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+Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, 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, December 1878
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26945]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S, DECEMBER 1878 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Annie McGuire and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+  OF
+
+  _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+
+  DECEMBER, 1878.
+
+
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878,
+  by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the
+  Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+
+
+DANUBIAN DAYS.
+
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES AT PESTH.]
+
+
+If it were not for the people, the journey by steamer from Belgrade to
+Pesth would be rather unromantic. When the Servian capital is reached in
+ascending the great stream from Galatz and Rustchuk, the picturesque
+cliffs, the mighty forests, the moss-grown ruins overhanging the
+rushing waters, are all left behind. Belgrade is not very imposing. It
+lies along a low line of hills bordering the Sava and the Danube, and
+contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet
+creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name--for the
+city grouped around the fort was once called _Beograd_ ("white
+city")--now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon
+which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and
+have become so extravagantly vain in view of their exploits that their
+conceit is quite painful to contemplate. Yet it is impossible to avoid
+sympathizing to some extent with this little people, whose lot has been
+so hard and whose final emancipation has been so long in arriving. The
+intense affection which the Servian manifests for his native land is
+doubtless the result of the struggles and the sacrifices which he has
+been compelled to make in order to remain in possession of it. One day
+he has been threatened by the Austrian or the jealous and unreasonable
+Hungarian: another he has received news that the Turks were marching
+across his borders, burning, plundering and devastating. There is
+something peculiarly pathetic in the lot of these small Danubian states.
+Nearly every one of them has been the cause of combats in which its
+inhabitants have shed rivers of blood before they could obtain even a
+fragment of such liberty and peace as have long been the possessions of
+Switzerland and Belgium. It is not surprising that the small countries
+which once formed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious to grow larger
+and stronger by annexation of territory and consolidation of
+populations. They are tired of being feeble: it is not amusing. Servia
+once expected that she would be allowed to gain a considerable portion
+of Bosnia, her neighbor province, but the Austrians are there, and would
+speedily send forces to Belgrade if it were for a moment imagined that
+Prince Milan and his counsellors were still greedy for Serapevo and
+other fat towns of the beautiful Bosnian lands. Now and then, when a
+Servian burgher has had an extra flask of Negotin, he vapors about
+meeting the Austrians face to face and driving them into the Sava; but
+he never mentions it when he is in a normal condition.
+
+[Illustration: SOPHIA.]
+
+The country which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of
+Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes,
+and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It
+was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks
+should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had
+done everything that he could to make himself feared and loathed by the
+Servians. To this day, not far from one of the principal gates of the
+city, on the Pirot road, stands the "Skull Tower," in the existence of
+which, I suppose, an English Tory would refuse to believe, just as he
+denied his credence to the story of the atrocities at Batak. The four
+sides of this tower are completely covered, as with a barbarous mosaic,
+with the skulls of Servians slain by their oppressors in the great
+combat of 1809. The Turks placed here but a few of their trophies, for
+they slaughtered thousands, while the tower's sides could accommodate
+only nine hundred and fifty-two skulls. It is much to the credit of the
+Servians that when they took Nisch in 1877 they wreaked no vengeance on
+the Mussulman population, but simply compelled them to give up their
+arms, and informed them that they could return to their labors. The
+presence of the Servians at Nisch has already been productive of good:
+decent roads from that point to Sophia are already in process of
+construction, and the innumerable brigands who swarmed along the
+country-side have been banished or killed. Sophia still lies basking in
+the mellow sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed or improved. Nowhere
+else on the border-line of the Orient is there a town which so admirably
+illustrates the reckless and stupid negligence of the Turk. Sophia looks
+enchanting from a distance, but when one enters its narrow streets,
+choked with rubbish and filled with fetid smells, one is only too glad
+to retire hastily. It would take a quarter of a century to make Sophia
+clean. All round the city are scattered ancient tumuli filled with the
+remains of the former lords of the soil, and they are almost as
+attractive as the hovels in which live the people of to-day. What a
+desolate waste the Turk has been allowed to make of one of the finest
+countries in Europe! He must be thrust out before improvement can come
+in. Lamartine, who was one of the keenest observers that ever set foot
+in Turkey, truly said "that civilization, which is so fine in its proper
+place, would prove a mortal poison to Islamism. Civilization cannot live
+where the Turks are: it will wither away and perish more quickly
+whenever it is brought near them. With it, if you could acclimate it in
+Turkey, you could not make Europeans, you could not make Christians: you
+would simply unmake Turks."
+
+[Illustration: BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN.]
+
+The enemies of progress and of the "Christian dogs" are receding, and
+railways and sanitary improvements will come when they are gone.
+Belgrade was a wretched town when the Turks had it: now it is civilized.
+Its history is romantic and picturesque, although its buildings are not.
+Servia's legends and the actual recitals of the adventurous wars which
+have occurred within her limits would fill volumes. The White City has
+been famous ever since the Ottoman conquest. Its dominant position at
+the junction of two great rivers, at the frontier of Christian Europe,
+at a time when turbans were now and then seen in front of the walls of
+Vienna, gave it a supreme importance. The Turks exultingly named it "the
+Gate of the Holy War." Thence it was that they sallied forth on
+incursions through the fertile plains where now the Hungarian shepherd
+leads his flock and plays upon his wooden pipe, undisturbed by the
+bearded infidel. The citadel was fought over until its walls cracked
+beneath the successive blows of Christian and Mussulman. Suleiman the
+Lawgiver, the elector of Bavaria, Eugene of Savoy, have trod the
+ramparts which frown on the Danube's broad current. The Austrians have
+many memories of the old fortress: they received it in 1718 by the
+treaty of Passarowitz, but gave it up in 1749, to take it back again in
+1789. The treaty of Sistova--an infamy which postponed the liberation
+of the suffering peoples in Turkey-in-Europe for nearly a hundred
+years--compelled the Austrians once more to yield it, this time to the
+Turks. In this century how often has it been fought over--from the time
+of the heroic Kara George, the Servian liberator, to the bloody riots in
+our days which resulted in driving Mussulmans definitely from the
+territory!
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN.]
+
+Everywhere along the upper Servian banks of the Danube traces of the old
+epoch are disappearing. The national costume, which was graceful, and
+often very rich, is yielding before the prosaic--the ugly garments
+imported from Jewish tailoring establishments in Vienna and Pesth. The
+horseman with his sack-coat, baggy velvet trousers and slouch hat looks
+not unlike a rough rider along the shores of the Mississippi River. In
+the interior patriarchal costumes and customs are still preserved. On
+the Sava river-steamers the people from towns in the shadows of the
+primeval forests which still cover a large portion of the country are to
+be found, and they are good studies for an artist. The women, with
+golden ducats braided in their hair; the priests, with tall brimless
+hats and long yellow robes; the men, with round skull-caps, leathern
+girdles with knives in them, and waistcoats ornamented with hundreds of
+glittering buttons,--are all unconscious of the change which is creeping
+in by the Danube, and to which they will presently find themselves
+submitting. The railway will take away the lingering bits of romance
+from Servia; the lovely and lonely monasteries high among the grand
+peaks in the mountain-ranges will be visited by tourists from Paris, who
+will scrawl their names upon the very altars; and Belgrade will be rich
+in second-class caravanserais kept by Moses and Abraham. After the
+Austrians who have gone over into Bosnia will naturally follow a crowd
+of adventurers from Croatia and from the neighborhood of Pesth, and it
+would not be surprising should many of them find it for their interest
+to settle in Servia, although the government would probably endeavor to
+keep them out. Should the movement which Lord Beaconsfield is pleased to
+call the "Panslavic conspiracy" assume alarming proportions within a
+short time, the Servians would be in great danger of losing, for years
+at least, their autonomy.
+
+The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and
+one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted
+coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a
+gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of
+shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous
+raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the
+bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in
+transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian
+river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered
+with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian
+beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the
+neighborhood of the East. I had on one occasion, while a steamer was
+lying at Belgrade, time to observe the manners of the humbler sort of
+folk in a species of cabaret near the river-side and hard by the erratic
+structure known as the custom-house. There was a serious air upon the
+faces of the men which spoke well for their characters. Each one seemed
+independent, and to a certain extent careless, of his neighbor's
+opinion. It would have been impossible, without some knowledge of the
+history of the country, to have supposed that these people, or even
+their ancestors, had ever been oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor is
+there anywhere among the Danubian Slavs a tendency to the innocent and
+spontaneous jollity so common in some sections of Europe. The Servian
+takes life seriously. I was amused to see that each one of this numerous
+company of swineherds or farmers, who had evidently come in to Belgrade
+to market, drank his wine as if it were a duty, and on leaving saluted
+as seriously as if he were greeting a distinguished company gathered to
+do him honor. That such men are cowards, as the English would have us
+believe, is impossible; and in 1877 they showed that the slander was
+destitute of even the slightest foundation in fact.
+
+Morals in Belgrade among certain classes perhaps leave something to
+desire in the way of strictness; but the Danubian provinces are not
+supposed to be the abodes of all the virtues and graces. The Hungarians
+could not afford to throw stones at the Servians on the score of
+morality, and the Roumanians certainly would not venture to try the
+experiment. In the interior of Servia the population is pure, and the
+patriarchal manner in which the people live tends to preserve them so.
+There is as much difference between the sentiment in Belgrade and that
+in the provinces as would be found between Paris and a French rural
+district.
+
+But let us drop details concerning Servia, for the brave little country
+demands more serious attention than can be given to it in one or two
+brief articles. The boat which bears me away from the Servian capital
+has come hither from Semlin, the Austrian town on the other side of the
+Sava River. It is a jaunty and comfortable craft, as befits such vessels
+as afford Servians their only means of communication with the outer
+world. If any but Turks had been squatted in Bosnia there would have
+been many a smart little steamer running down the Sava and around up the
+Danube; but the baleful Mussulman has checked all enterprise wherever he
+has had any foothold. We go slowly, cleaving the dull-colored tide,
+gazing, as we sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the upper deck, out upon
+the few public institutions of Belgrade--the military college and the
+handsome road leading to the garden of Topschidere, where the
+Lilliputian court has its tiny summer residence. Sombre memories
+overhang this "Cannoneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where Michael, the
+son and successor of good Milosch as sovereign prince of the nation,
+perished by assassination in 1868. In a few minutes we are whisked round
+a corner, and a high wooded bluff conceals the White City from our view.
+
+The Servian women--and more especially those belonging to the lower
+classes--have a majesty and dignity which are very imposing. One is
+inclined at first to believe these are partially due to assumption, but
+he speedily discovers that such is not the case. Blanqui, the French
+revolutionist, who made a tour through Servia in 1840, has given the
+world a curious and interesting account of the conversations which he
+held with Servian women on the subject of the oppression from which the
+nation was suffering. Everywhere among the common people he found virile
+sentiments expressed by the women, and the princess Lionbitza, he said,
+was "the prey of a kind of holy fever." M. Blanqui described her as a
+woman fifty years old, with a martial, austere yet dreamy physiognomy,
+with strongly-marked features, a proud and sombre gaze, and her head
+crowned with superb gray hair braided and tied with red ribbon. "Ah!"
+said this woman to him, with an accent in her voice which startled him,
+"if all these men round about us here were not women, _or if they were
+women like me_, we should soon be free from our tormentors!" It was the
+fiery words of such women as this which awoke the Servian men from the
+lethargy into which they were falling after Kara George had exhausted
+himself in heroic efforts, and which sent them forth anew to fight for
+their liberties.
+
+[Illustration: THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE.]
+
+At night, when the moon is good enough to shine, the voyage up the
+river has charms, and tempts one to remain on deck all night, in spite
+of the sharp breezes which sweep across the stream. The harmonious
+accents of the gentle Servian tongue echo all round you: the song of
+the peasants grouped together, lying in a heap like cattle to keep
+warm, comes occasionally to your ears; and if there be anything
+disagreeable, it is the loud voices and brawling manners of some
+Austrian troopers on transfer. From time to time the boat slows her
+speed as she passes through lines or streets of floating mills
+anchored securely in the river. Each mill--a small house with sloping
+roof, and with so few windows that one wonders how the millers ever
+manage to see their grist--is built upon two boats. The musical hum
+of its great wheel is heard for a long distance, and warns one of the
+approach toward these pacific industries. The miller is usually on the
+lookout, and sometimes, when a large steamer is coming up, and he
+anticipates trouble from the "swell" which she may create, he may be
+seen madly gesticulating and dancing upon his narrow platform in a
+frenzy of anxiety for the fruits of his toil. A little village on a
+neck of land or beneath a grove shows where the wives and children of
+these millers live. The mills are a source of prosperity for thousands
+of humble folk, and of provocation to hurricanes of profanity on the
+part of the Austrian, Italian and Dalmatian captains who are compelled
+to pass them. Stealing through an aquatic town of this kind at
+midnight, with the millers all holding out their lanterns, with the
+steamer's bell ringing violently, and with rough voices crying out
+words of caution in at least four languages, produces a curious if not
+a comical effect on him who has the experience for the first time.
+
+[Illustration: FISHERMEN'S HUTS ON THE DANUBE.]
+
+Peaceable as the upper Danube shores look, Arcadian as seems the
+simplicity of their populations, the people are torn by contending
+passions, and are watched by the lynx-eyed authorities of two or three
+governments. The agents of the _Omladina_, the mysterious society which
+interests itself in the propagation of Pan-slavism, have numerous
+powerful stations in the Austrian towns, and do much to discontent the
+Slavic subjects of Francis Joseph with the rule of the Hapsburgs. There
+have also been instances of conspiracy against the Obrenovich dynasty,
+now in power in Servia, and these have frequently resulted in armed
+incursions from the Hungarian side of the stream to the other bank,
+where a warm reception was not long awaited. In the humblest hamlet
+there are brains hot with ambitious dreams daringly planning some scheme
+which is too audacious to be realized.
+
+The traveller can scarcely believe this when, as the boat stops at some
+little pier which is half buried under vines and blossoms, he sees the
+population indulging in an innocent festival with the aid of red and
+white wine, a few glasses of beer, and bread and cheese. Families
+mounted in huge yellow chariots drawn by horses ornamented with
+gayly-decorated harnesses, come rattling into town and get down before a
+weatherbeaten inn, the signboard above which testifies to respect and
+love for some emperor of long ago. Youths and maidens wander arm in arm
+by the foaming tide or sit in the little arbors crooning songs and
+clinking glasses. Officers strut about, calling each other loudly by
+their titles or responding to the sallies of those of their comrades who
+fill the after-deck of the steamer. The village mayor in a braided
+jacket, the wharfmaster in semi-military uniform, and the agent of the
+steamboat company, who appears to have a remarkable penchant for gold
+lace and buttons, render the throng still more motley. There is also, in
+nine cases out of ten, a band of tooting musicians, and as the boat
+moves away national Hungarian and Austrian airs are played. He would be
+indeed a surly fellow who should not lift his cap on these occasions,
+and he would be repaid for his obstinacy by the very blackest of looks.
+
+Carlowitz and Slankamen are two historic spots which an Hungarian, if he
+feels kindly disposed toward a stranger, will point out to him. The
+former is known to Americans by name only, as a rule, and that because
+they have seen it upon bottle-labels announcing excellent wine; but the
+town, with its ancient cathedral, its convents, and its "chapel of
+peace" built on the site of the structure in which was signed the noted
+peace of 1699, deserves a visit. Rumor says that the head-quarters of
+the Omladina are very near this town, so that the foreign visitor must
+not be astonished if the local police seem uncommonly solicitous for his
+welfare while he remains. At Slankamen in 1691 the illustrious margrave
+of Baden administered such a thrashing to the Turks that they fled in
+the greatest consternation, and it was long before they rallied again.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF MOHACZ.]
+
+Thus, threading in and out among the floating mills, pushing through
+reedy channels in the midst of which she narrowly escapes crushing the
+boats of fishers, and carefully avoiding the moving banks of sand which
+render navigation as difficult as on the Mississippi, the boat reaches
+Peterwardein, high on a mighty mass of rock, and Neusatz opposite,
+connected with its neighbor fortress-town by a bridge of boats. Although
+within the limits of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Neusatz is almost
+entirely Servian in aspect and population, and Peterwardein, which marks
+the military confines of Slavonia, has a large number of Servian
+inhabitants. It was the proximity and the earnestness in their cause of
+these people which induced the Hungarians to agree to the military
+occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. At one time the obstinate
+Magyars would have liked to refuse their adhesion to the decisions of
+the Berlin Congress, but they soon thought better of that. Peterwardein
+is the last really imposing object on the Danube before reaching Pesth.
+It is majestic and solemn, with its gloomy castle, its garrison which
+contains several thousand soldiers, and its prison of state. The
+remembrance that Peter the Hermit there put himself at the head of the
+army with which the Crusades were begun adds to the mysterious and
+powerful fascination of the place. I fancied that I could see the lean
+and fanatical priest preaching before the assembled thousands, hurling
+his words down upon them from some lofty pinnacle. No one can blame the
+worthy Peter for undertaking his mission if the infidels treated
+Christians in the Orient as badly then as they do to-day. Centuries
+after Peter slept in consecrated dust the Turks sat down before
+Peterwardein to besiege it, but they had only their labor for their
+pains, for Prince Eugene drove them away. This was in 1716. It seems
+hard to believe that a hostile force of Turks was powerful enough to
+wander about Christendom a little more than a century and a half ago.
+
+After passing Peterwardein and Neusatz the boat's course lies through
+the vast Hungarian plain, which reminds the American of some of the rich
+lands in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, lusty, crude, seemingly
+not of Europe, but rather of the extreme West or East. As far as the eye
+can reach on either hand stretch the level acres, dotted with herds of
+inquisitive swine, with horses wild and beautiful snorting and
+gambolling as they hear the boat's whistle, and peasants in white linen
+jackets and trousers and immense black woollen hats. Fishers by hundreds
+balance in their little skiffs on the small whirlpool of waves made by
+the steamer, and sing gayly. For a stretch of twenty miles the course
+may lie near an immense forest, where millions of stout trees stand in
+regular rows, where thousands of oaks drop acorns every year to fatten
+thousands upon thousands of pigs. Cattle stray in these woods, and
+sometimes the peasant-farmer has a veritable hunt before he can find his
+own. Afar in the wooded recesses of Slavonia many convents of the Greek
+religion are hidden. Their inmates lead lives which have little or no
+relation to anything in the nineteenth century. For them wars and rumors
+of wars, Russian aggression, Austrian annexation, conspiracies by Kara
+Georgewitch, Hungarian domination in the Cabinet at Vienna, and all such
+trivial matters, do not exist. The members of these religious
+communities are not like the more active members of the clergy of their
+Church, who unquestionably have much to do with promoting war and
+supporting it when it is in aid of their nationality and their religion.
+
+One of the most remarkable sights in this region is a herd of the noble
+"cattle of the steppes," the beasts in which every Hungarian takes so
+much pride. These cattle are superb creatures, and as they stand eying
+the passers-by one regrets that he has not more time in which to admire
+their exquisite white skins, their long symmetrical horns and their
+shapely limbs. They appear to be good-tempered, but it would not be wise
+to risk one's self on foot in their immediate neighborhood.
+
+As for the fishermen, some of them seem to prefer living on the water
+rather than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy borders of the Danube are
+not very healthy, and it is not astonishing that men do not care to make
+their homes on these low lands. There are several aquatic towns between
+Pesth and the point at which the Drava (or Drau), a noble river, empties
+its waters into the Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of huts which appear
+to spring from the bosom of the current, but as the steamer approaches
+one sees that these huts are built upon piles driven firmly into the
+river-bed, and between these singular habitations are other piles upon
+which nets are stretched. So the fisherman, without going a hundred
+yards from his own door, traps the wily denizens of the Danube, prepares
+them for market, and at night goes peacefully to sleep in his rough bed,
+lulled by the rushing of the strong current beneath him. I am bound to
+confess that the fishermen of Apatin impressed me as being rather
+rheumatic, but perhaps this was only a fancy.
+
+Besdan, with its low hills garnished with windmills and its shores lined
+with silvery willows, is the only other point of interest, save Mohacz,
+before reaching Pesth. Hour after hour the traveller sees the same
+panorama of steppes covered with swine, cattle and horses, with
+occasional farms--their outbuildings protected against brigands and
+future wars by stout walls--and with pools made by inundations of the
+impetuous Danube. Mohacz is celebrated for two tremendous battles in the
+past, and for a fine cathedral, a railway and a coaling-station at
+present. Louis II., king of Hungary, was there undone by Suleiman in
+1526; and there, a hundred and fifty years later, did the Turks come to
+sorrow by the efforts of the forces under Charles IV. of Lorraine.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE OF BUDA-PESTH.]
+
+Just as I was beginning to believe that the slow-going steamer on which
+I had embarked my fortunes was held back by enchantment--for we were
+half a day ascending the stream from Mohacz--we came in sight of a huge
+cliff almost inaccessible from one side, and a few minutes later could
+discern the towers of Buda and the mansions of Pesth. While nearing the
+landing-place and hastening hither and yon to look after various small
+bundles and boxes, I had occasion to address an Hungarian gentleman. In
+the course of some conversation which followed I remarked that Pesth
+seemed a thriving place, and that one would hardly have expected to find
+two such flourishing towns as Vienna and Pesth so near each other.
+
+"Oh," said he with a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he
+was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town,
+but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to his native
+city.
+
+Although I could not exactly agree with this extravagant estimate of the
+extent of Pesth, I could not deny that it was vastly superior to my idea
+of it. When one arrives there from the south-east, after many wanderings
+among semi-barbaric villages and little cities on the outskirts of
+civilization, he finds Pesth very impressive. The Hungarian shepherds
+and the boatmen who ply between the capital and tiny forts below fancy
+that it is the end of the world. They have vaguely heard of Vienna, but
+their patriotism is so intense and their round of life so circumscribed
+that they never succeed in forming a definite idea of its proportions or
+its location. Communication between the two chief towns of the
+Austria-Hungarian empire is also much less frequent than one would
+imagine. The Hungarians go but little to Vienna, even the members of the
+nobility preferring to consecrate their resources to the support of the
+splendors of their own city rather than to contribute them to the
+Austrian metropolis. Seven hours' ride in what the Austrians are bold
+enough to term an express-train covers the distance between Vienna and
+Pesth, yet there seems to be an abyss somewhere on the route which the
+inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a haughty determination not to submit
+to centralization, and content with their surroundings make the
+Hungarians sparing of intercourse with their Austrian neighbors. "We
+send them prime ministers, and now and then we allow them a glimpse of
+some of our beauties in one of their palaces, but the latter does not
+happen very often," once said an Hungarian friend to me.
+
+An American who should arrive in Pesth fancying that he was about to see
+a specimen of the dilapidated towns of "effete and decaying Europe"
+would find himself vastly mistaken. The beautiful and costly modern
+buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast
+river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial
+hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak
+of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it
+really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the
+extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises and
+the rapid increase of her population. Austria and Hungary were alike the
+prey of a feverish agitation which pervaded all classes. In a single day
+at Vienna as many as thirty gigantic stock companies were formed;
+hundreds of superb structures sprang up monthly; people who had been
+beggars but a few months before rode in carriages and bestowed gold by
+handfuls on whoever came first. The wind or some mysterious agency which
+no one could explain brought this financial pestilence to Pesth, where
+it raged until the _Krach_--the Crash, as the Germans very properly call
+it--came. After the extraordinary activity which had prevailed there
+came gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in America, business in Pesth
+and in Hungary generally is gradually assuming solidity and contains
+itself within proper bounds. The exciting period had one beneficial
+feature: it made Pesth a handsome city. There are no quays in Europe
+more substantial and elegant than those along the Danube in the
+Hungarian capital, and no hotels, churches and mansions more splendid
+than those fronting on these same quays. At eventide, when the whole
+population comes out for an airing and loiters by the parapets which
+overlook the broad rushing river, when innumerable lights gleam from the
+boats anchored on either bank, and when the sound of music and song is
+heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more
+animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted. Pesth is exceedingly
+proper and decorous as soon as the darkness has fallen, although I do
+remember to have seen a torchlight procession there during the
+Russo-Turkish war. The inhabitants were so enthusiastic over the arrival
+of a delegation of Mussulman students from Constantinople that they put
+ten thousand torches in line and marched until a late hour, thinking,
+perhaps, that the lurid light on the horizon might be seen as far as
+Vienna, and might serve as a warning to the Austrian government not to
+go too far in its sympathy with Russia.
+
+[Illustration: CITADEL OF BUDA]
+
+Buda-Pesth is the name by which the Hungarians know their capital, and
+Buda is by no means the least important portion of the city. It occupies
+the majestic and rugged hill directly opposite Pesth--a hill so steep
+that a tunnel containing cars propelled upward and downward by machinery
+has been arranged to render Buda easy of access. Where the hill slopes
+away southward there are various large villages crowded with Servians,
+Croatians and Low Hungarians, who huddle together in a rather
+uncivilized manner. A fortress where there were many famous fights and
+sieges in the times of the Turks occupies a summit a little higher than
+Buda, so that in case of insurrection a few hot shot could be dropped
+among the inhabitants. Curiously enough, however, there are thousands of
+loyal Austrians, German by birth, living in Buda--or Ofen, as the
+Teutons call it--whereas in Pesth, out of the two hundred thousand
+inhabitants, scarcely three thousand are of Austrian birth. As long as
+troops devoted to Francis Joseph hold Buda there is little chance for
+the citizens of Pesth to succeed in revolt. Standing on the terrace of
+the rare old palace on Buda's height, I looked down on Pesth with the
+same range of vision that I should have had in a balloon. Every quarter
+of the city would be fully exposed to an artillery fire from these
+gigantic hills.
+
+Buda is not rich in the modern improvements which render Pesth so
+noticeable. I found no difficulty in some of the nooks and corners of
+this quaint town in imagining myself back in the Middle Ages. Tottering
+churches, immensely tall houses overhanging yawning and precipitous
+alleys, markets set on little shelves in the mountain, hovels protesting
+against sliding down into the valley, whither they seemed inevitably
+doomed to go, succeeded one another in rapid panorama. Here were
+costume, theatrical effect, artistic grouping: it was like Ragusa,
+Spalatro and Sebenico. Old and young women sat on the ground in the
+markets, as our negroes do in Lynchburg in Virginia: they held up fruit
+and vegetables and shrieked out the prices in a dialect which seemed a
+compound of Hungarian and German. Austrian soldiers and Hungarian
+recruits, the former clad in brown jackets and blue hose, the latter in
+buff doublets and red trousers, and wearing feathers in their caps,
+marched and countermarched, apparently going nowhere in particular, but
+merely keeping up discipline by means of exercise.
+
+The emperor comes often to the fine palace on Buda hill, and sallies
+forth from it to hunt with some of the nobles on their immense estates.
+The empress is passionately fond of Hungary, and spends no small portion
+of her time there. The Hungarians receive this consideration from their
+sovereign lady as very natural, and speak of her as a person of great
+good sense. The German and Slavic citizens of Austria say that there are
+but two failings of which Her Imperial Majesty can be accused--she loves
+the Hungarians and she is too fond of horses. Nothing delights the
+citizens of Pesth so much as to find that the Slavs are annoyed, for
+there is no love lost between Slav and Magyar. A natural antipathy has
+been terribly increased by the fear on the part of Hungary that she may
+lose her influence in the composite empire one day, owing to the Slavic
+regeneration.
+
+[Illustration: MUSEUM AND SEAT OF THE DIET AT PESTH.]
+
+At Pesth they do not speak of the "beautiful blue Danube," because there
+the river ceases to be of that color, which Johann Strauss has so
+enthusiastically celebrated. But between Vienna and Pesth the blue is
+clearly perceptible, and the current is lovely even a few miles from the
+islands in the stream near the Hungarian capital. The Margarethen-Insel,
+which is but a short distance above Pesth, is a little paradise. It has
+been transformed by private munificence into a rich garden full of
+charming shaded nooks and rare plants and flowers. In the middle of this
+pleasure-ground are extensive bath-houses and mineral springs. Morning,
+noon and night gypsy bands make seductive music, and the notes of their
+melodies recall the strange lands far away down the stream--Roumania,
+the hills and valleys of the Banat and the savage Servian mountains.
+Along the river-side there are other resorts in which, in these days,
+when business has not yet entirely recovered from the _Krach_, there are
+multitudes of loungers. In midsummer no Hungarian need go farther than
+these baths of Pesth to secure rest and restore health. The Romans were
+so pleased with the baths in the neighborhood that they founded a colony
+on the site of Buda-Pesth, although they had no particular strategic
+reasons for doing so. As you sit in the pleasant shade you will probably
+hear the inspiring notes of the _Rakoczy_, the march of which the
+Hungarians are so passionately fond, which recalls the souvenirs of
+their revolutions and awakens a kind of holy exaltation in their hearts.
+The _Rakoczy_ has been often enough fantastically described: some hear
+in it the gallop of horsemen, the clashing of arms, the songs of women
+and the cries of wounded men. A clever Frenchman has even written two
+columns of analysis of the march, and he found in it nearly as much as
+there is in Goethe's _Faust_. These harmless fancies are of little use
+in aiding to a veritable understanding of the wonderful march. It
+suffices to say that one cannot hear it played, even by a strolling band
+of gypsies, without a strange fluttering of the heart, an excitement and
+an enthusiasm which are beyond one's control. A nation with such a
+_Marseillaise_ as the _Rakoczy_ certainly ought to go far in time of
+war.
+
+The Hungarians are a martial people, and are fond of reciting their
+exploits. Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, in a variegated
+English which will provoke your smiles, all the incidents of the
+Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 and 1849--how the Austrians
+were driven across the great bridge over the Danube, etc.--with infinite
+gusto. The humblest wharf-laborer takes a vital interest in the welfare
+of his country, even if he is not intelligent enough to know from what
+quarter hostilities might be expected. There is a flash in an
+Hungarian's eye when he speaks of the events of 1848 which is equalled
+only by the lightnings evoked from his glance by the magic echoes of the
+_Rakoczy_.
+
+The peasantry round about Pesth, and the poor wretches, Slavic and
+Hungarian, who work on the streets, seem in sad plight. A friend one day
+called my attention to a number of old women, most miserably clad,
+barefooted and bent with age and infirmities, carrying stones and
+bricks to a new building. The spectacle was enough to make one's heart
+bleed, but my friend assured me that the old women were happy, and that
+they lived on bread and an occasional onion, with a little water for
+drink or sometimes a glass of adulterated white wine. The men working
+with them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the
+poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews,
+the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting
+that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The
+utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the
+lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as the Austrian
+servants do. Toward strangers Hungarians of all ranks are unfailingly
+civil and courteous. A simple letter of introduction will procure one a
+host of attentions which he would not have the right to expect in
+England or America.
+
+The mound of earth on the bank of the Danube near the quays of Pesth
+represents the soil of every Hungarian province; and from that mound the
+emperor of Austria, when he was crowned king of Hungary, was forced to
+shake his sword against the four quarters of the globe, thus signifying
+his intention of defending the country from any attack whatsoever. Thus
+far he has succeeded in doing it, and in keeping on good terms with the
+legislative bodies of the country, without whose co-operation he cannot
+exercise his supreme authority. These bodies are a chamber of peers,
+recruited from the prelates, counts and such aristocrats as sit there by
+right of birth, and a second chamber, which is composed of four hundred
+and thirteen deputies elected from as many districts for the term of
+three years, and thirty-four delegates from the autonomous province of
+Croatia-Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is guarded by a
+frosty-looking servitor in an extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket and
+hose profusely covered with brilliant braids, and varnished jack-boots.
+The deputies when in session are quiet, orderly and dignified, save
+when the word "Russian" is pronounced. It is a word which arouses all
+their hatred.
+
+Buda-Pesth is about to undergo a formidable series of improvements
+notwithstanding the illusions which were dispersed by the _Krach_. One
+of the most conspicuous and charming municipal displays in the Paris
+Exposition is the group of charts and plans sent from Pesth. The patriot
+Deak is to have a colossal monument; the quays are to be rendered more
+substantial against inundations than they are at present; and many
+massive public edifices are to be erected. The Danube is often unruly,
+and once nearly destroyed the city of Pesth, also doing much damage
+along the slopes of Buda. If an inundation should come within the next
+two or three years millions of florins' worth of property might be swept
+away in a single night. The opera, the principal halls of assembly and
+the hotels of Pesth will challenge comparison with those of any town of
+two hundred thousand population in the world; and the Grand Hotel
+Hungaria has few equals in cities of the largest size.
+
+[Illustration: SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH.]
+
+The Hungarians are a handsome race, and the people of Pesth and vicinity
+have especial claims to attention for their beauty. The men of the
+middle and upper classes are tall, slender, graceful, and their features
+are exceedingly regular and pleasing. The women are so renowned that a
+description of their charms is scarcely necessary. Beautiful as are the
+Viennese ladies in their early youth, they cannot rival their
+fellow-subjects of Hungary. The Austrian woman grows fat, matronly and
+rather coarse as she matures: the Hungarian lady of forty is still as
+willowy, graceful and capricious as she was at twenty. The
+peasant-women, poor things! are ugly, because they work from morning
+till night in the vineyards, toiling until their backs are broken. The
+wine which the beauties drink costs their humbler sisters their
+life-blood, their grace, their happiness. The sunshine of a thousand
+existences is imprisoned in the vintages of Pressburg and Carlowitz.
+Poor, homely toilers in the fields! Poor human creatures transformed
+into beasts of burden! The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to
+emancipate these struggling women and show them the way to better
+things.
+
+EDWARD KING.
+
+
+
+
+"FOR PERCIVAL."
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII ENGAGEMENTS--HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and
+summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and
+flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the
+bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft.
+Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new
+life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown
+long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air
+and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to
+him that he had awakened from a dream.
+
+He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to
+call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He
+could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost
+intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came
+from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could
+work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he
+could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for
+business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him
+so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his
+examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in
+such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a
+small share in the business,--what would be the end of this most
+improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in
+Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he
+loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could
+offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond
+or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him
+to something better.
+
+Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he
+sincerely respected--I might almost say he admired--his own folly. He
+had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom
+of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence
+for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his
+own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to
+reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful
+career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the
+extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted
+with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly
+understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very
+likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not
+understood.
+
+And now, having conquered in the race, could he go back and ask for the
+help which he had once refused? Hardly. The life in which we first gain
+independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself--when we
+gather in our harvest--may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will
+spoil the palate for all other flavors. They will seem sickly sweet
+after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater
+desire for a career of any kind than he had felt a year earlier when he
+talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what
+was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his
+earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then,
+"Brackenhill," dismissing the impossible idea with a smile even as he
+uttered it. Asked what would content him--since we can hardly hope to
+draw the highest prize in our life's lottery--he would answer now as
+then--to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the
+Continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky;
+wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might
+always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his
+manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace
+in the land where one is born), to drink the wine of the country, to
+read many poems in verse, in prose, in the scenery around; and through
+it all, from first to last, to "dream deliciously."
+
+And yet, even while he felt that his desire was unchanged, he knew that
+there was a fresh obstacle between him and its fulfilment. Heaven help
+him! had there not been enough before? Was it needful that it should
+become clear to him that nowhere on earth could he find the warmth and
+the sunlight for which he pined while a certain pair of sad eyes grew
+ever sadder and sadder looking out on the murky sky, the smoke, the
+dust, the busy industry of Brenthill? How could he go away? Even these
+quiet walks of his had pain mixed with their pleasure when he thought
+that there was no such liberty for Judith Lisle. Not for her the
+cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the
+elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon
+the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung
+ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their
+loveliness the more he felt her loss.
+
+He had no walk on Sunday mornings. A few months earlier Mr. Clifton of
+St. Sylvester's would have claimed him as a convert. Now he was equally
+devout, but it was the evangelical minister, Mr. Bradbury of Christ
+Church, who saw him week after week a regular attendant, undaunted and
+sleepless though the sermon should be divided into seven heads. Mr.
+Bradbury preached terribly, in a voice which sometimes died mournfully
+away or hissed in a melodramatic whisper, and then rose suddenly in a
+threatening cry. Miss Macgregor sat in front of a gallery and looked
+down on the top of her pastor's head. The double row of little boys who
+were marshalled at her side grew drowsy in the hot weather, blinked
+feebly as the discourse progressed, and nodded at the congregation. Now
+and then Mr. Bradbury, who was only, as it were, at arm's length, turned
+a little, looked up and flung a red-hot denunciation into the front
+seats of the gallery. The little boys woke up, heard what was most
+likely in store for them on the last day, and sat with eyes wide open
+dismally surveying the prospect. But presently the next boy fidgeted, or
+a spider let himself down from the roof, or a bird flew past the window,
+or a slanting ray of sunlight revealed a multitude of dusty dancing
+motes, and the little lads forgot Mr. Bradbury, who had forgotten them
+and was busy with somebody else. It might be with the pope: Mr. Bradbury
+was fond of providing for the pope. Or perhaps he was wasting his energy
+on Percival Thorne, who sat with his head thrown back and his upward
+glance just missing the preacher, and was quite undisturbed by his
+appeals.
+
+Judith Lisle had accepted the offer of a situation at Miss Macgregor's
+with the expectation of being worked to death, only hoping, as she told
+Mrs. Barton, that the process would be slow. The hope would not have
+been at all an unreasonable one if she had undertaken her task in the
+days when she had Bertie to work for. She could have lived through much
+when she lived for Bertie. But, losing her brother, the mainspring of
+her life seemed broken. One would have said that she had leaned on him,
+not he on her, she drooped so pitifully now he was gone. Even Miss
+Macgregor noticed that Miss Lisle was delicate, and expressed her strong
+disapprobation of such a state of affairs. Mrs. Barton thought Judith
+looking very far from well, suggested tonics, and began to consider
+whether she might ask her to go to them for her summer holidays. But to
+Percival's eyes there was a change from week to week, and he watched her
+with terror in his heart. Judith had grown curiously younger during the
+last few months. There had been something of a mother's tenderness in
+her love for Bertie, which made her appear more than her real age and
+gave decision and stateliness to her manner. Now that she was alone, she
+was only a girl, silent and shrinking, needing all her strength to
+suffer and hide her sorrow. Percival knew that each Sunday, as soon as
+she had taken her place, she would look downward to the pew where he
+always sat to ascertain if he were there. For a moment he would meet
+that quiet gaze, lucid, uncomplaining, but very sad. Then her eyes would
+be turned to her book or to the little boys who sat near her, or it
+might even be to Mr. Bradbury. The long service would begin, go on, come
+to an end. But before she left her place her glance would meet his once
+more, as if in gentle farewell until another Sunday should come round.
+Percival would not for worlds have failed at that trysting-place, but he
+cursed his helplessness. Could he do nothing for Judith but cheer her
+through Mr. Bradbury's sermons?
+
+About this time he used deliberately to indulge in an impossible fancy.
+His imagination dwelt on their two lives, cramped, dwarfed and fettered.
+He had lost his freedom, but it seemed to him that Judith, burdened once
+with riches, and later with poverty, never had been free. He looked
+forward, and saw nothing in the future but a struggle for existence
+which might be prolonged through years of labor and sordid care. Why
+were they bound to endure this? Why could they not give up all for just
+a few days of happiness? Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of
+beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty.
+Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content
+that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and
+inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would
+be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they
+had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy
+what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant
+against a black background of death. How free they would be to spend all
+they possessed without a thought for the future! Nothing could pall upon
+them, and he pictured to himself how every sense would be quickened, how
+passion would gather strength and tenderness, during those brief days,
+and rise to its noblest height to meet the end. His imagination revelled
+in the minute details of the picture, adding one by one a thousand
+touches of beauty and joy till the dream was lifelike in its loveliness.
+He could pass in a moment from his commonplace world to this enchanted
+life with Judith. Living alone, and half starving himself in the attempt
+to pay his debts, he was in a fit state to see visions and dream dreams.
+But they only made his present life more distasteful to him, and the
+more he dreamed of Judith the more he felt that he had nothing to offer
+her.
+
+He was summoned abruptly from his fairyland one night by the arrival of
+Mrs. Bryant. She made her appearance rather suddenly, and sat down on a
+chair by the door to have a little chat with her lodger. "I came back
+this afternoon," she said. "I didn't tell Lydia: where was the use of
+bothering about writing to her? Besides, I could just have a look round,
+and see how Emma'd done the work while I was away, and how things had
+gone on altogether." She nodded her rusty black cap confidentially at
+Percival. It was sprinkled with bugles, which caught the light of his
+solitary candle.
+
+"I hope you found all right," he said.
+
+"Pretty well," Mrs. Bryant allowed. "It's a mercy when there's no
+illness nor anything of that kind, though, if you'll excuse my saying
+it, Mr. Thorne, you ain't looking as well yourself as I should have
+liked to see you."
+
+"Oh, I am all right, thank you," said Percival.
+
+Mrs. Bryant shook her head. The different movement brought out quite a
+different effect of glancing bugles. "Young people should be careful of
+their health," was her profound remark.
+
+"I assure you there's nothing the matter with me."
+
+"Well, well! we'll hope not," she answered, "though you certainly do
+look altered, Mr. Thorne, through being thinner in the face and darker
+under the eyes."
+
+Percival smiled impatiently.
+
+"What was I saying?" Mrs. Bryant continued. "Oh yes--that there was a
+many mercies to be thankful for. To find the house all right, and the
+times and times I've dreamed of fire and the engines not to be had, and
+woke up shaking so as you'd hardly believe it! And I don't really think
+that I've gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia
+had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not
+safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round,
+I'd mention it to my sister."
+
+Percival sighed briefly, probably pitying the sister. "I think Miss
+Bryant has been very careful in fastening everything," he said.
+
+"Well, it does seem so, and very thankful I am. And as I always say when
+I go out, 'Waste I _must_ expect, and waste I _do_ expect,' but it's a
+mercy when there's no thieving."
+
+"Things will hardly go on quite the same when you are not here to look
+after them, Mrs. Bryant."
+
+"No: how should they?" the landlady acquiesced. "Young heads ain't like
+old ones, as I said one evening to my sister when Smith was by. 'Young
+heads ain't like old ones,' said I. 'Why, no,' said Smith: 'they're a
+deal prettier.' I told him he ought to have done thinking of such
+things. And so he ought--a man of his age! But that's what the young men
+mostly think of, ain't it, Mr. Thorne? Though it's the old heads make
+the best housekeepers, I think, when there's a lot of lodgers to look
+after."
+
+"Very likely," said Percival.
+
+"I dare say you think there'd be fine times for the young men lodgers if
+it wasn't for the old heads. And I don't blame you, Mr. Thorne: it's
+only natural, and what we must expect in growing old. And if anything
+could make one grow old before one's time, and live two years in one, so
+to speak, I do think it's letting lodgings."
+
+Percival expressed himself as not surprised to hear it, though very
+sorry that lodgers were so injurious to her health.
+
+"There's my drawing-room empty now, and two bedrooms," Mrs. Bryant
+continued. "Not but what I've had an offer for it this very afternoon,
+since coming back. But it doesn't do to be too hasty. Respectable
+parties who pay regular," she nodded a little at Percival as if to point
+the compliment, "are the parties for me."
+
+"Of course," he said.
+
+"A queer business that of young Mr. Lisle's, wasn't it?" she went on. "I
+should say it was about time that Miss Crawford did shut up, if she
+couldn't manage her young ladies better. I sent my Lydia to a
+boarding-school once, but it was one of a different kind to that. Pretty
+goings on there were at Standon Square, I'll be bound, if we only knew
+the truth. But as far as this goes there ain't no great harm done, that
+I can see. He hasn't done badly for himself, and I dare say they'll be
+very comfortable. She might have picked a worse--I will say that--for he
+was always a pleasant-spoken young gentleman, and good-looking too,
+though that's not a thing to set much store by. And they do say he had
+seen better times."
+
+She paused. Percival murmured something which was quite unintelligible,
+but it served to start her off again, apparently under the impression
+that she had heard a remark of some kind.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. And as I was saying to Lydia--The coolness of them
+both! banns and all regular! But there now! I'm talking and talking,
+forgetting that you were in the thick of it. You knew all about it, I've
+no doubt, and finely you and he must have laughed in your sleeves--"
+
+"I knew nothing about it, Mrs. Bryant--nothing."
+
+Mrs. Bryant smiled cunningly and nodded at him again. But it was an
+oblique nod this time, and there was a sidelong look to match it.
+Percival felt as if he were suffering from an aggravated form of
+nightmare.
+
+"No, no: I dare say you didn't. At any rate, you won't let out if you
+did: why should you? It's a great thing to hold one's tongue, Mr.
+Thorne; and I ought to know, for I've found the advantage of being
+naturally a silent woman. And I don't say but what you are wise."
+
+"I knew nothing," he repeated doggedly.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose it was any the worse for anybody who _did_ know,"
+said Mrs. Bryant. "And though, of course, Miss Lisle lost her situation
+through it, I dare say she finds it quite made up to her."
+
+"Not at all," said Percival shortly. The conversation was becoming
+intolerable.
+
+"Oh, you may depend upon it she does," said Mrs. Bryant. "How should a
+gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all
+the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the
+world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking
+to Lydia."
+
+Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too
+intimate a knowledge of Judith's feelings and position, and he could not
+listen in silence. "I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant," he said, in
+a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive
+ear. Even his landlady perceived that the subject was not a welcome one.
+
+"Well, well!" she said. "It doesn't matter, and I'll only wish you as
+good luck as Mr. Lisle; for I'm sure you deserve a young lady with a
+little bit of money as well as he did; and no reason why you shouldn't
+look to find one, one of these fine days."
+
+"No, Mrs. Bryant, I sha'n't copy Mr. Lisle."
+
+"Ah, you've something else in your eye, I can see, and perhaps one might
+make a guess as to a name. Well, people must manage those things their
+own way, and interfering mostly does harm, I take it. And I'll wish you
+luck, anyhow."
+
+"I don't think there's any occasion for your good wishes," said
+Percival. "Thank you all the same."
+
+"Not but what I'm sorry to lose Mr. and Miss Lisle," Mrs. Bryant
+continued, as if that were the natural end of her previous sentence,
+"for they paid for everything most regular."
+
+"I hope these people who want to come may do the same," said Percival.
+Though he knew that he ran the risk of hearing all that Mrs. Bryant
+could tell him about their condition and prospects, he felt he could
+endure anything that would turn the conversation from the Lisles and
+himself.
+
+But there was a different train of ideas in Mrs. Bryant's mind. "And, by
+the way," she said, "I think we've some little accounts to settle
+together, Mr. Thorne." Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that
+she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared
+had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it.
+Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the
+table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He
+stooped over his hoard--a meagre little hoard this time--counting what
+he had to give her.
+
+Mrs. Bryant began to hunt in her purse for a receipt stamp. "It's a
+pleasure to have to do with a gentleman who is always so regular," she
+said with an approving smile.
+
+Percival, who was steadying a little pile of coin on the sloping desk,
+felt a strong desire to tell her the state of affairs while he stooped
+in the shadow with his face turned away. Precisely because he felt this
+desire he drew himself up to his full height, walked to the table,
+looked straight into her eyes and said, "Not so very regular this time,
+Mrs. Bryant."
+
+She stepped back with a perplexed and questioning expression, but she
+understood that something was wrong, and the worn face fell suddenly,
+deepening a multitude of melancholy wrinkles. He laid the money before
+her: "That's just half of what I owe you: I think you'll find I have
+counted it all right."
+
+"Half? But where's the other half, Mr. Thorne?"
+
+"Well, I must earn the other half, Mrs. Bryant. You shall have it as
+soon as I get it."
+
+She looked up at him. "You've got to earn it?" she repeated. Her tone
+would have been more appropriate if Percival had said he must steal it.
+There was a pause: Mrs. Bryant's lean hand closed over the money. "I
+don't understand this, Mr. Thorne--I don't understand it at all."
+
+"It is very simple," he replied. "According to your wishes, I kept the
+rent for you, but during your absence there was a sudden call upon me
+for money, and I could not refuse to advance it. I regret it exceedingly
+if it puts you to inconvenience. I had hoped to have made it all right
+before you returned, but I have not had time. I can only promise you
+that you shall be paid all that I can put by each week till I have
+cleared off my debt."
+
+"Oh, that's all very fine," said Mrs. Bryant. "But I don't think much of
+promises."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it," he answered gravely.
+
+She looked hard at him, and said: "I did think you were quite the
+gentleman, Mr. Thorne. I didn't think you'd have served me so."
+
+"No," said Percival. "I assure you I'm very sorry. If I could explain
+the whole affair to you, you would see that I am not to blame. But,
+unluckily, I can't."
+
+"Oh, I don't want any explanations: I wouldn't give a thank-you for a
+cartload of 'em. Nobody ever is to blame who has the explaining of a
+thing, if it's ever so rascally a job."
+
+"I am very sorry," he repeated. "But I can only say that you shall be
+paid."
+
+"Oh, I dare say! Look here, Mr. Thorne: I've heard that sort of thing
+scores of times. There's always been a sudden call for money; it's
+always something that never happened before, and it isn't ever to happen
+again; and it's always going to be paid back at once, but there's not
+one in a hundred who does pay it. Once you begin that sort of thing--"
+
+"You'll find me that hundredth one," said Percival.
+
+"Oh yes. To hear them talk you'd say each one was one in a thousand, at
+least. But I'd like you to know that though I'm a widow woman I'm not to
+be robbed and put upon."
+
+"Mrs. Bryant"--Percival's strong voice silenced her querulous tones--"no
+one wants to rob you. Please to remember that it was entirely of your
+own free-will that you trusted me with the money."
+
+"More fool I!" Mrs. Bryant ejaculated.
+
+"It was to oblige you that I took charge of it."
+
+"And a pretty mess I've made of it! It had better have gone so as to be
+some pleasure to my own flesh and blood, instead of your spending it in
+some way you're ashamed to own."
+
+"If you had been here to receive it, it would have been ready for you,"
+Percival went on, ignoring her last speech. "As it is, it has waited all
+these weeks for you. It isn't unreasonable that it should wait a little
+longer for me."
+
+She muttered something to the effect that there was justice to be had,
+though he didn't seem to think it.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, "there's the
+county court or something of that kind. By all means go to the county
+court if you like. But I see no occasion for discussing the matter any
+more beforehand."
+
+His calmness had its effect upon her. She didn't want any
+unpleasantness, she said.
+
+"Neither do I," he replied: "I do not see why there need be any. If I
+live you will be paid, and that before very long. If I should happen to
+die first, I have a friend who will settle my affairs for me, and you
+will be no loser."
+
+Mrs. Bryant suggested that it might be pleasanter for all parties if Mr.
+Thorne were to apply to his friend at once. She thought very likely
+there were little bills about in the town--gentlemen very often had
+little bills--and if there were any difficulties--gentlemen so often got
+into difficulties--it was so much better to have things settled and make
+a fresh start. She had no doubt that Mr. Lisle would be very willing.
+
+"Mr. Lisle!" Percival exclaimed. "Do you suppose for one moment I should
+ask Mr. Lisle?"
+
+Startled at his vehemence, Mrs. Bryant begged pardon, and substituted
+"the gentleman" for "Mr. Lisle."
+
+"Thank you, no," said Percival. "I prefer to manage my own affairs in my
+own way. If I live I will not apply to any one. But if I must go to my
+grave owing five or six weeks' rent to one or other of you, I assure you
+most solemnly, Mrs. Bryant, that I will owe it to my friend."
+
+The storm had subsided into subdued grumblings. Their purport was,
+apparently, that Mrs. Bryant liked lodgers who paid regular, and as for
+those who didn't, they would have to leave, and she wished them to know
+it.
+
+"Does that mean that you wish me to go?" the young man demanded with the
+readiness which was too much for his landlady. "I'll go to-night if you
+like. Do you wish it?" There was an air of such promptitude about him as
+he spoke that Mrs. Bryant half expected to see him vanish then and
+there. She had by no means made up her mind that she did wish to lose a
+lodger who had been so entirely satisfactory up to that time. And she
+preferred to keep her debtor within reach; so she drew back a little and
+qualified what she had said.
+
+"Very well," said Percival, "just as you please."
+
+Mrs. Bryant only hoped it wouldn't occur again. The tempest of her
+wrath showed fearful symptoms of dissolving in a shower of tears. "You
+don't know what work I have to make both ends meet, Mr. Thorne," she
+said, "nor how hard it is to get one's own, let alone keeping it. I do
+assure you, Mr. Thorne, me and Lydia might go in silks every day of our
+lives, and needn't so much as soil our fingers with the work of the
+house, if we had all we rightly should have. But there are folks who
+call themselves honest who don't think any harm of taking a widow
+woman's rooms and getting behindhand with the rent, running up an
+account for milk and vegetables and the like by the week together; and
+there's the bell ringing all day, as you may say, with the bills coming
+in, and one's almost driven out of one's wits with the worry of it all,
+let alone the loss, which is hard to bear. Oh, I do hope, Mr. Thorne,
+that it won't occur again!"
+
+"It isn't very likely," said Percival, privately thinking that suicide
+would be preferable to an existence in which such interviews with his
+landlady should be of frequent occurrence. Pity, irritation, disgust,
+pride and humiliation made up a state of feeling which was overshadowed
+by a horrible fear that Mrs. Bryant would begin to weep before he could
+get rid of her. He watched her with ever-increasing uneasiness while she
+attempted to give him a receipt for the money he had paid. She began by
+wiping her spectacles, but her hand trembled so much that she let them
+fall, and she, Percival and the candle were all on the floor together,
+assisting one another in the search for them. The rusty cap was
+perilously near the flame more than once, which was a cause of fresh
+anxiety on his part. And when she was once more established at the
+table, writing a word or two and then wiping her eyes, it was
+distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had
+brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table,
+had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at
+least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two
+minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant's damp
+pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to
+her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural
+disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at
+last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and
+Percival's heart beat high as he received the completed document.
+
+And then--Mrs. Bryant laid down the pen, took off her spectacles, shook
+her pocket handkerchief and deliberately burst into tears.
+
+Percival was in despair. Of course he knew perfectly well that he was
+not a heartless brute, but equally of course he felt that he must be a
+heartless brute as he stood by while Mrs. Bryant wept copiously. Of
+course he begged her to calm herself, and of course a long-drawn sob was
+her only answer. All at once there was a knock at the door. "Come in,"
+said Percival, feeling that matters could not possibly be worse. It
+opened, and Lydia stood on the threshold, staring at the pair in much
+surprise.
+
+"Well, I never!" she said; and turning toward Percival she eyed him
+suspiciously, as if she thought he might have been knocking the old lady
+about. "And pray what may be the meaning of this?"
+
+"Mrs. Bryant isn't quite herself this evening, I am afraid," said
+Percival, feeling that his reply was very feeble. "And we have had a
+little business to settle which was not quite satisfactory."
+
+At the word "business" Lydia stepped forward, and her surprise gave
+place to an expression of half incredulous amusement--Percival would
+almost have said of delight.
+
+"What! ain't the money all right?" she said. "You don't say so! Well,
+ma, you _have_ been clever this time, haven't you? Oh I suppose you
+thought I didn't know what you were after when you were so careful about
+not bothering me with the accounts? Lor! I knew fast enough. Don't you
+feel proud of yourself for having managed it so well?"
+
+Mrs. Bryant wept. Percival, not having a word to say, preserved a
+dignified silence.
+
+"Come along, ma: I dare say Mr. Thorne has had about enough of this,"
+Lydia went on, coolly examining the paper which lay on the table. She
+arrived at the total. "Oh that's it, is it? Well, I like that, I do!
+Some people are so clever, ain't they? So wonderfully sharp they can't
+trust their own belongings! I do like that! Come along, ma." And Lydia
+seconded her summons with such energetic action that it seemed to
+Percival that she absolutely swept the old lady out of the room, and
+that the wet handkerchief, the rusty black gown and the bugle-sprinkled
+head-dress vanished in a whirlwind, with a sound of shrill laughter on
+the stairs.
+
+For a moment his heart leapt with a sudden sense of relief and freedom,
+but only for a moment. Then he flung himself into his arm-chair, utterly
+dejected and sickened.
+
+Should he be subject to this kind of thing all his life long? If he
+should chance to be ill and unable to work, how could he live for any
+length of time on his paltry savings? And debt would mean _this_! He
+need not even be ill. He remembered how he broke his arm once when he
+was a lad. Suppose he broke his arm now--a bit of orange-peel in the
+street might do it--or suppose he hurt the hand with which he wrote?
+
+And this was the life which he might ask Judith to share with him! She
+might endure Mrs. Bryant's scolding and Lydia's laughter, and pinch and
+save as he was forced to do, and grow weary and careworn and sick at
+heart. No, God forbid! And yet--and yet--was she not enduring as bad or
+worse in that hateful school?
+
+Oh for his dream! One week of life and love, and then swift exit from a
+hideous world, where Mrs. Bryant and Miss Macgregor and Lydia and all
+his other nightmares might do their worst and fight their hardest in
+their ugly struggle for existence!
+
+Percival had achieved something of a victory in his encounter with his
+landlady. His manner had been calm and fairly easy, and from first to
+last she had been more conscious of his calmness than Percival was
+himself. She had been silenced, not coaxed and flattered as she often
+was by unfortunate lodgers whose ready money ran short. Indeed, she had
+been defied, and when she recovered herself a little she declared that
+she had never seen any one so stuck up as Mr. Thorne. This was unkind,
+after he had gone down on his knees to look for her spectacles.
+
+But if Percival had conquered, his was but a barren victory. He fancied
+that an unwonted tone of deference crept into his voice when he gave his
+orders. He was afraid of Mrs. Bryant. He faced Lydia bravely, but he
+winced in secret at the recollection of her laughter. He very nearly
+starved himself lest mother or daughter should be able to say, "Mr.
+Thorne might have remembered his debts before he ordered this or that."
+He had paid Lisle's bill at Mr. Robinson's, but he could not forget his
+own, and he walked past the house daily with his head high, feeling
+himself a miserable coward.
+
+There was a draper's shop close to it, and as he went by one day he saw
+a little pony chaise at the door. A girl of twelve or thirteen sat in it
+listlessly holding the reins and looking up and down the street. It was
+a great field-day for the Brenthill volunteers, and their band came
+round a corner not a dozen yards away and suddenly struck up a
+triumphant march. The pony, although as quiet a little creature as you
+could easily find, was startled. If it had been a wooden rocking-horse
+it might not have minded, but any greater sensibility must have received
+a shock. The girl uttered a cry of alarm, but there was no cause for it.
+Percival, who was close at hand, stepped to the pony's head, a lady
+rushed out of the shop, the band went by in a tempest of martial music,
+a crowd of boys and girls filled the roadway and disappeared as quickly
+as they came. It was all over in a minute. Percival, who was coaxing the
+pony as he stood, was warmly thanked.
+
+"There is nothing to thank me for," he said. "That band was enough to
+frighten anything, but the pony seems a gentle little thing."
+
+"So it is," the lady replied. "But you see, the driver was very
+inexperienced, and we really are very much obliged to you, Mr. Thorne."
+
+He looked at her in blank amazement. Had some one from his former life
+suddenly arisen to claim acquaintance with him? He glanced from her to
+the girl, but recognized neither. "You know me?" he said.
+
+She smiled: "You don't know me, I dare say. I am Mrs. Barton. I saw you
+one day when I was just coming away after calling on Miss Lisle." She
+watched the hero of her romance as she spoke. His dark face lighted up
+suddenly.
+
+"I have often heard Miss Lisle speak of you and of your kindness," he
+said. "Do you ever see her now?"
+
+"Oh yes. She comes to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday
+afternoon.--We couldn't do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?" The
+girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread her face.
+
+"I had no idea she still came to you. Do you know how she gets on at
+Miss Macgregor's?" he asked eagerly. "Is she well? I saw her at church
+one day, and I thought she was pale."
+
+"She says she is well," Mrs. Barton replied. "But I am not very fond of
+Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long." A shopman
+came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins.
+"I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her," she said as with a bow
+and cordial smile she drove off.
+
+It was Monday, and Percival's mind was speedily made up. He would see
+Judith Lisle on Wednesday.
+
+Tuesday was a remarkably long day, but Wednesday came at last, and he
+obtained permission to leave the office earlier than usual. He knew the
+street in which Mrs. Barton lived, and had taken some trouble to
+ascertain the number, so that he could stroll to and fro at a safe
+distance, commanding a view of the door.
+
+He had time to study the contents of a milliner's window: it was the
+only shop near at hand, and even that pretended not to be a shop, but
+rather a private house, where some one had accidentally left a bonnet or
+two, a few sprays of artificial flowers and an old lady's cap in the
+front room. He had abundant leisure to watch No. 51 taking in a supply
+of coals, and No. 63 sending away a piano. He sauntered to and fro so
+long, with a careless assumption of unconsciousness how time was
+passing, that a stupid young policeman perceived that he was not an
+ordinary passer-by. Astonished and delighted at his own penetration, he
+began to saunter and watch him, trying to make out which house he
+intended to favor with a midnight visit. Percival saw quite a procession
+of babies in perambulators being wheeled home by their nurses after
+their afternoon airing, and he discovered that the nurse at No. 57 had a
+flirtation with a soldier. But at last the door of No. 69 opened, a slim
+figure came down the steps, and he started to meet it, leisurely, but
+with a sudden decision and purpose in his walk. The young policeman saw
+the meeting: the whole affair became clear to him--why, he had done that
+sort of thing himself--and he hurried off rather indignantly, feeling
+that he had wasted his time, and that the supposed burglar had not
+behaved at all handsomely.
+
+And Percival went forward and held out his hand to Judith, but found
+that even the most commonplace greeting stuck in his throat somehow. She
+looked quickly up at him, but she too was silent, and he walked a few
+steps by her side before he said, "I did not know what day you were
+going away."
+
+The rest of the conversation followed in a swift interchange of question
+and reply, as if to make up for that pause.
+
+"No, but I thought I should be sure to have a chance of saying
+good-bye."
+
+"And I was out. I was very sorry when I came home and found that you
+were gone. But since we have met again, it doesn't matter now, does it?"
+he said with a smile. "How do you get on at Miss Macgregor's?"
+
+"Oh, very well," she answered. "It will do for the present."
+
+"And Miss Crawford?"
+
+"She will not see me nor hear from me. She is ill and low-spirited, and
+Mrs. Barton tells me that a niece has come to look after her."
+
+"Isn't that rather a good thing?"
+
+"No: I don't like it. I saw one or two of those nieces--there are seven
+of them--great vulgar, managing women. I can't bear to think of my dear
+little Miss Crawford being bullied and nursed by Miss Price. She
+couldn't endure them, I know, only she was so fond of their mother."
+
+Percival changed the subject: "So you go to Mrs. Barton's still? I
+didn't know that till last Monday."
+
+"When you rescued Janie from imminent peril. Oh, I have heard," said
+Judith with a smile.
+
+"Please to describe me as risking my own life in the act. It would be a
+pity not to make me heroic while you are about it."
+
+"Janie would readily believe it. She measures her danger by her terror,
+which was great. But she is a dear, good child, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to go there every week!"
+
+"Ah! Then you are not happy at Miss Macgregor's?"
+
+"Well, not very. But it might be much worse. And I am mercenary enough
+to think about the money I earn at Mrs. Barton's," said Judith. "I don't
+mind telling you now that Bertie left two or three little bills unpaid
+when he went away, and I was very anxious about them. But, luckily, they
+were small."
+
+"You don't mind telling me now. Are they paid, then?"
+
+"Yes, and I have not heard of any more."
+
+"You paid them out of your earnings?"
+
+"Yes. You understand me, don't you, Mr. Thorne? Bertie and I were
+together then, and I could not take Emmeline's money to pay our debts."
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+"And I had saved a little. It is all right now, since they are all paid.
+I fancied there would be some more to come in, but it seems not, so I
+have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich."
+
+It struck Percival that Judith had managed better than he had. "Do you
+ever hear from him?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Mr. Nash has forgiven them."
+
+"Already?"
+
+Judith nodded: "He has, though I thought he never would. Bertie
+understood him better."
+
+(The truth was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of
+purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was
+anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And
+Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on
+his own level.)
+
+"He has forgiven them," Percival repeated with a smile. "Well, Bertie is
+a lucky fellow."
+
+"So is my father lucky, if that is luck."
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"Yes. He has written to me and to my aunt Lisle--at Rookleigh, you know.
+He has taken another name, and it seems he is getting on and making
+money: _he_ wanted to send me some too. And my aunt is angry with me
+because I would not go to her. She has given me two months to make up my
+mind in."
+
+"And you will not go?"
+
+"I cannot leave Brenthill," said Judith. "She is more than half inclined
+to forgive Bertie too. So I am alone; and yet I am right." She uttered
+the last words with lingering sadness.
+
+"No doubt," Percival answered. They were walking slowly through a quiet
+back street, with a blank wall on one side. "Still, it is hard," he
+said.
+
+There was something so simple and tender in his tone that Judith looked
+up and met his eyes. She might have read his words in them even if he
+had not spoken. "Don't pity me, Mr. Thorne," she said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, because--I hardly know why. I can't stand it when any one is kind
+to me, or sorry for me, sometimes at Mrs. Barton's. I don't know how to
+bear it. But it does not matter much, for I get braver and braver when
+people are hard and cold. I really don't mind that half as much as you
+would think, so you see you needn't pity me. In fact, you mustn't."
+
+"Indeed, I think I must," said Percival. "More than before."
+
+"No, no," she answered, hurriedly. "Don't say it, don't look it, don't
+even let me think you do it in your heart. Tell me about yourself. You
+listen to me, you ask about me, but you say nothing of what you are
+doing."
+
+"Working." There was a moment's hesitation. "And dreaming," he added.
+
+"But you have been ill?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"You have not been ill? Then you are ill. What makes you so pale?"
+
+He laughed: "Am I pale?"
+
+"And you look tired."
+
+"My work is wearisome sometimes."
+
+"More so than it was?" she questioned anxiously. "You used not to look
+so tired."
+
+"Don't you think that a wearisome thing must grow more wearisome merely
+by going on?"
+
+"But is that all? Isn't there anything else the matter?"
+
+"Perhaps there is," he allowed. "There are little worries of course, but
+shall I tell you what is the great thing that is the matter with me?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"I miss you, Judith."
+
+The color spread over her face like a rosy dawn. Her eyes were fixed on
+the pavement, and yet they looked as if they caught a glimpse of Eden.
+But Percival could not see that. "You miss me?" she said.
+
+"Yes." He had forgotten his hesitation and despair. He had outstripped
+them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a
+glad sense of victory and freedom. "Must I miss you always?" he said.
+"Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome
+then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long
+to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to
+offer you? But will you come?"
+
+She looked up at him: "Do you really want me, or is it that you are
+sorry for me and want to help me? Are you sure it isn't that? We Lisles
+have done you harm enough: I won't do you a worse wrong still."
+
+"You will do me the worst wrong of all if you let such fears and fancies
+stand between you and me," said Percival. "Do you not know that I love
+you? You must decide as your own heart tells you. But don't doubt me."
+
+She laid her hand lightly on his arm: "Forgive me, Percival."
+
+And so those two passed together into the Eden which she had seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+HOW THE SUN ROSE IN GLADNESS, AND SET IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF
+DEATH.
+
+
+The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had
+dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant
+beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The
+preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and
+cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of
+blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the
+clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds
+were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a
+headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to
+herself, "Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!"
+
+She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been
+flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless,
+joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the
+sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a
+glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last
+one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with
+her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and
+knocked with might and main at her brother's door: "Walter! Walter!
+wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn't rain! It is a
+_lovely_ morning! Oh, Walter!"
+
+Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half
+after three, and was aware of the fact.
+
+Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to
+discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields.
+The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom,
+made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was,
+added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the
+effect that it was a fine day.
+
+Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he
+inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.
+
+Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and
+about six miles from Latimer's Court. Sissy Langton had said one day
+that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it.
+Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and
+vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This
+Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was
+nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous
+afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council
+composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent
+to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most
+extraordinary manner since luncheon.
+
+The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late
+that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the
+barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it
+underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger
+brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the
+village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and
+much laughter.
+
+"It will rain," said Walter: "it will certainly rain. I thought it was
+very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything now. We must just wait
+and see what happens."
+
+And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day
+in a thousand, a very queen of days.
+
+The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the
+quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and
+laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton,
+and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she
+had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might
+have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not
+have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant,
+though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were
+intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above
+the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of
+Fothergill's head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so
+frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the
+captain ought to be shot.
+
+Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it,
+close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the
+Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them
+as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered
+shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of
+old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet
+fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the
+very heart of summer-time.
+
+"A place to recollect and dream of on a November day," said Fothergill.
+
+"Oh, don't talk of November now! I hate it."
+
+"I don't want November, I assure you," he replied. "Why cannot this last
+for ever?"
+
+"The weather?"
+
+"Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that
+it was a fine day?"
+
+"What, the place too?" said Sissy. "It is beautiful, but I think you
+would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill."
+
+"Do you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which
+seemed to draw hers to meet them. "Try me and see which will be tired
+first." And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: "Couldn't
+you be content with Ashendale?"
+
+"For always? I don't think I could--not for all my life."
+
+"Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find," said Fothergill. "And
+how charming it must be!"
+
+"If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.
+
+"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not _one_! Won't you hope we may
+both find it?"
+
+"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
+hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
+the others.
+
+Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
+Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
+his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
+himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
+curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
+and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
+affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
+To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
+went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
+old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
+when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
+little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
+The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
+were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
+Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
+unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
+and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
+readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
+to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
+was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
+hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
+nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
+People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
+into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
+unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
+as an afterthought about the whole affair.
+
+Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
+For--thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
+clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself--it was not
+possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
+been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll--no! Therefore she used the one
+cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He
+remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own,
+and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the
+thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy's part,
+till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the
+existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean?
+It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield,
+clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness--seeking safety
+in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power,
+and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect
+him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss
+Langton's equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was
+a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)
+
+When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little
+Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of
+wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who
+had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.
+
+A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy's eye. "Why, Edie, what have
+you got there?" she said. "Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did
+you find it?"
+
+"In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at
+the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I get you some?"
+
+"No: I'll get some," exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy's feet.
+"Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know."
+
+Sissy arched her brows.
+
+"She has so much more confidence in me," Archie explained. "Please give
+me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it's like."
+
+"My confidence is rather misplaced, I'm afraid, if you don't know what
+you are going to look for."
+
+"Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct
+which will take me straight to it."
+
+"Dear me! It hasn't any smell, you know," said Sissy with perfect
+gravity.
+
+"Oh, how cruel!" said Carroll, "withering up my delicate feelings with
+thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d'ye-call-it--sympathy--will
+tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But
+I'll have that leaf all the same, please."
+
+"And it might be as well to know where to look for it."
+
+"We found it in the ruins--in the wall of the refectory," said
+Hardwicke.
+
+Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, "Oh, I know! That's where
+the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
+the time."
+
+"What a bore!" some one suggested.
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
+bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
+might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
+alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"
+
+"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
+broken bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
+the full benefit of your opinions."
+
+"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
+"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"
+
+"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
+picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
+examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
+you call maiden-hair?"
+
+"What should you call it?"
+
+"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden--hair, indeed! Why, I can see
+some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
+this? _You_ can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
+the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
+ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
+and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine--oh, don't move your
+head!--and looks like a golden glory--"
+
+"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."
+
+"--And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."
+
+"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."
+
+"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
+Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think--remembering that
+I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
+beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
+voyage--don't you think--"
+
+"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
+of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."
+
+"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
+with it all?"
+
+"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."
+
+"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
+do with mine if you gave it me."
+
+"Oh, but I could tell you that."
+
+"Tell me, then."
+
+"You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you
+would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look
+business-like. Besides, you couldn't possibly forget. And a few months
+hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady--I don't
+know where you are going--and you would find the little packet in your
+desk, and wonder who gave it to you."
+
+"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the
+turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and
+sat up again. "There _was_ a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for
+the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or
+three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help
+me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have
+such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and
+I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself,
+'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm
+sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I
+consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I
+can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have
+sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd
+had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't."
+
+"You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do
+you always mention it when you ask--"
+
+"Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought _you_ would take it as it was
+meant--as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose
+it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I _couldn't_
+tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much
+higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up
+with anybody else in my mind?"
+
+"She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair
+too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?"
+
+"Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but
+you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll
+look for this green stuff."
+
+Fothergill smiled, but Latimer's handsome face flushed. He had made a
+dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing
+pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty,
+head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer's Court and
+Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
+Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
+they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
+strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
+knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
+child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
+especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
+who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
+held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
+even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
+ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
+what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
+it _because_ it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
+as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
+sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
+of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
+bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
+full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
+he.
+
+But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
+had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
+danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
+not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
+Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
+spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.
+
+"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
+refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
+what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
+all!"
+
+"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
+hadn't had enough to eat."
+
+"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
+sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
+smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
+be the chapel."
+
+Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
+never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
+into this place."
+
+"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
+they were just alike?"
+
+"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here
+if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And,
+laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when
+she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side
+directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this
+morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place
+better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh,
+Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"
+
+"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy:
+"it would stay up there a good long time."
+
+There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked
+down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his
+eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.
+
+"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a
+great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he
+called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"
+
+She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face,
+her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched
+hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which
+slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself
+with an effort. There was blank space before him--and what below?
+
+Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid,
+and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a
+minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass--a yard away from that
+which he dared not touch--saying pitifully, "Miss Langton! Oh, won't you
+speak to me, Miss Langton?"
+
+He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken
+doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and
+the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made
+Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had
+heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank
+bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin's
+aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the
+unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes
+were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw
+his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her--O God!--or only
+on her dress?
+
+Fothergill's features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the
+horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a
+moment's hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf,
+resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the
+tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face.
+Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.
+
+"Water!" said Fothergill. "Where's Anderson?" (Anderson was the young
+doctor.) "Not here?"
+
+"He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn," cried Edith suddenly: "I saw
+him." Hardwicke darted off.
+
+"Curse him! Playing the fool when he's wanted more than he ever will be
+again.--Mrs. Latimer!"
+
+Edith rushed away to find her mother.
+
+Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his
+disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.
+
+Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on
+which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the
+staring group, he stopped aghast. "Good God!" he panted, "what has
+happened?"
+
+Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.
+
+Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: "What has
+happened?"
+
+A hoarse voice spoke from the background: "She fell." Archie Carroll had
+risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed
+to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill's eyes, and with a
+half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his
+face.
+
+"Fothergill! is she much hurt?" cried Latimer. "Is it serious?"
+
+The other did not look up. "I cannot tell," he said, "but I believe she
+is killed."
+
+Latimer uttered a cry: "No! no! For God's sake don't say that! It can't
+be!"
+
+Fothergill made no answer.
+
+"It isn't possible!" said Walter. But his glance measured the height of
+the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words
+died on his lips.
+
+"Is Anderson never coming?" said some one else. Another messenger
+hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him.
+All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away
+with a movement as of horror.
+
+The last runner returned: "Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly:
+I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs.
+Latimer."
+
+[Illustration: "FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?"--Page 682.]
+
+Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. "Here is
+mamma," she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings,
+and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only
+answer, and the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping
+head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all
+arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first
+thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they
+were arranging this Edith felt two hands pressed lightly on her
+shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.
+
+"Hush!" he said: "do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her
+to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for
+Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs.
+Middleton. You understand?" he added, for the child was looking at him
+with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"
+
+"Not if anything you and I can do will save her--will she, Edith?" and
+Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who
+saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the
+gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one--a lady's horse, a
+chestnut--and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek
+for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum
+go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his
+terrible errand.
+
+Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was
+helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet
+secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him.
+Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she
+could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short
+distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering
+group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll
+lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy,
+rose darkly above him--too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He
+sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the
+turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting
+there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one
+hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the
+crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass,
+every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The
+breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot
+stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there
+was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite.
+Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel
+stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him
+from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing
+by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain
+did he leave the spot.
+
+By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by,
+her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at
+Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the
+innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would
+not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by
+conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be
+called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter
+felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he
+had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he
+had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that
+she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.
+
+Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow
+of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the
+path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin.
+Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was
+obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How
+is she?" he said at last.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.
+
+Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more
+strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said
+with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime
+if you lived a thousand years."
+
+"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"
+
+"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have
+happened if I had been there?"
+
+"They said that wall--" the young fellow began.
+
+"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole
+place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."
+
+Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"
+
+"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at
+the rectory. No more of this."
+
+Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill
+retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the
+shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where
+Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious.
+From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a
+senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she
+was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope--a
+hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed
+it.
+
+His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl--cared for
+her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring--and he
+felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment
+doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but
+Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over.
+Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who
+robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer
+no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury
+was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a
+bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter
+who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.
+
+And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would
+hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best
+chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or
+that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing,
+but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been
+before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been
+something higher and missed it. That was all.
+
+Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that
+inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had
+moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little
+hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was
+certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she
+said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot
+stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused,
+protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't
+know--" His voice suddenly gave way.
+
+"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood,
+and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
+you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
+Hardwicke has gone for her."
+
+This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
+with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
+of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
+and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
+hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
+turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.
+
+He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
+sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
+back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
+horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
+eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
+nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though,
+unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
+their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
+life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
+the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
+terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
+the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
+Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
+should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
+a hopeless hell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THROUGH THE NIGHT.
+
+
+The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon
+the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll
+raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring
+out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly
+to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the
+doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and
+then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then
+at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When
+they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had
+been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on
+his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the
+faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs. Middleton's heart as
+she passed him. To Archie, just then, the whole universe was _his_
+agony, and there was no room for more.
+
+Ten minutes later came Dr. Grey's brougham. The doctor, as he jumped
+out, told his man to wait. He went from the gate to the house more
+hurriedly than Mrs. Middleton, and his anxiety was more marked, but he
+found time to look round as he went with keen eyes, which rested for an
+instant on the young sailor, though he lay half hidden by the bushes.
+He too vanished, as the others had vanished.
+
+About an hour later he came out again, and Fothergill followed him. The
+doctor started when he encountered his eager eyes. Fothergill demanded
+his opinion. He began some of the usual speeches in which men wrap up
+the ghastly word "death" in such disguise that it can hardly be
+recognized.
+
+The soldier cut him short: "Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey."
+
+The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.
+
+"Danger--yes," said Fothergill, "but is there any hope? I am not a
+fool--I sha'n't go in and scare the women: is there any hope?"
+
+The answer was written on the doctor's face. He had known Sissy Langton
+from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his
+head, and murmured something about "even if there were no other injury,
+the spine--"
+
+Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with
+an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with
+which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear
+sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's
+will."
+
+"God's will! God's will! Are you sure it isn't the devil's?" said
+Fothergill. "It seems more like it. If you think it is God's will, you
+may persuade yourself it's yours, for aught I know. But I'm not such a
+damned hypocrite as to make believe it's mine."
+
+And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face
+and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the
+farmhouse.
+
+So Sissy's doom was spoken--to linger a few hours, more or less, in
+helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously,
+was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much
+to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old
+lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, "I fell."
+
+"Yes, my darling, I know," Aunt Harriet said.
+
+"Can I go home?" Sissy asked after a pause.
+
+"No, dear, you must not think of it: you mustn't ask to go home."
+
+"I thought not," said Sissy.
+
+Mrs. Middleton asked her if she felt much pain.
+
+"I don't know," she said, and closed her eyes.
+
+Later, Henry Hardwicke sent in a message, and the old lady came out to
+speak to him. He was standing by an open casement in the passage,
+looking out at the sunset through the orchard boughs. "What is it,
+Harry?" she said.
+
+He started and turned round: "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Middleton, but I
+thought in case you wanted to send any telegrams--if--if--I mean I
+thought you might want to send some, and there is not very much time."
+
+She put her hand to her head. "I ought to, oughtn't I?" she said. "Who
+should be sent for?"
+
+"Mr. Hammond?" Hardwicke questioned doubtfully.
+
+Something like relief or pleasure lighted her sad eyes: "Yes, yes! send
+for Godfrey Hammond. He will come." She was about to leave him, but the
+young fellow stepped forward: "Mrs. Middleton"--was it the clear red
+light from the window that suddenly flushed his face?--"Mrs. Middleton,
+shall I send for Mr. Percival Thorne?"
+
+She stopped, looking strangely at him: something in his voice surprised
+her. "For Percival?" she said.
+
+"May I? I think he ought to come." The hot color was burning on his
+cheeks. What right had he to betray the secret which he believed he had
+discovered? And yet could he stand by and not speak for her when she had
+so little time in which to speak for herself?
+
+"Is it for his sake," said Mrs. Middleton, "or is it that you think--?
+Well, let it be so: send for Percival. Yes," she added, "perhaps I have
+misunderstood. Yes, send at once for Percival."
+
+"I'll go," said Harry, hurrying down the passage. "The message shall be
+sent off at once. I'll take it to Fordborough."
+
+"Must you go yourself?" Mrs. Middleton raised her voice a little as he
+moved away.
+
+"No: let me go," said Captain Fothergill, turning the farther corner: "I
+am going to Fordborough. What is it? I will take it. Mrs. Middleton, you
+will let me be your messenger?"
+
+"You are very good," she said.--"Harry, you will write--I can't. Oh, I
+must go back." And she vanished, leaving the two men face to face.
+
+"I've no telegraph-forms," said Harry after a pause. "If you would take
+the paper to my father, he will send the messages."
+
+Fothergill nodded silently, and went out to make ready for his journey.
+Hardwicke followed him, and stood in the porch pencilling on the back of
+an old letter. When Fothergill had given his orders he walked up to
+Carroll, touched the lad's shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and
+stood away. "Come," he said.
+
+Archie raised himself from the ground and stumbled to his feet: "Come?
+where?"
+
+"To Fordborough."
+
+The boy started and stepped back. He looked at the farmhouse, he looked
+at his cousin. "I'll come afterward," he faltered.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Fothergill. "I'm going now, and of course you go with
+me."
+
+Archie shrank away, keeping his eyes fixed, as if in a kind of
+fascination, on his cousin's terrible eyes. The idea of going back alone
+with Raymond was awful to him. "No, I can't come, Ray--indeed I can't,"
+he said. "I'll walk: I'd much rather--I would indeed."
+
+"What for?" said Fothergill. "You are doing no good here. Do you know I
+have a message to take? I can't be kept waiting. Don't be a fool," he
+said in a lower but not less imperative voice.
+
+Archie glanced despairingly round. Hardwicke came forward with the paper
+in his outstretched hand: "Leave him here, Captain Fothergill. I dare
+say I shall go to the inn in the village, and he may go with me. He can
+take you the earliest news to-morrow morning."
+
+Archie looked breathlessly from one to the other. "As you please," said
+Fothergill, and strode off without another word.
+
+The boy tried to say something in the way of thanks. "Oh, it's nothing,"
+Hardwicke replied. "You won't care what sort of quarters they may turn
+out to be, I know." And he went back to the house with a little shrug of
+his shoulders at the idea of having young Carroll tied to him in this
+fashion. He did not want the boy, but Hardwicke could never help
+sacrificing himself.
+
+So Archie went to the gate and watched his cousin ride away, a slim
+black figure on his black horse against the burning sky. Fothergill
+never turned his head. Where was the use of looking back? He was intent
+only on his errand, and when that piece of paper should have been
+delivered into Mr. Hardwicke's hands the last link between Sissy Langton
+and himself would be broken. There would be no further service to
+render. Fothergill did not know that the message he carried was to
+summon his rival, but it would have made no difference in his feelings
+if he had. Nothing made any difference now.
+
+Mrs. Middleton sat by Sissy's bedside in the clear evening light. Harry
+Hardwicke's words haunted her: why did he think that Sissy wanted
+Percival? They had parted a year ago, and she had believed that Sissy
+was cured of her liking for him. It was Sissy who had sent him away, and
+she had been brighter and gayer of late: indeed, Mrs. Middleton had
+fancied that Walter Latimer-- Well, that was over, but if Sissy cared
+for Percival--
+
+A pair of widely-opened eyes were fixed on her: "Am I going to die, Aunt
+Harriet?"
+
+"I hope not. Oh, my darling, I pray that you may live."
+
+"I think I am going to die. Will it be very soon? Would there be time to
+send--"
+
+"We will send for anything or any one you want. Do you feel worse, dear?
+Time to send for whom?"
+
+"For Percival."
+
+"Harry Hardwicke has sent for him already. Perhaps he has the message by
+now: it is an hour and a half since the messenger went."
+
+"When will he come?"
+
+"To-morrow, darling."
+
+There was a pause. Then the faint voice came again: "What time?"
+
+Mrs. Middleton went to the door and called softly to Hardwicke. He had
+been looking in Bradshaw, and she returned directly: "Percival will come
+by the express to-night. He will be at Fordborough by the quarter-past
+nine train, and Harry will meet him and bring him over at once--by ten
+o'clock, he says, or a few minutes later."
+
+Sissy's brows contracted for a moment: she was calculating the time.
+"What is it now?" she said.
+
+"Twenty minutes to eight."
+
+Fourteen hours and a half! The whole night between herself and Percival!
+The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be
+high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to
+Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf,
+where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him,
+to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and
+Percival? "Aunt Harriet," she said, "shall I live till then? I want to
+speak to him."
+
+"Yes, my darling--indeed you will. Don't talk so: you will break my
+heart. Perhaps God will spare you."
+
+"No," said Sissy--"no."
+
+Between eight and nine Hardwicke was summoned again. Mrs. Latimer wanted
+some one to go to Latimer's Court, to take the latest news and to say
+that it was impossible she could return that night. "You see they went
+away before Dr. Grey came," she said. "I have written a little note. Can
+you find me a messenger?"
+
+"I will either find one or I will go myself," he replied.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to trouble you. And wait a moment, for Mrs. Middleton
+wants him to go on to her house. She will come and speak to you when I
+go back to the poor girl."
+
+"How is Miss Langton?"
+
+"I hardly know. I think she is wandering a little: she talked just now
+about some embroidery she has been doing--asked for it, in fact."
+
+"When Dr. Grey was obliged to go he didn't think there would be any
+change before he came back, surely?" said Hardwicke anxiously.
+
+"No. But she can't know what she is saying, can she? Poor girl! she will
+never do another stitch." Mrs. Latimer fairly broke down. The unfinished
+embroidery which never could be finished brought the truth home to her.
+It is hard to realize that a life with its interlacing roots and fibres
+is broken off short.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Latimer, don't! don't!" Harry exclaimed, aghast at her tears.
+"For dear Mrs. Middleton's sake!" He rushed away, and returned with
+wine. "If you give way what will become of us?"
+
+She was better in a few minutes, and able to go back, while Harry waited
+in quiet confidence for Mrs. Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of
+helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but
+there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a
+supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as
+she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand
+shook, but her eyes met his bravely and her lips were firm.
+
+"You'll have some wine too," he said, pouring it out as a matter of
+course. "You can drink it while you tell me what I am to do."
+
+She took the glass with a slight inclination of her head, and explained
+that she wanted an old servant who had been Sissy's nurse when she was a
+little child. "Mrs. Latimer is very kind," she said, "but Sissy will
+like her own people best. And Sarah would be broken-hearted--" She
+paused. "Here is a list of things that I wish her to bring."
+
+"Mrs. Latimer thought Miss Langton was not quite herself," he said
+inquiringly.
+
+"Do you mean because she talked of her work? Oh, I don't think so. She
+answers quite sensibly--indeed, she speaks quite clearly. That was the
+only thing."
+
+"Then is it down in the list, this needlework? Or where is it to be
+found?"
+
+"You will bring it?" said Mrs. Middleton. "Well, perhaps--"
+
+"If she should ask again," he said.
+
+"True. Yes, yes, bring it." She told him where to find the little case.
+"The fancy may haunt her. How am I to thank you, Harry?"
+
+"Not at all," he said. "Only let me do what I can."
+
+It was nearly eleven before Hardwicke had accomplished his double errand
+and returned with Sarah. The stars were out, the ruins of the priory
+rose in great black masses against the sky, the farmhouse windows
+beneath the overhanging eaves were like bright eyes gazing out into the
+night. Dr. Grey had come back in the interval, and had seen his patient.
+There was nothing new to say, and nothing to be done, except to make the
+path to the grave as little painful as might be. He was taking a nap in
+Mr. Greenwell's arm-chair when the young man came in, but woke up clear
+and alert in a moment. "Ah, you have come?" he said, recognizing the old
+servant. "That's well: you'll save your mistress a little. Only, mind,
+we mustn't have any crying. If there is anything of that sort you will
+do more harm than good."
+
+Sarah deigned no reply, but passed on. Mrs. Middleton came out to meet
+them. Sissy had not spoken. She lay with her eyes shut, and moaned now
+and then. "Are you going home, Harry?" said the old lady.
+
+"Only into the village: I've got a room at the Latimer Arms. It isn't
+two minutes' walk from here, so I can be fetched directly if I'm
+wanted."
+
+"And you will be sure to meet the train?"
+
+"I will: you may depend upon me. But I shall come here first."
+
+"Good-night, then. Go and get some rest."
+
+Hardwicke went off to look for Archie Carroll. He found him in the
+square flagged hall, sitting on the corner of a window-seat, with his
+head leaning against the frame, among Mrs. Greenwell's geraniums. "Come
+along, old fellow," said Harry.
+
+There was only a glimmering candle, and the hall was very dim. Archie
+got up submissively and groped his way after his guide. "Where are we
+going?" he asked as the door was opened.
+
+"To a little public-house close by. We couldn't ask the Greenwells to
+take us in."
+
+As they went out into the road the priory rose up suddenly on the left
+and towered awfully above them. Carroll shuddered, drew closer to his
+companion and kept his eyes fixed on the ground. "I feel as if I were
+the ghost of myself, and those were the ghosts of the ruins," he said as
+he hurried past.
+
+The flight of fancy was altogether beyond Hardwicke: "You've been
+sitting alone and thinking. There has been nothing for you to do, and I
+couldn't help leaving you. Here we are."
+
+They turned into the little sanded parlor of the ale-house. Hardwicke
+had looked in previously and given his orders, and supper was laid ready
+for them. He sat down and began to help himself, but Archie at first
+refused to eat.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Harry. "You have had nothing since the beginning of the
+day. We must not break down, any of us." And with a little persuasion he
+prevailed, and saw the lad make a tolerable supper and drink some brandy
+and water afterward. "Vile brandy!" said Hardwicke as he set his tumbler
+down. Archie was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing at him.
+His eyes were heavy and swollen, and there were purple shadows below
+them.
+
+"Mr. Hardwicke," he said, "you've been very good to me. Do you think it
+was my fault?"
+
+"Do I think what was your fault?"
+
+"_This!_" Archie said--"to-day."
+
+"No--not if I understand it."
+
+"Ray said if he had been there--"
+
+"I wish he had been. But we must not expect old heads on young
+shoulders. How did it happen?"
+
+"We climbed up on the wall, and she was saying how narrow and broken it
+was, and I picked some of that stuff and called to her, and as she
+looked back--"
+
+Hardwicke groaned. "It was madly imprudent," he said. "But I don't blame
+you. You didn't think. Poor fellow! I only hope you won't think too much
+in future. Come, it's time for bed."
+
+"I don't want to sleep," Archie answered: "I can't sleep."
+
+"Very well," said Hardwicke. "But I must try and get a little rest. They
+had only one room for us, so if you can't sleep you'll keep quiet and
+let a fellow see what he can do in that line. And you may call me in the
+morning if I don't wake. But don't worry yourself, for I shall."
+
+"What time?" said Carroll.
+
+"Oh, from five to six--not later than six."
+
+But in half an hour it was Carroll who lay worn out and sleeping
+soundly, and Hardwicke who was counting the slow minutes of that
+intolerable night.
+
+Sarah had been indignant that Dr. Grey should tell her not to cry. But
+when Sissy looked up with a gentle smile of recognition, and instead of
+calling her by her name said "Nurse," as she used to say in old times,
+the good woman was very near it indeed, and was obliged to go away to
+the window to try to swallow the lump that rose up in her throat and
+almost choked her.
+
+Mrs. Middleton sat by her darling's bedside. She had placed the little
+work-case in full view, and presently Sissy noticed it and would have it
+opened. The half-finished strip of embroidery was laid within easy reach
+of hand and eye. She smiled, but was not satisfied. "The case," she
+said. Her fingers strayed feebly among the little odds and ends which it
+contained, and closed over something which she kept.
+
+Then there was a long silence, unbroken till Sissy was thirsty and
+wanted something to drink. "What time?" she said when she had finished.
+
+"Half-past twelve."
+
+"It's very dark."
+
+"We will have another candle," said Aunt Harriet.
+
+"No: the candle only makes me see how dark it is all round."
+
+Again there was silence, but not so long this time. And again Sissy
+broke it: "Aunt Harriet, he is coming now."
+
+"Yes, darling, he is coming."
+
+"I feel as if I saw the train, with red lights in front, coming through
+the night--always coming, but never any nearer."
+
+"But it _is_ nearer every minute. Percival is nearer now than when you
+spoke."
+
+Sissy said "Yes," and was quiet again till between one and two. Then
+Mrs. Middleton perceived that her eyes were open. "What is it, dear
+child?" she said.
+
+"The night is so long!"
+
+"Sissy," said Aunt Harriet softly, "I want you to listen to me. A year
+ago, when Godfrey died and I talked about the money that I hoped to
+leave you one day, you told me what you should like me to do with it
+instead, because you had enough and you thought it was not fair. I
+didn't quite understand then, and I would not promise. Do you remember?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sissy, shall I promise now? I've been thinking about it, and I've no
+wish on earth but to make you happy. Will it make you happier if I
+promise now that it shall be as you said?"
+
+"Yes," said Sissy with eager eyes.
+
+"Then I do promise: all that is mine to leave he shall have."
+
+Sissy answered with a smile. "Kiss me," she said. And so the promise was
+sealed. After that the worst of the night seemed somehow to be over.
+Sissy slept a little, and Aunt Harriet nodded once or twice in the
+easy-chair. Starting into wakefulness after one of these moments, she
+saw the outline of the window faintly defined in gray, and thanked God
+that the dawn had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+BY THE EXPRESS.
+
+
+Mr. Hardwicke, not knowing Percival Thorne's precise address, had
+telegraphed to Godfrey Hammond, begging him to forward the message
+without delay. A couple of days earlier Hammond had suddenly taken it
+into his head that he was tired of being in town and would go away
+somewhere. In a sort of whimsical amusement at his own mood he decided
+that the Land's End ought to suit a misanthrope, and promptly took a
+ticket for Penzance as a considerable step in the right direction.
+
+It made no difference to Percival, for Hammond had left full directions
+with a trustworthy servant in case any letters should come for Mr.
+Thorne, and the man sent the message on to Brenthill at once. But it
+made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the
+telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard
+Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds
+screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks far below.
+
+But with Percival there was no delay. The message found him in Bellevue
+street, though he did not return there immediately after his parting
+with Judith. He wanted the open air, the sky overhead, movement and
+liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the
+nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect
+was not very beautiful. The trees were few--some cropped willows by a
+mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And
+the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful
+to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet
+there was grass, such as it was, and daisies sprinkled here and there,
+and soft cloud-shadows gliding over it. Percival's unreal and fantastic
+dream had perished suddenly when Judith put her hand in his. Now, as he
+walked across these meadows, he saw a new vision, that dream of noble,
+simple poverty, which, if it could but be realized, would be the fairest
+of all.
+
+When he returned from his walk, and came once more to the well-known
+street which he was learning to call "home," he was so much calmer that
+he thought he was quite himself again. Not the languid, hopeless self
+who had lived there once, but a self young, vigorous, elate, rejoicing
+in the present and looking confidently toward the future.
+
+  This I can tell,
+  That all will go well,
+
+was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air--as if he had
+but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of
+No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away
+from it. Hurrying in with eager eyes and his face bright with unspoken
+joy, Percival nearly ran up against Mrs. Bryant and Emma, whose heads
+were close together over the address on the envelope.
+
+"Lor! Mr. Thorne, how you startled me! It's for you," said his landlady.
+
+He went up the stairs two at a time, with his message in his hand. Here
+was some good news--not for one moment did he dream it could be other
+than good news--come to crown this day, already the whitest of his life.
+He tore the paper open and read it by the red sunset light, hotly
+reflected from a wilderness of tiles.
+
+He read it twice--thrice--caught at the window-frame to steady himself,
+and stood staring vaguely at the smoke which curled upward from a
+neighboring chimney. He was stunned. The words seemed to have a meaning
+and no meaning. "This is not how people receive news of death, surely?"
+he thought. "I suppose I am in my right senses, or is it a dream?"
+
+He made a strong effort to regain his self-command, but all certainties
+eluded him. This was not the first time that he had taken up a telegram
+and believed that he read the tidings of Sissy's death. He had
+misunderstood it now as then. It could not be. But why could he not
+wake?
+
+"Ashendale." Yes, he remembered Ashendale. He had ridden past the ruins
+the last day he ever rode with Sissy, the day that Horace came home. It
+belonged to the Latimers--to Walter Latimer. And Sissy was dying at
+Ashendale!
+
+All at once he knew that it was no dream. But the keen edge of pain
+awoke him to the thought of what he had to do, and sent him to hunt
+among a heap of papers for a time-table. He drew a long breath. The
+express started at 10.5, and it was now but twenty minutes past eight.
+
+He caught up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom
+left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting
+into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned
+on a matter of life and death. "Sorry to hear it," said the lawyer as he
+took the reins--"hope you may find things better than you expect. We
+shall see you again when you come back." And with a nod he rattled down
+the street. Percival stood on the pavement gazing after him, when he
+suddenly remembered that he had no money. "I might have asked him to
+give me my half week's salary," he reflected. "Not that that would have
+paid my fare."
+
+A matter of life and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no
+money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had
+not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go
+to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a
+quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker
+lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short.
+He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind
+when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two to spare,
+and I feel quite rich." He took the first turning toward Miss
+Macgregor's house.
+
+Outside her door he halted for a moment. If they would not let him see
+Judith, how was he to convey his request? He felt in his pocket, found
+the telegram and pencilled below the message, "Sissy Langton was once to
+have been my wife: we parted, and I have never seen her since. I have
+not money enough for my railway-fare: can you help me?" He folded it
+and rang the bell.
+
+No, he could not see Miss Lisle. She was particularly engaged. "Very
+well," he said: "be so good as to take this note to her, and I will wait
+for the answer." His manner impressed the girl so much that, although
+she had been carefully trained by Miss Macgregor, she cast but one
+hesitating glance at the umbrella-stand before she went on her errand.
+
+Percival waited, eager to be off, yet well assured that it was all right
+since it was in Judith's hands. Presently the servant returned and gave
+him a little packet. The wax of the seal was still warm. He opened it
+where he stood, and by the light of Miss Macgregor's hall-lamp read the
+couple of lines it contained:
+
+     "I cannot come, but I send you all the money I have. I pray God you
+     may be in time. Yours, JUDITH."
+
+There were two sovereigns and some silver. He told the girl to thank
+Miss Lisle, and went out into the dusk as the clocks were striking nine.
+Ten minutes brought him to Bellevue street, and rushing up to his room
+he began to put a few things into a little travelling-bag. In his haste
+he neglected to shut the door, and Mrs. Bryant, whose curiosity had been
+excited, came upon him in the midst of this occupation.
+
+"And what may be the meaning of this, Mr. Thorne, if I may make so bold
+as to ask?" she said, eying him doubtfully from the doorway.
+
+Percival explained that he had had bad news and was off by the express.
+
+Mrs. Bryant's darkest suspicions were aroused. She said it was a likely
+story.
+
+"Why, you gave me the telegram yourself," he answered indifferently
+while he caught up a couple of collars. He was too much absorbed to heed
+either Mrs. Bryant or his packing.
+
+"And who sent it, I should like to know?"
+
+Percival made no answer, and she began to grumble about people who had
+money enough to travel all over the country at a minute's notice if they
+liked, and none to pay their debts--people who made promises by the
+hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside
+them, she'd be bound.
+
+Thus baited, Percival at last turned angrily upon her, but before he
+could utter a word another voice interposed: "What are you always
+worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr.
+Thorne finish his packing. He'll pay you every halfpenny he owes you:
+don't you know that?" And the door was shut with such decision that it
+was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall.
+"Come along," said Lydia: "there's toasted cheese."
+
+Percival ran down stairs five minutes later with his bag in his hand. He
+turned into his sitting-room, picked up a few papers and thrust them
+into his desk. He was in the act of locking it when he heard a step
+behind him, and looking round he saw Lydia. She had a cup of tea and
+some bread and butter, which she set down before him. "You haven't had a
+morsel since the middle of the day," she said. "Just you drink this. Oh,
+you must: there's lots of time."
+
+"Miss Bryant, this is very kind of you, but I don't think--"
+
+"Just you drink it," said Lydia, "and eat a bit too, or you'll be good
+for nothing." And while Percival hastily obeyed she glanced round the
+room: "Nobody'll meddle with your things while you're gone: don't you
+trouble yourself."
+
+"Oh, I didn't suspect that any one would," he replied, hardly thinking
+whether it was likely or not as he swallowed the bread and butter.
+
+"Well, that was very nice of you, I'm sure, _I_ should have suspected a
+lot if I'd been you," said Lydia candidly. "But nobody shall. Now, you
+aren't going to leave that tea? Why, it wants twenty minutes to ten, and
+not six minutes' walk to the station!"
+
+Percival finished the tea: "Thank you very much, Miss Bryant."
+
+"And I say," Lydia pursued, pulling her curl with less than her usual
+consideration for its beauty, "I suppose you _have_ got money enough?
+Because if not, I'll lend you a little. Don't you mind what ma says, Mr.
+Thorne. I know you're all right."
+
+"You are very good," said Percival. "I didn't expect so much kindness,
+and I've been borrowing already, so I needn't trouble you. But thank you
+for your confidence in me and for your thoughtfulness." He held out his
+hand to Lydia, and thus bade farewell to Bellevue street.
+
+She stood for a moment looking after him. Only a few hours before she
+would have rejoiced in any small trouble or difficulty which might have
+befallen Mr. Thorne. But when he turned round upon her mother and
+herself as they stood at his door, her spite had vanished before the
+sorrowful anxiety of his eyes. She had frequently declared that Mr.
+Thorne was no gentleman, and that she despised him, but she knew in her
+heart that he _was_ a gentleman, and she was ashamed of her mother's
+behavior. Lydia was capable of being magnanimous, provided the object of
+her magnanimity were a man. I doubt if she could have been magnanimous
+to a woman. But Percival Thorne was a young and handsome man, and though
+she did not know what his errand might be, she knew that she was not
+sending him to Miss Lisle. Standing before his glass, she smoothed back
+her hair with both hands, arranged the ribbon at her throat and admired
+the blue earrings and a large locket which she wore suspended from a
+chain. Even while she thought kindly of Mr. Thorne, and wished him well,
+she was examining her complexion and her hands with the eye of a critic.
+"I don't believe that last stuff is a mite of good," she said to
+herself; "and it's no end of bother. I might as well pitch the bottle
+out of the window. It was just as well that he'd borrowed the money of
+some one else, but I'm glad I offered it. I wonder when he'll come
+back?" And with that Lydia returned to her toasted cheese.
+
+Percival had had a nervous fear of some hinderance on his way to the
+station. It was so urgent that he should go by this train that the
+necessity oppressed him like a nightmare. An earthquake seemed a not
+improbable thing. He was seriously afraid that he might lose his way
+during the five minutes' walk through familiar streets. He imagined an
+error of half an hour or so in all the Brenthill clocks. He hardly knew
+what he expected, but he felt it a relief when he came to the station
+and found it standing in its right place, quietly awaiting him. He was
+the first to take a ticket, and the moment the train drew up by the
+platform his hand was on the door of a carriage, though before getting
+in he stopped a porter to inquire if this were the express. The porter
+answered "Yes, sir--all right," with the half smile of superior
+certainty: what else could it be? Thorne took his place and waited a few
+minutes, which seemed an eternity. Then the engine screamed, throbbed,
+and with quickening speed rushed out into the night.
+
+A man was asleep in one corner of the carriage, otherwise Percival was
+alone. His nervous anxiety subsided, since nothing further depended upon
+him till he reached town, and he sat thinking of Sissy and of that brief
+engagement which had already receded into a shadowy past. "It was a
+mistake," he mused, "and she found it out before it was too late. But I
+believe her poor little heart has been aching for me, lest she wounded
+me too cruelly that night. It wasn't her fault. She would have hid her
+fear of me, poor child! if she had been able. And she was so sorry for
+me in my trouble! I don't think she could be content to go on her way
+and take her happiness now while my life was spoilt and miserable. Poor
+little Sissy! she will be glad to know--"
+
+And then he remembered that it was to a dying Sissy that the tidings
+of marriage and hope must be uttered, if uttered at all. And he sat
+as it were in a dull dream, trying to realize how the life which
+in the depths of his poverty had seemed so beautiful and safe was
+suddenly cut short, and how Sissy at that moment lay in the darkness,
+waiting--waiting--waiting. The noise of the train took up his thought,
+and set it to a monotonous repetition of "Waiting at Ashendale! waiting
+at Ashendale!" If only she might live till he could reach her! He seemed
+to be hurrying onward, yet no nearer. His overwrought brain caught up
+the fancy that Death and he were side by side, racing together through
+the dark, at breathless, headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for
+them both.
+
+Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the
+night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in
+her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level
+blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+     Quand on a trouvé ce qu'on cherchait, on n'a pas le temps de le
+     dire: il faut mourir.--J. JOUBERT.
+
+
+When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and
+the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody,
+Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it
+back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields,
+and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke,
+who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and
+a couple of minutes later she joined him.
+
+"How is she? How has she passed the night?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought.
+You were very right to send for Percival."
+
+Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him
+before. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm off to fetch him in about an hour and
+a half."
+
+"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.
+
+"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall
+hear, unless he is out."
+
+"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me.
+And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."
+
+She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before,
+and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up
+at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a
+young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem.
+And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of
+her June!
+
+Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back
+to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie,
+who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his
+sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy's lips
+parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper
+slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about
+breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. "I suppose I must," he said to
+himself.
+
+But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were
+half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the
+unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly
+round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke.
+"It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.
+
+Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him
+asked, "Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?"
+
+"Yes," said Harry. "But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet
+night: there is no change."
+
+"I've been asleep," said Archie after a pause. "I never thought I should
+sleep." He looked ashamed of having done so.
+
+"It would have been strange if you hadn't: you were worn out."
+
+"My watch has run down," the other continued. "What is the time?"
+
+"Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you
+had better go home."
+
+"Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?"
+
+"No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You
+don't want to go back to him?"
+
+Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill
+prompted him to say, "Ray was never hard on me before."
+
+"You mustn't think about that," Hardwicke replied. "People don't weigh
+their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here--less
+than nothing. You'll be better away. Give me your address, and I'll
+write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough
+with me and catch the up train."
+
+As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the
+day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of
+that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with
+greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably
+possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the
+platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he
+said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever
+there's anything I can do--"
+
+"You'll do it," said Harry with a smile.
+
+"That I will! And you'll write?"
+
+Hardwicke answered "Yes." He knew too well _what_ it was he promised to
+write to say a word more.
+
+It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the
+platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open
+doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing
+his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety--or rather
+side by side with his anxiety--he was conscious of a current of interest
+in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given
+for the horse five months before, and of Latimer's opinion of his
+bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered
+that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting
+on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the
+London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting
+close by, and was there.
+
+A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower
+at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he
+came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up
+with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.
