilities in the olden time. Not even the combination of
+attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and
+reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of grange
+halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of degrees,
+the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep young men on
+the farm unless something is done to render the labor less monotonous
+and disagreeable.
+
+One of the Patrons during a late discussion of these questions
+predicted, from the growing intelligence of the people, and their
+better understanding of the possibilities of organization, that within
+a few years we shall see magnificent social palaces, something like
+the famous one at Guise, in many places in this country; and he went
+on to show how social and industrial life might be organized so as
+to secure the most complete liberty of the individual or family,
+magnificent educational advantanges, remunerative occupation and
+varied amusements for all, with perfect insurance against want for
+orphans, for the sick and the aged. Each palace was to be the centre
+of a great agricultural district exploited in the most scientific
+manner, and through the varied economies resulting from combination
+all the luxuries of industry and all the conditions for high culture
+were to be secured to all who were willing to labor even one-half
+the hours that the farmer now does. It was a glowing picture, and
+certainly very entertaining, whether a possibility of this, or, as one
+of the company suggested, of some happier planet than ours.
+
+But whatever dreams for the future may be entertained by some of the
+Patrons, it is certain that they have work directly at hand, and that
+they are grappling it with a will. The Iowa granges, through agents
+appointed from among their members, now purchase their machinery and
+farming implements direct from the manufacturer and by wholesale.
+That State saved half a million during 1872 in this way, and Missouri,
+through the executive committee of her State grange, has just
+completed a contract in St. Louis for the same purpose. All members
+of the granges are thus enabled to secure these articles at greatly
+reduced prices; and as there are over three hundred and fifty granges,
+with a larger membership than in many other States, this is a very
+important item.
+
+Now, in regard to the railroads, with which it is generally supposed
+the Patrons of Husbandry are in fierce conflict. Certainly, to the
+outside observer, the agriculturists of the South and West seem
+to have most grievous burdens to bear. It costs the price of three
+bushels of corn to carry one to the grain-marts by rail, and the whole
+world knows that they have been burning their three-year old crops as
+fuel in nearly all the Western States. Meanwhile, it seems clear that
+there is not too much corn raised, since a great famine has just swept
+over Persia, and others are threatening in different parts of the
+world.
+
+The present high rates of transportation were never anticipated by the
+farmer. If in the beginning some great route charged high rates for
+carrying, his dissatisfaction was soothed by the assurance that the
+road had cost an enormous outlay of capital, and that as soon as
+the company was partially reimbursed the rates would be lowered. The
+sequel generally proved that the rates went up instead of down, and
+the still angrier mood of the farmer was again quieted by a new hope:
+a great competing railroad line was projected, and finally finished.
+Competition would certainly bring down the prices. This was the
+reasonable way to expect relief. Competition always had that effect.
+Alas for the simple producer! He had borne his burdens long and
+patiently only to learn the truth of George Stevenson's pithy
+apothegm, that "where combination is possible competition is
+impossible." The two great companies combined, became consolidated
+into one, and, having their victim completely in their power, swindled
+him without pity and divided the spoils between them.
+
+The characteristic of the day is the tendency to consolidation. But
+nothing can prevent the people from fearing the results of great
+monopolies and "rings," or from organizing to circumvent their
+schemes. Those who make no calculation for the growing intelligence
+of industry are walking blindly. Never were the people so conscious of
+their power--never so fully aware that in this country the machinery
+for correcting abuses lies in the degree of concentration with which
+public opinion can be brought to bear in a given direction. Once let
+the people become fully aroused to the existence of an evil or abuse,
+and there is no interest nor combination of interests that can
+long hold out against them. The trouble heretofore has been the
+multiplicity of conflicting opinions everywhere disseminated, and the
+consequent difficulty of agreeing upon measures, and uniting a great
+number of people in their adoption for the accomplishment of certain
+ends. If we may rely upon the promise of the order of the Patrons of
+Husbandry, now slowly and surely sweeping toward the eastern shores of
+the country, and yet still widening and extending in the West, where
+it rose, we may hope that this is the great moving army of the people
+so long waited for, which is to work out the vexed problems of labor
+and capital by a sudden but peaceful revolution.
+
+The record of the vast work that the order of the Patrons has
+accomplished for its members exists at present in a detached and
+scattered form among the different granges, and in piles of yet unused
+documents at the national head-quarters. The full history of the
+movement is promised, and in good time will doubtless appear.
+
+Since the first part of this paper was written the Iowa granges have
+increased to over one thousand seven hundred and fifty. Twenty-nine
+new ones were organized during the week ending July 24. Over one-third
+of all the grain-elevators of the State are owned or controlled by
+the granges, which had, up to December last, shipped over five
+million bushels of grain to Chicago, besides cattle and hogs in vast
+quantities; and the reports received from these shipments show an
+increased profit to the producers of from ten to forty per cent.
+over that of the old "middlemen" system; and by the complete buying
+arrangements which the Western granges have effected it is calculated
+that the members save on an average one hundred dollars a year each.
+Large families find their expenses reduced by three or four hundred
+dollars annually, aside from amounts saved on sewing-machines, pianos,
+organs, reapers, mowers, corn-shellers and a hundred other costly
+articles; all of which any member of any grange can obtain to-day at
+a saving of from twenty-five to forty per cent. They are ordered in
+quantity from the manufacturers by the agents of the State granges of
+the West, and a single order even from a member of a new-formed
+grange in Vermont will be incorporated in the general State order. The
+granges of the Eastern and Middle States are as yet mostly engaged
+in the work of organizing, and have not yet realized the pecuniary
+advantages accruing to older granges. By this vast co-operative and
+entirely cash system all parties are well satisfied except certain
+unfortunate middlemen, who find their "occupation gone," and
+themselves obliged to become producers or to enter into the sale of
+the numerous small and low-priced articles not yet affected by the
+movement.
+
+MARIE ROWLAND.
+
+
+[It is desirable that an organization which is assuming such
+proportions and promising such results should be examined from every
+point of view, and the foregoing article, written from that of
+an enthusiastic member of the order, will, we may hope, assist in
+throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
+in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement
+has been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
+state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
+The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
+combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and agricultural
+implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very startling character;
+and if this can be attained at no greater cost or trouble to the
+individual "Patrons" than that of "decorating the granges" and taking
+part in the singing and the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage
+will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is
+to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of
+productions, should have become the _bete noire_ of the producers, are
+points on which more definite information would seem to be required.
+But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress,
+we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such
+announcements are calculated to inspire.--ED.]
+
+
+
+
+ON THE CHURCH STEPS.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+I had a busy week of it in New York--copying out instructions, taking
+notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day
+a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me:
+all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent
+the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side
+by side.
+
+I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would be
+the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
+raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
+separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the plan.
+"I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday's steamer: say yes, dear
+child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from here."
+
+I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped to be
+married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came "No,"
+simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my darling's graceful
+hand.
+
+Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would surely
+yield when she saw me faithful to my word.
+
+"I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed
+myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we
+were shutting up. We had worked late by gaslight, all the clerks had
+gone home long ago, and only the porter remained, half asleep on a
+chair in the hall.
+
+It was striking nine as I gathered up my bundle of papers and thrust
+them into a bag. I was rid of them for three days at least. "Bill, you
+may lock up now," I said, tapping the sleepy porter on the shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Munro, shure here's a card for yees," handing me a lady's
+card.
+
+"Who left it, Bill?" I hurriedly asked, taking it to the flaring
+gaslight on the stairway.
+
+"Two ladies in a carriage--an old 'un and a pretty young lady, shure.
+They charged me giv' it yees, and druv' off."
+
+"And why didn't you bring it in, you blockhead?" I shouted, for it
+was Bessie Stewart's card. On it was written in pencil: "Westminster
+Hotel. On our way through New York. Leave on the 8 train for the South
+to-night. Come up to dinner."
+
+The eight-o'clock train, and it was now striking nine!
+
+"Shure, Mr. Charles, you had said you was not to be disturbed on no
+account, and that I was to bring in no messages."
+
+"Did you tell those ladies that? What time were they here?"
+
+"About five o'clock--just after you had shut the dure, and the clerks
+was gone. Indeed, and they didn't wait for no reply, but hearin' you
+were in there, they druv' off the minute they give me the card. The
+pretty young lady didn't like the looks of our office, I reckon."
+
+It was of no use to storm at Bill. He had simply obeyed orders like
+a faithful machine. So, after a hot five minutes, I rushed up to the
+Westminster. Perhaps they had not gone. Bessie would know there was a
+mistake, and would wait for me.
+
+But they were gone. On the books of the hotel were registered in a
+clear hand, Bessie's hand, "Mrs. M. Antoinette Sloman and maid; Miss
+Bessie Stewart." They had arrived that afternoon, must have driven
+directly from the train to the office, and had dined, after waiting a
+little time for some one who did not come.
+
+"And where were they going?" I asked of the sympathetic clerk, who
+seemed interested.
+
+"Going South--I don't know where. The elder lady seemed delicate, and
+the young lady quite anxious that she should stay here to-night and go
+on in the morning. But no, she would go on to-night."
+
+I took the midnight train for Philadelphia. They would surely not go
+farther to-night if Mrs. Sloman seemed such an invalid.
+
+I scanned every hotel-book in vain. I walked the streets of the city,
+and all the long Sunday I haunted one or two churches that my memory
+suggested to me were among the probabilities for that day. They were
+either not in the city or most securely hid.
+
+And all this time there was a letter in the New York post-office
+waiting for me. I found it at my room when I went back to it on Monday
+noon.
+
+It ran as follows:
+
+  "WESTMINSTER HOTEL.
