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+Project Gutenberg's A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+[The Physician and Poet, not his son the Jurist O. W. Holmes, Jr.]
+
+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: A Mortal Antipathy
+
+Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2698]
+Last Updated: February 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MORTAL ANTIPATHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY
+
+By Oliver Wendell Holmes
+
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+ PREFACE.
+
+ INTRODUCTION.
+
+ THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
+
+ A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+
+
+ I. GETTING READY.
+
+ II. THE BOAT-RACE.
+
+ III. THE WHITE CANOE.
+
+ IV. THE YOUNG SOLITARY
+
+ V. THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
+
+ VI. STILL AT FAULT.
+
+ VII. A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
+
+ VIII. THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+ IX. THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
+
+ X. A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+ XI. THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
+
+ XII. MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
+
+ XIII. DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
+
+ XIV. MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+
+ XV. DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+
+ XVI. MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
+
+ XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
+
+ XVIII. MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
+
+ XIX. THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
+
+ XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
+
+ XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
+
+ XXII. EUTHYMIA.
+
+ XXIII.    THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
+
+ XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.
+
+ POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
+
+ MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+ DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+ DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+“A MORTAL ANTIPATHY” was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and
+very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he
+is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring
+to this story: “I should have been afraid of my subject.” He did
+not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the
+improbability of the physiological or pathological occurrence on which
+the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be
+rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my
+readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of
+extraordinary but well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character
+that I could hope to gain any serious attention to so strange a
+narrative.
+
+I need not recur to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not
+to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the
+reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured
+me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable
+terror. While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall
+clocks had fallen with a loud crash and produced an impression on his
+nervous system which he had never got over.
+
+The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of
+hearing is conceivable enough.
+
+But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close
+relation with the higher organs of consciousness. The strength of the
+associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves,
+the olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience and
+as related by others. Now we know that every human being, as well as
+every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere.
+If a man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and can track him
+anywhere by it. This personal peculiarity varies with the age and
+conditions of the individual. It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source
+of attraction or repulsion, but its influence is not less real, though
+far less obvious and less dominant, than in the lower animals. It was
+an atmospheric impression of this nature which associated itself with
+a terrible shock experienced by the infant which became the subject of
+this story. The impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly
+be broken up by some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a
+cause as potent as the one which had produced the disordered condition.
+
+This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have
+puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not
+suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.
+
+BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891. O. W. H.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+“And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?”
+
+Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in
+which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly
+spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all
+conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the
+baby? And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of
+as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no
+other in existence?
+
+Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born
+thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to
+callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of
+intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so
+it shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its
+fellows as a portfolio.
+
+There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say
+something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever these
+may be. I have had other portfolios before this,--two, more especially,
+and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.
+
+Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you
+that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was
+opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession,
+for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving
+it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my
+readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but
+fifty years ago,--there are too many talkative old people who know all
+about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware.
+A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough
+of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them--the
+delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.
+
+When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
+legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could
+have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug.
+Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with
+that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with
+the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have
+been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or
+knowing much about it.
+
+Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.
+
+In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
+attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got
+our first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
+comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
+that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.
+
+How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in
+the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in
+it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait
+of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated
+gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like gentlemen and
+ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and
+Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women,
+not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable
+rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival
+landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in
+those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal Soup's collection; and
+the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum
+a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense
+and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in
+Joseph's coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in
+for nothing; and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But
+why go on with the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen
+either at the Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery,
+and admired or criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more
+generously, than in those earlier years when we looked at them through
+the japanned fish-horns?
+
+If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
+Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
+which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
+Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
+butterflies. The father was editor of the “Boston Recorder,” a very
+respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by
+that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of
+the week as “the Sahbuth.” The son was the editor of several different
+periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of
+many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which
+he studied on the outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with
+a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat
+frothed over by his worldly experiences.
+
+Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
+Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published
+in his father's paper, I think, and signed “Roy.” He had started the
+“American Magazine,” afterwards merged in the “New York Mirror.” He had
+then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of
+verse. He had just written
+
+
+     “I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
+        They idly give me joy,
+     As if I should be glad to know
+        That I was less a boy.”
+
+He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being
+very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
+luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to
+show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was
+something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of
+Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture
+of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had
+kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always
+reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face
+as compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the
+canvas, but the fresh-cheeked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has
+long faded out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me
+at this moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the
+door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad, overclouded winter's day, in the
+year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent
+young American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had
+all done their best work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was
+a school-boy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his
+way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was
+destined to outdo and to outlive. Not one of the great histories,
+which have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our school-books
+depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts
+from the orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on Bryant's
+Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers,
+Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American
+Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping and Genius
+Waking,--and not getting very wide awake, either. These could be
+depended upon. A few other copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's
+“Columbia, Columbia,” and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were already
+effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and generation must
+soon be, by the great wave which the near future will pour over the
+sands in which they still are legible.
+
+About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
+“Truth, a Gift for Scribblers,” which made some talk for a while, and
+is now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be
+read the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones.
+The “London Athenaeum” spoke of it as having been described as a
+“tomahawk sort of satire.” As the author had been a trapper in Missouri,
+he was familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its
+owners. Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army officer, educated
+at West Point, he came back to his native city about the year 1830. He
+wrote an article on Bryant's Poems for the “North American Review,” and
+another on the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk. In this last-mentioned
+article he tells this story as the great warrior told it himself. It was
+an incident of a fight with the Osages.
+
+“Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and
+tear the scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed
+furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my
+lance through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to
+my father. He said nothing, but looked pleased.”
+
+This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
+warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
+much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked
+him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous
+epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one
+else escaped.
+
+If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were
+floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago,
+he will find in the pages of “Truth” a long catalogue of celebrities he
+never heard of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned
+in the little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have
+not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still
+flourishing in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time
+dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and
+instruction, as he had dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter
+at last under a roof which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen
+better and many of whom had known worse days than those which they were
+passing within its friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least,
+was the story I heard after he disappeared from general observation.
+
+That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and
+all that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
+engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
+establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations of
+this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
+The “Scarlet Letter” was an unhinted possibility. The “Voices of the
+Night” had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still
+in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes,
+which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have
+shrunk into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature
+by a scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.
+
+What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations,
+floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring
+each other in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust
+to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of
+the small litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use.
+His attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little
+discipline, and though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came
+with it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble
+writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental
+pique, or equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three
+survivors before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest
+son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey,
+an American writer, “who made long since a happy snatch at fame,” which
+must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot
+identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last
+Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright
+and agreeable writer of light verse,--all these are commended to the
+keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and
+hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens committed to
+his charge, after making a show of paying every possible attention to
+them so long as he is kept in sight.
+
+It was a good time to open a portfolio. But my old one had boyhood
+written on every page. A single passionate outcry when the old warship
+I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen
+literature, and in the “Naval Monument,” was threatened with demolition;
+a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked
+hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first
+Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the
+duties of a profession authorized to claim all the time and thought
+which would have been otherwise expended in filling it.
+
+During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for
+the greater part of the time. Only now and then it would be taken up
+and opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
+particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I was a
+member.
+
+In the year 1857, towards its close, the “Atlantic Monthly,” which I had
+the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips
+& Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell. He thought
+that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not
+unacceptable in the new magazine. I looked at the poor old receptacle,
+which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its freshness,
+and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome
+the new-comer in the literary world of Boston, the least provincial of
+American centres of learning and letters. The gilded covering where
+the emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded; not
+wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold become dim!---how was the most
+fine gold changed! Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time
+for literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio
+had done little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of
+supply was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio, and said
+to myself, “Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never brighten,
+these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and
+leave them to the spider and the book-worm.”
+
+In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
+condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period.
+When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the
+“Saturday Club” gathered about the long table at “Parker's,” such a
+representation of all that was best in American literature had never
+been collected within so small a compass. Most of the Americans whom
+educated foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration
+official dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects of
+curiosity--were seated at that board. But the club did not yet exist,
+and the “Atlantic Monthly” was an experiment. There had already been
+several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and permanent,
+among which “Putnam's Magazine” was conspicuous, owing its success
+largely to the contributions of that very accomplished and delightful
+writer, Mr. George William Curtis. That magazine, after a somewhat
+prolonged and very honorable existence, had gone where all periodicals
+go when they die, into the archives of the deaf, dumb, and blind
+recording angel whose name is Oblivion. It had so well deserved to live
+that its death was a surprise and a source of regret. Could another
+monthly take its place and keep it when that, with all its attractions
+and excellences, had died out, and left a blank in our periodical
+literature which it would be very hard to fill as well as that had
+filled it?
+
+This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon,
+and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the
+scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to
+other studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted
+upon my becoming a contributor. And so, yielding to a pressure which I
+could not understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised
+to take a part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the
+columns of the new magazine.
+
+That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my
+table, and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857. I was
+already at least
+
+
+     'Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,'
+
+when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of
+what looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I did
+not meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the critic, the
+most dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me after his own
+fashion.
+
+The second Portfolio is closed and laid away. Perhaps it was hardly
+worth while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before me,
+and I hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me
+in coming once more before my old friends. But before I open it I want
+to claim a little further indulgence.
+
+There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I
+might say to almost every human being. No matter what his culture or
+ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character, the
+subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think, and, if
+opportunity is offered, to talk. On this he is eloquent, if on nothing
+else. The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid listener becomes
+electric with vivacity, and alive all over with interest.
+
+The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He
+is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a
+subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing
+disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the
+conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who,
+having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars, or of
+having his pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means
+of reaching that distant home where affluence waits for him with its
+luxurious welcome, but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and
+twenty dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart
+would ache with gratitude during the brief interval between the loan and
+its repayment.
+
+I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in
+my own history, and more especially to some of the recent experiences
+through which I have been passing.
+
+What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if
+it were his private correspondent? There are at least three sufficient
+reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to
+hear,--if he has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle, or has
+witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new about it;
+secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common experiences not
+already well told, so that readers will say, “Why, yes! I have had
+that sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times, but I never heard
+it spoken of before, and I never saw any mention of it in print;” and
+thirdly, anything one likes, provided he can so tell it as to make it
+interesting.
+
+I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim
+any general attention. My first pages relate the effect of a certain
+literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial metempsychoses
+of which I have been the subject. Next follows a brief tribute to the
+memory of a very dear and renowned friend from whom I have recently been
+parted. The rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory
+of my birthplace.
+
+I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page is
+written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before it is
+in the reader's hands. The experience of thinking another man's thoughts
+continuously for a long time; of living one's self into another man's
+life for a month, or a year, or more, is a very curious one. No matter
+how much superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who
+writes the life feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the
+person whose life he is writing. One cannot fight over the battles of
+Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself
+had a fractional claim to the victory, so real seems the transfer of his
+personality into that of the conqueror while he reads. Still more must
+this identification of “subject” and “object” take place when one is
+writing of a person whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.
+
+Here are some of my metempsychoses: Ten years ago I wrote what I called
+A Memorial Outline of a remarkable student of nature. He was a born
+observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of great
+enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others
+passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
+pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion
+would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the
+end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity
+and long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described
+them, studied them in their relations, and before those around him were
+aware of it the collector was an accomplished naturalist. When--he died
+his collections remained, and they still remain, as his record in the
+hieratic language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his
+quiet pursuits, the even temper they bred in him, gained possession of
+my own mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed
+spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had
+myself prepared and arranged its specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom,
+fair-minded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his
+placid, observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature “slid into my soul,”
+ and if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected
+to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
+sketching.
+
+A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing
+a Memoir of which he was the subject. I saw him, the beautiful,
+bright-eyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first
+at Harvard, then at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of
+Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as a novelist, and
+showing the elements which made his failures the promise of success in a
+larger field of literary labor; the delving historian, burying his fresh
+young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent libraries, to come forth in
+the face of Europe and America as one of the leading historians of
+the time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of captivating presence and
+manners, an ardent American, and in the time of trial an impassioned and
+eloquent advocate of the cause of freedom; reaching at last the summit
+of his ambition as minister at the Court of Saint James. All this I
+seemed to share with him as I tracked his career from his birthplace in
+Dorchester, and the house in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood,
+to the palaces of Vienna and London. And then the cruel blow which
+struck him from the place he adorned; the great sorrow that darkened his
+later years; the invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger,
+and after a period of invalidism, during a part of which I shared his
+most intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome, final summons.
+Did not my own consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to transfer
+itself into this brilliant life history, as I traced its glowing record?
+I, too, seemed to feel the delight of carrying with me, as if they were
+my own, the charms of a presence which made its own welcome everywhere.
+I shared his heroic toils, I partook of his literary and social
+triumphs, I was honored by the marks of distinction which gathered about
+him, I was wronged by the indignity from which he suffered, mourned with
+him in his sorrow, and thus, after I had been living for months with his
+memory, I felt as if I should carry a part of his being with me so
+long as my self-consciousness might remain imprisoned in the ponderable
+elements.
+
+The years passed away, and the influences derived from the
+companionships I have spoken of had blended intimately with my own
+current of being. Then there came to me a new experience in my relations
+with an eminent member of the medical profession, whom I met habitually
+for a long period, and to whose memory I consecrated a few pages as a
+prelude to a work of his own, written under very peculiar circumstances.
+He was the subject of a slow, torturing, malignant, and almost
+necessarily fatal disease. Knowing well that the mind would feed upon
+itself if it were not supplied with food from without, he determined
+to write a treatise on a subject which had greatly interested him, and
+which would oblige him to bestow much of his time and thought upon it,
+if indeed he could hold out to finish the work. During the period
+while he was engaged in writing it, his wife, who had seemed in perfect
+health, died suddenly of pneumonia. Physical suffering, mental distress,
+the prospect of death at a near, if uncertain, time always before him,
+it was hard to conceive a more terrible strain than that which he had to
+endure. When, in the hour of his greatest need, his faithful companion,
+the wife of many years of happy union, whose hand had smoothed his
+pillow, whose voice had consoled and cheered him, was torn from him
+after a few days of illness, I felt that my friend's trial was such that
+the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might well have
+escaped from his lips: “I was at ease, but he hath broken me asunder; he
+hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me up
+for his mark. His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins
+asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the ground.”
+
+I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing blow.
+What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which the fearful
+description of the Eastern poet does not picture too vividly! We have
+been taught to admire the calm philosophy of Haller, watching his
+faltering pulse as he lay dying; we have heard the words of pious
+resignation said to have been uttered with his last breath by Addison:
+but here was a trial, not of hours, or days, or weeks, but of months,
+even years, of cruel pain, and in the midst of its thick darkness the
+light of love, which had burned steadily at his bedside, was suddenly
+extinguished.
+
+There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my
+consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
+experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
+suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to
+kill in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking woes
+which make even that brief space of time an eternity? There can be but
+one answer that will meet this terrible question, which must arise in
+every thinking nature that would fain “justify the ways of God to men.”
+ So must it be until that
+
+
+     “one far-off divine event
+     To which the whole creation moves”
+
+has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant
+note shall be joined by a voice from every life made “perfect through
+sufferings.”
+
+Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years of
+companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing which
+I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.
+
+And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of
+intimacy with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than while
+he was here in living form and feature. I did not know how difficult a
+task I had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man whom all, or
+almost all, agree upon as one of the great lights of the New World, and
+whom very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah. Never before was I so
+forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of the work of a newspaper
+editor,--that threshing of straw already thrice beaten by the flails of
+other laborers in the same field. What could be said that had not been
+said of “transcendentalism” and of him who was regarded as its prophet;
+of the poet whom some admired without understanding, a few understood,
+or thought they did, without admiring, and many both understood and
+admired,--among these there being not a small number who went far beyond
+admiration, and lost themselves in devout worship? While one exalted him
+as “the greatest man that ever lived,” another, a friend, famous in the
+world of letters, wrote expressly to caution me against the danger
+of overrating a writer whom he is content to recognize as an American
+Montaigne, and nothing more.
+
+After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I would
+gladly have let my brain rest for a while. The wide range of thought
+which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional mysticism
+and the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of imagination and the
+sparkle of wit which kept his reader's mind on the stretch, the union
+of prevailing good sense with exceptional extravagances, the modest
+audacity of a nature that showed itself in its naked truthfulness and
+was not ashamed, the feeling that I was in the company of a sibylline
+intelligence which was discounting the promises of the remote future
+long before they were due,--all this made the task a grave one. But when
+I found myself amidst the vortices of uncounted, various, bewildering
+judgments, Catholic and Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from
+under the tree of knowledge and instinctive from over the potato-hill;
+the passionate enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool, if not cynical,
+estimate of hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they
+whirled, each around its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very
+difficult to keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
+
+It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such a
+man. “He nothing common” said, “or mean.” He was always the same pure
+and high-souled companion. After being with him virtue seemed as natural
+to man as its opposite did according to the old theologies. But how to
+let one's self down from the high level of such a character to one's own
+poor standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual and
+spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in
+it. It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that he falls so
+far short of the superior being who has been so long the object of
+his contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's
+personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his
+own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may
+be, as nearly like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting
+was like Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that
+he is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way. So far
+as tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy
+of the original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a
+misfortune for the borrower. But to share the inmost consciousness of
+a noble thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure
+and radiant soul,--this is indeed the highest form of teaching and
+discipline.
+
+I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they
+have taught me. But let me write no more. There are but two biographers
+who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life. One is the person
+himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel. The autobiographer
+cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may tell nothing
+but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of
+his own hands. As for myself, I would say to my friends, in the Oriental
+phrase, “Live forever!” Yes, live forever, and I, at least, shall not
+have to wrong your memories by my imperfect record and unsatisfying
+commentary.
+
+In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in
+which I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will
+indulge me in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear
+and honored contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this
+day, December 13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be remembered
+Dr. Samuel Johnson. The year 1709 was made ponderous and illustrious
+in English biography by his birth. My own humble advent to the world of
+protoplasm was in the year 1809 of the present century. Summer was just
+ending when those four letters, “son b.” were written under the date
+of my birth, August 29th. Autumn had just begun when my great
+pre-contemporary entered this un-Christian universe and was made a
+member of the Christian church on the same day, for he was born and
+baptized on the 18th of September.
+
+Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the
+great English scholar and writer and myself. Year by year, and almost
+month by month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in
+the last century. I had only to open my Boswell at any time, and I knew
+just what Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy, was thinking
+and doing; what were his feelings about life; what changes the years
+had wrought in his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his
+reputation. It was for me a kind of unison between two instruments, both
+playing that old familiar air, “Life,”--one a bassoon, if you will, and
+the other an oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still
+keeping pace with each other until the players both grew old and gray.
+At last the thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep
+accompaniment rolls out its thunder no more.
+
+I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years
+has left me. I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do with
+many of my living friends. I can hardly remember when I did not know
+him. I can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the Reverend
+Dr. Samuel Cooper (who died in December, 1783) as Copley painted
+him,--he hangs there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase. His ample
+coat, too, I see, with its broad flaps and many buttons and generous
+cuffs, and beneath it the long, still more copiously buttoned waistcoat,
+arching in front of the fine crescentic, almost semi-lunar Falstaffian
+prominence, involving no less than a dozen of the above-mentioned
+buttons, and the strong legs with their sturdy calves, fitting columns
+of support to the massive body and solid, capacious brain enthroned over
+it. I can hear him with his heavy tread as he comes in to the Club, and
+a gap is widened to make room for his portly figure. “A fine day,” says
+Sir Joshua. “Sir,” he answers, “it seems propitious, but the atmosphere
+is humid and the skies are nebulous,” at which the great painter smiles,
+shifts his trumpet, and takes a pinch of snuff.
+
+Dear old massive, deep-voiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the
+eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club,
+between you and the bony, “mighty-mouthed,” harsh-toned termagant and
+dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the
+snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven the
+shores of Lethe. I wish I could find our “spiritualist's” paper in the
+Portfolio, in which the two are brought together, but I hardly know what
+I shall find when it is opened.
+
+Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that dear
+old friend; and when the funeral train moves to Westminster Abbey next
+Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884,--I seem to find
+myself following the hearse, one of the silent mourners.
+
+Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me
+has been the demolition of that venerable and interesting old
+dwelling-house, precious for its intimate association with the earliest
+stages of the war of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my birthplace
+and the home of my boyhood.
+
+The “Old Gambrel-roofed House” exists no longer. I remember saying
+something, in one of a series of papers published long ago, about the
+experience of dying out of a house,--of leaving it forever, as the
+soul dies out of the body. We may die out of many houses, but the house
+itself can die but once; and so real is the life of a house to one who
+has dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which held him
+in dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate youth,--so real,
+I say, is its life, that it seems as if something like a soul of it must
+outlast its perishing frame.
+
+The slaughter of the Old Gambrel-roofed House was, I am ready to admit,
+a case of justifiable domicide. Not the less was it to be deplored
+by all who love the memories of the past. With its destruction are
+obliterated some of the footprints of the heroes and martyrs who took
+the first steps in the long and bloody march which led us through the
+wilderness to the promised land of independent nationality. Personally,
+I have a right to mourn for it as a part of my life gone from me. My
+private grief for its loss would be a matter for my solitary digestion,
+were it not that the experience through which I have just passed is one
+so familiar to my fellow-countrymen that, in telling my own reflections
+and feelings, I am repeating those of great numbers of men and women who
+have had the misfortune to outlive their birthplace.
+
+It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The
+Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural
+objects encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and
+some unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a
+century and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and
+the bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant
+view. But the west windows gave a broad outlook across the common,
+beyond which the historical “Washington elm” and two companions in line
+with it, spread their leaves in summer and their networks in winter. And
+far away rose the hills that bounded the view, with the glimmer here and
+there of the white walls or the illuminated casements of some embowered,
+half-hidden villa. Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier
+remembrance, widely open, and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails
+gliding along as if through the level fields, for no water was visible.
+So there were broad expanses on two sides at least, for my imagination
+to wander over.
+
+I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us
+all our days. Among these western wooded hills my day-dreams built their
+fairy palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library window,
+across the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the familiar home of
+my early visions. The “clouds of glory” which we trail with us in after
+life need not be traced to a pre-natal state. There is enough to account
+for them in that unconsciously remembered period of existence before we
+have learned the hard limitations of real life. Those earliest months
+in which we lived in sensations without words, and ideas not fettered in
+sentences, have all the freshness of proofs of an engraving “before
+the letter.” I am very thankful that the first part of my life was not
+passed shut in between high walls and treading the unimpressible and
+unsympathetic pavement.
+
+Our university town was very much like the real country, in those
+days of which I am thinking. There were plenty of huckleberries and
+blueberries within half a mile of the house. Blackberries ripened in the
+fields, acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels ran among
+the branches, and not rarely the hen-hawk might be seen circling over
+the barnyard. Still another rural element was not wanting, in the form
+of that far-diffused, infragrant effluvium, which, diluted by a good
+half mile of pure atmosphere, is no longer odious, nay is positively
+agreeable, to many who have long known it, though its source and centre
+has an unenviable reputation. I need not name the animal whose Parthian
+warfare terrifies and puts to flight the mightiest hunter that ever
+roused the tiger from his jungle or faced the lion of the desert.
+Strange as it may seem, an aerial hint of his personality in the far
+distance always awakens in my mind pleasant remembrances and tender
+reflections. A whole neighborhood rises up before me: the barn, with
+its haymow, where the hens laid their eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our
+apples to ripen, both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non vobis;
+the shed, where the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism
+that made Salvini's Othello seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old
+outhouse, with the “corn-chamber” which the mice knew so well; the paved
+yard, with its open gutter,--these and how much else come up at the
+hint of my far-off friend, who is my very near enemy. Nothing is more
+familiar than the power of smell in reviving old memories. There was
+that quite different fragrance of the wood-house, the smell of fresh
+sawdust. It comes back to me now, and with it the hiss of the saw; the
+tumble of the divorced logs which God put together and man has just put
+asunder; the coming down of the axe and the hah! that helped it,--the
+straight-grained stick opening at the first appeal of the implement as
+if it were a pleasure, and the stick with a knot in the middle of it
+that mocked the blows and the hahs! until the beetle and wedge made it
+listen to reason,--there are just such straight-grained and just such
+knotty men and women. All this passes through my mind while Biddy, whose
+parlor-name is Angela, contents herself with exclaiming “egh!*******!”
+
+How different distances were in those young days of which I am thinking!
+From the old house to the old yellow meeting-house, where the head of
+the family preached and the limbs of the family listened, was not much
+more than two or three times the width of Commonwealth Avenue. But of
+a hot summer's afternoon, after having already heard one sermon,
+which could not in the nature of things have the charm of novelty of
+presentation to the members of the home circle, and the theology of
+which was not too clear to tender apprehensions; with three hymns more
+or less lugubrious, rendered by a village-choir, got into voice by many
+preliminary snuffles and other expiratory efforts, and accompanied by
+the snort of a huge bassviol which wallowed through the tune like a
+hippopotamus, with other exercises of the customary character,--after
+all this in the forenoon, the afternoon walk to the meeting-house in the
+hot sun counted for as much, in my childish dead-reckoning, as from old
+Israel Porter's in Cambridge to the Exchange Coffeehouse in Boston
+did in after years. It takes a good while to measure the radius of the
+circle that is about us, for the moon seems at first as near as the
+watchface. Who knows but that, after a certain number of ages, the
+planet we live on may seem to us no bigger than our neighbor Venus
+appeared when she passed before the sun a few months ago, looking as
+if we could take her between our thumb and finger, like a bullet or a
+marble? And time, too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the
+joyous “sun-down” of an old-fashioned, puritanical, judaical first day
+of the week, which a pious fraud christened “the Sabbath”? Was it a
+fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week? Curious entities,
+or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a metaphysician trying to
+wash his hands of them and get rid of these accidents, so as to lay his
+dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not remind you of the hopeless
+task of changing the color of the blackamoor by a similar proceeding?
+For space is the fluid in which he is washing, and time is the soap
+which he is using up in the process, and he cannot get free from them
+until he can wash himself in a mental vacuum.
+
+In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years ago,
+I said,
+
+“By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself
+on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so
+tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with those
+who cherished them.”
+
+What strides the great University has taken since those words were
+written! During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat still
+and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert. Then all at once,
+like the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her pedestal. The fall
+of that “stony foot” has effected a miracle like the harp that Orpheus
+played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed. The plain where the moose and
+the bear were wandering while Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, where a
+few plain dormitories and other needed buildings were scattered about
+in my school-boy days, groans under the weight of the massive edifices
+which have sprung up all around them, crowned by the tower of that noble
+structure which stands in full view before me as I lift my eyes from the
+portfolio on the back of which I am now writing.
+
+For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it. I
+have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it has
+cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,--if I have
+overcome them, which others must decide. And I feel exactly as honest
+Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long journey with
+a good deal of up-hill work. He wants to rest a little, then to feed
+a little; then, if you will turn him loose in the pasture, he wants to
+roll. I have left my starry and ethereal companionship,--not for a
+long time, I hope, for it has lifted me above my common self, but for a
+while. And now I want, so to speak, to roll in the grass and among the
+dandelions with the other pachyderms. So I have kept to the outside of
+the portfolio as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and
+fancies, and vagaries, and parentheses.
+
+How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
+vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
+Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse
+a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm.
+It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic
+aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters
+“leached” through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it
+with the best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became convinced that
+I was feeding the tea-plants of China, and then I gave over the attempt.
+And yet I did love, and do love, that arid patch of ground. I wonder if
+a single flower could not be made to grow in a pot of earth from that
+Campo Santo of my childhood! One noble product of nature did not
+refuse to flourish there,--the tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired,
+many-jointed, generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and
+defies the blaze of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to
+wander in its forest-like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with
+the lofty tassels tossing their heads high above him! There are two
+aspects of the cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first
+when it has reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an
+army on the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second
+when, after the battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the
+field of slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,--say rather like the
+crazy widows and daughters of the dead soldiery.
+
+Once more let us come back to the old house. It was far along in its
+second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no longer.
+
+The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its human
+tenants. The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs of age.
+Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards
+that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or
+the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the
+floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale
+off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop
+from their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl
+their cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and at
+last there comes a crash, a great cloud of dust rises, and the home that
+had been the shelter of generation after generation finds its grave in
+its own cellar. Only the chimney remains as its monument. Slowly, little
+by little, the patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their
+chemistry pick out the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty
+wind roars around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic
+crashes down among the wrecks it has long survived. So dies a human
+habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the surface of
+the soil sinking gradually below it,
+
+
+   Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
+   Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
+
+But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall
+by the hand of violence! The ripping off of the shelter that has kept
+out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork,
+the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe,
+the progressive ruin, which ends by rending all the joints asunder and
+flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed
+and split to warm some new habitation as firewood,--what a brutal act of
+destruction it seems!
+
+Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it
+more than ten years ago? Alas! how many remember anything they read but
+once, and so long ago as that? How many would find it out if one should
+say over in the same words that which he said in the last decade? But
+there is really no need of telling the story a second time, for it can
+be found by those who are curious enough to look it up in a volume of
+which it occupies the opening chapter.
+
+In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let me
+remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at the
+breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying Bunker's
+Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower room, the
+floor of which was covered with dents, made, it was alleged, by the
+butts of the soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General Warren
+probably passed the night before the Bunker Hill battle, and over its
+threshold must the stately figure of Washington have often cast its
+shadow.
+
+But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one day
+came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a little
+universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent identity,
+with the terrible responsibility of a separate, independent, inalienable
+existence,--that house does not ask for any historical associations to
+make it the centre of the earth for him.
+
+If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who is
+born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions and
+the means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to his own
+taste, without losing sight of all the characteristic features which
+surrounded his earliest years. The American is, for the most part, a
+nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls up his tent-poles.
+If I had an ideal life to plan for him it would be something like this:
+
+His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained,
+large-hearted country minister, from whom he should inherit the
+temperament that predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the
+finer instincts which direct life to noble aims and make it rich with
+the gratification of pure and elevated tastes and the carrying out of
+plans for the good of his neighbors and his fellow-creatures. He should,
+if possible, have been born, at any rate have passed some of his early
+years, or a large part of them, under the roof of the good old minister.
+His father should be, we will say, a business man in one of our great
+cities,--a generous manipulator of millions, some of which have adhered
+to his private fortunes, in spite of his liberal use of his means. His
+heir, our ideally placed American, shall take possession of the old
+house, the home of his earliest memories, and preserve it sacredly,
+not exactly like the Santa Casa, but, as nearly as may be, just as
+he remembers it. He can add as many acres as he will to the narrow
+house-lot. He can build a grand mansion for himself, if he chooses, in
+the not distant neighborhood. But the old house, and all immediately
+round it, shall be as he recollects it when he had to stretch his little
+arm up to reach the door-handles. Then, having well provided for his
+own household, himself included, let him become the providence of the
+village or the town where he finds himself during at least a portion
+of every year. Its schools, its library, its poor,--and perhaps the new
+clergyman who has succeeded his grandfather's successor may be one of
+them,--all its interests, he shall make his own. And from this centre
+his beneficence shall radiate so far that all who hear of his wealth
+shall also hear of him as a friend to his race.
+
+Is not this a pleasing programme? Wealth is a steep hill, which the
+father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately; but
+there is a table-land on a level with it, which may be found by those
+who do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply cloven
+summit.---Our dangerously rich men can make themselves hated, held as
+enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its benefactors.
+The clouds of discontent are threatening, but if the gold-pointed
+lightning-rods are rightly distributed the destructive element may be
+drawn off silently and harmlessly. For it cannot be repeated too often
+that the safety of great wealth with us lies in obedience to the new
+version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+
+
+
+I. GETTING READY.
+
+It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the powers
+of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to which its
+central point of interest belongs without some words in the nature of
+preparation. Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah Battle insisted
+on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her favorite game of
+whist.
+
+The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
+pages, before sitting down to tell his story. He does not intend to
+frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn
+him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within
+the range of every-day experience. Did he ever see the Siamese twins, or
+any pair like them? Probably not, yet he feels sure that Chang and
+Eng really existed; and if he has taken the trouble to inquire, he has
+satisfied himself that similar cases have been recorded by credible
+witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each
+other.
+
+This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
+skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we
+can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.
+
+One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready
+for the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the
+reader's attention is invited. If the principal personages made their
+entrance at once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole
+scenery of their surrounding conditions. In point of fact, no matter
+how a story is begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief
+actors out of any hint the author may have dropped, and provided from
+their own resources a locality and a set of outward conditions to
+environ these imagined personalities. These are all to be brushed away,
+and the actual surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented
+as they were, at the risk of detaining the reader a little while from
+the events most likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever
+was laid was not so big as the nest that held it. If a story were so
+interesting that a maiden would rather hear it than listen to the praise
+of her own beauty, or a poet would rather read it than recite his
+own verses, still it would have to be wrapped in some tissue of
+circumstance, or it would lose half its effectiveness.
+
+It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
+narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand. Recent
+experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating
+places and the people who live in them. There are, it may be added,
+so many advertisements disguised under the form of stories and other
+literary productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion
+of being employed by the enterprising proprietors of this or that
+celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are
+no doubt many persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and
+its four chief personages presently to be mentioned. It is to be hoped
+that they will not furnish the public with a key to this narrative,
+and perhaps bring trouble to the writer of it, as has happened to other
+authors. If the real names are a little altered, it need not interfere
+with the important facts relating to those who bear them. It might not
+be safe to tell a damaging story about John or James Smythe; but if
+the slight change is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would
+never think of bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of
+them. The same gulf of family distinction separates the Thompsons with a
+p from the Thomsons without that letter.
+
+There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
+residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by the
+name of Arrowhead Village. The Indians had found it out, as the relics
+they left behind them abundantly testified. The commonest of these were
+those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism, and from
+which the place took its name,--the heads of arrows, of various sizes,
+material, and patterns: some small enough for killing fish and little
+birds, some large enough for such game as the moose and the bear, to say
+nothing of the hostile Indian and the white settler; some of flint, now
+and then one of white quartz, and others of variously colored jasper.
+The Indians must have lived here for many generations, and it must have
+been a kind of factory village of the stone age,--which lasted up to
+near the present time, if we may judge from the fact that many of these
+relics are met with close to the surface of the ground.
+
+No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one
+of the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed, that
+those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the swarms
+of tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it for itself,
+and not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural cockneyism.
+
+There is the lake, in the first place,--Cedar Lake,--about five miles
+long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching
+from north to south. Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
+Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious
+name, but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the
+water. At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the Corinna
+Institute, a favorite school for young ladies, where large numbers of
+the daughters of America are fitted, so far as education can do it, for
+all stations in life, from camping out with a husband at the mines in
+Nevada to acting the part of chief lady of the land in the White House
+at Washington.
+
+Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake,
+is a valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of the
+lake, leaving only room enough for a road between their base and the
+water. This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled, and
+here for a century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern. A famous
+place it was so long as its sign swung at the side of the road: famous
+for its landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a guest that
+looked worthy of the attention was like that of a parent to a returning
+prodigal, and whose parting words were almost as good as a marriage
+benediction; famous for its landlady, ample in person, motherly, seeing
+to the whole household with her own eyes, mistress of all culinary
+secrets that Northern kitchens are most proud of; famous also for its
+ancient servant, as city people would call her,--help, as she was called
+in the tavern and would have called herself,--the unchanging, seemingly
+immortal Miranda, who cared for the guests as if she were their nursing
+mother, and pressed the specially favorite delicacies on their attention
+as a connoisseur calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties
+of a picture. Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets
+Miranda's
+
+
+   “A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;”
+
+or
+
+
+   “Some of these cakes? You will find them ver-y good.”
+
+Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
+member of the household,--the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent Pushee,
+ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the limits of the
+establishment at all hours of the day and night. He fed, nobody could
+say accurately when or where. There were rumors of a “bunk,” in which he
+lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to be always wide awake,
+and at the service of as many guest, at once as if there had been half a
+dozen of him.
+
+So much for old reminiscences.
+
+The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign. He had had
+the house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it open
+in summer for a few boarders. It happened more than once that the summer
+boarders were so much pleased with the place that they stayed on through
+the autumn, and some of them through the winter. The attractions of
+the village were really remarkable. Boating in summer, and skating in
+winter; ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks could hardly keep up with;
+fishing, for which the lake was renowned; varied and beautiful walks
+through the valley and up the hillsides; houses sheltered from the north
+and northeasterly winds, and refreshed in the hot summer days by
+the breeze which came over the water,--all this made the frame for a
+pleasing picture of rest and happiness. But there was a great deal more
+than this. There was a fine library in the little village, presented
+and richly endowed by a wealthy native of the place. There was a small
+permanent population of a superior character to that of an everyday
+country town; there was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a
+good-hearted rector, broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be
+a little afraid of, and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the
+summer season, there were always some who wanted a place of worship to
+keep their religion from dying out during the heathen months, while
+the shepherds of the flocks to which they belonged were away from their
+empty folds.
+
+What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was
+the frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary
+association. Some time before the tavern took down its sign the landlord
+had built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which the young
+folks of all the country round had resorted. It was still sometimes used
+for similar occasions, but it was especially notable as being the place
+of meeting of the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted as
+signifying that its members knew everything, had no such pretensions,
+but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly, held itself
+open to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had
+knowledge to impart. Its President was the rector of the little chapel,
+a man who, in spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could stand fire from
+the widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing
+his temper. The hall of the old Anchor Tavern was a convenient place
+of meeting for the students and instructors of the University and
+the Institute. Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes in carriage-loads,
+sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to the meetings in
+Pansophian Hall, as it was now commonly called.
+
+These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest. It was
+customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the
+most part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by
+the students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances
+by anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and
+discussed by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought
+worth listening to. The variety of topics considered was very great.
+The young ladies of the village and the Institute had their favorite
+subjects, the young gentlemen a different set of topics, and the
+occasional outside contributors their own; so that one who happened
+to be admitted to a meeting never knew whether he was going to hear an
+account of recent arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom of the
+will, or a psychological experience, or a story, or even a poem.
+
+Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating to
+the true status and the legitimate social functions of woman. The most
+conflicting views were held on the subject. Many of the young ladies
+and some of the University students were strong in defence of all the
+“woman's rights” doctrines. Some of these young people were extreme
+in their views. They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea and Queen
+Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the chance, to
+vote for a woman as President of the United States or as General of
+the United States Army. They were even disposed to assert the physical
+equality of woman to man, on the strength of the rather questionable
+history of the Amazons, and especially of the story, believed to be
+authentic, of the female body-guard of the King of Dahomey,--females
+frightful enough to need no other weapon than their looks to scare off
+an army of Cossacks.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna
+Institute, was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood. It was
+rather singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of this
+extreme doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with
+brain than muscles. In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed,
+long-eyelashed, slender-necked, slightly developed young woman; looking
+almost like a child at an age when many of the girls had reached their
+full stature and proportions. In her studies she was so far in advance
+of her different classes that there was always a wide gap between her
+and the second scholar. So fatal to all rivalry had she proved herself
+that she passed under the school name of The Terror. She learned so
+easily that she undervalued her own extraordinary gifts, and felt the
+deepest admiration for those of her friends endowed with faculties of an
+entirely different and almost opposite nature. After sitting at her desk
+until her head was hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look
+at the blooming young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school,
+and feel as if she would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and
+strange tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the
+encyclopaedia of every class she belonged to, if she could go through
+the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her
+schoolmates delighting.
+
+One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was
+of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which nature had
+specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss Lurida
+had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was
+The Wonder. Though of full womanly stature, there were several taller
+girls of her age. While all her contours and all her movements betrayed
+a fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her
+finely shaped hands and feet showed that her organization was one of
+those carefully finished masterpieces of nature which sculptors are
+always in search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect
+products of the living laboratory.
+
+This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
+performances in the gymnasium. She commonly contented herself with
+the same exercises that her companions were accustomed to. Only her
+dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too
+heavy for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the
+floor. She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be
+checked in her indulgence in them. The Professor of gymnastics at the
+University came over to the Institute now and then, and it was a source
+of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in which the
+young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing
+herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked impossible at first
+sight. How often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly
+give up all her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral
+calculus if she could only perform the least of those feats which were
+mere play to The Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her
+attainments in classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of
+the very best students in the out-door branches,--botany, mineralogy,
+sketching from nature,--to be found among the scholars of the Institute.
+
+There was an eight-oared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of
+which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar. Poor little
+Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when there were
+many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere feather-weight,
+and quick-witted enough to serve well in the important office where
+brains are more needed than muscle.
+
+There was also an eight-oared boat belonging to the University, and
+rowed by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows. The bow oar and
+captain of the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like the
+captain of the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast. He had had one or two
+quiet trials with Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the ultras of
+the woman's rights party, he had not vindicated the superiority of his
+sex in the way which might have been expected. Indeed, it was claimed
+that he let a cannon-ball drop when he ought to have caught it, and
+it was not disputed that he had been ingloriously knocked over by a
+sand-bag projected by the strong arms of the young maiden. This was of
+course a story that was widely told and laughingly listened to, and
+the captain of the University crew had become a little sensitive on
+the subject. When there was a talk, therefore, about a race between the
+champion boats of the two institutions there was immense excitement in
+both of them, as well as among the members of the Pansophian Society and
+all the good people of the village.
+
+There were many objections to be overcome. Some thought it unladylike
+for the young maidens to take part in a competition which must attract
+many lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very hoidenish to venture
+upon. Some said it was a shame to let a crew of girls try their strength
+against an equal number of powerful young men. These objections were
+offset by the advocates of the race by the following arguments. They
+maintained that it was no more hoidenish to row a boat than it was to
+take a part in the calisthenic exercises, and that the girls had nothing
+to do with the young men's boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as
+possible. As to strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight
+for weight, their crew was as strong as the other, and of course due
+allowance would be made for the difference of weight and all other
+accidental hindrances. It was time to test the boasted superiority
+of masculine muscle. Here was a chance. If the girls beat, the whole
+country would know it, and after that female suffrage would be only
+a question of time. Such was the conclusion, from rather insufficient
+premises, it must be confessed; but if nature does nothing per
+saltum,--by jumps,--as the old adage has it, youth is very apt to take
+long leaps from a fact to a possible sequel or consequence. So it had
+come about that a contest between the two boat-crews was looked forward
+to with an interest almost equal to that with which the combat between
+the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.
+
+The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after
+cautious protocols and many diplomatic discussions. It was so novel in
+its character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust it
+in such a way as to be fair to both parties. The course must not be too
+long for the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying power of the young
+persons who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon. A certain
+advantage must be allowed them at the start, and this was a delicate
+matter to settle. The weather was another important consideration. June
+would be early enough, in all probability, and if the lake should be
+tolerably smooth the grand affair might come off some time in that
+month. Any roughness of the water would be unfavorable to the weaker
+crew. The rowing-course was on the eastern side of the lake, the
+starting-point being opposite the Anchor Tavern; from that three
+quarters of a mile to the south, where the turning-stake was fixed, so
+that the whole course of one mile and a half would bring the boats back
+to their starting-point.
+
+The race was to be between the Algonquin, eight-oared boat with
+outriggers, rowed by young men, students of Stoughton University, and
+the Atalanta, also eight-oared and outrigger boat, by young ladies from
+the Corinna Institute. Their boat was three inches wider than the other,
+for various sufficient reasons, one of which was to make it a little
+less likely to go over and throw its crew into the water, which was a
+sound precaution, though all the girls could swim, and one at least, the
+bow oar, was a famous swimmer, who had pulled a drowning man out of the
+water after a hard struggle to keep him from carrying her down with him.
+
+Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as to
+draw together a rabble of betting men and ill-conditioned lookers-on,
+there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the villagers
+and the students of the two institutions. Among them were a few who were
+disposed to add to their interest in the trial by small wagers. The bets
+were rather in favor of the “Quins,” as the University boat was commonly
+called, except where the natural sympathy of the young ladies or the
+gallantry of some of the young men led them to risk their gloves or
+cigars, or whatever it might be, on the Atalantas. The elements of
+judgment were these: average weight of the Algonquins one hundred and
+sixty-five pounds; average weight of the Atalantas, one hundred and
+forty-eight pounds; skill in practice about equal; advantage of the
+narrow boat equal to three lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas
+eight lengths,--a long stretch to be made up in a mile and a half. And
+so both crews began practising for the grand trial.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+II. THE BOAT-RACE.
+
+The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still and
+bright. The water was smooth, and the crews were in the best possible
+condition. All was expectation, and for some time nothing but
+expectation. No boat-race or regatta ever began at the time appointed
+for the start. Somebody breaks an oar, or somebody fails to appear in
+season, or something is the matter with a seat or an outrigger; or if
+there is no such excuse, the crew of one or both or all the boats to
+take part in the race must paddle about to get themselves ready for
+work, to the infinite weariness of all the spectators, who naturally ask
+why all this getting ready is not attended to beforehand. The Algonquins
+wore plain gray flannel suits and white caps. The young ladies were all
+in dark blue dresses, touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and
+wore light straw hats. The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last
+to step on board. As she took her place she carefully deposited at her
+feet a white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a
+sponge, in case the boat should take in water.
+
+At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay,
+--long, narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel when he darts from the
+reedy shore. It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows in
+their close-fitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending their
+backs for the stroke and recovering, as if they were parts of a single
+machine.
+
+“The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers,” said the old blacksmith
+from the village.
+
+“You wait till the gals get a-goin',” said the carpenter, who had often
+worked in the gymnasium of the Corinna Institute, and knew something of
+their muscular accomplishments. “Y' ought to see 'em climb ropes, and
+swing dumb-bells, and pull in them rowin'-machines. Ask Jake there
+whether they can't row a mild in double-quick time,--he knows all abaout
+it.”
+
+Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
+country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-doors,
+being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the habits and
+habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of observation, just
+as dealing in horses is an education of certain faculties, and breeds a
+race of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious, wary, and wide awake, with a
+rhetoric of appreciation and depreciation all its own.
+
+Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
+following effect:
+
+“Wahl, I don' know jest what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough
+when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout
+neither on 'em. But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em
+stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f
+a mile 'n' a haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them fellers
+is naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they
+git raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum. I'll go ye a quarter
+on the pahnts agin the petticoats.”
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that the
+young ladies were overmatched. Still there were not wanting those who
+thought the advantage allowed the “Lantas,” as they called the Corinna
+boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible for the “Quins”
+ to make it up and go by them.
+
+The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators. They
+appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome
+as colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen, disciplined
+to work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of
+oars. The fisherman offered to make his quarter fifty cents. No takers.
+
+Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking
+for the Atalanta. A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along which
+the Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point. Presently
+the long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with
+their ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as Raphael fills
+his skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the
+Atalanta came on!---no rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the
+bow oar turning to look ahead every now and then, and watching her
+course, which seemed to be straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes
+as true and regular as the pulse of the healthiest rower among them
+all. And if the sight of the other boat and its crew was beautiful, how
+lovely was the look of this! Eight young girls,--young ladies, for those
+who prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,--all
+in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its
+duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time,
+or let her oar dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its
+propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each
+of the boats was cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the
+Atalanta were naturally the loudest, as the gallantry of one sex and the
+clear, high voices of the other gave it life and vigor.
+
+“Take your places!” shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half
+hour. The two boats felt their way slowly and cautiously to their
+positions, which had been determined by careful measurement. After a
+little backing and filling they got into line, at the proper distance
+from each other, and sat motionless, their bodies bent forward, their
+arms outstretched, their oars in the water, waiting for the word.
+
+“Go!” shouted the umpire.
+
+Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin,
+her oars bending like so many long Indian bows as their blades flashed
+through the water.
+
+“A stern chase is a long chase,” especially when one craft is a great
+distance behind the other. It looked as if it would be impossible for
+the rear boat to overcome the odds against it. Of course the Algonquin
+kept gaining, but could it possibly gain enough? That was the question.
+As the boats got farther and farther away, it became more and more
+difficult to determine what change there was in the interval between
+them. But when they came to rounding the stake it was easier to guess at
+the amount of space which had been gained. It was clear that something
+like half the distance, four lengths, as nearly as could be estimated,
+had been made up in rowing the first three quarters of a mile. Could
+the Algonquins do a little better than this in the second half of the
+race-course, they would be sure of winning.
+
+The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly. Every minute
+the University boat was getting nearer the other.
+
+“Go it, Quins!” shouted the students.
+
+“Pull away, Lantas!” screamed the girls, who were crowding down to the
+edge of the water.
+
+Nearer,--nearer,--the rear boat is pressing the other more and more
+closely,--a few more strokes, and they will be even, for there is but
+one length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the line.
+It looks desperate for the Atalantas. The bow oar of the Algonquin turns
+his head. He sees the little coxswain leaning forward at every stroke,
+as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence,--but a few
+ounces might turn the scale of victory. As he turned he got a glimpse of
+the stroke oar of the Atalanta. What a flash of loveliness it was! Her
+face was like the reddest of June roses, with the heat and the
+strain and the passion of expected triumph. The upper button of her
+close-fitting flannel suit had strangled her as her bosom heaved with
+exertion, and it had given way before the fierce clutch she made at it.
+The bow oar was a staunch and steady rower, but he was human. The blade
+of his oar lingered in the water; a little more and he would have caught
+a crab, and perhaps lost the race by his momentary bewilderment.
+
+The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a
+Derby three-year-old, felt the slight check, and all her men bent more
+vigorously to their oars. The Atalantas saw the movement, and made a
+spurt to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could. It was of
+no use. The strong arms of the young men were too much for the young
+maidens; only a few lengths remained to be rowed, and they would
+certainly pass the Atalanta before she could reach the line.
+
+The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if she
+could not save them by some strategic device.
+
+
+   “Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?”
+
+she whispered to herself,--for The Terror remembered her Virgil as she
+did everything else she ever studied. As she stooped, she lifted the
+handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet. “Look!”
+ she cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the Algonquin. The
+captain of the University boat turned his head, and there was the lovely
+vision which had a moment before bewitched him. The owner of all that
+loveliness must, he thought, have flung the bouquet. It was a challenge:
+how could he be such a coward as to decline accepting it.
+
+He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line
+in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his boat,
+proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his
+mast-head.
+
+He turned the boat's head a little by backing water. He came up with the
+floating flowers, and near enough to reach them. He stooped and snatched
+them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,--no more. He felt
+sure of his victory.
+
+How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites?
+Are we not there ourselves? Are not our muscles straining with those of
+these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves
+all tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all their life
+concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme effort? No! We
+are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the
+Atalanta!
+
+--Three more lengths' rowing and the college crew will pass the girls!
+
+--“Hurrah for the Quins!” The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the
+Atalanta!
+
+“Through with her!” shouts the captain of the Algonquin.
+
+“Now, girls!” shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.
+
+They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.
+
+--Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its
+splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line,
+eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.
+
+Hooraw for the Lantas! Hooraw for the Girls! Hooraw for the Institoot!
+shout a hundred voices.
+
+“Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!” pipes the small voice
+of The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all round.
+
+She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for
+nothing. “I have paid off one old score,” she said. “Set down my damask
+roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!”
+
+It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave the
+race to the Atalantas.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III. THE WHITE CANOE.
+
+While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookers-on in them
+were rowing or sailing in the neighborhood of the race-course. The scene
+on the water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats were, many
+of them, acquainted with each other. There was a good deal of lively
+talk until the race became too exciting. Then many fell silent, until,
+as the boats neared the line, and still more as they crossed it, the
+shouts burst forth which showed how a cramp of attention finds its
+natural relief in a fit of convulsive exclamation.
+
+But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to be
+seen, in which sat a young man, who paddled it skillfully and swiftly.
+It was evident enough that he was watching the race intently, but the
+spectators could see little more than that. One of them, however, who
+sat upon the stand, had a powerful spy-glass, and could distinguish his
+motions very minutely and exactly. It was seen by this curious observer
+that the young man had an opera-glass with him, which he used a good
+deal at intervals. The spectator thought he kept it directed to the
+girls' boat, chiefly, if not exclusively. He thought also that the
+opera-glass was more particularly pointed towards the bow of the boat,
+and came to the natural conclusion that the bow oar, Miss Euthymia
+Tower, captain of the Atalantas, “The Wonder” of the Corinna Institute,
+was the attraction which determined the direction of the instrument.
+
+“Who is that in the canoe over there?” asked the owner of the spy-glass.
+
+“That's just what we should like to know,” answered the old landlord's
+wife. “He and his man boarded with us when they first came, but we could
+never find out anything about him only just his name and his ways of
+living. His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood, Esq., it used to come
+on his letters. As for his ways of living, he was the solitariest human
+being that I ever came across. His man carried his meals up to him. He
+used to stay in his room pretty much all day, but at night he would be
+off, walking, or riding on horseback, or paddling about in the lake,
+sometimes till nigh morning. There's something very strange about that
+Mr. Kirkwood. But there don't seem to be any harm in him. Only nobody
+can guess what his business is. They got up a story about him at one
+time. What do you think? They said he was a counterfeiter! And so they
+went one night to his room, when he was out, and that man of his was
+away too, and they carried keys, and opened pretty much everything; and
+they found--well, they found just nothing at all except writings and
+letters,--letters from places in America and in England, and some with
+Italian postmarks: that was all. Since that time the sheriff and
+his folks have let him alone and minded their own business. He was a
+gentleman,--anybody ought to have known that; and anybody that knew
+about his nice ways of living and behaving, and knew the kind of wear he
+had for his underclothing, might have known it. I could have told those
+officers that they had better not bother him. I know the ways of real
+gentlemen and real ladies, and I know those fellows in store clothes
+that look a little too fine,--outside. Wait till washing-day comes!”
+
+The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they were
+not wholly unworthy of consideration; they were quite as much to be
+relied on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who sent his
+accomplice on before him to study out the principal personages in the
+village, and in the light of these revelations interpreted the bumps,
+with very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim, or any other authorities.
+
+Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search among
+his papers and effects, the gossips of the village had constructed
+several distinct histories for the mysterious stranger. He was an agent
+of a great publishing house; a leading contributor to several important
+periodicals; the author of that anonymously published novel which had
+made so much talk; the poet of a large clothing establishment; a spy of
+the Italian, some said the Russian, some said the British, Government;
+a proscribed refugee from some country where he had been plotting; a
+school-master without a school, a minister without a pulpit, an actor
+without an engagement; in short, there was no end to the perfectly
+senseless stories that were told about him, from that which made him out
+an escaped convict to the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric
+heir to a great English title and estate.
+
+The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion.
+Nobody in the village, no student in the University, knew his history.
+No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word from
+him. Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute were
+returning at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing into the
+shadows as they drew near it. Sometimes on a moonlight night, when a
+party of the young ladies were out upon the lake, they would see the
+white canoe gliding ghost-like in the distance. And it had happened more
+than once that when a boat's crew had been out with singers among them,
+while they were in the midst of a song, the white canoe would suddenly
+appear and rest upon the water,--not very near them, but within hearing
+distance,--and so remain until the singing was over, when it would steal
+away and be lost sight of in some inlet or behind some jutting rock.
+
+Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man. The
+landlady had told her story, which explained nothing. There was nobody
+to be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian, whose name
+was Paolo, but who to the village was known as Mr. Paul.
+
+Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a
+secret out of. He was good-natured, child-like as a Heathen Chinee,
+talked freely with everybody in such English as he had at command, knew
+all the little people of the village, and was followed round by them
+partly from his personal attraction for them, and partly because he was
+apt to have a stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other desirable
+luxury in his pocket for any of his little friends he met with. He had
+that wholesome, happy look, so uncommon in our arid countrymen,--a look
+hardly to be found except where figs and oranges ripen in the open air.
+A kindly climate to grow up in, a religion which takes your money and
+gives you a stamped ticket good at Saint Peter's box office, a roomy
+chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an honest digestive apparatus, a
+lively temperament, a cheerful acceptance of the place in life assigned
+to one by nature and circumstance,--these are conditions under which
+life may be quite comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant
+to contemplate. All these conditions were united in Paolo. He was the
+easiest; pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a
+companion. His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity
+and openness, made him friends everywhere.
+
+It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history of
+his master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being. He had
+been tried by all the village experts. The rector had put a number of
+well-studied careless questions, which failed of their purpose. The old
+librarian of the town library had taken note of all the books he carried
+to his master, and asked about his studies and pursuits. Paolo found
+it hard to understand his English, apparently, and answered in the most
+irrelevant way. The leading gossip of the village tried her skill in
+pumping him for information. It was all in vain.
+
+His master's way of life was peculiar,--in fact, eccentric. He had hired
+rooms in an old-fashioned three-story house. He had two rooms in the
+second and third stories of this old wooden building: his study in
+the second, his sleeping-room in the one above it. Paolo lived in the
+basement, where he had all the conveniences for cooking, and played the
+part of chef for his master and himself. This was only a part of his
+duty, for he was a man-of-all-work, purveyor, steward, chambermaid,--as
+universal in his services for one man as Pushee at the Anchor Tavern
+used to be for everybody.
+
+It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and had
+such threatening symptoms that he asked the baker, when he called, to
+send the village physician to see him. In the course of his visit the
+doctor naturally inquired about the health of Paolo's master.
+
+“Signor Kirkwood well,--molto bene,” said Paolo. “Why does he keep out
+of sight as he does?” asked the doctor.
+
+“He always so,” replied Paolo. “Una antipatia.”
+
+Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed it
+to him as to a father confessor, or whether he thought it time that the
+reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor did not
+feel sure. At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any further
+revelations. Una antipatia,--an antipathy,--that was all the doctor
+learned. He thought the matter over, and the more he reflected the
+more he was puzzled. What could an antipathy be that made a young man
+a recluse! Was it a dread of blue sky and open air, of the smell of
+flowers, or some electrical impression to which he was unnaturally
+sensitive?
+
+Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him. His wife was a
+sensible, discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional
+secrets. He told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with
+her in the light of his experience and her own; for she had known some
+curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.
+
+Mrs. Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where
+it lay for nearly a week. At the end of that time it emerged in a
+confidential whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe
+person. Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village that
+Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious, unheard-of
+antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole neighborhood
+naturally resolved itself into an unorganized committee of
+investigation.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE YOUNG SOLITARY
+
+What is a country village without its mysterious personage? Few are now
+living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who was the
+mystery of our great university town “sixty years since,”--long enough
+ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley may remind us.
+The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and is not sure that
+he has not told the strange story in some form or other to the last
+generation, or to the one before the last. No matter: if he has told it
+they have forgotten it,--that is, if they have ever read it; and whether
+they have or have not, the story is singular enough to justify running
+the risk of repetition.
+
+This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared
+unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge. He wanted
+employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he
+undertook and performed cheerfully. But his whole appearance showed
+plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different
+nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for his
+living. His aspect was that of one of gentle birth. His hands were not
+those of a laborer, and his features were delicate and refined, as well
+as of remarkable beauty. Who he was, where he came from, why he had
+come to Cantabridge, was never clearly explained. He was alone,
+without friends, except among the acquaintances he had made in his new
+residence. If he had any correspondents, they were not known to the
+neighborhood where he was living. But if he had neither friends nor
+correspondents, there was some reason for believing that he had enemies.
+Strange circumstances occurred which connected themselves with him in
+an ominous and unaccountable way. A threatening letter was slipped under
+the door of a house where he was visiting. He had a sudden attack of
+illness, which was thought to look very much like the effect of poison.
+At one time he disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a
+town many miles from that where he was residing. When questioned how he
+came there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some
+pretext, or in some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a
+certain landing-place, he had escaped and fled for his life, which he
+believed was in danger from his kidnappers.
+
+Whoever his enemies may have been,--if they really existed,--he did not
+fall a victim to their plots, so far as known to or remembered by this
+witness.
+
+Various interpretations were put upon his story. Conjectures were as
+abundant as they were in the case of Kaspar Hauser. That he was of
+good family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not
+impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a greatly
+coveted position in one of the northern states of Europe was a favorite
+speculation of some of the more romantic young persons. There was no
+dramatic ending to this story,--at least none is remembered by the
+present writer.
+
+“He left a name,” like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have
+been for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which
+anybody “grew pale;” for he had swindled no one, and broken no woman's
+heart with false vows. Possibly some withered cheeks may flush faintly
+as they recall the handsome young man who came before the Cantabridge
+maidens fully equipped for a hero of romance when the century was in its
+first quarter.
+
+The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
+attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had
+made his appearance at Arrowhead Village.
+
+It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for the
+young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an antipathy.
+For what do we understand by that word? When a young lady screams at
+the sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural
+antipathy to the creature. When a person expresses a repugnance to some
+wholesome article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if
+he gives the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to
+some persons and repulsive to others. We do not pretend to go behind
+the fact. It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. Even
+between different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike
+as well as an elective affinity. We are not bound to give a reason why
+Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily
+challenges a juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough that
+he “does not like his looks.”
+
+There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have
+his special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and
+dislikes. But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should
+be alleged as the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of
+explanations were suggested, not one of them in the least satisfactory,
+but serving to keep the curiosity of inquirers active until they were
+superseded by a new theory. One story was that Maurice had a great fear
+of dogs. It grew at last to a connected narrative, in which a fright
+in childhood from a rabid mongrel was said to have given him such
+a sensitiveness to the near presence of dogs that he was liable to
+convulsions if one came close to him.
+
+This hypothesis had some plausibility. No other creature would be so
+likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt
+to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They
+are met with everywhere,--in one's daily walk, at the thresholds of the
+doors one enters, in the gentleman's library, on the rug of my lady's
+sitting-room and on the cushion of her carriage. It is true that there
+are few persons who have an instinctive repugnance to this “friend of
+man.” But what if this so-called antipathy were only a fear, a terror,
+which borrowed the less unmanly name? It was a fair question, if,
+indeed, the curiosity of the public had a right to ask any questions at
+all about a harmless individual who gave no offence, and seemed entitled
+to the right of choosing his way of living to suit himself, without
+being submitted to espionage.
+
+There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet. But one
+of the village people had a large Newfoundland dog, of a very sociable
+disposition, with which he determined to test the question. He watched
+for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the woods or the
+lake, and started with his dog to meet him. The animal walked up to the
+stranger in a very sociable fashion, and began making his acquaintance,
+after the usual manner of well-bred dogs; that is, with the courtesies
+and blandishments by which the canine Chesterfield is distinguished from
+the ill-conditioned cur. Maurice patted him in a friendly way, and spoke
+to him as one who was used to the fellowship of such companions. That
+idle question and foolish story were disposed of, therefore, and some
+other solution must be found, if possible.
+
+A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard to
+cats. This has never been explained. It is not mere aversion to the
+look of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the common
+observer. The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in movement, nice
+in personal habits, and of amiable disposition. No cause of offence is
+obvious, and yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of
+the most innocent little kitten. They can tell, in some mysterious way,
+that there is a cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the
+creature. Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or
+whatever it may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too
+many well-authenticated instances to allow its being questioned. But
+suppose Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its
+extremest degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to
+which he had condemned himself. He might shun the firesides of the old
+women whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy
+dames do not make up the whole population.
+
+These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
+started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very
+much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and
+inquiring persons. This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable
+gift of the evil eye. He was in frequent communication with Italy, as
+his letters showed, and had recently been residing in that country, as
+was learned from Paolo. Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not
+rarely met with in Italy. Everybody who has ever read Mr. Story's “Roba
+di Roma” knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil
+eye exercises. It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon. No
+person's life or limb is safe if the jettatura, the withering glance of
+the deadly organ, falls upon him. It must be observed that this malign
+effect may follow a look from the holiest personages, that is, if we may
+assume that a monk is such as a matter of course. Certainly we have
+a right to take it for granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an
+eminently holy man, and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and
+dreaded jettatura as well as his blessing. If Maurice Kirkwood carried
+that destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be
+feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could easily
+be understood why he kept his look away from all around him whom he
+feared he might harm.
+
+No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil
+eye, but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
+suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
+putting any real confidence in them. It was just suited to the romantic
+notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had meddled more
+or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new fancy, if it were
+only wild enough.
+
+The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to
+find any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for
+the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two
+educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among
+the young ladies. Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young
+ladies, who, having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of
+Mary, saw fit to have herself called Mollie in the catalogue and in her
+letters. The old postmaster of the town to which her letter was directed
+took it up to stamp, and read on the envelope the direction to “Miss
+Lulu Pinrow.” He brought the stamp down with a vicious emphasis, coming
+very near blotting out the nursery name, instead of cancelling the
+postage-stamp. “Lulu!” he exclaimed. “I should like to know if that
+great strapping girl isn't out of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa
+will think that belongs to her, but I saw her christened and I heard
+the name the minister gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby
+nonsense.” And so saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if
+it burned his fingers. Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be
+cheapened in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become
+them as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a
+graduate of the Corinna Institute, the old postmaster could not guess.
+He was a queer old man.
+
+The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's written
+loquacity:
+
+“Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of 'in
+all your born days,' as mamma used to say. He has been at the village
+for some time, but lately we have had--oh, the weirdest stories about
+him! 'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give him, but we girls
+call him the Sachem, because he paddles about in an Indian canoe. If I
+should tell you all the things that are said about him I should use up
+all my paper ten times over. He has never made a visit to the Institute,
+and none of the girls have ever spoken to him, but the people at the
+village say he is very, very handsome. We are dying to get a look at
+him, of course--though there is a horrid story about him--that he has
+the evil eye did you ever hear about the evil eye? If a person who is
+born with it looks at you, you die, or something happens--awful--is n't
+it?
+
+“The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good many
+of the people that pass the summer at the village never do--they
+think their religion must have vacations--that's what I've heard they
+say--vacations, just like other hard work--it ought not to be hard work,
+I'm sure, but I suppose they feel so about it. Should you feel afraid to
+have him look at you? Some of the girls say they would n't have him
+for the whole world, but I shouldn't mind it--especially if I had on my
+eyeglasses. Do you suppose if there is anything in the evil eye it would
+go through glass? I don't believe it. Do you think blue eye-glasses
+would be better than common ones? Don't laugh at me--they tell such
+weird stories! The Terror--Lurida Vincent, you know-makes fun of all
+they say about it, but then she 'knows everything and doesn't believe
+anything,' the girls say--Well, I should be awfully scared, I know,
+if anybody that had the evil eye should look at me--but--oh, I
+don't know--but if it was a young man--and if he was very--very
+good-looking--I think--perhaps I would run the risk--but don't tell
+anybody I said any such horrid thing--and burn this letter right
+up--there 's a dear good girl.”
+
+It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this
+letter. There are not quite so many “awfuls” and “awfullys” as one
+expects to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two “weirds,”
+ which may be considered a fair allowance. How it happened that “jolly”
+ did not show itself can hardly be accounted for; no doubt it turns up
+two or three times at least in the postscript.
+
+Here is an extract from another letter. This was from one of the
+students of Stoughton University to a friend whose name as it was
+written on the envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield. The old postmaster
+who found fault with Miss “Lulu's” designation would probably have
+quarrelled with this address, if it had come under his eye. “Frank” is
+a very pretty, pleasant-sounding name, and it is not strange that many
+persons use it in common conversation all their days when speaking of a
+friend. Were they really christened by that name, any of these numerous
+Franks? Perhaps they were, and if so there is nothing to be said. But
+if not, was the baptismal name Francis or Franklin? The mind is apt to
+fasten in a very perverse and unpleasant way upon this question, which
+too often there is no possible way of settling. One might hope, if he
+outlived the bearer of the appellation, to get at the fact; but since
+even gravestones have learned to use the names belonging to childhood
+and infancy in their solemn record, the generation which docks its
+Christian names in such an un-Christian way will bequeath whole
+churchyards full of riddles to posterity. How it will puzzle and
+distress the historians and antiquarians of a coming generation to
+settle what was the real name of Dan and Bert and Billy, which last is
+legible on a white marble slab, raised in memory of a grown person, in a
+certain burial-ground in a town in Essex County, Massachusetts!
+
+But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr. Frank
+Mayfield.
+
+“DEAR FRANK,--Hooray! Hurrah! Rah!
+
+“I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'! It happened
+by a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near relieving you of
+the duty of replying to this letter. I was out in my little boat, which
+carries a sail too big for her, as I know and ought to have remembered.
+One of those fitful flaws of wind to which the lake is so liable struck
+the sail suddenly, and over went my boat. My feet got tangled in the
+sheet somehow, and I could not get free. I had hard work to keep my head
+above water, and I struggled desperately to escape from my toils; for if
+the boat were to go down I should be dragged down with her. I thought
+of a good many things in the course of some four or five minutes, I can
+tell you, and I got a lesson about time better than anything Kant and
+all the rest of them have to say of it. After I had been there about an
+ordinary lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that
+our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become
+acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what
+the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in
+the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat
+tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing
+where he kept his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about
+his manners or his way of talk. I judge him to be a native of one of our
+Northern States,--perhaps a New Englander. He has lived abroad during
+some parts of his life. He is not an artist, as it was at one time
+thought he might be. He is a good-looking fellow, well developed, manly
+in appearance, with nothing to excite special remark unless it be a
+certain look of anxiety or apprehension which comes over him from time
+to time. You remember our old friend Squire B., whose companion was
+killed by lightning when he was standing close to him. You know the look
+he had whenever anything like a thundercloud came up in the sky. Well, I
+should say there was a look like that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's
+face every now and then. I noticed that he looked round once or twice as
+if to see whether some object or other was in sight. There was a little
+rustling in the grass as if of footsteps, and this look came over his
+features. A rabbit ran by us, and I watched to see if he showed any sign
+of that antipathy we have heard so much of, but he seemed to be pleased
+watching the creature.
+
+“If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think
+he is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a 'crank'
+exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,--the
+lake, the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over
+and take a look at the college. He did n't promise, but I should not be
+surprised if I should get him over there some day. I asked him why he
+did n't go to the Pansophian meetings. He did n't give any reason, but
+he shook his head in a very peculiar way, as much as to say that it was
+impossible.
+
+“On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of dread
+of human society, or dislike for it, which under the name of religion
+used to drive men into caves and deserts. What a pity that Protestantism
+does not make special provision for all the freaks of individual
+character! If we had a little more faith and a few more caverns, or
+convenient places for making them, we should have hermits in these holes
+as thick as woodchucks or prairie dogs. I should like to know if you
+never had the feeling,
+
+
+   “'Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place!'
+
+“I know what your answer will be, of course. You will say, 'Certainly,
+
+
+   “'With one fair spirit for my minister;'”
+
+“but I mean alone,--all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should like
+to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as
+lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is
+looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a
+disgrace to the University--but never mind.) I often feel as if I should
+like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,--yes, and have it soaped
+from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores and
+the duns? Let us get up a pillar-roosters' association. (Jerry--still
+looking over says there is an absurd contradiction in the idea.)
+
+“What a matter-of-fact idiot Jerry is!
+
+“How do you like looking over, Mr. Inspector general?”
+
+The reader will not get much information out of this lively young
+fellow's letter, but he may get a little. It is something to know that
+the mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor talk like
+a crazy person; that he was of agreeable aspect and address, helpful
+when occasion offered, and had nothing about him, so far as yet
+appeared, to prevent his being an acceptable member of society.
+
+Of course the people in the village could never be contented without
+learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor. All
+the city papers were examined for advertisements. If a cashier had
+absconded, if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was
+missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency,
+until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious
+of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his
+inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an
+unsolved enigma. The “Sachem” of the boating girls became the “Sphinx”
+ of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did
+not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this
+young man's odd way of living.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+V. THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
+
+It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a young
+man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if made for
+companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world around him
+in a place where there was a general feeling of good neighborhood and a
+pleasant social atmosphere. The Public Library was a central point which
+brought people together. The Pansophian Society did a great deal to make
+them acquainted with each other for many of the meetings were open to
+outside visitors, and the subjects discussed in the meetings furnished
+the material for conversation in their intervals. A card of invitation
+had been sent by the Secretary to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo
+carried back a polite note of regret. The paper had a narrow rim of
+black, implying apparently some loss of relative or friend, but not
+any very recent and crushing bereavement. This refusal to come to the
+meetings of the society was only what was expected. It was proper to ask
+him, but his declining the invitation showed that he did not wish for
+attentions or courtesies. There was nothing further to be done to bring
+him out of his shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him
+at present.
+
+In this state of things it was natural that all which had been
+previously gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him
+should be worked over again. When there is no new ore to be dug, the old
+refuse heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them. The
+landlord of the Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-house,
+talked about Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one time or
+another. He had not much to say, but he added a fact or two.
+
+The young gentleman was good pay,--so they all said. Sometimes he paid
+in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank. He trusted his
+man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills. He knew something about
+horses; he showed that by the way he handled that colt,--the one that
+threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone. “Mr. Paul come down to the
+stable. 'Let me see that cult you all 'fraid of,' says he. 'My master,
+he ride any hoss,' says Paul. 'You saddle him,' says he; and so they
+did, and Paul, he led that colt--the kickinest and ugliest young beast
+you ever see in your life--up to the place where his master, as he calls
+him, and he lives. What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of
+long spurs and jump on to that colt's back, and off the beast goes, tail
+up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at
+last going it full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough
+of it. That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet
+as a cosset lamb. A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good money, and
+knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is
+n't a whole one,--and most likely he is a whole one.”
+
+So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern. His wife had already given
+her favorable opinion of her former guest. She now added something to
+her description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.
+
+“I call him,” she said, “about as likely a young gentleman as ever I
+clapped my eyes on. He is rather slighter than I like to see a young
+man of his age; if he was my son, I should like to see him a little
+more fleshy. I don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and thirty
+or forty pounds. Did y' ever look at those eyes of his, M'randy? Just as
+blue as succory flowers. I do like those light-complected young fellows,
+with their fresh cheeks and their curly hair; somehow, curly hair doos
+set off anybody's face. He is n't any foreigner, for all that he talks
+Italian with that Mr. Paul that's his help. He looks just like our
+kind of folks, the college kind, that's brought up among books, and is
+handling 'em, and reading of 'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all
+their lives. All that you say about his riding the mad colt is just what
+I should think he was up to, for he's as spry as a squirrel; you ought
+to see him go over that fence, as I did once. I don't believe there's
+any harm in that young gentleman,--I don't care what people say. I
+suppose he likes this place just as other people like it, and cares more
+for walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos
+for company; and if he doos, whose business is it, I should like to
+know?”
+
+The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging
+people.
+
+“I never see him but two or three times,” Miranda said. “I should like
+to have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him when he
+was eatin' his vittles. That 's the time to watch folks, when their jaws
+get a-goin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em. Do you remember that
+chap the sheriff come and took away when we kep' tahvern? Eleven year
+ago it was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time. A mighty grand gentleman from
+the City he set up for. I watched him, and I watched him. Says I, I
+don't believe you're no gentleman, says I. He eat with his knife, and
+that ain't the way city folks eats. Every time I handed him anything
+I looked closeter and closeter. Them whiskers never grooved on them
+cheeks, says I to myself. Them 's paper collars, says I. That dimun in
+your shirt-front hain't got no life to it, says I. I don't believe it's
+nothin' more 'n a bit o' winderglass. So says I to Pushee, 'You jes'
+step out and get the sheriff to come in and take a look at that chap.'
+I knowed he was after a fellah. He come right in, an' he goes up to the
+chap. 'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm mighty glad to see yer. We've had the
+hole in the wall you got out of mended, and I want your company to
+come and look at the old place,' says he, and he pulls out a couple of
+handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in less than no time, an' off
+they goes together! I know one thing about that young gentleman,
+anyhow,--there ain't no better judge of what's good eatin' than he is.
+I cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he sends word to me by
+that Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that the Pope o' Rome
+don't have no better cooked maccaroni than what she sent up to me
+yesterday,' says he. I don' know much about the Pope o' Rome except that
+he's a Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for him, whether it's a
+man or a woman; but when it comes to a dish o' maccaroni, I ain't afeard
+of their shefs, as they call 'em,--them he-cooks that can't serve up a
+cold potater without callin' it by some name nobody can say after 'em.
+But this gentleman knows good cookin', and that's as good a sign of a
+gentleman as I want to tell 'em by.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VI. STILL AT FAULT.
+
+The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not
+a very inviting one. It was old, and had been left in a somewhat
+dilapidated and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in the
+part which Maurice now occupied. They had piled their packing-boxes
+in the cellar, with broken chairs, broken china, and other household
+wrecks. A cracked mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the contents
+of which were airing themselves through wide rips and rents. A lame
+clothes-horse was saddled with an old rug fringed with a ragged border,
+out of which all the colors had been completely trodden. No woman would
+have gone into a house in such a condition. But the young man did not
+trouble himself much about such matters, and was satisfied when the
+rooms which were to be occupied by himself and his servant were made
+decent and tolerably comfortable. During the fine season all this was
+not of much consequence, and if Maurice made up his mind to stay through
+the winter he would have his choice among many more eligible places.
+
+The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the
+young ladies had scattered to their homes. Among the graduates of the
+year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had now
+returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village. They were both glad to
+rest after the long final examinations and the exercises of the closing
+day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part. It was a
+pleasant life they led in the village, which was lively enough at
+this season. Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to the Library,
+meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics made the time
+pass very cheerfully, and soon showed their restoring influences. The
+Terror's large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed look by which they had
+too often betrayed the after effects of over-excitement of the strong
+and active brain behind them. The Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and
+looked full enough of life to radiate vitality into a statue of ice.
+They had a boat of their own, in which they passed many delightful
+hours on the lake, rowing, drifting, reading, telling of what had been,
+dreaming of what might be.
+
+The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and
+visited often by strangers. The old Librarian was a peculiar character,
+as these officials are apt to be. They have a curious kind of knowledge,
+sometimes immense in its way. They know the backs of books, their
+title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the class of readers who
+call for particular works, the value of different editions, and a good
+deal besides. Their minds catch up hints from all manner of works on all
+kinds of subjects. They will give a visitor a fact and a reference which
+they are surprised to find they remember and which the visitor might
+have hunted for a year. Every good librarian, every private book-owner,
+who has grown into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to
+every bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book. These
+nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not
+like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like to have
+their naked eyes handled. They come to feel at last that the books of
+a great collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though
+they are only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as
+it were, outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian
+was getting a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them.
+Fortunately, he had a young lady for his assistant, who was never so
+happy as when she could find the work any visitor wanted and put it in
+his hands,--or her hands, for there were more readers among the wives
+and--daughters, and especially among the aunts, than there were among
+their male relatives. The old Librarian knew the books, but the books
+seemed to know the young assistant; so it looked, at least, to the
+impatient young people who wanted their services.
+
+Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,--a great many, according to
+Paolo's account; but Paolo's ideas were limited, and a few well-filled
+shelves seemed a very large collection to him. His master frequently
+sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat enlarged his
+notions; still, the Signor was a very learned man, he was certain, and
+some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly gilt) were more
+splendid, according to Paolo, than anything in the Library.
+
+There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that Maurice
+was in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian's record was carefully
+searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators. The list proved
+to be a long and varied one. It would imply a considerable knowledge
+of modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and
+physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a
+fancy for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling
+these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like
+the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De
+Sternutatione,' books about alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and
+modern works relating to Spiritualism. With these were the titles of
+novels and now and then of books of poems; but it may be taken for
+granted that his own shelves held the works he was most frequently in
+the habit of reading or consulting. Not much was to be made out of this
+beyond the fact of wide scholarship,--more or less deep it might be, but
+at any rate implying no small mental activity; for he appeared to read
+very rapidly, at any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new
+ones very frequently. To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters.
+But so wide-reading a man of letters must have an object, a literary
+purpose in all probability. Why should not he be writing a novel? Not
+a novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is not the person to
+report the talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do with.
+Novelists and lawyers understand the art of “cramming” better than any
+other persons in the world. Why should not this young man be working
+up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a background for
+some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints borrowed from
+science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his odd and
+miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might be, or
+possibly he was only reading for amusement. Who could say?
+
+The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the
+managers to purchase many books out of the common range of reading. The
+two learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor. These
+two worthies kept up the old controversy between the professions, which
+grows out of the fact that one studies nature from below upwards, and
+the other from above downwards. The rector maintained that physicians
+contracted a squint which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles
+which roll their eyes upward become palsied. The doctor retorted
+that theological students developed a third eyelid,--the nictitating
+membrane, which is so well known in birds, and which serves to shut
+out, not all light, but all the light they do not want. Their little
+skirmishes did not prevent their being very good friends, who had
+a common interest in many things and many persons. Both were on the
+committee which had the care of the Library and attended to the purchase
+of books. Each was scholar enough to know the wants of scholars, and
+disposed to trust the judgment of the other as to what books should
+be purchased. Consequently, the clergyman secured the addition to the
+Library of a good many old theological works which the physician would
+have called brimstone divinity, and held to be just the thing to kindle
+fires with,--good books still for those who know how to use them,
+oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of disorganization the
+whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief has strangled the
+natural human instincts. The physician, in the mean time, acquired for
+the collection some of those medical works where one may find recorded
+various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not have their like
+for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so as to give a new
+lease of credibility to stories which had come to be looked upon as
+fables.
+
+Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in the
+young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the present,
+perhaps for a long period. The rector would have been glad to see him
+at church. He would have liked more especially to have had him hear his
+sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society. The doctor, meanwhile, was
+meditating on the duties of society to young men, and wishing that he
+could gain the young man's confidence, so as to help him out of any
+false habit of mind or any delusion to which he might be subject, if he
+had the power of being useful to him.
+
+Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead
+Village, but of all the surrounding region. He was an excellent specimen
+of the country doctor, self-reliant, self-sacrificing, working a great
+deal harder for his living than most of those who call themselves the
+laboring classes,--as if none but those whose hands were hardened by the
+use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that
+sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also
+a fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a
+traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the
+guideboards. He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that
+oftentimes very innocent-sounding words mean very grave disorders; that
+all, degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the
+same term; that “run down” may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from
+which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked
+patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that “seedy”
+ may signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's
+over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of
+coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at
+the shortest notice, to the south of France. He knew too well that what
+is spoken lightly of as a “nervous disturbance” may imply that the whole
+machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual
+organ would groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible
+inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate with the consciousness.
+
+When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile,
+and say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which
+the young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to
+set down everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that
+supposition might seem. He was prepared to believe in some exceptional,
+perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what
+class of objects he could not at present conjecture, but which was as
+vital to the subject of it as the insulating arrangement to a piece
+of electrical machinery. With this feeling he began to look into the
+history of antipathies as recorded in all the books and journals on
+which he could lay his hands.
+
+
+       ------------------------------
+
+The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief interval.
+He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before offering them some
+verses which have no connection with the narrative now in progress.
+
+If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
+representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or forty
+or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of
+aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of
+threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting one; still,
+as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth
+looking at as it passed through the curve of life,--the vital parabola,
+which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features. An
+inscription is the same thing, whether we read it on slate-stone, or
+granite, or marble. To watch the lights and shades, the reliefs and
+hollows, of a countenance through a lifetime, or a large part of it, by
+the aid of a continuous series of photographs would not only be curious;
+it would teach us much more about the laws of physiognomy than we could
+get from casual and unconnected observations.
+
+The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found
+in them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning in middle
+life and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to
+remind me--as if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledge--is
+no longer youth. Here is the latest of a series of annual poems
+read during the last thirty-four years. There seems to have been one
+interruption, but there may have been other poems not recorded or
+remembered. This, the latest poem of the series, was listened to by the
+scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant circle of classmates
+and friends when the first of the long series was read before them, then
+in the flush of ardent manhood:--
+
+
+     THE OLD SONG.
+
+   The minstrel of the classic lay
+   Of love and wine who sings
+   Still found the fingers run astray
+   That touched the rebel strings.
+
+   Of Cadmus he would fair have sung,
+   Of Atreus and his line;
+   But all the jocund echoes rung
+   With songs of love and wine.
+
+   Ah, brothers! I would fair have caught
+   Some fresher fancy's gleam;
+   My truant accents find, unsought,
+   The old familiar theme.
+
+   Love, Love! but not the sportive child
+   With shaft and twanging bow,
+   Whose random arrows drove us wild
+   Some threescore years ago;
+
+   Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
+   The urchin blind and bare,
+   But Love, with spectacles and staff,
+   And scanty, silvered hair.
+
+   Our heads with frosted locks are white,
+   Our roofs are thatched with snow,
+   But red, in chilling winter's spite,
+   Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
+
+   Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
+   And while the running sands
+   Their golden thread unheeded spin,
+   He warms his frozen hands.
+
+   Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
+   And waft this message o'er
+   To all we miss, from all we meet
+   On life's fast-crumbling shore:
+
+   Say that to old affection true
+   We hug the narrowing chain
+   That binds our hearts,--alas, how few
+   The links that yet remain!
+
+   The fatal touch awaits them all
+   That turns the rocks to dust;
+   From year to year they break and fall,
+   They break, but never rust.
+
+   Say if one note of happier strain
+   This worn-out harp afford,
+   --One throb that trembles, not in vain,
+   Their memory lent its chord.
+
+   Say that when Fancy closed her wings
+   And Passion quenched his fire,
+   Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
+   As from Anacreon's lyre!
+
+   January 8, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+
+VII. A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
+
+In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that, with
+care and patience and watching his opportunity, he should get at the
+secret, which so far had yielded nothing but a single word. It might
+be asked why he was so anxious to learn what, from all appearances, the
+young stranger was unwilling to explain. He may have been to some extent
+infected by the general curiosity of the persons around him, in which
+good Mrs. Butts shared, and which she had helped to intensify by
+revealing the word dropped by Paolo. But this was not really his
+chief motive. He could not look upon this young man, living a life
+of unwholesome solitude, without a natural desire to do all that his
+science and his knowledge of human nature could help him to do towards
+bringing him into healthy relations with the world about him. Still,
+he would not intrude upon him in any way. He would only make certain
+general investigations, which might prove serviceable in case
+circumstances should give him the right to counsel the young man as
+to his course of life. The first thing to be done was to study
+systematically the whole subject of antipathies. Then, if any further
+occasion offered itself, he would be ready to take advantage of it.
+The resources of the Public Library of the place and his own private
+collection were put in requisition to furnish him the singular and
+widely scattered facts of which he was in search.
+
+It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study
+of the natural history of antipathies. The stories told about them are,
+however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned, there is
+no doubt that many of the strangest are true, and consequently take away
+from the improbability of others which we are disposed to doubt.
+
+But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy? It is an
+aversion to some object, which may vary in degree from mere dislike to
+mortal horror. What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say. It
+acts sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the imagination,
+sometimes through an unknown channel. The relations which exist between
+the human being and all that surrounds him vary in consequence of some
+adjustment peculiar to each individual. The brute fact is expressed in
+the phrase “One man's meat is another man's poison.”
+
+In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those
+referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common. In
+any collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who cannot
+make use of certain articles of food generally acceptable. This may be
+from the disgust they occasion or the effects they have been found to
+produce. Every one knows individuals who cannot venture on honey, or
+cheese, or veal, with impunity. Carlyle, for example, complains of
+having veal set before him,--a meat he could not endure. There is a
+whole family connection in New England, and that a very famous one, to
+many of whose members, in different generations, all the products of the
+dairy are the subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there
+are persons who dread the smell of apples more than they would dread
+being exposed to a fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story
+“A Week in a French Country-House” will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's
+piteous cry in the night: “Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou
+sleepest, but I cannot close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such
+a dreadful smell! Oh, Ursula, it is such a smell! I do so wish thou
+couldst smell it! Good-night, my angel!----Dearest! I have found them!
+They are apples!” The smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has been
+known to cause faintness. The sight of various objects has had singular
+effects on some persons. A boar's head was a favorite dish at the table
+of great people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the
+sight of one. It is not uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the
+sight of blood. One of the most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's
+college-mates confessed that he had this infirmity. Stranger and far
+more awkward than this is the case mentioned in an ancient collection,
+where the subject of the antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of
+a red color. There are sounds, also, which have strange effects on
+some individuals. Among the obnoxious noises are the crumpling of silk
+stuffs, the sound of sweeping, the croaking of frogs. The effects
+in different cases have been spasms, a sense of strangling, profuse
+sweating,--all showing a profound disturbance of the nervous system.
+
+All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of sense,
+seemingly by direct agency on certain nerve centres. But there is
+another series of cases in which the imagination plays a larger part
+in the phenomena. Two notable examples are afforded in the lives of two
+very distinguished personages.
+
+Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a bridge
+into the water. Long afterward, when he had reached manhood, this hardy
+and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels rattling over a
+bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening to the sound, in
+spite of his dread of it, in order to overcome his antipathy. The story
+told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar to that related of Peter.
+As he was driving in his coach and four over the bridge at Neuilly,
+his horses took fright and ran away, and the leaders broke from their
+harness and sprang into the river, leaving the wheel-horses and the
+carriage on the bridge. Ever after this fright it is said that Pascal
+had the terrifying sense that he was just on the edge of an abyss, ready
+to fall over.
+
+What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always to
+shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a church, as it is recorded? The
+old and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural one,
+that it was an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when she
+entered the holy place and brought her spiritual tenant into the
+presence of the sacred symbols, “cried with a loud voice, and came out
+of” her. A very singular case, the doctor himself had recorded, and
+which the reader may accept as authentic, is the following: At the head
+of the doctor's front stairs stood, and still stands, a tall clock, of
+early date and stately presence. A middle-aged visitor, noticing it
+as he entered the front door, remarked that he should feel a great
+unwillingness to pass that clock. He could not go near one of those tall
+timepieces without a profound agitation, which he dreaded to undergo.
+This very singular idiosyncrasy he attributed to a fright when he was an
+infant in the arms of his nurse.
+
+She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which
+supported one of its heavy leaden weights broke, and the weight came
+crashing down to the bottom of the case. Some effect must have been
+produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never recovered.
+Why should not this happen, when we know that a sudden mental shock
+may be the cause of insanity? The doctor remembered the verse of “The
+Ancient Mariner:”
+
+
+  “I moved my lips; the pilot shrieked
+   And fell down in a fit;
+   The holy hermit raised his eyes
+   And prayed where he did sit.
+   I took the oars; the pilot's boy,
+   Who now doth crazy go,
+   Laughed loud and long, and all the while
+   His eyes went to and fro.”
+
+This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the description
+from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish many cases
+where insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
+
+More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some
+person, a child commonly, killed outright by terror,--scared to death,
+literally. Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a surprise
+being intended, the shock has instantly arrested the movements on which
+life depends. If a mere instantaneous impression can produce effects
+like these, such an impression might of course be followed by
+consequences less fatal or formidable, but yet serious in their nature.
+If here and there a person is killed, as if by lightning, by a sudden
+startling sight or sound, there must be more numerous cases in which
+a terrible shock is produced by similar apparently insignificant
+causes,--a shock which falls short of overthrowing the reason and does
+not destroy life, yet leaves a lasting effect upon the subject of it.
+
+This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that,
+as a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a human
+being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change
+of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause
+may not rationally account for. He would not be surprised, he said to
+himself, to find that some early alarm, like that which was experienced
+by Peter the Great or that which happened to Pascal, had broken some
+spring in this young man's nature, or so changed its mode of action as
+to account for the exceptional remoteness of his way of life. But how
+could any conceivable antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young
+man aloof from all the world, and make a hermit of him? He did not
+hate the human race; that was clear enough. He treated Paolo with great
+kindness, and the Italian was evidently much attached to him. He had
+talked naturally and pleasantly with the young man he had helped out of
+his dangerous situation when his boat was upset. Dr. Butts heard that
+he had once made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the
+University. It was not misanthropy, therefore, which kept him solitary.
+What could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case? Nothing that
+the doctor could think of, unless it were some color, the sight of which
+acted on him as it did on the individual before mentioned, who could not
+look at anything red without fainting. Suppose this were a case of the
+same antipathy. How very careful it would make the subject of it as to
+where he went and with whom he consorted! Time and patience would be
+pretty sure to bring out new developments, and physicians, of all men in
+the world, know how to wait as well as how to labor.
+
+Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or
+gathered them from his own experience. He soon discovered that the story
+had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim of an
+“antipathy,” whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of the
+people of the place. If he suspected the channel through which it had
+reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre, the
+country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a
+domestic casus belli. Paolo might have mentioned it to others as well
+as to himself. Maurice might have told some friend, who had divulged it.
+But to accuse Mrs. Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit treason in telling
+one of her husband's professional secrets was too serious a matter to be
+thought of. He would be a little more careful, he promised himself, the
+next time, at any rate; for he had to concede, in spite of every wish to
+be charitable in his judgment, that it was among the possibilities that
+the worthy lady had forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put
+their tongues out, and a doctor's wife must keep her tongue in.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VIII. THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the
+office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him. It occurred
+to the members of the Society that a little fresh blood infused into
+it might stir up the general vitality of the organization. The woman
+suffragists saw no reason why the place of Secretary need as a matter of
+course be filled by a person of the male sex. They agitated, they
+made domiciliary visits, they wrote notes to influential citizens, and
+finally announced as their candidate the young lady who had won and
+worn the school name of “The Terror,” who was elected. She was just the
+person for the place: wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of
+every kind of knowledge, and, above all, strong on points of order and
+details of management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer,
+to do which is often the most essential duty of a Secretary. The
+President, the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track of
+the common moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get muddled
+if anything came up requiring swift decision and off-hand speech. The
+Terror had schooled herself in the debating societies of the Institute,
+and would set up the President, when he was floored by an awkward
+question, as easily as if he were a ninepin which had been bowled over.
+
+It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
+communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
+organization. Of late these had been becoming more frequent. Many of
+them were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors to
+the village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both full
+of ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often impossible
+to trace the papers to their authors. The new Secretary was alive with
+curiosity, and as sagacious a little body as one might find if in want
+of a detective. She could make a pretty shrewd guess whether a paper was
+written by a young or old person, by one of her own sex or the other, by
+an experienced hand or a novice.
+
+Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
+curiosity to an extraordinary degree. She felt a strong suspicion that
+“the Sachem,” as the boat-crews used to call him, “the Recluse,” “the
+Night-Hawk,” “the Sphinx,” as others named him, must be the author of
+it. It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective,
+poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least,
+so thought the Secretary. The writer had travelled much; had resided in
+Italy, among other places. But so had many of the summer visitors and
+residents of Arrowhead Village. The handwriting was not decisive; it
+had some points of resemblance with the pencilled orders for books
+which Maurice sent to the Library, but there were certain differences,
+intentional or accidental, which weakened this evidence. There was an
+undertone in the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the
+solitary stranger. It might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the
+dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not
+as a smooth ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush
+him, with all his hopes and prospects. This interpretation may have been
+too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own
+opinion:
+
+
+          MY THREE COMPANIONS.
+
+“I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer. I do not mean constantly
+flitting from one place to another, for my residence has often been
+fixed for considerable periods. From time to time I have put down in a
+notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes through which I
+have passed. I have long hesitated whether to let any of my notes appear
+before the public. My fear has been that they were too subjective, to
+use the metaphysician's term,--that I have seen myself reflected in
+Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature as she was meant to be
+understood. One who should visit the Harz Mountains would see--might
+see, rather his own colossal image shape itself on the morning mist. But
+if in every mist that rises from the meadows, in every cloud that hangs
+upon the mountain, he always finds his own reflection, we cannot accept
+him as an interpreter of the landscape.
+
+“There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to
+which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its
+author. They have visited the same localities, they have had many of
+the same thoughts and feelings. Many, I have no doubt. Not all,--no, not
+all. Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have been driven
+to it. Much of my life has been passed in that communion. These pages
+record some of the intimacies I have formed with her under some of her
+various manifestations.
+
+“I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke
+wildest and its voice rose loudest.
+
+“I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous rivers.
+
+“I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through many
+a long, long summer day on its clear waters.
+
+“I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has
+spoken,--at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it. I will
+translate some of these as I best may into common speech.
+
+“The OCEAN says to the dweller on its shores:--
+
+“You are neither welcome nor unwelcome. I do not trouble myself with the
+living tribes that come down to my waters. I have my own people, of
+an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your
+mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill
+the air or move over the thin crust of the earth. Who are you that build
+your palaces on my margin? I see your white faces as I saw the dark
+faces of the tribes that came before you, as I shall look upon the
+unknown family of mankind that will come after you. And what is your
+whole human family but a parenthesis in a single page of my history? The
+raindrops stereotyped themselves on my beaches before a living creature
+left his footprints there. This horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is
+of older lineage than your Adam,--perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam
+as one of his descendants. What feeling have I for you? Not scorn,
+not hatred,--not love,--not loathing. No!---indifference,--blank
+indifference to you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather
+absence of feeling, as regards you.---Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I
+will cool you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong
+arms, I will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his
+cradle. Am I not gentle? Am I not kind? Am I not harmless? But hark! The
+wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates! What do you
+say to my voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks
+tremble as my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible
+as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments,
+as you would crack an eggshell?--No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding
+indifference,--that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or later,
+into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I
+look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in
+momentary glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom
+I follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her
+nuptial raiment for the shroud.
+
+“Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side. Continents
+and islands grow old, and waste and disappear. The hardest rock
+crumbles; vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being, wax great,
+decline, and perish, to give way to others, even as human dynasties and
+nations and races come and go. Look on me! 'Time writes no wrinkle' on
+my forehead. Listen to me! All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I
+have only one language: the winds taught me their vowels the crags and
+the sands schooled me in my rough or smooth consonants. Few words are
+mine but I have whispered them and sung them and shouted them to men of
+all tribes from the time when the first wild wanderer strayed into my
+awful presence. Have you a grief that gnaws at your heart-strings? Come
+with it to my shore, as of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried
+his rage and anguish to the margin of the loud-roaring sea. There, if
+anywhere you will forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice
+speaks to the infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.
+
+“To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices
+of the world about him, who frequents the market and the thoroughfare,
+who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the
+deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation,
+the RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion.
+
+“Come live with me. I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural
+talker and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except
+occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get
+a fall. When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my
+changing features. My idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles
+that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least musical.
+I am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is absolutely
+safe, but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches
+with wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders. Abide with me, and
+you shall not die of thirst, like the forlorn wretches left to the
+mercies of the pitiless salt waves. Trust yourself to me, and I will
+carry you far on your journey, if we are travelling to the same point of
+the compass. If I sometimes run riot and overflow your meadows, I leave
+fertility behind me when I withdraw to my natural channel. Walk by my
+side toward the place of my destination. I will keep pace with you, and
+you shall feel my presence with you as that of a self-conscious being
+like yourself. You will find it hard to be miserable in my company; I
+drain you of ill-conditioned thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your
+dwelling and its grounds.”
+
+But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen
+indifference, and the river disturbs with its never-pausing and
+never-ending story, the silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of
+rest for his soul.
+
+“'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited faculties,'
+it says; 'yield not yourself to the babble of the running stream. Leave
+the ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living thing that walks
+the solid earth; leave the river, too busy with its own errand, too
+talkative about its own affairs, and find peace with me, whose smile
+will cheer you, whose whisper will soothe you. Come to me when the
+morning sun blazes across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me
+in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted firmament like a cup
+brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all the constellations that
+float in my ebon goblet. Do you know the charm of melancholy? Where will
+you find a sympathy like mine in your hours of sadness? Does the ocean
+share your grief? Does the river listen to your sighs? The salt wave,
+that called to you from under last month's full moon, to-day is
+dashing on the rocks of Labrador; the stream, that ran by you pure and
+sparkling, has swallowed the poisonous refuse of a great city, and is
+creeping to its grave in the wide cemetery that buries all things in its
+tomb of liquid crystal. It is true that my waters exhale and are renewed
+from one season to another; but are your features the same, absolutely
+the same, from year to year? We both change, but we know each other
+through all changes. Am I not mirrored in those eyes of yours? And
+does not Nature plant me as an eye to behold her beauties while she is
+dressed in the glories of leaf and flower, and draw the icy lid over
+my shining surface when she stands naked and ashamed in the poverty of
+winter?'
+
+“I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a life
+not very long, but with a record which much longer lives could not match
+in incident. Oftentimes the temptation has come over me with dangerous
+urgency to try a change of existence, if such change is a part of human
+destiny,--to seek rest, if that is what we gain by laying down the
+burden of life. I have asked who would be the friend to whom I should
+appeal for the last service I should have need of. Ocean was there,
+all ready, asking no questions, answering none. What strange voyages,
+downward through its glaucous depths, upwards to its boiling and
+frothing surface, wafted by tides, driven by tempests, disparted by rude
+agencies; one remnant whitening on the sands of a northern beach,
+one perhaps built into the circle of a coral reef in the Pacific, one
+settling to the floor of the vast laboratory where continents are built,
+to emerge in far-off ages! What strange companions for my pall-bearers!
+Unwieldy sea-monsters, the stories of which are counted fables by the
+spectacled collectors who think their catalogues have exhausted nature;
+naked-eyed creatures, staring, glaring, nightmare-like spectres of
+the ghastly-green abysses; pulpy islands, with life in gelatinous
+immensity,--what a company of hungry heirs at every ocean funeral! No!
+No! Ocean claims great multitudes, but does not invite the solitary who
+would fain be rid of himself.
+
+“Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than I
+have ever found when drifting idly over its surface? No, again. I do not
+want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of nature, when
+life, the faithful body-servant, has ceased caring for me. That must not
+be. The mirror which has pictured me so often shall never know me as an
+unwelcome object.
+
+“If I must ask the all-subduing element to be my last friend, and lead
+me out of my prison, it shall be the busy, whispering, not unfriendly,
+pleasantly companionable river.
+
+“But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods
+of human life which they who are choosing their places of abode should
+consider. Let the child play upon the seashore. The wide horizon gives
+his imagination room to grow in, untrammelled. That background of
+mystery, without which life is a poor mechanical arrangement, is shaped
+and colored, so far as it can have outline, or any hue but shadow, on a
+vast canvas, the contemplation of which enlarges and enriches the sphere
+of consciousness. The mighty ocean is not too huge to symbolize the
+aspirations and ambitions of the yet untried soul of the adolescent.
+
+“The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a solid
+limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he would have
+thought could content him in the years of undefined possibilities. Then
+he will find the river a more natural intimate than the ocean. It
+is individual, which the ocean, with all its gulfs and inlets and
+multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be. It does not love you very
+dearly, and will not miss you much when you disappear from its margin;
+but it means well to you, bids you good-morning with its coming waves,
+and good-evening with those which are leaving. It will lead your
+thoughts pleasantly away, upwards to its source, downwards to the stream
+to which it is tributary, or the wide waters in which it is to lose
+itself. A river, by choice, to live by in middle age.
+
+“In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which
+have little left but tender memories, the still companionship of the
+lake, embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and
+hidden springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit. I am
+not thinking of those great inland seas, which have many of the features
+and much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of those 'ponds,'
+as our countrymen used to call them until they were rechristened by
+summer visitors; beautiful sheets of water from a hundred to a few
+thousand acres in extent, scattered like raindrops over the map of our
+Northern sovereignties. The loneliness of contemplative old age finds
+its natural home in the near neighborhood of one of these tranquil
+basins.”
+
+Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we look
+carefully their affinities betray themselves. The youth will carry his
+Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved so well. The
+man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous couplets of Pope
+which ring in his ears were written on the banks of the Thames. The old
+man, as he nods over the solemn verse of Wordsworth, will recognize the
+affinity between the singer and the calm sheet that lay before him as he
+wrote,--the stainless and sleepy Windermere.
+
+“The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their
+own feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the
+Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of
+the fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in its
+forests.”
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this
+paper, and pondered long upon it. She was thinking very seriously of
+studying medicine, and had been for some time in frequent communication
+with Dr. Butts, under whose direction she had begun reading certain
+treatises, which added to such knowledge of the laws of life in health
+and in disease as she had brought with her from the Corinna Institute.
+Naturally enough, she carried the anonymous paper to the doctor, to get
+his opinion about it, and compare it with her own. They both agreed that
+it was probably, they would not say certainly, the work of the solitary
+visitor. There was room for doubt, for there were visitors who might
+well have travelled to all the places mentioned, and resided long enough
+on the shores of the waters the writer spoke of to have had all the
+experiences mentioned in the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady,
+a former schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families
+common in this generation, the heads of which, especially the female
+heads, can never be easy where they are, but keep going between America
+and Europe, like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment,
+alternately attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium.
+Every few years they pull their families up by the roots, and by the
+time they have begun to take hold a little with their radicles in the
+spots to which they have been successively transplanted up they come
+again, so that they never get a tap-root anywhere. The Terror suspected
+the daughter of one of these families of sending certain anonymous
+articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had just received.
+But she knew the style of composition common among the young girls,
+and she could hardly believe that it was one of them who had sent this
+paper. Could a brother of this young lady have written it? Possibly; she
+knew nothing more than that the young lady had a brother, then a student
+at the University. All the chances were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was
+the author. So thought Lurida, and so thought Dr. Butts.
+
+Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both. There
+was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part
+of the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to
+suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and
+did not look to any practical purpose in that direction. Besides, if the
+stranger were the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a
+sheet of water like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in
+case he seriously meditated taking unceremonious leave of life and its
+accidents. He could find a river easily enough, to say nothing of other
+methods of effecting his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the
+impropriety of selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the
+white canoe and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of
+the deep waters.
+
+The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before
+the public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers
+belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make
+free use of, either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a
+diversion during those intervals in which the flow of events is languid,
+or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress. The reader can
+hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the
+focal point where a good deal of mental activity converged. There were
+the village people, including a number of cultivated families; there
+were the visitors, among them many accomplished and widely travelled
+persons; there was the University, with its learned teachers and
+aspiring young men; there was the Corinna Institute, with its eager,
+ambitious, hungry-souled young women, crowding on, class after class
+coming forward on the broad stream of liberal culture, and rounding
+the point which, once passed, the boundless possibilities of womanhood
+opened before them. All this furnished material enough and to spare for
+the records and the archives of the society.
+
+The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings. It may be
+remembered that the girls had said of her, when she was The Terror, that
+“she knew everything and didn't believe anything.” That was just
+the kind of person for a secretary of such an association. Properly
+interpreted, the saying meant that she knew a great deal, and wanted to
+know a great deal more, and was consequently always on the lookout for
+information; that she believed nothing without sufficient proof that
+it was true, and therefore was perpetually asking for evidence where,
+others took assertions on trust.
+
+It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror could
+accomplish in the course of a single season. She found out what each
+member could do and wanted to do. She wrote to the outside visitors whom
+she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at the meetings, or
+send written papers to be read. As an official, with the printed title
+at the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY, she was a privileged
+personage. She begged the young persons who had travelled to tell
+something of their experiences. She had contemplated getting up a
+discussion on the woman's rights question, but being a wary little
+body, and knowing that the debate would become a dispute and divide the
+members into two hostile camps, she deferred this project indefinitely.
+It would be time enough after she had her team well in hand, she said to
+herself,--had felt their mouths and tried their paces. This expression,
+as she used it in her thoughts, seems rather foreign to her habits, but
+there was room in her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and
+an ample vocabulary. She could not do much with her own muscles, but
+she had known the passionate delight of being whirled furiously over
+the road behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stage-coach, and
+thought of herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver
+on his box. A few weeks of rest had allowed her nervous energy to store
+itself up, and the same powers which had distanced competition in the
+classes of her school had of necessity to expend themselves in vigorous
+action in her new office.
+
+Her appeals had their effect. A number of papers were very soon sent
+in; some with names, some anonymously. She looked these papers over, and
+marked those which she thought would be worth reading and listening to
+at the meetings. One of them has just been presented to the reader. As
+to the authorship of the following one there were many conjectures. A
+well-known writer, who had spent some weeks at Arrowhead Village, was
+generally suspected of being its author. Some, however, questioned
+whether it was not the work of a new hand, who wrote, not from
+experience, but from his or her ideas of the condition to which a
+story-teller, a novelist, must in all probability be sooner or later
+reduced. The reader must judge for himself whether this first paper is
+the work of an old hand or a novice.
+
+
+        SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.
+
+“I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I think.
+Let me see. For twelve years two novels a year regularly: that makes
+twenty-four. In three different years I have written three
+stories annually: that makes thirty-three. In five years one a
+year,--thirty-eight. That is all, is n't it? Yes. Thirty-eight, not
+forty. I wish I could make them all into one composite story, as Mr.
+Galton does his faces.
+
+“Hero--heroine--mamma--papa--uncle--sister, and so on. Love
+--obstacles--misery--tears--despair--glimmer of hope--unexpected
+solution of difficulties--happy finale.
+
+“Landscape for background according to season. Plants of each month got
+up from botanical calendars.
+
+“I should like much to see the composite novel. Why not apply Mr.
+Galton's process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one? All the
+Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all the P----West Britons into
+one Patrick, etc., what a saving of time it would be!
+
+“I got along pretty well with my first few stories. I had some
+characters around me which, a little disguised, answered well enough.
+There was the minister of the parish, and there was an old schoolmaster
+either of them served very satisfactorily for grandfathers and
+old uncles. All I had to do was to shift some of their leading
+peculiarities, keeping the rest. The old minister wore knee-breeches.
+I clapped them on to the schoolmaster. The schoolmaster carried a tall
+gold-headed cane. I put this in the minister's hands. So with other
+things,--I shifted them round, and got a set of characters who, taken
+together, reproduced the chief persons of the village where I lived, but
+did not copy any individual exactly. Thus it went on for a while; but
+by and by my stock company began to be rather too familiarly known,
+in spite of their change of costume, and at last some altogether too
+sagacious person published what he called a 'key' to several of my
+earlier stories, in which I found the names of a number of neighbors
+attached to aliases of my own invention. All the 'types,' as he called
+them, represented by these personages of my story had come to be
+recognized, each as standing for one and the same individual of my
+acquaintance. It had been of no use to change the costume. Even changing
+the sex did no good. I had a famous old gossip in one of my tales,--a
+much-babbling Widow Sertingly. 'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon
+Spinner, the same he told about in that other story of his,--only
+the deacon's got on a petticoat and a mob-cap,--but it's the same old
+sixpence.' So I said to myself, I must have some new characters. I
+had no trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much
+alike,--dark-haired or light-haired, with the outfits belonging to their
+complexion, respectively. I had an old great-aunt, who was a tip-top
+eccentric. I had never seen anything just like her in books. So I said,
+I will have you, old lady, in one of my stories; and, sure enough, I
+fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name, which I got from the
+directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised, as I supposed,
+beyond the possibility of recognition. The book sold well, and the
+eccentric personage was voted a novelty. A few weeks after it was
+published a lawyer called upon me, as the agent of the person in the
+directory, whose family name I had used, as he maintained, to his
+and all his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss, grief, shame, and
+irreparable injury, for which the sum of blank thousand dollars would be
+a modest compensation. The story made the book sell, but not enough
+to pay blank thousand dollars. In the mean time a cousin of mine had
+sniffed out the resemblance between the character in my book and our
+great-aunt. We were rivals in her good graces. 'Cousin Pansie' spoke to
+her of my book and the trouble it was bringing on me,--she was so sorry
+about it! She liked my story,--only those personalities, you know. 'What
+personalities?' says old granny-aunt. 'Why, auntie, dear, they do say
+that he has brought in everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you
+about--well,--I suppose you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you
+you were made fun of in that novel?' Somebody--no matter who--happened
+to hear all this, and told me. She said granny-aunt's withered old face
+had two red spots come to it, as if she had been painting her cheeks
+from a pink saucer. No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they
+were two coals of fire. She sent out and got the book, and made her (the
+somebody that I was speaking of) read it to her. When she had heard
+as much as she could stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages
+to her,--explained, you know,--she sent for her lawyer, and that same
+somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up. It was not
+to my advantage. 'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the grocery
+is, and pretty much everything else. The old woman left me a legacy.
+What do you think it was? An old set of my own books, that looked as if
+it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating library.
+
+“After that I grew more careful. I studied my disguises much more
+diligently. But after all, what could I do? Here I was, writing stories
+for my living and my reputation. I made a pretty sum enough, and worked
+hard enough to earn it. No tale, no money. Then every story that went
+from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my reputation,
+and there was a set of critics,--there is a set of critics now
+and everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's
+reputation as ever a village half drowned out by an inundation watched
+for the falling of the waters. The fame I had won, such as it was,
+seemed to attend me,--not going before me in the shape of a woman with
+a trumpet, but rather following me like one of Actaeon's hounds, his
+throat open, ready to pull me down and tear me. What a fierce enemy
+is that which bays behind us in the voice of our proudest bygone
+achievement!
+
+“But, as I said above, what could I do? I must write novels, and I must
+have characters. 'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice. Oh, yes!
+Invent them! You can invent a human being that in certain aspects
+of humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was
+intended. A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of breeches, a hat
+which has been soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a
+brood of chickens raised in it,--these elements, duly adjusted to each
+other, will represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid
+the cornfield when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you
+think you can make your heroes and heroines,--nay, even your scrappy
+supernumeraries,--out of refuse material, as you made your scarecrow?
+You can't do it. You must study living people and reproduce them. And
+whom do you know so well as your friends? You will show up your friends,
+then, one after another. When your friends give out, who is left for
+you? Why, nobody but your own family, of course. When you have used
+up your family, there is nothing left for you but to write your
+autobiography.
+
+“After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious, very
+naturally. I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well as
+sexes. In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material,
+which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with.
+Who would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in the guise of a
+schoolboy? Yet I managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the
+old gentleman would have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that
+long siphon which he always used when the most sacred vintages were
+summoned from their crypts to render an account of themselves on his
+hospitable board. It was a nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I
+drink cheerfully to that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from
+his own cellar, which, with many other more important tokens of his good
+will, I call my own since his lamented demise.
+
+“I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course
+of cousins. I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of
+portraits. There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more
+correctly. She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something
+happen to it, and she walked with a crutch. Her patience under her trial
+was very pathetic and picturesque, so to speak,--I mean adapted to
+the tender parts of a story; nothing could work up better in a
+melting paragraph. But I could not, of course, describe her particular
+infirmity; that would point her out at once. I thought of shifting the
+lameness to the right lower limb, but even that would be seen through.
+So I gave the young woman that stood for her in my story a lame elbow,
+and put her arm in a sling, and made her such a model of uncomplaining
+endurance that my grandmother cried over her as if her poor old heart
+would break. She cried very easily, my grandmother; in fact, she had
+such a gift for tears that I availed myself of it, and if you remember
+old Judy, in my novel 'Honi Soit' (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called
+it),--old Judy, the black-nurse,--that was my grandmother. She had
+various other peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and
+saddled on to different characters. You see she was a perfect mine of
+singularities and idiosyncrasies. After I had used her up pretty well,
+I came down upon my poor relations. They were perfectly fair game; what
+better use could I put them to? I studied them up very carefully, and as
+there were a good many of them I helped myself freely. They lasted me,
+with occasional intermissions, I should say, three or four years. I had
+to be very careful with my poor relations,--they were as touchy as they
+could be; and as I felt bound to send a copy of my novel, whatever it
+might be, to each one of them,--there were as many as a dozen,--I took
+care to mix their characteristic features, so that, though each might
+suspect I meant the other, no one should think I meant him or her. I
+got through all my relations at last except my father and mother. I had
+treated my brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except Elisha and
+Joanna. The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,--family traits,
+I suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure
+separately in two different stories. These two novels made me some
+little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in one
+of them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and declared
+that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and that it was
+a real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and blood, and treated
+me to one of her cries. She was n't handsome when she cried, poor, dear
+Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal traits I had made use of
+in the story that Elisha found fault with.
+
+“So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
+yourself I had no choice. There was one great advantage in dealing with
+them,--I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain delicacy
+it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have been
+so near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her little
+ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would
+furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without
+hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her
+portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be
+generally recognized. One's father is commonly of tougher fibre than
+one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in
+using him professionally as material in a novel; still, while you are
+employing him as bait,--you see I am honest and plain-spoken, for your
+characters are baits to catch readers with,--I would follow kind
+Izaak Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are fastening to your
+fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he directs, but in so doing I use
+him as though you loved him.'
+
+“I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen
+who have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all
+my friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has
+occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection of
+my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them
+a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them
+and their relatives and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for
+getting acquainted with the social sphere several grades below that to
+which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that I shall find matter for
+half a dozen new stories among those connections of mine. Besides, they
+live in a Western city, and one doesn't mind much how he cuts up the
+people of places he does n't himself live in. I suppose there is not
+really so much difference in people's feelings, whether they live in
+Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves can't be expected to stretch across
+the continent. It is all a matter of greater or less distance. I read
+this morning that a Chinese fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half
+so much about it as I did about losing my sleeve button, confound
+it! People have accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the
+artist-nature,--that is all. I obey that implicitly; I am sorry if
+people don't like my descriptions, but I have done my best. I have
+pulled to pieces all the persons I am acquainted with, and put them
+together again in my characters. The quills I write with come from live
+geese, I would have you know. I expect to get some first-rate pluckings
+from those people I was speaking of, and I mean to begin my thirty-ninth
+novel as soon as I have got through my visit.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IX. THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
+
+There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a
+narrative like this. June passed away, and July, and August had come,
+and as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead Village and
+its visitors remained unsolved. The white canoe still wandered over the
+lake, alone, ghostly, always avoiding the near approach of the boats
+which seemed to be coming in its direction. Now and then a circumstance
+would happen which helped to keep inquiry alive. Good horsemanship was
+not so common among the young men of the place and its neighborhood that
+Maurice's accomplishment in that way could be overlooked. If there was
+a wicked horse or a wild colt whose owner was afraid of him, he would
+be commended to Maurice's attention. Paolo would lead him to his master
+with all due precaution,--for he had no idea of risking his neck on the
+back of any ill-conditioned beast,--and Maurice would fasten on his long
+spurs, spring into the saddle, and very speedily teach the creature good
+behavior. There soon got about a story that he was what the fresh-water
+fisherman called “one o' them whisperers.” It is a common legend enough,
+coming from the Old World, but known in American horse-talking circles,
+that some persons will whisper certain words in a horse's ear which
+will tame him if he is as wild and furious as ever Cruiser was. All this
+added to the mystery which surrounded the young man. A single improbable
+or absurd story amounts to very little, but when half a dozen such
+stories are told about the same individual or the same event, they begin
+to produce the effect of credible evidence. If the year had been 1692
+and the place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would have run
+the risk of being treated like the Reverend George Burroughs.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with
+reference to the young man of whom so many stories were told. She had
+pretty nearly convinced herself that he was the author of the paper on
+Ocean, Lake, and River, which had been read at one of the meetings of
+the Pansophian Society. She was very desirous of meeting him, if it
+were possible. It seemed as if she might, as Secretary of the Society,
+request the cooperation of any of the visitors, without impropriety.
+So, after much deliberation, she wrote a careful note, of which the
+following is an exact copy. Her hand was bold, almost masculine, a
+curious contrast to that of Euthymia, which was delicately feminine.
+PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-. MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,--You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the
+meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure of
+seeing you at any of them. We have supposed that we might be indebted
+to you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to with
+much interest. As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be inquisitive
+respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any papers kindly
+sent us by the temporary residents of our village will be welcome, and
+if adapted to the wants of our Association will be read at one of its
+meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps both read and printed.
+May we not hope for your presence at the meeting, which is to take place
+next Wednesday evening? Respectfully yours,
+
+LURIDA VINCENT, Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
+
+To this note the Secretary received the following reply: MISS LURIDA
+VINCENT,
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 4, 18-.
+
+Secretary of the Pansophian Society:
+
+DEAR MISS VINCENT,--I have received the ticket you refer to, and desire
+to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention. I regret that I
+have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend the meetings of the
+Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which I feel an inclination
+to write, it will give me pleasure to send a paper, to be disposed of as
+the Society may see fit.
+
+Very respectfully yours, MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
+
+“He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the
+other evening,” the Secretary said to herself. “No matter,--he wrote
+it,--there is no mistaking his handwriting. We know something about him,
+now, at any rate. But why doesn't he come to our meetings? What has his
+antipathy to do with his staying away? I must find out what his secret
+is, and I will. I don't believe it's harder than it was to solve that
+prize problem which puzzled so many teachers, or than beating Crakowitz,
+the great chess-player.”
+
+To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties
+which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those
+who knew her in her school-days. It was a very delicate piece of
+business; for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate, and
+believed she was entitled to do almost everything that men dared to,
+she knew very well there were certain limits which a young woman like
+herself must not pass.
+
+In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student
+at the University,--the same whom he had rescued from his dangerous
+predicament in the lake. With him had called one of the teachers,--an
+instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy. Maurice and the
+instructor exchanged a few words in Italian. The young man spoke it with
+the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.
+
+After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about
+him,--who he was, how long he had been in the village, whether anything
+was known of his history,--all these inquiries with an eagerness which
+implied some special and peculiar reason for the interest they evinced.
+
+“I feel satisfied,” the instructor said, “that I have met that young man
+in my own country. It was a number of years ago, and of course he
+has altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about him
+of--what shall I call it?---apprehension,--as if he were fearing the
+approach of something or somebody. I think it is the way a man would
+look that was haunted; you know what I mean,--followed by a spirit or
+ghost. He does not suggest the idea of a murderer,--very far from it;
+but if he did, I should think he was every minute in fear of seeing the
+murdered man's spirit.”
+
+The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor could
+recall. He had seen him in Rome, he thought, at the Fountain of Trevi,
+where so many strangers go before leaving the city. The youth was in
+the company of a man who looked like a priest. He could not mistake
+the peculiar expression of his countenance, but that was all he now
+remembered about his appearance. His attention had been called to this
+young man by seeing that some of the bystanders were pointing at him,
+and noticing that they were whispering with each other as if with
+reference to him. He should say that the youth was at that time fifteen
+or sixteen years old, and the time was about ten years ago.
+
+After all, this evidence was of little or no value. Suppose the youth
+were Maurice; what then? We know that he had been in Italy, and had been
+there a good while,--or at least we infer so much from his familiarity
+with the language, and are confirmed in the belief by his having an
+Italian servant, whom he probably brought from Italy when he returned.
+If he wrote the paper which was read the other evening, that settles it,
+for the writer says he had lived by the Tiber. We must put this scrap of
+evidence furnished by the Professor with the other scraps; it may
+turn out of some consequence, sooner or later. It is like a piece of a
+dissected map; it means almost nothing by itself, but when we find the
+pieces it joins with we may discover a very important meaning in it.
+
+In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and
+immediately around Arrowhead Village, every day must have its local
+gossip as well as its general news. The newspaper tells the small
+community what is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues of
+male and female, especially the latter, fill in with the occurrences
+and comments of the ever-stirring microcosm. The fact that the Italian
+teacher had, or thought he had, seen Maurice ten years before was
+circulated and made the most of,--turned over and over like a cake,
+until it was thoroughly done on both sides and all through. It was a
+very small cake, but better than nothing. Miss Vincent heard this story,
+as others did, and talked about it with her friend, Miss Tower. Here was
+one more fact to help along.
+
+The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna Institute
+remained, as they had always been, intimate friends. They were the
+natural complements of each other. Euthymia represented a complete,
+symmetrical womanhood. Her outward presence was only an index of a
+large, wholesome, affluent life. She could not help being courageous,
+with such a firm organization. She could not help being generous,
+cheerful, active. She had been told often enough that she was fair to
+look upon. She knew that she was called The Wonder by the schoolmates
+who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but she did not
+overvalue them. She rather tended to depreciate her own gifts, in
+comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent. The two agreed
+all the better for differing as they did. The octave makes a perfect
+chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the ear. Each admired
+the other with a heartiness which if they had been less unlike, would
+have been impossible.
+
+It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other.
+The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her
+friend. All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her
+bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She
+would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had
+any message for her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the
+taking of an instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book
+on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she
+only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning
+up, as a moist sponge absorbs water. “What can I do with such a creature
+as this?” he said to himself. “There is only one way to deal with her,
+treat her as one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it
+will spin its own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own
+web of knowledge.”
+
+“Do you really think of studying medicine?” said Dr. Butts to her.
+
+“I have n't made up my mind about that,” she answered, “but I want to
+know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we
+are all tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find
+some very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be
+able to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims
+and fancies. Besides, I want to know everything.”
+
+“They tell me you do, already,” said Dr. Butts.
+
+“I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!”
+ exclaimed The Terror.
+
+The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of
+education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable
+expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of
+darkness until it is partially illuminated.
+
+“You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most
+ignorant young lady that ever graduated there,” said the doctor. “They
+tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the
+school was founded.”
+
+“What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small
+aquarium, to be sure!” answered The Terror. “He was six inches long, the
+monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did
+you hand me that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything
+about the human body?”
+
+“You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try you
+with an easy book, by way of introduction.”
+
+The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.
+
+“I meant what I said, and I mean what I say. When I talk about my
+ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor. I don't
+measure myself with my teachers, either. You must talk to me as if I
+were a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything. Where is your
+hat, doctor? Let me try it on.”
+
+The doctor handed her his wide-awake. The Terror's hair was not
+naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather short.
+Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard. She tried to put
+the hat on.
+
+“Do you see that?” she said. “I could n't wear it--it would squeeze my
+eyes out of my head. The books told me that women's brains were smaller
+than men's: perhaps they are,--most of them,--I never measured a
+great many. But when they try to settle what women are good for, by
+phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my head. I don't
+believe in their nonsense, for all that. You might as well tell me
+that if one horse weighs more than another horse he is worth more,--a
+cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred pounds better than
+Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand. Give me a list of the best
+books you can think of, and turn me loose in your library. I can find
+what I want, if you have it; and what I don't find there I will get at
+the Public Library. I shall want to ask you a question now and then.”
+
+The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully,
+as if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her slight
+constitutional resource.
+
+She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her
+statements about herself.
+
+“I am not a fool, if I am ignorant. Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide sea of
+ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows and
+some of its depths. Your profession deals with the facts of life that
+interest me most just now, and I want to know something of it. Perhaps I
+may find it a calling such as would suit me.”
+
+“Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?” said
+the doctor.
+
+“Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to know
+something more about it first. Perhaps I sha'n't believe in medicine
+enough to practise it. Perhaps I sha'n't like it well enough. No matter
+about that. I wish to study some of your best books on some of the
+subjects that most interest me. I know about bones and muscles and all
+that, and about digestion and respiration and such things. I want to
+study up the nervous system, and learn all about it. I am of the nervous
+temperament myself, and perhaps that is the reason. I want to read about
+insanity and all that relates to it.”
+
+A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The Terror
+said this.
+
+“Nervous system. Insanity. She has headaches, I know,--all those
+large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what
+has set her off about insanity and the nervous system? I wonder if any
+of her more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder. Bright
+people very often have crazy relations. Perhaps some of her friends are
+in that way. I wonder whether”--the doctor did not speak any of these
+thoughts, and in fact hardly shaped his “whether,” for The Terror
+interrupted his train of reflection, or rather struck into it in a way
+which startled him.
+
+“Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?” she asked,
+looking at its empty place on the shelf.
+
+“On my table,” the doctor answered. “I have been consulting it.”
+
+Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly
+until she came to the one she wanted. The doctor cast his eye on the
+beading of the page, and saw the large letters A N T.
+
+“I thought so,” he said to himself. “We shall know everything there is
+in the books about antipathies now, if we never did before. She has a
+special object in studying the nervous system, just as I suspected. I
+think she does not care to mention it at this time; but if she finds out
+anything of interest she will tell me, if she does anybody. Perhaps
+she does not mean to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business,--a
+young girl studying the natural history of a young man. Not quite so
+safe as botany or palaeontology!”
+
+Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and
+chose to keep them to herself, for the present, at least. Her hands
+were full enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of
+the great Arrowhead Village enigma. But she was in the most perfect
+training, so far as her intelligence was concerned; and the summer rest
+had restored her bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an overcharged
+battery which will find conductors somewhere to carry off its crowded
+energy.
+
+At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful season
+it had ever known. The Pansophian Society flourished to an extraordinary
+degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary. The rector was
+a good figure-head as President, but the Secretary was the life of the
+Society. Communications came in abundantly: some from the village and
+its neighborhood, some from the University and the Institute, some from
+distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the
+work of examining these papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet
+of her room looked like a barn floor after a husking-match. A glance at
+the manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened
+any young writer away from the thought of authorship as a business. If
+the candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection
+and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately. A paper of
+twenty pages would come in, with an underscored request to please read
+through, carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to condemn
+any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the
+Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of martial law in
+dealing with manuscripts. The looker-on might have seen her take up the
+paper, cast one flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence
+and the last, dip at a venture into two or three pages, and decide as
+swiftly as the lightning calculator would add up a column of figures
+what was to be its destination. If rejected, it went into the heap
+on the left; if approved, it was laid apart, to be submitted to the
+Committee for their judgment. The foolish writers who insist on one's
+reading through their manuscript poems and stories ought to know how
+fatal the request is to their prospects. It provokes the reader, to
+begin with. The reading of manuscript is frightful work, at the best;
+the reading of worthless manuscript--and most of that which one is
+requested to read through is worthless--would add to the terrors of
+Tartarus, if any infernal deity were ingenious enough to suggest it as a
+punishment.
+
+If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the
+Committee, but was returned to the author, if he sent for it, which he
+commonly did. Its natural course was to try for admission into some one
+of the popular magazines: into “The Sifter,” the most fastidious of them
+all; if that declined it, into “The Second Best;” and if that returned
+it, into “The Omnivorous.” If it was refused admittance at the doors of
+all the magazines, it might at length find shelter in the corner of a
+newspaper, where a good deal of very readable verse is to be met with
+nowadays, some of which has been, no doubt, presented to the Pansophian
+Society, but was not considered up to its standard.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+X. A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+There was a recent accession to the transient population of the village
+which gave rise to some speculation. The new-comer was a young fellow,
+rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much at home as if he
+owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it. He commonly had a cigar
+in his mouth, carried a pocket pistol, of the non-explosive sort, and
+a stick with a bulldog's head for its knob; wore a soft hat, a
+coarse check suit, a little baggy, and gaiterboots which had been
+half-soled,--a Bohemian-looking personage, altogether.
+
+This individual began making explorations in every direction. He was
+very curious about the place and all the people in it. He was especially
+interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he made all
+sorts of inquiries. This led him to form a summer acquaintance with the
+Secretary, who was pleased to give him whatever information he asked
+for; being proud of the Society, as she had a right to be, and knowing
+more about it than anybody else.
+
+The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing
+something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the stories, true and false,
+connected with his name. He questioned everybody who could tell him
+anything about Maurice, and set down the answers in a little note-book
+he always had with him.
+
+All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this
+new visitor. Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an attribute
+thought to belong more especially to her sex, became somewhat interested
+to know more exactly who this inquiring, note-taking personage, who
+seemed to be everywhere and to know everybody, might himself be. Meeting
+him at the Public Library at a fortunate moment, when there was nobody
+but the old Librarian, who was hard of hearing, to interfere with their
+conversation, the little Secretary had a chance to try to find out
+something about him.
+
+“This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess,” he
+remarked to Miss Lurida.
+
+“It is, indeed,” she said. “Have you found it well furnished with the
+books you most want?”
+
+“Oh, yes,--books enough. I don't care so much for the books as I do for
+the Newspapers. I like a Review well enough,--it tells you all there
+is in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper saves a
+fellow the trouble of reading it.”
+
+“You find the papers you want, here, I hope,” said the young lady.
+
+“Oh, I get along pretty well. It's my off-time, and I don't do much
+reading or writing. Who is the city correspondent of this place?”
+
+“I don't think we have any one who writes regularly. Now and then, there
+is a letter, with the gossip of the place in it, or an account of some
+of the doings at our Society. The city papers are always glad to get the
+reports of our meetings, and to know what is going on in the village.”
+
+“I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the
+Secretary.”
+
+This was a point-blank shot. She meant to question the young man about
+his business, and here she was on the witness-stand. She ducked her
+head, and let the question go over her.
+
+“Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write,
+--especially to give an account of their own papers. I think they like
+to have me put in the applause, when they get any. I do that sometimes.”
+ (How much more, she did not say.)
+
+“I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they
+tell me of the Secretary, I should have thought she might have written
+herself.”
+
+He looked her straight in the eyes.
+
+“I have transmitted some good papers,” she said, without winking, or
+swallowing, or changing color, precious little color she had to change;
+her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and more too.
+“You spoke of Newspapers,” she said, without any change of tone or
+manner: “do you not frequently write for them yourself?”
+
+“I should think I did,” answered the young man. “I am a regular
+correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'”
+
+“The regular correspondent from where?”
+
+“Where! Oh, anywhere,--the place does not make much difference. I have
+been writing chiefly from Naples and St. Petersburg, and now and then
+from Constantinople.”
+
+“How long since your return to this country, may I ask?”
+
+“My return? I have never been out of this country. I travel with a
+gazetteer and some guide-books. It is the cheapest way, and you can get
+the facts much better from them than by trusting your own observation. I
+have made the tour of Europe by the help of them and the newspapers.
+But of late I have taken to interviewing. I find that a very pleasant
+specialty. It is about as good sport as trout-tickling, and much the
+same kind of business. I should like to send the Society an account of
+one of my interviews. Don't you think they would like to hear it?”
+
+“I have no doubt they would. Send it to me, and I will look it over; and
+if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting. You
+know everything has to be examined and voted on by the Committee,” said
+the cautious Secretary.
+
+“Very well,--I will risk it. After it is read, if it is read, please
+send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The Second
+Best,' or some of the paying magazines.”
+
+This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the Pansophian
+Society.
+
+“I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached,
+'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to
+a certain well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could
+concerning him and all that related to him. I have interviewed a good
+many politicians, who I thought rather liked the process; but I had
+never tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite sure
+how this one would feel about it. I said as much to the chief, but he
+pooh-poohed my scruples. 'It is n't our business whether they like it
+or not,' said he; 'the public wants it, and what the public wants it's
+bound to have, and we are bound to furnish it. Don't be afraid of your
+man; he 's used to it,--he's been pumped often enough to take it
+easy, and what you've got to do is to pump him dry. You need n't be
+modest,--ask him what you like; he is n't bound to answer, you know.'
+
+“As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up a
+little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine on
+my best high-lows. I said to myself, as I was walking towards the house
+where he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and pass for a
+visitor from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers' who call in
+to pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home and say that
+they have met the distinguished So and So, which gives them a certain
+distinction in the village circle to which they belong.
+
+“My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
+reception-room. I observed that he managed to get the light full on my
+face, while his own was in the shade. I had meant to have his face in
+the light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged things so as
+to give him that advantage. It was like two frigates manoeuvring,--each
+trying to get to windward of the other. I never take out my
+note-book until I and my man have got engaged in artless and earnest
+conversation,--always about himself and his works, of course, if he is
+an author.
+
+“I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers. Those who
+had read his books were naturally curious to see the writer of them.
+
+“He assented, emphatically, to this statement. He had, he said, a great
+many callers.
+
+“I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his readers
+feel as if they knew him personally, and caused them to cherish a
+certain attachment to him.
+
+“He smiled, as if pleased. He was himself disposed to think so, he said.
+In fact, a great many persons, strangers writing to him, had told him
+so.
+
+“My dear sir,” I said, “there is nothing wonderful in the fact you
+mention. You reach a responsive chord in many human breasts.
+
+
+   'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.'
+
+“Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled), were
+your blood relation. Do they not name their children after you very
+frequently?
+
+“He blushed perceptibly. 'Sometimes,' he answered. 'I hope they will all
+turn out well.'
+
+“I am afraid I am taking up too much of your time, I said.
+
+“No, not at all,' he replied. 'Come up into my library; it is warmer and
+pleasanter there.'
+
+“I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an
+author's library, which is commonly his working-room, is, like a lady's
+boudoir, a sacred apartment.
+
+“So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my face,
+when I wanted it on has.
+
+“You have a fine library, I remarked. There were books all round the
+room, and one of those whirligig square book-cases. I saw in front a
+Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book, and
+other classical works and books of grave aspect. I contrived to give
+it a turn, and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of Barnum's
+Rhyming Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations and cheap
+compends of knowledge. Always twirl one of those revolving book-cases
+when you visit a scholar's library. That is the way to find out what
+books he does n't want you to see, which of course are the ones you
+particularly wish to see.
+
+“Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive. What do you suppose
+is an interviewer's business? Did you ever see an oyster opened? Yes?
+Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing. His man is his
+oyster, which he, not with sword, but with pencil and note-book, must
+open. Mark how the oysterman's thin blade insinuates itself,--how gently
+at first, how strenuously when once fairly between the shells!
+
+“And here, I said, you write your books,--those books which have
+carried your name to all parts of the world, and will convey it down to
+posterity! Is this the desk at which you write? And is this the pen you
+write with?
+
+“'It is the desk and the very pen,' he replied.
+
+“He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them. I took up
+the pen as reverentially as if it had been made of the feather which
+the angel I used to read about in Young's 'Night Thoughts' ought to have
+dropped, and did n't.
+
+“Would you kindly write your autograph in my note-book, with that pen? I
+asked him. Yes, he would, with great pleasure.
+
+“So I got out my note-book.
+
+“It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this interview.
+I admire your bookcases, said I. Can you tell me just how high they are?
+
+“'They are about eight feet, with the cornice.'
+
+“I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough, said
+I. Eight feet,--eight feet, with the cornice. I must put that down.
+
+“So I got out my pencil.
+
+“I sat there with my pencil and note-book in my hand, all ready, but not
+using them as yet.
+
+“I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a
+very early age. Is it taking too great a liberty to ask how early you
+began to write in verse?
+
+“He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are
+themselves the subjects of conversation.
+
+“'Very early,--I hardly know how early. I can say truly, as Louise Colet
+said,
+
+
+   “'Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.'”
+
+“I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be kind
+enough to translate that line for me.
+
+“'Certainly. With pleasure. I made my first verses without knowing how
+to write them.'
+
+“How interesting! But I never heard of Louise Colet. Who was she?
+
+“My man was pleased to give me a piece of literary information.
+
+“'Louise the lioness! Never heard of her? You have heard of Alphonse
+Karr?'
+
+“Why,--yes,--more or less. To tell the truth, I am not very well up in
+French literature. What had he to do with your lioness?
+
+“'A good deal. He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a
+case-knife in her hand, intending to stick him with it. By and by he
+came down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing
+her case-knife. He took it from her, after getting a cut in his
+dressing-gown, put it in his pocket, and went on with his cigarette. He
+keeps it with an inscription:
+
+
+   “Donne a Alphonse Karr
+   Par Madame Louise Colet....
+   Dans le dos.
+
+“Lively little female!'
+
+“I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview
+the lively little female. He was evidently tickled with the interest
+I appeared to take in the story he told me. That made him feel amiably
+disposed toward me.
+
+“I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at everything
+about his family history and the small events of his boyhood. Some of
+the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a good bold face on my
+most audacious questions, and so I wormed out a great deal that was new
+concerning my subject. He had been written about considerably, and the
+public wouldn't have been satisfied without some new facts; and these I
+meant to have, and I got. No matter about many of them now, but here
+are some questions and answers that may be thought worth reading or
+listening to:
+
+“How do you enjoy being what they call 'a celebrity,' or a celebrated
+man?
+
+“'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough. But self-love
+is a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes all
+through it, and never fill it up. It breeds an appetite for more of the
+same kind. It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of egotism. It
+generates a craving for high-seasoned personalities which is in danger
+of becoming slavery, like that following the abuse of alcohol, or opium,
+or tobacco. Think of a man's having every day, by every post, letters
+that tell him he is this and that and the other, with epithets and
+endearments, one tenth part of which would have made him blush red hot
+before he began to be what you call a celebrity!'
+
+“Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is called
+celebrity?
+
+“'I should think so! Suppose you were obliged every day of your life
+to stand and shake hands, as the President of the United States has to
+after his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel after
+a few months' practice of that exercise? Suppose you had given you
+thirty-five millions of money a year, in hundred-dollar coupons, on
+condition that you cut them all off yourself in the usual manner: how do
+you think you should like the look of a pair of scissors at the end of
+a year, in which you had worked ten hours a day every day but Sunday,
+cutting off a hundred coupons an hour, and found you had not finished
+your task, after all? You have addressed me as what you are pleased to
+call “a literary celebrity.” I won't dispute with you as to whether or
+not I deserve that title. I will take it for granted I am what you call
+me, and give you some few hints on my experience.
+
+“'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for
+Self-Protection. It meant well, and it was hoped that something would
+come of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I am sorry
+to say that it has not effected its purpose.'
+
+“I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of
+that Association. Yes, I said, an admirable Association it was, and as
+much needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I am
+sorry to hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop to the
+abuse of a deserving class of men. It ought to have done it; it was well
+conceived, and its public manifesto was a masterpiece. (I saw by his
+expression that he was its author.)
+
+“'I see I can trust you,' he said. 'I will unbosom myself freely of some
+of the grievances attaching to the position of the individual to whom
+you have applied the term “Literary Celebrity.”
+
+“'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales of
+his books, all the money from which, it is taken for granted, goes into
+his pocket. Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to him for
+his signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his name comes to
+him for assistance.
+
+“'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by
+receiving blank formulae, which, with their promises to pay, he is
+expected to fill up.
+
+“'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and give
+his opinion about each of them, which opinion, if it has a word
+which can be used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the
+newspapers.
+
+“'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he is
+called upon to examine and pronounce on their merits; these manuscripts
+having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to whom they have
+been sent, and having as a rule no literary value whatever.
+
+“'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to write
+for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make after-dinner speeches, to
+send money for objects he does not believe in to places he never heard
+of.
+
+“'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers, who
+begin by saying they have no claim upon his time, and then appropriate
+it by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and sheet after
+sheet, if of the other.
+
+“'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment
+and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be suggested
+to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-grandmother on her
+reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an
+ode for the Fourth of July in a Western township not to be found in
+Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover
+who believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to win the object of his
+affections.'
+
+“Is n't it so? I asked the Celebrity.
+
+“'I would bet on the prose lover. She will show the verses to him, and
+they will both have a good laugh over them.'
+
+“I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with
+the Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing
+self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and
+spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen
+on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him
+that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself
+exposed to the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of
+The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'”
+
+After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who the
+person spoken of as the “Literary Celebrity” might be. Among the various
+suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was neither more
+nor less than the unexplained personage known in the village as Maurice
+Kirkwood. Why should that be his real name? Why should not he be the
+Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to this retreat to escape
+from the persecutions of kind friends, who were pricking him and
+stabbing him nigh to death with their daggers of sugar candy?
+
+The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the
+Interviewer the next time she met him at the Library, which happened
+soon after the meeting when his paper was read.
+
+“I do not know,” she said, in the course of a conversation in which she
+had spoken warmly of his contribution to the literary entertainment of
+the Society, “that you mentioned the name of the Literary Celebrity whom
+you interviewed so successfully.”
+
+“I did not mention him, Miss Vincent,” he answered, “nor do I think it
+worth while to name him. He might not care to have the whole story told
+of how he was handled so as to make him communicative. Besides, if I
+did, it would bring him a new batch of sympathetic letters, regretting
+that he was bothered by those horrid correspondents, full of indignation
+at the bores who presumed to intrude upon him with their pages of
+trash, all the writers of which would expect answers to their letters of
+condolence.”
+
+The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman who
+called himself Maurice Kirkwood.
+
+“What,” he answered, “the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides all
+the wild horses of the neighborhood? No, I don't know him, but I have
+met him once or twice, out walking. A mighty shy fellow, they tell me.
+Do you know anything particular about him?”
+
+“Not much. None of us do, but we should like to. The story is that he
+has a queer antipathy to something or to somebody, nobody knows what or
+whom.”
+
+“To newspaper correspondents, perhaps,” said the interviewer. “What made
+you ask me about him? You did n't think he was my 'Literary Celebrity,'
+did you?”
+
+“I did not know. I thought he might be. Why don't you interview this
+mysterious personage? He would make a good sensation for your paper, I
+should think.”
+
+“Why, what is there to be interviewed in him? Is there any story
+of crime, or anything else to spice a column or so, or even a
+few paragraphs, with? If there is, I am willing to handle him
+professionally.”
+
+“I told you he has what they call an antipathy. I don't know how much
+wiser you are for that piece of information.”
+
+“An antipathy! Why, so have I an antipathy. I hate a spider, and as for
+a naked caterpillar,--I believe I should go into a fit if I had to
+touch one. I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great green
+caterpillars that come down from the elm-trees in August and early
+autumn.”
+
+“Afraid of them?” asked the young lady.
+
+“Afraid? What should I be afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't
+give any reason. All I know is that when I come across one of these
+creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,--sometimes using
+very improper words. The fact is, they make me crazy for the moment.”
+
+“I understand what you mean,” said Miss Vincent. “I used to have the
+same feeling about spiders, but I was ashamed of it, and kept a little
+menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that is, pretty
+much got over it, for I don't love the creatures very dearly, though I
+don't scream when I see one.”
+
+“What did you tell me, Miss Vincent, was this fellow's particular
+antipathy?”
+
+“That is just the question. I told you that we don't know and we can't
+guess what it is. The people here are tired out with trying to
+discover some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way of
+everybody, as he does. They say he is odd or crazy, and they don't seem
+to be able to tell which. It would make the old ladies of the village
+sleep a great deal sounder,--yes, and some of the young ladies, too,--if
+they could find out what this Mr. Kirkwood has got into his head, that
+he never comes near any of the people here.”
+
+“I think I can find out,” said the Interviewer, whose professional
+ambition was beginning to be excited. “I never came across anybody yet
+that I could n't get something out of. I am going to stay here a week
+or two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is any, of
+this Mr. Maurice Kirkwood.”
+
+We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present us
+with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or failure.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XI. THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
+
+When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as she
+pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a strain
+she was putting upon it. She did know that she was doing her best, but
+how great the force of her best was she was not aware until she saw
+its effects. Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature, in all its
+manifestations. She did not pride herself on her knowledge, nor reproach
+herself for her ignorance. In every way she formed a striking contrast
+to her friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they spoke betrayed the
+difference between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's head-voice,
+penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the
+corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the quiet,
+conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature restful
+and sympathetic.
+
+The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which will
+one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies. The dependence of
+two young friends may be mutual, but one will always lean more heavily
+than the other; the masculine and feminine elements will be as sure to
+assert themselves as if the friends were of different sexes.
+
+On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her
+superior. She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge, and
+deferred to her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an oracle,
+but as wiser than herself or any of her other companions. It was a
+different thing, however, when the graver questions of life came up.
+Lurida was full of suggestions, plans, projects, which were too liable
+to run into whims before she knew where they were tending. She would lay
+out her ideas before Euthymia so fluently and eloquently that she could
+not help believing them herself, and feeling as if her friend must
+accept them with an enthusiasm like her own. Then Euthymia would
+take them up with her sweet, deliberate accents, and bring her calmer
+judgment to bear on them.
+
+Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new
+interests and occupations. She was constantly on the lookout for papers
+to be read at the meetings of her Society,--for she made it her own in
+great measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,--and in the mean time she was
+reading in various books which Dr. Butts selected for her, all bearing
+on the profession to which, at least as a possibility, she was looking
+forward. Privately and in a very still way, she was occupying herself
+with the problem of the young stranger, the subject of some delusion,
+or disease, or obliquity of unknown nature, to which the vague name of
+antipathy had been attached. Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in
+the fear that over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and
+partly from anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in
+her desire to get at the truth of a very puzzling question.
+
+“How do you like the books I see you reading?” said Euthymia to Lurida,
+one day, as they met at the Library.
+
+“Better than all the novels I ever read,” she answered. “I have been
+reading about the nervous system, and it seems to me I have come nearer
+the springs of life than ever before in all my studies. I feel just as
+if I were a telegraph operator. I was sure that I had a battery in my
+head, for I know my brain works like one; but I did not know how many
+centres of energy there are, and how they are played upon by all sorts
+of influences, external and internal. Do you know, I believe I could
+solve the riddle of the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,' as the paper called
+him, if he would only stay here long enough?”
+
+“What paper has had anything about it, Lurida? I have not seen or heard
+of its being mentioned in any of the papers.”
+
+“You know that rather queer-looking young man who has been about here
+for some time,--the same one who gave the account of his interview with
+a celebrated author? Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper in which
+he writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.' He talks
+about this village in a very free and easy way. He says there is a
+Sphinx here, who has mystified us all.”
+
+“And you have been chatting with that fellow! Don't you know that he'll
+have you and all of us in his paper? Don't you know that nothing is safe
+where one of those fellows gets in with his note-book and pencil? Oh,
+Lurida, Lurida, do be careful! What with this mysterious young man and
+this very questionable newspaper-paragraph writer, you will be talked
+about, if you don't mind, before you know it. You had better let the
+riddle of the Sphinx alone. If you must deal with such dangerous people,
+the safest way is to set one of them to find out the other.--I wonder
+if we can't get this new man to interview the visitor you have so much
+curiosity about. That might be managed easily enough without your having
+anything to do with it. Let me alone, and I will arrange it. But mind,
+now, you must not meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and get
+your name in the 'Household Inquisitor' in a way you won't like.”
+
+“Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia. I don't mean to give him a
+chance to work me into his paper, if I can help it. But if you can get
+him to try his skill upon this interesting personage and his antipathy,
+so much the better. I am very curious about it, and therefore about
+him. I want to know what has produced this strange state of feeling in a
+young man who ought to have all the common instincts of a social being.
+I believe there are unexplained facts in the region of sympathies
+and antipathies which will repay study with a deeper insight into the
+mysteries of life than we have dreamed of hitherto. I often
+wonder whether there are not heart-waves and soul-waves as well as
+'brain-waves,' which some have already recognized.”
+
+Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman talking
+the language of science like an adept. The truth is, Lurida was one of
+those persons who never are young, and who, by way of compensation, will
+never be old. They are found in both sexes. Two well-known graduates of
+one of our great universities are living examples of this precocious
+but enduring intellectual development. If the readers of this narrative
+cannot pick them out, they need not expect the writer of it to help
+them. If they guess rightly who they are, they will recognize the fact
+that just such exceptional individuals as the young woman we are dealing
+with are met with from time to time in families where intelligence has
+been cumulative for two or three generations.
+
+Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable visitor
+should learn all that was known in the village about the nebulous
+individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the village were
+trying to penetrate, but that he should learn it from some other
+informant than Lurida.
+
+The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside
+his door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and
+handsome youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so strikingly
+that one might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a seat by his
+side. Presently the two were engaged in conversation. The Interviewer
+asked all sorts of questions about everybody in the village. When he
+came to inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a remarkable interest
+regarding him. The greatest curiosity, he said, existed with reference
+to this personage. Everybody was trying to find out what his story
+was,--for a story, and a strange one, he must surely have,--and nobody
+had succeeded.
+
+The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive. The young man told him
+the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis, about
+his horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat was
+overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help out
+the effect of his narrative.
+
+The Interviewer was becoming excited. “Can't find out anything about
+him, you said, did n-'t you? How do you know there's anything to find?
+Do you want to know what I think he is? I'll tell you. I think he is an
+actor,--a fellow from one of the city theatres. Those fellows go off in
+their summer vacation, and like to puzzle the country folks. They are
+the very same chaps, like as not, the visitors have seen in plays at the
+city theatres; but of course they don't know 'em in plain clothes. Kings
+and Emperors look pretty shabby off the stage sometimes, I can tell
+you.”
+
+The young man followed the Interviewer's lead. “I shouldn't wonder if
+you were right,” he said. “I remember seeing a young fellow in Romeo
+that looked a good deal like this one. But I never met the Sphinx, as
+they call him, face to face. He is as shy as a woodchuck. I believe
+there are people here that would give a hundred dollars to find out who
+he is, and where he came from, and what he is here for, and why he does
+n't act like other folks. I wonder why some of those newspaper men don't
+come up here and get hold of this story. It would be just the thing for
+a sensational writer.”
+
+To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest.
+Always on the lookout for something to make up a paragraph or a column
+about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,--to the biggest
+pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live frog from
+the human stomach story, the third set of teeth and reading without
+spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous commonplaces
+which are kept in type with e o y or e 6 m (every other year or every
+six months) at the foot; always in want of a fresh incident, a new
+story, an undescribed character, an unexplained mystery, it is no wonder
+that the Interviewer fastened eagerly upon this most tempting subject
+for an inventive and emotional correspondent.
+
+He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's
+confidential servant, but had never spoken to him. So he said to himself
+that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with. In the summer
+season many kinds of small traffic were always carried on in Arrowhead
+Village. Among the rest, the sellers of fruits--oranges, bananas,
+and others, according to the seasons--did an active business. The
+Interviewer watched one of these fruit-sellers, and saw that his
+hand-cart stopped opposite the house where, as he knew, Maurice Kirkwood
+was living. Presently Paolo came out of the door, and began examining
+the contents of the hand-cart. The Interviewer saw his opportunity. Here
+was an introduction to the man, and the man must introduce him to the
+master.
+
+He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,--there was
+no difficulty about that. He had learned his name, and that he was an
+Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.
+
+“Good morning, Mr. Paul,” he said. “How do you like the look of these
+oranges?”
+
+“They pretty fair,” said Paolo: “no so good as them las' week; no sweet
+as them was.”
+
+“Why, how do you know without tasting them?” said the Interviewer.
+
+“I know by his look,--I know by his smell,--he no good yaller,--he no
+smell ripe,--I know orange ever since my head no bigger than he is,” and
+Paolo laughed at his own comparison.
+
+The Interviewer laughed louder than Paolo.
+
+“Good!” said he,--“first-rate! Of course you know all about 'em. Why
+can't you pick me out a couple of what you think are the best of 'em? I
+shall be greatly obliged to you. I have a sick friend, and I want to get
+two nice sweet ones for him.”
+
+Paolo was pleased. His skill and judgment were recognized. He felt
+grateful to the stranger, who had given him, an opportunity of
+conferring a favor. He selected two, after careful examination and grave
+deliberation. The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to offer him
+an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.
+
+“How is Mr. Kirkwood, to-day?” he asked.
+
+“Signor? He very well. He always well. Why you ask? Anybody tell you he
+sick?”
+
+“No, nobody said he was sick. I have n't seen him going about for a day
+or two, and I thought he might have something the matter with him. Is he
+in the house now?”
+
+“No: he off riding. He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day.
+Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle in the morning, very, very
+early,--in night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and read,
+and study, and write,--he great scholar, Misser Kirkwood.”
+
+“A good many books, has n't he?”
+
+“He got whole shelfs full of books. Great books, little books, old
+books, new books, all sorts of books. He great scholar, I tell you.”
+
+“Has n't he some curiosities,--old figures, old jewelry, old coins, or
+things of that sort?”
+
+Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously. “He don't
+keep no jewels nor no money in his chamber. He got some old things,--old
+jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they used to have in old
+times: she don't pass now.” Paolo's genders were apt to be somewhat
+indiscriminately distributed.
+
+A lucky thought struck the Interviewer. “I wonder if he would examine
+some old coins of mine?” said he, in a modestly tentative manner.
+
+“I think he like to see anything curious. When he come home I ask him.
+Who will I tell him wants to ask him about old coin?”
+
+“Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call and
+show him some old pieces of money, said to be Roman ones.”
+
+The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old
+battered bits of copper which he had picked up at a tollman's, where
+they had been passed off for cents. He had bought them as curiosities.
+One had the name of Gallienus upon it, tolerably distinct,--a common
+little Roman penny; but it would serve his purpose of asking a question,
+as would two or three others with less legible legends. Paolo told him
+that if he came the next morning he would stand a fair chance of seeing
+Mr. Kirkwood. At any rate, he would speak to his master.
+
+The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing his
+breakfast and his cigar, feeling reasonably sure of finding Mr. Kirkwood
+at home, as he proved to be. He had told Paolo to show the stranger up
+to his library,--or study, as he modestly called it.
+
+It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one
+direction, and the wooded hill in another. The tenant had fitted it up
+in scholarly fashion. The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous, many of
+them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding, showing that
+probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other Italian city. With
+these were older volumes in their dark original leather, and recent ones
+in cloth or paper. As the Interviewer ran his eye over them, he found
+that he could make very little out of what their backs taught him. Some
+of the paper-covered books, some of the cloth-covered ones, had names
+which he knew; but those on the backs of many of the others were strange
+to his eyes. The classics of Greek and Latin and Italian literature
+were there; and he saw enough to feel convinced that he had better not
+attempt to display his erudition in the company of this young scholar.
+
+The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his
+visiting a person who had not asked to make his acquaintance, and who
+was living as a recluse. He took out his battered coppers, and showed
+them to Maurice.
+
+“I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a good
+many yourself. So I took the liberty of calling upon you, hoping that
+you could tell me something about some ancient coins I have had for
+a good while.” So saying, he pointed to the copper with the name of
+Gallienus.
+
+“Is this very rare and valuable? I have heard that great prices have
+been paid for some of these ancient coins,--ever so many guineas,
+sometimes. I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old.”
+
+“More than a thousand years old,” said Maurice.
+
+“And worth a great deal of money?” asked the Interviewer.
+
+“No, not a great deal of money,” answered Maurice.
+
+“How much, should you say?” said the Interviewer.
+
+Maurice smiled. “A little more than the value of its weight in
+copper,--I am afraid not much more. There are a good many of these coins
+of Gallienus knocking about. The peddlers and the shopkeepers take such
+pieces occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or ten cents, to
+young collectors. No, it is not very precious in money value, but as a
+relic any piece of money that was passed from hand to hand a thousand or
+fifteen hundred years ago is interesting. The value of such relics is a
+good deal a matter of imagination.”
+
+“And what do you say to these others?” asked the Interviewer. Poor old
+worn-out things they were, with a letter or two only, and some faint
+trace of a figure on one or two of them.
+
+“Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the
+times when you may suppose they were current. Perhaps Horace tossed one
+of them to a beggar. Perhaps one of these was the coin that was brought
+when One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I may see it.'
+But the market price is a different matter. That depends on the beauty
+and preservation, and above all the rarity, of the specimen. Here is a
+coin, now,”--he opened a small cabinet, and took one from it. “Here is a
+Syracusan decadrachm with the head of Persephone, which is at once rare,
+well preserved, and beautiful. I am afraid to tell what I paid for it.”
+
+The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics. He cared very little
+more for an old coin than he did for an old button, but he had thought
+his purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation. No matter
+about the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any rate, that
+Maurice must have money and could be extravagant, or what he himself
+considered so; also that he was familiar with ancient coins. That would
+do for a beginning.
+
+“May I ask where you picked up the coin you are showing me?” he said
+
+“That is a question which provokes a negative answer. One does not 'pick
+up' first-class coins or paintings, very often, in these times. I bought
+this of a great dealer in Rome.”
+
+“Lived in Rome once?” said the Interviewer.
+
+“For some years. Perhaps you have been there yourself?”
+
+The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he should
+go there, one of these years, “suppose you studied art and antiquities
+while you were there?” he continued.
+
+“Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and antiquities.
+Before you go there I advise you to review Roman history and the classic
+authors. You had better make a study of ancient and modern art, and
+not have everything to learn while you are going about among ruins, and
+churches, and galleries. You know your Horace and Virgil well, I take it
+for granted?”
+
+The Interviewer hesitated. The names sounded as if he had heard them.
+“Not so well as I mean to before going to Rome,” he answered. “May I ask
+how long you lived in Rome?”
+
+“Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it. No one
+should go there without careful preparation beforehand. You are familiar
+with Vasari, of course?”
+
+The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead. He took out his
+handkerchief. “It is a warm day,” he said. “I have not had time to read
+all--the works I mean to. I have had too much writing to do, myself, to
+find all the time for reading and study I could have wished.”
+
+“In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will pardon
+my inquiry? said Maurice.
+
+“I am connected with the press. I understood that you were a man of
+letters, and I hoped I might have the privilege of hearing from your own
+lips some account of your literary experiences.”
+
+“Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it
+for my autobiography. You said you were connected with the press. Do I
+understand that you are an author?”
+
+By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a
+very warm day. He did not seem to be getting hold of his pitcher by the
+right handle, somehow. But he could not help answering Maurice's very
+simple question.
+
+“If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author, I
+may call myself one. I write for the 'People's Perennial and Household
+Inquisitor'.”
+
+“Are you the literary critic of that well-known journal, or do you
+manage the political column?”
+
+“I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of
+interest.”
+
+“Places you have been to, and people you have known?”
+
+“Well, yes,--generally, that is. Sometimes I have to compile my
+articles.”
+
+“Did you write the letter from Rome, published a few weeks ago?”
+
+The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place. However, he had
+found that his man was too much for him, and saw that the best thing
+he could do was to submit to be interviewed himself. He thought that he
+should be able to pick up something or other which he could work into
+his report of his visit.
+
+“Well, I--prepared that article for our columns. You know one does not
+have to see everything he describes. You found it accurate, I hope, in
+its descriptions?”
+
+“Yes, Murray is generally accurate. Sometimes he makes mistakes, but I
+can't say how far you have copied them. You got the Ponte Molle--the old
+Milvian bridge--a good deal too far down the stream, if I remember. I
+happened to notice that, but I did not read the article carefully. May
+I ask whether you propose to do me the honor of reporting this visit
+and the conversation we have had, for the columns of the newspaper with
+which you are connected?”
+
+The Interviewer thought he saw an opening. “If you have no objections,”
+ he said, “I should like very much to ask a few questions.” He was
+recovering his professional audacity.
+
+“You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet,
+--after you have answered one or two of mine: Who commissioned you to
+submit me to examination?”
+
+“The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the humble
+agent of its investigations.”
+
+“What has the public to do with my private affairs?”
+
+“I suppose it is a question of majority and minority. That settles
+everything in this country. You are a minority of one opposed to a large
+number of curious people that form a majority against you. That is the
+way I've heard the chief put it.”
+
+Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the American
+citizen. The Interviewer smiled, too, and thought he had his man, sure,
+at last. Maurice calmly answered, “There is nothing left for minorities,
+then, but the right of rebellion. I don't care about being made the
+subject of an article for your paper. I am here for my pleasure, minding
+my own business, and content with that occupation. I rebel against your
+system of forced publicity. Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public
+all it has any right to know about me. In the mean time I shall request
+to be spared reading my biography while I am living. I wish you a
+good-morning.”
+
+The Interviewer had not taken out his note-book and pencil. In his next
+communication from Arrowhead Village he contented himself with a brief
+mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now visiting the
+place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the privilege of
+examining, and whose courtesy was equalled only by the modesty that
+shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular intelligence
+would otherwise confer upon him.
+
+The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had failed
+to get the first hint of its solution.
+
+The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain idle.
+The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the various
+cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the conversational
+circles which met every evening in the different centres of social
+life. The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was that Maurice had a
+congenital aversion to some color, the effects of which upon him were
+so painful or disagreeable that he habitually avoided exposure to it.