+
+"Ah! I am in time, then?" said Percival when he looked round in reply to
+Hardwicke's hurried greeting.
+
+"Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once."
+
+Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were
+fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. "How did
+it happen?" he asked.
+
+Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly,
+and then, just saying "It's very dreadful," he was silent again. But it
+was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward
+as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point
+where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees.
+Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton
+loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from
+Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little
+or nothing in common--a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of
+things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about
+politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done--a
+man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke
+did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the
+consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.
+
+As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a
+brougham. "Ha! Brackenhill," said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed
+round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took
+no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the
+sound of wheels would be music to Sissy's ears.
+
+A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of
+being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two
+young men came up the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that
+moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He
+was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he
+were dying.
+
+[Illustration: "SEE HERE, SISSY," SAID PERCIVAL, "WE ARE FRIENDS."--Page
+698.]
+
+"She will not see me," he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a
+confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored
+his cousin.
+
+"She will see you now that Percival has come," said Mrs. Middleton,
+advancing from the background. "She will see you together."
+
+And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he
+was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men
+stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It
+was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened
+waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half
+wound, half bruise--a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness.
+But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace
+said "Oh, Sissy!" and Sissy said "Percival." He could not speak, but
+stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.
+
+"Whisper," said Sissy. He bent over her. "Have you forgiven him?" she
+asked.
+
+"Yes." The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into
+Sissy's eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.
+
+"Are you sure? Quite?"
+
+"Before God and you, Sissy."
+
+"Tell him so, Percival."
+
+He stood up and turned to his cousin. "Horace!" he said, and held out
+his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.--"See here, Sissy,"
+said Percival, "we are friends."
+
+"Yes, we're friends," Horace repeated. "Has it vexed you, Sissy? I
+thought you didn't care about me. I'm sorry, dear--I'm very sorry."
+
+Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof
+for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted
+as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old
+days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and
+since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's
+hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and
+since--and since--she loved him, she drew his head down to her and
+kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe
+his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's hand, he held Aunt Harriet's.
+
+Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. "Ask him to
+forgive me," she said.
+
+"He knows nothing, dear."
+
+"Ask him for me."
+
+"Horace," said Percival, "Sissy wants your forgiveness."
+
+"I've nothing to forgive," said Horace. "It is I who ought to ask to be
+forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy,
+but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on
+that day: I thought you'd been plotting against me."
+
+"No, no," said Sissy--"not he."
+
+"No, but I did think so.--Since then I've felt that, anyhow, it was not
+fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how,
+especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now."
+
+"You have it," said Percival. "We didn't understand each other very
+well."
+
+"But I never blamed you, Sissy--never, for one moment. I wasn't so bad
+as that. I've watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just
+to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never
+forgive me, because of Percival."
+
+"He has forgiven," said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival's.
+
+"Look here, Horace," he said. "There was a misunderstanding you knew
+nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It _was_
+cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather's manner to
+you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since
+it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you
+like best"--he looked steadily at Horace--"that we should forgive and
+forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Horace. "Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never
+meant me any harm, I know."
+
+"Don't! don't! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry."
+
+"God knows I forgive you, whatever it was," he said.
+
+"Kiss me, Horace."
+
+He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was
+his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled:
+"Good-bye, Horry!"
+
+Mrs. Middleton interposed. "This will be too much for her," she
+said.--"Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful." And she drew Horace
+gently away.
+
+Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to
+the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy
+was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: "Lie still a little
+while, dear: I'm not going away."
+
+She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and
+waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the
+morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time
+the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly
+believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of
+Judith's love and brought him to Sissy's deathbed. He was in a strangely
+exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a
+crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He
+had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his
+excitement sustained him.
+
+He met Sissy's eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had
+frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so
+delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away
+her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the
+past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or
+grieve the poor child now.
+
+After a time she spoke: "You have worked too hard. Isn't it that you
+wanted to do something great?"
+
+"That isn't at all likely," said Percival with a melancholy smile. "I'm
+all right, Sissy."
+
+"No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey
+Hammond didn't tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited
+to see it."
+
+"Don't talk so," he entreated. "There will be nothing to see."
+
+"You mustn't work too hard--promise," she whispered.
+
+"No, dear, I won't."
+
+"Percival, will you be good to me?"
+
+"If I can I will indeed. What can I do?"
+
+"I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody." Sissy
+remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an
+assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.
+
+Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment's hesitation
+alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her
+words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell
+her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would
+be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage
+by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear,"
+he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery
+caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your
+thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He
+would have drawn it gently away.
+
+The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: "No,
+Percival. It's mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my
+other."
+
+"O God!" he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the
+summer day at Brackenhill--Sissy and he upon the terrace--the work-box
+upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty
+reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered
+how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble--the
+first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief
+engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said,
+was given before. And she was dying with it in her hand! She had loved
+him from first to last.
+
+"Percival, you will take my money?" she pleaded, fearing some
+incomprehensible scruple.
+
+"For God's sake, Sissy! I must think a moment." He buried his face in
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, you are cruel!" she whispered.
+
+How could he think? Sissy loved him--had always loved him. It was all
+plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out
+the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!
+
+"Don't be unkind to me, Percival: I can't bear it, dear."
+
+How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so
+sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he
+keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?
+
+"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"
+
+He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."
+
+"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be
+good to me!"
+
+He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen
+what might.
+
+"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it,
+living or dying. If only you might be spared--"
+
+"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."
+
+"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must
+be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make
+amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me,
+dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."
+
+As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to
+a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in
+them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"
+
+Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick
+footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside,
+dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.
+
+Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he
+felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little
+to the wall.
+
+"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.
+
+"I can't. Only one more word!"
+
+"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will
+call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her
+outright?"
+
+He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped
+down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he
+asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a
+brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"
+
+Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she
+is better."
+
+He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best.
+Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing
+right."
+
+"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in
+his.
+
+Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I
+meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to
+her?"
+
+She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved.
+"What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"
+
+He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.
+
+She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you,
+Percival!"
+
+"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."
+
+"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't
+you have waited till she was in her grave?"
+
+"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded
+he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt
+that he must see her once more.
+
+"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured
+any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."
+
+"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."
+
+"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left
+in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to
+her always--always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived
+through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows
+I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"
+
+"Don't say that."
+
+"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We
+were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."
+
+He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would
+die if it could make Sissy any happier."
+
+"And Miss Lisle?" she said.
+
+He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand
+over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to
+return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him,
+pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.
+
+Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the
+needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was
+silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they
+spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed
+Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.
+
+Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station
+himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from
+the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the
+latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside,
+but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even
+have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs.
+Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the
+sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a
+small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some
+buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He
+came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that
+Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet,"
+he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike
+him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.
+
+"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close
+by."
+
+"Going there for some luncheon?"
+
+Hardwicke supposed so.
+
+"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."
+
+Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to
+stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to
+eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that
+he felt better for the food he had taken.
+
+The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of
+Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three
+times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the
+cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting
+vainly for the summons which did not come.
+
+Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival
+would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got
+a kind of tea-dinner," he said--"chops and that sort of thing. You'd
+better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the
+house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged
+Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.
+
+"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again
+when he had taken away the cup and plate.
+
+"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and
+one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the
+square of sunset sky.
+
+Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But
+you can't sleep here," he said.
+
+"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."
+
+A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened,
+and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and
+down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival
+leant back again.
+
+Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood
+with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to
+steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the
+wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her
+anxiety.
+
+"I don't know--not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and
+hesitated a little.
+
+"It is: tell me the truth."
+
+"I am--I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a
+pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't
+really think there's any more."
+
+"It isn't rising, then?"
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the
+least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs.
+Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the
+well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed
+away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the
+porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then
+there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back.
+Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a
+little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her
+shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half
+lying in the window-seat behind her.
+
+"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass
+has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising
+still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it
+will keep fine for some time."
+
+"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"
+
+"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.
+
+"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying,
+as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die
+in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter
+night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be _that_ but I fancied
+the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would
+hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but
+she might have thought of it again lying there."
+
+Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him
+too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.
+
+"Of course it is nothing--it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if
+it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!--if it might be!"
+She stopped with a catching in her voice.
+
+Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs.
+Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be
+any wind."
+
+"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."
+
+"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a
+brief silence.
+
+"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the
+night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you
+persuade him to go away?"
+
+"Mr. Thorne?"
+
+She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see
+him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of
+his waiting there?"
+
+Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and
+persuade him. He won't stir for me."
+
+"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."
+
+"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do
+any good."
+
+Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I
+shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable
+decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later,
+regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting
+the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival,
+however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last
+he was left alone.
+
+Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the
+light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was
+the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton,
+watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a
+lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear,
+more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so
+wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.
+
+Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he
+had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he
+have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night
+by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her--
+
+  If she love me, this believe,
+  I will die ere she shall grieve;
+
+and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire
+had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end
+of all.
+
+His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance
+of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for
+thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it--could not
+help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was
+worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no
+mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was
+so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back
+to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his
+future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery.
+Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive
+him!
+
+As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly
+and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window
+at his side--a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud
+were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon
+gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and
+phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the
+heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled
+with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.
+
+Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in,
+widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a
+golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow
+smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she
+encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot
+of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.
+
+Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke
+Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.
+
+The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day
+had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was
+soaring and singing--a mere point in the dome of blue.
+
+Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, "Brackenhill?"
+
+Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: "A little to
+the right, my darling."
+
+The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet
+the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet's eyes, warm on its
+southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long
+terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.
+
+"Darling, it is warm and light," the old lady said at last.
+
+Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. "Aunt, you promised,"
+she whispered.
+
+"Yes, dear--yes, I promised."
+
+There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than
+she had spoken for hours: "Tell Percival--my love to Miss Lisle."
+
+"Fetch him," said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her
+hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked
+after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was
+tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were
+heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated
+faintly, like an echo, "My love to Miss Lisle, Percival." Her glance met
+his and welcomed him. But even as he said "Sissy!" her eyes closed, and
+when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a
+change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. "She does not
+know me!" he said.
+
+Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It
+was something about "Horry--coming home from school."
+
+Hardly knowing what she said--only longing for one more look, one smile
+of recognition, one word--Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct
+tones: "My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?"
+
+No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur
+recommenced. It was still "Horry," and "Rover," and presently they
+thought she said "Langley Wood."
+
+"Horace used to take her there for a treat," said Mrs. Middleton.--"Oh,
+Sissy, don't you know Aunt Harriet?"
+
+Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was
+dark--the trees--she had lost--
+
+Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse
+than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy
+was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not
+know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word
+for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was
+the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.
+
+The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling
+leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls
+and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet
+delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of "Auntie," and
+"Horry," ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during
+which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between
+living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell
+the moment when she left them.
+
+It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the
+gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his
+eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of
+a closed window through the boughs.
+
+He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been
+there, saying, "Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to
+her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I'm sure it
+isn't right that she should be left so."
+
+Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was
+perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself.
+Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was
+repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to
+disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by
+herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.
+
+Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the
+priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should
+he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an
+undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.
+
+He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless,
+yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his
+shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of
+the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.
+
+"Thank God you're come, Mr. Hammond!" Harry exclaimed, and began to
+pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before
+Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking
+a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray
+coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the
+farmhouse.
+
+"I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once," he said when
+Hardwicke had finished.
+
+Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He
+knocked at the door.
+
+"Who is there?" said the voice within.
+
+"It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something
+lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered,
+then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. "Oh, Godfrey!" she
+said in a low voice, "she died this morning."
+
+He put his arm about her. "I would have been here before if I could," he
+said.
+
+"I knew it." She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting
+her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was
+unmoved as ever.
+
+"She died this morning," Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face
+suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt
+so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!"
+
+"We could not wish her to linger in pain," he said softly.
+
+"No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for
+years!"
+
+Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint
+glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+AFTERWARD.
+
+
+There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons,
+their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows,
+have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so
+blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the
+crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she
+has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years
+gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and
+shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even
+Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's
+face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She
+looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she
+believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a
+little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness
+Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her
+place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped
+up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a
+smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could.
+It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some
+little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever
+be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate,
+old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which
+smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure
+in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will
+pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the
+better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken
+sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in
+that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin's summer or the
+November blooming of a rose.
+
+In the February after Sissy's death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day,
+to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had
+once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to
+another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival,
+standing on the uneven pavement above the Shadwells' vault, remembered
+his vision of Sissy's frightened eyes even while he uttered the words
+that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true
+because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.
+
+Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading
+such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the
+day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or
+linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a
+square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to
+wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about
+Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as
+if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His
+vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his
+life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of
+kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and
+he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of
+thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to
+her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in
+her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of
+hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as
+clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he
+looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme
+in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for
+the last time and knew himself forgiven.
+
+
+
+
+SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART.
+
+
+The art of the present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not
+immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an
+interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art
+in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even
+well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All
+love for it, with all knowledge of its history and all desire for its
+development, was for a generation or two confined to a few professed
+followers and a few devoted patrons, the mass of mankind thinking of it
+not at all. But slowly a revival came in the main centres of
+civilization--not much sooner in one than in another, though somewhat
+differently in each. In Germany we see it beginning with the famous
+Teutonic colony at Rome, reverent in spirit, cautious in method, severe
+in theory, restrained in style--culminating, on the one hand, in the
+academic pietism of Overbeck, on the other in the deliberate majesty of
+Cornelius. In France the new life begins with the successors of David,
+strenuous, impetuous, jealous and innovating, Ingres and outline waging
+deadly battle with color and Delacroix. In England architectural
+enthusiasm gave the first impulse, the "Gothic Revival" becoming the
+basis of all subsequent work.
+
+If, before noting the points of difference between one branch and
+another of this modern art, we try to find the characteristics in which
+these branches resemble one another, and by which they collectively are
+distinguished from earlier developments, we find the most prominent one
+to be self-consciousness--not necessarily self-conceit, but the inward
+consciousness that they _are_, and the endeavor to realize just what
+they are. With these comes, when the art is conscientious, a desire to
+discover the noblest goal and to formulate the best methods of reaching
+it. Some, casting the horoscope for this struggling art of ours, find
+in these facts a great discouragement, believing that the vital germ of
+art is spontaneity--believing that there cannot again be a genuine form
+of art until there arise a fresh race of artists, unfed by the
+mummy-wheat of tradition, unfettered by the cere-cloths of criticism.
+Others, more sanguine, believe that spontaneity has done all it can, and
+that its place is in the future to be worthily filled by a wide
+eclecticism. Let us inquire what testimony as to the value of
+spontaneity and the influence of self-consciousness in art may be
+gathered from the methods and results of the past, and what from a
+contrast between the different contemporary schools in their methods and
+their results. Painting, as most prominently before our eyes and minds
+just now, will principally concern us.
+
+To the making of every work of art go three things and no more--the
+material worked upon, the hand that works, and the intellect or
+imagination which guides that hand. When the proportion is perfect
+between the three, the work of art is perfect of its kind. But in the
+different kinds of art the necessary proportion is not the same. In
+music, for example, the medium is at its lowest value, the imagination
+at its highest. In architecture, on the other hand, material is most
+important. Musicians use the vibration of string and atmosphere,
+sculptors use bronze and marble, painters use color and canvas, poets
+use rhythm and rhyme, as vehicles to express their ideas. The
+architect's ideas are for the sake of his material. He takes his
+material as such, and embellishes it with his ideas--creates beauty
+merely by disposing its masses and enriching its surface. But in all and
+each of these processes, whether mind predominate or matter, there comes
+in as a further necessary factor the actual technical manipulation.
+Poetic visions and a noble mother-tongue do not constitute a man a poet
+if he cannot treat that language nobly according to the technique of his
+art. Nor, though Ariel sing in his brain and the everlasting harp of the
+atmosphere wait for him, is he a musician if he have not a sensitive
+ear and a knowledge of counter-point. More notably yet does the
+hand--and in this as a technical term I include the other bodily powers
+which go to form technical skill,--more notably yet does the hand come
+in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination
+mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but
+the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and
+wrist, how all-important! often how all-sufficing!
+
+In all criticism it is necessary first to reflect which of these three
+factors--intellectual power, physical endowment or propitious
+material--is most imperious. When we find this factor most perfectly
+developed, and the others, though subordinate, neither absent nor
+stunted, we shall find the art nearest to perfection. And the conditions
+of race and climate and society which most helpfully develop that factor
+without injuring the others are the conditions which will best further
+that art. And the critic who lays most stress on that factor, and is
+content to miss, if necessary, though noting the loss, a certain measure
+of the other two in order more entirely to gain the one that is
+vitalest, is the critic whose words are tonic. And he who, blending the
+province of the arts, calling them all with vagueness "art," exalts and
+demands the same factor first in all of them, must be detrimental, no
+matter how great his sincerity and his knowledge.
+
+Before weighing any contemporary thing in the balance let us mark out in
+the past some standards of comparison. For it is useless to speculate
+upon theoretical methods if we can discover the actual methods employed
+by those whose art, if not ideally perfect, is yet so far beyond our
+present power as to be quite perfectly ideal. It needs no discussion to
+prove that to find the utmost that has been actually accomplished by
+human endeavor we must turn in sculpture and in language to Greece, in
+music to Germany, in architecture to Greece or to mediæval Europe as our
+taste may pull, and in painting to the Italians.
+
+The primary conception of art in its productive energy is as a certain
+inspiration. How did that inspiration work in those whom we acknowledge
+to have received it in fullest measure? If we think a moment we shall
+say, "Involuntarily"--by a sort of _possession_ rather than a voluntary
+intellectual effort. The sculpture of the Greeks, their tragedies and
+their temples, were all wrought simply, without effort, without
+conscious travailing, by a natural evolution, not by a potent
+egg-hatching process of instructive criticism and morbid self-inspection
+and consulting of previous models, native and foreign. Architectural
+motives were gathered from Egypt and the East, from Phoenicia and
+Anatolia, but they were worked in as material, not copied as patterns;
+and the architecture is as original as if no one had ever built before.
+Phidias and Praxiteles and the rest shaped and chiselled, aiming at
+perfection no doubt, trying to do their best, but without troubling
+themselves as to what that best "ought" to be. Criticism was rife in
+Athens of all places, but it was a criticism of things existing, not of
+things problematically desirable. Statue and temple-front were
+criticised, not sculptor and architect--surely not sculpture and
+architecture in the abstract. Not sculptors and architects, that is,
+when the question was of their works. The men came in for their share of
+criticism, but on a different count. Theseus and Athene were judged as
+works of art, not as lame though interesting revelations of Phidias's
+soul. And be sure no faintest sin of the chisel was excused on the plea
+that Phidias meant more than he could express, and so bungled in the
+expression. Nor was the plea advanced that such bungling after the
+infinite was better than simple perfection in the attainable. An artist
+was called upon to be an artist, not a poet nor a philosopher nor a
+moralist. When Plato confounded them all in a splendid confusion of
+criticism the fruit-time had gone by. There was left but to expatiate on
+the hoard which summer had bequeathed, or to speculate, if he chose, on
+the possible yield of a future and most problematical year.
+
+In the rich Italian summer one sees the same thing. Men paint because
+they must--because put at anything else they come back to art as iron to
+the magnet. Not because art is lovely, nor because to be an artist is a
+desirable or a noble or a righteous thing, but because they are artists
+born, stamped, double-dyed, and, kick as they might, they could be
+nothing else--if not artists creative, yet artists critical and
+appreciative. Truly, they think and strive over their art, write
+treatises and dogmas and speculations, vie with and rival and outdo each
+other. But it is their _art_ they discuss, not themselves, not one
+another--technical methods, practical instruction, questions of pigment
+and model and touch, of perspective and chiaroscuro and varnish, not
+psychological æsthetics, biographical and psychical explanations as to
+facts of canvas and color. What is done is what is to be criticised.
+What can be done technically is what should be done theoretically, and
+what cannot be done with absolute and perfect technical success is out
+of the domain of art once and for ever. As the Greek did not try to
+carve marble eyelashes, so no Venetian tried to put his conscience on a
+panel. All Lionardo could see of Mona Lisa's soul he might paint, not
+all he could feel of Lionardo's. Mr. Ruskin himself quotes Dürer's note
+that Raphael sent him his drawings, not to show his soul nor his
+theories, but simply _seine Hand zu weisen_--to prove his touch. In
+Raphael's touch was implied Raphael's eye, and those two made the artist
+Raphael.
+
+Nothing strikes one more in these men than the oblivion of self in their
+work. Only one of the first-rank men was self-conscious, and he, the
+most mighty as a man, is by no means the first as an artist. And even
+Michael Angelo had not the self-consciousness of to-day: it requires a
+clique of commentators and a brotherhood of artists equally infected to
+develop that. But just so far as he tried to put his mighty self into
+his work, just so far he failed of artistic perfection; and not every
+one is Michael Angelo to make even failure beautifully colossal. In
+architecture, which in his day was already a dead art to be galvanized,
+not alive and manly like the art of the painter, his self-consciousness
+shows most strongly and his failure is most conspicuous. Here he did not
+create, but avowedly composed--set himself deliberately to study the
+past and to decide what was best for the future. And upon none but him
+rests the blame of having driven out of the semi-unconscious,
+semi-original Renaissance style what elements of power it had, and sent
+it reeling down through two centuries crazed with conceit and distorted
+with self-inspection.
+
+On the unconscious development of mediæval architecture, due to no one
+man, but to a universal interest in and appreciation of the art, it is
+unnecessary to dwell. Nor need we for present purposes seek further
+illustration farther afield. Let us take time now to look more narrowly
+at the art of to-day, and try to mark the different shapes it has taken
+with different nations.
+
+The most decided school is in France: her artists, many in number,
+confine, whether involuntarily or not, their individual differences
+within sharply-marked and easily-noted limits. In Germany the schools
+are two--one of so-called historical painting at Munich, one of what we
+may name domestic painting at Düsseldorf. This last may be put on one
+side as having no specially obtrusive characteristics, and by German
+pictures will be meant those of the Munich and Vienna type, whether
+actually from the studios of Munich and Vienna or not. In English
+contemporary art can one pretend to find a school at all in any true
+sense of the word? What we do find is a very widespread art-literature
+and talk of art, a large number of working artists varying in
+temperament, and a vast horde of amateurs, who are not content to be
+patrons, but yearn also to be practisers of art.
+
+In England theories of art are more carefully discussed and more widely
+diffused than they are in any other country. But they are theories of an
+essentially untechnical, amateurish, literary kind. The English critic
+calls all law and philosophy, all rules of morals and manners, of
+religion and political economy and science and scientific æsthetics, to
+aid his critical faculty when he needs must speak of pictures. In
+Germany there is also much theorizing, but of a different kind. It is
+not so much the whole physical and psychical cosmos that the German
+critic studies as the past history of art in its most recondite phases
+and most subtle divergences. Upon this he draws for information as to
+the value of the work before him. On the other hand, we shall find
+French art-criticism to be almost purely technical.
+
+As the critics differ, so do the criticised by the natural law of
+national coherence. An English painter is apt to be primarily an
+embodied theory of one sort or another; which theory is more or less
+directly connected with his actual work as a painter. A German painting
+is apt to be scientifically composed on theory also, but a theory drawn
+from the study of art _per se_, not of the whole world external to art.
+The work of a Frenchman, like the criticism of his commentator, is
+primarily technical.
+
+Because both German work and English work are theoretical compared with
+French, I do not wish to imply that technically they are on a par. Aside
+from the difference of imaginative power in the two nations, which
+renders German conceptions more valuable in every way than contemporary
+English ideas, there is a great difference in the technical training of
+the two groups of artists. German work often shows technical qualities
+as notable as those we find in France, though of another kind. The noble
+physical endowment of an artist--that by reason of which, and by reason
+of which alone, he _is_ an artist--is twofold: power of eye and power of
+hand. By power of the eye I mean simple vision exalted into a special
+gift, a special appreciation of line, an ultra delicate and profound
+perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not
+imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so
+say, of the retina--as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his
+notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by
+conscious effort the objects before one, and to recall them
+deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when the brush
+pauses trembling for the signal, to put down unerringly facts learned
+God knows where, or imagined God knows how. Automatic, I repeat, this
+power must be. The tongue might not be able to tell, nor the mind
+deliberately to recall in cold blood, what was the depth of blue on a
+distant hill or the vagueness of its outlines, or what the anatomical
+structure of a mistress's fingers. But the brush knows, as nothing but
+the brush of an artist can; and when it comes to painting them, aërial
+perspective and anatomical detail _must_ come right. This is the first
+and the great endowment. And the second is like unto it in--Shall I use
+the fashionable artistic slang and say _preciousness_? It is the gift of
+a dexterous hand, winged with lightness and steady as steel, sensitive
+as a blind man's finger-tips, yet unerring in its stroke as the piston
+of a steamship. This is a gift as well as the other, but it can, far
+more than the other, be improved and developed by practice and patience.
+Both gifts in equal perfection constitute a technical master. It is
+hardly necessary to say that no man--certainly no nation--can to-day
+claim the highest measure of both. The French are most highly gifted
+with the first, the Germans with the second. In the latter, patience and
+science, working upon a natural aptitude, have developed great strength
+and accuracy of wrist, and with this the power of composition and
+design, purity and accuracy of outline, and good chiaroscuro. But the
+whole race is deficient in a sense of color. Its work is marked by
+crudeness and harshness, or at the best reticence--splendor without
+softness or inoffensiveness without charm. In cases where much is
+attempted in color--as in what is undoubtedly one of the best of
+contemporary paintings, Knille's _Tannhäuser and Venus_ in the Berlin
+Gallery--the success is by no means on a par with the great excellence
+of drawing and composition. In France the eye for color is present--I
+will not say as in Venice, but to a greater degree than in the two other
+nations.
+
+If we leave now professional painters and professional critics and turn
+to the untrained public, we shall find, of course, all our modern faults
+more evident. The English public is pre-eminently untechnical in its
+judgments, pre-eminently literary or moral. But the French and the
+German public approximate more to the English--as is natural--than do
+their respective artists. I use the word _literary_ as it has often been
+used by others in characterizing the popular art-criticism of the
+time--and in England much of the professional criticism also--to denote
+a prominence given to the subject, the idea, the story--_l'anecdote_, as
+a French critic calls it--over the purely painter's work of a picture.
+It denotes the theory that a picture is not first to please the sense,
+but to catch the fancy or the intellect or to touch the heart. This
+feeling, which in France turns toward sensationalism, in England toward
+sentimentality, is something other than the interest which attaches to
+historical painting as the record of facts--in itself not the highest
+interest one can find in a work of art. If we think back for a moment, we
+shall see how different from either of these moods was the mood in which
+the great Italians painted. Some "subject" of course a painting must
+have that is not a portrait, but these men chose instinctively--hardly,
+it is to be supposed, theoretically--such subjects as were most familiar
+to their public, and therefore least likely to engage attention
+primarily, and to the exclusion of the absolute pictorial value of the
+painting as such. We never find Titian telling anecdotes. His portraits
+are quiescence itself--portraits of men and women standing in the
+fulness of beauty and strength to be painted by Titian. We do not find
+likenesses snatched in some occurrence of daily life or in some dramatic
+action of historical or biographical importance. Even Raphael's great
+frescoes are symbolical more truly than historical, expressing the
+significance of a whole series of events rather than literally rendering
+one single event. The first remark of many who, accustomed to the
+literary interest of modern pictures, are for the first time making
+acquaintance with the old masters, is, that the galleries are so
+unexcitingly monotonous: the subjects are not interesting. Portraits,
+scenes from sacred history or Greek mythology,--that is all among the
+Italians. Desiring nothing but beauty of line and color, and
+expressiveness provided it was beautiful, they sought a subject merely
+as the _raison d'etre_ of beauty. Raphael could paint the Madonna and
+Child a score of times, and Veronese his _Marriages of Cana_, and all of
+them Magdalenes and St. Sebastians by the dozen, without thinking of
+finding fresh subjects to excite fresh interest. Nor does this
+restricted range of subjects imply, under the hand of a master,
+monotony. There is more unlikeness in Raphael's Madonnas than in the
+figures of any modern artist, whatever their variety of name and action.
+Even a century later than Raphael, among the Flemings and Hollanders,
+the best pictures are the simplest, the least dependent for their
+interest upon anything dramatic or anecdotal in their subject. The
+triumphs of the Dutch school are the portraits of the guilds. The
+masterpieces of Rubens are his children and single figures and biblical
+scenes, not his _Marie de Medicis_. And what of Rembrandt is so perfect
+as his _Saskia with the Pink_ at Dresden? If we have a photograph even
+of such a picture as this constantly before us, with a modern picture of
+anecdotal interest, no matter how vivid and pleasant that interest may
+have been at first, it is not hard to predict which will please us
+longest--which will grow to be an element in the happiness of every day,
+while the other becomes at last _fade_ and insipid. This even if we
+suppose its technical excellence to be great. How, then, shall such
+interest take the place of technical excellence?
+
+This modern love of _l'anecdote_ is not exactly the cause perhaps, nor
+yet the effect, of the self-consciousness of modern art, but it goes
+hand in hand with it: they are manifestations of the same spirit in the
+two different spheres of worker and spectator.
+
+But it may be said, If Michael Angelo was self-conscious, it was
+because he first caught the infection of modern times. Life, the world,
+the nineteenth century, are self-conscious through and through. It is
+impossible to be otherwise. It is impossible for a world which has lived
+through what ours has, which has recorded its doings and sufferings and
+speculations for our benefit, ever to be naïve or spontaneous in
+anything. Inspiration unsought and unquestioned is a thing of the past.
+Study, reflection, absorption, eclecticism,--these are the watchwords of
+the future. If this were granted, many would still think it an open
+question whether art of the highest kind would in the future be possible
+or not. But is by no means necessary to grant it, for we have had in the
+most learned and speculative of nations an art in our century--still
+surviving, indeed, in our very midst--the growth of which has been as
+rapid and the flowering as superb as the growth and bloom of sculpture
+in Greece or of painting in Italy. I mean, of course, music in Germany.
+And if we think a moment we shall see that its growth was as
+unpremeditated, its direction and development as unbiassed by theories,
+its votaries as untroubled with self-consciousness, as if they had been
+archaic sculptors or builders of the thirteenth century. Bach, Haydn,
+Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, what sublime unconsciousness of their
+own personality as the personality of artists and as influencing art!
+Does Richard Wagner seem at first sight to be a glaring exception to
+such a rule--seem to strive more than any other artist in any branch of
+art to be critic as well--seem, perhaps, to be most notably
+self-conscious even in an age of self-consciousness? The most highly
+gifted of the generation as an artist, his musical talent developed
+spontaneously, irresistibly. It had thus developed before he began to
+reason about it, to justify in theory that which had approved itself in
+fact. His power lies in the union we find in him of musician and
+dramatist. His dogmatizing and theorizing expatiate not on the way he
+works in either art, but on the propriety of combining the two. Not his
+theories, but his artist's instinct, taught him how to do it as it is
+done in the _Meistersinger_. His theories try to explain his work, but
+by just so much as his work is consciously founded on his theories, by
+just so much is it less perfect than it would have been had he preserved
+his unconsciousness. The fact of his self-consciousness tends in many
+eyes to mark him as the rearguard of a line of artists, the pioneer of a
+generation of critical musicians. May Liszt perhaps serve as a sample of
+such--learned, critical, self-conscious, productive, but unoriginal? And
+the worst sign in Germany is less that the young musicians copy Wagner
+than that they copy him not instinctively and by nature, but
+theoretically and of deliberate intent, exalting his theories to rank
+beside his work.
+
+It seems at first strange that, music being at once the glory and the
+recreation of the whole German nation, and a knowledge of it being
+native to the vast majority of individual Germans, there is little
+existing musical criticism--none as compared with the abounding German
+criticism on every other branch of art and every other subject under the
+sun. The field offered here to the cobweb-spinning German brain is wide
+and attractive. It seems strange that it should be as yet uncultivated,
+unless we fall back on the theory that art at its vitalest is of
+necessity uncritical, and that where an inborn love of, and aptitude
+for, an art exists with a daily enjoyment of its technical perfection,
+we shall be least likely to find it elaborately criticised
+theoretically. Where practice is abundantly satisfactory theories are
+superfluous.
+
+Below, though still in the same category with, the musical gift of the
+Germans we may cite the literary gift of the English. For though this
+may not be the greatest literary epoch of England, yet it will not be
+denied that the greatest of English aptitudes is for literature. The
+wide appreciation of it in England is unmatched by a like appreciation
+of any other form of art. The growth of English novel-writing and its
+healthy development, accompanied, it may be, by many fungus-growths due
+to over-fertility, afford us the spectacle of a contemporary yet
+spontaneous English art, unforced by hothouse cultivation, uninfluenced
+by theories. A century or so hence the hearty, unconscious bloom of
+narrative literature in our day and language may seem as strange as
+seems to us the spontaneous blossoming of Venetian painting, of Greek
+sculpture, or of architecture in the Ile de France. An Englishman of
+to-day who thinks painters can be spun out of theories would surely
+laugh with instinctive knowledge of the veritable requirements of their
+art if one were to propose supplying novelists or poets in a similar
+way.
+
+If we thus acknowledge that two kinds of art--and those two requiring
+the greatest amount of imaginative power--can flourish with spontaneity
+even in so self-conscious a civilization as ours, we shall fail to see
+in that civilization a sufficient _a priori_ reason why the same might
+not have been the case with painting. If, however, still keeping to our
+own day, we look for the reverse of this picture, we shall find some
+approach to it in the condition of the painter's art in England. Here
+theory runs wild, practice falls far behind, and a great part of the
+practice that exists is inspired and regulated by theory. Artists are
+especially self-conscious, and the public, while much concerned with
+things artistic and fed on daily food of art-theory and speculation, is
+specially devoid of an innate artistic sense and an educated faculty for
+appreciating technical perfection.
+
+In England, more even than on the Continent or with ourselves, is there
+a passion for story-telling with the brush, a desire to give ideas
+instead of pictures, a denial of the fact that the main object of a
+picture is to please the eye just as truly and as surely as the main
+object of a symphony is to please the ear. If we look through the
+catalogue of a Royal Academy exhibition, we notice the preponderance of
+scenes illustrative of English or other literature--of canvases that
+tell a story or point a moral or bear a punning or a sentimental title.
+And we notice the great number of quotations introduced into the
+catalogue without any actual explanatory necessity. Even landscapes are
+dragged into the domain of sentiment, and Mr. Millais, who copies Nature
+with the exactest reverence, cannot call his brook a brook, but "The
+sound of many waters;" and a graveyard is not named a graveyard, but
+"Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap;" and instead of
+_Winding the Clock_ we are told "The clock beats out the life of little
+men." A canvas representing "untrodden snow" must be ticketed, for
+increase of interest, "Within three miles of Charing Cross." Another is
+marked, "Christmas Eve: a welcome to old friends. (See _Silas Marner_.)"
+And so on, _ad infinitum_. May one not say _ad nauseam_ before a piece
+of marble labelled "Baby doesn't like the water," or a canvas by Faed,
+R. A., called "Little cold tooties," or the portrait by the president of
+the Academy of a child on her pony denoted not only by the child's name
+in full, but her pony's also?
+
+Prominent also at a first visit to a London exhibition stands out the
+hesitancy; of English artists to deal with large canvases and life-size
+figures--their strict confinement to _genre_ of a domestic or bookishly
+archæological type. This is not the place to discuss the causes of such
+a fact, nor to insist on the lack of certain technical qualities in even
+the best English work. Such discussions can only be profitable when the
+originals are at hand to recriticise the criticism.
+
+More striking than anything to be seen in 1877 at the Royal Academy was
+the small collection of pictures at the Grosvenor Gallery, organized and
+controlled by a noble amateur--himself a painter also--with the avowed
+intention of exhibiting the latest and most eccentric phases of English
+art. To a Londoner the opening day was interesting, as revealing the
+newest works of the most conspicuous London artists. To a stranger fresh
+from continental pictures, old and new, eager to see the touch of hands
+so often described in print, it was a revelation not only of a few men's
+work, but of the tendency of a national art and the artistic
+temperament of a whole people. Superficially, these pictures seemed the
+exact opposite of those at the conservative Academy--as aberrant as the
+latter were commonplace. But to one who knew them as the work of a
+fashionable, highly-educated clique they seemed merely a reaction of the
+same spirit that produced the elder style. In striving to get out of the
+rut of commonplace which had so long held in its grip the wheels of
+English art, not originality, so much as deliberate, sought-out
+eccentricity, was the result. The scale of work, starting from the
+original bathos of domestic sentimentality, runs up to the veriest
+contortions of affected mediævalism, rarely striking out a note of
+common sense. Simple English art is the apotheosis of the British
+middle-class spirit, of Mr. Arnold's "Philistinism." English art
+departing from this spirit shows, not Mr. Arnold's "sweetness and
+light," not calmness, repose, sureness of self, unconsciousness of its
+own springs of life, but theories running into vague contradictions, a
+far-fetched abnormalness, a morbid conception of beauty, a defiant
+disregard of the fact that a public exists which judges by common sense
+and the eye, not by a fine-spun confusion of theories and an undefined
+but omnipotent and deified "æsthetic sense" non-resident in the optic
+nerve. Mr. Whistler's pictures to-day, cleverly as he can paint if he
+will, are not pictures--I do not mean in fact, which is certainly
+true--but in title. They are "Natures in Black and Gold," or "In Blue
+and Silver," or "In Blue and Gold," or "Arrangements in Black," or
+"Harmonies in Amber and Brown." Here we have the desperate reaction from
+the idea that _l'anecdote_ is everything to the idea that it is
+sufficient to represent nothing (poetically conceived!) with little
+color and less form, with the vaguest and slightest and most untechnical
+technique. It is hard to say which would most puzzle Titian
+redivivus--"Little cold tooties," or a blue-gray wash with a point or
+two of yellow, bearing some imaginary resemblance to the Thames with its
+gaslights, and called a "Nocturne in Blue and Gold."
+
+The French "impressionalist" clique, similar in spirit to these
+Englishmen, though less outré in practice, is not by any means of so
+great importance in France as they are in England. It has more than once
+been remarked in England that the old-fashioned amateur--patron and
+critic, _kenner_--is dying out, and that his modern substitute must not
+only choose, but experiment--not only admire, but be admired. This
+spirit, spreading through a nation, will not make it a nation of
+artists, but will make the nation's artists amateurs. No critic, no
+amateur, is more loath to try his own hand than the one who most deeply
+and rightly appreciates the skill of others, and the rare and God-given
+and difficult nature of that skill. The confusion of amateur with
+professional work lowers the standard, so there will be every year fewer
+to tell the mass of the nation that most useful of truths--how earnest a
+thing is true art, and how rare a native appreciation of its truest
+worth.
+
+There is no place where the interest excited by national art is so
+widespread, where the exhibitions are so crowded, where they so regulate
+times and seasons, annual excursions to and departures from town, as in
+England. Yet there is no place where the interest in art seems to a
+stranger so factitious, so much a matter of fashion and custom, of
+instinctive following of chance-appointed bell-wethers. It would
+scarcely be a matter of surprise if the whole thing should collapse
+through some pin-thrust of rival interest or excitement, and next year's
+exhibition be a desert, next year's artists paint their theories and
+their souls for unregarding eyes, or rather for unheeding brains. Have
+we not an apology for such a suggestion in the history of the rage for
+Gothic architecture, so thoroughly demonstrated in every possible
+theoretical and philosophical way to be the only proper style for
+Englishmen present or future, so devotedly and exclusively followed for
+a while by the profession, only to be suddenly abandoned for its fresher
+rivals, the so-called styles of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne?
+
+In the throngs that flocked to the opening of the Royal Academy, waiting
+hours before the doors were opened, fighting and struggling for a
+foothold on the stairs, eager to be the first to see, though there were
+weeks of opportunities ahead--in the rare recurrence through the hum of
+the vast criticising crowd of a word of technical judgment or sober
+artistic criticism--it was easy to recognize the same spirit that
+confuses morality with chair-legs, that finds a knocker more "sincere"
+and "right" than a door-bell, that insists as upon a vital necessity
+that the heads of all nails should be visible and that all lines should
+be straight, and would as soon have a shadow on its conscience as in the
+pattern of wall-paper. Nowhere was decorative art so non-existent a few
+years ago as in England--nowhere is it so universally dwelt upon to-day.
+Yet it is easy to see how entirely the revival is a child of theory and
+books and teachers and rules--how little owing to a spontaneous
+development of art-instinct in the people, a spontaneous desire for more
+beauty in their surroundings, a spontaneous knowledge of how it is best
+to be obtained.
+
+The literary and un-painterlike--if I may use such an awkward
+term--nature of English art is shown perhaps more forcibly in its
+critics than in artists or public. One is especially struck in reading
+criticisms of whatever grade with the excessive prominence given to the
+artist's personality. The work of this year is judged not so much by its
+excellence as by comparison with the work of last year. A----'s
+pictures, and B----'s and C----'s and D----'s, are interesting and
+valuable mainly as showing A----'s improvement, or B----'s falling off,
+or C----'s unexpected change of theme, or D----'s fine mind and delicate
+sensibilities.
+
+Mr. Ruskin is without doubt the most remarkable of English critics, and
+summarizes so many opposite theories and tendencies that his pages may
+in some sort be taken as an epitome of the whole matter. It would be
+impossible to abstract from their great bulk any consecutive or
+consistent system of thought or precept. His influence has been mainly
+by isolated ideas of more or less truth and value. It is impossible here
+to analyze his work. Such is the mixed tissue of his woof that the
+captive princess who was set to sort a roomful of birds' feathers had
+scarcely a harder task than one who should try to separate and classify
+his threads, some priceless and steady, some rotten, false, misleading.
+Morals, manners, religion, political economy, are mixed with art in
+every shape--art considered theoretically and technically, historically,
+philosophically and prophetically. Various as are his views on these
+varying subjects, on no one subject even do they remain invariable. Yet
+such is the charm of his style, delightfully sarcastic, and eloquent as
+a master's brush, so vividly is each idea presented in itself, that,
+each idea being enjoyed as it comes, all seem at first of equal value.
+We realize neither the fallacy of many taken singly nor the conflict of
+all taken together. His points are often cleverly and faithfully put,
+and our attention is so riveted on this cleverness and faithfulness that
+we take for granted the rightness of his deductions, slovenly, illogical
+or false though they may be. What we most remark in his books is how the
+purely artistic element in his nature--of a very high grade and very
+true instincts--is dwarfed of full development and stunted of full
+results by the theorizing literary bent which he has in common with his
+time and people. In theorizing even on truly-felt and clearly-stated
+facts, in explaining their origin and unfolding their effects, his
+guidance is least valuable. We may more safely ask him _what_ than
+_why_. His influence on English art has been great at the instant:
+whether it will be permanent is doubtful. At one time it was said that
+without having read his books one could tell by an inspection of the
+Royal Academy walls what Mr. Ruskin had written in the past year. Now,
+the most notable exponents of his teaching, whether consciously so or
+not, are on the one hand the shining lights of the Grosvenor
+Gallery--hierophants of mysticism and allegory and symbolism and
+painted souls and moral beauty expressed in the flesh, copying Ruskin's
+_Botticelli_ line for line, forgetting that what was naïveté in him, and
+in him admirable, because all before him had done so much less well,
+becomes to-day in them the direst affectation, is reprehensible in them
+because many before them have done so much better. On the other hand, we
+have a naturalistic throng which follows Mr. Ruskin's precepts when he
+overweights the other side of the scale and says that art should "never
+exist alone, never for itself," never except as "representing a
+true"--defined as actually-existing--"thing or decorating a useful
+thing;" when he declares that every attempt by the imagination to "exalt
+or refine healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it." Mr. Ruskin
+bade men "go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her
+laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to
+penetrate her meaning, _rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and
+scorning nothing_;" and Mr. Hamerton was literally obeying him when he
+exiled himself for five years in a hut on an island in a bleak Scotch
+lake to learn faithfully to portray the shores of that single lake. Was
+it thus that Titian studied in his youth, and learned how, years after
+in Venice, to paint the chestnuts and the hills of Cadore a
+thousand-fold more artistically and more truly, because more abstractly
+and more ideally, than could all the "pre-Raphaelite" copyists of
+to-day? Thus we see the two extremes of Mr. Ruskin's teaching--see him
+at one time exalting imagination and feeling over the pictorial part of
+art, at another degrading art into the servilest copying.
+
+Observers may disagree as to whether these cognate
+things--self-consciousness in the artist, æsthetic philosophizing in the
+critic, and the taste for a literary rather than a pictorial value in
+the public--are on the increase or on the decrease in the various
+centres of art. Annual exhibitions--a significant illustration of our
+high-pressure life in art as in other things--would seem to tend toward
+deepening these faults. Attention must be attracted at all hazards, and
+the greater the number of exhibitors and the average attractiveness of
+their canvases the greater becomes the temptation to shine, not by
+excellence, but by eccentricities of treatment, or, still more, by the
+factitious interest of a "telling" subject. Is it due, perhaps, to this
+constant desire for notoriety on the part of the artist, and for more
+and more excitement on the part of the public, that in all modern
+schools, landscape art, as less possibly influenced by such a state of
+things, stands ahead of the art which has humanity for its subject? It
+is scarcely possible to find in France to-day a figure-painter who is a
+Daubigny, still less a Jules Dupré. Next to these unquestionably stand
+such animal-painters as Bonheur and Troyon; and it would be hard among
+the youngest file of artists to find a figure-painter who in his line
+should rival Van Marcke in his. In England also landscape ranks ahead,
+and it is perhaps in comparing it with French landscape that the
+difference between the schools is most truly though not most glaringly
+displayed. Even here, and in the allied fields of animal-painting, the
+desire for _l'anecdote_ creeps in, and Landseer with all his talent
+often prostitutes his brush in the attempt to make his brutes the centre
+of dramatic action, and forces into them semi-human characteristics in
+order to extract from them tales or ideas of human interest. It was not
+thus that Veronese painted dogs or Franz Snyders his lions and
+boars--not thus that the Greeks have put the horse into art. Nor, to
+take the best contemporary comparison, is it thus that Barye's bronzes
+are designed.
+
+Landscape brings us inevitably to Turner. The most highly gifted of all
+English artists, past or present, his genius was hardly a logical
+outcome of the contemporary spirit of his nation. We have no right to
+say this of an artist, no right to call him anomalous, while we are
+still in doubt as to whether he may be only the advance-guard of a new
+national art, the herald of a new avatar. But when he with his
+generation dies, when another generation develops and bears fruit, and
+a third is beginning to blossom, and he still seems anomalous, it is
+fair to hold him exceptional in his country's art, rather than
+characteristic thereof. Together with wonderful endowments of eye and
+hand, and a prodigious power of work, Turner's earlier works show us an
+unconscious development and a healthy oblivion of his own personality.
+But later the fatal modern fever entered his blood, ending in something
+very like delirium. From a painter he became a theorist, contaminated by
+a rush of criticism alike indiscriminate in praise and injudicious in
+blame. We shall see the baleful effects of modern methods if we look, in
+the wonderful series at the National Gallery, first at the pictures
+painted when Turner was an artist thinking of painting, then to those
+done when he was a self-conscious experimentalist thinking of
+Turner--Turner worshipped by Ruskin, Turner sick with envy of the
+Dutchmen and defiance of Claude.
+
+I have but a line to give to the one or two other men of abnormally
+splendid gifts whom this century has seen. Henri Regnault's
+extraordinary talent was extinguished almost at the first spark, and it
+is beyond prophecy to tell what it might have produced. His
+eccentricities seem to have been quite genuine, due to an overflow of
+power rather than to posing or grimace. His love of his art, his passion
+for color, were almost frantic in their intensity, but sincere. A
+certain exaggerated phrase of his is but the protest of reaction against
+the literary painting, the erudite and philosophical art, of his time.
+"La vie," he cries, "étant courte, il faut peindre tant qu'on a des
+yeux. Donc on ne doit pas les fatiguer à lire des stupides journaux." A
+crude way of putting the idea that to be an artist one needs but art.
+
+Another wonderful talent is Hans Makart. Such an eye for color, it is
+quite safe to say, has not been born since Veronese. Had he been born at
+Venice among his peers, forced to work instead of experiment, outvied
+instead of foolishly extolled, surrounded by artists to surpass him if
+he tripped for a single instant, instead of critics to laud his most
+glaring faults and amateurs to pay thousands for his spoiled paper, we
+should have had another name to use as explanatory of genius. As it is,
+he is, according to present indications, utterly spoiled. Only those who
+know how he can draw if he will, how he has painted--portraits best,
+perhaps--when he would, are vexed beyond endurance by the folly and the
+carelessness and the sins he chooses to give us. It has been said that
+Raphael Mengs was a born genius spoiled by the coldness, the
+pseudo-classicism, the artificiality and eclecticism of the eighteenth
+century. A companion portrait is Hans Makart, ruined by the
+amateurishness, the rhapsodizing, the theorizing, the morbid
+self-consciousness of the nineteenth.
+
+The so-called Spanish school of to-day is as yet too new for us to see
+exactly whither it tends. Its passion for glaring, metallic, aniline
+compound tints--tints that "scream," to use a French phrase--its horror
+of all shade and depth and of pure and simple colors, are, however, most
+certainly unhealthy. It is a diseased eye that in the desire for violent
+color loses all memory of chiaroscuro.
+
+I have left till now unnoticed the contemporary Netherland artists,
+though their works are perhaps more entirely satisfactory than those of
+either of the three schools we have discussed. But their characteristics
+are less markedly distinct, less available for comparison, and can be
+best noted and appraised by a previously-gained knowledge of the
+peculiarities of English, French and German painting. The Belgian school
+is most closely allied to the French, and in technique is often its
+equal. In landscape and cattle-painting the types are similar, while
+Belgian figure-painting gains by the lack of the element which a French
+critic notes when he says modern art has become _mondain--surtout
+demi-mondain_. Nowhere does contemporary art seem so healthy and sane,
+so sure of itself, so consonant with the best nature and gifts of the
+people, as in the Netherlands: nowhere are its ideals so free from
+morbidness, affectation or sentimentality. Is it perhaps that in the
+studios of Amsterdam, in the great school of Antwerp, even in the
+galleries of Brussels, one is somewhat out of the wildest stream of
+modern life--less driven to analysis and theorizing and
+self-consciousness than in London, Paris or Munich? Whatever is cause,
+whatever effect, the Netherland school shows two things side by
+side--the least measure of self-consciousness, and the soundest
+contemporary painting: if not the most effective, it is, I think, the
+most full of promise. There seems to be forming the most healthy
+national soil for the development of future genius.
+
+In conclusion, it may be noted that we in America, whose art is just
+beginning even to strive, are subjected to a somewhat strange cross-fire
+of influences. Lineally the children of England, we are spiritually and
+by temperament in many things her opposites. Our taste in art seems to
+turn resolutely away from her. For each hundred of French and score of
+German pictures that comes to us, how many come from England? What can
+one who has not crossed the sea learn of English pictures from our
+private collections and picture-dealers' shops? Was not all we knew
+prior to the Exhibition of 1876 gleaned from _Vernon Gallery_ plates and
+Turner's _Rogers_ or _Rivers of France_? But while our dealers and
+students and millionaires throng the studios of Paris and Munich, and
+our eyes are being daily educated to demand above all things
+_technique_, our brains are constantly being worked upon by a stream of
+art-literature from England. Taste pulls us one way--identity of English
+speech, with consequent openness to English ideas, pulls us the other.
+Pictures preach one thing, books another. Our boy who has worked in
+Paris comes home to try to realize Ruskin. Both influences are too new,
+and our art is as yet too unsteady, for any one to guess as to the
+ultimate result. One thing only can be unreservedly inculcated: Let us
+shun self-analyzation, self-consciousness, morbidness, affectation,
+attitudinizing. Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our
+eyes on our brushes and on the world of beauty around us. One thing
+only can with safety be predicted: If we are, or are to be, a people of
+artists, creative or appreciative as the case may be, we shall learn
+whatever of technique the world has to teach us, and shall improve upon
+it, and we shall perhaps digest the small measure of theory for which we
+have appetites left. But if we are _not_ artists, actual or future,
+technique will be impossible, and will seem undesirable. We shall
+greedily fill our stomachs with the wind of art-philosophy, shall work
+with the reason instead of with the eye and the fingers, shall symbolize
+our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and
+fondly dream we are painting pictures. Or we shall copy with a hopeless
+effort after literalness the first face or weed we meet, and call the
+imperfect, mechanical result a work of art.
+
+  M. G. VAN RENSSELAER.
+
+
+
+
+THREE WATCHES
+
+
+  I sat in the silence, in moonlight that gathered and glowed
+    Far over the field and the forest with tender increase:
+  The low, rushing winds in the trees were like waters that flowed
+    From sources of passionate joy to an ocean of peace.
+  And I watched, and was glad in my heart, though the shadows were deep,
+    Till one came and asked me: "Say, why dost thou watch through the
+        night?"
+  And I said, "I am watching my joy. They who sorrow may sleep,
+    But the soul that is glad cannot part with one hour of delight."
+
+  Again in the silence I watched, and the moon had gone down;
+    The shadows were hidden in darkness; the winds had passed by;
+  The midnight sat throned, and the jewels were bright in her crown,
+    For stars glimmered softly--oh softly!--from depths of the sky.
+  And I sighed as I watched all alone, till again came a voice:
+    "Ah! why dost thou watch? Joy is over, and sorrow is vain."
+  And I said, "I am watching my grief. Let them sleep who rejoice,
+    But the spirit that loves cannot part with one hour of its pain."
+
+  Once more I sat watching, in darkness that fell like a death--
+    The deep solemn darkness that comes to make way for the dawn:
+  I looked on the earth, and it slept without motion or breath,
+    And blindly I looked on the sky, but the stars were withdrawn.
+  And the voice spoke once more: "Cease thy watching, for what dost
+        thou gain?"
+    But I said, "I am watching my soul, to this darkness laid bare.
+  Let them sleep to whom love giveth joy, to whom love giveth pain,
+    But the soul left alone cannot part with one moment of prayer."
+
+  MARION COUTHOUY.
+
+
+
+
+SISTER SILVIA.
+
+
+Monte Compatri is one of the eastern outlying peaks of the Alban
+Mountains, and, like so many Italian mountains, has its road climbing to
+and fro in long loops to a gray little city at the top. This city of
+Monte Compatri is a full and busy hive, with solid blocks of houses, and
+the narrowest of streets that break now and then into stairs. For those
+old builders respected the features of a landscape as though they had
+been the features of a face, and no more thought of levelling
+inequalities of land than of shaving down or raising up noses. When a
+man had a house-lot in a hollow, he built his house there, and made
+Steps to go down to it: his neighbor, who owned a rocky knoll, built his
+house at the top, and made stairs to go up to it. Moreover, if the land
+was a bit in the city, the house was made in the shape of it, and was as
+likely to have corners in obtuse or acute as in right angles.
+
+The inhabitants of Monte Compatri have two streets of which they are
+immensely proud--the Lungara, which wriggles through the middle of the
+town, and the Giro, which makes the entire circuit of the town, leaving
+outside only the rim of houses that rise from the edge of the mountain,
+some of them founded on the natural rock, others stretching roots of
+masonry far down into the earth.
+
+One of these houses on the Giro had for generations been in the
+possession of the Guai family. One after another had held it at an easy
+rent from Prince Borghese, the owner of the town. The vineyard and
+orchard below in the Campagna they owned, and from those their wealth
+was derived. For it was wealth for such people to have a house full of
+furniture, linen and porcelain--where, perhaps, a connoisseur might have
+found some rare bits of old china--besides having a thousand scudi in
+bank.
+
+In this position was the head of the family when he died, leaving a
+grown-up son and daughter, and his wife about to become a mother for the
+third time.
+
+"Pepina shall have her portion in money, since she is to marry soon,"
+the father said. "Give her three hundred scudi in gold and a hundred in
+pearls. The rest of the money shall be for my wife to do as she likes
+with. For the little one; when it shall come, Matteo shall put in the
+bank every year thirty scudi, and when it shall be of age, be it girl or
+boy, he shall divide the land equally with it."
+
+So said Giovanni Guai, and died, and his wife let him talk
+uncontradicted, since it was for the last time. They had lived a stormy
+life, his heavy fist opposed to her indefatigable tongue, and she
+contemplated with silent triumph the prospect of being left in
+possession of the field. Besides, would he not see afterward what she
+did--see and be helpless to oppose? So she let him die fancying that he
+had disposed of his property.
+
+"The child is sure to be a girl," she said afterward, "and I mean her to
+be a nun. The land shall not be cut up. Matteo shall be a rich man and
+pile up a fortune. He shall be the richest man in Monte Compatri, and a
+girl shall not stand in his way."
+
+Nature verified the mother's prophecy and sent a little girl. Silvia
+they called her, and, since she was surely to be a nun, she grew to be
+called Sister Silvia by everybody, even before she was old enough to
+recognize her own name.
+
+The house of the Guai, on its inner wall, opened on the comparatively
+quiet Giro. From the windows and door could be heard the buzz and hum of
+the Lungara, where everybody--men, women, children, cats and dogs--were
+out with every species of work and play when the sun began to decline.
+This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family.
+They could see their neighbors even when they were at work in their
+houses, and could exchange gossip and stir the polenta at the same
+time. The other side of the house they avoided. It was lonely and it was
+sunny. For Italians would have the sun, like the Lord, to be for ever
+knocking at the door and for ever shut out. It must shine upon their
+outer walls, but not by any means enter their windows.
+
+As years passed, however, there grew to be one exception in this regard.
+Sister Silvia loved not the town with its busy streets, nor the front
+windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own
+chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with
+knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear
+mass. There her mother accompanied her--a large, self-satisfied woman
+beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her
+mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his
+black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to
+encounter the two black eyes of Matteo Guai. It was understood that the
+knife in his belt was sharp, and that no scruple of conscience would
+stand between him and any vengeance he might choose to take for any
+affront he might choose to imagine.
+
+After mass, then, and the little work her mother permitted the girl to
+do for health's sake, Silvia sat alone by her window and looked out on
+the splendor which her eyes alone could appreciate. There lay the
+Campagna rolling and waving for miles and miles around, till the
+Sabines, all rose and amethyst, hemmed it in with their exquisite wall,
+and the sea curved a gleaming sickle to cut off its flowery passage, or
+the nearer mountains stood guard, almost covered by the green spray it
+threw up their rocky sides. She sat and stared at Rome while her busy
+fingers knit--at the wonderful city where she was one day to go and be a
+nun, where the pope lived and kings came to worship him. In the morning
+light the Holy City lay in the midst of the Campagna like her mother's
+wedding-pearls when dropped in a heap on their green cushion; and Silvia
+knelt with her face that way and prayed for a soul as white, for she
+was to be the spouse of Christ, and her purity was all that she could
+bring Him as a dowry. But when evening came, and that other airy sea of
+fine golden mist flowed in from the west, and made a gorgeous blur of
+all things, then the city seemed to float upward from the earth and rise
+toward heaven all stirring with the wings of its guardian angels, and
+Silvia would beg that the New Jerusalem might not be assumed till she
+should have the happiness of being in it.
+
+But there was a lovely view nearer than this visionary one, though the
+little nun seldom looked at it. If she should lean from her window she
+would see the mountain-side dropping from the gray walls of her home,
+with clinging flowery vines and trees growing downward, while the olives
+and grapevines of the Campagna came to meet them, setting here and there
+a precarious little garden halfway up the steep. Just under her window
+an almost perpendicular path came up, crept round the walls and entered
+the town. But no one ever used this road now, for a far wider and better
+one had been constructed at the other side of the mountain, and all the
+people came up that way when the day's work was over in the Campagna.
+
+One summer afternoon Silvia's reveries were broken by her mother's voice
+calling her: "Silvia, come and prepare the salad for Matteo."
+
+It was an extraordinary request, but the girl went at once without
+question. She seized upon every opportunity to practise obedience in
+preparation for that time when her life would be made up of obedience
+and prayer.
+
+Her mother was sitting by one of the windows talking with Matteo, who
+had just came up from the Campagna. He had an unsocial habit of eating
+alone, and, as he ate nothing when down in the vineyard, always wanted
+his supper as soon as he came up. The table was set for him with
+snow-white cloth and napkin, silver knife, fork and spoon, a loaf of
+bread and a decanter of golden-sparkling wine icy cold from the grotto
+hewn in the rock beneath the house; and he was just eating his
+_minestra_ of vegetables when his sister came in. At the other end of
+the long table was a head of crisp white lettuce lying on a clean linen
+towel, and two bottles--one of white vinegar, the other of oil as sweet
+as cream and as bright as sunshine. Monte Compatri had no need to send
+to Lucca for oil of olives while its own orchards dropped such streams
+of pure richness.
+
+The room was large and dingy. The brick floor had never known other
+cleansing than sprinkling and sweeping, the yellow-washed walls had
+become with time a pale, mottled brown, the paint had disappeared under
+a fixed dinginess which the dusting-brush alone could not remove, and
+the glass of the windows had never been washed except by the rain. Yet,
+for all that, the place had an air of cleanliness. For though these
+people do not clean their houses more than they clean their yards, yet
+their clothing and tables and beds are clean. Plentiful white linen,
+stockings like snow, and bright dishes and metals give a look of
+freshness and show well on the dim background. Heavy walnut presses,
+carved and black with age, stood against the walls, drinking-glasses and
+candlesticks sparkled on a dark bureau-top, there was a bright picture
+or two, and the sunlighted tinware of a house at the other side of the
+street threw a cluster of tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the
+window. Silvia received these sun-blossoms on her head when she placed
+herself at the lower end of the table. She pushed the sleeves of her
+white sack back from her slim white arms, and began washing the
+lettuce-leaves in a bowl of fresh water and breaking them in the towel.
+The leaves broke with a fine snap and dropped in pieces as stiff as
+paper into a large dark-blue plate of old Japanese ware. A connoisseur
+in porcelain would have set such a plate on his drawing-room wall as a
+picture.
+
+"How does Claudio work?" the mother asked of her son.
+
+"He works well," Matteo replied. "He is worth two of our common fellows,
+if he _is_ educated."
+
+"Nevertheless, I should not have employed him," the mother said. "He
+has disobeyed and disappointed his parents, and he should be punished.
+They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to
+educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay
+them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood,
+and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set one's
+will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough for
+anything. There should be a prison where parents could put the children
+who disobey them."
+
+The Sora Guai spoke sternly, and looked as if she would not have
+hesitated to put a refractory child in the deepest of dungeons.
+
+"He was a fool, but he earns his money," Matteo responded, and, drawing
+a plate of deliciously fried frogs toward him, began to gnaw them and
+throw the bones on the floor.
+
+Silvia gave him the salad, and poured wine and water into the tumbler
+for him, while his mother went to the kitchen for a dish of fricasseed
+pigeons.
+
+"There's no onion in the salad," Matteo grumbled when she came back.
+
+Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white little
+onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.
+
+"Forgive me, Matteo," she said. "I was distracted by the thought of
+Claudio. It seems such a terrible thing."
+
+"It would be a much more terrible thing if it were a girl who
+disobeyed," Matteo growled. He did not like that girls should criticise
+men.
+
+"So it would," the girl responded with meek readiness.
+
+"I don't know why I feel so tired to-day," the mother said, sinking into
+a chair again. "My bones ache as if I had been working in the vineyard
+all day."
+
+"You are not ill, mamma?" exclaimed Silvia, blushing with alarm.
+
+The answer was a hesitating one: "I don't see what can ail me. It
+wouldn't be anything, only that I am so tired without having done much."
+
+"Perhaps it's the weather, mamma," Silvia suggested.
+
+Gentle as she was, she had adopted the ruthless and ungrateful Italian
+custom of ascribing every ache and pain of the body to some almost
+imperceptible change in their too beautiful weather. The smallest cloud
+goes laden with more accusations than it holds drops of rain, and the
+ill winds that blow nobody any good blow through those shining skies
+from morning till night and from night till morning again.
+
+The Sora Guai was sicker than she dreamed. It was not the summer sun
+that scorched her so, nor the _scirocco_ that made her head so heavy.
+What malaria she had found to breathe on the mountain-top it would be
+hard to say; but the dreaded _perniciosa_ had caught her in its grasp,
+and she was doomed. The fever burned fiercely for a few days, and when
+it was quenched there was nothing left but ashes.
+
+And thus died the only earthly thing to which Sister Silvia's heart
+clung. The mother had been stern, but the daughter was too submissive to
+need correction. She had never had any will of her own, except to love
+and obey. Collision between them was therefore impossible, and the
+daughter felt as a frail plant growing under a shadowing tree might feel
+if the tree were cut down. She was bare to every wind that blew. She had
+no companions of her own age--she had no companion of any age, in
+fact--and she had not been accustomed to think for herself in the
+smallest thing.
+
+She had got bent into a certain shape, however, and her brother and
+sister felt quite safe on her account. Everybody knew that she was to be
+a nun of the Perpetual Adoration; that she was soon to go to the convent
+of Santa Maria Maddalena on the Quirinal in Rome; and that, once entered
+there, she would never again see a person from outside. The
+town's-people were accustomed to the wall of silence and seclusion which
+had already grown up about her, and they did not even seek to salute her
+when they met her going to and from church in the morning. To these
+simple citizens, ignorant but reverential, Sister Silvia's lowered
+eyelids were as inviolate as the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
+Besides, to help their reverence, there were the fierce black eyes and
+strange reputation of Matteo. So when, a day or two after her mother's
+death, his sister begged him to accompany her to church in the early
+morning, and leave her in the care of some decent woman there, Matteo
+replied that she might go by herself.
+
+She set out for the first time alone on what had ever been to her a _via
+sacra_, and was now become a _via dolorosa_, where her tears dropped as
+she walked. And going so once, she went again. Pepina, the elder sister,
+a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but she was too
+much taken up with work, the care of her two children and looking out
+for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and after a few weeks
+the young girl went as unheeded as a matron in her daily walk.
+
+At home her life was nearly the same. She mended the clothes from the
+washing and knit stockings, and sat at her window and looked off over
+the Campagna toward Rome.
+
+One evening she sat there before going to bed and watched the moonlight
+turn all the earth to black and silver under the purple sky--a black
+like velvet, so deep and soft was it, and a silver like white fire,
+clear and splendid, yet beautifully soft. She was feeling desolate, and
+her tears dropped down, now and then breaking into sobs. It had been
+pleasant to sit there alone when she knew that her mother was below
+stairs, strong, healthy and gay. All that life had been as the oil over
+which her little flame burned. Lacking it, she grew dim, just as the
+floating wick in her little blue vase before the Madonna grew dim when
+the oil was gone.
+
+As she wept and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew conscious
+of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human voice, clear
+and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in little
+snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came nearer
+and paused beneath a fig tree, and the words grew distinct.
+
+"Pietà, signore, di me dolente," it sang.
+
+Silvia leaned out of the window and looked down at the singer. His face
+was lifted to the white moonlight, and seemed in its pallid beauty a
+concentration of the moonlight. Only his face was visible, for the
+shadow of the tree hid all his figure. One might almost have expected to
+catch a glimmer of two motionless wings bearing up that face, so fair it
+was.
+
+To Silvia it was as if another self, who grieved also, but who could
+speak, were uttering all her pain, and lightening it so. She recognized
+Claudio's voice. He was the chief singer in the cathedral, and sang like
+an angel. She was afraid that Claudio had done very wrong in not being a
+priest, but, for all that, she had often found her devotion increased by
+his singing. The Christmas night would not have been half so joyful
+lacking his _Adeste Fideles_; the _Stabat Mater_ sung by him in Holy
+Week made her tears of religious sorrow burst forth afresh; and when on
+Easter morning he sang the _Gloria_ it had seemed to her that the
+heavens were opening.
+
+For all that, however, he had been to her not a person, but a voice.
+That he should come here and express her sorrow made him seem different.
+For the first time she looked at his face. By daylight it was thin and
+finely featured, and of a clear darkness like shaded water, through
+which the faintest tinge of color is visible. In this transfigurating
+moonlight it became of a luminous whiteness.
+
+The song ended, the singer turned his head slightly and looked up at
+Silvia's window. She did not draw back. There was no recognition of any
+human sympathy with him, and no slightest consciousness of that airy and
+silent friendship which had long been weaving itself over the tops of
+the mountains that separated them. How could she know that Claudio had
+sung for her, and that it had been the measure of his success to see her
+head droop or lift as he sang of sorrow and pain or of joy and triumph?
+The choir had their post over the door; and, besides, she never glanced
+up even in going out. Therefore she gazed down into his uplifted face
+with a sweet and sorrowful tranquillity, her soul pure and candid to its
+uttermost depths.
+
+For Claudio, who had sung to express his sympathy for her, but had not
+dreamed of seeing her, it was as if the dark-blue sky above had opened
+and an angel had looked out when he saw her face. He could only stretch
+his clasped hands toward her.
+
+The gesture made her weep anew, for it was like human kindness. She hid
+her face in her handkerchief, and he saw her wipe the tears away again
+and again.
+
+Claudio remembered a note he carried. It had been written the night
+before--not with any hope of her ever seeing it, but, as he had written
+her hundreds of notes before, pouring out his heart into them because it
+was too full to bear without that relief. He took the note out, but how
+should he give it to her? The window was too far above for him to toss
+so light a thing unless it should be weighted with a stone; and he could
+not throw a stone at Silvia's window. He held it up, and, that she might
+see it more clearly, tore up a handful of red poppies and laid it white
+on the blossoms that were a deep red by night.
+
+Silvia understood, and after a moment's study dropped him down the ball
+of her knitting; and soon the note came swaying up through the still air
+resting on its cushion of poppies, for Claudio had wound the thread
+about both flowers and letter.
+
+He smiled with an almost incredulous delight as he saw the package
+arrive safely at its destination and caught afterward the faint red
+light of the lamp that Silvia had taken down from before her Madonna to
+read the note by. Since she was a little thing only five or six years
+old his heart had turned toward her, and her small white face had been
+to him the one star in a dim life. He still kept two or three tiny
+flowers she had given him years before when his family and hers were
+coming together down from Monte San Silvestro at the other side of
+Monte Compatri. The two children, with others, had stopped to stick
+fresh flowers through the wire screen before the great crucifix halfway
+up the mountain, and Silvia had given Claudio these blossoms. He had
+laid them away with his treasures and relics--the bit of muslin from the
+veil of Our Lady of Loretto, the almost invisible speck from the cord of
+St. Francis of Assisi and the little paper of the ashes of Blessed
+Joseph Labré. In those days he was the little priest and she the little
+nun, and their companions stood respectfully back for them. Now he was
+no more the priest, and she was up there in her window against the sky
+reading the note he had written her.
+
+This is what the note said:
+
+"My heart is breaking for your sorrow. Why should such eyes as yours be
+permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those tears away? Oh that I
+might catch them as they fall! Drop me down a handkerchief that has been
+wet with them, that I may keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in
+which I can console you and spend my life to serve you."
+
+She read with a mingling of consolation and astonishment. Why, this was
+more than her mother cared for her! But perhaps men were really more
+strongly loving than women. It would seem so, since God, who knows all,
+when He wanted to express His love to mankind, took the form of a man,
+not of a woman. Then she considered whether, and how, she should answer
+this note, and the result of her considering was this, written hastily
+on a bit of paper in which some Agnus Dei had been wrapped:
+
+     "I do not know what I ought to write to you, but I thank you for
+     your kindness. It comforts me, and I have need of comfort. I think,
+     though, that it may be wrong for you to speak of my handkerchief as
+     if it were a relic. Relics are things which have belonged to the
+     saints, and I am not a saint at all, though I hope to become one. I
+     frequently do wrong. Spend your life in serving God, and pray for
+     me. You pray in singing, and your singing is very sweet.
+
+     SILVIA."
+
+It seemed to her a simple and merely polite note. To him it was as the
+spark to a magazine of powder. All the possibilities of his life, only
+half hoped or half dreamed of, burst at once into a flame of certainty.
+She had need of comfort, and he comforted her! His voice was sweet to
+her, and his singing was a prayer!
+
+Silvia should not be a nun. She should break the bond imposed by her
+mother, as he had broken that imposed by his parents. She should be his
+wife, and they would live in Rome. He knew that his voice would find
+bread for them.
+
+All this flashed through his mind as he read, and pressed to his lips
+the handkerchief which she had dropped down to him, though it was not a
+relic. He lifted his arms upward toward her window with a rapturous joy,
+as if to embrace her, but she did not look out again. A little scruple
+for having deprived the Madonna for a moment of her lamp had made her
+resolve to say at once a decade of the rosary in expiation. He waited
+till the sound of closing doors and wandering voices told that the
+inhabitants gathered for the evening in the Lungara were separating to
+their homes, then went reluctantly away. Matteo would be at home, and
+Matteo's face might look down at him from that other window beside
+Silvia's. So he also went home, with the moonlight between his feet and
+the ground and stars sparkling in his brain. He felt as if his head were
+the sky.
+
+This was an August night. One day in October, Matteo told his sister
+that she was to go to Rome with him the next morning to pass a month
+with a family they knew there, and afterward begin her noviciáte in the
+convent of the Sacramentarians at Monte Cavallo. He had received a
+letter from the Signora Fantini, who would receive her and do everything
+for her. He and Pepina had no time, now that the vintage had begun, to
+attend to such affairs, even if they knew how.
+
+Silvia grew pale. She had not expected to go before the spring, and now
+all was arranged without a word being said to her, and she was to go
+without saying good-bye to any one.
+
+Matteo's sharp eyes were watching her. "You will be ready to start at
+seven o'clock," he said: "I must be back to-morrow night."
+
+"Yes, Matteo," she faltered, hesitated a moment, then ventured to add,
+"I did not expect to go so soon."
+
+"And what of that?" he demanded roughly. "You were to go at the proper
+time, and the proper time is to-morrow."
+
+She trembled, but ventured another word: "I should like to see my
+confessor first."
+
+"He will come here this evening to see you," her brother replied: "I
+have already talked with him. You have nothing else to do. Pepina will
+pack your trunk while you are talking with the priest."
+
+Silvia had no more to say. She was bound hand and foot. Besides, she was
+willing to go, she assured herself. It was her duty to obey her parents,
+or the ones who stood in their place and had authority over her. Matteo
+said she must go; therefore it was her duty to go, and she was willing.
+
+But the willing girl looked very pale and walked about with a very
+feeble step, and it was hard work to keep the tears that were every
+moment rising to her eyes from falling over her cheeks. It was such a
+pitiful face, indeed, that Father Teodoli, when he came just before Ave
+Maria, asked if Silvia were ill.
+
+"She has had a toothache," Matteo said quickly, and gave his sister a
+glance.
+
+"And what have you done for it, my child?" the priest asked kindly.
+
+"Nothing," Silvia faltered out.
+
+"I will leave you to give Silvia all the advice she needs," Matteo said
+after the compliments of welcome were over. "I have to go down the
+Lungara for men to work in the vineyard to-morrow.--Silvia, come and
+shut the door after me: there is too much draught here."
+
+Silvia followed her brother to the door, trembling for what he might say
+or do. Well she knew that his command was given only that he might have
+a chance to speak with her alone.
+
+"Mind what you say to your confessor," he whispered, grasping her arm
+and speaking in her ear. "You are to be a nun: you wish to be, and you
+are willing to set out to-morrow. Tell him no nonsense--do you hear?--or
+it will be worse for you. I shall know every word you say. If he asks if
+you had a toothache say Yes. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, Matteo."
+
+She went back half fainting, and did as she had been commanded. If there
+had been any little lurking impulse to beg for another week or month, it
+died of fear. If she had any confession to make of other wishes than
+those chosen for her, she postponed it. Matteo might be behind the door
+listening, or in the next room or at the window. It seemed to her that
+he could make himself invisible in order to keep guard over her.
+
+So the priest talked a little, learned nothing, gave some advice,
+recommended himself to her prayers, gave her his benediction, and went.
+Then Pepina called her to see the trunk all packed with linen that had
+been laid by for her for years, and Matteo, who had really been lurking
+about the house, told her to go to bed, and himself really went off this
+time to the Lungara. Pepina's lover came for her to sit out on the
+doorstep with him, and Silvia was left alone. Nobody cared for her. All
+had other interests, and they forgot her the moment she was out of their
+sight. Worse, even: they wanted her to be for ever out of their sight,
+that they might never have to think of her.
+
+But no: there was one who did not forget her--who would perhaps now have
+heard that she was going away, and be waiting in the mountain-path for
+her. She hastened to her room, locked the door and went to the window.
+He made a gesture of haste, and she dropped the ball down to him. This
+was not the second time that their conversation had been held by means
+of a thread. Indeed, they had come to talk so every night. At first it
+had been a few words only, and Silvia's unconsciousness and her
+sincerity in her intention to follow her mother's will had imposed
+silence on the young man. But little by little he had ventured, and she
+had understood; and within the last week there had been no concealments
+between them, though Silvia still resisted all his prayers to change her
+resolution and brave her brother.
+
+His first note was in her hands in a moment:
+
+"Is it possible that what I hear is true? I will not believe it: I will
+not let you go."
+
+"Yes, and I must go," she wrote back. "I have to start at seven in the
+morning. Dear Claudio, be resigned: there is no help for it."
+
+"Silvia, why will you persist in ruining your life and mine? It is a
+sin. Say that you are too sick to go to-morrow. Stay in bed all day, and
+by night I will have a rope-ladder for you to come down to me. We can
+run away and hide somewhere."
+
+"I cannot. We could never hide from Matteo: he would find us out and
+kill us both."
+
+"I will go to the Holy Father and tell him all. We could be in Rome
+early in the morning if we should walk all night."
+
+"Matteo would hear us: he hears everything. We should never reach Rome.
+He would find us wherever we might be hidden. If we were dead and buried
+he would pull us out of the ground to stab us. I must go. I have sinned
+in having so much intercourse with you. Be resigned, Claudio. Be a good
+man, and we shall meet in heaven. The earth is a terrible place: I am
+afraid of it. I want to shut myself up in the convent and be at peace. I
+fear so much that I tremble all the time. Say addio."
+
+"I cannot. Will you stay in bed to-morrow, and let me try if I cannot go
+to Rome?"
+
+"Say addio, Claudio. I dare not stay here any longer: I hear some one
+outside my door. I say addio to you now. I shall not drop the ball
+again."
+
+She did not even draw it up again, for the thread caught on a nail in
+the wall and broke. And at the same time there was a knock at her door.
+
+"Silvia, why do you not go to bed?" Matteo called out: "I hear you up."
+
+"I am going now," she made haste to answer, and in her terror threw
+herself on the bed without undressing. She wondered if Matteo could hear
+her heart beat through the wall or see how she was shaking.
+
+The next morning at seven o'clock Silvia and her brother took their
+seats in the clumsy coach that goes from Monte Compatri to Rome whenever
+there are passengers enough to fill it, and after confused leavetakings
+from all but the one she wished most to see they set out. Claudio was
+invisible. In fact, he had lain on the ground all night beneath her
+window, and now, hidden in a tree, was watching the winding road for an
+occasional glimpse of the carriage as it bore his love away.
+
+The peasants of Italy, when they see the Milky Way stretching its
+wavering, cloudy path across the sky, shining as if made up of the
+footprints of innumerable saints, say that it is the road to Jerusalem.
+The road to the New Jerusalem has no such pallid and spiritual glory:
+its colors are those of life. No death but that of martyrdom, with its
+rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown, is figured there. Life,
+and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few
+blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the _dolce far niente_ of poverty
+that neither works nor starves,--they lie all along the road.
+
+Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey.
+She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though all
+the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of St.
+John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon _Angelus_,
+and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door and Silvia in
+the kind lady's arms. It seemed to the girl that she had found her
+mother again. That this lady was more gracious, graceful, kind and
+beautiful than her mother had ever been she would not think. She was
+simply another mother. And when Matteo had gone away home again, not
+too soon, and when, after a few days' sightseeing, the signora,
+suspecting that the continued sadness of her young guest had some other
+cause than separation from her brother and sister, sought persistently
+and artfully to win her secret, Silvia told her all with many tears. She
+was going to be a nun because her mother had said that she must; and she
+was willing to be a nun--certainly she was willing. But, for all that,
+if it could have been so, she would have been so happy with Claudio, and
+she never should be quite happy without him.
+
+"Then you must not be a nun," the signora said decidedly. "The thing is
+all wrong. You have no vocation. You should have said all this before."
+
+For already the signora had taken Silvia to see the Superior at Monte
+Cavallo, who had promised to receive the young novice in three weeks,
+and had told her what work she could perform in the convent. "You are
+not strong, I think," she had said, "but you can knit the stockings. All
+have to work."
+
+And Monsignor Catinari, whose business it was to examine all candidates
+for the conventual life, had held a long conversation with her and gone
+away perfectly satisfied.
+
+But when the signora proposed to undo all this, Silvia was wild with
+terror. No, no, she would be a nun. Her mother had said so, she wished
+it, and Matteo would kill her if she should refuse.
+
+"Leave it all to me," the signora said, and laid her motherly hand on
+the trembling little ones held out to her in entreaty. "We will look out
+for that. Matteo shall not hurt you or Claudio. I am going to send for
+Monsignor Catinari again, and you must tell him the truth this time. And
+then we will see what can be done in the case. Don't look so terrified,
+child. Do you think that Matteo rules the world?"
+
+Poor little Silvia could not be reassured, for to her other terrors was
+now added Monsignor Catinari's possible wrath. To her, men were objects
+of terror. The doctrine of masculine supremacy, so pitilessly upheld in
+Italy, was exaggerated to her mind by her brother's character; and
+though she believed that help was sometimes possible, she also believed
+that it often came too late, as in the case of poor Beatrice Cenci. They
+might stand between her and Matteo, but if he had first killed her, what
+good would it do? She had a fixed idea that he would kill her.
+
+Monsignor Catinari was indeed much provoked when the signora told him
+the true story of the little novice.
+
+"Just see what creatures girls are!" he exclaimed. "How are we to know
+if they have a vocation or not? That girl professed herself both willing
+and desirous to be a nun."
+
+He did not scold Silvia, however. When he saw her pretty frightened face
+his heart relented. "You have told me a good many lies, my child," he
+said, "but I forgive you, since they were not intended in malice. We
+will say no more about it. I learn from the signora that this Claudio is
+a good young man, so the sooner you are married the better. Cheer up: we
+will have you a bride by the first week of November; and if Claudio has
+such a wonderful voice, he can make his way in Rome."
+
+The reassurances of a man were more effectual than those of a woman.
+
+"At last I believe! at last I fear no more!" Silvia cried, throwing
+herself into the arms of the Signora Fantini when the Monsignor was
+gone. "Oh how beautiful the earth is! how beautiful life is!"
+
+"We will then begin immediately to enjoy life," the signora replied.
+"Collation is ready, and Nanna has bought us some of the most delicious
+grapes. See how large and rich they are! One could almost slice them.
+There! these black figs are like honey. Try one now, before your soup.
+The macaroni that will be brought in presently was made in the
+house--none of your Naples stuff, made nobody knows how or by whom. What
+else Nanna has for us I cannot say. She was very secret this morning,
+and I suspect that means riceballs seasoned with mushrooms and hashed
+giblets of turkey. She always becomes mysterious when those are in
+preparation. Eat well, child, and get a little flesh and color before
+Claudio comes."
+
+They made a merry breakfast, with the noon sun sending its golden arrows
+through every tiniest chink of the closed shutters and an almost summer
+heat reigning without. Then there was an hour of sleep, then a drive to
+the Pincio to see all the notable people who came up there to look at or
+speak to each other while the sun sank behind St. Peter's. And in the
+evening after dinner they went to the housetop to see the fireworks
+which were being displayed for some festa or other; and later there was
+music, and then to bed.
+
+Life became an enchantment to the little bride-elect, as life in Italy
+will become to any one who has not too heavy a cross to bear. For peace
+in this beautiful land means delight, not merely the absence of pain.
+How the sun shone! and how the fountains danced! What roses bloomed
+everywhere! what fruits of Eden were everywhere piled! How soft the
+speech was! and how sweet the smiles! And when it was discovered that
+Silvia had a beautiful voice, so that she and Claudio would be like a
+pair of birds together, then it seemed to her that a nest of twigs on a
+tree-branch would be all that she could desire.
+
+They took her to see the pope on one of those days. It was as if they
+had taken her to heaven. To her he was the soul of Rome, the reason why
+Rome was; and when she saw his white figure against the scarlet
+background of cardinals she remembered how Rome looked against the rosy
+Campagna at sunset from her far-away window in Monte Compatri.
+
+"A little _sposa_, is she?" the pope said when Monsignor Catinari
+presented her.--"I bless you, my child: wear this in memory of me." He
+gave her a little gold medal from a tiny pocket at his side, laid his
+hand on her head and passed on. It was too much: she had to weep for
+joy.
+
+Then, when the audience was over, they took her through the museum and
+library, and some one gave her a bunch of roses out of the pope's
+private garden, and she was put into a carriage and driven home, her
+heart beating somewhere in her head, her feet winged and her eyes
+dazzled.
+
+There was a rapturous letter from Claudio awaiting her, and by that she
+knew that it was not all a dream. She rattled the paper in her hands as
+she sat with her eyes shut, half dreaming, to make sure and keep sure
+that she was not to wake up presently to bitterness. Claudio would come
+to Rome in a week, and perhaps they would be married before he should go
+back. There was no letter from Matteo. So much the better.
+
+One golden day succeeded another, and Silvia changed from a lily to a
+rose with marvellous rapidity. She was not a ruddy, full-leaved rose,
+though, but like one of those delicate ones with clouds of red on them
+and petals that only touch the calyx, as if they were wings and must be
+free to move. She was slim and frail, and her color wavered, and her
+head had a little droop, and her voice was low. She had always been the
+stillest creature alive; and now, full of happiness as she was, her
+feelings showed themselves in an uneasy stirring, like that of a flower
+in which a bee has hidden itself. After the first outburst she did not
+so much say that she was happy as breathe and look it.
+
+One noonday, when life seemed too beautiful to last, and they all sat
+together after breakfast, the signora, her daughter and Silvia, too
+contented to say a word, the door opened, and Matteo Guai came in with a
+black, smileless face, and not the slightest salutation for his sister.
+He had come to take Silvia home, he replied briefly to the signora's
+compliments. She must be ready in an hour. The vintage was suffering by
+his absence, and it was necessary that he should return at once.
+
+Signora Fantini poured out the most voluble exclamations, prayers and
+protests. She had forty engagements for Silvia. They had had only a few
+days' visit from her, and she was to have stayed a month. They would
+themselves accompany her to Monte Compatri later if it was necessary
+that she should go. But, in fine, Monsignor Catinari did not expect her
+to return.
+
+"I am the head of the family, and my sister has to obey me till she is
+married," Matteo replied doggedly. "I suppose that Monsignor Catinari
+will not deny that. The Church always supports the authority of the
+master of the family."
+
+"Why, of course," the signora replied, rather confused by this
+irresistible argument, "you have the right, and no one will resist you.
+But as a favor now--" and the signora assumed her most coaxing smile,
+and even advanced a plump white hand to touch Matteo's sleeve.
+
+She might as well have tried to bewitch and persuade the bronze Augustus
+on the Capitoline Hill.
+
+"Things are changed since it was promised that Silvia should stay a
+month with you," Matteo replied. "There is work at home for her to do.
+Since she is not to be a nun, she must work. Let her be ready to start
+in an hour: my carriage is waiting at the door. I am going out into the
+piazza for a little while. I will send a man up for her trunk when I am
+ready to start."
+
+Silvia uttered not a word. At sight of her brother she had sunk back in
+her chair white and speechless. On hearing his voice she had closed her
+eyes.
+
+He half turned to her before going out, looking at her out of the
+corners of his evil eyes, a cold, strange smile wreathing his lips. "So
+you are not going to be a nun?" he said.
+
+She did not respond. Only the quiver of her lowered eyelids and a slight
+shiver told that she knew he was addressing her.
+
+Matteo went out, and the signora, at her wits' end, undertook to
+encourage Silvia. There was no time to see Monsignor Catinari or to
+appeal to any authority; and if there were, it would have availed
+nothing perhaps. Almost any one would have said that the girl's terrors
+were fanciful, and that it was quite natural her brother, who would lose
+five hundred scudi by her change of purpose, should require her to work
+as other girls of her condition worked.
+
+"Cheer up and go with him, _figlia mia_," she said, "and leave all to
+me. I will see Monsignor Catinari this very evening, and post a letter
+to you before I go to bed. If Matteo is unkind to you, we will have you
+taken away from him at once. And, in any case, you shall be married in a
+few weeks at the most, as Monsignor promised. Don't cry so: don't say
+that you cannot go. I am sorry and vexed, my dear, but I see no way but
+for you to go. Depend upon me. No harm shall come to you. I will myself
+come to Monte Compatri within the week, and arrange all for you.
+Besides, recollect that you will see Claudio: he is there waiting for
+you. Perhaps you may see him this very evening."
+
+The Signora Fantini's efforts to cheer and reassure the sister were as
+ineffectual as her efforts to persuade the brother had been. Silvia
+submitted because she had no strength to resist.
+
+"O Madonna mia!" she kept murmuring, "he will kill me! he will kill me!
+O Madonna mia! pray for me."
+
+When an Italian says that he will come back in an hour, you may look for
+him after two hours. Matteo was no exception to the rule. It was already
+mid-afternoon when the porter came up and said that Silvia's brother was
+waiting for her below.
+
+The signora gave her a tumbler half full of _vin santo_, which she kept
+for special occasions--a strong, delicious wine with the perfume of a
+whole garden in it. "Drink every drop," she commanded: "it will give you
+courage. You had better be a little tipsy than fainting away. And put
+this bottle into your pocket to drink when you have need on the way."
+
+More dead than alive, Silvia was placed in the little old-fashioned
+carriage that Matteo had hired to come to Rome in, and her brother took
+his seat beside her. The Signora Fantini and her daughter leaned from
+the window, kissing their hands to her and shaking their handkerchiefs
+as long as she was in sight. And as long as she was in sight they saw
+her pale face turned backward, looking at them. Then the tawny stone of
+a church-corner hid her from their eyes for ever.
+
+Who knows or can guess what that drive was? The two passed through
+Frascati, and Matteo stopped to speak to an acquaintance there. They
+drove around Monte Porzio, and Matteo stopped again, to buy a glass of
+wine and some figs. He offered some to his sister, but she shook her
+head.
+
+"She is sleepy," her brother said to the man of whom he had bought.
+"Give me another tumbler of wine: it isn't bad."
+
+"It is the last barrel I have of the vintage of two years ago," the man
+replied. "It was a good vintage. If the signorina would take a drop she
+would sleep the better. Besides, the night is coming on and there is a
+chill in the air."
+
+Silvia opened her eyes and made the little horizontal motion with her
+fore finger which in Italy means no.
+
+"She will sleep well enough," Matteo said, and drove on.
+
+Night was coming on, and they had no more towns to pass--only a bit more
+of lonely level road and the lonely road that wound to and fro up the
+mountain-side. At the best, they could not reach home before ten
+o'clock. The road went to and fro--sometimes open, to give a view of the
+Campagna and the Sabine Mountains, and Soracte swimming in a lustrous
+dimness on the horizon; sometimes shut in closely by trees, that made it
+almost black in spite of the moon. For the moon was low and gave but
+little light, being but a crescent as yet. There was a shooting star now
+and then, breaking out like a rocket with a trail of sparks or slipping
+small and pallid across the sky.
+
+One of these latter might have been poor Silvia's soul slipping away
+from the earth. It went out there somewhere on the mountain-side. Matteo
+said the carriage tilted, and she, being asleep, fell out before he
+could prevent. Her temple struck a sharp rock, and Claudio missed his
+bride.
+
+He had to keep quiet about it, though. What could he prove? what could
+any one prove? Where knives are sharp and people mind their own
+business, or express their opinions only by a shrug of the shoulders and
+a grimace, how is a poor boy, how is even a rich man or a rich woman, to
+come at the truth in such a case? Besides, the truth would not have
+brought her back, poor little Silvia!
+
+  MARY AGNES TINCKER.
+
+
+
+
+A SPANISH STORY-TELLER
+
+
+In these days of pessimism in literature, when Tourgueneff and
+Sacher-Masoch represent man as the victim of blind Chance and
+annihilation his greatest happiness, it is pleasant to turn to a writer
+who still believes in God, his country and the family, and recognizes an
+overruling Providence that directs the world. It is not strange that
+these old-fashioned ideas should be found in Spain, where, in spite of
+much ignorance and superstition, the lower classes are deeply religious
+in the best sense of the word, and distinguished for their patriotism
+and intense love for their homes.
+
+Antonio de Trueba, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1821 at
+Montellano, a little village in Biscay. He thus describes the home of
+his childhood in the preface to his collected poems: "On the brow of one
+of the mountains that surround a valley of Biscay there are four little
+houses, white as four doves, hidden in a grove of chestnut and walnut
+trees--four houses that can only be seen at a distance when the autumn
+has removed the leaves from the trees. There I spent the first fifteen
+years of my life. In the bottom of the valley there is a church whose
+belfry pierces the arch of foliage and rises majestic above the ash and
+walnut trees, as if to signify that the voice of God rises above
+Nature; and in that church two masses were said on Sunday--one at
+sunrise and the other two hours later. We children rose with the song of
+the birds and went down to the first mass, singing and leaping through
+the shady oak-groves, while our elders came down later to high mass.
+While our parents and grand-parents were attending it I sat down beneath
+some cherry trees that were opposite my father's house--for from that
+spot could be seen the whole valley that ended in the sea--and shortly
+after four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that
+hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long
+braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to
+their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine,
+under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders
+chatted and enjoyed our pleasure."
+
+The young poet's parents were simple tillers of the soil, who gave their
+son a meagre education. In one of his letters he says that his father's
+library consisted of the _Fueros de Viscaya_ (the old laws of Biscay),
+the _Fables_ of Samaniego, _Don Quixote_, some ballads brought from
+Valmaseda or Bilbao, and two or three lives of the saints. Antonio seems
+to have had from his earliest childhood an ardent love of poetry, and in
+the passage quoted above he mentions his own compositions. He continues
+by saying, "I remember one day one of those girls was very sad because
+her sweetheart was going away for a long time. She wanted a song to
+express her grief, and I composed one at her request. A few days later
+she did not need my aid to sing her sorrow: in proportion as it had
+increased her ability to sing it herself had also increased, for poetry
+is the child of feeling. Her songs, as well as those I composed, soon
+became popular in the valley."
+
+When the poet was fifteen years old the civil war waged by Don Carlos
+was desolating Spain. The inhabitants of Biscay espoused his cause, but
+Antonio's parents were unwilling to expose their son to the dangers he
+must run if he remained at home, and therefore decided to send him to a
+distant relative in Madrid who kept a hardware-shop. "One night in
+November," says Trueba, "I departed from my village, perhaps--my
+God!--never to return. I descended the valley with my eyes bathed in
+tears. The cocks began to crow, the dogs barked, the owls hooted in the
+mountains, the wind moaned in the tops of the walnut trees, and the
+river roared furiously rushing down the valley; but the inhabitants of
+the village slept peaceably, except my parents and brothers, who from
+the window followed weeping the sound of my footsteps, about to be lost
+in the noise of the valley. I was just leaving the last house of the
+village when one of those girls who had so often sought me under the
+cherry trees approached the window and took leave of me sobbing. On
+crossing a hill, about to lose the valley from my sight, I heard a
+distant song, and stopped. That same girl was sending me her last
+farewell in a song as beautiful as the sentiment that inspired it."
+
+Antonio devoted himself to his duties during the day and pursued his
+studies with eagerness during the night. What he suffered from
+home-sickness the reader can easily imagine. All through his later works
+are scattered reminiscences of those unhappy years in Madrid, when his
+memory fondly turned to the mountains and cherry-groves of his beloved
+Encartaciones.[1] Often dreaming of the country, which, he says, is his
+perpetual dream, he imagined the moment in which God would permit him to
+return to the valley in which he was born. "When this happens, I say to
+myself, my brow will be wrinkled and my hair gray. The day on which I
+return to my native valley will be a festal day, and on crossing the
+hill from which I can behold the whole valley, I shall hear the bells
+ringing for high mass. How sweetly will resound in my ears those bells
+that so often rilled my childhood with delight! I shall enter the
+valley, my heart beating, my breathing difficult and my eyes bathed with
+tears of joy. There will be, with its white and sonorous belfry, the
+church where the holy water of baptism was poured upon the brows of my
+parents and my own; there will be the walnut and chestnut trees beneath
+whose shade we danced on Sunday afternoons; there will be the wood where
+my brothers and I looked for birds' nests and made whistles out of the
+chestnut and walnut bark; there, along the road, will be the apple trees
+whose fruit my companions and I knocked off with stones when we went to
+school; there will be the little white house where my grand-parents, my
+father, my brothers and I were born; there will be all that does not
+feel or breathe. But where will be, my God, all those who with tears in
+their eyes bade me farewell so many years ago? I shall follow the valley
+down: I shall recognize the valley, but not its inhabitants. Judge
+whether there will be among sorrows a greater sorrow than mine! The
+people gathered in the portico of the church waiting for mass to begin
+will look over the wall along the road, and others will look out of the
+windows, all to see the stranger pass. And they will not know me, and I
+shall not know them, for those children and those youths and those old
+men will not be the old men nor the youths nor the children whom I left
+in my native valley. I shall follow sadly the valley down. 'All that has
+felt,' I shall exclaim, 'has changed or died. What is it that preserves
+here pure and immaculate the sentiments which I inspired?' And then some
+village-woman will sing one of those songs in which I enclosed the
+deepest feelings of my soul, and on hearing her my heart will want to
+leap from my breast, and I shall fall on my knees, and, if emotion and
+sobs do not stifle my voice, I shall exclaim, 'Holy and thrice holy,
+blessed and thrice blessed, poetry which immortalizes human sentiment!'"
+
+Antonio after a time left his relative's shop to enter another in the
+same business, from which he was relieved by the owner's financial
+difficulties. He then determined to devote himself to literature, and
+became a writer for the papers. In 1852 he published _Libro de Cantares_
+(_Book of Songs_), which at once made his name a household word
+throughout Spain. He tells us that most of the poems in it were composed
+mentally while dreaming of his native country and wandering about the
+environs of Madrid, "wherever the birds sing and the people display
+their virtues and their vices, for the noble Spanish people have a
+little of everything." He warns his readers not to expect from him what
+he cannot give them: "Do not seek in this book erudition or culture or
+art. Seek recollections and feeling, and nothing more. Fifteen years ago
+I left my solitary village: these fifteen years, instead of singing
+under the cherry trees of my native country, I sing in the midst of the
+Babylon which rises on the banks of the Manzanares; and,
+notwithstanding, I still amuse myself with counting from here the trees
+that shade the little white house where I was born, and where, God
+willing, I shall die: my songs still resemble those of fifteen years
+ago. What do I understand of Greek or Latin, of the precepts of Horace
+or of Aristotle? Speak to me of the blue skies and seas, of birds and
+boughs, of harvests and trees laden with golden fruit, of the loves and
+joys and griefs of the upright and simple villagers, and then I shall
+understand you, because I understand nothing more than this."
+
+These poems are what the author calls them, nothing more--pure and
+simple records of the life of the people around him, their loves and
+griefs, their hopes and disappointments. The most usual metre is the
+simple Spanish _asonante_, or eight-syllable trochaic verse, with the
+vowel rhyme called _asonante_.[2] They are pervaded by a tender spirit
+of melancholy, very different from the _Weltschmerz_ of Heine, with some
+of whose lyrics the Spanish poet's _cantares_ may be compared without
+losing anything by the comparison. In one poem he says: "In the depths
+of my heart are great sorrows: some of them are known to men, others to
+God alone. But I shall rarely mention my griefs in my songs, for I have
+no hope that they can be alleviated; and where is the mortal who, in
+passing through this valley, has not encountered among the flowers some
+sharp thorn?" In the same poem he says: "All ask me, Who taught you to
+sing? No one: I sing because God wills it--I sing like the birds;" and
+he explains his method by a touching incident. One evening he was
+singing on the bank of the Manzanares when he saw a child smiling on the
+breast of its mother. The poet went and caressed it, and the child threw
+its arms about Antonio's neck and turning to its mother cried, "Mother,
+Antonio, he of the songs, is a blind man who sees."[3] The poet
+continues: "I am a blind man who sees: that angel told the truth. With
+my guitar resting on my loving heart, you may see me wandering from the
+city to the valley, from the cabin of the poor to the palace of the
+great, weeping with those who weep, singing with those who sing, for my
+rude guitar is the lasting echo of all joys and all sorrows. I shall
+sing my songs in the simple language of the laborer and the soldier, of
+the children and the mothers, of those who have not frequented learned
+schools.... In this language I shall extol the faith and the holy
+combats of the soldiers of Christ with the sacrilegious Saracen; I shall
+sing the heroic efforts of our fathers to conquer the proud legions of
+Bonaparte; and the beauty of the skies, and the flowers of the valley,
+and love and innocence--all that is beautiful and great--will find a
+lasting echo in my rude guitar."
+
+Many of these songs are ingenious variations on a theme supplied by some
+old and well-known poem, a few lines of which are woven into each
+division of the new song.
+
+The success of the _Libro de los Cantares_ was immediate and great; the
+first three editions were exhausted in a few months; the duc de
+Montpensier wished to defray the expenses of the fourth, and Queen
+Isabella of the fifth; since then others have followed. Some years later
+the poet married, and since then has written chiefly in prose.
+
+In 1859 appeared a volume of short tales entitled _Rose-colored Stories_
+(_Cuentos de Color de Rosa_): these were followed by _Tales of the
+Country_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), _Popular Tales_ (_Cuentos popolares_),
+_Popular Narrations_ (_Narraciones popolares_), _Tales of Various
+Colors_, _Tales of the Dead and Living_, etc.[4]
+
+Before examining in detail any of these collections it may be well to
+learn the author's views of his task and definition of his subject. In
+the introduction to the _Popular Tales_ he says, addressing his friend
+Don José de Castro y Serrano: "The object of this preface is simply to
+tell you why I have given the name of _Popular Tales_ to those contained
+in this volume, what I understand by popular literature, and why I write
+tales instead of writing novels or comedies or cookbooks. There are two
+reasons why I have called these tales popular. First, because many of
+them are told by the people; and, secondly, because in retelling them I
+have used the simple and plain style of the people.... In my conception,
+popular literature can be defined in this manner: That literature which
+by its simplicity and clearness is within the reach of the intelligence
+of the people.... However, in popular literature the simplicity of form
+is not enough: it is necessary to reproduce Nature, because if not
+reproduced there will be no truth in it; and if there is no truth in it
+the people will not believe it; and if they do not believe it they will
+not feel it. For my part, I take such pains in studying Nature, in order
+that my pictures may be true, that I fear you will accuse me of
+extravagance, and will laugh at me when you read the two examples I am
+going to cite. On a very severe night in January I was writing in the
+fourth story of the street Lope de Vega, No. 32, the tale which I named
+_De Patas en el Infierno_ ('The Feet in Hell'), and when a detail
+occurred which consisted in explaining the changes in the sound made by
+water in filling a jar at a fountain, I found that I had never studied
+these changes, and I did not have in the house at that moment water
+enough to study them. The printers were going to send for the story
+early in the morning, and it must be finished that night. Do you know
+what I did to get out of my difficulty? At three o'clock in the morning,
+facing the darkness, rain and wind, I went to the little fountain near
+by with a jar under my cloak, and spent a quarter of an hour there
+listening to the sound of the water as it fell into the jar. A short
+time after I was preparing to write the rural tale called _Las Siembras
+y las Cosechas_ ('Seed-time and Harvest'), and the description of a
+sunrise in the country entered into my plan. I had often seen the sun
+rise in the country, but it was necessary to contemplate and study anew
+that beautiful spectacle in order to describe it exactly; and early one
+morning, long before the dawn, accompanied by two friends, I went to the
+hills of Vicalvaro, where we made some good studies, but were very much
+frightened by some thieves who attacked us knife in hand, believing we
+were people who carried watches."
+
+These words of the author reveal better than we could explain his aim
+and method. He is a follower of Fernan Caballero, in so far as he has
+devoted himself to illustrate the every-day life of the Spanish people.
+The former writer has filled her pages with brilliant pictures of the
+life of Andalusia. Her canvas is, however, larger than Trueba's: she
+depicts the society of the South in all its grades; Trueba has chosen a
+more limited circle on which he has lavished all his care.
+
+The volume of _Rose-colored Tales_ is in many respects the best that
+Trueba has produced. The dedication to his wife explains the title and
+reveals the author's optimistic views. He says: "I call them
+_Rose-colored Tales_ because they are the reverse of that pessimistic
+literature which delights in representing the world as a boundless
+desert in which no flower blooms, and life as a perpetual night in which
+no star shines. I, poor son of Adam, in whom the curse of the Lord on
+our first parents has not ceased to be accomplished a single day since
+the time when, still a child, I left my beloved valley of the
+Encartaciones,--I shall love this life, and shall not believe myself
+exiled in the world while God, friendship, love and the family exist in
+it, while the sun shines on me every morning, while the moon lights me
+every night and the flowers and birds visit me every day."
+
+The scene of all the stories of this collection is in the Encartaciones,
+and an examination of a few of them will make us acquainted with the
+usual range of characters and the author's mode of treatment. The first
+is entitled "The Resurrection of the Soul" (_La Resurreccion del Alma_),
+and opens with an account of the village of C----, one of the fifteen
+composing the Encartaciones. Here lived Santiago and Catalina, the
+latter a foundling whom Santiago's parents had found at their door one
+winter morning. The good people, who had always desired a daughter,
+cared tenderly for the little stranger, and she grew up with their son,
+who was a few years older. It had been decided that when Santiago was
+fifteen he should go to his uncle in Mexico; which country, for the
+simple inhabitants of Biscay, is still "India," and the retired
+merchants who return to spend their last days in their native towns are
+"Indians"--a class that often play an important part in the dénouement
+of Trueba's simple plots. At the beginning of the story the two children
+(Santiago was nearly fifteen) had gone off to play and allowed the goats
+to get into the fields. The angry father is about to punish Catalina,
+who has assumed all the blame, but his wife mollifies him by reminding
+him that they have received a piece of good news. Ramon good-humoredly
+says, "You women always have your own way," and proceeds to tell a story
+to illustrate it. We give it as an example of the popular tales that
+Trueba often weaves into his stories:
+
+"Once upon a time, when Christ went through the world healing the sick
+and raising the dead, a woman came out to meet him and said to him,
+seizing hold of his cloak and weeping like a Magdalen, 'Lord, do me the
+favor to come and raise my husband, who died this morning.'
+
+"'I cannot stop,' answered the Lord. 'I am going to perform a great
+miracle--that is, find a good mother among the women who are fond of
+bull-fights; but everything will turn out well if the ass doesn't stop.
+All I can do for you is that if you take it into your head to raise your
+husband, your husband will be raised.'
+
+"And indeed the wife took it into her head that her husband must be
+raised, and her husband was raised, for even the dead can't resist the
+whims of women."
+
+The good news that Ramon had received was a letter from his brother, who
+wished Santiago to be sent to him by the first steamer leaving Bilbao.
+It was the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, when Santiago,
+accompanied by his father, prepared to start for Bilbao.
+
+"Quica, who until the moment of departure had not shed a tear, because
+she had only seen her son on the way to happiness, as you saw yours,
+disconsolate mother, who now see only a sepulchre in the
+Americas,--Quica now wept without restraint. Poor Catalina had wept so
+much for a month and a half that there were no tears left in her eyes:
+she did not weep, but she felt the faintness and sorrow which the dying
+must experience. Santiago's eyes were moist at times, but soon shone
+with joy.
