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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science
+       Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2004 [EBook #13195]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sandra Brown and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+Note: The Table of Contents and the list of illustrations were added
+by the transcriber.
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+
+JUNE, 1873.
+
+Vo. XI, No. 27.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+  A NEW ATLANTIS.
+
+  THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA.
+    CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+  A REMINISCENCE OF THE EXPOSITION OF 1867 by ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+
+  SLAINS CASTLE by LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
+
+  OUR HOME IN THE TYROL by MARGARET HOWITT.
+    CHAPTER III.
+    CHAPTER IV.
+
+  SAINT ROMUALDO by EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+  A PRINCESS OF THULE by WILLIAM BLACK
+    CHAPTER VIII. "O TERQUE QUATERQUE BEATE!"
+    CHAPTER IX. "FAREWELL, MACKRIMMON!"
+
+  THE EMERALD by A.C. HAMLIN, M.D.
+
+  BERRYTOWN by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
+    CHAPTER VIII.
+    CHAPTER IX.
+    CHAPTER X.
+
+  BOWERY ENGLAND by WIRT SIKES.
+
+  DAY-DREAM by KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
+
+  OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+    THE GLADSTONE FAMILY.
+    WHITSUNTIDE AMONG THE MENNISTS.
+    THE RAW AMERICAN by PRENTICE MULFORD.
+
+  FAREWELL by LUCY H. HOOPER.
+
+  NOTES.
+
+  LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+    _Books Received._
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  ATLANTIC CITY FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE.
+  UP THE INLET.
+  LANDING-PLACE ON THE INLET.
+  CONGRESS HALL.
+  MR. RICHARD WRIGHT'S COTTAGE.
+  THE SENATE HOUSE.
+  ON THE SHINING SANDS.
+  MR. THOMAS C. HAND'S COTTAGE.
+  THE THOROUGHFARE.
+  THE EXCURSION HOUSE.
+  A SCENE IN FRONT OF SCHAUFLER'S HOTEL.
+  ABD-EL-KADER IN KABYLIA.
+  AN AGHA OF KABYLIA HUNTING WITH THE FALCON.
+  THE DISCIPLES OF TOFAIL.
+  A KOUBBA, OR MARABOUT'S TOMB.
+  KABYLE MEN.
+  KABYLE WOMEN.
+  DEFILE OF THIFILKOULT.
+  AN ARAB MARKET.
+  POVERTY AND JEWELS.
+  GEORGE CHRISTY IN AFRICA.
+
+
+
+
+
+A NEW ATLANTIS.
+
+[Illustration: ATLANTIC CITY FROM THE LIGHTHOUSE.]
+
+The New Year's debts are paid, the May-day moving is over and settled,
+and still a remnant of money is found sticking to the bottom of the
+old marmalade pot. Where shall we go?
+
+There is nothing like the sea. Shall it be Newport?
+
+But Newport is no longer the ocean pure and deep, in the rich severity
+of its _sangre azul_. We want to admire the waves, and they drag us
+off to inspect the last new villa: we like the beach, and they bid
+us enjoy the gardens, brought every spring in lace-paper out of the
+florist's shop. We like to stroll on the shore, barefooted if we
+choose, and Newport is become an affair of toilette and gold-mounted
+harness, a bathing-place where people do everything but bathe.
+
+[Illustration: UP THE INLET.]
+
+Well, Nahant, then, or Long Branch?
+
+Too slow and too fast. Besides, we have seen them.
+
+Suppose we try the Isles of Shoals? Appledore and Duck Island and
+White Island, now? Or Nantucket, or Marblehead?
+
+Too stony, and nothing in particular to eat. You ask for fish, and
+they give you a rock.
+
+In truth, under that moral and physical dyspepsia to which we bring
+ourselves regularly every summer, the fine crags of the north become
+just the least bit of a bore. They necessitate an amount of heroic
+climbing under the command of a sort of romantic and do-nothing Girls
+of the Period, who sit about on soft shawls in the lee of the rocks,
+and gather their shells and anemones vicariously at the expense of
+your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate,
+and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single
+ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse
+at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels
+dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require
+more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, and
+encourage more heartfelt secret profanity than the making of a
+steam-engine or the writing of a proposal.
+
+No, no, we would admire nothing, dare nothing, do nothing, but only
+suck in rosy health at every pore, pin our souls out on the holly
+hedge to sweeten, and forget what we had for breakfast. Uneasy daemons
+that we are all winter, toiling gnomes of the mine and the forge--"O
+spent ones of a workday age"--can we not for one brief month in our
+year be Turks?
+
+[Illustration: LANDING-PLACE ON THE INLET.]
+
+Our doctors, slowly acquiring a little sense, are changing their
+remedies. Where the cry used to be "drugs," it now is "hygiene." But
+hygiene itself might be changed for the better. We can imagine a few
+improvements in the materia medica of the future. Where the physician
+used to order a tonic for a feeble pulse, he will simply hold his
+watch thoughtfully for sixty seconds and prescribe "Paris." Where
+he was wont to recommend a strong emetic, he will in future advise
+a week's study of the works of art at our National Capital. For
+lassitude, a donkey-ride up Vesuvius. For color-blindness, a course
+of sunrises from the Rigi. For deafness, Wachtel in his song of "Di
+quella Pira." For melancolia, Naples. For fever, driving an ice-cart.
+But when the doctor's most remunerative patient comes along, the pursy
+manufacturer able to afford the luxury of a bad liver, let him consult
+the knob of his cane a moment and order "Atlantic City."
+
+--Because it is lazy, yet stimulating. Because it is unspoilt, yet
+luxurious. Because the air there is filled with iodine and the sea
+with chloride of sodium. Because, with a whole universe of water,
+Atlantic City is dry. Because of its perfect rest and its infinite
+horizons.
+
+But where and what _is_ Atlantic City? It is a refuge thrown up by the
+continent-building sea. Fashion took a caprice, and shook it out of
+a fold of her flounce. A railroad laid a wager to find the shortest
+distance from Penn's treaty-elm to the Atlantic Ocean: it dashed into
+the water, and a City emerged from its freight-cars as a consequence
+of the manoeuvre. Almost any kind of a parent-age will account for
+Atlantis. It is beneath shoddy and above mediocrity. It is below
+Long Branch and higher up than Cape May. It is different from any
+watering-place in the world, yet its strong individuality might have
+been planted in any other spot; and a few years ago it was nowhere.
+Its success is due to its having nothing importunate about it. It
+promises endless sea, sky, liberty and privacy, and, having made you
+at home, it leaves you to your devices.
+
+[Illustration: CONGRESS HALL.]
+
+Two of our best marine painters in their works offer us a choice of
+coast-landscape. Kensett paints the bare stiff crags, whitened with
+salt, standing out of his foregrounds like the clean and hungry
+teeth of a wild animal, and looking hard enough to have worn out the
+painter's brush with their implacable enamel. From their treeless
+waste extends the sea, a bath of deep, pure color. All seems keen,
+fresh, beautiful and severe: it would take a pair of stout New England
+lungs to breathe enjoyably in such an air. That is the northern coast.
+Mr. William Richards gives us the southern--the landscape, in fact,
+of Atlantic City. In his scenes we have the infinitude of soft silver
+beach, the rolling tumultuousness of a boundless sea, and twisted
+cedars mounted like toiling ships on the crests of undulating
+sand-hills. It is the charm, the dream, the power and the peace of the
+Desert.
+
+And here let us be indulged with a few words about a section of our
+great continent which has never been sung in rhyme, and which it
+is almost a matter of course to treat disparagingly. A cheap and
+threadbare popular joke assigns the Delaware River as the eastern
+boundary of the United States of America, and defines the out-landers
+whose homes lie between that current and the Atlantic Ocean as
+foreigners, Iberians, and we know not what. Scarcely more of an exile
+was Victor Hugo, sitting on the shores of Old Jersey, than is the
+denizen of _New_ Jersey when he brings his half-sailor costume and his
+beach-learned manners into contrast with the thrift and hardness of
+the neighboring commonwealth. The native of the alluvium is another
+being from the native of the great mineral State. But, by the very
+reason of this difference, there is a strange soft charm that comes
+over our thoughts of the younger Jersey when we have done laughing
+at it. That broad, pale peninsula, built of shells and crystal-dust,
+which droops toward the south like some vast tropical leaf, and
+spreads its two edges toward the fresh and salt waters, enervated with
+drought and sunshine--that flat leaf of land has characteristics that
+are almost Oriental. To make it the sea heaved up her breast, and
+showed the whitened sides against which her tides were beating. To
+walk upon it is in a sense to walk upon the bottom of the ocean. Here
+are strange marls, the relics of infinite animal life, into which
+has sunk the lizard or the dragon of antiquity--the gigantic
+_Hadrosaurus_, who cranes his snaky throat at us in the museum,
+swelling with the tale of immemorial times when he weltered here in
+the sunny ooze. The country is a mighty steppe, but not deprived of
+trees: the ilex clothes it with its set, dark foliage, and the endless
+woods of pine, sand-planted, strew over that boundless beach a murmur
+like the sea. The edibles it bears are of the quaintest and most
+individual kinds: the cranberry is its native condiment, full of
+individuality, unknown to Europe, beautiful as a carbuncle, wild as
+a Tartar belle, and rife with a subacid irony that is like the wit of
+Heine.
+
+[Illustration: MR. RICHARD WRIGHT'S COTTAGE.]
+
+Here is the _patate douce_, with every kind of sweet-fleshed gourd
+that loves to gad along the sand--the citron in its carved net,
+and the enormous melon, carnation-colored within and dark-green to
+blackness outside. The peaches here are golden-pulped, as if trying to
+be oranges, and are richly bitter, with a dark hint of prussic acid,
+fascinating the taste like some enchantress of Venice, the pursuit of
+whom is made piquant by a fancy that she may poison you. The farther
+you penetrate this huge idle peninsula, the more its idiosyncrasy
+is borne in on your mind. Infinite horizons, "an everlasting wash of
+air," the wild pure warmth of Arabia, and heated jungles of dwarf oaks
+balancing balmy plantations of pine. Then, toward the sea, the wiry
+grasses that dry into "salt hay" begin to dispute possession with
+the forests, and finally supplant them: the sand is blown into
+coast-hills, whose crests send off into every gale a foam of flying
+dust, and which themselves change shape, under pressure of the same
+winds, with a slower imitation of the waves. Finally, by the gentlest
+of transitions, the deserts and the quicksands become the ocean.
+
+[Illustration: THE SENATE HOUSE.]
+
+The shore melts into the sea by a network of creeks and inlets,
+edging the territory (as the flying osprey sees it) with an inimitable
+lacework of azure waters; the pattern is one of looping channels
+with oval interstices, and the dentellated border of the commonwealth
+resembles that sort of lace which was made by arranging on glass
+the food of a silk-spinning worm: the creature ate and wove, having
+voracity always before him and Fine Art behind him. Much of the
+solider part of the State is made of the materials which enter into
+glass-manufacture: a mighty enchanter might fuse the greater portion
+of it into one gigantic goblet. A slight approximation to this work
+of magic is already being carried on. The tourist who has crossed
+the lagoons of Venice to see the fitful lights flash up from the
+glass-furnaces of Murano, will find more than one locality here where
+leaping lights, crowning low banks of sand, are preparing the crystal
+for our infant industries in glass, and will remind him of his hours
+by the Adriatic. Every year bubbles of greater and greater beauty
+are being blown in these secluded places, and soon we hope to enrich
+commerce with all the elegances of latticinio and schmelze, the
+perfected glass of an American Venice.
+
+But our business is not with the land, but the sea. Here it lies,
+basking at our feet, the warm amethystine sea of the South. It does
+not boom and thunder, as in the country of the "cold gray stones."
+On the contrary, saturating itself with sunny ease, thinning its bulk
+over the shoal flat beach with a succession of voluptuous curves, it
+spreads thence in distance with strands and belts of varied color,
+away and away, until blind with light it faints on a prodigiously far
+horizon. Its falling noises are as soft as the sighs of Christabel.
+Its colors are the pale and milky colors of the opal. But ah! what an
+impression of boundlessness! How the silver ribbon of beach unrolls
+for miles and miles! And landward, what a parallel sea of marshes,
+bottoms and dunes! The sense of having all the kingdoms of the world
+spread out beneath one, together with most of the kingdoms of the
+mermen, has never so come to one's consciousness before. And again,
+what an artist is Nature, with these faint washes and tenderest varied
+hues--varied and tender as the flames from burning gases--while her
+highest lights (a painter will understand the difficulty of _that_)
+are still diaphanous and profound!
+
+One goes to the seaside not for pomp and peacock's tails, but for
+saltness, Nature and a bite of fresh fish. To build a city there that
+shall not be an insult to the sentiment of the place is a matter of
+difficulty. One's ideal, after all, is a canvas encampment. A range of
+solid stone villas like those of Newport, so far as congruity with
+a watering-place goes, pains the taste like a false note in music.
+Atlantic City pauses halfway between the stone house and the tent, and
+erects herself in woodwork. A quantity of bright, rather giddy-looking
+structures, with much open-work and carved ruffling about the eaves
+and balconies, are poised lightly on the sand, following the course
+of the two main avenues which lead parallel with the shore, and the
+series of short, straight, direct streets which leap across them and
+run eagerly for the sea. They have a low, brooding look, and evidently
+belong to a class of sybarites who are not fond of staircases. Among
+them, the great rambling hotel, sprawling in its ungainly length here
+and there, looks like one of the ordinary tall New York houses that
+had concluded to lie over on its side and grow, rather than take
+the trouble of piling on its stories standing. In this encampment of
+wooden pavilions is lived the peculiar life of the place.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE SHINING SANDS.]
+
+We are sure it is a sincere, natural, sensible kind of life, as
+compared with that of other bathing-shores. Although there are brass
+bands at the hotels, and hops in the evening, and an unequal struggle
+of macassar oil with salt and stubborn locks, yet the artificiality is
+kept at a minimum. People really do bathe, really do take walks on the
+beach for the love of the ocean, really do pick up shells and throw
+them away again, really do go yachting and crab-catching; and if they
+try city manners in the evening, they are so tired with their honest
+day's work that it is apt to end in misery. On the hotel piazzas you
+see beauties that surprise you with exquisite touches of the warm and
+languid South. That dark Baltimore girl, her hair a constellation of
+jessamines, is beating her lover's shoulders with her fan in a state
+of ferocity that you would give worlds to encounter. That pair of
+proud Philadelphia sisters, statues sculptured in peach-pulp and
+wrapped in gauze, look somehow like twin Muses at the gates of a
+temple. Whole rows of unmatched girls stare at the sea, desolate but
+implacable, waiting for partners equal to them in social position. In
+such a dearth a Philadelphia girl will turn to her old music-teacher
+and flirt solemnly with him for a whole evening, sooner than involve
+herself with well-looking young chits from Providence or New York,
+who may be jewelers' clerks when at home. Yet the unspoiled and fruity
+beauty of these Southern belles is very striking to one who comes
+fresh from Saratoga and the sort of upholstered goddesses who are
+served to him there.
+
+Some years ago the Surf House was the finest place of entertainment,
+but it has now many rivals, taller if not finer. Congress Hall, under
+the management of Mr. G.W. Hinkle, is a universal favorite, while the
+Senate House, standing under the shadow of the lighthouse, has the
+advantage of being the nearest to the beach of all the hotels. Both
+are ample and hospitable hostelries, where you are led persuasively
+through the Eleusinian mystery of the Philadelphia cuisine.
+Schaufler's is an especial resort of our German fellow-citizens, who
+may there be seen enjoying themselves in the manner depicted by our
+artist, while concocting--as we are warned by M. Henri Kowalski--the
+ambitious schemes which they conceal under their ordinary _enveloppe
+debonnaire_.
+
+[Illustration: MR. THOMAS C. HAND'S COTTAGE.]
+
+There is another feature of the place. With its rarely fine
+atmosphere, so tonic and bracing, so free from the depressing fog
+of the North, it is a great sanitarium. There are seasons when the
+Pennsylvania University seems to have bred its wealth of doctors
+for the express purpose of marshaling a dying world to the curative
+shelter of Atlantic City. The trains are encumbered with the halt and
+the infirm, who are got out at the doors like unwieldy luggage in
+the arms of nurses and porters. Once arrived, however, they display
+considerable mobility in distributing themselves through the three or
+four hundred widely-separated cottages which await them for hire. As
+you wander through the lanes of these cunning little houses, you catch
+strange fragments of conversation. Gentlemen living vis-a-vis, and
+standing with one leg in the grave and the other on their own piazzas,
+are heard on sunny mornings exciting themselves with the maddest abuse
+of each other's doctor. There are large boarding-houses, fifty or more
+of them, each of which has its contingent of puling valetudinarians.
+The healthy inmates have the privilege of listening to the symptoms,
+set forth with that full and conscientious detail not unusual with
+invalids describing their own complaints. Or the sufferers turn their
+batteries on each other. On the verandah of a select boarding-house we
+have seen a fat lady of forty lying on a bench like a dead harlequin,
+as she rolled herself in the triangles of a glittering afghan. On a
+neighboring seat a gouty subject, and a tropical sun pouring on both.
+
+"Good-morning! You see I am trying my sun-bath. I am convinced it
+relieves my spine." The same remark has introduced seven morning
+conversations.
+
+"And my gout has shot from the index toe to the ring toe. I feared my
+slipper was damp, and I am roasting it here. But, dear ma'am, I pity
+you so with your spine! Tried acupuncture?"
+
+[Illustration: THE THOROUGHFARE.]
+
+The patient probably hears the word as Acapulco. For she answers, "No,
+but I tried St. Augustine last winter. Not a morsel of good."
+
+Among these you encounter sometimes lovely, frail, transparent girls,
+who come down with cheeks of wax, and go home in two months with
+cheeks of apple. Or stout gentlemen arriving yellow, and going back in
+due time purple.
+
+Once a hardened siren of many watering-places, large and blooming,
+arrived at Atlantic City with her latest capture, a stooping invalid
+gentleman of good family in Rhode Island. They boated, they had
+croquet on the beach, they paced the shining sands. Both of them
+people of the world and past their first youth, they found an
+amusement in each other's knowing ways and conversation that kept them
+mutually faithful in a kind of mock-courtship. The gentleman, however,
+was evidently only amusing himself with this travesty of sentiment,
+though he was never led away by the charms of younger women. After a
+month of it he succeeded in persuading her for the first time to
+enter the water, and there he assisted her to take the billows in the
+gallant American fashion. Her intention of staying only in the very
+edge of the ocean he overruled by main force, playfully drawing her
+out where a breaker washed partially over her. As the water touched
+her face she screamed, and raised her arm to hide the cheek that had
+been wet. She then ran hastily to shore, and her friend, fearing some
+accident, made haste to rejoin her. His astonishment was great at
+finding one of her cheeks of a ghastly, unhealthy white. Her color had
+always been very high. That afternoon she sought him and explained.
+She was really an invalid, she said calmly, and had recently undergone
+a shocking operation for tumor. But she saw no reason for letting that
+interfere with her usual summer life, particularly as she felt youth
+and opportunity making away from her with terrible strides. Having
+a chance to enjoy his society which might never be repeated, fearing
+lest his rapid disease should carry him away from before her eyes, she
+had concluded to make the most of time, dissemble her suffering, and
+endeavor to conceal by art the cold bloodlessness of her face. This
+whimsical, worldly heroism happened to strike the gentleman strangely.
+He was affected to the point of proposing marriage. At the same time
+he perceived with some amazement that his disease had left him: the,
+curative spell of the region had wrought its enchantment upon his
+system. They were wedded, with roles reversed--he as the protector and
+she as the invalid--and were truly happy during the eighteen months
+that the lady lived as his wife.
+
+[Illustration: THE EXCURSION HOUSE.]
+
+There are prettier and more innocent stories. Every freckle-nosed girl
+from the Alleghany valleys who sweeps with her polka-muslin the
+floors of these generous hotels has an idyl of her own, which she is
+rehearsing with young Jefferson Jones or little Madison Addison. In
+the golden afternoons they ride together--not in the fine turn-outs
+supplied by the office-clerks, nor yet on horse-back, but in guiltless
+country wagons guided by Jersey Jehus, where close propinquity is a
+delightful necessity. Ten miles of uninterrupted beach spread before
+them, which the ocean, transformed for the purpose into a temporary
+Haussmann, is rolling into a marble boulevard for their use twice a
+day. On the hard level the wheels scarcely leave a trace. The ride
+seems like eternity, it lapses off so gentle and smooth, and the
+landscape is so impressively similar: everywhere the plunging surf,
+the gray sand-hills, the dark cedars with foliage sliced off sharp and
+flat by the keen east wind--their stems twisted like a dishclout or
+like the olives around Florence.
+
+[Illustration: A SCENE IN FRONT OF SCHAUFLER'S HOTEL.]
+
+Or she goes with Jefferson and Madison on a "crabbing" hunt. Out in
+a boat at the "Thoroughfare," near the railroad bridge, you lean over
+the side and see the dark glassy forms moving on the bottom. It is
+shallow, and a short bit of string will reach them. The bait is a
+morsel of raw beefsteak from the butcher's, and no hook is necessary.
+They make for the titbit with strange monkey-like motions, and nip it
+with their hard skeleton ringers, trying to tuck it into their mouths;
+and so you bring them up into blue air, sprawling and astonished, but
+tenacious. You can put them through their paces where they roost under
+water, moving the beef about, and seeing them sidle and back on
+their aimless, Cousin Feenix-like legs: it is a sight to bring a
+freckle-nosed cousin almost into hysterics. But one day a vivacious
+girl had committed the offence of boasting too much of her skill
+in crab-catching, besides being quite unnecessarily gracious to Mr.
+Jefferson Jones. Then Mr. Madison Addison, who must have been reading
+Plutarch, did a sly thing indeed. The boat having been drawn unnoted
+into deeper water, a cunning negro boy who was aboard contrived
+to slide down one side without remark, and the next trophy of the
+feminine chase was a red _boiled_ crab, artificially attached to a
+chocolate caramel, and landed with mingled feelings by the pretty
+fisherwoman. Then what a tumult of laughter, feigned anger and
+becoming blushes! It is said that that crimson shell, carved into
+a heart-shape of incorrect proportions, is worn over Mr. Jones's
+diaphragm to this day.
+
+At the Inlet, which penetrates the beach alongside the lighthouse,
+is draught for light vessels, and the various kinds of society which
+focus at Atlantic City may be seen concentrated there on the wharf any
+of these bright warm days. A gay party of beauties and aristocrats,
+with a champagne-basket and hamper of lunch, are starting thence for
+a sail over to Brigantine Beach. Two gentlemen in flannel, with guns,
+are urging a little row-boat up toward the interior country. They will
+return at night laden with rail or reed-birds, with the additional
+burden perhaps of a great loon, shot as a curiosity. Others, provided
+with fishing-tackle, are going out for flounder. Laughing farewells,
+waving handkerchiefs and the other telegraphic signs of departure, are
+all very gay, but the tune may be changed when the great sailing-party
+comes back, wet and wretched, and with three of the principal beauties
+limp as bolsters on the gentlemen's hands with sea-sickness.
+
+Another spirited scene takes place at five in the morning--an hour
+when the city beauties are abed with all that tenacity of somnolence
+which characterizes Kathleen Mavourneen in the song. The husbands and
+brothers, who are due in the city before business hours, are out for
+a good, royal, irresponsible tumble in the surf. There is the great
+yeasty bath-tub, full of merry dashing figures, dipping the sleek
+shoulder to the combing wave. On the shore, active humanities hastily
+undressing. Then the heavens are filled with a new glory, and the
+dazzling sun leaves his bath at the same time with all these merry
+roisterers who have shared it with him. He takes up his line of
+business for the day, and so do the good husbands and brothers, first
+going through a little ceremony of toilet from which he is exempt.
+
+Thus does the New Atlantis provide for her republic, holding health to
+her children with one hand, and shaking from the other an infinity of
+toys and diversions; while for those of more thoughtful bent the
+sea turns without ceasing its ancient pages, written all over with
+inexhaustible romance.
+
+The great architect of the city was the Power who graded those
+streets of immaculate sand, and who laid out that park of mellow,
+foam-flowered ocean. Its human founders have done what seemed suitable
+in providing shelter for a throng of fitful sojourners, not forgetting
+to put up six neat and modest churches, where suitable praise and
+adoration may be chanted against the chanting of the sea. In several
+respects the place grows somewhat curiously. For instance, a lawn of
+turf is made by the simple expedient of fencing off the cattle: the
+grass then grows, but if the cows get in they pull up the sod by the
+roots, and the wind in a single season excavates a mighty hollow where
+the grassy slope was before. So much for building our hopes on
+sand. An avenue of trees is prepared by the easy plan of thrusting
+willow-stems into the ground: they sprout directly, and alternate
+with the fine native cedars and hollies in clothing the streets with
+shadow. Several citizens, as Mr. Richard Wright and Mr. Thomas C.
+Hand, whose handsome cottages are tasteful specimens of our seaside
+architecture, have been tempted by this facility of vegetable life
+at Atlantic City to lay out elaborate gardens, which with suitable
+culture are successful. Fine avenues of the best construction lead off
+to Shell Beach or to the single hill boasted by the locality. Finally,
+remembering the claims of the great democracy to a wash-basin, the
+aediles invited Tom, Dick and Harry, and set up the Excursion or
+Sea-View House, with its broad piazzas, its numberless facilities
+for amusement, and its enormous dining-hall, which can be changed on
+occasion into a Jardin Mabille, with flowers and fountains.
+
+To a great city all the renovating and exhilarating qualities of
+sea-breezes and sea-bathing are but as the waters of Tantalus, unless
+the place which offers these advantages be easy of access. In this
+respect Atlantic City has for Philadelphia a superiority over all
+its rivals. The Camden and Atlantic Railroad, to whose secretary and
+treasurer, Mr. D.M. Zimmermann, we are indebted for much information,
+has simply drawn a straight line to the coast, which may be reached in
+an hour and three-quarters from Vine street wharf. The villages on
+the route, like the seaside terminus, owe their existence to the road,
+which is now reaping the reward of a far-sighted enterprise.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROUMI IN KABYLIA.
+
+CONCLUDING PAPER.
+
+[Illustration: ABD-EL-KADER IN KABYLIA.]
+
+A noble life, whose course belongs to the subject of these pages, is,
+while they are preparing, apparently drawing to a close. The
+severe illness now reported of Abd-el-Kader, coming upon old age,
+disappointment, war and the lassitude of a great purpose foiled, can
+have but one result. Dimmed to-day, as our hurrying century so rapidly
+dims her brightest renowns, Abd-el-Kader's existence has only to cease
+and his memory will assume the sacred splendor of the tomb.
+
+Hapless Washington of a betrayed revolution! In these latter days of
+enforced quiet in Palestine how his early scenes of African experience
+must have flooded his mind!--his birth, sixty-six years ago, in a
+family group of Moslem saints; the teachings of his beautiful mother
+Leila and of his marabout father; his pilgrimage when eight years old
+to Mecca, and his education in Italy; his visions among the tombs, and
+the crown of magic light which was seen on his brows when he began to
+taste the enchanted apple; then, with adolescence, the burning sense
+of infidel tyranny that made his home at Mascara seem only a cage,
+barred upon him by the unclean Franks; and soon, while still a youth,
+his amazing election as emir of Mascara and sultan of Oran, at a
+moment when the prophet-chief had just four _oukias_ (half-dimes) tied
+into the corner of his bornouse!
+
+"God will send me others," said young Abd-el-Kader.
+
+[Illustration: AN AGHA OF KABYLIA HUNTING WITH THE FALCON.]
+
+The tourist remembers the trinity-portrait of him, by Maxime David, in
+the Luxembourg Gallery at Paris, where his face, framed in its white
+hood, is seen in full, in profile and in three-quarters view. The
+visage is aquiline, olive-tinted, refined; but we can describe it
+more authentically in the terms of one of his enemies, Lieutenant
+de France, who became his prisoner in 1836, and who followed his
+movements for five months, taking down his daily talk and habits like
+a Boswell, but leaving nothing in his narrative that is not to the
+sultan's credit. Of Abd-el-Kader at twenty-eight the lieutenant says:
+"His face is long and deadly pale, his large black eyes are soft
+and languishing, his mouth small and delicate, and his nose rather
+aquiline: his beard is thin, but jet-black, and he wears a small
+moustache, which gives a martial character to his soft, delicate face,
+and becomes him vastly. His hands are small and exquisitely formed,
+and his feet equally beautiful." Every interlocutor leaves a similar
+portrait, impressing upon the mind the image of some warrior-saint of
+the Middle Ages, born too late, and beating out his noble fanaticism
+against our century of machines and chicanery.
+
+[Illustration: THE DISCIPLES OF TOFAIL.]
+
+Himself, according to some accounts, a Berber, the young marabout
+early saw the importance of inducing the Kabyles to join with him
+and his Arabs in expelling the French. He affiliated himself with the
+religious order of Ben-abd-er-Rhaman, a saint whose tomb is one of the
+sacred places of Kabylia; and it is certain that the college of this
+order furnished him succor in men and money. He visited the Kabyles in
+their rock-built villages, casting aside his military pomp and coming
+among them as a simple pilgrim. If the Kabyles had received him
+better, he could have shown a stouter front to the enemy. But the
+mountain Berbers, utterly unused to co-operation and subordination,
+met him with surprise and distrust.
+
+[Illustration: A KOUBBA, OR MARABOUT'S TOMB.]
+
+At least, such is the account of General Daumas: in this interesting
+relation we are forced to depend on the French. Daumas, amply provided
+with documents, letters and evidence, has arranged in his work on _La
+Grande Kabylie_ the principal evidence we possess of this epoch of
+Abd-el-Kader's life.
+
+The chief appeared in 1836 at Bordj-Boghni and at Si-Ali-ou-Moussa
+among the mountains. The Kabyle tribes visited him in multitudes. He
+addressed them at the door of his tent, and these rude mountaineers
+found themselves face to face with that saintly sallow visage,
+those long gazelle eyes and the prophetic countenance framed in its
+apostolic beard. Raising his arms in the attitude of Raphael's Paul at
+Lystra, he said simply, "I am the thorn which Allah has placed in the
+eye of the Franks. And if you will help me I will send them weeping
+into the sea."
+
+But when it came to a demand for supplies, the Kabyles, says Daumas,
+utterly refused.
+
+"You have come as a pilgrim," said their amins, "and we have fed you
+with kouskoussu. If you were to come as a chief, wishing to lay his
+authority on us, instead of white kouskoussu we should treat you to
+black kouskoussu" (gunpowder).
+
+Abd-el-Kader, without losing the serenity of the marabout, argued with
+the Kabyles, and succeeded in obtaining their reverence and adhesion;
+but when he mounted his horse to go the amins significantly told him
+to come among them always as a simple pilgrim, demanding hospitality
+and white kouskoussu.
+
+[Illustration: KABYLE MEN.]
+
+At Thizzi-Ouzzou he met the tribe of Ameraouas, who promised to submit
+to his authority as soon as the fractions surrounding that centre
+should do so. The Sons of Aicha received him with honor and games of
+horsemanship. At the camp of Ben Salem the chiefs of several tribes
+came to render homage to the noble marabout, descendant of Berber
+ancestry and of the Prophet. From thence he sought tribes still more
+wild, discarding his horse and appearing among the villagers as a
+simple foot-pilgrim. The natives approached him in throngs, each
+family bearing a great dish of rancid kouskoussu. Laying the platters
+before his tent and planting their clubs in them, all vociferated,
+"Eat! thou art our guest;" and the chieftain was constrained to taste
+of each. Finally, near Bougie he happened to receive a courier sent by
+the French commandant. The Kabyles immediately believed him to be in
+treasonable communication with the enemy, and he was forced to retire.
+
+The young chief was in fact at that time in peaceful communication
+with the French, having made himself respected by them in the west,
+while they were attending to the subjugation of Constantina and
+founding of Philippeville in the east. Protected by the treaty
+of Taafna in 1837, Abd-el-Kader was at leisure to attempt the
+consolidation of his little empire and the fusion of the jealous
+tribes which composed it. The low moral condition of his Arabs, who
+were for the most part thieves and cowards, and the rude individuality
+of his Kabyles, who would respect his religious but scoff at his
+political claims, made the task of the leader a difficult one. To the
+Kabyles he confided the care of his saintly reputation, renouncing
+their contributions, and asking only for their prayers as a Berber
+and as a khouan of the order of Ben-abd-er-Rhaman. For a few years his
+power increased, without one base measure, without any soilure on the
+blazon of increasing prosperity. In 1840 the sultan of Oran, at the
+zenith of his influence, swept the plains beneath the Atlas with his
+nomad court, defended by two hundred and fifty horsemen. Passing his
+days in reviewing his troops and in actions of splendid gallantry, he
+resumed the humility of the saint at evening prayers: his palace of a
+night received him, watched by thirty negro tent-guards; and here he
+sheltered his lowly head, whose attitude was perpetually bowed by
+the habitual weight of his cowl. The French soon became jealous, and
+encroached upon their treaty. The duke of Orleans, we are told, had
+Abd-el-Kader's seal counterfeited by a Jewish coiner at Oran, and
+with passports thus stamped sent scouting-parties toward the sultan's
+dominions, protected by the sultan's forged safe-conduct. Open
+conflict followed, and a succession of French razzias. In 1845,
+Colonels Pelissier and St. Arnaud, under Marshal Bugeaud, conducted
+that expedition of eternal infamy during which seven hundred of
+Abd-el-Kader's Arabs were suffocated in a cave-sanctuary of the Dahra.
+This sickening measure was put in force at a _cul-de-sac_, where a few
+hours' blockade would have commanded a peaceful surrender.
+
+[Illustration: KABYLE WOMEN.]
+
+"The fire was kept up throughout the night, and when the day had fully
+dawned the then expiring embers were kicked aside, and as soon as
+a sufficient time had elapsed to render the air of the silent cave
+breathable, some soldiers were directed to ascertain how matters were
+within. They were gone but a few minutes, and then came back, we
+are told, pale, trembling, terrified, hardly daring, it seemed, to
+confront the light of day. No wonder they trembled and looked
+pale! They had found all the Arabs dead--men, women, children,
+all dead!--had beheld them lying just as death had found and left
+them--the old man grasping his gray beard; the dead mother clasping
+her dead child with the steel gripe of the last struggle, when all
+gave way but her strong love."
+
+Abd-el-Kader's final defeat in 1848 was due less to the prowess of
+Lamoriciere and Bugeaud than to the cunning of his traitorous ally,
+the sultan of Morocco, who, after having induced many of the princely
+saint's adherents to desert, finally drove him by force of numbers
+over the French frontier. Confronting the duke of Aumale on the
+Morocco borders, he made a gallant fight, but lost half his best men
+in warding off an attack of the Mencer Kabyles. Fatigued now with a
+long effort against overwhelming pressure, and world-weary, he met
+the duke at Nemours, on the sea-coast close to the Morocco
+line. Depositing his sandals, Arab-fashion, outside the French
+head-quarters, he awaited the duke's signal to sit down.
+
+"I should have wished to do this sooner," said the broken chief, "but
+I have awaited the hour decreed by Allah. I ask the aman (pardon) of
+the king of the French for my family and for myself."
+
+Louis Philippe could not come in contact with this pure spirit without
+an exhibition of Frankish treachery, like tinder illuminating
+its foulness at the striking of steel. The sultan's surrender was
+conditioned on the freedom to retire to Egypt. The French government
+no sooner secured him than it treacherously sent him to prison, first
+to the castle of Pau, then to that of Amboise near Blois, where he was
+kept from 1848 to 1852, when the late emperor made an early use of
+his imperial power to set him at liberty. Since his freedom, at
+Constantinople, Broussa and Damascus the ex-sultan has continued to
+practice the rigors and holiness of the Oriental saint, proving his
+catholic spirit by protecting the Christians from Turkish injustice,
+and awaiting with the deep fatigue of a martyr the moment destined to
+unite his soul with the souls of Washington, Bozzaris and L'Ouverture.
+
+This noble life, which impinges a moment on our course through
+Kabylia, is surely the most epical of our century, which can never
+be reproached for the lack of a hero while Abd-el-Kader's name is
+remembered.
+
+[Illustration: DEFILE OF THIFILKOULT.]
+
+The descent from the rock-perched city of Kalaa having been made in
+safety, and the animals being remounted at the first plateau, our
+Roumi traveler and his guides arrive in a few hours at the modern,
+fortified, but altogether Kabylian stronghold of Akbou. Here a letter
+from a French personage of importance gives us the acquaintance of a
+Kabyle family of the highest rank.
+
+The ancestors of Ben-Ali-Cherif, remotely descended from Mohammed
+through one of his sisters, were of Kabylian race, and one of them,
+settled in Chellata, near Akbou, founded there a prosperous college of
+the Oriental style. Ben-Ali-Cherif, born in Chellata and residing at
+Akbou, receives the tourist with a natural icy dignity which only a
+czar among the sovereigns of Europe could hope to equal: those who
+have but seen Arabs of inferior class can form no notion of the
+distinction and lofty gravity of the chiefs of a grand house (or of a
+grand tent, as they are called): the Kabyle noble is quite as superb
+as the Arab.
+
+Ben-Ali seats us at a rich table covered with viands half French and
+half Oriental: a beautiful youth, his son, resembling a girl with his
+blue head-drapery and slim white hands, places himself at table,
+and attracts the conversation of the guest. The young man answers
+in monosyllables and with his large eyes downcast, and the agha
+significantly observes, "You will excuse him if he does not answer: he
+is not used to talk before his father."
+
+The host, disposing of the time of his guests, has arranged a series
+of diversions. The valley of the river Sahel is full of boars, and
+panthers and monkeys abound in the neighboring spurs of the Zouaouas.
+While the Roumi are examining his orchards of oranges and pomegranates
+the agha's courtyard fills with guests, magnificent sheikhs on Barbary
+horses, armed with inlaid guns. These are all entertained for the
+night, together with the usual throng of parasites, who choke his
+doors like the clients of the rich Roman in Horace.
+
+At sunrise the party is mounted. The mare of the agha, a graceful
+creature whose veins form an embroidery over her coat of black satin,
+is caparisoned with a slender crimson bridle, and a saddle smaller
+than the Arab saddles and furnished with lighter stirrups. The
+Christian guests are furnished with veritable arquebuses of the Middle
+Ages; that is to say, with Kabyle guns, the stock of which, flattened
+and surmounted with a hammer of flints, is ignited by a wheel-shaped
+lock, easier to be managed by a Burgundian under Charles the Bold than
+by an unpretending modern Roumi.
+
+The usual features of an Algerian hunt succeed. A phantom-like silence
+pervades the column of galloping horsemen up to the moment when the
+boar is beaten up. Then, with a formidable clamor of "_Haou! haou!_"
+from his pursuers, the tusked monster bursts through the tamarinds and
+dwarf palms: after a long chase he suddenly stops, and then his form
+instantly disappears under the gigantic African hounds who leap upon
+him and hang at his ears. A huntsman dismounts and stabs his shoulder
+with the yataghan. After a rest the chase is resumed, but this time
+under the form of a hawking-party.
+
+Only the djouads and marabouts--that is to say, the religious or
+secular nobles--have the privilege of hunting with the falcon.
+The patrician bird, taken by the agha from the shoulder of his
+hawk-bearer, is about as large as a pigeon, the head small, beak short
+and strong, the claws yellow and armed with sharp talons. The bird
+rides upon his master's leather glove until a hare is started: then,
+unhooded and released, his first proceeding is to dart into the zenith
+as if commissioned to make a hole in the sky. No fear, however, that
+the poor panting quarry is lost for an instant from the vision of that
+infallible eye, which follows far aloft in the blue, invisible and
+fatal. Soon the cruel bird drops like an aerolite, and, as the deed is
+explained to us, doubles up his yellow hand into a fist, and deals the
+animal a sharp blow on the skull. Directly, as the horsemen approach,
+he is found with his obtuse head bent over his prey, digging out its
+eyes by the spoonful.
+
+By noontide the troop is naturally famished. A luncheon, has, however,
+been prepared by the thoughtfulness of the agha. Riding up to a tent
+which appears as by magic in the wilderness, the provisions for a
+sumptuous repast are discovered. Two fires are burning in the open
+air, and are surrounded by a host of servants or followers. The Roumi
+and their host adjourn from the neighborhood of the preparations, and
+are served under a plane tree beautiful as that whose limbs were hung
+by Xerxes with bracelets. A soup, absolutely set on fire with red
+pepper, introduces the repast: pancakes follow, and various meats
+smothered with eggs or onions. Then two half-naked cooks stagger
+up bearing on a wooden dish, under a gold-bordered napkin, a sheep
+roasted entire and still impaled with the spit. The chief cook takes
+hold of the skewer and draws it violently toward himself, applying
+a smart stroke with his naked heel to the tail of the creature--a
+contact which would seem almost as trying as the ancient ordeal of
+the ploughshares, or as the red-hot horseshoes which the fire-eating
+marabouts are accustomed to dance upon. The Roumi travelers taste
+the succulent viand, taste again, eat till ashamed, and are ready to
+declare that never was mutton properly dressed before. If possible,
+they vow to introduce the undissected roast, the bonfire, the spit
+and the cook with imperturbable heel into the cuisine of less-favored
+lands more distant from the sun.
+
+[Illustration: AN ARAB MARKET.]
+
+Champagne, which the cunning Mussulmans do not consider as wine,
+washes the meal, and coffee and pale perfumed tobacco supplement it.
+But when the appetite has retired and permitted some sharpness to the
+ordinary senses, the travelers are amazed at the gradual and silent
+increase which has taken place in their numbers. Every group of guests
+is augmented by a circle of prone and creeping forms that, springing
+apparently from the earth, are busily breaking the fragments of the
+feast under the care of the servitors, who appear, rather to encourage
+than repel them. Ben-Ali-Cherif, being interrogated, replies calmly,
+"They are Tofailians."
+
+The Tofailian is a parasite on system, an idler who elevates his belly
+into a divinity, or at least a principle. His prophet or exemplar is a
+certain Tofail, whose doctrine is expressed in a few practical rules,
+respectfully observed and numerously followed. "Let him who attends
+a wedding-feast," says one of his apophthegms, "having no invitation,
+avoid glancing here and there dubiously. Choose the best place. If the
+guests are numerous, pass through boldly without saluting any one, to
+make the guests of the bride think you a friend of the bridegroom, and
+those of the groom a friend of the bride."
+
+An Arab poet said of Tofail: "If he saw two buttered pancakes in a
+cloud, he would take his flight without hesitation."
+
+A Tofailian of marked genius once learned that a festival was going
+on at a grand mansion. He ran thither, but the door was closed and
+entrance impossible. Inquiring here and there, he learned that a son
+of the house was absent on the Mecca pilgrimage. Instantly he procured
+a sheet of parchment, folded it, and sealed it as usual with clay: he
+rolled his garments in the dust and bent his spine painfully over a
+long staff. Thus perfect in what an actor would call his reading, he
+sent word to the host that a messenger had arrived from his son. "You
+have seen him?" said the delighted Amphitryon, "and how did he bear
+his fatigues?" "He was in excellent health," answered the Tofailian
+very feebly. "Speak, speak!" cried the eager father, "and tell me
+every detail: how far had he got?" "I cannot, I am faint with hunger,"
+said the simple fellow. Directly he was seated at the highest place of
+the feast, and every guest admired that splendid appetite--an appetite
+quite professional, and cultivated as poulterers cultivate the
+assimilative powers of livers. "Did my son send no letter?" asked the
+poor father in a favorable interval caused by strangulation. "Surely,"
+replied the good friend, and, comprehending that the critical moment
+had arrived, he drew to himself a chine of kid with one hand while he
+unwound the letter from his turban with the other. The seal was still
+moist, and the pilgrim had not found time to write anything on the
+parchment. "Are you a Tofailian?" asked the host with the illumination
+of a sudden idea. "Yea, in truth, verily," said the stranger,
+struggling with his last mouthful. "Eat, then, and may Sheytan trouble
+thy digestion!" The parasite was shown the door, but he had dined.
+
+Men of rank and wealth, like Ben-Ali-Cherif, turn the Tofailian into a
+proverb, and thus laugh at a plague they cannot cure.
+
+[Illustration: POVERTY AND JEWELS.]
+
+The Algerine coast has enriched our language with at least two words,
+respectively warlike and peaceful--_razzia_ and _fantasia_. The latter
+is applied to a game of horsemanship, used to express joy or to honor
+a distinguished friend. A spirited fantasia is organized by the guests
+of the agha on returning to Akbou. Twenty of the best-mounted horsemen
+having gone on before, and being completely lost to sight in the
+whirlwind of dust created by their departure, all of a sudden
+reappear. Menacing their host and his companions like an army, they
+gallop up, their bornouses flying and their weapons flashing, until
+at a few paces they discharge their long guns under the bodies of the
+horses opposite, and take flight like a covey of birds. Loading
+as they retire and quickly forming, again they dash to the charge,
+shouting, galloping, and shooting among the legs of their host's fine
+horses: this sham attack is repeated a score or two of times, up
+to the door of the agha's house. The Bedouins, in their picturesque
+expression, are making the powder talk. Finer horsemanship can nowhere
+be seen. Their horses, accustomed to the exercise, enter into the game
+with spirit, and the riders, secure in their castellated saddles, sit
+with ease as they turn, leap or dance on two feet. Used, too, from
+infancy to the society of their mares, they move with them in a degree
+of unity, vigor and boldness which the English horseman never attains.