+It was known, and it has already been mentioned, that such cases were
+on record. There had been a great deal of discussion, of late, with
+reference to a fact long known to a few individuals, but only recently
+made a matter of careful scientific observation and brought to the
+notice of the public. This was the now well-known phenomenon of
+color-blindness. It did not seem very strange that if one person in
+every score or two could not tell red from green there might be other
+curious individual peculiarities relating to color. A case has already
+been referred to where the subject of observation fainted at the sight
+of any red object. What if this were the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood?
+It will be seen at once how such a congenital antipathy would tend to
+isolate the person who was its unfortunate victim. It was an hypothesis
+not difficult to test, but it was a rather delicate business to be
+experimenting on an inoffensive stranger. Miss Vincent was thinking
+it over, but said nothing, even to Euthymia, of any projects she might
+entertain.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XII. MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
+
+The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
+Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading various
+works selected for her by Dr. Butts,--works chiefly relating to the
+nervous system and its different affections. She thought it was about
+time to talk over the general subject of the medical profession with her
+new teacher,--if such a self-directing person as Lurida could be said to
+recognize anybody as teacher.
+
+She began at the beginning. “What is the first book you would put in
+a student's hands, doctor?” she said to him one day. They were in his
+study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on Insanity,
+one of Bucknill and Puke's, which she had devoured as if it had been a
+pamphlet.
+
+“Not that book, certainly,” he said. “I am afraid it will put all sorts
+of notions into your head. Who or what set you to reading that, I should
+like to know?”
+
+“I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps be
+crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what kind
+of a condition insanity is. I don't believe they were ever very bright,
+those insane people, most of them. I hope I am not stupid enough ever to
+lose my wits.”
+
+“There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that busy
+brain of yours. But did n't it make you nervous, reading about so many
+people possessed with such strange notions?”
+
+“Nervous? Not a bit. I could n't help thinking, though, how many people
+I had known that had a little touch of craziness about them. Take that
+poor woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,--not Her Majesty, but
+Her Majesty's Person,--a very important distinction, according to her:
+how she does remind me of more than one girl I have known! She would let
+her skirts down so as to make a kind of train, and pile things on her
+head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and throw her head back, and
+feel as grand as a queen. I have seen more than one girl act very much
+in that way. Are not most of us a little crazy, doctor,--just a little?
+I think so. It seems to me I never saw but one girl who was free from
+every hint of craziness.”
+
+“And who was that, pray?”
+
+“Why, Euthymia,--nobody else, of course. She never loses her head,--I
+don't believe she would in an earthquake. Whenever we were at work with
+our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind was
+the only achromatic one I ever looked into,--I did n't say looked
+through.--But I did n't come to talk about that. I read in one of your
+books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he should
+read, the great physician said, 'Read “Don Quixote.”' I want you to
+explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the first
+book, according to your idea, that a student ought to read.”
+
+“What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper to
+be read before the Society? I think there may be other young ladies at
+the meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing the study of
+medicine. At any rate, there are a good many who are interested in the
+subject; in fact, most people listen readily to anything doctors tell
+them about their calling.”
+
+“I wish you would, doctor. I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't doubt
+there will be others who will be glad to hear everything you have to say
+about it. But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade Euthymia to become
+a physician! What a doctor she would make! So strong, so calm, so full
+of wisdom! I believe she could take the wheel of a steamboat in a storm,
+or the hose of a fire-engine in a conflagration, and handle it as well
+as the captain of the boat or of the fire-company.”
+
+“Have you ever talked with her about studying medicine?”
+
+“Indeed I have. Oh, if she would only begin with me! What good times we
+would have studying together!”
+
+“I don't doubt it. Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you
+think practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten
+miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches
+was racking you?”
+
+“Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of
+storms or anything else. If she would only study medicine with me!”
+
+“Well, what does she say to it?”
+
+“She does n't like the thought of it. She does n't believe in women
+doctors. She thinks that now and then a woman may be fitted for it by
+nature, but she does n't think there are many who are. She gives me a
+good many reasons against their practising medicine, you know what most
+of them are, doctor,--and ends by saying that the same woman who would
+be a poor sort of doctor would make a first-rate nurse; and that,
+she thinks, is a woman's business, if her instinct carries her to the
+hospital or sick-chamber. I can't argue her ideas out of her.”
+
+“Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I
+am disposed to agree with your friend, that you will often spoil a good
+nurse to make a poor doctor. Doctors and side-saddles don't seem to me
+to go together. Riding habits would be awkward things for practitioners.
+But come, we won't have a controversy just now. I am for giving women
+every chance for a good education, and if they think medicine is one of
+their proper callings let them try it. I think they will find that they
+had better at least limit themselves to certain specialties, and always
+have an expert of the other sex to fall back upon. The trouble is that
+they are so impressible and imaginative that they are at the mercy
+of all sorts of fancy systems. You have only to see what kinds of
+instruction they very commonly flock to in order to guess whether they
+would be likely to prove sensible practitioners. Charlatanism always
+hobbles on two crutches, the tattle of women, and the certificates of
+clergymen, and I am afraid that half the women doctors will be too much
+under both those influences.”
+
+Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of
+the village, had “carried her through” a fever, brought on by
+over-excitement and exhausting study. She took no offence at his
+reference to nursery gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap. Nobody
+so despises the weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's rights.
+She accepted the doctor's concession of a fair field and open trial of
+the fitness of her sex for medical practice, and did not trouble herself
+about his suggested limitations. As to the imaginative tendencies of
+women, she knew too well the truth of the doctor's remark relating to
+them to wish to contradict it.
+
+“Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
+doctor,” she said; and in due season it came, and was of course approved
+for reading.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIII. DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
+
+“Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls
+is that which we feel for our mortal bodies. I am afraid my very first
+statement may be open to criticism. The care of the body is the first
+thought with a great many,--in fact, with the larger part of the world.
+They send for the physician first, and not until he gives them up do
+they commonly call in the clergyman. Even the minister himself is not
+so very different from other people. We must not blame him if he is
+not always impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests
+and ever-changing sources of excitement for that which tradition has
+delivered to us as one eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety.
+Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn and disfigured by long
+years of service, hang about our consciousness like old garments. They
+are used to us, and we are used to them. And all the accidents of our
+lives,--the house we dwell in, the living people round us, the landscape
+we look over, all, up to the sky that covers us like a bell glass,--all
+these are but looser outside garments which we have worn until they seem
+a part of us, and we do not like the thought of changing them for a new
+suit which we have never yet tried on. How well I remember that dear
+ancient lady, who lived well into the last decade of her century, as
+she repeated the verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select
+from that string of pearls, Gray's 'Elegy'!
+
+
+  “'For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
+   This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
+   Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+   Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?'
+
+“Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told. Better so, it may be,
+than to live solely for it, as so many do. But it may be well doubted
+if there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society. On the contrary,
+there are many who think a great deal of their bodies, many who have
+come here to regain the health they have lost in the wear and tear of
+city life, and very few who have not at some time or other of their
+lives had occasion to call in the services of a physician.
+
+“There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members
+some remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical
+practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.
+
+“A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical studies,
+happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the greatest
+and most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas Sydenham. The
+story is that, when a student asked him what books he should read, the
+great doctor told him to read 'Don Quixote.'
+
+“This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study of
+books, and furnishes a convenient shield for ignorant pretenders.
+But Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical
+experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not
+thought they would be better reading for the medical student than the
+story of Cervantes. His own works are esteemed to this day, and he
+certainly could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom of
+all the past. No remedy is good, it was said of old, unless applied at
+the right time in the right way. So we may say of all anecdotes, like
+this which I have told you about Sydenham and the young man. It is very
+likely that he carried him to the bedside of some patients, and talked
+to him about the cases he showed him, instead of putting a Latin volume
+in his hand. I would as soon begin in that way as any other, with a
+student who had already mastered the preliminary branches,--who knew
+enough about the structure and functions of the body in health.
+
+“But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical student
+of a philosophical habit of mind, you may be surprised to hear me say
+it would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.' They are the ones where the
+astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management of the elements,
+the control of which, as he had persuaded himself, had been committed to
+him. Let me read you a few sentences from this story, which is commonly
+bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like a woollen lining to
+a silken mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in processions of
+paragraphs which sound as if they ought to have a grammatical drum-major
+to march before their tramping platoons.
+
+“The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to him
+the secret of his wonderful powers:--
+
+“'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I
+have possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
+distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and
+passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call,
+have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I
+have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervors of
+the crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto
+eluded my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial
+tempests, which I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain.'
+
+“The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere,
+devoted, and most benevolent man, for forty years a student of the
+heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these miraculous
+powers. This is his account:
+
+“'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in
+my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains,
+and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I
+commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my command with
+that of the inundation I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.'
+
+“'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence? The
+Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
+
+“'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, 'that such objections
+could escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and labored
+against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself
+of madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man
+like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible
+and the incredible from the false.'
+
+“The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom he
+has adopted as his successor in the government of the elements and the
+seasons, in these impressive words:
+
+“Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
+innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
+thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons. The
+memory of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee
+to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain
+to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.'
+
+“Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in which
+the delusions of an insane astronomer are related with all the pomp
+of the Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young person
+about to enter on the study of the science and art of healing? Listen to
+me while I show you the parallel of the story of the astronomer in the
+history of medicine.
+
+“This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with benevolence,
+but all its wisdom and all its virtue have had to struggle with the
+ever-rising mists of delusion. The agencies which waste and destroy
+the race of mankind are vast and resistless as the elemental forces of
+nature; nay, they are themselves elemental forces. They may be to some
+extent avoided, to some extent diverted from their aim, to some extent
+resisted. So may the changes of the seasons, from cold that freezes
+to heats that strike with sudden death, be guarded against. So may the
+tides be in some small measure restrained in their inroads. So may the
+storms be breasted by walls they cannot shake from their foundations.
+But the seasons and the tides and the tempests work their will on the
+great scale upon whatever stands in their way; they feed or starve the
+tillers of the soil; they spare or drown the dwellers by the shore; they
+waft the seaman to his harbor or bury him in the angry billows.
+
+“The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from deadly
+and dangerous influences, and something to control or arrest the effects
+of these influences. But look at the records of the life-insurance
+offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's destroying
+agencies. Look at the annual reports of the deaths in any of our great
+cities, and see how their regularity approaches the uniformity of the
+tides, and their variations keep pace with those of the seasons. The
+inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to be predicted than the
+vast wave of infantile disease which flows in upon all our great cities
+with the growing heats of July,--than the fevers and dysenteries which
+visit our rural districts in the months of the falling leaf.
+
+“The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the
+rise of the great river. He longs to rescue individuals, to protect
+communities from the inroads of these destroying agencies. He uses all
+the means which experience has approved, tries every rational method
+which ingenuity can suggest. Some fortunate recovery leads him to
+believe he has hit upon a preventive or a cure for a malady which had
+resisted all known remedies. His rescued patient sounds his praises, and
+a wide circle of his patient's friends joins in a chorus of eulogies.
+Self-love applauds him for his sagacity. Self-interest congratulates him
+on his having found the road to fortune; the sense of having proved a
+benefactor of his race smooths the pillow on which he lays his head
+to dream of the brilliant future opening before him. If a single
+coincidence may lead a person of sanguine disposition to believe that he
+has mastered a disease which had baffled all who were before his time,
+and on which his contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must
+be the effect of a series of such coincidences even on a mind of calmer
+temper! Such series of coincidences will happen, and they may well
+deceive the very elect. Think of Dr. Rush,--you know what a famous man
+he was, the very head and front of American medical science in his day,
+--and remember how he spoke about yellow fever, which he thought he had
+mastered!
+
+“Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy,
+in which he and his patient and their friends, and Nature herself, are
+involved. What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to so great
+an extent a record of self-delusion!
+
+“If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true science
+and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied in the
+first aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Do not draw a
+wrong inference from the frank statement of the difficulties which
+beset the medical practitioner. Think rather, if truth is so hard of
+attainment, how precious are the results which the consent of the wisest
+and most experienced among the healers of men agrees in accepting. Think
+what folly it is to cast them aside in favor of palpable impositions
+stolen from the records of forgotten charlatanism, or of fantastic
+speculations spun from the squinting brains of theorists as wild as the
+Egyptian astronomer.
+
+“Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the
+following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your first lesson will teach
+you modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all
+practical branches of knowledge. Faith will come later, when you learn
+how much medical science and art have actually achieved for the relief
+of mankind, and how great are the promises it holds out of still larger
+triumphs over the enemies of human health and happiness.”
+
+After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which we
+have no room to report here, and the Society adjourned.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIV. MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+
+The sober-minded, sensible, well-instructed Dr. Butts was not a little
+exercised in mind by the demands made upon his knowledge by his young
+friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida Vincent.
+
+“I don't wonder they called her The Terror,” he said to himself. “She is
+enough to frighten anybody. She has taken down old books from my
+shelves that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to the medical
+journals, I believe the girl could index them from memory. She is in
+pursuit of some special point of knowledge, I feel sure, and I cannot
+doubt what direction she is working in, but her wonderful way of dealing
+with books amazes me.”
+
+What marvels those “first scholars” in the classes of our great
+universities and colleges are, to be sure! They are not, as a rule,
+the most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life.
+The chances are that “the field” will beat “the favorite” over the long
+race-course. Others will develop a longer stride and more staying power.
+But what fine gifts those “first scholars” have received from nature!
+How dull we writers, famous or obscure, are in the acquisition of
+knowledge as compared with them! To lead their classmates they must
+have quick apprehension, fine memories, thorough control of their
+mental faculties, strong will, power of concentration, facility of
+expression,--a wonderful equipment of mental faculties. I always want to
+take my hat off to the first scholar of his year.
+
+Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The Terror.
+She surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was ready to
+receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him one day with
+a cry of triumph, “Eureka! Eureka!”
+
+“And what have you found, my dear?” said the doctor.
+
+Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new discovery.
+
+“I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's
+dread of all human intercourse!”
+
+The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.
+
+“Wait a minute and get your breath,” said the doctor. “Are you not a
+little overstating his peculiarity? It is not quite so bad as that.
+He keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old
+Tavern, he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he
+pulled out of the water, or rescued somehow,--I don't believe he avoids
+the whole human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I
+have remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man
+was ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much
+more than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some
+congenital or other personal repugnance to which has been given the name
+of an antipathy.”
+
+Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking. When he
+finished, she began the account of her discovery:
+
+“I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an
+Italian medical journal of about fourteen years ago. I met with a
+reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli
+Ospitali lying among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the
+Library. I have made a translation of it, which you must read and then
+tell me if you do not agree with me in my conclusion.”
+
+“Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for
+myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you seem to
+have reached.”
+
+Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a
+map of the world, as she said,
+
+“I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the
+bite of a TARANTULA!”
+
+The doctor drew a long breath. He remembered in a vague sort of way the
+stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but he had
+consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have
+clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name. He looked into
+the round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as if he feared that
+she was in a state of undue excitement, but, true to his professional
+training, he waited for another symptom, if indeed her mind was in any
+measure off its balance.
+
+“I know what you are thinking,” Lurida said, “but it is not so. 'I am
+not mad, most noble Festus.' You shall see the evidence and judge for
+yourself. Read the whole case,--you can read my hand almost as if it
+were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this young
+man is in all probability the same person as the boy described in the
+Italian journal,
+
+“One thing you might say is against the supposition. The young patient
+is spoken of as Signorino M---- Ch------ But you must remember that ch
+is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which letter is wanting in the
+Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough that the initial of the
+second name should have got changed in the record to its Italian
+equivalent.”
+
+Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this extraordinary
+case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes to be indulged
+in a few words of explanation, in order that he may not have to
+apologize for allowing the introduction of a subject which may be
+thought to belong to the professional student rather than to the readers
+of this record. There is a great deal in medical books which it is very
+unbecoming to bring before the general public,--a great deal to repel,
+to disgust, to alarm, to excite unwholesome curiosity. It is not the men
+whose duties have made them familiar with this class of subjects who
+are most likely to offend by scenes and descriptions which belong to the
+physician's private library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite
+literature. Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and
+practised medicine, could not by any possibility have outraged all the
+natural feelings of delicacy and decency as Swift and Zola have outraged
+them. But without handling doubtful subjects, there are many curious
+medical experiences which have interest for every one as extreme
+illustrations of ordinary conditions with which all are acquainted. No
+one can study the now familiar history of clairvoyance profitably who
+has not learned something of the vagaries of hysteria. No one can read
+understandingly the life of Cowper and that of Carlyle without having
+some idea of the influence of hypochondriasis and of dyspepsia upon the
+disposition and intellect of the subjects of these maladies. I need
+not apologize, therefore, for giving publicity to that part of this
+narrative which deals with one of the most singular maladies to be found
+in the records of bodily and mental infirmities.
+
+The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent.
+For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the original paper,
+and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the
+patient are not precisely indicated here.
+
+[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18--.] REMARKABLE CASE OF
+TARANTISM.
+
+“The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
+instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of the
+extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject
+of a recent medical consultation in this city.
+
+“Signorino M... Ch... is the only son of a gentleman travelling in
+Italy at this time. He is eleven years of age, of sanguine-nervous
+temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent countenance, well grown,
+but rather slight in form, to all appearance in good health, but subject
+to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous symptoms, of which his father
+gives this history.
+
+“Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with
+his wife, this child, and a nurse. They were passing a few days in a
+country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the
+same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in
+perfect health and had never been affected by any serious illness. On
+the 10th of July he was playing out in the field near the house
+where the family was staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and
+violently. The nurse rushing to him found him in great pain, saying that
+something had bitten him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso,
+ran up at the moment and perceived in the grass, near where the boy
+was standing, an enormous spider, which he at once recognized as a
+tarantula. He managed to catch the creature in a large leaf, from which
+he was afterwards transferred to a wide-mouthed bottle, where he lived
+without any food for a month or more. The creature was covered with
+short hairs, and had a pair of nipper-like jaws, with which he could
+inflict an ugly wound. His body measured about an inch in length, and
+from the extremity of one of the longest limbs to the other was between
+two and three inches. Such was the account given by the physician to
+whom the peasant carried the great spider.
+
+“The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
+stocking was being removed and the foot examined. The place of the bite
+was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already showed
+the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending around them,
+with some puffy swelling. The distinguished Dr. Amadei was immediately
+sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the hope of drawing forth
+the poison. In vain all his skill and efforts! Soon, ataxic (irregular)
+nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it became plain that the
+system had been infected by the poison.
+
+“The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such
+as distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing,
+collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From
+these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had
+been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it. His
+constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic
+(poisonous) agent. The phenomena which have been observed in this young
+patient correspond so nearly with those enumerated in the elaborate
+essay of the celebrated Baglivi that one might think they had been
+transcribed from his pages.
+
+“He is very fond of solitude,--of wandering about in churchyards and
+other lonely places. He was once found hiding in an empty tomb, which
+had been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable.
+Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his
+likes and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to some colors his
+antipathy amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect
+upon him that he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets
+any one whose dress has any of that particular color he will turn away
+or retreat so as to avoid passing that person. Among these, purple and
+dark green are the least endurable. He cannot explain the sensations
+which these obnoxious colors produce except by saying that it is like
+the deadly feeling from a blow on the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).
+
+“About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning
+took place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like
+fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections.
+All the other symptoms are aggravated at this time.
+
+“In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health. He
+is fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal of
+exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.
+
+“The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by popular
+belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we shall again
+refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results. If the graver
+symptoms recur while the patient is under our observation, we propose to
+make use of an agency discredited by modern skepticism, but deserving of
+a fair trial as an exceptional remedy for an exceptional disease.
+
+“The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian
+physician of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in
+the Giornale in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian,
+subjoined. Here are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from
+them, with a translation of them into English.
+
+“After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by
+the subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows: “'Et si astantes
+incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis ingrates est,
+necesse est ut ab illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad intuitum molesti
+coloris angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia stating
+corripiuntur.' (G. Baglivi, Op. Omnia, page 614. Lugduni, 1745.)
+
+“That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color
+which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them, for
+on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress in the
+region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'
+
+“As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says: “'Dam calor solis
+ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa initia Julii et
+Augusti, Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam veneni percipiunt.'
+(Ibid., page 619.)
+
+“Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more fiercely,
+which happens about the beginning of July and August, the subjects of
+Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching recrudescence (returning
+symptoms) of the poisoning. Among the remedies most valued by this
+illustrious physician is that mentioned in the following sentence:
+
+“'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis diebus,
+hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos chronicos pene
+incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'
+
+“Or in translation, 'I commend especially riding on horseback in country
+air, every day, by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which
+horseback riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost
+incurable.'”
+
+Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him
+to examine and consider. He listened with a grave countenance and devout
+attention.
+
+As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate
+tones of the deepest conviction,
+
+“There, doctor! Have n't I found the true story of this strange visitor?
+Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx? Who can this man be but the
+boy of that story? Look at the date of the journal when he was eleven
+years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and that is just about the
+age the people here think he must be of. What could account so entirely
+for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the
+state they call Tarantism? I am just as sure it must be that as I am
+that I am alive. Oh, doctor, doctor, I must be right,--this Signorino
+M ... Ch... was the boy Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for
+everything,--his solitary habits, his dread of people,--it must be
+because they wear the colors he can't bear. His morning rides on
+horseback, his coming here just as the season was approaching which
+would aggravate all his symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be
+right in my conjecture,--no, my conviction?”
+
+The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he
+let her run on until she ran down. He was more used to the rules of
+evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so
+readily as she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are
+very apt to make what they think are discoveries. But he had been an
+angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an easy-running reel.
+He said quietly,
+
+“You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie case
+it is that you make out. I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood is not
+the same person as the M... Ch... of the medical journal,--that is, if
+I accept your explanation of the difference in the initials of these two
+names. Even if there were a difference, that would not disprove their
+identity, for the initials of patients whose cases are reported by their
+physicians are often altered for the purpose of concealment. I do not
+know, however, that Mr. Kirkwood has shown any special aversion to any
+particular color. It might be interesting to inquire whether it is so,
+but it is a delicate matter. I don't exactly see whose business it is
+to investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and constitutional
+history. If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he might
+tell me all about himself, in confidence, you know. These old accounts
+from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am cautious about
+receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an
+improbability, as his stories about the cure of the tarantula bite
+by music certainly do. I am disposed to wait for future developments,
+bearing in mind, of course, the very singular case you have unearthed.
+It wouldn't be very strange if our young gentleman had to send for me
+before the season is over. He is out a good deal before the dew is off
+the grass, which is rather risky in this neighborhood as autumn comes
+on. I am somewhat curious, I confess, about the young man, but I do not
+meddle where I am not asked for or wanted, and I have found that eggs
+hatch just as well if you let them alone in the nest as if you take
+them out and shake them every day. This is a wonderfully interesting
+supposition of yours, and may prove to be strictly in accordance with
+the facts. But I do not think we have all the facts in this young man's
+case. If it were proved that he had an aversion to any color, it would
+greatly strengthen your case. His 'antipatia,' as his man called
+it, must be one which covers a wide ground, to account for his
+self-isolation,--and the color hypothesis seems as plausible as any.
+But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think you had better leave your singular
+and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a while, rather than let it
+get abroad in a community like this, where so many tongues are in active
+exercise. I will carefully study this paper, if you will leave it with
+me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It is a fair subject for
+speculation, only we must keep quiet about it.”
+
+This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a
+little. She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would come
+for it the next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to
+her bosom friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XV. DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+
+The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
+lady. She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered the
+secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was
+of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But
+he felt it his duty to guard her against any possible results of
+indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of the equality,
+almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the
+woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget danger. Too little
+of the woman prompts her to defy it. Fortunately for this last class of
+women, they are not quite so likely to be perilously seductive as their
+more emphatically feminine sisters.
+
+Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their
+infancy. He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence from
+its precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained faculties.
+He had looked with admiration on the childish beauty of Euthymia,
+and had seen her grow up to womanhood, every year making her more
+attractive. He knew that if anything was to be done with his self-willed
+young scholar and friend, it would be more easily effected through the
+medium of Euthymia than by direct advice to the young lady herself.
+So the thoughtful doctor made up his mind to have a good talk with
+Euthymia, and put her on her guard, if Lurida showed any tendency to
+forget the conventionalities in her eager pursuit of knowledge.
+
+For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss Euthymia
+Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all the tongues
+in the village going. This was one of those families where illness was
+hardly looked for among the possibilities of life. There were other
+families where a call from the doctor was hardly more thought of than
+a call from the baker. But here he was a stranger, at least on his
+professional rounds, and when he asked for Miss Euthymia the servant,
+who knew his face well, stared as if he had held in his hand a warrant
+for her apprehension.
+
+Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made ready
+to meet him. One look at her glass to make sure that a lock had not run
+astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for a morning call
+was finished. Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had been announced, she
+might have taken a second look, but with the good middle-aged, married
+doctor one was enough for a young lady who had the gift of making all
+the dresses she wore look well, and had no occasion to treat her chamber
+like the laboratory where an actress compounds herself.
+
+Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily. She could not help
+suspecting his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk
+over her friend's schemes and fancies with him.
+
+The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.
+
+“I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida. Does she tell you
+all her plans and projects?”
+
+“Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not
+believe she keeps back anything of importance from me. I know what she
+has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into her
+head. What do you think of the Tarantula business? She has shown you the
+paper, she has written, I suppose.”
+
+“Indeed she has. It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and I do
+not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she had come
+at the true solution of the village riddle. It may be that this young
+man is the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian medical
+journal. But it is very far from clear that he is so. You know all her
+reasons, of course, as you have read the story. The times seem to agree
+well enough. It is easy to conceive that Ch might be substituted for K
+in the report. The singular solitary habits of this young man entirely
+coincide with the story. If we could only find out whether he has any
+of those feelings with reference to certain colors, we might guess with
+more chance of guessing right than we have at present. But I don't see
+exactly how we are going to submit him to examination on this point. If
+he were only a chemical compound, we could analyze him. If he were only
+a bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes. But
+being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of
+his own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem
+becomes more complicated. I hear that a newspaper correspondent has
+visited him so as to make a report to his paper,--do you know what he
+found out?”
+
+“Certainly I do, very well. My brother has heard his own story, which
+was this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to interview.
+The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he did not
+learn much about the Sphinx. But the newspaper man told Willy about the
+Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins he had; and said he should make
+an article out of him, anyhow. I wish the man would take himself off. I
+am afraid Lurida's love of knowledge will get her into trouble!”
+
+“Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?”
+
+“I was thinking of the newspaper man.”
+
+She blushed a little as she said, “I can't help feeling a strange sort
+of interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood. Do you know that I met him
+this morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?”
+
+“Well, to be sure! That was an interesting experience. And how did you
+like his looks?”
+
+“I thought his face a very remarkable one. But he looked very pale as he
+passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side as if he
+had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,--spasm or neuralgia,--I
+don't know what. I wondered whether he had what you call angina
+pectoris. It was the same kind of look and movement, I remember, as you
+must, too, in my uncle who died with that complaint.”
+
+The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, “Were you dressed as
+you are now?”
+
+“Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders. I was
+out early, and I have always remembered your caution.”
+
+“What color was your mantle?”
+
+“It was black. I have been over all this with Lucinda. A black mantle on
+a white dress. A straw hat with an old faded ribbon. There can't be
+much in those colors to trouble him, I should think, for his man wears
+a black coat and white linen,--more or less white, as you must have
+noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all colors often enough. But
+Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in the combination of
+colors. Her head is full of Tarantulas and Tarantism. I fear that she
+will never be easy until the question is settled by actual trial. And
+will you believe it? the girl is determined in some way to test her
+supposition!”
+
+“Believe it, Euthymia? I can believe almost anything of Lurida. She is
+the most irrepressible creature I ever knew. You know as well as I do
+what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole nature. I
+have had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her discretion. It
+is a great deal easier to get into a false position than to get out of
+it.”
+
+“I know it well enough. I want you to tell me what you think about the
+whole business. I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I can do
+nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I can show
+her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some way or other.
+But she is ingenious,--full of all sorts of devices, innocent enough in
+themselves, but liable to be misconstrued. You remember how she won us
+the boat-race?”
+
+“To be sure I do. It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was
+paying off an old score. The classical story of Atalanta, told, like
+that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to
+make trial of the powers of resistance in the other sex. But it was
+audacious. I hope her audacity will not go too far. You must watch her.
+Keep an eye on her correspondence.”
+
+The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend.
+He felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing
+foolish letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar
+indiscreet performances. The boldness of young girls, who think no evil,
+in opening correspondence with idealized personages is something quite
+astonishing to those who have had an opportunity of knowing the facts.
+Lurida had passed the most dangerous age, but her theory of the equality
+of the sexes made her indifferent to the by-laws of social usage. She
+required watching, and her two guardians were ready to check her, in
+case of need.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVI. MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
+
+Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for two
+or three days. She found her more than once busy at her desk, with a
+manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside the desk,
+as Euthymia entered.
+
+This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends expected
+to see in the other. It showed that some project was under way, which,
+at least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young lady did not
+wish to disclose. It had cost her a good deal of thought and care,
+apparently, for her waste-basket was full of scraps of paper, which
+looked as if they were the remains of a manuscript like that at which
+she was at work. “Copying and recopying, probably,” thought Euthymia,
+but she was willing to wait to learn what Lurida was busy about, though
+she had a suspicion that it was something in which she might feel called
+upon to interest herself.
+
+“Do you know what I think?” said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him as
+he left his door. “I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I don't
+like the thought of her doing such a thing. Of course she is not like
+other girls in many respects, but other people will judge her by the
+common rules of life.”
+
+“I am glad that you spoke of it,” answered the doctor; “she would write
+to him just as quickly as to any woman of his age. Besides, under the
+cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I
+think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute
+a paper for the Society. She can find a pretext easily enough if she has
+made up her mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself
+for any pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't
+let any letter go without seeing it, if you can help it.”
+
+Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they only
+know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and especially
+to romancers and poets. Nothing can be more innocent and simple-hearted
+than most of these letters. They are the spontaneous outflow of young
+hearts easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure which some story
+or poem has given them, and recognizing their own thoughts, their own
+feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to
+read. Undoubtedly they give great relief to solitary young persons, who
+must have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not where to
+look since Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna.
+The recipient of these letters sometimes wonders, after reading through
+one of them, how it is that his young correspondent has managed to fill
+so much space with her simple message of admiration or of sympathy.
+
+Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents,
+but she could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally
+surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their
+persons float in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed
+writing to this unknown gentleman? Euthymia questioned her point-blank.
+
+“Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood,
+Lurida? You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else. Or
+are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,--do tell me
+what you are so much taken up with.”
+
+“I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault with
+me for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do. You may
+read this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything in it you
+don't like you can suggest any change that you think will improve it. I
+hope you will see that it explains itself. I don't believe that you will
+find anything to frighten you in it.”
+
+This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend. The bold
+handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it consequently
+a less dangerous expression than that which belongs to the tinted and
+often fragrant sheet with its delicate thready characters, which slant
+across the page like an April shower with a south wind chasing it.
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August--, 18--.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a letter
+like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the Pansophian
+Society. There is a very common feeling that it is unbecoming in one of
+my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted, unless
+she has some special claim upon his attention. I am by no means disposed
+to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human being
+has anything to communicate to another,--anything which deserves being
+communicated,--I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex. I
+do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as
+its private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,
+
+I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing.
+If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving my whole
+powers to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea,
+should I refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellow-mortal because
+that mortal happened to be a brother, and not a sister? My whole
+nature protests against such one-sided humanity! No! I am blind to all
+distinctions when my eyes are opened to any form of suffering, to any
+spectacle of want.
+
+You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of,
+and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It
+is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to
+you,--that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our
+meetings. I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this as
+a compliment to that paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but
+thinking of better things than praises or phrases. I was interested in
+the paper, partly because I recognized some of the feelings expressed in
+it as my own,--partly because there was an undertone of sadness in all
+the voices of nature as you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and
+which I could not help longing to cheer and enliven. I said to myself, I
+should like to hold communion with the writer of that paper. I have
+had my lonely hours and days, as he has had. I have had some of his
+experiences in my intercourse with nature. And oh! if I could draw him
+into those better human relations which await us all, if we come with
+the right dispositions, I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I
+violated any conventional rule or not.
+
+You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the
+insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
+brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be
+educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due
+regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard
+or light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with
+the “stronger” or the “weaker” sex. I mark these words because,
+notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not true.
+Stronger! Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of cider,--though
+there have been women who could do that, and though when John Wesley
+was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three or four men, one
+after another, until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered.
+Talk about the weaker sex! Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the
+gymnasium! But no matter about which sex has the strongest muscles.
+Which has most to suffer, and which has most endurance and vitality? We
+go through many ordeals which you are spared, but we outlast you in
+mind and body. I have been led away into one of my accustomed trains of
+thought, but not so far away from it as you might at first suppose.
+
+My brother! Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal, a
+sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the same
+roof? And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes us all one
+family? You are lonely, you must be longing for some human fellowship.
+Take me into your confidence. What is there that you can tell me
+to which I cannot respond with sympathy? What saddest note in your
+spiritual dirges which will not find its chord in mine?
+
+I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence. I
+myself have known what it is to carry a brain that never rests in a body
+that is always tired. I have defied its infirmities, and forced it to do
+my bidding. You have no such hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect
+and habits. You deal with horses like a Homeric hero. No wild Indian
+could handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than
+we have seen you handling yours. There must be some reason for your
+seclusion which curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the
+province of curiosity to inquire. But in the irresistible desire which
+I have to bring you into kindly relations with those around you, I must
+run the risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to
+look for those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and
+sister can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to change
+the course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in accordance with
+his true nature.
+
+I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which
+you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--something
+which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people
+whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be
+anything in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought
+it as a residence, even for a single season there might be individuals
+here whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot
+have a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which
+certain sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for
+most persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made,
+them unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has
+occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion
+to the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses,
+especially where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of
+those in the village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in
+the dresses of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you
+unpleasantly. I know that instances of such antipathy have been
+recorded, and they would account for the seclusion of those who are
+subject to it.
+
+If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
+entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I
+beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not
+strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into
+the hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer myself to be
+frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be
+of use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered
+“unfeminine.” I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot
+endure to think of myself as inhuman. Can I help you, my brother'?
+
+Believe me your most sincere well-wisher, LURIDA VINCENT.
+
+Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she
+finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
+grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days
+are apt to do, on great occasions.
+
+“Well, I never!”
+
+Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to
+the window for a breath of outdoor air. Then she began at the beginning
+and read the whole letter all over again.
+
+What should she do about it? She could not let this young girl send
+a letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known
+except by inference,--to a young man, who would consider it a most
+extraordinary advance on the part of the sender. She would have liked to
+tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to treat it in
+that way. Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time
+Euthymia had the night to think over what she should do about it.
+
+There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle. There is no voice like
+that which breaks the silence--of the stagnant hours of the night with
+its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels. When Euthymia awoke in the
+morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad been
+dictated by her guardian angel. She went straight over to the home of
+Lurida, who was just dressed for breakfast.
+
+She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit. She was
+struck with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm, and
+contemplating her project with entire complacency.
+
+Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.
+
+“I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force.
+It is a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of the
+truest human feeling. But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood. If you
+were sixty years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be admissible
+to send it. But if you were forty, I should question its propriety; if
+you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than
+twenty. How do you know that this stranger will not show your letter to
+anybody or everybody? How do you know that he will not send it to one of
+the gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he
+keeps it to himself, which is more than you have a right to expect, what
+opinion is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his privacy
+with such freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is at the bottom
+of it,--and,--come, don't be angry at me for suggesting it,--may there
+not be a little of that same motive mingled with the others? No, don't
+interrupt me quite yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is
+correct. You are full of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but
+your desire for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps
+more than you know.”
+
+Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her
+friend was speaking. She loved her too sincerely and respected her
+intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not
+give up her humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some
+awkward consequences to herself. She had persuaded herself that she was
+playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact
+of her not wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no
+difference in her relations to those who needed her aid.
+
+“I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to
+you,” she said gravely. “It seems to me that I give up everything when I
+hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman. I am not afraid
+to send this letter and take all the consequences.”
+
+“Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our
+presence? And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it coincides
+with mine?”
+
+Lurida winced a little at this proposal. “I don't quite like,” she said,
+“showing this letter to--to” she hesitated, but it had to come out--“to
+a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended.”
+
+The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.
+
+“Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to
+his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his morning
+visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have
+sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to
+the doctor's with me and carry that letter.”
+
+There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm
+voice delivered it. At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's door.
+The servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but
+found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly
+ill and wished to see him at once. Was the illness dangerous? The
+servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul
+came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she
+couldn't understand, and took on as if he thought Mr. Kirkwood was going
+to die right off.
+
+And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of,
+at least for the present.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
+
+The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of
+a somewhat severe character. He knew too well what this meant, and the
+probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude. His patient was
+not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in this way. The
+autumnal fevers to which our country towns are subject, in the place of
+those “agues,” or intermittents, so largely prevalent in the South and
+West, were already beginning, and Maurice, who had exposed himself in
+the early and late hours of the dangerous season, must be expected to go
+through the regular stages of this always serious and not rarely fatal
+disease.
+
+Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of
+his master during his illness. But the doctor insisted that he must
+have a nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and
+exhausting.
+
+At the mention of the word “nurse” Paolo turned white, and exclaimed in
+an agitated and thoroughly frightened way,
+
+“No! no nuss! no woman! She kill him! I stay by him day and night, but
+don' let no woman come near him,--if you do, he die!”
+
+The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to
+taking care of sick people, and with no little effort at last succeeded
+in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and night for a
+fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to call in some
+assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was to play the
+leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid
+fever, with its regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and
+pill-boxes, its little company of stock actors, its gradual evolution of
+a very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations,
+and its denouement, sometimes tragic, oftener happy.
+
+It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of the
+village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the young
+man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much. Tokens of
+their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods and from the
+gardens; choice fruit grown in the open air or under glass, for there
+were some fine houses surrounded by well-kept grounds, and greenhouses
+and graperies were not unknown in the small but favored settlement.
+
+On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes. A faint
+smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of his
+features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his parched
+lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep
+in which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow hours dragged
+along the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but
+with steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course.
+It was at no time immediately threatening, but the experienced physician
+knew its uncertainties only too well. He had known fever patients
+suddenly seized with violent internal inflammation, and carried off with
+frightful rapidity. He remembered the case of a convalescent, a young
+woman who had been attacked while in apparently vigorous general health,
+who, on being lifted too suddenly to a sitting position, while still
+confined to her bed, fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe. It
+may well be supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert
+the accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular
+course of which is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a
+railroad from one city to another. The most natural interpretation which
+the common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of these
+autumnal maladies would be that some noxious combustible element had
+found its way into the system which must be burned to ashes before the
+heat which pervades the whole body can subside. Sometimes the fire may
+smoulder and seem as if it were going out, or were quite extinguished,
+and again it will find some new material to seize upon, and flame up as
+fiercely as ever. Its coming on most frequently at the season when the
+brush fires which are consuming the dead branches, and withered
+leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation are sending up their smoke is
+suggestive. Sometimes it seems as if the body, relieved of its effete
+materials, renewed its youth after one of these quiet, expurgating,
+internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students have found
+themselves plump and blooming, and it has happened that one whose hair
+was straight as that of an Indian has been startled to behold himself
+in his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated
+countenance.
+
+There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
+Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration,
+which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as
+unable to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state
+he lay for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great
+weariness, and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again.
+For the most part his intellect was unclouded when his attention was
+aroused. He spoke only in whispers, a few words at a time. The doctor
+felt sure, by the expression which passed over his features from time to
+time, that something was worrying and oppressing him; something which
+he wished to communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of
+purpose, to make perfectly clear. His eyes often wandered to a certain
+desk, and once he had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and
+point to it. The doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he
+slowly shook his head. He had not the power to say at that time what he
+wished. The next day he felt a little less prostrated; and succeeded
+in explaining to the doctor what he wanted. His words, so far as the
+physician could make them out, were these which follow. Dr. Butts looked
+upon them as possibly expressing wishes which would be his last, and
+noted them down carefully immediately after leaving his chamber.
+
+“I commit the secret of my life to your charge. My whole story is told
+in a paper locked in that desk. The key is--put your hand under
+my pillow. If I die, let the story be known. It will show that I
+was--human--and save my memory from reproach.”
+
+He was silent for a little time. A single tear stole down his hollow
+cheek. The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full. But
+he said to himself, “It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong hopes
+that he will recover.”
+
+Maurice spoke once more. “Doctor, I put full trust in you. You are wise
+and kind. Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once and
+read. I want you to know the story of my life before it is finished--if
+the end is at hand. Take it with you and read it before you sleep.”
+ He was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the doctor saw a
+tranquil look on his features which added encouragement to his hopes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
+
+I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been passed
+in foreign lands. My father was a man of education, possessed of an
+ample fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished and amiable
+woman. I was their first and only child. She died while I was yet an
+infant. If I remember her at all it is as a vision, more like a glimpse
+of a pre-natal existence than as a part of my earthly life. At the death
+of my mother I was left in the charge of the old nurse who had enjoyed
+her perfect confidence. She was devoted to me, and I became absolutely
+dependent on her, who had for me all the love and all the care of a
+mother. I was naturally the object of the attentions and caresses of
+the family relatives. I have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling
+infant, with nothing to indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility;
+not afraid of strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their
+acquaintance. My father was devoted to me and did all in his power to
+promote my health and comfort.
+
+I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened
+which changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely
+existence. I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror. I
+must force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely
+remembered, for I am not willing that my doomed and wholly exceptional
+life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained, unvindicated. My nature
+is, I feel sure, a kind and social one, but I have lived apart, as if my
+heart were filled with hatred of my fellow-creatures. If there are any
+readers who look without pity, without sympathy, upon those who shun the
+fellowship of their fellow men and women, who show by their downcast or
+averted eyes that they dread companionship and long for solitude, I pray
+them, if this paper ever reaches them, to stop at this point. Follow
+me no further, for you will not believe my story, nor enter into the
+feelings which I am about to reveal. But if there are any to whom all
+that is human is of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness
+some stirrings of invincible attraction to one individual and equally
+invincible repugnance to another, who know by their own experience that
+elective affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it
+were, their polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective
+repulsions, let them read with unquestioning faith the story of a
+blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of course, received from
+the lips of others.
+
+My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was
+considered eminently beautiful. It was in my second summer that she
+visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my
+old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura
+was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements, thoughtless
+occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should
+be. It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My
+nurse had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with
+a low railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of
+my father's house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came
+suddenly upon the balcony. She no sooner saw me than with all the
+delighted eagerness of her youthful nature she rushed toward me, and,
+catching me from the nurse's arms, began tossing me after the fashion of
+young girls who have been so lately playing with dolls that they feel
+as if babies were very much of the same nature. The abrupt seizure
+frightened me; I sprang from her arms in my terror, and fell over the
+railing of the balcony. I should probably enough have been killed on
+the spot but for the fact that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath
+the balcony, into which I fell and thus had the violence of the shock
+broken. But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day
+marks of the deep wounds they inflicted.
+
+That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden
+apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the
+protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that
+accompanied my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space;
+the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,--all these
+fearful impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.
+
+When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and
+the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But
+after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were
+none of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident
+passed away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my
+father, who had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed
+the injury, hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be
+found to result from it. My cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed
+to feel that her thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an
+accident. As soon as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very
+penitent, very anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me,
+with all its consequences. I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed,
+bandaged, but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all
+appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling. As Laura came near
+me I shrieked and instantly changed color. I put my hand upon my heart
+as if I had been stabbed, and fell over, unconscious. It was very much
+the same state as that in which I was found immediately after my fall.
+
+The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious. The
+approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to lay her
+hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which the moment
+of terror and pain had already occasioned. The old nurse saw this in a
+moment. “Go! go!” she cried to Laura, “go, or the child will die!”
+ Her command did not have to be repeated. After Laura had gone I lay
+senseless, white and cold as marble, for some time. The doctor soon
+came, and by the use of smart rubbing and stimulants the color came
+back slowly to my cheeks and the arrested circulation was again set in
+motion.
+
+It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary
+effect of the accident. There could be little doubt, it was thought by
+the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should recover from
+this morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other infants receive
+pleasant-looking young persons. The old nurse shook her head. “The girl
+will be the death of the child,” she said, “if she touches him or comes
+near him. His heart stopped beating just as when the girl snatched him
+out of my arms, and he fell over the balcony railing.” Once more the
+experiment was tried, cautiously, almost insidiously. The same alarming
+consequences followed. It was too evident that a chain of nervous
+disturbances had been set up in my system which repeated itself whenever
+the original impression gave the first impulse. I never saw my cousin
+Laura after this last trial. Its result had so distressed her that she
+never ventured again to show herself to me.
+
+If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have been
+a misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity. The world
+is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be considered an
+essential of existence. I often heard Laura's name mentioned, but never
+by any one who was acquainted with all the circumstances, for it was
+noticed that I changed color and caught at my breast as if I wanted to
+grasp my heart in my hand whenever that fatal name was mentioned.
+
+Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of
+my fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by
+another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his
+share in caring for me. It was thought best to keep me perfectly quiet,
+and strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery, with one
+exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it
+seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather
+anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she was dangerous.
+But one day, when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought
+in a young lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to
+see me. She was, as I have been told, a very handsome girl, of about the
+same age as my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her
+in form, features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room
+than the same sudden changes which had followed my cousin's visit began
+to show themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a
+state of deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.
+
+Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures.
+A little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the
+nursery one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand,
+but turned away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a
+certain dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling which it might
+be hoped that time would overcome. Those around me were gradually
+finding out the circumstances which brought on the deadly attack to
+which I was subject.
+
+The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest
+girl of the village where we were passing the summer. She was very
+anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that
+she should be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted
+in seeing her and being caressed by her. I was sleeping when she entered
+the nursery and came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence.
+Presently I became restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw
+her stooping over me. My hand went to my left breast,--the color faded
+from my cheeks,--I was again the cold marble image so like death that it
+had well-nigh been mistaken for it.
+
+Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left
+me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is most
+attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who
+feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming
+cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws all life into
+its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed seem. The
+dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not
+intentionally tried again, but accident brought about more than
+one renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully
+recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of
+woman,--not absolutely of the human female, for I had no fear of my
+old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had
+become accustomed to the occasional meeting of a little girl or two,
+whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-defined feeling that
+there was danger in their presence. I was sent to a boys' school very
+early, and during the first ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely
+any occasion to be reminded of my strange idiosyncrasy.
+
+As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings
+which had so long held complete possession of me. This was what my
+father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of
+their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I should
+have grown to mature manhood.
+
+How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering,
+dreadful years? Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and waking.
+Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it
+that I lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears
+and find myself at her side, like other youths by the side of young
+maidens,--happy in their cheerful companionship, while I,--I, under
+the curse of one blighting moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the
+glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice stirred within
+me all the instincts that make the morning of life beautiful to
+adolescence. I reasoned with myself:
+
+Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the
+nightmare of my earlier years? Why should not the rising tide of life
+have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of
+childhood? How many children there are who tremble at being left alone
+in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their foolish
+terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any
+longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane
+habit of mind? I was familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the
+strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of
+them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I
+overcome this dread of woman as Peter the Great fought down his dread of
+wheels rolling over a bridge? Was I, alone of all mankind, to be doomed
+to perpetual exclusion from the society which, as it seemed to me, was
+all that rendered existence worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to
+the vulgar need of supplying the waste of the system and working at the
+task of respiration like the daughters of Danaus,--toiling day and night
+as the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?
+
+Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to
+any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile,
+whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only
+answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader
+by giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of
+which I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of
+which I have made a copy, and which will be found included with
+this manuscript. It is enough to say here, without entering into the
+explanation of the fact, which will be found simple enough as seen
+by the light of modern physiological science, that the “nervous
+disturbance” which the presence of a woman in the flower of her
+age produced in my system was a sense of impending death, sudden,
+overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was a reversed action of the
+nervous centres,--the opposite of that which flushes the young lover's
+cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of
+the object of his passion. No one who has ever felt the sensation can
+have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which commands
+instant and terrified submission.
+
+It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
+effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily
+and mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too
+slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a
+cause of anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there
+was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often
+too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and
+each also in part effect.
+
+We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a
+school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of
+my own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under
+which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to
+separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated in
+their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be
+exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion
+from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were
+self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I
+should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem
+of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which
+settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the
+devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.
+
+How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was
+at once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed
+as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was
+with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom
+I was acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to
+accept the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend
+and instructor had to set me down as a case of “invincible ignorance.”
+ This was the loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house
+of his creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of
+absolute despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have
+regarded me.
+
+I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which
+I had such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an
+occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
+impressed upon my memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made
+in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of
+gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time
+in his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart
+became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were
+some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I
+could see to account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I
+could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon me of some influence
+which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a
+window. As he did so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a
+blooming young woman,--it was my friend's sister, who had been sitting
+with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door.
+Something had warned me of the presence of a woman, that occult and
+potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual
+effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever
+it was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which
+allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the
+Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused
+her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which
+betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the
+heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.
+
+Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my
+manuscript? Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional
+as it seems to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries.
+I have never known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have
+been such, and if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot
+doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his
+judgment until he has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn
+up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In
+this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which
+I have been subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is
+explained in language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such
+a change of polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and
+an extreme degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary
+and comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being
+uncommon,--is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known
+instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious
+experiences of it in their own private history.
+
+It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am
+now dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
+superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which
+had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I
+was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power
+which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions
+of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been
+engrafted on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as
+directed, and watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time
+darkened, but it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.
+
+There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of
+futurity than she had any right to know. The story was that she had
+foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
+
+However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black
+art upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the
+wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her
+wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she
+shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I could get
+them would be in English like these:
+
+
+   Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
+   Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
+
+Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose
+palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular response,
+have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment.
+The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject
+disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to all that relates
+to it. I have never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I
+should find myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It
+seems as if it would naturally come through the influence of some young
+and fair woman, to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the
+Providence that governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling
+fears, with mingled belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I
+have sought with longing yet half-averted eyes for the “elect lady,”
+ as I have learned to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined
+life.
+
+Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had
+found the object of my superstitious belief.--Singularly enough it
+was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before
+my bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow
+passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages. I need not say that she
+was beautiful, for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I
+saw her walking the deck on some of the fair days when sea-sickness was
+forgotten. The passengers were a social company enough, but I had kept
+myself apart, as was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong
+to resist any longer. “I will venture into the charmed circle if it
+kills me,” I said to my father. I did venture, and it did not kill me,
+or I should not be telling this story. But there was a repetition of the
+old experiences. I need not relate the series of alarming consequences
+of my venture. The English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has
+made some one supremely happy before this, but she was not the “elect
+lady” of the prophecy and of my dreams.
+
+A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
+destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
+fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden
+who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young
+womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its limits. I was
+floating with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long
+hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young
+girl in it. The boy had been rowing, and one of his oars had slipped
+from his grasp. He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was
+hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar all the time floating farther
+away from him. I could not refuse my assistance. I picked up the oar and
+brought my skiff alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the boy
+the young girl lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of
+the language which
+
+
+   'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'
+
+She was a type of Italian beauty,--a nocturne in flesh and blood, if
+I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice
+which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no
+longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An
+hour later I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat, white,
+cold, almost pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to
+consciousness. Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems
+probable that I should never have waked from a slumber which was hardly
+distinguishable from that of death.
+
+Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite
+it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of
+these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the
+ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced
+by the most insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to
+which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I
+of ever being rid of this long and deep-seated infirmity? I may well ask
+myself these questions, but my answer is that I will never give up
+the hope that time will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild
+prediction which so haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of
+late strange premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not
+help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in
+miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,--assuredly when it
+comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations
+of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right
+to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the
+old zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they
+will prove true.
+
+Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization?
+I have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months
+and weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new
+thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
+
+Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
+season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in
+a distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
+tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
+flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to tell
+it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is to be
+my deliverer, my saviour.
+
+I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
+experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
+disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent
+risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my
+former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were
+of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest
+the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,--anything
+that reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as
+Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been
+resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return
+ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor,
+but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its
+menace.
+
+After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
+strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
+suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt
+to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as
+in any other way? I am alone in the world,--alone save for my faithful
+servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by
+a single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion,
+my dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier
+manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means
+of living as might best please my fancy. This season shall decide my
+fate. One more experiment, and I shall find myself restored to my place
+among my fellow-beings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all
+our mortal infirmities are past and forgotten.
+
+I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there
+shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected with my
+memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort
+to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to
+my lot, with all its possibilities, and among these possibilities is a
+gleam of a better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them
+wise, deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men, that such a life-destiny
+should be related by the subject of it for the instruction of others,
+and especially for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human
+character often wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when
+they are in reality the results of misdirected or reversed actions in
+some of the closely connected nervous centres.
+
+For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility
+left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me. I have
+passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as
+I have developed from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind
+instinct about which I had no thought, living like other infants the
+life of impressions without language to connect them in series. In my
+boyhood I began to be deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated
+me from those around me. In youth began that conflict of emotions and
+impulses with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken,
+a conflict which has never ceased, but to which I have necessarily
+become to a certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers of which
+I have learned to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my
+isolation. You, young man,--if at any time your eyes shall look upon my
+melancholy record,--you at least will understand me. Does not your heart
+throb, in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if
+it “were ready to crack” with its own excess of strain? What if instead
+of throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat
+again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will
+look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it
+is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of
+the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the
+Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that
+no breath of air could enter your panting chest!
+
+Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored
+friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her kindly
+smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty
+child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace
+and trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do you tremble, does
+life palpitate through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen
+meets your enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder
+not, then, if the period of mystic attraction for you should be that
+of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom the natural current of the
+instincts has had its course changed as that of a stream is changed by a
+convulsion of nature, so that the impression which is new life to you is
+death to him.
+
+I am now twenty-five years old. I have reached the time of life which
+I have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit of the
+sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no
+good reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as
+if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence. There is nothing for
+me to be ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who
+would not have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which
+seized upon me under the conditions I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone
+singing to their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his
+breath long enough to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some
+mechanical help, or nature will make him draw in a breath of air, and
+would make him do so though he knew the salvation of the human race
+would be forfeited by that one gasp.
+
+This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way
+that I have been. It probably never will; but for all that, there are
+many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the
+direction of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness
+seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism shaken, if not removed,
+by the calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal
+Academy. It will make little difference to me whether my story is
+accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely a product of the
+imagination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of
+different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the
+palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that
+shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here,
+to-morrow on the wing.
+
+If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
+shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
+that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only
+curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let
+it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment
+it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,--the
+repulsions which play such a formidable part in social life, and which
+must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute
+the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem
+to be impossibilities,--then it may be freely given to the world.
+
+But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of
+my life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be
+illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all
+its saddening features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light
+and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?
+
+The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far
+from the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend
+his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for
+his consideration.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XIX. THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
+
+Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained,
+excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages
+which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the
+paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no
+curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave
+them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so
+leave them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the
+story to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.
+
+Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional
+one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish
+him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances,
+if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one
+who, for some reason or other, shunned the society of young women, as
+if they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he
+can understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are
+laid before him.
+
+One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
+Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the
+fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the
+Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his
+prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of
+avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every
+society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon
+himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,--upon a
+different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed
+of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he
+himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood
+there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long
+enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the
+fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his
+hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was
+submitted, he told them all that he knew about it almost without a sign
+of emotion. Nature was so peremptory with him,--saying in language that
+had no double meaning: “If you violate the condition on which you
+hold my gift of existence I slay you on the spot,”--that he became as
+decisive in his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his
+fate without repining.
+
+Yet it must not be thought for a moment,--it cannot be supposed,--that
+he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the coolness of an
+enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it was to
+live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of
+throwing it off with his life, as too grievous to be borne, was familiar
+to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How
+he had speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper
+the reader may remember on Ocean, River, and Lake.
+
+With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as
+may find any interest in them.
+
+
+        ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
+
+             WITH REMARKS.
+
+Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological
+Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.
+
+“The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment
+upon will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have
+learned the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon
+her laws by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time
+to time are observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier
+generations. We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,'
+except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches
+which still hold to them. Not the less do we meet with strange and
+surprising facts, which a century or two ago would have been handled by
+the clergy and the courts, but today are calmly recorded and judged by
+the best light our knowledge of the laws of life can throw upon them.
+It must be owned that there are stories which we can hardly dispute,
+so clear and full is the evidence in their support, which do,
+notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes leave us sceptical in spite
+of all the testimony which supports them.
+
+“In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to
+the candid attention of the Academy. If one were told that a young man,
+a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently perfect
+health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the
+presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly
+terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into
+her immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did
+not shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a
+certain timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the
+company of their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did
+not laugh, at the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this
+must be the fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer,
+the trick of some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea,
+carried out. A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little
+comedy and making love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be
+overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation
+the plain facts lend themselves too easily. We will relate the leading
+circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity
+and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if classified, would
+come under the general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a
+name, we shall have to apply the term Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman.”
+
+Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which is
+in all essentials identical with that already laid before the reader.
+
+“Such is the case offered to our consideration. Assuming its
+truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first
+place whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as it
+seems at first sight, or whether it is only the last term of a series
+of cases which in their less formidable aspect are well known to us
+in literature, in the records of science, and even in our common
+experience.
+
+“To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give are
+entirely superfluous. But there are some whose chief studies have been
+in different directions, and who will not complain if certain facts are
+mentioned which to the expert will seem rudimentary, and which hardly
+require recapitulation to those who are familiarly acquainted with the
+common text-books.
+
+“The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher animals,
+and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to a greater
+or less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the system. If its
+action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness is the immediate
+consequence; if it is arrested, loss of consciousness; if its action
+is not soon restored, death, of which fainting plants the white flag,
+remains in possession of the system.
+
+“How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need
+not go to science to learn, for all human experience and all literature
+are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation.
+Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the
+entire life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the language of
+Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for Measure:'
+
+
+  “'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
+   Making it both unable for itself
+   And dispossessing all my other parts
+   Of necessary fitness?'
+
+“More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the
+passion of love. A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called to
+the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some cause
+the physicians who had already seen her were unable to make out. The
+shrewd old practitioner suspected that love was at the bottom of the
+young lady's malady. Many relatives and friends of both sexes, all of
+them ready with their sympathy, came to see her. The physician sat by
+her bedside during one of these visits, and in an easy, natural way took
+her hand and placed a finger on her pulse. It beat quietly enough until
+a certain comely young gentleman entered the apartment, when it suddenly
+rose in frequency, and at the same moment her hurried breathing,
+her changing color, pale and flushed by turns, betrayed the profound
+agitation his presence excited. This was enough for the sagacious Greek;
+love was the disease, the cure of which by its like may be claimed as an
+anticipation of homoeopathy. In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta'
+edition of the works of Galen, you may find among the wood-cuts
+a representation of the interesting scene, with the title Amantas
+Dignotio,--the diagnosis, or recognition, of the lover.
+
+“Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them. The
+pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain which
+gives it color. The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each other's
+hearts beating. When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot herself, and
+was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,
+
+
+  “'T was partly love and partly fear,
+   And partly 't was a bashful art,
+   That I might rather feel than see
+   The swelling of her heart'
+
+“Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or
+felt. But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ treats
+the lover.
+
+
+  “'Faint heart never won fair lady.'
+
+“This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it
+has its literal truth. Many a lover has found his heart sink within
+him,--lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his emotion
+at the sight of the object of his affections. When Porphyro looked upon
+Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much for him:
+
+
+  “'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
+   Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint,
+   She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'
+
+“And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story
+'fainted away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at
+Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future husband.'
+
+“One who faints is dead if he does not 'come to,' and nothing is more
+likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off in this
+way. Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in these
+and similar trying moments. The mechanism of its actions becomes an
+interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes, and to all who
+are capable of intense emotions.
+
+“The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air, and
+heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste material. It
+knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty times in a minute,
+calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload its refuse. Between
+it and the brain there is the closest relation. The emotions, which act
+upon it as we have seen, govern it by a mechanism only of late years
+thoroughly understood. This mechanism can be made plain enough to the
+reader who is not afraid to believe that he can understand it.
+
+“The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition. It is
+the great central telegraphic station with which many lesser centres are
+in close relation, from which they receive, and to which they transmit,
+their messages. The heart has its own little brains, so to speak,--small
+collections of nervous substance which govern its rhythmical motions
+under ordinary conditions. But these lesser nervous centres are to a
+large extent dominated by influences transmitted from certain groups of
+nerve-cells in the brain and its immediate dependencies.
+
+“There are two among the special groups of nerve-cells which produce
+directly opposite effects. One of these has the power of accelerating
+the action of the heart, while the other has the power of retarding or
+arresting this action. One acts as the spur, the other as the bridle.
+According as one or the other predominates, the action of the heart
+will be stimulated or restrained. Among the great modern discoveries in
+physiology is that of the existence of a distinct centre of inhibition,
+as the restraining influence over the heart is called.
+
+“The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of
+cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man can be brave without blood
+to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German
+materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting
+lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend him her
+smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks. Porphyro got
+over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau
+was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness: but many an
+officer has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been rejected,
+because the centre of inhibition has got the upper hand of the centre of
+stimulation.
+
+“In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been recorded,
+the most frequent cause has been the disturbed and depressing influence
+of the centre of inhibition. Fainting at the sight of blood is one of
+the commonest examples of this influence. A single impression, in a very
+early period of atmospheric existence,--perhaps, indirectly, before that
+period, as was said to have happened in the case of James the First
+of England,--may establish a communication between this centre and the
+heart which will remain open ever afterwards. How does a footpath across
+a field establish itself? Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call
+accidental, but one after another follows it as if he were guided by a
+chart on which it was laid down. So it is with this dangerous transit
+between the centre of inhibition and the great organ of life. If once
+the path is opened by the track of some profound impression, that same
+impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old
+footmarks and follow them. Habit only makes the path easier to traverse,
+and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant, may perpetuate
+itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of its subject.
+
+“The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of the
+effect of inhibition on the heart.
+
+“We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of
+the human race; on the contrary, we do not doubt that there have been
+similar cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been
+the consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report. The
+case most like it is that of Colone Townsend, which is too well known to
+require any lengthened description in this paper. It is enough to recall
+the main facts. He could by a voluntary effort suspend the action of
+his heart for a considerable period, during which he lay like one dead,
+pulseless, and without motion. After a time the circulation returned,
+and he does not seem to have been the worse for his dangerous, or
+seemingly dangerous, experiment. But in his case it was by an act of the
+will that the heart's action was suspended. In the case before us it
+is an involuntary impulse transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting
+centre, which arrests the cardiac movements.
+
+“What is like to be the further history of the case?
+
+“The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty years
+old. The chain of nervous actions has become firmly established.
+It might have been hoped that the changes of adolescence would have
+effected a transformation of the perverted instinct. On the contrary,
+the whole force of this instinct throws itself on the centre of
+inhibition, instead of quickening the heart-beats, and sending the
+rush of youthful blood with fresh life through the entire system to the
+throbbing finger-tips.
+
+“Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of
+nervous interactions so long established? We are disposed to think that
+there is a chance of its being broken up. And we are not afraid to say
+that we suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such hold of
+the patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the 'spell,'
+as she called it, is to be dissolved. She must, in all probability,
+have had a hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth before her was a
+victim, and its cause, and if so, her guess as to the probable mode in
+which the young man would obtain relief from his unfortunate condition
+was the one which would naturally suggest itself.
+
+“If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of inhibition
+can be made to change its course, so as to follow its natural channel,
+it will probably keep to that channel ever afterwards. And this will, it
+is most likely, be effected by some sudden, unexpected impression. If
+he were drowning, and a young woman should rescue him, it is by no means
+impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to
+might be brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the
+poles in a magnet, which is effected in an instant. But he cannot be
+expected to throw himself into the water just at the right moment
+when the 'fair lady' of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore.
+Accident may effect the cure which art seems incompetent to perform. It
+would not be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back
+to consciousness. But it is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that
+a happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous polarity
+may be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and his past
+terrible experiences be to him like a scarce-remembered dream.
+
+“This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine
+the wisest course to be pursued. The question is not unlike that which
+arises in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the neck. Shall
+the unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face turned far round
+to the right or the left, or shall an attempt be made to replace the
+dislocated bones? an attempt which may succeed, or may cause instant
+death. The patient must be consulted as to whether he will take the
+chance. The practitioner may be unwilling to risk it, if the patient
+consents. Each case must be judged on its own special grounds. We cannot
+think that this young man is doomed to perpetual separation from the
+society of womanhood during the period of its bloom and attraction. But
+to provoke another seizure after his past experiences would be too much
+like committing suicide. We fear that we must trust to the chapter
+of accidents. The strange malady--for such it is--has become a second
+nature, and may require as energetic a shock to displace it as it did
+to bring it into existence. Time alone can solve this question, on which
+depends the well-being and, it may be, the existence of a young man
+every way fitted to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his
+true nature.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
+
+Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting upon
+them. He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the entire
+frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which Maurice
+showed in placing these papers at his disposal. He believed that his
+patient would recover from this illness for which he had been taking
+care of him. He thought deeply and earnestly of what he could do for him
+after he should have regained his health and strength.
+
+There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which
+the doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief
+autobiography. Some one person--some young woman, it must be--had
+produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous
+experiences through which he had passed. The doctor could not help
+thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to him.
+Maurice, as she said, turned pale,--he clapped his hand to his breast.
+He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any straggling
+damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be looked
+upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked like
+one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and
+command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without
+being struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had
+known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of
+attraction and uncontrollable dread,--if she had known it! But what,
+even then, could she have done? Nothing but get away from him as fast as
+she could. As it was, it was a long time before his agitation subsided,
+and his heart beat with its common force and frequency.
+
+Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between. But he
+could not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young persons
+could not come together as other young people do in the pairing season,
+and find out whether they cared for and were fitted for each other. He
+did not pretend to settle this question in his own mind, but the thought
+was a natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide
+as that between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This
+thought took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts
+of ways of effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and
+Euthymia. From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general
+considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been
+reading. He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal
+presence of an individual making itself perceived by some channel other
+than any of the five senses. The study of the natural sciences teaches
+those who are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead
+the way to the discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of
+the universe. From the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs
+which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very long
+stride if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which was the
+occasion of her having some frog-broth prepared for her, the world of
+to-day might not be in possession of the electric telegraph and
+the light which blazes like the sun at high noon. A common-looking
+occurrence, one seemingly unimportant, which had hitherto passed
+unnoticed with the ordinary course of things, was the means of
+introducing us to a new and vast realm of closely related phenomena. It
+was like a key that we might have picked up, looking so simple that it
+could hardly fit any lock but one of like simplicity, but which should
+all at once throw back the bolts of the one lock which had defied
+the most ingenious of our complex implements and open our way into a
+hitherto unexplored territory.
+
+It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the
+paralyzing influence. He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance, as
+he did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous disturbance. A
+certain proximity was necessary for the influence to be felt, as in the
+case of magnetism and electricity. An atmosphere of danger surrounded
+every woman he approached during the period when her sex exercises
+its most powerful attractions. How far did that atmosphere extend, and
+through what channel did it act?
+
+The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found in a
+fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of galvanism and
+its practical applications. The circumstances connected with the very
+common antipathy to cats were as remarkable in many points of view as
+the similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects
+of that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their
+nervous system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness,
+restlessness, oppression, came over them in the presence of one of
+these animals. He remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons
+sensitive to this impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is
+concealed in the apartment in which they may happen to be. It may be
+through some emanation. It may be through the medium of some electrical
+disturbance. What if the nerve-thrills passing through the whole system
+of the animal propagate themselves to a certain distance without any
+more regard to intervening solids than is shown by magnetism? A sieve
+lets sand pass through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass,
+glass holds fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but
+magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No
+good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray
+itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a
+box in which the animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories
+which allege such an occurrence as a fact and a not very infrequent one.
+
+If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these
+circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar
+conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific
+influence? The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his friends, a
+story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the distinguished
+actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no
+genius as an actress. It was all Samson's training and study, according
+to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness on the
+stage. But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she was full of. He declared
+that he was made aware of her presence on the stage, when he could not
+see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic emanation.
+The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might very
+probably be exaggeration, perhaps high imaginative coloring about it,
+but it was not a whit more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as
+authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments.
+Into this series of reflections we will try to follow him.
+
+What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the
+heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like
+a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy
+personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation,
+which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:
+
+
+  “Bright effluence of bright essence increate”?
+
+The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence
+of its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see,
+the doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the
+nervous centres there should not be one which acts at various distances
+from its source. It may not be visible like the “glory” of the painters,
+it may not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may
+be felt by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable
+presence,--more powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to
+its mode of action.
+
+Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
+unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just
+as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their
+presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the
+larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its
+presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is
+it strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong
+especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in
+distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it
+seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,--analogies
+too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female.
+
+Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was
+this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very
+strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or
+suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling
+their secret:
+
+How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they
+never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws
+man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes, in virtue
+of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in
+others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of which fear, this
+attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of
+doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left
+unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote
+themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their
+confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most
+attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is
+rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the
+beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in
+all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once
+let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the
+warrior who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the
+well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to
+ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with
+his lady-love.
+
+Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have
+seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have
+seen the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair
+of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as
+far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape
+that little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve,
+who knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes
+before he had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted
+them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and
+back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on
+earth.
+
+Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that
+opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily
+of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not
+only the historic wonder of beauty, that “burnt the topless towers of
+Ilium” for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the
+hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places,
+and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any
+of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon
+coiled around her.
+
+The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial
+imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the
+probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's
+story, if it came before the public.
+
+What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the
+village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments,
+what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer
+got hold of it, how “The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor”
+ would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows of the
+place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young
+girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story
+got about among them. “The Sachem” of the solitary canoe, the bold
+horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome so far as the glimpses they had
+got of him went,--must needs be an object of tender interest among them,
+now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from
+friends,--poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his
+sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them
+pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others
+“criss-crossed,” were growing more frequent as it was understood that
+the patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed.
+If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to
+their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his
+doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk;
+for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors, let us
+hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love
+of conquest.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
+
+The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
+profound prostration. The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger of
+any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from
+the pillow. But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he
+was able to hold some conversation with those about him. His faithful
+Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that
+the village children had to take a second look at his face when they
+passed him to make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no
+other. But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor
+assured him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's
+face began to recover something of its old look and expression, and once
+more his pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of
+worshipping three and four year old followers.
+
+“How is Mr. Kirkwood?” was the question with which he was always
+greeted. In the worst periods of the fever he rarely left his master.
+When he did, and the question was put to him, he would shake his head
+sadly, sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and
+faltering words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a stalwart man
+as he was, such a man as soldiers are made of in the great Continental
+armies.
+
+“He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be no
+better,” and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a passionate
+burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his
+master, his ready optimism declared itself no less transparently.
+
+“He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him on
+hoss in little while.” The kind-hearted creature's life was bound up in
+that of his “master,” as he loved to call him, in sovereign disregard of
+the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such
+recognition of another as their better. They could not understand how
+he, so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and manner, could
+speak of the man who employed him in any other way than as “Kirkwood,”
+ without even demeaning himself so far as to prefix a “Mr.” to it. But
+“my master” Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all
+men are born free and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a
+master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger.
+Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber and
+getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was
+in so much need. It worried him to see his servant returning after too
+short an absence. The attendant who had helped him in the care of the
+patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out of the house
+by the urgency of his master's command that he should take plenty of
+exercise in the open air.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although the
+force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to which
+he had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required great
+precautions to be taken. He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to such a
+degree that he had to be cared for very much as a child is tended.
+Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could hold some
+conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about him. The doctor
+waited for the right moment to make mention of the manuscript which
+Maurice had submitted to him. Up to this time, although it had been
+alluded to and the doctor had told him of the intense interest with
+which he had read it, he had never ventured to make it the subject of
+any long talk, such as would be liable to fatigue his patient. But now
+he thought the time had come.
+
+“I have been thinking,” the doctor said, “of the singular seizures to
+which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think
+about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable
+of receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about
+your history. And in the first place, will you allow me to ask what led
+you to this particular place? It is so much less known to the public at
+large than many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or
+that new visitor among us? We have no ill-tasting, natural spring of bad
+water to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific.
+We have no great gambling-houses, no racecourse (except that for boats
+on the lake); we have no coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any
+kind, so we ask, What brings this or that stranger here? And I think I
+may venture to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us,
+or whether it was accident that determined your coming to this place.”
+
+“Certainly, doctor,” Maurice answered, “I will tell you with great
+pleasure. Last year I passed on the border of a great river. The year
+before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean. I wanted
+this year to be by a lake. You heard the paper read at the meeting of
+your society, or at least you heard of it,--for such matters are always
+talked over in a village like this. You can judge by that paper, or
+could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind in which I came here.
+I was tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling
+egotism of the river, always hurrying along on its own private business.
+I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large, tranquil sheet of water that
+had nothing in particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my
+thoughts. I had read somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor
+Tavern, with its paternal landlord and motherly landlady and
+old-fashioned household, and that, though it was no longer open as a
+tavern, I could find a resting-place there early in the season, at least
+for a few days, while I looked about me for a quiet place in which I
+might pass my summer. I have found this a pleasant residence. By being
+up early and out late I have kept myself mainly in the solitude which
+has become my enforced habit of life. The season has gone by too swiftly
+for me since my dream has become a vision.”
+
+The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three
+fingers on his pulse. As he spoke these last words he noticed that the
+pulse fluttered a little,--beat irregularly a few times; intermitted;
+became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid
+bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.
+
+“No more talk, now,” he said. “You are too tired to be using your voice.
+I will hear all the rest another time.”
+
+The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point. What did
+he mean by saying that his dream had become a vision? This is what the
+doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to know. But
+his hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him unmistakably
+that the heart had taken the alarm and was losing its energy under
+the depressing nervous influence. Presently, however, it recovered its
+natural force and rhythm, and a faint flush came back to the pale cheek.
+The doctor remembered the story of Galen, and the young maiden whose
+complaint had puzzled the physicians.
+
+The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into
+conversation.
+
+“You said something about a dream of yours which had become a vision,”
+ said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as before. He
+felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a little, stop, then
+begin again, growing fuller in its beat. The heart had felt the pull of
+the bridle, but the spur had roused it to swift reaction.
+
+“You know the story of my past life, doctor,” Maurice answered; “and, I
+will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my dreams.
+You remember the boat-race? I watched it from a distance, but I held
+a powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole crew of the
+young ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the features, the
+figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers. I saw the little
+coxswain fling her bouquet in the track of the other boat,--you remember
+how the race was lost and won,--but I saw one face among those young
+girls which drew me away from all the rest. It was that of the young
+lady who pulled the bow oar, the captain of the boat's crew. I have
+since learned her name, you know it well,--I need not name her. Since
+that day I have had many distant glimpses of her; and once I met her
+so squarely that the deadly sensation came over me, and I felt that in
+another moment I should fall senseless at her feet. But she passed
+on her way and I on mine, and the spasm which had clutched my heart
+gradually left it, and I was as well as before. You know that young
+lady, doctor?”
+
+“I do; and she is a very noble creature. You are not the first young man
+who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia Tower. And
+she is well worth knowing more intimately.”
+
+The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early days,
+her character, her accomplishments. To all this he listened devoutly,
+and when the doctor left him he said to himself, “I will see her and
+speak with her, if it costs me my life.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXII. EUTHYMIA.
+
+“The Wonder” of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show
+of her gymnastic accomplishments. Her feats, which were so much admired,
+were only her natural exercise. Gradually the dumb-bells others used
+became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too short, the clubs
+she exercised with seemed as if they were made of cork instead of being
+heavy wood, and all the tests and meters of strength and agility had
+been strained beyond the standards which the records of the school had
+marked as their historic maxima. It was not her fault that she broke
+a dynamometer one day; she apologized for it, but the teacher said he
+wished he could have a dozen broken every year in the same way. The
+consciousness of her bodily strength had made her very careful in her
+movements. The pressure of her hand was never too hard for the tenderest
+little maiden whose palm was against her own. So far from priding
+herself on her special gifts, she was disposed to be ashamed of them.
+There were times and places in which she could give full play to her
+muscles without fear or reproach. She had her special costume for the
+boat and for the woods. She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now
+and then for the sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest
+where a hawk, or it may be an eagle, was raising her little brood of
+air-pirates.
+
+There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as
+an unsafe exposure. One sometimes met doubtful characters about the
+neighborhood, and stories were told of occurrences which might well
+frighten a young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself alone
+in the wild solitudes which surrounded the little village. Those who
+knew Euthymia thought her quite equal to taking care of herself. Her
+very look was enough to ensure the respect of any vagabond who might
+cross her path, and if matters came to the worst she would prove as
+dangerous as a panther.
+
+But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble
+specimen of true womanhood. Health, beauty, strength, were fine
+qualities, and in all these she was rich. She enjoyed all her natural
+gifts, and thought little about them. Unwillingly, but over-persuaded
+by some of her friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to be modelled.
+The artists who saw the cast wondered if it would be possible to get the
+bust of the maiden from whom it was taken. Nobody would have dared to
+suggest such an idea to her except Lurida. For Lurida sex was a trifling
+accident, to be disregarded not only in the interests of humanity, but
+for the sake of art.
+
+“It is a shame,” she said to Euthymia, “that you will not let your
+exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in marble. You have no right to
+withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow-creatures.
+Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents the divine
+idea! You belong to your race, and not to yourself,--at least, your
+beauty is a gift not to be considered as a piece of private property.
+Look at the so-called Venus of Milo. Do you suppose the noble woman who
+was the original of that divinely chaste statue felt any scruple about
+allowing the sculptor to reproduce her pure, unblemished perfections?”
+
+Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend. She listened to
+her eloquent discourse, but she could not help blushing, used as she was
+to Lurida's audacities. “The Terror's” brain had run away with a large
+share of the blood which ought to have gone to the nourishment of her
+general system. She could not help admiring, almost worshipping, a
+companion whose being was rich in the womanly developments with which
+nature had so economically endowed herself. An impoverished organization
+carries with it certain neutral qualities which make its subject appear,
+in the presence of complete manhood and womanhood, like a deaf-mute
+among speaking persons. The deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek
+at Lurida's suggestion was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed
+expression. There was a range of sensibilities of which Lurida knew far
+less than she did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed
+her vital forces. She was startled to see what an effect her proposal
+had produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing, but there was a flame
+in her eyes which she had hardly ever seen before.
+
+“Is this only your own suggestion?” Euthymia said, “or has some one been
+putting the idea into your head?” The truth was that she had happened
+to meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was offended by
+the long, searching stare with which that individual had honored her. It
+occurred to her that he, or some such visitor to the place, might have
+spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person who had repeated what
+was said to Lurida, as a good subject for the art of the sculptor,
+and she felt all her maiden sensibilities offended by the proposition.
+Lurida could not understand her excitement, but she was startled by
+it. Natures which are complementary of each other are liable to these
+accidental collisions of feeling. They get along very well together,
+none the worse for their differences, until all at once the tender spot
+of one or the other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness
+on the part of the aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the
+explosion explains the situation altogether too emphatically. Such
+scenes did not frequently occur between the two friends, and this little
+flurry was soon over; but it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia
+Tower was not of that class of self-conscious beauties who would be
+ready to dispute the empire of the Venus of Milo on her own ground, in
+defences as scanty and insufficient as those of the marble divinity.
+
+Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and
+in the long vacations, near enough to find out that she was anything but
+easy to make love to. She fairly frightened more than one rash youth
+who was disposed to be too sentimental in her company. They overdid
+flattery, which she was used to and tolerated, but which cheapened
+the admirer in her estimation, and now and then betrayed her into an
+expression which made him aware of the fact, and was a discouragement
+to aggressive amiability. The real difficulty was that not one of her
+adorers had ever greatly interested her. It could not be that nature had
+made her insensible. It must have been because the man who was made for
+her had never yet shown himself. She was not easy to please, that was
+certain; and she was one of those young women who will not accept as
+a lover one who but half pleases them. She could not pick up the first
+stick that fell in her way and take it to shape her ideal out of. Many
+of the good people of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be
+married.
+
+“There 's nothing good enough for her in this village,” said the old
+landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.
+
+“She must wait till a prince comes along,” the old landlady said in
+reply. “She'd make as pretty a queen as any of them that's born to it.
+Wouldn't she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and di'monds a
+glitterin' all over her! D' you remember how handsome she looked in the
+tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas Society? She had on an
+old dress of her grandma's,--they don't make anything half so handsome
+nowadays,--and she was just as pretty as a pictur'. But what's the use
+of good looks if they scare away folks? The young fellows think that
+such a handsome girl as that would cost ten times as much to keep as
+a plain one. She must be dressed up like an empress,--so they seem to
+think. It ain't so with Euthymy: she'd look like a great lady dressed
+anyhow, and she has n't got any more notions than the homeliest girl
+that ever stood before a glass to look at herself.”
+
+In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions
+were entertained of Miss Euthymia. The fresh-water fisherman represented
+pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged.
+“I tell ye,” said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief
+occupation was to watch the coming and going of the visitors to
+Arrowhead Village,--“I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any
+o' them slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin' raound to look at her
+every Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'. It's one o' them big gents
+from Boston or New York that'll step up an' kerry her off.”
+
+In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of Euthymia
+than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance. The ideals of young
+women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them very
+often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly
+trying to force upon them, in spite of their obvious unfitness. The
+higher the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has
+the great advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance
+who can profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of
+visitors is better than absolute loneliness,--the less likely are these
+undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced,
+accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia found so much pleasure
+in the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence
+and reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had
+been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in an
+abstract sort of way. Beneath her abstractions there was a capacity
+of loving which might have been inferred from the expression of her
+features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her voice, all
+of which were full of the language which belongs to susceptible natures.
+How many women never say to themselves that they were born to love,
+until all at once the discovery opens upon them, as the sense that he
+was born a painter is said to have dawned suddenly upon Correggio!
+
+Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
+thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers.
+She was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or
+even a bunch of flowers. She knew that he was receiving abounding tokens
+of kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a certain inward
+feeling restrained her from joining in these demonstrations. If he had
+been suffering from some deadly and contagious malady she would have
+risked her life to help him, without a thought that there was any
+wonderful heroism in such self-devotion. Her friend Lurida might have
+been capable of the same sacrifice, but it would be after reasoning with
+herself as to the obligations which her sense of human rights and duties
+laid upon her, and fortifying her courage with the memory of noble
+deeds recorded of women in ancient and modern history. With Euthymia the
+primary human instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection
+about them. All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this
+forlorn stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of
+giving any complete expression to them. She thought of Mungo Park in the
+African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied him,
+but had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him. How near
+were these two human creatures, each needing the other! How near in
+bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier seemingly
+impassable between them!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
+
+These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young
+people every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases. Not only are
+they liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental complications
+which may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after convalescence
+seems to be established, relapses occur which are more serious than the
+disease had appeared to be in its previous course. One morning Dr. Butts
+found Maurice worse instead of better, as he had hoped and expected to
+find him. Weak as he was, there was every reason to fear the issue
+of this return of his threatening symptoms. There was not much to do
+besides keeping up the little strength which still remained. It was all
+needed.
+
+Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as much
+as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and taking
+what we call his “rest”? More than a thousand times an hour, between a
+hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he has to lift
+the bars of the cage in which his breathing organs are confined, to save
+himself from asphyxia. Rest! There is no rest until the last long sigh
+tells those who look upon the dying that the ceaseless daily task, to
+rest from which is death, is at last finished. We are all galley-slaves,
+pulling at the levers of respiration,--which, rising and falling like so
+many oars, drive us across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore
+to another. No! Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these
+four and twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life
+long.
+
+The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
+relapse. It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
+source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
+keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm. He determined to
+remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure of pure air,
+and where he himself could give more constant attention to his patient
+during this critical period of his disease. It was a risk to take,
+but he could be carried on a litter by careful men, and remain wholly
+passive during the removal. Maurice signified his assent, as he could
+hardly help doing,--for the doctor's suggestion took pretty nearly the
+form of a command. He thought it a matter of life and death, and was
+gently urgent for his patient's immediate change of residence. The
+doctor insisted on having Maurice's books and other movable articles
+carried to his own house, so that he should be surrounded by familiar
+sights, and not worry himself about what might happen to objects which
+he valued, if they were left behind him.
+
+All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything
+was ready for the transfer of the patient to the house of the hospitable
+physician. Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the arrangement
+of Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master. The nurse in
+attendance, a trustworthy man enough in the main, finding his patient in
+a tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a little fresh air. While he
+was at the door he heard a shouting which excited his curiosity, and he
+followed the sound until he found himself at the border of the lake. It
+was nothing very wonderful which had caused the shouting. A Newfoundland
+dog had been showing off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers
+were betting as to the time it would take him to bring back to his
+master the various floating objects which had been thrown as far from
+the shore as possible. He watched the dog a few minutes, when his
+attention was drawn to a light wherry, pulled by one young lady and
+steered by another. It was making for the shore, which it would soon
+reach. The attendant remembered all at once, that he had left his
+charge, and just before the boat came to land he turned and hurried back
+to the patient. Exactly how long he had been absent he could not have
+said,--perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps longer; the time appeared
+short to him, wearied with long sitting and watching.
+
+It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was
+not in the least needed. The patient was lying perfectly quiet, and to
+all appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone. It was such a
+comfort to look at something besides the worn features of a sick man, to
+hear something besides his labored breathing and faint, half-whispered
+words, that the temptation to indulge in these luxuries for a few
+minutes had proved irresistible.
+
+Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the
+absence of the nurse. He very soon fell into a dream, which began
+quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams
+are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing,
+terrifying. His earlier and later experiences came up before him,
+fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at
+the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or
+rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their
+lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters
+of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage
+through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a
+slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a
+shallow niche, his hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss
+below him waiting for his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin
+the air seemed, how desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of
+Mont Blanc, it may be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he
+remembered well as one of the great trials in his mountain ascents. No,
+it was not Mont Blanc,--it was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits;
+it was Hecla that he was climbing.
+
+The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he was
+choking with its dense fumes; he heard the flames roaring around him, he
+felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry, and awoke.
+
+The room was full of smoke. He was gasping for breath, strangling in the
+smothering oven which his chamber had become.
+
+The house was on fire!
+
+He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in a
+whisper. He made a desperate effort, and rose so as to sit up in the bed
+for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back
+upon his pillow, helpless. He felt that his hour had come, for he could
+not live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was left alone. He could
+hear the crackle of fire as the flame crept along from one partition to
+another. It was a cruel fate to be left to perish in that way,--the
+fate that many a martyr had had to face,--to be first strangled and
+then burned. Death had not the terror for him that it has for most
+young persons. He was accustomed to thinking of it calmly, sometimes
+wistfully, even to such a degree that the thought of self-destruction
+had come upon him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected
+and appalling shape. He did not know before how much he cared to live.
+All his old recollections came before him as it were in one long, vivid
+flash. The closed vista of memory opened to its far horizon-line, and
+past and present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The
+dread moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He
+felt the convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,--the
+rush of air,--the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into
+which he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures
+which had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat
+themselves, as real as at the moment of their occurrence. The pictures
+passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared almost as if
+simultaneous. The vision of the “inward eye” was so intensified in this
+moment of peril that an instant was like an hour of common existence.
+Those who have been very near drowning know well what this description
+means. The development of a photograph may not explain it, but it
+illustrates the curious and familiar fact of the revived recollections
+of the drowning man's experience. The sensitive plate has taken one look
+at a scene, and remembers it all,
+
+Every little circumstance is there,--the hoof in air, the wing in
+flight, the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks. All there, but
+invisible; potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if not
+existing at all. A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene comes
+out in all its perfection of detail. In those supreme moments when death
+stares a man suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted emotion floods
+the undeveloped pictures of vanished years, stored away in the memory,
+the vast panorama of a lifetime, and in one swift instant the past comes
+out as vividly as if it were again the present. So it was at this moment
+with the sick man, as he lay helpless and felt that he was left to die.
+For he saw no hope of relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into
+the room; the flames were very near; if he was not reached and rescued
+immediately it was all over with him.
+
+His past life had flashed before him. Then all at once rose the thought
+of his future,--of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes which he
+had cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be lifted from him.
+There was something, then, to be lived for, something! There was a new
+life, it might be, in store for him, and such a new life! He thought of
+all he was losing. Oh, could he but have lived to know the meaning of
+love! And the passionate desire of life came over him,--not the dread of
+death, but the longing for what the future might yet have of happiness
+for him.
+
+All this took place in the course of a very few moments. Dreams and
+visions have little to do with measured time, and ten minutes, possibly
+fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the beginning of those
+nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested by the suffocating air
+he was breathing.
+
+What had happened? In the confusion of moving books and other articles
+to the doctor's house, doors and windows had been forgotten. Among the
+rest a window opening into the cellar, where some old furniture had
+been left by a former occupant, had been left unclosed. One of the lazy
+natives, who had lounged by the house smoking a bad cigar, had thrown
+the burning stump in at this open window. He had no particular intention
+of doing mischief, but he had that indifference to consequences which is
+the next step above the inclination to crime. The burning stump happened
+to fall among the straw of an old mattress which had been ripped open.
+The smoker went his way without looking behind him, and it so chanced
+that no other person passed the house for some time. Presently the straw
+was in a blaze, and from this the fire extended to the furniture, to the
+stairway leading up from the cellar, and was working its way along the
+entry under the stairs leading up to the apartment where Maurice was
+lying.
+
+The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a
+mass of combustibles,--loose straw from the mattress, dry old furniture,
+and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for a score
+or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of the
+newspaper reports, “a perfect tinder-box,” and would probably be a heap
+of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted sick
+man lying between life and death, beyond all help unless some unexpected
+assistance should come to his rescue.
+
+As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was
+horror-struck to see dense volumes of smoke pouring out of the lower
+windows. It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows,
+also, and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward along
+the side of the house. The man shrieked Fire! Fire! with all his might,
+and rushed to the door of the building to make his way to Maurice's
+room and save him. He penetrated but a short distance when, blinded and
+choking with the smoke, he rushed headlong down the stairs with a cry of
+despair that roused every man, woman, and child within reach of a human
+voice. Out they came from their houses in every quarter of the village.
+The shout of Fire! Fire! was the chief aid lent by many of the young and
+old. Some caught up pails and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling
+them; the hastier snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer
+the burning building.
+
+Is the sick man moved?
+
+This was the awful question first asked,--for in the little village all
+knew that Maurice was about being transferred to the doctor's house. The
+attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where he had left him,
+and gasped out,
+
+“He is there!”
+
+A ladder! A ladder! was the general cry, and men and boys rushed off
+in search of one. But a single minute was an age now, and there was no
+ladder to be had without a delay of many minutes. The sick man was going
+to be swallowed up in the flames before it could possibly arrive. Some
+were going for a blanket or a coverlet, in the hope that the young man
+might have strength enough to leap from the window and be safely caught
+in it. The attendant shook his head, and said faintly,
+
+“He cannot move from his bed.”
+
+One of the visitors at the village,--a millionaire, it was said,--a
+kind-hearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken tones:
+
+“A thousand dollars to the man that will bring him from his chamber!”
+
+The fresh-water fisherman muttered, “I should like to save the man and
+to see the money, but it ain't a thaousan' dollars, nor ten thaousan'
+dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,--or even chokin' to
+death, anyhaow.”
+
+The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village,
+recent or old, shook his head.
+
+“The stairs have been shored up,” he said, “and when the fists that
+holds 'em up goes, down they'll come. It ain't safe for no man to go
+over them stairs. Hurry along your ladder,--that's your only chance.”
+
+All was wild confusion around the burning house. The ladder they had
+gone for was missing from its case,--a neighbor had carried it off for
+the workmen who were shingling his roof. It would never get there in
+time. There was a fire-engine, but it was nearly half a mile from the
+lakeside settlement. Some were throwing on water in an aimless, useless
+way; one was sending a thin stream through a garden syringe: it seemed
+like doing something, at least. But all hope of saving Maurice was fast
+giving way, so rapid was the progress of the flames, so thick the cloud
+of smoke that filled the house and poured from the windows. Nothing was
+heard but confused cries, shrieks of women, all sorts of orders to
+do this and that, no one knowing what was to be done. The ladder! The
+ladder! Five minutes more and it will be too late!
+
+In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had stopped
+his work of arranging Maurice's books in the same way as that in which
+they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the direction of the
+sound, little thinking that his master was lying helpless in the burning
+house. “Some chimney afire,” he said to himself; but he would go and
+take a look, at any rate.
+
+Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending death,
+two young women, in boating dresses of decidedly Bloomerish aspect,
+had suddenly joined the throng. “The Wonder” and “The Terror” of their
+school-days--Miss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida Vincent had just come
+from the shore, where they had left their wherry. A few hurried words
+told them the fearful story. Maurice Kirkwood was lying in the chamber
+to which every eye was turned, unable to move, doomed to a dreadful
+death. All that could be hoped was that he would perish by suffocation
+rather than by the flames, which would soon be upon him. The man who had
+attended him had just tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back
+out of the door, almost strangled by the smoke. A thousand dollars had
+been offered to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had
+dared to make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if
+the smoke did not blind and smother the man who passed them before they
+fell.
+
+The two young women looked each other in the face for one swift moment.
+
+“How can he be reached?” asked Lurida. “Is there nobody that will
+venture his life to save a brother like that?”
+
+“I will venture mine,” said Euthymia.
+
+“No! no!” shrieked Lurida,--“not you! not you! It is a man's work, not
+yours! You shall not go!” Poor Lurida had forgotten all her theories
+in this supreme moment. But Euthymia was not to be held back. Taking a
+handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail of water and bound
+it about her head. Then she took several deep breaths of air, and filled
+her lungs as full as they would hold. She knew she must not take a
+single breath in the choking atmosphere if she could possibly help it,
+and Euthymia was noted for her power of staying under water so long that
+more than once those who saw her dive thought she would never come up
+again. So rapid were her movements that they paralyzed the bystanders,
+who would forcibly have prevented her from carrying out her purpose.
+Her imperious determination was not to be resisted. And so Euthymia, a
+willing martyr, if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within
+the veil that hid the sufferer.
+
+Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground. She was
+the first, but not the only one, of her sex that fainted as Euthymia
+disappeared in the smoke of the burning building. Even the rector grew
+very white in the face,--so white that one of his vestry-men begged him
+to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of water on his forehead,
+to his great disgust and manifest advantage. The old landlady was crying
+and moaning, and her husband was wiping his eyes and shaking his head
+sadly.
+
+“She will nevar come out alive,” he said solemnly.
+
+“Nor dead, neither,” added the carpenter. “Ther' won't be nothing left
+of neither of 'em but ashes.” And the carpenter hid his face in his
+hands.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a
+“hangkercher,”--it had served to carry bait that morning,--and was
+making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down
+his cheeks. The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with these more
+quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations, coming alike from
+old and young.
+
+All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a
+tableau. The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness, and before
+they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or seemed
+lost. They felt that they should never look again on either of those
+young faces.
+
+The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by
+habit, had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the
+funeral sermon. The first that occurred to him was this,--vaguely, of
+course, in the background of consciousness:
+
+“Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the
+fire.”
+
+The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective
+disposition. He had always been opposed to cremation, and here was a
+funeral pile blazing before his eyes. He, too, had his human sympathies,
+but in the distance his imagination pictured the final ceremony, and how
+he himself should figure in a spectacle where the usual centre piece of
+attraction would be wanting,--perhaps his own services uncalled for.
+
+Blame him not, you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears of
+mourners. The string of self-interest answers with its chord to every
+sound; it vibrates with the funeral-bell, it finds itself trembling to
+the wail of the De Profundis. Not always,--not always; let us not be
+cynical in our judgments, but common human nature, we may safely say,
+is subject to those secondary vibrations under the most solemn and
+soul-subduing influences.
+
+It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are
+contemplating in delaying it by the description of little circumstances
+and individual thoughts and feelings. But linger as we may, we cannot
+compress into a chapter--we could not crowd into a volume--all that
+passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of the awe-struck
+company which was gathered about the scene of danger and of terror. We
+are dealing with an impossibility: consciousness is a surface; narrative
+is a line.
+
+Maurice had given himself up for lost. His breathing was becoming every
+moment more difficult, and he felt that his strength could hold out but
+a few minutes longer.
+
+“Robert!” he called in faint accents. But the attendant was not there to
+answer.
+
+“Paolo! Paolo!” But the faithful servant, who would have given his
+life for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd was
+gathered.
+
+“Oh, for a breath of air! Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed!
+Too late! Too late!” he gasped, with what might have seemed his dying
+expiration.
+
+“Not too late!” The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if
+it had come down to him from heaven.
+
+In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms
+of--a woman!
+
+Out of the stifling chamber,--over the burning stairs,--close by the
+tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,--out into the
+open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as if he
+had been a babe, in the strong arms of “The Wonder” of the gymnasium,
+the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the use she was
+to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl accomplishments.
+
+Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that
+none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again,
+unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking
+vessel. Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who
+had stood in white despair as they thought of these two young lives
+soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern men--the old
+sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the
+city counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion
+that overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are
+capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.
+
+This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at
+the same moment.
+
+As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his
+eyes opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural
+lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting
+him. His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses
+stole the murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the
+wavelike movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that
+entered with every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed
+close to his ear. And every sense, and every instinct, and every
+reviving pulse told him in language like a revelation from another
+world that a woman's arms were around him, and that it was life, and not
+death, which her embrace had brought him.
+
+She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor
+made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:--
+
+“Do not move him a hair's breadth,” he said. “Wait until the litter
+comes. Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy
+flask about him?”
+
+One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather
+awkward, but did not come forward.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.
+
+“I han't got no brandy,” he said, “but there's a drop or two of old
+Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any
+help. I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled.”
+
+So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla stamped
+on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more of the
+specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which
+happen to persons of his calling.
+
+The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the aid
+of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an
+agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and had to
+content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all
+the prayers he could think of to Our Lady and to his holy namesake the
+Apostle.
+
+The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully.
+“Take a few drops of this cordial,” he said, as he held it to his
+patient's lips. “Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will
+watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by,
+waiting.” Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color. The “Old Medford”
+ knew its business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands; it had its
+redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor fellow now and then. It
+did this for Maurice very effectively. When he seemed somewhat restored,
+the doctor had the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia softly
+resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert
+lifted with the aid of the doctor, who walked by the patient as he was
+borne to the home where Mrs. Butts had made all ready for his reception.
+
+As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary
+duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman
+over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back
+from her long fainting fit.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.
+
+Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as
+elsewhere? It could not seem strange to the good people of that place
+and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under
+circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human
+soul is capable, should become attached to each other. But the bond
+between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had
+learned the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since
+his infancy he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence
+of youthful womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact
+when he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures
+of which he had had many and threatening experiences.
+
+It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
+possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of
+debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by
+what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation
+and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly
+clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he
+owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his
+nervous system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would
+be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the
+drugs in the pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the
+matter to her parents and friends. She must go with him on some of his
+visits. Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a
+case of life and death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from
+doing her duty.
+
+The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a
+scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the
+old edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the
+little group. He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside,
+and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse. As Euthymia
+entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with
+a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and strong,
+comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful stimulus.
+Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to disguise its
+difficulty.
+
+“Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, and
+handed him a white chrysanthemum. He took it from her hand, and before
+she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle
+constraint. What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she
+had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the
+disease which had almost worn out his powers of resistance.
+
+“Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side,” said the doctor. “He wants to thank
+you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death which
+seemed inevitable.”
+
+Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly
+tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with the
+dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
+
+The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens it; it lets
+the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken bed.
+The tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified
+itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman had
+conquered and abolished.
+
+The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the
+time of his restoration to his natural conditions. His convalescence
+was very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even
+progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead
+Village; the chrysanthemums were going out of flower, the frosts had
+come, and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The
+relation between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all
+common acquaintances and friendships that no ordinary rules could apply
+to it. Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme
+prostration.
+
+“You must come every day,” the doctor said. “He gains with every visit
+you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day.” So she came
+and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in
+his presence. He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed; and at last
+Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to walk about the
+room. She was startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse,
+but the young gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer.
+She had scruples about making any further visits. She asked Lurida what
+she thought about it.
+
+“Think about it?” said Lurida. “Why should n't you go to see a brother
+as well as a sister, I should like to know? If you are afraid to go to
+see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate. If you would rather
+have me go than go yourself, I will do it, and let people talk just as
+much as they want to. Shall I go instead of you?”
+
+Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
+patient. The doctor had told her he thought there were special reasons
+for her own course in coming daily to see him. “I am afraid,” she said,
+“you are too bright to be safe for him in his weak state. Your mind is
+such a stimulating one, you know. A dull sort of person like myself is
+better for him just now. I will continue visiting him as long as the
+doctor says it is important that I should; but you must defend me,
+Lurida,--I know you can explain it all so that people will not blame
+me.”
+
+Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating
+head-voice would be in a convalescent's chamber. She knew how that
+active mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when
+what he wanted was rest of every faculty. Were not these good and
+sufficient reasons for her decision? What others could there be?
+
+So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that she
+was continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to
+look too well to be called an invalid. It was a dangerous condition of
+affairs, and the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in their
+comments. Free, but kindly, for the story of the rescue had melted every
+heart; and what could be more natural than that these two young people
+whom God had brought together in the dread moment of peril should find
+it hard to tear themselves asunder after the hour of danger was past?
+When gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay his debts; and if
+Maurice gave his heart to Euthymia, would not she receive it as payment
+in full?
+
+The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
+Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in
+a magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the
+austral the boreal. It was well, perhaps, that this change took place
+while he was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness. For
+all the long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their
+natural channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ which
+throbs in response to every profound emotion. As his health gradually
+returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek,
+a glitter in his eyes, a something in the tone of his voice, which
+altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway of
+friendly intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which
+her woman's eye could read plainly enough, “Dangerous passing.”
+
+“You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, “that I think
+I had better not play Sister of Charity any longer. The next time we
+meet I hope you will be strong enough to call on me.”
+
+She was frightened to see how pale he turned,--he was weaker than she
+thought. There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
+looked up from the stocking she was knitting. They had forgotten the
+good woman's presence.
+
+Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a stitch
+at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she listened to
+what followed.
+
+“No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life.
+But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can ever know.
+To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I am
+to live at all. All I am, all I hope,--will you take this poor offering
+from one who owes you everything, whose lips never touched those of
+woman or breathed a word of love before you?”
+
+What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth
+of a passion which had never before found expression.
+
+Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she
+told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the tableaux they
+had had in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a
+pleasing picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave
+her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of
+Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the
+young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her
+lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn
+trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating
+from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new
+engagement or of the arrival of the last “little stranger.”
+
+Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village
+that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia Tower.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May
+18.
+
+MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar as
+the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses
+came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar and grand
+gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the
+mistress? You must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What
+am I saying?---you forget them! No, dearest, I know your heart too well
+for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships
+as they do last years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me
+all about yourself and your happiness, and now you want me to tell you
+about myself and what is going on in our little place.
+
+And first about myself. I have given up the idea of becoming a doctor. I
+have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of certainties,
+of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in probabilities. The
+practice of the art is so mixed up with the deepest human interests that
+it is hard to pursue it with that even poise of the intellect which is
+demanded by science. I want knowledge pure and simple,--I do not fancy
+having it mixed. Neither do I like the thought of passing my life in
+going from one scene of suffering to another; I am not saintly enough
+for such a daily martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy
+occupation. I fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never
+wanted to see another. I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician,
+if the right one asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at
+present. Yes, I think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife. I could
+teach him a good deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of
+nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the French women call their
+tantrums. I don't know but I should be willing to let him try his new
+medicines on me. If he were a homeopath, I know I should; for if a
+billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my tea or coffee,
+I don't feel afraid that a billionth of a grain of anything would poison
+me,--no, not if it were snake-venom; and if it were not disgusting, I
+would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to please my husband.
+But if I ever become a doctor's wife, my husband will not be one of that
+kind of practitioners, you may be sure of that, nor an “eclectic,” nor
+a “faith-cure man.” On the whole, I don't think I want to be married at
+all. I don't like the male animal very well (except such noble specimens
+as your husband). They are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex
+is concerned, and I often think we could get on better without them.
+
+However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers,
+some of them well worth reading. You have told me so often that you
+would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of
+the papers sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have
+laid aside one or two manuscripts expressly for your perusal. You will
+get them by and by.
+
+I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village
+misses him dreadfully, I can tell you. That is the reason people become
+so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I
+suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern
+standard. Then they are so child-like, whereas the native of these
+latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother
+says,--you know mother's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and
+sensible she is in spite of them,--mother says that when she was a
+girl families used to import young men and young women from the country
+towns, who called themselves “helps,” not servants,--no, that was
+Scriptural; “but they did n't know everything down in Judee,” and it is
+not good American language. She says that these people would live in the
+same household until they were married, and the women often remain in
+the same service until they died or were old and worn out, and then,
+what with the money they had saved and the care and assistance they got
+from their former employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old
+age, and be buried in the family lot. Mother has made up her mind to the
+change, but grandmother is bitter about it. She says there never was
+a country yet where the population was made up of “ladies” and
+“gentlemen,” and she does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a
+spread eagle on a copper makes a gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist
+after her own fashion. She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our
+people. No loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political
+edifice, she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no
+reverence of the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to
+make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls “universal
+suffrage” emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct we all must
+drink from. “Universal suffrage!” I suppose we women don't belong to the
+universe! Wait until we get a chance at the ballot-box, I tell grandma,
+and see if we don't wash out the sewers before they reach the aqueduct!
+But my pen has run away with me. I was thinking of Paolo, and what a
+pleasant thing it is to have one of those child-like, warm-hearted,
+attachable, cheerful, contented, humble, faithful, companionable, but
+never presuming grownup children of the South waiting on one, as if
+everything he could do for one was a pleasure, and carrying a look of
+content in his face which makes every one who meets him happier for a
+glimpse of his features.
+
+It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant,
+intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual interest in each
+other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong
+to domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost
+wholly confined to aliens and their immediate descendants. Why should
+Hannah think herself so much better than Bridget? When they meet at the
+polls together, as they will before long, they will begin to feel more
+of an equality than is recognized at present. The native female turns
+her nose up at the idea of “living out;” does she think herself so much
+superior to the women of other nationalities? Our women will have to
+come to it,--so grandmother says,--in another generation or two, and in
+a hundred years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of
+old “Miss Pollys” and “Miss Betseys” who have lived half a century in
+the same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in
+time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well
+as a broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot
+virtues of contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet the
+barren and hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
+
+There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to tell
+you. There is an engagement you will want to know all about. It came to
+pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I remember, and shall
+never forget as long as we live. It seems that the young fellow who
+pulled the bow oar of that men's college boat which we had the pleasure
+of beating got some glimpses of Georgina, our handsome stroke oar. I
+believe he took it into his head that it was she who threw the bouquet
+that won the race for us. He was, as you know, greatly mistaken, and
+ought to have made love to me, only he did n't. Well, it seems he came
+posting down to the Institute just before the vacation was over, and
+there got a sight of Georgina. I wonder whether she told him she didn't
+fling the bouquet! Anyhow, the acquaintance began in that way, and now
+it seems that this young fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but
+with a good many months more to pass in college, is her captive. It was
+too bad. Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit! No
+matter, the old Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
+
+You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts. They say he has just been
+offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges. I asked
+him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not. “But,” said he,
+“suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you think I ought to
+accept it and leave Arrowhead Village? Let us talk it over,” said he,
+“just as if I had had such an offer.” I told him he ought to stay. There
+are plenty of men that can get into a Professor's chair, I said, and
+talk like Solomons to a class of wondering pupils: but once get a really
+good doctor in a place, a man who knows all about everybody, whether
+they have this or that tendency, whether when they are sick they have
+a way of dying or a way of getting well, what medicines agree with them
+and what drugs they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think
+nothing is the matter with them until they are dead as smoked herring,
+or of the sort that send for the minister if they get a stomach-ache
+from eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the people
+within half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a
+regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be replaced
+like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a Waltham watch.
+Don't go! said I. Stay here and save our precious lives, if you can, or
+at least put us through in the proper way, so that we needn't be ashamed
+of ourselves for dying, if we must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not going
+to leave us. I hope you will have no unwelcome occasion for his
+services,--you are never ill, you know,--but, anyhow, he is going to be
+here, and no matter what happens he will be on hand.
+
+The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new
+house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband
+lived while he was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous
+inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that
+the natural man could educe from his original perversity of intellect.
+To get at any one room you must pass through every other. It is blind,
+or nearly so, on the only side which has a good prospect, and commands
+a fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We
+have a small fire-engine near the new house which can be worked by a man
+or two, and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of
+fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new
+fire-engine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and
+there should happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got
+out without running the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.
+What a blessed thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no
+ladder at hand on the day of the great rescue! If there had been, what a
+change in your programme of life! You remember that “cup of tea spilt
+on Mrs. Masham's apron,” which we used to read of in one of Everett's
+Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the affairs of
+Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever a Boston
+matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the tea-chests
+had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,--but no matter about that,
+now. That is the way things come about in this world. I must write a
+lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly, fortunate calamities. It
+will be just the converse of that odd essay of Swift's we read together,
+the awkward and stupid things done with the best intentions. Perhaps I
+shall deliver the lecture in your city: you will come and hear it, and
+bring him, won't you, dearest? Always, your loving
+
+LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia! And are you, and
+is your husband, and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and happy
+as you have been and as you ought to be? I suppose our small village
+seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now that you
+have become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great city. For all
+that, it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can tell you. We have
+sleighing parties,--I never go to them, myself, because I can't keep
+warm, and my mind freezes up when my blood cools down below 95 or 96
+deg. Fahrenheit. I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and
+read about Arctic discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells'
+jingling and to see the young people trying to have a good time as hard
+as they do at a picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is
+purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other place, where, as my favorite
+Milton says, “frost performs the effect of fire.” I believe I have
+quoted him correctly; I ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from
+memory once, if I cannot now.
+
+You must have plenty of excitement in your city life. I suppose you
+recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the “Household
+Inquisitor:” “Mrs. E. K., very beautiful, in an elegant,” etc., etc.,
+“with pearls,” etc., etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all that
+you wear, no matter what it is!
+
+I am so glad that you have married a scholar! Why should not
+Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office
+which has been offered him? It seems to me that he would find himself in
+exactly the right place. He can talk in two or three languages, has good
+manners, and a wife who--well, what shall I say of Mrs. Kirkwood but
+that “she would be good company for a queen,” as our old friend the
+quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say? I should so like to
+see you presented at Court! It seems to me that I should be willing to
+hold your train for the sake of seeing you in your court feathers and
+things.
+
+As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become either a
+professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or college for
+girls. I have tried the first business a little. Last month I delivered
+a lecture on Quaternions. I got three for my audience; two came over
+from the Institute, and one from that men's college which they try to
+make out to be a university, and where no female is admitted unless she
+belongs among the quadrupeds. I enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is
+a difficult one, and I don't think any one of them had any very clear
+notion of what I was talking about, except Rhodora,--and I know she did
+n't. To tell the truth, I was lecturing to instruct myself. I mean to
+try something easier next time. I have thought of the Basque language
+and literature. What do you say to that?
+
+The Society goes on famously. We have had a paper presented and read
+lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the
+weaker sort. The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-Lettres
+at that men's college over there. He is dreadfully hard on the poor
+“poets,” as they call themselves. It seems that a great many young
+persons, and more especially a great many young girls, of whom the
+Institute has furnished a considerable proportion, have taken to sending
+him their rhymed productions to be criticised,--expecting to be praised,
+no doubt, every one of them. I must give you one of the sauciest
+extracts from his paper in his own words:
+
+“It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people
+of both sexes. They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I
+recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness,
+and the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of
+ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority. Of course there are exceptions
+to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the presumption is always
+against the rhymester as compared with the less pretentious persons
+about him or her, busy with some useful calling,--too busy to be tagging
+rhymed commonplaces together. Just now there seems to be an epidemic
+of rhyming as bad as the dancing mania, or the sweating sickness.
+After reading a certain amount of manuscript verse one is disposed to
+anathematize the inventor of homophonous syllabification. [This phrase
+made a great laugh when it was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have
+been found out very early,
+
+
+   “'Where are you, Adam?'
+
+   “'Here am I, Madam;'
+
+“but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall.
+The intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the conversational
+intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise itself. Milton
+would not have them even in Paradise Lost, you remember. For my own
+part, I wish certain rhymes could be declared contraband of written or
+printed language. Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or
+whirled with it, or furled upon it or curled over it; all eyes should
+be kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth
+should be coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should
+never be reminded of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop
+a mortal's breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from
+blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his
+tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,--let us have one from which all
+rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing
+for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious,
+rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical
+operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with
+jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some
+kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles!
+No,--no,--no! I want to see the young people in our schools and
+academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions,
+lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of self-contemplating and
+self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism which is surfeiting
+the land with those literary sandwiches,--thin slices of tinkling
+sentimentality between two covers looking like hard-baked gilt
+gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advice!
+They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like his--or
+her--own verses, and they hold on to their metre-ballad-mongering as the
+fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to the gas-bag.”
+
+We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty
+hard. The best part of the joke is that the old man himself published
+a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to
+think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he
+can find in the shops. No matter what they say, I can't help agreeing
+with him about this great flood of “poetry,” as it calls itself, and
+looking at the rhyming mania much as he does.
+
+How I do love real poetry! That is the reason hate rhymes which have not
+a particle of it in them. The foolish scribblers that deal in them are
+like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop. They not only turn out bad jobs
+of work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen. There is hardly a
+pair of rhymes in the English language that is not so dulled and hacked
+and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a master of the craft hates to
+touch them, and yet he cannot very well do without them. I have not
+been besieged as the old Professor has been with such multitudes
+of would-be-poetical aspirants that he could not even read their
+manuscripts, but I have had a good many letters containing verses, and I
+have warned the writers of the delusion under which they were laboring.
+
+You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts
+from the Greek Anthology. I send you a few specimens of my work, with a
+Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I hope you will find something of
+the Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of
+inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian. I have found great delight
+in this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my
+manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred
+the thought of the men and women of two thousand years ago, or given
+rhythmical expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them.
+I must read you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I cannot help
+thinking that you will like it better than either of my last two, The
+Song of the Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.
+
+How I do miss you, dearest! I want you: I want you to listen to what I
+have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future; I
+want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's self
+to be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in the woods
+with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk over every
+day's doings with you. Alas! I feel that we have parted as two friends
+part at a port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss each other's
+cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to speak good-by to
+each other, they watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms
+grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the distance, two white
+handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet once more, and the last
+visible link of the chain which binds them has parted. Dear, dear,
+dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running over with tears when I think that
+we may never, never meet again.
+
+Don't you want some more items of village news? We are threatened with
+an influx of stylish people: “Buttons” to answer the door-bell, in place
+of the chamber-maid; “butler,” in place of the “hired man;” footman
+in top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la Napoleon;
+tandems, “drags,” dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts. It is rather
+amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes away the good
+old country flavor of the place.
+
+I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to
+spend your summers here. I suppose you must have a large house, and I
+am sure you will have a beautiful one. I suppose you will have some fine
+horses, and who would n't be glad to? But I do not believe you will try
+to make your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their eyes out of their
+heads with a display meant to outshine everybody else that comes here.
+You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like, but I hope you will pull
+a pair of oars in our old boat once in a while, with me to steer you. I
+know you will be just the same dear Euthymia you always were and always
+must be. How happy you must make such a man as Maurice Kirkwood! And how
+happy you ought to be with him!--a man who knows what is in books, and
+who has seen for himself, what is in men. If he has not seen so much of
+women, where could he study all that is best in womanhood as he can in
+his own wife? Only one thing that dear Euthymia lacks. She is not quite
+pronounced enough in her views as to the rights and the wrongs of
+the sex. When I visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate
+Maurice with sound views on that subject. I have written an essay for
+the Society, which I hope will go a good way towards answering all the
+objections to female suffrage. I mean to read it to your husband, if
+you will let me, as I know you will, and perhaps you would like to hear
+it,--only you know my thoughts on the subject pretty well already.
+
+With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to your
+precious self, I am ever your LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,--My pen refuses to call you by any other name.
+Sweet-souled you are, and your Latinized Greek name is--the one which
+truly designates you. I cannot tell you how we have followed you, with
+what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told their
+story in your letters to your mother. She has let us have the privilege
+of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer, yacht, felucca,
+gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from crowded capitals to
+“deserts where no men abide,”--everywhere keeping company with you in
+your natural and pleasant descriptions of your experiences. And now that
+you have returned to your home in the great city I must write you a few
+lines of welcome, if nothing more.
+
+You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it.
+We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little
+place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens
+the consequences are striking,--some of them desirable and some far
+otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses
+and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them shows
+itself in a large circuit around the fashionable centre. Houses get on
+a new coat of paint, fences are kept in better order, little plots
+of flowers show themselves where only ragged weeds had rioted, the
+inhabitants present themselves in more comely attire and drive in
+handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed horses. On the other
+hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part of the natives of the
+region suddenly become fashionable. They have seen the land they sold at
+farm prices by the acre coming to be valued by the foot, like the
+corner lots in a city. Their simple and humble modes of life look almost
+poverty-stricken in the glare of wealth and luxury which so outshines
+their plain way of living. It is true that many of them have found them
+selves richer than in former days, when the neighborhood lived on
+its own resources. They know how to avail themselves of their altered
+position, and soon learn to charge city prices for country products; but
+nothing can make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men
+whose yearly income is many times their own whole capital. I think it
+would be better if our rich men scattered themselves more than they
+do,--buying large country estates, building houses and stables which
+will make it easy to entertain their friends, and depending for society
+on chosen guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who come
+together for social rivalry. But I do not fret myself about it. Society
+will stratify itself according to the laws of social gravitation. It
+will take a generation or two more, perhaps, to arrange the strata by
+precipitation and settlement, but we can always depend on one principle
+to govern the arrangement of the layers. People interested in the same
+things will naturally come together. The youthful heirs of fortunes
+who keep splendid yachts have little to talk about with the oarsman who
+pulls about on the lake or the river. What does young Dives, who drives
+his four-in-hand and keeps a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus,
+who feels rich in the possession of a horse-railroad ticket? You
+know how we live at our house, plainly, but with a certain degree of
+cultivated propriety. We make no pretensions to what is called “style.”
+ We are still in that social stratum where the article called “a
+napkin-ring” is recognized as admissible at the dinner-table. That fact
+sufficiently defines our modest pretensions. The napkin-ring is the
+boundary mark between certain classes. But one evening Mrs. Butts and
+I went out to a party given by the lady of a worthy family, where the
+napkin itself was a newly introduced luxury. The conversation of the
+hostess and her guests turned upon details of the kitchen and the
+laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with “emptins”
+ (emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about “bluing” and starching and
+crimping, and similar matters. Poor Mrs. Butts! She knew nothing more
+about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the musical
+glasses. What was the use of trying to enforce social intercourse under
+such conditions? Incompatibility of temper has been considered ground
+for a divorce; incompatibility of interests is a sufficient warrant for
+social separation. The multimillionaires have so much that is common
+among themselves, and so little that they share with us of moderate
+means, that they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue
+of their palaces, their picture-galleries, their equipages, their
+yachts, their large hospitality, constitute a kind of exclusive
+aristocracy. Religion, which ought to be the great leveller, cannot
+reduce these elements to the same grade. You may read in the parable,
+“Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” The
+modern version would be, “How came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having
+a dress on your back which came from Paris?”
+
+The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds me
+of Hamlet's uncle,--a thing “of shreds and patches,” but rather pretty
+to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the
+name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church.
+Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity
+will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that
+old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found
+himself before this memorial tribute, on the inside,--you know he goes
+to church sometimes, if you remember your Faust.
+
+The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist. He
+has always been rather “broad” in his views, but cautious in their
+expression. You can tell the three branches of the mother-island church
+by the way they carry their heads. The low-church clergy look down, as
+if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest
+drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints;
+the broad-church preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he
+felt himself the heir of creation. Our rector carries his head in the
+broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the least open to the charge of
+affectation,--in fact, is the natural and manly way of carrying it.
+
+The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never
+before. Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so
+that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large
+numbers. I know all about it, for she often consults me as to the merits
+of a particular contribution.
+
+What is to be the fate of Lurida? I often think, with no little interest
+and some degree of anxiety, about her future. Her body is so frail and
+her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or
+the other will give way. I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever
+being married. She grows more and more zealous in behalf of her own sex,
+and sterner in her judgment of the other. She declares that she never
+would marry any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage, and as
+these gentlemen are not very common hereabouts the chance is against her
+capturing any one of the hostile sex.
+
+What do you think? I happened, just as I was writing the last sentence,
+to look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida, with a young
+man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation, according to all
+appearance! I think he must be a friend of the rector, as I have seen a
+young man like this one in his company. Who knows?
+
+Affectionately yours, etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.
+
+MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would
+have thought could have been got together in this little village during
+the short time you have been staying away from it.
+
+Lurida Vincent is engaged! He is a clergyman with a mathematical
+turn. The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the
+mathematical journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution
+that the young man fell in love with her on the strength of it. I don't
+think the story is literally true, nor do I believe that other report
+that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the
+blackboard; but that it was an intellectual rather than a sentimental
+courtship I do not doubt. Lurida has given up the idea of becoming
+a professional lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking that her future
+husband's parish will find her work enough to do. A certain amount of
+daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse with simple-minded
+people will be the best thing in the world for that brain of hers,
+always simmering with some new project in its least fervid condition.
+
+All our summer visitors have arrived. Euthymia Mrs. Maurice Kirkwood and
+her husband and little Maurice are here in their beautiful house looking
+out on the lake. They gave a grand party the other evening. You ought
+to have been there, but I suppose you could not very well have left your
+sister in the middle of your visit: All the grand folks were there, of
+course. Lurida and her young man--Gabriel is what she calls him--were
+naturally the objects of special attention. Paolo acted as major-domo,
+and looked as if he ought to be a major-general. Nothing could be
+pleasanter than the way in which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their
+plain country neighbors; that is, just as they did the others of more
+pretensions, as if they were really glad to see them, as I am sure they
+were. The old landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves,
+and I saw Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at
+the dancers and out at the little groups in the garden, and evidently
+enjoying it as much as her old employers. It was a most charming and
+successful party. We had two sensations in the course of the evening.
+One was pleasant and somewhat exciting, the other was thrilling and of
+strange and startling interest.
+
+You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his
+fever, in that first season when he was among us. He was out in a boat
+one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place
+where the water was rather shallow. “Jake”--you know Jake,--everybody
+knows Jake--was rowing him. He promised to come to the spot and fish
+up the ring if he could possibly find it. He was seen poking about with
+fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was ever heard from
+him about the ring. It was an antique intaglio stone in an Etruscan
+setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna. Mr. Kirkwood valued it
+highly, and regretted its loss very much.
+
+While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake,
+with a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood. “Come,” said Maurice to
+me, “let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us. What
+have you got there, Jake?”
+
+“What I 've got? Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the
+biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year.
+An' I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel. When I come to cut
+him open, what do you think I faound in his insides but this here ring
+o' yourn,”--and he showed the one Maurice had lost so long before. There
+it was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's style of housekeeping
+for all that time. There are those who discredit Jake's story about
+finding the ring in the fish; anyhow, there was the ring and there
+was the pickerel. I need not say that Jake went off well paid for his
+pickerel and the precious contents of its stomach. Now comes the chief
+event of the evening. I went early by special invitation. Maurice took
+me into his library, and we sat down together.
+
+“I have something of great importance,” he said, “to say to you. I
+learned within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a friend
+in the next town to this. You know, doctor, that we have never met since
+the last, almost fatal, experience of my early years. I have determined
+to defy the strength of that deadly chain of associations connected
+with her presence, and I have begged her to come this evening with the
+friends with whom she is staying. Several letters passed between us,
+for it was hard to persuade her that there was no longer any risk in my
+meeting her. Her imagination was almost as deeply impressed as mine had
+been at those alarming interviews, and I had to explain to her fully
+that I had become quite indifferent to the disturbing impressions of
+former years. So, as the result of our correspondence, Laura is coming
+this evening, and I wish you to be present at our meeting. There is
+another reason why I wish you to be here. My little boy is not far from
+the age at which I received my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock.
+I mean to have little Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is
+said to be still a very handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint
+of that peculiar sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening
+seizure. It seemed to me not impossible that he might inherit some
+tendency of that nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of
+danger should declare itself. For myself I have no fear. Some radical
+change has taken place in my nervous system. I have been born again, as
+it were, in my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new man.
+But I must know how it is with my little Maurice.”
+
+Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
+experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it seemed
+to me. The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in, but
+no Laura as yet. At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a carriage
+stopped at the door. Two ladies and a gentleman got out, and soon
+entered the drawing room.
+
+“My cousin Laura!” whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to
+meet her. A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the
+thirties,--one of those women so thoroughly constituted that they cannot
+help being handsome at every period of life. I watched them both as
+they approached each other. Both looked pale at first, but Maurice soon
+recovered his usual color, and Laura's natural, rich bloom came back by
+degrees. Their emotion at meeting was not to be wondered at, but there
+was no trace in it of the paralyzing influence on the great centres of
+life which had once acted upon its fated victim like the fabled head
+which turned the looker-on into a stone.
+
+“Is the boy still awake?” said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to
+say of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on that
+gay and busy evening.
+
+“What! Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on? I hear him
+crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight.”
+
+“Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that leads
+out of the library.”
+
+The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake, wondering
+apparently at the noise he heard, which he seemed to think was for his
+special amusement.
+
+“See if he will go to that lady,” said his father. Both of us held our
+breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
+
+The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
+glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her
+embrace as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all his
+days.
+
+The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of Maurice
+Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself snatched from the
+grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
+
+
+         --------------------------
+
+In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix
+which the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First
+Opening. It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability of a
+second opening.
+
+I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a certain
+small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my surviving
+contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be much obliged if
+I would hurry up my answer before it is too late. They are right, these
+delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding me of a fact which I
+cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my recollection. I thank
+them for recalling my attention to a truth which I shall be wiser, if
+not more hilarious, for remembering.
+
+No, I had no right to say the First Opening. How do I know that I shall
+have a chance to open it again? How do I know that anybody will want it
+to be opened a second time? How do I know that I shall feel like opening
+it? It is safest neither to promise to open the New Portfolio once more,
+nor yet to pledge myself to keep it closed hereafter. There are many
+papers potentially existent in it, some of which might interest a
+reader here and there. The Records of the Pansophian Society contain
+a considerable number of essays, poems, stories, and hints capable of
+being expanded into presentable dimensions. In the mean time I will say
+with Prospero, addressing my old readers, and my new ones, if such I
+have,
+
+
+  “If you be pleased, retire into my cell
+   And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
+   To still my beating mind.”
+
+When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and
+consider whether it is worth while to open it consider whether it is
+worth while to open it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes,
+Sr.
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
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+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Project Gutenberg's A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+[The Physician and Poet, not his son the Jurist O. W. Holmes, Jr.]
+
+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: A Mortal Antipathy
+
+Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2698]
+Last Updated: February 18, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MORTAL ANTIPATHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <h1>
+      A MORTAL ANTIPATHY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Oliver Wendell Holmes
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br /> <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION. </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING. </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> <b>A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.</b> </a><br /><br />
+        <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0006"> I. </a>GETTING READY. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0007"> II. </a>THE BOAT-RACE. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0008"> III. </a>THE WHITE CANOE. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0009"> IV. </a>THE YOUNG SOLITARY <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0010"> V. </a>THE ENIGMA STUDIED. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0011"> VI. </a>STILL AT FAULT. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0012"> VII. </a>A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0013"> VIII. </a>THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0014"> IX. </a>THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0015"> X. </a>A NEW ARRIVAL. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0016"> XI. </a>THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0017"> XII. </a>MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0018"> XIII. </a>DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIV. </a>MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+        <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XV. </a>DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+        <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XVI. </a>MISS VINCENT WRITES A
+        LETTER. <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XVII. </a>Dr. BUTTS'S
+        PATIENT. <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XVIII. </a>MAURICE
+        KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE. <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XIX.
+        </a>THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0025"> XX. </a>DR. BUTTS REFLECTS. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXI. </a>AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXII. </a>EUTHYMIA. <br /><br /><a
+        href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>THE MEETING OF
+        MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA. <br /><br /><a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIV. </a>THE
+        INEVITABLE. <br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> POSTSCRIPT:
+        AFTER-GLIMPSES. </a><br /><br /> <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> MISS LURIDA
+        VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. </a><br /><br /> <a
+        href="#link2H_4_0032"> DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. </a><br /><br />
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS. </a><br /><br />
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A MORTAL ANTIPATHY&rdquo; was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and
+      very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he is
+      in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this
+      story: &ldquo;I should have been afraid of my subject.&rdquo; He did not explain
+      himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the
+      physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to
+      be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt
+      the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers, and it was only by
+      recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary but
+      well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character that I could hope
+      to gain any serious attention to so strange a narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I need not recur to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not
+      to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the
+      reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me that
+      he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror. While
+      an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had fallen
+      with a loud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system which he
+      had never got over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of
+      hearing is conceivable enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation with
+      the higher organs of consciousness. The strength of the associations
+      connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the olfactory, is
+      familiar to most persons in their own experience and as related by others.
+      Now we know that every human being, as well as every other living
+      organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere. If a man's friend
+      does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere by it. This
+      personal peculiarity varies with the age and conditions of the individual.
+      It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but
+      its influence is not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant,
+      than in the lower animals. It was an atmospheric impression of this nature
+      which associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant
+      which became the subject of this story. The impression could not be
+      outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by some sudden change in the
+      nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had produced
+      the disordered condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have puzzled
+      some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not suspect the
+      true cause of the mysterious antipathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891. O. W. H.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?&rdquo;
+     </h3>
+    <p>
+      Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in which
+      you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly spoken of
+      as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all conditions,
+      in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the baby? And was
+      the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as a cradle; or
+      was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no other in
+      existence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born
+      thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to
+      callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of
+      intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it
+      shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its fellows
+      as a portfolio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say
+      something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever these
+      may be. I have had other portfolios before this,&mdash;two, more
+      especially, and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you
+      that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was
+      opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession, for
+      fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving it
+      the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my
+      readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but
+      fifty years ago,&mdash;there are too many talkative old people who know
+      all about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of
+      ware. A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just
+      enough of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them&mdash;the
+      delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
+      legend,&mdash;or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers
+      could have had their way,&mdash;Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp.
+      Caesar. Aug. Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or
+      silver with that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly
+      acquainted with the precious metals at that period of my career, and,
+      there might have been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my
+      handling it, or knowing much about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
+      attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our
+      first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
+      comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in that
+      agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in
+      the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in it
+      for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait of
+      the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated
+      gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,&mdash;they looked like gentlemen and
+      ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and
+      Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women, not
+      forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable rocking-horse,&mdash;you
+      may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival landscapes of Doughty
+      and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in those days; and the
+      Murillo,&mdash;not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the portrait of
+      Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars;
+      and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in
+      which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many
+      colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's
+      brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with the
+      catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the Athenaeum
+      building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or criticised
+      perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in those earlier
+      years when we looked at them through the japanned fish-horns?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
+      Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in which
+      lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous Calvinism,
+      and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary butterflies. The
+      father was editor of the &ldquo;Boston Recorder,&rdquo; a very respectable, but very
+      far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by that class of the
+      community which spoke habitually of the first day of the week as &ldquo;the
+      Sahbuth.&rdquo; The son was the editor of several different periodicals in
+      succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of many pleasant
+      books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which he studied on the
+      outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with a certain amount of
+      sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat frothed over by his
+      worldly experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
+      Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published in
+      his father's paper, I think, and signed &ldquo;Roy.&rdquo; He had started the
+      &ldquo;American Magazine,&rdquo; afterwards merged in the &ldquo;New York Mirror.&rdquo; He had
+      then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of
+      verse. He had just written
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
+        They idly give me joy,
+     As if I should be glad to know
+        That I was less a boy.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being very
+      handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in luxuriant
+      abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to show behind
+      the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was something
+      between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde.
+      There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus
+      and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had kindled a passion in
+      the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded me of Willis, in
+      spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal.
+      The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheeked,
+      jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I
+      took the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his
+      coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad,
+      overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis
+      was by far the most prominent young American author. Cooper, Irving,
+      Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best work. Longfellow was
+      not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a school-boy. Emerson was unheard of.
+      Whittier was beginning to make his way against the writers with better
+      educational advantages whom he was destined to outdo and to outlive. Not
+      one of the great histories, which have done honor to our literature, had
+      appeared. Our school-books depended, so far as American authors were
+      concerned, on extracts from the orations and speeches of Webster and
+      Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death
+      of the Flowers, Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on
+      Drake's American Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping
+      and Genius Waking,&mdash;and not getting very wide awake, either. These
+      could be depended upon. A few other copies of verses might be found, but
+      Dwight's &ldquo;Columbia, Columbia,&rdquo; and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were
+      already effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and generation
+      must soon be, by the great wave which the near future will pour over the
+      sands in which they still are legible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
+      &ldquo;Truth, a Gift for Scribblers,&rdquo; which made some talk for a while, and is
+      now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be read
+      the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones. The
+      &ldquo;London Athenaeum&rdquo; spoke of it as having been described as a &ldquo;tomahawk
+      sort of satire.&rdquo; As the author had been a trapper in Missouri, he was
+      familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its owners. Born
+      in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army officer, educated at West Point, he
+      came back to his native city about the year 1830. He wrote an article on
+      Bryant's Poems for the &ldquo;North American Review,&rdquo; and another on the famous
+      Indian chief, Black Hawk. In this last-mentioned article he tells this
+      story as the great warrior told it himself. It was an incident of a fight
+      with the Osages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the
+      scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed furiously
+      upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance
+      through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my
+      father. He said nothing, but looked pleased.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
+      warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
+      much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked him in
+      heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous epigrams.
+      Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one else escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating,
+      some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find
+      in the pages of &ldquo;Truth&rdquo; a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard of.
+      I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the little
+      book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read the
+      obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing in
+      spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly with
+      poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he had dealt
+      with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof which held
+      numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of whom had known
+      worse days than those which they were passing within its friendly and not
+      exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I heard after he
+      disappeared from general observation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all
+      that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
+      engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
+      establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,&mdash;to manifestations
+      of this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
+      The &ldquo;Scarlet Letter&rdquo; was an unhinted possibility. The &ldquo;Voices of the
+      Night&rdquo; had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still in
+      the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes, which
+      took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk into
+      entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a scrap or
+      two in some omnivorous collection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating
+      in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other
+      in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any
+      against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the small
+      litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use. His attack on
+      Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little discipline, and
+      though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were
+      worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble writer Spelling treated
+      with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally
+      insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred
+      to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow
+      gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer, &ldquo;who made
+      long since a happy snatch at fame,&rdquo; which must have been snatched away
+      from him by envious time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died
+      early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss
+      Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable writer of light verse,&mdash;all
+      these are commended to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who
+      finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the
+      burdens committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every
+      possible attention to them so long as he is kept in sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good time to open a portfolio. But my old one had boyhood written
+      on every page. A single passionate outcry when the old warship I had read
+      about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen literature, and in
+      the &ldquo;Naval Monument,&rdquo; was threatened with demolition; a few verses
+      suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked hat and
+      breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first Portfolio,
+      which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the duties of a
+      profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which would have
+      been otherwise expended in filling it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the
+      greater part of the time. Only now and then it would be taken up and
+      opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
+      particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I was a
+      member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the year 1857, towards its close, the &ldquo;Atlantic Monthly,&rdquo; which I had
+      the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips
+      &amp; Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell. He
+      thought that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would
+      be not unacceptable in the new magazine. I looked at the poor old
+      receptacle, which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its
+      freshness, and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to
+      welcome the new-comer in the literary world of Boston, the least
+      provincial of American centres of learning and letters. The gilded
+      covering where the emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had
+      faded; not wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold become dim!&mdash;-how
+      was the most fine gold changed! Long devotion to other pursuits had left
+      little time for literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old
+      Portfolio had done little more than keep alive the memory that such a
+      source of supply was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio,
+      and said to myself, &ldquo;Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never
+      brighten, these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close
+      them, and leave them to the spider and the book-worm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
+      condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period. When, a
+      little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the &ldquo;Saturday
+      Club&rdquo; gathered about the long table at &ldquo;Parker's,&rdquo; such a representation
+      of all that was best in American literature had never been collected
+      within so small a compass. Most of the Americans whom educated foreigners
+      cared to see-leaving out of consideration official dignitaries, whose
+      temporary importance makes them objects of curiosity&mdash;were seated at
+      that board. But the club did not yet exist, and the &ldquo;Atlantic Monthly&rdquo; was
+      an experiment. There had already been several monthly periodicals, more or
+      less successful and permanent, among which &ldquo;Putnam's Magazine&rdquo; was
+      conspicuous, owing its success largely to the contributions of that very
+      accomplished and delightful writer, Mr. George William Curtis. That
+      magazine, after a somewhat prolonged and very honorable existence, had
+      gone where all periodicals go when they die, into the archives of the
+      deaf, dumb, and blind recording angel whose name is Oblivion. It had so
+      well deserved to live that its death was a surprise and a source of
+      regret. Could another monthly take its place and keep it when that, with
+      all its attractions and excellences, had died out, and left a blank in our
+      periodical literature which it would be very hard to fill as well as that
+      had filled it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon,
+      and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the
+      scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to other
+      studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my
+      becoming a contributor. And so, yielding to a pressure which I could not
+      understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a
+      part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the new
+      magazine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my table,
+      and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857. I was already at
+      least
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     'Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of what
+      looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I did not
+      meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the critic, the most
+      dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me after his own fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second Portfolio is closed and laid away. Perhaps it was hardly worth
+      while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before me, and I
+      hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me in
+      coming once more before my old friends. But before I open it I want to
+      claim a little further indulgence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I might
+      say to almost every human being. No matter what his culture or ignorance,
+      no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character, the subject I
+      refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think, and, if opportunity is
+      offered, to talk. On this he is eloquent, if on nothing else. The slow of
+      speech becomes fluent; the torpid listener becomes electric with vivacity,
+      and alive all over with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He is
+      accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a
+      subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing
+      disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the
+      conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who,
+      having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars, or of
+      having his pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means
+      of reaching that distant home where affluence waits for him with its
+      luxurious welcome, but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and
+      twenty dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart
+      would ache with gratitude during the brief interval between the loan and
+      its repayment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in my
+      own history, and more especially to some of the recent experiences through
+      which I have been passing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it
+      were his private correspondent? There are at least three sufficient
+      reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to hear,&mdash;if
+      he has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle, or has witnessed any
+      interesting event, and can tell anything new about it; secondly, if he can
+      put in fitting words any common experiences not already well told, so that
+      readers will say, &ldquo;Why, yes! I have had that sensation, thought, emotion,
+      a hundred times, but I never heard it spoken of before, and I never saw
+      any mention of it in print;&rdquo; and thirdly, anything one likes, provided he
+      can so tell it as to make it interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim any
+      general attention. My first pages relate the effect of a certain literary
+      experience upon myself,&mdash;a series of partial metempsychoses of which
+      I have been the subject. Next follows a brief tribute to the memory of a
+      very dear and renowned friend from whom I have recently been parted. The
+      rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory of my
+      birthplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page is
+      written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before it is in
+      the reader's hands. The experience of thinking another man's thoughts
+      continuously for a long time; of living one's self into another man's life
+      for a month, or a year, or more, is a very curious one. No matter how much
+      superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who writes the life
+      feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the person whose life
+      he is writing. One cannot fight over the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz
+      with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to
+      the victory, so real seems the transfer of his personality into that of
+      the conqueror while he reads. Still more must this identification of
+      &ldquo;subject&rdquo; and &ldquo;object&rdquo; take place when one is writing of a person whose
+      studies or occupations are not unlike his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are some of my metempsychoses: Ten years ago I wrote what I called A
+      Memorial Outline of a remarkable student of nature. He was a born
+      observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of great
+      enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others
+      passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
+      pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion
+      would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the
+      end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity and
+      long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described them,
+      studied them in their relations, and before those around him were aware of
+      it the collector was an accomplished naturalist. When&mdash;he died his
+      collections remained, and they still remain, as his record in the hieratic
+      language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his quiet
+      pursuits, the even temper they bred in him, gained possession of my own
+      mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed
+      spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had
+      myself prepared and arranged its specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom,
+      fair-minded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his
+      placid, observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature &ldquo;slid into my soul,&rdquo; and
+      if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected to
+      see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
+      sketching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing a
+      Memoir of which he was the subject. I saw him, the beautiful, bright-eyed
+      boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first at Harvard, then
+      at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of Bismarck; the young
+      author, making a dash for renown as a novelist, and showing the elements
+      which made his failures the promise of success in a larger field of
+      literary labor; the delving historian, burying his fresh young manhood in
+      the dusty alcoves of silent libraries, to come forth in the face of Europe
+      and America as one of the leading historians of the time; the diplomatist,
+      accomplished, of captivating presence and manners, an ardent American, and
+      in the time of trial an impassioned and eloquent advocate of the cause of
+      freedom; reaching at last the summit of his ambition as minister at the
+      Court of Saint James. All this I seemed to share with him as I tracked his
+      career from his birthplace in Dorchester, and the house in Walnut Street
+      where he passed his boyhood, to the palaces of Vienna and London. And then
+      the cruel blow which struck him from the place he adorned; the great
+      sorrow that darkened his later years; the invasion of illness, a threat
+      that warned of danger, and after a period of invalidism, during a part of
+      which I shared his most intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome,
+      final summons. Did not my own consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to
+      transfer itself into this brilliant life history, as I traced its glowing
+      record? I, too, seemed to feel the delight of carrying with me, as if they
+      were my own, the charms of a presence which made its own welcome
+      everywhere. I shared his heroic toils, I partook of his literary and
+      social triumphs, I was honored by the marks of distinction which gathered
+      about him, I was wronged by the indignity from which he suffered, mourned
+      with him in his sorrow, and thus, after I had been living for months with
+      his memory, I felt as if I should carry a part of his being with me so
+      long as my self-consciousness might remain imprisoned in the ponderable
+      elements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The years passed away, and the influences derived from the companionships
+      I have spoken of had blended intimately with my own current of being. Then
+      there came to me a new experience in my relations with an eminent member
+      of the medical profession, whom I met habitually for a long period, and to
+      whose memory I consecrated a few pages as a prelude to a work of his own,
+      written under very peculiar circumstances. He was the subject of a slow,
+      torturing, malignant, and almost necessarily fatal disease. Knowing well
+      that the mind would feed upon itself if it were not supplied with food
+      from without, he determined to write a treatise on a subject which had
+      greatly interested him, and which would oblige him to bestow much of his
+      time and thought upon it, if indeed he could hold out to finish the work.
+      During the period while he was engaged in writing it, his wife, who had
+      seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of pneumonia. Physical suffering,
+      mental distress, the prospect of death at a near, if uncertain, time
+      always before him, it was hard to conceive a more terrible strain than
+      that which he had to endure. When, in the hour of his greatest need, his
+      faithful companion, the wife of many years of happy union, whose hand had
+      smoothed his pillow, whose voice had consoled and cheered him, was torn
+      from him after a few days of illness, I felt that my friend's trial was
+      such that the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might
+      well have escaped from his lips: &ldquo;I was at ease, but he hath broken me
+      asunder; he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set
+      me up for his mark. His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my
+      reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall upon the
+      ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing blow.
+      What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which the fearful
+      description of the Eastern poet does not picture too vividly! We have been
+      taught to admire the calm philosophy of Haller, watching his faltering
+      pulse as he lay dying; we have heard the words of pious resignation said
+      to have been uttered with his last breath by Addison: but here was a
+      trial, not of hours, or days, or weeks, but of months, even years, of
+      cruel pain, and in the midst of its thick darkness the light of love,
+      which had burned steadily at his bedside, was suddenly extinguished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my
+      consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
+      experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
+      suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to kill
+      in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking woes which
+      make even that brief space of time an eternity? There can be but one
+      answer that will meet this terrible question, which must arise in every
+      thinking nature that would fain &ldquo;justify the ways of God to men.&rdquo; So must
+      it be until that
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;one far-off divine event
+     To which the whole creation moves&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant note
+      shall be joined by a voice from every life made &ldquo;perfect through
+      sufferings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years of
+      companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing which I
+      seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of intimacy
+      with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than while he was
+      here in living form and feature. I did not know how difficult a task I had
+      undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man whom all, or almost all,
+      agree upon as one of the great lights of the New World, and whom very many
+      regard as an unpredicted Messiah. Never before was I so forcibly reminded
+      of Carlyle's description of the work of a newspaper editor,&mdash;that
+      threshing of straw already thrice beaten by the flails of other laborers
+      in the same field. What could be said that had not been said of
+      &ldquo;transcendentalism&rdquo; and of him who was regarded as its prophet; of the
+      poet whom some admired without understanding, a few understood, or thought
+      they did, without admiring, and many both understood and admired,&mdash;among
+      these there being not a small number who went far beyond admiration, and
+      lost themselves in devout worship? While one exalted him as &ldquo;the greatest
+      man that ever lived,&rdquo; another, a friend, famous in the world of letters,
+      wrote expressly to caution me against the danger of overrating a writer
+      whom he is content to recognize as an American Montaigne, and nothing
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I would
+      gladly have let my brain rest for a while. The wide range of thought which
+      belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional mysticism and the
+      frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of imagination and the sparkle of
+      wit which kept his reader's mind on the stretch, the union of prevailing
+      good sense with exceptional extravagances, the modest audacity of a nature
+      that showed itself in its naked truthfulness and was not ashamed, the
+      feeling that I was in the company of a sibylline intelligence which was
+      discounting the promises of the remote future long before they were due,&mdash;all
+      this made the task a grave one. But when I found myself amidst the
+      vortices of uncounted, various, bewildering judgments, Catholic and
+      Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from under the tree of
+      knowledge and instinctive from over the potato-hill; the passionate
+      enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool, if not cynical, estimate of
+      hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they whirled, each around
+      its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very difficult to keep the
+      faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such a
+      man. &ldquo;He nothing common&rdquo; said, &ldquo;or mean.&rdquo; He was always the same pure and
+      high-souled companion. After being with him virtue seemed as natural to
+      man as its opposite did according to the old theologies. But how to let
+      one's self down from the high level of such a character to one's own poor
+      standard? I trust that the influence of this long intellectual and
+      spiritual companionship never absolutely leaves one who has lived in it.
+      It may come to him in the form of self-reproach that he falls so far short
+      of the superior being who has been so long the object of his
+      contemplation. But it also carries him at times into the other's
+      personality, so that he finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his
+      own, using phrases which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may
+      be, as nearly like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting
+      was like Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that he
+      is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way. So far as
+      tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy of the
+      original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a misfortune for
+      the borrower. But to share the inmost consciousness of a noble thinker, to
+      scan one's self in the white light of a pure and radiant soul,&mdash;this
+      is indeed the highest form of teaching and discipline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they have
+      taught me. But let me write no more. There are but two biographers who can
+      tell the story of a man's or a woman's life. One is the person himself or
+      herself; the other is the Recording Angel. The autobiographer cannot be
+      trusted to tell the whole truth, though he may tell nothing but the truth,
+      and the Recording Angel never lets his book go out of his own hands. As
+      for myself, I would say to my friends, in the Oriental phrase, &ldquo;Live
+      forever!&rdquo; Yes, live forever, and I, at least, shall not have to wrong your
+      memories by my imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in which
+      I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will indulge me
+      in another personal reminiscence. I have just lost my dear and honored
+      contemporary of the last century. A hundred years ago this day, December
+      13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be remembered Dr. Samuel Johnson.
+      The year 1709 was made ponderous and illustrious in English biography by
+      his birth. My own humble advent to the world of protoplasm was in the year
+      1809 of the present century. Summer was just ending when those four
+      letters, &ldquo;son b.&rdquo; were written under the date of my birth, August 29th.
+      Autumn had just begun when my great pre-contemporary entered this
+      un-Christian universe and was made a member of the Christian church on the
+      same day, for he was born and baptized on the 18th of September.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the great
+      English scholar and writer and myself. Year by year, and almost month by
+      month, my life has kept pace in this century with his life in the last
+      century. I had only to open my Boswell at any time, and I knew just what
+      Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy, was thinking and doing;
+      what were his feelings about life; what changes the years had wrought in
+      his body, his mind, his feelings, his companionships, his reputation. It
+      was for me a kind of unison between two instruments, both playing that old
+      familiar air, &ldquo;Life,&rdquo;&mdash;one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an
+      oaten pipe, if you care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace
+      with each other until the players both grew old and gray. At last the
+      thinner thread of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment
+      rolls out its thunder no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years has
+      left me. I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do with many of
+      my living friends. I can hardly remember when I did not know him. I can
+      see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the Reverend Dr. Samuel
+      Cooper (who died in December, 1783) as Copley painted him,&mdash;he hangs
+      there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase. His ample coat, too, I see,
+      with its broad flaps and many buttons and generous cuffs, and beneath it
+      the long, still more copiously buttoned waistcoat, arching in front of the
+      fine crescentic, almost semi-lunar Falstaffian prominence, involving no
+      less than a dozen of the above-mentioned buttons, and the strong legs with
+      their sturdy calves, fitting columns of support to the massive body and
+      solid, capacious brain enthroned over it. I can hear him with his heavy
+      tread as he comes in to the Club, and a gap is widened to make room for
+      his portly figure. &ldquo;A fine day,&rdquo; says Sir Joshua. &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he answers, &ldquo;it
+      seems propitious, but the atmosphere is humid and the skies are nebulous,&rdquo;
+       at which the great painter smiles, shifts his trumpet, and takes a pinch
+      of snuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear old massive, deep-voiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the
+      eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club,
+      between you and the bony, &ldquo;mighty-mouthed,&rdquo; harsh-toned termagant and
+      dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the
+      snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven the
+      shores of Lethe. I wish I could find our &ldquo;spiritualist's&rdquo; paper in the
+      Portfolio, in which the two are brought together, but I hardly know what I
+      shall find when it is opened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that dear
+      old friend; and when the funeral train moves to Westminster Abbey next
+      Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884,&mdash;I seem to
+      find myself following the hearse, one of the silent mourners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me has
+      been the demolition of that venerable and interesting old dwelling-house,
+      precious for its intimate association with the earliest stages of the war
+      of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my birthplace and the home of my
+      boyhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;Old Gambrel-roofed House&rdquo; exists no longer. I remember saying
+      something, in one of a series of papers published long ago, about the
+      experience of dying out of a house,&mdash;of leaving it forever, as the
+      soul dies out of the body. We may die out of many houses, but the house
+      itself can die but once; and so real is the life of a house to one who has
+      dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which held him in
+      dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate youth,&mdash;so real, I
+      say, is its life, that it seems as if something like a soul of it must
+      outlast its perishing frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The slaughter of the Old Gambrel-roofed House was, I am ready to admit, a
+      case of justifiable domicide. Not the less was it to be deplored by all
+      who love the memories of the past. With its destruction are obliterated
+      some of the footprints of the heroes and martyrs who took the first steps
+      in the long and bloody march which led us through the wilderness to the
+      promised land of independent nationality. Personally, I have a right to
+      mourn for it as a part of my life gone from me. My private grief for its
+      loss would be a matter for my solitary digestion, were it not that the
+      experience through which I have just passed is one so familiar to my
+      fellow-countrymen that, in telling my own reflections and feelings, I am
+      repeating those of great numbers of men and women who have had the
+      misfortune to outlive their birthplace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon. The Old
+      Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of natural objects
+      encircling it. Northerly it looked upon its own outbuildings and some
+      unpretending two-story houses which had been its neighbors for a century
+      and more. To the south of it the square brick dormitories and the
+      bellfried hall of the university helped to shut out the distant view. But
+      the west windows gave a broad outlook across the common, beyond which the
+      historical &ldquo;Washington elm&rdquo; and two companions in line with it, spread
+      their leaves in summer and their networks in winter. And far away rose the
+      hills that bounded the view, with the glimmer here and there of the white
+      walls or the illuminated casements of some embowered, half-hidden villa.
+      Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier remembrance, widely open,
+      and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails gliding along as if through
+      the level fields, for no water was visible. So there were broad expanses
+      on two sides at least, for my imagination to wander over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us all
+      our days. Among these western wooded hills my day-dreams built their fairy
+      palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library window, across
+      the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the familiar home of my early
+      visions. The &ldquo;clouds of glory&rdquo; which we trail with us in after life need
+      not be traced to a pre-natal state. There is enough to account for them in
+      that unconsciously remembered period of existence before we have learned
+      the hard limitations of real life. Those earliest months in which we lived
+      in sensations without words, and ideas not fettered in sentences, have all
+      the freshness of proofs of an engraving &ldquo;before the letter.&rdquo; I am very
+      thankful that the first part of my life was not passed shut in between
+      high walls and treading the unimpressible and unsympathetic pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our university town was very much like the real country, in those days of
+      which I am thinking. There were plenty of huckleberries and blueberries
+      within half a mile of the house. Blackberries ripened in the fields,
+      acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels ran among the
+      branches, and not rarely the hen-hawk might be seen circling over the
+      barnyard. Still another rural element was not wanting, in the form of that
+      far-diffused, infragrant effluvium, which, diluted by a good half mile of
+      pure atmosphere, is no longer odious, nay is positively agreeable, to many
+      who have long known it, though its source and centre has an unenviable
+      reputation. I need not name the animal whose Parthian warfare terrifies
+      and puts to flight the mightiest hunter that ever roused the tiger from
+      his jungle or faced the lion of the desert. Strange as it may seem, an
+      aerial hint of his personality in the far distance always awakens in my
+      mind pleasant remembrances and tender reflections. A whole neighborhood
+      rises up before me: the barn, with its haymow, where the hens laid their
+      eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our apples to ripen, both occasionally
+      illustrating the sic vos non vobis; the shed, where the annual Tragedy of
+      the Pig was acted with a realism that made Salvini's Othello seem but a
+      pale counterfeit; the rickety old outhouse, with the &ldquo;corn-chamber&rdquo; which
+      the mice knew so well; the paved yard, with its open gutter,&mdash;these
+      and how much else come up at the hint of my far-off friend, who is my very
+      near enemy. Nothing is more familiar than the power of smell in reviving
+      old memories. There was that quite different fragrance of the wood-house,
+      the smell of fresh sawdust. It comes back to me now, and with it the hiss
+      of the saw; the tumble of the divorced logs which God put together and man
+      has just put asunder; the coming down of the axe and the hah! that helped
+      it,&mdash;the straight-grained stick opening at the first appeal of the
+      implement as if it were a pleasure, and the stick with a knot in the
+      middle of it that mocked the blows and the hahs! until the beetle and
+      wedge made it listen to reason,&mdash;there are just such straight-grained
+      and just such knotty men and women. All this passes through my mind while
+      Biddy, whose parlor-name is Angela, contents herself with exclaiming
+      &ldquo;egh!*******!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How different distances were in those young days of which I am thinking!
+      From the old house to the old yellow meeting-house, where the head of the
+      family preached and the limbs of the family listened, was not much more
+      than two or three times the width of Commonwealth Avenue. But of a hot
+      summer's afternoon, after having already heard one sermon, which could not
+      in the nature of things have the charm of novelty of presentation to the
+      members of the home circle, and the theology of which was not too clear to
+      tender apprehensions; with three hymns more or less lugubrious, rendered
+      by a village-choir, got into voice by many preliminary snuffles and other
+      expiratory efforts, and accompanied by the snort of a huge bassviol which
+      wallowed through the tune like a hippopotamus, with other exercises of the
+      customary character,&mdash;after all this in the forenoon, the afternoon
+      walk to the meeting-house in the hot sun counted for as much, in my
+      childish dead-reckoning, as from old Israel Porter's in Cambridge to the
+      Exchange Coffeehouse in Boston did in after years. It takes a good while
+      to measure the radius of the circle that is about us, for the moon seems
+      at first as near as the watchface. Who knows but that, after a certain
+      number of ages, the planet we live on may seem to us no bigger than our
+      neighbor Venus appeared when she passed before the sun a few months ago,
+      looking as if we could take her between our thumb and finger, like a
+      bullet or a marble? And time, too; how long was it from the serious
+      sunrise to the joyous &ldquo;sun-down&rdquo; of an old-fashioned, puritanical,
+      judaical first day of the week, which a pious fraud christened &ldquo;the
+      Sabbath&rdquo;? Was it a fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week?
+      Curious entities, or non-entities, space and tithe? When you see a
+      metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these
+      accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does it not
+      remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the blackamoor by
+      a similar proceeding? For space is the fluid in which he is washing, and
+      time is the soap which he is using up in the process, and he cannot get
+      free from them until he can wash himself in a mental vacuum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years ago, I
+      said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on
+      this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so
+      tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with those who
+      cherished them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What strides the great University has taken since those words were
+      written! During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat still
+      and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert. Then all at once, like
+      the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her pedestal. The fall of that
+      &ldquo;stony foot&rdquo; has effected a miracle like the harp that Orpheus played,
+      like the teeth which Cadmus sowed. The plain where the moose and the bear
+      were wandering while Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, where a few plain
+      dormitories and other needed buildings were scattered about in my
+      school-boy days, groans under the weight of the massive edifices which
+      have sprung up all around them, crowned by the tower of that noble
+      structure which stands in full view before me as I lift my eyes from the
+      portfolio on the back of which I am now writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it. I
+      have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it has
+      cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,&mdash;if I
+      have overcome them, which others must decide. And I feel exactly as honest
+      Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long journey with a
+      good deal of up-hill work. He wants to rest a little, then to feed a
+      little; then, if you will turn him loose in the pasture, he wants to roll.
+      I have left my starry and ethereal companionship,&mdash;not for a long
+      time, I hope, for it has lifted me above my common self, but for a while.
+      And now I want, so to speak, to roll in the grass and among the dandelions
+      with the other pachyderms. So I have kept to the outside of the portfolio
+      as yet, and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and fancies, and
+      vagaries, and parentheses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
+      vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
+      Santo with that sacred soil! The old house stood upon about as perverse a
+      little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved earth-worm. It
+      was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus. The rustic aid-de-camps
+      of the household used to aver that all fertilizing matters &ldquo;leached&rdquo;
+       through it. I tried to disprove their assertion by gorging it with the
+      best of terrestrial nourishment, until I became convinced that I was
+      feeding the tea-plants of China, and then I gave over the attempt. And yet
+      I did love, and do love, that arid patch of ground. I wonder if a single
+      flower could not be made to grow in a pot of earth from that Campo Santo
+      of my childhood! One noble product of nature did not refuse to flourish
+      there,&mdash;the tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired, many-jointed,
+      generous maize or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and defies the blaze
+      of our shrivelling summer. What child but loves to wander in its
+      forest-like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with the lofty tassels
+      tossing their heads high above him! There are two aspects of the cornfield
+      which always impress my imagination: the first when it has reached its
+      full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an army on the march with its
+      plumed and bannered battalions; the second when, after the battle of the
+      harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the field of slaughter like so many
+      ragged Niobes,&mdash;say rather like the crazy widows and daughters of the
+      dead soldiery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more let us come back to the old house. It was far along in its
+      second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its human
+      tenants. The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs of age.
+      Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards
+      that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or the
+      attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the floors
+      warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale off and
+      fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop from
+      their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl their
+      cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and at last there
+      comes a crash, a great cloud of dust rises, and the home that had been the
+      shelter of generation after generation finds its grave in its own cellar.