+
+"'Come, come! You are like a lot of crying children,' exclaimed Ramon,
+tearing his son from the arms of Quica and Catalina. 'One would say that
+it is a matter to cry over. Don't you see me? I too have a soul in my
+soul-case....'
+
+"And indeed he had, for tears as large as nuts rolled from his eyes.
+Santiago and Ramon departed. Quica and Catalina sorrowfully followed
+them with their eyes until they crossed a neighboring hill. Then the
+young girl made an almost supernatural effort to calm herself, and said,
+'Mother, I am going to take the sheep to the mountain.'
+
+"'Do what you wish, my daughter,' answered Quica mechanically.
+
+"It was Catalina's custom to open, the gate every morning to a flock of
+sheep and lead them a stone's throw from the farmhouse, where she left
+them alone; but this day she went with them as far as the hill that
+Ramon and Santiago had just crossed, and from that hill she went on to
+the next and the next, with her eyes always fixed on the road to Bilbao,
+until, overcome by fatigue and dying with grief, she bowed her beautiful
+head, and instead of retracing her steps to the farmhouse of Ipenza, she
+went to the church in the valley and fell on her knees before the altar
+of the Virgin of Solitude."
+
+Santiago reaches Mexico in safety, and is kindly received by his uncle,
+who dies ten years later and leaves him an immense fortune. Santiago at
+once plunges into every species of dissipation, and soon destroys his
+health. His physician recommends him as a last resort to return to his
+native country and try the effect of the mountain-air. Meanwhile,
+Catalina had grown up one of the prettiest girls of the village, and
+Santiago's parents had died, leaving her a handsome dowry and the use of
+the farm until it should be claimed by Santiago.
+
+"One dark and rainy night Santiago returned to his home, broken down in
+health and profoundly weary of life. Catalina receives him, and is
+amazed at his changed appearance.
+
+"'Are you ill, Santiago?' asked Catalina with infinite tenderness.
+
+"'Yes--ill in body and mind.'
+
+"'How do you feel, brother of my heart?'
+
+"'I do not feel anything: that is my greatest misfortune.'"
+
+In truth, the unfortunate Santiago had lost all the better feelings of
+his heart. His return to the home of his innocent boyhood failed to
+evoke any pure and noble sentiments: his heart continued paralyzed,
+cold, indifferent to everything. But it was impossible for him to remain
+in this condition under the influence of Catalina. He gradually began to
+take an interest in the life around him and employ his wealth for the
+benefit of his neighbors. Gradually, he awoke from his lethargy and
+became well in body and mind. As the reader can imagine, the story
+closes with his marriage to Catalina, who had such a great share in his
+recovery.
+
+In the story called "From One's Country to Heaven" (_Desde la Patria al
+Cielo_) the author's endeavors show that the surest happiness is to be
+found in one's native village. He begins with an ironical description of
+the village of S---- in the Encartaciones, in which he depicts the
+simplicity of the inhabitants and their backwardness, in regard to the
+spirit of the age. In this village lived, among others, Teresa, a poor
+widow, and her only child, Pedro. One day, while passing the palace of a
+wealthy "Indian," he called her and said he was obliged to return to
+America, and wished her to take care of his house during his absence.
+The poor woman now saw herself relieved from want and able to educate
+her son. The latter found in the rich library of the "Indian" food for
+many years of study, and soon became dissatisfied with his quiet life in
+the village, and eager to travel and see the countries about which he
+had read such charming tales. He soon grew to despise everything around
+him, and treated with scorn his neighbor Rose, who had long loved him
+tenderly.
+
+One day news arrived from Mexico that the "Indian" had died, leaving to
+Teresa his palace at S---- and a large sum of money besides. Pedro was
+now able to fulfil his dreams of travel, and started on his journey. He
+first visits the Pass of Roncesvalles, and is nearly killed by the
+indignant Frenchmen whom he asks about the defeat of Charlemagne and the
+Twelve Peers. Pedro then proceeds to Bayonne, where he is so shocked by
+the sight of young girls selling their hair to the highest bidder that
+he determines to leave France, and we next find him in a Swiss chalet,
+where he is disgusted by the lack of cleanliness. His feelings can be
+imagined when he finds that the peasants have no popular traditions and
+are not acquainted even with the name of William Tell. In despair, Pedro
+directs his course to Germany, but finds no sylphs or sirens on the
+banks of the Rhine, while maidens with blue eyes and golden hair are no
+more abundant there than elsewhere. Greece next receives the wanderer,
+who hears in Athens of railroads and consolidated funds: on Olympus he
+finds a guano manufactory, and on Pindus a poet writing
+fourteen-syllable endecasyllabics. He visits with a similar
+disenchantment Constantinople, and then makes his way to England. There
+poor Pedro is disgusted by the sordid, selfish spirit of the people. An
+absurd scene at a village church fills him with horror. The bare walls
+of the temple chill his heart, and after the service a domestic quarrel
+between the curate and his jealous wife caps the climax and Pedro flees
+to America. On landing in New York he is robbed of his watch: the thief
+is arrested, but gives the watch to the magistrate, keeping the chain
+for himself, and Pedro is condemned to pay the costs and the damages
+suffered by the thief's character. On returning that evening from the
+theatre he is garroted and robbed of all he has with him. The landlord
+tells him that no one thinks of going out at night without a pair of
+six-shooters, and adds that what happens in New York is nothing to what
+goes on at Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans. The next day he reads an
+editorial in the _New York Herald_ advising American merchants to
+repudiate their foreign debts. He then determines to visit the different
+States, and on passing through the South thanks God that slavery is
+unknown in Europe. Railroad accidents, murders and political and social
+corruption cause him to regard with profound horror the young republic,
+which seems to him old in vice, and he starts for South America, the
+Spanish part of which reminds him of a virgin overwhelmed with
+misfortunes, but still full of youth and faith. In Vera Cruz, Pedro
+visits the sepulchre of the "Indian" to whom he owes his fortune. A
+letter from his mother is awaiting him there, and he bursts into tears,
+and sails at once for his beloved home, which he reaches one beautiful
+Sunday morning in May. His meeting with his mother takes place in the
+church, and there also he sees Rose, whose constancy is now rewarded.
+The story closes with the lines from Lista: "Happy he who has never seen
+any other stream than that of his native place, and, an old man, sleeps
+in the shade where he played a boy!"
+
+Another story of the same collection, and one of the author's best, is
+entitled _Juan Paloma_. The principal characters are Don Juan de
+Urrutia, nicknamed Juan Paloma ("dovelike"), a wealthy and crusty old
+bachelor, and Antonio de Molinar, a poor peasant, and his wife. The
+moral of the story is in Don Juan's last words: "Blessed be the family!"
+and in Juana's remark: "Alas for him who lives alone in the world, for
+only his dogs will weep for him when he dies!"
+
+The other stories of this volume, "The Mother-in-Law," "The Judas of the
+Household" and "I Believe in God," all contain many charming scenes. In
+the last a young girl is educated by an infidel father, and after his
+death marries Diego, a village lad. She becomes a mother, but still
+retains in her heart the seeds of atheism sown there by her father. Her
+child, a girl, becomes ill, and a doctor is sent for from Bilbao.
+
+"The doctor was long in coming, and Ascensita was devoured by impatience
+and uncertainty. He arrived at last, and examined the child attentively,
+observing a deep silence, which caused the poor mother the most
+sorrowful anxiety.
+
+"'Will the daughter of my heart recover?' Ascensita asked him in tears.
+'For God's sake, speak to me frankly, for this uncertainty is more cruel
+than the death of my daughter.'
+
+"'Señora,' answered the doctor, 'God alone can save the child.'
+
+"Ascensita fell senseless by the side of the cradle containing her
+dying child. When she returned to herself Diego alone was at her side.
+The unhappy mother placed her ear to the child's lips, and perceived
+that it still breathed.
+
+"'Diego,' she exclaimed, 'take care of the child of my soul!' and flying
+down the stairs hastened to a hermitage near by, and falling on her
+knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin!
+pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven
+since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore
+her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!'
+
+"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with
+joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and
+call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also
+gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.
+
+"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and
+hope in His mercy!'
+
+"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina,
+bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."
+
+The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.
+
+In the _Popular Narrations_, Trueba works up themes already popular
+among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to
+suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook
+some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the
+narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are
+the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others
+imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to
+the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or
+collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted
+themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from
+mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales
+almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This
+system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although
+they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter
+worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected
+by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the
+sphere of art should be without."
+
+The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St.
+Peter's Doubts" (_Las Dudas de San Pedro_) is as old as the _Gesta
+Romanorum_ (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's
+_Hermit_. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (_Un Siglo en un Momento_),
+is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth
+and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another,
+_Tragaldabas_, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's _Household Tales_,
+where it figures as "Godfather Death."
+
+The volume of _Popular Tales_ contains nineteen stories of the most
+varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The
+Three Counsels" (_Los Consejos_), in which a soldier whose time of
+service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of
+advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what
+does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on
+his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and
+thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as _Ofero_,
+the legend of St. Christopher, and _Casilda_, the story of the Moorish
+king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from
+Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (_La
+Mujer del Arquitecto_), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another,
+"The Prince without a Memory" (_El Principe Desmemoriado_), is taken
+from Gracian Dantisco's _Galateo Español_.
+
+We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the
+stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best.
+He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones
+or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories
+in the volume entitled _Rural Tales_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), which
+contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are
+generally longer than the others--one, "Domestic Happiness" (_La
+Felicidad domestica_), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time
+and Harvest" (_Las Siembras y las Cosechas_) is a charming story of Pepe
+and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the
+latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the
+collection, however--and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has
+written--is the one called "The Style is the Man" (_El Estilo es el
+Hombre_), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it
+by an analysis.
+
+We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He
+has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life
+of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and
+in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with
+a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his
+attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though
+some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled
+_Chapters of a Book_ (_Capitulos de un Libro_). Trueba resided at this
+period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste
+during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has
+published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some
+of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his
+poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best
+of this class of literature--with Auerbach's _Tales of the Black
+Forest_, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author,
+whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always
+apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a
+type of the best class of Spaniards--a class that will some day win for
+their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory
+than that founded on conquest.
+
+  T. F. CRANE.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH WINDING WAYS.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+My first meeting with Georgy Lenox on the seashore was not my last. The
+habits of the family made it easy for us to have our interviews
+uninterrupted, and probably unperceived, for although we were all early
+risers we rarely met each other till breakfast-time. Helen went to her
+father's room at half-past seven, and they read and talked together
+until my mother called them at nine o'clock. As for my mother, purest of
+all women as she was, she felt she was not pure enough to meet the new
+day until she had spent an hour at her Bible and on her knees in prayer.
+There is a light that comes out of the west sometimes toward evening
+after a stormy day which seems to be sent straight from the fount of
+light itself. Such light was always in my mother's eyes when I kissed
+her good-morning, and I knew it had come to her as she knelt on bended
+knees. She was tranquil in these days with a Heaven-born tranquillity,
+but I know now that she had a pang of dread for every throb of love.
+
+She spoke to me once of my increasing intimacy with Georgina. "There is
+nothing you are concealing from me, Floyd?" she said, her brown eyes
+reading my face.
+
+She had come to my bedside after I had gone to rest for the night,
+impelled by a restlessness to be certain that all was well with her dear
+ones before she could close her eyes.
+
+"I cannot think what you mean, mother," I answered. "I have nothing to
+conceal."
+
+She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she
+baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win
+you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh,
+why is she here?"
+
+"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."
+
+"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the
+house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and
+treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together
+but that she hates us every one."
+
+I thought my mother fanciful, and told her that she was prejudiced
+against the girl, who had grown up from infancy under her eyes.
+
+"I know her better than you do, mother," I affirmed stubbornly.
+
+She smiled a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she
+gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do
+you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you
+would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know
+each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the
+men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other.
+Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set
+her wishes upon?"
+
+I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something
+like anger against her growing in my heart.
+
+"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any
+girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox
+is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."
+
+My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it
+was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence
+between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained--indeed, we were
+more than ever gentle and tender in our ways ... but there was a subject
+which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and
+there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to
+read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.
+
+But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of
+any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point
+that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The
+young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth,
+beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed
+that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and
+proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory
+fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the
+watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels
+filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an
+air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no
+one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half
+so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her
+with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it
+a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with
+a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire
+carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself
+direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.
+
+I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over
+poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find
+there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken
+possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her
+husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of her love for him of
+which he had never dreamed. There was the young girl's journal before
+she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were
+the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her
+great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I
+believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible
+maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of
+his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost
+had cause to regret that he had seen them.
+
+"She never told me of her premonition of death," he said to my mother
+over and over again. "She seemed very glad and proud that she was going
+to bring me a little child."
+
+Helen had run off with her blue velvet-covered book.
+
+"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but
+these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these
+he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him
+again and again.
+
+The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's
+health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had
+filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he
+remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a
+bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly,
+and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat,
+until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died
+young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was
+of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a
+good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like
+to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by
+motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"
+
+"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a
+symptom of advancing age, James."
+
+I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her
+father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her
+superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love
+for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the
+charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She
+was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I
+often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox
+could be more winning, sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was
+for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes
+wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little
+sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When
+she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with
+coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her,
+and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices,
+although I scolded her for them now and then.
+
+"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a
+tame cat yet."
+
+"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I
+do the man who places my chair."
+
+"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night,
+when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at
+his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you,
+and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight
+services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have
+wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had
+raised the cover of the instrument."
+
+"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He
+thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let
+him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he
+called me Miss Helen this morning!"
+
+"What did you tell him?"
+
+"I told him nothing: I looked----"
+
+"I pity him then: I know how you can look."
+
+"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young
+gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."
+
+"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle.
+Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I
+shall admire you."
+
+"Really, now?"
+
+"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show
+nothing but kindness to my friends.
+
+  Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;
+  But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,
+
+is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."
+
+"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me
+to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"
+
+"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must
+have the first, best, dearest place."
+
+"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You
+come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because
+I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.
+
+"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young
+men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."
+
+And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree
+that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through
+inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my
+suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a
+little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never
+displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he
+quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse
+patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face
+of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed
+would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject.
+However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it
+well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less
+cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe
+that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's
+attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.
+
+"When he gets his congé he cannot complain of having received
+encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that
+he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique
+her with a show of devotion to Helen?"
+
+"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there
+is nothing of that sort."
+
+"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my
+wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man
+had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little
+employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice
+brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss
+Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened:
+sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a
+coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a
+score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to
+have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in
+return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will
+manage her affairs for her, as for us all."
+
+I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach
+continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous
+no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek
+an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world
+when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment
+on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in
+fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who
+had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the
+whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a
+comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most
+beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive
+themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I
+did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk,
+not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until
+Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed
+to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two
+more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly
+self-distrustful.
+
+Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over
+again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and
+glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those
+mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual
+relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had
+colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many
+people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's
+influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental
+society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine
+had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for
+details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results
+easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable
+beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose
+that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good
+taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything
+concerning Mr. Floyd--his friends abroad, his habits, his _vie intime_
+at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he
+was minister at ----. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days,
+but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what
+she wished.
+
+But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me,
+wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I
+lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she
+seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours,
+only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another
+direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a
+woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive,
+mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in
+my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was
+demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined
+to follow her into society.
+
+It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest.
+I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of
+the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every
+card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of
+pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim
+in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover.
+Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing
+sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and
+the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly
+from the recollection of that time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+I had gone with Georgina to a picnic one day at her request, meeting her
+at the house of Mrs. Woodruff, with whom she was staying for a
+fortnight, at the Point. The picnic meant merely a drive for miles back
+into the country and a lunch in the woods prepared by a French cook, but
+it was a delightful road through shadows of tall forest trees, the glare
+of sunlight alternating with green copsewood coolness. They were cutting
+the grass and clover in the fields, and the air was fresh with the scent
+of new-mown hay: half the land on either side of us was covered with
+ripening grain, and the light breeze that played perpetually over it
+gave us endless shimmerings and glimmerings of wonderful light almost as
+beautiful as the tints that play over the sea.
+
+I had every need to find the beauty of the summer gracious to me that
+day. It was but another of many days when every throb of my feeling for
+Georgy Lenox became an anguish hard to bear. She was opposite me as we
+rode through the fair country, but she neither looked at nor spoke to
+me. I was much lionized, however, by Mrs. Woodruff, a pretty, faded,
+coquettish woman, who had been balancing herself on the very edge of
+proprieties for years, but who still, thanks to a certain weariness she
+compelled in men, was yet safe enough in her position as a matron.
+Georgy's companion was a titled foreigner just then a favorite at the
+Point, but of whom I need not speak.
+
+"Did you ask me to come that I might hear you talk with the count?" I
+asked her when once that day I had a chance to address her.
+
+"But the count would talk to me," she returned, laughing. "Do you
+suppose I care for him? I think him the most odious man I know, with his
+waxed moustache, his small green eyes, his wicked mouth and teeth. But
+Mrs. Woodruff is dying for him, and half the women here hate me in their
+hearts because he pays me attention. I like you infinitely better,
+Floyd."
+
+"Then come away and sit upon the rocks with me."
+
+"Oh, I cannot afford to do those romantic, compromising things. You see
+that, as we are both staying at The Headlands, where everybody's
+curiosity is centred this summer, we are much observed, much commented
+upon."
+
+"It seems to me you are not at all afraid of compromising yourself with
+other men."
+
+"Now you are cross and jealous. Perhaps if you betrayed a little less
+interest in me you might make me less afraid of concession. And you must
+not watch me so: the count himself spoke about your eyes ready to burn
+me with their melancholy fire."
+
+"Hang the count!"
+
+"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go
+away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."
+
+There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of
+them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like
+school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms;
+but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me
+neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have
+sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no
+homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed
+around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They
+seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts
+why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to
+come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair
+and sweet, seem depolarized?
+
+Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She
+understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she
+practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the
+count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times,
+however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of
+observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his
+presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with
+Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran
+whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by
+other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses
+tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.
+
+Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured
+into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten
+ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his _pâté_ spoiled.
+
+"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss
+Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a
+seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they
+meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a
+_belle héritière_ and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if
+one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of
+us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light
+to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect
+for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake--no faith in their
+value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract
+admirers."
+
+"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."
+
+"I _am_ out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's
+sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."
+
+"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to
+make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just
+this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak
+tree?"
+
+He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he
+returned.
+
+"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your
+call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young
+lady you allude to."
+
+He looked crestfallen for a moment: then his thorough coxcombry resumed
+its sway. "You see," said he, with a consummate air of reserve, "you
+know nothing about the affair at all, Randolph."
+
+"You'd much better drop the subject, Thorpe," I remarked: "I assure you
+it's much safer let alone."
+
+I contrived to live through the long hours of the day. At sunset we
+drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche
+to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of
+us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which
+was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it
+with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange
+yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom
+together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines
+of trembling light away, away into remote horizons. We all enjoyed the
+drive, although none of us spoke until we got down from the cart at the
+steps of the hotel.
+
+"That was the best part of the day," observed my cousin Frank. "What
+good times we fellows might have if there were no women to disturb us!"
+
+Thorpe growled some inarticulate assent or dissent, as the case might
+be, and went up to his room, while Frank and I had our cigars out on the
+piazza.
+
+A dance at Mrs. Woodruff's was to follow the picnic, and thither we
+resorted about ten o'clock and found the chairs placed for a German.
+Georgy Lenox was there, radiant in a ravishing toilette, waiting for
+Frank to lead the cotillon with her. She nodded to me pleasantly as she
+took her seat. I was angry with myself for my disappointment, doubly
+angry with her for causing it. It cost me my self-respect to be so
+utterly at her mercy. What did I gain by following her into this gay
+coterie but pang upon pang of humiliation and pain? Why did I come,
+indeed? It was not the first time she had broken her promises to me. Yet
+what could I expect of her? Bright, gay, dazzling creature that she was,
+warm and eager in her love of vigorous life, could she sit down with me
+in a corner and talk while the rest of the world palpitated and glowed
+and whirled around her to the music of the waltz, which stirred even my
+crippled limbs with a wild wish for voluptuous swaying motion in rhythm
+with the melodious melancholy strain? No, I could not blame her: I was
+merely out of my place. Let me go home and remember what a gulf of
+disparity separated me from my fellows.
+
+So I walked out of the house through the grounds into the street, and
+along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I
+overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the
+house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen
+by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.
+
+I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night,
+and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was
+like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my
+face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and
+my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a
+boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful
+stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of
+which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story.
+Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a
+pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr.
+Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an
+end.
+
+"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.
+
+"Why, no! Has he? so early?"
+
+"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."
+
+She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might
+sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed
+by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through
+dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.
+
+"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the
+Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was
+coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love
+to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant
+flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw
+her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be
+stout in five years."
+
+"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."
+
+"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.
+
+"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has
+hands that I kiss"--and he kissed them--"the most beautiful hands in the
+world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless,
+there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers
+her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."
+
+"I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief
+attribute in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any
+feet."
+
+"That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room
+but every man there knows the color of her stockings."
+
+"I am ashamed of you, papa!--Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite
+horrid."
+
+"Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands,
+what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?"
+
+"Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other
+people ever to think of me in that way at all."
+
+"Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps."
+
+"I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself."
+
+"Not even Floyd?"
+
+"Floyd would never be silly," Helen said indignantly. "Floyd likes me
+because we are old friends: he knew grandpa and you, papa, and all
+that."
+
+"You are easily satisfied if you are contented with affection on the
+score of your aged relatives."
+
+"How soundly he sleeps!" murmured Helen; and I knew that she bent close
+to me as she spoke, for I could feel the warmth of her young cheeks.
+Half to frighten her, half because I wanted to see how she looked as she
+regarded me, I suddenly opened my eyes.
+
+"You weren't asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite
+unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear
+everything we said?"
+
+"Indeed, Helen," I said, "I was fast asleep, I do believe, until you
+confessed your affection for me. You did not expect me to sleep through
+that?"
+
+She stared at me blankly, then looked at the others with dilating eyes.
+"Did I say anything about that?" she asked, growing pale even to her
+lips and tears gathering in her eyes.
+
+"Why, no, you foolish child!" said her father, drawing her upon his
+knee: "he is only teasing you. As if anybody had any affection for one
+of the Seven Sleepers!--Well, Floyd, how happened you to come back so
+soon? The carriage was going for you at midnight.--Here, Mills, Mr.
+Randolph has already returned, and the coachman may go to bed."
+
+"The day was pretty long," I returned. "I had had enough of it, and so
+set out and walked back. I was well tired out when I came in, and that
+put me to sleep."
+
+"It was a shame for you to walk so far," exclaimed Helen imperiously:
+"you are not strong enough for such an effort. There are eight horses in
+the stables, every one of them pawing in his stall, longing for a
+gallop, and for you to be obliged to walk four miles! Don't do such a
+dreadful thing again, Floyd."
+
+I sprang up and limped about, feeling impatient and cross. "In spite of
+my poor leg," I returned, "I am a fair walker. Don't set me down as a
+helpless cripple, Helen."
+
+I was bitter and wrathful still, or I trust I was too magnanimous to
+have wounded her so.
+
+"Floyd!" exclaimed my mother in a tone of reproof; but I did not turn,
+and went down the long suite of parlors and stood at the great window
+which overlooked the sea. It was all open to the summer night, and the
+lace curtains waved to and fro in the breeze. Solemnly came up the
+rhythmic flow of the waves as they beat against the rocks. I pushed
+aside the draperies and looked out at the wide expanse of waters lying,
+it seemed, almost at my feet, for everything else but the great silver
+plain of sea was in shadow. Above, the moon had it all her own way
+to-night: the constellations shone pale, and seemed weary of the
+firmament which at other times they span and compass with their myriad
+splendors. Mars moved in a stately way straight along above the southern
+horizon to his couch in the west: even his red light was dim.
+
+But what stillness and peace seemed possible beneath this throbbing sea?
+I sighed as I listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the great
+golden pathway of the moon across the silver waters. I knew that some
+one had followed me and stood timidly behind me: I guessed it was Helen,
+but did not know until a slim satin hand stole into mine, for surely it
+was not my mother's hand. Hers was warm and firm in its pressure: the
+touch of this was soft and cool like a rose-leaf. I held the hand close,
+but did not turn.
+
+"Floyd!" she whispered timidly, "dear Floyd!"
+
+"I hear you, Helen," I returned wearily.
+
+"Are you angry with me? Do not be angry."
+
+"I am only angry with myself: I am not behaving well to-night."
+
+She came in front of me and looked up in my face. "I don't want you to
+think," she said in a little faint trembling voice, "that--that I--that
+I--" She quite broke down.
+
+"I really don't know what you mean, Helen."
+
+"Floyd," she cried passionately, "I think I would die before I would
+wilfully hurt your feelings!"
+
+"Why, my poor little girl," said I, quite touched at the sight of her
+quivering face and the sound of her impassioned voice, "you did not hurt
+my feelings for an instant. What I said was in answer to my own
+thoughts. I like to say such things to myself at times, and remember
+that I do not possess the advantages of other men. Besides, facts are
+facts: I am lame. I cannot dance, and although I can walk, it is with a
+limping gait: I should be a poor fellow in a foot-race. I don't suppose
+that my being a cripple will forfeit me anything in the kingdom of
+heaven, but, nevertheless, it obliges me to forego a good many pleasures
+here on earth."
+
+"You are not a cripple!" she burst out impetuously. "You have every
+advantage! What is it that you cannot dance? I despise men who whirl
+about like puppets: I have never seen them waltzing but they must make
+themselves ridiculous. I am glad you cannot dance: you are on the level
+of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty
+things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with
+an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful
+although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes
+as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager
+voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you just the
+same. Why, Floyd, what do you think it is to me that, as you say, you do
+not possess the advantages of other men? Have you forgotten how it all
+came about? I was a little girl then, but there is nothing that happened
+yesterday clearer to my memory than that terrible morning when I cost
+you so dear. I know how I felt--as if forsaken by the world. I wondered
+if God looked down and saw me, alone, in danger, blind and dizzy and
+trembling, so that again and again I seemed to be slipping away from
+everything that held me. I could not have stayed one minute more had I
+not heard your voice. You were so strong, so kind, Floyd! When you
+reached me your hands were bleeding, your face scratched and torn, your
+breath came in great pants, but you looked at me and smiled. And then
+you carried me to the top and put me in safety, and I let you go down,
+down, down!" She was quite speechless, and leaned her cheek against my
+hand, which she still held, and wet it freely with her tears.
+
+"If you mind your lameness," she said brokenly, with intervals of
+sobs--"if you feel that Fate is cruel to you--that there is any reason
+why you cannot be perfectly happy--then I wish," she exclaimed with
+energy, "that I had never been born to do you this great injury. I love
+my life, I love papa, I love your mother and you, and it seems to me as
+if I were going to be a very happy woman; but still, if you carry any
+regret for that day in your heart, I wish I had died when I was so sick
+before you came: I wish I lay up there on the hill with the grass
+growing over me."
+
+What was anybody to do with this overwrought, fanciful child? She was so
+wonderfully pretty too, with her great dark, melancholy eyes, her
+flushed, tear-stained cheeks, her rich rare lips! "Oh, Helen," I
+murmured, holding her close to me, "I don't want you to go under the
+green grass: I'm very glad you are alive. I would have broken all my
+bones in your service that day and welcome, so that you might be well
+and unhurt. Come, now, cheer up: I am going to be a pleasanter fellow
+than I have been of late. Dry your eyes, dear. Your father will be
+laughing at you. Come, let us go and take a stroll in the moonlight: it
+is quite wicked not to indulge in a little romance on a sweet midsummer
+night like this."
+
+When I had gone to my room that night, and sat, still bitter, still
+discontented, looking off through my open window toward the Point, and
+wondering who was looking in Georgy Lenox's starry eyes just
+then--thinking, with a feeling about my forehead like a band of burning
+iron, that some man's arm was sure to be about her waist, her face
+upturned to his, her floating golden hair across his shoulder as they
+danced,--while, I say, such fancies held a firm clutch over my brain and
+senses, devouring me with the throes of an insane jealousy, my mother
+came in and sat down beside me.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, "I am going to
+give you a caution. You must remember that Helen, with all her frankness
+and impetuosity, is still no child. Don't win her heart unthinkingly."
+
+I felt the blood rush to my face, and I think I had never in all my life
+experienced such embarrassment.
+
+"I'm not such a coxcomb, mother, as to believe any girl could fall in
+love with me--Helen above all others."
+
+She smiled, with a little inward amusement in her smile. "You must
+remember," she said again softly, "that Helen is not a child, and you
+surely would not make her suffer."
+
+"Why, mother," I gasped, "we are just like brother and sister: our
+intimacy is the habit of years."
+
+"Good-night, my son," my mother said, and went away still smiling: "I
+have perfect faith in your magnanimity."
+
+I remembered with a flash of guilty self-consciousness one or two
+little circumstances about our talk by the window two hours before which
+I have not set down here. It had seemed an easy task to soothe the
+child. If there had been any absurdity like that my mother hinted at,
+would she--could I-- No, never! She was a careless child, with fits of
+coldness, imperious tenderness and generosity. Not a woman at all. The
+idea was quite distasteful to me that Helen was a grown-up woman with
+whom I must be on my guard.
+
+However, Helen's manner to me next day and at all times was calculated
+to assure any man that she was a wilful, self-sustained young creature
+of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to
+him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a
+crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the
+black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he
+laid them carefully away in his pocket-book.
+
+"Miss Floyd," said I, "here is another rose. Don't honor that poor
+skeleton of a vanished flower."
+
+She saw the accident which had befallen her rose, and took mine from me
+and replaced her ornament with a fresh blossom. "Give me the poor stem,"
+said I as she was about to throw it away.
+
+"What is that for?" she asked, staring at me as I placed it in my
+buttonhole. "What do you want of the poor old thing?"
+
+And, mistrusting some mischief beneath my sentimental behavior, she was
+quite tart with me the entire evening, and would not speak to Thorpe at
+all, but sat demurely between my mother and Mr. Floyd, her eyes nailed
+on some embroidery, and behaving altogether like a spoiled child of
+twelve years old.
+
+Georgy Lenox had returned from her visit at Mrs. Woodruff's, and seemed
+a little quiet and weary of late. I was not so much at her service as
+before, but had begun to console myself by teaching in song what, like
+other young poets, I had experienced in suffering. I thank Heaven that
+no eyes but my own ever beheld the tragedy I wrote that summer: still,
+I am a little tender-hearted over it yet, and believe that it was, after
+all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to
+find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my
+own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After
+all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter
+about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought
+since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other standpoint
+save the necessity of fighting them. Most of our fiercest struggles for
+life have no adequate reason: it is not so necessary for us to live as
+we think it is. That we do not get what we want, or that we sink beneath
+our load of trouble, signifies little in the aggregate of the world's
+history. But, all the same, our cries of despair go up to Heaven, and
+there seems no need in the universe so absolute, so final, as that we
+ourselves should live and be happy.
+
+It is hard for a man of middle age, with a cool brain and tranquillized
+passions, to retrace the history of his youth. There is much that he
+must smile over--much, too, which is irksome for him to dwell upon. Many
+experiences which in their freshness seemed holy and sacred, in after
+years, stripped of their disguise of false sentiment and the aureole
+with which they were invested by youthful imagination, become absolutely
+loathsome--just as when we see tamely by daylight the tawdry stage which
+last night made a world for us full of all the paraphernalia of high
+romanticism--silver and velvet robes, plumed hats, dim woodland vistas
+and the echo of a distant high note, youthful beauty, rope-ladders,
+balconies, daggers, poison, and passionate love-strains. This skeleton
+framework of the illusion, these well-worn contrivances, tarnished gold
+lace and mock splendors, disenchant us sadly, and what we took for
+
+  Horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
+  Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
+  Blow, bugle: answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying,
+
+is now discovered to be a cheap-trumpet imitation of the enchanted
+notes we dreamed of hearing.
+
+After Miss Lenox returned from the Point she was, as I have said, a
+little pensive: this little shadow upon the splendor of her beauty lent
+a subtlety and charm to her manner. If there had been a fault in her
+loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light
+seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her
+eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness
+about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it
+had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give
+herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams of her, yet
+never one where I thought she could have given me the infinite softness
+of a caressing touch or feel the motherly quality which lies at the
+bottom of every true woman's love for man. Now the splendor of her eyes
+was veiled, her smile was half melancholy, her voice less clear and
+ringing.
+
+When a man loves a woman, and her mood changes and softens, he reads but
+one meaning in her tenderness; and it was not long before I had begun
+fully to believe that there was hope for me. There seemed to be no one
+to meddle in my wooing. True, Judge Talbot came constantly to the house
+to see Miss Lenox, and lacked none of the signs by which we read a man's
+errand in his demeanor; but I did not fear any rivalry from him. Youth,
+at any rate, is something in itself, independent of other advantages: no
+wonder it vaunts itself and believes in its own power. That Georgy would
+think for an instant of giving herself to this man did not seriously
+occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men
+whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was
+broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together,
+his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy
+formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He
+was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation of
+holding an iron grip over everything he claimed, and never letting it
+go. He had been married in early life, and now had sons and daughters
+past the age of the girl upon whom he was eagerly pressing his suit.
+
+He came to dinner now and then, and over his wine he was noisy,
+boisterous and bragging. He had been in Congress with Mr. Floyd years
+before, and, though of different parties, they had innumerable
+recollections in common, and, much as I disliked Mr. Talbot, I
+recognized his cleverness in anecdote and the clearness and conciseness
+of his narratives. I could endure him among men, but with women he was
+odious, and, for some reasons occult and inexplicable to any man, plumed
+himself upon his success with them. He understood himself too well, and
+relied too entirely upon his natural abilities, to make any effort to
+hide his gross ignorance upon all subjects requiring either literary or
+mental culture. He had been eminently successful without any such
+acquirements in every field he entered, and consequently considered them
+non-essentials in a man's career--very good to have, like the cream and
+confectionery at dessert, tickling the palates of women and children,
+but eschewed by sensible men. He had travelled twice over Europe, seeing
+everything with the voracious curiosity of a strong man eager to get his
+money's worth: after his experience of cities rich in high historic
+charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished
+lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable
+marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places
+where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in
+certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to
+grapple with the difficulties of foreign tongues.
+
+No, it did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr.
+Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify
+him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at
+table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and
+then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought
+I overmatched her heavy admirer.
+
+As I have said, I had turned to composition as an amusement, an
+occupation, and perhaps a refuge from feelings which were rapidly
+becoming an ever-present pain. I recall one day when I had sat for hours
+at my desk writing busily, utterly wrapped up in my fancies--so
+engrossed, indeed, that when I had finished my work I looked with
+astonishment at my watch and discovered that it was long past two
+o'clock. I rose and went to the window, pushed aside the curtains and
+threw open the blinds, and gazed out. I overlooked the garden, which was
+deserted except by the bees and humming-birds busy among the flowers.
+The mid-day heat had passed, and a breeze rustled the leaves and moaned
+in the pine trees. It was a fair world, and I felt what one often
+experiences in coming back to reality after high emotion--a sort of
+strangeness in the beauty of tree and grass and sea and wood.
+
+While I stood there some one advanced along the garden-path, looked up,
+saw me and beckoned. It was but a moment's effort to join her, and
+almost before I had realized what I was doing I was beside Miss Lenox in
+the garden.
+
+"Come and sit down in the arbor," she said softly.
+
+"No," I returned, remembering that I had sworn to myself not to yield to
+her caprices, "I am going for a walk."
+
+She regarded me pensively. "May I go?" she asked.
+
+"Oh yes, you may go, Georgy," I said with a little laugh. "I am only too
+happy, I am afraid, if you ask to go anywhere with me."
+
+"Don't take me where it is wet," she observed simply, "for I have on
+thin slippers;" and she stretched out a little foot.
+
+"I will take care of you," I answered her.
+
+She took up the folds of her full white dress in her hands, and we set
+out. The mood was upon me to take the old paths across the sloping
+uplands into the woods on the hill that Helen and I had tramped over so
+often in our childhood. Beneath us lay the sea, a wide plain of placid
+waters, blue in the foreground, with opal tints playing over it as it
+spread out toward the horizon; above us were the woods luxuriant in
+their midsummer verdure, silent except for the occasional note of a wild
+bird; and about us were the green fields, fresh mown of late, with
+thickets of grape and wild convolvulus and star-wreathed
+blackberry-vines making a luxuriant tangle over the fences.
+
+Georgy walked before me in the narrow path, and I followed closely,
+watching her fine free movements, the charm of her figure in its plain
+white morning-dress bound at the waist with a purple ribbon. Her
+golden-yellow hair lay in curls upon her shoulders: now and then I
+caught a glimpse of the contour of her face as she half turned to see if
+I were close behind her. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
+
+My own thoughts flew about like leaves in a wind, but I wondered of what
+she was thinking. Although I had known her all my life, she was not easy
+for me to understand; or rather my impressions of her at this time were
+so colored by the passion of my own hopes that it was impossible for me
+to find a clew to her real feelings. Perhaps she was thinking of Jack:
+she was thinking--I was sure she was thinking--of something sweet, sad
+and strange, or she could not have looked so beautiful.
+
+Suddenly she stopped in her walk and uttered a little cry. "It is wet
+here," she cried with vexation: "we must turn back, Floyd."
+
+"I said I would take care of you," I exclaimed quickly, and putting my
+arms about her I raised her and carried her safely over the spot where a
+hundred springs trickled up to the surface and made a morass of the
+luxuriant grass. I did not set her down at once. For weeks now, sleeping
+and waking, I had been haunted by a fierce longing to hold her to my
+heart as I held her now, and it was not so easy to put by so great a
+joy. When at last I reached the stile I released her, and she sat down
+on the stone and looked at me with a half smile.
+
+"If you call that taking care of me, Floyd--" said she, shaking her
+head.
+
+"You are not angry with me, Georgina?"
+
+"How could I be angry with you?" she said, putting out her hand to me
+and speaking so kindly that I dared to press her little rosy palm to my
+lips. "But how strong you are, Floyd! You carried me like a feather's
+weight, and yet I am tall and very heavy. You know how to take care of
+me, indeed."
+
+"If I might always take care of you!" I said, my heart beating and the
+blood rushing to my face. "I can carry you home if you will. Don't you
+remember about the Laird of Bothwick declaring that no man should marry
+his daughter save the one who should carry her three miles up the
+mountain-side? If I could have such a chance with you!"
+
+"But about the daughter of the old laird: did she find a lover so strong
+as to carry her to the mountain-top?"
+
+"Yes: one of her suitors took her in his arms and strode along, crying,
+'Love gives me strength--love gives me speed.' However, he was not happy
+after all, poor fellow! When he reached the goal he died. How could he
+have died then?"
+
+"What did the young lady do?" inquired Georgy, laughing. "I suppose
+another lover rode by her side as she walked home, and that she married
+him for his pains. That is the way the brave men of the world are
+rewarded, Floyd. Don't be too generous, nor too strong, nor too
+self-forgetful. You will gain nothing by it."
+
+"Do you mean that I shall not gain you, Georgy?"
+
+"Oh, I said nothing about myself. Why do you ask me all these questions
+as soon as we are alone? I am afraid sometimes to let you talk to me,
+although there are few people in the world whom I like so well to have
+near me. Women will always love you dearly, Floyd. You are so gentle, so
+harmonious with pleasant thoughts and pleasant doings: you seem less
+selfish and vain than other men. You deserve that some woman should
+make you very happy, Floyd."
+
+"There is but one woman who can do it, Georgy."
+
+"I am not so sure of that. I do not know why you think of me at all:
+what is it about me that attracts you? Helen is younger than I am--a
+hundred times more beautiful. No, sir, you need make no such
+demonstrations. If you like my poor face best, it is because we are old
+friends, and you are so true, so kind, to the old memories. Do not
+interrupt me yet. I think you are blind to your own interests when you
+pass Helen by: she is so rich that if you marry her you can live a life
+like a prince."
+
+"But if I do not wish to lead a prince's life, Georgy?" said I, a little
+nettled at the indifference which must prompt such comparisons of Helen
+to herself. "Nothing could induce me to marry a rich woman, even if
+Helen were to be thought of by a poor fellow like me. I have no vague
+dreams about the future: my hopes are clear and definite. I want a
+career carved by my own industry, my own taste: I want--above all
+things, I want--the wife of whom I am always thinking."
+
+"And who is she, my poor boy?"
+
+"You know very well, Georgy," I returned, throwing myself beside her and
+gazing up into her face. "Since I was a little fellow in Belfield, and
+used to look out of the school-room window with Jack Holt, and see you
+going past the church with your red jacket and your curls on your
+shoulders, I have had just one dream of the girl I could love so well
+that I could die for her. I used to lie on the hilltop then and fancy
+myself a bold knight on a white steed who should gallop down those
+sunshiny streets and seize you in his arms, raise you to the saddle and
+carry you away into Fairyland to live with him for ever. My longing has
+not changed: I want the same thing still."
+
+"But when I was to marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina,
+looking at me with that new pensiveness she had learned of late.
+
+"You knew my heart very little. When Jack told me that you were still
+free, I hated myself, my joy, my renewal of hope, seemed so
+contemptibly little in contrast with his great despair. I would not have
+wronged him. God knows, I pity him when I remember what he has lost!
+Still, I too loved you as a child: I never had it in my power to serve
+you, but I had no other thought but you. Why may it not be, dear? Who
+can love you better than I do? Even although I am not rich, who will
+take better care of you than I shall? I am sure you love me a little. Do
+not put the feeling by, but think of it: do not deny it--let it have its
+chance."
+
+She rose with an absent air. "We must go on," she said dreamily; and I
+helped her over the stile, and we walked slowly through the wood. She
+leaned upon my arm, but her face was downcast, and her broad hat
+concealed it from me.
+
+"I wish," I said after a time, "you would let me know some of those
+thoughts."
+
+She looked up at me pale but smiling. "Do you know, Floyd," she
+murmured, "I do think you could make me happy if anybody could."
+
+"Promise me that I may have the chance. End now, Georgy, all your
+doubts, all my fears. You will be happier so."
+
+"But we should be poor!" she cried sharply. "I could not be contented to
+marry a poor man. You may be clever, Floyd--I do not know much about
+cleverness in men--but, all the same, it is hard for a man to make money
+until he has worked for many, many years. I could not wait for you. I am
+older than you, and everybody is wondering why, with all my
+opportunities, I have not married. You'd much better give me up," she
+added, looking into my face steadily and smiling, although her lip
+trembled, "and let Mr. Talbot have me. He is rich, and can marry me at
+once. He is waiting for my answer now, and it is best that I should, as
+you say, end it all."
+
+I shuddered as this pang disturbed my warm bliss. "For Heaven's sake,
+don't joke, Georgy!" I exclaimed. "I can't even hear you allude to the
+possibility of marrying such a man as that with equanimity. I am not so
+poor. Mr. Floyd--" But, after all, I could not tell her of Mr. Floyd's
+generosity to me: it seemed like basing calculations upon his death to
+assure her that the course of events was to bring me a fortune.
+
+She looked at me with eagerness. "Tell me now," she said, putting her
+hand upon my arm. "If you love me, Floyd, you cannot keep a secret from
+me."
+
+To describe the beauty of her face, the fascination of her manner, the
+thrill of her touch, words are quite powerless, mere pen-scratches. If
+any man could have withstood her, I was not that man. Shame to relate, I
+soon had told her everything--that Mr. Floyd had for years placed an
+ample income at my disposal--that I had seen his will, which gave me,
+without restriction, a clear third of his fortune.
+
+She was meditative for a while. "But," she said then with a trifle of
+brusqueness, "if you marry me he will be angry and change all that: he
+does not like me. He has different plans for you: he wants you to marry
+Helen."
+
+"Don't say that," I cried, "for I love Mr. Floyd so well, I owe him so
+much, I could refuse him nothing."
+
+"You mean that if he asked you to marry Helen you would give me up,
+would take her?" she retorted with a flaming color on her cheeks and a
+gleam in her eyes. "You do not care for me, then. You are merely
+playing with me: you love her, after all."
+
+"Now, that is nonsense, Georgy," I said gently, for through her jealousy
+I had the first glimpse, I fancied, of something like real love for me;
+"and I do not like to hear Helen's name bandied about in this way. You
+may be sure that she will stand in no need of suitors: I shall never be
+one of them. Now, then, who is it that is coquetting? You know whom I
+love--what I want. I am very much in earnest--unsettled in heart and
+mind, body, soul and spirit, until I have your answer. Tell me, Georgy
+darling, is it or is it not to be?"
+
+But I was to have no answer that day. Miss Lenox said it was very
+tiresome hearing me reiterate that dreary question, and that she saw
+raspberries in the thicket which I must gather for her. Although, when
+she had eaten them, she let me kiss the lovely stained lips, I was still
+far enough from knowing whether they were mine or not--whether she liked
+to raise my ardent dreams merely to disappoint them, or whether at heart
+it was, as she sometimes hinted, that she did care for me with something
+of the intimate, clinging habit which bound _me_ so closely to _her_.
+
+  ELLEN W. OLNEY.
+
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+DAWN IN THE CITY.
+
+
+    The city slowly wakes:
+    Her every chimney makes
+  Offering of smoke against the cool white skies:
+    Slowly the morning shakes
+    The lingering shadowy flakes
+  Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes.
+
+    A breath through heaven goes:
+    Leaves of the pale sweet rose
+  Are strewn along the clouds of upper air.
+    Healer of ancient woes,
+    The palm of dawn bestows
+  On feverish temples peace, comfort on grim despair.
+
+    Now the celestial fire
+    Fingers the sunken spire;
+  Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down;
+    Brushes the maze of wire,
+    Dewy, electric lyre,
+  And with a silent hymn one moment fills the town.
+
+    Over emergent roofs
+    A sound of pattering hoofs
+  And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd:
+    Scared by the piteous droves,
+    A shoal of skurrying doves,
+  Veering, around the island of the church has whirred.
+
+    Soon through the smoky haze,
+    The park begins to raise
+  Its outlines clearer into daylit prose:
+    Ever with fresh amaze
+    The sleepless fountains praise
+  Morn, that has gilt the city as it gilds the rose.
+
+    High in the clearer air
+    The smoke now builds a stair
+  Leading to realms no wing of bird has found:
+    Things are more foul, more fair;
+    A distant clock, somewhere,
+  Strikes, and the dreamer starts at clear reverberant sound.
+
+    Farther the tide of dark
+    Drains from each square and park:
+  Here is a city fresh and new create,
+    Wondrous as though the ark
+    Should once again disbark
+  On a remoulded world its safe and joyous freight.
+
+    Ebbs all the dark, and now
+    Life eddies to and fro
+  By pier and alley, street and avenue:
+    The myriads stir below,
+    As hives of coral grow--
+  Vaulted above, like them, with a fresh sea of blue.
+
+  CHARLES DE KAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.
+
+IV.--MACHINERY.
+
+[Illustration: APPLEBY'S STEAM-CRANE, WITH FIXED JIB FOR USE ON
+TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT TRACK.]
+
+
+The machinery in the Paris Exposition covers a larger space than any
+other of the eight departments of material, machinery and products which
+occupy the buildings and annexes. The ninth department, Horticulture, is
+outdoors on the grounds or in greenhouses. Foreign machinery has about
+half the space, and French machinery the remainder. Few countries are
+without annexes, the space allotted to each, though supposed to be
+ample, being utterly insufficient to hold the multitude of objects
+presented.
+
+In preference to taking the classes of machinery in turn, and visiting
+the various nations in search of exemplars of the classes in rotation,
+it will be more interesting to take the nations in order and arrive at
+an idea of the rate and direction of their relative progress, modified
+so largely by the respective natural productions of the countries and by
+the habits and degrees of civilization of their inhabitants. When put to
+a trial of its strength, each nation naturally brings forward the
+matters in which it particularly excels.
+
+Prominent in the section of the Netherlands, the name so descriptive of
+the land where not less than two hundred and twenty-three thousand acres
+are below the level of the sea and kept constantly drained by artificial
+means, are the engineering and mechanical devices for the reclamation
+and preservation of land, the formation of outlet-canals for the centres
+of commerce, and the bridging of the rivers and estuaries which
+intersect the maritime portions of the country. Some of the models and
+relief-maps were shown in the Netherlands section in the Main Building
+at Philadelphia, but the exhibition is more perfect here, as much has
+been added in the two intervening years.
+
+The works for the drainage of the Haarlemmer Meer illustrate the means
+employed for the last great drainage-work completed. This lake had an
+area of 45,230 acres, an average depth of seventeen feet below low
+water, and was drained between 1848 and 1853. Being diked to exclude the
+waters which naturally flowed into it, three large engines were built in
+different places around it, and the work of pumping out 800,000,000 tons
+of water commenced. The engines have cylinders of twelve feet diameter,
+and are capable of lifting 2,000,000 tons of water in twenty-four hours
+from the depth of seventeen feet to the level of the _boezem_, or
+catch-water basin, of the district. The boezem carries the water to the
+sea, into which it discharges by sluices at Katwyk on the North Sea and
+at Sparndam and Halfweg on the Y, or the southern end of the Zuyder Zee.
+The land reclaimed is now in excellent tillage, and one farm on the
+tract is referred to in agricultural journals as one of the three model
+farms of the world. The three engines are called the Leeghwater, the
+Cruquius and the Lynden, from three celebrated engineers who had at
+different times proposed plans for draining the Haarlemmer Meer.
+Proposals for its drainage were made by one of these engineers as far
+back as 1663. The next enterprise in hand is the drainage of the
+southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, which is stated to have an average
+depth of thirteen feet, and it is intended to cut it off by a dike from
+the northern basin and erect sufficient engines around it to pump it out
+in thirteen years at the rate of a foot a year, working night and day.
+
+Another engineering device, very necessary in a land where foundations
+are so frequently built under water, is the enclosed caisson with
+compressed air, as shown in detail in this exhibit. It was originally
+invented by M. Triger to keep the water expelled from the sheet-iron
+cylinders which he sunk through quick-sands in reaching the
+coal-measures in the vicinity of the river Loire in France. The seams of
+coal in this district lie under a stratum of quicksand from fifty-eight
+to sixty-six feet in thickness, and they had been inaccessible by all
+the ordinary modes of mining previously practised. The system has been
+much amplified and improved since, especially in sinking the foundations
+of the St. Louis and the New York East River bridges, and does not
+require specific description. An improved air-lock, by which access is
+given from the exterior to the working chamber at the part where the men
+work in an atmosphere sufficiently condensed to exclude water from the
+lower open end--like a tumbler inverted in water--is the principal
+addition which America has made to the device.
+
+We need not go abroad to find long bridges, but the great bridge, with
+three immense iron trusses and eight smaller ones, over the Wahal near
+Bommell would be respectable anywhere. Our Louisville bridge is a
+parallel example for length, but the truss is different.
+
+The dikes and jetties of the new embouchure of the Meuse embrace the
+same features of extending a river's banks into deep water, and by
+confining the stream making it scour out its own bed, as now so
+successfully practised by Captain Eads in one of the passes of the
+Mississippi River. Limbs and saplings made into gabions and staked
+together form mattresses, and by loading with stone are sunk in
+position. They soon become silted up, and are practically solid. Others
+are made and laid upon them _ad libitum_, and at last raise the crest
+above the level of the sea, the last course being laid with the
+advantage of high-water spring tides. This foundation supports courses
+of pitched masonry on its side, and these protect the stone or gravel
+embankment, which forms a roadbed. The river's water, instead of, as
+formerly, depositing its silt at the embouchure as its motion is
+arrested on reaching the open sea, carries its silt along and deposits
+it farther out: if a favorable shore-current occurs, it is swept away
+laterally, and so disposed of.
+
+The maritime canal of Amsterdam is another late success of this
+remarkable people, which leads the world in dikes and drainage of low
+lands, as the Italian does in the art and area of irrigation. The
+present canal may satisfy the great and still rising commerce of
+Amsterdam, the previous ship-canal, fifty-one miles in length, built in
+1819-25 at a cost of $4,250,000, and deep and wide enough to float two
+passing frigates, having proved insufficient.
+
+Belgium is happily situated, and well provided by Nature and art to
+enter into any competitive trial. With admirable skill, great provision
+of iron and coal and a people of economical habits that permit them to
+work at low wages without being impoverished, she is, besides working
+up her own abundant material, rolling the iron of England into rails,
+and making it into locomotives for Great Britain, whose own people lack
+the work thus done abroad. The "Société Cockerill-Seraing" has an
+enormous space devoted to the machinery for the exploitation of iron.
+Compressed forgings in car-wheels and other shapes are piled on the
+floor, and a whole railway rail-rolling mill train is shown in motion.
+Two of the rolls are stated to have rolled 10,500 tons of steel rails,
+and are in apparent good order yet.
+
+[Illustration: WHEELOCK'S AUTOMATIC CUT-OFF STEAM-ENGINE.]
+
+The Belgium system of sinking shafts for mines and wells, invented by
+Kind and Chaudron, exhibited here as in Philadelphia, attracts great
+attention from its gigantic proportions. Imagine an immense
+boring-chisel (_trepan_), weighing 26,000 pounds and with a breadth of
+over six feet, worked up and down by machinery, the steel studs on its
+face stamping the rocks into dust, so that they can be removed with a
+bucket with bottom valves which is dropped into the hole and is worked
+up and down until the detritus and water, if any, creep into it, when it
+is withdrawn and emptied. The repetition of these processes makes the
+shaft of two mètres diameter. Then comes the larger trepan, with a width
+of 4.80 mètres, and repeats the process on a larger scale. This enormous
+chisel weighs 44,000 pounds. The system is much in favor, and forty-five
+shafts have been thus sunk between 1854 and 1877 in Belgium, France,
+England and Germany. Cast-iron lining is lowered in sections as the
+shaft deepens, the sections being added at the top and bolted together.
+
+The Belgian exhibit contains also one of those immense paper-machines
+invented by the brothers Fourdrinier about fifty years ago, and now used
+almost universally for the best class of machine-made papers. They are
+used by Wilcox at Glen Falls, Delaware county, Penn., in making the
+government note and bond paper, and are a marvel of art. The Frenchmen
+who invented the machine brought it into use in England, but they were
+much hampered and discouraged by difficulties, and it was never a
+pecuniary success to them. It was a legacy to the future, and they have
+joined the army of martyrs to mechanical science. The machine in the
+Belgian section is one hundred and thirty feet long, and the Swiss
+machine, near by, is nearly as large. The French, with their customary
+ingenuity, have reduced the proportions very considerably. The Swiss
+machine makes paper one mètre and a half wide.
+
+The remainder of the Belgian exhibit of machinery may be summarized:
+rock drills on the principle of those used at Mont Cenis; the
+gas-engines of Otto; machine tools, lathes, drills and planers; a very
+curious machine for cutting bevel or straight gears, built by a firm at
+Liège, and worthy of attention by Mr. Sellers or Mr. Corliss, whose
+ingenious machines for the same purpose were at Philadelphia; the
+woollen machinery of Celestine Martin of Verviers, which I recollect to
+have seen in Philadelphia also; multitubular boilers, rudder propeller,
+and hand fire-engines Then we see a number of locomotives and tramway
+engines, rail and street cars, winding, mining, crane and portable
+engines, and a full set of vacuum-pans for sugar, with engines,
+centrifugal filters and hydraulic presses. A glance at Guibal's great
+mine-ventilator fan, fifty feet in diameter and with ten wooden vanes,
+and we may quit the section of Belgium, which is the next largest after
+England of all the foreign departments here.
+
+The exhibition of Denmark is principally agricultural machinery, its
+iron ploughs being copies of the English, and its reapers of the
+American, while the dairy machines and apparatus are its own, and very
+excellent.
+
+The embroidering-machine of Hurtu & Hautin is shown working in the Swiss
+section, and is a great success. The web or cloth to be embroidered is
+stretched between horizontal rollers in a vertical frame which hangs
+suspended in the machine from the shorter end of a lever above. On each
+side of this floating frame is a track on which a carriage alternately
+approaches and recedes. Each carriage carries as many nippers in a row
+as equals the number of needles, which in this case is two hundred and
+twelve. The needles have an eye in the middle and are pointed at each
+end. The carriage advances, the nippers holding the threaded needles,
+and pushes them through the cloth: the nippers on the other side are
+waiting to receive them and shut upon them, those which have just thrust
+them into the cloth opening automatically; the second carriage retreats
+and draws the silk through the cloth with the requisite tightness, and
+then comes forward, thrusting the other end of the needles through the
+cloth to be grasped by the nippers on the first carriage, and so on. The
+frame holding the cloth is moved by an arrangement of levers under the
+control of the operator, who conducts a tracer point on the long end of
+the lever over the design, which is suspended before him. The frame
+moves in obedience to the action of the tracer, but in a minified
+degree, and each needle repeats on a scale of one-twentieth the design
+over which the tracer is moved step by step between each stitch. Thus
+two hundred and twelve embroideries according to a prescribed pattern
+are made by each needle; and, in fact, though it was not stated, to
+avoid complicating the description, a second row of a similar number of
+needles is carried by the same carriages and operates upon a second web
+stretched between another pair of rollers in the same floating frame.
+The object of the rollers is to reel off new cloth as the embroidery
+progresses and to reel on the work done. A similar machine is shown in
+the French section, in the Salle de l'École Militaire.
+
+The Jacquard loom is shown in many sections--Swiss, French, United
+States, English and others--principally upon silk handkerchiefs and
+motto-ribbons. The exhibit of carpet-weaving is far inferior to the
+Philadelphian. The Swiss exhibit of machinery for making paper of wood
+pulp is very large and ample, but the Belgian annex shows the finest and
+largest varieties of paper so made to be found in the Exposition. The
+paper, white and of various colors, made from about forty trees and
+twenty different straws, grasses and forage-plants, is shown in large
+rolls.
+
+Of Russia there is not much to say except as regards the work of the
+École Impériale Technique de Moscou. This is a remarkable
+exemplification of tools, methods of work, parts of engines and
+machines, all finished with extreme care and fitted with great nicety.
+It is fuller than it was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are
+readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary
+engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military
+and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges and an excellent
+lifeboat, système de Bojarsky.
+
+Austria comes with no more striking exhibit than the malteries and
+breweries of Nobak Frères and Fritze. The immense extent of the
+magazines for barley and hops; the size and height of the malteries,
+where by continuous processes the grain is damped, sprouted and dried
+and the malt ground; the number and capacity of the various vessels in
+which the infusions of malt and hops are made and mixed; and the
+apparently interminable series of engines, pumps and pipes by which the
+steam and liquids are conducted,--are confusing until some study
+evolves order out of the apparent confusion. The wort is cooled
+artificially, time being a great object as well as the saving of aroma,
+and the yet innocent liquid is poured in a torrent into the
+fermentation-vats, where Nature will have her own way and eliminate the
+ingredients which convert the mawkish wort into the sparkling and
+refreshing beer. Four hundred and fifty of these establishments have
+been erected by this firm in Europe; which must be some comfort to
+those, not vignerons, who think the prospects of the vine are materially
+clouded by the _Phylloxera_.
+
+But Austria is not beery alone. She has fine exhibits in horology,
+electric and pneumatic telegraphy, and in tools, grain-mills, gang-saw
+mills, and machines for making paper bags. More important, as some might
+say, are the admirable locomotives and stationary engines, cars,
+fire-engines, and her collection of iron-work, in which are exhibited
+cast-iron car-wheels, made by Ganz & Co. of Buda-Pesth, which have been
+in use twenty-one years and have run without apparent severe injury a
+distance of 549,108 kilomètres, or nearly 280,700 miles.
+
+The beet-root sugar interest is becoming very important in Austria, but
+the evidences of the Exhibition indicate that the diffusion-process
+holds better credit there than in France, where it is not approved of.
+The rotative apparatus shown is an immense affair, with a series of
+eight tall tanks arranged on a circular carriage and rotating on a
+vertical axis, so as to bring each in turn to the charging and
+discharging positions. Each tank has its own system of pumps. Beet-root
+is difficult to exploit for various reasons, chemical and other. Like
+the vine, it is particular in its nutriment, requires great skill to
+remove extraneous substances, and can hardly be handled by the French
+system without a set of machinery costing about eighty thousand dollars.
+
+From Austria to Spain is but a step, but it is not productive of much
+information in the matter we have in hand. A beaming-machine for cotton
+warps, red, white and yellow, stands solitary in its section, and next
+to it is a model of a _cirque de taureau_, composed of nineteen thousand
+pieces of tin laboriously put together without solder, as if that were a
+merit, and stated to be the work of two years. In the arena the wooden
+bull regards with indifference two mounted cavaliers and seven footmen
+in various provoking attitudes. Near by are various machines and presses
+for the treatment of grapes and olives, grinders and presses in variety,
+a sugar-cane press and a turbine. Barcelona would seem to be the most
+enterprising of Spanish cities. Several exemplifications of the
+excellent iron of Catalonia and Biscay suggest the direction in which
+Spain has taken its most important industrial start of late years. An
+admirable model of the quay of the copper-mining company of the Rio
+Tinto is another evidence in the same line which the maps, plans and
+ores amply corroborate.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE STONE-CRUSHER.]
+
+Two steps, in violation of all preconceived geographical notions, but in
+obedience to the Exposition authorities, land us in China, where we find
+things mechanical in much the same state of progress as Marco Polo
+viewed them some centuries since. The silk tissues brought from the far
+East were famous in the days of the Roman magnificence, and here is the
+loom. The marvel is how such a web can be made on such a rough machine.
+A blue silk warp of delicate threads is in the loom, which has nine
+heddles, and the partly-finished fabric shows a woof consisting of a
+narrow gilded strip of paper. The sheen of the figured goods is
+something remarkable. It is a parallel case to that of the shawls of
+Kashmir, where the natives, trained for generations, succeed in
+producing by great care and unlimited expenditure of time fabrics with
+which the utmost elaboration of our machinery scarcely enables us to
+compete.
+
+The machine for the whitening of rice by the removal of the brown
+coating from the pure white grain is similar to that shown from Siam at
+the Centennial, but, unlike the latter, the faces of the two round
+horizontal wooden blocks which act as mill-stones are serrated, whereas
+the Siamese rubbers were made of sun-dried clay, the serrations
+consisting of bamboo strips inserted in the clay while yet plastic. The
+motion is similar, not being continuously revolving, but reciprocatory,
+and the method is customary in all the rice-eating regions except India,
+and is well known in parts of the latter, though not universal. The
+grain of Eastern Asia, including India and Malaysia, is almost
+universally rice, of which two, and even three, crops a year are raised
+in some regions, and the processes of cooking are simple among these
+vegetarians, the variation consisting principally in the choice of
+condiments or of certain additional esculents or fruits in their season.
+The grinding of grain is, however, universally known, though meal forms
+but a small proportion of the daily food. The mortar and pestle in the
+Chinese section show the more usual method, and there, as in some parts
+of India, the pestle is placed on the end of a poised horizontal beam
+which is worked by the foot of the operator at the end opposite to the
+pestle.
+
+We meet in the Chinese section with the original of our fanning-mill or
+winnowing-machine for grain. Though China has had the same machines for
+centuries, we have not knowingly copied many of them. The fanning-mill,
+porcelain and the _cheng_ may be fairly credited to her. The last is the
+original of all our free-reed musical instruments. It is shown here, and
+was also at the Centennial, and it was the carrying of one overland to
+Russia, where it fell into the hands of Kratzenstein, the organ-builder
+to Queen Catharine II., which initiated the free reed in Europe, and led
+to the accordions, concertinas, harmoniums and parlor organs which
+perhaps afford the cheapest and loudest music for a given expenditure of
+muscle and wind of anything we have.
+
+The spinning and winding machinery of China is simple enough, but so
+much like that of our great-grandmothers that it does not arrest
+particular attention. It is otherwise with the irrigating-machine, which
+in its various modifications produces, by the fruitfulness induced, the
+food of scores of millions in China, India, Syria and Egypt--the cogged
+wheel on a vertical axis, with an ox travelling beneath it, and a
+horizontal shaft moved thereby and carrying an endless chain of pots or
+buckets, either hanging from the cord or moving in an inclined chute.
+
+The ploughs, harrows, rakes, flails, spades, hoes and forks are of the
+usual clumsy description, not to be apprehended by the reader without
+cuts, and many of them only reasonably effective even in the mellow soil
+repeatedly stirred and occasionally flooded with water. The seed-drill
+for planting one row, with a share on each side to turn soil on to the
+grain, is an anticipation of some later inventions nearer home. The
+thresher is a square frame drawn over the grain--which is spread upon
+the bare ground--and is furnished on its under side with steel blades
+which not only shell the grain out of the ear, but also reduce the straw
+into chaff, which is desirable, as storing for feed more conveniently.
+Southern nations have but little conception of our use of hay. Grain for
+the man and straw for the beast is the usual division. The ancient Roman
+_tribulum_ and the modern Syrian _morej_, were or are similar, and the
+"sharp" threshing instrument of Isaiah may be seen to-day in the Tunis
+exhibit, being a frame of boards with sharp flint spalls inserted into
+its under surface.
+
+We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese
+manufactures--sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc., showing the stages of
+cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market--but
+perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the
+ancient island of Zipango.
+
+Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the
+rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place
+among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any
+liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which
+attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring
+silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets,
+and cutlery of native shapes.
+
+[Illustration: TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.]
+
+The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time
+immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain
+Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given
+place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name
+of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before
+Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened
+between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage
+in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand
+and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank
+movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of
+the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a
+patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin
+Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near
+the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the
+eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of
+John Schöner, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had
+Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and
+south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus
+died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three
+hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our
+group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are
+one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among
+the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the
+sleep of centuries.
+
+Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes,
+but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for
+example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made
+the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by his twin
+wolf-nursling, but it is the plough of Bocchi Gaetano of Parma, is
+twelve feet long and weighs something under half a ton. Another, hard
+by, is two feet longer and has but one handle. Efforts are evident,
+however, to assimilate the country to the portions of Europe more
+advanced in mechanical matters. When we reflect upon how much we owe to
+Italy, we can but wish her well, but we cannot delay long with her in a
+search for objects of mechanical interest except to examine her models
+of tunnels, manner of scaffolding, boring and blasting. The Mont Cenis
+tunnel must stand as the grandest work of its kind until that of Saint
+Gothard is finished. An exemplification by a model constructed to a
+scale of the electric ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton
+gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and
+the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each
+impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is
+stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to
+pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be
+proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery
+Building at the Centennial the eight-inch armor-plating made by Cammell
+of Sheffield, tested in one case by nine spherical shots overlapping,
+making an indentation of 3.12 inches with balls from a seven-inch gun
+driven by thirty pounds of powder at a range of seventy feet. They are
+here again, and so is the nine-inch armor with a much deeper indentation
+from a chilled Palisser bolt. Here is also a new-comer, John Brown,
+whose armor of four and a half inches of steel welded on to the same
+thickness of iron resists the Palisser bolt, which only penetrates the
+thickness of the steel. What might happen to it with a pointed steel
+bolt from a sixty- or one-hundred-ton gun is another matter. To set our
+minds at rest as to what would occur in the event supposed comes Sir
+Joseph Whitworth, who exhibits his gun with polygonal rifling, the bore
+being a hexagon with rounded corners. The projectiles are moulded of the
+same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of
+these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half
+pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half
+inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth
+fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred
+and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting
+charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton gun, and
+penetrated iron sixteen inches thick and twelve inches of oak backing.
+The shell remained entire and was only slightly distorted. The question
+seems to be answered, unless the plates are made twenty inches thick,
+and that is impossible on a vessel to be manoeuvred.
+
+Sweden comes next, and the scene changes; for the weapon which suggested
+the remarks was only, as it were, one gun in a garden. Instead of wine
+and olives we find iron and furs. Except some Indian steels, there is no
+better metal than that of Sweden, and horse-shoe nails are made of it
+all over Europe and the United States. Iron in ore, pig, rails, bars,
+rods, wire; iron in tools, files, wheels, balls, shells, pans, boilers,
+stoves, springs; iron _ad lib_.
+
+The agricultural machines of Sweden, like those of Denmark, are copies
+of the American and English, and the same is true to a large extent of
+the engines, saw-mills, water-wheels and wood-working machinery. The
+statement would not be true of the very elaborate exercising-machines
+(_la gymnastique médicale mécanique_) invented by Gustave Zander of
+Stockholm. They embrace every conceivable variety of effort, and also
+another class of applications which may be termed shampooing, as they
+consist of kneading and rubbing. Among the twenty machines are those
+designed for flexing, stretching and extending the limbs, for kneading
+the back and neck, for rubbing the body and limbs to induce circulation
+and simulate the effect of exercise in the cases of weak persons or
+those confined to their beds by casualties. Some of these were in
+Philadelphia in 1876.
+
+Steering-apparatus and gun-harpoons for whaling testify to the maritime
+character of the people, as do the boats and ropes. The great exhibit
+of _pâte de bois_ shows the anxiety of the people to turn their
+extensive forests to good account in the markets of the world. White
+pine seems to be the principal wood thus used. Norway and Sweden have
+been shipping timber for some centuries, and yet seem to need no laws to
+restrain the denudation of their hills; certainly not to encourage
+rainfall. Bergen has 88.13 inches per annum, which is just double that
+of Philadelphia, and four inches greater than that of Sitka, where the
+people say it is always raining. Of course these figures are small when
+compared to spots on the Himalayas, where Hooker observed a fall of 470
+inches in seven months, and on one occasion 30 inches in four hours; the
+latter equal to the average annual rainfall of France.
+
+The American machinery, which occupies a position between Norway and
+England, is creditable in kind and quality, but fails very far in giving
+a correct idea of the multiplicity of our industries. Almost the only
+evidence of our textile manufactures are two of Tilt's Jacquard
+silk-weaving looms. The telephones of Edison and Gray excite unremitting
+astonishment and admiration, and have both received the highest possible
+awards. Our wood-working is practically shown in a large variety by Fay
+& Co. of Cincinnati, and one or two other special machines by other
+makers. The Wheelock engine, which drives all the machinery in our
+section of the main building, has very properly been awarded a grand
+prize. It is all that can be desired in an engine, and has a singular
+simplicity of construction, with few working parts. It is the same which
+drove the machinery in the Agricultural Building at the Centennial. The
+steam is admitted and exhausted by a valve at each end of the cylinder
+placed directly below the port. The cut-off valve is behind the main
+valve: the mechanism for operating the valves is on the outside of the
+steam-chest, and easily accessible. The valves and seats are made
+tapering in their general diameter, and the pressure of steam comes on
+one side, also acting to keep the collar in contact with the sleeve.
+
+[Illustration: TWEDDELL'S HYDRAULIC RIVETING-MACHINE.]
+
+The Waltham Watch Company is considered by some of the most influential
+European journals as the most important in the American section on
+account of the revolution it is making in that important industry. When
+the Swiss commissioner went home from the Centennial he published a
+letter fairly throwing up the sponge, and when the company's exhibit
+appeared for the first time in Europe at an international exposition it
+was regarded as carrying the war into Africa. The American system of
+making by machinery all the parts of an article--say, of a watch--of a
+given grade by means of gauges and templets, so that the parts may be
+"assembled," and of such singular exactitude in their making that any
+part may be replaced by the corresponding piece of any other watch of
+the same grade, has in this manufactory attained its highest results,
+greatest precision and most perfect illustration. The whole collection
+of watches was sold within a few weeks after the opening. The latest
+improvements in the balance to secure perfect isochronism under varying
+conditions of temperature would delight the soul of Harrison, who worked
+from 1728 to 1761 on the problem of a compensator for the changes of
+rate due to the expansion and contraction of the metal, and received the
+reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling offered by the Board of
+Longitude.
+
+Tiffany's exhibit has been admired and patronized, but is not quite
+within my range of subjects. Darling, Brown & Sharpe have their
+machine-tools and gauges, Bliss & Williams their presses and dies. We
+have the Baxter, Snyder and Lovegrove portable engines, Taylor's and
+Aultman's agricultural engines. Our railroad exhibit is not very full:
+we have a Philadelphia and Reading coal-burning locomotive, a Pullman
+car, the Westinghouse brake, Stephenson's street-cars, car-wheels from
+Baldwin's and Lobdell's: the latter also sends calender-rolls of
+remarkable quality. As a sort of set-off to the Austrian car-wheels
+which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell
+has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and
+Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size
+and purpose, and of a finish and an accuracy which have become
+proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery;
+Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen & Roeder's
+riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,--are a few more of
+the representative machines.
+
+Sewing-machines are not in as great variety in the American section as
+they were in Philadelphia. There are, however, enough of American and
+European to foot up about eighty exhibitors. Wheeler & Wilson's have
+been awarded the grand prize, and there are various medals for others,
+both home and foreign--the American machine, Cole's and Wardwell's among
+the number. The various hardware exhibits, such as the Disston saws,
+Ames shovels, Collins axes, Batcheller forks, Russell & Erwin builders'
+hardware, as well as the Remington, Colt, Winchester, Sharpe and Owen
+Jones rifles and revolvers, and the Gatling and Gardner guns, are a
+little on one side of my present line of subjects.
+
+The United States has preserved its ancient reputation in its
+agricultural machinery. We are especially strong in the class which we
+term "harvesters," the name including reapers, automatic binders,
+mowers, horse-rakes and hay-loaders. Our baling-presses also are in
+advance of competitors. A juryman may perhaps stand excused for
+supposing that more than an average amount of interest is felt in the
+machinery which happens to be in his class, but on Class
+76--"agricultural implements in motion and in the field"--additional
+interest was conferred by a series of competitive trials extending from
+July 22 to August 12, and embracing reapers, mowers, steam and ordinary
+ploughs, hay-presses, threshing-machines especially, but also including
+all the other machines for working in the ground, gathering crops and
+the storage and preparation of feed for animals. In this series of
+competitive trials eight different countries entered the lists. The
+prizes were twelve _objets d'art_ placed at the disposal of Monsieur
+Tisseraud, the "director-general of agriculture and horticulture of
+France," and the jury selected to attend the trials. Eleven of them were
+accorded to machines of "exceptional merit," the idea of novelty being
+included in the definition of the term. These _objets d'art_ are Sèvres
+vases worth one thousand francs each, and in view of their exceptional
+value, and the large share that America has in the award, a list of the
+names may very properly be appended.[5] Several hundred machines
+competed: for instance, twenty-six reapers, sixteen mowers, fifty-four
+ploughs, and so on of numerous kinds of agricultural implements and
+machines for working in the soil, gathering crops and for the work of
+the homestead and barn.
+
+Last on the foreign side is the British machinery, and the collection is
+very much larger and more varied than any of the preceding. There are
+few lines of manufacture which are not represented here. Machines for
+working in iron and other metals, for sawing and fashioning wood, for
+the ginning, breaking or carding of cotton, flax, wool, jute and hemp,
+for working in stone, glass, leather and paper, are shown. Then, again,
+the finished productions; prime motors, such as stationary engines,
+locomotives and fire-engines; lifting-machines for solids or liquids,
+cranes, jacks, elevators, pumps, each in endless variety.
+
+Prominent in the hall, and employed in driving the machinery, is the
+large double compound horizontal engine of Galloway of Manchester. This
+form of engine is coming to the front, as is evinced especially in the
+marine service. Maudslay & Sons of London exhibit a model of the
+four-cylinder marine compound engine as fitted on the "White Star line"
+vessels, the Germanic, Britannic, Oceanic, Baltic and Adriatic, and on
+the steamers of the "Compagnie Générale Transatlantique," the Ville de
+Havre, Europe, France, Amérique, Labrador, Canada. The vessels of the
+New York and Bremen line have the same class of engines, built in
+Greenock, Scotland.
+
+Amid so large a mass of machinery one can but select the most prominent,
+and among these we may choose such as, while not necessarily imposing in
+size, are suggestive of ideas which we may find valuable for home
+introduction. Appleby & Sons lead the world in the completeness and
+capacity of their great cranes and lifts for docks and wharves,
+machine-shops, erection of buildings, and travelling cranes for railways
+or common roads. We must make one exception--the elevators for hotels
+and warehouses, in which America is in advance of all other countries.
+While we have many varieties of these, we must give credit where it is
+due, and the _ascenseur Edoux_ of Paris is the original of all those in
+which the cage is placed upon a plunger that descends into a vertical
+cylinder into which water is forced to elevate the plunger, and from
+which it is withdrawn to allow the plunger and cage to descend. Very
+fine specimens of this class of elevator are in the New York Post-office
+building. The gantry crane of Messrs. Appleby Bros. of London is the
+most complete engine of its kind in the world. It was originally
+constructed for the growing requirements of the docks of the
+North-eastern Railway Company of England at Middlesborough. The term
+"gantry" is applied to the movable scaffold or frame, which in this case
+rests upon a pair of rails twenty-three feet apart, one of them being
+close to the edge of the quay. The clear height is seventeen and a half
+feet, which allows the uninterrupted passage of locomotives and all
+kinds of rolling-stock on each of the two lines of rails which are
+spanned by the gantry. The crane is designed for a working load of five
+tons, with a maximum radius of twenty-one feet from the centre of the
+crane-post to the plumb-line of the lifting chain, with a capacity for
+altering the radius by steam to a minimum of fourteen feet. The crane
+has capacity to (1) lift and lower; (2) turn round completely in either
+direction simultaneously with the lifting and lowering; (3) alter the
+radius by raising or lowering the jib-head; (4) travel along the rails
+by its own steam-power. All these motions are easily worked by one man,
+who attends to the boiler. The travelling motion is transmitted from the
+crane-engines by suitable gear and shafts to the travelling wheels, and
+warping-drums or capstans are fitted on a countershaft on the inner side
+of each frame, which drums can be driven independently of the travelling
+wheels for moving trucks into position below the crane as they are
+required for loading and unloading. Smaller cranes may pass with their
+loads below the gantry, and a number of these large cranes may be
+assembled so as each to work at the different hatchways of a large
+screw steamer, or two may be associated together for any exceptionally
+heavy lift. The value of elevation of the crane is not only in allowing
+the loaded cars to be brought on tracks beneath it, but in giving it
+capacity to work over the sides of large vessels, which when light may
+rise twenty feet above the level of the quay, and to load or discharge
+from trucks on two lines of rails on the land-side of the gantry,
+overhead of the trucks on the two lines which run below the gantry.[6]
+
+Blake's stone-breaker, though only represented by model in the United
+States section, where it belongs, is shown by two English firms; and
+though some Europeans profess to have improved upon its details, no
+efficient substitute has been found for it, but it remains the premium
+stone-crusher of the world, and has rendered services in the
+exploitation of gold quartz and silver ores, and in the crushing of
+stones for public works and for concretes, which can hardly be
+exaggerated. In testimony taken in the United States in 1872 it was put
+in evidence that five hundred and nine machines then in service effected
+a direct saving over hand-labor of five million five hundred thousand
+dollars per annum.
+
+Steam-pumps are here in force--direct by Tangye and others, and rotary
+by both of the Gwynnes, whose name has been so long and is so intimately
+associated with this class of machines.
+
+The emery-wheels of Thompson, Sterne & Co. of Glasgow have the same
+variety of form and application usual with us, but the firm claims that
+while it uses the true corundum emery of Naxos, the American article is
+only a refractory iron ore, which soon loses its sharpness and becomes
+inefficient. This is a question of efficiency or of veracity which we
+leave to the trade. The machine adapted as a tool-grinder has six
+emery-wheels for varying characters of work. Four are assorted for
+gauges of different radii, for moulding-irons, etc. One has a square
+face for plane-irons, chisels, etc. One is an emery hone to replace the
+water-of-Ayr stone.
+
+In examining the English locomotives exhibited two things were apparent:
+one half of them have adopted the outside cylinders and wrist-pins on
+the drivers, three out of four have comfortable cabs for the engineers.
+These are, as we view them, sensible changes. Outside-cylinder engines
+are also coming into extensive use in France. The machine tools shown by
+Sharp, Stewart & Co. of Manchester are remarkably well made, and their
+locomotive in the same space is an evidence of the efficiency of the
+tools.
+
+The exhibit of hydraulic-machine tools by Mr. R. H. Tweddell is a very
+admirable one, and shows a multitude of stationary and portable forms in
+which the idea is developed so as to reach the varying requirements.
+When work is more conveniently held to the machines, the latter are
+adapted to reach it whether presented vertically or horizontally, or
+with one arm inside of it, as with boilers and flue-pipes. When it is
+more convenient to handle the riveter, the latter is suspended from a
+crane and swung up to its work, and the peculiarity of the various sizes
+and shapes for different kinds of work is remarkable. The cut shows one
+of the latest for riveting girders.
+
+The Ingram rotary perfecting press, on which the _Illustrated London
+News_ is worked off, prints from a web of paper of the usual length, and
+is claimed as the final triumph in the line of inventors, which is thus
+stated in England: Nicholson, König, Applegarth and Cowper, Hoe and
+Walter. We should be disposed to add a few names to the list, among
+which would be Bullock and Campbell. A is the roll of paper, containing
+a length of, say, two miles; B B the type and impression cylinders for
+printing the inner form; C C calendering rollers to remove the
+indentation of the inner form type; D D the outer form type and
+impression cylinders; E E cylinders with a saw-tooth knife and an
+indentation respectively to perforate the sheet between the papers; F F
+rollers to hold the sheet while the snatching-rollers G G, which run at
+an increased speed, break the paper off where it has been indented by E
+E. The folder is in duplicate to give time to work, as each only takes
+half the papers. The vibrating arm H delivers the sheets alternately to
+K and J, which are carrying-tapes leading to two folding-machines. If
+the sheets are not required to be folded, the arm H is moved to its
+highest position, and there fixed, without stopping the machine: it then
+delivers the sheets to the roller L, and by means of a blast of air and
+a flyer they are laid on a table provided for them.
+
+The rise of British factory-life and great energy in manufacturing began
+with the invention of the spinning-frame by Arkwright, the power-loom by
+Cartwright, the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves, and the mule by
+Crompton--all within a space of twenty years ending 1785. To these must
+be added the steam-engine by Watt, which made it possible to drive the
+machinery, and the gin by Eli Whitney, which made it possible to get
+cotton to spin. Much as iron has loomed up lately, the working of the
+various fibres--cotton, wool, flax, hemp and jute--constitutes the pet
+industry of her people, and very elaborate and beautiful are the
+machines at the Exposition, especially attractive and less commonly
+known being those for working long or combing wool, flax, hemp and jute.
+The United States is not doing as much as it ought in the working of
+these fibres, and the money which is paid for the purchase of foreign
+linens and fabrics made of other materials than cotton and wool might,
+some economists think, be employed at home in making them. The day will
+come probably, but does not seem to be hastening very fast, when we
+shall conclude to make our own linens, as we have within a comparatively
+few years past determined in regard to all the staple varieties of
+carpets.
+
+[Illustration: INGRAM'S ROTARY PERFECTING PRINTING-MACHINE.]
+
+One of the most important machines in the Exposition, from the American
+point of view, is the "double Macarthy roller-gin," exhibited by Platt
+Brothers & Co. of Oldham, England. It is a curious instance of how
+machines sometimes revert to their original types. The oldest machine
+for ginning cotton is undoubtedly the roller-gin, and it was known in
+India, China and Malaysia long before Vasco da Gama turned the Cape of
+Good Hope and opened the trade of the East to the Portuguese and their
+successors. The common roller-gin of Southern Asia was shown at the
+Centennial from Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from
+Java. It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close
+together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the
+fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the
+closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794
+revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our
+Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of
+saw-teeth projecting through slits in the side of the chamber in which
+the seed-cotton is placed. But the roller-gin has again come upon the
+stage, and with the late improvements is likely to become the gin of the
+future. When the close of our civil war put an end to the "cotton
+famine," as it was called, in Europe, and American cotton resumed its
+place in the market, the export of the East Indian and Egyptian cottons
+would have been immediately suppressed if they had not possessed the
+roller-gin in those countries. Ten thousand of the double Macarthy gin
+are used in India, and five thousand of the single roller-gin in Egypt.
+It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in
+India. While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting,
+tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and
+fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is
+suitable for working it. The slow action of the single roller-gin,
+cleaning about one hundred and fifty pounds of lint per day, made its
+cultivation too expensive, but the double roller-gin will clean nine
+hundred pounds in ten hours, or one hundred and twenty pounds an hour of
+the common upland short-staple cotton. It is thought by Southern members
+of the United States commission that the introduction of the double
+roller-gin into our country would greatly increase the profitableness of
+the culture of cotton, and especially of the "sea island," which is at
+present much neglected, and in the growth of which we need fear no
+rivalry. Each roller is made of walrus leather, and rotates in contact
+with a fixed knife, dragging by its rough surface the fibres of cotton
+between itself and the knife. A grating holds the seed-cotton. Besides
+these parts there are moving knives to which are attached a grid or
+series of fingers. At each elevation of the moving knives, the grids
+attached thereto lift the cotton to the elevation of the fixed
+knife-edge and of the exposed surface of the rollers: on the descent of
+each moving knife the seeds which have become separated from the fibre
+are disentangled by the prongs of the moving grid passing between those
+of the lower or fixed grid about seven hundred and fifty times per
+minute, and are by this rapidity of action flirted out.
+
+It would be scarcely fair to neglect altogether the English annex in
+which all the agricultural implements are exhibited, nor that which
+contains its carriages. So much commercial intercourse, so many journals
+published in the respective countries, have made each pretty well
+acquainted with the agricultural machines and methods of the other. The
+principal difference is in the splendid plant for steam-ploughing
+exhibited by Fowler & Son and by Aveling & Porter, and in the great
+number and variety of the machines and apparatus for preparing food for
+animals--chaff-cutters, oat- and bean-bruisers and crushers,
+oilcake-grinders, boilers and steamers for feed and mills for rough
+grinding of grain.
+
+A shed by the annex contains two curious machines for working stone--one
+a dresser, belonging to Brunton & Triers, which has a large wheel and a
+number of planetary cutters whose disk edges as they revolve cut the
+stone against which they impinge. The other machine, by Weston & Co., is
+for planing stone mouldings. The stone-drills are in the same annex;
+also the Smith and the Hardy brakes, the former of which is the European
+rival of the Westinghouse, acting upon the vacuum principle, and already
+in possession of so many of the lines in Europe that it proves a serious
+competitor.
+
+Perhaps nothing in the French Exposition excites more surprise in the
+minds of those who are conversant with technical matters than the
+immense advance of the French since 1867 in the matter of machinery. The
+simple statement of the names of the exhibitors, their residences and
+the subject-matter occupies a large volume, and the quality and variety
+are equal to the quantity.
+
+Reference has been made to the web perfecting printing-machine in the
+English section, but quite a number are shown in the French department,
+three of them by Marinoni of Paris, one of which prints the journal _La
+France_, eighteen thousand an hour. It prints, cuts, counts, folds and
+piles the papers. Another by the same maker prints twenty thousand an
+hour of the _Weekly Dispatch_ (English paper), and counts and piles them
+in heaps of one hundred each. A third works on the _Petit Journal_,
+printing forty thousand per hour with two forms. Alauzet & Co. have also
+a web perfecting press, _à double touche_, for illustrated papers and
+book-printing. This wets, prints, cuts, counts and folds in octavo four
+thousand per hour of super-royal size. They also show a double railway
+topographic press, printing in two colors. Vauthier's roller-press is
+arranged to work on an endless roll of paper or on sheets fed in as
+usual, and prints in six colors. Electro shells are secured in position
+on the respective rollers, which are in horizontal series, and the paper
+is conducted by tapes to the rollers in succession. The French section
+shows a great variety of polychrome, lithographic and zincographic
+printing-machines, and also a great number of ordinary job and card
+presses, the most interest, however, centring in the large number and
+variety of the web perfecting presses for newspapers and for bill-work
+where long numbers are required.
+
+France has a right to exemplify the Jacquard in its fulness, for it is
+hers. The original machine of Vaucanson and that of Jacquard are in the
+Conservatoire des Arts et Metiérs, as well as a long series of
+exemplifications of successive improvements. The Grand Maison de Blanc
+of Paris has a large one, making an immense linen cloth of damask
+figures, all in white, and representing what I took at first to be an
+allegorical picture of all the nations bringing their gifts to the
+Exposition. I found afterward that it was called _Fées du Dessert_. It
+is about three mètres wide, and just as long as you please to make it,
+but the pattern is repeated every five mètres. The design, on paper, is
+hung against the wall, and is twelve by eight mètres, all laid off in
+squares of twelve millimètres, and these again into smaller ones exactly
+a square millimètre in size. The number of small squares on the sheet of
+paper is ninety-six million, which represents the number of the
+intersections of the warp and woof in the pattern. There are nine
+thousand and sixty-six perforated cards in the Jacquard arrangement for
+floating the threads which form the damask pattern, and the whole
+machine stands on a space of about twenty by twelve feet and is eighteen
+feet high. It is worked by one man, without steam-power, the shifting of
+the harness being done by two foot-levers and the shuttle thrown by a
+pull-cord.
+
+We may here observe the looms that weave the marvellously fine silk
+gauzes realizing such fanciful Indian names as "morning mist," which
+poetically express the lightness of a web that when spread upon the
+grass is not visible unless one stoops down and examines closely. To
+even name the various looms here would be to make a list of ribbons,
+velvets, cloths and other tissues. The subsidiary machines for dressing
+the fabrics are here also--for napping, teasling, shearing, stretching
+and brushing, for measuring, folding and packing.
+
+The other modes of making fabrics shown are a machine for making
+fishing-nets of great width, and a number of knitting-machines, from the
+stocking-frame of eighty years ago to the small domestic machine, and
+the larger one with nine hundred needles in the circumference and making
+a circular seamless fabric eighteen inches in diameter. The march of
+improvement is eminently shown here, where an old man is patiently
+knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between
+the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose
+motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir,
+and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and
+thirty pounds of knitted goods per day.
+
+Passing the large exhibit of machines for the working of fibres
+preliminary to the loom--the carding, roving, spinning, reeling and
+warping--and the allied but different machines which make wire-cloths of
+different meshes and size, we come to the ropemaking-machines for hemp
+and wire, which are shown principally in their products, the
+manufacture taking an amount of room and material which could hardly be
+expected to be efficiently shown in a crowded building where space is
+valuable.
+
+The French plant for boring small shafts to find water or obtain
+sections of the strata, and the larger ones for sinking large ones for
+mines, are shown by several exhibitors. The annular drills remove
+cylindrical sections of the strata from ten to sixty centimètres in
+diameter: the large chisels resemble those described in the Belgian
+exhibit, having a diameter of four mètres and a weight of twenty-five
+thousand kilos.
+
+The department of mining has some excellent large models of mining
+districts, in which the face of the country is represented with the
+natural undulations, the villages, roads, fields and streams, and made
+in removal-sections which expose the underlying strata, the galleries,
+drifts and shafts of the subterranean world.
+
+An attempt to describe the steam-engines, of such various size, shape,
+position and capacity, would exhaust all the space permissible in a
+magazine article.
+
+The wood-working tools of France are excellent, and our manufacturers
+must look well to their laurels. We have as yet the advantage in
+compactness and simplicity, with adjustability and adaptation to varying
+classes of work. The band-saw is claimed as a French invention, and the
+crowds around the workman who saws a roomful of dolls' furniture out of
+a single block as large as one's fist are as great here as they were at
+Philadelphia. The Blanchard lathe for turning irregular forms is here in
+a variety of forms. This is an interesting object of study, as
+illustrating the usual course of invention, in which a master-hand
+grasps a subject which has been suggested in an incomplete and
+comparatively ineffective manner from time to time by others. De la Hire
+and Condamine during the last century described lathes adapted to turn
+irregular shapes, and the scoring-machine for ships' blocks invented by
+Brunel and made by Maudslay for Chatham dockyard in England, 1802-8,
+was as perfect an exemplification of the idea as the nature of the work
+to be done required. Blanchard, however, in 1819 gave the finishing
+stroke, and the lathe will bear his name for long years. Inventors of
+three nations attacked the problem, and each aided the result.
+
+Brickmaking, diamond-cutting; machines for making paper bags, envelopes,
+cuffs and collars; distilleries, sugar-mills, with the successive
+apparatus of vacuum-pans, pumps and centrifugal filters; soap, stearine,
+paraffine, wax, candle, candy and chocolate machines and
+apparatus,--succeed each other, and we next find ourselves in a busy
+factory of cheap jewelry, Exposition souvenirs and medals, chains and
+charms. The leather machinery is deserving of a careful description, but
+it would be too technical perhaps, and there is no romance in the
+handling of wet hides, the scraping, currying, stretching and pommelling
+which even the thickness, prepare the surface and develop the pliability
+of the leather. Near this is the boot- and shoe-making, sewing and
+cable-screw wire machines, but none for pegging. Sewing-machines, copies
+of the various American forms, occupy the end of the hall.
+
+Separate buildings around the grounds and on both banks of the Seine
+contain groups of machinery at which we can but glance. Two long
+pavilions have agricultural machines, and one each is appropriated to
+materials for railways, to civil engineering, pumps, gas-works, the
+forges of Terre Noire, the iron-works of Creusot, the ministry of public
+works, stoves, the government manufacture of tobacco, navigation,
+life-saving apparatus of floats and boats, fire-engines and ceramics.
+Add to these two annexes, each one thousand feet long, containing
+locomotives, cars, street-cars, telegraph-apparatus and many acres of
+the surplus machinery of all classes excluded from the large building
+for want of room, and a person may form some adequate idea of the
+immense extent and variety of this wonderful collection.
+
+  EDWARD H. KNIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE: AN ALGERIAN STORY.
+
+
+"I've known many clever fellows in my time," said Paul Dupont, French
+sous-lieutenant in the --th of the line, as he sat sipping his coffee in
+front of the Hôtel de la Régence at Algiers, "but by far the cleverest
+man I ever met was our old colonel, Henri de Malet. People said he ought
+to have been an _avocat_, but that was giving him but half his due, for
+I'll be bound he could have outflanked any lawyer that ever wore a gown.
+In his latter days he always went by the name of 'Solomon the Second;'
+and if you care to hear how he came by it I'll tell you.
+
+"Before he came to us De Malet was military commandant at Oran, and it
+was there that he did one of his best strokes--outgeneralling a
+camel-driver from Tangier, one of those thorough-paced Moorish rascals
+of whom the saying goes, 'Two Maltese to a Jew, and three Jews to a
+Moor,' Now this Tangerine, when pulled up for some offence or other,
+swore that he wasn't Muley the camel-driver at all, but quite another
+man; and as his friends all swore the same, and he had managed to alter
+his appearance a bit before he was arrested, he seemed safe to get off.
+But our colonel wasn't to be done in that way. He pretended to dismiss
+the case, and allowed the fellow to get right out into the street as if
+all was over; and then he suddenly shouted after him, 'Muley the
+camel-driver, I want to speak to you.' The old rogue, hearing his own
+name, turned and came back before he could recollect himself; and so he
+was caught in spite of all his cunning.
+
+"The fame of this exploit went abroad like wildfire, and it got to be a
+saying among us, whenever we heard of any very clever trick, that it was
+'one of Colonel de Malet's judgments;' and so, when he was transferred
+from Oran to Algiers, it was just as if we all knew him already,
+although none of us had ever seen him before. But it wasn't long before
+we got a much better story than that about him; for one night a man
+dined at our mess who had known the colonel out in India, and told us a
+grand tale of how he had astonished them all at Pondicherry. It seems
+that some things had been stolen from the officers' quarters, and nobody
+could tell who had done it. The first thing next morning the colonel
+went along the line at early parade, giving each of the native soldiers
+a small strip of bamboo; and then he said, very solemnly, 'My children,
+there is a guilty man among us, and it has been revealed to me by Brahma
+himself how his guilt is to be made clear. Let every man of you come
+forward in his turn and give me his piece of bamboo; and the thief, let
+him do what he may, will have the longest piece.'
+
+"Now, you know what superstitious hounds those Asiatic fellows always
+are; and when they heard this announcement they all looked at each other
+like children going to be whipped. The colonel took the bamboos one
+after another, as solemnly as if he were on a court-martial, but when
+about a dozen men had gone past he suddenly sprang forward and seized
+one of them by the throat, shouting at the full pitch of his voice, 'You
+are the man!'
+
+"Down went the fellow on his knees and yelled for mercy, confessing that
+he _was_ the man, sure enough. As for the rest, they looked as
+frightened as if all the gods in the caverns of Elephanta had come
+flying down among them at once; and from that day forth they salaamed to
+the very ground at the mere sight of the colonel half a mile off.
+
+"'How on earth did you manage that, colonel?' asked the senior major, a
+great fat fellow, as stupid as a carp.[7]
+
+"'Nothing simpler, my dear fellow,' answered De Malet, laughing. 'The
+strips were all exactly the same length, and the thief, fearing to get
+the longest piece, betrayed himself by _biting off the end_.'
+
+"This, as you may think, added a good deal to the colonel's reputation;
+and when we had that affair with the Bedouins at Laghouat we soon saw
+that he could fight as well as manoeuvre. In the thick of the skirmish
+one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone, flew at him with drawn
+yataghan, but the colonel just dropped on his horse's neck and let the
+blow pass over him, and then gave point and ran the fellow right through
+the body, as neatly as any fencing-master could have done it. You may be
+sure we thought none the less of him after that; but all this was
+nothing to what was coming.
+
+"Well, De Malet had been with us about a year when the railway was begun
+from Algiers to Blidah, and the directing engineer happened to be one of
+my greatest friends, Eugène Latour, as good a fellow as I ever met. It
+was quite a fête with us whenever he dined at mess, for his jokes and
+good stories kept every one brisk; and then to hear him sing! _ma foi_,
+it was wonderful! One minute some rattling refrain that seemed to set
+the very chairs dancing, and then suddenly a low, sad air that fairly
+brought the tears into your eyes. They were in mine, I know, every time
+I heard him sing those last two verses of 'The Conscript's Farewell:'
+
+  I thought to gain rich spoils--I've gained
+    Of bullets half a score:
+  I thought to come back corporal--
+    I shall come back no more.
+
+  Feed my poor dog, I pray thee, Rose,
+    And with him gentle be:
+  He'll miss his master for a while--
+    Adieu! remember me![8]
+
+"Well, as I was saying, Eugène had been put over the work, and I don't
+know where they could have found a better man for it. Whether it poured
+with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was
+all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything,
+with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a
+chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting
+on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a
+bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The
+fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't
+happened to be an Arab underneath (the only time that an Arab ever _was_
+of any use, I should say), and Eugène, alighting upon _him_, broke his
+own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.
+
+"Now, if there had been nobody there to tell tales, this wouldn't have
+mattered a pin, for an Arab more or less is no such great matter; but,
+as ill-luck would have it, there were three or four more of the rascals
+near enough to see what had happened, and of course they raised a
+hue-and-cry directly. And when it was noised abroad that a Christian dog
+(as they politely call us) had killed a Mussulman, you should have seen
+what an uproar there was! The people came running together like vultures
+when a camel drops down in the desert, and there was a yelling and
+dancing and shaking of fists that made one's very head turn round. Poor
+Eugène would have been torn to pieces on the spot if the guard hadn't
+formed round him and defended him; and the only way we could pacify the
+mob was to promise them justice from the district magistrate; so away to
+the magistrate we all went.
+
+"Now, I dare say Mr. Magistrate was a very good fellow in his way, and I
+don't want to say a word against him, but still, it must be owned that
+he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble
+of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once
+under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of
+his wits; and the only thing _he_ thought of was how to shift the
+responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders as fast as possible. So
+he said (and it was very lucky he did, as it turned out) that Latour,
+being in government employ, must be tried by military law; and he
+packed them all off to the commandant, who, as I've told you, was no
+other than Colonel de Malet.
+
+"It was no easy matter for the colonel to get at the facts of the case,
+for all the rascals kept shrieking at once, one louder than another; but
+at last, bit by bit, he managed to get a pretty clear idea of what had
+happened; and then he said, very solemnly, 'A French officer does his
+duty, let it be what it will. You have come here for justice, and
+justice you shall have.'
+
+"There was a great roar of triumph from the crowd, and poor Eugène
+looked as blank as a thief in the Salle de la Police.
+
+"'Before I pass sentence, however,' pursued De Malet, 'I wish to ask
+this young man' (pointing to the son of the dead Arab, who was the
+ringleader of all the mischief) 'whether he will accept of any
+compromise.'
+
+"'No, no!' yelled the young brigand--'life for life!'
+
+"'So be it,' said the colonel gravely, 'and you, by Mussulman law, are
+your father's destined avenger. Therefore, let the engineer be taken
+back to the very spot where his victim was standing, and do you go up to
+the top of the parapet and _jump down upon him_!'
+
+"_Tonnerre de ciel!_ what a roar of laughter there was! The very Arabs
+couldn't help joining in. As to the young villain himself, he stood
+stock-still for a moment, and then flew out of the court like a madman;
+and that was the last of him. We gave Eugène a famous supper that night
+at the Café Militaire in honor of his escape; and the story was in all
+the papers next morning, headed 'A Judgment of Solomon.' And from that
+day to the end of his life Colonel de Malet never went by any other name
+among us but 'Solomon the Second.'"
+
+  DAVID KER.
+
+
+
+
+STARLIGHT
+
+
+          How dark against the sky
+  Loom the great hills! Over the cradled stream
+    They lean their dusky shadows lovingly,
+          Watching its happy dream.
+
+          The oil-well's little blaze
+  Gleams red and grand against the mountain's dark:
+    Yon star, seen through illimitable haze,
+          Is dwindled to a spark.
+
+          Far greater to my eye
+  The swimming lights of yonder fishing-boat
+    Than worlds that burn in night's immensity--
+          So huge, but so remote.
+
+          Ah, I have loved a star
+  That beckoned sweetly from its distant throne,
+    Forgetting nearer orbs that fairer are,
+          And shine for me alone.
+
+          Better the small and near
+  Than the grand distant with its mocking beams--
+    Better the lovelight in thine eyes, my dear,
+          Than all ambition's dreams.
+
+  CHARLES QUIET.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1878 IN VENEZUELA.
+
+
+On Friday evening, the 12th of April, 1878, we were collected, as usual,
+in our drawing-room in Caracas, and were in the act of welcoming an old
+friend who had just returned from Europe, when there came suddenly a
+crash, a reverberation--a something as utterly impossible to convey the
+impression of as to describe the movement which followed, or rather
+accompanied, it, so confused, strange and unnatural was the entire
+sensation. It was like the rush of many waters, the explosion of
+cannon--like anything the imagination can conceive; and at the same time
+the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with
+an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the
+beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and
+girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great
+bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm
+with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower
+struck the ill-timed hour with a solemn, unearthly reverberation.
+
+This was but the work of a few seconds: a few more and Caracas would
+have been a heap of ruins, as in the earthquake of 1812. But even in
+these short moments we had time, horror-stricken and pallid with terror
+as we were, to cry out, "An earthquake! an earthquake!"--to seize upon
+our European friend, who did not seem to realize the danger, to drag him
+from the chair which he was just about to take, I pushing him before me,
+while my sister pulled him by the arm down the long drawing-room into
+the corridor which surrounds the central court, while still the earth
+rocked beneath our feet and everything around us trembled with the
+vibration.
+
+By this time the city was thoroughly alarmed. Cries of "Misericordia!
+misericordia!" resounded on every side, and every one prophesied another
+and a greater shock. These fears were not entirely uncalled for, for at
+twenty minutes past nine there was a second, and several more before
+daybreak, although none proved to be as severe as the first.
+
+In a short time carriages began to roll by in all directions, bearing
+the more timorous to the villages and plantations outside of the city:
+the open public squares or _plazas_ filled rapidly with the excited
+population, especially when telegram after telegram began to arrive from
+La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, La Vittoria and the intervening
+towns--all having felt the violence of the shock, and anxious lest the
+capital might have been destroyed. This proof of the extent of the _onda
+seismica_, as the scientists termed it, served to increase the general
+alarm. Tents were improvised in the plazas, composed of blankets,
+counterpanes, etc., stretched across ropes attached to the trees in the
+square, those who had no such appliances at hand remaining all night
+upon the public benches or upon more comfortable seats which they caused
+to be transported for their accommodation.
+
+The scene in the principal square of Caracas, the Plaza Bolivar--upon
+which front the cathedral on the eastern side, the palace of the
+archbishop on the southern, the presidential residence (called the _Casa
+Amarilla_, or "Yellow House") on the western, and a number of other
+public buildings on the northern--was one which under less terrifying
+circumstances would have been most imposing, for the archbishop left his
+palace and descended by the great stairway into the plaza, accompanied
+by a train of his attending priests, to raise the fainting spirits of
+the terrified multitude, who, with pallid faces upraised to Heaven or
+crouched upon the bare ground in attitudes of supplication, implored
+mercy from on high. And inasmuch as calamitous events, such as the
+appearance of comets, earthquakes or pestilences, are usually the
+signal for great moral reforms, doubtless many a promise of a purer life
+was registered in that hour of terror by those self-accused by their
+quickened consciences.
+
+The archbishop--who is a young man, devout, fervent and sincere, a very
+anchorite in his habits and mode of life, thin, spare of frame, and with
+features eloquent with the fire of intellect, morally and physically the
+splendid ideal of what a true priest ought to be--wandered among his
+flock, exhorting, comforting, admonishing and cheering them; while the
+_Hermandades_, a religious brotherhood, headed by their color-bearer,
+upon whose banner the effigy of the Virgin, their patron saint, was
+emblazoned, walking two by two in procession in the long gowns of their
+order--some red, some black, some white--and each carrying a lighted
+taper, traversed the plazas and paraded the streets the whole night. The
+glimmering light of the tapers falling upon these dusky shrouded forms
+in the gloom of this awful night, the melancholy refrain of the prayers
+which they chanted as they passed through the awestruck city, the
+lessening glimpses of the flickering tapers as the train passed solemnly
+by into some distant street,--all served rather to intensify than to
+tranquillize the alarm.
+
+The excitement and agitation of the people were so great that no one
+thought of going to bed: those who, like ourselves, went neither to the
+country nor to the open squares, sat in their windows and compared their
+experiences or gathered news from every passer-by; for they feared to
+separate from their families, lest a worse shock might overtake some one
+of them apart from the rest. Besides this, the danger in the streets was
+greater than at home, because of their narrowness and the likelihood of
+the walls on either side toppling over upon pedestrians.
+
+The night had been beautifully clear, and the moon brilliant as it is
+only in the tropics, but toward midnight the weather became cloudy and a
+drizzling rain fell at intervals, driving us within doors between one
+and two o'clock, but only to lie down fully dressed upon our beds, with
+lights burning and doors left open, so as the more readily to facilitate
+our escape if necessary. One or two slight shocks recurred during the
+night, but morning dawned at last, finding us unhurt; and with returning
+day our courage too returned, so _darkness_ "doth make cowards of us
+all." It was then ascertained that the cathedral had sustained some
+slight damage; the image of the Virgin in the church of the Candelaria
+had been thrown to the ground and broken to pieces; and the National
+Pantheon, the observatory of the new university and other public
+buildings, with many houses, had been injured, but none thrown down and
+no lives lost.