+The Arab's love for his horse is not only the pride of the cavalier:
+it is an article of faith, and the Prophet comprehended the close
+unity between his nation and their beasts when he said, "The blessings
+of this world, up to the day of judgment, shall be suspended to the
+locks which our horses wear between their eyes."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE CHRISTY IN AFRICA.]
+
+Truly the Oriental idea of hospitality has its advantages--on the side
+of the obliged party. This haughty ruler, on the simple stress of
+a letter from a French commandant, has made himself our servant and
+teased his brain for devices to amuse us. His chief cook precedes us
+to his birthplace at Chellata, to arrange a sumptuous Arab supper.
+After a ride made enervating by the simoom, we descend at the arcaded
+and galleried Moorish house where Ben-Ali-Cherif was born, and are
+visited by the sheikh of the college which the agha maintains. It is
+a strange, peaceful, cloistered scene, consecrated to study and
+hospitality. Chellata, white and silent, sleeps in the gigantic shadow
+of the rock Tisibert, and in its graveyard, among the tombs of sacred
+marabouts, walk the small bald-headed students reciting passages
+of law or of the Koran. Algeria is dotted over with institutions
+(_zaouias_) similar to this, which, like monasteries of old,
+combine the functions of seminaries and gratuitous inns. That of
+Ben-Ali-Cherif, to which he contributes from his own purse a sum equal
+to sixteen thousand dollars a year, is enshrined in buildings strewn
+around the resting-place of his holy ancestors. The sacred koubba (or
+dome) marking the bones of the marabout is swept by shadows of oak
+and tamarind trees: professors stray in the shadow, and the pupils con
+their tasks on the adjoining tombstones.
+
+Every impression of Chellata is silvered over, as with a moonlight of
+beneficence, by the attentions of Ben-Ali's house-steward, who rains
+upon our appetites a shower of most delicious kouskoussu, soothes us
+with Moorish coffee, and finishes by the politeness of lighting and
+taking the first whiff of our cigarette--a bit of courtesy that might
+be spared, but common here as in parts of Spain.
+
+With daybreak we find the town of Chellata preparing to play its
+role as a mart or place of industry. The labor seems at first sight,
+however, to be confined to the children and the women: the former lead
+the flocks out at sunrise to pasture in the mountain, the women make
+the town ring with their busy work, whether of grinding at the mill,
+weaving stuff or making graceful vases in pottery. The men are at work
+in the fields, from which they return at nightfall, sullen, hardy and
+silent, in their tattered haiks. These are never changed among the
+poor working-people, for the scars of a bornouse are as dignified as
+those of the body, and are confided with the garment by a father to
+his son. The women, as we have remarked before, are in a state of
+far greater liberty than are the female Arabs, but it is more than
+anything else the liberty to toil. Among these mountaineers the wife
+is a chattel from whom it is permissible to extract all the usefulness
+possible, and whom it is allowable to sell when a bargain can be
+struck. The Kabyle woman's sole recreation is her errand to the
+fountain. This is sometimes situated in the valley, far from the
+nodding pillar or precipice on which the town is built. There the
+traveler finds the good wives talking and laughing together, bending
+their lively--sometimes blonde and blue-eyed--faces together over
+their jars, and gossiping as in Naples or as in the streets around
+Notre Dame in Paris. The Kabyles--differing therein from the
+Arabs--provide a fountain for either sex; and a visit by a man to the
+women's fountain is charged, in their singular code of penal fines,
+"inspired by Allah," a sum equal to five dollars, or half as much as
+the theft of an ox.
+
+By the white light of day-dawn we quit Chellata, with the naked crests
+of the Djurjura printing themselves on the starry vault behind us and
+the valley below bathed in clouds. As we descend we seem to waken the
+white, red-roofed villages with our steps. The plateaus are gradually
+enlivened with spreading herds and men going forth to labor. We skirt
+the precipice of Azrou-n'hour, crowned with its marabout's tomb. The
+plains at our feet are green and glorious, pearled with white, distant
+villages. Opposite the precipice the granite rocks open to let us pass
+by a narrow portal where formerly the Kabyles used to stand and levy
+a toll on all travelers. This straitened gorge, where snow abounds in
+winter, and which has various narrow fissures, is named the Defile
+of Thifilkoult: it connects the highways of several tribes, but is
+impassable from December to April from the snow and the storms which
+rage among the cliffs. We are still four thousand feet above the
+plain, whose depth the swimming eye tries in vain to fathom, yet the
+snowy peaks above us are inaccessible. Descending chains of rocks
+mingled with flint and lime, we attain a more clement landscape.
+Kabyle girls crowd around a well called the Mosquitoes' Fountain, a
+naked boy plays melancholy tunes on a reed, and the signs of a lower
+level are abundant in the fields of corn and orchards of olive. But
+the rugged mountains, in whose grasp we have found so many wonders,
+are not left without regret. The most picturesque part of our
+course is now behind us, and as day dies upon our crossing through
+Iferaouenen, we turn back to behold the fine line of the mountains,
+half sad and regretful,
+
+  While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.
+
+Fourteen expeditions were found necessary by the French between 1838
+and 1857 to subdue the Kabyles, who under leaders such as Ben-Salem,
+Ben-Kassim, the Man-with-the-Mule, the Man-with-the-She-Ass, and other
+chiefs less celebrated, defended their territory step by step. In the
+great chastisement of 1857, Marshal Randon, after subduing this part
+of the Djurjura ridge in detail, determined to preserve the fruits of
+victory by two new constructions--a fort and a military road. France
+was to reside among her unwilling colonists, and she was to possess
+an avenue of escape. The building of these two conveniences, as we
+may call them, over the smoking ruins of victory, was a conspicuous
+example of the excellent engineering genius of the nation. An English
+officer, Lieutenant-colonel Walmsley, witnessed, and has left a
+spirited account of, the great conquest, and the immediate improvement
+of it. The strongholds of the Djurjura (it being May, 1857) were
+taken: the most difficult, Icheriden, was soon to fall, yielding
+only to the assault of the Foreign Legion--that troop of Arabs and of
+Kabyles from the Zouaoua plain wherefrom we derive the word _zouave_.
+Marshal Randon selected for his fort the key of the whole district: it
+was a place known as the Souk-el-Arba ("Market of Wednesday"). It was
+in the heart of the Beni Raten land, and in a spot where three great
+mountain-ridges ran down into the plain of the Sebaou. These ridges,
+subdued and friendly, would be held in respect by the garrison of the
+fort, and the other ridge of Agacha, still rebellious, would likewise
+terminate at the fort. The works were immediately laid out and quickly
+built. As the road sprang into its level flight like magic, the
+peeping Kabyles, perfectly unaware that they were conquered, laughed
+in derision. "It is to help the cowards to run away," they said. In
+due time rose the pale walls of the citadel, with mountains above and
+hills below. The Kabyles call it the White Phantom. Their songs, the
+"traditions" of illiterate tribes, recite the building of the terrible
+stronghold: "The Roumi has arrived at the Market: he is building
+there. Weep, O my eyes! tears of blood. The children of Raten are
+valiant men: they are known as masters of the warlike art. They fell
+upon the enemy at Icheriden. The Franks fell like lopped branches.
+Glory to those brave men! But the Roumi has peeled us like seeds. The
+powder talks no more. The warlike men are fainting. Cover thyself with
+mourning, O my head!"
+
+As the tourist turns the summit of Aboudid suddenly appears, like an
+ornamental detail in a panorama, this vast fortress, originally
+named Fort Napoleon, and since the collapse of the empire called Fort
+National. During the French troubles of 1871, in the month of August,
+General Ceres was obliged to inspire terror by burning the village of
+Thizzi-Ouzzou beneath, and then went on to relieve the fort. When the
+next opportunity will occur for the Beni Raten to assert their rights
+it is impossible to tell. We descend from the fort, and all becomes
+commonplace. The charred ruins of Thizzi-Ouzzou in its valley-bed are
+being replaced by new buildings. All wears a look of every-day thrift.
+The Arab, moving his household goods, drives before him his poor
+dingy wife, loaded down with worthless valuables and also with copper
+jewels, in which she clanks like a fettered slave. A negro musician
+from the Desert, a true African minstrel, capers before us and beats
+the tom-tom, until, distracted with his noise, we pay him and bombard
+him off the face of the road with projectiles.
+
+From Thizzi-Ouzzou to Algiers it is but four hours' journey, and
+the four hours are passed in a diligence. Yes, our circumstances are
+subdued to the conditions of the diligence! Adieu, our spahi guides,
+like figures from _Lalla Rookh!_ Adieu, our dream of an African
+Switzerland! The Roumi, outside of Kabylia, quickly fades into the
+light of common day, and becomes plain Tom or Harry.
+
+
+
+
+A REMINISCENCE OF THE EXPOSITION OF 1867.
+
+
+"And you traveled alone?"
+
+"There were two of us--Annie Foster and I."
+
+"You found no difficulty?"
+
+"Not a bit," she replied laughing.
+
+"But you had adventures: I see it in your face."
+
+"Who would travel without adventures?" and she made an expressive
+gesture.
+
+"Romantic?"
+
+"Hm!--_tant soit peu_."
+
+"I am all attention: begin."
+
+"You promise not to tell?"
+
+"Not for the world: torture could not induce me to divulge a single
+word."
+
+"Well, the way it came about was this: Annie and I had been sent from
+England to a small French town on the coast, for the benefit of the
+warm sea-water baths. It was a quaint little port; all the houses
+reminded you of ships in their fitting up; the beds were set into the
+wall like berths; closets were stowed away in all sorts of impossible
+places; the floors were uncarpeted and white as a main deck; and
+articles from distant countries hung about the walls or stood in the
+corners--East Indian sugar-cane, cotton from America, Chinese
+crockery and piles of sea-shells. The great sea by which we lodged was
+represented everywhere. Our food was fish, shrimps and water-fowl--our
+acquaintance, fishermen, shrimpers and sailors. The leading event of
+the day was the coming in and going out of the tide, and ducks and
+geese were the chief domestic animals. On one side was a prospect of
+wind-tossed waves and the sails of ships, on the other wind-beaten
+fields and the sails of mills: the few cabins that had rashly ventured
+beyond the protection of the village shortly lost courage, and, with
+their thatched roofs not a yard from the earth, seemed crouching low
+to avoid the continuous blasts. The church alone on the high sea-wall
+raised itself fearlessly against the tyrant, and though his baffled
+voice still howled without, within the pious prayed securely before a
+faith-inspiring altarpiece of Christ stilling the tempest.
+
+"In a few weeks, after we had exhausted every amusement that the dull
+town afforded, become intimate with all the old gossips, tired of
+listening to the yarns of the pilot-tars off duty, driven the donkeys
+over the country until they instinctively avoided us whenever
+we appeared, sailed in the bay and suffered periodic attacks of
+sea-sickness therefrom, finished the circulating library, and half
+learned some barbarous sentences of Norman patois, we sat down
+disconsolate one afternoon to devise some means of employing the
+remainder of our time. It was then that the bright idea struck Annie,
+and she exclaimed, 'Let us go to the Paris Exposition!'
+
+"'Just the thing!' I answered with enthusiasm. 'I wonder when the next
+train starts?'
+
+"'I'll go and inquire: you begin and pack the trunks. If we can get
+off to-day, by to-morrow morning we can begin seeing it;' and she left
+the room in great excitement.
+
+"The result was, that by seven o'clock that evening we had made our
+hasty preparations, and were ready to set out. It was raining terribly
+when the only hack of the village (which, by the by, was an omnibus)
+called for us at the door. The dripping fluid oozed and sparkled over
+the blinking lamps, the ribbed sides of the antiquated machine were
+varnished with moisture, and the horses looked as if each hair was a
+water-spout to drain the sky. Noah's patriarchal mansion might
+have presented a similar appearance during the first days of that
+celebrated wet season.
+
+"The motherly woman with whom we had been boarding turned dismally
+from the weather to her invalids and tried to dissuade us from leaving
+that night, little understanding that we considered it 'fun.' As
+a parting advice she told us to call each other _madame_: it would
+procure us more consideration. 'For you know, young ladies,' she
+remonstrated mildly, 'it is not quite proper for you to travel alone.'
+After this prudent counsel and many warm adieus we sallied forth.
+
+"The omnibus was crowded, and I had perforce to sit on Annie's knees.
+This, with the jolting, the queer effect of the half-light in the
+rickety interior, together with the expression of the good people, who
+evidently could see no fun in rain, excited my risibility so strongly
+that I indulged in a smothered laugh, tempered to fit the publicity of
+the occasion.
+
+"'You must not laugh in France,' whispered Nan, pulling my dress.
+
+"'I thought the French admired gayety,' I answered in the same tone.
+
+"'Be quiet: it isn't proper.'
+
+"The rest of the way was accomplished in silence. We soon arrived
+at the station and bought our tickets. Of course we had half a dozen
+bundles: in gathering them up a most gentlemanly person accosted us
+and asked, 'Avez vous perdu quelque chose, mademoiselle?'
+
+"Annie replied in the negative with great dignity, and so cut off any
+chance of adventure in that quarter.
+
+"On came the train. In France there is fortunately a provision made
+for women traveling without an escort. In your country they have, I
+believe, smoking-cars especially for the gentlemen: in that blessed
+land there is a compartment for 'ladies alone,' or _Dames Seules,_
+as it is called. A good American once read this inscription with much
+commiseration, _D---- souls_, and returning told his friends that the
+'wicked' French allowed His Satanic Majesty the right of running a
+special car on their roads for his greater accommodation.
+
+"As we were hastening to this most desired refuge I noticed two very
+student-looking young men walking near us, and caught a bit of their
+conversation.
+
+"'They will.'
+
+"'They won't: a bottle of wine on it we go up in the same car with
+them.'
+
+"'I told you so!'
+
+"As we found our car and entered the students passed on, not daring to
+ignore the magic words on the door; so Adventure No. 2 was nipped in
+the bud.
+
+"Nan and I were the only lady-passengers, and we sank back into the
+soft cushions with the pleasant sense that no further effort would
+be needed during the journey. We had been told that the train would
+arrive in Paris about midnight, but the lateness of the hour caused
+us no uneasiness, as we had been there before and remembered the city
+pretty well; and, besides, we thoroughly believed in our ability to
+take care of ourselves.
+
+"In an interval of wakefulness we discussed our plans, and concluded
+to spend the night at some hotel near the station, the next morning
+looking up our friends (several of whom we knew to be in town) and
+consulting them about our future proceedings, feeling that a midnight
+visit from us would scarcely be welcome to any one. Annie recalled a
+fine-looking hotel just opposite the terminus, and, having made our
+selection in its favor, we dozed off again very comfortably.
+
+"I think we had been on the way some four hours when the welcome
+lights began to appear--first in the sky above the city, as if the
+earth in this favored spot threw out rays like the sun; next through
+the darkness over the country below; and then we plunged tunnel-wise
+into the earth under the busy streets and fortifications, to emerge at
+the end of our route.
+
+"We gathered up our bundles in haste, thanking the stars that we had
+accomplished our ride so safely, and were walking off to the hotel
+when we suddenly thought of the trunks. Another consultation was held,
+and we decided to leave them in the baggage-room until morning.
+
+"'But we must go and see that they are safe,' suggested Annie.
+
+"'Where is the baggage-room?' I asked of a porter.
+
+"'This way, mademoiselle.'
+
+"'Madame!' I ventured to correct in a weak voice.
+
+"'Vos clefs, s'il vous plait,' said a polite official as we entered
+the door, and another laid hands on the satchels we carried, to
+examine them.
+
+"We had entirely forgotten the octroi officers. 'Oh my! this affair
+may keep us another half hour,' thought I, 'and I am so sleepy!' I
+have often found (I confide this to you as an inviolable secret) that
+to be unreasonable is a woman's strongest weakness: it is a shield
+against which man's sharpest logic is invariably turned aside. The
+next thing to there not being a necessity, is not seeing a necessity,
+and this I prepared in the most innocent manner to do.
+
+"'Gracious me!' I exclaimed--or its French equivalent, which I suppose
+is 'Mon Dieu'--'you don't mean to detain us here opening those bags,
+and we so tired, and they packed so full that we could scarcely shut
+them; and if you _do_ open them, we cannot get all the things into
+them again, and shall have no end of trouble!' Then I looked as
+injured as if they had been thieves or highway-men.
+
+"Had a man made this speech they would have mistrusted him, but as
+women have a reputation for shallowness, such talk is never thought
+suspicious in them.
+
+"'What do they contain?' asked the officer, hesitating.
+
+"'I don't know what all: we have been at the sea-side, and they are
+full of trash. There are some shells and an old hat in mine, and--and
+things.'
+
+"He tried to conceal a smile, and looked toward the other, who nodded,
+and we saw the welcome 'O' put on in chalk, upon which the bags were
+given back to us.
+
+"'Now the trunks,' said the first who had spoken, holding out his hand
+for the keys.
+
+"'Oh, we are going to leave them here till to-morrow: they are all
+right--you can mark them too;' and without further ceremony we moved
+toward the door. One of the men stepped after us. I thought it was to
+make us return, but it was only to ask if he should get us a carriage.
+
+"We thanked him and replied that we were going to the hotel opposite,
+and did not need one: he then turned to a person who seemed to be the
+porter of the establishment, and told him to carry our satchels for
+us. Now we felt our journey was well at an end, for the windows of our
+welcome asylum were blazing not more than a hundred feet off.
+
+"We crossed the street, rang at the ladies' entrance and asked for
+rooms. After a few moments the servant returned, and, much to our
+chagrin, said that there were none to be had, every corner was full.
+
+"'Do let us see the clerk. We _must_ have a room: you can surely find
+us one somewhere.'
+
+"The man shook his head.
+
+"'Please go and try,' we insisted: 'we shall be satisfied with
+anything for the night. Won't you go and ask again?'
+
+"'It is of no use,' he answered obstinately, a cause de l'Exposition;'
+and he opposed a shrug of his shoulders to every other effort at
+persuasion that we made.
+
+"Just then a chambermaid passed. 'Do come here,' I called. 'Can't you
+find us a room? I will pay you;' and I put my hand significantly in my
+pocket.
+
+"'Very sorry, ladies, but it is impossible,'
+
+"This was a contingency we had not provided for: we looked at each
+other blankly, and, though loath to do so, we both came to the
+conclusion that they were telling the truth.
+
+"'What shall we do?' asked Annie, speaking to me in English.
+
+"'I suppose we shall have to take a carriage and go down town, after
+all,'
+
+"'They may be full there too,' she said in a rueful tone.
+
+"Just then the porter with our satchels spoke: 'There is another hotel
+near, ladies, and if you will come I will show you to it,'
+
+"I consulted Annie with a look, and she assented. Any prospect was
+better than a midnight drive of several miles, with no certainty as to
+our lot at the end of it. So we turned from the inhospitable door and
+followed our guide.
+
+"The latter walked quickly for perhaps a square, stopped before a
+neat-looking house and rang. Our courage rose as the door opened and
+revealed a clean-looking court surrounded by orange trees in boxes,
+with small coffee-tables under them for the convenience of the guests.
+
+"'Rooms for two ladies!' demanded our attendant with the voice of a
+herald.
+
+"The trim but sleepy servant looked at us a moment, as if not
+comprehending the situation, then slowly pronounced our sentence in
+two words, 'No rooms!' and as if to emphasize them threw up the palms
+of his hands, shook his head and added 'Full!' after which he closed
+the door with a hasty click and returned to his nap.
+
+"Our night-errant was visibly disappointed with this reception--not
+more so than we were--but without allowing us time to speak he said
+in his most reassuring voice, 'Never mind, ladies: there are plenty
+of hotels about here, and we shall soon find lodgings for you.' Having
+undertaken the task, he seemed to think it his duty to comfort and
+provide for us.
+
+"Alas! this was not soon accomplished. Two other hotels were
+successively tried in vain, and still our indefatigable guide went
+on. It appeared as if we had walked a considerable distance, but the
+streets cut each other at odd angles, and we had been turning so often
+that I confess I had but little idea where we were, or how far we had
+come, when we entered a quarter where the ways became narrower, passed
+into a dingy alley, thence plunged through a still darker court, from
+that to another alley, and the next moment our porter was ringing at
+the door of a tall, sombre house. I truly hoped that we should not
+find rooms here, and was turning to Annie to advise a cab and an
+attempt in a more civilized-looking locality, when the bell was
+answered and the old question repeated.
+
+"To my surprise and dismay the servant said they could accommodate us.
+Should we stay? I knew that in the older parts of Paris the best of
+houses are sometimes found in the poorer streets, and that in no city
+is a person less able to judge of the interior comfort of a building
+by its external aspect. We were very tired, and should we turn away
+from this open door where should we find another open for us? The
+porter, however good-natured, could not continue to run about with us
+all night, and our faith in ourselves was considerably diluted since
+we left the cars: even a cab might be difficult to get at this hour
+of the night. Annie did not object: indeed, she looked too worn out to
+have an opinion in the matter, and as I could think of nothing better
+to do, I began to make the usual inquiries: 'Have you two adjoining
+rooms?'
+
+"'Yes, mademoiselle.'
+
+"I remembered the advice that had been given us on starting: here
+surely was a place to use it, so I said to the servant in a marked
+tone, 'Take _madame's_ bag and show us to our chambers.'
+
+"'This way, mesdemoiselles,' he answered with the most provoking
+coolness.
+
+"I dismissed our faithful porter with regret, and followed the
+other up stairs. While ascending I racked my brain to determine
+what peculiarity of manner we could adopt that would give us a more
+matronly air while traveling, but I could think of nothing. I may as
+well tell you now that we never for an instant deceived any one on
+this subject during our stay, and we soon ceased trying to do so.
+
+"Our rooms were much better than I had expected to find them, but even
+this caused in me a feeling of doubt. They had a hypocritical air, a
+grasping after appearances that I believe always accompanies deceit
+and imposition--a sleek shabbiness that I detest. I knew by instinct
+that if I examined I should find the carpets worn out under the mats,
+and the chairs faded beneath their smart chintz covers. There was not
+a candid-looking piece of furniture in the apartment: the table was an
+impostor with one short leg; the drawers of the bureau would not open;
+the glasses were all askew, and twisted your face to such a degree
+that it frightened you to catch a glimpse of yourself in passing. But
+this was not the worst: from the moment I entered the rooms I felt
+that they _had been waiting for us_.
+
+"I did not venture to mention my suspicions to Annie, and tried to
+keep up a cheery sort of conversation while we undressed, but I could
+see that she too began to be uneasy. We carefully inspected our doors,
+and found the locks were good, then looked to see that there was no
+one lurking under the beds. It would be difficult to tell you exactly
+what I feared, but somehow everything impressed me as mysterious--the
+quiet of the streets through which we had come, and the quiet of the
+house. It was such a lonely, eerie kind of place: our feet echoed
+on the stairways as if human feet seldom ascended them; the shadows
+appeared especially dark; our candles' small light made little
+impression on the gloom; the very air seemed harder to breathe than
+ordinary; and on recalling the face of the impertinent servant I
+thought that it had a sinister look.
+
+"I tried to recall whether we were in a good or bad faubourg, but
+could not; and then I remembered that Paris was now divided into
+arrondissements, which had a much less ill-omened sound. I went to the
+window to reconnoitre the locality, but, though the rain had ceased,
+darkness covered all so thickly that I could see nothing. As I stood
+there the clock on the station struck, first the quarters, and then
+_one_, in a doleful, muffled tone. It told me one thing I was glad
+to know--namely, that we could not have wandered very far during our
+walk; but there was little comfort in that, after all, since the walk
+had terminated here.
+
+"Stories that I had read of strange adventures and accidents to
+midnight guests now trooped into my head. I thought of one in
+particular, in which the tester of the bed slowly descended to smother
+the sleeping inmate for purposes of robbery; whereupon I minutely
+examined mine, and found to my satisfaction that it was scarcely able
+to discharge the single duty of holding up the curtains, and looked
+most innocent of further intentions. Finding myself again peering into
+corners I had already searched, and feeling this general unrest to
+be growing upon me, I began to think I must be nervous from
+over-exertion, and determined to get rid of my silly fancies in sleep.
+Then, as if to take myself by surprise, I suddenly blew out the light,
+sprang under the covers and shut my eyes tight, afraid that something
+hateful might glare upon me in the dark.
+
+"Just then Annie came to the communicating doorway, and with an effort
+to speak in her natural voice she said, 'Jane, I am going to
+sleep here.' And as if this endeavor had consumed her last bit of
+resistance, she closed and locked the door quickly, ran to my bed and
+threw herself shivering beside me.
+
+"'What is the matter?' I whispered, feeling my presentiment of evil
+confirmed.
+
+"She put her lips to my ear and answered, 'I found a door in my room
+behind the bed-curtains, and it leads I don't know _where_."
+
+"'Did you open it?'
+
+"'No indeed! I would not open it for the world. There might be
+something horrible in it;' and she shuddered.
+
+"'You have left your light burning.'
+
+"'I don't care. I won't go back: no indeed, I _could_ not.' There
+was silence for a few minutes: neither of us moved, when Nan again
+whispered, 'Do you think this room quite safe?'
+
+"'I looked all around before I blew out the light.'
+
+"'Did you look _behind_ your curtains?'
+
+"'No!' I answered with an uncomfortable sensation.
+
+"'You are next the wall: feel along it,' in her most persuasive voice.
+
+"The very idea made me creep. Put my hand behind those curtains and
+touch--what? Even the cold wall would be sufficient to terrify me. For
+reply I remarked suggestively, 'If we had the light we could see.'
+
+"'Yes, that would be just the thing. Go bring it--do!'
+
+"I felt that something must be done, and soon, or I should be in no
+state to accomplish it. If Nan would not go, I must: when we had the
+light half our trouble would be over, and, after all, she might have
+been mistaken.
+
+"'Did the door move?' I ventured to ask.
+
+"'No, it didn't do anything--at least I don't think it did--but it
+_looked_ so awful that it frightened me.'
+
+"'That light in there may set something on fire,' I remarked.
+
+"'Go fetch it: it will only take you a minute. Do go!'
+
+"'You are sure the door didn't open?' I asked, far from liking my
+task.
+
+"'I will go with you half-way,' she volunteered, 'and stand there
+while you run in quick. Come on, and don't let us talk any more about
+it: we shall only get more and more frightened.' You will see that
+Annie's gifts lay more in persuasion than in action.
+
+"Thus adjured, I went with her to the communicating door, cautiously
+listened, then looked through the keyhole. The silence within was
+oppressive, but the flickering bougie warned me that I must make an
+effort, and without allowing myself time to think I hastily turned the
+key and opened the door.
+
+"At that moment it seemed to me that I heard distant footsteps. I
+rushed for the light and turned to go back, when I ran against some
+one: the candle was extinguished by being jerked from the holder to
+the floor, and a hand which I vainly tried to shake off clasped my
+arm. My blood grew thick and still with sudden terror. I tried to
+speak, but could not. What increased my dread was that I could not
+tell whether the _Thing_ by my side was a reality or a spectre. I had
+caught a glimpse of something white as the light disappeared, and I
+believe that a pistol at my head would have caused me less alarm than
+this horrible idea of the supernatural. I began to feel that I could
+endure it no longer, that I should stifle, should die, when Annie's
+voice spoke in the darkness quite near, and I found it was she who had
+grasped my arm.
+
+"'I could not stay in that room alone,' she whispered. 'Don't you
+hear?--_footsteps!_ They are coming.'
+
+"'You have half frightened me to death,' I murmured trembling: 'I
+thought you were something.'
+
+"'No, I ain't anything, but something _is_ coming. Don't you hear?'
+
+"It was true enough. Through the quiet of the house came stealthy
+footsteps. Nearer, nearer. They were ascending the stairs, at times
+delaying an instant, as if groping for the way, then on.
+
+"'Come into your room,' said Annie convulsively: 'come, and we can
+lock ourselves in. Oh, where _is_ your door? I cannot find it, and
+they are coming. What shall we do? what shall we do?'
+
+"We were in total darkness: not a ray of light came from the window,
+and in our confusion we had lost our bearings. Neither of us had the
+least idea in what direction the other room lay.
+
+"'Let us creep along the floor, perhaps we may find it. Do try,' said
+I.
+
+"'No, no, I cannot move. I wish we had never come. I am dying.' She
+was shaking with fright, and would not leave my arm for an instant.
+
+"Just then, from somewhere near us, we could not tell from what
+side, came a long low whistle, so mournful and unearthly, with such a
+summons in its tone, that I shivered: then a faint movement followed
+from the same place.
+
+"'It is a signal for the other,' gasped Annie: 'it is in that door:
+they are coming, they are here. Shall I scream murder? shall I?'
+giving my arm an emphasizing grip.
+
+"'No, no, wait: it will do no good.'
+
+"She groaned, slipped down on her knees, with one arm still round
+me, her face pressed against my side, holding her other hand over the
+unprotected ear, so that she should hear no more; and in this position
+she began to repeat 'Now I lay me down to sleep' just as fast as she
+could gabble it.
+
+"I was no less frightened, and would willingly have crouched down
+also, but she held me so tight that I could not without a struggle,
+and above all things I did not want to make a noise.
+
+"It was thus we awaited the crisis. The steps were certainly coming to
+our room, but whether by the door we had entered or by the one Annie
+had seen behind the bed, I could not tell. I was too bewildered to
+locate the sound, nor did I know whether the bed was at my right or
+left hand. I had a slight hope that the steps might pass on.
+
+"It was for that I waited.
+
+"They came--near, nearer. For a time my heart ceased beating. Annie
+slipped lower, until she lay on the floor, and I could no longer hear
+her breathe. My whole being was merged in listening to that step. I
+could feel that now it was on a level with our room--was there almost
+beside us. Lightly though distinctly a hand passed over the door, as
+if fumbling for the latch. This was the intense moment. Had the person
+paused or hesitated an instant, I think it would have killed us both.
+But no, he did not falter. Steadily on, the step, guided by the hand,
+went as it had come, and as I stood, not daring to move, I heard it
+receding in the distance of the great house. Then all was silence.
+
+"When sensation returned to me I felt as if I had awakened from a
+nightmare, and found myself shaking from the nervous reaction and the
+cold. I stooped to find poor Nan on the floor, and said through my
+chattering teeth, 'It must have been only a late boarder. Don't be
+afraid. It is all over: come, get up.'
+
+"'Can't you get a light?' she begged. 'I cannot move until you have a
+light. I am still afraid.'
+
+"I now remembered that the bureau must be behind me, for I had merely
+turned when I encountered Annie and dropped the candle. There were
+probably matches upon it: yes, there they were. I struck one and
+easily found the candle: then Annie rose with the meekest air
+possible, and, without looking at the obnoxious corner where the bed
+stood, we walked into the other room and locked the door.
+
+"It was not until the gray morning light crept into the window that we
+felt quite safe. Every crack in the floor or nibbling mouse caused us
+to start, and at each quarter the clock of the station would strike
+as if to warn us to be on the alert. But the bed was not bad, and the
+house remained quiet; and as soon as the dawn made our candle useless,
+we began to think we had been very foolish, and the result was a sound
+sleep.
+
+"When we awoke it was ten o'clock: the morning was bright and clear,
+and the terrors of the night had all departed during our refreshing
+rest. The room certainly looked shabby, but if that were a crime, half
+the houses in the world would be sent to prison. There was nothing in
+the least mysterious about it. Our courage rose with the day, and we
+teased and joked each other about our fright. Then, anticipating the
+glories of the Exposition, we congratulated ourselves that we had
+come.
+
+"'We won't breakfast here,' said Annie as she was dressing: 'we will
+go down town to a nice restaurant, and sit at a window and see the
+people go by. Afterward we will look up our friends and find a good
+hotel or boarding-house; and we _must_ go to the Exposition this very
+day. We shall have a famous time. We can make up parties to drive out,
+and go monument-hunting and sight-seeing, and to the theatre. Ain't
+you glad you came?'
+
+"'The first thing we do must be to go back to the station and leave
+these bags with our trunks until we find lodgings,' I remarked.
+
+"Nan went into the next room to get some of the clothing she had left
+there. When she returned, lowering her voice she said, 'Jane, there
+_is_ a door behind my curtains.'
+
+"'Very well, let it alone: I suppose it is a closet.'
+
+"'No such thing: it don't look like a closet; and why would they hide
+a closet, I should like to know? Come in and see it.'
+
+"She walked back, and as I followed drew the curtain aside, and there
+in fact it was.
+
+"'I am going to open it before I leave the room,' she said in a
+determined tone: 'there is something not right about it.'
+
+"'I wouldn't,' I remonstrated: 'some one may be in there.'
+
+"'I am going to see: I must look into it. It is daylight, you know,
+and we sha'n't be much frightened. Help me to push away the bed.'
+
+"'I won't do anything so absurd. This is a hotel, Annie, and there
+must be plenty of adjoining rooms in it. Suppose that room is now
+occupied by a boarder?'
+
+"'If it is occupied they will lock the door on the other side, and I
+will try the latch softly to see; but I know it is not. Don't you
+see that the only entrance must be from here? There is the entry.
+opposite, and here is the court: now, how could any one get into it
+but through this room? It must be a small place, too, for here is
+the corner of the house, and it has been evidently planned to be kept
+_concealed_."
+
+"'No matter: we have no right to any rooms but these we are in. Come
+away, and let well enough alone.'
+
+"'It is not "well enough," as you call it. I am going to see into
+it, and why they hide it. I declare,' and she examined the door
+critically, 'it looks like the entrance to Bluebeard's chamber. Look
+at these queer marks, these dents and stains, as if there had been
+a struggle. It is our duty to investigate;' and her voice grew
+impressive. 'Perhaps we have been brought here for that very purpose,
+and, Jane, if there _is_ a dead body in there, I shall inform the
+police.' Annie was very brave in daylight.
+
+"'Fiddle-de-dee!' I replied to this fine speech. 'What you call duty,
+I call curiosity. I am ravenously hungry, and I wish you would finish
+dressing and let us get to breakfast.'
+
+"'I will just tell you this,' she answered indignantly, and yet with a
+quiver in her voice, 'I never in my life felt as I did last night when
+I saw that door. It was quite like what people write of a mysterious
+influence, or the presence of some one unseen; and that whistle or
+voice or moan, as if a soul was calling, came from here; and you must
+help me to find out what it really was, for I can't go away without
+knowing.'
+
+"I saw it was useless to try longer to dissuade her. The bed moved
+easily: she took my hand and led me behind it; then warily tried the
+latch. It rose, but she was obliged to lean all her weight against the
+door before it would give way, and finally it opened so unexpectedly
+that she almost fell forward.
+
+"What did I see? At the first glimpse a faint light from a cobwebbed
+window, a narrow room and a floor--red. Was it blood? A sickening
+mouldy smell came forth, but as I forced myself to look again I saw
+that it was only red tiles that had startled me. There was an upright
+brick range in a corner, an old water-tank, some shelves and a
+cupboard. A missing pane of glass left a space through which the air
+had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above
+the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the
+footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs
+of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few
+moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that
+had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me with no less
+terror.
+
+"The house had been built for a _hotel garni_; that is, a house with
+furnished rooms or apartments, something like a tenement-house in your
+country. This was the kitchen of the suite, and belonged to the two
+rooms we had taken. Being unused for its proper object, and too small
+for a bed-chamber, it had been closed, and appeared as if it had been
+unentered for years. I turned to Annie to see how she would bear this
+prosaic explanation of our alarm, but with the air of one who had
+expected nothing but this from the beginning, she remarked, 'Now you
+see how much better it is to look into such things. This room would
+have furnished me with bad dreams for the remainder of my life, and
+here I find it is only a commonplace kitchen. Think how ludicrous to
+have the horrors over a kitchen! Sha'n't I tell of your fright when
+we get home--how you didn't want to open the door, and wanted to 'let
+well enough alone'? The place _might_ be haunted by the ghost of
+a chicken or a rabbit, but, my dear, you should not allow that to
+terrify you.'
+
+"'Perhaps it was the ghost of a chicken that you feared last night,
+and that caused your presentiments this morning. I hope you will
+inform the police of what you have discovered here,' I remarked
+quietly.
+
+"'A truce, a truce, good Jane! I will say no more. We were both
+boobies. But wouldn't it be 'cute to live here, you and me, and make
+our own breakfast? Look at the hole for charcoal, and the little
+cupboard, the nails for the pots and pans to hang on: everything is
+complete. That room could be for dining, the other a parlor, and--'
+
+"'The only drawback would be that, except at the North Pole, the night
+comes once in twenty-four hours.'
+
+"'Don't be mean, Jane! Do come in here a minute: it's a dear little
+place.'
+
+"'You will certainly make a housekeeper if a kitchen gives you such
+ecstasy. Come out, I am so hungry. Put on your bonnet and leave this
+elysium: I have had enough of it.'
+
+"'You come in for a second: it will shake the terror off and you
+won't dream of it. That is a cure my old nurse once gave me for laying
+ghosts.'
+
+"'It may be a good plan to shake off the terror, but the dust on you
+will not be shaken off so easily.'
+
+"'Suppose,' and she stamped her foot--'suppose that the floor should
+be hollow, and that this were only a pretended kitchen after all, or
+that there was a trap-door painted to resemble tiles, or a sliding
+panel.' Here she felt over the surface of the wall. 'Why should I feel
+so queer last night if this was really nothing but a kitchen?'
+
+"'Because you are a goose,' I answered impatiently, 'and if you don't
+come I will leave you. If you like, you can engage boarding here for a
+week, and raise the tiles one by one with a knife and fork. As for me,
+I am going to breakfast.'
+
+"'But don't you think it really has an uncanny look?' she asked,
+giving a last glance over her shoulder as she came out.
+
+"'If you call dirt uncanny, there is plenty of that. Shut the door,
+and I will push back the bed.'
+
+"'Jane,' she again remarked as she was trying on her bonnet before the
+crooked glass, 'if ever I tell of this night, I think I will say that
+there _was_ a trap-door in the kitchen: you know there might be one
+and we not see it.'
+
+"'Oh yes,' I answered as patiently as I could, 'I suppose a fib more
+or less will make but little difference in your lifetime. While you
+are at it, however, you may as well make a few more additions.'
+
+"'Now you are unkind.'
+
+"'A person is not accountable for temper when famishing. Take up your
+satchel.'
+
+"We found the house a most every-day-looking house, seen by sunlight;
+but there had lain the difficulty. The clerk in the office did not
+particularly resemble a cutthroat, or even a cutpurse, and, strange to
+say, did not overcharge us: in fact, he behaved very civilly. We found
+we were not far from the station, and depositing our bags there, we
+walked down the beautiful Rue La Fayette.
+
+"'It is a great deal pleasanter to travel alone in this way,' said
+Nan gayly, her spirits rising in the delightful air. 'When I was here
+before with all the family, it was not near so jolly; and I think we
+manage well, don't you? Oh, there is an omnibus not _complet_: let us
+get in. I am too hungry to walk.'
+
+"After we were seated she continued: 'I wonder what will happen to
+us to-night. Suppose we find every place full, and have to sleep in a
+garden or on the steps of a church, or something? Isn't it delightful
+not to know in the least what is going to happen next?--just as in
+fairy-land. Don't you hope we may have an adventure every night?'
+
+"'I should not call last night an adventure: it seems to me it was
+more like a panic,' I said drily.
+
+"'You will never let anything be agreeable,' in a hurt tone: then
+recovering her good temper, she went on: 'Well, call it a panic if
+you like. Now, suppose we had one every night, and we stayed here two
+weeks, there would be fourteen panics before we go home. Wouldn't that
+be glorious?'
+
+"'You did not appear to enjoy it so much last night.'
+
+"'At the time I did not,' she admitted frankly. 'Weren't we
+frightened? But then, you know, how nice it will be to talk of it
+afterward!'
+
+"We arrived at a restaurant in the Palais Royal, and found a seat by
+the window, and a breakfast. We had already finished the latter, and
+were playing with our fruit, when a party entered who attracted our
+attention by speaking English.
+
+"'One of them is Miss Rodgers,' Annie whispered excitedly. 'I know her
+well: hadn't we better run away? What will she think of our being here
+alone?'
+
+"'Nonsense! You had better ask her where she is staying. Remember, we
+are houseless as yet.'
+
+"'I don't like to ask her.'
+
+"'Introduce me: I will ask.' The idea of spending the night in a
+garden or on a church-step did not possess the same charms for me as
+for Nan. Thus prompted, she walked forward and spoke to her friend,
+afterward presenting me. We chatted a few minutes, when Miss Rodgers
+asked Annie where she was staying, and how her mamma was.
+
+"'Mamma is not with us,' was Nan's embarrassed reply.
+
+"I went to her rescue, and diverted the questions by asking some
+myself: 'Miss Rodgers, where are you staying? We do not like our hotel
+and want to change.'
+
+"'There is not a room in our house that is unoccupied, and you won't
+find good accommodation anywhere. You had better not change if you
+have a place to lay your head. Paris is so crowded that everything
+has been taken up long ago. You can ask at a dozen hotels or
+boarding-houses and not find a garret to let. You have no idea of the
+difficulty.'
+
+"Yes, we had an idea, and believed every word she said: in fact,
+we would rather have felt less convinced on the subject. Even Annie
+seemed to think that traveling alone might present some disagreeable
+features, and looked quite unhappy, notwithstanding her love of
+adventure. But before our mental anguish had time to become unbearable
+a young girl, a niece of Miss Rodgers, spoke: 'Auntie, if the young
+ladies would like, I know of just the place that would suit them.'
+Then turning to us, she continued: 'I am at school a few miles out of
+the city, and madame told me that if I knew of any one, she had room
+for a few parlor-boarders. It is a lovely spot, and no end of trains
+coming and going all day; so that it would be just as convenient as
+living here, and you would have excellent accommodation. Then, too,
+I could speak English to you sometimes. I am so tired of talking for
+ever without half knowing what I am saying.'
+
+"I could have embraced the chatterbox on the spot for this opportune
+proposal, but controlled my feelings and looked at Nan to see if
+she approved. She was consenting with every one of her expressive
+features, and did not appear at all anxious to enjoy one of her
+fourteen delightful panics this evening if it could be avoided.
+Being spokesman, I said, 'I would willingly try the school on your
+recommendation, Miss Ada, if you think madame could be ready for us
+this evening.'
+
+"'Of course she could: come out with me now and see her. I must go
+at one, and can show you the way. Will you meet me at the station? or
+shall we call for you at your hotel?'
+
+"'We will meet at the station,' I replied, glad to settle it so
+quickly, 'if you are quite sure that your madame will like our
+unceremonious arrival.'
+
+"'That will be all right, I know. She has several empty rooms, and
+will be happy to have them filled. You can leave your trunks until
+to-morrow if you don't like to come bag and baggage.'
+
+"We needed no further pressing. Here was deliverance and safety, and
+we bade good-morning to the party with light hearts.
+
+"We found the school all that Miss Ada had promised, and thus ended
+the nearest approach to an adventure that we had during the two weeks
+that we remained."
+
+"And now tell me about the Exposition."
+
+"Well, we saw it."
+
+"Saw what?"
+
+"Why, everything."
+
+"Describe it to me."
+
+"Certainly. In the first place, it was very big, and everybody was
+there, so it was crowded; and you met your friends and you talked;
+and--and you got fearfully tired; and it was wonderful; and there were
+ever so many restaurants, and a soda-water fountain, and queer things
+that you never expected to see there, like the Mexican techcatl and
+Russian horses; and everything was _real_--real lace and cashmeres and
+diamonds, and nothing but what was very nice. But, after all, I think
+you had better get a file of old newspapers and read about it, for I
+really have no talent for description--or, better still, go and see
+the one in Vienna this summer."
+
+ITA ANIOL PROKOP.
+
+
+
+
+SLAINS CASTLE.
+
+
+In traveling over the old lands of Europe one is sometimes apt to
+think more of historical and genealogical traditions than of the
+natural beauties or peculiarities of the country. The old landmarks
+of a nation, whether monuments built by the hand of man or archives
+carefully preserved by him, tell us of its growth, just as the strata
+of the mountain tell of its progress to the geologist; and as every
+successive layer has some relation both to its predecessor and its
+successor, so the traditions of each generation have a perceptible
+influence upon the moral development of the generation following.
+Every nation is thus the growing fruit of its own history, and every
+visible step of the grand ladder of facts that has led up to the
+present result must needs have for a student of human nature an
+intrinsic interest.
+
+This comes very clearly before my mind as I think of Slains Castle
+(Aberdeen), a massive crown of granite set on the brow of the rocks of
+the German Ocean, and the seat of one of those old Scottish families
+whose origin is hidden away among the suggestive mists of tradition.
+
+Slains Castle stands alone, a giant watchman upon giant cliffs,
+built up only one story high, on account of the tremendous winds that
+prevail there in spring and autumn, and cased with the gray Aberdeen
+granite of the famous quarries near by. The surrounding country is
+as bare and uninviting as one could imagine; the road from Aberdeen
+(twenty miles) is bleak and stony; the young trees near the castle are
+stunted, and in many cases disfigured by the inroads of hungry cows
+among their lower branches, and a damp veil of mist hangs perpetually
+over the scene, softening the landscape, but sometimes depressing
+the spirits. As the hours pass the place grows on you: a weird beauty
+begins to loom up from among the mist-wreaths, the jagged rocks, the
+restless waves, and you forget the desolate moor, which in itself
+displays attractions you will realize later, in the grandeur of the
+desolate sea.