+      Only the chimney remains as its monument. Slowly, little by little, the
+      patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their chemistry pick out
+      the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty wind roars around it
+      and rushes against it, and the monumental relic crashes down among the
+      wrecks it has long survived. So dies a human habitation left to natural
+      decay, all that was seen above the surface of the soil sinking gradually
+      below it,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
+   Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling fall by
+      the hand of violence! The ripping off of the shelter that has kept out a
+      thousand storms, the tearing off of the once ornamental woodwork, the
+      wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the murderous blows of the axe, the
+      progressive ruin, which ends by rending all the joints asunder and
+      flinging the tenoned and mortised timbers into heaps that will be sawed
+      and split to warm some new habitation as firewood,&mdash;what a brutal act
+      of destruction it seems!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it more
+      than ten years ago? Alas! how many remember anything they read but once,
+      and so long ago as that? How many would find it out if one should say over
+      in the same words that which he said in the last decade? But there is
+      really no need of telling the story a second time, for it can be found by
+      those who are curious enough to look it up in a volume of which it
+      occupies the opening chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let me
+      remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at the
+      breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying Bunker's Hill
+      was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower room, the floor of
+      which was covered with dents, made, it was alleged, by the butts of the
+      soldiers' muskets. In that house, too, General Warren probably passed the
+      night before the Bunker Hill battle, and over its threshold must the
+      stately figure of Washington have often cast its shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one day
+      came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a little
+      universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent identity, with
+      the terrible responsibility of a separate, independent, inalienable
+      existence,&mdash;that house does not ask for any historical associations
+      to make it the centre of the earth for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who is
+      born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions and the
+      means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to his own taste,
+      without losing sight of all the characteristic features which surrounded
+      his earliest years. The American is, for the most part, a nomad, who pulls
+      down his house as the Tartar pulls up his tent-poles. If I had an ideal
+      life to plan for him it would be something like this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained, large-hearted
+      country minister, from whom he should inherit the temperament that
+      predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the finer instincts which
+      direct life to noble aims and make it rich with the gratification of pure
+      and elevated tastes and the carrying out of plans for the good of his
+      neighbors and his fellow-creatures. He should, if possible, have been
+      born, at any rate have passed some of his early years, or a large part of
+      them, under the roof of the good old minister. His father should be, we
+      will say, a business man in one of our great cities,&mdash;a generous
+      manipulator of millions, some of which have adhered to his private
+      fortunes, in spite of his liberal use of his means. His heir, our ideally
+      placed American, shall take possession of the old house, the home of his
+      earliest memories, and preserve it sacredly, not exactly like the Santa
+      Casa, but, as nearly as may be, just as he remembers it. He can add as
+      many acres as he will to the narrow house-lot. He can build a grand
+      mansion for himself, if he chooses, in the not distant neighborhood. But
+      the old house, and all immediately round it, shall be as he recollects it
+      when he had to stretch his little arm up to reach the door-handles. Then,
+      having well provided for his own household, himself included, let him
+      become the providence of the village or the town where he finds himself
+      during at least a portion of every year. Its schools, its library, its
+      poor,&mdash;and perhaps the new clergyman who has succeeded his
+      grandfather's successor may be one of them,&mdash;all its interests, he
+      shall make his own. And from this centre his beneficence shall radiate so
+      far that all who hear of his wealth shall also hear of him as a friend to
+      his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is not this a pleasing programme? Wealth is a steep hill, which the father
+      climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately; but there is a
+      table-land on a level with it, which may be found by those who do not lose
+      their head in looking down from its sharply cloven summit.&mdash;-Our
+      dangerously rich men can make themselves hated, held as enemies of the
+      race, or beloved and recognized as its benefactors. The clouds of
+      discontent are threatening, but if the gold-pointed lightning-rods are
+      rightly distributed the destructive element may be drawn off silently and
+      harmlessly. For it cannot be repeated too often that the safety of great
+      wealth with us lies in obedience to the new version of the Old World
+      axiom, RICHESS oblige.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      I. GETTING READY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the powers
+      of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to which its
+      central point of interest belongs without some words in the nature of
+      preparation. Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah Battle insisted
+      on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her favorite game of whist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
+      pages, before sitting down to tell his story. He does not intend to
+      frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to warn
+      him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not within
+      the range of every-day experience. Did he ever see the Siamese twins, or
+      any pair like them? Probably not, yet he feels sure that Chang and Eng
+      really existed; and if he has taken the trouble to inquire, he has
+      satisfied himself that similar cases have been recorded by credible
+      witnesses, though at long intervals and in countries far apart from each
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
+      skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we can
+      begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready for
+      the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the reader's
+      attention is invited. If the principal personages made their entrance at
+      once, the reader would have to create for himself the whole scenery of
+      their surrounding conditions. In point of fact, no matter how a story is
+      begun, many of its readers have already shaped its chief actors out of any
+      hint the author may have dropped, and provided from their own resources a
+      locality and a set of outward conditions to environ these imagined
+      personalities. These are all to be brushed away, and the actual
+      surroundings of the subject of the narrative represented as they were, at
+      the risk of detaining the reader a little while from the events most
+      likely to interest him. The choicest egg that ever was laid was not so big
+      as the nest that held it. If a story were so interesting that a maiden
+      would rather hear it than listen to the praise of her own beauty, or a
+      poet would rather read it than recite his own verses, still it would have
+      to be wrapped in some tissue of circumstance, or it would lose half its
+      effectiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
+      narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand. Recent
+      experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in designating
+      places and the people who live in them. There are, it may be added, so
+      many advertisements disguised under the form of stories and other literary
+      productions that one naturally desires to avoid the suspicion of being
+      employed by the enterprising proprietors of this or that celebrated resort
+      to use his gifts for their especial benefit. There are no doubt many
+      persons who remember the old sign and the old tavern and its four chief
+      personages presently to be mentioned. It is to be hoped that they will not
+      furnish the public with a key to this narrative, and perhaps bring trouble
+      to the writer of it, as has happened to other authors. If the real names
+      are a little altered, it need not interfere with the important facts
+      relating to those who bear them. It might not be safe to tell a damaging
+      story about John or James Smythe; but if the slight change is made of
+      spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would never think of bringing an
+      action, as if the allusion related to any of them. The same gulf of family
+      distinction separates the Thompsons with a p from the Thomsons without
+      that letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
+      residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by the
+      name of Arrowhead Village. The Indians had found it out, as the relics
+      they left behind them abundantly testified. The commonest of these were
+      those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism, and from which the
+      place took its name,&mdash;the heads of arrows, of various sizes,
+      material, and patterns: some small enough for killing fish and little
+      birds, some large enough for such game as the moose and the bear, to say
+      nothing of the hostile Indian and the white settler; some of flint, now
+      and then one of white quartz, and others of variously colored jasper. The
+      Indians must have lived here for many generations, and it must have been a
+      kind of factory village of the stone age,&mdash;which lasted up to near
+      the present time, if we may judge from the fact that many of these relics
+      are met with close to the surface of the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one of
+      the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed, that those
+      who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the swarms of
+      tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it for itself, and
+      not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural cockneyism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is the lake, in the first place,&mdash;Cedar Lake,&mdash;about five
+      miles long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching
+      from north to south. Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
+      Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious name,
+      but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the water. At
+      the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the Corinna Institute, a
+      favorite school for young ladies, where large numbers of the daughters of
+      America are fitted, so far as education can do it, for all stations in
+      life, from camping out with a husband at the mines in Nevada to acting the
+      part of chief lady of the land in the White House at Washington.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake, is a
+      valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of the lake,
+      leaving only room enough for a road between their base and the water. This
+      valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled, and here for a
+      century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern. A famous place it was so
+      long as its sign swung at the side of the road: famous for its landlord,
+      portly, paternal, whose welcome to a guest that looked worthy of the
+      attention was like that of a parent to a returning prodigal, and whose
+      parting words were almost as good as a marriage benediction; famous for
+      its landlady, ample in person, motherly, seeing to the whole household
+      with her own eyes, mistress of all culinary secrets that Northern kitchens
+      are most proud of; famous also for its ancient servant, as city people
+      would call her,&mdash;help, as she was called in the tavern and would have
+      called herself,&mdash;the unchanging, seemingly immortal Miranda, who
+      cared for the guests as if she were their nursing mother, and pressed the
+      specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a connoisseur calls
+      the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties of a picture. Who that
+      has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets Miranda's
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      or
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Some of these cakes? You will find them ver-y good.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
+      member of the household,&mdash;the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent
+      Pushee, ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the limits
+      of the establishment at all hours of the day and night. He fed, nobody
+      could say accurately when or where. There were rumors of a &ldquo;bunk,&rdquo; in
+      which he lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to be always wide
+      awake, and at the service of as many guest, at once as if there had been
+      half a dozen of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much for old reminiscences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign. He had had the
+      house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it open in
+      summer for a few boarders. It happened more than once that the summer
+      boarders were so much pleased with the place that they stayed on through
+      the autumn, and some of them through the winter. The attractions of the
+      village were really remarkable. Boating in summer, and skating in winter;
+      ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks could hardly keep up with; fishing,
+      for which the lake was renowned; varied and beautiful walks through the
+      valley and up the hillsides; houses sheltered from the north and
+      northeasterly winds, and refreshed in the hot summer days by the breeze
+      which came over the water,&mdash;all this made the frame for a pleasing
+      picture of rest and happiness. But there was a great deal more than this.
+      There was a fine library in the little village, presented and richly
+      endowed by a wealthy native of the place. There was a small permanent
+      population of a superior character to that of an everyday country town;
+      there was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a good-hearted rector,
+      broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be a little afraid of, and
+      hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the summer season, there were
+      always some who wanted a place of worship to keep their religion from
+      dying out during the heathen months, while the shepherds of the flocks to
+      which they belonged were away from their empty folds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was the
+      frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary association.
+      Some time before the tavern took down its sign the landlord had built a
+      hall, where many a ball had been held, to which the young folks of all the
+      country round had resorted. It was still sometimes used for similar
+      occasions, but it was especially notable as being the place of meeting of
+      the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted as
+      signifying that its members knew everything, had no such pretensions, but,
+      as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly, held itself open to
+      accept knowledge on any and all subjects from such as had knowledge to
+      impart. Its President was the rector of the little chapel, a man who, in
+      spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could stand fire from the
+      widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without flinching or losing his
+      temper. The hall of the old Anchor Tavern was a convenient place of
+      meeting for the students and instructors of the University and the
+      Institute. Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes in carriage-loads, sometimes
+      in processions of skaters, they came to the meetings in Pansophian Hall,
+      as it was now commonly called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest. It was
+      customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the most
+      part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by the
+      students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances by
+      anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and discussed
+      by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought worth listening
+      to. The variety of topics considered was very great. The young ladies of
+      the village and the Institute had their favorite subjects, the young
+      gentlemen a different set of topics, and the occasional outside
+      contributors their own; so that one who happened to be admitted to a
+      meeting never knew whether he was going to hear an account of recent
+      arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom of the will, or a
+      psychological experience, or a story, or even a poem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating to the
+      true status and the legitimate social functions of woman. The most
+      conflicting views were held on the subject. Many of the young ladies and
+      some of the University students were strong in defence of all the &ldquo;woman's
+      rights&rdquo; doctrines. Some of these young people were extreme in their views.
+      They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea and Queen Elizabeth, until they
+      were ready, if they could get the chance, to vote for a woman as President
+      of the United States or as General of the United States Army. They were
+      even disposed to assert the physical equality of woman to man, on the
+      strength of the rather questionable history of the Amazons, and especially
+      of the story, believed to be authentic, of the female body-guard of the
+      King of Dahomey,&mdash;females frightful enough to need no other weapon
+      than their looks to scare off an army of Cossacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna Institute,
+      was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood. It was rather
+      singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of this extreme
+      doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with brain than muscles.
+      In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed, long-eyelashed,
+      slender-necked, slightly developed young woman; looking almost like a
+      child at an age when many of the girls had reached their full stature and
+      proportions. In her studies she was so far in advance of her different
+      classes that there was always a wide gap between her and the second
+      scholar. So fatal to all rivalry had she proved herself that she passed
+      under the school name of The Terror. She learned so easily that she
+      undervalued her own extraordinary gifts, and felt the deepest admiration
+      for those of her friends endowed with faculties of an entirely different
+      and almost opposite nature. After sitting at her desk until her head was
+      hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look at the blooming
+      young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school, and feel as if she
+      would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and strange tongues and
+      history, all those accomplishments that made her the encyclopaedia of
+      every class she belonged to, if she could go through the series of
+      difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her schoolmates
+      delighting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was
+      of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which nature had
+      specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss Lurida
+      had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was
+      The Wonder. Though of full womanly stature, there were several taller
+      girls of her age. While all her contours and all her movements betrayed a
+      fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her finely
+      shaped hands and feet showed that her organization was one of those
+      carefully finished masterpieces of nature which sculptors are always in
+      search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect products of the
+      living laboratory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
+      performances in the gymnasium. She commonly contented herself with the
+      same exercises that her companions were accustomed to. Only her
+      dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too heavy
+      for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the floor. She
+      was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be checked in her
+      indulgence in them. The Professor of gymnastics at the University came
+      over to the Institute now and then, and it was a source of great
+      excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in which the young lady
+      showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing herself in
+      the accomplishment of feats which looked impossible at first sight. How
+      often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly give up all
+      her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral calculus if she
+      could only perform the least of those feats which were mere play to The
+      Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her attainments in
+      classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of the very best
+      students in the out-door branches,&mdash;botany, mineralogy, sketching
+      from nature,&mdash;to be found among the scholars of the Institute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an eight-oared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of
+      which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar. Poor little
+      Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when there were many
+      boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere feather-weight, and
+      quick-witted enough to serve well in the important office where brains are
+      more needed than muscle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was also an eight-oared boat belonging to the University, and rowed
+      by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows. The bow oar and captain of the
+      University crew was a powerful young man, who, like the captain of the
+      girls' boat, was a noted gymnast. He had had one or two quiet trials with
+      Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the ultras of the woman's rights
+      party, he had not vindicated the superiority of his sex in the way which
+      might have been expected. Indeed, it was claimed that he let a cannon-ball
+      drop when he ought to have caught it, and it was not disputed that he had
+      been ingloriously knocked over by a sand-bag projected by the strong arms
+      of the young maiden. This was of course a story that was widely told and
+      laughingly listened to, and the captain of the University crew had become
+      a little sensitive on the subject. When there was a talk, therefore, about
+      a race between the champion boats of the two institutions there was
+      immense excitement in both of them, as well as among the members of the
+      Pansophian Society and all the good people of the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many objections to be overcome. Some thought it unladylike for
+      the young maidens to take part in a competition which must attract many
+      lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very hoidenish to venture upon.
+      Some said it was a shame to let a crew of girls try their strength against
+      an equal number of powerful young men. These objections were offset by the
+      advocates of the race by the following arguments. They maintained that it
+      was no more hoidenish to row a boat than it was to take a part in the
+      calisthenic exercises, and that the girls had nothing to do with the young
+      men's boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as possible. As to
+      strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for weight, their
+      crew was as strong as the other, and of course due allowance would be made
+      for the difference of weight and all other accidental hindrances. It was
+      time to test the boasted superiority of masculine muscle. Here was a
+      chance. If the girls beat, the whole country would know it, and after that
+      female suffrage would be only a question of time. Such was the conclusion,
+      from rather insufficient premises, it must be confessed; but if nature
+      does nothing per saltum,&mdash;by jumps,&mdash;as the old adage has it,
+      youth is very apt to take long leaps from a fact to a possible sequel or
+      consequence. So it had come about that a contest between the two
+      boat-crews was looked forward to with an interest almost equal to that
+      with which the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after cautious
+      protocols and many diplomatic discussions. It was so novel in its
+      character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust it in such
+      a way as to be fair to both parties. The course must not be too long for
+      the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying power of the young persons
+      who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon. A certain advantage must
+      be allowed them at the start, and this was a delicate matter to settle.
+      The weather was another important consideration. June would be early
+      enough, in all probability, and if the lake should be tolerably smooth the
+      grand affair might come off some time in that month. Any roughness of the
+      water would be unfavorable to the weaker crew. The rowing-course was on
+      the eastern side of the lake, the starting-point being opposite the Anchor
+      Tavern; from that three quarters of a mile to the south, where the
+      turning-stake was fixed, so that the whole course of one mile and a half
+      would bring the boats back to their starting-point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The race was to be between the Algonquin, eight-oared boat with
+      outriggers, rowed by young men, students of Stoughton University, and the
+      Atalanta, also eight-oared and outrigger boat, by young ladies from the
+      Corinna Institute. Their boat was three inches wider than the other, for
+      various sufficient reasons, one of which was to make it a little less
+      likely to go over and throw its crew into the water, which was a sound
+      precaution, though all the girls could swim, and one at least, the bow
+      oar, was a famous swimmer, who had pulled a drowning man out of the water
+      after a hard struggle to keep him from carrying her down with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as to
+      draw together a rabble of betting men and ill-conditioned lookers-on,
+      there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the villagers and
+      the students of the two institutions. Among them were a few who were
+      disposed to add to their interest in the trial by small wagers. The bets
+      were rather in favor of the &ldquo;Quins,&rdquo; as the University boat was commonly
+      called, except where the natural sympathy of the young ladies or the
+      gallantry of some of the young men led them to risk their gloves or
+      cigars, or whatever it might be, on the Atalantas. The elements of
+      judgment were these: average weight of the Algonquins one hundred and
+      sixty-five pounds; average weight of the Atalantas, one hundred and
+      forty-eight pounds; skill in practice about equal; advantage of the narrow
+      boat equal to three lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas eight
+      lengths,&mdash;a long stretch to be made up in a mile and a half. And so
+      both crews began practising for the grand trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II. THE BOAT-RACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still and
+      bright. The water was smooth, and the crews were in the best possible
+      condition. All was expectation, and for some time nothing but expectation.
+      No boat-race or regatta ever began at the time appointed for the start.
+      Somebody breaks an oar, or somebody fails to appear in season, or
+      something is the matter with a seat or an outrigger; or if there is no
+      such excuse, the crew of one or both or all the boats to take part in the
+      race must paddle about to get themselves ready for work, to the infinite
+      weariness of all the spectators, who naturally ask why all this getting
+      ready is not attended to beforehand. The Algonquins wore plain gray
+      flannel suits and white caps. The young ladies were all in dark blue
+      dresses, touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and wore light straw
+      hats. The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to step on board.
+      As she took her place she carefully deposited at her feet a white
+      handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a sponge, in case
+      the boat should take in water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay, &mdash;long,
+      narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel when he darts from the reedy shore.
+      It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows in their
+      close-fitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending their backs
+      for the stroke and recovering, as if they were parts of a single machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers,&rdquo; said the old blacksmith from
+      the village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wait till the gals get a-goin',&rdquo; said the carpenter, who had often
+      worked in the gymnasium of the Corinna Institute, and knew something of
+      their muscular accomplishments. &ldquo;Y' ought to see 'em climb ropes, and
+      swing dumb-bells, and pull in them rowin'-machines. Ask Jake there whether
+      they can't row a mild in double-quick time,&mdash;he knows all abaout it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
+      country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-doors,
+      being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the habits and
+      habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of observation, just as
+      dealing in horses is an education of certain faculties, and breeds a race
+      of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious, wary, and wide awake, with a
+      rhetoric of appreciation and depreciation all its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
+      following effect:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wahl, I don' know jest what to say. I've seed 'em both often enough when
+      they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout neither on
+      'em. But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em stretched in a
+      straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout 'f a mile 'n' a
+      haaf. I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them fellers is naterally
+      longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the time they git raound the
+      stake 'n' over agin the big ellum. I'll go ye a quarter on the pahnts agin
+      the petticoats.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that the
+      young ladies were overmatched. Still there were not wanting those who
+      thought the advantage allowed the &ldquo;Lantas,&rdquo; as they called the Corinna
+      boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible for the &ldquo;Quins&rdquo;
+       to make it up and go by them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators. They
+      appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine, mettlesome as
+      colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen, disciplined to
+      work together as symmetrically as a single sculler pulls his pair of oars.
+      The fisherman offered to make his quarter fifty cents. No takers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking for
+      the Atalanta. A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along which the
+      Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point. Presently the long
+      shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers, who, with their ample
+      dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as Raphael fills his skiff on
+      the edge of the Lake of Galilee. But how steadily the Atalanta came on!&mdash;-no
+      rocking, no splashing, no apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look
+      ahead every now and then, and watching her course, which seemed to be
+      straight as an arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and regular as the
+      pulse of the healthiest rower among them all. And if the sight of the
+      other boat and its crew was beautiful, how lovely was the look of this!
+      Eight young girls,&mdash;young ladies, for those who prefer that more
+      dignified and less attractive expression,&mdash;all in the flush of youth,
+      all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower alert,
+      not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the
+      water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling
+      with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it came in
+      sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the loudest, as the
+      gallantry of one sex and the clear, high voices of the other gave it life
+      and vigor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your places!&rdquo; shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half hour.
+      The two boats felt their way slowly and cautiously to their positions,
+      which had been determined by careful measurement. After a little backing
+      and filling they got into line, at the proper distance from each other,
+      and sat motionless, their bodies bent forward, their arms outstretched,
+      their oars in the water, waiting for the word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go!&rdquo; shouted the umpire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin, her
+      oars bending like so many long Indian bows as their blades flashed through
+      the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A stern chase is a long chase,&rdquo; especially when one craft is a great
+      distance behind the other. It looked as if it would be impossible for the
+      rear boat to overcome the odds against it. Of course the Algonquin kept
+      gaining, but could it possibly gain enough? That was the question. As the
+      boats got farther and farther away, it became more and more difficult to
+      determine what change there was in the interval between them. But when
+      they came to rounding the stake it was easier to guess at the amount of
+      space which had been gained. It was clear that something like half the
+      distance, four lengths, as nearly as could be estimated, had been made up
+      in rowing the first three quarters of a mile. Could the Algonquins do a
+      little better than this in the second half of the race-course, they would
+      be sure of winning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly. Every minute
+      the University boat was getting nearer the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go it, Quins!&rdquo; shouted the students.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull away, Lantas!&rdquo; screamed the girls, who were crowding down to the
+      edge of the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nearer,&mdash;nearer,&mdash;the rear boat is pressing the other more and
+      more closely,&mdash;a few more strokes, and they will be even, for there
+      is but one length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the
+      line. It looks desperate for the Atalantas. The bow oar of the Algonquin
+      turns his head. He sees the little coxswain leaning forward at every
+      stroke, as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence,&mdash;but
+      a few ounces might turn the scale of victory. As he turned he got a
+      glimpse of the stroke oar of the Atalanta. What a flash of loveliness it
+      was! Her face was like the reddest of June roses, with the heat and the
+      strain and the passion of expected triumph. The upper button of her
+      close-fitting flannel suit had strangled her as her bosom heaved with
+      exertion, and it had given way before the fierce clutch she made at it.
+      The bow oar was a staunch and steady rower, but he was human. The blade of
+      his oar lingered in the water; a little more and he would have caught a
+      crab, and perhaps lost the race by his momentary bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a
+      Derby three-year-old, felt the slight check, and all her men bent more
+      vigorously to their oars. The Atalantas saw the movement, and made a spurt
+      to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could. It was of no use. The
+      strong arms of the young men were too much for the young maidens; only a
+      few lengths remained to be rowed, and they would certainly pass the
+      Atalanta before she could reach the line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if she
+      could not save them by some strategic device.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      she whispered to herself,&mdash;for The Terror remembered her Virgil as
+      she did everything else she ever studied. As she stooped, she lifted the
+      handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; she
+      cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the Algonquin. The
+      captain of the University boat turned his head, and there was the lovely
+      vision which had a moment before bewitched him. The owner of all that
+      loveliness must, he thought, have flung the bouquet. It was a challenge:
+      how could he be such a coward as to decline accepting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the line in
+      triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his boat, proud as
+      Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his mast-head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned the boat's head a little by backing water. He came up with the
+      floating flowers, and near enough to reach them. He stooped and snatched
+      them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,&mdash;no more. He felt
+      sure of his victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites? Are
+      we not there ourselves? Are not our muscles straining with those of these
+      sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their nerves all
+      tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all their life
+      concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme effort? No! We
+      are seeing, not telling about what somebody else once saw!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the
+      Atalanta!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;Three more lengths' rowing and the college crew will pass the
+      girls!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;&ldquo;Hurrah for the Quins!&rdquo; The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the
+      Atalanta!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Through with her!&rdquo; shouts the captain of the Algonquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, girls!&rdquo; shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &mdash;Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its
+      splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line,
+      eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hooraw for the Lantas! Hooraw for the Girls! Hooraw for the Institoot!
+      shout a hundred voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!&rdquo; pipes the small voice of
+      The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for
+      nothing. &ldquo;I have paid off one old score,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Set down my damask
+      roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave the
+      race to the Atalantas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III. THE WHITE CANOE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookers-on in them were
+      rowing or sailing in the neighborhood of the race-course. The scene on the
+      water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats were, many of them,
+      acquainted with each other. There was a good deal of lively talk until the
+      race became too exciting. Then many fell silent, until, as the boats
+      neared the line, and still more as they crossed it, the shouts burst forth
+      which showed how a cramp of attention finds its natural relief in a fit of
+      convulsive exclamation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to be
+      seen, in which sat a young man, who paddled it skillfully and swiftly. It
+      was evident enough that he was watching the race intently, but the
+      spectators could see little more than that. One of them, however, who sat
+      upon the stand, had a powerful spy-glass, and could distinguish his
+      motions very minutely and exactly. It was seen by this curious observer
+      that the young man had an opera-glass with him, which he used a good deal
+      at intervals. The spectator thought he kept it directed to the girls'
+      boat, chiefly, if not exclusively. He thought also that the opera-glass
+      was more particularly pointed towards the bow of the boat, and came to the
+      natural conclusion that the bow oar, Miss Euthymia Tower, captain of the
+      Atalantas, &ldquo;The Wonder&rdquo; of the Corinna Institute, was the attraction which
+      determined the direction of the instrument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that in the canoe over there?&rdquo; asked the owner of the spy-glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just what we should like to know,&rdquo; answered the old landlord's
+      wife. &ldquo;He and his man boarded with us when they first came, but we could
+      never find out anything about him only just his name and his ways of
+      living. His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood, Esq., it used to come on
+      his letters. As for his ways of living, he was the solitariest human being
+      that I ever came across. His man carried his meals up to him. He used to
+      stay in his room pretty much all day, but at night he would be off,
+      walking, or riding on horseback, or paddling about in the lake, sometimes
+      till nigh morning. There's something very strange about that Mr. Kirkwood.
+      But there don't seem to be any harm in him. Only nobody can guess what his
+      business is. They got up a story about him at one time. What do you think?
+      They said he was a counterfeiter! And so they went one night to his room,
+      when he was out, and that man of his was away too, and they carried keys,
+      and opened pretty much everything; and they found&mdash;well, they found
+      just nothing at all except writings and letters,&mdash;letters from places
+      in America and in England, and some with Italian postmarks: that was all.
+      Since that time the sheriff and his folks have let him alone and minded
+      their own business. He was a gentleman,&mdash;anybody ought to have known
+      that; and anybody that knew about his nice ways of living and behaving,
+      and knew the kind of wear he had for his underclothing, might have known
+      it. I could have told those officers that they had better not bother him.
+      I know the ways of real gentlemen and real ladies, and I know those
+      fellows in store clothes that look a little too fine,&mdash;outside. Wait
+      till washing-day comes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they were
+      not wholly unworthy of consideration; they were quite as much to be relied
+      on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who sent his
+      accomplice on before him to study out the principal personages in the
+      village, and in the light of these revelations interpreted the bumps, with
+      very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim, or any other authorities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search among his
+      papers and effects, the gossips of the village had constructed several
+      distinct histories for the mysterious stranger. He was an agent of a great
+      publishing house; a leading contributor to several important periodicals;
+      the author of that anonymously published novel which had made so much
+      talk; the poet of a large clothing establishment; a spy of the Italian,
+      some said the Russian, some said the British, Government; a proscribed
+      refugee from some country where he had been plotting; a school-master
+      without a school, a minister without a pulpit, an actor without an
+      engagement; in short, there was no end to the perfectly senseless stories
+      that were told about him, from that which made him out an escaped convict
+      to the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric heir to a great
+      English title and estate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion.
+      Nobody in the village, no student in the University, knew his history. No
+      young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word from him.
+      Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute were returning
+      at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing into the shadows as
+      they drew near it. Sometimes on a moonlight night, when a party of the
+      young ladies were out upon the lake, they would see the white canoe
+      gliding ghost-like in the distance. And it had happened more than once
+      that when a boat's crew had been out with singers among them, while they
+      were in the midst of a song, the white canoe would suddenly appear and
+      rest upon the water,&mdash;not very near them, but within hearing
+      distance,&mdash;and so remain until the singing was over, when it would
+      steal away and be lost sight of in some inlet or behind some jutting rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man. The
+      landlady had told her story, which explained nothing. There was nobody to
+      be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian, whose name was
+      Paolo, but who to the village was known as Mr. Paul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a
+      secret out of. He was good-natured, child-like as a Heathen Chinee, talked
+      freely with everybody in such English as he had at command, knew all the
+      little people of the village, and was followed round by them partly from
+      his personal attraction for them, and partly because he was apt to have a
+      stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other desirable luxury in his
+      pocket for any of his little friends he met with. He had that wholesome,
+      happy look, so uncommon in our arid countrymen,&mdash;a look hardly to be
+      found except where figs and oranges ripen in the open air. A kindly
+      climate to grow up in, a religion which takes your money and gives you a
+      stamped ticket good at Saint Peter's box office, a roomy chest and a good
+      pair of lungs in it, an honest digestive apparatus, a lively temperament,
+      a cheerful acceptance of the place in life assigned to one by nature and
+      circumstance,&mdash;these are conditions under which life may be quite
+      comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to contemplate. All
+      these conditions were united in Paolo. He was the easiest; pleasantest
+      creature to talk with that one could ask for a companion. His southern
+      vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and openness, made him
+      friends everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history of his
+      master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being. He had been tried
+      by all the village experts. The rector had put a number of well-studied
+      careless questions, which failed of their purpose. The old librarian of
+      the town library had taken note of all the books he carried to his master,
+      and asked about his studies and pursuits. Paolo found it hard to
+      understand his English, apparently, and answered in the most irrelevant
+      way. The leading gossip of the village tried her skill in pumping him for
+      information. It was all in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His master's way of life was peculiar,&mdash;in fact, eccentric. He had
+      hired rooms in an old-fashioned three-story house. He had two rooms in the
+      second and third stories of this old wooden building: his study in the
+      second, his sleeping-room in the one above it. Paolo lived in the
+      basement, where he had all the conveniences for cooking, and played the
+      part of chef for his master and himself. This was only a part of his duty,
+      for he was a man-of-all-work, purveyor, steward, chambermaid,&mdash;as
+      universal in his services for one man as Pushee at the Anchor Tavern used
+      to be for everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and had
+      such threatening symptoms that he asked the baker, when he called, to send
+      the village physician to see him. In the course of his visit the doctor
+      naturally inquired about the health of Paolo's master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor Kirkwood well,&mdash;molto bene,&rdquo; said Paolo. &ldquo;Why does he keep
+      out of sight as he does?&rdquo; asked the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He always so,&rdquo; replied Paolo. &ldquo;Una antipatia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed it to
+      him as to a father confessor, or whether he thought it time that the
+      reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor did not feel
+      sure. At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any further revelations.
+      Una antipatia,&mdash;an antipathy,&mdash;that was all the doctor learned.
+      He thought the matter over, and the more he reflected the more he was
+      puzzled. What could an antipathy be that made a young man a recluse! Was
+      it a dread of blue sky and open air, of the smell of flowers, or some
+      electrical impression to which he was unnaturally sensitive?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him. His wife was a sensible,
+      discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional secrets. He
+      told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with her in the light
+      of his experience and her own; for she had known some curious cases of
+      constitutional likes and aversions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where it lay
+      for nearly a week. At the end of that time it emerged in a confidential
+      whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe person.
+      Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village that Maurice
+      Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious, unheard-of antipathy to
+      something, nobody knew what; and the whole neighborhood naturally resolved
+      itself into an unorganized committee of investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV. THE YOUNG SOLITARY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      What is a country village without its mysterious personage? Few are now
+      living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who was the
+      mystery of our great university town &ldquo;sixty years since,&rdquo;&mdash;long
+      enough ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley may
+      remind us. The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and is not
+      sure that he has not told the strange story in some form or other to the
+      last generation, or to the one before the last. No matter: if he has told
+      it they have forgotten it,&mdash;that is, if they have ever read it; and
+      whether they have or have not, the story is singular enough to justify
+      running the risk of repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared
+      unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge. He wanted
+      employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he
+      undertook and performed cheerfully. But his whole appearance showed
+      plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different nature,
+      if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for his living.
+      His aspect was that of one of gentle birth. His hands were not those of a
+      laborer, and his features were delicate and refined, as well as of
+      remarkable beauty. Who he was, where he came from, why he had come to
+      Cantabridge, was never clearly explained. He was alone, without friends,
+      except among the acquaintances he had made in his new residence. If he had
+      any correspondents, they were not known to the neighborhood where he was
+      living. But if he had neither friends nor correspondents, there was some
+      reason for believing that he had enemies. Strange circumstances occurred
+      which connected themselves with him in an ominous and unaccountable way. A
+      threatening letter was slipped under the door of a house where he was
+      visiting. He had a sudden attack of illness, which was thought to look
+      very much like the effect of poison. At one time he disappeared, and was
+      found wandering, bewildered, in a town many miles from that where he was
+      residing. When questioned how he came there; he told a coherent story that
+      he had been got, under some pretext, or in some not incredible way, into a
+      boat, from which, at a certain landing-place, he had escaped and fled for
+      his life, which he believed was in danger from his kidnappers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever his enemies may have been,&mdash;if they really existed,&mdash;he
+      did not fall a victim to their plots, so far as known to or remembered by
+      this witness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Various interpretations were put upon his story. Conjectures were as
+      abundant as they were in the case of Kaspar Hauser. That he was of good
+      family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not
+      impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a greatly
+      coveted position in one of the northern states of Europe was a favorite
+      speculation of some of the more romantic young persons. There was no
+      dramatic ending to this story,&mdash;at least none is remembered by the
+      present writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He left a name,&rdquo; like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have been
+      for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which anybody
+      &ldquo;grew pale;&rdquo; for he had swindled no one, and broken no woman's heart with
+      false vows. Possibly some withered cheeks may flush faintly as they recall
+      the handsome young man who came before the Cantabridge maidens fully
+      equipped for a hero of romance when the century was in its first quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
+      attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had made
+      his appearance at Arrowhead Village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for the
+      young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an antipathy. For
+      what do we understand by that word? When a young lady screams at the sight
+      of a spider, we accept her explanation that she has a natural antipathy to
+      the creature. When a person expresses a repugnance to some wholesome
+      article of food, agreeable to most people, we are satisfied if he gives
+      the same reason. And so of various odors, which are pleasing to some
+      persons and repulsive to others. We do not pretend to go behind the fact.
+      It is an individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity. Even between
+      different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike as well
+      as an elective affinity. We are not bound to give a reason why Dr. Fell is
+      odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily challenges a
+      juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough that he &ldquo;does not
+      like his looks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have his
+      special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and dislikes.
+      But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should be alleged as
+      the reason for his singular mode of life. All sorts of explanations were
+      suggested, not one of them in the least satisfactory, but serving to keep
+      the curiosity of inquirers active until they were superseded by a new
+      theory. One story was that Maurice had a great fear of dogs. It grew at
+      last to a connected narrative, in which a fright in childhood from a rabid
+      mongrel was said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near
+      presence of dogs that he was liable to convulsions if one came close to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hypothesis had some plausibility. No other creature would be so
+      likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt
+      to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They are
+      met with everywhere,&mdash;in one's daily walk, at the thresholds of the
+      doors one enters, in the gentleman's library, on the rug of my lady's
+      sitting-room and on the cushion of her carriage. It is true that there are
+      few persons who have an instinctive repugnance to this &ldquo;friend of man.&rdquo;
+       But what if this so-called antipathy were only a fear, a terror, which
+      borrowed the less unmanly name? It was a fair question, if, indeed, the
+      curiosity of the public had a right to ask any questions at all about a
+      harmless individual who gave no offence, and seemed entitled to the right
+      of choosing his way of living to suit himself, without being submitted to
+      espionage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet. But one of the
+      village people had a large Newfoundland dog, of a very sociable
+      disposition, with which he determined to test the question. He watched for
+      the time when Maurice should leave his house for the woods or the lake,
+      and started with his dog to meet him. The animal walked up to the stranger
+      in a very sociable fashion, and began making his acquaintance, after the
+      usual manner of well-bred dogs; that is, with the courtesies and
+      blandishments by which the canine Chesterfield is distinguished from the
+      ill-conditioned cur. Maurice patted him in a friendly way, and spoke to
+      him as one who was used to the fellowship of such companions. That idle
+      question and foolish story were disposed of, therefore, and some other
+      solution must be found, if possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard to
+      cats. This has never been explained. It is not mere aversion to the look
+      of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the common observer.
+      The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in movement, nice in personal
+      habits, and of amiable disposition. No cause of offence is obvious, and
+      yet there are many persons who cannot abide the presence of the most
+      innocent little kitten. They can tell, in some mysterious way, that there
+      is a cat in the room when they can neither see nor hear the creature.
+      Whether it is an electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or whatever it
+      may be, of the fact of this strange influence there are too many
+      well-authenticated instances to allow its being questioned. But suppose
+      Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its extremest
+      degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to which he had
+      condemned himself. He might shun the firesides of the old women whose
+      tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy dames do not
+      make up the whole population.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
+      started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very much
+      as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed and
+      inquiring persons. This was that Maurice was endowed with the unenviable
+      gift of the evil eye. He was in frequent communication with Italy, as his
+      letters showed, and had recently been residing in that country, as was
+      learned from Paolo. Now everybody knows that the evil eye is not rarely
+      met with in Italy. Everybody who has ever read Mr. Story's &ldquo;Roba di Roma&rdquo;
+       knows what a terrible power it is which the owner of the evil eye
+      exercises. It can blight and destroy whatever it falls upon. No person's
+      life or limb is safe if the jettatura, the withering glance of the deadly
+      organ, falls upon him. It must be observed that this malign effect may
+      follow a look from the holiest personages, that is, if we may assume that
+      a monk is such as a matter of course. Certainly we have a right to take it
+      for granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an eminently holy man, and
+      yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and dreaded jettatura as well
+      as his blessing. If Maurice Kirkwood carried that destructive influence,
+      so that his clear blue eyes were more to be feared than the fascinations
+      of the deadliest serpent, it could easily be understood why he kept his
+      look away from all around him whom he feared he might harm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil eye,
+      but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
+      suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
+      putting any real confidence in them. It was just suited to the romantic
+      notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had meddled more
+      or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new fancy, if it were
+      only wild enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find
+      any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for the
+      gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two
+      educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest among
+      the young ladies. Here is an extract from a letter of one of these young
+      ladies, who, having received at her birth the ever-pleasing name of Mary,
+      saw fit to have herself called Mollie in the catalogue and in her letters.
+      The old postmaster of the town to which her letter was directed took it up
+      to stamp, and read on the envelope the direction to &ldquo;Miss Lulu Pinrow.&rdquo; He
+      brought the stamp down with a vicious emphasis, coming very near blotting
+      out the nursery name, instead of cancelling the postage-stamp. &ldquo;Lulu!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't out
+      of her cradle yet! I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs to her,
+      but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister gave her, and
+      it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense.&rdquo; And so saying, he gave it a
+      fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his fingers. Why a grown-up
+      young woman allowed herself to be cheapened in the way so many of them do
+      by the use of names which become them as well as the frock of a
+      ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a graduate of the Corinna Institute,
+      the old postmaster could not guess. He was a queer old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's written
+      loquacity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of 'in all
+      your born days,' as mamma used to say. He has been at the village for some
+      time, but lately we have had&mdash;oh, the weirdest stories about him!
+      'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give him, but we girls call him
+      the Sachem, because he paddles about in an Indian canoe. If I should tell
+      you all the things that are said about him I should use up all my paper
+      ten times over. He has never made a visit to the Institute, and none of
+      the girls have ever spoken to him, but the people at the village say he is
+      very, very handsome. We are dying to get a look at him, of course&mdash;though
+      there is a horrid story about him&mdash;that he has the evil eye did you
+      ever hear about the evil eye? If a person who is born with it looks at
+      you, you die, or something happens&mdash;awful&mdash;is n't it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good many of
+      the people that pass the summer at the village never do&mdash;they think
+      their religion must have vacations&mdash;that's what I've heard they say&mdash;vacations,
+      just like other hard work&mdash;it ought not to be hard work, I'm sure,
+      but I suppose they feel so about it. Should you feel afraid to have him
+      look at you? Some of the girls say they would n't have him for the whole
+      world, but I shouldn't mind it&mdash;especially if I had on my eyeglasses.
+      Do you suppose if there is anything in the evil eye it would go through
+      glass? I don't believe it. Do you think blue eye-glasses would be better
+      than common ones? Don't laugh at me&mdash;they tell such weird stories!
+      The Terror&mdash;Lurida Vincent, you know-makes fun of all they say about
+      it, but then she 'knows everything and doesn't believe anything,' the
+      girls say&mdash;Well, I should be awfully scared, I know, if anybody that
+      had the evil eye should look at me&mdash;but&mdash;oh, I don't know&mdash;but
+      if it was a young man&mdash;and if he was very&mdash;very good-looking&mdash;I
+      think&mdash;perhaps I would run the risk&mdash;but don't tell anybody I
+      said any such horrid thing&mdash;and burn this letter right up&mdash;there
+      's a dear good girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this
+      letter. There are not quite so many &ldquo;awfuls&rdquo; and &ldquo;awfullys&rdquo; as one expects
+      to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two &ldquo;weirds,&rdquo; which may be
+      considered a fair allowance. How it happened that &ldquo;jolly&rdquo; did not show
+      itself can hardly be accounted for; no doubt it turns up two or three
+      times at least in the postscript.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is an extract from another letter. This was from one of the students
+      of Stoughton University to a friend whose name as it was written on the
+      envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield. The old postmaster who found fault with
+      Miss &ldquo;Lulu's&rdquo; designation would probably have quarrelled with this
+      address, if it had come under his eye. &ldquo;Frank&rdquo; is a very pretty,
+      pleasant-sounding name, and it is not strange that many persons use it in
+      common conversation all their days when speaking of a friend. Were they
+      really christened by that name, any of these numerous Franks? Perhaps they
+      were, and if so there is nothing to be said. But if not, was the baptismal
+      name Francis or Franklin? The mind is apt to fasten in a very perverse and
+      unpleasant way upon this question, which too often there is no possible
+      way of settling. One might hope, if he outlived the bearer of the
+      appellation, to get at the fact; but since even gravestones have learned
+      to use the names belonging to childhood and infancy in their solemn
+      record, the generation which docks its Christian names in such an
+      un-Christian way will bequeath whole churchyards full of riddles to
+      posterity. How it will puzzle and distress the historians and antiquarians
+      of a coming generation to settle what was the real name of Dan and Bert
+      and Billy, which last is legible on a white marble slab, raised in memory
+      of a grown person, in a certain burial-ground in a town in Essex County,
+      Massachusetts!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr. Frank
+      Mayfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DEAR FRANK,&mdash;Hooray! Hurrah! Rah!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'! It happened by
+      a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near relieving you of the duty
+      of replying to this letter. I was out in my little boat, which carries a
+      sail too big for her, as I know and ought to have remembered. One of those
+      fitful flaws of wind to which the lake is so liable struck the sail
+      suddenly, and over went my boat. My feet got tangled in the sheet somehow,
+      and I could not get free. I had hard work to keep my head above water, and
+      I struggled desperately to escape from my toils; for if the boat were to
+      go down I should be dragged down with her. I thought of a good many things
+      in the course of some four or five minutes, I can tell you, and I got a
+      lesson about time better than anything Kant and all the rest of them have
+      to say of it. After I had been there about an ordinary lifetime, I saw a
+      white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy young gentleman was
+      coming to help me, and that we should become acquainted without an
+      introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what the trouble was, managed
+      to disentangle my feet without drowning me in the process or upsetting his
+      little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat tired with my struggle, took
+      me in tow and carried me to the landing where he kept his canoe. I can't
+      say that there is anything odd about his manners or his way of talk. I
+      judge him to be a native of one of our Northern States,&mdash;perhaps a
+      New Englander. He has lived abroad during some parts of his life. He is
+      not an artist, as it was at one time thought he might be. He is a
+      good-looking fellow, well developed, manly in appearance, with nothing to
+      excite special remark unless it be a certain look of anxiety or
+      apprehension which comes over him from time to time. You remember our old
+      friend Squire B., whose companion was killed by lightning when he was
+      standing close to him. You know the look he had whenever anything like a
+      thundercloud came up in the sky. Well, I should say there was a look like
+      that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's face every now and then. I noticed
+      that he looked round once or twice as if to see whether some object or
+      other was in sight. There was a little rustling in the grass as if of
+      footsteps, and this look came over his features. A rabbit ran by us, and I
+      watched to see if he showed any sign of that antipathy we have heard so
+      much of, but he seemed to be pleased watching the creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I think he
+      is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a 'crank'
+      exactly. He talked well enough about such matters as we spoke of,&mdash;the
+      lake, the scenery in general, the climate. I asked him to come over and
+      take a look at the college. He did n't promise, but I should not be
+      surprised if I should get him over there some day. I asked him why he did
+      n't go to the Pansophian meetings. He did n't give any reason, but he
+      shook his head in a very peculiar way, as much as to say that it was
+      impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of dread
+      of human society, or dislike for it, which under the name of religion used
+      to drive men into caves and deserts. What a pity that Protestantism does
+      not make special provision for all the freaks of individual character! If
+      we had a little more faith and a few more caverns, or convenient places
+      for making them, we should have hermits in these holes as thick as
+      woodchucks or prairie dogs. I should like to know if you never had the
+      feeling,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place!'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what your answer will be, of course. You will say, 'Certainly,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'With one fair spirit for my minister;'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;but I mean alone,&mdash;all alone. Don't you ever feel as if you should
+      like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong as
+      lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water? (Jerry is
+      looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to send, and a
+      disgrace to the University&mdash;but never mind.) I often feel as if I
+      should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,&mdash;yes, and have
+      it soaped from top to bottom. Wouldn't it be fun to look down at the bores
+      and the duns? Let us get up a pillar-roosters' association. (Jerry&mdash;still
+      looking over says there is an absurd contradiction in the idea.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a matter-of-fact idiot Jerry is!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you like looking over, Mr. Inspector general?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader will not get much information out of this lively young fellow's
+      letter, but he may get a little. It is something to know that the
+      mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor talk like a
+      crazy person; that he was of agreeable aspect and address, helpful when
+      occasion offered, and had nothing about him, so far as yet appeared, to
+      prevent his being an acceptable member of society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the people in the village could never be contented without
+      learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor. All the
+      city papers were examined for advertisements. If a cashier had absconded,
+      if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was missing, some of
+      the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency, until some new
+      circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these
+      inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and
+      unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The
+      &ldquo;Sachem&rdquo; of the boating girls became the &ldquo;Sphinx&rdquo; of the village ramblers,
+      and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics
+      harder to make out than the meaning of this young man's odd way of living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V. THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a young
+      man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if made for
+      companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world around him in
+      a place where there was a general feeling of good neighborhood and a
+      pleasant social atmosphere. The Public Library was a central point which
+      brought people together. The Pansophian Society did a great deal to make
+      them acquainted with each other for many of the meetings were open to
+      outside visitors, and the subjects discussed in the meetings furnished the
+      material for conversation in their intervals. A card of invitation had
+      been sent by the Secretary to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo carried
+      back a polite note of regret. The paper had a narrow rim of black,
+      implying apparently some loss of relative or friend, but not any very
+      recent and crushing bereavement. This refusal to come to the meetings of
+      the society was only what was expected. It was proper to ask him, but his
+      declining the invitation showed that he did not wish for attentions or
+      courtesies. There was nothing further to be done to bring him out of his
+      shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him at present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this state of things it was natural that all which had been previously
+      gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him should be worked
+      over again. When there is no new ore to be dug, the old refuse heaps are
+      looked over for what may still be found in them. The landlord of the
+      Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-house, talked about Maurice,
+      as everybody in the village did at one time or another. He had not much to
+      say, but he added a fact or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young gentleman was good pay,&mdash;so they all said. Sometimes he
+      paid in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank. He trusted
+      his man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills. He knew something
+      about horses; he showed that by the way he handled that colt,&mdash;the
+      one that threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone. &ldquo;Mr. Paul come down
+      to the stable. 'Let me see that cult you all 'fraid of,' says he. 'My
+      master, he ride any hoss,' says Paul. 'You saddle him,' says he; and so
+      they did, and Paul, he led that colt&mdash;the kickinest and ugliest young
+      beast you ever see in your life&mdash;up to the place where his master, as
+      he calls him, and he lives. What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a
+      couple of long spurs and jump on to that colt's back, and off the beast
+      goes, tail up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of
+      capers, and at last going it full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got
+      about enough of it. That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come
+      back as quiet as a cosset lamb. A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good
+      money, and knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if
+      he is n't a whole one,&mdash;and most likely he is a whole one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern. His wife had already given
+      her favorable opinion of her former guest. She now added something to her
+      description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I call him,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;about as likely a young gentleman as ever I
+      clapped my eyes on. He is rather slighter than I like to see a young man
+      of his age; if he was my son, I should like to see him a little more
+      fleshy. I don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and thirty or forty
+      pounds. Did y' ever look at those eyes of his, M'randy? Just as blue as
+      succory flowers. I do like those light-complected young fellows, with
+      their fresh cheeks and their curly hair; somehow, curly hair doos set off
+      anybody's face. He is n't any foreigner, for all that he talks Italian
+      with that Mr. Paul that's his help. He looks just like our kind of folks,
+      the college kind, that's brought up among books, and is handling 'em, and
+      reading of 'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all their lives. All
+      that you say about his riding the mad colt is just what I should think he
+      was up to, for he's as spry as a squirrel; you ought to see him go over
+      that fence, as I did once. I don't believe there's any harm in that young
+      gentleman,&mdash;I don't care what people say. I suppose he likes this
+      place just as other people like it, and cares more for walking in the
+      woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for company; and if he
+      doos, whose business is it, I should like to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never see him but two or three times,&rdquo; Miranda said. &ldquo;I should like to
+      have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him when he was
+      eatin' his vittles. That 's the time to watch folks, when their jaws get
+      a-goin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em. Do you remember that chap
+      the sheriff come and took away when we kep' tahvern? Eleven year ago it
+      was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time. A mighty grand gentleman from the City
+      he set up for. I watched him, and I watched him. Says I, I don't believe
+      you're no gentleman, says I. He eat with his knife, and that ain't the way
+      city folks eats. Every time I handed him anything I looked closeter and
+      closeter. Them whiskers never grooved on them cheeks, says I to myself.
+      Them 's paper collars, says I. That dimun in your shirt-front hain't got
+      no life to it, says I. I don't believe it's nothin' more 'n a bit o'
+      winderglass. So says I to Pushee, 'You jes' step out and get the sheriff
+      to come in and take a look at that chap.' I knowed he was after a fellah.
+      He come right in, an' he goes up to the chap. 'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm
+      mighty glad to see yer. We've had the hole in the wall you got out of
+      mended, and I want your company to come and look at the old place,' says
+      he, and he pulls out a couple of handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in
+      less than no time, an' off they goes together! I know one thing about that
+      young gentleman, anyhow,&mdash;there ain't no better judge of what's good
+      eatin' than he is. I cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he
+      sends word to me by that Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that
+      the Pope o' Rome don't have no better cooked maccaroni than what she sent
+      up to me yesterday,' says he. I don' know much about the Pope o' Rome
+      except that he's a Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for him,
+      whether it's a man or a woman; but when it comes to a dish o' maccaroni, I
+      ain't afeard of their shefs, as they call 'em,&mdash;them he-cooks that
+      can't serve up a cold potater without callin' it by some name nobody can
+      say after 'em. But this gentleman knows good cookin', and that's as good a
+      sign of a gentleman as I want to tell 'em by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI. STILL AT FAULT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not a very
+      inviting one. It was old, and had been left in a somewhat dilapidated and
+      disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in the part which
+      Maurice now occupied. They had piled their packing-boxes in the cellar,
+      with broken chairs, broken china, and other household wrecks. A cracked
+      mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the contents of which were airing
+      themselves through wide rips and rents. A lame clothes-horse was saddled
+      with an old rug fringed with a ragged border, out of which all the colors
+      had been completely trodden. No woman would have gone into a house in such
+      a condition. But the young man did not trouble himself much about such
+      matters, and was satisfied when the rooms which were to be occupied by
+      himself and his servant were made decent and tolerably comfortable. During
+      the fine season all this was not of much consequence, and if Maurice made
+      up his mind to stay through the winter he would have his choice among many
+      more eligible places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the
+      young ladies had scattered to their homes. Among the graduates of the year
+      were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had now returned to
+      their homes in Arrowhead Village. They were both glad to rest after the
+      long final examinations and the exercises of the closing day, in which
+      each of them had borne a conspicuous part. It was a pleasant life they led
+      in the village, which was lively enough at this season. Walking, riding,
+      driving, boating, visits to the Library, meetings of the Pansophian
+      Society, hops, and picnics made the time pass very cheerfully, and soon
+      showed their restoring influences. The Terror's large eyes did not wear
+      the dull, glazed look by which they had too often betrayed the after
+      effects of over-excitement of the strong and active brain behind them. The
+      Wonder gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate
+      vitality into a statue of ice. They had a boat of their own, in which they
+      passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing, drifting, reading,
+      telling of what had been, dreaming of what might be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and
+      visited often by strangers. The old Librarian was a peculiar character, as
+      these officials are apt to be. They have a curious kind of knowledge,
+      sometimes immense in its way. They know the backs of books, their
+      title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the class of readers who call
+      for particular works, the value of different editions, and a good deal
+      besides. Their minds catch up hints from all manner of works on all kinds
+      of subjects. They will give a visitor a fact and a reference which they
+      are surprised to find they remember and which the visitor might have
+      hunted for a year. Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who has
+      grown into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every
+      bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book. These nerves
+      get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do not like to
+      have a volume meddled with any more than they would like to have their
+      naked eyes handled. They come to feel at last that the books of a great
+      collection are a part, not merely of their own property, though they are
+      only the agents for their distribution, but that they are, as it were,
+      outlying portions of their own organization. The old Librarian was getting
+      a miserly feeling about his books, as he called them. Fortunately, he had
+      a young lady for his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could
+      find the work any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,&mdash;or her
+      hands, for there were more readers among the wives and&mdash;daughters,
+      and especially among the aunts, than there were among their male
+      relatives. The old Librarian knew the books, but the books seemed to know
+      the young assistant; so it looked, at least, to the impatient young people
+      who wanted their services.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,&mdash;a great many, according
+      to Paolo's account; but Paolo's ideas were limited, and a few well-filled
+      shelves seemed a very large collection to him. His master frequently sent
+      him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat enlarged his notions;
+      still, the Signor was a very learned man, he was certain, and some of his
+      white books (bound in vellum and richly gilt) were more splendid,
+      according to Paolo, than anything in the Library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that Maurice was
+      in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian's record was carefully
+      searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators. The list proved to
+      be a long and varied one. It would imply a considerable knowledge of
+      modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and
+      physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a fancy
+      for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling these
+      words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia
+      of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione,' books about
+      alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to
+      Spiritualism. With these were the titles of novels and now and then of
+      books of poems; but it may be taken for granted that his own shelves held
+      the works he was most frequently in the habit of reading or consulting.
+      Not much was to be made out of this beyond the fact of wide scholarship,&mdash;more
+      or less deep it might be, but at any rate implying no small mental
+      activity; for he appeared to read very rapidly, at any rate exchanged the
+      books he had taken out for new ones very frequently. To judge by his
+      reading, he was a man of letters. But so wide-reading a man of letters
+      must have an object, a literary purpose in all probability. Why should not
+      he be writing a novel? Not a novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is
+      not the person to report the talk and manners of a world which he has
+      nothing to do with. Novelists and lawyers understand the art of &ldquo;cramming&rdquo;
+       better than any other persons in the world. Why should not this young man
+      be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a
+      background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and hints
+      borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way knowledge which his
+      odd and miscellaneous selection of books furnished him? That might be, or
+      possibly he was only reading for amusement. Who could say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the managers
+      to purchase many books out of the common range of reading. The two learned
+      people of the village were the rector and the doctor. These two worthies
+      kept up the old controversy between the professions, which grows out of
+      the fact that one studies nature from below upwards, and the other from
+      above downwards. The rector maintained that physicians contracted a squint
+      which turns their eyes inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes
+      upward become palsied. The doctor retorted that theological students
+      developed a third eyelid,&mdash;the nictitating membrane, which is so well
+      known in birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all the
+      light they do not want. Their little skirmishes did not prevent their
+      being very good friends, who had a common interest in many things and many
+      persons. Both were on the committee which had the care of the Library and
+      attended to the purchase of books. Each was scholar enough to know the
+      wants of scholars, and disposed to trust the judgment of the other as to
+      what books should be purchased. Consequently, the clergyman secured the
+      addition to the Library of a good many old theological works which the
+      physician would have called brimstone divinity, and held to be just the
+      thing to kindle fires with,&mdash;good books still for those who know how
+      to use them, oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of
+      disorganization the whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief
+      has strangled the natural human instincts. The physician, in the mean
+      time, acquired for the collection some of those medical works where one
+      may find recorded various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not
+      have their like for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so as to
+      give a new lease of credibility to stories which had come to be looked
+      upon as fables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in the
+      young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the present,
+      perhaps for a long period. The rector would have been glad to see him at
+      church. He would have liked more especially to have had him hear his
+      sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society. The doctor, meanwhile, was
+      meditating on the duties of society to young men, and wishing that he
+      could gain the young man's confidence, so as to help him out of any false
+      habit of mind or any delusion to which he might be subject, if he had the
+      power of being useful to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead
+      Village, but of all the surrounding region. He was an excellent specimen
+      of the country doctor, self-reliant, self-sacrificing, working a great
+      deal harder for his living than most of those who call themselves the
+      laboring classes,&mdash;as if none but those whose hands were hardened by
+      the use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had
+      that sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had
+      also a fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a
+      traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the
+      guideboards. He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that
+      oftentimes very innocent-sounding words mean very grave disorders; that
+      all, degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the
+      same term; that &ldquo;run down&rdquo; may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from
+      which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked
+      patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that &ldquo;seedy&rdquo; may
+      signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's
+      over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of
+      coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at
+      the shortest notice, to the south of France. He knew too well that what is
+      spoken lightly of as a &ldquo;nervous disturbance&rdquo; may imply that the whole
+      machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual
+      organ would groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible
+      inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate with the consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile, and
+      say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which the
+      young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to set down
+      everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that supposition might
+      seem. He was prepared to believe in some exceptional, perhaps anomalous,
+      form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what class of objects he
+      could not at present conjecture, but which was as vital to the subject of
+      it as the insulating arrangement to a piece of electrical machinery. With
+      this feeling he began to look into the history of antipathies as recorded
+      in all the books and journals on which he could lay his hands.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+       &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief interval.
+      He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before offering them some
+      verses which have no connection with the narrative now in progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
+      representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or forty or
+      fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of
+      aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of
+      threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting one; still, as
+      sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth looking
+      at as it passed through the curve of life,&mdash;the vital parabola, which
+      betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features. An inscription is
+      the same thing, whether we read it on slate-stone, or granite, or marble.
+      To watch the lights and shades, the reliefs and hollows, of a countenance
+      through a lifetime, or a large part of it, by the aid of a continuous
+      series of photographs would not only be curious; it would teach us much
+      more about the laws of physiognomy than we could get from casual and
+      unconnected observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found in
+      them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning in middle life
+      and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to remind me&mdash;as
+      if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledge&mdash;is no longer
+      youth. Here is the latest of a series of annual poems read during the last
+      thirty-four years. There seems to have been one interruption, but there
+      may have been other poems not recorded or remembered. This, the latest
+      poem of the series, was listened to by the scanty remnant of what was a
+      large and brilliant circle of classmates and friends when the first of the
+      long series was read before them, then in the flush of ardent manhood:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     THE OLD SONG.
+
+   The minstrel of the classic lay
+   Of love and wine who sings
+   Still found the fingers run astray
+   That touched the rebel strings.
+
+   Of Cadmus he would fair have sung,
+   Of Atreus and his line;
+   But all the jocund echoes rung
+   With songs of love and wine.
+
+   Ah, brothers! I would fair have caught
+   Some fresher fancy's gleam;
+   My truant accents find, unsought,
+   The old familiar theme.
+
+   Love, Love! but not the sportive child
+   With shaft and twanging bow,
+   Whose random arrows drove us wild
+   Some threescore years ago;
+
+   Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
+   The urchin blind and bare,
+   But Love, with spectacles and staff,
+   And scanty, silvered hair.
+
+   Our heads with frosted locks are white,
+   Our roofs are thatched with snow,
+   But red, in chilling winter's spite,
+   Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
+
+   Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
+   And while the running sands
+   Their golden thread unheeded spin,
+   He warms his frozen hands.
+
+   Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
+   And waft this message o'er
+   To all we miss, from all we meet
+   On life's fast-crumbling shore:
+
+   Say that to old affection true
+   We hug the narrowing chain
+   That binds our hearts,&mdash;alas, how few
+   The links that yet remain!
+
+   The fatal touch awaits them all
+   That turns the rocks to dust;
+   From year to year they break and fall,
+   They break, but never rust.
+
+   Say if one note of happier strain
+   This worn-out harp afford,
+   &mdash;One throb that trembles, not in vain,
+   Their memory lent its chord.
+
+   Say that when Fancy closed her wings
+   And Passion quenched his fire,
+   Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
+   As from Anacreon's lyre!
+
+   January 8, 1885.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII. A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that, with
+      care and patience and watching his opportunity, he should get at the
+      secret, which so far had yielded nothing but a single word. It might be
+      asked why he was so anxious to learn what, from all appearances, the young
+      stranger was unwilling to explain. He may have been to some extent
+      infected by the general curiosity of the persons around him, in which good
+      Mrs. Butts shared, and which she had helped to intensify by revealing the
+      word dropped by Paolo. But this was not really his chief motive. He could
+      not look upon this young man, living a life of unwholesome solitude,
+      without a natural desire to do all that his science and his knowledge of
+      human nature could help him to do towards bringing him into healthy
+      relations with the world about him. Still, he would not intrude upon him
+      in any way. He would only make certain general investigations, which might
+      prove serviceable in case circumstances should give him the right to
+      counsel the young man as to his course of life. The first thing to be done
+      was to study systematically the whole subject of antipathies. Then, if any
+      further occasion offered itself, he would be ready to take advantage of
+      it. The resources of the Public Library of the place and his own private
+      collection were put in requisition to furnish him the singular and widely
+      scattered facts of which he was in search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study of
+      the natural history of antipathies. The stories told about them are,
+      however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned, there is no
+      doubt that many of the strangest are true, and consequently take away from
+      the improbability of others which we are disposed to doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy? It is an aversion
+      to some object, which may vary in degree from mere dislike to mortal
+      horror. What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say. It acts
+      sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the imagination, sometimes
+      through an unknown channel. The relations which exist between the human
+      being and all that surrounds him vary in consequence of some adjustment
+      peculiar to each individual. The brute fact is expressed in the phrase
+      &ldquo;One man's meat is another man's poison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those
+      referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common. In any
+      collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who cannot make
+      use of certain articles of food generally acceptable. This may be from the
+      disgust they occasion or the effects they have been found to produce.
+      Every one knows individuals who cannot venture on honey, or cheese, or
+      veal, with impunity. Carlyle, for example, complains of having veal set
+      before him,&mdash;a meat he could not endure. There is a whole family
+      connection in New England, and that a very famous one, to many of whose
+      members, in different generations, all the products of the dairy are the
+      subjects of a congenital antipathy. Montaigne says there are persons who
+      dread the smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a
+      fire of musketry. The readers of the charming story &ldquo;A Week in a French
+      Country-House&rdquo; will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in the
+      night: &ldquo;Ursula, art thou asleep? Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but I cannot
+      close my eyes. Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful smell! Oh, Ursula,
+      it is such a smell! I do so wish thou couldst smell it! Good-night, my
+      angel!&mdash;&mdash;Dearest! I have found them! They are apples!&rdquo; The
+      smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has been known to cause faintness.
+      The sight of various objects has had singular effects on some persons. A
+      boar's head was a favorite dish at the table of great people in Marshal
+      d'Albret's time; yet he used to faint at the sight of one. It is not
+      uncommon to meet with persons who faint at the sight of blood. One of the
+      most inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that
+      he had this infirmity. Stranger and far more awkward than this is the case
+      mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the antipathy
+      fainted at the sight of any object of a red color. There are sounds, also,
+      which have strange effects on some individuals. Among the obnoxious noises
+      are the crumpling of silk stuffs, the sound of sweeping, the croaking of
+      frogs. The effects in different cases have been spasms, a sense of
+      strangling, profuse sweating,&mdash;all showing a profound disturbance of
+      the nervous system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of sense,
+      seemingly by direct agency on certain nerve centres. But there is another
+      series of cases in which the imagination plays a larger part in the
+      phenomena. Two notable examples are afforded in the lives of two very
+      distinguished personages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a bridge
+      into the water. Long afterward, when he had reached manhood, this hardy
+      and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels rattling over a
+      bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening to the sound, in
+      spite of his dread of it, in order to overcome his antipathy. The story
+      told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar to that related of Peter.
+      As he was driving in his coach and four over the bridge at Neuilly, his
+      horses took fright and ran away, and the leaders broke from their harness
+      and sprang into the river, leaving the wheel-horses and the carriage on
+      the bridge. Ever after this fright it is said that Pascal had the
+      terrifying sense that he was just on the edge of an abyss, ready to fall
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always to
+      shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a church, as it is recorded? The old
+      and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural one, that it
+      was an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when she entered the holy
+      place and brought her spiritual tenant into the presence of the sacred
+      symbols, &ldquo;cried with a loud voice, and came out of&rdquo; her. A very singular
+      case, the doctor himself had recorded, and which the reader may accept as
+      authentic, is the following: At the head of the doctor's front stairs
+      stood, and still stands, a tall clock, of early date and stately presence.
+      A middle-aged visitor, noticing it as he entered the front door, remarked
+      that he should feel a great unwillingness to pass that clock. He could not
+      go near one of those tall timepieces without a profound agitation, which
+      he dreaded to undergo. This very singular idiosyncrasy he attributed to a
+      fright when he was an infant in the arms of his nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which
+      supported one of its heavy leaden weights broke, and the weight came
+      crashing down to the bottom of the case. Some effect must have been
+      produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never recovered. Why
+      should not this happen, when we know that a sudden mental shock may be the
+      cause of insanity? The doctor remembered the verse of &ldquo;The Ancient
+      Mariner:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;I moved my lips; the pilot shrieked
+   And fell down in a fit;
+   The holy hermit raised his eyes
+   And prayed where he did sit.
+   I took the oars; the pilot's boy,
+   Who now doth crazy go,
+   Laughed loud and long, and all the while
+   His eyes went to and fro.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the description
+      from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish many cases where
+      insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some person, a
+      child commonly, killed outright by terror,&mdash;scared to death,
+      literally. Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a surprise
+      being intended, the shock has instantly arrested the movements on which
+      life depends. If a mere instantaneous impression can produce effects like
+      these, such an impression might of course be followed by consequences less
+      fatal or formidable, but yet serious in their nature. If here and there a
+      person is killed, as if by lightning, by a sudden startling sight or
+      sound, there must be more numerous cases in which a terrible shock is
+      produced by similar apparently insignificant causes,&mdash;a shock which
+      falls short of overthrowing the reason and does not destroy life, yet
+      leaves a lasting effect upon the subject of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that, as a
+      violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a human being,
+      there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change of taste
+      or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause may not
+      rationally account for. He would not be surprised, he said to himself, to
+      find that some early alarm, like that which was experienced by Peter the
+      Great or that which happened to Pascal, had broken some spring in this
+      young man's nature, or so changed its mode of action as to account for the
+      exceptional remoteness of his way of life. But how could any conceivable
+      antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man aloof from all the
+      world, and make a hermit of him? He did not hate the human race; that was
+      clear enough. He treated Paolo with great kindness, and the Italian was
+      evidently much attached to him. He had talked naturally and pleasantly
+      with the young man he had helped out of his dangerous situation when his
+      boat was upset. Dr. Butts heard that he had once made a short visit to
+      this young man, at his rooms in the University. It was not misanthropy,
+      therefore, which kept him solitary. What could be broad enough to cover
+      the facts of the case? Nothing that the doctor could think of, unless it
+      were some color, the sight of which acted on him as it did on the
+      individual before mentioned, who could not look at anything red without
+      fainting. Suppose this were a case of the same antipathy. How very careful
+      it would make the subject of it as to where he went and with whom he
+      consorted! Time and patience would be pretty sure to bring out new
+      developments, and physicians, of all men in the world, know how to wait as
+      well as how to labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or
+      gathered them from his own experience. He soon discovered that the story
+      had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim of an
+      &ldquo;antipathy,&rdquo; whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of the people
+      of the place. If he suspected the channel through which it had reached the
+      little community, and, spreading from that centre, the country round, he
+      did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a domestic casus belli.
+      Paolo might have mentioned it to others as well as to himself. Maurice
+      might have told some friend, who had divulged it. But to accuse Mrs.
+      Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit treason in telling one of her husband's
+      professional secrets was too serious a matter to be thought of. He would
+      be a little more careful, he promised himself, the next time, at any rate;
+      for he had to concede, in spite of every wish to be charitable in his
+      judgment, that it was among the possibilities that the worthy lady had
+      forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put their tongues out,
+      and a doctor's wife must keep her tongue in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII. THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the
+      office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him. It occurred to
+      the members of the Society that a little fresh blood infused into it might
+      stir up the general vitality of the organization. The woman suffragists
+      saw no reason why the place of Secretary need as a matter of course be
+      filled by a person of the male sex. They agitated, they made domiciliary
+      visits, they wrote notes to influential citizens, and finally announced as
+      their candidate the young lady who had won and worn the school name of
+      &ldquo;The Terror,&rdquo; who was elected. She was just the person for the place: wide
+      awake, with all her wits about her, full of every kind of knowledge, and,
+      above all, strong on points of order and details of management, so that
+      she could prompt the presiding officer, to do which is often the most
+      essential duty of a Secretary. The President, the worthy rector, was good
+      at plain sailing in the track of the common moralities and proprieties,
+      but was liable to get muddled if anything came up requiring swift decision
+      and off-hand speech. The Terror had schooled herself in the debating
+      societies of the Institute, and would set up the President, when he was
+      floored by an awkward question, as easily as if he were a ninepin which
+      had been bowled over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
+      communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
+      organization. Of late these had been becoming more frequent. Many of them
+      were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors to the
+      village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both full of
+      ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often impossible to trace
+      the papers to their authors. The new Secretary was alive with curiosity,
+      and as sagacious a little body as one might find if in want of a
+      detective. She could make a pretty shrewd guess whether a paper was
+      written by a young or old person, by one of her own sex or the other, by
+      an experienced hand or a novice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
+      curiosity to an extraordinary degree. She felt a strong suspicion that
+      &ldquo;the Sachem,&rdquo; as the boat-crews used to call him, &ldquo;the Recluse,&rdquo; &ldquo;the
+      Night-Hawk,&rdquo; &ldquo;the Sphinx,&rdquo; as others named him, must be the author of it.
+      It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective,
+      poetical turn of mind. It was not a woman's way of writing; at least, so
+      thought the Secretary. The writer had travelled much; had resided in
+      Italy, among other places. But so had many of the summer visitors and
+      residents of Arrowhead Village. The handwriting was not decisive; it had
+      some points of resemblance with the pencilled orders for books which
+      Maurice sent to the Library, but there were certain differences,
+      intentional or accidental, which weakened this evidence. There was an
+      undertone in the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the
+      solitary stranger. It might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the
+      dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not
+      as a smooth ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush
+      him, with all his hopes and prospects. This interpretation may have been
+      too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own
+      opinion:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          MY THREE COMPANIONS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer. I do not mean constantly
+      flitting from one place to another, for my residence has often been fixed
+      for considerable periods. From time to time I have put down in a notebook
+      the impressions made upon me by the scenes through which I have passed. I
+      have long hesitated whether to let any of my notes appear before the
+      public. My fear has been that they were too subjective, to use the
+      metaphysician's term,&mdash;that I have seen myself reflected in Nature,
+      and not the true aspects of Nature as she was meant to be understood. One
+      who should visit the Harz Mountains would see&mdash;might see, rather his
+      own colossal image shape itself on the morning mist. But if in every mist
+      that rises from the meadows, in every cloud that hangs upon the mountain,
+      he always finds his own reflection, we cannot accept him as an interpreter
+      of the landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to
+      which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its
+      author. They have visited the same localities, they have had many of the
+      same thoughts and feelings. Many, I have no doubt. Not all,&mdash;no, not
+      all. Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have been driven to
+      it. Much of my life has been passed in that communion. These pages record
+      some of the intimacies I have formed with her under some of her various
+      manifestations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke
+      wildest and its voice rose loudest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous rivers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through many a
+      long, long summer day on its clear waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has
+      spoken,&mdash;at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it. I
+      will translate some of these as I best may into common speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The OCEAN says to the dweller on its shores:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are neither welcome nor unwelcome. I do not trouble myself with the
+      living tribes that come down to my waters. I have my own people, of an
+      older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than your
+      mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that fill the
+      air or move over the thin crust of the earth. Who are you that build your
+      palaces on my margin? I see your white faces as I saw the dark faces of
+      the tribes that came before you, as I shall look upon the unknown family
+      of mankind that will come after you. And what is your whole human family
+      but a parenthesis in a single page of my history? The raindrops
+      stereotyped themselves on my beaches before a living creature left his
+      footprints there. This horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is of older
+      lineage than your Adam,&mdash;perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as one
+      of his descendants. What feeling have I for you? Not scorn, not hatred,&mdash;not
+      love,&mdash;not loathing. No!&mdash;-indifference,&mdash;blank
+      indifference to you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather
+      absence of feeling, as regards you.&mdash;-Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I
+      will cool you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong
+      arms, I will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his
+      cradle. Am I not gentle? Am I not kind? Am I not harmless? But hark! The
+      wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates! What do you say to
+      my voice now? Do you see my foaming lips? Do you feel the rocks tremble as
+      my huge billows crash against them? Is not my anger terrible as I dash
+      your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into fragments, as you would
+      crack an eggshell?&mdash;No, not anger; deaf, blind, unheeding
+      indifference,&mdash;that is all. Out of me all things arose; sooner or
+      later, into me all things subside. All changes around me; I change not. I
+      look not at you, vain man, and your frail transitory concerns, save in
+      momentary glimpses: I look on the white face of my dead mistress, whom I
+      follow as the bridegroom follows the bier of her who has changed her
+      nuptial raiment for the shroud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side. Continents and
+      islands grow old, and waste and disappear. The hardest rock crumbles;
+      vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being, wax great, decline, and
+      perish, to give way to others, even as human dynasties and nations and
+      races come and go. Look on me! 'Time writes no wrinkle' on my forehead.
+      Listen to me! All tongues are spoken on my shores, but I have only one
+      language: the winds taught me their vowels the crags and the sands
+      schooled me in my rough or smooth consonants. Few words are mine but I
+      have whispered them and sung them and shouted them to men of all tribes
+      from the time when the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful presence.
+      Have you a grief that gnaws at your heart-strings? Come with it to my
+      shore, as of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried his rage and
+      anguish to the margin of the loud-roaring sea. There, if anywhere you will
+      forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice speaks to the
+      infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the voices of
+      the world about him, who frequents the market and the thoroughfare, who
+      lives in the study of time and its accidents rather than in the deeper
+      emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual contemplation, the RIVER
+      addresses itself as his natural companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come live with me. I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural talker
+      and story-teller. I am not noisy, like the ocean, except occasionally when
+      I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get a fall. When I am
+      silent you can still have pleasure in watching my changing features. My
+      idlest babble, when I am toying with the trifles that fall in my way, if
+      not very full of meaning, is at least musical. I am not a dangerous
+      friend, like the ocean; no highway is absolutely safe, but my nature is
+      harmless, and the storms that strew the beaches with wrecks cast no ruins
+      upon my flowery borders. Abide with me, and you shall not die of thirst,
+      like the forlorn wretches left to the mercies of the pitiless salt waves.
+      Trust yourself to me, and I will carry you far on your journey, if we are
+      travelling to the same point of the compass. If I sometimes run riot and
+      overflow your meadows, I leave fertility behind me when I withdraw to my
+      natural channel. Walk by my side toward the place of my destination. I
+      will keep pace with you, and you shall feel my presence with you as that
+      of a self-conscious being like yourself. You will find it hard to be
+      miserable in my company; I drain you of ill-conditioned thoughts as I
+      carry away the refuse of your dwelling and its grounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen indifference,
+      and the river disturbs with its never-pausing and never-ending story, the
+      silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of rest for his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited faculties,' it
+      says; 'yield not yourself to the babble of the running stream. Leave the
+      ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living thing that walks the
+      solid earth; leave the river, too busy with its own errand, too talkative
+      about its own affairs, and find peace with me, whose smile will cheer you,
+      whose whisper will soothe you. Come to me when the morning sun blazes
+      across my bosom like a golden baldric; come to me in the still midnight,
+      when I hold the inverted firmament like a cup brimming with jewels, nor
+      spill one star of all the constellations that float in my ebon goblet. Do
+      you know the charm of melancholy? Where will you find a sympathy like mine
+      in your hours of sadness? Does the ocean share your grief? Does the river
+      listen to your sighs? The salt wave, that called to you from under last
+      month's full moon, to-day is dashing on the rocks of Labrador; the stream,
+      that ran by you pure and sparkling, has swallowed the poisonous refuse of
+      a great city, and is creeping to its grave in the wide cemetery that
+      buries all things in its tomb of liquid crystal. It is true that my waters
+      exhale and are renewed from one season to another; but are your features
+      the same, absolutely the same, from year to year? We both change, but we
+      know each other through all changes. Am I not mirrored in those eyes of
+      yours? And does not Nature plant me as an eye to behold her beauties while
+      she is dressed in the glories of leaf and flower, and draw the icy lid
+      over my shining surface when she stands naked and ashamed in the poverty
+      of winter?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a life
+      not very long, but with a record which much longer lives could not match
+      in incident. Oftentimes the temptation has come over me with dangerous
+      urgency to try a change of existence, if such change is a part of human
+      destiny,&mdash;to seek rest, if that is what we gain by laying down the
+      burden of life. I have asked who would be the friend to whom I should
+      appeal for the last service I should have need of. Ocean was there, all
+      ready, asking no questions, answering none. What strange voyages, downward
+      through its glaucous depths, upwards to its boiling and frothing surface,
+      wafted by tides, driven by tempests, disparted by rude agencies; one
+      remnant whitening on the sands of a northern beach, one perhaps built into
+      the circle of a coral reef in the Pacific, one settling to the floor of
+      the vast laboratory where continents are built, to emerge in far-off ages!
+      What strange companions for my pall-bearers! Unwieldy sea-monsters, the
+      stories of which are counted fables by the spectacled collectors who think
+      their catalogues have exhausted nature; naked-eyed creatures, staring,
+      glaring, nightmare-like spectres of the ghastly-green abysses; pulpy
+      islands, with life in gelatinous immensity,&mdash;what a company of hungry
+      heirs at every ocean funeral! No! No! Ocean claims great multitudes, but
+      does not invite the solitary who would fain be rid of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than I
+      have ever found when drifting idly over its surface? No, again. I do not
+      want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of nature, when
+      life, the faithful body-servant, has ceased caring for me. That must not
+      be. The mirror which has pictured me so often shall never know me as an
+      unwelcome object.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I must ask the all-subduing element to be my last friend, and lead me
+      out of my prison, it shall be the busy, whispering, not unfriendly,
+      pleasantly companionable river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods of
+      human life which they who are choosing their places of abode should
+      consider. Let the child play upon the seashore. The wide horizon gives his
+      imagination room to grow in, untrammelled. That background of mystery,
+      without which life is a poor mechanical arrangement, is shaped and
+      colored, so far as it can have outline, or any hue but shadow, on a vast
+      canvas, the contemplation of which enlarges and enriches the sphere of
+      consciousness. The mighty ocean is not too huge to symbolize the
+      aspirations and ambitions of the yet untried soul of the adolescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a solid
+      limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he would have
+      thought could content him in the years of undefined possibilities. Then he
+      will find the river a more natural intimate than the ocean. It is
+      individual, which the ocean, with all its gulfs and inlets and
+      multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be. It does not love you very
+      dearly, and will not miss you much when you disappear from its margin; but
+      it means well to you, bids you good-morning with its coming waves, and
+      good-evening with those which are leaving. It will lead your thoughts
+      pleasantly away, upwards to its source, downwards to the stream to which
+      it is tributary, or the wide waters in which it is to lose itself. A
+      river, by choice, to live by in middle age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which have
+      little left but tender memories, the still companionship of the lake,
+      embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and hidden
+      springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit. I am not
+      thinking of those great inland seas, which have many of the features and
+      much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of those 'ponds,' as our
+      countrymen used to call them until they were rechristened by summer
+      visitors; beautiful sheets of water from a hundred to a few thousand acres
+      in extent, scattered like raindrops over the map of our Northern
+      sovereignties. The loneliness of contemplative old age finds its natural
+      home in the near neighborhood of one of these tranquil basins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we look
+      carefully their affinities betray themselves. The youth will carry his
+      Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved so well. The
+      man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous couplets of Pope
+      which ring in his ears were written on the banks of the Thames. The old
+      man, as he nods over the solemn verse of Wordsworth, will recognize the
+      affinity between the singer and the calm sheet that lay before him as he
+      wrote,&mdash;the stainless and sleepy Windermere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their own
+      feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the
+      Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of the
+      fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in its
+      forests.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this paper,
+      and pondered long upon it. She was thinking very seriously of studying
+      medicine, and had been for some time in frequent communication with Dr.
+      Butts, under whose direction she had begun reading certain treatises,
+      which added to such knowledge of the laws of life in health and in disease
+      as she had brought with her from the Corinna Institute. Naturally enough,
+      she carried the anonymous paper to the doctor, to get his opinion about
+      it, and compare it with her own. They both agreed that it was probably,
+      they would not say certainly, the work of the solitary visitor. There was
+      room for doubt, for there were visitors who might well have travelled to
+      all the places mentioned, and resided long enough on the shores of the
+      waters the writer spoke of to have had all the experiences mentioned in
+      the paper. The Terror remembered a young lady, a former schoolmate, who
+      belonged to one of those nomadic families common in this generation, the
+      heads of which, especially the female heads, can never be easy where they
+      are, but keep going between America and Europe, like so many pith-balls in
+      the electrical experiment, alternately attracted and repelled, never in
+      contented equilibrium. Every few years they pull their families up by the
+      roots, and by the time they have begun to take hold a little with their
+      radicles in the spots to which they have been successively transplanted up
+      they come again, so that they never get a tap-root anywhere. The Terror
+      suspected the daughter of one of these families of sending certain
+      anonymous articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had just
+      received. But she knew the style of composition common among the young
+      girls, and she could hardly believe that it was one of them who had sent
+      this paper. Could a brother of this young lady have written it? Possibly;
+      she knew nothing more than that the young lady had a brother, then a
+      student at the University. All the chances were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood
+      was the author. So thought Lurida, and so thought Dr. Butts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both. There
+      was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on the part of
+      the writer, whoever he or she might be. There were references to suicide,
+      it is true, but they were of a purely speculative nature, and did not look
+      to any practical purpose in that direction. Besides, if the stranger were
+      the author of the paper, he certainly would not choose a sheet of water
+      like Cedar Lake to perform the last offices for him, in case he seriously
+      meditated taking unceremonious leave of life and its accidents. He could
+      find a river easily enough, to say nothing of other methods of effecting
+      his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the impropriety of
+      selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the white canoe and
+      its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of the deep waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before the
+      public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers belonging
+      to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make free use of,
+      either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a diversion during
+      those intervals in which the flow of events is languid, or even ceases for
+      the time to manifest any progress. The reader can hardly have failed to
+      notice that the old Anchor Tavern had become the focal point where a good
+      deal of mental activity converged. There were the village people,
+      including a number of cultivated families; there were the visitors, among
+      them many accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the
+      University, with its learned teachers and aspiring young men; there was
+      the Corinna Institute, with its eager, ambitious, hungry-souled young
+      women, crowding on, class after class coming forward on the broad stream
+      of liberal culture, and rounding the point which, once passed, the
+      boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them. All this
+      furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the archives of
+      the society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings. It may be
+      remembered that the girls had said of her, when she was The Terror, that
+      &ldquo;she knew everything and didn't believe anything.&rdquo; That was just the kind
+      of person for a secretary of such an association. Properly interpreted,
+      the saying meant that she knew a great deal, and wanted to know a great
+      deal more, and was consequently always on the lookout for information;
+      that she believed nothing without sufficient proof that it was true, and
+      therefore was perpetually asking for evidence where, others took
+      assertions on trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror could
+      accomplish in the course of a single season. She found out what each
+      member could do and wanted to do. She wrote to the outside visitors whom
+      she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at the meetings, or
+      send written papers to be read. As an official, with the printed title at
+      the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY, she was a privileged personage.
+      She begged the young persons who had travelled to tell something of their
+      experiences. She had contemplated getting up a discussion on the woman's
+      rights question, but being a wary little body, and knowing that the debate
+      would become a dispute and divide the members into two hostile camps, she
+      deferred this project indefinitely. It would be time enough after she had
+      her team well in hand, she said to herself,&mdash;had felt their mouths
+      and tried their paces. This expression, as she used it in her thoughts,
+      seems rather foreign to her habits, but there was room in her large brain
+      for a wide range of illustrations and an ample vocabulary. She could not
+      do much with her own muscles, but she had known the passionate delight of
+      being whirled furiously over the road behind four scampering horses, in a
+      rocking stage-coach, and thought of herself in the Secretary's chair as
+      not unlike the driver on his box. A few weeks of rest had allowed her
+      nervous energy to store itself up, and the same powers which had distanced
+      competition in the classes of her school had of necessity to expend
+      themselves in vigorous action in her new office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her appeals had their effect. A number of papers were very soon sent in;
+      some with names, some anonymously. She looked these papers over, and
+      marked those which she thought would be worth reading and listening to at
+      the meetings. One of them has just been presented to the reader. As to the
+      authorship of the following one there were many conjectures. A well-known
+      writer, who had spent some weeks at Arrowhead Village, was generally
+      suspected of being its author. Some, however, questioned whether it was
+      not the work of a new hand, who wrote, not from experience, but from his
+      or her ideas of the condition to which a story-teller, a novelist, must in
+      all probability be sooner or later reduced. The reader must judge for
+      himself whether this first paper is the work of an old hand or a novice.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I think. Let
+      me see. For twelve years two novels a year regularly: that makes
+      twenty-four. In three different years I have written three stories
+      annually: that makes thirty-three. In five years one a year,&mdash;thirty-eight.
+      That is all, is n't it? Yes. Thirty-eight, not forty. I wish I could make
+      them all into one composite story, as Mr. Galton does his faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hero&mdash;heroine&mdash;mamma&mdash;papa&mdash;uncle&mdash;sister, and
+      so on. Love &mdash;obstacles&mdash;misery&mdash;tears&mdash;despair&mdash;glimmer
+      of hope&mdash;unexpected solution of difficulties&mdash;happy finale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Landscape for background according to season. Plants of each month got up
+      from botanical calendars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like much to see the composite novel. Why not apply Mr. Galton's
+      process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one? All the Yankees would
+      resolve into one Yankee, all the P&mdash;&mdash;West Britons into one
+      Patrick, etc., what a saving of time it would be!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got along pretty well with my first few stories. I had some characters
+      around me which, a little disguised, answered well enough. There was the
+      minister of the parish, and there was an old schoolmaster either of them
+      served very satisfactorily for grandfathers and old uncles. All I had to
+      do was to shift some of their leading peculiarities, keeping the rest. The
+      old minister wore knee-breeches. I clapped them on to the schoolmaster.
+      The schoolmaster carried a tall gold-headed cane. I put this in the
+      minister's hands. So with other things,&mdash;I shifted them round, and
+      got a set of characters who, taken together, reproduced the chief persons
+      of the village where I lived, but did not copy any individual exactly.
+      Thus it went on for a while; but by and by my stock company began to be
+      rather too familiarly known, in spite of their change of costume, and at
+      last some altogether too sagacious person published what he called a 'key'
+      to several of my earlier stories, in which I found the names of a number
+      of neighbors attached to aliases of my own invention. All the 'types,' as
+      he called them, represented by these personages of my story had come to be
+      recognized, each as standing for one and the same individual of my
+      acquaintance. It had been of no use to change the costume. Even changing
+      the sex did no good. I had a famous old gossip in one of my tales,&mdash;a
+      much-babbling Widow Sertingly. 'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon
+      Spinner, the same he told about in that other story of his,&mdash;only the
+      deacon's got on a petticoat and a mob-cap,&mdash;but it's the same old
+      sixpence.' So I said to myself, I must have some new characters. I had no
+      trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much alike,&mdash;dark-haired
+      or light-haired, with the outfits belonging to their complexion,
+      respectively. I had an old great-aunt, who was a tip-top eccentric. I had
+      never seen anything just like her in books. So I said, I will have you,
+      old lady, in one of my stories; and, sure enough, I fitted her out with a
+      first-rate odd-sounding name, which I got from the directory, and sent her
+      forth to the world, disguised, as I supposed, beyond the possibility of
+      recognition. The book sold well, and the eccentric personage was voted a
+      novelty. A few weeks after it was published a lawyer called upon me, as
+      the agent of the person in the directory, whose family name I had used, as
+      he maintained, to his and all his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss,
+      grief, shame, and irreparable injury, for which the sum of blank thousand
+      dollars would be a modest compensation. The story made the book sell, but
+      not enough to pay blank thousand dollars. In the mean time a cousin of
+      mine had sniffed out the resemblance between the character in my book and
+      our great-aunt. We were rivals in her good graces. 'Cousin Pansie' spoke
+      to her of my book and the trouble it was bringing on me,&mdash;she was so
+      sorry about it! She liked my story,&mdash;only those personalities, you
+      know. 'What personalities?' says old granny-aunt. 'Why, auntie, dear, they
+      do say that he has brought in everybody we know,&mdash;did n't anybody
+      tell you about&mdash;well,&mdash;I suppose you ought to know it,&mdash;did
+      n't anybody tell you you were made fun of in that novel?' Somebody&mdash;no
+      matter who&mdash;happened to hear all this, and told me. She said
+      granny-aunt's withered old face had two red spots come to it, as if she
+      had been painting her cheeks from a pink saucer. No, she said, not a pink
+      saucer, but as if they were two coals of fire. She sent out and got the
+      book, and made her (the somebody that I was speaking of) read it to her.
+      When she had heard as much as she could stand,&mdash;for 'Cousin Pansie'
+      explained passages to her,&mdash;explained, you know,&mdash;she sent for
+      her lawyer, and that same somebody had to be a witness to a new will she
+      had drawn up. It was not to my advantage. 'Cousin Pansie' got the corner
+      lot where the grocery is, and pretty much everything else. The old woman
+      left me a legacy. What do you think it was? An old set of my own books,
+      that looked as if it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating
+      library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After that I grew more careful. I studied my disguises much more
+      diligently. But after all, what could I do? Here I was, writing stories
+      for my living and my reputation. I made a pretty sum enough, and worked
+      hard enough to earn it. No tale, no money. Then every story that went from
+      my workshop had to come up to the standard of my reputation, and there was
+      a set of critics,&mdash;there is a set of critics now and everywhere,&mdash;that
+      watch as narrowly for the decline of a man's reputation as ever a village
+      half drowned out by an inundation watched for the falling of the waters.
+      The fame I had won, such as it was, seemed to attend me,&mdash;not going
+      before me in the shape of a woman with a trumpet, but rather following me
+      like one of Actaeon's hounds, his throat open, ready to pull me down and
+      tear me. What a fierce enemy is that which bays behind us in the voice of
+      our proudest bygone achievement!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, as I said above, what could I do? I must write novels, and I must
+      have characters. 'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice. Oh, yes!
+      Invent them! You can invent a human being that in certain aspects of
+      humanity will answer every purpose for which your invention was intended.
+      A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of breeches, a hat which has been
+      soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken window, and had a brood of chickens
+      raised in it,&mdash;these elements, duly adjusted to each other, will
+      represent humanity so truthfully that the crows will avoid the cornfield
+      when your scarecrow displays his personality. Do you think you can make
+      your heroes and heroines,&mdash;nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,&mdash;out
+      of refuse material, as you made your scarecrow? You can't do it. You must
+      study living people and reproduce them. And whom do you know so well as
+      your friends? You will show up your friends, then, one after another. When
+      your friends give out, who is left for you? Why, nobody but your own
+      family, of course. When you have used up your family, there is nothing
+      left for you but to write your autobiography.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious, very
+      naturally. I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well as sexes.
+      In this way I continued to use up a large amount of material, which looked
+      as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to meddle with. Who would have
+      expected to meet my maternal uncle in the guise of a schoolboy? Yet I
+      managed to decant his characteristics as nicely as the old gentleman would
+      have decanted a bottle of Juno Madeira through that long siphon which he
+      always used when the most sacred vintages were summoned from their crypts
+      to render an account of themselves on his hospitable board. It was a nice
+      business, I confess, but I did it, and I drink cheerfully to that good
+      uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his own cellar, which, with many
+      other more important tokens of his good will, I call my own since his
+      lamented demise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a course of
+      cousins. I had enough of them to furnish out a whole gallery of portraits.
+      There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her; Lucretia, more correctly.
+      She was a cripple. Her left lower limb had had something happen to it, and
+      she walked with a crutch. Her patience under her trial was very pathetic
+      and picturesque, so to speak,&mdash;I mean adapted to the tender parts of
+      a story; nothing could work up better in a melting paragraph. But I could
+      not, of course, describe her particular infirmity; that would point her
+      out at once. I thought of shifting the lameness to the right lower limb,
+      but even that would be seen through. So I gave the young woman that stood
+      for her in my story a lame elbow, and put her arm in a sling, and made her
+      such a model of uncomplaining endurance that my grandmother cried over her
+      as if her poor old heart would break. She cried very easily, my
+      grandmother; in fact, she had such a gift for tears that I availed myself
+      of it, and if you remember old Judy, in my novel 'Honi Soit' (Honey Sweet,
+      the booksellers called it),&mdash;old Judy, the black-nurse,&mdash;that
+      was my grandmother. She had various other peculiarities, which I brought
+      out one by one, and saddled on to different characters. You see she was a
+      perfect mine of singularities and idiosyncrasies. After I had used her up
+      pretty well, I came down upon my poor relations. They were perfectly fair
+      game; what better use could I put them to? I studied them up very
+      carefully, and as there were a good many of them I helped myself freely.
+      They lasted me, with occasional intermissions, I should say, three or four
+      years. I had to be very careful with my poor relations,&mdash;they were as
+      touchy as they could be; and as I felt bound to send a copy of my novel,
+      whatever it might be, to each one of them,&mdash;there were as many as a
+      dozen,&mdash;I took care to mix their characteristic features, so that,
+      though each might suspect I meant the other, no one should think I meant
+      him or her. I got through all my relations at last except my father and
+      mother. I had treated my brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except
+      Elisha and Joanna. The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,&mdash;family
+      traits, I suppose, but were just different enough from each other to
+      figure separately in two different stories. These two novels made me some
+      little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in one of
+      them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and declared that
+      Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and that it was a real
+      mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and blood, and treated me to
+      one of her cries. She was n't handsome when she cried, poor, dear Joanna;
+      in fact, that was one of the personal traits I had made use of in the
+      story that Elisha found fault with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
+      yourself I had no choice. There was one great advantage in dealing with
+      them,&mdash;I knew them so thoroughly. One naturally feels a certain
+      delicacy it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who have
+      been so near to him. One's mother, for instance: suppose some of her
+      little ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of them would
+      furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would not be without
+      hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would draw her portrait,
+      with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it should be generally
+      recognized. One's father is commonly of tougher fibre than one's mother,
+      and one would not feel the same scruples, perhaps, in using him
+      professionally as material in a novel; still, while you are employing him
+      as bait,&mdash;you see I am honest and plain-spoken, for your characters
+      are baits to catch readers with,&mdash;I would follow kind Izaak Walton's
+      humane counsel about the frog you are fastening to your fish-hook: fix him
+      artistically, as he directs, but in so doing I use him as though you loved
+      him.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen who
+      have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my friends,
+      all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives. It has occurred to me
+      that I might open a new field in the family connection of my father-in-law
+      and mother-in-law. We have been thinking of paying them a visit, and I
+      shall have an admirable opportunity of studying them and their relatives
+      and visitors. I have long wanted a good chance for getting acquainted with
+      the social sphere several grades below that to which I am accustomed, and
+      I have no doubt that I shall find matter for half a dozen new stories
+      among those connections of mine. Besides, they live in a Western city, and
+      one doesn't mind much how he cuts up the people of places he does n't
+      himself live in. I suppose there is not really so much difference in
+      people's feelings, whether they live in Bangor or Omaha, but one's nerves
+      can't be expected to stretch across the continent. It is all a matter of
+      greater or less distance. I read this morning that a Chinese fleet was
+      sunk, but I did n't think half so much about it as I did about losing my
+      sleeve button, confound it! People have accused me of want of feeling;
+      they misunderstand the artist-nature,&mdash;that is all. I obey that
+      implicitly; I am sorry if people don't like my descriptions, but I have
+      done my best. I have pulled to pieces all the persons I am acquainted
+      with, and put them together again in my characters. The quills I write
+      with come from live geese, I would have you know. I expect to get some
+      first-rate pluckings from those people I was speaking of, and I mean to
+      begin my thirty-ninth novel as soon as I have got through my visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX. THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a
+      narrative like this. June passed away, and July, and August had come, and
+      as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead Village and its
+      visitors remained unsolved. The white canoe still wandered over the lake,
+      alone, ghostly, always avoiding the near approach of the boats which
+      seemed to be coming in its direction. Now and then a circumstance would
+      happen which helped to keep inquiry alive. Good horsemanship was not so
+      common among the young men of the place and its neighborhood that
+      Maurice's accomplishment in that way could be overlooked. If there was a
+      wicked horse or a wild colt whose owner was afraid of him, he would be
+      commended to Maurice's attention. Paolo would lead him to his master with
+      all due precaution,&mdash;for he had no idea of risking his neck on the
+      back of any ill-conditioned beast,&mdash;and Maurice would fasten on his
+      long spurs, spring into the saddle, and very speedily teach the creature
+      good behavior. There soon got about a story that he was what the
+      fresh-water fisherman called &ldquo;one o' them whisperers.&rdquo; It is a common
+      legend enough, coming from the Old World, but known in American
+      horse-talking circles, that some persons will whisper certain words in a
+      horse's ear which will tame him if he is as wild and furious as ever
+      Cruiser was. All this added to the mystery which surrounded the young man.
+      A single improbable or absurd story amounts to very little, but when half
+      a dozen such stories are told about the same individual or the same event,
+      they begin to produce the effect of credible evidence. If the year had
+      been 1692 and the place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would
+      have run the risk of being treated like the Reverend George Burroughs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with reference
+      to the young man of whom so many stories were told. She had pretty nearly
+      convinced herself that he was the author of the paper on Ocean, Lake, and
+      River, which had been read at one of the meetings of the Pansophian
+      Society. She was very desirous of meeting him, if it were possible. It
+      seemed as if she might, as Secretary of the Society, request the
+      cooperation of any of the visitors, without impropriety. So, after much
+      deliberation, she wrote a careful note, of which the following is an exact
+      copy. Her hand was bold, almost masculine, a curious contrast to that of
+      Euthymia, which was delicately feminine. PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-. MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR SIR,&mdash;You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the
+      meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure of
+      seeing you at any of them. We have supposed that we might be indebted to
+      you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to with much
+      interest. As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be inquisitive respecting
+      its authorship; but we desire to say that any papers kindly sent us by the
+      temporary residents of our village will be welcome, and if adapted to the
+      wants of our Association will be read at one of its meetings or printed in
+      its records, or perhaps both read and printed. May we not hope for your
+      presence at the meeting, which is to take place next Wednesday evening?
+      Respectfully yours,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LURIDA VINCENT, Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this note the Secretary received the following reply: MISS LURIDA
+      VINCENT,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 4, 18-.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secretary of the Pansophian Society:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEAR MISS VINCENT,&mdash;I have received the ticket you refer to, and
+      desire to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention. I regret
+      that I have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend the meetings
+      of the Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which I feel an
+      inclination to write, it will give me pleasure to send a paper, to be
+      disposed of as the Society may see fit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very respectfully yours, MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the other
+      evening,&rdquo; the Secretary said to herself. &ldquo;No matter,&mdash;he wrote it,&mdash;there
+      is no mistaking his handwriting. We know something about him, now, at any
+      rate. But why doesn't he come to our meetings? What has his antipathy to
+      do with his staying away? I must find out what his secret is, and I will.
+      I don't believe it's harder than it was to solve that prize problem which
+      puzzled so many teachers, or than beating Crakowitz, the great
+      chess-player.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties
+      which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those who
+      knew her in her school-days. It was a very delicate piece of business; for
+      though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate, and believed she
+      was entitled to do almost everything that men dared to, she knew very well
+      there were certain limits which a young woman like herself must not pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student at
+      the University,&mdash;the same whom he had rescued from his dangerous
+      predicament in the lake. With him had called one of the teachers,&mdash;an
+      instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy. Maurice and the
+      instructor exchanged a few words in Italian. The young man spoke it with
+      the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about him,&mdash;who
+      he was, how long he had been in the village, whether anything was known of
+      his history,&mdash;all these inquiries with an eagerness which implied
+      some special and peculiar reason for the interest they evinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel satisfied,&rdquo; the instructor said, &ldquo;that I have met that young man
+      in my own country. It was a number of years ago, and of course he has
+      altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about him of&mdash;what
+      shall I call it?&mdash;-apprehension,&mdash;as if he were fearing the
+      approach of something or somebody. I think it is the way a man would look
+      that was haunted; you know what I mean,&mdash;followed by a spirit or
+      ghost. He does not suggest the idea of a murderer,&mdash;very far from it;
+      but if he did, I should think he was every minute in fear of seeing the
+      murdered man's spirit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor could
+      recall. He had seen him in Rome, he thought, at the Fountain of Trevi,
+      where so many strangers go before leaving the city. The youth was in the
+      company of a man who looked like a priest. He could not mistake the
+      peculiar expression of his countenance, but that was all he now remembered
+      about his appearance. His attention had been called to this young man by
+      seeing that some of the bystanders were pointing at him, and noticing that
+      they were whispering with each other as if with reference to him. He
+      should say that the youth was at that time fifteen or sixteen years old,
+      and the time was about ten years ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, this evidence was of little or no value. Suppose the youth were
+      Maurice; what then? We know that he had been in Italy, and had been there
+      a good while,&mdash;or at least we infer so much from his familiarity with
+      the language, and are confirmed in the belief by his having an Italian
+      servant, whom he probably brought from Italy when he returned. If he wrote
+      the paper which was read the other evening, that settles it, for the
+      writer says he had lived by the Tiber. We must put this scrap of evidence
+      furnished by the Professor with the other scraps; it may turn out of some
+      consequence, sooner or later. It is like a piece of a dissected map; it
+      means almost nothing by itself, but when we find the pieces it joins with
+      we may discover a very important meaning in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and
+      immediately around Arrowhead Village, every day must have its local gossip
+      as well as its general news. The newspaper tells the small community what
+      is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues of male and female,
+      especially the latter, fill in with the occurrences and comments of the
+      ever-stirring microcosm. The fact that the Italian teacher had, or thought
+      he had, seen Maurice ten years before was circulated and made the most of,&mdash;turned
+      over and over like a cake, until it was thoroughly done on both sides and
+      all through. It was a very small cake, but better than nothing. Miss
+      Vincent heard this story, as others did, and talked about it with her
+      friend, Miss Tower. Here was one more fact to help along.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna Institute
+      remained, as they had always been, intimate friends. They were the natural
+      complements of each other. Euthymia represented a complete, symmetrical
+      womanhood. Her outward presence was only an index of a large, wholesome,
+      affluent life. She could not help being courageous, with such a firm
+      organization. She could not help being generous, cheerful, active. She had
+      been told often enough that she was fair to look upon. She knew that she
+      was called The Wonder by the schoolmates who were dazzled by her singular
+      accomplishments, but she did not overvalue them. She rather tended to
+      depreciate her own gifts, in comparison with those of her friend, Miss
+      Lurida Vincent. The two agreed all the better for differing as they did.
+      The octave makes a perfect chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less
+      on the ear. Each admired the other with a heartiness which if they had
+      been less unlike, would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other. The
+      Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend.
+      All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily
+      exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling
+      open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had any message for
+      her. Her teachers had compared her way of reading to the taking of an
+      instantaneous photograph. When she took up the first book on Physiology
+      which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him that if she only opened at
+      any place, and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist
+      sponge absorbs water. &ldquo;What can I do with such a creature as this?&rdquo; he
+      said to himself. &ldquo;There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as one
+      treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own
+      cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own web of knowledge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really think of studying medicine?&rdquo; said Dr. Butts to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have n't made up my mind about that,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;but I want to know
+      a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we are all
+      tangled in. I know something about it, but not enough. I find some very
+      strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I want to be able to
+      silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to their whims and fancies.
+      Besides, I want to know everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They tell me you do, already,&rdquo; said Dr. Butts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!&rdquo;
+       exclaimed The Terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor smiled. He knew what it meant. She had reached that stage of
+      education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its illimitable
+      expanse before the eyes of the student. We never know the extent of
+      darkness until it is partially illuminated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the most
+      ignorant young lady that ever graduated there,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;They
+      tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record since the
+      school was founded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small aquarium,
+      to be sure!&rdquo; answered The Terror. &ldquo;He was six inches long, the monster,&mdash;a
+      little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with! What did you hand me
+      that schoolbook for? Did you think I did n't know anything about the human
+      body?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try you
+      with an easy book, by way of introduction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant what I said, and I mean what I say. When I talk about my
+      ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor. I don't
+      measure myself with my teachers, either. You must talk to me as if I were
+      a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything. Where is your hat,
+      doctor? Let me try it on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor handed her his wide-awake. The Terror's hair was not naturally
+      abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather short. Her head used
+      to get very hot when she studied hard. She tried to put the hat on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see that?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I could n't wear it&mdash;it would squeeze
+      my eyes out of my head. The books told me that women's brains were smaller
+      than men's: perhaps they are,&mdash;most of them,&mdash;I never measured a
+      great many. But when they try to settle what women are good for, by
+      phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my head. I don't
+      believe in their nonsense, for all that. You might as well tell me that if
+      one horse weighs more than another horse he is worth more,&mdash;a
+      cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred pounds better than
+      Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand. Give me a list of the best
+      books you can think of, and turn me loose in your library. I can find what
+      I want, if you have it; and what I don't find there I will get at the
+      Public Library. I shall want to ask you a question now and then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully, as
+      if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her slight
+      constitutional resource.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her
+      statements about herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a fool, if I am ignorant. Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide sea of
+      ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows and some of
+      its depths. Your profession deals with the facts of life that interest me
+      most just now, and I want to know something of it. Perhaps I may find it a
+      calling such as would suit me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?&rdquo; said the
+      doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to know
+      something more about it first. Perhaps I sha'n't believe in medicine
+      enough to practise it. Perhaps I sha'n't like it well enough. No matter
+      about that. I wish to study some of your best books on some of the
+      subjects that most interest me. I know about bones and muscles and all
+      that, and about digestion and respiration and such things. I want to study
+      up the nervous system, and learn all about it. I am of the nervous
+      temperament myself, and perhaps that is the reason. I want to read about
+      insanity and all that relates to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The Terror
+      said this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nervous system. Insanity. She has headaches, I know,&mdash;all those
+      large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what has
+      set her off about insanity and the nervous system? I wonder if any of her
+      more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder. Bright people very
+      often have crazy relations. Perhaps some of her friends are in that way. I
+      wonder whether&rdquo;&mdash;the doctor did not speak any of these thoughts, and
+      in fact hardly shaped his &ldquo;whether,&rdquo; for The Terror interrupted his train
+      of reflection, or rather struck into it in a way which startled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?&rdquo; she asked,
+      looking at its empty place on the shelf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my table,&rdquo; the doctor answered. &ldquo;I have been consulting it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly until
+      she came to the one she wanted. The doctor cast his eye on the beading of
+      the page, and saw the large letters A N T.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;We shall know everything there is in
+      the books about antipathies now, if we never did before. She has a special
+      object in studying the nervous system, just as I suspected. I think she
+      does not care to mention it at this time; but if she finds out anything of
+      interest she will tell me, if she does anybody. Perhaps she does not mean
+      to tell anybody. It is a rather delicate business,&mdash;a young girl
+      studying the natural history of a young man. Not quite so safe as botany
+      or palaeontology!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and chose
+      to keep them to herself, for the present, at least. Her hands were full
+      enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of the great
+      Arrowhead Village enigma. But she was in the most perfect training, so far
+      as her intelligence was concerned; and the summer rest had restored her
+      bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an overcharged battery which will
+      find conductors somewhere to carry off its crowded energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful season it
+      had ever known. The Pansophian Society flourished to an extraordinary
+      degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary. The rector was a
+      good figure-head as President, but the Secretary was the life of the
+      Society. Communications came in abundantly: some from the village and its
+      neighborhood, some from the University and the Institute, some from
+      distant and unknown sources. The new Secretary was very busy with the work
+      of examining these papers. After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her
+      room looked like a barn floor after a husking-match. A glance at the
+      manuscripts strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any
+      young writer away from the thought of authorship as a business. If the
+      candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection and
+      elimination, he would have felt still more desperately. A paper of twenty
+      pages would come in, with an underscored request to please read through,
+      carefully. That request alone is commonly sufficient to condemn any paper,
+      and prevent its having any chance of a hearing; but the Secretary was not
+      hardened enough yet for that kind of martial law in dealing with
+      manuscripts. The looker-on might have seen her take up the paper, cast one
+      flashing glance at its title, read the first sentence and the last, dip at
+      a venture into two or three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning
+      calculator would add up a column of figures what was to be its
+      destination. If rejected, it went into the heap on the left; if approved,
+      it was laid apart, to be submitted to the Committee for their judgment.
+      The foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their manuscript
+      poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to their
+      prospects. It provokes the reader, to begin with. The reading of
+      manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless
+      manuscript&mdash;and most of that which one is requested to read through
+      is worthless&mdash;would add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any infernal
+      deity were ingenious enough to suggest it as a punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the
+      Committee, but was returned to the author, if he sent for it, which he
+      commonly did. Its natural course was to try for admission into some one of
+      the popular magazines: into &ldquo;The Sifter,&rdquo; the most fastidious of them all;
+      if that declined it, into &ldquo;The Second Best;&rdquo; and if that returned it, into
+      &ldquo;The Omnivorous.&rdquo; If it was refused admittance at the doors of all the
+      magazines, it might at length find shelter in the corner of a newspaper,
+      where a good deal of very readable verse is to be met with nowadays, some
+      of which has been, no doubt, presented to the Pansophian Society, but was
+      not considered up to its standard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X. A NEW ARRIVAL.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was a recent accession to the transient population of the village
+      which gave rise to some speculation. The new-comer was a young fellow,
+      rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much at home as if he
+      owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it. He commonly had a cigar in
+      his mouth, carried a pocket pistol, of the non-explosive sort, and a stick
+      with a bulldog's head for its knob; wore a soft hat, a coarse check suit,
+      a little baggy, and gaiterboots which had been half-soled,&mdash;a
+      Bohemian-looking personage, altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This individual began making explorations in every direction. He was very
+      curious about the place and all the people in it. He was especially
+      interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he made all sorts
+      of inquiries. This led him to form a summer acquaintance with the
+      Secretary, who was pleased to give him whatever information he asked for;
+      being proud of the Society, as she had a right to be, and knowing more
+      about it than anybody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing
+      something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the stories, true and false, connected
+      with his name. He questioned everybody who could tell him anything about
+      Maurice, and set down the answers in a little note-book he always had with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this new
+      visitor. Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an attribute thought
+      to belong more especially to her sex, became somewhat interested to know
+      more exactly who this inquiring, note-taking personage, who seemed to be
+      everywhere and to know everybody, might himself be. Meeting him at the
+      Public Library at a fortunate moment, when there was nobody but the old
+      Librarian, who was hard of hearing, to interfere with their conversation,
+      the little Secretary had a chance to try to find out something about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to Miss Lurida.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, indeed,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Have you found it well furnished with the
+      books you most want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes,&mdash;books enough. I don't care so much for the books as I do
+      for the Newspapers. I like a Review well enough,&mdash;it tells you all
+      there is in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper saves
+      a fellow the trouble of reading it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You find the papers you want, here, I hope,&rdquo; said the young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I get along pretty well. It's my off-time, and I don't do much
+      reading or writing. Who is the city correspondent of this place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think we have any one who writes regularly. Now and then, there
+      is a letter, with the gossip of the place in it, or an account of some of
+      the doings at our Society. The city papers are always glad to get the
+      reports of our meetings, and to know what is going on in the village.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the
+      Secretary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a point-blank shot. She meant to question the young man about his
+      business, and here she was on the witness-stand. She ducked her head, and
+      let the question go over her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write, &mdash;especially
+      to give an account of their own papers. I think they like to have me put
+      in the applause, when they get any. I do that sometimes.&rdquo; (How much more,
+      she did not say.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they tell
+      me of the Secretary, I should have thought she might have written
+      herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked her straight in the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have transmitted some good papers,&rdquo; she said, without winking, or
+      swallowing, or changing color, precious little color she had to change;
+      her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and more too.
+      &ldquo;You spoke of Newspapers,&rdquo; she said, without any change of tone or manner:
+      &ldquo;do you not frequently write for them yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think I did,&rdquo; answered the young man. &ldquo;I am a regular
+      correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The regular correspondent from where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where! Oh, anywhere,&mdash;the place does not make much difference. I
+      have been writing chiefly from Naples and St. Petersburg, and now and then
+      from Constantinople.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long since your return to this country, may I ask?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My return? I have never been out of this country. I travel with a
+      gazetteer and some guide-books. It is the cheapest way, and you can get
+      the facts much better from them than by trusting your own observation. I
+      have made the tour of Europe by the help of them and the newspapers. But
+      of late I have taken to interviewing. I find that a very pleasant
+      specialty. It is about as good sport as trout-tickling, and much the same
+      kind of business. I should like to send the Society an account of one of
+      my interviews. Don't you think they would like to hear it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no doubt they would. Send it to me, and I will look it over; and
+      if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting. You know
+      everything has to be examined and voted on by the Committee,&rdquo; said the
+      cautious Secretary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&mdash;I will risk it. After it is read, if it is read, please
+      send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The Second
+      Best,' or some of the paying magazines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the Pansophian
+      Society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached, 'The
+      People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to a certain
+      well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could concerning him
+      and all that related to him. I have interviewed a good many politicians,
+      who I thought rather liked the process; but I had never tried any of these
+      literary people, and I was not quite sure how this one would feel about
+      it. I said as much to the chief, but he pooh-poohed my scruples. 'It is
+      n't our business whether they like it or not,' said he; 'the public wants
+      it, and what the public wants it's bound to have, and we are bound to
+      furnish it. Don't be afraid of your man; he 's used to it,&mdash;he's been
+      pumped often enough to take it easy, and what you've got to do is to pump
+      him dry. You need n't be modest,&mdash;ask him what you like; he is n't
+      bound to answer, you know.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up a
+      little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine on my
+      best high-lows. I said to myself, as I was walking towards the house where
+      he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and pass for a visitor
+      from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers' who call in to pay
+      their respects, to get an autograph, and go home and say that they have
+      met the distinguished So and So, which gives them a certain distinction in
+      the village circle to which they belong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
+      reception-room. I observed that he managed to get the light full on my
+      face, while his own was in the shade. I had meant to have his face in the
+      light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged things so as to give
+      him that advantage. It was like two frigates manoeuvring,&mdash;each
+      trying to get to windward of the other. I never take out my note-book
+      until I and my man have got engaged in artless and earnest conversation,&mdash;always
+      about himself and his works, of course, if he is an author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers. Those who had
+      read his books were naturally curious to see the writer of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He assented, emphatically, to this statement. He had, he said, a great
+      many callers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his readers
+      feel as if they knew him personally, and caused them to cherish a certain
+      attachment to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He smiled, as if pleased. He was himself disposed to think so, he said.
+      In fact, a great many persons, strangers writing to him, had told him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear sir,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there is nothing wonderful in the fact you
+      mention. You reach a responsive chord in many human breasts.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled), were
+      your blood relation. Do they not name their children after you very
+      frequently?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He blushed perceptibly. 'Sometimes,' he answered. 'I hope they will all
+      turn out well.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid I am taking up too much of your time, I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not at all,' he replied. 'Come up into my library; it is warmer and
+      pleasanter there.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an author's
+      library, which is commonly his working-room, is, like a lady's boudoir, a
+      sacred apartment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my face,
+      when I wanted it on has.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a fine library, I remarked. There were books all round the room,
+      and one of those whirligig square book-cases. I saw in front a Bible and a
+      Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book, and other
+      classical works and books of grave aspect. I contrived to give it a turn,
+      and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of Barnum's Rhyming
+      Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations and cheap compends of
+      knowledge. Always twirl one of those revolving book-cases when you visit a
+      scholar's library. That is the way to find out what books he does n't want
+      you to see, which of course are the ones you particularly wish to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive. What do you suppose
+      is an interviewer's business? Did you ever see an oyster opened? Yes?
+      Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing. His man is his oyster,
+      which he, not with sword, but with pencil and note-book, must open. Mark
+      how the oysterman's thin blade insinuates itself,&mdash;how gently at
+      first, how strenuously when once fairly between the shells!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here, I said, you write your books,&mdash;those books which have
+      carried your name to all parts of the world, and will convey it down to
+      posterity! Is this the desk at which you write? And is this the pen you
+      write with?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'It is the desk and the very pen,' he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them. I took up
+      the pen as reverentially as if it had been made of the feather which the
+      angel I used to read about in Young's 'Night Thoughts' ought to have
+      dropped, and did n't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you kindly write your autograph in my note-book, with that pen? I
+      asked him. Yes, he would, with great pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I got out my note-book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this interview. I
+      admire your bookcases, said I. Can you tell me just how high they are?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'They are about eight feet, with the cornice.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough, said I.
+      Eight feet,&mdash;eight feet, with the cornice. I must put that down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I got out my pencil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sat there with my pencil and note-book in my hand, all ready, but not
+      using them as yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a very
+      early age. Is it taking too great a liberty to ask how early you began to
+      write in verse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are
+      themselves the subjects of conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Very early,&mdash;I hardly know how early. I can say truly, as Louise
+      Colet said,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.'&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be kind
+      enough to translate that line for me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Certainly. With pleasure. I made my first verses without knowing how to
+      write them.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How interesting! But I never heard of Louise Colet. Who was she?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My man was pleased to give me a piece of literary information.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Louise the lioness! Never heard of her? You have heard of Alphonse
+      Karr?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&mdash;yes,&mdash;more or less. To tell the truth, I am not very well
+      up in French literature. What had he to do with your lioness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A good deal. He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a
+      case-knife in her hand, intending to stick him with it. By and by he came
+      down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing her
+      case-knife. He took it from her, after getting a cut in his dressing-gown,
+      put it in his pocket, and went on with his cigarette. He keeps it with an
+      inscription:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;Donne a Alphonse Karr
+   Par Madame Louise Colet....
+   Dans le dos.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lively little female!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview the
+      lively little female. He was evidently tickled with the interest I
+      appeared to take in the story he told me. That made him feel amiably
+      disposed toward me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at everything
+      about his family history and the small events of his boyhood. Some of the
+      points touched upon were delicate, but I put a good bold face on my most
+      audacious questions, and so I wormed out a great deal that was new
+      concerning my subject. He had been written about considerably, and the
+      public wouldn't have been satisfied without some new facts; and these I
+      meant to have, and I got. No matter about many of them now, but here are
+      some questions and answers that may be thought worth reading or listening
+      to:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you enjoy being what they call 'a celebrity,' or a celebrated man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough. But self-love is
+      a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes all through
+      it, and never fill it up. It breeds an appetite for more of the same kind.
+      It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of egotism. It generates a
+      craving for high-seasoned personalities which is in danger of becoming
+      slavery, like that following the abuse of alcohol, or opium, or tobacco.
+      Think of a man's having every day, by every post, letters that tell him he
+      is this and that and the other, with epithets and endearments, one tenth
+      part of which would have made him blush red hot before he began to be what
+      you call a celebrity!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is called
+      celebrity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I should think so! Suppose you were obliged every day of your life to
+      stand and shake hands, as the President of the United States has to after
+      his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel after a few
+      months' practice of that exercise? Suppose you had given you thirty-five
+      millions of money a year, in hundred-dollar coupons, on condition that you
+      cut them all off yourself in the usual manner: how do you think you should
+      like the look of a pair of scissors at the end of a year, in which you had
+      worked ten hours a day every day but Sunday, cutting off a hundred coupons
+      an hour, and found you had not finished your task, after all? You have
+      addressed me as what you are pleased to call &ldquo;a literary celebrity.&rdquo; I
+      won't dispute with you as to whether or not I deserve that title. I will
+      take it for granted I am what you call me, and give you some few hints on
+      my experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for
+      Self-Protection. It meant well, and it was hoped that something would come
+      of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I am sorry to say
+      that it has not effected its purpose.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of that
+      Association. Yes, I said, an admirable Association it was, and as much
+      needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I am sorry to
+      hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop to the abuse of a
+      deserving class of men. It ought to have done it; it was well conceived,
+      and its public manifesto was a masterpiece. (I saw by his expression that
+      he was its author.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I see I can trust you,' he said. 'I will unbosom myself freely of some
+      of the grievances attaching to the position of the individual to whom you
+      have applied the term &ldquo;Literary Celebrity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales of
+      his books, all the money from which, it is taken for granted, goes into
+      his pocket. Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to him for
+      his signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his name comes to
+      him for assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by
+      receiving blank formulae, which, with their promises to pay, he is
+      expected to fill up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and give his
+      opinion about each of them, which opinion, if it has a word which can be
+      used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the newspapers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he is
+      called upon to examine and pronounce on their merits; these manuscripts
+      having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to whom they have
+      been sent, and having as a rule no literary value whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to write
+      for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make after-dinner speeches, to send
+      money for objects he does not believe in to places he never heard of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers, who
+      begin by saying they have no claim upon his time, and then appropriate it
+      by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and sheet after sheet, if
+      of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment
+      and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be suggested to
+      him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-grandmother on her
+      reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an ode
+      for the Fourth of July in a Western township not to be found in
+      Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover who
+      believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to win the object of his
+      affections.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is n't it so? I asked the Celebrity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I would bet on the prose lover. She will show the verses to him, and
+      they will both have a good laugh over them.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the
+      Literary Celebrity. He was so much taken up with his pleasing
+      self-contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and
+      spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his linen on
+      the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to him that he had
+      been in the hands of an interviewer until he found himself exposed to the
+      wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the columns of The People's
+      Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who the
+      person spoken of as the &ldquo;Literary Celebrity&rdquo; might be. Among the various
+      suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was neither more nor
+      less than the unexplained personage known in the village as Maurice
+      Kirkwood. Why should that be his real name? Why should not he be the
+      Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to this retreat to escape from
+      the persecutions of kind friends, who were pricking him and stabbing him
+      nigh to death with their daggers of sugar candy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the
+      Interviewer the next time she met him at the Library, which happened soon
+      after the meeting when his paper was read.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; she said, in the course of a conversation in which she
+      had spoken warmly of his contribution to the literary entertainment of the
+      Society, &ldquo;that you mentioned the name of the Literary Celebrity whom you
+      interviewed so successfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not mention him, Miss Vincent,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;nor do I think it
+      worth while to name him. He might not care to have the whole story told of
+      how he was handled so as to make him communicative. Besides, if I did, it
+      would bring him a new batch of sympathetic letters, regretting that he was
+      bothered by those horrid correspondents, full of indignation at the bores
+      who presumed to intrude upon him with their pages of trash, all the
+      writers of which would expect answers to their letters of condolence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman who
+      called himself Maurice Kirkwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides all
+      the wild horses of the neighborhood? No, I don't know him, but I have met
+      him once or twice, out walking. A mighty shy fellow, they tell me. Do you
+      know anything particular about him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much. None of us do, but we should like to. The story is that he has
+      a queer antipathy to something or to somebody, nobody knows what or whom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To newspaper correspondents, perhaps,&rdquo; said the interviewer. &ldquo;What made
+      you ask me about him? You did n't think he was my 'Literary Celebrity,'
+      did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not know. I thought he might be. Why don't you interview this
+      mysterious personage? He would make a good sensation for your paper, I
+      should think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what is there to be interviewed in him? Is there any story of crime,
+      or anything else to spice a column or so, or even a few paragraphs, with?
+      If there is, I am willing to handle him professionally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told you he has what they call an antipathy. I don't know how much
+      wiser you are for that piece of information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An antipathy! Why, so have I an antipathy. I hate a spider, and as for a
+      naked caterpillar,&mdash;I believe I should go into a fit if I had to
+      touch one. I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great green
+      caterpillars that come down from the elm-trees in August and early
+      autumn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of them?&rdquo; asked the young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid? What should I be afraid of? They can't bite or sting. I can't
+      give any reason. All I know is that when I come across one of these
+      creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,&mdash;sometimes
+      using very improper words. The fact is, they make me crazy for the
+      moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand what you mean,&rdquo; said Miss Vincent. &ldquo;I used to have the same
+      feeling about spiders, but I was ashamed of it, and kept a little
+      menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that is, pretty
+      much got over it, for I don't love the creatures very dearly, though I
+      don't scream when I see one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did you tell me, Miss Vincent, was this fellow's particular
+      antipathy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is just the question. I told you that we don't know and we can't
+      guess what it is. The people here are tired out with trying to discover
+      some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way of everybody,
+      as he does. They say he is odd or crazy, and they don't seem to be able to
+      tell which. It would make the old ladies of the village sleep a great deal
+      sounder,&mdash;yes, and some of the young ladies, too,&mdash;if they could
+      find out what this Mr. Kirkwood has got into his head, that he never comes
+      near any of the people here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I can find out,&rdquo; said the Interviewer, whose professional
+      ambition was beginning to be excited. &ldquo;I never came across anybody yet
+      that I could n't get something out of. I am going to stay here a week or
+      two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is any, of this
+      Mr. Maurice Kirkwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present us
+      with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI. THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as she
+      pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a strain
+      she was putting upon it. She did know that she was doing her best, but how
+      great the force of her best was she was not aware until she saw its
+      effects. Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature, in all its
+      manifestations. She did not pride herself on her knowledge, nor reproach
+      herself for her ignorance. In every way she formed a striking contrast to
+      her friend, Miss Vincent. Every word they spoke betrayed the difference
+      between them: the sharp tones of Lurida's head-voice, penetrative,
+      aggressive, sometimes irritating, revealed the corresponding traits of
+      mental and moral character; the quiet, conversational contralto of
+      Euthymia was the index of a nature restful and sympathetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which will
+      one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies. The dependence of
+      two young friends may be mutual, but one will always lean more heavily
+      than the other; the masculine and feminine elements will be as sure to
+      assert themselves as if the friends were of different sexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her superior.
+      She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge, and deferred to
+      her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an oracle, but as wiser
+      than herself or any of her other companions. It was a different thing,
+      however, when the graver questions of life came up. Lurida was full of
+      suggestions, plans, projects, which were too liable to run into whims
+      before she knew where they were tending. She would lay out her ideas
+      before Euthymia so fluently and eloquently that she could not help
+      believing them herself, and feeling as if her friend must accept them with
+      an enthusiasm like her own. Then Euthymia would take them up with her
+      sweet, deliberate accents, and bring her calmer judgment to bear on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new interests
+      and occupations. She was constantly on the lookout for papers to be read
+      at the meetings of her Society,&mdash;for she made it her own in great
+      measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,&mdash;and in the mean time she was
+      reading in various books which Dr. Butts selected for her, all bearing on
+      the profession to which, at least as a possibility, she was looking
+      forward. Privately and in a very still way, she was occupying herself with
+      the problem of the young stranger, the subject of some delusion, or
+      disease, or obliquity of unknown nature, to which the vague name of
+      antipathy had been attached. Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in the
+      fear that over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and partly
+      from anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her desire
+      to get at the truth of a very puzzling question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you like the books I see you reading?&rdquo; said Euthymia to Lurida,
+      one day, as they met at the Library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than all the novels I ever read,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I have been
+      reading about the nervous system, and it seems to me I have come nearer
+      the springs of life than ever before in all my studies. I feel just as if
+      I were a telegraph operator. I was sure that I had a battery in my head,
+      for I know my brain works like one; but I did not know how many centres of
+      energy there are, and how they are played upon by all sorts of influences,
+      external and internal. Do you know, I believe I could solve the riddle of
+      the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,' as the paper called him, if he would only
+      stay here long enough?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What paper has had anything about it, Lurida? I have not seen or heard of
+      its being mentioned in any of the papers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know that rather queer-looking young man who has been about here for
+      some time,&mdash;the same one who gave the account of his interview with a
+      celebrated author? Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper in which he
+      writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.' He talks about
+      this village in a very free and easy way. He says there is a Sphinx here,
+      who has mystified us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you have been chatting with that fellow! Don't you know that he'll
+      have you and all of us in his paper? Don't you know that nothing is safe
+      where one of those fellows gets in with his note-book and pencil? Oh,
+      Lurida, Lurida, do be careful! What with this mysterious young man and
+      this very questionable newspaper-paragraph writer, you will be talked
+      about, if you don't mind, before you know it. You had better let the
+      riddle of the Sphinx alone. If you must deal with such dangerous people,
+      the safest way is to set one of them to find out the other.&mdash;I wonder
+      if we can't get this new man to interview the visitor you have so much
+      curiosity about. That might be managed easily enough without your having
+      anything to do with it. Let me alone, and I will arrange it. But mind,
+      now, you must not meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and get
+      your name in the 'Household Inquisitor' in a way you won't like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia. I don't mean to give him a chance
+      to work me into his paper, if I can help it. But if you can get him to try
+      his skill upon this interesting personage and his antipathy, so much the
+      better. I am very curious about it, and therefore about him. I want to
+      know what has produced this strange state of feeling in a young man who
+      ought to have all the common instincts of a social being. I believe there
+      are unexplained facts in the region of sympathies and antipathies which
+      will repay study with a deeper insight into the mysteries of life than we
+      have dreamed of hitherto. I often wonder whether there are not heart-waves
+      and soul-waves as well as 'brain-waves,' which some have already
+      recognized.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman talking the
+      language of science like an adept. The truth is, Lurida was one of those
+      persons who never are young, and who, by way of compensation, will never
+      be old. They are found in both sexes. Two well-known graduates of one of
+      our great universities are living examples of this precocious but enduring
+      intellectual development. If the readers of this narrative cannot pick
+      them out, they need not expect the writer of it to help them. If they
+      guess rightly who they are, they will recognize the fact that just such
+      exceptional individuals as the young woman we are dealing with are met
+      with from time to time in families where intelligence has been cumulative
+      for two or three generations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable visitor
+      should learn all that was known in the village about the nebulous
+      individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the village were trying
+      to penetrate, but that he should learn it from some other informant than
+      Lurida.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside his
+      door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and handsome
+      youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so strikingly that one
+      might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a seat by his side.
+      Presently the two were engaged in conversation. The Interviewer asked all
+      sorts of questions about everybody in the village. When he came to inquire
+      about Maurice, the youth showed a remarkable interest regarding him. The
+      greatest curiosity, he said, existed with reference to this personage.
+      Everybody was trying to find out what his story was,&mdash;for a story,
+      and a strange one, he must surely have,&mdash;and nobody had succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive. The young man told him
+      the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis, about his
+      horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat was overturned,
+      and every occurrence he could recall which would help out the effect of
+      his narrative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer was becoming excited. &ldquo;Can't find out anything about him,
+      you said, did n-'t you? How do you know there's anything to find? Do you
+      want to know what I think he is? I'll tell you. I think he is an actor,&mdash;a
+      fellow from one of the city theatres. Those fellows go off in their summer
+      vacation, and like to puzzle the country folks. They are the very same
+      chaps, like as not, the visitors have seen in plays at the city theatres;
+      but of course they don't know 'em in plain clothes. Kings and Emperors
+      look pretty shabby off the stage sometimes, I can tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man followed the Interviewer's lead. &ldquo;I shouldn't wonder if you
+      were right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I remember seeing a young fellow in Romeo that
+      looked a good deal like this one. But I never met the Sphinx, as they call
+      him, face to face. He is as shy as a woodchuck. I believe there are people
+      here that would give a hundred dollars to find out who he is, and where he
+      came from, and what he is here for, and why he does n't act like other
+      folks. I wonder why some of those newspaper men don't come up here and get
+      hold of this story. It would be just the thing for a sensational writer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest.
+      Always on the lookout for something to make up a paragraph or a column
+      about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,&mdash;to the
+      biggest pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live frog from
+      the human stomach story, the third set of teeth and reading without
+      spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous commonplaces
+      which are kept in type with e o y or e 6 m (every other year or every six
+      months) at the foot; always in want of a fresh incident, a new story, an
+      undescribed character, an unexplained mystery, it is no wonder that the
+      Interviewer fastened eagerly upon this most tempting subject for an
+      inventive and emotional correspondent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's
+      confidential servant, but had never spoken to him. So he said to himself
+      that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with. In the summer
+      season many kinds of small traffic were always carried on in Arrowhead
+      Village. Among the rest, the sellers of fruits&mdash;oranges, bananas, and
+      others, according to the seasons&mdash;did an active business. The
+      Interviewer watched one of these fruit-sellers, and saw that his hand-cart
+      stopped opposite the house where, as he knew, Maurice Kirkwood was living.
+      Presently Paolo came out of the door, and began examining the contents of
+      the hand-cart. The Interviewer saw his opportunity. Here was an
+      introduction to the man, and the man must introduce him to the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,&mdash;there was
+      no difficulty about that. He had learned his name, and that he was an
+      Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Mr. Paul,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How do you like the look of these
+      oranges?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They pretty fair,&rdquo; said Paolo: &ldquo;no so good as them las' week; no sweet as
+      them was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, how do you know without tasting them?&rdquo; said the Interviewer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know by his look,&mdash;I know by his smell,&mdash;he no good yaller,&mdash;he
+      no smell ripe,&mdash;I know orange ever since my head no bigger than he
+      is,&rdquo; and Paolo laughed at his own comparison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer laughed louder than Paolo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said he,&mdash;&ldquo;first-rate! Of course you know all about 'em. Why
+      can't you pick me out a couple of what you think are the best of 'em? I
+      shall be greatly obliged to you. I have a sick friend, and I want to get
+      two nice sweet ones for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Paolo was pleased. His skill and judgment were recognized. He felt
+      grateful to the stranger, who had given him, an opportunity of conferring
+      a favor. He selected two, after careful examination and grave
+      deliberation. The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to offer him
+      an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Mr. Kirkwood, to-day?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signor? He very well. He always well. Why you ask? Anybody tell you he
+      sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nobody said he was sick. I have n't seen him going about for a day or
+      two, and I thought he might have something the matter with him. Is he in
+      the house now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No: he off riding. He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day.
+      Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle in the morning, very, very early,&mdash;in
+      night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and read, and study,
+      and write,&mdash;he great scholar, Misser Kirkwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good many books, has n't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He got whole shelfs full of books. Great books, little books, old books,
+      new books, all sorts of books. He great scholar, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has n't he some curiosities,&mdash;old figures, old jewelry, old coins,
+      or things of that sort?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously. &ldquo;He don't
+      keep no jewels nor no money in his chamber. He got some old things,&mdash;old
+      jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they used to have in old
+      times: she don't pass now.&rdquo; Paolo's genders were apt to be somewhat
+      indiscriminately distributed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lucky thought struck the Interviewer. &ldquo;I wonder if he would examine some
+      old coins of mine?&rdquo; said he, in a modestly tentative manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think he like to see anything curious. When he come home I ask him. Who
+      will I tell him wants to ask him about old coin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call and
+      show him some old pieces of money, said to be Roman ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old battered
+      bits of copper which he had picked up at a tollman's, where they had been
+      passed off for cents. He had bought them as curiosities. One had the name
+      of Gallienus upon it, tolerably distinct,&mdash;a common little Roman
+      penny; but it would serve his purpose of asking a question, as would two
+      or three others with less legible legends. Paolo told him that if he came
+      the next morning he would stand a fair chance of seeing Mr. Kirkwood. At
+      any rate, he would speak to his master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing his
+      breakfast and his cigar, feeling reasonably sure of finding Mr. Kirkwood
+      at home, as he proved to be. He had told Paolo to show the stranger up to
+      his library,&mdash;or study, as he modestly called it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one
+      direction, and the wooded hill in another. The tenant had fitted it up in
+      scholarly fashion. The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous, many of
+      them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding, showing that
+      probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other Italian city. With
+      these were older volumes in their dark original leather, and recent ones
+      in cloth or paper. As the Interviewer ran his eye over them, he found that
+      he could make very little out of what their backs taught him. Some of the
+      paper-covered books, some of the cloth-covered ones, had names which he
+      knew; but those on the backs of many of the others were strange to his
+      eyes. The classics of Greek and Latin and Italian literature were there;
+      and he saw enough to feel convinced that he had better not attempt to
+      display his erudition in the company of this young scholar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his visiting
+      a person who had not asked to make his acquaintance, and who was living as
+      a recluse. He took out his battered coppers, and showed them to Maurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a good
+      many yourself. So I took the liberty of calling upon you, hoping that you
+      could tell me something about some ancient coins I have had for a good
+      while.&rdquo; So saying, he pointed to the copper with the name of Gallienus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this very rare and valuable? I have heard that great prices have been
+      paid for some of these ancient coins,&mdash;ever so many guineas,
+      sometimes. I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than a thousand years old,&rdquo; said Maurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And worth a great deal of money?&rdquo; asked the Interviewer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not a great deal of money,&rdquo; answered Maurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much, should you say?&rdquo; said the Interviewer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maurice smiled. &ldquo;A little more than the value of its weight in copper,&mdash;I
+      am afraid not much more. There are a good many of these coins of Gallienus
+      knocking about. The peddlers and the shopkeepers take such pieces
+      occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or ten cents, to young
+      collectors. No, it is not very precious in money value, but as a relic any
+      piece of money that was passed from hand to hand a thousand or fifteen
+      hundred years ago is interesting. The value of such relics is a good deal
+      a matter of imagination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you say to these others?&rdquo; asked the Interviewer. Poor old
+      worn-out things they were, with a letter or two only, and some faint trace
+      of a figure on one or two of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the
+      times when you may suppose they were current. Perhaps Horace tossed one of
+      them to a beggar. Perhaps one of these was the coin that was brought when
+      One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I may see it.' But
+      the market price is a different matter. That depends on the beauty and
+      preservation, and above all the rarity, of the specimen. Here is a coin,
+      now,&rdquo;&mdash;he opened a small cabinet, and took one from it. &ldquo;Here is a
+      Syracusan decadrachm with the head of Persephone, which is at once rare,
+      well preserved, and beautiful. I am afraid to tell what I paid for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics. He cared very little
+      more for an old coin than he did for an old button, but he had thought his
+      purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation. No matter about
+      the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any rate, that Maurice must
+      have money and could be extravagant, or what he himself considered so;
+      also that he was familiar with ancient coins. That would do for a
+      beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I ask where you picked up the coin you are showing me?&rdquo; he said
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is a question which provokes a negative answer. One does not 'pick
+      up' first-class coins or paintings, very often, in these times. I bought
+      this of a great dealer in Rome.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lived in Rome once?&rdquo; said the Interviewer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For some years. Perhaps you have been there yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he should
+      go there, one of these years, &ldquo;suppose you studied art and antiquities
+      while you were there?&rdquo; he continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and antiquities.
+      Before you go there I advise you to review Roman history and the classic
+      authors. You had better make a study of ancient and modern art, and not
+      have everything to learn while you are going about among ruins, and
+      churches, and galleries. You know your Horace and Virgil well, I take it
+      for granted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer hesitated. The names sounded as if he had heard them. &ldquo;Not
+      so well as I mean to before going to Rome,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;May I ask how
+      long you lived in Rome?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it. No one should
+      go there without careful preparation beforehand. You are familiar with
+      Vasari, of course?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead. He took out his
+      handkerchief. &ldquo;It is a warm day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have not had time to read
+      all&mdash;the works I mean to. I have had too much writing to do, myself,
+      to find all the time for reading and study I could have wished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will pardon my
+      inquiry? said Maurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am connected with the press. I understood that you were a man of
+      letters, and I hoped I might have the privilege of hearing from your own
+      lips some account of your literary experiences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it for my
+      autobiography. You said you were connected with the press. Do I understand
+      that you are an author?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a very
+      warm day. He did not seem to be getting hold of his pitcher by the right
+      handle, somehow. But he could not help answering Maurice's very simple
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author, I
+      may call myself one. I write for the 'People's Perennial and Household
+      Inquisitor'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you the literary critic of that well-known journal, or do you manage
+      the political column?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of
+      interest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Places you have been to, and people you have known?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes,&mdash;generally, that is. Sometimes I have to compile my articles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you write the letter from Rome, published a few weeks ago?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place. However, he had
+      found that his man was too much for him, and saw that the best thing he
+      could do was to submit to be interviewed himself. He thought that he
+      should be able to pick up something or other which he could work into his
+      report of his visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&mdash;prepared that article for our columns. You know one does
+      not have to see everything he describes. You found it accurate, I hope, in
+      its descriptions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Murray is generally accurate. Sometimes he makes mistakes, but I
+      can't say how far you have copied them. You got the Ponte Molle&mdash;the
+      old Milvian bridge&mdash;a good deal too far down the stream, if I
+      remember. I happened to notice that, but I did not read the article
+      carefully. May I ask whether you propose to do me the honor of reporting
+      this visit and the conversation we have had, for the columns of the
+      newspaper with which you are connected?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer thought he saw an opening. &ldquo;If you have no objections,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;I should like very much to ask a few questions.&rdquo; He was recovering
+      his professional audacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet,
+      &mdash;after you have answered one or two of mine: Who commissioned you to
+      submit me to examination?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the humble
+      agent of its investigations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has the public to do with my private affairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it is a question of majority and minority. That settles
+      everything in this country. You are a minority of one opposed to a large
+      number of curious people that form a majority against you. That is the way
+      I've heard the chief put it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the American
+      citizen. The Interviewer smiled, too, and thought he had his man, sure, at
+      last. Maurice calmly answered, &ldquo;There is nothing left for minorities,
+      then, but the right of rebellion. I don't care about being made the
+      subject of an article for your paper. I am here for my pleasure, minding
+      my own business, and content with that occupation. I rebel against your
+      system of forced publicity. Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public
+      all it has any right to know about me. In the mean time I shall request to
+      be spared reading my biography while I am living. I wish you a
+      good-morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer had not taken out his note-book and pencil. In his next
+      communication from Arrowhead Village he contented himself with a brief
+      mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now visiting the
+      place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the privilege of
+      examining, and whose courtesy was equalled only by the modesty that
+      shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular intelligence
+      would otherwise confer upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had failed to
+      get the first hint of its solution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain idle.
+      The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the various
+      cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the conversational
+      circles which met every evening in the different centres of social life.
+      The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was that Maurice had a congenital
+      aversion to some color, the effects of which upon him were so painful or
+      disagreeable that he habitually avoided exposure to it. It was known, and
+      it has already been mentioned, that such cases were on record. There had
+      been a great deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact long
+      known to a few individuals, but only recently made a matter of careful
+      scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public. This was
+      the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness. It did not seem very
+      strange that if one person in every score or two could not tell red from
+      green there might be other curious individual peculiarities relating to
+      color. A case has already been referred to where the subject of
+      observation fainted at the sight of any red object. What if this were the
+      trouble with Maurice Kirkwood? It will be seen at once how such a
+      congenital antipathy would tend to isolate the person who was its
+      unfortunate victim. It was an hypothesis not difficult to test, but it was
+      a rather delicate business to be experimenting on an inoffensive stranger.
+      Miss Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to Euthymia, of
+      any projects she might entertain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII. MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
+      Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading various
+      works selected for her by Dr. Butts,&mdash;works chiefly relating to the
+      nervous system and its different affections. She thought it was about time
+      to talk over the general subject of the medical profession with her new
+      teacher,&mdash;if such a self-directing person as Lurida could be said to
+      recognize anybody as teacher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She began at the beginning. &ldquo;What is the first book you would put in a
+      student's hands, doctor?&rdquo; she said to him one day. They were in his study,
+      and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on Insanity, one of
+      Bucknill and Puke's, which she had devoured as if it had been a pamphlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not that book, certainly,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am afraid it will put all sorts of
+      notions into your head. Who or what set you to reading that, I should like
+      to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps be
+      crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what kind of
+      a condition insanity is. I don't believe they were ever very bright, those
+      insane people, most of them. I hope I am not stupid enough ever to lose my
+      wits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that busy
+      brain of yours. But did n't it make you nervous, reading about so many
+      people possessed with such strange notions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nervous? Not a bit. I could n't help thinking, though, how many people I
+      had known that had a little touch of craziness about them. Take that poor
+      woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,&mdash;not Her Majesty, but
+      Her Majesty's Person,&mdash;a very important distinction, according to
+      her: how she does remind me of more than one girl I have known! She would
+      let her skirts down so as to make a kind of train, and pile things on her
+      head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and throw her head back, and feel
+      as grand as a queen. I have seen more than one girl act very much in that
+      way. Are not most of us a little crazy, doctor,&mdash;just a little? I
+      think so. It seems to me I never saw but one girl who was free from every
+      hint of craziness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who was that, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Euthymia,&mdash;nobody else, of course. She never loses her head,&mdash;I
+      don't believe she would in an earthquake. Whenever we were at work with
+      our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind was the
+      only achromatic one I ever looked into,&mdash;I did n't say looked
+      through.&mdash;But I did n't come to talk about that. I read in one of
+      your books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he should
+      read, the great physician said, 'Read &ldquo;Don Quixote.&rdquo;' I want you to
+      explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the first book,
+      according to your idea, that a student ought to read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper to
+      be read before the Society? I think there may be other young ladies at the
+      meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing the study of
+      medicine. At any rate, there are a good many who are interested in the
+      subject; in fact, most people listen readily to anything doctors tell them
+      about their calling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish you would, doctor. I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't doubt
+      there will be others who will be glad to hear everything you have to say
+      about it. But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade Euthymia to become a
+      physician! What a doctor she would make! So strong, so calm, so full of
+      wisdom! I believe she could take the wheel of a steamboat in a storm, or
+      the hose of a fire-engine in a conflagration, and handle it as well as the
+      captain of the boat or of the fire-company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you ever talked with her about studying medicine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed I have. Oh, if she would only begin with me! What good times we
+      would have studying together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't doubt it. Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you think
+      practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten miles in
+      a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches was racking
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of
+      storms or anything else. If she would only study medicine with me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what does she say to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She does n't like the thought of it. She does n't believe in women
+      doctors. She thinks that now and then a woman may be fitted for it by
+      nature, but she does n't think there are many who are. She gives me a good
+      many reasons against their practising medicine, you know what most of them
+      are, doctor,&mdash;and ends by saying that the same woman who would be a
+      poor sort of doctor would make a first-rate nurse; and that, she thinks,
+      is a woman's business, if her instinct carries her to the hospital or
+      sick-chamber. I can't argue her ideas out of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I am
+      disposed to agree with your friend, that you will often spoil a good nurse
+      to make a poor doctor. Doctors and side-saddles don't seem to me to go
+      together. Riding habits would be awkward things for practitioners. But
+      come, we won't have a controversy just now. I am for giving women every
+      chance for a good education, and if they think medicine is one of their
+      proper callings let them try it. I think they will find that they had
+      better at least limit themselves to certain specialties, and always have
+      an expert of the other sex to fall back upon. The trouble is that they are
+      so impressible and imaginative that they are at the mercy of all sorts of
+      fancy systems. You have only to see what kinds of instruction they very
+      commonly flock to in order to guess whether they would be likely to prove
+      sensible practitioners. Charlatanism always hobbles on two crutches, the
+      tattle of women, and the certificates of clergymen, and I am afraid that
+      half the women doctors will be too much under both those influences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the
+      village, had &ldquo;carried her through&rdquo; a fever, brought on by over-excitement
+      and exhausting study. She took no offence at his reference to nursery
+      gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap. Nobody so despises the
+      weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's rights. She accepted the
+      doctor's concession of a fair field and open trial of the fitness of her
+      sex for medical practice, and did not trouble herself about his suggested
+      limitations. As to the imaginative tendencies of women, she knew too well
+      the truth of the doctor's remark relating to them to wish to contradict
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
+      doctor,&rdquo; she said; and in due season it came, and was of course approved
+      for reading.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII. DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal souls is
+      that which we feel for our mortal bodies. I am afraid my very first
+      statement may be open to criticism. The care of the body is the first
+      thought with a great many,&mdash;in fact, with the larger part of the
+      world. They send for the physician first, and not until he gives them up
+      do they commonly call in the clergyman. Even the minister himself is not
+      so very different from other people. We must not blame him if he is not
+      always impatient to exchange a world of multiplied interests and
+      ever-changing sources of excitement for that which tradition has delivered
+      to us as one eminently deficient in the stimulus of variety. Besides,
+      these bodily frames, even when worn and disfigured by long years of
+      service, hang about our consciousness like old garments. They are used to
+      us, and we are used to them. And all the accidents of our lives,&mdash;the
+      house we dwell in, the living people round us, the landscape we look over,
+      all, up to the sky that covers us like a bell glass,&mdash;all these are
+      but looser outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of
+      us, and we do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which
+      we have never yet tried on. How well I remember that dear ancient lady,
+      who lived well into the last decade of her century, as she repeated the
+      verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select from that string
+      of pearls, Gray's 'Elegy'!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;'For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
+   This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
+   Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+   Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told. Better so, it may be, than
+      to live solely for it, as so many do. But it may be well doubted if there
+      is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society. On the contrary, there are
+      many who think a great deal of their bodies, many who have come here to
+      regain the health they have lost in the wear and tear of city life, and
+      very few who have not at some time or other of their lives had occasion to
+      call in the services of a physician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members some
+      remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical
+      practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical studies,
+      happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the greatest and
+      most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas Sydenham. The story is
+      that, when a student asked him what books he should read, the great doctor
+      told him to read 'Don Quixote.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study of
+      books, and furnishes a convenient shield for ignorant pretenders. But
+      Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical
+      experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not
+      thought they would be better reading for the medical student than the
+      story of Cervantes. His own works are esteemed to this day, and he
+      certainly could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom of
+      all the past. No remedy is good, it was said of old, unless applied at the
+      right time in the right way. So we may say of all anecdotes, like this
+      which I have told you about Sydenham and the young man. It is very likely
+      that he carried him to the bedside of some patients, and talked to him
+      about the cases he showed him, instead of putting a Latin volume in his
+      hand. I would as soon begin in that way as any other, with a student who
+      had already mastered the preliminary branches,&mdash;who knew enough about
+      the structure and functions of the body in health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical student of
+      a philosophical habit of mind, you may be surprised to hear me say it
+      would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.' They are the ones where the
+      astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management of the elements,
+      the control of which, as he had persuaded himself, had been committed to
+      him. Let me read you a few sentences from this story, which is commonly
+      bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like a woollen lining to a silken
+      mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in processions of paragraphs which
+      sound as if they ought to have a grammatical drum-major to march before
+      their tramping platoons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to him
+      the secret of his wonderful powers:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I have
+      possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
+      distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and
+      passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have
+      poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I have
+      restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervors of the
+      crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto eluded
+      my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial tempests, which
+      I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere,
+      devoted, and most benevolent man, for forty years a student of the
+      heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these miraculous
+      powers. This is his account:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in
+      my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains,
+      and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I
+      commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my command with that
+      of the inundation I found that the clouds had listened to my lips.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence? The Nile
+      does not always rise on the same day.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, 'that such objections could
+      escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and labored against
+      truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness,
+      and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you,
+      capable of distinguishing the wonderful from the impossible and the
+      incredible from the false.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom he
+      has adopted as his successor in the government of the elements and the
+      seasons, in these impressive words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
+      innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
+      thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons. The memory
+      of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee to let
+      kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain to pour it
+      on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in which the
+      delusions of an insane astronomer are related with all the pomp of the
+      Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young person about to
+      enter on the study of the science and art of healing? Listen to me while I
+      show you the parallel of the story of the astronomer in the history of
+      medicine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with benevolence, but
+      all its wisdom and all its virtue have had to struggle with the
+      ever-rising mists of delusion. The agencies which waste and destroy the
+      race of mankind are vast and resistless as the elemental forces of nature;
+      nay, they are themselves elemental forces. They may be to some extent
+      avoided, to some extent diverted from their aim, to some extent resisted.
+      So may the changes of the seasons, from cold that freezes to heats that
+      strike with sudden death, be guarded against. So may the tides be in some
+      small measure restrained in their inroads. So may the storms be breasted
+      by walls they cannot shake from their foundations. But the seasons and the
+      tides and the tempests work their will on the great scale upon whatever
+      stands in their way; they feed or starve the tillers of the soil; they
+      spare or drown the dwellers by the shore; they waft the seaman to his
+      harbor or bury him in the angry billows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from deadly
+      and dangerous influences, and something to control or arrest the effects
+      of these influences. But look at the records of the life-insurance
+      offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's destroying
+      agencies. Look at the annual reports of the deaths in any of our great
+      cities, and see how their regularity approaches the uniformity of the
+      tides, and their variations keep pace with those of the seasons. The
+      inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to be predicted than the
+      vast wave of infantile disease which flows in upon all our great cities
+      with the growing heats of July,&mdash;than the fevers and dysenteries
+      which visit our rural districts in the months of the falling leaf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the rise of
+      the great river. He longs to rescue individuals, to protect communities
+      from the inroads of these destroying agencies. He uses all the means which
+      experience has approved, tries every rational method which ingenuity can
+      suggest. Some fortunate recovery leads him to believe he has hit upon a
+      preventive or a cure for a malady which had resisted all known remedies.
+      His rescued patient sounds his praises, and a wide circle of his patient's
+      friends joins in a chorus of eulogies. Self-love applauds him for his
+      sagacity. Self-interest congratulates him on his having found the road to
+      fortune; the sense of having proved a benefactor of his race smooths the
+      pillow on which he lays his head to dream of the brilliant future opening
+      before him. If a single coincidence may lead a person of sanguine
+      disposition to believe that he has mastered a disease which had baffled
+      all who were before his time, and on which his contemporaries looked in
+      hopeless impotence, what must be the effect of a series of such
+      coincidences even on a mind of calmer temper! Such series of coincidences
+      will happen, and they may well deceive the very elect. Think of Dr. Rush,&mdash;you
+      know what a famous man he was, the very head and front of American medical
+      science in his day, &mdash;and remember how he spoke about yellow fever,
+      which he thought he had mastered!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy, in
+      which he and his patient and their friends, and Nature herself, are
+      involved. What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to so great
+      an extent a record of self-delusion!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true science
+      and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied in the first
+      aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Do not draw a wrong
+      inference from the frank statement of the difficulties which beset the
+      medical practitioner. Think rather, if truth is so hard of attainment, how
+      precious are the results which the consent of the wisest and most
+      experienced among the healers of men agrees in accepting. Think what folly
+      it is to cast them aside in favor of palpable impositions stolen from the
+      records of forgotten charlatanism, or of fantastic speculations spun from
+      the squinting brains of theorists as wild as the Egyptian astronomer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the
+      following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your first lesson will teach you
+      modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all practical
+      branches of knowledge. Faith will come later, when you learn how much
+      medical science and art have actually achieved for the relief of mankind,
+      and how great are the promises it holds out of still larger triumphs over
+      the enemies of human health and happiness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which we
+      have no room to report here, and the Society adjourned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV. MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The sober-minded, sensible, well-instructed Dr. Butts was not a little
+      exercised in mind by the demands made upon his knowledge by his young
+      friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida Vincent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't wonder they called her The Terror,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;She is
+      enough to frighten anybody. She has taken down old books from my shelves
+      that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to the medical journals,
+      I believe the girl could index them from memory. She is in pursuit of some
+      special point of knowledge, I feel sure, and I cannot doubt what direction
+      she is working in, but her wonderful way of dealing with books amazes me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What marvels those &ldquo;first scholars&rdquo; in the classes of our great
+      universities and colleges are, to be sure! They are not, as a rule, the
+      most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life. The
+      chances are that &ldquo;the field&rdquo; will beat &ldquo;the favorite&rdquo; over the long
+      race-course. Others will develop a longer stride and more staying power.
+      But what fine gifts those &ldquo;first scholars&rdquo; have received from nature! How
+      dull we writers, famous or obscure, are in the acquisition of knowledge as
+      compared with them! To lead their classmates they must have quick
+      apprehension, fine memories, thorough control of their mental faculties,
+      strong will, power of concentration, facility of expression,&mdash;a
+      wonderful equipment of mental faculties. I always want to take my hat off
+      to the first scholar of his year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The Terror. She
+      surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was ready to receive her
+      without astonishment when she burst in upon him one day with a cry of
+      triumph, &ldquo;Eureka! Eureka!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what have you found, my dear?&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new discovery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's dread
+      of all human intercourse!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute and get your breath,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;Are you not a
+      little overstating his peculiarity? It is not quite so bad as that. He
+      keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old Tavern,
+      he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he pulled out
+      of the water, or rescued somehow,&mdash;I don't believe he avoids the
+      whole human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I have
+      remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man was
+      ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much more
+      than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some congenital
+      or other personal repugnance to which has been given the name of an
+      antipathy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking. When he
+      finished, she began the account of her discovery:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an Italian
+      medical journal of about fourteen years ago. I met with a reference which
+      led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli Ospitali lying among the
+      old pamphlets in the medical section of the Library. I have made a
+      translation of it, which you must read and then tell me if you do not
+      agree with me in my conclusion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for
+      myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you seem to
+      have reached.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a map
+      of the world, as she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the bite
+      of a TARANTULA!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor drew a long breath. He remembered in a vague sort of way the
+      stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but he had
+      consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have
+      clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name. He looked into the
+      round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as if he feared that she
+      was in a state of undue excitement, but, true to his professional
+      training, he waited for another symptom, if indeed her mind was in any
+      measure off its balance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you are thinking,&rdquo; Lurida said, &ldquo;but it is not so. 'I am not
+      mad, most noble Festus.' You shall see the evidence and judge for
+      yourself. Read the whole case,&mdash;you can read my hand almost as if it
+      were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this young man is
+      in all probability the same person as the boy described in the Italian
+      journal,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One thing you might say is against the supposition. The young patient is
+      spoken of as Signorino M&mdash;&mdash; Ch&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; But you
+      must remember that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which letter
+      is wanting in the Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough that the
+      initial of the second name should have got changed in the record to its
+      Italian equivalent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this extraordinary
+      case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes to be indulged in
+      a few words of explanation, in order that he may not have to apologize for
+      allowing the introduction of a subject which may be thought to belong to
+      the professional student rather than to the readers of this record. There
+      is a great deal in medical books which it is very unbecoming to bring
+      before the general public,&mdash;a great deal to repel, to disgust, to
+      alarm, to excite unwholesome curiosity. It is not the men whose duties
+      have made them familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely to
+      offend by scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician's private
+      library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite literature. Goldsmith
+      and even Smollett, both having studied and practised medicine, could not
+      by any possibility have outraged all the natural feelings of delicacy and
+      decency as Swift and Zola have outraged them. But without handling
+      doubtful subjects, there are many curious medical experiences which have
+      interest for every one as extreme illustrations of ordinary conditions
+      with which all are acquainted. No one can study the now familiar history
+      of clairvoyance profitably who has not learned something of the vagaries
+      of hysteria. No one can read understandingly the life of Cowper and that
+      of Carlyle without having some idea of the influence of hypochondriasis
+      and of dyspepsia upon the disposition and intellect of the subjects of
+      these maladies. I need not apologize, therefore, for giving publicity to
+      that part of this narrative which deals with one of the most singular
+      maladies to be found in the records of bodily and mental infirmities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss Vincent.
+      For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the original paper,
+      and for similar reasons the date of the event and the birthplace of the
+      patient are not precisely indicated here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      [Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18&mdash;.] REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
+      instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of the
+      extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the subject
+      of a recent medical consultation in this city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Signorino M... Ch... is the only son of a gentleman travelling in Italy
+      at this time. He is eleven years of age, of sanguine-nervous temperament,
+      light hair, blue eyes, intelligent countenance, well grown, but rather
+      slight in form, to all appearance in good health, but subject to certain
+      peculiar and anomalous nervous symptoms, of which his father gives this
+      history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy with
+      his wife, this child, and a nurse. They were passing a few days in a
+      country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province of the same
+      name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia. The child was in perfect
+      health and had never been affected by any serious illness. On the 10th of
+      July he was playing out in the field near the house where the family was
+      staying when he was heard to scream suddenly and violently. The nurse
+      rushing to him found him in great pain, saying that something had bitten
+      him in one of his feet. A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the moment and
+      perceived in the grass, near where the boy was standing, an enormous
+      spider, which he at once recognized as a tarantula. He managed to catch
+      the creature in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards transferred to
+      a wide-mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for a month or
+      more. The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a pair of
+      nipper-like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound. His body
+      measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of the
+      longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches. Such was the
+      account given by the physician to whom the peasant carried the great
+      spider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
+      stocking was being removed and the foot examined. The place of the bite
+      was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already showed
+      the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending around them,
+      with some puffy swelling. The distinguished Dr. Amadei was immediately
+      sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the hope of drawing forth
+      the poison. In vain all his skill and efforts! Soon, ataxic (irregular)
+      nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it became plain that the system
+      had been infected by the poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as
+      distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing, collapse
+      of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death. From these first
+      symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had been profoundly
+      affected by the venom circulating through it. His constitution has never
+      thrown off the malady resulting from this toxic (poisonous) agent. The
+      phenomena which have been observed in this young patient correspond so
+      nearly with those enumerated in the elaborate essay of the celebrated
+      Baglivi that one might think they had been transcribed from his pages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very fond of solitude,&mdash;of wandering about in churchyards and
+      other lonely places. He was once found hiding in an empty tomb, which had
+      been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable. Generally
+      speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his likes and
+      dislikes are capricious, and with regard to some colors his antipathy
+      amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect upon him that
+      he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets any one whose
+      dress has any of that particular color he will turn away or retreat so as
+      to avoid passing that person. Among these, purple and dark green are the
+      least endurable. He cannot explain the sensations which these obnoxious
+      colors produce except by saying that it is like the deadly feeling from a
+      blow on the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning took
+      place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like fainting
+      or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those affections. All the
+      other symptoms are aggravated at this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health. He is
+      fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal of exercise,
+      which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by popular
+      belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we shall again
+      refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results. If the graver
+      symptoms recur while the patient is under our observation, we propose to
+      make use of an agency discredited by modern skepticism, but deserving of a
+      fair trial as an exceptional remedy for an exceptional disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian physician
+      of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in the Giornale
+      in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian, subjoined. Here
+      are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from them, with a
+      translation of them into English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by the
+      subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows: &ldquo;'Et si astantes incedant
+      vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis ingrates est, necesse est ut ab
+      illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad intuitum molesti coloris angore cordis,
+      et symptomatum recrudescantia stating corripiuntur.' (G. Baglivi, Op.