+
+  "Very sorry not to see you--Aunt
+  Sloman especially sorry; but she has
+  set her heart on going to Philadelphia
+  to-night. We shall stay at a private
+  house, a quiet boarding-house; for aunt
+  goes to consult Dr. R---- there, and
+  wishes to be very retired. I shall not
+  give you our address: as you sail so
+  soon, it would not be worth while to
+  come over. I will write you on the
+  other side.
+
+  B.S."
+
+Where's a Philadelphia directory? Where is this Dr. R----? I find him,
+sure enough--such a number Walnut street. Time is precious--Monday
+noon!
+
+"I'll transfer my berth to the Saturday steamer: that will do as well.
+Can't help it if they do scold at the office."
+
+To drive to the Cunard company's office and make the transfer took
+some little time, but was not this my wedding holiday? I sighed as I
+again took my seat in the car at Jersey City. On this golden Monday
+afternoon I should have been slowly coming down the Housatonic Valley,
+with my dear little wife beside me. Instead, the unfamiliar train, and
+the fat man at my side reading a campaign newspaper, and shaking his
+huge sides over some broad burlesque.
+
+The celebrated surgeon, Dr. R----, was not at home in answer to my
+ring on Monday evening.
+
+"How soon will he be in? I will wait."
+
+"He can see no patients to-night sir," said the man; "and he may not
+be home until midnight."
+
+"But I am an _im_patient," I might have urged, when a carriage dashed
+up to the door. A slight little man descended, and came slowly up the
+steps.
+
+"Dr. R----?" I said inquiringly.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Just one minute, doctor, if you please. I only want to get an address
+from you."
+
+He scanned me from head to foot: "Walk into my office, young man."
+
+I might have wondered at the brusqueness of his manner had I not
+caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantelshelf.
+Dusty and worn, and with a keen look of anxiety showing out of every
+feature, I should scarcely have recognized myself.
+
+I explained as collectedly as possible that I wanted the address of
+one of his patients, a dear old friend of mine, whom I had missed
+as she passed through New York, and that, as I was about to sail for
+Europe in a few days, I had rushed over to bid her good-bye. "Mrs.
+Antoinette Sloman, it is, doctor."
+
+The doctor eyed me keenly: he put out his hand to the little silver
+bell that stood on the table and tapped it sharply. The servant
+appeared at the door: "Let the carriage wait, James."
+
+Again the watchful, keen expression. Did he think me an escaped
+lunatic, or that I had an intent to rob the old lady? Apparently the
+scrutiny was satisfactory, for he took out a little black book from
+his pocket, and turning over the leaves, said, "Certainly, here it
+is--No. 30 Elm street, West Philadelphia."
+
+Over the river, then, again: no wonder I had not seen them in the
+Sunday's search.
+
+"I will take you over," said Dr. R----, replacing the book in his
+pocket again. "Mrs. Sloman is on my list. Wait till I eat a biscuit,
+and I'll drive you over in my carriage."
+
+Shrewd little man! thought I: if I am a convict or a lunatic with
+designs on Mrs. Sloman, he is going to be there to see.
+
+"Till he ate a biscuit?" I should think so. To his invitation, most
+courteously urged, that I should come and share his supper--"You've
+just come from the train, and you won't get back to your hotel for two
+hours, at least"--I yielded a ready acceptance, for I was really very
+hungry: I forget whether I had eaten anything all day.
+
+But the biscuit proved to be an elegant little supper served in
+glittering plate, and the doctor lounged over the tempting bivalves
+until I could scarce conceal my impatience.
+
+"Do you chance to know," he said carelessly, as at last we rose from
+the table and he flung his napkin down, "Mrs. Sloman's niece, Miss
+Stewart?"
+
+"Excellently well," I said smiling: "in fact, I believe I am engaged
+to be married to her."
+
+"My dear fellow," said the doctor, bursting out laughing, "I am
+delighted to hear it! Take my carriage and go. I saw you were a
+lawyer, and you looked anxious and hurried; and I made up my mind
+that you had come over to badger the old lady into making her will. I
+congratulate you with all my soul--and myself, too," he added, shaking
+my hand. "Only think! Had it not been for your frankness, I should
+have taken a five-mile ride to watch you and keep you from doing my
+patient an injury."
+
+The good doctor quite hurried me into the carriage in the effusion of
+his discovery; and I was soon rolling away in that luxurious vehicle
+over the bridge, and toward Bessie at last.
+
+I cannot record that interview in words, nor can I now set down any
+but the mere outline of our talk. My darling came down to meet me with
+a quick flush of joy that she did not try to conceal. She was natural,
+was herself, and only too glad, after the _contretemps_ in New York,
+to see me again. She pitied me as though I had been a tired child
+when I told her pathetically of my two journeys to Philadelphia, and
+laughed outright at my interview with Dr. R----.
+
+I was so sure of my ground. When I came to speak of the journey--_our_
+journey--I knew I should prevail. It was a deep wound, and she shrank
+from any talk about it. I had to be very gentle and tender before she
+would listen to me at all.
+
+But there was something else at work against me--what was
+it?--something that I could neither see nor divine. And it was not
+altogether made up of Aunt Sloman, I was sure.
+
+"I cannot leave her now, Charlie. Dr. R---- wishes her to remain in
+Philadelphia, so that he can watch her case. That settles it, Charlie:
+I must stay with her."
+
+What was there to be said? "Is there no one else, no one to take your
+place?"
+
+"Nobody; and I would not leave her even if there were."
+
+Still, I was unsatisfied. A feeling of uneasiness took possession of
+me. I seemed to read in Bessie's eyes that there was a thought between
+us hidden out of sight. There is no clairvoyant like a lover. I could
+see the shadow clearly enough, but whence, in her outer life, had the
+shadow come? _Between_ us, surely, it could not be. Even her anxiety
+for her aunt could not explain it: it was something concealed.
+
+When at last I had to leave her, "So to-morrow is your last day?" she
+said.
+
+"No, not the last. I have changed my passage to the Saturday steamer."
+
+The strange look came into her face again. Never before did blue eyes
+wear such a look of scrutiny.
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked laughingly as I looked straight into her
+eyes.
+
+"The Saturday steamer," she said musingly--"the Algeria, isn't it? I
+thought you were in a hurry?"
+
+"It was my only chance to have you," I explained, and apparently the
+argument was satisfactory enough.
+
+With the saucy little upward toss with which she always dismissed a
+subject, "Then it isn't good-bye to-night?" she said.
+
+"Yes, for two days. I shall run over again on Thursday."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The two days passed, and the Thursday, and the Friday's parting,
+harder for Bessie, as it seemed, than she had thought for. It was hard
+to raise her dear little head from my shoulder when the last moment
+came, and to rush down stairs to the cab, whose shivering horse and
+implacable driver seemed no bad emblem of destiny on that raw October
+morning.
+
+I was glad of the lowering sky as I stepped up the gangway to the
+ship's deck. "What might have been" went down the cabin stairs with
+me; and as I threw my wraps and knapsack into the double state-room I
+had chosen I felt like a widower.
+
+It was wonderful to me then, as I sat down on the side of the berth
+and looked around me, how the last two weeks had filled all the future
+with dreams. "I must have a genius for castle-building," I laughed.
+"Well, the reality is cold and empty enough. I'll go up on deck."
+
+On deck, among the piles of luggage, were various metal-covered trunks
+marked M----. I remember now watching them as they were stowed away.
+
+But it was with a curious shock, an hour after we had left the dock,
+that a turn in my solitary walk on deck brought me face to face with
+Fanny Meyrick.
+
+"You here?" she said. "I thought you had sailed in the Russia! Bessie
+told me you were to go then."
+
+"Did she know," I asked, "that _you_ were going by this steamer?"
+
+On my life, never was gallantry farther from my thoughts: my question
+concerned Bessie alone, but Fanny apparently took it as a compliment,
+and looked up gayly: "Oh yes: that was fixed months ago. I told her
+about it at Lenox."
+
+"And did she tell you something else?" I asked sharply.
+
+"Oh yes. I was very glad to hear of your good prospect. Do be
+congratulated, won't you?"
+
+Rather an odd way to put it, thought I, but it is Fanny Meyrick's way.
+"Good prospect!" Heavens! was that the term to apply to my engagement
+with Bessie?
+
+I should have insisted on a distincter utterance and a more flattering
+expression of the situation had it been any other woman. But a
+lingering suspicion that perhaps the subject was a distasteful one to
+Fanny Meyrick made me pause, and a few moments after, as some one else
+joined her, I left her and went to the smokestack for my cigar.
+
+It was impossible, in the daily monotony of ship-life, to avoid
+altogether the young lady whom Fate had thrown in my way. She was a
+most provokingly good sailor, too. Other women stayed below or were
+carried in limp bundles to the deck at noon; but Fanny, perfectly
+poised, with the steady glow in her cheek, was always ready to amuse
+or be amused.
+
+I tried, at first, keeping out of her way, with the _Trois
+Mousquetaires_ for company. But it seemed to me, as she knew of my
+engagement, such avoidance was anything but complimentary to her.
+Loyalty to her sex would forbid me to show that I had read her secret.
+Why not meet her on the frank, breezy ground of friendship?
+
+Perhaps, after all, there was no secret. Perhaps her feeling was only
+one of girlish gratitude, however needless, for pulling her out of the
+Hudson River. I did not know.
+
+Nor was I particularly pleased with the companion to whom she
+introduced me on our third day out--Father Shamrock, an Irish priest,
+long resident in America, and bound now for Maynooth. How he had
+obtained an introduction to her I do not know, except in the easy,
+fatherly way he seemed to have with every one on board.
+
+"Pshaw!" thought I, "what a nuisance!" for I shared the common
+antipathy to his country and his creed. Nor was his appearance
+prepossessing--one of Froude's "tonsured peasants," as I looked
+down at the square shoulders, the stout, short figure and the broad
+beardlessness of the face of the padre. But his voice, rich and
+mellow, attracted me in spite of myself. His eyes were sparkling with
+kindly humor, and his laugh was irresistible.