+
+No one, however, could dwell long in lamentation over these accidents
+when the news reached us the next morning of the terrible calamity which
+had overtaken the beautiful valley of the Tuy. This valley lies to the
+south of the city of Caracas, at an elevation of twelve or fifteen
+hundred feet above the sea, and is noted for being one of the most
+fertile of the many rich agricultural districts in which Venezuela
+abounds. The river Tuy, two hundred miles in length and navigable for
+about forty miles, flows through the centre, fertilizing the soil and
+causing it to become the granary of the capital, its abundant crops
+usually sufficing, in fact, for the consumption of the whole province.
+Indeed, were there more public highways its surplus products might find
+their way to still more distant portions of the republic. The whole
+valley is studded with towns, villages and plantations: of the former,
+the principal are Ocumare, Charallave, Santa Teresa, Santa Lucia and
+Cua.
+
+The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing
+of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward
+the vast _Llanos_ or plains, and being also the emporium of many
+extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as
+coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo. There too had been transported enormous
+timber from the still virgin forests--timber of the most valuable kind,
+whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the
+city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance
+of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the
+generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of
+society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many
+of the principal families of the country--gentlemen at the head of
+wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large
+estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode.
+Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as
+regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American
+towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled
+the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.
+
+Such was the state of things in this smiling valley when, at the same
+moment precisely at which we in Caracas felt the shock of the
+earthquake, all the above-mentioned towns--Ocumare, Santa Lucia,
+Charallave, etc.--were shaken to their foundations. The latter
+especially suffered greatly, for not a house was left uninjured or safe
+to inhabit, although the occupants had time to escape. But Cua--unhappy
+Cua!--was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a
+single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were
+buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was
+reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no
+sign. The heat had become so intense between seven and eight o'clock
+that numbers of persons were seated outside of the houses or had betaken
+themselves to the open squares to endeavor to seize a breath of fresh
+air, while many of the lower classes were sleeping under the open sky;
+to which fact, indeed, they owed their lives. The only habitations which
+survived the violence of the shock were the huts of the poor, being what
+is called _bajareque_, made of posts driven into the earth and otherwise
+formed of a species of wild cane tied together and cemented with mud
+and straw, these primitive dwellings being usually considered
+earthquake-proof.
+
+Besides the extraordinary heat, a friend of ours, who was riding from
+his plantation into the town, observed another indication of some
+disturbance in the usual processes of Nature. While crossing the river
+he noticed that the fishes were leaping in great numbers out of the
+water, and called the attention of several persons to the fact. They
+attributed this, however, to the discomfort occasioned by the intense
+heat, for the temperature of the water had increased so much that it had
+become disagreeable to drink.
+
+The gentleman to whom I have alluded, Don Tomas de la G----, describes
+the subterranean noise at Cua during the earthquake as something
+terrific, like the discharge of hundreds of cannon, while the earth rose
+simultaneously under his feet. There are two kinds of earthquakes--that
+of _trepidacion_, which comes directly from below, with an upward
+motion; the other, _de oscilacion_, where the earth sways to and fro
+like a pendulum, and which is generally less dangerous. Unfortunate Cua
+experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town
+being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and
+overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was
+happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed
+into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to
+quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. All was
+so sudden that few were saved by their own exertions, those who survived
+having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the
+counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It
+was as if the city had been lifted up _en masse_, and then thrown back
+with the foundations uppermost--upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la
+G---- happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock
+came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the
+tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; then suddenly
+reversing its course in an exactly opposite direction, it flung him off
+to a great distance, bruising him severely. While clinging to the tree
+he beheld the church in front of him, a new and handsome edifice,
+literally lifted up bodily into the air and then overturned with an
+appalling crash, "not one stone left upon another." If this had occurred
+an hour or two previously, hundreds would have perished within the
+walls, for there had been religious services in the church until a late
+hour, it being the Friday before Holy Week, termed by Spanish Catholics
+_Viernes del Concilio_.
+
+Don Tomas de la G---- described the whole scene as something too
+terrible for the imagination to conceive. After the stupendous crash
+caused by the falling of the houses, for a few moments there ensued an
+awful silence: then, amid the impenetrable darkness caused by the cloud
+of dust from the fallen walls, which totally obscured the murky light of
+a clouded moon, there arose a cry of anguish from those without--a wail
+as of one great voice of stricken humanity; then the answering smothered
+groan of those buried beneath the ruins--a cry like nothing human,
+rising as it did from the very bowels of the earth.
+
+There ensued a scene the harrowing details of which can never be fully
+given--the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or
+imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar.
+Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already
+rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so
+faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter
+still, until those who were working for the release of the captive
+became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay
+beneath their feet. No light could be obtained in this stifling Erebus
+of dust and darkness: all means of obtaining light had been buried in
+the undistinguishable mass, and where lighted lamps were overturned in
+the crash they had set fire to beams and rafters in the houses, and
+many who escaped being crushed were burned to death. Even proper
+instruments were wanting, and the number of persons who had collected to
+assist in the work of searching the débris was totally inadequate to the
+occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as
+the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I
+am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the
+upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts
+such as I have described, were generally uninjured.
+
+One of the richest commercial houses in Cua was owned by three German
+gentlemen, brothers. The eldest, having married a Spanish American lady
+of the place, had lately built himself a magnificent mansion, and one of
+his brothers resided with him. The lady was seated between her
+brother-in-law and husband when the shock came: a huge beam from the
+ceiling fell across her brother-in-law and literally divided him in two,
+while the side wall, falling at the same time, buried her husband from
+her sight. She herself was saved by the great packages of hemp and
+tobacco which fell around her and prevented the wall from crushing her.
+Blinded by the darkness and choked by the dust, she yet managed with the
+only hand at liberty to tear an opening which allowed her to breathe,
+and through which she called for help. Faint accents answered her: they
+were the tones of her husband's failing voice. She called to him to have
+courage--that she had hopes of release. "No," he replied, "I am dying,
+but do not give way. Live for our child's sake." As well as her
+agitation and distress would permit she endeavored to sustain him with
+words of encouragement, but in vain. About fifteen minutes passed in
+this sad colloquy: the replies came more and more slowly, more and more
+painfully, and then they ceased: the imprisoned lady comprehended in her
+lonely agony that she was a widow. She, a living, breathing woman, fully
+conscious of her awful anguish, lay helpless between the stiff and stark
+corpses of her husband and brother-in-law, and quite ignorant of the
+fate of her infant child, which had been left in another part of the
+house. Her cries were heard at last by a muleteer, who made some efforts
+to release her, but alone and in the darkness he could accomplish
+little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had
+returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks
+were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over
+upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer
+from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was
+indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was
+willing to risk his life in her behalf. One or two remained with him,
+and they succeeded at last in releasing her, but were obliged to cut her
+clothes from her body, as they seemed immovably nailed to the floor, the
+Good Samaritan of a muleteer covering her with his own cloak. The bodies
+of her husband, brother-in-law, two clerks and several servants were
+recovered the next day and buried.
+
+Another lady was found, when the ruins of her house were cleared away,
+upon her knees, with her children surrounding her in the same
+attitude--all dead! Their bodies were uninjured, so that it is probable
+that they were suffocated by the dust of the falling walls. A gentleman
+named Benitez, who had been standing at the door of his house, ran into
+the centre of the street and fell upon his knees: a little boy from the
+opposite doorway rushed in his terror into Benitez's arms. At that
+moment the two houses fell, and in this attitude the bodies of the man
+and the child were found the following day. A bride of twenty-four hours
+was killed with three of her children by a previous marriage. A fourth
+child was supposed also to have been killed, but on the third day a
+soldier who was passing the house pierced a basket which was among the
+ruins with his bayonet out of curiosity, when to his amazement a
+childish voice cried out, "_Tengo hambre_" ("I am hungry"), and the
+basket being lifted a living child was discovered, thus almost
+miraculously saved.
+
+One lady was crushed to death under the weight of the body of her
+daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was
+dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter,
+and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the
+death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of
+death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the
+terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid
+corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the
+most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr.
+Acosta, now of Paris, one of the favored circle of the ex-queen Isabella
+of Spain, with his wife, who was Miss Carroll, a sister of the present
+governor of Maryland.
+
+The Acosta family suffered perhaps more than any other, no less than
+fourteen of its members having perished, among them Doña Rosa, a still
+young and remarkably handsome woman, with her son, a lad of fifteen, and
+her baby grandchild. It was to save the life of this grandchild that
+Doña Rosa forfeited her own, as she ran into the house to snatch it from
+its cradle. Of the same family two little boys had fallen asleep at
+their play: one lay upon a sofa, and the other had crept beneath it. The
+earthquake literally turned the room upside down, the sofa being
+overturned by the falling wall, the child beneath thrown out and killed
+by the descending rafters, while the boy who had been sleeping upon it
+fell beneath the lounge, and, being thus protected, actually remained in
+this position uninjured for the greater part of two days. He had been
+numbered with the many dead in that house of sorrow, and was only found
+when the mourning survivors were searching for his remains to inter
+them--alive, but insensible, and entirely unable to give any account of
+what had befallen him.
+
+Every member of the police force, twenty-five in number, was killed,
+together with nine prisoners under guard.
+
+But it is impossible to give an adequate description of that night of
+horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those
+that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally
+distressing.
+
+The survivors encamped upon the banks of the river Tuy, where they might
+well repeat those tender lines of the Psalmist: "By the waters of
+Babylon we sat down and wept." Even the discomfort of the heavy rains
+which set in could make no impression upon hearts bowed down and crushed
+by the terrible calamity which had swept away their all--home, friends,
+everything that makes life worth having--at one quick blow. Not a house
+was left standing in their beautiful city: even the outlines of the
+streets were no longer visible: it was with the greatest difficulty that
+any particular building or locality could be recognized.
+
+Tents of various materials were improvised upon the river-side,
+sheltering without regard to age, sex or social condition the wounded,
+and even the dead. Many were in a state of delirium, some in the agonies
+of death, hundreds weeping for their lost friends and relatives, and
+many unable to recognize the recovered bodies on account of their having
+been burned beyond recognition by the fire caused by the upsetting of
+petroleum lamps. For the first two days the bodies were buried in the
+usual manner, but on the third decomposition had set in to such an
+extent that it was found necessary to burn them. An eye-witness
+exclaims: "Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful,
+the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so
+profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the
+bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together
+with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the
+stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being
+touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced
+decomposition." The body of a little child was thrown upon this funeral
+pile, when suddenly the eyes opened, and the voice cried out, "_Pan!
+pan!_" ("Bread! bread!") Imagine the feelings of the spectators at
+beholding how nearly the little creature had been immolated!
+
+The explosion and principal strength of the subterranean forces were
+concentrated in the town of Cua and within a radius of four or five
+leagues (twelve or fifteen miles) around it. Within this distance great
+chasms of various widths had opened, all running from east to west. From
+some of these streams of a fetid liquid issued, intermingled with a
+grayish-tinted earth, which caused many persons to surmise that a
+volcano was about to burst forth, especially as the earthquake-shocks
+still continued for many days, accompanied by loud subterranean reports.
+Although the catastrophe was confined to the valley of the Tuy, the
+shocks were felt for many hundred miles in every direction, even as far
+as Barquesimeto and other places toward the Cordilleras.
+
+As the population of Cua had entirely deserted the city and encamped
+upon the river-side, and as large sums of money and other valuables were
+known to be buried beneath the ruins, some heartless, lawless wretches
+took advantage of the unprotected state of things, under pretence of
+assisting in the work of extricating the victims, to appropriate
+everything that they could secrete without being discovered. Only one of
+the public officials, General E----, had escaped: the police had
+perished. It was a situation where only prompt and stringent measures
+could avail. General E----, therefore, with Don Tomas de la G----, whom
+I have before mentioned, assumed the responsibility of issuing a most
+energetic order of the day, and Don Tomas was commissioned by the
+general to draw up the document. In relating the anecdote to me, Don
+Tomas avers that the order had to be drawn upon the back of a letter
+which he discovered in his pocket, and that great delay was caused by
+its being an impossibility to procure ink. A poor black woman, however,
+hearing of his perplexity, announced that her son had been learning to
+write, and that as her _rancho_ or hut was still standing, the bottle
+of ink would probably be found tied to a nail in the wall, as well as
+the pen; that is, provided the thieves had not made away with it, of
+which she appeared to be somewhat suspicious. She consented to go for
+the articles herself, stipulating, however, that Don Tomas and one or
+two others should accompany her, believing, apparently, that numbers
+would guarantee her against injury from the earthquake. The ink was
+found where she had described it, but, unfortunately, no pen. Here was
+another dilemma! She bethought herself at last that a neighbor of hers
+possessed a pen; so the party was obliged to retrace its steps to the
+encampment for further information. The neighbor was sufficiently
+generous to lend the pen, but stoutly refused to re-enter the stricken
+city. She described its _locale_, however, as being between a rafter and
+a _caña_ in the roof at the entrance of her hut. The thieves, it proved
+upon investigation, had spared the precious implement, although,
+probably, if they had surmised the use to which it was to be put, that
+of fulminating destruction to their machinations, they might not have
+been so honest. All difficulties having been at length overcome, the
+important document was drawn up, and duly published the following
+morning by _bando_--that is, by sound of the trumpet, drum and fife--a
+body of citizens doing duty in lieu of troops, and the individual with
+the most stentorian lungs thundering forth the edict from where the
+corner of the streets might have been supposed to be. The proclamation
+was to the effect that any person or persons discovered robbing houses
+or insulting females should be shot on the spot, without trial or
+benefit of clergy. This measure of lynch law had the desired effect, and
+proved sufficient to maintain order until the arrival of a corps of
+three hundred soldiers sent by the government for that purpose.
+
+As soon as the disaster was made known, General Alcantara, the president
+of the republic, sent carts laden with provisions, blankets, shoes,
+hats, etc., besides money, and coaches to convey the unfortunate Cuans
+to their friends in the adjacent towns. The president also recommended
+the unfortunate people of Cua to the generosity of Congress, which was
+then in session. A sum of one hundred thousand dollars for rebuilding
+the city was immediately voted--a large sum for so impoverished a
+nation--and subscriptions from neighboring states, as well as private
+ones, have been most liberal. But these are but a drop in the bucket.
+Some of the finest plantations in the country surrounded Cua--coffee,
+sugar, cocoa, indigo, etc.--all with handsome mansions and expensive
+offices, with stores, sugar-mills and steam-engines, many of them worth
+from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. After the disastrous 12th no
+one for many miles in the vicinity slept under roof, but all encamped on
+the adjacent plains: not even the rainy season, which soon set in with
+great violence, sufficed to drive them from their hastily-contrived
+shelter. From the 12th of April to the 30th there were ninety-eight or
+ninety-nine shocks of earthquake.
+
+In Caracas too the people still continued to sleep in the public
+squares, although the capital had hitherto escaped the greatest violence
+of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the
+population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain
+astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Briceño by name,
+had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed
+by the ominous title, "_Vigilemos!_" (_Let us watch!_). He prophesied
+that on the 17th of April, at twenty-nine minutes past one, there would
+certainly occur a great _cataclismo_, connecting the movements of the
+moon with the occurrence of earthquakes, and assuring the populace that
+at that hour this heavenly body would be in the precise position to
+produce this extraordinary _cataclismo_, whatever that might prove to
+be. The public excitement was intense, but the fatal day and hour
+arrived, passed, and found the city still safe and unharmed.
+
+  ISABELLA ANDERSON.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE HISS AND ITS HISTORY.
+
+     "I warrant thee, if I do not act it, they will hiss me."--_Merry
+     Wives of Windsor._
+
+
+Hissing is a custom of great antiquity. Cicero, in his _Paradoxes_, says
+that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree,
+or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his
+declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing
+confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to
+Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the
+disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his
+day had paid applauders in court, who greeted the points of their
+patron's speech with an _ululatus_, or shrill yell. This Roman manner of
+denoting approval seems akin to the practice of the Japanese, who give a
+wild shriek as a sign of approbation, and hoot and howl to show their
+displeasure. But the sound of the goose--the simple hiss--is the most
+frequently-employed symbol of dissent. "Goose" is, in theatrical
+parlance, to hiss; and Dutton Cook, in his entertaining _Book of the
+Play_, remarks that the bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a
+drama.
+
+The dramatist is of all creative artists the most unfortunate. He can
+never present himself directly to his critics; he must be seen through a
+medium over which he has but slight control; he must depend wholly on
+the actors of his play, and too often he is leaning on a reed. Colman
+accused John Kemble of having been the cause of the original failure of
+_The Iron Chest_, and Ben Jonson published his _New Inn_ as a comedy
+"never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's
+servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's
+subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, His
+Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."
+
+Nor are Colman and Jonson alone in their tribulations. Sheridan was
+hissed, and so were Goldsmith and Fielding and Coleridge and Godwin and
+Beaumarchais and About and Victor Hugo and Scribe and Sardou, and many
+another, including Charles Lamb, who cheerfully hissed his own _Mr. H_.
+
+The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for
+he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his
+characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's
+_Tannhäuser_ led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few
+evenings, and its failure the composer has never been willing to let the
+world forget. Rossini was more philosophical. On its first performance
+the _Barber of Seville_, like the comedy of Beaumarchais, whence its
+libretto is taken, was a failure; and when the curtain fell, Rossini,
+who had led the orchestra, turned to the audience and calmly clapped his
+hands. The anger at this openly-expressed contempt for public opinion
+did not prevent the opera from gradually gaining ground, until by the
+end of the week it was a marked success. Had it been a failure, the
+composer would have borne it easily: Mr. Edwards informs us that when
+Rossini's _Sigismondo_ was violently hissed at Venice he sent a letter
+to his mother with a picture of a large _fiasco_ (bottle). His _Torvaldo
+e Dorliska_, which was brought out soon afterward, was also hissed, but
+not so much. This time Rossini sent his mother a picture of a
+_fiaschetto_ (little bottle).
+
+Nor is it, in modern times, authors or actors alone who are subject to
+the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an
+unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so
+safe, nor the hissee--to coin a convenient word--so defenceless. The
+orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has
+the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant
+surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was
+hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to
+them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort
+of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth
+is poured on red-hot prejudices, no wonder they hiss."
+
+Sir William Knighton declares that George II. never entered a theatre
+save in fear and trembling from dread of hearing a single hiss, which,
+though it were at once drowned in tumultuous applause, he would lie
+awake all night thinking about, entirely forgetful of the enthusiasm it
+had evoked. He must have felt as Charles Lamb did, who wrote: "A hundred
+hisses (hang the word! I write it like kisses--how different!)--a
+hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly
+from the heart." It is hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing
+seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least
+from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of
+the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint.
+No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and
+for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which
+he formerly bowed himself off.
+
+Indeed, applause is the breath of an actor's nostrils. Without it good
+acting is almost impossible. Actors, like other artists, need
+encouragement. Applause gives heart, and, as Mrs. Siddons said, "better
+still--breath." Mrs. Siddons's niece has put on record her views, as
+valuable as her famous relative's: "'Tis amazing how much an audience
+loses by this species of hanging back, even when the silence proceeds
+from unwillingness to interrupt a good performance: though in reality it
+is the greatest compliment an actor can receive, yet he is deprived by
+that very stillness of half his power. Excitement is reciprocal between
+the performer and the audience: he creates it in them, and receives it
+back again from them."
+
+To one set of actors a hiss takes the place of applause. It is the
+highest compliment which can be paid to a "heavy villain," for it bears
+witness to the truth with which he has sustained his character.
+
+Sometimes the performer mistakes reproof for approval. An amateur
+singer, describing to her father the great success she had achieved at
+her first concert, concluded by saying, "Some Italians even took me for
+Pasta."--"Yes," corroborated her mother: "before she had sung her second
+song they all cried, 'Basta! basta!'" ("Enough! enough!")
+
+Pasta herself is the heroine of an amusing anecdote. She gave her
+servant, a simple _contadina_, an order for the opera on a night when
+she appeared in one of her greatest parts. That evening the great prima
+donna surpassed herself; she was recalled time and again; the audience
+were wildly enthusiastic; almost every number was encored. Returning
+home, she wearily asked her maid how she had enjoyed the play. "Well,
+the play, ma'am, was fine, but I felt sorry for _you_," was the
+reply.--"For me, child! And why?"--"Well, ma'am," said the waiting-maid,
+"you did everything so badly that the people were always shouting and
+storming at you, and making you do it all over again."
+
+There are situations even worse than Pasta's, as Pauline Lucca has
+recently discovered in Vienna, where she was fined fifty florins for
+violating the law which forbids the recognition of applause. It seems
+cruel to mulct a pretty prima donna for condescending to acknowledge an
+encore.
+
+Whether or not it be law in Austria to prevent a courtesy and a smile,
+rewarding the enthusiasm of an audience, it is certainly law in England
+and France that a dissatisfied spectator shall be at liberty to express
+his dissatisfaction. It has been held by the Court of Queen's Bench
+that, while any conspiracy against an actor or author is of course
+illegal, yet the audience have a lawful right to express their feelings
+at the performance either by applause or by hisses. The Cour de
+Cassation of France has decided in the same way. When Forrest,
+therefore, hissed Macready for introducing a fancy dance in _Hamlet_, he
+was doing what he had a legal right to do, though the ultimate result
+of it was the Astor Place riot and the death of many. In ancient Rome
+the right to hiss seems also to have existed in its fulness. Suetonius
+in his life of Augustus informs us that Pylades was banished not only
+from Rome, but from Italy, for having pointed with his finger at a
+spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the whole
+audience upon him. But as time passed on, and Nero took the imperial
+crown and chose to exhibit it himself to the public on the stage, all
+the spectators were bound to applaud under penalty of death.
+
+The French law forbids disturbance of any kind except when the curtain
+is up. In France the boisterousness of the Dublin gallery-boy would
+hardly be tolerated. The Parisians would have been amazed at a recent
+incident of the Irish stage. When Sophocles' tragedy of _Antigone_ was
+produced at the Theatre Royal with Mendelssohn's music, the gallery
+"gods" were greatly pleased, and, according to their custom, demanded a
+sight of the author. "Bring out Sapherclaze," they yelled. The manager
+explained that Sophocles had been dead two thousand years and more, and
+could not well come. Thereat a small voice shouted from the gallery,
+"Then chuck us out his mummy."
+
+There is a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in
+Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!"
+She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to
+conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity
+asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I can do for you?"
+
+Actors are not always willing to stand baiting quietly: they turn and
+rend their tormentors. Mrs. Siddons herself took leave of a barbarian
+audience with the words, "Farewell, ye brutes!" George Frederick Cooke,
+describing his own failings, said: "On Monday I was drunk, and appeared,
+but they didn't like that and hissed me. On Wednesday I was drunk, so I
+didn't appear; and they didn't like that. What the devil would they
+have?" Once at Liverpool, when he was drunk and did appear, they didn't
+like it. He reeled across the stage and was greeted by a storm of
+hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss
+me--me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you
+shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!"
+He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a
+brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro."
+Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal
+contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him
+out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.--"You! you!"
+was the reply.--"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with
+characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United
+Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal
+theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never
+acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before
+me."
+
+  J. B. M.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.
+
+
+There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the
+decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities.
+"I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day
+when her bric-à-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial
+for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have
+something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms
+of a generation ago--a colorless, cold, negative background for social
+life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the
+windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated
+into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly
+barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer;
+nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion,
+thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished--nothing tolerated
+save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.
+
+No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon
+women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary
+social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with
+bric-à-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faïence, and richly-hung
+walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has
+received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear
+results before many years have passed.
+
+Enthusiasm for bric-à-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general
+decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative
+people--people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened
+by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a
+conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an
+undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental
+horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into
+poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse,
+and is able in some way to gratify it.
+
+The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too
+much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry
+its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one
+direction--in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and
+satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the
+early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into
+intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these
+fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one
+generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an
+inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned,
+the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and
+wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.
+
+But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American
+woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has
+learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness
+and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a
+new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to
+those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a
+discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for
+instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain
+from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt
+to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of
+knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly
+and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed
+so easily? Far from it. "This is _real_ crackle," the collector insists,
+with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his
+specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the
+points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing
+at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound
+styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised
+observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge
+amounts to little.
+
+We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently
+neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has,
+since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed
+into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms
+dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a
+topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from
+her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her
+cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne
+furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by
+this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her
+tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest
+allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the lady, well
+equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the
+delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much
+less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something
+outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.
+
+We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth
+never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where
+we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the
+observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if
+our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and
+mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were
+really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported
+from Doulton.
+
+It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and
+aims--which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms
+of occupation and interest--was an answer to the yearning of the
+feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a
+current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends
+interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and
+promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.
+
+  L. W.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE TROCADÉRO.
+
+
+There is no portion of the Paris Exhibition of 1878 which has excited
+more attention or attracted more visitors than has the Palace of the
+Trocadéro. Yet few of the visitors who pass beneath its lofty portals
+ever imagine that the site of the sumptuous edifice is haunted by
+historical associations of no slight degree of interest. In fact, before
+the palace "rose like an exhalation" at the bidding of the skilled
+architects employed by the government few persons knew anything about
+the Trocadéro at all. That lofty eminence, incomparably the finest
+building-site in Paris, with its graduated slopes gay with flowers and
+verdure, has long been a favorite lounging-place for Parisian artisans
+when out for a holiday, or for tourists seeking for a good view of the
+city and shrinking from the fatigue of climbing to the top of the Arc de
+Triomphe. Yet no one seemed to know anything of its history, or even why
+a hill in Paris should bear the name of a Spanish fort. And yet, to a
+certain extent, the spot is one of genuine historical interest.
+Successively a feudal manor, a royal domain, a cloister, and the site of
+unrealized projects of the later monarchs of France, religion, ambition,
+sorrow and glory have there at different times sought a refuge or a
+pedestal.
+
+The Trocadéro occupies a part of the site of the ancient village of
+Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In
+its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and
+gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still
+retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de
+Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de
+Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there,
+but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen,
+Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President Janin, who
+probably tore down and rebuilt the royal abode, as he is accused in the
+memoirs of the time of being largely possessed by a mania for pulling
+down and rebuilding all the mansions in his possession. An engraving of
+the edifice as he left it exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It shows
+a very charming structure in the Renaissance style, erected, apparently,
+at a point halfway down the slope, since there are two lines of terraces
+behind it, as well as many in front.
+
+The next owner of the domain of Chaillot was François de Bassompierre,
+former friend and boon-companion of Henri IV. He did not occupy it very
+long, being sent to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few
+years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent
+Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent
+to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a
+summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law
+that she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu
+remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture
+of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the
+king possessed.
+
+The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of
+England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene.
+She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France,
+established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel
+was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old
+comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached
+by Bossuet--one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal
+eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name
+immortal.
+
+Next we have a vision of Louise de la Vallière, "like Niobe, all tears,"
+flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the
+anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place.
+It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the
+fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but
+not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too
+perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now,
+he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring
+her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of
+suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not
+enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then
+situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.
+
+In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the
+officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of
+Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward
+the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their
+cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the
+erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were
+not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place
+on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the
+nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to
+various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the
+gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been
+carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and
+rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.
+
+Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind
+them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to
+the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons,
+they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable
+site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of
+Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in
+France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the
+height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The
+plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to
+which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of
+Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four
+sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital
+and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and
+industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over
+fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy--an extent which is about
+that of the present Palace of the Trocadéro. The whole of the plain of
+Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be
+transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de
+Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the
+Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St.
+Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.
+
+This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the
+foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of
+Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and
+ammunition more than for palaces and parks. After the battle of
+Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced
+palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great--a quiet retreat
+where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had
+the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication
+of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew,
+and this time a decisive one; for, though a few workmen were employed in
+levelling the grounds and building the walls during the Hundred Days,
+there was neither spirit nor conviction in the work: the illusions of
+other days had fled, and were not to be revived. It was impossible for
+even the most sanguine partisans of Napoleon to imagine that the palace
+would ever be completed and receive him as a tenant.
+
+Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations
+and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new
+edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the
+successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the
+anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocadéro at Cadiz by the
+duc d'Angoulême, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which
+the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the
+fort in question. The programme of the fête was long and elaborate. It
+consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocadéro, a sham
+battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then
+came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the
+dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared
+the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly
+thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were
+left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the
+name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the
+Trocadéro.
+
+Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues
+which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre,
+necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at
+first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the
+victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn
+up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its
+dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a
+fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to
+have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too,
+came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities
+into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the
+flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with
+grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by
+Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocadéro a Grecian
+temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men
+of France with commemorative inscriptions--a project which the downfall
+of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village
+of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish
+legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights
+the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks,
+monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy
+precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the
+Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and
+historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and
+of its associations with the past.
+
+  L. H. H.
+
+
+
+
+SWISS ENGINEERING.
+
+
+Switzerland, of all the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and
+numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the
+mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential
+character of the rivers,--everything unites to make the highways cost
+enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the
+triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of
+shareholders and the burden of budgets." Among these triumphs are the
+viaduct of Grandfey; the railroads that climb the Righi and the
+Uetliberg; the Axen tunnel and quay; and the Gotthard tunnel, over nine
+miles long--a solid granite bore through a mountain. One that was
+honored by a national celebration on the 16th of last August was the
+reclaiming from the water of the vast plain called Seeland, the
+territory occupying the triangle bounded by the river Aar and the Lakes
+of Bienne, Neufchâtel and Morat. It was wholly under water, and had
+slowly emerged after many centuries; but despite an extensive system of
+drainage the land was never dry enough for serious cultivation. In rainy
+years it was even covered with water, making, with the three lakes, a
+sheet nearly twenty-five miles square.
+
+The great work celebrated last August was no less than the changing the
+bed of the Aar and the lowering of the three lakes mentioned. The Aar in
+this region is about the size of the Seine at Paris or of the Hudson at
+Troy, but it is subject to sudden floods that are the terror of dwellers
+and property-owners along its borders. A Swiss colonel named La Nicca
+was the author of the grand scheme for reclaiming Seeland. The
+proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices
+of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and
+also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so
+vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.
+
+To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly
+west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne
+near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five
+and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and
+twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another
+vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern
+extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne,
+receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchâtel and
+Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in
+communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the
+eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles
+below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river
+Thièle, deepened and reconstructed.
+
+The deepening of the bed of the Thièle, the natural outlet of Lake
+Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the
+lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a
+vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields
+abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these
+three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water
+removed--no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million
+cubic feet--represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole
+plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and
+consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village,
+Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty
+thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding,
+malaria-exhaling marsh.
+
+  M. H.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+     The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of the History and Manufacture of
+     Pottery and Porcelain. By Jennie J. Young. New York: Harper &
+     Brothers.
+
+
+"More crockery!" exclaims one aweary of the ceramic craze. "And the
+biggest book of all!--the winding-up shower, let us hope," quoth another
+non-sympathizer.
+
+This portly octavo, with its four hundred and sixty-four wood-cuts, a
+seemingly exhaustive compend of the subject, may indeed be accepted as
+the peroratory rain destined to give the soil its last preparation for
+the rich growth to follow under a clear and sunny sky. What pen and
+print can do to perfect the requisite conditions for a Periclean age of
+pottery must by this time have been done. The case is summed up and
+stated. The issue rests with the jury of millions who use and admire
+burnt clay. Their wants, their sense of beauty and their purse will
+render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will
+render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true,
+since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all
+nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and
+fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar
+in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who
+would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us
+rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," the
+rich realism of Palissy or the wild and delightful riot of line and
+color and unequalled delicacy of manipulation presented to us by the
+Japanese? One and the same eye, as highly and soundly educated as you
+please, may be charmed almost equally by works of each of these schools
+and of others not here named; and that almost without wishing to see the
+peculiar merits of each combined and merged in one. A perfect eclectic
+vase is not to be expected, if desired, any more than a fruit or a wine
+which shall unite the best flavors of all orchards or all vintages. What
+can be done is to strive in that direction, as the French cook seeks, by
+"composing," to attain in one supreme _plat_ the _ne plus ultra_ of
+sapidity. We shall not be able, any more than he, to reach that climax
+or to dull the charm of variety. The fusing of the Greek brain and the
+Oriental eye and finger in the alembic of Western Europe and the New
+World will still continue to be attempted.
+
+Trade, the great amalgamator, is promoting this end. Chinese porcelain
+has long been sent to Japan for decoration, the resemblance between the
+styles of the two countries, due primarily to race, being thus
+increased. American biscuit is sent to England for the like purpose; and
+we read with more surprise that the unfinished ware of Dresden seeks
+ornamentation in the same country, whence it is returned to be placed
+upon the market as true Meissen. A firm of New Yorkers, again, have
+migrated to France and built up the beautiful fabric of Limoges with the
+aid of French artists. The craftsmen of Japan and China are year by year
+borrowing Western forms and methods, as comparison of the ancient and
+modern work of those nations will show clearly enough.
+
+While national idiosyncrasies the most opposite and the most widely
+separated in every sense ally themselves in behalf of progress,
+individual effort is encouraged by the reflection that no walk of art
+offers a more open field to original genius. Della Robbia, Bernart,
+Palissy and Wedgwood each found his own material and created his own
+school. Neither of them possessed the facilities, educational or
+mechanical, now at the command of hundreds. Neither had as wide or as
+eager a market for his productions as the coming artist in clay may
+command. Surely, such an artist is at this moment maturing his powers in
+some one of the scores of training institutions which have sprung up,
+under public or private auspices, within the past quarter of a century.
+Thorwaldsen was not a man of great originative genius, and nothing at
+all of a potter, troubling himself little about hard or soft paste or
+this or the other glaze; but he infused the love of classic form into
+the bleakest corners of Scandinavia, and made her youth modellers of
+terra-cotta into shapes unexcelled by any imitators of the antique. The
+prize awaits him who should, upon such knowledge and discipline, graft a
+study of Oriental designs, an eye for color, an independent fancy, and
+such minute precision of manual dexterity as seems the hardest thing of
+all for the Western to acquire. He will not have, like his great
+forerunners, to invent his material. Science does not repress, it
+invites and assists him. It offers him mineral colors and modes of
+graduating heat unknown to them. All the secrets of porcelain are open
+to him; and were they not, Europe did all her best things in ceramics
+before she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for
+improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so
+long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may
+not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese
+and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture,
+paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of
+asbestos as greenbacks are by threads of silk and the sun-burned
+Egyptian bricks were by straw. Malleable glass we have already. Why not
+malleable faïence?
+
+The book before us presents the art, its history, its processes and its
+results in a manner every way satisfactory. Its account is full without
+being prolix. The author's taste is catholic enough. The different
+styles are placed before the reader side by side, with an evident
+purpose to do justice to all of them. There is little of the jargon of
+the connoisseur. Marks are curtly dismissed with the sound dictum that
+"the art and not the mark should be studied." Much use is made of the
+engravings, which are more closely connected with the text than,
+unfortunately, is generally the case in illustrated works. They are
+strictly illustrations of it, and serve as good a purpose in that way as
+cuts without the aid of color could well do. Nothing is more difficult
+to reproduce than a first-class work in clay or porcelain. Color,
+drawing, form, surface and texture present a compound of difficulties
+not to be completely overcome by the resources of the graver, the camera
+and the printer in colors. Only on the shelves of the museum can it be
+studied understandingly. It must speak for itself. The chromo undertakes
+to duplicate, with more or less success, the painting in oil or fresco,
+but the vase is a picture and something more. It is the joint product of
+the painter and the sculptor, and the substance whereon they bestow
+their labor has a special and varying beauty of its own.
+
+In the pages devoted to the history of American pottery we confess that
+we have been chiefly attracted by its antiquities. The specimens given
+of remains from all parts of the two continents show at a glance their
+common origin. They all come unmistakably from the hands of the same
+Indian, civilized or savage. The Moquis, the Mound-builders, the Aztecs
+and the Peruvians all wrought their mother, Earth, into the same
+fashion, and adorned her countenance, purified by fire, with scrolls and
+colors in the same taste. The pigments employed have proved as lasting
+as those in the Egyptian tombs, and the forms are often as graceful as
+in a majority of the Phoenician vessels found in Cyprus. In the
+representation of the human head the Peruvian artist, so far as we may
+judge from these relics, excelled his rival of Tyre and Sidon.
+
+That this will become a handbook on the subject of which it treats
+cannot be doubted. If we might venture to suggest an amendment to the
+second edition, it would be the addition to the illustrations of two or
+three figures carefully executed in colors--Greek, Japanese and Sèvres.
+
+
+     Like unto Like. By Sherwood Bonner. (Library of American Fiction.)
+     New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Sherwood Bonner has been singularly happy in her choice of a subject for
+this, her first novel. She has broken new ground on that Southern soil
+which seemed already for literary purposes wellnigh worn out, and she
+has touched upon a period in the struggle between North and South which,
+so far as we know, has been little treated by novelists. The antagonists
+are represented not in the smoke of battle, but at that critical and
+awkward moment when the first steps toward reconciliation are being
+made. A proud but sociable little Mississippi town is shown in the act
+of half-reluctantly opening its doors to the officers of a couple of
+Federal regiments stationed within its bounds. The situation is
+portrayed with much spirit and humor, as well as with the most perfect
+_good_-humor. Thoroughly Southern as the novel is, it is not narrowly
+so: its pictures of Southern society are drawn from within, and show its
+writer's sympathy with Southern feeling, yet its tone, even in touching
+on the most tender spots, is entirely dispassionate, and at the same
+time free from any apparent effort to be so.
+
+The first chapter introduces us to a triad of charming girls, whose
+careless talk soon turns upon the soldiers' expected arrival in Yariba
+and the proper reception to be given them by the Yariba damsels. Betty
+Page, Mary Barton and Blythe Herndon are, in a sense, typical girls, and
+represent the three orders in which nearly all girlhood may be
+classified--namely, frivolous girls, good girls, and clever girls or
+girls with ideas. Ideas are represented by Blythe Herndon, whose
+outspoken verdict in favor of tolerance and forgetfulness of the past
+draws upon her the patriotic indignation of Miss Betty Page. How long
+the fair disputants preserve the jewel of consistency forms the _motif_
+of the book. Betty dances and flirts, neglects her loyal young Southern
+lover--who, we hope, is consoled by Mary--and finally surrenders to a
+handsome moustache and the Union with a happy unconsciousness of any
+abandonment of her principles. Blythe, with her ardent nature and
+youthful attitude of intolerance toward intolerance, is easily attracted
+by the intellectual freedom which appears to open before her in the
+conversation of an enthusiastic New England radical. Her mind is,
+however, not wholly thrown off its balance by this vision of culture:
+she awakens to the fact that the breach is wider than she had at first
+dreamed, and shrinks from the sacrifice not only of prejudice, but of
+first principles and affections, which is demanded of her. Lovers who
+are separated by hereditary or political strife have ever been a
+favorite theme with poet and romancer. In the majority of instances
+these unhappy beings have regarded the barrier between them as a useless
+obstacle erected by a perverse Fate in the way of their happiness. But
+Mr. Roger Ellis adheres with narrow obstinacy to the least article of
+his broad political creed, without a particle of consideration for the
+different one in which Blythe has been nurtured. He flourishes the
+American flag in his conversation in true stump-orator style, kisses
+black babies in the street--when, as Betty Page remarks, no man was ever
+known to kiss a white baby if he could help it--and refuses to eat
+without the company at table of a little black _protégé_.
+
+Plot there is none in _Like unto Like_, and of incident very little.
+Light, often sparkling, conversations and charming bits of description
+follow each other in ready succession like beads upon a string. Lack of
+incident is atoned for by charm of writing, and in the vivacity of the
+scenes the reader disregards the slenderness of the connecting thread,
+or perhaps forgets to look for it. The style is easy and pleasant, while
+free from the slips to which "easy writers" are so prone. Of bright,
+witty sayings a number could easily be gathered as samples, but the
+readers would still have to be referred to the book for many more.
+Perhaps the main charm of _Like unto Like_ lies in its description of
+the quaint life in Southern provincial towns, where the people "all talk
+to each other as if they were members of one family," where married
+ladies are still called by their friends "Miss Kate," "Miss Janey," or
+"Miss Ada," and where, "when a youth and maiden promise to marry each
+other, they become possessed immediately with a wild desire to conceal
+their engagement from all the world." There clings to the book a
+suggestion of that Southern accent which in the mouth of a pretty woman
+has such a piquant foreign sound.
+
+
+     His Heart's Desire: A Novel. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+We can complain of no lack of plot or paucity of incidents in _His
+Heart's Desire_. Were the material less ably handled we should suggest
+an unnecessary redundancy, but we hesitate to pronounce superfluous
+anything which is so exactly fitted, so neatly dove-tailed into the main
+structure, as is each incident and character in the present novel. About
+a dozen individual and more or less finished personages contribute their
+life-histories to the book, yet each of these lives has some bearing
+upon that of the heroine, Nora St. John, and notwithstanding these
+intricacies the plot never becomes confused. It has been too firmly
+grasped by the author's mind to be a puzzle to the reader's. Its various
+ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all
+turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure
+by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of
+the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The
+same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though
+drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness,
+whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped.
+Numerous as the figures are, they never crowd or jostle each other, and
+elaborated as they are in many cases, all are subordinate to that of
+Nora, whose character and story stand out in a strong relief not easy to
+obtain upon so varied a background. This character is finely conceived
+and drawn with real power, being impressive by the very truth of the
+rendering, for she is not invested with any strikingly heroic qualities.
+A strong, passionate nature made cold by suffering and the constant
+struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising
+again to confront her--a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions
+or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power
+left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made
+upon it--Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by
+the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. In the
+later pages of the book, and notably in the scene with Mr. Sistare, in
+which revelations are made by both, the changes gradual or sudden in her
+feelings and thought are portrayed with the delicacy of light and shade,
+the picturesqueness and self-forgetfulness, with which a fine actress
+renders a part. This dramatic quality is perhaps the most striking trait
+in _His Heart's Desire_. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full
+of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare
+accomplishment--that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally
+brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue.
+
+In praising this novel so highly we do not forget its faults. But,
+though perhaps as numerous as its merits, they are by no means equal to
+them in importance. Something of naturalness and simplicity has been
+sacrificed to the exigences of the plot; and, while the higher truth is
+adhered to in the principal scenes and characters, some of the minor
+ones appear to us rather highly colored. By distributing the fatal gift
+of beauty with a less lavish hand the author might, we think, have
+subdued this color: a few commonplace figures would have added to the
+naturalness of the scene.
+
+Sensational the book may be pronounced from a glance through its chain
+of incidents, yet neither by its tone nor its writing does it belong to
+the class which we call sensational. Its tone is earnest and sincere,
+grave social questions being handled with a purity and feeling which
+makes the book, in spite of its apparent unconsciousness of purpose, a
+distinctly moral one.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+     Books for Bright Eyes, embracing "On the Farm," "More Happy Days,"
+     "Mountain-Tops," "One Day in our Long Vacation." By Mrs. M. E.
+     Miller. New York: American Tract Society.
+
+
+     Cross's Eclectic Short-hand: A New System, adapted both to general
+     use and to verbatim reporting. By J. George Cross, A. M. Chicago:
+     S. C. Griggs & Co.
+
+
+     The Waverley Dictionary: An Alphabetical Arrangement of all the
+     Characters in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. By May Rogers.
+     Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.
+
+
+     The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Translated by
+     John Durand. (First Volume.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+
+     Maximum Stresses in Framed Bridges. By Professor William Cain,
+     A. M., C. E. (Van Nostrand's Science Series.) New York: D. Van
+     Nostrand.
+
+
+     The Ethics of Positivism: A Critical Study. By Giacomo Barzellotti,
+     Professor of Philosophy, Florence. New York: Charles P. Somerby.
+
+
+     Grammar-Land; or, Grammar in Fun for the Children of
+     Schoolroom-shire. By M. L. Nesbitt. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+
+     The Family Christian Almanac for 1879. By Professor George W.
+     Coakley. New York: American Tract Society.
+
+
+     American Colleges: Their Students and Work. By Charles F. Thwing.
+     New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town. By Robert Lowell. Boston:
+     Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+     Life and Adventure in Japan. By E. Warren Clark. New York: American
+     Tract Society.
+
+
+     Cupid and the Sphinx. By Harford Flemming. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     The Old House Altered. By George C. Mason. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. Boston:
+     Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+     Handsome Harry. By Sarah E. Chester. New York: American Tract
+     Society.
+
+
+     Thanatopsis. By William Cullen Bryant. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     Modern Frenchmen. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts
+     Brothers.
+
+
+     What is the Bible? By J. T. Sunderland. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     Sibyl Spencer. By James Kent. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     Songs of Italy. By Joaquin Miller. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This is the name given from time immemorial to that part of Biscay
+that extends from Bilbao to the eastern boundaries of the province of
+Santander. It contains fifteen thousand inhabitants, and abounds in
+minerals, fruit and grain. The original Basque language, owing to the
+constant intercourse with Castile, has yielded to the Spanish, which,
+however, is mixed with many Basque words and expressions.
+
+[2] That is, a similarity of the final vowel or last two vowels. Thus,
+jardin_e_r_o_s and du_e_ñ_o_ amist_a_d and sac_a_r are considered to
+rhyme.
+
+[3] The word _ciego_, "blind man," is also used to denote the blind
+ballad-singers with whom the country abounds.
+
+[4] The first four of the above-mentioned volumes, together with the
+_Libro de los Cantares_, have been published by Brockhaus in his
+_Colleccion de Autores Españoles_, Leipzig, vols. vi., xviii., xix.,
+xxvi., and xxxiii.
+
+[5] Special awards of objects of art to competitors in the trials of
+agricultural implements in the field:
+
+  McCormick (grand prize), binding reaper, United States.
+  Wood, binding reaper, United States.
+  Osborne, binding reaper, United States.
+  Johnston, reaper, United States.
+  Whiteley, mower, United States.
+  Dederick, hay-press, United States.
+  Mabille, Chicago hay-press, France.
+  Meixmoron-Dombasle, gang-plough, France.
+  Deere, gang-plough, United States.
+  Aveling & Porter, steam-plough, England.
+  Albaret, electric light for field-work at night, France.
+
+[6] The cut shows a smaller crane, which has a fixed jib for use on a
+permanent or temporary track.
+
+[7] Why this unfortunate fish should be so distinguished I have never
+been able to learn, but the saying is universal in the French army.
+
+[8] This is a paraphrase rather than a translation, the patois of the
+original being impossible to render exactly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S, DECEMBER 1878 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 26945-8.txt or 26945-8.zip *****
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, by Various.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, 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, December 1878
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26945]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S, DECEMBER 1878 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Annie McGuire and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="trans-note">
+    Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.
+</div>
+
+<h1>LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE</i>.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<h3>DECEMBER, 1878.</h3>
+
+<h5>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878,</h5>
+<h5>by <span class="smcap">J.&nbsp;B. Lippincott &amp; Co.</span>, in the Office of the</h5>
+<h5>Librarian of Congress, at Washington.</h5>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><i>CONTENTS</i>.</h2>
+
+<p>
+<a href="#DANUBIAN_DAYS"><b>DANUBIAN DAYS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FOR_PERCIVAL"><b>"FOR PERCIVAL."</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SOME_ASPECTS_OF_CONTEMPORARY_ART"><b>SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THREE_WATCHES"><b>THREE WATCHES</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SISTER_SILVIA"><b>SISTER SILVIA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_SPANISH_STORY-TELLER"><b>A SPANISH STORY-TELLER</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THROUGH_WINDING_WAYS"><b>THROUGH WINDING WAYS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#DAWN_IN_THE_CITY"><b>DAWN IN THE CITY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_PARIS_EXPOSITION_OF_1878"><b>THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_COLONELS_SENTENCE_AN_ALGERIAN_STORY"><b>THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE: AN ALGERIAN STORY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#STARLIGHT"><b>STARLIGHT</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_GREAT_EARTHQUAKE_OF_1878_IN_VENEZUELA"><b>THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1878 IN VENEZUELA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#OUR_MONTHLY_GOSSIP"><b>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#LITERATURE_OF_THE_DAY"><b>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#Books_Received"><b>Books Received.</b></a><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DANUBIAN_DAYS" id="DANUBIAN_DAYS"></a>DANUBIAN DAYS.</h2>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 395px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0001-1.jpg" width="395" height="500" alt="COSTUMES AT PESTH." title="" />
+<span class="caption">COSTUMES AT PESTH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If it were not for the people, the journey by steamer from Belgrade to
+Pesth would be rather unromantic. When the Servian capital is reached in
+ascending the great stream from Galatz and Rustchuk, the picturesque
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span>cliffs, the mighty forests, the moss-grown ruins overhanging the
+rushing waters, are all left behind. Belgrade is not very imposing. It
+lies along a low line of hills bordering the Sava and the Danube, and
+contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet
+creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name&mdash;for the
+city grouped around the fort was once called <i>Beograd</i> ("white
+city")&mdash;now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon
+which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and
+have become so extravagantly vain in view of their exploits that their
+conceit is quite painful to contemplate. Yet it is impossible to avoid
+sympathizing to some extent with this little people, whose lot has been
+so hard and whose final emancipation has been so long in arriving. The
+intense affection which the Servian manifests for his native land is
+doubtless the result of the struggles and the sacrifices which he has
+been compelled to make in order to remain in possession of it. One day
+he has been threatened by the Austrian or the jealous and unreasonable
+Hungarian: another he has received news that the Turks were marching
+across his borders, burning, plundering and devastating. There is
+something peculiarly pathetic in the lot of these small Danubian states.
+Nearly every one of them has been the cause of combats in which its
+inhabitants have shed rivers of blood before they could obtain even a
+fragment of such liberty and peace as have long been the possessions of
+Switzerland and Belgium. It is not surprising that the small countries
+which once formed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious to grow larger
+and stronger by annexation of territory and consolidation of
+populations. They are tired of being feeble: it is not amusing. Servia
+once expected that she would be allowed to gain a considerable portion
+of Bosnia, her neighbor province, but the Austrians are there, and would
+speedily send forces to Belgrade if it were for a moment imagined that
+Prince Milan and his counsellors were still greedy for Serapevo and
+other fat towns of the beautiful Bosnian lands. Now and then, when a
+Servian burgher has had an extra flask of Negotin, he vapors about
+meeting the Austrians face to face and driving them into the Sava; but
+he never mentions it when he is in a normal condition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0004-1.jpg" width="500" height="286" alt="SOPHIA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">SOPHIA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The country which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of
+Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes,
+and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It
+was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks
+should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had
+done everything that he could to make himself feared and loathed by the
+Servians. To this day, not far from one of the principal gates of the
+city, on the Pirot road, stands the "Skull Tower," in the existence of
+which, I suppose, an English Tory would refuse to believe, just as he
+denied his credence to the story of the atrocities at Batak. The four
+sides of this tower are completely covered, as with a barbarous mosaic,
+with the skulls of Servians slain by their oppressors in the great
+combat of 1809. The Turks placed here but a few of their trophies, for
+they slaughtered thousands, while the tower's sides could accommodate
+only nine hundred and fifty-two skulls. It is much to the credit of the
+Servians that when they took Nisch in 1877 they wreaked no vengeance on
+the Mussulman population, but simply compelled them to give up their
+arms, and informed them that they could return to their labors. The
+presence of the Servians at Nisch has already been productive of good:
+decent roads from that point to Sophia are already in process of
+construction, and the innumerable brigands who swarmed along the
+country-side have been banished or killed. Sophia still lies basking in
+the mellow sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed or improved. Nowhere
+else on the border-line of the Orient is there a town which so admirably
+illustrates the reckless and stupid negligence of the Turk. Sophia looks
+enchanting from a distance, but when one enters its narrow streets,
+choked with rubbish and filled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span> with fetid smells, one is only too glad
+to retire hastily. It would take a quarter of a century to make Sophia
+clean. All round the city are scattered ancient tumuli filled with the
+remains of the former lords of the soil, and they are almost as
+attractive as the hovels in which live the people of to-day. What a
+desolate waste the Turk has been allowed to make of one of the finest
+countries in Europe! He must be thrust out before improvement can come
+in. Lamartine, who was one of the keenest observers that ever set foot
+in Turkey, truly said "that civilization, which is so fine in its proper
+place, would prove a mortal poison to Islamism. Civilization cannot live
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span>where the Turks are: it will wither away and perish more quickly
+whenever it is brought near them. With it, if you could acclimate it in
+Turkey, you could not make Europeans, you could not make Christians: you
+would simply unmake Turks."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0005-1.jpg" width="500" height="143" alt="BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN." title="" />
+<span class="caption">BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The enemies of progress and of the "Christian dogs" are receding, and
+railways and sanitary improvements will come when they are gone.
+Belgrade was a wretched town when the Turks had it: now it is civilized.
+Its history is romantic and picturesque, although its buildings are not.
+Servia's legends and the actual recitals of the adventurous wars which
+have occurred within her limits would fill volumes. The White City has
+been famous ever since the Ottoman conquest. Its dominant position at
+the junction of two great rivers, at the frontier of Christian Europe,
+at a time when turbans were now and then seen in front of the walls of
+Vienna, gave it a supreme importance. The Turks exultingly named it "the
+Gate of the Holy War." Thence it was that they sallied forth on
+incursions through the fertile plains where now the Hungarian shepherd
+leads his flock and plays upon his wooden pipe, undisturbed by the
+bearded infidel. The citadel was fought over until its walls cracked
+beneath the successive blows of Christian and Mussulman. Suleiman the
+Lawgiver, the elector of Bavaria, Eugene of Savoy, have trod the
+ramparts which frown on the Danube's broad current. The Austrians have
+many memories of the old fortress: they received it in 1718 by the
+treaty of Passarowitz, but gave it up in 1749, to take it back again in
+1789. The treaty of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span> Sistova&mdash;an infamy which postponed the liberation
+of the suffering peoples in Turkey-in-Europe for nearly a hundred
+years&mdash;compelled the Austrians once more to yield it, this time to the
+Turks. In this century how often has it been fought over&mdash;from the time
+of the heroic Kara George, the Servian liberator, to the bloody riots in
+our days which resulted in driving Mussulmans definitely from the
+territory!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0007-1.jpg" width="500" height="389" alt="VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN." title="" />
+<span class="caption">VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Everywhere along the upper Servian banks of the Danube traces of the old
+epoch are disappearing. The national costume, which was graceful, and
+often very rich, is yielding before the prosaic&mdash;the ugly garments
+imported from Jewish tailoring establishments in Vienna and Pesth. The
+horseman with his sack-coat, baggy velvet trousers and slouch hat looks
+not unlike a rough rider along the shores of the Mississippi River. In
+the interior patriarchal costumes and customs are still preserved. On
+the Sava river-steamers the people from towns in the shadows of the
+primeval forests which still cover a large portion of the country are to
+be found, and they are good studies for an artist. The women, with
+golden ducats braided in their hair; the priests, with tall brimless
+hats and long yellow robes; the men, with round skull-caps, leathern
+girdles with knives in them, and waistcoats ornamented with hundreds of
+glittering buttons,&mdash;are all unconscious of the change which is creeping
+in by the Danube, and to which they will presently find themselves
+submitting. The railway will take away the lingering bits of romance
+from Servia; the lovely and lonely monasteries high among the grand
+peaks in the mountain-ranges will be visited by tourists from Paris, who
+will scrawl their names upon the very altars; and Belgrade will be rich
+in second-class caravanserais kept by Moses and Abraham. After the
+Austrians who have gone over into Bosnia will naturally follow a crowd
+of adventurers from Croatia and from the neighborhood of Pesth, and it
+would not be surprising should many of them find it for their interest
+to settle in Servia, although the government would probably endeavor to
+keep them out. Should the movement which Lord Beaconsfield is pleased to
+call the "Panslavic conspiracy" assume alarming proportions within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span> a
+short time, the Servians would be in great danger of losing, for years
+at least, their autonomy.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and
+one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted
+coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a
+gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of
+shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous
+raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the
+bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in
+transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian
+river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered
+with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian
+beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the
+neighborhood of the East. I had on one occasion, while a steamer was
+lying at Belgrade, time to observe the manners of the humbler sort of
+folk in a species of cabaret near the river-side and hard by the erratic
+structure known as the custom-house. There was a serious air upon the
+faces of the men which spoke well for their characters. Each one seemed
+independent, and to a certain extent careless, of his neighbor's
+opinion. It would have been impossible, without some knowledge of the
+history of the country, to have supposed that these people, or even
+their ancestors, had ever been oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor is
+there anywhere among the Danubian Slavs a tendency to the innocent and
+spontaneous jollity so common in some sections of Europe. The Servian
+takes life seriously. I was amused to see that each one of this numerous
+company of swineherds or farmers, who had evidently come in to Belgrade
+to market, drank his wine as if it were a duty, and on leaving saluted
+as seriously as if he were greeting a distinguished company gathered to
+do him honor. That such men are cowards, as the English would have us
+believe, is impossible; and in 1877 they showed that the slander was
+destitute of even the slightest foundation in fact.</p>
+
+<p>Morals in Belgrade among certain classes perhaps leave something to
+desire in the way of strictness; but the Danubian provinces are not
+supposed to be the abodes of all the virtues and graces. The Hungarians
+could not afford to throw stones at the Servians on the score of
+morality, and the Roumanians certainly would not venture to try the
+experiment. In the interior of Servia the population is pure, and the
+patriarchal manner in which the people live tends to preserve them so.
+There is as much difference between the sentiment in Belgrade and that
+in the provinces as would be found between Paris and a French rural
+district.</p>
+
+<p>But let us drop details concerning Servia, for the brave little country
+demands more serious attention than can be given to it in one or two
+brief articles. The boat which bears me away from the Servian capital
+has come hither from Semlin, the Austrian town on the other side of the
+Sava River. It is a jaunty and comfortable craft, as befits such vessels
+as afford Servians their only means of communication with the outer
+world. If any but Turks had been squatted in Bosnia there would have
+been many a smart little steamer running down the Sava and around up the
+Danube; but the baleful Mussulman has checked all enterprise wherever he
+has had any foothold. We go slowly, cleaving the dull-colored tide,
+gazing, as we sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the upper deck, out upon
+the few public institutions of Belgrade&mdash;the military college and the
+handsome road leading to the garden of Topschidere, where the
+Lilliputian court has its tiny summer residence. Sombre memories
+overhang this "Cannoneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where Michael, the
+son and successor of good Milosch as sovereign prince of the nation,
+perished by assassination in 1868. In a few minutes we are whisked round
+a corner, and a high wooded bluff conceals the White City from our view.</p>
+
+<p>The Servian women&mdash;and more especially those belonging to the lower
+classes&mdash;have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span> a majesty and dignity which are very imposing. One is
+inclined at first to believe these are partially due to assumption, but
+he speedily discovers that such is not the case. Blanqui, the French
+revolutionist, who made a tour through Servia in 1840, has given the
+world a curious and interesting account of the conversations which he
+held with Servian women on the subject of the oppression from which the
+nation was suffering. Everywhere among the common people he found virile
+sentiments expressed by the women, and the princess Lionbitza, he said,
+was "the prey of a kind of holy fever." M. Blanqui described her as a
+woman fifty years old, with a martial, austere yet dreamy physiognomy,
+with strongly-marked features, a proud and sombre gaze, and her head
+crowned with superb gray hair braided and tied with red ribbon. "Ah!"
+said this woman to him, with an accent in her voice which startled him,
+"if all these men round about us here were not women, <i>or if they were
+women like me</i>, we should soon be free from our tormentors!" It was the
+fiery words of such women as this which awoke the Servian men from the
+lethargy into which they were falling after Kara George had exhausted
+himself in heroic efforts, and which sent them forth anew to fight for
+their liberties.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0011-1.jpg" width="500" height="152" alt="THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At night, when the moon is good enough to shine, the voyage up the river
+has charms, and tempts one to remain on deck all night, in spite of the
+sharp breezes which sweep across the stream. The harmonious accents of
+the gentle Servian tongue echo all round you: the song of the peasants
+grouped together, lying in a heap like cattle to keep warm, comes
+occasionally to your ears; and if there be anything disagreeable, it is
+the loud voices and brawling manners of some Austrian troopers on
+transfer. From time to time the boat slows her speed as she passes
+through lines or streets of floating mills anchored securely in the
+river. Each mill&mdash;a small house with sloping roof, and with so few
+windows that one wonders how the millers ever manage to see their
+grist&mdash;is built upon two boats.The musical hum of its great wheel is heard for a long distance, and
+warns one of the approach toward these pacific industries. The miller is
+usually on the lookout, and sometimes, when a large<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span> steamer is coming
+up, and he anticipates trouble from the "swell" which she may create, he
+may be seen madly gesticulating and dancing upon his narrow platform in
+a frenzy of anxiety for the fruits of his toil. A little village on a
+neck of land or beneath a grove shows where the wives and children of
+these millers live. The mills are a source of prosperity for thousands
+of humble folk, and of provocation to hurricanes of profanity on the
+part of the Austrian, Italian and Dalmatian captains who are compelled
+to pass them. Stealing through an aquatic town of this kind at midnight,
+with the millers all holding out their lanterns, with the steamer's bell
+ringing violently, and with rough voices crying out words of caution in
+at least four languages, produces a curious if not a comical effect on
+him who has the experience for the first time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0012-1.jpg" width="500" height="153" alt="FISHERMEN&#39;S HUTS ON THE DANUBE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">FISHERMEN&#39;S HUTS ON THE DANUBE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Peaceable as the upper Danube shores look, Arcadian as seems the
+simplicity of their populations, the people are torn by contending
+passions, and are watched by the lynx-eyed authorities of two or three
+governments. The agents of the <i>Omladina</i>, the mysterious society which
+interests itself in the propagation of Pan-slavism, have numerous
+powerful stations in the Austrian towns, and do much to discontent the
+Slavic subjects of Francis Joseph with the rule of the Hapsburgs. There
+have also been instances of conspiracy against the Obrenovich dynasty,
+now in power in Servia, and these have frequently resulted in armed
+incursions from the Hungarian side of the stream to the other bank,
+where a warm reception was not long awaited. In the humblest hamlet
+there are brains hot with ambitious dreams daringly planning some scheme
+which is too audacious to be realized.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller can scarcely believe this when, as the boat stops at some
+little pier which is half buried under vines and blossoms, he sees the
+population indulging in an innocent festival with the aid of red and
+white wine, a few glasses of beer, and bread and cheese. Families
+mounted in huge yellow chariots drawn by horses ornamented with
+gayly-decorated harnesses, come rattling into town and get down before a
+weatherbeaten inn, the signboard above which testifies to respect and
+love for some emperor of long ago. Youths and maidens wander arm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span> in arm
+by the foaming tide or sit in the little arbors crooning songs and
+clinking glasses. Officers strut about, calling each other loudly by
+their titles or responding to the sallies of those of their comrades who
+fill the after-deck of the steamer. The village mayor in a braided
+jacket, the wharfmaster in semi-military uniform, and the agent of the
+steamboat company, who appears to have a remarkable penchant for gold
+lace and buttons, render the throng still more motley. There is also, in
+nine cases out of ten, a band of tooting musicians, and as the boat
+moves away national Hungarian and Austrian airs are played. He would be
+indeed a surly fellow who should not lift his cap on these occasions,
+and he would be repaid for his obstinacy by the very blackest of looks.</p>
+
+<p>Carlowitz and Slankamen are two historic spots which an Hungarian, if he
+feels kindly disposed toward a stranger, will point out to him. The
+former is known to Americans by name only, as a rule, and that because
+they have seen it upon bottle-labels announcing excellent wine; but the
+town, with its ancient cathedral, its convents, and its "chapel of
+peace" built on the site of the structure in which was signed the noted
+peace of 1699, deserves a visit. Rumor says that the head-quarters of
+the Omladina are very near this town, so that the foreign visitor must
+not be astonished if the local police seem uncommonly solicitous for his
+welfare while he remains. At Slankamen in 1691 the illustrious margrave
+of Baden administered such a thrashing to the Turks that they fled in
+the greatest consternation, and it was long before they rallied again.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0015-1.jpg" width="500" height="156" alt="VIEW OF MOHACZ." title="" />
+<span class="caption">VIEW OF MOHACZ.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus, threading in and out among the floating mills, pushing through
+reedy channels in the midst of which she narrowly escapes crushing the
+boats of fishers, and carefully avoiding the moving banks of sand which
+render navigation as difficult as on the Mississippi, the boat reaches
+Peterwardein, high on a mighty mass of rock, and Neusatz opposite,
+connected with its neighbor fortress-town by a bridge of boats. Although
+within the limits of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Neusatz is almost
+entirely Servian in aspect and population, and Peterwardein, which marks
+the military confines of Slavonia, has a large number of Servian
+inhabitants. It was the proximity and the earnestness in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span> their cause of
+these people which induced the Hungarians to agree to the military
+occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. At one time the obstinate
+Magyars would have liked to refuse their adhesion to the decisions of
+the Berlin Congress, but they soon thought better of that. Peterwardein
+is the last really imposing object on the Danube before reaching Pesth.
+It is majestic and solemn, with its gloomy castle, its garrison which
+contains several thousand soldiers, and its prison of state. The
+remembrance that Peter the Hermit there put himself at the head of the
+army with which the Crusades were begun adds to the mysterious and
+powerful fascination of the place. I fancied that I could see the lean
+and fanatical priest preaching before the assembled thousands, hurling
+his words down upon them from some lofty pinnacle. No one can blame the
+worthy Peter for undertaking his mission if the infidels treated
+Christians in the Orient as badly then as they do to-day. Centuries
+after Peter slept in consecrated dust the Turks sat down before
+Peterwardein to besiege it, but they had only their labor for their
+pains, for Prince Eugene drove them away. This was in 1716. It seems
+hard to believe that a hostile force of Turks was powerful enough to
+wander about Christendom a little more than a century and a half ago.</p>
+
+<p>After passing Peterwardein and Neusatz the boat's course lies through
+the vast Hungarian plain, which reminds the American of some of the rich
+lands in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, lusty, crude, seemingly
+not of Europe, but rather of the extreme West or East. As far as the eye
+can reach on either hand stretch the level acres, dotted with herds of
+inquisitive swine, with horses wild and beautiful snorting and
+gambolling as they hear the boat's whistle, and peasants in white linen
+jackets and trousers and immense black woollen hats. Fishers by hundreds
+balance in their little skiffs on the small whirlpool of waves made by
+the steamer, and sing gayly. For a stretch of twenty miles the course
+may lie near an immense forest, where millions of stout trees stand in
+regular rows, where thousands of oaks drop acorns every year to fatten
+thousands upon thousands of pigs. Cattle stray in these woods, and
+sometimes the peasant-farmer has a veritable hunt before he can find his
+own. Afar in the wooded recesses of Slavonia many convents of the Greek
+religion are hidden. Their inmates lead lives which have little or no
+relation to anything in the nineteenth century. For them wars and rumors
+of wars, Russian aggression, Austrian annexation, conspiracies by Kara
+Georgewitch, Hungarian domination in the Cabinet at Vienna, and all such
+trivial matters, do not exist. The members of these religious
+communities are not like the more active members of the clergy of their
+Church, who unquestionably have much to do with promoting war and
+supporting it when it is in aid of their nationality and their religion.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most remarkable sights in this region is a herd of the noble
+"cattle of the steppes," the beasts in which every Hungarian takes so
+much pride. These cattle are superb creatures, and as they stand eying
+the passers-by one regrets that he has not more time in which to admire
+their exquisite white skins, their long symmetrical horns and their
+shapely limbs. They appear to be good-tempered, but it would not be wise
+to risk one's self on foot in their immediate neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>As for the fishermen, some of them seem to prefer living on the water
+rather than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy borders of the Danube are
+not very healthy, and it is not astonishing that men do not care to make
+their homes on these low lands. There are several aquatic towns between
+Pesth and the point at which the Drava (or Drau), a noble river, empties
+its waters into the Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of huts which appear
+to spring from the bosom of the current, but as the steamer approaches
+one sees that these huts are built upon piles driven firmly into the
+river-bed, and between these singular habitations are other piles upon
+which nets are stretched. So the fisherman,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span> without going a hundred
+yards from his own door, traps the wily denizens of the Danube, prepares
+them for market, and at night goes peacefully to sleep in his rough bed,
+lulled by the rushing of the strong current beneath him. I am bound to
+confess that the fishermen of Apatin impressed me as being rather
+rheumatic, but perhaps this was only a fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Besdan, with its low hills garnished with windmills and its shores lined
+with silvery willows, is the only other point of interest, save Mohacz,
+before reaching Pesth. Hour after hour the traveller sees the same
+panorama of steppes covered with swine, cattle and horses, with
+occasional farms&mdash;their outbuildings protected against brigands and
+future wars by stout walls&mdash;and with pools made by inundations of the
+impetuous Danube. Mohacz is celebrated for two tremendous battles in the
+past, and for a fine cathedral, a railway and a coaling-station at
+present. Louis II., king of Hungary, was there undone by Suleiman in
+1526; and there, a hundred and fifty years later, did the Turks come to
+sorrow by the efforts of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span> the forces under Charles IV. of Lorraine.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0019-1.jpg" width="500" height="199" alt="BRIDGE OF BUDA-PESTH." title="" />
+<span class="caption">BRIDGE OF BUDA-PESTH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Just as I was beginning to believe that the slow-going steamer on which
+I had embarked my fortunes was held back by enchantment&mdash;for we were
+half a day ascending the stream from Mohacz&mdash;we came in sight of a huge
+cliff almost inaccessible from one side, and a few minutes later could
+discern the towers of Buda and the mansions of Pesth. While nearing the
+landing-place and hastening hither and yon to look after various small
+bundles and boxes, I had occasion to address an Hungarian gentleman. In
+the course of some conversation which followed I remarked that Pesth
+seemed a thriving place, and that one would hardly have expected to find
+two such flourishing towns as Vienna and Pesth so near each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said he with a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he
+was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town,
+but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to his native
+city.</p>
+
+<p>Although I could not exactly agree with this extravagant estimate of the
+extent of Pesth, I could not deny that it was vastly superior to my idea
+of it. When one arrives there from the south-east, after many wanderings
+among semi-barbaric villages and little cities on the outskirts of
+civilization, he finds Pesth very impressive. The Hungarian shepherds
+and the boatmen who ply between the capital and tiny forts below fancy
+that it is the end of the world. They have vaguely heard of Vienna, but
+their patriotism is so intense and their round of life so circumscribed
+that they never succeed in forming a definite idea of its proportions or
+its location. Communication between the two chief towns of the
+Austria-Hungarian empire is also much less frequent than one would
+imagine. The Hungarians go but little to Vienna, even the members of the
+nobility preferring to consecrate their resources to the support of the
+splendors of their own city rather than to contribute them to the
+Austrian metropolis. Seven hours' ride in what the Austrians are bold
+enough to term an express-train covers the distance between Vienna and
+Pesth, yet there seems to be an abyss somewhere on the route which the
+inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a haughty determination not to submit
+to centralization, and content with their surroundings make the
+Hungarians sparing of intercourse with their Austrian neighbors. "We
+send them prime ministers, and now and then we allow them a glimpse of
+some of our beauties in one of their palaces, but the latter does not
+happen very often," once said an Hungarian friend to me.</p>
+
+<p>An American who should arrive in Pesth fancying that he was about to see
+a specimen of the dilapidated towns of "effete and decaying Europe"
+would find himself vastly mistaken. The beautiful and costly modern
+buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast
+river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial
+hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak
+of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it
+really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the
+extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises and
+the rapid increase of her population. Austria and Hungary were alike the
+prey of a feverish agitation which pervaded all classes. In a single day
+at Vienna as many as thirty gigantic stock companies were formed;
+hundreds of superb structures sprang up monthly; people who had been
+beggars but a few months before rode in carriages and bestowed gold by
+handfuls on whoever came first. The wind or some mysterious agency which
+no one could explain brought this financial pestilence to Pesth, where
+it raged until the <i>Krach</i>&mdash;the Crash, as the Germans very properly call
+it&mdash;came. After the extraordinary activity which had prevailed there
+came gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in America, business in Pesth
+and in Hungary generally is gradually assuming solidity and contains
+itself within proper bounds. The exciting period had one beneficial
+feature: it made Pesth a handsome<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span> city. There are no quays in Europe
+more substantial and elegant than those along the Danube in the
+Hungarian capital, and no hotels, churches and mansions more splendid
+than those fronting on these same quays. At eventide, when the whole
+population comes out for an airing and loiters by the parapets which
+overlook the broad rushing river, when innumerable lights gleam from the
+boats anchored on either bank, and when the sound of music and song is
+heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more
+animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted. Pesth is exceedingly
+proper and decorous as soon as the darkness has fallen, although I do
+remember to have seen a torchlight procession there during the
+Russo-Turkish war. The inhabitants were so enthusiastic over the arrival
+of a delegation of Mussulman students from Constantinople that they put
+ten thousand torches in line and marched until a late hour, thinking,
+perhaps, that the lurid light on the horizon might be seen as far as
+Vienna, and might serve as a warning to the Austrian government<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span> not to
+go too far in its sympathy with Russia.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0023-1.jpg" width="500" height="204" alt="CITADEL OF BUDA" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CITADEL OF BUDA</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Buda-Pesth is the name by which the Hungarians know their capital, and
+Buda is by no means the least important portion of the city. It occupies
+the majestic and rugged hill directly opposite Pesth&mdash;a hill so steep
+that a tunnel containing cars propelled upward and downward by machinery
+has been arranged to render Buda easy of access. Where the hill slopes
+away southward there are various large villages crowded with Servians,
+Croatians and Low Hungarians, who huddle together in a rather
+uncivilized manner. A fortress where there were many famous fights and
+sieges in the times of the Turks occupies a summit a little higher than
+Buda, so that in case of insurrection a few hot shot could be dropped
+among the inhabitants. Curiously enough, however, there are thousands of
+loyal Austrians, German by birth, living in Buda&mdash;or Ofen, as the
+Teutons call it&mdash;whereas in Pesth, out of the two hundred thousand
+inhabitants, scarcely three thousand are of Austrian birth. As long as
+troops devoted to Francis Joseph hold Buda there is little chance for
+the citizens of Pesth to succeed in revolt. Standing on the terrace of
+the rare old palace on Buda's height, I looked down on Pesth with the
+same range of vision that I should have had in a balloon. Every quarter
+of the city would be fully exposed to an artillery fire from these
+gigantic hills.</p>
+
+<p>Buda is not rich in the modern improvements which render Pesth so
+noticeable. I found no difficulty in some of the nooks and corners of
+this quaint town in imagining myself back in the Middle Ages. Tottering
+churches, immensely tall houses overhanging yawning and precipitous
+alleys, markets set on little shelves in the mountain, hovels protesting
+against sliding down into the valley, whither they seemed inevitably
+doomed to go, succeeded one another in rapid panorama. Here were
+costume, theatrical effect, artistic grouping: it was like Ragusa,
+Spalatro and Sebenico. Old and young women sat on the ground in the
+markets, as our negroes do in Lynchburg in Virginia: they held up fruit
+and vegetables and shrieked out the prices in a dialect which seemed a
+compound of Hungarian and German. Austrian soldiers and Hungarian
+recruits, the former clad in brown jackets and blue hose, the latter in
+buff doublets and red trousers, and wearing feathers in their caps,
+marched and countermarched, apparently going nowhere in particular, but
+merely keeping up discipline by means of exercise.</p>
+
+<p>The emperor comes often to the fine palace on Buda hill, and sallies
+forth from it to hunt with some of the nobles on their immense estates.
+The empress is passionately fond of Hungary, and spends no small portion
+of her time there. The Hungarians receive this consideration from their
+sovereign lady as very natural, and speak of her as a person of great
+good sense. The German and Slavic citizens of Austria say that there are
+but two failings of which Her Imperial Majesty can be accused&mdash;she loves
+the Hungarians and she is too fond of horses. Nothing delights the
+citizens of Pesth so much as to find that the Slavs are annoyed, for
+there is no love lost between Slav and Magyar. A natural antipathy has
+been terribly increased by the fear on the part of Hungary that she may
+lose her influence in the composite empire one day, owing to the Slavic
+regeneration.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0026-1.jpg" width="500" height="311" alt="MUSEUM AND SEAT OF THE DIET AT PESTH." title="" />
+<span class="caption">MUSEUM AND SEAT OF THE DIET AT PESTH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Pesth they do not speak of the "beautiful blue Danube," because there
+the river ceases to be of that color, which Johann Strauss has so
+enthusiastically celebrated. But between Vienna and Pesth the blue is
+clearly perceptible, and the current is lovely even a few miles from the
+islands in the stream near the Hungarian capital. The Margarethen-Insel,
+which is but a short distance above Pesth, is a little paradise. It has
+been transformed by private munificence into a rich garden full of
+charming shaded nooks and rare plants and flowers. In the middle of this
+pleasure-ground are extensive bath-houses and mineral springs. Morning,
+noon and night gypsy bands make seductive music, and the notes of their
+melodies recall the strange<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span> lands far away down the stream&mdash;Roumania,
+the hills and valleys of the Banat and the savage Servian mountains.
+Along the river-side there are other resorts in which, in these days,
+when business has not yet entirely recovered from the <i>Krach</i>, there are
+multitudes of loungers. In midsummer no Hungarian need go farther than
+these baths of Pesth to secure rest and restore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span> health. The Romans were
+so pleased with the baths in the neighborhood that they founded a colony
+on the site of Buda-Pesth, although they had no particular strategic
+reasons for doing so. As you sit in the pleasant shade you will probably
+hear the inspiring notes of the <i>Rakoczy</i>, the march of which the
+Hungarians are so passionately fond, which recalls the souvenirs of
+their revolutions and awakens a kind of holy exaltation in their hearts.
+The <i>Rakoczy</i> has been often enough fantastically described: some hear
+in it the gallop of horsemen, the clashing of arms, the songs of women
+and the cries of wounded men. A clever Frenchman has even written two
+columns of analysis of the march, and he found in it nearly as much as
+there is in Goethe's <i>Faust</i>. These harmless fancies are of little use
+in aiding to a veritable understanding of the wonderful march. It
+suffices to say that one cannot hear it played, even by a strolling band
+of gypsies, without a strange fluttering of the heart, an excitement and
+an enthusiasm which are beyond one's control. A nation with such a
+<i>Marseillaise</i> as the <i>Rakoczy</i> certainly ought to go far in time of
+war.</p>
+
+<p>The Hungarians are a martial people, and are fond of reciting their
+exploits. Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, in a variegated
+English which will provoke your smiles, all the incidents of the
+Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 and 1849&mdash;how the Austrians
+were driven across the great bridge over the Danube, etc.&mdash;with infinite
+gusto. The humblest wharf-laborer takes a vital interest in the welfare
+of his country, even if he is not intelligent enough to know from what
+quarter hostilities might be expected. There is a flash in an
+Hungarian's eye when he speaks of the events of 1848 which is equalled
+only by the lightnings evoked from his glance by the magic echoes of the
+<i>Rakoczy</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The peasantry round about Pesth, and the poor wretches, Slavic and
+Hungarian, who work on the streets, seem in sad plight. A friend one day
+called my attention to a number of old women, most miserably clad,
+barefooted and bent with age and infirmities, carrying stones and
+bricks to a new building. The spectacle was enough to make one's heart
+bleed, but my friend assured me that the old women were happy, and that
+they lived on bread and an occasional onion, with a little water for
+drink or sometimes a glass of adulterated white wine. The men working
+with them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the
+poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews,
+the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting
+that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The
+utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the
+lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as the Austrian
+servants do. Toward strangers Hungarians of all ranks are unfailingly
+civil and courteous. A simple letter of introduction will procure one a
+host of attentions which he would not have the right to expect in
+England or America.</p>
+
+<p>The mound of earth on the bank of the Danube near the quays of Pesth
+represents the soil of every Hungarian province; and from that mound the
+emperor of Austria, when he was crowned king of Hungary, was forced to
+shake his sword against the four quarters of the globe, thus signifying
+his intention of defending the country from any attack whatsoever. Thus
+far he has succeeded in doing it, and in keeping on good terms with the
+legislative bodies of the country, without whose co-operation he cannot
+exercise his supreme authority. These bodies are a chamber of peers,
+recruited from the prelates, counts and such aristocrats as sit there by
+right of birth, and a second chamber, which is composed of four hundred
+and thirteen deputies elected from as many districts for the term of
+three years, and thirty-four delegates from the autonomous province of
+Croatia-Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is guarded by a
+frosty-looking servitor in an extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket and
+hose profusely covered with brilliant braids, and varnished jack-boots.
+The deputies when in session are quiet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span> orderly and dignified, save
+when the word "Russian" is pronounced. It is a word which arouses all
+their hatred.</p>
+
+<p>Buda-Pesth is about to undergo a formidable series of improvements
+notwithstanding the illusions which were dispersed by the <i>Krach</i>. One
+of the most conspicuous and charming municipal displays in the Paris
+Exposition is the group of charts and plans sent from Pesth. The patriot
+Deak is to have a colossal monument; the quays are to be rendered more
+substantial against inundations than they are at present; and many
+massive public edifices are to be erected. The Danube is often unruly,
+and once nearly destroyed the city of Pesth, also doing much damage
+along the slopes of Buda. If an inundation should come within the next
+two or three years millions of florins' worth of property might be swept
+away in a single night. The opera, the principal halls of assembly and
+the hotels of Pesth will challenge comparison with those of any town of
+two hundred thousand population in the world; and the Grand Hotel
+Hungaria has few equals in cities of the largest size.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0029-1.jpg" width="379" height="500" alt="SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH." title="" />
+<span class="caption">SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Hungarians are a handsome race, and the people of Pesth and vicinity
+have especial claims to attention for their beauty. The men of the
+middle and upper classes are tall, slender, graceful, and their features
+are exceedingly regular and pleasing. The women are so renowned that a
+description of their charms is scarcely necessary. Beautiful as are the
+Viennese ladies in their early youth, they cannot rival their
+fellow-subjects of Hungary. The Austrian woman grows fat, matronly and
+rather coarse as she matures: the Hungarian lady of forty is still as
+willowy, graceful and capricious as she was at twenty. The
+peasant-women, poor things! are ugly, because they work from morning
+till night in the vineyards, toiling until their backs are broken. The
+wine which the beauties drink costs their humbler sisters their
+life-blood, their grace, their happiness. The sunshine of a thousand
+existences is imprisoned in the vintages of Pressburg and Carlowitz.
+Poor, homely toilers in the fields! Poor human creatures transformed
+into beasts of burden! The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to
+emancipate these struggling women and show them the way to better
+things.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Edward King.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span></span>
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="FOR_PERCIVAL" id="FOR_PERCIVAL"></a>"FOR PERCIVAL."</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XLVIII ENGAGEMENTS&mdash;HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 340px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0030-1.jpg" width="340" height="500" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and
+summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and
+flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the
+bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft.
+Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new
+life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown
+long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air
+and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to
+him that he had awakened from a dream.</p>
+
+<p>He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to
+call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He
+could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost
+intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came
+from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could
+work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he
+could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for
+business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him
+so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his
+examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in
+such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a
+small share in the business,&mdash;what would be the end of this most
+improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in
+Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he
+loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could
+offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond
+or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him
+to something better.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he
+sincerely respected&mdash;I might almost say he admired&mdash;his own folly. He
+had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom
+of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence
+for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his
+own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to
+reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful
+career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the
+extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted
+with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly
+understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very
+likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not
+understood.</p>
+
+<p>And now, having conquered in the race, could he go back and ask for the
+help which he had once refused? Hardly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span> The life in which we first gain
+independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself&mdash;when we
+gather in our harvest&mdash;may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will
+spoil the palate for all other flavors. They will seem sickly sweet
+after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater
+desire for a career of any kind than he had felt a year earlier when he
+talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what
+was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his
+earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then,
+"Brackenhill," dismissing the impossible idea with a smile even as he
+uttered it. Asked what would content him&mdash;since we can hardly hope to
+draw the highest prize in our life's lottery&mdash;he would answer now as
+then&mdash;to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the
+Continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky;
+wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might
+always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his
+manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace
+in the land where one is born), to drink the wine of the country, to
+read many poems in verse, in prose, in the scenery around; and through
+it all, from first to last, to "dream deliciously."</p>
+
+<p>And yet, even while he felt that his desire was unchanged, he knew that
+there was a fresh obstacle between him and its fulfilment. Heaven help
+him! had there not been enough before? Was it needful that it should
+become clear to him that nowhere on earth could he find the warmth and
+the sunlight for which he pined while a certain pair of sad eyes grew
+ever sadder and sadder looking out on the murky sky, the smoke, the
+dust, the busy industry of Brenthill? How could he go away? Even these
+quiet walks of his had pain mixed with their pleasure when he thought
+that there was no such liberty for Judith Lisle. Not for her the
+cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the
+elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon
+the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung
+ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their
+loveliness the more he felt her loss.</p>
+
+<p>He had no walk on Sunday mornings. A few months earlier Mr. Clifton of
+St. Sylvester's would have claimed him as a convert. Now he was equally
+devout, but it was the evangelical minister, Mr. Bradbury of Christ
+Church, who saw him week after week a regular attendant, undaunted and
+sleepless though the sermon should be divided into seven heads. Mr.
+Bradbury preached terribly, in a voice which sometimes died mournfully
+away or hissed in a melodramatic whisper, and then rose suddenly in a
+threatening cry. Miss Macgregor sat in front of a gallery and looked
+down on the top of her pastor's head. The double row of little boys who
+were marshalled at her side grew drowsy in the hot weather, blinked
+feebly as the discourse progressed, and nodded at the congregation. Now
+and then Mr. Bradbury, who was only, as it were, at arm's length, turned
+a little, looked up and flung a red-hot denunciation into the front
+seats of the gallery. The little boys woke up, heard what was most
+likely in store for them on the last day, and sat with eyes wide open
+dismally surveying the prospect. But presently the next boy fidgeted, or
+a spider let himself down from the roof, or a bird flew past the window,
+or a slanting ray of sunlight revealed a multitude of dusty dancing
+motes, and the little lads forgot Mr. Bradbury, who had forgotten them
+and was busy with somebody else. It might be with the pope: Mr. Bradbury
+was fond of providing for the pope. Or perhaps he was wasting his energy
+on Percival Thorne, who sat with his head thrown back and his upward
+glance just missing the preacher, and was quite undisturbed by his
+appeals.</p>
+
+<p>Judith Lisle had accepted the offer of a situation at Miss Macgregor's
+with the expectation of being worked to death, only hoping, as she told
+Mrs. Barton, that the process would be slow. The hope would not have
+been at all an unreasonable one if she had undertaken her task in the
+days when she had Bertie to work for. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span> could have lived through much
+when she lived for Bertie. But, losing her brother, the mainspring of
+her life seemed broken. One would have said that she had leaned on him,
+not he on her, she drooped so pitifully now he was gone. Even Miss
+Macgregor noticed that Miss Lisle was delicate, and expressed her strong
+disapprobation of such a state of affairs. Mrs. Barton thought Judith
+looking very far from well, suggested tonics, and began to consider
+whether she might ask her to go to them for her summer holidays. But to
+Percival's eyes there was a change from week to week, and he watched her
+with terror in his heart. Judith had grown curiously younger during the
+last few months. There had been something of a mother's tenderness in
+her love for Bertie, which made her appear more than her real age and
+gave decision and stateliness to her manner. Now that she was alone, she
+was only a girl, silent and shrinking, needing all her strength to
+suffer and hide her sorrow. Percival knew that each Sunday, as soon as
+she had taken her place, she would look downward to the pew where he
+always sat to ascertain if he were there. For a moment he would meet
+that quiet gaze, lucid, uncomplaining, but very sad. Then her eyes would
+be turned to her book or to the little boys who sat near her, or it
+might even be to Mr. Bradbury. The long service would begin, go on, come
+to an end. But before she left her place her glance would meet his once
+more, as if in gentle farewell until another Sunday should come round.
+Percival would not for worlds have failed at that trysting-place, but he
+cursed his helplessness. Could he do nothing for Judith but cheer her
+through Mr. Bradbury's sermons?</p>
+
+<p>About this time he used deliberately to indulge in an impossible fancy.
+His imagination dwelt on their two lives, cramped, dwarfed and fettered.
+He had lost his freedom, but it seemed to him that Judith, burdened once
+with riches, and later with poverty, never had been free. He looked
+forward, and saw nothing in the future but a struggle for existence
+which might be prolonged through years of labor and sordid care. Why
+were they bound to endure this? Why could they not give up all for just
+a few days of happiness? Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of
+beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty.
+Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content
+that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and
+inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would
+be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they
+had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy
+what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant
+against a black background of death. How free they would be to spend all
+they possessed without a thought for the future! Nothing could pall upon
+them, and he pictured to himself how every sense would be quickened, how
+passion would gather strength and tenderness, during those brief days,
+and rise to its noblest height to meet the end. His imagination revelled
+in the minute details of the picture, adding one by one a thousand
+touches of beauty and joy till the dream was lifelike in its loveliness.
+He could pass in a moment from his commonplace world to this enchanted
+life with Judith. Living alone, and half starving himself in the attempt
+to pay his debts, he was in a fit state to see visions and dream dreams.
+But they only made his present life more distasteful to him, and the
+more he dreamed of Judith the more he felt that he had nothing to offer
+her.</p>
+
+<p>He was summoned abruptly from his fairyland one night by the arrival of
+Mrs. Bryant. She made her appearance rather suddenly, and sat down on a
+chair by the door to have a little chat with her lodger. "I came back
+this afternoon," she said. "I didn't tell Lydia: where was the use of
+bothering about writing to her? Besides, I could just have a look round,
+and see how Emma'd done the work while I was away, and how things had
+gone on altogether." She nodded her rusty black cap confidentially at
+Percival. It was sprinkled with bugles, which caught the light of his
+solitary candle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I hope you found all right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well," Mrs. Bryant allowed. "It's a mercy when there's no
+illness nor anything of that kind, though, if you'll excuse my saying
+it, Mr. Thorne, you ain't looking as well yourself as I should have
+liked to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I am all right, thank you," said Percival.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant shook her head. The different movement brought out quite a
+different effect of glancing bugles. "Young people should be careful of
+their health," was her profound remark.</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you there's nothing the matter with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! we'll hope not," she answered, "though you certainly do
+look altered, Mr. Thorne, through being thinner in the face and darker
+under the eyes."</p>
+
+<p>Percival smiled impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"What was I saying?" Mrs. Bryant continued. "Oh yes&mdash;that there was a
+many mercies to be thankful for. To find the house all right, and the
+times and times I've dreamed of fire and the engines not to be had, and
+woke up shaking so as you'd hardly believe it! And I don't really think
+that I've gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia
+had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not
+safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round,
+I'd mention it to my sister."</p>
+
+<p>Percival sighed briefly, probably pitying the sister. "I think Miss
+Bryant has been very careful in fastening everything," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it does seem so, and very thankful I am. And as I always say when
+I go out, 'Waste I <i>must</i> expect, and waste I <i>do</i> expect,' but it's a
+mercy when there's no thieving."</p>
+
+<p>"Things will hardly go on quite the same when you are not here to look
+after them, Mrs. Bryant."</p>
+
+<p>"No: how should they?" the landlady acquiesced. "Young heads ain't like
+old ones, as I said one evening to my sister when Smith was by. 'Young
+heads ain't like old ones,' said I. 'Why, no,' said Smith: 'they're a
+deal prettier.' I told him he ought to have done thinking of such
+things. And so he ought&mdash;a man of his age! But that's what the young men
+mostly think of, ain't it, Mr. Thorne? Though it's the old heads make
+the best housekeepers, I think, when there's a lot of lodgers to look
+after."</p>
+
+<p>"Very likely," said Percival.</p>
+
+<p>"I dare say you think there'd be fine times for the young men lodgers if
+it wasn't for the old heads. And I don't blame you, Mr. Thorne: it's
+only natural, and what we must expect in growing old. And if anything
+could make one grow old before one's time, and live two years in one, so
+to speak, I do think it's letting lodgings."</p>
+
+<p>Percival expressed himself as not surprised to hear it, though very
+sorry that lodgers were so injurious to her health.</p>
+
+<p>"There's my drawing-room empty now, and two bedrooms," Mrs. Bryant
+continued. "Not but what I've had an offer for it this very afternoon,
+since coming back. But it doesn't do to be too hasty. Respectable
+parties who pay regular," she nodded a little at Percival as if to point
+the compliment, "are the parties for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"A queer business that of young Mr. Lisle's, wasn't it?" she went on. "I
+should say it was about time that Miss Crawford did shut up, if she
+couldn't manage her young ladies better. I sent my Lydia to a
+boarding-school once, but it was one of a different kind to that. Pretty
+goings on there were at Standon Square, I'll be bound, if we only knew
+the truth. But as far as this goes there ain't no great harm done, that
+I can see. He hasn't done badly for himself, and I dare say they'll be
+very comfortable. She might have picked a worse&mdash;I will say that&mdash;for he
+was always a pleasant-spoken young gentleman, and good-looking too,
+though that's not a thing to set much store by. And they do say he had
+seen better times."</p>
+
+<p>She paused. Percival murmured something which was quite unintelligible,
+but it served to start her off again, apparently under the impression
+that she had heard a remark of some kind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I suppose so. And as I was saying to Lydia&mdash;The coolness of them
+both! banns and all regular! But there now! I'm talking and talking,
+forgetting that you were in the thick of it. You knew all about it, I've
+no doubt, and finely you and he must have laughed in your sleeves&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew nothing about it, Mrs. Bryant&mdash;nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant smiled cunningly and nodded at him again. But it was an
+oblique nod this time, and there was a sidelong look to match it.
+Percival felt as if he were suffering from an aggravated form of
+nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no: I dare say you didn't. At any rate, you won't let out if you
+did: why should you? It's a great thing to hold one's tongue, Mr.
+Thorne; and I ought to know, for I've found the advantage of being
+naturally a silent woman. And I don't say but what you are wise."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew nothing," he repeated doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't suppose it was any the worse for anybody who <i>did</i> know,"
+said Mrs. Bryant. "And though, of course, Miss Lisle lost her situation
+through it, I dare say she finds it quite made up to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said Percival shortly. The conversation was becoming
+intolerable.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you may depend upon it she does," said Mrs. Bryant. "How should a
+gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all
+the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the
+world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking
+to Lydia."</p>
+
+<p>Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too
+intimate a knowledge of Judith's feelings and position, and he could not
+listen in silence. "I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant," he said, in
+a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive
+ear. Even his landlady perceived that the subject was not a welcome one.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well!" she said. "It doesn't matter, and I'll only wish you as
+good luck as Mr. Lisle; for I'm sure you deserve a young lady with a
+little bit of money as well as he did; and no reason why you shouldn't
+look to find one, one of these fine days."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Bryant, I sha'n't copy Mr. Lisle."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you've something else in your eye, I can see, and perhaps one might
+make a guess as to a name. Well, people must manage those things their
+own way, and interfering mostly does harm, I take it. And I'll wish you
+luck, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think there's any occasion for your good wishes," said
+Percival. "Thank you all the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Not but what I'm sorry to lose Mr. and Miss Lisle," Mrs. Bryant
+continued, as if that were the natural end of her previous sentence,
+"for they paid for everything most regular."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope these people who want to come may do the same," said Percival.
+Though he knew that he ran the risk of hearing all that Mrs. Bryant
+could tell him about their condition and prospects, he felt he could
+endure anything that would turn the conversation from the Lisles and
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a different train of ideas in Mrs. Bryant's mind. "And, by
+the way," she said, "I think we've some little accounts to settle
+together, Mr. Thorne." Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that
+she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared
+had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it.
+Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the
+table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He
+stooped over his hoard&mdash;a meagre little hoard this time&mdash;counting what
+he had to give her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant began to hunt in her purse for a receipt stamp. "It's a
+pleasure to have to do with a gentleman who is always so regular," she
+said with an approving smile.</p>
+
+<p>Percival, who was steadying a little pile of coin on the sloping desk,
+felt a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span> strong desire to tell her the state of affairs while he stooped
+in the shadow with his face turned away. Precisely because he felt this
+desire he drew himself up to his full height, walked to the table,
+looked straight into her eyes and said, "Not so very regular this time,
+Mrs. Bryant."</p>
+
+<p>She stepped back with a perplexed and questioning expression, but she
+understood that something was wrong, and the worn face fell suddenly,
+deepening a multitude of melancholy wrinkles. He laid the money before
+her: "That's just half of what I owe you: I think you'll find I have
+counted it all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Half? But where's the other half, Mr. Thorne?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must earn the other half, Mrs. Bryant. You shall have it as
+soon as I get it."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him. "You've got to earn it?" she repeated. Her tone
+would have been more appropriate if Percival had said he must steal it.
+There was a pause: Mrs. Bryant's lean hand closed over the money. "I
+don't understand this, Mr. Thorne&mdash;I don't understand it at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very simple," he replied. "According to your wishes, I kept the
+rent for you, but during your absence there was a sudden call upon me
+for money, and I could not refuse to advance it. I regret it exceedingly
+if it puts you to inconvenience. I had hoped to have made it all right
+before you returned, but I have not had time. I can only promise you
+that you shall be paid all that I can put by each week till I have
+cleared off my debt."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all very fine," said Mrs. Bryant. "But I don't think much of
+promises."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to hear it," he answered gravely.</p>
+
+<p>She looked hard at him, and said: "I did think you were quite the
+gentleman, Mr. Thorne. I didn't think you'd have served me so."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Percival. "I assure you I'm very sorry. If I could explain
+the whole affair to you, you would see that I am not to blame. But,
+unluckily, I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't want any explanations: I wouldn't give a thank-you for a
+cartload of 'em. Nobody ever is to blame who has the explaining of a
+thing, if it's ever so rascally a job."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sorry," he repeated. "But I can only say that you shall be
+paid."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I dare say! Look here, Mr. Thorne: I've heard that sort of thing
+scores of times. There's always been a sudden call for money; it's
+always something that never happened before, and it isn't ever to happen
+again; and it's always going to be paid back at once, but there's not
+one in a hundred who does pay it. Once you begin that sort of thing&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find me that hundredth one," said Percival.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. To hear them talk you'd say each one was one in a thousand, at
+least. But I'd like you to know that though I'm a widow woman I'm not to
+be robbed and put upon."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bryant"&mdash;Percival's strong voice silenced her querulous tones&mdash;"no
+one wants to rob you. Please to remember that it was entirely of your
+own free-will that you trusted me with the money."</p>
+
+<p>"More fool I!" Mrs. Bryant ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>"It was to oblige you that I took charge of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And a pretty mess I've made of it! It had better have gone so as to be
+some pleasure to my own flesh and blood, instead of your spending it in
+some way you're ashamed to own."</p>
+
+<p>"If you had been here to receive it, it would have been ready for you,"
+Percival went on, ignoring her last speech. "As it is, it has waited all
+these weeks for you. It isn't unreasonable that it should wait a little
+longer for me."</p>
+
+<p>She muttered something to the effect that there was justice to be had,
+though he didn't seem to think it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," he said, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, "there's the
+county court or something of that kind. By all means go to the county
+court if you like. But I see no occasion for discussing the matter any
+more beforehand."</p>
+
+<p>His calmness had its effect upon her. She didn't want any
+unpleasantness, she said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[Pg 672]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I," he replied: "I do not see why there need be any. If I
+live you will be paid, and that before very long. If I should happen to
+die first, I have a friend who will settle my affairs for me, and you
+will be no loser."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant suggested that it might be pleasanter for all parties if Mr.
+Thorne were to apply to his friend at once. She thought very likely
+there were little bills about in the town&mdash;gentlemen very often had
+little bills&mdash;and if there were any difficulties&mdash;gentlemen so often got
+into difficulties&mdash;it was so much better to have things settled and make
+a fresh start. She had no doubt that Mr. Lisle would be very willing.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Lisle!" Percival exclaimed. "Do you suppose for one moment I should
+ask Mr. Lisle?"</p>
+
+<p>Startled at his vehemence, Mrs. Bryant begged pardon, and substituted
+"the gentleman" for "Mr. Lisle."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, no," said Percival. "I prefer to manage my own affairs in my
+own way. If I live I will not apply to any one. But if I must go to my
+grave owing five or six weeks' rent to one or other of you, I assure you
+most solemnly, Mrs. Bryant, that I will owe it to my friend."</p>
+
+<p>The storm had subsided into subdued grumblings. Their purport was,
+apparently, that Mrs. Bryant liked lodgers who paid regular, and as for
+those who didn't, they would have to leave, and she wished them to know
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that mean that you wish me to go?" the young man demanded with the
+readiness which was too much for his landlady. "I'll go to-night if you
+like. Do you wish it?" There was an air of such promptitude about him as
+he spoke that Mrs. Bryant half expected to see him vanish then and
+there. She had by no means made up her mind that she did wish to lose a
+lodger who had been so entirely satisfactory up to that time. And she
+preferred to keep her debtor within reach; so she drew back a little and
+qualified what she had said.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Percival, "just as you please."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant only hoped it wouldn't occur again. The tempest of her
+wrath showed fearful symptoms of dissolving in a shower of tears. "You
+don't know what work I have to make both ends meet, Mr. Thorne," she
+said, "nor how hard it is to get one's own, let alone keeping it. I do
+assure you, Mr. Thorne, me and Lydia might go in silks every day of our
+lives, and needn't so much as soil our fingers with the work of the
+house, if we had all we rightly should have. But there are folks who
+call themselves honest who don't think any harm of taking a widow
+woman's rooms and getting behindhand with the rent, running up an
+account for milk and vegetables and the like by the week together; and
+there's the bell ringing all day, as you may say, with the bills coming
+in, and one's almost driven out of one's wits with the worry of it all,
+let alone the loss, which is hard to bear. Oh, I do hope, Mr. Thorne,
+that it won't occur again!"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't very likely," said Percival, privately thinking that suicide
+would be preferable to an existence in which such interviews with his
+landlady should be of frequent occurrence. Pity, irritation, disgust,
+pride and humiliation made up a state of feeling which was overshadowed
+by a horrible fear that Mrs. Bryant would begin to weep before he could
+get rid of her. He watched her with ever-increasing uneasiness while she
+attempted to give him a receipt for the money he had paid. She began by
+wiping her spectacles, but her hand trembled so much that she let them
+fall, and she, Percival and the candle were all on the floor together,
+assisting one another in the search for them. The rusty cap was
+perilously near the flame more than once, which was a cause of fresh
+anxiety on his part. And when she was once more established at the
+table, writing a word or two and then wiping her eyes, it was
+distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had
+brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table,
+had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at
+least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two
+minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[Pg 673]</a></span> Mrs. Bryant's damp
+pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to
+her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural
+disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at
+last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and
+Percival's heart beat high as he received the completed document.</p>
+
+<p>And then&mdash;Mrs. Bryant laid down the pen, took off her spectacles, shook
+her pocket handkerchief and deliberately burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Percival was in despair. Of course he knew perfectly well that he was
+not a heartless brute, but equally of course he felt that he must be a
+heartless brute as he stood by while Mrs. Bryant wept copiously. Of
+course he begged her to calm herself, and of course a long-drawn sob was
+her only answer. All at once there was a knock at the door. "Come in,"
+said Percival, feeling that matters could not possibly be worse. It
+opened, and Lydia stood on the threshold, staring at the pair in much
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I never!" she said; and turning toward Percival she eyed him
+suspiciously, as if she thought he might have been knocking the old lady
+about. "And pray what may be the meaning of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Bryant isn't quite herself this evening, I am afraid," said
+Percival, feeling that his reply was very feeble. "And we have had a
+little business to settle which was not quite satisfactory."</p>
+
+<p>At the word "business" Lydia stepped forward, and her surprise gave
+place to an expression of half incredulous amusement&mdash;Percival would
+almost have said of delight.</p>
+
+<p>"What! ain't the money all right?" she said. "You don't say so! Well,
+ma, you <i>have</i> been clever this time, haven't you? Oh I suppose you
+thought I didn't know what you were after when you were so careful about
+not bothering me with the accounts? Lor! I knew fast enough. Don't you
+feel proud of yourself for having managed it so well?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant wept. Percival, not having a word to say, preserved a
+dignified silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Come along, ma: I dare say Mr. Thorne has had about enough of this,"
+Lydia went on, coolly examining the paper which lay on the table. She
+arrived at the total. "Oh that's it, is it? Well, I like that, I do!
+Some people are so clever, ain't they? So wonderfully sharp they can't
+trust their own belongings! I do like that! Come along, ma." And Lydia
+seconded her summons with such energetic action that it seemed to
+Percival that she absolutely swept the old lady out of the room, and
+that the wet handkerchief, the rusty black gown and the bugle-sprinkled
+head-dress vanished in a whirlwind, with a sound of shrill laughter on
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment his heart leapt with a sudden sense of relief and freedom,
+but only for a moment. Then he flung himself into his arm-chair, utterly
+dejected and sickened.</p>
+
+<p>Should he be subject to this kind of thing all his life long? If he
+should chance to be ill and unable to work, how could he live for any
+length of time on his paltry savings? And debt would mean <i>this</i>! He
+need not even be ill. He remembered how he broke his arm once when he
+was a lad. Suppose he broke his arm now&mdash;a bit of orange-peel in the
+street might do it&mdash;or suppose he hurt the hand with which he wrote?</p>
+
+<p>And this was the life which he might ask Judith to share with him! She
+might endure Mrs. Bryant's scolding and Lydia's laughter, and pinch and
+save as he was forced to do, and grow weary and careworn and sick at
+heart. No, God forbid! And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;was she not enduring as bad or
+worse in that hateful school?</p>
+
+<p>Oh for his dream! One week of life and love, and then swift exit from a
+hideous world, where Mrs. Bryant and Miss Macgregor and Lydia and all
+his other nightmares might do their worst and fight their hardest in
+their ugly struggle for existence!</p>
+
+<p>Percival had achieved something of a victory in his encounter with his
+landlady. His manner had been calm and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[Pg 674]</a></span> fairly easy, and from first to
+last she had been more conscious of his calmness than Percival was
+himself. She had been silenced, not coaxed and flattered as she often
+was by unfortunate lodgers whose ready money ran short. Indeed, she had
+been defied, and when she recovered herself a little she declared that
+she had never seen any one so stuck up as Mr. Thorne. This was unkind,
+after he had gone down on his knees to look for her spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>But if Percival had conquered, his was but a barren victory. He fancied
+that an unwonted tone of deference crept into his voice when he gave his
+orders. He was afraid of Mrs. Bryant. He faced Lydia bravely, but he
+winced in secret at the recollection of her laughter. He very nearly
+starved himself lest mother or daughter should be able to say, "Mr.
+Thorne might have remembered his debts before he ordered this or that."
+He had paid Lisle's bill at Mr. Robinson's, but he could not forget his
+own, and he walked past the house daily with his head high, feeling
+himself a miserable coward.</p>
+
+<p>There was a draper's shop close to it, and as he went by one day he saw
+a little pony chaise at the door. A girl of twelve or thirteen sat in it
+listlessly holding the reins and looking up and down the street. It was
+a great field-day for the Brenthill volunteers, and their band came
+round a corner not a dozen yards away and suddenly struck up a
+triumphant march. The pony, although as quiet a little creature as you
+could easily find, was startled. If it had been a wooden rocking-horse
+it might not have minded, but any greater sensibility must have received
+a shock. The girl uttered a cry of alarm, but there was no cause for it.