+
+The original building is of the time of James VI. (of Scotland), and
+is due to Francis, earl of Erroll, whose more ancient castle, bearing
+the same name, was destroyed by the king to punish his vassal for
+the part he had taken in a rebellion. In the seventeenth century Earl
+Gilbert made great improvements in it, and early in the eighteenth
+Earl Charles added the front. In 1836 it was rebuilt by Earl William
+George, the father of the present owner, with the exception of the
+lower part of the original tower. In this there used to be in olden
+times an _oubliette_ in which unhappy prisoners were let down. All at
+first appeared dark around them, but when they had thankfully assured
+themselves that they at last stood upon solid ground, they would look
+about them and presently descry a line of fitful light coming from a
+door ajar in their dungeon. The poor victims would then go in haste
+to this door, pull it open and, blinded by the sudden light, step out
+upon the green slope terminating quickly in a precipice, which went
+sheer down to the sea.
+
+The rest of the house is built around a large covered piazza,
+intersected by corridors where pictures, armor and all kinds of old
+family relics decorate the walls. The drawing-room is on the very edge
+of the rock, and on stormy days the flocks of uneasy sea-gulls almost
+flap their wings against its window-panes, while the clouds of
+spray dash up against them in miniature waterfalls. The rocks in the
+immediate neighborhood of the castle are rugged in the extreme, here
+and there rent by a gigantic fissure reaching far inland, and up which
+the foaming waters gurgle continually as if in impatience of their
+narrow bounds, now jutting far into the sea like a Titanic staircase
+and thickly matted with coarse sea-weed, and again reared up on high,
+a sheer glistening wall, with not a cranny for the steadiest foot, and
+with Niagaras of spray for ever veiling its smooth, unchanging face.
+In wonderful hollows you will come upon pools of green water with
+sea-anemones, delicate sea-weed of pink, yellow or purple hue, and
+gem-like shells resting on a bottom of clearest sand; and while the
+waves are roaring on every side, and flinging their dampness into your
+very face, these fairy pools will lie at your feet without a breath or
+ripple on their surface.
+
+The most magnificent of these rocks is one called in Gaelic "Dun-Bug"
+("Yellow Rock"), the favorite haunt of the white sea-gulls. It stands
+alone, as if torn from the land and hurled into the tossing waves
+by some giant hand. Two hundred feet in height and a thousand in
+circumference, it forms a natural arch, being pierced from its base
+upward by an opening that widens as it ascends. The waves dash through
+it with terrific violence, and the very sight of its grim splendor
+conjures up a vision of shipwreck and danger. Scott has made
+mention of it in _The Antiquary_, and Johnson in his _Journey to the
+Hebrides_, recalling the grandeur of the rocky coast of Slains, has
+said that though he could not wish for a storm, still as storms,
+whether wished for or not, will sometimes happen, he would prefer
+to look at them from Slains Castle. These rocks and the caves that
+alternate with them were once famous as a smuggling rendezvous, and
+as such Scott has again immortalized them in his _Guy Mannering_. The
+Crooked Mary, a noted lugger, had many an adventure along this coast
+during the last century. The skipper's arrival was eagerly looked for
+at certain stated times, the preconcerted signal was given by him,
+and the inhabitants bestirred themselves with commendable haste.
+All ordinary business was immediately suspended: men might be seen
+stealing along from house to house, or a fisher-girl, bareheaded and
+barefooted, would hurry to the neighboring village, and deliver a
+brief message which to a bystander would sound very like nonsense, but
+which nevertheless was well understood by the person to whom it was
+given. Soon after a plaid or blanket might be seen spread out, as if
+to dry, upon the top of a peat-stack. Other beacons, not calculated
+to draw general notice, but sufficiently understood by the initiated,
+soon made their appearance, telegraphing the news from place to place.
+As soon as the evening began to close in the Crooked Mary would be
+observed rapidly approaching the land, and occasionally giving out
+signals indicating the creek into which she meant to run. Both on sea
+and land hairbreadth escapes were the rule rather than the exception,
+and it is related of one of the Crooked Mary's confederates on shore,
+poor Philip Kennedy, that one night, while clearing the way for the
+cargo just landed from the contraband trader's hold, he was simply
+murdered by the excise-officers. The heavy cart laden with the
+cargo was yet some distance behind, and Kennedy with some dastardly
+companions was slowly going forward to ascertain if all was safe,
+when three officers of the customs suddenly made their unwelcome
+appearance. Brave as a lion, Kennedy attacked two of them, and
+actually succeeded for a time in keeping them down in his powerful
+grasp, while he called to his party to secure the third. They,
+however, thinking prudence the better part of valor, decamped
+ignominiously, and the enemy remained master of the brave man's life.
+Anderson, the third officer, was observed to hold up his sword to the
+moon, as if to ascertain if he were using the edge, and then to bring
+it down with accurate aim and tremendous force upon the smuggler's
+skull. Strange to say, Kennedy, streaming with blood, actually
+succeeded in reaching Kirkton of Slains, nearly a quarter of a mile
+away, but expired a few moments after his arrival. His last words
+were: "If all had been true as I was, the goods would have been safe,
+and I should not have been bleeding to death." The brave fellow was
+buried in the churchyard of Slains, where a plain stone marks his
+grave, and bears the simple inscription, "To the memory of Philip
+Kennedy, _in Ward_, who died the 19th of December, 1798. Aged 38."
+
+My own earliest recollections of the grand, desolate old castle are
+derived, not from my first visit to it made in infancy, but from the
+descriptions of one whose home it was during a brief but intensely
+observant period of childhood. There came one day a storm such as
+seldom even on that coast lashes up the gray, livid ocean. The waves,
+as far out as sight could reach, were one mass of foam, and the
+ghastly lightning flashed upon the torn sails of a ship as near
+destruction as it well could be. Cries came up from below in the brief
+pauses of the storm, and above lanterns were quickly carried to and
+fro, while pale attendants hurriedly and silently obeyed the signals
+of a more collected master. The occupants of the castle hardly knew to
+what its chambers might be destined--whether to receive the dead or to
+afford rest to the saved. Beds, fires and cordials were in readiness,
+and strong men bore dread burdens up dizzy paths leading from beneath.
+The ship broke in pieces on the merciless rocks, and many a drowned
+sailor went down to meet the army of his fellow-victims of all times
+who no doubt lay sleeping in the submarine caves of Slains. Those who
+survived soon disappeared, full of gratitude for the timely relief
+offered them at the castle, but one old man remained. He was never
+known by any other name than "Monsieur," and was beloved by every
+individual member of the household. A French _emigre_ of the old
+school, with the dainty, gallant ways of the _ancien regime_, he still
+clung to the dress of his earlier days, and wore a veritable _queue_,
+silk stockings and buckled shoes. For some time he remained a welcome
+guest in the "red chamber," where the host's little children would
+sometimes join him and play with his watch and jeweled baubles. But
+one day poor little "Monsieur" sickened, and the tiny feet that had
+made such haste to run to him, now trod the corridor softly and bore a
+baby-nurse to the gentle invalid. It was a high and coveted reward for
+the little girls to carry "Monsieur's" medicine to his bedside, and
+everything that kindness and hospitality could suggest was equally
+lavished on him; but his feeble life, which had no doubt received a
+shock from the shipwreck it had barely escaped, went out peacefully
+like the soft flame of a lamp.
+
+Slains Castle had many gentle and pleasant memories about it, as well
+as its traditional horrors, and among these were many connected with
+the history of the old family that owned it. In one of the corridors
+hangs the picture of James, Lord Hay, a fair-haired, sunny-faced boy,
+tall and athletic, standing with a cricket-bat in his hand. He would
+have been earl of Erroll had he lived, but if we follow him in his
+short life from classic Eton to the field of Quatre-Bras, we shall
+find him again, on a bright June day in 1815, lying as if asleep, as
+fair and noble-looking as before, but silent in death. Simple Flemish
+peasants stand in a group around him, awed and admiring, asking each
+other if this beautiful youth is an angel fallen from heaven, or
+only a mortal man slain for the Honor of his country. His was a noble
+death, and worthy of the suggestive memento of his early boyhood
+before which we stood just now in the corridor of Slains Castle.
+
+A little farther down this corridor, which to all intents and purposes
+is a family picture-gallery, we shall be forced to stop before the
+portrait of a dark woman, masculine and resolute, not beautiful nor
+like the handsome race of the Hays, of which she was yet the last
+direct representative. This is the famous Countess Mary, one of the
+central figures of the family traditions. The Hays were hereditary
+lords high constable of Scotland, and also one of the few Scottish
+families in which titles and offices, as well as lands, are
+transmitted through the female line. So this Countess Mary found
+herself, at the death of her brother, countess of Erroll in her
+own right and _lord_ high constable of Scotland. In one of the two
+pictures of her at Slains, if I remember right, she is represented
+with the baton of her office, with which badge she also appeared at
+court before her marriage (after this it was borne by her husband
+in the character of her deputy). Her husband was a commoner, a Mr.
+Falconer of Dalgaty, whose reported history in connection with her is
+curious and deserves to be told, though the old tradition is moulded
+into so many different forms that it is very difficult to disentangle
+the truth from its manifold embellishments. Toward the beginning of
+the eighteenth century this intrepid and independent lady fell in love
+with Mr. Falconer, who at first did not seem eager to return or notice
+her affection. High-strung and chivalric by nature, she did not droop
+and pine under her disappointment, but vowed to herself that she would
+bring him to her feet. Mr. Falconer coner left the country after some
+time, and went to London. The Countess Mary also traveled south the
+same year, and no news of her was heard at Slains for some time.
+Meanwhile, she and Mr. Falconer met, but unknown to the latter,
+who about the same time became acquainted with a very dashing young
+cavalier, evidently a man of high birth and standing, but resolutely
+bent on mystifying his friends as to his origin. The two saw each
+other frequently, and were linked by that desultory companionship
+of London life which sometimes indeed ripens into friendship, but as
+often ends in a sudden quarrel. Such was the end of this acquaintance,
+and one day some trifling difference having occurred between the
+friends, a cartel reached Mr. Falconer couched in very haughty though
+perfectly courteous language. These things were every-day matters in
+such times, and very nonchalantly the challenged went in the early
+morning to the appointed place to meet the challenger. Here the
+versions of the story differ. Some say that Mr. Falconer and his
+antagonist fought, but without witnesses; that the former got the
+worst of the encounter, and remained at the other's mercy; that then,
+_and not before_, the Countess Mary made herself known to him and
+gave him his choice--a thrust from her sword or a speedy marriage with
+herself. Others say that it was before the duel that she astonished
+her lover by this discovery, and that the choice she gave him was
+between marriage and ridicule.[A]
+
+The fact of her marriage, and that it proved a happy one, is certain.
+Mr. Falconer dropped his own name to assume that of Hay. The
+countess was a devoted Jacobite and an earnest churchwoman. When
+Presbyterianism had got the upper hand in Scotland, and was repaying
+church persecutions with terrible interest, a Mr. Keith was
+appointed to the Anglican parish of Deer. This was within the Erroll
+jurisdiction, and it was not long before the zealous Countess Mary
+came to the rescue of the congregation, who had assembled for some
+time in an old farmhouse. In 1719 or '20 she had the upper floor of
+a large granary fitted up for their accommodation, and this afforded
+them a grateful shelter for more than a quarter of a century. Of
+this same parish of Deer a curious story is told in the local annals,
+showing how conservative and tenacious of traditions the north of
+Scotland still was in 1711. The skirmish to which it relates goes
+by the quaint title of the "Rabbling of Deer," and is thus reported:
+"Some people of Aberdeen, in conjunction with the presbytry of
+Deer, to the number of seventy horse or thereby, assembled on the
+twenty-third of March, 1711, to force in a Presbyterian teacher in
+opposition to the parish; but the presbytry and their satellites were
+soundly beat off by the people, not without blood on both sides."
+
+There was little of the martyr about the Scot of that warlike day, and
+most emphatically and literally did he show himself a "_soldier_ of
+the Lord."
+
+The aisle of the old church of Slains contains the graves of Countess
+Mary and her husband, with an epitaph in Latin, of which the following
+is a translation: "Beneath this tombstone there are buried neither
+gold nor silver, nor treasures of any kind, but the bodies of the most
+chaste wedded pair, Mary, countess of Erroll, and Alexander Hay
+of Dalgaty, who lived peaceably and lovingly in matrimony for
+twenty-seven years. They wished to be buried here beside each other,
+and pray that this stone may not be moved nor their remains disturbed,
+but that these be allowed to rest in the Lord until He shall call
+them to the happy resurrection of that life which they expect from the
+mercy of God and the merits of the Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ."
+
+The central figure, however, in the history of the Hays of Erroll,
+and that which no one who bears the name of Hay can think of without a
+thrill of pride, is the Lord Kilmarnock who fell, in 1746, a victim
+to the last unsuccessful but heroic rising in favor of the Stuarts.
+I have heard it whispered as an instance of "second sight" that some
+years before he had any reason to anticipate such a death he was once
+startled by the ghostly opening of a door in the apartment where
+he was sitting alone, and by the apparition, horribly distinct and
+realistic, of a bloody head rolling slowly toward him across the room;
+till it rested at his feet. The glassy eyes were upturned to his,
+and the bonny locks were clotted with blood: it was as if it had
+just rolled from under the axe of the executioner; and the features,
+plainly discerned, _were his own!_
+
+His part in the rising of 1745 belongs to history, but his personal
+demeanor concerns my narrative more closely. All the contemporary
+accounts are loud in praise of his beauty and elegance of person, his
+refinement of manner, his variety of accomplishments; and Scott,
+in his _Tales of a Grandfather_, relates a curious circumstance
+concerning his fine presence at the moment of his execution. A lady of
+fashion who had never seen him before, and who was herself, I
+believe, the wife of one who had much to do with Lord Kilmarnock's
+death-warrant, seeing him pass on his way to the block, formed a most
+violent attachment for his person, "which in a less serious affair
+would have, been little less than a ludicrous frenzy."
+
+The grace and dignity of his appearance, together with the resignation
+and mildness of his address, melted all the spectators to tears as
+they gathered round the fatal Tower prison to witness his death: the
+chaplain who attended him says his behavior was so humble and resigned
+that even the executioner burst into tears, and was obliged to use
+strong cordials to support him in his terrible duty. Lord Kilmarnock
+himself was deeply impressed by the sight of the block draped in
+funereal black, the plain coffin placed just beside it, the sawdust
+that was so disposed as speedily to suck up the bloody traces of the
+execution, and the sea of faces surrounding the open enclosure kept
+for this his last earthly ordeal. It was certainly not from fear that
+he recoiled, but his proud, sensitive, melancholy nature was thrilled
+through every nerve by this dread publicity, and we cannot wonder
+that, leaning heavily on the arm of a trusty friend, he should have
+whispered, almost with his last breath, the simple words, "Home, this
+is dreadful!"
+
+One who was the lineal descendant of this earl of Kilmarnock,
+and whose only brother long bore the same blood-stained and
+laurel-wreathed title, has often told me of the strange link that
+bridged the chasm of four generations from 1746 to 1829, and bound her
+recollections to those of a living witness of the scene. She was so
+young as not to have any distinct impression of other events that
+happened at the same time, but this lived in her mind because of the
+importance and solemnity with which her own parents had purposely
+invested it in her eyes. One day, at Brighton, this little
+great-great-grand-daughter of the Lord Kilmarnock of 1745 was brought
+down from the nursery to see an old, more than octogenarian, soldier
+who had distinguished himself in recent wars, and reached the rank
+of general. This tottering old man, more than fourscore years of age,
+took the wee maiden of hardly four upon his knee, and told her in
+simple words the story she was never to forget--how he had been a
+tiny boy running to school on the day of the execution of the "rebel
+lords," and how, seeing a vast, eager crowd all setting toward the
+Tower quarter, he was tempted to play truant, and flinging his satchel
+of books over his shoulder, had pushed his way as far as the great
+state prison. Then of his frantic efforts to secure a point of vantage
+whence to see the great death-pageant--of his childish admiration for
+the handsome, manly form of Lord Kilmarnock, of his enthusiasm when
+Lord Balmerino, the other victim, had cried in a loud voice, "Long
+live the king!" and of the fascination he could not resist which led
+his eyes from the shining axe and the draped block to the auburn locks
+of the prisoner, and soon after to his bleeding head laid low in the
+sawdust around the coffin. All this the old veteran told thrillingly,
+the shadow of a boy's awed recollection mingling with his Scottish
+exultation as a compatriot of the victim, and even with a touch of
+humor as he recalled the domestic scolding which marked the truant's
+return.
+
+In the charter-room at Slains Castle, where the records, genealogies,
+private journals, official deeds, etc. of the family are kept,
+one might find ample material for curious investigation of our
+forefathers' way of living. Among other papers is a kind of inventory
+headed, "My Ladies Petition anent the Plenissing within Logg and
+Slanis." The list of things wanted for Slains speaks chiefly of brass
+pots, pewter pans and oil barrels, but, the "plenissing" of Logg
+(another residence of the Errolls), "quhilk my Ladie desyris as eftir
+followis, quhilk extendis skantlie (scantily) to the half," contains
+an ample list of curtains of purple velvet, green serge, green-and-red
+drugget and other stuffs hardly translatable to the modern
+understanding, and shows that in those days women were not more
+backward than now in plaguing their liege lords about upholstery and
+millinery. But the most amusing and natural touch of all is in the
+endorsement, hardly gallant, but _very_ conjugal, made by the fair
+petitioner's husband: "To my Ladyes gredie (greedy) and vnressonable
+(unreasonable) desyris it is answerit...." Here follows a distinct
+admission that the furniture of both houses, put together, is too
+little to furnish the half of each of them, and therefore nothing can
+be spared from Logie to "pleniss" Slains.
+
+The family coat-of-arms commemorates to this day the poetical
+genealogy of the Hays. Its supporters are two tall, naked peasants
+bearing plough-yokes on their shoulders: the crest is a falcon, while
+the motto is also significant--"_Serva jugum._" Scottish tradition
+tells us that in 980, when the Danes had shamefully routed the Scots
+at Loncarty, a little village near Perth, and were pursuing the
+fugitives, an old man and his two stalwart sons, who were ploughing in
+a field close by, were seized with indignation, and, shouldering their
+plough-yokes, placed themselves resolutely in a narrow defile through
+which their countrymen must pass to evade a second slaughter by
+the victors. As the Scots came on the three patriots opposed their
+passage, crying shame upon them for cowards and no men, and exhorting
+them thus: "Why! would ye rather be certainly killed by the
+heathen Danes than die in arms for your own land?" Ashamed, and
+yet encouraged, the fugitives rallied, and with the three dauntless
+peasants at their head fell upon their astonished pursuers, and fought
+with such desperation that they turned defeat into victory. Kenneth
+III., the Scottish king, instantly sent for the saviors of his army,
+gave them a large share of the enemy's spoils, and made them march in
+triumph into Perth with their bloody plough-yokes on their shoulders.
+More than that, he ennobled them, and gave them a fair tract of land,
+to be measured, according to the fashion of that day, by the flight of
+a falcon. From the name of this land the Hays came to be called;
+lords of Erroll, and it is said that the Hawk Stone at St. Madoes,
+Perthshire, which stands upon what is known to have been the ancient
+boundary of the possessions of the Hays, is the identical stone from
+which the lucky falcon started. It was left standing as a special
+memorial of the defeat of the Danes at Loncarty. Another stone famous
+in the Hay annals, and conspicuously placed in front of the entrance
+to Slains Castle, is said to be the same on which the peasant general
+rested after his toilsome leadership in the battle.
+
+Our walks over the bleak moors on one side, with the heather in
+bloom and the blackberries in low--lying purple clusters fringing the
+granite rocks, were sometimes rendered more interesting, though more
+dangerous, by the sudden falling of a thick white mist. Slowly it
+would come at first, gathering little filmy clouds together as it
+were, and hovering over the gray sea in curling tufts, and then,
+growing strong and dense, would swoop down irresistibly, till what was
+clear five minutes before was impenetrably walled off, and one seemed
+to stand alone in a silent world of ghosts. Or again, our walks would
+take us on the other side, over the Sands of Forvie, a desolate tract
+where nothing grows save the coarse grass called _bent_ by the Scotch,
+and where the wearied eye rests on nothing but mounds of shifting
+sand, drearily shaped into the semblance of graves by the keen winds
+that blow from over the German Ocean.
+
+This miniature desert, tradition says, was an Eden four hundred years
+ago, but a wicked guardian robbed the helpless orphan heiresses of it
+by fraud and violence, and the maidens threw a spell or _weird_ upon
+it in these terms:
+
+  "Yf evyr maydens malysone
+    Did licht upon drye lande,
+  Let nocht bee funde in Furvye's glebys
+    Bot thystl, bente and sande."
+
+I must not forget the "Bullers," a natural curiosity which is the
+boast of the neighborhood of Slains, and is moreover connected with
+a feat performed by a former guest and friend of one of the lords of
+Erroll. We drove there in a large party, and passed through an untidy,
+picturesque little fishing-hamlet on our way, where the women talked
+to each other in Gaelic as they stood barefooted at the doors of
+their cabins, and where the children looked so hardy, fearless and
+determined that the wildest dreams of future possible achievement
+seemed hardly unlikely of realization in connection with any one of
+them.
+
+"The Pot," as it is locally called, is a huge rocky cavern,
+irregularly circular and open to the sky, into which the sea rushes
+through a natural archway. A narrow pathway is left quite round
+the basin, from which one looks down a sheer descent of more than a
+hundred feet; but this is so dangerous, the earth and coarse grass
+that carpet it so deceptive and loose, and the wind almost always
+so high on this spot, that only the most foolhardy or youngest of
+visitors would dare in broad daylight to attempt to _walk_ round it.
+Yet it is on record that the duke of Richmond, some sixty or seventy
+years ago, made a bet at Lord Erroll's dinner-table that he would
+_ride round it after dark_. He accomplished the feat in safety. His
+picture, life-size, hangs in the dining-room to this day, and as he
+is represented standing in all the pride of a vigorous manhood by
+the side of his beautiful charger, he does not seem to belie the
+reputation which this incident created for him in the old district of
+Buchan.
+
+The peasants of this wild and primitive neighborhood, though to some
+extent slightly infected by modernization, are yet very fair specimens
+of the hardy, trusty clansmen of Scottish history, and the present
+owners of Slains certainly give them every reason to keep up the old
+bonds of affectionate interest with every one and everything belonging
+to "the family." To my own observation of the ancient seat of the Hays
+I owe one of the most delightful recollections of my life, that of
+a Christian home. Not only the outward observances, but the inner
+spiritual vitality of religion, were there, while unselfish devotion
+to all within the range of her influence or authority marked the
+character of her who was at the head of this little family kingdom.
+The present head of the house, a Hay to the backbone, has triumphantly
+carried on the martial traditions of his ancestry, and on the roll of
+England's victorious sons at the battle of the Alma his name is to be
+found. He was there disabled by a wound that shattered his right arm
+and cut short his military career. Domestic happiness, however, is
+no bad substitute for a brilliant public life, and there are duties,
+higher yet than a soldier's, that go far toward making up that
+background of rural prosperity which alone ensures the grand effect of
+military successes. After having done one's duty in the field, it
+is to the full as noble, and perhaps more patriotic, to turn to the
+duties of the glebe, thereby finishing as a landlord the work begun as
+a soldier.
+
+It is a touching custom, hardly yet obliterated in the district over
+which my reminiscences have led me, for one peasant, when coming upon
+another employed in his lawful calling, thus to salute him: "Guid
+speed the wark!" the rejoinder being, in the same broad Buchan
+dialect, "Thank ye: I wish ye weel."
+
+I can end these pages with no more fitting sentiment. As a tribute of
+grateful recollection to those who made my days at Slains a happiness
+to me, and in the first fresh sorrow of a deep bereavement offered
+me distractions the more alluring because the more associated with
+Nature's changeless, silent grandeur, I pen these lines, crowning them
+with the homely Scottish wish that wherever they are and whatever they
+do, "Guid speed the wark!"
+
+LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
+
+[Footnote A: There is another version of her courtship, and this a
+metrical one. This old ballad was not much known beyond the district
+round Slains, and the old servants and farmers on the estate were the
+chief depositaries of the tradition. I have failed to secure more than
+a very small fragment of it, which is itself only written down from
+memory by one of these old women. The rhyme and rhythm are both
+_original_:
+
+  Lady Mary Hay went to a wedding
+  Near the famous town of Reading:
+  There a gentleman she saw
+  That belonged to the law....
+
+Here evidently there occurs a hiatus, during which some account is
+probably begun of her unreturned attachment, for a little later we
+find in the very primitive manuscript from which we quote these words
+of the countess:
+
+  I that have so many slighted,
+  I am at last--(unrequited?)
+
+The story is now carried on in prose (my informant having forgotten
+the text of the ballad), and says that "Lady Mary wanted or challenged
+him to meet her in a masquerade" (probably meaning a duel in
+disguise), "and that his father told him to go." Neither father
+nor son seems to have known the fair challenger's rank, though the
+following words point to their being aware of her sex, for the elder
+Falconer is represented as saying,
+
+  If she is rich she will raise your fame,
+  And if poor you are the same.
+]
+
+
+
+
+OUR HOME IN THE TYROL
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+We were soon comfortably settled in the old Hof. The spacious
+rooms, always deliciously cool, were fragrant with rare and delicate
+blossoms--Alpine roses from the rocks, white lilies from Moidel's
+special little garden-plot, grasses and nodding flowers, campanulas,
+veronicas, melisot, potentillas and lady's bedstraw, which, according
+to Anton, no cattle would touch, whilst the roots of others were good
+for man or beast, their various qualities being all known to him. But
+soon the waving flowers bent beneath the scythe. It was the eve of St.
+Peter and St. Paul's Day, a festival when all work must cease, and
+the Hofbauer, whose word was law, had given orders that the hay in the
+wood-meadow must be carried that evening. Seeing, therefore, that the
+more hands there were the better, the two Margarets seized each a rake
+and worked as hard as any woman in the field.
+
+On we labored, the golden evening sun glinting down upon our
+picturesque row of haymakers, nor did we cease until the angelus
+sounded from the village spire. Then Anton, Jakob, Moidel, their men
+and maids, fell devoutly upon their knees and thanked God that Christ
+Jesus had been born. These humble Tyrolese remember thrice daily to
+praise the Lord, as David did. With a hushed, subdued look upon their
+honest faces, they arose, and we joining them the fresh, fragrant hay
+was carted triumphantly home. The hay is cut long before we should
+consider it ready, and is housed whilst still green and moist. The
+newer the hay the richer the cream, they say. The Hofbauer has three
+crops yearly, but his neighbors, who lie higher, have only two, and
+sometimes but one.
+
+The good old Kathi stood at the door cooling a gigantic pan of
+buckwheat polenta, and when she had set down this dish, intended for
+the haymakers' supper, she brought us each, as our pay, a couple of
+_krapfen_, which are oblong dough-cakes fried in butter.
+
+Although the haymakers were worn out and weary with a long day's
+work of twelve hours, still Rosenkranz sounded in the chapel like the
+humming of bees in lime trees. This pious custom duly impressed us,
+until on the very next day, as we walked up our village street on the
+evening of the festival, our solemn feelings received a great check.
+We observed that the prayer-leaders, who knelt at the open windows
+of each separate house, followed our every movement with their eyes,
+whilst their mouths mechanically repeated sonorous Ave Marias and
+Paternosters. Nay, there was our own pious Moidel watching us from the
+kitchen window, her Hail Marys mingling with her friendly greetings;
+but then Moidel was waiting upon us and our supper whilst her family
+were on their knees in the chapel. Still, we soon learnt to perceive
+that Rosenkranz was considered quite as efficacious if merely uttered
+by the tongue, whilst the mind was far away. This being a festival,
+and no one tired with work, the household trooped into the old
+pleasaunce after supper. The elders sat together in a row, whilst the
+younger members congregated on a second long stone bench and struck up
+singing, Moidel and her elder brother beginning with a duet:
+
+  Green, green is the clover
+    On the hills as I go,
+  And my maiden as fresh is
+    As spring water's flow.
+
+And the chorus joined in--
+
+    As spring water's flow,
+
+winding up with a jodel.
+
+Nanni, the chief maid, next sang in a clear, flexible voice, which
+trembled no little when she perceived that the Herrschaft now formed
+part of the audience in the balcony--
+
+A WEEK'S SORROW.
+
+  On Sunday I cried, for my heart was so sore,
+  Like a poor little child outside the church door;
+  On Monday I felt so afeard and alone,
+  And thought, Were I a swallow, I'd quickly begone:
+  Woe's me! were I but a swallow, were I but a swallow!
+
+  On Tuesday, and nothing could please me all day,
+  For him that I love best is far, far away;
+  On Wednesday whatever I did, I did ill,
+  For when the heart's heavy the hand has no skill;
+  On Thursday I was weary and sleepy all day;
+  On Friday, and one of the cows went astray;
+  On Saturday down poured my tears like the rain,
+  As though I should never be happy again.
+  Woe's me! never be happy again; woe's me! never again.
+
+In order to catch the meaning of the words, which were sung in strong
+dialect, Margaret and I had descended to the garden. The Hofbauer
+looked sad when he saw us approach, and quietly brushed a tear away
+with his shirt-sleeve. We consequently asked Moidel when we stood
+alone with her whether anything were troubling her father.
+
+"It strikes me not," she said. "I fancy that it is but the music.
+Father and uncle may both seem quiet and dull now, yet they have been
+celebrated singers; only when my mother died father left off singing,
+and so did uncle after Uncle Jakob's death."
+
+"Ah yes!" said the aunt, who had also joined us, "they were the three
+handsomest, best--grown men in the parish, living happily together
+without an ill word, until four years ago Jakob was trampled upon by
+a yoke of vicious oxen, and in three days he was dead. Yes, that was a
+sorrow almost as cutting as the death of the Hofbauerin, so young when
+she died. Only married five years, and leaving four little children,
+not one of whom ever knew her! Yes, Moidel is a good girl, and is
+wearing her linen now, but she can never come up in looks to her
+mother. Ah ja! and now the trouble is about Jakob."
+
+"About Jakob?" asked we in a low, astonished voice.
+
+"Why yes, that he has been drawn for the Landwehr. Ah, I thought you
+knew. It was last autumn that he was drawn. The Hofbauer would have
+sold his best acres to release him, but the recruiting-officer would
+have no nay: Jakobi was a fine, well-behaved young fellow, and such
+were needed in the army. He had to serve two months this spring, and
+with his comrades day by day had to run up the face of mountains
+some four thousand feet. It quite wore Jakob out, though he is so
+good-tempered. He declared that he was used, to be sure, at the Olm
+to climb up to the glaciers of the Hoch Gall after his goats, often
+bringing the kids in his arms down the precipices, but to have his
+back broken and his feet blistered in order to know how to shed human
+blood was what he hated. Yet he bore it so well, doing his best, that
+when the other recruits could return to their homes, Jakob, being so
+clever and well-behaved, had to stay a fortnight longer to brush, fold
+up and put away all the regimentals. However, the under-officer did
+have him to dine with him every day."
+
+"Yes, and Jakob will in his turn be an officer," we replied, trying to
+reassure her.
+
+"Oh, na, na, that can never be: eleven more long years must he serve,
+and always as a private. I thought like you, until the Hofbauer
+explained to me that all the officers were foreigners--Saxons,
+Bavarians, Wuertembergers, put in by the Austrian ministry, who are
+tyrants to Tyrol. Ah, if the good emperor would only interfere, for
+he loves Tyrol! but he leaves everything to the ministry. Austria may
+itself be overthrown in these unrighteous days before my Jakobi is
+free." Now it was the good soul's turn to wipe her eye with the corner
+of her ample blue apron.
+
+We were venturing some fresh attempt at consolation when fortunately
+an event occurred which drew her thoughts from the deep shadow which
+we had just discovered hung over the peaceful Hof. Jodokus, the
+village schoolmaster in the winter, when the children had time
+to learn, but during the busy summer months one of the men, had
+challenged Jakobi to a wrestling-match. Hardly had the two antagonists
+encountered each other on the grass in a stout set-to, when the sound
+of the goatherd's whip was heard on the hilly common above, sending
+forth a succession of reports like those of a pistol, becoming
+stronger and louder when the game and the assembled company were seen.
+At last the young "whipper-snapper," as we called him, made one long
+final succession of cracks and reports, and springing over the
+wall, and casting his instrument of torture on one side, he boldly
+challenged Anton.
+
+The young man, whose skill and strength were well known, smiled, half
+amused, half incredulous, on his antagonist. The younger athlete, a
+lad of thirteen, firmly built and agile, mistook the look for a sneer,
+and the blood ran fast and hot into his face. So, Anton accepting
+the challenge, they immediately began to spar. They first fearlessly
+regarded each other, then bowing their heads they rushed forward,
+butting like rams. The lad, with his head fixed firm in Anton's chest,
+tried to find his adversary's weakest point, and with his arms round
+his waist endeavored cunningly to make him slip; but it was soon the
+young champion who was tripped up, and who in playful, half-serious
+anger dealt blows and tugs right and left, almost managing to bring
+Anton sprawling to the ground. The lad, however, suddenly stopped:
+he had lost a little tin ring off his finger and a four-kreuzer piece
+from his pocket--too great a loss for a shepherd-boy. The combat
+therefore was speedily closed, both antagonists and their partisans
+hunting in the unmowed grass until the treasures were again trove.
+
+At the same time an elderly man approached and opened the gate--a
+peasant evidently, although, instead of the usual long white apron
+and bib, he wore one of new green linen, shining as satin--a man of a
+strong although delicate make, the head slightly stooping forward,
+and a face that beamed with genuine pleasure as half a dozen voices
+simultaneously burst forth with a "God greet you, Alois!"
+
+This then was Schuster (or Shoe-maker) Alois, in preparation of
+whose advent the good aunt had scrubbed a bed-room, and Moidel had
+beautified the window with pots of blooming geraniums. The room was a
+large chamber, set apart for the different ambulatory work-people who
+came to the Hof in the course of the year. The weaver, who arrived in
+the spring to weave the flax which the busy womankind had spun through
+the winter, had been the last occupant of the room, and had woven no
+less than two hundred and ninety-three ells of linen, which now in
+long symmetrical lines were carefully pegged down on the turf of the
+pleasaunce by Moidel, who walked over them daily with her bare feet,
+busily watering until the gray threads were turning snowy white.
+
+Later on in the year the sewing-woman would appear, and then the
+tailor, to make the clothing for this large household, the servants,
+according to an old custom long since extinct in most countries, being
+chiefly paid in kind. Schuster Alois had now come to make the boots
+for Jakob and the Senner Franz preparatory to their going with the
+cattle to the Alpine pastures.
+
+I greatly doubt whether the tailor or the weaver was so well waited
+upon as the shoemaker: I fancy they were left more to the maids.
+Passing the open door of the family house-place, aunt and niece might
+now be seen sitting hour after hour, the elder lining the soles of
+Jakob's stockings with pieces of strong woolen to prevent mending on
+the Alp, or attending to other needs of his homely toilet; the younger
+at her paste-board or kneading-trough, whilst Schuster Alois sat
+between them in the sunny oriel window, and while he steadily plied
+his awl appeared to be either telling them tales or reciting poetry.
+
+The Alp, or Olm (to use the provincial word), lay at the distance of
+about six hours, and the Hofbauer went up to examine the state of the
+pasturage before his son and the cattle finally started. In two days
+he returned. "The going up of the cattle must be postponed at least a
+week," he said, "for snow had fallen at the huts the depth of a man;
+and the river had swollen to such a height that it had carried two
+houses away in St. Wolfgang, the highest mountain-village; and even
+life had been lost."
+
+This delay caused a respite from hard work. The next morning
+Alois's arms did not move like unwearying machinery, and, the ten
+o'clock-dinner being over, we saw him seated at his ease on the
+adjoining hillside. Should we go and speak to him? He appeared
+different from the ordinary run of his class (though cobblers are
+often clever men enough), and moreover of a decidedly friendly turn of
+mind. We determined that we would. We joined Alois on the stony, waste
+hillside, crowned by two trees with a crucifix in the centre, which
+formed from the house, with its background of mountains, ever a
+melancholy, soul-touching little poem.
+
+"You have not quite such hard work to-day, Schuster?"
+
+He smiled and said, "Do your work betimes, and then rest; and where
+better than under the shadow of the cross?"
+
+"Yes, and the crucifix which you have chosen is more pleasing than the
+generality which are sown broadcast over the fields of the Tyrol. Why
+are they made so hideous and revolting?"
+
+We spoke out freely, because the unusually intelligent face before
+us evidently belonged to a thinker. Candor of speech pleased him.
+Nevertheless, he answered as if musing, "They appear ugly to you: well
+they may be. Ja, but the most who look upon them are men and women
+acquainted with many sorrows--sudden deaths by falls from precipices,
+destruction of house and home by lightning, floods, avalanches,
+failure of crops, and many another visitation--and it soothes their
+perhaps selfish natures to see these anguished features, these
+blood-stained limbs--signs of still greater suffering--whilst they
+pray that only such crosses may be laid on them as will keep them in
+obedience to His will. Just before you came up the hill I was thinking
+of a strange history connected with a crucifix--one that I read only
+ten days ago in the house of a Hochmair himself."
+
+It merely needed silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he
+soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says
+that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a
+blasted larch--such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked
+the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guide
+was an old man who knew every, tradition and legend, besides all the
+family histories in that part of the Tyrol. 'That tree,' said he, 'is
+left there purposely, as the reminder of a great crime, and nobody
+would think of touching it. If you look into the chapel, you'll see a
+Christ on the cross which has been shot through the breast. That was
+once a crucifix under this very tree.' Then the guide made a remark
+which had often struck myself--that there are some families in which
+everything that is strange and dreadful happens, whilst there are
+others that go on for generations and are no more distinguishable than
+the very weeds themselves. In that valley were the Hochmairs, and they
+were of this prominent sort, and odd enough, as I said before, it was
+at a Hochmair's house that I read this account. Well, some generations
+back there was a Hochmair who was a regular ruffian. He cared no more
+for the life of a man than that of a chamois. The government kept the
+game strictly on the mountains, and he was suspected of having put
+more than one of their keepers out of the way. In short, he had such
+a bad character that when he went to confession the priest would
+not give him absolution. This put him in a great rage, and it is
+remarkable that from that day his luck in hunting forsook him. He
+could not take aim--a sort of mist was ever before his eyes, his hand
+trembled. People believed that he was perpetually haunted by the ghost
+of a young man whom, after he had shot, he had beaten to death with
+his gunstock, and then flung down a crevasse. Be that as it may, he
+would be absent for weeks in the mountains. He did no good, and the
+little he possessed fell into ruin.
+
+"His creditors were about to sell him up, stick and stone, when he
+put, as one may say, the finishing stroke to everything himself. It
+was Corpus Christi Day: the bells were ringing and the procession
+moving through the fields, the holy banners waving, the choir-boys
+singing the sanctus, when just as the priest lifted the Host in the
+golden monstrance, a shot was fired from the bushes in front of a
+crucifix. Lightning flashed from heaven, and the house of the wicked
+Hochmair, which was at no great distance, burst into flames. An awful
+cry rang from the bushes: the procession rushed forward, the priest
+only remaining with the Host and a few attendants. And what did they
+see? There was the image of the crucified Saviour pierced by a bullet,
+and out in the road stood the wretched Hochmair, with his hands
+clasped on the lock of his gun and his eyes rolling in frenzy.
+Everybody perceived the crime he had committed, and remained
+motionless, whilst he beckoned wildly to the priest, who came up in
+gloomy silence. After they had talked together alone for some time,
+the priest went into the church, where he remained all night in
+prayer. The wretched man, whom nobody dared to touch, disappeared
+into the thicket, and all trace was lost of him. In the mean while
+the injured image of the Saviour was removed into the church. So years
+went on, and then one Sunday after service the priest announced from
+the pulpit that the former sinner Hochmair was dead, but that after
+years of penitence he had received the forgiveness of the Church and
+of God. 'Therefore,' said the good man, 'let all forgive him, and
+remember only their own sins, and pray Christ to be merciful to them.'
+After that it was known that he had become possessed with the crazy
+notion that if he fired into the breast of the Saviour on Corpus
+Christi Day, just when the Host was being elevated and the benediction
+spoken, it would make his gun unerring. He fired therefore, and at the
+same moment the Saviour on the cross raised His head and, fixing on
+him His eyes full of tears, gave him a look which pierced him to the
+very marrow, and that terrified him far more than the lightning
+which, flashing from his forehead, set fire to his house, whilst the
+thorn-crowned countenance seemed to float before him, and he knew that
+this was his punishment. Such was his confession at the time to the
+priest who laid the penance of the Church upon him. So he went out
+into the world like another Cain, and God in His own time was merciful
+to him. Still, the wounded effigy of the Saviour and the blasted larch
+tree remain as witnesses on earth against him.
+
+"And," continued Schuster Alois, "that is only one tale amongst the
+hundreds which could be related concerning these crucifixes. Ah,
+there is many an old, bleached, weather-beaten crucifix on crag or
+highway-side from which the anguished face of the Saviour has both
+smitten and healed the sinner. Crucifixes cut deeper into most
+Tyrolese hearts than shrines, some way."
+
+"Strange," we replied, "for these old shrines are not only quaint,
+but often beautiful, as, for instance, the one on the roadside turning
+into town."
+
+"Ah, I am glad you like it," said Alois, "for there are those who
+would wish it pulled down and a lofty wooden cross, as a landmark,
+placed there instead. The Capuchins in the adjoining monastery are
+opposed to it, however, and no wonder. Have you ever remarked," he
+continued, becoming quite aglow, "that although it is greatly injured
+and many of the figures lost, still there are others who look at you
+so calmly and seriously with their marred, dilapidated countenances
+that you feel a peace steal into your heart? And whoever the painter
+was, he must have loved his work, for Saint Gregory could never have
+been more dignified in real life than he looks in the shrine."
+
+"Are you a painter?" we asked, almost without knowing what we were
+saying, for it was hardly probable.
+
+"Oh, I only touch colors now and then, when there's a purpose in it
+or I can serve the Church," he returned. He became embarrassed, and
+explained that it was time to return to his work.
+
+We afterward learnt from Moidel that Alois bore in the neighborhood
+far and wide the reputation of an artist, although he did not consider
+himself such, seeing he could not paint saints and angels. It was,
+however, a great source of pleasure to him to paint mottoes and
+devices and to arrange floral decorations, especially when they could
+serve as a surprise for some private name-day or church festival.
+
+One afternoon we were told that the boots were made, that Anton had
+brought the flour from the mill, that two hundred loaves of rye bread
+were baked, and, the weather being sufficiently fine and all the
+preparations being completed, the cattle would now start for the
+Olm. First, Anton and the Senner Franz set off at four o'clock in the
+afternoon, with the calves in advance, the young things being unable
+to keep up with the cattle. Then a _leiterwagen_ which had been drawn
+into the lower corridor and filled with sacks of flour, meal, salt and
+the two hundred loaves, was driven by the Hofbauer as far as Taufers,
+whence the supplies for the Alpine residents would be borne on men's
+backs up to the huts.
+
+In the evening Jakob came into the grand old sitting-room to bid us
+good-bye. He appeared in his shirt-sleeves and the indispensable white
+apron, and with the utmost self-possession and refinement of manner he
+presented us with a little bouquet of edelweiss, promising to send us
+down a larger supply by his brother. We talked with him about the Olm,
+and found him enthusiastic on the subject, his one regret being that,
+as he must return for several weeks of drilling on August 22d, his
+stay there this summer would be greatly curtailed. The Olm was very
+extensive, lying on a mountain-platform which was only bare of snow
+for about three months in the year. When, however, the snow was off,
+the flowers came up by thousands, the grass sprang up by magic,
+all the mountains were filled with the rushing and roaring sound
+of waters, which came down in foaming cascades, often of wonderful
+beauty, amongst the rocks and the pine woods which clothed the steeper
+mountain-sides. Nor was the life at all solitary, for various farmers
+were sending up their cattle to other Olms about the same time,
+so that no one was without neighbors, although they might be at a
+considerable distance apart.
+
+Jakob spoke on until we became wild to go up to the Olm too. "Could we
+go thither," we asked, "and pay him a visit?"
+
+"That we could," he replied, "if we did not mind sleeping in the hay.
+Only we had better wait for settled weather in August."
+
+There was now no talk of our leaving the Hof at St. Jakobi. The
+Hofbauer had declared that the house was at our disposal until
+Martinmas--longer if we wanted it. He also fell into the scheme of
+our visiting his Olm, where he intimated his desire to be host, saying
+that all the dairy produce would be at our service.
+
+In the night, exactly at one o'clock, Jakob and Jodokus started: we
+heard them go, the cattle-bells ringing and the "Leben Sie wohl!"
