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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Condensed Novels, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Condensed Novels
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Posting Date: March 21, 2009 [EBook #2277]
+Release Date: August, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONDENSED NOVELS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer. HTML
+version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONDENSED NOVELS
+
+
+by
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+  HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES
+  LOTHAW, or THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION
+  MUCK-A-MUCK, A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL, AFTER JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
+  TERENCE DENVILLE
+  SELINA SEDILIA
+  THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN [AFTER THE THREE MUSKETEERS, BY DUMAS]
+  THE HAUNTED MAN
+  MISS MIX [AFTER CHARLOTTE BRONTE]
+  GUY HEAVYSTONE; OR, "ENTIRE."
+  MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY
+  JOHN JENKINS; OR, THE SMOKER REFORMED
+  NO TITLE [AFTER WILKIE COLLINS]
+    Contains:
+    MARY JONES'S NARRATIVE
+    THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY
+    NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD
+    COUNT MOSCOW'S NARRATIVE
+    DR. DIGGS'S STATEMENT
+  BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYLE
+  FANTINE
+  LA FEMME
+  MARY MCGILLUP, A SOUTHERN NOVEL, AFTER BELLE BOYD
+
+
+
+
+
+HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES.
+
+BY CH--S R--DE.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The Dodds were dead.  For twenty year they had slept under the green
+graves of Kittery churchyard.  The townfolk still spoke of them kindly.
+The keeper of the alehouse, where David had smoked his pipe, regretted
+him regularly, and Mistress Kitty, Mrs. Dodd's maid, whose trim figure
+always looked well in her mistress's gowns, was inconsolable.  The
+Hardins were in America.  Raby was aristocratically gouty; Mrs. Raby,
+religious.  Briefly, then, we have disposed of--
+
+1. Mr. and Mrs. Dodd (dead).
+
+2. Mr. and Mrs. Hardin (translated).
+
+3. Raby, baron et femme.  (Yet I don't know about the former; he came
+of a long-lived family, and the gout is an uncertain disease.)
+
+We have active at the present writing (place aux dames)--
+
+1. Lady Caroline Coventry, niece of Sir Frederick.
+
+2. Faraday Huxley Little, son of Henry and Grace Little, deceased.
+
+Sequitur to the above, A HERO AND HEROINE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+On the death of his parents, Faraday Little was taken to Raby Hall. In
+accepting his guardianship, Mr. Raby struggled stoutly against two
+prejudices: Faraday was plain-looking and sceptical.
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does, sweetheart," pleaded Jael, interceding
+for the orphan with arms that were still beautiful. "Dear knows, it is
+not his fault if he does not look like--his father," she added with a
+great gulp.  Jael was a woman, and vindicated her womanhood by never
+entirely forgiving a former rival.
+
+"It's not that alone, madam," screamed Raby, "but, d--m it, the little
+rascal's a scientist,--an atheist, a radical, a scoffer! Disbelieves in
+the Bible, ma'am; is full of this Darwinian stuff about natural
+selection and descent.  Descent, forsooth!  In my day, madam, gentlemen
+were content to trace their ancestors back to gentlemen, and not
+to--monkeys!"
+
+"Dear heart, the boy is clever," urged Jael.
+
+"Clever!" roared Raby; "what does a gentleman want with cleverness?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Young Little WAS clever.  At seven he had constructed a telescope; at
+nine, a flying-machine.  At ten he saved a valuable life.
+
+Norwood Park was the adjacent estate,--a lordly domain dotted with red
+deer and black trunks, but scrupulously kept with gravelled roads as
+hard and blue as steel.  There Little was strolling one summer morning,
+meditating on a new top with concealed springs.  At a little distance
+before him he saw the flutter of lace and ribbons.  A young lady, a
+very young lady,--say of seven summers,--tricked out in the crying
+abominations of the present fashion, stood beside a low bush.  Her
+nursery-maid was not present, possibly owing to the fact that John the
+footman was also absent.
+
+Suddenly Little came towards her.  "Excuse me, but do you know what
+those berries are?"  He was pointing to the low bush filled with dark
+clusters of shining--suspiciously shining--fruit.
+
+"Certainly; they are blueberries."
+
+"Pardon me; you are mistaken.  They belong to quite another family."
+
+Miss Impudence drew herself up to her full height (exactly three feet
+nine and a half inches), and, curling an eight of an inch of scarlet
+lip, said, scornfully.  "YOUR family, perhaps."
+
+Faraday Little smiled in the superiority of boyhood over girlhood.
+
+"I allude to the classification.  That plant is the belladonna, or
+deadly nightshade.  Its alkaloid is a narcotic poison."
+
+Sauciness turned pale.  "I--have--just--eaten--some!"  And began to
+whimper.  "O dear, what shall I do?"  Then did it, i. e. wrung her
+small fingers and cried.
+
+"Pardon me one moment."  Little passed his arm around her neck, and
+with his thumb opened widely the patrician-veined lids of her sweet
+blue eyes.  "Thank Heaven, there is yet no dilation of the pupil; it is
+not too late!"  He cast a rapid glance around.  The nozzle and about
+three feet of garden hose lay near him.
+
+"Open your mouth, quick!"
+
+It was a pretty, kissable mouth.  But young Little meant business. He
+put the nozzle down her pink throat as far as it would go.
+
+"Now, don't move."
+
+He wrapped his handkerchief around a hoopstick.  Then he inserted both
+in the other end of the stiff hose.  It fitted snugly.  He shoved it in
+and then drew it back.
+
+Nature abhors a vacuum.  The young patrician was as amenable to this
+law as the child of the lowest peasant.
+
+She succumbed.  It was all over in a minute.  Then she burst into a
+small fury.
+
+"You nasty, bad--UGLY boy."
+
+Young Little winced, but smiled.
+
+"Stimulants," he whispered to the frightened nursery-maid who
+approached; "good evening."  He was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The breach between young Little and Mr. Raby was slowly widening.
+Little found objectionable features in the Hall.  "This black oak
+ceiling and wainscoating is not as healthful as plaster; besides, it
+absorbs the light.  The bedroom ceiling is too low; the Elizabethan
+architects knew nothing of ventilation.  The color of that oak
+panelling which you admire is due to an excess of carbon and the exuvia
+from the pores of your skin--"
+
+"Leave the house," bellowed Raby, "before the roof falls on your
+sacrilegious head!"
+
+As Little left the house, Lady Caroline and a handsome boy of about
+Little's age entered.  Lady Caroline recoiled, and then--blushed.
+Little glared; he instinctively felt the presence of a rival.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Little worked hard.  He studied night and day.  In five years he became
+a lecturer, then a professor.
+
+He soared as high as the clouds, he dipped as low as the cellars of the
+London poor.  He analyzed the London fog, and found it two parts smoke,
+one disease, one unmentionable abominations.  He published a pamphlet,
+which was violently attacked.  Then he knew he had done something.
+
+But he had not forgotten Caroline.  He was walking one day in the
+Zoological Gardens and he came upon a pretty picture,--flesh and blood
+too.
+
+Lady Caroline feeding buns to the bears!  An exquisite thrill passed
+through his veins.  She turned her sweet face and their eyes met.  They
+recollected their first meeting seven years before, but it was his turn
+to be shy and timid.  Wonderful power of age and sex!  She met him with
+perfect self-possession.
+
+"Well meant, but indigestible I fear" (he alluded to the buns).
+
+"A clever person like yourself can easily correct that" (she, the
+slyboots, was thinking of something else).
+
+In a few moments they were chatting gayly.  Little eagerly descanted
+upon the different animals; she listened with delicious interest.  An
+hour glided delightfully away.
+
+After this sunshine, clouds.
+
+To them suddenly entered Mr. Raby and a handsome young man.  The
+gentlemen bowed stiffly and looked vicious,--as they felt.  The lady of
+this quartette smiled amiably, as she did not feel.
+
+"Looking at your ancestors, I suppose," said Mr. Raby, pointing to the
+monkeys; "we will not disturb you.  Come."  And he led Caroline away.
+
+Little was heart-sick.  He dared not follow them.  But an hour later he
+saw something which filled his heart with bliss unspeakable.
+
+Lady Caroline, with a divine smile on her face, feeding the monkeys!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Encouraged by love, Little worked hard upon his new flying-machine. His
+labors were lightened by talking of the beloved one with her French
+maid Therese, whom he had discreetly bribed.  Mademoiselle Therese was
+venal, like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not
+bribed by British gold.  Strange as it may seem to the British mind, it
+was British genius, British eloquence, British thought, that brought
+her to the feet of this young savan.
+
+"I believe," said Lady Caroline, one day, interrupting her maid in a
+glowing eulogium upon the skill of "M. Leetell,"--"I believe you are in
+love with this Professor."  A quick flush crossed the olive cheek of
+Therese, which Lady Caroline afterward remembered.
+
+The eventful day of trial came.  The public were gathered, impatient
+and scornful as the pigheaded public are apt to be.  In the open area a
+long cylindrical balloon, in shape like a Bologna sausage, swayed above
+the machine, from which, like some enormous bird caught in a net, it
+tried to free itself.  A heavy rope held it fast to the ground.
+
+Little was waiting for the ballast, when his eye caught Lady Caroline's
+among the spectators.  The glance was appealing.  In a moment he was at
+her side.
+
+"I should like so much to get into the machine," said the
+arch-hypocrite, demurely.
+
+"Are you engaged to marry young Raby," said Little, bluntly.
+
+"As you please," she said with a courtesy; "do I take this as a
+refusal?"
+
+Little was a gentleman.  He lifted her and her lapdog into the car.
+
+"How nice! it won't go off?"
+
+"No, the rope is strong, and the ballast is not yet in."
+
+A report like a pistol, a cry from the spectators, a thousand hands
+stretched to grasp the parted rope, and the balloon darted upward.
+
+Only one hand of that thousand caught the rope,--Little's!  But in the
+same instant the horror-stricken spectators saw him whirled from his
+feet and borne upward, still clinging to the rope, into space.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.*
+
+* The right of dramatization of this and succeeding chapters is
+reserved by the writer.
+
+
+Lady Caroline fainted.  The cold watery nose of her dog on her cheek
+brought her to herself.  She dared not look over the edge of the car;
+she dared not look up to the bellying monster above her, bearing her to
+death.  She threw herself on the bottom of the car, and embraced the
+only living thing spared her,--the poodle.  Then she cried.  Then a
+clear voice came apparently out of the circumambient air:--
+
+"May I trouble you to look at the barometer?"
+
+She put her head over the car.  Little was hanging at the end of a long
+rope.  She put her head back again.
+
+In another moment he saw her perplexed, blushing face over the
+edge,--blissful sight.
+
+"O, please don't think of coming up!  Stay there, do!"
+
+Little stayed.  Of course she could make nothing out of the barometer,
+and said so.  Little smiled.
+
+"Will you kindly send it down to me?"
+
+But she had no string or cord.  Finally she said, "Wait a moment."
+
+Little waited.  This time her face did not appear.  The barometer came
+slowly down at the end of--a stay-lace.
+
+The barometer showed a frightful elevation.  Little looked up at the
+valve and said nothing.  Presently he heard a sigh.  Then a sob.  Then,
+rather sharply,--
+
+"Why don't you do something?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Little came up the rope hand over hand.  Lady Caroline crouched in the
+farther side of the car.  Fido, the poodle, whined.  "Poor thing," said
+Lady Caroline, "it's hungry."
+
+"Do you wish to save the dog?" said Little.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Give me your parasol."
+
+She handed Little a good-sized affair of lace and silk and whalebone.
+(None of your "sunshades.")  Little examined its ribs carefully.
+
+"Give me the dog."
+
+Lady Caroline hurriedly slipped a note under the dog's collar, and
+passed over her pet.
+
+Little tied the dog to the handle of the parasol and launched them both
+into space.  The next moment they were slowly, but tranquilly, sailing
+to the earth.
+
+"A parasol and a parachute are distinct, but not different.  Be not
+alarmed, he will get his dinner at some farm-house."
+
+"Where are we now?"
+
+"That opaque spot you see is London fog.  Those twin clouds are North
+and South America.  Jerusalem and Madagascar are those specks to the
+right."
+
+Lady Caroline moved nearer; she was becoming interested.  Then she
+recalled herself and said freezingly, "How are we going to descend?"
+
+"By opening the valve."
+
+"Why don't you open it then?"
+
+"BECAUSE THE VALVE-STRING IS BROKEN!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Lady Caroline fainted.  When she revived it was dark.  They were
+apparently cleaving their way through a solid block of black marble.
+She moaned and shuddered.
+
+"I wish we had a light."
+
+"I have no lucifers," said Little.  "I observe, however, that you wear
+a necklace of amber.  Amber under certain conditions becomes highly
+electrical.  Permit me."
+
+He took the amber necklace and rubbed it briskly.  Then he asked her to
+present her knuckle to the gem.  A bright spark was the result.  This
+was repeated for some hours.  The light was not brilliant, but it was
+enough for the purposes of propriety, and satisfied the delicately
+minded girl.
+
+Suddenly there was a tearing, hissing noise and a smell of gas. Little
+looked up and turned pale.  The balloon, at what I shall call the
+pointed end of the Bologna sausage, was evidently bursting from
+increased pressure.  The gas was escaping, and already they were
+beginning to descend.  Little was resigned but firm.
+
+"If the silk gives way, then we are lost.  Unfortunately I have no rope
+nor material for binding it."
+
+The woman's instinct had arrived at the same conclusion sooner than the
+man's reason.  But she was hesitating over a detail.
+
+"Will you go down the rope for a moment?" she said, with a sweet smile.
+
+Little went down.  Presently she called to him.  She held something in
+her hand,--a wonderful invention of the seventeenth century, improved
+and perfected in this: a pyramid of sixteen circular hoops of light yet
+strong steel, attached to each other by cloth bands.
+
+With a cry of joy Little seized them, climbed to the balloon, and
+fitted the elastic hoops over its conical end.  Then he returned to the
+car.
+
+"We are saved."
+
+Lady Caroline, blushing, gathered her slim but antique drapery against
+the other end of the car.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+They were slowly descending.  Presently Lady Caroline distinguished the
+outlines of Raby Hall.  "I think I will get out here," she said.
+
+Little anchored the balloon and prepared to follow her.
+
+"Not so, my friend," she said, with an arch smile.  "We must not be
+seen together.  People might talk.  Farewell."
+
+Little sprang again into the balloon and sped away to America.  He came
+down in California, oddly enough in front of Hardin's door, at Dutch
+Flat.  Hardin was just examining a specimen of ore.
+
+"You are a scientist; can you tell me if that is worth anything?" he
+said, handing it to Little.
+
+Little held it to the light.  "It contains ninety per cent of silver."
+
+Hardin embraced him.  "Can I do anything for you, and why are you here?"
+
+Little told his story.  Hardin asked to see the rope.  Then he examined
+it carefully.
+
+"Ah, this was cut, not broken!"
+
+"With a knife?" asked Little.
+
+"No.  Observe both sides are equally indented.  It was done with a
+SCISSORS!"
+
+"Just Heaven!" gasped Little.  "Therese!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Little returned to London.  Passing through London one day he met a
+dog-fancier.  "Buy a nice poodle, sir?"
+
+Something in the animal attracted his attention.  "Fido!" he gasped.
+
+The dog yelped.
+
+Little bought him.  On taking off his collar a piece of paper rustled
+to the floor.  He knew the handwriting and kissed it.  It ran:--
+
+
+"TO THE HON. AUGUSTUS RABY--I cannot marry you.  If I marry any one"
+(sly puss) "it will be the man who has twice saved my life,--Professor
+Little.
+
+"CAROLINE COVENTRY."
+
+
+And she did.
+
+
+
+
+LOTHAW;
+
+OR,
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF A RELIGION.
+
+BY MR. BENJAMINS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"I remember him a little boy," said the Duchess.  "His mother was a
+dear friend of mine; you know she was one of my bridesmaids."
+
+"And you have never seen him since, mamma?" asked the oldest married
+daughter, who did not look a day older than her mother.
+
+"Never; he was an orphan shortly after.  I have often reproached
+myself, but it is so difficult to see boys."
+
+This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the morning-room of
+Plusham, where the mistress of the palatial mansion sat involved in the
+sacred privacy of a circle of her married daughters.  One dexterously
+applied golden knitting-needles to the fabrication of a purse of floss
+silk of the rarest texture, which none who knew the almost fabulous
+wealth of the Duke would believe was ever destined to hold in its
+silken meshes a less sum than L1,000,000; another adorned a slipper
+exclusively with seed pearls; a third emblazoned a page with rare
+pigments and the finest quality of gold leaf.  Beautiful forms leaned
+over frames glowing with embroidery, and beautiful frames leaned over
+forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl.  Others, more remote, occasionally
+burst into melody as they tried the passages of a new and exclusive air
+given to them in MS. by some titled and devoted friend, for the private
+use of the aristocracy alone, and absolutely prohibited for publication.
+
+The Duchess, herself the superlative of beauty, wealth, and position,
+was married to the highest noble in the Three Kingdoms. Those who
+talked about such matters said that their progeny were exactly like
+their parents,--a peculiarity of the aristocratic and wealthy.  They
+all looked like brothers and sisters, except their parents, who, such
+was their purity of blood, the perfection of their manners, and the
+opulence of their condition, might have been taken for their own
+children's elder son and daughter.  The daughters, with one exception,
+were all married to the highest nobles in the land.  That exception was
+the Lady Coriander, who, there being no vacancy above a marquis and a
+rental of L1,000,000, waited.  Gathered around the refined and sacred
+circle of their breakfast-table, with their glittering coronets, which,
+in filial respect to their father's Tory instincts and their mother's
+Ritualistic tastes, they always wore on their regal brows, the effect
+was dazzling as it was refined.  It was this peculiarity and their
+strong family resemblance which led their brother-in-law, the
+good-humored St. Addlegourd, to say that, "'Pon my soul, you know, the
+whole precious mob looked like a ghastly pack of court cards, you
+know."  St. Addlegourd was a radical.  Having a rent-roll of
+L15,000,000, and belonging to one of the oldest families in Britain, he
+could afford to be.
+
+"Mamma, I've just dropped a pearl," said the Lady Coriander, bending
+over the Persian hearthrug.
+
+"From your lips, sweet friend," said Lothaw, who came of age and
+entered the room at the same moment.
+
+"No, from my work.  It was a very valuable pearl, mamma; papa gave
+Isaacs and Sons L50,000 for the two."
+
+"Ah, indeed," said the Duchess, languidly rising; "let us go to
+luncheon."
+
+"But your Grace," interposed Lothaw, who was still quite young, and had
+dropped on all-fours on the carpet in search of the missing gem,
+"consider the value--"
+
+"Dear friend," interposed the Duchess, with infinite tact, gently
+lifting him by the tails of his dress-coat, "I am waiting for your arm."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Lothaw was immensely rich.  The possessor of seventeen castles, fifteen
+villas, nine shooting-boxes, and seven town houses, he had other
+estates of which he had not even heard.
+
+Everybody at Plusham played croquet, and none badly.  Next to their
+purity of blood and great wealth, the family were famous for this
+accomplishment.  Yet Lothaw soon tired of the game, and after seriously
+damaging his aristocratically large foot in an attempt to "tight
+croquet" the Lady Aniseed's ball, he limped away to join the Duchess.
+
+"I'm going to the hennery," she said.
+
+"Let me go with you, I dearly love fowls--broiled," he added,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"The Duke gave Lady Montairy some large Cochins the other day,"
+continued the Duchess, changing the subject with delicate tact.
+
+
+        "Lady Montairy,
+         Quite contrairy,
+     How do your cochins grow?"
+
+
+sang Lothaw gayly.
+
+The Duchess looked shocked.  After a prolonged silence, Lothaw abruptly
+and gravely said:--
+
+"If you please, ma'am, when I come into my property I should like to
+build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander."
+
+"You amaze me, dear friend, and yet both your aspirations are noble and
+eminently proper," said the Duchess; "Coriander is but a child,--and
+yet," she added, looking graciously upon her companion, "for the matter
+of that, so are you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Mr. Putney Giles's was Lothaw's first grand dinner-party.  Yet, by
+carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably,
+and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing
+its contents with a spoon.  The conversation was peculiar and
+singularly interesting.
+
+"Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?"
+said Mrs. Putney Giles to her companion.
+
+"I certainly think that polygamy should be limited by isothermal
+lines," replied Lothaw.
+
+"I should say it was a matter of latitude," observed a loud talkative
+man opposite.  He was an Oxford Professor with a taste for satire, and
+had made himself very obnoxious to the company, during dinner, by
+speaking disparagingly of a former well-known Chancellor of the
+Exchequer,--a great statesman and brilliant novelist,--whom he feared
+and hated.
+
+Suddenly there was a sensation in the room; among the females it
+absolutely amounted to a nervous thrill.  His Eminence, the Cardinal,
+was announced.  He entered with great suavity of manner, and, after
+shaking hands with everybody, asking after their relatives, and
+chucking the more delicate females under the chin with a high-bred
+grace peculiar to his profession, he sat down, saying, "And how do we
+all find ourselves this evening, my dears?" in several different
+languages, which he spoke fluently.
+
+Lothaw's heart was touched.  His deeply religious convictions were
+impressed.  He instantly went up to this gifted being, confessed, and
+received absolution.  "To-morrow," he said to himself, "I will partake
+of the communion, and endow the Church with my vast estates.  For the
+present I'll let the improved cottages go."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+As Lothaw turned to leave the Cardinal, he was struck by a beautiful
+face.  It was that of a matron, slim but shapely as an Ionic column.
+Her face was Grecian, with Corinthian temples; Hellenic eyes that
+looked from jutting eyebrows, like dormer-windows in an Attic forehead,
+completed her perfect Athenian outline.  She wore a black frock-coat
+tightly buttoned over her bloomer trousers, and a standing collar.
+
+"Your Lordship is struck by that face," said a social parasite.
+
+"I am; who is she?"
+
+"Her name is Mary Ann.  She is married to an American, and has lately
+invented a new religion."
+
+"Ah!" said Lothaw eagerly, with difficulty restraining himself from
+rushing toward her.
+
+"Yes; shall I introduce you?"
+
+Lothaw thought of Lady Coriander's High Church proclivities, of the
+Cardinal, and hesitated: "No, I thank you, not now."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Lothaw was maturing.  He had attended two woman's rights conventions,
+three Fenian meetings, had dined at White's, and had danced vis-a-vis
+to a prince of the blood, and eaten off of gold plates at Crecy House.
+
+His stables were near Oxford, and occupied more ground than the
+University.  He was driving over there one day, when he perceived some
+rustics and menials endeavoring to stop a pair of runaway horses
+attached to a carriage in which a lady and gentleman were seated.
+Calmly awaiting the termination of the accident, with high-bred
+courtesy Lothaw forbore to interfere until the carriage was overturned,
+the occupants thrown out, and the runaways secured by the servants,
+when he advanced and offered the lady the exclusive use of his Oxford
+stables.
+
+Turning upon him a face whose perfect Hellenic details he remembered,
+she slowly dragged a gentleman from under the wheels into the light and
+presented him with ladylike dignity as her husband, Major-General
+Camperdown, an American.