+Percival, who was close at hand, stepped to the pony's head, a lady
+rushed out of the shop, the band went by in a tempest of martial music,
+a crowd of boys and girls filled the roadway and disappeared as quickly
+as they came. It was all over in a minute. Percival, who was coaxing the
+pony as he stood, was warmly thanked.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to thank me for," he said. "That band was enough to
+frighten anything, but the pony seems a gentle little thing."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is," the lady replied. "But you see, the driver was very
+inexperienced, and we really are very much obliged to you, Mr. Thorne."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in blank amazement. Had some one from his former life
+suddenly arisen to claim acquaintance with him? He glanced from her to
+the girl, but recognized neither. "You know me?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled: "You don't know me, I dare say. I am Mrs. Barton. I saw you
+one day when I was just coming away after calling on Miss Lisle." She
+watched the hero of her romance as she spoke. His dark face lighted up
+suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have often heard Miss Lisle speak of you and of your kindness," he
+said. "Do you ever see her now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. She comes to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday
+afternoon.&mdash;We couldn't do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?" The
+girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea she still came to you. Do you know how she gets on at
+Miss Macgregor's?" he asked eagerly. "Is she well? I saw her at church
+one day, and I thought she was pale."</p>
+
+<p>"She says she is well," Mrs. Barton replied. "But I am not very fond of
+Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long." A shopman
+came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins.
+"I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her," she said as with a bow
+and cordial smile she drove off.</p>
+
+<p>It was Monday, and Percival's mind was speedily made up. He would see
+Judith Lisle on Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>Tuesday was a remarkably long day, but Wednesday came at last, and he
+obtained permission to leave the office earlier than usual. He knew the
+street in which Mrs. Barton lived, and had taken some trouble to
+ascertain the number, so that he could stroll to and fro at a safe
+distance, commanding a view of the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[Pg 675]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He had time to study the contents of a milliner's window: it was the
+only shop near at hand, and even that pretended not to be a shop, but
+rather a private house, where some one had accidentally left a bonnet or
+two, a few sprays of artificial flowers and an old lady's cap in the
+front room. He had abundant leisure to watch No. 51 taking in a supply
+of coals, and No. 63 sending away a piano. He sauntered to and fro so
+long, with a careless assumption of unconsciousness how time was
+passing, that a stupid young policeman perceived that he was not an
+ordinary passer-by. Astonished and delighted at his own penetration, he
+began to saunter and watch him, trying to make out which house he
+intended to favor with a midnight visit. Percival saw quite a procession
+of babies in perambulators being wheeled home by their nurses after
+their afternoon airing, and he discovered that the nurse at No. 57 had a
+flirtation with a soldier. But at last the door of No. 69 opened, a slim
+figure came down the steps, and he started to meet it, leisurely, but
+with a sudden decision and purpose in his walk. The young policeman saw
+the meeting: the whole affair became clear to him&mdash;why, he had done that
+sort of thing himself&mdash;and he hurried off rather indignantly, feeling
+that he had wasted his time, and that the supposed burglar had not
+behaved at all handsomely.</p>
+
+<p>And Percival went forward and held out his hand to Judith, but found
+that even the most commonplace greeting stuck in his throat somehow. She
+looked quickly up at him, but she too was silent, and he walked a few
+steps by her side before he said, "I did not know what day you were
+going away."</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the conversation followed in a swift interchange of question
+and reply, as if to make up for that pause.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I thought I should be sure to have a chance of saying
+good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"And I was out. I was very sorry when I came home and found that you
+were gone. But since we have met again, it doesn't matter now, does it?"
+he said with a smile. "How do you get on at Miss Macgregor's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well," she answered. "It will do for the present."</p>
+
+<p>"And Miss Crawford?"</p>
+
+<p>"She will not see me nor hear from me. She is ill and low-spirited, and
+Mrs. Barton tells me that a niece has come to look after her."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that rather a good thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: I don't like it. I saw one or two of those nieces&mdash;there are seven
+of them&mdash;great vulgar, managing women. I can't bear to think of my dear
+little Miss Crawford being bullied and nursed by Miss Price. She
+couldn't endure them, I know, only she was so fond of their mother."</p>
+
+<p>Percival changed the subject: "So you go to Mrs. Barton's still? I
+didn't know that till last Monday."</p>
+
+<p>"When you rescued Janie from imminent peril. Oh, I have heard," said
+Judith with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Please to describe me as risking my own life in the act. It would be a
+pity not to make me heroic while you are about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Janie would readily believe it. She measures her danger by her terror,
+which was great. But she is a dear, good child, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to go there every week!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Then you are not happy at Miss Macgregor's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not very. But it might be much worse. And I am mercenary enough
+to think about the money I earn at Mrs. Barton's," said Judith. "I don't
+mind telling you now that Bertie left two or three little bills unpaid
+when he went away, and I was very anxious about them. But, luckily, they
+were small."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind telling me now. Are they paid, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I have not heard of any more."</p>
+
+<p>"You paid them out of your earnings?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. You understand me, don't you, Mr. Thorne? Bertie and I were
+together then, and I could not take Emmeline's money to pay our debts."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"And I had saved a little. It is all right now, since they are all paid.
+I fancied there would be some more to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[Pg 676]</a></span> come in, but it seems not, so I
+have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich."</p>
+
+<p>It struck Percival that Judith had managed better than he had. "Do you
+ever hear from him?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Mr. Nash has forgiven them."</p>
+
+<p>"Already?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith nodded: "He has, though I thought he never would. Bertie
+understood him better."</p>
+
+<p>(The truth was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of
+purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was
+anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And
+Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on
+his own level.)</p>
+
+<p>"He has forgiven them," Percival repeated with a smile. "Well, Bertie is
+a lucky fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"So is my father lucky, if that is luck."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He has written to me and to my aunt Lisle&mdash;at Rookleigh, you know.
+He has taken another name, and it seems he is getting on and making
+money: <i>he</i> wanted to send me some too. And my aunt is angry with me
+because I would not go to her. She has given me two months to make up my
+mind in."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will not go?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot leave Brenthill," said Judith. "She is more than half inclined
+to forgive Bertie too. So I am alone; and yet I am right." She uttered
+the last words with lingering sadness.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," Percival answered. They were walking slowly through a quiet
+back street, with a blank wall on one side. "Still, it is hard," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>There was something so simple and tender in his tone that Judith looked
+up and met his eyes. She might have read his words in them even if he
+had not spoken. "Don't pity me, Mr. Thorne," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because&mdash;I hardly know why. I can't stand it when any one is kind
+to me, or sorry for me, sometimes at Mrs. Barton's. I don't know how to
+bear it. But it does not matter much, for I get braver and braver when
+people are hard and cold. I really don't mind that half as much as you
+would think, so you see you needn't pity me. In fact, you mustn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I think I must," said Percival. "More than before."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," she answered, hurriedly. "Don't say it, don't look it, don't
+even let me think you do it in your heart. Tell me about yourself. You
+listen to me, you ask about me, but you say nothing of what you are
+doing."</p>
+
+<p>"Working." There was a moment's hesitation. "And dreaming," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"But you have been ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I."</p>
+
+<p>"You have not been ill? Then you are ill. What makes you so pale?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed: "Am I pale?"</p>
+
+<p>"And you look tired."</p>
+
+<p>"My work is wearisome sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"More so than it was?" she questioned anxiously. "You used not to look
+so tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think that a wearisome thing must grow more wearisome merely
+by going on?"</p>
+
+<p>"But is that all? Isn't there anything else the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps there is," he allowed. "There are little worries of course, but
+shall I tell you what is the great thing that is the matter with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you will."</p>
+
+<p>"I miss you, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>The color spread over her face like a rosy dawn. Her eyes were fixed on
+the pavement, and yet they looked as if they caught a glimpse of Eden.
+But Percival could not see that. "You miss me?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." He had forgotten his hesitation and despair. He had outstripped
+them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a
+glad sense of victory and freedom. "Must I miss you always?" he said.
+"Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome
+then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long
+to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to
+offer you? But will you come?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[Pg 677]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him: "Do you really want me, or is it that you are
+sorry for me and want to help me? Are you sure it isn't that? We Lisles
+have done you harm enough: I won't do you a worse wrong still."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do me the worst wrong of all if you let such fears and fancies
+stand between you and me," said Percival. "Do you not know that I love
+you? You must decide as your own heart tells you. But don't doubt me."</p>
+
+<p>She laid her hand lightly on his arm: "Forgive me, Percival."</p>
+
+<p>And so those two passed together into the Eden which she had seen.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.</h3>
+
+<h3>HOW THE SUN ROSE IN GLADNESS, AND SET IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.</h3>
+
+<p>The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had
+dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant
+beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The
+preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and
+cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of
+blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the
+clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds
+were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a
+headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to
+herself, "Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!"</p>
+
+<p>She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been
+flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless,
+joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the
+sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a
+glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last
+one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with
+her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and
+knocked with might and main at her brother's door: "Walter! Walter!
+wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn't rain! It is a
+<i>lovely</i> morning! Oh, Walter!"</p>
+
+<p>Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half
+after three, and was aware of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to
+discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields.
+The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom,
+made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was,
+added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the
+effect that it was a fine day.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he
+inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.</p>
+
+<p>Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and
+about six miles from Latimer's Court. Sissy Langton had said one day
+that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it.
+Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and
+vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This
+Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was
+nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous
+afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council
+composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent
+to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most
+extraordinary manner since luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late
+that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the
+barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it
+underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger
+brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the
+village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and
+much laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"It will rain," said Walter: "it will certainly rain. I thought it was
+very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[Pg 678]</a></span> now. We must just wait
+and see what happens."</p>
+
+<p>And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day
+in a thousand, a very queen of days.</p>
+
+<p>The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the
+quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and
+laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton,
+and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she
+had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might
+have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not
+have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant,
+though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were
+intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above
+the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of
+Fothergill's head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so
+frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the
+captain ought to be shot.</p>
+
+<p>Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it,
+close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the
+Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them
+as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered
+shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of
+old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet
+fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the
+very heart of summer-time.</p>
+
+<p>"A place to recollect and dream of on a November day," said Fothergill.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't talk of November now! I hate it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want November, I assure you," he replied. "Why cannot this last
+for ever?"</p>
+
+<p>"The weather?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that
+it was a fine day?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, the place too?" said Sissy. "It is beautiful, but I think you
+would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which
+seemed to draw hers to meet them. "Try me and see which will be tired
+first." And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: "Couldn't
+you be content with Ashendale?"</p>
+
+<p>"For always? I don't think I could&mdash;not for all my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find," said Fothergill. "And
+how charming it must be!"</p>
+
+<p>"If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not <i>one</i>! Won't you hope we may
+both find it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
+hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
+Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
+his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
+himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
+curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
+and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
+affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
+To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
+went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
+old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
+when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
+little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
+The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
+were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
+Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
+unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
+and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
+readiness to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[Pg 679]</a></span> help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
+to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
+was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
+hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
+nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
+People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
+into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
+unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
+as an afterthought about the whole affair.</p>
+
+<p>Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
+For&mdash;thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
+clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself&mdash;it was not
+possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
+been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll&mdash;no! Therefore she used the one
+cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He
+remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own,
+and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the
+thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy's part,
+till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the
+existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean?
+It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield,
+clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness&mdash;seeking safety
+in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power,
+and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect
+him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss
+Langton's equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was
+a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)</p>
+
+<p>When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little
+Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of
+wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who
+had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.</p>
+
+<p>A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy's eye. "Why, Edie, what have
+you got there?" she said. "Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did
+you find it?"</p>
+
+<p>"In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at
+the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I get you some?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: I'll get some," exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy's feet.
+"Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy arched her brows.</p>
+
+<p>"She has so much more confidence in me," Archie explained. "Please give
+me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it's like."</p>
+
+<p>"My confidence is rather misplaced, I'm afraid, if you don't know what
+you are going to look for."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct
+which will take me straight to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! It hasn't any smell, you know," said Sissy with perfect
+gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how cruel!" said Carroll, "withering up my delicate feelings with
+thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d'ye-call-it&mdash;sympathy&mdash;will
+tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But
+I'll have that leaf all the same, please."</p>
+
+<p>"And it might be as well to know where to look for it."</p>
+
+<p>"We found it in the ruins&mdash;in the wall of the refectory," said
+Hardwicke.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, "Oh, I know! That's where
+the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
+the time."</p>
+
+<p>"What a bore!" some one suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
+bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
+might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
+alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
+broken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[Pg 680]</a></span> bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
+the full benefit of your opinions."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
+"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
+picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
+examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
+you call maiden-hair?"</p>
+
+<p>"What should you call it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden&mdash;hair, indeed! Why, I can see
+some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
+this? <i>You</i> can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
+the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
+ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
+and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine&mdash;oh, don't move your
+head!&mdash;and looks like a golden glory&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
+Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think&mdash;remembering that
+I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
+beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
+voyage&mdash;don't you think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
+of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."</p>
+
+<p>"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
+with it all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."</p>
+
+<p>"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
+do with mine if you gave it me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I could tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, then."</p>
+
+<p>"You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you
+would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look
+business-like. Besides, you couldn't possibly forget. And a few months
+hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady&mdash;I don't
+know where you are going&mdash;and you would find the little packet in your
+desk, and wonder who gave it to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the
+turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and
+sat up again. "There <i>was</i> a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for
+the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or
+three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help
+me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have
+such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and
+I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself,
+'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm
+sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I
+consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I
+can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have
+sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd
+had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do
+you always mention it when you ask&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought <i>you</i> would take it as it was
+meant&mdash;as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose
+it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I <i>couldn't</i>
+tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much
+higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up
+with anybody else in my mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair
+too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[Pg 681]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but
+you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll
+look for this green stuff."</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill smiled, but Latimer's handsome face flushed. He had made a
+dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing
+pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty,
+head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer's Court and
+Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
+Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
+they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
+strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
+knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
+child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
+especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
+who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
+held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
+even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
+ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
+what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
+it <i>because</i> it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
+as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
+sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
+of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
+bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
+full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
+he.</p>
+
+<p>But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
+had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
+danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
+not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
+Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
+spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
+refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
+what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
+hadn't had enough to eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
+sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
+smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
+be the chapel."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
+never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
+into this place."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
+they were just alike?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here
+if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And,
+laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when
+she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side
+directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this
+morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place
+better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh,
+Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy:
+"it would stay up there a good long time."</p>
+
+<p>There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked
+down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his
+eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a
+great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he
+called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face,
+her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682">[Pg 682]</a></span> laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched
+hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which
+slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself
+with an effort. There was blank space before him&mdash;and what below?</p>
+
+<p>Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid,
+and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a
+minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass&mdash;a yard away from that
+which he dared not touch&mdash;saying pitifully, "Miss Langton! Oh, won't you
+speak to me, Miss Langton?"</p>
+
+<p>He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken
+doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and
+the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made
+Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had
+heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank
+bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin's
+aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the
+unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes
+were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw
+his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her&mdash;O God!&mdash;or only
+on her dress?</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill's features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the
+horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a
+moment's hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf,
+resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the
+tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face.
+Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Water!" said Fothergill. "Where's Anderson?" (Anderson was the young
+doctor.) "Not here?"</p>
+
+<p>"He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn," cried Edith suddenly: "I saw
+him." Hardwicke darted off.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse him! Playing the fool when he's wanted more than he ever will be
+again.&mdash;Mrs. Latimer!"</p>
+
+<p>Edith rushed away to find her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his
+disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on
+which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the
+staring group, he stopped aghast. "Good God!" he panted, "what has
+happened?"</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.</p>
+
+<p>Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: "What has
+happened?"</p>
+
+<p>A hoarse voice spoke from the background: "She fell." Archie Carroll had
+risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed
+to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill's eyes, and with a
+half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Fothergill! is she much hurt?" cried Latimer. "Is it serious?"</p>
+
+<p>The other did not look up. "I cannot tell," he said, "but I believe she
+is killed."</p>
+
+<p>Latimer uttered a cry: "No! no! For God's sake don't say that! It can't
+be!"</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't possible!" said Walter. But his glance measured the height of
+the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words
+died on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Anderson never coming?" said some one else. Another messenger
+hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him.
+All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away
+with a movement as of horror.</p>
+
+<p>The last runner returned: "Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly:
+I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs.
+Latimer."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0274-1.jpg" width="500" height="307" alt="&quot;FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?&quot;&mdash;Page 682." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?&quot;&mdash;Page 682.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. "Here is
+mamma," she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings,
+and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only
+answer, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683">[Pg 683]</a></span> the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping
+head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all
+arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first
+thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they
+were arranging this Edith felt two hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684">[Pg 684]</a></span> pressed lightly on her
+shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" he said: "do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her
+to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for
+Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs.
+Middleton. You understand?" he added, for the child was looking at him
+with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if anything you and I can do will save her&mdash;will she, Edith?" and
+Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who
+saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the
+gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one&mdash;a lady's horse, a
+chestnut&mdash;and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek
+for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum
+go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his
+terrible errand.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was
+helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet
+secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him.
+Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she
+could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short
+distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering
+group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll
+lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy,
+rose darkly above him&mdash;too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He
+sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the
+turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting
+there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one
+hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the
+crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass,
+every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The
+breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot
+stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there
+was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite.
+Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel
+stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him
+from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing
+by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain
+did he leave the spot.</p>
+
+<p>By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by,
+her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at
+Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the
+innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would
+not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by
+conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be
+called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter
+felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he
+had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he
+had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that
+she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow
+of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the
+path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin.
+Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was
+obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How
+is she?" he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more
+strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said
+with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime
+if you lived a thousand years."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685">[Pg 685]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have
+happened if I had been there?"</p>
+
+<p>"They said that wall&mdash;" the young fellow began.</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole
+place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."</p>
+
+<p>Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at
+the rectory. No more of this."</p>
+
+<p>Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill
+retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the
+shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where
+Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious.
+From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a
+senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she
+was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope&mdash;a
+hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed
+it.</p>
+
+<p>His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl&mdash;cared for
+her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring&mdash;and he
+felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment
+doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but
+Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over.
+Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who
+robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer
+no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury
+was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a
+bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter
+who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would
+hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best
+chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or
+that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing,
+but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been
+before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been
+something higher and missed it. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that
+inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had
+moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little
+hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was
+certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she
+said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot
+stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused,
+protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't
+know&mdash;" His voice suddenly gave way.</p>
+
+<p>"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood,
+and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
+you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
+Hardwicke has gone for her."</p>
+
+<p>This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
+with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
+of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
+and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
+hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
+turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.</p>
+
+<p>He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
+sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
+back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
+horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
+eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
+nightmare. Of course he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686">[Pg 686]</a></span> get over it, like his cousin, though,
+unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
+their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
+life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
+the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
+terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
+the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
+Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
+should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
+a hopeless hell.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L.</h3>
+
+<h3>THROUGH THE NIGHT.</h3>
+
+<p>The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon
+the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll
+raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring
+out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly
+to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the
+doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and
+then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then
+at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When
+they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had
+been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on
+his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the
+faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs. Middleton's heart as
+she passed him. To Archie, just then, the whole universe was <i>his</i>
+agony, and there was no room for more.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later came Dr. Grey's brougham. The doctor, as he jumped
+out, told his man to wait. He went from the gate to the house more
+hurriedly than Mrs. Middleton, and his anxiety was more marked, but he
+found time to look round as he went with keen eyes, which rested for an
+instant on the young sailor, though he lay half hidden by the bushes.
+He too vanished, as the others had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>About an hour later he came out again, and Fothergill followed him. The
+doctor started when he encountered his eager eyes. Fothergill demanded
+his opinion. He began some of the usual speeches in which men wrap up
+the ghastly word "death" in such disguise that it can hardly be
+recognized.</p>
+
+<p>The soldier cut him short: "Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Danger&mdash;yes," said Fothergill, "but is there any hope? I am not a
+fool&mdash;I sha'n't go in and scare the women: is there any hope?"</p>
+
+<p>The answer was written on the doctor's face. He had known Sissy Langton
+from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his
+head, and murmured something about "even if there were no other injury,
+the spine&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with
+an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with
+which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear
+sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's
+will."</p>
+
+<p>"God's will! God's will! Are you sure it isn't the devil's?" said
+Fothergill. "It seems more like it. If you think it is God's will, you
+may persuade yourself it's yours, for aught I know. But I'm not such a
+damned hypocrite as to make believe it's mine."</p>
+
+<p>And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face
+and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the
+farmhouse.</p>
+
+<p>So Sissy's doom was spoken&mdash;to linger a few hours, more or less, in
+helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously,
+was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much
+to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old
+lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, "I fell."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687">[Pg 687]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my darling, I know," Aunt Harriet said.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I go home?" Sissy asked after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, you must not think of it: you mustn't ask to go home."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought not," said Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton asked her if she felt much pain.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said, and closed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Henry Hardwicke sent in a message, and the old lady came out to
+speak to him. He was standing by an open casement in the passage,
+looking out at the sunset through the orchard boughs. "What is it,
+Harry?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He started and turned round: "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Middleton, but I
+thought in case you wanted to send any telegrams&mdash;if&mdash;if&mdash;I mean I
+thought you might want to send some, and there is not very much time."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand to her head. "I ought to, oughtn't I?" she said. "Who
+should be sent for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hammond?" Hardwicke questioned doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>Something like relief or pleasure lighted her sad eyes: "Yes, yes! send
+for Godfrey Hammond. He will come." She was about to leave him, but the
+young fellow stepped forward: "Mrs. Middleton"&mdash;was it the clear red
+light from the window that suddenly flushed his face?&mdash;"Mrs. Middleton,
+shall I send for Mr. Percival Thorne?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, looking strangely at him: something in his voice surprised
+her. "For Percival?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"May I? I think he ought to come." The hot color was burning on his
+cheeks. What right had he to betray the secret which he believed he had
+discovered? And yet could he stand by and not speak for her when she had
+so little time in which to speak for herself?</p>
+
+<p>"Is it for his sake," said Mrs. Middleton, "or is it that you think&mdash;?
+Well, let it be so: send for Percival. Yes," she added, "perhaps I have
+misunderstood. Yes, send at once for Percival."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go," said Harry, hurrying down the passage. "The message shall be
+sent off at once. I'll take it to Fordborough."</p>
+
+<p>"Must you go yourself?" Mrs. Middleton raised her voice a little as he
+moved away.</p>
+
+<p>"No: let me go," said Captain Fothergill, turning the farther corner: "I
+am going to Fordborough. What is it? I will take it. Mrs. Middleton, you
+will let me be your messenger?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good," she said.&mdash;"Harry, you will write&mdash;I can't. Oh, I
+must go back." And she vanished, leaving the two men face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"I've no telegraph-forms," said Harry after a pause. "If you would take
+the paper to my father, he will send the messages."</p>
+
+<p>Fothergill nodded silently, and went out to make ready for his journey.
+Hardwicke followed him, and stood in the porch pencilling on the back of
+an old letter. When Fothergill had given his orders he walked up to
+Carroll, touched the lad's shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and
+stood away. "Come," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Archie raised himself from the ground and stumbled to his feet: "Come?
+where?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Fordborough."</p>
+
+<p>The boy started and stepped back. He looked at the farmhouse, he looked
+at his cousin. "I'll come afterward," he faltered.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" said Fothergill. "I'm going now, and of course you go with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>Archie shrank away, keeping his eyes fixed, as if in a kind of
+fascination, on his cousin's terrible eyes. The idea of going back alone
+with Raymond was awful to him. "No, I can't come, Ray&mdash;indeed I can't,"
+he said. "I'll walk: I'd much rather&mdash;I would indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?" said Fothergill. "You are doing no good here. Do you know I
+have a message to take? I can't be kept waiting. Don't be a fool," he
+said in a lower but not less imperative voice.</p>
+
+<p>Archie glanced despairingly round. Hardwicke came forward with the paper
+in his outstretched hand: "Leave him here, Captain Fothergill. I dare<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688">[Pg 688]</a></span>
+say I shall go to the inn in the village, and he may go with me. He can
+take you the earliest news to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>Archie looked breathlessly from one to the other. "As you please," said
+Fothergill, and strode off without another word.</p>
+
+<p>The boy tried to say something in the way of thanks. "Oh, it's nothing,"
+Hardwicke replied. "You won't care what sort of quarters they may turn
+out to be, I know." And he went back to the house with a little shrug of
+his shoulders at the idea of having young Carroll tied to him in this
+fashion. He did not want the boy, but Hardwicke could never help
+sacrificing himself.</p>
+
+<p>So Archie went to the gate and watched his cousin ride away, a slim
+black figure on his black horse against the burning sky. Fothergill
+never turned his head. Where was the use of looking back? He was intent
+only on his errand, and when that piece of paper should have been
+delivered into Mr. Hardwicke's hands the last link between Sissy Langton
+and himself would be broken. There would be no further service to
+render. Fothergill did not know that the message he carried was to
+summon his rival, but it would have made no difference in his feelings
+if he had. Nothing made any difference now.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton sat by Sissy's bedside in the clear evening light. Harry
+Hardwicke's words haunted her: why did he think that Sissy wanted
+Percival? They had parted a year ago, and she had believed that Sissy
+was cured of her liking for him. It was Sissy who had sent him away, and
+she had been brighter and gayer of late: indeed, Mrs. Middleton had
+fancied that Walter Latimer&mdash; Well, that was over, but if Sissy cared
+for Percival&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A pair of widely-opened eyes were fixed on her: "Am I going to die, Aunt
+Harriet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope not. Oh, my darling, I pray that you may live."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I am going to die. Will it be very soon? Would there be time to
+send&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We will send for anything or any one you want. Do you feel worse, dear?
+Time to send for whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"For Percival."</p>
+
+<p>"Harry Hardwicke has sent for him already. Perhaps he has the message by
+now: it is an hour and a half since the messenger went."</p>
+
+<p>"When will he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, darling."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then the faint voice came again: "What time?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton went to the door and called softly to Hardwicke. He had
+been looking in Bradshaw, and she returned directly: "Percival will come
+by the express to-night. He will be at Fordborough by the quarter-past
+nine train, and Harry will meet him and bring him over at once&mdash;by ten
+o'clock, he says, or a few minutes later."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy's brows contracted for a moment: she was calculating the time.
+"What is it now?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty minutes to eight."</p>
+
+<p>Fourteen hours and a half! The whole night between herself and Percival!
+The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be
+high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to
+Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf,
+where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him,
+to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and
+Percival? "Aunt Harriet," she said, "shall I live till then? I want to
+speak to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my darling&mdash;indeed you will. Don't talk so: you will break my
+heart. Perhaps God will spare you."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Sissy&mdash;"no."</p>
+
+<p>Between eight and nine Hardwicke was summoned again. Mrs. Latimer wanted
+some one to go to Latimer's Court, to take the latest news and to say
+that it was impossible she could return that night. "You see they went
+away before Dr. Grey came," she said. "I have written a little note. Can
+you find me a messenger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will either find one or I will go myself," he replied.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689">[Pg 689]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't mean to trouble you. And wait a moment, for Mrs. Middleton
+wants him to go on to her house. She will come and speak to you when I
+go back to the poor girl."</p>
+
+<p>"How is Miss Langton?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hardly know. I think she is wandering a little: she talked just now
+about some embroidery she has been doing&mdash;asked for it, in fact."</p>
+
+<p>"When Dr. Grey was obliged to go he didn't think there would be any
+change before he came back, surely?" said Hardwicke anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But she can't know what she is saying, can she? Poor girl! she will
+never do another stitch." Mrs. Latimer fairly broke down. The unfinished
+embroidery which never could be finished brought the truth home to her.
+It is hard to realize that a life with its interlacing roots and fibres
+is broken off short.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Latimer, don't! don't!" Harry exclaimed, aghast at her tears.
+"For dear Mrs. Middleton's sake!" He rushed away, and returned with
+wine. "If you give way what will become of us?"</p>
+
+<p>She was better in a few minutes, and able to go back, while Harry waited
+in quiet confidence for Mrs. Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of
+helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but
+there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a
+supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as
+she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand
+shook, but her eyes met his bravely and her lips were firm.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have some wine too," he said, pouring it out as a matter of
+course. "You can drink it while you tell me what I am to do."</p>
+
+<p>She took the glass with a slight inclination of her head, and explained
+that she wanted an old servant who had been Sissy's nurse when she was a
+little child. "Mrs. Latimer is very kind," she said, "but Sissy will
+like her own people best. And Sarah would be broken-hearted&mdash;" She
+paused. "Here is a list of things that I wish her to bring."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Latimer thought Miss Langton was not quite herself," he said
+inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean because she talked of her work? Oh, I don't think so. She
+answers quite sensibly&mdash;indeed, she speaks quite clearly. That was the
+only thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Then is it down in the list, this needlework? Or where is it to be
+found?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will bring it?" said Mrs. Middleton. "Well, perhaps&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If she should ask again," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"True. Yes, yes, bring it." She told him where to find the little case.
+"The fancy may haunt her. How am I to thank you, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," he said. "Only let me do what I can."</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly eleven before Hardwicke had accomplished his double errand
+and returned with Sarah. The stars were out, the ruins of the priory
+rose in great black masses against the sky, the farmhouse windows
+beneath the overhanging eaves were like bright eyes gazing out into the
+night. Dr. Grey had come back in the interval, and had seen his patient.
+There was nothing new to say, and nothing to be done, except to make the
+path to the grave as little painful as might be. He was taking a nap in
+Mr. Greenwell's arm-chair when the young man came in, but woke up clear
+and alert in a moment. "Ah, you have come?" he said, recognizing the old
+servant. "That's well: you'll save your mistress a little. Only, mind,
+we mustn't have any crying. If there is anything of that sort you will
+do more harm than good."</p>
+
+<p>Sarah deigned no reply, but passed on. Mrs. Middleton came out to meet
+them. Sissy had not spoken. She lay with her eyes shut, and moaned now
+and then. "Are you going home, Harry?" said the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Only into the village: I've got a room at the Latimer Arms. It isn't
+two minutes' walk from here, so I can be fetched directly if I'm
+wanted."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will be sure to meet the train?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will: you may depend upon me. But I shall come here first."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690">[Pg 690]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, then. Go and get some rest."</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke went off to look for Archie Carroll. He found him in the
+square flagged hall, sitting on the corner of a window-seat, with his
+head leaning against the frame, among Mrs. Greenwell's geraniums. "Come
+along, old fellow," said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>There was only a glimmering candle, and the hall was very dim. Archie
+got up submissively and groped his way after his guide. "Where are we
+going?" he asked as the door was opened.</p>
+
+<p>"To a little public-house close by. We couldn't ask the Greenwells to
+take us in."</p>
+
+<p>As they went out into the road the priory rose up suddenly on the left
+and towered awfully above them. Carroll shuddered, drew closer to his
+companion and kept his eyes fixed on the ground. "I feel as if I were
+the ghost of myself, and those were the ghosts of the ruins," he said as
+he hurried past.</p>
+
+<p>The flight of fancy was altogether beyond Hardwicke: "You've been
+sitting alone and thinking. There has been nothing for you to do, and I
+couldn't help leaving you. Here we are."</p>
+
+<p>They turned into the little sanded parlor of the ale-house. Hardwicke
+had looked in previously and given his orders, and supper was laid ready
+for them. He sat down and began to help himself, but Archie at first
+refused to eat.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" said Harry. "You have had nothing since the beginning of the
+day. We must not break down, any of us." And with a little persuasion he
+prevailed, and saw the lad make a tolerable supper and drink some brandy
+and water afterward. "Vile brandy!" said Hardwicke as he set his tumbler
+down. Archie was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing at him.
+His eyes were heavy and swollen, and there were purple shadows below
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hardwicke," he said, "you've been very good to me. Do you think it
+was my fault?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I think what was your fault?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>This!</i>" Archie said&mdash;"to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not if I understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ray said if he had been there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish he had been. But we must not expect old heads on young
+shoulders. How did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"We climbed up on the wall, and she was saying how narrow and broken it
+was, and I picked some of that stuff and called to her, and as she
+looked back&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke groaned. "It was madly imprudent," he said. "But I don't blame
+you. You didn't think. Poor fellow! I only hope you won't think too much
+in future. Come, it's time for bed."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to sleep," Archie answered: "I can't sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Hardwicke. "But I must try and get a little rest. They
+had only one room for us, so if you can't sleep you'll keep quiet and
+let a fellow see what he can do in that line. And you may call me in the
+morning if I don't wake. But don't worry yourself, for I shall."</p>
+
+<p>"What time?" said Carroll.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, from five to six&mdash;not later than six."</p>
+
+<p>But in half an hour it was Carroll who lay worn out and sleeping
+soundly, and Hardwicke who was counting the slow minutes of that
+intolerable night.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah had been indignant that Dr. Grey should tell her not to cry. But
+when Sissy looked up with a gentle smile of recognition, and instead of
+calling her by her name said "Nurse," as she used to say in old times,
+the good woman was very near it indeed, and was obliged to go away to
+the window to try to swallow the lump that rose up in her throat and
+almost choked her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton sat by her darling's bedside. She had placed the little
+work-case in full view, and presently Sissy noticed it and would have it
+opened. The half-finished strip of embroidery was laid within easy reach
+of hand and eye. She smiled, but was not satisfied. "The case," she
+said. Her fingers strayed feebly among the little odds and ends which it
+contained, and closed over something which she kept.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a long silence, unbroken till Sissy was thirsty and
+wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691">[Pg 691]</a></span> something to drink. "What time?" she said when she had finished.</p>
+
+<p>"Half-past twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"It's very dark."</p>
+
+<p>"We will have another candle," said Aunt Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>"No: the candle only makes me see how dark it is all round."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was silence, but not so long this time. And again Sissy
+broke it: "Aunt Harriet, he is coming now."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, darling, he is coming."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if I saw the train, with red lights in front, coming through
+the night&mdash;always coming, but never any nearer."</p>
+
+<p>"But it <i>is</i> nearer every minute. Percival is nearer now than when you
+spoke."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy said "Yes," and was quiet again till between one and two. Then
+Mrs. Middleton perceived that her eyes were open. "What is it, dear
+child?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The night is so long!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy," said Aunt Harriet softly, "I want you to listen to me. A year
+ago, when Godfrey died and I talked about the money that I hoped to
+leave you one day, you told me what you should like me to do with it
+instead, because you had enough and you thought it was not fair. I
+didn't quite understand then, and I would not promise. Do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy, shall I promise now? I've been thinking about it, and I've no
+wish on earth but to make you happy. Will it make you happier if I
+promise now that it shall be as you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Sissy with eager eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I do promise: all that is mine to leave he shall have."</p>
+
+<p>Sissy answered with a smile. "Kiss me," she said. And so the promise was
+sealed. After that the worst of the night seemed somehow to be over.
+Sissy slept a little, and Aunt Harriet nodded once or twice in the
+easy-chair. Starting into wakefulness after one of these moments, she
+saw the outline of the window faintly defined in gray, and thanked God
+that the dawn had come.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI.</h3>
+
+<h3>BY THE EXPRESS.</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Hardwicke, not knowing Percival Thorne's precise address, had
+telegraphed to Godfrey Hammond, begging him to forward the message
+without delay. A couple of days earlier Hammond had suddenly taken it
+into his head that he was tired of being in town and would go away
+somewhere. In a sort of whimsical amusement at his own mood he decided
+that the Land's End ought to suit a misanthrope, and promptly took a
+ticket for Penzance as a considerable step in the right direction.</p>
+
+<p>It made no difference to Percival, for Hammond had left full directions
+with a trustworthy servant in case any letters should come for Mr.
+Thorne, and the man sent the message on to Brenthill at once. But it
+made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the
+telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard
+Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds
+screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks far below.</p>
+
+<p>But with Percival there was no delay. The message found him in Bellevue
+street, though he did not return there immediately after his parting
+with Judith. He wanted the open air, the sky overhead, movement and
+liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the
+nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect
+was not very beautiful. The trees were few&mdash;some cropped willows by a
+mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And
+the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful
+to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet
+there was grass, such as it was, and daisies sprinkled here and there,
+and soft cloud-shadows gliding over it. Percival's unreal and fantastic
+dream had perished suddenly when Judith put her hand in his. Now, as he
+walked across these meadows, he saw a new vision, that dream of noble,
+simple poverty, which, if it could but be realized, would be the fairest
+of all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692">[Pg 692]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he returned from his walk, and came once more to the well-known
+street which he was learning to call "home," he was so much calmer that
+he thought he was quite himself again. Not the languid, hopeless self
+who had lived there once, but a self young, vigorous, elate, rejoicing
+in the present and looking confidently toward the future.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">This I can tell,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">That all will go well,</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air&mdash;as if he had
+but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of
+No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away
+from it. Hurrying in with eager eyes and his face bright with unspoken
+joy, Percival nearly ran up against Mrs. Bryant and Emma, whose heads
+were close together over the address on the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor! Mr. Thorne, how you startled me! It's for you," said his landlady.</p>
+
+<p>He went up the stairs two at a time, with his message in his hand. Here
+was some good news&mdash;not for one moment did he dream it could be other
+than good news&mdash;come to crown this day, already the whitest of his life.
+He tore the paper open and read it by the red sunset light, hotly
+reflected from a wilderness of tiles.</p>
+
+<p>He read it twice&mdash;thrice&mdash;caught at the window-frame to steady himself,
+and stood staring vaguely at the smoke which curled upward from a
+neighboring chimney. He was stunned. The words seemed to have a meaning
+and no meaning. "This is not how people receive news of death, surely?"
+he thought. "I suppose I am in my right senses, or is it a dream?"</p>
+
+<p>He made a strong effort to regain his self-command, but all certainties
+eluded him. This was not the first time that he had taken up a telegram
+and believed that he read the tidings of Sissy's death. He had
+misunderstood it now as then. It could not be. But why could he not
+wake?</p>
+
+<p>"Ashendale." Yes, he remembered Ashendale. He had ridden past the ruins
+the last day he ever rode with Sissy, the day that Horace came home. It
+belonged to the Latimers&mdash;to Walter Latimer. And Sissy was dying at
+Ashendale!</p>
+
+<p>All at once he knew that it was no dream. But the keen edge of pain
+awoke him to the thought of what he had to do, and sent him to hunt
+among a heap of papers for a time-table. He drew a long breath. The
+express started at 10.5, and it was now but twenty minutes past eight.</p>
+
+<p>He caught up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom
+left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting
+into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned
+on a matter of life and death. "Sorry to hear it," said the lawyer as he
+took the reins&mdash;"hope you may find things better than you expect. We
+shall see you again when you come back." And with a nod he rattled down
+the street. Percival stood on the pavement gazing after him, when he
+suddenly remembered that he had no money. "I might have asked him to
+give me my half week's salary," he reflected. "Not that that would have
+paid my fare."</p>
+
+<p>A matter of life and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no
+money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had
+not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go
+to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a
+quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker
+lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short.
+He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind
+when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two to spare,
+and I feel quite rich." He took the first turning toward Miss
+Macgregor's house.</p>
+
+<p>Outside her door he halted for a moment. If they would not let him see
+Judith, how was he to convey his request? He felt in his pocket, found
+the telegram and pencilled below the message, "Sissy Langton was once to
+have been my wife: we parted, and I have never seen her since. I have
+not money enough for my railway-fare: can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693">[Pg 693]</a></span> you help me?" He folded it
+and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>No, he could not see Miss Lisle. She was particularly engaged. "Very
+well," he said: "be so good as to take this note to her, and I will wait
+for the answer." His manner impressed the girl so much that, although
+she had been carefully trained by Miss Macgregor, she cast but one
+hesitating glance at the umbrella-stand before she went on her errand.</p>
+
+<p>Percival waited, eager to be off, yet well assured that it was all right
+since it was in Judith's hands. Presently the servant returned and gave
+him a little packet. The wax of the seal was still warm. He opened it
+where he stood, and by the light of Miss Macgregor's hall-lamp read the
+couple of lines it contained:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I cannot come, but I send you all the money I have. I pray God you
+may be in time. Yours, <span class="smcap">Judith</span>."</p></div>
+
+<p>There were two sovereigns and some silver. He told the girl to thank
+Miss Lisle, and went out into the dusk as the clocks were striking nine.
+Ten minutes brought him to Bellevue street, and rushing up to his room
+he began to put a few things into a little travelling-bag. In his haste
+he neglected to shut the door, and Mrs. Bryant, whose curiosity had been
+excited, came upon him in the midst of this occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"And what may be the meaning of this, Mr. Thorne, if I may make so bold
+as to ask?" she said, eying him doubtfully from the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>Percival explained that he had had bad news and was off by the express.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryant's darkest suspicions were aroused. She said it was a likely
+story.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you gave me the telegram yourself," he answered indifferently
+while he caught up a couple of collars. He was too much absorbed to heed
+either Mrs. Bryant or his packing.</p>
+
+<p>"And who sent it, I should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>Percival made no answer, and she began to grumble about people who had
+money enough to travel all over the country at a minute's notice if they
+liked, and none to pay their debts&mdash;people who made promises by the
+hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside
+them, she'd be bound.</p>
+
+<p>Thus baited, Percival at last turned angrily upon her, but before he
+could utter a word another voice interposed: "What are you always
+worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr.
+Thorne finish his packing. He'll pay you every halfpenny he owes you:
+don't you know that?" And the door was shut with such decision that it
+was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall.
+"Come along," said Lydia: "there's toasted cheese."</p>
+
+<p>Percival ran down stairs five minutes later with his bag in his hand. He
+turned into his sitting-room, picked up a few papers and thrust them
+into his desk. He was in the act of locking it when he heard a step
+behind him, and looking round he saw Lydia. She had a cup of tea and
+some bread and butter, which she set down before him. "You haven't had a
+morsel since the middle of the day," she said. "Just you drink this. Oh,
+you must: there's lots of time."</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Bryant, this is very kind of you, but I don't think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just you drink it," said Lydia, "and eat a bit too, or you'll be good
+for nothing." And while Percival hastily obeyed she glanced round the
+room: "Nobody'll meddle with your things while you're gone: don't you
+trouble yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I didn't suspect that any one would," he replied, hardly thinking
+whether it was likely or not as he swallowed the bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that was very nice of you, I'm sure, <i>I</i> should have suspected a
+lot if I'd been you," said Lydia candidly. "But nobody shall. Now, you
+aren't going to leave that tea? Why, it wants twenty minutes to ten, and
+not six minutes' walk to the station!"</p>
+
+<p>Percival finished the tea: "Thank you very much, Miss Bryant."</p>
+
+<p>"And I say," Lydia pursued, pulling her curl with less than her usual
+consideration for its beauty, "I suppose you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694">[Pg 694]</a></span> <i>have</i> got money enough?
+Because if not, I'll lend you a little. Don't you mind what ma says, Mr.
+Thorne. I know you're all right."</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good," said Percival. "I didn't expect so much kindness,
+and I've been borrowing already, so I needn't trouble you. But thank you
+for your confidence in me and for your thoughtfulness." He held out his
+hand to Lydia, and thus bade farewell to Bellevue street.</p>
+
+<p>She stood for a moment looking after him. Only a few hours before she
+would have rejoiced in any small trouble or difficulty which might have
+befallen Mr. Thorne. But when he turned round upon her mother and
+herself as they stood at his door, her spite had vanished before the
+sorrowful anxiety of his eyes. She had frequently declared that Mr.
+Thorne was no gentleman, and that she despised him, but she knew in her
+heart that he <i>was</i> a gentleman, and she was ashamed of her mother's
+behavior. Lydia was capable of being magnanimous, provided the object of
+her magnanimity were a man. I doubt if she could have been magnanimous
+to a woman. But Percival Thorne was a young and handsome man, and though
+she did not know what his errand might be, she knew that she was not
+sending him to Miss Lisle. Standing before his glass, she smoothed back
+her hair with both hands, arranged the ribbon at her throat and admired
+the blue earrings and a large locket which she wore suspended from a
+chain. Even while she thought kindly of Mr. Thorne, and wished him well,
+she was examining her complexion and her hands with the eye of a critic.
+"I don't believe that last stuff is a mite of good," she said to
+herself; "and it's no end of bother. I might as well pitch the bottle
+out of the window. It was just as well that he'd borrowed the money of
+some one else, but I'm glad I offered it. I wonder when he'll come
+back?" And with that Lydia returned to her toasted cheese.</p>
+
+<p>Percival had had a nervous fear of some hinderance on his way to the
+station. It was so urgent that he should go by this train that the
+necessity oppressed him like a nightmare. An earthquake seemed a not
+improbable thing. He was seriously afraid that he might lose his way
+during the five minutes' walk through familiar streets. He imagined an
+error of half an hour or so in all the Brenthill clocks. He hardly knew
+what he expected, but he felt it a relief when he came to the station
+and found it standing in its right place, quietly awaiting him. He was
+the first to take a ticket, and the moment the train drew up by the
+platform his hand was on the door of a carriage, though before getting
+in he stopped a porter to inquire if this were the express. The porter
+answered "Yes, sir&mdash;all right," with the half smile of superior
+certainty: what else could it be? Thorne took his place and waited a few
+minutes, which seemed an eternity. Then the engine screamed, throbbed,
+and with quickening speed rushed out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>A man was asleep in one corner of the carriage, otherwise Percival was
+alone. His nervous anxiety subsided, since nothing further depended upon
+him till he reached town, and he sat thinking of Sissy and of that brief
+engagement which had already receded into a shadowy past. "It was a
+mistake," he mused, "and she found it out before it was too late. But I
+believe her poor little heart has been aching for me, lest she wounded
+me too cruelly that night. It wasn't her fault. She would have hid her
+fear of me, poor child! if she had been able. And she was so sorry for
+me in my trouble! I don't think she could be content to go on her way
+and take her happiness now while my life was spoilt and miserable. Poor
+little Sissy! she will be glad to know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And then he remembered that it was to a dying Sissy that the tidings of
+marriage and hope must be uttered, if uttered at all. And he sat as it
+were in a dull dream, trying to realize how the life which in the depths
+of his poverty had seemed so beautiful and safe was suddenly cut short,
+and how Sissy at that moment lay in the darkness, waiting&mdash;waiting&mdash;waiting.
+The noise of the train took up his thought, and set it to a monotonous
+repetition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695">[Pg 695]</a></span> of "Waiting at Ashendale! waiting at Ashendale!" If only she
+might live till he could reach her! He seemed to be hurrying onward, yet
+no nearer. His overwrought brain caught up the fancy that Death and he
+were side by side, racing together through the dark, at breathless,
+headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for them both.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the
+night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in
+her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level
+blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Quand on a trouv&eacute; ce qu'on cherchait, on n'a pas le temps de le
+dire: il faut mourir.&mdash;<span class="smcap">J. Joubert.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and
+the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody,
+Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it
+back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields,
+and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke,
+who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and
+a couple of minutes later she joined him.</p>
+
+<p>"How is she? How has she passed the night?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought.
+You were very right to send for Percival."</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him
+before. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm off to fetch him in about an hour and
+a half."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall
+hear, unless he is out."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me.
+And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."</p>
+
+<p>She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before,
+and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up
+at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a
+young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem.
+And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of
+her June!</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back
+to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie,
+who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his
+sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy's lips
+parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper
+slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about
+breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. "I suppose I must," he said to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were
+half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the
+unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly
+round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke.
+"It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.</p>
+
+<p>Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him
+asked, "Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Harry. "But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet
+night: there is no change."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been asleep," said Archie after a pause. "I never thought I should
+sleep." He looked ashamed of having done so.</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been strange if you hadn't: you were worn out."</p>
+
+<p>"My watch has run down," the other continued. "What is the time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you
+had better go home."</p>
+
+<p>"Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You
+don't want to go back to him?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696">[Pg 696]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill
+prompted him to say, "Ray was never hard on me before."</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't think about that," Hardwicke replied. "People don't weigh
+their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here&mdash;less
+than nothing. You'll be better away. Give me your address, and I'll
+write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough
+with me and catch the up train."</p>
+
+<p>As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the
+day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of
+that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with
+greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably
+possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the
+platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he
+said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever
+there's anything I can do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do it," said Harry with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"That I will! And you'll write?"</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke answered "Yes." He knew too well <i>what</i> it was he promised to
+write to say a word more.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the
+platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open
+doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing
+his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety&mdash;or rather
+side by side with his anxiety&mdash;he was conscious of a current of interest
+in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given
+for the horse five months before, and of Latimer's opinion of his
+bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered
+that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting
+on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the
+London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting
+close by, and was there.</p>
+
+<p>A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower
+at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he
+came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up
+with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I am in time, then?" said Percival when he looked round in reply to
+Hardwicke's hurried greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once."</p>
+
+<p>Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were
+fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. "How did
+it happen?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly,
+and then, just saying "It's very dreadful," he was silent again. But it
+was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward
+as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point
+where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees.
+Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton
+loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from
+Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little
+or nothing in common&mdash;a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of
+things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about
+politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done&mdash;a
+man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke
+did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the
+consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a
+brougham. "Ha! Brackenhill," said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed
+round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took
+no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the
+sound of wheels would be music to Sissy's ears.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of
+being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two
+young men came up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697">[Pg 697]</a></span> the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that
+moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He
+was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he
+were dying.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0275-1.jpg" width="500" height="330" alt="&quot;SEE HERE, SISSY,&quot; SAID PERCIVAL, &quot;WE ARE FRIENDS.&quot;&mdash;Page
+698." title="" />
+<span class="caption">&quot;SEE HERE, SISSY,&quot; SAID PERCIVAL, &quot;WE ARE FRIENDS.&quot;&mdash;Page
+698.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"She will not see me," he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698">[Pg 698]</a></span>
+confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored
+his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"She will see you now that Percival has come," said Mrs. Middleton,
+advancing from the background. "She will see you together."</p>
+
+<p>And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he
+was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men
+stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It
+was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened
+waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half
+wound, half bruise&mdash;a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness.
+But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace
+said "Oh, Sissy!" and Sissy said "Percival." He could not speak, but
+stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.</p>
+
+<p>"Whisper," said Sissy. He bent over her. "Have you forgiven him?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into
+Sissy's eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure? Quite?"</p>
+
+<p>"Before God and you, Sissy."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him so, Percival."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up and turned to his cousin. "Horace!" he said, and held out
+his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.&mdash;"See here, Sissy,"
+said Percival, "we are friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we're friends," Horace repeated. "Has it vexed you, Sissy? I
+thought you didn't care about me. I'm sorry, dear&mdash;I'm very sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof
+for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted
+as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old
+days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and
+since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's
+hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and
+since&mdash;and since&mdash;she loved him, she drew his head down to her and
+kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe
+his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's hand, he held Aunt Harriet's.</p>
+
+<p>Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. "Ask him to
+forgive me," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"He knows nothing, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask him for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Horace," said Percival, "Sissy wants your forgiveness."</p>
+
+<p>"I've nothing to forgive," said Horace. "It is I who ought to ask to be
+forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy,
+but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on
+that day: I thought you'd been plotting against me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said Sissy&mdash;"not he."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I did think so.&mdash;Since then I've felt that, anyhow, it was not
+fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how,
+especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now."</p>
+
+<p>"You have it," said Percival. "We didn't understand each other very
+well."</p>
+
+<p>"But I never blamed you, Sissy&mdash;never, for one moment. I wasn't so bad
+as that. I've watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just
+to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never
+forgive me, because of Percival."</p>
+
+<p>"He has forgiven," said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival's.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Horace," he said. "There was a misunderstanding you knew
+nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It <i>was</i>
+cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather's manner to
+you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since
+it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you
+like best"&mdash;he looked steadily at Horace&mdash;"that we should forgive and
+forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," said Horace. "Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never
+meant me any harm, I know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699">[Pg 699]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't! don't! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"God knows I forgive you, whatever it was," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me, Horace."</p>
+
+<p>He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was
+his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled:
+"Good-bye, Horry!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton interposed. "This will be too much for her," she
+said.&mdash;"Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful." And she drew Horace
+gently away.</p>
+
+<p>Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to
+the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy
+was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: "Lie still a little
+while, dear: I'm not going away."</p>
+
+<p>She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and
+waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the
+morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time
+the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly
+believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of
+Judith's love and brought him to Sissy's deathbed. He was in a strangely
+exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a
+crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He
+had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his
+excitement sustained him.</p>
+
+<p>He met Sissy's eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had
+frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so
+delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away
+her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the
+past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or
+grieve the poor child now.</p>
+
+<p>After a time she spoke: "You have worked too hard. Isn't it that you
+wanted to do something great?"</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't at all likely," said Percival with a melancholy smile. "I'm
+all right, Sissy."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey
+Hammond didn't tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited
+to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk so," he entreated. "There will be nothing to see."</p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't work too hard&mdash;promise," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, I won't."</p>
+
+<p>"Percival, will you be good to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I can I will indeed. What can I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody." Sissy
+remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an
+assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.</p>
+
+<p>Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment's hesitation
+alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her
+words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell
+her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would
+be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage
+by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear,"
+he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery
+caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your
+thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He
+would have drawn it gently away.</p>
+
+<p>The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: "No,
+Percival. It's mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my
+other."</p>
+
+<p>"O God!" he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the
+summer day at Brackenhill&mdash;Sissy and he upon the terrace&mdash;the work-box
+upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty
+reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered
+how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble&mdash;the
+first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief
+engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said,
+was given before. And she was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700">[Pg 700]</a></span> dying with it in her hand! She had loved
+him from first to last.</p>
+
+<p>"Percival, you will take my money?" she pleaded, fearing some
+incomprehensible scruple.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Sissy! I must think a moment." He buried his face in
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are cruel!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>How could he think? Sissy loved him&mdash;had always loved him. It was all
+plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out
+the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be unkind to me, Percival: I can't bear it, dear."</p>
+
+<p>How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so
+sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he
+keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?</p>
+
+<p>"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be
+good to me!"</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen
+what might.</p>
+
+<p>"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it,
+living or dying. If only you might be spared&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."</p>
+
+<p>"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must
+be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make
+amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me,
+dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to
+a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in
+them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"</p>
+
+<p>Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick
+footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside,
+dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he
+felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little
+to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. Only one more word!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will
+call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her
+outright?"</p>
+
+<p>He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped
+down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he
+asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a
+brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she
+is better."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best.
+Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in
+his.</p>
+
+<p>Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I
+meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved.
+"What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you,
+Percival!"</p>
+
+<p>"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't
+you have waited till she was in her grave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded
+he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt
+that he must see her once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured
+any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701">[Pg 701]</a></span> more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."</p>
+
+<p>"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left
+in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to
+her always&mdash;always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived
+through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows
+I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that."</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We
+were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would
+die if it could make Sissy any happier."</p>
+
+<p>"And Miss Lisle?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand
+over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to
+return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him,
+pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.</p>
+
+<p>Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the
+needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was
+silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they
+spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed
+Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station
+himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from
+the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the
+latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside,
+but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even
+have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs.
+Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the
+sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a
+small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some
+buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He
+came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that
+Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet,"
+he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike
+him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close
+by."</p>
+
+<p>"Going there for some luncheon?"</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke supposed so.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to
+stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to
+eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that
+he felt better for the food he had taken.</p>
+
+<p>The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of
+Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three
+times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the
+cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting
+vainly for the summons which did not come.</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival
+would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got
+a kind of tea-dinner," he said&mdash;"chops and that sort of thing. You'd
+better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the
+house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged
+Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again
+when he had taken away the cup and plate.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and
+one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the
+square of sunset sky.</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But
+you can't sleep here," he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702">[Pg 702]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened,
+and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and
+down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival
+leant back again.</p>
+
+<p>Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood
+with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to
+steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the
+wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her
+anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and
+hesitated a little.</p>
+
+<p>"It is: tell me the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a
+pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't
+really think there's any more."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't rising, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the
+least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs.
+Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the
+well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed
+away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the
+porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then
+there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back.
+Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a
+little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her
+shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half
+lying in the window-seat behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass
+has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising
+still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it
+will keep fine for some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.</p>
+
+<p>"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying,
+as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die
+in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter
+night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be <i>that</i> but I fancied
+the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would
+hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but
+she might have thought of it again lying there."</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him
+too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it is nothing&mdash;it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if
+it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!&mdash;if it might be!"
+She stopped with a catching in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs.
+Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be
+any wind."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a
+brief silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the
+night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you
+persuade him to go away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Thorne?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see
+him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of
+his waiting there?"</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and
+persuade him. He won't stir for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do
+any good."</p>
+
+<p>Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703">[Pg 703]</a></span>
+shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable
+decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later,
+regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting
+the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival,
+however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last
+he was left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the
+light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was
+the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton,
+watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a
+lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear,
+more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so
+wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he
+had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he
+have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night
+by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">If she love me, this believe,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">I will die ere she shall grieve;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire
+had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end
+of all.</p>
+
+<p>His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance
+of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for
+thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it&mdash;could not
+help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was
+worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no
+mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was
+so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back
+to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his
+future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery.
+Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive
+him!</p>
+
+<p>As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly
+and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window
+at his side&mdash;a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud
+were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon
+gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and
+phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the
+heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled
+with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in,
+widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a
+golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow
+smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she
+encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot
+of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke
+Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.</p>
+
+<p>The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day
+had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was
+soaring and singing&mdash;a mere point in the dome of blue.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, "Brackenhill?"</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: "A little to
+the right, my darling."</p>
+
+<p>The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet
+the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet's eyes, warm on its
+southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long
+terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.</p>
+
+<p>"Darling, it is warm and light," the old lady said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. "Aunt, you promised,"
+she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear&mdash;yes, I promised."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_704" id="Page_704">[Pg 704]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than
+she had spoken for hours: "Tell Percival&mdash;my love to Miss Lisle."</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch him," said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her
+hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked
+after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was
+tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were
+heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated
+faintly, like an echo, "My love to Miss Lisle, Percival." Her glance met
+his and welcomed him. But even as he said "Sissy!" her eyes closed, and
+when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a
+change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. "She does not
+know me!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It
+was something about "Horry&mdash;coming home from school."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly knowing what she said&mdash;only longing for one more look, one smile
+of recognition, one word&mdash;Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct
+tones: "My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?"</p>
+
+<p>No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur
+recommenced. It was still "Horry," and "Rover," and presently they
+thought she said "Langley Wood."</p>
+
+<p>"Horace used to take her there for a treat," said Mrs. Middleton.&mdash;"Oh,
+Sissy, don't you know Aunt Harriet?"</p>
+
+<p>Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was
+dark&mdash;the trees&mdash;she had lost&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse
+than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy
+was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not
+know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word
+for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was
+the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.</p>
+
+<p>The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling
+leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls
+and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet
+delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of "Auntie," and
+"Horry," ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during
+which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between
+living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell
+the moment when she left them.</p>
+
+<p>It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the
+gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his
+eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of
+a closed window through the boughs.</p>
+
+<p>He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been
+there, saying, "Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to
+her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I'm sure it
+isn't right that she should be left so."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was
+perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself.
+Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was
+repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to
+disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by
+herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.</p>
+
+<p>Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the
+priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should
+he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an
+undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.</p>
+
+<p>He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless,
+yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his
+shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of
+the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God you're come, Mr. Hammond!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_705" id="Page_705">[Pg 705]</a></span> Harry exclaimed, and began to
+pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before
+Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking
+a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray
+coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the
+farmhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once," he said when
+Hardwicke had finished.</p>
+
+<p>Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He
+knocked at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is there?" said the voice within.</p>
+
+<p>"It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something
+lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered,
+then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. "Oh, Godfrey!" she
+said in a low voice, "she died this morning."</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm about her. "I would have been here before if I could," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it." She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting
+her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was
+unmoved as ever.</p>
+
+<p>"She died this morning," Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face
+suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt
+so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>"We could not wish her to linger in pain," he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for
+years!"</p>
+
+<p>Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint
+glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII.</h3>
+
+<h3>AFTERWARD.</h3>
+
+<p>There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons,
+their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows,
+have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so
+blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the
+crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she
+has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years
+gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and
+shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even
+Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's
+face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She
+looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she
+believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a
+little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness
+Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her
+place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped
+up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a
+smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could.
+It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some
+little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever
+be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate,
+old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which
+smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure
+in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will
+pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the
+better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken
+sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in
+that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin's summer or the
+November blooming of a rose.</p>
+
+<p>In the February after Sissy's death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day,
+to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had
+once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to
+another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival,
+standing on the uneven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_706" id="Page_706">[Pg 706]</a></span> pavement above the Shadwells' vault, remembered
+his vision of Sissy's frightened eyes even while he uttered the words
+that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true
+because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading
+such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the
+day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or
+linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a
+square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to
+wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about
+Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as
+if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His
+vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his
+life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of
+kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and
+he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of
+thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to
+her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in
+her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of
+hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as
+clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he
+looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme
+in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for
+the last time and knew himself forgiven.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOME_ASPECTS_OF_CONTEMPORARY_ART" id="SOME_ASPECTS_OF_CONTEMPORARY_ART"></a>SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART.</h2>
+
+<p>The art of the present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not
+immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an
+interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art
+in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even
+well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All
+love for it, with all knowledge of its history and all desire for its
+development, was for a generation or two confined to a few professed
+followers and a few devoted patrons, the mass of mankind thinking of it
+not at all. But slowly a revival came in the main centres of
+civilization&mdash;not much sooner in one than in another, though somewhat
+differently in each. In Germany we see it beginning with the famous
+Teutonic colony at Rome, reverent in spirit, cautious in method, severe
+in theory, restrained in style&mdash;culminating, on the one hand, in the
+academic pietism of Overbeck, on the other in the deliberate majesty of
+Cornelius. In France the new life begins with the successors of David,
+strenuous, impetuous, jealous and innovating, Ingres and outline waging
+deadly battle with color and Delacroix. In England architectural
+enthusiasm gave the first impulse, the "Gothic Revival" becoming the
+basis of all subsequent work.</p>
+
+<p>If, before noting the points of difference between one branch and
+another of this modern art, we try to find the characteristics in which
+these branches resemble one another, and by which they collectively are
+distinguished from earlier developments, we find the most prominent one
+to be self-consciousness&mdash;not necessarily self-conceit, but the inward
+consciousness that they <i>are</i>, and the endeavor to realize just what
+they are. With these comes, when the art is conscientious, a desire to
+discover the noblest goal and to formulate the best methods of reaching
+it. Some, casting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_707" id="Page_707">[Pg 707]</a></span> the horoscope for this struggling art of ours, find
+in these facts a great discouragement, believing that the vital germ of
+art is spontaneity&mdash;believing that there cannot again be a genuine form
+of art until there arise a fresh race of artists, unfed by the
+mummy-wheat of tradition, unfettered by the cere-cloths of criticism.
+Others, more sanguine, believe that spontaneity has done all it can, and
+that its place is in the future to be worthily filled by a wide
+eclecticism. Let us inquire what testimony as to the value of
+spontaneity and the influence of self-consciousness in art may be
+gathered from the methods and results of the past, and what from a
+contrast between the different contemporary schools in their methods and
+their results. Painting, as most prominently before our eyes and minds
+just now, will principally concern us.</p>
+
+<p>To the making of every work of art go three things and no more&mdash;the
+material worked upon, the hand that works, and the intellect or
+imagination which guides that hand. When the proportion is perfect
+between the three, the work of art is perfect of its kind. But in the
+different kinds of art the necessary proportion is not the same. In
+music, for example, the medium is at its lowest value, the imagination
+at its highest. In architecture, on the other hand, material is most
+important. Musicians use the vibration of string and atmosphere,
+sculptors use bronze and marble, painters use color and canvas, poets
+use rhythm and rhyme, as vehicles to express their ideas. The
+architect's ideas are for the sake of his material. He takes his
+material as such, and embellishes it with his ideas&mdash;creates beauty
+merely by disposing its masses and enriching its surface. But in all and
+each of these processes, whether mind predominate or matter, there comes
+in as a further necessary factor the actual technical manipulation.
+Poetic visions and a noble mother-tongue do not constitute a man a poet
+if he cannot treat that language nobly according to the technique of his
+art. Nor, though Ariel sing in his brain and the everlasting harp of the
+atmosphere wait for him, is he a musician if he have not a sensitive
+ear and a knowledge of counter-point. More notably yet does the
+hand&mdash;and in this as a technical term I include the other bodily powers
+which go to form technical skill,&mdash;more notably yet does the hand come
+in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination
+mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but
+the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and
+wrist, how all-important! often how all-sufficing!</p>
+
+<p>In all criticism it is necessary first to reflect which of these three
+factors&mdash;intellectual power, physical endowment or propitious
+material&mdash;is most imperious. When we find this factor most perfectly
+developed, and the others, though subordinate, neither absent nor
+stunted, we shall find the art nearest to perfection. And the conditions
+of race and climate and society which most helpfully develop that factor
+without injuring the others are the conditions which will best further
+that art. And the critic who lays most stress on that factor, and is
+content to miss, if necessary, though noting the loss, a certain measure
+of the other two in order more entirely to gain the one that is
+vitalest, is the critic whose words are tonic. And he who, blending the
+province of the arts, calling them all with vagueness "art," exalts and
+demands the same factor first in all of them, must be detrimental, no
+matter how great his sincerity and his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Before weighing any contemporary thing in the balance let us mark out in
+the past some standards of comparison. For it is useless to speculate
+upon theoretical methods if we can discover the actual methods employed
+by those whose art, if not ideally perfect, is yet so far beyond our
+present power as to be quite perfectly ideal. It needs no discussion to
+prove that to find the utmost that has been actually accomplished by
+human endeavor we must turn in sculpture and in language to Greece, in
+music to Germany, in architecture to Greece or to medi&aelig;val Europe as our
+taste may pull, and in painting to the Italians.</p>
+
+<p>The primary conception of art in its productive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_708" id="Page_708">[Pg 708]</a></span> energy is as a certain
+inspiration. How did that inspiration work in those whom we acknowledge
+to have received it in fullest measure? If we think a moment we shall
+say, "Involuntarily"&mdash;by a sort of <i>possession</i> rather than a voluntary
+intellectual effort. The sculpture of the Greeks, their tragedies and
+their temples, were all wrought simply, without effort, without
+conscious travailing, by a natural evolution, not by a potent
+egg-hatching process of instructive criticism and morbid self-inspection
+and consulting of previous models, native and foreign. Architectural
+motives were gathered from Egypt and the East, from Phoenicia and
+Anatolia, but they were worked in as material, not copied as patterns;
+and the architecture is as original as if no one had ever built before.
+Phidias and Praxiteles and the rest shaped and chiselled, aiming at
+perfection no doubt, trying to do their best, but without troubling
+themselves as to what that best "ought" to be. Criticism was rife in
+Athens of all places, but it was a criticism of things existing, not of
+things problematically desirable. Statue and temple-front were
+criticised, not sculptor and architect&mdash;surely not sculpture and
+architecture in the abstract. Not sculptors and architects, that is,
+when the question was of their works. The men came in for their share of
+criticism, but on a different count. Theseus and Athene were judged as
+works of art, not as lame though interesting revelations of Phidias's
+soul. And be sure no faintest sin of the chisel was excused on the plea
+that Phidias meant more than he could express, and so bungled in the
+expression. Nor was the plea advanced that such bungling after the
+infinite was better than simple perfection in the attainable. An artist
+was called upon to be an artist, not a poet nor a philosopher nor a
+moralist. When Plato confounded them all in a splendid confusion of
+criticism the fruit-time had gone by. There was left but to expatiate on
+the hoard which summer had bequeathed, or to speculate, if he chose, on
+the possible yield of a future and most problematical year.</p>
+
+<p>In the rich Italian summer one sees the same thing. Men paint because
+they must&mdash;because put at anything else they come back to art as iron to
+the magnet. Not because art is lovely, nor because to be an artist is a
+desirable or a noble or a righteous thing, but because they are artists
+born, stamped, double-dyed, and, kick as they might, they could be
+nothing else&mdash;if not artists creative, yet artists critical and
+appreciative. Truly, they think and strive over their art, write
+treatises and dogmas and speculations, vie with and rival and outdo each
+other. But it is their <i>art</i> they discuss, not themselves, not one
+another&mdash;technical methods, practical instruction, questions of pigment
+and model and touch, of perspective and chiaroscuro and varnish, not
+psychological &aelig;sthetics, biographical and psychical explanations as to
+facts of canvas and color. What is done is what is to be criticised.
+What can be done technically is what should be done theoretically, and
+what cannot be done with absolute and perfect technical success is out
+of the domain of art once and for ever. As the Greek did not try to
+carve marble eyelashes, so no Venetian tried to put his conscience on a
+panel. All Lionardo could see of Mona Lisa's soul he might paint, not
+all he could feel of Lionardo's. Mr. Ruskin himself quotes D&uuml;rer's note
+that Raphael sent him his drawings, not to show his soul nor his
+theories, but simply <i>seine Hand zu weisen</i>&mdash;to prove his touch. In
+Raphael's touch was implied Raphael's eye, and those two made the artist
+Raphael.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing strikes one more in these men than the oblivion of self in their
+work. Only one of the first-rank men was self-conscious, and he, the
+most mighty as a man, is by no means the first as an artist. And even
+Michael Angelo had not the self-consciousness of to-day: it requires a
+clique of commentators and a brotherhood of artists equally infected to
+develop that. But just so far as he tried to put his mighty self into
+his work, just so far he failed of artistic perfection; and not every
+one is Michael Angelo to make even failure beautifully colossal. In
+architecture, which in his day was already a dead art to be galvanized,
+not alive and manly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_709" id="Page_709">[Pg 709]</a></span> like the art of the painter, his self-consciousness
+shows most strongly and his failure is most conspicuous. Here he did not
+create, but avowedly composed&mdash;set himself deliberately to study the
+past and to decide what was best for the future. And upon none but him
+rests the blame of having driven out of the semi-unconscious,
+semi-original Renaissance style what elements of power it had, and sent
+it reeling down through two centuries crazed with conceit and distorted
+with self-inspection.</p>
+
+<p>On the unconscious development of medi&aelig;val architecture, due to no one
+man, but to a universal interest in and appreciation of the art, it is
+unnecessary to dwell. Nor need we for present purposes seek further
+illustration farther afield. Let us take time now to look more narrowly
+at the art of to-day, and try to mark the different shapes it has taken
+with different nations.</p>
+
+<p>The most decided school is in France: her artists, many in number,
+confine, whether involuntarily or not, their individual differences
+within sharply-marked and easily-noted limits. In Germany the schools
+are two&mdash;one of so-called historical painting at Munich, one of what we
+may name domestic painting at D&uuml;sseldorf. This last may be put on one
+side as having no specially obtrusive characteristics, and by German
+pictures will be meant those of the Munich and Vienna type, whether
+actually from the studios of Munich and Vienna or not. In English
+contemporary art can one pretend to find a school at all in any true
+sense of the word? What we do find is a very widespread art-literature
+and talk of art, a large number of working artists varying in
+temperament, and a vast horde of amateurs, who are not content to be
+patrons, but yearn also to be practisers of art.</p>
+
+<p>In England theories of art are more carefully discussed and more widely
+diffused than they are in any other country. But they are theories of an
+essentially untechnical, amateurish, literary kind. The English critic
+calls all law and philosophy, all rules of morals and manners, of
+religion and political economy and science and scientific &aelig;sthetics, to
+aid his critical faculty when he needs must speak of pictures. In
+Germany there is also much theorizing, but of a different kind. It is
+not so much the whole physical and psychical cosmos that the German
+critic studies as the past history of art in its most recondite phases
+and most subtle divergences. Upon this he draws for information as to
+the value of the work before him. On the other hand, we shall find
+French art-criticism to be almost purely technical.</p>
+
+<p>As the critics differ, so do the criticised by the natural law of
+national coherence. An English painter is apt to be primarily an
+embodied theory of one sort or another; which theory is more or less
+directly connected with his actual work as a painter. A German painting
+is apt to be scientifically composed on theory also, but a theory drawn
+from the study of art <i>per se</i>, not of the whole world external to art.
+The work of a Frenchman, like the criticism of his commentator, is
+primarily technical.</p>
+
+<p>Because both German work and English work are theoretical compared with
+French, I do not wish to imply that technically they are on a par. Aside
+from the difference of imaginative power in the two nations, which
+renders German conceptions more valuable in every way than contemporary
+English ideas, there is a great difference in the technical training of
+the two groups of artists. German work often shows technical qualities
+as notable as those we find in France, though of another kind. The noble
+physical endowment of an artist&mdash;that by reason of which, and by reason
+of which alone, he <i>is</i> an artist&mdash;is twofold: power of eye and power of
+hand. By power of the eye I mean simple vision exalted into a special
+gift, a special appreciation of line, an ultra delicate and profound
+perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not
+imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so
+say, of the retina&mdash;as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his
+notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by
+conscious effort the objects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_710" id="Page_710">[Pg 710]</a></span> before one, and to recall them
+deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when the brush
+pauses trembling for the signal, to put down unerringly facts learned
+God knows where, or imagined God knows how. Automatic, I repeat, this
+power must be. The tongue might not be able to tell, nor the mind
+deliberately to recall in cold blood, what was the depth of blue on a
+distant hill or the vagueness of its outlines, or what the anatomical
+structure of a mistress's fingers. But the brush knows, as nothing but
+the brush of an artist can; and when it comes to painting them, a&euml;rial
+perspective and anatomical detail <i>must</i> come right. This is the first
+and the great endowment. And the second is like unto it in&mdash;Shall I use
+the fashionable artistic slang and say <i>preciousness?</i> It is the gift of
+a dexterous hand, winged with lightness and steady as steel, sensitive
+as a blind man's finger-tips, yet unerring in its stroke as the piston
+of a steamship. This is a gift as well as the other, but it can, far
+more than the other, be improved and developed by practice and patience.
+Both gifts in equal perfection constitute a technical master. It is
+hardly necessary to say that no man&mdash;certainly no nation&mdash;can to-day
+claim the highest measure of both. The French are most highly gifted
+with the first, the Germans with the second. In the latter, patience and
+science, working upon a natural aptitude, have developed great strength
+and accuracy of wrist, and with this the power of composition and
+design, purity and accuracy of outline, and good chiaroscuro. But the
+whole race is deficient in a sense of color. Its work is marked by
+crudeness and harshness, or at the best reticence&mdash;splendor without
+softness or inoffensiveness without charm. In cases where much is
+attempted in color&mdash;as in what is undoubtedly one of the best of
+contemporary paintings, Knille's <i>Tannh&auml;user and Venus</i> in the Berlin
+Gallery&mdash;the success is by no means on a par with the great excellence
+of drawing and composition. In France the eye for color is present&mdash;I
+will not say as in Venice, but to a greater degree than in the two other
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>If we leave now professional painters and professional critics and turn
+to the untrained public, we shall find, of course, all our modern faults
+more evident. The English public is pre-eminently untechnical in its
+judgments, pre-eminently literary or moral. But the French and the
+German public approximate more to the English&mdash;as is natural&mdash;than do
+their respective artists. I use the word <i>literary</i> as it has often been
+used by others in characterizing the popular art-criticism of the
+time&mdash;and in England much of the professional criticism also&mdash;to denote
+a prominence given to the subject, the idea, the story&mdash;<i>l'anecdote</i>, as
+a French critic calls it&mdash;over the purely painter's work of a picture.
+It denotes the theory that a picture is not first to please the sense,
+but to catch the fancy or the intellect or to touch the heart. This
+feeling, which in France turns toward sensationalism, in England toward
+sentimentality, is something other than the interest which attaches to
+historical painting as the record of facts&mdash;in itself not the highest
+interest one can find in a work of art. If we think back for a moment, we
+shall see how different from either of these moods was the mood in which
+the great Italians painted. Some "subject" of course a painting must
+have that is not a portrait, but these men chose instinctively&mdash;hardly,
+it is to be supposed, theoretically&mdash;such
+subjects as were most familiar to their public, and therefore least
+likely to engage attention primarily, and to the exclusion of the
+absolute pictorial value of the painting as such. We never find Titian
+telling anecdotes. His portraits are quiescence itself&mdash;portraits of men
+and women standing in the fulness of beauty and strength to be painted
+by Titian. We do not find likenesses snatched in some occurrence of
+daily life or in some dramatic action of historical or biographical
+importance. Even Raphael's great frescoes are symbolical more truly than
+historical, expressing the significance of a whole series of events
+rather than literally rendering one single event. The first remark of
+many who, accustomed to the literary interest of modern pictures, are
+for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711">[Pg 711]</a></span> first time making acquaintance with the old masters, is, that
+the galleries are so unexcitingly monotonous: the subjects are not
+interesting. Portraits, scenes from sacred history or Greek
+mythology,&mdash;that is all among the Italians. Desiring nothing but beauty
+of line and color, and expressiveness provided it was beautiful, they</p>
+
+<p>sought a subject merely as the <i>raison d'etre</i> of beauty. Raphael could
+paint the Madonna and Child a score of times, and Veronese his
+<i>Marriages of Cana</i>, and all of them Magdalenes and St. Sebastians by
+the dozen, without thinking of finding fresh subjects to excite fresh
+interest. Nor does this restricted range of subjects imply, under the
+hand of a master, monotony. There is more unlikeness in Raphael's
+Madonnas than in the figures of any modern artist, whatever their
+variety of name and action. Even a century later than Raphael, among the
+Flemings and Hollanders, the best pictures are the simplest, the least
+dependent for their interest upon anything dramatic or anecdotal in
+their subject. The triumphs of the Dutch school are the portraits of the
+guilds. The masterpieces of Rubens are his children and single figures
+and biblical scenes, not his <i>Marie de Medicis</i>. And what of Rembrandt
+is so perfect as his <i>Saskia with the Pink</i> at Dresden? If we have a
+photograph even of such a picture as this constantly before us, with a
+modern picture of anecdotal interest, no matter how vivid and pleasant
+that interest may have been at first, it is not hard to predict which
+will please us longest&mdash;which will grow to be an element in the
+happiness of every day, while the other becomes at last <i>fade</i> and
+insipid. This even if we suppose its technical excellence to be great.
+How, then, shall such interest take the place of technical excellence?</p>
+
+<p>This modern love of <i>l'anecdote</i> is not exactly the cause perhaps, nor
+yet the effect, of the self-consciousness of modern art, but it goes
+hand in hand with it: they are manifestations of the same spirit in the
+two different spheres of worker and spectator.</p>
+
+<p>But it may be said, If Michael Angelo was self-conscious, it was
+because he first caught the infection of modern times. Life, the world,
+the nineteenth century, are self-conscious through and through. It is
+impossible to be otherwise. It is impossible for a world which has lived
+through what ours has, which has recorded its doings and sufferings and
+speculations for our benefit, ever to be na&iuml;ve or spontaneous in
+anything. Inspiration unsought and unquestioned is a thing of the past.
+Study, reflection, absorption, eclecticism,&mdash;these are the watchwords of
+the future. If this were granted, many would still think it an open
+question whether art of the highest kind would in the future be possible
+or not. But is by no means necessary to grant it, for we have had in the
+most learned and speculative of nations an art in our century&mdash;still
+surviving, indeed, in our very midst&mdash;the growth of which has been as
+rapid and the flowering as superb as the growth and bloom of sculpture
+in Greece or of painting in Italy. I mean, of course, music in Germany.
+And if we think a moment we shall see that its growth was as
+unpremeditated, its direction and development as unbiassed by theories,
+its votaries as untroubled with self-consciousness, as if they had been
+archaic sculptors or builders of the thirteenth century. Bach, Haydn,
+Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, what sublime unconsciousness of their
+own personality as the personality of artists and as influencing art!
+Does Richard Wagner seem at first sight to be a glaring exception to
+such a rule&mdash;seem to strive more than any other artist in any branch of
+art to be critic as well&mdash;seem, perhaps, to be most notably
+self-conscious even in an age of self-consciousness? The most highly
+gifted of the generation as an artist, his musical talent developed
+spontaneously, irresistibly. It had thus developed before he began to
+reason about it, to justify in theory that which had approved itself in
+fact. His power lies in the union we find in him of musician and
+dramatist. His dogmatizing and theorizing expatiate not on the way he
+works in either art, but on the propriety of combining the two.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_712" id="Page_712">[Pg 712]</a></span> Not his
+theories, but his artist's instinct, taught him how to do it as it is
+done in the <i>Meistersinger</i>. His theories try to explain his work, but
+by just so much as his work is consciously founded on his theories, by
+just so much is it less perfect than it would have been had he preserved
+his unconsciousness. The fact of his self-consciousness tends in many
+eyes to mark him as the rearguard of a line of artists, the pioneer of a
+generation of critical musicians. May Liszt perhaps serve as a sample of
+such&mdash;learned, critical, self-conscious, productive, but unoriginal? And
+the worst sign in Germany is less that the young musicians copy Wagner
+than that they copy him not instinctively and by nature, but
+theoretically and of deliberate intent, exalting his theories to rank
+beside his work.</p>
+
+<p>It seems at first strange that, music being at once the glory and the
+recreation of the whole German nation, and a knowledge of it being
+native to the vast majority of individual Germans, there is little
+existing musical criticism&mdash;none as compared with the abounding German
+criticism on every other branch of art and every other subject under the
+sun. The field offered here to the cobweb-spinning German brain is wide
+and attractive. It seems strange that it should be as yet uncultivated,
+unless we fall back on the theory that art at its vitalest is of
+necessity uncritical, and that where an inborn love of, and aptitude
+for, an art exists with a daily enjoyment of its technical perfection,
+we shall be least likely to find it elaborately criticised
+theoretically. Where practice is abundantly satisfactory theories are
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>Below, though still in the same category with, the musical gift of the
+Germans we may cite the literary gift of the English. For though this
+may not be the greatest literary epoch of England, yet it will not be
+denied that the greatest of English aptitudes is for literature. The
+wide appreciation of it in England is unmatched by a like appreciation
+of any other form of art. The growth of English novel-writing and its
+healthy development, accompanied, it may be, by many fungus-growths due
+to over-fertility, afford us the spectacle of a contemporary yet
+spontaneous English art, unforced by hothouse cultivation, uninfluenced
+by theories. A century or so hence the hearty, unconscious bloom of
+narrative literature in our day and language may seem as strange as
+seems to us the spontaneous blossoming of Venetian painting, of Greek
+sculpture, or of architecture in the Ile de France. An Englishman of
+to-day who thinks painters can be spun out of theories would surely
+laugh with instinctive knowledge of the veritable requirements of their
+art if one were to propose supplying novelists or poets in a similar
+way.</p>
+
+<p>If we thus acknowledge that two kinds of art&mdash;and those two requiring
+the greatest amount of imaginative power&mdash;can flourish with spontaneity
+even in so self-conscious a civilization as ours, we shall fail to see
+in that civilization a sufficient <i>a priori</i> reason why the same might
+not have been the case with painting. If, however, still keeping to our
+own day, we look for the reverse of this picture, we shall find some
+approach to it in the condition of the painter's art in England. Here
+theory runs wild, practice falls far behind, and a great part of the
+practice that exists is inspired and regulated by theory. Artists are
+especially self-conscious, and the public, while much concerned with
+things artistic and fed on daily food of art-theory and speculation, is
+specially devoid of an innate artistic sense and an educated faculty for
+appreciating technical perfection.</p>
+
+<p>In England, more even than on the Continent or with ourselves, is there
+a passion for story-telling with the brush, a desire to give ideas
+instead of pictures, a denial of the fact that the main object of a
+picture is to please the eye just as truly and as surely as the main
+object of a symphony is to please the ear. If we look through the
+catalogue of a Royal Academy exhibition, we notice the preponderance of
+scenes illustrative of English or other literature&mdash;of canvases that
+tell a story or point a moral or bear a punning or a sentimental title.
+And we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_713" id="Page_713">[Pg 713]</a></span> notice the great number of quotations introduced into the
+catalogue without any actual explanatory necessity. Even landscapes are
+dragged into the domain of sentiment, and Mr. Millais, who copies Nature
+with the exactest reverence, cannot call his brook a brook, but "The
+sound of many waters;" and a graveyard is not named a graveyard, but
+"Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap;" and instead of
+<i>Winding the Clock</i> we are told "The clock beats out the life of little
+men." A canvas representing "untrodden snow" must be ticketed, for
+increase of interest, "Within three miles of Charing Cross." Another is
+marked, "Christmas Eve: a welcome to old friends. (See <i>Silas Marner</i>.)"
+And so on, <i>ad infinitum</i>. May one not say <i>ad nauseam</i> before a piece
+of marble labelled "Baby doesn't like the water," or a canvas by Faed,
+R.&nbsp;A., called "Little cold tooties," or the portrait by the president of
+the Academy of a child on her pony denoted not only by the child's name
+in full, but her pony's also?</p>
+
+<p>Prominent also at a first visit to a London exhibition stands out the
+hesitancy; of English artists to deal with large canvases and life-size
+figures&mdash;their strict confinement to <i>genre</i> of a domestic or bookishly
+arch&aelig;ological type. This is not the place to discuss the causes of such
+a fact, nor to insist on the lack of certain technical qualities in even
+the best English work. Such discussions can only be profitable when the
+originals are at hand to recriticise the criticism.</p>
+
+<p>More striking than anything to be seen in 1877 at the Royal Academy was
+the small collection of pictures at the Grosvenor Gallery, organized and
+controlled by a noble amateur&mdash;himself a painter also&mdash;with the avowed
+intention of exhibiting the latest and most eccentric phases of English
+art. To a Londoner the opening day was interesting, as revealing the
+newest works of the most conspicuous London artists. To a stranger fresh
+from continental pictures, old and new, eager to see the touch of hands
+so often described in print, it was a revelation not only of a few men's
+work, but of the tendency of a national art and the artistic
+temperament of a whole people. Superficially, these pictures seemed the
+exact opposite of those at the conservative Academy&mdash;as aberrant as the
+latter were commonplace. But to one who knew them as the work of a
+fashionable, highly-educated clique they seemed merely a reaction of the
+same spirit that produced the elder style. In striving to get out of the
+rut of commonplace which had so long held in its grip the wheels of
+English art, not originality, so much as deliberate, sought-out
+eccentricity, was the result. The scale of work, starting from the
+original bathos of domestic sentimentality, runs up to the veriest
+contortions of affected medi&aelig;valism, rarely striking out a note of
+common sense. Simple English art is the apotheosis of the British
+middle-class spirit, of Mr. Arnold's "Philistinism." English art
+departing from this spirit shows, not Mr. Arnold's "sweetness and
+light," not calmness, repose, sureness of self, unconsciousness of its
+own springs of life, but theories running into vague contradictions, a
+far-fetched abnormalness, a morbid conception of beauty, a defiant
+disregard of the fact that a public exists which judges by common sense
+and the eye, not by a fine-spun confusion of theories and an undefined
+but omnipotent and deified "&aelig;sthetic sense" non-resident in the optic
+nerve. Mr. Whistler's pictures to-day, cleverly as he can paint if he
+will, are not pictures&mdash;I do not mean in fact, which is certainly
+true&mdash;but in title. They are "Natures in Black and Gold," or "In Blue
+and Silver," or "In Blue and Gold," or "Arrangements in Black," or
+"Harmonies in Amber and Brown." Here we have the desperate reaction from
+the idea that <i>l'anecdote</i> is everything to the idea that it is
+sufficient to represent nothing (poetically conceived!) with little
+color and less form, with the vaguest and slightest and most untechnical
+technique. It is hard to say which would most puzzle Titian
+redivivus&mdash;"Little cold tooties," or a blue-gray wash with a point or
+two of yellow, bearing some imaginary resemblance to the Thames with its
+gaslights,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714">[Pg 714]</a></span> and called a "Nocturne in Blue and Gold."</p>
+
+<p>The French "impressionalist" clique, similar in spirit to these
+Englishmen, though less outr&eacute; in practice, is not by any means of so
+great importance in France as they are in England. It has more than once
+been remarked in England that the old-fashioned amateur&mdash;patron and
+critic, <i>kenner</i>&mdash;is dying out, and that his modern substitute must not
+only choose, but experiment&mdash;not only admire, but be admired. This
+spirit, spreading through a nation, will not make it a nation of
+artists, but will make the nation's artists amateurs. No critic, no
+amateur, is more loath to try his own hand than the one who most deeply
+and rightly appreciates the skill of others, and the rare and God-given
+and difficult nature of that skill. The confusion of amateur with
+professional work lowers the standard, so there will be every year fewer
+to tell the mass of the nation that most useful of truths&mdash;how earnest a
+thing is true art, and how rare a native appreciation of its truest
+worth.</p>
+
+<p>There is no place where the interest excited by national art is so
+widespread, where the exhibitions are so crowded, where they so regulate
+times and seasons, annual excursions to and departures from town, as in
+England. Yet there is no place where the interest in art seems to a
+stranger so factitious, so much a matter of fashion and custom, of
+instinctive following of chance-appointed bell-wethers. It would
+scarcely be a matter of surprise if the whole thing should collapse
+through some pin-thrust of rival interest or excitement, and next year's
+exhibition be a desert, next year's artists paint their theories and
+their souls for unregarding eyes, or rather for unheeding brains. Have
+we not an apology for such a suggestion in the history of the rage for
+Gothic architecture, so thoroughly demonstrated in every possible
+theoretical and philosophical way to be the only proper style for
+Englishmen present or future, so devotedly and exclusively followed for
+a while by the profession, only to be suddenly abandoned for its fresher
+rivals, the so-called styles of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne?</p>
+
+<p>In the throngs that flocked to the opening of the Royal Academy, waiting
+hours before the doors were opened, fighting and struggling for a
+foothold on the stairs, eager to be the first to see, though there were
+weeks of opportunities ahead&mdash;in the rare recurrence through the hum of
+the vast criticising crowd of a word of technical judgment or sober
+artistic criticism&mdash;it was easy to recognize the same spirit that
+confuses morality with chair-legs, that finds a knocker more "sincere"
+and "right" than a door-bell, that insists as upon a vital necessity
+that the heads of all nails should be visible and that all lines should
+be straight, and would as soon have a shadow on its conscience as in the
+pattern of wall-paper. Nowhere was decorative art so non-existent a few
+years ago as in England&mdash;nowhere is it so universally dwelt upon to-day.
+Yet it is easy to see how entirely the revival is a child of theory and
+books and teachers and rules&mdash;how little owing to a spontaneous
+development of art-instinct in the people, a spontaneous desire for more
+beauty in their surroundings, a spontaneous knowledge of how it is best
+to be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The literary and un-painterlike&mdash;if I may use such an awkward
+term&mdash;nature of English art is shown perhaps more forcibly in its
+critics than in artists or public. One is especially struck in reading
+criticisms of whatever grade with the excessive prominence given to the
+artist's personality. The work of this year is judged not so much by its
+excellence as by comparison with the work of last year. A&mdash;&mdash;'s
+pictures, and B&mdash;&mdash;'s and C&mdash;&mdash;'s and D&mdash;&mdash;'s, are interesting and
+valuable mainly as showing A&mdash;&mdash;'s improvement, or B&mdash;&mdash;'s falling off,
+or C&mdash;&mdash;'s unexpected change of theme, or D&mdash;&mdash;'s fine mind and delicate
+sensibilities.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ruskin is without doubt the most remarkable of English critics, and
+summarizes so many opposite theories and tendencies that his pages may
+in some sort be taken as an epitome of the whole matter. It would be
+impossible to abstract<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715">[Pg 715]</a></span> from their great bulk any consecutive or
+consistent system of thought or precept. His influence has been mainly
+by isolated ideas of more or less truth and value. It is impossible here
+to analyze his work. Such is the mixed tissue of his woof that the
+captive princess who was set to sort a roomful of birds' feathers had
+scarcely a harder task than one who should try to separate and classify
+his threads, some priceless and steady, some rotten, false, misleading.
+Morals, manners, religion, political economy, are mixed with art in
+every shape&mdash;art considered theoretically and technically, historically,
+philosophically and prophetically. Various as are his views on these
+varying subjects, on no one subject even do they remain invariable. Yet
+such is the charm of his style, delightfully sarcastic, and eloquent as
+a master's brush, so vividly is each idea presented in itself, that,
+each idea being enjoyed as it comes, all seem at first of equal value.
+We realize neither the fallacy of many taken singly nor the conflict of
+all taken together. His points are often cleverly and faithfully put,
+and our attention is so riveted on this cleverness and faithfulness that
+we take for granted the rightness of his deductions, slovenly, illogical
+or false though they may be. What we most remark in his books is how the
+purely artistic element in his nature&mdash;of a very high grade and very
+true instincts&mdash;is dwarfed of full development and stunted of full
+results by the theorizing literary bent which he has in common with his
+time and people. In theorizing even on truly-felt and clearly-stated
+facts, in explaining their origin and unfolding their effects, his
+guidance is least valuable. We may more safely ask him <i>what</i> than
+<i>why</i>. His influence on English art has been great at the instant:
+whether it will be permanent is doubtful. At one time it was said that
+without having read his books one could tell by an inspection of the
+Royal Academy walls what Mr. Ruskin had written in the past year. Now,
+the most notable exponents of his teaching, whether consciously so or
+not, are on the one hand the shining lights of the Grosvenor
+Gallery&mdash;hierophants of mysticism and allegory and symbolism and
+painted souls and moral beauty expressed in the flesh, copying Ruskin's
+<i>Botticelli</i> line for line, forgetting that what was na&iuml;vet&eacute; in him, and
+in him admirable, because all before him had done so much less well,
+becomes to-day in them the direst affectation, is reprehensible in them
+because many before them have done so much better. On the other hand, we
+have a naturalistic throng which follows Mr. Ruskin's precepts when he
+overweights the other side of the scale and says that art should "never
+exist alone, never for itself," never except as "representing a
+true"&mdash;defined as actually-existing&mdash;"thing or decorating a useful
+thing;" when he declares that every attempt by the imagination to "exalt
+or refine healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it." Mr. Ruskin
+bade men "go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her
+laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to
+penetrate her meaning, <i>rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and
+scorning nothing</i>;" and Mr. Hamerton was literally obeying him when he
+exiled himself for five years in a hut on an island in a bleak Scotch
+lake to learn faithfully to portray the shores of that single lake. Was
+it thus that Titian studied in his youth, and learned how, years after
+in Venice, to paint the chestnuts and the hills of Cadore a
+thousand-fold more artistically and more truly, because more abstractly
+and more ideally, than could all the "pre-Raphaelite" copyists of
+to-day? Thus we see the two extremes of Mr. Ruskin's teaching&mdash;see him
+at one time exalting imagination and feeling over the pictorial part of
+art, at another degrading art into the servilest copying.</p>
+
+<p>Observers may disagree as to whether these cognate
+things&mdash;self-consciousness in the artist, &aelig;sthetic philosophizing in the
+critic, and the taste for a literary rather than a pictorial value in
+the public&mdash;are on the increase or on the decrease in the various
+centres of art. Annual exhibitions&mdash;a significant illustration of our
+high-pressure life in art as in other things&mdash;would seem to tend toward
+deepening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_716" id="Page_716">[Pg 716]</a></span> these faults. Attention must be attracted at all hazards, and
+the greater the number of exhibitors and the average attractiveness of
+their canvases the greater becomes the temptation to shine, not by
+excellence, but by eccentricities of treatment, or, still more, by the
+factitious interest of a "telling" subject. Is it due, perhaps, to this
+constant desire for notoriety on the part of the artist, and for more
+and more excitement on the part of the public, that in all modern
+schools, landscape art, as less possibly influenced by such a state of
+things, stands ahead of the art which has humanity for its subject? It
+is scarcely possible to find in France to-day a figure-painter who is a
+Daubigny, still less a Jules Dupr&eacute;. Next to these unquestionably stand
+such animal-painters as Bonheur and Troyon; and it would be hard among
+the youngest file of artists to find a figure-painter who in his line
+should rival Van Marcke in his. In England also landscape ranks ahead,
+and it is perhaps in comparing it with French landscape that the
+difference between the schools is most truly though not most glaringly
+displayed. Even here, and in the allied fields of animal-painting, the
+desire for <i>l'anecdote</i> creeps in, and Landseer with all his talent
+often prostitutes his brush in the attempt to make his brutes the centre
+of dramatic action, and forces into them semi-human characteristics in
+order to extract from them tales or ideas of human interest. It was not
+thus that Veronese painted dogs or Franz Snyders his lions and
+boars&mdash;not thus that the Greeks have put the horse into art. Nor, to
+take the best contemporary comparison, is it thus that Barye's bronzes
+are designed.</p>
+
+<p>Landscape brings us inevitably to Turner. The most highly gifted of all
+English artists, past or present, his genius was hardly a logical
+outcome of the contemporary spirit of his nation. We have no right to
+say this of an artist, no right to call him anomalous, while we are
+still in doubt as to whether he may be only the advance-guard of a new
+national art, the herald of a new avatar. But when he with his
+generation dies, when another generation develops and bears fruit, and
+a third is beginning to blossom, and he still seems anomalous, it is
+fair to hold him exceptional in his country's art, rather than
+characteristic thereof. Together with wonderful endowments of eye and
+hand, and a prodigious power of work, Turner's earlier works show us an
+unconscious development and a healthy oblivion of his own personality.
+But later the fatal modern fever entered his blood, ending in something
+very like delirium. From a painter he became a theorist, contaminated by
+a rush of criticism alike indiscriminate in praise and injudicious in
+blame. We shall see the baleful effects of modern methods if we look, in
+the wonderful series at the National Gallery, first at the pictures
+painted when Turner was an artist thinking of painting, then to those
+done when he was a self-conscious experimentalist thinking of
+Turner&mdash;Turner worshipped by Ruskin, Turner sick with envy of the
+Dutchmen and defiance of Claude.</p>
+
+<p>I have but a line to give to the one or two other men of abnormally
+splendid gifts whom this century has seen. Henri Regnault's
+extraordinary talent was extinguished almost at the first spark, and it
+is beyond prophecy to tell what it might have produced. His
+eccentricities seem to have been quite genuine, due to an overflow of
+power rather than to posing or grimace. His love of his art, his passion
+for color, were almost frantic in their intensity, but sincere. A
+certain exaggerated phrase of his is but the protest of reaction against
+the literary painting, the erudite and philosophical art, of his time.
+"La vie," he cries, "&eacute;tant courte, il faut peindre tant qu'on a des
+yeux. Donc on ne doit pas les fatiguer &agrave; lire des stupides journaux." A
+crude way of putting the idea that to be an artist one needs but art.</p>
+
+<p>Another wonderful talent is Hans Makart. Such an eye for color, it is
+quite safe to say, has not been born since Veronese. Had he been born at
+Venice among his peers, forced to work instead of experiment, outvied
+instead of foolishly extolled, surrounded by artists to surpass him if
+he tripped for a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717">[Pg 717]</a></span> instant, instead of critics to laud his most
+glaring faults and amateurs to pay thousands for his spoiled paper, we
+should have had another name to use as explanatory of genius. As it is,
+he is, according to present indications, utterly spoiled. Only those who
+know how he can draw if he will, how he has painted&mdash;portraits best,
+perhaps&mdash;when he would, are vexed beyond endurance by the folly and the
+carelessness and the sins he chooses to give us. It has been said that
+Raphael Mengs was a born genius spoiled by the coldness, the
+pseudo-classicism, the artificiality and eclecticism of the eighteenth
+century. A companion portrait is Hans Makart, ruined by the
+amateurishness, the rhapsodizing, the theorizing, the morbid
+self-consciousness of the nineteenth.</p>
+
+<p>The so-called Spanish school of to-day is as yet too new for us to see
+exactly whither it tends. Its passion for glaring, metallic, aniline
+compound tints&mdash;tints that "scream," to use a French phrase&mdash;its horror
+of all shade and depth and of pure and simple colors, are, however, most
+certainly unhealthy. It is a diseased eye that in the desire for violent
+color loses all memory of chiaroscuro.</p>
+
+<p>I have left till now unnoticed the contemporary Netherland artists,
+though their works are perhaps more entirely satisfactory than those of
+either of the three schools we have discussed. But their characteristics
+are less markedly distinct, less available for comparison, and can be
+best noted and appraised by a previously-gained knowledge of the
+peculiarities of English, French and German painting. The Belgian school
+is most closely allied to the French, and in technique is often its
+equal. In landscape and cattle-painting the types are similar, while
+Belgian figure-painting gains by the lack of the element which a French
+critic notes when he says modern art has become <i>mondain&mdash;surtout
+demi-mondain</i>. Nowhere does contemporary art seem so healthy and sane,
+so sure of itself, so consonant with the best nature and gifts of the
+people, as in the Netherlands: nowhere are its ideals so free from
+morbidness, affectation or sentimentality. Is it perhaps that in the
+studios of Amsterdam, in the great school of Antwerp, even in the
+galleries of Brussels, one is somewhat out of the wildest stream of
+modern life&mdash;less driven to analysis and theorizing and
+self-consciousness than in London, Paris or Munich? Whatever is cause,
+whatever effect, the Netherland school shows two things side by
+side&mdash;the least measure of self-consciousness, and the soundest
+contemporary painting: if not the most effective, it is, I think, the
+most full of promise. There seems to be forming the most healthy
+national soil for the development of future genius.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, it may be noted that we in America, whose art is just
+beginning even to strive, are subjected to a somewhat strange cross-fire
+of influences. Lineally the children of England, we are spiritually and
+by temperament in many things her opposites. Our taste in art seems to
+turn resolutely away from her. For each hundred of French and score of
+German pictures that comes to us, how many come from England? What can
+one who has not crossed the sea learn of English pictures from our
+private collections and picture-dealers' shops? Was not all we knew
+prior to the Exhibition of 1876 gleaned from <i>Vernon Gallery</i> plates and
+Turner's <i>Rogers</i> or <i>Rivers of France</i>? But while our dealers and
+students and millionaires throng the studios of Paris and Munich, and
+our eyes are being daily educated to demand above all things
+<i>technique</i>, our brains are constantly being worked upon by a stream of
+art-literature from England. Taste pulls us one way&mdash;identity of English
+speech, with consequent openness to English ideas, pulls us the other.
+Pictures preach one thing, books another. Our boy who has worked in
+Paris comes home to try to realize Ruskin. Both influences are too new,
+and our art is as yet too unsteady, for any one to guess as to the
+ultimate result. One thing only can be unreservedly inculcated: Let us
+shun self-analyzation, self-consciousness, morbidness, affectation,
+attitudinizing. Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our
+eyes on our brushes and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_718" id="Page_718">[Pg 718]</a></span> on the world of beauty around us. One thing
+only can with safety be predicted: If we are, or are to be, a people of
+artists, creative or appreciative as the case may be, we shall learn
+whatever of technique the world has to teach us, and shall improve upon
+it, and we shall perhaps digest the small measure of theory for which we
+have appetites left. But if we are <i>not</i> artists, actual or future,
+technique will be impossible, and will seem undesirable. We shall
+greedily fill our stomachs with the wind of art-philosophy, shall work
+with the reason instead of with the eye and the fingers, shall symbolize
+our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and
+fondly dream we are painting pictures. Or we shall copy with a hopeless
+effort after literalness the first face or weed we meet, and call the
+imperfect, mechanical result a work of art.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">M.&nbsp;G. Van Rensselaer.</span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THREE_WATCHES" id="THREE_WATCHES"></a>THREE WATCHES</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">I sat in the silence, in moonlight that gathered and glowed</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Far over the field and the forest with tender increase:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">The low, rushing winds in the trees were like waters that flowed</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">From sources of passionate joy to an ocean of peace.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And I watched, and was glad in my heart, though the shadows were deep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">Till one came and asked me: "Say, why dost thou watch through the</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">night?"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And I said, "I am watching my joy. They who sorrow may sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">But the soul that is glad cannot part with one hour of delight."</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Again in the silence I watched, and the moon had gone down;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">The shadows were hidden in darkness; the winds had passed by;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">The midnight sat throned, and the jewels were bright in her crown,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">For stars glimmered softly&mdash;oh softly!&mdash;from depths of the sky.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And I sighed as I watched all alone, till again came a voice:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">"Ah! why dost thou watch? Joy is over, and sorrow is vain."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And I said, "I am watching my grief. Let them sleep who rejoice,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">But the spirit that loves cannot part with one hour of its pain."</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Once more I sat watching, in darkness that fell like a death&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">The deep solemn darkness that comes to make way for the dawn:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">I looked on the earth, and it slept without motion or breath,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">And blindly I looked on the sky, but the stars were withdrawn.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">And the voice spoke once more: "Cease thy watching, for what dost</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">thou gain?"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">But I said, "I am watching my soul, to this darkness laid bare.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Let them sleep to whom love giveth joy, to whom love giveth pain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">But the soul left alone cannot part with one moment of prayer."</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Marion Couthouy.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_719" id="Page_719">[Pg 719]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SISTER_SILVIA" id="SISTER_SILVIA"></a>SISTER SILVIA.</h2>
+
+<p>Monte Compatri is one of the eastern outlying peaks of the Alban
+Mountains, and, like so many Italian mountains, has its road climbing to
+and fro in long loops to a gray little city at the top. This city of
+Monte Compatri is a full and busy hive, with solid blocks of houses, and
+the narrowest of streets that break now and then into stairs. For those
+old builders respected the features of a landscape as though they had
+been the features of a face, and no more thought of levelling
+inequalities of land than of shaving down or raising up noses. When a
+man had a house-lot in a hollow, he built his house there, and made
+Steps to go down to it: his neighbor, who owned a rocky knoll, built his
+house at the top, and made stairs to go up to it. Moreover, if the land
+was a bit in the city, the house was made in the shape of it, and was as
+likely to have corners in obtuse or acute as in right angles.</p>
+
+<p>The inhabitants of Monte Compatri have two streets of which they are
+immensely proud&mdash;the Lungara, which wriggles through the middle of the
+town, and the Giro, which makes the entire circuit of the town, leaving
+outside only the rim of houses that rise from the edge of the mountain,
+some of them founded on the natural rock, others stretching roots of
+masonry far down into the earth.</p>
+
+<p>One of these houses on the Giro had for generations been in the
+possession of the Guai family. One after another had held it at an easy
+rent from Prince Borghese, the owner of the town. The vineyard and
+orchard below in the Campagna they owned, and from those their wealth
+was derived. For it was wealth for such people to have a house full of
+furniture, linen and porcelain&mdash;where, perhaps, a connoisseur might have
+found some rare bits of old china&mdash;besides having a thousand scudi in
+bank.</p>
+
+<p>In this position was the head of the family when he died, leaving a
+grown-up son and daughter, and his wife about to become a mother for the
+third time.</p>
+
+<p>"Pepina shall have her portion in money, since she is to marry soon,"
+the father said. "Give her three hundred scudi in gold and a hundred in
+pearls. The rest of the money shall be for my wife to do as she likes
+with. For the little one; when it shall come, Matteo shall put in the
+bank every year thirty scudi, and when it shall be of age, be it girl or
+boy, he shall divide the land equally with it."</p>
+
+<p>So said Giovanni Guai, and died, and his wife let him talk
+uncontradicted, since it was for the last time. They had lived a stormy
+life, his heavy fist opposed to her indefatigable tongue, and she
+contemplated with silent triumph the prospect of being left in
+possession of the field. Besides, would he not see afterward what she
+did&mdash;see and be helpless to oppose? So she let him die fancying that he
+had disposed of his property.</p>
+
+<p>"The child is sure to be a girl," she said afterward, "and I mean her to
+be a nun. The land shall not be cut up. Matteo shall be a rich man and
+pile up a fortune. He shall be the richest man in Monte Compatri, and a
+girl shall not stand in his way."</p>
+
+<p>Nature verified the mother's prophecy and sent a little girl. Silvia
+they called her, and, since she was surely to be a nun, she grew to be
+called Sister Silvia by everybody, even before she was old enough to
+recognize her own name.</p>
+
+<p>The house of the Guai, on its inner wall, opened on the comparatively
+quiet Giro. From the windows and door could be heard the buzz and hum of
+the Lungara, where everybody&mdash;men, women, children, cats and dogs&mdash;were
+out with every species of work and play when the sun began to decline.