+"Behuet Euch Gott!" shouted lovingly after them from the open door and
+the lower windows of the silent old mansion. Six and twenty head of
+cattle: the goats, pigs and sheep were to follow later. It was a calm
+and beautiful night, the three-quarters moon just dropping behind the
+mountains, and the stars shining out brightly from the dark cloudless
+sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The Alpine caravansary was hardly settled at the Olm when the air
+became intensely hot and oppressive. Day by day black thunder-clouds
+gathered on the horizon. They crested the mountains in three
+directions, at times appearing to repel each other, at others marching
+fiercely on to conflict, when, the zenith becoming pitch-dark, they
+flung out long spears of lightning and exploded in overwhelming
+thunder. Very terrible were these perpetual storms. With the first
+peal the church-bells along the valley began solemnly to toll. It
+mattered not whether by night or day, the faithful bellringer was
+at his post, and with rain pouring down outside and fiery, vivid
+lightning playing around him, he still went tolling on, for evil
+spirits must be driven away, and people reminded to make the sign of
+the cross and pray God to protect them.
+
+At length, to use an expression of Alois's, "Saint Florian had left
+off playing at skittles, and Saint Leonhard had driven his hay over
+the heavenly bridge." The warring elements were still, but the earth
+seemed smouldering with heat, and we panted and gasped after the lofty
+mountain-slopes which lay on all sides. At the same time it came
+most opportunely to our knowledge that the Tyrol was rich in
+baths--primitive establishments most of them, but dotted over mountain
+and valley, so that each village had half a dozen to choose from,
+where every peasant, be he ever so poor, could at least dip and soak
+for an eight-days' _sommerfrisch_. Why, then, should not the two
+Margarets, they being the most desirous of a change, have at least a
+_sommerfrisch_?
+
+But which amongst all these baths was the one to choose? Good Kathi
+recommended her baths at Innichen. She herself evidently did not
+derive much pleasure from her yearly visits there. Still, we, being
+ladies, would find more people to talk to, and the bath-house, which
+was always full to overflowing, stood in a wood, and we liked trees.
+Schuster Alois--for the conversation took place before he left--said
+that most gentlefolks went to Maistall. There was not only _luxus_,
+but a great deal of life and spirit there. His Majesty Emperor Max
+as early as 1511 took up his quarters at Maistall during his campaign
+against the Venetians, and he had heard say that in the last century
+the visitors formed a society and made it a rule that none but the
+purest German should be spoken. Every fault of pronunciation cost a
+kreuzer to the offender: the money went to the chapel, and amounted
+one season to twenty-one florins six kreuzers.
+
+But one Margaret decidedly objected to going to a place where there
+was the faintest chance of her _loiter wagon_ for _leiterwagen_, her
+_pison_ for _speisen_, her _vulgarborn_ for _wohlgeboren_, being fined
+by a _gazel-schaft (gesellschaft)_. Besides, these places sounded too
+grand: we did not want a Gastein, but a Wildbad, if one could be
+found that did not belie its name. So the peasant-baths of St. Vigil,
+Muehlbach and Scharst were named to us, and the lot fell upon Scharst,
+we having heard that all the school-children in town had just been
+taken there for a long day's holiday, and had returned to their proud
+and happy parents, who waited for them in double ranks below, radiant
+with pleasure, waving their banners and Alpine roses.
+
+It was accordingly arranged that on the following Sunday Anton should
+drive us to Reischach, where there was to be a great festival, with
+candles in the church as big as a man's arm: so said a woman from
+Reischach. Anton was of a retiring nature, and did not like crowds,
+but he would gladly drive the ladies over. And at Reischach we should
+be sure to find some peasant returning that evening by Scharst, who
+could carry our belongings.
+
+Imagine us, therefore, at Reischach, the church-bell ringing for
+vespers, which begin at one o'clock. We wear bouquets of carnations
+and rosemary, presented to us by the family at the Hof, as correct
+decorations for a festival. And Anton!--how to present him to you as
+he deserves to be presented? His truthful, guileless face is his best
+ornament: nevertheless, he too wears carnations and rosemary caught
+in the silver cord and vieing with the silver tassels of his
+broad-brimmed, low-crowned beaver hat. His rough jacket, made by the
+tailor last autumn, and therefore too new to be worn on a less special
+occasion, is short and loose enough to leave ample space for the
+display of his _rauge_, or broad leather belt of softest chamois-skin,
+worked in scrolls surrounding his name, with split peacock quills,
+no little resembling Indian handicraft. His snow-white knees appear
+between his short leather breeches and his bright blue knitted
+stockings. These Nature's garters, when perfectly white, are regarded
+as a mark of great distinction amongst the dandies, and those of our
+Anton may be considered the very _knee plus ultra_.
+
+A parliament of men--a few still in breeches with Hessian boots,
+which appeared a characteristic of Reischach, but the majority, having
+succumbed to modern ideas, wearing trowsers--were seated in the shadow
+of a comfortable house, discussing the different stages of their rye
+and flax crops. Their wives and daughters, following their natural
+impulse, were already kneeling in church, confiding their cares of
+kitchen and farmyard to the ever-ready ear of _Mutter Gottes_--one
+dense mass of simple, believing women, in broad-brimmed beaver hats,
+with here and there a conical woolen beehive as a contrast.
+
+The church in itself, although it lacked the candles as big as a man's
+arm, must truly have shone like the gate of heaven to peasant eyes.
+Many of the more substantial families had lent their private saints
+for the occasion. They had brought Holy Nothburgs and Saint Leonhards
+and Virgins, generally preserved in wardrobes at home, but now brought
+to participate in the festival, besides adding to its great solemnity.
+It was Scapulary Sunday, we were told, and although the words conveyed
+no clear idea to us, we were soon to learn their significance. A
+Tyrolese anthem having been sung by some invisible voices, in which
+jodels leapt up and smothered Gregorians, a middle-aged Capuchin took
+his stand in the pulpit, and having greeted the congregation,
+promised to explain to them the mystery and the advantage of the Holy
+Scapulary.
+
+"My beloved," he began, "there are some who think too little of the
+scapulary, and there are others who lay too great a stress on this
+aid to faith. Let us meditate on both these conditions. But first, how
+must we ourselves regard the scapulary? Now, we are told not to love
+the world nor the things of the world. The scapulary, with its sacred
+image of Mary worn next the heart, is a great shield against this love
+of the world. It places you under the especial protection of the Queen
+of Heaven: you are as much her servant as those who serve king or
+kaiser, and equally wear her livery. Some think too little of the
+scapulary. Yet what incidents can be told of its efficacy! Let one
+suffice. In the year 1866, when the war raged between Austria and
+Prussia, the Catholic soldiers of the latter country immediately
+before the war entered by hundreds into the Society of the Scapulary.
+Wearing this sacred charm upon their hearts, they went into the
+battle-field, and the cannons roared and the bullets whizzed thick
+and fast around them, and not one of them fell, for they wore the
+scapulary. Indeed, their miraculous preservation created so much
+excitement that Lutherans marveled over it, and asked the Catholics
+how it came that they were no whit hurt. And they answered, 'We wear
+the scapulary of Mary, and she saves us.' Then many Lutherans said,
+'Come, we will have scapularies,' and wrote their names down in the
+society. And now hark ye, my brethren. There was a Catholic soldier,
+and there was a Lutheran, and the latter said, 'Lend me thy scapulary
+for this one day only, and see, here is a thaler for thee.' Then the
+foolish Catholic drew the scapulary off his neck, handed it to the
+Lutheran, took the thaler, went into battle: whiz went the bullets
+round him, and he fell."
+
+We could stand no more. The church, now crowded with men as well as
+women, reeked with perspiration, the sermon oppressed us, and thus our
+sense and senses drove us out into the open air. Here the fresh breeze
+came across from the Ziller snow-fields, health-giving as a breath
+from heaven. Peasant-women who were too late to squeeze into
+church were seated amongst the iron crosses of the graves. The more
+serious-minded had managed to cluster together round a side-door
+which, being adjacent to the pulpit, proved an advantageous spot for
+hearing. The less particular sat in the shade, feeling it sufficient
+to be in holy ground and to pass their beads through their fingers
+whilst they studied up our novel attire. Approaching the more
+attentive members, we found that the Capuchin had reached the second
+part of his discourse, and was dilating on those who thought too
+highly of the scapulary. We gathered the following fragment:
+
+"Now, the man was nigh unto death, and it was neither for confession
+nor for the death-sacrament that he craved. No, it was for a
+scapulary. 'A scapulary!' he cried, 'a scapulary!' My brethren, you
+know well he should have asked for the priest and for the blessing of
+the Church, but it was merely for a scapulary."
+
+Later on we asked permission to see a scapulary. It consisted of two
+small squares of cloth, herring-boned round the edge, and united by a
+narrow ribbon of sufficient length to permit one square to rest on
+the breast, whilst the other hung between the shoulders. That in front
+bore the image of the Virgin, designed by the nuns in the convent,
+whilst the simpler work had been given to some poor old woman, or even
+man, who was past harder employment. The privilege of wearing this
+charmed badge entailed the payment of a small yearly subscription and
+the repetition of seven Paternosters daily.
+
+The procession followed the sermon. Mary, Joseph, Saint Nothburg (once
+a good peasant-girl, now a saint) were paraded round the village by
+children, and borne back to church. Peasant-men staggered under large
+silk banners, which swayed and fluttered in the blustery wind,
+and, but for the steady grasp of the strong men who carried them,
+threatening at each moment to crush the pious throng. The four chief
+peasants of the district, wearing their robes of state, the Noah's ark
+coats in which they were married, bore the baldachin over the head
+of the Capuchin who elevated the Host: the village priest, in white
+surplice and Hessian boots, swung the censer at his side. The men were
+in front, the women, a long, broad file, divided in the procession by
+the priests from their male relations, followed--a dense black mass,
+but relieved in color by the whiteness of their short linen sleeves.
+
+Men and women, carefully severed in their prayers and on the very
+steps of the altar by Holy Church, were soon able to come together
+again under the spacious, hospitable roof of Herr Kappler, the wirth.
+Innumerable clean wooden tables, forms, and stiff, high-legged wooden
+chairs were ranged up stairs and down stairs and in the orchard
+without, for the accommodation of the scapularists and their friends.
+
+We sat at a side-table in an upper room partaking of grilled fowl and
+salad, whilst _buben_ and their _dirnen_, or lads and their lasses,
+middle-aged couples, old men and women, poured into the house,
+filling every chair, bench and table. They came thither from all
+the country-side, and endless were the greetings amongst cousins and
+cousins' cousins. The Tyrolese, like the Scotch, keep up every link
+of relationship, claiming the fiftieth cousin. Relationship, in fact,
+never does die out; and though it may become an abstract during busy
+seasons of ploughing and sowing, it becomes a strong reality at
+wakes and festivals. Thus, at Kappler's, on this scapulary afternoon,
+Barthel's brother-in-law's cousin drank with "Cousin Barthel," and
+Seppl's sister-in-law's niece was treated by "Onkel Seppl." There was
+one square-built, good-humored old man who appeared to be the whole
+world's cousin: he passed from table to table, and had to sip from
+fifty offered glasses.
+
+With our delicious coffee and boiled cream we ordered the host, as a
+suitable person, to find us a guide to carry our valise and shawls to
+Bad Scharst. Probably the perpetual and loud demands for pints of wine
+left him but little time to make a wise selection, seeing that there
+soon stood before us a small man with so subtle and malignant a look
+that his exorbitant demand made us only too gladly dismiss him. Our
+confidence shaken in the landlord's powers of discrimination, we sent
+word below that if Anton had returned we should be glad to speak with
+him. He had been in the village to visit his cousins, but was waiting
+our orders below. Although his native shyness made it hard for him
+to step forward and address ladies under the curious gaze of all the
+relative Seppls and Barthels, he did it with manliness, and turning
+round and addressing the popular old man as Hansel, asked him if his
+brother Joergel were below; and being answered in the affirmative, he
+hastened away, and returned with another compact little peasant, whom
+he introduced to us as Senner Franz's brother, with an aside, that he
+was "a friendly mortal and Count Arlberg's forester."
+
+The agreement was soon made, the sullen-looking man glowering at us
+from behind a stack of firewood, whilst Hansel and Anton packed a
+_kraxe_ or wooden frame and fixed it on Joergel's back. As we set
+off, Anton drove away homeward, although the skittle-balls were just
+beginning to roll, and the sound of "I bin a lustiger bua" and other
+Tyrolese songs came floating from the windows.
+
+MARGARET HOWITT.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+SAINT ROMUALDO.
+
+  I give God thanks that I, a lean old man,
+  Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains
+  By austere penance and continuous toil,
+  Now rest in spirit, and possess "the peace
+  Which passeth understanding." Th' end draws nigh,
+  Though the beginning is as yesterday,
+  And a broad lifetime spreads 'twixt this and that--
+  A favored life, though outwardly the butt
+  Of ignominy, malice and affront,
+  Yet lighted from within by the clear star
+  Of a high aim, and graciously prolonged
+  To see at last its utmost goal attained.
+  I speak not of mine Order and my House,
+  Here founded by my hands and filled with saints--
+  A white society of snowy souls,
+  Swayed by my voice, by mine example led;
+  For this is but the natural harvest reaped
+  From labors such as mine when blessed by God.
+  Though I rejoice to think my spirit still
+  Will work my purposes, through worthy hands,
+  After my bones are shriveled into dust,
+  Yet have I gleaned a finer, sweeter fruit
+  Of holy satisfaction, sure and real,
+  Though subtler than the tissue of the air--
+  The power completely to detach the soul
+  From her companion through this life, the flesh;
+  So that in blessed privacy of peace,
+  Communing with high angels, she can hold,
+  Serenely rapt, her solitary course.
+
+    Ye know, O saints of heaven, what I have borne
+  Of discipline and scourge; the twisted lash
+  Of knotted rope that striped my shrinking limbs;
+  Vigils and fasts protracted, till my flesh
+  Wasted and crumbled from mine aching bones,
+  And the last skin, one woof of pain and sores,
+  Thereto like yellow parchment loosely clung;
+  Exposure to the fever and the frost,
+  When 'mongst the hollows of the hills I lurked
+  From persecution of misguided folk,
+  Accustoming my spirit to ignore
+  The burden of the cross, while picturing
+  The bliss of disembodied souls, the grace
+  Of holiness, the lives of sainted men,
+  And entertaining all exalted thoughts,
+  That nowise touched the trouble of the hour,
+  Until the grief and pain seemed far less real
+  Than the creations of my brain inspired.
+  The vision, the beatitude, were true:
+  The agony was but an evil dream.
+  I speak not now as one who hath not learned
+  The purport of those lightly-bandied words,
+  Evil and Fate, but rather one who knows
+  The thunders of the terrors of the world.
+  No mortal chance or change, no earthly shock,
+  Can move or reach my soul, securely throned
+  On heights of contemplation and calm prayer,
+  Happy, serene, no less with actual joy
+  Of present peace than faith in joys to come.
+
+    This soft, sweet, yellow evening, how the trees
+  Stand crisp against the clear, bright-colored sky!
+  How the white mountain-tops distinctly shine,
+  Taking and giving radiance, and the slopes
+  Are purpled with rich floods of peach-hued light!
+  Thank God, my filmy, old dislustred eyes
+  Find the same sense of exquisite delight,
+  My heart vibrates to the same touch of joy
+  In scenes like this, as when my pulse danced high,
+  And youth coursed through my veins! This the one link
+  That binds the wan old man that now I am
+  To the wild lad who followed up the hounds
+  Among Ravenna's pine-woods by the sea.
+  For there how oft would I lose all delight
+  In the pursuit, the triumph or the game,
+  To stray alone among the shadowy glades,
+  And gaze, as one who is not satisfied
+  With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea,
+  The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between
+  The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees,
+  On gold-green turf, sweetbrier and wild pink rose!
+  How rich that buoyant air with changing scent
+  Of pungent pine, fresh flowers and salt cool seas!
+  And when all echoes of the chase had died,
+  Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds,
+  How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide
+  On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds,
+  The rustling of the tangled undergrowth,
+  And the deep lyric murmur of the pines,
+  When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze!
+  There was my world, there would my heart dilate,
+  And my aspiring soul dissolve in prayer
+  Unto that Spirit of Love whose energies
+  Were active round me, yet whose presence, sphered
+  In the unsearchable, unbodied air,
+  Made itself felt, but reigned invisible.
+  This ere the day that from my past divides
+  My present, and that made me what I am.
+  Still can I see the hot, bright sky, the sea
+  illimitably sparkling, as they showed
+  That morning. Though I deemed I took no note
+  Of heaven or earth or waters, yet my mind
+  Retains to-day the vivid portraiture
+  Of every line and feature of the scene.
+  Light-hearted 'midst the dewy lanes I fared
+  Unto the sea, whose jocund gleam I caught
+  Between the slim boles, when I heard the clink
+  Of naked weapons, then a sudden thrust
+  Sickening to hear, and then a stifled groan;
+  And pressing forward I beheld the sight
+  That seared itself for ever on my brain--
+  My kinsman, Ser Ranieri, on the turf,
+  Fallen upon his side, his bright young head
+  Among the pine-spurs, and his cheek pressed close
+  Unto the moist, chill sod: his fingers clutched
+  A handful of loose weeds and grass and earth,
+  Uprooted in his anguish as he fell,
+  And slowly from his heart the thick stream flowed,
+  Fouling the green, leaving the fair, sweet face
+  Ghastly, transparent, with blue, stony eyes
+  Staring in blankness on that other one
+  Who triumphed over him. With hot desire
+  Of instant vengeance I unsheathed my sword
+  To rush upon the slayer, when he turned
+  In his first terror of blood-guiltiness.
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Within my heart a something snapped and brake.
+  What was it but the chord of rapturous joy
+  For ever stilled? I tottered and would fall,
+  Had I not leaned against the friendly pine;
+  For all realities of life, unmoored
+  From their firm anchorage, appeared to float
+  Like hollow phantoms past my dizzy brain.
+  The strange delusion wrought upon my soul
+  That this had been enacted ages since.
+  This very horror curdled at my heart,
+  This net of trees spread round, these iron heavens,
+  Were closing over me when I had stood,
+  Unnumbered cycles back, and fronted _him,_
+  My father; and he felt mine eyes as now,
+  Yet saw me not; and then, as now, that form,
+  The one thing real, lay stretched between us both.
+  The fancy passed, and I stood sane and strong
+  To grasp the truth. Then I remembered all--
+  A few fierce words between them yester eve
+  Concerning some poor plot of pasturage,
+  Soon silenced into courteous, frigid calm:
+  This was the end. I could not meet him now,
+  To curse him, to accuse him, or to save,
+  And draw him from the red entanglement
+  Coiled by his own hands round his ruined life.
+  God pardon me! My heart that moment held
+  No drop of pity toward this wretched soul;
+  And cowering down, as though his guilt were mine,
+  I fled amidst the savage silences
+  Of that grim wood, resolved to nurse alone
+  My boundless desolation, shame and grief.
+
+    There, in that thick-leaved twilight of high noon,
+  The quiet of the still, suspended air,
+  Once more my wandering thoughts were calmly ranged,
+  Shepherded by my will. I wept, I prayed
+  A solemn prayer, conceived in agony,
+  Blessed with response instant, miraculous;
+  For in that hour my spirit was at one
+  With Him who knows and satisfies her needs.
+  The supplication and the blessing sprang
+  From the same source, inspired divinely both.
+  I prayed for light, self-knowledge, guidance, truth,
+  And these like heavenly manna were rained down
+  To feed my hungered soul. His guilt _was_ mine.
+  What angel had been sent to stay mine arm
+  Until the fateful moment passed away
+  That would have ushered an eternity
+  Of withering remorse? I found the germs
+  In mine own heart of every human sin,
+  That waited but occasion's tempting breath
+  To overgrow with poisoned bloom my life.
+  What God thus far had saved me from myself?
+  Here was the lofty truth revealed, that each
+  Must feel himself in all, must know where'er
+  The great soul acts or suffers or enjoys,
+  His proper soul in kinship there is bound.
+  Then my life-purpose dawned upon my mind,
+  Encouraging as morning. As I lay,
+  Crushed by the weight of universal love,
+  Which mine own thoughts had heaped upon myself,
+  I heard the clear chime of a slow, sweet bell.
+  I knew it--whence it came and what it sang.
+  From the gray convent nigh the wood it pealed,
+  And called the monks to prayer. Vigil and prayer,
+  Clean lives, white days of strict austerity:
+  Such were the offerings of these holy saints.
+  How far might such not tend to expiate
+  A riotous world's indulgence? Here my life,
+  Doubly austere and doubly sanctified,
+  Might even for that other one atone,
+  So bound to mine, till both should be forgiven.
+
+    They sheltered me, not questioning the need
+  That led me to their cloistered solitude.
+  How rich, how freighted with pure influence,
+  With dear security of perfect peace,
+  Was the first day I passed within those walls!
+  The holy habit of perpetual prayer,
+  The gentle greetings, the rare temperate speech,
+  The chastening discipline, the atmosphere
+  Of settled and profound tranquillity,
+  Were even as living waters unto one
+  Who perisheth of thirst. Was this the world
+  That yesterday seemed one huge battle-field
+  For brutish passions? Could the soul of man
+  Withdraw so easily, and erect apart
+  Her own fair temple for her own high ends?
+  But this serene contentment slowly waned
+  As I discerned the broad disparity
+  Betwixt the form and spirit of the laws
+  That bound the order in strait brotherhood.
+  Yet when I sought to gain a larger love,
+  More rigid discipline, severer truth,
+  And more complete surrender of the soul
+  Unto her God, this was to my reproach,
+  And scoffs and gibes beset me on all sides.
+  In mine own cell I mortified my flesh,
+  I held aloof from all my brethren's feasts
+  To wrestle with my viewless enemies,
+  Till they should leave their blessing on my head;
+  For nightly was I haunted by that face,
+  White, bloodless, as I saw it 'midst the ferns,
+  Now staring out of darkness, and it held
+  Mine eyes from slumber and my brain from rest
+  And drove me from my straw to weep and pray.
+  Rebellious thoughts such subtle torture wrought
+  Upon my spirit that I lay day-long
+  In dumb despair, until the blessed hope
+  Of mercy dawned again upon my soul,
+  As gradual as the slow gold moon that mounts
+  The airy steps of heaven. My faith arose
+  With sure perception that disaster, wrong,
+  And every shadow of man's destiny
+  Are merely circumstance, and cannot touch
+  The soul's fine essence: they exist or die
+  Only as she affirms them or denies.
+
+    This faith sustains me even to the end:
+  It floods my heart with peace as surely now
+  As on that day the friars drove me forth,
+  Urging that my asceticism, too harsh,
+  Endured through pride, would bring into reproach
+  Their customs and their order. Then began
+  My exile in the mountains, where I bode
+  A hunted man. The elements conspired
+  Against me, and I was the seasons' sport,
+  Drenched, parched, and scorched and frozen alternately,
+  Burned with shrewd frosts, prostrated by fierce heats,
+  Shivering 'neath chilling dews and gusty rains,
+  And buffeted by all the winds of heaven.
+  Yet was this period my time of joy:
+  My daily thoughts perpetual converse held
+  With angels ministrant; mine ears were charmed
+  With sweet accordance of celestial sounds,
+  Song, harp and choir, clear ringing through the air.
+  And visions were revealed unto mine eyes
+  By night and day of Heaven's very courts,
+  In shadowless, undimmed magnificence.
+  I gave God thanks, not that He sheltered me,
+  And fed me as He feeds the fowls of air--
+  For had I perished, this too had been well--
+  But for the revelation of His truth,
+  The glory, the beatitude vouchsafed
+  To exalt, to heal, to quicken, to inspire;
+  So that the pinched, lean excommunicate
+  Was crowned with joy more solid, more secure,
+  Than all the comfort of the vales could bring.
+  Then the good Lord touched certain fervid hearts,
+  Aspiring toward His love, to come to me,
+  Timid and few at first; but as they heard
+  From mine own lips the precious oracles,
+  That soothed the trouble of their souls, appeased
+  Their spiritual hunger, and disclosed
+  All of the God within them to themselves,
+  They flocked about me, and they hailed me saint,
+  And sware to follow and to serve the good
+  Which my word published and my life declared.
+  Thus the lone hermit of the mountain-top
+  Descended leader of a band of saints,
+  And midway 'twixt the summit and the vale
+  I perched my convent. Yet I bated not
+  One whit of strict restraint and abstinence.
+  And they who love me and who serve the truth
+  Have learned to suffer with me, and have won
+  The supreme joy that is not of the flesh,
+  Foretasting the delights of Paradise.
+  This faith, to them imparted, will endure
+  After my tongue hath ceased to utter it,
+  And the great peace hath settled on my soul.
+
+EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+
+A PRINCESS OF THULE.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A
+PHAETON."
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+"O TERQUE QUATERQUE BEATE!"
+
+
+Consider what a task this unhappy man Ingram had voluntarily
+undertaken! Here were two young people presumably in love. One of them
+was laid under suspicion by several previous love-affairs, though none
+of these, doubtless, had been so serious as the present. The other
+scarcely knew her own mind, or perhaps was afraid to question herself
+too closely, lest all the conflict between duty and inclination, with
+its fears and anxieties and troubles, should be too suddenly revealed.
+Moreover, this girl was the only daughter of a solitary and irascible
+old gentleman living in a remote island; and Ingram had not only
+undertaken that the love-affairs of the young folks should come all
+right--thus assuming a responsibility which might have appalled the
+bravest--but was also expected to inform the King of Borva that his
+daughter was about to be taken away from him.
+
+Of course, if Sheila had been a properly brought-up young lady,
+nothing of this sort would have been necessary. We all know what the
+properly brought-up young lady does under such circumstances. She goes
+straight to her papa and mamma and says, "My dear papa and mamma, I
+have been taught by my various instructors that I ought to have no
+secrets from my dear parents; and I therefore hasten to lay aside any
+little shyness or modesty or doubt of my own wishes I might feel, for
+the purpose of explaining to you the extent to which I have become a
+victim to the tender passion, and of soliciting your advice. I also
+place before you these letters I have received from the gentleman
+in question: probably they were sent in confidence to me, but I must
+banish any scruples that do not coincide with my duty to you. I may
+say that I respect, and even admire, Mr. So-and-So; and I should be
+unworthy of the care bestowed upon my education by my dear parents
+if I were altogether insensible to the advantages of his worldly
+position. But beyond this point I am at a loss to define my
+sentiments; and so I ask you, my dear papa and mamma, for permission
+to study the question for some little time longer, when I may be able
+to furnish you with a more accurate report of my feelings. At the same
+time, if the interest I have in this young man is likely to conflict
+with the duty I owe to my dear parents, I ask to be informed of the
+fact; and I shall then teach myself to guard against the approach of
+that insidious passion which might make me indifferent to the higher
+calls and interests of life." Happy the man who marries such a woman!
+No agonizing quarrels and delirious reconciliations, no piteous
+entreaties and fits of remorse and impetuous self-sacrifices await
+him, but a beautiful, methodical, placid life, as calm and accurate
+and steadily progressive as the multiplication table. His household
+will be a miracle of perfect arrangement. The relations between the
+members of it will be as strictly defined as the pattern of the paper
+on the walls. And how can a quarrel arise when a dissecter of the
+emotions is close at hand to say where the divergence of opinion or
+interest began? and how can a fit of jealousy be provoked in the case
+of a person who will split up her affections into fifteen parts, give
+ten-fifteenths to her children, three-fifteenths to her parents, and
+the remainder to her husband? Should there be any dismal fractions
+going about, friends and acquaintances may come in for them.
+
+But how was Sheila to go to her father and explain to him what she
+could not explain to herself? She had never dreamed of marriage. She
+had never thought of having to leave Borva and her father's house.
+But she had some vague feeling that in the future lay many terrible
+possibilities that she did not as yet dare to look at--until, at
+least, she was more satisfied as to the present. And how could she go
+to her father with such a chaos of unformed wishes and fears to place
+before him? That such a duty should have devolved upon Ingram was
+certainly odd enough, but it was not her doing. His knowledge of the
+position of these young people was not derived from her. But, having
+got it, he had himself asked her to leave the whole affair in his
+hands, with that kindness and generosity which had more than once
+filled her heart with an unspeakable gratitude toward him.
+
+"Well, you _are_ a good fellow!" said Lavender to him when he heard of
+this decision.
+
+"Bah!" said the other with a shrug of his shoulders. "I mean to amuse
+myself. I shall move you about like pieces on a chess-board, and have
+a pretty game with you. How to checkmate the king with a knight and a
+princess, in any number of moves you like--that is the problem; and my
+princess has a strong power over the king where she is just now."
+
+"It's an uncommonly awkward business, you know, Ingram," said Lavender
+ruefully.
+
+"Well, it is. Old Mackenzie is a tough old fellow to deal with, and
+you'll do no good by making a fight of it. Wait! Difficulties don't
+look so formidable when you take them one by one as they turn up. If
+you really love the girl, and mean to take your chance of getting
+her, and if she cares enough for you to sacrifice a good deal for your
+sake, there is nothing to fear."
+
+"I can answer for myself, any way," said Lavender in a tone of voice
+that Ingram rather liked: the young man did not always speak with the
+same quietness, thoughtfulness and modesty.
+
+And how naturally and easily it came about, after all! They were
+back again at Borva. They had driven round and about Lewis, and had
+finished up with Stornoway; and, now that they had got back to the
+island in Loch Roag, the quaint little drawing-room had even to
+Lavender a homely and friendly look. The big stuffed fishes and the
+sponge shells were old acquaintances; and he went to hunt up Sheila's
+music just as if he had known that dusky corner for years.
+
+"Yes, yes," called Mackenzie, "it iss the English songs we will try
+now."
+
+He had a notion that he was himself rather a good hand at a part
+song--just as Sheila had innocently taught him to believe that he was
+a brilliant whist-player when he had mastered the art of returning his
+partner's lead--but fortunately at this moment he was engaged with
+a long pipe and a big tumbler of hot whisky and water. Ingram was
+similarly employed, lying back in a cane-bottomed easy-chair, and
+placidly watching the smoke ascending to the roof. Sometimes he cast
+an eye to the young folks at the other end of the room. They formed a
+pretty sight, he thought. Lavender was a good-looking fellow enough,
+and there was something pleasing in the quiet and assiduous fashion in
+which he waited upon Sheila, and in the almost timid way in which he
+spoke to her. Sheila herself sat at the piano, clad all in slate-gray
+silk, with a narrow band of scarlet velvet round her neck; and it was
+only by a chance turning of the head that Ingram caught the tender
+and handsome profile, broken only by the outward sweep of the long
+eyelashes.
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays,
+
+Sheila sang, with her father keeping time by patting his forefinger on
+the table.
+
+  He in thy snowy bosom strays,
+
+sang Lavender; and then the two voices joined together:
+
+  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
+  And walks the mazes of thy hair.
+
+Or were there not three voices? Surely, from the back part of the
+room, the musicians could hear a wandering bass come in from time
+to time, especially at such portions as "Ah, he never--ah, he never
+touched thy heart!" which old Mackenzie considered very touching. But
+there was something quaint and friendly and pleasant in the pathos of
+those English songs, which made them far more acceptable to him than
+Sheila's wild and melancholy legends of the sea. He sang "Ah, he
+never, never touched thy heart!" with an outward expression of grief,
+but with much inward satisfaction. Was it the quaint phraseology of
+the old duets that awoke in him some faint ambition after histrionic
+effect? At all events, Sheila proceeded to another of his favorites,
+"All's Well," and here, amid the brisk music, the old man had an
+excellent opportunity of striking in at random--
+
+  The careful watch patrols the deck
+  To guard the ship from foes or wreck.
+
+These two lines he had absolutely mastered, and always sang them,
+whatever might be the key he happened to light on, with great vigor.
+He soon went the length of improvising a part for himself in the
+closing passages, and laid down his pipe altogether as he sang--
+
+  What cheer? Brother, quickly tell!
+  Above! Below! Good-night! All, all's well!
+
+From that point, however, Sheila and her companion wandered away into
+fields of melody whither the King of Borva could not follow them; so
+he was content to resume his pipe and listen placidly to the pretty
+airs. He caught but bits and fragments of phrases and sentiments, but
+they evidently were comfortable, merry, good-natured songs for young
+folks to sing. There was a good deal of love-making, and rosy morns
+appearing, and merry zephyrs, and such odd things, which, sung briskly
+and gladly by two young and fresh voices, rather drew the hearts of
+contemplative listeners to the musicians.
+
+"They sing very well whatever," said Mackenzie with a critical air
+to Ingram when the young people were so busily engaged with their own
+affairs as apparently to forget the presence of the others. "Oh yes,
+they sing very well whatever; and what should the young folks sing
+about but making love and courting, and all that?"
+
+"Natural enough," said Ingram, looking rather wistfully at the two at
+the other end of the room. "I suppose Sheila will have a sweetheart
+some day?"
+
+"Oh yes, Sheila will hef a sweetheart some day," said her father
+good-humoredly. "Sheila is a good-looking girl: she will hef a
+sweetheart some day."
+
+"She will be marrying too, I suppose," said Ingram cautiously.
+
+"Oh yes, she will marry--Sheila will marry: what will be the life of a
+young girl if she does not marry?"
+
+At this moment, as Ingram afterward described it, a sort of "flash
+of inspiration" darted in upon him, and he resolved there and then to
+brave the wrath of the old king, and place all the conspiracy
+before him, if only the music kept loud enough to prevent his being
+overheard.
+
+"It will be hard on you to part with Sheila when she marries," said
+Ingram, scarcely daring to look up.
+
+"Oh, ay, it will be that," said Mackenzie cheerfully enough. "But it
+iss every one will hef to do that, and no great harm comes of it. Oh
+no, it will not be much whatever; and Sheila, she will be very glad in
+a little while after, and it will be enough for me to see that she is
+ferry contented and happy. The young folk must marry, you will see;
+and what is the use of marrying if it is not when they are young?
+But Sheila, she will think of none of these things. It was young Mr.
+MacIntyre of Sutherland--you hef seen him last year in Stornoway: he
+hass three thousand acres of a deer forest in Sutherland--and he will
+be ferry glad to marry my Sheila. But I will say to him, 'It is not
+for me to say yes or no to you, Mr. MacIntyre: it is Sheila herself
+will tell you that.' But he wass afraid to speak to her; and Sheila
+herself will know nothing of why he came twice to Borva the last
+year."
+
+"It is very good of you to leave Sheila quite unbiased in her choice,"
+said Ingram: "many fathers would have been sorely tempted by that deer
+forest."
+
+Old Mackenzie laughed a loud laugh of derision, that fortunately
+did not stop Lavender's execution of "I would that my love would
+silently."
+
+"What the teffle," said Mackenzie, "hef I to want a deer forest for my
+Sheila? Sheila is no fisherman's lass. She has plenty for herself,
+and she will marry just the young man she wants to marry, and no other
+one: that is what she will do, by Kott!"
+
+All this was most hopeful. If Mackenzie had himself been advocating
+Lavender's suit, could he have said more? But notwithstanding all
+these frank and generous promises, dealing with a future which the old
+man considered as indefinitely remote, Ingram was still afraid of the
+announcement he was about to make.
+
+"Sheila is fortunately situated," he said, "in having a father who
+thinks only of her happiness. But I suppose she has never yet shown a
+preference for any one?"
+
+"Not for any one but yourself," said her father with a laugh.
+
+And Ingram laughed too, but in an embarrassed way, and his sallow
+face grew darker with a blush. Was there not something painful in
+the unintentional implication that of course Ingram could not be
+considered a possible lover of Sheila's, and that the girl herself was
+so well aware of it that she could openly testify to her regard for
+him?
+
+"And it would be a good thing for Sheila," continued her father, more
+gravely, "if there wass any young man about the Lewis that she would
+tek a liking to; for it will be some day I can no more look after her,
+and it would be bad for her to be left alone all by herself in the
+island."
+
+"And you don't think you see before you now some one who might take
+on him the charge of Sheila's future?" said Ingram, looking toward
+Lavender.
+
+"The English gentleman?" said Mackenzie with a smile. "No, that any
+way is not possible."
+
+"I fancy it is more than possible," said Ingram, resolved to go
+straight at it. "I know for a fact that he would like to marry your
+daughter, and I think that Sheila, without knowing it herself almost,
+is well inclined toward him."
+
+The old man started up from his chair: "Eh? what! my Sheila?"
+
+"Yes, papa," said the girl, turning round at once.
+
+She caught sight of a strange look on his face, and in an instant was
+by his side: "Papa, what is the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing, Sheila, nothing," he said impatiently. "I am a little tired
+of the music, that is all. But go on with the music. Go back to the
+piano, Sheila, and go on with the music, and Mr. Ingram and me, we
+will go outside for a little while."
+
+Mackenzie walked out of the room, and said aloud in the hall, "Ay, are
+you coming, Mr. Ingram? It iss a fine night this night, and the wind
+is in a very good way for the weather."
+
+And then, as he went out to the front, he hummed aloud, so that Sheila
+should hear,
+
+  Who goes there? Stranger, quickly tell!
+  A friend! The word! Good-night! All's well!
+  All's well! Good-night! All's well!
+
+Ingram followed the old man outside, with a somewhat guilty conscience
+suggesting odd things to him. Would it not be possible now to shut
+one's ears for the next half hour? Angry words were only little
+perturbations in the air. If you shut your ears till they were all
+over, what harm could be done? All the big facts of life would remain
+the same. The sea, the sky, the hills, the human beings around you,
+even your desire of sleep for the night and your wholesome longing for
+breakfast in the morning, would all remain, and the angry words would
+have passed away. But perhaps it was a proper punishment that he
+should now go out and bear all the wrath of this fierce old gentleman,
+whose daughter he had conspired to carry off. Mackenzie was walking up
+and down the path outside in the cool and silent night. There was
+not much moon now, but a clear and lambent twilight showed all the
+familiar features of Loch Roag and the southern hills, and down there
+in the bay you could vaguely make out the Maighdean-mhara rocking in
+the tiny waves that washed in on the white shore. Ingram had never
+looked on this pretty picture with a less feeling of delight.
+
+"Well, you see, Mr. Mackenzie," he was beginning, "you must make this
+excuse for him--"
+
+But Mackenzie put aside Lavender at once. It was all about Sheila
+that he wanted to know. There was no anger in his words; only a great
+anxiety, and sometimes an extraordinary and pathetic effort to take a
+philosophical view of the situation. What had Sheila said? Was Sheila
+deeply interested in the young man? Would it please Sheila if he was
+to go in-doors and give at once his free consent to her marrying this
+Mr. Lavender?
+
+"Oh, you must not think," said Mackenzie, with a certain loftiness
+of air even amidst his great perturbation and anxiety--"you must not
+think I hef not foreseen all this. It wass some day or other Sheila
+will be sure to marry; and although I did not expect--no, I did not
+expect _that_--that she would marry a stranger and an Englishman, if
+it will please her that is enough. You cannot tell a young lass the
+one she should marry: it iss all a chance the one she likes, and if
+she does not marry him it is better she will not marry at all. Oh yes,
+I know that ferry well. And I hef known there wass a time coming when
+I would give away my Sheila to some young man; and there iss no use
+complaining of it. But you hef not told me much about this young man,
+or I hef forgotten: it is the same thing whatever. He has not much
+money, you said--he is waiting for some money. Well, this is what I
+will do: I will give him all my money if he will come and live in the
+Lewis."
+
+All the philosophy he had been mustering up fell away from that last
+sentence. It was like the cry of a drowning man who sees the last
+life-boat set out for shore, leaving him to his fate. And Ingram had
+not a word to say in reply to that piteous entreaty.
+
+"I do not ask him to stop in Borva: no, it iss a small place for one
+that hass lived in a town. But the Lewis, that is quite different; and
+there iss ferry good houses in Stornoway."
+
+"But surely, sir," said Ingram, "you need not consider all this just
+yet. I am sure neither of them has thought of any such thing."
+
+"No," said Mackenzie, recovering himself, "perhaps not. But we hef our
+duties to look at the future of young folks. And you will say that Mr.
+Lavender hass only expectations of money?"
+
+"Well, the expectation is almost a certainty. His aunt, I have told
+you, is a very rich old lady, who has no other near relations, and she
+is exceedingly fond of him, and would do anything for him. I am sure
+the allowance he has now is greatly in excess of what she spends on
+herself."
+
+"But they might quarrel, you know--they might quarrel. You hef always
+to look to the future: they might quarrel, and what will he do then?"
+
+"Why, you don't suppose he couldn't support himself if the worst were
+to come to the worst? He is an amazingly clever fellow--"
+
+"Ay, that is very good," said Mackenzie in a cautious sort of way,
+"but has he ever made any money?"
+
+"Oh, I fancy not--nothing to speak of. He has sold some pictures, but
+I think he has given more away."
+
+"Then it iss not easy, tek my word for it, Mr. Ingram, to begin a new
+trade if you are twenty-five years of age; and the people who will tek
+your pictures for nothing, will they pay for them if you wanted the
+money?"
+
+It was obviously the old man's eager wish to prove to himself that,
+somehow or other, Lavender might come to have no money, and be made
+dependent on his father-in-law. So far, indeed, from sharing the
+sentiments ordinarily attributed to that important relative, he would
+have welcomed with a heartfelt joy the information that the man
+who, as he expected, was about to marry his daughter was absolutely
+penniless. Not even all the attractions of that deer forest in
+Sutherlandshire--particularly fascinating as they must have been to a
+man of his education and surroundings--had been able to lead the old
+King of Borva even into hinting to his daughter that the owner of that
+property would like to marry her. Sheila was to choose for herself.
+She was not like a fisherman's lass, bound to consider ways and means.
+And now that she had chosen, or at least indicated the possibility of
+her doing so, her father's chief desire was that his future son-in-law
+should come and take and enjoy his money, so only that Sheila might
+not be carried away from him for ever.
+
+"Well, I will see about it," said Mackenzie with an affectation of
+cheerful and practical shrewdness. "Oh yes, I will see about it when
+Sheila has made up her mind. He is a very good young man, whatever--"
+
+"He is the best-hearted fellow I know," said Ingram warmly. "I don't
+think Sheila has much to fear if she marries him. If you had known him
+as long as I have, you would know how considerate he is to everybody
+about him, how generous he is, how good-natured and cheerful, and so
+forth: in short, he is a thorough good fellow, that's what I have to
+say about him."
+
+"It iss well for him he will hef such a champion," said Mackenzie with
+a smile: "there is not many Sheila will pay attention to as she does
+to you."
+
+They went in-doors again, Ingram scarcely knowing how he had got so
+easily through the ordeal, but very glad it was over.
+
+Sheila was still at the piano, and on their entering she said, "Papa,
+here is a song you must learn to sing with me."
+
+"And what iss it, Sheila?" he said, going over to her.
+
+"'Time has not thinned my flowing hair.'"
+
+He put his hand on her head and said, "I hope it will be a long time
+before he will thin your hair, Sheila."
+
+The girl looked up surprised. Scotch folks are, as a rule, somewhat
+reticent in their display of affection, and it was not often that her
+father talked to her in that way. What was there in his face that
+made her glance instinctively toward Ingram. Somehow or other her hand
+sought her father's hand, and she rose and went away from the piano,
+with her head bent down and tears beginning to tell in her eyes.
+
+"Yes, that is a capital song," said Ingram loudly. Sing 'The
+Arethusa,' Lavender--'Said the saucy Arethusa.'"
+
+Lavender, knowing what had taken place, and not daring to follow with
+his eyes Sheila and her father, who had gone to the other end of the
+room, sang the song. Never was a gallant and devil-may-care sea-song
+sung so hopelessly without spirit. But the piano made a noise and the
+verses took up time. When he had finished he almost feared to
+turn round, and yet there was nothing dreadful in the picture that
+presented itself. Sheila was sitting on her father's knee, with her
+head buried in his bosom, while he was patting her head and talking
+in a low voice to her. The King of Borva did not look particularly
+fierce.
+
+"Yes, it iss a teffle of a good song," he said suddenly. "Now get up,
+Sheila, and go and tell Mairi we will have a bit of bread and cheese
+before going to bed. And there will be a little hot water wanted in
+the other room, for this room it iss too full of the smoke."
+
+Sheila, as she went out of the room, had her head cast down and
+perhaps an extra tinge of color in her young and pretty face. But
+surely, Lavender thought to himself as he watched her anxiously, she
+did not look grieved. As for her father, what should he do now? Turn
+suddenly round and beg Mackenzie's pardon, and throw himself on
+his generosity? When he did, with much inward trembling, venture to
+approach the old man, he found no such explanation possible. The
+King of Borva was in one of his grandest moods--dignified, courteous,
+cautious, and yet inclined to treat everybody and everything with a
+sort of lofty good-humor. He spoke to Lavender in the most friendly
+way, but it was about the singular and startling fact that modern
+research had proved many of the Roman legends to be utterly
+untrustworthy. Mr. Mackenzie observed that the man was wanting in
+proper courage who feared to accept the results of such inquiries. It
+was better that we should know the truth, and then the kings who had
+really made Rome great might emerge from the fog of tradition in their
+proper shape. There was something quite sympathetic in the way he
+talked of those ill-treated sovereigns, whom the vulgar mind had
+clothed in mist.