+      Omnia, page 614. Lugduni, 1745.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color
+      which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them, for on
+      seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress in the
+      region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says: &ldquo;'Dam calor solis
+      ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa initia Julii et Augusti,
+      Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid., page
+      619.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more fiercely,
+      which happens about the beginning of July and August, the subjects of
+      Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching recrudescence (returning
+      symptoms) of the poisoning. Among the remedies most valued by this
+      illustrious physician is that mentioned in the following sentence:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis diebus,
+      hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos chronicos pene
+      incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or in translation, 'I commend especially riding on horseback in country
+      air, every day, by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which
+      horseback riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost
+      incurable.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him to
+      examine and consider. He listened with a grave countenance and devout
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate tones
+      of the deepest conviction,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, doctor! Have n't I found the true story of this strange visitor?
+      Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx? Who can this man be but the
+      boy of that story? Look at the date of the journal when he was eleven
+      years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and that is just about the
+      age the people here think he must be of. What could account so entirely
+      for his ways and actions as that strange poisoning which produces the
+      state they call Tarantism? I am just as sure it must be that as I am that
+      I am alive. Oh, doctor, doctor, I must be right,&mdash;this Signorino M
+      ... Ch... was the boy Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for
+      everything,&mdash;his solitary habits, his dread of people,&mdash;it must
+      be because they wear the colors he can't bear. His morning rides on
+      horseback, his coming here just as the season was approaching which would
+      aggravate all his symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right
+      in my conjecture,&mdash;no, my conviction?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he let
+      her run on until she ran down. He was more used to the rules of evidence
+      than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion so readily as
+      she would have liked to have him. He knew that beginners are very apt to
+      make what they think are discoveries. But he had been an angler and knew
+      the meaning of a yielding rod and an easy-running reel. He said quietly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie case
+      it is that you make out. I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood is not the
+      same person as the M... Ch... of the medical journal,&mdash;that is, if I
+      accept your explanation of the difference in the initials of these two
+      names. Even if there were a difference, that would not disprove their
+      identity, for the initials of patients whose cases are reported by their
+      physicians are often altered for the purpose of concealment. I do not
+      know, however, that Mr. Kirkwood has shown any special aversion to any
+      particular color. It might be interesting to inquire whether it is so, but
+      it is a delicate matter. I don't exactly see whose business it is to
+      investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and constitutional
+      history. If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he might
+      tell me all about himself, in confidence, you know. These old accounts
+      from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am cautious about
+      receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an
+      improbability, as his stories about the cure of the tarantula bite by
+      music certainly do. I am disposed to wait for future developments, bearing
+      in mind, of course, the very singular case you have unearthed. It wouldn't
+      be very strange if our young gentleman had to send for me before the
+      season is over. He is out a good deal before the dew is off the grass,
+      which is rather risky in this neighborhood as autumn comes on. I am
+      somewhat curious, I confess, about the young man, but I do not meddle
+      where I am not asked for or wanted, and I have found that eggs hatch just
+      as well if you let them alone in the nest as if you take them out and
+      shake them every day. This is a wonderfully interesting supposition of
+      yours, and may prove to be strictly in accordance with the facts. But I do
+      not think we have all the facts in this young man's case. If it were
+      proved that he had an aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen
+      your case. His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers
+      a wide ground, to account for his self-isolation,&mdash;and the color
+      hypothesis seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think
+      you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping
+      for a while, rather than let it get abroad in a community like this, where
+      so many tongues are in active exercise. I will carefully study this paper,
+      if you will leave it with me, and we will talk the whole matter over. It
+      is a fair subject for speculation, only we must keep quiet about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a little.
+      She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would come for it the
+      next day, and went off to tell the result of this visit to her bosom
+      friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV. DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
+      lady. She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered the
+      secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village. It was of
+      no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited state. But he felt
+      it his duty to guard her against any possible results of indiscretion into
+      which her eagerness and her theory of the equality, almost the identity,
+      of the sexes might betray her. Too much of the woman in a daughter of our
+      race leads her to forget danger. Too little of the woman prompts her to
+      defy it. Fortunately for this last class of women, they are not quite so
+      likely to be perilously seductive as their more emphatically feminine
+      sisters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their infancy.
+      He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence from its
+      precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained faculties. He had
+      looked with admiration on the childish beauty of Euthymia, and had seen
+      her grow up to womanhood, every year making her more attractive. He knew
+      that if anything was to be done with his self-willed young scholar and
+      friend, it would be more easily effected through the medium of Euthymia
+      than by direct advice to the young lady herself. So the thoughtful doctor
+      made up his mind to have a good talk with Euthymia, and put her on her
+      guard, if Lurida showed any tendency to forget the conventionalities in
+      her eager pursuit of knowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss Euthymia
+      Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all the tongues
+      in the village going. This was one of those families where illness was
+      hardly looked for among the possibilities of life. There were other
+      families where a call from the doctor was hardly more thought of than a
+      call from the baker. But here he was a stranger, at least on his
+      professional rounds, and when he asked for Miss Euthymia the servant, who
+      knew his face well, stared as if he had held in his hand a warrant for her
+      apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made ready to
+      meet him. One look at her glass to make sure that a lock had not run
+      astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for a morning call
+      was finished. Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had been announced, she
+      might have taken a second look, but with the good middle-aged, married
+      doctor one was enough for a young lady who had the gift of making all the
+      dresses she wore look well, and had no occasion to treat her chamber like
+      the laboratory where an actress compounds herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily. She could not help suspecting
+      his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk over her
+      friend's schemes and fancies with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida. Does she tell you all
+      her plans and projects?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not
+      believe she keeps back anything of importance from me. I know what she has
+      been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into her head. What
+      do you think of the Tarantula business? She has shown you the paper, she
+      has written, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed she has. It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and I do
+      not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she had come at
+      the true solution of the village riddle. It may be that this young man is
+      the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian medical journal. But
+      it is very far from clear that he is so. You know all her reasons, of
+      course, as you have read the story. The times seem to agree well enough.
+      It is easy to conceive that Ch might be substituted for K in the report.
+      The singular solitary habits of this young man entirely coincide with the
+      story. If we could only find out whether he has any of those feelings with
+      reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of guessing
+      right than we have at present. But I don't see exactly how we are going to
+      submit him to examination on this point. If he were only a chemical
+      compound, we could analyze him. If he were only a bird or a quadruped, we
+      could find out his likes and dislikes. But being, as he is, a young man,
+      with ways of his own, and a will of his own, which he may not choose to
+      have interfered with, the problem becomes more complicated. I hear that a
+      newspaper correspondent has visited him so as to make a report to his
+      paper,&mdash;do you know what he found out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I do, very well. My brother has heard his own story, which was
+      this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to interview. The
+      young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he did not learn much
+      about the Sphinx. But the newspaper man told Willy about the Sphinx's
+      library and a cabinet of coins he had; and said he should make an article
+      out of him, anyhow. I wish the man would take himself off. I am afraid
+      Lurida's love of knowledge will get her into trouble!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking of the newspaper man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She blushed a little as she said, &ldquo;I can't help feeling a strange sort of
+      interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood. Do you know that I met him this
+      morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, to be sure! That was an interesting experience. And how did you
+      like his looks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought his face a very remarkable one. But he looked very pale as he
+      passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side as if he
+      had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,&mdash;spasm or neuralgia,&mdash;I
+      don't know what. I wondered whether he had what you call angina pectoris.
+      It was the same kind of look and movement, I remember, as you must, too,
+      in my uncle who died with that complaint.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was silent for a moment. Then he asked, &ldquo;Were you dressed as
+      you are now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders. I was out
+      early, and I have always remembered your caution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What color was your mantle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was black. I have been over all this with Lucinda. A black mantle on a
+      white dress. A straw hat with an old faded ribbon. There can't be much in
+      those colors to trouble him, I should think, for his man wears a black
+      coat and white linen,&mdash;more or less white, as you must have noticed,
+      and he must have seen ribbons of all colors often enough. But Lurida
+      believes it was the ribbon, or something in the combination of colors. Her
+      head is full of Tarantulas and Tarantism. I fear that she will never be
+      easy until the question is settled by actual trial. And will you believe
+      it? the girl is determined in some way to test her supposition!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Believe it, Euthymia? I can believe almost anything of Lurida. She is the
+      most irrepressible creature I ever knew. You know as well as I do what a
+      complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole nature. I have had
+      some fears lest her zeal might run away with her discretion. It is a great
+      deal easier to get into a false position than to get out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it well enough. I want you to tell me what you think about the
+      whole business. I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I can do
+      nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I can show
+      her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some way or other.
+      But she is ingenious,&mdash;full of all sorts of devices, innocent enough
+      in themselves, but liable to be misconstrued. You remember how she won us
+      the boat-race?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure I do. It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was
+      paying off an old score. The classical story of Atalanta, told, like that
+      of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to make trial
+      of the powers of resistance in the other sex. But it was audacious. I hope
+      her audacity will not go too far. You must watch her. Keep an eye on her
+      correspondence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend. He
+      felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing foolish
+      letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar indiscreet
+      performances. The boldness of young girls, who think no evil, in opening
+      correspondence with idealized personages is something quite astonishing to
+      those who have had an opportunity of knowing the facts. Lurida had passed
+      the most dangerous age, but her theory of the equality of the sexes made
+      her indifferent to the by-laws of social usage. She required watching, and
+      her two guardians were ready to check her, in case of need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI. MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for two or
+      three days. She found her more than once busy at her desk, with a
+      manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside the desk,
+      as Euthymia entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends expected to
+      see in the other. It showed that some project was under way, which, at
+      least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young lady did not wish to
+      disclose. It had cost her a good deal of thought and care, apparently, for
+      her waste-basket was full of scraps of paper, which looked as if they were
+      the remains of a manuscript like that at which she was at work. &ldquo;Copying
+      and recopying, probably,&rdquo; thought Euthymia, but she was willing to wait to
+      learn what Lurida was busy about, though she had a suspicion that it was
+      something in which she might feel called upon to interest herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what I think?&rdquo; said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him as he
+      left his door. &ldquo;I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I don't like
+      the thought of her doing such a thing. Of course she is not like other
+      girls in many respects, but other people will judge her by the common
+      rules of life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad that you spoke of it,&rdquo; answered the doctor; &ldquo;she would write to
+      him just as quickly as to any woman of his age. Besides, under the cover
+      of her office, she has got into the way of writing to anybody. I think she
+      has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him to contribute a paper for
+      the Society. She can find a pretext easily enough if she has made up her
+      mind to write. In fact, I doubt if she would trouble herself for any
+      pretext at all if she decided to write. Watch her well. Don't let any
+      letter go without seeing it, if you can help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they only
+      know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and especially to
+      romancers and poets. Nothing can be more innocent and simple-hearted than
+      most of these letters. They are the spontaneous outflow of young hearts
+      easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure which some story or poem has
+      given them, and recognizing their own thoughts, their own feelings, in
+      those expressed by the author, as if on purpose for them to read.
+      Undoubtedly they give great relief to solitary young persons, who must
+      have some ideal reflection of themselves, and know not where to look since
+      Protestantism has taken away the crucifix and the Madonna. The recipient
+      of these letters sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how
+      it is that his young correspondent has managed to fill so much space with
+      her simple message of admiration or of sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but she
+      could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally surround
+      themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their persons float
+      in a wide superfluity of woven tissues. Was she indeed writing to this
+      unknown gentleman? Euthymia questioned her point-blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood, Lurida?
+      You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else. Or are you
+      going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,&mdash;do tell me what
+      you are so much taken up with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault with me
+      for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do. You may read
+      this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything in it you don't
+      like you can suggest any change that you think will improve it. I hope you
+      will see that it explains itself. I don't believe that you will find
+      anything to frighten you in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend. The bold
+      handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it consequently a
+      less dangerous expression than that which belongs to the tinted and often
+      fragrant sheet with its delicate thready characters, which slant across
+      the page like an April shower with a south wind chasing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August&mdash;, 18&mdash;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR SIR,&mdash;You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a
+      letter like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the
+      Pansophian Society. There is a very common feeling that it is unbecoming
+      in one of my sex to address one of your own with whom she is unacquainted,
+      unless she has some special claim upon his attention. I am by no means
+      disposed to concede to the vulgar prejudice on this point. If one human
+      being has anything to communicate to another,&mdash;anything which
+      deserves being communicated,&mdash;I see no occasion for bringing in the
+      question of sex. I do not think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for
+      the male sex as its private property on general any more than on
+      grammatical grounds,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of healing.
+      If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving my whole powers
+      to the service of humanity. And if I should carry out that idea, should I
+      refuse my care and skill to a suffering fellow-mortal because that mortal
+      happened to be a brother, and not a sister? My whole nature protests
+      against such one-sided humanity! No! I am blind to all distinctions when
+      my eyes are opened to any form of suffering, to any spectacle of want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of, and to
+      whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive. It is because I
+      was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to you,&mdash;that on
+      Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our meetings. I say that
+      I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this as a compliment to that
+      paper. I am not bandying compliments now, but thinking of better things
+      than praises or phrases. I was interested in the paper, partly because I
+      recognized some of the feelings expressed in it as my own,&mdash;partly
+      because there was an undertone of sadness in all the voices of nature as
+      you echoed them which made me sad to hear, and which I could not help
+      longing to cheer and enliven. I said to myself, I should like to hold
+      communion with the writer of that paper. I have had my lonely hours and
+      days, as he has had. I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse
+      with nature. And oh! if I could draw him into those better human relations
+      which await us all, if we come with the right dispositions, I should blush
+      if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any conventional rule or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will understand me, I feel sure. You believe, do you not? in the
+      insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
+      brotherhood of mankind. You believe, do you not? that they should be
+      educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due
+      regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard or
+      light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the
+      &ldquo;stronger&rdquo; or the &ldquo;weaker&rdquo; sex. I mark these words because,
+      notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not true.
+      Stronger! Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of cider,&mdash;though
+      there have been women who could do that, and though when John Wesley was
+      mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down three or four men, one after
+      another, until she was at last overpowered and nearly murdered. Talk about
+      the weaker sex! Go and see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium! But no
+      matter about which sex has the strongest muscles. Which has most to
+      suffer, and which has most endurance and vitality? We go through many
+      ordeals which you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body. I have
+      been led away into one of my accustomed trains of thought, but not so far
+      away from it as you might at first suppose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My brother! Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal, a
+      sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the same
+      roof? And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes us all one
+      family? You are lonely, you must be longing for some human fellowship.
+      Take me into your confidence. What is there that you can tell me to which
+      I cannot respond with sympathy? What saddest note in your spiritual dirges
+      which will not find its chord in mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your existence. I
+      myself have known what it is to carry a brain that never rests in a body
+      that is always tired. I have defied its infirmities, and forced it to do
+      my bidding. You have no such hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect and
+      habits. You deal with horses like a Homeric hero. No wild Indian could
+      handle his bark canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we have
+      seen you handling yours. There must be some reason for your seclusion
+      which curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the province of
+      curiosity to inquire. But in the irresistible desire which I have to bring
+      you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run the risk of
+      giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for those
+      restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and sister can offer
+      to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to change the course of a life
+      which is not, which cannot be, in accordance with his true nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which
+      you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,&mdash;something
+      which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose
+      acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be anything
+      in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it as a
+      residence, even for a single season there might be individuals here whom
+      you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have a
+      personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain
+      sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most persons,
+      produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to
+      the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has occurred to me that
+      possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of the
+      street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a piano is
+      kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the village. Or it might
+      be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of women or the furniture
+      of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know that instances of such
+      antipathy have been recorded, and they would account for the seclusion of
+      those who are subject to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
+      entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I beg
+      of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not
+      strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the
+      hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer myself to be frightened
+      from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of use to a
+      fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered &ldquo;unfeminine.&rdquo; I can
+      bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot endure to think of myself
+      as inhuman. Can I help you, my brother'?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Believe me your most sincere well-wisher, LURIDA VINCENT.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she
+      finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
+      grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days
+      are apt to do, on great occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to
+      the window for a breath of outdoor air. Then she began at the beginning
+      and read the whole letter all over again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What should she do about it? She could not let this young girl send a
+      letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known except
+      by inference,&mdash;to a young man, who would consider it a most
+      extraordinary advance on the part of the sender. She would have liked to
+      tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to treat it in that
+      way. Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and in the mean time
+      Euthymia had the night to think over what she should do about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle. There is no voice like
+      that which breaks the silence&mdash;of the stagnant hours of the night
+      with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels. When Euthymia awoke in
+      the morning, her course of action was as clear before her as if it bad
+      been dictated by her guardian angel. She went straight over to the home of
+      Lurida, who was just dressed for breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit. She was struck
+      with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm, and
+      contemplating her project with entire complacency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force. It is
+      a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of the truest
+      human feeling. But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood. If you were sixty
+      years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be admissible to send it.
+      But if you were forty, I should question its propriety; if you were
+      thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a little more than twenty. How
+      do you know that this stranger will not show your letter to anybody or
+      everybody? How do you know that he will not send it to one of the
+      gossiping journals like the 'Household Inquisitor'? But supposing he keeps
+      it to himself, which is more than you have a right to expect, what opinion
+      is he likely to form of a young lady who invades his privacy with such
+      freedom? Ten to one he will think curiosity is at the bottom of it,&mdash;and,&mdash;come,
+      don't be angry at me for suggesting it,&mdash;may there not be a little of
+      that same motive mingled with the others? No, don't interrupt me quite
+      yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is correct. You are full
+      of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but your desire for
+      knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps more than you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her friend
+      was speaking. She loved her too sincerely and respected her intelligence
+      too much to take offence at her advice, but she could not give up her
+      humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear of some awkward
+      consequences to herself. She had persuaded herself that she was playing
+      the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and that the fact of her not
+      wearing the costume of these ministering angels made no difference in her
+      relations to those who needed her aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to you,&rdquo;
+       she said gravely. &ldquo;It seems to me that I give up everything when I
+      hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman. I am not afraid
+      to send this letter and take all the consequences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our presence?
+      And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it coincides with mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida winced a little at this proposal. &ldquo;I don't quite like,&rdquo; she said,
+      &ldquo;showing this letter to&mdash;to&rdquo; she hesitated, but it had to come out&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was intended.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, never mind about letting him read the letter. Will you go over to
+      his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his morning visits,
+      and have a talk over the whole matter with him? You know I have sometimes
+      had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say you must go to the doctor's
+      with me and carry that letter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm voice
+      delivered it. At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's door. The
+      servant said he had been at the house after his morning visits, but found
+      a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken suddenly ill and
+      wished to see him at once. Was the illness dangerous? The servant-maid did
+      n't know, but thought it was pretty bad, for Mr. Paul came in as white as
+      a sheet, and talked all sorts of languages which she couldn't understand,
+      and took on as if he thought Mr. Kirkwood was going to die right off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed of, at
+      least for the present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of a
+      somewhat severe character. He knew too well what this meant, and the
+      probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude. His patient was
+      not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in this way. The
+      autumnal fevers to which our country towns are subject, in the place of
+      those &ldquo;agues,&rdquo; or intermittents, so largely prevalent in the South and
+      West, were already beginning, and Maurice, who had exposed himself in the
+      early and late hours of the dangerous season, must be expected to go
+      through the regular stages of this always serious and not rarely fatal
+      disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of his
+      master during his illness. But the doctor insisted that he must have a
+      nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and exhausting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mention of the word &ldquo;nurse&rdquo; Paolo turned white, and exclaimed in an
+      agitated and thoroughly frightened way,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no nuss! no woman! She kill him! I stay by him day and night, but
+      don' let no woman come near him,&mdash;if you do, he die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to taking
+      care of sick people, and with no little effort at last succeeded in
+      convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and night for a
+      fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to call in some
+      assistance from without. And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was to play the
+      leading part in that drama of nature's composing called a typhoid fever,
+      with its regular bedchamber scenery, its properties of phials and
+      pill-boxes, its little company of stock actors, its gradual evolution of a
+      very simple plot, its familiar incidents, its emotional alternations, and
+      its denouement, sometimes tragic, oftener happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of the
+      village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the young man
+      about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much. Tokens of their
+      kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods and from the gardens;
+      choice fruit grown in the open air or under glass, for there were some
+      fine houses surrounded by well-kept grounds, and greenhouses and graperies
+      were not unknown in the small but favored settlement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes. A faint
+      smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of his
+      features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his parched
+      lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the fitful sleep in
+      which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow hours dragged along
+      the sluggish days one after another. With no violent symptoms, but with
+      steady persistency, the disease moved on in its accustomed course. It was
+      at no time immediately threatening, but the experienced physician knew its
+      uncertainties only too well. He had known fever patients suddenly seized
+      with violent internal inflammation, and carried off with frightful
+      rapidity. He remembered the case of a convalescent, a young woman who had
+      been attacked while in apparently vigorous general health, who, on being
+      lifted too suddenly to a sitting position, while still confined to her
+      bed, fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe. It may well be
+      supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the accidents
+      which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular course of which
+      is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a railroad from one
+      city to another. The most natural interpretation which the common observer
+      would put upon the manifestations of one of these autumnal maladies would
+      be that some noxious combustible element had found its way into the system
+      which must be burned to ashes before the heat which pervades the whole
+      body can subside. Sometimes the fire may smoulder and seem as if it were
+      going out, or were quite extinguished, and again it will find some new
+      material to seize upon, and flame up as fiercely as ever. Its coming on
+      most frequently at the season when the brush fires which are consuming the
+      dead branches, and withered leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation are
+      sending up their smoke is suggestive. Sometimes it seems as if the body,
+      relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after one of these
+      quiet, expurgating, internal fractional cremations. Lean, pallid students
+      have found themselves plump and blooming, and it has happened that one
+      whose hair was straight as that of an Indian has been startled to behold
+      himself in his mirror with a fringe of hyacinthine curls about his
+      rejuvenated countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
+      Maurice Kirkwood. The most alarming symptom was a profound prostration,
+      which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly helpless, as unable
+      to move without aid as the feeblest of paralytics. In this state he lay
+      for many days, not suffering pain, but with the sense of great weariness,
+      and the feeling that he should never rise from his bed again. For the most
+      part his intellect was unclouded when his attention was aroused. He spoke
+      only in whispers, a few words at a time. The doctor felt sure, by the
+      expression which passed over his features from time to time, that
+      something was worrying and oppressing him; something which he wished to
+      communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of purpose, to make
+      perfectly clear. His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and once he
+      had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it. The doctor
+      went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he slowly shook his head. He
+      had not the power to say at that time what he wished. The next day he felt
+      a little less prostrated; and succeeded in explaining to the doctor what
+      he wanted. His words, so far as the physician could make them out, were
+      these which follow. Dr. Butts looked upon them as possibly expressing
+      wishes which would be his last, and noted them down carefully immediately
+      after leaving his chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I commit the secret of my life to your charge. My whole story is told in
+      a paper locked in that desk. The key is&mdash;put your hand under my
+      pillow. If I die, let the story be known. It will show that I was&mdash;human&mdash;and
+      save my memory from reproach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a little time. A single tear stole down his hollow
+      cheek. The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full. But he
+      said to himself, &ldquo;It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong hopes that he
+      will recover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maurice spoke once more. &ldquo;Doctor, I put full trust in you. You are wise
+      and kind. Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once and read.
+      I want you to know the story of my life before it is finished&mdash;if the
+      end is at hand. Take it with you and read it before you sleep.&rdquo; He was
+      exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the doctor saw a tranquil
+      look on his features which added encouragement to his hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII. MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been passed in
+      foreign lands. My father was a man of education, possessed of an ample
+      fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished and amiable woman.
+      I was their first and only child. She died while I was yet an infant. If I
+      remember her at all it is as a vision, more like a glimpse of a pre-natal
+      existence than as a part of my earthly life. At the death of my mother I
+      was left in the charge of the old nurse who had enjoyed her perfect
+      confidence. She was devoted to me, and I became absolutely dependent on
+      her, who had for me all the love and all the care of a mother. I was
+      naturally the object of the attentions and caresses of the family
+      relatives. I have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling infant, with
+      nothing to indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not afraid of
+      strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their acquaintance. My father
+      was devoted to me and did all in his power to promote my health and
+      comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened which
+      changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely existence.
+      I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror. I must force myself
+      to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely remembered, for I am
+      not willing that my doomed and wholly exceptional life should pass away
+      unrecorded, unexplained, unvindicated. My nature is, I feel sure, a kind
+      and social one, but I have lived apart, as if my heart were filled with
+      hatred of my fellow-creatures. If there are any readers who look without
+      pity, without sympathy, upon those who shun the fellowship of their fellow
+      men and women, who show by their downcast or averted eyes that they dread
+      companionship and long for solitude, I pray them, if this paper ever
+      reaches them, to stop at this point. Follow me no further, for you will
+      not believe my story, nor enter into the feelings which I am about to
+      reveal. But if there are any to whom all that is human is of interest, who
+      have felt in their own consciousness some stirrings of invincible
+      attraction to one individual and equally invincible repugnance to another,
+      who know by their own experience that elective affinities have as their
+      necessary counterpart, and, as it were, their polar opposites, currents
+      not less strong of elective repulsions, let them read with unquestioning
+      faith the story of a blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of
+      course, received from the lips of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe, was
+      considered eminently beautiful. It was in my second summer that she
+      visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants and my
+      old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower. Laura was
+      full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements, thoughtless
+      occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of her age should be.
+      It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for the first time. My nurse
+      had me in her arms, walking back and forward on a balcony with a low
+      railing, upon which opened the windows of the second story of my father's
+      house. While the nurse was thus carrying me, Laura came suddenly upon the
+      balcony. She no sooner saw me than with all the delighted eagerness of her
+      youthful nature she rushed toward me, and, catching me from the nurse's
+      arms, began tossing me after the fashion of young girls who have been so
+      lately playing with dolls that they feel as if babies were very much of
+      the same nature. The abrupt seizure frightened me; I sprang from her arms
+      in my terror, and fell over the railing of the balcony. I should probably
+      enough have been killed on the spot but for the fact that a low thorn-bush
+      grew just beneath the balcony, into which I fell and thus had the violence
+      of the shock broken. But the thorns tore my tender flesh, and I bear to
+      this day marks of the deep wounds they inflicted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory. The sudden
+      apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the protecting
+      arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek that accompanied
+      my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable space; the cruel
+      lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,&mdash;all these fearful
+      impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was taken up I was thought to be dead. I was perfectly white, and
+      the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was perceptible. But
+      after a time consciousness returned; the wounds, though painful, were none
+      of them dangerous, and the most alarming effects of the accident passed
+      away. My old nurse cared for me tenderly day and night, and my father, who
+      had been almost distracted in the first hours which followed the injury,
+      hoped and believed that no permanent evil results would be found to result
+      from it. My cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed to feel that her
+      thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an accident. As soon as I
+      had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very penitent, very anxious to
+      make me forget the alarm she had caused me, with all its consequences. I
+      was in the nursery sitting up in my bed, bandaged, but not in any pain, as
+      it seemed, for I was quiet and to all appearance in a perfectly natural
+      state of feeling. As Laura came near me I shrieked and instantly changed
+      color. I put my hand upon my heart as if I had been stabbed, and fell
+      over, unconscious. It was very much the same state as that in which I was
+      found immediately after my fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious. The
+      approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to lay her
+      hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which the moment of
+      terror and pain had already occasioned. The old nurse saw this in a
+      moment. &ldquo;Go! go!&rdquo; she cried to Laura, &ldquo;go, or the child will die!&rdquo; Her
+      command did not have to be repeated. After Laura had gone I lay senseless,
+      white and cold as marble, for some time. The doctor soon came, and by the
+      use of smart rubbing and stimulants the color came back slowly to my
+      cheeks and the arrested circulation was again set in motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary effect
+      of the accident. There could be little doubt, it was thought by the doctor
+      and by my father, that after a few days I should recover from this morbid
+      sensibility and receive my cousin as other infants receive
+      pleasant-looking young persons. The old nurse shook her head. &ldquo;The girl
+      will be the death of the child,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if she touches him or comes
+      near him. His heart stopped beating just as when the girl snatched him out
+      of my arms, and he fell over the balcony railing.&rdquo; Once more the
+      experiment was tried, cautiously, almost insidiously. The same alarming
+      consequences followed. It was too evident that a chain of nervous
+      disturbances had been set up in my system which repeated itself whenever
+      the original impression gave the first impulse. I never saw my cousin
+      Laura after this last trial. Its result had so distressed her that she
+      never ventured again to show herself to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have been a
+      misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity. The world is
+      wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be considered an
+      essential of existence. I often heard Laura's name mentioned, but never by
+      any one who was acquainted with all the circumstances, for it was noticed
+      that I changed color and caught at my breast as if I wanted to grasp my
+      heart in my hand whenever that fatal name was mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of my fall
+      among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by another old
+      woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his share in caring
+      for me. It was thought best to keep me perfectly quiet, and
+      strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery, with one
+      exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it seems
+      that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather anxious eyes,
+      as if not quite certain whether or not she was dangerous. But one day,
+      when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought in a young
+      lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to see me. She
+      was, as I have been told, a very handsome girl, of about the same age as
+      my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her in form,
+      features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room than the same
+      sudden changes which had followed my cousin's visit began to show
+      themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state of
+      deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures. A
+      little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the nursery
+      one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand, but turned
+      away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a certain dread
+      and aversion, nothing more than a feeling which it might be hoped that
+      time would overcome. Those around me were gradually finding out the
+      circumstances which brought on the deadly attack to which I was subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest
+      girl of the village where we were passing the summer. She was very anxious
+      to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that she should
+      be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted in seeing her
+      and being caressed by her. I was sleeping when she entered the nursery and
+      came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence. Presently I became
+      restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over
+      me. My hand went to my left breast,&mdash;the color faded from my cheeks,&mdash;I
+      was again the cold marble image so like death that it had well-nigh been
+      mistaken for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left
+      me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is most
+      attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who
+      feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming
+      cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws all life into its
+      warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed seem. The
+      dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not
+      intentionally tried again, but accident brought about more than one
+      renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully recognized
+      that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of woman,&mdash;not
+      absolutely of the human female, for I had no fear of my old nurse or of my
+      grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had become accustomed to
+      the occasional meeting of a little girl or two, whom I nevertheless
+      regarded with a certain ill-defined feeling that there was danger in their
+      presence. I was sent to a boys' school very early, and during the first
+      ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of
+      my strange idiosyncrasy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings which
+      had so long held complete possession of me. This was what my father and
+      his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of their confident
+      hope in my return to natural conditions before I should have grown to
+      mature manhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering, dreadful
+      years? Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and waking. Sometimes a
+      graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it that I lost sight
+      of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears and find myself at her
+      side, like other youths by the side of young maidens,&mdash;happy in their
+      cheerful companionship, while I,&mdash;I, under the curse of one blighting
+      moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the
+      tone of a sweet voice stirred within me all the instincts that make the
+      morning of life beautiful to adolescence. I reasoned with myself:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the
+      nightmare of my earlier years? Why should not the rising tide of life have
+      drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of childhood?
+      How many children there are who tremble at being left alone in the dark,
+      but who, a few years later, will smile at their foolish terrors and brave
+      all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any longer be the slave
+      of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane habit of mind? I was
+      familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the strange antipathies and
+      invincible repugnances to which others, some of them famous men, had been
+      subject. I said to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman
+      as Peter the Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge?
+      Was I, alone of all mankind, to be doomed to perpetual exclusion from the
+      society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence worth
+      the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of supplying the
+      waste of the system and working at the task of respiration like the
+      daughters of Danaus,&mdash;toiling day and night as the worn-out sailor
+      labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to
+      any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile,
+      whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only
+      answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader by
+      giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of which I
+      was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of which I have
+      made a copy, and which will be found included with this manuscript. It is
+      enough to say here, without entering into the explanation of the fact,
+      which will be found simple enough as seen by the light of modern
+      physiological science, that the &ldquo;nervous disturbance&rdquo; which the presence
+      of a woman in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of
+      impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was a
+      reversed action of the nervous centres,&mdash;the opposite of that which
+      flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he
+      comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No one who has ever
+      felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative
+      summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
+      effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily and
+      mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too slender
+      for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a cause of
+      anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there was no doubt,
+      but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often too complex to
+      admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and each also in
+      part effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a
+      school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of my
+      own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under which
+      certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to separate
+      themselves from all communion with the sex associated in their minds with
+      the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be exposed. I became
+      in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion from the society of
+      women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The
+      thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and
+      the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to
+      myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and
+      raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of his
+      dangerous attraction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was at
+      once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed as I
+      had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was with
+      the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom I was
+      acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to accept the
+      credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend and instructor
+      had to set me down as a case of &ldquo;invincible ignorance.&rdquo; This was the
+      loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house of his creed, and
+      was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of absolute despair with
+      which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which I had
+      such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an occurrence,
+      which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is impressed upon my
+      memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made in Rome asked me one
+      day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of gems and medals which he
+      had collected. I had been but a short time in his library when a vague
+      sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart became restless,&mdash;I could
+      feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were some frightened creature caged
+      in my breast. There was nothing that I could see to account for it. A door
+      was partly open, but not so that I could see into the next room. The
+      feeling grew upon me of some influence which was paralyzing my
+      circulation. I begged my friend to open a window. As he did so, the door
+      swung in the draught, and I saw a blooming young woman,&mdash;it was my
+      friend's sister, who had been sitting with a book in her hand, and who
+      rose at the opening of the door. Something had warned me of the presence
+      of a woman, that occult and potent aura of individuality, call it personal
+      magnetism, spiritual effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if
+      you will; whatever it was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread
+      attraction which allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the
+      terrors of the Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her
+      brother caused her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the
+      impression which betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the
+      region of the heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly
+      fainting-fit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my manuscript?
+      Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional as it seems to
+      those who have not made a long study of its mysteries. I have never known
+      just such a case as my own, and yet there must have been such, and if the
+      whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been
+      many like it. Let my reader suspend his judgment until he has read the
+      paper I have referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal
+      Academy of the Biological Sciences. In this paper the mechanism of the
+      series of nervous derangements to which I have been subject since the
+      fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not hard to
+      understand. It will be seen that such a change of polarity in the nervous
+      centres is only a permanent form and an extreme degree of an emotional
+      disturbance, which as a temporary and comparatively unimportant personal
+      accident is far from being uncommon,&mdash;is so frequent, in fact, that
+      every one must have known instances of it, and not a few must have had
+      more or less serious experiences of it in their own private history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now
+      dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
+      superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which had
+      been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I was told
+      that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power which it
+      possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions of it, together
+      with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been engrafted on the
+      corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as directed, and watched it
+      carefully. It became tarnished and after a time darkened, but it wrought
+      no change in my unnatural condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of futurity
+      than she had any right to know. The story was that she had foretold the
+      assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black art
+      upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the
+      wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her
+      wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she shook
+      her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I could get them
+      would be in English like these:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
+   Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose palm
+      had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular response, have
+      always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment. The
+      extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject disposed me
+      to believe the incredible with reference to all that relates to it. I have
+      never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I should find
+      myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It seems as if it
+      would naturally come through the influence of some young and fair woman,
+      to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the Providence that
+      governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling fears, with
+      mingled belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I have sought with
+      longing yet half-averted eyes for the &ldquo;elect lady,&rdquo; as I have learned to
+      call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had
+      found the object of my superstitious belief.&mdash;Singularly enough it
+      was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before my
+      bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow passenger
+      with me in one of my ocean voyages. I need not say that she was beautiful,
+      for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I saw her walking the
+      deck on some of the fair days when sea-sickness was forgotten. The
+      passengers were a social company enough, but I had kept myself apart, as
+      was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong to resist any
+      longer. &ldquo;I will venture into the charmed circle if it kills me,&rdquo; I said to
+      my father. I did venture, and it did not kill me, or I should not be
+      telling this story. But there was a repetition of the old experiences. I
+      need not relate the series of alarming consequences of my venture. The
+      English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has made some one
+      supremely happy before this, but she was not the &ldquo;elect lady&rdquo; of the
+      prophecy and of my dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
+      destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
+      fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden who
+      drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young womanhood
+      with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its limits. I was floating
+      with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long hours of
+      reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young girl in it.
+      The boy had been rowing, and one of his oars had slipped from his grasp.
+      He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was hopelessly rowing
+      round and round, his oar all the time floating farther away from him. I
+      could not refuse my assistance. I picked up the oar and brought my skiff
+      alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the boy the young girl
+      lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of the language
+      which
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She was a type of Italian beauty,&mdash;a nocturne in flesh and blood, if
+      I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice
+      which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no longer
+      shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An hour later
+      I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat, white, cold, almost
+      pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to consciousness.
+      Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems probable that I should
+      never have waked from a slumber which was hardly distinguishable from that
+      of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite it
+      by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of these
+      deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the ablest
+      men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced by the most
+      insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to which they
+      had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I of ever being
+      rid of this long and deep-seated infirmity? I may well ask myself these
+      questions, but my answer is that I will never give up the hope that time
+      will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild prediction which so
+      haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of late strange
+      premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not help giving
+      heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in miracles to
+      accept the supernatural in any shape,&mdash;assuredly when it comes from
+      an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations of the
+      future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right to be
+      imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the old
+      zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they will
+      prove true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization? I
+      have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months and
+      weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new
+      thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this season
+      of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a distant
+      glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and tremulous, yet
+      was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks flushed and my pulse
+      bounded, I have seen her who&mdash;how do I dare to tell it so that my own
+      eyes can read it?&mdash;-I cannot help believing is to be my deliverer, my
+      saviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
+      experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
+      disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent
+      risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my
+      former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were of
+      constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest the
+      movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,&mdash;anything that
+      reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as Sir
+      Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been
+      resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return
+      ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor, but
+      I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its menace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
+      strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
+      suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt
+      to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as in any
+      other way? I am alone in the world,&mdash;alone save for my faithful
+      servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by a
+      single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion, my
+      dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier manhood,
+      died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means of living
+      as might best please my fancy. This season shall decide my fate. One more
+      experiment, and I shall find myself restored to my place among my
+      fellow-beings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our mortal
+      infirmities are past and forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there
+      shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected with my
+      memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort to
+      do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to my lot,
+      with all its possibilities, and among these possibilities is a gleam of a
+      better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them wise, deeply
+      instructed, and kind-hearted men, that such a life-destiny should be
+      related by the subject of it for the instruction of others, and especially
+      for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human character often
+      wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when they are in reality
+      the results of misdirected or reversed actions in some of the closely
+      connected nervous centres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility left
+      with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me. I have passed
+      through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as I have
+      developed from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind instinct
+      about which I had no thought, living like other infants the life of
+      impressions without language to connect them in series. In my boyhood I
+      began to be deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated me from
+      those around me. In youth began that conflict of emotions and impulses
+      with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken, a conflict
+      which has never ceased, but to which I have necessarily become to a
+      certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers of which I have learned
+      to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my isolation. You,
+      young man,&mdash;if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy
+      record,&mdash;you at least will understand me. Does not your heart throb,
+      in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it &ldquo;were
+      ready to crack&rdquo; with its own excess of strain? What if instead of
+      throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat again?
+      You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will look upon
+      these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it is when your
+      breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of the bodice seems
+      unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the Inquisition. Think
+      what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that no breath of air
+      could enter your panting chest!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored friend,
+      a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her kindly smile as
+      it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty child brings
+      you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace and trustful
+      simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do you tremble, does life palpitate
+      through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen meets your
+      enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder not, then, if the
+      period of mystic attraction for you should be that of agitation, terror,
+      danger, to one in whom the natural current of the instincts has had its
+      course changed as that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of nature,
+      so that the impression which is new life to you is death to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am now twenty-five years old. I have reached the time of life which I
+      have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit of the
+      sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no good
+      reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as if I
+      were preparing to begin a renewed existence. There is nothing for me to be
+      ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who would not
+      have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which seized upon
+      me under the conditions I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone singing to
+      their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his breath long enough
+      to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some mechanical help, or
+      nature will make him draw in a breath of air, and would make him do so
+      though he knew the salvation of the human race would be forfeited by that
+      one gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way
+      that I have been. It probably never will; but for all that, there are many
+      shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the direction
+      of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness seems
+      inconceivable, will find their scepticism shaken, if not removed, by the
+      calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal Academy. It
+      will make little difference to me whether my story is accepted
+      unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely a product of the imagination. I
+      am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of different
+      nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the palms of
+      Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that shadow the
+      Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here, to-morrow on
+      the wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
+      shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure that
+      I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only curious and
+      has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let it remain
+      unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment it throws any
+      light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,&mdash;the repulsions
+      which play such a formidable part in social life, and which must be
+      recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute the
+      individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem to be
+      impossibilities,&mdash;then it may be freely given to the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my life
+      will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be illuminated by
+      the light of a living present which will irradiate all its saddening
+      features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light and hope may be
+      that of dawn and not of departing day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far from
+      the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend his
+      judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for his
+      consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX. THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained,
+      excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages which
+      he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the paper
+      which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no curiosity
+      in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them to such as
+      relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave them he will
+      very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they
+      are meant to furnish him with a key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional
+      one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish
+      him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances,
+      if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one
+      who, for some reason or other, shunned the society of young women, as if
+      they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he can
+      understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are laid
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
+      Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the
+      fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the
+      Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his
+      prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of
+      avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every
+      society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon
+      himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,&mdash;upon a
+      different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed of his
+      shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he himself
+      thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was
+      no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long enduring
+      effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the fact as he
+      would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing. When
+      he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he told
+      them all that he knew about it almost without a sign of emotion. Nature
+      was so peremptory with him,&mdash;saying in language that had no double
+      meaning: &ldquo;If you violate the condition on which you hold my gift of
+      existence I slay you on the spot,&rdquo;&mdash;that he became as decisive in his
+      obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his fate without
+      repining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it must not be thought for a moment,&mdash;it cannot be supposed,&mdash;that
+      he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the coolness of an
+      enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it was to live
+      under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of throwing
+      it off with his life, as too grievous to be borne, was familiar to his
+      lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How he had
+      speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper the reader
+      may remember on Ocean, River, and Lake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as
+      may find any interest in them.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
+
+             WITH REMARKS.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological
+      Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment upon
+      will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have learned
+      the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws
+      by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are
+      observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier generations. We
+      pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we
+      receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to
+      them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a
+      century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts,
+      but today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge
+      of the laws of life can throw upon them. It must be owned that there are
+      stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in
+      their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes
+      leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to
+      the candid attention of the Academy. If one were told that a young man, a
+      gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently perfect
+      health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the
+      presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly
+      terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her
+      immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not
+      shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain
+      timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of
+      their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at
+      the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction
+      of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some
+      playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out. A young
+      man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making love to
+      her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth of the
+      story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend themselves too
+      easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the case, as they were
+      told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the subject of an
+      affection which, if classified, would come under the general head of
+      Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a name, we shall have to apply the
+      term Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which is in
+      all essentials identical with that already laid before the reader.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such is the case offered to our consideration. Assuming its truthfulness
+      in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first place whether or
+      not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as it seems at first
+      sight, or whether it is only the last term of a series of cases which in
+      their less formidable aspect are well known to us in literature, in the
+      records of science, and even in our common experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give are
+      entirely superfluous. But there are some whose chief studies have been in
+      different directions, and who will not complain if certain facts are
+      mentioned which to the expert will seem rudimentary, and which hardly
+      require recapitulation to those who are familiarly acquainted with the
+      common text-books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher animals,
+      and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to a greater or
+      less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the system. If its
+      action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness is the immediate
+      consequence; if it is arrested, loss of consciousness; if its action is
+      not soon restored, death, of which fainting plants the white flag, remains
+      in possession of the system.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need not
+      go to science to learn, for all human experience and all literature are
+      overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation.
+      Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the entire
+      life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the language of
+      Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for Measure:'
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
+   Making it both unable for itself
+   And dispossessing all my other parts
+   Of necessary fitness?'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the
+      passion of love. A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called to
+      the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some cause the
+      physicians who had already seen her were unable to make out. The shrewd
+      old practitioner suspected that love was at the bottom of the young lady's
+      malady. Many relatives and friends of both sexes, all of them ready with
+      their sympathy, came to see her. The physician sat by her bedside during
+      one of these visits, and in an easy, natural way took her hand and placed
+      a finger on her pulse. It beat quietly enough until a certain comely young
+      gentleman entered the apartment, when it suddenly rose in frequency, and at
+      the same moment her hurried breathing, her changing color, pale and
+      flushed by turns, betrayed the profound agitation his presence excited.
+      This was enough for the sagacious Greek; love was the disease, the cure of
+      which by its like may be claimed as an anticipation of homoeopathy. In the
+      frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta' edition of the works of Galen, you
+      may find among the wood-cuts a representation of the interesting scene,
+      with the title Amantas Dignotio,&mdash;the diagnosis, or recognition, of
+      the lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them. The
+      pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain which
+      gives it color. The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each other's
+      hearts beating. When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot herself, and
+      was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;'T was partly love and partly fear,
+   And partly 't was a bashful art,
+   That I might rather feel than see
+   The swelling of her heart'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or felt.
+      But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ treats the
+      lover.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;'Faint heart never won fair lady.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has its
+      literal truth. Many a lover has found his heart sink within him,&mdash;lose
+      all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his emotion at the sight
+      of the object of his affections. When Porphyro looked upon Madeline at her
+      prayers in the chapel, it was too much for him:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
+   Save wings, for heaven:&mdash;Porphyro grew faint,
+   She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story 'fainted
+      away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at Sceaux,
+      Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future husband.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One who faints is dead if he does not 'come to,' and nothing is more
+      likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off in this
+      way. Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in these and
+      similar trying moments. The mechanism of its actions becomes an
+      interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes, and to all who
+      are capable of intense emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air, and
+      heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste material. It
+      knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty times in a minute,
+      calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload its refuse. Between it
+      and the brain there is the closest relation. The emotions, which act upon
+      it as we have seen, govern it by a mechanism only of late years thoroughly
+      understood. This mechanism can be made plain enough to the reader who is
+      not afraid to believe that he can understand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition. It is
+      the great central telegraphic station with which many lesser centres are
+      in close relation, from which they receive, and to which they transmit,
+      their messages. The heart has its own little brains, so to speak,&mdash;small
+      collections of nervous substance which govern its rhythmical motions under
+      ordinary conditions. But these lesser nervous centres are to a large
+      extent dominated by influences transmitted from certain groups of
+      nerve-cells in the brain and its immediate dependencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are two among the special groups of nerve-cells which produce
+      directly opposite effects. One of these has the power of accelerating the
+      action of the heart, while the other has the power of retarding or
+      arresting this action. One acts as the spur, the other as the bridle.
+      According as one or the other predominates, the action of the heart will
+      be stimulated or restrained. Among the great modern discoveries in
+      physiology is that of the existence of a distinct centre of inhibition, as
+      the restraining influence over the heart is called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of
+      cowardice and of unsuccessful love. No man can be brave without blood to
+      sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the German materialist
+      says, not absurdly, without phosphorus. The fainting lover must recover
+      his circulation, or his lady will lend him her smelling-salts and take a
+      gallant with blood in his cheeks. Porphyro got over his faintness before
+      he ran away with Madeline, and Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when
+      he swooned with happiness: but many an officer has been cashiered, and
+      many a suitor has been rejected, because the centre of inhibition has got
+      the upper hand of the centre of stimulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been recorded, the
+      most frequent cause has been the disturbed and depressing influence of the
+      centre of inhibition. Fainting at the sight of blood is one of the
+      commonest examples of this influence. A single impression, in a very early
+      period of atmospheric existence,&mdash;perhaps, indirectly, before that
+      period, as was said to have happened in the case of James the First of
+      England,&mdash;may establish a communication between this centre and the
+      heart which will remain open ever afterwards. How does a footpath across a
+      field establish itself? Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call
+      accidental, but one after another follows it as if he were guided by a
+      chart on which it was laid down. So it is with this dangerous transit
+      between the centre of inhibition and the great organ of life. If once the
+      path is opened by the track of some profound impression, that same
+      impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old
+      footmarks and follow them. Habit only makes the path easier to traverse,
+      and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant, may perpetuate
+      itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of its subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of the
+      effect of inhibition on the heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of the
+      human race; on the contrary, we do not doubt that there have been similar
+      cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been the
+      consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report. The case
+      most like it is that of Colone Townsend, which is too well known to
+      require any lengthened description in this paper. It is enough to recall
+      the main facts. He could by a voluntary effort suspend the action of his
+      heart for a considerable period, during which he lay like one dead,
+      pulseless, and without motion. After a time the circulation returned, and
+      he does not seem to have been the worse for his dangerous, or seemingly
+      dangerous, experiment. But in his case it was by an act of the will that
+      the heart's action was suspended. In the case before us it is an
+      involuntary impulse transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting centre,
+      which arrests the cardiac movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is like to be the further history of the case?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty years
+      old. The chain of nervous actions has become firmly established. It might
+      have been hoped that the changes of adolescence would have effected a
+      transformation of the perverted instinct. On the contrary, the whole force
+      of this instinct throws itself on the centre of inhibition, instead of
+      quickening the heart-beats, and sending the rush of youthful blood with
+      fresh life through the entire system to the throbbing finger-tips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of nervous
+      interactions so long established? We are disposed to think that there is a
+      chance of its being broken up. And we are not afraid to say that we
+      suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such hold of the
+      patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the 'spell,' as she
+      called it, is to be dissolved. She must, in all probability, have had a
+      hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth before her was a victim, and
+      its cause, and if so, her guess as to the probable mode in which the young
+      man would obtain relief from his unfortunate condition was the one which
+      would naturally suggest itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of inhibition
+      can be made to change its course, so as to follow its natural channel, it
+      will probably keep to that channel ever afterwards. And this will, it is
+      most likely, be effected by some sudden, unexpected impression. If he were
+      drowning, and a young woman should rescue him, it is by no means
+      impossible that the change in the nervous current we have referred to
+      might be brought about as rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the poles
+      in a magnet, which is effected in an instant. But he cannot be expected to
+      throw himself into the water just at the right moment when the 'fair lady'
+      of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore. Accident may effect the
+      cure which art seems incompetent to perform. It would not be strange if in
+      some future seizure he should never come back to consciousness. But it is
+      quite conceivable, on the other hand, that a happier event may occur, that
+      in a single moment the nervous polarity may be reversed, the whole course
+      of his life changed, and his past terrible experiences be to him like a
+      scarce-remembered dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine the
+      wisest course to be pursued. The question is not unlike that which arises
+      in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the neck. Shall the
+      unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face turned far round to the
+      right or the left, or shall an attempt be made to replace the dislocated
+      bones? an attempt which may succeed, or may cause instant death. The
+      patient must be consulted as to whether he will take the chance. The
+      practitioner may be unwilling to risk it, if the patient consents. Each
+      case must be judged on its own special grounds. We cannot think that this
+      young man is doomed to perpetual separation from the society of womanhood
+      during the period of its bloom and attraction. But to provoke another
+      seizure after his past experiences would be too much like committing
+      suicide. We fear that we must trust to the chapter of accidents. The
+      strange malady&mdash;for such it is&mdash;has become a second nature, and
+      may require as energetic a shock to displace it as it did to bring it into
+      existence. Time alone can solve this question, on which depends the
+      well-being and, it may be, the existence of a young man every way fitted
+      to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his true nature.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting upon
+      them. He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the entire
+      frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which Maurice showed
+      in placing these papers at his disposal. He believed that his patient
+      would recover from this illness for which he had been taking care of him.
+      He thought deeply and earnestly of what he could do for him after he
+      should have regained his health and strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the
+      doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief
+      autobiography. Some one person&mdash;some young woman, it must be&mdash;had
+      produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous
+      experiences through which he had passed. The doctor could not help
+      thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to him.
+      Maurice, as she said, turned pale,&mdash;he clapped his hand to his
+      breast. He might have done so if he had met her chambermaid, or any
+      straggling damsel of the village. But Euthymia was not a young woman to be
+      looked upon with indifference. She held herself like a queen, and walked
+      like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to self-reliance, and
+      command of herself as well as others. One could not pass her without being
+      struck with her noble bearing and spirited features. If she had known how
+      Maurice trembled as he looked upon her, in that conflict of attraction and
+      uncontrollable dread,&mdash;if she had known it! But what, even then,
+      could she have done? Nothing but get away from him as fast as she could.
+      As it was, it was a long time before his agitation subsided, and his heart
+      beat with its common force and frequency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between. But he could
+      not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young persons could
+      not come together as other young people do in the pairing season, and find
+      out whether they cared for and were fitted for each other. He did not
+      pretend to settle this question in his own mind, but the thought was a
+      natural one. And here was a gulf between them as deep and wide as that
+      between Lazarus and Dives. Would it ever be bridged over? This thought
+      took possession of the doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of
+      effecting some experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia.
+      From this delicate subject he glanced off to certain general
+      considerations suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading.
+      He began by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence of
+      an individual making itself perceived by some channel other than any of
+      the five senses. The study of the natural sciences teaches those who are
+      devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead the way to the
+      discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of the universe. From
+      the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs which began with
+      that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very long stride if Madam
+      Galvani had not been in delicate health, which was the occasion of her
+      having some frog-broth prepared for her, the world of to-day might not be
+      in possession of the electric telegraph and the light which blazes like
+      the sun at high noon. A common-looking occurrence, one seemingly
+      unimportant, which had hitherto passed unnoticed with the ordinary course
+      of things, was the means of introducing us to a new and vast realm of
+      closely related phenomena. It was like a key that we might have picked up,
+      looking so simple that it could hardly fit any lock but one of like
+      simplicity, but which should all at once throw back the bolts of the one
+      lock which had defied the most ingenious of our complex implements and
+      open our way into a hitherto unexplored territory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the
+      paralyzing influence. He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance, as he
+      did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous disturbance. A
+      certain proximity was necessary for the influence to be felt, as in the
+      case of magnetism and electricity. An atmosphere of danger surrounded
+      every woman he approached during the period when her sex exercises its
+      most powerful attractions. How far did that atmosphere extend, and through
+      what channel did it act?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found in a
+      fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of galvanism and
+      its practical applications. The circumstances connected with the very
+      common antipathy to cats were as remarkable in many points of view as the
+      similar circumstances in the case of Maurice Kirkwood. The subjects of
+      that antipathy could not tell what it was which disturbed their nervous
+      system. All they knew was that a sense of uneasiness, restlessness,
+      oppression, came over them in the presence of one of these animals. He
+      remembered the fact already mentioned, that persons sensitive to this
+      impression can tell by their feelings if a cat is concealed in the
+      apartment in which they may happen to be. It may be through some
+      emanation. It may be through the medium of some electrical disturbance.
+      What if the nerve-thrills passing through the whole system of the animal
+      propagate themselves to a certain distance without any more regard to
+      intervening solids than is shown by magnetism? A sieve lets sand pass
+      through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass holds
+      fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but magnetic
+      attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve. No good reasons
+      can be given why the presence of a cat should not betray itself to certain
+      organizations, at a distance, through the walls of a box in which the
+      animal is shut up. We need not disbelieve the stories which allege such an
+      occurrence as a fact and a not very infrequent one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these
+      circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar
+      conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific
+      influence? The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his friends, a
+      story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the distinguished
+      actor, the late Mr. Fechter. The actor maintained that Rachel had no
+      genius as an actress. It was all Samson's training and study, according to
+      him, which explained the secret of her wonderful effectiveness on the
+      stage. But magnetism, he said,&mdash;magnetism, she was full of. He
+      declared that he was made aware of her presence on the stage, when he
+      could not see her or know of her presence otherwise, by this magnetic
+      emanation. The doctor took the story for what it was worth. There might
+      very probably be exaggeration, perhaps high imaginative coloring about it,
+      but it was not a whit more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as
+      authentic. He continued this train of thought into further developments.
+      Into this series of reflections we will try to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the
+      heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a
+      luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy
+      personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation,
+      which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;Bright effluence of bright essence increate&rdquo;?
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence of
+      its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see, the
+      doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the nervous
+      centres there should not be one which acts at various distances from its
+      source. It may not be visible like the &ldquo;glory&rdquo; of the painters, it may not
+      be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt by
+      the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,&mdash;more
+      powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to its mode of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
+      unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just as
+      the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their
+      presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the
+      larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its
+      presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is it
+      strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong
+      especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in
+      distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it
+      seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,&mdash;analogies
+      too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was
+      this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very
+      strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or
+      suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their
+      secret:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they never
+      overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws man
+      towards her, as strong in them as in others,&mdash;oftentimes, in virtue
+      of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in
+      others of like age and conditions,&mdash;in consequence of which fear,
+      this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of
+      doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left
+      unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote
+      themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their
+      confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most
+      attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture
+      to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved
+      object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time
+      and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a
+      strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced
+      bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the
+      ball-room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five
+      minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have
+      seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen
+      the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair of
+      young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far as
+      the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that
+      little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve, who knew
+      how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had
+      asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the
+      shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have been
+      drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that
+      opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of
+      all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!&mdash;not
+      only the historic wonder of beauty, that &ldquo;burnt the topless towers of
+      Ilium&rdquo; for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the
+      hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places,
+      and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of
+      the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled
+      around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial
+      imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the
+      probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's
+      story, if it came before the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village,
+      to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what
+      fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got
+      hold of it, how &ldquo;The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor&rdquo; would
+      blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows of the place
+      would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young girls-the
+      doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story got about
+      among them. &ldquo;The Sachem&rdquo; of the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the
+      handsome hermit,&mdash;handsome so far as the glimpses they had got of him
+      went,&mdash;must needs be an object of tender interest among them, now
+      that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,&mdash;poor
+      fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber;
+      bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some
+      three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others &ldquo;criss-crossed,&rdquo;
+       were growing more frequent as it was understood that the patient was
+      likely to be convalescent before many days had passed. If it should come
+      to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to their coming into any
+      personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there were
+      not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in
+      the village,&mdash;strangers, visitors, let us hope,&mdash;who would
+      sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
+      profound prostration. The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger of any
+      overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from the
+      pillow. But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he was able
+      to hold some conversation with those about him. His faithful Paolo had
+      grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that the village
+      children had to take a second look at his face when they passed him to
+      make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no other. But as his
+      master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor assured him that he
+      was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's face began to recover
+      something of its old look and expression, and once more his pockets filled
+      themselves with comfits for his little circle of worshipping three and
+      four year old followers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Mr. Kirkwood?&rdquo; was the question with which he was always greeted.
+      In the worst periods of the fever he rarely left his master. When he did,
+      and the question was put to him, he would shake his head sadly, sometimes
+      without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and faltering words,&mdash;more
+      like a brokenhearted child than a stalwart man as he was, such a man as
+      soldiers are made of in the great Continental armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He very bad,&mdash;he no eat nothing,&mdash;he&mdash;no say nothing,&mdash;he
+      never be no better,&rdquo; and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a
+      passionate burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about
+      his master, his ready optimism declared itself no less transparently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him on
+      hoss in little while.&rdquo; The kind-hearted creature's life was bound up in
+      that of his &ldquo;master,&rdquo; as he loved to call him, in sovereign disregard of
+      the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such
+      recognition of another as their better. They could not understand how he,
+      so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and manner, could speak
+      of the man who employed him in any other way than as &ldquo;Kirkwood,&rdquo; without
+      even demeaning himself so far as to prefix a &ldquo;Mr.&rdquo; to it. But &ldquo;my master&rdquo;
+       Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men are born free
+      and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a master than was Paolo
+      to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger. Since his improvement
+      Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber and getting out of the
+      house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was in so much need. It
+      worried him to see his servant returning after too short an absence. The
+      attendant who had helped him in the care of the patient was within call,
+      and Paolo was almost driven out of the house by the urgency of his
+      master's command that he should take plenty of exercise in the open air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although the
+      force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to which he
+      had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required great
+      precautions to be taken. He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to such a degree
+      that he had to be cared for very much as a child is tended. Gradually his
+      voice was coming back to him, so that he could hold some conversation, as
+      was before mentioned, with those about him. The doctor waited for the
+      right moment to make mention of the manuscript which Maurice had submitted
+      to him. Up to this time, although it had been alluded to and the doctor
+      had told him of the intense interest with which he had read it, he had
+      never ventured to make it the subject of any long talk, such as would be
+      liable to fatigue his patient. But now he thought the time had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking,&rdquo; the doctor said, &ldquo;of the singular seizures to
+      which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think about
+      such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable of
+      receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about your
+      history. And in the first place, will you allow me to ask what led you to
+      this particular place? It is so much less known to the public at large
+      than many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or that
+      new visitor among us? We have no ill-tasting, natural spring of bad water
+      to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific. We have
+      no great gambling-houses, no racecourse (except that for boats on the
+      lake); we have no coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any kind, so
+      we ask, What brings this or that stranger here? And I think I may venture
+      to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it
+      was accident that determined your coming to this place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, doctor,&rdquo; Maurice answered, &ldquo;I will tell you with great
+      pleasure. Last year I passed on the border of a great river. The year
+      before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean. I wanted this
+      year to be by a lake. You heard the paper read at the meeting of your
+      society, or at least you heard of it,&mdash;for such matters are always
+      talked over in a village like this. You can judge by that paper, or could,
+      if it were before you, of the frame of mind in which I came here. I was
+      tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling egotism of
+      the river, always hurrying along on its own private business. I wanted the
+      dreamy stillness of a large, tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in
+      particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my thoughts. I had read
+      somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal
+      landlord and motherly landlady and old-fashioned household, and that,
+      though it was no longer open as a tavern, I could find a resting-place
+      there early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about
+      me for a quiet place in which I might pass my summer. I have found this a
+      pleasant residence. By being up early and out late I have kept myself
+      mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of life. The
+      season has gone by too swiftly for me since my dream has become a vision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three fingers
+      on his pulse. As he spoke these last words he noticed that the pulse
+      fluttered a little,&mdash;beat irregularly a few times; intermitted;
+      became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid
+      bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more talk, now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You are too tired to be using your voice. I
+      will hear all the rest another time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point. What did he
+      mean by saying that his dream had become a vision? This is what the doctor
+      was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to know. But his hand
+      was still on his patient's pulse, which told him unmistakably that the
+      heart had taken the alarm and was losing its energy under the depressing
+      nervous influence. Presently, however, it recovered its natural force and
+      rhythm, and a faint flush came back to the pale cheek. The doctor
+      remembered the story of Galen, and the young maiden whose complaint had
+      puzzled the physicians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said something about a dream of yours which had become a vision,&rdquo;
+       said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as before. He
+      felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a little, stop, then
+      begin again, growing fuller in its beat. The heart had felt the pull of
+      the bridle, but the spur had roused it to swift reaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know the story of my past life, doctor,&rdquo; Maurice answered; &ldquo;and, I
+      will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my dreams.
+      You remember the boat-race? I watched it from a distance, but I held a
+      powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole crew of the young
+      ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the features, the figures,
+      the movements, of every one of the rowers. I saw the little coxswain fling
+      her bouquet in the track of the other boat,&mdash;you remember how the
+      race was lost and won,&mdash;but I saw one face among those young girls
+      which drew me away from all the rest. It was that of the young lady who
+      pulled the bow oar, the captain of the boat's crew. I have since learned
+      her name, you know it well,&mdash;I need not name her. Since that day I
+      have had many distant glimpses of her; and once I met her so squarely that
+      the deadly sensation came over me, and I felt that in another moment I
+      should fall senseless at her feet. But she passed on her way and I on
+      mine, and the spasm which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I
+      was as well as before. You know that young lady, doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do; and she is a very noble creature. You are not the first young man
+      who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia Tower. And
+      she is well worth knowing more intimately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early days,
+      her character, her accomplishments. To all this he listened devoutly, and
+      when the doctor left him he said to himself, &ldquo;I will see her and speak
+      with her, if it costs me my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXII. EUTHYMIA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Wonder&rdquo; of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show of
+      her gymnastic accomplishments. Her feats, which were so much admired, were
+      only her natural exercise. Gradually the dumb-bells others used became too
+      light for her, the ropes she climbed too short, the clubs she exercised
+      with seemed as if they were made of cork instead of being heavy wood, and
+      all the tests and meters of strength and agility had been strained beyond
+      the standards which the records of the school had marked as their historic
+      maxima. It was not her fault that she broke a dynamometer one day; she
+      apologized for it, but the teacher said he wished he could have a dozen
+      broken every year in the same way. The consciousness of her bodily
+      strength had made her very careful in her movements. The pressure of her
+      hand was never too hard for the tenderest little maiden whose palm was
+      against her own. So far from priding herself on her special gifts, she was
+      disposed to be ashamed of them. There were times and places in which she
+      could give full play to her muscles without fear or reproach. She had her
+      special costume for the boat and for the woods. She would climb the rugged
+      old hemlocks now and then for the sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into
+      the large nest where a hawk, or it may be an eagle, was raising her little
+      brood of air-pirates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as an unsafe
+      exposure. One sometimes met doubtful characters about the neighborhood,
+      and stories were told of occurrences which might well frighten a
+      young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself alone in the wild
+      solitudes which surrounded the little village. Those who knew Euthymia
+      thought her quite equal to taking care of herself. Her very look was
+      enough to ensure the respect of any vagabond who might cross her path, and
+      if matters came to the worst she would prove as dangerous as a panther.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble
+      specimen of true womanhood. Health, beauty, strength, were fine qualities,
+      and in all these she was rich. She enjoyed all her natural gifts, and
+      thought little about them. Unwillingly, but over-persuaded by some of her
+      friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to be modelled. The artists who
+      saw the cast wondered if it would be possible to get the bust of the
+      maiden from whom it was taken. Nobody would have dared to suggest such an
+      idea to her except Lurida. For Lurida sex was a trifling accident, to be
+      disregarded not only in the interests of humanity, but for the sake of
+      art.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a shame,&rdquo; she said to Euthymia, &ldquo;that you will not let your
+      exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in marble. You have no right to
+      withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow-creatures.
+      Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents the divine idea!
+      You belong to your race, and not to yourself,&mdash;at least, your beauty
+      is a gift not to be considered as a piece of private property. Look at the
+      so-called Venus of Milo. Do you suppose the noble woman who was the
+      original of that divinely chaste statue felt any scruple about allowing
+      the sculptor to reproduce her pure, unblemished perfections?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend. She listened to
+      her eloquent discourse, but she could not help blushing, used as she was
+      to Lurida's audacities. &ldquo;The Terror's&rdquo; brain had run away with a large
+      share of the blood which ought to have gone to the nourishment of her
+      general system. She could not help admiring, almost worshipping, a
+      companion whose being was rich in the womanly developments with which
+      nature had so economically endowed herself. An impoverished organization
+      carries with it certain neutral qualities which make its subject appear,
+      in the presence of complete manhood and womanhood, like a deaf-mute among
+      speaking persons. The deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek at
+      Lurida's suggestion was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed
+      expression. There was a range of sensibilities of which Lurida knew far
+      less than she did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed
+      her vital forces. She was startled to see what an effect her proposal had
+      produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing, but there was a flame in her
+      eyes which she had hardly ever seen before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this only your own suggestion?&rdquo; Euthymia said, &ldquo;or has some one been
+      putting the idea into your head?&rdquo; The truth was that she had happened to
+      meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was offended by the
+      long, searching stare with which that individual had honored her. It
+      occurred to her that he, or some such visitor to the place, might have
+      spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person who had repeated what was
+      said to Lurida, as a good subject for the art of the sculptor, and she
+      felt all her maiden sensibilities offended by the proposition. Lurida
+      could not understand her excitement, but she was startled by it. Natures
+      which are complementary of each other are liable to these accidental
+      collisions of feeling. They get along very well together, none the worse
+      for their differences, until all at once the tender spot of one or the
+      other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness on the part of the
+      aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the explosion explains the
+      situation altogether too emphatically. Such scenes did not frequently
+      occur between the two friends, and this little flurry was soon over; but
+      it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia Tower was not of that class of
+      self-conscious beauties who would be ready to dispute the empire of the
+      Venus of Milo on her own ground, in defences as scanty and insufficient as
+      those of the marble divinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and in
+      the long vacations, near enough to find out that she was anything but easy
+      to make love to. She fairly frightened more than one rash youth who was
+      disposed to be too sentimental in her company. They overdid flattery,
+      which she was used to and tolerated, but which cheapened the admirer in
+      her estimation, and now and then betrayed her into an expression which
+      made him aware of the fact, and was a discouragement to aggressive
+      amiability. The real difficulty was that not one of her adorers had ever
+      greatly interested her. It could not be that nature had made her
+      insensible. It must have been because the man who was made for her had
+      never yet shown himself. She was not easy to please, that was certain; and
+      she was one of those young women who will not accept as a lover one who
+      but half pleases them. She could not pick up the first stick that fell in
+      her way and take it to shape her ideal out of. Many of the good people of
+      the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be married.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There 's nothing good enough for her in this village,&rdquo; said the old
+      landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must wait till a prince comes along,&rdquo; the old landlady said in reply.
+      &ldquo;She'd make as pretty a queen as any of them that's born to it. Wouldn't
+      she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and di'monds a glitterin'
+      all over her! D' you remember how handsome she looked in the tableau, when
+      the fair was held for the Dorcas Society? She had on an old dress of her
+      grandma's,&mdash;they don't make anything half so handsome nowadays,&mdash;and
+      she was just as pretty as a pictur'. But what's the use of good looks if
+      they scare away folks? The young fellows think that such a handsome girl
+      as that would cost ten times as much to keep as a plain one. She must be
+      dressed up like an empress,&mdash;so they seem to think. It ain't so with
+      Euthymy: she'd look like a great lady dressed anyhow, and she has n't got
+      any more notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood before a glass to
+      look at herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were
+      entertained of Miss Euthymia. The fresh-water fisherman represented pretty
+      well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged. &ldquo;I tell ye,&rdquo;
+       said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief occupation was to
+      watch the coming and going of the visitors to Arrowhead Village,&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any o' them slab-sided
+      fellahs that you see hangin' raound to look at her every Sunday when she
+      comes aout o' meetin'. It's one o' them big gents from Boston or New York
+      that'll step up an' kerry her off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of Euthymia
+      than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance. The ideals of young
+      women cost them many and great disappointments, but they save them very
+      often from those lifelong companionships which accident is constantly
+      trying to force upon them, in spite of their obvious unfitness. The higher
+      the ideal, the less likely is the commonplace neighbor who has the great
+      advantage of easy access, or the boarding-house acquaintance who can
+      profit by those vacant hours when the least interesting of visitors is
+      better than absolute loneliness,&mdash;the less likely are these
+      undesirable personages to be endured, pitied, and, if not embraced,
+      accepted, for want of something better. Euthymia found so much pleasure in
+      the intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence and
+      reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had been
+      contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in an
+      abstract sort of way. Beneath her abstractions there was a capacity of
+      loving which might have been inferred from the expression of her features,
+      the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her voice, all of which
+      were full of the language which belongs to susceptible natures. How many
+      women never say to themselves that they were born to love, until all at
+      once the discovery opens upon them, as the sense that he was born a
+      painter is said to have dawned suddenly upon Correggio!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
+      thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers. She
+      was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or even a
+      bunch of flowers. She knew that he was receiving abounding tokens of
+      kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a certain inward
+      feeling restrained her from joining in these demonstrations. If he had
+      been suffering from some deadly and contagious malady she would have
+      risked her life to help him, without a thought that there was any
+      wonderful heroism in such self-devotion. Her friend Lurida might have been
+      capable of the same sacrifice, but it would be after reasoning with
+      herself as to the obligations which her sense of human rights and duties
+      laid upon her, and fortifying her courage with the memory of noble deeds
+      recorded of women in ancient and modern history. With Euthymia the primary
+      human instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection about them.
+      All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this forlorn stranger in
+      his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of giving any complete
+      expression to them. She thought of Mungo Park in the African desert, and
+      she envied the poor negress who not only pitied him, but had the blessed
+      opportunity of helping and consoling him. How near were these two human
+      creatures, each needing the other! How near in bodily presence, how far
+      apart in their lives, with a barrier seemingly impassable between them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIII. THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young people
+      every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases. Not only are they
+      liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental complications which
+      may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after convalescence seems to be
+      established, relapses occur which are more serious than the disease had
+      appeared to be in its previous course. One morning Dr. Butts found Maurice
+      worse instead of better, as he had hoped and expected to find him. Weak as
+      he was, there was every reason to fear the issue of this return of his
+      threatening symptoms. There was not much to do besides keeping up the
+      little strength which still remained. It was all needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as much
+      as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and taking what
+      we call his &ldquo;rest&rdquo;? More than a thousand times an hour, between a hundred
+      and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he has to lift the bars
+      of the cage in which his breathing organs are confined, to save himself
+      from asphyxia. Rest! There is no rest until the last long sigh tells those
+      who look upon the dying that the ceaseless daily task, to rest from which
+      is death, is at last finished. We are all galley-slaves, pulling at the
+      levers of respiration,&mdash;which, rising and falling like so many oars,
+      drive us across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore to another.
+      No! Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these four and twenty
+      oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
+      relapse. It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
+      source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
+      keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm. He determined to
+      remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure of pure air, and
+      where he himself could give more constant attention to his patient during
+      this critical period of his disease. It was a risk to take, but he could
+      be carried on a litter by careful men, and remain wholly passive during
+      the removal. Maurice signified his assent, as he could hardly help doing,&mdash;for
+      the doctor's suggestion took pretty nearly the form of a command. He
+      thought it a matter of life and death, and was gently urgent for his
+      patient's immediate change of residence. The doctor insisted on having
+      Maurice's books and other movable articles carried to his own house, so
+      that he should be surrounded by familiar sights, and not worry himself
+      about what might happen to objects which he valued, if they were left
+      behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything was
+      ready for the transfer of the patient to the house of the hospitable
+      physician. Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the arrangement of
+      Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master. The nurse in
+      attendance, a trustworthy man enough in the main, finding his patient in a
+      tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a little fresh air. While he was at
+      the door he heard a shouting which excited his curiosity, and he followed
+      the sound until he found himself at the border of the lake. It was nothing
+      very wonderful which had caused the shouting. A Newfoundland dog had been
+      showing off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers were betting as to
+      the time it would take him to bring back to his master the various
+      floating objects which had been thrown as far from the shore as possible.
+      He watched the dog a few minutes, when his attention was drawn to a light
+      wherry, pulled by one young lady and steered by another. It was making for
+      the shore, which it would soon reach. The attendant remembered all at
+      once, that he had left his charge, and just before the boat came to land
+      he turned and hurried back to the patient. Exactly how long he had been
+      absent he could not have said,&mdash;perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps
+      longer; the time appeared short to him, wearied with long sitting and
+      watching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was not
+      in the least needed. The patient was lying perfectly quiet, and to all
+      appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone. It was such a comfort
+      to look at something besides the worn features of a sick man, to hear
+      something besides his labored breathing and faint, half-whispered words,
+      that the temptation to indulge in these luxuries for a few minutes had
+      proved irresistible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the
+      absence of the nurse. He very soon fell into a dream, which began quietly
+      enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which dreams are in
+      the habit of undergoing became successively anxious, distressing,
+      terrifying. His earlier and later experiences came up before him,
+      fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at the
+      bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather
+      worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like
+      so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old
+      building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he
+      was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of
+      ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his
+      hold an icicle ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for
+      his foot to slip or the icicle to break. How thin the air seemed, how
+      desperately hard to breathe! He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may be, and
+      the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well as one of the
+      great trials in his mountain ascents. No, it was not Mont Blanc,&mdash;it
+      was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits; it was Hecla that he was
+      climbing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he was
+      choking with its dense fumes; he heard the flames roaring around him, he
+      felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry, and awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was full of smoke. He was gasping for breath, strangling in the
+      smothering oven which his chamber had become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house was on fire!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in a
+      whisper. He made a desperate effort, and rose so as to sit up in the bed
+      for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back upon
+      his pillow, helpless. He felt that his hour had come, for he could not
+      live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was left alone. He could hear the
+      crackle of fire as the flame crept along from one partition to another. It
+      was a cruel fate to be left to perish in that way,&mdash;the fate that
+      many a martyr had had to face,&mdash;to be first strangled and then
+      burned. Death had not the terror for him that it has for most young
+      persons. He was accustomed to thinking of it calmly, sometimes wistfully,
+      even to such a degree that the thought of self-destruction had come upon
+      him as a temptation. But here was death in an unexpected and appalling
+      shape. He did not know before how much he cared to live. All his old
+      recollections came before him as it were in one long, vivid flash. The
+      closed vista of memory opened to its far horizon-line, and past and
+      present were pictured in a single instant of clear vision. The dread
+      moment which had blighted his life returned in all its terror. He felt the
+      convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,&mdash;the rush
+      of air,&mdash;the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which
+      he was precipitated. One after another those paralyzing seizures which had
+      been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to repeat themselves,
+      as real as at the moment of their occurrence. The pictures passed in
+      succession with such rapidity that they appeared almost as if
+      simultaneous. The vision of the &ldquo;inward eye&rdquo; was so intensified in this
+      moment of peril that an instant was like an hour of common existence.
+      Those who have been very near drowning know well what this description
+      means. The development of a photograph may not explain it, but it
+      illustrates the curious and familiar fact of the revived recollections of
+      the drowning man's experience. The sensitive plate has taken one look at a
+      scene, and remembers it all,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every little circumstance is there,&mdash;the hoof in air, the wing in
+      flight, the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks. All there, but
+      invisible; potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if not
+      existing at all. A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene comes out
+      in all its perfection of detail. In those supreme moments when death
+      stares a man suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted emotion floods the
+      undeveloped pictures of vanished years, stored away in the memory, the
+      vast panorama of a lifetime, and in one swift instant the past comes out
+      as vividly as if it were again the present. So it was at this moment with
+      the sick man, as he lay helpless and felt that he was left to die. For he
+      saw no hope of relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the room; the
+      flames were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it
+      was all over with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His past life had flashed before him. Then all at once rose the thought of
+      his future,&mdash;of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes which he
+      had cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be lifted from him.
+      There was something, then, to be lived for, something! There was a new
+      life, it might be, in store for him, and such a new life! He thought of
+      all he was losing. Oh, could he but have lived to know the meaning of
+      love! And the passionate desire of life came over him,&mdash;not the dread
+      of death, but the longing for what the future might yet have of happiness
+      for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this took place in the course of a very few moments. Dreams and
+      visions have little to do with measured time, and ten minutes, possibly
+      fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the beginning of those
+      nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested by the suffocating air he
+      was breathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened? In the confusion of moving books and other articles to
+      the doctor's house, doors and windows had been forgotten. Among the rest a
+      window opening into the cellar, where some old furniture had been left by
+      a former occupant, had been left unclosed. One of the lazy natives, who
+      had lounged by the house smoking a bad cigar, had thrown the burning stump
+      in at this open window. He had no particular intention of doing mischief,
+      but he had that indifference to consequences which is the next step above
+      the inclination to crime. The burning stump happened to fall among the
+      straw of an old mattress which had been ripped open. The smoker went his
+      way without looking behind him, and it so chanced that no other person
+      passed the house for some time. Presently the straw was in a blaze, and
+      from this the fire extended to the furniture, to the stairway leading up
+      from the cellar, and was working its way along the entry under the stairs
+      leading up to the apartment where Maurice was lying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such a
+      mass of combustibles,&mdash;loose straw from the mattress, dry old
+      furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and shrinking for
+      a score or two of years. The whole house was, in the common language of
+      the newspaper reports, &ldquo;a perfect tinder-box,&rdquo; and would probably be a
+      heap of ashes in half an hour. And there was this unfortunate deserted
+      sick man lying between life and death, beyond all help unless some
+      unexpected assistance should come to his rescue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was
+      horror-struck to see dense volumes of smoke pouring out of the lower
+      windows. It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows, also,
+      and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward along the side
+      of the house. The man shrieked Fire! Fire! with all his might, and rushed
+      to the door of the building to make his way to Maurice's room and save
+      him. He penetrated but a short distance when, blinded and choking with the
+      smoke, he rushed headlong down the stairs with a cry of despair that
+      roused every man, woman, and child within reach of a human voice. Out they
+      came from their houses in every quarter of the village. The shout of Fire!
+      Fire! was the chief aid lent by many of the young and old. Some caught up
+      pails and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling them; the hastier
+      snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer the burning
+      building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is the sick man moved?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the awful question first asked,&mdash;for in the little village
+      all knew that Maurice was about being transferred to the doctor's house.
+      The attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where he had left
+      him, and gasped out,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A ladder! A ladder! was the general cry, and men and boys rushed off in
+      search of one. But a single minute was an age now, and there was no ladder
+      to be had without a delay of many minutes. The sick man was going to be
+      swallowed up in the flames before it could possibly arrive. Some were
+      going for a blanket or a coverlet, in the hope that the young man might
+      have strength enough to leap from the window and be safely caught in it.
+      The attendant shook his head, and said faintly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cannot move from his bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the visitors at the village,&mdash;a millionaire, it was said,&mdash;a
+      kind-hearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken tones:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand dollars to the man that will bring him from his chamber!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fresh-water fisherman muttered, &ldquo;I should like to save the man and to
+      see the money, but it ain't a thaousan' dollars, nor ten thaousan'
+      dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,&mdash;or even chokin'
+      to death, anyhaow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village,
+      recent or old, shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The stairs have been shored up,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and when the fists that holds
+      'em up goes, down they'll come. It ain't safe for no man to go over them
+      stairs. Hurry along your ladder,&mdash;that's your only chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All was wild confusion around the burning house. The ladder they had gone
+      for was missing from its case,&mdash;a neighbor had carried it off for the
+      workmen who were shingling his roof. It would never get there in time.
+      There was a fire-engine, but it was nearly half a mile from the lakeside
+      settlement. Some were throwing on water in an aimless, useless way; one
+      was sending a thin stream through a garden syringe: it seemed like doing
+      something, at least. But all hope of saving Maurice was fast giving way,
+      so rapid was the progress of the flames, so thick the cloud of smoke that
+      filled the house and poured from the windows. Nothing was heard but
+      confused cries, shrieks of women, all sorts of orders to do this and that,
+      no one knowing what was to be done. The ladder! The ladder! Five minutes
+      more and it will be too late!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had stopped
+      his work of arranging Maurice's books in the same way as that in which
+      they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the direction of the
+      sound, little thinking that his master was lying helpless in the burning
+      house. &ldquo;Some chimney afire,&rdquo; he said to himself; but he would go and take
+      a look, at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending death, two
+      young women, in boating dresses of decidedly Bloomerish aspect, had
+      suddenly joined the throng. &ldquo;The Wonder&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Terror&rdquo; of their
+      school-days&mdash;Miss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida Vincent had just
+      come from the shore, where they had left their wherry. A few hurried words
+      told them the fearful story. Maurice Kirkwood was lying in the chamber to
+      which every eye was turned, unable to move, doomed to a dreadful death.
+      All that could be hoped was that he would perish by suffocation rather
+      than by the flames, which would soon be upon him. The man who had attended
+      him had just tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back out of the
+      door, almost strangled by the smoke. A thousand dollars had been offered
+      to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had dared to make the
+      attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the smoke did not
+      blind and smother the man who passed them before they fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two young women looked each other in the face for one swift moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can he be reached?&rdquo; asked Lurida. &ldquo;Is there nobody that will venture
+      his life to save a brother like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will venture mine,&rdquo; said Euthymia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&rdquo; shrieked Lurida,&mdash;&ldquo;not you! not you! It is a man's work,
+      not yours! You shall not go!&rdquo; Poor Lurida had forgotten all her theories
+      in this supreme moment. But Euthymia was not to be held back. Taking a
+      handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail of water and bound it
+      about her head. Then she took several deep breaths of air, and filled her
+      lungs as full as they would hold. She knew she must not take a single
+      breath in the choking atmosphere if she could possibly help it, and
+      Euthymia was noted for her power of staying under water so long that more
+      than once those who saw her dive thought she would never come up again. So
+      rapid were her movements that they paralyzed the bystanders, who would
+      forcibly have prevented her from carrying out her purpose. Her imperious
+      determination was not to be resisted. And so Euthymia, a willing martyr,
+      if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within the veil that hid
+      the sufferer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground. She was the
+      first, but not the only one, of her sex that fainted as Euthymia
+      disappeared in the smoke of the burning building. Even the rector grew
+      very white in the face,&mdash;so white that one of his vestry-men begged
+      him to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of water on his
+      forehead, to his great disgust and manifest advantage. The old landlady
+      was crying and moaning, and her husband was wiping his eyes and shaking
+      his head sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will nevar come out alive,&rdquo; he said solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor dead, neither,&rdquo; added the carpenter. &ldquo;Ther' won't be nothing left of
+      neither of 'em but ashes.&rdquo; And the carpenter hid his face in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a
+      &ldquo;hangkercher,&rdquo;&mdash;it had served to carry bait that morning,&mdash;and
+      was making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running down
+      his cheeks. The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with these more
+      quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations, coming alike from old
+      and young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a
+      tableau. The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness, and before they
+      had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or seemed lost.
+      They felt that they should never look again on either of those young
+      faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by
+      habit, had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the
+      funeral sermon. The first that occurred to him was this,&mdash;vaguely, of
+      course, in the background of consciousness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the
+      fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective
+      disposition. He had always been opposed to cremation, and here was a
+      funeral pile blazing before his eyes. He, too, had his human sympathies,
+      but in the distance his imagination pictured the final ceremony, and how
+      he himself should figure in a spectacle where the usual centre piece of
+      attraction would be wanting,&mdash;perhaps his own services uncalled for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blame him not, you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears of
+      mourners. The string of self-interest answers with its chord to every
+      sound; it vibrates with the funeral-bell, it finds itself trembling to the
+      wail of the De Profundis. Not always,&mdash;not always; let us not be
+      cynical in our judgments, but common human nature, we may safely say, is
+      subject to those secondary vibrations under the most solemn and
+      soul-subduing influences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are contemplating
+      in delaying it by the description of little circumstances and individual
+      thoughts and feelings. But linger as we may, we cannot compress into a
+      chapter&mdash;we could not crowd into a volume&mdash;all that passed
+      through the minds and stirred the emotions of the awe-struck company which
+      was gathered about the scene of danger and of terror. We are dealing with
+      an impossibility: consciousness is a surface; narrative is a line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maurice had given himself up for lost. His breathing was becoming every
+      moment more difficult, and he felt that his strength could hold out but a
+      few minutes longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Robert!&rdquo; he called in faint accents. But the attendant was not there to
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paolo! Paolo!&rdquo; But the faithful servant, who would have given his life
+      for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd was
+      gathered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, for a breath of air! Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed! Too
+      late! Too late!&rdquo; he gasped, with what might have seemed his dying
+      expiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not too late!&rdquo; The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if it
+      had come down to him from heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms
+      of&mdash;a woman!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of the stifling chamber,&mdash;over the burning stairs,&mdash;close by
+      the tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,&mdash;out
+      into the open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,&mdash;carried as
+      easily as if he had been a babe, in the strong arms of &ldquo;The Wonder&rdquo; of the
+      gymnasium, the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the use
+      she was to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl accomplishments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that none
+      of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again, unless
+      he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking vessel.
+      Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who had stood
+      in white despair as they thought of these two young lives soon to be
+      wrapped in their burning shroud,&mdash;those stern men&mdash;the old
+      sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the city
+      counting-room&mdash;sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion
+      that overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are
+      capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at
+      the same moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his eyes
+      opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural
+      lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting him.
+      His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses stole the
+      murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the wavelike movements
+      of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that entered with every
+      breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed close to his ear. And
+      every sense, and every instinct, and every reviving pulse told him in
+      language like a revelation from another world that a woman's arms were
+      around him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace had
+      brought him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor
+      made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not move him a hair's breadth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Wait until the litter comes.
+      Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy flask about
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather awkward,
+      but did not come forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I han't got no brandy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but there's a drop or two of old
+      Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any help.
+      I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla stamped
+      on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more of the
+      specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which happen
+      to persons of his calling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the aid
+      of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an
+      agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and had to
+      content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all the
+      prayers he could think of to Our Lady and to his holy namesake the
+      Apostle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully. &ldquo;Take
+      a few drops of this cordial,&rdquo; he said, as he held it to his patient's
+      lips. &ldquo;Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will watch him, and
+      say when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by, waiting.&rdquo; Dr.
+      Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color. The &ldquo;Old Medford&rdquo; knew its
+      business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands; it had its redeeming
+      virtue, and helped to set up a poor fellow now and then. It did this for
+      Maurice very effectively. When he seemed somewhat restored, the doctor had
+      the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia softly resigned her helpless
+      burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert lifted with the aid of the
+      doctor, who walked by the patient as he was borne to the home where Mrs.
+      Butts had made all ready for his reception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary duties
+      of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman over
+      her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back from her
+      long fainting fit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as elsewhere?
+      It could not seem strange to the good people of that place and their
+      visitors that these two young persons, brought together under
+      circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human soul
+      is capable, should become attached to each other. But the bond between
+      them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had learned
+      the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since his infancy
+      he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence of youthful
+      womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact when he found
+      himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had
+      had many and threatening experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
+      possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of
+      debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by
+      what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation
+      and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly clear
+      to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he owed his
+      life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his nervous
+      system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would be of far
+      more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the drugs in the
+      pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the matter to her
+      parents and friends. She must go with him on some of his visits. Her
+      mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a case of life and
+      death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a scene
+      not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the old
+      edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the little
+      group. He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside, and held
+      the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse. As Euthymia entered it
+      gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with a faint memory of
+      its old habit, then throbbed full and strong, comparatively, as if under
+      the spur of some powerful stimulus. Euthymia's task was a delicate one,
+      but she knew how to disguise its difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood,&rdquo; she said, and handed
+      him a white chrysanthemum. He took it from her hand, and before she knew
+      it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle constraint.
+      What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she had saved, at
+      least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the disease which had
+      almost worn out his powers of resistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;He wants to thank
+      you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death which
+      seemed inevitable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly
+      tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with the
+      dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens it; it
+      lets the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken bed.
+      The tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified
+      itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman had conquered
+      and abolished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the
+      time of his restoration to his natural conditions. His convalescence was
+      very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even
+      progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead
+      Village; the chrysanthemums were going out of flower, the frosts had come,
+      and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The relation
+      between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all common
+      acquaintances and friendships that no ordinary rules could apply to it.
+      Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme prostration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come every day,&rdquo; the doctor said. &ldquo;He gains with every visit you
+      make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day.&rdquo; So she came and sat
+      by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in his presence.
+      He grew stronger,&mdash;began to sit up in bed; and at last Euthymia found
+      him dressed as in health, and beginning to walk about the room. She was
+      startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse, but the young
+      gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer. She had
+      scruples about making any further visits. She asked Lurida what she
+      thought about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think about it?&rdquo; said Lurida. &ldquo;Why should n't you go to see a brother as
+      well as a sister, I should like to know? If you are afraid to go to see
+      Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate. If you would rather have
+      me go than go yourself, I will do it, and let people talk just as much as
+      they want to. Shall I go instead of you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
+      patient. The doctor had told her he thought there were special reasons for
+      her own course in coming daily to see him. &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you
+      are too bright to be safe for him in his weak state. Your mind is such a
+      stimulating one, you know. A dull sort of person like myself is better for
+      him just now. I will continue visiting him as long as the doctor says it
+      is important that I should; but you must defend me, Lurida,&mdash;I know
+      you can explain it all so that people will not blame me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating head-voice
+      would be in a convalescent's chamber. She knew how that active mind of
+      hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when what he wanted was
+      rest of every faculty. Were not these good and sufficient reasons for her
+      decision? What others could there be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that she was
+      continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to look too
+      well to be called an invalid. It was a dangerous condition of affairs, and
+      the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in their comments. Free,
+      but kindly, for the story of the rescue had melted every heart; and what
+      could be more natural than that these two young people whom God had
+      brought together in the dread moment of peril should find it hard to tear
+      themselves asunder after the hour of danger was past? When gratitude is a
+      bankrupt, love only can pay his debts; and if Maurice gave his heart to
+      Euthymia, would not she receive it as payment in full?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
+      Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in a
+      magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the austral
+      the boreal. It was well, perhaps, that this change took place while he was
+      enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness. For all the
+      long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their natural
+      channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ which throbs in
+      response to every profound emotion. As his health gradually returned,
+      Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek, a glitter in his
+      eyes, a something in the tone of his voice, which altogether were a
+      warning to the young maiden that the highway of friendly intercourse was
+      fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which her woman's eye could read
+      plainly enough, &ldquo;Dangerous passing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that I think I
+      had better not play Sister of Charity any longer. The next time we meet I
+      hope you will be strong enough to call on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was frightened to see how pale he turned,&mdash;he was weaker than she
+      thought. There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
+      looked up from the stocking she was knitting. They had forgotten the good
+      woman's presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Maurice spoke,&mdash;very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a
+      stitch at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she
+      listened to what followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life.
+      But you have done more than that,&mdash;more than you know or can ever
+      know. To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I
+      am to live at all. All I am, all I hope,&mdash;will you take this poor
+      offering from one who owes you everything, whose lips never touched those
+      of woman or breathed a word of love before you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth of
+      a passion which had never before found expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she told
+      her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the tableaux they had had
+      in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a pleasing
+      picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave her
+      inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of Maurice
+      Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the young
+      people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her lap
+      tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn
+      trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating
+      from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new
+      engagement or of the arrival of the last &ldquo;little stranger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village
+      that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia Tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <b>MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May 18.</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,&mdash;Who would have thought, when you broke your oar
+      as the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses
+      came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar and grand
+      gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the
+      mistress? You must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What am
+      I saying?&mdash;-you forget them! No, dearest, I know your heart too well
+      for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships as
+      they do last years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me all
+      about yourself and your happiness, and now you want me to tell you about
+      myself and what is going on in our little place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And first about myself. I have given up the idea of becoming a doctor. I
+      have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of certainties, of
+      demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in probabilities. The practice
+      of the art is so mixed up with the deepest human interests that it is hard
+      to pursue it with that even poise of the intellect which is demanded by
+      science. I want knowledge pure and simple,&mdash;I do not fancy having it
+      mixed. Neither do I like the thought of passing my life in going from one
+      scene of suffering to another; I am not saintly enough for such a daily
+      martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy occupation. I fainted at
+      the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see another. I don't
+      say that I wouldn't marry a physician, if the right one asked me, but the
+      young doctor is not forthcoming at present. Yes, I think I might make a
+      pretty good doctor's wife. I could teach him a good deal about headaches
+      and backaches and all sorts of nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the
+      French women call their tantrums. I don't know but I should be willing to
+      let him try his new medicines on me. If he were a homeopath, I know I
+      should; for if a billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my
+      tea or coffee, I don't feel afraid that a billionth of a grain of anything
+      would poison me,&mdash;no, not if it were snake-venom; and if it were not
+      disgusting, I would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to please
+      my husband. But if I ever become a doctor's wife, my husband will not be
+      one of that kind of practitioners, you may be sure of that, nor an
+      &ldquo;eclectic,&rdquo; nor a &ldquo;faith-cure man.&rdquo; On the whole, I don't think I want to
+      be married at all. I don't like the male animal very well (except such
+      noble specimens as your husband). They are all tyrants,&mdash;almost all,&mdash;so
+      far as our sex is concerned, and I often think we could get on better
+      without them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers,
+      some of them well worth reading. You have told me so often that you would
+      like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of the papers
+      sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have laid aside one
+      or two manuscripts expressly for your perusal. You will get them by and
+      by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village
+      misses him dreadfully, I can tell you. That is the reason people become so
+      attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I
+      suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern
+      standard. Then they are so child-like, whereas the native of these
+      latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother says,&mdash;you
+      know mother's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and sensible she is in
+      spite of them,&mdash;mother says that when she was a girl families used to
+      import young men and young women from the country towns, who called
+      themselves &ldquo;helps,&rdquo; not servants,&mdash;no, that was Scriptural; &ldquo;but they
+      did n't know everything down in Judee,&rdquo; and it is not good American
+      language. She says that these people would live in the same household
+      until they were married, and the women often remain in the same service
+      until they died or were old and worn out, and then, what with the money
+      they had saved and the care and assistance they got from their former
+      employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old age, and be buried in
+      the family lot. Mother has made up her mind to the change, but grandmother
+      is bitter about it. She says there never was a country yet where the
+      population was made up of &ldquo;ladies&rdquo; and &ldquo;gentlemen,&rdquo; and she does n't
+      believe there can be; nor that putting a spread eagle on a copper makes a
+      gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist after her own fashion. She thinks
+      all sentiment is dying out of our people. No loyalty for the sovereign,
+      the king-post of the political edifice, she says; no deep attachment
+      between employer and employed; no reverence of the humbler members of a
+      household for its heads; and to make sure of continued corruption and
+      misery, what she calls &ldquo;universal suffrage&rdquo; emptying all the sewers into
+      the great aqueduct we all must drink from. &ldquo;Universal suffrage!&rdquo; I suppose
+      we women don't belong to the universe! Wait until we get a chance at the
+      ballot-box, I tell grandma, and see if we don't wash out the sewers before
+      they reach the aqueduct! But my pen has run away with me. I was thinking
+      of Paolo, and what a pleasant thing it is to have one of those child-like,
+      warm-hearted, attachable, cheerful, contented, humble, faithful,
+      companionable, but never presuming grownup children of the South waiting
+      on one, as if everything he could do for one was a pleasure, and carrying
+      a look of content in his face which makes every one who meets him happier
+      for a glimpse of his features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant,
+      intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual interest in each
+      other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong
+      to domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost
+      wholly confined to aliens and their immediate descendants. Why should
+      Hannah think herself so much better than Bridget? When they meet at the
+      polls together, as they will before long, they will begin to feel more of
+      an equality than is recognized at present. The native female turns her
+      nose up at the idea of &ldquo;living out;&rdquo; does she think herself so much
+      superior to the women of other nationalities? Our women will have to come
+      to it,&mdash;so grandmother says,&mdash;in another generation or two, and
+      in a hundred years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of
+      old &ldquo;Miss Pollys&rdquo; and &ldquo;Miss Betseys&rdquo; who have lived half a century in the
+      same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in time of
+      need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well as a broom, I
+      tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot virtues of
+      contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet the barren and
+      hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to tell
+      you. There is an engagement you will want to know all about. It came to
+      pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I remember, and shall
+      never forget as long as we live. It seems that the young fellow who pulled
+      the bow oar of that men's college boat which we had the pleasure of
+      beating got some glimpses of Georgina, our handsome stroke oar. I believe
+      he took it into his head that it was she who threw the bouquet that won
+      the race for us. He was, as you know, greatly mistaken, and ought to have
+      made love to me, only he did n't. Well, it seems he came posting down to
+      the Institute just before the vacation was over, and there got a sight of
+      Georgina. I wonder whether she told him she didn't fling the bouquet!
+      Anyhow, the acquaintance began in that way, and now it seems that this
+      young fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but with a good many
+      months more to pass in college, is her captive. It was too bad. Just think
+      of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit! No matter, the old
+      Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts. They say he has just been
+      offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges. I asked him
+      about it, and he did not say that he had or had not. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you think I ought to
+      accept it and leave Arrowhead Village? Let us talk it over,&rdquo; said he,
+      &ldquo;just as if I had had such an offer.&rdquo; I told him he ought to stay. There
+      are plenty of men that can get into a Professor's chair, I said, and talk
+      like Solomons to a class of wondering pupils: but once get a really good
+      doctor in a place, a man who knows all about everybody, whether they have
+      this or that tendency, whether when they are sick they have a way of dying
+      or a way of getting well, what medicines agree with them and what drugs
+      they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think nothing is the
+      matter with them until they are dead as smoked herring, or of the sort
+      that send for the minister if they get a stomach-ache from eating too many
+      cucumbers,&mdash;who knows all about all the people within half a dozen
+      miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a regular practitioner),&mdash;such
+      a man as that, I say, is not to be replaced like a missing piece out of a
+      Springfield musket or a Waltham watch. Don't go! said I. Stay here and
+      save our precious lives, if you can, or at least put us through in the
+      proper way, so that we needn't be ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we
+      must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not going to leave us. I hope you will have
+      no unwelcome occasion for his services,&mdash;you are never ill, you know,&mdash;but,
+      anyhow, he is going to be here, and no matter what happens he will be on
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new house
+      is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband lived while he
+      was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous inhabitants with the
+      most ingenious combination of inconveniences that the natural man could
+      educe from his original perversity of intellect. To get at any one room
+      you must pass through every other. It is blind, or nearly so, on the only
+      side which has a good prospect, and commands a fine view of the barn and
+      pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We have a small fire-engine near
+      the new house which can be worked by a man or two, and would be equal to
+      the emergency of putting out a bunch of fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a
+      new ladder, in a bog, close to the new fire-engine, so if the new house
+      catches fire, like its predecessor, and there should happen to, be a sick
+      man on an upper floor, he can be got out without running the risk of going
+      up and down a burning staircase. What a blessed thing it was that there
+      was no fire-engine near by and no ladder at hand on the day of the great
+      rescue! If there had been, what a change in your programme of life! You
+      remember that &ldquo;cup of tea spilt on Mrs. Masham's apron,&rdquo; which we used to
+      read of in one of Everett's Orations, and all its wide-reaching
+      consequences in the affairs of Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as
+      diligently as ever a Boston matron sought for the last leaves in her old
+      caddy after the tea-chests had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,&mdash;but
+      no matter about that, now. That is the way things come about in this
+      world. I must write a lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly,
+      fortunate calamities. It will be just the converse of that odd essay of
+      Swift's we read together, the awkward and stupid things done with the best
+      intentions. Perhaps I shall deliver the lecture in your city: you will
+      come and hear it, and bring him, won't you, dearest? Always, your loving
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      LURIDA. <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <b>MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia! And are you, and is
+      your husband, and Paolo,&mdash;good Paolo,&mdash;are you all as well and
+      happy as you have been and as you ought to be? I suppose our small village
+      seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now that you have
+      become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great city. For all that,
+      it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can tell you. We have sleighing
+      parties,&mdash;I never go to them, myself, because I can't keep warm, and
+      my mind freezes up when my blood cools down below 95 or 96 deg.
+      Fahrenheit. I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and read about
+      Arctic discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells' jingling and
+      to see the young people trying to have a good time as hard as they do at a
+      picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a
+      sleigh-ride that other place, where, as my favorite Milton says, &ldquo;frost
+      performs the effect of fire.&rdquo; I believe I have quoted him correctly; I
+      ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from memory once, if I cannot
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You must have plenty of excitement in your city life. I suppose you
+      recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the &ldquo;Household
+      Inquisitor:&rdquo; &ldquo;Mrs. E. K., very beautiful, in an elegant,&rdquo; etc., etc., &ldquo;with
+      pearls,&rdquo; etc., etc.,&mdash;as if you were not the ornament of all that you
+      wear, no matter what it is!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am so glad that you have married a scholar! Why should not Maurice&mdash;you
+      both tell me to call him so&mdash;take the diplomatic office which has
+      been offered him? It seems to me that he would find himself in exactly the
+      right place. He can talk in two or three languages, has good manners, and
+      a wife who&mdash;well, what shall I say of Mrs. Kirkwood but that &ldquo;she
+      would be good company for a queen,&rdquo; as our old friend the quondam landlady
+      of the Anchor Tavern used to say? I should so like to see you presented at
+      Court! It seems to me that I should be willing to hold your train for the
+      sake of seeing you in your court feathers and things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become either a
+      professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or college for
+      girls. I have tried the first business a little. Last month I delivered a
+      lecture on Quaternions. I got three for my audience; two came over from
+      the Institute, and one from that men's college which they try to make out
+      to be a university, and where no female is admitted unless she belongs
+      among the quadrupeds. I enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is a difficult
+      one, and I don't think any one of them had any very clear notion of what I
+      was talking about, except Rhodora,&mdash;and I know she did n't. To tell
+      the truth, I was lecturing to instruct myself. I mean to try something
+      easier next time. I have thought of the Basque language and literature.
+      What do you say to that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Society goes on famously. We have had a paper presented and read
+      lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the
+      weaker sort. The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-Lettres at
+      that men's college over there. He is dreadfully hard on the poor &ldquo;poets,&rdquo;
+       as they call themselves. It seems that a great many young persons, and
+      more especially a great many young girls, of whom the Institute has
+      furnished a considerable proportion, have taken to sending him their
+      rhymed productions to be criticised,&mdash;expecting to be praised, no
+      doubt, every one of them. I must give you one of the sauciest extracts
+      from his paper in his own words:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of both
+      sexes. They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I recognize a
+      tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness, and the
+      publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of ambitious
+      mediocrity, if not inferiority. Of course there are exceptions to this
+      rule of judgment, but I maintain that the presumption is always against
+      the rhymester as compared with the less pretentious persons about him or
+      her, busy with some useful calling,&mdash;too busy to be tagging rhymed
+      commonplaces together. Just now there seems to be an epidemic of rhyming
+      as bad as the dancing mania, or the sweating sickness. After reading a
+      certain amount of manuscript verse one is disposed to anathematize the
+      inventor of homophonous syllabification. [This phrase made a great laugh
+      when it was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have been found out very
+      early,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   &ldquo;'Where are you, Adam?'
+
+   &ldquo;'Here am I, Madam;'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall. The
+      intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the conversational
+      intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise itself. Milton
+      would not have them even in Paradise Lost, you remember. For my own part,
+      I wish certain rhymes could be declared contraband of written or printed
+      language. Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or whirled
+      with it, or furled upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away
+      from the skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth should be
+      coupled with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded
+      of her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath, nor
+      the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave
+      over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming
+      dictionaries,&mdash;let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously
+      excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his
+      sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles
+      which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting
+      themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my
+      stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women,
+      not the making of jingles! No,&mdash;no,&mdash;no! I want to see the young
+      people in our schools and academies and colleges, and the graduates of
+      these institutions, lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of
+      self-contemplating and self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism
+      which is surfeiting the land with those literary sandwiches,&mdash;thin
+      slices of tinkling sentimentality between two covers looking like
+      hard-baked gilt gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at
+      my good advice! They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one
+      like his&mdash;or her&mdash;own verses, and they hold on to their
+      metre-ballad-mongering as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to
+      the gas-bag.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty
+      hard. The best part of the joke is that the old man himself published a
+      thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to
+      think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he
+      can find in the shops. No matter what they say, I can't help agreeing with
+      him about this great flood of &ldquo;poetry,&rdquo; as it calls itself, and looking at
+      the rhyming mania much as he does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I do love real poetry! That is the reason hate rhymes which have not a
+      particle of it in them. The foolish scribblers that deal in them are like
+      bad workmen in a carpenter's shop. They not only turn out bad jobs of
+      work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen. There is hardly a pair
+      of rhymes in the English language that is not so dulled and hacked and
+      gapped by these 'prentice hands that a master of the craft hates to touch
+      them, and yet he cannot very well do without them. I have not been
+      besieged as the old Professor has been with such multitudes of
+      would-be-poetical aspirants that he could not even read their manuscripts,
+      but I have had a good many letters containing verses, and I have warned
+      the writers of the delusion under which they were laboring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts from
+      the Greek Anthology. I send you a few specimens of my work, with a
+      Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I hope you will find something of the
+      Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught a spark of inspiration
+      from the impassioned Lesbian. I have found great delight in this work, at
+      any rate, and am never so happy as when I read from my manuscript or
+      repeat from memory the lines into which I have transferred the thought of
+      the men and women of two thousand years ago, or given rhythmical
+      expression to my own rapturous feelings with regard to them. I must read
+      you my Dedication to the Shade of Sappho. I cannot help thinking that you
+      will like it better than either of my last two, The Song of the Roses, or
+      The Wail of the Weeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I do miss you, dearest! I want you: I want you to listen to what I
+      have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future; I want
+      to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's self to be
+      such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in the woods with
+      you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk over every day's
+      doings with you. Alas! I feel that we have parted as two friends part at a
+      port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss each other's cheeks, they
+      cover their faces and weep, they try to speak good-by to each other, they
+      watch from the pier and from the deck; the two forms grow less and less,
+      fainter and fainter in the distance, two white handkerchiefs flutter once
+      and again, and yet once more, and the last visible link of the chain which
+      binds them has parted. Dear, dear, dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running
+      over with tears when I think that we may never, never meet again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Don't you want some more items of village news? We are threatened with an
+      influx of stylish people: &ldquo;Buttons&rdquo; to answer the door-bell, in place of
+      the chamber-maid; &ldquo;butler,&rdquo; in place of the &ldquo;hired man;&rdquo; footman in
+      top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la Napoleon;
+      tandems, &ldquo;drags,&rdquo; dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts. It is rather
+      amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes away the good
+      old country flavor of the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to spend
+      your summers here. I suppose you must have a large house, and I am sure
+      you will have a beautiful one. I suppose you will have some fine horses,
+      and who would n't be glad to? But I do not believe you will try to make
+      your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their eyes out of their heads
+      with a display meant to outshine everybody else that comes here. You can
+      have a yacht on the lake, if you like, but I hope you will pull a pair of
+      oars in our old boat once in a while, with me to steer you. I know you
+      will be just the same dear Euthymia you always were and always must be.
+      How happy you must make such a man as Maurice Kirkwood! And how happy you
+      ought to be with him!&mdash;a man who knows what is in books, and who has
+      seen for himself, what is in men. If he has not seen so much of women,
+      where could he study all that is best in womanhood as he can in his own
+      wife? Only one thing that dear Euthymia lacks. She is not quite pronounced
+      enough in her views as to the rights and the wrongs of the sex. When I
+      visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate Maurice with sound
+      views on that subject. I have written an essay for the Society, which I
+      hope will go a good way towards answering all the objections to female
+      suffrage. I mean to read it to your husband, if you will let me, as I know
+      you will, and perhaps you would like to hear it,&mdash;only you know my
+      thoughts on the subject pretty well already.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to your
+      precious self, I am ever your LURIDA.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <b>DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,&mdash;My pen refuses to call you by any other name.
+      Sweet-souled you are, and your Latinized Greek name is&mdash;the one which
+      truly designates you. I cannot tell you how we have followed you, with
+      what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told their
+      story in your letters to your mother. She has let us have the privilege of
+      reading them, and we have been with you in steamer, yacht, felucca,
+      gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from crowded capitals to
+      &ldquo;deserts where no men abide,&rdquo;&mdash;everywhere keeping company with you in
+      your natural and pleasant descriptions of your experiences. And now that
+      you have returned to your home in the great city I must write you a few
+      lines of welcome, if nothing more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left it. We
+      are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the little place
+      upon which they swarm a kind of rural city. When this happens the
+      consequences are striking,&mdash;some of them desirable and some far
+      otherwise. The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-kept houses and
+      of handsome grounds always maintained in good order about them shows
+      itself in a large circuit around the fashionable centre. Houses get on a
+      new coat of paint, fences are kept in better order, little plots of
+      flowers show themselves where only ragged weeds had rioted, the
+      inhabitants present themselves in more comely attire and drive in
+      handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed horses. On the other hand,
+      there is a natural jealousy on the part of the natives of the region
+      suddenly become fashionable. They have seen the land they sold at farm
+      prices by the acre coming to be valued by the foot, like the corner lots
+      in a city. Their simple and humble modes of life look almost
+      poverty-stricken in the glare of wealth and luxury which so outshines
+      their plain way of living. It is true that many of them have found them
+      selves richer than in former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own
+      resources. They know how to avail themselves of their altered position,
+      and soon learn to charge city prices for country products; but nothing can
+      make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose yearly
+      income is many times their own whole capital. I think it would be better
+      if our rich men scattered themselves more than they do,&mdash;buying large
+      country estates, building houses and stables which will make it easy to
+      entertain their friends, and depending for society on chosen guests rather
+      than on the mob of millionaires who come together for social rivalry. But
+      I do not fret myself about it. Society will stratify itself according to
+      the laws of social gravitation. It will take a generation or two more,
+      perhaps, to arrange the strata by precipitation and settlement, but we can
+      always depend on one principle to govern the arrangement of the layers.
+      People interested in the same things will naturally come together. The
+      youthful heirs of fortunes who keep splendid yachts have little to talk
+      about with the oarsman who pulls about on the lake or the river. What does
+      young Dives, who drives his four-in-hand and keeps a stable full of
+      horses, care about Lazarus, who feels rich in the possession of a
+      horse-railroad ticket? You know how we live at our house, plainly, but
+      with a certain degree of cultivated propriety. We make no pretensions to
+      what is called &ldquo;style.&rdquo; We are still in that social stratum where the
+      article called &ldquo;a napkin-ring&rdquo; is recognized as admissible at the
+      dinner-table. That fact sufficiently defines our modest pretensions. The
+      napkin-ring is the boundary mark between certain classes. But one evening
+      Mrs. Butts and I went out to a party given by the lady of a worthy family,
+      where the napkin itself was a newly introduced luxury. The conversation of
+      the hostess and her guests turned upon details of the kitchen and the
+      laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with &ldquo;emptins&rdquo;
+       (emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about &ldquo;bluing&rdquo; and starching and
+      crimping, and similar matters. Poor Mrs. Butts! She knew nothing more
+      about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the musical
+      glasses. What was the use of trying to enforce social intercourse under
+      such conditions? Incompatibility of temper has been considered ground for
+      a divorce; incompatibility of interests is a sufficient warrant for social
+      separation. The multimillionaires have so much that is common among
+      themselves, and so little that they share with us of moderate means, that
+      they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue of their
+      palaces, their picture-galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their
+      large hospitality, constitute a kind of exclusive aristocracy. Religion,
+      which ought to be the great leveller, cannot reduce these elements to the
+      same grade. You may read in the parable, &ldquo;Friend, how camest thou in
+      hither not having a wedding garment?&rdquo; The modern version would be, &ldquo;How
+      came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having a dress on your back which came
+      from Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds me of
+      Hamlet's uncle,&mdash;a thing &ldquo;of shreds and patches,&rdquo; but rather pretty
+      to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the name
+      of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith
+      was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be
+      able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that old English
+      lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before
+      this memorial tribute, on the inside,&mdash;you know he goes to church
+      sometimes, if you remember your Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist. He has always
+      been rather &ldquo;broad&rdquo; in his views, but cautious in their expression. You
+      can tell the three branches of the mother-island church by the way they
+      carry their heads. The low-church clergy look down, as if they felt
+      themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-church priest drops his head
+      on one side, after the pattern of the mediaeval saints; the broad-church
+      preacher looks forward and round about him, as if he felt himself the heir
+      of creation. Our rector carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which
+      I suppose is the least open to the charge of affectation,&mdash;in fact,
+      is the natural and manly way of carrying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never before.
+      Lurida has stirred up our little community and its neighbors, so that we
+      get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and stories in large numbers. I
+      know all about it, for she often consults me as to the merits of a
+      particular contribution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is to be the fate of Lurida? I often think, with no little interest
+      and some degree of anxiety, about her future. Her body is so frail and her
+      mind so excessively and constantly active that I am afraid one or the
+      other will give way. I do not suppose she thinks seriously of ever being
+      married. She grows more and more zealous in behalf of her own sex, and
+      sterner in her judgment of the other. She declares that she never would
+      marry any man who was not an advocate of female suffrage, and as these
+      gentlemen are not very common hereabouts the chance is against her
+      capturing any one of the hostile sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What do you think? I happened, just as I was writing the last sentence, to
+      look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida, with a young man
+      in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation, according to all
+      appearance! I think he must be a friend of the rector, as I have seen a
+      young man like this one in his company. Who knows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Affectionately yours, etc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <b>DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.</b>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MY BELOVED WIFE,&mdash;This letter will tell you more news than you would
+      have thought could have been got together in this little village during
+      the short time you have been staying away from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lurida Vincent is engaged! He is a clergyman with a mathematical turn. The
+      story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the mathematical
+      journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution that the young
+      man fell in love with her on the strength of it. I don't think the story
+      is literally true, nor do I believe that other report that he offered
+      himself to her in the form of an equation chalked on the blackboard; but
+      that it was an intellectual rather than a sentimental courtship I do not
+      doubt. Lurida has given up the idea of becoming a professional lecturer,&mdash;so
+      she tells me,&mdash;thinking that her future husband's parish will find
+      her work enough to do. A certain amount of daily domestic drudgery and
+      unexciting intercourse with simple-minded people will be the best thing in
+      the world for that brain of hers, always simmering with some new project
+      in its least fervid condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All our summer visitors have arrived. Euthymia Mrs. Maurice Kirkwood and
+      her husband and little Maurice are here in their beautiful house looking
+      out on the lake. They gave a grand party the other evening. You ought to
+      have been there, but I suppose you could not very well have left your
+      sister in the middle of your visit: All the grand folks were there, of
+      course. Lurida and her young man&mdash;Gabriel is what she calls him&mdash;were
+      naturally the objects of special attention. Paolo acted as major-domo, and
+      looked as if he ought to be a major-general. Nothing could be pleasanter
+      than the way in which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their plain country
+      neighbors; that is, just as they did the others of more pretensions, as if
+      they were really glad to see them, as I am sure they were. The old
+      landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves, and I saw Miranda
+      with the servants of the household looking in at the dancers and out at
+      the little groups in the garden, and evidently enjoying it as much as her
+      old employers. It was a most charming and successful party. We had two
+      sensations in the course of the evening. One was pleasant and somewhat
+      exciting, the other was thrilling and of strange and startling interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his fever,
+      in that first season when he was among us. He was out in a boat one day,
+      when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a place where the
+      water was rather shallow. &ldquo;Jake&rdquo;&mdash;you know Jake,&mdash;everybody
+      knows Jake&mdash;was rowing him. He promised to come to the spot and fish
+      up the ring if he could possibly find it. He was seen poking about with
+      fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was ever heard from him about
+      the ring. It was an antique intaglio stone in an Etruscan setting,&mdash;a
+      wild goose flying over the Campagna. Mr. Kirkwood valued it highly, and
+      regretted its loss very much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake, with
+      a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Maurice to me,
+      &ldquo;let us see what our old friend the fisherman has brought us. What have
+      you got there, Jake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I 've got? Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the biggest
+      pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year. An' I 've
+      got somethin' else besides the pickerel. When I come to cut him open, what
+      do you think I faound in his insides but this here ring o' yourn,&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he showed the one Maurice had lost so long before. There it was, as good
+      as new, after having tried Jonah's style of housekeeping for all that
+      time. There are those who discredit Jake's story about finding the ring in
+      the fish; anyhow, there was the ring and there was the pickerel. I need
+      not say that Jake went off well paid for his pickerel and the precious
+      contents of its stomach. Now comes the chief event of the evening. I went
+      early by special invitation. Maurice took me into his library, and we sat
+      down together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have something of great importance,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to say to you. I learned
+      within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a friend in the
+      next town to this. You know, doctor, that we have never met since the
+      last, almost fatal, experience of my early years. I have determined to
+      defy the strength of that deadly chain of associations connected with her
+      presence, and I have begged her to come this evening with the friends with
+      whom she is staying. Several letters passed between us, for it was hard to
+      persuade her that there was no longer any risk in my meeting her. Her
+      imagination was almost as deeply impressed as mine had been at those
+      alarming interviews, and I had to explain to her fully that I had become
+      quite indifferent to the disturbing impressions of former years. So, as
+      the result of our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening, and I wish
+      you to be present at our meeting. There is another reason why I wish you
+      to be here. My little boy is not far from the age at which I
+      received my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock. I mean to have little
+      Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be still a very
+      handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint of that peculiar
+      sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure. It seemed to
+      me not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of that nature, and
+      I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of danger should declare itself.
+      For myself I have no fear. Some radical change has taken place in my
+      nervous system. I have been born again, as it were, in my
+      susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new man. But I must know
+      how it is with my little Maurice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
+      experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it seemed to
+      me. The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in, but no Laura as
+      yet. At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a carriage stopped at the
+      door. Two ladies and a gentleman got out, and soon entered the drawing
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cousin Laura!&rdquo; whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet her.
+      A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the thirties,&mdash;one
+      of those women so thoroughly constituted that they cannot help being
+      handsome at every period of life. I watched them both as they approached
+      each other. Both looked pale at first, but Maurice soon recovered his
+      usual color, and Laura's natural, rich bloom came back by degrees. Their
+      emotion at meeting was not to be wondered at, but there was no trace in it
+      of the paralyzing influence on the great centres of life which had once
+      acted upon its fated victim like the fabled head which turned the
+      looker-on into a stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the boy still awake?&rdquo; said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to say
+      of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on that gay and
+      busy evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on? I hear him
+      crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that leads
+      out of the library.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake, wondering
+      apparently at the noise he heard, which he seemed to think was for his
+      special amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See if he will go to that lady,&rdquo; said his father. Both of us held our
+      breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
+      glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her embrace
+      as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all his days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of Maurice
+      Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself snatched from the
+      grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+         &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix which
+      the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First Opening. It
+      was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability of a second
+      opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a certain
+      small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my surviving
+      contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be much obliged if I
+      would hurry up my answer before it is too late. They are right, these
+      delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding me of a fact which I
+      cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my recollection. I thank them
+      for recalling my attention to a truth which I shall be wiser, if not more
+      hilarious, for remembering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, I had no right to say the First Opening. How do I know that I shall
+      have a chance to open it again? How do I know that anybody will want it to
+      be opened a second time? How do I know that I shall feel like opening it?
+      It is safest neither to promise to open the New Portfolio once more, nor
+      yet to pledge myself to keep it closed hereafter. There are many papers
+      potentially existent in it, some of which might interest a reader here and
+      there. The Records of the Pansophian Society contain a considerable number
+      of essays, poems, stories, and hints capable of being expanded into
+      presentable dimensions. In the mean time I will say with Prospero,
+      addressing my old readers, and my new ones, if such I have,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;If you be pleased, retire into my cell
+   And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
+   To still my beating mind.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and consider
+      whether it is worth while to open it consider whether it is worth while to
+      open it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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+Project Gutenberg Etext A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver W. Holmes
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+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY
+
+by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY" was a truly hazardous experiment.  A very wise
+and very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature
+as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in
+referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject."
+He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt
+the improbability of the, physiological or pathological occurrence on
+which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could
+hardly be rendered plausible.  I felt the difficulty for myself as
+well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our
+consideration a series of extraordinary but well-authenticated facts
+of somewhat similar character that I could hope to gain any serious
+attention to so strange a narrative.
+
+I need not recur to these wonderful stories.  There is, however, one,
+not to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call
+the reader's attention.  It is that of the middle-aged man, who
+assured me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an
+indefinable terror.  While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one
+of these tall clocks had fallen with aloud crash and produced an
+impression on his nervous system which he had never got over.
+
+The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that
+of hearing is conceivable enough.
+
+But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation
+with the higher organs of consciousness.  The strength of the
+associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves,
+the olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience
+and as related by others.  Now we know that every human being, as
+well as every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing
+atmosphere.  If a man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and
+can track him anywhere by it.  This personal peculiarity varies with
+the age and conditions of the individual.  It may be agreeable or
+otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but its influence is
+not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant, than in the
+lower animals.  It was an atmospheric impression of this nature which
+associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant
+which became the subject of this story.  The impression could not be
+outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by some sudden change in
+the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had
+produced the disordered condition.
+
+This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have
+puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did
+not suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.
+
+BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891.
+
+O.  W.  H.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+"And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"
+
+Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in
+which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly
+spoken of as a baby?  Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under
+all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of
+as the baby?  And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly
+spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if
+there were no other in existence?
+
+Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my
+new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and
+show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers
+belonging to my list of intimates, and such other friends as may drop
+in by accident.  And so it shall have the definite article, and not
+be lost in the mob of its fellows as a portfolio.
+
+There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to
+say something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever
+these may be.  I have had other portfolios before this,--two, more
+especially, and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to
+these.
+
+Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell
+you that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak,
+was opened more than fifty years ago.  This is a very dangerous
+confession, for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned,
+without giving it the charm of real antiquity.  If I could say a
+hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them
+with a curious interest; but fifty years ago,--there are too many
+talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a
+century is a half-baked bit of ware.  A coin-fancier would say that
+your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them
+with rust, and not enough to give them--the delicate and durable
+patina which is time's exquisite enamel.
+
+When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for
+its legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers
+could have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp.
+Caesrzr.  Aug.  Div., Max., etc., etc.  I never happened to see any
+gold or silver with that legend, but the truth is I was not very
+familiarly acquainted with the precious metals at that period of my
+career, and, there might have been a good deal of such coin in
+circulation without my handling it, or knowing much about it.
+
+Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.
+
+In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
+attraction to young Boston people and their visitors.  Many of us got
+our first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
+comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
+that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.
+
+How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places
+in the mind's gallery!  Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red
+enough in it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-
+length portrait of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's
+long-waistcoated gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like
+gentlemen and ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-
+waisted matrons; and Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy,
+unimpassioned women, not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her
+interminable rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum;
+and the rival landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and
+largely praised in those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal
+Soup's collection; and the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself,
+which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical
+pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate
+shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if
+they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's brawny Lear
+tearing his clothes to pieces.  But why go on with the catalogue,
+when most of these pictures can be seen either at the Athenaeum
+building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or
+criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than
+in those earlier years when we looked at them through the japanned
+fish-horns?
+
+If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
+Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
+which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
+Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
+butterflies.  The father was editor of the "Boston Recorder," a very
+respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized
+by that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first
+day of the week as "the Sahbuth."  The son was the editor of several
+different periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or
+serious, and of many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions
+of society, which be studied on the outside with a quick eye for form
+and color, and with a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but
+real, though somewhat frothed over by his worldly experiences.
+
+Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
+Portfolio.  He had made himself known by his religious poetry,
+published in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy."  He had
+started the " American Magazine," afterwards merged in the New York
+Mirror."  He had then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to
+lighter forms of verse.  He had just written
+
+         "I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
+               They idly give me joy,
+          As if I should be glad to know
+               That I was less a boy."
+
+He was young, therefore, and already famous.  He came very near being
+very handsome.  He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
+luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted
+to show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance.  He
+was something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an
+anticipation of Oscar Wilde.  There used to be in the gallery of the
+Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful
+young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-
+mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of
+the living face as compared with the ideal.  The painted youth is
+still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young
+author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight.  I took
+the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his
+coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a
+sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867.  At that earlier
+time, Willis was by far the most prominent young American author.
+Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best
+work.  Longfellow was not yet conspicuous.  Lowell was a school-boy.
+Emerson was unheard of.  Whittier was beginning to make his way
+against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was
+destined to outdo and to outlive.  Not one of the great histories,
+which have done honor to our literature, had appeared.  Our school-
+books depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on
+extracts from the orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on
+Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the
+Flowers, Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's
+American Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping
+and Genius Waking,--and not getting very wide awake, either.  These
+could be depended upon.  A few other copies of verses might be found,
+but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia," and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine,
+were already effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and
+generation must soon be, by the great wave which the near future will
+pour over the sands in which they still are legible.
+
+About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
+"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which made some talk for a while, and
+is now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may
+be read the names of many whose renown has been buried with their
+bones.  The "London Athenaeum" spoke of it as having been described
+as a "tomahawk sort of satire."  As the author had been a trapper in
+Missouri, he was familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the
+warfare of its owners.  Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army
+officer, educated at West Point, he came back to his native city
+about the year 1830.  He wrote an article on Bryant's Poems for the
+"North American Review," and another on the famous Indian chief,
+Black Hawk.  In this last-mentioned article he tells this story as
+the great warrior told it himself.  It was an incident of a fight
+with the Osages.
+
+"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear
+the scalp from his head.  Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed
+furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran
+my lance through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in
+triumph to my father.  He said nothing, but looked pleased."
+
+This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of
+literary warfare.  His handling of his most conspicuous victim,
+Willis, was very much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the
+Osage.  He tomahawked him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and
+scalped him in barbarous epigrams.  Bryant and Halleck were
+abundantly praised; hardly any one else escaped.
+
+If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were
+floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago,
+he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities
+he never heard of.  I recognize only three names, of all which are
+mentioned in the little book, as belonging to persons still living;
+but as I have not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them
+may be still flourishing in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating
+onslaught.  Time dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not
+without talent and instruction, as he had dealt with our authors.  I
+think he found shelter at last under a roof which held numerous
+inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of whom had known
+worse days than those which they were passing within its friendly and
+not exclusive precincts.  Such, at least, was the story I heard after
+he disappeared from general observation.
+
+That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and
+all that class of showy annuals.  Short stories, slender poems, steel
+engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
+establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations
+of this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some
+years.  The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility.  The
+"Voices of the Night " had not stirred the brooding silence; the
+Concord seer was still in the lonely desert; most of the contributors
+to those yearly volumes, which took up such pretentious positions on
+the centre table, have shrunk into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold
+their place in literature by a scrap or two in some omnivorous
+collection.
+
+What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations,
+floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and
+mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections!  Violent, abusive as
+he was, unjust to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice,
+his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was not
+harmful, but rather of use.  His attack on Willis very probably did
+him good; he needed a little discipline, and though he got it too
+unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes
+he had to smart under.  One noble writer Spelling treated with
+rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally
+insignificant reason.  I myself, one of the three survivors before
+referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the
+Muse.  Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment.  Bailey, an
+American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which
+must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot
+identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last
+Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F.  Gould, a very
+bright and agreeable writer of light verse,--all these are commended
+to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe
+and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens
+committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every possible
+attention to them so long as he is kept in sight.
+
+It was a good time to open a portfolio.  But my old one had boyhood
+written on every page.  A single passionate outcry when the old
+warship I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our
+kitchen literature, and in the " Naval Monument," was threatened with
+demolition; a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville
+in his cocked hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of
+that first Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not
+interfere with the duties of a profession authorized to claim all the
+time and thought which would have been otherwise expended in filling
+it.
+
+During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for
+the greater part of the time.  Only now and then it would be taken up
+and opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
+particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I
+was a member.
+
+In the year 1857, towards its close, the "Atlantic Monthly," which I
+had the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of
+Phillips & Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell.
+He thought that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which
+would be not unacceptable in the new magazine.  I looked at the poor
+old receptacle, which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had
+lost its freshness, and seemed hardly presentable to the new company
+expected to welcome the new-comer in the literary world of Boston,
+the least provincial of American centres of learning and letters.
+The gilded covering where the emblems of hope and aspiration had
+looked so bright had faded; not wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold
+become dim!---how was the most fine gold changed!  Long devotion to
+other pursuits had left little time for literature, and the waifs and
+strays gathered from the old Portfolio had done little more than keep
+alive the memory that such a source of supply was still in existence.
+I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to myself, "Too late!  too
+late.  This tarnished gold will never brighten, these battered covers
+will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and leave them to the
+spider and the book-worm."
+
+In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
+condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period.
+When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the
+"Saturday Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a
+representation of all that was best in American literature had never
+been collected within so small a compass.  Most of the Americans whom
+educated foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration
+official dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects
+of curiosity--were seated at that board.  But the club did not yet
+exist, and the "Atlantic Monthly" was an experiment.  There had
+already been several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and
+permanent, among which "Putnam's Magazine" was conspicuous, owing its
+success largely to the contributions of that very accomplished and
+delightful writer, Mr. George William Curtis.  That magazine, after a
+somewhat prolonged and very honorable existence, had gone where all
+periodicals go when they die, into the archives of the deaf, dumb,
+and blind recording angel whose name is Oblivion.  It had so well
+deserved to live that its death was a surprise and a source of
+regret.  Could another monthly take its place and keep it when that,
+with all its attractions and excellences, had died out, and left a
+blank in our periodical literature which it would be very hard to
+fill as well as that had filled it?
+
+This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured
+upon, and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn
+around the scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given
+myself to other studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell
+insisted upon my becoming a contributor.  And so, yielding to a
+pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to
+resist, I promised to take a part in the new venture, as an
+occasional writer in the columns of the new magazine.
+
+That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my
+table, and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857.  I was
+already at least
+
+          Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,
+
+when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of
+what looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I
+did not meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the
+critic, the most dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me
+after his own fashion.
+
+The second Portfolio is closed and laid away.  Perhaps it was hardly
+worth while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before
+me, and I hope I may find something between its covers which will
+justify me in coming once more before my old friends.  But before I
+open it I want to claim a little further indulgence.
+
+There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I
+might say to almost every human being.  No matter what his culture or
+ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character,
+the subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think,
+and, if opportunity is offered, to talk.  On this he is eloquent, if
+on nothing else.  The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid
+listener becomes electric with vivacity, and alive all over with
+interest.
+
+The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude.
+He is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who
+has a subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the
+depressing disclosure of his real errand.  He is not unacquainted
+with the conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting
+stranger, who, having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in
+the cars, or of having his pocket picked at the station, finds
+himself without the means of reaching that distant home where
+affluence waits for him with its luxurious welcome, but to whom for
+the moment the loan of some five and twenty dollars would be a
+convenience and a favor for which his heart would ache with gratitude
+during the brief interval between the loan and its repayment.
+
+I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages
+in my own history, and more especially to some of the recent
+experiences through which I have been passing.
+
+What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as
+if it were his private correspondent?  There are at least three
+sufficient reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody
+wants to hear,--if be has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle,
+or has witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new
+about it; secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common
+experiences not already well told, so that readers will say, "Why,
+yes!  I have had that sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times,
+but I never heard it spoken of before, and I never saw any mention of
+it in print;" and thirdly, anything one likes, provided he can so
+tell it as to make it interesting.
+
+I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself
+claim any general attention.  My first pages relate the effect of a
+certain literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial
+metempsychoses of which I have been the subject.  Next follows a
+brief tribute to the memory of a very dear and renowned friend from
+whom I have recently been parted.  The rest of the Introduction will
+be consecrated to the memory of my birthplace.
+
+I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page
+is written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before
+it is in the reader's hands.  The experience of thinking another
+man's thoughts continuously for a long time; of living one's self
+into another man's life for a month, or a year, or more, is a very
+curious one.  No matter how much superior to the biographer his
+subject may be, the man who writes the life feels himself, in a
+certain sense, on the level of the person whose life he is writing.
+One cannot fight over the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz with
+Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to
+the victory, so real seems the transfer of his personality into that
+of the conqueror while he reads.  Still more must this identification
+of "subject" and "object" take place when one is writing of a person
+whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.
+
+Here are some of my metempsychoses:
+Ten years ago I wrote what I called A Memorial Outline of a
+remarkable student of nature.  He was a born observer, and such are
+far from common.  He was also a man of great enthusiasm and
+unwearying industry.  His quick eye detected what others passed by
+without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
+pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his
+companion would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a
+prize at the end of it.  Getting his single facts together with
+marvellous sagacity and long-breathed patience, he arranged them,
+classified them, described them, studied them in their relations, and
+before those around him were aware of it the collector was an
+accomplished naturalist.  When--he died his collections remained, and
+they still remain, as his record in the hieratic language of science.
+In writing this memoir the spirit of his quiet pursuits, the even
+temper they bred in him, gained possession of my own mind, so that I
+seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed spectacles, and to
+move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had myself prepared
+and arranged its specimens.  I felt wise with his wisdom, fair-minded
+with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his placid,
+observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul," and if
+I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected to
+see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
+sketching.
+
+A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing
+a Memoir of which he was the subject.  I saw him, the beautiful,
+bright-eyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first
+at Harvard, then at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of
+Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as a novelist,
+and showing the elements which made his failures the promise of
+success in a larger field of literary labor; the delving historian,
+burying his fresh young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent
+libraries, to come forth in the face of Europe and America as one of
+the leading historians of the time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of
+captivating presence and manners, an ardent American, and in the time
+of trial an impassioned and eloquent advocate of the cause of
+freedom; reaching at last the summit of his ambition as minister at
+the Court of Saint James.  All this I seemed to share with him as I
+tracked his career from his birthplace in Dorchester, and the house
+in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the palaces of
+Vienna and London.  And then the cruel blow which struck him from the
+place he adorned; the great sorrow that darkened his later years; the
+invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger, and after a
+period of invalidism, during a part of which I shared his most
+intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome, final summons.
+Did not my own consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to transfer
+itself into this brilliant life history, as I traced its glowing
+record?  I, too, seemed to feel the delight of carrying with me, as
+if they were my own, the charms of a presence which made its own
+welcome everywhere.  I shared his heroic toils, I partook of his
+literary and social triumphs, I was honored by the marks of
+distinction which gathered about him, I was wronged by the indignity
+from which he suffered, mourned with him in his sorrow, and thus,
+after I had been living for months with his memory, I felt as if I
+should carry a part of his being with me so long as my self-
+consciousness might remain imprisoned in the ponderable elements.
+
+The years passed away, and the influences derived from the
+companionships I have spoken of had blended intimately with my own
+current of being.  Then there came to me a new experience in my
+relations with an eminent member of the medical profession, whom I
+met habitually for a long period, and to whose memory I consecrated a
+few pages as a prelude to a work of his own, written under very
+peculiar circumstances.  He was the subject of a slow, torturing,
+malignant, and almost necessarily fatal disease.  Knowing well that
+the mind would feed upon itself if it were not supplied with food
+from without, he determined to write a treatise on a subject which
+had greatly interested him, and which would oblige him to bestow much
+of his time and thought upon it, if indeed he could hold out to
+finish the work.  During the period while he was engaged in writing
+it, his wife, who had seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of
+pneumonia.  Physical suffering, mental distress, the prospect of
+death at a near, if uncertain, time always before him, it was hard to
+conceive a more terrible strain than that which he had to endure.
+When, in the hour of his greatest need, his faithful companion, the
+wife of many years of happy union, whose hand had smoothed his
+pillow, whose voice had consoled and cheered him, was torn from him
+after a few days of illness, I felt that my, friend's trial was such
+that the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might
+well have escaped from his lips: "I was at ease, but he hath broken
+me asunder; he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces,
+and set me up for his mark.  His archers compass me round about, he
+cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall
+upon the ground."
+
+I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing
+blow.  What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which
+the fearful description of the Eastern poet does not picture too
+vividly!  We have been taught to admire the calm philosophy of
+Haller, watching his faltering pulse as he lay dying; we have heard
+the words of pious resignation said to have been uttered with his
+last breath by Addison: but here was a trial, not of hours, or days,
+or weeks, but of months, even years, of cruel pain, and in the midst
+of its thick darkness the light of love, which had burned steadily at
+his bedside, was suddenly extinguished.
+
+There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my
+consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
+experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
+suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to
+kill in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking
+woes which make even that brief space of time an eternity?  There can
+be but one answer that will meet this terrible question, which must
+arise in every thinking nature that would fain "justify the ways of
+God to men."  So must it be until that
+
+         "one far-off divine event
+          To which the whole creation moves"
+
+has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant
+note shall be joined by a voice from every life made "perfect through
+sufferings."
+
+Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years
+of companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing
+which I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.
+
+And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of
+intimacy with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than
+while he was here in living form and feature.  I did not know how
+difficult a task I had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man
+whom all, or almost all, agree upon as one of the great lights of the
+New World, and whom very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah.
+Never before was I so forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of
+the work of a newspaper editor,--that threshing of straw already
+thrice beaten by the flails of other laborers in the same field.
+What could be said that had not been said of "transcendentalism" and
+of him who was regarded as its prophet; of the poet whom some admired
+without understanding, a few understood, or thought they did, without
+admiring, and many both understood and admired,--among these there
+being not a small number who went far beyond admiration, and lost
+themselves in devout worship?  While one exalted him as "the greatest
+man that ever lived," another, a friend, famous in the world of
+letters, wrote expressly to caution me against the danger of
+overrating a writer whom he is content to recognize as an American
+Montaigne, and nothing more.
+
+After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I
+would gladly have let my brain rest for a while.  The wide range of
+thought which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional
+mysticism and the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of
+imagination and the sparkle of wit which kept his reader's mind on
+the stretch, the union of prevailing good sense with exceptional
+extravagances, the modest audacity of a nature that showed itself in
+its naked truthfulness and was not ashamed, the feeling that I was in
+the company of a sibylline intelligence which was discounting the
+promises of the remote future long before they were due,--all this
+made the task a grave one.  But when I found myself amidst the
+vortices of uncounted, various, bewildering judgments, Catholic and
+Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from under the tree of
+knowledge and instinctive from over the potato-hill; the passionate
+enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool, if not cynical, estimate of
+hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they whirled, each
+around its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very difficult to
+keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
+
+It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such
+a man.  "He nothing common" said, "or mean."  He was always the same
+pure and high-souled companion.  After being with him virtue seemed
+as natural to man as its opposite did according to the old
+theologies.  But how to let one's self down from the high level of
+such a character to one's own poor standard?  I trust that the
+influence of this long intellectual and spiritual companionship never
+absolutely leaves one who has lived in it.  It may come to him in the
+form of self-reproach that he falls so far short of the superior
+being who has been so long the object of his contemplation.  But it
+also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he
+finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his own, using phrases
+which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may be, as nearly
+like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting was like
+Raphael's ; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that he is
+talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way.  So far as
+tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy
+of the original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a
+misfortune for the borrower.  But to share the inmost consciousness
+of a noble thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure
+and radiant soul,--this is indeed the highest form of teaching and
+discipline.
+
+I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they
+have taught me.  But let me write no more.  There are but two
+biographers who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life.  One
+is the person himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel.
+The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though
+he may tell nothing but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets
+his book go out of his own hands.  As for myself, I would say to my
+friends, in the Oriental phrase, "Live forever!"  Yes, live forever,
+and I, at least, shall not have to wrong your memories by my
+imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.
+
+In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in
+which I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will
+indulge me in another personal reminiscence.  I have just lost my
+dear and honored contemporary of the last century.  A hundred years
+ago this day, December 13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be
+remembered Dr. Samuel Johnson.  The year 1709 was made ponderous and
+illustrious in English biography by his birth.  My own humble advent
+to the world of protoplasm was in the year 1809 of the present
+century.  Summer was just ending when those four letters, "son b."
+were written under the date of my birth, August 29th.  Autumn had
+just begun when my great pre-contemporary entered this un-Christian
+universe and was made a member of the Christian church on the same
+day, for he was born and baptized on the 18th of September.
+
+Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the
+great English scholar and writer and myself.  Year by year, and
+almost month by month, my life has kept pace in this century with his
+life in the last century.  I had only to open my Boswell at any time,
+and I knew just what Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy,
+was thinking and doing; what were his feelings about life; what
+changes the years had wrought in his body, his mind, his feelings,
+his companionships, his reputation.  It was for me a kind of unison
+between two instruments, both playing that old familiar air, "Life,"
+--one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an oaten pipe, if you
+care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace with each other
+until the players both grew old and gray.  At last the thinner thread
+of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment rolls out its
+thunder no more.
+
+I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years
+has left me.  I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do
+with many of my living friends.  I can hardly remember when I did not
+know him.  I can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the
+Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper (who died in December, 1783) as Copley
+painted him,--he hangs there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase.
+His ample coat, too, I see, with its broad flaps and many buttons and
+generous cuffs, and beneath it the long, still more copiously
+buttoned waistcoat, arching in front of the fine crescentic, almost
+semi-lunar Falstaffian prominence, involving no less than a dozen of
+the above-mentioned buttons, and the strong legs with their sturdy
+calves, fitting columns of support to the massive body and solid,
+capacious brain enthroned over it.  I can hear him with his heavy
+tread as he comes in to the Club, and a gap is widened to make room
+for his portly figure.  "A fine day," says Sir Joshua.  "Sir," he
+answers, "it seems propitious, but the atmosphere is humid and the
+skies are nebulous," at which the great painter smiles, shifts his
+trumpet, and takes a pinch of snuff.
+
+Dear old massive, deep-voiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the
+eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club,
+between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh-toned termagant and
+dyspeptic of the nineteenth!  The growl of the English mastiff and
+the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven
+the shores of Lethe.  I wish I could find our "spiritualist's" paper
+in the Portfolio, in which the two are brought together, but I hardly
+know what I shall find when it is opened.
+
+Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that
+dear old friend; and when the funeral train moves to Westminster
+Abbey next Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884,--
+I seem to find myself following the hearse, one of the silent
+mourners.
+
+Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me
+has been the demolition of that venerable and interesting old
+dwelling-house, precious for its intimate association with the
+earliest stages of the war of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my
+birthplace and the home of my boyhood.
+
+The "Old Gambrel-roofed House" exists no longer.  I remember saying
+something, in one of a series of papers published long ago, about the
+experience of dying out of a house,--of leaving it forever, as the
+soul dies out of the body.  We may die out of many houses, but the
+house itself can die but once; and so real is the life of a house to
+one who has dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which
+held him in dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate
+youth,--so real, I say, is its life, that it seems as if something
+like a soul of it must outlast its perishing frame.
+
+The slaughter of the Old Gambrel-roofed House was, I am ready to
+admit, a case of justifiable domicide.  Not the less was it to be
+deplored by all who love the memories of the past.  With its
+destruction are obliterated some of the footprints of the heroes and
+martyrs who took the first steps in the long and bloody march which
+led us through the wilderness to the promised land of independent
+nationality.  Personally, I have a right to mourn for it as a part of
+my life gone from me.  My private grief for its loss would be a
+matter for my solitary digestion, were it not that the experience
+through which I have just passed is one so familiar to my fellow-
+countrymen that, in telling my own reflections and feelings, I am
+repeating those of great numbers of men and women who have had the
+misfortune to outlive their birthplace.
+
+It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon.
+The Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of
+natural objects encircling it.  Northerly it looked upon its own
+outbuildings and some unpretending two-story houses which had been
+its neighbors for a century and more.  To the south of it the square
+brick dormitories and the belfried hall of the university helped to
+shut out the distant view.  But the west windows gave a broad outlook
+across the common, beyond which the historical "Washington elm" and
+two companions in line with it, spread their leaves in summer and
+their networks in winter.  And far away rose the hills that bounded
+the view, with the glimmer here and there of the white walls or the
+illuminated casements of some embowered, half-hidden villa.
+Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier remembrance, widely
+open, and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails gliding along as if
+through the level fields, for no water was visible.  So there were
+broad expanses on two sides at least, for my imagination to wander
+over.
+
+I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us
+all our days.  Among these western wooded hills my day-dreams built
+their fairy palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library
+window, across the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the
+familiar home of my early visions.  The "clouds of glory" which we
+trail with us in after life need not be traced to a pre-natal state.
+There is enough to account for them in that unconsciously remembered
+period of existence before we have learned the hard limitations of
+real life.  Those earliest months in which we lived in sensations
+without words, and ideas not fettered in sentences, have all the
+freshness of proofs of an engraving "before the letter."  I am very
+thankful that the first part of my life was not passed shut in
+between high walls and treading the unimpressible and unsympathetic
+pavement.
+
+Our university town was very much like the real country, in those
+days of which I am thinking.  There were plenty of huckleberries and
+blueberries within half a mile of the house.  Blackberries ripened in
+the fields, acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels
+ran among the branches, and not rarely the hen-hawk might be seen
+circling over the barnyard.  Still another rural element was not
+wanting, in the form of that far-diffused, infragrant effluvium,
+which, diluted by a good half mile of pure atmosphere, is no longer
+odious, nay is positively agreeable, to many who have long known it,
+though its source and centre has an unenviable reputation.  I need
+not name the animal whose Parthian warfare terrifies and puts to
+flight the mightiest hunter that ever roused the tiger from his
+jungle or faced the lion of the desert.  Strange as it may seem, an
+aerial hint of his personality in the far distance always awakens in
+my mind pleasant remembrances and tender reflections.  A whole
+neighborhood rises up before me: the barn, with its haymow, where the
+hens laid their eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our apples to ripen,
+both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non vobis; the shed, where
+the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism that made
+Salvini's Othello seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old
+outhouse, with the "corn-chamber" which the mice knew so well; the
+paved yard, with its open gutter,--these and how much else come up at
+the hint of my far-off friend, who is my very near enemy.  Nothing is
+more familiar than the power of smell in reviving old memories.
+There was that quite different fragrance of the wood-house, the smell
+of fresh sawdust.  It comes back to me now, and with it the hiss of
+the saw; the tumble of the divorced logs which God put together and
+man has just put asunder; the coming down of the axe and the hah!
+that helped it,--the straight-grained stick opening at the first
+appeal of the implement as if it were a pleasure, and the stick with
+a knot in the middle of it that mocked the blows and the hahs!  until
+the beetle and wedge made it listen to reason,--there are just such
+straight-grained and just such knotty men and women.  All this passes
+through my mind while Biddy, whose parlor-name is Angela, contents
+herself with exclaiming "egh!*******!"
+
+How different distances were in those young days of which I am
+thinking!  From the old house to the old yellow meeting-house, where
+the head of the family preached and the limbs of the family listened,
+was not much more than two or three times the width of Commonwealth
+Avenue.  But of a hot summer's afternoon, after having already heard
+one sermon, which could not in the nature of things have the charm of
+novelty of presentation to the members of the home circle, and the
+theology of which was not too clear to tender apprehensions; with
+three hymns more or less lugubrious, rendered by a village-choir, got
+into voice by many preliminary snuffles and other expiratory efforts,
+and accompanied by the snort of a huge bassviol which wallowed
+through the tune like a hippopotamus, with other exercises of the
+customary character,--after all this in the forenoon, the afternoon
+walk to the meeting-house in the hot sun counted for as much, in my
+childish dead-reckoning, as from old Israel Porter's in Cambridge to
+the Exchange Coffeehouse in Boston did in after years.  It takes a
+good while to measure the radius of the circle that is about us, for
+the moon seems at first as near as the watchface.  Who knows but
+that, after a certain number of ages, the planet we live on may seem
+to us no bigger than our neighbor Venus appeared when she passed
+before the sun a few months ago, looking as if we could take her
+between our thumb and finger, like a bullet or a marble?  And time,
+too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun-
+down" of an old-fashioned, puritanical, judaical first day of the
+week, which a pious fraud christened "the Sabbath"?  Was it a
+fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week?  Curious
+entities, or non-entities, space and tithe?  When you see a
+metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these
+accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does
+it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the
+blackamoor by a similar proceeding?  For space is the fluid in which
+he is washing, and time is the soap which he is using up in the
+process, and he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself
+in a mental vacuum.
+
+In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years
+ago, I said,
+
+"By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself
+on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so
+tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with
+those who cherished them."
+
+What strides the great University has taken since those words were
+written!  During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat
+still and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert.  Then all
+at once, like the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her
+pedestal.  The fall of that "stony foot" has effected a miracle like
+the harp that Orpheus played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed.  The
+plain where the moose and the bear were wandering while Shakespeare
+was writing Hamlet, where a few plain dormitories and other needed
+buildings were scattered about in my school-boy days, groans under
+the weight of the massive edifices which have sprung up all around
+them, crowned by the tower of that noble structure which stands in
+full view before me as I lift my eyes from the portfolio on the back
+of which I am now writing.
+
+For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it.
+I have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it
+has cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,--if
+I have overcome them, which others must decide.  And I feel exactly
+as honest Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long
+journey with a good deal of up-hill work.  He wants to rest a little,
+then to feed a little; then, if you will turn him loose in the
+pasture, he wants to roll.  I have left my starry and ethereal
+companionship,--not for a long time, I hope, for it has lifted me
+above my common self, but for a while.  And now I want, so to speak,
+to roll in the grass and among the dandelions with the other
+pachyderms.  So I have kept to the outside of the portfolio as yet,
+and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and fancies, and vagaries,
+and parentheses.
+
+How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
+vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
+Santo with that sacred soil!  The old house stood upon about as
+perverse a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved
+earth-worm.  It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus.
+The rustic aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all
+fertilizing matters "leached" through it.  I tried to disprove their
+assertion by gorging it with the best of terrestrial nourishment,
+until I became convinced that I was feeding the tea-plants of China,
+and then I gave over the attempt.  And yet I did love, and do love,
+that arid patch of ground.  I wonder if a single flower could not be
+made to grow in a pot of earth from that Campo Santo of my childhood!
+One noble product of nature did not refuse to flourish there,--the
+tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired, many-jointed, generous maize
+or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and defies the blaze of our
+shrivelling summer.  What child but loves to wander in its forest-
+like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with the lofty tassels
+tossing their heads high above him!  There are two aspects of the
+cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first when it has
+reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an army on
+the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second when,
+after the battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the
+field of slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,--say rather like the
+crazy widows and daughters of the dead soldiery.
+
+Once more let us come back to the old house.  It was far along in its
+second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no
+longer.
+
+The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its
+human tenants.  The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs
+of age.  Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave
+bald the boards that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and
+soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by
+the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels
+away, the ceilings scale off and fall, the windows are crusted with
+clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the winds
+come in without knocking and howl their cruel death-songs through the
+empty rooms and passages, and at last there comes a crash, a great
+cloud of dust rises, and the home that had been the shelter of
+generation after generation finds its grave in its own cellar.  Only
+the chimney remains as its monument.  Slowly, little by little, the
+patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their chemistry pick
+out the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty wind roars
+around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic crashes
+down among the wrecks it has long survived.  So dies a human
+habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the surface
+of the soil sinking gradually below it,
+
+     Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
+     Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
+
+But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling
+fall by the hand of violence!  The ripping off of the shelter that
+has kept out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once
+ornamental woodwork, the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the
+murderous blows of the axe, the progressive ruin, which ends by
+rending all the joints asunder and flinging the tenoned and mortised
+timbers into heaps that will be sawed and split to warm some new
+habitation as firewood,--what a brutal act of destruction it seems!
+
+Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it
+more than ten years ago?  Alas!  how many remember anything they read
+but once, and so long ago as that?  How many would find it out if one
+should say over in the same words that which he said in the last
+decade?  But there is really no need of telling the story a second
+time, for it can be found by those who are curious enough to look it
+up in a volume of which it occupies the opening chapter.
+
+In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let
+me remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at
+the breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying
+Bunker's Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower
+room, the floor of which was covered with dents, made, it was
+alleged, by the butts of the soldiers' muskets.  In that house, too,
+General Warren probably passed the night before the Bunker Hill
+battle, and over its threshold must the stately figure of Washington
+have often cast its shadow.
+
+But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one
+day came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a
+little universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent
+identity, with the terrible responsibility of a separate,
+independent, inalienable existence,--that house does not ask for any
+historical associations to make it the centre of the earth for him.
+
+If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who
+is born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions
+and the means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to
+his own taste, without losing sight of all the characteristic
+features which surrounded his earliest years.  The American is, for
+the most part, a nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls
+up his tent-poles.  If I had an ideal life to plan for him it would
+be something like this:
+
+His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained, large-
+hearted country minister, from whom he should inherit the temperament
+that predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the finer
+instincts which direct life to noble aims and make it rich with the
+gratification of pure and elevated tastes and the carrying out of
+plans for the good of his neighbors and his fellow-creatures.  He
+should, if possible, have been born, at any rate have passed some of
+his early years, or a large part of them, under the roof of the good
+old minister.  His father should be, we will say, a business man in
+one of our great cities,--a generous manipulator of millions, some of
+which have adhered to his private fortunes, in spite of his liberal
+use of his means.  His heir, our ideally placed American, shall take
+possession of the old house, the home of his earliest memories, and
+preserve it sacredly, not exactly like the Santa Casa, but, as nearly
+as may be, just as he remembers it.  He can add as many acres as he
+will to the narrow house-lot.  He can build a grand mansion for
+himself, if he chooses, in the not distant neighborhood.  But the old
+house, and all immediately round it, shall be as he recollects it
+when be had to stretch his little arm up to reach the door-handles.
+Then, having well provided for his own household, himself included,
+let him become the providence of the village or the town where be
+finds himself during at least a portion of every year.  Its schools,
+its library, its poor,--and perhaps the new clergyman who has
+succeeded his grandfather's successor may be one of them,--all its
+interests, he shall make his own.  And from this centre his
+beneficence shall radiate so far that all who hear of his wealth
+shall also hear of him as a friend to his race.
+
+Is not this a pleasing programme?  Wealth is a steep hill, which the
+father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately;
+but there is a table-land on a level with it, which may be found by
+those who do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply
+cloven summit.---Our dangerously rich men can make themselves hated,
+held as enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its
+benefactors.  The clouds of discontent are threatening, but if the
+gold-pointed lightning-rods are rightly distributed the destructive
+element may be drawn off silently and harmlessly.  For it cannot be
+repeated too often that the safety of great wealth with us lies in
+obedience to the new version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+
+
+I
+
+GETTING READY.
+
+It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the
+powers of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to
+which its central point of interest belongs without some words in the
+nature of preparation.  Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah
+Battle insisted on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her
+favorite game of whist.
+
+The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
+pages, before sitting down to tell his story.  He does not intend to
+frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to
+warn him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not
+within the range of every-day experience.  Did he ever see the
+Siamese twins, or any pair like them?  Probably not, yet he feels
+sure that Chang and Eng really existed; and if he has taken the
+trouble to inquire, he has satisfied himself that similar cases have
+been recorded by credible witnesses, though at long intervals and in
+countries far apart from each other.
+
+This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
+skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we
+can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each
+other.
+
+One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready
+for the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the
+reader's attention is invited.  If the principal personages made
+their entrance at once, the reader would have to create for himself
+the whole scenery of their surrounding conditions.  In point of fact,
+no matter how a story is begun, many of its readers have already
+shaped its chief actors out of any hint the author may have dropped,
+and provided from their own resources a locality and a set of outward
+conditions to environ these imagined personalities.  These are all to
+be brushed away, and the actual surroundings of the subject of the
+narrative represented as they were, at the risk of detaining the
+reader a little while from the events most likely to interest him.
+The choicest egg that ever was laid was not so big as the nest that
+held it.  If a story were so interesting that a maiden would rather
+hear it than listen to the praise of her own beauty, or a poet would
+rather read it than recite his own verses, still it would have to be
+wrapped in some tissue of circumstance, or it would lose half its
+effectiveness.
+
+It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
+narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand.
+Recent experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in
+designating places and the people who live in them.  There are, it
+may be added, so many advertisements disguised under the form of
+stories and other literary productions that one naturally desires to
+avoid the suspicion of being employed by the enterprising proprietors
+of this or that celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial
+benefit.  There are no doubt many persons who remember the old sign
+and the old tavern and its four chief personages presently to be
+mentioned.  It is to be hoped that they will not furnish the public
+with a key to this narrative, and perhaps bring trouble to the writer
+of it, as has happened to other authors.  If the real names are a
+little altered, it need not interfere with the important facts
+relating to those who bear them.  It might not be safe to tell a
+damaging story about John or James Smythe; but if the slight change
+is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would never think of
+bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of them.  The
+same gulf of family distinction separates the Thompsons with a p from
+the Thomsons without that letter.
+
+There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
+residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by
+the name of Arrowhead Village.  The Indians had found it out, as the
+relics they left behind them abundantly testified.  The commonest of
+these were those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism,
+and from Which the place took its name,--the heads of arrows, of
+various sizes, material, and patterns: some small enough for killing
+fish and little birds, some large enough for such game as the moose
+and the bear, to say nothing of the hostile Indian and the white
+settler; some of flint, now and then one of white quartz, and others
+of variously colored jasper.  The Indians must have lived here for
+many generations, and it must have been a kind of factory village of
+the stone age,--which lasted up to near the present time, if we may
+judge from the fact that many of these relics are met with close to
+the surface of the ground.
+
+No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one
+of the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed,
+that those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the
+swarms of tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it
+for itself, and not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural
+cockneyism.
+
+There is the lake, in the first place,--Cedar Lake,--about five miles
+long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching from
+north to south.  Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
+Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious
+name, but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the
+water.  At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the
+Corinna Institute, a favorite school for young ladies, where large
+numbers of the daughters of America are fitted, so far as education
+can do it, for all stations in life, from camping out with a husband
+at the mines in Nevada to acting the part of chief lady of the land
+in the White House at Washington.
+
+Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake,
+is a valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of
+the lake, leaving only room enough for a road between their base and
+the water.  This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled,
+and here for a century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern.  A
+famous place it was so long as its sign swung at the side of the
+road: famous for its landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a
+guest that looked worthy of the attention was like that of a parent
+to a returning prodigal, and whose parting words were almost as good
+as a marriage benediction; famous for its landlady, ample in person,
+motherly, seeing to the whole household with her own eyes, mistress
+of all culinary secrets that Northern kitchens are most proud of;
+famous also for its ancient servant, as city people would call her,
+--help, as she was called in the tavern and would have called
+herself,--the unchanging, seemingly immortal Miranda, who cared for
+the guests as if she were their nursing mother, and pressed the
+specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a connoisseur
+calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties of a picture.
+Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets Miranda's
+
+     "A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;"
+
+or
+
+     "Some of these cakes?  You will find them ver-y good."
+
+Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
+member of the household,--the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent
+Pushee, ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the
+limits of the establishment at all hours of the day and night.  He
+fed, nobody could say accurately when or where.  There were rumors of
+a "bunk," in which he lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to
+be always wide awake, and at the service of as many guest, at once as
+if there had been half a dozen of him.
+
+So much for old reminiscences.
+
+The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign.  He had
+had the house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it
+open in summer for a few boarders.  It happened more than once that
+the summer boarders were so much pleased with the place that they
+stayed on through the autumn, and some of them through the winter.
