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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Brick Moon, et. al., by Hale
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+The Brick Moon, et. al.
+
+by Edward Everett Hale
+
+February, 1999  [Etext #1633]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Brick Moon, et. al., by Hale
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+
+The Brick Moon
+and Other Stories
+
+by EDWARD EVERETT HALE
+Short Story Index Reprint Series
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+To read these stories again, thirty and more years after
+they were written, is to recall many memories, sad or
+glad, with which this reader need not be interrupted.
+But I have to make sure that they are intelligible to
+readers of a generation later than that for which they
+were written.
+
+The story of The Brick Moon was begun in my dear
+brother Nathan's working-room in Union College,
+Schenectady, in the year 1870, when he was professor of
+the English language there.  The account of the first
+plan of the moon is a sketch, as accurate as was needed,
+of the old chat and dreams, plans and jokes, of our
+college days, before he left Cambridge in 1838.  As I
+learned almost everything I know through his care and
+love and help, directly or indirectly, it is a pleasure
+to say this here.  The story was published in the
+"Atlantic Monthly," in 1870 and 1871.  It was the last
+story I wrote for that magazine, before assuming the
+charge of "Old and New," a magazine which I edited from
+1870 to 1876, and for which I wrote "Ten Times One is
+Ten," which has been printed in the third volume of this
+series.
+
+Among the kind references to "The Brick Moon" which
+I have received from sympathetic friends, I now recall
+with the greatest pleasure one sent me by Mr. Asaph Hall,
+the distinguished astronomer of the National Observatory.
+In sending me the ephemeris of the two moons of Mars,
+which he revealed to this world of ours, he wrote, "The
+smaller of these moons is the veritable Brick Moon."
+That, in the moment of triumph for the greatest
+astronomical discovery of a generation, Dr. Hall should
+have time or thought to give to my little parable,--this
+was praise indeed.
+
+Writing in 1870, I said, as the reader will see on
+page 66, that George Orcutt did not tell how he used a
+magnifying power of 700.  Nor did I choose to tell then,
+hoping that in some fortunate winter I might be able
+myself to repeat his process, greatly to the convenience
+of astronomers who have not Alvan Clark's resources at
+hand, or who have to satisfy themselves with glass lenses
+of fifteen inches, or even thirty, in diameter.  But no
+such winter has come round to me, and I will now give
+Orcutt's invention to the world.  He had unlimited
+freezing power.  So have we now, as we had not then.
+With this power he made an ice lens, ten feet in
+diameter, which was easily rubbed, by the delicate hands
+of the careful women around him, to precisely the
+surface which he needed.  Let me hope that before next
+winter passes some countryman or countrywoman of mine
+will have equalled his success, and with an ice lens will
+surpass all the successes of the glasses of our time.
+
+The plan of "Crusoe in New York" was made when I was
+enjoying the princely hospitality of Henry Whitney
+Bellows in New York.  The parsonage in that city
+commanded a view of a "lot" not built on, which would
+have given for many years a happy home to any disciple of
+Mayor Pingree, if a somewhat complicated social order had
+permitted.  The story was first published in Frank
+Leslie's illustrated paper.  In reading it in 1899, I am
+afraid that the readers of a hard, money generation may
+not know that "scrip" was in the sixties the name for
+small change.
+
+I regard a knowledge of every detail of the original
+Robinson Crusoe as well-nigh a necessity in education.
+Girls  may occasionally be excused, but never boys.  It
+ought to be unnecessary, therefore, to say that some of
+the narrative passages of Crusoe in New York are taken,
+word for word, from the text of Defoe.  If I do state
+this for the benefit of a few unfortunate ladies who are
+not familiar with that text, it is because I think no one
+among many courteous critics has observed it.
+
+"The Survivor's Story" is one of eight short stories
+which were published in the first Christmas number of
+"Old and New."
+
+Of the other stories I think no explanation is
+needed, but such as was given at the time of their
+publication and is reprinted with each of them here.
+
+EDWARD E. HALE.
+ROXBURY, July 6, 1899.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+THE BRICK MOON
+CRUSOE IN NEW YORK
+BREAD ON THE WATERS
+THE LOST PALACE
+99 LINWOOD STREET
+IDEALS
+THANKSGIVING AT THE POLLS
+THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
+
+
+
+THE BRICK MOON
+
+[From the papers of Captain FREDERIC INGHAM.]
+
+I
+
+PREPARATION
+
+I have no sort of objection now to telling the whole
+story.  The subscribers, of course, have a right to
+know what became of their money.  The astronomers may
+as well know all about it, before they announce any
+more asteroids with an enormous movement in
+declination.  And experimenters on the longitude may as
+well know, so that they may act advisedly in attempting
+another brick moon or in refusing to do so.
+
+It all began more than thirty years ago, when we were
+in college; as most good things begin.  We were studying
+in the book which has gray sides and a green back, and is
+called "Cambridge Astronomy" because it is translated
+from the French.  We came across this business of the
+longitude, and, as we talked, in the gloom and glamour of
+the old South Middle dining-hall, we had going the usual
+number of students' stories about rewards offered by the
+Board of Longitude for discoveries in that matter,--
+stories, all of which, so far as I know, are lies.  Like
+all boys, we had tried our hands at perpetual motion.
+For me, I was sure I could square the circle, if they
+would give me chalk enough.  But as to this business of
+the longitude, it was reserved for Q.[1] to make the
+happy hit and to explain it to the rest of us.
+
+
+[1]  Wherever Q. is referred to in these pages my
+brother Nathan is meant.  One of his noms de plume
+was Gnat Q. Hale, because G and Q may be silent letters.
+
+
+I wonder if I can explain it to an unlearned world,
+which has not studied the book with gray sides and a
+green cambric back.  Let us try.
+
+You know then, dear world, that when you look at the
+North Star, it always appears to you at just the same
+height above the horizon or what is between you and the
+horizon: say the Dwight School-house, or the houses in
+Concord Street; or to me, just now, North College.  You
+know also that, if you were to travel to the North Pole,
+the North Star would be just over your head.  And, if you
+were to travel to the equator, it would be just on your
+horizon, if you could see it at all through the red,
+dusty, hazy mist in the north, as you could not.  If you
+were just half-way between pole and equator, on the line
+between us and Canada, the North Star would be half-way
+up, or 45@ from the horizon.  So you would know there
+that you were 45@ from the equator.  Then in Boston, you
+would find it was 42@ 20' from the horizon.  So you know
+there that you are 42@ 20' from the equator.  At Seattle
+again you would find it was 47@ 40' high, so our friends
+at Seattle know that they are at 47@ 40' from the
+equator.  The latitude of a place, in other words, is
+found very easily by any observation which shows how high
+the North Star is; if you do not want to measure the
+North Star, you may take any star when it is just to
+north of you, and measure its height; wait twelve hours,
+and if you can find it, measure its height again.  Split
+the difference, and that is the altitude of the pole, or
+the latitude of you, the observer.
+
+"Of course we know this," says the graduating world.
+"Do you suppose that is what we borrow your book for, to
+have you spell out your miserable elementary astronomy?"
+At which rebuff I should shrink distressed, but that a
+chorus of voices an octave higher comes up with, "Dear
+Mr. Ingham, we are ever so much obliged to you; we did
+not know it at all before, and you make it perfectly
+clear."
+
+Thank you, my dear, and you, and you.  We will not
+care what the others say.  If you do understand it, or do
+know it, it is more than Mr. Charles Reade knew, or he
+would not have made his two lovers on the island guess at
+their latitude, as they did.  If they had either of them
+been educated at a respectable academy for the Middle
+Classes, they would have fared better.
+
+Now about the longitude.
+
+The latitude, which you have found, measures your
+distance north or south from the equator or the pole.  To
+find your longitude, you want to find your distance
+east or west from the meridian of Greenwich.  Now, if any
+one would build a good tall tower at Greenwich, straight
+into the sky,--say a hundred miles into the sky,--of
+course if you and I were east or west of it, and could
+see it, we could tell how far east or west we were by
+measuring the apparent height of the tower above our
+horizon.  If we could see so far, when the lantern with
+a Drummond's light, "ever so bright," on the very top of
+the tower, appeared to be on our horizon, we should know
+we were eight hundred and seventy-three miles away from
+it. The top of the tower would answer for us as the North
+Star does when we are measuring the latitude.  If we were
+nearer, our horizon would make a longer angle with the
+line from the top to our place of vision.  If we were
+farther away, we should need a higher tower.
+
+But nobody will build any such tower at Greenwich, or
+elsewhere on that meridian, or on any meridian.  You see
+that to be of use to the half the world nearest to it, it
+would have to be so high that the diameter of the world
+would seem nothing in proportion.  And then, for the
+other half of the world you would have to erect another
+tower as high on the other side.  It was this difficulty
+that made Q. suggest the expedient of the Brick Moon.
+
+For you see that if, by good luck, there were a ring
+like Saturn's which stretched round the world, above
+Greenwich and the meridian of Greenwich, and if it would
+stay above Greenwich, turning with the world, any one
+who wanted to measure his longitude or distance from
+Greenwich would look out of window and see how high this
+ring was above his horizon.  At Greenwich it would be
+over his head exactly.  At New Orleans, which is quarter
+round the world from Greenwich, it would be just in his
+horizon.  A little west of New Orleans you would begin to
+look for the other half of the ring on the west instead
+of the east; and if you went a little west of the Feejee
+Islands the ring would be over your head again.  So if we
+only had a ring like that, not round the equator of the
+world,--as Saturn's ring is around Saturn,--but vertical
+to the plane of the equator, as the brass ring of an
+artificial globe goes, only far higher in proportion,--
+"from that ring," said Q., pensively, "we could calculate
+the longitude."
+
+Failing that, after various propositions, he
+suggested the Brick Moon.  The plan was this:  If from
+the surface of the earth, by a gigantic peashooter, you
+could shoot a pea upward from Greenwich, aimed northward
+as well as upward; if you drove it so fast and far that
+when its power of ascent was exhausted, and it began to
+fall, it should clear the earth, and pass outside the
+North Pole; if you had given it sufficient power to get
+it half round the earth without touching, that pea would
+clear the earth forever.  It would continue to rotate
+above the North Pole, above the Feejee Island place,
+above the South Pole and Greenwich, forever, with the
+impulse with which it had first cleared our atmosphere
+and attraction.  If only we could see that pea as it
+revolved in that convenient orbit, then we could measure
+the longitude from that, as soon as we knew how high the
+orbit was, as well as if it were the ring of Saturn.
+
+"But a pea is so small!"
+
+"Yes," said Q., "but we must make a large pea."  Then
+we fell to work on plans for making the pea very large
+and very light.  Large,--that it might be seen far away
+by storm-tossed navigators: light,--that it might be the
+easier blown four thousand and odd miles into the air;
+lest it should fall on the heads of the Greenlanders or
+the Patagonians; lest they should be injured and the
+world lose its new moon.  But, of course, all this lath-
+and-plaster had to be given up.  For the motion through
+the air would set fire to this moon just as it does to
+other aerolites, and all your lath-and-plaster would
+gather into a few white drops, which no Rosse telescope
+even could discern.  "No," said Q. bravely, "at the least
+it must be very substantial.  It must stand fire well,
+very well.  Iron will not answer.  It must be brick; we
+must have a Brick Moon."
+
+Then we had to calculate its size.  You can see, on
+the old moon, an edifice two hundred feet long with any
+of the fine refractors of our day.  But no such
+refractors as those can be carried by the poor little
+fishermen whom we wanted to befriend, the bones of whose
+ships lie white on so many cliffs, their names
+unreported at any Lloyd's or by any Ross,
+
+Themselves the owners and their sons the crew.
+
+On the other hand, we did not want our moon two hundred
+and fifty thousand miles away, as the old moon is, which
+I will call the Thornbush moon, for distinction.  We did
+not care how near it was, indeed, if it were only far
+enough away to be seen, in practice, from almost the
+whole world.  There must be a little strip where they
+could not see it from the surface, unless we threw it
+infinitely high.  "But they need not look from the
+surface," said Q.; "they might climb to the mast-head.
+And if they did not see it at all, they would know that
+they were ninety degrees from the meridian."
+
+This difficulty about what we call "the strip,"
+however, led to an improvement in the plan, which made it
+better in every way.  It was clear that even if "the
+strip" were quite wide, the moon would have to be a good
+way off, and, in proportion, hard to see.  If, however,
+we would satisfy ourselves with a moon four thousand
+miles away, THAT could be seen on the earth's surface
+for three or four thousand miles on each side; and twice
+three thousand, or six thousand, is one fourth of the
+largest circumference of the earth.  We did not dare have
+it nearer than four thousand miles, since even at that
+distance it would be eclipsed three hours out of every
+night; and we wanted it bright and distinct, and not of
+that lurid, copper, eclipse color.  But at four
+thousand miles' distance the moon could be seen by a belt
+of observers six or eight thousand miles in diameter.
+"Start, then, two moons,"--this was my contribution to
+the plan.  "Suppose one over the meridian of Greenwich,
+and the other over that of New Orleans.  Take care that
+there is a little difference in the radii of their
+orbits, lest they `collide' some foul day.  Then, in most
+places, one or other, perhaps two will come in sight.  So
+much the less risk of clouds: and everywhere there may be
+one, except when it is cloudy.  Neither need be more than
+four thousand miles off; so much the larger and more
+beautiful will they be.  If on the old Thornbush moon old
+Herschel with his reflector could see a town-house two
+hundred feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will
+be able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if
+he wants to.  And people without the reflector, with
+their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently
+well."  And to this they agreed: that eventually there
+must be two Brick Moons.  Indeed, it were better that
+there should be four, as each must be below the horizon
+half the time.  That is only as many as Jupiter has.  But
+it was also agreed that we might begin with one.
+
+Why we settled on two hundred feet of diameter I
+hardly know.  I think it was from the statement of dear
+John Farrar's about the impossibility of there being a
+state house two hundred feet long not yet discovered, on
+the sunny side of old Thornbush.  That, somehow, made
+two hundred our fixed point.  Besides, a moon of two
+hundred feet diameter did not seem quite unmanageable.
+Yet it was evident that a smaller moon would be of no
+use, unless we meant to have them near the world, when
+there would be so many that they would be confusing, and
+eclipsed most of the time.  And four thousand miles is a
+good way off to see a moon even two hundred feet in
+diameter.
+
+Small though we made them on paper, these two-
+hundred-foot moons were still too much for us.  Of course
+we meant to build them hollow.  But even if hollow there
+must be some thickness, and the quantity of brick would
+at best be enormous.  Then, to get them up!  The pea-
+shooter, of course, was only an illustration.  It was
+long after that time that Rodman and other guns sent iron
+balls five or six miles in distance,--say two miles, more
+or less, in height.
+
+Iron is much heavier than hollow brick, but you can
+build no gun with a bore of two hundred feet now,--far
+less could you then.  No.
+
+Q. again suggested the method of shooting oft the
+moon.  It was not to be by any of your sudden explosions.
+It was to be done as all great things are done,--by the
+gradual and silent accumulation of power.  You all know
+that a flywheel--heavy, very heavy on the circumference,
+light, very light within it--was made to save up power,
+from the time when it was produced to the time when it
+was wanted.  Yes?  Then, before we began even to
+build the moon, before we even began to make the brick,
+we would build two gigantic fly-wheels, the diameter of
+each should be "ever so great," the circumference heavy
+beyond all precedent, and thundering strong, so that no
+temptation might burst it.  They should revolve, their
+edges nearly touching, in opposite directions, for years,
+if it were necessary, to accumulate power, driven by some
+waterfall now wasted to the world.  One should be a
+little heavier than the other.  When the Brick Moon was
+finished, and all was ready, IT should be gently rolled
+down a gigantic groove provided for it, till it lighted
+on the edge of both wheels at the same instant.  Of
+course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth
+part of a second.  It would be snapped upward, as a drop
+of water from a grindstone.  Upward and upward; but the
+heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the
+vertical.  Upward and northward it would rise, therefore,
+till it had passed the axis of the world.  It would, of
+course, feel the world's attraction all the time, which
+would bend its flight gently, but still it would leave
+the world more and more behind.  Upward still, but now
+southward, till it had traversed more than one hundred
+and eighty degrees of a circle.  Little resistance,
+indeed, after it had cleared the forty or fifty miles of
+visible atmosphere.  "Now let it fall," said Q., inspired
+with the vision.  "Let it fall, and the sooner the
+better!  The curve it is now on will forever clear
+the world; and over the meridian of that lonely
+waterfall,--if only we have rightly adjusted the gigantic
+flies,--will forever revolve, in its obedient orbit,
+the--
+
+BRICK MOON,
+
+the blessing of all seamen,--as constant in all change
+as its older sister has been fickle, and the second
+cynosure of all lovers upon the waves, and of all girls
+left behind them."  "Amen," we cried, and then we sat in
+silence till the clock struck ten; then shook each other
+gravely by the hand, and left the South Middle dining-
+hall.
+
+Of waterfalls there were plenty that we knew.
+
+Fly-wheels could be built of oak and pine, and hooped
+with iron.  Fly-wheels did not discourage us.
+
+But brick?  One brick is, say, sixty-four cubic
+inches only.  This moon,--though we made it hollow,--
+see,--it must take twelve million brick.
+
+The brick alone will cost sixty thousand dollars!
+
+
+The brick alone would cost sixty thousand dollars.
+There the scheme of the Brick Moon hung, an airy vision,
+for seventeen years,--the years that changed us from
+young men into men.  The brick alone, sixty thousand
+dollars!  For, to boys who have still left a few of their
+college bills unpaid, who cannot think of buying that
+lovely little Elzevir which Smith has for sale at
+auction, of which Smith does not dream of the value,
+sixty thousand dollars seems as intangible as sixty
+million sestertia.  Clarke, second, how much are sixty
+million sestertia stated in cowries?  How much in
+currency, gold being at 1.37 1/4/?  Right; go up.  Stop,
+I forget myself!
+
+So, to resume, the project of the Brick Moon hung in
+the ideal, an airy vision, a vision as lovely and as
+distant as the Brick Moon itself, at this calm moment of
+midnight when I write, as it poises itself over the
+shoulder of Orion, in my southern horizon.  Stop!  I
+anticipate.  Let me keep--as we say in Beadle's Dime
+Series--to the even current of my story.
+
+Seventeen years passed by, we were no longer boys,
+though we felt so.  For myself, to this hour, I never
+enter board meeting, committee meeting, or synod, without
+the queer question, what would happen should any one
+discover that this bearded man was only a big boy
+disguised? that the frockcoat and the round hat are none
+of mine, and that, if I should be spurned from the
+assembly, as an interloper, a judicious public, learning
+all the facts, would give a verdict, "Served him right."
+This consideration helps me through many bored meetings
+which would be else so dismal.  What did my old copy
+say?--
+
+"Boards are made of wood, they are long and narrow."
+
+But we do not get on!
+
+Seventeen years after, I say, or should have said,
+dear Orcutt entered my room at Naguadavick again.  I had
+not seen him since the Commencement day when we
+parted at Cambridge.  He looked the same, and yet not the
+same.  His smile was the same, his voice, his tender look
+of sympathy when I spoke to him of a great sorrow, his
+childlike love of fun.  His waistband was different, his
+pantaloons were different, his smooth chin was buried in
+a full beard, and he weighed two hundred pounds if he
+weighed a gramme.  O, the good time we had, so like the
+times of old!  Those were happy days for me in
+Naguadavick.  At that moment my double was at work for me
+at a meeting of the publishing committee of the
+Sandemanian Review, so I called Orcutt up to my own
+snuggery, and we talked over old times; talked till tea
+was ready.  Polly came up through the orchard and made
+tea for us herself there.  We talked on and on, till
+nine, ten at night, and then it was that dear Orcutt
+asked me if I remembered the Brick Moon.  Remember it? of
+course I did.  And without leaving my chair I opened the
+drawer of my writing-desk, and handed him a portfolio
+full of working-drawings on which I had engaged myself
+for my "third"[1] all that winter.  Orcutt was delighted.
+He turned them over hastily but intelligently, and said:
+"I am so glad.  I could not think you had forgotten.  And
+I have seen Brannan, and Brannan has not forgotten."
+"Now do you know," said he, "in all this railroading of
+mine, I have not forgotten.  When I built the great
+tunnel for the Cattawissa and Opelousas, by which we
+got rid of the old inclined planes, there was never a
+stone bigger than a peach-stone within two hundred miles
+of us.  I baked the brick of that tunnel on the line with
+my own kilns.  Ingham, I have made more brick, I believe,
+than any man living in the world!"
+
+
+[1]  "Every man," says Dr. Peabody, "should have a
+vocation and an avocation."  To which I add,"A third."
+
+
+"You are the providential man," said I.
+
+"Am I not, Fred?  More than that," said he; "I have
+succeeded in things the world counts worth more than
+brick.  I have made brick, and I have made money!"
+
+"One of us make money?" asked I, amazed.
+
+"Even so," said dear Orcutt; "one of us has, made
+money."  And he proceeded to tell me how.  It was not in
+building tunnels, nor in making brick.  No!  It was by
+buying up the original stock of the Cattawissa and
+Opelousas, at a moment when that stock had hardly a
+nominal price in the market.  There were the first
+mortgage bonds, and the second mortgage bonds, and the
+third, and I know not how much floating debt; and worse
+than all, the reputation of the road lost, and deservedly
+lost.  Every locomotive it had was asthmatic.  Every car
+it had bore the marks of unprecedented accidents, for
+which no one was to blame.  Rival lines, I know not how
+many, were cutting each other's throats for its
+legitimate business.  At this juncture dear George
+invested all his earnings as a contractor, in the
+despised original stock,--he actually bought it for 3 1/4
+per cent,--good shares that had cost a round hundred
+to every wretch who had subscribed.  Six thousand eight
+hundred dollars--every cent he had--did George thus
+invest.  Then he went himself to the trustees of the
+first mortgage, to the trustees of the second, and to the
+trustees of the third, and told them what he had done.
+
+Now it is personal presence that moves the world.
+Dear Orcutt has found that out since, if he did not know
+it before.  The trustees who would have sniffed had
+George written to them, turned round from their desks,
+and begged him to take a chair, when he came to talk with
+them.  Had he put every penny he was worth into that
+stock?  Then it was worth something which they did not
+know of, for George Orcutt was no fool about railroads.
+The man who bridged the Lower Rapidan when a freshet was
+running was no fool.
+
+"What were his plans?"
+
+George did not tell--no, not to lordly trustees--what
+his plans were.  He had plans, but he kept them to
+himself.  All he told them was that he had plans.  On
+those plans he had staked his all.  Now, would they or
+would they not agree to put him in charge of the running
+of that road, for twelve months, on a nominal salary?
+The superintendent they had had was a rascal.  He had
+proved that by running away.  They knew that George was
+not a rascal.  He knew that he could make this road pay
+expenses, pay bond-holders, and pay a dividend,--a thing
+no one else had dreamed of for twenty years.  Could
+they do better than try him?
+
+Of course they could not, and they knew they could
+not.  Of course they sniffed and talked, and waited, and
+pretended they did not know, and that they must consult,
+and so forth and so on.  But of course they all did try
+him, on his own terms.  He was put in charge of the
+running of that road.
+
+In one week he showed he should redeem it.  In three
+months he did redeem it!
+
+He advertised boldly the first day: "Infant
+children at treble price."
+
+The novelty attracted instant remark.  And it showed
+many things.  First, it showed he was a humane man, who
+wished to save human life.  He would leave these
+innocents in their cradles, where they belonged.
+
+Second, and chiefly, the world of travellers saw that
+the Crichton, the Amadis, the perfect chevalier of the
+future, had arisen,--a railroad manager caring for the
+comfort of his passengers!
+
+The first week the number of the C. and O.'s
+passengers was doubled: in a week or two more freight
+began to come in, in driblets, on the line which its
+owners had gone over.  As soon as the shops could turn
+them out, some cars were put on, with arms on which
+travellers could rest their elbows, with head-rests where
+they could take naps if they were weary.  These excited
+so much curiosity that one was exhibited in the museum
+at Cattawissa and another at Opelousas.  It may not
+be generally known that the received car of the American
+roads was devised to secure a premium offered by the
+Pawtucket and Podunk Company.  Their receipts were
+growing so large that they feared they should forfeit
+their charter.  They advertised, therefore, for a car in
+which no man could sleep at night or rest by day,--in
+which the backs should be straight, the heads of
+passengers unsupported, the feet entangled in a vice, the
+elbows always knocked by the passing conductor.  The
+pattern was produced which immediately came into use on
+all the American roads.  But on the Cattawissa and
+Opelousas this time-honored pattern was set aside.
+
+Of course you see the result.  Men went hundreds of
+miles out of their way to ride on the C. and O.  The
+third mortgage was paid off; a reserve fund was piled up
+for the second; the trustees of the first lived in dread
+of being paid; and George's stock, which he bought at 3
+1/4, rose to 147 before two years had gone by!  So was it
+that, as we sat together in the snuggery, George was
+worth well-nigh three hundred thousand dollars.  Some of
+his eggs were in the basket where they were laid; some he
+had taken out and placed in other baskets; some in nests
+where various hens were brooding over them.  Sound eggs
+they were, wherever placed; and such was the victory of
+which George had come to tell.
+
+One of us had made money!
+
+On his way he had seen Brannan.  Brannan, the pure-
+minded, right-minded, shifty man of tact, man of brain,
+man of heart, and man of word, who held New Altona in the
+hollow of his hand.  Brannan had made no money.  Not he,
+nor ever will.  But Brannan could do much what he pleased
+in this world, without money.  For whenever Brannan
+studied the rights and the wrongs of any enterprise, all
+men knew that what Brannan decided about it was well-nigh
+the eternal truth; and therefore all men of sense were
+accustomed to place great confidence in his prophecies.
+But, more than this, and better, Brannan was an
+unconscious dog, who believed in the people.  So, when he
+knew what was the right and what was the wrong, he could
+stand up before two or three thousand people and tell
+them what was right and what was wrong, and tell them
+with the same simplicity and freshness with which he
+would talk to little Horace on his knee.  Of the
+thousands who heard him there would not be one in a
+hundred who knew that this was eloquence.  They were fain
+to say, as they sat in their shops, talking, that Brannan
+was not eloquent.  Nay, they went so far as to regret
+that Brannan was not eloquent!  If he were only as
+eloquent as Carker was or as Barker was, how excellent he
+would be!  But when, a month after, it was necessary for
+them to do anything about the thing he had been speaking
+of, they did what Brannan had told them to do;
+forgetting, most likely, that he had ever told them,
+and fancying that these were their own ideas, which, in
+fact, had, from his liquid, ponderous, transparent, and
+invisible common sense, distilled unconsciously into
+their being.  I wonder whether Brannan ever knew that he
+was eloquent.  What I knew, and what dear George knew,
+was, that he was one of the leaders of men!
+
+Courage, my friends, we are steadily advancing to the
+Brick Moon!
+
+For George had stopped, and seen Brannan; and Brannan
+had not forgotten.  Seventeen years Brannan had
+remembered, and not a ship had been lost on a lee-shore
+because her longitude was wrong,--not a baby had wailed
+its last as it was ground between wrecked spar and cruel
+rock,--not a swollen corpse unknown had been flung up
+upon the sand and been buried with a nameless epitaph,--
+but Brannan had recollected the Brick Moon, and had, in
+the memory-chamber which rejected nothing, stored away
+the story of the horror.  And now George was ready to
+consecrate a round hundred thousand to the building of
+the Moon; and Brannan was ready, in the thousand ways in
+which wise men move the people to and fro, to persuade
+them to give to us a hundred thousand more; and George
+had come to ask me if I were not ready to undertake with
+them the final great effort, of which our old
+calculations were the embryo.  For this I was now to
+contribute the mathematical certainty and the lore
+borrowed from naval science, which should blossom and
+bear fruit when the Brick Moon was snapped like a cherry
+from the ways on which it was built, was launched into
+the air by power gathered from a thousand freshets, and,
+poised at last in its own pre-calculated region of the
+ether, should begin its course of eternal blessings in
+one unchanging meridian!
+
+Vision of Beneficence and Wonder!  Of course I
+consented.
+
+Oh that you were not so eager for the end!  Oh that
+I might tell you, what now you will never know,--of the
+great campaign which we then and there inaugurated!  How
+the horrible loss of the Royal Martyr, whose longitude
+was three degrees awry, startled the whole world, and
+gave us a point to start from.  How I explained to George
+that he must not subscribe the one hundred thousand
+dollars in a moment.  It must come in bits, when "the
+cause" needed a  stimulus, or the public needed
+encouragement.  How we caught neophyte editors, and
+explained to them enough to make them think the Moon was
+well-nigh their own invention and their own thunder.
+How, beginning in Boston, we sent round to all the men of
+science, all those of philanthropy, and all those of
+commerce, three thousand circulars, inviting them to a
+private meeting at George's parlors at the Revere.  How,
+besides ourselves, and some nice, respectable-looking old
+gentlemen Brannan had brought over from Podunk with him,
+paying their fares both ways, there were present only
+three men,--all adventurers whose projects had failed,--
+besides the representatives of the press.  How, of these
+representatives, some understood the whole, and some
+understood nothing.  How, the next day, all gave us
+"first-rate notices."  How, a few days after, in the
+lower Horticultural Hall, we had our first public
+meeting.  How Haliburton brought us fifty people who
+loved him,--his Bible class, most of them,--to help fill
+up; how, besides these, there were not three persons whom
+we had not asked personally, or one who could invent an
+excuse to stay away.  How we had hung the walls with
+intelligible and unintelligible diagrams.  How I opened
+the meeting.  Of that meeting, indeed, I must tell
+something.
+
+First, I spoke.  I did not pretend to unfold the
+scheme.  I did not attempt any rhetoric.  But I did not
+make any apologies.  I told them simply of the dangers of
+lee-shores.  I told them when they were most dangerous,--
+when seamen came upon them unawares.  I explained to them
+that, though the costly chronometer, frequently adjusted,
+made a delusive guide to the voyager who often made a
+harbor, still the adjustment was treacherous, the
+instrument beyond the use of the poor, and that, once
+astray, its error increased forever.  I said that we
+believed we had a method which, if the means were
+supplied for the experiment, would give the humblest
+fisherman the very certainty of sunrise and of sunset in
+his calculations of his place upon the world.  And I said
+that whenever a man knew his place in this world, it
+was always likely all would go well.  Then I sat down.
+
+Then dear George spoke,--simply, but very briefly.
+He said he was a stranger to the Boston people, and that
+those who knew him at all knew he was not a talking man.
+He was a civil engineer, and his business was to
+calculate and to build, and not to talk.  But he had come
+here to say that he had studied this new plan for the
+longitude from the Top to the Bottom, and that he
+believed in it through and through.  There was his
+opinion, if that was worth anything to anybody.  If that
+meeting resolved to go forward with the enterprise, or if
+anybody proposed to, he should offer his services in any
+capacity, and without any pay, for its success.  If he
+might only work as a bricklayer, he would work as a
+bricklayer.  For he believed, on his soul, that the
+success of this enterprise promised more for mankind than
+any enterprise which was ever likely to call for the
+devotion of his life.  "And to the good of mankind," he
+said, very simply, "my life is devoted."  Then he sat
+down.
+
+Then Brannan got up.  Up to this time, excepting that
+George had dropped this hint about bricklaying, nobody
+had said a word about the Moon, far less hinted what it
+was to be made of.  So Ben had the whole to open.  He did
+it as if he had been talking to a bright boy of ten years
+old.  He made those people think that he respected
+them as his equals.  But, in fact, he chose every
+word, as if not one of them knew anything.  He explained,
+as if it were rather more simple to explain than to take
+for granted.  But he explained as if, were they talking,
+they might be explaining to him.  He led them from point
+to point,--oh! so much more clearly than I have been
+leading you,--till, as their mouths dropped a little open
+in their eager interest, and their lids forgot to wink in
+their gaze upon his face, and so their eyebrows seemed a
+little lifted in curiosity,--till, I say, each man felt
+as if he were himself the inventor, who had bridged
+difficulty after difficulty; as if, indeed, the whole
+were too simple to be called difficult or complicated.
+The only wonder was that the Board of Longitude, or the
+Emperor Napoleon, or the Smithsonian, or somebody, had
+not sent this little planet on its voyage of blessing
+long before.  Not a syllable that you would have called
+rhetoric, not a word that you would have thought
+prepared; and then Brannan sat down.
+
+That was Ben Brannan's way.  For my part, I like it
+better than eloquence.
+
+Then I got up again.  We would answer any questions,
+I said.  We represented people who were eager to go
+forward with this work. (Alas! except Q., all of those
+represented were on the stage.)  We could not go forward
+without the general assistance of the community.  It was
+not an enterprise which the government could be asked to
+favor.  It was not an enterprise which would yield
+one penny of profit to any human being.  We had
+therefore, purely on the ground of its benefit to
+mankind, brought it before an assembly of Boston men and
+women.
+
+Then there was a pause, and we could hear our watches
+tick, and our hearts beat.  Dear George asked me in a
+whisper if he should say anything more, but I thought
+not.  The pause became painful, and then Tom Coram,
+prince of merchants, rose.  Had any calculation been made
+of the probable cost of the experiment of one moon?
+
+I said the calculations were on the table.  The brick
+alone would cost $60,000.  Mr. Orcutt had computed that
+$214,729 would complete two flywheels and one moon.  This
+made no allowance for whitewashing the moon, which was
+not strictly necessary.  The fly-wheels and water-power
+would be equally valuable for the succeeding moons, it
+any were attempted, and therefore the second moon could
+be turned off, it was hoped, for $159,732.
+
+Thomas Coram had been standing all the time I spoke,
+and in an instant he said:  "I am no mathematician.  But
+I have had a ship ground to pieces under me on the
+Laccadives because our chronometer was wrong.  You need
+$250,000 to build your first moon.  I will be one of
+twenty men to furnish the money; or I will pay  $10,000
+to-morrow for this purpose, to any person who may be
+named as treasurer, to be repaid to me if the moon is not
+finished this day twenty years."
+
+That was as long a speech as Tom Coram ever made.
+But it was pointed.  The small audience tapped applause.
+
+Orcutt looked at me, and I nodded.  "I will be
+another, of the twenty men," cried he.  "And I another,"
+said an old bluff Englishman, whom nobody had invited;
+who proved to be a Mr. Robert Boll, a Sheffield man, who
+came in from curiosity.  He stopped after the meeting;
+said he should leave the country the next week, and I
+have never seen him since.  But his bill of exchange came
+all the same.
+
+That was all the public subscribing.  Enough more
+than we had hoped for.  We tried to make Coram treasurer,
+but he refused.  We had to make Haliburton treasurer,
+though we should have liked a man better known than he
+then was.  Then we adjourned.  Some nice ladies then came
+up, and gave, one a dollar, and one five dollars, and one
+fifty, and so on,--and some men who have stuck by ever
+since.  I always, in my own mind, call each of those
+women Damaris, and each of those men Dionysius.  But
+those are not their real names.
+
+How I am wasting time on an old story!  Then some of
+these ladies came the next day and proposed a fair; and
+out of that, six months after, grew the great Longitude
+Fair, that you will all remember, if you went to it, I am
+sure.  And the papers the next day gave us first-rate
+reports; and then, two by two, with our subscription-
+books, we went at it.  But I must not tell the details of
+that subscription.  There were two or three men who
+subscribed $5,000 each, because they were perfectly
+certain the amount would never be raised.  They wanted,
+for once, to get the credit of liberality for nothing.
+There were many men and many women who subscribed from
+one dollar up to one thousand, not because they cared a
+straw for the longitude, nor because they believed in the
+least in the project; but because they believed in
+Brannan, in Orcutt, in Q., or in me.  Love goes far in
+this world of ours.  Some few men subscribed because
+others had done it: it was the thing to do, and they must
+not be out of fashion.  And three or four, at least,
+subscribed because each hour of their lives there came up
+the memory of the day when the news came that the---- was
+lost, George, or Harry, or John, in the----, and they
+knew that George, or Harry, or John might have been at
+home, had it been easier than it is to read the courses
+of the stars!
+
+Fair, subscriptions, and Orcutt's reserve,--we
+counted up $162,000, or nearly so.  There would be a
+little more when all was paid in.
+
+But we could not use a cent, except Orcutt's and our
+own little subscriptions, till we had got the whole.  And
+at this point it seemed as if the whole world was sick of
+us, and that we had gathered every penny that was in
+store for us.  The orange was squeezed dry!
+
+
+
+II
+
+HOW WE BUILT IT
+
+The orange was squeezed dry!  And how little any of us
+knew,--skilful George Orcutt, thoughtful Ben Brannan,
+loyal Haliburton, ingenious Q., or poor painstaking
+I,--how little we knew, or any of us, where was another
+orange, or how we could mix malic acid and tartaric
+acid, and citric acid and auric acid and sugar and
+water so as to imitate orange-juice, and fill up the
+bank-account enough to draw in the conditioned
+subscriptions, and so begin to build the MOON.  How
+often, as I lay awake at night, have I added up the
+different subscriptions in some new order, as if that
+would help the matter: and how steadily they have come
+out one hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, or even
+less, when I must needs, in my sleepiness, forget
+somebody's name!  So Haliburton put into railroad
+stocks all the money he collected, and the rest of us
+ground on at our mills, or flew up on our own wings
+towards Heaven.  Thus Orcutt built more tunnels, Q.
+prepared for more commencements, Haliburton calculated
+more policies, Ben Brannan created more civilization,
+and I, as I could, healed the hurt of my people of
+Naguadavick for the months there were left to me of my
+stay in that thriving town.
+
+None of us had the wit to see how the problem was to
+be wrought out further.  No.  The best things come to us
+when we have faithfully and well made all the
+preparation and done our best; but they come in some way
+that is none of ours.  So was it now, that to build the
+BRICK MOON it was necessary that I should be turned out
+of Naguadavick ignominiously, and that Jeff. Davis and
+some seven or eight other bad men should create the Great
+Rebellion.  Hear how it happened.
+
+Dennis Shea, my Double,--otherwise, indeed, called by
+my name and legally so,--undid me, as my friends
+supposed, one evening at a public meeting called by poor
+Isaacs in Naguadavick.  Of that transaction I have no
+occasion here to tell the story.  But of that transaction
+one consequence is that the BRICK MOON now moves in
+ether.  I stop writing, to rest my eye upon it, through
+a little telescope of Alvan Clark's here, which is always
+trained near it.  It is moving on as placidly as ever.
+
+It came about thus.  The morning after poor Dennis,
+whom I have long since forgiven, made his extraordinary
+speeches, without any authority from me, in the Town Hall
+at Naguadavick, I thought, and my wife agreed with me,
+that we had better both leave town with the children.
+Auchmuty, our dear friend, thought so too.  We left in
+the seven o'clock Accommodation for Skowhegan, and so
+came to Township No. 9 in the 3d Range, and there for
+years we resided.  That whole range of townships was set
+off under a provision admirable in its character, that
+the first settled minister in each town should receive
+one hundred acres of land as the "minister's grant,"
+and the first settled schoolmaster eighty.  To No. 9,
+therefore, I came.  I constituted a little Sandemanian
+church.  Auchmuty and Delafield came up and installed me,
+and with these hands I built the cabin in which, with
+Polly and the little ones, I have since spent many happy
+nights and days.  This is not the place for me to publish
+a map, which I have by me, of No. 9, nor an account of
+its many advantages for settlers.  Should I ever print my
+papers called "Stay-at-home Robinsons," it will be easy
+with them to explain its topography and geography.
+Suffice it now to say, that, with Alice and Bertha and
+Polly, I took tramps up and down through the lumbermen's
+roads, and soon knew the general features of the lay of
+the land.  Nor was it long, of course, before we came out
+one day upon the curious land-slides, which have more
+than once averted the flow of the Little Carrotook River,
+where it has washed the rocks away so far as to let down
+one section more of the overlying yielding yellow clay.
+
+Think how my eyes flashed, and my wife's, as,
+struggling though a wilderness of moosewood, we came out
+one afternoon on this front of yellow clay!  Yellow clay
+of course, when properly treated by fire, is brick!  Here
+we were surrounded by forests, only waiting to be burned;
+yonder was clay, only waiting to be baked.  Polly looked
+at me, and I looked at her, and with one voice, we cried
+out, "The MOON!"
+
+For here was this shouting river at our feet, whose
+power had been running to waste since the day when the
+Laurentian hills first heaved themselves above the hot
+Atlantic; and that day, I am informed by Mr. Agassiz, was
+the first day in the history of this solid world.  Here
+was water-power enough for forty fly-wheels, were it
+necessary to send heavenward twenty moons.  Here was
+solid timber enough for a hundred dams, yet only one was
+necessary to give motion to the fly-wheels.  Here was
+retirement,--freedom from criticism, an escape from the
+journalists, who would not embarrass us by telling of
+every cracked brick which had to be rejected from the
+structure.  We had lived in No. 9 now for six weeks, and
+not an "own correspondent" of them all had yet told what
+Rev. Mr. Ingham had for dinner.
+
+Of course I wrote to George Orcutt at once of our
+great discovery, and he came up at once to examine the
+situation.  On the whole, it pleased him.  He could not
+take the site I proposed for the dam, because this very
+clay there made the channel treacherous, and there was
+danger that the stream would work out a new career.  But
+lower down we found a stony gorge with which George was
+satisfied; he traced out a line for a railway by which,
+of their own weight, the brick-cars could run to the
+centrings; he showed us where, with some excavations, the
+fly-wheels could be placed exactly above the great mill-
+wheels, that no power might be wasted, and explained to
+us how, when the gigantic structure was finished, the
+BRICK MOON would gently roll down its ways upon the rapid
+wheels, to be launched instant into the sky!
+
+Shall I ever forget that happy October day of
+anticipation?
+
+We spent many of those October days in tentative
+surveys.  Alice and Bertha were our chain-men,
+intelligent and obedient.  I drove for George his stakes,
+or I cut away his brush, or I raised and lowered the
+shield at which he sighted  and at noon Polly appeared
+with her baskets, and we would dine al fresco, on a
+pretty point which, not many months after, was wholly
+covered by the eastern end of the dam.  When the field-
+work was finished we retired to the cabin for days, and
+calculated and drew, and drew and calculated.  Estimates
+for feeding Irishmen, estimates of hay for mules,--George
+was sure he could work mules better than oxen,--estimates
+for cement, estimates for the preliminary saw-mills,
+estimates for rail for the little brick-road, for wheels,
+for spikes, and for cutting ties; what did we not
+estimate for--on a basis almost wholly new, you will
+observe.  For here the brick would cost us less than our
+old conceptions,--our water-power cost us almost
+nothing,--but our stores and our wages would cost us much
+more.
+
+These estimates are now to me very curious,--a
+monument, indeed, to dear George's memory, that in the
+result they proved so accurate.  I would gladly print
+them here at length, with some illustrative cuts, but
+that I know the impatience of the public, and its
+indifference to detail.  If we are ever able to print a
+proper memorial of George, that, perhaps, will be the
+fitter place for them.  Suffice it to say that with the
+subtractions thus made from the original estimates,--even
+with the additions forced upon us by working in a
+wilderness,--George was satisfied that a money charge of
+$197,327 would build and start THE MOON.  As soon as we
+had determined the site, we marked off eighty acres,
+which contained all the essential localities, up and down
+the little Carrotook River,--I engaged George for the
+first schoolmaster in No. 9, and he took these eighty
+acres for the schoolmaster's reservation.  Alice and
+Bertha went to school to him the next day, taking lessons
+in civil engineering; and I wrote to the Bingham trustees
+to notify them that I had engaged a teacher, and that he
+had selected his land.
+
+Of course we remembered, still, that we were near
+forty thousand dollars short of the new estimates, and
+also that much of our money would not be paid us but on
+condition that two hundred and fifty thousand were
+raised.  But George said that his own subscription was
+wholly unhampered: with that we would go to work on the
+preliminary work of the dam, and on the flies.  Then, if
+the flies would hold together,--and they should hold if
+mortise and iron could hold them,--they might be at
+work summers and winters, days and nights, storing up
+Power for us.  This would encourage the subscribers, it
+would encourage us; and all this preliminary work would
+be out of the way when we were really ready to begin upon
+the MOON.
+
+Brannan, Haliburton, and Q. readily agreed to this
+when they were consulted.  They were the other trustees
+under an instrument which we had got St. Leger[1] to draw
+up.  George gave up, as soon as he might, his other
+appointments; and taught me, meanwhile, where and how I
+was to rig a little saw-mill, to cut some necessary
+lumber.  I engaged a gang of men to cut the timber for
+the dam, and to have it ready; and, with the next spring,
+we were well at work on the dam and on the flies!  These
+needed, of course, the most solid foundation.  The least
+irregularity of their movement might send the MOON awry.
+
+
+[1]  The St. Leger of these stories was Francis Brown
+Hayes, H. C. 1839.
+
+
+Ah me! would I not gladly tell the history of every
+bar of iron which was bent into the tires of those flies,
+and of every log which was mortised into its place in the
+dam, nay, of every curling mass of foam which played in
+the eddies beneath, when the dam was finished, and the
+waste water ran so smoothly over?  Alas! that one drop
+should be wasted of water that might move a world,
+although a small one!  I almost dare say that I remember
+each and all these,--with such hope and happiness did I
+lend myself, as I could, each day to the great
+enterprise; lending to dear George, who was here and
+there and everywhere, and was this and that and
+everybody,--lending to him, I say, such poor help as I
+could lend, in whatever way.  We waked, in the two cabins
+in those happy days, just before the sun came up, when
+the birds were in their loudest clamor of morning joy.
+Wrapped each in a blanket, George and I stepped out from
+our doors, each trying to call the other, and often
+meeting on the grass between.  We ran to the river and
+plunged in,--oh, how cold it was!--laughed and screamed
+like boys, rubbed ourselves aglow, and ran home to build
+Polly's fire beneath the open chimney which stood beside
+my cabin.  The bread had risen in the night.  The water
+soon boiled above the logs.  The children came laughing
+out upon the grass, barefoot, and fearless of the dew.
+Then Polly appeared with her gridiron and bear-steak, or
+with her griddle and eggs, and, in fewer minutes than
+this page has cost me, the breakfast was ready for Alice
+to carry, dish by dish, to the white-clad table on the
+piazza.  Not Raphael and Adam more enjoyed their
+watermelons, fox-grapes, and late blueberries!  And, in
+the long croon of the breakfast, we revenged ourselves
+for the haste with which it had been prepared.
+
+When we were well at table, a horn from the cabins
+below sounded the reveille for the drowsier workmen.
+Soon above the larches rose the blue of their smokes; and
+when we were at last nodding to the children, to say
+that they might leave the table, and Polly was folding
+her napkin as to say she wished we were gone, we would
+see tall Asaph Langdon, then foreman of the carpenters,
+sauntering up the valley with a roll of paper, or an
+adze, or a shingle with some calculations on it,--with
+something on which he wanted Mr. Orcutt's directions for
+the day.
+
+An hour of nothings set the carnal machinery of the
+day agoing.  We fed the horses, the cows, the pigs, and
+the hens.  We collected the eggs and cleaned the hen-
+houses and the barns.  We brought in wood enough for the
+day's fire, and water enough for the day's cooking and
+cleanliness.  These heads describe what I and the
+children did.  Polly's life during that hour was more
+mysterious.  That great first hour of the day is devoted
+with women to the deepest arcana of the Eleusinian
+mysteries of the divine science of housekeeping.  She who
+can meet the requisitions of that hour wisely and bravely
+conquers in the Day's Battle.  But what she does in it,
+let no man try to say!  It can be named, but not
+described, in the comprehensive formula, "Just stepping
+round."
+
+That hour well given to chores and to digestion, the
+children went to Mr. Orcutt's open-air school, and I to
+my rustic study,--a separate cabin, with a rough square
+table in it, and some book-boxes equally rude.  No man
+entered it, excepting George and me.  Here for two hours
+I worked undisturbed,--how happy the world, had it
+neither postman nor door-bell!--worked upon my Traces of
+Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries, and
+then was ready to render such service to The Cause and to
+George as the day might demand.  Thus I rode to Lincoln
+or to Foxcroft to order supplies; I took my gun and lay
+in wait on Chairback for a bear; I transferred to the
+hewn lumber the angles or bevels from the careful
+drawings: as best I could, I filled an apostle's part,
+and became all things to all these men around me.  Happy
+those days!--and thus the dam was built; in such Arcadian
+simplicity was reared the mighty wheel; thus grew on each
+side the towers which were to support the flies; and
+thus, to our delight not unmixed with wonder, at last we
+saw those mighty flies begin to turn.  Not in one day,
+nor in ten; but in a year or two of happy life,--full of
+the joy of joys,--the "joy of eventful living."
+
+Yet, for all this, $162,000 was not $197,000, far
+less was it $250,000; and but for Jeff. Davis and his
+crew the BRICK MOON would not have been born.
+
+But at last Jeff. Davis was ready.  "My preparations
+being completed," wrote General Beauregard, "I opened
+fire on Fort Sumter."  Little did he know it,--but in
+that explosion the BRICK MOON also was lifted into the
+sky!
+
+Little did we know it, when, four weeks after, George
+came up from the settlements, all excited with the
+news!  The wheels had been turning now for four days,
+faster of course and faster.  George had gone down for
+money to pay off the men, and he brought us up the news
+that the Rebellion had begun.
+
+"The last of this happy life," he said; "the last,
+alas, of our dear MOON."  How little he knew and we!
+
+But he paid off the men, and they packed their traps
+and disappeared, and, before two months were over, were
+in the lines before the enemy.  George packed up, bade us
+sadly good-by, and before a week had offered his service
+to Governor Fenton in Albany.  For us, it took rather
+longer; but we were soon packed; Polly took the children
+to her sister's, and I went on to the Department to offer
+my service there.  No sign of life left in No. 9, but the
+two gigantic Fly-Wheels, moving faster and faster by day
+and by night, and accumulating Power till it was needed.
+If only they would hold together till the moment came!
+
+So we all ground through the first slow year of the
+war.  George in his place, I in mine, Brannan in his,--we
+lifted as we could.  But how heavy the weight seemed!  It
+was in the second year, when the second large loan was
+placed, that Haliburton wrote to me,--I got the letter,
+I think, at Hilton Head,--that he had sold out every
+penny of our railroad stocks, at the high prices which
+railroad stocks then bore, and had invested the whole
+fifty-nine thousand in the new Governments.  "I could
+not call a board meeting," said Haliburton, "for I am
+here only on leave of absence, and the rest are all away.
+But the case is clear enough.  If the government goes up,
+the MOON will never go up; and, for one, I do not look
+beyond the veil."  So he wrote to us all, and of course
+we all approved.
+
+So it was that Jeff. Davis also served.  Deep must
+that man go into the Pit who does not serve, though
+unconscious.  For thus it was that, in the fourth year of
+the war, when gold was at 290, Haliburton was receiving
+on his fifty-nine thousand dollars seventeen per cent
+interest in currency; thus was it that, before the war
+was over, he had piled up, compounding his interest, more
+than fifty per cent addition to his capital; thus was it
+that, as soon as peace came, all his stocks were at a
+handsome percentage; thus was it that, before I returned
+from South America, he reported to all the subscribers
+that the full quarter-million was secured: thus was it
+that, when I returned after that long cruise of mine in
+the Florida, I found Polly and the children again at No.
+9, George there also, directing a working party of nearly
+eighty bricklayers and hodmen, the lower centrings well-
+nigh filled to their diameter, and the BRICK MOON, to the
+eye, seeming almost half completed.
+
+Here it is that I regret most of all that I cannot
+print the working-drawings with this paper.  If you will
+cut open the seed-vessel of Spergularia Rubra, or any
+other carpel that has a free central placenta, and
+observe how the circular seeds cling around the circular
+centre, you will have some idea of the arrangement of a
+transverse horizontal section of the completed MOON.  Lay
+three croquet-balls on the piazza, and call one or two of
+the children to help you poise seven in one plane above
+the three; then let another child place three more above
+the seven, and you have the CORE of the MOON
+completely.  If you want a more poetical illustration, it
+was what Mr. Wordsworth calls a mass
+
+"Of conglobated bubbles undissolved."
+
+
+Any section through any diameter looked like an
+immense rose-window, of six circles grouped round a
+seventh.  In truth, each of these sections would reveal
+the existence of seven chambers in the moon,--each a
+sphere itself,--whose arches gave solidity to the whole;
+while yet, of the whole moon, the greater part was air.