+
+Lavender was sorely beset by the rival claims of Rome and Borva upon
+his attention. He was inwardly inclined to curse Numa Pompilius--which
+would have been ineffectual--when he found that personage interfering
+with a wild effort to discover why Mackenzie should treat him in this
+way. And then it occurred to him that, as he had never said a word to
+Mackenzie about this affair, it was too much to expect that Sheila's
+father should himself open the subject. On the contrary, Mackenzie was
+bent on extending a grave courtesy to his guest, so that the latter
+should not feel ill at ease until it suited himself to make any
+explanations he might choose. It was not Mackenzie's business to ask
+this young man if he wanted to marry Sheila. No. The king's daughter,
+if she were to be won at all, was to be won by a suitor, and it was
+not for her father to be in a hurry about it. So Lavender got back
+into the region of early Roman history, and tried to recall what he
+had learned in Livy, and quite coincided with everything that Niebuhr
+had said or proved, and with everything that Mackenzie thought Niebuhr
+had said or proved. He was only too glad, indeed, to find himself
+talking to Sheila's father in this friendly fashion.
+
+Then Sheila came in and told them that supper was laid in the
+adjoining room. At that modest meal a great good-humor prevailed.
+Sometimes, it is true, it occurred to Ingram that Sheila occasionally
+cast an anxious glance to her father, as if she were trying to
+discover whether he was really satisfied, or whether he were not
+merely pretending satisfaction to please her; but for the rest the
+party was a most friendly and merry one. Lavender, naturally
+enough, was in the highest of spirits, and nothing could exceed the
+lighthearted endeavors he made to amuse and interest and cheer his
+companions. Sheila, indeed, sat up later than usual, even although
+pipes were lit again, and the slate-gray silk likely to bear witness
+to the fact in the morning. How comfortable and homely was this sort
+of life in the remote stone building overlooking the sea! He began to
+think that he could live always in Borva if only Sheila were with him
+as his companion.
+
+Was it an actual fact, then, he asked himself next morning, that
+he stood confessed to the small world of Borva as Sheila's accepted
+lover? Not a word on the subject had passed between Mackenzie and
+himself, and yet he found himself assuming the position of a younger
+relative, and rather expecting advice from the old man. He began to
+take a great interest, too, in the local administration of the island:
+he examined the window-fastenings of Mackenzie's house and saw that
+they would be useful in the winter, and expressed to Sheila's father
+his confidential opinion that the girl should not be allowed to go out
+in the Maighdean-mhara without Duncan.
+
+"She will know as much about boats as Duncan himself," said her father
+with a smile. "But Sheila will not go out when the rough weather
+begins."
+
+"Of course you keep her in-doors then," said the younger man, already
+assuming some little charge over Sheila's comfort.
+
+The father laughed aloud at this simplicity on the part of the
+Englishman: "If we wass to keep in-doors in the bad weather, it would
+be all the winter we would be in-doors! There iss no day at all Sheila
+will not be out some time or other; and she is never so well as in the
+hard weather, when she will be out always in the snow and the frost,
+and hef plenty of exercise and amusement."
+
+"She is not often ailing, I suppose?" said Lavender.
+
+"She is as strong as a young pony, that is what Sheila is," said her
+father proudly. "And there is no one in the island will run so fast,
+or walk so long without tiring, or carry things from the shore as she
+will--not one."
+
+But here he suddenly checked himself. "That is," he said with some
+little expression of annoyance, "I wass saying Sheila could do that if
+it wass any use; but she will not do such things, like a fisherman's
+lass that hass to keep in the work."
+
+"Oh, of course not," said Lavender hastily. "But still, you know, it
+is pleasant to know she is so strong and well."
+
+And at this moment Sheila herself appeared, accompanied by her great
+deerhound, and testifying by the bright color in her face to the
+assurances of her health her father had been giving. She had just come
+up and over the hill from Borvabost, while as yet breakfast had not
+been served. Somehow or other, Lavender fancied she never looked so
+bright and bold and handsome as in the early morning, with the fresh
+sea-air tingling the color in her cheeks, and the sunlight shining in
+the clear eyes or giving from time to time a glimpse of her perfect
+teeth. But this morning she did not seem quite so frankly merry as
+usual. She patted the deerhound's head, and rather kept her eyes away
+from her father and his companion. And then she took Bras away to give
+him his breakfast, just as Ingram appeared to bid her good-morning and
+ask her what she meant by being about so early.
+
+How anxiously Lavender now began to calculate on the remaining days of
+their stay in Borva! They seemed so few. He got up at preposterously
+early hours to make each day as long as possible, but it slipped away
+with a fatal speed; and already he began to think of Stornoway and the
+Clansman and his bidding good-bye to Sheila. He had said no more to
+her of any pledge as regarded the future. He was content to see that
+she was pleased to be with him; and happy indeed were their rambles
+about the island, their excursions in Sheila's boat, their visits to
+the White Water in search of salmon. Nor had he yet spoken to Sheila's
+father. He knew that Mackenzie knew, and both seemed to take it for
+granted that no good could come of a formal explanation until Sheila
+herself should make her wishes known. That, indeed, was the only
+aspect of the case that apparently presented itself to the old King of
+Borva. He forgot altogether those precautions and investigations which
+are supposed to occupy the mind of a future father-in-law, and only
+sought to see how Sheila was affected toward the young man who was
+soon about to leave the island. When he saw her pleased to be walking
+with Lavender and talking with him of an evening, he was pleased, and
+would rather have a cold dinner than break in upon them to hurry
+them home. When he saw her disappointed because Lavender had been
+unfortunate in his salmon-fishing, he was ready to swear at Duncan
+for not having had the fish in a better temper. And the most of his
+conversation with Ingram consisted of an endeavor to convince himself
+that, after all, what had happened was for the best, and that Sheila
+seemed to be happy.
+
+But somehow or other, when the time for their departure was drawing
+near, Mackenzie showed a strange desire that his guests should
+spend the last two days in Stornoway. When Lavender first heard this
+proposal he glanced toward Sheila, and his face showed clearly his
+disappointment.
+
+"But Sheila will go with us too," said her father, replying to that
+unuttered protest in the most innocent fashion; and then Lavender's
+face brightened again, and he said that nothing would give him greater
+pleasure than to spend two days in Stornoway.
+
+"And you must not think," said Mackenzie anxiously, "that it is one
+day or two days or a great many days will show you all the fine things
+about Stornoway. And if you were to live in Stornoway you would find
+very good acquaintances and friends there; and in the autumn, when the
+shooting begins, there are many English who will come up, and there
+will be ferry great doings at the castle. And there is some gentlemen
+now at Grimersta whom you hef not seen, and they are ferry fine
+gentlemen; and at Garra-na-hina there iss two more gentlemen for the
+salmon-fishing. Oh, there iss a great many fine people in the Lewis,
+and it iss not all as lonely as Borva."
+
+"If it is half as pleasant a place to live in as Borva, it will do,"
+said Lavender, with a flush of enthusiasm in his face as he looked
+toward Sheila and saw her pleased and downcast eyes.
+
+"But it iss not to be compared," said Mackenzie eagerly. "Borva, that
+is nothing at all; but the Lewis, it is a ferry different thing to
+live in the Lewis; and many English gentlemen hef told me they would
+like to live always in the Lewis."
+
+"I think I should too," said Lavender lightly and carelessly, little
+thinking what importance the old man immediately and gladly put upon
+the admission.
+
+From that moment, Lavender, although unconscious of what had happened,
+had nothing to fear in the way of opposition from Sheila's father. If
+he had there and then boldly asked Mackenzie for his daughter, the
+old man would have given his consent freely, and bade Lavender go to
+Sheila herself.
+
+And so they set sail, one pleasant forenoon, from Borvabost, and
+the light wind that ruffled the blue of Loch Roag gently filled the
+mainsail of the Maigh-dean-mhara as she lightly ran down the tortuous
+channel.
+
+"I don't like to go away from Borva," said Lavender in a low voice to
+Sheila, "but I might have been leaving the island with greater regret,
+for, you know, I expect to be back soon."
+
+"We shall always be glad to see you," said the girl; and although he
+would rather have had her say "I" than "we," there was something in
+the tone of her voice that contented him.
+
+At Garra-na-hina Mackenzie pointed out with a great interest to
+Lavender a tall man who was going down through some meadows to the
+Amhuinn Dhubh, "the Black River." He had a long rod over his shoulder,
+and behind him, at some distance, followed a shorter man, who carried
+a gaff and landing-net. Mackenzie anxiously explained to Lavender
+that the tall figure was that of an Englishman. Lavender accepted
+the statement. But would he not go down to the river and make his
+acquaintance? Lavender could not understand why he should be expected
+to take so great an interest in an ordinary English sportsman.
+
+"Ferry well," said Mackenzie, a trifle disappointed, "but you would
+find several of the English in the Lewis if you wass living here."
+
+These last two days in Stornoway were very pleasant. On their previous
+visit to the town Mackenzie had given up much of his time to business
+affairs, and was a good deal away from his guests, but now he devoted
+himself to making them particularly comfortable in the place and
+amusing them in every possible way. He introduced Lavender, in
+especial, to all his friends there, and was most anxious to impress
+on the young man that life in Stornoway was, on the whole, rather a
+brilliant affair. Then was there a finer point from which you
+could start at will for Inverness, Oban and such great centres of
+civilization? Very soon there would even be a telegraphic cable laid
+to the mainland. Was Mr. Lavender aware that frequently you could see
+the Sutherlandshire hills from this very town of Stornoway?
+
+There Sheila laughed, and Lavender, who kept watching her face always
+to read all her fancies and sentiments and wishes in the shifting
+lights of it, immediately demanded an explanation.
+
+"It is no good thing," said Sheila, "to see the Sutherland hills
+often, for when you see them it means to rain."
+
+But Lavender had not been taught to fear the rain of the Western
+Isles. The very weather seemed to have conspired with Mackenzie to
+charm the young man with the island. At this moment, for example, they
+were driving away from Stornoway along the side of the great bay that
+stretches northward until it finds its furthest promontory in Tiumpan
+Head. What magnificence of color shone all around them in the hot
+sunlight! Where the ruffled blue sea came near the long sweep of
+yellow sand it grew to be a bright, transparent green. The splendid
+curve of the bay showed a gleaming line of white where the waves
+broke in masses of hissing foam; and beyond that curve again long
+promontories of dark red conglomerate ran out into the darker waters
+of the sea, with their summits shining with the bright sea-grass.
+Here, close at hand, were warm meadows, with calves and lambs cropping
+the sweet-scented Dutch clover. A few huts, shaped like beehives,
+stood by the roadside, close by some deep peat cuttings. There was a
+cutting in the yellow sand of the bay for the pulling up of captured
+whales. Now and again you could see a solan dart down from the blue
+heavens into the blue of the sea, sending up a spurt of water twenty
+feet high as he disappeared; and far out there, between the red
+precipices and the ruffled waters beneath, white sea-fowl flew from
+crag to crag or dropped down upon the sea to rise and fall with the
+waves.
+
+At the small hamlet of Gress they got a large rowing-boat manned by
+sturdy fishermen, and set out to explore the great caves formed in the
+mighty wall of conglomerate that here fronts the sea. The wild-fowl
+flew about them, screaming and yelling at being disturbed. The long
+swell of the sea lifted the boat, passed from under it, and went on
+with majestic force to crash on the glowing red crags and send jets of
+foam flying up the face of them. They captured one of the sea-birds--a
+young thing about as big as a hen, with staring eyes, scant feathers,
+and a long beak with which it instinctively tried to bite its
+enemies--and the parents of it kept swooping down over the boat,
+uttering shrill cries, until their offspring was restored to the
+surface of the water. They went into the great loud-sounding caverns,
+getting a new impression of the extraordinary clearness of the
+sea-water by the depth at which the bottom was visible; and here their
+shouts occasionally called up from some dim twilight recess, far
+in among the perilous rocks, the head of a young seal, which would
+instantly dive again and be seen no more. They watched the salmon
+splash in the shallower creeks where the sea had scooped out a tiny
+bay of ruddy sand, and then a slowly rolling porpoise would show his
+black back above the water and silently disappear again. All this was
+pleasant enough on a pleasant morning, in fresh sea-air and sunlight,
+in holiday-time; and was there any reason, Mackenzie may fairly have
+thought, why this young man, if he did marry Sheila, should not come
+and live in a place where so much healthy amusement was to be found?
+
+And in the evening, too, when they had climbed to the top of the
+hills on the south of Stornoway harbor, did not the little town look
+sufficiently picturesque, with its white houses, its shipping, its
+great castle and plantations lying in shadow under the green of the
+eastern sky? Then away to the west what a strange picture presented
+itself! Thick bands of gray cloud lay across the sky, and the sunlight
+from behind them sent down great rays of misty yellow on the endless
+miles of moor. But how was it that, as these shafts of sunlight struck
+on the far and successive ridges of the moorland, each long undulation
+seemed to become transparent, and all the island appeared to consist
+of great golden-brown shells heaped up behind each other, with the
+sunlight shining through?
+
+"I have tried a good many new effects since coming up here," said
+Lavender, "but I shall not try _that_."
+
+"Oh, it iss nothing--it is nothing at all," said Mackenzie with a
+studied air of unconcern. "There iss much more beautiful things than
+that in the island, but you will hef need of a ferry long time before
+you will find it all out. That--that iss nothing at all."
+
+"You will perhaps make a picture of it some other time," said Sheila
+with her eyes cast down, and as he was standing by her at the time, he
+took her hand and pressed it, and said, "I hope so."
+
+Then, that night! Did not every hour produce some new and wonderful
+scene, or was it only that each minute grew to be so precious, and
+that the enchantment of Sheila's presence filled the air around him?
+There was no moon, but the stars shone over the bay and the harbor and
+the dusky hills beyond the castle. Every few seconds the lighthouse at
+Arnish Point sent out its wild glare of orange fire into the heart, of
+the clear darkness, and then as suddenly faded out and left the eyes
+too bewildered to make out the configuration of the rocks. All over
+the north-west there still remained the pale glow of the twilight, and
+somehow Lavender seemed to think that that strange glow belonged
+to Sheila's home in the west, and that the people in Stornoway knew
+nothing of the wonders of Loch Roag and of the strange nights there.
+Was he likely ever to forget?
+
+"Good-bye, Sheila," he said next morning, when the last signal had
+been given and the Clansman was about to move from her moorings.
+
+She had bidden good-bye to Ingram already, but somehow she could not
+speak to his companion just at this last moment. She pressed his hand
+and turned away, and went ashore with her father. Then the big steamer
+throbbed its way out of the harbor, and by and by the island of Lewis
+lay but as a thin blue cloud along the horizon; and who could tell
+that human beings, with strange hopes and fancies and griefs, were
+hidden away in that pale line of vapor?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"FAREWELL, MACKRIMMON!"
+
+
+A night journey from Greenock to London is a sufficiently prosaic
+affair in ordinary circumstances, but it need not be always so. What
+if a young man, apparently occupied in making himself comfortable and
+in talking nonsense to his friend and companion, should be secretly
+calculating how the journey could be made most pleasant to a bride,
+and that bride his bride? Lavender made experiments with regard to the
+ways and tempers of guards; he borrowed planks of wood with which to
+make sleeping-couches of an ordinary first-class carriage; he bribed a
+certain official to have the compartment secured; he took note of the
+time when, and the place where, refreshments could be procured: all
+these things he did, thinking of Sheila. And when Ingram, sometimes
+surprised by his good-nature, and occasionally remonstrating against
+his extravagance, at last fell asleep on the more or less comfortable
+cushions stretched across the planks, Lavender would have him wake up
+again, that he might be induced to talk once more about Sheila. Ingram
+would make use of some wicked words, rub his eyes, ask what was the
+last station they had passed, and then begin to preach to Lavender
+about the great obligations he was under to Sheila, and what would be
+expected of him in after times.
+
+"You are coming away just now," he would say, while Lavender, who
+could not sleep at all, was only anxious that Sheila's name should be
+mentioned, "enriched with a greater treasure than falls to the lot of
+most men. If you know how to value that treasure, there is not a king
+or emperor in Europe who should not envy you."
+
+"But don't you think I value it?" the other would say anxiously.
+
+"We'll see about that afterward, by what you do. But in the mean
+time you don't know what you have won. You don't know the magnificent
+single-heartedness of that girl, her keen sense of honor, nor the
+strength of character, of judgment and decision that lies beneath her
+apparent simplicity. Why, I have known Sheila, now--But what's the use
+of talking?"
+
+"I wish you would talk, though, Ingram," said his companion quite
+submissively. "You have known her longer than I. I am willing to
+believe all you say of her, and anxious, indeed, to know as much about
+her as possible. You don't suppose I fancy she is anything less than
+you say?"
+
+"Well," said Ingram doubtfully, "perhaps not. The worst of it is, that
+you take such odd readings of people. However, when you marry her, as
+I now hope you may, you will soon find out; and then, if you are
+not grateful, if you don't understand and appreciate _then_ the fine
+qualities of this girl, the sooner you put a millstone round your neck
+and drop over Chelsea Bridge the better."
+
+"She will always have in you a good friend to look after her when she
+comes to London."
+
+"Oh, don't imagine I mean to thrust myself in at your breakfast-table
+to give you advice. If a husband and wife cannot manage their own
+affairs satisfactorily, no third person can; and I am getting to be an
+elderly man, who likes peace and comfort and his own quiet."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk such nonsense!" said Lavender impetuously.
+"You know you are bound to marry; and the woman you ask to marry you
+will be a precious fool if she refuses. I don't know, indeed, how you
+and Sheila ever escaped--"
+
+"Look here, Lavender," said his companion, speaking in a somewhat more
+earnest fashion, "if you marry Sheila Mackenzie I suppose I may see
+something of both of you from time to time. But you are naturally
+jealous and exacting, as is the way with many good fellows who have
+had too much of their own will in the world; and if you start off with
+the notion now that Sheila and I might ever have married, or that such
+a thing was ever thought of by either of us, the certain consequence
+will be that you will become jealous of me, and that in time I shall
+have to stop seeing either of you if you happen to be living in
+London."
+
+"And if ever the time comes," said Lavender lightly, "when I prove
+myself such a fool, I hope I shall remember that a millstone can be
+bought in Victoria road and that Chelsea Bridge is handy."
+
+"All right: I'm going to sleep."
+
+For some time after Ingram was permitted to rest in peace, and it was
+not until they had reached some big station or other toward morning
+that he woke. Lavender had never closed his eyes.
+
+"Haven't you been asleep?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What's the matter now?"
+
+"My aunt."
+
+"You seem to have acquired a trick recently of looking at all the
+difficulties of your position at once. Why don't you take them
+singly? You've just got rid of Mackenzie's opposition: that might have
+contented you for a while."
+
+"I think the best plan will be to say nothing of this to my aunt at
+present. I think we ought to get married first, and when I take Sheila
+to see her as my wife, what can she say then?"
+
+"But what is Sheila likely to say before then? And Sheila's father?
+You must be out of your mind!"
+
+"There will be a pretty scene, then, when I tell her."
+
+"Scenes don't hurt anybody, unless when they end in brickbats or
+decanters. Your aunt must know you would marry some day."
+
+"Yes, but you know whom she wished me to marry."
+
+"That is nothing. Every old lady has a fancy for imagining possible
+marriages; but your aunt is a reasonable woman, and could not possibly
+object to your marrying a girl like Sheila?"
+
+"Oh, couldn't she? Then you don't know her: 'Frank, my dear, what are
+the arms borne by your wife's family?' 'My dear aunt, I will describe
+them to you as becomes a dutiful nephew. The arms are quarterly:
+first and fourth, vert, a herring, argent; second and third, azure, a
+solan-goose, volant, or. The crest, out of a crown vallery, argent,
+a cask of whisky, gules. Supporters, dexter, a gillie; sinister, a
+fisherman.'"
+
+"And a very good coat-of-arms, too. You might add the motto _Ultimus
+regum_. Or _Atavis editus regibus_. Or _Tyrrhena regum progenies_. To
+think that your aunt would forbid your wedding a king's daughter!"
+
+"I should wed the king's daughter, aunt or no aunt, in any case; but,
+you see, it would be uncommonly awkward, just as old Mackenzie would
+want to know something more particular about my circumstances; and he
+might ask for references to the old lady herself, just as if I were a
+tenant about to take a house."
+
+"I have given him enough references. Go to sleep, and don't bother
+yourself."
+
+But now Ingram felt himself just as unable as his companion to escape
+into unconsciousness, and so he roused himself thoroughly, and began
+to talk about Lewis and Borva and the Mackenzies, and the duties and
+responsibilities Lavender would undertake in marrying Sheila.
+
+"Mackenzie," he said, "will expect you to live in Stornoway at least
+half the year, and it will be very hard on him if you don't."
+
+"Oh, as to that," said the other, "I should have no objection; but,
+you see, if I am to get married I really think I ought to try to get
+into some position of earning my own living or helping toward it, you
+know. I begin to see how galling this sort of dependence on my aunt
+might be if I wished to act for myself. Now, if I were to begin to
+do anything, I could not go and bury myself in Lewis for half the
+year--just at first: by and by, you know, it might be different. But
+don't you think I ought to begin and do something?"
+
+"Most certainly. I have often wished you had been born a carpenter or
+painter or glazier."
+
+"People are not born carpenters or glaziers, but sometimes they are
+born painters. I think I have been born nothing; but I am willing to
+try, more especially as I think Sheila would like it."
+
+"I know she would."
+
+"I will write and tell her the moment I get to London."
+
+"I would fix first what your occupation was to be, if I were you.
+There is no hurry about telling Sheila, although she will be very glad
+to get as much news of you as possible, and I hope you will spare
+no time or trouble in pleasing her in that line. By the way, what an
+infamous shame it was of you to go and gammon old Mackenzie into the
+belief that he can read poetry! Why, he will make that girl's life a
+burden to her. I heard him propose to read _Paradise Lost_ to her as
+soon as the rain set in."
+
+"I didn't gammon him," said Lavender with a laugh. "Every man thinks
+he can read poetry better than every other man, even as every man
+fancies that no one gets cigars as good and as cheap as he does, and
+that no one can drive a horse safely but himself. My talking about
+his reading was not as bad as Sheila's persuading him that he can
+play whist. Did you ever know a man who did not believe that everybody
+else's reading of poetry was affected, stilted and unbearable? I
+know Mackenzie must have been reading poetry to Sheila long before I
+mentioned it to him."
+
+"But that suggestion about his resonant voice and the Crystal Palace?"
+
+"That was a joke."
+
+"He did not take it as a joke, and neither did Sheila."
+
+"Well, Sheila would believe that her father could command the Channel
+fleet, or turn out the present ministry, or build a bridge to America,
+if only anybody hinted it to her. Touching that Crystal Palace: did
+you observe how little notion of size she could have got from pictures
+when she asked me if the Crystal Palace was much bigger than the
+hot-houses at Lewis Castle?"
+
+"What a world of wonder the girl is coming into!" said the other
+meditatively. "But it will be all lit up by one sun if only you take
+care of her and justify her belief in you."
+
+"I have not much doubt," said Lavender with a certain modest
+confidence in his manner which had repeatedly of late pleased his
+friend.
+
+Even Sheila herself could scarcely have found London more strange than
+did the two men who had just returned from a month's sojourn in the
+northern Hebrides. The dingy trees in Euston Square, the pale sunlight
+that shone down on the gray pavements, the noise of the omnibuses and
+carts, the multitude of strangers, the blue and mist-like smoke that
+hung about Tottenham Court road,--all were as strange to them as the
+sensation of sitting in a hansom and being driven along by an unseen
+driver. Lavender confessed afterward that he was pervaded by an odd
+sort of desire to know whether there was anybody in London at all
+like Sheila. Now and again a smartly-dressed girl passed along the
+pavement: what was it that made the difference between her and that
+other girl whom he had just left? Yet he wished to have the
+difference as decided as possible. When some bright, fresh-colored,
+pleasant-looking girl passed, he was anxious to prove to himself that
+she was not to be compared with Sheila. Where in all London could
+you find eyes that told so much? He forgot to place the specialty of
+Sheila's eyes in the fact of their being a dark gray-blue under black
+eyelashes. What he did remember was that no eyes could possibly say
+the same things to him as they had said. And where in all London was
+the same sweet aspect to be found, or the same unconsciously proud
+and gentle demeanor, or the same tender friendliness expressed in a
+beautiful face? He would not say anything against London women, for
+all that. It was no fault of theirs that they could not be sea-kings'
+daughters, with the courage and frankness and sweetness of the sea
+gone into their blood. He was only too pleased to have proved to
+himself, by looking at some half dozen pretty shop-girls, that not in
+London was there any one to compare with Princess Sheila.
+
+For many a day thereafter Ingram had to suffer a good deal of this
+sort of lover's logic, and bore it with great fortitude. Indeed,
+nothing pleased him more than to observe that Lavender's affection, so
+far from waning, engrossed more and more of his thought and his
+time; and he listened with unfailing good-nature and patience to the
+perpetual talk of his friend about Sheila and her home, and the future
+that might be in store for both of them. If he had accepted half the
+invitations to dinner sent down to him at the Board of Trade by his
+friend, he would scarcely ever have been out of Lavender's club. Many
+a long evening they passed in this way--either in Lavender's rooms
+in King street or in Ingram's lodgings in Sloane street. Ingram quite
+consented to lie in a chair and smoke, sometimes putting in a word of
+caution to bring Lavender back from the romantic Sheila to the real
+Sheila, sometimes smiling at some wild proposal or statement on the
+part of his friend, but always glad to see that the pretty idealisms
+planted during their stay in the far North were in no danger of dying
+out down here in the South. Those were great days, too, when a letter
+arrived from Sheila. Nothing had been said about their corresponding,
+but Lavender had written shortly after his arrival in London, and
+Sheila had answered for her father and herself. It wanted but a very
+little amount of ingenuity to continue the interchange of letters
+thus begun; and when the well-known envelope arrived high holiday was
+immediately proclaimed by the recipient of it. He did not show Ingram
+these letters, of course, but the contents of them were soon bit
+by bit revealed. He was also permitted to see the envelope, as if
+Sheila's handwriting had some magical charm about it. Sometimes,
+indeed, Ingram had himself a letter from Sheila, and that was
+immediately shown to Lavender. Was he pleased to find that these
+communications were excessively business-like--describing how the
+fishing was going on, what was doing in the schools, and how John
+the Piper was conducting himself, with talk about the projected
+telegraphic cable, the shooting in Harris, the health of Bras, and
+other esoteric matters?
+
+Lavender's communications with the King of Borva were of a different
+nature. Wonderful volumes on building, agriculture and what not,
+tobacco hailing from certain royal sources in the neighborhood of
+the Pyramids, and now and again a new sort of rifle or some fresh
+invention in fishing-tackle,--these were the sort of things that found
+their way to Lewis. And then in reply came haunches of venison,
+and kegs of rare whisky, and skins of wild animals, which, all very
+admirable in their way, were a trifle cumbersome in a couple of
+moderate rooms in King street, St. James's. But here Lavender hit upon
+a happy device. He had long ago talked to his aunt of the mysterious
+potentate in the far North, who was the ruler of man, beast and
+fish, and who had an only daughter. When these presents arrived, Mrs.
+Lavender was informed that they were meant for her, and was given
+to understand that they were the propitiatory gifts of a half-savage
+monarch who wished to seek her friendship. In vain did Ingram warn
+Lavender of the possible danger of this foolish joke. The young man
+laughed, and would come down to Sloane street with another story of
+his success as an envoy of the distant king.
+
+And so the months went slowly by, and Lavender raved about Sheila,
+and dreamed about Sheila, and was always going to begin some splendid
+achievement for Sheila's sake, but never just managed to begin.
+After all, the future did not look very terrible, and the present
+was satisfactory enough. Mrs. Lavender had no objection whatever to
+listening to his praises of Sheila, and had even gone the length of
+approving of the girl's photograph when it was shown her. But at the
+end of six months Lavender suddenly went down to Sloane street,
+found Ingram in his lodgings, and said, "Ingram, I start for Lewis
+to-morrow."
+
+"The more fool you!" was the complacent reply.
+
+"I can't bear this any longer: I must go and see her."
+
+"You'll have to bear worse if you go. You don't know what getting to
+Lewis is in the winter. You'll be killed with cold before you see the
+Minch."
+
+"I can stand a good bit of cold when there's a reason for it," said
+the young man; "and I have written to Sheila to say I should start
+to-morrow."
+
+"In that case I had better make use of you. I suppose you won't mind
+taking up to Sheila a sealskin jacket that I have bought for her."
+
+"That you have bought for her!" said the other.
+
+How could he have spared fifteen pounds out of his narrow income for
+such a present? And yet he laughed at the idea of his ever having been
+in love with Sheila.
+
+Lavender took the sealskin jacket with him, and started on his journey
+to the North. It was certainly all that Ingram had prophesied in the
+way of discomfort, hardship and delay. But one forenoon, Lavender,
+coming up from the cabin of the steamer into which he had descended
+to escape from the bitter wind and the sleet, saw before him a strange
+thing. In the middle of the black sea and under a dark gray sky lay
+a long wonder-land of gleaming snow. Far as the eye could see the
+successive headlands of pale white jutted out into the dark ocean,
+until in the south they faded into a gray mist and became invisible.
+And when they got into Stornoway harbor, how black seemed the waters
+of the little bay and the hulls of the boats and the windows of the
+houses against the blinding white of the encircling hills!
+
+"Yes," said Lavender to the captain, "it will be a cold drive across
+to Loch Roag. I shall give Mackenzie's man a good dram before we
+start."
+
+But it was not Mackenzie's notion of hospitality to send Duncan to
+meet an honored guest, and ere the vessel was fast moored Lavender had
+caught sight of the well-known pair of horses and the brown wagonette,
+and Mackenzie stamping up and down in the trampled snow. And this
+figure close down to the edge of the quay? Surely, there was something
+about the thick gray shawl, the white feather, the set of the head,
+that he knew!
+
+"Why, Sheila!" he cried, jumping ashore before the gangway was shoved
+across, "whatever made you come to Stornoway on such a day?"
+
+"And it is not much my coming to Stornoway if you will come all the
+way from England to the Lewis," said Sheila, looking up with her
+bright and glad eyes.
+
+For six months he had been trying to recall the tones of her voice in
+looking at her picture, and had failed: now he fancied that she spoke
+more sweetly and musically than ever.
+
+"Ay, ay," said Mackenzie when he had shaken hands with the young
+man, "it wass a piece of foolishness, her coming over to meet you in
+Styornoway; but the girl will be neither to hold nor to bind when she
+teks a foolishness into her head."
+
+"Is this the character I hear of you, Sheila?" he said; and Mackenzie
+laughed at his daughter's embarrassment, and said she was a good lass
+for all that, and bundled both the young folks into the inn, where
+luncheon had been provided, with a blazing fire in the room, and a
+kettle of hot water steaming beside it.
+
+When they got to Borva, Lavender began to see that Mackenzie had laid
+the most subtle plans for reconciling him to the hard weather of these
+northern winters; and the young man, nothing loath, fell into his
+ways, and was astonished at the amusement and interest that could
+be got out of a residence in this bleak island at such a season.
+Mackenzie discarded at once the feeble protections against cold and
+wet which his guest had brought with him. He gave him a pair of his
+own knickerbockers and enormous boots; he made him wear a frieze coat
+borrowed from Duncan; he insisted on his turning down the flap of a
+sealskin cap and tying the ends under his chin; and thus equipped they
+started on many a rare expedition round the coast. But on their first
+going out, Mackenzie, looking at him, said with some chagrin, "Will
+they wear gloves when they go shooting in your country?"
+
+"Oh," said Lavender, "these are only a pair of old dogskins I
+use chiefly to keep my hands clean. You see I have cut out the
+trigger-finger. And they keep your hands from being numbed, you know,
+with the cold or the rain."
+
+"There will be not much need of that after a little while," said
+Mackenzie; and indeed, after half an hour's tramping over snow and
+climbing over rocks, Lavender was well inclined to please the old man
+by tossing the gloves into the sea, for his hands were burning with
+heat.
+
+Then the pleasant evenings after all the fatigues of the day were
+over, clothes changed, dinner despatched, and Sheila at the open piano
+in that warm little drawing-room, with its strange shells and fish and
+birds!
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays;
+  He in thy snowy bosom strays,
+
+they sang, just as in the bygone times of summer; and now old
+Mackenzie had got on a bit farther in his musical studies, and could
+hum with the best of them,
+
+  He makes thy rosy lips his care,
+  And walks the mazes of thy hair.
+
+There was no winter at all in the snug little room, with its crimson
+fire and closed shutters and songs of happier times. "When the
+rosy morn appearing" had nothing inappropriate in it; and if they
+particularly studied the words of "Oh wert thou in the cauld
+blast," it was only that Sheila might teach her companion the Scotch
+pronunciation, as far as she knew it. And once, half in joke, Lavender
+said he could believe it was summer again if Sheila had only on her
+slate-gray silk dress, with the red ribbon round her neck; and sure
+enough, after dinner she came down in that dress, and Lavender
+took her hand and kissed it in gratitude. Just at that moment, too,
+Mackenzie began to swear at Duncan for not having brought him his
+pipe, and not only went out of the room to look for it, but was a
+full half hour in finding it. When he came in again he was singing
+carelessly,
+
+  Love in thine eyes for ever plays,
+
+just as if he had got his pipe round the corner.
+
+For it had been all explained by this time, you know, and Sheila had
+in a couple of trembling words pledged away her life, and her father
+had given his consent. More than that he would have done for the girl,
+if need were; and when he saw the perfect happiness shining in her
+eyes--when he saw that, through some vague feelings of compunction
+or gratitude, or even exuberant joy, she was more than usually
+affectionate toward himself--he grew reconciled to the ways of
+Providence, and was ready to believe that Ingram had done them all a
+good turn in bringing his friend from the South with him. If there
+was any haunting fear at all, it was about the possibility of Sheila's
+husband refusing to live in Stornoway, even for half the year or a
+portion of the year; but did not the young man express himself as
+delighted beyond measure with Lewis and the Lewis people, and the
+sports and scenery and climate of the island? If Mackenzie could have
+bought fine weather at twenty pounds a day, Lavender would have gone
+back to London with the conviction that there was only one thing
+better than Lewis in summer-time, and that was Lewis in time of snow
+and frost.
+
+The blow fell. One evening a distinct thaw set in, during the night
+the wind went round to the south-west, and in the morning, lo! the
+very desolation of desolation. Suainabhal, Mealasabhal, Cracabhal were
+all hidden away behind dreary folds of mist; a slow and steady rain
+poured down from the lowering skies on the wet rocks, the marshy
+pasture-land and the leafless bushes; the Atlantic lay dark under a
+gray fog, and you could scarcely see across the loch in front of the
+house. Sometimes the wind freshened a bit, and howled about the house
+or dashed showers against the streaming panes; but ordinarily there
+was no sound but the ceaseless hissing of the rain on the wet gravel
+at the door and the rush of the waves along the black rocks. All signs
+of life seemed to have fled from the earth and the sky. Bird and beast
+had alike taken shelter, and not even a gull or a sea-pye crossed the
+melancholy lines of moorland, which were half obscured by the mist of
+the rain.
+
+"Well, it can't be fine weather always," said Lavender cheerfully when
+Mackenzie was affecting to be greatly surprised to find such a thing
+as rain in the island of Lewis.
+
+"No, that iss quite true," said the old man. "It wass ferry good
+weather we were having since you hef come here. And what iss a little
+rain?--oh, nothing at all. You will see it will go away whenever the
+wind goes round."
+
+With that Mackenzie would again go out to the front of the house,
+take a turn up and down the wet gravel, and pretend to be scanning the
+horizon for signs of a change. Sheila, a good deal more honest, went
+about her household duties, saying merely to Lavender, "I am very
+sorry the weather has broken, but it may clear before you go away from
+Borva."
+
+"Before I go? Do you expect it to rain for a week?"
+
+"Perhaps it will not, but it is looking very bad to-day," said Sheila.
+
+"Well, I don't care," said the young man, "though it should rain the
+skies down, if only you would keep in-doors, Sheila. But you do go
+out in such a reckless fashion. You don't seem to reflect that it is
+raining."
+
+"I do not get wet," she said.
+
+"Why, when you came up from the shore half an hour ago your hair was
+as wet as possible, and your face all red and gleaming with the rain."
+
+"But I am none the worse. And I am not wet now. It is impossible that
+you will always keep in a room if you have things to do; and a little
+rain does not hurt any one."
+
+"It occurs to me, Sheila," he observed slowly, "that you are an
+exceedingly obstinate and self-willed young person, and that no one
+has ever exercised any proper control over you."
+
+She looked up for a moment with a sudden glance of surprise and pain:
+then she saw in his eyes that he meant nothing, and she went forward
+to him, putting her hand in his hand, and saying with a smile, "I am
+very willing to be controlled."
+
+"Are you really?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then hear my commands. You shall _not_ go out in time of rain without
+putting something over your head or taking an umbrella. You shall
+_not_ go out in the Maighdean-mhara without taking some one with you
+besides Mairi. You shall never, if you are away from home, go within
+fifty yards of the sea, so long as there is snow on the rocks."
+
+"But that is so very many things already: is it not enough?" said
+Sheila.
+
+"You will faithfully remember and observe these rules?"
+
+"I will."
+
+"Then you are a more obedient girl than I imagined or expected; and
+you may now, if you are good, have the satisfaction of offering me
+a glass of sherry and a biscuit, for, rain or no rain, Lewis is a
+dreadful place for making people hungry."
+
+Mackenzie need not have been afraid. Strange as it may appear,
+Lavender was well content with the wet weather. No depression or
+impatience or remonstrance was visible on his face when he went to
+the blurred windows, day after day, to see only the same desolate
+picture--the dark sea, the wet rocks, the gray mists over the moorland
+and the shining of the red gravel before the house. He would stand
+with his hands in his pocket and whistle "Love in thine eyes for ever
+plays," just as if he were looking out on a cheerful summer sunrise.
+When he and Sheila went to the door, and were received by a cold blast
+of wet wind and a driving shower of rain, he would slam the door to
+again with a laugh, and pull the girl back into the house. Sometimes
+she would not be controlled; and then he would accompany her about the
+garden as she attended to her duties, or would go down to the shore
+with her to give Bras a run. From these excursions he returned in
+the best of spirits, with a fine color in his face; until, having got
+accustomed to heavy boots, impervious frieze and the discomfort of
+wet hands, he grew to be about as indifferent to the rain as Sheila
+herself, and went fishing or shooting or boating with much content,
+whether it was wet or dry.
+
+"It has been the happiest month of my life--I know that," he said to
+Mackenzie as they stood together on the quay at Stornoway.
+
+"And I hope you will hef many like it in the Lewis," said the old man
+cheerfully.
+
+"I think I should soon learn to become a Highlander up here," said
+Lavender, "if Sheila would only teach me the Gaelic."
+
+"The Gaelic!" cried Mackenzie impatiently. "The Gaelic! It is none of
+the gentlemen who will come here in the autumn will want the Gaelic;
+and what for would you want the Gaelic--ay, if you was staying here
+the whole year round?"
+
+"But Sheila will teach me all the same--won't you, Sheila?" he said,
+turning to his companion, who was gazing somewhat blankly at the rough
+steamer and at the rough gray sea beyond the harbor.
+
+"Yes," said the girl: she seemed in no mood for joking.
+
+Lavender returned to town more in love than ever; and soon the news
+of his engagement was spread abroad, he nothing loath. Most of his
+club-friends laughed, and prophesied it would come to nothing. How
+could a man in Lavender's position marry anybody but an heiress? He
+could not afford to go and marry a fisherman's daughter. Others came
+to the conclusion that artists and writers and all that sort of people
+were incomprehensible, and said "Poor beggar!" when they thought of
+the fashion in which Lavender had ruined his chances in life. His
+lady friends, however, were much more sympathetic. There was a dash of
+romance in the story; and would not the Highland girl be a curiosity
+for a little while after she came to town? Was she like any of the
+pictures Mr. Lavender had hanging up in his rooms? Had he not even a
+sketch of her? An artist, and yet not have a portrait of the girl he
+had chosen to marry? Lavender had no portrait of Sheila to show. Some
+little photographs he had he kept for his own pocket-book, while in
+vain had he tried to get some sketch or picture that would convey to
+the little world of his friends and acquaintances some notion of his
+future bride. They were left to draw on their imagination for some
+presentiment of the coming princess.
+
+He told Mrs. Lavender, of course. She said little, but sent for Edward
+Ingram. Him she questioned in a cautious, close and yet apparently
+indifferent way, and then merely said that Frank was very impetuous,
+that it was a pity he had resolved on marrying out of his own sphere
+of life, but that she hoped the young lady from the Highlands would
+prove a good wife to him.
+
+"I hope he will prove a good husband to her," said Ingram with unusual
+sharpness.
+
+"Frank is very impetuous." That was all Mrs. Lavender would say.
+
+By and by, as the spring drew on and the time of the marriage was
+coming nearer, the important business of taking and furnishing a house
+for Sheila's reception occupied the attention of the young man from
+morning till night. He had been somewhat disappointed at the cold
+fashion in which his aunt looked upon his choice, admitting everything
+he had to say in praise of Sheila, but never expressing any approval
+of his conduct or hope about the future; but now she showed herself
+most amiably and generously disposed. She supplied the young man with
+abundant funds wherewith to furnish the house according to his own
+fancy. It was a small place, fronting a somewhat commonplace square in
+Notting Hill, but it was to be a miracle of artistic adornment inside.
+He tortured himself for days over rival shades and hues; he drew
+designs for the chairs; he himself painted a good deal of paneling;,
+and, in short, gave up his whole time to making Sheila's future home
+beautiful. His aunt regarded these preparations with little interest,
+but she certainly gave her nephew ample means to indulge the
+eccentricities of his fancy.
+
+"Isn't she a dear old lady?" said Lavender one night to Ingram. "Look
+here! A cheque, received this morning, for two hundred pounds, for
+plate and glass."
+
+Ingram looked at the bit of pale green paper: "I wish you had earned
+the money yourself, or done without the plate until you could buy it
+with your own money."
+
+"Oh, confound it, Ingram! you carry your puritanical theories too far.
+Doubtless I shall earn my own living by and by. Give me time."
+
+"It is now nearly a year since you thought of marrying Sheila
+Mackenzie, and you have not done a stroke of work yet."
+
+"I beg your pardon. I have worked a good deal of late, as you will see
+when you come up to my rooms."
+
+"Have you sold a single picture since last summer?"
+
+"I cannot make people buy my pictures if they don't choose to do so."
+
+"Have you made any effort to get them sold, or to come to any
+arrangement with any of the dealers?"
+
+"I have been too busy of late--looking after this house, you know,"
+said Lavender with an air of apology.
+
+"You were not too busy to paint a fan for Mrs. Lorraine, that people
+say must have occupied you for months."
+
+Lavender laughed: "Do you know, Ingram, I think you are jealous of
+Mrs. Lorraine, on account of Sheila? Come, you shall go and see her."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"Are you afraid of your Puritan principles giving way?"
+
+"I am afraid that you are a very foolish boy," said the other with a
+good-humored shrug of resignation, "but I hope to see you mend when
+you marry."
+
+"Ah, then you _will_ see a difference!" said Lavender seriously; and
+so the dispute ended.
+
+It had been arranged that Ingram should go up to Lewis to the
+marriage, and after the ceremony in Stornoway return to Borva with
+Mr. Mackenzie, to remain with him a few days. But at the last moment
+Ingram was summoned down to Devonshire on account of the serious
+illness of some near relative, and accordingly Frank Lavender started
+by himself to bring back with him his Highland bride. His stay in
+Borva was short enough on this occasion. At the end of it there came a
+certain wet and boisterous day, the occurrences in which he afterward
+remembered as if they had taken place in a dream. There were many
+faces about, a confusion of tongues, a good deal of dram-drinking,
+a skirl of pipes, and a hurry through the rain; but all these things
+gave place to the occasional glance that he got from a pair of timid
+and trusting and beautiful eyes. Yet Sheila was not Sheila in that
+dress of white, with her face a trifle pale. She was more his own
+Sheila when she had donned her rough garments of blue, and when she
+stood on the wet deck of the vessel, with a great gray shawl around
+her, talking to her father with a brave effort at cheerfulness,
+although her lip would occasionally quiver as one or other, of her
+friends from Borva--many of them barefooted children--came up to bid
+her good-bye. Her father talked rapidly, with a grand affectation of
+indifference. He swore at the weather. He bade her see that Bras was
+properly fed, and if the sea broke over his box in the night, he was
+to be rubbed dry, and let out in the morning for a run up and down
+the deck. She was not to forget the parcel directed to an innkeeper
+at Oban. They would find Oban a very nice place at which to break the
+journey to London, but as for Greenock, Mackenzie could find no words
+with which to describe Greenock.
+
+And then, in the midst of all this, Sheila suddenly said, "Papa, when
+does the steamer leave?"
+
+"In a few minutes. They have got nearly all the cargo on board."
+
+"Will you do me a great favor, papa?"
+
+"Ay, but what is it, Sheila?"
+
+"I want you not to stay here till the boat sails, and then you will
+have all the people on the quay vexing you when you are going away. I
+want you to bid good-bye to us now, and drive away round to the point,
+and we shall see you the last of all when the steamer has got out of
+the harbor."
+
+"Ferry well, Sheila, I will do that," he said, knowing well why the
+girl wished it.