+
+"Ah," said Lothaw, carelessly, "I believe I have some land there. If I
+mistake not, my agent, Mr. Putney Giles, lately purchased the State
+of--Illinois--I think you call it."
+
+"Exactly.  As a former resident of the city of Chicago, let me
+introduce myself as your tenant."
+
+Lothaw bowed graciously to the gentleman, who, except that he seemed
+better dressed than most Englishmen, showed no other signs of
+inferiority and plebeian extraction.
+
+"We have met before," said Lothaw to the lady as she leaned on his arm,
+while they visited his stables, the University, and other places of
+interest in Oxford.  "Pray tell me, what is this new religion of yours?"
+
+"It is Woman Suffrage, Free Love, Mutual Affinity, and Communism.
+Embrace it and me."
+
+Lothaw did not know exactly what to do.  She however soothed and
+sustained his agitated frame and sealed with an embrace his speechless
+form.  The General approached and coughed slightly with gentlemanly
+tact.
+
+"My husband will be too happy to talk with you further on this
+subject," she said with quiet dignity, as she regained the General's
+side.  "Come with us to Oneida.  Brook Farm is a thing of the past."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+As Lothaw drove toward his country-seat, "The Mural Enclosure," he
+observed a crowd, apparently of the working class, gathered around a
+singular-looking man in the picturesque garb of an Ethiopian serenader.
+"What does he say?" inquired Lothaw of his driver.
+
+The man touched his hat respectfully and said, "My Mary Ann."
+
+"'My Mary Ann!'"  Lothaw's heart beat rapidly.  Who was this mysterious
+foreigner?  He had heard from Lady Coriander of a certain Popish plot;
+but could he connect Mr. Camperdown with it?
+
+The spectacle of two hundred men at arms who advanced to meet him at
+the gates of The Mural Enclosure drove all else from the still youthful
+and impressible mind of Lothaw.  Immediately behind them, on the steps
+of the baronial halls, were ranged his retainers, led by the chief cook
+and bottle-washer, and head crumb-remover.  On either side were two
+companies of laundry-maids, preceded by the chief crimper and fluter,
+supporting a long Ancestral Line, on which depended the family linen,
+and under which the youthful lord of the manor passed into the halls of
+his fathers.  Twenty-four scullions carried the massive gold and silver
+plate of the family on their shoulders, and deposited it at the feet of
+their master. The spoons were then solemnly counted by the steward, and
+the perfect ceremony ended.
+
+Lothaw sighed.  He sought out the gorgeously gilded "Taj," or sacred
+mausoleum erected to his grandfather in the second story front room,
+and wept over the man he did not know.  He wandered alone in his
+magnificent park, and then, throwing himself on a grassy bank, pondered
+on the Great First Cause, and the necessity of religion.  "I will send
+Mary Ann a handsome present," said Lothaw, thoughtfully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+"Each of these pearls, my Lord, is worth fifty thousand guineas," said
+Mr. Amethyst, the fashionable jeweler, as he lightly lifted a large
+shovelful from a convenient bin behind his counter.
+
+"Indeed," said Lothaw, carelessly, "I should prefer to see some
+expensive ones.
+
+"Some number sixes, I suppose," said Mr. Amethyst, taking a couple from
+the apex of a small pyramid that lay piled on the shelf. "These are
+about the size of the Duchess of Billingsgate's, but they are in finer
+condition.  The fact is, her Grace permits her two children, the
+Marquis of Smithfield and the Duke of St. Giles,--two sweet pretty
+boys, my Lord,--to use them as marbles in their games.  Pearls require
+some attention, and I go down there regularly twice a week to clean
+them.  Perhaps your Lordship would like some ropes of pearls?"
+
+"About half a cable's length," said Lothaw, shortly, "and send them to
+my lodgings."
+
+Mr. Amethyst became thoughtful.  "I am afraid I have not the exact
+number--that is--excuse me one moment.  I will run over to the Tower
+and borrow a few from the crown jewels."  And before Lothaw could
+prevent him, he seized his hat and left Lothaw alone.
+
+His position certainly was embarrassing.  He could not move without
+stepping on costly gems which had rolled from the counter; the rarest
+diamonds lay scattered on the shelves; untold fortunes in priceless
+emeralds lay within his grasp.  Although such was the aristocratic
+purity of his blood and the strength of his religious convictions that
+he probably would not have pocketed a single diamond, still he could
+not help thinking that he might be accused of taking some.  "You can
+search me, if you like," he said when Mr. Amethyst returned; "but I
+assure you, upon the honor of a gentleman, that I have taken nothing."
+
+"Enough, my Lord," said Mr. Amethyst, with a low bow; "we never search
+the aristocracy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+As Lothaw left Mr. Amethyst's, he ran against General Camperdown. "How
+is Mary Ann?" he asked hurriedly.
+
+"I regret to state that she is dying," said the general, with a grave
+voice, as he removed his cigar from his lips, and lifted his hat to
+Lothaw.
+
+"Dying!" said Lothaw, incredulously.
+
+"Alas, too true!" replied the General.  "The engagements of a long
+lecturing season, exposure in travelling by railway during the winter,
+and the imperfect nourishment afforded by the refreshments along the
+road, have told on her delicate frame.  But she wants to see you before
+she dies.  Here is the key of my lodging.  I will finish my cigar out
+here."
+
+Lothaw hardly recognized those wasted Hellenic outlines as he entered
+the dimly lighted room of the dying woman.  She was already a classic
+ruin,--as wrecked and yet as perfect as the Parthenon. He grasped her
+hand silently.
+
+"Open-air speaking twice a week, and saleratus bread in the rural
+districts, have brought me to this," she said feebly; "but it is well.
+The cause progresses.  The tyrant man succumbs."
+
+Lothaw could only press her hand.
+
+"Promise me one thing.  Don't--whatever you do--become a Catholic."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The Church does not recognize divorce.  And now embrace me.  I would
+prefer at this supreme moment to introduce myself to the next world
+through the medium of the best society in this.  Good by. When I am
+dead, be good enough to inform my husband of the fact."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Lothaw spent the next six months on an Aryan island, in an Aryan
+climate, and with an Aryan race.
+
+"This is an Aryan landscape," said his host, "and that is a Mary Ann
+statue."  It was, in fact, a full-length figure in marble of Mrs.
+General Camperdown!
+
+"If you please, I should like to become a Pagan," said Lothaw, one day,
+after listening to an impassioned discourse on Greek art from the lips
+of his host.
+
+But that night, on consulting a well-known spiritual medium, Lothaw
+received a message from the late Mrs. General Camperdown, advising him
+to return to England.  Two days later he presented himself at Plusham.
+
+"The young ladies are in the garden," said the Duchess.  "Don't you
+want to go and pick a rose?" she added with a gracious smile, and the
+nearest approach to a wink that was consistent with her patrician
+bearing and aquiline nose.
+
+Lothaw went and presently returned with the blushing Coriander upon his
+arm.
+
+"Bless you, my children," said the Duchess.  Then, turning to Lothaw,
+she said: "You have simply fulfilled and accepted your inevitable
+destiny.  It was morally impossible for you to marry out of this
+family.  For the present, the Church of England is safe."
+
+
+
+
+MUCK-A-MUCK.
+
+A MODERN INDIAN NOVEL.
+
+AFTER COOPER.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+It was toward the close of a bright October day.  The last rays of the
+setting sun were reflected from one of those sylvan lakes peculiar to
+the Sierras of California.  On the right the curling smoke of an Indian
+village rose between the columns of the lofty pines, while to the left
+the log cottage of Judge Tompkins, embowered in buckeyes, completed the
+enchanting picture.
+
+Although the exterior of the cottage was humble and unpretentious, and
+in keeping with the wildness of the landscape, its interior gave
+evidence of the cultivation and refinement of its inmates.  An
+aquarium, containing goldfishes, stood on a marble centre-table at one
+end of the apartment, while a magnificent grand piano occupied the
+other.  The floor was covered with a yielding tapestry carpet, and the
+walls were adorned with paintings from the pencils of Van Dyke, Rubens,
+Tintoretto, Michael Angelo, and the productions of the more modern
+Turner, Kensett, Church, and Bierstadt.  Although Judge Tompkins had
+chosen the frontiers of civilization as his home, it was impossible for
+him to entirely forego the habits and tastes of his former life.  He
+was seated in a luxurious arm-chair, writing at a mahogany ecritoire,
+while his daughter, a lovely young girl of seventeen summers, plied her
+crochet-needle on an ottoman beside him.  A bright fire of pine logs
+flickered and flamed on the ample hearth.
+
+Genevra Octavia Tompkins was Judge Tompkins's only child.  Her mother
+had long since died on the Plains.  Reared in affluence, no pains had
+been spared with the daughter's education.  She was a graduate of one
+of the principal seminaries, and spoke French with a perfect Benicia
+accent.  Peerlessly beautiful, she was dressed in a white moire antique
+robe trimmed with tulle.  That simple rosebud with which most heroines
+exclusively decorate their hair, was all she wore in her raven locks.
+
+The Judge was the first to break the silence.
+
+"Genevra, the logs which compose yonder fire seem to have been
+incautiously chosen.  The sibilation produced by the sap, which exudes
+copiously therefrom, is not conducive to composition."
+
+"True, father, but I thought it would be preferable to the constant
+crepitation which is apt to attend the combustion of more seasoned
+ligneous fragments."
+
+The Judge looked admiringly at the intellectual features of the
+graceful girl, and half forgot the slight annoyances of the green wood
+in the musical accents of his daughter.  He was smoothing her hair
+tenderly, when the shadow of a tall figure, which suddenly darkened the
+doorway, caused him to look up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+It needed but a glance at the new-comer to detect at once the form and
+features of the haughty aborigine,--the untaught and untrammelled son
+of the forest.  Over one shoulder a blanket, negligently but gracefully
+thrown, disclosed a bare and powerful breast, decorated with a quantity
+of three-cent postage-stamps which he had despoiled from an Overland
+Mail stage a few weeks previous.  A cast-off beaver of Judge
+Tompkins's, adorned by a simple feather, covered his erect head, from
+beneath which his straight locks descended.  His right hand hung
+lightly by his side, while his left was engaged in holding on a pair of
+pantaloons, which the lawless grace and freedom of his lower limbs
+evidently could not brook.
+
+"Why," said the Indian, in a low sweet tone,--"why does the Pale Face
+still follow the track of the Red Man?  Why does he pursue him, even as
+O-kee-chow, the wild-cat, chases Ka-ka, the skunk? Why are the feet of
+Sorrel-top, the white chief, among the acorns of Muck-a-muck, the
+mountain forest?  Why," he repeated, quietly but firmly abstracting a
+silver spoon from the table,--"why do you seek to drive him from the
+wigwams of his fathers?  His brothers are already gone to the happy
+hunting-grounds.  Will the Pale Face seek him there?"  And, averting
+his face from the Judge, he hastily slipped a silver cake-basket
+beneath his blanket, to conceal his emotion.
+
+"Muck-a-Muck has spoken," said Genevra, softly.  "Let him now listen.
+Are the acorns of the mountain sweeter than the esculent and nutritious
+bean of the Pale Face miner?  Does my brother prize the edible
+qualities of the snail above that of the crisp and oleaginous bacon?
+Delicious are the grasshoppers that sport on the hillside,--are they
+better than the dried apples of the Pale Faces? Pleasant is the gurgle
+of the torrent, Kish-Kish, but is it better than the cluck-cluck of old
+Bourbon from the old stone bottle?"
+
+"Ugh!" said the Indian,--"ugh! good.  The White Rabbit is wise. Her
+words fall as the snow on Tootoonolo, and the rocky heart of
+Muck-a-Muck is hidden.  What says my brother the Gray Gopher of Dutch
+Flat?"
+
+"She has spoken, Muck-a-Muck," said the Judge, gazing fondly on his
+daughter.  "It is well.  Our treaty is concluded.  No, thank you,--you
+need NOT dance the Dance of Snow Shoes, or the Moccasin Dance, the
+Dance of Green Corn, or the Treaty Dance.  I would be alone.  A strange
+sadness overpowers me."
+
+"I go," said the Indian.  "Tell your great chief in Washington, the
+Sachem Andy, that the Red Man is retiring before the footsteps of the
+adventurous Pioneer.  Inform him, if you please, that westward the star
+of empire takes its way, that the chiefs of the Pi-Ute nation are for
+Reconstruction to a man, and that Klamath will poll a heavy Republican
+vote in the fall."
+
+And folding his blanket more tightly around him, Muck-a-Muck withdrew.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Genevra Tompkins stood at the door of the log-cabin, looking after the
+retreating Overland Mail stage which conveyed her father to Virginia
+City.  "He may never return again," sighed the young girl as she
+glanced at the frightfully rolling vehicle and wildly careering
+horses,--"at least, with unbroken bones.  Should he meet with an
+accident!  I mind me now a fearful legend, familiar to my childhood.
+Can it be that the drivers on this line are privately instructed to
+despatch all passengers maimed by accident, to prevent tedious
+litigation?  No, no.  But why this weight upon my heart?"
+
+She seated herself at the piano and lightly passed her hand over the
+keys.  Then, in a clear mezzo-soprano voice, she sang the first verse
+of one of the most popular Irish ballads:--
+
+
+     "O Arrah, ma dheelish, the distant dudheen
+      Lies soft in the moonlight, ma bouchal vourneen:
+      The springing gossoons on the heather are still,
+      And the caubeens and colleens are heard on the hills."
+
+
+But as the ravishing notes of her sweet voice died upon the air, her
+hands sank listlessly to her side.  Music could not chase away the
+mysterious shadow from her heart.  Again she rose.  Putting on a white
+crape bonnet, and carefully drawing a pair of lemon-colored gloves over
+her taper fingers, she seized her parasol and plunged into the depths
+of the pine forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Genevra had not proceeded many miles before a weariness seized upon her
+fragile limbs, and she would fain seat herself upon the trunk of a
+prostrate pine, which she previously dusted with her handkerchief.  The
+sun was just sinking below the horizon, and the scene was one of
+gorgeous and sylvan beauty.  "How beautiful is Nature!" murmured the
+innocent girl, as, reclining gracefully against the root of the tree,
+she gathered up her skirts and tied a handkerchief around her throat.
+But a low growl interrupted her meditation.  Starting to her feet, her
+eyes met a sight which froze her blood with terror.
+
+The only outlet to the forest was the narrow path, barely wide enough
+for a single person, hemmed in by trees and rocks, which she had just
+traversed.  Down this path, in Indian file, came a monstrous grizzly,
+closely followed by a California lion, a wild-cat, and a buffalo, the
+rear being brought up by a wild Spanish bull.  The mouths of the three
+first animals were distended with frightful significance; the horns of
+the last were lowered as ominously.  As Genevra was preparing to faint,
+she heard a low voice behind her.
+
+"Eternally dog-gone my skin ef this ain't the puttiest chance yet."
+
+At the same moment, a long, shining barrel dropped lightly from behind
+her, and rested over her shoulder.
+
+Genevra shuddered.
+
+"Dern ye--don't move!"
+
+Genevra became motionless.
+
+The crack of a rifle rang through the woods.  Three frightful yells
+were heard, and two sullen roars.  Five animals bounded into the air
+and five lifeless bodies lay upon the plain.  The well-aimed bullet had
+done its work.  Entering the open throat of the grizzly, it had
+traversed his body only to enter the throat of the California lion, and
+in like manner the catamount, until it passed through into the
+respective foreheads of the bull and the buffalo, and finally fell
+flattened from the rocky hillside.
+
+Genevra turned quickly.  "My preserver!" she shrieked, and fell into
+the arms of Natty Bumpo, the celebrated Pike Ranger of Donner Lake.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The moon rose cheerfully above Donner Lake.  On its placid bosom a
+dug-out canoe glided rapidly, containing Natty Bumpo and Genevra
+Tompkins.
+
+Both were silent.  The same thought possessed each, and perhaps there
+was sweet companionship even in the unbroken quiet.  Genevra bit the
+handle of her parasol and blushed.  Natty Bumpo took a fresh chew of
+tobacco.  At length Genevra said, as if in half-spoken revery:--
+
+"The soft shining of the moon and the peaceful ripple of the waves seem
+to say to us various things of an instructive and moral tendency."
+
+"You may bet yer pile on that, Miss," said her companion, gravely.
+"It's all the preachin' and psalm-singin' I've heern since I was a boy."
+
+"Noble being!" said Miss Tompkins to herself, glancing at the stately
+Pike as he bent over his paddle to conceal his emotion. "Reared in this
+wild seclusion, yet he has become penetrated with visible consciousness
+of a Great First Cause."  Then, collecting herself, she said aloud:
+"Methinks 'twere pleasant to glide ever thus down the stream of life,
+hand in hand with the one being whom the soul claims as its affinity.
+But what am I saying?"--and the delicate-minded girl hid her face in
+her hands.
+
+A long silence ensued, which was at length broken by her companion.
+
+"Ef you mean you're on the marry," he said, thoughtfully, "I ain't in
+no wise partikler!"
+
+"My husband," faltered the blushing girl; and she fell into his arms.
+
+In ten minutes more the loving couple had landed at Judge Tompkins's.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A year has passed away.  Natty Bumpo was returning from Gold Hill,
+where he had been to purchase provisions.  On his way to Donner Lake,
+rumors of an Indian uprising met his ears.  "Dern their pesky skins, ef
+they dare to touch my Jenny," he muttered between his clenched teeth.
+
+It was dark when he reached the borders of the lake.  Around a
+glittering fire he dimly discerned dusky figures dancing.  They were in
+war paint.  Conspicuous among them was the renowned Muck-a-Muck.  But
+why did the fingers of Natty Bumpo tighten convulsively around his
+rifle?
+
+The chief held in his hand long tufts of raven hair.  The heart of the
+pioneer sickened as he recognized the clustering curls of Genevra.  In
+a moment his rifle was at his shoulder, and with a sharp "ping,"
+Muck-a-Muck leaped into the air a corpse.  To knock out the brains of
+the remaining savages, tear the tresses from the stiffening hand of
+Muck-a-Muck, and dash rapidly forward to the cottage of Judge Tompkins,
+was the work of a moment.
+
+He burst open the door.  Why did he stand transfixed with open mouth
+and distended eyeballs?  Was the sight too horrible to be borne?  On
+the contrary, before him, in her peerless beauty, stood Genevra
+Tompkins, leaning on her father's arm.
+
+"Ye'r not scalped, then!" gasped her lover.
+
+"No.  I have no hesitation in saying that I am not; but why this
+abruptness?" responded Genevra.
+
+Bumpo could not speak, but frantically produced the silken tresses.
+Genevra turned her face aside.
+
+"Why, that's her waterfall!" said the Judge.
+
+Bumpo sank fainting to the floor.
+
+The famous Pike chieftain never recovered from the deceit, and refused
+to marry Genevra, who died, twenty years afterwards, of a broken heart.
+Judge Tompkins lost his fortune in Wild Cat.  The stage passes twice a
+week the deserted cottage at Donner Lake. Thus was the death of
+Muck-a-Muck avenged.
+
+
+
+
+TERENCE DENVILLE.
+
+BY CH--L--S L--V--R.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MY HOME.
+
+The little village of Pilwiddle is one of the smallest and obscurest
+hamlets on the western coast of Ireland.  On a lofty crag, overlooking
+the hoarse Atlantic, stands "Denville's Shot Tower"--a corruption by
+the peasantry of D'Enville's Chateau, so called from my
+great-grandfather, Phelim St. Kemy d'Enville, who assumed the name and
+title of a French heiress with whom he ran away.  To this fact my
+familiar knowledge and excellent pronunciation of the French language
+may be attributed, as well as many of the events which covered my after
+life.
+
+The Denvilles were always passionately fond of field sports.  At the
+age of four, I was already the boldest rider and the best shot in the
+country.  When only eight, I won the St. Remy Cup at the Pilwiddle
+races,--riding my favorite bloodmare Hellfire.  As I approached the
+stand amidst the plaudits of the assembled multitude, and cries of,
+"Thrue for ye, Masther Terence," and "O, but it's a Dinville!" there
+was a slight stir among the gentry, who surrounded the Lord Lieutenant,
+and other titled personages whom the race had attracted thither.  "How
+young he is,--a mere child; and yet how noble-looking," said a sweet
+low voice, which thrilled my soul.
+
+I looked up and met the full liquid orbs of the Hon. Blanche Fitzroy
+Sackville, youngest daughter of the Lord Lieutenant.  She blushed
+deeply.  I turned pale and almost fainted.  But the cold, sneering
+tones of a masculine voice sent the blood back again into my youthful
+cheek.
+
+"Very likely the ragged scion of one of these banditti Irish gentry,
+who has taken naturally to 'the road.'  He should be at school--though
+I warrant me his knowledge of Terence will not extend beyond his own
+name," said Lord Henry Somerset, aid-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant.
+
+A moment and I was perfectly calm, though cold as ice. Dismounting, and
+stepping to the side of the speaker, I said in a low, firm voice:--
+
+"Had your Lordship read Terence more carefully, you would have learned
+that banditti are sometimes proficient in other arts beside
+horsemanship," and I touched his holster significantly with my hand.  I
+had not read Terence myself, but with the skilful audacity of my race I
+calculated that a vague allusion, coupled with a threat, would
+embarrass him.  It did.
+
+"Ah--what mean you?" he said, white with rage.
+
+"Enough, we are observed," I replied; "Father Tom will wait on you this
+evening; and to-morrow morning, my lord, in the glen below Pilwiddle we
+will meet again."
+
+"Father Tom--glen!" ejaculated the Englishman, with genuine surprise.
+"What? do priests carry challenges and act as seconds in your infernal
+country?"
+
+"Yes!" I answered, scornfully, "why should they not?  Their services
+are more often necessary than those of a surgeon," I added
+significantly, turning away.
+
+The party slowly rode off, with the exception of the Hon. Blanche
+Sackville, who lingered for a moment behind.  In an instant I was at
+her side.  Bending her blushing face over the neck of her white filly,
+she said hurriedly:--
+
+"Words have passed between Lord Somerset and yourself.  You are about
+to fight.  Don't deny it--but hear me.  You will meet him--I know your
+skill of weapons.  He will be at your mercy.  I entreat you to spare
+his life!"
+
+I hesitated.  "Never!" I cried passionately; "he has insulted a
+Denville!"
+
+"Terence," she whispered, "Terence--FOR MY SAKE?"
+
+The blood rushed to my cheeks, and her eyes sought the ground in
+bashful confusion.
+
+"You love him then?" I cried, bitterly.
+
+"No, no," she said, agitatedly, "no, you do me wrong.  I--I--cannot
+explain myself.  My father!--the Lady Dowager Sackville--the estate of
+Sackville--the borough--my uncle, Fitzroy Somerset.  Ah! what am I
+saying?  Forgive me.  O Terence," she said, as her beautiful head sank
+on my shoulder, "you know not what I suffer!"
+
+I seized her hand and covered it with passionate kisses.  But the
+high-bred English girl, recovering something of her former hauteur,
+said hastily, "Leave me, leave me, but promise!"
+
+"I promise," I replied, enthusiastically; "I WILL spare his life!"
+
+"Thanks, Terence,--thanks!" and disengaging her hand from my lips she
+rode rapidly away.