+The attractions of the village were really remarkable.  Boating in
+summer, and skating in winter; ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks
+could hardly keep up with; fishing, for which the lake was renowned;
+varied and beautiful walks through the valley and up the hillsides;
+houses sheltered from the north and northeasterly winds, and
+refreshed in the hot summer days by the breeze which came over the
+water,--all this made the frame for a pleasing picture of rest and
+happiness.  But there was a great deal more than this.  There was a
+fine library in the little village, presented and richly endowed by a
+wealthy native of the place.  There was a small permanent population
+of a superior character to that of an everyday country town; there
+was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a good-hearted rector,
+broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be a little afraid of,
+and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the summer season, there
+were always some who wanted a place of worship to keep their religion
+from dying out during the heathen months, while the shepherds of the
+flocks to which they belonged were away from their empty folds.
+
+What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was the
+frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary
+association.  Some time before the tavern took down its sign the
+landlord had built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which
+the young folks of all the country round had resorted.  It was still
+sometimes used for similar occasions, but it was especially notable
+as being the place of meeting of the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted
+as signifying that its members knew everything, had no such
+pretensions, but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly,
+held itself open to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from
+such as had knowledge to impart.  Its President was the rector of the
+little chapel, a man who, in spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could
+stand fire from the widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without
+flinching or losing his temper.  The hall of the old Anchor Tavern
+was a convenient place of meeting for the students and instructors of
+the University and the Institute.  Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes
+in carriage-loads, sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to
+the meetings in Pansophian Hall, as it was now commonly called.
+
+These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest.  It was
+customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the
+most part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by
+the students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances
+by anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and
+discussed by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought
+worth listening to.  The variety of topics considered was very great.
+The young ladies of the village and the Institute had their favorite
+subjects, the young gentlemen a different set of topics, and the
+occasional outside contributors their own; so that one who happened
+to be admitted to a meeting never knew whether he was going to hear
+an account of recent arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom
+of the will, or a psychological experience, or a story, or even a
+poem.
+
+Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating
+to the true status and the legitimate social functions of woman.  The
+most conflicting views were held on the subject.  Many of the young
+ladies and some of the University students were strong in defence of
+all the "woman's rights" doctrines.  Some of these young people were
+extreme in their views.  They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea
+and Queen Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the
+chance, to vote for a woman as President of the United States or as
+General of the United States Army.  They were even disposed to assert
+the physical equality of woman to man, on the strength of the rather
+questionable history of the Amazons, and especially of the story,
+believed to be authentic, of the female body-guard of the King of
+Dahomey,--females frightful enough to need no other weapon than their
+looks to scare off an army of Cossacks.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna
+Institute, was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood.  It
+was rather singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of
+this extreme doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with
+brain than muscles.  In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed,
+long-eyelashed, slender-necked, slightly developed young woman;
+looking almost like a child at an age when many of the girls had
+reached their full stature and proportions.  In her studies she was
+so far in advance of her different classes that there was always a
+wide gap between her and the second scholar.  So fatal to all rivalry
+had she proved herself that she passed under the school name of The
+Terror.  She learned so easily that she undervalued her own
+extraordinary gifts, and felt the deepest admiration for those of her
+friends endowed with faculties of an entirely different and almost
+opposite nature.  After sitting at her desk until her head was hot
+and her feet were like ice, she would go and look at the blooming
+young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school, and feel as if
+she would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and strange
+tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the
+encyclopaedia of every class she belonged to, if she could go through
+the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her
+schoolmates delighting.
+
+One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she
+was of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which
+nature had specially organized her.  All the physical perfections
+which Miss Lurida had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower,
+whose school name was The Wonder.  Though of full womanly stature,
+there were several taller girls of her age.  While all her contours
+and all her movements betrayed a fine muscular development, there was
+no lack of proportion, and her finely shaped hands and feet showed
+that her organization was one of those carefully finished
+masterpieces of nature which sculptors are always in search of, and
+find it hard to detect among the imperfect products of the living
+laboratory.
+
+This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
+performances in the gymnasium.  She commonly contented herself with
+the same exercises that her companions were accustomed to.  Only her
+dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too
+heavy for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the
+floor.  She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be
+checked in her indulgence in them.  The Professor of gymnastics at
+the University came over to the Institute now and then, and it was a
+source of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in
+which the young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and
+skill in managing herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked
+impossible at first sight.  How often The Terror had thought to
+herself that she would gladly give up all her knowledge of Greek and
+the differential and integral calculus if she could only perform the
+least of those feats which were mere play to The Wonder!  Miss
+Euthymia was not behind the rest in her attainments in classical or
+mathematical knowledge, and she was one of the very best students in
+the out-door branches,--botany, mineralogy, sketching from nature,--
+to be found among the scholars of the Institute.
+
+There was an eight-oared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of
+which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar.  Poor
+little Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when
+there were many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere
+feather-weight, and quick-witted enough to serve well in the
+important office where brains are more needed than muscle.
+
+There was also an eight-oared boat belonging to the University, and
+rowed by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows.  The bow oar and
+captain of the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like
+the captain of the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast.  He had had one
+or two quiet trials with Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the
+ultras of the woman's rights party, he had not vindicated the
+superiority of his sex in the way which might have been expected.
+Indeed, it was claimed that he let a cannon-ball drop when he ought
+to have caught it, and it was not disputed that he had been
+ingloriously knocked over by a sand-bag projected by the strong arms
+of the young maiden.  This was of course a story that was widely told
+and laughingly listened to, and the captain of the University crew
+had become a little sensitive on the subject.  When there was a talk,
+therefore, about a race between the champion boats of the two
+institutions there was immense excitement in both of them, as well as
+among the members of the Pansophian Society and all the good people
+of the village.
+
+There were many objections to be overcome.  Some thought it
+unladylike for the young maidens to take part in a competition which
+must attract many lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very
+hoidenish to venture upon.  Some said it was a shame to let a crew of
+girls try their strength against an equal number of powerful young
+men.  These objections were offset by the advocates of the race by
+the following arguments.  They maintained that it was no more
+hoidenish to row a boat than it was to take a part in the calisthenic
+exercises, and that the girls had nothing to do with the young men's
+boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as possible.  As to
+strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for weight,
+their crew was as strong as the other, and of course due allowance
+would be made for the difference of weight and all other accidental
+hindrances.  It was time to test the boasted superiority of masculine
+muscle.  Here was a chance.  If the girls beat, the whole country
+would know it, and after that female suffrage would be only a
+question of time.  Such was the conclusion, from rather insufficient
+premises, it must be confessed; but if nature does nothing per
+saltum,--by jumps,--as the old adage has it, youth is very apt to
+take long leaps from a fact to a possible sequel or consequence.  So
+it had come about that a contest between the two boat-crews was
+looked forward to with an interest almost equal to that with which
+the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.
+
+The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after
+cautious protocols and many diplomatic discussions.  It was so novel
+in its character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust
+it in such a way as to be fair to both parties.  The course must not
+be too long for the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying power of
+the young persons who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon.
+A certain advantage must be allowed them at the start, and this was a
+delicate matter to settle.  The weather was another important
+consideration.  June would be early enough, in all probability, and
+if the lake should be tolerably smooth the grand affair might come
+off some time in that month.  Any roughness of the water would be
+unfavorable to the weaker crew.  The rowing-course was on the eastern
+side of the lake, the starting-point being opposite the Anchor
+Tavern; from that three quarters of a mile to the south, where the
+turning-stake was fixed, so that the whole course of one mile and a
+half would bring the boats back to their starting-point.
+
+The race was to be between the Algonquin, eight-oared boat with
+outriggers, rowed by young men, students of Stoughton University, and
+the Atalanta, also eight-oared and outrigger boat, by young ladies
+from the Corinna Institute.  Their boat was three inches wider than
+the other, for various sufficient reasons, one of which was to make
+it a little less likely to go over and throw its crew into the water,
+which was a sound precaution, though all the girls could swim, and
+one at least, the bow oar, was a famous swimmer, who had pulled a
+drowning man out of the water after a hard struggle to keep him from
+carrying her down with him.
+
+Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as
+to draw together a rabble of betting men and ill-conditioned lookers-
+on, there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the
+villagers and the students of the two institutions.  Among them were
+a few who were disposed to add to their interest in the trial by
+small wagers.  The bets were rather in favor of the "Quins," as the
+University boat was commonly called, except where the natural
+sympathy of the young ladies or the gallantry of some of the young
+men led them to risk their gloves or cigars, or whatever it might be,
+on the Atalantas.  The elements of judgment were these: average
+weight of the Algonquins one hundred and sixty-five pounds; average
+weight of the Atalantas, one hundred and forty-eight pounds; skill in
+practice about equal; advantage of the narrow boat equal to three
+lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas eight lengths,--a long
+stretch to be made up in a mile and a half.
+
+And so both crews began practising for the grand trial.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BOAT-RACE.
+
+The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still
+and bright.  The water was smooth, and the crews were in the best
+possible condition.  All was expectation, and for some time nothing
+but expectation.  No boat-race or regatta ever began at the time
+appointed for the start.  Somebody breaks an oar, or somebody fails
+to appear in season, or something is the matter with a seat or an
+outrigger; or if there is no such excuse, the crew of one or both or
+all the boats to take part in the race must paddle about to get
+themselves ready for work, to the infinite weariness of all the
+spectators, who naturally ask why all this getting ready is not
+attended to beforehand.  The Algonquins wore plain gray flannel suits
+and white caps.  The young ladies were all in dark blue dresses,
+touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and wore light straw
+hats.  The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to step on
+board.  As she took her place she carefully deposited at her feet a
+white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a
+sponge, in case the boat should take in water.
+
+At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay,--
+long, narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel when he darts from the
+reedy shore.  It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows
+in their close-fitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending
+their backs for the stroke and recovering, as if they were parts of a
+single machine.
+
+"The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers," said the old blacksmith
+from the village.
+
+"You wait till the gals get a-goin'," said the carpenter, who had
+often worked in the gymnasium of the Corinna Institute, and knew
+something of their muscular accomplishments.  "Y' ought to see 'em
+climb ropes, and swing dumb-bells, and pull in them rowin'-machines.
+Ask Jake there whether they can't row a mild in double-quick time,--
+he knows all abaout it."
+
+Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
+country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-
+doors, being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the
+habits and habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of
+observation, just as dealing in horses is an education of certain
+faculties, and breeds a race of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious,
+wary, and wide awake, with a rhetoric of appreciation and
+depreciation all its own.
+
+Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
+following effect:
+
+"Wahl, I don' know jest what to say.  I've seed 'em both often enough
+when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout
+neither on 'em.  But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em
+stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout
+'f a mile 'n' a haaf.  I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them
+fellers is naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the
+time they git raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum.  I'll go
+ye a quarter on the pahnts agin the petticoats."
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that
+the young ladies were overmatched.  Still there were not wanting
+those who thought the advantage allowed the "Lantas," as they called
+the Corinna boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible
+for the "Quins" to make it up and go by them.
+
+The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators.
+They appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine,
+mettlesome as colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen,
+disciplined to work together as symmetrically as a single sculler
+pulls his pair of oars.  The fisherman offered to make his quarter
+fifty cents.  No takers.
+
+Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking
+for the Atalanta.  A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along
+which the Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point.
+Presently the long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers,
+who, with their ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as
+Raphael fills his skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee.  But how
+steadily the Atalanta came on!---no rocking, no splashing, no
+apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look ahead every now and
+then, and watching her course, which seemed to be straight as an
+arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and regular as the pulse of
+the healthiest rower among them all.  And if the sight of the other
+boat and its crew was beautiful, how lovely was the look of this!
+Eight young girls,--young ladies, for those who prefer that more
+dignified and less attractive expression,--all in the flush of youth,
+all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower
+alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar
+dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue;
+every eye kindling with the hope of victory.  Each of the boats was
+cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were
+naturally the loudest, as the gallantry of one sex and the clear,
+high voices of the other gave it life and vigor.
+
+"Take your places!" shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half
+hour.  The two boats felt their way slowly and cautiously to their
+positions, which had been determined by careful measurement.  After a
+little backing and filling they got into line, at the proper distance
+from each other, and sat motionless, their bodies bent forward, their
+arms outstretched, their oars in the water, waiting for the word.
+
+"Go!" shouted the umpire.
+
+Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin,
+her oars bending like so many long Indian bows as their blades
+flashed through the water.
+
+"A stern chase is a long chase," especially when one craft is a great
+distance behind the other.  It looked as if it would be impossible
+for the rear boat to overcome the odds against it.  Of course the
+Algonquin kept gaining, but could it possibly gain enough?  That was
+the question.  As the boats got farther and farther away, it became
+more and more difficult to determine what change there was in the
+interval between them.  But when they came to rounding the stake it
+was easier to guess at the amount of space which had been gained.  It
+was clear that something like half the distance, four lengths, as
+nearly as could be estimated, had been made up in rowing the first
+three quarters of a mile.  Could the Algonquins do a little better
+than this in the second half of the race-course, they would be sure
+of winning.
+
+The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly.  Every
+minute the University boat was getting nearer the other.
+
+"Go it, Quins!" shouted the students.
+
+"Pull away, Lantas!" screamed the girls, who were crowding down to
+the edge of the water.
+
+Nearer,--nearer,--the rear boat is pressing the other more and more
+closely,--a few more strokes, and they will be even, for there is but
+one length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the line.
+It looks desperate for the Atalantas.  The bow oar of the Algonquin
+turns his head.  He sees the little coxswain leaning forward at every
+stroke, as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence,--
+but a few ounces might turn the scale of victory.  As he turned he
+got a glimpse of the stroke oar of the Atalanta.  What a flash of
+loveliness it was!  Her face was like the reddest of June roses, with
+the heat and the strain and the passion of expected triumph.  The
+upper button of her close-fitting flannel suit had strangled her as
+her bosom heaved with exertion, and it had given way before the
+fierce clutch she made at it.  The bow oar was a staunch and steady
+rower, but he was human.  The blade of his oar lingered in the water;
+a little more and he would have caught a crab, and perhaps lost the
+race by his momentary bewilderment.
+
+The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a
+Derby three-year-old, felt the slight check, and all her men bent
+more vigorously to their oars.  The Atalantas saw the movement, and
+made a spurt to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could.  It
+was of no use.  The strong arms of the young men were too much for
+the young maidens; only a few lengths remained to be rowed, and they
+would certainly pass the Atalanta before she could reach the line.
+
+The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if
+she could not save them by some strategic device.
+
+     "Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?"
+
+she whispered to herself,--for The Terror remembered her Virgil as
+she did everything else she ever studied.  As she stooped, she lifted
+the handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet.
+"Look!" she cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the
+Algonquin.  The captain of the University boat turned his head, and
+there was the lovely vision which had a moment before bewitched him.
+The owner of all that loveliness must, he thought, have flung the
+bouquet.  It was a challenge: how could he be such a coward as to
+decline accepting it
+
+He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the
+line in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his
+boat, proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his
+mast-head.
+
+He turned the boat's head a little by backing water.  He came up with
+the floating flowers, and near enough to reach them.  He stooped and
+snatched them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,--no more.
+He felt sure of his victory.
+
+How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites?
+Are we not there ourselves?  Are not our muscles straining with those
+of these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their
+nerves all tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all
+their life concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme
+effort?  No!  We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else
+once saw!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the
+Atalanta!
+
+--Three more lengths' rowing and the college crew will pass the
+girls!
+
+--"Hurrah for the Quins!" The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the
+Atalanta!
+
+"Through with her!  "shouts the captain of the Algonquin.
+
+"Now, girls!" shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.
+
+They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.
+
+--Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its
+splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line,
+eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.
+
+Hooraw for the Lantas!  Hooraw for the Girls!  Hooraw for the
+Institoot!  shout a hundred voices.
+
+"Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!" pipes the small
+voice of The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all
+round.
+
+She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for
+nothing.  "I have paid off one old score," she said.  "Set down my
+damask roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!"
+
+It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave
+the race to the Atalantas.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE WHITE CANOE.
+
+While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookers-on in them
+were rowing or sailing in the neighborhood of the race-course.  The
+scene on the water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats
+were, many of them, acquainted with each other.  There was a good
+deal of lively talk until the race became too exciting.  Then many
+fell silent, until, as the boats neared the line, and still more as
+they crossed it, the shouts burst forth which showed how a cramp of
+attention finds its natural relief in a fit of convulsive
+exclamation.
+
+But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to
+be seen, in which sat a young man, who paddled it skillfully and
+swiftly.  It was evident enough that he was watching the race
+intently, but the spectators could see little more than that.  One of
+them, however, who sat upon the stand, had a powerful spy-glass, and
+could distinguish his motions very minutely and exactly.  It was seen
+by this curious observer that the young man had an opera-glass with
+him, which he used a good deal at intervals.  The spectator thought
+he kept it directed to the girls' boat, chiefly, if not exclusively.
+He thought also that the opera-glass was more particularly pointed
+towards the bow of the boat, and came to the natural conclusion that
+the bow oar, Miss Euthymia Tower, captain of the Atalantas, "The
+Wonder" of the Corinna Institute, was the attraction which determined
+the direction of the instrument.
+
+"Who is that in the canoe over there?" asked the owner of the spy-
+glass.
+
+"That's just what we should like to know," answered the old
+landlord's wife.  "He and his man boarded with us when they first
+came, but we could never find out anything about him only just his
+name and his ways of living.  His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood,
+Esq., it used to come on his letters.  As for his ways of living, he
+was the solitariest human being that I ever came across.  His man
+carried his meals up to him.  He used to stay in his room pretty much
+all day, but at night he would be off, walking, or riding on
+horseback, or paddling about in the lake, sometimes till nigh
+morning.  There's something very strange about that Mr. Kirkwood.
+But there don't seem to be any harm in him.  Only nobody can guess
+what his business is.  They got up a story about him at one time.
+What do you think?  They said he was a counterfeiter!  And so they
+went one night to his room, when he was out, and that man of his was
+away too, and they carried keys, and opened pretty much everything;
+and they found--well, they found just nothing at all except writings
+and letters,--letters from places in America and in England, and some
+with Italian postmarks: that was all.  Since that time the sheriff
+and his folks have let him alone and minded their own business.  He
+was a gentleman,--anybody ought to have known that; and anybody that
+knew about his nice ways of living and behaving, and knew the kind of
+wear he had for his underclothing, might have known it.  I could have
+told those officers that they had better not bother him.  I know the
+ways of real gentlemen and real ladies, and I know those fellows in
+store clothes that look a little too fine,--outside.  Wait till
+washing-day comes!"
+
+The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they
+were not wholly unworthy of consideration; they were quite as much to
+be relied on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who
+sent his accomplice on before him to study out the principal
+personages in the village, and in the light of these revelations
+interpreted the bumps, with very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim,
+or any other authorities.
+
+Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search
+among his papers and effects, the gossips of the village had
+constructed several distinct histories for the mysterious stranger.
+He was an agent of a great publishing house; a leading contributor to
+several important periodicals; the author of that anonymously
+published novel which had made so much talk; the poet of a large
+clothing establishment; a spy of the Italian, some said the Russian,
+some said the British, Government; a proscribed refugee from some
+country where he had been plotting; a school-master without a school,
+a minister without a pulpit, an actor without an engagement; in
+short, there was no end to the perfectly senseless stories that were
+told about him, from that which made him out an escaped convict to
+the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric heir to a great
+English title and estate.
+
+The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion.
+Nobody in the village, no student in the University, knew his
+history.  No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word
+from him.  Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute
+were returning at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing
+into the shadows as they drew near it.  Sometimes on a moonlight
+night, when a party of the young ladies were out upon the lake, they
+would see the white canoe gliding ghost-like in the distance.  And it
+had happened more than once that when a boat's crew had been out with
+singers among them, while they were in the midst of a song, the white
+canoe would suddenly appear and rest upon the water,--not very near
+them, but within hearing distance,--and so remain until the singing
+was over, when it would steal away and be lost sight of in some inlet
+or behind some jutting rock.
+
+Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man.
+The landlady had told her story, which explained nothing.  There was
+nobody to be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian,
+whose name was Paolo, but who to the village was known as Mr. Paul.
+
+Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a
+secret out of.  He was good-natured, child-like as a Heathen Chinee,
+talked freely with everybody in such English as he had at command,
+knew all the little people of the village, and was followed round by
+them partly from his personal attraction for them, and partly because
+he was apt to have a stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other
+desirable luxury in his pocket for any of his little friends he met
+with.  He had that wholesome, happy look, so uncommon in our arid
+countrymen,--a look hardly to be found except where figs and oranges
+ripen in the open air.  A kindly climate to grow up in, a religion
+which takes your money and gives you a stamped ticket good at Saint
+Peter's box office, a roomy chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an
+honest digestive apparatus, a lively temperament, a cheerful
+acceptance of the place in life assigned to one by nature and
+circumstance,--these are conditions under which life may be quite
+comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to contemplate.
+All these conditions were united in Paolo.  He was the easiest;
+pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a companion.
+His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and
+openness, made him friends everywhere.
+
+It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history
+of his master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being.  He
+had been tried by all the village experts.  The rector had put a
+number of well-studied careless questions, which failed of their
+purpose.  The old librarian of the town library had taken note of all
+the books he carried to his master, and asked about his studies and
+pursuits.  Paolo found it hard to understand his English, apparently,
+and answered in the most irrelevant way.  The leading gossip of the
+village tried her skill in pumping him for information.  It was all
+in vain.
+
+His master's way of life was peculiar,--in fact, eccentric.  He had
+hired rooms in an old-fashioned three-story house.  He had two rooms
+in the second and third stories of this old wooden building: his
+study in the second, his sleeping-room in the one above it.  Paolo
+lived in the basement, where he had all the conveniences for cooking,
+and played the part of chef for his master and himself.  This was
+only a part of his duty, for he was a man-of-all-work, purveyor,
+steward, chambermaid,--as universal in his services for one man as
+Pushee at the Anchor Tavern used to be for everybody.
+
+It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and
+had such threatening symptoms that he asked the baker, when he
+called, to send the village physician to see him.  In the course of
+his visit the doctor naturally inquired about the health of Paolo's
+master.
+
+"Signor Kirkwood well,--molto bene," said Paolo.  "Why does he keep
+out of sight as he does?" asked the doctor.
+
+"He always so," replied Paolo.  "Una antipatia."
+
+Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed
+it to him as to a father confessor, or whether he thought it time
+that the reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor
+did not feel sure.  At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any
+further revelations.  Una antipatia,--an antipathy,--that was all the
+doctor learned.  He thought the matter over, and the more he
+reflected the more he was puzzled.  What could an antipathy be that
+made a young man a recluse!  Was it a dread of blue sky and open air,
+of the smell of flowers, or some electrical impression to which be
+was unnaturally sensitive?
+
+Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him.  His wife was a
+sensible, discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional
+secrets.  He told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with
+her in the light of his experience and her own; for she had known
+some curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.
+
+Mrs.  Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where
+it lay for nearly a week.  At the end of that time it emerged in a
+confidential whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe
+person.  Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village
+that Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious,
+unheard-of antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole
+neighborhood naturally resolved itself into an unorganized committee
+of investigation.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+What is a country village without its mysterious personage?  Few are
+now living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who
+was the mystery of our great university town "sixty years since,"--
+long enough ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley
+may remind us.  The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and
+is not sure that he has not told the strange story in some form or
+other to the last generation, or to the one before the last.  No
+matter: if he has told it they have forgotten it,--that is, if they
+have ever read it; and whether they have or have not, the story is
+singular enough to justify running the risk of repetition.
+
+This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared
+unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge.  He wanted
+employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he
+undertook and performed cheerfully.  But his whole appearance showed
+plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different
+nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for
+his living.  His aspect was that of one of gentle birth.  His hands
+were not those of a laborer, and his features were delicate and
+refined, as well as of remarkable beauty.  Who he was, where he came
+from, why he had come to Cantabridge, was never clearly explained.
+He was alone, without friends, except among the acquaintances he had
+made in his new residence.  If he had any correspondents, they were
+not known to the neighborhood where he was living.  But if he had
+neither friends nor correspondents, there was some reason for
+believing that he had enemies.  Strange circumstances occurred which
+connected themselves with him in an ominous and unaccountable way.  A
+threatening letter was slipped under the door of a house where he was
+visiting.  He had a sudden attack of illness, which was thought to
+look very much like the effect of poison.  At one time he
+disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a town many
+miles from that where he was residing.  When questioned how he came
+there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some
+pretext, or in some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a
+certain landing-place, he had escaped and fled for his life, which he
+believed was in danger from his kidnappers.
+
+Whoever his enemies may have been,--if they really existed,--he did
+not fall a victim to their plots, so far as known to or remembered by
+this witness.
+
+Various interpretations were put upon his story.  Conjectures were as
+abundant as they were in the case of Kaspar Hauser.  That he was of
+good family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not
+impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a
+greatly coveted position in one of the northern states of Europe was
+a favorite speculation of some of the more romantic young persons.
+There was no dramatic ending to this story,--at least none is
+remembered by the present writer.
+
+"He left a name," like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have
+been for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which
+anybody "grew pale;" for he had swindled no one, and broken no
+woman's heart with false vows.  Possibly some withered cheeks may
+flush faintly as they recall the handsome young man who came before
+the Cantabridge maidens fully equipped for a hero of romance when the
+century was in its first quarter.
+
+The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
+attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had
+made his appearance at Arrowhead Village.
+
+It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for
+the young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an
+antipathy.  For what do we understand by that word?  When a young
+lady screams at the sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that
+she has a natural antipathy to the creature.  When a person expresses
+a repugnance to some wholesome article of food, agreeable to most
+people, we are satisfied if he gives the same reason.  And so of
+various odors, which are pleasing to some persons and repulsive to
+others.  We do not pretend to go behind the fact.  It is an
+individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity.  Even between
+different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike as
+well as an elective affinity.  We are not bound to give a reason why
+Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily
+challenges a juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough
+that he "does not like his looks."
+
+There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have
+his special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and
+dislikes.  But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should
+be alleged as the reason for his singular mode of life.  All sorts of
+explanations were suggested, not one of them in the least
+satisfactory, but serving to keep the curiosity of inquirers active
+until they were superseded by a new theory.  One story was that
+Maurice had a great fear of dogs.  It grew at last to a connected
+narrative, in which a fright in childhood from a rabid mongrel was
+said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near presence of
+dogs that he was liable to convulsions if one came close to him.
+
+This hypothesis had some plausibility.  No other creature would be so
+likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it.  Dogs are very
+apt to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way.
+They are met with everywhere,--in one's daily walk, at the thresholds
+of the doors one enters, in the gentleman's library, on the rug of my
+lady's sitting-room and on the cushion of her carriage.  It is true
+that there are few persons who have an instinctive repugnance to this
+"friend of man."  But what if this so-called antipathy were only a
+fear, a terror, which borrowed the less unmanly name?  It was a fair
+question, if, indeed, the curiosity of the public had a right to ask
+any questions at all about a harmless individual who gave no offence,
+and seemed entitled to the right of choosing his way of living to
+suit himself, without being submitted to espionage.
+
+There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet.  But one
+of the village people had a large Newfoundland dog, of a very
+sociable disposition, with which he determined to test the question.
+He watched for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the
+woods or the lake, and started with his dog to meet him.  The animal
+walked up to the stranger in a very sociable fashion, and began
+making his acquaintance, after the usual manner of well-bred dogs;
+that is, with the courtesies and blandishments by which the canine
+Chesterfield is distinguished from the ill-conditioned cur.  Maurice
+patted him in a friendly way, and spoke to him as one who was used to
+the fellowship of such companions.  That idle question and foolish
+story were disposed of, therefore, and some other solution must be
+found, if possible.
+
+A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard
+to cats.  This has never been explained.  It is not mere aversion to
+the look of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the
+common observer.  The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in
+movement, nice in personal habits, and of amiable disposition.  No
+cause of offence is obvious, and yet there are many persons who
+cannot abide the presence of the most innocent little kitten.  They
+can tell, in some mysterious way, that there is a cat in the room
+when they can neither see nor hear the creature.  Whether it is an
+electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or whatever it may be, of
+the fact of this strange influence there are too many well-
+authenticated instances to allow its being questioned.  But suppose
+Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its extremest
+degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to which he
+had condemned himself.  He might shun the firesides of the old women
+whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy
+dames do not make up the whole population.
+
+These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
+started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very
+much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed
+and inquiring persons.  This was that Maurice was endowed with the
+unenviable gift of the evil eye.  He was in frequent communication
+with Italy, as his letters showed, and had recently been residing in
+that country, as was learned from Paolo.  Now everybody knows that
+the evil eye is not rarely met with in Italy.  Everybody who has ever
+read Mr. Story's "Roba di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is
+which the owner of the evil eye exercises.  It can blight and destroy
+whatever it falls upon.  No person's life or limb is safe if the
+jettatura, the withering glance of the deadly organ, falls upon him.
+It must be observed that this malign effect may follow a look from
+the holiest personages, that is, if we may assume that a monk is such
+as a matter of course.  Certainly we have a right to take it for
+granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an eminently holy man,
+and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and dreaded
+jettatura as well as his blessing.  If Maurice Kirkwood carried that
+destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be
+feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could
+easily be understood why he kept his look away from all around him
+whom he feared he might harm.
+
+No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil
+eye, but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
+suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
+putting any real confidence in them.  It was just suited to the
+romantic notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had
+meddled more or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new
+fancy, if it were only wild enough.
+
+The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to
+find any very speedy solution.  Every new suggestion furnished talk
+for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in
+the two educational institutions.  Naturally, the discussion was
+liveliest among the young ladies.  Here is an extract from a letter
+of one of these young ladies, who, having received at her birth the
+ever-pleasing name of Mary, saw fit to have herself called Mollie in
+the catalogue and in her letters.  The old postmaster of the town to
+which her letter was directed took it up to stamp, and read on the
+envelope the direction to "Miss Lulu Pinrow."  He brought the stamp
+down with a vicious emphasis, coming very near blotting out the
+nursery name, instead of cancelling the postage-stamp.  "Lulu!" he
+exclaimed.  "I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't
+out of her cradle yet!  I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs
+to her, but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister
+gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense."  And so
+saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his
+fingers.  Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be cheapened
+in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them
+as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a
+graduate of the Corinna Institute, the old postmaster could not
+guess.  He was a queer old man.
+
+The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's
+written loquacity:
+
+"Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of
+'in all your born days,' as mamma used to say.  He has been at the
+village for some time, but lately we have had--oh, the weirdest
+stories about him!  'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give
+him, but we girls call him the Sachem, because he paddles about in an
+Indian canoe.  If I should tell you all the things that are said
+about him I should use up all my paper ten times over.  He has never
+made a visit to the Institute, and none of the girls have ever spoken
+to him, but the people at the village say he is very, very handsome.
+We are dying to get a look at him, of course--though there is a
+horrid story about him--that he has the evil eye did you ever hear
+about the evil eye?  If a person who is born with it looks at you,
+you die, or something happens--awful--is n't it?
+
+"The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good
+many of the people that pass the summer at the village never do--they
+think their religion must have vacations--that's what I've heard they
+say--vacations, just like other hard work--it ought not to be hard
+work, I'm sure, but I suppose they feel so about it.  Should you feel
+afraid to have him look at you?  Some of the girls say they would n't
+have him for the whole world, but I shouldn't mind it--especially if
+I had on my eyeglasses.  Do you suppose if there is anything in the
+evil eye it would go through glass?  I don't believe it.  Do you
+think blue eye-glasses would be better than common ones?  Don't laugh
+at me--they tell such weird stories!  The Terror--Lurida Vincent, you
+know-makes fun of all they say about it, but then she 'knows
+everything and doesn't believe anything,' the girls say--Well, I
+should be awfully scared, I know, if anybody that had the evil eye
+should look at me--but--oh, I don't know--but if it was a young man--
+and if he was very--very good-looking--I think--perhaps I would run
+the risk--but don't tell anybody I said any such horrid thing--and
+burn this letter right up--there 's a dear good girl."
+
+It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this
+letter.  There are not quite so many "awfuls" and "awfullys" as one
+expects to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two "weirds,"
+which may be considered a fair allowance.  How it happened that
+"jolly" did not show itself can hardly be accounted for; no doubt it
+turns up two or three times at least in the postscript.
+
+Here is an extract from another letter.  This was from one of the
+students of Stoughton University to a friend whose name as it was
+written on the envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield.  The old postmaster
+who found fault with Miss "Lulu's" designation would probably have
+quarrelled with this address, if it had come under his eye.  "Frank"
+is a very pretty, pleasant-sounding name, and it is not strange that
+many persons use it in common conversation all their days when
+speaking of a friend.  Were they really christened by that name, any
+of these numerous Franks?  Perhaps they were, and if so there is
+nothing to be said.  But if not, was the baptismal name Francis or
+Franklin?  The mind is apt to fasten in a very perverse and
+unpleasant way upon this question, which too often there is no
+possible way of settling.  One might hope, if he outlived the bearer
+of the appellation, to get at the fact; but since even gravestones
+have learned to use the names belonging to childhood and infancy in
+their solemn record, the generation which docks its Christian names
+in such an un-Christian way will bequeath whole churchyards full of
+riddles to posterity.  How it will puzzle and distress the historians
+and antiquarians of a coming generation to settle what was the real
+name of Dan and Bert and Billy, which last is legible on a white
+marble slab, raised in memory of a grown person, in a certain burial-
+ground in a town in Essex County, Massachusetts!
+
+But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr.
+Frank Mayfield.
+
+
+"DEAR FRANK,--Hooray! Hurrah!  Rah!
+
+"I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'!  It
+happened by a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near
+relieving you of the duty of replying to this letter.  I was out in
+my little boat, which carries a sail too big for her, as I know and
+ought to have remembered.  One of those fitful flaws of wind to which
+the lake is so liable struck the sail suddenly, and over went my
+boat.  My feet got tangled in the sheet somehow, and I could not get
+free.  I had hard work to keep my head above water, and I struggled
+desperately to escape from my toils; for if the boat were to go down
+I should be dragged down with her.  I thought of a good many things
+in the course of some four or five minutes, I can tell you, and I got
+a lesson about time better than anything Kant and all the rest of
+them have to say of it.  After I had been there about an ordinary
+lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our
+shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become
+acquainted without an introduction.  So it was, sure enough.  He saw
+what the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning
+me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was
+somewhat tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the
+landing where he kept his canoe.  I can't say that there is anything
+odd about his manners or his way of talk.  I judge him to be a native
+of one of our Northern States,--perhaps a New Englander.  He has
+lived abroad during some parts of his life.  He is not an artist, as
+it was at one time thought he might be.  He is a good-looking fellow,
+well developed, manly in appearance, with nothing to excite special
+remark unless it be a certain look of anxiety or apprehension which
+comes over him from time to time.  You remember our old friend Squire
+B., whose companion was killed by lightning when he was standing
+close to him.  You know the look he had whenever anything like a
+thundercloud came up in the sky.  Well, I should say there was a look
+like that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's face every now and then.
+I noticed that he looked round once or twice as if to see whether
+some object or other was in sight.  There was a little rustling in
+the grass as if of footsteps, and this look came over his features.
+A rabbit ran by us, and I watched to see if he showed any sign of
+that antipathy we have heard so much of, but he seemed to be pleased
+watching the creature.
+
+"If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I
+think he is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a
+'crank' exactly.  He talked well enough about such matters as we
+spoke of,--the lake, the scenery in general, the climate.  I asked
+him to come over and take a look at the college.  He did n't promise,
+but I should not be surprised if I should get him over there some
+day.  I asked him why he did n't go to the Pansophian meetings.  He
+did n't give any reason, but he shook his head in a very peculiar
+way, as much as to say that it was impossible.
+
+"On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of
+dread of human society, or dislike for it, which under the name of
+religion used to drive men into caves and deserts.  What a pity that
+Protestantism does not make special provision for all the freaks of
+individual character!  If we had a little more faith and a few more
+caverns, or convenient places for making them, we should have hermits
+in these holes as thick as woodchucks or prairie dogs.  I should like
+to know if you never had the feeling,
+
+     'Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place!'
+
+I know what your answer will be, of course.  You will say,
+'Certainly,
+
+     'With one fair spirit for my minister;"'
+
+but I mean alone,--all alone.  Don't you ever feel as if you should
+like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong
+as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water?
+(Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to
+send, and a disgrace to the University--but never mind.) I often feel
+as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,--yes,
+and have it soaped from top to bottom.  Wouldn't it be fun to look
+down at the bores and the duns?  Let us get up a pillar-roosters'
+association.  (Jerry--still looking over says there is an absurd
+contradiction in the idea.)
+
+"What a matter-of-fact idiot Jerry is!
+
+"How do you like looking over, Mr. Inspector general?"
+
+The reader will not get much information out of this lively young
+fellow's letter, but he may get a little.  It is something to know
+that the mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor
+talk like a crazy person; that he was of agreeable aspect and
+address, helpful when occasion offered, and had nothing about him, so
+far as yet appeared, to prevent his being an acceptable member of
+society.
+
+Of course the people in the village could never be contented without
+learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor.  All
+the city papers were examined for advertisements.  If a cashier had
+absconded, if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was
+missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh
+currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis.
+Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood
+lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed
+likely to remain an unsolved enigma.  The "Sachem" of the boating
+girls became the "Sphinx " of the village ramblers, and it was agreed
+on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make
+out than the meaning of this young man's odd way of living.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
+
+It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a
+young man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if
+made for companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world
+around him in a place where there was a general feeling of good
+neighborhood and a pleasant social atmosphere.  The Public Library
+was a central point which brought people together.  The Pansophian
+Society did a great deal to make them acquainted with each other for
+many of the meetings were open to outside visitors, and the subjects
+discussed in the meetings furnished the material for conversation in
+their intervals.  A card of invitation had been sent by the Secretary
+to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo carried back a polite note of
+regret.  The paper had a narrow rim of black, implying apparently
+some loss of relative or friend, but not any very recent and crushing
+bereavement.  This refusal to come to the meetings of the society was
+only what was expected.  It was proper to ask him, but his declining
+the invitation showed that he did not wish for attentions or
+courtesies.  There was nothing further to be done to bring him out of
+his shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him at
+present.
+
+In this state of things it was natural that all which had been
+previously gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him
+should be worked over again.  When there is no new ore to be dug, the
+old refuse heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them.
+The landlord of the Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-
+house, talked about Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one
+time or another.  He had not much to say, but he added a fact or two.
+
+The young gentleman was good pay,--so they all said.  Sometimes he
+paid in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank.  He
+trusted his man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills.  He knew
+something about horses; he showed that by the way he handled that
+colt,--the one that threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone.
+"Mr. Paul come down to the stable.  'Let me see that cult you all
+'fraid of,' says he.  'My master, he ride any hoss,' says Paul.  'You
+saddle him,' says be; and so they did, and Paul, he led that colt--
+the kickinest and ugliest young beast you ever see in your life--up
+to the place where his master, as he calls him, and he lives.  What
+does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of long spurs and jump on
+to that colt's back, and off the beast goes, tail up, heels flying,
+standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at last going it
+full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough of it.
+That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet as
+a cosset lamb.  A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good money, and
+knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is
+n't a whole one,--and most likely he is a whole one."
+
+So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern.  His wife had already
+given her favorable opinion of her former guest.  She now added
+something to her description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.
+
+"I call him," she said, "about as likely a young gentleman as ever I
+clapped my eyes on.  He is rather slighter than I like to see a young
+man of his age; if he was my sun, I should like to see him a little
+more fleshy.  I don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and
+thirty or forty pounds.  Did y' ever look at those eyes of his,
+M'randy?  Just as blue as succory flowers.  I do like those light-
+complected young fellows, with their fresh cheeks and their curly
+hair; somehow, curly hair doos set off anybody's face.  He is n't any
+foreigner, for all that he talks Italian with that Mr. Paul that's
+his help.  He looks just like our kind of folks, the college kind,
+that's brought up among books, and is handling 'em, and reading of
+'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all their lives.  All that
+you say about his riding the mad colt is just what I should think he
+was up to, for he's as spry as a squirrel; you ought to see him go
+over that fence, as I did once.  I don't believe there's any harm in
+that young gentleman,--I don't care what people say.  I suppose he
+likes this place just as other people like it, and cares more for
+walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for
+company; and if he doos, whose business is it, I should like to
+know?"
+
+The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging
+people.
+
+"I never see him but two or three times," Miranda said.  "I should
+like to have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him
+when he was eatin' his vittles.  That 's the time to watch folks,
+when their jaws get a-goin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em.
+Do you remember that chap the sheriff come and took away when we kep'
+tahvern?  Eleven year ago it was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time.  A
+mighty grand gentleman from the City he set up for.  I watched him,
+and I watched him.  Says I, I don't believe you're no gentleman,
+says I.  He eat with his knife, and that ain't the way city folks
+eats.  Every time I handed him anything I looked closeter and
+closeter.  Them whiskers never grooved on them cheeks, says I to
+myself.  Them 's paper collars, says I.  That dimun in your shirt-
+front hain't got no life to it, says I.  I don't believe it's
+nothiri' more 'n a bit o' winderglass.  So says I to Pushee, 'You
+jes' step out and get the sheriff to come in and take a look at that
+chap.' I knowed he was after a fellah.  He come right in, an' he goes
+up to the chap.  'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm mighty glad to see yer.
+We've had the hole in the wall you got out of mended, and I want your
+company to come and look at the old place,' says he, and he pulls out
+a couple of handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in less than no time,
+an' off they goes together!  I know one thing about that young
+gentleman, anyhow,--there ain't no better judge of what's good eatin'
+than he is.  I cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he sends
+word to me by that Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that the
+Pope o' Rome don't have no better cooked maccaroni than what she sent
+up to me yesterday,' says he.  I don' know much about the Pope o'
+Rome except that he's a Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for
+him, whether it's a man or a woman; but when it comes to a dish o'
+maccaroni, I ain't afeard of their shefs, as they call 'em,--them he-
+cooks that can't serve up a cold potater without callin' it by some
+name nobody can say after 'em.  But this gentleman knows good
+cookin', and that's as good a sign of a gentleman as I want to tell
+'em by."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+STILL AT FAULT.
+
+The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not a
+very inviting one.  It was old, and had been left in a somewhat
+dilapidated and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in
+the part which Maurice now occupied.  They had piled their packing-
+boxes in the cellar, with broken chairs, broken china, and other
+household wrecks.  A cracked mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the
+contents of which were airing themselves through wide rips and rents.
+A lame clothes-horse was saddled with an old rug fringed with a
+ragged border, out of which all the colors had been completely
+trodden.  No woman would have gone into a house in such a condition.
+But the young man did not trouble himself much about such matters,
+and was satisfied when the rooms which were to be occupied by himself
+and his servant were made decent and tolerably comfortable.  During
+the fine season all this was not of much consequence, and if Maurice
+made up his mind to stay through the winter he would have his choice
+among many more eligible places.
+
+The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the
+young ladies had scattered to their homes.  Among the graduates of
+the year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had
+now returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village.  They were both
+glad to rest after the long final examinations and the exercises of
+the closing day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part.
+It was a pleasant life they led in the village, which was lively
+enough at this season.  Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to
+the Library, meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics
+made the time pass very cheerfully, and soon showed their restoring
+influences.  The Terror's large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed
+look by which they had too often betrayed the after effects of over-
+excitement of the strong and active brain behind them.  The Wonder
+gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate
+vitality into a statue of ice.  They had a boat of their own, in
+which they passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing,
+drifting, reading, telling of what had been, dreaming of what might
+be.
+
+The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and
+visited often by strangers.  The old Librarian was a peculiar
+character, as these officials are apt to be.  They have a curious
+kind of knowledge, sometimes immense in its way.  They know the backs
+of books, their title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the
+class of readers who call for particular works, the value of
+different editions, and a good deal besides.  Their minds catch up
+hints from all manner of works on all kinds of subjects.  They will
+give a visitor a fact and a reference which they are surprised to
+find they remember and which the visitor might have hunted for a
+year.  Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who has grown
+into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every
+bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book.  These
+nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do
+not like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like
+to have their naked eyes handled.  They come to feel at last that the
+books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own
+property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but
+that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own
+organization.  The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about
+his books, as he called them.  Fortunately, he had a young lady for
+his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work
+any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,--or her hands, for there
+were more readers among the wives and--daughters, and especially
+among the aunts, than there were among their male relatives.  The old
+Librarian knew the books, but the books seemed to know the young
+assistant; so it looked, at least, to the impatient young people who
+wanted their services.
+
+Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,--a great many, according
+to Paolo's account; but Paolo's ideas were limited, and a few well-
+filled shelves seemed a very large collection to him.  His master
+frequently sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat
+enlarged his notions; still, the Signor was a very learned man, he
+was certain, and some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly
+gilt) were more splendid, according to Paolo, than anything in the
+Library.
+
+There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that
+Maurice was in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian's record
+was carefully searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators.
+The list proved to be a long and varied one.  It would imply a
+considerable knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a
+liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to
+electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the occult sciences, if there
+is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and
+obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the
+quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione," books about alchemy, and
+witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism.
+With these were the titles of novels and now and then of books of
+poems; but it may be taken for granted that his own shelves held the
+works he was most frequently in the habit of reading or consulting.
+Not much was to be made out of this beyond the fact of wide
+scholarship,--more or less deep it might be, but at any rate implying
+no small mental activity; for he appeared to read very rapidly, at
+any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new ones very
+frequently.  To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters.  But
+so wide-reading a man of letters must have an object, a literary
+purpose in all probability.  Why should not he be writing a novel?
+Not a novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is not the person to
+report the talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do
+with.  Novelists and lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better
+than any other persons in the world.  Why should not this young man
+be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a
+background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and
+hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way
+knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books
+furnished him?  That might be, or possibly he was only reading for
+amusement.  Who could say?
+
+The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the
+managers to purchase many books out of the common range of reading.
+The two learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor.
+These two worthies kept up the old controversy between the
+professions, which grows out of the fact that one studies nature from
+below upwards, and the other from above downwards.  The rector
+maintained that physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes
+inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes upward become
+palsied.  The doctor retorted that theological students developed a
+third eyelid,--the nictitating membrane, which is so well known in
+birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all the light
+they do not want.  Their little skirmishes did not prevent their
+being very good friends, who had a common interest in many things and
+many persons.  Both were on the committee which had the care of the
+Library and attended to the purchase of books.  Each was scholar
+enough to know the wants of scholars, and disposed to trust the
+judgment of the other as to what books should be purchased,.
+Consequently, the clergyman secured the addition to the Library of a
+good many old theological works which the physician would have called
+brimstone divinity, and held to be just the thing to kindle fires
+with,--good books still for those who know how to use them,
+oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of disorganization the
+whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief has strangled
+the natural human instincts.  The physician, in the mean time,
+acquired for the collection some of those medical works where one may
+find recorded various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not
+have their like for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so
+as to give a new lease of credibility to stories which had come to be
+looked upon as fables.
+
+Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in
+the young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the
+present, perhaps for a long period.  The rector would have been glad
+to see him at church.  He would have liked more especially to have
+had him hear his sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society.  The
+doctor, meanwhile, was meditating on the duties of society to young
+men, and wishing that he could gain the young man's confidence, so as
+to help him out of any false habit of mind or any delusion to which
+he might be subject, if he had the power of being useful to him.
+
+Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead
+Village, but of all the surrounding region.  He was an excellent
+specimen of the country doctor, self-reliant, self-sacrificing,
+working a great deal harder for his living than most of those who
+call themselves the laboring classes,--as if none but those whose
+hands were hardened by the use of farming or mechanical implements
+had any work to do.  He had that sagacity without which learning is a
+mere incumbrance, and he had also a fair share of that learning
+without which sagacity is like a traveller with a good horse, but who
+cannot read the directions on the guideboards.  He was not a man to
+be taken in by names.  He well knew that oftentimes very innocent-
+sounding words mean very grave disorders; that all, degrees of
+disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same term;
+that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a
+week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked
+patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may
+signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-
+indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of
+coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it,
+at the shortest notice, to the south of France.  He knew too well
+that what is spoken lightly of as a "nervous disturbance" may imply
+that the whole machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that
+every individual organ would groan aloud if it had any other language
+than the terrible inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate
+with the consciousness.
+
+When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile,
+and say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which
+the young man had got into his head.  Neither was he satisfied to set
+down everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that
+supposition might seem.  He was prepared to believe in some
+exceptional, perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility,
+relating to what class of objects he could not at present conjecture,
+but which was as vital to the subject of it as the insulating
+arrangement to a piece of electrical machinery.  With this feeling he
+began to look into tho history of antipathies as recorded in all the
+books and journals on which he could lay his hands.
+
+               ------------------------------
+
+The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief
+interval.  He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before
+offering them some verses which have no connection with the narrative
+now in progress.
+
+If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
+representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or
+forty or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual
+changes of aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty,
+to that of threescore and ten.  The face might be an uninteresting
+one; still, as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it
+would be worth looking at as it passed through the curve of life,--
+the vital parabola, which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of
+the features.  An inscription is the same thing, whether we read it
+on slate-stone, or granite, or marble.  To watch the lights and
+shades, the reliefs and hollows, of a countenance through a lifetime,
+or a large part of it, by the aid of a continuous series of
+photographs would not only be curious; it would teach us much more
+about the laws of physiognomy than we could get from casual and
+unconnected observations.
+
+The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be
+found in them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning
+in middle life and continued to what many of my correspondents are
+pleased to remind me--as if I required to have the fact brought to my
+knowledge--is no longer youth.  Here is the latest of a series of
+annual poems read during the last thirty-four years.  There seems to
+have been one interruption, but there may have been other poems not
+recorded or remembered.  This, the latest poem of the series, was
+listened to by the scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant
+circle of classmates and friends when the first of the long series
+was read before them, then in the flush of ardent manhood:--
+
+
+     THE OLD SONG.
+
+The minstrel of the classic lay
+Of love and wine who sings
+Still found the fingers run astray
+That touched the rebel strings.
+
+Of Cadmus he would fair have sung,
+Of Atreus and his line;
+But all the jocund echoes rung
+With songs of love and wine.
+
+Ah, brothers!  I would fair have caught
+Some fresher fancy's gleam;
+My truant accents find, unsought,
+The old familiar theme.
+
+Love, Love! but not the sportive child
+With shaft and twanging bow,
+Whose random arrows drove us wild
+Some threescore years ago;
+
+Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
+The urchin blind and bare,
+But Love, with spectacles and staff,
+And scanty, silvered hair.
+
+Our heads with frosted locks are white,
+Our roofs are thatched with snow,
+But red, in chilling winter's spite,
+Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
+
+Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
+And while the running sands
+Their golden thread unheeded spin,
+He warms his frozen hands.
+
+Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
+And waft this message o'er
+To all we miss, from all we meet
+On life's fast-crumbling shore:
+
+Say that to old affection true
+We hug the narrowing chain
+That binds our hearts,--alas, how few
+The links that yet remain!
+
+The fatal touch awaits them all
+That turns the rocks to dust;
+>From year to year they break and fall,
+They break, but never rust.
+
+Say if one note of happier strain
+This worn-out harp afford,--
+One throb that trembles, not in vain,
+Their memory lent its chord.
+
+Say that when Fancy closed her wings
+And Passion quenched his fire,
+Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
+As from Anacreon's lyre!
+
+January 8, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
+
+In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that,
+with care and patience and watching his opportunity, he should get at
+the secret, which so far bad yielded nothing but a single word.  It
+might be asked why he was so anxious to learn what, from all
+appearances, the young stranger was unwilling to explain.  He may
+have been to some extent infected by the general curiosity of the
+persons around him, in which good Mrs. Butts shared, and which she
+had helped to intensify by revealing the word dropped by Paolo.  But
+this was not really his chief motive.  He could not look upon this
+young man, living a life of unwholesome solitude, without a natural
+desire to do all that his science and his knowledge of human nature
+could help him to do towards bringing him into healthy relations with
+the world about him.  Still, he would not intrude upon him in any
+way.  He would only make certain general investigations, which might
+prove serviceable in case circumstances should give him the right to
+counsel the young man as to his course of life.  The first thing to
+be done was to study systematically the whole subject of antipathies.
+Then, if any further occasion offered itself, he would be ready to
+take advantage of it.  The resources of the Public Library of the
+place and his own private collection were put in requisition to
+furnish him the singular and widely scattered facts of which he was
+in search.
+
+It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study
+of the natural history of antipathies.  The stories told about them
+are, however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned,
+there is no doubt that many of the strangest are true, and
+consequently take away from the improbability of others which we are
+disposed to doubt.
+
+But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy?  It is an
+aversion to some object, which may vary in degree from mere dislike
+to mortal horror.  What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say.
+It acts sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the
+imagination, sometimes through an unknown channel.  The relations
+which exist between the human being and all that surrounds him vary
+in consequence of some adjustment peculiar to each individual.  The
+brute fact is expressed in the phrase "One man's meat is another
+man's poison."
+
+In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those
+referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common.  In
+any collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who
+cannot make use of certain articles of food generally acceptable.
+This may be from the disgust they occasion or the effects they have
+been found to produce.  Every one knows individuals who cannot
+venture on honey, or cheese, or veal, with impunity.  Carlyle, for
+example, complains of having veal set before him,--a meat he could
+not endure.  There is a whole family connection in New England, and
+that a very famous one, to many of whose members, in different
+generations, all the products of the dairy are the subjects of a
+congenital antipathy.  Montaigne says there are persons who dread the
+smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a fire of
+musketry.  The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French
+Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in
+the night: "Ursula, art thou asleep?  Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but
+I cannot close my eyes.  Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful
+smell!  Oh, Ursula, it is such a smell!  I do so wish thou couldst
+smell it!  Good-night, my angel!----Dearest!  I have found them!
+They are apples!  "The smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has
+been known to cause faintness.  The sight of various objects has had
+singular effects on some persons.  A boar's head was a favorite dish
+at the table of great people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used
+to faint at the sight of one.  It is not uncommon to meet with
+persons who faint at the sight of blood.  One of the most
+inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that
+he had this infirmity.  Stranger and far more awkward than this is
+the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the
+antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color.  There
+are sounds, also, which have strange effects on some individuals.
+Among the obnoxious noises are the crumpling of silk stuffs, the
+sound of sweeping, the croaking of frogs.  The effects in different
+cases have been spasms, a sense of strangling, profuse sweating,--all
+showing a profound disturbance of the nervous system.
+
+All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of
+sense, seemingly by direct agency on certain nerve centres.  But
+there is another series of cases in which the imagination plays a
+larger part in the phenomena.  Two notable examples are afforded in
+the lives of two very distinguished personages.
+
+Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a
+bridge into the water.  Long afterward, when he had reached manhood,
+this hardy and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels
+rattling over a bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening
+to the sound, in spite of his dread of it, in order to overcome his
+antipathy.  The story told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar
+to that related of Peter.  As he was driving in his coach and four
+over the bridge at Neuilly, his horses took fright and ran away, and
+the leaders broke from their harness and sprang into the river,
+leaving the wheel-horses and the carriage on the bridge.  Ever after
+this fright it is said that Pascal had the terrifying sense that he
+was just on the edge of an abyss, ready to fall over.
+
+What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always
+to shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a church, as it is recorded?
+The old and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural
+one, that it was an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when
+she entered the holy place and brought her spiritual tenant into the
+presence of the sacred symbols, "cried with a loud voice, and came
+out of" her.  A very singular case, the doctor himself had recorded,
+and which the reader may accept as authentic, is the following: At
+the head of the doctor's front stairs stood, and still stands, a tall
+clock, of early date and stately presence.  A middle-aged visitor,
+noticing it as he entered the front door, remarked that he should
+feel a great unwillingness to pass that clock.  He could not go near
+one of those tall timepieces without a profound agitation, which he
+dreaded to undergo.  This very singular idiosyncrasy he attributed to
+a fright when he was an infant in the arms of his nurse.
+
+She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which
+supported one of its heavy leaden weights broke, and the weight came
+crashing down to the bottom of the case.  Some effect must have been
+produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never
+recovered.  Why should not this happen, when we know that a sudden
+mental shock may be the cause of insanity?  The doctor remembered the
+verse of "The Ancient Mariner:"
+
+    "I moved my lips; the pilot shrieked
+     And fell down in a fit;
+     The holy hermit raised his eyes
+     And prayed where he did sit.
+     I took the oars; the pilot's boy,
+     Who now doth crazy go,
+     Laughed loud and long, and all the while
+     His eyes went to and fro."
+
+This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the
+description from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish
+many cases where insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
+
+More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some
+person, a child commonly, killed outright by terror,--scared to
+death, literally.  Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a
+surprise being intended, the shock has instantly arrested the
+movements on which life depends.  If a mere instantaneous impression
+can produce effects like these, such an impression might of course be
+followed by consequences less fatal or formidable, but yet serious in
+their nature.  If here and there a person is killed, as if by
+lightning, by a sudden startling sight or sound, there must be more
+numerous cases in which a terrible shock is produced by similar
+apparently insignificant causes,--a shock which falls short of
+overthrowing the reason and does not destroy life, yet leaves a
+lasting effect upon the subject of it.
+
+This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that,
+as a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a
+human being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice,
+no change of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which
+such a cause may not rationally account for.  He would not be
+surprised, he said to himself, to find that some early alarm, like
+that which was experienced by Peter the Great or that which happened
+to Pascal, had broken some spring in this young man's nature, or so
+changed its mode of action as to account for the exceptional
+remoteness of his way of life.  But how could any conceivable
+antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man aloof from all
+the world, and make a hermit of him?  He did not hate the human race;
+that was clear enough.  He treated Paolo with great kindness, and the
+Italian was evidently much attached to him.  He had talked naturally
+and pleasantly with the young man he had helped out of his dangerous
+situation when his boat was upset.  Dr. Butts heard that he had once
+made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the University.
+It was not misanthropy, therefore, which kept him solitary.  What
+could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case?  Nothing that
+the doctor could think of, unless it were some color, the sight of
+which acted on him as it did on the individual before mentioned, who
+could not look at anything red without fainting.  Suppose this were a
+case of the same antipathy.  How very careful it would make the
+subject of it as to where he went and with whom he consorted!  Time
+and patience would be pretty sure to bring out new developments, and
+physicians, of all men in the world, know how to wait as well as how
+to labor.
+
+Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or
+gathered them from his own experience.  He soon discovered that the
+story had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim
+of an "antipathy," whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of
+the people of the place.  If he suspected the channel through which
+it had reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre,
+the country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a
+domestic casus belli.  Paolo might have mentioned it to others as
+well as to himself.  Maurice might have told some friend, who had
+divulged it.  But to accuse Mrs. Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit
+treason in telling one of her husband's professional secrets was too
+serious a matter to be thought of.  He would be a little more
+careful, he promised himself, the next time, at any rate; for he had
+to concede, in spite of every wish to be charitable in his judgment,
+that it was among the possibilities that the worthy lady had
+forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put their tongues
+out, and a doctor's wife must keep her tongue in.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the
+office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him.  It
+occurred to the members of the Society that a little fresh blood
+infused into it might stir up the general vitality of the
+organization.  The woman suffragists saw no reason why the place of
+Secretary need as a matter of course be filled by a person of the
+male sex.  They agitated, they made domiciliary visits, they wrote
+notes to influential citizens, and finally announced as their
+candidate the young lady who had won and worn the school name of "The
+Terror," who was elected.  She was just the person for the place:
+wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of every kind of
+knowledge, and, above all, strong on points of order and details of
+management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer, to do
+which is often the most essential duty of a Secretary.  The
+President, the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track
+of the common moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get
+muddled if anything came up requiring swift decision and off-hand
+speech.  The Terror had schooled herself in the debating societies of
+the Institute, and would set up the President, when he was floored by
+an awkward question, as easily as if he were a ninepin which had been
+bowled over.
+
+It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
+communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
+organization.  Of late these had been becoming more frequent.  Many
+of them were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors
+to the village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both
+full of ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often
+impossible to trace the papers to their authors.  The new Secretary
+was alive with curiosity, and as sagacious a little body as one might
+find if in want of a detective.  She could make a pretty shrewd guess
+whether a paper was written by a young or old person, by one of her
+own sex or the other, by an experienced hand or a novice.
+
+Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
+curiosity to an extraordinary degree.  She felt a strong suspicion
+that "the Sachem," as the boat-crews used to call him, "the Recluse,"
+"the Night-Hawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the
+author of it.  It appeared to her the production of a young person of
+a reflective, poetical turn of mind.  It was not a woman's way of
+writing; at least, so thought the Secretary.  The writer had
+travelled much; had resided in Italy, among other places.  But so had
+many of the summer visitors and residents of Arrowhead Village.  The
+handwriting was not decisive; it had some points of resemblance with
+the pencilled orders for books which Maurice sent to the Library, but
+there were certain differences, intentional or accidental, which
+weakened this evidence.  There was an undertone in the essay which
+was in keeping with the mode of life of the solitary stranger.  It
+might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the dreamy sadness of a
+young person who sees the future he is to climb, not as a smooth
+ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush him, with
+all his hopes and prospects.  This interpretation may have been too
+imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own
+opinion:
+
+                    MY THREE COMPANIONS.
+
+"I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer.  I do not mean
+constantly flitting from one place to another, for my residence has
+often been fixed for considerable periods.  From time to time I have
+put down in a notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes
+through which I have passed.  I have long hesitated whether to let
+any of my notes appear before the public.  My fear has been that they
+were too subjective, to use the metaphysician's term,--that I have
+seen myself reflected in Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature
+as she was meant to be understood.  One who should visit the Harz
+Mountains would see--might see, rather his own colossal image shape
+itself on the morning mist.  But if in every mist that rises from the
+meadows, in every cloud that hangs upon the mountain, he always finds
+his own reflection, we cannot accept him as an interpreter of the
+landscape.
+
+"There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to
+which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its
+author.  They have visited the same localities, they have had many of
+the same thoughts and feelings.  Many, I have no doubt.  Not all,--
+no, not all.  Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have
+been driven to it.  Much of my life has been passed in that
+communion.  These pages record some of the intimacies I have formed
+with her under some of her various manifestations.
+
+"I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke
+wildest and its voice rose loudest.
+
+"I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous
+rivers.
+
+"I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through
+many a long, long summer day on its clear waters.
+
+"I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has
+spoken,--at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it.  I
+will translate some of these as I best may into common speech.
+
+"The OCEAN says to the dweller on its shores:--
+
+You are neither welcome nor unwelcome.  I do not trouble myself with
+the living tribes that come down to my waters.  I have my own people,
+of an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than
+your mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that
+fill the air or move over the thin crust of the earth.  Who are you
+that build your palaces on my margin?  I see your white faces as
+I saw the dark faces of the tribes that came before you, as I shall
+look upon the unknown family of mankind that will come after you.
+And what is your whole human family but a parenthesis in a single
+page of my history?  The raindrops stereotyped themselves on my
+beaches before a living creature left his footprints there.  This
+horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is of older lineage than your
+Adam,--perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as one of his
+descendants.  What feeling have I for you?  Not scorn, not hatred,--
+not love,--not loathing.  No!---indifference,--blank indifference to
+you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather absence of
+feeling, as regards you.---Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I will cool
+you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong arms, I
+will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his cradle.
+Am I not gentle?  Am I not kind?  Am I not harmless?  But hark!  The
+wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates!  What do you
+say to my voice now?  Do you see my foaming lips?  Do you feel the
+rocks tremble as my huge billows crash against them?  Is not my anger
+terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into
+fragments, as you would crack an eggshell? --No, not anger; deaf,
+blind, unheeding indifference,--that is all.  Out of me all things
+arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside.  All changes
+around me; I change not.  I look not at you, vain man, and your frail
+transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses: I look on the white
+face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the
+bier of her who has changed her nuptial raiment for the shroud.
+
+"Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side.
+Continents and islands grow old, and waste and disappear.  The
+hardest rock crumbles; vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being,
+wax great, decline, and perish, to give way to others, even as human
+dynasties and nations and races come and go.  Look on me!  "Time
+writes no wrinkle" on my forehead.  Listen to me!  All tongues are
+spoken on my shores, but I have only one language: the winds taught
+me their vowels the crags and the sands schooled me in my rough or
+smooth consonants.  Few words are mine but I have whispered them and
+sung them and shouted them to men of all tribes from the time when
+the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful presence.  Have you a
+grief that gnaws at your heart-strings?  Come with it to my shore, as
+of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried his rage and anguish
+to the margin of the loud-roaring sea.  There, if anywhere you will
+forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice speaks to the
+infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.'
+
+
+"To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the
+voices of the world about him, who frequents the market and the
+thoroughfare, who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather
+than in the deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual
+contemplation, the RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion.
+
+"Come live with me.  I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural
+talker and story-teller.  I am not noisy, like the ocean, except
+occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get
+a fall.  When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my
+changing features.  My idlest babble, when I am toying with the
+trifles that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least
+musical.  I am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is
+absolutely safe, but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew
+the beaches with wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders.  Abide
+with me, and you shall not die of thirst, like the forlorn wretches
+left to the mercies of the pitiless salt waves.  Trust yourself to
+me, and I will carry you far on your journey, if we are travelling to
+the same point of the compass.  If I sometimes run riot and overflow
+your meadows, I leave fertility behind me when I withdraw to my
+natural channel.  Walk by my side toward the place of my destination.
+I will keep pace with you, and you shall feel my presence with you as
+that of a self-conscious being like yourself.  You will find it hard
+to be miserable in my company; I drain you of ill-conditioned
+thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your dwelling and its grounds:
+
+
+But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen
+indifference, and the river disturbs with its never-pausing and
+never-ending story, the silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of
+rest for his soul.
+
+"'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited
+faculties,' it says; 'yield not yourself to the babble of the running
+stream.  Leave the ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living
+thing that walks the solid earth; leave the river, too busy with its
+own errand, too talkative about its own affairs, and find peace with
+me, whose smile will cheer you, whose whisper will soothe you.  Come
+to me when the morning sun blazes across my bosom like a golden
+baldric; come to me in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted
+firmament like a cup brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all
+the constellations that float in my ebon goblet.  Do you know the
+charm of melancholy?  Where will you find a sympathy like mine in
+your hours of sadness?  Does the ocean share your grief?  Does the
+river listen to your sighs?  The salt wave, that called to you from
+under last month's full moon, to-day is dashing on the rocks of
+Labrador; the stream, that ran by you pure and sparkling, has
+swallowed the poisonous refuse of a great city, and is creeping to
+its grave in the wide cemetery that buries all things in its tomb of
+liquid crystal.  It is true that my waters exhale and are renewed
+from one season to another; but are your features the same,
+absolutely the same, from year to year?  We both change, but we know
+each other through all changes.  Am I not mirrored in those eyes of
+yours?  And does not Nature plant me as an eye to behold her beauties
+while she is dressed in the glories of leaf and flower, and draw the
+icy lid over my shining surface when she stands naked and ashamed in
+the poverty of winter?'
+
+"I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a
+life not very long, but with a record which much longer lives could
+not match in incident.  Oftentimes the temptation has come over me
+with dangerous urgency to try a change of existence, if such change
+is a part of human destiny,--to seek rest, if that is what we gain by
+laying down the burden of life.  I have asked who would be the friend
+to whom I should appeal for the last service I should have need of.
+Ocean was there, all ready, asking no questions, answering none.
+What strange voyages, downward through its glaucous depths, upwards
+to its boiling and frothing surface, wafted by tides, driven by
+tempests, disparted by rude agencies; one remnant whitening on the
+sands of a northern beach, one perhaps built into the circle of a
+coral reef in the Pacific, one settling to the floor of the vast
+laboratory where continents are built, to emerge in far-off ages!
+What strange companions for my pall-bearers!  Unwieldy sea-monsters,
+the stories of which are counted fables by the spectacled collectors
+who think their catalogues have exhausted nature; naked-eyed
+creatures, staring, glaring, nightmare-like spectres of the ghastly-
+green abysses; pulpy islands, with life in gelatinous immensity,--
+what a company of hungry heirs at every ocean funeral!  No!  No!
+Ocean claims great multitudes, but does not invite the solitary who
+would fain be rid of himself.
+
+'Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than
+I have ever found when drifting idly over its surface?  No, again.  I
+do not want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of
+nature, when life, the faithful body-servant, has ceased caring for
+me.  That must not be.  The mirror which has pictured me so often
+shall never know me as an unwelcome object.
+
+"If I must ask the all-subduing element to be my last friend, and
+lead me out of my prison, it shall be the busy, whispering, not
+unfriendly, pleasantly companionable river.
+
+
+"But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods
+of human life which they who are choosing their places of abode
+should consider.  Let the child play upon the seashore.  The wide
+horizon gives his imagination room to grow in, untrammelled.  That
+background of mystery, without which life is a poor mechanical
+arrangement, is shaped and colored, so far as it can have outline, or
+any hue but shadow, on a vast canvas, the contemplation of which
+enlarges and enriches the sphere of consciousness.  The mighty ocean
+is not too huge to symbolize the aspirations and ambitions of the yet
+untried soul of the adolescent.
+
+"The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a
+solid limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he
+would have thought could content him in the years of undefined
+possibilities.  Then he will find the river a more natural intimate
+than the ocean.  It is individual, which the ocean, with all its
+gulfs and inlets and multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be.  It
+does not love you very dearly, and will not miss you much when you
+disappear from its margin; but it means well to you, bids you good-
+morning with its coming waves, and good-evening with those which are
+leaving.  It will lead your thoughts pleasantly away, upwards to its
+source, downwards to the stream to which it is tributary, or the wide
+waters in which it is to lose itself.  A river, by choice, to live by
+in middle age.
+
+"In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which
+have little left but tender memories, the still companionship of the
+lake, embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and
+hidden springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit.
+I am not thinking of those great inland seas, which have many of the
+features and much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of
+those 'ponds,' as our countrymen used to call them until they were
+rechristened by summer visitors; beautiful sheets of water from a
+hundred to a few thousand acres in extent, scattered like raindrops
+over the map of our Northern sovereignties.  The loneliness of
+contemplative old age finds its natural home in the near neighborhood
+of one of these tranquil basins.
+
+Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we
+look carefully their affinities betray themselves.  The youth will
+carry his Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved
+so well.  The man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous
+couplets of Pope which ring in his ears were written on the banks of
+the Thames.  The old man, as he nods over the solemn verse of
+Wordsworth, will recognize the affinity between the singer and the
+calm sheet that lay before him as he wrote,--the stainless and sleepy
+Windermere.
+
+"The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their
+own feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the
+Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of
+the fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in
+its forests."
+
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this
+paper, and pondered long upon it.  She was thinking very seriously of
+studying medicine, and had been for some time in frequent
+communication with Dr. Butts, under whose direction she had begun
+reading certain treatises, which added to such knowledge of the laws
+of life in health and in disease as she had brought with her from the
+Corinna Institute.  Naturally enough, she carried the anonymous paper
+to the doctor, to get his opinion about it, and compare it with her
+own.  They both agreed that it was probably, they would not say
+certainly, the work of the solitary visitor.  There was room for
+doubt, for there were visitors who might well have travelled to all
+the places mentioned, and resided long enough on the shores of the
+waters the writer spoke of to have had all the experiences mentioned
+in the paper.  The Terror remembered a young lady, a former
+schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families common in
+this generation, the heads of which, especially the female heads, can
+never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and
+Europe, like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment,
+alternately attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium.
+Every few years they pull their families up by the roots, and by the
+time they have begun to take hold a little with their radicles in the
+spots to which they have been successively transplanted up they come
+again, so that they never get a tap-root anywhere.  The Terror
+suspected the daughter of one of these families of sending certain
+anonymous articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had
+just received.  But she knew the style of composition common among
+the young girls, and she could hardly believe that it was one of them
+who had sent this paper.  Could a brother of this young lady have
+written it?  Possibly; she knew nothing more than that the young lady
+had a brother, then a student at the University.  All the chances
+were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was the author.  So thought Lurida,
+and so thought Dr. Butts.
+
+Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both.
+There was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on
+the part of the writer, whoever he or she might be.  There were
+references to suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely
+speculative nature, and did not look to any practical purpose in that
+direction.  Besides, if the stranger were the author of the paper, he
+certainly would not choose a sheet of water like Cedar Lake to
+perform the last offices for him, in case he seriously meditated
+taking unceremonious leave of life and its accidents.  He could find
+a river easily enough, to say nothing of other methods of effecting
+his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the impropriety of
+selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the white canoe
+and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of the deep
+waters.
+
+The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before
+the public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers
+belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make
+free use of, either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a
+diversion during those intervals in which the flow of events is
+languid, or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress.  The
+reader can hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern
+had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity
+converged.  There were the village people, including a number of
+cultivated families; there were the visitors, among them many
+accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the University,
+with its learned teachers and aspiring young men; there was the
+Corinna Institute, with its eager, ambitious, hungry-souled young
+women, crowding on, class after class coming forward on the broad
+stream of liberal culture, and rounding the point which, once passed,
+the boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them.  All
+this furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the
+archives of the society.
+
+The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings.  It may be
+remembered that the girls had said of her, when she was The Terror,
+that "she knew everything and didn't believe anything."  That was
+just the kind of person for a secretary of such an association.
+Properly interpreted, the saying meant that she knew a great deal,
+and wanted to know a great deal more, and was consequently always on
+the lookout for information; that she believed nothing without
+sufficient proof that it was true, and therefore was perpetually
+asking for evidence where, others took assertions on trust.
+
+It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror
+could accomplish in the course of a single season.  She found out
+what each member could do and wanted to do.  She wrote to the outside
+visitors whom she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at
+the meetings, or send written papers to be read.  As an official,
+with the printed title at the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY,
+she was a privileged personage.  She begged the young persons who had
+travelled to tell something of their experiences.  She had
+contemplated getting up a discussion on the woman's rights question,
+but being a wary little body, and knowing that the debate would
+become a dispute and divide the members into two hostile camps, she
+deferred this project indefinitely.  It would be time enough after
+she had her team well in hand, she said to herself,--had felt their
+mouths and tried their paces.  This expression, as she used it in her
+thoughts, seems rather foreign to her habits, but there was room in
+her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and an ample
+vocabulary.  She could not do much with her own muscles, but she had
+known the passionate delight of being whirled furiously over the road
+behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stage-coach, and thought
+of herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver on his
+box.  A few weeks of rest had allowed her nervous energy to store
+itself up, and the same powers which had distanced competition in the
+classes of her school had of necessity to expend themselves in
+vigorous action in her new office.
+
+
+Her appeals had their effect.  A number of papers were very soon sent
+in; some with names, some anonymously.  She looked these papers over,
+and marked those which she thought would be worth reading and
+listening to at the meetings.  One of them has just been presented to
+the reader.  As to the authorship of the following one there were
+many conjectures.  A well-known writer, who had spent some weeks at
+Arrowhead Village, was generally suspected of being its author.
+Some, however, questioned whether it was not the work of a new hand,
+who wrote, not from experience, but from his or her ideas of the
+condition to which a story-teller, a novelist, must in all
+probability be sooner or later reduced.  The reader must judge for
+himself whether this first paper is the work of an old hand or a
+novice.
+
+
+               SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.
+
+"I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I
+think.  Let me see.  For twelve years two novels a year regularly:
+that makes twenty-four.  In three different years I have written
+three stories annually: that makes thirty-three.  In five years one a
+year,--thirty-eight.  That is all, is n't it?  Yes.  Thirty-eight,
+not forty.  I wish I could make them all into one composite story, as
+Mr. Galton does his faces.
+
+"Hero--heroine--mamma--papa--uncle--sister, and so on.  Love--
+obstacles--misery--tears--despair--glimmer of hope--unexpected
+solution of difficulties--happy finale.
+
+"Landscape for background according to season.  Plants of each month
+got up from botanical calendars.
+
+
+"I should like much to see the composite novel.  Why not apply Mr.
+Galton's process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one?  All the
+Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all the P---- West Britons
+into one Patrick, etc., what a saving of time it would be!
+
+"I got along pretty well with my first few stories.  I had some
+characters around me which, a little disguised, answered well enough.
+There was the minister of the parish, and there was an old
+schoolmaster either of them served very satisfactorily for
+grandfathers and old uncles.  All I had to do was to shift some of
+their leading peculiarities, keeping the rest.  The old minister wore
+knee-breeches.  I clapped them on to the schoolmaster.  The
+schoolmaster carried a tall gold-headed cane.  I put this in the
+minister's hands.  So with other things,--I shifted them round, and
+got a set of characters who, taken together, reproduced the chief
+persons of the village where I lived, but did not copy any individual
+exactly.  Thus it went on for a while; but by and by my stock company
+began to be rather too familiarly known, in spite of their change of
+costume, and at last some altogether too sagacious person published
+what he called a 'key' to several of my earlier stories, in which I
+found the names of a number of neighbors attached to aliases of my
+own invention.  All the 'types,' as he called them, represented by
+these personages of my story had come to be recognized, each as
+standing for one and the same individual of my acquaintance.  It had
+been of no use to change the costume.  Even changing the sex did no
+good.  I had a famous old gossip in one of my tales,--a much-babbling
+Widow Sertingly.  'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon Spinner,
+the same he told about in that other story of his,--only the deacon's
+got on a petticoat and a mob-cap,--but it's the same old sixpence.'
+So I said to myself, I must have some new characters.  I had no
+trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much alike,--dark-
+haired or light-haired, with the outfits belonging to their
+complexion, respectively.  I had an old great-aunt, who was a tip-top
+eccentric.  I had never seen anything just like her in books.  So I
+said, I will have you, old lady, in one of my stories; and, sure
+enough, I fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name, which I
+got from the directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised,
+as I supposed, beyond the possibility of recognition.  The book sold
+well, and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty.  A few weeks
+after it was published a lawyer called upon me, as the agent of the
+person in the directory, whose family name I had used, as he
+maintained, to his and all his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss,
+grief, shame, and irreparable injury, for which the sum of blank
+thousand dollars would be a modest compensation.  The story made the
+book sell, but not enough to pay blank thousand dollars.  In the mean
+time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the resemblance between the
+character in my book and our great-aunt.  We were rivals in her good
+graces.  'Cousin Pansie' spoke to her of my book and the trouble it
+was bringing on me,--she was so sorry about it!  She liked my story,
+--only those personalities, you know.  'What personalities?' says old
+granny-aunt.  'Why, auntie, dear, they do say that he has brought in
+everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you about--well,--I suppose
+you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you you were made fun of
+in that novel?'  Somebody--no matter who--happened to hear all this,
+and told me.  She said granny-aunt's withered old face had two red
+spots come to it, as if she had been painting her cheeks from a pink
+saucer.  No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two
+coals of fire.  She sent out and got the book, and made her (the
+somebody that I was speaking of) read it to her.  When she had heard
+as much as she could stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages
+to her,--explained, you know,--she sent for her lawyer, and that same
+somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up.  It was
+not to my advantage.  'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the
+grocery is, and pretty much everything else.  The old woman left me a
+legacy.  What do you think it was?  An old set of my own books, that
+looked as if it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating
+library.
+
+"After that I grew more careful.  I studied my disguises much more
+diligently.  But after all, what could I do?  Here I was, writing
+stories for my living and my reputation.  I made a pretty sum enough,
+and worked hard enough to earn it.  No tale, no money.  Then every
+story that went from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my
+reputation, and there was a set of critics,--there is a set of
+critics now and everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline
+of a man's reputation as ever a village half drowned out by an
+inundation watched for the falling of the waters.  The fame I had
+won, such as it was, seemed to attend me,--not going before me in the
+shape of a woman with a trumpet, but rather following me like one of
+Actaeon's hounds, his throat open, ready to pull me down and tear me.
+What a fierce enemy is that which bays behind us in the voice of our
+proudest bygone achievement!
+
+"But, as I said above, what could I do?  I must write novels, and I
+must have characters.  'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice.
+Oh, yes!  Invent them!  You can invent a human being that in certain
+aspects of humanity will answer every purpose for which your
+invention was intended.  A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of
+breeches, a hat which has been soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken
+window, and had a brood of chickens raised in it,--these elements,
+duly adjusted to each other, will represent humanity so truthfully
+that the crows will avoid the cornfield when your scarecrow displays
+his personality.  Do you think you can make your heroes and
+heroines,--nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,--out of refuse
+material, as you made your scarecrow?  You can't do it.  You must
+study living people and reproduce them.  And whom do you know so well
+as your friends?  You will show up your friends, then, one after
+another.  When your friends give out, who is left for you?  Why,
+nobody but your own family, of course.  When you have used up your
+family, there is nothing left for you but to write your
+autobiography.
+
+"After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious,
+very naturally.  I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well
+as sexes.  In this way I continued to use up a large amount of
+material, which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to
+meddle with.  Who would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in
+the guise of a schoolboy?  Yet I managed to decant his
+characteristics as nicely as the old gentleman would have decanted a
+bottle of Juno Madeira through that long siphon which he always used
+when the most sacred vintages were summoned from their crypts to
+render an account of themselves on his hospitable board.  It was a
+nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I drink cheerfully to
+that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his own cellar,
+which, with many other more important tokens of his good will, I call
+my own since his lamented demise.
+
+"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a
+course of cousins.  I had enough of them to furnish out a whole
+gallery of portraits.  There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her;
+Lucretia, more correctly.  She was a cripple.  Her left lower limb
+had had something happen to it, and she walked with a crutch.  Her
+patience under her trial was very pathetic and picturesque, so to
+speak,--I mean adapted to the tender parts of a story; nothing could
+work up better in a melting paragraph.  But I could not, of course,
+describe her particular infirmity; that would point her out at once.
+I thought of shifting the lameness to the right lower limb, but even
+that would be seen through.  So I gave the young woman that stood for
+her in my story a lame elbow, and put her arm in a sling, and made
+her such a model of uncomplaining endurance that my grandmother cried
+over her as if her poor old heart would break.  She cried very
+easily, my grandmother; in fact, she had such a gift for tears that I
+availed myself of it, and if you remember old Judy, in my novel
+"Honi Soit " (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called it),--old Judy, the
+black-nurse,--that was my grandmother.  She had various other
+peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and saddled on to
+different characters.  You see she was a perfect mine of
+singularities and idiosyncrasies.  After I had used her up pretty
+well, I came dawn upon my poor relations.  They were perfectly fair
+game; what better use could I put them to?  I studied them up very
+carefully, and as there were a good many of them I helped myself
+freely.  They lasted me, with occasional intermissions, I should say,
+three or four years.  I had to be very careful with my poor
+relations,--they were as touchy as they could be; and as I felt bound
+to send a copy of my novel, whatever it might be, to each one of
+them,--there were as many as a dozen,--I took care to mix their
+characteristic features, so that, though each might suspect I meant
+the other, no one should think I meant him or her.  I got through all
+my relations at last except my father and mother.  I had treated my
+brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except Elisha and Joanna.
+The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,--family traits, I
+suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure
+separately in two different stories.  These two novels made me some
+little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in
+one of them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and
+declared that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and
+that it was a real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and
+blood, and treated me to one of her cries.  She was n't handsome when
+she cried, poor, dear Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal
+traits I had made use of in the story that Elisha found fault with.
+
+"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
+yourself I had no choice.  There was one great advantage in dealing
+with them,--I knew them so thoroughly.  One naturally feels a certain
+delicacy it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who
+have been so near to him.  One's mother, for instance: suppose some
+of her little ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of
+them would furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would
+not be without hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would
+draw her portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it
+should be generally recognized.  One's father is commonly of tougher
+fibre than one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples,
+perhaps, in using him professionally as material in a novel; still,
+while you are employing him as bait,--you see I am honest and plain-
+spoken, for your characters are baits to catch readers with,--I would
+follow kind Izaak Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are
+fastening to your fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he directs, but
+in so doing I use him as though you loved him.'
+
+"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen
+who have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my
+friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives.  It has
+occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection
+of my father-in-law and mother-in-law.  We have been thinking of
+paying them a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of
+studying them and their relatives and visitors.  I have long wanted a
+good chance for getting acquainted with the social sphere several
+grades below that to which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that
+I shall find matter for half a dozen new stories among those
+connections of mine.  Besides, they live in a Western city, and one
+doesn't mind much how he cuts up the people of places he does n't
+himself live in.  I suppose there is not really so much difference in
+people's feelings, whether they live in Bangor or Omaha, but one's
+nerves can't be expected to stretch across the continent.  It is all
+a matter of greater or less distance.  I read this morning that a
+Chinese fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half so much about it as
+I did about losing my sleeve button, confound it!  People have
+accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the artist-nature,
+--that is all.  I obey that implicitly; I am sorry if people don't
+like my descriptions, but I have done my best.  I have pulled to
+pieces all the persons I am acquainted with, and put them together
+again in my characters.  The quills I write with come from live
+geese, I would have you know.  I expect to get some first-rate
+pluckings from those people I was speaking of, and I mean to begin my
+thirty-ninth novel as soon as I have got through my visit."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
+
+There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a
+narrative like this.  June passed away, and July, and August had
+come, and as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead
+Village and its visitors remained unsolved.  The white canoe still
+wandered over the lake, alone, ghostly, always avoiding the near
+approach of the boats which seemed to be coming in its direction.
+Now and then a circumstance would happen which helped to keep inquiry
+alive.  Good horsemanship was not so common among the young men of
+the place and its neighborhood that Maurice's accomplishment in that
+way could be overlooked.  If there was a wicked horse or a wild colt
+whose owner was afraid of him, he would be commended to Maurice's
+attention.  Paolo would lead him to his master with all due
+precaution,--for he had no idea of risking his neck on the back of
+any ill-conditioned beast,--and Maurice would fasten on his long
+spurs, spring into the saddle, and very speedily teach the creature
+good behavior.  There soon got about a story that he was what the
+fresh-water fisherman called "one o' them whisperers."  It is a
+common legend enough, coming from the Old World, but known in
+American horse-talking circles, that some persons will whisper
+certain words in a horse's ear which will tame him if he is as wild
+and furious as ever Cruiser was.  All this added to the mystery which
+surrounded the young man.  A single improbable or absurd story
+amounts to very little, but when half a dozen such stories are told
+about the same individual or the same event, they begin to produce
+the effect of credible evidence.  If the year had been 1692 and the
+place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would have run the
+risk of being treated like the Reverend George Burroughs.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with
+reference to the young man of whom so many stories were told.  She
+had pretty nearly convinced herself that he was the author of the
+paper on Ocean, Lake, and River, which had been read at one of the
+meetings of the Pansophian Society.  She was very desirous of meeting
+him, if it were possible.  It seemed as if she might, as Secretary of
+the Society, request the cooperation of any of the visitors, without
+impropriety.  So, after much deliberation, she wrote a careful note,
+of which the following is an exact copy.  Her hand was bold, almost
+masculine, a curious contrast to that of Euthymia, which was
+delicately feminine.
+
+
+PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-.
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,--You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the
+meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure
+of seeing you at any of them.  We have supposed that we might be
+indebted to you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to
+with much interest.  As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be
+inquisitive respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any
+papers kindly sent us by the temporary residents of our village will
+be welcome, and if adapted to the wants of our Association will be
+read at one of its meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps
+both read and printed.  May we not hope for your presence at the
+meeting, which is to take place next Wednesday evening?
+Respectfully yours,
+
+LURIDA VINCENT,
+Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
+
+
+To this note the Secretary received the following reply:
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT,
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 4, 18-.
+
+Secretary of the Pansophian Society:
+
+DEAR MISS VINCENT,--I have received the ticket you refer to, and
+desire to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention.  I
+regret that I have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend
+the meetings of the Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which
+I feel an inclination to write, it will give me pleasure to send a
+paper, to be disposed of as the Society may see fit.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
+
+
+"He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the
+other evening," the Secretary said to herself.  " No matter,--he
+wrote it,--there is no mistaking his handwriting.  We know something
+about him, now, at any rate.  But why doesn't he come to our
+meetings?  What has his antipathy to do with his staying away?  I
+must find out what his secret is, and I will.  I don't believe it's
+harder than it was to solve that prize problem which puzzled so many
+teachers, or than beating Crakowitz, the great chess-player."
+
+To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties
+which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those
+who knew her in her school-days.  It was a very delicate piece of
+business; for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate,
+and believed she was entitled to do almost everything that men dared
+to, she knew very well there were certain limits which a young woman
+like herself must not pass.
+
+In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student
+at the University,--the same whom he had rescued from his dangerous
+predicament in the lake.  With him had called one of the teachers,--
+an instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy.  Maurice and
+the instructor exchanged a few words in Italian.  The young man spoke
+it with the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.
+
+After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about
+him,--who he was, how long he had been in the village, whether
+anything was known of his history,--all these inquiries with an
+eagerness which implied some special and peculiar reason for the
+interest they evinced.
+
+"I feel satisfied," the instructor said, "that I have met that young
+man in my own country.  It was a number of years ago, and of course
+he has altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about
+him of--what shall I call it?---apprehension,--as if he were fearing
+the approach of something or somebody.  I think it is the way a man
+would look that was haunted; you know what I mean,--followed by a
+spirit or ghost.  He does not suggest the idea of a murderer,--very
+far from it; but if he did, I should think he was every minute in
+fear of seeing the murdered man's spirit."
+
+The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor
+could recall.  He had seen him in Rome, he thought, at the Fountain
+of Trevi, where so many strangers go before leaving the city.  The
+youth was in the company of a man who looked like a priest.  He could
+not mistake the peculiar expression of his countenance, but that was
+all he now remembered about his appearance.  His attention had been
+called to this young man by seeing that some of the bystanders were
+pointing at him, and noticing that they were whispering with each
+other as if with reference to him.  He should say that the youth was
+at that time fifteen or sixteen years old, and the time was about ten
+years ago.
+
+After all, this evidence was of little or no value.  Suppose the
+youth were Maurice; what then?  We know that he had been in Italy,
+and had been there a good while,--or at least we infer so much from
+his familiarity with the language, and are confirmed in the belief by
+his having an Italian servant, whom he probably brought from Italy
+when he returned.  If he wrote the paper which was read the other
+evening, that settles it, for the writer says he had lived by the
+Tiber.  We must put this scrap of evidence furnished by the Professor
+with the other scraps; it may turn out of some consequence, sooner or
+later.  It is like a piece of a dissected map; it means almost
+nothing by itself, but when we find the pieces it joins with we may
+discover a very important meaning in it.
+
+In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and
+immediately around Arrowhead Village, every day must have its local
+gossip as well as its general news.  The newspaper tells the small
+community what is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues
+of male and female, especially the latter, fill in with the
+occurrences and comments of the ever-stirring microcosm.  The fact
+that the Italian , teacher had, or thought he had, seen Maurice ten
+years before was circulated and made the most of,--turned over and
+over like a cake, until it was thoroughly done on both sides and all
+through.  It was a very small cake, but better than nothing.  Miss
+Vincent heard this story, as others did, and talked about it with her
+friend, Miss Tower.  Here was one more fact to help along.
+
+The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna
+Institute remained, as they had always been, intimate friends.  They
+were the natural complements of each other.  Euthymia represented a
+complete, symmetrical womanhood.  Her outward presence was only an
+index of a large, wholesome, affluent life.  She could not help being
+courageous, with such a firm organization.  She could not help being
+generous, cheerful, active.  She had been told often enough that she
+was fair to look upon.  She knew that she was called The Wonder by
+the schoolmates who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but
+she did not overvalue them.  She rather tended to depreciate her own
+gifts, in comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent.
+The two agreed all the better for differing as they did.  The octave
+makes a perfect chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the
+ear.  Each admired the other with a heartiness which if they had been
+less unlike, would have been impossible.
+
+It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other.
+The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her
+friend.  All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her
+bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought.  She
+would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had
+any message for her.  Her teachers had compared her way of reading to
+the taking of an instantaneous photograph.  When she took up the
+first book on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him
+that if she only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind
+drank its meaning up, as a moist sponge absorbs water.  "What can I
+do with such a creature as this?" he said to himself.  " There is
+only one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm:
+give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own cocoon.  Give her
+the books, and she will spin her own web of knowledge."
+
+"Do you really think of studying medicine?" said Dr. Butts to her.
+
+"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to
+know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we
+are all tangled in.  I know something about it, but not enough.  I
+find some very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I
+want to be able to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to
+their whims and fancies.  Besides, I want to know everything."
+
+"They tell me you do, already," said Dr. Butts.
+
+"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!"
+exclaimed The Terror.
+
+The doctor smiled.  He knew what it meant.  She had reached that
+stage of education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its
+illimitable expanse before the eyes of the student.  We never know
+the extent of darkness until it is partially illuminated.
+
+"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the
+most ignorant young lady that ever graduated there," said the doctor.
+"They tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record
+since the school was founded."
+
+"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small
+aquarium, to be sure!" answered The Terror.  "He was six inches long,
+the monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with!
+What did you hand me that schoolbook for?  Did you think I did n't
+know anything about the human body?"
+
+"You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try
+you with an easy book, by way of introduction."
+
+The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.
+
+"I meant what I said, and I mean what I say.  When I talk about my
+ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor.  I don't
+measure myself with my teachers, either.  You must talk to me as if I
+were a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything.  Where is
+your hat, doctor?  Let me try it on."
+
+The doctor handed her his wide-awake.  The Terror's hair was not
+naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather
+short.  Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard.  She
+tried to put the hat on.
+
+"Do you see that?" she said.  "I could n't wear it--it would squeeze
+my eyes out of my head.  The books told me that women's brains were
+smaller than men's: "perhaps they are,--most of them,--I never
+measured a great many.  But when they try to settle what women are
+good for, by phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my
+head.  I don't believe in their nonsense, for all that.  You might as
+well tell me that if one horse weighs more than another horse he is
+worth more,--a cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred
+pounds better than Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand.  Give
+me a list of the best books you can think of, and turn me loose in
+your library.  I can find what I want, if you have it; and what I
+don't find there I will get at the Public Library.  I shall want to
+ask you a question now and then."
+
+The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully,
+as if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her
+slight constitutional resource.
+
+She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her
+statements about herself.
+
+"I am not a fool, if I am ignorant.  Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide
+sea of ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows
+and some of its depths.  Your profession deals with the facts of life
+that interest me most just now, and I want to know something of it.
+Perhaps I may find it a calling such as would suit me."
+
+"Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?" said
+the doctor.
+
+"Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to
+know something more about it first.  Perhaps I sha'n't believe in
+medicine enough to practise it.  Perhaps I sha'n't like it well
+enough.  No matter about that.  I wish to study some of your best
+books on some of the subjects that most interest me.  I know about
+bones and muscles and all that, and about digestion and respiration
+and such things.  I want to study up the nervous system, and learn
+all about it.  I am of the nervous temperament myself, and perhaps
+that is the reason.  I want to read about insanity and all that
+relates to it."
+
+A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The
+Terror said this.
+
+"Nervous system.  Insanity.  She has headaches, I know,--all those
+large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what
+has set her off about insanity and the nervous system?  I wonder if
+any of her more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder.
+Bright people very often have crazy relations.  Perhaps some of her
+friends are in that way.  I wonder whether"--the doctor did not speak
+any of these thoughts, and in fact hardly shaped his "whether," for
+The Terror interrupted his train of reflection, or rather struck into
+it in a way which startled him.
+
+"Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?" she asked,
+looking at its empty place on the shelf.
+
+"On my table," the doctor answered.  "I have been consulting it."
+
+Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly
+until she came to the one she wanted.  The doctor cast his eye on the
+beading of the page, and saw the large letters A N T.
+
+"I thought so," he said to himself.  "We shall know everything there
+is in the books about antipathies now, if we never did before.  She
+has a special object in studying the nervous system, just as I
+suspected.  I think she does not care to mention it at this time; but
+if she finds out anything of interest she will tell me, if she does
+anybody.  Perhaps she does not mean to tell anybody.  It is a rather
+delicate business,--a young girl studying the natural history of a
+young man.  Not quite so safe as botany or palaeontology!
+
+Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and
+chose to keep them to herself, for the present, at least.  Her hands
+were full enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of
+the great Arrowhead Village enigma.  But she was in the most perfect
+training, so far as her intelligence was concerned; and the summer
+rest had restored her bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an
+overcharged battery which will find conductors somewhere to carry off
+its crowded energy.
+
+At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful
+season it had ever known.  The Pansophian Society flourished to an
+extraordinary degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary.
+The rector was a good figure-head as President, but the Secretary was
+the life of the Society.  Communications came in abundantly: some
+from the village and its neighborhood, some from the University and
+the Institute, some from distant and unknown sources.  The new
+Secretary was very busy with the work of examining these papers.
+After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her room looked like a
+barn floor after a husking-match.  A glance at the manuscripts
+strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any young
+writer away from the thought of authorship as a business.  If the
+candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection
+and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately.  A paper
+of twenty pages would come in, with an underscored request to please
+read through, carefully.  That request alone is commonly sufficient
+to condemn any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing;
+but the Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of
+martial law in dealing with manuscripts.  The looker-on might have
+seen her take up the paper, cast one flashing glance at its title,
+read the first sentence and the last, dip at a venture into two or
+three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning calculator would
+add up a column of figures what was to be its destination.  If
+rejected, it went into the heap on the left; if approved, it was laid
+apart, to be submitted to the Committee for their judgment.  The
+foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their manuscript
+poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to their
+prospects.  It provokes the reader, to begin with.  The reading of
+manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless
+manuscript--and most of that which one is requested to read through
+is worthless--would add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any infernal
+deity were ingenious enough to suggest it as a punishment.
+
+If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the
+Committee, but was returned to the author, if he sent for it, which
+he commonly did.  Its natural course was to try for admission into
+some one of the popular magazines: into " The Sifter," the most
+fastidious of them all; if that declined it, into "The Second Best;"
+and if that returned it, into "The Omnivorous."  If it was refused
+admittance at the doors of all the magazines, it might at length find
+shelter in the corner of a newspaper, where a good deal of very
+readable verse is to be met with nowadays, some of which has been, no
+doubt, presented to the Pansophian Society, but was not considered up
+to its standard.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+There was a recent accession to the transient population of the
+village which gave rise to some speculation.  The new-comer was a
+young fellow, rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much
+at home as if he owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it.  He
+commonly had a cigar in his mouth, carried a pocket pistol, of the
+non-explosive sort, and a stick with a bulldog's bead for its knob;
+wore a soft bat, a coarse check suit, a little baggy, and gaiterboots
+which had been half-soled,--a Bohemian-looking personage, altogether.
+
+This individual began making explorations in every direction.  He was
+very curious about the place and all the people in it.  He was
+especially interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he
+made all sorts of inquiries.  This led him to form a summer
+acquaintance with the Secretary, who was pleased to give him whatever
+information he asked for; being proud of the Society, as she had a
+right to be, and knowing more about it than anybody else.
+
+The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing
+something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the stories, true and false,
+connected with his name.  He questioned everybody who could tell him
+anything about Maurice, and set down the answers in a little note-
+book he always had with him.
+
+All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this
+new visitor.  Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an
+attribute thought to belong more especially to her sex, became
+somewhat interested to know more exactly who this inquiring, note-
+taking personage, who seemed to be everywhere and to know everybody,
+might himself be.  Meeting him at the Public Library at a fortunate
+moment, when there was nobody but the old Librarian, who was hard of
+hearing, to interfere with their conversation, the little Secretary
+had a chance to try to find out something about him.
+
+"This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess,"
+he remarked to Miss Lurida.
+
+"It is, indeed," she said.  "Have you found it well furnished with
+the books you most want?"
+
+"Oh, yes,--books enough.  I don't care so much for the books as I do
+for the Newspapers.  I like a Review well enough,--it tells you all
+there is in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper
+saves a fellow the trouble of reading it."
+
+"You find the papers you want, here, I hope," said the young lady.
+
+"Oh, I get along pretty well.  It's my off-time, and I don't do much
+reading or writing.  Who is the city correspondent of this place?"
+
+"I don't think we have any one who writes regularly.  Now and then,
+there is a letter, with the gossip of the place in it, or an account
+of some of the doings at our Society.  The city papers are always
+glad to get the reports of our meetings, and to know what is going on
+in the village."
+
+"I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the
+Secretary."
+
+This was a point-blank shot.  She meant to question the young man
+about his business, and here she was on the witness-stand.  She
+ducked her head, and let the question go over her.
+
+"Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write,--
+especially to give an account of their own papers.  I think they like
+to have me put in the applause, when they get any.  I do that
+sometimes."  (How much more, she did not say.)
+
+"I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they
+tell me of the Secretary, I should have thought she might have
+written herself."
+
+He looked her straight in the eyes.
+
+"I have transmitted some good papers," she said, without winking, or
+swallowing, or changing color, precious little color she had to
+change; her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and
+more too.  "You spoke of Newspapers," she said, without any change of
+tone or manner: "do you not frequently write for them yourself?"
+
+"I should think I did," answered the young man.  "I am a regular
+correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+"The regular correspondent from where?"
+
+"Where!  Oh, anywhere,--the place does not make much difference.  I
+have been writing chiefly from Naples and St. Petersburg, and now and
+then from Constantinople."
+
+"How long since your return to this country, may I ask?"
+
+"My return?  I have never been out of this country.  I travel with a
+gazetteer and some guide-books.  It is the cheapest way, and you can
+get the facts much better from them than by trusting your own
+observation.  I have made the tour of Europe by the help of them and
+the newspapers.  But of late I have taken to interviewing.  I find
+that a very pleasant specialty.  It is about as good sport as trout-
+tickling, and much the same kind of business.  I should like to send
+the Society an account of one of my interviews.  Don't you think they
+would like to hear it?"
+
+"I have no doubt they would.  Send it to me, and I will look it over;
+and if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting.
+You know everything has to be examined and voted on by the
+Committee," said the cautious Secretary.
+
+"Very well,--I will risk it.  After it is read, if it is read, please
+send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The
+Second Best,' or some of the paying magazines."
+
+This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the
+Pansophian Society.
+
+
+"I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached,
+'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to
+a certain well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could
+concerning him and all that related to him.  I have interviewed a
+good many politicians, who I thought rather liked the process; but I
+had never tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite
+sure how this one would feel about it.  I said as much to the chief,
+but he pooh-poohed my scruples.  'It is n't our business whether they
+like it or not,' said he; 'the public wants it, and what the public
+wants it's bound to have, and we are bound to furnish it.  Don't be
+afraid of your man; he 's used to it,--he's been pumped often enough
+to take it easy, and what you've got to do is to pump him dry.  You
+need n't be modest,--ask him what you like; he is n't bound to
+answer, you know.'
+
+As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up
+a little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine
+on my best high-lows.  I said to myself, as I was walking towards the
+house where he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and
+pass for a visitor from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers'
+who call in to pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home
+and say that they have met the distinguished So and So, which gives
+them a certain distinction in the village circle to which they
+belong.
+
+"My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
+reception-room.  I observed that he managed to get the light full on
+my face, while his own was in the shade.  I had meant to have his
+face in the light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged
+things so as to give him that advantage.  It was like two frigates
+manoeuvring,--each trying to get to windward of the other.  I never
+take out my note-book until I and my man have got engaged in artless
+and earnest conversation,--always about himself and his works, of
+course, if he is an author.
+
+"I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers.  Those
+who had read his books were naturally curious to see the writer of
+them.
+
+"He assented, emphatically, to this statement.  He had, he said, a
+great many callers.
+
+"I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his
+readers feel as if they knew him personally, and caused them to
+cherish a certain attachment to him.
+
+"He smiled, as if pleased.  He was himself disposed to think so, he
+said.  In fact, a great many persons, strangers writing to him, had
+told him so.
+
+"My dear sir, I said, there is nothing wonderful in the fact you
+mention.  You reach a responsive chord in many human breasts.
+
+     'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.'
+
+Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled),
+were your blood relation.  Do they not name their children after you
+very frequently?
+
+"He blushed perceptibly.  'Sometimes,' he answered.  'I hope they
+will all turn out well.'
+
+"I am afraid I am taking up too much of your time, I said.
+
+"No, not at all,' he replied.  'Come up into my library; it is warmer
+and pleasanter there.'
+
+"I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an
+author's library, which is commonly his working-room, is, like a
+lady's boudoir, a sacred apartment.
+
+"So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my
+face, when I wanted it on has.
+
+"You have a fine library, I remarked.  There were books all round the
+room, and one of those whirligig square book-cases.  I saw in front a
+Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book,
+and other classical works and books of grave aspect.  I contrived to
+give it a turn, and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of
+Barnum's Rhyming Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations
+and cheap compends of knowledge.  Always twirl one of those revolving
+book-cases when you visit a scholar's library.  That is the way to
+find out what books he does n't want you to see, which of course are
+the ones you particularly wish to see.
+
+"Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive.  What do you
+suppose is an interviewer's business?  Did you ever see an oyster
+opened?  Yes?  Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing.
+His man is his oyster, which he, not with sword, but with pencil and
+note-book, must open.  Mark how the oysterman's thin blade insinuates
+itself,--how gently at first, how strenuously when once fairly
+between the shells!
+
+"And here, I said, you write your books,--those books which have
+carried your name to all parts of the world, and will convey it down
+to posterity!  Is this the desk at which you write?  And is this the
+pen you write with?
+
+"'It is the desk and the very pen,' he replied.
+
+"He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them.  I took
+up the pen as reverentially as if it had been made of the feather
+which the angel I used to read about in Young's "Night Thoughts"
+ought to have dropped, and did n't.
+
+"Would you kindly write your autograph in my note-book, with that
+pen?  I asked him.  Yes, he would, with great pleasure.
+
+"So I got out my note-book.
+
+"It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this
+interview.  I admire your bookcases, said I.  Can you tell me just
+how high they are?
+
+"'They are about eight feet, with the cornice.'
+
+"I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough,
+said I.  Eight feet,--eight feet, with the cornice.  I must put that
+down.
+
+"So I got out my pencil.
+
+"I sat there with my pencil and note-book in my hand, all ready, but
+not using them as yet.
+
+"I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a
+very early age.  Is it taking too great a liberty to ask how early
+you began to write in verse?
+
+"He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are
+themselves the subjects of conversation.
+
+"'Very early,--I hardly know how early.  I can say truly, as Louise
+Colet said,
+
+     'Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.'"
+
+"I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be
+kind enough to translate that line for me.
+
+"'Certainly.  With pleasure.  I made my first
+verses without knowing how to write them.'
+
+"How interesting!  But I never heard of Louise Colet.  Who was she?
+
+"My man was pleased to gi-ve me a piece of literary information.
+
+"'Louise the lioness!  Never heard of her?  You have heard of
+Alphonse Karr?'
+
+"Why,--yes,--more or less.  To tell the truth, I am not very well up
+in French literature.  What had he to do with your lioness?
+
+"'A good deal.  He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a
+case-knife in her hand, intending to stick him with it.  By and by he
+came down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing
+her case-knife.  He took it from her, after getting a cut in his
+dressing-gown, put it in his pocket, and went on with his cigarette.
+He keeps it with an inscription :
+
+
+     Donne a Alphonse Karr
+     Par Madame Louise Colet....
+     Dans le dos.
+
+Lively little female!'
+
+"I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview
+the lively little female.  He was evidently tickled with the interest
+I appeared to take in the story he told me.  That made him feel
+amiably disposed toward me.
+
+"I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at
+everything about his family history and the small events of his
+boyhood.  Some of the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a
+good bold face on my most audacious questions, and so I wormed out a
+great deal that was new concerning my subject.  He had been written
+about considerably, and the public wouldn't have been satisfied
+without some new facts; and these I meant to have, and I got.  No
+matter about many of them now, but here are some questions and
+answers that may be thought worth reading or listening to:
+
+"How do you enjoy being what they call 'a celebrity,' or a celebrated
+man?
+
+"'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough.  But self-
+love is a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes
+all through it, and never fill it up.  It breeds an appetite for more
+of the same kind.  It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of
+egotism.  It generates a craving for high-seasoned personalities
+which is in danger of becoming slavery, like that following the abuse
+of alcohol, or opium, or tobacco.  Think of a man's having every day,
+by every post, letters that tell him he is this and that and the
+other, with epithets and endearments, one tenth part of which would
+have made him blush red hot before he began to be what you call a
+celebrity!'
+
+"Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is
+called celebrity?
+
+"'I should think so!  Suppose you were obliged every day of your life
+to stand and shake hands, as the President of the United States has
+to after his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel
+after a few months' practice of that exercise?  Suppose you had given
+you thirty-five millions of money a year, in hundred-dollar coupons,
+on condition that you cut them all off yourself in the usual manner:
+how do you think you should like the look of a pair of scissors at
+the end of a year, in which you had worked ten hours a day every day
+but Sunday, cutting off a hundred coupons an hour, and found you had
+not finished your task, after all?  Yon have addressed me as what you
+are pleased to call "a literary celebrity."  I won't dispute with you
+as to whether or not I deserve that title.  I will take it for
+granted I am what you call me, and give you some few hints on my
+experience.
+
+"'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for
+Self-Protection.  It meant well, and it was hoped that something
+would come of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I
+am sorry to say that it has not effected its purpose.'
+
+"I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of
+that Association.  Yes, I said, an admirable Association it was, and
+as much needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
+I am sorry to hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop
+to the abuse of a deserving class of men.  It ought to have done it;
+it was well conceived, and its public manifesto was a masterpiece.
+(I saw by his expression that he was its author.)
+
+"'I see I can trust you,' he said.  'I will unbosom myself freely of
+some of the grievances attaching to the position of the individual to
+whom you have applied the term "Literary Celebrity."
+
+"'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales
+of his books, all the money from which, it is taken for granted, goes
+into his pocket.  Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to
+him for his signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his
+name comes to him for assistance.
+
+"'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by
+receiving blank formulae, which, with their promises to pay, he is
+expected to fill up.
+
+"'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and
+give his opinion about each of them, which opinion, if it has a word
+which can be used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the
+newspapers.
+
+"'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he
+is called upon to examine and pronounce on their merits; these
+manuscripts having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to
+whom they have been sent, and having as a rule no literary value
+whatever.
+
+"'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to
+write for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make after-dinner
+speeches, to send money for objects he does not believe in to places
+he never heard of.
+
+"'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers,
+who begin by saying they have no claim upon his time, and then
+appropriate it by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and
+sheet after sheet, if of the other.
+
+"'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any
+moment and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be
+suggested to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-
+grandmother on her reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant
+aged six weeks, an ode for the Fourth of July in a Western township
+not to be found in Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for
+some bucolic lover who believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to
+win the object of his affections.'
+
+"Is n't it so?  I asked the Celebrity.
+
+"'I would bet on the prose lover.  She will show the verses to him,
+and they will both have a good laugh over them.'
+
+
+"I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the
+Literary Celebrity.  He was so much taken up with his pleasing self-
+contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and
+spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his
+linen on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to
+him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found
+himself exposed to the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the
+columns of The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who
+the person spoken of as the "Literary Celebrity" might be.  Among the
+various suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was
+neither more nor less than the unexplained personage known in the
+village as Maurice Kirkwood.  Why should that be his real name?  Why
+should not he be the Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to
+this retreat to escape from the persecutions of kind friends, who
+were pricking him and stabbing him nigh to death with their daggers
+of sugar candy?
+
+The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the
+Interviewer the next time she met him at the Library, which happened
+soon after the meeting when his paper was read.
+
+"I do not know," she said, in the course of a conversation in which
+she had spoken warmly of his contribution to the literary
+entertainment of the Society, "that you mentioned the name of the
+Literary Celebrity whom you interviewed so successfully."
+
+"I did not mention him, Miss Vincent," he answered, "nor do I think
+it worth while to name him.  He might not care to have the whole
+story told of how he was handled so as to make him communicative.
+Besides, if I did, it would bring him a new batch of sympathetic
+letters, regretting that he was bothered by those horrid
+correspondents, full of indignation at the bores who presumed to
+intrude upon him with their pages of trash, all the writers of which
+would expect answers to their letters of condolence."
+
+The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman
+who called himself Maurice Kirkwood.
+
+"What," he answered, "the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides
+all the wild horses of the neighborhood?  No, I don't know him, but I
+have met him once or twice, out walking.  A mighty shy fellow, they
+tell me.  Do you know anything particular about him?"
+
+"Not much.  None of us do, but we should like to.  The story is that
+be has a queer antipathy to something or to somebody, nobody knows
+what or whom."
+
+"To newspaper correspondents, perhaps," said the interviewer.  "What
+made you ask me about him?  You did n't think he was my 'Literary
+Celebrity,' did you?"
+
+"I did not know.  I thought he might be.  Why don't you interview
+this mysterious personage?  He would make a good sensation for your
+paper, I should think."
+
+"Why, what is there to be interviewed in him?  Is there any story of
+crime, or anything else to spice a column or so, or even a few
+paragraphs, with?  If there is, I am willing to handle him
+professionally."
+
+"I told you he has what they call an antipathy.  I don't know how
+much wiser you are for that piece of information."
+
+"An antipathy!  Why, so have I an antipathy.  I hate a spider, and as
+for a naked caterpillar,--I believe I should go into a fit if I had
+to touch one.  I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great
+green caterpillars that come down from the elm-trees in August and
+early autumn."
+
+"Afraid of them?" asked the young lady.
+
+"Afraid?  What should I be afraid of?  They can't bite or sting.  I
+can't give any reason.  All I know is that when I come across one of
+these creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,--
+sometimes using very improper words.  The fact is, they make me crazy
+for the moment."
+
+"I understand what you mean," said Miss Vincent.  "I used to have the
+same feeling about spiders, but I was ashamed of it, and kept a
+little menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that
+is, pretty much got over it, for I don't love the creatures very
+dearly, though I don't scream when I see one."
+
+"What did you tell me, Miss Vincent, was this fellow's particular
+antipathy?"
+
+That is just the question.  I told you that we don't know and we
+can't guess what it is.  The people here are tired out with trying to
+discover some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way
+of everybody, as he does.  They say he is odd or crazy, and they
+don't seem to be able to tell which.  It would make the old ladies of
+the village sleep a great deal sounder,--yes, and some of the young
+ladies, too,--if they could find out what this Mr. Kirkwood has got
+into his head, that he never comes near any of the people here."
+
+"I think I can find out," said the Interviewer, whose professional
+ambition was beginning to be excited.  "I never came across anybody
+yet that I could n't get something out of.  I am going to stay here a
+week or two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is
+any, of this Mr. Maurice Kirkwood."
+
+We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present
+us with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or
+failure.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
+
+When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as
+she pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a
+strain she was putting upon it.  She did know that she was doing her
+best, but how great the force of her best was she was not aware until
+she saw its effects.  Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature,
+in all its manifestations.  She did not pride herself on her
+knowledge, nor reproach herself for her ignorance.  In every way she
+formed a striking contrast to her friend, Miss Vincent.  Every word
+they spoke betrayed the difference between them: the sharp tones of
+Lurida's head-voice, penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating,
+revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the
+quiet, conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature
+restful and sympathetic.
+
+The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which
+will one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies.  The
+dependence of two young friends may be mutual, but one will always
+lean more heavily than the other; the masculine and feminine elements
+will be as sure to assert themselves as if the friends were of
+different sexes.
+
+On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her
+superior.  She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge,
+and deferred to her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an
+oracle, but as wiser than herself or any of her other companions.  It
+was a different thing, however, when the graver questions of life
+came up.  Lurida was full of suggestions, plans, projects, which were
+too liable to run into whims before she knew where they were tending.
+She would lay out her ideas before Euthymia so fluently and
+eloquently that she could not help believing them herself, and
+feeling as if her friend must accept them with an enthusiasm like her
+own.  Then Euthymia would take them up with her sweet, deliberate
+accents, and bring her calmer judgment to bear on them.
+
+Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new
+interests and occupations.  She was constantly on the lookout for
+papers to be read at the meetings of her Society,--for she made it
+her own in great measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,--and in the
+mean time she was reading in various books which Dr. Butts selected
+for her, all bearing on the profession to which, at least as a
+possibility, she was looking forward.  Privately and in a very still
+way, she was occupying herself with the problem of the young
+stranger, the subject of some delusion, or disease, or obliquity of
+unknown nature, to which the vague name of antipathy had been
+attached.  Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in the fear that
+over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and partly from
+anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her desire
+to get at the truth of a very puzzling question.
+
+"How do you like the books I see you reading?" said Euthymia to
+Lurida, one day, as they met at the Library.
+
+"Better than all the novels I ever read," she answered.  "I have been
+reading about the nervous system, and it seems to me I have come
+nearer the springs of life than ever before in all my studies.  I
+feel just as if I were a telegraph operator.  I was sure that I had a
+battery in my head, for I know my brain works like one; but I did not
+know how many centres of energy there are, and how they are played
+upon by all sorts of influences, external and internal.  Do you know,
+I believe I could solve the riddle of the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,'
+as the paper called him, if he would only stay here long enough?"
+
+"What paper has had anything about it, Lurida?  I have not seen or
+heard of its being mentioned in any of the papers."
+
+"You know that rather queer-looking young man who has been about here
+for some time,--the same one who gave the account of his interview
+with a celebrated author?  Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper
+in which he writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household
+Inquisitor.' He talks about this village in a very free and easy way.
+He says there is a Sphinx here, who has mystified us all."
+
+"And you have been chatting with that fellow!  Don't you know that
+he'll have you and all of us in his paper?  Don't you know that
+nothing is safe where one of those fellows gets in with his note-book
+and pencil?  Oh, Lurida, Lurida, do be careful!"  What with this
+mysterious young man and this very questionable newspaper-paragraph
+writer, you will be talked about, if you don't mind, before you know
+it.  You had better let the riddle of the Sphinx alone.  If you must
+deal with such dangerous people, the safest way is to set one of them
+to find out the other. --I wonder if we can't get this new man to
+interview the visitor you have so much curiosity about.  That might
+be managed easily enough without your having anything to do with it.
+Let me alone, and I will arrange it.  But mind, now, you must not
+meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and get your name in
+the 'Household Inquisitor' in a way you won't like."
+
+"Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia.  I don't mean to give him a
+chance to work me into his paper, if I can help it.  But if you can
+get him to try his skill upon this interesting personage and his
+antipathy, so much the better.  I am very curious about it, and
+therefore about him.  I want to know what has produced this strange
+state of feeling in a young man who ought to have all the common
+instincts of a social being.  I believe there are unexplained facts
+in the region of sympathies and antipathies which will repay study
+with a deeper insight into the mysteries of life than we have dreamed
+of hitherto.  I often wonder whether there are not heart-waves and
+soul-waves as well as 'brain-waves,' which some have already
+recognized."
+
+Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman
+talking the language of science like an adept.  The truth is, Lurida
+was one of those persons who never are young, and who, by way of
+compensation, will never be old.  They are found in both sexes.  Two
+well-known graduates of one of our great universities are living
+examples of this precocious but enduring intellectual development.
+If the readers of this narrative cannot pick them out, they need not
+expect the writer of it to help them.  If they guess rightly who they
+are, they will recognize the fact that just such exceptional
+individuals as the young woman we are dealing with are met with from
+time to time in families where intelligence has been cumulative for
+two or three generations.
+
+Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable
+visitor should learn all that was known in the village about the
+nebulous individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the
+village were trying to penetrate, but that he should learn it from
+some other informant than Lurida.
+
+The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside
+his door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and
+handsome youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so
+strikingly that one might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a
+seat by his side.  Presently the two were engaged in conversation.
+The Interviewer asked all sorts of questions about everybody in the
+village.  When he came to inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a
+remarkable interest regarding him.  The greatest curiosity, he said,
+existed with reference to this personage.  Everybody was trying to
+find out what his story was,--for a story, and a strange one, he must
+surely have,--and nobody had succeeded.
+
+The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive.  The young man told
+him the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis,
+about his horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat
+was overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help
+out the effect of his narrative.
+
+The Interviewer was becoming excited.  "Can't find out anything about
+him, you said, did n-'t you?  How do you know there's anything to
+find?  Do you want to know what I think he is?  I'll tell you.  I
+think he is an actor,--a fellow from one of the city theatres.  Those
+fellows go off in their summer vacation, and like to puzzle the
+country folks.  They are the very same chaps, like as not, the
+visitors have seen in plays at the city theatres; but of course they
+don't know 'em in plain clothes.  Kings and Emperors look pretty
+shabby off the stage sometimes, I can tell you."
+
+The young man followed the Interviewer's lead.  "I shouldn't wonder
+if you were right," he said.  "I remember seeing a young fellow in
+Romeo that looked a good deal like this one.  But I never met the
+Sphinx, as they call him, face to face.  He is as shy as a woodchuck.
+I believe there are people here that would give a hundred dollars to
+find out who he is, and where he came from, and what he is here for,
+and why he does n't act like other folks.  I wonder why some of those
+newspaper men don't come up here and get hold of this story.  It
+would be just the thing for a sensational writer."
+
+To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest.
+Always on the lookout for something to make up a paragraph or a
+column about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,--to
+the biggest pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live
+frog from the human stomach story, the third set of teeth and reading
+without spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous
+commonplaces which are kept in type with e o y  or  e 6 m (every
+other year or every six months) at the foot; always in want of a
+fresh incident, a new story, an undescribed character, an unexplained
+mystery, it is no wonder that the Interviewer fastened eagerly upon
+this most tempting subject for an inventive and emotional
+correspondent.
+
+He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's
+confidential servant, but had never spoken to him.  So he said to
+himself that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with.  In
+the summer season many kinds of small traffic were always carried on
+in Arrowhead Village.  Among the rest, the sellers of fruits--
+oranges, bananas, and others, according to the seasons--did an active
+business.  The Interviewer watched one of these fruit-sellers, and
+saw that his hand-cart stopped opposite the house where, as he knew,
+Maurice Kirkwood was living.  Presently Paolo came out of the door,
+and began examining the contents of the hand-cart.  The Interviewer
+saw his opportunity.  Here was an introduction to the man, and the
+man must introduce him to the master.
+
+He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,--there was
+no difficulty about that.  He had learned his name, and that he was
+an Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Paul," he said.  "How do you like the look of
+these oranges?"
+
+"They pretty fair," said Paolo: "no so good as them las' week; no
+sweet as them was."
+
+"Why, how do you know without tasting them?" said the Interviewer.
+
+"I know by his look,--I know by his smell,--he no good yaller,--he no
+smell ripe,--I know orange ever since my head no bigger than he is,"
+and Paolo laughed at his own comparison.
+
+The Interviewer laughed louder than Paolo.
+
+"Good!" said he,--"first-rate!  Of course you know all about 'em.
+Why can't you pick me out a couple of what you think are the best of
+'em?  I shall be greatly obliged to you.  I have a sick friend, and I
+want to get two nice sweet ones for him."
+
+Paolo was pleased.  His skill and judgment were recognized.  He felt
+grateful to the stranger, who had given him, an opportunity of
+conferring a favor.  He selected two, after careful examination and
+grave deliberation.  The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to
+offer him an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.
+
+"How is Mr. Kirkwood, to-day?" he asked.
+
+"Signor?  He very well.  He always well.  Why you ask?  Anybody tell
+you he sick?"
+
+"No, nobody said he was sick.  I have n't seen him going about for a
+day or two, and I thought be might have something the matter with
+him.  Is he in the house now?"
+
+"No: he off riding.  He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day.
+Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle in the morning, very, very
+early,--in night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and
+read, and study, and write,--he great scholar, Misser Kirkwood."
+
+"A good many books, has n't he?"
+
+"He got whole shelfs full of books.  Great books, little books, old
+books, new books, all sorts of books.  He great scholar, I tell you."
+
+"Has n't he some curiosities,--old figures, old jewelry, old coins,
+or things of that sort?"
+
+Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously.
+"He don't keep no jewels nor no money in his chamber.  He got some
+old things,--old jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they
+used to have in old times: she don't pass now."  Paolo's genders were
+apt to be somewhat indiscriminately distributed.
+
+A lucky thought struck the Interviewer.  "I wonder if he would
+examine some old coins of mine?" said he, in a modestly tentative
+manner.
+
+"I think he like to see anything curious.  When he come home I ask
+him.  Who will I tell him wants to ask him about old coin?"
+
+"Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call
+and show him some old pieces of money, said to be Roman ones."
+
+The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old
+battered bits of copper which he had picked up at a tollman's, where
+they had been passed off for cents.  He had bought them as
+curiosities.  One had the name of Gallienus upon it, tolerably
+distinct,--a common little Roman penny; but it would serve his
+purpose of asking a question, as would two or three others with less
+legible legends.  Paolo told him that if he came the next morning he
+would stand a fair chance of seeing Mr. Kirkwood.  At any rate, he
+would speak to his master.
+
+The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing
+his breakfast and his cigar, feeling reasonably sure of finding Mr.
+Kirkwood at home, as he proved to be.  He had told Paolo to show the
+stranger up to his library,--or study, as he modestly called it.
+
+It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one
+direction, and the wooded hill in another.  The tenant had fitted it
+up in scholarly fashion.  The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous,
+many of them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding,
+showing that probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other
+Italian city.  With these were older volumes in their dark original
+leather, and recent ones in cloth or paper.  As the Interviewer ran
+his eye over them, he found that he could make very little out of
+what their backs taught him.  Some of the paper-covered books, some
+of the cloth-covered ones, had names which he knew; but those on the
+backs of many of the others were strange to his eyes.  The classics
+of Greek and Latin and Italian literature were there; and he saw
+enough to feel convinced that he had better not attempt to display
+his erudition in the company of this young scholar.
+
+The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his
+visiting a person who had not asked to make his acquaintance, and who
+was living as a recluse.  He took out his battered coppers, and
+showed them to Maurice.
+
+"I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a
+good many yourself.  So I took the liberty of calling upon you,
+hoping that you could tell me something about some ancient coins I
+have had for a good while."  So saying, he pointed to the copper with
+the name of Gallienus.
+
+"Is this very rare and valuable?  I have heard that great prices have
+been paid for some of these ancient coins,--ever so many guineas,
+sometimes.  I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old."
+
+"More than a thousand years old," said Maurice.
+
+"And worth a great deal of money?" asked the Interviewer.
+
+"No, not a great deal of money," answered Maurice.
+
+"How much, should you say?" said the Interviewer.
+
+Maurice smiled.  "A little more than the value of its weight in
+copper,--I am afraid not much more.  There are a good many of these
+coins of Gallienus knocking about.  The peddlers and the shopkeepers
+take such pieces occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or
+ten cents, to young collectors.  No, it is not very precious in money
+value, but as a relic any piece of money that was passed from hand to
+hand a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago is interesting.  The
+value of such relics is a good deal a matter of imagination."
+
+"And what do you say to these others?" asked the Interviewer.  Poor
+old worn-out things they were, with a letter or two only, and some
+faint trace of a figure on one or two of them.
+
+"Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the
+times when you may suppose they were current.  Perhaps Horace tossed
+one of them to a beggar.  Perhaps one of these was the coin that was
+brought when One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I
+may see it.'  But the market price is a different matter.  That
+depends on the beauty and preservation, and above all the rarity, of
+the specimen.  Here is a coin, now,"--he opened a small cabinet, and
+took one from it.  "Here is a Syracusan decadrachm with the head of
+Persephone, which is at once rare, well preserved, and beautiful.  I
+am afraid to tell what I paid for it."
+
+The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics.  He cared very
+little more for an old coin than he did for an old button, but he had
+thought his purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation.
+No matter about the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any
+rate, that Maurice must have money and could be extravagant, or what
+he himself considered so; also that he was familiar with ancient
+coins.  That would do for a beginning.
+
+"May I ask where you picked up the coin you are showing me?" he said
+
+"That is a question which provokes a negative answer.  One does not
+'pick up' first-class coins or paintings, very often, in these times.
+I bought this of a great dealer in Rome."
+
+"Lived in Rome once?" said the Interviewer.
+
+"For some years.  Perhaps you have been there yourself?"
+
+The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he
+should go there, one of these years.  "suppose you studied art and
+antiquities while you were there?" he continued.
+
+"Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and
+antiquities.  Before you go there I advise you to review Roman
+history and the classic authors.  You had better make a study of
+ancient and modern art, and not have everything to learn while you
+are going about among ruins, and churches, and galleries.  You know
+your Horace and Virgil well, I take it for granted?"
+
+The Interviewer hesitated.  The names sounded as if he had heard
+them.  "Not so well as I mean to before going to Rome," he answered.
+"May I ask how long you lived in Rome?"
+
+"Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it.  No one
+should go there without careful preparation beforehand.  You are
+familiar with Vasari, of course?"
+
+The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead.  He took out
+his handkerchief.  "It is a warm day," he said.  "I have not had time
+to read all--the works I mean to.  I have had too much writing to do,
+myself, to find all the time for reading and study I could have
+wished."
+
+"In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will
+pardon my inquiry?  said Maurice.
+
+"I am connected with the press.  I understood that you were a man of
+letters, and I hoped I might have the privilege of hearing from your
+own lips some account of your literary experiences."
+
+"Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it
+for my autobiography.  You said you were connected with the press.
+Do I understand that you are an author?"
+
+By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a
+very warm day.  He did not seem to be getting hold of his pitcher by
+the right handle, somehow.  But he could not help answering Maurice's
+very simple question.
+
+"If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author,
+I may call myself one.  I write for the "People's Perennial and
+Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+"Are you the literary critic of that well-known journal, or do you
+manage the political column?"
+
+"I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of
+interest."
+
+"Places you have been to, and people you have known?"
+
+"Well, yes,-generally, that is.  Sometimes I have to compile my
+articles."
+
+"Did you write the letter from Rome, published a few weeks ago?"
+
+The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place.  However, he
+had found that his man was too much for him, and saw that the best
+thing he could do was to submit to be interviewed himself.  He
+thought that he should be able to pick up something or other which he
+could work into his report of his visit.
+
+"Well, I--prepared that article for our columns.  You know one does
+not have to see everything he describes.  You found it accurate, I
+hope, in its descriptions?"
+
+"Yes, Murray is generally accurate.  Sometimes he makes mistakes, but
+I can't say how far you have copied them.  You got the Ponte Molle--
+the old Milvian bridge--a good deal too far down the stream, if I
+remember.  I happened to notice that, but I did not read the article
+carefully.  May I ask whether you propose to do me the honor of
+reporting this visit and the conversation we have had, for the
+columns of the newspaper with which you are connected?"
+
+The Interviewer thought he saw an opening.  "If you have no
+objections," he said, "I should like very much to ask a few
+questions."  He was recovering his professional audacity.
+
+"You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet,--
+after you have answered one or two of mine: Who commissioned you to
+submit me to examination?"
+
+"The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the
+humble agent of its investigations."
+
+"What has the public to do with my private affairs?"
+
+"I suppose it is a question of majority and minority.  That settles
+everything in this country.  You are a minority of one opposed to a
+large number of curious people that form a majority against you.
+That is the way I've heard the chief put it."
+
+Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the
+American citizen.  The Interviewer smiled, too, and thought he had
+his man, sure, at last.  Maurice calmly answered, "There is nothing
+left for minorities, then, but the right of rebellion.  I don't care
+about being made the subject of an article for your paper.  I am here
+for my pleasure, minding my own business, and content with that
+occupation.  I rebel against your system of forced publicity.
+Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public all it has any right to
+know about me.  In the mean time I shall request to be spared reading
+my biography while I am living.  I wish you a good-morning."
+
+The Interviewer had not taken out his note-book and pencil.  In his
+next communication from Arrowhead Village he contented himself with a
+brief mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now
+visiting the place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the
+privilege of examining, and whose courtesy was equalled only by the
+modesty that shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular
+intelligence would otherwise confer upon him.
+
+The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had
+failed to get the first hint of its solution.
+
+The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain
+idle.  The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the
+various cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the
+conversational circles which met every evening in the different
+centres of social life.  The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was
+that Maurice had a congenital aversion to some color, the effects of
+which upon him were so painful or disagreeable that he habitually
+avoided exposure to it.  It was known, and it has already been
+mentioned, that such cases were on record.  There had been a great
+deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact long known to a
+few individuals, but only recently made a matter of careful
+scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public.  This
+was the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness.  It did not
+seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not
+tell red from green there might be other curious individual
+peculiarities relating to color.  A case has already been referred to
+where the subject of observation fainted at the sight of any red
+object.  What if this were the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood?  It
+will be seen at once how such a congenital antipathy would tend to
+isolate the person who was its unfortunate victim.  It was an
+hypothesis not difficult to test, but it was a rather delicate
+business to be experimenting on an inoffensive stranger.  Miss
+Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to Euthymia, of
+any projects she might entertain.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
+
+The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
+Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading
+various works selected for her by Dr. Butts,--works chiefly relating
+to the nervous system and its different affections.  She thought it
+was about time to talk over the general subject of the medical
+profession with her new teacher,--if such a self-directing person as
+Lurida could be said to recognize anybody as teacher.
+
+She began at the beginning.  "What is the first book you would put in
+a student's hands, doctor?" she said to him one day.  They were in
+his study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on
+Insanity, one of Bucknill and Puke's, which she had devoured as if it
+had been a pamphlet.
+
+"Not that book, certainly," he said.  "I am afraid it will put all
+sorts of notions into your head.  Who or what set you to reading
+that, I should like to know?"
+
+"I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps
+be crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what
+kind of a condition insanity is.  I don't believe they were ever very
+bright, those insane people, most of them.  I hope I am not stupid
+enough ever to lose my wits."
+
+"There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that
+busy brain of yours.  But did n't it make you nervous, reading about
+so many people possessed with such strange notions?"
+
+"Nervous?  Not a bit.  I could n't help thinking, though, how many
+people I had known that had a little touch of craziness about them.
+Take that poor woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,--not Her
+Majesty, but Her Majesty's Person,--a very important distinction,
+according to her: how she does remind me of more than one girl I have
+known!  She would let her skirts down so as to make a kind of train,
+and pile things on her head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and
+throw her head back, and feel as grand as a queen.  I have seen more
+than one girl act very much in that way.  Are not most of us a little
+crazy, doctor,--just a little?  I think so.  It seems to me I never
+saw but one girl who was free from every hint of craziness."
+
+"And who was that, pray?"
+
+"Why, Euthymia,--nobody else, of course.  She never loses her head,--
+I don't believe she would in an earthquake.  Whenever we were at work
+with our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind
+was the only achromatic one I ever looked into,--I did n't say looked
+through.---But I did n't come to talk about that.  I read in one of
+your books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he
+should read, the great physician said, 'Read "Don Quixote."' I want
+you to explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the
+first book, according to your idea, that a student ought to read."
+
+"What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper
+to be read before the Society?  I think there may be other young
+ladies at the meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing
+the study of medicine.  At any rate, there are a good many who are
+interested in the subject; in fact, most people listen readily to
+anything doctors tell them about their calling."
+
+"I wish you would, doctor.  I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't
+doubt there will be others who will be glad to hear everything you
+have to say about it.  But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade
+Eutbymia to become a physician!  What a doctor she would make!  So
+strong, so calm, so full of wisdom!  I believe she could take the
+wheel of a steamboat in a storm, or the hose of a fire-engine in a
+conflagration, and handle it as well as the captain of the boat or of
+the fire-company."
+
+"Have you ever talked with her about studying medicine?"
+
+"Indeed I have.  Oh, if she would only begin with me!  What good
+times we would have studying together!"
+
+"I don't doubt it.  Medicine is a very pleasant study.  But how do
+you think practice would be?  How would you like being called up to
+ride ten miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging
+headaches was racking you?"
+
+"Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of
+storms or anything else.  If she would only study medicine with me!"
+
+"Well, what does she say to it?"
+
+"She does n't like the thought of it.  She does n't believe in women
+doctors.  She thinks that now and then a woman may be fitted for it
+by nature, but she does n't think there are many who are.  She gives
+me a good many reasons against their practising medicine, you know
+what most of them are, doctor,--and ends by saying that the same
+woman who would be a poor sort of doctor would make a first-rate
+nurse; and that, she thinks, is a woman's business, if her instinct
+carries her to the hospital or sick-chamber.  I can't argue her ideas
+out of her."
+
+"Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I
+am disposed to agree with your friend, that you will often spoil a
+good nurse to make a poor doctor.  Doctors and side-saddles don't
+seem to me to go together.  Riding habits would be awkward things for
+practitioners.  But come, we won't have a controversy just now.  I am
+for giving women every chance for a good education, and if they think
+medicine is one of their proper callings let them try it.  I think
+they will find that they had better at least limit themselves to
+certain specialties, and always have an expert of the other sex to
+fall back upon.  The trouble is that they are so impressible and
+imaginative that they are at the mercy of all sorts of fancy systems.
+You have only to see what kinds of instruction they very commonly
+flock to in order to guess whether they would be likely to prove
+sensible practitioners.  Charlatanism always hobbles on two crutches,
+the tattle of women, and the certificates of clergymen, and I am
+afraid that half the women doctors will be too much under both those
+influences."
+
+Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the
+village, had "carried her through" a fever, brought on by over-
+excitement and exhausting study.  She took no offence at his
+reference to nursery gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap.
+Nobody so despises the weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's
+rights.  She accepted the doctor's concession of a fair field and
+open trial of the fitness of her sex for medical practice, and did
+not trouble herself about his suggested limitations.  As to the
+imaginative tendencies of women, she knew too well the truth of the
+doctor's remark relating to them to wish to contradict it.
+
+"Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
+doctor," she said; and in due season it came, and was of course
+approved for reading.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
+
+"Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal
+souls is that which we feel for our mortal bodies.  I am afraid my
+very first statement may be open to criticism.  The care of the body
+is the first thought with a great many,--in fact, with the larger
+part of the world.  They send for the physician first, and not until
+he gives them up do they commonly call in the clergyman.  Even the
+minister himself is not so very different from other people.  We must
+not blame him if he is not always impatient to exchange a world of
+multiplied interests and ever-changing sources of excitement for that
+which tradition has delivered to us as one eminently deficient in the
+stimulus of variety.  Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn
+and disfigured by long years of service, hang about our consciousness
+like old garments.  They are used to us, and we are used to them.
+And all the accidents of our lives,--the house we dwell in, the
+living people round us, the landscape we look over, all, up to the
+sky that covers us like a bell glass,--all these are but looser
+outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and
+we do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which we
+have never yet tried on.  How well I remember that dear ancient lady,
+who lived well into the last decade of her century, as she repeated
+the verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select from that
+string of pearls, Gray's 'Elegy'!
+
+    'For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
+     This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
+     Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+     Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?'
+
+Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told.  Better so, it may be,
+than to live solely for it, as so many do.  But it may be well
+doubted if there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society.  On the
+contrary, there are many who think a great deal of their bodies, many
+who have come here to regain the health they have lost in the wear
+and tear of city life, and very few who have not at some time or
+other of their lives had occasion to call in the services of a
+physician.
+
+"There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members
+some remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical
+practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.
+
+"A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical
+studies, happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the
+greatest and most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas
+Sydenham.  The story is that, when a student asked him what books he
+should read, the great doctor told him to read 'Don Quixote.'
+
+"This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study
+of books, and furnishes a convenient shield for ignorant pretenders.
+But Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical
+experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not
+thought they would be better reading for the medical student than the
+story of Cervantes.  His own works are esteemed to this day, and he
+certainly could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom
+of all the past.  No remedy is good, it was said of old, unless
+applied at the right time in the right way.  So we may say of all
+anecdotes, like this which I have told you about Sydenham and the
+young man.  It is very likely that he carried him to the bedside of
+some patients, and talked to him about the cases he showed him,
+instead of putting a Latin volume in his hand.  I would as soon begin
+in that way as any other, with a student who had already mastered the
+preliminary branches,--who knew enough about the structure and
+functions of the body in health.
+
+"But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical
+student of a philosophical habit of mind, you may be surprised to
+hear me say it would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.'  They are the
+ones where the astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management
+of the elements, the control of which, as he had persuaded himself,
+had been committed to him.  Let me read you a few sentences from this
+story, which is commonly bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like
+a woollen lining to a silken mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in
+processions of paragraphs which sound as if they ought to have a
+grammatical drum-major to march before their tramping platoons.
+
+"The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to
+him the secret of his wonderful powers:--
+
+"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.  I have
+possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
+distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and
+passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call,
+have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command;
+I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervors
+of the crab.  The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have
+hitherto eluded my authority, and multitudes have perished by
+equinoctial tempests, which I found myself unable to prohibit or
+restrain.'
+
+"The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere,
+devoted, and most benevolent man, for forty years a student of the
+heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these
+miraculous powers.  This is his account:
+
+"'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt
+in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern
+mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation.  In the hurry of my
+imagination I commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my
+command with that of the inundation I found that the clouds had
+listened to my lips.'
+
+"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence?
+The Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
+
+"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, I that such objections
+could escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and
+labored against truth with the utmost obstinacy.  I sometimes
+suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this
+secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful
+from the impossible and the incredible from the false.'
+
+"The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom
+he has adopted as his successor in the government of the elements and
+the seasons, in these impressive words:
+
+"Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
+innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
+thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons.  The
+memory of mischief is no desirable fame.  Much less will it become
+thee to let kindness or interest prevail.  Never rob other countries
+of rain to pour it on thine own.  For us the Nile is sufficient.'
+
+"Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in
+which the delusions of an insane astronomer are related with all the
+pomp of the Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young
+person about to enter on the study of the science and art of healing?
+Listen to me while I show you the parallel of the story of the
+astronomer in the history of medicine.
+
+"This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with
+benevolence, but all its wisdom and all its virtue have had to
+struggle with the ever-rising mists of delusion.  The agencies which
+waste and destroy the race of mankind are vast and resistless as the
+elemental forces of nature; nay, they are themselves elemental
+forces.  They may be to some extent avoided, to some extent diverted
+from their aim, to some extent resisted.  So may the changes of the
+seasons, from cold that freezes to heats that strike with sudden
+death, be guarded against.  So may the tides be in some small measure
+restrained in their inroads.  So may the storms be breasted by walls
+they cannot shake from their foundations.  But the seasons and the
+tides and the tempests work their will on the great scale upon
+whatever stands in their way; they feed or starve the tillers of the
+soil; they spare or drown the dwellers by the shore; they waft the
+seaman to his harbor or bury him in the angry billows.
+
+"The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from
+deadly and dangerous influences, and something to control or arrest
+the effects of these influences.  But look at the records of the
+life-insurance offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's
+destroying agencies.  Look at the annual reports of the deaths in any
+of our great cities, and see how their regularity approaches the
+uniformity of the tides, and their variations keep pace with those of
+the seasons.  The inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to
+be predicted than the vast wave of infantile disease which flows in
+upon all our great cities with the growing heats of July,--than the
+fevers and dysenteries which visit our rural districts in the months
+of the falling leaf.
+
+"The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the
+rise of the great river.  He longs to rescue individuals, to protect
+communities from the inroads of these destroying agencies.  He uses
+all the means which experience has approved, tries every rational
+method which ingenuity can suggest.  Some fortunate recovery leads
+him to believe he has hit upon a preventive or a cure for a malady
+which had resisted all known remedies.  His rescued patient sounds
+his praises, and a wide circle of his patient's friends joins in a
+chorus of eulogies.  Self-love applauds him for his sagacity.  Self-
+interest congratulates him on his having found the road to fortune;
+the sense of having proved a benefactor of his race smooths the
+pillow on which he lays his head to dream of the brilliant future
+opening before him.  If a single coincidence may lead a person of
+sanguine disposition to believe that he has mastered a disease which
+had baffled all who were before his time, and on which his
+contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must be the effect
+of a series of such coincidences even on a mind of calmer temper!
+Such series of coincidences will happen, and they may well deceive
+the very elect.  Think of Dr. Rush,--you know what a famous man he
+was, the very head and front of American medical science in his day,
+--and remember how he spoke about yellow fever, which he thought he
+had mastered!
+
+"Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy,
+in which he and his patient and their friends, and-Nature herself,
+are involved.  What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to
+so great an extent a record of self-delusion!
+
+"If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true
+science and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied
+in the first aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine.  Do not
+draw a wrong inference from the frank statement of the difficulties
+which beset the medical practitioner.  Think rather, if truth is so
+hard of attainment, how precious are the results which the consent of
+the wisest and most experienced among the healers of men agrees in
+accepting.  Think what folly it is to cast them aside in favor of
+palpable impositions stolen from the records of forgotten
+charlatanism, or of fantastic speculations spun from the squinting
+brains of theorists as wild as the Egyptian astronomer.
+
+"Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the
+following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your first lesson will teach
+you modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all
+practical branches of knowledge.  Faith will come later, when you
+learn how much medical science and art have actually achieved for the
+relief of mankind, and how great are the promises it holds out of
+still larger triumphs over the enemies of human health and
+happiness."
+
+After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which
+we have no room to report here, and the Society adjourned.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+
+The sober-minded, sensible, well-instructed Dr. Butts was not a
+little exercised in mind by the demands made upon his knowledge by
+his young friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida
+Vincent.
+
+"I don't wonder they called her The Terror," he said to himself.
+"She is enough to frighten anybody.  She has taken down old books
+from my shelves that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to
+the medical journals, I believe the girl could index them from
+memory.  She is in pursuit of some special point of knowledge, I feel
+sure, and I cannot doubt what direction she is working in, but her
+wonderful way of dealing with books amazes me."
+
+What marvels those "first scholars" in the classes of our great
+universities and colleges are, to be sure!  They are not, as a rule,
+the most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life.
+The chances are that "the field" will beat "the favorite" over the
+long race-course.  Others will develop a longer stride and more
+staying power.  But what fine gifts those "first scholars" have
+received from nature!  How dull we writers, famous or obscure, are in
+the acquisition of knowledge as compared with them!  To lead their
+classmates they must have quick apprehension, fine memories, thorough
+control of their mental faculties, strong will, power of
+concentration, facility of expression,--a wonderful equipment of
+mental faculties.  I always want to take my hat off to the first
+scholar of his year.
+
+Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The
+Terror.  She surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was
+ready to receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him
+one allay with a cry of triumph, "Eureka! Eureka!"
+
+"And what have you found, my dear?" said the doctor.
+
+Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new
+discovery.
+
+"I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's
+dread of all human intercourse!"
+
+The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.
+
+"Wait a minute and get your breath," said the doctor.  "Are you not a
+little overstating his peculiarity?  It is not quite so bad as that.
+He keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old
+Tavern, he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he
+pulled out of the water, or rescued somehow,--I don't believe be
+avoids the whole human race.  He does not look as if he hated them,
+so far as I have remarked his expression.  I passed a few words with
+him when his man was ailing, and found him polite enough.  No, I
+don't believe it is much more than an extreme case of shyness,
+connected, perhaps, with some congenital or other personal repugnance
+to which has been given the name of an antipathy."
+
+Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking.  When
+he finished, she began the account of her discovery:
+
+"I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an
+Italian medical journal of about fourteen years ago.  I met with a
+reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli
+Ospitali lying among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the
+Library.  I have made a translation of it, which you must read and
+then tell me if you do not agree with me in my conclusion."
+
+"Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see
+for myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you
+seem to have reached."
+
+Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of
+a map of the world, as she said,
+
+"I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the
+bite of a TARANTULA!"
+
+The doctor drew a long breath.  He remembered in a vague sort of way
+the stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but
+he had consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many
+fictions have clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name.
+He looked into the round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as
+if he feared that she was in a state of undue excitement, but, true
+to his professional training, he waited for another symptom, if
+indeed her mind was in any measure off its balance.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," Lurida said, "but it is not so.  'I
+am not mad, most noble Festus.'  You shall see the evidence and judge
+for yourself.  Read the whole case,--you can read my hand almost as
+if it were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this
+young man is in all probability the same person as the boy described
+in the Italian journal,
+
+One thing you might say is against the supposition.  The young
+patient is spoken of as Signorino M .  .  .  Ch.  .  .  .  But you
+must remember that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which
+letter is wanting in the Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough
+that the initial of the second name should have got changed in the
+record to its Italian equivalent."
+
+Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this
+extraordinary case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes
+to be indulged in a few words of explanation, in order that he may
+not have to apologize for allowing the introduction of a subject
+which may be thought to belong to the professional student rather
+than to the readers of this record.  There is a great deal in medical
+books which it is very unbecoming to bring before the general
+public,--a great deal to repel, to disgust, to alarm, to excite
+unwholesome curiosity.  It is not the men whose duties have made them
+familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely to offend by
+scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician's private
+library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite literature.
+Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and practised
+medicine, could not by any possibility have outraged all the natural
+feelings of delicacy and decency as Swift and Zola have outraged
+them.  But without handling doubtful subjects, there are many curious
+medical experiences which have interest for every one as extreme
+illustrations of ordinary conditions with which all are acquainted.
+No one can study the now familiar history of clairvoyance profitably
+who has not learned something of the vagaries of hysteria.  No one
+can read understandingly the life of Cowper and that of Carlyle
+without having some idea of the influence of hypochondriasis and of
+dyspepsia upon the disposition and intellect of the subjects of these
+maladies.  I need not apologize, therefore, for giving publicity to
+that part of this narrative which deals with one of the most singular
+maladies to be found in the records of bodily and mental infirmities.
+
+The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss
+Vincent.  For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the
+original paper, and for similar reasons the date of the event and the
+birthplace of the patient are not precisely indicated here.
+
+[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18-.1
+
+REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.
+
+"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
+instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of
+the extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the
+subject of a recent medical consultation in this city.
+
+
+"Signorino M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  is the only son of a gentleman
+travelling in Italy at this time.  He is eleven years of age, of
+sanguine-nervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent
+countenance, well grown, but rather slight in form, to all appearance
+in good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous
+symptoms, of which his father gives this history.
+
+"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy
+with his wife, this child, and a nurse.  They were passing a few days
+in a country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province
+of the same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia.  The
+child was in perfect health and had never been affected by any
+serious illness.  On the 10th of July he was playing out in the field
+near the house where the family was staying when he was heard to
+scream suddenly and violently.  The nurse rushing to him found him in
+great pain, saying that something had bitten him in one of his feet.
+A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the moment and perceived in the
+grass, near where the boy was standing, an enormous spider, which he
+at once recognized as a tarantula.  He managed to catch the creature
+in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards transferred to a wide-
+mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for a month or more.
+The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a pair of nipper-
+like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound.  His body
+measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of
+the longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches.
+Such was the account given by the physician to whom the peasant
+carried the great spider.
+
+"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
+stocking was being removed and the foot examined.  The place of the
+bite was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already
+showed the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending
+around them, with some puffy swelling.  The distinguished Dr. Amadei
+was immediately sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the
+hope of drawing forth the poison.  In vain all his skill and efforts!
+Soon, ataxic (irregular) nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it
+became plain that the system had been infected by the poison.
+
+The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as
+distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing,
+collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death.  From
+these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had
+been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it.  His
+constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this
+toxic (poisonous) agent.  The phenomena which have been observed in
+this young patient correspond so nearly with those enumerated in the
+elaborate essay of the celebrated Baglivi that one might think they
+had been transcribed from his pages.
+
+"He is very fond of solitude,--of wandering about in churchyards and
+other lonely places.  He was once found hiding in an empty tomb,
+which had been left open.  His aversion to certain colors is
+remarkable.  Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker
+ones, but his likes and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to
+some colors his antipathy amounts to positive horror.  Some shades
+have such an effect upon him that he cannot remain in the room with
+them, and if he meets any one whose dress has any of that particular
+color he will turn away or retreat so as to avoid passing that
+person.  Among these, purple and dark green are the least endurable.
+He cannot explain the sensations which these obnoxious colors produce
+except by saying that it is like the deadly feeling from a blow on
+the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).
+
+"About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning
+took place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like
+fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those
+affections.  All the other symptoms are aggravated at this time.
+
+"In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health.
+He is fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal
+of exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.
+
+"The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by
+popular belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we
+shall again refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results.
+If the graver symptoms recur while the patient is under our
+observation, we propose to make use of an agency discredited by
+modern skepticism, but deserving of a fair trial as an exceptional
+remedy for an exceptional disease.
+
+"The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian
+physician of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in
+the Giornale in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian,
+subjoined.  Here are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from
+them, with a translation of them into English.
+
+"After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by
+the subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows:
+"'Et si astantes incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis
+ingrates est, necesse est ut ab illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad
+intuitum molesti coloris angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia
+stating corripiuntur.' (G.  Baglivi, Op.  Omnia, page 614.  Lugduni,
+1745.)
+
+"That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color
+which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them,
+for on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress
+in the region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'
+
+"As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says:
+"'Dam calor solis ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa
+initia Julii et Augusti, Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam
+veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid., page 619.)
+
+"Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more
+fiercely, which happens about the beginning of July and August, the
+subjects of Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching
+recrudescence (returning symptoms) of the poisoning.  Among the
+remedies most valued by this illustrious physician is that mentioned
+in the following sentence:
+"'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis
+diebus, hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos
+chronicos pene incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'
+
+" Or in translation,
+"'I commend especially riding on horseback in country air, every day,
+by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which horseback
+riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost
+incurable.'"
+
+Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him
+to examine and consider.  He listened with a grave countenance and
+devout attention.
+
+As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate
+tones of the deepest conviction,
+
+"There, doctor!  Have n't I found the true story of this strange
+visitor?  Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx?  Who can this
+man be but the boy of that story?  Look at the date of the journal
+when he was eleven years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and
+that is just about the age the people here think he must be of.  What
+could account so entirely for his ways and actions as that strange
+poisoning which produces the state they call Tarantism?  I am just as
+sure it must be that as I am that I am alive.  Oh, doctor, doctor, I
+must be right,--this Signprino M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  was the boy
+Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for everything,--his
+solitary habits, his dread of people,--it must be because they wear
+the colors he can't bear.  His morning rides on horseback, his coming
+here just as the season was approaching which would aggravate all his
+symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right in my
+conjecture,--no, my conviction?"
+
+The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he
+let her run on until she ran down.  He was more used to the rules of
+evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion
+so readily as she would have liked to have him.  He knew that
+beginners are very apt to make what they think are discoveries.  But
+he had been an angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an
+easy-running reel.  He said quietly,
+
+"You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie
+case it is that you make out.  I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood
+is not the same person as the M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  of the medical
+journal,--that is, if I accept your explanation of the difference in
+the initials of these two names.  Even if there were a difference,
+that would not disprove their identity, for the initials of patients
+whose cases are reported by their physicians are often altered for
+the purpose of concealment.  I do not know, however, that Mr.
+Kirkwood has shown any special aversion to any particular color.  It
+might be interesting to inquire whether it is so, but it is a
+delicate matter.  I don't exactly see whose business it is to
+investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and constitutional
+history.  If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he
+might tell me all about himself, in confidence, you know.  These old
+accounts from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am cautious
+about receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an
+improbability, as his stories about the cure of the tarantula bite by
+music certainly do.  I am disposed to wait for future developments,
+bearing in mind, of course, the very singular case you have
+unearthed.  It wouldn't be very strange if our young gentleman had to
+send for me before the season is over.  He is out a good deal before
+the dew is off the grass, which is rather risky in this neighborhood
+as autumn comes on.  I am somewhat curious, I confess, about the
+young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted,
+and I have found that eggs hatch just as well if you let them alone
+in the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day.  This
+is a wonderfully interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to
+be strictly in accordance with the facts.  But I do not think we have
+all the facts in this young man's case.  If it were proved that he
+had an aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case.
+His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a
+wide ground, to account for his self-isolation,--and the color
+hypothesis seems as plausible as any.  But, my dear Miss Vincent,
+I think you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in
+my keeping for a while, rather than let it get abroad in a community
+like this, where so many tongues are in active exercise.  I will
+carefully study this paper, if you will leave it with me, and we will
+talk the whole matter over.  It is a fair subject for speculation,
+only we must keep quiet about it."
+
+This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a
+little.  She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would
+come for it the next day, and went off to tell the result of this
+visit to her bosom friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+
+The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
+lady.  She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered
+the secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village.
+It was of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited
+state.  But he felt it his duty to guard her against any possible
+results of indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of
+the equality, almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her.
+Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget
+danger.  Too little of the woman prompts her to defy it.  Fortunately
+for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely to be
+perilously seductive as their more emphatically feminine sisters.
+
+Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their
+infancy.  He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence
+from its precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained
+faculties.  He had looked with admiration on the childish beauty of
+Euthymia, and had seen her grow up to womanhood, every year making
+her more attractive.  He knew that if anything was to be done with
+his self-willed young scholar and friend, it would be more easily
+effected through the medium of Euthymia than by direct advice to the
+young lady herself.  So the thoughtful doctor made up his mind to
+have a good talk with Euthymia, and put her on her guard, if Lurida
+showed any tendency to forget the conventionalities in her eager
+pursuit of knowledge.
+
+For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss
+Euthymia Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all
+the tongues in the village going.  This was one of those families
+where illness was hardly looked for among the possibilities of life.
+There were other families where a call from the doctor was hardly
+more thought of than a call from the baker.  But here he was a
+stranger, at least on his professional rounds, and when he asked for
+Miss Euthymia the servant, who knew his face well, stared as if he
+had held in his hand a warrant for her apprehension.
+
+Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made
+ready to meet him.  One look at her glass to make sure that a lock
+had not run astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for
+a morning call was finished.  Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had
+been announced, she might have taken a second look, but with the good
+middle-aged, married doctor one was enough for a young lady who had
+the gift of making all the dresses she wore look well, and had no
+occasion to treat her chamber like the laboratory where an actress
+compounds herself.
+
+Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily.  She could not help
+suspecting his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk
+over her friend's schemes and fancies with him.
+
+The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.
+
+"I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida.  Does she tell
+you all her plans and projects?"
+
+"Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not
+believe she keeps back anything of importance from me.  I know what
+she has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into
+her head.  What do you think of the Tarantula business?  She has
+shown you the paper, she has written, I suppose."
+
+"Indeed she has.  It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and
+I do not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she
+had come at the true solution of the village riddle.  It may be that
+this young man is the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian
+medical journal.  But it is very far from clear that he is so.  You
+know all her reasons, of course, as you have read the story.  The
+times seem to agree well enough.  It is easy to conceive that Ch
+might be substituted for Kin the report.  The singular solitary
+habits of this young man entirely coincide with the story.  If we
+could only find out whether he has any of those feelings with
+reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of
+guessing right than we have at present.  But I don't see exactly how
+we are going to submit him to examination on this point.  If he were
+only a chemical compound, we could analyze him.  If he were only a
+bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes.  But
+being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his
+own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem
+becomes more complicated.  I hear that a newspaper correspondent has
+visited him so as to make a report to his paper,--do you know what he
+found out?"
+
+"Certainly I do, very well.  My brother has heard his own story,
+which was this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to
+interview.  The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he
+did not learn much about the Sphinx.  But the newspaper man told
+Willy about the Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins he had; and
+said he should make an article out of him, anyhow.  I wish the man
+would take himself off.  I am afraid Lurida's love of knowledge will
+get her into trouble!"
+
+"Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?"
+
+"I was thinking of the newspaper man."
+
+She blushed a little as she said, "I can't help feeling a strange
+sort of interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood.  Do you know that I
+met him this morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?"
+
+"Well, to be sure!  That was an interesting experience.  And how did
+you like his looks?"
+
+"I thought his face a very remarkable one.  But he looked very pale
+as he passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side
+as if he had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,--spasm or
+neuralgia,--I don't know what.  I wondered whether he had what you
+call angina pectoris.  It was the same kind of look and movement, I
+remember, as you trust, too, in my uncle who died with that
+complaint."
+
+The doctor was silent for a moment.  Then he asked, "Were you dressed
+as you are now?"
+
+"Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders.  I
+was out early, and I have always remembered your caution."
+
+"What color was your mantle?"
+
+"It was black.  I have been over all this with Lucinda.  A black
+mantle on a white dress.  A straw hat with an old faded ribbon.
+There can't be much in those colors to trouble him, I should think,
+for his man wears a black coat and white linen,--more or less white,
+as you must have noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all colors
+often enough.  But Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in
+the combination of colors.  Her head is full of Tarantulas and
+Tarantism.  I fear that she will never be easy until the question is
+settled by actual trial.  And will you believe it? the girl is
+determined in some way to test her supposition!"
+
+"Believe it, Euthymia?  I can believe almost anything of Lurida.  She
+is the most irrepressible creature I ever knew.  You know as well as
+I do what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole
+nature.  I have had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her
+discretion.  It is a great deal easier to get into a false position
+than to get out of it."
+
+"I know it well enough.  I want you to tell me what you think about
+the whole business.  I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I
+can do nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I
+can show her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some
+way or other.  But she is ingenious,--full of all sorts of devices,
+innocent enough in themselves, but liable to be misconstrued.  You
+remember how she won us the boat-race?"
+
+"To be sure I do.  It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was
+paying off an old score.  The classical story of Atalanta, told, like
+that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to
+make trial of the powers of resistance in the other sex.  But it was
+audacious.  I hope her audacity will not go too far.  You must watch
+her.  Keep an eye on her correspondence."
+
+The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend.
+He felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing
+foolish letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar
+indiscreet performances.  The boldness of young girls, who think no
+evil, in opening correspondence with idealized personages is
+something quite astonishing to those who have had an opportunity of
+knowing the facts.  Lurida had passed the most dangerous age, but her
+theory of the equality of the sexes made her indifferent to the
+by-laws of social usage.  She required watching, and her two
+guardians were ready to check her, in case of need.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
+
+Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for
+two or three days.  She found her more than once busy at her desk,
+with a manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside
+the desk, as Euthymia entered.
+
+This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends
+expected to see in the other.  It showed that some project was under
+way, which, at least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young
+lady did not wish to disclose.  It had cost her a good deal of
+thought and care, apparently, for her waste-basket was full of scraps
+of paper, which looked as if they were the remains of a manuscript
+like that at which she was at work.  "Copying and recopying,
+probably," thought Euthymia, but she was willing to wait to learn
+what Lurida was busy about, though she had a suspicion that it was
+something in which she might feel called upon to interest herself.
+
+"Do you know what I think?" said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him
+as he left his door.  "I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I
+don't like the thought of her doing such a thing.  Of course she is
+not like other girls in many respects, but other people will judge
+her by the common rules of life."
+
+"I am glad that you spoke of it," answered the doctor; "she would
+write to him just as quickly as to any woman of his age.  Besides,
+under the cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to
+anybody.  I think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him
+to contribute a paper for the Society.  She can find a pretext easily
+enough if she has made up her mind to write.  In fact, I doubt if she
+would trouble herself for any pretext at all if she decided to write.