+
+A perfect man of the world, with no priestly austerity about him, he
+seemed a perpetual anxiety to the two young priests at his heels.
+They were on their dignity always, and, though bound to hold him in
+reverence as their superior in age and rank, his songs and his gay
+jests were evidently as thorns in their new cassocks.
+
+Father Shamrock was soon the star of the ship's company. Perfectly
+suave, his gayety had rather the French sparkle about it than the
+distinguishing Italian trait, and his easy manner had a dash of
+manliness which I had not thought to find. Accomplished in various
+tongues, rattling off a gay little _chanson_ or an Irish song, it was
+a sight to see the young priests looking in from time to time at
+the cabin door in despair as the clock pointed to nine, and Father
+Shamrock still sat the centre of a gay and laughing circle.
+
+He had rare tact, too, in talking to women. Of all the ladies on the
+Algeria, I question if there were any but the staunchest Protestants.
+Some few held themselves aloof at first and declined an introduction.
+"Father Shamrock! An Irish priest! How _can_ Miss Meyrick walk with
+him and present him as she does?" But the party of recalcitrants grew
+less and less, and Fanny Meyrick was very frank in her admiration.
+"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
+the trouble to try."
+
+And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
+evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
+famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
+I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
+to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.
+
+We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most
+of the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left
+the dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
+Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
+only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone
+on one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
+terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
+state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.
+
+When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
+But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
+very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
+went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
+woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he
+the only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
+family. He was her darling, just two years younger than she.
+
+"I went to see her, and found her in an agony. She had not kissed him
+when he left her: some little laughing tiff between them, and she
+had expected to see him again before his regiment marched. She threw
+herself on her knees and made confession; and then she took a holy
+vow: if the saints would grant her once more to behold his body, she
+would devote herself hereafter to God's holy Church.
+
+"She gathered all her jewels together in a heap and cast them at my
+feet. 'Take them, Father, for the Church: if I find him I shall not
+wear them again--or if I do not find him.'
+
+"I went with her to the front of battle, and we found him after a
+time. It was a search, but we found his grave, and we brought him home
+with us. Poor boy! beyond recognition, except for the ring he wore;
+but she gave him the last kiss, and then she was ready to leave the
+world. She took the vows as Sister Clara, the holy vows of poverty and
+charity."
+
+"But, Father," said Fanny, with a new depth in her eyes, "did she not
+die behind the bars? To be shut up in a convent with that grief at her
+heart!"
+
+"Bars there were none," said the Father gently. "She left her vocation
+to me, and I decided for her to become a Sister of Mercy. I
+have little sympathy," with a shrug half argumentative, half
+deprecatory--"but little sympathy with the conventual system for
+spirits like hers. She would have wasted and worn away in the offices
+of prayer. She needed _action_. And she had the full of it in her
+calling. She went from bedside to bedside of the sick and dying--here
+a child in a fever; there a widow-woman in the last stages of
+consumption--night after night, and day after day, with no rest, no
+thought of herself."
+
+"Oh, I have seen her," I could not help interposing, "in a city car. A
+shrouded figure that was conspicuous even in her serge dress. She read
+a book of _Hours_ all the time, but I caught one glimpse of her eyes:
+they were very brilliant."
+
+"Yes," sighed the Father, "it was an unnatural brightness. I was
+called away to Montreal, or I should never have permitted the
+sacrifice. She went where-ever the worst cases were of contagion and
+poverty, and she would have none to relieve her at her post. So, when
+I returned after three months' absence, I was shocked at the change:
+she was dying of their family disease. 'It is better, so,' she said,
+'dear Father. It was only the bullet that saved Harry from it, and it
+would have been sure to come to me at last, after some opera or
+ball.' She died last winter--so patient and pure, and such a saintly
+sufferer!"
+
+The Father wiped his eyes. Why should I think of Bessie? Why should
+the Sister's veiled figure and pale ardent face rise before me as if
+in warning?
+
+Of just such overwhelming sacrifice was my darling capable were her
+life's purpose wrecked. Something there was in the portrait of the
+sweet singleness, the noble scorn of self, the devotion unthinking,
+uncalculating, which I knew lay hidden in her soul.
+
+The Father warmed into other themes, all in the same key of mother
+Church. I listened dreamily, and to my own thoughts as well.
+
+He pictured the priest's life of poverty, renunciation, leaving the
+world of men, the polish and refinement of scholars, to take the
+confidences and bear the burdens of grimy poverty and ignorance.
+Surely, I thought, we do wrong to shut such men out of our sympathies,
+to label them "Dangerous." Why should we turn the cold shoulder? are
+we so true to our ideals? But one glance at the young priests as they
+sat crouching in the outer cabin, telling their beads and crossing
+themselves with the vehemence of a frightened faith, was enough.
+Father Shamrock was no type. Very possibly his own life would show but
+coarse and poor against the chaste, heroic portraits he had drawn. He
+had the dramatic faculty: for the moment he was what he related--that
+was all.
+
+Our vigilant duenna had gradually risen to a sitting posture, and
+drawn nearer and nearer, and as the narrator's voice sank into silence
+she said with effusion, "Well, _you_ are a good man, I guess."
+
+But Fanny Meyrick sat as if entranced. The gale had died away, and, to
+break the spell, I asked her if she wanted to take one peep on deck,
+to see if there was a star in the heavens.
+
+There was no star, but a light rising and falling with the ship's
+motion, which was pronounced by a sailor to be Queenstown light, shone
+in the distance.
+
+The Father was to leave us there. "We shall not make it to-night,"
+said the sailor. "It is too rough. Early in the morning the passengers
+will land."
+
+"I wish," said Fanny with a deep sigh, as if wakening from a dream,
+"that the Church of Rome was at the bottom of the sea!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Arrived at our dock, I hurried off to catch the train for London. The
+Meyricks lingered for a few weeks in Wales before coming to
+settle down for the winter. I was glad of it, for I could make my
+arrangements unhampered. So I carefully eliminated Clarges street from
+my list of lodging-houses, and finally "ranged" myself with a neat
+landlady in Sackville street.
+
+How anxiously I awaited the first letter from Bessie! As the banker's
+clerk handed it over the counter to me, instead of the heavy envelope
+I had hoped for, it was a thin slip of an affair that fluttered away
+from my hand. It was so very slim and light that I feared to open it
+there, lest it should be but a mocking envelope, nothing more.
+
+So I hastened back to my cab, and, ordering the man to drive to the
+law-offices, tore it open as I jumped in. It enclosed simply a
+printed slip, cut from some New York paper--a list of the Algeria's
+passengers.
+
+"What joke is this?" I said as I scanned it more closely.
+
+By some spite of fortune my name was printed directly after the
+Meyrick party. Was it for this, this paltry thing, that Bessie
+has denied me a word? I turned over the envelope, turned it inside
+out--not a penciled word even!
+
+The shadow that I had seen on that good-bye visit to Philadelphia was
+clear to me now. I had said at Lenox, repeating the words after Bessie
+with fatal emphasis, "I am glad, very glad, that Fanny Meyrick is to
+sail in October. I would not have her stay on this side for worlds!"
+Then the next day, twenty-four hours after, I told her that I too was
+going abroad. Coward that I was, not to tell her at first! She might
+have been sorry, vexed, but not _suspicious_.
+
+Yes, that was the ugly word I had to admit, and to admit that I had
+given it room to grow.
+
+My first hesitancy about taking her with me, my transfer from the
+Russia to the later steamer, and, to crown all, that leaf from Fanny's
+pocket-book: "I shall love him for ever and ever"!
+
+And yet she _had_ faith in me. She had told Fanny Meyrick we were
+engaged. _Had she not_?
+
+My work in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected.
+Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those
+pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I
+should have thrown up the case in despair, but advices from our office
+said "Stick to it," and I stayed.
+
+Eating out my own heart with anxiety whenever I thought of my home
+affair, perhaps it was well for me that I had the monotonous, musty
+work that required little thought, but only a persistent plodding and
+a patient holding of my end of the clue.
+
+In all these weeks I had nothing from Bessie save that first cruel
+envelope. Letter after letter went to her, but no response came. I
+wrote to Mrs. Sloman too, but no answer. Then I bethought me of Judge
+Hubbard, but received in reply a note from one of his sons, stating
+that his father was in Florida--that he had communicated with him,
+but regretted that he was unable to give me Miss Stewart's present
+address.
+
+Why did I not seek Fanny Meyrick? She must have come to London long
+since, and surely the girls were in correspondence. I was too proud.
+She knew of our relations: Bessie had told her. I could not bring
+myself to reveal to her how tangled and gloomy a mystery was between
+us. I could explain nothing without letting her see that she was the
+unconscious cause.
+
+At last, when one wretched week after another had gone by, and we were
+in the new year, I could bear it no longer. "Come what will, I must
+know if Bessie writes to her."
+
+I went to Clarges street. My card was carried into the Meyricks'
+parlor, and I followed close upon it. Fanny was sitting alone, reading
+by a table. She looked up in surprise as I stood in the doorway. A
+little coldly, I thought, she came forward to meet me, but her manner
+changed as she took my hand.
+
+"I was going to scold you, Charlie, for avoiding us, for staying away
+so long, but that is accounted for now. Why didn't you send us word
+that you were ill? Papa is a capital nurse."
+
+"But I have not been ill," I said, bewildered, "only very busy and
+very anxious."
+
+"I should think so," still holding my hand, and looking into my face
+with an expression of deep concern. "Poor fellow! You do look worn.
+Come right here to this chair by the fire, and let me take care of
+you. You need rest."
+
+And she rang the bell. I suffered myself to be installed in the soft
+crimson chair by the fire. It was such a comfort to hear a friendly
+voice after all those lonely weeks! When the servant entered with a
+tray, I watched her movements over the tea-cups with a delicious sense
+of the womanly presence and the home-feeling stealing over me.