+
+The next morning, the Hon. Captain Henry Somerset and myself exchanged
+nineteen shots in the glen, and at each fire I shot away a button from
+his uniform.  As my last bullet shot off the last button from his
+sleeve, I remarked quietly, "You seem now, my lord, to be almost as
+ragged as the gentry you sneered at," and rode haughtily away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE FIGHTING FIFTY-SIXTH.
+
+When I was nineteen years old my father sold the Chateau d'Enville and
+purchased my commission in the "Fifty-sixth" with the proceeds. "I say,
+Denville," said young McSpadden, a boy-faced ensign, who had just
+joined, "you'll represent the estate in the Army, if you won't in the
+House."  Poor fellow, he paid for his meaningless joke with his life,
+for I shot him through the heart the next morning. "You're a good
+fellow, Denville," said the poor boy faintly, as I knelt beside him:
+"good by!"  For the first time since my grandfather's death I wept.  I
+could not help thinking that I would have been a better man if
+Blanche--but why proceed?  Was she not now in Florence--the belle of
+the English Embassy?
+
+But Napoleon had returned from Elba.  Europe was in a blaze of
+excitement.  The Allies were preparing to resist the Man of Destiny.
+We were ordered from Gibraltar home, and were soon again en route for
+Brussels.  I did not regret that I was to be placed in active service.
+I was ambitious, and longed for an opportunity to distinguish myself.
+My garrison life in Gibraltar had been monotonous and dull.  I had
+killed five men in duel, and had an affair with the colonel of my
+regiment, who handsomely apologized before the matter assumed a serious
+aspect.  I had been twice in love.  Yet these were but boyish freaks
+and follies.  I wished to be a man.
+
+The time soon came,--the morning of Waterloo.  But why describe that
+momentous battle, on which the fate of the entire world was hanging?
+Twice were the Fifty-sixth surrounded by French cuirassiers, and twice
+did we mow them down by our fire.  I had seven horses shot under me,
+and was mounting the eighth, when an orderly rode up hastily, touched
+his cap, and, handing me a despatch, galloped rapidly away.
+
+I opened it hurriedly and read:--
+
+"LET PICTON ADVANCE IMMEDIATELY ON THE RIGHT."
+
+I saw it all at a glance.  I had been mistaken for a general officer.
+But what was to be done?  Picton's division was two miles away, only
+accessible through a heavy cross fire of artillery and musketry.  But
+my mind was made up.
+
+In an instant I was engaged with an entire squadron of cavalry, who
+endeavored to surround me.  Cutting my way through them, I advanced
+boldly upon a battery and sabred the gunners before they could bring
+their pieces to bear.  Looking around, I saw that I had in fact
+penetrated the French centre.  Before I was well aware of the locality,
+I was hailed by a sharp voice in French,--
+
+"Come here, sir!"
+
+I obeyed, and advanced to the side of a little man in a cocked hat.
+
+"Has Grouchy come?"
+
+"Not yet, sire," I replied,--for it was the Emperor.
+
+"Ha!" he said suddenly, bending his piercing eyes on my uniform; "a
+prisoner?"
+
+"No, sire," I said, proudly.
+
+"A spy?"
+
+I placed my hand upon my sword, but a gesture from the Emperor bade me
+forbear.
+
+"You are a brave man," he said.
+
+I took my snuff-box from my pocket, and, taking a pinch, replied by
+handing it, with a bow, to the Emperor.
+
+His quick eye caught the cipher on the lid.  "What! a D'Enville? Ha!
+this accounts for the purity of your accent.  Any relation to Roderick
+d'Enville?"
+
+"My father, sire."
+
+"He was my school-fellow at the Ecole Polytechnique.  Embrace me!" And
+the Emperor fell upon my neck in the presence of his entire staff.
+Then, recovering himself, he gently placed in my hand his own
+magnificent snuff-box, in exchange for mine, and hanging upon my breast
+the cross of the Legion of Honor which he took from his own, he bade
+one of his Marshals conduct me back to my regiment.
+
+I was so intoxicated with the honor of which I had been the recipient,
+that on reaching our lines I uttered a shout of joy and put spurs to my
+horse.  The intelligent animal seemed to sympathize with my feelings,
+and fairly flew over the ground.  On a rising eminence a few yards
+before me stood a gray-haired officer, surrounded by his staff.  I
+don't know what possessed me, but putting spurs to my horse, I rode at
+him boldly, and with one bound cleared him, horse and all.  A shout of
+indignation arose from the assembled staff.  I wheeled suddenly, with
+the intention of apologizing, but my mare misunderstood me, and, again
+dashing forward, once more vaulted over the head of the officer, this
+time unfortunately uncovering him by a vicious kick of her hoof.
+"Seize him!" roared the entire army.  I was seized.  As the soldiers
+led me away, I asked the name of the gray-haired officer.  "That--why,
+that's the DUKE OF WELLINGTON!"
+
+I fainted.
+
+        *        *        *        *        *
+
+For six months I had brain-fever.  During my illness ten grapeshot were
+extracted from my body which I had unconsciously received during the
+battle.  When I opened my eyes I met the sweet glance of a Sister of
+Charity.
+
+"Blanche!" I stammered feebly.
+
+"The same," she replied.
+
+"You here?"
+
+"Yes, dear; but hush!  It's a long story.  You see, dear Terence, your
+grandfather married my great-aunt's sister, and your father again
+married my grandmother's niece, who, dying without a will, was,
+according to the French law--"
+
+"But I do not comprehend," I said.
+
+"Of course not," said Blanche, with her old sweet smile; "you've had
+brain-fever; so go to sleep."
+
+I understood, however, that Blanche loved me; and I am now, dear
+reader, Sir Terence Sackville, K. C. B., and Lady Blanche is Lady
+Sackville.
+
+
+
+
+SELINA SEDILIA.
+
+BY MISS M. E. B--DD--N AND MRS. H--N--Y W--D.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The sun was setting over Sloperton Grange, and reddened the window of
+the lonely chamber in the western tower, supposed to be haunted by Sir
+Edward Sedilia, the founder of the Grange.  In the dreamy distance
+arose the gilded mausoleum of Lady Felicia Sedilia, who haunted that
+portion of Sedilia Manor, known as "Stiff-uns Acre." A little to the
+left of the Grange might have been seen a mouldering ruin, known as
+"Guy's Keep," haunted by the spirit of Sir Guy Sedilia, who was found,
+one morning, crushed by one of the fallen battlements.  Yet, as the
+setting sun gilded these objects, a beautiful and almost holy calm
+seemed diffused about the Grange.
+
+The Lady Selina sat by an oriel window, overlooking the park.  The sun
+sank gently in the bosom of the German Ocean, and yet the lady did not
+lift her beautiful head from the finely curved arm and diminutive hand
+which supported it.  When darkness finally shrouded the landscape she
+started, for the sound of horse-hoofs clattered over the stones of the
+avenue.  She had scarcely risen before an aristocratic young man fell
+on his knees before her.
+
+"My Selina!"
+
+"Edgardo!  You here?"
+
+"Yes, dearest."
+
+"And--you--you--have--seen nothing?" said the lady in an agitated voice
+and nervous manner, turning her face aside to conceal her emotion.
+
+"Nothing--that is nothing of any account," said Edgardo.  "I passed the
+ghost of your aunt in the park, noticed the spectre of your uncle in
+the ruined keep, and observed the familiar features of the spirit of
+your great-grandfather at his usual post.  But nothing beyond these
+trifles, my Selina.  Nothing more, love, absolutely nothing."
+
+The young man turned his dark liquid orbs fondly upon the ingenuous
+face of his betrothed.
+
+"My own Edgardo!--and you still love me?  You still would marry me in
+spite of this dark mystery which surrounds me?  In spite of the fatal
+history of my race?  In spite of the ominous predictions of my aged
+nurse?"
+
+"I would, Selina"; and the young man passed his arm around her yielding
+waist.  The two lovers gazed at each other's faces in unspeakable
+bliss.  Suddenly Selina started.
+
+"Leave me, Edgardo! leave me!  A mysterious something--a fatal
+misgiving--a dark ambiguity--an equivocal mistrust oppresses me.  I
+would be alone!"
+
+The young man arose, and cast a loving glance on the lady.  "Then we
+will be married on the seventeenth."
+
+"The seventeenth," repeated Selina, with a mysterious shudder.
+
+They embraced and parted.  As the clatter of hoofs in the court-yard
+died away, the Lady Selina sank into the chair she had just quitted.
+
+"The seventeenth," she repeated slowly, with the same fateful shudder.
+"Ah!--what if he should know that I have another husband living?  Dare
+I reveal to him that I have two legitimate and three natural children?
+Dare I repeat to him the history of my youth? Dare I confess that at
+the age of seven I poisoned my sister, by putting verdigris in her
+cream-tarts,--that I threw my cousin from a swing at the age of twelve?
+That the lady's-maid who incurred the displeasure of my girlhood now
+lies at the bottom of the horse-pond?  No! no! he is too pure,--too
+good,--too innocent, to hear such improper conversation!" and her whole
+body writhed as she rocked to and fro in a paroxysm of grief.
+
+But she was soon calm.  Rising to her feet, she opened a secret panel
+in the wall, and revealed a slow-match ready for lighting.
+
+"This match," said the Lady Selina, "is connected with a mine beneath
+the western tower, where my three children are confined; another branch
+of it lies under the parish church, where the record of my first
+marriage is kept.  I have only to light this match and the whole of my
+past life is swept away!" she approached the match with a lighted
+candle.
+
+But a hand was laid upon her arm, and with a shriek the Lady Selina
+fell on her knees before the spectre of Sir Guy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+"Forbear, Selina," said the phantom in a hollow voice.
+
+"Why should I forbear?" responded Selina haughtily, as she recovered
+her courage.  "You know the secret of our race?"
+
+"I do.  Understand me,--I do not object to the eccentricities of your
+youth.  I know the fearful destiny which, pursuing you, led you to
+poison your sister and drown your lady's-maid.  I know the awful doom
+which I have brought upon this house!  But if you make way with these
+children--"
+
+"Well," said the Lady Selina, hastily.
+
+"They will haunt you!"
+
+"Well, I fear them not," said Selina, drawing her superb figure to its
+full height.
+
+"Yes, but, my dear child, what place are they to haunt?  The ruin is
+sacred to your uncle's spirit.  Your aunt monopolizes the park, and, I
+must be allowed to state, not unfrequently trespasses upon the grounds
+of others.  The horse-pond is frequented by the spirit of your maid,
+and your murdered sister walks these corridors.  To be plain, there is
+no room at Sloperton Grange for another ghost. I cannot have them in my
+room,--for you know I don't like children. Think of this, rash girl,
+and forbear!  Would you, Selina," said the phantom, mournfully,--"would
+you force your great-grandfather's spirit to take lodgings elsewhere?"
+
+Lady Selina's hand trembled; the lighted candle fell from her nerveless
+fingers.
+
+"No," she cried passionately; "never!" and fell fainting to the floor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Edgardo galloped rapidly towards Sloperton.  When the outline of the
+Grange had faded away in the darkness, he reined his magnificent steed
+beside the ruins of Guy's Keep.
+
+"It wants but a few minutes of the hour," he said, consulting his watch
+by the light of the moon.  "He dare not break his word.  He will come."
+He paused, and peered anxiously into the darkness. "But come what may,
+she is mine," he continued, as his thoughts reverted fondly to the fair
+lady he had quitted.  "Yet if she knew all.  If she knew that I were a
+disgraced and ruined man,--a felon and an outcast.  If she knew that at
+the age of fourteen I murdered my Latin tutor and forged my uncle's
+will.  If she knew that I had three wives already, and that the fourth
+victim of misplaced confidence and my unfortunate peculiarity is
+expected to be at Sloperton by to-night's train with her baby.  But no;
+she must not know it.  Constance must not arrive.  Burke the Slogger
+must attend to that.
+
+"Ha! here he is!  Well?"
+
+These words were addressed to a ruffian in a slouched hat, who suddenly
+appeared from Guy's Keep.
+
+"I be's here, measter," said the villain, with a disgracefully low
+accent and complete disregard of grammatical rules.
+
+"It is well.  Listen: I'm in possession of facts that will send you to
+the gallows.  I know of the murder of Bill Smithers, the robbery of the
+tollgate-keeper, and the making away of the youngest daughter of Sir
+Reginald de Walton.  A word from me, and the officers of justice are on
+your track."
+
+Burke the Slogger trembled.
+
+"Hark ye! serve my purpose, and I may yet save you.  The 5.30 train
+from Clapham will be due at Sloperton at 9.25.  IT MUST NOT ARRIVE!"
+
+The villain's eyes sparkled as he nodded at Edgardo.
+
+"Enough,--you understand; leave me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+About half a mile from Sloperton Station the South Clapham and Medway
+line crossed a bridge over Sloperton-on-Trent.  As the shades of
+evening were closing, a man in a slouched hat might have been seen
+carrying a saw and axe under his arm, hanging about the bridge.  From
+time to time he disappeared in the shadow of its abutments, but the
+sound of a saw and axe still betrayed his vicinity.  At exactly nine
+o'clock he reappeared, and, crossing to the Sloperton side, rested his
+shoulder against the abutment and gave a shove.  The bridge swayed a
+moment, and then fell with a splash into the water, leaving a space of
+one hundred feet between the two banks.  This done, Burke the
+Slogger,--for it was he,--with a fiendish chuckle seated himself on the
+divided railway track and awaited the coming of the train.
+
+A shriek from the woods announced its approach.  For an instant Burke
+the Slogger saw the glaring of a red lamp.  The ground trembled.  The
+train was going with fearful rapidity.  Another second and it had
+reached the bank.  Burke the Slogger uttered a fiendish laugh.  But the
+next moment the train leaped across the chasm, striking the rails
+exactly even, and, dashing out the life of Burke the Slogger, sped away
+to Sloperton.
+
+The first object that greeted Edgardo, as he rode up to the station on
+the arrival of the train, was the body of Burke the Slogger hanging on
+the cow-catcher; the second was the face of his deserted wife looking
+from the windows of a second-class carriage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A nameless terror seemed to have taken possession of Clarissa, Lady
+Selina's maid, as she rushed into the presence of her mistress.
+
+"O my lady, such news!"
+
+"Explain yourself," said her mistress, rising.
+
+"An accident has happened on the railway, and a man has been killed."
+
+"What--not Edgardo!" almost screamed Selina.
+
+"No, Burke the Slogger!" your ladyship.
+
+"My first husband!" said Lady Selina, sinking on her knees.  "Just
+Heaven, I thank thee!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The morning of the seventeenth dawned brightly over Sloperton.  "A fine
+day for the wedding," said the sexton to Swipes, the butler of
+Sloperton Grange.  The aged retainer shook his head sadly.  "Alas!
+there's no trusting in signs!" he continued.  "Seventy-five years ago,
+on a day like this, my young mistress--"  But he was cut short by the
+appearance of a stranger.
+
+"I would see Sir Edgardo," said the new-comer, impatiently.
+
+The bridegroom, who, with the rest of the wedding-train, was about
+stepping into the carriage to proceed to the parish church, drew the
+stranger aside.
+
+"It's done!" said the stranger, in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"Ah! and you buried her?"
+
+"With the others!"
+
+"Enough.  No more at present.  Meet me after the ceremony, and you
+shall have your reward."
+
+The stranger shuffled away, and Edgardo returned to his bride.  "A
+trifling matter of business I had forgotten, my dear Selina; let us
+proceed."  And the young man pressed the timid hand of his blushing
+bride as he handed her into the carriage.  The cavalcade rode out of
+the court-yard.  At the same moment, the deep bell on Guy's Keep tolled
+ominously.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Scarcely had the wedding-train left the Grange, than Alice Sedilia,
+youngest daughter of Lady Selina, made her escape from the western
+tower, owing to a lack of watchfulness on the part of Clarissa. The
+innocent child, freed from restraint, rambled through the lonely
+corridors, and finally, opening a door, found herself in her mother's
+boudoir.  For some time she amused herself by examining the various
+ornaments and elegant trifles with which it was filled. Then, in
+pursuance of a childish freak, she dressed herself in her mother's
+laces and ribbons.  In this occupation she chanced to touch a peg which
+proved to be a spring that opened a secret panel in the wall.  Alice
+uttered a cry of delight as she noticed what, to her childish fancy,
+appeared to be the slow-match of a fire-work. Taking a lucifer match in
+her hand she approached the fuse. She hesitated a moment.  What would
+her mother and her nurse say?
+
+Suddenly the ringing of the chimes of Sloperton parish church met her
+ear.  Alice knew that the sound signified that the marriage party had
+entered the church, and that she was secure from interruption.  With a
+childish smile upon her lips, Alice Sedilia touched off the slow-match.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+At exactly two o'clock on the seventeenth, Rupert Sedilia, who had just
+returned from India, was thoughtfully descending the hill toward
+Sloperton manor.  "If I can prove that my aunt Lady Selina was married
+before my father died, I can establish my claim to Sloperton Grange,"
+he uttered, half aloud.  He paused, for a sudden trembling of the earth
+beneath his feet, and a terrific explosion, as of a park of artillery,
+arrested his progress.  At the same moment he beheld a dense cloud of
+smoke envelop the churchyard of Sloperton, and the western tower of the
+Grange seemed to be lifted bodily from its foundation.  The air seemed
+filled with falling fragments, and two dark objects struck the earth
+close at his feet. Rupert picked them up.  One seemed to be a heavy
+volume bound in brass.
+
+A cry burst from his lips.
+
+"The Parish Records."  He opened the volume hastily.  It contained the
+marriage of Lady Selina to "Burke the Slogger."
+
+The second object proved to be a piece of parchment.  He tore it open
+with trembling fingers.  It was the missing will of Sir James Sedilia!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+When the bells again rang on the new parish church of Sloperton it was
+for the marriage of Sir Rupert Sedilia and his cousin, the only
+remaining members of the family.
+
+Five more ghosts were added to the supernatural population of Sloperton
+Grange.  Perhaps this was the reason why Sir Rupert sold the property
+shortly afterward, and that for many years a dark shadow seemed to hang
+over the ruins of Sloperton Grange.
+
+
+
+
+THE NINETY-NINE GUARDSMEN.
+
+BY AL--X--D--R D--M--S
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SHOWING THE QUALITY OF THE CUSTOMERS OF THE INNKEEPER OF PROVINS.
+
+Twenty years after, the gigantic innkeeper of Provins stood looking at
+a cloud of dust on the highway.
+
+This cloud of dust betokened the approach of a traveller. Travellers
+had been rare that season on the highway between Paris and Provins.
+
+The heart of the innkeeper rejoiced.  Turning to Dame Perigord, his
+wife, he said, stroking his white apron:--
+
+"St. Denis! make haste and spread the cloth.  Add a bottle of
+Charlevoix to the table.  This traveller, who rides so fast, by his
+pace must be a Monseigneur."
+
+Truly the traveller, clad in the uniform of a musketeer, as he drew up
+to the door of the hostelry, did not seem to have spared his horse.
+Throwing his reins to the landlord, he leaped lightly to the ground.
+He was a young man of four-and-twenty, and spoke with a slight Gascon
+accent.
+
+"I am hungry, Morbleu!  I wish to dine!"
+
+The gigantic innkeeper bowed and led the way to a neat apartment, where
+a table stood covered with tempting viands.  The musketeer at once set
+to work.  Fowls, fish, and pates disappeared before him. Perigord
+sighed as he witnessed the devastations.  Only once the stranger paused.
+
+"Wine!"  Perigord brought wine.  The stranger drank a dozen bottles.
+Finally he rose to depart.  Turning to the expectant landlord, he
+said:--
+
+"Charge it."
+
+"To whom, your highness?" said Perigord, anxiously.
+
+"To his Eminence!"
+
+"Mazarin!" ejaculated the innkeeper.
+
+"The same.  Bring me my horse," and the musketeer, remounting his
+favorite animal, rode away.
+
+The innkeeper slowly turned back into the inn.  Scarcely had he reached
+the courtyard before the clatter of hoofs again called him to the
+doorway.  A young musketeer of a light and graceful figure rode up.
+
+"Parbleu, my dear Perigord, I am famishing.  What have you got for
+dinner?"
+
+"Venison, capons, larks, and pigeons, your excellency," replied the
+obsequious landlord, bowing to the ground.
+
+"Enough!"  The young musketeer dismounted and entered the inn. Seating
+himself at the table replenished by the careful Perigord, he speedily
+swept it as clean as the first comer.
+
+"Some wine, my brave Perigord," said the graceful young musketeer, as
+soon as he could find utterance.
+
+Perigord brought three dozen of Charlevoix.  The young man emptied them
+almost at a draught.
+
+"By-by, Perigord," he said lightly, waving his hand, as, preceding the
+astonished landlord, he slowly withdrew.
+
+"But, your highness,--the bill," said the astounded Perigord.
+
+"Ah, the bill.  Charge it!"
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"The Queen!"
+
+"What, Madame?"
+
+"The same.  Adieu, my good Perigord."  And the graceful stranger rode
+away.  An interval of quiet succeeded, in which the innkeeper gazed
+wofully at his wife.  Suddenly he was startled by a clatter of hoofs,
+and an aristocratic figure stood in the doorway.
+
+"Ah," said the courtier good-naturedly.  "What, do my eyes deceive me?
+No, it is the festive and luxurious Perigord.  Perigord, listen.  I
+famish.  I languish.  I would dine."
+
+The innkeeper again covered the table with viands.  Again it was swept
+clean as the fields of Egypt before the miraculous swarm of locusts.
+The stranger looked up.
+
+"Bring me another fowl, my Perigord."
+
+"Impossible, your excellency; the larder is stripped clean."
+
+"Another flitch of bacon, then."
+
+"Impossible, your highness; there is no more."
+
+"Well, then, wine!"
+
+The landlord brought one hundred and forty-four bottles.  The courtier
+drank them all.
+
+"One may drink if one cannot eat," said the aristocratic stranger,
+good-humoredly.
+
+The innkeeper shuddered.
+
+The guest rose to depart.  The innkeeper came slowly forward with his
+bill, to which he had covertly added the losses which he had suffered
+from the previous strangers.
+
+"Ah, the bill.  Charge it."
+
+"Charge it! to whom?"
+
+"To the King," said the guest.
+
+"What! his Majesty?"
+
+"Certainly.  Farewell, Perigord."
+
+The innkeeper groaned.  Then he went out and took down his sign. Then
+remarked to his wife:--
+
+"I am a plain man, and don't understand politics.  It seems, however,
+that the country is in a troubled state.  Between his Eminence the
+Cardinal, his Majesty the King, and her Majesty the Queen, I am a
+ruined man."
+
+"Stay," said Dame Perigord, "I have an idea."
+
+"And that is--"
+
+"Become yourself a musketeer."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE COMBAT.
+
+On leaving Provins the first musketeer proceeded to Nangis, where he
+was reinforced by thirty-three followers.  The second musketeer,
+arriving at Nangis at the same moment, placed himself at the head of
+thirty-three more.  The third guest of the landlord of Provins arrived
+at Nangis in time to assemble together thirty-three other musketeers.
+
+The first stranger led the troops of his Eminence.
+
+The second led the troops of the Queen.
+
+The third led the troops of the King.
+
+The fight commenced.  It raged terribly for seven hours.  The first
+musketeer killed thirty of the Queen's troops.  The second musketeer
+killed thirty of the King's troops.  The third musketeer killed thirty
+of his Eminence's troops.