+In all there were thirteen of these moonlets, if I am so
+to call them; though no one section, of course, would
+reveal so many.  Sustained on each side by their groined
+arches, the surface of the  whole moon was built over
+them and under them,--simply two domes connected at the
+bases.  The chambers themselves were made lighter by
+leaving large, round windows or open circles in the parts
+of their vaults farthest from their points of contact, so
+that each of them looked not unlike the outer sphere of
+a Japanese ivory nest of concentric balls.  You see
+the object was to make a moon, which, when left to its
+own gravity, should be fitly supported or braced within.
+Dear George was sure that, by this constant repetition of
+arches, we should with the least weight unite the
+greatest strength.  I believe it still, and experience
+has proved that there is strength enough.
+
+When I went up to No. 9, on my return from South
+America, I found the lower centring up, and half full of
+the working-bees,--who were really Keltic laborers,--all
+busy in bringing up the lower half-dome of the shell.
+This lower centring was of wood, in form exactly like a
+Roman amphitheatre if the seats of it be circular; on
+this the lower or inverted brick dome was laid.  The
+whole fabric was on one of the terraces which were heaved
+up in some old geological cataclysm, when some lake gave
+way, and the Carrotook River was born.  The level was
+higher than that of the top of the fly-wheels, which,
+with an awful velocity now, were circling in their wild
+career in the ravine below.  Three of the lowest
+moonlets, as I have called them,--separate croquet-balls,
+if you take my other illustration,--had been completed;
+their centrings had been taken to pieces and drawn out
+through the holes, and were now set up again with other
+new centrings for the second story of cells.
+
+I was received with wonder and delight.  I had
+telegraphed my arrival, but the despatches had never
+been forwarded from Skowhegan.  Of course, we all had a
+deal to tell; and, for me, there was no end to inquiries
+which I had to make in turn.  I was never tired of
+exploring the various spheres, and the nameless spaces
+between them.  I was never tired of talking with the
+laborers.  All of us, indeed, became skilful bricklayers;
+and on a pleasant afternoon you might see Alice and
+Bertha, and George and me, all laying brick together,--
+Polly sitting in the shade of some wall which had been
+built high enough, and reading to us from Jean Ingelow or
+Monte-Cristo or Jane Austen, while little Clara brought
+to us our mortar.  Happily and lightly went by that
+summer.  Haliburton and his wife made us a visit; Ben
+Brannan brought up his wife and children; Mrs. Haliburton
+herself put in the keystone to the central chamber, which
+had always been named G on the plans; and at her
+suggestion, it was named Grace now, because her mother's
+name was Hannah.  Before winter we had passed the
+diameter of I, J, and K, the three uppermost cells of
+all; and the surrounding shell was closing in upon them.
+On the whole, the funds had held out amazingly  well.
+The wages had been rather higher than we meant; but the
+men had no chances at liquor or dissipation, and had
+worked faster than we expected; and, with our new brick-
+machines, we made brick inconceivably fast, while their
+quality was so good that dear George said there was never
+so little waste.  We celebrated Thanksgiving of that year
+together,--my family and his family.  We had paid
+off all the laborers; and there were left, of that busy
+village, only Asaph Langdon and his family, Levi Jordan
+and Levi Ross, Horace Leonard and Seth Whitman with
+theirs.  "Theirs," I say, but Ross had no family.  He was
+a nice young fellow who was there as Haliburton's
+representative, to take care of the accounts and the pay-
+roll; Jordan was the head of the brick-kilns; Leonard, of
+the carpenters; and Whitman, of the commissariat,--and a
+good commissary Whitman was.
+
+We celebrated Thanksgiving together!  Ah me! what a
+cheerful, pleasant time we had; how happy the children
+were together!  Polly and I and our bairns were to go to
+Boston the next day.  I was to spend the winter in one
+final effort to get twenty-five thousand dollars more if
+I could, with which we might paint the MOON, or put on
+some ground felspathic granite dust, in a sort of paste,
+which in its hot flight through the air might fuse into
+a white enamel.  All of us who saw the MOON were so
+delighted with its success that we felt sure "the
+friends" would not pause about this trifle.  The rest of
+them were to stay there to watch the winter, and to be
+ready to begin work the moment the snow had gone.
+Thanksgiving afternoon, how well I remember it,--that
+good fellow, Whitman, came and asked Polly and me to
+visit his family in their new quarters.  They had moved
+for the winter into cells B and E, so lofty, spacious,
+and warm, and so much drier than their log cabins.
+Mrs. Whitman, I remember, was very cheerful and
+jolly; made my children eat another piece of pie, and
+stuffed their pockets with raisins; and then with great
+ceremony and fun we christened room B by the name of
+Bertha, and E, Ellen, which was Mrs. Whitman's name.  And
+the next day we bade them all good-by, little thinking
+what we said, and with endless promises of what we would
+send and bring them in the spring.
+
+Here are the scraps of letters from Orcutt, dear
+fellow, which tell what more there is left to tell:--
+
+"December 10th.
+". . . After you left we were a little blue, and hung
+round loose for a day or two.  Sunday we missed you
+especially, but Asaph made a good substitute, and Mrs.
+Leonard led the singing.  The next day we moved the
+Leonards into L and M, which we christened Leonard and
+Mary (Mary is for your wife).  They are pretty dark, but
+very dry.  Leonard has swung hammocks, as Whitman did.
+
+"Asaph came to me Tuesday and said he thought they
+had better turn to and put a shed over the unfinished
+circle, and so take occasion of warm days for dry work
+there.  This we have done, and the occupation is good for
+us. . . ."
+
+"December 25th.
+I have had no chance to write for a fortnight.  The
+truth is, that the weather has been so open that I let
+Asaph go down to No. 7 and to Wilder's, and engage five-
+and-twenty of the best of the men, who, we knew, were
+hanging round there.  We have all been at work most of
+the time since, with very good success.  H is now wholly
+covered in, and the centring is out.  The men have named
+it Haliburton.  I is well advanced.  J is as you left it.
+The work has been good for us all, morally."
+
+"February 11th.
+". . . We got your mail unexpectedly by some
+lumbermen on their way to the 9th Range.  One of them has
+cut himself, and takes this down.
+
+"You will be amazed to hear that I and K are both
+done.  We have had splendid weather, and have worked half
+the time.  We had a great jollification when K was closed
+in,--called it Kilpatrick, for Seth's old general.  I
+wish you could just run up and see us.  You must be
+quick, if you want to put in any of the last licks.
+
+"March 12th.
+"DEAR FRED,--I have but an instant.  By all means
+make your preparations to be here by the end of the month
+or early in next month.  The weather has been faultless,
+you know.  Asaph got in a dozen more men, and we have
+brought up the surface farther than you could dream.  The
+ways are well forward, and I cannot see why, if the
+freshet hold off a little, we should not launch her by
+the 10th or 12th.  I do not think it worth while to wait
+for paint or enamel.  Telegraph Brannan that he must be
+here.  You will be amused by our quarters.  We, who were
+the last outsiders, move into A and D to-morrow, for a
+few weeks.  It is much warmer there.
+"Ever yours,
+G. O."
+
+I telegraphed Brannan, and in reply he came with his
+wife and his children to Boston.  I told him that he
+could not possibly get up there, as the roads then were;
+but Ben said he would go to Skowhegan, and take his
+chance there.  He would, of course, communicate with me
+as soon as he got there.  Accordingly I got a note from
+him at Skowhegan, saying he had hired a sleigh to go over
+to No. 9; and in four days more I got this letter:--
+
+March 27th.
+DEAR FRED,--I am most glad I came, and I beg you to
+bring your wife as soon as possible.  The river is very
+full, the wheels, to which Leonard has added two
+auxiliaries, are moving as if they could not hold out
+long, the ways are all but ready, and we think we must
+not wait.  Start with all hands as soon as you can.  I
+had no difficulty in coming over from Skowhegan.  We did
+it in two days.
+
+This note I sent at once to Haliburton; and we got
+all the children ready for a winter journey, as the
+spectacle of the launch of the MOON was one to be
+remembered their life long.  But it was clearly
+impossible to attempt, at that season, to get the
+subscribers together.  Just as we started, this despatch
+from Skowhegan was brought me,--the last word I got from
+them:--
+
+Stop for nothing.  There is a jam below us in the
+stream, and we fear back-water.
+ORCUTT.
+
+Of course we could not go faster than we could.  We
+missed no connection.  At Skowhegan, Haliburton and I
+took a cutter, leaving the ladies and children to follow
+at once in larger sleighs.  We drove all night, changed
+horses at Prospect, and kept on all the next day.  At No.
+7 we had to wait over night.  We started early in the
+morning, and came down the Spoonwood Hill at four in the
+afternoon, in full sight of our little village.
+
+It was quiet as the grave!  Not a smoke, not a man,
+not an adze-blow, nor the tick of a trowel.  Only the
+gigantic fly-wheels were whirling as I saw them last.
+
+There was the lower Coliseum-like centring, somewhat
+as I first saw it.
+
+But where was the Brick Dome of the MOON?
+
+"Good Heavens! has it fallen on them all?" cried I.
+
+Haliburton lashed the beast till he fairly ran down
+that steep hill.  We turned a little point, and came out
+in front of the centring.  There was no MOON there!  An
+empty amphitheatre, with not a brick nor a splinter
+within!
+
+We were speechless.  We left the cutter.  We ran up
+the stairways to the terrace.  We ran by the familiar
+paths into the centring.  We came out upon the ways,
+which we had never seen before.  These told the story too
+well!  The ground and crushed surface of the timbers,
+scorched by the rapidity with which the MOON had slid
+down, told that they had done the duty for which they
+were built.
+
+It was too clear that in some wild rush of the waters
+the ground had yielded a trifle.  We could not find that
+the foundations had sunk more than six inches, but that
+was enough.  In that fatal six inches' decline of the
+centring, the MOON had been launched upon the ways just
+as George had intended that it should be when he was
+ready.  But it had slid, not rolled, down upon these
+angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with all our
+friends, it had been hurled into the sky!
+
+"They have gone up!" said Haliburton; "She has gone
+up!" said I;--both in one breath.  And with a common
+instinct, we looked up into the blue.
+
+But of course she was not there.
+
+--------
+
+Not a shred of letter or any other tidings could we
+find in any of the shanties.  It was indeed six weeks
+since George and Fanny and their children had moved into
+Annie and Diamond,--two unoccupied cells of the MOON,--so
+much more comfortable had the cells proved than the
+cabins, for winter life.  Returning to No. 7, we found
+there many of the laborers, who were astonished at what
+we told them.  They had been paid off on the 30th, and
+told to come up again on the 15th of April, to see the
+launch.  One of them, a man named Rob Shea, told me that
+George kept his cousin Peter to help him move back into
+his house the beginning of the next week.
+
+And that was the last I knew of any of them for
+more than a year.  At first I expected, each hour, to
+hear that they had fallen somewhere.  But time passed by,
+and of such a fall, where man knows the world's surface,
+there was no tale.  I answered, as best I could, the
+letters of their friends; by saying I did not know where
+they were, and had not heard from them.  My real thought
+was, that if this fatal MOON did indeed pass our
+atmosphere, all in it must have been burned to death in
+the transit.  But this I whispered to no one save to
+Polly and Annie and Haliburton.  In this terrible doubt
+I remained, till I noticed one day in the "Astronomical
+Record" the memorandum, which you perhaps remember, of
+the observation, by Dr. Zitta, of a new asteroid, with an
+enormous movement in declination.
+
+
+
+III
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+Looking back upon it now, it seems inconceivable that
+we said as little to each other as we did, of this
+horrible catastrophe.  That night we did not pretend to
+sleep.  We sat in one of the deserted cabins, now
+talking fast, now sitting and brooding, without
+speaking, perhaps, for hours.  Riding back the next day
+to meet the women and children, we still brooded, or we
+discussed this "if," that "if," and yet others.  But
+after we had once opened it all to them,--and when we
+had once answered the children's horribly naive
+questions as best we could,--we very seldom spoke to
+each other of it again.  It was too hateful, all of it,
+to talk about.  I went round to Tom Coram's office one
+day, and told him all I knew.  He saw it was dreadful
+to me, and, with his eyes full, just squeezed my hand,
+and never said one word more.  We lay awake nights,
+pondering and wondering, but hardly ever did I to
+Haliburton or he to me explain our respective notions
+as they came and went.  I believe my general impression
+was that of which I have spoken, that they were all
+burned to death on the instant, as the little aerolite
+fused in its passage through our atmosphere.  I believe
+Haliburton's thought more often was that they were
+conscious of what had happened, and gasped out their
+lives in one or two breathless minutes,--so horribly
+long!--as they shot outside of our atmosphere.  But it
+was all too terrible for words.  And that which we could
+not but think upon, in those dreadful waking nights, we
+scarcely whispered even to our wives.
+
+Of course I looked and he looked for the miserable
+thing.  But we looked in vain.  I returned to the few
+subscribers the money which I had scraped together
+towards whitewashing the moon,--"shrouding its guilty
+face with innocent white" indeed!  But we agreed to spend
+the wretched trifle of the other money, left in the
+treasury after paying the last bills, for the largest
+Alvan Clark telescope that we could buy; and we were
+fortunate in obtaining cheap a second-hand one which
+came to the hammer when the property of the Shubael
+Academy was sold by the mortgagees.  But we had, of
+course, scarce a hint whatever as to where the miserable
+object was to be found.  All we could do was to carry the
+glass to No. 9, to train it there on the meridian of No.
+9, and take turns every night in watching the field, in
+the hope that this child of sorrow might drift across it
+in its path of ruin.  But, though everything else seemed
+to drift by, from east to west, nothing came from south
+to north, as we expected.  For a whole month of spring,
+another of autumn, another of summer, and another of
+winter, did Haliburton and his wife and Polly and I glue
+our eyes to that eye-glass, from the twilight of evening
+to the twilight of morning, and the dead hulk never hove
+in sight.  Wherever else it was, it seemed not to be on
+that meridian, which was where it ought to be and was
+made to be!  Had ever any dead mass of matter wrought
+such ruin to its makers, and, of its own stupid inertia,
+so falsified all the prophecies of its birth!  Oh, the
+total depravity of things!
+
+It was more than a year after the fatal night,--if it
+all happened in the night, as I suppose,--that, as I
+dreamily read through the "Astronomical Record" in the
+new reading-room of the College Library at Cambridge, I
+lighted on this scrap:--
+
+"Professor Karl Zitta of Breslau writes to the
+Astronomische Nachrichten to claim the discovery
+of a new asteroid observed by him on the night of
+March 31st.
+
+
+                           App. A. R.      App. Decl.
+Bresl. M. T.   h. m.  s.   h. m.  s.        @  '   "   Size.
+March 31       12 53 51.9  15 39 52.32     -23 50 26.1 12.9
+April 1        1   3  2.1  15 39 52.32     -23  9  1.9 12.9
+
+He proposes for the asteroid the name of Phoebe.  Dr.
+Zitta states that in the short period which he had for
+observing Phoebe, for an hour after midnight, her motion
+in R. A. seemed slight and her motion in declination very
+rapid."
+
+After this, however, for months, nay even to this
+moment, nothing more was heard of Dr. Zitta of Breslau.
+
+But, one morning, before I was up, Haliburton came
+banging at my door on D Street.  The mood had taken him,
+as he returned from some private theatricals at
+Cambridge, to take the comfort of the new reading-room at
+night, and thus express in practice his gratitude to the
+overseers of the college for keeping it open through all
+the twenty-four hours.  Poor Haliburton, he did not sleep
+well in those times!  Well, as he read away on the
+Astronomische Nachrichten itself, what should he find
+but this in German, which he copied for me, and then, all
+on foot in the rain and darkness, tramped over with, to
+South Boston:--
+
+"The most enlightened head professor Dr. Gmelin
+writes to the director of the Porpol Astronomik at
+St. Petersburg, to claim the discovery of an asteroid in
+a very high southern latitude, of a wider inclination of
+the orbit, as will be noticed, than any asteroid yet
+observed.
+
+"Planet's apparent {alpha} 21^h. 20^m. 51^s.40.
+Planet's apparent {delta}-39@ 31' 11".9.  Comparison star
+{alpha}.
+
+"Dr. Gmelin publishes no separate second observation,
+but is confident that the declination is diminishing.
+Dr. Gmelin suggests for the name of this extra-zodiacal
+planet `Io,' as appropriate to its wanderings from the
+accustomed ways of planetary life, and trusts that the
+very distinguished Herr Peters, the godfather of so many
+planets, will relinquish this name, already claimed for
+the asteroid (85) observed by him, September 15, 1865."
+
+I had run down stairs almost as I was, slippers and
+dressing-gown being the only claims I had on society.
+But to me, as to Haliburton, this stuff about "extra-
+zodiacal wandering" blazed out upon the page, and though
+there was no evidence that the "most enlightened" Gmelin
+found anything the next night, yet, if his "diminishing"
+meant anything, there was, with Zitta's observation,--
+whoever Zitta might be,--something to start upon.  We
+rushed upon some old bound volumes of the Record and
+spotted the "enlightened Gmelin."  He was chief of a
+college at Taganrog, where perhaps they had a spyglass.
+This gave us the parallax of his observation.  Breslau,
+of course, we knew, and so we could place Zitta's,
+and with these poor data I went to work to construct,
+if I could, an orbit for this Io-Phoebe mass of brick and
+mortar.  Haliburton, not strong in spherical
+trigonometry, looked out logarithms for me till
+breakfast, and, as soon as it would do, went over to Mrs.
+Bowdoin, to borrow her telescope, ours being left at No.
+9.
+
+Mrs. Bowdoin was kind, as she always was, and at noon
+Haliburton appeared in triumph with the boxes on P.
+Nolan's job-wagon.  We always employ P., in memory of
+dear old Phil.  We got the telescope rigged, and waited
+for night, only, alas! to be disappointed again.  Io had
+wandered somewhere else, and, with all our sweeping back
+and forth on the tentative curve I had laid out, Io would
+not appear.  We spent that night in vain.
+
+But we were not going to give it up so.  Phoebe might
+have gone round the world twice before she became Io;
+might have gone three times, four, five, six,--nay, six
+hundred,--who knew?  Nay, who knew how far off Phoebe-
+Io was or Io-Phoebe?  We sent over for Annie, and
+she and Polly and George and I went to work again.  We
+calculated in the next week sixty-seven orbits on the
+supposition of so many different distances from our
+surface.  I laid out on a paper, which we stuck up on the
+wall opposite, the formula, and then one woman and one
+man attacked each set of elements, each having the
+Logarithmic Tables, and so in a week's working-time the
+sixty-seven orbits were completed.  Seventy-seven
+possible places for Io-Phoebe to be in on the
+forthcoming Friday evening.  Of these sixty-seven, forty-
+one were observable above our horizon that night.
+
+She was not in one of the forty-one, nor near it.
+
+But Despair, if Giotto be correct, is the chief of
+sins.  So has he depicted her in the fresco of the Arena
+in Padua.  No sin, that, of ours!  After searching all
+that Friday night, we slept all Saturday (sleeping after
+sweeping).  We all came to the Chapel, Sunday, kept awake
+there, and taught our Sunday classes special lessons on
+Perseverance.  On Monday we began again, and that week we
+calculated sixty-seven more orbits.  I am sure I do not
+know why we stopped at sixty-seven.  All of these were on
+the supposition that the revolution of the Brick Moon, or
+Io-Phoebe, was so fast that it would require either
+fifteen days to complete its orbit, or sixteen days, or
+seventeen days, and so on up to eighty-one days.  And,
+with these orbits, on the next Friday we waited for the
+darkness.  As we sat at tea, I asked if I should begin
+observing at the smallest or at the largest orbit.  And
+there was a great clamor of diverse opinions.  But little
+Bertha said, "Begin in the middle."
+
+"And what is the middle?" said George, chaffing the
+little girl.
+
+But she was not to be dismayed.  She had been in and
+out all the week, and knew that the first orbit was of
+fifteen days and the last of eighty-one; and, with true
+Lincoln School precision, she said, "The mean of the
+smallest orbit and the largest orbit is forty-eight
+days."
+
+"Amen!" said I, as we all laughed.  "On forty-eight
+days we will begin."
+
+Alice ran to the sheets, turned up that number, and
+read, "R.  A. 27@ 11'.  South declination 34@ 49'."
+
+"Convenient place," said George; "good omen, Bertha,
+my darling!  If we find her there, Alice and Bertha and
+Clara shall all have new dolls."
+
+It was the first word of pleasantry that had been
+spoken about the horrid thing since Spoonwood Hill!
+
+Night came at last.  We trained the glass on the
+fated spot.  I bade Polly take the eye-glass.  She did
+so, shook her head uneasily, screwed the tube northward
+herself a moment, and then screamed, "It is there! it is
+there,--a clear disk,--gibbous shape,--and very sharp on
+the upper edge.  Look! look! as big again as Jupiter!"
+
+Polly was right!  The Brick Moon was found!
+
+Now we had found it, we never lost it.  Zitta and
+Gmelin, I suppose, had had foggy nights and stormy
+weather often.  But we had some one at the eye-glass all
+that night, and before morning had very respectable
+elements, good measurements of angular distance when we
+got one, from another star in the field of our lowest
+power.  For we could see her even with a good French
+opera-glass I had, and with a night-glass which I used to
+carry on the South Atlantic Station.  It certainly
+was an extraordinary illustration of Orcutt's engineering
+ability, that, flying off as she did, without leave or
+license, she should have gained so nearly the orbit of
+our original plan,--nine thousand miles from the earth's
+centre, five thousand from the surface.  He had always
+stuck to the hope of this, and on his very last tests of
+the Flies he had said they, were almost up to it.  But
+for this accuracy of his, I can hardly suppose we should
+have found her to this hour, since she had failed, by
+what cause I then did not know, to take her intended
+place on the meridian of No. 9. At five thousand miles
+the MOON appeared as large as the largest satellite of
+Jupiter appears.  And Polly was right in that first
+observation, when she said she got a good disk with that
+admirable glass of Mrs. Bowdoin.
+
+The orbit was not on the meridian of No. 9, nor did
+it remain on any meridian.  But it was very nearly South
+and North,--an enormous motion in declination with a very
+slight RETROGRADE motion in Right Ascension.  At five
+thousand miles the MOON showed as large as a circle two
+miles and a third in diameter would have shown on old
+Thornbush, as we always called her older sister.  We
+longed for an eclipse of Thornbush by B. M., but no such
+lucky chance is on the cards in any place accessible to
+us for many years.  Of course, with a MOON so near us the
+terrestrial parallax is enormous.
+
+Now, you know, dear reader, that the gigantic
+reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen-
+inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate
+from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old
+Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I
+have named.  If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon
+Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in
+your memory.  As John Farrar taught us when all this
+began,--and as I have said already,--if there were a
+State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first
+Herschel would have seen it.  His magnifying power was
+6450; that would have brought this deaf and dumb State
+House within some forty miles.  Go up on Mt. Washington
+and see white sails eighty miles away, beyond Portland,
+with your naked eye, and you will find how well he would
+have seen that State House with his reflector.  Lord
+Rosse's statement is, that with his reflector he can see
+objects on old Thornbush two hundred and fifty-two feet
+long.  If he can do that he can see on our B. M. objects
+which are five feet long; and, of course, we were beside
+ourselves to get control of some instrument which had
+some approach to such power.  Haliburton was for at once
+building a reflector at No. 9; and perhaps he will do it
+yet, for Haliburton has been successful in his paper-
+making and lumbering.  But I went to work more promptly.
+
+I remembered, not an apothecary, but an observatory,
+which had been dormant, as we say of volcanoes, now for
+ten or a dozen years,--no matter why!  The trustees
+had quarrelled with the director, or the funds had given
+out, or the director had been shot at the head of his
+division,--one of those accidents had happened which will
+happen even in observatories which have fifteen-inch
+equatorials; and so the equatorial here had been left as
+useless as a cannon whose metal has been strained or its
+reputation stained in an experiment.  The observatory at
+Tamworth, dedicated with such enthusiasm,--"another
+light-house in the skies," had been, so long as I have
+said, worthless to the world.  To Tamworth, therefore, I
+travelled.  In the neighborhood of the observatory I took
+lodgings.  To the church where worshipped the family
+which lived in the observatory buildings I repaired;
+after two Sundays I established acquaintance with John
+Donald, the head of this family.  On the evening of the
+third, I made acquaintance with his wife in a visit to
+them.  Before three Sundays more he had recommended me to
+the surviving trustees as his successor as janitor to the
+buildings.  He himself had accepted promotion, and gone,
+with his household, to keep a store for Haliburton in
+North Ovid.  I sent for Polly and the children, to
+establish them in the janitor's rooms; and, after writing
+to her, with trembling eye I waited for the Brick Moon to
+pass over the field of the fifteen-inch equatorial.
+
+Night came.  I was "sole alone"!  B. M. came, more
+than filled the field of vision, of course! but for that
+I was ready.  Heavens! how changed.  Red no longer,
+but green as a meadow in the spring.  Still I could see--
+black on the green--the large twenty-foot circles which
+I remembered so well, which broke the concave of the
+dome; and, on the upper edge--were these palm-trees?
+They were.  No, they were hemlocks, by their shape, and
+among them were moving to and fro---------- flies?  Of
+course, I cannot see flies!  But something is moving,--
+coming, going.  One, two, three, ten; there are more than
+thirty in all!  They are men and women and their
+children!
+
+Could it be possible?  It was possible!  Orcutt and
+Brannan and the rest of them had survived that giddy
+flight through the ether, and were going and coming on
+the surface of their own little world, bound to it by its
+own attraction and living by its own laws!
+
+As I watched, I saw one of them leap from that
+surface.  He passed wholly out of my field of vision, but
+in a minute, more or less, returned.  Why not!  Of course
+the attraction of his world must be very small, while he
+retained the same power of muscle he had when he was
+here.  They must be horribly crowded, I thought.  No.
+They had three acres of surface, and there were but
+thirty-seven of them.  Not so much crowded as people are
+in Roxbury, not nearly so much as in Boston; and,
+besides, these people are living underground, and have
+the whole of their surface for their exercise.
+
+I watched their every movement as they approached the
+edge and as they left it.  Often they passed beyond it,
+so that I could see them no more.  Often they sheltered
+themselves from that tropical sun beneath the trees.
+Think of living on a world where from the vertical heat
+of the hottest noon of the equator to the twilight of the
+poles is a walk of only fifty paces!  What atmosphere
+they had, to temper and diffuse those rays, I could not
+then conjecture.
+
+I knew that at half-past ten they would pass into the
+inevitable eclipse which struck them every night at this
+period of their orbit, and must, I thought, be a luxury
+to them, as recalling old memories of night when they
+were on this world.  As they approached the line of
+shadow, some fifteen minutes before it was due, I counted
+on the edge thirty-seven specks arranged evidently in
+order; and, at one moment, as by one signal, all thirty-
+seven jumped into the air,--high jumps.  Again they did
+it, and again.  Then a low jump; then a high one.  I
+caught the idea in a moment.  They were telegraphing to
+our world, in the hope of an observer.  Long leaps and
+short leaps,--the long and short of Morse's Telegraph
+Alphabet,--were communicating ideas.  My paper and pencil
+had been of course before me.  I jotted down the
+despatch, whose language I knew perfectly:--
+
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+
+By "I understand" they meant the responsive signal
+given, in all telegraphy, by an operator who has received
+and understood a message.
+
+As soon as this exercise had been three times
+repeated, they proceeded in a solid body--much the most
+apparent object I had had until now--to Circle No. 3, and
+then evidently descended into the MOON.
+
+The eclipse soon began, but I knew the MOON'S path
+now, and followed the dusky, coppery spot without
+difficulty.  At 1.33 it emerged, and in a very few
+moments I saw the solid column pass from Circle No. 3
+again, deploy on the edge again, and repeat three times
+the signal:--
+
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+
+It was clear that Orcutt had known that the edge of
+his little world would be most easy of observation, and
+that he had guessed that the moments of obscuration and
+of emersion were the moments when observers would be most
+careful.  After this signal they broke up again, and I
+could not follow them.  With daylight I sent off a
+despatch to Haliburton, and, grateful and happy in
+comparison, sank into the first sleep not haunted by
+horrid dreams, which I had known for years.
+
+
+Haliburton knew that George Orcutt had taken with him
+a good Dolland's refractor, which he had bought in
+London, of a two-inch glass.  He knew that this would
+give Orcutt a very considerable power, if he could only
+adjust it accurately enough to find No. 9 in the 3d
+Range.  Orcutt had chosen well in selecting the "Saw-Mill
+Flat," a large meadow, easily distinguished by the
+peculiar shape of the mill-pond which we had made.  Eager
+though Haliburton was to join me, he loyally took moneys,
+caught the first train to Skowhegan, and, travelling
+thence, in thirty-six hours more was again descending
+Spoonwood Hill, for the first time since our futile
+observations.  The snow lay white upon the Flat.  With
+Rob. Shea's help, he rapidly unrolled a piece of black
+cambric twenty yards long, and pinned it to the crust
+upon the snow; another by its side, and another.  Much
+cambric had he left.  They had carried down with them
+enough for the funerals of two Presidents.  Haliburton
+showed the symbols for "I understand," but he could not
+resist also displaying ..-- .--, which are the dots and
+lines to represent O. K., which, he says, is the
+shortest message of comfort.  And not having exhausted
+the space on the Flat, he and Robert, before night closed
+in, made a gigantic O. K., fifteen yards from top to
+bottom, and in marks that were fifteen feet through.
+I had telegraphed my great news to Haliburton on
+Monday night.  Tuesday night he was at Skowhegan.
+Thursday night he was at No. 9.  Friday he and Rob.
+stretched their cambric.  Meanwhile, every day I slept.
+Every night I was glued to the eye-piece.  Fifteen
+minutes before the eclipse every night this weird dance
+of leaps two hundred feet high, followed by hops of
+twenty feet high, mingled always in the steady order I
+have described, spelt out the ghastly message:  "Show `I
+understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+
+And every morning, as the eclipse ended, I saw the
+column creep along to the horizon, and again, as the duty
+of opening day, spell out the same:--
+
+"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
+
+They had done this twice in every twenty-four hours
+for nearly two years.  For three nights steadily I read
+these signals twice each night; only these, and nothing
+more.
+
+But Friday night all was changed.  After "Attention,"
+that dreadful "Show" did not come, but this cheerful
+signal:--
+
+"Hurrah.  All well.  Air, food, and friends! what
+more can man require?  Hurrah."
+
+How like George!  How like Ben Brannan!  How like
+George's wife!  How like them all!  And they were all
+well!  Yet poor _I_ could not answer.  Nay, I could
+only guess what Haliburton had done.  But I have never,
+I believe, been so grateful since I was born.
+
+After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed
+their jumps and hops.  Long and short spelled out:--
+
+"Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be."
+
+Of the meaning of this, lonely _I_ had, of course,
+no idea.
+
+"I have a power of seven hundred," continued George.
+How did he get that?  He has never told us.  But this I
+can see, that all our analogies deceive us,--of views of
+the sea from Mt. Washington, or of the Boston State House
+from Wachusett.  For in these views we look through forty
+or eighty miles of dense terrestrial atmosphere.  But
+Orcutt was looking nearly vertically through an
+atmosphere which was, most of it, rare indeed, and pure
+indeed, compared with its lowest stratum.
+
+In the record-book of my observations these
+despatches are entered as 12 and 13.  Of course it was
+impossible for me to reply.  All I could do was to
+telegraph these in the morning to Skowhegan, sending them
+to the care of the Moores, that they might forward them.
+But the next night showed that this had not been
+necessary.
+
+Friday night George and the others went on for a
+quarter of an hour.  Then they would rest, saying, "two,"
+"three," or whatever their next signal time would be.
+Before morning I had these despatches:--
+
+14. "Write to all hands that we are doing well.
+Langdon's baby is named Io, and Leonard's is named
+Phoebe."
+
+How queer that was!  What a coincidence!  And they
+had some humor there.
+
+15 was:  "Our atmosphere stuck to us.  It weighs
+three tenths of an inch--our weight."
+
+16. "Our rain-fall is regular as the clock.  We have
+made a cistern of Kilpatrick."
+
+This meant the spherical chamber of that name.
+
+17. "Write to Darwin that he is all right.  We began
+with lichens and have come as far as palms and hemlocks."
+
+These were the first night's messages.  I had
+scarcely covered the eye-glasses and adjusted the
+equatorial for the day, when the bell announced the
+carriage in which Polly and the children came from the
+station to relieve me in my solitary service as janitor.
+I had the joy of showing her the good news.  This night's
+work seemed to fill our cup.  For all the day before,
+when I was awake, I had been haunted by the fear of
+famine for them.  True, I knew that they had stored away
+in chambers H, I, and J the pork and flour which we had
+sent up for the workmen through the summer, and the corn
+and oats for the horses.  But this could not last
+forever.
+
+Now, however, that it proved that in a tropical
+climate they were forming their own soil, developing
+their own palms, and eventually even their bread-fruit
+and bananas, planting their own oats and maize, and
+developing rice, wheat, and all other cereals, harvesting
+these six, eight, or ten times--for aught I could see--in
+one of our years,--why, then, there was no danger of
+famine for them.  If, as I thought, they carried up with
+them heavy drifts of ice and snow in the two chambers
+which were not covered in when they started, why, they
+had waters in their firmament quite sufficient for all
+purposes of thirst and of ablution.  And what I had seen
+of their exercise showed that they were in strength
+sufficient for the proper development of their little
+world.
+
+Polly had the messages by heart before an hour was
+over, and the little girls, of course, knew them sooner
+than she.
+
+Haliburton, meanwhile, had brought out the Shubael
+refractor (Alvan Clark), and by night of Friday was in
+readiness to see what he could see.  Shubael of course
+gave him no such luxury of detail as did my fifteen-inch
+equatorial.  But still he had no difficulty in making out
+groves of hemlock, and the circular openings.  And
+although he could not make out my thirty-seven flies,
+still when 10.15 came he saw distinctly the black square
+crossing from hole Mary to the edge, and beginning its
+Dervish dances.  They were on his edge more precisely
+than on mine.  For Orcutt knew nothing of Tamworth, and
+had thought his best chance was to display for No. 9. So
+was it that, at the same moment with me, Haliburton also
+was spelling out Orcutt & Co.'s joyous "Hurrah!"
+
+"Thtephen," lisps Celia, "promith that you will look
+at yon moon [old Thombush] at the inthtant I do."  So was
+it with me and Haliburton.
+
+He was of course informed long before the Moores'
+messenger came, that, in Orcutt's judgment, twenty feet
+of length were sufficient for his signals.  Orcutt's
+atmosphere, of course, must be exquisitely clear.
+
+So, on Saturday, Rob. and Haliburton pulled up all
+their cambric and arranged it on the Flat again, in
+letters of twenty feet, in this legend:--
+
+RAH.  AL WEL.
+
+
+Haliburton said he could not waste flat or cambric on
+spelling.
+
+He had had all night since half-past ten to consider
+what next was most important for them to know; and a very
+difficult question it was, you will observe.  They had
+been gone nearly two years, and much had happened.  Which
+thing was, on the whole, the most interesting and
+important?  He had said we were all well.  What then?
+
+Did you never find yourself in the same difficulty?
+When your husband had come home from sea, and kissed you
+and the children, and wondered at their size, did you
+never sit silent and have to think what you should say?
+Were you never fairly relieved when little Phil said,
+blustering, "I got three eggs to-day."  The truth is,
+that silence is very satisfactory intercourse, if we only
+know all is well.  When De Sauty got his original cable
+going, he had not much to tell after all; only that
+consols were a quarter per cent higher than they were
+the day before.  "Send me news," lisped he--poor lonely
+myth!--from Bull's Bay to Valentia,--"send me news; they
+are mad for news."  But how if there be no news worth
+sending?  What do I read in my cable despatch to-day?
+Only that the Harvard crew pulled at Putney yesterday,
+which I knew before I opened the paper, and that there
+had been a riot in Spain, which I also knew.  Here is a
+letter just brought me by the mail from Moreau, Tazewell
+County, Iowa.  It is written by Follansbee, in a good
+cheerful hand.  How glad I am to hear from Follansbee!
+Yes; but do I care one straw whether Follansbee planted
+spring wheat or winter wheat?  Not I.  All I care for is
+Follansbee's way of telling it.  All these are the
+remarks by which Haliburton explains the character of the
+messages he sent in reply to George Orcutt's autographs,
+which were so thoroughly satisfactory.
+
+Should he say Mr. Borie had left the Navy Department
+and Mr. Robeson come in?  Should he say the Lords had
+backed down on the Disendowment Bill?  Should he say the
+telegraph had been landed at Duxbury?  Should he say
+Ingham had removed to Tamworth?  What did they care for
+this?  What does anybody ever care for facts?  Should he
+say that the State Constable was enforcing the liquor law
+on whiskey, but was winking at lager?  All this would
+take him a week, in the most severe condensation,--
+and for what good? as Haliburton asked.  Yet these were
+the things that the newspapers told, and they told
+nothing else.  There was a nice little poem of Jean
+Ingelow's in a Transcript Haliburton had with him.  He
+said he was really tempted to spell that out.  It was
+better worth it than all the rest of the newspaper stuff,
+and would be remembered a thousand years after that was
+forgotten.  "What they wanted," says Haliburton, "was
+sentiment.  That is all that survives and is eternal."
+So he and Rob. laid out their cambric thus:--
+
+RAW.  AL WEL.  SO GLAD.
+
+Haliburton hesitated whether he would not add, "Power
+5000," to indicate the full power I was using at
+Tamworth.  But he determined not to, and, I think,
+wisely.  The convenience was so great, of receiving the
+signal at the spot where it could be answered, that for
+the present he thought it best that they should go on
+as they did.  That night, however, to his dismay,
+clouds gathered and a grim snow-storm began.  He got no
+observations; and the next day it stormed so heavily
+that he could not lay his signals out.  For me at
+Tamworth, I had a heavy storm all day, but at midnight
+it was clear; and as soon as the regular eclipse was
+past, George began with what we saw was an account of
+the great anaclysm which sent them there.  You observe
+that Orcutt had far greater power of communicating with
+us than we had with him.  He knew this.  And it was
+fortunate he had.  For he had, on his little world,
+much more of interest to tell than we had on our large
+one.
+
+18. "It stormed hard.  We were all asleep, and knew
+nothing till morning; the hammocks turned so slowly."
+
+Here was another revelation and relief.  I had always
+supposed that if they knew anything before they were
+roasted to death, they had had one wild moment of horror.
+Instead of this, the gentle slide of the MOON had not
+wakened them, the flight upward had been as easy as it
+was rapid, the change from one centre of gravity to
+another had of course been slow,--and they had actually
+slept through the whole.  After the dancers had rested
+once, Orcutt continued:--
+
+19. "We cleared E. A. in two seconds, I think.  Our
+outer surface fused and cracked somewhat.  So much the
+better for us."
+
+They moved so fast that the heat of their friction
+through the air could not propagate itself through the
+whole brick surface.  Indeed, there could have been but
+little friction after the first five or ten miles.  By E.
+A. he means earth's atmosphere.
+
+His 20th despatch is:  "I have no observations of
+ascent.  But by theory our positive ascent ceased in two
+minutes five seconds, when we fell into our proper orbit,
+which, as I calculate, is 5,109 miles from your mean
+surface."
+
+In all this, observe, George dropped no word of
+regret through these five thousand miles.
+
+His 21st despatch is:  "Our rotation on our axis is
+made once in seven hours, our axis being exactly vertical
+to the plane of our own orbit.  But in each of your daily
+rotations we get sunned all round."
+
+Of course, they never had lost their identity with
+us, so far as our rotation and revolution went: our
+inertia was theirs; all the fatal, Fly-Wheels had given
+them was an additional motion in space of their own.
+
+This was the last despatch before daylight of Sunday
+morning; and the terrible snow-storm of March, sweeping
+our hemisphere, cut off our communication with them, both
+at Tamworth and No. 9, for several days.
+
+But here was ample food for reflection.  Our friends
+were in a world of their own, all thirty-seven of them
+well, and it seemed they had two more little girls added
+to their number since they started.  They had plenty of
+vegetables to eat, with prospect of new tropical
+varieties according to Dr. Darwin.  Rob. Shea was sure
+that they carried up hens; he said he knew Mrs. Whitman
+had several Middlesexes and Mrs. Leonard two or three
+Black Spanish fowls, which had been given her by some
+friends in Foxcroft.  Even if they had not yet had time
+enough for these to develop into Alderneys and venison,
+they would not be without animal food.
+
+
+When at last it cleared off, Haliburton had to
+telegraph:  "Repeat from 21"; and this took all his
+cambric, though he had doubled his stock.  Orcutt replied
+the next night:
+
+22. "I can see your storms.  We have none.  When we
+want to change climate we can walk in less than a minute
+from midsummer to the depth of winter.  But in the inside
+we have eleven different temperatures, which do not
+change."
+
+On the whole there is a certain convenience in such
+an arrangement.  With No. 23 he went back to his story:--
+
+It took us many days, one or two of our months, to
+adjust ourselves to our new condition.  Our greatest
+grief is that we are not on the meridian.  Do you know
+why?"
+
+Loyal George!  He was willing to exile himself and
+his race from the most of mankind, if only the great
+purpose of his life could be fulfilled.  But his great
+regret was that it was not fulfilled.  He was not on the
+meridian.  I did not know why.  But Haliburton, with
+infinite labor, spelt out on the Flat,
+
+CYC.  PROJECT.  AD FIN.,
+
+by which he meant, "See article Projectiles in the
+Cyclopaedia at the end"; and there indeed is the only
+explanation to be given.  When you fire a shot, why
+does it ever go to the right or left of the plane in
+which it is projected?  Dr. Hutton ascribes it to a
+whirling motion acquired by the bullet by friction
+with the gun.  Euler thinks it due chiefly to the
+irregularity of the shape of the ball.  In our case the
+B. M. was regular enough.  But on one side, being
+wholly unprepared for flight, she was heavily stored
+with pork and corn, while her other chambers had in
+some of them heavy drifts of snow, and some only a few
+men and women and hens.
+
+Before Orcutt saw Haliburton's advice, he had sent us
+24 and 25.
+
+24. "We have established a Sandemanian church, and
+Brannan preaches.  My son Edward and Alice Whitman are to
+be married this evening."
+
+This despatch unfortunately did not reach Haliburton,
+though I got it.  So, all the happy pair received for our
+wedding-present was the advice to look in the Cyclopaedia
+at article Projectiles near the end.
+
+25 was:--
+
+"We shall act `As You Like It' after the wedding.
+Dead-head tickets for all of the old set who will come."
+
+Actually, in one week's reunion we had come to
+joking.
+
+The next night we got 26:
+
+"Alice says she will not read the Cyclopaedia in the
+honeymoon, but is much obliged to Mr. Haliburton for his
+advice."
+
+"How did she ever know it was I?" wrote the matter-
+of-fact Haliburton to me.
+
+27. "Alice wants to know if Mr. Haliburton will not
+send here for some rags; says we have plenty, with little
+need for clothes."
+
+And then despatches began to be more serious again.
+Brannan and Orcutt had failed in the great scheme for the
+longitude, to which they had sacrificed their lives,--if,
+indeed, it were a sacrifice to retire with those they
+love best to a world of their own.  But none the less did
+they devote themselves, with the rare power of
+observation they had, to the benefit of our world.  Thus,
+in 28:
+
+"Your North Pole is an open ocean.  It was black,
+which we think means water, from August 1st to September
+29th.  Your South Pole is on an island bigger than New
+Holland.  Your Antarctic Continent is a great cluster of
+islands."
+
+29. "Your Nyanzas are only two of a large group of
+African lakes.  The green of Africa, where there is no
+water, is wonderful at our distance."
+
+30. "We have not the last numbers of `Foul Play.'
+Tell us, in a word or two, how they got home.  We can see
+what we suppose their island was."
+
+31. "We should like to know who proved Right in `He
+Knew He was Right.'"
+
+This was a good night's work, as they were then
+telegraphing.  As soon as it cleared, Haliburton
+displayed,--
+
+BEST HOPES.  CARRIER DUCKS.
+
+
+This was Haliburton's masterpiece.  He had no room
+for more, however, and was obliged to reserve for the
+next day his answer to No. 31, which was simply,
+
+SHE.
+
+A real equinoctial now parted us for nearly a week,
+and at the end of that time they were so low in our
+northern horizon that we could not make out their
+signals; we and they were obliged to wait till they had
+passed through two-thirds of their month before we could
+communicate again.  I used the time in speeding to No. 9.
+We got a few carpenters together, and arranged on the
+Flat two long movable black platforms, which ran in and
+out on railroad-wheels on tracks, from under green
+platforms; so that we could display one or both as we
+chose, and then withdraw them.  With this apparatus we
+could give forty-five signals in a minute, corresponding
+to the line and dot of the telegraph; and thus could
+compass some twenty letters in that time, and make out
+perhaps two hundred and fifty words in an hour.
+Haliburton thought that, with some improvements, he could
+send one of Mr. Buchanan's messages up in thirty-seven
+working-nights.
+
+
+IV
+
+INDEPENDENCE
+
+I own to a certain mortification in confessing that
+after this interregnum, forced upon us by so long a
+period of non-intercourse, we never resumed precisely
+the same constancy of communication as that which I
+have tried to describe at the beginning.  The apology
+for this benumbment, if I may so call it, will suggest
+itself to the thoughtful reader.
+
+It is indeed astonishing to think that we so readily
+accept a position when we once understand it.  You buy a
+new house.  You are fool enough to take out a staircase
+that you may put in a bathing-room.  This will be done in
+a fortnight, everybody tells you, and then everybody
+begins.  Plumbers, masons, carpenters, plasterers,
+skimmers, bell-hangers, speaking-tube men, men who make
+furnace-pipe, paper-hangers, men who scrape off the old
+paper, and other men who take off the old paint with
+alkali, gas men, city-water men, and painters begin.  To
+them are joined a considerable number of furnace-men's
+assistants, stovepipe-men's assistants, mason's
+assistants, and hodmen who assist the assistants of the
+masons, the furnace-men, and the pipe-men.  For a day or
+two these all take possession of the house and reduce it
+to chaos.  In the language of Scripture, they enter
+in and dwell there.  Compare, for the details, Matt. xii.
+45.  Then you revisit it at the end of the fortnight, and
+find it in chaos, with the woman whom you employed to
+wash the attics the only person on the scene.  You ask
+her where the paper-hanger is; and she says he can do
+nothing because the plaster is not dry.  You ask why the
+plaster is not dry, and are told it is because the
+furnace-man has not come.  You send for him, and he says
+he did come, but the stove-pipe man was away.  You send
+for him, and he says he lost a day in coming, but that
+the mason had not cut the right hole in the chimney.  You
+go and find the mason, and he says they are all fools,
+and that there is nothing in the house that need take two
+days to finish.
+
+Then you curse, not the day in which you were born,
+but the day in which bath-rooms were invented.  You say,
+truly, that your father and mother, from whom you inherit
+every moral and physical faculty you prize, never had a
+bath-room till they were past sixty, yet they thrived,
+and their children.  You sneak through back streets,
+fearful lest your friends shall ask you when your house
+will be finished.  You are sunk in wretchedness, unable
+even to read your proofs accurately, far less able to
+attend the primary meetings of the party with which you
+vote, or to discharge any of the duties of a good
+citizen.  Life is wholly embittered to you.
+
+Yet, six weeks after, you sit before a soft-coal fire
+in your new house, with the feeling that you have always
+lived there.  You are not even grateful that you are
+there.  You have forgotten the plumber's name; and if you
+met in the street that nice carpenter that drove things
+through, you would just nod to him, and would not think
+of kissing him or embracing him.
+
+Thus completely have you accepted the situation.
+
+Let me confess that the same experience is that with
+which, at this writing, I regard the BRICK MOON.  It is
+there in ether.  I cannot keep it.  I cannot get it down.
+I cannot well go to it,--though possibly that might be
+done, as you will see.  They are all very happy there,--
+much happier, as far as I can see, than if they lived in
+sixth floors in Paris, in lodgings in London, or even in
+tenement-houses in Phoenix Place, Boston.  There are
+disadvantages attached to their position; but there are
+also advantages.  And what most of all tends to our
+accepting the situation is, that there is "nothing that
+we can do about it," as Q. says, but to keep up our
+correspondence with them, and to express our sympathies.
+
+For them, their responsibilities are reduced in
+somewhat the same proportion as the gravitation which
+binds them down,--I had almost said to earth,--which
+binds them down to brick, I mean.  This decrease of
+responsibility must make them as light-hearted as the
+loss of gravitation makes them light-bodied.
+
+On which point I ask for a moment's attention.  And
+as these sheets leave my hand, an illustration turns up
+which well serves me.  It is the 23d of October.
+Yesterday morning all wakeful women in New England were
+sure there was some one under the bed.  This is a certain
+sign of an earthquake.  And when we read the evening
+newspapers, we were made sure there had been an
+earthquake.  What blessings the newspapers are,--and how
+much information they give us!  Well, they said it was
+not very severe, here, but perhaps it was more severe
+elsewhere; hopes really arising in the editorial mind
+that in some Caraccas or Lisbon all churches and the
+cathedral might have fallen.  I did not hope for that.
+But I did have just the faintest feeling that IF--if
+if--it should prove that the world had blown up into six
+or eight pieces, and they had gone off into separate
+orbits, life would be vastly easier for all of us, on
+whichever bit we happened to be.
+
+That thing has happened, they say, once.  Whenever
+the big planet between Mars and Jupiter blew up, and
+divided himself into one hundred and two or more
+asteroids, the people on each one only knew there had
+been an earthquake when and after they read their morning
+journals.  And then, all that they knew at first was that
+telegraphic communication had ceased beyond--say two
+hundred miles.  Gradually people and despatches came in,
+who said that they had parted company with some of the
+other islands and continents.  But, as I say, on each
+piece the people not only weighed much less, but were
+much lighter-hearted, had less responsibility.
+
+Now will you imagine the enthusiasm here, at Miss
+Hale's school, when it should be announced that
+geography, in future, would be confined to the study of
+the region east of the Mississippi and west of the
+Atlantic,--the earth having parted at the seams so named.
+No more study of Italian, German, French, or Sclavonic,--
+the people speaking those languages being now in
+different orbits or other worlds.  Imagine also the
+superior ease of the office-work of the A. B. C. F. M.
+and kindred societies, the duties of instruction and
+civilizing, of evangelizing in general, being reduced
+within so much narrower bounds.  For you and me also, who
+cannot decide what Mr. Gladstone ought to do with the
+land tenure in Ireland, and who distress ourselves so
+much about it in conversation, what a satisfaction to
+know that Great Britain is flung off with one rate of
+movement, Ireland with another, and the Isle of Man with
+another, into space, with no more chance of meeting again
+than there is that you shall have the same hand at whist
+to-night that you had last night!  Even Victoria would
+sleep easier, and I am sure Mr. Gladstone would.
+
+Thus, I say, were Orcutt's and Brannan's
+responsibilities so diminished, that after the first I
+began to see that their contracted position had its
+decided compensating ameliorations.
+
+In these views, I need not say, the women of our
+little circle never shared.  After we got the new
+telegraph arrangement in good running-order, I observed
+that Polly and Annie Haliburton had many private
+conversations, and the secret came out one morning, when,
+rising early in the cabins, we men found they had
+deserted us; and then, going in search of them, found
+them running the signal boards in and out as rapidly as
+they could, to tell Mrs. Brannan and the bride, Alice
+Orcutt, that flounces were worn an inch and a half
+deeper, and that people trimmed now with harmonizing
+colors and not with contrasts.  I did not say that I
+believed they wore fig-leaves in B. M., but that was my
+private impression.
+
+After all, it was hard to laugh at the girls, as
+these ladies will be called, should they live to be as
+old as Helen was when she charmed the Trojan senate (that
+was ninety-three, if Heyne be right in his calculations).
+It was hard to laugh at them because this was simple
+benevolence, and the same benevolence led to a much more
+practical suggestion when Polly came to me and told me
+she had been putting up some baby things for little Io
+and Phoebe, and some playthings for the older children,
+and she thought we might "send up a bundle."
+
+Of course we could.  There were the Flies still
+moving! or we might go ourselves!