+
+"I can't imagine what keeps papa," she said, chatting away with
+woman's tact: "he always smokes after dinner, and comes up to me for
+his cup of tea afterward."
+
+Then, as she handed me a tiny porcelain cup, steaming and fragrant, "I
+should never have congratulated you, Charlie, on board the steamer if
+I had known it was going to end in this way."
+
+_This way_! Then Bessie must have told her.
+
+"End?" I said stammering: "what--what end?"
+
+"In wearing you out. Bessie told me at Lenox, the day we took that
+long walk, that you had this important case, and it was a great thing
+for a young lawyer to have such responsibility."
+
+Poor little porcelain cup! It fell in fragments on the floor as I
+jumped to my feet: "Was that _all_ she told you? Didn't she tell you
+that we were engaged?"
+
+For a moment Fanny did not speak. The scarlet glow on her cheek, the
+steady glow that was always there, died away suddenly and left her
+pale as ashes. Mechanically she opened and shut the silver sugar-tongs
+that lay on the table under her hand, and her eyes were fixed on me
+with a wild, beseeching expression.
+
+"Did you not know," I said in softer tones, still standing by the
+table and looking down on her, "that day at Lenox that we were
+engaged? Was it not for _that_ you congratulated me on board the
+steamer?"
+
+A deep-drawn sigh as she whispered, "Indeed, no! Oh dear! what have I
+done?"
+
+"You?--nothing!" I said with a sickly smile; "but there is some
+mistake, some mystery. I have never had one line from Bessie since I
+reached London, and when I left her she was my own darling little wife
+that was to be."
+
+Still Fanny sat pale as ashes, looking into the fire and muttering to
+herself. "Heavens! To think--Oh, Charlie," with a sudden burst, "it's
+all my doing! How can I ever tell you?"
+
+"You hear from Bessie, then? Is she--is she well? Where is she? What
+is all this?" And I seated myself again and tried to speak calmly, for
+I saw that something very painful was to be said--something that she
+could hardly say; and I wanted to help her, though how I knew not.
+
+At this moment the door opened and "papa" came in. He evidently
+saw that he had entered upon a scene as his quick eye took in the
+situation, but whether I was accepted or rejected as the future
+son-in-law even his penetration was at fault to discover.
+
+"Oh, papa," said Fanny, rising with evident relief, "just come and
+talk to Mr. Munro while I get him a package he wants to take with
+him."
+
+It took a long time to prepare that package. Mr. Meyrick, a cool,
+shrewd man of the world, was taking a mental inventory of me, I felt
+all the time. I was conscious that I talked incoherently and like a
+school-boy of the treaty. Every American in London was bound to
+have his special opinion thereupon, and Meyrick, I found, was of
+the English party. Then we discussed the special business which had
+brought me to England.
+
+"A very unpresentable son-in-law," I read in his eye, while he was
+evidently astonished at his daughter's prolonged absence.
+
+Our talk flagged and the fire grew gray in its flaky ashes before
+Fanny again appeared.
+
+"I know, papa, you think me very rude to keep Mr. Munro so long
+waiting, but there were some special directions to go with the packet,
+and it took me a long time to get them right. It is for Bessie,
+papa--Bessie Stewart, Mr. Munro's dear little _fiancee_"
+
+Escaping as quickly as possible from Mr. Meyrick's neatly turned
+felicitations--and that the satisfaction he expressed was genuine I
+was prepared to believe--hurried home to Sackville street.
+
+My bedroom was always smothering in its effect on me--close draperies
+to the windows, heavy curtains around the bed--and I closed the door
+and lighted my candle with a sinking heart.
+
+The packet was simply a long letter, folded thickly in several
+wrappers and tied with a string. The letter opened abruptly:
+
+"What I am going to do I am sure no woman on earth ever did before me,
+nor would I save to undo the trouble I have most innocently made. What
+must you have thought of me that day at Lenox, staying close all day
+to two engaged people, who must have wished me away a thousand times?
+But I did not dream you were engaged.
+
+"Remember, I had just come over from Saratoga, and knew nothing of
+Lenox gossip, then or afterward. Something in your manner once or
+twice made me look at you and think that perhaps you were _interested_
+in Bessie, but hers to you was so cold, so distant, that I thought it
+was only a notion of my jealous self.
+
+"Was I foolish to lay so much stress on that anniversary time? Do you
+know that the year before we had spent it together, too?--September
+28th. True, that year it was at Bertie Cox's funeral, but we had
+walked together, and I was happy in being near you.
+
+"For, you see, it was from something more than the Hudson River that
+you had brought me out. You had rescued me from the stupid gayety of
+my first winter--from the flats of fashionable life. You had given me
+an ideal--something to live up to and grow worthy of.
+
+"Let that pass. For myself, it is nothing, but for the deeper harm I
+have done, I fear, to Bessie and to you.
+
+"Again, on that day at Lenox, when Bessie and I drove together in the
+afternoon, I tried to make her talk about you, to find out what you
+were to her. But she was so distant, so repellant, that I fancied
+there was nothing at all between you; or, rather, if you had cared for
+her at all, that she had been indifferent to you.
+
+"Indeed, she quite forbade the subject by her manner; and when she
+told me you were going abroad, I could not help being very happy, for
+I thought then that I should have you all to myself.
+
+"When I saw you on shipboard, I fancied, somehow, that you had changed
+your passage to be with us. It was very foolish; and I write it,
+thankful that you are not here to see me. So I scribbled a little note
+to Bessie, and sent it off by the pilot: I don't know where you were
+when the pilot went. This is, as nearly as I remember it, what I
+wrote:
+
+"'DEAR BESSIE: Charlie Munro is on board. He must have changed his
+passage to be with us. I know from something that he has just told
+_me_ that this is so, and that he consoles himself already for your
+coldness. You remember what I told you when we talked about him. I
+shall _try_ now. F.M.'
+
+"Bessie would know what that meant. Oh, must I tell you what a weak,
+weak girl I was? When I found out at Lenox, as I thought, that Bessie
+did not care for you, I said to her that once I thought you _had_
+cared for me, but that papa had offended you by his manner--you
+weren't of an old Knickerbocker family, you know--and had given you to
+understand that your visits were not acceptable.
+
+"I am sure now that it was because I wanted to think so that I put
+that explanation upon your ceasing to visit me, and because papa
+always looked so decidedly _queer_ whenever your name was mentioned.
+
+"I had always had everything in life that I wanted, and I believed
+that in due time you would come back to me.
+
+"Bessie knew well enough what that pilot-letter meant, for here is her
+answer."
+
+Pinned fast to the end of Fanny's letter, so that by no chance should
+I read it first, were these words in my darling's hand:
+
+"Got your pilot-letter. Aunt is much better. We shall be traveling
+about so much that you need not write me the progress of your romance,
+but believe me I shall be most interested in its conclusion. BESSIE
+S."
+
+It was all explained now. My darling, so sensitive and spirited, had
+given her leave "to try."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+But was that all? Was she wearing away the slow months in passionate
+unbelief of me? I could not tell. But before I slept that night I had
+taken my resolve. I would sail for home by the next steamer. The case
+would suffer, perhaps, by the delay and the change of hands: D----
+must come out to attend to it himself, then, but I would suffer no
+longer.
+
+No use to write to Bessie. I had exhausted every means to reach her
+save that of the detectives. "I'll go to the office, file my papers
+till the next man comes over, see Fanny Meyrick, and be off."
+
+But what to say to Fanny? Good, generous girl! She had indeed done
+what few women in the world would have had the courage to do--shown
+her whole heart to a man who loved another. It would be an
+embarrassing interview; and I was not sorry when I started out that
+morning that it was too early yet to call.
+
+To the office first, then, I directed my steps. But here Fate lay
+_perdu_ and in wait for me.
+
+"A letter, Mr. Munro, from D---- & Co.," said the brisk young clerk.
+They had treated me with great respect of late, for, indeed, our claim
+was steadily growing in weight, and was sure to come right before
+long. I opened and read:
+
+"The missing paper is found on this side of the Atlantic--what you
+have been rummaging for all winter on the other. A trusty messenger
+sails at once, and will report himself to you."
+
+"At once!" Well, there's only a few days' delay, at most. Perhaps it's
+young Bunker. He can take the case and end it: anybody can end it now.
+
+And my heart was light. "A few days," I said to myself as I ran up the
+steps in Clarges street.
+
+"Miss Fanny at home?" to the man, or rather to the member of
+Parliament, who opened the door--"Miss Meyrick, I mean."
+
+"Yes, sir--in the drawing-room, sir;" and he announced me with a
+flourish.
+
+Fanny sat in the window. She might have been looking out for me, for
+on my entrance she parted the crimson curtains and came forward.
+
+Again the clear glow in her cheek, the self-possessed Fanny of old.
+
+"Charlie," she began impetuously, "I have been thinking over shipboard
+and Father Shamrock, and all. You didn't think then--did you?--that I
+cared so very much for you? I am so glad that the Father bewitched
+me as he did, for I can remember no foolishness on my part to you,
+sir--none at all. Can you?"
+
+Stammering, confused, I seemed to have lost my tongue and my head
+together. I had expected tears, pale cheeks, a burst of self-reproach,
+and that I should have to comfort and be very gentle and sympathetic.
+I had dreaded the _role_; but here was a new turn of affairs; and,
+I own it, my self-love was not a little wounded. The play was played
+out, that was evident. The curtain had fallen, and here was I, a
+late-arrived hero of romance, the chivalric elder brother, with all
+my little stock of property-phrases--friendship of a life, esteem,
+etc.--of no more account than a week-old playbill.
+
+For, I must confess it, I had rehearsed some little forgiveness scene,
+in which I should magnanimously kiss her hand, and tell her that I
+should honor her above all women for her courage and her truth; and
+in which she would cry until her poor little heart was soothed and
+calmed; and that I should have the sweet consciousness of being
+beloved, however hopelessly, by such a brilliant, ardent soul.