+Watch her well.  Don't let any letter go without seeing it, if you
+can help it."
+
+Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they
+only know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and
+especially to romancers and poets.  Nothing can be more innocent and
+simple-hearted than most of these letters.  They are the spontaneous
+outflow of young hearts easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure
+which some story or poem has given them, and recognizing their own
+thoughts, their own feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if
+on purpose for them to read.  Undoubtedly they give great relief to
+solitary young persons, who must have some ideal reflection of
+themselves, and know not where to look since Protestantism has taken
+away the crucifix and the Madonna.  The recipient of these letters
+sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how it is that
+his young correspondent has managed to fill so much space with her
+simple message of admiration or of sympathy.
+
+Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but
+she could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally
+surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their
+persons float in a wide superfluity of woven tissues.  Was she indeed
+writing to this unknown gentleman?  Euthymia questioned her point-
+blank.
+
+"Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood,
+Lurida?  You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else.
+Or are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,--do
+tell me what you are so much taken up with."
+
+"I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault
+with me for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do.
+You may read this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything
+in it you don't like you can suggest any change that you think will
+improve it.  I hope you will see that it explains itself.  I don't
+believe that you will find anything to frighten you in it."
+
+This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend.  The
+bold handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it
+consequently a less dangerous expression than that which belongs to
+the tinted and often fragrant sheet with its delicate thready
+characters, which slant across the page like an April shower with a
+south wind chasing it.
+
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August--, 18--.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a
+letter like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the
+Pansophian Society.  There is a very common feeling that it is
+unbecoming in one of my sex to address one of your own with whom she
+is unacquainted, unless she has some special claim upon his
+attention.  I am by no means disposed to concede to the vulgar
+prejudice on this point.  If one human being has anything to
+communicate to another,--anything which deserves being communicated,
+--I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex.  I do not
+think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as its
+private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,
+
+I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of
+healing.  If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving
+my whole powers to the service of humanity.  And if I should carry
+out that idea, should I refuse my care and skill to a suffering
+fellow-mortal because that mortal happened to be a brother, and not a
+sister?  My whole nature protests against such one-sided humanity!
+No! I am blind to all distinctions when my eyes are opened to any
+form of suffering, to any spectacle of want.
+
+You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of,
+and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive.  It
+is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to
+you,--that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our
+meetings.  I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this
+as a compliment to that paper.  I am not bandying compliments now,
+but thinking of better things than praises or phrases.  I was
+interested in the paper, partly because I recognized some of the
+feelings expressed in it as my own,--partly because there was an
+undertone of sadness in all the voices of nature as you echoed them
+which made me sad to hear, and which I could not help longing to
+cheer and enliven.  I said to myself, I should like to hold communion
+with the writer of that paper.  I have had my lonely hours and days,
+as he has had.  I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse
+with nature.  And oh! if I could draw him into those better human
+relations which await us all, if we come with the right dispositions,
+I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any
+conventional rule or not.
+
+You will understand me, I feel sure.  You believe, do you not? in the
+insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
+brotherhood of mankind.  You believe, do you not? that they should be
+educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due
+regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard
+or light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the
+"stronger" or the "weaker" sex.  I mark these words because,
+notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not
+true.  Stronger!  Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of
+cider,--though there have been women who could do that, and though
+when John Wesley was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down
+three or four men, one after another, until she was at last
+overpowered and nearly murdered.  Talk about the weaker sex!  Go and
+see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium!  But no matter about which
+sex has the strongest muscles.  Which has most to suffer, and which
+has most endurance and vitality?  We go through many ordeals which
+you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body.  I have been led
+away into one of my accustomed trains of thought, but not so far away
+from it as you might at first suppose.
+
+My brother!  Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal,
+a sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the
+same roof?  And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes
+us all one family?  You are lonely, you must be longing for some
+human fellowship.  Take me into your confidence.  What is there that
+you can tell me to which I cannot respond with sympathy?  What
+saddest note in your spiritual dirges which will not find its chord
+in mine?
+
+I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your
+existence.  I myself have known what it is to carry a brain that
+never rests in a body that is always tired.  I have defied its
+infirmities, and forced it to do my bidding.  You have no such
+hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect and habits.  You deal with
+horses like a Homeric hero.  No wild Indian could handle his bark
+canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we have seen you
+handling yours.  There must be some reason for your seclusion which
+curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the province of
+curiosity to inquire.  But in the irresistible desire which I have to
+bring you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run the
+risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for
+those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and
+sister can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to
+change the course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in
+accordance with his true nature.
+
+I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with
+which you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--
+something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from
+the people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed.  There
+can hardly be anything in the place itself, or you would not have
+voluntarily sought it as a residence, even for a single season.
+there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet,
+there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to
+everybody.  I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds,
+which have no particular significance for most persons, produced
+feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the
+subjects of the constitutional dislike.  It has occurred to me that
+possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of
+the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a
+piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the
+village.  Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses
+of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly.  I
+know that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they
+would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.
+
+If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
+entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I
+beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated.  Think it
+not strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself
+into the hidden chambers of your life.  I will never suffer myself to
+be frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to
+be of use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered
+"unfeminine."  I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot
+endure to think of myself as inhuman.  Can I help you, my brother'?
+
+Believe me your most sincere well-wisher,
+
+LURIDA VINCENT.
+
+
+Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself.  As she
+finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
+grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early
+days are apt to do, on great occasions.
+
+"Well, I never!"
+
+Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went
+to the window for a breath of outdoor air.  Then she began at the
+beginning and read the whole letter all over again.
+
+What should she do about it?  She could not let this young girl send
+a letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known
+except by inference,--to a young man, who would consider it a most
+extraordinary advance on the part of the sender.  She would have
+liked to tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to
+treat it in that way.  Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and
+in the mean time Euthymia had the night to think over what she should
+do about it.
+
+There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle.  There is no voice
+like that which breaks the silence--of the stagnant hours of the
+night with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels.  When
+Euthymia awoke in the morning, her course of action was as clear
+before her as if it bad been dictated by her guardian angel.  She
+went straight over to the home of Lurida, who was just dressed for
+breakfast.
+
+She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit.  She was
+struck with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm,
+and contemplating her project with entire complacency.
+
+Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.
+
+"I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force.
+It is a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of
+the truest human feeling.  But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood.
+If you were sixty years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be
+admissible to send it.  But if you were forty, I should question its
+propriety; if you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a
+little more than twenty.  How do you know that this stranger will not
+show your letter to anybody or everybody?  How do you know that he
+will not send it to one of the gossiping journals like the 'Household
+Inquisitor'?  But supposing he keeps it to himself, which is more
+than you have a right to expect, what opinion is he likely to form of
+a young lady who invades his privacy with such freedom?  Ten to one
+he will think curiosity is at the bottom of it,--and,--come, don't be
+angry at me for suggesting it,--may there not be a little of that
+same motive mingled with the others?  No, don't interrupt me quite
+yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is correct.  You are
+full of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but your desire
+for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps more than
+you know."
+
+Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her
+friend was speaking.  She loved her too sincerely and respected her
+intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could
+not give up her humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear
+of some awkward consequences to herself.  She had persuaded herself
+that she was playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and
+that the fact of her not wearing the costume of these ministering
+angels made no difference in her relations to those who needed her
+aid.
+
+"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to
+you," she said gravely.  "It seems to me that I give up everything
+when I hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman.  I am
+not afraid to send this letter and take all the consequences."
+
+"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our
+presence?  And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it
+coincides with mine?"
+
+Lurida winced a little at this proposal.  "I don't quite like," she
+said, "showing this letter to--to" she hesitated, but it had to come
+out--"to a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was
+intended."
+
+The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.
+
+"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter.  Will you go
+over to his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his
+morning visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him?  You
+know I have sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say
+you must go to the doctor's with me and carry that letter."
+
+There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm
+voice delivered it.  At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's
+door.  The servant said he had been at the house after his morning
+visits, but found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken
+suddenly ill and wished to see him at once.  Was the illness
+dangerous?  The servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty
+bad, for Mr. Paul came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts
+of languages which she couldn't understand, and took on as if he
+thought Mr. Kirkwood was going to die right off.
+
+And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed
+of, at least for the present.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
+
+The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of
+a somewhat severe character.  He knew too well what this meant, and
+the probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude.  His
+patient was not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in
+this way.  The autumnal fevers to which our country towns are
+subject, in the place of those "agues," or intermittents, so largely
+prevalent in the South and West, were already beginning, and Maurice,
+who had exposed himself in the early and late hours of the dangerous
+season, must be expected to go through the regular stages of this
+always serious and not rarely fatal disease.
+
+Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of
+his master during his illness.  But the doctor insisted that he must
+have a nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and
+exhausting.
+
+At the mention of the word "nurse" Paolo turned white, and exclaimed
+in an agitated and thoroughly frightened way,
+
+"No! no nuss!  no woman!  She kill him!  I stay by him day and night,
+but don' let no woman come near him,--if you do, he die!"
+
+The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to
+taking care of sick people, and with no little effort at last
+succeeded in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and
+night for a fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to
+call in some assistance from without.  And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood
+was to play the leading part in that drama of nature's composing
+called a typhoid fever, with its regular bedchamber scenery, its
+properties of phials and pill-boxes, its little company of stock
+actors, its gradual evolution of a very simple plot, its familiar
+incidents, its emotional alternations, and its denouement, sometimes
+tragic, oftener happy.
+
+It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of
+the village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the
+young man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much.
+Tokens of their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods
+and from the gardens; choice fruit grown in the open air or under
+glass, for there were some fine houses surrounded by well-kept
+grounds, and greenhouses and graperies were not unknown in the small
+but favored settlement.
+
+On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes.  A
+faint smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of
+his features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his
+parched lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the
+fitful sleep in which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow
+hours dragged along the sluggish days one after another.  With no
+violent symptoms, but with steady persistency, the disease moved on
+in its accustomed course.  It was at no time immediately threatening,
+but the experienced physician knew its uncertainties only too well.
+He had known fever patients suddenly seized with violent internal
+inflammation, and carried off with frightful rapidity.  He remembered
+the case of a convalescent, a young woman who had been attacked while
+in apparently vigorous general health, who, on being lifted too
+suddenly to a sitting position, while still confined to her bed,
+fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe.  It may well be
+supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the
+accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular
+course of which is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a
+railroad from one city to another.  The most natural interpretation
+which the common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of
+these autumnal maladies would be that some noxious combustible
+element had found its way into the system which must be burned to
+ashes before the heat which pervades the whole body can subside.
+Sometimes the fire may smoulder and seem as if it were going out, or
+were quite extinguished, and again it will find some new material to
+seize upon, and flame up as fiercely as ever.  Its coming on most
+frequently at the season when the brush fires which are consuming the
+dead branches, and withered leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation
+are sending up their smoke is suggestive.  Sometimes it seems as if
+the body, relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after
+one of these quiet, expurgating, internal fractional cremations.
+Lean, pallid students have found themselves plump and blooming, and
+it has happened that one whose hair was straight as gnat of an Indian
+has been startled to behold himself in his mirror with a fringe of
+hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated countenance.
+
+There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
+Maurice Kirkwood.  The most alarming symptom was a profound
+prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly
+helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of
+paralytics.  In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain,
+but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should
+never rise from his bed again.  For the most part his intellect was
+unclouded when his attention was aroused.  He spoke only in whispers,
+a few words at a time.  The doctor felt sure, by the expression which
+passed over his features from time to time, that something was
+worrying and oppressing him; something which he wished to
+communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of purpose, to
+make perfectly clear.  His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and
+once he had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it.
+The doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he slowly
+shook his head.  He had not the power to say at that time what he
+wished.  The next day he felt a little less prostrated; and succeeded
+in explaining to the doctor what he wanted.  His words, so far as the
+physician could make them out, were these which follow.  Dr. Butts
+looked upon them as possibly expressing wishes which would be his
+last, and noted them down carefully immediately after leaving his
+chamber.
+
+"I commit the secret of my life to your charge.  My whole story is
+told in a paper locked in that desk.  The key is--put your hand under
+my pillow.  If I die, let the story be known.  It will show that I
+was--human--and save my memory from reproach."
+
+He was silent for a little time.  A single tear stole down his hollow
+cheek.  The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full.
+But he said to himself, "It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong
+hopes that he will recover."
+
+Maurice spoke once more.  "Doctor, I put full trust in you.  You are
+wise and kind.  Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once
+and read.  I want you to know the story of my life before it is
+finished--if the end is at hand.  Take it with you and read it before
+you sleep."  He was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the
+doctor saw a tranquil look on his features which added encouragement
+to his hopes.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
+
+I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been
+passed in foreign lands.  My father was a man of education, possessed
+of an ample fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished
+and amiable woman.  I was their first and only child.  She died while
+I was yet an infant.  If I remember her at all it is as a vision,
+more like a glimpse of a pre-natal existence than as a part of my
+earthly life.  At the death of my mother I was left in the charge of
+the old nurse who had enjoyed her perfect confidence.  She was
+devoted to me, and I became absolutely dependent on her, who had for
+me all the love and all the care of a mother.  I was naturally the
+object of the attentions and caresses of the family relatives.  I
+have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling infant, with nothing to
+indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not afraid of
+strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their acquaintance.  My
+father was devoted to me and did all in his power to promote my
+health and comfort.
+
+
+I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened
+which changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely
+existence.  I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror.  I
+must force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely
+remembered, for I am not willing that my doomed and wholly
+exceptional life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained,
+unvindicated.  My nature is, I feel sure, a kind and social one, but
+I have lived apart, as if my heart were filled with hatred of my
+fellow-creatures.  If there are any readers who look without pity,
+without sympathy, upon those who shun the fellowship of their fellow
+men and women, who show by their downcast or averted eyes that they
+dread companionship and long for solitude, I pray them, if this paper
+ever reaches them, to stop at this point.  Follow me no further, for
+you will not believe my story, nor enter into the feelings which I am
+about to reveal.  But if there are any to whom all that is human is
+of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness some stirrings
+of invincible attraction to one individual and equally invincible
+repugnance to another, who know by their own experience that elective
+affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it were,
+their polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective
+repulsions, let them read with unquestioning faith the story of a
+blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of course, received
+from the lips of others.
+
+My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe,
+was considered eminently beautiful.  It was in my second summer that
+she visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants
+and my old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower.
+Laura was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements,
+thoughtless occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of
+her age should be.  It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for
+the first time.  My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and
+forward on a balcony with a low railing, upon which opened the
+windows of the second story of my father's house.  While the nurse
+was thus carrying me, Laura came suddenly upon the balcony.  She no
+sooner saw me than with all the delighted eagerness of her youthful
+nature she rushed toward me, and, catching me from the nurse's arms,
+began tossing me after the fashion of young girls who have been so
+lately playing with dolls that they feel as if babies were very much
+of the same nature.  The abrupt seizure frightened me; I sprang from
+her arms in my terror, and fell over the railing of the balcony.  I
+should probably enough have been killed on the spot but for the fact
+that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath the balcony, into which I
+fell and thus had the violence of the shock broken.  But the thorns
+tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day marks of the deep wounds
+they inflicted.
+
+That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory.  The sudden
+apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the
+protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek
+that accompanied my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable
+space; the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,--all
+these fearful impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.
+
+When I was taken up I was thought to be dead.  I was perfectly white,
+and the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was
+perceptible.  But after a time consciousness returned; the wounds,
+though painful, were none of them dangerous, and the most alarming
+effects of the accident passed away.  My old nurse cared for me
+tenderly day and night, and my father, who had been almost distracted
+in the first hours which followed the injury, hoped and believed
+that no permanent evil results would be found to result from it.  My
+cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed to feel that her
+thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an accident.  As soon
+as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very penitent, very
+anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me, with all its
+consequences.  I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed, bandaged,
+but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all
+appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling.  As Laura came
+near me I shrieked and instantly changed color.  I put my hand upon
+my heart as if I had been stabbed, and fell over, unconscious.  It
+was very much the same state as that in which I was found immediately
+after my fall.
+
+The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious.
+The approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to
+lay her hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which
+the moment of terror and pain had already occasioned.  The old nurse
+saw this in a moment.  "Go!  go!" she cried to Laura, "go, or the
+child will die!  "Her command did not have to be repeated.  After
+Laura had gone I lay senseless, white and cold as marble, for some
+time.  The doctor soon came, and by the use of smart rubbing and
+stimulants the color came back slowly to my cheeks and the arrested
+circulation was again set in motion.
+
+It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary
+effect of the accident.  There could be little doubt, it was thought
+by the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should
+recover from this morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other
+infants receive pleasant-looking young persons.  The old nurse shook
+her head.  "The girl will be the death of the child," she said, "if
+she touches him or comes near him.  His heart stopped beating just as
+when the girl snatched him out of my arms, and he fell over the
+balcony railing."  Once more the experiment was tried, cautiously,
+almost insidiously.  The same alarming consequences followed.  It was
+too evident that a chain of nervous disturbances had been set up in
+my system which repeated itself whenever the original impression gave
+the first impulse.  I never saw my cousin Laura after this last
+trial.  Its result had so distressed her that she never ventured
+again to show herself to me.
+
+If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have
+been a misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity.
+The world is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be
+considered an essential of existence.  I often heard Laura's name
+mentioned, but never by any one who was acquainted with all the
+circumstances, for it was noticed that I changed color and caught at
+my breast as if I wanted to grasp my heart in my hand whenever that
+fatal name was mentioned.
+
+Alas! this was not all.  While I was suffering from the effects of my
+fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by
+another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his
+share in caring for me.  It was thought best to keep--me perfectly
+quiet, and strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery,
+with one exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then.
+With her it seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her
+with rather anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she
+was dangerous.  But one day, when I was far advanced towards
+recovery, my father brought in a young lady, a relative of his, who
+had expressed a great desire to see me.  She was, as I have been
+told, a very handsome girl, of about the same age as my cousin Laura,
+but bearing no personal resemblance to her in form, features, or
+complexion.  She had no sooner entered the room than the same sudden
+changes which had followed my cousin's visit began to show
+themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state of
+deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.
+
+Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures.
+A little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the
+nursery one day and bring me some flowers.  I took them from her
+hand, but turned away and shut my eyes.  There was no seizure, but
+there was a certain dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling
+which it might be hoped that time would overcome.  Those around me
+were gradually finding out the circumstances which brought on the
+deadly attack to which I was subject.
+
+The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the
+prettiest girl of the village where we were passing the summer.  She
+was very anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was
+determined that she should be permitted to pay me a short visit.  I
+had always delighted in seeing her and being caressed by her.  I was
+sleeping when she entered the nursery and came and took a seat at my
+side in perfect silence.  Presently I became restless, and a moment
+later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over me.  My hand went to
+my left breast,--the color faded from my cheeks,--I was again the
+cold marble image so like death that it had well-nigh been mistaken
+for it.
+
+Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had
+left me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is
+most attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender
+age, who feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes,
+her blooming cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws
+all life into its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere?  So it did
+indeed seem.  The dangerous experiment could not be repeated
+indefinitely.  It was not intentionally tried again, but accident
+brought about more than one renewal of it during the following years,
+until it became fully recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a
+mortal dread of woman,--not absolutely of the human female, for I had
+no fear of my old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled
+face, and I had become accustomed to the occasional meeting of a
+little girl or two, whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-
+defined feeling that there was danger in their presence.  I was sent
+to a boys' school very early, and during the first ten or twelve
+years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of my
+strange idiosyncrasy.
+
+As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings
+which had so long held complete possession of me.  This was what my
+father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of
+their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I
+should have grown to mature manhood.
+
+How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering,
+dreadful years?  Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and
+waking.  Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes
+towards it that I lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all
+my fears and find myself at her side, like other youths by the side
+of young maidens,--happy in their cheerful companionship, while I,--
+I, under the curse of one blighting moment, looked on, hopeless.
+Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice
+stirred within me all the instincts that make the morning of life
+beautiful to adolescence.  I reasoned with myself:
+
+Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been
+the nightmare of my earlier years?  Why should not the rising tide of
+life have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows
+of childhood?  How many children there are who tremble at being left
+alone in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their
+foolish terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber!  Why
+should I any longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown
+into a half insane habit of mind?  I was familiarly acquainted with
+all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances
+to which others, some of them famous men, had been subject.  I said
+to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as Peter the
+Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge?  Was I,
+alone of all mankind, to be doomed to perpetual exclusion from the
+society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence
+worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of
+supplying the waste of the system and working at the task of
+respiration like the daughters of Danaus,--toiling day and night as
+the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?
+
+Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard
+to any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off
+smile, whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me?
+I can only answer this question to the satisfaction of any really
+inquiring reader by giving him the true interpretation of the
+singular phenomenon of which I was the subject.  For this I shall
+have to refer to a paper of which I have made a copy, and which will
+be found included with this manuscript.  It is enough to say here,
+without entering into the explanation of the fact, which will be
+found simple enough as seen by the light of modern physiological
+science, that the "nervous disturbance" which the presence of a woman
+in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of
+impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling.  It
+was a reversed action of the nervous centres,--the opposite of that
+which flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses
+as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion.  No one
+who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an
+imperative summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.
+
+It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
+effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily
+and mental condition.  I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too
+slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were
+a cause of anxiety.  That the mind was largely concerned in these
+there was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are
+often too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis.  Each is in part
+cause and each also in part effect.
+
+We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in
+a school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those
+of my own sex.  There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences
+under which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are
+led to separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated
+in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul
+can be exposed.  I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of
+exclusion from the society of women by seeing around me so many who
+were self-devoted to celibacy.  The thought sometimes occurred to me
+whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of
+the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me
+the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable
+barrier between the devotee and the object of his dangerous
+attraction.
+
+How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who
+was at once my special instructor and my favorite companion!  But
+accustomed as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and
+impressed as I was with the purity and excellence of many of its
+young members with whom I was acquainted, my early training rendered
+it impossible for me to accept the credentials which it offered me as
+authoritative.  My friend and instructor had to set me down as a case
+of "invincible ignorance."  This was the loop-hole through which he
+crept out of the prison-house of his creed, and was enabled to look
+upon me without the feeling of absolute despair with which his
+sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.
+
+I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which
+I had such reasons for dreading.  Here is one example of such an
+occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
+impressed upon my memory.  A young friend whose acquaintance I had
+made in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a
+cabinet of gems and medals which he had collected.  I had been but a
+short time in his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over
+me.  My heart became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly,
+as if it were some frightened creature caged in my breast.  There was
+nothing that I could see to account for it.  A door was partly open,
+but not so that I could see into the next room.  The feeling grew
+upon me of some influence which was paralyzing my circulation.  I
+begged my friend to open a window.  As be did so, the door swung in
+the draught, and I saw a blooming young woman,--it was my friend's
+sister, who had been sitting with a book in her hand, and who rose at
+the opening of the door.  Something had warned me of the presence of
+a woman, that occult and potent aura of individuality, call it
+personal magnetism, spiritual effluence, or reduce it to a simpler
+expression if you will; whatever it was, it had warned me of the
+nearness of the dread attraction which allured at a distance and
+revealed itself with all the terrors of the Lorelei if approached too
+recklessly.  A sign from her brother caused her to withdraw at once,
+but not before I had felt the impression which betrayed itself in my
+change of color, anxiety about the region of the heart, and sudden
+failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.
+
+Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my
+manuscript?  Nothing in the history of life is so strange or
+exceptional as it seems to those who have not made a long study of
+its mysteries.  I have never known just such a case as my own, and
+yet there must have been such, and if the whole history of mankind
+were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been many like it.  Let
+my reader suspend his judgment until he has read the paper I have
+referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal Academy
+of the Biological Sciences.  In this paper the mechanism of the
+series of nervous derangements to which I have been subject since the
+fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not
+hard to understand.  It will be seen that such a change of polarity
+in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme degree
+of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and comparatively
+unimportant personal accident is far from being uncommon,--is so
+frequent, in fact, that every one must have known instances of it,
+and not a few must have had more or less serious experiences of it in
+their own private history.
+
+It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now
+dealing with the reader.  I was full of strange fancies and wild
+superstitions.  One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal
+which had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my
+body.  I was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue
+of a power which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain
+portions of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which
+had been engrafted on the corrupt nature.  I wore the medal
+faithfully, as directed, and watched it carefully.  It became
+tarnished and after a time darkened, but it wrought no change in my
+unnatural condition.
+
+There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of
+futurity than she had any right to know.  The story was that she had
+foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
+
+However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black
+art upon my future.  I shall never forget the strange, wild look of
+the wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed
+her wicked old eyes on my young countenance.  After this examination
+she shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I
+could get them would be in English like these:
+
+     Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
+     Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
+
+Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose
+palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular
+response, have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to
+fulfilment.  The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I
+was subject disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to
+all that relates to it.  I have never ceased to have the feeling
+that, sooner or later, I should find myself freed from the blight
+laid upon me in my infancy.  It seems as if it would naturally come
+through the influence of some young and fair woman, to whom that
+merciful errand should be assigned by the Providence that governs our
+destiny.  With strange hopes, with trembling fears, with mingled
+belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I have sought with
+longing yet half-averted eyes for the "elect lady," as I have learned
+to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined life.
+
+Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I
+had found the object of my superstitious belief. --Singularly enough
+it was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared
+before my bewildered vision.  Once it was an English girl who was a
+fellow passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages.  I need not say
+that she was beautiful, for she was my dream realized.  I heard her
+singing, I saw her walking the deck on some of the fair days when
+sea-sickness was forgotten.  The passengers were a social company
+enough, but I had kept myself apart, as was my wont.  At last the
+attraction became too strong to resist any longer.  "I will venture
+into the charmed circle if it kills me," I said to my father.  I did
+venture, and it did not kill me, or I should not be telling this
+story.  But there was a repetition of the old experiences.  I need
+not relate the series of alarming consequences of my venture.  The
+English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has made some one
+supremely happy before this, but she was not the "elect lady" of the
+prophecy and of my dreams.
+
+A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
+destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
+fellow men and women.  It was on the Tiber that I met the young
+maiden who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded
+young womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its
+limits.  I was floating with the stream in the little boat in which I
+passed many long hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with
+a boy and a young girl in it.  The boy had been rowing, and one of
+his oars had slipped from his grasp.  He did not know how to paddle
+with a single oar, and was hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar
+all the time floating farther away from him.  I could not refuse my
+assistance.  I picked up the oar and brought my skiff alongside of
+the boat.  When I handed the oar to the boy the young girl lifted her
+veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of the language which
+
+     'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin."
+
+She was a type of Italian beauty,--a nocturne in flesh and blood, if
+I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice
+which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no
+longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race.
+An hour later I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat,
+white, cold, almost pulseless.  It cost much patient labor to bring
+me back to consciousness.  Had not such extreme efforts been made, it
+seems probable that I should never have waked from a slumber which
+was hardly distinguishable from that of death.
+
+
+Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I
+invite it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause?  The
+habit of these deadly seizures has become a second nature.  The
+strongest and the ablest men have found it impossible to resist the
+impression produced by the most insignificant object, by the most
+harmless sight or sound to which they had a congenital or acquired
+antipathy.  What prospect have I of ever being rid of this long and
+deep-seated infirmity?  I may well ask myself these questions, but my
+answer is that I will never give up the hope that time will yet bring
+its remedy.  It may be that the wild prediction which so haunts me
+shall find itself fulfilled.  I have had of late strange
+premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not help
+giving heed.  But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in
+miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,--assuredly when it
+comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her
+revelations of the future.  Be it so: though I am not superstitious,
+I have a right to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to
+those words of the old zingara with an irresistible feeling that,
+sooner or later, they will prove true.
+
+Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its
+realization?  I have had both waking and sleeping visions within
+these last months and weeks which have taken possession of me and
+filled my life with new thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
+
+Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
+season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a
+distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
+tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
+flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to
+tell it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is
+to be my deliverer, my saviour.
+
+I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
+experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
+disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the
+imminent risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the
+repetition of my former experiences.  I was reminded that unexplained
+sudden deaths were of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion
+is liable to arrest the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or
+bad news,--anything that reaches the deeper nervous centres.  I had
+already died once, as Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more
+than once, died and been resuscitated.  The next time, I might very
+probably fail to get my return ticket after my visit to Hades.  It
+was a rather grim stroke of humor, but I understood its meaning full
+well, and felt the force of its menace.
+
+After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
+strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
+suppressed, crushed out of existence?  Why not as well die in the
+attempt to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous
+movement as in any other way?  I am alone in the world,--alone save
+for my faithful servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human
+race as it were by a single filament.  My father, who was my
+instructor, my companion, my dearest and best friend through all my
+later youth and my earlier manhood, died three years ago and left me
+my own master, with the means of living as might best please my
+fancy.  This season shall decide my fate.  One more experiment, and I
+shall find myself restored to my place among my fellow-beings, or, as
+I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our mortal infirmities are
+past and forgotten.
+
+I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that
+there shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected
+with my memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly.  It has cost
+me an effort to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more
+reconciled to my lot, with all its possibilities, and among these
+possibilities is a gleam of a better future.  I have been told by my
+advisers, some of them wise, deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men,
+that such a life-destiny should be related by the subject of it for
+the instruction of others, and especially for the light it throws on
+certain peculiarities of human character often wrongly interpreted as
+due to moral perversion, when they are in reality the results of
+misdirected or reversed actions in some of the closely connected
+nervous centres.
+
+For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility
+left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me.  I
+have passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it,
+as I have developed from infancy to manhood.  At first it was mere
+blind instinct about which I had no thought, living like other
+infants the life of impressions without language to connect them in
+series.  In my boyhood I began to be deeply conscious of the
+infirmity which separated me from those around me.  In youth began
+that conflict of emotions and impulses with the antagonistic
+influence of which I have already spoken, a conflict which has never
+ceased, but to which I have necessarily become to a certain degree
+accustomed; and against the dangers of which I have learned to guard
+myself habitually.  That is the meaning of my isolation.  You, young
+man,--if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy record,
+--you at least will understand me.  Does not your heart throb, in the
+presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were
+ready to crack" with its own excess of strain?  What if instead of
+throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat
+again?  You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy
+will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know
+what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and
+the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron
+virgin of the Inquisition.  Think what it would be if the grasp were
+tightened so that no breath of air could enter your panting chest!
+
+Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored
+friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her
+kindly smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness?  When
+a pretty child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with
+artless grace and trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do
+you tremble, does life palpitate through your whole being, as when
+the maiden of seventeen meets your enamored sight in the glow of her
+rosebud beauty?  Wonder not, then, if the period of mystic attraction
+for you should be that of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom
+the natural current of the instincts has had its course changed as
+that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of nature, so that the
+impression which is new life to you is death to him.
+
+I am now twenty-five years old.  I have reached the time of life
+which I have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit
+of the sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy.  I can
+assign no good reason for this anticipation.  But in writing this
+paper I feel as if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence.
+There is nothing for me to be ashamed of in the story I have told.
+There is no man living who would not have yielded to the sense of
+instantly impending death which seized upon me under the conditions I
+have mentioned.  Martyrs have gone singing to their flaming shrouds,
+but never a man could hold his breath long enough to kill himself; he
+must have rope or water, or some mechanical help, or nature will make
+him draw in a breath of air, and would make him do so though he knew
+the salvation of the human race would be forfeited by that one gasp.
+
+This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same
+way that I have been.  It probably never will; but for all that,
+there are many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in
+themselves in the direction of my unhappy susceptibility.  Others, to
+whom such weakness seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism
+shaken, if not removed, by the calm, judicial statement of the Report
+drawn up for the Royal Academy.  It will make little difference to me
+whether my story is accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely
+a product of the imagination.  I am but a bird of passage that lights
+on the boughs of different nationalities.  I belong to no flock; my
+home may be among the palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks
+of England, the elms that shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I
+build no nest; to-day I am here, to-morrow on the wing.
+
+If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
+shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
+that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit.  If it is only
+curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to
+let it remain unread until I shall have passed away.  If in his
+judgment it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our
+nature,--the repulsions which play such a formidable part in social
+life, and which must be recognized as the correlatives of the
+affinities that distribute the individuals governed by them in the
+face of impediments which seem to be impossibilities,--then it may be
+freely given to the world.
+
+But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my
+life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be
+illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all
+its saddening features.  Who would not pray that my last gleam of
+light and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?
+
+The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far
+from the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend
+his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered
+for his consideration.
+
+
+THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
+
+Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be
+entertained, excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage
+through pages which he cannot understand without some effort of his
+own, to read the paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon
+it.  If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he
+can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of
+science.  But if he does so leave them he will very probably remain
+sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to
+furnish him with a key.
+
+Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and
+exceptional one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's
+experience will furnish him with its parallel.  But let him look back
+over all his acquaintances, if he has reached middle life, and see if
+he cannot recall more than one who, for some reason or other, shunned
+the society of young women, as if they had a deadly fear of their
+company.  If he remembers any such, he can understand the simple
+statements and natural reflections which are laid before him.
+
+One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
+Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to
+the fate which had fallen upon him.  He did not choose to be pumped
+by the Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns
+of his prying newspaper.  He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest
+mode of avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in
+almost every society into which he might venture.  But he had learned
+to look upon himself very much as he would upon an intimate not
+himself,--upon a different personality.  A young man will naturally
+enough be ashamed of his shyness.  It is something which others
+believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome.  But in
+the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the
+reality and gravity of the long enduring effects of his first
+convulsive terror.  He had accepted the fact as he would have
+accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing.  When he
+was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he told
+them all that he knew about it almost without a sign of emotion.
+Nature was so peremptory with him,--saying in language that had no
+double meaning: "If you violate the condition on which you hold my
+gift of existence I slay you on the spot,"--that he became as
+decisive in his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his
+fate without repining.
+
+Yet it must not be thought for a moment,--it cannot be supposed,--
+that he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the
+coolness of an enforced philosophy.  He bore his burden manfully,
+hard as it was to live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in
+hope.  The thought of throwing it off with his life, as too grievous
+to be borne, was familiar to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as
+unworthy of his manhood.  How he had speculated and dreamed about it
+is plain enough from the paper the reader may remember on Ocean,
+River, and Lake.
+
+With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such
+as may find any interest in them.
+
+
+               ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
+
+                         WITH REMARKS.
+
+Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Bio~
+logical Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.
+
+"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment
+upon will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have
+learned the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light
+upon her laws by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from
+time to time are observed.  We have done with the lusus naturae of
+earlier generations.  We pay little attention to the stories of
+'miracles,' except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands
+of the churches which still hold to them.  Not the less do we meet
+with strange and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would
+have been handled by the clergy and the courts, but today are calmly
+recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge of the laws of
+life can throw upon them.  It must be owned that there are stories
+which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in
+their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes
+leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.
+
+" In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend
+to the candid attention of the Academy.  If one were told that a
+young man, a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in
+apparently perfect health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners,
+could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but
+was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers
+of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added
+that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old
+withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens
+who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener
+would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the
+fable.  Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some
+fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some
+playwright.  It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out.
+A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and
+making love to her grandmother!  This would, of course, be
+overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation
+the plain facts lend themselves too easily.  We will relate the
+leading circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect
+simplicity and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if
+classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but to
+which, if we give it a name, we shall have to apply the term
+Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman."
+
+Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which
+is in all essentials identical with that already laid before the
+reader.
+
+" Such is the case offered to our consideration.  Assuming its
+truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first
+place whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as
+it seems at first sight, or whether it is only the last term of a
+series of cases which in their less formidable aspect are well known
+to us in literature, in the records of science, and even in our
+common experience.
+
+"To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give
+are entirely superfluous.  But there are some whose chief studies
+have been in different directions, and who will not complain if
+certain facts are mentioned which to the expert will seem
+rudimentary, and which hardly require recapitulation to those who are
+familiarly acquainted with the common text-books.
+
+"The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher
+animals, and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to
+a greater or less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the
+system.  If its action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness
+is the immediate consequence; if it is arrested, loss of
+consciousness; if its action is not soon restored, death, of which
+fainting plants the white flag, remains in possession of the system.
+
+How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need
+not go to science to learn, for all human experience and all
+literature are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of
+this relation.  Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry
+represents the entire life, we might almost say.  Not less forcible
+is the language of Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for
+Measure:'
+
+    'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
+     Making it both unable for itself
+     And dispossessing all my other parts
+     Of necessary fitness?'
+
+More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the
+passion of love.  A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called
+to the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some
+cause the physicians who had already seen her were unable to make
+out.  The shrewd old practitioner suspected that love was at the
+bottom of the young lady's malady.  Many relatives and friends of
+both sexes, all of them ready with their sympathy, came to see her.
+The physician sat by her bedside during one of these visits, and in
+an easy, natural way took her hand and placed a finger on her pulse.
+It beat quietly enough until a certain comely young gentleman entered
+the apartment, when it suddenly rose infrequency, and at the same
+moment her hurried breathing, her changing color, pale and flushed by
+turns, betrayed the profound agitation his presence excited.  This
+was enough for the sagacious Greek; love was the disease, the cure of
+which by its like may be claimed as an anticipation of homoeopathy.
+In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta' edition of the works of
+Galen, you may find among the wood-cuts a representation of the
+interesting scene, with the title Amantas Dignotio,--the diagnosis,
+or recognition, of the lover.
+
+"Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them.
+The pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain
+which gives it color.  The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each
+other's hearts beating.  When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot
+herself, and was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,
+
+    'T was partly love and partly fear,
+     And partly 't was a bashful art,
+     That I might rather feel than see
+     The swelling of her heart'
+
+Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or
+felt.  But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ
+treats the lover.
+
+    'Faint heart never won fair lady.'
+
+This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has
+its literal truth.  Many a lover has found his heart sink within
+him,--lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his
+emotion at the sight of the object of his affections.  When Porphyro
+looked upon Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much
+for him:
+
+    'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
+     Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint,
+     She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'
+
+And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story
+'fainted away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at
+Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future
+husband.'
+
+"One who faints is dead if he does not I come to,' and nothing is
+more likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off
+in this way.  Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in
+these and similar trying moments.  The mechanism of its actions
+becomes an interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes,
+and to all who are capable of intense emotions.
+
+"The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air,
+and heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste
+material.  It knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty
+times in a minute, calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload
+its refuse.  Between it and the brain there is the closest relation.
+The emotions, which act upon it as we have seen, govern it by a
+mechanism only of late years thoroughly understood.  This mechanism
+can be made plain enough to the reader who is not afraid to believe
+that he can understand it.
+
+"The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition.
+It is the great central telegraphic station with which many lesser
+centres are in close relation, from which they receive, and to which
+they transmit, their messages.  The heart has its own little brains,
+so to speak,--small collections of nervous substance which govern its
+rhythmical motions under ordinary conditions.  But these lesser
+nervous centres are to a large extent dominated by influences
+transmitted from certain groups of nerve-cells in the brain and its
+immediate dependencies.
+
+"There are two among the special groups of nerve-cells which produce
+directly opposite effects.  One of these has the power of
+accelerating the action of the heart, while the other has the power
+of retarding or arresting this action.  One acts as the spur, the
+other as the bridle.  According as one or the other predominates, the
+action of the heart will be stimulated or restrained.  Among the
+great modern discoveries in physiology is that of the existence of a
+distinct centre of inhibition, as the restraining influence over the
+heart is called.
+
+"The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of
+cowardice and of unsuccessful love.  No man can be brave without
+blood to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the
+German materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus.  The
+fainting lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend
+him her smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks.
+Porphyro got over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and
+Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness:
+but many an officer has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been
+rejected, because the centre of inhibition has got the upper hand of
+the centre of stimulation.
+
+"In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been
+recorded, the most frequent cause has been the disturbed and
+depressing influence of the centre of inhibition.  Fainting at the
+sight of blood is one of the commonest examples of this influence.  A
+single impression, in a very early period of atmospheric existence,--
+perhaps, indirectly, before that period, as was said to have happened
+in the case of James the First of England,--may establish a
+communication between this centre and the heart which will remain
+open ever afterwards.  How does a footpath across a field establish
+itself?  Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call accidental, but
+one after another follows it as if he were guided by a chart on which
+it was laid down.  So it is with this dangerous transit between the
+centre of inhibition and the great organ of life.  If once the path
+is opened by the track of some profound impression, that same
+impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old
+footmarks and follow them.  Habit only makes the path easier to
+traverse, and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant,
+may perpetuate itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of its
+subject.
+
+"The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of
+the effect of inhibition on the heart.
+
+"We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of
+the human race; on the contrary, we do not doubt that there have been
+similar cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been
+the consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report.
+The case most like it is that of Colone Townsend, which is too well
+known to require any lengthened description in this paper.  It is
+enough to recall the main facts.  He could by a voluntary effort
+suspend the action of his heart for a considerable period, during
+which he lay like one dead, pulseless, and without motion.  After a
+time the circulation returned, and he does not seem to have been the
+worse for his dangerous, or seemingly dangerous, experiment.  But in
+his case it was by an act of the will that the heart's action was
+suspended.  In the case before us it is an involuntary impulse
+transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting centre, which arrests
+the cardiac movements.
+
+"What is like to be the further history of the case?
+
+"The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty
+years old.  The chain of nervous actions has become firmly
+established.  It might have been hoped that the changes of
+adolescence would have effected a transformation of the perverted
+instinct.  On the contrary, the whole force of this instinct throws
+itself on the centre of inhibition, instead of quickening the heart-
+beats, and sending the rush of youthful blood with fresh life through
+the entire system to the throbbing finger-tips.
+
+"Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of
+nervous interactions so long established?  We are disposed to think
+that there is a chance of its being broken up.  And we are not afraid
+to say that we suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such
+hold of the patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the
+"spell,' as she called it, is to be dissolved.  She must, in all
+probability, have had a hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth
+before her was a victim, and its cause, and if so, her guess as to
+the probable mode in which the young man would obtain relief from his
+unfortunate condition was the one which would naturally suggest
+itself.
+
+"If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of
+inhibition can be made to change its course, so as to follow its
+natural channel, it will probably keep to that channel ever
+afterwards.  And this will, it is most likely, be effected by some
+sudden, unexpected impression.  If he were drowning, and a young
+woman should rescue him, it is by no means impossible that the change
+in the nervous current we have referred to might be brought about as
+rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the poles in a magnet, which
+is effected in an instant.  But he cannot be expected to throw
+himself into the water just at the right moment when the 'fair lady'
+of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore.  Accident may
+effect the cure which art seems incompetent to perform.  It would not
+be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back to
+consciousness.  But it is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that
+a happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous
+polarity may be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and
+his past terrible experiences be to him like a scarce-remembered
+dream.
+
+"This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine
+the wisest course to be pursued.  The question is not unlike that
+which arises in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the
+neck.  Shall the unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face
+turned far round to the right or the left, or shall an attempt be
+made to replace the dislocated bones?  an attempt which may succeed,
+or may cause instant death.  The patient must be consulted as to
+whether he will take the chance.  The practitioner may be unwilling
+to risk it, if the patient consents.  Each case must be judged on its
+own special grounds.  We cannot think that this young man is doomed
+to perpetual separation from the society of womanhood during the
+period of its bloom and attraction.  But to provoke another seizure
+after his past experiences would be too much like committing suicide.
+We fear that we must trust to the chapter of accidents.  The strange
+malady--for such it is--has become a second nature, and may require
+as energetic a shock to displace it as it did to bring it into
+existence.  Time alone can solve this question, on which depends the
+well-being and, it may be, the existence of a young man every way
+fitted to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his true
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
+
+Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting
+upon them.  He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the
+entire frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which
+Maurice showed in placing these papers at his disposal.  He believed
+that his patient would recover from this illness for which he had
+been taking care of him.  He thought deeply and earnestly of what he
+could do for him after he should have regained his health and
+strength.
+
+There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the
+doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief
+autobiography.  Some one person--some young woman, it must be--had
+produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous
+experiences through which he had passed.  The doctor could not help
+thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to
+him.  Maurice, as she said, turned pale,--he clapped his hand to his
+breast.  He might have done so if be had met her chambermaid, or any
+straggling damsel of the village.  But Euthymia was not a young woman
+to be looked upon with indifference.  She held herself like a queen,
+and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to
+self-reliance, and command of herself as well as others.  One could
+not pass her without being struck with her noble bearing and spirited
+features.  If she had known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon
+her, in that conflict of attraction and uncontrollable dread,--if she
+had known it!  But what, even then, could she have done?  Nothing but
+get away from him as fast as she could.  As it was, it was a long
+time before his agitation subsided, and his heart beat with its
+common force and frequency.
+
+Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between.  But he
+could not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young
+persons could not come together as other young people do in the
+pairing season, and find out whether they cared for and were fitted
+for each other.  He did not pretend to settle this question in his
+own mind, but the thought was a natural one.  And here was a gulf
+between them as deep and wide as that between Lazarus and Dives.
+Would it ever be bridged over?  This thought took possession of the
+doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some
+experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia.  From this
+delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations
+suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading.  He began
+by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence of an
+individual making itself perceived by some channel other than any of
+the five senses.  The study of the natural sciences teaches those who
+are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead the
+way to the discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of the
+universe.  From the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs
+which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very
+long stride if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which
+was the occasion of her having some frog-broth prepared for her, the
+world of to-day might not be in possession of the electric telegraph
+and the light which blazes like the sun at high noon.  A common-
+looking occurrence, one seemingly unimportant, which had hitherto
+passed unnoticed with the ordinary course of things, was the means of
+introducing us to a new and vast realm of closely related phenomena.
+It was like a key that we might have picked up, looking so simple
+that it could hardly fit any lock but one of like simplicity, but
+which should all at once throw back the bolts of the one lock which
+had defied the most ingenious of our complex implements and open our
+way into a hitherto unexplored territory.
+
+It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the
+paralyzing influence.  He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance,
+as he did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous
+disturbance.  A certain proximity was necessary for the influence to
+be felt, as in the case of magnetism and electricity.  An atmosphere
+of danger surrounded every woman he approached during the period when
+her sex exercises its most powerful attractions.  How far did that
+atmosphere extend, and through what channel did it act?
+
+The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found
+in a fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of
+galvanism and its practical applications.  The circumstances
+connected with the very common antipathy to cats were as remarkable
+in many points of view as the similar circumstances in the case of
+Maurice Kirkwood.  The subjects of that antipathy could not tell what
+it was which disturbed their nervous system.  All they knew was that
+a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, oppression, came over them in
+the presence of one of these animals.  He remembered the fact already
+mentioned, that persons sensitive to this impression can tell by
+their feelings if a cat is concealed in the apartment in which they
+may happen to be.  It may be through some emanation.  It may be
+through the medium of some electrical disturbance.  What if the
+nerve-thrills passing through the whole system of the animal
+propagate themselves to a certain distance without any more regard to
+intervening solids than is shown by magnetism?  A sieve lets sand
+pass through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass
+holds fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but
+magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve.
+No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not
+betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the
+walls of a box in which the animal is shut up.  We need not
+disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and
+a not very infrequent one.
+
+If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these
+circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar
+conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific
+influence?  The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his
+friends, a story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the
+distinguished actor, the late Mr. Fechter.  The actor maintained that
+Rachel had no genius as an actress.  It was all Samson's training and
+study, according to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful
+effectiveness on the stage.  But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she
+was full of.  He declared that he was made aware of her presence on
+the stage, when he could not see her or know of her presence
+otherwise, by this magnetic emanation.  The doctor took the story for
+what it was worth.  There might very probably be exaggeration,
+perhaps high imaginative coloring about it, but it was not a whit
+more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as authentic.  He
+continued this train of thought into further developments.  Into this
+series of reflections we will try to follow him.
+
+What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded
+the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them
+like a luminous cloud?  Is it not a recognition of the fact that
+these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a
+visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:
+
+    "Bright effluence of bright essence increate"?
+
+The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the
+existence of its correlative, effluence.  There is no good reason
+that I can see, the doctor said to himself, why among the forces
+which work upon the nervous centres there should not be one which
+acts at various distances from its source.  It may not be visible
+like the "glory" of the painters, it may not be appreciable by any
+one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt by the person reached
+by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,--more powerfully,
+perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to its mode of action.
+
+Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
+unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him,
+just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of
+their presence through some unknown channel?  Is it anything strange
+that the larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a
+consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the
+slighter and feebler one?  Is it strange that this mysterious
+influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the
+period of complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity
+or decadence?  On the contrary, it seems to be in accordance with all
+the analogies of nature,--analogies too often cruel in the sentence
+they pass upon the human female.
+
+Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind
+was this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he
+felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the
+happiness or suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die
+without telling their secret:
+
+How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they
+never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which
+draws man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes,
+in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in
+them than in others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of
+which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the
+possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending
+upon it are left unrealized!  Think what numbers of young men in
+Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy.  Think how
+many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young
+woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a
+companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure,
+so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of
+expression.  Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the
+hopes and terrors of lovers.  Once let loose a strong impulse on the
+centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and
+batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the ball-
+room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five
+minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love.
+
+Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I
+have seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I
+have seen the malady many times.  Only one word has stood between
+many a pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that
+word has got as far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not,
+could not, shape that little word.  All young women are not like
+Coleridge's Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his
+difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer.  So the
+wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has
+just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the
+desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.
+
+Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key
+that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most
+easily of all, the gate of fear.  How terrible is the one fact of
+beauty!--not only the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the
+topless towers of Ilium "for the smile of Helen, and fired the
+palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs
+up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent
+for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides.  Paint Beauty with her
+foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her.
+
+The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and
+pictorial imagery.  Drifting along from thought to thought, he
+reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of
+Maurice Kirkwood's story, if it came before the public.
+
+What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the
+village, to be sure!  What scoffing, what ridicule, what
+embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story!
+If the Interviewer got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and
+Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next issue!
+The young fellows' of the place would be disposed to make fun of the
+whole matter.  The young girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what
+would happen when the story got about among them.  "The Sachem" of
+the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome
+so far as the glimpses they had got of him went,--must needs be an
+object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing,
+suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,--poor fellow!
+Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber; bunches
+of flowers with(dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some
+three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others "criss-
+crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that the
+patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed.
+If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle
+to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had
+his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the
+risk; for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors,
+let us hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity
+and love of conquest.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
+
+The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
+profound prostration.  The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger
+of any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his
+head from the pillow.  But his mind was gradually recovering its
+balance, and he was able to hold some conversation with those about
+him.  His faithful Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and
+watching with him that the village children had to take a second look
+at his face when they passed him to make sure that it was indeed
+their old friend and no other.  But as his master advanced towards
+convalescence and the doctor assured him that he was going in all
+probability to get well, Paolo's face began to recover something of
+its old look and expression, and once more his pockets filled
+themselves with comfits for his little circle of worshipping three
+and four year old followers.
+
+How is Mr. Kirkwood?" was the question with which he was always
+greeted.  In the worst periods of the fever be rarely left his
+master.  When he did, and the question was put to him, he would shake
+his head sadly, sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and
+sobs and faltering words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a
+stalwart man as he was, such a man as soldiers are made of in the
+great Continental armies.
+
+"He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be
+no better," and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a
+passionate burst of lamentation.  But now that he began to feel easy
+about his master, his ready optimism declared itself no less
+transparently.
+
+"He better every day now.  He get well in few weeks, sure.  You see
+him on hoss in little while."  The kind-hearted creature's life was
+bound up in that of his "master," as he loved to call him, in
+sovereign disregard of the comments of the natives, who held
+themselves too high for any such recognition of another as their
+better.  They could not understand how he, so much their superior in
+bodily presence, in air and manner, could speak of the man who
+employed him in any other way than as "Kirkwood," without even
+demeaning himself so far as to prefix a "Mr."  to it.  But "my
+master" Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men
+are born free and equal.  And never was a servant more devoted to a
+master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger.
+Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber
+and getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which
+he was in so much need.  It worried him to see his servant returning
+after too short an absence.  The attendant who had helped him in the
+care of the patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out
+of the house by the urgency of his master's command that he should
+take plenty of exercise in the open air.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although
+the force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to
+which he had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required
+great precautions to be taken.  He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to
+such a degree that he had to be cared for very much as a child is
+tended.  Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could
+hold some conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about
+him.  The doctor waited for the right moment to make mention of the
+manuscript which Maurice had submitted to him.  Up to this time,
+although it had been alluded to and the doctor had told him of the
+intense interest with which he had read it, he had never ventured to
+make it the subject of any long talk, such as would be liable to
+fatigue his patient.  But now he thought the time had come.
+
+"I have been thinking," the doctor said, "of the singular seizures to
+which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think
+about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable
+of receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts
+about your history.  And in the first place, will you allow me to ask
+what led you to this particular place?  It is so much less known to
+the public at large than many other resorts that we naturally ask,
+What brings this or that new visitor among us?  We have no ill-
+tasting, natural spring of bad water to be analyzed by the state
+chemist and proclaimed as a specific.  We have no great gambling-
+houses, no racecourse (except that fox boats on the lake); we have no
+coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any kind, so we ask, What
+brings this or that stranger here?  And I think I may venture to ask
+you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it
+was accident that determined your coming to this place."
+
+"Certainly, doctor," Maurice answered, "I will tell you with great
+pleasure.  Last year I passed on the border of a great river.  The
+year before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean.  I
+wanted this year to be by a lake.  You heard the paper read at the
+meeting of your society, or at least you heard of it,--for such
+matters are always talked over in a village like this.  You can judge
+by that paper, or could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind
+in which I came here.  I was tired of the sullen indifference of the
+ocean and the babbling egotism of the river, always hurrying along on
+its own private business.  I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large,
+tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in particular to do, and
+would leave me to myself and my thoughts.  I had read somewhere about
+the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal landlord and
+motherly landlady and old-fashioned household, and that, though it
+was no longer open as a tavern, I could find a resting-place there
+early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about me
+for a quiet place in which I might pass my summer.  I have found this
+a pleasant residence.  By being up early and out late I have kept
+myself mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of
+life.  The season has gone by too swiftly for me since my dream has
+become a vision."
+
+The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three
+fingers on his pulse.  As he spoke these last words he noticed that
+the pulse fluttered a little,--beat irregularly a few times;
+intermitted; became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter
+than the pallid bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.
+
+"No more talk, now," he said.  "You are too tired to be using your
+voice.  I will hear all the rest another time."
+
+The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point.  What did
+he mean by saying that his dream had become a vision?  This is what
+the doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to
+know.  But his hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him
+unmistakably that the heart had taken the alarm and was losing its
+energy under the depressing nervous influence.  Presently, however,
+it recovered its natural force and rhythm, and a faint flush came
+back to the pale cheek.  The doctor remembered the story of Galen,
+and the young maiden whose complaint had puzzled the physicians.
+
+The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into
+conversation.
+
+"You said something about a dream of yours which had become a
+vision," said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as
+before.  He felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a
+little, stop, then begin again, growing fuller in its beat.  The
+heart had felt the pull of the bridle, but the spur had roused it to
+swift reaction.
+
+"You know the story of my past life, doctor," Maurice answered; "and,
+I will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my
+dreams.  You remember the boat-race?  I watched it from a distance,
+but I held a powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole
+crew of the young ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the
+features, the figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers.  I
+saw the little coxswain fling her bouquet in the track of the other
+boat,--you remember how the race was lost and won,--but I saw one
+face among those young girls which drew me away from all the rest.
+It was that of the young lady who pulled the bow oar, the captain of
+the boat's crew.  I have since learned her name, you know it well,--I
+need not name her.  Since that day I have had many distant glimpses
+of her; and once I met her so squarely that the deadly sensation came
+over me, and I felt that in another moment I should fall senseless at
+her feet.  But she passed on her way and I on mine, and the spasm
+which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I was as well as
+before.  You know that young lady, doctor?"
+
+"I do; and she is a very noble creature.  You are not the first young
+man who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia
+Tower.  And she is well worth knowing more intimately."
+
+The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early
+days, her character, her accomplishments.  To all this he listened
+devoutly, and when the doctor left him he said to himself,
+"I will see her and speak with her, if it costs me my life."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+EUTHYMIA.
+
+"The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show
+of her gymnastic accomplishments.  Her feats, which were so much
+admired, were only her natural exercise.  Gradually the dumb-bells
+others used became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too
+short, the clubs she exercised with seemed as if they were made of
+cork instead of being heavy wood, and all the tests and meters of
+strength and agility had been strained beyond the standards which the
+records of the school had marked as their historic maxima.  It was
+not her fault that she broke a dynamometer one day; she apologized
+for it, but the teacher said he wished he could have a dozen broken
+every year in the same way.  The consciousness of her bodily strength
+had made her very careful in her movements.  The pressure of her hand
+was never too hard for the tenderest little maiden whose palm was
+against her own.  So far from priding herself on her special gifts,
+she was disposed to be ashamed of them.  There were times and places
+in which she could give full play to her muscles without fear or
+reproach.  She had her special costume for the boat and for the
+woods.  She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now and then for the
+sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest where a hawk,
+or it may be an eagle, was raising her little brood of air-pirates.
+
+There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as an
+unsafe exposure.  One sometimes met doubtful characters about the
+neighborhood, and stories were--told of occurrences which might well
+frighten a young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself
+alone in the wild solitudes which surrounded the little village..
+Those who knew Euthymia thought her quite equal to taking care of
+herself.  Her very look was enough to ensure the respect of any
+vagabond who might cross her path, and if matters came to the worst
+she would prove as dangerous as a panther.
+
+But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble
+specimen of true womanhood.  Health, beauty, strength, were fine
+qualities, and in all these she was rich.  She enjoyed all her
+natural gifts, and thought little about them.  Unwillingly, but over-
+persuaded by some of her friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to
+be modelled.  The artists who saw the cast wondered if it would be
+possible to get the bust of the maiden from whom it was taken.
+Nobody would have dared to suggest such an idea to her except Lurida.
+For Lurida sex was a trifling accident, to be disregarded not only in
+the interests of humanity, but for the sake of art.
+
+"It is a shame," she said to Euthymia, "that you will not let your
+exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in marble.  You have no right
+to withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow-
+creatures.  Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents
+the divine idea!  You belong to your race, and not to yourself,--at
+least, your beauty is a gift not to be considered as a piece of
+private property.  Look at the so-called Venus of Milo.  Do you
+suppose the noble woman who was the original of that divinely chaste
+statue felt any scruple about allowing the sculptor to reproduce her
+pure, unblemished perfections?"
+
+Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend.  She
+listened to her eloquent discourse, but she could not help blushing,
+used as she was to Lurida's audacities.  "The Terror's" brain had run
+away with a large share of the blood which ought to have gone to the
+nourishment of her general system.  She could not help admiring,
+almost worshipping, a companion whose being was rich in the womanly
+developments with which nature had so economically endowed herself.
+An impoverished organization carries with it certain neutral
+qualities which make its subject appear, in the presence of complete
+manhood and womanhood, like a deaf-mute among speaking persons.  The
+deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek at Lurida's suggestion
+was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed expression.  There
+was a range of sensibilities of which Lurida knew far less than she
+did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed her vital
+forces.  She was startled to see what an effect her proposal had
+produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing, but there was a flame
+in her eyes which she had hardly ever seen before.
+
+"Is this only your own suggestion?" Euthymia said, "or has some one
+been putting the idea into your head?"  The truth was that she had
+happened to meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was
+offended by the long, searching stare with which that individual had
+honored her.  It occurred to her that he, or some such visitor to the
+place, might have spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person
+who had repeated what was said to Lurida, as a good subject for the
+art of the sculptor, and she felt all her maiden sensibilities
+offended by the proposition.  Lurida could not understand her
+excitement, but she was startled by it.  Natures which are
+complementary of each other are liable to these accidental collisions
+of feeling.  They get along very well together, none the worse for
+their differences, until all at once the tender spot of one or the
+other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness on the part of
+the aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the explosion
+explains the situation altogether too emphatically.  Such scenes did
+not frequently occur between the two friends, and this little flurry
+was soon over; but it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia Tower
+was not of that class of self-conscious beauties who would be ready
+to dispute the empire of the Venus of Milo on her own ground, in
+defences as scanty and insufficient as those of the marble divinity.
+
+Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and
+in the long vacations, near enough to find out that she was anything
+but easy to make love to.  She fairly frightened more than one rash
+youth who was disposed to be too sentimental in her company.  They
+overdid flattery, which she was used to and tolerated, but which
+cheapened the admirer in her estimation, and now and then betrayed
+her into an expression which made him aware of the fact, and was a
+discouragement to aggressive amiability.  The real difficulty was
+that not one of her adorers had ever greatly interested her.  It
+could not be that nature had made her insensible.  It must have been
+because the man who was made for her had never yet shown himself.
+She was not easy to please, that was certain; and she was one of
+those young women who will not accept as a lover one who but half
+pleases them.  She could not pick up the first stick that fell in her
+way and take it to shape her ideal out of.  Many of the good people
+of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be married.
+
+"There 's nothing good enough for her in this village," said the old
+landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.
+
+"She must wait till a prince comes along," the old landlady said in
+reply.  "She'd make as pretty a queen as any of them that's born to
+it.  Wouldn't she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and
+di'monds a glitterin' all over her!  D' you remember how handsome she
+looked in the tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas Society?
+She had on an old dress of her grandma's,--they don't make anything.
+half so handsome nowadays,--and she was just as pretty as a pictur'.
+But what's the use of good looks if they scare away folks?  The young
+fellows think that such a handsome girl as that would cost ten times
+as much to keep as a plain one.  She must be dressed up like an
+empress,--so they seem to think.  It ain't so with Euthymy: she'd
+look like a great lady dressed anyhow, and she has n't got any more
+notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood before a glass to
+look at herself."
+
+In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions
+were entertained of Miss Euthymia.  The fresh-water fisherman
+represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he
+belonged.  'I tell ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure,
+whose chief occupation was to watch the coming and going of the
+visitors to Arrowhead Village,--"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to
+put up with any o' them slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin'
+raound to look at her every Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'.
+It's one o' them big gents from Boston or New York that'll step up
+an' kerry her off."
+
+In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of
+Euthymia than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance.  The
+ideals of young women cost them many and great disappointments, but
+they save them very often from those lifelong companionships which
+accident is constantly trying to force upon them, in spite of their
+obvious unfitness.  The higher the ideal, the less likely is the
+commonplace neighbor who has the great advantage of easy access, or
+the boarding-house acquaintance who can profit by those vacant hours
+when the least interesting of visitors is better than absolute
+loneliness,--the less likely are these undesirable personages to be
+endured, pitied, and, if not embraced, accepted, for want of
+something better.  Euthymia found so much pleasure in the
+intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence and
+reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had
+been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in
+an abstract sort of way.  Beneath her abstractions there was a
+capacity of loving which might have been inferred from the expression
+of her features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her
+voice, all of which were full of the language which belongs to
+susceptible natures.  How many women never say to themselves that
+they were born to love, until all at once the discovery opens upon
+them, as the sense that he was born a painter is said to have dawned
+suddenly upon Correggio!
+
+Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
+thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers.
+She was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or
+even a bunch of flowers.  She knew that he was receiving abounding
+tokens of kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a
+certain inward feeling restrained her from joining in these
+demonstrations.  If he had been suffering from some deadly and
+contagious malady she would have risked her life to help him, without
+a thought that there was any wonderful heroism in such self-devotion.
+Her friend Lurida might have been capable of the same sacrifice, but
+it would be after reasoning with herself as to the obligations which
+her sense of human rights and duties laid upon her, and fortifying
+her courage with the memory of noble deeds recorded of women in
+ancient and modern history.  With Euthymia the primary human
+instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection about them.
+All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this forlorn
+stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of giving
+any complete expression to them.  She thought of Mungo Park in the
+African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied
+him, but had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him.
+How near were these two human creatures, each needing the other!  How
+near in bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier
+seemingly impassable between them !
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
+
+These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young
+people every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases.  Not only
+are they liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental
+complications which may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after
+convalescence seems to be established, relapses occur which are more
+serious than the disease had appeared to be in its previous course.
+One morning Dr. Butts found Maurice worse instead of better, as he
+had hoped and expected to find him.  Weak as he was, there was every
+reason to fear the issue of this return of his threatening symptoms.
+There was not much to do besides keeping up the little strength which
+still remained.  It was all needed.
+
+Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as
+much as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and
+taking what we call his "rest"?  More than a thousand times an hour,
+between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he
+has to lift the bars of the cage in which his breathing organs are
+confined, to save himself from asphyxia.  Rest!  There is no rest
+until the last long sigh tells those who look upon the dying that the
+ceaseless daily task, to rest from which is death, is at last
+finished.  We are all galley-slaves, pulling at the levers of
+respiration,--which, rising and falling like so many oars, drive us
+across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore to another.  No!
+Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these four and
+twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life long
+
+The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
+relapse.  It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
+source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
+keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm.  He
+determined to remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure
+of pure air, and where he himself could give more constant attention
+to his patient during this critical period of his disease.  It was a
+risk to take, but he could be carried on a litter by careful men, and
+remain wholly passive during the removal.  Maurice signified his
+assent, as he could hardly help doing,--for the doctor's suggestion
+took pretty nearly the form of a command.  He thought it a matter of
+life and death, and was gently urgent for his patient's immediate
+change of residence.  The doctor insisted on having Maurice's books
+and other movable articles carried to his own house, so that he
+should be surrounded by familiar sights, and not worry himself about
+what might happen to objects which he valued, if they were left
+behind him.
+
+All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything
+was ready for the transfer of the patient to the house of the
+hospitable physician.  Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the
+arrangement of Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master.
+The nurse in attendance, a trustworthy man enough in the main,
+finding his patient in a tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a
+little fresh air.  While he was at the door he heard a shouting which
+excited his curiosity, and he followed the sound until he found
+himself at the border of the lake.  It was nothing very wonderful
+which had caused the shouting.  A Newfoundland dog had been showing
+off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers were betting as to
+the time it would take him to bring back to his master the various
+floating objects which had been thrown as far from the shore as
+possible.  He watched the dog a few minutes, when his attention was
+drawn to a light wherry, pulled by one young lady and steered by
+another.  It was making for the shore, which it would soon reach.
+The attendant remembered all at once, that he had left his charge,
+and just before the boat came to land he turned and hurried back to
+the patient.  Exactly how long he had been absent he could not have
+said,--perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps longer; the time
+appeared short to him, wearied with long sitting and watching.
+
+It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was
+not in the least needed.  The patient was lying perfectly quiet, and
+to all appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone.  It was
+such a comfort to look at something besides the worn features of a
+sick man, to hear something besides his labored breathing and faint,
+half-whispered words, that the temptation to indulge in these
+luxuries for a few minutes had proved irresistible.
+
+Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the
+absence of the nurse.  He very soon fell into a dream, which began
+quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which
+dreams are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious,
+distressing, terrifying.  His earlier and later experiences came up
+before him, fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as
+reality.  He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long,
+narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a
+large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into
+the beams and rafters of some old building.  How close the air was in
+the stifling passage through which he was crawling!  The scene
+changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate
+effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle
+ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot
+to slip or the icicle to break.  How thin the air seemed, how
+desperately hard to breathe!  He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may
+be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well as
+one of the great trials in his mountain ascents.  No, it was not Mont
+Blanc,--it was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits; it was Hecla
+that he was climbing
+
+The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he
+was choking with its dense fumes; he heard the flames roaring around
+him, he felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry,
+and awoke.
+
+The room was full of smoke.  He was gasping for breath, strangling in
+the smothering oven which his chamber had become.
+
+The house was on fire!
+
+He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in
+a whisper.  He made a desperate effort, and rose so as to sit up in
+the bed for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he
+sank back upon his pillow, helpless.  He felt that his hour had come,
+for he could not live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was left
+alone.  He could hear the crackle of fire as the flame crept along
+from one partition to another.  It was a cruel fate to be left to
+perish in that way,--the fate that many a martyr had had to face,--to
+be first strangled and then burned.  Death had not the terror for him
+that it has for most young persons.  He was accustomed to thinking of
+it calmly, sometimes wistfully, even to such a degree that the
+thought of self-destruction had come upon him as a temptation.  But
+here was death in an unexpected and appalling shape.  He did not know
+before how much he cared to live.  All his old recollections came
+before him as it were in one long, vivid flash.  The closed vista of
+memory opened to its far horizon-line, and past and present were
+pictured in a single instant of clear vision.  The dread moment which
+had blighted his life returned in all its terror.  He felt the
+convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,--the rush
+of air,--the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which
+he was precipitated.  One after another those paralyzing seizures
+which had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to
+repeat themselves, as real as at the moment of their occurrence.  The
+pictures passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared
+almost as if simultaneous.  The vision of the "inward eye " was so
+intensified in this moment of peril that an instant was like an hour
+of common existence.  Those who have been very near drowning know
+well what this description means.  The development of a photograph
+may not explain it, but it illustrates the curious and familiar fact
+of the revived recollections of the drowning man's experience.  The
+sensitive plate has taken one look at a scene, and remembers it all,
+
+
+Every little circumstance is there,--the hoof in air, the wing in
+flight, the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks.  All there, but
+invisible; potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if
+not existing at all.  A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene
+comes out in all its perfection of detail.  In those supreme moments
+when death stares a man suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted
+emotion floods the undeveloped pictures of vanished years, stored
+away in the memory, the vast panorama of a lifetime, and in one swift
+instant the past comes out as vividly as if it were again the
+present.  So it was at this moment with the sick man, as he lay
+helpless and felt that he was left to die.  For he saw no hope of
+relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the room; the flames
+were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it was
+all over with him.
+
+His past life had flashed before him.  Then all at once rose the
+thought of his future,--of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes
+which he had cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be
+lifted from him.  There was something, then, to be lived for,
+something!  There was a new life, it might be, in store for him, and
+such a new life!  He thought of all he was losing.  Oh, could he but
+have lived to know the meaning of love!  And the passionate desire of
+life came over him,--not the dread of death, but the longing for what
+the future might yet have of happiness for him.
+
+All this took place in the course of a very few moments.  Dreams and
+visions have little to do with measured time, and ten minutes,
+possibly fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the
+beginning of those nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested
+by the suffocating air he was breathing.
+
+What had happened?  In the confusion of moving books and other
+articles to the doctor's house, doors and windows had been forgotten.
+Among the rest a window opening into the cellar, where some old
+furniture had been left by a former occupant, had been left unclosed.
+One of the lazy natives, who had lounged by the house smoking a bad
+cigar, had thrown the burning stump in at this open window.  He had
+no particular intention of doing mischief, but he had that
+indifference to consequences which is the next step above the
+inclination to crime.  The burning stump happened to fall among the
+straw of an old mattress which had been ripped open.  The smoker went
+his way without looking behind him, and it so chanced that no other
+person passed the house for some time.  Presently the straw was in a
+blaze, and from this the fire extended to the furniture, to the
+stairway leading up from the cellar, and was working its way along
+the entry under the stairs leading up to the apartment where Maurice
+was lying.
+
+The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such
+a mass of combustibles,--loose straw from the mattress, dry old
+furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and
+shrinking for a score or two of years.  The whole house was, in the
+common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and
+would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour.  And there was
+this unfortunate deserted sick man lying between life and death,
+beyond all help unless some unexpected assistance should come to his
+rescue.
+
+As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was
+horror-struck to see dense volumes of smoke pouring out of the lower
+windows.  It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows,
+also, and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward
+along the side of the house.  The man shrieked Fire!  Fire!  with all
+his might, and rushed to the door of the building to make his way to
+Maurice's room and save him.  He penetrated but a short distance
+when, blinded and choking with the smoke, he rushed headlong down the
+stairs with a cry of despair that roused every man, woman, and child
+within reach of a human voice.  Out they came from their houses in
+every quarter of the village.  The shout of Fire!  Fire!  was the
+chief aid lent by many of the young and old.  Some caught up pails
+and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling them; the hastier
+snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer the burning
+building.
+
+Is the sick man moved?
+
+This was the awful question first asked,--for in the little village
+all knew that Maurice was about being transferred to the doctor's
+house.  The attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where
+he had left him, and gasped out,
+
+"He is there!"
+
+A ladder!  A ladder!  was the general cry, and men and boys rushed
+off in search of one.  But a single minute was an age now, and there
+was no ladder to be had without a delay of many minutes.  The sick
+man was going to be swallowed up in the flames before it could
+possibly arrive.  Some were going for a blanket or a coverlet, in the
+hope that the young man might have strength enough to leap from the
+window and be safely caught in it.  The attendant shook his head, and
+said faintly,
+
+"He cannot move from his bed."
+
+One of the visitors at the village,--a millionaire, it was said,--a
+kind-hearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken tones:
+
+"A thousand dollars to the man that will bring him from his chamber!"
+
+The fresh-water fisherman muttered, "I should like to save the man
+and to see the money, but it ain't a thaousan' dollars, nor ten
+thaousan' dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,--or
+even chokin' to death, anyhaow."
+
+The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village,
+recent or old, shook his head.
+
+"The stairs have been shored up," he said, "and when the fists that
+holds 'em up goes, down they'll come.  It ain't safe for no man to go
+over them stairs.  Hurry along your ladder,--that's your only
+chance."
+
+All was wild confusion around the burning house.  The ladder they had
+gone for was missing from its case,--a neighbor had carried it off
+for the workmen who were shingling his roof.  It would never get
+there in time.  There was a fire-engine, but it was nearly half a
+mile from the lakeside settlement.  Some were throwing on water in an
+aimless, useless way; one was sending a thin stream through a garden
+syringe: it seemed like doing something, at least.  But all hope of
+saving Maurice was fast giving way, so rapid was the progress of the
+flames, so thick the cloud of smoke that filled the house and poured
+from the windows.  Nothing was heard but confused cries, shrieks of
+women, all sorts of orders to do this and that, no one knowing what
+was to be done.  The ladder!  The ladder! Five minutes more and it
+will be too late!
+
+In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had
+stopped his work of arranging Maurice's books in the same way as that
+in which they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the
+direction of the sound, little thinking that his master was lying
+helpless in the burning house.  "Some chimney afire," he said to
+himself; but he would go and take a look, at any rate.
+
+Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending
+death, two young women, in boating dresses of decidedly Bloomerish
+aspect, had suddenly joined the throng.  "The Wonder" and "The
+Terror" of their school-days--Miss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida
+Vincent had just come from the shore, where they had left their
+wherry.  A few hurried words told them the fearful story.  Maurice
+Kirkwood was lying in the chamber to which every eye was turned,
+unable to move, doomed to a dreadful death.  All that could be hoped
+was that he would perish by suffocation rather than by the flames,
+which would soon be upon him.  The man who had attended him had just
+tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back out of the door,
+almost strangled by the smoke.  A thousand dollars had been offered
+to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had dared to
+make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the
+smoke did not blind and smother the man who passed them before they
+fell.
+
+The two young women looked each other in the face for one swift
+moment.
+
+"How can he be reached? " asked Lurida.  "Is there nobody that will
+venture his life to save a brother like that?"
+
+"I will venture mine," said Euthymia.
+
+"No!  no!" shrieked Lurida,--"not you! not you !  It is a man's work,
+not yours!  You shall not go!  Poor Lurida had forgotten all her
+theories in this supreme moment.  But Euthymia was not to be held
+back.  Taking a handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail
+of water and bound it about her head.  Then she took several deep
+breaths of air, and filled her lungs as full as they would hold.  She
+knew she must not take a single breath in the choking atmosphere if
+she could possibly help it, and Euthymia was noted for her power of
+staying under water so long that more than once those who saw her
+dive thought she would never come up again.  So rapid were her
+movements that they paralyzed the bystanders, who would forcibly have
+prevented her from carrying out her purpose.  Her imperious
+determination was not to be resisted.  And so Euthymia, a willing
+martyr, if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within the
+veil that hid the sufferer.
+
+Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground.  She was
+the first, but not the only one, of her sex that fainted as Euthymia
+disappeared in the smoke of the burning building.  Even the rector
+grew very white in the face,--so white that one of his vestry-men
+begged him to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of water on
+his forehead, to his great disgust and manifest advantage.  The old
+landlady was crying and moaning, and her husband was wiping his eyes
+and shaking his head sadly.
+
+"She will nevar come out alive," he said solemnly.
+
+"Nor dead, neither," added the carpenter.  "Ther' won't be nothing
+left of neither of 'em but ashes."  And the carpenter hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a
+"hangkercher,"--it had served to carry bait that morning,--and was
+making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running
+down his cheeks.  The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with
+these more quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations,
+coming alike from old and young.
+
+All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a
+tableau.  The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness, and before
+they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or
+seemed lost.  They felt that they should never look again on either
+of those young faces.
+
+The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by
+habit, had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the
+funeral sermon.  The first that occurred to him was this,--vaguely,
+of course, in the background of consciousness:
+
+"Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the
+fire."
+
+The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective
+disposition.  He had always been opposed to cremation, and here was a
+funeral pile blazing before his eyes.  He, too, had his human
+sympathies, but in the distance his imagination pictured the final
+ceremony, and how he himself should figure in a spectacle where the
+usual centre piece of attraction would be wanting,--perhaps his own
+services uncalled for.
+
+Blame him not, you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears
+of mourners.  The string of self-interest answers with its chord to
+every sound; it vibrates with the funeral-bell, it finds itself
+trembling to the wail of the De Profundis.  Not always,--not always;
+let us not be cynical in our judgments, but common human nature, we
+may safely say, is subject to those secondary vibrations under the
+most solemn and soul-subduing influences.
+
+It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are
+contemplating in delaying it by the description of little
+circumstances and individual thoughts and feelings.  But linger as we
+may, we cannot compress into a chapter--we could not crowd into a
+volume--all that passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of
+the awe-struck company which was gathered about the scene of danger
+and of terror.  We are dealing with an impossibility: consciousness
+is a surface; narrative is a line.
+
+Maurice had given himself up for lost.  His breathing was becoming
+every moment more difficult, and he felt that his strength could hold
+out but a few minutes longer.
+
+"Robert!" he called in faint accents.  But the attendant was not
+there to answer.
+
+"Paolo!  Paolo!" But the faithful servant, who would have given his
+life for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd
+was gathered.
+
+"Oh, for a breath of air!  Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed!
+Too late!  Too late!" he gasped, with what might have seemed his
+dying expiration.
+
+"Not too late!" The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as
+if it had come down to him from heaven.
+
+In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the
+arms of--a woman!
+
+Out of the stifling chamber,--over the burning stairs,--close by the
+tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,--out into
+the open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as
+if he had been a babe, in the strong arms of "The Wonder" of the
+gymnasium, the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the
+use she was to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl
+accomplishments.
+
+Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers!  It was a sound
+that none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear
+again, unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a
+sinking vessel.  Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their
+emotion, who had stood in white despair as they thought of these two
+young lives soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern
+men--the old sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron
+tradesmen of the city counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it
+was like a convulsion that overcame natures unused to those deeper
+emotions which many who are capable of experiencing die without ever
+knowing.
+
+This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared
+at the same moment.
+
+As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his
+eyes opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost
+supernatural lucidity.  Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was
+still supporting him.  His head was resting on her bosom.  Through
+his awakening senses stole the murmurs of the living cradle which
+rocked him with the wavelike movements of respiration, the soft
+susurrus of the air that entered with every breath, the double beat
+of the heart which throbbed close to his ear.  And every sense, and
+every instinct, and every reviving pulse told him in language like a
+revelation from another world that a woman's arms were around
+him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace had
+brought him.
+
+She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the
+doctor made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp
+command:--
+
+"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said.  "Wait until the litter
+comes.  Any sudden movement might be dangerous.  Has anybody a brandy
+flask about him?"
+
+One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather
+awkward, but did not come forward.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.
+
+"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old
+Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any
+help.  I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n'
+chilled."
+
+So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word ,Sarsaparilla
+stamped on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more
+of the specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures
+which happen to persons of his calling.
+
+The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the
+aid of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment.  So poor
+Paolo, in an agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as
+possible, and had to content himself with asking all sorts of
+questions and repeating all the prayers he could think of to Our Lady
+and to his holy namesake the Apostle.
+
+The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully.
+"Take a few drops of this cordial," he said, as he held it to his
+patient's lips.  "Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring.  I
+will watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved.  The litter is
+near by, waiting."  Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color.  The
+"old Medford " knew its business.  It had knocked over its tens of
+thousands; it had its redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor
+fellow now and then.  It did this for Maurice very effectively.  When
+he seemed somewhat restored, the doctor had the litter brought to his
+side, and Euthymia softly resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo
+and the attendant Robert lifted with the aid of the doctor, who
+walked by the patient as he was borne to the home where Mrs. Butts
+had made all ready for his reception.
+
+As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary
+duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old
+woman over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her
+back from her long fainting fit.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE INEVITABLE.
+
+Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as
+elsewhere?  It could not seem strange to the good people of that
+place and their visitors that these two young persons, brought
+together under circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of
+which the human soul is capable, should become attached to each
+other.  But the bond between them was stronger than any knew, except
+the good doctor, who had learned the great secret of Maurice's life.
+For the first time since his infancy he had fully felt the charm
+which the immediate presence of youthful womanhood carries with it.
+He could hardly believe the fact when he found himself no longer the
+subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had had many and
+threatening experiences.
+
+It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
+possibly do it.  Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state
+of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence.
+Only by what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to
+suffocation and the mental anguish through which he had passed.  It
+was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young
+woman to whom he owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the
+revolution in his nervous system which would be the beginning of a
+new existence, it would be of far more value as a restorative agency
+than any or all of the drugs in the pharmacopoeia.  He told this to
+Euthymia, and explained the matter to her parents and friends.  She
+must go with him on some of his visits.  Her mother should go with
+her, or her sister; but this was a case of life and death, and no
+maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.
+
+The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a
+scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of
+the old edition of Galen.  The doctor was perhaps the most agitated
+of the little group.  He went before the others, took his seat by the
+bedside, and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse.
+As Euthymia entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant
+as if with a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and
+strong, comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful
+stimulus.  Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to
+disguise its difficulty.
+
+"Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, and
+handed him a white chrysanthemum.  He took it from her hand, and
+before she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a
+gentle constraint.  What could she do?  Here was the young man whose
+life she had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in
+danger from the disease which had almost worn out his powers of
+resistance.
+
+"Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side," said the doctor.  "He wants to
+thank you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death
+which seemed inevitable."
+
+Not many words could Maurice command.  He was weak enough for womanly
+tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with
+the dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
+
+The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens--it; it
+lets the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken
+bed.  The tyrannous habit was broken.  The prophecy of the gitana had
+verified itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman
+bad conquered and abolished.
+
+The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from
+the time of his restoration to his natural conditions.  His
+convalescence was very slow and gradual, but no further accident
+interrupted its even progress.  The season was over, the summer
+visitors had left Arrowhead Village; the chrysanthemums were going
+out of flower, the frosts had come, and Maurice was still beneath the
+roof of the kind physician.  The relation between him and his
+preserver was so entirely apart from all common acquaintances and
+friendships that no ordinary rules could apply to it.  Euthymia
+visited him often during the period of his extreme prostration.
+
+"You must come every day," the doctor said.  "He gains with every
+visit you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day."  So
+she came and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her
+company in his presence.  He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed;
+and at last Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to
+walk about the room.  She was startled.  She had thought of herself
+as a kind of nurse, but the young gentleman could hardly be said to
+need a nurse any longer.  She had scruples about making any further
+visits.  She asked Lurida what she thought about it.
+
+"Think about it?" said Lurida.  " Why should n't you go to see a
+brother as well as a sister, I should like to know?  If you are
+afraid to go to see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate.
+If you would rather have me go than go yourself, I will do it, and
+let people talk just as much as they want to.  Shall I go instead of
+you?"
+
+Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
+patient.  The doctor had told her he thought there were special
+reasons for her own course in coming daily to see him.  "I am
+afraid," she said, " you are too bright to be safe for him in his
+weak state.  Your mind is such a stimulating one, you know.  A dull
+sort of person like myself is better for him just now.  I will
+continue visiting him as long as the doctor says it is important that
+I should; but you must defend me, Lurida,--I know you can explain it
+all so that people will not blame me."
+
+Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating head-
+voice would be in a convalescent's chamber.  She knew how that active
+mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when what he
+wanted was rest of every faculty.  Were not these good and sufficient
+reasons for her decision?  What others could there be?
+
+So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that
+she was continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to
+look too well to be called an invalid.  It was a dangerous condition
+of affairs, and the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in
+their comments.  Free, but kindly, for the story of the rescue had
+melted every heart; and what could be more natural than that these
+two young people whom God had brought together in the dread moment of
+peril should find it hard to tear themselves asunder after the hour
+of danger was past?  When gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay
+his debts; and if Maurice gave his heart to Euthymia, would not she
+receive it as payment in full?
+
+The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
+Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in a
+magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the
+austral the boreal.  It was well, perhaps, that this change took
+place while he was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness.
+For all the long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found
+their natural channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ
+which throbs in response to every profound emotion.  As his health
+gradually returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his
+cheek, a glitter in his eyes, a something in the tone of his voice,
+which altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway
+of friendly intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of
+which her woman's eye could read plainly enough, "Dangerous passing."
+
+"You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, "that I
+think I had better not play Sister of Charity any longer.  The next
+time we meet I hope you will be strong enough to call on me."
+
+She was frightened to see how pale he turned,--he was weaker than she
+thought.  There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
+looked up from the stocking she was knitting.  They had forgotten the
+good woman's presence.
+
+Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a
+stitch at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she
+listened to what followed.
+
+"No! you must not leave me.  You must never leave me.  You saved my
+life.  But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can
+ever know.  To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live
+henceforth, if I am to live at all.  All I am, all I hope,--will you
+take this poor offering from one who owes you everything, whose lips
+never touched those of woman or breathed a word of love before you?
+
+What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the
+depth of a passion which had never before found expression.
+
+Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear.  But
+she told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the
+tableaux they had had in September to compare with what she then saw.
+It was indeed a pleasing picture which those two young heads
+presented as Euthymia gave her inarticulate but infinitely expressive
+answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood.  The good-hearted woman
+thought it time to leave the young people.  Down went the stocking
+with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted,
+rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some
+village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth,
+leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the
+arrival of the last "little stranger."
+
+Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead
+Village that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia
+Tower.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
+
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May 18.
+
+MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar
+as the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the
+roses came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar
+and grand gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of
+which you are the mistress?  You must not forget your old Arrowhead
+Village friends.  What am I saying?---you forget them!  No, dearest,
+I know your heart too well for that!  You are not one of those who
+lay aside their old friendships as they do last years bonnet when
+they get a new one.  You have told me all about yourself and your
+happiness, and now you want me to tell you about myself and what is
+going on in our little place.
+
+And first about myself.  I have given up the idea of becoming a
+doctor.  I have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of
+certainties, of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in
+probabilities.  The practice of the art is so mixed up with the
+deepest human interests that it is hard to pursue it with that even
+poise of the intellect which is demanded by science.  I want
+knowledge pure and simple,--I do not fancy having it mixed.  Neither
+do I like the thought of passing my life in going from one scene of
+suffering to another; I am not saintly enough for such a daily
+martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy occupation.  I
+fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see
+another.  I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician, if the right
+one asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at present.
+Yes, I think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife.  I could teach
+him a good deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of
+nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the French women call their
+tantrums.  I don't know but I should be willing to let him try his
+new medicines on me.  If he were a homeopath, I know I should; for if
+a billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my tea or
+coffee, I don't feel afraid that a billionth of a grain of anything
+would poison me,--no, not if it were snake-venom; and if it were not
+disgusting, I would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to
+please my husband.  But if I ever become a doctor's wife, my husband
+will not be one of that kind of practitioners, you may be sure of
+that, nor an "eclectic," nor a "faith-cure man."  On the whole, I
+don't think I want to be married at all.  I don't like the male
+animal very well (except such noble specimens as your husband).  They
+are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex is concerned, and I
+often think we could get on better without them.
+
+However, the creatures are useful in the Society.  They send us
+papers, some of them well worth reading.  You have told me so often
+that you would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to
+read some of the papers sent to it if they happened to be
+interesting, that I have laid aside one or two manuscripts expressly
+for your perusal.  You will get them by and by.
+
+I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you.  Arrowhead
+Village misses him dreadfully, I can tell you.  That is the reason
+people become so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in
+their natures?  I suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood
+down to our Northern standard.  Then they are so child-like, whereas
+the native of these latitudes is never young after he is ten or
+twelve years old.  Mother says,--you know mother's old-fashioned
+notions, and how shrewd and sensible she is in spite of them,--mother
+says that when she was a girl families used to import young men and
+young women from the country towns, who called themselves "helps,"
+not servants,--no, that was Scriptural; " but they did n't know
+everything down in Judee," and it is not good American language.  She
+says that these people would live in the same household until they
+were married, and the women often remain in the same service until
+they died or were old and worn out, and then, what with the money
+they had saved and the care and assistance they got from their former
+employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old age, and be buried
+in the family lot.  Mother has made up her mind to the change, but
+grandmother is bitter about it.  She says there never was a country
+yet where the population was made up of "ladies" and "gentlemen," and
+she does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a spread eagle on
+a copper makes a gold dollar of it.  She is a pessimist after her own
+fashion.  She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our people.  No
+loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political edifice,
+she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no
+reverence of the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to
+make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls
+"universal suffrage" emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct
+we all must drink from.  "Universal suffrage!"  I suppose we women
+don't belong to the universe!  Wait until we get a chance at the
+ballot-box, I tell grandma, and see if we don't wash out the sewers
+before they reach the aqueduct!  But my pen has run away with men I
+was thinking of Paolo, and what a pleasant thing it is to have one of
+those child-like, warm-hearted, attachable, cheerful, contented,
+humble, faithful, companionable, but never presuming grownup children
+of the South waiting on one, as if everything he could do for one was
+a pleasure, and carrying a look of content in his face which makes
+every one who meets him happier for a glimpse of his features.
+
+It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and
+servant, intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual
+interest in each other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the
+advantages which belong to domestic service in the better class of
+families, should be almost wholly confined to aliens and their
+immediate descendants.  Why should Hannah think herself so much
+better than Bridget?  When they meet at the polls together, as they
+will before long, they will begin to feel more of an equality than is
+recognized at present.  The native female turns her nose up at the
+idea of "living out;" does she think herself so much superior to the
+women of other nationalities?  Our women will have to come to it,--so
+grandmother says,--in another generation or two, and in a hundred
+years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of old
+"Miss Pollys" and " Miss Betseys" who have lived half a century in
+the same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in
+time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well
+as a broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot
+virtues of contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet
+the barren and hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
+
+There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to
+tell you.  There is an engagement you will want to know all about.
+It came to pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I
+remember, and shall never forget as long as we live.  It seems that
+the young fellow who pulled the bow oar of that men's college boat
+which we had the pleasure of beating got some glimpses of Georgina,
+our handsome stroke oar.  I believe he took it into his head that it
+was she who threw the bouquet that won the race for us.  He was, as
+you know, greatly mistaken, and ought to have made love to me, only
+he did n't.  Well, it seems he came posting down to the Institute
+just before the vacation was over, and there got a sight of Georgina.
+I wonder whether she told him she didn't fling the bouquet!  Anyhow,
+the acquaintance began in that way, and now it seems that this young
+fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but with a good many
+months more to pass in college, is her captive.  It was too bad.
+Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit!  No
+matter, the old Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
+
+You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts.  They say he has just been
+offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges.  I
+asked him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not.
+"But," said be, "suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you
+think I ought to accept it and leave Arrowhead Village?  Let us talk
+it over," said he, "just as if I had had such an offer."  I told him
+he ought to stay.  There are plenty of men that can get into a
+Professor's chair, I said, and talk like Solomons to a class of
+wondering pupils: but once get a really good doctor in a place, a man
+who knows all about everybody, whether they have this or that
+tendency, whether when they are sick they have a way of dying or a
+way of getting well, what medicines agree with them and what drugs
+they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think nothing is
+the matter with them until they are dead as smoked herring, or of the
+sort that send for the minister if they get a stomach-ache from
+eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the people within
+half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a
+regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be
+replaced like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a
+Waltham watch.  Don't go!  said I.  Stay here and save our precious
+lives, if you can, or at least put us through in the proper way, so
+that we needn't be ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we must die.
+Well, Dr. Butts is not going to leave us.  I hope you will have no
+unwelcome occasion for his services,--you are never ill, you know,--
+but, anyhow, he is going to be here, and no matter what happens he
+will be on hand.
+
+The village news is not of a very exciting character.  Item 1.  A new
+house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband lived
+while he was here.  It was planned by one of the autochthonous
+inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences
+that the natural man could educe from his original perversity of
+intellect.  To get at any one room you must pass through every other.
+It is blind, or nearly so, on the only side which has a good
+prospect, and commands a fine view of the barn and pigsty through
+numerous windows.  Item 2.  We have a small fire-engine near the new
+house which can be worked by a man or two, and would be equal to the
+emergency of putting out a bunch of fire-crackers.  Item 3.  We have
+a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new fire-engine, so if the new
+house catches fire, like its predecessor, and there should happen to,
+be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got out without running
+the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.  What a blessed
+thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no ladder at
+hand on the day of the great rescue!  If there had been, what a
+change in your programme of life!  You remember that "cup of tea
+spilt on Mrs. Masham's apron," which we used to read of in one of
+Everett's Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the
+affairs of Europe.  I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever
+a Boston matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the
+tea-chests had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,--but no
+matter about that, now.  That is the way things come about in this
+world.  I must write a lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly,
+fortunate calamities.  It will be just the converse of that odd essay
+of Swift's we read together, the awkward and stupid things done with
+the best intentions.  Perhaps I shall deliver the lecture in your
+city: you will come and hear it, and bring him, won't
+you, dearest?
+Always, your loving
+
+LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia!  And are you,
+and is your husband, and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and
+happy as you have been and as you ought to be?  I suppose our small
+village seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now
+that you have become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great
+city.  For all that, it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can
+tell you.  We have sleighing parties,--I never go to them, myself,
+because I can't keep warm, and my mind freezes up when my blood cools
+down below 95 or 96 deg. Fahrenheit.  I had a great deal rather sit
+by a good fire and read about Arctic discoveries.  But I like very
+well to hear the bells' jingling and to see the young people trying
+to have a good time as hard as they do at a picnic.  It may be that
+they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other
+place, where, as my favorite Milton says, "frost performs the effect
+of fire."  I believe I have quoted him correctly; I ought to, for I
+could repeat half his poems from memory once, if I cannot now.
+
+You must have plenty of excitement in your city life.  I suppose you
+recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the "Household
+Inquisitor:" "Mrs. E.  K., very beautiful, in an elegant," etc., etc,
+"with pearls," etc., etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all
+that you wear, no matter what it is!
+
+I am so glad that you have married a scholar!  Why should not
+Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office
+which has been offered him?  It seems to me that he would find
+himself in exactly the right place.  He can talk in two or three
+languages, has good manners, and a wife who--well, what shall I say
+of Mrs. Kirkwood but that "she would be good company for a queen," as
+our old friend the quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say?
+I should so like to see you presented at Court!  It seems to me that
+I should be willing to hold your train for the sake of seeing you in
+your court feathers and things.
+
+As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become
+either a professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or
+college for girls.  I have tried the first business a little.  Last
+month I delivered a lecture on Quaternions.  I got three for my
+audience; two came over from the Institute, and one from that men's
+college which they try to make out to be a university, and where no
+female is admitted unless she belongs among the quadrupeds.  I
+enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is a difficult one, and I don't
+think any one of them had any very clear notion of what I was talking
+about, except Rhodora,--and I know she did n't.  To tell the truth, I
+was lecturing to instruct myself.  I mean to try something easier
+next time.  I have thought of the Basque language and literature.
+What do you say to that?
+
+The Society goes on famously.  We have had a paper presented and read
+lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the
+weaker sort.  The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-
+Lettres at that men's college over there.  He is dreadfully hard on
+the poor "poets," as they call themselves.  It seems that a great
+many young persons, and more especially a great many young girls, of
+whom the Institute has furnished a considerable proportion, have
+taken to sending him their rhymed productions to be criticised,--
+expecting to be praised, no doubt, every one of them.  I must give
+you one of the sauciest extracts from his paper in his own words:
+
+"It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of
+both sexes.  They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I
+recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness,
+and the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence
+of ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority.  Of course there are
+exceptions to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the
+presumption is always against the rhymester as compared with the less
+pretentious persons about him or her, busy with some useful calling,
+--too busy to be tagging rhymed commonplaces together.  Just now
+there seems to be an epidemic of rhyming as bad as the dancing mania,
+or the sweating sickness.  After reading a certain amount of
+manuscript verse one is disposed to anathematize the inventor of
+homophonous syllabification.  [This phrase made a great laugh when it
+was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have been found out very
+early,
+
+     'Where are you, Adam?'
+
+     'Here am I, Madam;'
+
+but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall.
+The intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the
+conversational intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled
+Paradise itself.  Milton would not have them even in Paradise Lost,
+you remember.  For my own part, I wish certain rhymes could be
+declared contraband of written or printed language.  Nothing should
+be allowed to be hurled at the world or whirled with it, or furled
+upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away from the
+skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth should be coupled
+with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of
+her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath,
+nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers
+to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb.  We have
+rhyming dictionaries,--let us have one from which all rhymes are
+rigorously excluded.  The sight of a poor creature grubbing for
+rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious,
+rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical
+operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with
+jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel.  Work, work of some
+kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles!
+No,--no,--no!  I want to see the young people in our schools and
+academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions,
+lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of self-contemplating and
+self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism which is
+surfeiting the land with those literary sandwiches,--thin slices of
+tinkling sentimentality between two covers looking like hard-baked
+gilt gingerbread.  But what faces these young folks make up at my
+good advice!  They get tipsy on their rhymes.  Nothing intoxicates
+one like his--or her--own verses, and they hold on to their metre-
+ballad-mongering as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to
+the gas-bag."
+
+We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us
+pretty hard.  The best part of the joke is that the old man himself
+published a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is
+good reason to think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up
+all the copies he can find in the shops.  No matter what they say, I
+can't help agreeing with him about this great flood of "poetry," as
+it calls itself, and looking at the rhyming mania much as he does.
+
+How I do love real poetry!  That is the reason hate rhymes which have
+not a particle of it in them.  The foolish scribblers that deal in
+them are like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop.  They not only turn
+out bad jobs of work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen.
+There is hardly a pair of rhymes in the English language that is not
+so dulled and hacked and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a
+master of the craft hates to touch them, and yet he cannot very well
+do without them.  I have not been besieged as the old Professor has
+been with such multitudes of would-be-poetical aspirants that he
+could not even read their manuscripts, but I have had a good many
+letters containing verses, and I have warned the writers of the
+delusion under which they were laboring.
+
+You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts
+from the Greek Anthology.  I send you a few specimens of my work,
+with a Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I hope you will find
+something of the Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught
+a spark of inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian.  I have found
+great delight in this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as
+when I read from my manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into
+which I have transferred the thought of the men and women of two
+thousand years ago, or given rhythmical expression to my own
+rapturous feelings with regard to them.  I must read you my
+Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I cannot help thinking that you
+will like it better than either of my last two, The Song of the
+Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.
+
+How I do miss you, dearest!  I want you: I want you to listen to what
+I have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future;
+I want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's
+self to be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in
+the woods with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk
+over every day's doings with you.  Alas!  I feel that we have parted
+as two friends part at a port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss
+each other's cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to
+speak good-by to each other, they watch from the pier and from the
+deck; the two forms grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the
+distance, two white handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet
+once more, and the last visible link of the chain which binds them
+has parted.  Dear, dear, dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running over
+with tears when I think that we may never, never meet again.
+
+Don't you want some more items of village news?  We are threatened
+with an influx of stylish people: "Buttons" to answer the door-bell,
+in place of the chamber-maid; "butler," in place of the "hired man;"
+footman in top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la
+Napoleon; tandems, "drags," dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts.  It
+is rather amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes
+away the good old country flavor of the place.
+
+I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to
+spend your summers here.  I suppose you must have a large house, and
+I am sure you will have a beautiful one.  I suppose you will have
+some fine horses, and who would n't be glad to?  But I do not believe
+you will try to make your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their
+eyes out of their heads with a display meant to outshine everybody
+else that comes here.  You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like,
+but I hope you will pull a pair of oars in our old boat once in a
+while, with me to steer you.  I know you will be just the same dear-
+Euthymia you always were and always must be.  How happy you must make
+such a man as Maurice Kirkwood!  And how happy you ought to be with
+him!--a man who knows what is in books, and who has seen for himself,
+what is in men.  If he has not seen so much of women, where could he
+study all that is best in womanhood as he can in his own wife?  Only
+one thing that dear Euthymia lacks.  She is not quite pronounced
+enough in her views as to the rights and the wrongs of the sex.  When
+I visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate Maurice with
+sound views on that subject.  I have written an essay for the
+Society, which I hope will go a good way towards answering all the
+objections to female suffrage.  I mean to read it to your husband, if
+you will let me, as I know you will, and perhaps you would like to
+hear it,--only you know my thoughts on the subject pretty well
+already.
+
+With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to
+your precious self,
+I am ever your
+
+LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,--My pen refuses to call you by any other name.
+Sweet-souled you are, and your Latinized Greek name is--the one which
+truly designates you.  I cannot tell you how we have followed you,
+with what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told
+their story in your letters to your mother.  She has let us have the
+privilege of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer,
+yacht, felucca, gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from
+crowded capitals to "deserts where no men abide,"--everywhere keeping
+company with you in your natural and pleasant descriptions of your
+experiences.  And now that you have returned to your home in the
+great city I must write you a few lines of welcome, if nothing more.
+
+You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left
+it.  We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the
+little place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city.  When this
+happens the consequences are striking,--some of them desirable and
+some far otherwise.  The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-
+kept houses and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order
+about them shows itself in a large circuit around the fashionable
+centre.  Houses get on a new coat of paint, fences are kept in better
+order, little plots of flowers show themselves where only ragged
+weeds had rioted, the inhabitants present themselves in more comely
+attire and drive in handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed
+horses.  On the other hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part
+of the natives of the region suddenly become fashionable.  They have
+seen the land they sold at farm prices by the acre coming to be
+valued by the foot, like the corner lots in a city.  Their simple and
+humble modes of life look almost poverty-stricken in the glare of
+wealth and luxury which so outshines their plain way of living.  It
+is true that many of them have found them selves richer than in
+former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own resources.  They
+know how to avail themselves of their altered position, and soon
+learn to charge city prices for country products; but nothing can
+make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose
+yearly income is many times their own whole capital.  I think it
+would be better if our rich men scattered themselves more than they
+do,--buying large country estates, building houses and stables which
+will make it easy to entertain their friends, and depending for
+society on chosen guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who
+come together for social rivalry.  But I do not fret myself about it.
+Society will stratify itself according to the laws of social
+gravitation.  It will take a generation or two more, perhaps, to
+arrange the strata by precipitation and settlement, but we can always
+depend on one principle to govern the arrangement of the layers.
+People interested in the same things will naturally come together.
+The youthful heirs of fortunes who keep splendid yachts have little
+to talk about with the oarsman who pulls about on the lake or the
+river.  What does young Dives, who drives his four-in-hand and keeps
+a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus, who feels rich in the
+possession of a horse-railroad ticket?  You know how we live at our
+house, plainly, but with a certain degree of cultivated propriety.
+We make no pretensions to what is called "style."  We are still in
+that social stratum where the article called "a napkin-ring" is
+recognized as admissible at the dinner-table.  That fact sufficiently
+defines our modest pretensions.  The napkin-ring is the boundary mark
+between certain classes.  But one evening Mrs. Butts and I went out
+to a party given by the lady of a worthy family, where the napkin
+itself was a newly introduced luxury.  The conversation of the
+hostess and her guests turned upon details of the kitchen and the
+laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with "emptins"
+(emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about "bluing" and starching and
+crimping, and similar matters.  Poor Mrs. Butts!  She knew nothing
+more about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the
+musical glasses.  What was the use of trying to enforce social
+intercourse under such conditions?  Incompatibility of temper has
+been considered ground for a divorce; incompatibility of interests is
+a sufficient warrant for social separation.  The multimillionaires
+have so much that is common among themselves, and so little that they
+share with us of moderate means, that they will naturally form a
+specialized class, and in virtue of their palaces, their picture-
+galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their large hospitality,
+constitute a kind of exclusive aristocracy.  Religion, which ought to
+be the great leveller, cannot reduce these elements to the same
+grade.  You may read in the parable, "Friend, how camest thou in
+hither not having a wedding garment?"  The modern version would be,
+"How came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having a dress on your back
+which came from Paris?"
+
+The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds
+me of Hamlet's uncle,--a thing "of shreds and patches," but rather
+pretty to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to
+be the name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the
+church.  Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I
+hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental
+window; but that old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles
+himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute, on the
+inside,--you know he goes to church sometimes, if you remember your
+Faust.
+
+The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist.  He has
+always been rather "broad " in his views, but cautious in their
+expression.  You can tell the three branches of the mother-island
+church by the way they carry their heads.  The low-church clergy look
+down, as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-
+church priest drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the
+mediaeval saints; the broad-church preacher looks forward and round
+about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation.  Our rector
+carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the
+least open to the charge of affectation,--in fact, is the natural and
+manly way of carrying it.
+
+The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never
+before.  Lurida has stirred up our little community and its
+neighbors, so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and
+stories in large numbers.  I know all about it, for she often
+consults me as to the merits of a particular contribution.
+
+What is to be the fate of Lurida?  I often think, with no little
+interest and some degree of anxiety, about her future.  Her body is
+so frail and her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am
+afraid one or the other will give way.  I do not suppose she thinks
+seriously of ever being married.  She grows more and more zealous in
+behalf of her own sex, and sterner in her judgment of the other.  She
+declares that she never would marry any man who was not an advocate
+of female suffrage, and as these gentlemen are not very common
+hereabouts the chance is against her capturing any one of the hostile
+sex.
+
+What do you think?  I happened, just as I was writing the last
+sentence, to look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida,
+with a young man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation,
+according to all appearance!  I think he must be a friend of the
+rector, as I have seen a young man like this one in his company.  Who
+knows?
+
+Affectionately yours, etc.
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.
+
+MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would
+have thought could have been got together in this little village
+during the short time you have been staying away from it.
+
+Lurida Vincent is engaged!  He is a clergyman with a mathematical
+turn.  The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the
+mathematical journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution
+that the young man fell in love with her on the strength of it.  I
+don't think the story is literally true, nor do I believe that other
+report that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation
+chalked on the blackboard; but that it was an intellectual rather
+than a sentimental courtship I do not doubt.  Lurida has given up the
+idea of becoming a professional lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking
+that her future husband's parish will find her work enough to do.  A
+certain amount of daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse
+with simple-minded people will be the best thing in the world for
+that brain of hers, always simmering with some new project in its
+least fervid condition.
+
+All our summer visitors have arrived.  Euthymia Mrs. Maurice
+Kirkwood and her husband and little Maurice are here in their
+beautiful house looking out on the lake.  They gave a grand party the
+other evening.  You ought to have been there, but I suppose you could
+not very well have left your sister in the middle of your visit: All
+the grand folks were there, of course.  Lurida and her young man--
+Gabriel is what she calls him--were naturally the objects of special
+attention.  Paolo acted as major-domo, and looked as if he ought to
+be a major-general.  Nothing could be pleasanter than the way in
+which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their plain country neighbors;
+that is, just as they did the others of more pretensions, as if they
+were really glad to see them, as I am sure they were.  The old
+landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves, and I saw
+Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at the dancers
+and out at the little groups in the garden, and evidently enjoying it
+as much as her old employers.  It was a most charming and successful
+party.  We had two sensations in the course of the evening.  One was
+pleasant and somewhat exciting, the other was thrilling and of
+strange and startling interest.
+
+You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his
+fever, in that first season when he was among us.  He was out in a
+boat one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a
+place where the water was rather shallow.  "Jake"--you know Jake,--
+everybody knows Jake--was rowing him.  He promised to come to the
+spot and fish up the ring if he could possibly find it.  He was seen
+poking about with fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was
+ever heard from him about the ring.  It was an antique intaglio stone
+in an Etruscan setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna.  Mr.
+Kirkwood valued it highly, and regretted its loss very much.
+
+While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake,
+with a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood.  "Come," said
+Maurice to me, "let us see what our old friend the fisherman has
+brought us.  What have you got there, Jake?"
+
+"What I 've got?  Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the
+biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year.
+An' I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel.  When I come to
+cut him open, what do you think I faound in his insides but this here
+ring o' yourn,"--and he showed the one Maurice had lost so long
+before.  There it was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's
+style of housekeeping for all that time.  There are those who
+discredit Jake's story about finding the ring in the fish; anyhow,
+there was the ring and there was the pickerel.  I need not say that
+Jake went off well paid for his pickerel and the precious contents of
+its stomach.  Now comes the chief event of the evening.  I went early
+by special invitation.  Maurice took me into his library, and we sat
+down together.
+
+"I have something of great importance," he said, " to say to you.  I
+learned within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a
+friend in the next town to this.  You know, doctor, that we have
+never met since the last, almost fatal, experience of my early years.
+I have determined to defy the strength of that deadly chain of
+associations connected with her presence, and I have begged her to
+come this evening with the friends with whom she is staying.  Several
+letters passed between us, for it was hard to persuade her that there
+was no longer any risk in my meeting her.  Her imagination was almost
+as deeply impressed as mine had been at those alarming interviews,
+and I had to explain to her fully that I had become quite indifferent
+to the disturbing impressions of former years.  So, as the result of
+our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening, and I wish you to
+be present at our meeting.  There is another reason why I wish you to
+be here.  My little boy is not far from the--age at which I received
+my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock.  I mean to have little
+Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be still a
+very handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint of that peculiar
+sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure.  It
+seemed to me not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of
+that nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of danger
+should declare itself.  For myself I have no fear.  Some radical
+change has taken place in my nervous system.  I have been born again,
+as it were, in my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new
+man.  But I must know how it is with my little Maurice."
+
+Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
+experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it
+seemed to me.  The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in,
+but no Laura as yet.  At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a
+carriage stopped at the door.  Two ladies and a gentleman got out,
+and soon entered the drawing room.
+
+"My cousin Laura!" whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet
+her.  A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the
+thirties,--one of those women so thoroughly constituted that they
+cannot help being handsome at every period of life.  I watched them
+both as they approached each other.  Both looked pale at first, but
+Maurice soon recovered his usual color, and Laura's natural, rich
+bloom came back by degrees.  Their emotion at meeting was not to be
+wondered at, but there was no trace in it of the paralyzing influence
+on the great centres of life which had once acted upon its fated
+victim like the fabled head which turned the looker-on into a stone.
+
+"Is the boy still awake?" said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to
+say of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on
+that gay and busy evening.
+
+"What!  Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on?  I hear
+him crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight."
+
+"Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that
+leads out of the library."
+
+The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake,
+wondering apparently at the noise he heard, which he seemed to think
+was for his special amusement.
+
+"See if he will go to that lady," said his father.  Both of us held
+our breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
+
+The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
+glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her
+embrace as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all
+his days.
+
+The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of
+Maurice Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself
+snatched from the grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
+
+
+                    --------------------------
+
+
+In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix
+which the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First
+Opening.  It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability
+of a second opening.
+
+I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a
+certain small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my
+surviving contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be
+much obliged if I would hurry up my answer before it is too late.
+They are right, these delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding
+me of a fact which I cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my
+recollection.  I thank them for recalling my attention to a truth
+which I shall be wiser, if not more hilarious, for remembering.
+
+No, I had no right to say the First Opening.  How do I know that I
+shall have a chance to open it again?  How do I know that anybody
+will want it to be opened a second time?  How do I know that I shall
+feel like opening it?  It is safest neither to promise to open the
+New Portfolio once more, nor yet to pledge myself to keep it closed
+hereafter.  There are many papers potentially existent in it, some of
+which might interest a reader here and there.  The Records of the
+Pansophian Society contain a considerable number of essays, poems,
+stories, and hints capable of being expanded into presentable
+dimensions.  In the mean time I will say with Prospero, addressing my
+old readers, and my new ones, if such I have,
+
+    "If you be pleased, retire into my cell
+     And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
+     To still my beating mind."
+
+When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and
+consider whether it is worth while to open it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver W. Holmes
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Mortal Antipathy, by O. W. Holmes, Sr.
+#7 in our series by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet)
+
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+Title: A Mortal Antipathy
+
+Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet)
+(Not the Jurist O. W. Holmes, Jr.)
+
+Release Date: July, 2001 [Etext #2698]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[Most recently updated: December 6, 2001]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Mortal Antipathy, by O. W. Holmes
+*******This file should be named antip11.txt or antip11.zip*******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, antip12.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, antip11a.txt
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+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY
+
+By Oliver Wendell Holmes
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY" was a truly hazardous experiment.  A very wise
+and very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature
+as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in
+referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject."
+He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt
+the improbability of the, physiological or pathological occurrence on
+which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could
+hardly be rendered plausible.  I felt the difficulty for myself as
+well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our
+consideration a series of extraordinary but well-authenticated facts
+of somewhat similar character that I could hope to gain any serious
+attention to so strange a narrative.
+
+I need not recur to these wonderful stories.  There is, however, one,
+not to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call
+the reader's attention.  It is that of the middle-aged man, who
+assured me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an
+indefinable terror.  While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one
+of these tall clocks had fallen with aloud crash and produced an
+impression on his nervous system which he had never got over.
+
+The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that
+of hearing is conceivable enough.
+
+But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation
+with the higher organs of consciousness.  The strength of the
+associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves,
+the olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience
+and as related by others.  Now we know that every human being, as
+well as every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing
+atmosphere.  If a man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and
+can track him anywhere by it.  This personal peculiarity varies with
+the age and conditions of the individual.  It may be agreeable or
+otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but its influence is
+not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant, than in the
+lower animals.  It was an atmospheric impression of this nature which
+associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant
+which became the subject of this story.  The impression could not be
+outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by some sudden change in
+the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had
+produced the disordered condition.
+
+This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have
+puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did
+not suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.
+
+BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891.
+
+O.  W.  H.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+"And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"
+
+Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in
+which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly
+spoken of as a baby?  Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under
+all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of
+as the baby?  And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly
+spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if
+there were no other in existence?
+
+Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my
+new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and
+show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers
+belonging to my list of intimates, and such other friends as may drop
+in by accident.  And so it shall have the definite article, and not
+be lost in the mob of its fellows as a portfolio.
+
+There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to
+say something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever
+these may be.  I have had other portfolios before this,--two, more
+especially, and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to
+these.
+
+Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell
+you that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak,
+was opened more than fifty years ago.  This is a very dangerous
+confession, for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned,
+without giving it the charm of real antiquity.  If I could say a
+hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them
+with a curious interest; but fifty years ago,--there are too many
+talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a
+century is a half-baked bit of ware.  A coin-fancier would say that
+your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them
+with rust, and not enough to give them--the delicate and durable
+patina which is time's exquisite enamel.
+
+When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for
+its legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers
+could have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp.
+Caesrzr.  Aug.  Div., Max., etc., etc.  I never happened to see any
+gold or silver with that legend, but the truth is I was not very
+familiarly acquainted with the precious metals at that period of my
+career, and, there might have been a good deal of such coin in
+circulation without my handling it, or knowing much about it.
+
+Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.
+
+In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
+attraction to young Boston people and their visitors.  Many of us got
+our first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
+comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
+that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.
+
+How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places
+in the mind's gallery!  Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red
+enough in it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-
+length portrait of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's
+long-waistcoated gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like
+gentlemen and ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-
+waisted matrons; and Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy,
+unimpassioned women, not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her
+interminable rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum;
+and the rival landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and
+largely praised in those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal
+Soup's collection; and the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself,
+which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical
+pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate
+shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if
+they must have been thrown in for nothing; and West's brawny Lear
+tearing his clothes to pieces.  But why go on with the catalogue,
+when most of these pictures can be seen either at the Athenaeum
+building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or
+criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than
+in those earlier years when we looked at them through the japanned
+fish-horns?
+
+If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
+Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
+which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
+Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
+butterflies.  The father was editor of the "Boston Recorder," a very
+respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized
+by that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first
+day of the week as "the Sahbuth."  The son was the editor of several
+different periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or
+serious, and of many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions
+of society, which be studied on the outside with a quick eye for form
+and color, and with a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but
+real, though somewhat frothed over by his worldly experiences.
+
+Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
+Portfolio.  He had made himself known by his religious poetry,
+published in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy."  He had
+started the "American Magazine," afterwards merged in the New York
+Mirror."  He had then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to
+lighter forms of verse.  He had just written
+
+         "I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
+               They idly give me joy,
+          As if I should be glad to know
+               That I was less a boy."
+
+He was young, therefore, and already famous.  He came very near being
+very handsome.  He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
+luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted
+to show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance.  He
+was something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an
+anticipation of Oscar Wilde.  There used to be in the gallery of the
+Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful
+young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-
+mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of
+the living face as compared with the ideal.  The painted youth is
+still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young
+author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight.  I took
+the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his
+coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a
+sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867.  At that earlier
+time, Willis was by far the most prominent young American author.
+Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best
+work.  Longfellow was not yet conspicuous.  Lowell was a school-boy.
+Emerson was unheard of.  Whittier was beginning to make his way
+against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was
+destined to outdo and to outlive.  Not one of the great histories,
+which have done honor to our literature, had appeared.  Our school-
+books depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on
+extracts from the orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on
+Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the
+Flowers, Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's
+American Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping
+and Genius Waking,--and not getting very wide awake, either.  These
+could be depended upon.  A few other copies of verses might be found,
+but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia," and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine,
+were already effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and
+generation must soon be, by the great wave which the near future will
+pour over the sands in which they still are legible.
+
+About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
+"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which made some talk for a while, and
+is now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may
+be read the names of many whose renown has been buried with their
+bones.  The "London Athenaeum" spoke of it as having been described
+as a "tomahawk sort of satire."  As the author had been a trapper in
+Missouri, he was familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the
+warfare of its owners.  Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army
+officer, educated at West Point, he came back to his native city
+about the year 1830.  He wrote an article on Bryant's Poems for the
+"North American Review," and another on the famous Indian chief,
+Black Hawk.  In this last-mentioned article he tells this story as
+the great warrior told it himself.  It was an incident of a fight
+with the Osages.
+
+"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear
+the scalp from his head.  Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed
+furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran
+my lance through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in
+triumph to my father.  He said nothing, but looked pleased."
+
+This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of
+literary warfare.  His handling of his most conspicuous victim,
+Willis, was very much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the
+Osage.  He tomahawked him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and
+scalped him in barbarous epigrams.  Bryant and Halleck were
+abundantly praised; hardly any one else escaped.
+
+If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were
+floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago,
+he will find in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities
+he never heard of.  I recognize only three names, of all which are
+mentioned in the little book, as belonging to persons still living;
+but as I have not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them
+may be still flourishing in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating
+onslaught.  Time dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not
+without talent and instruction, as he had dealt with our authors.  I
+think he found shelter at last under a roof which held numerous
+inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of whom had known
+worse days than those which they were passing within its friendly and
+not exclusive precincts.  Such, at least, was the story I heard after
+he disappeared from general observation.
+
+That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and
+all that class of showy annuals.  Short stories, slender poems, steel
+engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
+establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations
+of this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some
+years.  The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility.  The
+"Voices of the Night" had not stirred the brooding silence; the
+Concord seer was still in the lonely desert; most of the contributors
+to those yearly volumes, which took up such pretentious positions on
+the centre table, have shrunk into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold
+their place in literature by a scrap or two in some omnivorous
+collection.
+
+What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations,
+floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and
+mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections!  Violent, abusive as
+he was, unjust to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice,
+his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was not
+harmful, but rather of use.  His attack on Willis very probably did
+him good; he needed a little discipline, and though he got it too
+unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes
+he had to smart under.  One noble writer Spelling treated with
+rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally
+insignificant reason.  I myself, one of the three survivors before
+referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the
+Muse.  Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment.  Bailey, an
+American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which
+must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot
+identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last
+Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F.  Gould, a very
+bright and agreeable writer of light verse,--all these are commended
+to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe
+and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens
+committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every possible
+attention to them so long as he is kept in sight.
+
+It was a good time to open a portfolio.  But my old one had boyhood
+written on every page.  A single passionate outcry when the old
+warship I had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our
+kitchen literature, and in the "Naval Monument," was threatened with
+demolition; a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville
+in his cocked hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of
+that first Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not
+interfere with the duties of a profession authorized to claim all the
+time and thought which would have been otherwise expended in filling
+it.
+
+During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for
+the greater part of the time.  Only now and then it would be taken up
+and opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
+particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I
+was a member.
+
+In the year 1857, towards its close, the "Atlantic Monthly," which I
+had the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of
+Phillips & Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell.
+He thought that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which
+would be not unacceptable in the new magazine.  I looked at the poor
+old receptacle, which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had
+lost its freshness, and seemed hardly presentable to the new company
+expected to welcome the new-comer in the literary world of Boston,
+the least provincial of American centres of learning and letters.
+The gilded covering where the emblems of hope and aspiration had
+looked so bright had faded; not wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold
+become dim!---how was the most fine gold changed!  Long devotion to
+other pursuits had left little time for literature, and the waifs and
+strays gathered from the old Portfolio had done little more than keep
+alive the memory that such a source of supply was still in existence.
+I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to myself, "Too late!  too
+late.  This tarnished gold will never brighten, these battered covers
+will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and leave them to the
+spider and the book-worm."
+
+In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
+condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period.
+When, a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the
+"Saturday Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a
+representation of all that was best in American literature had never
+been collected within so small a compass.  Most of the Americans whom
+educated foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration
+official dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects
+of curiosity--were seated at that board.  But the club did not yet
+exist, and the "Atlantic Monthly" was an experiment.  There had
+already been several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and
+permanent, among which "Putnam's Magazine" was conspicuous, owing its
+success largely to the contributions of that very accomplished and
+delightful writer, Mr. George William Curtis.  That magazine, after a
+somewhat prolonged and very honorable existence, had gone where all
+periodicals go when they die, into the archives of the deaf, dumb,
+and blind recording angel whose name is Oblivion.  It had so well
+deserved to live that its death was a surprise and a source of
+regret.  Could another monthly take its place and keep it when that,
+with all its attractions and excellences, had died out, and left a
+blank in our periodical literature which it would be very hard to
+fill as well as that had filled it?
+
+This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured
+upon, and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn
+around the scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given
+myself to other studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell
+insisted upon my becoming a contributor.  And so, yielding to a
+pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to
+resist, I promised to take a part in the new venture, as an
+occasional writer in the columns of the new magazine.
+
+That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my
+table, and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857.  I was
+already at least
+
+          'Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,'
+
+when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of
+what looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I
+did not meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the
+critic, the most dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me
+after his own fashion.
+
+The second Portfolio is closed and laid away.  Perhaps it was hardly
+worth while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before
+me, and I hope I may find something between its covers which will
+justify me in coming once more before my old friends.  But before I
+open it I want to claim a little further indulgence.
+
+There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I
+might say to almost every human being.  No matter what his culture or
+ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character,
+the subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think,
+and, if opportunity is offered, to talk.  On this he is eloquent, if
+on nothing else.  The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid
+listener becomes electric with vivacity, and alive all over with
+interest.
+
+The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude.
+He is accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who
+has a subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the
+depressing disclosure of his real errand.  He is not unacquainted
+with the conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting
+stranger, who, having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in
+the cars, or of having his pocket picked at the station, finds
+himself without the means of reaching that distant home where
+affluence waits for him with its luxurious welcome, but to whom for
+the moment the loan of some five and twenty dollars would be a
+convenience and a favor for which his heart would ache with gratitude
+during the brief interval between the loan and its repayment.
+
+I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages
+in my own history, and more especially to some of the recent
+experiences through which I have been passing.
+
+What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as
+if it were his private correspondent?  There are at least three
+sufficient reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody
+wants to hear,--if be has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle,
+or has witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new
+about it; secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common
+experiences not already well told, so that readers will say, "Why,
+yes!  I have had that sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times,
+but I never heard it spoken of before, and I never saw any mention of
+it in print;" and thirdly, anything one likes, provided he can so
+tell it as to make it interesting.
+
+I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself
+claim any general attention.  My first pages relate the effect of a
+certain literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial
+metempsychoses of which I have been the subject.  Next follows a
+brief tribute to the memory of a very dear and renowned friend from
+whom I have recently been parted.  The rest of the Introduction will
+be consecrated to the memory of my birthplace.
+
+I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page
+is written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before
+it is in the reader's hands.  The experience of thinking another
+man's thoughts continuously for a long time; of living one's self
+into another man's life for a month, or a year, or more, is a very
+curious one.  No matter how much superior to the biographer his
+subject may be, the man who writes the life feels himself, in a
+certain sense, on the level of the person whose life he is writing.
+One cannot fight over the battles of Marengo or Austerlitz with
+Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had a fractional claim to
+the victory, so real seems the transfer of his personality into that
+of the conqueror while he reads.  Still more must this identification
+of "subject" and "object" take place when one is writing of a person
+whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.
+
+Here are some of my metempsychoses:
+Ten years ago I wrote what I called A Memorial Outline of a
+remarkable student of nature.  He was a born observer, and such are
+far from common.  He was also a man of great enthusiasm and
+unwearying industry.  His quick eye detected what others passed by
+without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
+pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his
+companion would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a
+prize at the end of it.  Getting his single facts together with
+marvellous sagacity and long-breathed patience, he arranged them,
+classified them, described them, studied them in their relations, and
+before those around him were aware of it the collector was an
+accomplished naturalist.  When--he died his collections remained, and
+they still remain, as his record in the hieratic language of science.
+In writing this memoir the spirit of his quiet pursuits, the even
+temper they bred in him, gained possession of my own mind, so that I
+seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed spectacles, and to
+move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had myself prepared
+and arranged its specimens.  I felt wise with his wisdom, fair-minded
+with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his placid,
+observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul," and if
+I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected to
+see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
+sketching.
+
+A few years hater I lived over the life of another friend in writing
+a Memoir of which he was the subject.  I saw him, the beautiful,
+bright-eyed boy, with dark, waving hair; the youthful scholar, first
+at Harvard, then at Gottingen and Berlin, the friend and companion of
+Bismarck; the young author, making a dash for renown as a novelist,
+and showing the elements which made his failures the promise of
+success in a larger field of literary labor; the delving historian,
+burying his fresh young manhood in the dusty alcoves of silent
+libraries, to come forth in the face of Europe and America as one of
+the leading historians of the time; the diplomatist, accomplished, of
+captivating presence and manners, an ardent American, and in the time
+of trial an impassioned and eloquent advocate of the cause of
+freedom; reaching at last the summit of his ambition as minister at
+the Court of Saint James.  All this I seemed to share with him as I
+tracked his career from his birthplace in Dorchester, and the house
+in Walnut Street where he passed his boyhood, to the palaces of
+Vienna and London.  And then the cruel blow which struck him from the
+place he adorned; the great sorrow that darkened his later years; the
+invasion of illness, a threat that warned of danger, and after a
+period of invalidism, during a part of which I shared his most
+intimate daily life, the sudden, hardly unwelcome, final summons.
+Did not my own consciousness migrate, or seem, at least, to transfer
+itself into this brilliant life history, as I traced its glowing
+record?  I, too, seemed to feel the delight of carrying with me, as
+if they were my own, the charms of a presence which made its own
+welcome everywhere.  I shared his heroic toils, I partook of his
+literary and social triumphs, I was honored by the marks of
+distinction which gathered about him, I was wronged by the indignity
+from which he suffered, mourned with him in his sorrow, and thus,
+after I had been living for months with his memory, I felt as if I
+should carry a part of his being with me so long as my self-
+consciousness might remain imprisoned in the ponderable elements.
+
+The years passed away, and the influences derived from the
+companionships I have spoken of had blended intimately with my own
+current of being.  Then there came to me a new experience in my
+relations with an eminent member of the medical profession, whom I
+met habitually for a long period, and to whose memory I consecrated a
+few pages as a prelude to a work of his own, written under very
+peculiar circumstances.  He was the subject of a slow, torturing,
+malignant, and almost necessarily fatal disease.  Knowing well that
+the mind would feed upon itself if it were not supplied with food
+from without, he determined to write a treatise on a subject which
+had greatly interested him, and which would oblige him to bestow much
+of his time and thought upon it, if indeed he could hold out to
+finish the work.  During the period while he was engaged in writing
+it, his wife, who had seemed in perfect health, died suddenly of
+pneumonia.  Physical suffering, mental distress, the prospect of
+death at a near, if uncertain, time always before him, it was hard to
+conceive a more terrible strain than that which he had to endure.
+When, in the hour of his greatest need, his faithful companion, the
+wife of many years of happy union, whose hand had smoothed his
+pillow, whose voice had consoled and cheered him, was torn from him
+after a few days of illness, I felt that my, friend's trial was such
+that the cry of the man of many afflictions and temptations might
+well have escaped from his lips: "I was at ease, but he hath broken
+me asunder; he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces,
+and set me up for his mark.  His archers compass me round about, he
+cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare; he poureth out my gall
+upon the ground."
+
+I had dreaded meeting him for the first time after this crushing
+blow.  What a lesson he gave me of patience under sufferings which
+the fearful description of the Eastern poet does not picture too
+vividly!  We have been taught to admire the calm philosophy of
+Haller, watching his faltering pulse as he lay dying; we have heard
+the words of pious resignation said to have been uttered with his
+last breath by Addison: but here was a trial, not of hours, or days,
+or weeks, but of months, even years, of cruel pain, and in the midst
+of its thick darkness the light of love, which had burned steadily at
+his bedside, was suddenly extinguished.
+
+There were times in which the thought would force itself upon my
+consciousness, How long is the universe to look upon this dreadful
+experiment of a malarious planet, with its unmeasurable freight of
+suffering, its poisonous atmosphere, so sweet to breathe, so sure to
+kill in a few scores of years at farthest, and its heart-breaking
+woes which make even that brief space of time an eternity?  There can
+be but one answer that will meet this terrible question, which must
+arise in every thinking nature that would fain "justify the ways of
+God to men."  So must it be until that
+
+         "one far-off divine event
+          To which the whole creation moves"
+
+has become a reality, and the anthem in which there is no discordant
+note shall be joined by a voice from every life made "perfect through
+sufferings."
+
+Such was the lesson into which I lived in those sad yet placid years
+of companionship with my suffering and sorrowing friend, in retracing
+which I seemed to find another existence mingled with my own.
+
+And now for many months I have been living in daily relations of
+intimacy with one who seems nearer to me since he has left us than
+while he was here in living form and feature.  I did not know how
+difficult a task I had undertaken in venturing upon a memoir of a man
+whom all, or almost all, agree upon as one of the great lights of the
+New World, and whom very many regard as an unpredicted Messiah.
+Never before was I so forcibly reminded of Carlyle's description of
+the work of a newspaper editor,--that threshing of straw already
+thrice beaten by the flails of other laborers in the same field.
+What could be said that had not been said of "transcendentalism" and
+of him who was regarded as its prophet; of the poet whom some admired
+without understanding, a few understood, or thought they did, without
+admiring, and many both understood and admired,--among these there
+being not a small number who went far beyond admiration, and lost
+themselves in devout worship?  While one exalted him as "the greatest
+man that ever lived," another, a friend, famous in the world of
+letters, wrote expressly to caution me against the danger of
+overrating a writer whom he is content to recognize as an American
+Montaigne, and nothing more.
+
+After finishing this Memoir, which has but just left my hands, I
+would gladly have let my brain rest for a while.  The wide range of
+thought which belonged to the subject of the Memoir, the occasional
+mysticism and the frequent tendency toward it, the sweep of
+imagination and the sparkle of wit which kept his reader's mind on
+the stretch, the union of prevailing good sense with exceptional
+extravagances, the modest audacity of a nature that showed itself in
+its naked truthfulness and was not ashamed, the feeling that I was in
+the company of a sibylline intelligence which was discounting the
+promises of the remote future long before they were due,--all this
+made the task a grave one.  But when I found myself amidst the
+vortices of uncounted, various, bewildering judgments, Catholic and
+Protestant, orthodox and liberal, scholarly from under the tree of
+knowledge and instinctive from over the potato-hill; the passionate
+enthusiasm of young adorers and the cool, if not cynical, estimate of
+hardened critics, all intersecting each other as they whirled, each
+around its own centre, I felt that it was indeed very difficult to
+keep the faculties clear and the judgment unbiassed.
+
+It is a great privilege to have lived so long in the society of such
+a man.  "He nothing common" said, "or mean."  He was always the same
+pure and high-souled companion.  After being with him virtue seemed
+as natural to man as its opposite did according to the old
+theologies.  But how to let one's self down from the high level of
+such a character to one's own poor standard?  I trust that the
+influence of this long intellectual and spiritual companionship never
+absolutely leaves one who has lived in it.  It may come to him in the
+form of self-reproach that he falls so far short of the superior
+being who has been so long the object of his contemplation.  But it
+also carries him at times into the other's personality, so that he
+finds himself thinking thoughts that are not his own, using phrases
+which he has unconsciously borrowed, writing, it may be, as nearly
+like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting was like
+Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that he is
+talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way.  So far as
+tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy
+of the original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a
+misfortune for the borrower.  But to share the inmost consciousness
+of a noble thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure
+and radiant soul,--this is indeed the highest form of teaching and
+discipline.
+
+I have written these few memoirs, and I am grateful for all that they
+have taught me.  But let me write no more.  There are but two
+biographers who can tell the story of a man's or a woman's life.  One
+is the person himself or herself; the other is the Recording Angel.
+The autobiographer cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth, though
+he may tell nothing but the truth, and the Recording Angel never lets
+his book go out of his own hands.  As for myself, I would say to my
+friends, in the Oriental phrase, "Live forever!"  Yes, live forever,
+and I, at least, shall not have to wrong your memories by my
+imperfect record and unsatisfying commentary.
+
+In connection with these biographies, or memoirs, more properly, in
+which I have written of my departed friends, I hope my readers will
+indulge me in another personal reminiscence.  I have just lost my
+dear and honored contemporary of the last century.  A hundred years
+ago this day, December 13, 1784, died the admirable and ever to be
+remembered Dr. Samuel Johnson.  The year 1709 was made ponderous and
+illustrious in English biography by his birth.  My own humble advent
+to the world of protoplasm was in the year 1809 of the present
+century.  Summer was just ending when those four letters, "son b."
+were written under the date of my birth, August 29th.  Autumn had
+just begun when my great pre-contemporary entered this un-Christian
+universe and was made a member of the Christian church on the same
+day, for he was born and baptized on the 18th of September.
+
+Thus there was established a close bond of relationship between the
+great English scholar and writer and myself.  Year by year, and
+almost month by month, my life has kept pace in this century with his
+life in the last century.  I had only to open my Boswell at any time,
+and I knew just what Johnson at my age, twenty or fifty or seventy,
+was thinking and doing; what were his feelings about life; what
+changes the years had wrought in his body, his mind, his feelings,
+his companionships, his reputation.  It was for me a kind of unison
+between two instruments, both playing that old familiar air, "Life,"
+--one a bassoon, if you will, and the other an oaten pipe, if you
+care to find an image for it, but still keeping pace with each other
+until the players both grew old and gray.  At last the thinner thread
+of sound is heard by itself, and its deep accompaniment rolls out its
+thunder no more.
+
+I feel lonely now that my great companion and friend of so many years
+has left me.  I felt more intimately acquainted with him than I do
+with many of my living friends.  I can hardly remember when I did not
+know him.  I can see him in his bushy wig, exactly like that of the
+Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper (who died in December, 1783) as Copley
+painted him,--he hangs there on my wall, over the revolving bookcase.
+His ample coat, too, I see, with its broad flaps and many buttons and
+generous cuffs, and beneath it the long, still more copiously
+buttoned waistcoat, arching in front of the fine crescentic, almost
+semi-lunar Falstaffian prominence, involving no less than a dozen of
+the above-mentioned buttons, and the strong legs with their sturdy
+calves, fitting columns of support to the massive body and solid,
+capacious brain enthroned over it.  I can hear him with his heavy
+tread as he comes in to the Club, and a gap is widened to make room
+for his portly figure.  "A fine day," says Sir Joshua.  "Sir," he
+answers, "it seems propitious, but the atmosphere is humid and the
+skies are nebulous," at which the great painter smiles, shifts his
+trumpet, and takes a pinch of snuff.
+
+Dear old massive, deep-voiced dogmatist and hypochondriac of the
+eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club,
+between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh-toned termagant and
+dyspeptic of the nineteenth!  The growl of the English mastiff and
+the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven
+the shores of Lethe.  I wish I could find our "spiritualist's" paper
+in the Portfolio, in which the two are brought together, but I hardly
+know what I shall find when it is opened.
+
+Yes, my life is a little less precious to me since I have lost that
+dear old friend; and when the funeral train moves to Westminster
+Abbey next Saturday, for I feel as if this were 1784, and not 1884,--
+I seem to find myself following the hearse, one of the silent
+mourners.
+
+Among the events which have rendered the past year memorable to me
+has been the demolition of that venerable and interesting old
+dwelling-house, precious for its intimate association with the
+earliest stages of the war of the Revolution, and sacred to me as my
+birthplace and the home of my boyhood.
+
+The "Old Gambrel-roofed House" exists no longer.  I remember saying
+something, in one of a series of papers published long ago, about the
+experience of dying out of a house,--of leaving it forever, as the
+soul dies out of the body.  We may die out of many houses, but the
+house itself can die but once; and so real is the life of a house to
+one who has dwelt in it, more especially the life of the house which
+held him in dreamy infancy, in restless boyhood, in passionate
+youth,--so real, I say, is its life, that it seems as if something
+like a soul of it must outlast its perishing frame.
+
+The slaughter of the Old Gambrel-roofed House was, I am ready to
+admit, a case of justifiable domicide.  Not the less was it to be
+deplored by all who love the memories of the past.  With its
+destruction are obliterated some of the footprints of the heroes and
+martyrs who took the first steps in the long and bloody march which
+led us through the wilderness to the promised land of independent
+nationality.  Personally, I have a right to mourn for it as a part of
+my life gone from me.  My private grief for its loss would be a
+matter for my solitary digestion, were it not that the experience
+through which I have just passed is one so familiar to my fellow-
+countrymen that, in telling my own reflections and feelings, I am
+repeating those of great numbers of men and women who have had the
+misfortune to outlive their birthplace.
+
+It is a great blessing to be born surrounded by a natural horizon.
+The Old Gambrel-roofed House could not boast an unbroken ring of
+natural objects encircling it.  Northerly it looked upon its own
+outbuildings and some unpretending two-story houses which had been
+its neighbors for a century and more.  To the south of it the square
+brick dormitories and the belfried hall of the university helped to
+shut out the distant view.  But the west windows gave a broad outlook
+across the common, beyond which the historical "Washington elm" and
+two companions in line with it, spread their leaves in summer and
+their networks in winter.  And far away rose the hills that bounded
+the view, with the glimmer here and there of the white walls or the
+illuminated casements of some embowered, half-hidden villa.
+Eastwardly also, the prospect was, in my earlier remembrance, widely
+open, and I have frequently seen the sunlit sails gliding along as if
+through the level fields, for no water was visible.  So there were
+broad expanses on two sides at least, for my imagination to wander
+over.
+
+I cannot help thinking that we carry our childhood's horizon with us
+all our days.  Among these western wooded hills my day-dreams built
+their fairy palaces, and even now, as I look at them from my library
+window, across the estuary of the Charles, I find myself in the
+familiar home of my early visions.  The "clouds of glory" which we
+trail with us in after life need not be traced to a pre-natal state.
+There is enough to account for them in that unconsciously remembered
+period of existence before we have learned the hard limitations of
+real life.  Those earliest months in which we lived in sensations
+without words, and ideas not fettered in sentences, have all the
+freshness of proofs of an engraving "before the letter."  I am very
+thankful that the first part of my life was not passed shut in
+between high walls and treading the unimpressible and unsympathetic
+pavement.
+
+Our university town was very much like the real country, in those
+days of which I am thinking.  There were plenty of huckleberries and
+blueberries within half a mile of the house.  Blackberries ripened in
+the fields, acorns and shagbarks dropped from the trees, squirrels
+ran among the branches, and not rarely the hen-hawk might be seen
+circling over the barnyard.  Still another rural element was not
+wanting, in the form of that far-diffused, infragrant effluvium,
+which, diluted by a good half mile of pure atmosphere, is no longer
+odious, nay is positively agreeable, to many who have long known it,
+though its source and centre has an unenviable reputation.  I need
+not name the animal whose Parthian warfare terrifies and puts to
+flight the mightiest hunter that ever roused the tiger from his
+jungle or faced the lion of the desert.  Strange as it may seem, an
+aerial hint of his personality in the far distance always awakens in
+my mind pleasant remembrances and tender reflections.  A whole
+neighborhood rises up before me: the barn, with its haymow, where the
+hens laid their eggs to hatch, and we boys hid our apples to ripen,
+both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non vobis; the shed, where
+the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism that made
+Salvini's Othello seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old
+outhouse, with the "corn-chamber" which the mice knew so well; the
+paved yard, with its open gutter,--these and how much else come up at
+the hint of my far-off friend, who is my very near enemy.  Nothing is
+more familiar than the power of smell in reviving old memories.
+There was that quite different fragrance of the wood-house, the smell
+of fresh sawdust.  It comes back to me now, and with it the hiss of
+the saw; the tumble of the divorced logs which God put together and
+man has just put asunder; the coming down of the axe and the hah!
+that helped it,--the straight-grained stick opening at the first
+appeal of the implement as if it were a pleasure, and the stick with
+a knot in the middle of it that mocked the blows and the hahs!  until
+the beetle and wedge made it listen to reason,--there are just such
+straight-grained and just such knotty men and women.  All this passes
+through my mind while Biddy, whose parlor-name is Angela, contents
+herself with exclaiming "egh!*******!"
+
+How different distances were in those young days of which I am
+thinking!  From the old house to the old yellow meeting-house, where
+the head of the family preached and the limbs of the family listened,
+was not much more than two or three times the width of Commonwealth
+Avenue.  But of a hot summer's afternoon, after having already heard
+one sermon, which could not in the nature of things have the charm of
+novelty of presentation to the members of the home circle, and the
+theology of which was not too clear to tender apprehensions; with
+three hymns more or less lugubrious, rendered by a village-choir, got
+into voice by many preliminary snuffles and other expiratory efforts,
+and accompanied by the snort of a huge bassviol which wallowed
+through the tune like a hippopotamus, with other exercises of the
+customary character,--after all this in the forenoon, the afternoon
+walk to the meeting-house in the hot sun counted for as much, in my
+childish dead-reckoning, as from old Israel Porter's in Cambridge to
+the Exchange Coffeehouse in Boston did in after years.  It takes a
+good while to measure the radius of the circle that is about us, for
+the moon seems at first as near as the watchface.  Who knows but
+that, after a certain number of ages, the planet we live on may seem
+to us no bigger than our neighbor Venus appeared when she passed
+before the sun a few months ago, looking as if we could take her
+between our thumb and finger, like a bullet or a marble?  And time,
+too; how long was it from the serious sunrise to the joyous "sun-
+down" of an old-fashioned, puritanical, judaical first day of the
+week, which a pious fraud christened "the Sabbath"?  Was it a
+fortnight, as we now reckon duration, or only a week?  Curious
+entities, or non-entities, space and tithe?  When you see a
+metaphysician trying to wash his hands of them and get rid of these
+accidents, so as to lay his dry, clean palm on the absolute, does
+it not remind you of the hopeless task of changing the color of the
+blackamoor by a similar proceeding?  For space is the fluid in which
+he is washing, and time is the soap which he is using up in the
+process, and he cannot get free from them until he can wash himself
+in a mental vacuum.
+
+In my reference to the old house in a former paper, published years
+ago, I said,
+
+"By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself
+on this whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so
+tenaciously to the place and its habitations will have died with
+those who cherished them."
+
+What strides the great University has taken since those words were
+written!  During all my early years our old Harvard Alma Mater sat
+still and lifeless as the colossi in the Egyptian desert.  Then all
+at once, like the statue in Don Giovanni, she moved from her
+pedestal.  The fall of that "stony foot" has effected a miracle like
+the harp that Orpheus played, like the teeth which Cadmus sowed.  The
+plain where the moose and the bear were wandering while Shakespeare
+was writing Hamlet, where a few plain dormitories and other needed
+buildings were scattered about in my school-boy days, groans under
+the weight of the massive edifices which have sprung up all around
+them, crowned by the tower of that noble structure which stands in
+full view before me as I lift my eyes from the portfolio on the back
+of which I am now writing.
+
+For I must be permitted to remind you that I have not yet opened it.
+I have told you that I have just finished a long memoir, and that it
+has cost me no little labor to overcome some of its difficulties,--if
+I have overcome them, which others must decide.  And I feel exactly
+as honest Dobbin feels when his harness is slipped off after a long
+journey with a good deal of up-hill work.  He wants to rest a little,
+then to feed a little; then, if you will turn him loose in the
+pasture, he wants to roll.  I have left my starry and ethereal
+companionship,--not for a long time, I hope, for it has lifted me
+above my common self, but for a while.  And now I want, so to speak,
+to roll in the grass and among the dandelions with the other
+pachyderms.  So I have kept to the outside of the portfolio as yet,
+and am disporting myself in reminiscences, and fancies, and vagaries,
+and parentheses.
+
+How well I understand the feeling which led the Pisans to load their
+vessels with earth from the Holy Land, and fill the area of the Campo
+Santo with that sacred soil!  The old house stood upon about as
+perverse a little patch of the planet as ever harbored a half-starved
+earth-worm.  It was as sandy as Sahara and as thirsty as Tantalus.
+The rustic aid-de-camps of the household used to aver that all
+fertilizing matters "leached" through it.  I tried to disprove their
+assertion by gorging it with the best of terrestrial nourishment,
+until I became convinced that I was feeding the tea-plants of China,
+and then I gave over the attempt.  And yet I did love, and do love,
+that arid patch of ground.  I wonder if a single flower could not be
+made to grow in a pot of earth from that Campo Santo of my childhood!
+One noble product of nature did not refuse to flourish there,--the
+tall, stately, beautiful, soft-haired, many-jointed, generous maize
+or Indian corn, which thrives on sand and defies the blaze of our
+shrivelling summer.  What child but loves to wander in its forest-
+like depths, amidst the rustling leaves and with the lofty tassels
+tossing their heads high above him!  There are two aspects of the
+cornfield which always impress my imagination: the first when it has
+reached its full growth, and its ordered ranks look like an army on
+the march with its plumed and bannered battalions; the second when,
+after the battle of the harvest, the girdled stacks stand on the
+field of slaughter like so many ragged Niobes,--say rather like the
+crazy widows and daughters of the dead soldiery.
+
+Once more let us come back to the old house.  It was far along in its
+second century when the edict went forth that it must stand no
+longer.
+
+The natural death of a house is very much like that of one of its
+human tenants.  The roof is the first part to show the distinct signs
+of age.  Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave
+bald the boards that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and
+soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by
+the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels
+away, the ceilings scale off and fall, the windows are crusted with
+clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the winds
+come in without knocking and howl their cruel death-songs through the
+empty rooms and passages, and at last there comes a crash, a great
+cloud of dust rises, and the home that had been the shelter of
+generation after generation finds its grave in its own cellar.  Only
+the chimney remains as its monument.  Slowly, little by little, the
+patient solvents that find nothing too hard for their chemistry pick
+out the mortar from between the bricks; at last a mighty wind roars
+around it and rushes against it, and the monumental relic crashes
+down among the wrecks it has long survived.  So dies a human
+habitation left to natural decay, all that was seen above the surface
+of the soil sinking gradually below it,
+
+     Till naught remains the saddening tale to tell
+     Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well.
+
+But if this sight is saddening, what is it to see a human dwelling
+fall by the hand of violence!  The ripping off of the shelter that
+has kept out a thousand storms, the tearing off of the once
+ornamental woodwork, the wrench of the inexorable crowbar, the
+murderous blows of the axe, the progressive ruin, which ends by
+rending all the joints asunder and flinging the tenoned and mortised
+timbers into heaps that will be sawed and split to warm some new
+habitation as firewood,--what a brutal act of destruction it seems!
+
+Why should I go over the old house again, having already described it
+more than ten years ago?  Alas!  how many remember anything they read
+but once, and so long ago as that?  How many would find it out if one
+should say over in the same words that which he said in the last
+decade?  But there is really no need of telling the story a second
+time, for it can be found by those who are curious enough to look it
+up in a volume of which it occupies the opening chapter.
+
+In order, however, to save any inquisitive reader that trouble, let
+me remind him that the old house was General Ward's headquarters at
+the breaking out of the Revolution; that the plan for fortifying
+Bunker's Hill was laid, as commonly believed, in the southeast lower
+room, the floor of which was covered with dents, made, it was
+alleged, by the butts of the soldiers' muskets.  In that house, too,
+General Warren probably passed the night before the Bunker Hill
+battle, and over its threshold must the stately figure of Washington
+have often cast its shadow.
+
+But the house in which one drew his first breath, and where he one
+day came into the consciousness that he was a personality, an ego, a
+little universe with a sky over him all his own, with a persistent
+identity, with the terrible responsibility of a separate,
+independent, inalienable existence,--that house does not ask for any
+historical associations to make it the centre of the earth for him.
+
+If there is any person in the world to be envied, it is the one who
+is born to an ancient estate, with a long line of family traditions
+and the means in his hands of shaping his mansion and his domain to
+his own taste, without losing sight of all the characteristic
+features which surrounded his earliest years.  The American is, for
+the most part, a nomad, who pulls down his house as the Tartar pulls
+up his tent-poles.  If I had an ideal life to plan for him it would
+be something like this:
+
+His grandfather should be a wise, scholarly, large-brained, large-
+hearted country minister, from whom he should inherit the temperament
+that predisposes to cheerfulness and enjoyment, with the finer
+instincts which direct life to noble aims and make it rich with the
+gratification of pure and elevated tastes and the carrying out of
+plans for the good of his neighbors and his fellow-creatures.  He
+should, if possible, have been born, at any rate have passed some of
+his early years, or a large part of them, under the roof of the good
+old minister.  His father should be, we will say, a business man in
+one of our great cities,--a generous manipulator of millions, some of
+which have adhered to his private fortunes, in spite of his liberal
+use of his means.  His heir, our ideally placed American, shall take
+possession of the old house, the home of his earliest memories, and
+preserve it sacredly, not exactly like the Santa Casa, but, as nearly
+as may be, just as he remembers it.  He can add as many acres as he
+will to the narrow house-lot.  He can build a grand mansion for
+himself, if he chooses, in the not distant neighborhood.  But the old
+house, and all immediately round it, shall be as he recollects it
+when be had to stretch his little arm up to reach the door-handles.
+Then, having well provided for his own household, himself included,
+let him become the providence of the village or the town where be
+finds himself during at least a portion of every year.  Its schools,
+its library, its poor,--and perhaps the new clergyman who has
+succeeded his grandfather's successor may be one of them,--all its
+interests, he shall make his own.  And from this centre his
+beneficence shall radiate so far that all who hear of his wealth
+shall also hear of him as a friend to his race.
+
+Is not this a pleasing programme?  Wealth is a steep hill, which the
+father climbs slowly and the son often tumbles down precipitately;
+but there is a table-land on a level with it, which may be found by
+those who do not lose their head in looking down from its sharply
+cloven summit.---Our dangerously rich men can make themselves hated,
+held as enemies of the race, or beloved and recognized as its
+benefactors.  The clouds of discontent are threatening, but if the
+gold-pointed lightning-rods are rightly distributed the destructive
+element may be drawn off silently and harmlessly.  For it cannot be
+repeated too often that the safety of great wealth with us lies in
+obedience to the new version of the Old World axiom, RICHESS oblige.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.
+
+
+
+
+A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.
+
+
+
+I
+
+GETTING READY.
+
+It is impossible to begin a story which must of necessity tax the
+powers of belief of readers unacquainted with the class of facts to
+which its central point of interest belongs without some words in the
+nature of preparation.  Readers of Charles Lamb remember that Sarah
+Battle insisted on a clean-swept hearth before sitting down to her
+favorite game of whist.
+
+The narrator wishes to sweep the hearth, as it were, in these opening
+pages, before sitting down to tell his story.  He does not intend to
+frighten the reader away by prolix explanation, but he does mean to
+warn him against hasty judgments when facts are related which are not
+within the range of every-day experience.  Did he ever see the
+Siamese twins, or any pair like them?  Probably not, yet he feels
+sure that Chang and Eng really existed; and if he has taken the
+trouble to inquire, he has satisfied himself that similar cases have
+been recorded by credible witnesses, though at long intervals and in
+countries far apart from each other.
+
+This is the first sweep of the brush, to clear the hearth of the
+skepticism and incredulity which must be got out of the way before we
+can begin to tell and to listen in peace with ourselves and each
+other.
+
+One more stroke of the brush is needed before the stage will be ready
+for the chief characters and the leading circumstances to which the
+reader's attention is invited.  If the principal personages made
+their entrance at once, the reader would have to create for himself
+the whole scenery of their surrounding conditions.  In point of fact,
+no matter how a story is begun, many of its readers have already
+shaped its chief actors out of any hint the author may have dropped,
+and provided from their own resources a locality and a set of outward
+conditions to environ these imagined personalities.  These are all to
+be brushed away, and the actual surroundings of the subject of the
+narrative represented as they were, at the risk of detaining the
+reader a little while from the events most likely to interest him.
+The choicest egg that ever was laid was not so big as the nest that
+held it.  If a story were so interesting that a maiden would rather
+hear it than listen to the praise of her own beauty, or a poet would
+rather read it than recite his own verses, still it would have to be
+wrapped in some tissue of circumstance, or it would lose half its
+effectiveness.
+
+It may not be easy to find the exact locality referred to in this
+narrative by looking into the first gazetteer that is at hand.
+Recent experiences have shown that it is unsafe to be too exact in
+designating places and the people who live in them.  There are, it
+may be added, so many advertisements disguised under the form of
+stories and other literary productions that one naturally desires to
+avoid the suspicion of being employed by the enterprising proprietors
+of this or that celebrated resort to use his gifts for their especial
+benefit.  There are no doubt many persons who remember the old sign
+and the old tavern and its four chief personages presently to be
+mentioned.  It is to be hoped that they will not furnish the public
+with a key to this narrative, and perhaps bring trouble to the writer
+of it, as has happened to other authors.  If the real names are a
+little altered, it need not interfere with the important facts
+relating to those who bear them.  It might not be safe to tell a
+damaging story about John or James Smythe; but if the slight change
+is made of spelling the name Smith, the Smythes would never think of
+bringing an action, as if the allusion related to any of them.  The
+same gulf of family distinction separates the Thompsons with a p from
+the Thomsons without that letter.
+
+There are few pleasanter places in the Northern States for a summer
+residence than that known from the first period of its settlement by
+the name of Arrowhead Village.  The Indians had found it out, as the
+relics they left behind them abundantly testified.  The commonest of
+these were those chipped stones which are the medals of barbarism,
+and from Which the place took its name,--the heads of arrows, of
+various sizes, material, and patterns: some small enough for killing
+fish and little birds, some large enough for such game as the moose
+and the bear, to say nothing of the hostile Indian and the white
+settler; some of flint, now and then one of white quartz, and others
+of variously colored jasper.  The Indians must have lived here for
+many generations, and it must have been a kind of factory village of
+the stone age,--which lasted up to near the present time, if we may
+judge from the fact that many of these relics are met with close to
+the surface of the ground.
+
+No wonder they found this a pleasant residence, for it is to-day one
+of the most attractive of all summer resorts; so inviting, indeed,
+that those who know it do not like to say too much about it, lest the
+swarms of tourists should make it unendurable to those who love it
+for itself, and not as a centre of fashionable display and extramural
+cockneyism.
+
+There is the lake, in the first place,--Cedar Lake,--about five miles
+long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half wide, stretching from
+north to south.  Near the northern extremity are the buildings of
+Stoughton University, a flourishing young college with an ambitious
+name, but well equipped and promising, the grounds of which reach the
+water.  At the southern end of the lake are the edifices of the
+Corinna Institute, a favorite school for young ladies, where large
+numbers of the daughters of America are fitted, so far as education
+can do it, for all stations in life, from camping out with a husband
+at the mines in Nevada to acting the part of chief lady of the land
+in the White House at Washington.
+
+Midway between the two extremities, on the eastern shore of the lake,
+is a valley between two hills, which come down to the very edge of
+the lake, leaving only room enough for a road between their base and
+the water.  This valley, half a mile in width, has been long settled,
+and here for a century or more has stood the old Anchor Tavern.  A
+famous place it was so long as its sign swung at the side of the
+road: famous for its landlord, portly, paternal, whose welcome to a
+guest that looked worthy of the attention was like that of a parent
+to a returning prodigal, and whose parting words were almost as good
+as a marriage benediction; famous for its landlady, ample in person,
+motherly, seeing to the whole household with her own eyes, mistress
+of all culinary secrets that Northern kitchens are most proud of;
+famous also for its ancient servant, as city people would call her,
+--help, as she was called in the tavern and would have called
+herself,--the unchanging, seemingly immortal Miranda, who cared for
+the guests as if she were their nursing mother, and pressed the
+specially favorite delicacies on their attention as a connoisseur
+calls the wandering eyes of an amateur to the beauties of a picture.
+Who that has ever been at the old Anchor Tavern forgets Miranda's
+
+     "A little of this fricassee?-it is ver-y nice;"
+
+or
+
+     "Some of these cakes?  You will find them ver-y good."
+
+Nor would it be just to memory to forget that other notable and noted
+member of the household,--the unsleeping, unresting, omnipresent
+Pushee, ready for everybody and everything, everywhere within the
+limits of the establishment at all hours of the day and night.  He
+fed, nobody could say accurately when or where.  There were rumors of
+a "bunk," in which he lay down with his clothes on, but he seemed to
+be always wide awake, and at the service of as many guest, at once as
+if there had been half a dozen of him.
+
+So much for old reminiscences.
+
+The landlord of the Anchor Tavern had taken down his sign.  He had
+had the house thoroughly renovated and furnished it anew, and kept it
+open in summer for a few boarders.  It happened more than once that
+the summer boarders were so much pleased with the place that they
+stayed on through the autumn, and some of them through the winter.
+The attractions of the village were really remarkable.  Boating in
+summer, and skating in winter; ice-boats, too, which the wild ducks
+could hardly keep up with; fishing, for which the lake was renowned;
+varied and beautiful walks through the valley and up the hillsides;
+houses sheltered from the north and northeasterly winds, and
+refreshed in the hot summer days by the breeze which came over the
+water,--all this made the frame for a pleasing picture of rest and
+happiness.  But there was a great deal more than this.  There was a
+fine library in the little village, presented and richly endowed by a
+wealthy native of the place.  There was a small permanent population
+of a superior character to that of an everyday country town; there
+was a pretty little Episcopal church, with a good-hearted rector,
+broad enough for the Bishop of the diocese to be a little afraid of,
+and hospitable to all outsiders, of whom, in the summer season, there
+were always some who wanted a place of worship to keep their religion
+from dying out during the heathen months, while the shepherds of the
+flocks to which they belonged were away from their empty folds.
+
+What most helped to keep the place alive all through the year was the
+frequent coming together of the members of a certain literary
+association.  Some time before the tavern took down its sign the
+landlord had built a hall, where many a ball had been held, to which
+the young folks of all the country round had resorted.  It was still
+sometimes used for similar occasions, but it was especially notable
+as being the place of meeting of the famous PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+This association, the name of which might be invidiously interpreted
+as signifying that its members knew everything, had no such
+pretensions, but, as its Constitution said very plainly and modestly,
+held itself open to accept knowledge on any and all subjects from
+such as had knowledge to impart.  Its President was the rector of the
+little chapel, a man who, in spite of the Thirty-Nine Articles, could
+stand fire from the widest-mouthed heretical blunderbuss without
+flinching or losing his temper.  The hall of the old Anchor Tavern
+was a convenient place of meeting for the students and instructors of
+the University and the Institute.  Sometimes in boat-loads, sometimes
+in carriage-loads, sometimes in processions of skaters, they came to
+the meetings in Pansophian Hall, as it was now commonly called.
+
+These meetings had grown to be occasions of great interest.  It was
+customary to have papers written by members of the Society, for the
+most part, but now and then by friends of the members, sometimes by
+the students of the College or the Institute, and in rarer instances
+by anonymous personages, whose papers, having been looked over and
+discussed by the Committee appointed for that purpose, were thought
+worth listening to.  The variety of topics considered was very great.
+The young ladies of the village and the Institute had their favorite
+subjects, the young gentlemen a different set of topics, and the
+occasional outside contributors their own; so that one who happened
+to be admitted to a meeting never knew whether he was going to hear
+an account of recent arctic discoveries, or an essay on the freedom
+of the will, or a psychological experience, or a story, or even a
+poem.
+
+Of late there had been a tendency to discuss the questions relating
+to the true status and the legitimate social functions of woman.  The
+most conflicting views were held on the subject.  Many of the young
+ladies and some of the University students were strong in defence of
+all the "woman's rights" doctrines.  Some of these young people were
+extreme in their views.  They had read about Semiramis and Boadicea
+and Queen Elizabeth, until they were ready, if they could get the
+chance, to vote for a woman as President of the United States or as
+General of the United States Army.  They were even disposed to assert
+the physical equality of woman to man, on the strength of the rather
+questionable history of the Amazons, and especially of the story,
+believed to be authentic, of the female body-guard of the King of
+Dahomey,--females frightful enough to need no other weapon than their
+looks to scare off an army of Cossacks.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, gold medallist of her year at the Corinna
+Institute, was the leader of these advocates of virile womanhood.  It
+was rather singular that she should have elected to be the apostle of
+this extreme doctrine, for she was herself far better equipped with
+brain than muscles.  In fact, she was a large-headed, large-eyed,
+long-eyelashed, slender-necked, slightly developed young woman;
+looking almost like a child at an age when many of the girls had
+reached their full stature and proportions.  In her studies she was
+so far in advance of her different classes that there was always a
+wide gap between her and the second scholar.  So fatal to all rivalry
+had she proved herself that she passed under the school name of The
+Terror.  She learned so easily that she undervalued her own
+extraordinary gifts, and felt the deepest admiration for those of her
+friends endowed with faculties of an entirely different and almost
+opposite nature.  After sitting at her desk until her head was hot
+and her feet were like ice, she would go and look at the blooming
+young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school, and feel as if
+she would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and strange
+tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the
+encyclopaedia of every class she belonged to, if she could go through
+the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her
+schoolmates delighting.