+
+By this time it will be perceived the number of musketeers had been
+narrowed down to four on each side.
+
+Naturally the three principal warriors approached each other.
+
+They simultaneously uttered a cry.
+
+"Aramis!"
+
+"Athos!"
+
+"D'Artagnan!"
+
+They fell into each other's arms.
+
+"And it seems that we are fighting against each other, my children,"
+said the Count de la Fere, mournfully.
+
+"How singular!" exclaimed Aramis and D'Artagnan.
+
+"Let us stop this fratricidal warfare," said Athos.
+
+"We will!" they exclaimed together.
+
+"But how to disband our followers?" queried D'Artagnan.
+
+Aramis winked.  They understood each other.  "Let us cut 'em down!"
+
+They cut 'em down.  Aramis killed three.  D'Artagnan three.  Athos
+three.
+
+The friends again embraced.  "How like old times," said Aramis. "How
+touching!" exclaimed the serious and philosophic Count de la Fere.
+
+The galloping of hoofs caused them to withdraw from each other's
+embraces.  A gigantic figure rapidly approached.
+
+"The innkeeper of Provins!" they cried, drawing their swords.
+
+"Perigord, down with him!" shouted D'Artagnan.
+
+"Stay," said Athos.
+
+The gigantic figure was beside them.  He uttered a cry.
+
+"Athos, Aramis, D'Artagnan!"
+
+"Porthos!" exclaimed the astonished trio.
+
+"The same."  They all fell in each other's arms.
+
+The Count de la Fere slowly raised his hands to Heaven.  "Bless you!
+Bless us, my children!  However different our opinion may be in regard
+to politics, we have but one opinion in regard to our own merits.
+Where can you find a better man than Aramus?"
+
+"Than Porthos?" said Aramis.
+
+"Than D'Artagnan?" said Porthos.
+
+"Than Athos?" said D'Artagnan.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SHOWING HOW THE KING OF FRANCE WENT UP A LADDER.
+
+The King descended into the garden.  Proceeding cautiously along the
+terraced walk, he came to the wall immediately below the windows of
+Madame.  To the left were two windows, concealed by vines.  They opened
+into the apartments of La Valliere.
+
+The King sighed.
+
+"It is about nineteen feet to that window," said the King.  "If I had a
+ladder about nineteen feet long, it would reach to that window.  This
+is logic."
+
+Suddenly the King stumbled over something.  "St. Denis!" he exclaimed,
+looking down.  It was a ladder, just nineteen feet long.
+
+The King placed it against the wall.  In so doing, he fixed the lower
+end upon the abdomen of a man who lay concealed by the wall The man did
+not utter a cry or wince.  The King suspected nothing. He ascended the
+ladder.
+
+The ladder was too short.  Louis the Grand was not a tall man.  He was
+still two feet below the window.
+
+"Dear me!" said the King.
+
+Suddenly the ladder was lifted two feet from below.  This enabled the
+King to leap in the window.  At the farther end of the apartment stood
+a young girl, with red hair and a lame leg.  She was trembling with
+emotion.
+
+"Louise!"
+
+"The King!"
+
+"Ah, my God, mademoiselle."
+
+"Ah, my God, sire."
+
+But a low knock at the door interrupted the lovers.  The King uttered a
+cry of rage; Louise one of despair.
+
+The door opened and D'Artagnan entered.
+
+"Good evening, sire," said the musketeer.
+
+The King touched a bell.  Porthos appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Good evening, sire."
+
+"Arrest M. D'Artagnan."
+
+Porthos looked at D'Artagnan, and did not move.
+
+The King almost turned purple with rage.  He again touched the bell.
+Athos entered.
+
+"Count, arrest Porthos and D'Artagnan."
+
+The Count de la Fere glanced at Porthos and D'Artagnan, and smiled
+sweetly.
+
+"Sacre!  Where is Aramis?" said the King, violently.
+
+"Here, sire," and Aramis entered.
+
+"Arrest Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan."
+
+Aramis bowed and folded his arms.
+
+"Arrest yourself!"
+
+Aramis did not move.
+
+The King shuddered and turned pale.  "Am I not King of France?"
+
+"Assuredly, sire, but we are also severally, Porthos, Aramis,
+D'Artagnan, and Athos."
+
+"Ah!" said the King.
+
+"Yes, sire."
+
+"What does this mean?"
+
+"It means, your Majesty," said Aramis, stepping forward, "that your
+conduct as a married man is highly improper.  I am an Abbe, and I
+object to these improprieties.  My friends here, D'Artagnan, Athos, and
+Porthos, pure-minded young men, are also terribly shocked. Observe,
+sire, how they blush!"
+
+Athos, Porthos, and D'Artagnan blushed.  "Ah," said the King,
+thoughtfully.  "You teach me a lesson.  You are devoted and noble young
+gentlemen, but your only weakness is your excessive modesty. From this
+moment I make you all Marshals and Dukes, with the exception of Aramis."
+
+"And me, sire?" said Aramis.
+
+"You shall be an Archbishop!"
+
+The four friends looked up and then rushed into each other's arms. The
+King embraced Louise de la Valliere, by way of keeping them company.  A
+pause ensued.  At last Athos spoke:--
+
+"Swear, my children, that, next to yourselves, you will respect the
+King of France; and remember that 'Forty years after' we will meet
+again."
+
+
+
+
+THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+BY SIR ED--D L--TT--N B--LW--R.
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+THE PROMPTINGS OF THE IDEAL.
+
+It was noon.  Sir Edward had stepped from his brougham and was
+proceeding on foot down the Strand.  He was dressed with his usual
+faultless taste, but in alighting from his vehicle his foot had
+slipped, and a small round disk of conglomerated soil, which instantly
+appeared on his high arched instep, marred the harmonious glitter of
+his boots.  Sir Edward was fastidious.  Casting his eyes around, at a
+little distance he perceived the stand of a youthful bootblack.
+Thither he sauntered, and carelessly placing his foot on the low stool,
+he waited the application of the polisher's art. "'Tis true," said Sir
+Edward to himself, yet half aloud, "the contact of the Foul and the
+Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny and the Beautiful--and,
+yet, why am I here?  I repeat it, calmly and deliberately--why am I
+here?  Ha!  Boy!"
+
+The Boy looked up--his dark Italian eyes glanced intelligently at the
+Philosopher, and as with one hand he tossed back his glossy curls, from
+his marble brow, and with the other he spread the equally glossy Day &
+Martin over the Baronet's boot, he answered in deep rich tones: "The
+Ideal is subjective to the Real.  The exercise of apperception gives a
+distinctiveness to idiocracy, which is, however, subject to the limits
+of ME.  You are an admirer of the Beautiful, sir.  You wish your boots
+blacked.  The Beautiful is attainable by means of the Coin."
+
+"Ah," said Sir Edward thoughtfully, gazing upon the almost supernal
+beauty of the Child before him; "you speak well.  You have read Kant."
+
+The Boy blushed deeply.  He drew a copy of Kant from his blouse, but in
+his confusion several other volumes dropped from his bosom on the
+ground.  The Baronet picked them up.
+
+"Ah!" said the Philosopher, "what's this?  Cicero's De Senectute, at
+your age, too?  Martial's Epigrams, Caesar's Commentaries. What! a
+classical scholar?"
+
+"E pluribus Unum.  Nux vomica.  Nil desperandum.  Nihil fit!" said the
+Boy, enthusiastically.  The Philosopher gazed at the Child.  A strange
+presence seemed to transfuse and possess him.  Over the brow of the Boy
+glittered the pale nimbus of the Student.
+
+"Ah, and Schiller's Robbers, too?" queried the Philosopher.
+
+"Das ist ausgespielt," said the Boy, modestly.
+
+"Then you have read my translation of Schiller's Ballads?" continued
+the Baronet, with some show of interest.
+
+"I have, and infinitely prefer them to the original," said the Boy,
+with intellectual warmth.  "You have shown how in Actual life we strive
+for a Goal we cannot reach; how in the Ideal the Goal is attainable,
+and there effort is victory.  You have given us the Antithesis which is
+a key to the Remainder, and constantly balances before us the
+conditions of the Actual and the privileges of the Ideal."
+
+"My very words," said the Baronet; "wonderful, wonderful!" and he gazed
+fondly at the Italian boy, who again resumed his menial employment.
+Alas! the wings of the Ideal were folded.  The Student had been
+absorbed in the Boy.
+
+But Sir Edward's boots were blacked, and he turned to depart. Placing
+his hand upon the clustering tendrils that surrounded the classic nob
+of the infant Italian, he said softly, like a strain of distant music:--
+
+"Boy, you have done well.  Love the Good.  Protect the Innocent.
+Provide for The Indigent.  Respect the Philosopher. . . .  Stay! Can
+you tell we what IS The True, The Beautiful, The Innocent, The
+Virtuous?"
+
+"They are things that commence with a capital letter," said the Boy,
+promptly.
+
+"Enough!  Respect everything that commences with a capital letter!
+Respect ME!" and dropping a half-penny in the hand of the boy, he
+departed.
+
+The Boy gazed fixedly at the coin.  A frightful and instantaneous
+change overspread his features.  His noble brow was corrugated with
+baser lines of calculation.  His black eye, serpent-like, glittered
+with suppressed passion.  Dropping upon his hands and feet, he crawled
+to the curbstone and hissed after the retreating form of the Baronet,
+the single word:--
+
+"Bilk!"
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+IN THE WORLD.
+
+"Eleven years ago," said Sir Edward to himself, as his brougham slowly
+rolled him toward the Committee Room; "just eleven years ago my natural
+son disappeared mysteriously.  I have no doubt in the world but that
+this little bootblack is he.  His mother died in Italy.  He resembles
+his mother very much.  Perhaps I ought to provide for him.  Shall I
+disclose myself?  No! no!  Better he should taste the sweets of Labor.
+Penury ennobles the mind and kindles the Love of the Beautiful.  I will
+act to him, not like a Father, not like a Guardian, not like a
+Friend--but like a Philosopher!"
+
+With these words, Sir Edward entered the Committee Room.  His Secretary
+approached him.  "Sir Edward, there are fears of a division in the
+House, and the Prime Minister has sent for you."
+
+"I will be there," said Sir Edward, as he placed his hand on his chest
+and uttered a hollow cough!
+
+No one who heard the Baronet that night, in his sarcastic and withering
+speech on the Drainage and Sewerage Bill, would have recognized the
+lover of the Ideal and the Philosopher of the Beautiful.  No one who
+listened to his eloquence would have dreamed of the Spartan resolution
+this iron man had taken in regard to the Lost Boy--his own beloved
+Lionel.  None!
+
+"A fine speech from Sir Edward to-night," said Lord Billingsgate, as,
+arm-and-arm with the Premier, he entered his carriage.
+
+"Yes! but how dreadfully he coughs!"
+
+"Exactly.  Dr. Bolus says his lungs are entirely gone; he breathes
+entirely by an effort of will, and altogether independent of pulmonary
+assistance."
+
+"How strange!" and the carriage rolled away.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD.
+
+"ADON AI, appear! appear!"
+
+And as the Seer spoke, the awful Presence glided out of Nothingness,
+and sat, sphinx-like, at the feet of the Alchemist.
+
+"I am come!" said the Thing.
+
+"You should say, 'I have come,'--it's better grammar," said the
+Boy-Neophyte, thoughtfully accenting the substituted expression.
+
+"Hush, rash Boy," said the Seer, sternly.  "Would you oppose your
+feeble knowledge to the infinite intelligence of the Unmistakable? A
+word, and you are lost forever."
+
+The Boy breathed a silent prayer, and, handing a sealed package to the
+Seer, begged him to hand it to his father in case of his premature
+decease.
+
+"You have sent for me," hissed the Presence.  "Behold me,
+Apokatharticon,--the Unpronounceable.  In me all things exist that are
+not already coexistent.  I am the Unattainable, the Intangible, the
+Cause, and the Effect.  In me observe the Brahma of Mr. Emerson; not
+only Brahma himself, but also the sacred musical composition rehearsed
+by the faithful Hindoo.  I am the real Gyges. None others are genuine."
+
+And the veiled Son of the Starbeam laid himself loosely about the room,
+and permeated Space generally.
+
+"Unfathomable Mystery," said the Rosicrucian in a low, sweet voice.
+"Brave Child with the Vitreous Optic!  Thou who pervadest all things
+and rubbest against us without abrasion of the cuticle.  I command
+thee, speak!"
+
+And the misty, intangible, indefinite Presence spoke.
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+MYSELF.
+
+After the events related in the last chapter, the reader will perceive
+that nothing was easier than to reconcile Sir Edward to his son Lionel,
+nor to resuscitate the beautiful Italian girl, who, it appears, was not
+dead, and to cause Sir Edward to marry his first and boyish love, whom
+he had deserted.  They were married in St. George's, Hanover Square.
+As the bridal party stood before the altar, Sir Edward, with a sweet
+sad smile, said, in quite his old manner:--
+
+"The Sublime and Beautiful are the Real; the only Ideal is the
+Ridiculous and Homely.  Let us always remember this.  Let us through
+life endeavor to personify the virtues, and always begin 'em with a
+capital letter.  Let us, whenever we can find an opportunity, deliver
+our sentiments in the form of round-hand copies.  Respect the Aged.
+Eschew Vulgarity.  Admire Ourselves. Regard the Novelist."
+
+
+
+
+THE HAUNTED MAN.
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY.
+
+BY CH--R--S D--CK--NS.
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE FIRST PHANTOM.
+
+Don't tell me that it wasn't a knocker.  I had seen it often enough,
+and I ought to know.  So ought the three-o'clock beer, in dirty
+high-lows, swinging himself over the railing, or executing a demoniacal
+jig upon the doorstep; so ought the butcher, although butchers as a
+general thing are scornful of such trifles; so ought the postman, to
+whom knockers of the most extravagant description were merely human
+weaknesses, that were to be pitied and used.  And so ought, for the
+matter of that, etc., etc., etc.
+
+But then it was SUCH a knocker.  A wild, extravagant, and utterly
+incomprehensible knocker.  A knocker so mysterious and suspicious that
+Policeman X 37, first coming upon it, felt inclined to take it
+instantly in custody, but compromised with his professional instincts
+by sharply and sternly noting it with an eye that admitted of no
+nonsense, but confidently expected to detect its secret yet.  An ugly
+knocker; a knocker with a hard, human face, that was a type of the
+harder human face within.  A human face that held between its teeth a
+brazen rod.  So hereafter, in the mysterious future should be held,
+etc., etc.
+
+But if the knocker had a fierce human aspect in the glare of day, you
+should have seen it at night, when it peered out of the gathering
+shadows and suggested an ambushed figure; when the light of the street
+lamps fell upon it, and wrought a play of sinister expression in its
+hard outlines; when it seemed to wink meaningly at a shrouded figure
+who, as the night fell darkly, crept up the steps and passed into the
+mysterious house; when the swinging door disclosed a black passage into
+which the figure seemed to lose itself and become a part of the
+mysterious gloom; when the night grew boisterous and the fierce wind
+made furious charges at the knocker, as if to wrench it off and carry
+it away in triumph.  Such a night as this.
+
+It was a wild and pitiless wind.  A wind that had commenced life as a
+gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns had
+become demoralized, and reaching the city had plunged into extravagant
+dissipation and wild excesses.  A roistering wind that indulged in
+Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the hats
+from the heads of helpless passengers, and then fulfilled its duties by
+speeding away, like all young prodigals,--to sea.
+
+He sat alone in a gloomy library listening to the wind that roared in
+the chimney.  Around him novels and story-books were strewn thickly; in
+his lap he held one with its pages freshly cut, and turned the leaves
+wearily until his eyes rested upon a portrait in its frontispiece.  And
+as the wind howled the more fiercely, and the darkness without fell
+blacker, a strange and fateful likeness to that portrait appeared above
+his chair and leaned upon his shoulder.  The Haunted Man gazed at the
+portrait and sighed.  The figure gazed at the portrait and sighed too.
+
+"Here again?" said the Haunted Man.
+
+"Here again," it repeated in a low voice.
+
+"Another novel?"
+
+"Another novel."
+
+"The old story?"
+
+"The old story."
+
+"I see a child," said the Haunted Man, gazing from the pages of the
+book into the fire,--"a most unnatural child, a model infant.  It is
+prematurely old and philosophic.  It dies in poverty to slow music.  It
+dies surrounded by luxury to slow music.  It dies with an accompaniment
+of golden water and rattling carts to slow music. Previous to its
+decease it makes a will; it repeats the Lord's Prayer, it kisses the
+'boofer lady.'  That child--"
+
+"Is mine," said the phantom.
+
+"I see a good woman, undersized.  I see several charming women, but
+they are all undersized.  They are more or less imbecile and idiotic,
+but always fascinating and undersized.  They wear coquettish caps and
+aprons.  I observe that feminine virtue is invariably below the medium
+height, and that it is always simple and infantine.  These women--"
+
+"Are mine."
+
+"I see a haughty, proud, and wicked lady.  She is tall and queenly. I
+remark that all proud and wicked women are tall and queenly. That
+woman--"
+
+"Is mine," said the phantom, wringing his hands.
+
+"I see several things continually impending.  I observe that whenever
+an accident, a murder, or death is about to happen, there is something
+in the furniture, in the locality, in the atmosphere, that foreshadows
+and suggests it years in advance.  I cannot say that in real life I
+have noticed it,--the perception of this surprising fact belongs--"
+
+"To me!" said the phantom.  The Haunted Man continued, in a despairing
+tone:--
+
+"I see the influence of this in the magazines and daily papers; I see
+weak imitators rise up and enfeeble the world with senseless formula.
+I am getting tired of it.  It won't do, Charles! it won't do!" and the
+Haunted Man buried his head in his hands and groaned. The figure looked
+down upon him sternly: the portrait in the frontispiece frowned as he
+gazed.
+
+"Wretched man," said the phantom, "and how have these things affected
+you?"
+
+"Once I laughed and cried, but then I was younger.  Now, I would forget
+them if I could."
+
+"Have then your wish.  And take this with you, man whom I renounce.
+From this day henceforth you shall live with those whom I displace.
+Without forgetting me, 't will be your lot to walk through life as if
+we had not met.  But first you shall survey these scenes that
+henceforth must be yours.  At one to-night, prepare to meet the phantom
+I have raised.  Farewell!"
+
+The sound of its voice seemed to fade away with the dying wind, and the
+Haunted Man was alone.  But the firelight flickered gayly, and the
+light danced on the walls, making grotesque figures of the furniture.
+
+"Ha, ha!" said the Haunted Man, rubbing his hands gleefully; "now for a
+whiskey punch and a cigar."
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+THE SECOND PHANTOM.
+
+One!  The stroke of the far-off bell had hardly died before the front
+door closed with a reverberating clang.  Steps were heard along the
+passage; the library door swung open of itself, and the Knocker--yes,
+the Knocker--slowly strode into the room.  The Haunted Man rubbed his
+eyes,--no! there could be no mistake about it,--it was the Knocker's
+face, mounted on a misty, almost imperceptible body.  The brazen rod
+was transferred from its mouth to its right hand, where it was held
+like a ghostly truncheon.
+
+"It's a cold evening," said the Haunted Man.
+
+"It is," said the Goblin, in a hard, metallic voice.
+
+"It must be pretty cold out there," said the Haunted Man, with vague
+politeness.  "Do you ever--will you--take some hot water and brandy?"
+
+"No," said the Goblin.
+
+"Perhaps you'd like it cold, by way of change?" continued the Haunted
+Man, correcting himself, as he remembered the peculiar temperature with
+which the Goblin was probably familiar.
+
+"Time flies," said the Goblin coldly.  "We have no leisure for idle
+talk.  Come!"  He moved his ghostly truncheon toward the window, and
+laid his hand upon the other's arm.  At his touch the body of the
+Haunted Man seemed to become as thin and incorporeal as that of the
+Goblin himself, and together they glided out of the window into the
+black and blowy night.
+
+In the rapidity of their flight the senses of the Haunted Man seemed to
+leave him.  At length they stopped suddenly.
+
+"What do you see?" asked the Goblin.
+
+"I see a battlemented mediaeval castle.  Gallant men in mail ride over
+the drawbridge, and kiss their gauntleted fingers to fair ladies, who
+wave their lily hands in return.  I see fight and fray and tournament.
+I hear roaring heralds bawling the charms of delicate women, and
+shamelessly proclaiming their lovers.  Stay.  I see a Jewess about to
+leap from a battlement.  I see knightly deeds, violence, rapine, and a
+good deal of blood.  I've seen pretty much the same at Astley's."
+
+"Look again."
+
+"I see purple moors, glens, masculine women, bare-legged men, priggish
+book-worms, more violence, physical excellence, and blood. Always
+blood,--and the superiority of physical attainments."
+
+"And how do you feel now?" said the Goblin.
+
+The Haunted Man shrugged his shoulders.  "None the better for being
+carried back and asked to sympathize with a barbarous age."
+
+The Goblin smiled and clutched his arm; they again sped rapidly through
+the black night and again halted.
+
+"What do you see?" said the Goblin.
+
+"I see a barrack room, with a mess table, and a group of intoxicated
+Celtic officers telling funny stories, and giving challenges to duel.
+I see a young Irish gentleman capable of performing prodigies of valor.
+I learn incidentally that the acme of all heroism is the cornetcy of a
+dragoon regiment.  I hear a good deal of French!  No, thank you," said
+the Haunted Man hurriedly, as he stayed the waving hand of the Goblin;
+"I would rather NOT go to the Peninsula, and don't care to have a
+private interview with Napoleon."
+
+Again the Goblin flew away with the unfortunate man, and from a strange
+roaring below them he judged they were above the ocean.  A ship hove in
+sight, and the Goblin stayed its flight.  "Look," he said, squeezing
+his companion's arm.
+
+The Haunted Man yawned.  "Don't you think, Charles, you're rather
+running this thing into the ground?  Of course it's very moral and
+instructive, and all that.  But ain't there a little too much pantomime
+about it?  Come now!"
+
+"Look!" repeated the Goblin, pinching his arm malevolently.  The
+Haunted Man groaned.
+
+"O, of course, I see her Majesty's ship Arethusa. Of course I am
+familiar with her stern First Lieutenant, her eccentric Captain, her
+one fascinating and several mischievous midshipmen.  Of course I know
+it's a splendid thing to see all this, and not to be seasick.  O, there
+the young gentlemen are going to play a trick on the purser.  For God's
+sake, let us go," and the unhappy man absolutely dragged the Goblin
+away with him.
+
+When they next halted, it was at the edge of a broad and boundless
+prairie, in the middle of an oak opening.
+
+"I see," said the Haunted Man, without waiting for his cue, but
+mechanically, and as if he were repeating a lesson which the Goblin had
+taught him,--"I see the Noble Savage.  He is very fine to look at!  But
+I observe under his war-paint, feathers, and picturesque blanket, dirt,
+disease, and an unsymmetrical contour.  I observe beneath his inflated
+rhetoric deceit and hypocrisy; beneath his physical hardihood, cruelty,
+malice, and revenge.  The Noble Savage is a humbug.  I remarked the
+same to Mr. Catlin."
+
+"Come," said the phantom.