+
+[And here the reader must indulge me in a long
+parenthesis.  I beg him to bear me witness that I never
+made one before.  This parenthesis is on the tense that
+I am obliged to use in sending to the press these
+minutes.  The reader observes that the last transactions
+mentioned happen in April and May, 1871.  Those to be
+narrated are the sequence of those already told.
+Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the
+English language is very difficult.  One needs, for
+accuracy, a sure future, a second future, a paulo-post
+future, and a paulum-ante future, none of which does this
+language have.  Failing this, one would be glad of an a-
+orist,--tense without time,--if the grammarians will not
+swoon at hearing such language.  But the English tongue
+hath not that, either.  Doth the learned reader remember
+that the Hebrew--language of history and prophecy--hath
+only a past and a future tense, but hath no present?  Yet
+that language succeeded tolerably in expressing the
+present griefs or joys of David and of Solomon.  Bear
+with me, then, O critic! if even in 1870 I use the so-
+called past tenses in narrating what remaineth of this
+history up to the summer of 1872.  End of the
+parenthesis.]
+
+On careful consideration, however, no one volunteers
+to go.  To go, if you observe, would require that a man
+envelop himself thickly in asbestos or some similar non-
+conducting substance, leap boldly on the rapid Flies, and
+so be shot through the earth's atmosphere in two seconds
+and a fraction, carrying with him all the time in a non-
+conducting receiver the condensed air he needed, and
+landing quietly on B. M. by a precalculated orbit.  At
+the bottom of our hearts I think we were all afraid.
+Some of us confessed to fear; others said, and said
+truly, that the population of the Moon was already dense,
+and that it did not seem reasonable or worth while, on
+any account, to make it denser.  Nor has any movement
+been renewed for going.  But the plan of the bundle of
+"things" seemed more feasible, as the things would not
+require oxygen.  The only precaution seemed to be that
+which was necessary for protecting the parcel against
+combustion as it shot through the earth's atmosphere.  We
+had not asbestos enough.  It was at first proposed to
+pack them all in one of Professor Horsford's safes.  But
+when I telegraphed this plan to Orcutt, he demurred.
+Their atmosphere was but shallow, and with a little too
+much force the corner of the safe might knock a very bad
+hole in the surface of his world.  He said if we would
+send up first a collection of things of no great weight,
+but of considerable bulk, he would risk that, but he
+would rather have no compact metals.
+
+I satisfied myself, therefore, with a plan which I
+still think good.  Making the parcel up in heavy old
+woollen carpets, and cording it with worsted cords, we
+would case it in a carpet-bag larger than itself and fill
+in the interstice with dry sand, as our best non-
+conductor; cording this tightly again, we would renew the
+same casing with more sand; and so continually offer
+surfaces of sand and woollen, till we had five separate
+layers between the parcel and the air.  Our calculation
+was that a perceptible time  would be necessary for
+the burning and disintegrating of each sand-bag.  If each
+one, on the average, would stand two-fifths of a second,
+the inner parcel would get through the earth's atmosphere
+unconsumed.  If, on the other hand, they lasted a little
+longer, the bag, as it fell on B. M., would not be unduly
+heavy.  Of course we could take their night for the
+experiment, so that we might be sure they should all be
+in bed and out of the way.
+
+We had very funny and very merry times in selecting
+things important enough and at the same time bulky and
+light enough to be safe.  Alice and Bertha at once
+insisted that there must be room for the children's
+playthings.  They wanted to send the most approved of the
+old ones, and to add some new presents.  There was a
+woolly sheep in particular, and a watering-pot that Rose
+had given Fanny, about which there was some sentiment;
+boxes of dominos, packs of cards, magnetic fishes, bows
+and arrows, checker-boards and croquet sets.  Polly and
+Annie were more considerate.  Down to Coleman and Company
+they sent an order for pins, needles, hooks and eyes,
+buttons, tapes, and I know not what essentials.  India-
+rubber shoes for the children Mrs. Haliburton insisted on
+sending.  Haliburton himself bought open-eye-shut-eye
+dolls, though I felt that wax had been, since Icarus's
+days, the worst article in such an adventure.  For the
+babies he had india-rubber rings: he had tin cows and
+carved wooden lions for the bigger children, drawing-
+tools for those older yet, and a box of crochet tools for
+the ladies.  For my part I piled in literature,--a set of
+my own works, the Legislative Reports of the State of
+Maine, Jean Ingelow, as I said or intimated, and both
+volumes of the "Earthly Paradise."  All these were packed
+in sand, bagged and corded,--bagged, sanded and corded
+again,--yet again and again,--five times.  Then the whole
+awaited Orcutt's orders and our calculations.
+
+At last the moment came.  We had, at Orcutt's order,
+reduced the revolutions of the Flies to 7230, which was,
+as nearly as he knew, the speed on the fatal night.  We
+had soaked the bag for near twelve hours, and, at the
+moment agreed upon, rolled it on the Flies and saw it
+shot into the air.  It was so small that it went out of
+sight too soon for us to see it take fire.
+
+Of course we watched eagerly for signal time.  They
+were all in bed on B. M. when we let fly.  But the
+despatch was a sad disappointment.
+
+107. "Nothing has come through but two croquet balls
+and a china horse.  But we shall send the boys hunting in
+the bushes, and we may find more."
+
+108. "Two Harpers and an Atlantic, badly singed.  But
+we can read all but the parts which were most dry."
+
+109. "We see many small articles revolving round us
+which may perhaps fall in."
+
+They never did fall in, however.  The truth was that
+all the bags had burned through.  The sand, I suppose,
+went to its place, wherever that was.  And all the other
+things in our bundle became little asteroids or aerolites
+in orbits of their own, except a well-disposed score or
+two, which persevered far enough to get within the
+attraction of Brick Moon and to take to revolving there,
+not having hit quite square, as the croquet balls did.
+They had five volumes of the "Congressional Globe"
+whirling round like bats within a hundred feet of their
+heads.  Another body, which I am afraid was "The Ingham
+Papers," flew a little higher, not quite so heavy.  Then
+there was an absurd procession of the woolly sheep, a
+china cow, a pair of india-rubbers, a lobster Haliburton
+had chosen to send, a wooden lion, the wax doll, a
+Salter's balance, the "New York Observer," the bow and
+arrows, a Nuremberg nanny-goat, Rose's watering-pot, and
+the magnetic fishes, which gravely circled round and
+round them slowly and made the petty zodiac of their
+petty world.
+
+We have never sent another parcel since, but we
+probably shall at Christmas, gauging the Flies perhaps to
+one revolution more.  The truth is, that although we have
+never stated to each other in words our difference of
+opinion or feeling, there is a difference of habit of
+thought in our little circle as to the position which the
+B. M. holds.  Somewhat similar is the difference of
+habit of thought in which different statesmen of
+England regard their colonies.
+
+Is B. M. a part of our world, or is it not?  Should
+its inhabitants be encouraged to maintain their
+connections with us, or is it better for them to "accept
+the situation" and gradually wean themselves from us and
+from our affairs?  It would be idle to determine this
+question in the abstract: it is perhaps idle to decide
+any question of casuistry in the abstract.  But, in
+practice, there are constantly arising questions which
+really require some decision of this abstract problem for
+their solution.
+
+For instance, when that terrible breach occurred in
+the Sandemanian church, which parted it into the Old
+School and New School parties, Haliburton thought it very
+important that Brannan and Orcutt and the church in B. M.
+under Brannan's ministry should give in their adhesion to
+our side.  Their church would count one more in our
+registry, and the weight of its influence would not be
+lost.  He therefore spent eight or nine days in
+telegraphing, from the early proofs, a copy of the
+address of the Chautauqua Synod to Brannan, and asked
+Brannan if he were not willing to have his name signed to
+it when it was printed.  And the only thing which
+Haliburton takes sorely in the whole experience of the
+Brick Moon, from the beginning, is that neither Orcutt
+nor Brannan has ever sent one word of acknowledgment of
+the despatch.  Once, when Haliburton was very low-
+spirited, I heard him even say that he believed they had
+never read a word of it, and that he thought he and Rob.
+Shea had had their labor for their pains in running the
+signals out and in.
+
+Then he felt quite sure that they would have to
+establish civil government there.  So he made up an
+excellent collection of books,--De Lolme on the British
+Constitution; Montesquieu on Laws; Story, Kent, John
+Adams, and all the authorities here; with ten copies of
+his own address delivered before the Young Men's Mutual
+Improvement Society of Podunk, on the "Abnormal Truths of
+Social Order."  He telegraphed to know what night he
+should send them, and Orcutt replied:--
+
+129. "Go to thunder with your old law-books.  We have
+not had a primary meeting nor a justice court since we
+have been here, and, D. V., we never will have."
+
+Haliburton says this is as bad as the state of things
+in Kansas, when, because Frank Pierce would not give them
+any judges or laws to their mind, they lived a year or so
+without any.  Orcutt added in his next despatch:--
+
+130. "Have not you any new novels?  Send up Scribe
+and the `Arabian Nights' and `Robinson Crusoe' and the
+`Three Guardsmen,' and Mrs. Whitney's books.  We have
+Thackeray and Miss Austen."
+
+When he read this, Haliburton felt as if they
+were not only light-footed but light-headed.  And he
+consulted me quite seriously as to telegraphing to them
+"Pycroft's Course of Reading."  I coaxed him out of that,
+and he satisfied himself with a serious expostulation
+with George as to the way in which their young folks
+would grow up.  George replied by telegraphing Brannan's
+last sermon, I Thessalonians iv. II.  The sermon had
+four heads, must have occupied an hour and a half in
+delivery, and took five nights to telegraph.  I had
+another engagement, so that Haliburton had to sit it all
+out with his eye to Shubael, and he has never entered on
+that line of discussion again.  It was as well, perhaps,
+that he got enough of it.
+
+The women have never had any misunderstandings.  When
+we had received two or three hundred despatches from B.
+M., Annie Haliburton came to me and said, in that pretty
+way of hers, that she thought they had a right to their
+turn again.  She said this lore about the Albert Nyanza
+and the North Pole was all very well, but, for her part,
+she wanted to know how they lived, what they did, and
+what they talked about, whether they took summer
+journeys, and how and what was the form of society where
+thirty-seven people lived in such close quarters.  This
+about "the form of society" was merely wool pulled over
+my eyes.  So she said she thought her husband and I had
+better go off to the Biennial Convention at Assampink, as
+she knew we wanted to do, and she and Bridget and
+Polly and Cordelia would watch for the signals, and would
+make the replies.  She thought they would get on better
+if we were out of the way.
+
+So we went to the convention, as she called it, which
+was really not properly a convention, but the Forty-fifth
+Biennial General Synod, and we left the girls to their
+own sweet way.
+
+Shall I confess that they kept no record of their own
+signals, and did not remember very accurately what they
+were?  "I was not going to keep a string of `says I's'
+and `says she's,'" said Polly, boldly.  "it shall not be
+written on my tomb that I have left more annals for
+people to file or study or bind or dust or catalogue."
+But they told us that they had begun by asking the
+"bricks" if they remembered what Maria Theresa said to
+her ladies-in-waiting.[1]  Quicker than any signal had
+ever been answered, George Orcutt's party replied from
+the Moon, "We hear, and we obey."  Then the women-kind
+had it all to themselves.  The brick-women explained at
+once to our girls that they had sent their men round to
+the other side to cut ice, and that they were manning the
+telescope, and running the signals for themselves, and
+that they could have a nice talk without any bother about
+the law-books or the magnetic pole.  As I say, I do
+not know what questions Polly and Annie put; but--to give
+them their due--they had put on paper a coherent record
+of the results arrived at in the answers; though, what
+were the numbers of the despatches, or in what order they
+came, I do not know; for the session of the synod kept us
+at Assampink for two or three weeks
+
+
+[1]  Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, Duke of
+Tuscany, was hanging about loose one day, and the
+Empress, who had got a little tired, said to the maids of
+honor, "Girls, whenever you marry, take care and choose
+a husband who has something to do outside of the house."
+
+
+Mrs. Brannan was the spokesman.  "We tried a good
+many experiments about day and night.  It was very funny
+at first not to know when it would be light and when
+dark, for really the names day and night do not express
+a great deal for us.  Of course the pendulum clocks all
+went wrong till the men got them overhauled, and I think
+watches and clocks both will soon go out of fashion.  But
+we have settled down on much the old hours, getting up,
+without reference to daylight, by our great gong, at your
+eight o'clock.  But when the eclipse season comes, we
+vary from that for signalling.
+
+"We still make separate families, and Alice's is the
+seventh.  We tried hotel life and we liked it, for there
+has never been the first quarrel here.  You can't quarrel
+here, where you are never sick, never tired, and need not
+be ever hungry.  But we were satisfied that it was nicer
+for the children and for all round to live separately and
+come together at parties, to church, at signal time, and
+so on.  We had something to say then, something to teach,
+and something to learn.
+
+"Since the carices developed so nicely into flax, we
+have had one great comfort, which we had lost before, in
+being able to make and use paper.  We have had great fun,
+and we think the children have made great improvement in
+writing novels for the Union.  The Union is the old Union
+for Christian work that we had in dear old No. 9.  We
+have two serial novels going on, one called `Diana of
+Carrotook,' and the other called `Ups and Downs'; the
+first by Levi Ross, and the other by my Blanche.  They
+are really very good, and I wish we could send them to
+you.  But they would not be worth despatching.
+
+"We get up at eight; dress, and fix up at home; a
+sniff of air, as people choose; breakfast; and then we
+meet for prayers outside.  Where we meet depends on the
+temperature; for we can choose any temperature we want,
+from boiling water down, which is convenient.  After
+prayers an hour's talk, lounging, walking, and so on; no
+flirting, but a favorite time with the young folks.
+
+"Then comes work.  Three hours' head-work is the
+maximum in that line.  Of women's work, as in all worlds,
+there are twenty-four in one of your days, but for my
+part I like it.  Farmers and carpenters have their own
+laws, as the light serves and the seasons.  Dinner is
+seven hours after breakfast began; always an hour long,
+as breakfast was.  Then every human being sleeps for an
+hour.  Big gong again, and we ride, walk, swim,
+telegraph, or what not, as the case may be.  We have
+no horses yet, but the Shanghaes are coming up into very
+good dodos and ostriches, quite big enough for a trot for
+the children.
+
+"Only two persons of a family take tea at home.  The
+rest always go out to tea without invitation.  At 8 P. M.
+big gong again, and we meet in `Grace,' which is the
+prettiest hall, church, concert-room, that you ever saw.
+We have singing, lectures, theatre, dancing, talk, or
+what the mistress of the night determines, till the
+curfew sounds at ten, and then we all go home.  Evening
+prayers are in the separate households, and every one is
+in bed by midnight.  The only law on the statute-book is
+that every one shall sleep nine hours out of every
+twenty-four.
+
+"Only one thing interrupts this general order.  Three
+taps on the gong means `telegraph,' and then, I tell you,
+we are all on hand.
+
+"You cannot think how quickly the days and years go
+by!"
+
+Of course, however, as I said, this could not last.
+We could not subdue our world and be spending all our
+time in telegraphing our dear B. M.  Could it be
+possible--perhaps it was possible--that they there had
+something else to think of and to do besides attending to
+our affairs?  Certainly their indifference to Grant's
+fourth Proclamation, and to Mr. Fish's celebrated
+protocol in the Tahiti business, looked that way.  Could
+it be that that little witch of a Belle Brannan really
+cared more for their performance of "Midsummer
+Night's Dream," or her father's birthday, than she cared
+for that pleasant little account I telegraphed up to all
+the children, of the way we went to muster when we were
+boys together?  Ah well!  I ought not to have supposed
+that all worlds were like this old world.  Indeed, I
+often say this is the queerest world I ever knew.
+Perhaps theirs is not so queer, and it is I who am the
+oddity.
+
+Of course it could not last.  We just arranged
+correspondence days, when we would send to them, and they
+to us.  I was meanwhile turned out from my place at
+Tamworth Observatory.  Not but I did my work well, and
+Polly hers.  The observer's room was a miracle of
+neatness.  The children were kept in the basement.
+Visitors were received with great courtesy; and all the
+fees were sent to the treasurer; he got three dollars and
+eleven cents one summer,--that was the year General Grant
+came there; and that was the largest amount that they
+ever received from any source but begging.  I was not
+unfaithful to my trust.  Nor was it for such infidelity
+that I was removed.  No!  But it was discovered that I
+was a Sandemanian; a Glassite, as in derision I was
+called.  The annual meeting of the trustees came round.
+There was a large Mechanics' Fair in Tamworth at the
+time, and an Agricultural Convention.  There was no
+horse-race at the convention, but there were two
+competitive examinations in which running horses
+competed with each other, and trotting horses
+competed with each other, and five thousand dollars was
+given to the best runner and the best trotter.  These
+causes drew all the trustees together.  The Rev. Cephas
+Philpotts presided.  His doctrines with regard to free
+agency were considered much more sound than mine.  He
+took the chair,--in that pretty observatory parlor, which
+Polly had made so bright with smilax and ivy.  Of course
+I took no chair; I waited, as a janitor should, at the
+door.  Then a brief address.  Dr. Philpotts trusted that
+the observatory might always be administered in the
+interests of science, of true science; of that science
+which rightly distinguishes between unlicensed liberty
+and true freedom; between the unrestrained volition and
+the freedom of the will.  He became eloquent, he became
+noisy.  He sat down.  Then three other men spoke, on
+similar subjects.  Then the executive committee which had
+appointed me was dismissed with thanks.  Then a new
+executive committee was chosen, with Dr. Philpotts at the
+head.  The next day I was discharged.  And the next week
+the Philpotts family moved into the observatory, and
+their second girl now takes care of the instruments.
+
+I returned to the cure of souls and to healing the
+hurt of my people.  On observation days somebody runs
+down to No. 9, and by means of Shubael communicates with
+B. M.  We love them, and they love us all the same.
+
+Nor do we grieve for them as we did.  Coming home
+from Pigeon Cove in October with those nice Wadsworth
+people, we fell to talking as to the why and wherefore of
+the summer life we had led.  How was it that it was so
+charming?  And why were we a little loath to come back to
+more comfortable surroundings?  "I hate the school," said
+George Wadsworth.  "I hate the making calls," said his
+mother.  "I hate the office hour," said her poor husband;
+"if there were only a dozen I would not mind, but
+seventeen hundred thousand in sixty minutes is too many."
+So that led to asking how many of us there had been at
+Pigeon Cove.  The children counted up all the six
+families,--the Haliburtons, the Wadsworths, the
+Pontefracts, the Midges, the Hayeses, and the Inghams,
+and the two good-natured girls, thirty-seven in all,--and
+the two babies born this summer.  "Really," said Mrs.
+Wadsworth, "I have not spoken to a human being besides
+these since June; and what is more, Mrs. Ingham, I have
+not wanted to.  We have really lived in a little world of
+our own."
+
+"World of our own!"  Polly fairly jumped from her
+seat, to Mrs. Wadsworth's wonder.  So we had--lived in a
+world of our own.  Polly reads no newspaper since the
+"Sandemanian" was merged.  She has a letter or two tumble
+in sometimes, but not many; and the truth was that she
+had been more secluded from General Grant and Mr.
+Gladstone and the Khedive, and the rest of the
+important people, than had Brannan or Ross or any of
+them!
+
+And it had been the happiest summer she had ever
+known.
+
+Can it be possible that all human sympathies can
+thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all human
+joys increase, if we live with all our might with the
+thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing kindly to
+all other people, to be sure?  Can it be possible that
+our passion for large cities, and large parties, and
+large theatres, and large churches, develops no faith nor
+hope nor love which would not find aliment and exercise
+in a little "world of our own"?
+
+
+
+CRUSOE IN NEW YORK
+
+PART I
+
+I was born in the year 1842, in the city of New York,
+of a good family, though not of that country, my father
+being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first in
+England.  He got a good estate by merchandise, and
+afterward lived at New York.  But first he had married
+my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very
+good family in her country--and from them I was named.
+
+My father died before I can remember--at least, I
+believe so.  For, although I sometimes figure to myself
+a grave, elderly man, thickset and wearing a broad-
+brimmed hat, holding me between his knees and advising me
+seriously, I cannot say really whether this were my
+father or no; or, rather, whether this is really some one
+I remember or no.  For my mother, with whom I have lived
+alone much of my life, as the reader will see, has talked
+to me of my father so much, and has described him to me
+so faithfully, that I cannot tell but it is her
+description of him that I recollect so easily.  And
+so, as I say, I cannot tell whether I remember him or no.
+
+He never lost his German notions, and perhaps they
+gained in England some new force as to the way in which
+boys should be bred.  At least, for myself, I know that
+he left to my mother strict charge that I should be bound
+'prentice to a carpenter as soon as I was turned of
+fourteen.  I have often heard her say that this was the
+last thing he spoke to her of when he was dying; and with
+the tears in her eyes, she promised him it should be so.
+And though it cost her a world of trouble--so changed
+were times and customs--to find an old-fashioned master
+who would take me for an apprentice, she was as good as
+her word.
+
+I should like to tell the story of my apprenticeship,
+if I supposed the reader cared as much about it as I do;
+but I must rather come to that part of my life which is
+remarkable, than hold to that which is more like the life
+of many other boys.  My father's property was lost or was
+wasted, I know not how, so that my poor mother had but a
+hard time of it; and when I was just turned of twenty-one
+and was free of my apprenticeship, she had but little to
+live upon but what I could bring home, and what she could
+earn by her needle.  This was no grief to me, for I was
+fond of my trade, and I had learned it well.  My old
+master was fond of me, and would trust me with work of a
+good deal of responsibility.  I neither drank nor
+smoked, nor was I over-fond of the amusements which took
+up a good deal of the time of my fellow-workmen.  I was
+most pleased when, on pay-day, I could carry home to my
+mother ten, fifteen, or even twenty dollars--could throw
+it into her lap, and kiss her and make her kiss me.
+
+"Here is the oil for the lamp, my darling," I would
+say; or, "Here is the grease for the wheels"; or, "Now
+you must give me white sugar twice a day."  She was a
+good manager, and she made both ends meet very well.
+
+I had no thought of leaving my master when my
+apprenticeship was over, nor had he any thought of
+letting me go.  We understood each other well, he liked
+me and I liked him.  He knew that he had in me one man
+who was not afraid of work, as he would say, and who
+would not shirk it.  And so, indeed, he would often put
+me in charge of parties of workmen who were much older
+than I was.
+
+So it was that it happened, perhaps some months after
+I had become a journeyman, that he told me to take a gang
+of men, whom he named, and to go quite up-town in the
+city, to put a close wooden fence around a vacant lot of
+land there.  One of his regular employers had come to
+him, to say that this lot of land was to be enclosed, and
+the work was to be done by him.  He had sent round the
+lumber, and he told me that I would find it on the
+ground.  He gave me, in writing, the general
+directions by which the fence was ordered, and told me to
+use my best judgment in carrying them out.  "Only take
+care," said he, "that you do it as well as if I was there
+myself.  Do not be in a hurry, and be sure your work
+stands."
+
+I was well pleased to be left thus to my own
+judgment.  I had no fear of failing to do the job well,
+or of displeasing my old master or his employer.  If I
+had any doubts, they were about the men who were to work
+under my lead, whom I did not rate at all equally; and,
+if I could have had my pick, I should have thrown out
+some of the more sulky and lazy of them, and should have
+chosen from the other hands.  But youngsters must not be
+choosers when they are on their first commissions.
+
+I had my party well at work, with some laborers whom
+we had hired to dig our post-holes, when a white-haired
+old man, with gold spectacles and a broad-brimmed hat,
+alighted from a cab upon the sidewalk, watched the men
+for a minute at their work, and then accosted me.  I knew
+him perfectly, though of course he did not remember me.
+He was, in fact, my employer in this very job, for he was
+old Mark Henry, a Quaker gentleman of Philadelphia, who
+was guardian of the infant heirs who owned this block of
+land which we were enclosing.  My master did all the
+carpenter's work in the New York houses which Mark Henry
+or any of his wards owned, and I had often seen him
+at the shop in consultation.  I turned to him and
+explained to him the plans for the work.  We had already
+some of the joists cut, which were to make the posts to
+our fence.  The old man measured them with his cane, and
+said he thought they would not be long enough.
+
+I explained to him that the fence was to be eight
+feet high, and that these were quite long enough for
+that.
+
+"I know," he said, "I know, my young friend, that my
+order was for a fence eight feet high, but I do not think
+that will do."
+
+With some surprise I showed him, by a "ten-foot
+pole," how high the fence would come.
+
+"Yes, my young friend, I see, I see.  But I tell
+thee, every beggar's brat in the ward will be over thy
+fence before it has been built a week, and there will be
+I know not what devices of Satan carried on in the
+inside.  All the junk from the North River will be hidden
+there, and I shall be in luck if some stolen trunk, nay,
+some dead man's body, is not stowed away there.  Ah, my
+young friend, if thee is ever unhappy enough to own a
+vacant lot in the city, thee will know much that thee
+does not know now of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
+Thee will know of trials of the spirit and of the temper
+that thee has never yet experienced."
+
+I said I thought this was probable, but I thought
+inwardly that I would gladly be tried that way.  The old
+man went on:--
+
+"I said eight feet to friend Silas, but thee may say
+to him that I have thought better of it, and that I have
+ordered thee to make the fence ten feet high.  Thee may
+say that I am now going to Philadelphia, but that I will
+write to him my order when I arrive.  Meanwhile thee will
+go on with the fence as I bid thee."
+
+And so the old man entered his cab again and rode
+away.
+
+I amused myself at his notion, for I knew very well
+that the street-boys and other loafers would storm his
+ten-foot wall as readily as they would have stormed the
+Malakoff or the Redan, had they supposed there was
+anything to gain by doing it.  I had, of course, to
+condemn some of my posts, which were already cut, or to
+work them in to other parts of the fence.  My order for
+spruce boards was to be enlarged by twenty per cent by
+the old man's direction, and this, as it happened, led to
+a new arrangement of my piles of lumber on my vacant
+land.
+
+And all this it was which set me to thinking that
+night, as I looked on the work, that I might attempt
+another enterprise, which, as it proved, lasted me for
+years, and which I am now going to describe.
+
+I had worked diligently with the men to set up some
+fifty feet of the fence where it parted us from an alley-
+way, for I wanted a chance to dry some of the boards,
+which had just been hauled from a raft in the North
+River.  The truckmen had delivered them helter-
+skelter, and they lay, still soaking, above each other on
+our vacant lot.
+
+We turned all our force on this first piece of fence,
+and had so much of it done that, by calling off the men
+just before sundown, I was able to set up all the wet
+boards, each with one end resting on the fence and the
+other on the ground, so that they took the air on both
+sides, and would dry more quickly.  Of course this left
+a long, dark tunnel underneath.
+
+As the other hands gathered up their tools and made
+ready to go, a fellow named McLoughlin, who had gone out
+with one of the three months' regiments not long before,
+said:--
+
+"I would not be sorry to sleep there.  I have slept
+in many a worse place than that in Dixie"; and on that he
+went away, leaving me to make some measurements which I
+needed the next day.  But what he said rested in my mind,
+and, as it happened, directed the next twelve years of my
+life.
+
+Why should not I live here?  How often my mother had
+said that if she had only a house of her own she should
+be perfectly happy!  Why should not we have a house of
+our own here, just as comfortable as if we had gone a
+thousand miles out on the prairie to build it, and a
+great deal nearer to the book-stores, to the good music,
+to her old friends, and to my good wages?  We had talked
+a thousand times of moving together to Kansas, where I
+was to build a little hut for her, and we were to be
+very happy together.  But why not do as the minister had
+bidden us only the last Sunday--seize on to-day, and take
+what Providence offered now?
+
+I must acknowledge that the thought of paying any
+ground rent to old Mr. Henry did not occur to me then--
+no, nor for years afterward.  On the other hand, all that
+I thought of was this,--that here was as good a chance as
+there was in Kansas to live without rent, and that rent
+had been, was still, and was likely to be my bugbear,
+unless I hit on some such scheme as this for abating it.
+
+The plan, to be short, filled my mind.  There was
+nothing in the way of house-building which I shrank from
+now, for, in learning my trade, I had won my Aladdin's
+lamp, and I could build my mother a palace, if she had
+needed one.  Pleased with my fancy, before it was dark I
+had explored my principality from every corner, and
+learned all its capabilities.
+
+The lot was an oblong, nearly three times as long as
+it was wide.  On the west side, which was one of the
+short sides, it faced what I will call the Ninety-ninth
+Avenue, and on the south side, what I will call Fernando
+Street, though really it was one of the cross-streets
+with numbers.  Running to the east it came to a narrow
+passage-way which had been reserved for the accommodation
+of the rear of a church which fronted on the street just
+north of us.  Our back line was also the back line of the
+yards of the houses on the same street, but on our
+northeast corner the church ran back as far as the back
+line of both houses and yards, and its high brick wall--
+nearly fifty feet high--took the place there of the ten-
+foot brick wall, surmounted by bottle-glass, which made
+their rear defence.
+
+The moment my mind was turned to the matter, I saw
+that in the rear of the church there was a corner which
+lay warmly and pleasantly to the southern and western
+sun, which was still out of eye-shot from the street,
+pleasantly removed from the avenue passing, and only
+liable to inspection, indeed, from the dwelling-houses on
+the opposite side of our street,--houses which, at this
+moment, were not quite finished, though they would be
+occupied soon.
+
+If, therefore, I could hit on some way of screening
+my mother's castle from them--for a castle I called it
+from the first moment, though it was to be much more like
+a cottage--I need fear no observation from other
+quarters; for the avenue was broad, and on the other side
+from us there was a range of low, rambling buildings--an
+engine-house and a long liquor-saloon were two--which had
+but one story.  Most of them bad been built, I suppose,
+only to earn something for the land while it was growing
+valuable.  The church had no windows in the rear, and
+that protected my castle--which was, indeed, still in the
+air--from all observation on that side.
+
+I told my mother nothing of all this when I went
+home.  But I did tell her that I had some calculations to
+make for my work, and that was enough.  She went on,
+sweet soul! without speaking a word, with her knitting
+and her sewing at her end of the table, only getting up
+to throw a cloth over her parrot's cage when he was
+noisy; and I sat at my end of the table, at work over my
+figures, as silent as if I had been on a desert island.
+
+Before bedtime I had quite satisfied myself with the
+plan of a very pretty little house which would come quite
+within our space, our means, and our shelter.  There was
+a little passage which ran quite across from east to
+west.  On the church side of this there was my mother's
+kitchen, which was to be what I fondly marked the
+"common-room."  This was quite long from east to west,
+and not more than half as long the other way.  But on the
+east side, where I could have no windows, I cut off, on
+its whole width, a deep closet; and this proved a very
+fortunate thing afterward, as you shall see.  On the west
+side I made one large square window, and there was, of
+course, a door into the passage.
+
+On the south side of the passage I made three rooms,
+each narrow and long.  The two outside rooms I meant to
+light from the top.  Whether I would put any skylight
+into the room between them, I was not quite so certain;
+I did not expect visitors in my new house, so I did not
+mark it a "guest-room " in the plan.  But I thought
+of it as a store-room, and as such, indeed, for many
+years we used it; though at last I found it more
+convenient to cut a sky-light in the roof there also.
+But I am getting before my story.
+
+Before I had gone to bed that night I had made a
+careful estimate as to how much lumber I should need, of
+different kinds, for my little house; for I had, of
+course, no right to use my master's lumber nor Mr.
+Henry's; nor had I any thought of doing so.  I made out
+an estimate that would be quite full, for shingles, for
+clapboards, white pine for my floors and finish,--for I
+meant to make a good job of it if I made any,--and for
+laths for the inside work.  I made another list of the
+locks, hinges, window furniture and other hardware I
+should need; but for this I cared less, as I need not
+order them so soon.  I could scarcely refrain from
+showing my plan to my mother, so snug and comfortable did
+it look already; but I had already determined that the
+"city house" should be a present to her on her next
+birthday, and that till then I would keep it a secret
+from her, as from all the world; so I refrained.
+
+The next morning I told my master what the old Quaker
+had directed about the fence, and I took his order for
+the new lumber we should need to raise the height as was
+proposed.  At the same time I told him that we were all
+annoyed at the need of carrying our tools back and forth,
+and because we could only take the nails for one
+day's use; and that, if he were willing, I had a mind to
+risk an old chest I had with the nails in it and a few
+tools, which I thought I could so hide that the wharf-
+rats and other loafers should not discover it.  He told
+me to do as I pleased, that he would risk the nails if I
+would risk my tools; and so, by borrowing what we call a
+hand-cart for a few days, I was able to take up my own
+little things to the lot without his asking any other
+questions, or without exciting the curiosity of
+McLoughlin or any other of the men.  Of course, he would
+have sent up in the shop-wagon anything we needed; but it
+was far out of the way, and nobody wanted to drive the
+team back at night if we could do without.  And so, as
+night came on, I left the men at their work, and having
+loaded my hand-cart with a small chest I had, I took that
+into the alley-way of which I told you before, carried my
+box of tools into the corner between the church and our
+fence, under the boards which we had set up that day, and
+covered it heavily, with McLoughlin's help, with joists
+and boards, so that no light work would remove them, if,
+indeed, any wanderer of the night suspected that the box
+was there.  I took the hand-cart out into the alley-way
+and  chained it, first by the wheel and then by the
+handle, in two staples which I drove there.  I had
+another purpose in this, as you shall see; but most of
+all, I wanted to test both the police and the
+knavishness of the neighborhood by seeing if the
+hand-cart were there in the morning.
+
+To my great joy it was, and to my greater joy it
+remained there unmolested all the rest of the week in
+which we worked there.  For my master, who never came
+near us himself, increased our force for us on the third
+day, so that at the end of the week, or Saturday night,
+the job was nearly done, and well done, too.
+
+On the third day I had taken the precaution to throw
+out in the inside of our enclosure a sort of open fence,
+on which I could put the wet boards to dry, which at
+first I had placed on our side fence.  I told McLoughlin,
+what was true enough, that the south sun was better for
+them than the sun from the west.  So I ran out what I may
+call a screen thirty-five feet from the church, and
+parallel with it, on which I set up these boards to dry,
+and to my great joy I saw that they would wholly protect
+the roof of my little house from any observation from the
+houses the other side of the way while the workmen were
+at work, or even after they were inhabited.
+
+There was not one of the workmen with me who had
+forethought enough or care for our master's interest to
+ask whose boards those were which we left there, or why
+we left them there.  Indeed, they knew the next Monday
+that I went up with the Swede, to bring back such lumber
+was we did not use, and none of them knew or cared how
+much we left there.
+
+For me, I was only eager to get to work, and that day
+seemed very long to me.  But that Monday afternoon I
+asked my master if I might have the team again for my own
+use for an hour or so, to move some stuff of mine and my
+mother's, and he gave it to me readily.
+
+I had then only to drive up-town to a friendly
+lumberman's, where my own stuff was already lying waiting
+for me to load up, with the assistance of the workmen
+there, and to drive as quickly as I could into the church
+alley.  Here I looked around, and seeing a German who
+looked as if he were only a day from Bremen, I made signs
+to him that if he would help me I would give him a piece
+of scrip which I showed him.  The man had been long
+enough in the country to know that the scrip was good for
+lager.  He took hold manfully with me, and carried my
+timbers and boards into the enclosure through a gap I
+made in the fence for the purpose.  I gave him his money
+and he went away.  As he went to Minnesota the next day,
+he never mentioned to anybody the business he had been
+engaged in.
+
+Meanwhile, I had bought my hand-cart of the man who
+owned it.  I left a little pile of heavy cedar logs on
+the outside, spiking them to each other indeed, that they
+should not be easily moved.  And to them and to my posts
+I padlocked the hand-cart; nor was it ever disturbed
+during my reign in those regions.  So I had easy method
+enough when I wanted a bundle or two of laths, or a
+bunch of shingles, or anything else for my castle, to
+bring them up in the cool of the evening, and to
+discharge my load without special observation.  My pile
+of logs, indeed, grew eventually into a blind or screen,
+which quite protected that corner of the church alley
+from the view of any passer-by in Fernando Street.
+
+Of that whole summer, happy and bright as it all was,
+I look back most often on the first morning when I got
+fairly to work on my new home.  I told my mother that for
+some weeks I should have to start early, and that she
+must not think of getting up for my breakfast.  I told
+her that there was extra work on a job up-town, and that
+I had promised to be there at five every day while the
+summer lasted.  She left for me a pot of coffee, which I
+promised her I would warm when the time for breakfast and
+dinner came; and for the rest, she always had my dinner
+ready in my tin dinner-pail.  Little did she know then,
+sweet saint! that I was often at Fernando Street by half-
+past three in the first sweet gray of those summer days.
+
+On that particular day, it was really scarcely light
+enough for me to find the nail I drew from the plank
+which I left for my entrance.  When I was fairly within
+and the plank was replaced, I felt that I was indeed
+"monarch of all I surveyed."  What did I survey?  The
+church wall on the north; on the south, my own screen of
+spruce boards, now well dry; on the east and west, the
+ten-foot fences which I had built myself; and over
+that on the west, God's deep, transparent sky, in which
+I could still see a planet whose name I did not know.  It
+was a heaven, indeed, which He had said was as much mine
+as his!
+
+The first thing, of course, was to get out my frame.
+This was a work of weeks.  The next thing was to raise
+it.  And here the first step was the only hard one, nor
+was this so hard as it would seem.  The highest wall of
+my house was no higher than the ten-foot fence we had
+already built on the church alley.  The western wall, if,
+indeed, a frame house has any walls, was only eight feet
+high.  For foundations and sills, I dug deep post-holes,
+in which I set substantial cedar posts which I knew would
+outlast my day, and I framed my sills into these.  I made
+the frame of the western wall lie out upon the ground in
+one piece; and I only needed a purchase high enough, and
+a block with repeating pulleys strong enough, to be able
+to haul up the  whole frame by my own strength,
+unassisted.  The high purchase I got readily enough by
+making what we called a "three-leg," near twenty feet
+high, just where my castle was to stand.  I had no
+difficulty in hauling this into its place by a solid
+staple and ring, which for this purpose I drove high in
+the church wall.  My multiplying pulley did the rest; and
+after it was done, I took out the staple and mended the
+hole it had made, so the wall was as good as ever.
+
+You see it was nobody's business what shanty or what
+tower old Mark Henry or the Fordyce heirs might or might
+not put on the vacant corner lot.  The Fordyce heirs were
+all in nurseries and kindergartens in Geneva, and indeed
+would have known nothing of corner lots had they been
+living in their palace in Fourteenth Street.  As for Mark
+Henry, that one great achievement by which he rode up to
+Fernando Street was one of the rare victories of his
+life, of which ninety-nine hundredths were spent in
+counting-houses.  Indeed, if he had gone there, all he
+would have seen was his ten-foot fence, and he would have
+taken pride to himself that he had it built so high.
+
+When the day of the first raising came, and the frame
+slipped into the mortises so nicely, as I had
+foreordained that it should do, I was so happy that I
+could scarcely keep my secret from my mother.  Indeed,
+that day I did run back to dinner.  And when she asked me
+what pleased me so, I longed to let her know; but I only
+smoothed her cheeks with my hands and kissed her on both
+of them, and told her it was because she was so handsome
+that I was so pleased.  She said she knew I had a secret
+from her, and I owned that I had, but she said she would
+not try to guess, but would wait for the time for me to
+tell her.
+
+And so the summer sped by.  Of course I saw my
+sweetheart, as I then called my mother, less and
+less.  For I worked till it was pitch-dark at the castle;
+and after it was closed in, so I could work inside, I
+often worked till ten o'clock by candlelight.  I do not
+know how I lived with so little sleep; I am afraid I
+slept pretty late on Sundays.  But the castle grew and
+grew, and the common-room, which I was most eager to
+finish wholly before cold weather, was in complete order
+three full weeks before my mother's birthday came.
+
+Then came the joy of furnishing it.  To this I had
+looked forward all the summer, and I had measured with my
+eye many a bit of furniture, and priced, in an unaffected
+way, many an impossible second-hand finery, so that I
+knew just what I could do and what I could not do.
+
+My mother had always wanted a Banner stove.  I knew
+this, and it was a great grief to me that she had none,
+though she would never say anything about it.
+
+To my great joy, I found a second-hand Banner stove,
+No. 2, at a sort of old junk-shop, which was, in fact, an
+old curiosity shop not three blocks away from Ninety-
+ninth Avenue.  Some one had sold this to them while it
+was really as good as new, and yet the keeper offered it
+to me at half-price.
+
+I hung round the place a good deal, and when the man
+found I really had money and meant something, he took me
+into all sorts of alleys and hiding-places, where he
+stored his old things away.  I made fabulous
+bargains there, for either the old Jew liked me
+particularly, or I liked things that nobody else wanted.
+In the days when his principal customers were wharf-rats,
+and his principal business the traffic in old cordage and
+copper, he had hung out as a sign an old tavern-sign of
+a ship that had come to him.  His place still went by the
+name of "The Ship," though it was really, as I say, a
+mere wreck, a rambling, third-rate old furniture shop of
+the old-curiosity kind.
+
+But after I had safely carried the Banner to my new
+house, and was sure the funnel drew well, and that the
+escape of smoke and sparks was carefully guarded, many a
+visit did I make to The Ship at early morning or late in
+the evening, to bring away one or another treasure which
+I had discovered there.
+Under the pretence of new-varnishing some of my
+mother's most precious tables and her bureau, I got them
+away from her also.  I knocked up, with my own hatchet
+and saw, a sitting-table which I meant to have permanent
+in the middle of the room, which was much more convenient
+than anything I could buy or carry.
+
+And so, on the 12th of October, the eve of my
+mother's birthday, the common-room was all ready for her.
+In her own room I had a new carpet and a new set of
+painted chamber furniture, which I had bought at the
+maker's, and brought up piece by piece.  It cost me
+nineteen dollars and a half, for which I paid him in
+cash, which indeed he wanted sadly.
+
+So, on the morning of the 13th of October, I kissed
+my mother forty times, because that day she was forty
+years old.  I told her that before midnight she should
+know what the great surprise was, and I asked her if she
+could hold out till then.
+
+She let me poke as much fun at her as I chose,
+because she said she was so glad to have me at breakfast;
+and I stayed long after breakfast, for I had told my
+mother that it was her birthday, and that I should be
+late.  And such a thing as my asking for an hour or two
+was so rare that I took it quite of course when I did
+ask.  I came home early at night, too.  Then I said,--
+
+"Now, sweetheart, the surprise requires that you
+spend the night away from home with me.  Perhaps, if you
+like the place, we will spend tomorrow there.  So I will
+take Poll in her cage, and you must put up your night-
+things and take them in your hand."
+
+She was surprised now, for such a thing as an outing
+over night had never been spoken of before by either of
+us.
+
+"Why, Rob," she said, "you are taking too much pains
+for your old sweetheart, and spending too much money for
+her birthday.  Now, don't you think that you should
+really have as good a time, say, if we went visiting
+together, and then came back here?"
+
+For, you see, she never thought of herself at all; it
+was only what I should like most.
+
+"No, sweetheart dear," said I.  "It is not for me,
+this 13th of October, it is all for you.  And to-night's
+outing is not for me, it is for you; and I think you will
+like it and I think Poll will like it, and I have leave
+for to-morrow, and we will stay away all to-morrow."
+
+As for Tom-puss, I said, we would leave some milk
+where he could find it, and I would leave a bone or two
+for him.  But I whistled Rip, my dog, after me.  I took
+Poll's cage, my mother took her bag, and locked and left
+her door, unconscious that she was never to enter it
+again.
+
+A Ninety-ninth Avenue car took us up to Fernando
+Street.  It was just the close of twilight when we came
+there.  I took my mother to Church Alley, muttered
+something about some friends, which she did not
+understand more than I did, and led her up the alley in
+her confused surprise.  Then I pushed aside my movable
+board, and, while she was still surprised, led her in
+after me and slid it back again.
+
+"What is it, dear Rob?  Tell me--tell me!"
+
+"This way, sweetheart, this way!"  This was all I
+would say.
+
+I drew her after me through the long passage, led her
+into the common-room, which was just lighted up by the
+late evening twilight coming in between the curtains of
+the great square window.  Then I fairly pushed her to the
+great, roomy easy-chair which I had brought from The
+Ship, and placed it where she could look out on the
+evening glow, and I said,--
+
+"Mother, dear, this is the surprise; this is your new
+home; and, mother dear, your own boy has made it with his
+own hands, all for you."
+
+"But, Rob, I do not understand--I do not understand
+at all.  I am so stupid.  I know I am awake.  But it is
+as sudden as a dream!"
+
+So I had to begin and to explain it all,--how here
+was a vacant lot that Mark Henry had the care of, and how
+I had built this house for her upon it.  And long before
+I had explained it all, it was quite dark.  And I lighted
+up the pretty student's-lamp, and I made the fire in the
+new Banner with my own hands.
+
+And that night I would not let her lift a kettle, nor
+so much as cut a loaf of bread.  It was my feast, I said,
+and I had everything ready, round to a loaf of birthday-
+cake, which I had ordered at Taylor's, which I had myself
+frosted and dressed, and decorated with the initials of
+my mother's name.
+
+And when the feast was over, I had the best surprise
+of all.  Unknown to my mother, I had begged from my Aunt
+Betsy my own father's portrait, and I had hung that
+opposite the window, and now I drew the curtain that hid
+it, and told my sweetheart that this and the house were
+her birthday presents for this year!
+.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+And this was the beginning of a happy life, which
+lasted nearly twelve years.  I could make a long story of
+it, for there was an adventure in everything,--in the way
+we bought our milk, and the way we took in our coals.
+But there is no room for me to tell all that, and it
+might not interest other people as it does me.  I am sure
+my mother was never sorry for the bold step she took when
+we moved there from our tenement.  True, she saw little
+or no society, but she had not seen much before.  The
+conditions of our life were such that she did not like to
+be seen coming out of Church Alley, lest people should
+ask how she got in, and excepting in the evening, I did
+not care to have her go.  In the evening I could go with
+her.  She did not make many calls, because she could not
+ask people to return them.  But she would go with me to
+concerts, and to the church parlor meetings, and
+sometimes to exhibitions; and at such places, and on
+Sundays, she would meet, perhaps, one or another of the
+few friends she had in New York.  But we cared for them
+less and less, I will own, and we cared more and more for
+each other.
+
+As soon as the first spring came, I made an immense
+effort, and spaded over nearly half of the lot.  It was
+ninety feet wide and over two hundred and sixty long--more
+than half an acre.  So I knew we could have our own fresh
+vegetables, even if we never went to market.  My mother
+was a good gardener, and she was not afraid even to
+hoe the corn when I was out of the way.  I dare say that
+the people whom the summer left in the street above us
+often saw her from their back windows, but they did not
+know--as how should they?--who had the charge of this
+lot, and there was no reason why they should be surprised
+to see a cornfield there.  We only raised green corn.  I
+am fond of Indian cake, but I did not care to grind my
+own corn, and I could buy sweet meal without trouble.  I
+settled the milk question, after the first winter, by
+keeping our own goats.  I fenced in, with a wire fence,
+the northwest corner of our little empire, and put there
+a milch goat and her two kids.  The kids were pretty
+little things, and would come and feed from my mother's
+hand.  We soon weaned them, so that we could milk their
+mother; and after that our flock grew and multiplied, and
+we were never again troubled for such little milk as we
+used.
+
+Some old proprietor, in the old Dutch days, must have
+had an orchard in these parts.  There were still left two
+venerable wrecks of ancient pear-trees; and although they
+bore little fruit, and what they bore was good for
+nothing, they still gave a compact and grateful shade.
+I sodded the ground around them and made a seat beneath,
+where my mother would sit with her knitting all the
+afternoon.  Indeed, after the sods grew firm, I planted
+hoops there, and many a good game of croquet have she and
+I had together there, playing so late that we longed
+for the chance they have in Sybaris, where, in the
+evening, they use balls of colored glass, with fireflies
+shut up inside.
+
+On the 11th of February, in the year 1867, my old
+master died, to my great regret, and I truly believe to
+that of his widow and her children.  His death broke up
+the establishment, and I, who was always more of a
+cabinet-maker or joiner than carpenter or builder, opened
+a little shop of my own, where I took orders for
+cupboards, drawers, stairs, and other finishing work, and
+where I employed two or three German journeymen, and was
+thus much more master of my own time.  In particular, I
+had two faithful fellows, natives of my own father's town
+of Bremen.  While they were with me I could leave them a
+whole afternoon at a time, while I took any little job
+there might be, and worked at it at my own house at home.
+Where my house was, except that it was far uptown, they
+never asked, nor ever, so far as I know, cared.  This
+gave me the chance for many a pleasant afternoon with my
+mother, such as we had dreamed of in the old days when we
+talked of Kansas.  I would work at the lathe or the bench
+and she would read to me.  Or we would put off the bench
+till the evening, and we would both go out into the
+cornfield together.
+
+And so we lived year after year.  I am afraid that we
+worshipped each other too much.  We were in the
+heart of a crowded city, but there was that in our lives
+which tended a little to habits of loneliness, and I
+suppose a moralist would say that our dangers lay in that
+direction.
+
+On the other hand, I am almost ashamed to say that,
+as I sat in a seat I had made for myself in old Van der
+Tromp's pear-tree, I would look upon my corn and peas and
+squashes and tomatoes with a satisfaction which I believe
+many a nobleman in England does not enjoy.
+
+Till the youngest of the Fordyce heirs was of age,
+and that would not be till 1880, this was all my own.  I
+was, by right of possession and my own labors, lord of
+all this region.  How else did the writers on political
+economy teach me that any property existed!
+
+I surveyed it with a secret kind of pleasure.  I had
+not abundance of pears; what I had were poor and few.
+But I had abundance of sweet corn, of tomatoes, of peas,
+and of beans.  The tomatoes were as wholesome as they
+were plentiful, and as I sat I could see the long shelves
+of them which my mother had spread in the sun to ripen,
+that we might have enough of them canned when winter
+should close in upon us.  I knew I should have potatoes
+enough of my own raising also to begin the winter with.
+I should have been glad of more.  But as by any good
+day's work I could buy two barrels of potatoes, I did not
+fret myself that my stock was but small.
+
+Meanwhile my stock in bank grew fast.  Neither my
+mother nor I had much occasion to buy new clothes.  We
+were at no charge for house-rent, insurance, or taxes.
+I remember that a Spanish gentleman, who was fond of me,
+for whom I had made a cabinet with secret drawers, paid
+me in moidores and pieces-of-eight, which in those times
+of paper were a sight to behold.
+
+I carried home the little bag and told my mother that
+this was a birthday present for her; indeed, that she was
+to put it all in her bed that night, that she might say
+she had rolled in gold and silver.  She played with the
+pieces, and we used them to count with as we played our
+game of cribbage.
+
+"But really, Robin, boy," said she, "it is as the
+dirt under our feet.  I would give it all for three or
+four pairs of shoes and stockings, such as we used to buy
+in York, but such as these Lynn-built shoes and steam-
+knit stockings have driven out of the market."
+
+Indeed, we wanted very little in our desert home.
+
+And so for many years we led a happy life, and we
+found more in life than would have been possible had we
+been all tangled up with the cords of artificial society.
+I say "we," for I am sure I did, and I think my dear
+mother did.
+
+But it was in the seventh  year of our residence in
+the hut that of a sudden I had a terrible shock or
+fright, and this I must now describe to you.  It
+comes in about the middle of this history, and it may end
+this chapter.
+
+It was one Sunday afternoon, when I had taken the
+fancy, as I often did of Sundays, to inspect my empire.
+Of course, in a certain way, I did this every time I
+climbed old Van der Tromp's pear-tree, and sat in my
+hawk's-nest there.  But a tour of inspection was a
+different thing.  I walked close round the path which I
+had made next the fence of the enclosure.  I went in
+among my goats,--even entered the goat-house and played
+with my kids.  I tried the boards of the fence and the
+timber-stays, to be sure they all were sound.  I had
+paths enough between the rows of corn and potatoes to
+make a journey of three miles and half a furlong, with
+two rods more, if I went through the whole of them.  So
+at half-past four on this fatal afternoon I bade my
+mother good-by, and kissed her.  I told her I should not
+be back for two hours, because I was going to inspect my
+empire, and I set out happily.
+
+But in less than an hour--I can see the face of the
+clock now: it was twenty-two minutes after five--I flung
+myself in my chair, panting for breath, and, as my mother
+said, as pale as if I had seen a ghost.  But I told her
+it was worse than that.