+
+One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she
+was of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which
+nature had specially organized her.  All the physical perfections
+which Miss Lurida had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower,
+whose school name was The Wonder.  Though of full womanly stature,
+there were several taller girls of her age.  While all her contours
+and all her movements betrayed a fine muscular development, there was
+no lack of proportion, and her finely shaped hands and feet showed
+that her organization was one of those carefully finished
+masterpieces of nature which sculptors are always in search of, and
+find it hard to detect among the imperfect products of the living
+laboratory.
+
+This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
+performances in the gymnasium.  She commonly contented herself with
+the same exercises that her companions were accustomed to.  Only her
+dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too
+heavy for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the
+floor.  She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be
+checked in her indulgence in them.  The Professor of gymnastics at
+the University came over to the Institute now and then, and it was a
+source of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in
+which the young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and
+skill in managing herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked
+impossible at first sight.  How often The Terror had thought to
+herself that she would gladly give up all her knowledge of Greek and
+the differential and integral calculus if she could only perform the
+least of those feats which were mere play to The Wonder!  Miss
+Euthymia was not behind the rest in her attainments in classical or
+mathematical knowledge, and she was one of the very best students in
+the out-door branches,--botany, mineralogy, sketching from nature,--
+to be found among the scholars of the Institute.
+
+There was an eight-oared boat rowed by a crew of the young ladies, of
+which Miss Euthymia was the captain and pulled the bow oar.  Poor
+little Lurida could not pull an oar, but on great occasions, when
+there were many boats out, she was wanted as coxswain, being a mere
+feather-weight, and quick-witted enough to serve well in the
+important office where brains are more needed than muscle.
+
+There was also an eight-oared boat belonging to the University, and
+rowed by a picked crew of stalwart young fellows.  The bow oar and
+captain of the University crew was a powerful young man, who, like
+the captain of the girls' boat, was a noted gymnast.  He had had one
+or two quiet trials with Miss Euthymia, in which, according to the
+ultras of the woman's rights party, he had not vindicated the
+superiority of his sex in the way which might have been expected.
+Indeed, it was claimed that he let a cannon-ball drop when he ought
+to have caught it, and it was not disputed that he had been
+ingloriously knocked over by a sand-bag projected by the strong arms
+of the young maiden.  This was of course a story that was widely told
+and laughingly listened to, and the captain of the University crew
+had become a little sensitive on the subject.  When there was a talk,
+therefore, about a race between the champion boats of the two
+institutions there was immense excitement in both of them, as well as
+among the members of the Pansophian Society and all the good people
+of the village.
+
+There were many objections to be overcome.  Some thought it
+unladylike for the young maidens to take part in a competition which
+must attract many lookers-on, and which it seemed to them very
+hoidenish to venture upon.  Some said it was a shame to let a crew of
+girls try their strength against an equal number of powerful young
+men.  These objections were offset by the advocates of the race by
+the following arguments.  They maintained that it was no more
+hoidenish to row a boat than it was to take a part in the calisthenic
+exercises, and that the girls had nothing to do with the young men's
+boat, except to keep as much ahead of it as possible.  As to
+strength, the woman's righters believed that, weight for weight,
+their crew was as strong as the other, and of course due allowance
+would be made for the difference of weight and all other accidental
+hindrances.  It was time to test the boasted superiority of masculine
+muscle.  Here was a chance.  If the girls beat, the whole country
+would know it, and after that female suffrage would be only a
+question of time.  Such was the conclusion, from rather insufficient
+premises, it must be confessed; but if nature does nothing per
+saltum,--by jumps,--as the old adage has it, youth is very apt to
+take long leaps from a fact to a possible sequel or consequence.  So
+it had come about that a contest between the two boat-crews was
+looked forward to with an interest almost equal to that with which
+the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii was regarded.
+
+The terms had been at last arranged between the two crews, after
+cautious protocols and many diplomatic discussions.  It was so novel
+in its character that it naturally took a good deal of time to adjust
+it in such a way as to be fair to both parties.  The course must not
+be too long for the lighter and weaker crew, for the staying power of
+the young persons who made it up could not be safely reckoned upon.
+A certain advantage must be allowed them at the start, and this was a
+delicate matter to settle.  The weather was another important
+consideration.  June would be early enough, in all probability, and
+if the lake should be tolerably smooth the grand affair might come
+off some time in that month.  Any roughness of the water would be
+unfavorable to the weaker crew.  The rowing-course was on the eastern
+side of the lake, the starting-point being opposite the Anchor
+Tavern; from that three quarters of a mile to the south, where the
+turning-stake was fixed, so that the whole course of one mile and a
+half would bring the boats back to their starting-point.
+
+The race was to be between the Algonquin, eight-oared boat with
+outriggers, rowed by young men, students of Stoughton University, and
+the Atalanta, also eight-oared and outrigger boat, by young ladies
+from the Corinna Institute.  Their boat was three inches wider than
+the other, for various sufficient reasons, one of which was to make
+it a little less likely to go over and throw its crew into the water,
+which was a sound precaution, though all the girls could swim, and
+one at least, the bow oar, was a famous swimmer, who had pulled a
+drowning man out of the water after a hard struggle to keep him from
+carrying her down with him.
+
+Though the coming trial had not been advertised in the papers, so as
+to draw together a rabble of betting men and ill-conditioned lookers-
+on, there was a considerable gathering, made up chiefly of the
+villagers and the students of the two institutions.  Among them were
+a few who were disposed to add to their interest in the trial by
+small wagers.  The bets were rather in favor of the "Quins," as the
+University boat was commonly called, except where the natural
+sympathy of the young ladies or the gallantry of some of the young
+men led them to risk their gloves or cigars, or whatever it might be,
+on the Atalantas.  The elements of judgment were these: average
+weight of the Algonquins one hundred and sixty-five pounds; average
+weight of the Atalantas, one hundred and forty-eight pounds; skill in
+practice about equal; advantage of the narrow boat equal to three
+lengths; whole distance allowed the Atalantas eight lengths,--a long
+stretch to be made up in a mile and a half.
+
+And so both crews began practising for the grand trial.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BOAT-RACE.
+
+The 10th of June was a delicious summer day, rather warm, but still
+and bright.  The water was smooth, and the crews were in the best
+possible condition.  All was expectation, and for some time nothing
+but expectation.  No boat-race or regatta ever began at the time
+appointed for the start.  Somebody breaks an oar, or somebody fails
+to appear in season, or something is the matter with a seat or an
+outrigger; or if there is no such excuse, the crew of one or both or
+all the boats to take part in the race must paddle about to get
+themselves ready for work, to the infinite weariness of all the
+spectators, who naturally ask why all this getting ready is not
+attended to beforehand.  The Algonquins wore plain gray flannel suits
+and white caps.  The young ladies were all in dark blue dresses,
+touched up with a red ribbon here and there, and wore light straw
+hats.  The little coxswain of the Atalanta was the last to step on
+board.  As she took her place she carefully deposited at her feet a
+white handkerchief wrapped about something or other, perhaps a
+sponge, in case the boat should take in water.
+
+At last the Algonquin shot out from the little nook where she lay,--
+long, narrow, shining, swift as a pickerel when he darts from the
+reedy shore.  It was a beautiful sight to see the eight young fellows
+in their close-fitting suits, their brown muscular arms bare, bending
+their backs for the stroke and recovering, as if they were parts of a
+single machine.
+
+"The gals can't stan' it agin them fellers," said the old blacksmith
+from the village.
+
+"You wait till the gals get a-goin'," said the carpenter, who had
+often worked in the gymnasium of the Corinna Institute, and knew
+something of their muscular accomplishments.  "Y' ought to see 'em
+climb ropes, and swing dumb-bells, and pull in them rowin'-machines.
+Ask Jake there whether they can't row a mild in double-quick time,--
+he knows all abaout it."
+
+Jake was by profession a fisherman, and a freshwater fisherman in a
+country village is inspector-general of all that goes on out-of-
+doors, being a lazy, wandering sort of fellow, whose study of the
+habits and habitats of fishes gives him a kind of shrewdness of
+observation, just as dealing in horses is an education of certain
+faculties, and breeds a race of men peculiarly cunning, suspicious,
+wary, and wide awake, with a rhetoric of appreciation and
+depreciation all its own.
+
+Jake made his usual preliminary signal, and delivered himself to the
+following effect:
+
+"Wahl, I don' know jest what to say.  I've seed 'em both often enough
+when they was practisin', an' I tell ye the' wa'n't no slouch abaout
+neither on 'em.  But them bats is all-fired long, 'n' eight on 'em
+stretched in a straight line eendways makes a consid'able piece aout
+'f a mile 'n' a haaf.  I'd bate on them gals if it wa'n't that them
+fellers is naterally longer winded, as the gals 'll find aout by the
+time they git raound the stake 'n' over agin the big ellum.  I'll go
+ye a quarter on the pahnts agin the petticoats."
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had expressed the prevailing belief that
+the young ladies were overmatched.  Still there were not wanting
+those who thought the advantage allowed the "Lantas," as they called
+the Corinna boatcrew, was too great, and that it would be impossible
+for the "Quins" to make it up and go by them.
+
+The Algonquins rowed up and down a few times before the spectators.
+They appeared in perfect training, neither too fat nor too fine,
+mettlesome as colts, steady as draught-horses, deep-breathed as oxen,
+disciplined to work together as symmetrically as a single sculler
+pulls his pair of oars.  The fisherman offered to make his quarter
+fifty cents.  No takers.
+
+Five minutes passed, and all eyes were strained to the south, looking
+for the Atalanta.  A clump of trees hid the edge of the lake along
+which the Corinna's boat was stealing towards the starting-point.
+Presently the long shell swept into view, with its blooming rowers,
+who, with their ample dresses, seemed to fill it almost as full as
+Raphael fills his skiff on the edge of the Lake of Galilee.  But how
+steadily the Atalanta came on!---no rocking, no splashing, no
+apparent strain; the bow oar turning to look ahead every now and
+then, and watching her course, which seemed to be straight as an
+arrow, the beat of the strokes as true and regular as the pulse of
+the healthiest rower among them all.  And if the sight of the other
+boat and its crew was beautiful, how lovely was the look of this!
+Eight young girls,--young ladies, for those who prefer that more
+dignified and less attractive expression,--all in the flush of youth,
+all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower
+alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar
+dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue;
+every eye kindling with the hope of victory.  Each of the boats was
+cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were
+naturally the loudest, as the gallantry of one sex and the clear,
+high voices of the other gave it life and vigor.
+
+"Take your places!" shouted the umpire, five minutes before the half
+hour.  The two boats felt their way slowly and cautiously to their
+positions, which had been determined by careful measurement.  After a
+little backing and filling they got into line, at the proper distance
+from each other, and sat motionless, their bodies bent forward, their
+arms outstretched, their oars in the water, waiting for the word.
+
+"Go!" shouted the umpire.
+
+Away sprang the Atalanta, and far behind her leaped the Algonquin,
+her oars bending like so many long Indian bows as their blades
+flashed through the water.
+
+"A stern chase is a long chase," especially when one craft is a great
+distance behind the other.  It looked as if it would be impossible
+for the rear boat to overcome the odds against it.  Of course the
+Algonquin kept gaining, but could it possibly gain enough?  That was
+the question.  As the boats got farther and farther away, it became
+more and more difficult to determine what change there was in the
+interval between them.  But when they came to rounding the stake it
+was easier to guess at the amount of space which had been gained.  It
+was clear that something like half the distance, four lengths, as
+nearly as could be estimated, had been made up in rowing the first
+three quarters of a mile.  Could the Algonquins do a little better
+than this in the second half of the race-course, they would be sure
+of winning.
+
+The boats had turned the stake, and were coming in rapidly.  Every
+minute the University boat was getting nearer the other.
+
+"Go it, Quins!" shouted the students.
+
+"Pull away, Lantas!" screamed the girls, who were crowding down to
+the edge of the water.
+
+Nearer,--nearer,--the rear boat is pressing the other more and more
+closely,--a few more strokes, and they will be even, for there is but
+one length between them, and thirty rods will carry them to the line.
+It looks desperate for the Atalantas.  The bow oar of the Algonquin
+turns his head.  He sees the little coxswain leaning forward at every
+stroke, as if her trivial weight were of such mighty consequence,--
+but a few ounces might turn the scale of victory.  As he turned he
+got a glimpse of the stroke oar of the Atalanta.  What a flash of
+loveliness it was!  Her face was like the reddest of June roses, with
+the heat and the strain and the passion of expected triumph.  The
+upper button of her close-fitting flannel suit had strangled her as
+her bosom heaved with exertion, and it had given way before the
+fierce clutch she made at it.  The bow oar was a staunch and steady
+rower, but he was human.  The blade of his oar lingered in the water;
+a little more and he would have caught a crab, and perhaps lost the
+race by his momentary bewilderment.
+
+The boat, which seemed as if it had all the life and nervousness of a
+Derby three-year-old, felt the slight check, and all her men bent
+more vigorously to their oars.  The Atalantas saw the movement, and
+made a spurt to keep their lead and gain upon it if they could.  It
+was of no use.  The strong arms of the young men were too much for
+the young maidens; only a few lengths remained to be rowed, and they
+would certainly pass the Atalanta before she could reach the line.
+
+The little coxswain saw that it was all up with the girls' crew if
+she could not save them by some strategic device.
+
+     "Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?"
+
+she whispered to herself,--for The Terror remembered her Virgil as
+she did everything else she ever studied.  As she stooped, she lifted
+the handkerchief at her feet, and took from it a flaming bouquet.
+"Look!" she cried, and flung it just forward of the track of the
+Algonquin.  The captain of the University boat turned his head, and
+there was the lovely vision which had a moment before bewitched him.
+The owner of all that loveliness must, he thought, have flung the
+bouquet.  It was a challenge: how could he be such a coward as to
+decline accepting it
+
+He was sure he could win the race now, and he would sweep past the
+line in triumph with the great bunch of flowers at the stem of his
+boat, proud as Van Tromp in the British channel with the broom at his
+mast-head.
+
+He turned the boat's head a little by backing water.  He came up with
+the floating flowers, and near enough to reach them.  He stooped and
+snatched them up, with the loss perhaps of a second in all,--no more.
+He felt sure of his victory.
+
+How can one tell the story of the finish in cold-blooded preterites?
+Are we not there ourselves?  Are not our muscles straining with those
+of these sixteen young creatures, full of hot, fresh blood, their
+nerves all tingling like so many tight-strained harp-strings, all
+their life concentrating itself in this passionate moment of supreme
+effort?  No!  We are seeing, not telling about what somebody else
+once saw!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin passes the stern of the Atalanta!
+
+--The bow of the Algonquin is on a level with the middle of the
+Atalanta!
+
+--Three more lengths' rowing and the college crew will pass the
+girls!
+
+--"Hurrah for the Quins!" The Algonquin ranges up alongside of the
+Atalanta!
+
+"Through with her!  "shouts the captain of the Algonquin.
+
+"Now, girls!" shrieks the captain of the Atalanta.
+
+They near the line, every rower straining desperately, almost madly.
+
+--Crack goes the oar of the Atalanta's captain, and up flash its
+splintered fragments, as the stem of her boat springs past the line,
+eighteen inches at least ahead of the Algonquin.
+
+Hooraw for the Lantas!  Hooraw for the Girls!  Hooraw for the
+Institoot!  shout a hundred voices.
+
+"Hurrah for woman's rights and female suffrage!" pipes the small
+voice of The Terror, and there is loud laughing and cheering all
+round.
+
+She had not studied her classical dictionary and her mythology for
+nothing.  "I have paid off one old score," she said.  "Set down my
+damask roses against the golden apples of Hippomenes!"
+
+It was that one second lost in snatching up the bouquet which gave
+the race to the Atalantas.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE WHITE CANOE.
+
+While the two boats were racing, other boats with lookers-on in them
+were rowing or sailing in the neighborhood of the race-course.  The
+scene on the water was a gay one, for the young people in the boats
+were, many of them, acquainted with each other.  There was a good
+deal of lively talk until the race became too exciting.  Then many
+fell silent, until, as the boats neared the line, and still more as
+they crossed it, the shouts burst forth which showed how a cramp of
+attention finds its natural relief in a fit of convulsive
+exclamation.
+
+But far away, on the other side of the lake, a birchbark canoe was to
+be seen, in which sat a young man, who paddled it skillfully and
+swiftly.  It was evident enough that he was watching the race
+intently, but the spectators could see little more than that.  One of
+them, however, who sat upon the stand, had a powerful spy-glass, and
+could distinguish his motions very minutely and exactly.  It was seen
+by this curious observer that the young man had an opera-glass with
+him, which he used a good deal at intervals.  The spectator thought
+he kept it directed to the girls' boat, chiefly, if not exclusively.
+He thought also that the opera-glass was more particularly pointed
+towards the bow of the boat, and came to the natural conclusion that
+the bow oar, Miss Euthymia Tower, captain of the Atalantas, "The
+Wonder" of the Corinna Institute, was the attraction which determined
+the direction of the instrument.
+
+"Who is that in the canoe over there?" asked the owner of the spy-
+glass.
+
+"That's just what we should like to know," answered the old
+landlord's wife.  "He and his man boarded with us when they first
+came, but we could never find out anything about him only just his
+name and his ways of living.  His name is Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood,
+Esq., it used to come on his letters.  As for his ways of living, he
+was the solitariest human being that I ever came across.  His man
+carried his meals up to him.  He used to stay in his room pretty much
+all day, but at night he would be off, walking, or riding on
+horseback, or paddling about in the lake, sometimes till nigh
+morning.  There's something very strange about that Mr. Kirkwood.
+But there don't seem to be any harm in him.  Only nobody can guess
+what his business is.  They got up a story about him at one time.
+What do you think?  They said he was a counterfeiter!  And so they
+went one night to his room, when he was out, and that man of his was
+away too, and they carried keys, and opened pretty much everything;
+and they found--well, they found just nothing at all except writings
+and letters,--letters from places in America and in England, and some
+with Italian postmarks: that was all.  Since that time the sheriff
+and his folks have let him alone and minded their own business.  He
+was a gentleman,--anybody ought to have known that; and anybody that
+knew about his nice ways of living and behaving, and knew the kind of
+wear he had for his underclothing, might have known it.  I could have
+told those officers that they had better not bother him.  I know the
+ways of real gentlemen and real ladies, and I know those fellows in
+store clothes that look a little too fine,--outside.  Wait till
+washing-day comes!"
+
+The good lady had her own standards for testing humanity, and they
+were not wholly unworthy of consideration; they were quite as much to
+be relied on as the judgments of the travelling phrenologist, who
+sent his accomplice on before him to study out the principal
+personages in the village, and in the light of these revelations
+interpreted the bumps, with very little regard to Gall and Spurzheim,
+or any other authorities.
+
+Even with the small amount of information obtained by the search
+among his papers and effects, the gossips of the village had
+constructed several distinct histories for the mysterious stranger.
+He was an agent of a great publishing house; a leading contributor to
+several important periodicals; the author of that anonymously
+published novel which had made so much talk; the poet of a large
+clothing establishment; a spy of the Italian, some said the Russian,
+some said the British, Government; a proscribed refugee from some
+country where he had been plotting; a school-master without a school,
+a minister without a pulpit, an actor without an engagement; in
+short, there was no end to the perfectly senseless stories that were
+told about him, from that which made him out an escaped convict to
+the whispered suggestion that he was the eccentric heir to a great
+English title and estate.
+
+The one unquestionable fact was that of his extraordinary seclusion.
+Nobody in the village, no student in the University, knew his
+history.  No young lady in the Corinna Institute had ever had a word
+from him.  Sometimes, as the boats of the University or the Institute
+were returning at dusk, their rowers would see the canoe stealing
+into the shadows as they drew near it.  Sometimes on a moonlight
+night, when a party of the young ladies were out upon the lake, they
+would see the white canoe gliding ghost-like in the distance.  And it
+had happened more than once that when a boat's crew had been out with
+singers among them, while they were in the midst of a song, the white
+canoe would suddenly appear and rest upon the water,--not very near
+them, but within hearing distance,--and so remain until the singing
+was over, when it would steal away and be lost sight of in some inlet
+or behind some jutting rock.
+
+Naturally enough, there was intense curiosity about this young man.
+The landlady had told her story, which explained nothing.  There was
+nobody to be questioned about him except his servant, an Italian,
+whose name was Paolo, but who to the village was known as Mr. Paul.
+
+Mr. Paul would have seemed the easiest person in the world to worm a
+secret out of.  He was good-natured, child-like as a Heathen Chinee,
+talked freely with everybody in such English as he had at command,
+knew all the little people of the village, and was followed round by
+them partly from his personal attraction for them, and partly because
+he was apt to have a stick of candy or a handful of peanuts or other
+desirable luxury in his pocket for any of his little friends he met
+with.  He had that wholesome, happy look, so uncommon in our arid
+countrymen,--a look hardly to be found except where figs and oranges
+ripen in the open air.  A kindly climate to grow up in, a religion
+which takes your money and gives you a stamped ticket good at Saint
+Peter's box office, a roomy chest and a good pair of lungs in it, an
+honest digestive apparatus, a lively temperament, a cheerful
+acceptance of the place in life assigned to one by nature and
+circumstance,--these are conditions under which life may be quite
+comfortable to endure, and certainly is very pleasant to contemplate.
+All these conditions were united in Paolo.  He was the easiest;
+pleasantest creature to talk with that one could ask for a companion.
+His southern vivacity, his amusing English, his simplicity and
+openness, made him friends everywhere.
+
+It seemed as if it would be a very simple matter to get the history
+of his master out of this guileless and unsophisticated being.  He
+had been tried by all the village experts.  The rector had put a
+number of well-studied careless questions, which failed of their
+purpose.  The old librarian of the town library had taken note of all
+the books he carried to his master, and asked about his studies and
+pursuits.  Paolo found it hard to understand his English, apparently,
+and answered in the most irrelevant way.  The leading gossip of the
+village tried her skill in pumping him for information.  It was all
+in vain.
+
+His master's way of life was peculiar,--in fact, eccentric.  He had
+hired rooms in an old-fashioned three-story house.  He had two rooms
+in the second and third stories of this old wooden building: his
+study in the second, his sleeping-room in the one above it.  Paolo
+lived in the basement, where he had all the conveniences for cooking,
+and played the part of chef for his master and himself.  This was
+only a part of his duty, for he was a man-of-all-work, purveyor,
+steward, chambermaid,--as universal in his services for one man as
+Pushee at the Anchor Tavern used to be for everybody.
+
+It so happened that Paolo took a severe cold one winter's day, and
+had such threatening symptoms that he asked the baker, when he
+called, to send the village physician to see him.  In the course of
+his visit the doctor naturally inquired about the health of Paolo's
+master.
+
+"Signor Kirkwood well,--molto bene," said Paolo.  "Why does he keep
+out of sight as he does?" asked the doctor.
+
+"He always so," replied Paolo.  "Una antipatia."
+
+Whether Paolo was off his guard with the doctor, whether he revealed
+it to him as to a father confessor, or whether he thought it time
+that the reason of his master's seclusion should be known, the doctor
+did not feel sure.  At any rate, Paolo was not disposed to make any
+further revelations.  Una antipatia,--an antipathy,--that was all the
+doctor learned.  He thought the matter over, and the more he
+reflected the more he was puzzled.  What could an antipathy be that
+made a young man a recluse!  Was it a dread of blue sky and open air,
+of the smell of flowers, or some electrical impression to which be
+was unnaturally sensitive?
+
+Dr. Butts carried these questions home with him.  His wife was a
+sensible, discreet woman, whom he could trust with many professional
+secrets.  He told her of Paolo's revelation, and talked it over with
+her in the light of his experience and her own; for she had known
+some curious cases of constitutional likes and aversions.
+
+Mrs.  Butts buried the information in the grave of her memory, where
+it lay for nearly a week.  At the end of that time it emerged in a
+confidential whisper to her favorite sister-in-law, a perfectly safe
+person.  Twenty-four hours later the story was all over the village
+that Maurice Kirkwood was the subject of a strange, mysterious,
+unheard-of antipathy to something, nobody knew what; and the whole
+neighborhood naturally resolved itself into an unorganized committee
+of investigation.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+What is a country village without its mysterious personage?  Few are
+now living who can remember the advent of the handsome young man who
+was the mystery of our great university town "sixty years since,"--
+long enough ago for a romance to grow out of a narrative, as Waverley
+may remind us.  The writer of this narrative remembers him well, and
+is not sure that he has not told the strange story in some form or
+other to the last generation, or to the one before the last.  No
+matter: if he has told it they have forgotten it,--that is, if they
+have ever read it; and whether they have or have not, the story is
+singular enough to justify running the risk of repetition.
+
+This young man, with a curious name of Scandinavian origin, appeared
+unheralded in the town, as it was then, of Cantabridge.  He wanted
+employment, and soon found it in the shape of manual labor, which he
+undertook and performed cheerfully.  But his whole appearance showed
+plainly enough that he was bred to occupations of a very different
+nature, if, in deed, he had been accustomed to any kind of toil for
+his living.  His aspect was that of one of gentle birth.  His hands
+were not those of a laborer, and his features were delicate and
+refined, as well as of remarkable beauty.  Who he was, where he came
+from, why he had come to Cantabridge, was never clearly explained.
+He was alone, without friends, except among the acquaintances he had
+made in his new residence.  If he had any correspondents, they were
+not known to the neighborhood where he was living.  But if he had
+neither friends nor correspondents, there was some reason for
+believing that he had enemies.  Strange circumstances occurred which
+connected themselves with him in an ominous and unaccountable way.  A
+threatening letter was slipped under the door of a house where he was
+visiting.  He had a sudden attack of illness, which was thought to
+look very much like the effect of poison.  At one time he
+disappeared, and was found wandering, bewildered, in a town many
+miles from that where he was residing.  When questioned how he came
+there; he told a coherent story that he had been got, under some
+pretext, or in some not incredible way, into a boat, from which, at a
+certain landing-place, he had escaped and fled for his life, which he
+believed was in danger from his kidnappers.
+
+Whoever his enemies may have been,--if they really existed,--he did
+not fall a victim to their plots, so far as known to or remembered by
+this witness.
+
+Various interpretations were put upon his story.  Conjectures were as
+abundant as they were in the case of Kaspar Hauser.  That he was of
+good family seemed probable; that he was of distinguished birth, not
+impossible; that he was the dangerous rival of a candidate for a
+greatly coveted position in one of the northern states of Europe was
+a favorite speculation of some of the more romantic young persons.
+There was no dramatic ending to this story,--at least none is
+remembered by the present writer.
+
+"He left a name," like the royal Swede, of whose lineage he may have
+been for aught that the village people knew, but not a name at which
+anybody "grew pale;" for he had swindled no one, and broken no
+woman's heart with false vows.  Possibly some withered cheeks may
+flush faintly as they recall the handsome young man who came before
+the Cantabridge maidens fully equipped for a hero of romance when the
+century was in its first quarter.
+
+The writer has been reminded of the handsome Swede by the incidents
+attending the advent of the unknown and interesting stranger who had
+made his appearance at Arrowhead Village.
+
+It was a very insufficient and unsatisfactory reason to assign for
+the young man's solitary habits that he was the subject of an
+antipathy.  For what do we understand by that word?  When a young
+lady screams at the sight of a spider, we accept her explanation that
+she has a natural antipathy to the creature.  When a person expresses
+a repugnance to some wholesome article of food, agreeable to most
+people, we are satisfied if he gives the same reason.  And so of
+various odors, which are pleasing to some persons and repulsive to
+others.  We do not pretend to go behind the fact.  It is an
+individual, and it may be a family, peculiarity.  Even between
+different personalities there is an instinctive elective dislike as
+well as an elective affinity.  We are not bound to give a reason why
+Dr. Fell is odious to us any more than the prisoner who peremptorily
+challenges a juryman is bound to say why he does it; it is enough
+that he "does not like his looks."
+
+There was nothing strange, then, that Maurice Kirkwood should have
+his special antipathy; a great many other people have odd likes and
+dislikes.  But it was a very curious thing that this antipathy should
+be alleged as the reason for his singular mode of life.  All sorts of
+explanations were suggested, not one of them in the least
+satisfactory, but serving to keep the curiosity of inquirers active
+until they were superseded by a new theory.  One story was that
+Maurice had a great fear of dogs.  It grew at last to a connected
+narrative, in which a fright in childhood from a rabid mongrel was
+said to have given him such a sensitiveness to the near presence of
+dogs that he was liable to convulsions if one came close to him.
+
+This hypothesis had some plausibility.  No other creature would be so
+likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it.  Dogs are very
+apt to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way.
+They are met with everywhere,--in one's daily walk, at the thresholds
+of the doors one enters, in the gentleman's library, on the rug of my
+lady's sitting-room and on the cushion of her carriage.  It is true
+that there are few persons who have an instinctive repugnance to this
+"friend of man."  But what if this so-called antipathy were only a
+fear, a terror, which borrowed the less unmanly name?  It was a fair
+question, if, indeed, the curiosity of the public had a right to ask
+any questions at all about a harmless individual who gave no offence,
+and seemed entitled to the right of choosing his way of living to
+suit himself, without being submitted to espionage.
+
+There was no positive evidence bearing on the point as yet.  But one
+of the village people had a large Newfoundland dog, of a very
+sociable disposition, with which he determined to test the question.
+He watched for the time when Maurice should leave his house for the
+woods or the lake, and started with his dog to meet him.  The animal
+walked up to the stranger in a very sociable fashion, and began
+making his acquaintance, after the usual manner of well-bred dogs;
+that is, with the courtesies and blandishments by which the canine
+Chesterfield is distinguished from the ill-conditioned cur.  Maurice
+patted him in a friendly way, and spoke to him as one who was used to
+the fellowship of such companions.  That idle question and foolish
+story were disposed of, therefore, and some other solution must be
+found, if possible.
+
+A much more common antipathy is that which is entertained with regard
+to cats.  This has never been explained.  It is not mere aversion to
+the look of the creature, or to any sensible quality known to the
+common observer.  The cat is pleasing in aspect, graceful in
+movement, nice in personal habits, and of amiable disposition.  No
+cause of offence is obvious, and yet there are many persons who
+cannot abide the presence of the most innocent little kitten.  They
+can tell, in some mysterious way, that there is a cat in the room
+when they can neither see nor hear the creature.  Whether it is an
+electrical or quasi-magnetic phenomenon, or whatever it may be, of
+the fact of this strange influence there are too many well-
+authenticated instances to allow its being questioned.  But suppose
+Maurice Kirkwood to be the subject of this antipathy in its extremest
+degree, it would in no manner account for the isolation to which he
+had condemned himself.  He might shun the firesides of the old women
+whose tabbies were purring by their footstools, but these worthy
+dames do not make up the whole population.
+
+These two antipathies having been disposed of, a new suggestion was
+started, and was talked over with a curious sort of half belief, very
+much as ghost stories are told in a circle of moderately instructed
+and inquiring persons.  This was that Maurice was endowed with the
+unenviable gift of the evil eye.  He was in frequent communication
+with Italy, as his letters showed, and had recently been residing in
+that country, as was learned from Paolo.  Now everybody knows that
+the evil eye is not rarely met with in Italy.  Everybody who has ever
+read Mr. Story's "Roba di Roma" knows what a terrible power it is
+which the owner of the evil eye exercises.  It can blight and destroy
+whatever it falls upon.  No person's life or limb is safe if the
+jettatura, the withering glance of the deadly organ, falls upon him.
+It must be observed that this malign effect may follow a look from
+the holiest personages, that is, if we may assume that a monk is such
+as a matter of course.  Certainly we have a right to take it for
+granted that the late Pope, Pius Ninth, was an eminently holy man,
+and yet he had the name of dispensing the mystic and dreaded
+jettatura as well as his blessing.  If Maurice Kirkwood carried that
+destructive influence, so that his clear blue eyes were more to be
+feared than the fascinations of the deadliest serpent, it could
+easily be understood why he kept his look away from all around him
+whom he feared he might harm.
+
+No sensible person in Arrowhead Village really believed in the evil
+eye, but it served the purpose of a temporary hypothesis, as do many
+suppositions which we take as a nucleus for our observations without
+putting any real confidence in them.  It was just suited to the
+romantic notions of the more flighty persons in the village, who had
+meddled more or less with Spiritualism, and were ready for any new
+fancy, if it were only wild enough.
+
+The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to
+find any very speedy solution.  Every new suggestion furnished talk
+for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in
+the two educational institutions.  Naturally, the discussion was
+liveliest among the young ladies.  Here is an extract from a letter
+of one of these young ladies, who, having received at her birth the
+ever-pleasing name of Mary, saw fit to have herself called Mollie in
+the catalogue and in her letters.  The old postmaster of the town to
+which her letter was directed took it up to stamp, and read on the
+envelope the direction to "Miss Lulu Pinrow."  He brought the stamp
+down with a vicious emphasis, coming very near blotting out the
+nursery name, instead of cancelling the postage-stamp.  "Lulu!" he
+exclaimed.  "I should like to know if that great strapping girl isn't
+out of her cradle yet!  I suppose Miss Louisa will think that belongs
+to her, but I saw her christened and I heard the name the minister
+gave her, and it was n't 'Lulu,' or any such baby nonsense."  And so
+saying, he gave it a fling to the box marked P, as if it burned his
+fingers.  Why a grown-up young woman allowed herself to be cheapened
+in the way so many of them do by the use of names which become them
+as well as the frock of a ten-year-old schoolgirl would become a
+graduate of the Corinna Institute, the old postmaster could not
+guess.  He was a queer old man.
+
+The letter thus scornfully treated runs over with a young girl's
+written loquacity:
+
+"Oh, Lulu, there is such a sensation as you never saw or heard of
+'in all your born days,' as mamma used to say.  He has been at the
+village for some time, but lately we have had--oh, the weirdest
+stories about him!  'The Mysterious Stranger is the name some give
+him, but we girls call him the Sachem, because he paddles about in an
+Indian canoe.  If I should tell you all the things that are said
+about him I should use up all my paper ten times over.  He has never
+made a visit to the Institute, and none of the girls have ever spoken
+to him, but the people at the village say he is very, very handsome.
+We are dying to get a look at him, of course--though there is a
+horrid story about him--that he has the evil eye did you ever hear
+about the evil eye?  If a person who is born with it looks at you,
+you die, or something happens--awful--is n't it?
+
+"The rector says he never goes to church, but then you know a good
+many of the people that pass the summer at the village never do--they
+think their religion must have vacations--that's what I've heard they
+say--vacations, just like other hard work--it ought not to be hard
+work, I'm sure, but I suppose they feel so about it.  Should you feel
+afraid to have him look at you?  Some of the girls say they would n't
+have him for the whole world, but I shouldn't mind it--especially if
+I had on my eyeglasses.  Do you suppose if there is anything in the
+evil eye it would go through glass?  I don't believe it.  Do you
+think blue eye-glasses would be better than common ones?  Don't laugh
+at me--they tell such weird stories!  The Terror--Lurida Vincent, you
+know-makes fun of all they say about it, but then she 'knows
+everything and doesn't believe anything,' the girls say--Well, I
+should be awfully scared, I know, if anybody that had the evil eye
+should look at me--but--oh, I don't know--but if it was a young man--
+and if he was very--very good-looking--I think--perhaps I would run
+the risk--but don't tell anybody I said any such horrid thing--and
+burn this letter right up--there 's a dear good girl."
+
+It is to be hoped that no reader will doubt the genuineness of this
+letter.  There are not quite so many "awfuls" and "awfullys" as one
+expects to find in young ladies' letters, but there are two "weirds,"
+which may be considered a fair allowance.  How it happened that
+"jolly" did not show itself can hardly be accounted for; no doubt it
+turns up two or three times at least in the postscript.
+
+Here is an extract from another letter.  This was from one of the
+students of Stoughton University to a friend whose name as it was
+written on the envelope was Mr. Frank Mayfield.  The old postmaster
+who found fault with Miss "Lulu's" designation would probably have
+quarrelled with this address, if it had come under his eye.  "Frank"
+is a very pretty, pleasant-sounding name, and it is not strange that
+many persons use it in common conversation all their days when
+speaking of a friend.  Were they really christened by that name, any
+of these numerous Franks?  Perhaps they were, and if so there is
+nothing to be said.  But if not, was the baptismal name Francis or
+Franklin?  The mind is apt to fasten in a very perverse and
+unpleasant way upon this question, which too often there is no
+possible way of settling.  One might hope, if he outlived the bearer
+of the appellation, to get at the fact; but since even gravestones
+have learned to use the names belonging to childhood and infancy in
+their solemn record, the generation which docks its Christian names
+in such an un-Christian way will bequeath whole churchyards full of
+riddles to posterity.  How it will puzzle and distress the historians
+and antiquarians of a coming generation to settle what was the real
+name of Dan and Bert and Billy, which last is legible on a white
+marble slab, raised in memory of a grown person, in a certain burial-
+ground in a town in Essex County, Massachusetts!
+
+But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr.
+Frank Mayfield.
+
+
+"DEAR FRANK,--Hooray! Hurrah!  Rah!
+
+"I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'!  It
+happened by a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near
+relieving you of the duty of replying to this letter.  I was out in
+my little boat, which carries a sail too big for her, as I know and
+ought to have remembered.  One of those fitful flaws of wind to which
+the lake is so liable struck the sail suddenly, and over went my
+boat.  My feet got tangled in the sheet somehow, and I could not get
+free.  I had hard work to keep my head above water, and I struggled
+desperately to escape from my toils; for if the boat were to go down
+I should be dragged down with her.  I thought of a good many things
+in the course of some four or five minutes, I can tell you, and I got
+a lesson about time better than anything Kant and all the rest of
+them have to say of it.  After I had been there about an ordinary
+lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our
+shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become
+acquainted without an introduction.  So it was, sure enough.  He saw
+what the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning
+me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was
+somewhat tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the
+landing where he kept his canoe.  I can't say that there is anything
+odd about his manners or his way of talk.  I judge him to be a native
+of one of our Northern States,--perhaps a New Englander.  He has
+lived abroad during some parts of his life.  He is not an artist, as
+it was at one time thought he might be.  He is a good-looking fellow,
+well developed, manly in appearance, with nothing to excite special
+remark unless it be a certain look of anxiety or apprehension which
+comes over him from time to time.  You remember our old friend Squire
+B., whose companion was killed by lightning when he was standing
+close to him.  You know the look he had whenever anything like a
+thundercloud came up in the sky.  Well, I should say there was a look
+like that came over this Maurice Kirkwood's face every now and then.
+I noticed that he looked round once or twice as if to see whether
+some object or other was in sight.  There was a little rustling in
+the grass as if of footsteps, and this look came over his features.
+A rabbit ran by us, and I watched to see if he showed any sign of
+that antipathy we have heard so much of, but he seemed to be pleased
+watching the creature.
+
+"If you ask me what my opinion is about this Maurice Kirkwood, I
+think he is eccentric in his habit of life, but not what they call a
+'crank' exactly.  He talked well enough about such matters as we
+spoke of,--the lake, the scenery in general, the climate.  I asked
+him to come over and take a look at the college.  He did n't promise,
+but I should not be surprised if I should get him over there some
+day.  I asked him why he did n't go to the Pansophian meetings.  He
+did n't give any reason, but he shook his head in a very peculiar
+way, as much as to say that it was impossible.
+
+"On the whole, I think it is nothing more than the same feeling of
+dread of human society, or dislike for it, which under the name of
+religion used to drive men into caves and deserts.  What a pity that
+Protestantism does not make special provision for all the freaks of
+individual character!  If we had a little more faith and a few more
+caverns, or convenient places for making them, we should have hermits
+in these holes as thick as woodchucks or prairie dogs.  I should like
+to know if you never had the feeling,
+
+     "'Oh, that the desert were my dwelling-place!'
+
+"I know what your answer will be, of course.  You will say,
+'Certainly,
+
+     "'With one fair spirit for my minister;"'
+
+"but I mean alone,--all alone.  Don't you ever feel as if you should
+like to have been a pillar-saint in the days when faith was as strong
+as lye (spelt with a y), instead of being as weak as dish-water?
+(Jerry is looking over my shoulder, and says this pun is too bad to
+send, and a disgrace to the University--but never mind.) I often feel
+as if I should like to roost on a pillar a hundred feet high,--yes,
+and have it soaped from top to bottom.  Wouldn't it be fun to look
+down at the bores and the duns?  Let us get up a pillar-roosters'
+association.  (Jerry--still looking over says there is an absurd
+contradiction in the idea.)
+
+"What a matter-of-fact idiot Jerry is!
+
+"How do you like looking over, Mr. Inspector general?"
+
+The reader will not get much information out of this lively young
+fellow's letter, but he may get a little.  It is something to know
+that the mysterious resident of Arrowhead Village did not look nor
+talk like a crazy person; that he was of agreeable aspect and
+address, helpful when occasion offered, and had nothing about him, so
+far as yet appeared, to prevent his being an acceptable member of
+society.
+
+Of course the people in the village could never be contented without
+learning everything there was to be learned about their visitor.  All
+the city papers were examined for advertisements.  If a cashier had
+absconded, if a broker had disappeared, if a railroad president was
+missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh
+currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis.
+Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood
+lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed
+likely to remain an unsolved enigma.  The "Sachem" of the boating
+girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed
+on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make
+out than the meaning of this young man's odd way of living.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE ENIGMA STUDIED.
+
+It was a curious, if it was not a suspicious, circumstance that a
+young man, seemingly in good health, of comely aspect, looking as if
+made for companionship, should keep himself apart from all the world
+around him in a place where there was a general feeling of good
+neighborhood and a pleasant social atmosphere.  The Public Library
+was a central point which brought people together.  The Pansophian
+Society did a great deal to make them acquainted with each other for
+many of the meetings were open to outside visitors, and the subjects
+discussed in the meetings furnished the material for conversation in
+their intervals.  A card of invitation had been sent by the Secretary
+to Maurice, in answer to which Paolo carried back a polite note of
+regret.  The paper had a narrow rim of black, implying apparently
+some loss of relative or friend, but not any very recent and crushing
+bereavement.  This refusal to come to the meetings of the society was
+only what was expected.  It was proper to ask him, but his declining
+the invitation showed that he did not wish for attentions or
+courtesies.  There was nothing further to be done to bring him out of
+his shell, and seemingly nothing more to be learned about him at
+present.
+
+In this state of things it was natural that all which had been
+previously gathered by the few who had seen or known anything of him
+should be worked over again.  When there is no new ore to be dug, the
+old refuse heaps are looked over for what may still be found in them.
+The landlord of the Anchor Tavern, now the head of the boarding-
+house, talked about Maurice, as everybody in the village did at one
+time or another.  He had not much to say, but he added a fact or two.
+
+The young gentleman was good pay,--so they all said.  Sometimes he
+paid in gold; sometimes in fresh bills, just out of the bank.  He
+trusted his man, Mr. Paul, with the money to pay his bills.  He knew
+something about horses; he showed that by the way he handled that
+colt,--the one that threw the hostler and broke his collar-bone.
+"Mr. Paul come down to the stable.  'Let me see that cult you all
+'fraid of,' says he.  'My master, he ride any hoss,' says Paul.  'You
+saddle him,' says be; and so they did, and Paul, he led that colt--
+the kickinest and ugliest young beast you ever see in your life--up
+to the place where his master, as he calls him, and he lives.  What
+does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of long spurs and jump on
+to that colt's back, and off the beast goes, tail up, heels flying,
+standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at last going it
+full run for a couple of miles, till he'd got about enough of it.
+That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet as
+a cosset lamb.  A man that pays his bills reg'lar, in good money, and
+knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is
+n't a whole one,--and most likely he is a whole one."
+
+So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern.  His wife had already
+given her favorable opinion of her former guest.  She now added
+something to her description as a sequel to her husband's remarks.
+
+"I call him," she said, "about as likely a young gentleman as ever I
+clapped my eyes on.  He is rather slighter than I like to see a young
+man of his age; if he was my sun, I should like to see him a little
+more fleshy.  I don't believe he weighs more than a hundred and
+thirty or forty pounds.  Did y' ever look at those eyes of his,
+M'randy?  Just as blue as succory flowers.  I do like those light-
+complected young fellows, with their fresh cheeks and their curly
+hair; somehow, curly hair doos set off anybody's face.  He is n't any
+foreigner, for all that he talks Italian with that Mr. Paul that's
+his help.  He looks just like our kind of folks, the college kind,
+that's brought up among books, and is handling 'em, and reading of
+'em, and making of 'em, as like as not, all their lives.  All that
+you say about his riding the mad colt is just what I should think he
+was up to, for he's as spry as a squirrel; you ought to see him go
+over that fence, as I did once.  I don't believe there's any harm in
+that young gentleman,--I don't care what people say.  I suppose he
+likes this place just as other people like it, and cares more for
+walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for
+company; and if he doos, whose business is it, I should like to
+know?"
+
+The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging
+people.
+
+"I never see him but two or three times," Miranda said.  "I should
+like to have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him
+when he was eatin' his vittles.  That 's the time to watch folks,
+when their jaws get a-goin' and their eyes are on what's afore 'em.
+Do you remember that chap the sheriff come and took away when we kep'
+tahvern?  Eleven year ago it was, come nex' Thanksgivin' time.  A
+mighty grand gentleman from the City he set up for.  I watched him,
+and I watched him.  Says I, I don't believe you're no gentleman,
+says I.  He eat with his knife, and that ain't the way city folks
+eats.  Every time I handed him anything I looked closeter and
+closeter.  Them whiskers never grooved on them cheeks, says I to
+myself.  Them 's paper collars, says I.  That dimun in your shirt-
+front hain't got no life to it, says I.  I don't believe it's
+nothiri' more 'n a bit o' winderglass.  So says I to Pushee, 'You
+jes' step out and get the sheriff to come in and take a look at that
+chap.' I knowed he was after a fellah.  He come right in, an' he goes
+up to the chap.  'Why, Bill,' says he, 'I'm mighty glad to see yer.
+We've had the hole in the wall you got out of mended, and I want your
+company to come and look at the old place,' says he, and he pulls out
+a couple of handcuffs and has 'em on his wrists in less than no time,
+an' off they goes together!  I know one thing about that young
+gentleman, anyhow,--there ain't no better judge of what's good eatin'
+than he is.  I cooked him some maccaroni myself one day, and he sends
+word to me by that Mr. Paul, 'Tell Miss Miranda,' says he, I that the
+Pope o' Rome don't have no better cooked maccaroni than what she sent
+up to me yesterday,' says he.  I don' know much about the Pope o'
+Rome except that he's a Roman Catholic, and I don' know who cooks for
+him, whether it's a man or a woman; but when it comes to a dish o'
+maccaroni, I ain't afeard of their shefs, as they call 'em,--them he-
+cooks that can't serve up a cold potater without callin' it by some
+name nobody can say after 'em.  But this gentleman knows good
+cookin', and that's as good a sign of a gentleman as I want to tell
+'em by."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+STILL AT FAULT.
+
+The house in which Maurice Kirkwood had taken up his abode was not a
+very inviting one.  It was old, and had been left in a somewhat
+dilapidated and disorderly condition by the tenants who had lived in
+the part which Maurice now occupied.  They had piled their packing-
+boxes in the cellar, with broken chairs, broken china, and other
+household wrecks.  A cracked mirror lay on an old straw mattress, the
+contents of which were airing themselves through wide rips and rents.
+A lame clothes-horse was saddled with an old rug fringed with a
+ragged border, out of which all the colors had been completely
+trodden.  No woman would have gone into a house in such a condition.
+But the young man did not trouble himself much about such matters,
+and was satisfied when the rooms which were to be occupied by himself
+and his servant were made decent and tolerably comfortable.  During
+the fine season all this was not of much consequence, and if Maurice
+made up his mind to stay through the winter he would have his choice
+among many more eligible places.
+
+The summer vacation of the Corinna Institute had now arrived, and the
+young ladies had scattered to their homes.  Among the graduates of
+the year were Miss Euthymia Tower and Miss Lurida Vincent, who had
+now returned to their homes in Arrowhead Village.  They were both
+glad to rest after the long final examinations and the exercises of
+the closing day, in which each of them had borne a conspicuous part.
+It was a pleasant life they led in the village, which was lively
+enough at this season.  Walking, riding, driving, boating, visits to
+the Library, meetings of the Pansophian Society, hops, and picnics
+made the time pass very cheerfully, and soon showed their restoring
+influences.  The Terror's large eyes did not wear the dull, glazed
+look by which they had too often betrayed the after effects of over-
+excitement of the strong and active brain behind them.  The Wonder
+gained a fresher bloom, and looked full enough of life to radiate
+vitality into a statue of ice.  They had a boat of their own, in
+which they passed many delightful hours on the lake, rowing,
+drifting, reading, telling of what had been, dreaming of what might
+be.
+
+The Library was one of the chief centres of the fixed population, and
+visited often by strangers.  The old Librarian was a peculiar
+character, as these officials are apt to be.  They have a curious
+kind of knowledge, sometimes immense in its way.  They know the backs
+of books, their title-pages, their popularity or want of it, the
+class of readers who call for particular works, the value of
+different editions, and a good deal besides.  Their minds catch up
+hints from all manner of works on all kinds of subjects.  They will
+give a visitor a fact and a reference which they are surprised to
+find they remember and which the visitor might have hunted for a
+year.  Every good librarian, every private book-owner, who has grown
+into his library, finds he has a bunch of nerves going to every
+bookcase, a branch to every shelf, and a twig to every book.  These
+nerves get very sensitive in old librarians, sometimes, and they do
+not like to have a volume meddled with any more than they would like
+to have their naked eyes handled.  They come to feel at last that the
+books of a great collection are a part, not merely of their own
+property, though they are only the agents for their distribution, but
+that they are, as it were, outlying portions of their own
+organization.  The old Librarian was getting a miserly feeling about
+his books, as he called them.  Fortunately, he had a young lady for
+his assistant, who was never so happy as when she could find the work
+any visitor wanted and put it in his hands,--or her hands, for there
+were more readers among the wives and--daughters, and especially
+among the aunts, than there were among their male relatives.  The old
+Librarian knew the books, but the books seemed to know the young
+assistant; so it looked, at least, to the impatient young people who
+wanted their services.
+
+Maurice had a good many volumes of his own,--a great many, according
+to Paolo's account; but Paolo's ideas were limited, and a few well-
+filled shelves seemed a very large collection to him.  His master
+frequently sent him to the Public Library for books, which somewhat
+enlarged his notions; still, the Signor was a very learned man, he
+was certain, and some of his white books (bound in vellum and richly
+gilt) were more splendid, according to Paolo, than anything in the
+Library.
+
+There was no little curiosity to know what were the books that
+Maurice was in the habit of taking out, and the Librarian's record
+was carefully searched by some of the more inquisitive investigators.
+The list proved to be a long and varied one.  It would imply a
+considerable knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a
+liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to
+electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the occult sciences, if there
+is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and
+obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the
+quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione,' books about alchemy, and
+witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism.
+With these were the titles of novels and now and then of books of
+poems; but it may be taken for granted that his own shelves held the
+works he was most frequently in the habit of reading or consulting.
+Not much was to be made out of this beyond the fact of wide
+scholarship,--more or less deep it might be, but at any rate implying
+no small mental activity; for he appeared to read very rapidly, at
+any rate exchanged the books he had taken out for new ones very
+frequently.  To judge by his reading, he was a man of letters.  But
+so wide-reading a man of letters must have an object, a literary
+purpose in all probability.  Why should not he be writing a novel?
+Not a novel of society, assuredly, for a hermit is not the person to
+report the talk and manners of a world which he has nothing to do
+with.  Novelists and lawyers understand the art of "cramming" better
+than any other persons in the world.  Why should not this young man
+be working up the picturesque in this romantic region to serve as a
+background for some story with magic, perhaps, and mysticism, and
+hints borrowed from science, and all sorts of out-of-the-way
+knowledge which his odd and miscellaneous selection of books
+furnished him?  That might be, or possibly he was only reading for
+amusement.  Who could say?
+
+The funds of the Public Library of Arrowhead Village allowed the
+managers to purchase many books out of the common range of reading.
+The two learned people of the village were the rector and the doctor.
+These two worthies kept up the old controversy between the
+professions, which grows out of the fact that one studies nature from
+below upwards, and the other from above downwards.  The rector
+maintained that physicians contracted a squint which turns their eyes
+inwardly, while the muscles which roll their eyes upward become
+palsied.  The doctor retorted that theological students developed a
+third eyelid,--the nictitating membrane, which is so well known in
+birds, and which serves to shut out, not all light, but all the light
+they do not want.  Their little skirmishes did not prevent their
+being very good friends, who had a common interest in many things and
+many persons.  Both were on the committee which had the care of the
+Library and attended to the purchase of books.  Each was scholar
+enough to know the wants of scholars, and disposed to trust the
+judgment of the other as to what books should be purchased.
+Consequently, the clergyman secured the addition to the Library of a
+good many old theological works which the physician would have called
+brimstone divinity, and held to be just the thing to kindle fires
+with,--good books still for those who know how to use them,
+oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of disorganization the
+whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief has strangled
+the natural human instincts.  The physician, in the mean time,
+acquired for the collection some of those medical works where one may
+find recorded various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not
+have their like for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so
+as to give a new lease of credibility to stories which had come to be
+looked upon as fables.
+
+Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in
+the young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the
+present, perhaps for a long period.  The rector would have been glad
+to see him at church.  He would have liked more especially to have
+had him hear his sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society.  The
+doctor, meanwhile, was meditating on the duties of society to young
+men, and wishing that he could gain the young man's confidence, so as
+to help him out of any false habit of mind or any delusion to which
+he might be subject, if he had the power of being useful to him.
+
+Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead
+Village, but of all the surrounding region.  He was an excellent
+specimen of the country doctor, self-reliant, self-sacrificing,
+working a great deal harder for his living than most of those who
+call themselves the laboring classes,--as if none but those whose
+hands were hardened by the use of farming or mechanical implements
+had any work to do.  He had that sagacity without which learning is a
+mere incumbrance, and he had also a fair share of that learning
+without which sagacity is like a traveller with a good horse, but who
+cannot read the directions on the guideboards.  He was not a man to
+be taken in by names.  He well knew that oftentimes very innocent-
+sounding words mean very grave disorders; that all, degrees of
+disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same term;
+that "run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a
+week or a month of rest will completely restore the over-worked
+patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may
+signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-
+indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of
+coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it,
+at the shortest notice, to the south of France.  He knew too well
+that what is spoken lightly of as a "nervous disturbance" may imply
+that the whole machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that
+every individual organ would groan aloud if it had any other language
+than the terrible inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate
+with the consciousness.
+
+When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile,
+and say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which
+the young man had got into his head.  Neither was he satisfied to set
+down everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that
+supposition might seem.  He was prepared to believe in some
+exceptional, perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility,
+relating to what class of objects he could not at present conjecture,
+but which was as vital to the subject of it as the insulating
+arrangement to a piece of electrical machinery.  With this feeling he
+began to look into tho history of antipathies as recorded in all the
+books and journals on which he could lay his hands.
+
+               ------------------------------
+
+The holder of the Portfolio asks leave to close it for a brief
+interval.  He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before
+offering them some verses which have no connection with the narrative
+now in progress.
+
+If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually,
+representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or
+forty or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual
+changes of aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty,
+to that of threescore and ten.  The face might be an uninteresting
+one; still, as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it
+would be worth looking at as it passed through the curve of life,--
+the vital parabola, which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of
+the features.  An inscription is the same thing, whether we read it
+on slate-stone, or granite, or marble.  To watch the lights and
+shades, the reliefs and hollows, of a countenance through a lifetime,
+or a large part of it, by the aid of a continuous series of
+photographs would not only be curious; it would teach us much more
+about the laws of physiognomy than we could get from casual and
+unconnected observations.
+
+The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be
+found in them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning
+in middle life and continued to what many of my correspondents are
+pleased to remind me--as if I required to have the fact brought to my
+knowledge--is no longer youth.  Here is the latest of a series of
+annual poems read during the last thirty-four years.  There seems to
+have been one interruption, but there may have been other poems not
+recorded or remembered.  This, the latest poem of the series, was
+listened to by the scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant
+circle of classmates and friends when the first of the long series
+was read before them, then in the flush of ardent manhood:--
+
+
+     THE OLD SONG.
+
+The minstrel of the classic lay
+Of love and wine who sings
+Still found the fingers run astray
+That touched the rebel strings.
+
+Of Cadmus he would fair have sung,
+Of Atreus and his line;
+But all the jocund echoes rung
+With songs of love and wine.
+
+Ah, brothers!  I would fair have caught
+Some fresher fancy's gleam;
+My truant accents find, unsought,
+The old familiar theme.
+
+Love, Love! but not the sportive child
+With shaft and twanging bow,
+Whose random arrows drove us wild
+Some threescore years ago;
+
+Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
+The urchin blind and bare,
+But Love, with spectacles and staff,
+And scanty, silvered hair.
+
+Our heads with frosted locks are white,
+Our roofs are thatched with snow,
+But red, in chilling winter's spite,
+Our hearts and hearthstones glow.
+
+Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in,
+And while the running sands
+Their golden thread unheeded spin,
+He warms his frozen hands.
+
+Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet,
+And waft this message o'er
+To all we miss, from all we meet
+On life's fast-crumbling shore:
+
+Say that to old affection true
+We hug the narrowing chain
+That binds our hearts,--alas, how few
+The links that yet remain!
+
+The fatal touch awaits them all
+That turns the rocks to dust;
+From year to year they break and fall,
+They break, but never rust.
+
+Say if one note of happier strain
+This worn-out harp afford,--
+One throb that trembles, not in vain,
+Their memory lent its chord.
+
+Say that when Fancy closed her wings
+And Passion quenched his fire,
+Love, Love, still echoed from the strings
+As from Anacreon's lyre!
+
+January 8, 1885.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES
+
+In thinking the whole matter over, Dr. Butts felt convinced that,
+with care and patience and watching his opportunity, he should get at
+the secret, which so far bad yielded nothing but a single word.  It
+might be asked why he was so anxious to learn what, from all
+appearances, the young stranger was unwilling to explain.  He may
+have been to some extent infected by the general curiosity of the
+persons around him, in which good Mrs. Butts shared, and which she
+had helped to intensify by revealing the word dropped by Paolo.  But
+this was not really his chief motive.  He could not look upon this
+young man, living a life of unwholesome solitude, without a natural
+desire to do all that his science and his knowledge of human nature
+could help him to do towards bringing him into healthy relations with
+the world about him.  Still, he would not intrude upon him in any
+way.  He would only make certain general investigations, which might
+prove serviceable in case circumstances should give him the right to
+counsel the young man as to his course of life.  The first thing to
+be done was to study systematically the whole subject of antipathies.
+Then, if any further occasion offered itself, he would be ready to
+take advantage of it.  The resources of the Public Library of the
+place and his own private collection were put in requisition to
+furnish him the singular and widely scattered facts of which he was
+in search.
+
+It is not every reader who will care to follow Dr. Butts in his study
+of the natural history of antipathies.  The stories told about them
+are, however, very curious; and if some of them may be questioned,
+there is no doubt that many of the strangest are true, and
+consequently take away from the improbability of others which we are
+disposed to doubt.
+
+But in the first place, what do we mean by an antipathy?  It is an
+aversion to some object, which may vary in degree from mere dislike
+to mortal horror.  What the cause of this aversion is we cannot say.
+It acts sometimes through the senses, sometimes through the
+imagination, sometimes through an unknown channel.  The relations
+which exist between the human being and all that surrounds him vary
+in consequence of some adjustment peculiar to each individual.  The
+brute fact is expressed in the phrase "One man's meat is another
+man's poison."
+
+In studying the history of antipathies the doctor began with those
+referable to the sense of taste, which are among the most common.  In
+any collection of a hundred persons there will be found those who
+cannot make use of certain articles of food generally acceptable.
+This may be from the disgust they occasion or the effects they have
+been found to produce.  Every one knows individuals who cannot
+venture on honey, or cheese, or veal, with impunity.  Carlyle, for
+example, complains of having veal set before him,--a meat he could
+not endure.  There is a whole family connection in New England, and
+that a very famous one, to many of whose members, in different
+generations, all the products of the dairy are the subjects of a
+congenital antipathy.  Montaigne says there are persons who dread the
+smell of apples more than they would dread being exposed to a fire of
+musketry.  The readers of the charming story "A Week in a French
+Country-House" will remember poor Monsieur Jacque's piteous cry in
+the night: "Ursula, art thou asleep?  Oh, Ursula, thou sleepest, but
+I cannot close my eyes.  Dearest Ursula, there is such a dreadful
+smell!  Oh, Ursula, it is such a smell!  I do so wish thou couldst
+smell it!  Good-night, my angel!----Dearest!  I have found them!
+They are apples!  "The smell of roses, of peonies, of lilies, has
+been known to cause faintness.  The sight of various objects has had
+singular effects on some persons.  A boar's head was a favorite dish
+at the table of great people in Marshal d'Albret's time; yet he used
+to faint at the sight of one.  It is not uncommon to meet with
+persons who faint at the sight of blood.  One of the most
+inveterately pugnacious of Dr. Butts's college-mates confessed that
+he had this infirmity.  Stranger and far more awkward than this is
+the case mentioned in an ancient collection, where the subject of the
+antipathy fainted at the sight of any object of a red color.  There
+are sounds, also, which have strange effects on some individuals.
+Among the obnoxious noises are the crumpling of silk stuffs, the
+sound of sweeping, the croaking of frogs.  The effects in different
+cases have been spasms, a sense of strangling, profuse sweating,--all
+showing a profound disturbance of the nervous system.
+
+All these effects were produced by impressions on the organs of
+sense, seemingly by direct agency on certain nerve centres.  But
+there is another series of cases in which the imagination plays a
+larger part in the phenomena.  Two notable examples are afforded in
+the lives of two very distinguished personages.
+
+Peter the Great was frightened, when an infant, by falling from a
+bridge into the water.  Long afterward, when he had reached manhood,
+this hardy and resolute man was so affected by the sound of wheels
+rattling over a bridge that he had to discipline himself by listening
+to the sound, in spite of his dread of it, in order to overcome his
+antipathy.  The story told by Abbe Boileau of Pascal is very similar
+to that related of Peter.  As he was driving in his coach and four
+over the bridge at Neuilly, his horses took fright and ran away, and
+the leaders broke from their harness and sprang into the river,
+leaving the wheel-horses and the carriage on the bridge.  Ever after
+this fright it is said that Pascal had the terrifying sense that he
+was just on the edge of an abyss, ready to fall over.
+
+What strange early impression was it which led a certain lady always
+to shriek aloud if she ventured to enter a church, as it is recorded?
+The old and simple way of accounting for it would be the scriptural
+one, that it was an unclean spirit who dwelt in her, and who, when
+she entered the holy place and brought her spiritual tenant into the
+presence of the sacred symbols, "cried with a loud voice, and came
+out of" her.  A very singular case, the doctor himself had recorded,
+and which the reader may accept as authentic, is the following: At
+the head of the doctor's front stairs stood, and still stands, a tall
+clock, of early date and stately presence.  A middle-aged visitor,
+noticing it as he entered the front door, remarked that he should
+feel a great unwillingness to pass that clock.  He could not go near
+one of those tall timepieces without a profound agitation, which he
+dreaded to undergo.  This very singular idiosyncrasy he attributed to
+a fright when he was an infant in the arms of his nurse.
+
+She was standing near one of those tall clocks, when the cord which
+supported one of its heavy leaden weights broke, and the weight came
+crashing down to the bottom of the case.  Some effect must have been
+produced upon the pulpy nerve centres from which they never
+recovered.  Why should not this happen, when we know that a sudden
+mental shock may be the cause of insanity?  The doctor remembered the
+verse of "The Ancient Mariner:"
+
+    "I moved my lips; the pilot shrieked
+     And fell down in a fit;
+     The holy hermit raised his eyes
+     And prayed where he did sit.
+     I took the oars; the pilot's boy,
+     Who now doth crazy go,
+     Laughed loud and long, and all the while
+     His eyes went to and fro."
+
+This is only poetry, it is true, but the poet borrowed the
+description from nature, and the records of our asylums could furnish
+many cases where insanity was caused by a sudden fright.
+
+More than this, hardly a year passes that we do not read of some
+person, a child commonly, killed outright by terror,--scared to
+death, literally.  Sad cases they often are, in which, nothing but a
+surprise being intended, the shock has instantly arrested the
+movements on which life depends.  If a mere instantaneous impression
+can produce effects like these, such an impression might of course be
+followed by consequences less fatal or formidable, but yet serious in
+their nature.  If here and there a person is killed, as if by
+lightning, by a sudden startling sight or sound, there must be more
+numerous cases in which a terrible shock is produced by similar
+apparently insignificant causes,--a shock which falls short of
+overthrowing the reason and does not destroy life, yet leaves a
+lasting effect upon the subject of it.
+
+This point, then, was settled in the mind of Dr. Butts, namely, that,
+as a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a
+human being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice,
+no change of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which
+such a cause may not rationally account for.  He would not be
+surprised, he said to himself, to find that some early alarm, like
+that which was experienced by Peter the Great or that which happened
+to Pascal, had broken some spring in this young man's nature, or so
+changed its mode of action as to account for the exceptional
+remoteness of his way of life.  But how could any conceivable
+antipathy be so comprehensive as to keep a young man aloof from all
+the world, and make a hermit of him?  He did not hate the human race;
+that was clear enough.  He treated Paolo with great kindness, and the
+Italian was evidently much attached to him.  He had talked naturally
+and pleasantly with the young man he had helped out of his dangerous
+situation when his boat was upset.  Dr. Butts heard that he had once
+made a short visit to this young man, at his rooms in the University.
+It was not misanthropy, therefore, which kept him solitary.  What
+could be broad enough to cover the facts of the case?  Nothing that
+the doctor could think of, unless it were some color, the sight of
+which acted on him as it did on the individual before mentioned, who
+could not look at anything red without fainting.  Suppose this were a
+case of the same antipathy.  How very careful it would make the
+subject of it as to where he went and with whom he consorted!  Time
+and patience would be pretty sure to bring out new developments, and
+physicians, of all men in the world, know how to wait as well as how
+to labor.
+
+Such were some of the crude facts as Dr. Butts found them in books or
+gathered them from his own experience.  He soon discovered that the
+story had got about the village that Maurice Kirkwood was the victim
+of an "antipathy," whatever that word might mean in the vocabulary of
+the people of the place.  If he suspected the channel through which
+it had reached the little community, and, spreading from that centre,
+the country round, he did not see fit to make out of his suspicions a
+domestic casus belli.  Paolo might have mentioned it to others as
+well as to himself.  Maurice might have told some friend, who had
+divulged it.  But to accuse Mrs. Butts, good Mrs. Butts, of petit
+treason in telling one of her husband's professional secrets was too
+serious a matter to be thought of.  He would be a little more
+careful, he promised himself, the next time, at any rate; for he had
+to concede, in spite of every wish to be charitable in his judgment,
+that it was among the possibilities that the worthy lady had
+forgotten the rule that a doctor's patients must put their tongues
+out, and a doctor's wife must keep her tongue in.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+The Secretary of this association was getting somewhat tired of the
+office, and the office was getting somewhat tired of him.  It
+occurred to the members of the Society that a little fresh blood
+infused into it might stir up the general vitality of the
+organization.  The woman suffragists saw no reason why the place of
+Secretary need as a matter of course be filled by a person of the
+male sex.  They agitated, they made domiciliary visits, they wrote
+notes to influential citizens, and finally announced as their
+candidate the young lady who had won and worn the school name of "The
+Terror," who was elected.  She was just the person for the place:
+wide awake, with all her wits about her, full of every kind of
+knowledge, and, above all, strong on points of order and details of
+management, so that she could prompt the presiding officer, to do
+which is often the most essential duty of a Secretary.  The
+President, the worthy rector, was good at plain sailing in the track
+of the common moralities and proprieties, but was liable to get
+muddled if anything came up requiring swift decision and off-hand
+speech.  The Terror had schooled herself in the debating societies of
+the Institute, and would set up the President, when he was floored by
+an awkward question, as easily as if he were a ninepin which had been
+bowled over.
+
+It has been already mentioned that the Pansophian Society received
+communications from time to time from writers outside of its own
+organization.  Of late these had been becoming more frequent.  Many
+of them were sent in anonymously, and as there were numerous visitors
+to the village, and two institutions not far removed from it, both
+full of ambitious and intelligent young persons, it was often
+impossible to trace the papers to their authors.  The new Secretary
+was alive with curiosity, and as sagacious a little body as one might
+find if in want of a detective.  She could make a pretty shrewd guess
+whether a paper was written by a young or old person, by one of her
+own sex or the other, by an experienced hand or a novice.
+
+Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her
+curiosity to an extraordinary degree.  She felt a strong suspicion
+that "the Sachem," as the boat-crews used to call him, "the Recluse,"
+"the Night-Hawk," "the Sphinx," as others named him, must be the
+author of it.  It appeared to her the production of a young person of
+a reflective, poetical turn of mind.  It was not a woman's way of
+writing; at least, so thought the Secretary.  The writer had
+travelled much; had resided in Italy, among other places.  But so had
+many of the summer visitors and residents of Arrowhead Village.  The
+handwriting was not decisive; it had some points of resemblance with
+the pencilled orders for books which Maurice sent to the Library, but
+there were certain differences, intentional or accidental, which
+weakened this evidence.  There was an undertone in the essay which
+was in keeping with the mode of life of the solitary stranger.  It
+might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the dreamy sadness of a
+young person who sees the future he is to climb, not as a smooth
+ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush him, with
+all his hopes and prospects.  This interpretation may have been too
+imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own
+opinion:
+
+                    MY THREE COMPANIONS.
+
+"I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer.  I do not mean
+constantly flitting from one place to another, for my residence has
+often been fixed for considerable periods.  From time to time I have
+put down in a notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes
+through which I have passed.  I have long hesitated whether to let
+any of my notes appear before the public.  My fear has been that they
+were too subjective, to use the metaphysician's term,--that I have
+seen myself reflected in Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature
+as she was meant to be understood.  One who should visit the Harz
+Mountains would see--might see, rather his own colossal image shape
+itself on the morning mist.  But if in every mist that rises from the
+meadows, in every cloud that hangs upon the mountain, he always finds
+his own reflection, we cannot accept him as an interpreter of the
+landscape.
+
+"There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to
+which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its
+author.  They have visited the same localities, they have had many of
+the same thoughts and feelings.  Many, I have no doubt.  Not all,--
+no, not all.  Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have
+been driven to it.  Much of my life has been passed in that
+communion.  These pages record some of the intimacies I have formed
+with her under some of her various manifestations.
+
+"I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke
+wildest and its voice rose loudest.
+
+"I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous
+rivers.
+
+"I have dwelt on the margin of a tranquil lake, and floated through
+many a long, long summer day on its clear waters.
+
+"I have learned the 'various language' of Nature, of which poetry has
+spoken,--at least, I have learned some words and phrases of it.  I
+will translate some of these as I best may into common speech.
+
+"The OCEAN says to the dweller on its shores:--
+
+"You are neither welcome nor unwelcome.  I do not trouble myself with
+the living tribes that come down to my waters.  I have my own people,
+of an older race than yours, that grow to mightier dimensions than
+your mastodons and elephants; more numerous than all the swarms that
+fill the air or move over the thin crust of the earth.  Who are you
+that build your palaces on my margin?  I see your white faces as
+I saw the dark faces of the tribes that came before you, as I shall
+look upon the unknown family of mankind that will come after you.
+And what is your whole human family but a parenthesis in a single
+page of my history?  The raindrops stereotyped themselves on my
+beaches before a living creature left his footprints there.  This
+horseshoe-crab I fling at your feet is of older lineage than your
+Adam,--perhaps, indeed, you count your Adam as one of his
+descendants.  What feeling have I for you?  Not scorn, not hatred,--
+not love,--not loathing.  No!---indifference,--blank indifference to
+you and your affairs that is my feeling, say rather absence of
+feeling, as regards you.---Oh yes, I will lap your feet, I will cool
+you in the hot summer days, I will bear you up in my strong arms, I
+will rock you on my rolling undulations, like a babe in his cradle.
+Am I not gentle?  Am I not kind?  Am I not harmless?  But hark!  The
+wind is rising, and the wind and I are rough playmates!  What do you
+say to my voice now?  Do you see my foaming lips?  Do you feel the
+rocks tremble as my huge billows crash against them?  Is not my anger
+terrible as I dash your argosy, your thunder-bearing frigate, into
+fragments, as you would crack an eggshell?--No, not anger; deaf,
+blind, unheeding indifference,--that is all.  Out of me all things
+arose; sooner or later, into me all things subside.  All changes
+around me; I change not.  I look not at you, vain man, and your frail
+transitory concerns, save in momentary glimpses: I look on the white
+face of my dead mistress, whom I follow as the bridegroom follows the
+bier of her who has changed her nuptial raiment for the shroud.
+
+"Ye whose thoughts are of eternity, come dwell at my side.
+Continents and islands grow old, and waste and disappear.  The
+hardest rock crumbles; vegetable and animal kingdoms come into being,
+wax great, decline, and perish, to give way to others, even as human
+dynasties and nations and races come and go.  Look on me!  "Time
+writes no wrinkle" on my forehead.  Listen to me!  All tongues are
+spoken on my shores, but I have only one language: the winds taught
+me their vowels the crags and the sands schooled me in my rough or
+smooth consonants.  Few words are mine but I have whispered them and
+sung them and shouted them to men of all tribes from the time when
+the first wild wanderer strayed into my awful presence.  Have you a
+grief that gnaws at your heart-strings?  Come with it to my shore, as
+of old the priest of far-darting Apollo carried his rage and anguish
+to the margin of the loud-roaring sea.  There, if anywhere you will
+forget your private and short-lived woe, for my voice speaks to the
+infinite and the eternal in your consciousness.'
+
+
+"To him who loves the pages of human history, who listens to the
+voices of the world about him, who frequents the market and the
+thoroughfare, who lives in the study of time and its accidents rather
+than in the deeper emotions, in abstract speculation and spiritual
+contemplation, the RIVER addresses itself as his natural companion.
+
+"Come live with me.  I am active, cheerful, communicative, a natural
+talker and story-teller.  I am not noisy, like the ocean, except
+occasionally when I am rudely interrupted, or when I stumble and get
+a fall.  When I am silent you can still have pleasure in watching my
+changing features.  My idlest babble, when I am toying with the
+trifles that fall in my way, if not very full of meaning, is at least
+musical.  I am not a dangerous friend, like the ocean; no highway is
+absolutely safe, but my nature is harmless, and the storms that strew
+the beaches with wrecks cast no ruins upon my flowery borders.  Abide
+with me, and you shall not die of thirst, like the forlorn wretches
+left to the mercies of the pitiless salt waves.  Trust yourself to
+me, and I will carry you far on your journey, if we are travelling to
+the same point of the compass.  If I sometimes run riot and overflow
+your meadows, I leave fertility behind me when I withdraw to my
+natural channel.  Walk by my side toward the place of my destination.
+I will keep pace with you, and you shall feel my presence with you as
+that of a self-conscious being like yourself.  You will find it hard
+to be miserable in my company; I drain you of ill-conditioned
+thoughts as I carry away the refuse of your dwelling and its grounds."
+
+
+But to him whom the ocean chills and crushes with its sullen
+indifference, and the river disturbs with its never-pausing and
+never-ending story, the silent LAKE shall be a refuge and a place of
+rest for his soul.
+
+"'Vex not yourself with thoughts too vast for your limited
+faculties,' it says; 'yield not yourself to the babble of the running
+stream.  Leave the ocean, which cares nothing for you or any living
+thing that walks the solid earth; leave the river, too busy with its
+own errand, too talkative about its own affairs, and find peace with
+me, whose smile will cheer you, whose whisper will soothe you.  Come
+to me when the morning sun blazes across my bosom like a golden
+baldric; come to me in the still midnight, when I hold the inverted
+firmament like a cup brimming with jewels, nor spill one star of all
+the constellations that float in my ebon goblet.  Do you know the
+charm of melancholy?  Where will you find a sympathy like mine in
+your hours of sadness?  Does the ocean share your grief?  Does the
+river listen to your sighs?  The salt wave, that called to you from
+under last month's full moon, to-day is dashing on the rocks of
+Labrador; the stream, that ran by you pure and sparkling, has
+swallowed the poisonous refuse of a great city, and is creeping to
+its grave in the wide cemetery that buries all things in its tomb of
+liquid crystal.  It is true that my waters exhale and are renewed
+from one season to another; but are your features the same,
+absolutely the same, from year to year?  We both change, but we know
+each other through all changes.  Am I not mirrored in those eyes of
+yours?  And does not Nature plant me as an eye to behold her beauties
+while she is dressed in the glories of leaf and flower, and draw the
+icy lid over my shining surface when she stands naked and ashamed in
+the poverty of winter?'
+
+"I have had strange experiences and sad thoughts in the course of a
+life not very long, but with a record which much longer lives could
+not match in incident.  Oftentimes the temptation has come over me
+with dangerous urgency to try a change of existence, if such change
+is a part of human destiny,--to seek rest, if that is what we gain by
+laying down the burden of life.  I have asked who would be the friend
+to whom I should appeal for the last service I should have need of.
+Ocean was there, all ready, asking no questions, answering none.
+What strange voyages, downward through its glaucous depths, upwards
+to its boiling and frothing surface, wafted by tides, driven by
+tempests, disparted by rude agencies; one remnant whitening on the
+sands of a northern beach, one perhaps built into the circle of a
+coral reef in the Pacific, one settling to the floor of the vast
+laboratory where continents are built, to emerge in far-off ages!
+What strange companions for my pall-bearers!  Unwieldy sea-monsters,
+the stories of which are counted fables by the spectacled collectors
+who think their catalogues have exhausted nature; naked-eyed
+creatures, staring, glaring, nightmare-like spectres of the ghastly-
+green abysses; pulpy islands, with life in gelatinous immensity,--
+what a company of hungry heirs at every ocean funeral!  No!  No!
+Ocean claims great multitudes, but does not invite the solitary who
+would fain be rid of himself.
+
+"Shall I seek a deeper slumber at the bottom of the lake I love than
+I have ever found when drifting idly over its surface?  No, again.  I
+do not want the sweet, clear waters to know me in the disgrace of
+nature, when life, the faithful body-servant, has ceased caring for
+me.  That must not be.  The mirror which has pictured me so often
+shall never know me as an unwelcome object.
+
+"If I must ask the all-subduing element to be my last friend, and
+lead me out of my prison, it shall be the busy, whispering, not
+unfriendly, pleasantly companionable river.
+
+"But Ocean and River and Lake have certain relations to the periods
+of human life which they who are choosing their places of abode
+should consider.  Let the child play upon the seashore.  The wide
+horizon gives his imagination room to grow in, untrammelled.  That
+background of mystery, without which life is a poor mechanical
+arrangement, is shaped and colored, so far as it can have outline, or
+any hue but shadow, on a vast canvas, the contemplation of which
+enlarges and enriches the sphere of consciousness.  The mighty ocean
+is not too huge to symbolize the aspirations and ambitions of the yet
+untried soul of the adolescent.
+
+"The time will come when his indefinite mental horizon has found a
+solid limit, which shuts his prospect in narrower bounds than he
+would have thought could content him in the years of undefined
+possibilities.  Then he will find the river a more natural intimate
+than the ocean.  It is individual, which the ocean, with all its
+gulfs and inlets and multitudinous shores, hardly seems to be.  It
+does not love you very dearly, and will not miss you much when you
+disappear from its margin; but it means well to you, bids you good-
+morning with its coming waves, and good-evening with those which are
+leaving.  It will lead your thoughts pleasantly away, upwards to its
+source, downwards to the stream to which it is tributary, or the wide
+waters in which it is to lose itself.  A river, by choice, to live by
+in middle age.
+
+"In hours of melancholy reflection, in those last years of life which
+have little left but tender memories, the still companionship of the
+lake, embosomed in woods, sheltered, fed by sweet mountain brooks and
+hidden springs, commends itself to the wearied and saddened spirit.
+I am not thinking of those great inland seas, which have many of the
+features and much of the danger that belong to the ocean, but of
+those 'ponds,' as our countrymen used to call them until they were
+rechristened by summer visitors; beautiful sheets of water from a
+hundred to a few thousand acres in extent, scattered like raindrops
+over the map of our Northern sovereignties.  The loneliness of
+contemplative old age finds its natural home in the near neighborhood
+of one of these tranquil basins."
+
+Nature does not always plant her poets where they belong, but if we
+look carefully their affinities betray themselves.  The youth will
+carry his Byron to the rock which overlooks the ocean the poet loved
+so well.  The man of maturer years will remember that the sonorous
+couplets of Pope which ring in his ears were written on the banks of
+the Thames.  The old man, as he nods over the solemn verse of
+Wordsworth, will recognize the affinity between the singer and the
+calm sheet that lay before him as he wrote,--the stainless and sleepy
+Windermere.
+
+"The dwellers by Cedar Lake may find it an amusement to compare their
+own feelings with those of one who has lived by the Atlantic and the
+Mediterranean, by the Nile and the Tiber, by Lake Leman and by one of
+the fairest sheets of water that our own North America embosoms in
+its forests."
+
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, read this
+paper, and pondered long upon it.  She was thinking very seriously of
+studying medicine, and had been for some time in frequent
+communication with Dr. Butts, under whose direction she had begun
+reading certain treatises, which added to such knowledge of the laws
+of life in health and in disease as she had brought with her from the
+Corinna Institute.  Naturally enough, she carried the anonymous paper
+to the doctor, to get his opinion about it, and compare it with her
+own.  They both agreed that it was probably, they would not say
+certainly, the work of the solitary visitor.  There was room for
+doubt, for there were visitors who might well have travelled to all
+the places mentioned, and resided long enough on the shores of the
+waters the writer spoke of to have had all the experiences mentioned
+in the paper.  The Terror remembered a young lady, a former
+schoolmate, who belonged to one of those nomadic families common in
+this generation, the heads of which, especially the female heads, can
+never be easy where they are, but keep going between America and
+Europe, like so many pith-balls in the electrical experiment,
+alternately attracted and repelled, never in contented equilibrium.
+Every few years they pull their families up by the roots, and by the
+time they have begun to take hold a little with their radicles in the
+spots to which they have been successively transplanted up they come
+again, so that they never get a tap-root anywhere.  The Terror
+suspected the daughter of one of these families of sending certain
+anonymous articles of not dissimilar character to the one she had
+just received.  But she knew the style of composition common among
+the young girls, and she could hardly believe that it was one of them
+who had sent this paper.  Could a brother of this young lady have
+written it?  Possibly; she knew nothing more than that the young lady
+had a brother, then a student at the University.  All the chances
+were that Mr. Maurice Kirkwood was the author.  So thought Lurida,
+and so thought Dr. Butts.
+
+Whatever faults there were in this essay, it interested them both.
+There was nothing which gave the least reason to suspect insanity on
+the part of the writer, whoever he or she might be.  There were
+references to suicide, it is true, but they were of a purely
+speculative nature, and did not look to any practical purpose in that
+direction.  Besides, if the stranger were the author of the paper, he
+certainly would not choose a sheet of water like Cedar Lake to
+perform the last offices for him, in case he seriously meditated
+taking unceremonious leave of life and its accidents.  He could find
+a river easily enough, to say nothing of other methods of effecting
+his purpose; but he had committed himself as to the impropriety of
+selecting a lake, so they need not be anxious about the white canoe
+and its occupant, as they watched it skimming the surface of the deep
+waters.
+
+The holder of the Portfolio would never have ventured to come before
+the public if he had not counted among his resources certain papers
+belonging to the records of the Pansophian Society, which he can make
+free use of, either for the illustration of the narrative, or for a
+diversion during those intervals in which the flow of events is
+languid, or even ceases for the time to manifest any progress.  The
+reader can hardly have failed to notice that the old Anchor Tavern
+had become the focal point where a good deal of mental activity
+converged.  There were the village people, including a number of
+cultivated families; there were the visitors, among them many
+accomplished and widely travelled persons; there was the University,
+with its learned teachers and aspiring young men; there was the
+Corinna Institute, with its eager, ambitious, hungry-souled young
+women, crowding on, class after class coming forward on the broad
+stream of liberal culture, and rounding the point which, once passed,
+the boundless possibilities of womanhood opened before them.  All
+this furnished material enough and to spare for the records and the
+archives of the society.
+
+The new Secretary infused fresh life into the meetings.  It may be
+remembered that the girls had said of her, when she was The Terror,
+that "she knew everything and didn't believe anything."  That was
+just the kind of person for a secretary of such an association.
+Properly interpreted, the saying meant that she knew a great deal,
+and wanted to know a great deal more, and was consequently always on
+the lookout for information; that she believed nothing without
+sufficient proof that it was true, and therefore was perpetually
+asking for evidence where, others took assertions on trust.
+
+It was astonishing to see what one little creature like The Terror
+could accomplish in the course of a single season.  She found out
+what each member could do and wanted to do.  She wrote to the outside
+visitors whom she suspected of capacity, and urged them to speak at
+the meetings, or send written papers to be read.  As an official,
+with the printed title at the head of her notes, PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY,
+she was a privileged personage.  She begged the young persons who had
+travelled to tell something of their experiences.  She had
+contemplated getting up a discussion on the woman's rights question,
+but being a wary little body, and knowing that the debate would
+become a dispute and divide the members into two hostile camps, she
+deferred this project indefinitely.  It would be time enough after
+she had her team well in hand, she said to herself,--had felt their
+mouths and tried their paces.  This expression, as she used it in her
+thoughts, seems rather foreign to her habits, but there was room in
+her large brain for a wide range of illustrations and an ample
+vocabulary.  She could not do much with her own muscles, but she had
+known the passionate delight of being whirled furiously over the road
+behind four scampering horses, in a rocking stage-coach, and thought
+of herself in the Secretary's chair as not unlike the driver on his
+box.  A few weeks of rest had allowed her nervous energy to store
+itself up, and the same powers which had distanced competition in the
+classes of her school had of necessity to expend themselves in
+vigorous action in her new office.
+
+
+Her appeals had their effect.  A number of papers were very soon sent
+in; some with names, some anonymously.  She looked these papers over,
+and marked those which she thought would be worth reading and
+listening to at the meetings.  One of them has just been presented to
+the reader.  As to the authorship of the following one there were
+many conjectures.  A well-known writer, who had spent some weeks at
+Arrowhead Village, was generally suspected of being its author.
+Some, however, questioned whether it was not the work of a new hand,
+who wrote, not from experience, but from his or her ideas of the
+condition to which a story-teller, a novelist, must in all
+probability be sooner or later reduced.  The reader must judge for
+himself whether this first paper is the work of an old hand or a
+novice.
+
+
+               SOME EXPERIENCES OF A NOVELIST.
+
+"I have written a frightful number of stories, forty or more, I
+think.  Let me see.  For twelve years two novels a year regularly:
+that makes twenty-four.  In three different years I have written
+three stories annually: that makes thirty-three.  In five years one a
+year,--thirty-eight.  That is all, is n't it?  Yes.  Thirty-eight,
+not forty.  I wish I could make them all into one composite story, as
+Mr. Galton does his faces.
+
+"Hero--heroine--mamma--papa--uncle--sister, and so on.  Love--
+obstacles--misery--tears--despair--glimmer of hope--unexpected
+solution of difficulties--happy finale.
+
+"Landscape for background according to season.  Plants of each month
+got up from botanical calendars.
+
+"I should like much to see the composite novel.  Why not apply Mr.
+Galton's process, and get thirty-eight stories all in one?  All the
+Yankees would resolve into one Yankee, all the P---- West Britons
+into one Patrick, etc., what a saving of time it would be!
+
+"I got along pretty well with my first few stories.  I had some
+characters around me which, a little disguised, answered well enough.
+There was the minister of the parish, and there was an old
+schoolmaster either of them served very satisfactorily for
+grandfathers and old uncles.  All I had to do was to shift some of
+their leading peculiarities, keeping the rest.  The old minister wore
+knee-breeches.  I clapped them on to the schoolmaster.  The
+schoolmaster carried a tall gold-headed cane.  I put this in the
+minister's hands.  So with other things,--I shifted them round, and
+got a set of characters who, taken together, reproduced the chief
+persons of the village where I lived, but did not copy any individual
+exactly.  Thus it went on for a while; but by and by my stock company
+began to be rather too familiarly known, in spite of their change of
+costume, and at last some altogether too sagacious person published
+what he called a 'key' to several of my earlier stories, in which I
+found the names of a number of neighbors attached to aliases of my
+own invention.  All the 'types,' as he called them, represented by
+these personages of my story had come to be recognized, each as
+standing for one and the same individual of my acquaintance.  It had
+been of no use to change the costume.  Even changing the sex did no
+good.  I had a famous old gossip in one of my tales,--a much-babbling
+Widow Sertingly.  'Sho!' they all said, that 's old Deacon Spinner,
+the same he told about in that other story of his,--only the deacon's
+got on a petticoat and a mob-cap,--but it's the same old sixpence.'
+So I said to myself, I must have some new characters.  I had no
+trouble with young characters; they are all pretty much alike,--dark-
+haired or light-haired, with the outfits belonging to their
+complexion, respectively.  I had an old great-aunt, who was a tip-top
+eccentric.  I had never seen anything just like her in books.  So I
+said, I will have you, old lady, in one of my stories; and, sure
+enough, I fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name, which I
+got from the directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised,
+as I supposed, beyond the possibility of recognition.  The book sold
+well, and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty.  A few weeks
+after it was published a lawyer called upon me, as the agent of the
+person in the directory, whose family name I had used, as he
+maintained, to his and all his relatives' great damage, wrong, loss,
+grief, shame, and irreparable injury, for which the sum of blank
+thousand dollars would be a modest compensation.  The story made the
+book sell, but not enough to pay blank thousand dollars.  In the mean
+time a cousin of mine had sniffed out the resemblance between the
+character in my book and our great-aunt.  We were rivals in her good
+graces.  'Cousin Pansie' spoke to her of my book and the trouble it
+was bringing on me,--she was so sorry about it!  She liked my story,
+--only those personalities, you know.  'What personalities?' says old
+granny-aunt.  'Why, auntie, dear, they do say that he has brought in
+everybody we know,--did n't anybody tell you about--well,--I suppose
+you ought to know it,--did n't anybody tell you you were made fun of
+in that novel?'  Somebody--no matter who--happened to hear all this,
+and told me.  She said granny-aunt's withered old face had two red
+spots come to it, as if she had been painting her cheeks from a pink
+saucer.  No, she said, not a pink saucer, but as if they were two
+coals of fire.  She sent out and got the book, and made her (the
+somebody that I was speaking of) read it to her.  When she had heard
+as much as she could stand,--for 'Cousin Pansie' explained passages
+to her,--explained, you know,--she sent for her lawyer, and that same
+somebody had to be a witness to a new will she had drawn up.  It was
+not to my advantage.  'Cousin Pansie' got the corner lot where the
+grocery is, and pretty much everything else.  The old woman left me a
+legacy.  What do you think it was?  An old set of my own books, that
+looked as if it had been bought out of a bankrupt circulating
+library.
+
+"After that I grew more careful.  I studied my disguises much more
+diligently.  But after all, what could I do?  Here I was, writing
+stories for my living and my reputation.  I made a pretty sum enough,
+and worked hard enough to earn it.  No tale, no money.  Then every
+story that went from my workshop had to come up to the standard of my
+reputation, and there was a set of critics,--there is a set of
+critics now and everywhere,--that watch as narrowly for the decline
+of a man's reputation as ever a village half drowned out by an
+inundation watched for the falling of the waters.  The fame I had
+won, such as it was, seemed to attend me,--not going before me in the
+shape of a woman with a trumpet, but rather following me like one of
+Actaeon's hounds, his throat open, ready to pull me down and tear me.
+What a fierce enemy is that which bays behind us in the voice of our
+proudest bygone achievement!
+
+"But, as I said above, what could I do?  I must write novels, and I
+must have characters.  'Then why not invent them?' asks some novice.
+Oh, yes!  Invent them!  You can invent a human being that in certain
+aspects of humanity will answer every purpose for which your
+invention was intended.  A basket of straw, an old coat and pair of
+breeches, a hat which has been soaked, sat upon, stuffed a broken
+window, and had a brood of chickens raised in it,--these elements,
+duly adjusted to each other, will represent humanity so truthfully
+that the crows will avoid the cornfield when your scarecrow displays
+his personality.  Do you think you can make your heroes and
+heroines,--nay, even your scrappy supernumeraries,--out of refuse
+material, as you made your scarecrow?  You can't do it.  You must
+study living people and reproduce them.  And whom do you know so well
+as your friends?  You will show up your friends, then, one after
+another.  When your friends give out, who is left for you?  Why,
+nobody but your own family, of course.  When you have used up your
+family, there is nothing left for you but to write your
+autobiography.
+
+"After my experience with my grand-aunt, I be came more cautious,
+very naturally.  I kept traits of character, but I mixed ages as well
+as sexes.  In this way I continued to use up a large amount of
+material, which looked as if it were as dangerous as dynamite to
+meddle with.  Who would have expected to meet my maternal uncle in
+the guise of a schoolboy?  Yet I managed to decant his
+characteristics as nicely as the old gentleman would have decanted a
+bottle of Juno Madeira through that long siphon which he always used
+when the most sacred vintages were summoned from their crypts to
+render an account of themselves on his hospitable board.  It was a
+nice business, I confess, but I did it, and I drink cheerfully to
+that good uncle's memory in a glass of wine from his own cellar,
+which, with many other more important tokens of his good will, I call
+my own since his lamented demise.
+
+"I succeeded so well with my uncle that I thought I would try a
+course of cousins.  I had enough of them to furnish out a whole
+gallery of portraits.  There was cousin 'Creeshy,' as we called her;
+Lucretia, more correctly.  She was a cripple.  Her left lower limb
+had had something happen to it, and she walked with a crutch.  Her
+patience under her trial was very pathetic and picturesque, so to
+speak,--I mean adapted to the tender parts of a story; nothing could
+work up better in a melting paragraph.  But I could not, of course,
+describe her particular infirmity; that would point her out at once.
+I thought of shifting the lameness to the right lower limb, but even
+that would be seen through.  So I gave the young woman that stood for
+her in my story a lame elbow, and put her arm in a sling, and made
+her such a model of uncomplaining endurance that my grandmother cried
+over her as if her poor old heart would break.  She cried very
+easily, my grandmother; in fact, she had such a gift for tears that I
+availed myself of it, and if you remember old Judy, in my novel
+"Honi Soit" (Honey Sweet, the booksellers called it),--old Judy, the
+black-nurse,--that was my grandmother.  She had various other
+peculiarities, which I brought out one by one, and saddled on to
+different characters.  You see she was a perfect mine of
+singularities and idiosyncrasies.  After I had used her up pretty
+well, I came dawn upon my poor relations.  They were perfectly fair
+game; what better use could I put them to?  I studied them up very
+carefully, and as there were a good many of them I helped myself
+freely.  They lasted me, with occasional intermissions, I should say,
+three or four years.  I had to be very careful with my poor
+relations,--they were as touchy as they could be; and as I felt bound
+to send a copy of my novel, whatever it might be, to each one of
+them,--there were as many as a dozen,--I took care to mix their
+characteristic features, so that, though each might suspect I meant
+the other, no one should think I meant him or her.  I got through all
+my relations at last except my father and mother.  I had treated my
+brothers and sisters pretty fairly, all except Elisha and Joanna.
+The truth is they both had lots of odd ways,--family traits, I
+suppose, but were just different enough from each other to figure
+separately in two different stories.  These two novels made me some
+little trouble; for Elisha said he felt sure that I meant Joanna in
+one of them, and quarrelled with me about it; and Joanna vowed and
+declared that Elnathan, in the other, stood for brother 'Lisha, and
+that it was a real mean thing to make fun of folks' own flesh and
+blood, and treated me to one of her cries.  She was n't handsome when
+she cried, poor, dear Joanna; in fact, that was one of the personal
+traits I had made use of in the story that Elisha found fault with.
+
+"So as there was nobody left but my father and mother, you see for
+yourself I had no choice.  There was one great advantage in dealing
+with them,--I knew them so thoroughly.  One naturally feels a certain
+delicacy it handling from a purely artistic point of view persons who
+have been so near to him.  One's mother, for instance: suppose some
+of her little ways were so peculiar that the accurate delineation of
+them would furnish amusement to great numbers of readers; it would
+not be without hesitation that a writer of delicate sensibility would
+draw her portrait, with all its whimsicalities, so plainly that it
+should be generally recognized.  One's father is commonly of tougher
+fibre than one's mother, and one would not feel the same scruples,
+perhaps, in using him professionally as material in a novel; still,
+while you are employing him as bait,--you see I am honest and plain-
+spoken, for your characters are baits to catch readers with,--I would
+follow kind Izaak Walton's humane counsel about the frog you are
+fastening to your fish-hook: fix him artistically, as he directs, but
+in so doing I use him as though you loved him.'
+
+"I have at length shown up, in one form and another, all my townsmen
+who have anything effective in their bodily or mental make-up, all my
+friends, all my relatives; that is, all my blood relatives.  It has
+occurred to me that I might open a new field in the family connection
+of my father-in-law and mother-in-law.  We have been thinking of
+paying them a visit, and I shall have an admirable opportunity of
+studying them and their relatives and visitors.  I have long wanted a
+good chance for getting acquainted with the social sphere several
+grades below that to which I am accustomed, and I have no doubt that
+I shall find matter for half a dozen new stories among those
+connections of mine.  Besides, they live in a Western city, and one
+doesn't mind much how he cuts up the people of places he does n't
+himself live in.  I suppose there is not really so much difference in
+people's feelings, whether they live in Bangor or Omaha, but one's
+nerves can't be expected to stretch across the continent.  It is all
+a matter of greater or less distance.  I read this morning that a
+Chinese fleet was sunk, but I did n't think half so much about it as
+I did about losing my sleeve button, confound it!  People have
+accused me of want of feeling; they misunderstand the artist-nature,
+--that is all.  I obey that implicitly; I am sorry if people don't
+like my descriptions, but I have done my best.  I have pulled to
+pieces all the persons I am acquainted with, and put them together
+again in my characters.  The quills I write with come from live
+geese, I would have you know.  I expect to get some first-rate
+pluckings from those people I was speaking of, and I mean to begin my
+thirty-ninth novel as soon as I have got through my visit."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.
+
+There is no use in trying to hurry the natural course of events, in a
+narrative like this.  June passed away, and July, and August had
+come, and as yet the enigma which had completely puzzled Arrowhead
+Village and its visitors remained unsolved.  The white canoe still
+wandered over the lake, alone, ghostly, always avoiding the near
+approach of the boats which seemed to be coming in its direction.
+Now and then a circumstance would happen which helped to keep inquiry
+alive.  Good horsemanship was not so common among the young men of
+the place and its neighborhood that Maurice's accomplishment in that
+way could be overlooked.  If there was a wicked horse or a wild colt
+whose owner was afraid of him, he would be commended to Maurice's
+attention.  Paolo would lead him to his master with all due
+precaution,--for he had no idea of risking his neck on the back of
+any ill-conditioned beast,--and Maurice would fasten on his long
+spurs, spring into the saddle, and very speedily teach the creature
+good behavior.  There soon got about a story that he was what the
+fresh-water fisherman called "one o' them whisperers."  It is a
+common legend enough, coming from the Old World, but known in
+American horse-talking circles, that some persons will whisper
+certain words in a horse's ear which will tame him if he is as wild
+and furious as ever Cruiser was.  All this added to the mystery which
+surrounded the young man.  A single improbable or absurd story
+amounts to very little, but when half a dozen such stories are told
+about the same individual or the same event, they begin to produce
+the effect of credible evidence.  If the year had been 1692 and the
+place had been Salem Village, Maurice Kirkwood would have run the
+risk of being treated like the Reverend George Burroughs.
+
+Miss Lurida Vincent's curiosity had been intensely excited with
+reference to the young man of whom so many stories were told.  She
+had pretty nearly convinced herself that he was the author of the
+paper on Ocean, Lake, and River, which had been read at one of the
+meetings of the Pansophian Society.  She was very desirous of meeting
+him, if it were possible.  It seemed as if she might, as Secretary of
+the Society, request the cooperation of any of the visitors, without
+impropriety.  So, after much deliberation, she wrote a careful note,
+of which the following is an exact copy.  Her hand was bold, almost
+masculine, a curious contrast to that of Euthymia, which was
+delicately feminine.
+
+
+PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-.
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
+
+DEAR SIR,--You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the
+meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure
+of seeing you at any of them.  We have supposed that we might be
+indebted to you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to
+with much interest.  As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be
+inquisitive respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any
+papers kindly sent us by the temporary residents of our village will
+be welcome, and if adapted to the wants of our Association will be
+read at one of its meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps
+both read and printed.  May we not hope for your presence at the
+meeting, which is to take place next Wednesday evening?
+Respectfully yours,
+
+LURIDA VINCENT,
+Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
+
+
+To this note the Secretary received the following reply:
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT,
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 4, 18-.
+
+Secretary of the Pansophian Society:
+
+DEAR MISS VINCENT,--I have received the ticket you refer to, and
+desire to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention.  I
+regret that I have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend
+the meetings of the Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which
+I feel an inclination to write, it will give me pleasure to send a
+paper, to be disposed of as the Society may see fit.
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
+
+
+"He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the
+other evening," the Secretary said to herself.  "No matter,--he
+wrote it,--there is no mistaking his handwriting.  We know something
+about him, now, at any rate.  But why doesn't he come to our
+meetings?  What has his antipathy to do with his staying away?  I
+must find out what his secret is, and I will.  I don't believe it's
+harder than it was to solve that prize problem which puzzled so many
+teachers, or than beating Crakowitz, the great chess-player."
+
+To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties
+which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those
+who knew her in her school-days.  It was a very delicate piece of
+business; for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate,
+and believed she was entitled to do almost everything that men dared
+to, she knew very well there were certain limits which a young woman
+like herself must not pass.
+
+In the mean time Maurice had received a visit from the young student
+at the University,--the same whom he had rescued from his dangerous
+predicament in the lake.  With him had called one of the teachers,--
+an instructor in modern languages, a native of Italy.  Maurice and
+the instructor exchanged a few words in Italian.  The young man spoke
+it with the ease which implied long familiarity with its use.
+
+After they left, the instructor asked many curious questions about
+him,--who he was, how long he had been in the village, whether
+anything was known of his history,--all these inquiries with an
+eagerness which implied some special and peculiar reason for the
+interest they evinced.
+
+"I feel satisfied," the instructor said, "that I have met that young
+man in my own country.  It was a number of years ago, and of course
+he has altered in appearance a good deal; but there is a look about
+him of--what shall I call it?---apprehension,--as if he were fearing
+the approach of something or somebody.  I think it is the way a man
+would look that was haunted; you know what I mean,--followed by a
+spirit or ghost.  He does not suggest the idea of a murderer,--very
+far from it; but if he did, I should think he was every minute in
+fear of seeing the murdered man's spirit."
+
+The student was curious, in his turn, to know all the instructor
+could recall.  He had seen him in Rome, he thought, at the Fountain
+of Trevi, where so many strangers go before leaving the city.  The
+youth was in the company of a man who looked like a priest.  He could
+not mistake the peculiar expression of his countenance, but that was
+all he now remembered about his appearance.  His attention had been
+called to this young man by seeing that some of the bystanders were
+pointing at him, and noticing that they were whispering with each
+other as if with reference to him.  He should say that the youth was
+at that time fifteen or sixteen years old, and the time was about ten
+years ago.
+
+After all, this evidence was of little or no value.  Suppose the
+youth were Maurice; what then?  We know that he had been in Italy,
+and had been there a good while,--or at least we infer so much from
+his familiarity with the language, and are confirmed in the belief by
+his having an Italian servant, whom he probably brought from Italy
+when he returned.  If he wrote the paper which was read the other
+evening, that settles it, for the writer says he had lived by the
+Tiber.  We must put this scrap of evidence furnished by the Professor
+with the other scraps; it may turn out of some consequence, sooner or
+later.  It is like a piece of a dissected map; it means almost
+nothing by itself, but when we find the pieces it joins with we may
+discover a very important meaning in it.
+
+In a small, concentrated community like that which centred in and
+immediately around Arrowhead Village, every day must have its local
+gossip as well as its general news.  The newspaper tells the small
+community what is going on in the great world, and the busy tongues
+of male and female, especially the latter, fill in with the
+occurrences and comments of the ever-stirring microcosm.  The fact
+that the Italian teacher had, or thought he had, seen Maurice ten
+years before was circulated and made the most of,--turned over and
+over like a cake, until it was thoroughly done on both sides and all
+through.  It was a very small cake, but better than nothing.  Miss
+Vincent heard this story, as others did, and talked about it with her
+friend, Miss Tower.  Here was one more fact to help along.
+
+The two young ladies who had recently graduated at the Corinna
+Institute remained, as they had always been, intimate friends.  They
+were the natural complements of each other.  Euthymia represented a
+complete, symmetrical womanhood.  Her outward presence was only an
+index of a large, wholesome, affluent life.  She could not help being
+courageous, with such a firm organization.  She could not help being
+generous, cheerful, active.  She had been told often enough that she
+was fair to look upon.  She knew that she was called The Wonder by
+the schoolmates who were dazzled by her singular accomplishments, but
+she did not overvalue them.  She rather tended to depreciate her own
+gifts, in comparison with those of her friend, Miss Lurida Vincent.
+The two agreed all the better for differing as they did.  The octave
+makes a perfect chord, when shorter intervals jar more or less on the
+ear.  Each admired the other with a heartiness which if they had been
+less unlike, would have been impossible.
+
+It was a pleasant thing to observe their dependence on each other.
+The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her
+friend.  All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her
+bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought.  She
+would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had
+any message for her.  Her teachers had compared her way of reading to
+the taking of an instantaneous photograph.  When she took up the
+first book on Physiology which Dr. Butts handed her, it seemed to him
+that if she only opened at any place, and gave one look, her mind
+drank its meaning up, as a moist sponge absorbs water.  "What can I
+do with such a creature as this?" he said to himself.  "There is
+only one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm:
+give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own cocoon.  Give her
+the books, and she will spin her own web of knowledge."
+
+"Do you really think of studying medicine?" said Dr. Butts to her.
+
+"I have n't made up my mind about that," she answered, "but I want to
+know a little more about this terrible machinery of life and death we
+are all tangled in.  I know something about it, but not enough.  I
+find some very strange beliefs among the women I meet with, and I
+want to be able to silence them when they attempt to proselyte me to
+their whims and fancies.  Besides, I want to know everything."
+
+"They tell me you do, already," said Dr. Butts.
+
+"I am the most ignorant little wretch that draws the breath of life!"
+exclaimed The Terror.
+
+The doctor smiled.  He knew what it meant.  She had reached that
+stage of education in which the vast domain of the unknown opens its
+illimitable expanse before the eyes of the student.  We never know
+the extent of darkness until it is partially illuminated.
+
+"You did not leave the Institute with the reputation of being the
+most ignorant young lady that ever graduated there," said the doctor.
+"They tell me you got the highest marks of any pupil on their record
+since the school was founded."
+
+"What a grand thing it was to be the biggest fish in our small
+aquarium, to be sure!" answered The Terror.  "He was six inches long,
+the monster,--a little too big for bait to catch a pickerel with!
+What did you hand me that schoolbook for?  Did you think I did n't
+know anything about the human body?"
+
+"You said you were such an ignorant creature I thought I would try
+you with an easy book, by way of introduction."
+
+The Terror was not confused by her apparent self-contradiction.
+
+"I meant what I said, and I mean what I say.  When I talk about my
+ignorance, I don't measure myself with schoolgirls, doctor.  I don't
+measure myself with my teachers, either.  You must talk to me as if I
+were a man, a grown man, if you mean to teach me anything.  Where is
+your hat, doctor?  Let me try it on."
+
+The doctor handed her his wide-awake.  The Terror's hair was not
+naturally abundant, like Euthymia's, and she kept it cut rather
+short.  Her head used to get very hot when she studied hard.  She
+tried to put the hat on.
+
+"Do you see that?" she said.  "I could n't wear it--it would squeeze
+my eyes out of my head.  The books told me that women's brains were
+smaller than men's: perhaps they are,--most of them,--I never
+measured a great many.  But when they try to settle what women are
+good for, by phrenology, I like to have them put their tape round my
+head.  I don't believe in their nonsense, for all that.  You might as
+well tell me that if one horse weighs more than another horse he is
+worth more,--a cart-horse that weighs twelve or fourteen hundred
+pounds better than Eclipse, that may have weighed a thousand.  Give
+me a list of the best books you can think of, and turn me loose in
+your library.  I can find what I want, if you have it; and what I
+don't find there I will get at the Public Library.  I shall want to
+ask you a question now and then."
+
+The doctor looked at her with a kind of admiration, but thoughtfully,
+as if he feared she was thinking of a task too formidable for her
+slight constitutional resource.
+
+She returned, instinctively, to the apparent contradiction in her
+statements about herself.
+
+"I am not a fool, if I am ignorant.  Yes, doctor, I sail on a wide
+sea of ignorance, but I have taken soundings of some of its shallows
+and some of its depths.  Your profession deals with the facts of life
+that interest me most just now, and I want to know something of it.
+Perhaps I may find it a calling such as would suit me."
+
+"Do you seriously think of becoming a practitioner of medicine?" said
+the doctor.
+
+"Certainly, I seriously think of it as a possibility, but I want to
+know something more about it first.  Perhaps I sha'n't believe in
+medicine enough to practise it.  Perhaps I sha'n't like it well
+enough.  No matter about that.  I wish to study some of your best
+books on some of the subjects that most interest me.  I know about
+bones and muscles and all that, and about digestion and respiration
+and such things.  I want to study up the nervous system, and learn
+all about it.  I am of the nervous temperament myself, and perhaps
+that is the reason.  I want to read about insanity and all that
+relates to it."
+
+A curious expression flitted across the doctor's features as The
+Terror said this.
+
+"Nervous system.  Insanity.  She has headaches, I know,--all those
+large-headed, hard-thinking girls do, as a matter of course; but what
+has set her off about insanity and the nervous system?  I wonder if
+any of her more remote relatives are subject to mental disorder.
+Bright people very often have crazy relations.  Perhaps some of her
+friends are in that way.  I wonder whether"--the doctor did not speak
+any of these thoughts, and in fact hardly shaped his "whether," for
+The Terror interrupted his train of reflection, or rather struck into
+it in a way which startled him.
+
+"Where is the first volume of this Medical Cyclopaedia?" she asked,
+looking at its empty place on the shelf.
+
+"On my table," the doctor answered.  "I have been consulting it."
+
+Lurida flung it open, in her eager way, and turned the pages rapidly
+until she came to the one she wanted.  The doctor cast his eye on the
+beading of the page, and saw the large letters A N T.
+
+"I thought so," he said to himself.  "We shall know everything there
+is in the books about antipathies now, if we never did before.  She
+has a special object in studying the nervous system, just as I
+suspected.  I think she does not care to mention it at this time; but
+if she finds out anything of interest she will tell me, if she does
+anybody.  Perhaps she does not mean to tell anybody.  It is a rather
+delicate business,--a young girl studying the natural history of a
+young man.  Not quite so safe as botany or palaeontology!"
+
+Lurida, lately The Terror, now Miss Vincent, had her own plans, and
+chose to keep them to herself, for the present, at least.  Her hands
+were full enough, it might seem, without undertaking the solution of
+the great Arrowhead Village enigma.  But she was in the most perfect
+training, so far as her intelligence was concerned; and the summer
+rest had restored her bodily vigor, so that her brain was like an
+overcharged battery which will find conductors somewhere to carry off
+its crowded energy.
+
+At this time Arrowhead Village was enjoying the most successful
+season it had ever known.  The Pansophian Society flourished to an
+extraordinary degree under the fostering care of the new Secretary.
+The rector was a good figure-head as President, but the Secretary was
+the life of the Society.  Communications came in abundantly: some
+from the village and its neighborhood, some from the University and
+the Institute, some from distant and unknown sources.  The new
+Secretary was very busy with the work of examining these papers.
+After a forenoon so employed, the carpet of her room looked like a
+barn floor after a husking-match.  A glance at the manuscripts
+strewed about, or lying in heaps, would have frightened any young
+writer away from the thought of authorship as a business.  If the
+candidate for that fearful calling had seen the process of selection
+and elimination, he would have felt still more desperately.  A paper
+of twenty pages would come in, with an underscored request to please
+read through, carefully.  That request alone is commonly sufficient
+to condemn any paper, and prevent its having any chance of a hearing;
+but the Secretary was not hardened enough yet for that kind of
+martial law in dealing with manuscripts.  The looker-on might have
+seen her take up the paper, cast one flashing glance at its title,
+read the first sentence and the last, dip at a venture into two or
+three pages, and decide as swiftly as the lightning calculator would
+add up a column of figures what was to be its destination.  If
+rejected, it went into the heap on the left; if approved, it was laid
+apart, to be submitted to the Committee for their judgment.  The
+foolish writers who insist on one's reading through their manuscript
+poems and stories ought to know how fatal the request is to their
+prospects.  It provokes the reader, to begin with.  The reading of
+manuscript is frightful work, at the best; the reading of worthless
+manuscript--and most of that which one is requested to read through
+is worthless--would add to the terrors of Tartarus, if any infernal
+deity were ingenious enough to suggest it as a punishment.
+
+If a paper was rejected by the Secretary, it did not come before the
+Committee, but was returned to the author, if he sent for it, which
+he commonly did.  Its natural course was to try for admission into
+some one of the popular magazines: into "The Sifter," the most
+fastidious of them all; if that declined it, into "The Second Best;"
+and if that returned it, into "The Omnivorous."  If it was refused
+admittance at the doors of all the magazines, it might at length find
+shelter in the corner of a newspaper, where a good deal of very
+readable verse is to be met with nowadays, some of which has been, no
+doubt, presented to the Pansophian Society, but was not considered up
+to its standard.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A NEW ARRIVAL.
+
+There was a recent accession to the transient population of the
+village which gave rise to some speculation.  The new-comer was a
+young fellow, rather careless in his exterior, but apparently as much
+at home as if he owned Arrowhead Village and everything in it.  He
+commonly had a cigar in his mouth, carried a pocket pistol, of the
+non-explosive sort, and a stick with a bulldog's bead for its knob;
+wore a soft bat, a coarse check suit, a little baggy, and gaiterboots
+which had been half-soled,--a Bohemian-looking personage, altogether.
+
+This individual began making explorations in every direction.  He was
+very curious about the place and all the people in it.  He was
+especially interested in the Pansophian Society, concerning which he
+made all sorts of inquiries.  This led him to form a summer
+acquaintance with the Secretary, who was pleased to give him whatever
+information he asked for; being proud of the Society, as she had a
+right to be, and knowing more about it than anybody else.
+
+The visitor could not have been long in the village without hearing
+something of Maurice Kirkwood, and the stories, true and false,
+connected with his name.  He questioned everybody who could tell him
+anything about Maurice, and set down the answers in a little note-
+book he always had with him.
+
+All this naturally excited the curiosity of the village about this
+new visitor.  Among the rest, Miss Vincent, not wanting in an
+attribute thought to belong more especially to her sex, became
+somewhat interested to know more exactly who this inquiring, note-
+taking personage, who seemed to be everywhere and to know everybody,
+might himself be.  Meeting him at the Public Library at a fortunate
+moment, when there was nobody but the old Librarian, who was hard of
+hearing, to interfere with their conversation, the little Secretary
+had a chance to try to find out something about him.
+
+"This is a very remarkable library for a small village to possess,"
+he remarked to Miss Lurida.
+
+"It is, indeed," she said.  "Have you found it well furnished with
+the books you most want?"
+
+"Oh, yes,--books enough.  I don't care so much for the books as I do
+for the Newspapers.  I like a Review well enough,--it tells you all
+there is in a book; but a good abstract of the Review in a Newspaper
+saves a fellow the trouble of reading it."
+
+"You find the papers you want, here, I hope," said the young lady.
+
+"Oh, I get along pretty well.  It's my off-time, and I don't do much
+reading or writing.  Who is the city correspondent of this place?"
+
+"I don't think we have any one who writes regularly.  Now and then,
+there is a letter, with the gossip of the place in it, or an account
+of some of the doings at our Society.  The city papers are always
+glad to get the reports of our meetings, and to know what is going on
+in the village."
+
+"I suppose you write about the Society to the papers, as you are the
+Secretary."
+
+This was a point-blank shot.  She meant to question the young man
+about his business, and here she was on the witness-stand.  She
+ducked her head, and let the question go over her.
+
+"Oh, there are plenty of members who are willing enough to write,--
+especially to give an account of their own papers.  I think they like
+to have me put in the applause, when they get any.  I do that
+sometimes."  (How much more, she did not say.)
+
+"I have seen some very well written articles, which, from what they
+tell me of the Secretary, I should have thought she might have
+written herself."
+
+He looked her straight in the eyes.
+
+"I have transmitted some good papers," she said, without winking, or
+swallowing, or changing color, precious little color she had to
+change; her brain wanted all the blood it could borrow or steal, and
+more too.  "You spoke of Newspapers," she said, without any change of
+tone or manner: "do you not frequently write for them yourself?"
+
+"I should think I did," answered the young man.  "I am a regular
+correspondent of 'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+"The regular correspondent from where?"
+
+"Where!  Oh, anywhere,--the place does not make much difference.  I
+have been writing chiefly from Naples and St. Petersburg, and now and
+then from Constantinople."
+
+"How long since your return to this country, may I ask?"
+
+"My return?  I have never been out of this country.  I travel with a
+gazetteer and some guide-books.  It is the cheapest way, and you can
+get the facts much better from them than by trusting your own
+observation.  I have made the tour of Europe by the help of them and
+the newspapers.  But of late I have taken to interviewing.  I find
+that a very pleasant specialty.  It is about as good sport as trout-
+tickling, and much the same kind of business.  I should like to send
+the Society an account of one of my interviews.  Don't you think they
+would like to hear it?"
+
+"I have no doubt they would.  Send it to me, and I will look it over;
+and if the Committee approve it, we will have it at the next meeting.
+You know everything has to be examined and voted on by the
+Committee," said the cautious Secretary.
+
+"Very well,--I will risk it.  After it is read, if it is read, please
+send it back to me, as I want to sell it to 'The Sifter,' or 'The
+Second Best,' or some of the paying magazines."
+
+This is the paper, which was read at the next meeting of the
+Pansophian Society.
+
+
+"I was ordered by the editor of the newspaper to which I am attached,
+'The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor,' to make a visit to
+a certain well-known writer, and obtain all the particulars I could
+concerning him and all that related to him.  I have interviewed a
+good many politicians, who I thought rather liked the process; but I
+had never tried any of these literary people, and I was not quite
+sure how this one would feel about it.  I said as much to the chief,
+but he pooh-poohed my scruples.  'It is n't our business whether they
+like it or not,' said he; 'the public wants it, and what the public
+wants it's bound to have, and we are bound to furnish it.  Don't be
+afraid of your man; he 's used to it,--he's been pumped often enough
+to take it easy, and what you've got to do is to pump him dry.  You
+need n't be modest,--ask him what you like; he is n't bound to
+answer, you know.'
+
+"As he lived in a rather nice quarter of the town, I smarted myself up
+a little, put on a fresh collar and cuffs, and got a five-cent shine
+on my best high-lows.  I said to myself, as I was walking towards the
+house where he lived, that I would keep very shady for a while and
+pass for a visitor from a distance; one of those 'admiring strangers'
+who call in to pay their respects, to get an autograph, and go home
+and say that they have met the distinguished So and So, which gives
+them a certain distinction in the village circle to which they
+belong.
+
+"My man, the celebrated writer, received me in what was evidently his
+reception-room.  I observed that he managed to get the light full on
+my face, while his own was in the shade.  I had meant to have his
+face in the light, but he knew the localities, and had arranged
+things so as to give him that advantage.  It was like two frigates
+manoeuvring,--each trying to get to windward of the other.  I never
+take out my note-book until I and my man have got engaged in artless
+and earnest conversation,--always about himself and his works, of
+course, if he is an author.
+
+"I began by saying that he must receive a good many callers.  Those
+who had read his books were naturally curious to see the writer of
+them.
+
+"He assented, emphatically, to this statement.  He had, he said, a
+great many callers.
+
+"I remarked that there was a quality in his books which made his
+readers feel as if they knew him personally, and caused them to
+cherish a certain attachment to him.
+
+"He smiled, as if pleased.  He was himself disposed to think so, he
+said.  In fact, a great many persons, strangers writing to him, had
+told him so.
+
+"My dear sir, I said, there is nothing wonderful in the fact you
+mention.  You reach a responsive chord in many human breasts.
+
+     'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.'
+
+"Everybody feels as if he, and especially she (his eyes sparkled),
+were your blood relation.  Do they not name their children after you
+very frequently?
+
+"He blushed perceptibly.  'Sometimes,' he answered.  'I hope they
+will all turn out well.'
+
+"I am afraid I am taking up too much of your time, I said.
+
+"No, not at all,' he replied.  'Come up into my library; it is warmer
+and pleasanter there.'
+
+"I felt confident that I had him by the right handle then; for an
+author's library, which is commonly his working-room, is, like a
+lady's boudoir, a sacred apartment.
+
+"So we went upstairs, and again he got me with the daylight on my
+face, when I wanted it on has.
+
+"You have a fine library, I remarked.  There were books all round the
+room, and one of those whirligig square book-cases.  I saw in front a
+Bible and a Concordance, Shakespeare and Mrs. Cowden Clarke's book,
+and other classical works and books of grave aspect.  I contrived to
+give it a turn, and on the side next the wall I got a glimpse of
+Barnum's Rhyming Dictionary, and several Dictionaries of Quotations
+and cheap compends of knowledge.  Always twirl one of those revolving
+book-cases when you visit a scholar's library.  That is the way to
+find out what books he does n't want you to see, which of course are
+the ones you particularly wish to see.
+
+"Some may call all this impertinent and inquisitive.  What do you
+suppose is an interviewer's business?  Did you ever see an oyster
+opened?  Yes?  Well, an interviewer's business is the same thing.
+His man is his oyster, which he, not with sword, but with pencil and
+note-book, must open.  Mark how the oysterman's thin blade insinuates
+itself,--how gently at first, how strenuously when once fairly
+between the shells!
+
+"And here, I said, you write your books,--those books which have
+carried your name to all parts of the world, and will convey it down
+to posterity!  Is this the desk at which you write?  And is this the
+pen you write with?
+
+"'It is the desk and the very pen,' he replied.
+
+"He was pleased with my questions and my way of putting them.  I took
+up the pen as reverentially as if it had been made of the feather
+which the angel I used to read about in Young's "Night Thoughts"
+ought to have dropped, and did n't.
+
+"Would you kindly write your autograph in my note-book, with that
+pen?  I asked him.  Yes, he would, with great pleasure.
+
+"So I got out my note-book.
+
+"It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this
+interview.  I admire your bookcases, said I.  Can you tell me just
+how high they are?
+
+"'They are about eight feet, with the cornice.'
+
+"I should like to have some like those, if I ever get rich enough,
+said I.  Eight feet,--eight feet, with the cornice.  I must put that
+down.
+
+"So I got out my pencil.
+
+"I sat there with my pencil and note-book in my hand, all ready, but
+not using them as yet.
+
+"I have heard it said, I observed, that you began writing poems at a
+very early age.  Is it taking too great a liberty to ask how early
+you began to write in verse?
+
+"He was getting interested, as people are apt to be when they are
+themselves the subjects of conversation.
+
+"'Very early,--I hardly know how early.  I can say truly, as Louise
+Colet said,
+
+     "'Je fis mes premiers vers sans savoir les ecrire.'"
+
+"I am not a very good French scholar, said I; perhaps you will be
+kind enough to translate that line for me.
+
+"'Certainly.  With pleasure.  I made my first
+verses without knowing how to write them.'
+
+"How interesting!  But I never heard of Louise Colet.  Who was she?
+
+"My man was pleased to gi-ve me a piece of literary information.
+
+"'Louise the lioness!  Never heard of her?  You have heard of
+Alphonse Karr?'
+
+"Why,--yes,--more or less.  To tell the truth, I am not very well up
+in French literature.  What had he to do with your lioness?
+
+"'A good deal.  He satirized her, and she waited at his door with a
+case-knife in her hand, intending to stick him with it.  By and by he
+came down, smoking a cigarette, and was met by this woman flourishing
+her case-knife.  He took it from her, after getting a cut in his
+dressing-gown, put it in his pocket, and went on with his cigarette.
+He keeps it with an inscription:
+
+
+     "Donne a Alphonse Karr
+     Par Madame Louise Colet....
+     Dans le dos.
+
+"Lively little female!'
+
+"I could n't help thinking that I should n't have cared to interview
+the lively little female.  He was evidently tickled with the interest
+I appeared to take in the story he told me.  That made him feel
+amiably disposed toward me.
+
+"I began with very general questions, but by degrees I got at
+everything about his family history and the small events of his
+boyhood.  Some of the points touched upon were delicate, but I put a
+good bold face on my most audacious questions, and so I wormed out a
+great deal that was new concerning my subject.  He had been written
+about considerably, and the public wouldn't have been satisfied
+without some new facts; and these I meant to have, and I got.  No
+matter about many of them now, but here are some questions and
+answers that may be thought worth reading or listening to:
+
+"How do you enjoy being what they call 'a celebrity,' or a celebrated
+man?
+
+"'So far as one's vanity is concerned it is well enough.  But self-
+love is a cup without any bottom, and you might pour the Great Lakes
+all through it, and never fill it up.  It breeds an appetite for more
+of the same kind.  It tends to make the celebrity a mere lump of
+egotism.  It generates a craving for high-seasoned personalities
+which is in danger of becoming slavery, like that following the abuse
+of alcohol, or opium, or tobacco.  Think of a man's having every day,
+by every post, letters that tell him he is this and that and the
+other, with epithets and endearments, one tenth part of which would
+have made him blush red hot before he began to be what you call a
+celebrity!'
+
+"Are there not some special inconveniences connected with what is
+called celebrity?
+
+"'I should think so!  Suppose you were obliged every day of your life
+to stand and shake hands, as the President of the United States has
+to after his inauguration: how do you think your hand would feel
+after a few months' practice of that exercise?  Suppose you had given
+you thirty-five millions of money a year, in hundred-dollar coupons,
+on condition that you cut them all off yourself in the usual manner:
+how do you think you should like the look of a pair of scissors at
+the end of a year, in which you had worked ten hours a day every day
+but Sunday, cutting off a hundred coupons an hour, and found you had
+not finished your task, after all?  Yon have addressed me as what you
+are pleased to call "a literary celebrity."  I won't dispute with you
+as to whether or not I deserve that title.  I will take it for
+granted I am what you call me, and give you some few hints on my
+experience.
+
+"'You know there was formed a while ago an Association of Authors for
+Self-Protection.  It meant well, and it was hoped that something
+would come of it in the way of relieving that oppressed class, but I
+am sorry to say that it has not effected its purpose.'
+
+"I suspected he had a hand in drawing up the Constitution and Laws of
+that Association.  Yes, I said, an admirable Association it was, and
+as much needed as the one for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
+I am sorry to hear that it has not proved effectual in putting a stop
+to the abuse of a deserving class of men.  It ought to have done it;
+it was well conceived, and its public manifesto was a masterpiece.
+(I saw by his expression that he was its author.)
+
+"'I see I can trust you,' he said.  'I will unbosom myself freely of
+some of the grievances attaching to the position of the individual to
+whom you have applied the term "Literary Celebrity."
+
+"'He is supposed to be a millionaire, in virtue of the immense sales
+of his books, all the money from which, it is taken for granted, goes
+into his pocket.  Consequently, all subscription papers are handed to
+him for his signature, and every needy stranger who has heard his
+name comes to him for assistance.
+
+"'He is expected to subscribe for all periodicals, and is goaded by
+receiving blank formulae, which, with their promises to pay, he is
+expected to fill up.
+
+"'He receives two or three books daily, with requests to read and
+give his opinion about each of them, which opinion, if it has a word
+which can be used as an advertisement, he will find quoted in all the
+newspapers.
+
+"'He receives thick masses of manuscript, prose and verse, which he
+is called upon to examine and pronounce on their merits; these
+manuscripts having almost invariably been rejected by the editors to
+whom they have been sent, and having as a rule no literary value
+whatever.
+
+"'He is expected to sign petitions, to contribute to journals, to
+write for fairs, to attend celebrations, to make after-dinner
+speeches, to send money for objects he does not believe in to places
+he never heard of.
+
+"'He is called on to keep up correspondences with unknown admirers,
+who begin by saying they have no claim upon his time, and then
+appropriate it by writing page after page, if of the male sex; and
+sheet after sheet, if of the other.
+
+"'If a poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any
+moment and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be
+suggested to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-
+grandmother on her reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant
+aged six weeks, an ode for the Fourth of July in a Western township
+not to be found in Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for
+some bucolic lover who believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to
+win the object of his affections.'
+
+"Is n't it so?  I asked the Celebrity.
+
+"'I would bet on the prose lover.  She will show the verses to him,
+and they will both have a good laugh over them.'
+
+"I have only reported a small part of the conversation I had with the
+Literary Celebrity.  He was so much taken up with his pleasing self-
+contemplation, while I made him air his opinions and feelings and
+spread his characteristics as his laundress spreads and airs his
+linen on the clothes-line, that I don't believe it ever occurred to
+him that he had been in the hands of an interviewer until he found
+himself exposed to the wind and sunshine in full dimensions in the
+columns of The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+After the reading of this paper, much curiosity was shown as to who
+the person spoken of as the "Literary Celebrity" might be.  Among the
+various suppositions the startling idea was suggested that he was
+neither more nor less than the unexplained personage known in the
+village as Maurice Kirkwood.  Why should that be his real name?  Why
+should not he be the Celebrity, who had taken this name and fled to
+this retreat to escape from the persecutions of kind friends, who
+were pricking him and stabbing him nigh to death with their daggers
+of sugar candy?
+
+The Secretary of the Pansophian Society determined to question the
+Interviewer the next time she met him at the Library, which happened
+soon after the meeting when his paper was read.
+
+"I do not know," she said, in the course of a conversation in which
+she had spoken warmly of his contribution to the literary
+entertainment of the Society, "that you mentioned the name of the
+Literary Celebrity whom you interviewed so successfully."
+
+"I did not mention him, Miss Vincent," he answered, "nor do I think
+it worth while to name him.  He might not care to have the whole
+story told of how he was handled so as to make him communicative.
+Besides, if I did, it would bring him a new batch of sympathetic
+letters, regretting that he was bothered by those horrid
+correspondents, full of indignation at the bores who presumed to
+intrude upon him with their pages of trash, all the writers of which
+would expect answers to their letters of condolence."
+
+The Secretary asked the Interviewer if he knew the young gentleman
+who called himself Maurice Kirkwood.
+
+"What," he answered, "the man that paddles a birch canoe, and rides
+all the wild horses of the neighborhood?  No, I don't know him, but I
+have met him once or twice, out walking.  A mighty shy fellow, they
+tell me.  Do you know anything particular about him?"
+
+"Not much.  None of us do, but we should like to.  The story is that
+be has a queer antipathy to something or to somebody, nobody knows
+what or whom."
+
+"To newspaper correspondents, perhaps," said the interviewer.  "What
+made you ask me about him?  You did n't think he was my 'Literary
+Celebrity,' did you?"
+
+"I did not know.  I thought he might be.  Why don't you interview
+this mysterious personage?  He would make a good sensation for your
+paper, I should think."
+
+"Why, what is there to be interviewed in him?  Is there any story of
+crime, or anything else to spice a column or so, or even a few
+paragraphs, with?  If there is, I am willing to handle him
+professionally."
+
+"I told you he has what they call an antipathy.  I don't know how
+much wiser you are for that piece of information."
+
+"An antipathy!  Why, so have I an antipathy.  I hate a spider, and as
+for a naked caterpillar,--I believe I should go into a fit if I had
+to touch one.  I know I turn pale at the sight of some of those great
+green caterpillars that come down from the elm-trees in August and
+early autumn."
+
+"Afraid of them?" asked the young lady.
+
+"Afraid?  What should I be afraid of?  They can't bite or sting.  I
+can't give any reason.  All I know is that when I come across one of
+these creatures in my path I jump to one side, and cry out,--
+sometimes using very improper words.  The fact is, they make me crazy
+for the moment."
+
+"I understand what you mean," said Miss Vincent.  "I used to have the
+same feeling about spiders, but I was ashamed of it, and kept a
+little menagerie of spiders until I had got over the feeling; that
+is, pretty much got over it, for I don't love the creatures very
+dearly, though I don't scream when I see one."
+
+"What did you tell me, Miss Vincent, was this fellow's particular
+antipathy?"
+
+That is just the question.  I told you that we don't know and we
+can't guess what it is.  The people here are tired out with trying to
+discover some good reason for the young man's keeping out of the way
+of everybody, as he does.  They say he is odd or crazy, and they
+don't seem to be able to tell which.  It would make the old ladies of
+the village sleep a great deal sounder,--yes, and some of the young
+ladies, too,--if they could find out what this Mr. Kirkwood has got
+into his head, that he never comes near any of the people here."
+
+"I think I can find out," said the Interviewer, whose professional
+ambition was beginning to be excited.  "I never came across anybody
+yet that I could n't get something out of.  I am going to stay here a
+week or two, and before I go I will find out the secret, if there is
+any, of this Mr. Maurice Kirkwood."
+
+We must leave the Interviewer to his contrivances until they present
+us with some kind of result, either in the shape of success or
+failure.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.
+
+When Miss Euthymia Tower sent her oar off in flashing splinters, as
+she pulled her last stroke in the boat-race, she did not know what a
+strain she was putting upon it.  She did know that she was doing her
+best, but how great the force of her best was she was not aware until
+she saw its effects.  Unconsciousness belonged to her robust nature,
+in all its manifestations.  She did not pride herself on her
+knowledge, nor reproach herself for her ignorance.  In every way she
+formed a striking contrast to her friend, Miss Vincent.  Every word
+they spoke betrayed the difference between them: the sharp tones of
+Lurida's head-voice, penetrative, aggressive, sometimes irritating,
+revealed the corresponding traits of mental and moral character; the
+quiet, conversational contralto of Euthymia was the index of a nature
+restful and sympathetic.
+
+The friendships of young girls prefigure the closer relations which
+will one day come in and dissolve their earlier intimacies.  The
+dependence of two young friends may be mutual, but one will always
+lean more heavily than the other; the masculine and feminine elements
+will be as sure to assert themselves as if the friends were of
+different sexes.
+
+On all common occasions Euthymia looked up to her friend as her
+superior.  She fully appreciated all her varied gifts and knowledge,
+and deferred to her opinion in every-day matters, not exactly as an
+oracle, but as wiser than herself or any of her other companions.  It
+was a different thing, however, when the graver questions of life
+came up.  Lurida was full of suggestions, plans, projects, which were
+too liable to run into whims before she knew where they were tending.
+She would lay out her ideas before Euthymia so fluently and
+eloquently that she could not help believing them herself, and
+feeling as if her friend must accept them with an enthusiasm like her
+own.  Then Euthymia would take them up with her sweet, deliberate
+accents, and bring her calmer judgment to bear on them.
+
+Lurida was in an excited condition, in the midst of all her new
+interests and occupations.  She was constantly on the lookout for
+papers to be read at the meetings of her Society,--for she made it
+her own in great measure, by her zeal and enthusiasm,--and in the
+mean time she was reading in various books which Dr. Butts selected
+for her, all bearing on the profession to which, at least as a
+possibility, she was looking forward.  Privately and in a very still
+way, she was occupying herself with the problem of the young
+stranger, the subject of some delusion, or disease, or obliquity of
+unknown nature, to which the vague name of antipathy had been
+attached.  Euthymia kept an eye upon her, partly in the fear that
+over-excitement would produce some mental injury, and partly from
+anxiety lest she should compromise her womanly dignity in her desire
+to get at the truth of a very puzzling question.
+
+"How do you like the books I see you reading?" said Euthymia to
+Lurida, one day, as they met at the Library.
+
+"Better than all the novels I ever read," she answered.  "I have been
+reading about the nervous system, and it seems to me I have come
+nearer the springs of life than ever before in all my studies.  I
+feel just as if I were a telegraph operator.  I was sure that I had a
+battery in my head, for I know my brain works like one; but I did not
+know how many centres of energy there are, and how they are played
+upon by all sorts of influences, external and internal.  Do you know,
+I believe I could solve the riddle of the 'Arrowhead Village Sphinx,'
+as the paper called him, if he would only stay here long enough?"
+
+"What paper has had anything about it, Lurida?  I have not seen or
+heard of its being mentioned in any of the papers."
+
+"You know that rather queer-looking young man who has been about here
+for some time,--the same one who gave the account of his interview
+with a celebrated author?  Well, he has handed me a copy of a paper
+in which he writes, 'The People's Perennial and Household
+Inquisitor.' He talks about this village in a very free and easy way.
+He says there is a Sphinx here, who has mystified us all."
+
+"And you have been chatting with that fellow!  Don't you know that
+he'll have you and all of us in his paper?  Don't you know that
+nothing is safe where one of those fellows gets in with his note-book
+and pencil?  Oh, Lurida, Lurida, do be careful!"  What with this
+mysterious young man and this very questionable newspaper-paragraph
+writer, you will be talked about, if you don't mind, before you know
+it.  You had better let the riddle of the Sphinx alone.  If you must
+deal with such dangerous people, the safest way is to set one of them
+to find out the other.--I wonder if we can't get this new man to
+interview the visitor you have so much curiosity about.  That might
+be managed easily enough without your having anything to do with it.
+Let me alone, and I will arrange it.  But mind, now, you must not
+meddle; if you do, you will spoil everything, and get your name in
+the 'Household Inquisitor' in a way you won't like."
+
+"Don't be frightened about me, Euthymia.  I don't mean to give him a
+chance to work me into his paper, if I can help it.  But if you can
+get him to try his skill upon this interesting personage and his
+antipathy, so much the better.  I am very curious about it, and
+therefore about him.  I want to know what has produced this strange
+state of feeling in a young man who ought to have all the common
+instincts of a social being.  I believe there are unexplained facts
+in the region of sympathies and antipathies which will repay study
+with a deeper insight into the mysteries of life than we have dreamed
+of hitherto.  I often wonder whether there are not heart-waves and
+soul-waves as well as 'brain-waves,' which some have already
+recognized."
+
+Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman
+talking the language of science like an adept.  The truth is, Lurida
+was one of those persons who never are young, and who, by way of
+compensation, will never be old.  They are found in both sexes.  Two
+well-known graduates of one of our great universities are living
+examples of this precocious but enduring intellectual development.
+If the readers of this narrative cannot pick them out, they need not
+expect the writer of it to help them.  If they guess rightly who they
+are, they will recognize the fact that just such exceptional
+individuals as the young woman we are dealing with are met with from
+time to time in families where intelligence has been cumulative for
+two or three generations.
+
+Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable
+visitor should learn all that was known in the village about the
+nebulous individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the
+village were trying to penetrate, but that he should learn it from
+some other informant than Lurida.
+
+The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside
+his door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and
+handsome youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so
+strikingly that one might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a
+seat by his side.  Presently the two were engaged in conversation.
+The Interviewer asked all sorts of questions about everybody in the
+village.  When he came to inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a
+remarkable interest regarding him.  The greatest curiosity, he said,
+existed with reference to this personage.  Everybody was trying to
+find out what his story was,--for a story, and a strange one, he must
+surely have,--and nobody had succeeded.
+
+The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive.  The young man told
+him the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis,
+about his horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat
+was overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help
+out the effect of his narrative.
+
+The Interviewer was becoming excited.  "Can't find out anything about
+him, you said, did n-'t you?  How do you know there's anything to
+find?  Do you want to know what I think he is?  I'll tell you.  I
+think he is an actor,--a fellow from one of the city theatres.  Those
+fellows go off in their summer vacation, and like to puzzle the
+country folks.  They are the very same chaps, like as not, the
+visitors have seen in plays at the city theatres; but of course they
+don't know 'em in plain clothes.  Kings and Emperors look pretty
+shabby off the stage sometimes, I can tell you."
+
+The young man followed the Interviewer's lead.  "I shouldn't wonder
+if you were right," he said.  "I remember seeing a young fellow in
+Romeo that looked a good deal like this one.  But I never met the
+Sphinx, as they call him, face to face.  He is as shy as a woodchuck.
+I believe there are people here that would give a hundred dollars to
+find out who he is, and where he came from, and what he is here for,
+and why he does n't act like other folks.  I wonder why some of those
+newspaper men don't come up here and get hold of this story.  It
+would be just the thing for a sensational writer."
+
+To all this the Interviewer listened with true professional interest.
+Always on the lookout for something to make up a paragraph or a
+column about; driven oftentimes to the stalest of repetitions,--to
+the biggest pumpkin story, the tall cornstalk, the fat ox, the live
+frog from the human stomach story, the third set of teeth and reading
+without spectacles at ninety story, and the rest of the marvellous
+commonplaces which are kept in type with e o y  or  e 6 m (every
+other year or every six months) at the foot; always in want of a
+fresh incident, a new story, an undescribed character, an unexplained
+mystery, it is no wonder that the Interviewer fastened eagerly upon
+this most tempting subject for an inventive and emotional
+correspondent.
+
+He had seen Paolo several times, and knew that he was Maurice's
+confidential servant, but had never spoken to him.  So he said to
+himself that he must make Paolo's acquaintance, to begin with.  In
+the summer season many kinds of small traffic were always carried on
+in Arrowhead Village.  Among the rest, the sellers of fruits--
+oranges, bananas, and others, according to the seasons--did an active
+business.  The Interviewer watched one of these fruit-sellers, and
+saw that his hand-cart stopped opposite the house where, as he knew,
+Maurice Kirkwood was living.  Presently Paolo came out of the door,
+and began examining the contents of the hand-cart.  The Interviewer
+saw his opportunity.  Here was an introduction to the man, and the
+man must introduce him to the master.
+
+He knew very well how to ingratiate himself with the man,--there was
+no difficulty about that.  He had learned his name, and that he was
+an Italian whom Maurice had brought to this country with him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Paul," he said.  "How do you like the look of
+these oranges?"
+
+"They pretty fair," said Paolo: "no so good as them las' week; no
+sweet as them was."
+
+"Why, how do you know without tasting them?" said the Interviewer.
+
+"I know by his look,--I know by his smell,--he no good yaller,--he no
+smell ripe,--I know orange ever since my head no bigger than he is,"
+and Paolo laughed at his own comparison.
+
+The Interviewer laughed louder than Paolo.
+
+"Good!" said he,--"first-rate!  Of course you know all about 'em.
+Why can't you pick me out a couple of what you think are the best of
+'em?  I shall be greatly obliged to you.  I have a sick friend, and I
+want to get two nice sweet ones for him."
+
+Paolo was pleased.  His skill and judgment were recognized.  He felt
+grateful to the stranger, who had given him, an opportunity of
+conferring a favor.  He selected two, after careful examination and
+grave deliberation.  The Interviewer had sense and tact enough not to
+offer him an orange, and so shift the balance of obligation.
+
+"How is Mr. Kirkwood, to-day?" he asked.
+
+"Signor?  He very well.  He always well.  Why you ask?  Anybody tell
+you he sick?"
+
+"No, nobody said he was sick.  I have n't seen him going about for a
+day or two, and I thought be might have something the matter with
+him.  Is he in the house now?"
+
+"No: he off riding.  He take long, long rides, sometime gone all day.
+Sometime he go on lake, paddle, paddle in the morning, very, very
+early,--in night when the moon shine; sometime stay in house, and
+read, and study, and write,--he great scholar, Misser Kirkwood."
+
+"A good many books, has n't he?"
+
+"He got whole shelfs full of books.  Great books, little books, old
+books, new books, all sorts of books.  He great scholar, I tell you."
+
+"Has n't he some curiosities,--old figures, old jewelry, old coins,
+or things of that sort?"
+
+Paolo looked at the young man cautiously, almost suspiciously.
+"He don't keep no jewels nor no money in his chamber.  He got some
+old things,--old jugs, old brass figgers, old money, such as they
+used to have in old times: she don't pass now."  Paolo's genders were
+apt to be somewhat indiscriminately distributed.
+
+A lucky thought struck the Interviewer.  "I wonder if he would
+examine some old coins of mine?" said he, in a modestly tentative
+manner.
+
+"I think he like to see anything curious.  When he come home I ask
+him.  Who will I tell him wants to ask him about old coin?"
+
+"Tell him a gentleman visiting Arrowhead Village would like to call
+and show him some old pieces of money, said to be Roman ones."
+
+The Interviewer had just remembered that he had two or three old
+battered bits of copper which he had picked up at a tollman's, where
+they had been passed off for cents.  He had bought them as
+curiosities.  One had the name of Gallienus upon it, tolerably
+distinct,--a common little Roman penny; but it would serve his
+purpose of asking a question, as would two or three others with less
+legible legends.  Paolo told him that if he came the next morning he
+would stand a fair chance of seeing Mr. Kirkwood.  At any rate, he
+would speak to his master.
+
+The Interviewer presented himself the next morning, after finishing
+his breakfast and his cigar, feeling reasonably sure of finding Mr.
+Kirkwood at home, as he proved to be.  He had told Paolo to show the
+stranger up to his library,--or study, as he modestly called it.
+
+It was a pleasant room enough, with a lookout on the lake in one
+direction, and the wooded hill in another.  The tenant had fitted it
+up in scholarly fashion.  The books Paolo spoke of were conspicuous,
+many of them, by their white vellum binding and tasteful gilding,
+showing that probably they had been bound in Rome, or some other
+Italian city.  With these were older volumes in their dark original
+leather, and recent ones in cloth or paper.  As the Interviewer ran
+his eye over them, he found that he could make very little out of
+what their backs taught him.  Some of the paper-covered books, some
+of the cloth-covered ones, had names which he knew; but those on the
+backs of many of the others were strange to his eyes.  The classics
+of Greek and Latin and Italian literature were there; and he saw
+enough to feel convinced that he had better not attempt to display
+his erudition in the company of this young scholar.
+
+The first thing the Interviewer had to do was to account for his
+visiting a person who had not asked to make his acquaintance, and who
+was living as a recluse.  He took out his battered coppers, and
+showed them to Maurice.
+
+"I understood that you were very skilful in antiquities, and had a
+good many yourself.  So I took the liberty of calling upon you,
+hoping that you could tell me something about some ancient coins I
+have had for a good while."  So saying, he pointed to the copper with
+the name of Gallienus.
+
+"Is this very rare and valuable?  I have heard that great prices have
+been paid for some of these ancient coins,--ever so many guineas,
+sometimes.  I suppose this is as much as a thousand years old."
+
+"More than a thousand years old," said Maurice.
+
+"And worth a great deal of money?" asked the Interviewer.
+
+"No, not a great deal of money," answered Maurice.
+
+"How much, should you say?" said the Interviewer.
+
+Maurice smiled.  "A little more than the value of its weight in
+copper,--I am afraid not much more.  There are a good many of these
+coins of Gallienus knocking about.  The peddlers and the shopkeepers
+take such pieces occasionally, and sell them, sometimes for five or
+ten cents, to young collectors.  No, it is not very precious in money
+value, but as a relic any piece of money that was passed from hand to
+hand a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago is interesting.  The
+value of such relics is a good deal a matter of imagination."
+
+"And what do you say to these others?" asked the Interviewer.  Poor
+old worn-out things they were, with a letter or two only, and some
+faint trace of a figure on one or two of them.
+
+"Very interesting, always, if they carry your imagination back to the
+times when you may suppose they were current.  Perhaps Horace tossed
+one of them to a beggar.  Perhaps one of these was the coin that was
+brought when One said to those about Him, 'Bring me a penny, that I
+may see it.'  But the market price is a different matter.  That
+depends on the beauty and preservation, and above all the rarity, of
+the specimen.  Here is a coin, now,"--he opened a small cabinet, and
+took one from it.  "Here is a Syracusan decadrachm with the head of
+Persephone, which is at once rare, well preserved, and beautiful.  I
+am afraid to tell what I paid for it."
+
+The Interviewer was not an expert in numismatics.  He cared very
+little more for an old coin than he did for an old button, but he had
+thought his purchase at the tollman's might prove a good speculation.
+No matter about the battered old pieces: he had found out, at any
+rate, that Maurice must have money and could be extravagant, or what
+he himself considered so; also that he was familiar with ancient
+coins.  That would do for a beginning.
+
+"May I ask where you picked up the coin you are showing me?" he said
+
+"That is a question which provokes a negative answer.  One does not
+'pick up' first-class coins or paintings, very often, in these times.
+I bought this of a great dealer in Rome."
+
+"Lived in Rome once?" said the Interviewer.
+
+"For some years.  Perhaps you have been there yourself?"
+
+The Interviewer said he had never been there yet, but he hoped he
+should go there, one of these years.  "suppose you studied art and
+antiquities while you were there?" he continued.
+
+"Everybody who goes to Rome must learn something of art and
+antiquities.  Before you go there I advise you to review Roman
+history and the classic authors.  You had better make a study of
+ancient and modern art, and not have everything to learn while you
+are going about among ruins, and churches, and galleries.  You know
+your Horace and Virgil well, I take it for granted?"
+
+The Interviewer hesitated.  The names sounded as if he had heard
+them.  "Not so well as I mean to before going to Rome," he answered.
+"May I ask how long you lived in Rome?"
+
+"Long enough to know something of what is to be seen in it.  No one
+should go there without careful preparation beforehand.  You are
+familiar with Vasari, of course?"
+
+The Interviewer felt a slight moisture on his forehead.  He took out
+his handkerchief.  "It is a warm day," he said.  "I have not had time
+to read all--the works I mean to.  I have had too much writing to do,
+myself, to find all the time for reading and study I could have
+wished."
+
+"In what literary occupation have you been engaged, if you will
+pardon my inquiry?  said Maurice.
+
+"I am connected with the press.  I understood that you were a man of
+letters, and I hoped I might have the privilege of hearing from your
+own lips some account of your literary experiences."
+
+"Perhaps that might be interesting, but I think I shall reserve it
+for my autobiography.  You said you were connected with the press.
+Do I understand that you are an author?"
+
+By this time the Interviewer had come to the conclusion that it was a
+very warm day.  He did not seem to be getting hold of his pitcher by
+the right handle, somehow.  But he could not help answering Maurice's
+very simple question.
+
+"If writing for a newspaper gives one a right to be called an author,
+I may call myself one.  I write for the "People's Perennial and
+Household Inquisitor.'"
+
+"Are you the literary critic of that well-known journal, or do you
+manage the political column?"
+
+"I am a correspondent from different places and on various matters of
+interest."
+
+"Places you have been to, and people you have known?"
+
+"Well, yes,-generally, that is.  Sometimes I have to compile my
+articles."
+
+"Did you write the letter from Rome, published a few weeks ago?"
+
+The Interviewer was in what he would call a tight place.  However, he
+had found that his man was too much for him, and saw that the best
+thing he could do was to submit to be interviewed himself.  He
+thought that he should be able to pick up something or other which he
+could work into his report of his visit.
+
+"Well, I--prepared that article for our columns.  You know one does
+not have to see everything he describes.  You found it accurate, I
+hope, in its descriptions?"
+
+"Yes, Murray is generally accurate.  Sometimes he makes mistakes, but
+I can't say how far you have copied them.  You got the Ponte Molle--
+the old Milvian bridge--a good deal too far down the stream, if I
+remember.  I happened to notice that, but I did not read the article
+carefully.  May I ask whether you propose to do me the honor of
+reporting this visit and the conversation we have had, for the
+columns of the newspaper with which you are connected?"
+
+The Interviewer thought he saw an opening.  "If you have no
+objections," he said, "I should like very much to ask a few
+questions."  He was recovering his professional audacity.
+
+"You can ask as many questions as you consider proper and discreet,--
+after you have answered one or two of mine: Who commissioned you to
+submit me to examination?"
+
+"The curiosity of the public wishes to be gratified, and I am the
+humble agent of its investigations."
+
+"What has the public to do with my private affairs?"
+
+"I suppose it is a question of majority and minority.  That settles
+everything in this country.  You are a minority of one opposed to a
+large number of curious people that form a majority against you.
+That is the way I've heard the chief put it."
+
+Maurice could not help smiling at the quiet assumption of the
+American citizen.  The Interviewer smiled, too, and thought he had
+his man, sure, at last.  Maurice calmly answered, "There is nothing
+left for minorities, then, but the right of rebellion.  I don't care
+about being made the subject of an article for your paper.  I am here
+for my pleasure, minding my own business, and content with that
+occupation.  I rebel against your system of forced publicity.
+Whenever I am ready I shall tell the public all it has any right to
+know about me.  In the mean time I shall request to be spared reading
+my biography while I am living.  I wish you a good-morning."
+
+The Interviewer had not taken out his note-book and pencil.  In his
+next communication from Arrowhead Village he contented himself with a
+brief mention of the distinguished and accomplished gentleman now
+visiting the place, whose library and cabinet of coins he had had the
+privilege of examining, and whose courtesy was equalled only by the
+modesty that shunned the public notoriety which the organs of popular
+intelligence would otherwise confer upon him.
+
+The Interviewer had attempted the riddle of the Sphinx, and had
+failed to get the first hint of its solution.
+
+The many tongues of the village and its visitors could not remain
+idle.  The whole subject of antipathies had been talked over, and the
+various cases recorded had become more or less familiar to the
+conversational circles which met every evening in the different
+centres of social life.  The prevalent hypothesis for the moment was
+that Maurice had a congenital aversion to some color, the effects of
+which upon him were so painful or disagreeable that he habitually
+avoided exposure to it.  It was known, and it has already been
+mentioned, that such cases were on record.  There had been a great
+deal of discussion, of late, with reference to a fact long known to a
+few individuals, but only recently made a matter of careful
+scientific observation and brought to the notice of the public.  This
+was the now well-known phenomenon of color-blindness.  It did not
+seem very strange that if one person in every score or two could not
+tell red from green there might be other curious individual
+peculiarities relating to color.  A case has already been referred to
+where the subject of observation fainted at the sight of any red
+object.  What if this were the trouble with Maurice Kirkwood?  It
+will be seen at once how such a congenital antipathy would tend to
+isolate the person who was its unfortunate victim.  It was an
+hypothesis not difficult to test, but it was a rather delicate
+business to be experimenting on an inoffensive stranger.  Miss
+Vincent was thinking it over, but said nothing, even to Euthymia, of
+any projects she might entertain.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.
+
+The young lady whom we have known as The Terror, as Lurida, as Miss
+Vincent, Secretary of the Pansophian Society, had been reading
+various works selected for her by Dr. Butts,--works chiefly relating
+to the nervous system and its different affections.  She thought it
+was about time to talk over the general subject of the medical
+profession with her new teacher,--if such a self-directing person as
+Lurida could be said to recognize anybody as teacher.
+
+She began at the beginning.  "What is the first book you would put in
+a student's hands, doctor?" she said to him one day.  They were in
+his study, and Lurida had just brought back a thick volume on
+Insanity, one of Bucknill and Puke's, which she had devoured as if it
+had been a pamphlet.
+
+"Not that book, certainly," he said.  "I am afraid it will put all
+sorts of notions into your head.  Who or what set you to reading
+that, I should like to know?"
+
+"I found it on one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps
+be crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what
+kind of a condition insanity is.  I don't believe they were ever very
+bright, those insane people, most of them.  I hope I am not stupid
+enough ever to lose my wits."
+
+"There is no telling, my dear, what may happen if you overwork that
+busy brain of yours.  But did n't it make you nervous, reading about
+so many people possessed with such strange notions?"
+
+"Nervous?  Not a bit.  I could n't help thinking, though, how many
+people I had known that had a little touch of craziness about them.
+Take that poor woman that says she is Her Majesty's Person,--not Her
+Majesty, but Her Majesty's Person,--a very important distinction,
+according to her: how she does remind me of more than one girl I have
+known!  She would let her skirts down so as to make a kind of train,
+and pile things on her head like a sort of crown, fold her arms and
+throw her head back, and feel as grand as a queen.  I have seen more
+than one girl act very much in that way.  Are not most of us a little
+crazy, doctor,--just a little?  I think so.  It seems to me I never
+saw but one girl who was free from every hint of craziness."
+
+"And who was that, pray?"
+
+"Why, Euthymia,--nobody else, of course.  She never loses her head,--
+I don't believe she would in an earthquake.  Whenever we were at work
+with our microscopes at the Institute I always told her that her mind
+was the only achromatic one I ever looked into,--I did n't say looked
+through.---But I did n't come to talk about that.  I read in one of
+your books that when Sydenham was asked by a student what books he
+should read, the great physician said, 'Read "Don Quixote."' I want
+you to explain that to me; and then I want you to tell me what is the
+first book, according to your idea, that a student ought to read."
+
+"What do you say to my taking your question as the subject of a paper
+to be read before the Society?  I think there may be other young
+ladies at the meeting, besides yourself, who are thinking of pursuing
+the study of medicine.  At any rate, there are a good many who are
+interested in the subject; in fact, most people listen readily to
+anything doctors tell them about their calling."
+
+"I wish you would, doctor.  I want Euthymia to hear it, and I don't
+doubt there will be others who will be glad to hear everything you
+have to say about it.  But oh, doctor, if you could only persuade
+Eutbymia to become a physician!  What a doctor she would make!  So
+strong, so calm, so full of wisdom!  I believe she could take the
+wheel of a steamboat in a storm, or the hose of a fire-engine in a
+conflagration, and handle it as well as the captain of the boat or of
+the fire-company."
+
+"Have you ever talked with her about studying medicine?"
+
+"Indeed I have.  Oh, if she would only begin with me!  What good
+times we would have studying together!"
+
+"I don't doubt it.  Medicine is a very pleasant study.  But how do
+you think practice would be?  How would you like being called up to
+ride ten miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging
+headaches was racking you?"
+
+"Oh, but we could go into partnership, and Euthymia is n't afraid of
+storms or anything else.  If she would only study medicine with me!"
+
+"Well, what does she say to it?"
+
+"She does n't like the thought of it.  She does n't believe in women
+doctors.  She thinks that now and then a woman may be fitted for it
+by nature, but she does n't think there are many who are.  She gives
+me a good many reasons against their practising medicine, you know
+what most of them are, doctor,--and ends by saying that the same
+woman who would be a poor sort of doctor would make a first-rate
+nurse; and that, she thinks, is a woman's business, if her instinct
+carries her to the hospital or sick-chamber.  I can't argue her ideas
+out of her."
+
+"Neither can I argue you out of your feeling about the matter; but I
+am disposed to agree with your friend, that you will often spoil a
+good nurse to make a poor doctor.  Doctors and side-saddles don't
+seem to me to go together.  Riding habits would be awkward things for
+practitioners.  But come, we won't have a controversy just now.  I am
+for giving women every chance for a good education, and if they think
+medicine is one of their proper callings let them try it.  I think
+they will find that they had better at least limit themselves to
+certain specialties, and always have an expert of the other sex to
+fall back upon.  The trouble is that they are so impressible and
+imaginative that they are at the mercy of all sorts of fancy systems.
+You have only to see what kinds of instruction they very commonly
+flock to in order to guess whether they would be likely to prove
+sensible practitioners.  Charlatanism always hobbles on two crutches,
+the tattle of women, and the certificates of clergymen, and I am
+afraid that half the women doctors will be too much under both those
+influences."
+
+Lurida believed in Dr. Butts, who, to use the common language of the
+village, had "carried her through" a fever, brought on by over-
+excitement and exhausting study.  She took no offence at his
+reference to nursery gossip, which she had learned to hold cheap.
+Nobody so despises the weaknesses of women as the champion of woman's
+rights.  She accepted the doctor's concession of a fair field and
+open trial of the fitness of her sex for medical practice, and did
+not trouble herself about his suggested limitations.  As to the
+imaginative tendencies of women, she knew too well the truth of the
+doctor's remark relating to them to wish to contradict it.
+
+"Be sure you let me have your paper in season for the next meeting,
+doctor," she said; and in due season it came, and was of course
+approved for reading.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.
+
+"Next to the interest we take in all that relates to our immortal
+souls is that which we feel for our mortal bodies.  I am afraid my
+very first statement may be open to criticism.  The care of the body
+is the first thought with a great many,--in fact, with the larger
+part of the world.  They send for the physician first, and not until
+he gives them up do they commonly call in the clergyman.  Even the
+minister himself is not so very different from other people.  We must
+not blame him if he is not always impatient to exchange a world of
+multiplied interests and ever-changing sources of excitement for that
+which tradition has delivered to us as one eminently deficient in the
+stimulus of variety.  Besides, these bodily frames, even when worn
+and disfigured by long years of service, hang about our consciousness
+like old garments.  They are used to us, and we are used to them.
+And all the accidents of our lives,--the house we dwell in, the
+living people round us, the landscape we look over, all, up to the
+sky that covers us like a bell glass,--all these are but looser
+outside garments which we have worn until they seem a part of us, and
+we do not like the thought of changing them for a new suit which we
+have never yet tried on.  How well I remember that dear ancient lady,
+who lived well into the last decade of her century, as she repeated
+the verse which, if I had but one to choose, I would select from that
+string of pearls, Gray's 'Elegy'!
+
+    "'For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey
+     This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
+     Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
+     Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?'
+
+"Plotinus was ashamed of his body, we are told.  Better so, it may be,
+than to live solely for it, as so many do.  But it may be well
+doubted if there is any disciple of Plotinus in this Society.  On the
+contrary, there are many who think a great deal of their bodies, many
+who have come here to regain the health they have lost in the wear
+and tear of city life, and very few who have not at some time or
+other of their lives had occasion to call in the services of a
+physician.