+
+The Haunted Man sighed, and took out his watch.  "Couldn't we do the
+rest of this another time?"
+
+"My hour is almost spent, irreverent being, but there is yet a chance
+for your reformation.  Come!"
+
+Again they sped through the night, and again halted.  The sound of
+delicious but melancholy music fell upon their ears.
+
+"I see," said the Haunted Man, with something of interest in his
+manner,--"I see an old moss-covered manse beside a sluggish, flowing
+river.  I see weird shapes: witches, Puritans, clergymen, little
+children, judges, mesmerized maidens, moving to the sound of melody
+that thrills me with its sweetness and purity.  But, although carried
+along its calm and evenly flowing current, the shapes are strange and
+frightful: an eating lichen gnaws at the heart of each.  Not only the
+clergymen, but witch, maiden, judge, and Puritan, all wear Scarlet
+Letters of some kind burned upon their hearts.  I am fascinated and
+thrilled, but I feel a morbid sensitiveness creeping over me.  I--I beg
+your pardon."  The Goblin was yawning frightfully.  "Well, perhaps we
+had better go."
+
+"One more, and the last," said the Goblin.
+
+They were moving home.  Streaks of red were beginning to appear in the
+eastern sky.  Along the banks of the blackly flowing river by moorland
+and stagnant fens, by low houses, clustering close to the water's edge,
+like strange mollusks, crawled upon the beach to dry; by misty black
+barges, the more misty and indistinct seen through its mysterious veil,
+the river fog was slowly rising.  So rolled away and rose from the
+heart of the Haunted Man, etc., etc.
+
+They stopped before a quaint mansion of red brick.  The Goblin waved
+his hand without speaking.
+
+"I see," said the Haunted Man, "a gay drawing-room.  I see my old
+friends of the club, of the college, of society, even as they lived and
+moved.  I see the gallant and unselfish men, whom I have loved, and the
+snobs whom I have hated.  I see strangely mingling with them, and now
+and then blending with their forms, our old friends Dick Steele,
+Addison, and Congreve.  I observe, though, that these gentlemen have a
+habit of getting too much in the way.  The royal standard of Queen
+Anne, not in itself a beautiful ornament, is rather too prominent in
+the picture.  The long galleries of black oak, the formal furniture,
+the old portraits, are picturesque, but depressing.  The house is damp.
+I enjoy myself better here on the lawn, where they are getting up a
+Vanity Fair.  See, the bell rings, the curtain is rising, the puppets
+are brought out for a new play.  Let me see."
+
+The Haunted Man was pressing forward in his eagerness, but the hand of
+the Goblin stayed him, and pointing to his feet he saw, between him and
+the rising curtain, a new-made grave.  And bending above the grave in
+passionate grief, the Haunted Man beheld the phantom of the previous
+night.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+The Haunted Man started, and--woke.  The bright sunshine streamed into
+the room.  The air was sparkling with frost.  He ran joyously to the
+window and opened it.  A small boy saluted him with "Merry Christmas."
+The Haunted Man instantly gave him a Bank of England note.  "How much
+like Tiny Tim, Tom, and Bobby that boy looked,--bless my soul, what a
+genius this Dickens has!"
+
+A knock at the door, and Boots entered.
+
+"Consider your salary doubled instantly.  Have you read David
+Copperfield?"
+
+"Yezzur."
+
+"Your salary is quadrupled.  What do you think of the Old Curiosity
+Shop?"
+
+The man instantly burst into a torrent of tears, and then into a roar
+of laughter.
+
+"Enough!  Here are five thousand pounds.  Open a porter-house, and call
+it, 'Our Mutual Friend.'  Huzza!  I feel so happy!"  And the haunted
+Man danced about the room.
+
+And so, bathed in the light of that blessed sun, and yet glowing with
+the warmth of a good action, the Haunted Man, haunted no longer, save
+by those shapes which make the dreams of children beautiful, reseated
+himself in his chair, and finished Our Mutual Friend.
+
+
+
+
+MISS MIX.
+
+BY CH--L--TTE BR--NTE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+My earliest impressions are of a huge, misshapen rock, against which
+the hoarse waves beat unceasingly.  On this rock three pelicans are
+standing in a defiant attitude.  A dark sky lowers in the background,
+while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor
+the floating corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground.  A few
+bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewelry, scattered
+around loosely, complete this remarkable picture.
+
+It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way, symbolizes, to my
+fancy, the character of a man.  I have never been able to explain
+exactly why.  I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated
+volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was born.
+
+As a child I was not handsome.  When I consulted the triangular bit of
+looking-glass which I always carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy,
+and freckled face, shaded by locks like the color of seaweed when the
+sun strikes it in deep water.  My eyes were said to be indistinctive;
+they were a faint, ashen gray; but above them rose--my only beauty--a
+high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, like
+door-knobs of the purest porcelain.
+
+Our family was a family of governesses.  My mother had been one, and my
+sisters had the same occupation.  Consequently, when, at the age of
+thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertisement of Mr.
+Rawjester, clipped from that day's "Times," I accepted it as my
+destiny.  Nevertheless, a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite
+future haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my little
+snow-white bed.  The next morning, with two bandboxes tied up in silk
+handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage
+forever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, Esq., was encompassed by
+dark pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides.  The wind sang weirdly
+in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park.
+As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before
+the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the
+bell.  While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the
+housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old woman, showed me into the
+library.
+
+I entered, overcome with conflicting emotions.  I was dressed in a
+narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed with black bugles.  A thick green
+shawl was pinned across my breast.  My hands were encased with black
+half-mittens worked with steel beads; on my feet were large pattens,
+originally the property of my deceased grandmother. I carried a blue
+cotton umbrella.  As I passed before a mirror, I could not help
+glancing at it, nor could I disguise from myself the fact that I was
+not handsome.
+
+Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with folded hands, calmly
+awaiting the arrival of my master.  Once or twice a fearful yell rang
+through the house, or the rattling of chains, and curses uttered in a
+deep, manly voice, broke upon the oppressive stillness.  I began to
+feel my soul rising with the emergency of the moment.
+
+"You look alarmed, miss.  You don't hear anything, my dear, do you?"
+asked the housekeeper nervously.
+
+"Nothing whatever," I remarked calmly, as a terrific scream, followed
+by the dragging of chairs and tables in the room above, drowned for a
+moment my reply.  "It is the silence, on the contrary, which has made
+me foolishly nervous."
+
+The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and instantly made some tea
+for me.
+
+I drank seven cups; as I was beginning the eighth, I heard a crash, and
+the next moment a man leaped into the room through the broken window.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The crash startled me from my self-control.  The housekeeper bent
+toward me and whispered:--
+
+"Don't be excited.  It's Mr. Rawjester,--he prefers to come in
+sometimes in this way.  It's his playfulness, ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"I perceive," I said calmly.  "It's the unfettered impulse of a lofty
+soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of custom."  And I turned toward
+him.
+
+He had never once looked at me.  He stood with his back to the fire,
+which set off the herculean breadth of his shoulders.  His face was
+dark and expressive; his under jaw squarely formed, and remarkably
+heavy.  I was struck with his remarkable likeness to a Gorilla.
+
+As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his nervous fingers,
+I watched him with some interest.  Suddenly he turned toward me:--
+
+"Do you think I'm handsome, young woman?"
+
+"Not classically beautiful," I returned calmly; "but you have, if I may
+so express myself, an abstract manliness,--a sincere and wholesome
+barbarity which, involving as it does the naturalness--" But I stopped,
+for he yawned at that moment,--an action which singularly developed the
+immense breadth of his lower jaw,--and I saw he had forgotten me.
+Presently he turned to the housekeeper:--
+
+"Leave us."
+
+The old woman withdrew with a courtesy.
+
+Mr. Rawjester deliberately turned his back upon me and remained silent
+for twenty minutes.  I drew my shawl the more closely around my
+shoulders and closed my eyes.
+
+"You are the governess?" at length he said.
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, and the use of the
+globes--ha!--a wretched remnant of femininity,--a skimp pattern of
+girlhood with a premature flavor of tea-leaves and morality.  Ugh!"
+
+I bowed my head silently.
+
+"Listen to me, girl!" he said sternly; "this child you have come to
+teach--my ward--is not legitimate.  She is the offspring of my
+mistress,--a common harlot.  Ah!  Miss Mix, what do you think of me
+now?"
+
+"I admire," I replied calmly, "your sincerity.  A mawkish regard for
+delicacy might have kept this disclosure to yourself.  I only recognize
+in your frankness that perfect community of thought and sentiment which
+should exist between original natures."
+
+I looked up; he had already forgotten my presence, and was engaged in
+pulling off his boots and coat.  This done, he sank down in an
+arm-chair before the fire, and ran the poker wearily through his hair.
+I could not help pitying him.
+
+The wind howled dismally without, and the rain beat furiously against
+the windows.  I crept toward him and seated myself on a low stool
+beside his chair.
+
+Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed his foot absently in
+my lap.  I affected not to notice it.  But he started and looked down.
+
+"You here yet--Carrothead?  Ah, I forgot.  Do you speak French?"
+
+"Oui, Monsieur."
+
+"Taisez-vous!" he said sharply, with singular purity of accent.  I
+complied.  The wind moaned fearfully in the chimney, and the light
+burned dimly.  I shuddered in spite of myself.  "Ah, you tremble, girl!"
+
+"It is a fearful night."
+
+"Fearful!  Call you this fearful, ha! ha! ha!  Look! you wretched
+little atom, look!" and he dashed forward, and, leaping out of the
+window, stood like a statue in the pelting storm, with folded arms. He
+did not stay long, but in a few minutes returned by way of the hall
+chimney.  I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that he
+had again forgotten my presence.
+
+"You are a governess.  What can you teach?" he asked, suddenly and
+fiercely thrusting his face in mine.
+
+"Manners!" I replied, calmly.
+
+"Ha! teach ME!"
+
+"You mistake yourself," I said, adjusting my mittens.  "Your manners
+require not the artificial restraint of society.  You are radically
+polite; this impetuosity and ferociousness is simply the sincerity
+which is the basis of a proper deportment.  Your instincts are moral;
+your better nature, I see, is religious.  As St. Paul justly
+remarks--see chap. 6, 8, 9, and 10--"
+
+He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me.  I dodged it
+submissively but firmly.
+
+"Excuse me," he remarked, as his under jaw slowly relaxed.  "Excuse me,
+Miss Mix--but I can't stand St. Paul!  Enough--you are engaged."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+I followed the housekeeper as she led the way timidly to my room. As we
+passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an
+iron gate with a grating.  Three of the doors on the corridor were
+likewise grated.  A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling
+of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper
+good night, and taking the candle, I entered my bedchamber.
+
+I took off my dress, and, putting on a yellow flannel nightgown, which
+I could not help feeling did not agree with my complexion, I composed
+myself to rest by reading Blair's Rhetoric and Paley's Moral
+Philosophy.  I had just put out the light, when I heard voices in the
+corridor.  I listened attentively.  I recognized Mr. Rawjester's stern
+tones.
+
+"Have you fed No. 1?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," said a gruff voice, apparently belonging to a domestic.
+
+"How's No. 2?"
+
+"She's a little off her feed, just now, but will pick up in a day or
+two!"
+
+"And No. 3?"
+
+"Perfectly furious, sir.  Her tantrums are ungovernable."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful slumber.
+
+I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical forest.  Suddenly I
+saw the figure of a gorilla approaching me.  As it neared me, I
+recognized the features of Mr. Rawjester.  He held his hand to his side
+as if in pain.  I saw that he had been wounded.  He recognized me and
+called me by name, but at the same moment the vision changed to an
+Ashantee village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes were
+dancing and participating in some wild Obi festival.  I awoke with the
+strain still ringing in my ears.
+
+"Hokee-pokee wokee fum!"
+
+Good Heavens! could I be dreaming?  I heard the voice distinctly on the
+floor below, and smelt something burning.  I arose, with an indistinct
+presentiment of evil, and hastily putting some cotton in my ears and
+tying a towel about my head, I wrapped myself in a shawl and rushed
+down stairs.  The door of Mr. Rawjester's room was open.  I entered.
+
+Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, from which even the
+clouds of smoke that came from the burning curtains of his bed could
+not rouse him.  Around the room a large and powerful negress, scantily
+attired, with her head adorned with feathers, was dancing wildly,
+accompanying herself with bone castanets.  It looked like some terrible
+fetich.
+
+I did not lose my calmness.  After firmly emptying the pitcher, basin,
+and slop-jar on the burning bed, I proceeded cautiously to the garden,
+and, returning with the garden-engine, I directed a small stream at Mr.
+Rawjester.
+
+At my entrance the gigantic negress fled.  Mr. Rawjester yawned and
+woke.  I explained to him, as he rose dripping from the bed, the reason
+of my presence.  He did not seem to be excited, alarmed, or
+discomposed.  He gazed at me curiously.
+
+"So you risked your life to save mine, eh? you canary-colored teacher
+of infants."
+
+I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly over my yellow flannel
+nightgown.
+
+"You love me, Mary Jane,--don't deny it!  This trembling shows it!" He
+drew me closely toward him, and said, with his deep voice tenderly
+modulated:--
+
+"How's her pooty tootens,--did she get her 'ittle tootens wet,--bess
+her?"
+
+I understood his allusion to my feet.  I glanced down and saw that in
+my hurry I had put on a pair of his old india-rubbers.  My feet were
+not small or pretty, and the addition did not add to their beauty.
+
+"Let me go, sir," I remarked quietly.  "This is entirely improper; it
+sets a bad example for your child."  And I firmly but gently extricated
+myself from his grasp.  I approached the door.  He seemed for a moment
+buried in deep thought.
+
+"You say this was a negress?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Humph, No. 1, I suppose?"
+
+"Who is Number One, sir?"
+
+"My FIRST," he remarked, with a significant and sarcastic smile. Then,
+relapsing into his old manner, he threw his boots at my head, and bade
+me begone.  I withdrew calmly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French with a perfect
+accent.  Her mother had been a French ballet-dancer, which probably
+accounted for it.  Although she was only six years old, it was easy to
+perceive that she had been several times in love.  She once said to
+me:--
+
+"Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion?  Did you ever feel a
+fluttering here?" and she placed her hand upon her small chest, and
+sighed quaintly, "a kind of distaste for bonbons and caromels, when the
+world seemed as tasteless and hollow as a broken cordial drop."
+
+"Then you have felt it, Nina?" I said quietly.  "O dear, yes. There was
+Buttons,--that was our page, you know,--I loved him dearly, but papa
+sent him away.  Then there was Dick, the groom, but he laughed at me,
+and I suffered misery!" and she struck a tragic French attitude.
+"There is to be company here to-morrow," she added, rattling on with
+childish naivete, "and papa's sweetheart--Blanche Marabout--is to be
+here.  You know they say she is to be my mamma."
+
+What thrill was this shot through me?  But I rose calmly, and,
+administering a slight correction to the child, left the apartment.
+
+Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the scene of gayety and
+merriment.  That portion of the mansion closed with a grating was
+walled up, and the midnight shrieks no longer troubled me.
+
+But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situation.  I was obliged
+to help Lady Blanche at her toilet and help her to look beautiful.  For
+what?  To captivate him?  O--no, no,--but why this sudden thrill and
+faintness?  Did he really love her?  I had seen him pinch and swear at
+her.  But I reflected that he had thrown a candlestick at my head, and
+my foolish heart was reassured.
+
+It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message obliged Mr.
+Rawjester to leave his guests for a few hours.  "Make yourselves merry,
+idiots," he added, under his breath, as he passed me.  The door closed
+and he was gone.
+
+An half-hour passed.  In the midst of the dancing a shriek was heard,
+and out of the swaying crowd of fainting women and excited men a wild
+figure strode into the room.  One glance showed it to be a highwayman,
+heavily armed, holding a pistol in each hand.
+
+"Let no one pass out of this room!" he said, in a voice of thunder.
+"The house is surrounded and you cannot escape.  The first one who
+crosses yonder threshold will be shot like a dog.  Gentlemen, I'll
+trouble you to approach in single file, and hand me your purses and
+watches."
+
+Finding resistance useless, the order was ungraciously obeyed.
+
+"Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry and trinkets."
+
+This order was still more ungraciously complied with.  As Blanche
+handed to the bandit captain her bracelet, she endeavored to conceal a
+diamond necklace, the gift of Mr. Rawjester, in her bosom.  But, with a
+demoniac grin, the powerful brute tore it from its concealment, and,
+administering a hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her
+aside.
+
+It was now my turn.  With a beating heart I made my way to the robber
+chieftain, and sank at his feet.  "O sir, I am nothing but a poor
+governess, pray let me go."
+
+"O ho!  A governess?  Give me your last month's wages, then.  Give me
+what you have stolen from your master!" and he laughed fiendishly.
+
+I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice: "I have stolen
+nothing from you, Mr. Rawjester!"
+
+"Ah, discovered!  Hush! listen, girl!" he hissed, in a fiercer whisper,
+"utter a syllable to frustrate my plans and you die; aid me, and--"
+But he was gone.
+
+In a few moments the party, with the exception of myself, were gagged
+and locked in the cellar.  The next moment torches were applied to the
+rich hangings, and the house was in flames.  I felt a strong hand seize
+me, and bear me out in the open air and place me upon the hillside,
+where I could overlook the burning mansion. It was Mr. Rawjester.
+
+"Burn!" he said, as he shook his fist at the flames.  Then sinking on
+his knees before me, he said hurriedly:--
+
+"Mary Jane, I love you; the obstacles to our union are or will be soon
+removed.  In yonder mansion were confined my three crazy wives.  One of
+them, as you know, attempted to kill me!  Ha! this is vengeance!  But
+will you be mine?"
+
+I fell, without a word, upon his neck.
+
+
+
+
+GUY HEAVYSTONE;
+
+OR,
+
+"ENTIRE."
+
+A MUSCULAR NOVEL.
+
+BY THE AUTHOR or "SWORD AND GUN."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus."
+
+
+A dingy, swashy, splashy afternoon in October; a school-yard filled
+with a mob of riotous boys.  A lot of us standing outside.
+
+Suddenly came a dull, crashing sound from the school-room.  At the
+ominous interruption I shuddered involuntarily, and called to
+Smithsye:--
+
+"What's up, Smithums?"
+
+"Guy's cleaning out the fourth form," he replied.
+
+At the same moment George de Coverly passed me, holding his nose, from
+whence the bright Norman blood streamed redly.  To him the plebeian
+Smithsye laughingly:--
+
+"Cully! how's his nibs?"
+
+I pushed the door of the school-room open.  There are some spectacles
+which a man never forgets.  The burning of Troy probably seemed a
+large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression
+on him which he carried away with the feeble Anchises.
+
+In the centre of the room, lightly brandishing the piston-rod of a
+steam-engine, stood Guy Heavystone alone.  I say alone, for the pile of
+small boys on the floor in the corner could hardly be called company.
+
+I will try and sketch him for the reader.  Guy Heavystone was then only
+fifteen.  His broad, deep chest, his sinewy and quivering flank, his
+straight pastern, showed him to be a thoroughbred. Perhaps he was a
+trifle heavy in the fetlock, but he held his head haughtily erect.  His
+eyes were glittering but pitiless.  There was a sternness about the
+lower part of his face,--the old Heavystone look,--a sternness,
+heightened, perhaps, by the snaffle-bit which, in one of his strange
+freaks, he wore in his mouth to curb his occasional ferocity.  His
+dress was well adapted to his square-set and herculean frame.  A
+striped knit undershirt, close-fitting striped tights, and a few
+spangles set off his figure; a neat Glengarry cap adorned his head.  On
+it was displayed the Heavystone crest, a cock regardant on a dunghill
+or, and the motto, "Devil a better!"
+
+I thought of Horatius on the bridge, of Hector before the walls.  I
+always make it a point to think of something classical at such times.
+
+He saw me, and his sternness partly relaxed.  Something like a smile
+struggled through his grim lineaments.  It was like looking on the
+Jungfrau after having seen Mont Blanc,--a trifle, only a trifle less
+sublime and awful.  Resting his hand lightly on the shoulder of the
+head-master, who shuddered and collapsed under his touch, he strode
+toward me.
+
+His walk was peculiar.  You could not call it a stride.  It was like
+the "crest-tossing Bellerophon,"--a kind of prancing gait. Guy
+Heavystone pranced toward me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  "Lord Lovel he stood at the garden gate,
+  A-combing his milk-white steed."
+
+
+It was the winter of 186- when I next met Guy Heavystone.  He had left
+the University and had entered the 76th "Heavies."  "I have exchanged
+the gown for the sword, you see," he said, grasping my hand, and
+fracturing the bones of my little finger, as he shook it.
+
+I gazed at him with unmixed admiration.  He was squarer, sterner, and
+in every way smarter and more remarkable than ever.  I began to feel
+toward this man as Phalaster felt towards Phyrgino, as somebody must
+have felt toward Archididasculus, as Boswell felt toward Johnson.
+
+"Come into my den," he said, and lifting me gently by the seat of my
+pantaloons he carried me up stairs and deposited me, before I could
+apologize, on the sofa.  I looked around the room.  It was a bachelor's
+apartment, characteristically furnished in the taste of the proprietor.
+A few claymores and battle-axes were ranged against the wall, and a
+culverin, captured by Sir Ralph Heavystone, occupied the corner, the
+other end of the room being taken up by a light battery.  Foils,
+boxing-gloves, saddles, and fishing-poles lay around carelessly.  A
+small pile of billets-doux lay upon a silver salver.  The man was not
+an anchorite, nor yet a Sir Galahad.
+
+I never could tell what Guy thought of women.  "Poor little beasts," he
+would often say when the conversation turned on any of his fresh
+conquests.  Then, passing his hand over his marble brow, the old look
+of stern fixedness of purpose and unflinching severity would straighten
+the lines of his mouth, and he would mutter, half to himself, "S'death!"
+
+"Come with me to Heavystone Grange.  The Exmoor Hounds throw off
+to-morrow.  I'll give you a mount," he said, as he amused himself by
+rolling up a silver candlestick between his fingers.  "You shall have
+Cleopatra.  But stay," he added, thoughtfully; "now I remember, I
+ordered Cleopatra to be shot this morning."
+
+"And why?" I queried.
+
+"She threw her rider yesterday and fell on him--"
+
+"And killed him?"
+
+"No.  That's the reason why I have ordered her to be shot.  I keep no
+animals that are not dangerous--I should add--DEADLY!"  He hissed the
+last sentence between his teeth, and a gloomy frown descended over his
+calm brow.
+
+I affected to turn over the tradesman's bills that lay on the table,
+for, like all of the Heavystone race, Guy seldom paid cash, and said:--
+
+"You remind me of the time when Leonidas--"
+
+"O, bother Leonidas and your classical allusions.  Come!"
+
+We descended to dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  "He carries weight, he rides a race,
+  'Tis for a thousand pound."
+
+
+"There is Flora Billingsgate, the greatest coquette and hardest rider
+in the country," said my companion, Ralph Mortmain, as we stood upon
+Dingleby Common before the meet.
+
+I looked up and beheld Guy Heavystone bending haughtily over the
+saddle, as he addressed a beautiful brunette.  She was indeed a
+splendidly groomed and high-spirited woman.  We were near enough to
+overhear the following conversation, which any high-toned reader will
+recognize as the common and natural expression of the higher classes.