+
+I had come out from between two high rows of corn,
+which wholly covered me, upon a little patch which lay
+warm to the south and west, where I had some melons
+a-ripening, and was just lifting one of the melons, to be
+sure that the under surface did not rot, when close
+behind it I saw the print of a man's foot, which was very
+plain to be seen in the soft soil.
+
+I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen
+an apparition.  I listened; I looked round me. I could
+hear nothing but the roar of the omnibuses, nor could I
+see anything.  I went up and down the path, but it was
+all one.  I could see no other impression but that one.
+I went to it again, to see if there were any more, and to
+observe if it might not be my fancy.  But there was no
+room for that, for there was exactly the print of an
+Englishman's hobnailed shoe,--the heavy heel, the prints
+of the heads of the nails.  There was even a piece of
+patch which had been put on it, though it had never been
+half-soled.
+
+How it came there I knew not; neither could I in the
+least imagine.  But, as I say, like a man perfectly
+confused and out of myself, I rushed home into my hut,
+not feeling the ground I went upon.  I fled into it like
+one pursued, and, as my mother said, when I fell into my
+chair, panting, I looked as if I had seen a ghost.
+
+It was worse than that, as I said to her.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+I cannot well tell you how much dismay this sight of a
+footprint in the ground gave me, nor how many sleepless
+nights it cost me.  All the time I was trying to make
+my mother think that there was no ground for anxiety,
+and yet all the time I was showing her that I was very
+anxious.  The more I pretended that I was not troubled,
+the more absent-minded, and so the more troubled, I
+appeared to her.  And yet, if I made no pretence, and
+told her what I really feared, I should have driven her
+almost wild by the story of my terrors.  To have our
+pretty home broken up, perhaps to be put in the
+newspapers--which was a lot that, so far, we had always
+escaped in our quiet and modest life--all this was more
+than she or I could bear to think of.
+
+In the midst of these cogitations, apprehensions, and
+reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, as I was
+working at my shop down-town with my men, that all this
+might be a chimera of my own, and that the foot might be
+the print of my own boot as I had left it in the soil
+some days before when I was looking at my melons.  This
+cheered me up a little, too.  I considered that I could
+by no means tell for certain where I had trod and where
+I had not, and that if at last this was the print of my
+own boot, I had played the part of those fools who strive
+to make stories of spectres, and then are themselves
+frightened at them more than anybody else.
+
+So I returned home that day in very good spirits.  I
+carried to my mother a copy of Frank Leslie's Illustrated
+Newspaper, which had in it some pictures that I knew
+would please her, and I talked with her in as light-
+hearted a way as I could, to try to make her think that
+I had forgotten my alarm.  And afterward we played two or
+three games of Egyptian solitaire at the table, and I
+went to bed unusually early.  But, at the first break of
+day, when I fancied or hoped that she was still asleep,
+I rose quickly, and half-dressing myself, crept out to
+the melon-patch to examine again the imprint of the foot
+and to make sure that it was mine.
+
+Alas! it was no more mine than it was Queen
+Victoria's.  If it had only been cloven, I could easily
+have persuaded myself whose it was, so much grief and
+trouble had it cost me.  When I came to measure the mark
+with my own boot, I found, just as I had seen before,
+that mine was not nearly so large as this mark was.
+Also, this was, as I have said, the mark of a heavy
+brogan--such as I never wore--and there was the mark of
+a strange patch near the toe, such as I had never seen,
+nor, indeed, have seen since, from that hour to this
+hour.  All these things renewed my terrors.  I went home
+like a whipped dog, wholly certain now that some one had
+found the secret of our home: we might be surprised in it
+before I was aware; and what course to take for my
+security I knew not.
+
+As we breakfasted, I opened my whole heart to my
+mother.  If she said so, I would carry all our little
+property, piece by piece, back to old Thunberg, the junk-
+dealer, and with her parrot and my umbrella we would go
+out to Kansas, as we used to propose.  We would give up
+the game.  Or, if she thought best, we would stand on the
+defensive.  I would put bottle-glass on the upper edges
+of the fences all the way round.
+
+There were four or five odd revolvers at The Ship,
+and I would buy them all, with powder and buck-shot
+enough for a long siege.  I would teach her how to load,
+and while she loaded I would fire, till they had quite
+enough of attacking us in our home.  Now it has all gone
+by, I should be ashamed to set down in writing the
+frightful contrivances I hatched for destroying these
+"creatures," as I called them, or, at least, frightening
+them, so as to prevent their coming thither any more.
+
+"Robin, my boy," said my mother to me, when I gave
+her a chance at last, "if they came in here to-night--
+whoever `they' may be--very little is the harm that they
+could do us.  But if Mr. Kennedy and twenty of his police
+should come in here over the bodies of--five times five
+are twenty-five, twenty-five times eleven are--two
+hundred and seventy-five people whom you will have killed
+by that time, if I load as fast as thee tells me I
+can, why, Robin, my boy, it will go hard for thee and me
+when the day of the assizes comes.  They will put
+handcuffs on thy poor old mother and on thee, and if they
+do not send thee to Jack Ketch, they will send thee to
+Bloomingdale."
+
+I could not but see that there was sense in what she
+said.  Anyway, it cooled me down for the time, and I
+kissed her and went to my work less eager, and, indeed,
+less anxious, than I had been the night before.  As I
+went down-town in the car, I had a chance to ask myself
+what right I had to take away the lives of these poor
+savages of the neighborhood merely because they entered
+on my possessions.  Was it their fault that they had not
+been apprenticed to carpenters?  Could they help
+themselves in the arrangements which had left them
+savages?  Had any one ever given them a chance to fence
+in an up-town lot?  Was it, in a word, I said to myself--
+was it my merit or my good luck which made me as good as
+a landed proprietor, while the Fordyce heirs had their
+education?  Such thoughts, before I came to my shop, had
+quite tamed me down, and when I arrived there I was quite
+off my design, and I concluded that I had taken a wrong
+measure in my resolution to attack the savages, as I had
+begun to call men who might be merely harmless loafers.
+
+It was clearly not my business to meddle with them
+unless they first attacked me.  This it was my
+business to prevent; if I were discovered and attacked,
+then I knew my duty.
+
+With these thoughts I went into my shop that day, and
+with such thoughts as these, and with my mother's good
+sense in keeping me employed in pleasanter things than
+hunting for traces of savages, I got into a healthier way
+of thinking.
+
+The crop of melons came in well, and many a good
+feast we had from them.  Once and again I was able to
+carry a nice fresh melon to an old lady my mother was
+fond of, who now lay sick with a tertian ague.
+
+Then we had the best sweet corn for dinner every day
+that any man had in New York.  For at Delmonico's itself,
+the corn the grandees had had been picked the night
+before, and had started at two o'clock in the morning on
+its long journey to town.  But my mother picked my corn
+just at the minute when she knew I was leaving my shop.
+She husked it and put it in the pot, and by the time I
+had come home, had slipped up the board in the fence that
+served me for a door, and had washed my face and hands in
+my own room, she would have dished her dinner, would have
+put her fresh corn upon the table, covered with a pretty
+napkin; and so, as I say, I had a feast which no nabob in
+New York had.  No indeed, nor any king that I know of,
+unless it were the King of the Sandwich Islands, and I
+doubt if he were as well served as I.
+
+So I became more calm and less careworn, though
+I will not say but sometimes I did look carefully to see
+if I could find the traces of a man's foot; but I never
+saw another.
+
+Unless we went out somewhere during the evening, we
+went to bed early.  We rose early as well, for I never
+lost the habits of my apprenticeship.  And so we were
+both sound asleep in bed one night when a strange thing
+happened, and a sudden fright came to us, of which I must
+tell quite at length, for it made, indeed, a very sudden
+change in the current of our lives.
+
+I was sound asleep, as I said, and so, I found, was
+my mother also.  But I must have been partly waked by
+some sudden noise in the street, for I knew I was sitting
+up in my bed in the darkness when I heard a woman
+scream,--a terrible cry,--and while I was yet startled,
+I heard her scream again, as if she were in deadly fear.
+My window was shaded by a heavy green curtain, but in an
+instant I had pulled it up, and by the light of the moon
+I seized my trousers and put them on.
+
+I was well awake by this time, and when I flung open
+the door of my house, so as to run into my garden, I
+could hear many wild voices, some in English, some in
+German, some in Irish, and some with terrible cries,
+which I will not pretend I could understand.
+
+There was no cry of a woman now, but only the howling
+of angry or drunken men, when they are in a rage with
+some one or with each other.  What startled me was
+that, whereas the woman's cry came from the street south
+of me, which I have called Fernando Street, the whole
+crowd of men, as they howled and swore, were passing
+along that street rapidly, and then stopped for an
+instant, as if they were coming up what I called Church
+Alley.  There must have been seven or eight of them.
+
+Now, it was by Church Alley that my mother and I
+always came into our house, and so into our garden.  In
+the eight years, or nearly so, that I had lived there, I
+had by degrees accumulated more and more rubbish near the
+furthest end of the alley as a screen, so to speak, that
+when my mother or I came in or out, no one in the street
+might notice us.  I had even made a little wing-fence out
+from my own, to which my hand-cart was chained.  Next
+this I had piled broken brickbats and paving-stones, and
+other heavy things, that would not be stolen.  There was
+the stump and the root of an old pear-tree there, too
+heavy to steal, and too crooked and hard to clean or saw.
+There was a bit of curbstone from the street, and other
+such trash, which quite masked the fence and the hand-
+cart.
+
+On the other side--that is, the church side, or the
+side furthest from the street--was the sliding-board in
+the fence, where my mother and I came in.  So soon as it
+was slid back, no man could see that the fence was not
+solid.
+
+At this moment in the night, however, when I
+found that this riotous, drunken crew were pausing
+at the entrance of Church Alley, as doubting if they
+would not come down, I ran back through the passage,
+knocking loudly for my mother as I passed, and coming to
+my coal-bin, put my eye at the little hole through which
+I always reconnoitred before I slid the door.  I could
+see nothing, nor at night ought I to have expected to do
+so.
+
+But I could hear, and I heard what I did not expect.
+I could hear the heavy panting of one who had been
+running, and as I listened I heard a gentle, low voice
+sob out, "Ach, ach, mein Gott!  Ach, mein Gott!" or words
+that I thought were these, and I was conscious, when I
+tried to move the door, that some one was resting close
+upon it.
+
+All the same, I put my shoulder stoutly to the cross-
+bar, to which the boards of the door were nailed; I slid
+it quickly in its grooves, and as it slid, a woman fell
+into the passage.
+
+She was wholly surprised by the motion, so that she
+could not but fall.  I seized her and dragged her in,
+saying, "Hush, hush, hush!" as I did so.  But not so
+quick was I but that she screamed once more as I drew to
+the sliding-door and thrust in the heavy bolt which held
+it.
+
+In an instant my mother was in the passage with a
+light in her hand.  In another instant I had seized the
+light and put it out.  But that instant was enough for
+her and me to see that here was a lovely girl, with
+no hat or bonnet on, with her hair floating wildly, both
+her arms bleeding, and her clothes all stained with
+blood.  She could see my mother's face of amazement, and
+she could see my finger on my mouth, as with the other I
+dashed out the candle.  We all thought quickly, and we
+all knew that we must keep still.
+
+But that unfortunate scream of hers was enough.
+Though no one of us all uttered another sound, this was
+like a "view-halloo," to bring all those dogs down upon
+us.  The passage was dark, and, to my delight, I heard
+some of them breaking their shins over the curbstone and
+old pear-tree of my defences.  But they were not such
+hounds as were easily thrown off the scent, and there
+were enough to persevere while the leaders picked
+themselves up again.
+
+Then how they swore and cursed and asked questions!
+And we three stood as still as so many frightened
+rabbits.  In an instant more one of them, who spoke in
+English, said he would be hanged if he thought she had
+gone into the church, that he believed she had got
+through the fence; and then, with his fist, or something
+harder, he began trying the boards on our side, and
+others of them we could hear striking those on the other
+side of the alley-way.
+
+When it came to this, I whispered to my mother that
+she must never fear, only keep perfectly still.  She
+dragged the frightened girl into our kitchen, which
+was our sitting-room, and they both fell, I know not how,
+into the great easy-chair.
+
+For my part, I seized the light ladder, which always
+hung ready at the door, and ran with it at my full speed
+to the corner of Fernando Street and the alley.  I
+planted the ladder, and was on the top of the fence in an
+instant
+
+Then I sprang my watchman's rattle, which had hung by
+the ladder, and I whirled it round well.  It wholly
+silenced the sound of the swearing fellows up the
+passage, and their pounding.  When I found they were
+still, I cried out:--
+
+"This way, 24! this way, 47!  I have them all penned
+up here!  Signal the office, 42, and bid them send us a
+sergeant.  This way, fellows--up Church Alley!"
+
+With this I was down my ladder again.  But my gang of
+savages needed no more.  I could hear them rushing out of
+the alley as fast as they might, not one of them waiting
+for 24 or 47.  This was lucky for me, for as it happened
+I was ten minutes older before I heard two patrolmen on
+the outside, wondering what frightened old cove had been
+at the pains to spring a rattle.
+
+The moonlight shone in at the western window of the
+kitchen, so that as I came in I could just make out the
+figure of my mother and of the girl, lying, rather than
+sitting, in her lap and her arms.  I was not afraid to
+speak now, and I told my mother we were quite safe again,
+and she told the poor girl so.  I struck a match and
+lighted the lamp as soon as I could.  The poor,
+frightened creature started as I did so, and then fell on
+her knees at my mother's feet, took both her hands in her
+own, and seemed like one who begs for mercy, or, indeed,
+for life.
+
+My poor, dear mother was all amazed, and her eyes
+were running with tears at the sight of the poor thing's
+terror.  She kissed her again and again; she stroked her
+beautiful golden hair with her soft hands; she said in
+every word that she could think of that she was quite
+safe now, and must not think of being frightened any
+more.
+
+But it was clear in a moment that the girl could not
+understand any language that we could speak.  My mother
+tried her with a few words of German, and she smiled
+then; but she shook her head prettily, as if to say that
+she thanked her, but could not speak to her in that way
+either.  Then she spoke eagerly in some language that we
+could not understand.  But had it been the language of
+Hottentots, we should have known that she was begging my
+mother not to forsake her, so full of entreaty was every
+word and every gesture.
+
+My dear, sweet mother lifted her at last into the
+easy-chair and made her lie there while she dipped some
+hot water from her boiler and filled a large basin in her
+sink.  Then she led the pretty creature to it, and washed
+from her arms, hands, and face the blood that had
+hardened upon them, and looked carefully to find what her
+wounds were.  None of them were deep, though there
+were ugly scratches on her beautiful arms; they were cut
+by glass, as I guessed then, and as we learned from her
+afterward.  My mother was wholly prepared for all such
+surgery as was needed here; she put on two bandages where
+she thought they were needed, she plastered up the other
+scratches with court-plaster, and then, as if the girl
+understood her, she said to her, "And now, my dear child,
+you must come to bed; there is no danger for you more."
+
+The poor girl had grown somewhat reassured in the
+comfortable little kitchen, but her terror seemed to come
+back at any sign of removal; she started to her feet,
+almost as if she were a wild creature.  But I would defy
+any one to be afraid of my dear mother, or indeed to
+refuse to do what she bade, when she smiled so in her
+inviting way and put out her hand; and so the girl went
+with her, bowing to me, or dropping a sort of courtesy in
+her foreign fashion, as she went out of the door, and I
+was left to see what damage had been done to my castle by
+the savages, as I called them.
+
+I had sprung the rattle none too soon; for one of
+these rascals, as it proved--I suppose it was the same
+who swore that she had not gone into the church--with
+some tool or other he had in his hand, had split out a
+bit of the fence and had pried out a part of a plank.  I
+had done my work too well for any large piece to give
+way.  But the moment I looked into my coal-bin I saw that
+something was amiss.  I did not like very well to go
+to the outside, but I must risk something; so I took out
+a dark lantern which I always kept ready.  Sure enough,
+as I say, the fellow had struck so hard and so well that
+he had split out a piece of board, and a little coal even
+had fallen upon the passage-way.  I was not much
+displeased at this, for if he thought no nearer the truth
+than that he had broken into a coal-bin of the church,
+why, he was far enough from his mark for me.  After
+finding this, however, I was anxious enough, lest any of
+them should return, not to go to bed again that night;
+but all was still as death, and, to tell the truth, I
+fell asleep in my chair.  I doubt whether my mother
+slept, or her frightened charge.
+
+I was at work in the passage early the next morning
+with some weather-stained boards I had, and before nine
+o'clock I had doubled all that piece of fence, from my
+wing where my hand-cart was to the church, and I had
+spiked the new boards on, which looked like old boards,
+as I said, with tenpenny nails; so that he would be a
+stout burglar who would cut through them unless he had
+tools for his purpose and daylight to work by.  As I was
+gathering up my tools to go in, a coarse, brutal-looking
+Irishman came walking up the alley and looked round.  My
+work was so well done, and I had been so careful to leave
+no chips, that even then he could not have guessed that
+I had been building the fence anew, though I fancied
+he looked at it.  He seemed to want to excuse himself for
+being there at all, and asked me, with an oath and in a
+broad Irish brogue, if there were no other passage
+through.  I had the presence of mind to say in German,
+"Wollen sie sprechen Deutsch?" and so made as if I
+could not understand him; and then, kneeling on the
+cellar-door of the church, pretended to put a key into
+the lock, as if I were making sure that I had made it
+firm.
+
+And with that, he turned round with another oath, as
+if he had come out of his way, and went out of the alley,
+closely followed by me.  I watched him as long as I
+dared, but as he showed no sign of going back to the
+alley, I at last walked round a square with my tools, and
+so came back to my mother and the pretty stranger.
+
+My mother had been trying to get at her story.  She
+made her understand a few words of German, but they
+talked by signs and smiles and tears and kisses much more
+than by words; and by this time they understood each
+other so well that my mother had persuaded her not to go
+away that day.
+
+Nor did she go out for many days after; I will go
+before my story far enough to say that.  She had, indeed,
+been horribly frightened that night, and she was as loath
+to go out again into the streets of New York as I should
+be to plunge from a safe shore into some terrible,
+howling ocean; or, indeed, as one who found himself safe
+at home would be to trust himself to the tender
+mercies of a tribe of cannibals.
+
+Two such loving women as they were were not long in
+building up a language, especially as my mother had
+learned from my father and his friends, in her early
+life, some of the common words of German--what she called
+a bread-and-butter German.  For our new inmate was a
+Swedish girl.  Her story, in short, was this:--
+
+She had been in New York but two days.  On the voyage
+over, they had had some terrible sickness on the vessel,
+and the poor child's mother had died very suddenly and
+had been buried in the sea.  Her father had died long
+before.
+
+This was, as you may think, a terrible shock to her.
+But she had hoped and hoped for the voyage to come to an
+end, because there was a certain brother of hers in
+America whom they were to meet at their landing, and
+though she was very lonely on the packet-ship, in which
+she and her mother and a certain family of the name of
+Hantsen--of whom she had much to say--were the only
+Swedes, still she expected to find the brother almost as
+soon, as I may say, as they saw the land.
+
+She felt badly enough that he did not come on board
+with the quarantine officer.  When the passengers were
+brought to Castle Garden, and no brother came, she felt
+worse.  However, with the help of the clerks there, she
+got off a letter to him, somewhere in Jersey, and
+proposed to wait as long as they would let her, till he
+should come.
+
+The second day there came a man to the Garden, who
+said he was a Dane, but he spoke Swedish well enough.  He
+said her brother was sick, and had sent him to find her.
+She was to come with her trunks, and her mother's, and
+all their affairs, to his house, and the same afternoon
+they should go to where the brother was.
+
+Without doubt or fear she went with this man, and
+spent the day at a forlorn sort of hotel which she
+described, but which I never could find again.  Toward
+night the man came again and bade her take a bag, with
+her one change of dress, and come with him to her
+brother.
+
+After a long ride through the city, they got out at
+a house which, thank God! was only one block from
+Fernando Street.  And there this simple, innocent
+creature, as she went in, asked where her brother was, to
+meet only a burst of laughter from one or two coarse-
+looking men, and from half-a-dozen brazen-faced girls
+whom she hated, she said, the minute she saw them.
+
+Except that an old woman took off her shawl and cloak
+and bonnet, and took away from her the travelling things
+she had in her hand, nobody took any care of her but to
+laugh at her, and mock her if she dared say anything.
+
+She tried to go out to the door to find even the
+Dane who had brought her there, but she was given to
+understand that he was coming again for her, and that she
+must wait till he came.  As for her brother, there was no
+brother there, nor had been any.  The poor girl had been
+trapped, and saw that she had been trapped; she had been
+spirited away from everybody who ever heard of her
+mother, and was in the clutches, as she said to my mother
+afterward, of a crew of devils who knew nothing of love
+or of mercy.
+
+They did try to make her eat and drink,--tried to
+make her drink champagne, or any other wine; but they had
+no fool to deal with.  The girl did not, I think, let her
+captors know how desperate were her resolutions.  But her
+eyes were wide open, and she was not going to lose any
+chance.  She was all on the alert for her escape when, at
+eleven o'clock, the Dane came at last whom she had been
+expecting so anxiously.
+
+The girl asked him for her brother, only to be put
+off by one excuse or another, and then to hear from him
+the most loathsome talk of his admiration, not to say his
+passion, for her.
+
+They were nearly alone by this time, and he led her
+unresisting, as he thought, into another smaller room,
+brilliantly lighted, and, as she saw in a glance, gaudily
+furnished, with wine and fruit and cake on a side-
+table,--a room where they would be quite alone.
+
+She walked simply across and looked at herself in the
+great mirror.  Then she made some foolish little
+speech about her hair, and how pale she looked.  Then she
+crossed to the sofa, and sat upon it with as tired an air
+as he might have expected of one who had lived through
+such a day.  Then she looked up at him and even smiled
+upon him, she said, and asked him if he would not ask
+them for some cold water.
+
+The fellow turned into the passage-way, well pleased
+with her submission, and in the same instant the girl was
+at the window as if she had flown across the room.
+
+Fool!  The window was made fast, not by any moving
+bolt, either.  It was nailed down, and it did not give a
+hairs-breadth to her hand.
+
+Little cared she for that.  She sat on the window-
+seat, which was broad enough to hold her; she braced her
+feet against the foot of the bedstead, which stood just
+near enough to her; she turned enough to bring her
+shoulder against the window-sash, and then with her whole
+force she heaved herself against the sash, and the entire
+window, of course, gave way.
+
+The girl caught herself upon the blind, which swung
+open before her.  She pulled herself free from the sill
+and window-seat, and dropped fearless into the street.
+
+The fall was not long.  She lighted on her feet and
+ran as only fear could teach her to run.  Where to, she
+knew not; but she thought she turned a corner before she
+heard any voices from behind.
+
+Still she ran.  And it was when she came to the
+corner of the next street that she heard for the first
+time the screams of pursuers.
+
+She turned again, like a poor hunted hare as she was.
+But what was her running to theirs?  She was passing our
+long fence in Fernando Street, and then for the first
+time she screamed for help.
+
+It was that scream which waked me.
+
+She saw the steeple of the church.  She had a dim
+feeling that a church would be an asylum.  So was it that
+she ran up our alley, to find that she was in a trap
+there.
+
+And then it was that she fell against my door, that
+she cried twice, "Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!" and that the
+good God, who had heard her, sent me to draw her in.
+
+We had to learn her language, in a fashion, and she
+to learn ours, before we understood her story in this
+way.  But at the very first my mother made out that the
+girl had fled from savages who meant worse than death for
+her.  So she understood why she was so frightened at
+every sound, and why at first she was afraid to stay with
+us, yet more afraid to go.
+
+But this passed off in a day or two.  She took to my
+mother with a sort of eager way which showed how she must
+have loved her own mother, and how much she lost when she
+lost her.  And that was one of the parts of her sad story
+that we understood.
+
+No one, I think, could help loving my mother; but
+here was a poor, storm-tossed creature who, I might say,
+had nothing else to love, seeing she had lost all trace
+of this brother, and here was my mother, soothing her,
+comforting her, dressing her wounds for her, trying to
+make her feel that God's world was not all wickedness;
+and the girl in return poured out her whole heart.
+
+When my mother explained to her that she should not
+let her go away till her brother was found, then for the
+first time she seemed perfectly happy.  She was indeed
+the loveliest creature I ever put my eyes on.
+
+She was then about nineteen years old, of a delicate
+complexion naturally, which was now a little browned by
+the sea-air.  She was rather tall than otherwise, but her
+figure was so graceful that I think you never thought her
+tall.  Her eyes were perhaps deep-set, and of that
+strange gray which I have heard it said the goddesses in
+the Greek poetry had.  Still, when she was sad, one saw
+the less of all this.  It was not till she forgot her
+grief for the instant in the certainty that she might
+rest with my mother, so that her whole face blazed with
+joy, that I first knew what the perfect beauty of a
+perfect woman was.
+
+Her name, it seemed, was Frida,--a name made from the
+name of one of the old goddesses among the Northmen, the
+same from whom our day Friday is named.  She is the half-
+sister of Thor, from whom Thursday is named, and the
+daughter of Wodin, from whom Wednesday is named.
+
+I knew little of all this then, but I did not wonder
+when I read afterward that this northern goddess was the
+Goddess of Love, the friend of song, the most beautiful
+of all their divinities,--queen of spring and light and
+everything lovely.
+
+But surely never any one took fewer of the airs of a
+goddess than our Frida did while she was with us.  She
+would watch my mother, as if afraid that she should put
+her hand to a gridiron or a tin dipper.  She gave her to
+understand, in a thousand pretty ways, that she should be
+her faithful, loving, and sincere. servant.  If she would
+only show her what to do, she would work for her as a
+child that loved her.  And so indeed she did.  My dear
+mother would laugh and say she was quite a fine lady now,
+for Frida would not let her touch broom nor mop, skimmer
+nor dusting-cloth.
+
+The girl would do anything but go out upon an errand.
+She could not bear to see the other side of the fence.
+What she thought of it all I do not know.  Whether she
+thought it was the custom in America for young men to
+live shut up with their mothers in enclosures of half an
+acre square, or whether she thought we two made some
+peculiar religious order, whose rules provided that one
+woman and one man should live together in a convent or
+monastery of their own, or whether she supposed half New
+York was made up, as Marco Polo found Pekin, of
+cottages or of gardens, I did not know, nor did I much
+care.  I could see that here was provided a companion for
+my mother, who was else so lonely, and I very soon found
+that she was as much a companion for me.
+
+So soon as we could understand her at all, I took the
+name of her brother and his address.  When he wrote last
+he was tending a saw-mill at a place about seven miles
+away from Tuckahoe, in Jersey.  But he said he was going
+to leave there at once, so that they need not write
+there.  He sent the money for their passage, and
+promised, as I said, to meet them at New York.
+
+This was a poor clew at the best.  But I put a good
+face on it, and promised her I would find him if he could
+be found.  And I spared no pains.  I wrote to the
+postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard of
+there.  I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and
+Philadelphia.  Indeed, in the end, I went to Tuckahoe
+myself, with her, to inquire.  But this was long after.
+However, I may say here, once for all, to use an old
+phrase of my mother's, we never found "hide nor hair" of
+him.  And although this grieved Frida, of course, yet it
+came on her gradually, and as she had never seen him to
+remember him, it was not the same loss as if they had
+grown up together.
+
+Meanwhile that first winter was, I thought, the
+pleasantest I had ever known in my life.  I did not have
+to work very hard now, for my business was rather
+the laying out work for my men, and sometimes a nice job
+which needed my hand on my lathe at home, or in some
+other delicate affair that I could bring home with me.
+
+We were teaching Frida English, my mother and I, and
+she and I made a great frolic of her teaching me Swedish.
+I would bring home Swedish newspapers and stories for
+her, and we would puzzle them out together,--she as much
+troubled to find the English word as I to find out the
+Swedish.  Then she sang like a bird when she was about
+her household work, or when she sat sewing for my mother,
+and she had not lived with us a fortnight before she
+began to join us on Sunday evenings in the choruses of
+the Methodist hymns which my mother and I sang together.
+So then we made her sing Swedish hymns to us.  And before
+she knew it, the great tears would brim over her deep
+eyes and would run down in pearls upon her cheek.
+Nothing set her to thinking of her old home as those
+Sunday evenings did.  Of a Sunday evening we could make
+her go out with us to church sometimes.  Not but then she
+would half cover her face with a veil, so afraid was she
+that we might meet the Dane.  But I told her that the
+last place we should find him at would be at church on
+Sunday evening.
+
+I have come far in advance of my story, that I might
+make any one who reads this life of mine to understand
+how naturally and simply this poor lost bird nestled down
+into our quiet life, and how the house that was
+built for two proved big enough for three.  For I made
+some new purchases now, and fitted up the little middle
+chamber for Frida's own use.  We had called it the "spare
+chamber" before, in joke.  But now my mother fitted
+pretty curtains to it, and other hangings, without
+Frida's knowledge.  I had a square of carpet made up at
+the warehouse for the middle of the floor, and by making
+her do one errand and another in the corner of the garden
+one pleasant afternoon in November, we had it all
+prettily fitted up for her room before she knew it.  And
+a great gala we made of it when she came in from
+gathering the seeds of the calystegia, which she had been
+sent for.
+
+She looked like a northern Flora as she came in, with
+her arms all festooned by the vines she had been pulling
+down.  And when my mother made her come out to the door
+she had never seen opened before, and led her in, and
+told her that this pretty chamber was all her own, the
+pretty creature flushed crimson red at first, and then
+her quick tears ran over, and she fell on my mother's
+neck and kissed her as if she would never be done.  And
+then she timidly held her hand out to me, too, as I stood
+in the doorway, and said, in her slow, careful English,--
+
+"And you, too--and you, too.  I must tank you both,
+also, especially.  You are so good--so good to de poor
+lost girl!" That was a very happy evening.
+
+But, as I say, I have gone ahead of my story.  For
+before we had these quiet evenings we were fated to have
+many anxious ones and one stormy one.
+
+The very first day that Frida was with us, I felt
+sure that the savages would make another descent upon us.
+They had heard her scream, that was certain.  They knew
+she had not passed them, that was certain.  They knew
+there was a coal-bin on the other side of our fence, that
+was certain.  They would have reason enough for being
+afraid to have her at large, if, indeed, there were no
+worse passion than fear driving some of them in pursuit
+of her.  I could not keep out of my mind the beastly look
+of the Irishman who asked me, with such an ugly leer on
+his face, if there were no passage through.  Not that I
+told either of the two women of my fears.  But, all the
+same, I did not undress myself for a week, and sat in the
+great easy-chair in our kitchen through the whole of
+every night, waiting for the least sound of alarm.
+
+Next to the savages, I had always lived in fear of
+being discovered in my retreat by the police, who would
+certainly think it strange to find a man and his mother
+living in a shed, without any practicable outside door,
+in what they called a vacant lot.
+
+But I have read of weak nations in history which were
+fain to call upon one neighbor whom they did not like to
+protect them against another whom they liked less.
+I made up my mind, in like wise, to go round to the
+police-station nearest me.
+
+And so, having dressed myself in my black coat, and
+put on a round hat and gloves, I bought me a Malacca
+walking-stick, such as was then in fashion, and called
+upon the captain in style.  I told him I lived next the
+church, and that on such and such a night there was a
+regular row among roughs, and that several of them went
+storming up the alley in a crowd.  I said, "Although your
+men were there as quick as they could come, these fellows
+had all gone before they came."  But then I explained
+that I had seen a fellow hanging about the alley in the
+daytime, who seemed to be there for no good; that there
+was a hand-cart kept there by a workman, who seemed to be
+an honest fellow, and, perhaps, all they wanted was to
+steal that; that, if I could, I would warn him.  But
+meanwhile, I said, I had come round to the station to
+give the warning of my suspicions, that if my rattle was
+heard again, the patrolmen might know what was in the
+wind.
+
+The captain was a good deal impressed by my make-up
+and by the ease of my manner.  He affected to be
+perfectly well acquainted with me, although we had never
+happened to meet at the Century Club or at the Union
+League.  I confirmed the favorable impression I had made
+by leaving my card, which I had had handsomely engraved:
+"MR. ROBINSON CRUSOE."  With my pencil I added my
+down-town address, where, I said, a note or telegram
+would find me.
+
+I was not a day too soon with my visit to this
+gentleman.  That very night, after my mother and Frida
+had gone to bed, as I sat in my easychair, there came
+over me one of those strange intimations which I have
+never found it safe to disregard.  Sometimes it is of
+good, and sometimes of bad.  This time it made me certain
+that all was not well.  To relieve my fears I lifted my
+ladder over the wall and dropped it in the alley.  I
+swung myself down and carried it to the very end of the
+alley, to the place where I had dragged poor Frida in.
+The moon fell on the fence opposite ours.  My wing-fence
+and hand-cart were all in shade.  But everything was safe
+there.
+
+Again I chided myself for my fears, when, as I looked
+up the alley to the street, I saw a group of four men
+come in stealthily.  They said not a word, but I could
+make out their forms distinctly against the houses
+opposite.
+
+I was caught in my own trap!
+
+Not quite!  They had not seen me, for I was wholly in
+shadow.  I stepped quickly in at my own slide.  I pushed
+it back and bolted it securely, and with my heart in my
+mouth, I waited at my hole of observation.  In a minute
+more they were close around me, though they did not
+suspect I was so near.
+
+They also had a dark-lantern, and, I thought,
+more than one.  They spoke in low tones; but as they
+had no thought they had a hearer quite so near, I could
+hear all they said.
+
+"I tell you it was this side, and this is the side I
+heard their deuced psalm-singing day before yesterday."
+
+"What if he did hear psalm-singing?  Are you going to
+break into a man's garden because he sings psalms?  I
+came here to find out where the girl went to; and now you
+talk of psalm-singing and coal-bins."  This from another,
+whose English was poor, and in whom I fancied I heard the
+Dane.  It was clear enough that be spoke sense, and a
+sort of doubt fell on the whole crew; but speaker No. 1,
+with a heavy crowbar he had, smashed into my pine wall,
+as I have a right to call it now, with a force which made
+the splinters fly.
+
+"I should think we were all at Niblo's," said a man
+of slighter build, "and that we were playing Humpty
+Dumpty.  Because a girl flew out of a window, you think
+a fence opened to take her in. Why should she not go
+through a door? and he kicked with his foot upon the
+heavy sloping cellar-door of the church, which just rose
+a little from the pavement.  It was the doorway which
+they used there when they took in their supply of coal.
+The moon fell full on one side of it.  To my surprise it
+was loose and gave way.
+
+"Here is where the girl flew to, and here is
+where Bully Bigg, the donkey, let her slip out of
+his fingers.  I knew he was a fool, but I did not know he
+was such a fool," said the Dane (if he were the Dane).
+
+I will not pretend to write down the oaths and foul
+words which came in between every two of the words I have
+repeated.
+
+"Fool yourself!" replied the Bully; "and what sort of
+a fool is the man who comes up a blind alley looking
+after a girl that will not kiss him when he bids her?"
+
+"Anyway," put in another of the crew, who had just
+now lifted the heavy cellar-door, "other people may find
+it handy to hop down here when the `beaks' are too near
+them.  It's a handy place to know of in a dark night, if
+the dear deacons do choose to keep it open for a poor
+psalm-singing tramp, who has no chance at the station-
+house.  Here, Lopp, you are the tallest,--jump in and
+tell us what is there;" and at this moment the Dane
+caught sight of my unfortunate ladder, lying full in the
+moonlight.  I could see him seize it and run to the
+doorway with it with a deep laugh and some phrase of his
+own country talk, which I did not understand.
+
+"The deacons are very good," said the savage who had
+lifted the cellar-door.  "They make everything handy for
+us poor fellows."
+
+And though he had not planted the ladder, he was the
+first to run down, and called for the rest to follow.
+The Dane was second, Lopp was third, and "The
+Bully," as the big rascal seemed to be called by
+distinction, was the fourth.
+
+I saw him disappear from my view with a mixture of
+wonder and terror which I will not describe.  I seized my
+light overcoat, which always hung in the passage.  I
+flung open my sliding-door and shut it again behind me.
+I looked into the black of the cellar to see the
+reflections from their distant lanterns, and without a
+sound I drew up my ladder.  Then I ran to the head of the
+alley and sounded my rattle as I would have sounded the
+trumpet for a charge in battle.  The officers joined me
+in one moment.
+
+"I am the man who spoke to the captain about these
+rowdies.  Four of them are in the cellar of the church
+yonder now."
+
+"Do you know who?"
+
+"One they called Lopp, and one they called Bully
+Bigg," said I. "I do not know the others' names."
+
+The officers were enraptured.
+
+I led them, and two other patrolmen who joined us, to
+the shelter of my wing-wall.  In a few minutes the head
+of the Dane appeared, as he was lifted from below.  With
+an effort and three or four oaths, he struggled out upon
+the ground, to be seized and gagged the moment he stepped
+back.  With varying fortunes, Bigg and Lopp emerged, and
+were seized and handcuffed in turn.  The fourth
+surrendered on being summoned.
+
+What followed comes into the line of daily life and
+the morning newspaper so regularly that I need not
+describe it.  Against the Dane it proved that endless
+warrants could be brought immediately.  His lair of
+stolen baggage and other property was unearthed, and
+countless sufferers claimed their own.  I was able to
+recover Frida's and her mother's possessions--the locks
+on the trunks still unbroken.  The Dane himself would
+have been sent to the Island on I know not how many
+charges, but that the Danish minister asked for him that
+he might be hanged in Denmark, and he was sent and hanged
+accordingly.
+
+Lopp was sent to Sing-Sing for ten years, and has not
+yet been pardoned.
+
+Bigg and Cordon were sent to Blackwell's Island for
+three years each.  And so the land had peace for that
+time.
+
+That winter, as there came on one and another idle
+alarm that Frida's brother might be heard from, my heart
+sank with the lowest terror lest she should go away.  And
+in the spring I told her that if she went away I was sure
+I should die.  And the dear girl looked down, and looked
+up, and said she thought--she thought she should, too.
+And we told my mother that we had determined that Frida
+should never go away while we stayed there.  And she
+approved.
+
+So I wrote a note to the minister of the church which
+had protected us so long, and one night we slid the
+board carefully, and all three walked round, fearless of
+the Dane, and Frida and I were married.
+
+It was more than three years after, when I received
+by one post three letters, which gave us great ground for
+consultation.  The first was from my old friend and
+patron, the Spaniard.  He wrote to me from Chicago, where
+he, in his turn, had fallen in with a crew of savages,
+who had stripped him of all he had, under the pretext of
+a land-enterprise they engaged him in, and had left him
+without a real, as he said.  He wanted to know if I could
+not find him some clerkship, or even some place as
+janitor, in New York.
+
+The second letter was from old Mr. Henry in
+Philadelphia, who had always employed me after my old
+master's death.  He said that the fence around the lot in
+Ninety-ninth Avenue might need some repairs, and he
+wished I would look at it.  He was growing old, he said,
+and he did not care to come to New York.  But the Fordyce
+heirs would spend ten years in Europe.
+
+The third letter was from Tom Grinnell.
+
+I wrote to Mr. Henry that I thought he had better let
+me knock up a little office, where a keeper might sleep,
+if necessary; that there was some stuff with which I
+could put up such an office, and that I had an old
+friend, a Spaniard, who was an honest fellow, and if he
+might have his bed in the office, would take
+gratefully whatever his services to the estate proved
+worth.  He wrote me by the next day's mail that I might
+engage the Spaniard and finish the office.  So I wrote to
+the Spaniard and got a letter from him, accepting the
+post provided for him.  Then I wrote to Tom Grinnell.
+
+The last day we spent at our dear old home, I
+occupied myself in finishing the office as Friend Henry
+bade me.  I made a "practicable door," which opened from
+the passage on Church Alley.  Then I loaded my hand-cart
+with my own chest and took it myself, in my working
+clothes, to the Vanderbilt Station, where I took a brass
+check for it.
+
+I could not wait for the Spaniard, but I left a
+letter for him, giving him a description of the way I
+managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten
+them, and to make both butter and cheese.
+
+At half-past ten a "crystal," as those cabs were then
+called, came to the corner of Fernando Street and Church
+Alley, and so we drove to the station.  I left the key of
+the office, directed to the Spaniard, in the hands of the
+baggage-master.
+
+When I took leave of my castle, as I called it, I
+carried with me for relics the great straw hat I had
+made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots; also I forgot
+not to take the money I formerly mentioned, which had
+lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty
+and tarnished, and could scarcely pass for money till it
+had been a little rubbed and handled.  With these relics
+and with my wife's and mother's baggage and my own chest,
+we arrived at our new home.
+
+
+
+BREAD ON THE WATERS
+A WASHINGTON CHRISTMAS
+
+[No.  This story also is "Invented Example."  But it
+is founded on facts.  It is a pleasure to me, writing
+fifty-four years after the commission intrusted to me by
+the late Mrs. Fales, to say that that is a real name, and
+that her benevolence at a distance is precisely
+represented here.
+
+Perhaps the large history of the world would be
+differently written but for that kindness of hers.
+
+I was a very young clergyman, and the remittance she
+made to me was the first trust of the same kind which had
+ever been confided to me.]
+
+
+CHAPTER  I
+
+MAKE READY
+
+"Only think, Matty, papa passed right by me when I was
+sitting with my back to the fire and stitching away on
+his book-mark without my once seeing him!  But he was
+so busy talking to mamma that he never saw what I was
+doing, and I huddled it under a newspaper before he
+came back again.  Well, I have got papa's present done,
+but I cannot keep out of mamma's way.  Matty, dear, if
+I will sit in the sun and keep a shawl on, may I not
+sit in your room and work?  It is not one bit cold
+there.  Really, Matty, it is a great deal warmer
+than it was yesterday."
+
+"Dear child," said Matty, to whom everybody came so
+readily for advice and help, "I can do better for you
+than that.  You shall come into the study; papa will be
+away all the morning, and I will have the fire kept up
+there,--and mamma shall never come near you."
+
+All this, and a thousand times more of plotting and
+counterplotting, was going on among four children and
+their elders in a comfortable, free-and-easy seeming
+household in Washington, as the boys and girls, young men
+and young women were in the last agonies of making ready
+for Christmas.  Matty is fully entitled to be called a
+young woman, when we see her.  She has just passed her
+twenty-first birthday.  But she looks as fresh and pretty
+as when she was seventeen, and certainly she is a great
+deal pleasanter though she be wiser.  She is the oldest
+of the troop.  Tom, the next, is expected from Annapolis
+this afternoon, and Beverly from Charlotte.  Then come
+four boys and girls whose ages and places the reader must
+guess at as we go on.
+
+The youngest of the family were still young enough to
+write the names of the presents which they would be glad
+to receive, or to denote them by rude hieroglyphs, on
+large sheets of paper.  They were wont to pin up these
+sheets on certain doors, which, by long usage in this
+free-and-easy family, had come to be regarded as the
+bulletin-boards of the establishment.  Well-nigh
+every range of created things had some representation on
+these bulletins,--from an ambling pony round to a "boot-
+buttenner," thus spelled out by poor Laura, who was
+constantly in disgrace, because she always appeared
+latest at the door when the children started for church,
+to ride, or for school.  The youngsters still held to the
+theory of announcing thus their wants in advance.  Horace
+doubted whether he were not too old.  But there was so
+much danger that nobody would know how much he needed a
+jig-saw, that he finally compromised with his dignity,
+wrote on a virgin sheet of paper, "gig-saw," signed his
+name, "Horace Molyneux, Dec. 21," and left his other
+presents to conjecture.
+
+And of course at the very end, as Santa Claus and his
+revels were close upon them, while the work done had been
+wonderful, that which we ought to have done but which we
+had left undone, was simply terrible.  Here were pictures
+that must be brought home from the frame-man, who had
+never pretended he would send them; there were ferns and
+lycopodiums in pots which must be brought home from the
+greenhouse; here were presents for other homes, which
+must not only be finished, but must be put up in paper
+and sent before night, so as to appear on other trees.
+Every one of these must be shown to mamma, an approved by
+her and praised; and every one must be shown to dear
+Matty, and praised and approved by her.  And yet by
+no accident must Matty see her own presents or dream that
+any child has remembered her, or mamma see HERS or
+think herself remembered.
+
+And Matty has all her own little list to see to,
+while she keeps a heart at leisure from itself to soothe
+and sympathize.  She has to correct the mistakes, to
+repair the failures, to respect the wonder, to refresh
+the discouragement, of each and all the youngsters.  Her
+own Sunday scholars are to be provided with their
+presents.  The last orders are to be given for the
+Christmas dinners of half-a-dozen families of vassals,
+mostly black or of some shade of black, who never forgot
+their vassalage as Christmas came round.  Turkey,
+cranberry, apples, tea, cheese, and butter must be sent
+to each household of these vassals, as if every member
+were paralyzed except in the muscles of the jaw.  But,
+all the same, Matty or her mother must be in readiness
+all the morning and afternoon to receive the visits of
+all the vassals,--who, so far as this form of homage
+went, did not seem to be paralyzed at all.
+
+For herself, Matty took possession of the dining-
+room, as soon as she could clear it of the breakfast
+equipage, of the children and of the servants, and here,
+with pen and ink, with wrapping-paper and twine, with
+telegraph blanks and with the directory, and with Venty
+as her Ariel messenger--not so airy and quick as Ariel,
+but quite as willing--Matty worked her wonders, and
+gave her audiences, whether to vassals from without or
+puzzled children from within.
+
+Venty was short for Ventidius.  But this name, given
+in baptism, was one which Venty seldom heard.
+
+Matty corded up this parcel, and made Venty cord up
+that; wrote this note of compliment, that of inquiry,
+that of congratulation, and sent Venty on this, that, and
+another errand with them; relieved Flossy's anxieties and
+poor Laura's in ways which have been described; made sure
+that the wagon should be at the station in ample time for
+Beverly's arrival; and at last, at nearly one o'clock,
+called Aunty Chloe (who was in waiting on everybody as a
+superserviceable person, on the pretence that she was
+needed), bade Aunty pick up the scraps, sweep the floor,
+and bring the room to rights.  And so, having attended to
+everybody beside herself, to all their wishes and hopes
+and fears, poor Matty--or shall I say, dear Matty--ran
+off to her own room, to finish her own presents and make
+her own last preparations.
+
+She had kept up her spirits as best she could all the
+morning, but, at any moment when she was alone, her
+spirits had fallen again.  She knew it, and she knew why.
+And now she could not hold out any longer.  She and her
+mother, thank God, never had any secrets.  And as she ran
+by her mother's door she could not help tapping, to be
+sure if she had come home.
+
+Yes, she had come home.  "Come in!" and Matty ran in.
+
+Her mother had not even taken off her hat or her
+gloves.  She had flung herself on the sofa, as if her
+walk had been quite too much for her; her salts and her
+handkerchief were in her hands, and when she saw it was
+Matty, as she had hoped when she spoke, she would not
+even pretend she had not been in tears.
+
+In a moment Matty was on her knees on the floor by
+the sofa, and somehow had her left arm round about her
+mother's neck.
+
+"Dear, dear mamma!  What is it, what is the matter?"
+
+"My dear, dear Matty," replied her mother, just
+succeeding in speaking without sobs, and speaking the
+more easily because she stroked the girl's hair and
+caressed her as she spoke, "do not ask, do not try to
+know.  You will know, if you do not guess, only too soon.
+And now the children will be better, and papa will get
+through Christmas better, if you do not know, my
+darling."
+
+"No, dear mamma," said Matty, crossing her mother's
+purpose almost for the first time that she remembered,
+but wholly sure that she was right in doing so,--"No,
+dear mamma, it is not best so.  Indeed, it is not, mamma!
+I feel in my bones that it is not!"  This she said with
+a wretched attempt to smile, which was the more ghastly
+because the tears were running down from both their
+faces.
+
+"You see I have tried, mamma.  I knew all day
+yesterday that something was wrong, and at breakfast this
+morning I knew it.  And I have had to hold up--with the
+children and all these people--with the feeling that any
+minute the hair might break and the sword fall.  And I
+know I shall do better if you tell me.  You see the boys
+will be here before dark, and of course they will see,
+and what in the world shall I say to them?"
+
+"What, indeed?" said her poor mother.  "Terrible it
+is, dear child, because your father is so wretched.  I
+have just come from him.  He would not let me stay, and
+yet for the minute I was there, I saw that no one else
+could come in to goad him.  Dear, dear papa, he is so
+resolute and brave, and yet any minute I was afraid that
+he would break a blood-vessel and fall dead before me.
+Oh, Matty, Matty, my darling, it is terrible!"
+
+And this time the poor woman could not control
+herself longer, but gave way to her sobs, and her voice
+fairly broke, so that she was inarticulate, as she laid
+her cheek against her daughter's on the sofa.
+
+"What is terrible?  Dear mamma, you must tell me!"
+
+"I think I must tell you, Matty, my darling.  I
+believe if I cannot tell some one, I shall die."
+
+Then Mrs. Molyneux told the whole horror to Matty.
+Here was her husband charged with the grossest
+plunder of the treasury, and now charged even in the
+House of Representatives.  It had been whispered about
+before, and had been hinted at in some of the lower
+newspapers, but now even a committee of Congress had
+noticed it, and had "given him an opportunity to clear
+himself."  There was no less a sum than forty-seven
+thousand dollars, in three separate payments, charged to
+him at the Navy Department as long ago as the second and
+third years of the Civil War.  At the Navy they had his
+receipts for it.  Not that he had been in that department
+then any more than he was now.  He was then chief clerk
+in the Bureau of Internal Improvement, as he was now
+Commissioner there.  But this was when the second Rio
+Grande expedition was fitted out; and from Mr. Molyneux's
+knowledge of Spanish, and his old connection with the
+Santa Fe trade, this particular matter had been intrusted
+to him.
+
+"Yes, dear mamma!"
+
+"Well, papa has it all down on his own cashbook; that
+book he carries in his breast-pocket.  There are the
+three payments, and then all the transfers he made to the
+different people.  One, was that old white-haired
+Spaniard with the harelip, who used to come here at the
+back door, so that he should not be seen at the
+Department.  But it was before you remember.  The others
+were in smaller sums.  But the whole thing was done in
+three weeks, and then the expedition sailed, and papa had
+enough else to think of, and has never thought of it
+since, till ten or fifteen days ago, when somebody in the
+Eleventh Auditor's office discovered this charge, and his
+receipt for this money."
+
+"Well, dear mamma?"
+
+"Well, dear child, that is all, but that now the
+newspapers have got hold of it, and the Committee on
+Retrenchment, who are all new men, with their reputations
+to make, have got hold of it, and some of them really
+think, you know, that papa has stolen the money!"  And
+she broke down crying again.
+
+"But he can show his accounts, mamma!"  What are his
+accounts worth?  He must show the vouchers, as they are
+called.  He must show these people's receipts, and what
+has become of these people; what they did with the money.
+He must show everything.  Well, when the `Copperhead'
+first spoke of it--that was a fortnight ago--papa was
+really pleased.  For he said it would be a good chance to
+bring out a piece of war history.  He said that in our
+Bureau we had never had any credit for the Rio Grande
+successes, that they were all our thunder; because
+THEN he could laugh about this horrid thing.  He said
+the Navy had taken all the boners, while we deserved them
+all.  And he said if these horrid `Copperhead' and
+`Argus' and `Scorpion' people would only publish the
+vouchers half as freely as they published the charges, we
+should get a little of the credit that was our due."
+
+"Well, mamma, and what is the trouble now?"
+
+"Why, papa was so sure that he would do nothing until
+an official call came.  But on Monday it got into
+Congress.  That hairy man from the Yellowstone brought in
+a resolution or something, and the Committee was ordered
+to inquire.  And when the order came down, papa told Mr.
+Waltsingham to bring him the papers, and, Matty, the
+papers were not there!"
+
+"Stolen!" cried Matty, understanding the crisis for
+the first time.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--or lost--hidden somewhere.  You have
+no idea of the work of those days night work and all
+that.  Many a time your father did not undress for a
+week."
+
+"And now he must remember where he put a horrid pile
+of papers, eleven, twelve years ago.  Mamma, that pile is
+stolen.  That odious Greenhithe stole it.  He lives in
+Philadelphia now, and he has put up these newspapers to
+this lie."