+
+So father and daughter bade good-bye to each other; and Mackenzie went
+on shore with his face down, and said not a word to any of his friends
+on the quay, but got into the wagonette, and, lashing the horses,
+drove rapidly away. As he had shaken hands with Lavender, Lavender had
+said to him, "Well, we shall soon be back in Borva again to see you;"
+and the old man had merely tightened the grip of his hand as he left.
+
+The roar of the steam-pipes ceased, the throb of the engines struck
+the water, and the great steamer steamed away from the quay and out of
+the plain of the harbor into a wide world of gray waves and wind and
+rain. There stood Mackenzie as they passed, the dark figure clearly
+seen against the pallid colors of the dismal day; and Sheila waved
+a handkerchief to him until Stornoway and its lighthouse and all the
+promontories and bays of the great island had faded into the white
+mists that lay along the horizon. And then her arm fell to her side,
+and for a moment she stood bewildered, with a strange look in her eyes
+of grief, and almost of despair.
+
+"Sheila, my darling, you must go below now," said her companion: "you
+are almost dead with cold."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, as though she had scarcely heard what
+he said. But his eyes were full of pity for her: he drew her closer
+to him, and put his arms round her, and then she hid her head in his
+bosom and sobbed there like a child.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+THE EMERALD.
+
+
+Dutens and several others who have written upon gems and precious
+stones during the last two centuries have asserted that the ancients
+were unacquainted with the true emerald, and that Heliodorus, when
+speaking nearly two thousand years ago of "gems green as a meadow in
+the spring," or Pliny, when describing stone of a "soft green lustre,"
+referred to the peridot, the plasma, the malachite, or the far rarer
+gem, the green sapphire. But the antiquary has come to the rescue with
+the treasures of the despoiled mounds of Tuscany, the exposed ashes of
+Herculaneum and Pompeii, and now exhibits emeralds which were mounted
+in gold two thousand years before Columbus dreamed of the New World,
+or Pizarro and his remorseless band gathered the precious stones by
+the hundred-weight from the spoils of Peru. Although these specimens
+of antique jewelry set with emeralds may be numbered by the score or
+more in the museums and "reliquaries" of Europe, but very few engraved
+emeralds have descended to us from ancient times: This rarity is not
+due to the hardness of the stone, for the ancient lapidaries cut the
+difficult and still harder sapphire: therefore we must believe the
+statement of the early gem-writers that the emerald was exempted
+from the glyptic art by common consent on account of its beauty and
+costliness.
+
+The emerald is now one of the rarest of gems, and its scarcity gives
+rise to the inquiry as to what has become of the abundant shower of
+emeralds which fairly rained upon Spain during the early days of the
+conquest of Mexico and Peru, bringing down the value of fine stones
+to a trifling price. As with all commercial articles, there is a waste
+and loss to be accounted for during the wear of three centuries,
+but this alone will not explain their present rarity in civilized
+countries. Even in the times of Charles II., when the destitution of
+the country was extreme, the dukes of Infantado and Albuquerque had
+millions in diamonds, rubies and precious stones, yet hardly possessed
+a single sou. So impoverished was the land, and so slender were the
+purses of all, that the duke of Albuquerque dined on an egg and a
+pigeon, yet it required six weeks to make an inventory of his plate.
+At this period, when the nobles gave fetes the lamps were often
+decorated with emeralds and the ceilings garlanded with precious
+stones. The women fairly blazed with sparkling gems of fabulous value,
+while the country was starving. Most, if not all, of this missing
+treasure was transferred to Asia, and with the silver current which
+flowed steadily from the Spanish coffers into India went many of the
+emeralds also; for in those regions this gem is regarded as foreign
+stone, and the natives, investing it with the possession of certain
+talismanic properties, prize it above all earthly treasures.
+
+When the Spaniards commenced their march toward the capital of Mexico,
+they were astonished at the magnificence of the costumes of the chiefs
+who came to meet them as envoys or join them as allies, and among the
+splendid gems which adorned their persons they recognized emeralds and
+turquoises of such rare perfection and beauty that their cupidity was
+excited to the highest degree. During the after years of conquest and
+occupation the avaricious spoilers sought in vain for the parent ledge
+where these precious stones were found. Recent times have, however,
+revealed the home of the Mexican turquoise, which has proved to be in
+the northern part of Mexico, as the Totonacs informed the inquiring
+Spaniards. The first of these mines, which is of great antiquity, is
+situated in the Cerrillos Mountains, eighteen miles from Santa Fe.
+The deposit occurs in soft trachyte, and an immense cavity of several
+hundred feet in extent has been excavated by the Indians while
+searching for this gem in past times. Probably some of the fine
+turquoises worn by the Aztec nobles at the time of the Spanish
+Conquest came from this mine. Another mine is located in the Sierra
+Blanca Mountains in New Mexico, but the Navajos will not allow
+strangers to visit it. Stones of transcendent beauty have been taken
+from it, and handed down in the tribe from generation to generation
+as heirlooms. Nothing tempts the cupidity of the Indians to dispose of
+these gems, and gratitude alone causes them to part with any of these
+treasures, which, like the mountaineers of Thibet, they regard with
+mystical reverence. The Navajos wear them as ear-drops, by boring them
+and attaching them to the ear by means of a deer sinew. Lesser stones
+are pierced, then strung on sinews and worn as neck-laces. Even the
+nobler Ute Indians, when stripping the ornaments of turquoise from
+the ears of the conquered Navajos, value them as sacred treasures, and
+refuse to part with them even for gold or silver.
+
+All the Spanish accounts of the invasion of Mexico agree in the great
+abundance of emeralds, both in the adornment of the chiefs and
+nobles and also in the decoration of the gods, the thrones and the
+paraphernalia. The Mexican historian Ixtlilxochitl says the throne
+of gold in the palace of Tezcuco was inlaid with turquoises and other
+precious stones--that a human skull in front of it was crowned with an
+immense emerald of a pyramidal form.
+
+The great standard of the republic of Tlascala was richly ornamented
+with emeralds and silver-work. The fantastic helmets of the chiefs
+glittered with gold and precious stones, and their plumes were set
+with emeralds. The mantle of Montezuma was held together by a clasp of
+the green chalchivitl (jade), and the same precious gem, with emeralds
+of uncommon size, ornamented other parts of his dress.
+
+The Mexicans carved the obdurate jade and emerald with wonderful
+skill, using, like the Peruvians, nothing but silicious powder and
+copper instruments alloyed with tin. They also worked with exquisite
+taste in gold and silver, and they represented Nature so faithfully
+and so beautifully that the great naturalist Hernandez took many
+of these objects thus portrayed for his models when describing the
+natural history of the country.
+
+When Cortes returned home he displayed five emeralds of extraordinary
+size and beauty, and presented them to his bride, the niece of the
+duke de Bejar. On his famous expedition along the Pacific coast and up
+the Gulf of California he was reduced to such want as to be obliged to
+pawn these jewels for a time. One of them was as precious as Shylock's
+turquoise, and Gomara states that some Genoese merchants who examined
+it in Seville offered forty thousand golden ducats for it. One of the
+emeralds was in the form of a rose; the second in that of a horn;
+the third like a fish with eyes of gold; the fourth was like a little
+bell, with a fine pearl for a tongue, and it bore on its rim the
+following inscription in Spanish: "Blessed is he who created thee!"
+The fifth, which was the most valuable of all, was in the form of a
+small cup with a foot of gold, and with four little chains of the same
+metal attached to a large pearl as a button: the edge of the cup was
+of gold, on which was engraved in Latin words, "Inter natos mulierum
+non surrexit major." These splendid gems are now buried deep in the
+sand on the coast of Barbary, where they were lost in 1529, when
+Cortes was shipwrecked with the admiral of Castile whilst on their way
+to assist Charles V. at the siege of Algiers.
+
+The quantity of emeralds obtained by the Spaniards in their pillage
+of Mexico was large, but it was trifling when compared with that
+collected by Pizarro and his remorseless followers in the sack
+of Peru. Many large and magnificent stones were obtained by the
+Spaniards, but the transcendent gem of all, called by the Peruvians
+the Great Mother, and nearly as large as an ostrich egg, was concealed
+by the natives, and all the efforts of Pizarro and his successors to
+discover it proved unavailing.
+
+The immense uncut Peruvian emerald given by Rudolph II. to the elector
+of Saxony is still preserved in the Green Vaults at Dresden. This
+collection is the finest in the world, and is of the value of many
+millions of dollars. The treasures are arranged in eight apartments,
+each surpassing the previous one in the splendor and richness of its
+contents. This museum dates from the early period when the Freyburg
+silver-mines yielded vast revenues, and made the Saxon princes among
+the richest sovereigns in Europe. With lavish hand these potentates
+purchased jewels and works of art, and the treasures they have thus
+accumulated are of immense value, and remind the traveler of the
+gorgeous descriptions of Oriental magnificence.
+
+The finest emerald in Europe is said to belong to the emperor of
+Russia. It weighs but thirty carats, but it is of the most perfect
+transparency and of the most beautiful color. There are many other
+fine emeralds among the imperial jewels of the czar, some of which are
+of great size and rare beauty. The ancient crown of Vladimir glitters
+with four great stones of unusual brilliancy. The grand state sceptre
+is surmounted by another emerald of great size. The sceptre of
+Poland, which is now treasured in the Kremlin, has a long green stone,
+fractured in the middle. It is not described, and may be one of the
+Siberian tourmalines, some of which closely approach the emerald in
+hue. The imperial _orb_ of Russia, which is of Byzantine workmanship
+of the tenth century, has fifty emeralds. This fact alone would seem
+to prove that emeralds were known in Europe or Asia Minor long before
+the discovery of America; but, on the other hand, the ancient crown
+which was taken when Kasan was subjugated in 1553 is destitute of
+emeralds. And hence we are inclined to believe the imperial orb to be
+of modern workmanship, especially as some of the ancient state chairs
+do not exhibit emeralds among their decorations of gems and precious
+stones.
+
+Nowhere in North America do the true emeralds occur. Professor
+Cleaveland, who was one of the best authorities of his day, maintained
+nearly half a century ago that emeralds which exhibited a lively and
+beautiful green hue were found in blasting a canal through a ledge
+of graphic granite in the town of Topsham in Maine. Several of the
+crystals presented so pure, uniform and rich a green that he ventured
+to pronounce them precious emeralds. But to-day we are unable to verify
+the assertion, or point to a single specimen similar in hue to the
+emerald from the above-mentioned locality.
+
+The nearest approach to the emerald in color, with the exception of
+the incomparable green tourmalines from Maine, are the beryls of North
+and South Royalston in the State of Massachusetts. These beautiful
+stones exhibit the physical, characteristics of emeralds with the
+exception of the color, in which they differ very perceptibly. But to
+appreciate fully the difference in hue we must compare the two gems.
+Then the lively green of the beryl fades away before the overpowering
+hue of the emerald, whose rich prismatic green may be taken as the
+purest type of that color known to the chemist or the painter.
+
+Two summers ago we visited the localities in Massachusetts which were
+famous in the days of Hitchcock and Webster. We found that the beryls
+occurred in a very coarse granite, where the quartz appeared in masses
+and the felspar in huge crystals. These also occur in finer granite,
+and exhibit no indications of veins or connection with each other.
+They are few in number, and are soon exhausted by blasting, being
+generally very superficial. After removing several tons of the rock at
+the locality at North Royalston, where the beryls appear on the summit
+of the loftiest hill, our labors were at length rewarded with two
+beautiful crystals. One of them was a fine prism an inch in diameter,
+of perfect transparency and of a deep sea-green color, which, however
+is far from being similar to the transcendent hue of the Granada
+emeralds, which exhibit an excess of neither blue nor yellow. The
+other was yellowish-green, resembling the chrysoberyls of Brazil.
+
+Other but imperfect crystals were brought to light, some fragments of
+which exhibited the deepest golden tints of the topaz, and others
+the tints of the sherry-wine colored topazes of Siberia. Magnificent
+crystals have been found in these localities in times long past, and
+from the fragments and sections of crystals found in the debris of
+early explorations we observed the wide range of color and the deep
+longitudinal striae which characterize the renowned beryls from the
+Altai Mountains, in Siberia. Lively sea- and grass-green, light and
+deep yellow, also blue crystals of various shades, have been found
+here.
+
+At the quarries on Rollestone Mountain in Fitchburg beryls of a
+rich golden color have been blasted out. Some of these approach the
+chrysoberyl and topaz in hardness and hue. Others so closely resemble
+the yellow diamond that they may readily be taken for that superior
+gem. The refractive power of these yellow stones is remarkable, and
+the goniometer will probably reveal a higher index than is accorded to
+all the varieties of beryl by the learned Abbe Hauey.
+
+Beautiful transparent beryls have been found among the granite hills
+of Oxford county in Maine, and the late Governor Lincoln nearly half a
+century ago possessed a splendid crystal which would have rivaled the
+superb prism found at Mouzzinskaia, and which the Russians value so
+highly. The extended and unexplored ledges of granite which rise
+from the shores of the ocean at Harpswell in Maine, and stretch
+north-westward for nearly a hundred miles, quite to the base of the
+White Mountain group, are not only rich in beryls, but they contain
+many of the rarest minerals known to the mineralogist. And perhaps
+there is no other field of equal extent in the country which offers to
+the mineralogist such a harvest of the rare and curious productions of
+the mineral kingdom.
+
+At Haddam in Connecticut beautiful crystals of beryl have been
+discovered, and one of these, of fine green color, an inch in diameter
+and several inches in length, was preserved in the cabinet of Colonel
+Gibbs. Professor Silliman possessed another fine one, seven inches in
+length.
+
+The mountains in Colorado have yielded some fine specimens. But the
+finest of the beryl species come from Russia. In the Ural Mountains
+the crystals are small, but of fine color; in the Altai Mountains they
+are very large and of a greenish blue; but in the granitic ledges of
+Odon Tchelon in Daouria, on the frontier of China, they are found in
+the greatest perfection. They occur on the summit of the mountain
+in irregular veins of micaceous and white indurated clay, and are
+greenish-yellow, pure pale green, greenish-blue and sky-blue. The
+chief matrix of the beryl all over the world is graphic granite, but
+it may occur in other rocks. The light green stones of Limoges in
+France appear in a vein of quartz traversing granite. At Royalston we
+observed them to spring seemingly from the felspar and project into
+smoky quartz, becoming more transparent as they advanced into the
+harder stone.
+
+The beryl possesses the same crystalline form and specific gravity as
+the emerald, but its hardness (especially in the yellow varieties) is
+sometimes greater. The only perceptible difference in the two stones
+is in the color. Cleaveland thought that as the emerald and beryl had
+the same essential characters, they might gradually pass into each
+other; and Klaproth, finding the oxides of both chrome and iron in one
+specimen, was led to take the same view. The crystals of true emerald
+are almost always small (with the exception of those found in the Wald
+district in Siberia), whilst those of the beryl vary from a few
+grains to more than a ton in weight. The crystals of both are almost
+invariably regular hexahedral prisms, sometimes slightly modified.
+Those of the beryl we sometimes find quite flat, as though they
+had been compressed by force: then again they are acicular and of
+extraordinary length, considering their slender diameter. Sometimes
+their lateral faces are longitudinally striated, and as deeply as the
+tourmaline, so that the edges of the prism are rendered indistinct.
+Other crystals are curved, and some perforated in the axis like
+the tourmaline, so as to contain other minerals. Sometimes they are
+articulated like the pillars of basalt, and separated at some distance
+by the intervening quartz. These modified forms give rise to curious
+speculations as to their formation and origin. If we admit the action
+of fire (which is improbable), then the separation may be easily
+explained; but if we insist that they were deposited in the wet way
+and by slow process, how can we account for the dislocation? "By
+electricity," whispers a friend--"by telluric magnetism, that
+wonderful unexplained and mysterious force which has caused the grand
+geological changes of the globe, and is still at work."
+
+No other gem has been counterfeited with such perfection as the
+emerald; and in fact it is utterly impossible to distinguish the
+artificial from the real gems by the aid of the eye alone: even the
+little flaws which lull the suspicions of the inexperienced are easily
+produced by a dexterous blow from the mallet of the skilled artisan.
+Not only emeralds, but most of the gems and precious stones, are now
+imitated with such consummate skill as to deceive the eye, and none
+but experts are aware of the extent to which these fictitious gems
+are worn in fashionable society, for oftentimes the wearers themselves
+imagine that they possess the real stones. There is not one in a
+hundred jewelers who is acquainted with the physical properties of the
+gems, and very few can distinguish the diamond from the white zircon
+or the white topaz, the emerald from the tourmaline of similar hue,
+the sapphire from iolite, or the topaz from the Bohemian yellow
+quartz. Jewelers are governed generally by sight, which they believe
+to be infallible, whilst hardness and specific gravity are the only
+sure tests.
+
+Artificial gems rivaling in beauty of color the most brilliant and
+delicately tinted of the productions of Nature are now made at Paris
+and in other European cities. The establishments at Septmoncel in the
+Jura alone employ a thousand persons, and fabulous quantities of the
+glittering pastes are made there and sent to all parts of the world.
+
+A fine specimen of prase when cut affords a fair imitation of
+the emerald. The green fluor-spar which Hauey called "emeraude de
+Carthagene" may also be substituted, but the application of the file
+detects the trick with ease. Some of the green tourmalines approach
+the emeralds in hue very closely, and by artificial light it is
+impossible to distinguish them from each other. Fragments of quartz
+may be stained by being steeped in green-colored tinctures. The Greeks
+stained quartz so like the real gem that Pliny exclaimed against the
+fraud while declining to tell how it was done. The Ancona rubies at
+the present day are made by plunging quartz into a hot tincture of
+cochineal, which penetrates the minute fissures of the rock.
+
+But notwithstanding the high art reached by modern glass-makers, they
+are yet far behind the ancients in imitating the emerald in point of
+hardness and lustre. Many emerald pastes of Roman times still extant
+are with difficulty distinguished from the real gem, so much harder
+and lustrous are they than modern glass. The ancient Phoenician
+remains found in the island of Sardinia by Cavalier Cara in 1856 show
+fine color in their enamels and glass-works. The green pigment brought
+home from the ruins of Thebes by Mr. Wilkinson was shown by Dr. Ure
+to consist of blue glass in powder, with yellow ochre and colorless
+glass. From Greek inscriptions dating from the period of the
+Peloponnesian war we learn that there were signets of colored glass
+among the gems in the treasury of the Parthenon.
+
+Of all the emerald imitations that have descended to us from
+antiquity, none are more remarkable, none more interesting to the
+antiquary and historian, than the famous Sacro Catino of the cathedral
+of Genoa. This celebrated relic is a glass dish or patera fourteen
+inches in width, five inches in depth and of the richest transparent
+green color, though disfigured by several flaws. It was bestowed upon
+the republic of Genoa by the Crusaders after the capture of Caesarea
+in 1101, and was regarded as an equivalent for a large sum of money
+due from the Christian army. It was traditionally believed to have
+been presented to King Solomon by the queen of Sheba, and afterward
+preserved in the Temple, and some accounts relate that it was used by
+Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper. The Genoese received
+it with so much veneration and faith that twelve nobles were appointed
+to guard it, and it was exhibited but once a year, when a priest held
+it up in his hand to the view of the passing throng. The state in
+1319, in a time of pressing need, pawned the holy relic for twelve
+hundred marks of gold (two hundred thousand dollars), and redeemed
+it with a promptness which proved its belief in the reality of the
+material as well as in its sanctity. And it is also related that the
+Jews, during a period of fifty years, lent the republic four million
+francs, holding the sacred relic as a pledge of security. Seven
+hundred years passed away, when Napoleon came, and as he swept down
+over Italy, gathering her art-treasures, he ordered the "Holy
+Grail" to be conveyed to Paris. It was deposited in the Cabinet of
+Antiquities in the Imperial Library, and the mineralogists quickly
+discovered it to be glass. It is due to the memory of Condamine to
+state that he was the first to doubt the material of the Sacro Catino,
+for, when examining it by lamplight in 1757, in the presence of the
+princes Corsini, he observed none of the cracks, clouds and specks
+common to emeralds, but detected little bubbles of air. In 1815 the
+Allies ordered its return to the cathedral of Genoa. During this
+journey the beautiful relic was broken, but its fragments were
+restored by a skillful artisan, and it is now supported upon a tripod,
+the fragments being held together by a band of gold filigree. This
+remarkable object of antiquity, which is of extraordinary beauty of
+material and workmanship, furnishes a theme over which the antiquaries
+love to muse and wrangle.
+
+Another of the antique monster emeralds, weighing twenty-nine pounds,
+was presented to the abbey of Reichenau near Constance by Charlemagne.
+Beckman has also detected this precious relic to be glass. And
+probably the great emerald of two pounds weight brought home from the
+Holy Land by one of the dukes of Austria, and now deposited in the
+collection at Vienna, is of the same material. The hardness of our
+glass is yet far inferior to that of the ancients, and even the
+ruby lustre of the potters of Umbria, which was so precious to the
+dilettanti of the Cinque Cento period, has not been recovered.
+
+The emerald has been a subject of controversy among the chemists
+and mineralogists, and its character, especially the cause of its
+beautiful color, is not clearly defined even at the present day. But
+that distinguished chemist, Professor Lewy of Paris, seems to offer,
+thus far, the most correct and plausible theory. Ten years ago he
+boldly asserted that the hue is not due to the oxide of chromium,
+and with this opinion he confronted such eminent men as Vauquelin,
+Klaproth and others of high rank in the scientific world. Not content
+with his researches in his laboratory in Paris, he resolutely crossed
+the ocean and sought the emerald in its parent ledges in the lofty
+table-lands of New Granada. Here he obtained new information of a
+geological character which goes far to strengthen his position.
+The experiments of M. Lewy indicate, if they do not prove, that the
+coloring matter of the emerald is organic, and readily destroyed
+by heat, which would not be the case if it was due to the oxide of
+chromium. All my own fire-tests with the Granada emerald corroborate
+the views of M. Lewy, for in every instance the gem lost its hue when
+submitted to a red heat.
+
+Nevertheless, the recent researches of Woehler and Rose give negative
+results. These experienced chemists kept an emerald at the temperature
+of melted copper for an hour, and found that, although the stone had
+become opaque, the color was not affected. They therefore considered
+the oxide of chromium to be the coloring agent, without, however,
+denying the presence of organic matter. The amount of the oxide of
+chromium found by many chemists varies from one to two per cent.,
+while Lewy and others found it in a quantity so small as to be
+inappreciable, and too minute to be weighed.
+
+Before the ordinary blowpipe the emerald passes rapidly into a whitish
+vesicular glass, and with borax it forms a fine green glass, while its
+sub-species, the beryl, changes into a colorless bead: with salt of
+phosphorus it slowly dissolves, leaving a silicious skeleton.[A]
+
+M. Lewy visited the mines at Muzo in Granada, and from the results
+of his analyses, together with the fact of finding emeralds in
+conjunction with the presence of fossil shells in the limestone in
+which they occur, he arrived at the conclusion that they have been
+formed in the wet way--deposited from a chemical solution. He also
+found that when extracted they are so soft and fragile that the
+largest and finest fragments can be reduced to powder by merely
+rubbing them between the fingers, and the crystals often crack and
+fall to pieces after being removed from the mine, apparently from loss
+of water. Consequently, when the emeralds are first extracted they are
+laid aside carefully for a few days until the water is evaporated.
+
+This statement relative to the softness of the gem and its subsequent
+hardening has been met with a shout of derision from some of the
+gem-seekers--none louder than that of Barbot, the retired jeweler.
+Barbot seems to forget that the rock of which his own house in Paris
+is constructed undergoes the same change after being removed from
+the deep quarries in the catacombs under the city. This phenomenon is
+observed with many rocks. Flints acquire additional toughness by the
+evaporation of water contained in them. The steatite of St. Anthony's
+Falls grows harder on exposure, and other minerals when quarried from
+considerable depths become firmer on exposure to the action of the
+air. Observations of this kind led Kuhlman to investigate the cause,
+and he believes that the hardening of rocks is not owing solely to
+the evaporation of quarry-water, but that it depends upon the
+tendency which all earthy matters possess to undergo a spontaneous
+crystallization by slow dessication, which commences the moment the
+rock is exposed to the air.
+
+The coloring matter of the emerald seems to be derived from the
+decomposition of the remains of animals who have lived in a bygone
+age, and whose remains are now found fossilized in the rock which
+forms the matrix of the gem. This rock in Granada is a black
+limestone, with white veins containing ammonites. Specimens of these
+rocks exhibiting fragments of emeralds _in situ_, and also ammonites,
+are to be seen in the mineralogical gallery of the Jardin des Plantes
+in Paris. Lewy believes that the beautiful tint of these gems is
+produced by an organic substance, which he considers to be a carburet
+of hydrogen, similar to that called chlorophyll, which constitutes
+the coloring matter of the leaves of plants; and he has shown that
+the emeralds of the darkest hue, which contain the greatest amount
+of organic matter, lose their color completely at a low red heat,
+and become opaque and white; while minerals and pastes which are
+well known to be colored by chromium, like the green garnets (the
+lime-chrome garnets) of Siberia, are unchanged in hue by the action of
+heat.
+
+Since the time of the Spanish Conquest, New Granada has furnished
+the world with the most of its emeralds. The most famous mines are at
+Muzo, in the valley of Tunca, between the mountains of New Granada and
+Popayan, about seventy-five miles from Santa Fe de Bogota, where
+every rock, it is said, contains an emerald. At present the supply of
+emeralds is very limited, owing to restrictions on trade and want of
+capital and energy in mining operations.
+
+Blue as well as green emeralds are found in the Cordillera of the
+Cubillari. The Esmeraldas mines in Equador are said to have been
+worked successfully at one period by the Jesuits. The Peruvians
+obtained many emeralds from the barren district of Atacama, and in
+the times of the Conquest there were quarries on the River of Emeralds
+near Barbacoas.
+
+Emeralds are found in Siberia, and some of the localities may have
+furnished to the ancients the Scythian gems which Pliny and others
+mention. In the Wald district magnificent crystals have been found
+embedded in mica-slate. One of these--a twin-crystal, now in the
+Imperial Cabinet at St. Petersburg--is seven inches long, four inches
+broad, and weighs four and a half pounds. There is another mass in the
+same collection which measures fourteen inches long by twelve broad
+and five thick, weighing sixteen and three-quarter pounds troy. This
+group shows twenty crystals from a half inch to five inches long,
+and from one to two inches broad. They were discovered by a peasant
+cutting wood near the summit of the mountain. His eye was attracted
+by the lustrous sparkling amongst the decomposed mica and where the
+ground had been exposed by the uprooting of a tree by the violence of
+the wind. He collected a number of the crystals, and brought them to
+Katharineburg and showed them to M. Kokawin, who recognized them and
+sent them to St. Petersburg, where they were critically examined by
+Van Worth and pronounced to be emeralds. One of these crystals was
+presented by the emperor to Humboldt when he visited St. Petersburg,
+and it is now deposited in the Berlin collection. Quite a number
+of emeralds are now brought from the Siberian localities, and it is
+believed that enterprise and capital would produce a large supply of
+the gem.[B]
+
+The supply of emeralds from South America is very limited, and may
+be ascribed to want of skillful mining, as well as to climate,
+the political condition of the country and the indolence of its
+inhabitants. The localities cannot be exhausted, for they are too
+numerous and extensive. The elevated regions in Granada admit of
+scientific exploration by Europeans, and at the present day the
+only emerald-mining operations conducted in South America have been
+prosecuted near Santa Fe de Bogota by a French company, which has
+paid the government fourteen thousand dollars yearly for the right of
+mining, all the emeralds obtained being sent to Paris to be cut by the
+lapidaries of that city.
+
+In the Atacama districts, and along the banks of the River of
+Emeralds, the physical obstructions are difficult to overcome, and
+pestilential diseases of malignant character forbid the long sojourn
+of the European. Yet the introduction of Chinese labor may prove
+successful and highly remunerative, since the coolie reared among
+the jungles and rice-swamps of Southern China is quite as exempt from
+malarial fevers as the negro.
+
+The price of the emerald has no fixed and extended scale, like that of
+the diamond, and the fluctuations of its value during the past three
+centuries form an interesting chapter in the history of gems.
+
+In the time of Dutens (1777) the price of small stones of the first
+quality was one louis the carat; one and a half carats, five louis;
+two carats, ten louis; and beyond this weight no rule of value could
+be established. In De Boot's day (1600) emeralds were so plenty as
+to be worth only a quarter as much as the diamond. The markets were
+glutted with the frequent importations from Peru, and thirteen years
+before the above-mentioned period one vessel brought from South
+America two hundred and three pounds of fine emeralds, worth at
+the present valuation more than seven millions of dollars. At the
+beginning of this century, according to Caire, they were worth no more
+than twenty-four francs (or about five dollars) the carat, and for a
+long time antecedent to 1850 they were valued at only fifteen dollars
+the carat. Since this period they have become very rare, and their
+valuation has advanced enormously. In fact, the value of the emerald
+now exceeds that of the diamond, and is rapidly approaching the ratio
+fixed by Benevenuto Cellini in the middle of the sixteenth century,
+which rated the emerald at four times, and the ruby at eight times,
+the value of the diamond. Perfect stones (the emerald is exceedingly
+liable to flaw, the beryl is more free, and the green sapphire is
+rarely impaired by fissures or cracks) of one carat in weight are
+worth at the present day two hundred dollars in gold. Perfect gems
+of two carats weight will command five hundred dollars in gold, while
+larger stones are sold at extravagant prices.
+
+Most of our aqua-marinas come from Brazil and Siberia, and small
+stones are sold at trifling prices. Some of them, however, when
+perfect and of fine color, command fabulous sums. The superb little
+beryl found at Mouzzinskaia is valued by the Russians at the enormous
+sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, although the crystal
+weighs but little more than one ounce. Another rough prism preserved
+in the Museum at Paris, and weighing less than one hundred grains, has
+received the tempting offer of fifteen thousand francs.
+
+A.C. HAMLIN, M.D.
+
+[Footnote A: A curious result happened to the elder Silliman when
+experimenting with a Peruvian emerald before the compound blowpipe.
+The reducing flame instantly melted it into a transparent green
+globule. Perhaps the intense heat of this all-powerful flame, which
+reduces even the diamond, recalled the colors which disappear at a
+lower temperature. But this could not be done if the color was due
+to organic matter, which is annihilated or modified beyond recall by
+combustion.]
+
+[Footnote B: Several of the natural crystals of the Siberian emeralds
+of large size and beautiful color are now to be seen in the valuable
+and choice collections of Messrs. Clay and William S. Vaux of
+Philadelphia.]
+
+
+
+
+BERRYTOWN.
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It rained during the night. The wind blew feebly in the morning,
+and the sunlight glimmered dully from behind the flying gray clouds.
+Catharine looked out of her window, anxiously pushing aside the boughs
+full of wet white roses. The sense of desolation was not strong enough
+upon her to make her forget that Peter had not yet cut the clover
+in the lower meadow, and that such a rain was bad for the tomatoes.
+Doctor McCall was at the gate, propping up an old Bourbon rose, an
+especial favorite of her father's. Somebody tapped at her door, and
+Miss Muller rustled in in a flounced white muslin and rose-colored
+ribbons. She too hurried to the window and looked down.
+
+"I asked him to meet me here, Kitty. I can't make you understand,
+probably, but the Water-cure House is so bald and bare! There is
+something in the shade here, and the old books, and this wilderness
+of roses, that forms a fitting background for a friendship like ours,
+aesthetically considered."
+
+"I'm very glad. It's lucky I told Jane to have waffles--"
+
+"I'll go down," interrupted Miss Muller, "and direct her about the
+table. Coarse tablecloths and oily butter would jar against the finest
+emotions. What very pretty shoulders you have, child! Such women as
+you, like potatoes, are best _au naturel_. Now, with those corsets,
+and this red shawl over the back of your chair, you would make a very
+good Madonna of the Rubens school. Men's ideal of womanhood then was
+to be plump, insipid and a mother."
+
+"But about the oily butter?" said Kitty, glancing back over the
+aforesaid shoulders as she stooped to lace her shoes, while Maria
+hurried off to the kitchen. "Jane will jar against her finer emotions,
+I fancy, when she begins to order her about."
+
+But Kitty lost all relish for fun before she sat down to the
+breakfast-table. Mr. Muller came in. The poor little man hurried to
+her side: "I passed a sleepless night, Catharine. I feared that I had
+been rough with you. I forget so often how gentle and tender you are,
+my darling."
+
+Catharine was puzzled: "Upon my word, I've forgotten what happened.
+And I really never feel especially gentle or tender. You are mistaken
+about that."
+
+When she took her place behind the urn, Maria motioned her brother to
+the foot of the table, and then nodded significantly. "Now you two can
+imagine a month or two has passed," she said.
+
+Even Doctor McCall smiled meaningly. Mr. Muller blushed, and glanced
+shyly at Catharine. But she looked at him unmoved. "Our table will
+not be like this," gravely. "You forget the three hundred blue-coats
+between." Maria laughed, but Doctor McCall for the first time looked
+steadily at the girl.
+
+First of all, perhaps, Kitty was just then a housekeeper. She waited
+anxiously to see if the steak was properly rare and the omelette
+light, nodded brightly to Jane, who stood watchful behind her, and
+then looked over at her betrothed, thinking how soon they would sit
+down tete-a-tete for the rest of their lives, perhaps for eternity,
+for, according to her orthodoxy, there could be no new loves in
+heaven. How fat he was, and bald! The mild blue eyes behind their
+glasses took possession of her and held her.
+
+She listened to the talk between Doctor McCall and Miss Muller in a
+language she had never learned. Maria's share of it was largely made
+up of headlong dives into Spencer and Darwin, with reminiscences of
+_The Dial_, while Doctor McCall's was anchored fast down to facts; but
+it was all alive, suggestive, brilliant. They were young. They were
+drinking life and love with full cups. She (looking over at the bald
+head and spectacled eyes) had gone straight out of childhood into
+middle age and respectability.
+
+The breakfast was over at last. Miss Muller followed Doctor McCall
+into the shop, where he fell to turning over the old books, and then
+to the garden. What was the use of a stage properly set if the drama
+would not begin?
+
+"Pray do not worry any longer with that old bush," as he went back
+to Peter's rose. "It is not a trait of yours to be persistent about
+trifles. Or stay: give me a bud for my hair."
+
+"Not these!" sharply, holding her hand. "I could not see one of these
+roses on any woman's head."
+
+She smiled, very well pleased: "You perceive some subtle connection
+between me and the flower?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort. There are some, planted, I suppose, by that
+little girl, which will be more becoming to your face."
+
+"You are repelled by 'the little girl,' I see, John. I always told you
+your instincts were magnetic. That type of woman is antipathetic to
+you."
+
+He laughed: "I have no instincts, hardly ideas, about either roses
+or types of women. If I avoided Miss Vogdes, it was because her name
+recalled one of the old hard experiences of my boyhood. The girl
+herself is harmless enough, no doubt."
+
+"And the rose?"
+
+"The rose? Why, we have no time to waste in such talk as this. You
+have not yet told me how you managed to get your profession. When I
+last saw you you had set all the old professors in the university at
+defiance. Did you carry lectures and cliniques by strategy or assault?
+You have good fighting qualities, Maria."
+
+She would rather not have gone over her battle with the doctors just
+then: she would rather he had talked of her "magnetic instincts," her
+hair, her eyes--anything else than her fighting qualities. But she
+told him. There was an inexplicable delight to her in telling him
+anything--even the time of day. Was he not a pioneer, a captain among
+men, a seer in the realms of thought, keeping step with her in all her
+high imaginings? Ordinary people, it is true, set McCall down as an
+ordinary fellow, genial and hearty--not a very skillful physician,
+perhaps, but a shrewd farmer, and the best judge of mules or peaches
+in Kent county. Maria, however, saw him with the soul's eye.
+
+Kitty meanwhile sat by the window mending the clothes that had come
+out of the wash. Mr. Muller was reading some letters relative to the
+school to her. This was the day of the week on which she always mended
+the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to
+her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a
+prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of
+stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's
+droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle
+in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the
+attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do?
+Had the world nothing in it for her but this? Yesterday she had made
+up her mind to go to Delaware to find Hugh Guinness, alive or dead,
+and bring him to his father. That would be work worth doing. This
+morning she remembered that Delaware was a wide hunting-ground--that
+she had never been ten miles from home in her life. If there were
+anybody to give her advice! This Doctor McCall had seemed to her
+to-day as, in fact, he did to most people, practical, honest, full
+of information. He would too, she somehow felt, understand her wild
+fancy. But--
+
+"Why should Doctor McCall dislike _me_?" she broke in at the close of
+one of Mr. Muller's expositions.
+
+"What an absurd fancy, child!" looking up in amazement. "The man was
+civil enough to you for so slight an acquaintance."
+
+"It was more than dislike," vehemently. "He watched me all through
+breakfast as though he owed me a grudge. I could see it in his eyes."
+
+"You oughtn't to see any eyes but mine, Cathie dear," with anxious
+playfulness. "Why should you care for the opinion of any man?"
+
+"Because he is different from any man I ever knew. He belongs to the
+world outside. I always did wonder if people would like me out there,"
+said Kitty, too doggedly in earnest to see how her words hurt her
+listener. "If one could be like those two people yonder! They seem to
+know everything--they can do everything!"
+
+"Maria is well enough--for a woman," dryly. "But I never heard McCall
+credited with exceptional ability of any sort."
+
+Kitty glanced at him: "Of course you're right," quickly. "Men only can
+judge of character: we women are apt to be silly about such things."
+Her kind heart felt a wrench at having hurt this good soul. She put
+her fingers on his fat hand with a touch that was almost a caress. He
+turned red with surprise and pleasure. "But it is pleasant," she said,
+glancing down again to the Bourbon rose, "to see such love as that.
+They will be married soon, I suppose?"
+
+"Very likely. I never knew of any love in the case before. But Maria
+is such a manager! And you think of love, then, sometimes?" timidly
+putting his arm about her.
+
+"Oh to be sure! How can you doubt that? But it grows chilly. I must
+bring a sacque," hurrying away; and in fact she looked cold, and
+shivered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"Doctor McCall recognizes the Book-house, just as I did, as the right
+background for communion like ours," Miss Muller said complacently to
+Kitty a week later. "He meets me here every day."
+
+"Yes," said Catharine with a perplexed look. She had no special
+instincts or intuitions, but her eyes were as keen and observant as a
+lynx's. He came, she saw, to the Book-house every day. But had he no
+other purpose than to meet Maria?
+
+"I did not know that McCall affected scholarship," said Mr. Muller
+tartly the next day. "He tells me that he has a peach-farm to manage.
+August is no time to loiter away, poring over old books. Just the
+peach season."
+
+"No," Kitty replied demurely. But her face wore again the puzzled
+look. She began to watch Doctor McCall. He really knew but little, she
+saw, of rare books: his reading of them was a mere pretence. He
+was neither a lazy nor a morbid man: what pleasure could he have in
+neglecting his work day after day, sitting alone in the dusky old shop
+as if held there by some enchantment? Kitty knew that she herself had
+nothing to do with it: she appeared to be no more in his way than a
+tame dog would be, and, after the first annoyance which she gave
+him, was really little more noticed. But there is a certain sense of
+home-snugness and comfort in the presence of tame dogs and of women
+like Kitty: one cannot be long in the room with either without
+throwing them a kind word or petting them in some way. Doctor McCall
+was just the man to fall into such a habit. Down on the farm, his
+cattle, his hands, even the neighbors with whom he argued on politics,
+could all have testified to his easy, large good-humor.
+
+"Oh, we are the best of friends," he said indifferently when Maria
+found Kitty chattering to him once, very much as she did to old Peter.
+But when Miss Muller, who had no petty jealousies, enlarged on the
+singular beauty of her eyes and some good points in her shape, he did
+not respond. "I never could talk of a woman as if she were a horse,"
+he said. "And this little girl seems to me unusually human."
+
+"There's really nothing in her, though. Poor William! He is marrying
+eyes, I tell him. It's a pitiable marriage!"
+
+"Yes, it is," said Doctor McCall gravely.
+
+After that he neglected the old books sometimes to talk to Kitty. He
+thought she was such an immature, thoughtless creature that she would
+not notice that the subject he chose was always the same--her daily
+life, with old Peter for her chum and confidant.
+
+"Mr. Guinness, then, has had no companion but you?" he said one day,
+after a searching inspection of her face.
+
+"No, nobody but me," quite forgetful, as she and Peter were too apt to
+be, that her mother was alive.
+
+"And has had none for years?"
+
+"Not since his son died. Hugh Guinness is dead, you know."
+
+Doctor McCall was looking thoughtfully at the floor. He rose presently
+and took up his hat: "The old man cannot have been unhappy with such
+love as you could give him. No man could."
+
+Kitty was sitting, as usual, on a low stool pasting labels on some
+dog-eared books: as long as McCall stood looking at her round cheeks
+and double chin she pasted on, apparently unconscious that he was
+there, but when he turned away she watched him shrewdly as he went
+uneasily up and down the shop, and finally, with a curt good-bye,
+turned out of the door. As the stout figure passed through the low
+branches of the walnuts her gray eyes began to shine. Her Mystery was
+nearly solved.
+
+Dropping paste and books in a heap, she ran after him, taking a short
+cut through the currant bushes, so that when he passed on the outer
+side of the garden fence there she was quietly waiting, her head and
+face darkly framed by a thick creeper.
+
+"Well?" smiling down, amused, as he might to a playful kitten.
+
+"Doctor McCall," in the queer formal fashion that was Kitty's own, "I
+should be glad if you would come back this evening. Without Maria.
+I have some business--that is, a plan of mine. Well, it is a certain
+thing that--"
+
+"That you wish to consult me about?" after waiting for her to finish.
+
+"Yes, that's it," nodding energetically.
+
+"Very well." He stood looking at her arm on the fence, and the face
+resting with its chin upon it. McCall, of all men, hated a scene, and
+he had an uneasy consciousness that he had just betrayed unexplained
+feeling in the house, and was therefore glad to slip back to
+commonplaces. Besides, Kitty was exactly the kind of woman whom all
+men feel an insane desire to help at first sight. "You have a plan,
+eh? and you want advice, not knowing much about business?"
+
+There was not the least necessity for him to say this, having asked
+it before. But he did it, and waited to hear Kitty say yes again, and
+waited still, before he lifted his hat and said good-bye, to see the
+shadow of a waving branch creep over her white chin and lose itself in
+her neck. Most men would have done the same, just as they would stop
+to whistle a laugh from a fat, pretty baby on the street, and then go
+on, leaving it behind. The last thing in the world to consult on their
+business, or to ask for help or comfort when trouble met them, or
+death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miss Muller spent the whole day at the Book-house, but Doctor McCall
+did not come, as she expected. As evening approached she began to
+shiver, and had premonitory symptoms of clairvoyance, and went home at
+last, to Kitty's relief. A slow drizzling rain set in: the damp fogs
+that belong to that river-bottom walled in the house and hung flat
+over the walnuts like a roof. Catharine had made her own corner of the
+Book-shop snug and cheerful. The space was wide, the light soft and
+bright. She placed her own chair by the table, Peter's not far from
+it. She meant to produce a great effect on this man to-night, to
+change the whole current of his life, without having the help of
+either love or even friendship. Unconsciously she planned to bring
+him close to her, though very likely she had never heard of personal
+magnetism, or any of the curious secrets political speakers or
+actors or revivalists could have told her of the deadening effects of
+distance and empty benches.
+
+Then Kitty, in her room overhead, looked at herself in the glass,
+arrayed in a soft cashmere, in color blue, still farther toned down,
+by certain softer fringes and loops, into the very ideal garb for
+a man's type of "yielding, lovely woman." It was one of the sacred
+wedding-dresses.
+
+"Maria could never look like this," tying a lace handkerchief about
+her neck, pulling the soft rings of hair looser about her ears,
+setting her head on one side, and half shutting her eyes to see the
+thick and curly lashes.
+
+There was no danger of interruption. Maria was safely lodged in the
+Water-cure House, and the very idea of Mr. Muller's glossy black shoes
+and dainty brown umbrella venturing out in the rain made Kitty laugh.
+
+"The dear, good soul is finical as a cat," with the good-natured
+indulgence of a mother for a child. Suddenly she stopped, stared at
+herself in the glass. "Why, he is my husband!" she said, speaking to
+the blushing, blue-robed figure as to another person. Then she hastily
+unbuttoned, unlooped the pretty dress, threw it off, putting on her
+usual gray wrapper and knotting her hair more tightly back than ever
+in a comb. "He has been very good to me--very good to me," her chin
+trembling a good deal.
+
+Then she went down to meet Doctor McCall, who that moment came into
+the Book-shop, stopping at the door to take off and shake his oilskin
+coat.
+
+"It is a wet night," she said, just as though he were a stranger. She
+did not know what else to say or what he answered as she went about,
+trimming the lamp, dragging out a chair for him, closing the window
+curtains. Both McCall and Catharine were ordinary people, accustomed
+to keep up a good flow of talk on ordinary subjects, the weather
+or any joke or gossip that was nearest to them. There had been no
+passages of love or hate between them to account for her forced
+formality, her trembling and flushing, and urgent almost angry wish
+to remind him that she was Mr. Muller's affianced wife. She felt this
+with a new contempt for herself.