+
+"When Diana takes the field the chase is not wholly confined to objects
+ferae naturae," said Guy, darting a significant glance at his
+companion.  Flora did not shrink either from the glance or the meaning
+implied in the sarcasm.
+
+"If I were looking for an Endymion, now--" she said archly, as she
+playfully cantered over a few hounds and leaped a five-barred gate.
+
+Guy whispered a few words, inaudible to the rest of the party, and,
+curvetting slightly, cleverly cleared two of the huntsmen in a flying
+leap, galloped up the front steps of the mansion, and dashing at full
+speed through the hall leaped through the drawing-room window and
+rejoined me, languidly, on the lawn.
+
+"Be careful of Flora Billingsgate," he said to me, in low stern tones,
+while his pitiless eye shot a baleful fire.  "Gardez vous!"
+
+"Gnothi seauton," I replied calmly, not wishing to appear to be behind
+him in perception or verbal felicity.
+
+Guy started off in high spirits.  He was well carried.  He and the
+first whip, a ten-stone man, were head and head at the last fence,
+while the hounds were rolling over their fox a hundred yards farther in
+the open.
+
+But an unexpected circumstance occurred.  Coming back, his chestnut
+mare refused a ten-foot wall.  She reared and fell backward.  Again he
+led her up to it lightly; again she refused, falling heavily from the
+coping.  Guy started to his feet.  The old pitiless fire shone in his
+eyes; the old stern look settled around his mouth. Seizing the mare by
+the tail and mane he threw her over the wall. She landed twenty feet on
+the other side, erect and trembling. Lightly leaping the same obstacle
+himself, he remounted her.  She did not refuse the wall the next time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+"He holds him by his glittering eye."
+
+
+Guy was in the North of Ireland, cock-shooting.  So Ralph Mortmain told
+me, and also that the match between Mary Brandagee and Guy had been
+broken off by Flora Billingsgate.  "I don't like those Billingsgates,"
+said Ralph, "they're a bad stock.  Her father, Smithfield de
+Billingsgate, had an unpleasant way of turning up the knave from the
+bottom of the pack.  But nous verrons; let us go and see Guy."
+
+The next morning we started for Fin-ma-Coul's Crossing.  When I reached
+the shooting-box, where Guy was entertaining a select company of
+friends, Flora Billingsgate greeted me with a saucy smile.
+
+Guy was even squarer and sterner than ever.  His gusts of passion were
+more frequent, and it was with difficulty that he could keep an
+able-bodied servant in his family.  His present retainers were more or
+less maimed from exposure to the fury of their master. There was a
+strange cynicism, a cutting sarcasm in his address, piercing through
+his polished manner.  I thought of Timon, etc., etc.
+
+One evening, we were sitting over our Chambertin, after a hard day's
+work, and Guy was listlessly turning over some letters, when suddenly
+he uttered a cry.  Did you ever hear the trumpeting of a wounded
+elephant?  It was like that.
+
+I looked at him with consternation.  He was glancing at a letter which
+he held at arm's length, and snorting, as it were, at it as he gazed.
+The lower part of his face was stern, but not as rigid as usual.  He
+was slowly grinding between his teeth the fragments of the glass he had
+just been drinking from.  Suddenly he seized one of his servants, and,
+forcing the wretch upon his knees, exclaimed, with the roar of a
+tiger:--
+
+"Dog! why was this kept from me?"
+
+"Why, please, sir, Miss Flora said as how it was a reconciliation from
+Miss Brandagee, and it was to be kept from you where you would not be
+likely to see it,--and--and--"
+
+"Speak, dog! and you--"
+
+"I put it among your bills, sir!"
+
+With a groan, like distant thunder, Guy fell swooning to the floor.
+
+He soon recovered, for the next moment a servant came rushing into the
+room with the information that a number of the ingenuous peasantry of
+the neighborhood were about to indulge that evening in the national
+pastime of burning a farm-house and shooting a landlord.  Guy smiled a
+fearful smile, without, however, altering his stern and pitiless
+expression.
+
+"Let them come," he said calmly; "I feel like entertaining company."
+
+We barricaded the doors and windows, and then chose our arms from the
+armory.  Guy's choice was a singular one: it was a landing net with a
+long handle, and a sharp cavalry sabre.
+
+We were not destined to remain long in ignorance of its use.  A howl
+was heard from without, and a party of fifty or sixty armed men
+precipitated themselves against the door.
+
+Suddenly the window opened.  With the rapidity of lightning, Guy
+Heavystone cast the net over the head of the ringleader, ejaculated
+"Habet!" and with a back stroke of his cavalry sabre severed the member
+from its trunk, and, drawing the net back again, cast the gory head
+upon the floor, saying quietly:--
+
+"One."
+
+Again the net was cast, the steel flashed, the net was withdrawn, and
+an ominous "Two!" accompanied the head as it rolled on the floor.
+
+"Do you remember what Pliny says of the gladiator?" said Guy, calmly
+wiping his sabre.  "How graphic is that passage commencing 'Inter nos,
+etc.'"  The sport continued until the heads of twenty desperadoes had
+been gathered in.  The rest seemed inclined to disperse.  Guy
+incautiously showed himself at the door; a ringing shot was heard, and
+he staggered back, pierced through the heart. Grasping the door-post in
+the last unconscious throes of his mighty frame, the whole side of the
+house yielded to that earthquake tremor, and we had barely time to
+escape before the whole building fell in ruins.  I thought of Samson,
+the Giant Judge, etc., etc.; but all was over.
+
+Guy Heavystone had died as he had lived,--HARD.
+
+
+
+
+MR. MIDSHIPMAN BREEZY.
+
+A NAVAL OFFICER.
+
+BY CAPTAIN M--RRY--T, R. N.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+My father was a north-country surgeon.  He had retired, a widower, from
+her Majesty's navy many years before, and had a small practice in his
+native village.  When I was seven years old he employed me to carry
+medicines to his patients.  Being of a lively disposition, I sometimes
+amused myself; during my daily rounds, by mixing the contents of the
+different phials.  Although I had no reason to doubt that the general
+result of this practice was beneficial, yet, as the death of a
+consumptive curate followed the addition of a strong mercurial lotion
+to his expectorant, my father concluded to withdraw me from the
+profession and send me to school.
+
+Grubbins, the schoolmaster, was a tyrant, and it was not long before my
+impetuous and self-willed nature rebelled against his authority.  I
+soon began to form plans of revenge.  In this I was assisted by Tom
+Snaffle,--a schoolfellow.  One day Tom suggested:--
+
+"Suppose we blow him up.  I've got two pounds of powder!"
+
+"No, that's too noisy," I replied.
+
+Tom was silent for a minute, and again spoke:--
+
+"You remember how you flattened out the curate, Pills!  Couldn't you
+give Grubbins something--something to make him leathery sick--eh?"
+
+A flash of inspiration crossed my mind.  I went to the shop of the
+village apothecary.  He knew me; I had often purchased vitriol, which I
+poured into Grubbins's inkstand to corrode his pens and burn up his
+coat-tail, on which he was in the habit of wiping them. I boldly asked
+for an ounce of chloroform.  The young apothecary winked and handed me
+the bottle.
+
+It was Grubbins's custom to throw his handkerchief over his head,
+recline in his chair and take a short nap during recess.  Watching my
+opportunity, as he dozed, I managed to slip his handkerchief from his
+face and substitute my own, moistened with chloroform.  In a few
+minutes he was insensible.  Tom and I then quickly shaved his head,
+beard, and eyebrows, blackened his face with a mixture of vitriol and
+burnt cork, and fled.  There was a row and scandal the next day.  My
+father always excused me by asserting that Grubbins had got drunk,--but
+somehow found it convenient to procure me an appointment in her
+Majesty's navy at an early day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+An official letter, with the Admiralty seal, informed me that I was
+expected to join H. M. ship Belcher, Captain Boltrope, at Portsmouth,
+without delay.  In a few days I presented myself to a tall,
+stern-visaged man, who was slowly pacing the leeward side of the
+quarter-deck.  As I touched my hat he eyed me sternly:--
+
+"So ho!  Another young suckling.  The service is going to the devil.
+Nothing but babes in the cockpit and grannies in the board. Boatswain's
+mate, pass the word for Mr. Cheek!"
+
+Mr. Cheek, the steward, appeared and touched his hat.  "Introduce Mr.
+Breezy to the young gentlemen.  Stop!  Where's Mr. Swizzle?"
+
+"At the masthead, sir."
+
+"Where's Mr. Lankey?"
+
+"At the masthead, sir."
+
+"Mr. Briggs?"
+
+"Masthead, too, sir."
+
+"And the rest of the young gentlemen?" roared the enraged officer.
+
+"All masthead, sir."
+
+"Ah!" said Captain Boltrope, as he smiled grimly, "under the
+circumstances, Mr. Breezy, you had better go to the masthead too."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+At the masthead I made the acquaintance of two youngsters of about my
+own age, one of whom informed me that he had been there three hundred
+and thirty-two days out of the year.
+
+"In rough weather, when the old cock is out of sorts, you know, we
+never come down," added a young gentleman of nine years, with a dirk
+nearly as long as himself, who had been introduced to me as Mr. Briggs.
+"By the way, Pills," he continued, "how did you come to omit giving the
+captain a naval salute?"
+
+"Why, I touched my hat," I said, innocently.
+
+"Yes, but that isn't enough, you know.  That will do very well at other
+times.  He expects the naval salute when you first come on
+board--greeny!"
+
+I began to feel alarmed, and begged him to explain.
+
+"Why, you see, after touching your hat, you should have touched him
+lightly with your forefinger in his waistcoat, so, and asked, 'How's
+his nibs?'--you see?"
+
+"How's his nibs?" I repeated.
+
+"Exactly.  He would have drawn back a little, and then you should have
+repeated the salute remarking, 'How's his royal nibs?' asking
+cautiously after his wife and family, and requesting to be introduced
+to the gunner's daughter."
+
+"The gunner's daughter?"
+
+"The same; you know she takes care of us young gentlemen; now don't
+forget, Pillsy!"
+
+When we were called down to the deck I thought it a good chance to
+profit by this instruction.  I approached Captain Boltrope and repeated
+the salute without conscientiously omitting a single detail.  He
+remained for a moment, livid and speechless.  At length he gasped out:--
+
+"Boatswain's mate?"
+
+"If you please, sir," I asked, tremulously, "I should like to be
+introduced to the gunner's daughter!"
+
+"O, very good, sir!" screamed Captain Boltrope, rubbing his hands and
+absolutely capering about the deck with rage.  "O d--n you!  Of course
+you shall!  O ho! the gunner's daughter!  O, h--ll! this is too much!
+Boatswain's mate!"  Before I well knew where I was, I was seized, borne
+to an eight-pounder, tied upon it and flogged!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+As we sat together in the cockpit, picking the weevils out of our
+biscuit, Briggs consoled me for my late mishap, adding that the "naval
+salute," as a custom, seemed just then to be honored more in the BREACH
+than the observance.  I joined in the hilarity occasioned by the
+witticism, and in a few moments we were all friends.  Presently Swizzle
+turned to me:--
+
+"We have been just planning how to confiscate a keg of claret, which
+Nips, the purser, keeps under his bunk.  The old nipcheese lies there
+drunk half the day, and there's no getting at it."
+
+"Let's get beneath the state-room and bore through the deck, and so tap
+it," said Lankey.
+
+The proposition was received with a shout of applause.  A long
+half-inch auger and bit was procured from Chips, the carpenter's mate,
+and Swizzle, after a careful examination of the timbers beneath the
+ward-room, commenced operations.  The auger at last disappeared, when
+suddenly there was a slight disturbance on the deck above.  Swizzle
+withdrew the auger hurriedly; from its point a few bright red drops
+trickled.
+
+"Huzza! send her up again!" cried Lankey.
+
+The auger was again applied.  This time a shriek was heard from the
+purser's cabin.  Instantly the light was doused, and the party
+retreated hurriedly to the cockpit.  A sound of snoring was heard as
+the sentry stuck his head into the door.  "All right, sir," he replied
+in answer to the voice of the officer of the deck.
+
+The next morning we heard that Nips was in the surgeon's hands, with a
+bad wound in the fleshy part of his leg, and that the auger had NOT
+struck claret.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"Now, Pills, you'll have a chance to smell powder," said Briggs as he
+entered the cockpit and buckled around his waist an enormous cutlass.
+"We have just sighted a French ship."
+
+We went on deck.  Captain Boltrope grinned as we touched our hats. He
+hated the purser.  "Come, young gentlemen, if you're boring for french
+claret, yonder's a good quality.  Mind your con, sir," he added,
+turning to the quartermaster, who was grinning.
+
+The ship was already cleared for action.  The men, in their eagerness,
+had started the coffee from the tubs and filled them with shot.
+Presently the Frenchman yawed, and a shot from a long thirty-two came
+skipping over the water.  It killed the quartermaster and took off both
+of Lankey's legs.  "Tell the purser our account is squared," said the
+dying boy, with a feeble smile.
+
+The fight raged fiercely for two hours.  I remember killing the French
+Admiral, as we boarded, but on looking around for Briggs, after the
+smoke had cleared away, I was intensely amused at witnessing the
+following novel sight:--
+
+Briggs had pinned the French captain against the mast with his cutlass,
+and was now engaged, with all the hilarity of youth, in pulling the
+captain's coat-tails between his legs, in imitation of a dancing-jack.
+As the Frenchman lifted his legs and arms, at each jerk of Briggs's, I
+could not help participating in the general mirth.
+
+"You young devil, what are you doing?" said a stifled voice behind me.
+I looked up and beheld Captain Boltrope, endeavoring to calm his stern
+features, but the twitching around his mouth betrayed his intense
+enjoyment of the scene.  "Go to the masthead--up with you, sir!" he
+repeated sternly to Briggs.
+
+"Very good, sir," said the boy, coolly preparing to mount the shrouds.
+"Good by, Johnny Crapaud.  Humph!" he added, in a tone intended for my
+ear, "a pretty way to treat a hero.  The service is going to the devil!"
+
+I thought so too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+We were ordered to the West Indies.  Although Captain Boltrope's manner
+toward me was still severe, and even harsh, I understood that my name
+had been favorably mentioned in the despatches.
+
+Reader, were you ever at Jamaica?  If so, you remember the negresses,
+the oranges, Port Royal Tom--the yellow fever.  After being two weeks
+at the station, I was taken sick of the fever.  In a month I was
+delirious.  During my paroxysms, I had a wild distempered dream of a
+stern face bending anxiously over my pillow, a rough hand smoothing my
+hair, and a kind voice saying:--
+
+"Bess his 'ittle heart!  Did he have the naughty fever?"  This face
+seemed again changed to the well-known stern features of Captain
+Boltrope.
+
+When I was convalescent, a packet edged in black was put in my hand.
+It contained the news of my father's death, and a sealed letter which
+he had requested to be given to me on his decease.  I opened it
+tremblingly.  It read thus:--
+
+
+"My dear Boy:--I regret to inform you that in all probability you are
+not my son.  Your mother, I am grieved to say, was a highly improper
+person.  Who your father may be, I really cannot say, but perhaps the
+Honorable Henry Boltrope, Captain R. N., may be able to inform you.
+Circumstances over which I have no control have deferred this important
+disclosure.
+
+"YOUR STRICKEN PARENT."
+
+
+And so Captain Boltrope was my father.  Heavens!  Was it a dream? I
+recalled his stern manner, his observant eye, his ill-concealed
+uneasiness when in my presence.  I longed to embrace him. Staggering to
+my feet, I rushed in my scanty apparel to the deck, where Captain
+Boltrope was just then engaged in receiving the Governor's wife and
+daughter.  The ladies shrieked; the youngest, a beautiful girl, blushed
+deeply.  Heeding them not, I sank at his feet, and, embracing them,
+cried:--
+
+"My father!"
+
+"Chuck him overboard!" roared Captain Boltrope.
+
+"Stay," pleaded the soft voice of Clara Maitland, the Governor's
+daughter.
+
+"Shave his head! he's a wretched lunatic!" continued Captain Boltrope,
+while his voice trembled with excitement.
+
+"No, let me nurse and take care of him," said the lovely girl, blushing
+as she spoke.  "Mamma, can't we take him home?"
+
+The daughter's pleading was not without effect.  In the mean time I had
+fainted.  When I recovered my senses I found myself in Governor
+Maitland's mansion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The reader will guess what followed.  I fell deeply in love with Clara
+Maitland, to whom I confided the secret of my birth.  The generous girl
+asserted that she had detected the superiority of my manner at once.
+We plighted our troth, and resolved to wait upon events.
+
+Briggs called to see me a few days afterward.  He said that the purser
+had insulted the whole cockpit, and all the midshipmen had called him
+out.  But he added thoughtfully: "I don't see how we can arrange the
+duel.  You see there are six of us to fight him."
+
+"Very easily," I replied.  "Let your fellows all stand in a row, and
+take his fire; that, you see, gives him six chances to one, and he must
+be a bad shot if he can't hit one of you; while, on the other hand, you
+see, he gets a volley from you six, and one of you'll be certain to
+fetch him."
+
+"Exactly"; and away Briggs went, but soon returned to say that the
+purser had declined,--"like a d--d coward," he added.
+
+But the news of the sudden and serious illness of Captain Boltrope put
+off the duel.  I hastened to his bedside, but too late,--an hour
+previous he had given up the ghost.
+
+I resolved to return to England.  I made known the secret of my birth,
+and exhibited my adopted father's letter to Lady Maitland, who at once
+suggested my marriage with her daughter, before I returned to claim the
+property.  We were married, and took our departure next day.
+
+I made no delay in posting at once, in company with my wife and my
+friend Briggs, to my native village.  Judge of my horror and surprise
+when my late adopted father came out of his shop to welcome me.
+
+"Then you are not dead!" I gasped.
+
+"No, my dear boy."
+
+"And this letter?"
+
+My father--as I must still call him--glanced on the paper, and
+pronounced it a forgery.  Briggs roared with laughter.  I turned to him
+and demanded an explanation.
+
+"Why, don't you see, Greeny, it's all a joke,--a midshipman's joke!"
+
+"But--" I asked.
+
+"Don't be a fool.  You've got a good wife,--be satisfied."
+
+I turned to Clara, and was satisfied.  Although Mrs. Maitland never
+forgave me, the jolly old Governor laughed heartily over the joke, and
+so well used his influence that I soon became, dear reader, Admiral
+Breezy, K. C. B.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN JENKINS;
+
+OR,
+
+THE SMOKER REFORMED.
+
+BY T. S. A--TH--R.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"One cigar a day!" said Judge Boompointer.
+
+"One cigar a day!" repeated John Jenkins, as with trepidation he
+dropped his half-consumed cigar under his work-bench.
+
+"One cigar a day is three cents a day," remarked Judge Boompointer,
+gravely; "and do you know, sir, what one cigar a day, or three cents a
+day, amounts to in the course of four years?"
+
+John Jenkins, in his boyhood, had attended the village school, and
+possessed considerable arithmetical ability.  Taking up a shingle which
+lay upon his work-bench, and producing a piece of chalk, with a feeling
+of conscious pride he made an exhaustive calculation.
+
+"Exactly forty-three dollars and eighty cents," he replied, wiping the
+perspiration from his heated brow, while his face flushed with honest
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, sir, if you saved three cents a day, instead of wasting it, you
+would now be the possessor of a new suit of clothes, an illustrated
+Family Bible, a pew in the church, a complete set of Patent Office
+Reports, a hymn-book, and a paid subscription to Arthur's Home
+Magazine, which could be purchased for exactly forty-three dollars and
+eighty cents; and," added the Judge, with increasing sternness, "if you
+calculate leap-year, which you seem to have strangely omitted, you have
+three cents more, sir; THREE CENTS MORE!  What would that buy you, sir?"
+
+"A cigar," suggested John Jenkins; but, coloring again deeply, he hid
+his face.
+
+"No, sir," said the Judge, with a sweet smile of benevolence stealing
+over his stern features; "properly invested, it would buy you that
+which passeth all price.  Dropped into the missionary-box, who can tell
+what heathen, now idly and joyously wantoning in nakedness and sin,
+might be brought to a sense of his miserable condition, and made,
+through that three cents, to feel the torments of the wicked?"
+
+With these words the Judge retired, leaving John Jenkins buried in
+profound thought.  "Three cents a day," he muttered.  "In forty years I
+might be worth four hundred and thirty-eight dollars and ten
+cents,--and then I might marry Mary.  Ah, Mary!"  The young carpenter
+sighed, and, drawing a twenty-five cent daguerreotype from his
+vest-pocket, gazed long and fervidly upon the features of a young girl
+in book muslin and a coral necklace.  Then, with a resolute expression,
+he carefully locked the door of his workshop and departed.
+
+Alas! his good resolutions were too late.  We trifle with the tide of
+fortune which too often nips us in the bud and casts the dark shadow of
+misfortune over the bright lexicon of youth!  That night the
+half-consumed fragment of John Jenkins's cigar set fire to his workshop
+and burned it up, together with all his tools and materials.  There was
+no insurance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE DOWNWARD PATH.
+
+"Then you still persist in marrying John Jenkins?" queried Judge
+Boompointer, as he playfully, with paternal familiarity, lifted the
+golden curls of the village belle, Mary Jones.
+
+"I do," replied the fair young girl, in a low voice, that resembled
+rock candy in its saccharine firmness,--"I do.  He has promised to
+reform.  Since he lost all his property by fire--"
+
+"The result of his pernicious habit, though he illogically persists in
+charging it to me," interrupted the Judge.
+
+"Since then," continued the young girl, "he has endeavored to break
+himself of the habit.  He tells me that he has substituted the stalks
+of the Indian ratan, the outer part of a leguminous plant called the
+smoking-bean, and the fragmentary and unconsumed remainder of cigars
+which occur at rare and uncertain intervals along the road, which, as
+he informs me, though deficient in quality and strength, are
+comparatively inexpensive."  And, blushing at her own eloquence, the
+young girl hid her curls on the Judge's arm.
+
+"Poor thing!" muttered Judge Boompointer.  "Dare I tell her all? Yet I
+must."
+
+"I shall cling to him," continued the young girl, rising with her
+theme, "as the young vine clings to some hoary ruin.  Nay, nay, chide
+me not, Judge Boompointer.  I will marry John Jenkins!"
+
+The Judge was evidently affected.  Seating himself at the table, he
+wrote a few lines hurriedly upon a piece of paper, which he folded and
+placed in the fingers of the destined bride of John Jenkins.
+
+"Mary Jones," said the Judge, with impressive earnestness, "take this
+trifle as a wedding gift from one who respects your fidelity and
+truthfulness.  At the altar let it be a reminder of me."  And covering
+his face hastily with a handkerchief, the stern and iron-willed man
+left the room.  As the door closed, Mary unfolded the paper.  It was an
+order on the corner grocery for three yards of flannel, a paper of
+needles, four pounds of soap, one pound of starch, and two boxes of
+matches!
+
+"Noble and thoughtful man!" was all Mary Jones could exclaim, as she
+hid her face in her hands and burst into a flood of tears.