+
+Mr. Greenhithe was an underclerk in the Internal
+Improvement Bureau, who had shown an amount of attention
+to Miss Matty, which she had disliked and had refused to
+receive.  She had always said he was bad and would come
+to a bad end, and when he was detected in a low trick,
+selling stationery which he had stolen from the supply
+room, and was discharged in disgrace, Matty had said it
+was good enough for him.
+
+These were her reasons for pronouncing at once
+that he had stolen the vouchers and had started the
+rumors.
+
+"I do not know.  Papa does not know.  He hardly tries
+to guess.  He says either way it is bad.  If the vouchers
+are stolen, he is in fault, for he is responsible for the
+archives; if he cannot produce the vouchers, then all the
+country is down on him for stealing.  I only hope," said
+poor Mrs. Molyneux, "that they won't say our poor old
+wagon is a coach and six;" and this time she tried to
+smile.
+
+And now she had told her story.  All last night,
+while the children were asleep, Mr. Molyneux had been at
+the office, even till four o'clock in the morning, taking
+old dusty piles from their lairs and searching for those
+wretched vouchers.  And mamma had been waiting--shall one
+not say, had been weeping?--here at home.  That was the
+reason poor papa had looked so haggard at breakfast this
+morning.
+
+This was all mamma had to tell.  She had been to the
+office this morning, but papa would not let her stay.  He
+must see all comers, just as if nothing had happened, was
+happening, or was going to happen.
+
+Well! Matty did make her mother take off her jacket
+and her hat and her gloves.  She even made her drink a
+glass of wine and lie down.  And then the poor girl
+retired to her own room, with such appetite as she might
+for taking the last stitches in worsted work, for
+stippling in the lights into drawings, for writing
+the presentation lines in books, and for doing the
+thousand little niceties in the way of finishing touches
+which she had promised the children to do for them.
+
+Her dominant feeling--yes, it was a dominant passion,
+as she knew--was simply rage against this miserable
+Greenhithe, this cowardly sneak who was thus taking his
+revenge upon her, because she had been so cold to him.
+Or was it that he made up to her because he was already
+in trouble at the Office and hoped she would clear him
+with her father?  Either way he was a snake and a
+scorpion, but he had worked out for himself a terrible
+revenge.  Poor Matty!  She tried to think what she could
+do, how she could help, for that was the habit of her
+life.  But this was now hard indeed.  Her mind would not
+now take that turn.  All that it would turn to was to the
+wretched and worse than worthless question, what
+punishment might fall on him for such utter baseness and
+wickedness.
+
+All the same the children must have their lunch, and
+they must not know that anything was the matter.  Oh
+dear! this concealment was the worst of all!
+
+So they had their lunch.  And poor Matty counselled
+again, and helped again, and took the last stitches, and
+mended the last breaks, and waited and wondered, and
+tried to hope, till at five o'clock an office messenger
+came up with this message.
+
+4.45 P.M.
+DEAR MATTY,--I shall not come up to dinner.  There is
+pressing work here.  Tell mamma not to sit up for me.  I
+have my key.
+I have no chance to get my things for the children.
+Will you see to it?  Here is twenty dollars, and if you
+need more let them send in the bill.  I had only thought
+of that jig-saw--was it?--that Horace wants.  See that
+the dear fellow has a good one.
+
+Love to all and ever yours,
+
+PAPA.
+
+
+"Poor, dear papa," said Matty aloud, shedding tears
+in spite of herself.  "To be thinking of jig-saws and
+children in all this horrid hunt!  As if hunting for
+anything was not the worst trial of all, always."  And at
+once the brave girl took down her wraps and put on her
+walking-shoes, that her father's commissions might be met
+before their six-o'clock dinner.  And she determined that
+first of all she would meet Tom at the station.
+
+At the station she met Tom; that was well.  Matty had
+not been charged to secrecy; that was well.  She told him
+all the story, not without adding her suspicions, and
+giving him some notion of her rage.
+
+And Tom was angry enough,--there was a crumb of
+comfort there.  But Tom went off on another track.  Tom
+distrusted the Navy Department.  He had been long enough
+at Annapolis to doubt the red tape of the bureaus with
+which his chiefs had to do.  "If the navy had the
+money, the navy had the vouchers," that was Tom's theory.
+He knew a chief clerk in the navy, and Tom was going at
+once round there.
+
+But Matty held him in check at least for the moment.
+Whatever else he did, he must come home first; he must
+see mamma and he must see the children, and he must have
+dinner.  She had not told him yet how well he looked, and
+how handsome he was.
+
+But after Tom had seen them he slipped off, pretended
+he had unfinished preparations to make, and went right to
+the Department, forced his way in because he was Mr.
+Molyneux's son, and found his poor father with Zeigler,
+the chief clerk, still on this wretched and fruitless
+overhaul of the old files.  Tom stated frankly, in his
+off-hand, business-like way, what his theory was.
+Neither Zeigler nor Tom's father believed in it in the
+least.  Tom knew nothing, they said; the Navy paid the
+money, but the Navy was satisfied with our receipt, and
+should be.
+
+Tom continued to say, "If the Navy paid the money the
+Navy must have the vouchers;" and at last, more to be rid
+of him than with any hope of the result, Mr. Molyneux let
+the eager fellow go round to his friend, Eben Ricketts,
+and see if Eben would not give an hour or two of his
+Christmas to looking up the thing.  Mr. Molyneux even
+went so far as to write a frank line to Mr. Ricketts, and
+enclosed a letter which he had had that day from the
+chairman of the House Committee,--a letter which was
+smooth enough in the language, but horrible enough in the
+thing.
+
+Ah me!  Had not Ricketts read it all already in the
+evening "Argus"?  He was willing, if he could, to serve.
+So he with Tom went round and found the Navy Department
+messenger, and opened and lighted up the necessary rooms,
+and they spent three hours of their Christmas there.
+Meanwhile Beverly had arrived from Norfolk.  He had a
+frolic with the children, and then called his mother and
+Matty away from them.
+
+"What in thunder is the matter?" said the poor boy.
+
+And they told him.  How could they help telling him?
+And so soon as the story was finished, the boy had his
+coat on and was putting on his boots.  He went right down
+to his father's office, he made old Stratton admit him,
+and told his father he too had reported for duty.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHRISTMAS MORNING
+
+And at last Christmas morning dawned,--gray enough and
+grim enough.
+
+In that house the general presenting was reserved for
+evening after dinner,--when in olden days there had
+always been a large Christmas-tree lighted and
+dressed for the children and their little friends.  As
+the children had grown older, and the trees at the
+Sunday-school and elsewhere had grown larger, the family
+tree had grown smaller, and on this day was to be simply
+atypical tree, a little suggestion of a tree, between the
+front windows; while most of the presents of every sort
+and kind were to be dispersed--where room could be made
+for them--in any part of the front parlors.  All the
+grand ceremonial of present-giving was thus reserved to
+the afternoon of Christmas, because then it was certain
+papa would be at home, Tom and Beverly would both be
+ready, and, indeed, as the little people confessed, they
+themselves would have more chance to be quite prepared.
+
+But none the less was the myth of Santa Claus and the
+stockings kept up, although that was a business of less
+account, and one in which the children themselves had no
+share, except to wonder, to enjoy, and to receive.  You
+will observe that there is a duality in most of the
+enjoyments of life,--that if you have a long-expected
+letter from your brother who is in Yokohama, by the same
+mail or the next mail there comes a letter from your
+sister who is in Cawnpore.  And so it was of Christmas at
+this Molyneux house.  Besides the great wonders, like
+those wrought out by Aladdin's slave of the lamp, there
+were the wonders, less gigantic but not less exquisite,
+of the morning hours, wrought out by the slave of
+the ring.  How this series of wonders came about, the
+youngest of the children did not know, and were still
+imaginative enough and truly wise enough not to inquire.
+
+While, then, the two young men and their father were
+at one or the other Department, now on step-ladders,
+handing down dusty old pasteboard boxes, now under
+gaslights, running down long indexes with inquiring
+fingers and unwinking eyes, Matty and her mother watched
+and waited till eleven o'clock came, not saying much of
+what was on the hearts of both, but sometimes just
+recurring to it, as by some invisible influence,--an
+influence which would overcome both of them at the same
+moment.  For the mother and daughter were as two sisters,
+not parted far, even in age, and not parted at all in
+sympathy.  For occupation, they were wrapping up in thin
+paper a hundred barley dogs, cats, eagles, locomotives,
+suns, moons, and stars,--with little parcels of nuts,
+raisins, and figs, large red apples, and bright Florida
+oranges,--all of which were destined to be dragged out of
+different stockings at daybreak.
+
+"And now, dear, dear mamma," said Matty, "you will go
+to bed,--please do, dear mamma."  This was said as she
+compelled the last obstinate eagle to accept his fate and
+stay in his wrapping-paper, from which he had more than
+once struggled out, with the instincts of freedom.
+
+"Please do, dear mamma; I will sort these all
+out, and will be quite sure that each has his own.
+At least, let us come upstairs together.  I will comb
+your hair for you; that is one of the little comforts.
+And you shall get into bed and see me arrange them, and
+if I do it wrong you can tell me."
+
+Poor mamma, she yielded to her--as who does not
+yield, and because it was easier to go upstairs than to
+stay.  And the girl led her up and made herself a toilet
+woman indeed, and did put her worn-out mamma into bed,
+and then hurried to the laundry, where she was sure she
+could find what Diana had been bidden to reserve there--a
+pair of clean stockings belonging to each member of the
+family.  The youngest children, alas, who would need the
+most room for their spread-eagles and sugar locomotives,
+had the smallest feet and legs.  But nature compensates
+for all things, and Matty did not fail to provide an
+extra pair of her mother's longest stockings for each of
+"the three," as the youngest were called in the councils
+of their elders.  So a name was printed by Santa Claus on
+a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY
+or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his
+bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize
+yarn or knitting as familiar.  Matty hurried back with
+their treasures.  She brought from her own room the large
+red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by
+her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels,
+and filled each stocking full.
+
+Dear girl! she had not wrongly guessed.  There was
+just occupation enough, and just little enough, for the
+poor mother's anxious, tired thought.  Matty was wise.
+She asked fewer and fewer questions; fewer and fewer she
+made her journeys to the great high fender, where she
+pinned all these stiff models of gouty legs.  And when
+the last hung there quietly, the girl had the exquisite
+satisfaction of seeing that her mother was fast asleep.
+She would not leave the room.  She turned the gas-light
+down to a tiny bead.  She slipped off her own frock, put
+on her mother's heavy dressing-gown, lay down quietly by
+her side without rousing her, and in a little while--for
+with those so young this resource is well-nigh sure--she
+slept too.
+
+It was five o'clock when she was wakened by her
+father's hand.  He led her out into his own dressing-
+room, and before she spoke she kissed him!
+
+She knew what his answer would be.  She knew that
+from his heavy face.  But all the same she tried to
+smile, and she said,
+
+"Found?"
+
+"Found?  No, no, dear child, nor ever will be.  How
+is mamma?"
+
+And Matty told him, and begged him to come and sleep
+in her own little room, because the children would come
+in in a rout at daybreak.  But no! he would not hear to
+that.  "Whatever else is left, dear Matty, we have each
+other.  And we will not begin--on what will be a new
+life to all of us--we will not begin by 'bating a jot of
+the dear children's joys.  Matty, that is what I have
+been thinking of all the way as I walked home.  But maybe
+I should not have said it, but that Beverly said it just
+now to me.  Dear fellow!  I cannot tell you the comfort
+it was to me to see him come in!  I told him he should
+not have come, but he knew that he made me almost happy.
+He is a fine fellow, Matty, and all night long he has
+shown the temper and the sense of a man."
+
+For a moment Matty could not say a word.  Her eyes
+were all running over with tears.  She kissed her father
+again, and then found out how to say, "I shall tell him
+what you say, papa, and there will be two happy children
+in this house, after all."
+
+So she ran to Beverly's room, found him before he was
+undressed, and told him.  And the boy who was just
+becoming a man, and the girl who, without knowing it, had
+become a woman, kissed each other; held each other for a
+minute, each by both hands, looked each other so lovingly
+in the eyes, comforted each other by the infinite comfort
+of love, and then said good-night and were asleep.  Tom
+had stolen to bed without waking his mother or his
+sister, some hours before.
+
+Yes!  They all slept.  The little ones slept, though
+they had been so certain that they should not sleep one
+wink from anxiety.  This poor jaded man slept
+because he must sleep.  His poor wife slept because she
+had not slept now for two nights before.  And Matty and
+Tom and Beverly slept because they were young and brave
+and certain and pure, and because they were between
+seventeen and twenty-two years of age.  This is all to
+say that they could seek God's help and find it.  This is
+to say that they were well-nigh omnipotent over earthly
+ills,--so far, at the least, that sleep came when sleep
+was needed.
+
+But not after seven o'clock!  Venty and Diana had
+been retained by Flossy and Laura to call them at five
+minutes of seven, and Laura and Flossy had called the
+others.  And at seven o'clock, precisely, a bugle-horn
+sounded in the children's quarters, and then four
+grotesque riders, each with a soldier hat made of
+newspaper, each with a bright sash girt round a dressing-
+gown, each with bare feet stuck into stout shoes, came
+storming down the stairs, and as soon as the lower floor
+was reached, each mounted on a hobby-horse or stick, and
+with riot not to be told came knocking at Matty's door,
+at Beverly's, and at Tom's.  And these all appeared, also
+with paper soldier hats upon their heads, and girt in
+some very spontaneous costume, and so the whole troop
+proceeded with loud fanfaron and drumbeat to mamma's door
+and knocked for admission, and heard her cheery "Come
+in."  And papa and mamma had heard the bugle-calls, and
+had wrapped some sort of shawls around their
+shoulders, and were sitting up in bed, they also with
+paper soldier hats upon them; and one scream of "Merry
+Christmas" resounded as the doors flew open,--and then a
+wild rampage of kissing and of hugging as the little ones
+rushed for the best places they could find on the bed--
+not to say in it.  This was the Christmas custom.
+
+And Tom rolled up a lounge on one side of the bed,
+which after a fashion widened it, and Beverly brought up
+his mother's easy-chair, which had earned the name of
+"Moses' seat," on the other side, and thus, in a minute,
+the great broad bed was peopled with the whole family, as
+jolly, if as absurd, a sight as the rising sun looked
+upon.  And then!  Flossy and Beverly were deputed to go
+to the fender, and to bring the crowded, stiff stockings,
+whose crackle was so delicate and exquisite; and so,
+youngest by youngest, they brought forth their treasures,
+not indeed gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but what
+answered the immediate purposes better, barley cats,
+dogs, elephants and locomotives, figs, raisins, walnuts,
+and pecans.
+
+Yes, and for one noisy half-hour not one person
+thought of the cloud which hung over the house only the
+night before!
+
+But such happy forgetfulness cannot last forever.
+There was the Christmas breakfast.  And Tom tried to tell
+of Academy times, and Beverly tried to tell stories
+of the University.  But it was a hard pull.  The lines
+under papa's eyes were only too dark.  And all of a
+sudden he would start, and ask some question which showed
+that he did not know what they were talking of.  Matty
+had taken care to have the newspapers out of the way; but
+everybody knew why they were out of the way,--and perhaps
+this made things worse.  Poor blundering Laura must needs
+say, "That is the good of Christmas, that there are no
+horrid newspapers for people to bother with," when
+everybody above Horace's age knew that there were papers
+somewhere, and soon Horace was bright enough to see what
+he had not been told in words,--that something was going
+wrong.
+
+And as soon as breakfast was done, Flossy cried out,
+"And now papa will tell us the story of the bear!  Papa
+always tells us that on Christmas morning.  Laura, you
+shall come; and, Horace, you shall sit there."  And then
+her poor papa had to take her up and kiss her, and say
+that this morning he could not stop to tell stories, that
+he had to go to the Department.  And then Flossy and
+Laura fairly cried.  It was too bad.  They hated the
+Department.  There never could be any fun but what that
+horrid old Department came in.  And when Horace found
+that Tom was going to the Department too, and that Bev
+meant to go with him, he was mad, and said he did not see
+what was the use of having Christmas.  Here he had tin-
+foil and plaster upstairs, and little Watrous had
+lent him a set of government medals, and they should have
+such a real good time if Bev would only stay.  He wished
+the Department was at the bottom of the Potomac.  Matty
+fairly had to take the scolding boy out of the room.
+
+Mr. Molyneux, poor fellow, undertook the soothing of
+Flossy.  "Anyway, old girl, you shall meet me as you go
+to church, and we will go through the avenue together,
+and I will show you the new Topsy girl selling cigars at
+Pierre's tobacco shop.  She is as big as Flossy.  She has
+not got quite such golden hair, but she never says one
+word to her papa, because she is never cross to him."
+
+"That's because he is never kind to her," said the
+quick child, speaking wiser than she knew.
+
+For Matty, she got a word with Tom, and he too
+promised that they would be away from the Department in
+time to meet the home party, and that all of them should
+go to church together.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER  III
+
+CHURCH AND SERMON
+
+And, accordingly, as Mrs. Molyneux with her little troop
+crossed F Street, they met the gentlemen all coming
+toward them.  They broke up into groups, and Tom and
+Matty got their first real chance for talk since they had
+parted the night before.  No!  Tom had found no clue
+at the Navy Department.  And although Eben Ricketts had
+been good as gold, and had stayed and worked with Tom
+till long after midnight, Eben had only worked to show
+good-will, for Eben had not the least faith that there
+was any clue there.  Eben had said that if old Mr.
+Whilthaugh, who knew the archive rooms through and
+through, had not been turned out, they could do in
+fifteen minutes what had cost them six hours, and that
+old Mr. Whilthaugh, without looking, could tell whether
+it was worth while to look.  But old Mr. Whilthaugh had
+been turned out, and Eben, even, did not know precisely
+what had become of him.  He thought he had gone back into
+Pennsylvania, where his wife came from, but he did not
+know.
+
+"But, Matty, if nothing turns up to-day, I go to
+Pennsylvania to-morrow to find this old Mr. Whilthaugh.
+For I shall die if I stay here; and all the Eben
+Rickettses in the world will never persuade me that the
+vouchers are not in that archive-room.  If the Navy did
+the work, the Navy must have the vouchers."
+
+Then Matty ventured to ask what she and her mother
+had wondered about once and again,--why these particular
+bits of paper were so necessary.  Surely other vouchers,
+or certified copies, or books of account could be found
+somewhere!
+
+"Yes! I know; you would say so.  And if it were all
+yesterday, and was all in these lazy times of peace,
+you would say true.  But you see, in the first place,
+this is ever so long ago.  Then, in the second place, it
+was in the heat of war, when everything was on a gigantic
+scale, and things had to be done in unheard-of ways.
+Then, chiefly, this particular business involved the
+buying up of I do not know who among the Rebels there in
+Texas, and among their allies on the other side the Rio
+Grande.  This old Spaniard, whom mamma remembers, and
+whom I just remember, he was the chief captain among the
+turncoats, and there were two or three others, F. F. men
+in their places,--"First Family men," that means, you
+know; but after they did this work they did not stay in
+their places long.  No! papa says he was mighty careful;
+that he had three of the scoundrels sworn before
+notaries, or rather before one notary, and had their
+receipts and acknowledgments stamped with his notary's
+seal.  Still, it did not do to have a word said in public
+then.  And after everything succeeded so perfectly, after
+the troops landed without a shot, and found all the base
+ready for them, corn and pork just where they wanted
+it,--why, then everybody was too gratified to think of
+imagining, as they do now, that papa had stolen that
+money that bought the pork and the corn."
+
+"I wish they were only half as grateful now," he
+said, after a pause.
+
+"Tom," said Matty, eagerly, "who was that notary?"
+
+"I thought of that, too," said Tom.  "There is no
+doubt who it was.  It was old Gilbert; you must remember
+his sign, just below Faulkner's on the avenue.  But in
+the first place, Gilbert died just after our taking
+Richmond.  In the second place, he never knew what the
+papers were--and he executed twenty such sets of papers
+every day, very likely.  All he could say, at the very
+best, would be that at such a time father brought in an
+old Spaniard and two or three other greasers, and that he
+took their acknowledgments of something."
+
+"I do not know that, Tom," said the girl, without
+flinching at his mannish information.  "If notaries in
+Washington are anything like notaries in novels, that man
+kept a record or register of his work.  If he was not
+very unlike everybody else who lives and works here, he
+left a very destitute widow when he died.  Tom, I shall
+go after church and hunt up the Widow Gilbert.  I shall
+ask her for her husband's books, and shall tell her why
+I want them."
+
+The girl dropped her voice and said:  "Tom, I shall
+ask her IN HIS NAME."
+
+"God grant it does any good, dear girl," said he.
+"Far be it from me to say that you shall not try--"
+
+But here he stopped speaking, for he felt Matty's arm
+shake in his, and her whole frame trembled.  Tom had only
+to keep his eyes before him to see why.
+
+Mr. Greenhithe, Matty's old admirer, the clerk who
+had been dismissed for stealing, was just entering the
+church, and even touched his hat to her as she went by.
+
+Tom resisted his temptation to thrash him then and
+there.  He said,--
+
+"Matty, I believe I will tackle that man!"
+
+"Oh, Tom!"
+
+"Yes, Matty, I can keep my temper, and he cannot keep
+his.  He has one advantage over most knaves, that he is
+not only a knave of the first water, but he is sometimes
+a fool, too.  If it were only decent and right to take
+him into Downing's saloon, and give him just one more
+glass of whiskey than the blackguard would care to pay
+for, I could get at his whole story."
+
+"But, Tom, I thought you were so sure the Navy had
+the papers!"
+
+"Well! well!" said Tom, a little annoyed, as eager
+people are when other eager people remember their words
+against them.  "I was sure--I was wholly sure--till I
+left Eben Ricketts.  But after that--well, of course, we
+ought to pull every string."
+
+"Tom!"  This with a terrible gulp.
+
+"Tom, you don't think I ought to speak with him!"
+
+"Matty!"
+
+"Why, Tom, yes; if he does know--if he is holding
+this up in terror, Tom, I could make him do what I chose
+once, Tom.  You don't think I ought to try?"
+
+"Matty, if you ever speak to that snake again, I will
+thrash him within an inch of his life, and I will never
+say a word to you as long as you live."
+
+"That's my dear Tom!"  And, hidden as they were, and
+crying as she was under her veil, she flung her arms
+around him and kissed him.
+
+"All the same," said Tom, after he had kissed her
+again and again,--"all the same, I shall find out, after
+church, where the snake is staying.  I shall go to the
+hotel and take a cigar.  I shall offer him one, and he is
+so mean and stingy that he will take it.  Perhaps this
+may be one of his fool days.  Perhaps somebody else will
+treat him to the whiskey.  No, Matty! honor bright, _I_
+will not, though that ten cents might give us all a Merry
+Christmas.  Honor bright, I will not treat.  But I am not
+a saint, Matty!  If anybody else treats, I must not be
+expected to be far away."
+
+Then he wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief and
+led her in to the service.  Their own pew was already
+full.  He had to take her back into Dr. Metcalf's pew.
+
+So Matty was spared one annoyance which was prepared
+for her.
+
+Directly in front of her father's pew, sitting in the
+most conspicuous seat on the other side of the aisle, was
+the hateful Mr. Greenhithe.
+
+Had he put himself there to watch Matty's face?
+
+If he did, he was disappointed.  If he had
+persuaded himself he was to see a pale cheek or
+tearful eyes, or that he was going to compel her to drop
+her veil, he had reckoned quite without his host.
+Whenever he did look that way, all he saw was the face of
+Master Horace.  Horace was engaged in counting the large
+tassels on his side of the pulpit curtains; in counting,
+also, the number of small tassels between them, and from
+the data thus obtained, in calculating how many tassels
+there must be on all the curtains to the pulpit, and how
+many on the curtains behind the rail to the chancel.  Mr.
+Greenhithe, therefore, had but little comfort in studying
+Horace's face.
+
+Just as the Creed was finished, when the rest of the
+church was still, the sexton led up the aisle a grim-
+looking man, with a shaggy coat and a very dirty face,
+and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew--
+as if he would fain bring him in.  Mr. Molyneux was at
+the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from
+the aisle, and the sexton actually touched him.  He
+turned round and looked at the stranger,--evidently did
+not know him,--but with the instinct of hospitality,
+stepped into the aisle and offered him his seat.  The
+stranger was embarrassed; hesitated as if he would speak,
+then shook his head in refusal of the attention, and
+crossing the aisle, took a seat offered him there, in
+full sight of Mr. Molyneux, and, indeed, of Matty.
+
+Poor girl!  The trifle--of course it was a trifle--
+upset her sadly.
+
+Was the man a marshal or a sheriff?  Would they
+really arrest her father on Christmas Day, in church?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+IS THIS CHRISTMAS?
+
+Yes; it was, as you have said, a very curious Christmas
+service for all those people.
+
+What Horace turned his mind to, at intervals, has
+been told.
+
+Of the elder members of our little company who sat
+there near the head of the side aisle, it may be said, in
+general, that they did their best to keep their hearts
+and minds engaged in the service, and that sometimes they
+succeeded.  They succeeded better while they could really
+join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it
+came to the sermon.  Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of
+those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so
+inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the
+text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and
+look."  And so it happened--it was what did not often
+happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often,
+at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading
+paragraph of the sermon.  Now this duty of searching and
+looking had been just what all the elder members of
+the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his
+way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty-
+eight hours.  To get such relief as they might from it,
+they had come to church, to look rather higher if they
+could.  So that it was to them more a misfortune than a
+matter of immediate spiritual relief that their dear old
+friend, who loved each one of them with an intimate and
+peculiar love, happened to enlarge on his text just as he
+did.
+
+If poor Mr. Molyneux, by dint of severe self-command,
+had succeeded in abstracting his thoughts from disgrace
+almost certain,--from thinking over, in horrible variety,
+the several threads of inquiry and answer by which that
+disgrace was to be avoided or precipitated,--how was it
+possible to maintain such abstraction, while the worthy
+preacher, wholly unconscious of the blood he drew with
+every word, ground out his sentences in such words as
+these:--
+
+"Search and look, my brethren.  Time passes faster
+than we think.  Our gray hairs gather apace above our
+foreheads.  And the treasure which we prized beyond price
+in years bygone has perhaps, amid the cares of this
+world, or in the deceitfulness of riches, been thrust on
+one side, neglected, at last forgotten.  How is it with
+you, dear friends?  Are you the man?  Are you the woman?
+Have you put on one side the very treasure of your
+life,--as some careless housewife might lay aside on
+a forgotten shelf this parcel or that, once so precious
+to her?  Dear friends, as the year draws to a close,
+awaken from such neglect!  Brush away the dust from these
+forgotten caskets!  Lift them from their hiding-places
+and set them forth, even in your Christmas festivities.
+Search and look!"
+
+Poor Mrs. Molyneux had never wished before so
+earnestly that a sermon might be done.  She dared not
+look round to see her husband for a while, but after one
+of these invocations--not quite so terrible as the rest,
+perhaps--she stole a glance that way, to find--that she
+might have spared her anxiety.  Two nights of "searching
+and looking" had done their duty by the poor man, and
+though his head was firm braced against the column which
+rose from the side of their pew, his eyes were closed,
+and his wife was relieved by the certainty that he was
+listening, as those happy members of the human family
+listen who assure me that they hear when their lids are
+tight pressed over their eyeballs.  As for Beverly, he
+was assuming the resolute aspect of a sailor under fire,
+and was imagining himself taking the whole storm of Fort
+Constantine as he led an American squadron into the Bay
+of Sevastopol.  Tom did not know what the preacher said,
+but was devising the method of his interview with
+Greenhithe.  Matty did know.  Dear girl! she knew very
+well.  And with every well-rounded sentence of the sermon
+she was more determined as to the method of her
+appeal to Mrs. Gilbert, the widow of the notary.  She
+would search and look there.
+
+Yes! and it was well for every one of them that they
+went to that service.  The sermon at the worst was but
+twenty minutes.  "Twenty minutes in length," said
+Beverly, wickedly, "and no depth at all."  But that was
+not true nor fair; nor was that, either way, the thing
+that was essential.  By the time they had all sung
+
+"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,"
+
+even before the good old Doctor had asked for Heaven's
+blessing upon them, it had come.  To Mr. Molyneux it
+had come in an hour's rest of mind, body, and soul.  To
+Matty it had come in an hour's calm determination.  To
+Mrs. Molyneux it had come in the certainty that there
+is One Eye which sees through all hiding-places and
+behind all disguises.  To the children it had come,
+because the hour had called up to them a hundred memories
+of Galilee and Nazareth, of Mary Mother, and of children
+made happy, to supplement and help out their legends of
+Santa Claus.  Yes, and even Beverly the brave, and Tom
+the outraged, as they stood to receive the benediction of
+the preacher, were more of men and less of firebrands
+than they were.  They all stood with reverence; they
+paused a moment, and then slowly walked down the aisle.
+
+"Where is your father, Horace?" said Mrs. Molyneux,
+a little anxiously, as she came where she could
+speak aloud.  Horace was waiting for her.
+
+"Papa?  He went away with the gentleman who came in
+after service began; they crossed the street and took a
+carriage together."
+
+"And did papa leave no message?"
+
+"Why, no; he did not turn round.  The strange man--
+the man in the rough coat--just touched him and spoke to
+him half-way down the aisle.  Then papa whispered to him
+and he whispered back.  Then, as soon as they came into
+the vestibule here, papa led him out at that side door,
+and did not seem to remember me.  They almost ran across
+the street, and took George Gibb's hack.  I knew the
+horses."
+
+"That's too bad," said Laura; "I thought papa would
+walk home with us and tell us the story of the bears."
+
+Poor Mrs. Molyneux thought it was too bad, too; but
+she said nothing.
+
+And Matty, when she joined her mother, said,--
+
+"I shall feel a thousand times happier, mamma, if I
+go and see Mrs. Gilbert now."  And she explained who Mrs.
+Gilbert was.  "Perhaps it may do some good.  Anyway, I
+shall feel as if I were doing something.  I will be home
+in time to finish the tree and things, for Horace will
+like to help me."
+
+And the poor girl looked her entreaties so eagerly
+that her mother could not but assent to her plan.
+So she made Beverly go up the avenue with her,--Beverly,
+who would have swum the Potomac and back for her, had she
+asked him,--as he was on his way to join his father at
+the Bureau.
+
+As they came out upon the broad sidewalk, that odious
+Greenhithe, with some one whom Beverly called a
+blackguard of his crew, pushed by them, and he had the
+impudence to turn and touch his hat to Matty again.
+
+Matty's hand trembled on Beverly's arm, but she would
+not speak for a minute, only she walked slower and
+slower.
+
+Then she said:  "I am so afraid, Bev, that Tom and he
+will get into a quarrel.  Tom declares he will go into
+Willard's and find out whether he does know anything."
+
+But Beverly, very mannish, tried to reassure her and
+make her believe that Tom would be very self-restrained
+and perfectly careful.
+
+On Christmas Day the Jew's dry-goods store, which had
+taken the place of old Mr. Gilbert's notary's office, was
+closed--not perhaps so much from the Israelite's
+enthusiasm about Christmas as in deference to what in New
+England is called "the sense of the street."  Matty,
+however, acting from a precise knowledge of Washington
+life, rang boldly at the green door adjacent, Beverly
+still waiting to see what might turn up; and when a brisk
+"colored girl" appeared, Matty inquired if Mrs. Munroe
+was at home.
+
+Now all that Matty knew of Mrs. Munroe was that her
+name was on a well-scoured brass plate on the door.
+
+Mrs. Munroe was in.  Beverly said he would wait in
+the passage.  Mrs. Munroe proved to be a nice, motherly
+sort of a person, who, as it need hardly be said, was
+stone-deaf.  It required some time for Matty to adjust
+her speaking apparatus to the exigency, but when this was
+done, Mrs. Munroe explained that Mr. Gilbert was dead,--
+that an effort had been made to continue the business
+with the old sign and the old good will, under the
+direction of a certain Mr. Bundy, who had sometimes been
+called in as an assistant.  But Mr. Bundy, after some
+years, paid more attention to whiskey than he did to
+notarying, and the law business had suffered.  Finally,
+Mr. Bundy was brought home by the police one night with
+a broken head, and then Mrs. Gilbert had withdrawn the
+signs, cancelled the lease, turned Mr. Bundy out-of-
+doors, and retired to live with a step-sister of her
+brother's wife's father near the Arsenal; good Mrs.
+Munroe was not certain whether on Delaware Avenue, or
+whether on T Street, U Street, or V Street.  And, indeed,
+whether the lady's name were Butman before she married
+her second husband, and Lichtenfels afterward--or whether
+his name were Butman and hers Lichtenfels, Mrs. Munroe
+was not quite sure.  Nor could she say whether Mr.
+Gilbert took the account books and registers --there
+were heaps on heaps of them, for Mr. Gilbert had been a
+notary ever since General Jackson's day--or whether Bundy
+did not take them, or whether they were not sold for old
+paper, Mrs. Munroe was not sure.  For all this happened--
+all the break-up and removal--while Mrs. Munroe was on a
+visit to her sister not far from Brick Church above
+Little Falls, on your way to Frederic.  And Mrs. Munroe
+offered this visit as a constant apology for her not
+knowing more precisely every detail of her old friend's
+business.
+
+This explanation took a good deal of time, through
+all of which poor Beverly was fretting and fuming and
+stamping his cold feet in the passage, hearing the
+occasional questions of his sister, uttered with thunder
+tone in the "setting-room" above, but hearing no word of
+the placid widow's replies.
+
+When Matty returned and held a consultation with him,
+the question was, whether to follow the books of account
+to Georgetown, where Mr. Bundy was understood to be still
+residing, or to the neighborhood of the Arsenal, in the
+hope of finding Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Lichtenfels, or Mrs.
+Butman, as the case might be.  Readers should understand
+that these two points, both unknown to the young people,
+are some six miles asunder, the original notary's office
+being about half-way between them.  Beverly was more
+disposed to advise following the man.  He was of a mind
+to attack some one of his own sex.  But the
+enterprise was, in truth, Matty's enterprise.  Beverly
+had but little faith in it from the beginning, and Matty
+was minded to follow such clue as they had to Mrs.
+Gilbert, quite sure that, woman with woman, she should
+succeed better with her than, man with man, Beverly with
+Bundy.  Beverly assented to this view the more willingly,
+because Matty was quite willing to undertake the quest
+alone.  She was very brave about it indeed.  "Plenty of
+nice people at the Arsenal," or near it, whom she could
+fall back upon for counsel or information.  So they
+parted.  Matty took a street car for the east and south,
+and Beverly went his ways to the Bureau of Internal
+Improvement to report for duty to his father.
+
+This story must not follow the details of Matty's
+quest for the firm of "Gilbert, Lichtenfels, or Butman."
+Certain it is that she would never have succeeded had she
+rested simply on the directory or on such crude
+information as Mrs. Munroe had so freely given.  But
+Matty had an English tongue in her head,--a courteous,
+which is to say a confiding, address with strangers; she
+seemed almost to be conferring a favor at the moment when
+she asked one, and she knew, in this business, that there
+was no such word as fail.  After one or two false
+starts--some very stupid answers, and some very blunt
+refusals--she found her quarry at last, by as simple a
+process as walking into a Sunday-school of colored
+children, where she heard singing in the basement of
+a little chapel.
+
+In a few words Matty explained her errand to the
+Superintendent, and that it was necessary that she should
+find Mrs. Gilbert before dark.
+
+"Ting!" one stroke of the bell called hundreds of
+eager voices to silence.
+
+"Who knows where Mrs. Gilbert lives?  Is it at Mrs.
+Butman's house or Mrs. Lichtenfels'?"
+
+Twenty eager hands contended with each other for the
+honor of giving the information, and in three minutes
+more, Matty, all encouraged by her success, was on her
+way.
+
+And Mrs. Gilbert was at home.  Good fortune number
+two!  Matty's star was surely in the ascendant!  Matty
+sent in her card, and the nice old lady presented herself
+at once, remembered who Matty was, remembered how much
+business Mr. Molyneux used to bring to the office, and
+how grateful Mr. Gilbert always was.  She was so glad to
+see Matty, and she hoped Mr. Molyneux was well, and Mrs.
+Molyneux and all those little ones!  She used to see them
+every Sunday as they went to church, if they went on the
+avenue.
+
+Thus encouraged, Matty opened on her sad story, and
+was fairly helped from stage to stage by the wonder,
+indignation, and exclamations of the kind old lady.  When
+Matty came to the end, and made her understand how much
+depended on the day-book, register, and ledger of her
+husband, it was a fair minute before she spoke.
+
+"We will see, my dear, we will see.  I wish it may be
+so, but I 'm all afeard.  It would not be like him, my
+dear.  It would not be like any of them.  But come with
+me, my dear, we will see--we will see."
+
+Then, as Matty followed her, through devious ways,
+out through the kitchen, across a queer bricked yard,
+into a half stable, half woodshed, which the good woman
+unlocked, she went on talking:--
+
+"You see, my dear child, that though notaries are
+called notaries, as if it were their business to give
+notice, the most important part of their business is
+keeping secrets.  Now, when a man's note goes to protest,
+the notary tells him what has happened, which he knew
+very well before; and then he comes to the notary and
+begs him not to tell anybody else, and of course he does
+not.  And the business of a notary's account books, as my
+husband used to say, is to tell just enough, and not to
+tell any more.
+
+"Why, my dear child, he would not use blotting-paper
+in the office,--he would always use sand.  `Blotting-
+paper!  Never!' he would say; 'Blotting-paper tells
+secrets!'"
+
+With such chatter they came to the little chilly
+room, which was shelved all around, and to Matty's glad
+eyes presented rows of green and blue and blue and red
+boxes,--and folio and quarto books of every date, from
+1829 to 1869, forty years in which the late Mr. Gilbert
+had been confirming history, keeping secret what he
+knew, but making sure what, but for him, might have been
+doubted by a sceptic world.
+
+Things were in good order.  Mrs. Gilbert was proud to
+show that they were in good order.  The day-book for 1863
+was at hand.  Matty knew the fatal dates only too well.
+And the fatal entries were here!
+
+How her heart beat as she began to read!
+
+                                                           Cr.
+   To Thomas Molyneux Esq., (B. I. I.) official
+       authentication of signature of Felipe Gazza .  .  . $1.25
+   Same, authentication of signature of Jose B. Du
+       Camara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1.25
+   Same, authentication of signature of Jacob H.
+       Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1.25
+
+And this was all!  Poor Matty copied it all, but all the
+time she begged Mrs. Gilbert to tell her if there was not
+some note-book or journal that would tell more.  And kind
+Mrs. Gilbert looked eagerly for what she called the
+"Diry."  At the proper dates on the cash-book, at
+intervals of a week or two, Matty found similar entries--
+the names of the two Spaniards appearing in all these--
+but other names in place of Cole's just as Tom had told
+her already.  By the time she had copied all of these,
+Mrs. Gilbert had found the "Diry."  Eager, and yet heart-
+sick, Matty turned it over with her old friend.
+
+This was all:--
+
+"Mr. Molyneux here.  Very private.  Papers in R. G. E."
+And then followed a little burst of unintelligible
+short-hand.
+
+Poor Matty!  She could not but feel that here would
+not be evidence good for anything, even in a novel.  But
+she copied every word carefully, as a chief clerk's
+daughter should do.  She thanked the kind old lady, and
+even kissed her.  She looked at her watch.  Heavens! how
+fast time had gone! and the afternoons were so short!
+
+"Yes, my dear Miss Molyneux; but they have turned, my
+dear, the day is a little longer and a little lighter."
+
+Did the old lady mean it for an omen, or was it only
+one of those chattering remarks on meteors and weather
+change of which old age is so fond?  Matty wondered, but
+did not know.  Fast as she could, she tripped bravely on
+to the avenue for her street car.
+
+"The day is longer and lighter."
+
+
+Meanwhile Tom was following his clue in the public
+rooms at Willard's, to which, as he prophesied, Mr.
+Greenhithe had returned after the unusual variation in
+his life of a morning spent in the sanctuary.  Tom bought
+a copy of the Baltimore "The Sun," and went into one of
+the larger rooms resorted to by travellers and loafers,
+and sat down.  But Mr. Greenhithe did not appear there.
+Tom walked up and down through the passages a little
+uneasily, for he was sure the ex-clerk had come into the
+hotel.  He went up and looked in at the ladies'
+sitting-rooms, to see if perhaps some Duchess of
+Devonshire, of high political circles, had found it worth
+while to drag Mr. Greenhithe up there by a single hair.
+No Mr. Greenhithe!  Tom was forced to go down and drink
+a glass of beer to see if Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty.
+But at that moment, though Mr. Greenhithe was generally
+thirsty in the middle of the day, and although many men
+were thirsty at the time Tom hung over his glass of
+lager, Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty there.  It was only
+as Tom passed the billiard-room that he saw Mr.
+Greenhithe was playing a game of billiards, by way of
+celebrating the new birth of a regenerated world.
+
+What to do now!  Tom could not, in common decency, go
+in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke.
+Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the
+Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about.  Tom
+slowly withdrew.
+
+As he withdrew, whom should be meet but one of his
+kindest friends, Commodore Benbow?  When the boys made
+their "experimental cruise" the year before, they had
+found Commodore Benbow's ship at Lisbon.  The Commodore
+had taken a particular fancy to Tom, because he had known
+his mother when they were boy and girl.  Tom had even
+been invited personally to the flag-ship, and was to have
+been presented at Court, but that they sailed too soon.
+
+To tell the whole truth, the Commodore was not
+overpleased to see his protege hanging about the bar
+and billiard-room on Christmas Day.  For himself, his
+whole family were living at Willard's, but he knew Tom's
+father was not living there, and he thought Tom might be
+better employed.
+
+Perhaps Tom guessed this.  Perhaps he was in despair.
+Anyway he knew "Old Benbow," as the boys called him,
+would be a good counsellor.  In point of statistics "Old
+Benbow" was just turned forty, had not a gray hair in his
+head, could have beaten any one of Tom's class, whether
+in gunning or at billiards, could have demonstrated every
+problem in Euclid while they were fiddling over the
+forty-seventh proposition.  He was at the very prime of
+well-preserved power, but young nineteen called him "Old
+Benbow," as young nineteen will, in such cases.
+
+Bold with despair, or with love for his father, Tom
+stopped "Old Benbow" and asked him if he would  come into
+one of the sitting-rooms with him.  Then he made this
+venerable man his confidant.  The Commodore had seen the
+slurs in the "Scorpion" and the "Argus" and the "Evening
+Journal."  "A pity," said he, "that Newspaper Row, that
+can do so much good, should do so much harm.  What is
+Newspaper Row?  Three or four men of honor, three or four
+dreamers, three or four schoolboys, three or four fools,
+and three or four scamps.  And the public, Molyneux,--
+which is to say you and I,--accept the trumpet blast
+of one of these heralds precisely as we do that of
+another.  Practically," said he, pensively, "when we were
+detached to serve with the 33d Corps in Mobile Bay, I
+found I liked the talk of those light-infantry men who
+had been in every scrimmage of the war, quite as much as
+I did that of the bandmen who played the trumpets on
+parade.  But this is neither here nor there.  I thought
+of coming round to see your father, but I knew I should
+bother him.  What can I do, my boy?"
+
+Then Tom told him, rather doubtfully, that he had
+reason to fear that Mr. Greenhithe was at the bottom of
+the whole scandal.  He said he wished he did not think
+that Mr. Greenhithe had himself stolen the papers.  "If
+I am wrong, I want to know it," said he; "if I am right,
+I want to know it.  I do not want to be doing any man
+injustice.  But I do not want to keep old Eben Ricketts
+down at the department hunting for a file of papers which
+Greenhithe has hidden in his trunk or put into the fire."
+
+"No!--no!--no, indeed," said "old Benbow," musing.
+"No!--No!--No!--"
+
+Then after a pause, "Tom," said he, "come round here
+in an hour.  I know that young fellow your friend is
+playing with, and I wish he were in better company than
+he is.  I think I know enough of the usages of modern
+society to `interview' him and his companion, though
+times have changed since I was of your age in that
+regard.  Come here in an hour, or give me rather more,
+come here at half-past two, and we will see what we
+will see."
+
+So Tom went round to the Navy Department, and here he
+found the faithful Eben--faithful to him, though utterly
+faithless as to any success in the special quest which
+was making the entertainment of the Christmas holiday.
+Vainly did Tom repeat to him his formula,--
+
+"If the Navy did the work, the Navy has the vouchers."
+
+"My dear boy," Eben Ricketts repeated a hundred
+times, "though the Navy did the work, the Navy did not
+provide the pork and beans; it did not arrange in advance
+for the landing, least of all did it buy the greasers.
+I will look where you like, for love of your father and
+you; but that file of vouchers is not here, never was
+here, and never will be found here."
+
+An assistant like this is not an encouraging
+companion or adviser.
+
+And, in short, the vouchers were not found in the
+Navy Department, in that particular midday search.  At
+twenty-five minutes past two Tom gave it up unwillingly,
+bade Eben Ricketts good-by, washed from his hands the
+accretions of coal-dust, which will gather even on
+letter-boxes in Navy Departments, and ran across in front
+of the President's House, to Willard's.  He looked up at
+the White House, and wondered how the people there were
+spending their Christmas Day.
+
+Commodore Benbow was waiting for him.  He took him up
+into his own parlor.
+
+"Molyneux, your Mr. Greenhithe is either the most
+ingenious liar and the best actor on God's earth, or he
+knows no more of your lost papers than a child in heaven.
+
+"I went back to the billiard-room, after you left me.
+I walked up to Millet--that was Lieutenant Millet playing
+with Greenhithe--and I shook hands.  He had to introduce
+me to your friend.  Then I asked them both to come here,
+told Millet I had some papers from Montevideo that he
+would be glad to see, and that I should be glad of a call
+when they had done their game.  Well, they came.  I am
+sorry to say your friend--"
+
+"Oh, don't, my dear Commodore Benbow, don't call him
+my friend, even in a joke; it makes me feel awfully."
+
+"I am glad it does," said the Commodore, laughing.
+"Well, I am very sorry to say that the black sheep had
+been drinking more of the whisky downstairs than was good
+for him; and, no fault of mine, he drank more of my
+Madeira than he should have done, and, Tom, I do not
+believe he was in any condition to keep secrets.  Well,
+first of all, it appeared that he had been in Bremen and
+Vienna for six months.  He only arrived in New York
+yesterday morning."
+
+Tom's face fell.
+
+"And, next--you may take this for what it is worth--
+but I believe he spoke the truth for once; he
+certainly did if there is any truth in liquor or in
+swearing.  For when I asked Millet what all this stuff
+about your father meant, Greenhithe interrupted, very
+unnecessarily and very rudely, and said, with more oaths
+than I will trouble you with, that the whole was a damned
+lie of the newspaper men; that they had lied about him
+(Greenhithe) and now were lying about old Molyneux; that
+Molyneux had been very hard on him and very unjust to
+him, but he would say that he was honest as the clock--
+honest enough to be mean.  And that he would say that to
+the committee, if they would call on him, and so on and
+so on."
+
+"Much good would he do before the committee," said
+poor Tom.
+
+And thus ended Tom's branch of the investigation.
+"Come to me, if I can help you, my boy," said Old Benbow.
+"It is always the darkest, old fellow, the hour before
+day."
+
+Tom was astronomer enough to know that this old saw
+was as false as most old saws.  But with this for his
+only comfort, he returned to the bureau to seek Beverly
+and his father.
+
+Neither Beverly nor his father was there!  Tom went
+directly home.  His mother was eager to see him.
+
+She had come home alone, and, save Horace and Laura
+and Flossy and Brick, she had seen nobody but a messenger
+from the bureau.
+
+Brick was the family name for Robert, one of the
+youngest of this household.
+
+Of Beverly's movements the story must be more briefly
+told.  They took more time than Tom's; as much indeed as
+his sister's, after they parted.  But they were conducted
+by means of that marvel of marvels, the telegraph,--the
+chief of whose marvels is that it compels even a long-
+winded generation like ours to speak in very short metre.
+
+Beverly began with Mr. Bundy at Georgetown.
+Georgetown is but a quiet place on the most active of
+days.  On Christmas Day Beverly found but little stirring
+out of doors.
+
+Still, with the directory, with the advice of a
+saloon-keeper and the information of a police officer,
+Beverly tracked Mr. Bundy to his lair.
+
+It was not a notary's office, it was a liquor shop of
+the lowest grade, with many badly painted signs, which
+explained that this was "Our House," and that here Mr.
+Bundy made and sold with proper license--let us be
+grateful--Tom and Jerry, Smashes, Cocktails, and did
+other "deeds without a name."  On this occasion, however,
+even the door of "Our House" was closed.  Mr. Bundy had
+gone to a turkey-shooting match at Fairfax Court House.
+The period of his return was very doubtful.  He had never
+done anything but keep this drinking-room since old Mrs.
+Gilbert turned him out of doors.
+
+With this information Master Beverly returned to
+town.  He then began on his own line of search.  Relying
+on Tom's news, he went to the office of the Western
+Union Telegraph and concocted this despatch, which he
+thought a masterpiece.
+
+GREENSBURG, Westmoreland Co., Pa.
+
+TO ROBERT JOHN WHILTHAUGH:
+
+When and where can I see you on important business?
+Answer.
+
+BEVERLY MOLYNEUX, for THOMAS MOLYNEUX.
+
+
+Then he took a walk, and after half an hour called at
+the office again.  The office was still engaged in
+calling Greensburg.  Greensburg was eating its Christmas
+dinner.  But at last Greensburg was called.  Then Beverly
+received this answer:--
+
+Whilthaugh has been dead more than a year.
+GREENSBURG.
+
+To which Beverly replied:--
+
+Where does his wife live, or his administrator?
+
+To which Greensburg, having been called a second time
+with difficulty, replied:--
+
+His wife is crazy, and we never heard of any property.
+GREENSBURG.
+
+With this result of his investment as a non-dividend
+member of the great Western Union Mutual Information
+Club, Beverly returned home, chewing the cud of sweet and
+bitter fancies.
+
+"There is no speech nor language," sang the choir in
+St. Matthews as he passed, "where their voice is not
+heard.  Their line is gone out through all the
+earth--"  And Tom heard no more, as he passed on.
+
+As he walked, almost unwillingly, up the street to
+the high steps of his father's house, Matty, out of
+breath, overtook him.
+
+"What have you found, Bev?"
+
+"Nothing," said the boy, moodily.  And poor Matty had
+to confess that she had hardly more to tell.
+
+They came into the house by the lower entrance, that
+they need not attract their mother's attention.  But she
+was on the alert.  Even Horace and the younger children
+knew by this time that something was wrong.
+
+Horace's story about the strange man and papa was the
+last news of papa.  Papa had not been at the bureau.  The
+bureau people waited for him till two, and he did not
+come.  Then Stratton had come round to see if he was to
+keep open any longer.  Stratton had told Mrs. Molyneux
+that her husband had not been there since church.
+
+Where in the world was he?
+
+Poor Mrs. Molyneux had not known where to send or to
+go.  She had just looked in at the Doctor's, but he was
+not there.
+
+Tom had appeared first to her tedious waiting.  Tom
+would not tell her, but he even went and looked in on
+Newspaper Row, which he had been abusing so.  For Tom's
+first thought was that a formal information had been
+lodged somewhere, and that his father was arrested.
+
+But Newspaper Row evidently was unsuspicious of any
+arrest.
+
+Tom even walked down to the old jail, and made an
+absurd errand to see the Deputy-Marshal.  But the Deputy-
+Marshal was at his Christmas dinner.
+
+Tom told all this in the hall to Beverly and to
+Matty.
+
+Everything had failed, and papa was gone.  Who could
+the man in the shaggy coat be?
+
+The three went together into the parlor.
+
+For a little, Matty and Horace and Tom and Beverly
+then made a pretence of arranging the tree.  But, in
+truth, Mrs. Molyneux, in the midst of all her care, had
+done that, while they were all away.
+
+Dinner was postponed half an hour, and they gathered,
+all in the darkness, looking at the sickliest blaze that
+ever rambled over half-burned Cumberland coal.
+
+The Brick came climbing up on Tom's knees and bade
+him tell a story; but even Laura saw that something was
+wrong, and hushed the child, and said she and Flossy
+would sing one of their carols.  And they sang it, and
+were praised; and they sang another, and were praised.
+But then it was quite dark, and nobody had any heart to
+say one word.
+
+"Where is papa?" said the Brick.
+
+"Where indeed?" everybody wanted to say, and no one
+did.