+
+But Mistress Fanny had quietly turned the tables on me, and I believe
+I was angry enough for the moment to wish it had not been so.
+
+But only for a moment. It began to dawn upon me soon, the rare tact
+which had made easy the most embarrassing situation in, the world--the
+_bravura_ style, if I may call it so, that had carried us over such a
+difficult bar.
+
+It _was_ delicacy, this careless reminder of the fascinating Father,
+and perhaps there was a modicum of truth in that acknowledgment too.
+
+I took my leave of Fanny Meyrick, and walked home a wiser man.
+
+But the trusty messenger, who arrived three days later, was not, as
+I had hoped, young Bunker or young Anybody. It was simply Mrs. D----,
+with a large traveling party. They came straight to London, and
+summoned me at once to the Langham Hotel.
+
+I suppose I looked somewhat amazed at sight of the portly lady, whom
+I had last seen driving round Central Park. But the twin Skye terriers
+who tumbled in after her assured me of her identity soon enough.
+
+"Mr. D---- charged me, Mr. Munro," she began after our first
+ceremonious greeting, "to give this into no hands but yours. I have
+kept it securely with my diamonds, and those I always carry about me."
+
+From what well-stitched diamond receptacle she had extracted the paper
+I did not suffer myself to conjecture, but the document was strongly
+perfumed with violet powder.
+
+"You see, I was coming over," she proceeded to explain, "in any
+event, and when Mr. D---- talked of sending Bunker--I think it was
+Bunker--with us, I persuaded him to let me be messenger instead.
+It wasn't worth while, you know, to have any more people leave the
+office, you being away, and--Oh, Ada, my dear, here is Mr. Munro!"
+
+As Ada, a slim, willowy creature, with the _surprised_ look in her
+eyes that has become the fashion of late, came gliding up to me, I
+thought that the reason for young Bunker's omission from the party was
+possibly before me.
+
+Bother on her matrimonial, or rather anti-matrimonial, devices! Her
+maternal solicitude lest Ada should be charmed with the poor young
+clerk on the passage over had cost me weeks of longer stay. For
+at this stage a request for any further transfer would have been
+ridiculous and wrong. As easy to settle it now as to arrange for any
+one else; so the first of April found me still in London, but leaving
+it on the morrow for home.
+
+"Bessie is in Lenox, I think," Fanny Meyrick had said to me as I bade
+her good-bye.
+
+"What! You have heard from her?"
+
+"No, but I heard incidentally from one of my Boston friends this
+morning that he had seen her there, standing on the church steps."
+
+I winced, and a deeper glow came into Fanny's cheek.
+
+"You will give her my letter? I would have written to her also, but it
+was indeed only this morning that I heard. You will give her that?"
+
+"I have kept it for her," I said quietly; and the adieus were over.
+
+SARAH C. HALLOWELL.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+HOW THEY "KEEP A HOTEL" IN TURKEY.
+
+
+The charity of Islam is an article of practice as well as of faith,
+and manifests itself in ways astonishing to visitors from Christian
+lands. Thus, the impunity--nay, the protection and sympathy--afforded
+to the street-beggar, and the way in which the very poor divide their
+crust with those still more poverty-stricken than themselves, surprise
+the stranger who observes the scene in the open streets. Then, too,
+the public fountains, which are charitable offerings from pious
+persons, are more numerous in Constantinople than in any other city in
+the world. Nor does the law of kindness restrict itself to man. Islam
+has anticipated Mr. Bergh, and "The Society for the Prevention
+of Cruelty to Animals" had as its founder in the Orient no less a
+personage than Mohammed, whom "the faithful" revere as the Messenger
+(Resoul) of God, and whom we improperly term Prophet. The Koran
+specially inculcates kindness to the brute creation, and so thoroughly
+does the Mussulman obey the mandate that the streets are filled with
+homeless, masterless dogs, whose melancholy lives Moslem piety will
+not abridge by water-cure, as in Western lands. This is the more
+curious because the dog is an unclean animal, whose touch defiles the
+true believer. Therefore no one keeps a dog, or harbors him, or does
+more than throw him a bone or scraps of food.
+
+Should a camel fall sick in the desert, or break a limb, his master
+does not mercifully put him out of his pain, but leaves him there to
+die "when it pleases Allah." The same sentiment runs through the
+whole of Eastern life, and it is notably manifested in religious
+foundations, which also serve as schools, and in khans or
+caravansaries, which are the Eastern substitutes for hotels. The
+khans had their origin in charity in the good old times of primitive
+Mohammedanism, before its simplicity was lost by contact with other
+creeds. They were wayside buildings intended for the use of commercial
+travelers or pilgrims, affording shelter from storms and protection
+from wild beasts, but no further accommodation. The hospitable doors
+were ever open, but the apparition of "mine host," ready to offer you
+board and lodging for a reasonable compensation, was undreamt of in
+the early Turkish philosophy. Every traveler literally "took up his
+bed and walked "--or rode--away in the morning, leaving the room he
+had tenanted as bare as he found it. Everybody had to bring his own
+cooking utensils, provender and materials for making a fire.
+
+What in other countries is left for commercial enterprise to effect
+for the sake of profit is accomplished here by pious people, who leave
+legacies for the purpose, and never figure in newspapers, before or
+after death, as the reward of their munificence or charity. Many a
+wayworn traveler has blessed the memory of those truly religious men
+or women on reaching the rugged walls of a khan after a long
+day's ride under a Syrian sun or the pitiless down-pours of rain
+characteristic of the same region.
+
+Some of these khans on the road to Damascus or other large Eastern
+cities are spacious buildings, and the scene presented within them
+when some caravan stops overnight, or several parties of travelers
+meet there, is picturesque in the extreme. Everybody wears
+bright-colored garments and everybody is armed, and the grunt of the
+camel and bray of the donkey make night, if not musical, certainly
+most melancholy to the untrained ear.
+
+But innovation has crept in, and the city khan is now a kind of
+bastard hotel, with a rude host, who makes you pay for your own
+lodging and the provender of your animal; and as part and parcel of
+the establishment you also find a coffee-shop, coffee being the primal
+necessity of Oriental well--being, taking precedence even of tobacco,
+which, however, always accompanies it. There is always a bazaar close
+by, at which you can purchase savory _kibabs_ of mutton and other
+cooked food. Men are no more ashamed to eat in the street than they
+are to pray there; so you may see multitudes taking their meals _al
+fresco_ at the hours of morning, midday or sunset, after prayers.
+
+Neither does the Mussulman need elaborate bed and bedding for his
+repose. He does not undress as we do, but only loosens his garments,
+without taking them off, and stretches himself on top of his bed or
+rug, as the case may be. When the weather is cold, he takes off his
+shoes, but wraps his head and the upper part of his person tightly
+in his blanket or shawl, at apparent risk of suffocation. Keeping
+the feet warm and the head cool, which is our great sanitary law,
+is reversed by the Turk, for he keeps his head covered and his feet
+uncovered as much as he possibly can. In the morning he gets up,
+shakes himself, tightens his garments, performs his matutinal
+ablutions, and his toilet is made for the day. Under these
+circumstances it will be seen that many things which we should regard
+as essential necessaries in our hostelry, would be pure superfluities
+to our Turkish or Arab brother.
+
+Of course, in these places you meet a great mixture of nationalities
+and all classes and conditions, for the rich, in the absence of other
+hotel accommodations, must use them as well as the poor; only, as
+every man brings his own things with him, you find more luxury and
+comfort in some of the arrangements than in others. You may see rich
+merchants from Bagdad or Damascus sitting on piles of costly cushions,
+attended by obsequious slaves, and smoking perfumed Shiraz out
+of silver narghiles, whose long, snake-like tubes are tipped with
+precious amber and encircled by rows of precious stones worth a
+prince's ransom. Huddled together, in striking contrast to this
+picture, you may see, crouched on their old rugs and smoking the
+common clay chibouque, a bevy of street-beggars, also enjoying
+themselves after their fashion.
+
+These khans serve also as shops or bazaars for the traveling merchant,
+Persian or Turk, who is ever ready to show you his wares, without
+seeming to care much whether you buy or not.
+
+The city khans are very simply built in a quadrangle, with small
+rooms, like convent cells, running all round it. These are used both
+as sleeping-rooms and shops. The stables for the animals and the
+store-rooms are in a covered corridor beneath. As there are permanent
+residents here, and valuable merchandise and other articles stored
+away, there is a gate strongly bolted and barred, and often sheathed
+in iron, and a gate-keeper, generally to be seen sleeping or smoking,
+whose sole business is to prevent the entrance of improper or
+suspicious persons.
+
+The evenings at the khan used to be, and sometimes still are,
+enlivened by the presence of the almes or dancing-girls, whose
+ancestors may have danced the same wild and wanton dances before
+Cleopatra. The singing-girls, monotonously chanting the same dolorous
+and drowsy tunes, with imitation guitar accompaniment on the _saab_
+were also wont to wound the drowsy ear of night for the diversion
+of the guests. Drowsier and more sleep-compelling still were the
+interminable tales spun out by the professional story-teller, giving
+ragged versions of the _Arabian Nights' Entertainments_ for the
+delectation of the tireless native listeners.
+
+In those old days, too, the khans used to be the resort of the
+slave-merchants, who kept stowed safely away, for inspection and
+purchase, Circassian, Georgian or more dingy beauties, to suit
+all tastes. But civilization, in its encroachments on Turkey, has
+compelled the cessation of open sales of either white or black slaves
+in public places, though so long as the social and domestic system of
+the East remains unchanged, the sale of women for the house or harem
+will continue. It is conducted, however, with more privacy, and
+Christians are not permitted the privilege of viewing the proceedings.