+
+          *          *         *          *          *
+
+The bells of Cloverdale are ringing merrily.  It is a wedding. "How
+beautiful they look!" is the exclamation that passes from lip to lip,
+as Mary Jones, leaning timidly on the arm of John Jenkins, enters the
+church.  But the bride is agitated, and the bridegroom betrays a
+feverish nervousness.  As they stand in the vestibule, John Jenkins
+fumbles earnestly in his vest-pocket.  Can it be the ring he is anxious
+about?  No.  He draws a small brown substance from his pocket, and
+biting off a piece, hastily replaces the fragment and gazes furtively
+around.  Surely no one saw him?  Alas! the eyes of two of that wedding
+party saw the fatal act.  Judge Boompointer shook his head sternly.
+Mary Jones sighed and breathed a silent prayer.  Her husband chewed!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AND LAST.
+
+"What! more bread?" said John Jenkins, gruffly.  "You're always asking
+for money for bread.  D--nation!  Do you want to ruin me by your
+extravagance?" and as he uttered these words he drew from his pocket a
+bottle of whiskey, a pipe, and a paper of tobacco. Emptying the first
+at a draught, he threw the empty bottle at the head of his eldest boy,
+a youth of twelve summers.  The missile struck the child full in the
+temple, and stretched him a lifeless corpse.  Mrs. Jenkins, whom the
+reader will hardly recognize as the once gay and beautiful Mary Jones,
+raised the dead body of her son in her arms, and carefully placing the
+unfortunate youth beside the pump in the back yard, returned with
+saddened step to the house. At another time, and in brighter days, she
+might have wept at the occurrence.  She was past tears now.
+
+"Father, your conduct is reprehensible!" said little Harrison Jenkins,
+the youngest boy.  "Where do you expect to go when you die?"
+
+"Ah!" said John Jenkins, fiercely; "this comes of giving children a
+liberal education; this is the result of Sabbath schools.  Down, viper!"
+
+A tumbler thrown from the same parental fist laid out the youthful
+Harrison cold.  The four other children had, in the mean time, gathered
+around the table with anxious expectancy.  With a chuckle, the now
+changed and brutal John Jenkins produced four pipes, and, filling them
+with tobacco, handed one to each of his offspring and bade them smoke.
+"It's better than bread!" laughed the wretch hoarsely.
+
+Mary Jenkins, though of a patient nature, felt it her duty now to
+speak.  "I have borne much, John Jenkins," she said.  "But I prefer
+that the children should not smoke.  It is an unclean habit, and soils
+their clothes.  I ask this as a special favor!"
+
+John Jenkins hesitated,--the pangs of remorse began to seize him.
+
+"Promise me this, John!" urged Mary upon her knees.
+
+"I promise!" reluctantly answered John.
+
+"And you will put the money in a savings-bank?"
+
+"I will," repeated her husband; "and I'LL give up smoking, too."
+
+"'Tis well, John Jenkins!" said Judge Boompointer, appearing suddenly
+from behind the door, where he had been concealed during this
+interview.  "Nobly said! my man.  Cheer up!  I will see that the
+children are decently buried."  The husband and wife fell into each
+other's arms.  And Judge Boompointer, gazing upon the affecting
+spectacle, burst into tears.
+
+From that day John Jenkins was an altered man.
+
+
+
+
+NO TITLE.
+
+By W--LK--E C--LL--NS.
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+The following advertisement appeared in the "Times" of the 17th of
+June, 1845:--
+
+
+WANTED.--A few young men for a light genteel employment.
+         Address                           J. W., P. O.
+
+
+In the same paper, of same date, in another column:--
+
+
+TO LET.--That commodious and elegant family mansion, No. 27 Limehouse
+Road, Pultneyville, will be rented low to a respectable tenant if
+applied for immediately, the family being about to remove to the
+continent.
+
+
+Under the local intelligence, in another column:--
+
+
+MISSING.--An unknown elderly gentleman a week ago left his lodgings in
+the Kent Road, since which nothing has been heard of him.  He left no
+trace of his identity except a portmanteau containing a couple of
+shirts marked "209, WARD."
+
+
+To find the connection between the mysterious disappearance of the
+elderly gentleman and the anonymous communication, the relevancy of
+both these incidents to the letting of a commodious family mansion, and
+the dead secret involved in the three occurrences, is the task of the
+writer of this history.
+
+A slim young man with spectacles, a large hat, drab gaiters, and a
+note-book, sat late that night with a copy of the "Times" before him,
+and a pencil which he rattled nervously between his teeth in the
+coffee-room of the "Blue Dragon."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MARY JONES'S NARRATIVE.
+
+I am upper housemaid to the family that live at No. 27 Limehouse Road,
+Pultneyville.  I have been requested by Mr. Wilkey Collings, which I
+takes the liberty of here stating is a gentleman born and bred, and has
+some consideration for the feelings of servants, and is not above
+rewarding them for their trouble, which is more than you can say for
+some who ask questions and gets short answers enough, gracious knows,
+to tell what I know about them.  I have been requested to tell my story
+in my own langwidge, though, being no schollard, mind cannot conceive.
+I think my master is a brute. Do not know that he has ever attempted to
+poison my missus,--which is too good for him, and how she ever came to
+marry him, heart only can tell,--but believe him to be capable of any
+such hatrosity. Have heard him swear dreadful because of not having his
+shaving-water at nine o'clock precisely.  Do not know whether he ever
+forged a will or tried to get my missus' property, although, not having
+confidence in the man, should not be surprised if he had done so.
+Believe that there was always something mysterious in his conduct.
+Remember distinctly how the family left home to go abroad.  Was putting
+up my back hair, last Saturday morning, when I heard a ring.  Says
+cook, "That's missus' bell, and mind you hurry or the master 'ill know
+why."  Says I, "Humbly thanking you, mem, but taking advice of them as
+is competent to give it, I'll take my time."  Found missus dressing
+herself and master growling as usual. Says missus, quite calm and easy
+like, "Mary, we begin to pack to-day."  "What for, mem?" says I, taken
+aback.  "What's that hussy asking?" says master from the bedclothes
+quite savage like.  "For the Continent--Italy," says missus--"Can you
+go Mary?"  Her voice was quite gentle and saintlike, but I knew the
+struggle it cost, and says I, "With YOU mem, to India's torrid clime,
+if required, but with African Gorillas," says I, looking toward the
+bed, "never."  "Leave the room," says master, starting up and catching
+of his bootjack.  "Why Charles!" says missus, "how you talk!" affecting
+surprise.  "Do go Mary," says she, slipping a half-crown into my hand.
+I left the room scorning to take notice of the odious wretch's conduct.
+
+Cannot say whether my master and missus were ever legally married. What
+with the dreadful state of morals nowadays and them stories in the
+circulating libraries, innocent girls don't know into what society they
+might be obliged to take situations.  Never saw missus' marriage
+certificate, though I have quite accidental-like looked in her desk
+when open, and would have seen it.  Do not know of any lovers missus
+might have had.  Believe she had a liking for John Thomas, footman, for
+she was always spiteful-like--poor lady--when we were together--though
+there was nothing between us, as Cook well knows, and dare not deny,
+and missus needn't have been jealous.  Have never seen arsenic or
+Prussian acid in any of the private drawers--but have seen paregoric
+and camphor.  One of my master's friends was a Count Moscow, a Russian
+papist--which I detested.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY.
+
+I am by profession a reporter, and writer for the press.  I live at
+Pultneyville.  I have always had a passion for the marvellous, and have
+been distinguished for my facility in tracing out mysteries, and
+solving enigmatical occurrences.  On the night of the 17th June, 1845,
+I left my office and walked homeward.  The night was bright and
+starlight.  I was revolving in my mind the words of a singular item I
+had just read in the "Times."  I had reached the darkest portion of the
+road, and found my self mechanically repeating: "An elderly gentleman a
+week ago left his lodgings on the Kent Road," when suddenly I heard a
+step behind me.
+
+I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in my face, and by the
+light of the newly risen moon beheld an elderly gentleman, with green
+cotton umbrella, approaching me.  His hair, which was snow white, was
+parted over a broad, open forehead.  The expression of his face, which
+was slightly flushed, was that of amiability verging almost upon
+imbecility.  There was a strange, inquiring look about the widely
+opened mild blue eye,--a look that might have been intensified to
+insanity, or modified to idiocy.  As he passed me, he paused and partly
+turned his face, with a gesture of inquiry.  I see him still, his white
+locks blowing in the evening breeze, his hat a little on the back of
+his head, and his figure painted in relief against the dark blue sky.
+
+Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me.  A weak smile played
+about his thin lips.  In a voice which had something of the
+tremulousness of age and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility in
+it, he asked, pointing to the rising moon, "Why?--hush!"
+
+He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be looking anxiously down the
+road.  I could feel his aged frame shaking with terror as he laid his
+thin hands upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction of the
+supposed danger.
+
+"Hush! did you not hear them coming?"
+
+I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the roadside trees
+in the evening wind.  I endeavored to reassure him, with such success
+that in a few moments the old weak smile appeared on his benevolent
+face.
+
+"Why?--"  But the look of interrogation was succeeded by a hopeless
+blankness.
+
+"Why!" I repeated with assuring accents.
+
+"Why," he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over his face, "is
+yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean, casting a flood of
+light o'er hill and dale, like--  Why," he repeated, with a feeble
+smile, "is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean--" He
+hesitated,--stammered,--and gazed at me hopelessly, with the tears
+dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.
+
+I took his hand kindly in my own.  "Casting a shadow o'er hill and
+dale," I repeated quietly, leading him up the subject, "like--  Come,
+now."
+
+"Ah!" he said, pressing my hand tremulously, "you know it?"
+
+"I do.  Why is it like--the--eh--the commodious mansion on the
+Limehouse Road?"
+
+A blank stare only followed.  He shook his head sadly.  "Like the young
+men wanted for a light, genteel employment?"
+
+He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.
+
+"Or, Mr. Ward," I said, with bold confidence, "like the mysterious
+disappearance from the Kent Road?"
+
+The moment was full of suspense.  He did not seem to hear me. Suddenly
+he turned.
+
+"Ha!"
+
+I darted forward.  But he had vanished in the darkness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD.
+
+It was a hot midsummer evening.  Limehouse Road was deserted save by
+dust and a few rattling butchers' carts, and the bell of the muffin and
+crumpet man.  A commodious mansion, which stood on the right of the
+road as you enter Pultneyville, surrounded by stately poplars and a
+high fence surmounted by a chevaux de frise of broken glass, looked to
+the passing and footsore pedestrian like the genius of seclusion and
+solitude.  A bill announcing in the usual terms that the house was to
+let, hung from the bell at the servants' entrance.
+
+As the shades of evening closed, and the long shadows of the poplars
+stretched across the road, a man carrying a small kettle stopped and
+gazed, first at the bill and then at the house.  When he had reached
+the corner of the fence, he again stopped and looked cautiously up and
+down the road.  Apparently satisfied with the result of his scrutiny,
+he deliberately sat himself down in the dark shadow of the fence, and
+at once busied himself in some employment, so well concealed as to be
+invisible to the gaze of passers-by.  At the end of an hour he retired
+cautiously.
+
+But not altogether unseen.  A slim young man, with spectacles and
+note-book, stepped from behind a tree as the retreating figure of the
+intruder was lost in the twilight, and transferred from the fence to
+his note-book the freshly stencilled inscription, "S--T--1860--X."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+COUNT MOSCOW'S NARRATIVE.
+
+I am a foreigner.  Observe!  To be a foreigner in England is to be
+mysterious, suspicious, intriguing.  M. Collins has requested the
+history of my complicity with certain occurrences.  It is nothing, bah!
+absolutely nothing.
+
+I write with ease and fluency.  Why should I not write?  Tra la la? I
+am what you English call corpulent.  Ha, ha!  I am a pupil of
+Macchiavelli.  I find it much better to disbelieve everything, and to
+approach my subject and wishes circuitously, than in a direct manner.
+You have observed that playful animal, the cat.  Call it, and it does
+not come to you directly, but rubs itself against all the furniture in
+the room, and reaches you finally--and scratches. Ah, ha, scratches!  I
+am of the feline species.  People call me a villain--bah!
+
+I know the family, living No. 27 Limehouse Road.  I respect the
+gentleman,--a fine, burly specimen of your Englishman,--and madame,
+charming, ravishing, delightful.  When it became known to me that they
+designed to let their delightful residence, and visit foreign shores, I
+at once called upon them.  I kissed the hand of madame. I embraced the
+great Englishman.  Madame blushed slightly.  The great Englishman shook
+my hand like a mastiff.
+
+I began in that dexterous, insinuating manner, of which I am truly
+proud.  I thought madame was ill.  Ah, no.  A change, then, was all
+that was required.  I sat down at the piano and sang.  In a few minutes
+madame retired.  I was alone with my friend.
+
+Seizing his hand, I began with every demonstration of courteous
+sympathy.  I do not repeat my words, for my intention was conveyed more
+in accent, emphasis, and manner, than speech.  I hinted to him that he
+had another wife living.  I suggested that this was balanced--ha!--by
+his wife's lover.  That, possibly, he wished to fly; hence the letting
+of his delightful mansion.  That he regularly and systematically beat
+his wife in the English manner, and that she repeatedly deceived me.  I
+talked of hope, of consolation, of remedy.  I carelessly produced a
+bottle of strychnine and a small vial of stramonium from my pocket, and
+enlarged on the efficiency of drugs.  His face, which had gradually
+become convulsed, suddenly became fixed with a frightful expression.
+He started to his feet, and roared: "You d--d Frenchman!"
+
+I instantly changed my tactics, and endeavored to embrace him.  He
+kicked me twice, violently.  I begged permission to kiss madame's hand.
+He replied by throwing me down stairs.
+
+I am in bed with my head bound up, and beef-steaks upon my eyes, but
+still confident and buoyant.  I have not lost faith in Macchiavelli.
+Tra la la! as they sing in the opera.  I kiss everybody's hands.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+DR. DIGGS'S STATEMENT.
+
+My name is David Diggs.  I am a surgeon, living at No. 9 Tottenham
+Court.  On the 15th of June, 1854, I was called to see an elderly
+gentleman lodging on the Kent Road.  Found him highly excited, with
+strong febrile symptoms, pulse 120, increasing.  Repeated incoherently
+what I judged to be the popular form of a conundrum. On closer
+examination found acute hydrocephalus and both lobes of the brain
+rapidly filling with water.  In consultation with an eminent
+phrenologist, it was further discovered that all the organs were more
+or less obliterated, except that of Comparison.  Hence the patient was
+enabled to only distinguish the most common points of resemblance
+between objects, without drawing upon other faculties, such as Ideality
+or Language, for assistance.  Later in the day found him
+sinking,--being evidently unable to carry the most ordinary conundrum
+to a successful issue.  Exhibited Tinct. Val., Ext. Opii, and Camphor,
+and prescribed quiet and emollients. On the 17th the patient was
+missing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LAST.
+
+STATEMENT OF THE PUBLISHER.
+
+On the 18th of June, Mr. Wilkie Collins left a roll of manuscript with
+us for publication, without title or direction, since which time he has
+not been heard from.  In spite of the care of the proof-readers, and
+valuable literary assistance, it is feared that the continuity of the
+story has been destroyed by some accidental misplacing of chapters
+during its progress.  How and what chapters are so misplaced, the
+publisher leaves to an indulgent public to discover.
+
+
+
+
+N N.
+
+BEING A NOVEL IN THE FRENCH PARAGRAPHIC STYLE.
+
+
+--Mademoiselle, I swear to you that I love you.
+
+--You who read these pages.  You who turn your burning eyes upon these
+words--words that I trace--  Ah, Heaven! the thought maddens me.
+
+--I will be calm.  I will imitate the reserve of the festive
+Englishman, who wears a spotted handkerchief which he calls a Belchio,
+who eats biftek, and caresses a bulldog.  I will subdue myself like him.
+
+--Ha!  Poto-beer!  All right--Goddam!
+
+--Or, I will conduct myself as the free-born American--the gay Brother
+Jonathan!  I will whittle me a stick.  I will whistle to myself "Yankee
+Doodle," and forget my passion in excessive expectoration.
+
+--Hoho!--wake snakes and walk chalks.
+
+
+The world is divided into two great divisions,--Paris and the
+provinces.  There is but one Paris.  There are several provinces, among
+which may be numbered England, America, Russia, and Italy.
+
+N N. was a Parisian.
+
+But N N. did not live in Paris.  Drop a Parisian in the provinces, and
+you drop a part of Paris with him.  Drop him in Senegambia, and in
+three days he will give you an omelette soufflee, or a pate de foie
+gras, served by the neatest of Senegambian filles, whom he will call
+Mademoiselle.  In three weeks he will give you an opera.
+
+N N. was not dropped in Senegambia, but in San Francisco,--quite as
+awkward.
+
+They find gold in San Francisco, but they don't understand gilding.
+
+N N. existed three years in this place.  He became bald on the top of
+his head, as all Parisians do.  Look down from your box at the Opera
+Comique, Mademoiselle, and count the bald crowns of the fast young men
+in the pit.  Ah--you tremble!  They show where the arrows of love have
+struck and glanced off.
+
+N N. was also near-sighted, as all Parisians finally become.  This is a
+gallant provision of Nature to spare them the mortification of
+observing that their lady friends grow old.  After a certain age every
+woman is handsome to a Parisian.
+
+One day, N N. was walking down Washington street.  Suddenly he stopped.
+
+He was standing before the door of a mantuamaker.  Beside the counter,
+at the farther extremity of the shop, stood a young and elegantly
+formed woman.  Her face was turned from N N.  He entered. With a
+plausible excuse, and seeming indifference, he gracefully opened
+conversation with the mantuamaker as only a Parisian can. But he had to
+deal with a Parisian.  His attempts to view the features of the fair
+stranger by the counter were deftly combated by the shop-woman.  He was
+obliged to retire.
+
+N N. went home and lost his appetite.  He was haunted by the elegant
+basque and graceful shoulders of the fair unknown, during the whole
+night.
+
+The next day he sauntered by the mantuamaker.  Ah! Heavens!  A thrill
+ran through his frame, and his fingers tingled with a delicious
+electricity.  The fair inconnue was there!  He raised his hat
+gracefully.  He was not certain, but he thought that a slight motion of
+her faultless bonnet betrayed recognition.  He would have wildly darted
+into the shop, but just then the figure of the mantuamaker appeared in
+the doorway.
+
+--Did Monsieur wish anything?
+
+Misfortune!  Desperation.  N N. purchased a bottle of Prussic acid, a
+sack of charcoal, and a quire of pink note-paper, and returned home.
+He wrote a letter of farewell to the closely fitting basque, and opened
+the bottle of Prussic acid.
+
+Some one knocked at his door.  It was a Chinaman, with his weekly linen.
+
+These Chinese are docile, but not intelligent.  They are ingenious, but
+not creative.  They are cunning in expedients, but deficient in tact.
+In love they are simply barbarous.  They purchase their wives openly,
+and not constructively by attorney.  By offering small sums for their
+sweethearts, they degrade the value of the sex.
+
+Nevertheless, N N. felt he was saved.  He explained all to the faithful
+Mongolian, and exhibited the letter he had written.  He implored him to
+deliver it.
+
+The Mongolian assented.  The race are not cleanly or sweet-savored, but
+N N. fell upon his neck.  He embraced him with one hand, and closed his
+nostrils with the other.  Through him, he felt he clasped the
+close-fitting basque.
+
+The next day was one of agony and suspense.  Evening came, but no
+Mercy.  N N. lit the charcoal.  But, to compose his nerves, he closed
+his door and first walked mildly up and down Montgomery Street.  When
+he returned, he found the faithful Mongolian on the steps.
+
+--All lity!
+
+These Chinese are not accurate in their pronunciation.  They avoid the
+r, like the English nobleman.
+
+N N. gasped for breath.  He leaned heavily against the Chinaman.
+
+--Then you have seen her, Ching Long?
+
+--Yes.  All lity.  She cum.  Top side of house.
+
+The docile barbarian pointed up the stairs, and chuckled.
+
+--She here--impossible!  Ah, Heaven! do I dream?
+
+--Yes.  All lity,--top side of house.  Good by, John.
+
+This is the familiar parting epithet of the Mongolian.  It is
+equivalent to our au revoir.
+
+N N. gazed with a stupefied air on the departing servant.
+
+He placed his hand on his throbbing heart.  She here,--alone beneath
+this roof.  O Heavens, what happiness!
+
+But how?  Torn from her home.  Ruthlessly dragged, perhaps, from her
+evening devotions, by the hands of a relentless barbarian. Could she
+forgive him?
+
+He dashed frantically up the stairs.  He opened the door.  She was
+standing beside his couch with averted face.
+
+A strange giddiness overtook him.  He sank upon his knees at the
+threshold.
+
+--Pardon, pardon.  My angel, can you forgive me?
+
+A terrible nausea now seemed added to the fearful giddiness.  His
+utterance grew thick and sluggish.
+
+--Speak, speak, enchantress.  Forgiveness is all I ask.  My Love, my
+Life!
+
+She did not answer.  He staggered to his feet.  As he rose, his eyes
+fell on the pan of burning charcoal.  A terrible suspicion flashed
+across his mind.  This giddiness,--this nausea.  The ignorance of the
+barbarian.  This silence.  O merciful heavens! she was dying!
+
+He crawled toward her.  He touched her.  She fell forward with a
+lifeless sound upon the floor.  He uttered a piercing shriek, and threw
+himself beside her.
+
+          *          *          *          *         *
+
+A file of gendarmes, accompanied by the Chef Burke, found him the next
+morning lying lifeless upon the floor.  They laughed brutally,--these
+cruel minions of the law,--and disengaged his arm from the waist of the
+wooden dummy which they had come to reclaim for the mantuamaker.
+
+Emptying a few bucketfuls of water over his form, they finally
+succeeded in robbing him, not only of his mistress, but of that Death
+he had coveted without her.
+
+Ah! we live in a strange world, Messieurs.
+
+
+
+
+FANTINE.
+
+AFTER THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+As long as there shall exist three paradoxes, a moral Frenchman, a
+religious Atheist, and a believing sceptic; so long, in fact, as
+booksellers shall wait--say twenty-five years--for a new gospel; so
+long as paper shall remain cheap and ink three sous a bottle, I have no
+hesitation in saying that such books as these are not utterly
+profitless.
+
+VICTOR HUGO.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+To be good is to be queer.  What is a good man?  Bishop Myriel.
+
+My friend, you will possibly object to this.  You will say you know
+what a good man is.  Perhaps you will say your clergyman is a good man,
+for instance.
+
+Bah! you are mistaken; you are an Englishman, and an Englishman is a
+beast.
+
+Englishmen think they are moral when they are only serious.  These
+Englishmen also wear ill-shaped hats, and dress horribly!
+
+Bah! they are canaille.
+
+Still, Bishop Myriel was a good man,--quite as good as you.  Better
+than you, in fact.
+
+One day M. Myriel was in Paris.  This angel used to walk about the
+streets like any other man.  He was not proud, though fine-looking.
+Well, three gamins de Paris called him bad names.  Says one:--
+
+"Ah, mon Dieu! there goes a priest; look out for your eggs and
+chickens!"
+
+What did this good man do?  He called to them kindly.