+
+But then the door-bell rang, and Chloe brought in a
+note.
+
+"He's waiting for an answer, mum."
+
+And Tom lighted the gas.  It popped up so bright that
+little Flossy said,--
+
+"The people that sat in darkness saw a great light--"
+
+This was just as Mrs. Molyneux tore open the note.
+For the instant she could not speak.  She handed it to
+the three.
+
+"FOUND
+"Home in half an hour!
+"All right! thank God!
+T. M."
+
+"Saw a great light, indeed!" said Horace, who, for
+once, felt awed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THIS IS CHRISTMAS
+
+For half a minute, as it seemed afterwards, no one
+spoke.  Then Matty flew to her mother, and flung her
+arms around her neck, and kissed her again and again.
+
+Tom hardly knew what he was doing; but he recovered
+self-command enough to know that he must try to be manly
+and businesslike,--and so he rushed downstairs to find
+the man who brought the note.  It proved to be a man he
+did not know.  Not a messenger from the bureau, not one
+from the Navy Department, least of all, an aid of
+the Assistant Marshal's.  He was an innocent waiter from
+the Seaton House, who said a gentleman called him and
+gave him the note, told him to lose no time, and gave him
+half a dollar for coming.  He had asked for an answer,
+though the gentleman had not told him to do so.
+
+Tom wrote:  "Hurrah!  All's well!  All at home.--T."
+and gave this note to the man.
+
+They all talked at once, and then they sat still
+without talking.  The children--must it be confessed?--
+asked all sorts of inopportune questions.  At last Tom
+was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by
+way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much
+correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in
+smelling at the almond-candy and the figs, when a
+carriage was heard on the street, evidently coming
+rapidly towards them.  It stopped at the door.  The bear
+was forgotten, as all the elders in this free-and-easy
+family rushed out of the parlor into the hall.
+
+Papa was there, and was as happy as they.  With papa,
+or just behind him, came in the man with the rough coat,
+whose face at church had been so dirty, whose face now
+was clean.  To think that papa should have brought the
+Deputy-Marshal with him!  For by the name of "the Deputy-
+Marshal" had this mysterious stranger been spoken of in
+private by the two young men since the fatal theory had
+been advanced that he had come into the church to arrest
+Mr. Molyneux.
+
+The unknown, with great tact, managed to keep in the
+background, while Mrs. Molyneux kissed her husband, and
+while Matty kissed him, and while among them they pulled
+off his coat.  But Mr. Molyneux did not forget.  He made
+a chance in a moment for saying, "You must speak to our
+friend who has brought me here; no one was ever so
+welcome at a Christmas dinner.  Mr. Kuypers, my dear, Mr.
+Kuypers, Matty dear; these are my boys, Mr. Kuypers."
+
+Then the ladies welcomed the stranger, and the boys
+shook hands with him.  Mr. Molyneux added, what hardly
+any one understood:  "It is not every friend that travels
+two thousand miles to jog a friend's memory."
+
+And they all huddled into the parlor.  But in a
+moment more, Mrs. Molyneux had invited Mr. Kuypers to go
+upstairs to wash himself, and he, with good feeling,
+which he showed all the evening, gladly took himself out
+of the way, and so, as Tom returned from showing him to
+his room, the parlor was filled with "those God made
+there," as the little boy used to say, and with none
+beside.
+
+"Now tell us all about it, dear papa," cried Tom.
+
+"I was trying to tell your mother.  But there is not
+much to tell.  Poor Mr. Kuypers had travelled all the way
+from Colorado, the minute he heard I was in trouble.
+Yesterday he bought the `Scorpion' in the train, and
+found the Committee was down on us.  He drove here from
+the station as soon as the train came in.  He missed you
+here, and drove by mistake to Trinity.  That made
+him late with us, and so, as the service had begun, he
+waited till it was done."
+
+"Well!" said Bev, perhaps a little impatiently.
+
+"But so soon as we were going out he touched me, and
+said he had come to find me, in the matter of the Rio
+Grande vouchers.  Do you know, Eliza, I can afford to
+laugh at it now, but at the moment I thought he was a
+deputy of the Sergeant-at-Arms?"
+
+"There!" screamed Tom, "I said he was a deputy-marshal!"
+
+"I said, `Certainly;' and I laughed, and said they
+seemed to interest all my friends.  Then he said, `Then
+you have them?  If I had known that, I would have spared
+my journey.'  This threw me off guard, and I said I
+supposed I had them, but I could not find them.  And he
+said eagerly--this was just on the church steps--`But I
+can.'
+
+"Then he said he had a carriage waiting, and he bade
+me jump in.
+
+"So soon as we were in the carriage he explained,
+what I ought to have remembered, but could not then
+recollect for the life of me, that after General Trebou
+returned from Texas, there was a Court of Inquiry, and
+that there was some question about these very supplies,
+the beans and the coffee particularly; they had nothing
+to do with the landing nor with the Mexicans.  And the
+Court of Inquiry sent over one day from the War
+Department, where they were sitting, to our office for an
+account, because we were said to have it.  Mr.
+Kuypers was their messenger to us, and because we had
+bound them all together, the whole file was sent as it
+was.  He took them, and as it happened, he looked them
+over, and what was better, he remembered them.  Where our
+receipt is, Heaven knows!
+
+"Well, that Court of Inquiry was endless, as those
+army inquiries always are.  Mr. Kuypers was in attendance
+all the time.  He says he never shall forget it, if other
+people do.
+
+"So, as soon as he saw that we were in trouble at the
+bureau--that I was in trouble, I mean," said Mr.
+Molyneux, stoutly, "he knew that he knew what nobody else
+knew,--that the vouchers were in the papers of that Court
+of Inquiry."
+
+"And he came all the way to tell?  What a good
+fellow!"
+
+"Yes, he came on purpose.  He says he could not help
+coming.  He says he made two or three telegrams; but
+every time he tried to telegraph, he felt as if he were
+shirking.  And I believe he was right.  I believe we
+should never have pulled through without him.  `Personal
+presence moves the world,' as Eli Thayer used to say."
+
+"And you found them?" asked Mrs. Molyneux, faintly
+essaying to get back to the story.
+
+"Oh Yes, we found them; but not in one minute.  You
+see, first of all, I had to go to the chief clerk at the
+War Department and get the department opened on a
+holiday.  Then we had no end of clerks to disturb at
+their Christmas dinners, and at last we found a good
+fellow named Breen who was willing to take hold with Mr.
+Kuypers.  And Mr. Kuypers himself," here he dropped his
+voice, "why, we have not three men in all the departments
+who know the history of this government or the system of
+its records as he does.
+
+"Once in the office, he went to work like a master.
+Breen was amazed.  Why!  We found those documents in less
+than half an hour!
+
+"Then I sent Breen with a note to the Secretary.  He
+was good as gold; came down in his own carriage,
+congratulated me as heartily--well almost as heartily as
+you do, Tom--and took us both round, with the files, to
+Mr. McDermot, the Chairman of the House Committee.  He
+was dining with his mess, at the Seaton House, but we
+called him out, and I declare, I believe he was as much
+pleased as we were.
+
+"I only stopped to make him give me a receipt for the
+papers, because they all said it was idle to take copies,
+and here we are!"
+
+On the hush that followed, the Brick made his way up
+on his father's knee and said,--
+
+"And now, papa, will you tell us the story of the
+bear?  Tom does not tell it very well."
+
+They all laughed,--they could afford to laugh now;
+and Mr. Molyneux was just beginning upon the story of the
+bear, when Mr. Kuypers reappeared.  He had in this short
+time revised his toilet, and looked, Mr. Molyneux said in
+an aside, like the angel of light that he was.  "Bears!"
+said he, "are there any bears in Washington?  Why,
+it was only last Monday that I killed a bear, and I ate
+him on Tuesday."
+
+"Did you eat him all?" asked the Brick, whose
+reverence for Mr. Kuypers was much more increased by this
+story than by any of the unintelligible conversation
+which had gone before.  But just as Mr. Kuypers began on
+the story of the bear, Chloe appeared with beaming face,
+and announced that dinner was ready.
+
+That dinner, which this morning every one who had any
+sense had so dreaded, and which now seemed a festival
+indeed!
+
+Well! there was great pretence in fun and form in
+marshalling.  And Mr. Kuypers gave his arm to Matty, and
+Horace his to Laura, and Beverly his to Flossy, and Tom
+brought up the rear with the Brick on his shoulders.  And
+Mr. Molyneux returned thanks and asked a blessing all
+together.  And then they fell to, on the turkey and on
+the chicken pie.  And they tried to talk about Colorado
+and mining; about Gold Hill and Hale-and-Norcross, and
+Uncle Sam and Overman and Yellow Jacket.  But in spite of
+them all, the talk would drift back to Bundy and his
+various signs, "Our House" and Tom and Jerry; to the wife
+of Mr. Whilthaugh; to Commodore Benbow; to old Mrs.
+Gilbert and Delaware Avenue.  And this was really quite
+as much the fault of Mr. Kuypers as it was of any of the
+Molyneux family.  He seemed as much one of them as did
+Tom himself.  This anecdote of failure and that of
+success kept cropping out.  Walsingham's high-bred and
+dignified enthusiasm for the triumph of the office, and
+the satisfaction that Eben Ricketts would feel when he
+was told that the Navy never had the vouchers,--all were
+commented on.  Then Mr. Molyneux would start and say, "We
+are talking shop again.  You say the autumn has been mild
+in the mountains;" and then in two minutes they would be
+on the trail of "Search and Look" again.
+
+It was in one of these false starts that Mr. Kuypers
+explained why he came, which in Horace's mind and perhaps
+in the minds of the others had been the question most
+puzzling of all.
+
+"Why," said Horace, bluntly, "had you ever heard of
+papa before!"
+
+"Had I heard of him? " said Mr. Kuypers.  "I think
+so.  Why, my dear boy, your father is my oldest and
+kindest friend!"  At this exclamation even Mrs. Molyneux
+showed amazement.  Tom laid down his fork and looked to
+see if the man was crazy, and Mr. Molyneux himself was
+thrown off his balance.
+
+Mr. Kuypers was a well-bred man, but this time he
+could not conceal his amazement.  He laid down knife and
+fork both, looked up and almost laughed, as he said with
+wonder,--
+
+"Don't you know who I am?"
+
+"We know you are our good angel to-day," said Mrs.
+Molyneux, bravely; "and that is enough to know."
+
+"But don't you know why I am here, or what sent me?"
+
+Mr. Molyneux said that he understood very well that
+his friend wanted to see justice done, and that he had
+preferred to see to this in person.
+
+"I thought you looked queer," said Mr. Kuypers,
+frankly; "but still, I did not know I was changed.  Why,
+don't you remember Bruce?  You remember Mrs. Chappell,
+surely."
+
+"Are you Bruce?" cried Mr. Molyneux; and he fairly
+left his chair and went round the table to the young man.
+"Why, I can see it now.  But then--why, you were a boy,
+you know, and this black beard--"
+
+"But pray explain, pray explain," cried Tom.  "The
+mysteries increase on us.  Who is Mrs. Chappell, and, for
+that matter, who is Bruce, if his real name be not
+Kuypers?"
+
+And they all laughed heartily.  People got back their
+self-possession a little, and Mr. Kuypers explained.
+
+"I am Bruce Kuypers," said he, "though your father
+does not seem to remember the Kuypers part."
+
+"No," said Mr. Molyneux, "I cannot remember the
+Kuypers part, but the Bruce part I remember very well."
+
+"My mother was Mrs. Kuypers before she married Mr.
+Chappell, and Mr. Chappell died when my brother Ben was
+six years old, and little Lizzy was a baby."
+
+"Lizzy was my godchild," said Mrs. Molyneux, who now
+remembered everything.
+
+"Certainly she was, Mrs. Molyneux, and last month
+Lizzy was married to as good a fellow as ever presided
+over the melting of ingots.  We marry them earlier at the
+West than you do here."
+
+"Where Lizzie would have been," he said more gravely,
+addressing Tom again, "where my mother would have been,
+or where I should have been but for your father and
+mother here, it would be hard to tell.  And all to-day I
+have taken it for granted that to him, as to me, this has
+been one part of that old Christmas!  Surely you
+remember?" he turned to Mrs. Molyneux.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Molyneux did remember, but her eyes were
+all running over with tears and she did not say so.
+
+"Mr. Molyneux," said Bruce Kuypers, again addressing
+Tom, "seventeen years ago this blessed day, there was a
+Christmas morning in the poor old tenement above
+Massachusetts Avenue such as you never saw, and such as
+I hope you never may see.
+
+"There was fire in the stove because your father had
+sent the coal.  There was oatmeal mush on the table
+because your father paid my mother's scot at your
+father's grocer.
+
+"But there was not much jollity in that house, and
+there were no Christmas presents, but what your mother
+had sent to Bruce and Ben and Flora, and even to the
+baby.  Still we kept up such courage as we could.
+It was a terribly cold day, and there was a wet storm.
+
+"All of a sudden a carriage stopped at the door, and
+in came your father here.  He came to say that that day's
+mail had brought a letter from Dr. Wilder of the navy,
+conveying the full certificate that William Chappell's
+death was caused by exposure in the service.  That
+certificate was what my mother needed for her pension.
+She never could get it, but your father here had sifted
+and worried and worked.  The `Macedonian' arrived
+Thursday at New York, and had Dr. Wilder on board, and
+Friday afternoon your father had Wilder's letter, and he
+left his own Christmas dinner to make light my mother's
+and mine.  That was not all.  Your father, as he came,
+had stopped to see Mr. Birdsall, who was the Speaker of
+the House.  He had seen the Speaker before, and had said
+kind things about me.  And that day the Speaker told him
+to tell me to come and see him at his room at the Capitol
+next day.  Oh! how my mother dressed me up!  Was there
+ever such a page seen before!  What with your father's
+kind words and my dear mother's extra buttons, the
+Speaker made me his own page the next day, and there I
+served for four years.  It was then that I was big enough
+to go into the War Department, and Mr. Goodsell--he was
+the next Speaker, if you remember--recommended me there.
+
+"After that," said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did
+not see you so often, but I used to see you
+sometimes, and I did not think"--this with a roguish
+twinkling of the eye--"that you forgot your young friends
+so soon."
+
+"I remember you," said Tom.  "I used to think you
+were the grandest man in Washington.  You gave me the
+first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some
+exceptional fall of snow."
+
+"I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now," said
+Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; "he always
+bought things for our stockings.  I have a Noah's Ark
+upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had
+a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa
+Claus.  I believe I thought Santa Claus' name was
+Nicholas Bruce.  I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce
+had any other name."
+
+"If you had said you were Mr. Chappell," said Mr.
+Molyneux, "I should have known you in a minute."
+
+"But I was not," said the young man, laughing.
+
+"Well, if you had said you were `Bruce,' I should
+have known."
+
+"Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at
+Gem City nobody calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy.
+So I said `Mr. Kuypers,' forgetting that I had ever been
+a boy.  But now I am in Washington again, I shall
+remember that things change here very fast in ten years.
+And yet not so fast as they change at the mines."
+
+And now everybody was at ease.  How well Mrs.
+Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not
+speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his
+story!  It was in their young married life.  She had her
+father and mother to dine with her, and the event was
+really a trial in her young experience.  And then, just
+as the old folks were expected, her husband came dashing
+in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because
+he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell,
+and she had to tell her father and mother, when they
+came, that they must all wait for his return.
+
+The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem
+attracted to Washington by some fatal law.  It had been
+two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been
+asked to hunt her up and help her.  A letter had come,
+asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and
+Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells.  But the
+money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and
+the wolf was very near the Chappells' door, when the
+telegraph announced the "Macedonian."  Mr. Molyneux had
+telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder.  Dr. Wilder had
+some sense of Christmas promptness.  He remembered poor
+Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough
+certificate.  This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux
+had carried to the poor old tenement of Massachusetts
+Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day--and
+this.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were
+speaking aloud, "it seems so queer that Christmas
+comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about
+that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell's!
+
+"Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux's health
+every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used
+to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came
+down the chimney!"
+
+"As, at another place," said Matty, "they thought of
+Mr. Bruce--of Noah's Ark memory."
+
+"Anyway," said Mr. Molyneux, "any crumbs of comfort
+we scattered that day were BREAD UPON THE WATERS."
+
+Of Mr. Kuypers's quick journey the main points have
+been told.  Six days before, by some good luck, which
+could hardly have been expected, the "Gem City Medium's"
+despatch from Washington was full enough to be
+intelligible.  It was headed, "ANOTHER SWINDLER NAILED."
+It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement
+office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during
+the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande.  It
+had now been discovered that there never was any such
+expedition, and the correspondent of the Associated Press
+hoped that justice would be done.
+
+The moment Bruce Kuypers read this he was anxious.
+Before an hour passed he had determined to cross to the
+Pacific train eastward.  Before night he was in a
+sleeping-car.  Day by day as he met Eastern papers, he
+searched for news of the investigation.  Day by day he
+met it, but thanks to his promptness he had arrived in
+time.  It was pathetic to hear him describe his
+anxiety from point to point, and they were all hushed to
+silence when he told how glad he was when he found he
+should certainly appear on Christmas Day.
+
+After the dinner, another procession, not wholly
+unlike the rabble rout of the morning, moved from the
+dining-room to the great front parlor, where the tree was
+lighted, and parcels of gray and white and brown lay
+round on mantel, on piano, on chairs, on tables, and on
+the floor.
+
+No; this tale is too long already.  We will not tell
+what all the presents were to all the ten,--to Venty,
+Chloe, Diana, and all of their color.  Only let it tell
+that all the ten had presents.  To Mr. Kuypers's
+surprise, and to every one's surprise, indeed, there were
+careful presents for him as for the rest, but it must be
+confessed that Horace and Laura had spelled Chipah a
+little wildly.  The truth was that each separate person
+had feared that he would feel a little left on one
+side,--he to whom so much was due on that day.  And each
+person, severally, down to the Brick himself, had gone
+secretly, without consulting the others, to select from
+his own possessions something very dear, and had wrapped
+it up and marked it for the stranger.  When Mr. Kuypers
+opened a pretty paper, to find Matty's own illustrated
+Browning, he was touched indeed.  When in a rough brown
+paper he found the Brick's jack-knife labelled "FOR THE
+MAN," the tears stood in his eyes.
+
+
+The next day the "Evening Lantern" contained this
+editorial article:--
+
+"The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr.
+Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the
+periodical press for some days, and has even been
+adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of
+metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday.
+The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put
+in an appearance before the committee.  Mr. Molyneux
+himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of
+manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical
+memorial of times that tried men's souls.  The committee
+and other gentlemen present examined this curious record
+with great interest.  Not to speak of the minor details,
+an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives
+full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the
+skill with which they executed the commission given them
+in a department quite out of their line.  Our brethren of
+the `Argus' will be pleased to know that every grain of
+oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous
+$47,000, are accounted for in detail.  The authenticated
+signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza
+and the mythical Captain Cole appear.  Very valuable
+letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with
+the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented
+Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those
+Spanish turncoats and their allies.
+
+"We cannot say that we regret the attention which has
+thus been given to a very important piece of history, too
+long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs.
+We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest
+once more against this preposterous system of
+`Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every
+niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the
+House degrades itself to the work of the common
+scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation
+into some subject where all well informed persons are
+fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure,
+etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.'"
+
+But I fear no one at the Molyneux mansion had "the
+lantern."  They had "found a man," and did not need a
+lantern to look farther.
+
+It was as Mr. Molyneux had said: he had cast his
+Bread upon the Waters, and he had found it after many
+days.
+
+
+
+THE LOST PALACE
+
+
+THE LOST PALACE
+
+[From the Ingham Papers.]
+
+"Passengers for Philadelphia and New York will change
+cars."
+
+This annoying and astonishing cry was loudly made in
+the palace-car "City of Thebes," at Pittsburg, just as
+the babies were well asleep, and all the passengers
+adapting themselves to a quiet evening.
+
+"Impossible!" said I, mildly, to the "gentlemanly
+conductor," who beamed before me in the majesty of gilt
+lace on his cap, and the embroidered letters P. P. C.
+These letters do not mean, as in French, "to take leave,"
+for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not
+leave you till your journey's end: they mean, in
+American, "Pullman's Palace Car."  "Impossible!" said I;
+"I bought my ticket at Chicago through to Philadelphia,
+with the assurance that the palace-car would go through.
+This lady has done the same for herself and her children.
+Nay, if you remember, you told me yourself that the `City
+of Thebes' was built for the Philadelphia service, and
+that I need not move my hat, unless I wished, till we
+were there."
+
+The man did not blush, but answered, in the well-
+mannered tone of a subordinate used to obey,
+
+Here are my orders, sir; telegram just received here
+from headquarters:  `"City of Thebes" is to go to
+Baltimore.'  Another palace here, sir, waiting for you."
+And so we were trans-shipped into such chairs and berths
+as might have been left in this other palace, as not
+wanted by anybody in the great law of natural selection;
+and the "City of Thebes" went to Baltimore, I suppose.
+The promises which had been made to us when we bought our
+tickets went to their place, and the people who made them
+went to theirs.
+
+Except for this little incident, of which all my
+readers have probably experienced the like in these days
+of travel, the story I am now to tell would have seemed
+to me essentially improbable.  But so soon as I
+reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go
+thither, controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant
+bureau, the story recurred to me as having elements of
+vraisemblance which I had not noticed before.  Having
+occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at the
+Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had
+been left in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly
+official told me that he did not know where that car was;
+he had not heard of it for several days.  This again
+reminded me of "The Lost Palace."  Why should not one
+palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands
+to care for?  Indeed had not Mr. Firth told me, at
+the Albany, that the worst difficulty in the
+administration of a strong railway is, that they cannot
+call their freight-cars home?  They go astray on the line
+of some weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use
+them till they begin to show a need for paint or repairs.
+If freight-cars disappear, why not palaces?  So the story
+seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon paper.
+
+It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard
+it.  It was late at night, in the coffee-room of the
+Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent third-class house,
+in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I should
+not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than
+they were.  I laid down, at last, an old New York
+"Herald," which the captain of the "Osprey" had given me
+that morning, and which, in the hope of home-news, I had
+read and read again to the last syllable of the
+"Personals."  I put down the paper as one always puts
+down an American paper in a foreign land, saying to
+myself, "Happy is that nation whose history is
+unwritten."  At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had
+been talking with an intelligent-looking American on the
+other side of the table, stretched his giant form, and
+said he believed he would play a game of billiards before
+he went to bed.  He left us alone; and the American
+crossed the room, and addressed me.
+
+"You are from Massachusetts, are you not?" said he.
+I said I had lived in that State.
+
+"Good State to come from," said he.  "I was
+there myself for three or four months,--four months
+and ten days precisely.  Did not like it very well; did
+not like it.  At least I liked it well enough: my wife
+did not like it; she could not get acquainted."
+
+"Does she get acquainted here?" said I, acting on a
+principle which I learned from Scipio Africanus at the
+Latin School, and so carrying the war into the enemy's
+regions promptly.  That is to say, I saw I must talk with
+this man, and I preferred to have him talk of his own
+concerns rather than of mine.
+
+"O sir, I lost her,--I lost her ten years ago!  Lived
+in New Altoona then.  I married this woman the next
+autumn, in Vandalia.  Yes, Mrs. Joslyn is very well
+satisfied here.  She sees a good deal of society, and
+enjoys very good health."
+
+I said that most people did who were fortunate enough
+to have it to enjoy.  But Mr. Joslyn did not understand
+this bitter sarcasm, far less resent it.  He went on,
+with sufficient volubility, to give to me his impressions
+of the colony,--of the advantages it would derive from
+declaring its independence, and then from annexing itself
+to the United States.  At the end of one of his periods,
+goaded again to say something, I asked why he left his
+own country for a "colony," if he so greatly preferred
+the independent order of government.
+
+Mr. Joslyn looked round somewhat carefully, shut the
+door of the room in which we were now alone,--and
+were likely, at that hour of the night, to be alone,--and
+answered my question at length, as the reader will see.
+
+"Did you ever hear of the lost palace?" said he a
+little anxiously.
+
+I said, no; that, with every year or two, I heard
+that Mr. Layard had found a palace at Nineveh, but that
+I had never heard of one's being lost.
+
+"They don't tell of it, sir.  Sometimes I think they
+do not know themselves.  Does not that seem possible?"
+And the poor man repeated this question with such
+eagerness, that, in spite of my anger at being bored by
+him, my heart really warmed toward him.  "I really think
+they do not know.  I have never seen one word in the
+papers about it.  Now, they would have put something in
+the papers,--do you not think they would?  If they knew
+it themselves, they would."
+
+"Knew what?" said I, really startled out of my
+determination to snub him.
+
+"Knew where the palace is,--knew how it was lost."
+
+By this time, of course, I supposed he was crazy.
+But a minute more dispelled that notion; and I beg the
+reader to relieve his mind from it.  This man knew
+perfectly well what he was talking about, and never, in
+the whole narration, showed any symptom of mania,--a
+matter on which I affect to speak with the intelligence
+of the "experts" indeed.
+
+After a little of this fencing with each other, in
+which he satisfied himself that my ignorance was not
+affected, he took a sudden resolution, as if it were a
+relief to him to tell me the whole story.
+
+"It was years on years ago," said he.  "It was when
+they first had palaces."
+
+Still thinking of Nimrod's palace and Priam's, I said
+that must have been a great while ago.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said he.  "You would not call them
+palaces now, since you have seen Pullman's and Wagner's.
+But we called them palaces then.  So many looking-
+glasses, you know, and tapestry carpets and gold spit-
+boxes.  Ours was the first line that run palaces."
+
+I asked myself, mentally, of what metal were the
+spit-boxes in Semiramis's palace; but I said nothing.
+
+"Our line was the first line that had them.  We were
+running our lightning express on the `Great Alleghanian.'
+We were in opposition to everybody, made close
+connections, served supper on board, and our passengers
+only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis.  Those
+were the days of river-boats, you know.  We introduced
+the palace feature on the railroad; and very successful
+it was.  I was an engineer.  I had a first-rate
+character, and the best wages of any man on the line.
+Never put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer,
+I tell you.  No, sir!  I ran the expresses, and nothing
+else, and lay off two days in the week, besides.  I don't
+think I should have thought of it but for Todhunter,
+who was my palace conductor."
+
+Again this IT, which bad appeared so mysteriously in
+what the man said before.  I asked no question, but
+listened, really interested now, in the hope I should
+find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn.  He
+went on, in a hurried way:--
+
+"Todhunter was my palace conductor.  One night he was
+full, and his palace was hot, and smelled bad of whale-
+oil.  We did not burn petroleum then.  Well, it was a
+splendid full moon in August; and we were coming down
+grade, making up the time we had lost at the Brentford
+junction.  Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one.
+Todhunter had brought his cigar out on the tender, and
+was sitting by me.  Good Lord! it seems like last week.
+
+"Todhunter says to me, `Joslyn,' says he, `what's the
+use of crooking all round these valleys, when it would be
+so easy to go across?'  You see, we were just beginning
+to crook round, so as to make that long bend there is at
+Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could see the
+stern lights of Fisher's train: it was not more than half
+a mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we
+came there."
+
+I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant.  To cross the mountain
+ranges by rail, the engineers are obliged to wind up one
+side of a valley, and then, boldly crossing the head of
+the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other side
+still, so that perhaps half an hour's journey is
+consumed, while not a mile of real distance is made.
+Joslyn took out his pencil, and on the back of an
+envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as
+it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his
+comments, explains his whole story completely.  "Here we
+are," said he.  "This black line is the Great
+Alleghanian,--double track, seventy pounds to the yard;
+no figuring off there, I tell you.  This was a good
+straight run, down grade a hundred and seventy-two feet
+on the mile.  There, where I make this X, we came on the
+Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly north.
+So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we
+stopped if they showed lanterns,--what we call a flag-
+station.  But there we got across the valley, and worked
+south again to this other X, which was, as I say, not
+five-eighths of a mile from this X above, though it had
+taken us eleven miles to get there."
+
+He had said it was not more than half a mile; but
+this half-mile grew to five-eighths as he became more
+accurate and serious.
+
+"Well," said he, now resuming the thread of his
+story, "it was Todhunter put it into my head.  He owns he
+did.  Todhunter says, says he, `Joslyn, what's the use of
+crooking round all these valleys, when it would be so
+easy to go across?'
+
+"Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now.
+When that trip was done, I had two days to myself,--one
+was Sunday,--and Todhunter had the same; and he came
+round to my house.  His wife knew mine, and we liked
+them.  Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the
+Cyclopaedia, and we found out there about the speed of
+cannon-balls, and the direction they had to give them.
+You know this was only talk then; we never thought what
+would come of it; but very curious it all was."
+
+And here Mr. Joslyn went into a long mathematical
+talk, with which I will not harass the reader, perfectly
+sure, from other experiments which I have tried with
+other readers, that this reader would skip it all if
+it were written down.  Stated very briefly, it amounted
+to this:  In the old-fashioned experiments of those days,
+a cannon-ball travelled four thousand and one hundred
+feet in nine seconds.  Now, Joslyn was convinced, like
+every other engineman I ever talked to, that on a steep
+down-grade he could drive a train at the rate of a
+hundred miles an hour.  This is thirteen hundred and
+fourteen feet in nine seconds,--almost exactly one-third
+of the cannon-ball's velocity.  At those rates, if the
+valley at Chamoguin were really but five-eighths of a
+mile wide, the cannon-ball would cross it in seven or
+eight seconds, and the train in about twenty-three
+seconds.  Both Todhunter and Joslyn were good enough
+mechanics and machinists to know that the rate for
+thirty-three hundred feet, the width of the valley, was
+not quite the same as that for four thousand feet; for
+which, in their book, they had the calculations and
+formulas; but they also knew that the difference was to
+their advantage, or the advantage of the bold experiment
+which had occurred to both of them when Todhunter had
+made on the tender his very critical suggestion.
+
+The reader has already conceived the idea of this
+experiment.  These rash men were wondering already
+whether it were not possible to leap an engine flying
+over the Chamoguin ravine, as Eclipse or Flying Childers
+might have leaped the brook at the bottom of it.  Joslyn
+believed implicitly, as I found in talk with him,
+the received statement of conversation, that Eclipse, at
+a single bound, sprang forty feet.  "If Eclipse, who
+weighed perhaps one thousand two hundred, would spring
+forty feet, could not my train, weighing two hundred
+tons, spring a hundred times as far?" asked he
+triumphantly.  At least, he said that he said this to
+Todhunter.  They went into more careful studies of
+projectiles, to see if it could or could not.
+
+The article on "Gunnery" gave them just one of those
+convenient tables which are the blessing of wise men and
+learned men, and which lead half-trained men to their
+ruin.  They found that for their "range," which was, as
+they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of a
+forty-two pounder was one degree and a third; of a nine-
+pounder, three degrees.  The elevation for a railway
+train, alas! no man had calculated.  But this had
+occurred to both of them from the beginning.  In
+descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little
+map, Joslyn made the more westerly X, they were more than
+eleven hundred feet above the spot where he had made his
+second, or easterly X.  All this descent was to the
+advantage of the experiment.  A gunner would have said
+that the first X "commanded" the second X, and that a
+battery there would inevitably silence a battery at the
+point below.
+
+"We need not figure on it," said Todhunter, as Mrs.
+Joslyn called them in to supper.  "If we did, we
+should make a mistake.  Give me your papers.  When I go
+up, Monday night, I'll give them to my brother Bill.  I
+shall pass him at Faber's Mills.  He has studied all
+these things, of course; and he will like the fun of
+making it out for us."  So they sat down to Mrs. Joslyn's
+waffles; and, but for Bill Todhunter, this story would
+never have been told to me, nor would John Joslyn and
+"this woman" ever have gone to Australia.
+
+But Bill Todhunter was one of those acute men of whom
+the new civilization of this country is raising thousands
+with every year; who, in the midst of hard hand-work, and
+a daily duty which to collegians and to the ignorant men
+among their professors seems repulsive, carry on careful
+scientific study, read the best results of the latest
+inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of
+reference, never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco,
+never waste an hour at a circus or a ball, but make their
+wives happy by sitting all the evening, "figuring," one
+side of the table, while the wife is hemming napkins on
+the other.  All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted,
+he steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people
+wonder, who forget that for two centuries and a half the
+foresighted men and women of this country have been
+building up, in the face of the Devil of Selfishness on
+the one hand, and of the Pope of Rome on the other, a
+system of popular education, improving every hour.
+
+At this moment Bill Todhunter was foreman of Repair
+Section No. II on the "Great Alleghanian,"--a position
+which needed a man of first-rate promptness, of great
+resource, of good education in engineering.  Such a man
+had the "Great Alleghanian" found in him, by good luck;
+and they had promoted him to their hardest-worked and
+best-paid section,--the section on which, as it happened,
+was this Chamoguin run, and the long bend which I have
+described, by which the road "headed" that stream.
+
+The younger Todhunter did meet his brother at Faber's
+Mills, where the repair-train had hauled out of the way
+of the express, and where the express took wood.  The
+brothers always looked for each other on such occasions;
+and Bill promised to examine the paper which Joslyn had
+carefully written out, and which his brother brought to
+him.
+
+I have never repeated in detail the mass of
+calculations which Bill Todhunter made on the suggestion
+thus given to him.  If I had, I would not repeat them
+here, for a reason which has been suggested already.  He
+became fascinated with the problem presented to him.
+Stated in the language of the craft, it was this:
+
+Given a moving body, with a velocity eight thousand
+eight hundred feet in a minute, what should be its
+elevation that it may fall eleven hundred feet in the
+transit of five-eighths of a mile?"  He had not only
+to work up the parabola, comparatively simple, but he had
+to allow for the resistance of the air, on the
+supposition of a calm, according to the really admirable
+formulas of Robins and Coulomb, which were the best be
+had access to.  Joslyn brought me, one day, a letter from
+Bill Todhunter, which shows how carefully he went into
+this intricate inquiry.
+
+Unfortunately for them all, it took possession of
+this spirited and accomplished young man.  You see, he
+not only had the mathematical ability for the calculation
+of the fatal curve, but, as had been ordered without any
+effort of his, he was in precisely the situation of the
+whole world for trying in practice his own great
+experiment.  At each of the two X X of Joslyn's map, the
+company had, as it happened, switches for repair-trains
+or wood-trains.  Had it not, Bill Todhunter had ample
+power to make them.
+
+For the "experiment," all that was necessary was,
+that under the pretext of re-adjusting these switches, he
+should lay out that at the upper X so that it should run,
+on the exact grade which he required, to the western edge
+of the ravine, in a line which should be the direct
+continuation of the long, straight run with which the
+little map begins.
+
+An engine, then, running down that grade at the
+immense rapidity practicable there, would take the switch
+with its full speed, would fly the ravine at precisely
+the proper slopes, and, if the switch had been
+rightly aligned, would land on the similar switch at the
+lower X.  It would come down exactly right on the track,
+as you sit precisely on a chair when you know exactly how
+high it is.
+
+"If."  And why should it not be rightly aligned, if
+Bill Todhunter himself aligned it?  This he was well
+disposed to do.  He also would align the lower switch,
+that at the lower X, that it might receive into its
+willing embrace the engine on its arrival.
+
+When the bold engineer had conceived this plan, it
+was he who pushed the others on to it, not they who urged
+him.  They were at work on their daily duty, sometimes
+did not meet each other for a day or two.  Bill Todhunter
+did not see them more than once in a fortnight.  But
+whenever they did meet, the thing seemed to be taken more
+and more for granted.  At last Joslyn observed one day,
+as he ran down, that there was a large working-party at
+the switch above Drums, and he could see Bill Todhunter,
+in his broad sombrero, directing them all.  Joslyn was
+not surprised, somehow, when he came to the lower switch,
+to find another working-party there.  The next time they
+all three met, Bill Todhunter told them that all was
+ready if they were.  He said that he had left a few
+birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear
+some nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be
+frightened, and "blow" about the switch.  But he said
+that any night when the others were ready to make
+the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the next
+Wednesday, and, if there was no wind, he hoped they would
+do it then.
+
+"You know," said poor Joslyn, describing it to me, "I
+should never have done it alone; August would never have
+done it alone; no, I do not think that Bill Todhunter
+himself would have done it alone.  But our heads were
+full of it.  We had thought of it and thought of it till
+we did not think of much else; and here was everything
+ready, and neither of us was afraid, and neither of us
+chose to have the others think he was afraid.  I did say,
+what was the truth, that I had never meant to try it with
+a train.  I had only thought that we should apply to the
+supe, and that he would get up a little excursion party
+of gentlemen,--editors, you know, and stockholders,--who
+would like to do it together, and that I should have the
+pleasure and honor of taking them over.  But Todhunter
+poohed at that.  He said all the calculations were made
+for the inertia of a full train, that that was what the
+switch was graded for, and that everything would have to
+be altered if any part of the plan were altered.
+Besides, he said the superintendent would never agree,
+that he would insist on consulting the board and the
+chief engineer, and that they would fiddle over it till
+Christmas.
+
+"`No,' said Bill, `next Wednesday, or never!  If you
+will not do it then, I will put the tracks back
+again.'  August Todhunter said nothing; but I knew he
+would do what we agreed to, and he did.
+
+"So at last I said I would jump it on Wednesday
+night, if the night was fine.  But I had just as lief own
+to you that I hoped it would not be fine.  Todhunter--
+Bill Todhunter, I mean--was to leave the switch open
+after the freight had passed, and to drive up to the
+Widow Jones's Cross Road.  There he would have a lantern,
+and I would stop and take him up.  He had a right to stop
+us, as chief of repairs.  Then we should have seven miles
+down-grade to get up our speed, and then--we should see!
+
+"Mr. Ingham, I might have spared myself the hoping
+for foul weather.  It was the finest moonlight night that
+you ever knew in October.  And if Bill Todhunter had
+weighed that train himself, he could not have been better
+pleased,--one baggage-car, one smoking-car, two regular
+first-class, and two palaces: she run just as steady as
+an old cow!  We came to the Widow Jones's, square on
+time; and there was Bill's lantern waving.  I slowed the
+train: he jumped on the tender without stopping it.  I
+`up brakes' again, and then I told Flanagan, my fireman,
+to go back to the baggage-car, and see if they would lend
+me some tobacco.  You see, we wanted to talk, and we
+didn't want him to see.  `Mr. Todhunter and I will feed
+her till you come back,' says I to Flanagan.  In a
+minute after he had gone, August Todhunter came forward
+on the engine; and, I tell you, she did fly!
+
+"`Not too fast,' said Bill, `not too fast: too fast
+is as bad as too slow.'
+
+"`Never you fear me,' says I.  `I guess I know this
+road and this engine.  Take out your watch, and time the
+mile-posts,' says I; and he timed them.  `Thirty-eight
+seconds,' says he; `thirty-seven and a half, thirty-six,
+thirty-six, thirty-six,'--three times thirty-six, as we
+passed the posts, just as regular as an old clock!  And
+then we came right on the mile-post you know at Old
+Flander's.  `Thirty-six,' says Bill again.  And then she
+took the switch,--I can hear that switch-rod ring under
+us now Mr. Ingham,--and then--we were clear!
+
+"Wasn't it grand?  The range was a little bit up,
+you see, at first; but it seemed as if we were flying
+just straight across.  All the rattle of the rail
+stopped, you know, though the pistons worked just as true
+as ever; neither of us said one word, you know; and she
+just flew--well, as you see a hawk fly sometimes, when he
+pounces, you know, only she flew so straight and true!
+I think you may have dreamed of such things.  I have; and
+now,--now I dream it very often.  It was not half a
+minute, you know, but it seemed a good long time.  I said
+nothing and they said nothing; only Bill just squeezed my
+hand.  And just as I knew we must be half over,--for I
+could see by the star I was watching ahead that we
+were not going up, but were falling again,--do you think
+the rope by my side tightened quick, and the old bell on
+the engine gave one savage bang, turned right over as far
+as the catch would let it, and stuck where it turned!
+Just that one sound, everything else was still; and then
+she landed on the rails, perhaps seventy feet inside the
+ravine, took the rails as true and sweet as you ever saw
+a ship take the water, hardly touched them, you know,
+skimmed--well, as I have seen a swallow skim on the sea;
+the prettiest, well, the tenderest touch, Mr. Ingham,
+that ever I did see!  And I could just hear the
+connecting rods tighten the least bit in the world behind
+me, and we went right on.
+
+"We just looked at each other in the faces, and we
+could not speak; no, I do not believe we spoke for three
+quarters of a minute.  Then August said, `Was not that
+grand?  Will they let us do it always, Bill?'  But we
+could not talk then.  Flanagan came back with the
+tobacco, and I had just the wit to ask him why he had
+been gone so long.  Poor fellow! he was frightened enough
+when we pulled up at Clayville, and he thought it was
+Drums.  Drums, you see, was way up the bend, a dozen
+miles above Clayville.  Poor Flanagan thought we must
+have passed there while he was skylarking in the baggage-
+car, and that he had not minded it.  We never stopped at
+Drums unless we had passengers, or they.  It was what
+we call a flag-station.  So I blew Flanagan up, and
+told him he was gone too long.
+
+"Well, sir, at Clayville we did stop,--always stopped
+there for wood.  August Todhunter, he was the palace
+conductor; he went back to look to his passengers.  Bill
+stayed with me.  But in a minute August came running
+back, and called me off the engine.  He led me forward,
+where it was dark; but I could see, as we went, that
+something was to pay.  The minute we were alone he
+says,--
+
+"`John, we've lost the rear palace.'
+
+"`Don't fool me, August,' says I.
+
+"`No fooling, John,' says he.  `The shackle parted.
+The cord parted, and is flying loose behind now.  If you
+want to see, come and count the cars.  The "General
+Fremont" is here all right; but I tell you the "James
+Buchanan" is at the bottom of the Chamoguin Creek.'
+
+"I walked back to the other end of the platform, as
+fast as I could go and not be minded.  Todhunter was
+there before me, tying up the loose end of the bell-cord.
+There was a bit of the broken end of the shackle twisted
+in with the bolt.  I pulled the bolt and threw the iron
+into the swamp far as I could fling her.  Then I nodded
+to Todhunter and walked forward just as that old goose at
+Clayville had got his trousers on, so he could come out,
+and ask me if we were not ahead of time.  I tell you,
+sir, I did not stop to talk with him.  I just rang `All
+aboard!' and started her again; and this time I run
+slow enough to save the time before we came down to
+Steuben.  We were on time, all right, there."
+
+Here poor Joslyn stopped a while in his story; and I
+could see that he was so wrought up with excitement that
+I had better not interrupt, either with questions or with
+sympathy.  He rallied in a minute or two, and said,--
+
+"I thought--we all thought--that there would be a
+despatch somewhere waiting us.  But no; all was as
+regular as the clock.  One palace more or less,--what did
+they know, and what did they care?  So daylight came.  We
+could not say a word, you know, with Flanagan there; and
+we only stopped, you know, a minute or two every hour;
+and just then was when August Todhunter had to be with
+his passengers, you know.  Was not I glad when we came
+into Pemaquid,--our road ran from Pemaquid across the
+mountains to Eden, you know,--when we came into Pemaquid,
+and nobody had asked any questions?
+
+"I reported my time at the office of the master of
+trains, and I went home.  I tell you, Mr. Ingham, I have
+never seen Pemaquid Station since that day.
+
+"I had done nothing wrong, of course.  I had obeyed
+every order, and minded every signal.  But still I knew
+public opinion might be against me when they heard of the
+loss of the palace.  I did not feel very well about it,
+and I wrote a note to say I was not well enough to take
+my train the next night; and I and Mrs. Joslyn went
+to New York, and I went aboard a Collins steamer as
+fireman; and Mrs. Joslyn, she went as stewardess; and I
+wrote to Pemaquid, and gave up my place.  It was a good
+place, too; but I gave it up, and I left America.
+
+Bill Todhunter, he resigned his place too, that same
+day, though that was a good place.  He is in the Russian
+service now.  He is running their line from Archangel to
+Astrachan; good pay, he says, but lonely.  August would
+not stay in America after his brother left; and he is now
+captain's clerk on the Harkaway steamers between Bangkok
+and Cochbang; good place he says, but hot.  So we are all
+parted.
+
+"And do you know, sir, never one of us ever heard of
+the lost palace!"
+
+Sure enough, under that very curious system of
+responsibility, by which one corporation owns the
+carriages which another corporation uses, nobody in the
+world has to this moment ever missed "The Lost Palace."
+On each connecting line, everybody knew that "she" was
+not there; but no one knew or asked where she was.  The
+descent into the rocky bottom of the Chamouin, more than
+fifteen hundred feet below the line of flight, had of
+course been  rapid,--slow at first, but in the end rapid.
+In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen
+feet; in the second, sixty-four; in the third, one
+hundred and forty-four; in the fourth, two hundred and
+fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so that
+it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its
+fall, that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred
+feet in a second, the falling palace, with its
+unconscious passengers, fell upon the rocks at the bottom
+of the Chamoguin ravine.  In the dead of night, wholly
+without jar or parting, those passengers must have been
+sleeping soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any
+calculation of human probability, that any one of them
+can have been waked an instant before the complete
+destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its
+fall upon the bed of the stream.  To them the accident,
+if it is fair to call it so, must have been wholly free
+from pain.
+
+The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it,
+are such that I suppose that even the most adventurous
+huntsman never finds his way there.  On the only occasion
+when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne he expressed a desire to
+descend there from one of his balloons, to learn whether
+the inhabitants of "The Lost Palace" might not still
+survive, and be living in a happy republican colony
+there,--a place without railroads, without telegrams,
+without mails, and certainly without palaces.  But at the
+moment when these sheets go to press, no account of such
+an adventure has appeared from his rapid pen.
+
+
+
+9 LINWOOD STREET
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+A gray morning, the deck wet, the iron all beaded with
+frost, all the longshoremen in heavy pea-jackets or
+cardigans, the whole ship in a bustle, and the favored
+first-class passengers just leaving.
+
+One sad-looking Irish girl stands with her knit hood
+already spotted with the rime, and you cannot tell
+whether those are tears which hang from her black
+eyelashes or whether the fog is beginning to freeze
+there.  What you see is that the poor thing looks right
+and left and up the pier and down the pier, and that in
+the whole crowd--they all seem so selfish--she sees
+nobody.  Hundreds of people going and coming, pushing and
+hauling, and Nora's big brother is not there, as he
+promised to be and should be.
+
+Mrs. Ohstrom, the motherly Swedish woman, who has
+four children and ten tin cups and a great bed and five
+trunks and a fatuous, feckless husband makes time,
+between cousins and uncles and custom-house men and
+sharpers, to run up every now and then to say that Nora
+must not cry, that she must be easy, that she has spoken
+to the master and the master has said they are three
+hours earlier than they were expected.  And all this
+was so kindly meant and so kindly said that poor Nora
+brushed the tears away, if they were tears, and thanked
+her, though she did not understand one word that dear
+Mrs. Ohstrom said to her.  What is language, or what are
+words, after all?
+
+And the bright-buttoned, daintily dressed little
+ship's doctor, whom poor Nora hardly knew in his shore
+finery,--he made time to stop and tell her that the ship
+was too early, and that she must not worry.  Father, was
+it, she was waiting for?  "Oh, brother!  Oh, he will be
+sure to be here!  Better sit down.  Here is a chair.
+Don't cry.  I am afraid you had no breakfast.  Take this
+orange.  It will cheer you up.  I shall see you again."
+
+Alas! the little doctor was swept away and forgot
+Nora for a week, and she "was left lamenting."
+
+For one hour went by, and two, and three.  The
+Swedish woman went, and the doctor went, and the girl
+could see the captain go, and the mate that gave them
+their orders every morning.  The custom-house people
+began to go.  The cabs and other carriages for the gentry
+had gone long before.
+
+And poor Nora was left lamenting.
+
+Then was it that that queer Salvation Army girl, with
+a coal-scuttle for a bonnet, came up again.  She had
+smiled pleasantly two or three times before, and had
+asked Nora to eat a bun.  Poor Nora broke down and
+cried heartily this time.  But the other was patient and
+kind, and said just what the others had said.  Only she
+did not go away.  And she had the sense to ask if Nora
+knew where the brother lived.
+
+"Why, of course I do, miss.  See, here is the
+paper."
+
+And the little soldier lass read it:  "99 Linwood
+Street, Boston."
+
+"My poor child, what a pity you did not let us see it
+before!"
+
+Alas and alas!  Nora's box was of the biggest.  But
+the army lass flinched at nothing.
+
+An immense wagon, with two giant horses, loaded with
+the most extraordinary chests which have been seen since
+the days of the Vikings.  Piled on the top were many
+feather-beds, and on the top of the feather-beds a
+Scandinavian matron.  With Mike, the good-natured
+teamster, who was at once captain and pilot of this
+craft, the army lass had easily made her treaty, when he
+was told the story.  He was to carry Nora and her outfit
+to the Linwood Street house after he had taken these
+Swedes to theirs.  "And indade it will not be farr, miss.
+There 's a shorrt cut behind Egan's, if indade he did not
+put up a tinimint house since I was that way."  And with
+new explanations to Nora that all was right, that indeed
+it was better this way than it would have been had her
+brother been called from his work, she was lifted,
+without much consent of her own, to the driver's seat,
+and her precious "box" was so placed that she could
+rest her little feet upon it.
+
+Nora had proudly confided to the friendly lass the
+assurance that she had money, had even shown a crisp $2
+bill which had been sent to her for exigencies.
+
+But when the lass made the contract with Mike
+Dermott, the good fellow said he should take Nora and her
+box for the love of County Cork.  "Indade, indade, I
+don't take money from the like of her."
+
+And so they started, with the Swedish men walking on
+one side of the cart with their rifles, keeping a good
+lookout for buffaloes and red Indians and grizzly bears,
+as men landing in a new country which they were to
+civilize.  More sailing for there was the ferry to cross
+to old Boston.  Much waiting, for there was a broken-down
+coal-wagon in Salutation Alley.  Long conference between
+Nora and Mike, in which  he did all the talking and she
+all the listening, as to home rule and Mr. McCarthy, and
+what O'Brien thought of this, and what Cunniff thought of
+that.  Then an occasional question came in Swedish from
+the matron above their heads, and was followed by a reply
+in Celtic English from Mike, each wholly ignorant of the
+views or wishes of the others.  And occasionally the
+escort of riflemen, after some particular attack of
+chaff, in words which they fortunately did not
+understand, looked up to their matron, controller, and
+director, exchanged words with her, and then studied
+the pavement again for tracks of buffalo.  A long hour of
+all this, the stone and brick of the city giving way to
+green trees between the houses as they come to
+Dorchester.
+
+Poor Nora looks right and looks left, hoping to meet
+her big brother.  She begins to think she shall remember
+him.  Everybody else looks so different from Fermoy that
+he must look like home.
+
+But there is no brother.
+
+There is at last a joyful cry as the Swedish matron
+and the riflemen recognize familiar faces.  And Mike
+smiles gladly, and brings round the stout bays with a
+twitch, so that the end of the cart comes square to the
+sidewalk.  Somebody produces a step-ladder, and the
+Swedish matron, with her bird-cage in her hand, descends
+in triumph.  Much kissing, much shaking of hands, much
+thanking of God, more or less reverent.  Then the cords
+are cut, beds flung down, the giant boxes lifted, the
+sons of Anak only know how.  The money covenanted for is
+produced and paid, and Mike mounts lightly to Nora's
+side.
+
+"And now, Nora, my child, wherr is the paper?  For in
+two minutes we 'll soon be therr, now that this rubbish
+is landed."
+
+And he read on the precious paper, "John McLaughlin,
+99 Linwood Street."
+
+Strange to say, the paper said just what it had said
+two hours before.
+
+"And now, my dear child, we will be therr in ten
+minutes, if only we can cross back of Egan's."
+
+And although they could not cross back of Egan's, for
+Egan had put up a "tinimint" house since Mike had passed
+that way, yet in ten minutes Linwood Street had been
+found.  No. 99 at last revealed itself, between Nos. 7
+and 2,--a great six-story wooden tinder-box, with
+clothes-lines mysterious behind, open doors in front,
+long passages running through, three doors on each side
+of a passage, and the wondering heads of eleven women who
+belonged to five different races and spoke in six
+different languages appearing from their eleven windows,
+as Mike and Nora and the two bays all stopped at one and
+the same moment at the door.