+This restriction has taken away from the khans one of their former
+great attractions.
+
+To European or American travelers accustomed to the ease, luxury and
+profusion of our modern hotels, where the guests enjoy more comforts
+than most of them get at home, this kind of entertainment for man and
+beast certainly does not seem attractive. Yet there is enjoyment in it
+when the khan is tolerably free from fleas and "such small deer," and
+one is accustomed "to roughing it," and blessed with a good appetite
+and digestion.
+
+Yet, truth to tell, it is more picturesque than pleasant at the
+best--more gratifying to the eye than to the other senses, especially
+to those of smell and hearing. For the odors arising from Turkish
+or Arab cooking are not those of Araby the Blest; and the close
+contiguity of the beasts of burden assails both the senses named more
+pungently than pleasantly. Besides, the Oriental, generally making
+it a rule to wrap up his head carefully in the covering, snores
+stertorously throughout the night; so that silence, which we regard as
+necessary for repose, does not rule over the khan; and when daybreak
+comes, the startled traveler may imagine Babel has broken loose
+again, since both men and animals rise with the dawn, and make most
+diabolical noises to indicate that they have risen.
+
+Enterprising Europeans have set up many hotels in Eastern cities,
+but they are almost exclusively resorted to by strangers or Europeans
+resident in the country. Even the high Turks, lapped in luxury and
+sybaritic in their habits of personal ease, prefer their own hotel
+system to ours, carrying all their comforts along with them, and a
+retinue of servants to take charge of them. You will very rarely see
+a Turkish gentleman, even if educated in Europe, stopping at Messeir's
+or any of the great Eastern hotels on the European plan.
+
+At Messeir's in Constantinople, or at Shepheard's hotel in
+Cairo--places of historic interest almost, through the vivid
+descriptions of travelers like the authors of _Eothen_ and _The
+Crescent and the Cross_--a most motley medley of Western nationalities
+may be encountered, the adventurers, tourists and wanderers of the
+world congregated there during the winter months, and presenting a
+panoramic view of all the peculiar phases and contrasts of European
+civilization, more antagonistic there than elsewhere. There you see
+the German savant with his round spectacles, round face and round
+figure; the lean and restless Frenchman; the imperturbable Englishman,
+drinking his bottled beer under the shadow of the Pyramids; and the
+angular American, more curious, but more cosmopolite, than any of
+them. The returning Englishman or Englishwoman who has spent twenty
+years in India also presents an anomalous type, proving how climate
+and mode of life may alter the original; for it is curious to contrast
+the round, rosy faces of the fresh English girls outward bound with
+the sharp, sallow faces and flashing, restless eyes which
+characterize those who are returning. The babel of tongues at these
+_tables-d'hote_, where conversations are being carried on in every
+European language, is most perplexing at first, though French and
+English predominate. Altogether, for the student of character there
+is no better field than one of these European hotels in the East--none
+where the lines of difference can be found more sharply defined;
+for travel and contact with strangers appear only to bring out the
+contrasts more clearly, and produce a more direct antagonism, instead
+of softening down or assimilating them, as one might expect.
+
+Very few travelers see the city khans--fewer still ever venture to
+pass a night within their walls. Even on the routes of desert-travel
+the pilgrims for pleasure avoid them, substituting their own tents
+for the stone walls, and confiding in the arrangements made by their
+dragomen or guides, who contract to make the necessary provision for
+all their wants for a stipulated sum--one-half usually in advance,
+the balance payable at the expiration of the trip. To do these men
+justice, as a rule they provide liberally and well in all respects,
+their reputation and recommendations being their capital and stock in
+trade for securing subsequent tourists. Yet it cannot be doubted that
+this system has robbed the Eastern tour of some of its most salient
+and striking peculiarities, and has deprived the traveler of much
+opportunity for insight into the real life of the Oriental, only to be
+seen while he is journeying from place to place, since his own house
+is generally closed against the stranger, and it is only in the khan
+that a glimpse of his mode of life can be obtained.
+
+The khan, like the harem, is one of the peculiar institutions of the
+East, and will probably so continue, in spite of the advancing tide of
+European civilization; which, however it may affect the outer aspects
+of that life, has as yet made little impression on its more essential
+features. The men may wear the Frank dress (all but the hat, which
+they will not accept), may smoke cigars instead of chibouques, and
+drink "gaseous lemonade" (champagne), in defiance of the Prophet's
+prohibition; the women may send from the high harems for French
+fashions, and "fearfully and wonderfully" array themselves therein;
+but in other respects the people will stubbornly adhere to their own
+social system and habits of life.
+
+It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners
+and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view
+if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels
+we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of
+the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a
+few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.
+
+EDWIN DE LEON.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.
+
+
+I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue.
+It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am
+lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk
+to another. The _commisionnaire_ does not understand more than half I
+say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most
+trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some
+blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper!
+paper! fuer die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher--er: ink no dry;
+what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took down all sorts of
+paper--letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post. I tried
+to make my want known by signs. I made myself simply ridiculous. The
+shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair. Then he
+discussed the matter with his wife. I fretted, perspiring vigorously.
+I went away. I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel. It required five
+minutes to explain the matter to him. He discussed the matter with
+the _portier_. The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass
+buttons. The commissionnaire returns to me. He thinks he knows what
+I require, but is not quite certain. All this trouble for a bit of
+blotting-paper! It is so with everything. Every little matter of
+every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical,
+here costs so much time, labor and anxiety! My strength is all gone
+when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink. Breakfast
+and dinner task me to the utmost. The slightest deviation from
+established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like
+a wrong figure in a table of logarithms. It required three days to
+convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer
+for dinner. He would bring beer. I would say, "I don't want beer!
+I want my--some dinner." He would depart and take counsel with the
+head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for
+which I ought to be corrected. The latter functionary approaches
+and exclaims with domineering voice, "Vat you vants?" I reply with
+meekness, "Dinner, sir, if you please." He brings me an elegantly
+bound book containing the bill of fare. But it is in German: I look at
+it knowingly: Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible. I put my
+finger on a word which I suppose means soup. I look up meekly at the
+functionary. He glowers contemptuously upon me. He recommends me to an
+underling, and bustles off to guests more important. There are in the
+dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese. Tongues,
+plates, knives and forks clatter inside--wheels roll, rumble and
+clatter over the stony pavement outside. I wait for my soup. Hours
+seem to lag by. I appeal in vain to other waiters. Life is too busy
+and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.
+
+The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath
+his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He
+knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every
+signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To
+appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with
+the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at
+different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this
+man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows
+as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna
+restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols,
+bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it
+requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed _de rigueur_,
+condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough.
+There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner
+resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities--the
+other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England.
+One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open
+a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and
+gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if
+possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He
+said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be
+opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few
+common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?
+
+You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable
+rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner,
+so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an
+egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und
+egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English
+accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who
+attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the
+culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter
+of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for
+next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up
+and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You
+understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came
+about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I
+resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more
+force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the
+nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the
+free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling
+monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be
+produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and
+totter.
+
+I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your
+kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer
+under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and
+keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week--any
+length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones,
+brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I
+want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and
+savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement
+in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.
+
+The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer
+and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the
+English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.
+The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the
+people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's
+stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain
+longer in their bodies.
+
+I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two
+hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a
+glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a cafe table on
+the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake,
+drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is
+occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then
+more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am
+aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese
+life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time
+is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling
+America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the
+street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour
+after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill.
+Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life
+about them.
+
+The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze
+forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the
+street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a
+"Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it
+up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin
+equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of
+holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.
+
+The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and
+particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose--a most refreshing
+sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in
+this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to
+have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is
+very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more
+dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut
+"by the lifts and braces."
+
+Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered
+about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some
+pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering
+back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty
+kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a
+black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened
+herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow.
+I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind.
+Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen
+sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to
+fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over
+the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will
+attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar.
+Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no
+lock on the door--nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe
+in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has
+left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings,
+long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over
+their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On
+subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I
+rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.
+
+The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare,
+disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial
+offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with
+very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall
+despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to
+visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I
+have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those
+apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the
+proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate
+passages, and after making the entire round without discovering
+egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where
+I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room
+looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the
+right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew:
+this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting
+around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old
+gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering
+nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however,
+this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I
+was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the
+strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry,
+and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.
+
+I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern
+justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork
+Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which
+millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into
+pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and
+going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their
+business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs
+scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted,
+hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy
+and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a
+little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of
+clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a
+patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps,
+with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American
+department.
+
+It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the
+general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives
+our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our
+greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor
+opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political
+torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago
+or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were
+the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent,
+he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the
+pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles
+out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a
+reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes
+and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a
+few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps
+of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks
+and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up
+realistically and artistically.
+
+PRENTICE MULFORD.
+
+
+
+
+GHOSTLY WARRIORS.
+
+
+So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval
+Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's _Battle
+of the Lake Regillus_, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of
+the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the
+extract from the _Vida de San Millan_ given in the _Poets and Poetry
+of Europe_, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets
+whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the
+monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred
+subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the
+Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror
+of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful
+those."
+
+  And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,
+  Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;
+  And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,--
+  Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.
+
+  They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,
+  And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,--
+  And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;
+  They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,
+  And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.
+
+  The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;
+  They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,
+  And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins,
+  And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins.
+
+  And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground,
+  They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around;
+  Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks among,
+  A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng.
+
+  Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky,
+  The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody fight;
+  Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half-dead with fright:
+  Full sorely they repented that to the field they came,
+  For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on,
+  Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;
+  And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,
+  Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood.