+This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family.
+They could see their neighbors even when they were at work in their
+houses, and could exchange gossip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_720" id="Page_720">[Pg 720]</a></span> and stir the polenta at the same
+time. The other side of the house they avoided. It was lonely and it was
+sunny. For Italians would have the sun, like the Lord, to be for ever
+knocking at the door and for ever shut out. It must shine upon their
+outer walls, but not by any means enter their windows.</p>
+
+<p>As years passed, however, there grew to be one exception in this regard.
+Sister Silvia loved not the town with its busy streets, nor the front
+windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own
+chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with
+knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear
+mass. There her mother accompanied her&mdash;a large, self-satisfied woman
+beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her
+mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his
+black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to
+encounter the two black eyes of Matteo Guai. It was understood that the
+knife in his belt was sharp, and that no scruple of conscience would
+stand between him and any vengeance he might choose to take for any
+affront he might choose to imagine.</p>
+
+<p>After mass, then, and the little work her mother permitted the girl to
+do for health's sake, Silvia sat alone by her window and looked out on
+the splendor which her eyes alone could appreciate. There lay the
+Campagna rolling and waving for miles and miles around, till the
+Sabines, all rose and amethyst, hemmed it in with their exquisite wall,
+and the sea curved a gleaming sickle to cut off its flowery passage, or
+the nearer mountains stood guard, almost covered by the green spray it
+threw up their rocky sides. She sat and stared at Rome while her busy
+fingers knit&mdash;at the wonderful city where she was one day to go and be a
+nun, where the pope lived and kings came to worship him. In the morning
+light the Holy City lay in the midst of the Campagna like her mother's
+wedding-pearls when dropped in a heap on their green cushion; and Silvia
+knelt with her face that way and prayed for a soul as white, for she
+was to be the spouse of Christ, and her purity was all that she could
+bring Him as a dowry. But when evening came, and that other airy sea of
+fine golden mist flowed in from the west, and made a gorgeous blur of
+all things, then the city seemed to float upward from the earth and rise
+toward heaven all stirring with the wings of its guardian angels, and
+Silvia would beg that the New Jerusalem might not be assumed till she
+should have the happiness of being in it.</p>
+
+<p>But there was a lovely view nearer than this visionary one, though the
+little nun seldom looked at it. If she should lean from her window she
+would see the mountain-side dropping from the gray walls of her home,
+with clinging flowery vines and trees growing downward, while the olives
+and grapevines of the Campagna came to meet them, setting here and there
+a precarious little garden halfway up the steep. Just under her window
+an almost perpendicular path came up, crept round the walls and entered
+the town. But no one ever used this road now, for a far wider and better
+one had been constructed at the other side of the mountain, and all the
+people came up that way when the day's work was over in the Campagna.</p>
+
+<p>One summer afternoon Silvia's reveries were broken by her mother's voice
+calling her: "Silvia, come and prepare the salad for Matteo."</p>
+
+<p>It was an extraordinary request, but the girl went at once without
+question. She seized upon every opportunity to practise obedience in
+preparation for that time when her life would be made up of obedience
+and prayer.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother was sitting by one of the windows talking with Matteo, who
+had just came up from the Campagna. He had an unsocial habit of eating
+alone, and, as he ate nothing when down in the vineyard, always wanted
+his supper as soon as he came up. The table was set for him with
+snow-white cloth and napkin, silver knife, fork and spoon, a loaf of
+bread and a decanter of golden-sparkling wine icy cold from the grotto
+hewn in the rock beneath the house; and he was just eating his
+<i>minestra</i> of vegetables<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721">[Pg 721]</a></span> when his sister came in. At the other end of
+the long table was a head of crisp white lettuce lying on a clean linen
+towel, and two bottles&mdash;one of white vinegar, the other of oil as sweet
+as cream and as bright as sunshine. Monte Compatri had no need to send
+to Lucca for oil of olives while its own orchards dropped such streams
+of pure richness.</p>
+
+<p>The room was large and dingy. The brick floor had never known other
+cleansing than sprinkling and sweeping, the yellow-washed walls had
+become with time a pale, mottled brown, the paint had disappeared under
+a fixed dinginess which the dusting-brush alone could not remove, and
+the glass of the windows had never been washed except by the rain. Yet,
+for all that, the place had an air of cleanliness. For though these
+people do not clean their houses more than they clean their yards, yet
+their clothing and tables and beds are clean. Plentiful white linen,
+stockings like snow, and bright dishes and metals give a look of
+freshness and show well on the dim background. Heavy walnut presses,
+carved and black with age, stood against the walls, drinking-glasses and
+candlesticks sparkled on a dark bureau-top, there was a bright picture
+or two, and the sunlighted tinware of a house at the other side of the
+street threw a cluster of tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the
+window. Silvia received these sun-blossoms on her head when she placed
+herself at the lower end of the table. She pushed the sleeves of her
+white sack back from her slim white arms, and began washing the
+lettuce-leaves in a bowl of fresh water and breaking them in the towel.
+The leaves broke with a fine snap and dropped in pieces as stiff as
+paper into a large dark-blue plate of old Japanese ware. A connoisseur
+in porcelain would have set such a plate on his drawing-room wall as a
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"How does Claudio work?" the mother asked of her son.</p>
+
+<p>"He works well," Matteo replied. "He is worth two of our common fellows,
+if he <i>is</i> educated."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless, I should not have employed him," the mother said. "He
+has disobeyed and disappointed his parents, and he should be punished.
+They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to
+educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay
+them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood,
+and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set one's
+will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough for
+anything. There should be a prison where parents could put the children
+who disobey them."</p>
+
+<p>The Sora Guai spoke sternly, and looked as if she would not have
+hesitated to put a refractory child in the deepest of dungeons.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a fool, but he earns his money," Matteo responded, and, drawing
+a plate of deliciously fried frogs toward him, began to gnaw them and
+throw the bones on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia gave him the salad, and poured wine and water into the tumbler
+for him, while his mother went to the kitchen for a dish of fricasseed
+pigeons.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no onion in the salad," Matteo grumbled when she came back.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white little
+onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me, Matteo," she said. "I was distracted by the thought of
+Claudio. It seems such a terrible thing."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a much more terrible thing if it were a girl who
+disobeyed," Matteo growled. He did not like that girls should criticise
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"So it would," the girl responded with meek readiness.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know why I feel so tired to-day," the mother said, sinking into
+a chair again. "My bones ache as if I had been working in the vineyard
+all day."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not ill, mamma?" exclaimed Silvia, blushing with alarm.</p>
+
+<p>The answer was a hesitating one: "I don't see what can ail me. It
+wouldn't be anything, only that I am so tired without having done much."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's the weather, mamma," Silvia suggested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_722" id="Page_722">[Pg 722]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Gentle as she was, she had adopted the ruthless and ungrateful Italian
+custom of ascribing every ache and pain of the body to some almost
+imperceptible change in their too beautiful weather. The smallest cloud
+goes laden with more accusations than it holds drops of rain, and the
+ill winds that blow nobody any good blow through those shining skies
+from morning till night and from night till morning again.</p>
+
+<p>The Sora Guai was sicker than she dreamed. It was not the summer sun
+that scorched her so, nor the <i>scirocco</i> that made her head so heavy.
+What malaria she had found to breathe on the mountain-top it would be
+hard to say; but the dreaded <i>perniciosa</i> had caught her in its grasp,
+and she was doomed. The fever burned fiercely for a few days, and when
+it was quenched there was nothing left but ashes.</p>
+
+<p>And thus died the only earthly thing to which Sister Silvia's heart
+clung. The mother had been stern, but the daughter was too submissive to
+need correction. She had never had any will of her own, except to love
+and obey. Collision between them was therefore impossible, and the
+daughter felt as a frail plant growing under a shadowing tree might feel
+if the tree were cut down. She was bare to every wind that blew. She had
+no companions of her own age&mdash;she had no companion of any age, in
+fact&mdash;and she had not been accustomed to think for herself in the
+smallest thing.</p>
+
+<p>She had got bent into a certain shape, however, and her brother and
+sister felt quite safe on her account. Everybody knew that she was to be
+a nun of the Perpetual Adoration; that she was soon to go to the convent
+of Santa Maria Maddalena on the Quirinal in Rome; and that, once entered
+there, she would never again see a person from outside. The
+town's-people were accustomed to the wall of silence and seclusion which
+had already grown up about her, and they did not even seek to salute her
+when they met her going to and from church in the morning. To these
+simple citizens, ignorant but reverential, Sister Silvia's lowered
+eyelids were as inviolate as the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
+Besides, to help their reverence, there were the fierce black eyes and
+strange reputation of Matteo. So when, a day or two after her mother's
+death, his sister begged him to accompany her to church in the early
+morning, and leave her in the care of some decent woman there, Matteo
+replied that she might go by herself.</p>
+
+<p>She set out for the first time alone on what had ever been to her a <i>via
+sacra</i>, and was now become a <i>via dolorosa</i>, where her tears dropped as
+she walked. And going so once, she went again. Pepina, the elder sister,
+a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but she was too
+much taken up with work, the care of her two children and looking out
+for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and after a few weeks
+the young girl went as unheeded as a matron in her daily walk.</p>
+
+<p>At home her life was nearly the same. She mended the clothes from the
+washing and knit stockings, and sat at her window and looked off over
+the Campagna toward Rome.</p>
+
+<p>One evening she sat there before going to bed and watched the moonlight
+turn all the earth to black and silver under the purple sky&mdash;a black
+like velvet, so deep and soft was it, and a silver like white fire,
+clear and splendid, yet beautifully soft. She was feeling desolate, and
+her tears dropped down, now and then breaking into sobs. It had been
+pleasant to sit there alone when she knew that her mother was below
+stairs, strong, healthy and gay. All that life had been as the oil over
+which her little flame burned. Lacking it, she grew dim, just as the
+floating wick in her little blue vase before the Madonna grew dim when
+the oil was gone.</p>
+
+<p>As she wept and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew conscious
+of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human voice, clear
+and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in little
+snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came nearer
+and paused beneath a fig tree, and the words grew distinct.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723">[Pg 723]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Piet&agrave;, signore, di me dolente," it sang.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia leaned out of the window and looked down at the singer. His face
+was lifted to the white moonlight, and seemed in its pallid beauty a
+concentration of the moonlight. Only his face was visible, for the
+shadow of the tree hid all his figure. One might almost have expected to
+catch a glimmer of two motionless wings bearing up that face, so fair it
+was.</p>
+
+<p>To Silvia it was as if another self, who grieved also, but who could
+speak, were uttering all her pain, and lightening it so. She recognized
+Claudio's voice. He was the chief singer in the cathedral, and sang like
+an angel. She was afraid that Claudio had done very wrong in not being a
+priest, but, for all that, she had often found her devotion increased by
+his singing. The Christmas night would not have been half so joyful
+lacking his <i>Adeste Fideles</i>; the <i>Stabat Mater</i> sung by him in Holy
+Week made her tears of religious sorrow burst forth afresh; and when on
+Easter morning he sang the <i>Gloria</i> it had seemed to her that the
+heavens were opening.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, however, he had been to her not a person, but a voice.
+That he should come here and express her sorrow made him seem different.
+For the first time she looked at his face. By daylight it was thin and
+finely featured, and of a clear darkness like shaded water, through
+which the faintest tinge of color is visible. In this transfigurating
+moonlight it became of a luminous whiteness.</p>
+
+<p>The song ended, the singer turned his head slightly and looked up at
+Silvia's window. She did not draw back. There was no recognition of any
+human sympathy with him, and no slightest consciousness of that airy and
+silent friendship which had long been weaving itself over the tops of
+the mountains that separated them. How could she know that Claudio had
+sung for her, and that it had been the measure of his success to see her
+head droop or lift as he sang of sorrow and pain or of joy and triumph?
+The choir had their post over the door; and, besides, she never glanced
+up even in going out. Therefore she gazed down into his uplifted face
+with a sweet and sorrowful tranquillity, her soul pure and candid to its
+uttermost depths.</p>
+
+<p>For Claudio, who had sung to express his sympathy for her, but had not
+dreamed of seeing her, it was as if the dark-blue sky above had opened
+and an angel had looked out when he saw her face. He could only stretch
+his clasped hands toward her.</p>
+
+<p>The gesture made her weep anew, for it was like human kindness. She hid
+her face in her handkerchief, and he saw her wipe the tears away again
+and again.</p>
+
+<p>Claudio remembered a note he carried. It had been written the night
+before&mdash;not with any hope of her ever seeing it, but, as he had written
+her hundreds of notes before, pouring out his heart into them because it
+was too full to bear without that relief. He took the note out, but how
+should he give it to her? The window was too far above for him to toss
+so light a thing unless it should be weighted with a stone; and he could
+not throw a stone at Silvia's window. He held it up, and, that she might
+see it more clearly, tore up a handful of red poppies and laid it white
+on the blossoms that were a deep red by night.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia understood, and after a moment's study dropped him down the ball
+of her knitting; and soon the note came swaying up through the still air
+resting on its cushion of poppies, for Claudio had wound the thread
+about both flowers and letter.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled with an almost incredulous delight as he saw the package
+arrive safely at its destination and caught afterward the faint red
+light of the lamp that Silvia had taken down from before her Madonna to
+read the note by. Since she was a little thing only five or six years
+old his heart had turned toward her, and her small white face had been
+to him the one star in a dim life. He still kept two or three tiny
+flowers she had given him years before when his family and hers were
+coming together down from Monte San Silvestro at the other side<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724">[Pg 724]</a></span> of
+Monte Compatri. The two children, with others, had stopped to stick
+fresh flowers through the wire screen before the great crucifix halfway
+up the mountain, and Silvia had given Claudio these blossoms. He had
+laid them away with his treasures and relics&mdash;the bit of muslin from the
+veil of Our Lady of Loretto, the almost invisible speck from the cord of
+St. Francis of Assisi and the little paper of the ashes of Blessed
+Joseph Labr&eacute;. In those days he was the little priest and she the little
+nun, and their companions stood respectfully back for them. Now he was
+no more the priest, and she was up there in her window against the sky
+reading the note he had written her.</p>
+
+<p>This is what the note said:</p>
+
+<p>"My heart is breaking for your sorrow. Why should such eyes as yours be
+permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those tears away? Oh that I
+might catch them as they fall! Drop me down a handkerchief that has been
+wet with them, that I may keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in
+which I can console you and spend my life to serve you."</p>
+
+<p>She read with a mingling of consolation and astonishment. Why, this was
+more than her mother cared for her! But perhaps men were really more
+strongly loving than women. It would seem so, since God, who knows all,
+when He wanted to express His love to mankind, took the form of a man,
+not of a woman. Then she considered whether, and how, she should answer
+this note, and the result of her considering was this, written hastily
+on a bit of paper in which some Agnus Dei had been wrapped:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I do not know what I ought to write to you, but I thank you for
+your kindness. It comforts me, and I have need of comfort. I think,
+though, that it may be wrong for you to speak of my handkerchief as
+if it were a relic. Relics are things which have belonged to the
+saints, and I am not a saint at all, though I hope to become one. I
+frequently do wrong. Spend your life in serving God, and pray for
+me. You pray in singing, and your singing is very sweet.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Silvia.</span>"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her a simple and merely polite note. To him it was as the
+spark to a magazine of powder. All the possibilities of his life, only
+half hoped or half dreamed of, burst at once into a flame of certainty.
+She had need of comfort, and he comforted her! His voice was sweet to
+her, and his singing was a prayer!</p>
+
+<p>Silvia should not be a nun. She should break the bond imposed by her
+mother, as he had broken that imposed by his parents. She should be his
+wife, and they would live in Rome. He knew that his voice would find
+bread for them.</p>
+
+<p>All this flashed through his mind as he read, and pressed to his lips
+the handkerchief which she had dropped down to him, though it was not a
+relic. He lifted his arms upward toward her window with a rapturous joy,
+as if to embrace her, but she did not look out again. A little scruple
+for having deprived the Madonna for a moment of her lamp had made her
+resolve to say at once a decade of the rosary in expiation. He waited
+till the sound of closing doors and wandering voices told that the
+inhabitants gathered for the evening in the Lungara were separating to
+their homes, then went reluctantly away. Matteo would be at home, and
+Matteo's face might look down at him from that other window beside
+Silvia's. So he also went home, with the moonlight between his feet and
+the ground and stars sparkling in his brain. He felt as if his head were
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>This was an August night. One day in October, Matteo told his sister
+that she was to go to Rome with him the next morning to pass a month
+with a family they knew there, and afterward begin her novici&aacute;te in the
+convent of the Sacramentarians at Monte Cavallo. He had received a
+letter from the Signora Fantini, who would receive her and do everything
+for her. He and Pepina had no time, now that the vintage had begun, to
+attend to such affairs, even if they knew how.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia grew pale. She had not expected to go before the spring, and now
+all was arranged without a word being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_725" id="Page_725">[Pg 725]</a></span> said to her, and she was to go
+without saying good-bye to any one.</p>
+
+<p>Matteo's sharp eyes were watching her. "You will be ready to start at
+seven o'clock," he said: "I must be back to-morrow night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Matteo," she faltered, hesitated a moment, then ventured to add,
+"I did not expect to go so soon."</p>
+
+<p>"And what of that?" he demanded roughly. "You were to go at the proper
+time, and the proper time is to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>She trembled, but ventured another word: "I should like to see my
+confessor first."</p>
+
+<p>"He will come here this evening to see you," her brother replied: "I
+have already talked with him. You have nothing else to do. Pepina will
+pack your trunk while you are talking with the priest."</p>
+
+<p>Silvia had no more to say. She was bound hand and foot. Besides, she was
+willing to go, she assured herself. It was her duty to obey her parents,
+or the ones who stood in their place and had authority over her. Matteo
+said she must go; therefore it was her duty to go, and she was willing.</p>
+
+<p>But the willing girl looked very pale and walked about with a very
+feeble step, and it was hard work to keep the tears that were every
+moment rising to her eyes from falling over her cheeks. It was such a
+pitiful face, indeed, that Father Teodoli, when he came just before Ave
+Maria, asked if Silvia were ill.</p>
+
+<p>"She has had a toothache," Matteo said quickly, and gave his sister a
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you done for it, my child?" the priest asked kindly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Silvia faltered out.</p>
+
+<p>"I will leave you to give Silvia all the advice she needs," Matteo said
+after the compliments of welcome were over. "I have to go down the
+Lungara for men to work in the vineyard to-morrow.&mdash;Silvia, come and
+shut the door after me: there is too much draught here."</p>
+
+<p>Silvia followed her brother to the door, trembling for what he might say
+or do. Well she knew that his command was given only that he might have
+a chance to speak with her alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mind what you say to your confessor," he whispered, grasping her arm
+and speaking in her ear. "You are to be a nun: you wish to be, and you
+are willing to set out to-morrow. Tell him no nonsense&mdash;do you hear?&mdash;or
+it will be worse for you. I shall know every word you say. If he asks if
+you had a toothache say Yes. Do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Matteo."</p>
+
+<p>She went back half fainting, and did as she had been commanded. If there
+had been any little lurking impulse to beg for another week or month, it
+died of fear. If she had any confession to make of other wishes than
+those chosen for her, she postponed it. Matteo might be behind the door
+listening, or in the next room or at the window. It seemed to her that
+he could make himself invisible in order to keep guard over her.</p>
+
+<p>So the priest talked a little, learned nothing, gave some advice,
+recommended himself to her prayers, gave her his benediction, and went.
+Then Pepina called her to see the trunk all packed with linen that had
+been laid by for her for years, and Matteo, who had really been lurking
+about the house, told her to go to bed, and himself really went off this
+time to the Lungara. Pepina's lover came for her to sit out on the
+doorstep with him, and Silvia was left alone. Nobody cared for her. All
+had other interests, and they forgot her the moment she was out of their
+sight. Worse, even: they wanted her to be for ever out of their sight,
+that they might never have to think of her.</p>
+
+<p>But no: there was one who did not forget her&mdash;who would perhaps now have
+heard that she was going away, and be waiting in the mountain-path for
+her. She hastened to her room, locked the door and went to the window.
+He made a gesture of haste, and she dropped the ball down to him. This
+was not the second time that their conversation had been held by means
+of a thread. Indeed, they had come to talk so every night. At first it
+had been a few words only, and Silvia's unconsciousness and her
+sincerity in her intention to follow her mother's will had imposed
+silence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726">[Pg 726]</a></span> on the young man. But little by little he had ventured, and she
+had understood; and within the last week there had been no concealments
+between them, though Silvia still resisted all his prayers to change her
+resolution and brave her brother.</p>
+
+<p>His first note was in her hands in a moment:</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible that what I hear is true? I will not believe it: I will
+not let you go."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and I must go," she wrote back. "I have to start at seven in the
+morning. Dear Claudio, be resigned: there is no help for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Silvia, why will you persist in ruining your life and mine? It is a
+sin. Say that you are too sick to go to-morrow. Stay in bed all day, and
+by night I will have a rope-ladder for you to come down to me. We can
+run away and hide somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot. We could never hide from Matteo: he would find us out and
+kill us both."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to the Holy Father and tell him all. We could be in Rome
+early in the morning if we should walk all night."</p>
+
+<p>"Matteo would hear us: he hears everything. We should never reach Rome.
+He would find us wherever we might be hidden. If we were dead and buried
+he would pull us out of the ground to stab us. I must go. I have sinned
+in having so much intercourse with you. Be resigned, Claudio. Be a good
+man, and we shall meet in heaven. The earth is a terrible place: I am
+afraid of it. I want to shut myself up in the convent and be at peace. I
+fear so much that I tremble all the time. Say addio."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot. Will you stay in bed to-morrow, and let me try if I cannot go
+to Rome?"</p>
+
+<p>"Say addio, Claudio. I dare not stay here any longer: I hear some one
+outside my door. I say addio to you now. I shall not drop the ball
+again."</p>
+
+<p>She did not even draw it up again, for the thread caught on a nail in
+the wall and broke. And at the same time there was a knock at her door.</p>
+
+<p>"Silvia, why do you not go to bed?" Matteo called out: "I hear you up."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going now," she made haste to answer, and in her terror threw
+herself on the bed without undressing. She wondered if Matteo could hear
+her heart beat through the wall or see how she was shaking.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning at seven o'clock Silvia and her brother took their
+seats in the clumsy coach that goes from Monte Compatri to Rome whenever
+there are passengers enough to fill it, and after confused leavetakings
+from all but the one she wished most to see they set out. Claudio was
+invisible. In fact, he had lain on the ground all night beneath her
+window, and now, hidden in a tree, was watching the winding road for an
+occasional glimpse of the carriage as it bore his love away.</p>
+
+<p>The peasants of Italy, when they see the Milky Way stretching its
+wavering, cloudy path across the sky, shining as if made up of the
+footprints of innumerable saints, say that it is the road to Jerusalem.
+The road to the New Jerusalem has no such pallid and spiritual glory:
+its colors are those of life. No death but that of martyrdom, with its
+rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown, is figured there. Life,
+and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few
+blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the <i>dolce far niente</i> of poverty
+that neither works nor starves,&mdash;they lie all along the road.</p>
+
+<p>Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey.
+She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though all
+the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of St.
+John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon <i>Angelus</i>,
+and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door and Silvia in
+the kind lady's arms. It seemed to the girl that she had found her
+mother again. That this lady was more gracious, graceful, kind and
+beautiful than her mother had ever been she would not think. She was
+simply another mother. And when Matteo had gone away home again,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727">[Pg 727]</a></span> not
+too soon, and when, after a few days' sightseeing, the signora,
+suspecting that the continued sadness of her young guest had some other
+cause than separation from her brother and sister, sought persistently
+and artfully to win her secret, Silvia told her all with many tears. She
+was going to be a nun because her mother had said that she must; and she
+was willing to be a nun&mdash;certainly she was willing. But, for all that,
+if it could have been so, she would have been so happy with Claudio, and
+she never should be quite happy without him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you must not be a nun," the signora said decidedly. "The thing is
+all wrong. You have no vocation. You should have said all this before."</p>
+
+<p>For already the signora had taken Silvia to see the Superior at Monte
+Cavallo, who had promised to receive the young novice in three weeks,
+and had told her what work she could perform in the convent. "You are
+not strong, I think," she had said, "but you can knit the stockings. All
+have to work."</p>
+
+<p>And Monsignor Catinari, whose business it was to examine all candidates
+for the conventual life, had held a long conversation with her and gone
+away perfectly satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>But when the signora proposed to undo all this, Silvia was wild with
+terror. No, no, she would be a nun. Her mother had said so, she wished
+it, and Matteo would kill her if she should refuse.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave it all to me," the signora said, and laid her motherly hand on
+the trembling little ones held out to her in entreaty. "We will look out
+for that. Matteo shall not hurt you or Claudio. I am going to send for
+Monsignor Catinari again, and you must tell him the truth this time. And
+then we will see what can be done in the case. Don't look so terrified,
+child. Do you think that Matteo rules the world?"</p>
+
+<p>Poor little Silvia could not be reassured, for to her other terrors was
+now added Monsignor Catinari's possible wrath. To her, men were objects
+of terror. The doctrine of masculine supremacy, so pitilessly upheld in
+Italy, was exaggerated to her mind by her brother's character; and
+though she believed that help was sometimes possible, she also believed
+that it often came too late, as in the case of poor Beatrice Cenci. They
+might stand between her and Matteo, but if he had first killed her, what
+good would it do? She had a fixed idea that he would kill her.</p>
+
+<p>Monsignor Catinari was indeed much provoked when the signora told him
+the true story of the little novice.</p>
+
+<p>"Just see what creatures girls are!" he exclaimed. "How are we to know
+if they have a vocation or not? That girl professed herself both willing
+and desirous to be a nun."</p>
+
+<p>He did not scold Silvia, however. When he saw her pretty frightened face
+his heart relented. "You have told me a good many lies, my child," he
+said, "but I forgive you, since they were not intended in malice. We
+will say no more about it. I learn from the signora that this Claudio is
+a good young man, so the sooner you are married the better. Cheer up: we
+will have you a bride by the first week of November; and if Claudio has
+such a wonderful voice, he can make his way in Rome."</p>
+
+<p>The reassurances of a man were more effectual than those of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>"At last I believe! at last I fear no more!" Silvia cried, throwing
+herself into the arms of the Signora Fantini when the Monsignor was
+gone. "Oh how beautiful the earth is! how beautiful life is!"</p>
+
+<p>"We will then begin immediately to enjoy life," the signora replied.
+"Collation is ready, and Nanna has bought us some of the most delicious
+grapes. See how large and rich they are! One could almost slice them.
+There! these black figs are like honey. Try one now, before your soup.
+The macaroni that will be brought in presently was made in the
+house&mdash;none of your Naples stuff, made nobody knows how or by whom. What
+else Nanna has for us I cannot say. She was very secret this morning,
+and I suspect that means riceballs seasoned with mushrooms and hashed
+giblets of turkey. She always becomes mysterious when those are in
+preparation. Eat well,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_728" id="Page_728">[Pg 728]</a></span> child, and get a little flesh and color before
+Claudio comes."</p>
+
+<p>They made a merry breakfast, with the noon sun sending its golden arrows
+through every tiniest chink of the closed shutters and an almost summer
+heat reigning without. Then there was an hour of sleep, then a drive to
+the Pincio to see all the notable people who came up there to look at or
+speak to each other while the sun sank behind St. Peter's. And in the
+evening after dinner they went to the housetop to see the fireworks
+which were being displayed for some festa or other; and later there was
+music, and then to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Life became an enchantment to the little bride-elect, as life in Italy
+will become to any one who has not too heavy a cross to bear. For peace
+in this beautiful land means delight, not merely the absence of pain.
+How the sun shone! and how the fountains danced! What roses bloomed
+everywhere! what fruits of Eden were everywhere piled! How soft the
+speech was! and how sweet the smiles! And when it was discovered that
+Silvia had a beautiful voice, so that she and Claudio would be like a
+pair of birds together, then it seemed to her that a nest of twigs on a
+tree-branch would be all that she could desire.</p>
+
+<p>They took her to see the pope on one of those days. It was as if they
+had taken her to heaven. To her he was the soul of Rome, the reason why
+Rome was; and when she saw his white figure against the scarlet
+background of cardinals she remembered how Rome looked against the rosy
+Campagna at sunset from her far-away window in Monte Compatri.</p>
+
+<p>"A little <i>sposa</i>, is she?" the pope said when Monsignor Catinari
+presented her.&mdash;"I bless you, my child: wear this in memory of me." He
+gave her a little gold medal from a tiny pocket at his side, laid his
+hand on her head and passed on. It was too much: she had to weep for
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the audience was over, they took her through the museum and
+library, and some one gave her a bunch of roses out of the pope's
+private garden, and she was put into a carriage and driven home, her
+heart beating somewhere in her head, her feet winged and her eyes
+dazzled.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rapturous letter from Claudio awaiting her, and by that she
+knew that it was not all a dream. She rattled the paper in her hands as
+she sat with her eyes shut, half dreaming, to make sure and keep sure
+that she was not to wake up presently to bitterness. Claudio would come
+to Rome in a week, and perhaps they would be married before he should go
+back. There was no letter from Matteo. So much the better.</p>
+
+<p>One golden day succeeded another, and Silvia changed from a lily to a
+rose with marvellous rapidity. She was not a ruddy, full-leaved rose,
+though, but like one of those delicate ones with clouds of red on them
+and petals that only touch the calyx, as if they were wings and must be
+free to move. She was slim and frail, and her color wavered, and her
+head had a little droop, and her voice was low. She had always been the
+stillest creature alive; and now, full of happiness as she was, her
+feelings showed themselves in an uneasy stirring, like that of a flower
+in which a bee has hidden itself. After the first outburst she did not
+so much say that she was happy as breathe and look it.</p>
+
+<p>One noonday, when life seemed too beautiful to last, and they all sat
+together after breakfast, the signora, her daughter and Silvia, too
+contented to say a word, the door opened, and Matteo Guai came in with a
+black, smileless face, and not the slightest salutation for his sister.
+He had come to take Silvia home, he replied briefly to the signora's
+compliments. She must be ready in an hour. The vintage was suffering by
+his absence, and it was necessary that he should return at once.</p>
+
+<p>Signora Fantini poured out the most voluble exclamations, prayers and
+protests. She had forty engagements for Silvia. They had had only a few
+days' visit from her, and she was to have stayed a month. They would
+themselves accompany her to Monte Compatri later if it was necessary
+that she should go. But, in fine, Monsignor Catinari did not expect her
+to return.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_729" id="Page_729">[Pg 729]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am the head of the family, and my sister has to obey me till she is
+married," Matteo replied doggedly. "I suppose that Monsignor Catinari
+will not deny that. The Church always supports the authority of the
+master of the family."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," the signora replied, rather confused by this
+irresistible argument, "you have the right, and no one will resist you.
+But as a favor now&mdash;" and the signora assumed her most coaxing smile,
+and even advanced a plump white hand to touch Matteo's sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>She might as well have tried to bewitch and persuade the bronze Augustus
+on the Capitoline Hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Things are changed since it was promised that Silvia should stay a
+month with you," Matteo replied. "There is work at home for her to do.
+Since she is not to be a nun, she must work. Let her be ready to start
+in an hour: my carriage is waiting at the door. I am going out into the
+piazza for a little while. I will send a man up for her trunk when I am
+ready to start."</p>
+
+<p>Silvia uttered not a word. At sight of her brother she had sunk back in
+her chair white and speechless. On hearing his voice she had closed her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He half turned to her before going out, looking at her out of the
+corners of his evil eyes, a cold, strange smile wreathing his lips. "So
+you are not going to be a nun?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She did not respond. Only the quiver of her lowered eyelids and a slight
+shiver told that she knew he was addressing her.</p>
+
+<p>Matteo went out, and the signora, at her wits' end, undertook to
+encourage Silvia. There was no time to see Monsignor Catinari or to
+appeal to any authority; and if there were, it would have availed
+nothing perhaps. Almost any one would have said that the girl's terrors
+were fanciful, and that it was quite natural her brother, who would lose
+five hundred scudi by her change of purpose, should require her to work
+as other girls of her condition worked.</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up and go with him, <i>figlia mia</i>," she said, "and leave all to
+me. I will see Monsignor Catinari this very evening, and post a letter
+to you before I go to bed. If Matteo is unkind to you, we will have you
+taken away from him at once. And, in any case, you shall be married in a
+few weeks at the most, as Monsignor promised. Don't cry so: don't say
+that you cannot go. I am sorry and vexed, my dear, but I see no way but
+for you to go. Depend upon me. No harm shall come to you. I will myself
+come to Monte Compatri within the week, and arrange all for you.
+Besides, recollect that you will see Claudio: he is there waiting for
+you. Perhaps you may see him this very evening."</p>
+
+<p>The Signora Fantini's efforts to cheer and reassure the sister were as
+ineffectual as her efforts to persuade the brother had been. Silvia
+submitted because she had no strength to resist.</p>
+
+<p>"O Madonna mia!" she kept murmuring, "he will kill me! he will kill me!
+O Madonna mia! pray for me."</p>
+
+<p>When an Italian says that he will come back in an hour, you may look for
+him after two hours. Matteo was no exception to the rule. It was already
+mid-afternoon when the porter came up and said that Silvia's brother was
+waiting for her below.</p>
+
+<p>The signora gave her a tumbler half full of <i>vin santo</i>, which she kept
+for special occasions&mdash;a strong, delicious wine with the perfume of a
+whole garden in it. "Drink every drop," she commanded: "it will give you
+courage. You had better be a little tipsy than fainting away. And put
+this bottle into your pocket to drink when you have need on the way."</p>
+
+<p>More dead than alive, Silvia was placed in the little old-fashioned
+carriage that Matteo had hired to come to Rome in, and her brother took
+his seat beside her. The Signora Fantini and her daughter leaned from
+the window, kissing their hands to her and shaking their handkerchiefs
+as long as she was in sight. And as long as she was in sight they saw
+her pale face turned backward, looking at them. Then the tawny stone of
+a church-corner hid her from their eyes for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Who knows or can guess what that drive was? The two passed through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730">[Pg 730]</a></span>
+Frascati, and Matteo stopped to speak to an acquaintance there. They
+drove around Monte Porzio, and Matteo stopped again, to buy a glass of
+wine and some figs. He offered some to his sister, but she shook her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"She is sleepy," her brother said to the man of whom he had bought.
+"Give me another tumbler of wine: it isn't bad."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the last barrel I have of the vintage of two years ago," the man
+replied. "It was a good vintage. If the signorina would take a drop she
+would sleep the better. Besides, the night is coming on and there is a
+chill in the air."</p>
+
+<p>Silvia opened her eyes and made the little horizontal motion with her
+fore finger which in Italy means no.</p>
+
+<p>"She will sleep well enough," Matteo said, and drove on.</p>
+
+<p>Night was coming on, and they had no more towns to pass&mdash;only a bit more
+of lonely level road and the lonely road that wound to and fro up the
+mountain-side. At the best, they could not reach home before ten
+o'clock. The road went to and fro&mdash;sometimes open, to give a view of the
+Campagna and the Sabine Mountains, and Soracte swimming in a lustrous
+dimness on the horizon; sometimes shut in closely by trees, that made it
+almost black in spite of the moon. For the moon was low and gave but
+little light, being but a crescent as yet. There was a shooting star now
+and then, breaking out like a rocket with a trail of sparks or slipping
+small and pallid across the sky.</p>
+
+<p>One of these latter might have been poor Silvia's soul slipping away
+from the earth. It went out there somewhere on the mountain-side. Matteo
+said the carriage tilted, and she, being asleep, fell out before he
+could prevent. Her temple struck a sharp rock, and Claudio missed his
+bride.</p>
+
+<p>He had to keep quiet about it, though. What could he prove? what could
+any one prove? Where knives are sharp and people mind their own
+business, or express their opinions only by a shrug of the shoulders and
+a grimace, how is a poor boy, how is even a rich man or a rich woman, to
+come at the truth in such a case? Besides, the truth would not have
+brought her back, poor little Silvia!</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Mary Agnes Tincker.</span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_SPANISH_STORY-TELLER" id="A_SPANISH_STORY-TELLER"></a>A SPANISH STORY-TELLER</h2>
+
+<p>In these days of pessimism in literature, when Tourgueneff and
+Sacher-Masoch represent man as the victim of blind Chance and
+annihilation his greatest happiness, it is pleasant to turn to a writer
+who still believes in God, his country and the family, and recognizes an
+overruling Providence that directs the world. It is not strange that
+these old-fashioned ideas should be found in Spain, where, in spite of
+much ignorance and superstition, the lower classes are deeply religious
+in the best sense of the word, and distinguished for their patriotism
+and intense love for their homes.</p>
+
+<p>Antonio de Trueba, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1821 at
+Montellano, a little village in Biscay. He thus describes the home of
+his childhood in the preface to his collected poems: "On the brow of one
+of the mountains that surround a valley of Biscay there are four little
+houses, white as four doves, hidden in a grove of chestnut and walnut
+trees&mdash;four houses that can only be seen at a distance when the autumn
+has removed the leaves from the trees. There I spent the first fifteen
+years of my life. In the bottom of the valley there is a church whose
+belfry pierces the arch of foliage and rises majestic above the ash and
+walnut trees, as if to signify that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_731" id="Page_731">[Pg 731]</a></span> voice of God rises above
+Nature; and in that church two masses were said on Sunday&mdash;one at
+sunrise and the other two hours later. We children rose with the song of
+the birds and went down to the first mass, singing and leaping through
+the shady oak-groves, while our elders came down later to high mass.
+While our parents and grand-parents were attending it I sat down beneath
+some cherry trees that were opposite my father's house&mdash;for from that
+spot could be seen the whole valley that ended in the sea&mdash;and shortly
+after four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that
+hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long
+braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to
+their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine,
+under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders
+chatted and enjoyed our pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>The young poet's parents were simple tillers of the soil, who gave their
+son a meagre education. In one of his letters he says that his father's
+library consisted of the <i>Fueros de Viscaya</i> (the old laws of Biscay),
+the <i>Fables</i> of Samaniego, <i>Don Quixote</i>, some ballads brought from
+Valmaseda or Bilbao, and two or three lives of the saints. Antonio seems
+to have had from his earliest childhood an ardent love of poetry, and in
+the passage quoted above he mentions his own compositions. He continues
+by saying, "I remember one day one of those girls was very sad because
+her sweetheart was going away for a long time. She wanted a song to
+express her grief, and I composed one at her request. A few days later
+she did not need my aid to sing her sorrow: in proportion as it had
+increased her ability to sing it herself had also increased, for poetry
+is the child of feeling. Her songs, as well as those I composed, soon
+became popular in the valley."</p>
+
+<p>When the poet was fifteen years old the civil war waged by Don Carlos
+was desolating Spain. The inhabitants of Biscay espoused his cause, but
+Antonio's parents were unwilling to expose their son to the dangers he
+must run if he remained at home, and therefore decided to send him to a
+distant relative in Madrid who kept a hardware-shop. "One night in
+November," says Trueba, "I departed from my village, perhaps&mdash;my
+God!&mdash;never to return. I descended the valley with my eyes bathed in
+tears. The cocks began to crow, the dogs barked, the owls hooted in the
+mountains, the wind moaned in the tops of the walnut trees, and the
+river roared furiously rushing down the valley; but the inhabitants of
+the village slept peaceably, except my parents and brothers, who from
+the window followed weeping the sound of my footsteps, about to be lost
+in the noise of the valley. I was just leaving the last house of the
+village when one of those girls who had so often sought me under the
+cherry trees approached the window and took leave of me sobbing. On
+crossing a hill, about to lose the valley from my sight, I heard a
+distant song, and stopped. That same girl was sending me her last
+farewell in a song as beautiful as the sentiment that inspired it."</p>
+
+<p>Antonio devoted himself to his duties during the day and pursued his
+studies with eagerness during the night. What he suffered from
+home-sickness the reader can easily imagine. All through his later works
+are scattered reminiscences of those unhappy years in Madrid, when his
+memory fondly turned to the mountains and cherry-groves of his beloved
+Encartaciones.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Often dreaming of the country, which, he says, is his
+perpetual dream, he imagined the moment in which God would permit him to
+return to the valley in which he was born. "When this happens, I say to
+myself, my brow will be wrinkled and my hair gray. The day on which I
+return to my native valley will be a festal day, and on crossing the
+hill from which I can behold the whole valley, I shall hear the bells
+ringing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_732" id="Page_732">[Pg 732]</a></span> for high mass. How sweetly will resound in my ears those bells
+that so often rilled my childhood with delight! I shall enter the
+valley, my heart beating, my breathing difficult and my eyes bathed with
+tears of joy. There will be, with its white and sonorous belfry, the
+church where the holy water of baptism was poured upon the brows of my
+parents and my own; there will be the walnut and chestnut trees beneath
+whose shade we danced on Sunday afternoons; there will be the wood where
+my brothers and I looked for birds' nests and made whistles out of the
+chestnut and walnut bark; there, along the road, will be the apple trees
+whose fruit my companions and I knocked off with stones when we went to
+school; there will be the little white house where my grand-parents, my
+father, my brothers and I were born; there will be all that does not
+feel or breathe. But where will be, my God, all those who with tears in
+their eyes bade me farewell so many years ago? I shall follow the valley
+down: I shall recognize the valley, but not its inhabitants. Judge
+whether there will be among sorrows a greater sorrow than mine! The
+people gathered in the portico of the church waiting for mass to begin
+will look over the wall along the road, and others will look out of the
+windows, all to see the stranger pass. And they will not know me, and I
+shall not know them, for those children and those youths and those old
+men will not be the old men nor the youths nor the children whom I left
+in my native valley. I shall follow sadly the valley down. 'All that has
+felt,' I shall exclaim, 'has changed or died. What is it that preserves
+here pure and immaculate the sentiments which I inspired?' And then some
+village-woman will sing one of those songs in which I enclosed the
+deepest feelings of my soul, and on hearing her my heart will want to
+leap from my breast, and I shall fall on my knees, and, if emotion and
+sobs do not stifle my voice, I shall exclaim, 'Holy and thrice holy,
+blessed and thrice blessed, poetry which immortalizes human sentiment!'"</p>
+
+<p>Antonio after a time left his relative's shop to enter another in the
+same business, from which he was relieved by the owner's financial
+difficulties. He then determined to devote himself to literature, and
+became a writer for the papers. In 1852 he published <i>Libro de Cantares</i>
+(<i>Book of Songs</i>), which at once made his name a household word
+throughout Spain. He tells us that most of the poems in it were composed
+mentally while dreaming of his native country and wandering about the
+environs of Madrid, "wherever the birds sing and the people display
+their virtues and their vices, for the noble Spanish people have a
+little of everything." He warns his readers not to expect from him what
+he cannot give them: "Do not seek in this book erudition or culture or
+art. Seek recollections and feeling, and nothing more. Fifteen years ago
+I left my solitary village: these fifteen years, instead of singing
+under the cherry trees of my native country, I sing in the midst of the
+Babylon which rises on the banks of the Manzanares; and,
+notwithstanding, I still amuse myself with counting from here the trees
+that shade the little white house where I was born, and where, God
+willing, I shall die: my songs still resemble those of fifteen years
+ago. What do I understand of Greek or Latin, of the precepts of Horace
+or of Aristotle? Speak to me of the blue skies and seas, of birds and
+boughs, of harvests and trees laden with golden fruit, of the loves and
+joys and griefs of the upright and simple villagers, and then I shall
+understand you, because I understand nothing more than this."</p>
+
+<p>These poems are what the author calls them, nothing more&mdash;pure and
+simple records of the life of the people around him, their loves and
+griefs, their hopes and disappointments. The most usual metre is the
+simple Spanish <i>asonante</i>, or eight-syllable trochaic verse, with the
+vowel rhyme called <i>asonante</i>.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> They are pervaded by a tender spirit
+of melancholy, very different from the <i>Weltschmerz</i> of Heine, with some
+of whose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733">[Pg 733]</a></span> lyrics the Spanish poet's <i>cantares</i> may be compared without
+losing anything by the comparison. In one poem he says: "In the depths
+of my heart are great sorrows: some of them are known to men, others to
+God alone. But I shall rarely mention my griefs in my songs, for I have
+no hope that they can be alleviated; and where is the mortal who, in
+passing through this valley, has not encountered among the flowers some
+sharp thorn?" In the same poem he says: "All ask me, Who taught you to
+sing? No one: I sing because God wills it&mdash;I sing like the birds;" and
+he explains his method by a touching incident. One evening he was
+singing on the bank of the Manzanares when he saw a child smiling on the
+breast of its mother. The poet went and caressed it, and the child threw
+its arms about Antonio's neck and turning to its mother cried, "Mother,
+Antonio, he of the songs, is a blind man who sees."<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The poet
+continues: "I am a blind man who sees: that angel told the truth. With
+my guitar resting on my loving heart, you may see me wandering from the
+city to the valley, from the cabin of the poor to the palace of the
+great, weeping with those who weep, singing with those who sing, for my
+rude guitar is the lasting echo of all joys and all sorrows. I shall
+sing my songs in the simple language of the laborer and the soldier, of
+the children and the mothers, of those who have not frequented learned
+schools.... In this language I shall extol the faith and the holy
+combats of the soldiers of Christ with the sacrilegious Saracen; I shall
+sing the heroic efforts of our fathers to conquer the proud legions of
+Bonaparte; and the beauty of the skies, and the flowers of the valley,
+and love and innocence&mdash;all that is beautiful and great&mdash;will find a
+lasting echo in my rude guitar."</p>
+
+<p>Many of these songs are ingenious variations on a theme supplied by some
+old and well-known poem, a few lines of which are woven into each
+division of the new song.</p>
+
+<p>The success of the <i>Libro de los Cantares</i> was immediate and great; the
+first three editions were exhausted in a few months; the duc de
+Montpensier wished to defray the expenses of the fourth, and Queen
+Isabella of the fifth; since then others have followed. Some years later
+the poet married, and since then has written chiefly in prose.</p>
+
+<p>In 1859 appeared a volume of short tales entitled <i>Rose-colored Stories</i>
+(<i>Cuentos de Color de Rosa</i>): these were followed by <i>Tales of the
+Country</i> (<i>Cuentos campesinos</i>), <i>Popular Tales</i> (<i>Cuentos popolares</i>),
+<i>Popular Narrations</i> (<i>Narraciones popolares</i>), <i>Tales of Various
+Colors</i>, <i>Tales of the Dead and Living</i>, etc.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Before examining in detail any of these collections it may be well to
+learn the author's views of his task and definition of his subject. In
+the introduction to the <i>Popular Tales</i> he says, addressing his friend
+Don Jos&eacute; de Castro y Serrano: "The object of this preface is simply to
+tell you why I have given the name of <i>Popular Tales</i> to those contained
+in this volume, what I understand by popular literature, and why I write
+tales instead of writing novels or comedies or cookbooks. There are two
+reasons why I have called these tales popular. First, because many of
+them are told by the people; and, secondly, because in retelling them I
+have used the simple and plain style of the people.... In my conception,
+popular literature can be defined in this manner: That literature which
+by its simplicity and clearness is within the reach of the intelligence
+of the people.... However, in popular literature the simplicity of form
+is not enough: it is necessary to reproduce Nature, because if not
+reproduced there will be no truth in it; and if there is no truth in it
+the people will not believe it; and if they do not believe it they will
+not feel it. For my part, I take such pains in studying Nature, in order
+that my pictures may be true, that I fear you will accuse me of
+extravagance, and will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734">[Pg 734]</a></span> laugh at me when you read the two examples I am
+going to cite. On a very severe night in January I was writing in the
+fourth story of the street Lope de Vega, No. 32, the tale which I named
+<i>De Patas en el Infierno</i> ('The Feet in Hell'), and when a detail
+occurred which consisted in explaining the changes in the sound made by
+water in filling a jar at a fountain, I found that I had never studied
+these changes, and I did not have in the house at that moment water
+enough to study them. The printers were going to send for the story
+early in the morning, and it must be finished that night. Do you know
+what I did to get out of my difficulty? At three o'clock in the morning,
+facing the darkness, rain and wind, I went to the little fountain near
+by with a jar under my cloak, and spent a quarter of an hour there
+listening to the sound of the water as it fell into the jar. A short
+time after I was preparing to write the rural tale called <i>Las Siembras
+y las Cosechas</i> ('Seed-time and Harvest'), and the description of a
+sunrise in the country entered into my plan. I had often seen the sun
+rise in the country, but it was necessary to contemplate and study anew
+that beautiful spectacle in order to describe it exactly; and early one
+morning, long before the dawn, accompanied by two friends, I went to the
+hills of Vicalvaro, where we made some good studies, but were very much
+frightened by some thieves who attacked us knife in hand, believing we
+were people who carried watches."</p>
+
+<p>These words of the author reveal better than we could explain his aim
+and method. He is a follower of Fernan Caballero, in so far as he has
+devoted himself to illustrate the every-day life of the Spanish people.
+The former writer has filled her pages with brilliant pictures of the
+life of Andalusia. Her canvas is, however, larger than Trueba's: she
+depicts the society of the South in all its grades; Trueba has chosen a
+more limited circle on which he has lavished all his care.</p>
+
+<p>The volume of <i>Rose-colored Tales</i> is in many respects the best that
+Trueba has produced. The dedication to his wife explains the title and
+reveals the author's optimistic views. He says: "I call them
+<i>Rose-colored Tales</i> because they are the reverse of that pessimistic
+literature which delights in representing the world as a boundless
+desert in which no flower blooms, and life as a perpetual night in which
+no star shines. I, poor son of Adam, in whom the curse of the Lord on
+our first parents has not ceased to be accomplished a single day since
+the time when, still a child, I left my beloved valley of the
+Encartaciones,&mdash;I shall love this life, and shall not believe myself
+exiled in the world while God, friendship, love and the family exist in
+it, while the sun shines on me every morning, while the moon lights me
+every night and the flowers and birds visit me every day."</p>
+
+<p>The scene of all the stories of this collection is in the Encartaciones,
+and an examination of a few of them will make us acquainted with the
+usual range of characters and the author's mode of treatment. The first
+is entitled "The Resurrection of the Soul" (<i>La Resurreccion del Alma</i>),
+and opens with an account of the village of C&mdash;&mdash;, one of the fifteen
+composing the Encartaciones. Here lived Santiago and Catalina, the
+latter a foundling whom Santiago's parents had found at their door one
+winter morning. The good people, who had always desired a daughter,
+cared tenderly for the little stranger, and she grew up with their son,
+who was a few years older. It had been decided that when Santiago was
+fifteen he should go to his uncle in Mexico; which country, for the
+simple inhabitants of Biscay, is still "India," and the retired
+merchants who return to spend their last days in their native towns are
+"Indians"&mdash;a class that often play an important part in the d&eacute;nouement
+of Trueba's simple plots. At the beginning of the story the two children
+(Santiago was nearly fifteen) had gone off to play and allowed the goats
+to get into the fields. The angry father is about to punish Catalina,
+who has assumed all the blame, but his wife mollifies him by reminding
+him that they have received a piece of good news. Ramon good-humoredly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_735" id="Page_735">[Pg 735]</a></span>
+says, "You women always have your own way," and proceeds to tell a story
+to illustrate it. We give it as an example of the popular tales that
+Trueba often weaves into his stories:</p>
+
+<p>"Once upon a time, when Christ went through the world healing the sick
+and raising the dead, a woman came out to meet him and said to him,
+seizing hold of his cloak and weeping like a Magdalen, 'Lord, do me the
+favor to come and raise my husband, who died this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I cannot stop,' answered the Lord. 'I am going to perform a great
+miracle&mdash;that is, find a good mother among the women who are fond of
+bull-fights; but everything will turn out well if the ass doesn't stop.
+All I can do for you is that if you take it into your head to raise your
+husband, your husband will be raised.'</p>
+
+<p>"And indeed the wife took it into her head that her husband must be
+raised, and her husband was raised, for even the dead can't resist the
+whims of women."</p>
+
+<p>The good news that Ramon had received was a letter from his brother, who
+wished Santiago to be sent to him by the first steamer leaving Bilbao.
+It was the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, when Santiago,
+accompanied by his father, prepared to start for Bilbao.</p>
+
+<p>"Quica, who until the moment of departure had not shed a tear, because
+she had only seen her son on the way to happiness, as you saw yours,
+disconsolate mother, who now see only a sepulchre in the
+Americas,&mdash;Quica now wept without restraint. Poor Catalina had wept so
+much for a month and a half that there were no tears left in her eyes:
+she did not weep, but she felt the faintness and sorrow which the dying
+must experience. Santiago's eyes were moist at times, but soon shone
+with joy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come, come! You are like a lot of crying children,' exclaimed Ramon,
+tearing his son from the arms of Quica and Catalina. 'One would say that
+it is a matter to cry over. Don't you see me? I too have a soul in my
+soul-case....'</p>
+
+<p>"And indeed he had, for tears as large as nuts rolled from his eyes.
+Santiago and Ramon departed. Quica and Catalina sorrowfully followed
+them with their eyes until they crossed a neighboring hill. Then the
+young girl made an almost supernatural effort to calm herself, and said,
+'Mother, I am going to take the sheep to the mountain.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do what you wish, my daughter,' answered Quica mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Catalina's custom to open, the gate every morning to a flock of
+sheep and lead them a stone's throw from the farmhouse, where she left
+them alone; but this day she went with them as far as the hill that
+Ramon and Santiago had just crossed, and from that hill she went on to
+the next and the next, with her eyes always fixed on the road to Bilbao,
+until, overcome by fatigue and dying with grief, she bowed her beautiful
+head, and instead of retracing her steps to the farmhouse of Ipenza, she
+went to the church in the valley and fell on her knees before the altar
+of the Virgin of Solitude."</p>
+
+<p>Santiago reaches Mexico in safety, and is kindly received by his uncle,
+who dies ten years later and leaves him an immense fortune. Santiago at
+once plunges into every species of dissipation, and soon destroys his
+health. His physician recommends him as a last resort to return to his
+native country and try the effect of the mountain-air. Meanwhile,
+Catalina had grown up one of the prettiest girls of the village, and
+Santiago's parents had died, leaving her a handsome dowry and the use of
+the farm until it should be claimed by Santiago.</p>
+
+<p>"One dark and rainy night Santiago returned to his home, broken down in
+health and profoundly weary of life. Catalina receives him, and is
+amazed at his changed appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you ill, Santiago?' asked Catalina with infinite tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes&mdash;ill in body and mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you feel, brother of my heart?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not feel anything: that is my greatest misfortune.'"</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the unfortunate Santiago had lost all the better feelings of
+his heart.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736">[Pg 736]</a></span> His return to the home of his innocent boyhood failed to
+evoke any pure and noble sentiments: his heart continued paralyzed,
+cold, indifferent to everything. But it was impossible for him to remain
+in this condition under the influence of Catalina. He gradually began to
+take an interest in the life around him and employ his wealth for the
+benefit of his neighbors. Gradually, he awoke from his lethargy and
+became well in body and mind. As the reader can imagine, the story
+closes with his marriage to Catalina, who had such a great share in his
+recovery.</p>
+
+<p>In the story called "From One's Country to Heaven" (<i>Desde la Patria al
+Cielo</i>) the author's endeavors show that the surest happiness is to be
+found in one's native village. He begins with an ironical description of
+the village of S&mdash;&mdash; in the Encartaciones, in which he depicts the
+simplicity of the inhabitants and their backwardness, in regard to the
+spirit of the age. In this village lived, among others, Teresa, a poor
+widow, and her only child, Pedro. One day, while passing the palace of a
+wealthy "Indian," he called her and said he was obliged to return to
+America, and wished her to take care of his house during his absence.
+The poor woman now saw herself relieved from want and able to educate
+her son. The latter found in the rich library of the "Indian" food for
+many years of study, and soon became dissatisfied with his quiet life in
+the village, and eager to travel and see the countries about which he
+had read such charming tales. He soon grew to despise everything around
+him, and treated with scorn his neighbor Rose, who had long loved him
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>One day news arrived from Mexico that the "Indian" had died, leaving to
+Teresa his palace at S&mdash;&mdash; and a large sum of money besides. Pedro was
+now able to fulfil his dreams of travel, and started on his journey. He
+first visits the Pass of Roncesvalles, and is nearly killed by the
+indignant Frenchmen whom he asks about the defeat of Charlemagne and the
+Twelve Peers. Pedro then proceeds to Bayonne, where he is so shocked by
+the sight of young girls selling their hair to the highest bidder that
+he determines to leave France, and we next find him in a Swiss chalet,
+where he is disgusted by the lack of cleanliness. His feelings can be
+imagined when he finds that the peasants have no popular traditions and
+are not acquainted even with the name of William Tell. In despair, Pedro
+directs his course to Germany, but finds no sylphs or sirens on the
+banks of the Rhine, while maidens with blue eyes and golden hair are no
+more abundant there than elsewhere. Greece next receives the wanderer,
+who hears in Athens of railroads and consolidated funds: on Olympus he
+finds a guano manufactory, and on Pindus a poet writing
+fourteen-syllable endecasyllabics. He visits with a similar
+disenchantment Constantinople, and then makes his way to England. There
+poor Pedro is disgusted by the sordid, selfish spirit of the people. An
+absurd scene at a village church fills him with horror. The bare walls
+of the temple chill his heart, and after the service a domestic quarrel
+between the curate and his jealous wife caps the climax and Pedro flees
+to America. On landing in New York he is robbed of his watch: the thief
+is arrested, but gives the watch to the magistrate, keeping the chain
+for himself, and Pedro is condemned to pay the costs and the damages
+suffered by the thief's character. On returning that evening from the
+theatre he is garroted and robbed of all he has with him. The landlord
+tells him that no one thinks of going out at night without a pair of
+six-shooters, and adds that what happens in New York is nothing to what
+goes on at Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans. The next day he reads an
+editorial in the <i>New York Herald</i> advising American merchants to
+repudiate their foreign debts. He then determines to visit the different
+States, and on passing through the South thanks God that slavery is
+unknown in Europe. Railroad accidents, murders and political and social
+corruption cause him to regard with profound horror the young republic,
+which seems to him old in vice, and he starts for South America, the
+Spanish part of which reminds<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_737" id="Page_737">[Pg 737]</a></span> him of a virgin overwhelmed with
+misfortunes, but still full of youth and faith. In Vera Cruz, Pedro
+visits the sepulchre of the "Indian" to whom he owes his fortune. A
+letter from his mother is awaiting him there, and he bursts into tears,
+and sails at once for his beloved home, which he reaches one beautiful
+Sunday morning in May. His meeting with his mother takes place in the
+church, and there also he sees Rose, whose constancy is now rewarded.
+The story closes with the lines from Lista: "Happy he who has never seen
+any other stream than that of his native place, and, an old man, sleeps
+in the shade where he played a boy!"</p>
+
+<p>Another story of the same collection, and one of the author's best, is
+entitled <i>Juan Paloma</i>. The principal characters are Don Juan de
+Urrutia, nicknamed Juan Paloma ("dovelike"), a wealthy and crusty old
+bachelor, and Antonio de Molinar, a poor peasant, and his wife. The
+moral of the story is in Don Juan's last words: "Blessed be the family!"
+and in Juana's remark: "Alas for him who lives alone in the world, for
+only his dogs will weep for him when he dies!"</p>
+
+<p>The other stories of this volume, "The Mother-in-Law," "The Judas of the
+Household" and "I Believe in God," all contain many charming scenes. In
+the last a young girl is educated by an infidel father, and after his
+death marries Diego, a village lad. She becomes a mother, but still
+retains in her heart the seeds of atheism sown there by her father. Her
+child, a girl, becomes ill, and a doctor is sent for from Bilbao.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor was long in coming, and Ascensita was devoured by impatience
+and uncertainty. He arrived at last, and examined the child attentively,
+observing a deep silence, which caused the poor mother the most
+sorrowful anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"'Will the daughter of my heart recover?' Ascensita asked him in tears.
+'For God's sake, speak to me frankly, for this uncertainty is more cruel
+than the death of my daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Se&ntilde;ora,' answered the doctor, 'God alone can save the child.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ascensita fell senseless by the side of the cradle containing her
+dying child. When she returned to herself Diego alone was at her side.
+The unhappy mother placed her ear to the child's lips, and perceived
+that it still breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Diego,' she exclaimed, 'take care of the child of my soul!' and flying
+down the stairs hastened to a hermitage near by, and falling on her
+knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin!
+pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven
+since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore
+her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!'</p>
+
+<p>"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with
+joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and
+call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also
+gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and
+hope in His mercy!'</p>
+
+<p>"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina,
+bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."</p>
+
+<p>The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Popular Narrations</i>, Trueba works up themes already popular
+among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to
+suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook
+some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the
+narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are
+the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others
+imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to
+the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or
+collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted
+themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from
+mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales
+almost as they have collected them from the lips of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738">[Pg 738]</a></span> people. This
+system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although
+they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter
+worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected
+by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the
+sphere of art should be without."</p>
+
+<p>The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St.
+Peter's Doubts" (<i>Las Dudas de San Pedro</i>) is as old as the <i>Gesta
+Romanorum</i> (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's
+<i>Hermit</i>. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (<i>Un Siglo en un Momento</i>),
+is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth
+and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another,
+<i>Tragaldabas</i>, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's <i>Household Tales</i>,
+where it figures as "Godfather Death."</p>
+
+<p>The volume of <i>Popular Tales</i> contains nineteen stories of the most
+varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The
+Three Counsels" (<i>Los Consejos</i>), in which a soldier whose time of
+service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of
+advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what
+does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on
+his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and
+thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as <i>Ofero</i>,
+the legend of St. Christopher, and <i>Casilda</i>, the story of the Moorish
+king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from
+Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (<i>La
+Mujer del Arquitecto</i>), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another,
+"The Prince without a Memory" (<i>El Principe Desmemoriado</i>), is taken
+from Gracian Dantisco's <i>Galateo Espa&ntilde;ol</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the
+stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best.
+He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones
+or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories
+in the volume entitled <i>Rural Tales</i> (<i>Cuentos campesinos</i>), which
+contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are
+generally longer than the others&mdash;one, "Domestic Happiness" (<i>La
+Felicidad domestica</i>), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time
+and Harvest" (<i>Las Siembras y las Cosechas</i>) is a charming story of Pepe
+and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the
+latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the
+collection, however&mdash;and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has
+written&mdash;is the one called "The Style is the Man" (<i>El Estilo es el
+Hombre</i>), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it
+by an analysis.</p>
+
+<p>We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He
+has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life
+of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and
+in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with
+a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his
+attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though
+some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled
+<i>Chapters of a Book</i> (<i>Capitulos de un Libro</i>). Trueba resided at this
+period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste
+during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has
+published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some
+of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his
+poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best
+of this class of literature&mdash;with Auerbach's <i>Tales of the Black
+Forest</i>, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author,
+whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always
+apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a
+type of the best class of Spaniards&mdash;a class that will some day win for
+their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory
+than that founded on conquest.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">T.&nbsp;F. Crane.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_739" id="Page_739">[Pg 739]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THROUGH_WINDING_WAYS" id="THROUGH_WINDING_WAYS"></a>THROUGH WINDING WAYS.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<p>My first meeting with Georgy Lenox on the seashore was not my last. The
+habits of the family made it easy for us to have our interviews
+uninterrupted, and probably unperceived, for although we were all early
+risers we rarely met each other till breakfast-time. Helen went to her
+father's room at half-past seven, and they read and talked together
+until my mother called them at nine o'clock. As for my mother, purest of
+all women as she was, she felt she was not pure enough to meet the new
+day until she had spent an hour at her Bible and on her knees in prayer.
+There is a light that comes out of the west sometimes toward evening
+after a stormy day which seems to be sent straight from the fount of
+light itself. Such light was always in my mother's eyes when I kissed
+her good-morning, and I knew it had come to her as she knelt on bended
+knees. She was tranquil in these days with a Heaven-born tranquillity,
+but I know now that she had a pang of dread for every throb of love.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke to me once of my increasing intimacy with Georgina. "There is
+nothing you are concealing from me, Floyd?" she said, her brown eyes
+reading my face.</p>
+
+<p>She had come to my bedside after I had gone to rest for the night,
+impelled by a restlessness to be certain that all was well with her dear
+ones before she could close her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot think what you mean, mother," I answered. "I have nothing to
+conceal."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she
+baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win
+you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh,
+why is she here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the
+house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and
+treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together
+but that she hates us every one."</p>
+
+<p>I thought my mother fanciful, and told her that she was prejudiced
+against the girl, who had grown up from infancy under her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I know her better than you do, mother," I affirmed stubbornly.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she
+gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do
+you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you
+would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know
+each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the
+men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other.
+Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set
+her wishes upon?"</p>
+
+<p>I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something
+like anger against her growing in my heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any
+girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox
+is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."</p>
+
+<p>My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it
+was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence
+between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained&mdash;indeed, we were
+more than ever gentle and tender in our ways ... but there was a subject
+which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and
+there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to
+read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_740" id="Page_740">[Pg 740]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of
+any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point
+that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The
+young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth,
+beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed
+that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and
+proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory
+fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the
+watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels
+filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an
+air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no
+one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half
+so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her
+with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it
+a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with
+a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire
+carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself
+direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.</p>
+
+<p>I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over
+poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find
+there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken
+possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her
+husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of her love for him of
+which he had never dreamed. There was the young girl's journal before
+she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were
+the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her
+great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I
+believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible
+maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of
+his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost
+had cause to regret that he had seen them.</p>
+
+<p>"She never told me of her premonition of death," he said to my mother
+over and over again. "She seemed very glad and proud that she was going
+to bring me a little child."</p>
+
+<p>Helen had run off with her blue velvet-covered book.</p>
+
+<p>"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but
+these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these
+he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him
+again and again.</p>
+
+<p>The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's
+health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had
+filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he
+remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a
+bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly,
+and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat,
+until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died
+young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was
+of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a
+good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like
+to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by
+motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a
+symptom of advancing age, James."</p>
+
+<p>I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her
+father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her
+superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love
+for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the
+charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She
+was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I
+often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox
+could be more winning,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_741" id="Page_741">[Pg 741]</a></span> sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was
+for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes
+wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little
+sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When
+she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with
+coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her,
+and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices,
+although I scolded her for them now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a
+tame cat yet."</p>
+
+<p>"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I
+do the man who places my chair."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night,
+when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at
+his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you,
+and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight
+services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have
+wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had
+raised the cover of the instrument."</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He
+thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let
+him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he
+called me Miss Helen this morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you tell him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told him nothing: I looked&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I pity him then: I know how you can look."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young
+gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle.
+Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I
+shall admire you."</p>
+
+<p>"Really, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show
+nothing but kindness to my friends.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."</p>
+
+<p>"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me
+to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must
+have the first, best, dearest place."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You
+come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because
+I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young
+men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."</p>
+
+<p>And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree
+that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through
+inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my
+suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a
+little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never
+displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he
+quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse
+patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face
+of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed
+would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject.
+However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it
+well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less
+cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe
+that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's
+attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.</p>
+
+<p>"When he gets his cong&eacute; he cannot complain of having received
+encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that
+he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_742" id="Page_742">[Pg 742]</a></span> to pique
+her with a show of devotion to Helen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there
+is nothing of that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my
+wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man
+had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little
+employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice
+brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss
+Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened:
+sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a
+coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a
+score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to
+have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in
+return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will
+manage her affairs for her, as for us all."</p>
+
+<p>I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach
+continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous
+no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek
+an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world
+when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment
+on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in
+fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who
+had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the
+whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a
+comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most
+beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive
+themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I
+did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk,
+not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until
+Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed
+to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two
+more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly
+self-distrustful.</p>
+
+<p>Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over
+again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and
+glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those
+mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual
+relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had
+colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many
+people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's
+influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental
+society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine
+had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for
+details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results
+easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable
+beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose
+that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good
+taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything
+concerning Mr. Floyd&mdash;his friends abroad, his habits, his <i>vie intime</i>
+at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he
+was minister at &mdash;&mdash;. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days,
+but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what
+she wished.</p>
+
+<p>But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me,
+wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I
+lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she
+seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours,
+only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another
+direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a
+woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive,
+mocking goddess that she was, I felt every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_743" id="Page_743">[Pg 743]</a></span> day more and more ardent in
+my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was
+demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined
+to follow her into society.</p>
+
+<p>It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest.
+I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of
+the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every
+card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of
+pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim
+in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover.
+Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing
+sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and
+the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly
+from the recollection of that time.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<p>I had gone with Georgina to a picnic one day at her request, meeting her
+at the house of Mrs. Woodruff, with whom she was staying for a
+fortnight, at the Point. The picnic meant merely a drive for miles back
+into the country and a lunch in the woods prepared by a French cook, but
+it was a delightful road through shadows of tall forest trees, the glare
+of sunlight alternating with green copsewood coolness. They were cutting
+the grass and clover in the fields, and the air was fresh with the scent
+of new-mown hay: half the land on either side of us was covered with
+ripening grain, and the light breeze that played perpetually over it
+gave us endless shimmerings and glimmerings of wonderful light almost as
+beautiful as the tints that play over the sea.</p>
+
+<p>I had every need to find the beauty of the summer gracious to me that
+day. It was but another of many days when every throb of my feeling for
+Georgy Lenox became an anguish hard to bear. She was opposite me as we
+rode through the fair country, but she neither looked at nor spoke to
+me. I was much lionized, however, by Mrs. Woodruff, a pretty, faded,
+coquettish woman, who had been balancing herself on the very edge of
+proprieties for years, but who still, thanks to a certain weariness she
+compelled in men, was yet safe enough in her position as a matron.
+Georgy's companion was a titled foreigner just then a favorite at the
+Point, but of whom I need not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ask me to come that I might hear you talk with the count?" I
+asked her when once that day I had a chance to address her.</p>
+
+<p>"But the count would talk to me," she returned, laughing. "Do you
+suppose I care for him? I think him the most odious man I know, with his
+waxed moustache, his small green eyes, his wicked mouth and teeth. But
+Mrs. Woodruff is dying for him, and half the women here hate me in their
+hearts because he pays me attention. I like you infinitely better,
+Floyd."</p>
+
+<p>"Then come away and sit upon the rocks with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I cannot afford to do those romantic, compromising things. You see
+that, as we are both staying at The Headlands, where everybody's
+curiosity is centred this summer, we are much observed, much commented
+upon."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me you are not at all afraid of compromising yourself with
+other men."</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are cross and jealous. Perhaps if you betrayed a little less
+interest in me you might make me less afraid of concession. And you must
+not watch me so: the count himself spoke about your eyes ready to burn
+me with their melancholy fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Hang the count!"</p>
+
+<p>"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go
+away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."</p>
+
+<p>There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of
+them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like
+school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms;
+but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_744" id="Page_744">[Pg 744]</a></span>
+neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have
+sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no
+homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed
+around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They
+seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts
+why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to
+come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair
+and sweet, seem depolarized?</p>
+
+<p>Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She
+understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she
+practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the
+count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times,
+however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of
+observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his
+presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with
+Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran
+whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by
+other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses
+tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.</p>
+
+<p>Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured
+into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten
+ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his <i>p&acirc;t&eacute;</i> spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss
+Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a
+seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they
+meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a
+<i>belle h&eacute;riti&egrave;re</i> and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if
+one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of
+us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light
+to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect
+for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake&mdash;no faith in their
+value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract
+admirers."</p>
+
+<p>"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's
+sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to
+make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just
+this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak
+tree?"</p>
+
+<p>He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your
+call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young
+lady you allude to."</p>
+
+<p>He looked crestfallen for a moment: then his thorough coxcombry resumed
+its sway. "You see," said he, with a consummate air of reserve, "you
+know nothing about the affair at all, Randolph."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd much better drop the subject, Thorpe," I remarked: "I assure you
+it's much safer let alone."</p>
+
+<p>I contrived to live through the long hours of the day. At sunset we
+drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche
+to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of
+us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which
+was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it
+with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange
+yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom
+together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines
+of trembling light away, away into remote horizons. We all enjoyed the
+drive, although none of us spoke until we got down from the cart at the
+steps of the hotel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_745" id="Page_745">[Pg 745]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That was the best part of the day," observed my cousin Frank. "What
+good times we fellows might have if there were no women to disturb us!"</p>
+
+<p>Thorpe growled some inarticulate assent or dissent, as the case might
+be, and went up to his room, while Frank and I had our cigars out on the
+piazza.</p>
+
+<p>A dance at Mrs. Woodruff's was to follow the picnic, and thither we
+resorted about ten o'clock and found the chairs placed for a German.
+Georgy Lenox was there, radiant in a ravishing toilette, waiting for
+Frank to lead the cotillon with her. She nodded to me pleasantly as she
+took her seat. I was angry with myself for my disappointment, doubly
+angry with her for causing it. It cost me my self-respect to be so
+utterly at her mercy. What did I gain by following her into this gay
+coterie but pang upon pang of humiliation and pain? Why did I come,
+indeed? It was not the first time she had broken her promises to me. Yet
+what could I expect of her? Bright, gay, dazzling creature that she was,
+warm and eager in her love of vigorous life, could she sit down with me
+in a corner and talk while the rest of the world palpitated and glowed
+and whirled around her to the music of the waltz, which stirred even my
+crippled limbs with a wild wish for voluptuous swaying motion in rhythm
+with the melodious melancholy strain? No, I could not blame her: I was
+merely out of my place. Let me go home and remember what a gulf of
+disparity separated me from my fellows.</p>
+
+<p>So I walked out of the house through the grounds into the street, and
+along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I
+overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the
+house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen
+by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.</p>
+
+<p>I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night,
+and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was
+like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my
+face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and
+my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a
+boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful
+stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of
+which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story.
+Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a
+pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr.
+Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an
+end.</p>
+
+<p>"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no! Has he? so early?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might
+sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed
+by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through
+dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the
+Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was
+coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love
+to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant
+flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw
+her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be
+stout in five years."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."</p>
+
+<p>"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has
+hands that I kiss"&mdash;and he kissed them&mdash;"the most beautiful hands in the
+world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless,
+there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers
+her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief
+attribute<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_746" id="Page_746">[Pg 746]</a></span> in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any
+feet."</p>
+
+<p>"That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room
+but every man there knows the color of her stockings."</p>
+
+<p>"I am ashamed of you, papa!&mdash;Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite
+horrid."</p>
+
+<p>"Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands,
+what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other
+people ever to think of me in that way at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even Floyd?"</p>
+
+<p>"Floyd would never be silly," Helen said indignantly. "Floyd likes me
+because we are old friends: he knew grandpa and you, papa, and all
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"You are easily satisfied if you are contented with affection on the
+score of your aged relatives."</p>
+
+<p>"How soundly he sleeps!" murmured Helen; and I knew that she bent close
+to me as she spoke, for I could feel the warmth of her young cheeks.
+Half to frighten her, half because I wanted to see how she looked as she
+regarded me, I suddenly opened my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite
+unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear
+everything we said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, Helen," I said, "I was fast asleep, I do believe, until you
+confessed your affection for me. You did not expect me to sleep through
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>She stared at me blankly, then looked at the others with dilating eyes.
+"Did I say anything about that?" she asked, growing pale even to her
+lips and tears gathering in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, you foolish child!" said her father, drawing her upon his
+knee: "he is only teasing you. As if anybody had any affection for one
+of the Seven Sleepers!&mdash;Well, Floyd, how happened you to come back so
+soon? The carriage was going for you at midnight.&mdash;Here, Mills, Mr.
+Randolph has already returned, and the coachman may go to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"The day was pretty long," I returned. "I had had enough of it, and so
+set out and walked back. I was well tired out when I came in, and that
+put me to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a shame for you to walk so far," exclaimed Helen imperiously:
+"you are not strong enough for such an effort. There are eight horses in
+the stables, every one of them pawing in his stall, longing for a
+gallop, and for you to be obliged to walk four miles! Don't do such a
+dreadful thing again, Floyd."</p>
+
+<p>I sprang up and limped about, feeling impatient and cross. "In spite of
+my poor leg," I returned, "I am a fair walker. Don't set me down as a
+helpless cripple, Helen."</p>
+
+<p>I was bitter and wrathful still, or I trust I was too magnanimous to
+have wounded her so.</p>
+
+<p>"Floyd!" exclaimed my mother in a tone of reproof; but I did not turn,
+and went down the long suite of parlors and stood at the great window
+which overlooked the sea. It was all open to the summer night, and the
+lace curtains waved to and fro in the breeze. Solemnly came up the
+rhythmic flow of the waves as they beat against the rocks. I pushed
+aside the draperies and looked out at the wide expanse of waters lying,
+it seemed, almost at my feet, for everything else but the great silver
+plain of sea was in shadow. Above, the moon had it all her own way
+to-night: the constellations shone pale, and seemed weary of the
+firmament which at other times they span and compass with their myriad
+splendors. Mars moved in a stately way straight along above the southern
+horizon to his couch in the west: even his red light was dim.</p>
+
+<p>But what stillness and peace seemed possible beneath this throbbing sea?
+I sighed as I listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the great
+golden pathway of the moon across the silver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_747" id="Page_747">[Pg 747]</a></span> waters. I knew that some
+one had followed me and stood timidly behind me: I guessed it was Helen,
+but did not know until a slim satin hand stole into mine, for surely it
+was not my mother's hand. Hers was warm and firm in its pressure: the
+touch of this was soft and cool like a rose-leaf. I held the hand close,
+but did not turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Floyd!" she whispered timidly, "dear Floyd!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you, Helen," I returned wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you angry with me? Do not be angry."</p>
+
+<p>"I am only angry with myself: I am not behaving well to-night."</p>
+
+<p>She came in front of me and looked up in my face. "I don't want you to
+think," she said in a little faint trembling voice, "that&mdash;that I&mdash;that
+I&mdash;" She quite broke down.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't know what you mean, Helen."</p>
+
+<p>"Floyd," she cried passionately, "I think I would die before I would
+wilfully hurt your feelings!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my poor little girl," said I, quite touched at the sight of her
+quivering face and the sound of her impassioned voice, "you did not hurt
+my feelings for an instant. What I said was in answer to my own
+thoughts. I like to say such things to myself at times, and remember
+that I do not possess the advantages of other men. Besides, facts are
+facts: I am lame. I cannot dance, and although I can walk, it is with a
+limping gait: I should be a poor fellow in a foot-race. I don't suppose
+that my being a cripple will forfeit me anything in the kingdom of
+heaven, but, nevertheless, it obliges me to forego a good many pleasures
+here on earth."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not a cripple!" she burst out impetuously. "You have every
+advantage! What is it that you cannot dance? I despise men who whirl
+about like puppets: I have never seen them waltzing but they must make
+themselves ridiculous. I am glad you cannot dance: you are on the level
+of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty
+things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with
+an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful
+although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes
+as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager
+voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you just the
+same. Why, Floyd, what do you think it is to me that, as you say, you do
+not possess the advantages of other men? Have you forgotten how it all
+came about? I was a little girl then, but there is nothing that happened
+yesterday clearer to my memory than that terrible morning when I cost
+you so dear. I know how I felt&mdash;as if forsaken by the world. I wondered
+if God looked down and saw me, alone, in danger, blind and dizzy and
+trembling, so that again and again I seemed to be slipping away from
+everything that held me. I could not have stayed one minute more had I
+not heard your voice. You were so strong, so kind, Floyd! When you
+reached me your hands were bleeding, your face scratched and torn, your
+breath came in great pants, but you looked at me and smiled. And then
+you carried me to the top and put me in safety, and I let you go down,
+down, down!" She was quite speechless, and leaned her cheek against my
+hand, which she still held, and wet it freely with her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"If you mind your lameness," she said brokenly, with intervals of
+sobs&mdash;"if you feel that Fate is cruel to you&mdash;that there is any reason
+why you cannot be perfectly happy&mdash;then I wish," she exclaimed with
+energy, "that I had never been born to do you this great injury. I love
+my life, I love papa, I love your mother and you, and it seems to me as
+if I were going to be a very happy woman; but still, if you carry any
+regret for that day in your heart, I wish I had died when I was so sick
+before you came: I wish I lay up there on the hill with the grass
+growing over me."</p>
+
+<p>What was anybody to do with this overwrought, fanciful child? She was so
+wonderfully pretty too, with her great dark, melancholy eyes, her
+flushed, tear-stained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_748" id="Page_748">[Pg 748]</a></span> cheeks, her rich rare lips! "Oh, Helen," I
+murmured, holding her close to me, "I don't want you to go under the
+green grass: I'm very glad you are alive. I would have broken all my
+bones in your service that day and welcome, so that you might be well
+and unhurt. Come, now, cheer up: I am going to be a pleasanter fellow
+than I have been of late. Dry your eyes, dear. Your father will be
+laughing at you. Come, let us go and take a stroll in the moonlight: it
+is quite wicked not to indulge in a little romance on a sweet midsummer
+night like this."</p>
+
+<p>When I had gone to my room that night, and sat, still bitter, still
+discontented, looking off through my open window toward the Point, and
+wondering who was looking in Georgy Lenox's starry eyes just
+then&mdash;thinking, with a feeling about my forehead like a band of burning
+iron, that some man's arm was sure to be about her waist, her face
+upturned to his, her floating golden hair across his shoulder as they
+danced,&mdash;while, I say, such fancies held a firm clutch over my brain and
+senses, devouring me with the throes of an insane jealousy, my mother
+came in and sat down beside me.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, "I am going to
+give you a caution. You must remember that Helen, with all her frankness
+and impetuosity, is still no child. Don't win her heart unthinkingly."</p>
+
+<p>I felt the blood rush to my face, and I think I had never in all my life
+experienced such embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not such a coxcomb, mother, as to believe any girl could fall in
+love with me&mdash;Helen above all others."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, with a little inward amusement in her smile. "You must
+remember," she said again softly, "that Helen is not a child, and you
+surely would not make her suffer."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mother," I gasped, "we are just like brother and sister: our
+intimacy is the habit of years."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, my son," my mother said, and went away still smiling: "I
+have perfect faith in your magnanimity."</p>
+
+<p>I remembered with a flash of guilty self-consciousness one or two
+little circumstances about our talk by the window two hours before which
+I have not set down here. It had seemed an easy task to soothe the
+child. If there had been any absurdity like that my mother hinted at,
+would she&mdash;could I&mdash; No, never! She was a careless child, with fits of
+coldness, imperious tenderness and generosity. Not a woman at all. The
+idea was quite distasteful to me that Helen was a grown-up woman with
+whom I must be on my guard.</p>
+
+<p>However, Helen's manner to me next day and at all times was calculated
+to assure any man that she was a wilful, self-sustained young creature
+of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to
+him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a
+crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the
+black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he
+laid them carefully away in his pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Floyd," said I, "here is another rose. Don't honor that poor
+skeleton of a vanished flower."</p>
+
+<p>She saw the accident which had befallen her rose, and took mine from me
+and replaced her ornament with a fresh blossom. "Give me the poor stem,"
+said I as she was about to throw it away.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that for?" she asked, staring at me as I placed it in my
+buttonhole. "What do you want of the poor old thing?"</p>
+
+<p>And, mistrusting some mischief beneath my sentimental behavior, she was
+quite tart with me the entire evening, and would not speak to Thorpe at
+all, but sat demurely between my mother and Mr. Floyd, her eyes nailed
+on some embroidery, and behaving altogether like a spoiled child of
+twelve years old.</p>
+
+<p>Georgy Lenox had returned from her visit at Mrs. Woodruff's, and seemed
+a little quiet and weary of late. I was not so much at her service as
+before, but had begun to console myself by teaching in song what, like
+other young poets, I had experienced in suffering. I thank Heaven that
+no eyes but my own ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_749" id="Page_749">[Pg 749]</a></span> beheld the tragedy I wrote that summer: still,
+I am a little tender-hearted over it yet, and believe that it was, after
+all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to
+find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my
+own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After
+all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter
+about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought
+since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other standpoint
+save the necessity of fighting them. Most of our fiercest struggles for
+life have no adequate reason: it is not so necessary for us to live as
+we think it is. That we do not get what we want, or that we sink beneath
+our load of trouble, signifies little in the aggregate of the world's
+history. But, all the same, our cries of despair go up to Heaven, and
+there seems no need in the universe so absolute, so final, as that we
+ourselves should live and be happy.</p>
+
+<p>It is hard for a man of middle age, with a cool brain and tranquillized
+passions, to retrace the history of his youth. There is much that he
+must smile over&mdash;much, too, which is irksome for him to dwell upon. Many
+experiences which in their freshness seemed holy and sacred, in after
+years, stripped of their disguise of false sentiment and the aureole
+with which they were invested by youthful imagination, become absolutely
+loathsome&mdash;just as when we see tamely by daylight the tawdry stage which
+last night made a world for us full of all the paraphernalia of high
+romanticism&mdash;silver and velvet robes, plumed hats, dim woodland vistas
+and the echo of a distant high note, youthful beauty, rope-ladders,
+balconies, daggers, poison, and passionate love-strains. This skeleton
+framework of the illusion, these well-worn contrivances, tarnished gold
+lace and mock splendors, disenchant us sadly, and what we took for</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Horns of Elfland faintly blowing!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Blow, bugle: answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying,</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>is now discovered to be a cheap-trumpet imitation of the enchanted
+notes we dreamed of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>After Miss Lenox returned from the Point she was, as I have said, a
+little pensive: this little shadow upon the splendor of her beauty lent
+a subtlety and charm to her manner. If there had been a fault in her
+loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light
+seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her
+eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness
+about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it
+had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give
+herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams of her, yet
+never one where I thought she could have given me the infinite softness
+of a caressing touch or feel the motherly quality which lies at the
+bottom of every true woman's love for man. Now the splendor of her eyes
+was veiled, her smile was half melancholy, her voice less clear and
+ringing.</p>
+
+<p>When a man loves a woman, and her mood changes and softens, he reads but
+one meaning in her tenderness; and it was not long before I had begun
+fully to believe that there was hope for me. There seemed to be no one
+to meddle in my wooing. True, Judge Talbot came constantly to the house
+to see Miss Lenox, and lacked none of the signs by which we read a man's
+errand in his demeanor; but I did not fear any rivalry from him. Youth,
+at any rate, is something in itself, independent of other advantages: no
+wonder it vaunts itself and believes in its own power. That Georgy would
+think for an instant of giving herself to this man did not seriously
+occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men
+whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was
+broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together,
+his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy
+formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He
+was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation of
+holding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_750" id="Page_750">[Pg 750]</a></span> an iron grip over everything he claimed, and never letting it
+go. He had been married in early life, and now had sons and daughters
+past the age of the girl upon whom he was eagerly pressing his suit.</p>
+
+<p>He came to dinner now and then, and over his wine he was noisy,
+boisterous and bragging. He had been in Congress with Mr. Floyd years
+before, and, though of different parties, they had innumerable
+recollections in common, and, much as I disliked Mr. Talbot, I
+recognized his cleverness in anecdote and the clearness and conciseness
+of his narratives. I could endure him among men, but with women he was
+odious, and, for some reasons occult and inexplicable to any man, plumed
+himself upon his success with them. He understood himself too well, and
+relied too entirely upon his natural abilities, to make any effort to
+hide his gross ignorance upon all subjects requiring either literary or
+mental culture. He had been eminently successful without any such
+acquirements in every field he entered, and consequently considered them
+non-essentials in a man's career&mdash;very good to have, like the cream and
+confectionery at dessert, tickling the palates of women and children,
+but eschewed by sensible men. He had travelled twice over Europe, seeing
+everything with the voracious curiosity of a strong man eager to get his
+money's worth: after his experience of cities rich in high historic
+charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished
+lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable
+marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places
+where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in
+certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to
+grapple with the difficulties of foreign tongues.</p>
+
+<p>No, it did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr.
+Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify
+him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at
+table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and
+then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought
+I overmatched her heavy admirer.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, I had turned to composition as an amusement, an
+occupation, and perhaps a refuge from feelings which were rapidly
+becoming an ever-present pain. I recall one day when I had sat for hours
+at my desk writing busily, utterly wrapped up in my fancies&mdash;so
+engrossed, indeed, that when I had finished my work I looked with
+astonishment at my watch and discovered that it was long past two
+o'clock. I rose and went to the window, pushed aside the curtains and
+threw open the blinds, and gazed out. I overlooked the garden, which was
+deserted except by the bees and humming-birds busy among the flowers.
+The mid-day heat had passed, and a breeze rustled the leaves and moaned
+in the pine trees. It was a fair world, and I felt what one often
+experiences in coming back to reality after high emotion&mdash;a sort of
+strangeness in the beauty of tree and grass and sea and wood.</p>
+
+<p>While I stood there some one advanced along the garden-path, looked up,
+saw me and beckoned. It was but a moment's effort to join her, and
+almost before I had realized what I was doing I was beside Miss Lenox in
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Come and sit down in the arbor," she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I returned, remembering that I had sworn to myself not to yield to
+her caprices, "I am going for a walk."</p>
+
+<p>She regarded me pensively. "May I go?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, you may go, Georgy," I said with a little laugh. "I am only too
+happy, I am afraid, if you ask to go anywhere with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take me where it is wet," she observed simply, "for I have on
+thin slippers;" and she stretched out a little foot.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take care of you," I answered her.</p>
+
+<p>She took up the folds of her full white dress in her hands, and we set
+out. The mood was upon me to take the old paths<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_751" id="Page_751">[Pg 751]</a></span> across the sloping
+uplands into the woods on the hill that Helen and I had tramped over so
+often in our childhood. Beneath us lay the sea, a wide plain of placid
+waters, blue in the foreground, with opal tints playing over it as it
+spread out toward the horizon; above us were the woods luxuriant in
+their midsummer verdure, silent except for the occasional note of a wild
+bird; and about us were the green fields, fresh mown of late, with
+thickets of grape and wild convolvulus and star-wreathed
+blackberry-vines making a luxuriant tangle over the fences.</p>
+
+<p>Georgy walked before me in the narrow path, and I followed closely,
+watching her fine free movements, the charm of her figure in its plain
+white morning-dress bound at the waist with a purple ribbon. Her
+golden-yellow hair lay in curls upon her shoulders: now and then I
+caught a glimpse of the contour of her face as she half turned to see if
+I were close behind her. Neither of us spoke for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>My own thoughts flew about like leaves in a wind, but I wondered of what
+she was thinking. Although I had known her all my life, she was not easy
+for me to understand; or rather my impressions of her at this time were
+so colored by the passion of my own hopes that it was impossible for me
+to find a clew to her real feelings. Perhaps she was thinking of Jack:
+she was thinking&mdash;I was sure she was thinking&mdash;of something sweet, sad
+and strange, or she could not have looked so beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stopped in her walk and uttered a little cry. "It is wet
+here," she cried with vexation: "we must turn back, Floyd."</p>
+
+<p>"I said I would take care of you," I exclaimed quickly, and putting my
+arms about her I raised her and carried her safely over the spot where a
+hundred springs trickled up to the surface and made a morass of the
+luxuriant grass. I did not set her down at once. For weeks now, sleeping
+and waking, I had been haunted by a fierce longing to hold her to my
+heart as I held her now, and it was not so easy to put by so great a
+joy. When at last I reached the stile I released her, and she sat down
+on the stone and looked at me with a half smile.</p>
+
+<p>"If you call that taking care of me, Floyd&mdash;" said she, shaking her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not angry with me, Georgina?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I be angry with you?" she said, putting out her hand to me
+and speaking so kindly that I dared to press her little rosy palm to my
+lips. "But how strong you are, Floyd! You carried me like a feather's
+weight, and yet I am tall and very heavy. You know how to take care of
+me, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"If I might always take care of you!" I said, my heart beating and the
+blood rushing to my face. "I can carry you home if you will. Don't you
+remember about the Laird of Bothwick declaring that no man should marry
+his daughter save the one who should carry her three miles up the
+mountain-side? If I could have such a chance with you!"</p>
+
+<p>"But about the daughter of the old laird: did she find a lover so strong
+as to carry her to the mountain-top?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: one of her suitors took her in his arms and strode along, crying,
+'Love gives me strength&mdash;love gives me speed.' However, he was not happy
+after all, poor fellow! When he reached the goal he died. How could he
+have died then?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did the young lady do?" inquired Georgy, laughing. "I suppose
+another lover rode by her side as she walked home, and that she married
+him for his pains. That is the way the brave men of the world are
+rewarded, Floyd. Don't be too generous, nor too strong, nor too
+self-forgetful. You will gain nothing by it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I shall not gain you, Georgy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I said nothing about myself. Why do you ask me all these questions
+as soon as we are alone? I am afraid sometimes to let you talk to me,
+although there are few people in the world whom I like so well to have
+near me. Women will always love you dearly, Floyd. You are so gentle, so
+harmonious with pleasant thoughts and pleasant doings: you seem less
+selfish and vain than other men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752">[Pg 752]</a></span> You deserve that some woman should
+make you very happy, Floyd."</p>
+
+<p>"There is but one woman who can do it, Georgy."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so sure of that. I do not know why you think of me at all:
+what is it about me that attracts you? Helen is younger than I am&mdash;a
+hundred times more beautiful. No, sir, you need make no such
+demonstrations. If you like my poor face best, it is because we are old
+friends, and you are so true, so kind, to the old memories. Do not
+interrupt me yet. I think you are blind to your own interests when you
+pass Helen by: she is so rich that if you marry her you can live a life
+like a prince."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I do not wish to lead a prince's life, Georgy?" said I, a little
+nettled at the indifference which must prompt such comparisons of Helen
+to herself. "Nothing could induce me to marry a rich woman, even if
+Helen were to be thought of by a poor fellow like me. I have no vague
+dreams about the future: my hopes are clear and definite. I want a
+career carved by my own industry, my own taste: I want&mdash;above all
+things, I want&mdash;the wife of whom I am always thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is she, my poor boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know very well, Georgy," I returned, throwing myself beside her and
+gazing up into her face. "Since I was a little fellow in Belfield, and
+used to look out of the school-room window with Jack Holt, and see you
+going past the church with your red jacket and your curls on your
+shoulders, I have had just one dream of the girl I could love so well
+that I could die for her. I used to lie on the hilltop then and fancy
+myself a bold knight on a white steed who should gallop down those
+sunshiny streets and seize you in his arms, raise you to the saddle and
+carry you away into Fairyland to live with him for ever. My longing has
+not changed: I want the same thing still."</p>
+
+<p>"But when I was to marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina,
+looking at me with that new pensiveness she had learned of late.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew my heart very little. When Jack told me that you were still
+free, I hated myself, my joy, my renewal of hope, seemed so
+contemptibly little in contrast with his great despair. I would not have
+wronged him. God knows, I pity him when I remember what he has lost!
+Still, I too loved you as a child: I never had it in my power to serve
+you, but I had no other thought but you. Why may it not be, dear? Who
+can love you better than I do? Even although I am not rich, who will
+take better care of you than I shall? I am sure you love me a little. Do
+not put the feeling by, but think of it: do not deny it&mdash;let it have its
+chance."</p>
+
+<p>She rose with an absent air. "We must go on," she said dreamily; and I
+helped her over the stile, and we walked slowly through the wood. She
+leaned upon my arm, but her face was downcast, and her broad hat
+concealed it from me.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," I said after a time, "you would let me know some of those
+thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at me pale but smiling. "Do you know, Floyd," she
+murmured, "I do think you could make me happy if anybody could."</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me that I may have the chance. End now, Georgy, all your
+doubts, all my fears. You will be happier so."</p>
+
+<p>"But we should be poor!" she cried sharply. "I could not be contented to
+marry a poor man. You may be clever, Floyd&mdash;I do not know much about
+cleverness in men&mdash;but, all the same, it is hard for a man to make money
+until he has worked for many, many years. I could not wait for you. I am
+older than you, and everybody is wondering why, with all my
+opportunities, I have not married. You'd much better give me up," she
+added, looking into my face steadily and smiling, although her lip
+trembled, "and let Mr. Talbot have me. He is rich, and can marry me at
+once. He is waiting for my answer now, and it is best that I should, as
+you say, end it all."</p>
+
+<p>I shuddered as this pang disturbed my warm bliss. "For Heaven's sake,
+don't joke, Georgy!" I exclaimed. "I can't even hear you allude to the
+possibility of marrying such a man as that with equanimity. I am not so
+poor. Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_753" id="Page_753">[Pg 753]</a></span> Floyd&mdash;" But, after all, I could not tell her of Mr. Floyd's
+generosity to me: it seemed like basing calculations upon his death to
+assure her that the course of events was to bring me a fortune.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me with eagerness. "Tell me now," she said, putting her
+hand upon my arm. "If you love me, Floyd, you cannot keep a secret from
+me."</p>
+
+<p>To describe the beauty of her face, the fascination of her manner, the
+thrill of her touch, words are quite powerless, mere pen-scratches. If
+any man could have withstood her, I was not that man. Shame to relate, I
+soon had told her everything&mdash;that Mr. Floyd had for years placed an
+ample income at my disposal&mdash;that I had seen his will, which gave me,
+without restriction, a clear third of his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>She was meditative for a while. "But," she said then with a trifle of
+brusqueness, "if you marry me he will be angry and change all that: he
+does not like me. He has different plans for you: he wants you to marry
+Helen."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that," I cried, "for I love Mr. Floyd so well, I owe him so
+much, I could refuse him nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that if he asked you to marry Helen you would give me up,
+would take her?" she retorted with a flaming color on her cheeks and a
+gleam in her eyes. "You do not care for me, then. You are merely
+playing with me: you love her, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, that is nonsense, Georgy," I said gently, for through her jealousy
+I had the first glimpse, I fancied, of something like real love for me;
+"and I do not like to hear Helen's name bandied about in this way. You
+may be sure that she will stand in no need of suitors: I shall never be
+one of them. Now, then, who is it that is coquetting? You know whom I
+love&mdash;what I want. I am very much in earnest&mdash;unsettled in heart and
+mind, body, soul and spirit, until I have your answer. Tell me, Georgy
+darling, is it or is it not to be?"</p>
+
+<p>But I was to have no answer that day. Miss Lenox said it was very
+tiresome hearing me reiterate that dreary question, and that she saw
+raspberries in the thicket which I must gather for her. Although, when
+she had eaten them, she let me kiss the lovely stained lips, I was still
+far enough from knowing whether they were mine or not&mdash;whether she liked
+to raise my ardent dreams merely to disappoint them, or whether at heart
+it was, as she sometimes hinted, that she did care for me with something
+of the intimate, clinging habit which bound <i>me</i> so closely to <i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Ellen W. Olney.</span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<h4>[TO BE CONTINUED.]</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="DAWN_IN_THE_CITY" id="DAWN_IN_THE_CITY"></a>DAWN IN THE CITY.</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The city slowly wakes:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Her every chimney makes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Offering of smoke against the cool white skies:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Slowly the morning shakes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The lingering shadowy flakes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">A breath through heaven goes:</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_754" id="Page_754">[Pg 754]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 12em;">Leaves of the pale sweet rose</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Are strewn along the clouds of upper air.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Healer of ancient woes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The palm of dawn bestows</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">On feverish temples peace, comfort on grim despair.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Now the celestial fire</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Fingers the sunken spire;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Brushes the maze of wire,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Dewy, electric lyre,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And with a silent hymn one moment fills the town.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Over emergent roofs</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">A sound of pattering hoofs</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Scared by the piteous droves,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">A shoal of skurrying doves,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Veering, around the island of the church has whirred.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Soon through the smoky haze,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The park begins to raise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Its outlines clearer into daylit prose:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Ever with fresh amaze</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The sleepless fountains praise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Morn, that has gilt the city as it gilds the rose.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">High in the clearer air</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The smoke now builds a stair</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Leading to realms no wing of bird has found:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Things are more foul, more fair;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">A distant clock, somewhere,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Strikes, and the dreamer starts at clear reverberant sound.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Farther the tide of dark</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Drains from each square and park:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Here is a city fresh and new create,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Wondrous as though the ark</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Should once again disbark</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">On a remoulded world its safe and joyous freight.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Ebbs all the dark, and now</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Life eddies to and fro</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">By pier and alley, street and avenue:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">The myriads stir below,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">As hives of coral grow&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Vaulted above, like them, with a fresh sea of blue.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Charles de Kay.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_755" id="Page_755">[Pg 755]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_PARIS_EXPOSITION_OF_1878" id="THE_PARIS_EXPOSITION_OF_1878"></a>THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.</h2>
+
+<h3>IV.&mdash;MACHINERY.</h3>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0276-1.jpg" width="300" height="222" alt="APPLEBY&#39;S STEAM-CRANE, WITH FIXED JIB FOR USE ON
+TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT TRACK." title="" />
+<span class="caption">APPLEBY&#39;S STEAM-CRANE, WITH FIXED JIB FOR USE ON
+TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT TRACK.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The machinery in the Paris Exposition covers a larger space than any
+other of the eight departments of material, machinery and products which
+occupy the buildings and annexes. The ninth department, Horticulture, is
+outdoors on the grounds or in greenhouses. Foreign machinery has about
+half the space, and French machinery the remainder. Few countries are
+without annexes, the space allotted to each, though supposed to be
+ample, being utterly insufficient to hold the multitude of objects
+presented.</p>
+
+<p>In preference to taking the classes of machinery in turn, and visiting
+the various nations in search of exemplars of the classes in rotation,
+it will be more interesting to take the nations in order and arrive at
+an idea of the rate and direction of their relative progress, modified
+so largely by the respective natural productions of the countries and by
+the habits and degrees of civilization of their inhabitants. When put to
+a trial of its strength, each nation naturally brings forward the
+matters in which it particularly excels.</p>
+
+<p>Prominent in the section of the Netherlands, the name so descriptive of
+the land where not less than two hundred and twenty-three thousand acres
+are below the level of the sea and kept constantly drained by artificial
+means, are the engineering and mechanical devices for the reclamation
+and preservation of land, the formation of outlet-canals for the centres
+of commerce, and the bridging of the rivers and estuaries which
+intersect the maritime portions of the country. Some of the models and
+relief-maps were shown in the Netherlands section in the Main Building
+at Philadelphia, but the exhibition is more perfect here, as much has
+been added in the two intervening years.</p>
+
+<p>The works for the drainage of the Haarlemmer Meer illustrate the means
+employed for the last great drainage-work completed. This lake had an
+area of 45,230 acres, an average depth of seventeen feet below low
+water, and was drained between 1848 and 1853. Being diked to exclude the
+waters which naturally flowed into it, three large engines were built in
+different places around it, and the work of pumping out 800,000,000 tons
+of water commenced. The engines have cylinders of twelve feet diameter,
+and are capable of lifting 2,000,000 tons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_756" id="Page_756">[Pg 756]</a></span> of water in twenty-four hours
+from the depth of seventeen feet to the level of the <i>boezem</i>, or
+catch-water basin, of the district. The boezem carries the water to the
+sea, into which it discharges by sluices at Katwyk on the North Sea and
+at Sparndam and Halfweg on the Y, or the southern end of the Zuyder Zee.
+The land reclaimed is now in excellent tillage, and one farm on the
+tract is referred to in agricultural journals as one of the three model
+farms of the world. The three engines are called the Leeghwater, the
+Cruquius and the Lynden, from three celebrated engineers who had at
+different times proposed plans for draining the Haarlemmer Meer.
+Proposals for its drainage were made by one of these engineers as far
+back as 1663. The next enterprise in hand is the drainage of the
+southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, which is stated to have an average
+depth of thirteen feet, and it is intended to cut it off by a dike from
+the northern basin and erect sufficient engines around it to pump it out
+in thirteen years at the rate of a foot a year, working night and day.</p>
+
+<p>Another engineering device, very necessary in a land where foundations
+are so frequently built under water, is the enclosed caisson with
+compressed air, as shown in detail in this exhibit. It was originally
+invented by M. Triger to keep the water expelled from the sheet-iron
+cylinders which he sunk through quick-sands in reaching the
+coal-measures in the vicinity of the river Loire in France. The seams of
+coal in this district lie under a stratum of quicksand from fifty-eight
+to sixty-six feet in thickness, and they had been inaccessible by all
+the ordinary modes of mining previously practised. The system has been
+much amplified and improved since, especially in sinking the foundations
+of the St. Louis and the New York East River bridges, and does not
+require specific description. An improved air-lock, by which access is
+given from the exterior to the working chamber at the part where the men
+work in an atmosphere sufficiently condensed to exclude water from the
+lower open end&mdash;like a tumbler inverted in water&mdash;is the principal
+addition which America has made to the device.</p>
+
+<p>We need not go abroad to find long bridges, but the great bridge, with
+three immense iron trusses and eight smaller ones, over the Wahal near
+Bommell would be respectable anywhere. Our Louisville bridge is a
+parallel example for length, but the truss is different.</p>
+
+<p>The dikes and jetties of the new embouchure of the Meuse embrace the
+same features of extending a river's banks into deep water, and by
+confining the stream making it scour out its own bed, as now so
+successfully practised by Captain Eads in one of the passes of the
+Mississippi River. Limbs and saplings made into gabions and staked
+together form mattresses, and by loading with stone are sunk in
+position. They soon become silted up, and are practically solid. Others
+are made and laid upon them <i>ad libitum</i>, and at last raise the crest
+above the level of the sea, the last course being laid with the
+advantage of high-water spring tides. This foundation supports courses
+of pitched masonry on its side, and these protect the stone or gravel
+embankment, which forms a roadbed. The river's water, instead of, as
+formerly, depositing its silt at the embouchure as its motion is
+arrested on reaching the open sea, carries its silt along and deposits
+it farther out: if a favorable shore-current occurs, it is swept away
+laterally, and so disposed of.</p>
+
+<p>The maritime canal of Amsterdam is another late success of this
+remarkable people, which leads the world in dikes and drainage of low
+lands, as the Italian does in the art and area of irrigation. The
+present canal may satisfy the great and still rising commerce of
+Amsterdam, the previous ship-canal, fifty-one miles in length, built in
+1819-25 at a cost of $4,250,000, and deep and wide enough to float two
+passing frigates, having proved insufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Belgium is happily situated, and well provided by Nature and art to
+enter into any competitive trial. With admirable skill, great provision
+of iron and coal and a people of economical habits that permit them to
+work at low wages without being impoverished, she is, besides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757">[Pg 757]</a></span> working
+up her own abundant material, rolling the iron of England into rails,
+and making it into locomotives for Great Britain, whose own people lack
+the work thus done abroad. The "Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Cockerill-Seraing" has an
+enormous space devoted to the machinery for the exploitation of iron.
+Compressed forgings in car-wheels and other shapes are piled on the
+floor, and a whole railway rail-rolling mill train is shown in motion.