+
+Mike was already anxious about his time, for he was
+to be at the custom-house an hour away or more at eleven
+sharp.  But he selected a certain Widow Flynn from the
+eleven white-capped women; he explained to her briefly
+that John McLaughlin was to be found; he told Nora for
+the thirty-seventh time that all was right and that she
+must not cry; he looked at his watch again, rather
+anxiously, mounted his box, and drove swiftly away.
+
+He was the one thread which bound Nora to this world.
+And this thread broke before her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Flynn affected to be cheerful.  But she was not
+cheerful.  Mrs. Flynn was a prominent person in her
+sodality.  And well she knew that if any John
+McLaughlin in those parts were expecting any sister from
+home, she should know him and where he lived.  Well she
+knew, also, that John McLaughlin, the mason, was born in
+Glasgow; that John McLaughlin, who is on the city work,
+had all his family around him, and, most distinct of all,
+she knew that no McLaughlin, sisterless or many-sistered,
+lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were
+99 Linwood Street.  Into her own cell of that beehive,
+however, she took poor, sad, desolate Nora.  Into the
+hallway she bade the loafing neighbor boys bring Nora's
+trunk; in a language Nora could hardly understand she
+explained to her that all would be well as soon as the
+policeman passed by.  She sent Mary Murphy, who happened
+to be at home from school, for a pint of milk, and so
+compelled Nora to drink a cup of tea and to eat a biscuit
+and a dropped egg, while they waited for the policeman.
+
+Of course he knew of seven John McLaughlins.  He even
+went to the drug-store and looked in the Boston Directory
+to find that there were there the names of sixty-one
+more.  But not one of them lived in Linwood Street, as
+they all knew already.  All the same Nora was charged not
+to cry, to drink more tea and eat more bread and butter.
+The "cop" said he would look in on three of the Johns
+whom he knew, and intelligent boys now returning from
+school were sent to the homes of the other four to
+interrogate them as to any expected sister.  Within an
+hour, now nearly one o'clock, answers were received
+from all the seven.  No one of them expected chick or
+child from Fermoy.
+
+But the "cop" had a suggestion to make.  His pocket
+list of names of streets revealed another Linwood
+Street--in Roxbury; not this one in Dorchester.  Be it
+known to unlearned readers, who in snug shelter in
+Montana follow along this little tale, that Roxbury and
+Dorchester are both parts of that large municipality
+called Boston.  Though no John McLaughlin was in the
+directory for 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, was not that
+the objective?  Poor Nora was questioned as to Roxbury.
+She was sure she never heard of it.
+
+But the clue was too good to be lost, and the
+authority of the friendly "cop" was too great to be
+resisted.  He telephoned to the central office that Nora
+McLaughlin, just from Ireland, had been found, in a
+fashion, but that no one knew where to put her.  Then he
+stopped a milkman from Braintree, who delivered afternoon
+milk for invalids.
+
+Was he not going through Roxbury?
+
+Of course he was.
+
+Would he not take this lost child to 99 Linwood Street?
+
+Of course he would.  Milkmen, from their profession,
+have hearts warm toward children.
+
+Well, if he were to take her, he had better take her
+trunk too.
+
+To which illogical proposal the milkman
+acceded--on the afternoon route there is so much
+less milk to take than there is in the morning.
+
+So Nora was lifted into the milk-wagon.  In tears she
+kissed good Mrs. Flynn.  The boys and girls assembled to
+bid her good-by, and even she had a hope for a few
+moments that her troubles were at an end.
+
+At 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, they were preparing
+for the Review Club.
+
+The Review Club met once a fortnight at half-past two
+o'clock at the house of one or another of the members.
+They first arranged the little details of the business.
+Then the hostess read, or made some one read, the scraps
+which seemed most worthy in the reviews and magazines of
+the last issues, and at four the husbands and brothers
+and neighbors generally dropped in, and there was
+afternoon tea.
+
+"You are sure you have cream enough, Ellen?"
+
+"Oh, yes, mum."
+
+"All kinds of tea, you know, that which the Chinese
+gentlemen sent, and be sure of the chocolate for Mrs.
+Bunce."
+
+"Indeed yes, mum."
+
+"And let me know just before you bring up the hot
+water."  Doorbell rings.  "There is Mrs. Walter now!"
+
+No, it wasn't Mrs. Walter.  She came three minutes
+after.  But before she came, Howells, the milkman, had
+lifted Nora from her seat.  As the snow fell fast on the
+doorsteps, he carried her carefully up to the door,
+and even by the time Ellen answered the bell he had the
+heavy chest, dragging it over the snow by the stout rope
+at one end.
+
+Ellen was amazed to find this group instead of Mrs.
+Walter.  She called her mistress, who heard Howells's
+realistic story with amazement, not to say amusement.
+
+"You poor dear child!" she cried at once.  "Come in
+where it is dry!  John McLaughlin?  No, indeed!  Who can
+John McLaughlin be?  Ellen, what is Mike's last name?"
+
+Mike was the choreman, who made the furnace fire and
+kept the sidewalk.
+
+"Mike's name, mum? I don't know, mum.  Mary will
+know, mum."
+
+And for the moment Ellen disappeared to find Mary.
+
+"Never mind, never mind.  Come in, you poor child.
+You are very good to bring her, Mr. Howells, very good
+indeed.  We will take care of her.  Is it going to
+storm?"
+
+Mr. Howells thought it was going to storm, and turned
+to go away.  At that moment Mrs. Walter arrived, the
+first comer of the Review Club.  And Nora's new hostess
+had to turn to her guests, while Ellen in the last cares
+for the afternoon table had to comfort Nora by spasms.
+It was left for Margaret the chambermaid to pump out--or
+to screw out, as you choose--the details of the story
+from the poor frightened waif, who seemed more astray
+than ever.
+
+John McLaughlin?  No.  Nobody knew anything about
+him.  The last choreman was named McManus, but he went to
+Ottawa three years ago!
+
+And while the different facts and doubts were
+canvassed in the kitchen, upstairs they settled the
+Bulgarian question, the origin of the natives of
+Tasmania, and the last questions about realism.
+
+Only the mind of the lady of the house returned again
+and again to questions as to the present residence of
+John McLaughlin.
+
+For in spite of the gathering snow and the prospect
+of more, the members of the Review Club had followed fast
+on Mrs. Walters and gathered in full force.
+
+The hostess, though somewhat preoccupied, was
+courteous and ready.
+
+Only the functions of the club, as they went forward,
+would be occasionally interrupted.  Thus she would read
+aloud "as in her private duty bound"--
+
+"`The peasantry were excited, but were held in check
+by promises from Stambuloff.  The emissaries of the
+Czar--'
+
+"Mrs. Goodspeed, would you mind reading on?  Here is
+the place.  I see my postman pass the window."
+
+And so, moving quickly to the front door, she
+interviewed the faithful Harrington, dressed, heaven
+knows why, in Confederate uniform of gray.  For
+Harrington had served his four years on the loyal side.
+Four times a day did Harrington with his letter-bag
+renew the connection of this household with the world and
+other worlds.
+
+"Dear Mr. Harrington, I thought you could tell us.
+Here is a girl named Nora McLaughlin, and here is her
+trunk, both left at the door by the milkman, and we do
+not know anything about where she belongs."
+
+"Insufficient address?" asked Harrington,
+professionally.
+
+"Exactly.  All she knows is that her brother is named
+John."
+
+"A great many of them are," said Harrington, already
+writing on his memorandum book, and in his memory fixing
+the fact that a large, two-legged living parcel,
+insufficiently addressed, had been left at the wrong door
+for John McLaughlin; also a trunk, too large for delivery
+by the penny post.
+
+"I will tell the other men, and if I was you I would
+send to the police."
+
+"Would you mind telling the first officer you meet?
+I hate to send my girls out."  And so she returned to
+Bulgaria.
+
+But Bulgaria was ended, and Mrs. Conover handed her
+an article on "Antarctic Discovery."  She was again
+reading:--
+
+"Under these circumstances Captain Wilkes, who had
+collected a boatload of stones from the front of the
+glacier," when she gave back the "Forum" to Mrs. Conover.
+"Would you mind going on just a minute? " she said, and
+ran out to meet the icecream man.  So soon as he had
+left his tins she said,--
+
+"Mr. Fridge, would you mind stopping at the Dudley
+School as you go home and telling Miss Lougee that there
+is a lost girl here?" etc.
+
+Good Mr. Fridge was most eager to help, and the
+hostess returned, took the book again and read on with
+"the temperature, as they observed it, was 99 degrees C.;
+but, as the alcohol in their tins was frozen at the
+moment, there seemed reason to suspect the correctness of
+this observation."
+
+And a shiver passed over the Review Club.
+
+Thus far the powers of confusion and error seemed to
+have been triumphant over poor Nora, or such was the
+success of that power who uses these agencies, if the
+reader prefer to personify him.
+
+But the time had come to turn his left flank and to
+attack his forces in the rear, for the postman now took
+the field,--that is to say, Harrington, good fellow,
+finished his third delivery, four good miles and nine-
+tenths of a furlong, snow two inches deep, three, four,
+six, before he was done, and then returned to his branch
+office to report.
+
+"Two-legged parcel; insufficient address; 99 Linwood
+Street!  Jim, what ever come to that letter that went to
+99 Linwood Street with insufficient address six weeks
+ago?"
+
+"Linwood Street?  Insufficient address?  Foreign
+letter?  Why, of course, you know, went back to the
+central office."
+
+"I guess it did," said Harrington, grimly; "so I must
+go there too."
+
+This meant that after Harrington had gone his rounds
+again on delivery route No. 6, four more miles and nine-
+tenths more of a furlong, 313 doorbells and only 73 slit
+boxes, snow now ranging from 6 inches to 12 on the
+sidewalks, and breast-deep where there was a chance for
+drifting, when all this was well done, so that Harrington
+had no more duties to Uncle Sam, he could take Nora
+McLaughlin's work in hand, and thus defeat the prince of
+evil.
+
+To the central office by a horse-car.  Blocked once
+or twice, but well at the office at 7.30 in the evening.
+
+Christmas work heavy, so the whole home staff is on
+duty.  That is well.  Enemy of souls loses one point
+there.
+
+Blind-letter clerks all here.  Insufficient-delivery
+men both here.  Chief of returned bureau here.  All
+summoned to the foreign office as Harrington tells his
+story.  Indexes produced, ledgers, journals, day-books,
+and private passbooks.  John McLaughlin's biography
+followed out on 67 of the different avatars in which his
+personality has been manifested under that name.  False
+trail here--clue breaks there--scent fails here, but at
+last--a joyful cry from Will Search:--
+
+"Here you are!  Insufficient address.  November 1.
+Queenstown letter--`Linwood, to John McLaughlin.  Try
+Dorchester.  Try Roxbury.  Try East Boston.  Try
+Somerville'-- and there it stops, and was not returned."
+
+"Try Somerville!"
+
+In these words great light fell over the eager
+circle.  Not because Somerville is the seat of an insane
+hospital.  No!  But because it is not in the Boston
+Directory.
+
+If you please, Somerville is an independent city, and
+so, unless John McLaughlin worked in Boston, if he lived
+in Somerville, he would not be in the Boston Directory.
+
+Not much!  Somerville has its own seven John
+McLaughlins besides those Boston ones.
+
+"I say, Harry, Tom, Dick--somebody fetch Somerville
+Directory!"
+
+Dick flew and returned with the book.
+
+"Here you be!  `John McLaughlin, laborer, 99 Linwood
+Street!
+
+"Victory!"
+
+Satan's forces tremble, and as the different officers
+return to their desks "even the ranks of Tuscany" in that
+well-bred office "can scarce forbear to cheer."
+
+As for Harrington, he bids good-by, wraps his tartan
+around him, and is out in the snow again.  Where Linwood
+Street is he "knows no more than the dead."  But somebody
+will know.
+
+Somerville car.  Draw of bridge open.  Man falls into
+the river and has to be rescued.  Draw closes.  Snow-
+drift at Margin Street.  Shovels.  Drift open.  Centre of
+Somerville.  Apothecary's shop open.  "Please, where is
+Linwood Street?"
+
+"Take your second left, cross three or four streets,
+turn to the right by the water-pipe, take the third
+right, go down hill by the schoolhouse and take second
+left, and you come out at 11 Linwood Street."
+
+All which Harrington does.  He experiences one
+continual burst of joy that his route does not take him
+through these detours daily.  But his professional
+experience is good for him.  We have no need to describe
+his false turns.  Even aniseed would have been useless in
+that snow.  At last, just as the Somerville bells ring
+for nine o'clock, Harrington also rings triumphant at the
+door of the little five-roomed cottage, where his lantern
+has already revealed the magic number 99.
+
+Ring! as for a gilt-edged special delivery!  Door
+thrown open by a solid man with curly red hair, unshaven
+since Sunday, in his shirtsleeves and with kerosene lamp
+in his hand.
+
+"Are you John McLaughlin?"
+
+"Indade I am; the same."
+
+"And where's your sister Nora?"
+
+The good fellow, who had been stern before, broke
+down.  "And indade I was saying to Ellen it's an awful
+night for 'em all in the gale off the coast in the ship.
+The holy Virgin and the good God take care of 'em!"
+
+"They have taken care of them," said Harrington,
+reverently.  "The ship is safe in dock, and your sister
+Nora is in Roxbury, at 99 Linwood Street!"
+
+And a broad grin lighted his face as he spoke the words.
+
+There was joy in every bed and at every door of the
+five rooms.  Then John hastily donned coat, cardigan, and
+ulster.  He persuaded Harrington to drink a cup of red-
+hot tea which was brewing on the stove.  While the good
+fellow did so, and ate a St. Anne's bun, which Mrs.
+McLaughlin produced in triumph, John was persuading
+Hermann Gross, the expressman next door, to put the gray
+into a light pung he had for special delivery.  By the
+time Harrington went to the door two lanterns were
+flitting about in the snow-piled yard behind the two
+houses.
+
+Harrington assisted in yoking the gray.  In five
+minutes he and John were defying the gale as they sped
+across the silent bridge, bound south to Roxbury.  Poor
+little Nora was asleep in the parlor on the sofa.  She
+had begged and begged that she need not be put to bed,
+and by her side her protector sat reading about the
+antarctic.  But of a sudden Harrington reappeared.
+
+Is it Santa Claus?
+
+Indeed it is!  Beard, hat, coat, all white with snow!
+
+And Santa Claus has come for the best present he will
+deliver that evening!
+
+Dear little Nora is wrapped in sealskins and other
+skins, mauds and astrakhan rugs.  She has a hot brick at
+her feet, and Pompey, the dog, is made to lie over them,
+so John McLaughlin No. 68 takes her in triumph to 99
+Linwood Street.
+
+That was a Christmas to be remembered!  And Christmas
+morning, after church, the Brothers of St. Patrick, which
+was the men's society, and the Sodality of St. Anne's,
+which was the women's, determined on a great Twelfth-
+night feast to celebrate Nora's return.
+
+It was to show "how these brethren love one another."
+
+They proposed to take the rink.  People didn't use
+it for skating in winter as much as in summer.
+
+Nora was to receive, with John McLaughlin and his
+wife to assist.  The other 74 John McLaughlins were to
+act as ushers.
+
+The Salvation Army came first, led by the lass who
+found Michael.
+
+Procession No. 2 was Mike and the teamsters who
+"don't take nothing for such as she."
+
+Third, in special horse-cars, which went through from
+Dorchester to Somerville by a vermilion edict from the
+West End Company, the eleven families of that No. 99.
+They stopped in Roxbury to pick up Ellen and the hostess
+of the Review Club.
+
+Fourth, all the patrolmen who had helped and all who
+tried to help, led by "cop" No. 47.
+
+Fifth, all the school children who had told the story
+and had made inquiries.
+
+Sixth, the man who made the Somerville Directory.
+
+Seventh and last, in two barouches, Harrington and
+the chiefs of staff at the general post-office.  And the
+boys asked Father McElroy to make a speech to all just
+before the dancing began.
+
+And he said:  "The lost sheep was never lost.  She
+thought she was lost in the wilderness, but she was at
+home, for she was met by the Christmas greeting of the
+world into which the dear Lord was born!"
+
+
+NOTE.--It may interest the reader to know that the
+important part of this story is true.
+
+
+
+IDEALS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN ACCOUNT
+
+I have a little circle of friends, among all my other
+friends quite distinct, though of them.  They are four
+men and four women; the husbands more in love with
+their wives than on the days when they married them,
+and the wives with their husbands.  These people live
+for the good of the world, to a fair extent, but much,
+very much, of their lives is passed together.  Perhaps
+the happiest period they ever knew was when, in
+different subordinate capacities, they were all on the
+staff of the same magazine.  Then they met daily at the
+office, lunched together perforce, and could make
+arrangements for the evening.  But, to say true, things
+differ little with them now, though that magazine long
+since took wings and went to a better world.
+
+Their names are Felix and Fausta Carter, Frederic and
+Mary Ingham, George and Anna Haliburton, George and Julia
+Hackmatack.
+
+I get the children's names wrong to their faces--
+except that in general their name is Legion, for they are
+many--so I will not attempt them here.
+
+These people live in very different houses, with very
+different "advantages," as the world says.  Haliburton
+has grown very rich in the rag and paper business, rich
+enough to discard rag money and believe in gold.  He even
+spits at silver, which I am glad to get when I can.
+Frederic Ingham will never be rich.  His regular income
+consists in his half-pay as a retired brevet officer in
+the patriot service of Garibaldi of the year 1859.  For
+the rest, he invested his money in the Brick Moon, and,
+as I need hardly add, insured his life in the late
+Continental Insurance Company.  But the Inghams find just
+as much in life as the Haliburtons, and Anna Haliburton
+consults Polly Ingham about the shade of a flounce just
+as readily and as eagerly as Polly consults her about the
+children's dentistry.  They are all very fond of each
+other.
+
+They get a great deal out of life, these eight,
+partly because they are so closely allied together.  Just
+two whist-parties, you see; or, if they go to ride, they
+just fill two carriages.  Eight is such a good number--
+makes such a nice dinner-party.  Perhaps they see a
+little too much of each other.  That we shall never know.
+
+They got a great deal of life, and yet they were not
+satisfied.  They found that out very queerly.  They have
+not many standards.  Ingham does take the "Spectator;"
+Hackmatack condescends to read the "Evening Post;"
+Haliburton, who used to be in the insurance business, and
+keeps his old extravagant habits, reads the "Advertiser"
+and the "Transcript;" all of them have the
+"Christian Union," and all of them buy "Harper's Weekly."
+Every separate week of their lives they buy of the boys,
+instead of subscribing; they think they may not want the
+next number, but they always do.  Not one of them has
+read the "Nation" for five years, for they like to keep
+good-natured.  In fact, they do not take much stock in
+the general organs of opinion, and the standard books you
+find about are scandalously few.  The Bible, Shakespeare,
+John Milton; Polly has Dante; Julia has "Barclay's
+Apology," with ever so many marks in it; one George has
+"Owen Felltham," and the other is strong on Marcus
+Aurelius.  Well, no matter about these separate things;
+the uniform books besides those I named, in different
+editions but in every house, are the "Arabian Nights" and
+"Robinson Crusoe."  Hackmatack has the priceless first
+edition.  Haliburton has Grandville's (the English
+Grandville).  Ingham has a proof copy of the Stothard.
+Carter has a good copy of the Cruikshank.
+
+If you ask me which of these four I should like best,
+I should say as the Laureate did when they gave him his
+choice of two kinds of cake, "Both's as good as one."
+
+Well, "Robinson Crusoe" being their lay gospel and
+creed, not to say epistle and psalter, it was not queer
+that one night, when the election had gone awfully, and
+the men were as blue as that little porcelain Osiris of
+mine yonder, who is so blue that he cannot stand on
+his feet--it was not queer, I say, that they turned
+instinctively to "Robinson Crusoe" for relief.
+
+Now, Robinson Crusoe was once in a very bad box
+indeed, and to comfort himself as well as he could, and
+to set the good against the evil, that he might have
+something to distinguish his case from worse, he stated
+impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts and
+miseries, thus:--
+
+
+           EVIL.                           GOOD.
+
+I am cast upon a horrible           But I am alive, and not
+desolate island, void of all       drowned as all my hope of
+recovery.                          ship's company were.
+
+I am singled out and separated,     But I am singled out,
+as it were, from all the world, to  too, from the ship's crew
+be miserable.                       to be spared from death.
+
+
+
+And so the debtor and creditor account goes on.
+
+Julia Hackmatack read this aloud to them--the whole
+of it--and they agreed, as Robinson says, not so much for
+their posterity as to keep their thoughts from daily
+poring on their trials, that for each family they would
+make such a balance.  What might not come of it?  Perhaps
+a partial nay, perhaps a perfect cure!
+
+So they determined that on the instant they would go
+to work, and two in the smoking-room, two in the dining-
+room, two in George's study, and two in the parlor, they
+should in the next halfhour make up their lists of good
+and evil.  Here are the results:--
+
+FREDERIC AND MARY INGHAM.
+
+           GOOD.                           EVIL.
+
+We have three nice boys        But the door-bell rings all
+and three nice girls.          the time.
+
+We have enough to eat,         But the coal bill is awful,
+drink, and wear.               and the Larrabee furnace has
+                               given out.  The firm that made
+                               it has gone up, and no castings
+                               can be got to mend it.
+
+We have more books than        But our friends borrow our
+we can read, and do not care   books, and only return odd
+to read many newspapers.       volumes.
+
+
+We have many very dear         But we are behindhand 143
+friends--enough.               names on our lists of calls.
+
+We have health in our          But the children may be
+family.                        sick.  The Lowndes children are.
+
+We seem to be of some          But Mrs. Hogarth has left
+use in the world.              Fred $200 for the poor, and he
+                               is afraid he shall spend it wrong.
+
+                               The country has gone to the
+                               dogs.
+
+
+                 GEORGE AND ANNA HALIBURTON.
+
+           GOOD.                           EVIL.
+
+We have a nice home in         You cannot give a cup of
+town, and one in Sharon, and   coffee to a beggar but he sends
+a sea-shore place at Little    five hundred million tramps to
+Gau, and we have friends       the door.
+enough to fill them.
+
+We have some of the nicest     A great many people call
+children in the world.         whose names we have forgotten.
+
+We have enough to do, and      We have to give a party to
+not too much.                  all our acquaintance every year,
+                               which is horrid.
+
+Business is good enough,       We do not do anything we
+though complaining.            want to do, and we do a great
+                               deal that we do not want to do.
+                               George had added, "And there
+                               is no health in us."  But Anna
+                               marked that out as wicked.
+
+The children are all well.     People vote as if they were
+                               possessed.
+
+
+                    GEORGE AND JULIA HACKMATACK
+
+           GOOD.                           EVIL.
+
+We have eight splendid         The plumbers' work always
+children.                      gives way at the wrong time,
+                               and the plumbers' bills are awful.
+
+We have money enough,          The furnace will not heat the
+though we know what to do      house unless the wind is at the
+with more.                     southwest.  None of the chimneys
+                               draw well.
+
+George will not have to go     We hate the Kydd School.
+to Bahia next year.            The master drinks and the first
+                               assistant lies.  But we live in
+                               that district; so the boys have
+                               to go there.
+
+Tom got through with scarlet   Lucy said "commence" yesterday,
+fever without being deaf.      Jane said "gent," Walter said
+                               "Bully for you," and Alice said
+                               "nobby."  And what is coming we
+                               do not know.
+
+Dr. Witherspoon has accepted   How long any man can live
+the presidency of Tiberias     under this government I do
+College in Alaska.             not know.
+
+
+
+                    FELIX AND FAUSTA CARTER
+
+           GOOD.                           EVIL.
+
+Governments are stronger           But as the children grow
+every year.  Money goes farther    bigger, their clothes cost
+than it did.                       more.
+
+All the boys are good and          But the children get no
+well.  So are the girls.           good at school, except
+They are splendid children.        measles, whooping-cough, and
+                                   scarlet fever.
+
+Old Mr. Porter died last           But the gas-meter lies;
+week, and Felix gets promotion     and the gas company wants to
+in the office.                     have it lie.
+
+The lost volume of Fichte          But the Athenaeum is always
+was left on the door-step last    calling in its books to examine
+night by some one who rang the    them, and making us say where
+bell and ran away.  It is rather   Mr. Fred Curtis's books are.
+wet, but when it is bound will     As if we cared.
+look nicely.
+
+The mistress of the Arbella        But our drains smell
+School is dead.                    awfully, though the Board of
+                                   Health says they do not.
+
+                                   We have to go to evening
+                                   parties among our friends, or
+                                   seem stuck up.  We hate to go,
+                                   and wish there were none.  We
+                                   had rather come here.
+
+                                    The increasing
+                                  worthlessness of the franchise.
+
+
+With these papers they gathered all in the study just
+as the clock struck nine, and, in good old Boston
+fashion, Silas was bringing in some hot oysters.  They
+ate the oysters, which were good--trust Anna for that--
+and then the women read the papers, while the smoking men
+smoked and pondered.
+
+They all recognized the gravity of the situation.
+Still, as Julia said, they felt better already.  It was
+like having the doctor come: you knew the worst, and
+could make ready for it.
+
+They did not discuss the statements much.  They had
+discussed them too much in severalty.  They did agree
+that they should be left to Felix to report upon the next
+evening.  He was, so to speak, to post them, to strike
+out from each side the quantities which could be
+eliminated, and leave the equations so simplified that
+the eight might determine what they should do about it--
+indeed, what they could do about it.
+
+The visitors put on their "things"--how strange that
+that word should once have meant "parliaments!"--kissed
+good-by so far as they were womanly, and went home.
+George Haliburton screwed down the gas, and they went to bed.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+STRIKING THE BALANCE
+
+The next night they went to see Warren at the Museum.
+That probably helped them.  After the play they met by
+appointment at the Carters'.  Felix read his
+
+REPORT.
+
+1.  NUMBER.--There are twenty-one reasons for
+congratulation, twenty-four for regret.  But of the
+twenty-four, four are the same; namely, the cursed
+political prospect of the country.  Counting that as one
+only, there are twenty-one on each side.
+
+2.  EVIL.--The twenty-one evils may be classified
+thus: political, 1; social, 12; physical, 5; terrors, 3.
+
+All the physical evils would be relieved by living in
+a temperate climate, instead of this abomination, which
+is not a climate, to which our ancestors were sold by the
+cupidity of the Dutch.
+
+The political evil would be ended by leaving the
+jurisdiction of the United States.
+
+The social evils, which are a majority of all, would
+be reduced by residence in any place where there were not
+so many people.
+
+The terrors properly belong to all the classes.  In
+a decent climate, in a country not governed by its vices,
+and a community not crowded, the three terrors would be
+materially abated, if not put to an end.
+
+Respectfully submitted,
+
+FELIX CARTER.
+
+
+How they discussed it now!  Talk?  I think so!  They
+all talked awhile, and no one listened.  But they had to
+stop when Phenice brought in the Welsh rare-bit (good
+before bed, but a little indigestible, unless your
+conscience is stainless), and Felix then put in a word.
+
+"Now I tell you, this is not nonsense.  Why not do
+what Winslow and Standish and those fellows thought they
+were doing when they sailed?  Why not go to a climate
+like France, with milder winters and cooler summers than
+here?  You want some winter, you want some summer."
+
+"I hate centipedes and scorpions," said Anna.
+
+"There's no need of them.  There's a place in Mexico,
+not a hundred miles from the sea, where you can have your
+temperature just as you like."
+
+"Stuff!"
+
+"No, it is not stuff at all," said poor Felix,
+eagerly.  "I do not mean just one spot.  But you live in
+this valley, you know.  If you find it is growing hot,
+you move about a quarter of a mile to another place
+higher up.  If you find that hot, why you have another
+house a little higher.  Don't you see?  Then, when winter
+comes, you move down."
+
+"Are there many people there?" asked Haliburton; "and
+do they make many calls?"
+
+"There are a good many people, but they are a gentle
+set.  They never quarrel.  They are a little too high up
+for the revolutions, and there is something
+tranquillizing about the place; they seldom die,
+none are sick, need no aguardiente, do what the head of
+the village tells them to do--only he never has any
+occasion to tell them.  They never make calls."
+
+"I like that," said Ingham.  That patriarchal system
+is the true system of government."
+
+"Where is this place?" said Anna, incredulously.
+
+"I have been trying to remember all day, but I can't.
+It is in Mexico, I know.  It is on this side of Mexico.
+It tells all about it in an old `Harper'--oh, a good many
+years ago--but I never bound mine; there are always one
+or two missing every year.  I asked Fausta to look for
+it, but she was busy.  I thought," continued poor Felix,
+a little crestfallen, "one of you might remember."
+
+No, nobody remembered; and nobody felt much like
+going to the public library to look, on Carter's rather
+vague indications.  In fact, it was a suggestion of
+Haliburton's that proved more popular.
+
+Haliburton said he had not laid in his coal.  They
+all said the same.  "Now," said he, "the coal of this
+crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if
+you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the
+furnace pots and sweeping the chimneys."
+
+To this they agreed.
+
+"It is now Wednesday.  Let us start Saturday for
+Memphis, take a cheap boat to New Orleans, go thence to
+Vera Cruz by steamer, explore the ground, buy the houses
+if we like, and return by the time we can do without
+fires next spring.  Our board will cost less than it
+would here, for it is there the beef comes from.  And the
+thousand dollars will pay the fares both ways."
+
+The women, with one voice, cried, "And the children?"
+
+"Oh yes," cried the eager adventurer.  "I had
+forgotten the children.  Well, they are all well, are
+they not?"
+
+Yes; all were well.
+
+"Then we will take them with us as far as Yellow
+Springs, in Ohio, and leave them for the fall and winter
+terms at Antioch College.  They will be enough better
+taught than they are at the Kydd School, and they will
+get no scarlet fever.  Nobody is ever sick there.  They
+will be better cared for than my children are when they
+are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles
+nearer to us than if they were here.  The little ones can
+go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy,
+and the oldest can go to college.  How many are there,
+Felix?"
+
+Felix said there were twenty-nine.
+
+"Well," said the arithmetical George, "it is the
+cheapest place I ever knew.  Why, their Seniors get along
+for three hundred dollars a year, and squeeze more out of
+life than I do out of twenty thousand.  The little ones
+won't cost at that rate.  A hundred and fifty dollars for
+twenty-nine children; how much is that, Polly?"
+
+"Forty-three hundred and fifty dollars, of course,"
+said she.
+
+"I thought so.  Well, don't you see, we shall save
+that in wages to these servants we are boarding here, of
+whom there are eleven, who cost us, say, six dollars a
+week; that is, sixty-six dollars for twenty weeks is
+thirteen hundred and twenty dollars.  We won't buy any
+clothes, but live on the old ones, and make the children
+wear their big brothers' and sisters'.  There's a saving
+of thirty-seven hundred dollars for thirty-seven of us.
+Why, we shall make money!  I tell you what, if you'll do
+it, I'll pay all the bills till we come home.  If you
+like, you shall then each pay me three-quarters of your
+last winter's accounts, and I'll charge any difference
+to profit and loss.  But I shall make by the bargain."
+
+The women doubted if they could be ready.  But it
+proved they could.  Still they did not start Saturday;
+they started Monday, in two palace-cars.  They left the
+children, all delighted with the change, at Antioch on
+Wednesday--a little tempted to spend the winter there
+themselves; but, this temptation well resisted, they sped
+on to Mexico.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+FULFILMENT
+
+Such a tranquil three days on the Mississippi, which
+was as an autumn flood, and revealed himself as indeed
+King of Waters!  Such delightful three days in
+hospitable New Orleans!  Might it not be possible to
+tarry even here?  "No," cried the inexorable George.
+"We have put our hand to the plough.  Who will turn
+back?"  Two days of abject wretchedness on the Gulf of
+Mexico.  "Why were we born?  Why did we not die before
+we left solid land?"  And then the light-house at Vera Cruz.
+
+"Lo, land! and all was well."
+
+What a splendid city!  Why had nobody told them of
+this queen on the sea-shore?  Red and white towers,
+cupolas, battlements!  It was all like a story-book.
+When they landed, to be sure, it was not quite so big a
+place as they had fancied from all this show; but for
+this they did not care.  To land--that was enough.  Had
+they landed on a sand-spit, they would have been in
+heaven.  No more swaying to and fro as they lay in bed,
+no more stumbling to and fro as they walked.  They
+refused the amazed Mexicans who wanted them to ride to
+the hotel.  To walk steadily was in itself a luxury.
+
+And then it was not long before the men had selected
+the little caravan of horses and mules which were to
+carry them on their expedition of discovery.  Some valley
+of paradise, where a man could change his climate from
+midwinter to midsummer by a journey of a mile.  Did the
+consul happen to have heard of any such valley?
+
+Had he heard of them?  He had heard of fifty.
+He had not, indeed, heard of much else.  How could
+he help hearing of them?
+
+Could the consul, then, recommend one or two valleys
+which might be for sale?  Or was it, perhaps, impossible
+to buy a foothold in such an Eden?
+
+For sale!  There was nothing in the country, so far
+as the friend knew to whom the consul presented them,
+which was not for sale.  Anywhere in Queretaro; or why
+should they not go to the Baxio?  No; that was too flat
+and too far off.  There were pretty places round Xalapa.
+Oh, plenty of plantations for sale.  But they need not go
+so far.  Anywhere on the rise of Chiquihiti.
+
+Was the friend quite sure that there were no plumbers
+in the regions he named?
+
+"Never a plumber in Mexico."
+
+Any life-insurance men?
+
+"Not one."  The prudent friend did not add, "Risk too high."
+
+Were the public schools graded schools or district schools?
+
+"Not a public school in six provinces."
+
+Would the neighbors be offended if we do not call?
+
+"Cut your throats if you did."
+
+Did the friend think there would be many tramps?
+
+The friend seemed more doubtful here, but suggested
+that the occasional use of a six-shooter reduced the
+number, and gave a certain reputation to the premises
+where it was employed which diminished much tramping
+afterward, and said that the law did not object to this
+method.
+
+They returned to a dinner of fish, for which Vera
+Cruz is celebrated.  "If what the man says be true," said
+Ingham, "we must be very near heaven."
+
+It was now in November.  Oh, the glory of that ride,
+as they left Vera Cruz and through a wilderness of color
+jogged slowly on to their new paradise!
+
+"Through Eden four glad couples took their way."
+
+Higher and higher.  This wonder and that.  Not a blade
+of grass such as they ever saw before, not a chirping
+cricket such as they ever heard before; a hundred
+bright-winged birds, and not one that they had ever
+seen before.  Higher and higher.  Trees, skies, clouds,
+flowers, beasts, birds, insects, all new and all
+lovely.
+
+The final purchase was of one small plantation, with
+a house large enough for a little army, yet without a
+stair.  Oranges, lemons, pomegranates, mangoes, bananas,
+pine-apples, coffee, sugar--what did not ripen in those
+perennial gardens?  Half a mile above there were two
+smaller houses belonging to the same estate; half a mile
+above, another was purchased easily.  This was too cold
+to stay in in November, but in June and July and August
+the temperature would be sixty-six, without change.
+
+They sent back the mules.  A telegram from Vera Cruz
+brought from Boston, in fifteen days, the best books
+in the world, the best piano in the world, a few boxes of
+colors for the artists, a few reams of paper, and a few
+dozen of pencils for the men.  And then began four months
+of blessed life.  Never a gas-bill nor a water-leak,
+never a crack in the furnace nor a man to put in coal,
+never a request to speak for the benefit of the Fenians,
+never the necessity of attending at a primary meeting.
+The ladies found in their walks these gentle Mexican
+children, simple, happy, civil, and with the strange idea
+that the object for which life is given is that men may
+live.  They came home with new wealth untold every day--
+of ipomoea, convolvulus, passion-flowers, and orchids.
+The gentlemen brought back every day a new species, even
+a new genus,--a new illustration of evolution, or a new
+mystery to be accounted for by the law of natural
+selection.  Night was all sleep; day was all life.
+Digestion waited upon appetite; appetite waited upon
+exercise; exercise waited upon study; study waited upon
+conversation; conversation waited upon love.  Could it be
+that November was over?  Can life run by so fast?  Can it
+be that Christmas has come?  Can we let life go by so
+fast?  Is it possible that it is the end of January?  We
+cannot let life go so fast.  Really, is this St.
+Valentine's Day!  When ever did life go so fast?
+
+And with the 1st of March the mules were ordered, and
+they moved to the next higher level.  The men and women
+walked.  And there, on the grade of a new climate,
+they began on a new botany, on new discoveries, and happy
+life found new forms as they began again.
+
+So sped April and so sped May.  Life had its
+battles,--oh yes, because it was life.  But they were not
+the pettiest of battles.  They were not the battles of
+prisoners shut up, to keep out the weather, in cells
+fifteen feet square.  They fought, if they fought, with
+God's air in their veins, and God's warm sunshine around
+them, and God's blue sky above them.  So they did what
+they could, as they wrote and read and drew and painted,
+as they walked and ran and swam and rode and drove, as
+they encouraged this peon boy and taught that peon girl,
+smoothed this old woman's pillow and listened to that old
+man's story, as they analyzed these wonderful flowers, as
+they tasted these wonderful fruits, as they climbed these
+wonderful mountains, or, at night, as they pointed the
+telescope through this cloudless and stainless sky.
+
+With all their might they lived.  And they were so
+many, and there were so many round them to whom their
+coming was a new life, that they lived in love, and every
+day drank in of the infinite elixir.
+
+But June came.  The mules are sent for again.  Again
+they walked a quarter of a mile.  And here in the little
+whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books
+below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the
+piano,--here they made ready for three weeks of June.
+Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the
+Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence
+were to take their degrees.  There would need five days
+from Vera Cruz to reach them.  And so this summer was to
+be spent in the North with them, before October should
+bring all the children and the parents to the land of the
+open sky.  Three busy weeks between the 1st and the 22d,
+in which all the pictures must be finished, Ingham's
+novel must be revised, Haliburton's articles completed,
+the new invention for measuring power must be gauged and
+tested, the dried flowers must be mounted and packed, the
+preserved fruits must be divided for the Northern
+friends.  Three happy weeks of life eventful, but life
+without crowding, and, above all, without interruption.
+"Think of it," cried Felix, as they took their last walk
+among the lava crags, the door-bell has not rung all this
+last winter.'"
+
+"`This happy old king
+On his gate he did swing,
+Because there was never a door-bell to ring.'"
+
+This was Julia's impromptu reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOME AGAIN
+
+So came one more journey.  Why can we not go and come
+without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this
+food for dogs, and this surge--ah, how remorseless!--of
+the cruel sea?
+
+But even this will end.  Once more the Stars and
+Stripes!  A land of furnaces and of waterpipes, a land of
+beggars and of caucuses, a land of gas-meters and of
+liars, a land of pasteboard and of cards, a land of
+etiquettes and of bad spelling, but still their country!
+A land of telegraphs, which told in an instant, as they
+landed on the levee, that all the twenty-nine were well,
+and begged them to be at the college on Tuesday evening,
+so as to see "Much Ado about Nothing."  For at Antioch
+they act a play the night before Commencement.  A land of
+Pullman's palace-cars.  And lo! they secured sections 5
+and 6, 7 and 8, in the "Mayflower."  Just time to kiss
+the baby of one friend, and to give a basket of guavas to
+another, and then whir for Cincinnati and Xenia and
+Yellow Springs!
+
+How beautiful were the live-oaks and the magnolias!
+How fresh the green of the cotton!  How black the faces
+of the little negroes, and how beyond dispute the perfume
+of the baked peanuts at the stations where sometimes they
+had to stop for wood and water!  Even the heavy pile of
+smoke above Cincinnati was golden with the hopes of a
+new-born day as they rushed up to the Ohio River, and as
+they crossed it.  And then, the land of happy homes!  It
+was Kapnist who said to me that the most favored places
+in the world were the larger villages in Ohio.  He had
+gone everywhere, too.  Xenia, and a perfect breakfast at
+the station, then the towers of Antioch, then the
+twenty-nine children waving their handkerchiefs as
+the train rushes in!
+
+How much there was to tell, to show, to ask for, and
+to see!  How much pleasure they gave with their
+cochineal, their mangoes, their bananas, their hat-bands
+for the boys, and their fans for the girls!  Yes; and how
+much more they took from nutbrown faces, from smiles
+beaming from ear to ear, from the boy so tall that he
+looked down upon his father, from the girl so womanly
+that you asked if her mother were not masquerading.  "You
+rascal Ozro, you do not pretend that those trousers were
+made for you?  Why, my boy, you disgrace the family."  "I
+hope not, papa; I had ninety-eight in the botany
+examination, passed with honors in Greek, and we beat the
+Buckeye Club to nothing in the return match yesterday."
+"You did, you little beggar?" the proud papa replied.
+"You ran all the better, I suppose, because you had
+nothing to trip you."  And so on, and so on.  The
+children did not live in paradise, perhaps, but this
+seems very like the kingdom come!
+
+And after commencements and the president's party, up
+to the Yellow Springs platform came two unusual palaces,
+specially engaged.  And one was named the "Valparaiso,"
+and the other, as it happened, the "Bethlehem."  And they
+took all the children, and by good luck Mrs. Tucker was
+going also, and three or four of the college girls, and
+they took them.  So there were forty-two in all.  And
+they sped and sped, without change of cars, save as
+Bethlehem visited Paradise and Paradise visited
+Bethlehem, till they came to New Salem, which is the
+station men buy tickets for when they would go to the
+beach below Quonochontaug, where the eight and the
+twenty-nine were to make their summer home before the
+final emigration.
+
+They do not live at Quonochontaug, but to that post-
+office are their letters sent.  They live in a hamlet of
+their own, known to the neighbors as the Little Gau.
+Four large houses, whitewashed without and within, with
+deep piazzas all around, the roofs of which join the
+roofs of the houses themselves, and run up on all sides
+to one point above the centre.  In each house a hall some
+twenty feet by fifty, and in the hall,--what is not in
+the hall?--maybe a piano, maybe a fish-rod, maybe a rifle
+or a telescope, a volume of sermons or a volume of songs,
+a spinning-wheel, or a guitar, or a battledore.  You
+might ask widely for what you needed, for study or for
+play, and you would find it, though it were a deep divan
+of Osiat or a chibouque from Stamboul--you would find it
+in one of these simple whitewashed halls.
+
+Little Gau is so near the sea-shore that every day
+they go down to the beach to bathe, and the beach is so
+near the Gulf Stream that the swim is--well, perfection.
+Still, the first day the ladies would not swim.  They had
+the trunks to open, they said, and the closets to
+arrange.  And the four men and the fourteen boys went to
+that bath of baths alone.  And as Felix, the cynic
+grumbler, ran races naked on the beach with his boy
+and the boy beat him, even Felix was heard to say, "How
+little man needs here below to be perfectly happy!"
+
+And at the Little Gau they spent the months from the
+Fourth of July to the 13th of October--two great days in
+history--getting ready for Mexico.  New sewing-machines
+were bought, and the fall of the stream from the lake was
+taught to run the treadles.  No end of clothing was got
+ready for a country which needs none; no end of memoranda
+made for the last purchases; no end of lists of books
+prepared, which they could read in that land of leisure.
+And on the 14th of October, with a passing sigh, they
+bade good-by to boats and dogs and cows and horses and
+neighbors and beaches--almost to sun and moon, which had
+smiled on so much happiness, and went back to Boston to
+make the last bargains, to pay the last bills, and to say
+the last good-byes.
+
+After one day of bill-paying and house-advertising
+and farewelling, they met at Ingham's to "tell their
+times."  And Julia told of her farewell call on dear Mrs.
+Blake.
+
+"The saint!" said she; "she does not see as well as
+she did.  But it was just lovely there.  There was the
+great bronze Japanese stork, which seemed so friendly,
+and the great vases, and her flowers as fresh as ever,
+and her books everywhere.  She found something for Tom
+and Maud to play with, just as she used to for Ben and
+Horace.  And we sat and talked of Mexico and Antioch and
+everything.  I asked her if her eyes troubled her,
+and I was delighted because it seems they do not trouble
+her at all.  She told all about Swampscott and her
+grandchildren.  I asked her if the dust never troubled
+them on Gladstone Street, but she says it does not at
+all; and she told all about her son's family in Hong-
+Kong.  I asked her if the failure of Rupee & Lac annoyed
+them, and she said not at all, and I was so glad, for I
+had been so afraid for them; and then she told about how
+much they were enjoying Macaulay.  Then I asked her if
+the new anvil factory on the other side of the street did
+not trouble her, and she said not at all.  And when I
+said, `How can that be?' she said, `Why, Julia dear, we
+do not let these things trouble us, don't you see.  If I
+were you, I would not let such things trouble me.'"
+
+George Haliburton laid down his knife as Julia told
+the story.  "Do you remember Rabia at Mecca?  Yes, they
+all remembered Rabia at Mecca:--
+
+"Oh heart, weak follower of the weak,
+  That thou shouldst traverse land and sea;
+In this far place that God to seek
+  Who long ago had come to thee!"
+
+
+"Why should we not stay here, and not let these
+things trouble us?"
+
+Why not, indeed?
+
+And they stayed.
+
+
+
+ONE CENT
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY
+
+DOWN
+
+Mr. Starr rose very early that day.  The sun was not
+up.  Yet, certainly, it was too light to strike a match.
+Ah, Mr. Starr, a match may be an economy!
+
+So it was that when, as always, the keys jingled out
+from his trousers pockets upon the floor, and the money
+as well, one cent rolled under the bureau unseen by Mr.
+Starr.  He went down to his work now, after he had
+gathered up the rest of the money and the keys, and
+answered yesterday's letters.
+
+Then, of course, he could loiter over his breakfast.
+
+But not too long.  Clara, his wife, was in good
+spirits, and the boys were very jolly, but Mr. Starr, all
+the same, did the duty next his hand.  He "kissed her
+good-by," and started down-town.  Edgar stopped, him to
+ask for fifty cents for his lunch; the postman wanted
+fifteen for an underpaid parcel; Susan, the maid, asked
+for ten for some extra milk; and then he kissed his hand
+to the parlor window, and was off.
+
+No!  He was not off.
+
+For Clara threw up the window and waved her lily
+hand.  Mr. Starr ran back to the door.  She flung it
+open.
+
+"My dear John, here is your best coat.  That coat you
+have on has a frayed button.  I saw it yesterday, and I
+cannot bear to have you wear it at the Board."
+
+"Dear Clara, what a saint you are!"  One more kiss,
+and Mr. Starr departed.
+
+And loyally he did the duty next his hand.  He
+stopped and signed the sewerage petition; he looked in on
+poor Colt and said a cheerful word to him; he bade
+Woolley, the fruit man, send a barrel of Nonesuches to
+old Mrs. Cowen; he was on time at the Board meeting, took
+the chair, and they changed the constitution.  He looked
+in at the office and told Mr. Freemantle he should be
+late, but that he would look at the letters when he came
+back, and then, ho! for East Boston!
+
+If only you knew, dear readers, that to East Boston
+you must go by a ferry-boat, as if it were named
+Greenbush, or Brooklyn, or Camden.
+
+As Mr. Starr took the street car after he had crossed
+the ferry, to go into the unknown parts of East Boston,
+he did notice that he gave the conductor his last ticket.
+But what of that?  "End of the route" came, and he girded
+his loins, trudged over to the pottery he was in search
+of, found it at last, found the foreman and gave his
+orders, and then, through mud unspeakable, waded
+back to the street car.  He was the only passenger.
+No wonder!  The only wonder was that there was a car.
+
+"Ticket, sir," said the conductor, after half a mile.
+
+MR. STARR (SMILING).  I have no ticket, but you
+may sell me a dollar's worth. (FEELS FOR POCKETBOOK.)
+Hello!  I have not my pocketbook; changed my coat.
+
+CONDUCTOR (SAVAGELY).  They generally has changed
+their coats.
+
+MR. STARR (WITH DIGNITY, OFFERING A FIVE-CENT
+NICKEL).  There's your fare, man.
+
+CONDUCTOR.  That won't do, mud-hopper.  Fare's
+six cents.
+
+MR. STARR (WELL REMEMBERING THE CENT, WHICH IS,
+ALAS UNDER THE BUREAU, AND GROVELLING FOR IT IN BOTH
+POCKETS).  I have a cent somewhere.
+
+CONDUCTOR (STOPPING CAR AND RETURNING FIVE-CENT
+PIECE).  We've had enough of you tramps who change your
+coats and cannot find your pennies.  You step off--and
+step off mighty quick.
+
+Mr. Starr declines; when they come to Maverick Square
+he will report the man to the superintendent, who knows
+him well.  Slight scuffle.  Mr. Starr resists.  Conductor
+calls driver.  Mr. Starr is ejected.  Coat torn badly and
+hat thrown into mud.  Car departs.
+
+TABLEAU.
+
+
+SCENE II
+
+
+UP
+
+
+(MUDDY STREET IN EAST BOSTON.  Mr. STARR,  WIPING
+HIS HAT WITH HIS HANDKERCHIEF, SOLUS.)
+
+MR. STARR.  If only Clara had not been so anxious
+about the Board meeting!   (EYES FIVE-CENT PIECE.)
+Where can that penny be?   (SEARCHES IN POCKETS, IS
+SEARCHING WHEN--)
+(ENTER R. H. U. E.  SPAN OF WILD HORSES, SWIFTLY
+DRAGGING A CARRYALL.  IN THE CARRYALL TWO CHILDREN
+SCREAMING.  SPEED OF HORSES, 2.41.)
+
+MR. STARR.  Under the present circumstances life
+is worthless, or nearly so.  Let me bravely throw it
+away!
+
+(RUSHES UPON THE SPAN.  CATCHES EACH HORSE BY THE BIT,
+AND BY SHEER WEIGHT CONTROLS THEM.  HORSES ON THEIR
+METTLE; Mr. Starr  ON HIS.  ENTER, RUNNING, JOHN
+CRADOCK.)
+
+JOHN CRADOCK.  Whoa, whoa!  Ha! they stop.  How
+can I thank you, my man?  You have saved my children's
+lives.
+
+MR. STARR (STILL HOLDING BITS).  You had better
+take the reins.
+
+John Cradock mounts the seat, seizes reins, but is
+eager to reward the poor, tattered wretch at their heads.
+Passes reins to right hand, and with left feels for a
+half eagle, which he throws, with grateful words, to Mr.
+Starr.  Mr. Starr leaves the plunging horses, and
+they rush toward Prescott Street. (EXEUNT JOHN
+CRADOCK, HORSES AND CHILDREN.)
+
+Half amused, half ashamed, Mr. Starr picks up the
+coin, which he also supposes to be half an eagle.
+
+It proves to be a bright penny, just from the mint.
+
+Mr. Starr lays it with delight upon the five-cent
+nickel.
+(ENTER A STREET CAR, L. H. L. E.  Mr. STARR WAVES
+HIS HAND WITH DIGNITY, AND ENTERS CAR.  PAYS HIS FARE,
+SIX CENTS, AS HE PASSES CONDUCTOR.)
+
+In fifteen minutes they are at Maverick Square.  Mr.
+Starr stops the car at the office of Siemens & Bessemer,
+and enters.  Meets his friend Fothergill.
+
+FOTHERGILL.  Bless me, Starr, you are covered
+with mud!  Pottery, eh?  Runaway horse, eh?  No matter;
+we are just in time to see Wendell off.  William, take
+Mr. Starr's hat to be pressed.  Put on this light
+overcoat, Starr.  Here is my tweed cap.  Now, jump in,
+and we will go to the "Samaria" to bid Wendell good-by.
+
+And indeed they both found Wendell.  Mr. Starr bade
+him good-by, and advised him a little about the man be
+was to see in Dresden.  He met Herr Birnebaum, and talked
+with him a little about the chemistry of enamels.  Oddly
+enough, Fonseca was there, the attache, the same whom
+Clara had taken to drive at Bethlehem.  Mr. Starr talked
+a little Spanish with him.  Then they were all rung
+onshore.
+
+TABLEAU:  DEPARTING STEAMER.  CROWD WAVES
+HANDKERCHIEFS.
+
+
+
+SCENE III
+CHRISTMAS--THE END
+
+At Mr. Starr's Christmas dinner, beside their cousins
+from Harvard College and their second cousins from
+Wellesley College and their third cousins from Bradford
+Academy, they had young Clifford, the head book-keeper.
+As he came in, joining the party on their way home from
+church, he showed Mr. Starr a large parcel.
+
+"It's the `Alaska's' mail, and I thought you might
+like to see it."