+
+Turn now to the _Battle of the Lake Regillus_. In a series of
+desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been
+worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins
+upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion, Herminius--"who
+kept the bridge so well"--has been slain, and his war-horse, black
+Auster, has barely been rescued by the dictator Aulus from the hands
+of Titus, the youngest of the Tarquins.
+
+  And Aulus the Dictator
+    Stroked Auster's raven mane;
+  With heed he looked unto the girths,
+    With heed unto the rein.
+  "Now bear me well, black Auster,
+    Into yon thick array;
+  And thou and I will have revenge
+    For thy good lord this day."
+
+  So spake he; and was buckling
+    Tighter black Auster's band,
+  When he was aware of a princely pair
+    That rode at his right hand.
+  So like they were, no mortal
+    Might one from other know:
+  White as snow their armor was:
+    Their steeds were white as snow.
+  Never on earthly anvil
+    Did such rare armor gleam;
+  And never did such gallant steeds
+    Drink of an earthly stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  So answered those strange horsemen,
+    And each couched low his spear;
+  And forthwith all the ranks of Rome
+    Were bold and of good cheer:
+  And on the thirty armies
+    Came wonder and affright,
+  And Ardea wavered on the left,
+    And Cora on the right.
+  "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus;
+    "The foe begins to yield!
+  Charge for the hearth of Vesta!
+    Charge for the Golden Shield!
+  Let no man stop to plunder,
+    But slay, and slay, and slay;
+  The gods who live for ever
+    Are on our side to-day."
+
+  Then the fierce trumpet-flourish
+    From earth to heaven arose;
+  The kites know well the long stern swell
+    That bids the Romans close.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  And fliers and pursuers
+    Were mingled in a mass:
+  And far away the battle
+    Went roaring through the pass.
+
+The scene of the following stanza is at Rome, where the watchers at
+the gates have learned from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the
+day:
+
+  And all the people trembled,
+    And pale grew every cheek;
+  And Sergius, the High Pontiff,
+    Alone found voice to speak:
+  "The gods who live for ever
+    Have fought for Rome to-day!
+  These be the Great Twin Brethren
+    To whom the Dorians pray!"
+
+Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay was
+consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was at
+the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out how
+certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might fairly
+be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long before
+Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren. He has
+even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary appearance
+of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the resemblance just
+pointed out. "In modern times," he wrote, "a very similar story
+actually found credence among a people much more civilized than the
+Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortez,
+writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico, ... had the
+face to assert that, in an engagement against the Indians, Saint James
+had appeared on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers.
+Many of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. One
+of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition....
+He says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with
+a man on his back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de
+Morla, and not the ever-blessed apostle Saint James. 'Nevertheless,'
+Bernal adds, 'it may be that the person on the gray horse was the
+glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was
+unworthy to see him.'" Other striking instances of identity between
+classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord Macaulay
+in the learned and interesting general preface to his _Lays of Ancient
+Rome_. But the reappearance of this particular story in such remote
+times and places, and with such marked similarities and variations,
+would entitle it to a place among the indestructible popular legends
+collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his _Curious Myths of the Middle
+Ages_.
+
+
+
+
+A WARNING TO LOVERS.
+
+
+"Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin', triflin', owdacious,
+contrary piece that ever lived."
+
+"Oh, ma!" sobbed Matilda, "I couldn' help myself--'deed I couldn'."
+
+"Couldn' help yourself? That's a pretty way to talk! Ain't he a nice
+young man?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Got money?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And good kinfolks?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"And loves you to destrackshun?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Well, in the name o' common sense, what did you send him home for?"
+
+"Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s'pose, though I'd
+ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and
+ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then
+it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and _his
+gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin'_, I till I thought in my soul
+somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and
+that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me
+do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the
+harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came
+to me that it wasn't nothin' but his gallowses; and then I bust out a
+laughin' fit to kill myself, right in his face. And then he jumpt
+up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain't comin' back no
+more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!"
+
+"Metildy," said the old woman sternly, "stop sniv'lin'. You've made
+an everlastin' fool of yourself, but your cake ain't all dough yet. It
+all comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses--' 'spenders'
+I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny,
+tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice
+pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never do creak."
+
+"Yes, ma," said Matilda, brightening up; "but let _me_ knit 'em."
+
+"So you shall, honey: he'll vally them a heap more than if I knit 'em.
+Cheer up, Tildy: it'll all be right--you mind if it won't."
+
+Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were married,
+and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a
+stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is
+particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger."
+Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the
+days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but
+it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of
+harmony between odors and colors--a theory which might never have been
+dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the
+boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if
+we may believe Eugene Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new
+refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and
+quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according
+to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially _de
+rigueur_, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to establish
+a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she carries
+and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is to say,
+gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the stuff
+of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if light
+yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be reseda (which has
+such a run at present for ladies' costumes), the chosen perfume
+will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the other flowers
+corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh ball-toilettes.
+Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between different odors and
+different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be
+as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and
+costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art
+rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of
+the drawing-room, it will die out before the science is fairly
+established.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _enfant terrible_ plays an important role in literature as in
+society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a
+good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.
+
+A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees,
+when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh,"
+says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I
+was in the ark?"
+
+"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"
+
+"Oh no, I'm not Noah."
+
+"Ah, then you're Shem."
+
+"No, not Shem, either."
+
+"Oh, then I suppose you're Japhet."
+
+"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."
+
+"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of
+his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."
+
+Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one
+Sunday for the first time.
+
+"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his
+tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many
+people come here to pray to God?"
+
+"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.
+
+Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found
+crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a
+slap.
+
+"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her
+indignation getting the better of her judgment.
+
+"Oh yes, I paid her back _before-hand_!"
+
+Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her
+schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was
+giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.
+
+"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break,
+poor things!" says papa.
+
+"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism
+was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and
+fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of
+the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with
+Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs.
+Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading
+articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort
+commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of
+maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the
+comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore;
+but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which
+politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Din about his conduct and his
+reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Din be impressed by English flattery," said
+this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance,
+His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of
+'Ushter wa Diraz-kush,' from the 'Baharistan' of Jaumy." In ordinary
+times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable
+is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for
+granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistan of Jaumy was as
+familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole,
+our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah.
+Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close
+application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has
+lately been flooded.
+
+  How various his employments whom the world
+  Calls idle!
+
+says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah
+in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly
+represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example
+(a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then
+Captain Shaw was presented to the shah--likewise Colonel Hogg; and
+then, according to the _Morning Advertiser_, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly,
+Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing
+before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed
+highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from
+the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the
+Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church
+Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation
+from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses
+Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to
+wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and
+princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance
+at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste--namely,
+gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah"
+on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious
+combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be
+supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious
+guest.
+
+A French writer some time since informed his countrymen that in
+America wooden hams were a regular article of manufacture. This is a
+fact not generally known; but at any rate, according to Pierre Veron,
+we have not yet quite outdone the Old World in the arts of commercial
+fraud. Worthy Johnny Crapaud used to flatter himself that he outwitted
+the grocers in buying his coffee unground, but now rogues make
+artificial coffee-kernels in a mould, and the Paris police court
+(which does not appreciate ingenuity of that sort) lately gave
+six months in prison to some makers of sham coffee-grains, thus
+interfering with a business which was earning twenty thousand dollars
+a year. Some of the Paris pastry-cooks make balls for _vol-au-vent_
+with a hash of rags allowed to soak in gravy; sham larks and
+partridges for pates are constructed out of chopped-up meat, neatly
+shaped to represent those birds; peddlers of sweet-meats sell
+marshmallow paste made out of Spanish white; the fish-merchant inserts
+the eyes of a fresh mackerel in a stale turbot, to trick his sharp
+customers; and as to drinks, one dyer boldly puts over his door
+"Burgundy Vintages!" They make marble of pasteboard and diamonds
+of glass. Adulteration on adulteration, moans M. Veron, all is
+adulteration!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The problem of aerial navigation seems at present to be agitating as
+many pseudo-scientific minds as did that of perpetual motion not many
+years ago, or the philosopher's stone at a more remote period. It
+possesses perhaps a still stronger attraction in the danger connected
+with the experiments--the source, we suppose, of the eagerness shown
+by Professor Wise and his associates to _fly_ to evils that they
+know not of. Perpetual motion received its quietus from the blasts of
+ridicule. Air-voyaging has a worse foe to encounter. It may survive
+the attacks of gayety, but it will succumb, we fancy, to the
+resistless force of _gravity_.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. New York: Holt
+& Williams.
+
+The task formerly undertaken by Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland, in
+adapting to our language the songs of Heine, is now well supplemented
+with some versions from among his prose works by another Philadelphian
+translator, Mr. Simon Adler Stern. Heine's prose, delicate in its
+pellucid brightness as any of his poetry, cannot be held too precious
+by the interpreter. The latter must have all his wits about him, or he
+will not find English at once simple enough and distinguished enough
+to stand for the original. To get at Heine's prose exactly in another
+language must be almost as hard as to get at his poetry. The principal
+selection made by Mr. Stern is a long rambling rhapsody called
+"Florentine Nights," in which the author professes to pour into the
+ears of a dying mistress the history of some of his former amours and
+exaltations, the natural jealousy of the listener going for a stimulus
+in the recital. His first love, however, is an idealization--a Greek
+statue which he visits by moonlight, as Sordello in Browning's poem
+does the
+
+                          Shrinking Caryatides
+  Of just-tinged marble, like Eve's lilied flesh.