+
+"My children," said he, "this is clearly not your fault.  I recognize
+in this insult and irreverence only the fault of your immediate
+progenitors.  Let us pray for your immediate progenitors."
+
+They knelt down and prayed for their immediate progenitors.
+
+The effect was touching.
+
+The Bishop looked calmly around.
+
+"On reflection," said he, gravely, "I was mistaken; this is clearly the
+fault of Society.  Let us pray for Society."
+
+They knelt down and prayed for Society.
+
+The effect was sublimer yet.  What do you think of that?  You, I mean.
+
+Everybody remembers the story of the Bishop and Mother Nez Retrousse.
+Old Mother Nez Retrouse sold asparagus.  She was poor; there's a great
+deal of meaning in that word, my friend.  Some people say "poor but
+honest."  I say, Bah!
+
+Bishop Myriel bought six bunches of asparagus.  This good man had one
+charming failing; he was fond of asparagus.  He gave her a franc and
+received three sous change.
+
+The sous were bad,--counterfeit.  What did this good Bishop do?  He
+said: "I should not have taken change from a poor woman."
+
+Then afterwards, to his housekeeper: "Never take change from a poor
+woman."
+
+Then he added to himself: "For the sous will probably be bad."
+
+
+
+II.
+
+When a man commits a crime, society claps him in prison.  A prison is
+one of the worst hotels imaginable.  The people there are low and
+vulgar.  The butter is bad, the coffee is green.  Ah, it is horrible!
+
+In prison, as in a bad hotel, a man soon loses, not only his morals,
+but what is much worse to a Frenchman, his sense of refinement and
+delicacy.
+
+Jean Valjean came from prison with confused notions of society.  He
+forgot the modern peculiarities of hospitality.  So he walked off with
+the Bishop's candlesticks.
+
+Let us consider: candlesticks were stolen; that was evident. Society
+put Jean Valjean in prison; that was evident, too.  In prison, Society
+took away his refinement; that is evident, likewise.
+
+Who is Society?
+
+You and I are Society.
+
+My friend, you and I stole those candlesticks!
+
+
+
+III.
+
+The Bishop thought so, too.  He meditated profoundly for six days. On
+the morning of the seventh he went to the Prefecture of Police.
+
+He said: "Monsieur, have me arrested.  I have stolen candlesticks."
+
+The official was governed by the law of Society, and refused.
+
+What did this Bishop do?
+
+He had a charming ball and chain made, affixed to his leg, and wore it
+the rest of his life.
+
+This is a fact!
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+Love is a mystery.
+
+A little friend of mine down in the country, at Auvergne, said to me
+one day: "Victor, Love is the world,--it contains everything."
+
+She was only sixteen, this sharp-witted little girl, and a beautiful
+blonde.  She thought everything of me.
+
+Fantine was one of those women who do wrong in the most virtuous and
+touching manner.  This is a peculiarity of French grisettes.
+
+You are an Englishman, and you don't understand.  Learn, my friend,
+learn.  Come to Paris and improve your morals.
+
+Fantine was the soul of modesty.  She always wore high-neck dresses.
+High-neck dresses are a sign of modesty.
+
+Fantine loved Tholmoyes.  Why?  My God!  What are you to do?  It was
+the fault of her parents, and she hadn't any.  How shall you teach her?
+You must teach the parent if you wish to educate the child.  How would
+you become virtuous?
+
+Teach your grandmother!
+
+
+
+V.
+
+When Tholmoyes ran away from Fantine,--which was done in a charming,
+gentlemanly manner,--Fantine became convinced that a rigid sense of
+propriety might look upon her conduct as immoral. She was a creature of
+sensitiveness,--and her eyes were opened.
+
+She was virtuous still, and resolved to break off the liaison at once.
+
+So she put up her wardrobe and baby in a bundle.  Child as she was, she
+loved them both.  Then left Paris.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+Fantine's native place had changed.
+
+M. Madeline--an angel, and inventor of jet work--had been teaching the
+villagers how to make spurious jet.
+
+This is a progressive age.  Those Americans,--children of the
+West,--they make nutmegs out of wood.
+
+I, myself, have seen hams made of pine, in the wigwams of those
+children of the forest.
+
+But civilization has acquired deception too.  Society is made up of
+deception.  Even the best French society.
+
+Still there was one sincere episode.
+
+Eh?
+
+The French Revolution!
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+M. Madeline was, if anything, better than Myriel.
+
+M. Myriel was a saint.  M. Madeline a good man.
+
+M. Myriel was dead.  M. Madeline was living.
+
+That made all the difference.
+
+M. Madeline made virtue profitable.  I have seen it written:--
+
+"Be virtuous and you will be happy."
+
+Where did I see this written?  In the modern Bible?  No.  In the Koran?
+No.  In Rousseau?  No.  Diderot?  No.  Where then?
+
+In a copy-book.
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+M. Madeline was M. le Maire.
+
+This is how it came about.
+
+For a long time he refused the honor.  One day an old woman, standing
+on the steps, said:--
+
+"Bah, a good mayor is a good thing.
+
+"You are a good thing.
+
+"Be a good mayor."
+
+This woman was a rhetorician.  She understood inductive ratiocination.
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+When this good M. Madeline, whom the reader will perceive must have
+been a former convict, and a very bad man, gave himself up to justice
+as the real Jean Valjean, about this same time, Fantine was turned away
+from the manufactory, and met with a number of losses from society.
+Society attacked her, and this is what she lost:--
+
+First her lover.
+
+Then her child.
+
+Then her place.
+
+Then her hair.
+
+Then her teeth.
+
+Then her liberty.
+
+Then her life.
+
+What do you think of society after that?  I tell you the present social
+system is a humbug.
+
+
+
+X.
+
+This is necessarily the end of Fantine.  There are other things that
+will be stated in other volumes to follow.  Don't be alarmed; there are
+plenty of miserable people left.
+
+Au revoir--my friend.
+
+
+
+
+"LA FEMME."
+
+AFTER THE FRENCH OF M. MICHELET.
+
+
+
+I.
+
+WOMEN AS AN INSTITUTION.
+
+"If it were not for women, few of us would at present be in existence."
+This is the remark of a cautious and discreet writer. He was also
+sagacious and intelligent.
+
+Woman!  Look upon her and admire her.  Gaze upon her and love her. If
+she wishes to embrace you, permit her.  Remember she is weak and you
+are strong.
+
+But don't treat her unkindly.  Don't make love to another woman before
+her face, even if she be your wife.  Don't do it.  Always be polite,
+even should she fancy somebody better than you.
+
+If your mother, my dear Amadis, had not fancied your father better than
+somebody, you might have been that somebody's son.  Consider this.
+Always be a philosopher, even about women.
+
+Few men understand women.  Frenchmen, perhaps, better than any one
+else.  I am a Frenchman.
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE INFANT.
+
+She is a child--a little thing--an infant.
+
+She has a mother and father.  Let us suppose, for example, they are
+married.  Let us be moral if we cannot be happy and free--they are
+married--perhaps--they love one another--who knows?
+
+But she knows nothing of this; she is an infant--a small thing--a
+trifle!
+
+She is not lovely at first.  It is cruel, perhaps, but she is red, and
+positively ugly.  She feels this keenly and cries.  She weeps. Ah, my
+God, how she weeps!  Her cries and lamentations now are really
+distressing.
+
+Tears stream from her in floods.  She feels deeply and copiously like
+M. Alphonse de Lamartine in his Confessions.
+
+If you are her mother, Madame, you will fancy worms; you will examine
+her linen for pins, and what not.  Ah, hypocrite! you, even YOU,
+misunderstand her.
+
+Yet she has charming natural impulses.  See how she tosses her dimpled
+arms.  She looks longingly at her mother.  She has a language of her
+own.  She says, "goo goo," and "ga ga."
+
+She demands something--this infant!
+
+She is faint, poor thing.  She famishes.  She wishes to be restored.
+Restore her, Mother!
+
+It is the first duty of a mother to restore her child!
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE DOLL.
+
+She is hardly able to walk; she already totters under the weight of a
+doll.
+
+It is a charming and elegant affair.  It has pink cheeks and
+purple-black hair.  She prefers brunettes, for she has already, with
+the quick knowledge of a French infant, perceived she is a blonde, and
+that her doll cannot rival her.  Mon Dieu, how touching!  Happy child!
+She spends hours in preparing its toilet. She begins to show her taste
+in the exquisite details of its dress. She loves it madly, devotedly.
+She will prefer it to bonbons.  She already anticipates the wealth of
+love she will hereafter pour out on her lover, her mother, her father,
+and finally, perhaps, her husband.
+
+This is the time the anxious parent will guide these first outpourings.
+She will read her extracts from Michelet's L'Amour, Rousseau's Heloise,
+and the Revue des deux Mondes.
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE MUD PIE.
+
+She was in tears to-day.
+
+She had stolen away from her bonne and was with some rustic infants.
+They had noses in the air, and large, coarse hands and feet.
+
+They had seated themselves around a pool in the road, and were
+fashioning fantastic shapes in the clayey soil with their hands. Her
+throat swelled and her eyes sparkled with delight as, for the first
+time, her soft palms touched the plastic mud.  She made a graceful and
+lovely pie.  She stuffed it with stones for almonds and plums.  She
+forgot everything.  It was being baked in the solar rays, when madame
+came and took her away.
+
+She weeps.  It is night, and she is weeping still.
+
+
+
+V.
+
+HER FIRST LOVE.
+
+She no longer doubts her beauty.  She is loved.  She saw him secretly.
+He is vivacious and sprightly.  He is famous.  He has already had an
+affair with Finfin, the fille de chambre, and poor Finfin is desolate.
+He is noble.  She knows he is the son of Madame la Baronne Couturiere.
+She adores him.
+
+She affects not to notice him.  Poor little thing!  Hippolyte is
+distracted--annihilated--inconsolable and charming.
+
+She admires his boots, his cravat, his little gloves his exquisite
+pantaloons--his coat, and cane.
+
+She offers to run away with him.  He is transported, but magnanimous.
+He is wearied, perhaps.  She sees him the next day offering flowers to
+the daughter of Madame la Comtesse Blanchisseuse.
+
+She is again in tears.
+
+She reads Paul et Virginie.  She is secretly transported.  When she
+reads how the exemplary young woman laid down her life rather than
+appear en deshabille to her lover, she weeps again.  Tasteful and
+virtuous Bernardine de St. Pierre!--the daughters of France admire you!
+
+All this time her doll is headless in the cabinet.  The mud pie is
+broken on the road.
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE WIFE.
+
+She is tired of loving and she marries.
+
+Her mother thinks it, on the whole, the best thing.  As the day
+approaches, she is found frequently in tears.  Her mother will not
+permit the affianced one to see her, and he makes several attempts to
+commit suicide.
+
+But something happens.  Perhaps it is winter, and the water is cold.
+Perhaps there are not enough people present to witness his heroism.
+
+In this way her future husband is spared to her.  The ways of
+Providence are indeed mysterious.  At this time her mother will talk
+with her.  She will offer philosophy.  She will tell her she was
+married herself.
+
+But what is this new and ravishing light that breaks upon her?  The
+toilet and wedding clothes!  She is in a new sphere.
+
+She makes out her list in her own charming writing.  Here it is. Let
+every mother heed it.*
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+She is married.  On the day after, she meets her old lover, Hippolyte.
+He is again transported.
+
+
+* The delicate reader will appreciate the omission of certain articles
+for which English synonymes are forbidden.
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+HER OLD AGE.
+
+A Frenchwoman never grows old.
+
+
+
+
+MARY MCGILLUP.
+
+A SOUTHERN NOVEL.
+
+AFTER BELLE BOYD.
+
+WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. A. S--LA.
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+"Will you write me up?"
+
+The scene was near Temple Bar.  The speaker was the famous rebel Mary
+McGillup,--a young girl of fragile frame, and long, lustrous black
+hair.  I must confess that the question was a peculiar one, and, under
+the circumstances, somewhat puzzling.  It was true I had been kindly
+treated by the Northerners, and, though prejudiced against them, was to
+some extent under obligations to them.  It was true that I knew little
+or nothing of American politics, history, or geography.  But when did
+an English writer ever weigh such trifles?  Turning to the speaker, I
+inquired with some caution the amount of pecuniary compensation offered
+for the work.
+
+"Sir!" she said, drawing her fragile form to its full height, "you
+insult me,--you insult the South."
+
+"But look ye here, d'ye see--the tin--the blunt--the ready--the stiff;
+you know.  Don't ye see, we can't do without that, you know!"
+
+"It shall be contingent on the success of the story," she answered
+haughtily.  "In the mean time take this precious gem."  And drawing a
+diamond ring from her finger, she placed it with a roll of MSS. in my
+hands and vanished.
+
+Although unable to procure more than L1 2s. 6 d. from an intelligent
+pawnbroker to whom I stated the circumstances and with whom I pledged
+the ring, my sympathies with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous
+people were at once enlisted.  I could not help wondering that in rich
+England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a young and lovely
+woman like the fair author of those pages should be obliged to thus
+pawn her jewels--her marriage gift--for the means to procure her bread!
+With the exception of the English aristocracy,--who much resemble
+them,--I do not know of a class of people that I so much admire as the
+Southern planters. May I become better acquainted with both!
+
+Since writing the above, the news of Mr. Lincoln's assassination has
+reached me.  It is enough for me to say that I am dissatisfied with the
+result.  I do not attempt to excuse the assassin.  Yet there will be
+men who will charge this act upon the chivalrous South.  This leads me
+to repeat a remark once before made by me in this connection which has
+become justly celebrated.  It is this:--
+
+"It is usual, in cases of murder, to look for the criminal among those
+who expect to be benefited by the crime.  In the death of Lincoln, his
+immediate successor in office alone receives the benefit of his dying."
+
+If her Majesty Queen Victoria were assassinated, which Heaven forbid,
+the one most benefited by her decease would, of course, be his Royal
+Highness the Prince of Wales, her immediate successor. It would be
+unnecessary to state that suspicion would at once point to the real
+culprit, which would of course be his Royal Highness. This is logic.
+
+But I have done.  After having thus stated my opinion in favor of the
+South, I would merely remark that there is One who judgeth all
+things,--who weigheth the cause between brother and brother,--and
+awardeth the perfect retribution; and whose ultimate decision I, as a
+British subject, have only anticipated.
+
+G. A. S.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Every reader of Belle Boyd's narrative will remember an allusion to a
+"lovely, fragile-looking girl of nineteen," who rivalled Belle Boyd in
+devotion to the Southern cause, and who, like her, earned the enviable
+distinction of being a "rebel spy."
+
+I am that "fragile" young creature.  Although on friendly terms with
+the late Miss Boyd, now Mrs. Hardinge, candor compels me to state that
+nothing but our common politics prevents me from exposing the
+ungenerous spirit she has displayed in this allusion. To be dismissed
+in a single paragraph after years of--  But I anticipate.  To put up
+with this feeble and forced acknowledgment of services rendered would
+be a confession of a craven spirit, which, thank God, though "fragile"
+and only "nineteen," I do not possess.  I may not have the "blood of a
+Howard" in my veins, as some people, whom I shall not disgrace myself
+by naming, claim to have, but I have yet to learn that the race of
+McGillup ever yet brooked slight or insult.  I shall not say that
+attention in certain quarters seems to have turned SOME PEOPLE'S heads;
+nor that it would have been more delicate if certain folks had kept
+quiet on the subject of their courtship, and the rejection of certain
+offers, when it is known that their forward conduct was all that
+procured them a husband!  Thank heaven, the South has some daughters
+who are above such base considerations!  While nothing shall tempt me
+to reveal the promises to share equally the fame of certain
+enterprises, which were made by one who shall now be nameless, I have
+deemed it only just to myself to put my own adventures upon record.  If
+they are not equal to those of another individual, it is because,
+though "fragile," my education has taught me to have some consideration
+for the truth.  I am done.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+I was born in Missouri.  My dislike for the Northern scum was inherent.
+This was shown, at an early age, in the extreme distaste I exhibited
+for Webster's spelling-book,--the work of a well-known Eastern
+Abolitionist.  I cannot be too grateful for the consideration shown by
+my chivalrous father,--a gentleman of the old school,--who resisted to
+the last an attempt to introduce Mitchell's Astronomy and Geography
+into the public school of our district.  When I state that this same
+Mitchell became afterward a hireling helot in the Yankee Army, every
+intelligent reader will appreciate the prophetic discrimination of this
+true son of the South.
+
+I was eight years old when I struck the first blow for Southern freedom
+against the Northern Tyrant.  It is hardly necessary to state that in
+this instance the oppressor was a pale, overworked New England
+"schoolmarm."  The principle for which I was contending, I felt,
+however, to be the same.  Resenting an affront put upon me, I one day
+heaved a rock* at the head of the Vandal schoolmistress.  I was seized
+and overpowered.  My pen falters as I reach the climax.  English
+readers will not give credit to this sickening story,--the civilized
+world will avert its head,--but I, Mary McGillup, was publicly SPANKED!
+
+
+* NOTE, BY G. A. S.--In the Southwest, any stone larger than a pea is
+termed "a rock."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+But the chaotic vortex of civil war approached, and fell destruction,
+often procrastinated, brooded in storm.*  As the English people may
+like to know what was really the origin of the rebellion, I have no
+hesitation in giving them the true and only cause.  Slavery had nothing
+to do with it, although the violation of the Declaration of
+Independence, in the disregard by the North of the Fugitive Slave
+Law,** might have provoked a less fiery people than the Southrons.  At
+the inception of the struggle a large amount of Southern indebtedness
+was held by the people of the North.  To force payment from the
+generous but insolvent debtor--to obtain liquidation from the Southern
+planter--was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven
+Northerners.  Let the common people of England look to this.  Let the
+improvident literary hack; the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor;
+the newspaper frequenter of sponging-houses, remember this in their
+criticisms of the vile and slavish Yankee.
+
+
+* I make no pretension to fine writing, but perhaps Mrs. Hardinge can
+lay over that.  O, of course!  M. McG.
+
+** The Declaration of Independence grants to each subject "the pursuit
+of life, liberty, and happiness."  A fugitive slave may be said to
+personify "life, liberty, and happiness."  Hence his pursuit is really
+legal.  This is logic.  G. A. S.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The roasting of an Abolitionist, by a greatly infuriated community, was
+my first taste of the horrors of civil war.  Heavens!  Why will the
+North persist in this fratricidal warfare?  The expulsion of several
+Union refugees, which soon followed, now fairly plunged my beloved
+State in the seething vortex.
+
+I was sitting at the piano one afternoon, singing that stirring
+refrain, so justly celebrated, but which a craven spirit, unworthy of
+England, has excluded from some of her principal restaurants, and was
+dwelling with some enthusiasm on the following line:--
+
+
+     "Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!"
+
+
+when a fragment of that scum, clothed in that detestable blue uniform
+which is the symbol of oppression, entered the apartment. "I have the
+honor of addressing the celebrated rebel spy, Miss McGillup," said the
+Vandal officer.
+
+In a moment I was perfectly calm.  With the exception of slightly
+expectorating twice in the face of the minion, I did not betray my
+agitation.  Haughtily, yet firmly, I replied:--
+
+"I am."
+
+"You looked as if you might be," the brute replied, as he turned on his
+heel to leave the apartment.
+
+In an instant I threw myself before him.  "You shall not leave here
+thus," I shrieked, grappling him with an energy which no one, seeing my
+frail figure, would have believed.  "I know the reputation of your
+hireling crew.  I read your dreadful purpose in your eye.  Tell me not
+that your designs are not sinister.  You came here to insult me,--to
+kiss me, perhaps.  You sha'n't,--you naughty man.  Go away!"
+
+The blush of conscious degradation rose to the cheek of the Lincoln
+hireling as he turned his face away from mine.
+
+In an instant I drew my pistol from my belt, which, in anticipation of
+some such outrage, I always carried, and shot him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     "Thy forte was less to act than speak,
+                                      Maryland!
+      Thy politics were changed each week,
+                                      Maryland!
+      With Northern Vandals thou wast meek,
+      With sympathizers thou wouldst shriek,
+      I know thee--O, 'twas like thy cheek!
+                        Maryland! my Maryland!"
+
+
+After committing the act described in the preceding chapter, which
+every English reader will pardon, I went up stairs, put on a clean pair
+of stockings, and, placing a rose in my lustrous black hair, proceeded
+at once to the camp of Generals Price and Mosby to put them in
+possession of information which would lead to the destruction of a
+portion of the Federal Army.  During a great part of my flight I was
+exposed to a running fire from the Federal pickets of such coarse
+expressions as, "Go it, Sally Reb," "Dust it, my Confederate beauty,"
+but I succeeded in reaching the glorious Southern camp uninjured.
+
+In a week afterwards I was arrested, by a lettre de cachet of Mr.
+Stanton, and placed in the Bastile.  British readers of my story will
+express surprise at these terms, but I assure them that not only these
+articles but tumbrils, guillotines, and conciergeries were in active
+use among the Federals.  If substantiation be required, I refer to the
+Charleston Mercury, the only reliable organ, next to the New York Daily
+News, published in the country. At the Bastile I made the acquaintance
+of the accomplished and elegant author of Guy Livingstone,* to whom I
+presented a curiously carved thigh-bone of a Union officer, and from
+whom I received the following beautiful acknowledgment:--
+
+
+"Demoiselle:--Should I ever win hame to my ain countrie, I make mine
+avow to enshrine in my reliquaire this elegant bijouterie and offering
+of La Belle Rebelle.  Nay, methinks this fraction of man's anatomy were
+some compensation for the rib lost by the 'grand old gardener,' Adam."
+
+
+* The recent conduct of Mr. Livingstone renders him unworthy of my
+notice.  His disgusting praise of Belle Boyd, and complete ignoring of
+my claims, show the artfulness of some females and puppyism of some
+men.  M. McG.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Released at last from durance vile and placed on board of an Erie
+canal-boat, on my way to Canada, I for a moment breathed the sweets of
+liberty.  Perhaps the interval gave me opportunity to indulge in
+certain reveries which I had hitherto sternly dismissed.  Henry
+Breckinridge Folair, a consistent copperhead, captain of the
+canal-boat, again and again pressed that suit I had so often rejected.
+
+It was a lovely moonlight night.  We sat on the deck of the gliding
+craft.  The moonbeam and the lash of the driver fell softly on the
+flanks of the off horse, and only the surging of the tow-rope broke the
+silence.  Folair's arm clasped my waist.  I suffered it to remain.
+Placing in my lap a small but not ungrateful roll of checkerberry
+lozenges, he took the occasion to repeat softly in my ear the words of
+a motto he had just unwrapped--with its graceful covering of the tissue
+paper--from a sugar almond.  The heart of the wicked little rebel, Mary
+McGillup, was won!
+
+The story of Mary McGillup is done.  I might have added the journal of
+my husband, Henry Breckinridge Folair, but as it refers chiefly to his
+freights, and a schedule of his passengers, I have been obliged,
+reluctantly, to suppress it.
+
+It is due to my friends to say that I have been requested not to write
+this book.  Expressions have reached my ears, the reverse of
+complimentary.  I have been told that its publication will probably
+insure my banishment for life.  Be it so.  If the cause for which I
+labored have been subserved, I am content.
+
+LONDON, May, 1865.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Condensed Novels, by Bret Harte
+
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