+
+"Ah, well!" said Mr. Starr, "it is Christmas, and I
+think the letters can wait, at least till after dinner."
+
+And a jolly dinner it was.  Turkey for those who
+wished, and goose for those who chose goose.  And when
+the Washington pie and the Marlborough pudding came, the
+squash, the mince, the cranberry-tart, and the blazing
+plum-pudding, then the children were put through their
+genealogical catechism.
+
+"Will, who is your mother's father's mother's father?"
+
+"Lucy Pico, sir!" and then great shouting.  Then was
+it that Mr. Starr told the story which the reader has
+read in scene one,--of the perils which may come when a
+man has not a penny.  He did not speak hastily, nor cast
+reproach on Clara for her care of the button.  Over
+that part of the story he threw a cautious veil.  But to
+boys and girls he pointed a terrible lesson of the value
+of one penny.
+
+"How dangerous, papa, to drop it into a box for the
+heathen!"
+
+But little Tom found this talk tiresome, and asked
+leave to slip away, teasing Clifford as he went about
+some postage-stamps Clifford had promised him.
+
+"Go bring the parcel I left on the hall table, and
+your papa will give you some Spanish stamps."
+
+So the boy brought the mail.
+
+"What in the world is this?" cried Mr. Starr, as he
+cut open the great envelope; and more and more amazed he
+was as he ran down the lines:--
+
+"`Much Esteemed and Respected Senor, Don JOHN STARR,
+Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece:
+
+"`SENOR,--It is with true yet inexpressible
+satisfaction that I write this private note, that I may
+be the first of your friends in Madrid to say to you that
+the order for your creation as a Knight Companion of the
+much esteemed and truly venerable Order of the Golden
+Fleece passed the seals of the Chancellerie yesterday.
+His Majesty is pleased to say that your views on the
+pacification of Porto Rico coincide precisely with his
+own; that the hands of the government will be
+strengthened as with the force of giants when he
+communicates them to the very excellent and much
+honored governor of the island, and that, as a mark of
+his confidence, he has the pleasure of sending to you the
+cordon of the order, and of asking your acceptance.'
+
+"My dear Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, that is what came
+to you when that Cradock man threw a cent into the mud
+for me."
+
+"But, papa, what are the other letters?"
+
+"Oh, yes, what are they?  Here is English; it's from
+Wendell.  H'm--h'm--h'm.  Shortpassage.  Worcestershire--
+h'm--Wedgewood--h'm--Staffordshire--h'm.  Why, Clara,
+George, listen:
+
+"`I suppose you will not be surprised when I say that
+your suggestion made on the deck of the `Samaria,' as to
+oxalate of strontium, was received with surprise by Herr
+Fernow and Herr Klee.  But such is the respect in which
+suggestions from America are now held, that they ordered
+a trial at once in the Royal kilns, the result of which
+are memoranda A and B, enclosed.  They are so much
+delighted with these results that they have formed a
+syndicate with the Winkels, of Potsdam, and the
+Schonhoffs, of Berlin, to undertake the manufacture in
+Germany; and I am instructed to ask you whether you will
+accept a round sum, say 150,000 marks, for the German
+patent, or join them, say as a partner, with twenty per
+cent of stock in their adventure.'
+
+"I think so," said Mr. Starr.  "That is what the
+bright penny comes to at compound interest.  Let us try
+Birnebaum's letter."
+
+"`GOTTFRIEED BIRNEBAUM to JOHN STARR:
+
+"`MY HONORED SIR,--I am at a loss to express to you
+the satisfaction with which I write.  The eminently
+practical suggestions which you made to me so kindly and
+freely, as we parted, have, indeed, also proved
+themselves undoubtedly to be of even the first import.
+It has to me been also, indeed, of the very first
+pleasure to communicate them, as I said indeed, to the
+first director in charge at the works at Sevres, as I
+passed through Paris, and now yet again, with equal
+precision also and readiness, to the Herr first fabricant
+at Dresden.  Your statement regarding the action of the
+oxides of gold, in combination with the tungstate of
+bdellium, has more than in practice verified itself.  I
+am requested by the authorities at Dresden to ask the
+acceptance, by your accomplished and highly respected
+lady, of a dinner-set of their recent manufacture, in
+token small of their appreciation, renewed daily, of your
+contribution so valuable to the resources of tint and
+color in their rooms of design; and M. Foudroyant, of
+Sevres, tells me also, by telegraph of to-day, that to
+the same much esteemed and highly distinguished lady he
+has shipped by the `San Laurent' a tea-service, made to
+the order of the Empress of China, and delayed only by
+the untoward state of hostilities, greatly to be
+regretted, on the Annamite frontier.'"
+
+Mr. Starr read this long-winded letter with
+astonishment.
+
+"Well, Dulcinea, you will be able to give a dinner-
+party to the King of Spain when he comes to visit you at
+Toboso.
+
+
+"So much for Brother Cradock's penny."
+
+"Dear John, till I die I will never be afraid to call
+you back when your buttons are tattered."
+
+"And for me," said little Jack, "I will go now and
+look under the bureau for the lost cent, and will have it
+for my own."
+
+(ENTER SERVANTS, R. H. L. E., I WITH THE DRESDEN
+CHINA.
+
+THEY MEET OTHER SERVANTS, L. H. L. E., WITH THE
+SEVRES CHINA.)
+
+TABLEAU.
+CURTAIN.
+
+
+
+THANKSGIVING AT THE POLLS
+
+A THANKSGIVING STORY
+
+
+I
+
+Frederick Dane was on his way towards  what he called
+his home.  His home, alas, was but an indifferent attic
+in one of the southern suburbs of Boston.  He had been
+walking; but he was now standing still, at the well-known
+corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues.
+
+As often happens, Frederick Dane had an opportunity
+to wait at this corner a quarter of an hour.  As he
+looked around him on the silent houses, he could not but
+observe the polling-booth, which a watchful city
+government had placed in the street, a few days before,
+in preparation for the election which was to take place
+three weeks afterward.  Dane is of an inquiring temper,
+and seeing that the polling-booth had a door and the door
+had a keyhole, he tried in the keyhole a steel key which
+he had picked up in Dock Square the day before.  Almost
+to his surprise, the key governed the lock at once, and
+he found himself able to walk in.
+
+He left the door wide open, and the gaslight
+streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells
+arranged for Australian voting.  The rails were all in
+their places, and the election might take place the very
+next day.  It instantly occurred to Dane that he might
+save the five cents which otherwise he would have given
+to his masters of the street railway, and be the next
+morning three miles nearer his work, if he spent the
+night in the polling-cabin.  He looked around for a
+minute or two, and found some large rolls of street
+posters, which had been left there by some disappointed
+canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one
+cell of the cabin in its travels.  Dane is a prompt man,
+and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him,
+had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had
+rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a
+pillow.  In five minutes more, covered with his heavy
+coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had
+slept the year before, when he found himself on the lee
+side of an iceberg under Peary's command.
+
+This is perhaps unnecessary detail, by way of saying
+that this is the beginning of the arrangement which a
+city, not very intelligent, will make in the next century
+for unsettled people, whose own houses are not agreeable
+to them.  There exist in Boston at this moment three or
+four hundred of the polling-booths,--nice little houses,
+enough better than most of the peasantry of most of
+Europe ever lived in.  They are, alas, generally packed
+up in lavender and laid away for ten months of the
+year.  But in the twentieth century we shall send them
+down to the shores of islands and other places where
+people like to spend the summer, and we shall utilize
+them, not for the few hours of an election only, but all
+the year round.  This will not then be called
+"Nationalism," it will be called "Democracy;" and that is
+a very good name when it is applied to a very good thing.
+
+Dane was an old soldier and an old seaman.  He was
+not troubled by disagreeable dreams, and in the morning,
+when the street-cars began to travel, he was awaked a
+little after sunrise, by their clatter on the corner.  He
+felt well satisfied with the success of his experiment,
+and began on a forecast, which the reader shall follow
+for a few weeks, which he thought, and thought rightly,
+would tend to his own convenience, possibly to that of
+his friends.
+
+Dane telegraphed down to the office that he should be
+detained an hour that morning, went out to his home of
+the day before at Ashmont, paid his landlady her scot,
+brought in with him his little possessions in a valise to
+the office, and did not appear at his new home until
+after nightfall.
+
+He was then able to establish himself on the basis
+which proved convenient afterwards, and which it is worth
+while to explain to a world which is not too well housed.
+The city had provided three or four chairs there, a
+stove, and two tables.  Dane had little literature, but,
+as he was in the literary line himself, he did not
+care for this so much; men who write books are not
+commonly eager to read books which are worse than their
+own.  At a nine-cent window of a neighboring tinman's he
+was able to buy himself the few little necessities which
+he wanted for housekeeping.  And not to detain the reader
+too long upon merely fleshly arrangements, in the course
+of a couple of hours of Tuesday evening and Wednesday
+evening, he had fitted up his convenient if not pretty
+bower with all that man requires.  It was easy to buy a
+mince pie or a cream cake, or a bit of boiled ham or
+roast chicken, according as payday was near or distant.
+One is glad to have a tablecloth.  But if one have a
+large poster warning people, a year before, that they
+should vote the Prohibition ticket, one's conscience is
+not wounded if this poster, ink down, takes the place
+which a tablecloth would have taken under other
+circumstances.  If there is not much crockery to use,
+there is but little to wash.  And, in short, as well
+trained a man of the world as Dane had made himself
+thoroughly comfortable in his new quarters before the
+week was over.
+
+
+
+II
+
+At the beginning Frederick's views were purely
+personal, or, as the preachers say, selfish.  Here was
+an empty house, three miles nearer his work than his
+hired attic was, and he had taken possession.  But
+conscience always asserts itself, and it was not long
+before he felt that he ought to extend the benefits of
+this new discovery of his somewhat further.  It really
+was a satisfaction to what the pulpits call a "felt
+want" when as he came through Massachusetts Avenue on
+Thursday evening, he met a boy and a girl, neither of
+them more than ten years old, crying on the sidewalk.
+Dane is sympathetic and fond of children.  He stopped
+the little brats, and satisfied himself that neither
+had had any supper.  He could not understand a word of
+the language in which they spoke, nor could they
+understand him.  But kindness needs little spoken
+language; and accordingly Frederick led them along to
+his cabin, and after waiting, as he always did, a
+minute or two, to be sure that no one was in sight, he
+unlocked the door, and brought in his little
+companions.
+
+It was clear enough that the children were such waifs
+and strays that nothing surprised them, and they readily
+accepted the modest hospitalities of the position.  Like
+all masculine housekeepers, Frederick had provided three
+times as much food as he needed for his own physical
+wants, so that it was not difficult to make these
+children happy with the pieces of mince pie and lemon pie
+and cream cake and eclairs which were left from his
+unknown festivals of the day before.  Poor little things,
+they were both cold and tired, and, before half an hour
+was over, they were snugly asleep on and under a pile of
+Prohibition posters.
+
+
+III
+
+Fortunately for Frederick Dane, for the nine years
+before he joined Peary, he had lived in the city of
+Bagdad.  He had there served as the English interpreter
+for the Caliph of that city.  The Caliph did most of
+his business at night, and was in the habit of taking
+Mr. Dane with him on his evening excursions.  In this
+way Mr. Dane had made the somewhat intimate
+acquaintance of Mr. Jaffrey, the private secretary of
+the Caliph; and he had indeed in his own employment for
+some time, a wide-awake black man, of the name of
+Mezrour, who, for his "other place," was engaged as a
+servant in the Caliph's household.  Dane was thus not
+unfamiliar with the methods of unexpected evening
+visits; and it was fortunate for him that he was so.
+The little children whom he had picked up, explained to
+him, by pantomime which would have made the fortune of
+a ballet-girl, that they were much more comfortable in
+their new home than they had been in any other, and
+that they had no wish to leave it.  But by various
+temptations addressed to them, in the form of barley
+horses and dogs, and sticks of barber's candy, Dane,
+who was of a romantic and enterprising disposition,
+persuaded them to take him to some of their former
+haunts.
+
+These were mostly at the North End of Boston,
+and he soon found that he needed all his
+recollections of Bagdad for the purpose of conducting any
+conversation with any of the people they knew best.  In
+a way, however, with a little broken Arabic, a little
+broken Hebrew, a great deal of broken China, and many
+gesticulations, he made acquaintance with two of their
+compatriots, who had, as it seemed, crossed the ocean
+with them in the same steerage.  That is to say, they
+either had or had not; but for many months Mr. Dane was
+unable to discover which.  Such as they were, however,
+they had been sleeping on the outside of the upper attic
+of the house in Salutation Alley where these children had
+lodged, or not lodged, as the case might be, during the
+last few days.  When Mr. Dane saw what were called their
+lodgings, he did not wonder that they had accepted pot-
+luck with him.
+
+It is necessary to explain all this, that the reader
+may understand why, on the first night after the arrival
+of these two children, the population of the polling-
+booth was enlarged by the presence of these two Hebrew
+compatriots.  And, without further mystery, it may be as
+well to state that all four were from a village about
+nine hundred and twenty-three miles north of Odessa, in
+the southern part of Russia.  They had emigrated in a
+compulsory manner from that province, first on account of
+the utter failure of anything to eat there; second, on
+account of a prejudice which the natives of that country
+had contracted against the Hebrew race.
+
+The two North End friends of little Ezra and Sarah
+readily accepted the invitation of the two children to
+join in the College Settlement at the corner of the two
+avenues.  The rules of the institution proved attractive,
+and before a second week was well advanced ten light
+excelsior mattresses were regularly rolled up every
+morning as the different inmates went to their duties;
+while, as evening closed in, eight cheerful companions
+told stories around the hospitable board.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+It is no part of this little tale to follow, with Mr.
+Stevenson's magic, or with that of the Arabian Nights,
+the fortunes from day to day of the little circle.
+Enough that men of Hebrew race do not prove lazy
+anywhere.  Dane, certainly, gave them no bad example.
+The children were at once entered in a neighboring
+school, where they showed the quickness of their race.
+They had the advantage, when the week closed and began,
+that they could attend the Sabbath school provided for
+them by the Hebrews on Saturday and the several Sunday-
+schools of the Parker Memorial, the Berkeley Temple,
+and the other churches of the neighborhood.  The day
+before the election, Frederick Dane asked Oleg and
+Vladimir to help him in bringing up some short boards,
+which they laid on the trusses in the roof above them.
+On the little attic thus prepared, they stored
+their mattresses and other personal effects before the
+great election of that year began.  They had no
+intention of interfering, even by a cup of cold coffee,
+with the great wave of righteous indignation which, on
+that particular day of that particular year, "swept
+away, as by a great cosmic tidal flood, the pretences
+and ambitions, etc., etc., etc."  These words are cited
+from Frederick Dane's editorial of the next morning, and
+were in fact used by him or by some of his friends,
+without variations, in all the cosmic changes of the
+elections of the next six years.
+
+
+
+V
+
+But so soon as this election was well over, the country
+and the city settled down, with what Ransom used to
+call "amazin'" readiness to the new order, such as it
+was.  Only the people who "take up the streets"
+detached more men than ever to spoil the pavement.  For
+now a city election was approaching.  And it might be
+that the pavers and ditchers and shovellers and
+curbstone men and asphalt makers should vote wrong.
+Dane and his settlement were well aware that after this
+election they would all have to move out from their
+comfortable quarters.  But, while they were in, they
+determined to prepare for a fit Thanksgiving to God,
+and the country which makes provision so generous for
+those in need.  It is not every country, indeed,
+which provides four hundred empty houses, every autumn,
+for the convenience of any unlodged night-editor with a
+skeleton key, who comes along.
+
+He explained to his companions that a great festival
+was near.  They heard this with joy.  He explained that
+no work would be done that day,--not in any cigar-shop or
+sweating-room.  This also pleased them.  He then, at some
+length, explained the necessity of the sacrifice of
+turkeys on the occasion.  He told briefly how Josselyn
+and the fathers shot them as they passed through the sky.
+But he explained that now we shoot them, as one makes
+money, not directly but indirectly.  We shoot our
+turkeys, say, at shooting-galleries.  All this proved
+intelligible, and Frederick had no fear for turkeys.
+
+As for Sarah and Ezra, he found that at Ezra's boys'
+club and at Sarah's girls' club, and each of her Sabbath-
+school classes and Sunday-school classes, and at each of
+his, it had been explained that on the day before
+Thanksgiving they must come with baskets to places named,
+and carry home a Thanksgiving dinner.
+
+These announcements were hailed with satisfaction by
+all to whom Dane addressed them.  Everything in the
+country was as strange to them as it would have been to
+an old friend of mine, an inhabitant of the planet Mars.
+And they accepted the custom of this holiday among the
+rest.  Oddly enough, it proved that one or two of them
+were first-rate shots, and, by attendance at
+different shooting-galleries, they brought in more than
+a turkey apiece, as Governor Bradford's men did in 1621.
+Many of them were at work in large factories, where it
+was the custom of the house to give a roasted turkey and
+a pan of cranberry sauce to each person who had been on
+the pay-list for three months.  One or two of them were
+errand men in the market, and it was the practice of the
+wholesale dealers there, who at this season become to a
+certain extent retailers, to encourage these errand men
+by presenting to each of them a turkey, which was
+promised in advance.  As for Dane himself, the
+proprietors of his journal always presented a turkey to
+each man on their staff.  And in looking forward to his
+Thanksgiving at the polls, he had expected to provide a
+twenty-two pound gobbler which a friend in Vermont was
+keeping for him.  It may readily be imagined, then, that,
+when the day before Thanksgiving came, he was more
+oppressed by an embarrassment of riches than by any
+difficulty on the debtor side of his account.  He had
+twelve people to feed, himself included.  There were the
+two children, their eight friends, and a young Frenchman
+from Paris who, like all persons of that nationality who
+are six months in this country, had found many enemies
+here.  Dane had invited him to dinner.  He had arranged
+that there should be plates or saucers enough for each
+person to have two.  And now there was to be a chicken-
+pie from Obed Shalom, some mince pies and
+Marlborough pies from the Union for Christian Work, a
+turkey at each end of the board; and he found he should
+have left over, after the largest computation for the
+appetites of the visitors, twenty-three pies of different
+structure, five dishes of cranberry sauce, three or four
+boxes of raisins, two or three drums of figs, two roasted
+geese and eleven turkeys.  He counted all the turkeys as
+roasted, because he had the promise of the keeper of the
+Montgomery House that he would roast for him all the
+birds that were brought in to him before nine o'clock on
+Thanksgiving morning.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Having stated all this on a list carefully written,
+first in the English language and second in the
+language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow-
+lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening
+before Thanksgiving Day.  He explained to them, in the
+patois which they used together, that it would be
+indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther
+than next Monday for their own purposes.  He told them
+that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to
+the God of heaven.  He showed them that they all had
+great reason for thanksgiving.  And, in short, he made
+three heads of a discourse which might have been
+expanded by the most eloquent preacher in Boston
+the next day, and would have well covered the twenty-
+five minutes which the regulation would have required
+for a sermon.  He then said that, as they had been
+favored with much more than they could use for their own
+appetites, they must look up those who were not so well
+off as themselves.
+
+He was well pleased by finding that he was
+understood, and what he said was received with applause
+in the various forms in which Southern Russia applauds on
+such occasions.  As for the two children, their eyes were
+wide open, and their mouths, and they looked their
+wonder.
+
+Frederick then proposed that two of their number
+should volunteer to open a rival establishment at the
+polling-booth at the corner of Gates Street and Burgoyne
+Street, and that the company should on the next day
+invite guests enough to make another table of twelve.  He
+proposed that the same course should be taken at the
+corner of Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets, and yet again
+at the booth which is at the corner of Curtis Avenue and
+Quincy Street.  And he said that, as time would press
+upon them, they had better arrange to carry a part at
+least of the stores to these places that evening.  To
+this there was a general assent.  The company sat down to
+a hasty tea, administered much as the Israelites took
+their last meal in Egypt; for every man had on his long
+frieze coat and his heavy boots, and they were eager for
+the active work of Thanksgiving.  For each the
+stewards packed two turkeys in a basket, filled in
+as far as they could with other stores, and Frederick
+headed his procession.
+
+It was then that he was to learn, for the first time,
+that he was not the only person in Boston.
+
+It was then that he found out that the revelation
+made to one man is frequently made to many.
+
+He found out that he was as wise as the next fellow,
+but was no wiser; was as good as the next fellow, but was
+no better; and that, in short, he had no special patent
+upon his own undertaking,
+
+The little procession soon arrived at the corner of
+Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets.  Whoever had made the
+locks on the doors of the houses had been content to use
+the same pattern for all. It proved, therefore, that the
+key of No. 237 answered for No. 238, and it was not
+necessary to open the door with the "Jimmy" which Simeon
+had under his ulster.
+
+But on the other hand, to Frederick's amazement, as
+he threw the door open, he found a lighted room and a
+long table around which sat twelve men, guised or
+disguised in much the same way as those whom he had
+brought with him.  A few moments showed that another
+leader of the people had discovered this vacant home a
+few weeks before, and had established there another
+settlement of the un-homed.  As it proved, this gentleman
+was a Mashpee Indian.  He was, in fact, the member of the
+House of Representatives from the town of Mashpee for the
+next winter.  Arriving in Boston to look for
+lodgings, he, not unnaturally, met with a Mohawk, two
+Dacotahs, and a Cherokee, who, for various errands, had
+come north and east.  A similarity of color, not to say
+of racial relations, had established a warm friendship
+among the five, and they had brought together gradually
+twelve gentlemen of copper color, who had been residing
+in this polling-booth since the second day after the
+general election.  Their fortune had not been unlike that
+of Frederick and his friends, and at this moment they
+were discussing the methods by which they might
+distribute several brace of ducks which had been sent up
+from Mashpee, a haunch of venison which had come down
+from above Machias, and some wild turkeys which had
+arrived by express from the St. Regis Indians of Northern
+New York.  At the moment of the arrival of our friends,
+they were sending out two of their number to find how
+they might best distribute thus their extra provender.
+
+These two gladly joined in the little procession, and
+all went together to the corner of Quincy Street and
+Curtis Avenue.  There a similar revelation was made, only
+there was some difficulty at first in any real mutual
+understanding.  For here they met a dozen, more or less,
+of French Canadians.  These gentlemen had left their
+wives and their children in the province of Quebec, and,
+finding themselves in Boston, had taken possession of the
+polling-booth, where they were living much more
+comfortably than they would have lived at home.
+They too had been well provided for Thanksgiving, both by
+their friends at home and by their employers, and had
+been questioning as to the distribution which they could
+make of their supplies.  Reinforced by four of their
+number, the delegation in search of hungry people was
+increased to fourteen in number, and with a certain
+curiosity, it must be confessed, they went together to
+try their respective keys on No. 311.
+
+Opening this without so much as knocking at the door
+to know if here they might not provide the "annex" or
+"tender" which they wished to establish, they found, it
+must be confessed without any amazement or amusement, a
+company of Italians under the charge of one Antonio Fero,
+who had also worked out the problem of cheap lodgings,
+and had established themselves for some weeks here.
+These men also had been touched, either by some priest's
+voice or other divine word, with a sense of the duties of
+the occasion, and were just looking round to know where
+they might spread their second table.  Five of them
+joined the fourteen, and the whole company, after a rapid
+conversation, agreed that they would try No. 277 on the
+other side of the Avenue.  And here their fortunes
+changed.
+
+For here it proved that the "cops" on that beat,
+finding nights growing somewhat cold, and that there was
+no provision made by the police commissioners for a club-
+room for gentlemen of their profession, had themselves
+arranged in the polling-booth a convenient place for
+the reading of the evening newspapers and for conference
+on their mutual affairs.  These "cops" were unmarried
+men, and did not much know where was the home in which
+the governor requested them to spend their Thanksgiving.
+They had therefore determined to spread their own table
+in their club-room, and this evening had been making
+preparations for a picnic feast there at midnight on
+Thanksgiving Day, when they should be relieved from their
+more pressing duties.  They also had found the liberality
+of each member of the force had brought in more than
+would be requisite, and were considering the same subject
+which had oppressed the consciences of the leaders of the
+other bands.
+
+No one ever knew who made the great suggestion, but
+it is probable that it was one of these officials, well
+acquainted with the charter of the city of Boston and
+with its constitution and by-laws, who offered the
+proposal which was adopted.  In the jealousy of the
+fierce democracy of Boston in the year 1820, when the
+present city charter was made, it reserved for itself
+permission to open Faneuil Hall at any time for a public
+meeting.  It proves now that whenever fifty citizens
+unite to ask for the use of the hall for such a meeting,
+it must be given to them.  At the time of which we are
+reading the mayor had to preside at every such meeting.
+At the "Cops'" club it was highly determined that the
+names of fifty citizens should at once be obtained,
+and that the Cradle of Liberty should be secured for the
+general Thanksgiving.
+
+It was wisely resolved that no public notice should
+be given of this in the journals.  It was well known that
+that many-eyed Argus called the press is very apt not to
+interfere with that which is none of its business.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+And thus it happened that, when Thanksgiving Day came,
+the worthy janitor of Faneuil Hall sent down his
+assistant to open it, and that the assistant, who meant
+to dine at home, found a good-natured friend from the
+country who took the keys and lighted the gas in his
+place.  Before the sun had set, Frederick Dane and
+Antonio Fero and Michael Chevalier and the Honorable
+Mr. Walk-in-the-Water and Eben Kartschoff arrived with
+an express-wagon driven by a stepson of P. Nolan.
+There is no difficulty at Faneuil Hall in bringing out
+a few trestles and as many boards as one wants for
+tables, for Faneuil Hall is a place given to
+hospitality.  And so, before six o'clock, the hour
+assigned for the extemporized dinner, the tables were
+set with turkeys, with geese, with venison, with mallards
+and plover, with quail and partridges, with cranberry and
+squash, and with dishes of Russia and Italy and Greece
+and Bohemia, such as have no names.  The Greeks brought
+fruits, the Indians brought venison, the Italians
+brought red wine, the French brought walnuts and
+chestnuts, and the good God sent a blessing.  Almost
+every man found up either a wife or a sweetheart or a
+daughter or a niece to come with him, and the feast went
+on to the small hours of Friday.  The Mayor came down on
+time, and being an accomplished man, addressed them in
+English, in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, and in Tuscan.
+And it is to be hoped that they understood him.
+
+But no record has ever been made of the feast in any
+account-book on this side the line.  Yet there are those
+who have seen it, or something like it, with the eye of
+faith.  And when, a hundred years hence, some antiquary
+reads this story in a number of the "Omaha
+Intelligencer," which has escaped the detrition of the
+thirty-six thousand days and nights, he will say,--
+
+"Why, this was the beginning of what we do now!  Only
+these people seem to have taken care of strangers only
+one month in the twelve.  Why did they not welcome all
+strangers in like manner, until they had made them feel
+at home?  These people, once a year, seem to have fed the
+hungry.  Would it not have been simpler for them to
+provide that no man should ever be hungry?  These people
+certainly thanked God to some purpose once a year; how
+happy is the nation which has learned to thank Him always!"
+
+
+
+THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
+
+Fortunately we were with our wives.
+
+It is in general an excellent custom, as I will
+explain if opportunity is given.
+
+First, you are thus sure of good company.
+
+For four mortal hours we had ground along, and
+stopped and waited and started again, in the drifts
+between Westfield and Springfield.  We had shrieked out
+our woes by the voices of five engines.  Brave men had
+dug.  Patient men had sat inside and waited for the
+results of the digging.  At last, in triumph, at eleven
+and three quarters, as they say in "Cinderella," we
+entered the Springfield station.
+
+It was Christmas Eve!
+
+Leaving the train to its devices, Blatchford and his
+wife (her name was Sarah), and I with mine (her name was
+Phebe), walked quickly with our little sacks out of the
+station, ploughed and waded along the white street, not
+to the Massasoit--no, but to the old Eagle and Star,
+which was still standing, and was a favorite with us
+youngsters.  Good waffles, maple syrup ad lib., such
+fixings of other sorts as we preferred, and some liberty.
+The amount of liberty in absolutely first-class
+hotels is but small.  A drowsy boy waked, and turned up
+the gas.  Blatchford entered our names on the register,
+and cried at once, "By George, Wolfgang is here, and
+Dick!  What luck!" for Dick and Wolfgang also travel with
+their wives.  The boy explained that they had come up the
+river in the New Haven train, were only nine hours behind
+time, had arrived at ten, and had just finished supper
+and gone to bed.  We ordered rare beefsteak, waffles,
+dip-toast, omelettes with kidneys, and omelettes without;
+we toasted our feet at the open fire in the parlor; we
+ate the supper when it was ready; and we also went to
+bed; rejoicing that we had home with us, having travelled
+with our wives; and that we could keep our Merry
+Christmas here.  If only Wolfgang and Dick and their
+wives would join us, all would be well.  (Wolfgang's wife
+was named Bertha, and Dick's was named Hosanna,--a name
+I have never met with elsewhere.)
+
+Bed followed; and I am a graceless dog that I do not
+write a sonnet here on the unbroken slumber that
+followed.  Breakfast, by arrangement of us four, at nine.
+At 9.30, to us enter Bertha, Dick, Hosanna, and Wolfgang,
+to name them in alphabetical order.  Four chairs had been
+turned down for them.  Four chops, four omelettes, and
+four small oval dishes of fried potatoes had been
+ordered, and now appeared.  Immense shouting, immense
+kissing among those who had that privilege, general
+wondering, and great congratulating that our wives were
+there.  Solid resolution that we would advance no
+farther.  Here, and here only, in Springfield itself,
+would we celebrate our Christmas Day.
+
+It may be remarked in parenthesis that we had learned
+already that no train had entered the town since eleven
+and a quarter; and it was known by telegraph that none
+was within thirty-four miles and a half of the spot, at
+the moment the vow was made.
+
+We waded and ploughed our way through the snow to
+church.  I think Mr. Rumfry, if that is the gentleman's
+name who preached an admirable Christmas sermon in a
+beautiful church there, will remember the platoon of four
+men and four women who made perhaps a fifth of his
+congregation in that storm,--a storm which shut off most
+church-going.  Home again: a jolly fire in the parlor,
+dry stockings, and dry slippers.  Turkeys, and all things
+fitting for the dinner; and then a general assembly, not
+in a caravansary, not in a coffee-room, but in the
+regular guests' parlor of a New England second-class
+hotel, where, as it was ordered, there were no
+"transients" but ourselves that day; and whence all the
+"boarders" had gone either to their own rooms or to other
+homes.
+
+For people who have their wives with them, it is not
+difficult to provide entertainment on such an occasion.
+
+"Bertha," said Wolfgang, "could you not entertain us
+with one of your native dances?"
+
+"Ho! slave," said Dick to Hosanna, "play upon the
+virginals."  And Hosanna played a lively Arab air on the
+tavern piano, while the fair Bertha danced with a spirit
+unusual.  Was it indeed in memory of the Christmas of her
+own dear home in Circassia?
+
+All that, from "Bertha" to "Circassia," is not so.
+We did not do this at all.  That was all a slip of the
+pen.  What we did was this.  John Blatchford pulled the
+bell-cord till it broke (they always break in novels, and
+sometimes they do in taverns).  This bell-cord broke.
+The sleepy boy came; and John said, "Caitiff, is there
+never a barber in the house?"  The frightened boy said
+there was; and John bade him send him.  In a minute the
+barber appeared--black, as was expected--with a shining
+face, and white teeth, and in shirt-sleeves, and broad
+inquiry.
+
+"Do you tell me, Caesar," said John, "that in your
+country they do not wear their coats on Christmas Day?"
+
+"Sartin, they do, sah, when they go outdoors."
+
+"Do you tell me, Caesar," said Dick, "that they have
+doors in your country?"
+
+"Sartin, they do," said poor Caesar, flurried.
+
+"Boy," said I, "the gentlemen are making fun of you.
+They want to know if you ever keep Christmas in your
+country without a dance."
+
+"Never, sah," said poor Caesar.
+
+"Do they dance without music?"
+
+"No, sah; never."
+
+"Go, then," I said, in my sternest accents,--"go
+fetch a zithern, or a banjo, or a kit, or a hurdy-gurdy,
+or a fiddle."
+
+The black boy went, and returned with his violin.
+And as the light grew gray, and crept into the darkness,
+and as the darkness gathered more thick and more, he
+played for us, and he played for us, tune after tune; and
+we danced--first with precision, then in sport, then in
+wild holiday frenzy.  We began with waltzes--so great is
+the convenience of travelling with your wives--where
+should we have been, had we been all sole alone, four
+men?  Probably playing whist or euchre.  And now we began
+with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided
+into other round dances; and then in very exhaustion we
+fell back in a grave quadrille.  I danced with Hosanna;
+Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis.  We went
+through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced
+in the ark with their four wives, and which has been
+danced ever since, in every moment, on one or another
+spot of the dry earth, going round it with the sun, like
+the drum-beat of England--right and left, first two
+forward, right hand across, pastorale--the whole
+series of them; we did them with as much spirit as if it
+had been on a flat on the side of Ararat, ground yet too
+muddy for croquet.  Then Blatchford called for
+"Virginia Reel," and we raced and chased through that.
+Poor Caesar began to get exhausted, but a little flip
+from downstairs helped him amazingly.  And after the flip
+Dick cried, "Can you not dance `Money-Musk'?"  And in one
+wild frenzy of delight we danced "Money-Musk" and "Hull's
+Victory" and "Dusty Miller" and "Youth's Companion," and
+"Irish jigs" on the closet-door lifted off for the
+occasion, till the men lay on the floor screaming with
+the fun, and the women fell back on the sofas, fairly
+faint with laughing.
+
+All this last, since the sentence after "Circassia,"
+is a mistake.  There was not any bell, nor any barber,
+and we did not dance at all.  This was all a slip of my
+memory.
+
+What we really did was this:
+
+John Blatchford said, "Let us all tell stories."  It
+was growing dark and he put more logs on the fire.
+
+Bertha said,--
+
+
+"Heap on more wood, the wind is chill;
+But let it whistle as it will,
+We'll keep our merry Christmas still."
+
+
+She said that because it was in "Bertha's Visit,"--a
+very stupid book, which she remembered.
+
+Then Wolfgang told
+
+
+THE PENNY-A-LINER'S STORY
+
+[Wolfgang is a reporter, or was then, on the staff of
+the "Star."]
+
+When I was on the "Tribune" [he never was on the
+"Tribune" an hour, unless he calls selling the "Tribune"
+at Fort Plains being on the "Tribune."  But I tell the
+story as he told it.  He said:]  When I was on the
+"Tribune," I was despatched to report Mr. Webster's great
+reply to Hayne.  This was in the days of stages.  We had
+to ride from Baltimore to Washington early in the morning
+to get there in time.  I found my boots were gone from my
+room when the stage-man called me, and I reported that
+speech in worsted slippers my wife had given me the week
+before.  As we came into Bladensburg, it grew light, and
+I recognized my boots on the feet of my fellow-
+passenger,--there was but one other man in the stage.  I
+turned to claim them, but stopped in a moment, for it was
+Webster himself.  How serene his face looked as he slept
+there!  He woke soon, passed the time of day, offered me
+a part of a sandwich, for we were old friends,--I was
+counsel against him in the Ogden case.  Said Webster to
+me, "Steele, I am bothered about this speech; I have a
+paragraph in it which I cannot word up to my mind;" and
+he repeated it to me.  "How would this do?" said he.
+"`Let us hope that the sense of unrestricted freedom may
+be so intertwined with the desire to preserve a
+connection of the several parts of the body politic, that
+some arrangement, more or less lasting, may prove in a
+measure satisfactory.'  How would that do?"
+
+I said I liked the idea, but the expression seemed
+involved.
+
+"And it is involved," said Webster; "but I can't
+improve it."
+
+"How would this do?" said I.
+
+"`LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND
+INSEPARABLE!'"
+
+"Capital!" he said, "capital! write that down for
+me."  At that moment we arrived at the Capitol steps.  I
+wrote down the words for him, and from my notes he read
+them, when that place in the speech came along.
+
+All of us applauded the story.
+
+Phebe then told
+
+
+THE SCHOOLMISTRESS'S STORY
+
+You remind me of the impression that very speech made
+on me, as I heard Henry Chapin deliver it at an
+exhibition at Leicester Academy.  I resolved then that I
+would free the slave, or perish in the attempt.  But how?
+I, a woman--disfranchised by the law?  Ha!  I saw!
+
+I went to Arkansas.  I opened a "Normal College, or
+Academy for Teachers."  We had balls every second
+night, to make it popular.  Immense numbers came.  Half
+the teachers of the  Southern States were trained there.
+I had admirable instructors in oil painting and music--
+the most essential studies.  The arithmetic I taught
+myself.  I taught it well.  I achieved fame.  I achieved
+wealth; invested in Arkansas five per cents.  Only one
+secret device I persevered in.  To all--old and young,
+innocent girls and sturdy men--I so taught the
+multiplication table that one fatal error was hidden in
+its array of facts.  The nine line is the difficult one.
+I buried the error there.  "Nine times six," I taught
+them, "is fifty-six."  The rhyme made it easy.  The
+gilded falsehood passed from lip to lip, from State to
+State,--one little speck in a chain of golden verity.  I
+retired from teaching.  Slowly I watched the growth of
+the rebellion.  At last the aloe blossom shot up--after
+its hundred years of waiting.  The Southern heart was
+fired.  I brooded over my revenge.  I repaired to
+Richmond.  I opened a first-class boarding-house, where
+all the Cabinet and most of the Senate came for their
+meals; and I had eight permanents.  Soon their brows
+clouded.  The first flush of victory passed away.  Night
+after night they sat over their calculations, which all
+came wrong.  I smiled--and was a villain!  None of their
+sums would prove.  None of their estimates matched the
+performance!  Never a muster-roll that fitted as it
+should do!  And I--the despised boarding-mistress--I
+alone knew why!  Often and often, when Memminger has
+said to me, with an oath, "Why this discordancy in our
+totals?" have my lips burned to tell the secret!  But no!
+I hid it in my bosom.  And when at last I saw a black
+regiment march into Richmond, singing "John Brown," I
+cried, for the first time in twenty years, "Six times
+nine is fifty-four," and gloated in my sweet revenge.
+
+Then was hushed the harp of Phebe, and Dick told his story.
+
+
+
+THE INSPECTOR OF GAS-METERS' STORY
+
+Mine is a tale of the ingratitude of republics.  It
+is well-nigh thirty years since I was walking by the
+Owego and Ithaca Railroad,--a crooked road, not then
+adapted to high speed.  Of a sudden I saw that a long
+cross timber, on a trestle, high above a swamp, had
+sprung up from its ties.  I looked for a spike with which
+to secure it.  I  found a stone with which to hammer the
+spike.  But at this moment a train approached, down hill.
+I screamed.  They heard!  But the engine had no power to
+stop the heavy train.  With the presence of mind of a
+poet, and the courage of a hero, I flung my own weight on
+the fatal timber.  I would hold it down, or perish.  The
+engine came.  The elasticity of the pine timber whirled
+me in the air!  But I held on.  The tender crossed.
+Again I was flung in wild gyrations.  But I held on.
+"It is no bed of roses," I said; "but what act of
+Parliament was there that I should be happy?"  Three
+passenger cars and ten freight cars, as was then the
+vicious custom of that road, passed me.  But I held on,
+repeating to myself texts of Scripture to give me
+courage.  As the last car passed, I was whirled into the
+air by the rebound of the rafter.  "Heavens!" I said, "if
+my orbit is a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth."
+Hastily I estimated its ordinates, and calculated the
+curve.  What bliss!  It was a parabola!  After a flight
+of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down,
+in a soft mud-hole!
+
+In that train was the young U. S. Grant, on his way
+to West Point for examination.  But for me the armies of
+the Republic would have had no leader.
+
+I pressed my claim, when I asked to be appointed
+Minister to England.  Although no one else wished to go,
+I alone was forgotten.  Such is gratitude with republics!
+
+He ceased.  Then Sarah Blatchford told
+
+
+THE WHEELER AND WILSON'S OPERATIVE'S STORY
+
+My father had left the anchorage of Sorrento for a
+short voyage, if voyage it may be called.  Life was
+young, and this world seemed heaven.  The yacht bowled on
+under tight-reefed staysails, and all was happy.
+Suddenly the corsairs seized us; all were slain in my
+defence; but I--this fatal gift of beauty bade them spare
+my life!
+
+Why linger on my tale?  In the Zenana of the Shah of
+Persia I found my home.  "How escape his eye?" I said;
+and, fortunately, I remembered that in my reticule I
+carried one box of F. Kidder's indelible ink.  Instantly
+I applied the liquid in the large bottle to one cheek.
+Soon as it was dry, I applied that in the small bottle,
+and sat in the sun one hour.  My head ached with the
+sunlight, but what of that?  I was a fright, and I knew
+all would be well.
+
+I was consigned, so soon as my hideous deficiencies
+were known, to the sewing-room.  Then how I sighed for my
+machine!  Alas! it was not there; but I constructed an
+imitation from a cannon-wheel, a coffee-mill, and two
+nut-crackers.  And with this I made the underclothing for
+the palace and the Zenana.
+
+I also vowed revenge.  Nor did I doubt one instant
+how; for in my youth I had read Lucretia Borgia's
+memoirs, and I had a certain rule for slowly slaying a
+tyrant at a distance.  I was in charge of the Shah's own
+linen.  Every week I set back the buttons on his shirt
+collars by the width of one thread; or, by arts known to
+me, I shrunk the binding of the collar by a like
+proportion.  Tighter and tighter with each week did the
+vice close around his larynx.  Week by week, at the
+high religious festivals, I could see his face was
+blacker and blacker.  At length the hated tyrant died.
+The leeches called it apoplexy.  I did not undeceive
+them.  His guards sacked the palace.  I bagged the
+diamonds, fled with them to Trebizond, and sailed thence
+in a caique to South Boston.  No more! such memories
+oppress me.
+
+Her voice was hushed.  I told my tale in turn.
+
+
+THE CONDUCTOR'S STORY
+
+I was poor.  Let this be my excuse, or rather my
+apology.  I entered a Third Avenue car at Thirty-sixth
+Street, and saw the conductor sleeping.  Satan tempted
+me, and I took from him his badge, 213.  I see the hated
+figures now.  When he woke, he knew not he had lost it.
+The car started, and he walked to the rear.  With the
+badge on my coat I collected eight fares within, stepped
+forward, and sprang into the street.  Poverty is my only
+apology for the crime.  I concealed myself in a cellar
+where men were playing with props.  Fear is my only
+excuse.  Lest they should suspect me, I joined their
+game, and my forty cents were soon three dollars and
+seventy.  With these ill-gotten gains I visited the gold
+exchange, then open evenings.  My superior intelligence
+enabled me to place well my modest means, and at
+midnight I had a competence.  Let me be a warning to all
+young men.  Since that night I have never gambled more.
+
+I threw the hated badge into the river.  I bought a
+palace on Murray Hill, and led an upright and honorable
+life.  But since that night of terror the sound of the
+horse-cars oppresses me.  Always since, to go up town or
+down, I order my own coupe, with George to drive me; and
+never have I entered the cleanly, sweet, and airy
+carriage provided for the public.  I cannot; conscience
+is too much for me.  You see in me a monument of crime.
+
+I said no more.  A moment's pause, a few natural
+tears, and a single sigh hushed the assembly; then
+Bertha, with her siren voice, told
+
+
+THE WIFE OF BIDDEFORD'S STORY
+
+At the time you speak of I was the private governess
+of two lovely boys, Julius and Pompey--Pompey the senior
+of the two.  The black-eyed darling!  I see him now.  I
+also see, hanging to his neck, his blue-eyed brother, who
+had given Pompey his black eye the day before.  Pompey
+was generous to a fault; Julius parsimonious beyond
+virtue.  I, therefore, instructed them in two different
+rooms.  To Pompey I read the story of "Waste not, want
+not."  To Julius, on the other hand, I spoke of the
+All-love of his great Mother Nature, and her profuse
+gifts to her children.  Leaving him with grapes and
+oranges, I stepped back to Pompey, and taught him how to
+untie parcels so as to save the string.  Leaving him
+winding the string neatly, I went back to Julius, and
+gave him ginger-cakes.  The dear boys grew from year to
+year.  They outgrew their knickerbockers, and had
+trousers.  They outgrew their jackets, and became men;
+and I felt that I had not lived in vain.  I had conquered
+nature.  Pompey, the little spendthrift, was the honored
+cashier of a savings-bank, till he ran away with the
+capital.  Julius, the miser, became the chief croupier at
+the New Crockford's.  One of those boys is now in Botany
+Bay, and the other is in Sierra Leone!
+
+"I thought you were going to say in a hotter place,"
+said John Blatchford; and he told his story.
+
+
+THE STOKER'S STORY
+
+We were crossing the Atlantic in a Cunarder.  I was
+second stoker on the starboard watch.  In that horrible
+gale we spoke of before dinner, the coal was exhausted,
+and I, as the best-dressed man, was sent up to the
+captain to ask him what we should do.  I found him
+himself at the wheel.  He almost cursed me, and bade me
+say nothing of coal, at a moment when he must keep
+her head to the wind with her full power, or we were
+lost.  He bade me slide my hand into his pocket, and take
+out the key of the after freight-room, open that, and use
+the contents for fuel.  I returned hastily to the engine-
+room, and we did as we were bid.  The room contained
+nothing but old account books, which made a hot and
+effective fire.
+
+On the third day the captain came down himself into
+the engine-room, where I had never seen him before,
+called me aside, and told me that by mistake he had given
+me the wrong key; asking me if I had used it.  I pointed
+to him the empty room; not a leaf was left.  He turned
+pale with fright.  As I saw his emotion, he confided to
+me the truth.  The books were the evidences or accounts
+of the British national debt; of what is familiarly known
+as the Consolidated Fund, or the "Consols."  They had
+been secretly sent to New York for the examination of
+James Fiske, who had been asked to advance a few millions
+on this security to the English Exchequer, and now all
+evidence of indebtedness was gone!
+
+The captain was about to leap into the sea.  But I
+dissuaded him.  I told him to say nothing; I would keep
+his secret; no man else knew it.  The government would
+never utter it.  It was safe in our hands.  He
+reconsidered his purpose.  We came safe to port and did--
+nothing.
+
+Only on the first quarter-day which followed, I
+obtained leave of absence, and visited the Bank of
+England, to see what happened.  At the door was this
+placard, "Applicants for dividends will file a written
+application, with name and amount, at desk A, and proceed
+in turn to the Paying Teller's Office."  I saw their
+ingenuity.  They were making out new books, certain that
+none would apply but those who were accustomed to.  So
+skilfully do men of government study human nature.
+
+I stepped lightly to one of the public desks.  I took
+one of the blanks.  I filled it out, "John Blatchford,
+L1747 6s. 8d." and handed it in at the open trap.  I
+took my place in the queue in the teller's room.  After
+an agreeable hour, a pile, not thick, of Bank of England
+notes was given to me; and since that day I have
+quarterly drawn that amount from the maternal government
+of that country.  As I left the teller's room, I observed
+the captain in the queue.  He was the seventh man from
+the window, and I have never seen him more.
+
+We then asked Hosanna for her story.
+
+
+THE N. E. HISTORICAL GENEALOGIST'S STORY
+
+"My story," said she, "will take us far back into the
+past.  It will be necessary for me to dwell on some
+incidents in the first settlement of this country, and I
+propose that we first prepare and enjoy the Christmas
+tree.  After this, if your courage holds, you shall hear
+an over-true tale."  Pretty creature, how little she
+knew what was before us!
+
+As we had sat listening to the stories, we had been
+preparing for the tree.  Shopping being out of the
+question, we were fain from our own stores to make up our
+presents, while the women were arranging nuts, and blown
+egg-shells, and popcorn strings from the stores of the
+Eagle and Star.  The popping of corn in two corn-poppers
+had gone on through the whole of the story-telling.  All
+being so nearly ready, I called the drowsy boy again,
+and, showing him a very large stick in the wood-box,
+asked him to bring me a hatchet.  To my great joy he
+brought the axe of the establishment, and I bade him
+farewell.  How little did he think what was before him!
+So soon as he had gone I went stealthily down the stairs,
+and stepping out into the deep snow, in front of the
+hotel, looked up into the lovely night.  The storm had
+ceased, and I could see far back into the heavens.  In
+the still evening my strokes might have been heard far
+and wide, as I cut down one of the two pretty Norways
+that shaded Mr. Pynchon's front walk, next the hotel.  I
+dragged it over the snow.  Blatchford and Steele lowered
+sheets to me from the large parlor window, which I
+attached to the larger end of the tree.  With infinite
+difficulty they hauled it in.  I joined them in the
+parlor, and soon we had as stately a tree growing there
+as was in any home of joy that night in the river
+counties.
+
+With swift fingers did our wives adorn it.  I should
+have said above, that we travelled with our wives, and
+that I would recommend that custom to others.  It was
+impossible, under the circumstances, to maintain much
+secrecy; but it had been agreed that all who wished to
+turn their backs to the circle, in the preparation of
+presents, might do so without offence to the others.  As
+the presents were wrapped, one by one, in paper of
+different colors, they were marked with the names of
+giver and receiver, and placed in a large clothes-basket.
+At last all was done.  I had wrapped up my knife, my
+pencil-case, my lettercase, for Steele, Blatchford, and
+Dick.  To my wife I gave my gold watch-key, which
+fortunately fits her watch; to Hosanna, a mere trifle, a
+seal ring I wore; to Bertha, my gold chain; and to Sarah
+Blatchford, the watch which generally hung from it.  For
+a few moments we retired to our rooms while the pretty
+Hosanna arranged the forty-nine presents on the tree.
+Then she clapped her hands, and we rushed in.  What a
+wondrous sight!  What a shout of infantine laughter and
+charming prattle! for in that happy moment were we not
+all children again?
+
+I see my story hurries to its close.  Dick, who is
+the tallest, mounted a step-ladder, and called us by name
+to receive our presents.  I had a nice gold watch-key
+from Hosanna, a knife from Steele, a letter-case from
+Phebe, and a pretty pencil-case from Bertha.  Dick had
+given me his watch-chain, which he knew I fancied;
+Sarah Blatchford, a little toy of a Geneva watch she
+wore; and her husband, a handsome seal ring,--a present
+to him from the Czar, I believe; Phebe, that is my
+wife,--for we were travelling with our wives,--had a
+pencil-case from Steele, a pretty little letter-case from
+Dick, a watch-key from me, and a French repeater from
+Blatchford; Sarah Blatchford gave her the knife she
+carried, with some bright verses, saying that it was not
+to cut love; Bertha, a watch-chain; and Hosanna, a ring
+of turquoise and amethysts.  The other presents were
+similar articles, and were received, as they were given,
+with much tender feeling.  But at this moment, as Dick
+was on the top of the flight of steps, handing down a red
+apple from the tree, a slight catastrophe occurred.
+
+The first thing I was conscious of was the angry hiss
+of steam.  In a moment I perceived that the steam-boiler,
+from which the tavern was warmed, had exploded.  The
+floor beneath us rose, and we were driven with it through
+the ceiling and the rooms above,--through an opening in
+the roof into the still night.  Around us in the air were
+flying all the other contents and occupants of the Star
+and Eagle.  How bitterly was I reminded of Dick's flight
+from the railroad track of the Ithaca and Owego Railroad!
+But I could not hope such an escape as his.  Still my
+flight was in a parabola; and, in a period not longer
+than it has taken to describe it, I was thrown senseless,
+at last, into a deep snow-bank near the United
+States Arsenal.
+
+Tender hands lifted me and assuaged me.  Tender teams
+carried me to the City Hospital.  Tender eyes brooded
+over me.  Tender science cared for me.  It proved
+necessary, before I recovered, to amputate my two legs at
+the hips.  My right arm was wholly removed, by a delicate
+and curious operation, from the socket.  We saved the
+stump of my left arm, which was amputated just below the
+shoulder.  I am still in the hospital to recruit my
+strength.  The doctor does not like to have me occupy my
+mind at all; but he says there is no harm in my compiling
+my memoirs, or writing magazine stories.  My faithful
+nurse has laid me on my breast on a pillow, has put a
+camel's-hair pencil in my mouth, and, feeling almost
+personally acquainted with John Carter, the artist, I
+have written out for you, in his method, the story of my
+last Christmas.
+
+I am sorry to say that the others have never been found.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Brick Moon, et. al., by Hale
+