+
+"There is, therefore, no impropriety in my offering to the members
+some remarks upon the peculiar difficulties which beset the medical
+practitioner in the discharge of his laborious and important duties.
+
+"A young friend of mine, who has taken an interest in medical
+studies, happened to meet with a very familiar story about one of the
+greatest and most celebrated of all English physicians, Thomas
+Sydenham.  The story is that, when a student asked him what books he
+should read, the great doctor told him to read 'Don Quixote.'
+
+"This piece of advice has been used to throw contempt upon the study
+of books, and furnishes a convenient shield for ignorant pretenders.
+But Sydenham left many writings in which he has recorded his medical
+experience, and he surely would not have published them if he had not
+thought they would be better reading for the medical student than the
+story of Cervantes.  His own works are esteemed to this day, and he
+certainly could not have supposed that they contained all the wisdom
+of all the past.  No remedy is good, it was said of old, unless
+applied at the right time in the right way.  So we may say of all
+anecdotes, like this which I have told you about Sydenham and the
+young man.  It is very likely that he carried him to the bedside of
+some patients, and talked to him about the cases he showed him,
+instead of putting a Latin volume in his hand.  I would as soon begin
+in that way as any other, with a student who had already mastered the
+preliminary branches,--who knew enough about the structure and
+functions of the body in health.
+
+"But if you ask me what reading I would commend to the medical
+student of a philosophical habit of mind, you may be surprised to
+hear me say it would be certain passages in 'Rasselas.'  They are the
+ones where the astronomer gives an account to Imlac of his management
+of the elements, the control of which, as he had persuaded himself,
+had been committed to him.  Let me read you a few sentences from this
+story, which is commonly bound up with the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' like
+a woollen lining to a silken mantle, but is full of stately wisdom in
+processions of paragraphs which sound as if they ought to have a
+grammatical drum-major to march before their tramping platoons.
+
+"The astronomer has taken Imlac into his confidence, and reveals to
+him the secret of his wonderful powers:--
+
+"'Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.  I have
+possessed for five years the regulation of the weather and the
+distribution of the seasons the sun has listened to my dictates, and
+passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call,
+have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command;
+I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervors
+of the crab.  The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have
+hitherto eluded my authority, and multitudes have perished by
+equinoctial tempests, which I found myself unable to prohibit or
+restrain.'
+
+"The reader naturally wishes to know how the astronomer, a sincere,
+devoted, and most benevolent man, for forty years a student of the
+heavens, came to the strange belief that he possessed these
+miraculous powers.  This is his account:
+
+"'One day, as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt
+in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern
+mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation.  In the hurry of my
+imagination I commanded rain to fall, and by comparing the time of my
+command with that of the inundation I found that the clouds had
+listened to my lips.'
+
+"'Might not some other cause,' said I, 'produce this concurrence?
+The Nile does not always rise on the same day.'
+
+"'Do not believe,' said he, with impatience, I that such objections
+could escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and
+labored against truth with the utmost obstinacy.  I sometimes
+suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this
+secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the wonderful
+from the impossible and the incredible from the false.'
+
+"The good old astronomer gives his parting directions to Imlac, whom
+he has adopted as his successor in the government of the elements and
+the seasons, in these impressive words:
+
+"Do not, in the administration of the year, indulge thy pride by
+innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make
+thyself renowned to all future ages by disordering the seasons.  The
+memory of mischief is no desirable fame.  Much less will it become
+thee to let kindness or interest prevail.  Never rob other countries
+of rain to pour it on thine own.  For us the Nile is sufficient.'
+
+"Do you wonder, my friends, why I have chosen these passages, in
+which the delusions of an insane astronomer are related with all the
+pomp of the Johnsonian vocabulary, as the first lesson for the young
+person about to enter on the study of the science and art of healing?
+Listen to me while I show you the parallel of the story of the
+astronomer in the history of medicine.
+
+"This history is luminous with intelligence, radiant with
+benevolence, but all its wisdom and all its virtue have had to
+struggle with the ever-rising mists of delusion.  The agencies which
+waste and destroy the race of mankind are vast and resistless as the
+elemental forces of nature; nay, they are themselves elemental
+forces.  They may be to some extent avoided, to some extent diverted
+from their aim, to some extent resisted.  So may the changes of the
+seasons, from cold that freezes to heats that strike with sudden
+death, be guarded against.  So may the tides be in some small measure
+restrained in their inroads.  So may the storms be breasted by walls
+they cannot shake from their foundations.  But the seasons and the
+tides and the tempests work their will on the great scale upon
+whatever stands in their way; they feed or starve the tillers of the
+soil; they spare or drown the dwellers by the shore; they waft the
+seaman to his harbor or bury him in the angry billows.
+
+"The art of the physician can do much to remove its subjects from
+deadly and dangerous influences, and something to control or arrest
+the effects of these influences.  But look at the records of the
+life-insurance offices, and see how uniform is the action of nature's
+destroying agencies.  Look at the annual reports of the deaths in any
+of our great cities, and see how their regularity approaches the
+uniformity of the tides, and their variations keep pace with those of
+the seasons.  The inundations of the Nile are not more certainly to
+be predicted than the vast wave of infantile disease which flows in
+upon all our great cities with the growing heats of July,--than the
+fevers and dysenteries which visit our rural districts in the months
+of the falling leaf.
+
+"The physician watches these changes as the astronomer watched the
+rise of the great river.  He longs to rescue individuals, to protect
+communities from the inroads of these destroying agencies.  He uses
+all the means which experience has approved, tries every rational
+method which ingenuity can suggest.  Some fortunate recovery leads
+him to believe he has hit upon a preventive or a cure for a malady
+which had resisted all known remedies.  His rescued patient sounds
+his praises, and a wide circle of his patient's friends joins in a
+chorus of eulogies.  Self-love applauds him for his sagacity.  Self-
+interest congratulates him on his having found the road to fortune;
+the sense of having proved a benefactor of his race smooths the
+pillow on which he lays his head to dream of the brilliant future
+opening before him.  If a single coincidence may lead a person of
+sanguine disposition to believe that he has mastered a disease which
+had baffled all who were before his time, and on which his
+contemporaries looked in hopeless impotence, what must be the effect
+of a series of such coincidences even on a mind of calmer temper!
+Such series of coincidences will happen, and they may well deceive
+the very elect.  Think of Dr. Rush,--you know what a famous man he
+was, the very head and front of American medical science in his day,
+--and remember how he spoke about yellow fever, which he thought he
+had mastered!
+
+"Thus the physician is entangled in the meshes of a wide conspiracy,
+in which he and his patient and their friends, and-Nature herself,
+are involved.  What wonder that the history of Medicine should be to
+so great an extent a record of self-delusion!
+
+"If this seems a dangerous concession to the enemies of the true
+science and art of healing, I will remind you that it is all implied
+in the first aphorism of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine.  Do not
+draw a wrong inference from the frank statement of the difficulties
+which beset the medical practitioner.  Think rather, if truth is so
+hard of attainment, how precious are the results which the consent of
+the wisest and most experienced among the healers of men agrees in
+accepting.  Think what folly it is to cast them aside in favor of
+palpable impositions stolen from the records of forgotten
+charlatanism, or of fantastic speculations spun from the squinting
+brains of theorists as wild as the Egyptian astronomer.
+
+"Begin your medical studies, then, by reading the fortieth and the
+following four chapters of 'Rasselas.' Your first lesson will teach
+you modesty and caution in the pursuit of the most deceptive of all
+practical branches of knowledge.  Faith will come later, when you
+learn how much medical science and art have actually achieved for the
+relief of mankind, and how great are the promises it holds out of
+still larger triumphs over the enemies of human health and
+happiness."
+
+After the reading of this paper there was a lively discussion, which
+we have no room to report here, and the Society adjourned.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.
+
+The sober-minded, sensible, well-instructed Dr. Butts was not a
+little exercised in mind by the demands made upon his knowledge by
+his young friend, and for the time being his pupil, Miss Lurida
+Vincent.
+
+"I don't wonder they called her The Terror," he said to himself.
+"She is enough to frighten anybody.  She has taken down old books
+from my shelves that I had almost forgotten the backs of, and as to
+the medical journals, I believe the girl could index them from
+memory.  She is in pursuit of some special point of knowledge, I feel
+sure, and I cannot doubt what direction she is working in, but her
+wonderful way of dealing with books amazes me."
+
+What marvels those "first scholars" in the classes of our great
+universities and colleges are, to be sure!  They are not, as a rule,
+the most distinguished of their class in the long struggle of life.
+The chances are that "the field" will beat "the favorite" over the
+long race-course.  Others will develop a longer stride and more
+staying power.  But what fine gifts those "first scholars" have
+received from nature!  How dull we writers, famous or obscure, are in
+the acquisition of knowledge as compared with them!  To lead their
+classmates they must have quick apprehension, fine memories, thorough
+control of their mental faculties, strong will, power of
+concentration, facility of expression,--a wonderful equipment of
+mental faculties.  I always want to take my hat off to the first
+scholar of his year.
+
+Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The
+Terror.  She surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was
+ready to receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him
+one allay with a cry of triumph, "Eureka! Eureka!"
+
+"And what have you found, my dear?" said the doctor.
+
+Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new
+discovery.
+
+"I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's
+dread of all human intercourse!"
+
+The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.
+
+"Wait a minute and get your breath," said the doctor.  "Are you not a
+little overstating his peculiarity?  It is not quite so bad as that.
+He keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old
+Tavern, he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he
+pulled out of the water, or rescued somehow,--I don't believe be
+avoids the whole human race.  He does not look as if he hated them,
+so far as I have remarked his expression.  I passed a few words with
+him when his man was ailing, and found him polite enough.  No, I
+don't believe it is much more than an extreme case of shyness,
+connected, perhaps, with some congenital or other personal repugnance
+to which has been given the name of an antipathy."
+
+Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking.  When
+he finished, she began the account of her discovery:
+
+"I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an
+Italian medical journal of about fourteen years ago.  I met with a
+reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli
+Ospitali lying among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the
+Library.  I have made a translation of it, which you must read and
+then tell me if you do not agree with me in my conclusion."
+
+"Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see
+for myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you
+seem to have reached."
+
+Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of
+a map of the world, as she said,
+
+"I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the
+bite of a TARANTULA!"
+
+The doctor drew a long breath.  He remembered in a vague sort of way
+the stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but
+he had consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many
+fictions have clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name.
+He looked into the round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as
+if he feared that she was in a state of undue excitement, but, true
+to his professional training, he waited for another symptom, if
+indeed her mind was in any measure off its balance.
+
+"I know what you are thinking," Lurida said, "but it is not so.  'I
+am not mad, most noble Festus.'  You shall see the evidence and judge
+for yourself.  Read the whole case,--you can read my hand almost as
+if it were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this
+young man is in all probability the same person as the boy described
+in the Italian journal,
+
+"One thing you might say is against the supposition.  The young
+patient is spoken of as Signorino M .  .  .  Ch.  .  .  .  But you
+must remember that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which
+letter is wanting in the Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough
+that the initial of the second name should have got changed in the
+record to its Italian equivalent."
+
+Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this
+extraordinary case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes
+to be indulged in a few words of explanation, in order that he may
+not have to apologize for allowing the introduction of a subject
+which may be thought to belong to the professional student rather
+than to the readers of this record.  There is a great deal in medical
+books which it is very unbecoming to bring before the general
+public,--a great deal to repel, to disgust, to alarm, to excite
+unwholesome curiosity.  It is not the men whose duties have made them
+familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely to offend by
+scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician's private
+library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite literature.
+Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and practised
+medicine, could not by any possibility have outraged all the natural
+feelings of delicacy and decency as Swift and Zola have outraged
+them.  But without handling doubtful subjects, there are many curious
+medical experiences which have interest for every one as extreme
+illustrations of ordinary conditions with which all are acquainted.
+No one can study the now familiar history of clairvoyance profitably
+who has not learned something of the vagaries of hysteria.  No one
+can read understandingly the life of Cowper and that of Carlyle
+without having some idea of the influence of hypochondriasis and of
+dyspepsia upon the disposition and intellect of the subjects of these
+maladies.  I need not apologize, therefore, for giving publicity to
+that part of this narrative which deals with one of the most singular
+maladies to be found in the records of bodily and mental infirmities.
+
+The following is the account of the case as translated by Miss
+Vincent.  For obvious reasons the whole name was not given in the
+original paper, and for similar reasons the date of the event and the
+birthplace of the patient are not precisely indicated here.
+
+[Giornale degli Ospitali, Luglio 21, 18-.]
+
+REMARKABLE CASE OF TARANTISM.
+
+"The great interest attaching to the very singular and exceptional
+instance of this rare affection induces us to give a full account of
+the extraordinary example of its occurrence in a patient who was the
+subject of a recent medical consultation in this city.
+
+"Signorino M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  is the only son of a gentleman
+travelling in Italy at this time.  He is eleven years of age, of
+sanguine-nervous temperament, light hair, blue eyes, intelligent
+countenance, well grown, but rather slight in form, to all appearance
+in good health, but subject to certain peculiar and anomalous nervous
+symptoms, of which his father gives this history.
+
+"Nine years ago, the father informs us, he was travelling in Italy
+with his wife, this child, and a nurse.  They were passing a few days
+in a country village near the city of Bari, capital of the province
+of the same name in the division (compartamento) of Apulia.  The
+child was in perfect health and had never been affected by any
+serious illness.  On the 10th of July he was playing out in the field
+near the house where the family was staying when he was heard to
+scream suddenly and violently.  The nurse rushing to him found him in
+great pain, saying that something had bitten him in one of his feet.
+A laborer, one Tommaso, ran up at the moment and perceived in the
+grass, near where the boy was standing, an enormous spider, which he
+at once recognized as a tarantula.  He managed to catch the creature
+in a large leaf, from which he was afterwards transferred to a wide-
+mouthed bottle, where he lived without any food for a month or more.
+The creature was covered with short hairs, and had a pair of nipper-
+like jaws, with which he could inflict an ugly wound.  His body
+measured about an inch in length, and from the extremity of one of
+the longest limbs to the other was between two and three inches.
+Such was the account given by the physician to whom the peasant
+carried the great spider.
+
+"The boy who had been bitten continued screaming violently while his
+stocking was being removed and the foot examined.  The place of the
+bite was easily found and the two marks of the claw-like jaws already
+showed the effects of the poison, a small livid circle extending
+around them, with some puffy swelling.  The distinguished Dr. Amadei
+was immediately sent for, and applied cups over the wounds in the
+hope of drawing forth the poison.  In vain all his skill and efforts!
+Soon, ataxic (irregular) nervous symptoms declared themselves, and it
+became plain that the system had been infected by the poison.
+
+"The symptoms were very much like those of malignant fever, such as
+distress about the region of the heart, difficulty of breathing,
+collapse of all the vital powers, threatening immediate death.  From
+these first symptoms the child rallied, but his entire organism had
+been profoundly affected by the venom circulating through it.  His
+constitution has never thrown off the malady resulting from this
+toxic (poisonous) agent.  The phenomena which have been observed in
+this young patient correspond so nearly with those enumerated in the
+elaborate essay of the celebrated Baglivi that one might think they
+had been transcribed from his pages.
+
+"He is very fond of solitude,--of wandering about in churchyards and
+other lonely places.  He was once found hiding in an empty tomb,
+which had been left open.  His aversion to certain colors is
+remarkable.  Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker
+ones, but his likes and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to
+some colors his antipathy amounts to positive horror.  Some shades
+have such an effect upon him that he cannot remain in the room with
+them, and if he meets any one whose dress has any of that particular
+color he will turn away or retreat so as to avoid passing that
+person.  Among these, purple and dark green are the least endurable.
+He cannot explain the sensations which these obnoxious colors produce
+except by saying that it is like the deadly feeling from a blow on
+the epigastrium (pit of the stomach).
+
+"About the same season of the year at which the tarantular poisoning
+took place he is liable to certain nervous seizures, not exactly like
+fainting or epilepsy, but reminding the physician of those
+affections.  All the other symptoms are aggravated at this time.
+
+"In other respects than those mentioned the boy is in good health.
+He is fond of riding, and has a pony on which he takes a great deal
+of exercise, which seems to do him more good than any other remedy.
+
+"The influence of music, to which so much has been attributed by
+popular belief and even by the distinguished Professor to whom we
+shall again refer, has not as yet furnished any satisfactory results.
+If the graver symptoms recur while the patient is under our
+observation, we propose to make use of an agency discredited by
+modern skepticism, but deserving of a fair trial as an exceptional
+remedy for an exceptional disease.
+
+"The following extracts from the work of the celebrated Italian
+physician of the last century are given by the writer of the paper in
+the Giornale in the original Latin, with a translation into Italian,
+subjoined.  Here are the extracts, or rather here is a selection from
+them, with a translation of them into English.
+
+"After mentioning the singular aversion to certain colors shown by
+the subject of Tarantism, Baglivi writes as follows:
+"'Et si astantes incedant vestibus eo colore difusis, qui Tarantatis
+ingrates est, necesse est ut ab illorum aspectu recedant; nam ad
+intuitum molesti coloris angore cordis, et symptomatum recrudescantia
+stating corripiuntur.' (G.  Baglivi, Op.  Omnia, page 614.  Lugduni,
+1745.)
+
+"That is, 'if the persons about the patient wear dresses of the color
+which is offensive to him, he must get away from the sight of them,
+for on seeing the obnoxious color he is at once seized with distress
+in the region of the heart, and a renewal of his symptoms.'
+
+"As to the recurrence of the malady, Baglivi says:
+"'Dam calor solis ardentius exurere incip at, quod contingit circa
+initia Julii et Augusti, Tarantati lente venientem recrudescentiam
+veneni percipiunt.' (Ibid., page 619.)
+
+"Which I render, 'When the heat of the sun begins to burn more
+fiercely, which happens about the beginning of July and August, the
+subjects of Tarantism perceive the gradually approaching
+recrudescence (returning symptoms) of the poisoning.  Among the
+remedies most valued by this illustrious physician is that mentioned
+in the following sentence:
+
+"'Laudo magnopere equitationes in aere rusticano factas singulis
+diebus, hord potissimum matutina, quibus equitationibus morbos
+chronicos pene incurabiles protanus eliminavi.'
+
+"Or in translation,
+"'I commend especially riding on horseback in country air, every day,
+by preference in the morning hours, by the aid of which horseback
+riding I have driven off chronic diseases which were almost
+incurable.'"
+
+Miss Vincent read this paper aloud to Dr. Butts, and handed it to him
+to examine and consider.  He listened with a grave countenance and
+devout attention.
+
+As she finished reading her account, she exclaimed in the passionate
+tones of the deepest conviction,
+
+"There, doctor!  Have n't I found the true story of this strange
+visitor?  Have n't I solved the riddle of the Sphinx?  Who can this
+man be but the boy of that story?  Look at the date of the journal
+when he was eleven years old, it would make him twenty-five now, and
+that is just about the age the people here think he must be of.  What
+could account so entirely for his ways and actions as that strange
+poisoning which produces the state they call Tarantism?  I am just as
+sure it must be that as I am that I am alive.  Oh, doctor, doctor, I
+must be right,--this Signprino M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  was the boy
+Maurice Kirkwood, and the story accounts for everything,--his
+solitary habits, his dread of people,--it must be because they wear
+the colors he can't bear.  His morning rides on horseback, his coming
+here just as the season was approaching which would aggravate all his
+symptoms, does n't all this prove that I must be right in my
+conjecture,--no, my conviction?"
+
+The doctor knew too much to interrupt the young enthusiast, and so he
+let her run on until she ran down.  He was more used to the rules of
+evidence than she was, and could not accept her positive conclusion
+so readily as she would have liked to have him.  He knew that
+beginners are very apt to make what they think are discoveries.  But
+he had been an angler and knew the meaning of a yielding rod and an
+easy-running reel.  He said quietly,
+
+"You are a most sagacious young lady, and a very pretty prima facie
+case it is that you make out.  I can see no proof that Mr. Kirkwood
+is not the same person as the M .  .  .  Ch .  .  .  of the medical
+journal,--that is, if I accept your explanation of the difference in
+the initials of these two names.  Even if there were a difference,
+that would not disprove their identity, for the initials of patients
+whose cases are reported by their physicians are often altered for
+the purpose of concealment.  I do not know, however, that Mr.
+Kirkwood has shown any special aversion to any particular color.  It
+might be interesting to inquire whether it is so, but it is a
+delicate matter.  I don't exactly see whose business it is to
+investigate Mr. Maurice Kirkwood's idiosyncrasies and constitutional
+history.  If he should have occasion to send for me at any time, he
+might tell me all about himself, in confidence, you know.  These old
+accounts from Baglivi are curious and interesting, but I am cautious
+about receiving any stories a hundred years old, if they involve an
+improbability, as his stories about the cure of the tarantula bite by
+music certainly do.  I am disposed to wait for future developments,
+bearing in mind, of course, the very singular case you have
+unearthed.  It wouldn't be very strange if our young gentleman had to
+send for me before the season is over.  He is out a good deal before
+the dew is off the grass, which is rather risky in this neighborhood
+as autumn comes on.  I am somewhat curious, I confess, about the
+young man, but I do not meddle where I am not asked for or wanted,
+and I have found that eggs hatch just as well if you let them alone
+in the nest as if you take them out and shake them every day.  This
+is a wonderfully interesting supposition of yours, and may prove to
+be strictly in accordance with the facts.  But I do not think we have
+all the facts in this young man's case.  If it were proved that he
+had an aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case.
+His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a
+wide ground, to account for his self-isolation,--and the color
+hypothesis seems as plausible as any.  But, my dear Miss Vincent,
+I think you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in
+my keeping for a while, rather than let it get abroad in a community
+like this, where so many tongues are in active exercise.  I will
+carefully study this paper, if you will leave it with me, and we will
+talk the whole matter over.  It is a fair subject for speculation,
+only we must keep quiet about it."
+
+This long speech gave Lurida's perfervid brain time to cool off a
+little.  She left the paper with the doctor, telling him she would
+come for it the next day, and went off to tell the result of this
+visit to her bosom friend, Miss Euthymia Tower.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.
+
+The doctor was troubled in thinking over his interview with the young
+lady.  She was fully possessed with the idea that she had discovered
+the secret which had defied the most sagacious heads of the village.
+It was of no use to oppose her while her mind was in an excited
+state.  But he felt it his duty to guard her against any possible
+results of indiscretion into which her eagerness and her theory of
+the equality, almost the identity, of the sexes might betray her.
+Too much of the woman in a daughter of our race leads her to forget
+danger.  Too little of the woman prompts her to defy it.  Fortunately
+for this last class of women, they are not quite so likely to be
+perilously seductive as their more emphatically feminine sisters.
+
+Dr. Butts had known Lurida and her friend from the days of their
+infancy.  He had watched the development of Lurida's intelligence
+from its precocious nursery-life to the full vigor of its trained
+faculties.  He had looked with admiration on the childish beauty of
+Euthymia, and had seen her grow up to womanhood, every year making
+her more attractive.  He knew that if anything was to be done with
+his self-willed young scholar and friend, it would be more easily
+effected through the medium of Euthymia than by direct advice to the
+young lady herself.  So the thoughtful doctor made up his mind to
+have a good talk with Euthymia, and put her on her guard, if Lurida
+showed any tendency to forget the conventionalities in her eager
+pursuit of knowledge.
+
+For the doctor's horse and chaise to stop at the door of Miss
+Euthymia Tower's parental home was an event strange enough to set all
+the tongues in the village going.  This was one of those families
+where illness was hardly looked for among the possibilities of life.
+There were other families where a call from the doctor was hardly
+more thought of than a call from the baker.  But here he was a
+stranger, at least on his professional rounds, and when he asked for
+Miss Euthymia the servant, who knew his face well, stared as if he
+had held in his hand a warrant for her apprehension.
+
+Euthymia did not keep the doctor waiting very long while she made
+ready to meet him.  One look at her glass to make sure that a lock
+had not run astray, or a ribbon got out of place, and her toilet for
+a morning call was finished.  Perhaps if Mr. Maurice Kirkwood had
+been announced, she might have taken a second look, but with the good
+middle-aged, married doctor one was enough for a young lady who had
+the gift of making all the dresses she wore look well, and had no
+occasion to treat her chamber like the laboratory where an actress
+compounds herself.
+
+Euthymia welcomed the doctor very heartily.  She could not help
+suspecting his errand, and she was very glad to have a chance to talk
+over her friend's schemes and fancies with him.
+
+The doctor began without any roundabout prelude.
+
+"I want to confer with you about our friend Lurida.  Does she tell
+you all her plans and projects?"
+
+"Why, as to that, doctor, I can hardly say, positively, but I do not
+believe she keeps back anything of importance from me.  I know what
+she has been busy with lately, and the queer idea she has got into
+her head.  What do you think of the Tarantula business?  She has
+shown you the paper, she has written, I suppose."
+
+"Indeed she has.  It is a very curious case she has got hold of, and
+I do not wonder at all that she should have felt convinced that she
+had come at the true solution of the village riddle.  It may be that
+this young man is the same person as the boy mentioned in the Italian
+medical journal.  But it is very far from clear that he is so.  You
+know all her reasons, of course, as you have read the story.  The
+times seem to agree well enough.  It is easy to conceive that Ch
+might be substituted for K in the report.  The singular solitary
+habits of this young man entirely coincide with the story.  If we
+could only find out whether he has any of those feelings with
+reference to certain colors, we might guess with more chance of
+guessing right than we have at present.  But I don't see exactly how
+we are going to submit him to examination on this point.  If he were
+only a chemical compound, we could analyze him.  If he were only a
+bird or a quadruped, we could find out his likes and dislikes.  But
+being, as he is, a young man, with ways of his own, and a will of his
+own, which he may not choose to have interfered with, the problem
+becomes more complicated.  I hear that a newspaper correspondent has
+visited him so as to make a report to his paper,--do you know what he
+found out?"
+
+"Certainly I do, very well.  My brother has heard his own story,
+which was this: He found out he had got hold of the wrong person to
+interview.  The young gentleman, he says, interviewed him, so that he
+did not learn much about the Sphinx.  But the newspaper man told
+Willy about the Sphinx's library and a cabinet of coins he had; and
+said he should make an article out of him, anyhow.  I wish the man
+would take himself off.  I am afraid Lurida's love of knowledge will
+get her into trouble!"
+
+"Which of the men do you wish would take himself off?"
+
+"I was thinking of the newspaper man."
+
+She blushed a little as she said, "I can't help feeling a strange
+sort of interest about the other, Mr. Kirkwood.  Do you know that I
+met him this morning, and had a good look at him, full in the face?"
+
+"Well, to be sure!  That was an interesting experience.  And how did
+you like his looks?"
+
+"I thought his face a very remarkable one.  But he looked very pale
+as he passed me, and I noticed that he put his hand to his left side
+as if he had a twinge of pain, or something of that sort,--spasm or
+neuralgia,--I don't know what.  I wondered whether he had what you
+call angina pectoris.  It was the same kind of look and movement, I
+remember, as you trust, too, in my uncle who died with that
+complaint."
+
+The doctor was silent for a moment.  Then he asked, "Were you dressed
+as you are now?"
+
+"Yes, I was, except that I had a thin mantle over my shoulders.  I
+was out early, and I have always remembered your caution."
+
+"What color was your mantle?"
+
+"It was black.  I have been over all this with Lucinda.  A black
+mantle on a white dress.  A straw hat with an old faded ribbon.
+There can't be much in those colors to trouble him, I should think,
+for his man wears a black coat and white linen,--more or less white,
+as you must have noticed, and he must have seen ribbons of all colors
+often enough.  But Lurida believes it was the ribbon, or something in
+the combination of colors.  Her head is full of Tarantulas and
+Tarantism.  I fear that she will never be easy until the question is
+settled by actual trial.  And will you believe it? the girl is
+determined in some way to test her supposition!"
+
+"Believe it, Euthymia?  I can believe almost anything of Lurida.  She
+is the most irrepressible creature I ever knew.  You know as well as
+I do what a complete possession any ruling idea takes of her whole
+nature.  I have had some fears lest her zeal might run away with her
+discretion.  It is a great deal easier to get into a false position
+than to get out of it."
+
+"I know it well enough.  I want you to tell me what you think about
+the whole business.  I don't like the look of it at all, and yet I
+can do nothing with the girl except let her follow her fancy, until I
+can show her plainly that she will get herself into trouble in some
+way or other.  But she is ingenious,--full of all sorts of devices,
+innocent enough in themselves, but liable to be misconstrued.  You
+remember how she won us the boat-race?"
+
+"To be sure I do.  It was rather sharp practice, but she felt she was
+paying off an old score.  The classical story of Atalanta, told, like
+that of Eve, as illustrating the weakness of woman, provoked her to
+make trial of the powers of resistance in the other sex.  But it was
+audacious.  I hope her audacity will not go too far.  You must watch
+her.  Keep an eye on her correspondence."
+
+The doctor had great confidence in the good sense of Lurida's friend.
+He felt sure that she would not let Lurida commit herself by writing
+foolish letters to the subject of her speculations, or similar
+indiscreet performances.  The boldness of young girls, who think no
+evil, in opening correspondence with idealized personages is
+something quite astonishing to those who have had an opportunity of
+knowing the facts.  Lurida had passed the most dangerous age, but her
+theory of the equality of the sexes made her indifferent to the
+by-laws of social usage.  She required watching, and her two
+guardians were ready to check her, in case of need.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.
+
+Euthymia noticed that her friend had been very much preoccupied for
+two or three days.  She found her more than once busy at her desk,
+with a manuscript before her, which she turned over and placed inside
+the desk, as Euthymia entered.
+
+This desire of concealment was not what either of the friends
+expected to see in the other.  It showed that some project was under
+way, which, at least in its present stage, the Machiavellian young
+lady did not wish to disclose.  It had cost her a good deal of
+thought and care, apparently, for her waste-basket was full of scraps
+of paper, which looked as if they were the remains of a manuscript
+like that at which she was at work.  "Copying and recopying,
+probably," thought Euthymia, but she was willing to wait to learn
+what Lurida was busy about, though she had a suspicion that it was
+something in which she might feel called upon to interest herself.
+
+"Do you know what I think?" said Euthymia to the doctor, meeting him
+as he left his door.  "I believe Lurida is writing to this man, and I
+don't like the thought of her doing such a thing.  Of course she is
+not like other girls in many respects, but other people will judge
+her by the common rules of life."
+
+"I am glad that you spoke of it," answered the doctor; "she would
+write to him just as quickly as to any woman of his age.  Besides,
+under the cover of her office, she has got into the way of writing to
+anybody.  I think she has already written to Mr. Kirkwood, asking him
+to contribute a paper for the Society.  She can find a pretext easily
+enough if she has made up her mind to write.  In fact, I doubt if she
+would trouble herself for any pretext at all if she decided to write.
+Watch her well.  Don't let any letter go without seeing it, if you
+can help it."
+
+Young women are much given to writing letters to persons whom they
+only know indirectly, for the most part through their books, and
+especially to romancers and poets.  Nothing can be more innocent and
+simple-hearted than most of these letters.  They are the spontaneous
+outflow of young hearts easily excited to gratitude for the pleasure
+which some story or poem has given them, and recognizing their own
+thoughts, their own feelings, in those expressed by the author, as if
+on purpose for them to read.  Undoubtedly they give great relief to
+solitary young persons, who must have some ideal reflection of
+themselves, and know not where to look since Protestantism has taken
+away the crucifix and the Madonna.  The recipient of these letters
+sometimes wonders, after reading through one of them, how it is that
+his young correspondent has managed to fill so much space with her
+simple message of admiration or of sympathy.
+
+Lurida did not belong to this particular class of correspondents, but
+she could not resist the law of her sex, whose thoughts naturally
+surround themselves with superabundant drapery of language, as their
+persons float in a wide superfluity of woven tissues.  Was she indeed
+writing to this unknown gentleman?  Euthymia questioned her point-
+blank.
+
+"Are you going to open a correspondence with Mr. Maurice Kirkwood,
+Lurida?  You seem to be so busy writing, I can think of nothing else.
+Or are you going to write a novel, or a paper for the Society,--do
+tell me what you are so much taken up with."
+
+"I will tell you, Euthymia, if you will promise not to find fault
+with me for carrying out my plan as I have made up my mind to do.
+You may read this letter before I seal it, and if you find anything
+in it you don't like you can suggest any change that you think will
+improve it.  I hope you will see that it explains itself.  I don't
+believe that you will find anything to frighten you in it."
+
+This is the letter, as submitted to Miss Tower by her friend.  The
+bold handwriting made it look like a man's letter, and gave it
+consequently a less dangerous expression than that which belongs to
+the tinted and often fragrant sheet with its delicate thready
+characters, which slant across the page like an April shower with a
+south wind chasing it.
+
+
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August--, 18--.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--You will doubtless be surprised at the sight of a
+letter like this from one whom you only know as the Secretary of the
+Pansophian Society.  There is a very common feeling that it is
+unbecoming in one of my sex to address one of your own with whom she
+is unacquainted, unless she has some special claim upon his
+attention.  I am by no means disposed to concede to the vulgar
+prejudice on this point.  If one human being has anything to
+communicate to another,--anything which deserves being communicated,
+--I see no occasion for bringing in the question of sex.  I do not
+think the homo sum of Terence can be claimed for the male sex as its
+private property on general any more than on grammatical grounds,
+
+I have sometimes thought of devoting myself to the noble art of
+healing.  If I did so, it would be with the fixed purpose of giving
+my whole powers to the service of humanity.  And if I should carry
+out that idea, should I refuse my care and skill to a suffering
+fellow-mortal because that mortal happened to be a brother, and not a
+sister?  My whole nature protests against such one-sided humanity!
+No! I am blind to all distinctions when my eyes are opened to any
+form of suffering, to any spectacle of want.
+
+You may ask me why I address you, whom I know little or nothing of,
+and to whom such an advance may seem presumptuous and intrusive.  It
+is because I was deeply impressed by the paper which I attributed to
+you,--that on Ocean, River, and Lake, which was read at one of our
+meetings.  I say that I was deeply impressed, but I do not mean this
+as a compliment to that paper.  I am not bandying compliments now,
+but thinking of better things than praises or phrases.  I was
+interested in the paper, partly because I recognized some of the
+feelings expressed in it as my own,--partly because there was an
+undertone of sadness in all the voices of nature as you echoed them
+which made me sad to hear, and which I could not help longing to
+cheer and enliven.  I said to myself, I should like to hold communion
+with the writer of that paper.  I have had my lonely hours and days,
+as he has had.  I have had some of his experiences in my intercourse
+with nature.  And oh! if I could draw him into those better human
+relations which await us all, if we come with the right dispositions,
+I should blush if I stopped to inquire whether I violated any
+conventional rule or not.
+
+You will understand me, I feel sure.  You believe, do you not? in the
+insignificance of the barrier which divides the sisterhood from the
+brotherhood of mankind.  You believe, do you not? that they should be
+educated side by side, that they should share the same pursuits, due
+regard being had to the fitness of the particular individual for hard
+or light work, as it must always be, whether we are dealing with the
+"stronger" or the "weaker" sex.  I mark these words because,
+notwithstanding their common use, they involve so much that is not
+true.  Stronger!  Yes, to lift a barrel of flour, or a barrel of
+cider,--though there have been women who could do that, and though
+when John Wesley was mobbed in Staffordshire a woman knocked down
+three or four men, one after another, until she was at last
+overpowered and nearly murdered.  Talk about the weaker sex!  Go and
+see Miss Euthymia Tower at the gymnasium!  But no matter about which
+sex has the strongest muscles.  Which has most to suffer, and which
+has most endurance and vitality?  We go through many ordeals which
+you are spared, but we outlast you in mind and body.  I have been led
+away into one of my accustomed trains of thought, but not so far away
+from it as you might at first suppose.
+
+My brother!  Are you not ready to recognize in me a friend, an equal,
+a sister, who can speak to you as if she had been reared under the
+same roof?  And is not the sky that covers us one roof, which makes
+us all one family?  You are lonely, you must be longing for some
+human fellowship.  Take me into your confidence.  What is there that
+you can tell me to which I cannot respond with sympathy?  What
+saddest note in your spiritual dirges which will not find its chord
+in mine?
+
+I long to know what influence has cast its shadow over your
+existence.  I myself have known what it is to carry a brain that
+never rests in a body that is always tired.  I have defied its
+infirmities, and forced it to do my bidding.  You have no such
+hindrance, if we may judge by your aspect and habits.  You deal with
+horses like a Homeric hero.  No wild Indian could handle his bark
+canoe more dexterously or more vigorously than we have seen you
+handling yours.  There must be some reason for your seclusion which
+curiosity has not reached, and into which it is not the province of
+curiosity to inquire.  But in the irresistible desire which I have to
+bring you into kindly relations with those around you, I must run the
+risk of giving offence that I may know in what direction to look for
+those restorative influences which the sympathy of a friend and
+sister can offer to a brother in need of some kindly impulse to
+change the course of a life which is not, which cannot be, in
+accordance with his true nature.
+
+I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with
+which you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--
+something which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from
+the people whose acquaintance you would naturally have formed.  There
+can hardly be anything in the place itself, or you would not have
+voluntarily sought it as a residence, even for a single season.
+there might be individuals here whom you would not care to meet,
+there must be such, but you cannot have a personal aversion to
+everybody.  I have heard of cases in which certain sights and sounds,
+which have no particular significance for most persons, produced
+feelings of distress or aversion that made, them unbearable to the
+subjects of the constitutional dislike.  It has occurred to me that
+possibly you might have some such natural aversion to the sounds of
+the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially where a
+piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the
+village.  Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses
+of women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly.  I
+know that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they
+would account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.
+
+If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
+entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I
+beg of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated.  Think it
+not strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself
+into the hidden chambers of your life.  I will never suffer myself to
+be frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to
+be of use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered
+"unfeminine."  I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot
+endure to think of myself as inhuman.  Can I help you, my brother'?
+
+Believe me your most sincere well-wisher,
+
+LURIDA VINCENT.
+
+
+Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself.  As she
+finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
+grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early
+days are apt to do, on great occasions.
+
+"Well, I never!"
+
+Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went
+to the window for a breath of outdoor air.  Then she began at the
+beginning and read the whole letter all over again.
+
+What should she do about it?  She could not let this young girl send
+a letter like that to a stranger of whose character little was known
+except by inference,--to a young man, who would consider it a most
+extraordinary advance on the part of the sender.  She would have
+liked to tear it into a thousand pieces, but she had no right to
+treat it in that way.  Lurida meant to send it the next morning, and
+in the mean time Euthymia had the night to think over what she should
+do about it.
+
+There is nothing like the pillow for an oracle.  There is no voice
+like that which breaks the silence--of the stagnant hours of the
+night with its sudden suggestions and luminous counsels.  When
+Euthymia awoke in the morning, her course of action was as clear
+before her as if it bad been dictated by her guardian angel.  She
+went straight over to the home of Lurida, who was just dressed for
+breakfast.
+
+She was naturally a little surprised at this early visit.  She was
+struck with the excited look of Euthymia, being herself quite calm,
+and contemplating her project with entire complacency.
+
+Euthymia began, in tones that expressed deep anxiety.
+
+"I have read your letter, my dear, and admired its spirit and force.
+It is a fine letter, and does you great credit as an expression of
+the truest human feeling.  But it must not be sent to Mr. Kirkwood.
+If you were sixty years old, perhaps if you were fifty, it might be
+admissible to send it.  But if you were forty, I should question its
+propriety; if you were thirty, I should veto it, and you are but a
+little more than twenty.  How do you know that this stranger will not
+show your letter to anybody or everybody?  How do you know that he
+will not send it to one of the gossiping journals like the 'Household
+Inquisitor'?  But supposing he keeps it to himself, which is more
+than you have a right to expect, what opinion is he likely to form of
+a young lady who invades his privacy with such freedom?  Ten to one
+he will think curiosity is at the bottom of it,--and,--come, don't be
+angry at me for suggesting it,--may there not be a little of that
+same motive mingled with the others?  No, don't interrupt me quite
+yet; you do want to know whether your hypothesis is correct.  You are
+full of the best and kindest feelings in the world, but your desire
+for knowledge is the ferment under them just now, perhaps more than
+you know."
+
+Lurida's pale cheeks flushed and whitened more than once while her
+friend was speaking.  She loved her too sincerely and respected her
+intelligence too much to take offence at her advice, but she could
+not give up her humane and sisterly intentions merely from the fear
+of some awkward consequences to herself.  She had persuaded herself
+that she was playing the part of a Protestant sister of charity, and
+that the fact of her not wearing the costume of these ministering
+angels made no difference in her relations to those who needed her
+aid.
+
+"I cannot see your objections in the light in which they appear to
+you," she said gravely.  "It seems to me that I give up everything
+when I hesitate to help a fellow-creature because I am a woman.  I am
+not afraid to send this letter and take all the consequences."
+
+"Will you go with me to the doctor's, and let him read it in our
+presence?  And will you agree to abide by his opinion, if it
+coincides with mine?"
+
+Lurida winced a little at this proposal.  "I don't quite like," she
+said, "showing this letter to--to" she hesitated, but it had to come
+out--"to a man, that is, to another man than the one for whom it was
+intended."
+
+The neuter gender business had got a pretty damaging side-hit.
+
+"Well, never mind about letting him read the letter.  Will you go
+over to his house with me at noon, when he comes back after his
+morning visits, and have a talk over the whole matter with him?  You
+know I have sometimes had to say must to you, Lurida, and now I say
+you must go to the doctor's with me and carry that letter."
+
+There was no resisting the potent monosyllable as the sweet but firm
+voice delivered it.  At noon the two maidens rang at the doctor's
+door.  The servant said he had been at the house after his morning
+visits, but found a hasty summons to Mr. Kirkwood, who had been taken
+suddenly ill and wished to see him at once.  Was the illness
+dangerous?  The servant-maid did n't know, but thought it was pretty
+bad, for Mr. Paul came in as white as a sheet, and talked all sorts
+of languages which she couldn't understand, and took on as if he
+thought Mr. Kirkwood was going to die right off.
+
+And so the hazardous question about sending the letter was disposed
+of, at least for the present.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.
+
+The physician found Maurice just regaining his heat after a chill of
+a somewhat severe character.  He knew too well what this meant, and
+the probable series of symptoms of which it was the prelude.  His
+patient was not the only one in the neighborhood who was attacked in
+this way.  The autumnal fevers to which our country towns are
+subject, in the place of those "agues," or intermittents, so largely
+prevalent in the South and West, were already beginning, and Maurice,
+who had exposed himself in the early and late hours of the dangerous
+season, must be expected to go through the regular stages of this
+always serious and not rarely fatal disease.
+
+Paolo, his faithful servant, would fain have taken the sole charge of
+his master during his illness.  But the doctor insisted that he must
+have a nurse to help him in his task, which was likely to be long and
+exhausting.
+
+At the mention of the word "nurse" Paolo turned white, and exclaimed
+in an agitated and thoroughly frightened way,
+
+"No! no nuss!  no woman!  She kill him!  I stay by him day and night,
+but don' let no woman come near him,--if you do, he die!"
+
+The doctor explained that he intended to send a man who was used to
+taking care of sick people, and with no little effort at last
+succeeded in convincing Paolo that, as he could not be awake day and
+night for a fortnight or three weeks, it was absolutely necessary to
+call in some assistance from without.  And so Mr. Maurice Kirkwood
+was to play the leading part in that drama of nature's composing
+called a typhoid fever, with its regular bedchamber scenery, its
+properties of phials and pill-boxes, its little company of stock
+actors, its gradual evolution of a very simple plot, its familiar
+incidents, its emotional alternations, and its denouement, sometimes
+tragic, oftener happy.
+
+It is needless to say that the sympathies of all the good people of
+the village, residents and strangers, were actively awakened for the
+young man about whom they knew so little and conjectured so much.
+Tokens of their kindness came to him daily: flowers from the woods
+and from the gardens; choice fruit grown in the open air or under
+glass, for there were some fine houses surrounded by well-kept
+grounds, and greenhouses and graperies were not unknown in the small
+but favored settlement.
+
+On all these luxuries Maurice looked with dull and languid eyes.  A
+faint smile of gratitude sometimes struggled through the stillness of
+his features, or a murmured word of thanks found its way through his
+parched lips, and he would relapse into the partial stupor or the
+fitful sleep in which, with intervals of slight wandering, the slow
+hours dragged along the sluggish days one after another.  With no
+violent symptoms, but with steady persistency, the disease moved on
+in its accustomed course.  It was at no time immediately threatening,
+but the experienced physician knew its uncertainties only too well.
+He had known fever patients suddenly seized with violent internal
+inflammation, and carried off with frightful rapidity.  He remembered
+the case of a convalescent, a young woman who had been attacked while
+in apparently vigorous general health, who, on being lifted too
+suddenly to a sitting position, while still confined to her bed,
+fainted, and in a few moments ceased to breathe.  It may well be
+supposed that he took every possible precaution to avert the
+accidents which tend to throw from its track a disease the regular
+course of which is arranged by nature as carefully as the route of a
+railroad from one city to another.  The most natural interpretation
+which the common observer would put upon the manifestations of one of
+these autumnal maladies would be that some noxious combustible
+element had found its way into the system which must be burned to
+ashes before the heat which pervades the whole body can subside.
+Sometimes the fire may smoulder and seem as if it were going out, or
+were quite extinguished, and again it will find some new material to
+seize upon, and flame up as fiercely as ever.  Its coming on most
+frequently at the season when the brush fires which are consuming the
+dead branches, and withered leaves, and all the refuse of vegetation
+are sending up their smoke is suggestive.  Sometimes it seems as if
+the body, relieved of its effete materials, renewed its youth after
+one of these quiet, expurgating, internal fractional cremations.
+Lean, pallid students have found themselves plump and blooming, and
+it has happened that one whose hair was straight as gnat of an Indian
+has been startled to behold himself in his mirror with a fringe of
+hyacinthine curls about his rejuvenated countenance.
+
+There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
+Maurice Kirkwood.  The most alarming symptom was a profound
+prostration, which at last reached such a point that he lay utterly
+helpless, as unable to move without aid as the feeblest of
+paralytics.  In this state he lay for many days, not suffering pain,
+but with the sense of great weariness, and the feeling that he should
+never rise from his bed again.  For the most part his intellect was
+unclouded when his attention was aroused.  He spoke only in whispers,
+a few words at a time.  The doctor felt sure, by the expression which
+passed over his features from time to time, that something was
+worrying and oppressing him; something which he wished to
+communicate, and had not the force, or the tenacity of purpose, to
+make perfectly clear.  His eyes often wandered to a certain desk, and
+once he had found strength to lift his emaciated arm and point to it.
+The doctor went towards it as if to fetch it to him, but he slowly
+shook his head.  He had not the power to say at that time what he
+wished.  The next day he felt a little less prostrated; and succeeded
+in explaining to the doctor what he wanted.  His words, so far as the
+physician could make them out, were these which follow.  Dr. Butts
+looked upon them as possibly expressing wishes which would be his
+last, and noted them down carefully immediately after leaving his
+chamber.
+
+"I commit the secret of my life to your charge.  My whole story is
+told in a paper locked in that desk.  The key is--put your hand under
+my pillow.  If I die, let the story be known.  It will show that I
+was--human--and save my memory from reproach."
+
+He was silent for a little time.  A single tear stole down his hollow
+cheek.  The doctor turned his head away, for his own eyes were full.
+But he said to himself, "It is a good sign; I begin to feel strong
+hopes that he will recover."
+
+Maurice spoke once more.  "Doctor, I put full trust in you.  You are
+wise and kind.  Do what you will with this paper, but open it at once
+and read.  I want you to know the story of my life before it is
+finished--if the end is at hand.  Take it with you and read it before
+you sleep."  He was exhausted and presently his eyes closed, but the
+doctor saw a tranquil look on his features which added encouragement
+to his hopes.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.
+
+I am an American by birth, but a large part of my life has been
+passed in foreign lands.  My father was a man of education, possessed
+of an ample fortune; my mother was considered, a very accomplished
+and amiable woman.  I was their first and only child.  She died while
+I was yet an infant.  If I remember her at all it is as a vision,
+more like a glimpse of a pre-natal existence than as a part of my
+earthly life.  At the death of my mother I was left in the charge of
+the old nurse who had enjoyed her perfect confidence.  She was
+devoted to me, and I became absolutely dependent on her, who had for
+me all the love and all the care of a mother.  I was naturally the
+object of the attentions and caresses of the family relatives.  I
+have been told that I was a pleasant, smiling infant, with nothing to
+indicate any peculiar nervous susceptibility; not afraid of
+strangers, but on the contrary ready to make their acquaintance.  My
+father was devoted to me and did all in his power to promote my
+health and comfort.
+
+
+I was still a babe, often carried in arms, when the event happened
+which changed my whole future and destined me to a strange and lonely
+existence.  I cannot relate it even now without a sense of terror.  I
+must force myself to recall the circumstances as told me and vaguely
+remembered, for I am not willing that my doomed and wholly
+exceptional life should pass away unrecorded, unexplained,
+unvindicated.  My nature is, I feel sure, a kind and social one, but
+I have lived apart, as if my heart were filled with hatred of my
+fellow-creatures.  If there are any readers who look without pity,
+without sympathy, upon those who shun the fellowship of their fellow
+men and women, who show by their downcast or averted eyes that they
+dread companionship and long for solitude, I pray them, if this paper
+ever reaches them, to stop at this point.  Follow me no further, for
+you will not believe my story, nor enter into the feelings which I am
+about to reveal.  But if there are any to whom all that is human is
+of interest, who have felt in their own consciousness some stirrings
+of invincible attraction to one individual and equally invincible
+repugnance to another, who know by their own experience that elective
+affinities have as their necessary counterpart, and, as it were,
+their polar opposites, currents not less strong of elective
+repulsions, let them read with unquestioning faith the story of a
+blighted life I am about to relate, much of it, of course, received
+from the lips of others.
+
+My cousin Laura, a girl of seventeen, lately returned from Europe,
+was considered eminently beautiful.  It was in my second summer that
+she visited my father's house, where he was living with his servants
+and my old nurse, my mother having but recently left him a widower.
+Laura was full of vivacity, impulsive, quick in her movements,
+thoughtless occasionally, as it is not strange that a young girl of
+her age should be.  It was a beautiful summer day when she saw me for
+the first time.  My nurse had me in her arms, walking back and
+forward on a balcony with a low railing, upon which opened the
+windows of the second story of my father's house.  While the nurse
+was thus carrying me, Laura came suddenly upon the balcony.  She no
+sooner saw me than with all the delighted eagerness of her youthful
+nature she rushed toward me, and, catching me from the nurse's arms,
+began tossing me after the fashion of young girls who have been so
+lately playing with dolls that they feel as if babies were very much
+of the same nature.  The abrupt seizure frightened me; I sprang from
+her arms in my terror, and fell over the railing of the balcony.  I
+should probably enough have been killed on the spot but for the fact
+that a low thorn-bush grew just beneath the balcony, into which I
+fell and thus had the violence of the shock broken.  But the thorns
+tore my tender flesh, and I bear to this day marks of the deep wounds
+they inflicted.
+
+That dreadful experience is burned deep into my memory.  The sudden
+apparition of the girl; the sense of being torn away from the
+protecting arms around me; the frantic effort to escape; the shriek
+that accompanied my fall through what must have seemed unmeasurable
+space; the cruel lacerations of the piercing and rending thorns,--all
+these fearful impressions blended in one paralyzing terror.
+
+When I was taken up I was thought to be dead.  I was perfectly white,
+and the physician who first saw me said that no pulse was
+perceptible.  But after a time consciousness returned; the wounds,
+though painful, were none of them dangerous, and the most alarming
+effects of the accident passed away.  My old nurse cared for me
+tenderly day and night, and my father, who had been almost distracted
+in the first hours which followed the injury, hoped and believed
+that no permanent evil results would be found to result from it.  My
+cousin Laura was of course deeply distressed to feel that her
+thoughtlessness had been the cause of so grave an accident.  As soon
+as I had somewhat recovered she came to see me, very penitent, very
+anxious to make me forget the alarm she had caused me, with all its
+consequences.  I was in the nursery sitting up in my bed, bandaged,
+but not in any pain, as it seemed, for I was quiet and to all
+appearance in a perfectly natural state of feeling.  As Laura came
+near me I shrieked and instantly changed color.  I put my hand upon
+my heart as if I had been stabbed, and fell over, unconscious.  It
+was very much the same state as that in which I was found immediately
+after my fall.
+
+The cause of this violent and appalling seizure was but too obvious.
+The approach of the young girl and the dread that she was about to
+lay her hand upon me had called up the same train of effects which
+the moment of terror and pain had already occasioned.  The old nurse
+saw this in a moment.  "Go!  go!" she cried to Laura, "go, or the
+child will die!  "Her command did not have to be repeated.  After
+Laura had gone I lay senseless, white and cold as marble, for some
+time.  The doctor soon came, and by the use of smart rubbing and
+stimulants the color came back slowly to my cheeks and the arrested
+circulation was again set in motion.
+
+It was hard to believe that this was anything more than a temporary
+effect of the accident.  There could be little doubt, it was thought
+by the doctor and by my father, that after a few days I should
+recover from this morbid sensibility and receive my cousin as other
+infants receive pleasant-looking young persons.  The old nurse shook
+her head.  "The girl will be the death of the child," she said, "if
+she touches him or comes near him.  His heart stopped beating just as
+when the girl snatched him out of my arms, and he fell over the
+balcony railing."  Once more the experiment was tried, cautiously,
+almost insidiously.  The same alarming consequences followed.  It was
+too evident that a chain of nervous disturbances had been set up in
+my system which repeated itself whenever the original impression gave
+the first impulse.  I never saw my cousin Laura after this last
+trial.  Its result had so distressed her that she never ventured
+again to show herself to me.
+
+If the effect of the nervous shock had stopped there, it would have
+been a misfortune for my cousin and myself, but hardly a calamity.
+The world is wide, and a cousin or two more or less can hardly be
+considered an essential of existence.  I often heard Laura's name
+mentioned, but never by any one who was acquainted with all the
+circumstances, for it was noticed that I changed color and caught at
+my breast as if I wanted to grasp my heart in my hand whenever that
+fatal name was mentioned.
+
+Alas! this was not all.  While I was suffering from the effects of my
+fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by
+another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his
+share in caring for me.  It was thought best to keep--me perfectly
+quiet, and strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery,
+with one exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then.
+With her it seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her
+with rather anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she
+was dangerous.  But one day, when I was far advanced towards
+recovery, my father brought in a young lady, a relative of his, who
+had expressed a great desire to see me.  She was, as I have been
+told, a very handsome girl, of about the same age as my cousin Laura,
+but bearing no personal resemblance to her in form, features, or
+complexion.  She had no sooner entered the room than the same sudden
+changes which had followed my cousin's visit began to show
+themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state of
+deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.
+
+Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures.
+A little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the
+nursery one day and bring me some flowers.  I took them from her
+hand, but turned away and shut my eyes.  There was no seizure, but
+there was a certain dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling
+which it might be hoped that time would overcome.  Those around me
+were gradually finding out the circumstances which brought on the
+deadly attack to which I was subject.
+
+The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the
+prettiest girl of the village where we were passing the summer.  She
+was very anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was
+determined that she should be permitted to pay me a short visit.  I
+had always delighted in seeing her and being caressed by her.  I was
+sleeping when she entered the nursery and came and took a seat at my
+side in perfect silence.  Presently I became restless, and a moment
+later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over me.  My hand went to
+my left breast,--the color faded from my cheeks,--I was again the
+cold marble image so like death that it had well-nigh been mistaken
+for it.
+
+Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had
+left me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is
+most attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender
+age, who feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes,
+her blooming cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws
+all life into its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere?  So it did
+indeed seem.  The dangerous experiment could not be repeated
+indefinitely.  It was not intentionally tried again, but accident
+brought about more than one renewal of it during the following years,
+until it became fully recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a
+mortal dread of woman,--not absolutely of the human female, for I had
+no fear of my old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled
+face, and I had become accustomed to the occasional meeting of a
+little girl or two, whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-
+defined feeling that there was danger in their presence.  I was sent
+to a boys' school very early, and during the first ten or twelve
+years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of my
+strange idiosyncrasy.
+
+As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings
+which had so long held complete possession of me.  This was what my
+father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of
+their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I
+should have grown to mature manhood.
+
+How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering,
+dreadful years?  Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and
+waking.  Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes
+towards it that I lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all
+my fears and find myself at her side, like other youths by the side
+of young maidens,--happy in their cheerful companionship, while I,--
+I, under the curse of one blighting moment, looked on, hopeless.
+Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice
+stirred within me all the instincts that make the morning of life
+beautiful to adolescence.  I reasoned with myself:
+
+Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been
+the nightmare of my earlier years?  Why should not the rising tide of
+life have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows
+of childhood?  How many children there are who tremble at being left
+alone in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their
+foolish terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber!  Why
+should I any longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown
+into a half insane habit of mind?  I was familiarly acquainted with
+all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances
+to which others, some of them famous men, had been subject.  I said
+to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as Peter the
+Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge?  Was I,
+alone of all mankind, to be doomed to perpetual exclusion from the
+society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence
+worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of
+supplying the waste of the system and working at the task of
+respiration like the daughters of Danaus,--toiling day and night as
+the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?
+
+Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard
+to any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off
+smile, whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me?
+I can only answer this question to the satisfaction of any really
+inquiring reader by giving him the true interpretation of the
+singular phenomenon of which I was the subject.  For this I shall
+have to refer to a paper of which I have made a copy, and which will
+be found included with this manuscript.  It is enough to say here,
+without entering into the explanation of the fact, which will be
+found simple enough as seen by the light of modern physiological
+science, that the "nervous disturbance" which the presence of a woman
+in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of
+impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling.  It
+was a reversed action of the nervous centres,--the opposite of that
+which flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses
+as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion.  No one
+who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an
+imperative summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.
+
+It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
+effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily
+and mental condition.  I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too
+slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were
+a cause of anxiety.  That the mind was largely concerned in these
+there was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are
+often too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis.  Each is in part
+cause and each also in part effect.
+
+We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in
+a school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those
+of my own sex.  There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences
+under which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are
+led to separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated
+in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul
+can be exposed.  I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of
+exclusion from the society of women by seeing around me so many who
+were self-devoted to celibacy.  The thought sometimes occurred to me
+whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of
+the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me
+the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable
+barrier between the devotee and the object of his dangerous
+attraction.
+
+How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who
+was at once my special instructor and my favorite companion!  But
+accustomed as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and
+impressed as I was with the purity and excellence of many of its
+young members with whom I was acquainted, my early training rendered
+it impossible for me to accept the credentials which it offered me as
+authoritative.  My friend and instructor had to set me down as a case
+of "invincible ignorance."  This was the loop-hole through which he
+crept out of the prison-house of his creed, and was enabled to look
+upon me without the feeling of absolute despair with which his
+sterner brethren would, I fear, have regarded me.
+
+I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which
+I had such reasons for dreading.  Here is one example of such an
+occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
+impressed upon my memory.  A young friend whose acquaintance I had
+made in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a
+cabinet of gems and medals which he had collected.  I had been but a
+short time in his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over
+me.  My heart became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly,
+as if it were some frightened creature caged in my breast.  There was
+nothing that I could see to account for it.  A door was partly open,
+but not so that I could see into the next room.  The feeling grew
+upon me of some influence which was paralyzing my circulation.  I
+begged my friend to open a window.  As be did so, the door swung in
+the draught, and I saw a blooming young woman,--it was my friend's
+sister, who had been sitting with a book in her hand, and who rose at
+the opening of the door.  Something had warned me of the presence of
+a woman, that occult and potent aura of individuality, call it
+personal magnetism, spiritual effluence, or reduce it to a simpler
+expression if you will; whatever it was, it had warned me of the
+nearness of the dread attraction which allured at a distance and
+revealed itself with all the terrors of the Lorelei if approached too
+recklessly.  A sign from her brother caused her to withdraw at once,
+but not before I had felt the impression which betrayed itself in my
+change of color, anxiety about the region of the heart, and sudden
+failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.
+
+Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my
+manuscript?  Nothing in the history of life is so strange or
+exceptional as it seems to those who have not made a long study of
+its mysteries.  I have never known just such a case as my own, and
+yet there must have been such, and if the whole history of mankind
+were unfolded I cannot doubt that there have been many like it.  Let
+my reader suspend his judgment until he has read the paper I have
+referred to, which was drawn up by a Committee of the Royal Academy
+of the Biological Sciences.  In this paper the mechanism of the
+series of nervous derangements to which I have been subject since the
+fatal shock experienced in my infancy is explained in language not
+hard to understand.  It will be seen that such a change of polarity
+in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and an extreme degree
+of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary and comparatively
+unimportant personal accident is far from being uncommon,--is so
+frequent, in fact, that every one must have known instances of it,
+and not a few must have had more or less serious experiences of it in
+their own private history.
+
+It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am now
+dealing with the reader.  I was full of strange fancies and wild
+superstitions.  One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal
+which had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my
+body.  I was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue
+of a power which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain
+portions of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which
+had been engrafted on the corrupt nature.  I wore the medal
+faithfully, as directed, and watched it carefully.  It became
+tarnished and after a time darkened, but it wrought no change in my
+unnatural condition.
+
+There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of
+futurity than she had any right to know.  The story was that she had
+foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
+
+However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black
+art upon my future.  I shall never forget the strange, wild look of
+the wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed
+her wicked old eyes on my young countenance.  After this examination
+she shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I
+could get them would be in English like these:
+
+     Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
+     Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
+
+Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose
+palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular
+response, have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to
+fulfilment.  The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I
+was subject disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to
+all that relates to it.  I have never ceased to have the feeling
+that, sooner or later, I should find myself freed from the blight
+laid upon me in my infancy.  It seems as if it would naturally come
+through the influence of some young and fair woman, to whom that
+merciful errand should be assigned by the Providence that governs our
+destiny.  With strange hopes, with trembling fears, with mingled
+belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I have sought with
+longing yet half-averted eyes for the "elect lady," as I have learned
+to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined life.
+
+Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I
+had found the object of my superstitious belief.--Singularly enough
+it was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared
+before my bewildered vision.  Once it was an English girl who was a
+fellow passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages.  I need not say
+that she was beautiful, for she was my dream realized.  I heard her
+singing, I saw her walking the deck on some of the fair days when
+sea-sickness was forgotten.  The passengers were a social company
+enough, but I had kept myself apart, as was my wont.  At last the
+attraction became too strong to resist any longer.  "I will venture
+into the charmed circle if it kills me," I said to my father.  I did
+venture, and it did not kill me, or I should not be telling this
+story.  But there was a repetition of the old experiences.  I need
+not relate the series of alarming consequences of my venture.  The
+English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has made some one
+supremely happy before this, but she was not the "elect lady" of the
+prophecy and of my dreams.
+
+A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
+destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
+fellow men and women.  It was on the Tiber that I met the young
+maiden who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded
+young womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its
+limits.  I was floating with the stream in the little boat in which I
+passed many long hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with
+a boy and a young girl in it.  The boy had been rowing, and one of
+his oars had slipped from his grasp.  He did not know how to paddle
+with a single oar, and was hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar
+all the time floating farther away from him.  I could not refuse my
+assistance.  I picked up the oar and brought my skiff alongside of
+the boat.  When I handed the oar to the boy the young girl lifted her
+veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of the language which
+
+     'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'
+
+She was a type of Italian beauty,--a nocturne in flesh and blood, if
+I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice
+which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no
+longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race.
+An hour later I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat,
+white, cold, almost pulseless.  It cost much patient labor to bring
+me back to consciousness.  Had not such extreme efforts been made, it
+seems probable that I should never have waked from a slumber which
+was hardly distinguishable from that of death.
+
+
+Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I
+invite it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause?  The
+habit of these deadly seizures has become a second nature.  The
+strongest and the ablest men have found it impossible to resist the
+impression produced by the most insignificant object, by the most
+harmless sight or sound to which they had a congenital or acquired
+antipathy.  What prospect have I of ever being rid of this long and
+deep-seated infirmity?  I may well ask myself these questions, but my
+answer is that I will never give up the hope that time will yet bring
+its remedy.  It may be that the wild prediction which so haunts me
+shall find itself fulfilled.  I have had of late strange
+premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not help
+giving heed.  But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in
+miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,--assuredly when it
+comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her
+revelations of the future.  Be it so: though I am not superstitious,
+I have a right to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to
+those words of the old zingara with an irresistible feeling that,
+sooner or later, they will prove true.
+
+Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its
+realization?  I have had both waking and sleeping visions within
+these last months and weeks which have taken possession of me and
+filled my life with new thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
+
+Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
+season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in a
+distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
+tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
+flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to
+tell it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is
+to be my deliverer, my saviour.
+
+I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
+experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
+disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the
+imminent risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the
+repetition of my former experiences.  I was reminded that unexplained
+sudden deaths were of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion
+is liable to arrest the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or
+bad news,--anything that reaches the deeper nervous centres.  I had
+already died once, as Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more
+than once, died and been resuscitated.  The next time, I might very
+probably fail to get my return ticket after my visit to Hades.  It
+was a rather grim stroke of humor, but I understood its meaning full
+well, and felt the force of its menace.
+
+After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
+strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
+suppressed, crushed out of existence?  Why not as well die in the
+attempt to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous
+movement as in any other way?  I am alone in the world,--alone save
+for my faithful servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human
+race as it were by a single filament.  My father, who was my
+instructor, my companion, my dearest and best friend through all my
+later youth and my earlier manhood, died three years ago and left me
+my own master, with the means of living as might best please my
+fancy.  This season shall decide my fate.  One more experiment, and I
+shall find myself restored to my place among my fellow-beings, or, as
+I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all our mortal infirmities are
+past and forgotten.
+
+I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that
+there shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected
+with my memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly.  It has cost
+me an effort to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more
+reconciled to my lot, with all its possibilities, and among these
+possibilities is a gleam of a better future.  I have been told by my
+advisers, some of them wise, deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men,
+that such a life-destiny should be related by the subject of it for
+the instruction of others, and especially for the light it throws on
+certain peculiarities of human character often wrongly interpreted as
+due to moral perversion, when they are in reality the results of
+misdirected or reversed actions in some of the closely connected
+nervous centres.
+
+For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility
+left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me.  I
+have passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it,
+as I have developed from infancy to manhood.  At first it was mere
+blind instinct about which I had no thought, living like other
+infants the life of impressions without language to connect them in
+series.  In my boyhood I began to be deeply conscious of the
+infirmity which separated me from those around me.  In youth began
+that conflict of emotions and impulses with the antagonistic
+influence of which I have already spoken, a conflict which has never
+ceased, but to which I have necessarily become to a certain degree
+accustomed; and against the dangers of which I have learned to guard
+myself habitually.  That is the meaning of my isolation.  You, young
+man,--if at any time your eyes shall look upon my melancholy record,
+--you at least will understand me.  Does not your heart throb, in the
+presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if it "were
+ready to crack" with its own excess of strain?  What if instead of
+throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat
+again?  You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy
+will look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know
+what it is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and
+the grip of the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron
+virgin of the Inquisition.  Think what it would be if the grasp were
+tightened so that no breath of air could enter your panting chest!
+
+Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored
+friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her
+kindly smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness?  When
+a pretty child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with
+artless grace and trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do
+you tremble, does life palpitate through your whole being, as when
+the maiden of seventeen meets your enamored sight in the glow of her
+rosebud beauty?  Wonder not, then, if the period of mystic attraction
+for you should be that of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom
+the natural current of the instincts has had its course changed as
+that of a stream is changed by a convulsion of nature, so that the
+impression which is new life to you is death to him.
+
+I am now twenty-five years old.  I have reached the time of life
+which I have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit
+of the sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy.  I can
+assign no good reason for this anticipation.  But in writing this
+paper I feel as if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence.
+There is nothing for me to be ashamed of in the story I have told.
+There is no man living who would not have yielded to the sense of
+instantly impending death which seized upon me under the conditions I
+have mentioned.  Martyrs have gone singing to their flaming shrouds,
+but never a man could hold his breath long enough to kill himself; he
+must have rope or water, or some mechanical help, or nature will make
+him draw in a breath of air, and would make him do so though he knew
+the salvation of the human race would be forfeited by that one gasp.
+
+This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same
+way that I have been.  It probably never will; but for all that,
+there are many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in
+themselves in the direction of my unhappy susceptibility.  Others, to
+whom such weakness seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism
+shaken, if not removed, by the calm, judicial statement of the Report
+drawn up for the Royal Academy.  It will make little difference to me
+whether my story is accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely
+a product of the imagination.  I am but a bird of passage that lights
+on the boughs of different nationalities.  I belong to no flock; my
+home may be among the palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks
+of England, the elms that shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I
+build no nest; to-day I am here, to-morrow on the wing.
+
+If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
+shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
+that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit.  If it is only
+curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to
+let it remain unread until I shall have passed away.  If in his
+judgment it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our
+nature,--the repulsions which play such a formidable part in social
+life, and which must be recognized as the correlatives of the
+affinities that distribute the individuals governed by them in the
+face of impediments which seem to be impossibilities,--then it may be
+freely given to the world.
+
+But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of my
+life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be
+illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all
+its saddening features.  Who would not pray that my last gleam of
+light and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?
+
+The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far
+from the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend
+his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered
+for his consideration.
+
+
+THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
+
+Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be
+entertained, excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage
+through pages which he cannot understand without some effort of his
+own, to read the paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon
+it.  If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he
+can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of
+science.  But if he does so leave them he will very probably remain
+sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to
+furnish him with a key.
+
+Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and
+exceptional one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's
+experience will furnish him with its parallel.  But let him look back
+over all his acquaintances, if he has reached middle life, and see if
+he cannot recall more than one who, for some reason or other, shunned
+the society of young women, as if they had a deadly fear of their
+company.  If he remembers any such, he can understand the simple
+statements and natural reflections which are laid before him.
+
+One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
+Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to
+the fate which had fallen upon him.  He did not choose to be pumped
+by the Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns
+of his prying newspaper.  He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest
+mode of avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in
+almost every society into which he might venture.  But he had learned
+to look upon himself very much as he would upon an intimate not
+himself,--upon a different personality.  A young man will naturally
+enough be ashamed of his shyness.  It is something which others
+believe, and perhaps he himself thinks, he might overcome.  But in
+the case of Maurice Kirkwood there was no room for doubt as to the
+reality and gravity of the long enduring effects of his first
+convulsive terror.  He had accepted the fact as he would have
+accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his hearing.  When he
+was questioned by the experts to whom his case was submitted, he told
+them all that he knew about it almost without a sign of emotion.
+Nature was so peremptory with him,--saying in language that had no
+double meaning: "If you violate the condition on which you hold my
+gift of existence I slay you on the spot,"--that he became as
+decisive in his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his
+fate without repining.
+
+Yet it must not be thought for a moment,--it cannot be supposed,--
+that he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the
+coolness of an enforced philosophy.  He bore his burden manfully,
+hard as it was to live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in
+hope.  The thought of throwing it off with his life, as too grievous
+to be borne, was familiar to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as
+unworthy of his manhood.  How he had speculated and dreamed about it
+is plain enough from the paper the reader may remember on Ocean,
+River, and Lake.
+
+With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such
+as may find any interest in them.
+
+
+               ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
+
+                         WITH REMARKS.
+
+Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological
+Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.
+
+"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment
+upon will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have
+learned the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light
+upon her laws by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from
+time to time are observed.  We have done with the lusus naturae of
+earlier generations.  We pay little attention to the stories of
+'miracles,' except so far as we receive them ready-made at the hands
+of the churches which still hold to them.  Not the less do we meet
+with strange and surprising facts, which a century or two ago would
+have been handled by the clergy and the courts, but today are calmly
+recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge of the laws of
+life can throw upon them.  It must be owned that there are stories
+which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in
+their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes
+leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.
+
+" In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend
+to the candid attention of the Academy.  If one were told that a
+young man, a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in
+apparently perfect health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners,
+could not endure the presence of the most attractive young woman, but
+was seized with deadly terror and sudden collapse of all the powers
+of life, if he came into her immediate presence; if it were added
+that this same young man did not shrink from the presence of an old
+withered crone; that he had a certain timid liking for little maidens
+who had not yet outgrown the company of their dolls, the listener
+would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at the absurdity of the
+fable.  Surely, he would say, this must be the fiction of some
+fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of some
+playwright.  It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out.
+A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and
+making love to her grandmother!  This would, of course, be
+overstating the truth of the story, but to such a misinterpretation
+the plain facts lend themselves too easily.  We will relate the
+leading circumstances of the case, as they were told us with perfect
+simplicity and frankness by the subject of an affection which, if
+classified, would come under the general head of Antipathy, but to
+which, if we give it a name, we shall have to apply the term
+Gynophobia, or Fear of Woman."
+
+Here follows the account furnished to the writer of the paper, which
+is in all essentials identical with that already laid before the
+reader.
+
+" Such is the case offered to our consideration.  Assuming its
+truthfulness in all its particulars, it remains to see in the first
+place whether or not it is as entirely exceptional and anomalous as
+it seems at first sight, or whether it is only the last term of a
+series of cases which in their less formidable aspect are well known
+to us in literature, in the records of science, and even in our
+common experience.
+
+"To most of those among us the explanations we are now about to give
+are entirely superfluous.  But there are some whose chief studies
+have been in different directions, and who will not complain if
+certain facts are mentioned which to the expert will seem
+rudimentary, and which hardly require recapitulation to those who are
+familiarly acquainted with the common text-books.
+
+"The heart is the centre of every living movement in the higher
+animals, and in man, furnishing in varying amount, or withholding to
+a greater or less extent, the needful supplies to all parts of the
+system.  If its action is diminished to a certain degree, faintness
+is the immediate consequence; if it is arrested, loss of
+consciousness; if its action is not soon restored, death, of which
+fainting plants the white flag, remains in possession of the system.
+
+"How closely the heart is under the influence of the emotions we need
+not go to science to learn, for all human experience and all
+literature are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of
+this relation.  Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry
+represents the entire life, we might almost say.  Not less forcible
+is the language of Shakespeare, as for instance, in 'Measure for
+Measure:'
+
+   "'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,
+     Making it both unable for itself
+     And dispossessing all my other parts
+     Of necessary fitness?'
+
+"More especially is the heart associated in every literature with the
+passion of love.  A famous old story is that of Galen, who was called
+to the case of a young lady long ailing, and wasting away from some
+cause the physicians who had already seen her were unable to make
+out.  The shrewd old practitioner suspected that love was at the
+bottom of the young lady's malady.  Many relatives and friends of
+both sexes, all of them ready with their sympathy, came to see her.
+The physician sat by her bedside during one of these visits, and in
+an easy, natural way took her hand and placed a finger on her pulse.
+It beat quietly enough until a certain comely young gentleman entered
+the apartment, when it suddenly rose infrequency, and at the same
+moment her hurried breathing, her changing color, pale and flushed by
+turns, betrayed the profound agitation his presence excited.  This
+was enough for the sagacious Greek; love was the disease, the cure of
+which by its like may be claimed as an anticipation of homoeopathy.
+In the frontispiece to the fine old 'Junta' edition of the works of
+Galen, you may find among the wood-cuts a representation of the
+interesting scene, with the title Amantas Dignotio,--the diagnosis,
+or recognition, of the lover.
+
+"Love has many languages, but the heart talks through all of them.
+The pallid or burning cheek tells of the failing or leaping fountain
+which gives it color.  The lovers at the 'Brookside' could hear each
+other's hearts beating.  When Genevieve, in Coleridge's poem, forgot
+herself, and was beforehand with her suitor in her sudden embrace,
+
+   "'T was partly love and partly fear,
+     And partly 't was a bashful art,
+     That I might rather feel than see
+     The swelling of her heart'
+
+"Always the heart, whether its hurried action is seen, or heard, or
+felt.  But it is not always in this way that the 'deceitful' organ
+treats the lover.
+
+    "'Faint heart never won fair lady.'
+
+"This saying was not meant, perhaps, to be taken literally, but it has
+its literal truth.  Many a lover has found his heart sink within
+him,--lose all its force, and leave him weak as a child in his
+emotion at the sight of the object of his affections.  When Porphyro
+looked upon Madeline at her prayers in the chapel, it was too much
+for him:
+
+   "'She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
+     Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint,
+     She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from earthly taint.'
+
+"And in Balzac's novel, 'Cesar Birotteau,' the hero of the story
+'fainted away for-joy at the moment when, under a linden-tree, at
+Sceaux, Constance-Barbe-Josephine accepted him as her future
+husband.'
+
+"One who faints is dead if he does not I come to,' and nothing is
+more likely than that too susceptible lovers have actually gone off
+in this way.  Everything depends on how the heart behaves itself in
+these and similar trying moments.  The mechanism of its actions
+becomes an interesting subject, therefore, to lovers of both sexes,
+and to all who are capable of intense emotions.
+
+"The heart is a great reservoir, which distributes food, drink, air,
+and heat to every part of the system, in exchange for its waste
+material.  It knocks at the gate of every organ seventy or eighty
+times in a minute, calling upon it to receive its supplies and unload
+its refuse.  Between it and the brain there is the closest relation.
+The emotions, which act upon it as we have seen, govern it by a
+mechanism only of late years thoroughly understood.  This mechanism
+can be made plain enough to the reader who is not afraid to believe
+that he can understand it.
+
+"The brain, as all know, is the seat of ideas, emotions, volition.
+It is the great central telegraphic station with which many lesser
+centres are in close relation, from which they receive, and to which
+they transmit, their messages.  The heart has its own little brains,
+so to speak,--small collections of nervous substance which govern its
+rhythmical motions under ordinary conditions.  But these lesser
+nervous centres are to a large extent dominated by influences
+transmitted from certain groups of nerve-cells in the brain and its
+immediate dependencies.
+
+"There are two among the special groups of nerve-cells which produce
+directly opposite effects.  One of these has the power of
+accelerating the action of the heart, while the other has the power
+of retarding or arresting this action.  One acts as the spur, the
+other as the bridle.  According as one or the other predominates, the
+action of the heart will be stimulated or restrained.  Among the
+great modern discoveries in physiology is that of the existence of a
+distinct centre of inhibition, as the restraining influence over the
+heart is called.
+
+"The centre of inhibition plays a terrible part in the history of
+cowardice and of unsuccessful love.  No man can be brave without
+blood to sustain his courage, any more than he can think, as the
+German materialist says, not absurdly, without phosphorus.  The
+fainting lover must recover his circulation, or his lady will lend
+him her smelling-salts and take a gallant with blood in his cheeks.
+Porphyro got over his faintness before he ran away with Madeline, and
+Cesar Birotteau was an accepted lover when he swooned with happiness:
+but many an officer has been cashiered, and many a suitor has been
+rejected, because the centre of inhibition has got the upper hand of
+the centre of stimulation.
+
+"In the well-known cases of deadly antipathy which have been
+recorded, the most frequent cause has been the disturbed and
+depressing influence of the centre of inhibition.  Fainting at the
+sight of blood is one of the commonest examples of this influence.  A
+single impression, in a very early period of atmospheric existence,--
+perhaps, indirectly, before that period, as was said to have happened
+in the case of James the First of England,--may establish a
+communication between this centre and the heart which will remain
+open ever afterwards.  How does a footpath across a field establish
+itself?  Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call accidental, but
+one after another follows it as if he were guided by a chart on which
+it was laid down.  So it is with this dangerous transit between the
+centre of inhibition and the great organ of life.  If once the path
+is opened by the track of some profound impression, that same
+impression, if repeated, or a similar one, is likely to find the old
+footmarks and follow them.  Habit only makes the path easier to
+traverse, and thus the unreasoning terror of a child, of an infant,
+may perpetuate itself in a timidity which shames the manhood of its
+subject.
+
+"The case before us is an exceptional and most remarkable example of
+the effect of inhibition on the heart.
+
+"We will not say that we believe it to be unique in the history of
+the human race; on the contrary, we do not doubt that there have been
+similar cases, and that in some rare instances sudden death has been
+the consequence of seizures like that of the subject of this Report.
+The case most like it is that of Colone Townsend, which is too well
+known to require any lengthened description in this paper.  It is
+enough to recall the main facts.  He could by a voluntary effort
+suspend the action of his heart for a considerable period, during
+which he lay like one dead, pulseless, and without motion.  After a
+time the circulation returned, and he does not seem to have been the
+worse for his dangerous, or seemingly dangerous, experiment.  But in
+his case it was by an act of the will that the heart's action was
+suspended.  In the case before us it is an involuntary impulse
+transmitted from the brain to the inhibiting centre, which arrests
+the cardiac movements.
+
+"What is like to be the further history of the case?
+
+"The subject of this anomalous affliction is now more than twenty
+years old.  The chain of nervous actions has become firmly
+established.  It might have been hoped that the changes of
+adolescence would have effected a transformation of the perverted
+instinct.  On the contrary, the whole force of this instinct throws
+itself on the centre of inhibition, instead of quickening the heart-
+beats, and sending the rush of youthful blood with fresh life through
+the entire system to the throbbing finger-tips.
+
+"Is it probable that time and circumstances will alter a habit of
+nervous interactions so long established?  We are disposed to think
+that there is a chance of its being broken up.  And we are not afraid
+to say that we suspect the old gypsy woman, whose prophecy took such
+hold of the patient's imagination, has hit upon the way in which the
+"spell,' as she called it, is to be dissolved.  She must, in all
+probability, have had a hint of the 'antipatia' to which the youth
+before her was a victim, and its cause, and if so, her guess as to
+the probable mode in which the young man would obtain relief from his
+unfortunate condition was the one which would naturally suggest
+itself.
+
+"If once the nervous impression which falls on the centre of
+inhibition can be made to change its course, so as to follow its
+natural channel, it will probably keep to that channel ever
+afterwards.  And this will, it is most likely, be effected by some
+sudden, unexpected impression.  If he were drowning, and a young
+woman should rescue him, it is by no means impossible that the change
+in the nervous current we have referred to might be brought about as
+rapidly, as easily, as the reversal of the poles in a magnet, which
+is effected in an instant.  But he cannot be expected to throw
+himself into the water just at the right moment when the 'fair lady'
+of the gitana's prophecy is passing on the shore.  Accident may
+effect the cure which art seems incompetent to perform.  It would not
+be strange if in some future seizure he should never come back to
+consciousness.  But it is quite conceivable, on the other hand, that
+a happier event may occur, that in a single moment the nervous
+polarity may be reversed, the whole course of his life changed, and
+his past terrible experiences be to him like a scarce-remembered
+dream.
+
+"This is one, of those cases in which it is very hard to determine
+the wisest course to be pursued.  The question is not unlike that
+which arises in certain cases of dislocation of the bones of the
+neck.  Shall the unfortunate sufferer go all his days with his face
+turned far round to the right or the left, or shall an attempt be
+made to replace the dislocated bones?  an attempt which may succeed,
+or may cause instant death.  The patient must be consulted as to
+whether he will take the chance.  The practitioner may be unwilling
+to risk it, if the patient consents.  Each case must be judged on its
+own special grounds.  We cannot think that this young man is doomed
+to perpetual separation from the society of womanhood during the
+period of its bloom and attraction.  But to provoke another seizure
+after his past experiences would be too much like committing suicide.
+We fear that we must trust to the chapter of accidents.  The strange
+malady--for such it is--has become a second nature, and may require
+as energetic a shock to displace it as it did to bring it into
+existence.  Time alone can solve this question, on which depends the
+well-being and, it may be, the existence of a young man every way
+fitted to be happy, and to give happiness, if restored to his true
+nature."
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.
+
+Dr. Butts sat up late at night reading these papers and reflecting
+upon them.  He was profoundly impressed and tenderly affected by the
+entire frankness, the absence of all attempt at concealment, which
+Maurice showed in placing these papers at his disposal.  He believed
+that his patient would recover from this illness for which he had
+been taking care of him.  He thought deeply and earnestly of what he
+could do for him after he should have regained his health and
+strength.
+
+There were references, in Maurice's own account of himself, which the
+doctor called to mind with great interest after reading his brief
+autobiography.  Some one person--some young woman, it must be--had
+produced a singular impression upon him since those earlier perilous
+experiences through which he had passed.  The doctor could not help
+thinking of that meeting with Euthymia of which she had spoken to
+him.  Maurice, as she said, turned pale,--he clapped his hand to his
+breast.  He might have done so if be had met her chambermaid, or any
+straggling damsel of the village.  But Euthymia was not a young woman
+to be looked upon with indifference.  She held herself like a queen,
+and walked like one, not a stage queen, but one born and bred to
+self-reliance, and command of herself as well as others.  One could
+not pass her without being struck with her noble bearing and spirited
+features.  If she had known how Maurice trembled as he looked upon
+her, in that conflict of attraction and uncontrollable dread,--if she
+had known it!  But what, even then, could she have done?  Nothing but
+get away from him as fast as she could.  As it was, it was a long
+time before his agitation subsided, and his heart beat with its
+common force and frequency.
+
+Dr. Butts was not a male gossip nor a matchmaking go-between.  But he
+could not help thinking what a pity it was that these two young
+persons could not come together as other young people do in the
+pairing season, and find out whether they cared for and were fitted
+for each other.  He did not pretend to settle this question in his
+own mind, but the thought was a natural one.  And here was a gulf
+between them as deep and wide as that between Lazarus and Dives.
+Would it ever be bridged over?  This thought took possession of the
+doctor's mind, and he imagined all sorts of ways of effecting some
+experimental approximation between Maurice and Euthymia.  From this
+delicate subject he glanced off to certain general considerations
+suggested by the extraordinary history he had been reading.  He began
+by speculating as to the possibility of the personal presence of an
+individual making itself perceived by some channel other than any of
+the five senses.  The study of the natural sciences teaches those who
+are devoted to them that the most insignificant facts may lead the
+way to the discovery of the most important, all-pervading laws of the
+universe.  From the kick of a frog's hind leg to the amazing triumphs
+which began with that seemingly trivial incident is a long, a very
+long stride if Madam Galvani had not been in delicate health, which
+was the occasion of her having some frog-broth prepared for her, the
+world of to-day might not be in possession of the electric telegraph
+and the light which blazes like the sun at high noon.  A common-
+looking occurrence, one seemingly unimportant, which had hitherto
+passed unnoticed with the ordinary course of things, was the means of
+introducing us to a new and vast realm of closely related phenomena.
+It was like a key that we might have picked up, looking so simple
+that it could hardly fit any lock but one of like simplicity, but
+which should all at once throw back the bolts of the one lock which
+had defied the most ingenious of our complex implements and open our
+way into a hitherto unexplored territory.
+
+It certainly was not through the eye alone that Maurice felt the
+paralyzing influence.  He could contemplate Euthymia from a distance,
+as he did on the day of the boat-race, without any nervous
+disturbance.  A certain proximity was necessary for the influence to
+be felt, as in the case of magnetism and electricity.  An atmosphere
+of danger surrounded every woman he approached during the period when
+her sex exercises its most powerful attractions.  How far did that
+atmosphere extend, and through what channel did it act?
+
+The key to the phenomena of this case, he believed, was to be found
+in a fact as humble as that which gave birth to the science of
+galvanism and its practical applications.  The circumstances
+connected with the very common antipathy to cats were as remarkable
+in many points of view as the similar circumstances in the case of
+Maurice Kirkwood.  The subjects of that antipathy could not tell what
+it was which disturbed their nervous system.  All they knew was that
+a sense of uneasiness, restlessness, oppression, came over them in
+the presence of one of these animals.  He remembered the fact already
+mentioned, that persons sensitive to this impression can tell by
+their feelings if a cat is concealed in the apartment in which they
+may happen to be.  It may be through some emanation.  It may be
+through the medium of some electrical disturbance.  What if the
+nerve-thrills passing through the whole system of the animal
+propagate themselves to a certain distance without any more regard to
+intervening solids than is shown by magnetism?  A sieve lets sand
+pass through it; a filter arrests sand, but lets fluids pass, glass
+holds fluids, but lets light through; wood shuts out light, but
+magnetic attraction goes through it as sand went through the sieve.
+No good reasons can be given why the presence of a cat should not
+betray itself to certain organizations, at a distance, through the
+walls of a box in which the animal is shut up.  We need not
+disbelieve the stories which allege such an occurrence as a fact and
+a not very infrequent one.
+
+If the presence of a cat can produce its effects under these
+circumstances, why should not that of a human being under similar
+conditions, acting on certain constitutions, exercise its specific
+influence?  The doctor recalled a story told him by one of his
+friends, a story which the friend himself heard from the lips of the
+distinguished actor, the late Mr. Fechter.  The actor maintained that
+Rachel had no genius as an actress.  It was all Samson's training and
+study, according to him, which explained the secret of her wonderful
+effectiveness on the stage.  But magnetism, he said,--magnetism, she
+was full of.  He declared that he was made aware of her presence on
+the stage, when he could not see her or know of her presence
+otherwise, by this magnetic emanation.  The doctor took the story for
+what it was worth.  There might very probably be exaggeration,
+perhaps high imaginative coloring about it, but it was not a whit
+more unlikely than the cat-stories, accepted as authentic.  He
+continued this train of thought into further developments.  Into this
+series of reflections we will try to follow him.
+
+What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded
+the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them
+like a luminous cloud?  Is it not a recognition of the fact that
+these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a
+visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:
+
+    "Bright effluence of bright essence increate"?
+
+The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the
+existence of its correlative, effluence.  There is no good reason
+that I can see, the doctor said to himself, why among the forces
+which work upon the nervous centres there should not be one which
+acts at various distances from its source.  It may not be visible
+like the "glory" of the painters, it may not be appreciable by any
+one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt by the person reached
+by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,--more powerfully,
+perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to its mode of action.
+
+Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the
+unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him,
+just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of
+their presence through some unknown channel?  Is it anything strange
+that the larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a
+consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the
+slighter and feebler one?  Is it strange that this mysterious
+influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the
+period of complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity
+or decadence?  On the contrary, it seems to be in accordance with all
+the analogies of nature,--analogies too often cruel in the sentence
+they pass upon the human female.
+
+Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind
+was this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he
+felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the
+happiness or suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die
+without telling their secret:
+
+How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they
+never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which
+draws man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes,
+in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in
+them than in others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of
+which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the
+possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending
+upon it are left unrealized!  Think what numbers of young men in
+Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy.  Think how
+many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young
+woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a
+companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure,
+so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of
+expression.  Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the
+hopes and terrors of lovers.  Once let loose a strong impulse on the
+centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and
+batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the ball-
+room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five
+minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love.
+
+Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I
+have seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I
+have seen the malady many times.  Only one word has stood between
+many a pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that
+word has got as far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not,
+could not, shape that little word.  All young women are not like
+Coleridge's Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his
+difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer.  So the
+wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has
+just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the
+desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.
+
+Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key
+that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most
+easily of all, the gate of fear.  How terrible is the one fact of
+beauty!--not only the historic wonder of beauty, that "burnt the
+topless towers of Ilium "for the smile of Helen, and fired the
+palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs
+up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent
+for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides.  Paint Beauty with her
+foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her.
+
+The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and
+pictorial imagery.  Drifting along from thought to thought, he
+reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of
+Maurice Kirkwood's story, if it came before the public.
+
+What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the
+village, to be sure!  What scoffing, what ridicule, what
+embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story!
+If the Interviewer got hold of it, how "The People's Perennial and
+Household Inquisitor" would blaze with capitals in its next issue!
+The young fellows' of the place would be disposed to make fun of the
+whole matter.  The young girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what
+would happen when the story got about among them.  "The Sachem" of
+the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome
+so far as the glimpses they had got of him went,--must needs be an
+object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing,
+suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,--poor fellow!
+Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber; bunches
+of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some
+three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others "criss-
+crossed," were growing more frequent as it was understood that the
+patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed.
+If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle
+to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had
+his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the
+risk; for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors,
+let us hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity
+and love of conquest.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.
+
+The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of
+profound prostration.  The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger
+of any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his
+head from the pillow.  But his mind was gradually recovering its
+balance, and he was able to hold some conversation with those about
+him.  His faithful Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and
+watching with him that the village children had to take a second look
+at his face when they passed him to make sure that it was indeed
+their old friend and no other.  But as his master advanced towards
+convalescence and the doctor assured him that he was going in all
+probability to get well, Paolo's face began to recover something of
+its old look and expression, and once more his pockets filled
+themselves with comfits for his little circle of worshipping three
+and four year old followers.
+
+How is Mr. Kirkwood?" was the question with which he was always
+greeted.  In the worst periods of the fever be rarely left his
+master.  When he did, and the question was put to him, he would shake
+his head sadly, sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and
+sobs and faltering words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a
+stalwart man as he was, such a man as soldiers are made of in the
+great Continental armies.
+
+"He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be
+no better," and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a
+passionate burst of lamentation.  But now that he began to feel easy
+about his master, his ready optimism declared itself no less
+transparently.
+
+"He better every day now.  He get well in few weeks, sure.  You see
+him on hoss in little while."  The kind-hearted creature's life was
+bound up in that of his "master," as he loved to call him, in
+sovereign disregard of the comments of the natives, who held
+themselves too high for any such recognition of another as their
+better.  They could not understand how he, so much their superior in
+bodily presence, in air and manner, could speak of the man who
+employed him in any other way than as "Kirkwood," without even
+demeaning himself so far as to prefix a "Mr."  to it.  But "my
+master" Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men
+are born free and equal.  And never was a servant more devoted to a
+master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger.
+Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber
+and getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which
+he was in so much need.  It worried him to see his servant returning
+after too short an absence.  The attendant who had helped him in the
+care of the patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out
+of the house by the urgency of his master's command that he should
+take plenty of exercise in the open air.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although
+the force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to
+which he had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required
+great precautions to be taken.  He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to
+such a degree that he had to be cared for very much as a child is
+tended.  Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could
+hold some conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about
+him.  The doctor waited for the right moment to make mention of the
+manuscript which Maurice had submitted to him.  Up to this time,
+although it had been alluded to and the doctor had told him of the
+intense interest with which he had read it, he had never ventured to
+make it the subject of any long talk, such as would be liable to
+fatigue his patient.  But now he thought the time had come.
+
+"I have been thinking," the doctor said, "of the singular seizures to
+which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think
+about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable
+of receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts
+about your history.  And in the first place, will you allow me to ask
+what led you to this particular place?  It is so much less known to
+the public at large than many other resorts that we naturally ask,
+What brings this or that new visitor among us?  We have no ill-
+tasting, natural spring of bad water to be analyzed by the state
+chemist and proclaimed as a specific.  We have no great gambling-
+houses, no racecourse (except that fox boats on the lake); we have no
+coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any kind, so we ask, What
+brings this or that stranger here?  And I think I may venture to ask
+you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it
+was accident that determined your coming to this place."
+
+"Certainly, doctor," Maurice answered, "I will tell you with great
+pleasure.  Last year I passed on the border of a great river.  The
+year before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean.  I
+wanted this year to be by a lake.  You heard the paper read at the
+meeting of your society, or at least you heard of it,--for such
+matters are always talked over in a village like this.  You can judge
+by that paper, or could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind
+in which I came here.  I was tired of the sullen indifference of the
+ocean and the babbling egotism of the river, always hurrying along on
+its own private business.  I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large,
+tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in particular to do, and
+would leave me to myself and my thoughts.  I had read somewhere about
+the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal landlord and
+motherly landlady and old-fashioned household, and that, though it
+was no longer open as a tavern, I could find a resting-place there
+early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about me
+for a quiet place in which I might pass my summer.  I have found this
+a pleasant residence.  By being up early and out late I have kept
+myself mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of
+life.  The season has gone by too swiftly for me since my dream has
+become a vision."
+
+The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three
+fingers on his pulse.  As he spoke these last words he noticed that
+the pulse fluttered a little,--beat irregularly a few times;
+intermitted; became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter
+than the pallid bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.
+
+"No more talk, now," he said.  "You are too tired to be using your
+voice.  I will hear all the rest another time."
+
+The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point.  What did
+he mean by saying that his dream had become a vision?  This is what
+the doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to
+know.  But his hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him
+unmistakably that the heart had taken the alarm and was losing its
+energy under the depressing nervous influence.  Presently, however,
+it recovered its natural force and rhythm, and a faint flush came
+back to the pale cheek.  The doctor remembered the story of Galen,
+and the young maiden whose complaint had puzzled the physicians.
+
+The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into
+conversation.
+
+"You said something about a dream of yours which had become a
+vision," said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as
+before.  He felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a
+little, stop, then begin again, growing fuller in its beat.  The
+heart had felt the pull of the bridle, but the spur had roused it to
+swift reaction.
+
+"You know the story of my past life, doctor," Maurice answered; "and,
+I will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my
+dreams.  You remember the boat-race?  I watched it from a distance,
+but I held a powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole
+crew of the young ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the
+features, the figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers.  I
+saw the little coxswain fling her bouquet in the track of the other
+boat,--you remember how the race was lost and won,--but I saw one
+face among those young girls which drew me away from all the rest.
+It was that of the young lady who pulled the bow oar, the captain of
+the boat's crew.  I have since learned her name, you know it well,--I
+need not name her.  Since that day I have had many distant glimpses
+of her; and once I met her so squarely that the deadly sensation came
+over me, and I felt that in another moment I should fall senseless at
+her feet.  But she passed on her way and I on mine, and the spasm
+which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I was as well as
+before.  You know that young lady, doctor?"
+
+"I do; and she is a very noble creature.  You are not the first young
+man who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia
+Tower.  And she is well worth knowing more intimately."
+
+The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early
+days, her character, her accomplishments.  To all this he listened
+devoutly, and when the doctor left him he said to himself,
+"I will see her and speak with her, if it costs me my life."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+EUTHYMIA.
+
+"The Wonder" of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show
+of her gymnastic accomplishments.  Her feats, which were so much
+admired, were only her natural exercise.  Gradually the dumb-bells
+others used became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too
+short, the clubs she exercised with seemed as if they were made of
+cork instead of being heavy wood, and all the tests and meters of
+strength and agility had been strained beyond the standards which the
+records of the school had marked as their historic maxima.  It was
+not her fault that she broke a dynamometer one day; she apologized
+for it, but the teacher said he wished he could have a dozen broken
+every year in the same way.  The consciousness of her bodily strength
+had made her very careful in her movements.  The pressure of her hand
+was never too hard for the tenderest little maiden whose palm was
+against her own.  So far from priding herself on her special gifts,
+she was disposed to be ashamed of them.  There were times and places
+in which she could give full play to her muscles without fear or
+reproach.  She had her special costume for the boat and for the
+woods.  She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now and then for the
+sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest where a hawk,
+or it may be an eagle, was raising her little brood of air-pirates.
+
+There were those who spoke of her wanderings in lonely places as an
+unsafe exposure.  One sometimes met doubtful characters about the
+neighborhood, and stories were--told of occurrences which might well
+frighten a young girl, and make her cautious of trusting herself
+alone in the wild solitudes which surrounded the little village..
+Those who knew Euthymia thought her quite equal to taking care of
+herself.  Her very look was enough to ensure the respect of any
+vagabond who might cross her path, and if matters came to the worst
+she would prove as dangerous as a panther.
+
+But it was a pity to associate this class of thoughts with a noble
+specimen of true womanhood.  Health, beauty, strength, were fine
+qualities, and in all these she was rich.  She enjoyed all her
+natural gifts, and thought little about them.  Unwillingly, but over-
+persuaded by some of her friends, she had allowed her arm and hand to
+be modelled.  The artists who saw the cast wondered if it would be
+possible to get the bust of the maiden from whom it was taken.
+Nobody would have dared to suggest such an idea to her except Lurida.
+For Lurida sex was a trifling accident, to be disregarded not only in
+the interests of humanity, but for the sake of art.
+
+"It is a shame," she said to Euthymia, "that you will not let your
+exquisitely moulded form be perpetuated in marble.  You have no right
+to withhold such a model from the contemplation of your fellow-
+creatures.  Think how rare it is to see a woman who truly represents
+the divine idea!  You belong to your race, and not to yourself,--at
+least, your beauty is a gift not to be considered as a piece of
+private property.  Look at the so-called Venus of Milo.  Do you
+suppose the noble woman who was the original of that divinely chaste
+statue felt any scruple about allowing the sculptor to reproduce her
+pure, unblemished perfections?"
+
+Euthymia was always patient with her imaginative friend.  She
+listened to her eloquent discourse, but she could not help blushing,
+used as she was to Lurida's audacities.  "The Terror's" brain had run
+away with a large share of the blood which ought to have gone to the
+nourishment of her general system.  She could not help admiring,
+almost worshipping, a companion whose being was rich in the womanly
+developments with which nature had so economically endowed herself.
+An impoverished organization carries with it certain neutral
+qualities which make its subject appear, in the presence of complete
+manhood and womanhood, like a deaf-mute among speaking persons.  The
+deep blush which crimsoned Euthymia's cheek at Lurida's suggestion
+was in a strange contrast to her own undisturbed expression.  There
+was a range of sensibilities of which Lurida knew far less than she
+did of those many and difficult studies which had absorbed her vital
+forces.  She was startled to see what an effect her proposal had
+produced, for Euthymia was not only blushing, but there was a flame
+in her eyes which she had hardly ever seen before.
+
+"Is this only your own suggestion?" Euthymia said, "or has some one
+been putting the idea into your head?"  The truth was that she had
+happened to meet the Interviewer at the Library, one day, and she was
+offended by the long, searching stare with which that individual had
+honored her.  It occurred to her that he, or some such visitor to the
+place, might have spoken of her to Lurida, or to some other person
+who had repeated what was said to Lurida, as a good subject for the
+art of the sculptor, and she felt all her maiden sensibilities
+offended by the proposition.  Lurida could not understand her
+excitement, but she was startled by it.  Natures which are
+complementary of each other are liable to these accidental collisions
+of feeling.  They get along very well together, none the worse for
+their differences, until all at once the tender spot of one or the
+other is carelessly handled in utter unconsciousness on the part of
+the aggressor, and the exclamation, the outcry, or the explosion
+explains the situation altogether too emphatically.  Such scenes did
+not frequently occur between the two friends, and this little flurry
+was soon over; but it served to warn Lurida that Miss Euthymia Tower
+was not of that class of self-conscious beauties who would be ready
+to dispute the empire of the Venus of Milo on her own ground, in
+defences as scanty and insufficient as those of the marble divinity.
+
+Euthymia had had admirers enough, at a distance, while at school, and
+in the long vacations, near enough to find out that she was anything
+but easy to make love to.  She fairly frightened more than one rash
+youth who was disposed to be too sentimental in her company.  They
+overdid flattery, which she was used to and tolerated, but which
+cheapened the admirer in her estimation, and now and then betrayed
+her into an expression which made him aware of the fact, and was a
+discouragement to aggressive amiability.  The real difficulty was
+that not one of her adorers had ever greatly interested her.  It
+could not be that nature had made her insensible.  It must have been
+because the man who was made for her had never yet shown himself.
+She was not easy to please, that was certain; and she was one of
+those young women who will not accept as a lover one who but half
+pleases them.  She could not pick up the first stick that fell in her
+way and take it to shape her ideal out of.  Many of the good people
+of the village doubted whether Euthymia would ever be married.
+
+"There 's nothing good enough for her in this village," said the old
+landlord of what had been the Anchor Tavern.
+
+"She must wait till a prince comes along," the old landlady said in
+reply.  "She'd make as pretty a queen as any of them that's born to
+it.  Wouldn't she be splendid with a gold crown on her head, and
+di'monds a glitterin' all over her!  D' you remember how handsome she
+looked in the tableau, when the fair was held for the Dorcas Society?
+She had on an old dress of her grandma's,--they don't make anything.
+half so handsome nowadays,--and she was just as pretty as a pictur'.
+But what's the use of good looks if they scare away folks?  The young
+fellows think that such a handsome girl as that would cost ten times
+as much to keep as a plain one.  She must be dressed up like an
+empress,--so they seem to think.  It ain't so with Euthymy: she'd
+look like a great lady dressed anyhow, and she has n't got any more
+notions than the homeliest girl that ever stood before a glass to
+look at herself."
+
+In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions
+were entertained of Miss Euthymia.  The fresh-water fisherman
+represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he
+belonged.  "I tell ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure,
+whose chief occupation was to watch the coming and going of the
+visitors to Arrowhead Village,--"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to
+put up with any o' them slab-sided fellahs that you see hangin'
+raound to look at her every Sunday when she comes aout o' meetin'.
+It's one o' them big gents from Boston or New York that'll step up
+an' kerry her off."
+
+In the mean time nothing could be further from the thoughts of
+Euthymia than the prospect of an ambitious worldly alliance.  The
+ideals of young women cost them many and great disappointments, but
+they save them very often from those lifelong companionships which
+accident is constantly trying to force upon them, in spite of their
+obvious unfitness.  The higher the ideal, the less likely is the
+commonplace neighbor who has the great advantage of easy access, or
+the boarding-house acquaintance who can profit by those vacant hours
+when the least interesting of visitors is better than absolute
+loneliness,--the less likely are these undesirable personages to be
+endured, pitied, and, if not embraced, accepted, for want of
+something better.  Euthymia found so much pleasure in the
+intellectual companionship of Lurida, and felt her own prudence and
+reserve so necessary to that independent young lady, that she had
+been contented, so far, with friendship, and thought of love only in
+an abstract sort of way.  Beneath her abstractions there was a
+capacity of loving which might have been inferred from the expression
+of her features, the light that shone in her eyes, the tones of her
+voice, all of which were full of the language which belongs to
+susceptible natures.  How many women never say to themselves that
+they were born to love, until all at once the discovery opens upon
+them, as the sense that he was born a painter is said to have dawned
+suddenly upon Correggio!
+
+Like all the rest of the village and its visitors, she could not help
+thinking a good deal about the young man lying ill amongst strangers.
+She was not one of those who had sent him the three-cornered notes or
+even a bunch of flowers.  She knew that he was receiving abounding
+tokens of kindness and sympathy from different quarters, and a
+certain inward feeling restrained her from joining in these
+demonstrations.  If he had been suffering from some deadly and
+contagious malady she would have risked her life to help him, without
+a thought that there was any wonderful heroism in such self-devotion.
+Her friend Lurida might have been capable of the same sacrifice, but
+it would be after reasoning with herself as to the obligations which
+her sense of human rights and duties laid upon her, and fortifying
+her courage with the memory of noble deeds recorded of women in
+ancient and modern history.  With Euthymia the primary human
+instincts took precedence of all reasoning or reflection about them.
+All her sympathies were excited by the thought of this forlorn
+stranger in his solitude, but she felt the impossibility of giving
+any complete expression to them.  She thought of Mungo Park in the
+African desert, and she envied the poor negress who not only pitied
+him, but had the blessed opportunity of helping and consoling him.
+How near were these two human creatures, each needing the other!  How
+near in bodily presence, how far apart in their lives, with a barrier
+seemingly impassable between them!
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.
+
+These autumnal fevers, which carry off a large number of our young
+people every year, are treacherous and deceptive diseases.  Not only
+are they liable, as has been mentioned, to various accidental
+complications which may prove suddenly fatal, but too often, after
+convalescence seems to be established, relapses occur which are more
+serious than the disease had appeared to be in its previous course.
+One morning Dr. Butts found Maurice worse instead of better, as he
+had hoped and expected to find him.  Weak as he was, there was every
+reason to fear the issue of this return of his threatening symptoms.
+There was not much to do besides keeping up the little strength which
+still remained.  It was all needed.
+
+Does the reader of these pages ever think of the work a sick man as
+much as a well one has to perform while he is lying on his back and
+taking what we call his "rest"?  More than a thousand times an hour,
+between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand times a week, he
+has to lift the bars of the cage in which his breathing organs are
+confined, to save himself from asphyxia.  Rest!  There is no rest
+until the last long sigh tells those who look upon the dying that the
+ceaseless daily task, to rest from which is death, is at last
+finished.  We are all galley-slaves, pulling at the levers of
+respiration,--which, rising and falling like so many oars, drive us
+across an unfathomable ocean from one unknown shore to another.  No!
+Never was a galley-slave so chained as we are to these four and
+twenty oars, at which we must tug day and night all our life long
+
+The doctor could not find any accidental cause to account for this
+relapse.  It presently occurred to him that there might be some local
+source of infection which had brought on the complaint, and was still
+keeping up the symptoms which were the ground of alarm.  He
+determined to remove Maurice to his own house, where he could be sure
+of pure air, and where he himself could give more constant attention
+to his patient during this critical period of his disease.  It was a
+risk to take, but he could be carried on a litter by careful men, and
+remain wholly passive during the removal.  Maurice signified his
+assent, as he could hardly help doing,--for the doctor's suggestion
+took pretty nearly the form of a command.  He thought it a matter of
+life and death, and was gently urgent for his patient's immediate
+change of residence.  The doctor insisted on having Maurice's books
+and other movable articles carried to his own house, so that he
+should be surrounded by familiar sights, and not worry himself about
+what might happen to objects which he valued, if they were left
+behind him.
+
+All these dispositions were quickly and quietly made, and everything
+was ready for the transfer of the patient to the house of the
+hospitable physician.  Paolo was at the doctor's, superintending the
+arrangement of Maurice's effects and making all ready for his master.
+The nurse in attendance, a trustworthy man enough in the main,
+finding his patient in a tranquil sleep, left his bedside for a
+little fresh air.  While he was at the door he heard a shouting which
+excited his curiosity, and he followed the sound until he found
+himself at the border of the lake.  It was nothing very wonderful
+which had caused the shouting.  A Newfoundland dog had been showing
+off his accomplishments, and some of the idlers were betting as to
+the time it would take him to bring back to his master the various
+floating objects which had been thrown as far from the shore as
+possible.  He watched the dog a few minutes, when his attention was
+drawn to a light wherry, pulled by one young lady and steered by
+another.  It was making for the shore, which it would soon reach.
+The attendant remembered all at once, that he had left his charge,
+and just before the boat came to land he turned and hurried back to
+the patient.  Exactly how long he had been absent he could not have
+said,--perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps longer; the time
+appeared short to him, wearied with long sitting and watching.
+
+It had seemed, when he stole away from Maurice's bedside, that he was
+not in the least needed.  The patient was lying perfectly quiet, and
+to all appearance wanted nothing more than letting alone.  It was
+such a comfort to look at something besides the worn features of a
+sick man, to hear something besides his labored breathing and faint,
+half-whispered words, that the temptation to indulge in these
+luxuries for a few minutes had proved irresistible.
+
+Unfortunately, Maurice's slumbers did not remain tranquil during the
+absence of the nurse.  He very soon fell into a dream, which began
+quietly enough, but in the course of the sudden transitions which
+dreams are in the habit of undergoing became successively anxious,
+distressing, terrifying.  His earlier and later experiences came up
+before him, fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as
+reality.  He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long,
+narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a
+large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into
+the beams and rafters of some old building.  How close the air was in
+the stifling passage through which he was crawling!  The scene
+changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate
+effort, his foot on the floor of a shallow niche, his hold an icicle
+ready to snap in an instant, an abyss below him waiting for his foot
+to slip or the icicle to break.  How thin the air seemed, how
+desperately hard to breathe!  He was thinking of Mont Blanc, it may
+be, and the fearfully rarefied atmosphere which he remembered well as
+one of the great trials in his mountain ascents.  No, it was not Mont
+Blanc,--it was not any one of the frozen Alpine summits; it was Hecla
+that he was climbing
+
+The smoke of the burning mountain was wrapping itself around him; he
+was choking with its dense fumes; he heard the flames roaring around
+him, he felt the hot lava beneath his feet, he uttered a faint cry,
+and awoke.
+
+The room was full of smoke.  He was gasping for breath, strangling in
+the smothering oven which his chamber had become.
+
+The house was on fire!
+
+He tried to call for help, but his voice failed him, and died away in
+a whisper.  He made a desperate effort, and rose so as to sit up in
+the bed for an instant, but the effort was too much for him, and he
+sank back upon his pillow, helpless.  He felt that his hour had come,
+for he could not live in this dreadful atmosphere, and he was left
+alone.  He could hear the crackle of fire as the flame crept along
+from one partition to another.  It was a cruel fate to be left to
+perish in that way,--the fate that many a martyr had had to face,--to
+be first strangled and then burned.  Death had not the terror for him
+that it has for most young persons.  He was accustomed to thinking of
+it calmly, sometimes wistfully, even to such a degree that the
+thought of self-destruction had come upon him as a temptation.  But
+here was death in an unexpected and appalling shape.  He did not know
+before how much he cared to live.  All his old recollections came
+before him as it were in one long, vivid flash.  The closed vista of
+memory opened to its far horizon-line, and past and present were
+pictured in a single instant of clear vision.  The dread moment which
+had blighted his life returned in all its terror.  He felt the
+convulsive spring in the form of a faint, impotent spasm,--the rush
+of air,--the thorns of the stinging and lacerating cradle into which
+he was precipitated.  One after another those paralyzing seizures
+which had been like deadening blows on the naked heart seemed to
+repeat themselves, as real as at the moment of their occurrence.  The
+pictures passed in succession with such rapidity that they appeared
+almost as if simultaneous.  The vision of the "inward eye" was so
+intensified in this moment of peril that an instant was like an hour
+of common existence.  Those who have been very near drowning know
+well what this description means.  The development of a photograph
+may not explain it, but it illustrates the curious and familiar fact
+of the revived recollections of the drowning man's experience.  The
+sensitive plate has taken one look at a scene, and remembers it all,
+
+
+Every little circumstance is there,--the hoof in air, the wing in
+flight, the leaf as it falls, the wave as it breaks.  All there, but
+invisible; potentially present, but impalpable, inappreciable, as if
+not existing at all.  A wash is poured over it, and the whole scene
+comes out in all its perfection of detail.  In those supreme moments
+when death stares a man suddenly in the face the rush of unwonted
+emotion floods the undeveloped pictures of vanished years, stored
+away in the memory, the vast panorama of a lifetime, and in one swift
+instant the past comes out as vividly as if it were again the
+present.  So it was at this moment with the sick man, as he lay
+helpless and felt that he was left to die.  For he saw no hope of
+relief: the smoke was drifting in clouds into the room; the flames
+were very near; if he was not reached and rescued immediately it was
+all over with him.
+
+His past life had flashed before him.  Then all at once rose the
+thought of his future,--of all its possibilities, of the vague hopes
+which he had cherished of late that his mysterious doom would be
+lifted from him.  There was something, then, to be lived for,
+something!  There was a new life, it might be, in store for him, and
+such a new life!  He thought of all he was losing.  Oh, could he but
+have lived to know the meaning of love!  And the passionate desire of
+life came over him,--not the dread of death, but the longing for what
+the future might yet have of happiness for him.
+
+All this took place in the course of a very few moments.  Dreams and
+visions have little to do with measured time, and ten minutes,
+possibly fifteen or twenty, were all that had passed since the
+beginning of those nightmare terrors which were evidently suggested
+by the suffocating air he was breathing.
+
+What had happened?  In the confusion of moving books and other
+articles to the doctor's house, doors and windows had been forgotten.
+Among the rest a window opening into the cellar, where some old
+furniture had been left by a former occupant, had been left unclosed.
+One of the lazy natives, who had lounged by the house smoking a bad
+cigar, had thrown the burning stump in at this open window.  He had
+no particular intention of doing mischief, but he had that
+indifference to consequences which is the next step above the
+inclination to crime.  The burning stump happened to fall among the
+straw of an old mattress which had been ripped open.  The smoker went
+his way without looking behind him, and it so chanced that no other
+person passed the house for some time.  Presently the straw was in a
+blaze, and from this the fire extended to the furniture, to the
+stairway leading up from the cellar, and was working its way along
+the entry under the stairs leading up to the apartment where Maurice
+was lying.
+
+The blaze was fierce and swift, as it could not help being with such
+a mass of combustibles,--loose straw from the mattress, dry old
+furniture, and old warped floors which had been parching and
+shrinking for a score or two of years.  The whole house was, in the
+common language of the newspaper reports, "a perfect tinder-box," and
+would probably be a heap of ashes in half an hour.  And there was
+this unfortunate deserted sick man lying between life and death,
+beyond all help unless some unexpected assistance should come to his
+rescue.
+
+As the attendant drew near the house where Maurice was lying, he was
+horror-struck to see dense volumes of smoke pouring out of the lower
+windows.  It was beginning to make its way through the upper windows,
+also, and presently a tongue of fire shot out and streamed upward
+along the side of the house.  The man shrieked Fire!  Fire!  with all
+his might, and rushed to the door of the building to make his way to
+Maurice's room and save him.  He penetrated but a short distance
+when, blinded and choking with the smoke, he rushed headlong down the
+stairs with a cry of despair that roused every man, woman, and child
+within reach of a human voice.  Out they came from their houses in
+every quarter of the village.  The shout of Fire!  Fire!  was the
+chief aid lent by many of the young and old.  Some caught up pails
+and buckets: the more thoughtful ones filling them; the hastier
+snatching them up empty, trusting to find water nearer the burning
+building.
+
+Is the sick man moved?
+
+This was the awful question first asked,--for in the little village
+all knew that Maurice was about being transferred to the doctor's
+house.  The attendant, white as death, pointed to the chamber where
+he had left him, and gasped out,
+
+"He is there!"
+
+A ladder!  A ladder!  was the general cry, and men and boys rushed
+off in search of one.  But a single minute was an age now, and there
+was no ladder to be had without a delay of many minutes.  The sick
+man was going to be swallowed up in the flames before it could
+possibly arrive.  Some were going for a blanket or a coverlet, in the
+hope that the young man might have strength enough to leap from the
+window and be safely caught in it.  The attendant shook his head, and
+said faintly,
+
+"He cannot move from his bed."
+
+One of the visitors at the village,--a millionaire, it was said,--a
+kind-hearted man, spoke in hoarse, broken tones:
+
+"A thousand dollars to the man that will bring him from his chamber!"
+
+The fresh-water fisherman muttered, "I should like to save the man
+and to see the money, but it ain't a thaousan' dollars, nor ten
+thaousan' dollars, that'll pay a fellah for burnin' to death,--or
+even chokin' to death, anyhaow."
+
+The carpenter, who knew the framework of every house in the village,
+recent or old, shook his head.
+
+"The stairs have been shored up," he said, "and when the fists that
+holds 'em up goes, down they'll come.  It ain't safe for no man to go
+over them stairs.  Hurry along your ladder,--that's your only
+chance."
+
+All was wild confusion around the burning house.  The ladder they had
+gone for was missing from its case,--a neighbor had carried it off
+for the workmen who were shingling his roof.  It would never get
+there in time.  There was a fire-engine, but it was nearly half a
+mile from the lakeside settlement.  Some were throwing on water in an
+aimless, useless way; one was sending a thin stream through a garden
+syringe: it seemed like doing something, at least.  But all hope of
+saving Maurice was fast giving way, so rapid was the progress of the
+flames, so thick the cloud of smoke that filled the house and poured
+from the windows.  Nothing was heard but confused cries, shrieks of
+women, all sorts of orders to do this and that, no one knowing what
+was to be done.  The ladder!  The ladder! Five minutes more and it
+will be too late!
+
+In the mean time the alarm of fire had reached Paolo, and he had
+stopped his work of arranging Maurice's books in the same way as that
+in which they had stood in his apartment, and followed in the
+direction of the sound, little thinking that his master was lying
+helpless in the burning house.  "Some chimney afire," he said to
+himself; but he would go and take a look, at any rate.
+
+Before Paolo had reached the scene of destruction and impending
+death, two young women, in boating dresses of decidedly Bloomerish
+aspect, had suddenly joined the throng.  "The Wonder" and "The
+Terror" of their school-days--Miss Euthymia rower and Miss Lurida
+Vincent had just come from the shore, where they had left their
+wherry.  A few hurried words told them the fearful story.  Maurice
+Kirkwood was lying in the chamber to which every eye was turned,
+unable to move, doomed to a dreadful death.  All that could be hoped
+was that he would perish by suffocation rather than by the flames,
+which would soon be upon him.  The man who had attended him had just
+tried to reach his chamber, but had reeled back out of the door,
+almost strangled by the smoke.  A thousand dollars had been offered
+to any one who would rescue the sick man, but no one had dared to
+make the attempt; for the stairs might fall at any moment, if the
+smoke did not blind and smother the man who passed them before they
+fell.
+
+The two young women looked each other in the face for one swift
+moment.
+
+"How can he be reached?" asked Lurida.  "Is there nobody that will
+venture his life to save a brother like that?"
+
+"I will venture mine," said Euthymia.
+
+"No!  no!" shrieked Lurida,--"not you! not you!  It is a man's work,
+not yours!  You shall not go!"  Poor Lurida had forgotten all her
+theories in this supreme moment.  But Euthymia was not to be held
+back.  Taking a handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in a pail
+of water and bound it about her head.  Then she took several deep
+breaths of air, and filled her lungs as full as they would hold.  She
+knew she must not take a single breath in the choking atmosphere if
+she could possibly help it, and Euthymia was noted for her power of
+staying under water so long that more than once those who saw her
+dive thought she would never come up again.  So rapid were her
+movements that they paralyzed the bystanders, who would forcibly have
+prevented her from carrying out her purpose.  Her imperious
+determination was not to be resisted.  And so Euthymia, a willing
+martyr, if martyr she was to be, and not saviour, passed within the
+veil that hid the sufferer.
+
+Lurida turned deadly pale, and sank fainting to the ground.  She was
+the first, but not the only one, of her sex that fainted as Euthymia
+disappeared in the smoke of the burning building.  Even the rector
+grew very white in the face,--so white that one of his vestry-men
+begged him to sit down at once, and sprinkled a few drops of water on
+his forehead, to his great disgust and manifest advantage.  The old
+landlady was crying and moaning, and her husband was wiping his eyes
+and shaking his head sadly.
+
+"She will nevar come out alive," he said solemnly.
+
+"Nor dead, neither," added the carpenter.  "Ther' won't be nothing
+left of neither of 'em but ashes."  And the carpenter hid his face in
+his hands.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman had pulled out a rag which he called a
+"hangkercher,"--it had served to carry bait that morning,--and was
+making use of its best corner to dry the tears which were running
+down his cheeks.  The whole village was proud of Euthymia, and with
+these more quiet signs of grief were mingled loud lamentations,
+coming alike from old and young.
+
+All this was not so much like a succession of events as it was like a
+tableau.  The lookers-on were stunned with its suddenness, and before
+they had time to recover their bewildered senses all was lost, or
+seemed lost.  They felt that they should never look again on either
+of those young faces.
+
+The rector, not unfeeling by nature, but inveterately professional by
+habit, had already recovered enough to be thinking of a text for the
+funeral sermon.  The first that occurred to him was this,--vaguely,
+of course, in the background of consciousness:
+
+"Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego came forth of the midst of the
+fire."
+
+The village undertaker was of naturally sober aspect and reflective
+disposition.  He had always been opposed to cremation, and here was a
+funeral pile blazing before his eyes.  He, too, had his human
+sympathies, but in the distance his imagination pictured the final
+ceremony, and how he himself should figure in a spectacle where the
+usual centre piece of attraction would be wanting,--perhaps his own
+services uncalled for.
+
+Blame him not, you whose garden-patch is not watered with the tears
+of mourners.  The string of self-interest answers with its chord to
+every sound; it vibrates with the funeral-bell, it finds itself
+trembling to the wail of the De Profundis.  Not always,--not always;
+let us not be cynical in our judgments, but common human nature, we
+may safely say, is subject to those secondary vibrations under the
+most solemn and soul-subduing influences.
+
+It seems as if we were doing great wrong to the scene we are
+contemplating in delaying it by the description of little
+circumstances and individual thoughts and feelings.  But linger as we
+may, we cannot compress into a chapter--we could not crowd into a
+volume--all that passed through the minds and stirred the emotions of
+the awe-struck company which was gathered about the scene of danger
+and of terror.  We are dealing with an impossibility: consciousness
+is a surface; narrative is a line.
+
+Maurice had given himself up for lost.  His breathing was becoming
+every moment more difficult, and he felt that his strength could hold
+out but a few minutes longer.
+
+"Robert!" he called in faint accents.  But the attendant was not
+there to answer.
+
+"Paolo!  Paolo!" But the faithful servant, who would have given his
+life for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd
+was gathered.
+
+"Oh, for a breath of air!  Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed!
+Too late!  Too late!" he gasped, with what might have seemed his
+dying expiration.
+
+"Not too late!" The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as
+if it had come down to him from heaven.
+
+In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the
+arms of--a woman!
+
+Out of the stifling chamber,--over the burning stairs,--close by the
+tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,--out into
+the open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as
+if he had been a babe, in the strong arms of "The Wonder" of the
+gymnasium, the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the
+use she was to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl
+accomplishments.
+
+Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers!  It was a sound
+that none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear
+again, unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a
+sinking vessel.  Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their
+emotion, who had stood in white despair as they thought of these two
+young lives soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern
+men--the old sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron
+tradesmen of the city counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it
+was like a convulsion that overcame natures unused to those deeper
+emotions which many who are capable of experiencing die without ever
+knowing.
+
+This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared
+at the same moment.
+
+As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his
+eyes opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost
+supernatural lucidity.  Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was
+still supporting him.  His head was resting on her bosom.  Through
+his awakening senses stole the murmurs of the living cradle which
+rocked him with the wavelike movements of respiration, the soft
+susurrus of the air that entered with every breath, the double beat
+of the heart which throbbed close to his ear.  And every sense, and
+every instinct, and every reviving pulse told him in language like a
+revelation from another world that a woman's arms were around
+him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace had
+brought him.
+
+She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the
+doctor made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp
+command:--
+
+"Do not move him a hair's breadth," he said.  "Wait until the litter
+comes.  Any sudden movement might be dangerous.  Has anybody a brandy
+flask about him?"
+
+One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather
+awkward, but did not come forward.
+
+The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.
+
+"I han't got no brandy," he said, "but there's a drop or two of old
+Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any
+help.  I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n'
+chilled."
+
+So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla
+stamped on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more
+of the specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures
+which happen to persons of his calling.
+
+The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the
+aid of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment.  So poor
+Paolo, in an agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as
+possible, and had to content himself with asking all sorts of
+questions and repeating all the prayers he could think of to Our Lady
+and to his holy namesake the Apostle.
+
+The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully.
+"Take a few drops of this cordial," he said, as he held it to his
+patient's lips.  "Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring.  I
+will watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved.  The litter is
+near by, waiting."  Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color.  The
+"Old Medford" knew its business.  It had knocked over its tens of
+thousands; it had its redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor
+fellow now and then.  It did this for Maurice very effectively.  When
+he seemed somewhat restored, the doctor had the litter brought to his
+side, and Euthymia softly resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo
+and the attendant Robert lifted with the aid of the doctor, who
+walked by the patient as he was borne to the home where Mrs. Butts
+had made all ready for his reception.
+
+As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary
+duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old
+woman over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her
+back from her long fainting fit.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+THE INEVITABLE.
+
+Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as
+elsewhere?  It could not seem strange to the good people of that
+place and their visitors that these two young persons, brought
+together under circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of
+which the human soul is capable, should become attached to each
+other.  But the bond between them was stronger than any knew, except
+the good doctor, who had learned the great secret of Maurice's life.
+For the first time since his infancy he had fully felt the charm
+which the immediate presence of youthful womanhood carries with it.
+He could hardly believe the fact when he found himself no longer the
+subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had had many and
+threatening experiences.
+
+It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
+possibly do it.  Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state
+of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence.
+Only by what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to
+suffocation and the mental anguish through which he had passed.  It
+was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young
+woman to whom he owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the
+revolution in his nervous system which would be the beginning of a
+new existence, it would be of far more value as a restorative agency
+than any or all of the drugs in the pharmacopoeia.  He told this to
+Euthymia, and explained the matter to her parents and friends.  She
+must go with him on some of his visits.  Her mother should go with
+her, or her sister; but this was a case of life and death, and no
+maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.
+
+The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a
+scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of
+the old edition of Galen.  The doctor was perhaps the most agitated
+of the little group.  He went before the others, took his seat by the
+bedside, and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse.
+As Euthymia entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant
+as if with a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and
+strong, comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful
+stimulus.  Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to
+disguise its difficulty.
+
+"Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, and
+handed him a white chrysanthemum.  He took it from her hand, and
+before she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a
+gentle constraint.  What could she do?  Here was the young man whose
+life she had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in
+danger from the disease which had almost worn out his powers of
+resistance.
+
+"Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side," said the doctor.  "He wants to
+thank you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death
+which seemed inevitable."
+
+Not many words could Maurice command.  He was weak enough for womanly
+tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with
+the dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
+
+The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens--it; it
+lets the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken
+bed.  The tyrannous habit was broken.  The prophecy of the gitana had
+verified itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman
+bad conquered and abolished.
+
+The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from
+the time of his restoration to his natural conditions.  His
+convalescence was very slow and gradual, but no further accident
+interrupted its even progress.  The season was over, the summer
+visitors had left Arrowhead Village; the chrysanthemums were going
+out of flower, the frosts had come, and Maurice was still beneath the
+roof of the kind physician.  The relation between him and his
+preserver was so entirely apart from all common acquaintances and
+friendships that no ordinary rules could apply to it.  Euthymia
+visited him often during the period of his extreme prostration.
+
+"You must come every day," the doctor said.  "He gains with every
+visit you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day."  So
+she came and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her
+company in his presence.  He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed;
+and at last Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to
+walk about the room.  She was startled.  She had thought of herself
+as a kind of nurse, but the young gentleman could hardly be said to
+need a nurse any longer.  She had scruples about making any further
+visits.  She asked Lurida what she thought about it.
+
+"Think about it?" said Lurida.  "Why should n't you go to see a
+brother as well as a sister, I should like to know?  If you are
+afraid to go to see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate.
+If you would rather have me go than go yourself, I will do it, and
+let people talk just as much as they want to.  Shall I go instead of
+you?"
+
+Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
+patient.  The doctor had told her he thought there were special
+reasons for her own course in coming daily to see him.  "I am
+afraid," she said, "you are too bright to be safe for him in his
+weak state.  Your mind is such a stimulating one, you know.  A dull
+sort of person like myself is better for him just now.  I will
+continue visiting him as long as the doctor says it is important that
+I should; but you must defend me, Lurida,--I know you can explain it
+all so that people will not blame me."
+
+Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating head-
+voice would be in a convalescent's chamber.  She knew how that active
+mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when what he
+wanted was rest of every faculty.  Were not these good and sufficient
+reasons for her decision?  What others could there be?
+
+So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that
+she was continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to
+look too well to be called an invalid.  It was a dangerous condition
+of affairs, and the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in
+their comments.  Free, but kindly, for the story of the rescue had
+melted every heart; and what could be more natural than that these
+two young people whom God had brought together in the dread moment of
+peril should find it hard to tear themselves asunder after the hour
+of danger was past?  When gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay
+his debts; and if Maurice gave his heart to Euthymia, would not she
+receive it as payment in full?
+
+The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
+Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in a
+magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the
+austral the boreal.  It was well, perhaps, that this change took
+place while he was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness.
+For all the long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found
+their natural channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ
+which throbs in response to every profound emotion.  As his health
+gradually returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his
+cheek, a glitter in his eyes, a something in the tone of his voice,
+which altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway
+of friendly intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of
+which her woman's eye could read plainly enough, "Dangerous passing."
+
+"You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood," she said, "that I
+think I had better not play Sister of Charity any longer.  The next
+time we meet I hope you will be strong enough to call on me."
+
+She was frightened to see how pale he turned,--he was weaker than she
+thought.  There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
+looked up from the stocking she was knitting.  They had forgotten the
+good woman's presence.
+
+Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a
+stitch at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she
+listened to what followed.
+
+"No! you must not leave me.  You must never leave me.  You saved my
+life.  But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can
+ever know.  To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live
+henceforth, if I am to live at all.  All I am, all I hope,--will you
+take this poor offering from one who owes you everything, whose lips
+never touched those of woman or breathed a word of love before you?"
+
+What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the
+depth of a passion which had never before found expression.
+
+Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear.  But
+she told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the
+tableaux they had had in September to compare with what she then saw.
+It was indeed a pleasing picture which those two young heads
+presented as Euthymia gave her inarticulate but infinitely expressive
+answer to the question of Maurice Kirkwood.  The good-hearted woman
+thought it time to leave the young people.  Down went the stocking
+with the needles in it; out of her lap tumbled the ball of worsted,
+rolling along the floor with its yarn trailing after it, like some
+village matron who goes about circulating from hearth to hearth,
+leaving all along her track the story of the new engagement or of the
+arrival of the last "little stranger."
+
+Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead
+Village that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia
+Tower.
+
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
+
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May 18.
+
+MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar
+as the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the
+roses came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar
+and grand gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of
+which you are the mistress?  You must not forget your old Arrowhead
+Village friends.  What am I saying?---you forget them!  No, dearest,
+I know your heart too well for that!  You are not one of those who
+lay aside their old friendships as they do last years bonnet when
+they get a new one.  You have told me all about yourself and your
+happiness, and now you want me to tell you about myself and what is
+going on in our little place.
+
+And first about myself.  I have given up the idea of becoming a
+doctor.  I have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of
+certainties, of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in
+probabilities.  The practice of the art is so mixed up with the
+deepest human interests that it is hard to pursue it with that even
+poise of the intellect which is demanded by science.  I want
+knowledge pure and simple,--I do not fancy having it mixed.  Neither
+do I like the thought of passing my life in going from one scene of
+suffering to another; I am not saintly enough for such a daily
+martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy occupation.  I
+fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never wanted to see
+another.  I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician, if the right
+one asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at present.
+Yes, I think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife.  I could teach
+him a good deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of
+nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the French women call their
+tantrums.  I don't know but I should be willing to let him try his
+new medicines on me.  If he were a homeopath, I know I should; for if
+a billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my tea or
+coffee, I don't feel afraid that a billionth of a grain of anything
+would poison me,--no, not if it were snake-venom; and if it were not
+disgusting, I would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to
+please my husband.  But if I ever become a doctor's wife, my husband
+will not be one of that kind of practitioners, you may be sure of
+that, nor an "eclectic," nor a "faith-cure man."  On the whole, I
+don't think I want to be married at all.  I don't like the male
+animal very well (except such noble specimens as your husband).  They
+are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex is concerned, and I
+often think we could get on better without them.
+
+However, the creatures are useful in the Society.  They send us
+papers, some of them well worth reading.  You have told me so often
+that you would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to
+read some of the papers sent to it if they happened to be
+interesting, that I have laid aside one or two manuscripts expressly
+for your perusal.  You will get them by and by.
+
+I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you.  Arrowhead
+Village misses him dreadfully, I can tell you.  That is the reason
+people become so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in
+their natures?  I suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood
+down to our Northern standard.  Then they are so child-like, whereas
+the native of these latitudes is never young after he is ten or
+twelve years old.  Mother says,--you know mother's old-fashioned
+notions, and how shrewd and sensible she is in spite of them,--mother
+says that when she was a girl families used to import young men and
+young women from the country towns, who called themselves "helps,"
+not servants,--no, that was Scriptural; "but they did n't know
+everything down in Judee," and it is not good American language.  She
+says that these people would live in the same household until they
+were married, and the women often remain in the same service until
+they died or were old and worn out, and then, what with the money
+they had saved and the care and assistance they got from their former
+employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old age, and be buried
+in the family lot.  Mother has made up her mind to the change, but
+grandmother is bitter about it.  She says there never was a country
+yet where the population was made up of "ladies" and "gentlemen," and
+she does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a spread eagle on
+a copper makes a gold dollar of it.  She is a pessimist after her own
+fashion.  She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our people.  No
+loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political edifice,
+she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no
+reverence of the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to
+make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls
+"universal suffrage" emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct
+we all must drink from.  "Universal suffrage!"  I suppose we women
+don't belong to the universe!  Wait until we get a chance at the
+ballot-box, I tell grandma, and see if we don't wash out the sewers
+before they reach the aqueduct!  But my pen has run away with men I
+was thinking of Paolo, and what a pleasant thing it is to have one of
+those child-like, warm-hearted, attachable, cheerful, contented,
+humble, faithful, companionable, but never presuming grownup children
+of the South waiting on one, as if everything he could do for one was
+a pleasure, and carrying a look of content in his face which makes
+every one who meets him happier for a glimpse of his features.
+
+It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and
+servant, intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual
+interest in each other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the
+advantages which belong to domestic service in the better class of
+families, should be almost wholly confined to aliens and their
+immediate descendants.  Why should Hannah think herself so much
+better than Bridget?  When they meet at the polls together, as they
+will before long, they will begin to feel more of an equality than is
+recognized at present.  The native female turns her nose up at the
+idea of "living out;" does she think herself so much superior to the
+women of other nationalities?  Our women will have to come to it,--so
+grandmother says,--in another generation or two, and in a hundred
+years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of old
+"Miss Pollys" and "Miss Betseys" who have lived half a century in
+the same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in
+time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well
+as a broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot
+virtues of contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet
+the barren and hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
+
+There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to
+tell you.  There is an engagement you will want to know all about.
+It came to pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I
+remember, and shall never forget as long as we live.  It seems that
+the young fellow who pulled the bow oar of that men's college boat
+which we had the pleasure of beating got some glimpses of Georgina,
+our handsome stroke oar.  I believe he took it into his head that it
+was she who threw the bouquet that won the race for us.  He was, as
+you know, greatly mistaken, and ought to have made love to me, only
+he did n't.  Well, it seems he came posting down to the Institute
+just before the vacation was over, and there got a sight of Georgina.
+I wonder whether she told him she didn't fling the bouquet!  Anyhow,
+the acquaintance began in that way, and now it seems that this young
+fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but with a good many
+months more to pass in college, is her captive.  It was too bad.
+Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit!  No
+matter, the old Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
+
+You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts.  They say he has just been
+offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges.  I
+asked him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not.
+"But," said be, "suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you
+think I ought to accept it and leave Arrowhead Village?  Let us talk
+it over," said he, "just as if I had had such an offer."  I told him
+he ought to stay.  There are plenty of men that can get into a
+Professor's chair, I said, and talk like Solomons to a class of
+wondering pupils: but once get a really good doctor in a place, a man
+who knows all about everybody, whether they have this or that
+tendency, whether when they are sick they have a way of dying or a
+way of getting well, what medicines agree with them and what drugs
+they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think nothing is
+the matter with them until they are dead as smoked herring, or of the
+sort that send for the minister if they get a stomach-ache from
+eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the people within
+half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a
+regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be
+replaced like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a
+Waltham watch.  Don't go!  said I.  Stay here and save our precious
+lives, if you can, or at least put us through in the proper way, so
+that we needn't be ashamed of ourselves for dying, if we must die.
+Well, Dr. Butts is not going to leave us.  I hope you will have no
+unwelcome occasion for his services,--you are never ill, you know,--
+but, anyhow, he is going to be here, and no matter what happens he
+will be on hand.
+
+The village news is not of a very exciting character.  Item 1.  A new
+house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband lived
+while he was here.  It was planned by one of the autochthonous
+inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences
+that the natural man could educe from his original perversity of
+intellect.  To get at any one room you must pass through every other.
+It is blind, or nearly so, on the only side which has a good
+prospect, and commands a fine view of the barn and pigsty through
+numerous windows.  Item 2.  We have a small fire-engine near the new
+house which can be worked by a man or two, and would be equal to the
+emergency of putting out a bunch of fire-crackers.  Item 3.  We have
+a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new fire-engine, so if the new
+house catches fire, like its predecessor, and there should happen to,
+be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got out without running
+the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.  What a blessed
+thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no ladder at
+hand on the day of the great rescue!  If there had been, what a
+change in your programme of life!  You remember that "cup of tea
+spilt on Mrs. Masham's apron," which we used to read of in one of
+Everett's Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the
+affairs of Europe.  I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever
+a Boston matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the
+tea-chests had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,--but no
+matter about that, now.  That is the way things come about in this
+world.  I must write a lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly,
+fortunate calamities.  It will be just the converse of that odd essay
+of Swift's we read together, the awkward and stupid things done with
+the best intentions.  Perhaps I shall deliver the lecture in your
+city: you will come and hear it, and bring him, won't
+you, dearest?
+Always, your loving
+
+LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia!  And are you,
+and is your husband, and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and
+happy as you have been and as you ought to be?  I suppose our small
+village seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now
+that you have become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great
+city.  For all that, it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can
+tell you.  We have sleighing parties,--I never go to them, myself,
+because I can't keep warm, and my mind freezes up when my blood cools
+down below 95 or 96 deg. Fahrenheit.  I had a great deal rather sit
+by a good fire and read about Arctic discoveries.  But I like very
+well to hear the bells' jingling and to see the young people trying
+to have a good time as hard as they do at a picnic.  It may be that
+they do, but to me a picnic is purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other
+place, where, as my favorite Milton says, "frost performs the effect
+of fire."  I believe I have quoted him correctly; I ought to, for I
+could repeat half his poems from memory once, if I cannot now.
+
+You must have plenty of excitement in your city life.  I suppose you
+recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the "Household
+Inquisitor:" "Mrs. E.  K., very beautiful, in an elegant," etc., etc,
+"with pearls," etc., etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all
+that you wear, no matter what it is!
+
+I am so glad that you have married a scholar!  Why should not
+Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office
+which has been offered him?  It seems to me that he would find
+himself in exactly the right place.  He can talk in two or three
+languages, has good manners, and a wife who--well, what shall I say
+of Mrs. Kirkwood but that "she would be good company for a queen," as
+our old friend the quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say?
+I should so like to see you presented at Court!  It seems to me that
+I should be willing to hold your train for the sake of seeing you in
+your court feathers and things.
+
+As for myself, I have been thinking of late that I would become
+either a professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or
+college for girls.  I have tried the first business a little.  Last
+month I delivered a lecture on Quaternions.  I got three for my
+audience; two came over from the Institute, and one from that men's
+college which they try to make out to be a university, and where no
+female is admitted unless she belongs among the quadrupeds.  I
+enjoyed lecturing, but the subject is a difficult one, and I don't
+think any one of them had any very clear notion of what I was talking
+about, except Rhodora,--and I know she did n't.  To tell the truth, I
+was lecturing to instruct myself.  I mean to try something easier
+next time.  I have thought of the Basque language and literature.
+What do you say to that?
+
+The Society goes on famously.  We have had a paper presented and read
+lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the
+weaker sort.  The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-
+Lettres at that men's college over there.  He is dreadfully hard on
+the poor "poets," as they call themselves.  It seems that a great
+many young persons, and more especially a great many young girls, of
+whom the Institute has furnished a considerable proportion, have
+taken to sending him their rhymed productions to be criticised,--
+expecting to be praised, no doubt, every one of them.  I must give
+you one of the sauciest extracts from his paper in his own words:
+
+"It takes half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of
+both sexes.  They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I
+recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness,
+and the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence
+of ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority.  Of course there are
+exceptions to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the
+presumption is always against the rhymester as compared with the less
+pretentious persons about him or her, busy with some useful calling,
+--too busy to be tagging rhymed commonplaces together.  Just now
+there seems to be an epidemic of rhyming as bad as the dancing mania,
+or the sweating sickness.  After reading a certain amount of
+manuscript verse one is disposed to anathematize the inventor of
+homophonous syllabification.  [This phrase made a great laugh when it
+was read.] This, that is rhyming, must have been found out very
+early,
+
+     "'Where are you, Adam?'
+
+     "'Here am I, Madam;'
+
+"but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall.
+The intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the
+conversational intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled
+Paradise itself.  Milton would not have them even in Paradise Lost,
+you remember.  For my own part, I wish certain rhymes could be
+declared contraband of written or printed language.  Nothing should
+be allowed to be hurled at the world or whirled with it, or furled
+upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away from the
+skies, in spite of os homini sublime dedit; youth should be coupled
+with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of
+her birth; death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath,
+nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bowers
+to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb.  We have
+rhyming dictionaries,--let us have one from which all rhymes are
+rigorously excluded.  The sight of a poor creature grubbing for
+rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious,
+rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical
+operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with
+jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel.  Work, work of some
+kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles!
+No,--no,--no!  I want to see the young people in our schools and
+academies and colleges, and the graduates of these institutions,
+lifted up out of the little Dismal Swamp of self-contemplating and
+self-indulging and self-commiserating emotionalism which is
+surfeiting the land with those literary sandwiches,--thin slices of
+tinkling sentimentality between two covers looking like hard-baked
+gilt gingerbread.  But what faces these young folks make up at my
+good advice!  They get tipsy on their rhymes.  Nothing intoxicates
+one like his--or her--own verses, and they hold on to their metre-
+ballad-mongering as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to
+the gas-bag."
+
+We laughed over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us
+pretty hard.  The best part of the joke is that the old man himself
+published a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is
+good reason to think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up
+all the copies he can find in the shops.  No matter what they say, I
+can't help agreeing with him about this great flood of "poetry," as
+it calls itself, and looking at the rhyming mania much as he does.
+
+How I do love real poetry!  That is the reason hate rhymes which have
+not a particle of it in them.  The foolish scribblers that deal in
+them are like bad workmen in a carpenter's shop.  They not only turn
+out bad jobs of work, but they spoil the tools for better workmen.
+There is hardly a pair of rhymes in the English language that is not
+so dulled and hacked and gapped by these 'prentice hands that a
+master of the craft hates to touch them, and yet he cannot very well
+do without them.  I have not been besieged as the old Professor has
+been with such multitudes of would-be-poetical aspirants that he
+could not even read their manuscripts, but I have had a good many
+letters containing verses, and I have warned the writers of the
+delusion under which they were laboring.
+
+You may like to know that I have just been translating some extracts
+from the Greek Anthology.  I send you a few specimens of my work,
+with a Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I hope you will find
+something of the Greek rhythm in my versions, and that I have caught
+a spark of inspiration from the impassioned Lesbian.  I have found
+great delight in this work, at any rate, and am never so happy as
+when I read from my manuscript or repeat from memory the lines into
+which I have transferred the thought of the men and women of two
+thousand years ago, or given rhythmical expression to my own
+rapturous feelings with regard to them.  I must read you my
+Dedication to the Shade of Sappho.  I cannot help thinking that you
+will like it better than either of my last two, The Song of the
+Roses, or The Wail of the Weeds.
+
+How I do miss you, dearest!  I want you: I want you to listen to what
+I have written; I want you to hear all about my plans for the future;
+I want to look at you, and think how grand it must be to feel one's
+self to be such a noble and beautiful-creature; I want to wander in
+the woods with you, to float on the lake, to share your life and talk
+over every day's doings with you.  Alas!  I feel that we have parted
+as two friends part at a port of embarkation: they embrace, they kiss
+each other's cheeks, they cover their faces and weep, they try to
+speak good-by to each other, they watch from the pier and from the
+deck; the two forms grow less and less, fainter and fainter in the
+distance, two white handkerchiefs flutter once and again, and yet
+once more, and the last visible link of the chain which binds them
+has parted.  Dear, dear, dearest Euthymia, my eyes are running over
+with tears when I think that we may never, never meet again.
+
+Don't you want some more items of village news?  We are threatened
+with an influx of stylish people: "Buttons" to answer the door-bell,
+in place of the chamber-maid; "butler," in place of the "hired man;"
+footman in top-boots and breeches, cockade on hat, arms folded a la
+Napoleon; tandems, "drags," dogcarts, and go-carts of all sorts.  It
+is rather amusing to look at their ambitious displays, but it takes
+away the good old country flavor of the place.
+
+I don't believe you mean to try to astonish us when you come back to
+spend your summers here.  I suppose you must have a large house, and
+I am sure you will have a beautiful one.  I suppose you will have
+some fine horses, and who would n't be glad to?  But I do not believe
+you will try to make your old Arrowhead Village friends stare their
+eyes out of their heads with a display meant to outshine everybody
+else that comes here.  You can have a yacht on the lake, if you like,
+but I hope you will pull a pair of oars in our old boat once in a
+while, with me to steer you.  I know you will be just the same dear-
+Euthymia you always were and always must be.  How happy you must make
+such a man as Maurice Kirkwood!  And how happy you ought to be with
+him!--a man who knows what is in books, and who has seen for himself,
+what is in men.  If he has not seen so much of women, where could he
+study all that is best in womanhood as he can in his own wife?  Only
+one thing that dear Euthymia lacks.  She is not quite pronounced
+enough in her views as to the rights and the wrongs of the sex.  When
+I visit you, as you say I shall, I mean to indoctrinate Maurice with
+sound views on that subject.  I have written an essay for the
+Society, which I hope will go a good way towards answering all the
+objections to female suffrage.  I mean to read it to your husband, if
+you will let me, as I know you will, and perhaps you would like to
+hear it,--only you know my thoughts on the subject pretty well
+already.
+
+With all sorts of kind messages to your dear husband, and love to
+your precious self,
+I am ever your
+
+LURIDA.
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
+
+MY DEAR EUTHYMIA,--My pen refuses to call you by any other name.
+Sweet-souled you are, and your Latinized Greek name is--the one which
+truly designates you.  I cannot tell you how we have followed you,
+with what interest and delight through your travels, as you have told
+their story in your letters to your mother.  She has let us have the
+privilege of reading them, and we have been with you in steamer,
+yacht, felucca, gondola, Nile-boat; in all sorts of places, from
+crowded capitals to "deserts where no men abide,"--everywhere keeping
+company with you in your natural and pleasant descriptions of your
+experiences.  And now that you have returned to your home in the
+great city I must write you a few lines of welcome, if nothing more.
+
+You will find Arrowhead Village a good deal changed since you left
+it.  We are discovered by some of those over-rich people who make the
+little place upon which they swarm a kind of rural city.  When this
+happens the consequences are striking,--some of them desirable and
+some far otherwise.  The effect of well-built, well-furnished, well-
+kept houses and of handsome grounds always maintained in good order
+about them shows itself in a large circuit around the fashionable
+centre.  Houses get on a new coat of paint, fences are kept in better
+order, little plots of flowers show themselves where only ragged
+weeds had rioted, the inhabitants present themselves in more comely
+attire and drive in handsomer vehicles with more carefully groomed
+horses.  On the other hand, there is a natural jealousy on the part
+of the natives of the region suddenly become fashionable.  They have
+seen the land they sold at farm prices by the acre coming to be
+valued by the foot, like the corner lots in a city.  Their simple and
+humble modes of life look almost poverty-stricken in the glare of
+wealth and luxury which so outshines their plain way of living.  It
+is true that many of them have found them selves richer than in
+former days, when the neighborhood lived on its own resources.  They
+know how to avail themselves of their altered position, and soon
+learn to charge city prices for country products; but nothing can
+make people feel rich who see themselves surrounded by men whose
+yearly income is many times their own whole capital.  I think it
+would be better if our rich men scattered themselves more than they
+do,--buying large country estates, building houses and stables which
+will make it easy to entertain their friends, and depending for
+society on chosen guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who
+come together for social rivalry.  But I do not fret myself about it.
+Society will stratify itself according to the laws of social
+gravitation.  It will take a generation or two more, perhaps, to
+arrange the strata by precipitation and settlement, but we can always
+depend on one principle to govern the arrangement of the layers.
+People interested in the same things will naturally come together.
+The youthful heirs of fortunes who keep splendid yachts have little
+to talk about with the oarsman who pulls about on the lake or the
+river.  What does young Dives, who drives his four-in-hand and keeps
+a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus, who feels rich in the
+possession of a horse-railroad ticket?  You know how we live at our
+house, plainly, but with a certain degree of cultivated propriety.
+We make no pretensions to what is called "style."  We are still in
+that social stratum where the article called "a napkin-ring" is
+recognized as admissible at the dinner-table.  That fact sufficiently
+defines our modest pretensions.  The napkin-ring is the boundary mark
+between certain classes.  But one evening Mrs. Butts and I went out
+to a party given by the lady of a worthy family, where the napkin
+itself was a newly introduced luxury.  The conversation of the
+hostess and her guests turned upon details of the kitchen and the
+laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with "emptins"
+(emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about "bluing" and starching and
+crimping, and similar matters.  Poor Mrs. Butts!  She knew nothing
+more about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the
+musical glasses.  What was the use of trying to enforce social
+intercourse under such conditions?  Incompatibility of temper has
+been considered ground for a divorce; incompatibility of interests is
+a sufficient warrant for social separation.  The multimillionaires
+have so much that is common among themselves, and so little that they
+share with us of moderate means, that they will naturally form a
+specialized class, and in virtue of their palaces, their picture-
+galleries, their equipages, their yachts, their large hospitality,
+constitute a kind of exclusive aristocracy.  Religion, which ought to
+be the great leveller, cannot reduce these elements to the same
+grade.  You may read in the parable, "Friend, how camest thou in
+hither not having a wedding garment?"  The modern version would be,
+"How came you at Mrs. Billion's ball not having a dress on your back
+which came from Paris?"
+
+The little church has got a new stained window, a saint who reminds
+me of Hamlet's uncle,--a thing "of shreds and patches," but rather
+pretty to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to
+be the name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the
+church.  Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I
+hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental
+window; but that old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles
+himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute, on the
+inside,--you know he goes to church sometimes, if you remember your
+Faust.
+
+The rector has come out, in a quiet way, as an evolutionist.  He has
+always been rather "broad" in his views, but cautious in their
+expression.  You can tell the three branches of the mother-island
+church by the way they carry their heads.  The low-church clergy look
+down, as if they felt themselves to be worms of the dust; the high-
+church priest drops his head on one side, after the pattern of the
+mediaeval saints; the broad-church preacher looks forward and round
+about him, as if he felt himself the heir of creation.  Our rector
+carries his head in the broad-church aspect, which I suppose is the
+least open to the charge of affectation,--in fact, is the natural and
+manly way of carrying it.
+
+The Society has justified its name of Pansophian of late as never
+before.  Lurida has stirred up our little community and its
+neighbors, so that we get essays on all sorts of subjects, poems and
+stories in large numbers.  I know all about it, for she often
+consults me as to the merits of a particular contribution.
+
+What is to be the fate of Lurida?  I often think, with no little
+interest and some degree of anxiety, about her future.  Her body is
+so frail and her mind so excessively and constantly active that I am
+afraid one or the other will give way.  I do not suppose she thinks
+seriously of ever being married.  She grows more and more zealous in
+behalf of her own sex, and sterner in her judgment of the other.  She
+declares that she never would marry any man who was not an advocate
+of female suffrage, and as these gentlemen are not very common
+hereabouts the chance is against her capturing any one of the hostile
+sex.
+
+What do you think?  I happened, just as I was writing the last
+sentence, to look out of my window, and whom should I see but Lurida,
+with a young man in tow, listening very eagerly to her conversation,
+according to all appearance!  I think he must be a friend of the
+rector, as I have seen a young man like this one in his company.  Who
+knows?
+
+Affectionately yours, etc.
+
+
+
+
+DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.
+
+MY BELOVED WIFE,--This letter will tell you more news than you would
+have thought could have been got together in this little village
+during the short time you have been staying away from it.
+
+Lurida Vincent is engaged!  He is a clergyman with a mathematical
+turn.  The story is that he put a difficult problem into one of the
+mathematical journals, and that Lurida presented such a neat solution
+that the young man fell in love with her on the strength of it.  I
+don't think the story is literally true, nor do I believe that other
+report that he offered himself to her in the form of an equation
+chalked on the blackboard; but that it was an intellectual rather
+than a sentimental courtship I do not doubt.  Lurida has given up the
+idea of becoming a professional lecturer,--so she tells me,--thinking
+that her future husband's parish will find her work enough to do.  A
+certain amount of daily domestic drudgery and unexciting intercourse
+with simple-minded people will be the best thing in the world for
+that brain of hers, always simmering with some new project in its
+least fervid condition.
+
+All our summer visitors have arrived.  Euthymia Mrs. Maurice
+Kirkwood and her husband and little Maurice are here in their
+beautiful house looking out on the lake.  They gave a grand party the
+other evening.  You ought to have been there, but I suppose you could
+not very well have left your sister in the middle of your visit: All
+the grand folks were there, of course.  Lurida and her young man--
+Gabriel is what she calls him--were naturally the objects of special
+attention.  Paolo acted as major-domo, and looked as if he ought to
+be a major-general.  Nothing could be pleasanter than the way in
+which Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood received their plain country neighbors;
+that is, just as they did the others of more pretensions, as if they
+were really glad to see them, as I am sure they were.  The old
+landlord and his wife had two arm-chairs to themselves, and I saw
+Miranda with the servants of the household looking in at the dancers
+and out at the little groups in the garden, and evidently enjoying it
+as much as her old employers.  It was a most charming and successful
+party.  We had two sensations in the course of the evening.  One was
+pleasant and somewhat exciting, the other was thrilling and of
+strange and startling interest.
+
+You remember how emaciated poor Maurice Kirkwood was left after his
+fever, in that first season when he was among us.  He was out in a
+boat one day, when a ring slipped off his thin finger and sunk in a
+place where the water was rather shallow.  "Jake"--you know Jake,--
+everybody knows Jake--was rowing him.  He promised to come to the
+spot and fish up the ring if he could possibly find it.  He was seen
+poking about with fish-hooks at the end of a pole, but nothing was
+ever heard from him about the ring.  It was an antique intaglio stone
+in an Etruscan setting,--a wild goose flying over the Campagna.  Mr.
+Kirkwood valued it highly, and regretted its loss very much.
+
+While we were in the garden, who should appear at the gate but Jake,
+with a great basket, inquiring for Mr. Kirkwood.  "Come," said
+Maurice to me, "let us see what our old friend the fisherman has
+brought us.  What have you got there, Jake?"
+
+"What I 've got?  Wall, I 'll tell y' what I've got: I 've got the
+biggest pickerel that's been ketched in this pond for these ten year.
+An' I 've got somethin' else besides the pickerel.  When I come to
+cut him open, what do you think I faound in his insides but this here
+ring o' yourn,"--and he showed the one Maurice had lost so long
+before.  There it was, as good as new, after having tried Jonah's
+style of housekeeping for all that time.  There are those who
+discredit Jake's story about finding the ring in the fish; anyhow,
+there was the ring and there was the pickerel.  I need not say that
+Jake went off well paid for his pickerel and the precious contents of
+its stomach.  Now comes the chief event of the evening.  I went early
+by special invitation.  Maurice took me into his library, and we sat
+down together.
+
+"I have something of great importance," he said, "to say to you.  I
+learned within a few days that my cousin Laura is staying with a
+friend in the next town to this.  You know, doctor, that we have
+never met since the last, almost fatal, experience of my early years.
+I have determined to defy the strength of that deadly chain of
+associations connected with her presence, and I have begged her to
+come this evening with the friends with whom she is staying.  Several
+letters passed between us, for it was hard to persuade her that there
+was no longer any risk in my meeting her.  Her imagination was almost
+as deeply impressed as mine had been at those alarming interviews,
+and I had to explain to her fully that I had become quite indifferent
+to the disturbing impressions of former years.  So, as the result of
+our correspondence, Laura is coming this evening, and I wish you to
+be present at our meeting.  There is another reason why I wish you to
+be here.  My little boy is not far from the--age at which I received
+my terrifying, almost disorganizing shock.  I mean to have little
+Maurice brought into the presence of Laura, who is said to be still a
+very handsome woman, and see if he betrays any hint of that peculiar
+sensitiveness which showed itself in my threatening seizure.  It
+seemed to me not impossible that he might inherit some tendency of
+that nature, and I wanted you to be at hand if any sign of danger
+should declare itself.  For myself I have no fear.  Some radical
+change has taken place in my nervous system.  I have been born again,
+as it were, in my susceptibilities, and am in certain respects a new
+man.  But I must know how it is with my little Maurice."
+
+Imagine with what interest I looked forward to this experiment; for
+experiment it was, and not without its sources of anxiety, as it
+seemed to me.  The evening wore along; friends and neighbors came in,
+but no Laura as yet.  At last I heard the sound of wheels, and a
+carriage stopped at the door.  Two ladies and a gentleman got out,
+and soon entered the drawing room.
+
+"My cousin Laura!" whispered Maurice to me, and went forward to meet
+her.  A very handsome woman, who might well have been in the
+thirties,--one of those women so thoroughly constituted that they
+cannot help being handsome at every period of life.  I watched them
+both as they approached each other.  Both looked pale at first, but
+Maurice soon recovered his usual color, and Laura's natural, rich
+bloom came back by degrees.  Their emotion at meeting was not to be
+wondered at, but there was no trace in it of the paralyzing influence
+on the great centres of life which had once acted upon its fated
+victim like the fabled head which turned the looker-on into a stone.
+
+"Is the boy still awake?" said Maurice to Paolo, who, as they used to
+say of Pushee at the old Anchor Tavern, was everywhere at once on
+that gay and busy evening.
+
+"What!  Mahser Maurice asleep an' all this racket going on?  I hear
+him crowing like young cockerel when he fus' smell daylight."
+
+"Tell the nurse to bring him down quietly to the little room that
+leads out of the library."
+
+The child was brought down in his night-clothes, wide awake,
+wondering apparently at the noise he heard, which he seemed to think
+was for his special amusement.
+
+"See if he will go to that lady," said his father.  Both of us held
+our breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
+
+The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
+glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her
+embrace as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all
+his days.
+
+The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of
+Maurice Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself
+snatched from the grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
+
+
+                    --------------------------
+
+
+In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix
+which the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First
+Opening.  It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability
+of a second opening.
+
+I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a
+certain small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my
+surviving contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be
+much obliged if I would hurry up my answer before it is too late.
+They are right, these delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding
+me of a fact which I cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my
+recollection.  I thank them for recalling my attention to a truth
+which I shall be wiser, if not more hilarious, for remembering.
+
+No, I had no right to say the First Opening.  How do I know that I
+shall have a chance to open it again?  How do I know that anybody
+will want it to be opened a second time?  How do I know that I shall
+feel like opening it?  It is safest neither to promise to open the
+New Portfolio once more, nor yet to pledge myself to keep it closed
+hereafter.  There are many papers potentially existent in it, some of
+which might interest a reader here and there.  The Records of the
+Pansophian Society contain a considerable number of essays, poems,
+stories, and hints capable of being expanded into presentable
+dimensions.  In the mean time I will say with Prospero, addressing my
+old readers, and my new ones, if such I have,
+
+    "If you be pleased, retire into my cell
+     And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
+     To still my beating mind."
+
+When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and
+consider whether it is worth while to open it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver W. Holmes
+
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