+Two of the rolls are stated to have rolled 10,500 tons of steel rails,
+and are in apparent good order yet.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0277-1.jpg" width="300" height="196" alt="WHEELOCK&#39;S AUTOMATIC CUT-OFF STEAM-ENGINE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHEELOCK&#39;S AUTOMATIC CUT-OFF STEAM-ENGINE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Belgium system of sinking shafts for mines and wells, invented by
+Kind and Chaudron, exhibited here as in Philadelphia, attracts great
+attention from its gigantic proportions. Imagine an immense
+boring-chisel (<i>trepan</i>), weighing 26,000 pounds and with a breadth of
+over six feet, worked up and down by machinery, the steel studs on its
+face stamping the rocks into dust, so that they can be removed with a
+bucket with bottom valves which is dropped into the hole and is worked
+up and down until the detritus and water, if any, creep into it, when it
+is withdrawn and emptied. The repetition of these processes makes the
+shaft of two m&egrave;tres diameter. Then comes the larger trepan, with a width
+of 4.80 m&egrave;tres, and repeats the process on a larger scale. This enormous
+chisel weighs 44,000 pounds. The system is much in favor, and forty-five
+shafts have been thus sunk between 1854 and 1877 in Belgium, France,
+England and Germany. Cast-iron lining is lowered in sections as the
+shaft deepens, the sections being added at the top and bolted together.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgian exhibit contains also one of those immense paper-machines
+invented by the brothers Fourdrinier about fifty years ago, and now used
+almost universally for the best class of machine-made papers. They are
+used by Wilcox at Glen Falls, Delaware county, Penn., in making the
+government note and bond paper, and are a marvel of art. The Frenchmen
+who invented the machine brought it into use in England, but they were
+much hampered and discouraged by difficulties, and it was never a
+pecuniary success to them. It was a legacy to the future, and they have
+joined the army of martyrs to mechanical science. The machine in the
+Belgian section is one hundred and thirty feet long, and the Swiss
+machine, near by, is nearly as large. The French, with their customary
+ingenuity, have reduced the proportions very considerably. The Swiss
+machine makes paper one m&egrave;tre and a half wide.</p>
+
+<p>The remainder of the Belgian exhibit of machinery may be summarized:
+rock drills on the principle of those used at Mont Cenis; the
+gas-engines of Otto; machine tools, lathes, drills and planers; a very
+curious machine for cutting bevel or straight gears, built by a firm at
+Li&egrave;ge, and worthy of attention by Mr. Sellers or Mr. Corliss, whose
+ingenious machines for the same purpose were at Philadelphia; the
+woollen machinery of Celestine Martin of Verviers, which I recollect to
+have seen in Philadelphia also; multitubular boilers, rudder propeller,
+and hand fire-engines Then we see a number of locomotives and tramway
+engines, rail and street cars, winding, mining, crane and portable
+engines, and a full set of vacuum-pans for sugar, with engines,
+centrifugal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_758" id="Page_758">[Pg 758]</a></span> filters and hydraulic presses. A glance at Guibal's great
+mine-ventilator fan, fifty feet in diameter and with ten wooden vanes,
+and we may quit the section of Belgium, which is the next largest after
+England of all the foreign departments here.</p>
+
+<p>The exhibition of Denmark is principally agricultural machinery, its
+iron ploughs being copies of the English, and its reapers of the
+American, while the dairy machines and apparatus are its own, and very
+excellent.</p>
+
+<p>The embroidering-machine of Hurtu &amp; Hautin is shown working in the Swiss
+section, and is a great success. The web or cloth to be embroidered is
+stretched between horizontal rollers in a vertical frame which hangs
+suspended in the machine from the shorter end of a lever above. On each
+side of this floating frame is a track on which a carriage alternately
+approaches and recedes. Each carriage carries as many nippers in a row
+as equals the number of needles, which in this case is two hundred and
+twelve. The needles have an eye in the middle and are pointed at each
+end. The carriage advances, the nippers holding the threaded needles,
+and pushes them through the cloth: the nippers on the other side are
+waiting to receive them and shut upon them, those which have just thrust
+them into the cloth opening automatically; the second carriage retreats
+and draws the silk through the cloth with the requisite tightness, and
+then comes forward, thrusting the other end of the needles through the
+cloth to be grasped by the nippers on the first carriage, and so on. The
+frame holding the cloth is moved by an arrangement of levers under the
+control of the operator, who conducts a tracer point on the long end of
+the lever over the design, which is suspended before him. The frame
+moves in obedience to the action of the tracer, but in a minified
+degree, and each needle repeats on a scale of one-twentieth the design
+over which the tracer is moved step by step between each stitch. Thus
+two hundred and twelve embroideries according to a prescribed pattern
+are made by each needle; and, in fact, though it was not stated, to
+avoid complicating the description, a second row of a similar number of
+needles is carried by the same carriages and operates upon a second web
+stretched between another pair of rollers in the same floating frame.
+The object of the rollers is to reel off new cloth as the embroidery
+progresses and to reel on the work done. A similar machine is shown in
+the French section, in the Salle de l'&Eacute;cole Militaire.</p>
+
+<p>The Jacquard loom is shown in many sections&mdash;Swiss, French, United
+States, English and others&mdash;principally upon silk handkerchiefs and
+motto-ribbons. The exhibit of carpet-weaving is far inferior to the
+Philadelphian. The Swiss exhibit of machinery for making paper of wood
+pulp is very large and ample, but the Belgian annex shows the finest and
+largest varieties of paper so made to be found in the Exposition. The
+paper, white and of various colors, made from about forty trees and
+twenty different straws, grasses and forage-plants, is shown in large
+rolls.</p>
+
+<p>Of Russia there is not much to say except as regards the work of the
+&Eacute;cole Imp&eacute;riale Technique de Moscou. This is a remarkable
+exemplification of tools, methods of work, parts of engines and
+machines, all finished with extreme care and fitted with great nicety.
+It is fuller than it was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are
+readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary
+engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military
+and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges and an excellent
+lifeboat, syst&egrave;me de Bojarsky.</p>
+
+<p>Austria comes with no more striking exhibit than the malteries and
+breweries of Nobak Fr&egrave;res and Fritze. The immense extent of the
+magazines for barley and hops; the size and height of the malteries,
+where by continuous processes the grain is damped, sprouted and dried
+and the malt ground; the number and capacity of the various vessels in
+which the infusions of malt and hops are made and mixed; and the
+apparently interminable series of engines, pumps and pipes by which the
+steam and liquids<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_759" id="Page_759">[Pg 759]</a></span> are conducted,&mdash;are confusing until some study
+evolves order out of the apparent confusion. The wort is cooled
+artificially, time being a great object as well as the saving of aroma,
+and the yet innocent liquid is poured in a torrent into the
+fermentation-vats, where Nature will have her own way and eliminate the
+ingredients which convert the mawkish wort into the sparkling and
+refreshing beer. Four hundred and fifty of these establishments have
+been erected by this firm in Europe; which must be some comfort to
+those, not vignerons, who think the prospects of the vine are materially
+clouded by the <i>Phylloxera</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But Austria is not beery alone. She has fine exhibits in horology,
+electric and pneumatic telegraphy, and in tools, grain-mills, gang-saw
+mills, and machines for making paper bags. More important, as some might
+say, are the admirable locomotives and stationary engines, cars,
+fire-engines, and her collection of iron-work, in which are exhibited
+cast-iron car-wheels, made by Ganz &amp; Co. of Buda-Pesth, which have been
+in use twenty-one years and have run without apparent severe injury a
+distance of 549,108 kilom&egrave;tres, or nearly 280,700 miles.</p>
+
+<p>The beet-root sugar interest is becoming very important in Austria, but
+the evidences of the Exhibition indicate that the diffusion-process
+holds better credit there than in France, where it is not approved of.
+The rotative apparatus shown is an immense affair, with a series of
+eight tall tanks arranged on a circular carriage and rotating on a
+vertical axis, so as to bring each in turn to the charging and
+discharging positions. Each tank has its own system of pumps. Beet-root
+is difficult to exploit for various reasons, chemical and other. Like
+the vine, it is particular in its nutriment, requires great skill to
+remove extraneous substances, and can hardly be handled by the French
+system without a set of machinery costing about eighty thousand dollars.</p>
+
+<p>From Austria to Spain is but a step, but it is not productive of much
+information in the matter we have in hand. A beaming-machine for cotton
+warps, red, white and yellow, stands solitary in its section, and next
+to it is a model of a <i>cirque de taureau</i>, composed of nineteen thousand
+pieces of tin laboriously put together without solder, as if that were a
+merit, and stated to be the work of two years. In the arena the wooden
+bull regards with indifference two mounted cavaliers and seven footmen
+in various provoking attitudes. Near by are various machines and presses
+for the treatment of grapes and olives, grinders and presses in variety,
+a sugar-cane press and a turbine. Barcelona would seem to be the most
+enterprising of Spanish cities. Several exemplifications of the
+excellent iron of Catalonia and Biscay suggest the direction in which
+Spain has taken its most important industrial start of late years. An
+admirable model of the quay of the copper-mining company of the Rio
+Tinto is another evidence in the same line which the maps, plans and
+ores amply corroborate.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0278-1.jpg" width="300" height="228" alt="BLAKE STONE-CRUSHER." title="" />
+<span class="caption">BLAKE STONE-CRUSHER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Two steps, in violation of all preconceived geographical notions, but in
+obedience to the Exposition authorities, land us in China, where we find
+things mechanical in much the same state of progress as Marco Polo
+viewed them some centuries since. The silk tissues brought from the far
+East were famous in the days of the Roman magnificence, and here is the
+loom. The marvel is how such a web can be made on such a rough machine.
+A blue silk warp of delicate threads is in the loom, which has nine
+heddles, and the partly-finished fabric shows a woof<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_760" id="Page_760">[Pg 760]</a></span> consisting of a
+narrow gilded strip of paper. The sheen of the figured goods is
+something remarkable. It is a parallel case to that of the shawls of
+Kashmir, where the natives, trained for generations, succeed in
+producing by great care and unlimited expenditure of time fabrics with
+which the utmost elaboration of our machinery scarcely enables us to
+compete.</p>
+
+<p>The machine for the whitening of rice by the removal of the brown
+coating from the pure white grain is similar to that shown from Siam at
+the Centennial, but, unlike the latter, the faces of the two round
+horizontal wooden blocks which act as mill-stones are serrated, whereas
+the Siamese rubbers were made of sun-dried clay, the serrations
+consisting of bamboo strips inserted in the clay while yet plastic. The
+motion is similar, not being continuously revolving, but reciprocatory,
+and the method is customary in all the rice-eating regions except India,
+and is well known in parts of the latter, though not universal. The
+grain of Eastern Asia, including India and Malaysia, is almost
+universally rice, of which two, and even three, crops a year are raised
+in some regions, and the processes of cooking are simple among these
+vegetarians, the variation consisting principally in the choice of
+condiments or of certain additional esculents or fruits in their season.
+The grinding of grain is, however, universally known, though meal forms
+but a small proportion of the daily food. The mortar and pestle in the
+Chinese section show the more usual method, and there, as in some parts
+of India, the pestle is placed on the end of a poised horizontal beam
+which is worked by the foot of the operator at the end opposite to the
+pestle.</p>
+
+<p>We meet in the Chinese section with the original of our fanning-mill or
+winnowing-machine for grain. Though China has had the same machines for
+centuries, we have not knowingly copied many of them. The fanning-mill,
+porcelain and the <i>cheng</i> may be fairly credited to her. The last is the
+original of all our free-reed musical instruments. It is shown here, and
+was also at the Centennial, and it was the carrying of one overland to
+Russia, where it fell into the hands of Kratzenstein, the organ-builder
+to Queen Catharine II., which initiated the free reed in Europe, and led
+to the accordions, concertinas, harmoniums and parlor organs which
+perhaps afford the cheapest and loudest music for a given expenditure of
+muscle and wind of anything we have.</p>
+
+<p>The spinning and winding machinery of China is simple enough, but so
+much like that of our great-grandmothers that it does not arrest
+particular attention. It is otherwise with the irrigating-machine, which
+in its various modifications produces, by the fruitfulness induced, the
+food of scores of millions in China, India, Syria and Egypt&mdash;the cogged
+wheel on a vertical axis, with an ox travelling beneath it, and a
+horizontal shaft moved thereby and carrying an endless chain of pots or
+buckets, either hanging from the cord or moving in an inclined chute.</p>
+
+<p>The ploughs, harrows, rakes, flails, spades, hoes and forks are of the
+usual clumsy description, not to be apprehended by the reader without
+cuts, and many of them only reasonably effective even in the mellow soil
+repeatedly stirred and occasionally flooded with water. The seed-drill
+for planting one row, with a share on each side to turn soil on to the
+grain, is an anticipation of some later inventions nearer home. The
+thresher is a square frame drawn over the grain&mdash;which is spread upon
+the bare ground&mdash;and is furnished on its under side with steel blades
+which not only shell the grain out of the ear, but also reduce the straw
+into chaff, which is desirable, as storing for feed more conveniently.
+Southern nations have but little conception of our use of hay. Grain for
+the man and straw for the beast is the usual division. The ancient Roman
+<i>tribulum</i> and the modern Syrian <i>morej</i>, were or are similar, and the
+"sharp" threshing instrument of Isaiah may be seen to-day in the Tunis
+exhibit, being a frame of boards with sharp flint spalls inserted into
+its under surface.</p>
+
+<p>We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese
+manufactures&mdash;sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc.,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_761" id="Page_761">[Pg 761]</a></span> showing the stages of
+cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market&mdash;but
+perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the
+ancient island of Zipango.</p>
+
+<p>Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the
+rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place
+among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any
+liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which
+attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring
+silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets,
+and cutlery of native shapes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0279-1.jpg" width="265" height="300" alt="TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL." title="" />
+<span class="caption">TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time
+immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain
+Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given
+place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name
+of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before
+Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened
+between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage
+in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand
+and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank
+movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of
+the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a
+patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin
+Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near
+the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the
+eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of
+John Sch&ouml;ner, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had
+Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and
+south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus
+died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three
+hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our
+group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are
+one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among
+the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the
+sleep of centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes,
+but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for
+example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made
+the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by his twin
+wolf-nursling, but it is the plough of Bocchi Gaetano of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_762" id="Page_762">[Pg 762]</a></span> Parma, is
+twelve feet long and weighs something under half a ton. Another, hard
+by, is two feet longer and has but one handle. Efforts are evident,
+however, to assimilate the country to the portions of Europe more
+advanced in mechanical matters. When we reflect upon how much we owe to
+Italy, we can but wish her well, but we cannot delay long with her in a
+search for objects of mechanical interest except to examine her models
+of tunnels, manner of scaffolding, boring and blasting. The Mont Cenis
+tunnel must stand as the grandest work of its kind until that of Saint
+Gothard is finished. An exemplification by a model constructed to a
+scale of the electric ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton
+gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and
+the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each
+impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is
+stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to
+pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be
+proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery
+Building at the Centennial the eight-inch armor-plating made by Cammell
+of Sheffield, tested in one case by nine spherical shots overlapping,
+making an indentation of 3.12 inches with balls from a seven-inch gun
+driven by thirty pounds of powder at a range of seventy feet. They are
+here again, and so is the nine-inch armor with a much deeper indentation
+from a chilled Palisser bolt. Here is also a new-comer, John Brown,
+whose armor of four and a half inches of steel welded on to the same
+thickness of iron resists the Palisser bolt, which only penetrates the
+thickness of the steel. What might happen to it with a pointed steel
+bolt from a sixty- or one-hundred-ton gun is another matter. To set our
+minds at rest as to what would occur in the event supposed comes Sir
+Joseph Whitworth, who exhibits his gun with polygonal rifling, the bore
+being a hexagon with rounded corners. The projectiles are moulded of the
+same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of
+these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half
+pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half
+inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth
+fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred
+and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting
+charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton gun, and
+penetrated iron sixteen inches thick and twelve inches of oak backing.
+The shell remained entire and was only slightly distorted. The question
+seems to be answered, unless the plates are made twenty inches thick,
+and that is impossible on a vessel to be manoeuvred.</p>
+
+<p>Sweden comes next, and the scene changes; for the weapon which suggested
+the remarks was only, as it were, one gun in a garden. Instead of wine
+and olives we find iron and furs. Except some Indian steels, there is no
+better metal than that of Sweden, and horse-shoe nails are made of it
+all over Europe and the United States. Iron in ore, pig, rails, bars,
+rods, wire; iron in tools, files, wheels, balls, shells, pans, boilers,
+stoves, springs; iron <i>ad lib</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The agricultural machines of Sweden, like those of Denmark, are copies
+of the American and English, and the same is true to a large extent of
+the engines, saw-mills, water-wheels and wood-working machinery. The
+statement would not be true of the very elaborate exercising-machines
+(<i>la gymnastique m&eacute;dicale m&eacute;canique</i>) invented by Gustave Zander of
+Stockholm. They embrace every conceivable variety of effort, and also
+another class of applications which may be termed shampooing, as they
+consist of kneading and rubbing. Among the twenty machines are those
+designed for flexing, stretching and extending the limbs, for kneading
+the back and neck, for rubbing the body and limbs to induce circulation
+and simulate the effect of exercise in the cases of weak persons or
+those confined to their beds by casualties. Some of these were in
+Philadelphia in 1876.</p>
+
+<p>Steering-apparatus and gun-harpoons for whaling testify to the maritime
+character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_763" id="Page_763">[Pg 763]</a></span> of the people, as do the boats and ropes. The great exhibit
+of <i>p&acirc;te de bois</i> shows the anxiety of the people to turn their
+extensive forests to good account in the markets of the world. White
+pine seems to be the principal wood thus used. Norway and Sweden have
+been shipping timber for some centuries, and yet seem to need no laws to
+restrain the denudation of their hills; certainly not to encourage
+rainfall. Bergen has 88.13 inches per annum, which is just double that
+of Philadelphia, and four inches greater than that of Sitka, where the
+people say it is always raining. Of course these figures are small when
+compared to spots on the Himalayas, where Hooker observed a fall of 470
+inches in seven months, and on one occasion 30 inches in four hours; the
+latter equal to the average annual rainfall of France.</p>
+
+<p>The American machinery, which occupies a position between Norway and
+England, is creditable in kind and quality, but fails very far in giving
+a correct idea of the multiplicity of our industries. Almost the only
+evidence of our textile manufactures are two of Tilt's Jacquard
+silk-weaving looms. The telephones of Edison and Gray excite unremitting
+astonishment and admiration, and have both received the highest possible
+awards. Our wood-working is practically shown in a large variety by Fay
+&amp; Co. of Cincinnati, and one or two other special machines by other
+makers. The Wheelock engine, which drives all the machinery in our
+section of the main building, has very properly been awarded a grand
+prize. It is all that can be desired in an engine, and has a singular
+simplicity of construction, with few working parts. It is the same which
+drove the machinery in the Agricultural Building at the Centennial. The
+steam is admitted and exhausted by a valve at each end of the cylinder
+placed directly below the port. The cut-off valve is behind the main
+valve: the mechanism for operating the valves is on the outside of the
+steam-chest, and easily accessible. The valves and seats are made
+tapering in their general diameter, and the pressure of steam comes on
+one side, also acting to keep the collar in contact with the sleeve.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 287px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0280-1.jpg" width="287" height="300" alt="TWEDDELL&#39;S HYDRAULIC RIVETING-MACHINE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">TWEDDELL&#39;S HYDRAULIC RIVETING-MACHINE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Waltham Watch Company is considered by some of the most influential
+European journals as the most important in the American section on
+account of the revolution it is making in that important industry. When
+the Swiss commissioner went home from the Centennial he published a
+letter fairly throwing up the sponge, and when the company's exhibit
+appeared for the first time in Europe at an international exposition it
+was regarded as carrying the war into Africa. The American system of
+making by machinery all the parts of an article&mdash;say, of a watch&mdash;of a
+given grade by means of gauges and templets, so that the parts may be
+"assembled," and of such singular exactitude in their making that any
+part may be replaced by the corresponding piece of any other watch of
+the same grade, has in this manufactory attained its highest results,
+greatest precision and most perfect illustration. The whole collection
+of watches was sold within<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_764" id="Page_764">[Pg 764]</a></span> a few weeks after the opening. The latest
+improvements in the balance to secure perfect isochronism under varying
+conditions of temperature would delight the soul of Harrison, who worked
+from 1728 to 1761 on the problem of a compensator for the changes of
+rate due to the expansion and contraction of the metal, and received the
+reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling offered by the Board of
+Longitude.</p>
+
+<p>Tiffany's exhibit has been admired and patronized, but is not quite
+within my range of subjects. Darling, Brown &amp; Sharpe have their
+machine-tools and gauges, Bliss &amp; Williams their presses and dies. We
+have the Baxter, Snyder and Lovegrove portable engines, Taylor's and
+Aultman's agricultural engines. Our railroad exhibit is not very full:
+we have a Philadelphia and Reading coal-burning locomotive, a Pullman
+car, the Westinghouse brake, Stephenson's street-cars, car-wheels from
+Baldwin's and Lobdell's: the latter also sends calender-rolls of
+remarkable quality. As a sort of set-off to the Austrian car-wheels
+which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell
+has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and
+Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size
+and purpose, and of a finish and an accuracy which have become
+proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery;
+Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen &amp; Roeder's
+riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,&mdash;are a few more of
+the representative machines.</p>
+
+<p>Sewing-machines are not in as great variety in the American section as
+they were in Philadelphia. There are, however, enough of American and
+European to foot up about eighty exhibitors. Wheeler &amp; Wilson's have
+been awarded the grand prize, and there are various medals for others,
+both home and foreign&mdash;the American machine, Cole's and Wardwell's among
+the number. The various hardware exhibits, such as the Disston saws,
+Ames shovels, Collins axes, Batcheller forks, Russell &amp; Erwin builders'
+hardware, as well as the Remington, Colt, Winchester, Sharpe and Owen
+Jones rifles and revolvers, and the Gatling and Gardner guns, are a
+little on one side of my present line of subjects.</p>
+
+<p>The United States has preserved its ancient reputation in its
+agricultural machinery. We are especially strong in the class which we
+term "harvesters," the name including reapers, automatic binders,
+mowers, horse-rakes and hay-loaders. Our baling-presses also are in
+advance of competitors. A juryman may perhaps stand excused for
+supposing that more than an average amount of interest is felt in the
+machinery which happens to be in his class, but on Class
+76&mdash;"agricultural implements in motion and in the field"&mdash;additional
+interest was conferred by a series of competitive trials extending from
+July 22 to August 12, and embracing reapers, mowers, steam and ordinary
+ploughs, hay-presses, threshing-machines especially, but also including
+all the other machines for working in the ground, gathering crops and
+the storage and preparation of feed for animals. In this series of
+competitive trials eight different countries entered the lists. The
+prizes were twelve <i>objets d'art</i> placed at the disposal of Monsieur
+Tisseraud, the "director-general of agriculture and horticulture of
+France," and the jury selected to attend the trials. Eleven of them were
+accorded to machines of "exceptional merit," the idea of novelty being
+included in the definition of the term. These <i>objets d'art</i> are S&egrave;vres
+vases worth one thousand francs each, and in view of their exceptional
+value, and the large share that America has in the award, a list of the
+names may very properly be appended.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Several hundred machines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_765" id="Page_765">[Pg 765]</a></span>
+competed: for instance, twenty-six reapers, sixteen mowers, fifty-four
+ploughs, and so on of numerous kinds of agricultural implements and
+machines for working in the soil, gathering crops and for the work of
+the homestead and barn.</p>
+
+<p>Last on the foreign side is the British machinery, and the collection is
+very much larger and more varied than any of the preceding. There are
+few lines of manufacture which are not represented here. Machines for
+working in iron and other metals, for sawing and fashioning wood, for
+the ginning, breaking or carding of cotton, flax, wool, jute and hemp,
+for working in stone, glass, leather and paper, are shown. Then, again,
+the finished productions; prime motors, such as stationary engines,
+locomotives and fire-engines; lifting-machines for solids or liquids,
+cranes, jacks, elevators, pumps, each in endless variety.</p>
+
+<p>Prominent in the hall, and employed in driving the machinery, is the
+large double compound horizontal engine of Galloway of Manchester. This
+form of engine is coming to the front, as is evinced especially in the
+marine service. Maudslay &amp; Sons of London exhibit a model of the
+four-cylinder marine compound engine as fitted on the "White Star line"
+vessels, the Germanic, Britannic, Oceanic, Baltic and Adriatic, and on
+the steamers of the "Compagnie G&eacute;n&eacute;rale Transatlantique," the Ville de
+Havre, Europe, France, Am&eacute;rique, Labrador, Canada. The vessels of the
+New York and Bremen line have the same class of engines, built in
+Greenock, Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>Amid so large a mass of machinery one can but select the most prominent,
+and among these we may choose such as, while not necessarily imposing in
+size, are suggestive of ideas which we may find valuable for home
+introduction. Appleby &amp; Sons lead the world in the completeness and
+capacity of their great cranes and lifts for docks and wharves,
+machine-shops, erection of buildings, and travelling cranes for railways
+or common roads. We must make one exception&mdash;the elevators for hotels
+and warehouses, in which America is in advance of all other countries.
+While we have many varieties of these, we must give credit where it is
+due, and the <i>ascenseur Edoux</i> of Paris is the original of all those in
+which the cage is placed upon a plunger that descends into a vertical
+cylinder into which water is forced to elevate the plunger, and from
+which it is withdrawn to allow the plunger and cage to descend. Very
+fine specimens of this class of elevator are in the New York Post-office
+building. The gantry crane of Messrs. Appleby Bros. of London is the
+most complete engine of its kind in the world. It was originally
+constructed for the growing requirements of the docks of the
+North-eastern Railway Company of England at Middlesborough. The term
+"gantry" is applied to the movable scaffold or frame, which in this case
+rests upon a pair of rails twenty-three feet apart, one of them being
+close to the edge of the quay. The clear height is seventeen and a half
+feet, which allows the uninterrupted passage of locomotives and all
+kinds of rolling-stock on each of the two lines of rails which are
+spanned by the gantry. The crane is designed for a working load of five
+tons, with a maximum radius of twenty-one feet from the centre of the
+crane-post to the plumb-line of the lifting chain, with a capacity for
+altering the radius by steam to a minimum of fourteen feet. The crane
+has capacity to (1) lift and lower; (2) turn round completely in either
+direction simultaneously with the lifting and lowering; (3) alter the
+radius by raising or lowering the jib-head; (4) travel along the rails
+by its own steam-power. All these motions are easily worked by one man,
+who attends to the boiler. The travelling motion is transmitted from the
+crane-engines by suitable gear and shafts to the travelling wheels, and
+warping-drums or capstans are fitted on a countershaft on the inner side
+of each frame, which drums can be driven independently of the travelling
+wheels for moving trucks into position below the crane as they are
+required for loading and unloading. Smaller cranes may pass with their
+loads below the gantry, and a number of these large cranes may be
+assembled so as each to work at the different<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_766" id="Page_766">[Pg 766]</a></span> hatchways of a large
+screw steamer, or two may be associated together for any exceptionally
+heavy lift. The value of elevation of the crane is not only in allowing
+the loaded cars to be brought on tracks beneath it, but in giving it
+capacity to work over the sides of large vessels, which when light may
+rise twenty feet above the level of the quay, and to load or discharge
+from trucks on two lines of rails on the land-side of the gantry,
+overhead of the trucks on the two lines which run below the gantry.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Blake's stone-breaker, though only represented by model in the United
+States section, where it belongs, is shown by two English firms; and
+though some Europeans profess to have improved upon its details, no
+efficient substitute has been found for it, but it remains the premium
+stone-crusher of the world, and has rendered services in the
+exploitation of gold quartz and silver ores, and in the crushing of
+stones for public works and for concretes, which can hardly be
+exaggerated. In testimony taken in the United States in 1872 it was put
+in evidence that five hundred and nine machines then in service effected
+a direct saving over hand-labor of five million five hundred thousand
+dollars per annum.</p>
+
+<p>Steam-pumps are here in force&mdash;direct by Tangye and others, and rotary
+by both of the Gwynnes, whose name has been so long and is so intimately
+associated with this class of machines.</p>
+
+<p>The emery-wheels of Thompson, Sterne &amp; Co. of Glasgow have the same
+variety of form and application usual with us, but the firm claims that
+while it uses the true corundum emery of Naxos, the American article is
+only a refractory iron ore, which soon loses its sharpness and becomes
+inefficient. This is a question of efficiency or of veracity which we
+leave to the trade. The machine adapted as a tool-grinder has six
+emery-wheels for varying characters of work. Four are assorted for
+gauges of different radii, for moulding-irons, etc. One has a square
+face for plane-irons, chisels, etc. One is an emery hone to replace the
+water-of-Ayr stone.</p>
+
+<p>In examining the English locomotives exhibited two things were apparent:
+one half of them have adopted the outside cylinders and wrist-pins on
+the drivers, three out of four have comfortable cabs for the engineers.
+These are, as we view them, sensible changes. Outside-cylinder engines
+are also coming into extensive use in France. The machine tools shown by
+Sharp, Stewart &amp; Co. of Manchester are remarkably well made, and their
+locomotive in the same space is an evidence of the efficiency of the
+tools.</p>
+
+<p>The exhibit of hydraulic-machine tools by Mr. R.&nbsp;H. Tweddell is a very
+admirable one, and shows a multitude of stationary and portable forms in
+which the idea is developed so as to reach the varying requirements.
+When work is more conveniently held to the machines, the latter are
+adapted to reach it whether presented vertically or horizontally, or
+with one arm inside of it, as with boilers and flue-pipes. When it is
+more convenient to handle the riveter, the latter is suspended from a
+crane and swung up to its work, and the peculiarity of the various sizes
+and shapes for different kinds of work is remarkable. The cut shows one
+of the latest for riveting girders.</p>
+
+<p>The Ingram rotary perfecting press, on which the <i>Illustrated London
+News</i> is worked off, prints from a web of paper of the usual length, and
+is claimed as the final triumph in the line of inventors, which is thus
+stated in England: Nicholson, K&ouml;nig, Applegarth and Cowper, Hoe and
+Walter. We should be disposed to add a few names to the list, among
+which would be Bullock and Campbell. A is the roll of paper, containing
+a length of, say, two miles; B&nbsp;B the type and impression cylinders for
+printing the inner form; C&nbsp;C calendering rollers to remove the
+indentation of the inner form type; D&nbsp;D the outer form type and
+impression cylinders; E&nbsp;E cylinders with a saw-tooth knife and an
+indentation respectively to perforate the sheet between the papers; F&nbsp;F
+rollers to hold the sheet while the snatching-rollers G&nbsp;G, which run at
+an increased speed, break<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_767" id="Page_767">[Pg 767]</a></span> the paper off where it has been indented by
+E&nbsp;E. The folder is in duplicate to give time to work, as each only takes
+half the papers. The vibrating arm H delivers the sheets alternately to
+K and J, which are carrying-tapes leading to two folding-machines. If
+the sheets are not required to be folded, the arm H is moved to its
+highest position, and there fixed, without stopping the machine: it then
+delivers the sheets to the roller L, and by means of a blast of air and
+a flyer they are laid on a table provided for them.</p>
+
+<p>The rise of British factory-life and great energy in manufacturing began
+with the invention of the spinning-frame by Arkwright, the power-loom by
+Cartwright, the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves, and the mule by
+Crompton&mdash;all within a space of twenty years ending 1785. To these must
+be added the steam-engine by Watt, which made it possible to drive the
+machinery, and the gin by Eli Whitney, which made it possible to get
+cotton to spin. Much as iron has loomed up lately, the working of the
+various fibres&mdash;cotton, wool, flax, hemp and jute&mdash;constitutes the pet
+industry of her people, and very elaborate and beautiful are the
+machines at the Exposition, especially attractive and less commonly
+known being those for working long or combing wool, flax, hemp and jute.
+The United States is not doing as much as it ought in the working of
+these fibres, and the money which is paid for the purchase of foreign
+linens and fabrics made of other materials than cotton and wool might,
+some economists think, be employed at home in making them. The day will
+come probably, but does not seem to be hastening very fast, when we
+shall conclude to make our own linens, as we have within a comparatively
+few years past determined in regard to all the staple varieties of
+carpets.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illus-0281-1.jpg" width="400" height="174" alt="INGRAM&#39;S ROTARY PERFECTING PRINTING-MACHINE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">INGRAM&#39;S ROTARY PERFECTING PRINTING-MACHINE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One of the most important machines in the Exposition, from the American
+point of view, is the "double Macarthy roller-gin," exhibited by Platt
+Brothers &amp; Co. of Oldham, England. It is a curious instance of how
+machines sometimes revert to their original types. The oldest machine
+for ginning cotton is undoubtedly the roller-gin, and it was known in
+India, China and Malaysia long before Vasco da Gama turned the Cape of
+Good Hope and opened the trade of the East to the Portuguese and their
+successors. The common roller-gin of Southern Asia was shown at the
+Centennial from Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from
+Java. It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close
+together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the
+fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the
+closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794
+revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our
+Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of
+saw-teeth projecting through slits in the side of the chamber in which
+the seed-cotton<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_768" id="Page_768">[Pg 768]</a></span> is placed. But the roller-gin has again come upon the
+stage, and with the late improvements is likely to become the gin of the
+future. When the close of our civil war put an end to the "cotton
+famine," as it was called, in Europe, and American cotton resumed its
+place in the market, the export of the East Indian and Egyptian cottons
+would have been immediately suppressed if they had not possessed the
+roller-gin in those countries. Ten thousand of the double Macarthy gin
+are used in India, and five thousand of the single roller-gin in Egypt.
+It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in
+India. While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting,
+tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and
+fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is
+suitable for working it. The slow action of the single roller-gin,
+cleaning about one hundred and fifty pounds of lint per day, made its
+cultivation too expensive, but the double roller-gin will clean nine
+hundred pounds in ten hours, or one hundred and twenty pounds an hour of
+the common upland short-staple cotton. It is thought by Southern members
+of the United States commission that the introduction of the double
+roller-gin into our country would greatly increase the profitableness of
+the culture of cotton, and especially of the "sea island," which is at
+present much neglected, and in the growth of which we need fear no
+rivalry. Each roller is made of walrus leather, and rotates in contact
+with a fixed knife, dragging by its rough surface the fibres of cotton
+between itself and the knife. A grating holds the seed-cotton. Besides
+these parts there are moving knives to which are attached a grid or
+series of fingers. At each elevation of the moving knives, the grids
+attached thereto lift the cotton to the elevation of the fixed
+knife-edge and of the exposed surface of the rollers: on the descent of
+each moving knife the seeds which have become separated from the fibre
+are disentangled by the prongs of the moving grid passing between those
+of the lower or fixed grid about seven hundred and fifty times per
+minute, and are by this rapidity of action flirted out.</p>
+
+<p>It would be scarcely fair to neglect altogether the English annex in
+which all the agricultural implements are exhibited, nor that which
+contains its carriages. So much commercial intercourse, so many journals
+published in the respective countries, have made each pretty well
+acquainted with the agricultural machines and methods of the other. The
+principal difference is in the splendid plant for steam-ploughing
+exhibited by Fowler &amp; Son and by Aveling &amp; Porter, and in the great
+number and variety of the machines and apparatus for preparing food for
+animals&mdash;chaff-cutters, oat- and bean-bruisers and crushers,
+oilcake-grinders, boilers and steamers for feed and mills for rough
+grinding of grain.</p>
+
+<p>A shed by the annex contains two curious machines for working stone&mdash;one
+a dresser, belonging to Brunton &amp; Triers, which has a large wheel and a
+number of planetary cutters whose disk edges as they revolve cut the
+stone against which they impinge. The other machine, by Weston &amp; Co., is
+for planing stone mouldings. The stone-drills are in the same annex;
+also the Smith and the Hardy brakes, the former of which is the European
+rival of the Westinghouse, acting upon the vacuum principle, and already
+in possession of so many of the lines in Europe that it proves a serious
+competitor.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps nothing in the French Exposition excites more surprise in the
+minds of those who are conversant with technical matters than the
+immense advance of the French since 1867 in the matter of machinery. The
+simple statement of the names of the exhibitors, their residences and
+the subject-matter occupies a large volume, and the quality and variety
+are equal to the quantity.</p>
+
+<p>Reference has been made to the web perfecting printing-machine in the
+English section, but quite a number are shown in the French department,
+three of them by Marinoni of Paris, one of which prints the journal <i>La
+France</i>, eighteen thousand an hour. It prints, cuts, counts, folds and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_769" id="Page_769">[Pg 769]</a></span>
+piles the papers. Another by the same maker prints twenty thousand an
+hour of the <i>Weekly Dispatch</i> (English paper), and counts and piles them
+in heaps of one hundred each. A third works on the <i>Petit Journal</i>,
+printing forty thousand per hour with two forms. Alauzet &amp; Co. have also
+a web perfecting press, <i>&agrave; double touche</i>, for illustrated papers and
+book-printing. This wets, prints, cuts, counts and folds in octavo four
+thousand per hour of super-royal size. They also show a double railway
+topographic press, printing in two colors. Vauthier's roller-press is
+arranged to work on an endless roll of paper or on sheets fed in as
+usual, and prints in six colors. Electro shells are secured in position
+on the respective rollers, which are in horizontal series, and the paper
+is conducted by tapes to the rollers in succession. The French section
+shows a great variety of polychrome, lithographic and zincographic
+printing-machines, and also a great number of ordinary job and card
+presses, the most interest, however, centring in the large number and
+variety of the web perfecting presses for newspapers and for bill-work
+where long numbers are required.</p>
+
+<p>France has a right to exemplify the Jacquard in its fulness, for it is
+hers. The original machine of Vaucanson and that of Jacquard are in the
+Conservatoire des Arts et Meti&eacute;rs, as well as a long series of
+exemplifications of successive improvements. The Grand Maison de Blanc
+of Paris has a large one, making an immense linen cloth of damask
+figures, all in white, and representing what I took at first to be an
+allegorical picture of all the nations bringing their gifts to the
+Exposition. I found afterward that it was called <i>F&eacute;es du Dessert</i>. It
+is about three m&egrave;tres wide, and just as long as you please to make it,
+but the pattern is repeated every five m&egrave;tres. The design, on paper, is
+hung against the wall, and is twelve by eight m&egrave;tres, all laid off in
+squares of twelve millim&egrave;tres, and these again into smaller ones exactly
+a square millim&egrave;tre in size. The number of small squares on the sheet of
+paper is ninety-six million, which represents the number of the
+intersections of the warp and woof in the pattern. There are nine
+thousand and sixty-six perforated cards in the Jacquard arrangement for
+floating the threads which form the damask pattern, and the whole
+machine stands on a space of about twenty by twelve feet and is eighteen
+feet high. It is worked by one man, without steam-power, the shifting of
+the harness being done by two foot-levers and the shuttle thrown by a
+pull-cord.</p>
+
+<p>We may here observe the looms that weave the marvellously fine silk
+gauzes realizing such fanciful Indian names as "morning mist," which
+poetically express the lightness of a web that when spread upon the
+grass is not visible unless one stoops down and examines closely. To
+even name the various looms here would be to make a list of ribbons,
+velvets, cloths and other tissues. The subsidiary machines for dressing
+the fabrics are here also&mdash;for napping, teasling, shearing, stretching
+and brushing, for measuring, folding and packing.</p>
+
+<p>The other modes of making fabrics shown are a machine for making
+fishing-nets of great width, and a number of knitting-machines, from the
+stocking-frame of eighty years ago to the small domestic machine, and
+the larger one with nine hundred needles in the circumference and making
+a circular seamless fabric eighteen inches in diameter. The march of
+improvement is eminently shown here, where an old man is patiently
+knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between
+the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose
+motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir,
+and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and
+thirty pounds of knitted goods per day.</p>
+
+<p>Passing the large exhibit of machines for the working of fibres
+preliminary to the loom&mdash;the carding, roving, spinning, reeling and
+warping&mdash;and the allied but different machines which make wire-cloths of
+different meshes and size, we come to the ropemaking-machines for hemp
+and wire, which are shown principally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_770" id="Page_770">[Pg 770]</a></span> in their products, the
+manufacture taking an amount of room and material which could hardly be
+expected to be efficiently shown in a crowded building where space is
+valuable.</p>
+
+<p>The French plant for boring small shafts to find water or obtain
+sections of the strata, and the larger ones for sinking large ones for
+mines, are shown by several exhibitors. The annular drills remove
+cylindrical sections of the strata from ten to sixty centim&egrave;tres in
+diameter: the large chisels resemble those described in the Belgian
+exhibit, having a diameter of four m&egrave;tres and a weight of twenty-five
+thousand kilos.</p>
+
+<p>The department of mining has some excellent large models of mining
+districts, in which the face of the country is represented with the
+natural undulations, the villages, roads, fields and streams, and made
+in removal-sections which expose the underlying strata, the galleries,
+drifts and shafts of the subterranean world.</p>
+
+<p>An attempt to describe the steam-engines, of such various size, shape,
+position and capacity, would exhaust all the space permissible in a
+magazine article.</p>
+
+<p>The wood-working tools of France are excellent, and our manufacturers
+must look well to their laurels. We have as yet the advantage in
+compactness and simplicity, with adjustability and adaptation to varying
+classes of work. The band-saw is claimed as a French invention, and the
+crowds around the workman who saws a roomful of dolls' furniture out of
+a single block as large as one's fist are as great here as they were at
+Philadelphia. The Blanchard lathe for turning irregular forms is here in
+a variety of forms. This is an interesting object of study, as
+illustrating the usual course of invention, in which a master-hand
+grasps a subject which has been suggested in an incomplete and
+comparatively ineffective manner from time to time by others. De la Hire
+and Condamine during the last century described lathes adapted to turn
+irregular shapes, and the scoring-machine for ships' blocks invented by
+Brunel and made by Maudslay for Chatham dockyard in England, 1802-8,
+was as perfect an exemplification of the idea as the nature of the work
+to be done required. Blanchard, however, in 1819 gave the finishing
+stroke, and the lathe will bear his name for long years. Inventors of
+three nations attacked the problem, and each aided the result.</p>
+
+<p>Brickmaking, diamond-cutting; machines for making paper bags, envelopes,
+cuffs and collars; distilleries, sugar-mills, with the successive
+apparatus of vacuum-pans, pumps and centrifugal filters; soap, stearine,
+paraffine, wax, candle, candy and chocolate machines and
+apparatus,&mdash;succeed each other, and we next find ourselves in a busy
+factory of cheap jewelry, Exposition souvenirs and medals, chains and
+charms. The leather machinery is deserving of a careful description, but
+it would be too technical perhaps, and there is no romance in the
+handling of wet hides, the scraping, currying, stretching and pommelling
+which even the thickness, prepare the surface and develop the pliability
+of the leather. Near this is the boot- and shoe-making, sewing and
+cable-screw wire machines, but none for pegging. Sewing-machines, copies
+of the various American forms, occupy the end of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Separate buildings around the grounds and on both banks of the Seine
+contain groups of machinery at which we can but glance. Two long
+pavilions have agricultural machines, and one each is appropriated to
+materials for railways, to civil engineering, pumps, gas-works, the
+forges of Terre Noire, the iron-works of Creusot, the ministry of public
+works, stoves, the government manufacture of tobacco, navigation,
+life-saving apparatus of floats and boats, fire-engines and ceramics.
+Add to these two annexes, each one thousand feet long, containing
+locomotives, cars, street-cars, telegraph-apparatus and many acres of
+the surplus machinery of all classes excluded from the large building
+for want of room, and a person may form some adequate idea of the
+immense extent and variety of this wonderful collection.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Edward H. Knight.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_771" id="Page_771">[Pg 771]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_COLONELS_SENTENCE_AN_ALGERIAN_STORY" id="THE_COLONELS_SENTENCE_AN_ALGERIAN_STORY"></a>THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE: AN ALGERIAN STORY.</h2>
+
+<p>"I've known many clever fellows in my time," said Paul Dupont, French
+sous-lieutenant in the &mdash;th of the line, as he sat sipping his coffee in
+front of the H&ocirc;tel de la R&eacute;gence at Algiers, "but by far the cleverest
+man I ever met was our old colonel, Henri de Malet. People said he ought
+to have been an <i>avocat</i>, but that was giving him but half his due, for
+I'll be bound he could have outflanked any lawyer that ever wore a gown.
+In his latter days he always went by the name of 'Solomon the Second;'
+and if you care to hear how he came by it I'll tell you.</p>
+
+<p>"Before he came to us De Malet was military commandant at Oran, and it
+was there that he did one of his best strokes&mdash;outgeneralling a
+camel-driver from Tangier, one of those thorough-paced Moorish rascals
+of whom the saying goes, 'Two Maltese to a Jew, and three Jews to a
+Moor,' Now this Tangerine, when pulled up for some offence or other,
+swore that he wasn't Muley the camel-driver at all, but quite another
+man; and as his friends all swore the same, and he had managed to alter
+his appearance a bit before he was arrested, he seemed safe to get off.
+But our colonel wasn't to be done in that way. He pretended to dismiss
+the case, and allowed the fellow to get right out into the street as if
+all was over; and then he suddenly shouted after him, 'Muley the
+camel-driver, I want to speak to you.' The old rogue, hearing his own
+name, turned and came back before he could recollect himself; and so he
+was caught in spite of all his cunning.</p>
+
+<p>"The fame of this exploit went abroad like wildfire, and it got to be a
+saying among us, whenever we heard of any very clever trick, that it was
+'one of Colonel de Malet's judgments;' and so, when he was transferred
+from Oran to Algiers, it was just as if we all knew him already,
+although none of us had ever seen him before. But it wasn't long before
+we got a much better story than that about him; for one night a man
+dined at our mess who had known the colonel out in India, and told us a
+grand tale of how he had astonished them all at Pondicherry. It seems
+that some things had been stolen from the officers' quarters, and nobody
+could tell who had done it. The first thing next morning the colonel
+went along the line at early parade, giving each of the native soldiers
+a small strip of bamboo; and then he said, very solemnly, 'My children,
+there is a guilty man among us, and it has been revealed to me by Brahma
+himself how his guilt is to be made clear. Let every man of you come
+forward in his turn and give me his piece of bamboo; and the thief, let
+him do what he may, will have the longest piece.'</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you know what superstitious hounds those Asiatic fellows always
+are; and when they heard this announcement they all looked at each other
+like children going to be whipped. The colonel took the bamboos one
+after another, as solemnly as if he were on a court-martial, but when
+about a dozen men had gone past he suddenly sprang forward and seized
+one of them by the throat, shouting at the full pitch of his voice, 'You
+are the man!'</p>
+
+<p>"Down went the fellow on his knees and yelled for mercy, confessing that
+he <i>was</i> the man, sure enough. As for the rest, they looked as
+frightened as if all the gods in the caverns of Elephanta had come
+flying down among them at once; and from that day forth they salaamed to
+the very ground at the mere sight of the colonel half a mile off.</p>
+
+<p>"'How on earth did you manage that, colonel?' asked the senior major, a
+great fat fellow, as stupid as a carp.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing simpler, my dear fellow,' answered De Malet, laughing. 'The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_772" id="Page_772">[Pg 772]</a></span>
+strips were all exactly the same length, and the thief, fearing to get
+the longest piece, betrayed himself by <i>biting off the end</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"This, as you may think, added a good deal to the colonel's reputation;
+and when we had that affair with the Bedouins at Laghouat we soon saw
+that he could fight as well as manoeuvre. In the thick of the skirmish
+one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone, flew at him with drawn
+yataghan, but the colonel just dropped on his horse's neck and let the
+blow pass over him, and then gave point and ran the fellow right through
+the body, as neatly as any fencing-master could have done it. You may be
+sure we thought none the less of him after that; but all this was
+nothing to what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, De Malet had been with us about a year when the railway was begun
+from Algiers to Blidah, and the directing engineer happened to be one of
+my greatest friends, Eug&egrave;ne Latour, as good a fellow as I ever met. It
+was quite a f&ecirc;te with us whenever he dined at mess, for his jokes and
+good stories kept every one brisk; and then to hear him sing! <i>ma foi</i>,
+it was wonderful! One minute some rattling refrain that seemed to set
+the very chairs dancing, and then suddenly a low, sad air that fairly
+brought the tears into your eyes. They were in mine, I know, every time
+I heard him sing those last two verses of 'The Conscript's Farewell:'</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I thought to gain rich spoils&mdash;I've gained</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Of bullets half a score:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">I thought to come back corporal&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">I shall come back no more.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Feed my poor dog, I pray thee, Rose,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">And with him gentle be:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">He'll miss his master for a while&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Adieu! remember me!<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as I was saying, Eug&egrave;ne had been put over the work, and I don't
+know where they could have found a better man for it. Whether it poured
+with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was
+all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything,
+with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a
+chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting
+on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a
+bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The
+fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't
+happened to be an Arab underneath (the only time that an Arab ever <i>was</i>
+of any use, I should say), and Eug&egrave;ne, alighting upon <i>him</i>, broke his
+own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if there had been nobody there to tell tales, this wouldn't have
+mattered a pin, for an Arab more or less is no such great matter; but,
+as ill-luck would have it, there were three or four more of the rascals
+near enough to see what had happened, and of course they raised a
+hue-and-cry directly. And when it was noised abroad that a Christian dog
+(as they politely call us) had killed a Mussulman, you should have seen
+what an uproar there was! The people came running together like vultures
+when a camel drops down in the desert, and there was a yelling and
+dancing and shaking of fists that made one's very head turn round. Poor
+Eug&egrave;ne would have been torn to pieces on the spot if the guard hadn't
+formed round him and defended him; and the only way we could pacify the
+mob was to promise them justice from the district magistrate; so away to
+the magistrate we all went.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I dare say Mr. Magistrate was a very good fellow in his way, and I
+don't want to say a word against him, but still, it must be owned that
+he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble
+of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once
+under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of
+his wits; and the only thing <i>he</i> thought of was how to shift the
+responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders as fast as possible. So
+he said (and it was very lucky he did, as it turned out) that Latour,
+being in government employ,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773">[Pg 773]</a></span> must be tried by military law; and he
+packed them all off to the commandant, who, as I've told you, was no
+other than Colonel de Malet.</p>
+
+<p>"It was no easy matter for the colonel to get at the facts of the case,
+for all the rascals kept shrieking at once, one louder than another; but
+at last, bit by bit, he managed to get a pretty clear idea of what had
+happened; and then he said, very solemnly, 'A French officer does his
+duty, let it be what it will. You have come here for justice, and
+justice you shall have.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was a great roar of triumph from the crowd, and poor Eug&egrave;ne
+looked as blank as a thief in the Salle de la Police.</p>
+
+<p>"'Before I pass sentence, however,' pursued De Malet, 'I wish to ask
+this young man' (pointing to the son of the dead Arab, who was the
+ringleader of all the mischief) 'whether he will accept of any
+compromise.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no!' yelled the young brigand&mdash;'life for life!'</p>
+
+<p>"'So be it,' said the colonel gravely, 'and you, by Mussulman law, are
+your father's destined avenger. Therefore, let the engineer be taken
+back to the very spot where his victim was standing, and do you go up to
+the top of the parapet and <i>jump down upon him</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Tonnerre de ciel!</i> what a roar of laughter there was! The very Arabs
+couldn't help joining in. As to the young villain himself, he stood
+stock-still for a moment, and then flew out of the court like a madman;
+and that was the last of him. We gave Eug&egrave;ne a famous supper that night
+at the Caf&eacute; Militaire in honor of his escape; and the story was in all
+the papers next morning, headed 'A Judgment of Solomon.' And from that
+day to the end of his life Colonel de Malet never went by any other name
+among us but 'Solomon the Second.'"</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">David Ker.</span></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="STARLIGHT" id="STARLIGHT"></a>STARLIGHT</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">How dark against the sky</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Loom the great hills! Over the cradled stream</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">They lean their dusky shadows lovingly,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Watching its happy dream.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">The oil-well's little blaze</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Gleams red and grand against the mountain's dark:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Yon star, seen through illimitable haze,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Is dwindled to a spark.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Far greater to my eye</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">The swimming lights of yonder fishing-boat</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Than worlds that burn in night's immensity&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">So huge, but so remote.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Ah, I have loved a star</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">That beckoned sweetly from its distant throne,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Forgetting nearer orbs that fairer are,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">And shine for me alone.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Better the small and near</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Than the grand distant with its mocking beams&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Better the lovelight in thine eyes, my dear,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">Than all ambition's dreams.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Charles Quiet.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774">[Pg 774]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_GREAT_EARTHQUAKE_OF_1878_IN_VENEZUELA" id="THE_GREAT_EARTHQUAKE_OF_1878_IN_VENEZUELA"></a>THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1878 IN VENEZUELA.</h2>
+
+<p>On Friday evening, the 12th of April, 1878, we were collected, as usual,
+in our drawing-room in Caracas, and were in the act of welcoming an old
+friend who had just returned from Europe, when there came suddenly a
+crash, a reverberation&mdash;a something as utterly impossible to convey the
+impression of as to describe the movement which followed, or rather
+accompanied, it, so confused, strange and unnatural was the entire
+sensation. It was like the rush of many waters, the explosion of
+cannon&mdash;like anything the imagination can conceive; and at the same time
+the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with
+an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the
+beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and
+girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great
+bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm
+with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower
+struck the ill-timed hour with a solemn, unearthly reverberation.</p>
+
+<p>This was but the work of a few seconds: a few more and Caracas would
+have been a heap of ruins, as in the earthquake of 1812. But even in
+these short moments we had time, horror-stricken and pallid with terror
+as we were, to cry out, "An earthquake! an earthquake!"&mdash;to seize upon
+our European friend, who did not seem to realize the danger, to drag him
+from the chair which he was just about to take, I pushing him before me,
+while my sister pulled him by the arm down the long drawing-room into
+the corridor which surrounds the central court, while still the earth
+rocked beneath our feet and everything around us trembled with the
+vibration.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the city was thoroughly alarmed. Cries of "Misericordia!
+misericordia!" resounded on every side, and every one prophesied another
+and a greater shock. These fears were not entirely uncalled for, for at
+twenty minutes past nine there was a second, and several more before
+daybreak, although none proved to be as severe as the first.</p>
+
+<p>In a short time carriages began to roll by in all directions, bearing
+the more timorous to the villages and plantations outside of the city:
+the open public squares or <i>plazas</i> filled rapidly with the excited
+population, especially when telegram after telegram began to arrive from
+La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, La Vittoria and the intervening
+towns&mdash;all having felt the violence of the shock, and anxious lest the
+capital might have been destroyed. This proof of the extent of the <i>onda
+seismica</i>, as the scientists termed it, served to increase the general
+alarm. Tents were improvised in the plazas, composed of blankets,
+counterpanes, etc., stretched across ropes attached to the trees in the
+square, those who had no such appliances at hand remaining all night
+upon the public benches or upon more comfortable seats which they caused
+to be transported for their accommodation.</p>
+
+<p>The scene in the principal square of Caracas, the Plaza Bolivar&mdash;upon
+which front the cathedral on the eastern side, the palace of the
+archbishop on the southern, the presidential residence (called the <i>Casa
+Amarilla</i>, or "Yellow House") on the western, and a number of other
+public buildings on the northern&mdash;was one which under less terrifying
+circumstances would have been most imposing, for the archbishop left his
+palace and descended by the great stairway into the plaza, accompanied
+by a train of his attending priests, to raise the fainting spirits of
+the terrified multitude, who, with pallid faces upraised to Heaven or
+crouched upon the bare ground in attitudes of supplication, implored
+mercy from on high. And inasmuch as calamitous events, such as the
+appearance of comets, earthquakes or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775">[Pg 775]</a></span> pestilences, are usually the
+signal for great moral reforms, doubtless many a promise of a purer life
+was registered in that hour of terror by those self-accused by their
+quickened consciences.</p>
+
+<p>The archbishop&mdash;who is a young man, devout, fervent and sincere, a very
+anchorite in his habits and mode of life, thin, spare of frame, and with
+features eloquent with the fire of intellect, morally and physically the
+splendid ideal of what a true priest ought to be&mdash;wandered among his
+flock, exhorting, comforting, admonishing and cheering them; while the
+<i>Hermandades</i>, a religious brotherhood, headed by their color-bearer,
+upon whose banner the effigy of the Virgin, their patron saint, was
+emblazoned, walking two by two in procession in the long gowns of their
+order&mdash;some red, some black, some white&mdash;and each carrying a lighted
+taper, traversed the plazas and paraded the streets the whole night. The
+glimmering light of the tapers falling upon these dusky shrouded forms
+in the gloom of this awful night, the melancholy refrain of the prayers
+which they chanted as they passed through the awestruck city, the
+lessening glimpses of the flickering tapers as the train passed solemnly
+by into some distant street,&mdash;all served rather to intensify than to
+tranquillize the alarm.</p>
+
+<p>The excitement and agitation of the people were so great that no one
+thought of going to bed: those who, like ourselves, went neither to the
+country nor to the open squares, sat in their windows and compared their
+experiences or gathered news from every passer-by; for they feared to
+separate from their families, lest a worse shock might overtake some one
+of them apart from the rest. Besides this, the danger in the streets was
+greater than at home, because of their narrowness and the likelihood of
+the walls on either side toppling over upon pedestrians.</p>
+
+<p>The night had been beautifully clear, and the moon brilliant as it is
+only in the tropics, but toward midnight the weather became cloudy and a
+drizzling rain fell at intervals, driving us within doors between one
+and two o'clock, but only to lie down fully dressed upon our beds, with
+lights burning and doors left open, so as the more readily to facilitate
+our escape if necessary. One or two slight shocks recurred during the
+night, but morning dawned at last, finding us unhurt; and with returning
+day our courage too returned, so <i>darkness</i> "doth make cowards of us
+all." It was then ascertained that the cathedral had sustained some
+slight damage; the image of the Virgin in the church of the Candelaria
+had been thrown to the ground and broken to pieces; and the National
+Pantheon, the observatory of the new university and other public
+buildings, with many houses, had been injured, but none thrown down and
+no lives lost.</p>
+
+<p>No one, however, could dwell long in lamentation over these accidents
+when the news reached us the next morning of the terrible calamity which
+had overtaken the beautiful valley of the Tuy. This valley lies to the
+south of the city of Caracas, at an elevation of twelve or fifteen
+hundred feet above the sea, and is noted for being one of the most
+fertile of the many rich agricultural districts in which Venezuela
+abounds. The river Tuy, two hundred miles in length and navigable for
+about forty miles, flows through the centre, fertilizing the soil and
+causing it to become the granary of the capital, its abundant crops
+usually sufficing, in fact, for the consumption of the whole province.
+Indeed, were there more public highways its surplus products might find
+their way to still more distant portions of the republic. The whole
+valley is studded with towns, villages and plantations: of the former,
+the principal are Ocumare, Charallave, Santa Teresa, Santa Lucia and
+Cua.</p>
+
+<p>The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing
+of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward
+the vast <i>Llanos</i> or plains, and being also the emporium of many
+extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as
+coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo. There too had been transported enormous
+timber from the still virgin forests&mdash;timber of the most valuable kind,
+whether for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_776" id="Page_776">[Pg 776]</a></span> ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the
+city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance
+of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the
+generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of
+society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many
+of the principal families of the country&mdash;gentlemen at the head of
+wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large
+estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode.
+Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as
+regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American
+towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled
+the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of things in this smiling valley when, at the same
+moment precisely at which we in Caracas felt the shock of the
+earthquake, all the above-mentioned towns&mdash;Ocumare, Santa Lucia,
+Charallave, etc.&mdash;were shaken to their foundations. The latter
+especially suffered greatly, for not a house was left uninjured or safe
+to inhabit, although the occupants had time to escape. But Cua&mdash;unhappy
+Cua!&mdash;was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a
+single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were
+buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was
+reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no
+sign. The heat had become so intense between seven and eight o'clock
+that numbers of persons were seated outside of the houses or had betaken
+themselves to the open squares to endeavor to seize a breath of fresh
+air, while many of the lower classes were sleeping under the open sky;
+to which fact, indeed, they owed their lives. The only habitations which
+survived the violence of the shock were the huts of the poor, being what
+is called <i>bajareque</i>, made of posts driven into the earth and otherwise
+formed of a species of wild cane tied together and cemented with mud
+and straw, these primitive dwellings being usually considered
+earthquake-proof.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the extraordinary heat, a friend of ours, who was riding from
+his plantation into the town, observed another indication of some
+disturbance in the usual processes of Nature. While crossing the river
+he noticed that the fishes were leaping in great numbers out of the
+water, and called the attention of several persons to the fact. They
+attributed this, however, to the discomfort occasioned by the intense
+heat, for the temperature of the water had increased so much that it had
+become disagreeable to drink.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman to whom I have alluded, Don Tomas de la G&mdash;&mdash;, describes
+the subterranean noise at Cua during the earthquake as something
+terrific, like the discharge of hundreds of cannon, while the earth rose
+simultaneously under his feet. There are two kinds of earthquakes&mdash;that
+of <i>trepidacion</i>, which comes directly from below, with an upward
+motion; the other, <i>de oscilacion</i>, where the earth sways to and fro
+like a pendulum, and which is generally less dangerous. Unfortunate Cua
+experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town
+being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and
+overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was
+happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed
+into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to
+quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. All was
+so sudden that few were saved by their own exertions, those who survived
+having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the
+counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It
+was as if the city had been lifted up <i>en masse</i>, and then thrown back
+with the foundations uppermost&mdash;upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la
+G&mdash;&mdash; happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock
+came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_777" id="Page_777">[Pg 777]</a></span>
+tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; then suddenly
+reversing its course in an exactly opposite direction, it flung him off
+to a great distance, bruising him severely. While clinging to the tree
+he beheld the church in front of him, a new and handsome edifice,
+literally lifted up bodily into the air and then overturned with an
+appalling crash, "not one stone left upon another." If this had occurred
+an hour or two previously, hundreds would have perished within the
+walls, for there had been religious services in the church until a late
+hour, it being the Friday before Holy Week, termed by Spanish Catholics
+<i>Viernes del Concilio</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Don Tomas de la G&mdash;&mdash; described the whole scene as something too
+terrible for the imagination to conceive. After the stupendous crash
+caused by the falling of the houses, for a few moments there ensued an
+awful silence: then, amid the impenetrable darkness caused by the cloud
+of dust from the fallen walls, which totally obscured the murky light of
+a clouded moon, there arose a cry of anguish from those without&mdash;a wail
+as of one great voice of stricken humanity; then the answering smothered
+groan of those buried beneath the ruins&mdash;a cry like nothing human,
+rising as it did from the very bowels of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>There ensued a scene the harrowing details of which can never be fully
+given&mdash;the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or
+imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar.
+Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already
+rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so
+faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter
+still, until those who were working for the release of the captive
+became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay
+beneath their feet. No light could be obtained in this stifling Erebus
+of dust and darkness: all means of obtaining light had been buried in
+the undistinguishable mass, and where lighted lamps were overturned in
+the crash they had set fire to beams and rafters in the houses, and
+many who escaped being crushed were burned to death. Even proper
+instruments were wanting, and the number of persons who had collected to
+assist in the work of searching the d&eacute;bris was totally inadequate to the
+occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as
+the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I
+am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the
+upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts
+such as I have described, were generally uninjured.</p>
+
+<p>One of the richest commercial houses in Cua was owned by three German
+gentlemen, brothers. The eldest, having married a Spanish American lady
+of the place, had lately built himself a magnificent mansion, and one of
+his brothers resided with him. The lady was seated between her
+brother-in-law and husband when the shock came: a huge beam from the
+ceiling fell across her brother-in-law and literally divided him in two,
+while the side wall, falling at the same time, buried her husband from
+her sight. She herself was saved by the great packages of hemp and
+tobacco which fell around her and prevented the wall from crushing her.
+Blinded by the darkness and choked by the dust, she yet managed with the
+only hand at liberty to tear an opening which allowed her to breathe,
+and through which she called for help. Faint accents answered her: they
+were the tones of her husband's failing voice. She called to him to have
+courage&mdash;that she had hopes of release. "No," he replied, "I am dying,
+but do not give way. Live for our child's sake." As well as her
+agitation and distress would permit she endeavored to sustain him with
+words of encouragement, but in vain. About fifteen minutes passed in
+this sad colloquy: the replies came more and more slowly, more and more
+painfully, and then they ceased: the imprisoned lady comprehended in her
+lonely agony that she was a widow. She, a living, breathing woman, fully
+conscious of her awful anguish, lay helpless between the stiff and stark
+corpses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778">[Pg 778]</a></span> of her husband and brother-in-law, and quite ignorant of the
+fate of her infant child, which had been left in another part of the
+house. Her cries were heard at last by a muleteer, who made some efforts
+to release her, but alone and in the darkness he could accomplish
+little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had
+returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks
+were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over
+upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer
+from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was
+indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was
+willing to risk his life in her behalf. One or two remained with him,
+and they succeeded at last in releasing her, but were obliged to cut her
+clothes from her body, as they seemed immovably nailed to the floor, the
+Good Samaritan of a muleteer covering her with his own cloak. The bodies
+of her husband, brother-in-law, two clerks and several servants were
+recovered the next day and buried.</p>
+
+<p>Another lady was found, when the ruins of her house were cleared away,
+upon her knees, with her children surrounding her in the same
+attitude&mdash;all dead! Their bodies were uninjured, so that it is probable
+that they were suffocated by the dust of the falling walls. A gentleman
+named Benitez, who had been standing at the door of his house, ran into
+the centre of the street and fell upon his knees: a little boy from the
+opposite doorway rushed in his terror into Benitez's arms. At that
+moment the two houses fell, and in this attitude the bodies of the man
+and the child were found the following day. A bride of twenty-four hours
+was killed with three of her children by a previous marriage. A fourth
+child was supposed also to have been killed, but on the third day a
+soldier who was passing the house pierced a basket which was among the
+ruins with his bayonet out of curiosity, when to his amazement a
+childish voice cried out, "<i>Tengo hambre</i>" ("I am hungry"), and the
+basket being lifted a living child was discovered, thus almost
+miraculously saved.</p>
+
+<p>One lady was crushed to death under the weight of the body of her
+daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was
+dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter,
+and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the
+death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of
+death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the
+terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid
+corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the
+most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr.
+Acosta, now of Paris, one of the favored circle of the ex-queen Isabella
+of Spain, with his wife, who was Miss Carroll, a sister of the present
+governor of Maryland.</p>
+
+<p>The Acosta family suffered perhaps more than any other, no less than
+fourteen of its members having perished, among them Do&ntilde;a Rosa, a still
+young and remarkably handsome woman, with her son, a lad of fifteen, and
+her baby grandchild. It was to save the life of this grandchild that
+Do&ntilde;a Rosa forfeited her own, as she ran into the house to snatch it from
+its cradle. Of the same family two little boys had fallen asleep at
+their play: one lay upon a sofa, and the other had crept beneath it. The
+earthquake literally turned the room upside down, the sofa being
+overturned by the falling wall, the child beneath thrown out and killed
+by the descending rafters, while the boy who had been sleeping upon it
+fell beneath the lounge, and, being thus protected, actually remained in
+this position uninjured for the greater part of two days. He had been
+numbered with the many dead in that house of sorrow, and was only found
+when the mourning survivors were searching for his remains to inter
+them&mdash;alive, but insensible, and entirely unable to give any account of
+what had befallen him.</p>
+
+<p>Every member of the police force, twenty-five in number, was killed,
+together with nine prisoners under guard.</p>
+
+<p>But it is impossible to give an adequate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_779" id="Page_779">[Pg 779]</a></span> description of that night of
+horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those
+that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally
+distressing.</p>
+
+<p>The survivors encamped upon the banks of the river Tuy, where they might
+well repeat those tender lines of the Psalmist: "By the waters of
+Babylon we sat down and wept." Even the discomfort of the heavy rains
+which set in could make no impression upon hearts bowed down and crushed
+by the terrible calamity which had swept away their all&mdash;home, friends,
+everything that makes life worth having&mdash;at one quick blow. Not a house
+was left standing in their beautiful city: even the outlines of the
+streets were no longer visible: it was with the greatest difficulty that
+any particular building or locality could be recognized.</p>
+
+<p>Tents of various materials were improvised upon the river-side,
+sheltering without regard to age, sex or social condition the wounded,
+and even the dead. Many were in a state of delirium, some in the agonies
+of death, hundreds weeping for their lost friends and relatives, and
+many unable to recognize the recovered bodies on account of their having
+been burned beyond recognition by the fire caused by the upsetting of
+petroleum lamps. For the first two days the bodies were buried in the
+usual manner, but on the third decomposition had set in to such an
+extent that it was found necessary to burn them. An eye-witness
+exclaims: "Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful,
+the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so
+profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the
+bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together
+with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the
+stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being
+touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced
+decomposition." The body of a little child was thrown upon this funeral
+pile, when suddenly the eyes opened, and the voice cried out, "<i>Pan!
+pan!</i>" ("Bread! bread!") Imagine the feelings of the spectators at
+beholding how nearly the little creature had been immolated!</p>
+
+<p>The explosion and principal strength of the subterranean forces were
+concentrated in the town of Cua and within a radius of four or five
+leagues (twelve or fifteen miles) around it. Within this distance great
+chasms of various widths had opened, all running from east to west. From
+some of these streams of a fetid liquid issued, intermingled with a
+grayish-tinted earth, which caused many persons to surmise that a
+volcano was about to burst forth, especially as the earthquake-shocks
+still continued for many days, accompanied by loud subterranean reports.
+Although the catastrophe was confined to the valley of the Tuy, the
+shocks were felt for many hundred miles in every direction, even as far
+as Barquesimeto and other places toward the Cordilleras.</p>
+
+<p>As the population of Cua had entirely deserted the city and encamped
+upon the river-side, and as large sums of money and other valuables were
+known to be buried beneath the ruins, some heartless, lawless wretches
+took advantage of the unprotected state of things, under pretence of
+assisting in the work of extricating the victims, to appropriate
+everything that they could secrete without being discovered. Only one of
+the public officials, General E&mdash;&mdash;, had escaped: the police had
+perished. It was a situation where only prompt and stringent measures
+could avail. General E&mdash;&mdash;, therefore, with Don Tomas de la G&mdash;&mdash;, whom
+I have before mentioned, assumed the responsibility of issuing a most
+energetic order of the day, and Don Tomas was commissioned by the
+general to draw up the document. In relating the anecdote to me, Don
+Tomas avers that the order had to be drawn upon the back of a letter
+which he discovered in his pocket, and that great delay was caused by
+its being an impossibility to procure ink. A poor black woman, however,
+hearing of his perplexity, announced that her son had been learning to
+write, and that as her <i>rancho</i> or hut was still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_780" id="Page_780">[Pg 780]</a></span> standing, the bottle
+of ink would probably be found tied to a nail in the wall, as well as
+the pen; that is, provided the thieves had not made away with it, of
+which she appeared to be somewhat suspicious. She consented to go for
+the articles herself, stipulating, however, that Don Tomas and one or
+two others should accompany her, believing, apparently, that numbers
+would guarantee her against injury from the earthquake. The ink was
+found where she had described it, but, unfortunately, no pen. Here was
+another dilemma! She bethought herself at last that a neighbor of hers
+possessed a pen; so the party was obliged to retrace its steps to the
+encampment for further information. The neighbor was sufficiently
+generous to lend the pen, but stoutly refused to re-enter the stricken
+city. She described its <i>locale</i>, however, as being between a rafter and
+a <i>ca&ntilde;a</i> in the roof at the entrance of her hut. The thieves, it proved
+upon investigation, had spared the precious implement, although,
+probably, if they had surmised the use to which it was to be put, that
+of fulminating destruction to their machinations, they might not have
+been so honest. All difficulties having been at length overcome, the
+important document was drawn up, and duly published the following
+morning by <i>bando</i>&mdash;that is, by sound of the trumpet, drum and fife&mdash;a
+body of citizens doing duty in lieu of troops, and the individual with
+the most stentorian lungs thundering forth the edict from where the
+corner of the streets might have been supposed to be. The proclamation
+was to the effect that any person or persons discovered robbing houses
+or insulting females should be shot on the spot, without trial or
+benefit of clergy. This measure of lynch law had the desired effect, and
+proved sufficient to maintain order until the arrival of a corps of
+three hundred soldiers sent by the government for that purpose.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as the disaster was made known, General Alcantara, the president
+of the republic, sent carts laden with provisions, blankets, shoes,
+hats, etc., besides money, and coaches to convey the unfortunate Cuans
+to their friends in the adjacent towns. The president also recommended
+the unfortunate people of Cua to the generosity of Congress, which was
+then in session. A sum of one hundred thousand dollars for rebuilding
+the city was immediately voted&mdash;a large sum for so impoverished a
+nation&mdash;and subscriptions from neighboring states, as well as private
+ones, have been most liberal. But these are but a drop in the bucket.
+Some of the finest plantations in the country surrounded Cua&mdash;coffee,
+sugar, cocoa, indigo, etc.&mdash;all with handsome mansions and expensive
+offices, with stores, sugar-mills and steam-engines, many of them worth
+from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. After the disastrous 12th no
+one for many miles in the vicinity slept under roof, but all encamped on
+the adjacent plains: not even the rainy season, which soon set in with
+great violence, sufficed to drive them from their hastily-contrived
+shelter. From the 12th of April to the 30th there were ninety-eight or
+ninety-nine shocks of earthquake.</p>
+
+<p>In Caracas too the people still continued to sleep in the public
+squares, although the capital had hitherto escaped the greatest violence
+of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the
+population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain
+astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Brice&ntilde;o by name,
+had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed
+by the ominous title, "<i>Vigilemos!</i>" (<i>Let us watch!</i>). He prophesied
+that on the 17th of April, at twenty-nine minutes past one, there would
+certainly occur a great <i>cataclismo</i>, connecting the movements of the
+moon with the occurrence of earthquakes, and assuring the populace that
+at that hour this heavenly body would be in the precise position to
+produce this extraordinary <i>cataclismo</i>, whatever that might prove to
+be. The public excitement was intense, but the fatal day and hour
+arrived, passed, and found the city still safe and unharmed.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;"><span class="smcap">Isabella Anderson.</span></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_781" id="Page_781">[Pg 781]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="OUR_MONTHLY_GOSSIP" id="OUR_MONTHLY_GOSSIP"></a>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HISS AND ITS HISTORY.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I warrant thee, if I do not act it, they will hiss me."&mdash;<i>Merry
+Wives of Windsor.</i></p></div>
+
+<p>Hissing is a custom of great antiquity. Cicero, in his <i>Paradoxes</i>, says
+that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree,
+or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his
+declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing
+confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to
+Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the
+disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his
+day had paid applauders in court, who greeted the points of their
+patron's speech with an <i>ululatus</i>, or shrill yell. This Roman manner of
+denoting approval seems akin to the practice of the Japanese, who give a
+wild shriek as a sign of approbation, and hoot and howl to show their
+displeasure. But the sound of the goose&mdash;the simple hiss&mdash;is the most
+frequently-employed symbol of dissent. "Goose" is, in theatrical
+parlance, to hiss; and Dutton Cook, in his entertaining <i>Book of the
+Play</i>, remarks that the bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a
+drama.</p>
+
+<p>The dramatist is of all creative artists the most unfortunate. He can
+never present himself directly to his critics; he must be seen through a
+medium over which he has but slight control; he must depend wholly on
+the actors of his play, and too often he is leaning on a reed. Colman
+accused John Kemble of having been the cause of the original failure of
+<i>The Iron Chest</i>, and Ben Jonson published his <i>New Inn</i> as a comedy
+"never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's
+servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's
+subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, His
+Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."</p>
+
+<p>Nor are Colman and Jonson alone in their tribulations. Sheridan was
+hissed, and so were Goldsmith and Fielding and Coleridge and Godwin and
+Beaumarchais and About and Victor Hugo and Scribe and Sardou, and many
+another, including Charles Lamb, who cheerfully hissed his own <i>Mr. H</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for
+he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his
+characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's
+<i>Tannh&auml;user</i> led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few
+evenings, and its failure the composer has never been willing to let the
+world forget. Rossini was more philosophical. On its first performance
+the <i>Barber of Seville</i>, like the comedy of Beaumarchais, whence its
+libretto is taken, was a failure; and when the curtain fell, Rossini,
+who had led the orchestra, turned to the audience and calmly clapped his
+hands. The anger at this openly-expressed contempt for public opinion
+did not prevent the opera from gradually gaining ground, until by the
+end of the week it was a marked success. Had it been a failure, the
+composer would have borne it easily: Mr. Edwards informs us that when
+Rossini's <i>Sigismondo</i> was violently hissed at Venice he sent a letter
+to his mother with a picture of a large <i>fiasco</i> (bottle). His <i>Torvaldo
+e Dorliska</i>, which was brought out soon afterward, was also hissed, but
+not so much. This time Rossini sent his mother a picture of a
+<i>fiaschetto</i> (little bottle).</p>
+
+<p>Nor is it, in modern times, authors or actors alone who are subject to
+the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an
+unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so
+safe, nor the hissee&mdash;to coin a convenient word&mdash;so defenceless. The
+orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has
+the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant
+surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_782" id="Page_782">[Pg 782]</a></span> was
+hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to
+them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort
+of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth
+is poured on red-hot prejudices, no wonder they hiss."</p>
+
+<p>Sir William Knighton declares that George II. never entered a theatre
+save in fear and trembling from dread of hearing a single hiss, which,
+though it were at once drowned in tumultuous applause, he would lie
+awake all night thinking about, entirely forgetful of the enthusiasm it
+had evoked. He must have felt as Charles Lamb did, who wrote: "A hundred
+hisses (hang the word! I write it like kisses&mdash;how different!)&mdash;a
+hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly
+from the heart." It is hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing
+seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least
+from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of
+the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint.
+No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and
+for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which
+he formerly bowed himself off.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, applause is the breath of an actor's nostrils. Without it good
+acting is almost impossible. Actors, like other artists, need
+encouragement. Applause gives heart, and, as Mrs. Siddons said, "better
+still&mdash;breath." Mrs. Siddons's niece has put on record her views, as
+valuable as her famous relative's: "'Tis amazing how much an audience
+loses by this species of hanging back, even when the silence proceeds
+from unwillingness to interrupt a good performance: though in reality it
+is the greatest compliment an actor can receive, yet he is deprived by
+that very stillness of half his power. Excitement is reciprocal between
+the performer and the audience: he creates it in them, and receives it
+back again from them."</p>
+
+<p>To one set of actors a hiss takes the place of applause. It is the
+highest compliment which can be paid to a "heavy villain," for it bears
+witness to the truth with which he has sustained his character.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the performer mistakes reproof for approval. An amateur
+singer, describing to her father the great success she had achieved at
+her first concert, concluded by saying, "Some Italians even took me for
+Pasta."&mdash;"Yes," corroborated her mother: "before she had sung her second
+song they all cried, 'Basta! basta!'" ("Enough! enough!")</p>
+
+<p>Pasta herself is the heroine of an amusing anecdote. She gave her
+servant, a simple <i>contadina</i>, an order for the opera on a night when
+she appeared in one of her greatest parts. That evening the great prima
+donna surpassed herself; she was recalled time and again; the audience
+were wildly enthusiastic; almost every number was encored. Returning
+home, she wearily asked her maid how she had enjoyed the play. "Well,
+the play, ma'am, was fine, but I felt sorry for <i>you</i>," was the
+reply.&mdash;"For me, child! And why?"&mdash;"Well, ma'am," said the waiting-maid,
+"you did everything so badly that the people were always shouting and
+storming at you, and making you do it all over again."</p>
+
+<p>There are situations even worse than Pasta's, as Pauline Lucca has
+recently discovered in Vienna, where she was fined fifty florins for
+violating the law which forbids the recognition of applause. It seems
+cruel to mulct a pretty prima donna for condescending to acknowledge an
+encore.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not it be law in Austria to prevent a courtesy and a smile,
+rewarding the enthusiasm of an audience, it is certainly law in England
+and France that a dissatisfied spectator shall be at liberty to express
+his dissatisfaction. It has been held by the Court of Queen's Bench
+that, while any conspiracy against an actor or author is of course
+illegal, yet the audience have a lawful right to express their feelings
+at the performance either by applause or by hisses. The Cour de
+Cassation of France has decided in the same way. When Forrest,
+therefore, hissed Macready for introducing a fancy dance in <i>Hamlet</i>, he
+was doing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_783" id="Page_783">[Pg 783]</a></span> what he had a legal right to do, though the ultimate result
+of it was the Astor Place riot and the death of many. In ancient Rome
+the right to hiss seems also to have existed in its fulness. Suetonius
+in his life of Augustus informs us that Pylades was banished not only
+from Rome, but from Italy, for having pointed with his finger at a
+spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the whole
+audience upon him. But as time passed on, and Nero took the imperial
+crown and chose to exhibit it himself to the public on the stage, all
+the spectators were bound to applaud under penalty of death.</p>
+
+<p>The French law forbids disturbance of any kind except when the curtain
+is up. In France the boisterousness of the Dublin gallery-boy would
+hardly be tolerated. The Parisians would have been amazed at a recent
+incident of the Irish stage. When Sophocles' tragedy of <i>Antigone</i> was
+produced at the Theatre Royal with Mendelssohn's music, the gallery
+"gods" were greatly pleased, and, according to their custom, demanded a
+sight of the author. "Bring out Sapherclaze," they yelled. The manager
+explained that Sophocles had been dead two thousand years and more, and
+could not well come. Thereat a small voice shouted from the gallery,
+"Then chuck us out his mummy."</p>
+
+<p>There is a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in
+Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!"
+She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to
+conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity
+asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I can do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>Actors are not always willing to stand baiting quietly: they turn and
+rend their tormentors. Mrs. Siddons herself took leave of a barbarian
+audience with the words, "Farewell, ye brutes!" George Frederick Cooke,
+describing his own failings, said: "On Monday I was drunk, and appeared,
+but they didn't like that and hissed me. On Wednesday I was drunk, so I
+didn't appear; and they didn't like that. What the devil would they
+have?" Once at Liverpool, when he was drunk and did appear, they didn't
+like it. He reeled across the stage and was greeted by a storm of
+hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss
+me&mdash;me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you
+shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!"
+He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a
+brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro."
+Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal
+contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him
+out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.&mdash;"You! you!"
+was the reply.&mdash;"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with
+characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United
+Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal
+theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never
+acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before
+me."</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;">J.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;M.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+<h3><a name="A_NEW_TOPIC_OF_CONVERSATION" id="A_NEW_TOPIC_OF_CONVERSATION"></a>A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.</h3>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the
+decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities.
+"I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day
+when her bric-&agrave;-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial
+for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have
+something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms
+of a generation ago&mdash;a colorless, cold, negative background for social
+life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the
+windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated
+into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly
+barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer;
+nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion,
+thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished&mdash;nothing tolerated
+save<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_784" id="Page_784">[Pg 784]</a></span> the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon
+women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary
+social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with
+bric-&agrave;-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and fa&iuml;ence, and richly-hung
+walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has
+received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear
+results before many years have passed.</p>
+
+<p>Enthusiasm for bric-&agrave;-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general
+decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative
+people&mdash;people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened
+by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a
+conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an
+undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental
+horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into
+poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse,
+and is able in some way to gratify it.</p>
+
+<p>The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too
+much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry
+its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one
+direction&mdash;in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and
+satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the
+early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into
+intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these
+fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one
+generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an
+inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned,
+the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and
+wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American
+woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has
+learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness
+and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a
+new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to
+those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a
+discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for
+instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain
+from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt
+to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of
+knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly
+and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed
+so easily? Far from it. "This is <i>real</i> crackle," the collector insists,
+with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his
+specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the
+points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing
+at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound
+styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised
+observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge
+amounts to little.</p>
+
+<p>We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently
+neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has,
+since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed
+into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms
+dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a
+topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from
+her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her
+cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne
+furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by
+this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her
+tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest
+allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_785" id="Page_785">[Pg 785]</a></span> lady, well
+equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the
+delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much
+less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something
+outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.</p>
+
+<p>We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth
+never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where
+we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the
+observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if
+our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and
+mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were
+really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported
+from Doulton.</p>
+
+<p>It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and
+aims&mdash;which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms
+of occupation and interest&mdash;was an answer to the yearning of the
+feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a
+current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends
+interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and
+promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;">L.&nbsp;W.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+<h3><a name="THE_STORY_OF_THE_TROCADERO" id="THE_STORY_OF_THE_TROCADERO"></a>THE STORY OF THE TROCAD&Eacute;RO.</h3>
+
+<p>There is no portion of the Paris Exhibition of 1878 which has excited
+more attention or attracted more visitors than has the Palace of the
+Trocad&eacute;ro. Yet few of the visitors who pass beneath its lofty portals
+ever imagine that the site of the sumptuous edifice is haunted by
+historical associations of no slight degree of interest. In fact, before
+the palace "rose like an exhalation" at the bidding of the skilled
+architects employed by the government few persons knew anything about
+the Trocad&eacute;ro at all. That lofty eminence, incomparably the finest
+building-site in Paris, with its graduated slopes gay with flowers and
+verdure, has long been a favorite lounging-place for Parisian artisans
+when out for a holiday, or for tourists seeking for a good view of the
+city and shrinking from the fatigue of climbing to the top of the Arc de
+Triomphe. Yet no one seemed to know anything of its history, or even why
+a hill in Paris should bear the name of a Spanish fort. And yet, to a
+certain extent, the spot is one of genuine historical interest.
+Successively a feudal manor, a royal domain, a cloister, and the site of
+unrealized projects of the later monarchs of France, religion, ambition,
+sorrow and glory have there at different times sought a refuge or a
+pedestal.</p>
+
+<p>The Trocad&eacute;ro occupies a part of the site of the ancient village of
+Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In
+its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and
+gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still
+retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de
+Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de
+Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there,
+but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen,
+Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President Janin, who
+probably tore down and rebuilt the royal abode, as he is accused in the
+memoirs of the time of being largely possessed by a mania for pulling
+down and rebuilding all the mansions in his possession. An engraving of
+the edifice as he left it exists in the Biblioth&egrave;que Nationale. It shows
+a very charming structure in the Renaissance style, erected, apparently,
+at a point halfway down the slope, since there are two lines of terraces
+behind it, as well as many in front.</p>
+
+<p>The next owner of the domain of Chaillot was Fran&ccedil;ois de Bassompierre,
+former friend and boon-companion of Henri IV. He did not occupy it very
+long, being sent to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few
+years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent
+Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent
+to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a
+summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_786" id="Page_786">[Pg 786]</a></span> she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu
+remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture
+of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the
+king possessed.</p>
+
+<p>The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of
+England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene.
+She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France,
+established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel
+was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old
+comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached
+by Bossuet&mdash;one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal
+eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name
+immortal.</p>
+
+<p>Next we have a vision of Louise de la Valli&egrave;re, "like Niobe, all tears,"
+flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the
+anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place.
+It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the
+fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but
+not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too
+perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now,
+he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring
+her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of
+suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not
+enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then
+situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.</p>
+
+<p>In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the
+officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of
+Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward
+the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their
+cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the
+erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were
+not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place
+on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the
+nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to
+various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the
+gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been
+carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and
+rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.</p>
+
+<p>Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind
+them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to
+the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons,
+they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable
+site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of
+Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in
+France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the
+height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The
+plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to
+which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of
+Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four
+sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital
+and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and
+industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over
+fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy&mdash;an extent which is about
+that of the present Palace of the Trocad&eacute;ro. The whole of the plain of
+Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be
+transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de
+Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the
+Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St.
+Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.</p>
+
+<p>This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the
+foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of
+Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and
+ammunition more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_787" id="Page_787">[Pg 787]</a></span> for palaces and parks. After the battle of
+Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced
+palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great&mdash;a quiet retreat
+where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had
+the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication
+of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew,
+and this time a decisive one; for, though a few workmen were employed in
+levelling the grounds and building the walls during the Hundred Days,
+there was neither spirit nor conviction in the work: the illusions of
+other days had fled, and were not to be revived. It was impossible for
+even the most sanguine partisans of Napoleon to imagine that the palace
+would ever be completed and receive him as a tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations
+and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new
+edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the
+successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the
+anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocad&eacute;ro at Cadiz by the
+duc d'Angoul&ecirc;me, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which
+the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the
+fort in question. The programme of the f&ecirc;te was long and elaborate. It
+consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocad&eacute;ro, a sham
+battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then
+came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the
+dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared
+the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly
+thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were
+left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the
+name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the
+Trocad&eacute;ro.</p>
+
+<p>Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues
+which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre,
+necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at
+first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the
+victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn
+up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its
+dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a
+fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to
+have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too,
+came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities
+into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the
+flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with
+grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by
+Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocad&eacute;ro a Grecian
+temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men
+of France with commemorative inscriptions&mdash;a project which the downfall
+of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village
+of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish
+legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights
+the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks,
+monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy
+precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the
+Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and
+historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and
+of its associations with the past.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 32em;">L.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;H.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+<h3><a name="SWISS_ENGINEERING" id="SWISS_ENGINEERING"></a>SWISS ENGINEERING.</h3>
+
+<p>Switzerland, of all the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and
+numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the
+mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential
+character of the rivers,&mdash;everything unites to make the highways cost
+enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the
+triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of
+shareholders and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_788" id="Page_788">[Pg 788]</a></span> the burden of budgets." Among these triumphs are the
+viaduct of Grandfey; the railroads that climb the Righi and the
+Uetliberg; the Axen tunnel and quay; and the Gotthard tunnel, over nine
+miles long&mdash;a solid granite bore through a mountain. One that was
+honored by a national celebration on the 16th of last August was the
+reclaiming from the water of the vast plain called Seeland, the
+territory occupying the triangle bounded by the river Aar and the Lakes
+of Bienne, Neufch&acirc;tel and Morat. It was wholly under water, and had
+slowly emerged after many centuries; but despite an extensive system of
+drainage the land was never dry enough for serious cultivation. In rainy
+years it was even covered with water, making, with the three lakes, a
+sheet nearly twenty-five miles square.</p>
+
+<p>The great work celebrated last August was no less than the changing the
+bed of the Aar and the lowering of the three lakes mentioned. The Aar in
+this region is about the size of the Seine at Paris or of the Hudson at
+Troy, but it is subject to sudden floods that are the terror of dwellers
+and property-owners along its borders. A Swiss colonel named La Nicca
+was the author of the grand scheme for reclaiming Seeland. The
+proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices
+of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and
+also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so
+vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.</p>
+
+<p>To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly
+west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne
+near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five
+and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and
+twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another
+vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern
+extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne,
+receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufch&acirc;tel and
+Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in
+communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the
+eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles
+below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river
+Thi&egrave;le, deepened and reconstructed.</p>
+
+<p>The deepening of the bed of the Thi&egrave;le, the natural outlet of Lake
+Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the
+lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a
+vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields
+abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these
+three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water
+removed&mdash;no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million
+cubic feet&mdash;represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole
+plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and
+consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village,
+Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty
+thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding,
+malaria-exhaling marsh.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">M.&nbsp;H.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_789" id="Page_789">[Pg 789]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LITERATURE_OF_THE_DAY" id="LITERATURE_OF_THE_DAY"></a>LITERATURE OF THE DAY.</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of the History and Manufacture of
+Pottery and Porcelain. By Jennie J. Young. New York: Harper &amp;
+Brothers.</p></div>
+
+<p>"More crockery!" exclaims one aweary of the ceramic craze. "And the
+biggest book of all!&mdash;the winding-up shower, let us hope," quoth another
+non-sympathizer.</p>
+
+<p>This portly octavo, with its four hundred and sixty-four wood-cuts, a
+seemingly exhaustive compend of the subject, may indeed be accepted as
+the peroratory rain destined to give the soil its last preparation for
+the rich growth to follow under a clear and sunny sky. What pen and
+print can do to perfect the requisite conditions for a Periclean age of
+pottery must by this time have been done. The case is summed up and
+stated. The issue rests with the jury of millions who use and admire
+burnt clay. Their wants, their sense of beauty and their purse will
+render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will
+render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true,
+since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all
+nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and
+fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar
+in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who
+would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us
+rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," the
+rich realism of Palissy or the wild and delightful riot of line and
+color and unequalled delicacy of manipulation presented to us by the
+Japanese? One and the same eye, as highly and soundly educated as you
+please, may be charmed almost equally by works of each of these schools
+and of others not here named; and that almost without wishing to see the
+peculiar merits of each combined and merged in one. A perfect eclectic
+vase is not to be expected, if desired, any more than a fruit or a wine
+which shall unite the best flavors of all orchards or all vintages. What
+can be done is to strive in that direction, as the French cook seeks, by
+"composing," to attain in one supreme <i>plat</i> the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of
+sapidity. We shall not be able, any more than he, to reach that climax
+or to dull the charm of variety. The fusing of the Greek brain and the
+Oriental eye and finger in the alembic of Western Europe and the New
+World will still continue to be attempted.</p>
+
+<p>Trade, the great amalgamator, is promoting this end. Chinese porcelain
+has long been sent to Japan for decoration, the resemblance between the
+styles of the two countries, due primarily to race, being thus
+increased. American biscuit is sent to England for the like purpose; and
+we read with more surprise that the unfinished ware of Dresden seeks
+ornamentation in the same country, whence it is returned to be placed
+upon the market as true Meissen. A firm of New Yorkers, again, have
+migrated to France and built up the beautiful fabric of Limoges with the
+aid of French artists. The craftsmen of Japan and China are year by year
+borrowing Western forms and methods, as comparison of the ancient and
+modern work of those nations will show clearly enough.</p>
+
+<p>While national idiosyncrasies the most opposite and the most widely
+separated in every sense ally themselves in behalf of progress,
+individual effort is encouraged by the reflection that no walk of art
+offers a more open field to original genius. Della Robbia, Bernart,
+Palissy and Wedgwood each found his own material and created his own
+school. Neither of them possessed the facilities, educational or
+mechanical, now at the command of hundreds. Neither had as wide or as
+eager a market for his productions as the coming artist in clay may
+command. Surely, such an artist is at this moment maturing his powers in
+some one of the scores of training institutions which have sprung up,
+under public or private auspices, within the past quarter of a century.
+Thorwaldsen was not a man of great originative genius, and nothing at
+all of a potter, troubling himself little about hard or soft paste or
+this or the other glaze; but he infused the love of classic form into
+the bleakest corners of Scandinavia, and made her youth modellers of
+terra-cotta into shapes unexcelled by any imitators of the antique. The
+prize awaits him who should, upon such knowledge and discipline, graft a
+study of Oriental designs, an eye for color, an independent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_790" id="Page_790">[Pg 790]</a></span> fancy, and
+such minute precision of manual dexterity as seems the hardest thing of
+all for the Western to acquire. He will not have, like his great
+forerunners, to invent his material. Science does not repress, it
+invites and assists him. It offers him mineral colors and modes of
+graduating heat unknown to them. All the secrets of porcelain are open
+to him; and were they not, Europe did all her best things in ceramics
+before she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for
+improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so
+long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may
+not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese
+and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture,
+paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of
+asbestos as greenbacks are by threads of silk and the sun-burned
+Egyptian bricks were by straw. Malleable glass we have already. Why not
+malleable fa&iuml;ence?</p>
+
+<p>The book before us presents the art, its history, its processes and its
+results in a manner every way satisfactory. Its account is full without
+being prolix. The author's taste is catholic enough. The different
+styles are placed before the reader side by side, with an evident
+purpose to do justice to all of them. There is little of the jargon of
+the connoisseur. Marks are curtly dismissed with the sound dictum that
+"the art and not the mark should be studied." Much use is made of the
+engravings, which are more closely connected with the text than,
+unfortunately, is generally the case in illustrated works. They are
+strictly illustrations of it, and serve as good a purpose in that way as
+cuts without the aid of color could well do. Nothing is more difficult
+to reproduce than a first-class work in clay or porcelain. Color,
+drawing, form, surface and texture present a compound of difficulties
+not to be completely overcome by the resources of the graver, the camera
+and the printer in colors. Only on the shelves of the museum can it be
+studied understandingly. It must speak for itself. The chromo undertakes
+to duplicate, with more or less success, the painting in oil or fresco,
+but the vase is a picture and something more. It is the joint product of
+the painter and the sculptor, and the substance whereon they bestow
+their labor has a special and varying beauty of its own.</p>
+
+<p>In the pages devoted to the history of American pottery we confess that
+we have been chiefly attracted by its antiquities. The specimens given
+of remains from all parts of the two continents show at a glance their
+common origin. They all come unmistakably from the hands of the same
+Indian, civilized or savage. The Moquis, the Mound-builders, the Aztecs
+and the Peruvians all wrought their mother, Earth, into the same
+fashion, and adorned her countenance, purified by fire, with scrolls and
+colors in the same taste. The pigments employed have proved as lasting
+as those in the Egyptian tombs, and the forms are often as graceful as
+in a majority of the Phoenician vessels found in Cyprus. In the
+representation of the human head the Peruvian artist, so far as we may
+judge from these relics, excelled his rival of Tyre and Sidon.</p>
+
+<p>That this will become a handbook on the subject of which it treats
+cannot be doubted. If we might venture to suggest an amendment to the
+second edition, it would be the addition to the illustrations of two or
+three figures carefully executed in colors&mdash;Greek, Japanese and S&egrave;vres.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Like unto Like. By Sherwood Bonner. (Library of American Fiction.)
+New York: Harper &amp; Brothers.</p></div>
+
+<p>Sherwood Bonner has been singularly happy in her choice of a subject for
+this, her first novel. She has broken new ground on that Southern soil
+which seemed already for literary purposes wellnigh worn out, and she
+has touched upon a period in the struggle between North and South which,
+so far as we know, has been little treated by novelists. The antagonists
+are represented not in the smoke of battle, but at that critical and
+awkward moment when the first steps toward reconciliation are being
+made. A proud but sociable little Mississippi town is shown in the act
+of half-reluctantly opening its doors to the officers of a couple of
+Federal regiments stationed within its bounds. The situation is
+portrayed with much spirit and humor, as well as with the most perfect
+<i>good</i>-humor. Thoroughly Southern as the novel is, it is not narrowly
+so: its pictures of Southern society are drawn from within, and show its
+writer's sympathy with Southern feeling, yet its tone, even in touching
+on the most tender spots, is entirely dispassionate, and at the same
+time free from any apparent effort to be so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_791" id="Page_791">[Pg 791]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The first chapter introduces us to a triad of charming girls, whose
+careless talk soon turns upon the soldiers' expected arrival in Yariba
+and the proper reception to be given them by the Yariba damsels. Betty
+Page, Mary Barton and Blythe Herndon are, in a sense, typical girls, and
+represent the three orders in which nearly all girlhood may be
+classified&mdash;namely, frivolous girls, good girls, and clever girls or
+girls with ideas. Ideas are represented by Blythe Herndon, whose
+outspoken verdict in favor of tolerance and forgetfulness of the past
+draws upon her the patriotic indignation of Miss Betty Page. How long
+the fair disputants preserve the jewel of consistency forms the <i>motif</i>
+of the book. Betty dances and flirts, neglects her loyal young Southern
+lover&mdash;who, we hope, is consoled by Mary&mdash;and finally surrenders to a
+handsome moustache and the Union with a happy unconsciousness of any
+abandonment of her principles. Blythe, with her ardent nature and
+youthful attitude of intolerance toward intolerance, is easily attracted
+by the intellectual freedom which appears to open before her in the
+conversation of an enthusiastic New England radical. Her mind is,
+however, not wholly thrown off its balance by this vision of culture:
+she awakens to the fact that the breach is wider than she had at first
+dreamed, and shrinks from the sacrifice not only of prejudice, but of
+first principles and affections, which is demanded of her. Lovers who
+are separated by hereditary or political strife have ever been a
+favorite theme with poet and romancer. In the majority of instances
+these unhappy beings have regarded the barrier between them as a useless
+obstacle erected by a perverse Fate in the way of their happiness. But
+Mr. Roger Ellis adheres with narrow obstinacy to the least article of
+his broad political creed, without a particle of consideration for the
+different one in which Blythe has been nurtured. He flourishes the
+American flag in his conversation in true stump-orator style, kisses
+black babies in the street&mdash;when, as Betty Page remarks, no man was ever
+known to kiss a white baby if he could help it&mdash;and refuses to eat
+without the company at table of a little black <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Plot there is none in <i>Like unto Like</i>, and of incident very little.
+Light, often sparkling, conversations and charming bits of description
+follow each other in ready succession like beads upon a string. Lack of
+incident is atoned for by charm of writing, and in the vivacity of the
+scenes the reader disregards the slenderness of the connecting thread,
+or perhaps forgets to look for it. The style is easy and pleasant, while
+free from the slips to which "easy writers" are so prone. Of bright,
+witty sayings a number could easily be gathered as samples, but the
+readers would still have to be referred to the book for many more.
+Perhaps the main charm of <i>Like unto Like</i> lies in its description of
+the quaint life in Southern provincial towns, where the people "all talk
+to each other as if they were members of one family," where married
+ladies are still called by their friends "Miss Kate," "Miss Janey," or
+"Miss Ada," and where, "when a youth and maiden promise to marry each
+other, they become possessed immediately with a wild desire to conceal
+their engagement from all the world." There clings to the book a
+suggestion of that Southern accent which in the mouth of a pretty woman
+has such a piquant foreign sound.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>His Heart's Desire: A Novel. Philadelphia: J.&nbsp;B. Lippincott &amp; Co.</p></div>
+
+<p>We can complain of no lack of plot or paucity of incidents in <i>His
+Heart's Desire</i>. Were the material less ably handled we should suggest
+an unnecessary redundancy, but we hesitate to pronounce superfluous
+anything which is so exactly fitted, so neatly dove-tailed into the main
+structure, as is each incident and character in the present novel. About
+a dozen individual and more or less finished personages contribute their
+life-histories to the book, yet each of these lives has some bearing
+upon that of the heroine, Nora St. John, and notwithstanding these
+intricacies the plot never becomes confused. It has been too firmly
+grasped by the author's mind to be a puzzle to the reader's. Its various
+ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all
+turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure
+by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of
+the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The
+same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though
+drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness,
+whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped.
+Numerous as the figures are, they never crowd or jostle each other, and
+elaborated as they are in many cases, all are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_792" id="Page_792">[Pg 792]</a></span> subordinate to that of
+Nora, whose character and story stand out in a strong relief not easy to
+obtain upon so varied a background. This character is finely conceived
+and drawn with real power, being impressive by the very truth of the
+rendering, for she is not invested with any strikingly heroic qualities.
+A strong, passionate nature made cold by suffering and the constant
+struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising
+again to confront her&mdash;a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions
+or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power
+left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made
+upon it&mdash;Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by
+the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. In the
+later pages of the book, and notably in the scene with Mr. Sistare, in
+which revelations are made by both, the changes gradual or sudden in her
+feelings and thought are portrayed with the delicacy of light and shade,
+the picturesqueness and self-forgetfulness, with which a fine actress
+renders a part. This dramatic quality is perhaps the most striking trait
+in <i>His Heart's Desire</i>. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full
+of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare
+accomplishment&mdash;that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally
+brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue.</p>
+
+<p>In praising this novel so highly we do not forget its faults. But,
+though perhaps as numerous as its merits, they are by no means equal to
+them in importance. Something of naturalness and simplicity has been
+sacrificed to the exigences of the plot; and, while the higher truth is
+adhered to in the principal scenes and characters, some of the minor
+ones appear to us rather highly colored. By distributing the fatal gift
+of beauty with a less lavish hand the author might, we think, have
+subdued this color: a few commonplace figures would have added to the
+naturalness of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>Sensational the book may be pronounced from a glance through its chain
+of incidents, yet neither by its tone nor its writing does it belong to
+the class which we call sensational. Its tone is earnest and sincere,
+grave social questions being handled with a purity and feeling which
+makes the book, in spite of its apparent unconsciousness of purpose, a
+distinctly moral one.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Books_Received" id="Books_Received"></a><i>Books Received.</i></h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Books for Bright Eyes, embracing "On the Farm," "More Happy Days,"
+"Mountain-Tops," "One Day in our Long Vacation." By Mrs. M.&nbsp;E.
+Miller. New York: American Tract Society.</p>
+
+<p>Cross's Eclectic Short-hand: A New System, adapted both to general
+use and to verbatim reporting. By J. George Cross, A.&nbsp;M. Chicago:
+S.&nbsp;C. Griggs &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The Waverley Dictionary: An Alphabetical Arrangement of all the
+Characters in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. By May Rogers.
+Chicago: S.&nbsp;C. Griggs &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Translated by
+John Durand. (First Volume.) New York: Henry Holt &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>Maximum Stresses in Framed Bridges. By Professor William Cain,
+A.&nbsp;M., C.&nbsp;E. (Van Nostrand's Science Series.) New York: D. Van
+Nostrand.</p>
+
+<p>The Ethics of Positivism: A Critical Study. By Giacomo Barzellotti,
+Professor of Philosophy, Florence. New York: Charles P. Somerby.</p>
+
+<p>Grammar-Land; or, Grammar in Fun for the Children of
+Schoolroom-shire. By M.&nbsp;L. Nesbitt. New York: Henry Holt &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The Family Christian Almanac for 1879. By Professor George W.
+Coakley. New York: American Tract Society.</p>
+
+<p>American Colleges: Their Students and Work. By Charles F. Thwing.
+New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town. By Robert Lowell. Boston:
+Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Life and Adventure in Japan. By E. Warren Clark. New York: American
+Tract Society.</p>
+
+<p>Cupid and the Sphinx. By Harford Flemming. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>The Old House Altered. By George C. Mason. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. Boston:
+Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Handsome Harry. By Sarah E. Chester. New York: American Tract
+Society.</p>
+
+<p>Thanatopsis. By William Cullen Bryant. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Modern Frenchmen. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>What is the Bible? By J.&nbsp;T. Sunderland. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Sibyl Spencer. By James Kent. New York: G.&nbsp;P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Songs of Italy. By Joaquin Miller. Boston: Roberts Brothers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This is the name given from time immemorial to that part of
+Biscay that extends from Bilbao to the eastern boundaries of the
+province of Santander. It contains fifteen thousand inhabitants, and
+abounds in minerals, fruit and grain. The original Basque language,
+owing to the constant intercourse with Castile, has yielded to the
+Spanish, which, however, is mixed with many Basque words and
+expressions.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> That is, a similarity of the final vowel or last two
+vowels. Thus, jardin<i>e</i>r<i>o</i>s and du<i>e</i>&ntilde;<i>o</i> amist<i>a</i>d and sac<i>a</i>r are
+considered to rhyme.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The word <i>ciego</i>, "blind man," is also used to denote the
+blind ballad-singers with whom the country abounds.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The first four of the above-mentioned volumes, together
+with the <i>Libro de los Cantares</i>, have been published by Brockhaus in
+his <i>Colleccion de Autores Espa&ntilde;oles</i>, Leipzig, vols. vi., xviii., xix.,
+xxvi., and xxxiii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Special awards of objects of art to competitors in the
+trials of agricultural implements in the field:
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">McCormick (grand prize), binding reaper, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wood, binding reaper, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Osborne, binding reaper, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Johnston, reaper, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whiteley, mower, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dederick, hay-press, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mabille, Chicago hay-press, France.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Meixmoron-Dombasle, gang-plough, France.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Deere, gang-plough, United States.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Aveling &amp; Porter, steam-plough, England.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Albaret, electric light for field-work at night, France.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> The cut shows a smaller crane, which has a fixed jib for
+use on a permanent or temporary track.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Why this unfortunate fish should be so distinguished I have
+never been able to learn, but the saying is universal in the French
+army.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> This is a paraphrase rather than a translation, the patois
+of the original being impossible to render exactly.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S, DECEMBER 1878 ***
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, 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, December 1878
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2008 [EBook #26945]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S, DECEMBER 1878 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Annie McGuire and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+  OF
+
+  _POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
+
+
+  DECEMBER, 1878.