+
+As for Doctor McCall, he leaned comfortably back in his arm-chair
+and dried his legs at the grate filled with red-hot coals, while he
+listened to the soft rustle of her skirts as she moved noiselessly
+about him. It is the peculiarity of women like Kitty, to whom Nature
+has denied the governing power of ideas or great personal beauty or
+magnetism, such as she gave to Miss Muller, that there is a certain
+impalpable force and attraction in their most petty actions and words,
+to which men yield. Miss Muller could have watched Kitty all day
+dragging chairs and trimming lamps, unmoved farther than to pronounce
+her little better than an idiot. But Peter, Muller or John McCall
+could not look at her for five minutes without classing her with
+Cordelia and Desdemona and all the other sweet fools for whom men have
+died, and whom the world yet keeps sacred in pathetic memory. Some
+day too, when Catharine should be a mother--though giving to her older
+children, little more than to the baby on her breast, soft touches and
+gentle words--she would bind them to her as no other kind, of mother
+could do--by such bonds that until they were gray-haired no power
+should be like hers. Miss Muller neither saw nor foresaw such things.
+But Doctor McCall did. "If I had had such a mother I should not have
+been what I am," he thought. It was a curious fancy to have about a
+young girl. But she seemed to embody all the womanliness that had been
+lacking in his life. Of course she was nothing to him. She was to be
+that prig Muller's wife, and he was quite satisfied that she should
+be. If he married, Maria Muller would be his wife. Yet, oddly enough,
+he felt to-night, for the first time, the necessity that Maria should
+know how marriage was barred out from him, and felt, for the first
+time, too, a maddening anger that it was so barred. However, Doctor
+McCall was never meant by Nature for a solitary man housed alone with
+morbid thoughts: he was the stuff out of which useful citizens are
+made--John Andersons of husbands, doting, gullible fathers.
+
+Remembering the bar in his life, his skeleton, ghost or whatever it
+was, he was only moved to get up and stretch himself, saying, "I've
+stayed in Berrytown too long. When you have told me your plan, I'll
+say good-bye to you, Miss Vogdes, and this old house. I shall be off
+to-morrow."
+
+Kitty had just caught a moth in the flame of the candle. She carried
+it to the window. "You will come back soon, of course?" her back still
+toward him.
+
+"No, I think not. I am neglecting my business. And I, of all men in
+the world, have least right to loiter about this old house, to look in
+on its home-life or on you."
+
+Kitty gave him a sharp glance, as though some sudden emergency was
+clear before her which her tact failed to meet. She was folding the
+bits of muslin at which she had been sewing in a basket: she finished
+slowly, put the basket away, and sat down at the table, with her elbow
+on it and her chin on her hand, her gray eyes suggesting a deeper and
+unspoken meaning to her words: "But for my plan?"
+
+"Ah! to be sure! You want advice?" seating himself comfortably. Her
+confusion was a pretty thing to watch, the red creeping up her neck
+into her face, blotting out its delicate tints, the uncertain glances,
+the full bitten lip. Doctor McCall quite forgot his own trouble in the
+keen pleasure of the sight.
+
+"Perhaps--You do not quite understand my position here? Mr. Guinness
+is not my own father."
+
+"No, I knew that."
+
+"But you cannot know what he has been to me: _I_ never knew until the
+last few days."
+
+"Why within these few days, Miss Vogdes?"
+
+"Because I saw you and Maria: I saw what love was. I began to think
+about it. I never have loved anybody but him," she went on headlong,
+utterly blind to all inferences. "There's a thing I can do for him,
+Doctor McCall, before I marry Mr. Muller, and I must do it. It will
+make his old age happier than any other part of his life has been."
+
+McCall nodded, leaning forward. It was nothing but an imprudent girl
+dragging out her secrets before a stranger; nothing but a heated face,
+wet eyes, a sweet milky breath; but no tragedy he had ever seen on the
+stage had moved him so uncontrollably--no, not any crisis in his own
+life--with such delicious, inexplicable emotion.
+
+"Well, what is it you can do?" after waiting for her to go on.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"My father," said Kitty, "had once a great trouble. It has made an old
+man of him before his time. I find that I can take it from him."
+She looked up at him with this. Now, there was a certain shrewd
+penetration under the softness of Kitty's eyes. Noting it, McCall
+instantly lost sight of her beauty and tears. He returned her look
+coolly.
+
+"What was his trouble?"
+
+"Mr. Guinness had a son. He has believed him to be dead for years: I
+know that he is not dead."
+
+Doctor McCall waited, with her eyes still upon him. "Well?" he said,
+attentive.
+
+"And then," pushing back the table and rising, "when I heard that, I
+meant to go and find Hugh Guinness, and bring him back to his father."
+
+Whatever this matter might be to her hearer, it was the most real
+thing in life to Catharine, and putting it into words gave it a sudden
+new force. She felt that she ought to hold her tongue, but she could
+not. She only knew that the lighted room, the beating of the rain
+without, the watchful guarded face on the other side of the table,
+shook and frightened and angered her unaccountably.
+
+"You should not laugh at me," she said. "This is the first work I ever
+set myself to do. It is better than nursing three hundred children."
+
+"I am not laughing at you, God knows! But this Guinness, if he be
+alive, remains away voluntarily. There must be a reason for that. You
+do not consider."
+
+"I do not care to consider. Is the man a log or a stone? If I found
+him," crossing the room in her heat until she stood beside him--"if
+I brought him to the old house and to his father? Why, look at this!"
+dragging open the drawer and taking out the broken gun and rod. "See
+what he has kept for years--all that was left him of his boy! Look,
+at that single hair! If Hugh Guinness stood where you do, and touched
+these things as you are touching them, could he turn his back on the
+old man?"
+
+Now, Doctor McCall did not touch gun nor cap nor hair, but he bent
+over the table, looking at them as if he were looking at the dead. He
+seemed to have forgotten that Kitty was there.
+
+At last he stood upright: "Poor little chap!" with a laugh. "There
+seemed to be no reason, when he went gunning and fishing like other
+boys, why he should not stand here to-day with as fair a chance for
+happiness as any other man. Did there? Just a trifling block laid in
+his way, a push down hill, and no force could ever drag him up again."
+
+Kitty, her eyes on his, stood silent. Do what he would, he could not
+shake off her eyes: they wrenched the truth from him, "I knew this man
+Guinness once," he said.
+
+She nodded: "Yes, I know you did."
+
+"Sit down beside me here, and I will tell you what kind of man he
+was."
+
+But she did not sit down. An unaccountable terror or timidity seemed
+to have paralyzed her. She looked aside--everywhere but in his face:
+"I wanted you to tell me how to reach him, how to touch him: I know
+what manner of man he is."
+
+"You have heard from your mother? A mixed Border Pike and
+Mephistopheles, eh? The devil and his victim rolled into one?" He
+shifted his heavy body uneasily, glancing toward the door. Chief
+among the graver secret emotions which she had roused in him was
+the momentary annoyance of not knowing how to deal with this
+chicken-hearted little girl before him, scared, but on fire from head
+to foot.
+
+Kitty was quite confident. If it had been Maria Muller who had thus
+set herself to tamper with a man's life, she would have done it
+trembling, with fear and self-distrust. She had brains which could
+feel and react against the passions she evoked, and were competent to
+warn her of the peril of her work. But as for Kitty--
+
+Here was Hugh Guinness before her, a Cain with the curse of God
+upon him. It was clearly her business to bring him back again to his
+father, and afterward convert him into a member of the church, if
+possible. She went about the work with as little doubt as if it had
+been the making of a pudding.
+
+But she was shy, tender, womanly withal. Doctor McCall laughed as
+he looked down at her, and spoke deliberately, as though giving his
+opinion of a patient to another physician. "I'll tell you honestly my
+opinion of Hugh Guinness. He was, first of all, a thoroughly ordinary,
+commonplace man, with neither great virtues nor great vices, nor force
+of any kind. If he had had that, he could have recovered himself when
+he began to fall. But he did not recover himself."
+
+"What drove him down in the first place?"
+
+He hesitated: "I suppose that his home and religion became hateful to
+him. Boys have unreasonable prejudices at times."
+
+"And then, in despair--"
+
+"Despair? Nonsense! Now don't figure to yourself a romantic Hotspur of
+a fellow rushing into hell because heaven's gate was shut on him.
+At nineteen Hugh Guinness drank and fought and gambled, as
+other ill-managed boys do to work off the rank fever of blood.
+Unfortunately--" he stopped, and then added in a lower voice,
+quickly, "he made a mistake while the fever was on him which was
+irretrievable."
+
+"A mistake?" Kitty was always of an inquiring turn of mind, but now
+she felt as if her curiosity was more than she could bear, while she
+stood, her eyes passing over the burly figure in summer clothes and
+the high-featured, pleasant face with its close-cut moustache. What
+dreadful secret was hid behind this good-humored, every-day propriety
+of linen duck, friendly eyes and reddish moustache over a mouth that
+often smiled? You might meet their like any day upon the streets. Was
+it a murder? At best some crime, perhaps, which had sent him to
+the penitentiary. Or--and church taught Kitty shuddered as a vague
+remembrance of the "unpardonable sin" rose before her like an actual
+horror. Whatever it was, it stood between herself and him, keeping
+them apart for ever.
+
+"Irretrievable?" she said. It was only curiosity, she knew, but her
+voice sounded oddly far off to herself, the room was hazy, her whole
+body seemed to shrink together.
+
+"What can it matter to you? You belong to another man, Miss Vogdes."
+She lifted herself erect. Doctor McCall was speaking more loudly than
+usual and looking keenly into her face.
+
+"I know: I shall be Mr. Muller's wife. Of course, I recollect. But
+you--this Hugh Guinness is my father's son," stammered Kitty, her face
+very white. "I had some interest in him."
+
+"Yes, that's true. He is, as you say, in some sort a brother of
+yours." He took her hand for the first time, looking down at her face
+with some meaning in his own, inexplicable, very likely, to himself,
+though the thoughts in Kitty's shallow brain were clear enough to him.
+"You are tired of standing," seating her gently in Peter's chair. A
+thick lock of hair had fallen over her face: he put out his hand
+to remove it, but drew back quickly. "We have talked too long, Miss
+Vogdes," in a brisk, cheerful tone. "Some other time, perhaps, we can
+return to this question of Hugh Guinness. That is," with a certain
+significance of manner, "if it be one in which Mr. Muller wishes you
+to take an interest." Nodding good-humoredly to her, he buttoned on
+his oilskin cape and went out into the rain without another word. He
+pulled off his cap outside to let the rain and wind reach his head,
+drawing a long breath as if to get rid of some foul air and heat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Of all that wet August the next morning was the freshest and
+cheerfulest. Doctor McCall had packed his valise, carried it to the
+station, and was now walking up the street, his hands clasped behind
+him and his head down, after the leisurely fashion of Delaware and
+Jersey farmers. People nodded an approving good-morning to him.
+Busy Berrytown had passed verdict on him as a man who was idle for a
+purpose, who permitted his brain to lie fallow, and who "loafed
+and invited his soul" during these two weeks for the best spiritual
+hygienic reasons.
+
+"Too much brain-work, my friend Doctor Maria Muller tells me," said
+the lawyer, De Camp, to a group of men at the station as McCall passed
+them. "Is here for repose."
+
+"Advanced?" said little Herr Bluhm, the phrenologist.
+
+"Well, no. But Doctor Maria thinks his mind is open to conviction,
+and that he would prove a strong worker should he remain here. She
+has already begun to enlighten him on our newest theories as to a
+Spontaneous Creation and a Consolidated Republic."
+
+"Should think his properer study would be potatoes. Smells of the
+barn-yard in his talk," rejoined one of the party.
+
+"Doctor Maria's a fool!" snapped Bluhm. "She has read the index to
+Bastian's book, and denies her Creator, and gabbles of Bacteria,
+boiled and unboiled, ever since."
+
+Doctor McCall meanwhile went down the cinder-path, to all passers-by
+a clean-shaven, healthy gentleman out in search of an appetite for
+breakfast. But in reality he was deciding his whole life in that brief
+walk. Why, he asked himself once or twice, should he be unlike the
+other clean-shaven, healthy men that he met? God knows he had no
+relish for mystery. He was, as he had told Kitty, a commonplace man, a
+thrifty Delaware farmer, in hearty good-fellowship with his neighbors,
+his cattle, the ground he tilled, and, he thought reverently, with
+the God who had made him and them. He had made a mistake in his early
+youth, but it was a mistake which every tenth man makes--which had no
+doubt driven half these men and women about him into their visionary
+creeds and hard work--that of an unhappy marriage. It was many years
+since he had heard of his wife: she had grown tired of warning him of
+the new paths of shame and crime she had found for herself. In fact,
+the year in which they had lived together was now so long past as to
+seem like a miserable half-forgotten dream.
+
+Irretrievable? Yes, it was irretrievable. There was, first of all,
+the stupid, boyish error of a change of name. If he came back as this
+child wished, all the annoyance which that entailed would follow him,
+and the humiliating circumstances which had led to it would be brought
+to life from their unclean graves. His father believed him dead.
+Better the quiet, softened grief which that had left than the disgrace
+which would follow his return. "I should have to tell him my wife's
+story," muttered McCall. But he did not turn pale nor break into a
+cold sweat at the remembrance, as Miss Muller's hero should have done.
+This was an old sore--serious enough, but one which he meant to make
+the best of, according to his habit. He had been a fool, he thought,
+to come back and hang about the old place for the pleasure of hearing
+his father talked of, and of touching the things he had handled a day
+or two before. Growing into middle age, Hugh Guinness's likeness to
+his father had increased year by year. The two men were simple as boys
+in some respects, and would have been satisfied alone together. The
+younger man halted now on the foot-bridge which crossed the creek,
+looking out the different hollows where his father had taken him to
+fish when he was a boy, and thinking of their life then. "But his wife
+and mine would have to be put into the scales now," with an attempt at
+whistling which died out discordantly.
+
+There was one person to whom the shameful confession of his marriage
+must be made--Miss Muller. That was the result, he thought, of his
+absurd whim of loitering about Berry town. When he had met Maria
+Muller before, he had no reason to think she cared a doit whether he
+was married or single. Now--McCall's color changed, alone as he was,
+with shame and annoyance. With all his experience of life and of
+women, he had as little self-confidence as an awkward girl. But Maria
+had left him no room for doubt.
+
+"It would be the right thing to do. I ought to tell her. But it will
+be a slight matter to her, no doubt."
+
+If he had been a single man, in all probability he would have asked
+Maria Muller to marry him that day. He was a susceptible fellow, with
+a man's ordinary vanity and passions; and Maria's bright sweet face,
+their loiterings along shady lanes and under Bourbon roses, the
+perpetual deference she paid to his stupendous intellect, had had due
+effect. He was not the man to see a strong, beautiful woman turn pale
+and tremble at his touch, and preserve his phlegm.
+
+He threw away his cigar, and jumped the fence into the Water-cure
+grounds. "I'll tell her now, and then be off from old Berry town for
+ever."
+
+Miss Muller was standing in the porch. She leaned over the railing,
+looking at the ragged rain-clouds driven swiftly over the blue
+distance, and at the wet cornfields and clumps of bay bushes gray with
+berries which filled the damp air with their pungent smell. Her dog,
+a little black-and-tan terrier, bit at her skirt. She had just been
+lecturing to her three students on the vertebrae, and when she
+took him up could not help fumbling over his bones, even while she
+perceived the color and scent of the morning. They gave her so keen a
+pleasure that the tears rushed to her eyes, and she stopped punching
+Hero's back.
+
+"'The rain is over and gone,'" she recited softly to herself, "'the
+vines with the tender grape give a good smell, and the time of the
+singing of birds has come.' There is no poetry like that old Hebrew
+love-song. If only it had not been hackneyed by being turned into a
+theological allegory! Ha, doggy, doggy! There comes a friend of ours!"
+suddenly laughing and hugging him as she caught sight of a large man
+coming up the road with a swinging gait and loose white overcoat. She
+broke off a rose and put it in her breast, tied on her hat and hurried
+down to meet him, the Song of Solomon still keeping time with her
+thoughts in a lofty cadence: "'Who is this that cometh up from the
+wilderness leaning upon his beloved? Set me as a seal upon thine
+heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love is strong as death.'"
+
+"What's that, Maria? I heard you intoning as I came up the hill?" Her
+eyes were soft and luminous and her voice unsteady. I am afraid Doctor
+McCall's eyes were warmer in their admiration than they should
+have been under the circumstances. Why should she not tell him? She
+repeated it. She had been chattering for two hours on cervical, dorsal
+and lumbar vertebrae, without stopping to take breath. But she grew
+red now and broke down miserably.
+
+"'Love is strong as death,' eh?" said McCall, awkwardly holding the
+gate open for her. "Friendship ought to be tough enough to bear a
+pretty stout strain, then. Such friendship as ours, I mean. For I
+think a man and woman can be friends without--without--Well, what do
+you think, Maria?" feeling a sudden imbecility in all his big body.
+
+The little woman beside him looked up scared and ready to cry: "I
+don't know, John, I'm sure. Do be quiet, Hero!" Then like a flash she
+saw that he meant to ask her to marry him: he meant to place love upon
+the higher basis of friendship. Maria was used to people who found new
+names for old things. Why! why! what folly was this, as she grew cold
+and hot by turns? So often she had pictured his coming to claim her,
+and how she would go out as one calm controlling soul should to meet
+another, to be dual yet united through all eternity; and here she was
+shivering and tongue-tied, like any silly school-girl! Love-making and
+marriage were at a discount with the Advanced Club of which she was a
+member, and classed with dancing, fashionable dressing and other such
+paltry feminine frivolities. But Maria had meant to show them that a
+woman could really love and marry, and preserve her own dignity. She
+tried to find her footing now.
+
+"Come into the summer-house, John. I should think our friendship would
+bear any strain, for it does not depend on external ties."
+
+"No, that's true. Now, as to your phalansteries and women's clubs and
+sitz-baths, why that's all flummery to me. But young women must have
+their whims until they have husbands to occupy their minds, I suppose.
+There's that little girl at the Book-shop: how many leagues of tatting
+do you suppose she makes in a year?"
+
+"I really cannot say," sharply.
+
+"But as to our friendship, Maria--"
+
+"Yes. There may be a lack of external bonds" (speaking deliberately,
+for she wanted to remember this crisis of her life as accurate in all
+its minutiae); "but there is a primal unity, a mysterious sympathy, in
+power and emotion. At least, so it seems to me," suddenly stammering
+and picking up Hero to avoid looking at McCall, who stood in front of
+her.
+
+"I don't know. Primal unities are rather hazy to me. I can tell by a
+woman's eye and hand-shake if she is pure-minded and sweet-tempered,
+and pretty well, too, what she thinks of me. That's about as far as I
+go."
+
+"It pleases you to wear this mask of dullness, I know," with an
+indulgent smile, with which Titania might have fondled the ass's head.
+
+"But as to our friendship," gravely, "I feel I've hardly been fair
+to you. Friendship demands candor, and there is one matter on which I
+have not dealt plainly with you. You have been an honest, firm friend
+to me, Maria. I had no right to withhold my confidence from you."
+
+If Miss Muller had not been known as an advanced philosopher, basing
+her life upon the Central Truths, she would have gained some credit
+as a shrewd woman of business. "What do you mean, John?" she said,
+turning a cool I steady countenance toward him.
+
+"Sit down and I will tell you what I mean."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The patients, taking soon after their two hours' exercise, made their
+jokes on the battle between the two systems, seeing the allopathist
+McCall and Doctor Maria Haynes Muller in the summer-house engaged in
+such long and earnest converse. Homoeopathy, they guessed, had the
+worst of it, for the lady was visibly agitated and McCall apparently
+unmoved. Indeed, when he left her and crossed the garden, nodding to
+such of them as he knew, he had a satisfied, relieved face.
+
+Maria went immediately in to visit her ward as usual. The patients
+observed that she was milder than was her wont, and deadly pale.
+One of them, addressing her as "Miss Muller," however, was sharply
+rebuked: "I earned my right to the title of physician too hardly to
+give it up for that which belongs to every simpering school-girl," she
+said. "Besides," with a queer pitiful smile, "the sooner we doctors
+sink the fact that we are women the better for the cause--and for us."
+
+She met her brother in the course of the morning, and drew him into
+the consulting-room.
+
+"William," she said, fumbling with the buttons of his coat, "he is
+going: he is going to take the afternoon train."
+
+"Who? That fellow McCall?"
+
+"Why do you speak so of him, William? He has just told me his story.
+He is so wretched! he has been used so hardly!" She could scarcely
+keep back the tears. In her new weakness and weariness it was such
+comfort to talk to and hang upon this fat, stupid little brother, whom
+usually she despised.
+
+"Wretched, eh? He don't look it, then. As stout and easy-going a
+fellow as I know. Come, come, Maria! The man has been imposing some
+story on you to work on your sensibilities. I never fancied him, as
+you know. He doesn't want to borrow money, eh?" with sudden alarm.
+
+"Money? No."
+
+"What is it, then? Don't look at me in that dazed way. You, are going
+to have one of your attacks. I do wish you had Kitty's constitution
+and some sense."
+
+"William," rousing herself, "he is going. He will never come back to
+Berrytown or to me. Our whole lives depend on my seeing him once more.
+Ask him to wait for a day--an hour."
+
+"If he doesn't take the noon express, he can't go in an hour. You
+certainly know that, Maria. Well, if I have to find him, I'd better go
+at once," buttoning his coat irritably. "I never did like the fellow."
+
+"Beg him to stay. Tell him that I have thought of a way of escape,"
+following him, catching him by his sleeve, her small face absolutely
+without color and her eyes glittering.
+
+"Yes, I'm going. But I must find my overshoes first. It begins to look
+like rain."
+
+Miss Muller watched him to the door, and then crossed the hall to her
+own room, locking the door behind her. The square table was piled with
+medical books. She sat down and dropped her head on her arms. Over
+went a bound volume of the _Lancet_ and a folio on diseases of the
+kidneys to the floor. She looked down at them. "And I was willing to
+give him up for that--that trash!" sobbing and rubbing her arms like
+a beaten child. But she had so strong a habit of talking that even in
+this pain the words would come: "I loved him so. He would have married
+me! And I must be kept from him by a law of society! It is--it is,"
+rising and wrenching her hands together, "a damnable law!"
+
+For Miss Muller had taught herself to think and talk like a man.
+
+REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+BOWERY ENGLAND.
+
+
+A party of four Americans in London--Mr. Hill Bunker of Boston, Mrs.
+Bunker, his wife, Miss Amy Abell of New York, and myself--we find
+ourselves growing weary of that noisy town. We talk of a trip to the
+country. It is the merry month of May.
+
+"Just the time for 'bowery England, as Bulwer phrases it," says Amy.
+"Let us go to Romsey and see the Boyces."
+
+Carried unanimously. We take the train from the Waterloo Station
+two hours later. When we get down at Romsey, "Fly, sir?" asks the
+attentive porter--carries our luggage, calls the fly and touches
+his hat thankfully for three-pence. The Romsey fly is a lumbering,
+two-seated carriage, rather more pretentious than a London cab, but
+far behind the glossy gorgeousness of a New York hackney-coach.
+
+A short drive brings us to the White Horse Inn, under whose covered
+arch we roll, and are met at the door by a maid. She conducts us to
+a stuffy coffee-room up a flight of crumbling old stairs, and meekly
+desires to know our will.
+
+"Send the landlord, please."
+
+The landlord comes, bowing low, and we make inquiries concerning the
+distance to Paultons, the estate where the Boyces have been spending
+the summer, and where we venture to hope they still are. He says it
+is a matter of four miles, and that we can have a fly over for six
+shillings. We order the fly to be got ready at once, and inquire if we
+can have dinner now, it being late in the afternoon.
+
+"Yes, sir," he replies. "Would you like some chicken and
+sparrowgrass?"
+
+"How long will they be in cooking?"
+
+"Matter of arf an hour, sir."
+
+As this means a matter of an hour, I ask if he can't get us up
+something in a shorter time. He suggests that chops can be cooked
+sooner.
+
+"Chops be it, then. In the words of the immortal Pickwick, chops and
+tomato sauce."
+
+"No tomarter sauce, sir," with profound gravity.
+
+"Sparrowgrass, then--chops and sparrowgrass."
+
+He retires, and we all rush to the windows and look out upon the
+quaint old village--a curious, old-fashioned scene. We feel as if
+we had somehow become transmogrified, and instead of being
+flesh-and-blood men and women from practical New York, were playing
+our parts in some old English novel. Odd little tumble-down houses,
+with peaked roofs and mullioned windows, ranged about a triangular
+common, look sleepily out upon a statue of Palmerston in the middle of
+the open place, the gray walls of Romsey Abbey, a thousand years old,
+against the blue sky behind them.
+
+About six o'clock our fly is at the door, and we are off, rattling
+through the ancient streets into the smooth open country. Oh the
+quaint, delightful old hedge-lined road, deep down below the level
+of the fields on either side--a green lane shut in with fragrance and
+delicious quiet! The hedges, perched upon the bank, tower high above
+our heads, and there is no break in them save at rustic gates. We meet
+characters on the road who have just stepped out of Trollope's novels.
+A young man and girl stand on a bridge across which we trundle,
+leaning companionably on the old stone parapet, and looking up the
+little river through a long avenue of trees to the pillared mansion of
+"Broadlands." A laborer, with a gay flower stuck in the buttonhole
+of his smock-frock, goes whistling along the brown road under the
+hedgerows. A country gentleman, driving alone in a basket phaeton,
+looks inquisitively at our half-closed windows as if expecting the
+sight of an acquaintance. Crumbling milestones stand by the wayside,
+with deep-cut letters so smoothed by the hand of time that we cannot
+read them as we pass. Flowers grow thick in the hedgerows. A boy is
+lolling on the green grass in front of a cottage door--an uncombed
+English hind, with a face of rustic simplicity and stolid ignorance.
+
+At last we come to a gate which bars the road. The driver gets down
+and opens it, and when we have passed through in the fly he tells us
+we are now on Mr. Stanley's broad estate of Paultons. The driver wears
+corduroy trousers, and touches his hat every time we speak to him and
+every time he answers. He does not merely touch it when he is first
+addressed, but he touches it continually throughout the conversation.
+Bunker considers his conduct extremely touching.
+
+We are presently driving through a bosky wood, and the driver touches
+his hat to remark that we are nearly there now, he thinks.
+
+"But where is the bad road the landlord spoke of?"
+
+"Bad road, sir?" touching hat.
+
+"Yes: the landlord said we could not drive fast because the road was
+bad. Where is it bad?"
+
+"All along back of 'ere, sir," touching hat. "We have pahst the worst
+of it naow, sir: the rest is not so 'illy, sir," touching hat.
+
+"Hilly? We haven't passed over anything bigger than a knoll. If this
+is what the landlord meant by a hilly road, it _is_ a rich joke. Why,
+it's as smooth as a floor, almost."
+
+"He should go to California," says Amy, who has feeling reminiscences.
+"He should go to the Yosemite Valley, over the road which runs through
+Chinese Camp and Hodgden's. Probably the man never saw a rough road in
+his life. I doubt if there is such a thing in England."
+
+After half an hour's trundling along the unfenced roads of this fine
+old estate, crossing ancient stone bridges, rolling through leafy
+groves, startling fat cattle from their browsing, getting a hat-touch
+from a shepherd who is leading his flocks across the fields in true
+pastoral style, we reach the manor-house, standing stately amid dells
+and dingles, pollards of fantastic growth and patches of fern and
+gorse. The Boyces have returned to Paris, but nurse and the children
+are still at the gardener's house, and thither we drive along the
+banks of a sylvan lake, beyond which the rooks are cawing about the
+chimneys.
+
+The old gardener is nurse's father, and though he is now so old that
+he no longer does any work, he is maintained in comfort by the family
+in whose service he has spent a lifetime. Forty years of honest
+service in one family! No wonder he feels that his destiny is for ever
+linked with that of the people who have been his masters, man and boy,
+for forty years. He has a delightful little cottage with thatched roof
+and mullioned windows, and pretty vines rioting all over it, and in
+front of it a flower-garden full of early bloom. The lilacs which
+grow about so profusely are not of the color of our lilacs in America,
+being of a rich purple; we should not know they were lilacs but for
+the familiar odor.
+
+A delicious ride back to Romsey in the twilight, carrying two of the
+Boyce children with us. In the evening I stroll out alone, to look at
+the village in the moonlight. The streets are like narrow lanes. The
+houses are very old, and for the most part dilapidated, but streets
+and houses are all as clean and neat as wax. Presently I come upon
+the old abbey, its rugged walls and towers looming solemnly in the
+moonlight, and pass the parson's house near by, all overrun with
+vines, thinking of Trollope again and Framley parsonage.
+
+Before going back to the White Horse Inn I wander round the village
+until I find that I am lost. The discovery is not very alarming in a
+place so small as this, even at night. I resolve to turn every corner
+to the left, and see what will come of it. I presently find that
+getting out into the country comes of it; and having crossed a bridge
+and come upon a silent brickyard, and seen the long road winding
+away into the open country, I am reminded of Oliver Twist--or was
+it Pip?--running away from home and trudging off under the stars to
+London. Somehow, it seems this road must lead to London.
+
+Turning about, but still walking at random and turning left-hand
+corners, I presently see the abbey tower again, and make for it. The
+street through which I pass is apparently the home of the British
+working man. A light burning in any house is most rare. Occasionally a
+man can be seen through the odd little windows, smoking a pipe by the
+blaze of the fire on the hearth. Here are the abbey windows, and now
+I know where I am. Down this narrow, winding street, across the open
+place where Lord Palmerston stands stonily in the moonlight, and I am
+at the White Horse Inn again.
+
+At nine o'clock next morning there is a rap at the door of my room.
+The door being opened a man-servant is discovered, who touches his
+forehead (having no hat to touch) and says, "The ladies would like to
+'ave you breakfast with them, sir."
+
+He is so very respectful in his manner of saying this that he is
+inaudible, and being asked what he said, repeats the touching his
+forehead and then repeats his words.
+
+There are no muffins at breakfast--a fact which I record merely
+because this is the first time since we have been in England that this
+peculiarly English dish has been omitted at breakfast. It appears on
+inquiry that muffins are a luxury of large towns. In villages they
+are rarely obtainable at less than about a week's notice. In fact, you
+can't get anything to eat, of any sort, without pretty liberal notice.
+
+After breakfast we go to see the old abbey. It is an imposing and
+well-preserved pile. It was founded by Ethelwold, a thane--one of
+those righting, praying, thieving old rascals who lived in the tenth
+century, and made things lively for any one who went past their houses
+with money on his person. When Ethelwold had stolen an unusually large
+sum one day, he founded the monastery and stocked it with nuns. It
+was but a wooden shanty at first, but after having served till it was
+worm-eaten and rotting with age, it was torn down and a fine stone
+convent was built.
+
+We walk about in that part of the abbey which is free from pews--by
+far the larger part--and stare at the monumental stones let into the
+floor and walls. If we did not know that Romsey had been the home
+of Palmerston, we should learn it now, for these stones are thickly
+covered with the legends of virtue in his family--wives, sisters, sons
+and so forth, whose remains lie "in the vault beneath." After perusing
+these numerous testimonials to the truly wonderful virtues of an
+aristocracy whom we are permitted to survive, and after dropping some
+shillings in the charity-box, which rather startle us by the noise
+they make, we pass out of the cool abbey into the hot churchyard, and
+read on a lonely stone which stands in a corner by the gate that
+here lies the dust of Mary Ann Brown, "for thirty-five years faithful
+servant to Mr. Appleford." Mary Ann no doubt had other virtues, but
+they are not recorded: this is sufficient for a servant.
+
+An hour's ride on the velvet cushions of a railway carriage brings us,
+with our Paultons friends, the Boyce boys, to Southampton, which was
+an old town when King Canute was young. We take rooms at a pretentious
+marble hotel with a mansard roof, attached to the station--a railroad
+hotel, in fact, but strikingly unlike that institution as we know it
+in America. Wide halls, solid stone staircases, gorgeous coffee-room,
+black-coated waiters, and the inevitable buxom landlady with a
+regiment of blooming daughters for assistants--one presiding over the
+accounts, another officiating at the beer-pumps, a third to answer
+questions, and all very much under the influence of their back hair
+and other charms of person. One of them alleviates the monotony of the
+office duties by working at embroidery in bright worsteds.
+
+Strolling out, Bunker and I consult certain shabby worthies who are
+yawning on the boxes of a long line of wretched hacks drawn up by the
+sidewalk across the street, and find that we can charter a vehicle for
+two shillings an hour. These cabbies have more nearly the air of our
+own noble hackmen than any we have seen in England. Americans are no
+novelty to them, for ship-loads of American tourists are put off here
+at frequent intervals, and the cabbies have a thin imitation of
+the voting hackman's independence. They stop short, however, of his
+impudence. They are lazy, but they touch their hats occasionally.
+
+We choose two of the tumble-down vehicles and go after the ladies. My
+driver is an elderly man with a hat which has seen better days, and
+I have chosen his hack, not because it is less likely to drop off
+its wheels than the others, but because he himself looks like a seedy
+Bohemian. He proves to be a very intelligent fellow, with a ready turn
+for description which serves him in good stead whenever his horse gets
+tired of walking and stops short. At such times our Bohemian pretends
+that he has stopped the horse himself in order to point out and
+comment upon some curious thing in the immediate vicinity.
+
+It is pleasant driving. The hack is open, and we hoist sun-umbrellas
+and look about comfortably. Presently the weary horse stops in the
+middle of the street.
+
+"'Ere you are, sir," says Cabby briskly, turning half round on his box
+and pointing to an old stone structure which stretches quite across
+the High street. "This 'ere is the old Bar Gate, sir, one of the
+hancient gates of the town. Part of the horiginal town wall. Was a
+large ditch 'ere, sir, and another there, and a stone bridge betwixt
+the two, and the young bucks in them days did use to practice harchery
+right 'ere where you see the lamp-post. The Guild'all is _hin_ the
+gate, sir, right hinside it, with a passage hup. I'll drive through
+the harch, sir, and you'll see the hother side. Cluck!" (to the
+horse).
+
+On the other side, the horse not taking a notion to stop again, the
+driver is not forced to resume his remarks. Turning about as we pass
+on, we look up at the old Norman gate-tower, with its handsome archway
+and projecting buttresses, and Amy says she fancies she sees a knight
+in armor looking out through the narrow crevice which may have been a
+window in olden times. This, being an altogether proper fancy for the
+place, is received with applause.
+
+The next time the horse concludes to stop we are in the midst of what
+is here called the Common--in fact, a magnificent old forest park,
+with a smooth road running through it, and numberless winding paths in
+among the bosky depths. I fancy Central Park might come to look like
+this if allowed to go untrimmed and unfussed-over for two or three
+hundred years.
+
+"The Common, sir," says Cabby, turning about, "where King Chawles did
+use to 'unt wild boars. Fav'rite walk of Halexander Pope, sir, the
+poet, and Doctor Watts, which wrote the 'ymn-book. Cluck!"
+
+From the top of a high hill a splendid wide landscape is seen, with
+Romsey in the distance, and (the horse having stopped again) Cabby
+points out Queen Elizabeth's shooting-box across the fields. In a lot
+close by cricketers are at play, and a little farther on, where there
+is a vine-covered beerhouse, a crowd of clod-hoppers are gathered in
+a green field, looking at two of their number engaged in a
+rough-and-tumble fight in their shirt-sleeves.
+
+The road after this running down hill, the horse continues to jog
+along for a considerable distance, stopping at last under a towering
+old wall looking out on the sea.
+
+"Wind Whistle Tower, sir," says Cabby, pointing up at a square tower
+projecting from the old wall overhead, and above it the remains of
+an old round tower thickly overrun with ivy. And, using his fingers
+industriously, Cabby proceeds to call off the names of various castles
+and towers here visible--notably, Prince Edward's Tower, bold and
+round, from whose summit three men were looking down.
+
+"What are those?" asks Bunker in the carriage behind us, pointing to
+the old brass guns which sit on the wall like Humpty Dumpty.
+
+"Them, sir," says Cabby, "was put there by 'Enry the Heighth, and this
+'ere wall was the purtection of the town when the Frenchmen hassaulted
+it."
+
+"Ho!" says Bunker, contemptuously. "Just fancy one of our ironclads
+paying any attention to the barking of those popguns!"
+
+Whereupon the horse starts again, and we go lazily on, Cabby dropping
+in a word of enlightenment here and there to the effect that this old
+tumble-down part of the ancient wall is the celebrated Arcade, which
+formed part of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane
+running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is
+Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the
+remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches
+and curious mouldings.
+
+Discharging the cab in the High street, we walk about. In a shop where
+we pause for a moment there is a quartette of half-naked barbarians,
+such as, with all our boasted varieties of humanity, were never yet
+seen in New York. We have abundant Chinese and Japanese there, and
+occasionally an Arab or a Turk, and the word African means with us a
+man and a brother behind our chair at dinner or wielding a razor in
+a barber-shop. These men here are pure barbarians, just landed from a
+vessel direct from Africa. Hideously tattooed, and their heads shaved
+in regular ridges of black wool, with narrow patches of black scalp
+between, they are here in a small tradesman's shop in bowery England
+buying shirts. They know not a word of English, but chatter among
+themselves the most horrible lingo known to the Hamitic group of
+tongues. They grimace in a frightful manner, and skip and dance, and
+writhe their half-naked bodies into the most exaggerated contortions
+known to the language of signs. The dignified English salesmen are
+at their wits' end how to treat them. The instinct of the British
+shopkeeper fights desperately with his disposition to be shocked. From
+the Ashantee gentlemen's gestures it can only be concluded that white
+shirts are wanted, but when white shirts are shown the negroes make
+furious objection to the plaited bosoms. They want shirts such as are
+fashionable at home. It is easy to be seen that they are Dandy Jims
+in Africa. They are all young, and, in a sense, spruce. One of them
+carries a little switch cane, evidently just bought: while he examines
+the shirts, testing the strength of the stuff by pulling it with his
+two hands, he holds his cane between his bare legs for safe-keeping.
+
+Sitting in the billiard-room of the hotel in the evening smoking our
+cigars, Bunker and I are accosted by a brisk little man, who asks us
+if we play billiards. Bunker doesn't. I do sometimes at home, but not
+the English game.
+
+"Oh, we play the 'Merican game too. 'Appy to play the 'Merican game
+with you, sir."
+
+"Try him a game," says Bunker. "It won't hurt you."
+
+Not liking to refuse an invitation from a polite Englishman, who
+appears to be a stranger here, I consent. This is billiard-room
+etiquette the world over.
+
+The cue is like a whip-stock. It positively runs down to a point not
+bigger than a shirt-button, and it bends like a switch. The balls are
+not much larger than marbles. To make up for this, the table is big
+enough for a back yard, broad, high, dull of cushion, and with six
+huge pockets. I am ignominiously beaten. My ball jumps like a living
+thing. It hops off the table upon the floor at almost every shot, and
+when it does not go on the floor it goes into one of the six yawning
+pockets. The pockets bear the same relative proportion to the balls
+that a tea-cup bears to a French pea. At the end of the game my ball
+has been everywhere except where I intended it to go, and I have
+"scratched" thirty.
+
+"A hundred's the game," says the Englishman, putting up his cue. "One
+shilling."
+
+I wonder if this is an English custom--to pay your victor a shilling,
+instead of paying the keeper of the tables. But as there is no one
+else to pay, I pay the Englishman. Bunker has fallen asleep in his
+chair.
+
+"Going on the Continent?" the Englishman asks.
+
+"Not at present. We return to London first, and go from there."
+
+"'Ave you got a guide?"
+
+I am on the point of saying that guides are a nuisance I do not
+tolerate, when the Englishman hands me a bit of paste-board. "There is
+my card, sir," he says. "A. SHARPE, Interpreter and Courier." On the
+opposite side I read--
+
+  SPEAKS         SPRICHT         PARLE        PARLA
+  French,      Franzoesich,     Frangais,    Francese,
+  German,      Deutsch,        Allemand,    Tedesco,
+  Italian and  Italienisch u.  Italien et   Italiano ed
+  English      Englisch        Anglais      Inglese
+  fluently     sehr gelaeufig.  courrament.  correntemente.
+
+At present he has charge of this billiard-room, but he is ready to
+follow me to the ends of the earth for a period of not less than three
+months. I tell him I can get on without a guide.
+
+"But I would go on the most reasonable terms. I would go for as low as
+ten pounds a month and my expenses."
+
+"Would you go for nothing?" Bunker wakes up and pops this out at him
+so suddenly as to quite take his breath away.
+
+He expands his hands at his trousers pockets, shrugs his shoulders and
+looks volumes of reproach.
+
+"Because," Bunker adds, in a soothing tone, "I shouldn't like to have
+you along, even at that price."
+
+He immediately goes to putting the room to rights.
+
+"Horrible breath that man had," says Bunker when we come out: "did you
+notice it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Take that breath around with us on the Continent! Why, if he was in
+Cologne itself, his breath would be in the majority."
+
+I had my umbrella in the billiard-room, and next morning I can't find
+it anywhere. At breakfast I ask the pompous head-waiter if he knows of
+my umbrella. He states that he does not. After breakfast I look in the
+billiard-room. It is not there. I go down to the office, and interrupt
+the worsted work there in progress by requesting that a search be made
+for my missing umbrella. The young lady whose ear I have gained
+kindly condescends to call the porter, and turning me over to that
+functionary returns to her worsted. The porter is respectful, but
+doubtful. The moment he learns that the lost article is an umbrella
+his manner is pervaded with a gentle hopelessness. He, however,
+listens forbearingly to my story.
+
+"And aboot what time was it, sir, when ye went ty bed?"
+
+"About half-past eleven."
+
+"Oh, then the night porter ull know of it, sir. He's abed now. I'll
+ask him when he gets oop."
+
+And so, when we go to Netley Abbey, I take a covered cab, because of
+my lost umbrella. It was a beautiful umbrella to keep off the sun.
+Nobody can make an umbrella like an Englishman. I should be sorry
+to lose it. I bought it in Regent street only a few days ago, but I
+already love it with a passionate affection.
+
+Through the hot paved streets, over a floating bridge, past the
+cliff at the river's mouth, through a shady grove of noble yews
+and sycamores, past a picturesque hamlet full of vine-curtained and
+straw-thatched cottages, through a forest of oaks and past a willow
+copse, and there is the grand old ruin of Netley Abbey lifting its
+picturesque and solemn fingers of ivy-hung stone above the tops of the
+trees which surround and shelter it in its hoary age.
+
+It is really curious how dramatically effective a grand old ruin is.
+The weird sense of being in the presence of olden time comes over us
+immediately. We look about us to see the spirit of some cloistered
+monk come stealing by with hood and girdle. Here--actually here,
+in these nooks all crumbling under Time's gnawing tooth--did old
+Cistercian monks kneel with shaved heads and confess their sins, and
+their bones have been powdered into dust three hundred years!
+Romsey Abbey--within whose well-kept walls we rather yawned over
+Palmerstonian eulogiums--is a thousand years old. This abbey is only
+six hundred and thirty-two years old. Romsey has been restored, and
+modern men go to church there on Sunday decorously. Netley has been
+left to go to utter ruin. Grass grows in its long-drawn aisles. Owls
+hoot in its moss-clothed chimneys. It is dramatically effective.
+
+We wander through cloistered courts into the main body of the church.
+Yonder stood the pulpit, here gathered the worshipers. The carpet is
+green grass. Trees grow within the walls. Ivy clambers from side to
+side of the tall windows, in place of the stained glass once there.
+Most of the windows have tumbled to decay, walls and all. The roof is
+the sky--naught else.
+
+We climb up the stone staircase in the turret. All the stone steps are
+worn with deep hollows where human feet have trodden up and down for
+centuries, and storms have sent rivulets of water pouring through many
+a wild night. Some of the steps are worn quite in two and broken away,
+which makes the ascent frightening to the ladies.
+
+Up here ("on the second floor," as Bunker says) the carpet is again
+grass, and Bunker and I clamber through a little archway into the
+cloister gallery, where the monks used to look down on the service
+below when they felt inclined. The ladies look after us, brave
+adventurers that we are (only two or three million men have been here
+before us, perhaps, since the ruin became a popular success), and
+refuse to follow in our rash footsteps. The crumbling wall is full of
+owls' nests. Rooks and swallows fly continually in and out of their
+holes. We could kick a loose stone down into the chancel if there were
+any stones to kick.
+
+The ladies declare themselves dizzy and afraid, and we help them down
+the dark winding turret staircase again, and go into the enclosed
+parts of the ruin. Here is where the monks lived. The walls still
+stand, and parts of the roof. The windows are thickly ivy-hung and
+moss-grown. Here is the room where the monks did whilom dine. For
+three hundred years this dining-room was in daily use, and in the spot
+where erst the dining-table stood now grows a stalwart tree, whose
+branches tower and spread beyond the crumbling walls. Passing strange!