+
+This weird love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator almost
+as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an interpreter of
+poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to struggle with, yet
+there is, on the other hand, an inspiration and waft of feeling in the
+metre which lends him wings and helps him on. If Mr. Stern does not
+encumber his style with a betrayal of the difficulties he has got
+over--if he does not give us pedantry and double-epithets, so common
+in vulgar renderings from the German--he certainly shows no timidity
+in turning the polished familiarity of Heine's prose into our
+commonest vernacular. "What lots of pleasure I found on my arrival;"
+"for the men, lots of patience:" trivialities of expression like these
+are not rare in his version. If they are not quite what Heine would
+have written if he had been writing in English, at least the fault
+of familiarity is better than the fault of hardness; and these
+translations are never at all hard or uncomfortable. When we add that
+Mr. Stern gives us an index without showing what works the extracts
+are taken from, and that he gives us an article on Heine without any
+mention that we can discover of Heine's wife, we have vented about all
+the objections we can make to this welcome publication; and they are
+very few to find in a collection of hundreds of "scintillations."
+
+The pleasures that remain for the reader are manifold: so liberally
+and judiciously are the extracts chosen that we get a complete exhibit
+of Heine's mind on nearly all the topics he occupied himself about. We
+have his views on French and German politicians; on French, German and
+English authors; on art and poetry; on his own soul and character; on
+religion; besides a great deal of that persiflage, the most exquisite
+persiflage surely that ever was heard, which flutters clear away from
+the regions of sense and information, yet which only a man of sense
+and information could have uttered.
+
+Heine came to Paris in 1831, and saw all the sights and found
+everything "charming." His wit is a little cheap, perhaps, when he
+calls the Senate Chamber at the Luxembourg "the necropolis in which
+the mummies of perjury are embalmed;" at least it becomes tiresome to
+hear his constant disparagement of the politics which he chose to live
+under, and which protected him so agreeably; but he is his own keen
+self where he observes that the signs of the revolution of 1830,
+what he calls the legend of _liberte, egalite, fraternite_ at the
+street-corners, had "already been wiped away." Victor Hugo, for his
+part, did not find it so: he says that the years 1831 and 1832 have,
+in relation to the revolution of July, the aspect of two mountains,
+where you can distinguish precipices, and that they embody "la
+grandeur revolutionnaire." The cooler spectator from Hamburg inspects
+at Paris "the giraffe, the three-legged goat, the kangaroos," without
+much of the vertigo of precipices, and he sees "M. de La Fayette and
+his white locks--at different places, however," for the latter were
+in a locket and the hero was in his brown wig. Elsewhere he associates
+"the virtuous La Fayette and James Watt the cotton-spinner." The age
+of industry, commerce and the Citizen-King, in fact, was not quite
+suited to the poet who celebrated Napoleon; yet was Heine's admiration
+of Napoleon not such as an epic hero would be comfortable under:
+"Cromwell never sank so low as to suffer a priest to anoint him
+emperor," he says in allusion to the coronation. He respects Napoleon
+as the last great aristocrat, and says the combined powers ought to
+have supported instead of overturned him, for his defeat precipitated
+the coming in of modern ideas. The prospect for the world after his
+death was "at the best to be bored to death by the monotony of a
+republic." Ardent patriots in this country need not go for sympathy to
+the king-scorner Heine. For the theory of a commonwealth he had small
+love: "That which oppresses me is the artist's and the scholar's
+secret dread, lest our modern civilization, the laboriously achieved
+result of so many centuries of effort, will be endangered I by the
+triumph of Communism." We have drifted into the citation of these
+sentiments because many conservatives think of Heine only as an
+irreconcilable destroyer and revolutionist, and do not care to welcome
+in him the basis of attachment to order which must underlie every
+artist's or author's love of freedom. "Soldier in the liberation of
+humanity" as he was, that liberation was to be the result of growth,
+not of destruction. As for Communism, it talks but "hunger, _envy_
+and death." It has but one faith, happiness on this earth; and the
+millennium it foresees is "a single shepherd and a single flock, all
+shorn after the same pattern, and bleating alike." Such passages are
+the true reflection of Heine's keen but not great mind, miserably
+bandied between the hopes of a republican future, that was to be the
+death of art and literature, and the rags of a feudal present, whose
+conditions sustained him while they disgusted him. If Heine fought,
+scratched and bit with all his might among the convulsions of the
+politics he was helpless to rearrange, he was equally mordant when
+he turned his attention to society, and perhaps more frightfully
+impartial. He hated the English for "their idle curiosity, bedizened
+awkwardness, impudent bashfulness, angular egotism, and vacant delight
+in all melancholy objects." As for the French, they are "les comediens
+ordinaires du bon Dieu;" yet "a blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle
+more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman." And Germany:
+"Germany alone possesses those colossal fools whose caps reach unto
+the heavens, and delight the stars with the ringing of their bells."
+Thus shooting forth his tongue on every side, Heine is shown "in
+action" by this little cluster of "scintillations," and the whole
+book is the shortest definition of him possible, for it makes the
+saliencies of his character jut out within a close compass. It can be
+read in a couple of hours, and no reading of the same length in any
+of his complete writings would give such a notion of the most witty,
+perverse, tender, savage, pitiable and inexcusable of men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Monographs, Personal and Social. By Lord Houghton. New York: Holt &
+Williams.
+
+Lord Houghton is one of those fortunate persons who seem to find
+without trouble the exact niches in life which Nature has designed
+them to fill. There probably never entered the world a man more
+eminently made to appreciate the best kind of "high life" which London
+has offered in the present century; and he has been able to avail
+himself of it to his heart's content. The son of a Yorkshire squire in
+affluent circumstances and of high character, Monckton Milnes was not
+spoilt by finding, as he might have done had he been the heir to a
+dukedom, the world at his feet; whilst at the same time all the good
+things were within his reach by a little of that exertion which does
+so much toward enhancing the enjoyment of them. From the period of his
+entry upon London life he displayed that anxiety to know celebrities
+which, though in a somewhat different way, was a marked feature of
+his contemporary and acquaintance, Crabb Robinson; and the story
+illustrative of this tendency which gained him the _sobriquet_ of "the
+cool of the evening" will be always associated with the name he has
+since merged in a less familiar title.
+
+Lord Houghton has now passed through some sixty London seasons, during
+which he has been more or less acquainted with nearly every social and
+literary celebrity in the English metropolis. Having regard to this
+circumstance, and the fact of his possessing a polished and graceful
+style of expressing himself, one would naturally expect a great deal
+from this volume of reminiscences. Nor will such expectations be
+entirely disappointed. The monographs are eight in number, and will be
+read with varying degrees of interest, according to the taste of
+the reader, as well as the subjects and quality of the papers. The
+portrait which will perhaps be the newest to American readers is that
+of Harriet, Lady Ashburton, wife of the second Baring who bore that
+title. Lady Ashburton was daughter of the earl of Sandwich, and Lord
+Houghton says of her: "She was an instance in which aristocracy gave
+of its best and showed at its best, although she may have owed little
+to the qualities she inherited from an irascible race and to an
+unaffectionate education"--a sentence reminding us of a remark in
+the London _Times_, that "with certain noble houses people are apt
+to associate certain qualities--with the Berkeleys, for instance, a
+series of disgraceful family quarrels." Lady Ashburton appears to us
+from this account to have been a brilliant spoilt child of fortune,
+who availed herself of her great social position to do and say what,
+had she remained Lady Harriet Montagu with the pittance of a poor
+nobleman's daughter, she would hardly have dared to do or say. It
+is one of the weak points of society in England that a woman who has
+rank, wealth, and ability, and contrives to surround herself with men
+of wit to whom she renders her house delightful, can be as hard and
+rude as she pleases to the world in general. Fortunately, in most
+cases native kindness of heart usually hurries to heal the wound that
+"wicked wit" may have made. This would scarcely seem to have been so
+with Lady Ashburton, for Lord Houghton tells us that "many who would
+not have cared for a quiet defeat shrank from the merriment of her
+victory," one of them saying, "I do not mind being knocked down, but
+I can't stand being danced upon afterward." Lord Houghton,
+however, defines this "jumping" as "a joyous sincerity that no
+conventionalities, high or low, could restrain--a festive nature
+flowing through the artificial soil of elevated life." And it must be
+owned that there was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a nature
+which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal capacity
+for warm and disinterested friendship.
+
+In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
+full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
+reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
+with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
+names.
+
+But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
+letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her
+childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself,
+wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that
+covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we
+have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
+comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
+his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
+as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
+thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for
+example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and
+its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his
+works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the
+malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been
+exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among
+these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial
+origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of
+society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and
+after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient
+element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a
+philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had
+still to be fought out.'"
+
+Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
+Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
+biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
+while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt
+whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information
+he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege
+of Lyons occurred under the _Directory_--which it preceded by a year
+or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered
+the navy, was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and,
+_subsequently_ enlisted "in the Army of Italy, then flushed with
+triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits"--language
+indicating the campaign of 1796-97; that "soon after his enrollment in
+the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers
+in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise
+[acquired apparently on shipboard] was of the greatest use and
+_brought him into general notice_"--making him, we may infer, a
+special favorite of Bonaparte;--we can easily believe that these
+things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity,"
+and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to
+more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of
+a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on
+the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented
+to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army as
+soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to intercept, were out of
+sight." Lord Houghton has evidently not read the best and most recent
+criticisms on the Waterloo campaign, but he should at least have known
+that Grouchy was sent, not to intercept, but to follow the Prussians
+in their retreat from Ligny, and that, if he lost sight of them,
+it was because, instead of falling back on their own line of
+communication, as Napoleon had expected them to do, they turned off to
+effect a junction with the English army.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received_.
+
+
+Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every
+species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent
+north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six
+steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By Elliott
+Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem: Naturalists'
+Agency.
+
+Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New
+Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson.
+New York: James Miller.
+
+The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By C.C.P.
+Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker & Godwin.
+
+On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgenieff. Translated from the Russian
+by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt & Williams.
+
+The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz
+Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.
+
+Harry Coverdale's Courtship and Marriage. By Frank E. Smedley.
+Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Afoot and Alone: A Walk from Sea to Sea by the Southern Route.
+Illustrated. Hartford: Columbian Book Company.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
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