+
+More strange is the sight in the next room, the chapter-house, where
+the abbot held his gravest councils, and where the most honored of the
+monks were buried beneath the floor when they died. And since the
+roof fell in, after long battling with storms, perhaps a hundred years
+after the last monk was buried, one day a seed fell. A tree grew up in
+the room. It spread its tall branches high above the piled-up stones,
+and shook its brown leaves down, autumn after autumn, for years and
+years. It grew slowly old, and at last it died. It fell down in its
+death in the room where it had grown, and its once sturdy trunk struck
+against the old ruined walls and broke. Its roots were torn out of the
+ground by the fall, and stuck up their gnarled fingers in the empty
+room. And the grass grew over the roots, weaving a green cloak to hide
+their nakedness. The old trunk stretches now across the space in the
+room, and leans its old head against the abbey wall. I didn't read
+this story in a guide-book. It was told to me by the principal actor,
+the tree.
+
+In the abbot's kitchen we get into the huge hooded fireplace--seven
+of us--and there is room for more. We look up the chimney and see
+the glossy green ivy leaves overhead, and the blue sky shining beyond
+them. We toss a pebble down into the subterranean passage where, they
+say, the monks were wont to pass out after provisions during a time
+of siege; which must have been somewhat demoralizing to the besiegers,
+whoever they were. I stoop to pick up something in the grass of
+the kitchen floor, which has a glitter of gold upon it, and my face
+flushes with eager anticipation as I seize it.
+
+"What have you found?" asks Amy.
+
+"A relic of the monks?" asks Bunker.
+
+"It's a champagne cork," I am forced to reply. "The truth is, Netley
+Abbey is a show, like Niagara Falls and Bunker Hill Monument. Of
+course crowds of tourists come here, and of course they pop champagne
+and ginger beer, and cut their confounded initials in the venerable
+stones."
+
+"Yes," says Bunker, "I saw 'W.S.' cut in the wall at the top of the
+turret stairs. Saves you the trouble, you know."
+
+"I don't do that sort of thing, thank you."
+
+Nevertheless, it was curious to see some nobody's name cut at full
+length in the stone, with the date underneath--1770.
+
+When we return to the hotel the night porter reports that he has not
+found my umbrella. So I must go off without it. Our train leaves at
+ten minutes past five this afternoon, and we shall be in London early
+in the evening. It is now four o'clock: we have ordered dinner for
+this hour, and so we sit down to our soup.
+
+"Please give us our dinner without any delay now," I say to the
+pompous head-waiter, "for we must take the train at ten minutes past
+five."
+
+The man bows stiffly and retires. We finish the soup, and wait.
+When we get tired of waiting we call the head-waiter to us: "Are you
+hastening our dinner?"
+
+"Fish directly, sir," he answers, and walks solemnly away. We begin to
+grow fidgety. Fifteen minutes since the soup, and no fish yet. Bunker
+swears he'll blow the head-waiter up in another minute. Just as he is
+quite ready for this explosion the fish arrives. All hail! I lay it
+open.
+
+"Why, it's not done!" I cry in consternation. "There, there! Take it
+away, and bring the meat."
+
+With an air of grave offence the man bears it solemnly out. Then we
+wait again. And wait. And wait.
+
+"Good gracious!" cries Bunker, "here's half an hour gone, and we've
+had nothing but soup! I really must blow this fellow up."
+
+"Stop! there it comes."
+
+Enter the waiter with great dignity, and solemnly deposits before
+us--the fish again!
+
+He has had it recooked. We attack it hurriedly, and bid the waiter for
+Goodness' sake bring the rest of the dinner _instantly_, or we must
+leave it.
+
+"And I'm about half starved," growls Bunker.
+
+More waiting. Five minutes pass. Ten.
+
+"Oh come, I can't stand this!" cries Bunker, jumping up with his
+napkin round his neck, and striding over to the head-waiter, where he
+stands in a Turveydroppy attitude, leaning against a sideboard with
+his arms folded. "Look here!" Bunker ejaculates: "_can_ you be made
+to understand that we are in a hurry? Would half a dollar be any
+inducement to you to wake up and look around lively? Because we have
+got to take those cars in exactly twelve minutes," showing his watch,
+"and as the dinner is already paid for, I want to get it before I go."
+
+"Certainly, sir," says the pompous ass with slow indifference, "dinner
+directly. John!" to our waiter, who is now placing the meat on the
+table, "serve the genl'm'n's dinner _directly_."
+
+Bunker stares at the fellow as Clown stares at Harlequin after having
+cut him in two, in dumb amazement at the fact that Harlequin is not in
+the least disturbed by being cut in two.
+
+"I wonder," he mutters as he returns to the table, "if that
+unmitigated wooden image of a dunderhead would pay any attention if I
+were to kick him?"
+
+"No--not if you were to tie a pack of fire-crackers to his coat-tail
+and light them. He knows his business too well. The first duty of
+an English head-waiter is to be dignified, as it is that of a French
+head-waiter to be vigilant and polite."
+
+"Besides," remarks Amy quietly, "I don't suppose the man had an idea
+of what you meant by 'those cars,' if he even knew what a half dollar
+signified."
+
+"Well, we must be off. Time's up. We shall miss the train. Good-bye,
+boys. You can sit still and finish your dinner in peace."
+
+Good-bye to our friends from Paultons--good-bye. And then we rush out,
+and _do_ miss the train. It is five o'clock ten minutes and a quarter.
+
+English trains go on time--English dinners don't.
+
+We finally get off at seven o'clock. Just before we leave a waiter
+comes up to me and says in a casual manner, "Found your humbreller
+yet, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Wat kind of er humbreller was it, sir?"
+
+"Neat little brown silk umbrella, with an ivory handle."
+
+"W'y, I wouldn't wonder if that was your humbreller in the corner now
+in the reading-room, sir."
+
+I make haste to look. Yes, there it is, my beloved, long-lost
+umbrella, quietly leaning against the wall in a dark corner, behind a
+pillar, behind a big arm-chair, where nobody ever placed it, I'll take
+my oath, but this rascally waiter, who expects to get a shilling for
+showing where he hid it.
+
+"Is _that_ your humbreller, sir?" the waiter says, rubbing his
+hands and getting in my way as I walk briskly out, at peril of being
+stumbled over by my hurrying feet. I scorn to reply, but I give him
+a glance of such withering contempt that I trust it pierced to his
+wicked heart, and will remain there, a punishment and a warning, to
+the last day of his base life. An English waiter's hide is very thick,
+however. He has probably hidden many a gentleman's umbrella since.
+
+At eleven o'clock we are back in our cozy London lodgings, and at
+twelve we are sleeping the sleep of profound fatigue, and dreaming of
+ghostly monks wandering among the weird old ruins of Netley.
+
+WIRT SIKES.
+
+
+
+
+DAY-DREAM.
+
+
+  Here, in the heart of the hills, I lie,
+  Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky--
+  An amethyst and an emerald stone
+  Hung and hollowed for me alone!
+
+  Is it a dream, or can it be
+  That there is life apart from me?--
+  A larger world than the circling bound
+  Of light and color that lap me round?
+
+  Drowsily, dully, through my brain,
+  Like some recurrent, vague refrain,
+  A world of fancy comes and goes--
+  Shadowy pleasures, shadowy woes.
+
+  Spectral toils and troubles seem
+  Fashioned out of this foolish dream:
+  Round my charmed quiet creep
+  Phantom creatures that laugh and weep.
+
+  Nay, I know they are meaningless,
+  Visions of utter idleness:
+  Nothing was, nor ever will be,
+  Save the hills and the heavens and me.
+
+KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE GLADSTONE FAMILY.
+
+
+There is no doubt that had Mr. Gladstone followed his personal
+inclinations when his Irish education scheme broke down last March,
+he would have retired from office. He is now sixty-four, and it may be
+fairly questioned whether there exists a man who for forty-six years
+has worked his brain harder. It is no light labor to read for the
+highest honors in even one school at Oxford, and Mr. Gladstone read
+for them in two. He gained "a double first," which meant at that time
+a first class both in classics and mathematics. Forthwith he plunged
+into political essay-writing, until in 1834 he further added to his
+labors by entering the House of Commons as M.P. for Newark.
+
+Mr. Gladstone's father was, as most people are aware, a Liverpool
+merchant of Scotch descent. This gentleman was the architect of his
+own fortunes, which arose in no slight degree out of his connection
+with the United States. Having been sent to this country by a firm
+largely interested in the corn trade, he discharged their business
+to their entire satisfaction, whilst at the same time he made very
+valuable business connections on his own account, which materially
+served him when at a later period he himself embarked in business.
+He made a large fortune, but it did not appear at his death to be so
+great as it was, because he gave his younger sons the bulk of their
+portions during his lifetime--to avoid legacy duty, people said.
+To his eldest son he left considerable estates in Scotland--to the
+younger sons, about one hundred thousand pounds apiece. The eldest,
+Sir Thomas Gladstone, is a very worthy man, but nowise remarkable for
+ability. He has one son, and has had six daughters. Four survive, and
+all are unmarried.
+
+The next brother, Robertson, an eccentric person whose indiscreet
+speeches must often have made his statesman brother feel very hot,
+continues the paternal business at Liverpool. The third, John Neilson,
+was, socially speaking, the flower of the flock. He was a captain in
+the navy, from which he had retired many years prior to his death in
+1863, and a member of Parliament. By his wife, a singularly excellent
+and charming woman, he had several children, who may be said to pretty
+nearly monopolize the feminine charms of the Gladstone family. One
+of these married the earl of Belmore, an Irish nobleman, who lately
+returned from a not very successful gubernatorial career in New
+South Wales. Both Sir Thomas and Captain Gladstone were decided
+Conservatives.
+
+William Ewart is the fourth brother. "That young brother of mine will
+make a noise in the world some of these days," said Captain Gladstone
+to a fellow-middy as his brother turned away from bidding him good-bye
+just before he was about to start on a cruise; and the words were
+certainly prophetic. Mr. Gladstone married when he was thirty. His
+wife was one of the two sisters of Sir Stephen Glynne. The English
+aristocracy contains a great many sets, and the Glynnes were in the
+intellectual set, comprising such men as the dukes of Argyll and
+Devonshire, and Lords Derby, Stanhope and Lyttelton. Mrs. Gladstone
+and her sister were married on the same day to two of the finest
+intellects of their time. The younger, whose mental gifts were far
+superior to those of her sister, married Lord Lyttelton.
+
+Mr. Gladstone has a large family. The eldest son has for some time
+been in Parliament, but has established no reputation for notable
+capacity, and it is said that, with the exception of one of his
+younger brothers, none of the family are remarkable in this respect.
+Mrs. Gladstone is a person of great kindness of heart and untiring
+benevolence. She is full of schemes for doing good: hospitals,
+convalescent institutions, etc. find in her an ever-ready friend,
+to the neglect, it is whispered, of her domestic duties. There is an
+amusing story told of how some time ago a few guests arrived at her
+house in response to an invitation to dinner. They waited in vain for
+the rest of the party, for whose delay their hostess was at a loss
+to account. At length she turned aside and opened her blotting-book,
+which quickly revealed the cause of the guests' non-appearance--the
+invitations were lying there. They had been written, but never sent.
+
+In London the prime minister--who has an indifferent official
+residence, which he and his family have occasionally occupied, in
+Downing street--lives in Carlton-House Terrace. It is a beautiful
+house, but not by any means well adapted for party-giving, for it is
+so constructed that circulation is almost impossible. If you once
+get into a room, you must stay there; whereas half the charm of
+Lady Palmerston's famous parties at Cambridge House was the free
+circulation the rooms afforded, enabling you to pass right round a
+quadrangle, and thus easily find an acquaintance or get away from a
+bore. Mr. Gladstone's house has a fine double staircase, and it will
+derive interest in after days from the circumstance that, standing at
+the head, Lord Russell took leave of the party he had led, and pointed
+to his then host as his successor.
+
+Carlton-House Terrace is in many respects the most delightful
+situation in London, for, whilst extremely central, it is very quiet.
+It stands between Pall Mall and St. James's Park. One side faces a
+strip of beautifully kept garden, which lies between the terrace and
+the row of palaces formed by the Senior United Service, Athenaeum,
+Travelers' and Carlton Clubs. The other side has a charming prospect
+over St. James's Park. In summer this is really lovely, for all ugly
+objects are obscured by the foliage, amid which glimpses are obtained
+of the pinnacles and fretted towers of the palace of Parliament on the
+one hand, and those of its venerable neighbor, the majestic abbey,
+on the other. It was here that Bunsen passed his London days, and the
+reader of his memoirs will remember frequent references to the charms
+of his house. It may well be imagined how great a boon it is to the
+toil-worn minister to find himself, as it were, in a garden, with only
+the distant roar, like that of the sea, to remind him as he sits in
+his study that five minutes walk across that pleasant park will bring
+him to Downing street, and three more to the Treasury bench in the
+House of Commons.
+
+In the country most of his time is spent at Hawarden Castle in
+Flintshire, about six hours from London. This is the ancestral seat of
+Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, lord lieutenant of
+the county, whose family have held this property for centuries. Sir
+Stephen is a very shy man of retired habits. By a family arrangement
+his house is the country abode of his sister and brother-in-law.
+
+In earlier life, Sir Stephen and his two brothers-in-law, Mr.
+Gladstone and Lord Lyttelton, formed an unfortunately favorable
+estimate of certain mines, into which much of the fortune of Sir
+Stephen and his sisters went, and from which it never came out again.
+There was one other brother, the late rector of Hawarden. He died
+about a year ago, and Mr. Gladstone's second son, Stephen, was
+appointed his successor. The living, in the gift of Sir Stephen, is
+very valuable. Mr. Glynne, the clergyman, died without a son, and the
+title will therefore on Sir Stephen's death be extinct. As matters
+now stand, it may be presumed that Mr. W.H. Gladstone, the prime
+minister's eldest son, will succeed to the Hawarden estates.
+
+Mr. Gladstone has himself recently increased the family interest
+around Hawarden by purchase. About five years ago the state of his
+finances were the talk of the town, and a number of people, especially
+of the Conservative party, avowed themselves in a position to assert
+from personal knowledge that he was ruined. There was no just ground
+for such a statement, and like so many other absurd rumors it died
+out. None of Mr. Gladstone's daughters are married, nor is his eldest
+son.
+
+
+
+
+WHITSUNTIDE AMONG THE MENNISTS.
+
+
+Certain great festivals of the Christian Church which were ignored by
+the Puritans and Quakers have always continued in high repute among
+the Pennsylvania Germans. Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide and
+Ascension Day are celebrated not only in the Lutheran, the Reformed
+or Calvinistic and the Moravian churches, but among the descendants
+of those Swiss Anabaptists who, being driven from their homes by
+religious persecution, finally took shelter in that part of the land
+of Penn now called Lancaster county, these quiet sectarians being
+known among us by the names of Mennists and Amish (pronounced
+Menneests and Ommish).
+
+The movable feast of Whitsunday or Pentecost, which occurs on the
+seventh Sunday after Easter, is a solemn occasion in the Mennonite
+meetings, for at this time is held one of the great semi-annual
+observances of bread-breaking and feet-washing. The ensuing day,
+Whitmonday, is a great secular festival. All the spring bonnets are
+then in readiness for the "Dutch" girls. The young farmer of eighteen
+or more, whose father has granted his heart's desire in the form of a
+buggy, or who has otherwise attained to that summit of rural felicity,
+harnesses and attaches to it one of the horses with which the farm is
+so well supplied, and takes his girl into the county-town. Here
+they walk the streets, partake of simple refreshments, meet their
+acquaintances or talk with them in the tavern parlor. Sometimes they
+visit a circus or menagerie whose managers have made a timely visit to
+our inland city.
+
+On the ensuing day, Tuesday, while the Dutch boys are working the
+corn, you may perchance hear their father's voice raised to a higher
+pitch than usual, which circumstance he explains when he comes in
+sight, thus: "The boys is sleepy to-day. Yesterday was Whissuntide,
+you know. They got home late." For custom forbids their leaving
+the girl of their choice before the small hours, and allows them,
+nevertheless, no remission from labor on the succeeding day.
+
+The people, however, whose religious services I am about to describe
+impose upon their members a stricter rule of earlier hours, etc. They
+are called New (or Reformed) Mennists.
+
+It was on Whitsunday, May 31, 1868, that I paid a visit to one of
+our New Mennist meeting-houses, and found before nine o'clock in the
+morning that the services had already begun. The first apartment we
+entered was a sort of tiring-room, where along the walls hung
+the shawls and black sun-bonnets of the sisters. Here were also
+traveling-bags, and a cradle stood ready to receive one or more of the
+babies that were in attendance. In the adjoining room were heard
+the familiar notes of "Old Hundred," and "Du bist der Weg" was sung
+pleasantly without any instrumental accompaniment.
+
+When we entered the whitewashed apartment in which the meeting had
+assembled I saw upon a small platform at the farther end five men, who
+were apparently preachers or elders. At the same end of the room were
+seated the soberly clad members of the sect--the men on one side of
+the apartment, with their broad-brimmed hats removed; on the other
+side the sisters, with their extremely plain book-muslin caps and
+otherwise sober attire.
+
+A portion of the services was in English. Dr. ----, a practitioner of
+medicine and a bishop in this Church, spoke extemporaneously in our
+language. He gave a long account of the ordinances of the Jewish
+Church, and then of those which the "Lord Jesus instituted in the
+place of these--the baptism that was celebrated a week ago, and this
+Lord's Supper, this feet-washing, this kiss of peace, this manner of
+visiting offenders;" the last phrase being an allusion to the severe
+rule which forbids the New or Reformed Mennists to eat, etc. with
+those excommunicated by the society.
+
+The Mennists, as I understand, hold in general those doctrines that
+are considered evangelical. The services were much prolonged, and the
+congregation became restless. But at length, while a younger brother
+was speaking in "Dutch" or German, there came in another bearing
+a parcel wrapped in a white cloth. He was followed by one carrying
+something tied in a blue-and-white cloth, which being opened disclosed
+a demijohn. The white parcel was received by the preacher upon the
+desk, and when opened showed a great loaf of our beautiful Lancaster
+county bread divided into slices. After prayer several preachers took
+slices, and passing around among the congregation broke off bits
+which they gave to the communicants. The wine in the demijohn was then
+poured into small, bright tin cups, like milkmen's measures, and was
+distributed among the members. A hymn in the German language was sung,
+two lines at a time, while the wine was handed round.
+
+After these services were concluded feet-washing began by reading the
+passage from the 13th chapter of John on the subject, and this
+was followed by many remarks. I observed that one elderly brother,
+speaking in a mournful tone and in our Dutch manner, quoted,
+"Nimmermehr soll du mein Fees wasche" ("Thou shalt never wash my
+feet"). These discourses were followed by the announcement, "Next
+Sunday there will be bread-breaking at Landisville."
+
+Now arose a confusion from carrying out benches, from arranging others
+in two long rows facing each other, etc. The two principal preachers
+were seen disencumbered of their coats, much animated conversation
+began, and feet-washing did not seem to be observed with so much
+seriousness as the Supper. I took a seat near the end of two long
+benches which were arranged to face each other, and on which sat some
+of the brethren whose feet were to be washed by one of the preachers.
+Common unpainted tubs containing water were brought in by two men. Dr.
+----, the bishop already mentioned, had a great piece of white linen
+tied around his waist. He passed along between the two rows of men as
+they sat facing each other, bearing his tub alternately from a brother
+in one row to one in the other, so that both rows were finished
+at about the same time. Quietly the men took off their shoes and
+stockings. They did not put their feet forward much. As Dr. ---- came
+to each participant he set his tub down before him, washed his feet a
+little, wiped them on the long white apron or towel, then shook hands
+with him and kissed him. He thus ministered to thirty persons, a
+somewhat laborious undertaking, but his powerful frame was suited to
+the exertion. The same water and the same towel served for all.
+
+Meantime, the sisters, in another part of the room, were arranged in
+smaller companies on benches placed in a similar manner. I said to a
+sister, "Do the preachers wash the sisters' feet?"
+
+"Oh no," she answered: "the sisters does it."
+
+Some of the sisters were very friendly, and not unwilling to converse.
+One said, "One sister washes as many as she is pretty well able: it's
+hard on the back."
+
+"And does she have a towel?" said I.
+
+"She girds a towel, and then she washes and wipes them, and gives them
+a kiss."
+
+"Do you all have your feet washed?" I inquired further.
+
+"No, not those that have any weakness that prevents."
+
+"And will all these brothers have their feet washed?"
+
+"All that communes."
+
+"And do not all commune?"
+
+"Yes, without they feel that they have something against another. Now
+if I feel that I have something against her--placing her hand upon a
+sister.
+
+"I understand," interrupted I. "'If thou bring thy gift to the
+altar--' And how many," I continued, "will there be in such a meeting
+as this that will not commune? Will there be half a dozen?"
+
+"Oh yes; but by another year all will likely be right, and then they
+will commune. Now, I did not commune nor have my feet washed."
+
+"Why not?" said I.
+
+"Why, I felt at this time such confusion of mind, as if the Enemy was
+against me--"
+
+"Well, it was not anything against a brother or sister?"
+
+"No, I count them all ahead of me: I count myself the poorest member."
+
+At the conclusion of the feet-washing a hymn was sung. Among those who
+had their feet washed was a young man apparently about twenty-two, and
+who looked full of fun. It seems that even such may be in membership
+with so strict a sect. It was about one o'clock when the meeting
+ended, having been in session four hours and a half.
+
+The great simplicity of the surroundings on this occasion may lead
+the reader to suppose that the congregation was poor. It was, however,
+composed in a great measure of some of the thriftiest farmers in one
+of the richest upland sections of the United States.
+
+Some time after attending this meeting I called upon an aged Amish man
+to converse with him upon their religious society, etc. The Amish
+are another branch of the Mennonites, and those among us are likewise
+descendants of Swiss refugees. They are the most primitive of the
+three divisions of the sect, preserving the use of the Dutch or German
+language not only in their religious meetings, but almost entirely in
+their own families.
+
+I mentioned to this aged man the feet-washing that I had attended,
+and told how Dr. ----, the bishop, had washed the feet of the other
+brethren.
+
+"Did he wash them all?" said my Amish acquaintance.
+
+"Yes, all that were assigned to him. How is it among you?"
+
+"They wash each other's, every two and two. If he washes them all, he
+puts himself in Christ's place. _He_ says, 'Wash each other's feet.'"
+
+This, I am also informed, is the rule among the third division, the
+Old Mennists, the most numerous branch of these remarkable people.
+
+P.E.G.
+
+
+
+
+THE RAW AMERICAN.
+
+
+London at present abounds in Americans on their way to the Vienna
+Exposition. Many of them are commissioners from various States. Some
+have lands to sell or other financial axes to grind. Of such the
+Langham Hotel is full. The Langham is the nearest approach to an
+American hotel in London. There, though not a guest, you may pass in
+and out without explaining to the hall-porter who you are, what you
+are, where you come from or what you want: you may there enter and
+retire without giving your pedigree, naturalization papers or a
+certificate of good character. At other English hotels something
+analogous to this is commonly required.
+
+We, who have been in England a full year, look down with an air of
+superiority on the raw, the newly-arrived American. We are quite
+English. We have worn out our American clothes. We have on English
+hats with tightly-curled rims and English stub-toed boots. We know the
+intricacies of London street navigation, and Islington, Blackfriars,
+Camden Town, Hackney, the "Surrey Side," Piccadilly, Regent and Oxford
+streets, the Strand and Fleet street, are all mapped out distinctly
+in our mind's eye. We are skilled in English money, and no longer pass
+off half crowns for two-shilling pieces. We are real Anglo-Americans.
+
+But the raw American, only arrived a week, is in a maze, a confusion,
+a hurry. He is excited and mystified. He tries to appear cool and
+unconcerned, and is simply ridiculous. His cards, bearing his name,
+title and official status, he distributes as freely as doth the winter
+wind the snow-flakes. Inquire at the Langham office for Mr. Smith, and
+you find he has blossomed into General Smith.
+
+He is always partaking or about to partake of official dinners. He
+feels that the eyes of all England are upon him. He is dressed _a la_
+bandbox--hat immaculate in its pristine gloss, white cravat, umbrella
+of the slimmest encased in silken wrapper. A speck of mud on his
+boots would tarnish the national honor. Commonly, he is taken for a
+head-butler. He drinks much stout. He eats a whitebait dinner before
+being forty-eight hours in London, and tells of it. All this makes him
+feel English.
+
+You meet him. He is overjoyed. He would talk of everything--your
+mutual experience in America, his sensations and impressions since
+arriving in England. He talks intelligibly of nothing. His brain is
+a mere rag-bag, shreddy, confused, parti-colored. Thus he empties it:
+"Passage over rough;" "London wonderful;" "Dined with the earl of
+---- yesterday;" "Dine with Sir ---- to-day;" "To the Tower;"
+"Westminster;" "New York growing;" "Saint Paul's"--going, going, gone!
+and he shakes hands with you, and is off at a Broadway gait straight
+toward the East End of London for his hotel, which lies at the West
+End.
+
+In reality, the man is not in his right mind. He is undergoing the
+mental acclimatization fever. Should he stay in London for three
+months, he might recover and begin to find out where he is. But six
+months hence he will have returned to America, fancying he has seen
+London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, and whatever other places
+his body has been hurried through, not his mind; for that, in the
+excitement and rapidity of his flight, has streamed behind him like
+the tail of a comet, light, attenuated, vapory, catching nothing,
+absorbing nothing.
+
+Occasionally this fever takes an abusive phase. He finds in England
+nothing to like, nothing to admire. Sometimes he wishes immediately to
+revolutionize the government. He is incensed at the cost of royalty.
+He sees on every side indications of political upheaval. Or he becomes
+culinarily disgusted. Because there are no buckwheat cakes, no codfish
+cakes, no hot bread, no pork and beans, no mammoth oysters, stewed,
+fried and roasted, he can find nothing fit to eat. The English
+cannot cook. Because he can find no noisy, clattering, dish-smashing
+restaurant, full of acrobatic waiters racing and balancing under
+immense piles of plates, and shouting jargon untranslatable,
+unintelligible and unpronounceable down into the lower kitchen, he
+cannot, cannot eat.
+
+PRENTICE MULFORD.
+
+
+
+
+FAREWELL.
+
+
+The occasion commemorated in the following verses--one of those
+festive meetings with which tender-hearted Philadelphians are wont to
+brace themselves up for sorrowful partings--called forth expressions
+of deep regret and cordial good wishes, in which many of our readers,
+we doubt not, will readily join:
+
+  If from my quivering lips in vain
+    The faltering accents strove to flow,
+  It was because my heart's deep pain
+    Bade tears be swift and utterance slow;
+  For in that moment rose the ghosts
+    Of pleasant hours in bygone years;
+  And your kind faces, O my hosts!
+    Showed blurred and dimly through my tears.
+
+  I could not tell you of the pride
+    That thrilled me in that parting hour:
+  Grief held command all undenied,
+    And only o'er my speech had power.
+  I found no words to tell the thoughts
+    That strove for utterance in my brain:
+  With gratitude my soul was fraught,
+    And yet I only spoke of pain.
+
+  O friends! 'tis you, and such as you,
+    That make this parting hard to bear!
+  Pass all things else my past life knew:
+    I scarcely heed--I do not care.
+  I lose in you the dearest part
+    Of pleasant time that here now ends:
+  Hand parts from hand, _not_ heart from heart,
+    And I must leave you, O my friends!
+
+  What can the future's fairest hours
+    Bring me to recompense for these?
+  Acquaintances spring like the flowers--
+    Friends are slow growth, like forest trees.
+  Come hope or gladness, what there will--
+    Days bright as sunshine after rain--
+  The past gave life's best blessings still:
+    We'll find no friends like these again.
+
+  I leave you in the dear old home
+    That once was mine--now mine no more:
+  Henceforth a stranger I must come
+    To haunts so well beloved of yore;
+  Yet if your faces turn to mine
+    The kindly smile I'm wont to see,
+  Not all, not all I must resign--
+    My lost home's light still shines for me!
+
+  Whatever chance or change be mine
+    In other climes, 'neath foreign skies,
+  Your love, your kindness, I shall hold
+    Dearest amid dear memories.
+  O eyes grown dim with falling tears!
+    O lips where Sorrow lays her spell!
+  The saddest task of all life's years
+    Is yours--to look and say farewell!
+
+  LUCY H. HOOPER.
+  AUGUSTIN'S, April 7, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES.
+
+
+Between the careers of Cavour and Thiers no sound parallel can easily
+be traced, but in their characters--or rather in their diplomatic
+methods and arts--there would seem to be some curious and almost
+ludicrous points of resemblance, if we may accept as true a sketch
+of the great Italian statesman made by M. Plattel, the author of
+"Causeries Franco-Italiennes," fifteen years ago. M. Plattel, who
+wrote from close personal observation, at that time described Count
+Cavour as being physically "M. Thiers magnified;" or, if you prefer,
+M. Thiers is the count viewed through the big end of an opera-glass.
+The count, says M. Plattel, "has the spectacles, and even a similar
+expression of finesse. When things take a serious turn, the count puts
+both hands in his pockets; and if you see him do that, expect to hear
+this threat: 'If you do not pass this bill, _signori deputati_, I
+consider you incapable of longer managing the affairs of the country:
+I have the honor of bidding you good-evening.' For (and this is a
+strange peculiarity) this first minister is never steadier than when
+in danger of falling; and his grand oratorical, or rather ministerial,
+figure of speech is to seize his hat and his cane, whereupon the
+chamber rises and begs M. de Cavour to sit down. M. de Cavour lets
+them plead a while, and then--he sits down again! Reading his speeches
+now in Paris, I can fancy the count with his hat by his side and his
+hand on the door-knob. Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb
+of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been
+gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!"
+It is with a very droll effect that a French paper has revived this
+curious description, _a propos_ of the perpetual repetition of the
+drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which
+the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably
+followed by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the
+other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again;
+and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort
+occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only _coup d'etat_
+to be feared from M. Thiers," said M. Dufaure in the Assembly, "is his
+withdrawal." It is, the quarreling and reconciliation of Horace and
+Lydia: "What if the door of the repudiated Lydia again open to me?"
+"Though you are stormier than blustering Adriatic, I should love to
+live with you," etc. Such is the billing and cooing, after quarrel,
+between the president and the Assembly. Still, it is clear that the
+puissant hat-and-cane argument must date back to Cavour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The recent proposition of some English writers to elevate a certain
+class of suicides to the rank of a legalized "institution," under the
+pleasant name of "euthanasia," suggests the inquiry whether, without
+any scientific vindication of the practice, there will not always be
+suicides enough in ordinary society. At any rate, however it may be in
+England, just across the Channel, in France, thousands of people every
+year break the "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," leaving the ills they
+have to "fly to others that they know not of." The official figures
+show that in a period of twenty-two years no less than 71,207 persons
+committed suicide in France. The causes were various--business
+embarrassments, domestic chagrins, the brutishness produced by liquor,
+poverty, insanity, the desire to put an end to physical suffering by
+"euthanasia," and so on; but they are pretty nearly all included in
+the "fardels" which Hamlet mentions, from the physical troubles of the
+"heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," up
+to the mental distress wrought by the "whips and scorns of time, the
+oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised
+love," and so on in the well-remembered catalogue. Perhaps the most
+interesting point in these statistics concerns the means employed for
+suicide. These are thus tabulated: Hanging, 24,536; drowning, 23,221;
+shooting, 10,197; asphyxia by charcoal fumes (a true Paris appliance),
+5587; various cutting instruments, 2871; plunging or jumping from an
+elevated place (an astonishing number), 2841; poison, 1500; sundry
+other methods, 454. Hanging and drowning are thus accountable for more
+than half the French suicides. The little stove of charcoal suggests
+itself as a remedy at hand to many a wretch without the means to buy
+a pistol or the nerve to use a knife. The cases of voluntary resort
+to poison are astonishingly few, but it must be remembered that the
+foregoing figures only embrace successful suicides, and antidotes to
+poison often come in season where the rope or the river would
+have made quick and fatal work. _La France_ notes, regarding these
+statistics, that their details show that men oftenest use pistols, and
+women oftenest try poison, in their attempts at suicide. What is more
+curious, each man is likely to employ an instrument familiar to him:
+thus, hunters and soldiers resort to the pistol, barbers trust
+the razor, shoemakers use the knife, engravers the graving-tool,
+washerwomen poison themselves with potash or Prussian blue; though,
+of course, these are only general rules, with a great many exceptions.
+And in Paris it is said that among all ranks and professions, and in
+both sexes, at least half of the suicides are by asphyxiation with
+charcoal. Surely in France one hardly needs to preach any doctrine of
+not patiently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
+A healthier and more inspiring morality would be that of the story of
+the baron of Grogzwig and his adventure with the "Genius of Despair
+and Suicide," as narrated in an episode of _Nicholas Nickleby_; for
+the stout baron, after thinking over his purpose of making a voluntary
+departure from this world, and finding he had no security of being any
+the better for going out of it, abandoned the plan, and adopted as a
+rule in all cases of melancholy to look at both sides of the question,
+and to apply a magnifying-glass to the better one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In Philadelphia, at least, where there is still a respect for age, the
+tidings will be received with respectful regret of the death of Nono,
+a noted pensionary of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, at the ripe age
+of more than a hundred years. To have achieved the celebrity of being
+the oldest inmate of that institution was no despicable distinction,
+but the venerable centenarian had other claims to honor. A native of
+the Marquesas Islands, he was brought by Bougainville in 1776 to
+the Royal Museum, afterward known as the Jardin des Plantes. It has
+frequently been alleged that parrots may live a hundred years:
+Nono has established the fact by living still longer. As he thus
+contributes an illustration to science, so surely he might point a
+general moral and adorn a historic tale. If Thackeray could discourse
+so wisely on "Some Carp at Sans Souci," the vicissitudes which this
+veteran Parisian witnessed in the French capital from 1776 to 1873,
+under two empires, two royal dynasties and three republics, might be
+worth a rhapsody. Nono seems to have been a well-preserved old parrot.
+Magnificent in youth, he attained literally a green old age, for his
+plumage was still fresh and thick. Very naturally, he had lost his
+houppe, and was almost totally bald. However, his eye was clear and
+bright enough to have read the finest print or followed the finest
+needlework; and it had the _narquois_, lightly skeptical look of those
+who have seen a great deal of life. In short, Nono was a stylish and
+eminently respectable old bird. That worthy person, Monsieur Chavreul,
+who treats the animals of the Jardin like a father, has stuffed
+and mounted the illustrious Nono as a testimonial of affection and
+respect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The connection between war and botany is, at first, not specially
+obvious, and yet a very clear bit of testimony to their relation was
+disclosed by the siege of Paris. Two naturalists have published a
+_Florula Obsidionalis_, which, as its name partly indicates, is a
+catalogue of the accidental flora of the late investment of Paris.
+They reckon in their list not less than one hundred and ninety species
+before unknown to the neighborhood of the French capital, whereof
+fifty-eight are leguminous (such as peas, beans, etc.), thirty-four
+are composite, thirty-two are _plantes grasses_, and sixty-six belong
+to other families. Almost all are to be found chiefly on the left bank
+of the Seine, though also discoverable at Neuilly and in the Bois de
+Boulogne. Of course, these new-comers are all accounted for as the
+produce of seeds brought by the German army. They will gradually die
+out; and yet some few may remain as permanent conquerors of the soil,
+since among the flora of Paris is still reckoned one plant whose seed
+was brought into France by some Russian forage-train in 1815.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As the impudence, dishonesty, laziness and rapacity of servants at
+watering-places have long been familiar subjects of satire, it is
+just to say a word on the other side in favor of some extreme
+Northern resorts. At the White Mountains, for example, the waiters and
+waitresses are of a better class than is generally met. Some of the
+young girls are farmers' daughters, who go to the hotels to see the
+fashions and earn a little pocket-money. The colored cook at one of
+the great houses teaches dancing during the winters. Not a few are
+school-teachers, others students at country academies, who pass their
+vacation in this way in order to earn enough to buy text-books or
+pay the winter's tuition. Many of them are more intelligent and well
+educated than some of the shoddies they wait upon. They are usually
+quicker in movement and of more retentive memory than the average
+American waiter; and though each has a great deal to do at times, yet
+even during the tremendous moment of dinner they contrive to find a
+few little intervals for harmless flirtations in the dining-room. They
+are for the most part well-mannered too, and if they talk to you of
+each other as "this lady" or "that gentleman," what is it more than
+some waiters do with far less reason? The New Hampshire villages
+become versed every summer in the latest imported fashions, thanks to
+the quick eyes of the hotel waitresses.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Osgood & Co.
+
+Mr. Taylor's muse has of late become very still-faced, decorous and
+mindful of the art-proprieties. Cautious is she, and there is perhaps
+nothing in this pastoral that will cause the grammarian to wince, or
+make the censorious rhetorician writhe in his judgment-seat with
+the sense that she is committing herself. Not such were the early
+attributes of the great itinerant's poetry. When he used to unsling
+his minstrel harp in the wilds of California or on the sunrise
+mountains of the Orient, there were plenty of false notes, plenty
+of youthful vivacities that overbore the strings and were heard as a
+sudden crack, and, withal, a good deal of young frank fire. Now there
+is much finish and the least possible suspicion of ennui. But the
+life-history of _Lars_ is worth reading. It is a calm procession of
+pictures, without pretence, except the slight pretence of classical
+correctness. The first part, which reflects Norwegian manners in a way
+reminding us more or less of the exquisite stories of Bjornsen, tells
+how two swains of Ulvik, Lars the hunter and Per the fisher, quarrel
+for love of Brita, and at a public wrestling decide the question by a
+combat, fighting with knives, in Norse fashion, while hooked to each
+other at the belt. They strip, _a la_ Heenan and Sayers. Mr. Taylor,
+who does not often come behind the occasion when he can get a human
+figure to describe statue-wise or under a studio light, is perhaps a
+trifle too Phidian in bringing out the good looks of his fish-eating
+gladiators:
+
+                       The low daylight clad
+  Their forms with awful fairness, beauty now
+  Of life, so warm and ripe and glorious, yet
+  So near the beauty terrible of Death.
+
+Lars, the victor, has all the ill-luck. His foe falls lifeless, his
+sweetheart calls him a murderer, and he flies from the law. Another
+scene quickly shows him crossing the broad ocean, as so many
+Norwegians and Swedes had crossed before him, and seeking the
+protection of Swedish forts on Delaware banks. Long, sad days pass on
+the ocean,
+
+                      Till shining fisher-sails
+  Came, stars of land that rose before the land;
+
+and soon he leaps to shore in New Sweden, only to find that the
+civilization he seeks has set like a sinking planet into the abiding
+enlightenment of another race and creed. Governor Printz's fortress
+on Tinicum isle is a ruin of yellow bricks: the wanderer strays up the
+broad stream
+
+  To where, upon her hill, fair Wilmington
+  Looks to the river over marshy weeds.
+  He saw the low brick church with stunted tower,
+  The portal-arches, ivied now and old,
+  And passed the gate: lo! there the ancient stones
+  Bore Norland names and dear familiar words!
+  It seemed the dead a comfort spake.
+
+The governor is a myth, the Swedes are dead, the Scandinavian tongues
+have been changed to English, and an English exactly conformed to King
+James's translation of the Scriptures. The first girl he speaks to
+checks him for addressing her with a civility:
+
+  "Nay," she said, "not _lady_! call me Ruth."
+
+With the father of this primitive Nausicaa, on Hockessin Farm, the
+wanderer abides as herdsman. Soon, under the propaganda of Ruth's
+soft eyes and the drowsy spell of the Delawarean society, he joins the
+peaceful sect amongst which he labors. It is easier, though, to
+change his plural pronouns to the scriptural _thou_ and _thee_ of King
+James's translators than to tame his heroic Viking blood, swift to
+boil into wrath at the show of oppression. Such an outburst leads to a
+quaint scene of acknowledgment and repentance, where lies
+
+  Up beyond the woods, at crossing-roads,
+  The heart of all, the ancient meeting-house.
+
+Lars, prayed over by the brethren, bursts forth in tears and
+supplications among the worshipers, and is received into full harmony
+with them:
+
+  So into joy revolved the doubtful year,
+  And, ere it closed, the gentle fold of Friends
+  Sheltered another member, even Lars....
+  And all the country-side assembled there
+  One winter Sabbath, when in snow and sky
+  The colors of transfiguration shone,
+  Within the meeting-house. There Ruth and Lars
+  Together sat upon the women's side;
+  And when the peace was perfect, they arose:
+  He took her by the hand, and spake these words,
+  As ordered: "In the presence of the Lord
+  And this assembly, by the hand I take
+  Ruth Mendenhall, and promise unto her,
+  Divine assistance blessing me, to be
+  A loving and a faithful husband, even
+  Till death shall separate us." Then spake Ruth
+  The like sweet words; and so the twain were one.
+
+It is not often that a liturgy has been translated into metre with
+less change of its form and substance.
+
+The imbedding of a raw Northern native in this lap of repose and in
+this transfiguring matrimonial alliance is the grand problem of the
+poem. What will Lars do, now that he is a man of peace and a Child of
+Light, with the burden of conscience? In America he is a saint and an
+apostle. In Europe he is known but as a proscribed murderer. The later
+scenes, where Lars, accompanied by his true and tender wife, meets his
+old love, his neighbors, and his rival restored to life, are of a more
+ambitious character than any that have preceded. The holy principles
+imbibed on the shores of Delaware are made to triumph, and Lars,
+dropping the sharp blade from his hand in the thronged arena whither
+he is forced once more, stands first as a laughing-stock, and then as
+an apostle, among his old neighbors. It is a position full of moral
+force, and we find ourselves--suddenly recovering in a degree from the
+calm view we had taken of the poem as a work of art--asking _how_ we
+should be so sensible of the grandeur of the situation if the poet by
+his skill had not brought out its peculiarity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A Lady of the Last Century. By Dr. Doran. London: Bentley.
+
+This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her
+surroundings. Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of
+Horace, "I have lived." "She never had a fool for an acquaintance,"
+says her biographer, "nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness." Her
+father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been
+settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott's
+friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich
+young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had
+a large family. His wife's mother married secondly Middleton, the
+biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter,
+Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual
+development. In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown
+amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age. During
+her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which
+wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she
+married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich,
+and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary's husband.
+
+Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant
+daughter of the duke of Kingston. Her husband was in every way
+estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how
+thoroughly she appreciated his character. They had only one child, who
+died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow
+the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who
+took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.
+
+A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent,
+received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery
+property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain
+very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high
+connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large
+house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became
+the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal
+card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into
+social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name
+of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More,
+Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up
+a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's
+well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members
+of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged
+repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After
+her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the
+management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which
+are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to
+Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and
+made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have
+appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them
+recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronte. Her
+principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent
+large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener
+"Capability Brown."
+
+She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years
+before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a
+then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as
+Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more
+splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for
+Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had
+been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing
+away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an
+affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps
+than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she
+played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true.
+
+The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association
+around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the
+trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the
+whole book--a serious drawback, more especially to American readers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the
+Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper &
+Brothers.
+
+Mr. Cushing has given another proof of the great capacity of some
+men to do very clever work, but to fail utterly in giving an adequate
+account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained
+by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted
+by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic
+negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the
+colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the
+Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the
+task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States.
+Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that
+may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a
+disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is
+loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in
+a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord
+chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have
+done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate
+as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an
+advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing
+the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives,
+now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that
+was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause
+for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle--"Western Orientalisms." The
+tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and
+rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise
+of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and
+lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives
+who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the
+bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens:
+"Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations"
+instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to,"
+"howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine
+scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such
+phrases without number.
+
+Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr.
+Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in
+discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the
+Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the
+Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground
+for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that
+negotiation, and will give the reading and reflecting public, both
+abroad and at home, a very unfavorable impression of the great task in
+which he played so important a part, and of the qualities of mind and
+temper he must have brought to it, since at this late day he finds
+no better impetus to the work of writing its history than unexplained
+anger at one of the members of the board before which Mr. Cushing
+argued the cause of his country, and helped to win it.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+The Drawing-Room Stage: A Series of Original Dramas, Comedies, Farces,
+and Entertainments for Amateur Theatricals and School Exhibitions. By
+George M. Baker. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
+
+Five Years in an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed, late
+Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third edition.
+Revised by the Author. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
+
+Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By the late C.A. Sainte-Beuve.
+With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston.
+Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Livingstone and his African Explorations: together with a Full Account
+of the Young, Stanley and Dawson Search Expeditions. New York: Adams,
+Victor & Co.
+
+The Mother's Register: Current Notes of the Health of Children. From
+the French of Professor J.B. Fonssagrines. New York: G.P. Putnam &
+Sons.
+
+Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. Translated from the
+French by J. M. Luyster. Illustrated. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+Scientific and Industrial Education: its Importance to our Country. By
+G.B. Stebbins. Detroit: Daily Post Printing Establishment.
+
+Never Again. By W.S. Mayo, M.D., author of "Kaloolah," "The Berber,"
+etc. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.
+
+The World-Priest. From the German of Leopold Schafer. By Charles T.
+Brooks. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+The Cuban Question in the Spanish Parliament. London: Press of the
+Anglo-American Times.
+
+Treason at Home: A Novel. By Mrs. Greenough. Philadelphia: T.B.
+Peterson & Brothers.
+
+Myths and Myth-Makers. By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. Boston: James R.
+Osgood & Co.
+
+An Account of the Sphynx at Mount Auburn. Illustrated. Boston: Little,
+Brown & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE ***
+
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