+
+
+  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878,
+  by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the
+  Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
+
+
+
+
+DANUBIAN DAYS.
+
+
+[Illustration: COSTUMES AT PESTH.]
+
+
+If it were not for the people, the journey by steamer from Belgrade to
+Pesth would be rather unromantic. When the Servian capital is reached in
+ascending the great stream from Galatz and Rustchuk, the picturesque
+cliffs, the mighty forests, the moss-grown ruins overhanging the
+rushing waters, are all left behind. Belgrade is not very imposing. It
+lies along a low line of hills bordering the Sava and the Danube, and
+contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet
+creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name--for the
+city grouped around the fort was once called _Beograd_ ("white
+city")--now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon
+which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and
+have become so extravagantly vain in view of their exploits that their
+conceit is quite painful to contemplate. Yet it is impossible to avoid
+sympathizing to some extent with this little people, whose lot has been
+so hard and whose final emancipation has been so long in arriving. The
+intense affection which the Servian manifests for his native land is
+doubtless the result of the struggles and the sacrifices which he has
+been compelled to make in order to remain in possession of it. One day
+he has been threatened by the Austrian or the jealous and unreasonable
+Hungarian: another he has received news that the Turks were marching
+across his borders, burning, plundering and devastating. There is
+something peculiarly pathetic in the lot of these small Danubian states.
+Nearly every one of them has been the cause of combats in which its
+inhabitants have shed rivers of blood before they could obtain even a
+fragment of such liberty and peace as have long been the possessions of
+Switzerland and Belgium. It is not surprising that the small countries
+which once formed part of Turkey-in-Europe are anxious to grow larger
+and stronger by annexation of territory and consolidation of
+populations. They are tired of being feeble: it is not amusing. Servia
+once expected that she would be allowed to gain a considerable portion
+of Bosnia, her neighbor province, but the Austrians are there, and would
+speedily send forces to Belgrade if it were for a moment imagined that
+Prince Milan and his counsellors were still greedy for Serapevo and
+other fat towns of the beautiful Bosnian lands. Now and then, when a
+Servian burgher has had an extra flask of Negotin, he vapors about
+meeting the Austrians face to face and driving them into the Sava; but
+he never mentions it when he is in a normal condition.
+
+[Illustration: SOPHIA.]
+
+The country which Servia has won from the Turks in the neighborhood of
+Nisch, and the quaint old city of Nisch itself, were no meagre prizes,
+and ought to content the ambition of the young prince for some time. It
+was righteous that the Servians should possess Nisch, and that the Turks
+should be driven out by violence. The cruel and vindictive barbarian had
+done everything that he could to make himself feared and loathed by the
+Servians. To this day, not far from one of the principal gates of the
+city, on the Pirot road, stands the "Skull Tower," in the existence of
+which, I suppose, an English Tory would refuse to believe, just as he
+denied his credence to the story of the atrocities at Batak. The four
+sides of this tower are completely covered, as with a barbarous mosaic,
+with the skulls of Servians slain by their oppressors in the great
+combat of 1809. The Turks placed here but a few of their trophies, for
+they slaughtered thousands, while the tower's sides could accommodate
+only nine hundred and fifty-two skulls. It is much to the credit of the
+Servians that when they took Nisch in 1877 they wreaked no vengeance on
+the Mussulman population, but simply compelled them to give up their
+arms, and informed them that they could return to their labors. The
+presence of the Servians at Nisch has already been productive of good:
+decent roads from that point to Sophia are already in process of
+construction, and the innumerable brigands who swarmed along the
+country-side have been banished or killed. Sophia still lies basking in
+the mellow sunlight, lazily refusing to be cleansed or improved. Nowhere
+else on the border-line of the Orient is there a town which so admirably
+illustrates the reckless and stupid negligence of the Turk. Sophia looks
+enchanting from a distance, but when one enters its narrow streets,
+choked with rubbish and filled with fetid smells, one is only too glad
+to retire hastily. It would take a quarter of a century to make Sophia
+clean. All round the city are scattered ancient tumuli filled with the
+remains of the former lords of the soil, and they are almost as
+attractive as the hovels in which live the people of to-day. What a
+desolate waste the Turk has been allowed to make of one of the finest
+countries in Europe! He must be thrust out before improvement can come
+in. Lamartine, who was one of the keenest observers that ever set foot
+in Turkey, truly said "that civilization, which is so fine in its proper
+place, would prove a mortal poison to Islamism. Civilization cannot live
+where the Turks are: it will wither away and perish more quickly
+whenever it is brought near them. With it, if you could acclimate it in
+Turkey, you could not make Europeans, you could not make Christians: you
+would simply unmake Turks."
+
+[Illustration: BANKS OF THE DANUBE NEAR SEMLIN.]
+
+The enemies of progress and of the "Christian dogs" are receding, and
+railways and sanitary improvements will come when they are gone.
+Belgrade was a wretched town when the Turks had it: now it is civilized.
+Its history is romantic and picturesque, although its buildings are not.
+Servia's legends and the actual recitals of the adventurous wars which
+have occurred within her limits would fill volumes. The White City has
+been famous ever since the Ottoman conquest. Its dominant position at
+the junction of two great rivers, at the frontier of Christian Europe,
+at a time when turbans were now and then seen in front of the walls of
+Vienna, gave it a supreme importance. The Turks exultingly named it "the
+Gate of the Holy War." Thence it was that they sallied forth on
+incursions through the fertile plains where now the Hungarian shepherd
+leads his flock and plays upon his wooden pipe, undisturbed by the
+bearded infidel. The citadel was fought over until its walls cracked
+beneath the successive blows of Christian and Mussulman. Suleiman the
+Lawgiver, the elector of Bavaria, Eugene of Savoy, have trod the
+ramparts which frown on the Danube's broad current. The Austrians have
+many memories of the old fortress: they received it in 1718 by the
+treaty of Passarowitz, but gave it up in 1749, to take it back again in
+1789. The treaty of Sistova--an infamy which postponed the liberation
+of the suffering peoples in Turkey-in-Europe for nearly a hundred
+years--compelled the Austrians once more to yield it, this time to the
+Turks. In this century how often has it been fought over--from the time
+of the heroic Kara George, the Servian liberator, to the bloody riots in
+our days which resulted in driving Mussulmans definitely from the
+territory!
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE NEAR SEMLIN.]
+
+Everywhere along the upper Servian banks of the Danube traces of the old
+epoch are disappearing. The national costume, which was graceful, and
+often very rich, is yielding before the prosaic--the ugly garments
+imported from Jewish tailoring establishments in Vienna and Pesth. The
+horseman with his sack-coat, baggy velvet trousers and slouch hat looks
+not unlike a rough rider along the shores of the Mississippi River. In
+the interior patriarchal costumes and customs are still preserved. On
+the Sava river-steamers the people from towns in the shadows of the
+primeval forests which still cover a large portion of the country are to
+be found, and they are good studies for an artist. The women, with
+golden ducats braided in their hair; the priests, with tall brimless
+hats and long yellow robes; the men, with round skull-caps, leathern
+girdles with knives in them, and waistcoats ornamented with hundreds of
+glittering buttons,--are all unconscious of the change which is creeping
+in by the Danube, and to which they will presently find themselves
+submitting. The railway will take away the lingering bits of romance
+from Servia; the lovely and lonely monasteries high among the grand
+peaks in the mountain-ranges will be visited by tourists from Paris, who
+will scrawl their names upon the very altars; and Belgrade will be rich
+in second-class caravanserais kept by Moses and Abraham. After the
+Austrians who have gone over into Bosnia will naturally follow a crowd
+of adventurers from Croatia and from the neighborhood of Pesth, and it
+would not be surprising should many of them find it for their interest
+to settle in Servia, although the government would probably endeavor to
+keep them out. Should the movement which Lord Beaconsfield is pleased to
+call the "Panslavic conspiracy" assume alarming proportions within a
+short time, the Servians would be in great danger of losing, for years
+at least, their autonomy.
+
+The arrival by night at Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and
+one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted
+coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a
+gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of
+shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous
+raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the
+bluster and surpassing the rudeness of the Austrians; of Turks in
+transit from the Constantinople boat to the craft plying to Bosnian
+river-ports; of Hungarian peasants in white felt jackets embroidered
+with scarlet thread, or mayhap even with yellow; and of various Bohemian
+beggars, whose swart faces remind one that he is still in the
+neighborhood of the East. I had on one occasion, while a steamer was
+lying at Belgrade, time to observe the manners of the humbler sort of
+folk in a species of cabaret near the river-side and hard by the erratic
+structure known as the custom-house. There was a serious air upon the
+faces of the men which spoke well for their characters. Each one seemed
+independent, and to a certain extent careless, of his neighbor's
+opinion. It would have been impossible, without some knowledge of the
+history of the country, to have supposed that these people, or even
+their ancestors, had ever been oppressed. Gayety did not prevail, nor is
+there anywhere among the Danubian Slavs a tendency to the innocent and
+spontaneous jollity so common in some sections of Europe. The Servian
+takes life seriously. I was amused to see that each one of this numerous
+company of swineherds or farmers, who had evidently come in to Belgrade
+to market, drank his wine as if it were a duty, and on leaving saluted
+as seriously as if he were greeting a distinguished company gathered to
+do him honor. That such men are cowards, as the English would have us
+believe, is impossible; and in 1877 they showed that the slander was
+destitute of even the slightest foundation in fact.
+
+Morals in Belgrade among certain classes perhaps leave something to
+desire in the way of strictness; but the Danubian provinces are not
+supposed to be the abodes of all the virtues and graces. The Hungarians
+could not afford to throw stones at the Servians on the score of
+morality, and the Roumanians certainly would not venture to try the
+experiment. In the interior of Servia the population is pure, and the
+patriarchal manner in which the people live tends to preserve them so.
+There is as much difference between the sentiment in Belgrade and that
+in the provinces as would be found between Paris and a French rural
+district.
+
+But let us drop details concerning Servia, for the brave little country
+demands more serious attention than can be given to it in one or two
+brief articles. The boat which bears me away from the Servian capital
+has come hither from Semlin, the Austrian town on the other side of the
+Sava River. It is a jaunty and comfortable craft, as befits such vessels
+as afford Servians their only means of communication with the outer
+world. If any but Turks had been squatted in Bosnia there would have
+been many a smart little steamer running down the Sava and around up the
+Danube; but the baleful Mussulman has checked all enterprise wherever he
+has had any foothold. We go slowly, cleaving the dull-colored tide,
+gazing, as we sit enthroned in easy-chairs on the upper deck, out upon
+the few public institutions of Belgrade--the military college and the
+handsome road leading to the garden of Topschidere, where the
+Lilliputian court has its tiny summer residence. Sombre memories
+overhang this "Cannoneer's Valley," this Topschidere, where Michael, the
+son and successor of good Milosch as sovereign prince of the nation,
+perished by assassination in 1868. In a few minutes we are whisked round
+a corner, and a high wooded bluff conceals the White City from our view.
+
+The Servian women--and more especially those belonging to the lower
+classes--have a majesty and dignity which are very imposing. One is
+inclined at first to believe these are partially due to assumption, but
+he speedily discovers that such is not the case. Blanqui, the French
+revolutionist, who made a tour through Servia in 1840, has given the
+world a curious and interesting account of the conversations which he
+held with Servian women on the subject of the oppression from which the
+nation was suffering. Everywhere among the common people he found virile
+sentiments expressed by the women, and the princess Lionbitza, he said,
+was "the prey of a kind of holy fever." M. Blanqui described her as a
+woman fifty years old, with a martial, austere yet dreamy physiognomy,
+with strongly-marked features, a proud and sombre gaze, and her head
+crowned with superb gray hair braided and tied with red ribbon. "Ah!"
+said this woman to him, with an accent in her voice which startled him,
+"if all these men round about us here were not women, _or if they were
+women like me_, we should soon be free from our tormentors!" It was the
+fiery words of such women as this which awoke the Servian men from the
+lethargy into which they were falling after Kara George had exhausted
+himself in heroic efforts, and which sent them forth anew to fight for
+their liberties.
+
+[Illustration: THE OXEN OF THE DANUBE.]
+
+At night, when the moon is good enough to shine, the voyage up the
+river has charms, and tempts one to remain on deck all night, in spite
+of the sharp breezes which sweep across the stream. The harmonious
+accents of the gentle Servian tongue echo all round you: the song of
+the peasants grouped together, lying in a heap like cattle to keep
+warm, comes occasionally to your ears; and if there be anything
+disagreeable, it is the loud voices and brawling manners of some
+Austrian troopers on transfer. From time to time the boat slows her
+speed as she passes through lines or streets of floating mills
+anchored securely in the river. Each mill--a small house with sloping
+roof, and with so few windows that one wonders how the millers ever
+manage to see their grist--is built upon two boats. The musical hum
+of its great wheel is heard for a long distance, and warns one of the
+approach toward these pacific industries. The miller is usually on the
+lookout, and sometimes, when a large steamer is coming up, and he
+anticipates trouble from the "swell" which she may create, he may be
+seen madly gesticulating and dancing upon his narrow platform in a
+frenzy of anxiety for the fruits of his toil. A little village on a
+neck of land or beneath a grove shows where the wives and children of
+these millers live. The mills are a source of prosperity for thousands
+of humble folk, and of provocation to hurricanes of profanity on the
+part of the Austrian, Italian and Dalmatian captains who are compelled
+to pass them. Stealing through an aquatic town of this kind at
+midnight, with the millers all holding out their lanterns, with the
+steamer's bell ringing violently, and with rough voices crying out
+words of caution in at least four languages, produces a curious if not
+a comical effect on him who has the experience for the first time.
+
+[Illustration: FISHERMEN'S HUTS ON THE DANUBE.]
+
+Peaceable as the upper Danube shores look, Arcadian as seems the
+simplicity of their populations, the people are torn by contending
+passions, and are watched by the lynx-eyed authorities of two or three
+governments. The agents of the _Omladina_, the mysterious society which
+interests itself in the propagation of Pan-slavism, have numerous
+powerful stations in the Austrian towns, and do much to discontent the
+Slavic subjects of Francis Joseph with the rule of the Hapsburgs. There
+have also been instances of conspiracy against the Obrenovich dynasty,
+now in power in Servia, and these have frequently resulted in armed
+incursions from the Hungarian side of the stream to the other bank,
+where a warm reception was not long awaited. In the humblest hamlet
+there are brains hot with ambitious dreams daringly planning some scheme
+which is too audacious to be realized.
+
+The traveller can scarcely believe this when, as the boat stops at some
+little pier which is half buried under vines and blossoms, he sees the
+population indulging in an innocent festival with the aid of red and
+white wine, a few glasses of beer, and bread and cheese. Families
+mounted in huge yellow chariots drawn by horses ornamented with
+gayly-decorated harnesses, come rattling into town and get down before a
+weatherbeaten inn, the signboard above which testifies to respect and
+love for some emperor of long ago. Youths and maidens wander arm in arm
+by the foaming tide or sit in the little arbors crooning songs and
+clinking glasses. Officers strut about, calling each other loudly by
+their titles or responding to the sallies of those of their comrades who
+fill the after-deck of the steamer. The village mayor in a braided
+jacket, the wharfmaster in semi-military uniform, and the agent of the
+steamboat company, who appears to have a remarkable penchant for gold
+lace and buttons, render the throng still more motley. There is also, in
+nine cases out of ten, a band of tooting musicians, and as the boat
+moves away national Hungarian and Austrian airs are played. He would be
+indeed a surly fellow who should not lift his cap on these occasions,
+and he would be repaid for his obstinacy by the very blackest of looks.
+
+Carlowitz and Slankamen are two historic spots which an Hungarian, if he
+feels kindly disposed toward a stranger, will point out to him. The
+former is known to Americans by name only, as a rule, and that because
+they have seen it upon bottle-labels announcing excellent wine; but the
+town, with its ancient cathedral, its convents, and its "chapel of
+peace" built on the site of the structure in which was signed the noted
+peace of 1699, deserves a visit. Rumor says that the head-quarters of
+the Omladina are very near this town, so that the foreign visitor must
+not be astonished if the local police seem uncommonly solicitous for his
+welfare while he remains. At Slankamen in 1691 the illustrious margrave
+of Baden administered such a thrashing to the Turks that they fled in
+the greatest consternation, and it was long before they rallied again.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF MOHACZ.]
+
+Thus, threading in and out among the floating mills, pushing through
+reedy channels in the midst of which she narrowly escapes crushing the
+boats of fishers, and carefully avoiding the moving banks of sand which
+render navigation as difficult as on the Mississippi, the boat reaches
+Peterwardein, high on a mighty mass of rock, and Neusatz opposite,
+connected with its neighbor fortress-town by a bridge of boats. Although
+within the limits of the Austria-Hungarian empire, Neusatz is almost
+entirely Servian in aspect and population, and Peterwardein, which marks
+the military confines of Slavonia, has a large number of Servian
+inhabitants. It was the proximity and the earnestness in their cause of
+these people which induced the Hungarians to agree to the military
+occupation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. At one time the obstinate
+Magyars would have liked to refuse their adhesion to the decisions of
+the Berlin Congress, but they soon thought better of that. Peterwardein
+is the last really imposing object on the Danube before reaching Pesth.
+It is majestic and solemn, with its gloomy castle, its garrison which
+contains several thousand soldiers, and its prison of state. The
+remembrance that Peter the Hermit there put himself at the head of the
+army with which the Crusades were begun adds to the mysterious and
+powerful fascination of the place. I fancied that I could see the lean
+and fanatical priest preaching before the assembled thousands, hurling
+his words down upon them from some lofty pinnacle. No one can blame the
+worthy Peter for undertaking his mission if the infidels treated
+Christians in the Orient as badly then as they do to-day. Centuries
+after Peter slept in consecrated dust the Turks sat down before
+Peterwardein to besiege it, but they had only their labor for their
+pains, for Prince Eugene drove them away. This was in 1716. It seems
+hard to believe that a hostile force of Turks was powerful enough to
+wander about Christendom a little more than a century and a half ago.
+
+After passing Peterwardein and Neusatz the boat's course lies through
+the vast Hungarian plain, which reminds the American of some of the rich
+lands in the Mississippi bottom. Here is life, lusty, crude, seemingly
+not of Europe, but rather of the extreme West or East. As far as the eye
+can reach on either hand stretch the level acres, dotted with herds of
+inquisitive swine, with horses wild and beautiful snorting and
+gambolling as they hear the boat's whistle, and peasants in white linen
+jackets and trousers and immense black woollen hats. Fishers by hundreds
+balance in their little skiffs on the small whirlpool of waves made by
+the steamer, and sing gayly. For a stretch of twenty miles the course
+may lie near an immense forest, where millions of stout trees stand in
+regular rows, where thousands of oaks drop acorns every year to fatten
+thousands upon thousands of pigs. Cattle stray in these woods, and
+sometimes the peasant-farmer has a veritable hunt before he can find his
+own. Afar in the wooded recesses of Slavonia many convents of the Greek
+religion are hidden. Their inmates lead lives which have little or no
+relation to anything in the nineteenth century. For them wars and rumors
+of wars, Russian aggression, Austrian annexation, conspiracies by Kara
+Georgewitch, Hungarian domination in the Cabinet at Vienna, and all such
+trivial matters, do not exist. The members of these religious
+communities are not like the more active members of the clergy of their
+Church, who unquestionably have much to do with promoting war and
+supporting it when it is in aid of their nationality and their religion.
+
+One of the most remarkable sights in this region is a herd of the noble
+"cattle of the steppes," the beasts in which every Hungarian takes so
+much pride. These cattle are superb creatures, and as they stand eying
+the passers-by one regrets that he has not more time in which to admire
+their exquisite white skins, their long symmetrical horns and their
+shapely limbs. They appear to be good-tempered, but it would not be wise
+to risk one's self on foot in their immediate neighborhood.
+
+As for the fishermen, some of them seem to prefer living on the water
+rather than on dry land. Indeed, the marshy borders of the Danube are
+not very healthy, and it is not astonishing that men do not care to make
+their homes on these low lands. There are several aquatic towns between
+Pesth and the point at which the Drava (or Drau), a noble river, empties
+its waters into the Danube. Apatin is an assemblage of huts which appear
+to spring from the bosom of the current, but as the steamer approaches
+one sees that these huts are built upon piles driven firmly into the
+river-bed, and between these singular habitations are other piles upon
+which nets are stretched. So the fisherman, without going a hundred
+yards from his own door, traps the wily denizens of the Danube, prepares
+them for market, and at night goes peacefully to sleep in his rough bed,
+lulled by the rushing of the strong current beneath him. I am bound to
+confess that the fishermen of Apatin impressed me as being rather
+rheumatic, but perhaps this was only a fancy.
+
+Besdan, with its low hills garnished with windmills and its shores lined
+with silvery willows, is the only other point of interest, save Mohacz,
+before reaching Pesth. Hour after hour the traveller sees the same
+panorama of steppes covered with swine, cattle and horses, with
+occasional farms--their outbuildings protected against brigands and
+future wars by stout walls--and with pools made by inundations of the
+impetuous Danube. Mohacz is celebrated for two tremendous battles in the
+past, and for a fine cathedral, a railway and a coaling-station at
+present. Louis II., king of Hungary, was there undone by Suleiman in
+1526; and there, a hundred and fifty years later, did the Turks come to
+sorrow by the efforts of the forces under Charles IV. of Lorraine.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE OF BUDA-PESTH.]
+
+Just as I was beginning to believe that the slow-going steamer on which
+I had embarked my fortunes was held back by enchantment--for we were
+half a day ascending the stream from Mohacz--we came in sight of a huge
+cliff almost inaccessible from one side, and a few minutes later could
+discern the towers of Buda and the mansions of Pesth. While nearing the
+landing-place and hastening hither and yon to look after various small
+bundles and boxes, I had occasion to address an Hungarian gentleman. In
+the course of some conversation which followed I remarked that Pesth
+seemed a thriving place, and that one would hardly have expected to find
+two such flourishing towns as Vienna and Pesth so near each other.
+
+"Oh," said he with a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he
+was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town,
+but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to his native
+city.
+
+Although I could not exactly agree with this extravagant estimate of the
+extent of Pesth, I could not deny that it was vastly superior to my idea
+of it. When one arrives there from the south-east, after many wanderings
+among semi-barbaric villages and little cities on the outskirts of
+civilization, he finds Pesth very impressive. The Hungarian shepherds
+and the boatmen who ply between the capital and tiny forts below fancy
+that it is the end of the world. They have vaguely heard of Vienna, but
+their patriotism is so intense and their round of life so circumscribed
+that they never succeed in forming a definite idea of its proportions or
+its location. Communication between the two chief towns of the
+Austria-Hungarian empire is also much less frequent than one would
+imagine. The Hungarians go but little to Vienna, even the members of the
+nobility preferring to consecrate their resources to the support of the
+splendors of their own city rather than to contribute them to the
+Austrian metropolis. Seven hours' ride in what the Austrians are bold
+enough to term an express-train covers the distance between Vienna and
+Pesth, yet there seems to be an abyss somewhere on the route which the
+inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a haughty determination not to submit
+to centralization, and content with their surroundings make the
+Hungarians sparing of intercourse with their Austrian neighbors. "We
+send them prime ministers, and now and then we allow them a glimpse of
+some of our beauties in one of their palaces, but the latter does not
+happen very often," once said an Hungarian friend to me.
+
+An American who should arrive in Pesth fancying that he was about to see
+a specimen of the dilapidated towns of "effete and decaying Europe"
+would find himself vastly mistaken. The beautiful and costly modern
+buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast
+river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial
+hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak
+of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it
+really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the
+extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises and
+the rapid increase of her population. Austria and Hungary were alike the
+prey of a feverish agitation which pervaded all classes. In a single day
+at Vienna as many as thirty gigantic stock companies were formed;
+hundreds of superb structures sprang up monthly; people who had been
+beggars but a few months before rode in carriages and bestowed gold by
+handfuls on whoever came first. The wind or some mysterious agency which
+no one could explain brought this financial pestilence to Pesth, where
+it raged until the _Krach_--the Crash, as the Germans very properly call
+it--came. After the extraordinary activity which had prevailed there
+came gloom and stagnation; but at last, as in America, business in Pesth
+and in Hungary generally is gradually assuming solidity and contains
+itself within proper bounds. The exciting period had one beneficial
+feature: it made Pesth a handsome city. There are no quays in Europe
+more substantial and elegant than those along the Danube in the
+Hungarian capital, and no hotels, churches and mansions more splendid
+than those fronting on these same quays. At eventide, when the whole
+population comes out for an airing and loiters by the parapets which
+overlook the broad rushing river, when innumerable lights gleam from the
+boats anchored on either bank, and when the sound of music and song is
+heard from half a hundred windows, no city can boast a spectacle more
+animated. At ten o'clock the streets are deserted. Pesth is exceedingly
+proper and decorous as soon as the darkness has fallen, although I do
+remember to have seen a torchlight procession there during the
+Russo-Turkish war. The inhabitants were so enthusiastic over the arrival
+of a delegation of Mussulman students from Constantinople that they put
+ten thousand torches in line and marched until a late hour, thinking,
+perhaps, that the lurid light on the horizon might be seen as far as
+Vienna, and might serve as a warning to the Austrian government not to
+go too far in its sympathy with Russia.
+
+[Illustration: CITADEL OF BUDA]
+
+Buda-Pesth is the name by which the Hungarians know their capital, and
+Buda is by no means the least important portion of the city. It occupies
+the majestic and rugged hill directly opposite Pesth--a hill so steep
+that a tunnel containing cars propelled upward and downward by machinery
+has been arranged to render Buda easy of access. Where the hill slopes
+away southward there are various large villages crowded with Servians,
+Croatians and Low Hungarians, who huddle together in a rather
+uncivilized manner. A fortress where there were many famous fights and
+sieges in the times of the Turks occupies a summit a little higher than
+Buda, so that in case of insurrection a few hot shot could be dropped
+among the inhabitants. Curiously enough, however, there are thousands of
+loyal Austrians, German by birth, living in Buda--or Ofen, as the
+Teutons call it--whereas in Pesth, out of the two hundred thousand
+inhabitants, scarcely three thousand are of Austrian birth. As long as
+troops devoted to Francis Joseph hold Buda there is little chance for
+the citizens of Pesth to succeed in revolt. Standing on the terrace of
+the rare old palace on Buda's height, I looked down on Pesth with the
+same range of vision that I should have had in a balloon. Every quarter
+of the city would be fully exposed to an artillery fire from these
+gigantic hills.
+
+Buda is not rich in the modern improvements which render Pesth so
+noticeable. I found no difficulty in some of the nooks and corners of
+this quaint town in imagining myself back in the Middle Ages. Tottering
+churches, immensely tall houses overhanging yawning and precipitous
+alleys, markets set on little shelves in the mountain, hovels protesting
+against sliding down into the valley, whither they seemed inevitably
+doomed to go, succeeded one another in rapid panorama. Here were
+costume, theatrical effect, artistic grouping: it was like Ragusa,
+Spalatro and Sebenico. Old and young women sat on the ground in the
+markets, as our negroes do in Lynchburg in Virginia: they held up fruit
+and vegetables and shrieked out the prices in a dialect which seemed a
+compound of Hungarian and German. Austrian soldiers and Hungarian
+recruits, the former clad in brown jackets and blue hose, the latter in
+buff doublets and red trousers, and wearing feathers in their caps,
+marched and countermarched, apparently going nowhere in particular, but
+merely keeping up discipline by means of exercise.
+
+The emperor comes often to the fine palace on Buda hill, and sallies
+forth from it to hunt with some of the nobles on their immense estates.
+The empress is passionately fond of Hungary, and spends no small portion
+of her time there. The Hungarians receive this consideration from their
+sovereign lady as very natural, and speak of her as a person of great
+good sense. The German and Slavic citizens of Austria say that there are
+but two failings of which Her Imperial Majesty can be accused--she loves
+the Hungarians and she is too fond of horses. Nothing delights the
+citizens of Pesth so much as to find that the Slavs are annoyed, for
+there is no love lost between Slav and Magyar. A natural antipathy has
+been terribly increased by the fear on the part of Hungary that she may
+lose her influence in the composite empire one day, owing to the Slavic
+regeneration.
+
+[Illustration: MUSEUM AND SEAT OF THE DIET AT PESTH.]
+
+At Pesth they do not speak of the "beautiful blue Danube," because there
+the river ceases to be of that color, which Johann Strauss has so
+enthusiastically celebrated. But between Vienna and Pesth the blue is
+clearly perceptible, and the current is lovely even a few miles from the
+islands in the stream near the Hungarian capital. The Margarethen-Insel,
+which is but a short distance above Pesth, is a little paradise. It has
+been transformed by private munificence into a rich garden full of
+charming shaded nooks and rare plants and flowers. In the middle of this
+pleasure-ground are extensive bath-houses and mineral springs. Morning,
+noon and night gypsy bands make seductive music, and the notes of their
+melodies recall the strange lands far away down the stream--Roumania,
+the hills and valleys of the Banat and the savage Servian mountains.
+Along the river-side there are other resorts in which, in these days,
+when business has not yet entirely recovered from the _Krach_, there are
+multitudes of loungers. In midsummer no Hungarian need go farther than
+these baths of Pesth to secure rest and restore health. The Romans were
+so pleased with the baths in the neighborhood that they founded a colony
+on the site of Buda-Pesth, although they had no particular strategic
+reasons for doing so. As you sit in the pleasant shade you will probably
+hear the inspiring notes of the _Rakoczy_, the march of which the
+Hungarians are so passionately fond, which recalls the souvenirs of
+their revolutions and awakens a kind of holy exaltation in their hearts.
+The _Rakoczy_ has been often enough fantastically described: some hear
+in it the gallop of horsemen, the clashing of arms, the songs of women
+and the cries of wounded men. A clever Frenchman has even written two
+columns of analysis of the march, and he found in it nearly as much as
+there is in Goethe's _Faust_. These harmless fancies are of little use
+in aiding to a veritable understanding of the wonderful march. It
+suffices to say that one cannot hear it played, even by a strolling band
+of gypsies, without a strange fluttering of the heart, an excitement and
+an enthusiasm which are beyond one's control. A nation with such a
+_Marseillaise_ as the _Rakoczy_ certainly ought to go far in time of
+war.
+
+The Hungarians are a martial people, and are fond of reciting their
+exploits. Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, in a variegated
+English which will provoke your smiles, all the incidents of the
+Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 and 1849--how the Austrians
+were driven across the great bridge over the Danube, etc.--with infinite
+gusto. The humblest wharf-laborer takes a vital interest in the welfare
+of his country, even if he is not intelligent enough to know from what
+quarter hostilities might be expected. There is a flash in an
+Hungarian's eye when he speaks of the events of 1848 which is equalled
+only by the lightnings evoked from his glance by the magic echoes of the
+_Rakoczy_.
+
+The peasantry round about Pesth, and the poor wretches, Slavic and
+Hungarian, who work on the streets, seem in sad plight. A friend one day
+called my attention to a number of old women, most miserably clad,
+barefooted and bent with age and infirmities, carrying stones and
+bricks to a new building. The spectacle was enough to make one's heart
+bleed, but my friend assured me that the old women were happy, and that
+they lived on bread and an occasional onion, with a little water for
+drink or sometimes a glass of adulterated white wine. The men working
+with them looked even worse fed and more degraded than the women. In the
+poor quarters of Pesth, and more especially those inhabited by the Jews,
+the tenements are exceedingly filthy, and the aroma is so uninviting
+that one hastens away from the streets where these rookeries abound. The
+utmost civility, not to say servility, may always be expected of the
+lower classes: some of them seize one's hand and kiss it as the Austrian
+servants do. Toward strangers Hungarians of all ranks are unfailingly
+civil and courteous. A simple letter of introduction will procure one a
+host of attentions which he would not have the right to expect in
+England or America.
+
+The mound of earth on the bank of the Danube near the quays of Pesth
+represents the soil of every Hungarian province; and from that mound the
+emperor of Austria, when he was crowned king of Hungary, was forced to
+shake his sword against the four quarters of the globe, thus signifying
+his intention of defending the country from any attack whatsoever. Thus
+far he has succeeded in doing it, and in keeping on good terms with the
+legislative bodies of the country, without whose co-operation he cannot
+exercise his supreme authority. These bodies are a chamber of peers,
+recruited from the prelates, counts and such aristocrats as sit there by
+right of birth, and a second chamber, which is composed of four hundred
+and thirteen deputies elected from as many districts for the term of
+three years, and thirty-four delegates from the autonomous province of
+Croatia-Slavonia. The entrance to the diet is guarded by a
+frosty-looking servitor in an extravagant Hungarian uniform, jacket and
+hose profusely covered with brilliant braids, and varnished jack-boots.
+The deputies when in session are quiet, orderly and dignified, save
+when the word "Russian" is pronounced. It is a word which arouses all
+their hatred.
+
+Buda-Pesth is about to undergo a formidable series of improvements
+notwithstanding the illusions which were dispersed by the _Krach_. One
+of the most conspicuous and charming municipal displays in the Paris
+Exposition is the group of charts and plans sent from Pesth. The patriot
+Deak is to have a colossal monument; the quays are to be rendered more
+substantial against inundations than they are at present; and many
+massive public edifices are to be erected. The Danube is often unruly,
+and once nearly destroyed the city of Pesth, also doing much damage
+along the slopes of Buda. If an inundation should come within the next
+two or three years millions of florins' worth of property might be swept
+away in a single night. The opera, the principal halls of assembly and
+the hotels of Pesth will challenge comparison with those of any town of
+two hundred thousand population in the world; and the Grand Hotel
+Hungaria has few equals in cities of the largest size.
+
+[Illustration: SLAV WOMAN IN PESTH.]
+
+The Hungarians are a handsome race, and the people of Pesth and vicinity
+have especial claims to attention for their beauty. The men of the
+middle and upper classes are tall, slender, graceful, and their features
+are exceedingly regular and pleasing. The women are so renowned that a
+description of their charms is scarcely necessary. Beautiful as are the
+Viennese ladies in their early youth, they cannot rival their
+fellow-subjects of Hungary. The Austrian woman grows fat, matronly and
+rather coarse as she matures: the Hungarian lady of forty is still as
+willowy, graceful and capricious as she was at twenty. The
+peasant-women, poor things! are ugly, because they work from morning
+till night in the vineyards, toiling until their backs are broken. The
+wine which the beauties drink costs their humbler sisters their
+life-blood, their grace, their happiness. The sunshine of a thousand
+existences is imprisoned in the vintages of Pressburg and Carlowitz.
+Poor, homely toilers in the fields! Poor human creatures transformed
+into beasts of burden! The Hungarian nation owes it to itself to
+emancipate these struggling women and show them the way to better
+things.
+
+EDWARD KING.
+
+
+
+
+"FOR PERCIVAL."
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII ENGAGEMENTS--HOSTILE AND OTHERWISE.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The fairest season of the year, the debatable ground between spring and
+summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and
+flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the
+bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft.
+Percival, always keenly affected by such influences, felt as if a new
+life had come to him with the spring. Now that the evenings had grown
+long and light, he could escape into the country, breathe a purer air
+and wander in fields and lanes. And as he wandered, musing, it seemed to
+him that he had awakened from a dream.
+
+He looked back upon the past year, and he was more than half inclined to
+call himself a fool. He had taken up work for which he was not fit. He
+could see that now. He knew very well that his life was almost
+intolerable, and that it would never be more tolerable unless help came
+from without. He could never grow accustomed to his drudgery. He could
+work honestly, but he could never put his heart into it. And even if he
+could have displayed ten times as much energy, if his aptitude for
+business had been ten times as great, if Mr. Ferguson had estimated him
+so highly as to take him as articled clerk, if he had passed all his
+examinations and been duly admitted, if the brightest possibilities in
+such a life as his had become realities and he had attained at last to a
+small share in the business,--what would be the end of this most
+improbable success? Merely that he would have to spend his whole life in
+Brenthill absorbed in law. Now, the law was a weariness to him, and he
+loathed Brenthill. Yet he had voluntarily accepted a life which could
+offer him no higher prize than such a fate as this, when Godfrey Hammond
+or Mrs. Middleton, or even old Hardwicke, would no doubt have helped him
+to something better.
+
+Certainly he had been a fool; and yet, while he realized this truth, he
+sincerely respected--I might almost say he admired--his own folly. He
+had been sick of dependence, and he had gone down at once to the bottom
+of everything, taken his stand on firm ground and conquered independence
+for himself. He had gained the precious knowledge that he could earn his
+own living by the labor of his hands. He might have been a fool to
+reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful
+career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the
+extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted
+with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly
+understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very
+likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had not
+understood.
+
+And now, having conquered in the race, could he go back and ask for the
+help which he had once refused? Hardly. The life in which we first gain
+independence may be stern and ugly, the independence itself--when we
+gather in our harvest--may have a rough and bitter taste, yet it will
+spoil the palate for all other flavors. They will seem sickly sweet
+after its wholesome austerity. Neither did Percival feel any greater
+desire for a career of any kind than he had felt a year earlier when he
+talked over his future life with Godfrey Hammond. If he were asked what
+was his day-dream, his castle in the air, the utmost limit of his
+earthly wishes, he would answer now as he would have answered then,
+"Brackenhill," dismissing the impossible idea with a smile even as he
+uttered it. Asked what would content him--since we can hardly hope to
+draw the highest prize in our life's lottery--he would answer now as
+then--to have an assured income sufficient to allow him to wander on the
+Continent, to see pictures, old towns, Alps, rivers, blue sky;
+wandering, to remain a foreigner all his life, so that there might
+always be something a little novel and curious about his food and his
+manner of living (things which are apt to grow so hideously commonplace
+in the land where one is born), to drink the wine of the country, to
+read many poems in verse, in prose, in the scenery around; and through
+it all, from first to last, to "dream deliciously."
+
+And yet, even while he felt that his desire was unchanged, he knew that
+there was a fresh obstacle between him and its fulfilment. Heaven help
+him! had there not been enough before? Was it needful that it should
+become clear to him that nowhere on earth could he find the warmth and
+the sunlight for which he pined while a certain pair of sad eyes grew
+ever sadder and sadder looking out on the murky sky, the smoke, the
+dust, the busy industry of Brenthill? How could he go away? Even these
+quiet walks of his had pain mixed with their pleasure when he thought
+that there was no such liberty for Judith Lisle. Not for her the
+cowslips in the upland pastures, the hawthorn in the hedges, the
+elm-boughs high against the breezy sky, the first dog-roses pink upon
+the briers. Percival turned from them to look at the cloud which hung
+ever like a dingy smear above Brenthill, and the more he felt their
+loveliness the more he felt her loss.
+
+He had no walk on Sunday mornings. A few months earlier Mr. Clifton of
+St. Sylvester's would have claimed him as a convert. Now he was equally
+devout, but it was the evangelical minister, Mr. Bradbury of Christ
+Church, who saw him week after week a regular attendant, undaunted and
+sleepless though the sermon should be divided into seven heads. Mr.
+Bradbury preached terribly, in a voice which sometimes died mournfully
+away or hissed in a melodramatic whisper, and then rose suddenly in a
+threatening cry. Miss Macgregor sat in front of a gallery and looked
+down on the top of her pastor's head. The double row of little boys who
+were marshalled at her side grew drowsy in the hot weather, blinked
+feebly as the discourse progressed, and nodded at the congregation. Now
+and then Mr. Bradbury, who was only, as it were, at arm's length, turned
+a little, looked up and flung a red-hot denunciation into the front
+seats of the gallery. The little boys woke up, heard what was most
+likely in store for them on the last day, and sat with eyes wide open
+dismally surveying the prospect. But presently the next boy fidgeted, or
+a spider let himself down from the roof, or a bird flew past the window,
+or a slanting ray of sunlight revealed a multitude of dusty dancing
+motes, and the little lads forgot Mr. Bradbury, who had forgotten them
+and was busy with somebody else. It might be with the pope: Mr. Bradbury
+was fond of providing for the pope. Or perhaps he was wasting his energy
+on Percival Thorne, who sat with his head thrown back and his upward
+glance just missing the preacher, and was quite undisturbed by his
+appeals.
+
+Judith Lisle had accepted the offer of a situation at Miss Macgregor's
+with the expectation of being worked to death, only hoping, as she told
+Mrs. Barton, that the process would be slow. The hope would not have
+been at all an unreasonable one if she had undertaken her task in the
+days when she had Bertie to work for. She could have lived through much
+when she lived for Bertie. But, losing her brother, the mainspring of
+her life seemed broken. One would have said that she had leaned on him,
+not he on her, she drooped so pitifully now he was gone. Even Miss
+Macgregor noticed that Miss Lisle was delicate, and expressed her strong
+disapprobation of such a state of affairs. Mrs. Barton thought Judith
+looking very far from well, suggested tonics, and began to consider
+whether she might ask her to go to them for her summer holidays. But to
+Percival's eyes there was a change from week to week, and he watched her
+with terror in his heart. Judith had grown curiously younger during the
+last few months. There had been something of a mother's tenderness in
+her love for Bertie, which made her appear more than her real age and
+gave decision and stateliness to her manner. Now that she was alone, she
+was only a girl, silent and shrinking, needing all her strength to
+suffer and hide her sorrow. Percival knew that each Sunday, as soon as
+she had taken her place, she would look downward to the pew where he
+always sat to ascertain if he were there. For a moment he would meet
+that quiet gaze, lucid, uncomplaining, but very sad. Then her eyes would
+be turned to her book or to the little boys who sat near her, or it
+might even be to Mr. Bradbury. The long service would begin, go on, come
+to an end. But before she left her place her glance would meet his once
+more, as if in gentle farewell until another Sunday should come round.
+Percival would not for worlds have failed at that trysting-place, but he
+cursed his helplessness. Could he do nothing for Judith but cheer her
+through Mr. Bradbury's sermons?
+
+About this time he used deliberately to indulge in an impossible fancy.
+His imagination dwelt on their two lives, cramped, dwarfed and fettered.
+He had lost his freedom, but it seemed to him that Judith, burdened once
+with riches, and later with poverty, never had been free. He looked
+forward, and saw nothing in the future but a struggle for existence
+which might be prolonged through years of labor and sordid care. Why
+were they bound to endure this? Why could they not give up all for just
+a few days of happiness? Percival longed intensely for a glimpse of
+beauty, for a little space of warmth and love, of wealth and liberty.
+Let their life thus blossom together into joy, and he would be content
+that it should be, like the flowering of the aloe, followed by swift and
+inevitable death. Only let the death be shared like the life! It would
+be bitter and terrible to be struck down in their gladness, but if they
+had truly lived they might be satisfied to die. Percival used to fancy
+what they might do in one glorious, golden, sunlit week, brilliant
+against a black background of death. How free they would be to spend all
+they possessed without a thought for the future! Nothing could pall upon
+them, and he pictured to himself how every sense would be quickened, how
+passion would gather strength and tenderness, during those brief days,
+and rise to its noblest height to meet the end. His imagination revelled
+in the minute details of the picture, adding one by one a thousand
+touches of beauty and joy till the dream was lifelike in its loveliness.
+He could pass in a moment from his commonplace world to this enchanted
+life with Judith. Living alone, and half starving himself in the attempt
+to pay his debts, he was in a fit state to see visions and dream dreams.
+But they only made his present life more distasteful to him, and the
+more he dreamed of Judith the more he felt that he had nothing to offer
+her.
+
+He was summoned abruptly from his fairyland one night by the arrival of
+Mrs. Bryant. She made her appearance rather suddenly, and sat down on a
+chair by the door to have a little chat with her lodger. "I came back
+this afternoon," she said. "I didn't tell Lydia: where was the use of
+bothering about writing to her? Besides, I could just have a look round,
+and see how Emma'd done the work while I was away, and how things had
+gone on altogether." She nodded her rusty black cap confidentially at
+Percival. It was sprinkled with bugles, which caught the light of his
+solitary candle.
+
+"I hope you found all right," he said.
+
+"Pretty well," Mrs. Bryant allowed. "It's a mercy when there's no
+illness nor anything of that kind, though, if you'll excuse my saying
+it, Mr. Thorne, you ain't looking as well yourself as I should have
+liked to see you."
+
+"Oh, I am all right, thank you," said Percival.
+
+Mrs. Bryant shook her head. The different movement brought out quite a
+different effect of glancing bugles. "Young people should be careful of
+their health," was her profound remark.
+
+"I assure you there's nothing the matter with me."
+
+"Well, well! we'll hope not," she answered, "though you certainly do
+look altered, Mr. Thorne, through being thinner in the face and darker
+under the eyes."
+
+Percival smiled impatiently.
+
+"What was I saying?" Mrs. Bryant continued. "Oh yes--that there was a
+many mercies to be thankful for. To find the house all right, and the
+times and times I've dreamed of fire and the engines not to be had, and
+woke up shaking so as you'd hardly believe it! And I don't really think
+that I've gone to bed hardly one night without wondering whether Lydia
+had fastened the door and the little window into the yard, which is not
+safe if left open. As regular as clockwork, when the time came round,
+I'd mention it to my sister."
+
+Percival sighed briefly, probably pitying the sister. "I think Miss
+Bryant has been very careful in fastening everything," he said.
+
+"Well, it does seem so, and very thankful I am. And as I always say when
+I go out, 'Waste I _must_ expect, and waste I _do_ expect,' but it's a
+mercy when there's no thieving."
+
+"Things will hardly go on quite the same when you are not here to look
+after them, Mrs. Bryant."
+
+"No: how should they?" the landlady acquiesced. "Young heads ain't like
+old ones, as I said one evening to my sister when Smith was by. 'Young
+heads ain't like old ones,' said I. 'Why, no,' said Smith: 'they're a
+deal prettier.' I told him he ought to have done thinking of such
+things. And so he ought--a man of his age! But that's what the young men
+mostly think of, ain't it, Mr. Thorne? Though it's the old heads make
+the best housekeepers, I think, when there's a lot of lodgers to look
+after."
+
+"Very likely," said Percival.
+
+"I dare say you think there'd be fine times for the young men lodgers if
+it wasn't for the old heads. And I don't blame you, Mr. Thorne: it's
+only natural, and what we must expect in growing old. And if anything
+could make one grow old before one's time, and live two years in one, so
+to speak, I do think it's letting lodgings."
+
+Percival expressed himself as not surprised to hear it, though very
+sorry that lodgers were so injurious to her health.
+
+"There's my drawing-room empty now, and two bedrooms," Mrs. Bryant
+continued. "Not but what I've had an offer for it this very afternoon,
+since coming back. But it doesn't do to be too hasty. Respectable
+parties who pay regular," she nodded a little at Percival as if to point
+the compliment, "are the parties for me."
+
+"Of course," he said.
+
+"A queer business that of young Mr. Lisle's, wasn't it?" she went on. "I
+should say it was about time that Miss Crawford did shut up, if she
+couldn't manage her young ladies better. I sent my Lydia to a
+boarding-school once, but it was one of a different kind to that. Pretty
+goings on there were at Standon Square, I'll be bound, if we only knew
+the truth. But as far as this goes there ain't no great harm done, that
+I can see. He hasn't done badly for himself, and I dare say they'll be
+very comfortable. She might have picked a worse--I will say that--for he
+was always a pleasant-spoken young gentleman, and good-looking too,
+though that's not a thing to set much store by. And they do say he had
+seen better times."
+
+She paused. Percival murmured something which was quite unintelligible,
+but it served to start her off again, apparently under the impression
+that she had heard a remark of some kind.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. And as I was saying to Lydia--The coolness of them
+both! banns and all regular! But there now! I'm talking and talking,
+forgetting that you were in the thick of it. You knew all about it, I've
+no doubt, and finely you and he must have laughed in your sleeves--"
+
+"I knew nothing about it, Mrs. Bryant--nothing."
+
+Mrs. Bryant smiled cunningly and nodded at him again. But it was an
+oblique nod this time, and there was a sidelong look to match it.
+Percival felt as if he were suffering from an aggravated form of
+nightmare.
+
+"No, no: I dare say you didn't. At any rate, you won't let out if you
+did: why should you? It's a great thing to hold one's tongue, Mr.
+Thorne; and I ought to know, for I've found the advantage of being
+naturally a silent woman. And I don't say but what you are wise."
+
+"I knew nothing," he repeated doggedly.
+
+"Well, I don't suppose it was any the worse for anybody who _did_ know,"
+said Mrs. Bryant. "And though, of course, Miss Lisle lost her situation
+through it, I dare say she finds it quite made up to her."
+
+"Not at all," said Percival shortly. The conversation was becoming
+intolerable.
+
+"Oh, you may depend upon it she does," said Mrs. Bryant. "How should a
+gentleman like you know all the ins and outs, Mr. Thorne? It makes all
+the difference to a young woman having a brother well-to-do in the
+world. And very fond of her he always seemed to be, as I was remarking
+to Lydia."
+
+Percival felt as if his blood were on fire. He dared not profess too
+intimate a knowledge of Judith's feelings and position, and he could not
+listen in silence. "I think you are mistaken, Mrs. Bryant," he said, in
+a tone which would have betrayed his angry disgust to any more sensitive
+ear. Even his landlady perceived that the subject was not a welcome one.
+
+"Well, well!" she said. "It doesn't matter, and I'll only wish you as
+good luck as Mr. Lisle; for I'm sure you deserve a young lady with a
+little bit of money as well as he did; and no reason why you shouldn't
+look to find one, one of these fine days."
+
+"No, Mrs. Bryant, I sha'n't copy Mr. Lisle."
+
+"Ah, you've something else in your eye, I can see, and perhaps one might
+make a guess as to a name. Well, people must manage those things their
+own way, and interfering mostly does harm, I take it. And I'll wish you
+luck, anyhow."
+
+"I don't think there's any occasion for your good wishes," said
+Percival. "Thank you all the same."
+
+"Not but what I'm sorry to lose Mr. and Miss Lisle," Mrs. Bryant
+continued, as if that were the natural end of her previous sentence,
+"for they paid for everything most regular."
+
+"I hope these people who want to come may do the same," said Percival.
+Though he knew that he ran the risk of hearing all that Mrs. Bryant
+could tell him about their condition and prospects, he felt he could
+endure anything that would turn the conversation from the Lisles and
+himself.
+
+But there was a different train of ideas in Mrs. Bryant's mind. "And, by
+the way," she said, "I think we've some little accounts to settle
+together, Mr. Thorne." Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that
+she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared
+had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it.
+Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the
+table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He
+stooped over his hoard--a meagre little hoard this time--counting what
+he had to give her.
+
+Mrs. Bryant began to hunt in her purse for a receipt stamp. "It's a
+pleasure to have to do with a gentleman who is always so regular," she
+said with an approving smile.
+
+Percival, who was steadying a little pile of coin on the sloping desk,
+felt a strong desire to tell her the state of affairs while he stooped
+in the shadow with his face turned away. Precisely because he felt this
+desire he drew himself up to his full height, walked to the table,
+looked straight into her eyes and said, "Not so very regular this time,
+Mrs. Bryant."
+
+She stepped back with a perplexed and questioning expression, but she
+understood that something was wrong, and the worn face fell suddenly,
+deepening a multitude of melancholy wrinkles. He laid the money before
+her: "That's just half of what I owe you: I think you'll find I have
+counted it all right."
+
+"Half? But where's the other half, Mr. Thorne?"
+
+"Well, I must earn the other half, Mrs. Bryant. You shall have it as
+soon as I get it."
+
+She looked up at him. "You've got to earn it?" she repeated. Her tone
+would have been more appropriate if Percival had said he must steal it.
+There was a pause: Mrs. Bryant's lean hand closed over the money. "I
+don't understand this, Mr. Thorne--I don't understand it at all."
+
+"It is very simple," he replied. "According to your wishes, I kept the
+rent for you, but during your absence there was a sudden call upon me
+for money, and I could not refuse to advance it. I regret it exceedingly
+if it puts you to inconvenience. I had hoped to have made it all right
+before you returned, but I have not had time. I can only promise you
+that you shall be paid all that I can put by each week till I have
+cleared off my debt."
+
+"Oh, that's all very fine," said Mrs. Bryant. "But I don't think much of
+promises."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it," he answered gravely.
+
+She looked hard at him, and said: "I did think you were quite the
+gentleman, Mr. Thorne. I didn't think you'd have served me so."
+
+"No," said Percival. "I assure you I'm very sorry. If I could explain
+the whole affair to you, you would see that I am not to blame. But,
+unluckily, I can't."
+
+"Oh, I don't want any explanations: I wouldn't give a thank-you for a
+cartload of 'em. Nobody ever is to blame who has the explaining of a
+thing, if it's ever so rascally a job."
+
+"I am very sorry," he repeated. "But I can only say that you shall be
+paid."
+
+"Oh, I dare say! Look here, Mr. Thorne: I've heard that sort of thing
+scores of times. There's always been a sudden call for money; it's
+always something that never happened before, and it isn't ever to happen
+again; and it's always going to be paid back at once, but there's not
+one in a hundred who does pay it. Once you begin that sort of thing--"
+
+"You'll find me that hundredth one," said Percival.
+
+"Oh yes. To hear them talk you'd say each one was one in a thousand, at
+least. But I'd like you to know that though I'm a widow woman I'm not to
+be robbed and put upon."
+
+"Mrs. Bryant"--Percival's strong voice silenced her querulous tones--"no
+one wants to rob you. Please to remember that it was entirely of your
+own free-will that you trusted me with the money."
+
+"More fool I!" Mrs. Bryant ejaculated.
+
+"It was to oblige you that I took charge of it."
+
+"And a pretty mess I've made of it! It had better have gone so as to be
+some pleasure to my own flesh and blood, instead of your spending it in
+some way you're ashamed to own."
+
+"If you had been here to receive it, it would have been ready for you,"
+Percival went on, ignoring her last speech. "As it is, it has waited all
+these weeks for you. It isn't unreasonable that it should wait a little
+longer for me."
+
+She muttered something to the effect that there was justice to be had,
+though he didn't seem to think it.
+
+"Oh yes," he said, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, "there's the
+county court or something of that kind. By all means go to the county
+court if you like. But I see no occasion for discussing the matter any
+more beforehand."
+
+His calmness had its effect upon her. She didn't want any
+unpleasantness, she said.
+
+"Neither do I," he replied: "I do not see why there need be any. If I
+live you will be paid, and that before very long. If I should happen to
+die first, I have a friend who will settle my affairs for me, and you
+will be no loser."
+
+Mrs. Bryant suggested that it might be pleasanter for all parties if Mr.
+Thorne were to apply to his friend at once. She thought very likely
+there were little bills about in the town--gentlemen very often had
+little bills--and if there were any difficulties--gentlemen so often got
+into difficulties--it was so much better to have things settled and make
+a fresh start. She had no doubt that Mr. Lisle would be very willing.
+
+"Mr. Lisle!" Percival exclaimed. "Do you suppose for one moment I should
+ask Mr. Lisle?"
+
+Startled at his vehemence, Mrs. Bryant begged pardon, and substituted
+"the gentleman" for "Mr. Lisle."
+
+"Thank you, no," said Percival. "I prefer to manage my own affairs in my
+own way. If I live I will not apply to any one. But if I must go to my
+grave owing five or six weeks' rent to one or other of you, I assure you
+most solemnly, Mrs. Bryant, that I will owe it to my friend."
+
+The storm had subsided into subdued grumblings. Their purport was,
+apparently, that Mrs. Bryant liked lodgers who paid regular, and as for
+those who didn't, they would have to leave, and she wished them to know
+it.
+
+"Does that mean that you wish me to go?" the young man demanded with the
+readiness which was too much for his landlady. "I'll go to-night if you
+like. Do you wish it?" There was an air of such promptitude about him as
+he spoke that Mrs. Bryant half expected to see him vanish then and
+there. She had by no means made up her mind that she did wish to lose a
+lodger who had been so entirely satisfactory up to that time. And she
+preferred to keep her debtor within reach; so she drew back a little and
+qualified what she had said.
+
+"Very well," said Percival, "just as you please."
+
+Mrs. Bryant only hoped it wouldn't occur again. The tempest of her
+wrath showed fearful symptoms of dissolving in a shower of tears. "You
+don't know what work I have to make both ends meet, Mr. Thorne," she
+said, "nor how hard it is to get one's own, let alone keeping it. I do
+assure you, Mr. Thorne, me and Lydia might go in silks every day of our
+lives, and needn't so much as soil our fingers with the work of the
+house, if we had all we rightly should have. But there are folks who
+call themselves honest who don't think any harm of taking a widow
+woman's rooms and getting behindhand with the rent, running up an
+account for milk and vegetables and the like by the week together; and
+there's the bell ringing all day, as you may say, with the bills coming
+in, and one's almost driven out of one's wits with the worry of it all,
+let alone the loss, which is hard to bear. Oh, I do hope, Mr. Thorne,
+that it won't occur again!"
+
+"It isn't very likely," said Percival, privately thinking that suicide
+would be preferable to an existence in which such interviews with his
+landlady should be of frequent occurrence. Pity, irritation, disgust,
+pride and humiliation made up a state of feeling which was overshadowed
+by a horrible fear that Mrs. Bryant would begin to weep before he could
+get rid of her. He watched her with ever-increasing uneasiness while she
+attempted to give him a receipt for the money he had paid. She began by
+wiping her spectacles, but her hand trembled so much that she let them
+fall, and she, Percival and the candle were all on the floor together,
+assisting one another in the search for them. The rusty cap was
+perilously near the flame more than once, which was a cause of fresh
+anxiety on his part. And when she was once more established at the
+table, writing a word or two and then wiping her eyes, it was
+distracting to discover that the receipt-stamp, which Mrs. Bryant had
+brought with her, and which she was certain she had laid on the table,
+had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed to Percival that he spent at
+least a quarter of an hour hunting for that stamp. In reality about two
+minutes elapsed before it was found sticking to Mrs. Bryant's damp
+pocket handkerchief. It was removed thence with great care, clinging to
+her fingers by the way, after which it showed a not unnatural
+disinclination to adhere to the paper. But even that difficulty was at
+last overcome: a shaky signature and a date were laboriously penned, and
+Percival's heart beat high as he received the completed document.
+
+And then--Mrs. Bryant laid down the pen, took off her spectacles, shook
+her pocket handkerchief and deliberately burst into tears.
+
+Percival was in despair. Of course he knew perfectly well that he was
+not a heartless brute, but equally of course he felt that he must be a
+heartless brute as he stood by while Mrs. Bryant wept copiously. Of
+course he begged her to calm herself, and of course a long-drawn sob was
+her only answer. All at once there was a knock at the door. "Come in,"
+said Percival, feeling that matters could not possibly be worse. It
+opened, and Lydia stood on the threshold, staring at the pair in much
+surprise.
+
+"Well, I never!" she said; and turning toward Percival she eyed him
+suspiciously, as if she thought he might have been knocking the old lady
+about. "And pray what may be the meaning of this?"
+
+"Mrs. Bryant isn't quite herself this evening, I am afraid," said
+Percival, feeling that his reply was very feeble. "And we have had a
+little business to settle which was not quite satisfactory."
+
+At the word "business" Lydia stepped forward, and her surprise gave
+place to an expression of half incredulous amusement--Percival would
+almost have said of delight.
+
+"What! ain't the money all right?" she said. "You don't say so! Well,
+ma, you _have_ been clever this time, haven't you? Oh I suppose you
+thought I didn't know what you were after when you were so careful about
+not bothering me with the accounts? Lor! I knew fast enough. Don't you
+feel proud of yourself for having managed it so well?"
+
+Mrs. Bryant wept. Percival, not having a word to say, preserved a
+dignified silence.
+
+"Come along, ma: I dare say Mr. Thorne has had about enough of this,"
+Lydia went on, coolly examining the paper which lay on the table. She
+arrived at the total. "Oh that's it, is it? Well, I like that, I do!
+Some people are so clever, ain't they? So wonderfully sharp they can't
+trust their own belongings! I do like that! Come along, ma." And Lydia
+seconded her summons with such energetic action that it seemed to
+Percival that she absolutely swept the old lady out of the room, and
+that the wet handkerchief, the rusty black gown and the bugle-sprinkled
+head-dress vanished in a whirlwind, with a sound of shrill laughter on
+the stairs.
+
+For a moment his heart leapt with a sudden sense of relief and freedom,
+but only for a moment. Then he flung himself into his arm-chair, utterly
+dejected and sickened.
+
+Should he be subject to this kind of thing all his life long? If he
+should chance to be ill and unable to work, how could he live for any
+length of time on his paltry savings? And debt would mean _this_! He
+need not even be ill. He remembered how he broke his arm once when he
+was a lad. Suppose he broke his arm now--a bit of orange-peel in the
+street might do it--or suppose he hurt the hand with which he wrote?
+
+And this was the life which he might ask Judith to share with him! She
+might endure Mrs. Bryant's scolding and Lydia's laughter, and pinch and
+save as he was forced to do, and grow weary and careworn and sick at
+heart. No, God forbid! And yet--and yet--was she not enduring as bad or
+worse in that hateful school?
+
+Oh for his dream! One week of life and love, and then swift exit from a
+hideous world, where Mrs. Bryant and Miss Macgregor and Lydia and all
+his other nightmares might do their worst and fight their hardest in
+their ugly struggle for existence!
+
+Percival had achieved something of a victory in his encounter with his
+landlady. His manner had been calm and fairly easy, and from first to
+last she had been more conscious of his calmness than Percival was
+himself. She had been silenced, not coaxed and flattered as she often
+was by unfortunate lodgers whose ready money ran short. Indeed, she had
+been defied, and when she recovered herself a little she declared that
+she had never seen any one so stuck up as Mr. Thorne. This was unkind,
+after he had gone down on his knees to look for her spectacles.
+
+But if Percival had conquered, his was but a barren victory. He fancied
+that an unwonted tone of deference crept into his voice when he gave his
+orders. He was afraid of Mrs. Bryant. He faced Lydia bravely, but he
+winced in secret at the recollection of her laughter. He very nearly
+starved himself lest mother or daughter should be able to say, "Mr.
+Thorne might have remembered his debts before he ordered this or that."
+He had paid Lisle's bill at Mr. Robinson's, but he could not forget his
+own, and he walked past the house daily with his head high, feeling
+himself a miserable coward.
+
+There was a draper's shop close to it, and as he went by one day he saw
+a little pony chaise at the door. A girl of twelve or thirteen sat in it
+listlessly holding the reins and looking up and down the street. It was
+a great field-day for the Brenthill volunteers, and their band came
+round a corner not a dozen yards away and suddenly struck up a
+triumphant march. The pony, although as quiet a little creature as you
+could easily find, was startled. If it had been a wooden rocking-horse
+it might not have minded, but any greater sensibility must have received
+a shock. The girl uttered a cry of alarm, but there was no cause for it.
+Percival, who was close at hand, stepped to the pony's head, a lady
+rushed out of the shop, the band went by in a tempest of martial music,
+a crowd of boys and girls filled the roadway and disappeared as quickly
+as they came. It was all over in a minute. Percival, who was coaxing the
+pony as he stood, was warmly thanked.
+
+"There is nothing to thank me for," he said. "That band was enough to
+frighten anything, but the pony seems a gentle little thing."
+
+"So it is," the lady replied. "But you see, the driver was very
+inexperienced, and we really are very much obliged to you, Mr. Thorne."
+
+He looked at her in blank amazement. Had some one from his former life
+suddenly arisen to claim acquaintance with him? He glanced from her to
+the girl, but recognized neither. "You know me?" he said.
+
+She smiled: "You don't know me, I dare say. I am Mrs. Barton. I saw you
+one day when I was just coming away after calling on Miss Lisle." She
+watched the hero of her romance as she spoke. His dark face lighted up
+suddenly.
+
+"I have often heard Miss Lisle speak of you and of your kindness," he
+said. "Do you ever see her now?"
+
+"Oh yes. She comes to give Janie her music-lesson every Wednesday
+afternoon.--We couldn't do without Miss Lisle, could we, Janie?" The
+girl was shy and did not speak, but a broad smile overspread her face.
+
+"I had no idea she still came to you. Do you know how she gets on at
+Miss Macgregor's?" he asked eagerly. "Is she well? I saw her at church
+one day, and I thought she was pale."
+
+"She says she is well," Mrs. Barton replied. "But I am not very fond of
+Miss Macgregor myself: no one ever stays there very long." A shopman
+came out and put a parcel into the chaise. Mrs. Barton took the reins.
+"I shall tell Miss Lisle you asked after her," she said as with a bow
+and cordial smile she drove off.
+
+It was Monday, and Percival's mind was speedily made up. He would see
+Judith Lisle on Wednesday.
+
+Tuesday was a remarkably long day, but Wednesday came at last, and he
+obtained permission to leave the office earlier than usual. He knew the
+street in which Mrs. Barton lived, and had taken some trouble to
+ascertain the number, so that he could stroll to and fro at a safe
+distance, commanding a view of the door.
+
+He had time to study the contents of a milliner's window: it was the
+only shop near at hand, and even that pretended not to be a shop, but
+rather a private house, where some one had accidentally left a bonnet or
+two, a few sprays of artificial flowers and an old lady's cap in the
+front room. He had abundant leisure to watch No. 51 taking in a supply
+of coals, and No. 63 sending away a piano. He sauntered to and fro so
+long, with a careless assumption of unconsciousness how time was
+passing, that a stupid young policeman perceived that he was not an
+ordinary passer-by. Astonished and delighted at his own penetration, he
+began to saunter and watch him, trying to make out which house he
+intended to favor with a midnight visit. Percival saw quite a procession
+of babies in perambulators being wheeled home by their nurses after
+their afternoon airing, and he discovered that the nurse at No. 57 had a
+flirtation with a soldier. But at last the door of No. 69 opened, a slim
+figure came down the steps, and he started to meet it, leisurely, but
+with a sudden decision and purpose in his walk. The young policeman saw
+the meeting: the whole affair became clear to him--why, he had done that
+sort of thing himself--and he hurried off rather indignantly, feeling
+that he had wasted his time, and that the supposed burglar had not
+behaved at all handsomely.
+
+And Percival went forward and held out his hand to Judith, but found
+that even the most commonplace greeting stuck in his throat somehow. She
+looked quickly up at him, but she too was silent, and he walked a few
+steps by her side before he said, "I did not know what day you were
+going away."
+
+The rest of the conversation followed in a swift interchange of question
+and reply, as if to make up for that pause.
+
+"No, but I thought I should be sure to have a chance of saying
+good-bye."
+
+"And I was out. I was very sorry when I came home and found that you
+were gone. But since we have met again, it doesn't matter now, does it?"
+he said with a smile. "How do you get on at Miss Macgregor's?"
+
+"Oh, very well," she answered. "It will do for the present."
+
+"And Miss Crawford?"
+
+"She will not see me nor hear from me. She is ill and low-spirited, and
+Mrs. Barton tells me that a niece has come to look after her."
+
+"Isn't that rather a good thing?"
+
+"No: I don't like it. I saw one or two of those nieces--there are seven
+of them--great vulgar, managing women. I can't bear to think of my dear
+little Miss Crawford being bullied and nursed by Miss Price. She
+couldn't endure them, I know, only she was so fond of their mother."
+
+Percival changed the subject: "So you go to Mrs. Barton's still? I
+didn't know that till last Monday."
+
+"When you rescued Janie from imminent peril. Oh, I have heard," said
+Judith with a smile.
+
+"Please to describe me as risking my own life in the act. It would be a
+pity not to make me heroic while you are about it."
+
+"Janie would readily believe it. She measures her danger by her terror,
+which was great. But she is a dear, good child, and it is such a
+pleasure to me to go there every week!"
+
+"Ah! Then you are not happy at Miss Macgregor's?"
+
+"Well, not very. But it might be much worse. And I am mercenary enough
+to think about the money I earn at Mrs. Barton's," said Judith. "I don't
+mind telling you now that Bertie left two or three little bills unpaid
+when he went away, and I was very anxious about them. But, luckily, they
+were small."
+
+"You don't mind telling me now. Are they paid, then?"
+
+"Yes, and I have not heard of any more."
+
+"You paid them out of your earnings?"
+
+"Yes. You understand me, don't you, Mr. Thorne? Bertie and I were
+together then, and I could not take Emmeline's money to pay our debts."
+
+"Yes, I understand."
+
+"And I had saved a little. It is all right now, since they are all paid.
+I fancied there would be some more to come in, but it seems not, so I
+have a pound or two to spare, and I feel quite rich."
+
+It struck Percival that Judith had managed better than he had. "Do you
+ever hear from him?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Mr. Nash has forgiven them."
+
+"Already?"
+
+Judith nodded: "He has, though I thought he never would. Bertie
+understood him better."
+
+(The truth was, that she had taken impotent rage for strength of
+purpose. Mr. Nash was aware that he had neglected his daughter, and was
+anxious to stifle the thought by laying the blame on every one else. And
+Bertie was quicker than Judith was in reading character when it was on
+his own level.)
+
+"He has forgiven them," Percival repeated with a smile. "Well, Bertie is
+a lucky fellow."
+
+"So is my father lucky, if that is luck."
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"Yes. He has written to me and to my aunt Lisle--at Rookleigh, you know.
+He has taken another name, and it seems he is getting on and making
+money: _he_ wanted to send me some too. And my aunt is angry with me
+because I would not go to her. She has given me two months to make up my
+mind in."
+
+"And you will not go?"
+
+"I cannot leave Brenthill," said Judith. "She is more than half inclined
+to forgive Bertie too. So I am alone; and yet I am right." She uttered
+the last words with lingering sadness.
+
+"No doubt," Percival answered. They were walking slowly through a quiet
+back street, with a blank wall on one side. "Still, it is hard," he
+said.
+
+There was something so simple and tender in his tone that Judith looked
+up and met his eyes. She might have read his words in them even if he
+had not spoken. "Don't pity me, Mr. Thorne," she said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, because--I hardly know why. I can't stand it when any one is kind
+to me, or sorry for me, sometimes at Mrs. Barton's. I don't know how to
+bear it. But it does not matter much, for I get braver and braver when
+people are hard and cold. I really don't mind that half as much as you
+would think, so you see you needn't pity me. In fact, you mustn't."
+
+"Indeed, I think I must," said Percival. "More than before."
+
+"No, no," she answered, hurriedly. "Don't say it, don't look it, don't
+even let me think you do it in your heart. Tell me about yourself. You
+listen to me, you ask about me, but you say nothing of what you are
+doing."
+
+"Working." There was a moment's hesitation. "And dreaming," he added.
+
+"But you have been ill?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"You have not been ill? Then you are ill. What makes you so pale?"
+
+He laughed: "Am I pale?"
+
+"And you look tired."
+
+"My work is wearisome sometimes."
+
+"More so than it was?" she questioned anxiously. "You used not to look
+so tired."
+
+"Don't you think that a wearisome thing must grow more wearisome merely
+by going on?"
+
+"But is that all? Isn't there anything else the matter?"
+
+"Perhaps there is," he allowed. "There are little worries of course, but
+shall I tell you what is the great thing that is the matter with me?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"I miss you, Judith."
+
+The color spread over her face like a rosy dawn. Her eyes were fixed on
+the pavement, and yet they looked as if they caught a glimpse of Eden.
+But Percival could not see that. "You miss me?" she said.
+
+"Yes." He had forgotten his hesitation and despair. He had outstripped
+them, had left them far behind, and his words sprang to his lips with a
+glad sense of victory and freedom. "Must I miss you always?" he said.
+"Will you not come back to me, Judith? My work could never be wearisome
+then when I should feel that I was working for you. There would be long
+to wait, no doubt, and then a hard life, a poor home. What have I to
+offer you? But will you come?"
+
+She looked up at him: "Do you really want me, or is it that you are
+sorry for me and want to help me? Are you sure it isn't that? We Lisles
+have done you harm enough: I won't do you a worse wrong still."
+
+"You will do me the worst wrong of all if you let such fears and fancies
+stand between you and me," said Percival. "Do you not know that I love
+you? You must decide as your own heart tells you. But don't doubt me."
+
+She laid her hand lightly on his arm: "Forgive me, Percival."
+
+And so those two passed together into the Eden which she had seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+HOW THE SUN ROSE IN GLADNESS, AND SET IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF
+DEATH.
+
+
+The Wednesday which was so white a day for Judith and Percival had
+dawned brightly at Fordborough. Sissy, opening her eyes on the radiant
+beauty of the morning, sprang up with an exclamation of delight. The
+preceding day had been gray and uncertain, but this was golden and
+cloudless. A light breeze tossed the acacia-boughs and showed flashes of
+blue between the quivering sprays. The dew was still hanging on the
+clustered white roses which climbed to her open window, and the birds
+were singing among the leaves as if they were running races in a
+headlong rapture of delight. Sissy did not sing, but she said to
+herself, "Oh, how glad the Latimers must be!"
+
+She was right, for at a still earlier hour the Latimer girls had been
+flying in and out of their respective rooms in a perfectly aimless,
+joyous, childishly happy fashion, like a flock of white pigeons. And the
+sum of their conversation was simply this: "Oh, what a day! what a
+glorious day!" Yet it sufficed for a Babel of bird-like voices. At last
+one more energetic than the rest, in her white dressing-gown and with
+her hair hanging loose, flew down the long oak-panelled corridor and
+knocked with might and main at her brother's door: "Walter! Walter!
+wake up! do! You said it would rain, and it doesn't rain! It is a
+_lovely_ morning! Oh, Walter!"
+
+Walter responded briefly to the effect that he had been awake since half
+after three, and was aware of the fact.
+
+Henry Hardwicke, who had been to the river for an early swim, stopped to
+discuss the weather with a laborer who was plodding across the fields.
+The old man looked at the blue sky with an air of unutterable wisdom,
+made some profound remarks about the quarter in which the wind was,
+added a local saying or two bearing on the case, and summed up to the
+effect that it was a fine day.
+
+Captain Fothergill had no particular view from his window, but he
+inquired at an early hour what the weather was like.
+
+Ashendale Priory was a fine old ruin belonging to the Latimers, and
+about six miles from Latimer's Court. Sissy Langton had said one day
+that she often passed it in her rides, but had never been into it.
+Walter Latimer was astonished, horrified and delighted all at once, and
+vowed that she must see it, and should see it without delay. This
+Wednesday had been fixed for an excursion there, but the project was
+nearly given up on account of the weather. As late as the previous
+afternoon the question was seriously debated at the Court by a council
+composed of Walter and three of his sisters. One of the members was sent
+to look at the barometer. She reported that it had gone up in the most
+extraordinary manner since luncheon.
+
+The announcement was greeted with delight, but it was discovered late
+that evening that Miss Latimer had had a happy thought. Fearing that the
+barometer would be utterly ruined by the shaking and tapping which it
+underwent, she had screwed it up to a height at which her younger
+brothers and sisters could not wish to disturb it, had gone into the
+village, and had forgotten all about it. There was general dismay and
+much laughter.
+
+"It will rain," said Walter: "it will certainly rain. I thought it was
+very queer. Well, it is too late to do anything now. We must just wait
+and see what happens."
+
+And behold the morrow had come, the clouds were gone, and it was a day
+in a thousand, a very queen of days.
+
+The party started for Ashendale, some riding, some driving, waking the
+quiet green lanes with a happy tumult of wheels and horse-hoofs and
+laughing voices. Captain Fothergill contrived to be near Miss Langton,
+and to talk in a fashion which made her look down once or twice when she
+had encountered the eagerness of his dark eyes. The words he said might
+have been published by the town-crier. But that functionary could not
+have reproduced the tone and manner which rendered them significant,
+though Sissy hardly knew the precise amount of meaning they were
+intended to convey. She was glad when the tower of the priory rose above
+the trees. So was Walter Latimer, who had been eying the back of
+Fothergill's head or the sharply-cut profile which was turned so
+frequently toward Miss Langton, and who was firmly persuaded that the
+captain ought to be shot.
+
+Ashendale Priory was built nearly at the bottom of a hill. Part of it,
+close by the gateway, was a farmhouse occupied by a tenant of the
+Latimers. His wife, a pleasant middle-aged woman, came out to meet them
+as they dismounted, and a rosy daughter of sixteen or seventeen lingered
+shyly in the little garden, which was full to overflowing of
+old-fashioned flowers and humming with multitudes of bees. The hot sweet
+fragrance of the crowded borders made Sissy say that it was like the
+very heart of summer-time.
+
+"A place to recollect and dream of on a November day," said Fothergill.
+
+"Oh, don't talk of November now! I hate it."
+
+"I don't want November, I assure you," he replied. "Why cannot this last
+for ever?"
+
+"The weather?"
+
+"Much more than the weather. Do you suppose I should only remember that
+it was a fine day?"
+
+"What, the place too?" said Sissy. "It is beautiful, but I think you
+would soon get tired of Ashendale, Captain Fothergill."
+
+"Do you?" he said in a low voice, looking at her with the eyes which
+seemed to draw hers to meet them. "Try me and see which will be tired
+first." And, without giving her time to answer, he went on: "Couldn't
+you be content with Ashendale?"
+
+"For always? I don't think I could--not for all my life."
+
+"Well, then, the perfect place is yet to find," said Fothergill. "And
+how charming it must be!"
+
+"If one should ever find it!" said Sissy.
+
+"One?" Fothergill looked at her again. "Not _one_! Won't you hope we may
+both find it?"
+
+"Like the people who hunted for the Earthly Paradise," said Sissy
+hurriedly. "Look! they are going to the ruins." And she hastened to join
+the others.
+
+Latimer noticed that she evidently, and very properly, would not permit
+Fothergill to monopolize her, but seemed rather to avoid the fellow. To
+his surprise, however, he found that there was no better fortune for
+himself. Fothergill had brought a sailor cousin, a boy of nineteen,
+curly-haired, sunburnt and merry, with a sailor's delight in flirtation
+and fun, and Archibald Carroll fixed his violent though temporary
+affections on Sissy the moment he was introduced to her at the priory.
+To Latimer's great disgust, Sissy distinctly encouraged him, and the two
+went off together during the progress round the ruins. There were some
+old fish-ponds to be seen, with swans and reeds and water-lilies, and
+when they were tired of scrambling about the gray walls there was a
+little copse hard by, the perfection of sylvan scenery on a small scale.
+The party speedily dispersed, rambling where their fancy led them, and
+were seen no more till the hour which had been fixed for dinner. Mrs.
+Latimer meanwhile chose a space of level turf, superintended the
+unpacking of hampers, and when the wanderers came dropping in by twos
+and threes from all points of the compass, professing unbounded
+readiness to help in the preparations, there was nothing left for them
+to do. Among the latest were Sissy and her squire, a radiant pair. She
+was charmed with her saucy sailor-boy, who had no serious intentions or
+hopes, who would most likely be gone on the morrow, and who asked
+nothing more than to be happy with her through that happy summer day.
+People and things were apt to grow perplexing and sad when they came
+into her every-day life, but here was a holiday companion, arrived as
+unexpectedly as if he were created for her holiday, with no such thing
+as an afterthought about the whole affair.
+
+Latimer sulked, but his rival smiled, when the two young people arrived.
+For--thus argued Raymond Fothergill, with a vanity which was so calm, so
+clear, so certain that it sounded like reason itself--it was not
+possible that Sissy Langton preferred Carroll to himself. Even had it
+been Latimer or Hardwicke! But Carroll--no! Therefore she used the one
+cousin merely to avoid the other. But why did she wish to avoid him? He
+remembered her blushes, her shyness, the eyes that sank before his own,
+and he answered promptly that she feared him. He triumphed in the
+thought. He had contended against a gentle indifference on Sissy's part,
+till, having heard rumors of a bygone love-affair, he had suspected the
+existence of an unacknowledged constancy. Then what did this fear mean?
+It was obviously the self-distrust of a heart unwilling to yield,
+clinging to its old loyalty, yet aware of a new weakness--seeking safety
+in flight because unable to resist. Fothergill was conscious of power,
+and could wait with patience. (It would have been unreasonable to expect
+him to spend an equal amount of time and talent in accounting for Miss
+Langton's equally evident avoidance of young Latimer. Besides, that was
+a simple matter. He bored her, no doubt.)
+
+When the business of eating and drinking was drawing to a close, little
+Edith Latimer, the youngest of the party, began to arrange a lapful of
+wild flowers which she had brought back from her ramble. Hardwicke, who
+had helped her to collect them, handed them to her one by one.
+
+A green tuft which he held up caught Sissy's eye. "Why, Edie, what have
+you got there?" she said. "Is that maiden-hair spleenwort? Where did
+you find it?"
+
+"In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at
+the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I get you some?"
+
+"No: I'll get some," exclaimed Archie, who was lying at Sissy's feet.
+"Miss Langton would rather I got it for her, I know."
+
+Sissy arched her brows.
+
+"She has so much more confidence in me," Archie explained. "Please give
+me a leaf of that stuff, Miss Latimer: I want to see what it's like."
+
+"My confidence is rather misplaced, I'm afraid, if you don't know what
+you are going to look for."
+
+"Not a bit misplaced. You know very well I shall have a sort of instinct
+which will take me straight to it."
+
+"Dear me! It hasn't any smell, you know," said Sissy with perfect
+gravity.
+
+"Oh, how cruel!" said Carroll, "withering up my delicate feelings with
+thoughtless sarcasm! Smell? no! My what-d'ye-call-it--sympathy--will
+tell me which it is. My heart will beat faster as I approach it. But
+I'll have that leaf all the same, please."
+
+"And it might be as well to know where to look for it."
+
+"We found it in the ruins--in the wall of the refectory," said
+Hardwicke.
+
+Sissy looked doubtful, but Carroll exclaimed, "Oh, I know! That's where
+the old fellows used to dine, isn't it? And had sermons read to them all
+the time."
+
+"What a bore!" some one suggested.
+
+"Well, I don't know about that," said Archie. "Sermons always are awful
+bores, ain't they? But I don't think I should mind 'em so much if I
+might eat my dinner all the time." He stopped with a comical look of
+alarm. "I say, we haven't got any parsons here, have we?"
+
+"No," said Fothergill smiling. "We've brought the surgeon, in case of
+broken bones, but we've left the chaplain at home. So you may give us
+the full benefit of your opinions."
+
+"I thought there wasn't one," Archie remarked, looking up at Sissy,
+"because nobody said grace. Or don't you ever say grace at a picnic?"
+
+"I don't think you do," Sissy replied. "Unless it were a very Low Church
+picnic perhaps. I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"Makes a difference being out of doors, I suppose," said Archie,
+examining the little frond which Edith had given him. "And this is what
+you call maiden-hair?"
+
+"What should you call it?"
+
+"A libel," he answered promptly. "Maiden--hair, indeed! Why, I can see
+some a thousand times prettier quite close by. What can you want with
+this? _You_ can't see the other, but I'll tell you what it's like. It's
+the most beautiful brown, with gold in it, and it grows in little
+ripples and waves and curls, and nothing ever was half so fine before,
+and it catches just the edge of a ray of sunshine--oh, don't move your
+head!--and looks like a golden glory--"
+
+"Dear me!" said Sissy. "Then I'm afraid it's very rough."
+
+"--And the least bit of it is worth a cartload of this green rubbish."
+
+"Ah! But you see it is very much harder to get."
+
+"Of course it is," said Archie. "But exchange is no robbery, they say.
+Suppose I go and dig up some of this, don't you think--remembering that
+I am a poor sailor-boy, going to be banished from 'England, home and
+beauty,' and that I shall most likely be drowned on my next
+voyage--don't you think--"
+
+"I think that, on your own showing, you must get me at least a cartload
+of the other before you have the face to finish that sentence."
+
+"A cartload! I feel like a prince in a fairy-tale. And what would you do
+with it all?"
+
+"Well, I really hardly know what I should do with it."
+
+"There now!" said Archie. "And I could tell you in a moment what I would
+do with mine if you gave it me."
+
+"Oh, but I could tell you that."
+
+"Tell me, then."
+
+"You would fold it up carefully in a neat little bit of paper, but you
+would not write anything on it, because you would not like it to look
+business-like. Besides, you couldn't possibly forget. And a few months
+hence you will have lost your heart to some foreign young lady--I don't
+know where you are going--and you would find the little packet in your
+desk, and wonder who gave it to you."
+
+"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the
+turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and
+sat up again. "There _was_ a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for
+the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or
+three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help
+me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have
+such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and
+I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself,
+'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm
+sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I
+consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I
+can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have
+sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd
+had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't."
+
+"You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do
+you always mention it when you ask--"
+
+"Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought _you_ would take it as it was
+meant--as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose
+it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I _couldn't_
+tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much
+higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up
+with anybody else in my mind?"
+
+"She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair
+too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?"
+
+"Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but
+you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll
+look for this green stuff."
+
+Fothergill smiled, but Latimer's handsome face flushed. He had made a
+dozen attempts to supplant Carroll, and had been foiled by the laughing
+pair. What was the use of being a good-looking fellow of six-and-twenty,
+head of one of the county families and owner of Latimer's Court and
+Ashendale, if he were to be set aside by a beggarly sailor-boy? What did
+Fothergill mean by bringing his poor relations dragging after him where
+they were not wanted? He sprang to his feet, and went away with long
+strides to make violent love to the farmer's rosy little daughter. He
+knew that he meant nothing at all, and that he was filling the poor
+child's head and heart with the vainest of hopes. He knew that he owed
+especial respect and consideration to the daughter of his tenant, a man
+who had dealt faithfully by him, and whose father and grandfather had
+held Ashendale under the Latimers. He felt that he was acting meanly
+even while he kissed little Lucy by the red wall where the apricots were
+ripening in the sun. And he had no overmastering passion for excuse:
+what did he care for little Lucy? He was doing wrong, and he was doing
+it _because_ it was wrong. He was in a fiercely antagonistic mood, and,
+as he could not fight Fothergill and Carroll, he fought with his own
+sense of truth and honor, for want of a better foe. And Lucy, conscious
+of her rosy prettiness, stood shyly pulling the lavender-heads in a glad
+bewilderment of vanity, wonder and delight, while Latimer's heart was
+full of jealous anger. If Sissy Langton could amuse herself, so could
+he.
+
+But Sissy was too happily absorbed in her amusement to think of his. She
+had avoided him, as she had avoided Captain Fothergill, from a sense of
+danger. They were becoming too serious, too much in earnest, and she did
+not want to be serious. So she went gayly across the grass, laughing at
+Archie because he would look on level ground for her maiden-hair
+spleenwort. They came to a small enclosure.
+
+"Here you are!" said Carroll. "This is what somebody said was the
+refectory. It makes one feel quite sad and sentimental only to think
+what a lot of jolly dinners have been eaten here. And nothing left of it
+all!"
+
+"That's your idea of sentiment, Mr. Carroll? It sounds to me as if you
+hadn't had enough to eat."
+
+"Oh yes, I had plenty. But we ought to pledge each other in a cup of
+sack, or something of the kind. And a place like this ought at least to
+smell deliciously of roast and boiled. Instead of which it might as well
+be the chapel."
+
+Sissy gazed up at the wall: "There's some maiden-hair! How was it I
+never saw it this morning? Surely, we came along the top and looked down
+into this place."
+
+"No," said Archie. "That was the chapel we looked into. Didn't I say
+they were just alike?"
+
+"Well, I can easily get up there," she said. "And you may stay down here
+if you like, and grow sentimental over the ghost of a dinner." And,
+laughing, she darted up a steep ascent of turf, slackening her pace when
+she came to a rough heap of fallen stones. Carroll was by her side
+directly, helping her. "Why, this is prettier than where we went this
+morning," she said when they reached the top: "you see the whole place
+better. But it's narrower, I think. This is the west wall, isn't it? Oh,
+Mr. Carroll, how much the sun has gone down already!"
+
+"I wish I were Moses, or whoever it was, to make it stop," said the boy:
+"it would stay up there a good long time."
+
+There was a black belt of shadow at the foot of the wall. Archie looked
+down as if to measure its breadth. A little tuft of green caught his
+eye, and stooping he pulled it from between the stones.
+
+"Oh, how broken it is here! Doesn't it look as if a giant had taken a
+great bite out of it?" Sissy exclaimed, at the same moment that he
+called after her, "Is this right, Miss Langton?"
+
+She turned her head, and for a second's space he saw her bright face,
+her laughing, parted lips. Then there was a terrible cry, stretched
+hands at which he snatched instinctively but in vain, and a stone which
+slipped and fell heavily. He stumbled forward, and recovered himself
+with an effort. There was blank space before him--and what below?
+
+Archie Carroll half scrambled down by the help of the ivy, half slid,
+and reached the ground. Thus, at the risk of his life, he gained half a
+minute, and spent it in kneeling on the grass--a yard away from that
+which he dared not touch--saying pitifully, "Miss Langton! Oh, won't you
+speak to me, Miss Langton?"
+
+He was in the shadow, but looking across the enclosure he faced a broken
+doorway in the south-east corner. The ground sloped away a little, and
+the arch opened into the stainless blue. A sound of footsteps made
+Carroll look up, and through the archway came Raymond Fothergill. He had
+heard the cry, he had outrun the rest, and, even in his blank
+bewilderment of horror, Archie shrank back scared at his cousin's
+aspect. His brows and moustache were black as night against the
+unnatural whiteness of his face, which was like bleached wax. His eyes
+were terrible. He seemed to reach the spot in an instant. Carroll saw
+his hands on the stone which had fallen, and lay on her--O God!--or only
+on her dress?
+
+Fothergill's features contracted in sudden agony as he noted the
+horribly twisted position in which she lay, but he stooped without a
+moment's hesitation, and, lifting her gently, laid her on the turf,
+resting her head upon his knee. There was a strange contrast between the
+tenderness with which he supported her and the fierce anger of his face.
+Others of the party came rushing on the scene in dismay and horror.
+
+"Water!" said Fothergill. "Where's Anderson?" (Anderson was the young
+doctor.) "Not here?"
+
+"He went by the fish-ponds with Evelyn," cried Edith suddenly: "I saw
+him." Hardwicke darted off.
+
+"Curse him! Playing the fool when he's wanted more than he ever will be
+again.--Mrs. Latimer!"
+
+Edith rushed away to find her mother.
+
+Some one brought water, and held it while Fothergill, with his
+disengaged hand, sprinkled the white face on his knee.
+
+Walter Latimer hurried round the corner. He held a pink rosebud, on
+which his fingers tightened unconsciously as he ran. Coming to the
+staring group, he stopped aghast. "Good God!" he panted, "what has
+happened?"
+
+Fothergill dashed more water on the shut eyes and bright hair.
+
+Latimer looked from him to the others standing round: "What has
+happened?"
+
+A hoarse voice spoke from the background: "She fell." Archie Carroll had
+risen from his knees, and, lifting one hand above his head, he pointed
+to the wall. Suddenly, he met Fothergill's eyes, and with a
+half-smothered cry he flung himself all along upon the grass and hid his
+face.
+
+"Fothergill! is she much hurt?" cried Latimer. "Is it serious?"
+
+The other did not look up. "I cannot tell," he said, "but I believe she
+is killed."
+
+Latimer uttered a cry: "No! no! For God's sake don't say that! It can't
+be!"
+
+Fothergill made no answer.
+
+"It isn't possible!" said Walter. But his glance measured the height of
+the wall and rested on the stones scattered thickly below. The words
+died on his lips.
+
+"Is Anderson never coming?" said some one else. Another messenger
+hurried off. Latimer stood as if rooted to the ground, gazing after him.
+All at once he noticed the rose which he still held, and jerked it away
+with a movement as of horror.
+
+The last runner returned: "Anderson and Hardwicke will be here directly:
+I saw them coming up the path from the fish-ponds. Here is Mrs.
+Latimer."
+
+[Illustration: "FOTHERGILL! IS SHE MUCH HURT?"--Page 682.]
+
+Edith ran through the archway first, eager and breathless. "Here is
+mamma," she said, going straight to Raymond Fothergill with her tidings,
+and speaking softly as if Sissy were asleep. A little nod was his only
+answer, and the girl stood gazing with frightened eyes at the drooping
+head which he supported. Mrs. Latimer, Hardwicke and Anderson all
+arrived together, and the group divided to make way for them. The first
+thing to be done was to carry Sissy to the farmhouse, and while they
+were arranging this Edith felt two hands pressed lightly on her
+shoulders. She turned and confronted Harry Hardwicke.
+
+"Hush!" he said: "do not disturb them now, but when they have taken her
+to the house, if you hear anything said, tell them that I have gone for
+Dr. Grey, and as soon as I have sent him here I shall go on for Mrs.
+Middleton. You understand?" he added, for the child was looking at him
+with her scared eyes, and had not spoken.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I will tell them. Oh, Harry! will she die?"
+
+"Not if anything you and I can do will save her--will she, Edith?" and
+Hardwicke ran off to the stables for his horse. A man was there who
+saddled it for him, and a rough farm-boy stood by and saw how the
+gentleman, while he waited, stroked the next one--a lady's horse, a
+chestnut--and how presently he turned his face away and laid his cheek
+for a moment against the chestnut's neck. The boy thought it was a rum
+go, and stood staring vacantly while Hardwicke galloped off on his
+terrible errand.
+
+Meanwhile, they were carrying Sissy to the house. Fothergill was
+helping, of course. Latimer had stood by irresolutely, half afraid, yet
+secretly hoping for a word which would call him. But no one heeded him.
+Evelyn and Edith had hurried on to see that there was a bed on which she
+could be laid, and the sad little procession followed them at a short
+distance. The lookers-on straggled after it, an anxiously-whispering
+group, and as the last passed through the ruined doorway Archie Carroll
+lifted his head and glanced round. The wall, with its mosses and ivy,
+rose darkly above him--too terrible a presence to be faced alone. He
+sprang up, hurried out of the black belt of shadow and fled across the
+turf. He never looked back till he stood under the arch, but halting
+there, within sight of his companions, he clasped a projection with one
+hand as if he were giddy, and turning his head gazed intently at the
+crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass,
+every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The
+breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot
+stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there
+was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite.
+Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel
+stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across the hideous gulf which parted him
+from the moment when he stood upon the wall with Sissy Langton laughing
+by his side. Not till every detail was cruelly stamped upon his brain
+did he leave the spot.
+
+By that time they had carried Sissy in. Little Lucy had been close by,
+her rosy face blanched with horror, and had looked appealingly at
+Latimer as he went past. She wanted a kind word or glance, but the
+innocent confiding look filled him with remorse and disgust. He would
+not meet it: he stared straight before him. Lucy was overcome by
+conflicting emotions, went off into hysterics, and her mother had to be
+called away from the room where she was helping Mrs. Latimer. Walter
+felt as if he could have strangled the pretty, foolish child to whom he
+had been saying sweet things not half an hour before. The rose that he
+had gathered for her was fastened in her dress, and the pink bud that
+she had given him lay in its first freshness on the turf in the ruins.
+
+Some of the party waited in the garden. Fothergill stood in the shadow
+of the porch, silent and a little apart. Archie Carroll came up the
+path, but no one spoke to him, and he went straight to his cousin.
+Leaning against the woodwork, he opened his lips to speak, but was
+obliged to stop and clear his throat, for the words would not come. "How
+is she?" he said at last.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why do you look at me like that?" said the boy desperately.
+
+Fothergill slightly changed his position, and the light fell more
+strongly on his face. "I don't ever want to look at you again," he said
+with quiet emphasis. "You've done mischief enough to last your lifetime
+if you lived a thousand years."
+
+"It wasn't my fault! Ray, it wasn't!"
+
+"Whose, then?" said Fothergill. "Possibly you think it would have
+happened if I had been there?"
+
+"They said that wall--" the young fellow began.
+
+"They didn't. No one told you to climb the most ruinous bit of the whole
+place. And she didn't even know where the refectory was."
+
+Carroll groaned: "Don't, Ray: I can't bear it! I shall kill myself!"
+
+"No, you won't," said Fothergill. "You'll go safe home to your people at
+the rectory. No more of this."
+
+Archie hesitated, and then miserably dragged himself away. Fothergill
+retreated a little farther into the porch, and was almost lost in the
+shadow. No tidings, good or evil, had come from the inner room where
+Sissy lay, but his state of mind was rather despairing than anxious.
+From the moment when he ran across the grass and saw her lying, a
+senseless heap, at the foot of the wall, he had felt assured that she
+was fatally injured. If he hoped at all it was an unconscious hope--a
+hope of which he never would be conscious until a cruel certainty killed
+it.
+
+His dominant feeling was anger. He had cared for this girl--cared for
+her so much that he had been astonished at himself for so caring--and he
+felt that this love was the crown of his life. He did not for a moment
+doubt that he would have won her. He had triumphed in anticipation, but
+Death had stepped between them and baffled him, and now it was all over.
+Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who
+robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer
+no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury
+was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a
+bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter
+who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill was in fierce revolt.
+
+And yet, through it all, he knew perfectly well that Sissy's death would
+hardly make any outward change in him. He was robbed of his best
+chance, but he did not pretend to himself that his heart was broken or
+that his life was over. Walter Latimer might fancy that kind of thing,
+but Fothergill knew that he should be much such a man as he had been
+before he met her, only somewhat lower, because he had so nearly been
+something higher and missed it. That was all.
+
+Mrs. Latimer came for a few moments out of the hushed mystery of that
+inner room. The tidings ran through the expectant groups that Sissy had
+moved slightly, and had opened her eyes once, but there was little
+hopefulness in the news. She was terribly injured: that much was
+certain, but nothing more. Mrs. Latimer wanted her son. "Walter," she
+said, "you must go home and take the girls. Indeed you must. They cannot
+stay here, and I cannot send them back without you." Latimer refused,
+protested, yielded. "Mother," he said, as he turned to go, "you don't
+know--" His voice suddenly gave way.
+
+"I do know. Oh, my poor boy!" She passed quickly to where Evelyn stood,
+and told her that Walter had gone to order the horses. "I would rather
+you were all away before Mrs. Middleton comes," she said: "Henry
+Hardwicke has gone for her."
+
+This departure was a signal to the rest. The groups melted away, and
+with sad farewells to one another, and awestruck glances at the windows
+of the farmhouse, almost all the guests departed. The sound of wheels
+and horse-hoofs died away in the lanes, and all was very still. The bees
+hummed busily round the white lilies and the lavender, and on the warm
+turf of one of the narrow paths lay Archie Carroll.
+
+He had a weight on heart and brain. There had been a moment all blue and
+sunny, the last of his happy life, when Sissy's laughing face looked
+back at him and he was a light-hearted-boy. Then had come a moment of
+horror and incredulous despair, and that black moment had hardened into
+eternity. Nightmare is hideous, and Archie's very life had become a
+nightmare. Of course he would get over it, like his cousin, though,
+unlike his cousin, he did not think so; and their different moods had
+their different bitternesses. In days to come Carroll would enjoy his
+life once more, would be ready for a joke or an adventure, would dance
+the night through, would fall in love. This misery was a swift and
+terrible entrance into manhood, for he could never be a boy again. And
+the scar would be left, though the wound would assuredly heal. But
+Archie, stumbling blindly through that awful pass, never thought that he
+should come again to the light of day: it was to him as the blackness of
+a hopeless hell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+THROUGH THE NIGHT.
+
+
+The village-clock struck five. As the last lingering stroke died upon
+the air there was the sound of a carriage rapidly approaching. Carroll
+raised his head when it stopped at the gate, and saw Hardwicke spring
+out and help a lady to alight. She was an old lady, who walked quickly
+to the house, looking neither to right nor left, and vanished within the
+doorway. Hardwicke stopped, as if to give some order to the driver, and
+then hurried after her. Archie stared vaguely, first at them, and then
+at the man, who turned his horses and went round to the stables. When
+they were out of sight he laid his head down again. The little scene had
+been a vivid picture which stamped itself with curious distinctness on
+his brain, yet failed to convey any meaning whatever. He had not the
+faintest idea of the agony of love and fear in Mrs. Middleton's heart as
+she passed him. To Archie, just then, the whole universe was _his_
+agony, and there was no room for more.
+
+Ten minutes later came Dr. Grey's brougham. The doctor, as he jumped
+out, told his man to wait. He went from the gate to the house more
+hurriedly than Mrs. Middleton, and his anxiety was more marked, but he
+found time to look round as he went with keen eyes, which rested for an
+instant on the young sailor, though he lay half hidden by the bushes.
+He too vanished, as the others had vanished.
+
+About an hour later he came out again, and Fothergill followed him. The
+doctor started when he encountered his eager eyes. Fothergill demanded
+his opinion. He began some of the usual speeches in which men wrap up
+the ghastly word "death" in such disguise that it can hardly be
+recognized.
+
+The soldier cut him short: "Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey."
+
+The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.
+
+"Danger--yes," said Fothergill, "but is there any hope? I am not a
+fool--I sha'n't go in and scare the women: is there any hope?"
+
+The answer was written on the doctor's face. He had known Sissy Langton
+from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his
+head, and murmured something about "even if there were no other injury,
+the spine--"
+
+Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with
+an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with
+which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear
+sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's
+will."
+
+"God's will! God's will! Are you sure it isn't the devil's?" said
+Fothergill. "It seems more like it. If you think it is God's will, you
+may persuade yourself it's yours, for aught I know. But I'm not such a
+damned hypocrite as to make believe it's mine."
+
+And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face
+and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the
+farmhouse.
+
+So Sissy's doom was spoken--to linger a few hours, more or less, in
+helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously,
+was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much
+to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old
+lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, "I fell."
+
+"Yes, my darling, I know," Aunt Harriet said.
+
+"Can I go home?" Sissy asked after a pause.
+
+"No, dear, you must not think of it: you mustn't ask to go home."
+
+"I thought not," said Sissy.
+
+Mrs. Middleton asked her if she felt much pain.
+
+"I don't know," she said, and closed her eyes.
+
+Later, Henry Hardwicke sent in a message, and the old lady came out to
+speak to him. He was standing by an open casement in the passage,
+looking out at the sunset through the orchard boughs. "What is it,
+Harry?" she said.
+
+He started and turned round: "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Middleton, but I
+thought in case you wanted to send any telegrams--if--if--I mean I
+thought you might want to send some, and there is not very much time."
+
+She put her hand to her head. "I ought to, oughtn't I?" she said. "Who
+should be sent for?"
+
+"Mr. Hammond?" Hardwicke questioned doubtfully.
+
+Something like relief or pleasure lighted her sad eyes: "Yes, yes! send
+for Godfrey Hammond. He will come." She was about to leave him, but the
+young fellow stepped forward: "Mrs. Middleton"--was it the clear red
+light from the window that suddenly flushed his face?--"Mrs. Middleton,
+shall I send for Mr. Percival Thorne?"
+
+She stopped, looking strangely at him: something in his voice surprised
+her. "For Percival?" she said.
+
+"May I? I think he ought to come." The hot color was burning on his
+cheeks. What right had he to betray the secret which he believed he had
+discovered? And yet could he stand by and not speak for her when she had
+so little time in which to speak for herself?
+
+"Is it for his sake," said Mrs. Middleton, "or is it that you think--?
+Well, let it be so: send for Percival. Yes," she added, "perhaps I have
+misunderstood. Yes, send at once for Percival."
+
+"I'll go," said Harry, hurrying down the passage. "The message shall be
+sent off at once. I'll take it to Fordborough."
+
+"Must you go yourself?" Mrs. Middleton raised her voice a little as he
+moved away.
+
+"No: let me go," said Captain Fothergill, turning the farther corner: "I
+am going to Fordborough. What is it? I will take it. Mrs. Middleton, you
+will let me be your messenger?"
+
+"You are very good," she said.--"Harry, you will write--I can't. Oh, I
+must go back." And she vanished, leaving the two men face to face.
+
+"I've no telegraph-forms," said Harry after a pause. "If you would take
+the paper to my father, he will send the messages."
+
+Fothergill nodded silently, and went out to make ready for his journey.
+Hardwicke followed him, and stood in the porch pencilling on the back of
+an old letter. When Fothergill had given his orders he walked up to
+Carroll, touched the lad's shoulder with the tips of his fingers, and
+stood away. "Come," he said.
+
+Archie raised himself from the ground and stumbled to his feet: "Come?
+where?"
+
+"To Fordborough."
+
+The boy started and stepped back. He looked at the farmhouse, he looked
+at his cousin. "I'll come afterward," he faltered.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Fothergill. "I'm going now, and of course you go with
+me."
+
+Archie shrank away, keeping his eyes fixed, as if in a kind of
+fascination, on his cousin's terrible eyes. The idea of going back alone
+with Raymond was awful to him. "No, I can't come, Ray--indeed I can't,"
+he said. "I'll walk: I'd much rather--I would indeed."
+
+"What for?" said Fothergill. "You are doing no good here. Do you know I
+have a message to take? I can't be kept waiting. Don't be a fool," he
+said in a lower but not less imperative voice.
+
+Archie glanced despairingly round. Hardwicke came forward with the paper
+in his outstretched hand: "Leave him here, Captain Fothergill. I dare
+say I shall go to the inn in the village, and he may go with me. He can
+take you the earliest news to-morrow morning."
+
+Archie looked breathlessly from one to the other. "As you please," said
+Fothergill, and strode off without another word.
+
+The boy tried to say something in the way of thanks. "Oh, it's nothing,"
+Hardwicke replied. "You won't care what sort of quarters they may turn
+out to be, I know." And he went back to the house with a little shrug of
+his shoulders at the idea of having young Carroll tied to him in this
+fashion. He did not want the boy, but Hardwicke could never help
+sacrificing himself.
+
+So Archie went to the gate and watched his cousin ride away, a slim
+black figure on his black horse against the burning sky. Fothergill
+never turned his head. Where was the use of looking back? He was intent
+only on his errand, and when that piece of paper should have been
+delivered into Mr. Hardwicke's hands the last link between Sissy Langton
+and himself would be broken. There would be no further service to
+render. Fothergill did not know that the message he carried was to
+summon his rival, but it would have made no difference in his feelings
+if he had. Nothing made any difference now.
+
+Mrs. Middleton sat by Sissy's bedside in the clear evening light. Harry
+Hardwicke's words haunted her: why did he think that Sissy wanted
+Percival? They had parted a year ago, and she had believed that Sissy
+was cured of her liking for him. It was Sissy who had sent him away, and
+she had been brighter and gayer of late: indeed, Mrs. Middleton had
+fancied that Walter Latimer-- Well, that was over, but if Sissy cared
+for Percival--
+
+A pair of widely-opened eyes were fixed on her: "Am I going to die, Aunt
+Harriet?"
+
+"I hope not. Oh, my darling, I pray that you may live."
+
+"I think I am going to die. Will it be very soon? Would there be time to
+send--"
+
+"We will send for anything or any one you want. Do you feel worse, dear?
+Time to send for whom?"
+
+"For Percival."
+
+"Harry Hardwicke has sent for him already. Perhaps he has the message by
+now: it is an hour and a half since the messenger went."
+
+"When will he come?"
+
+"To-morrow, darling."
+
+There was a pause. Then the faint voice came again: "What time?"
+
+Mrs. Middleton went to the door and called softly to Hardwicke. He had
+been looking in Bradshaw, and she returned directly: "Percival will come
+by the express to-night. He will be at Fordborough by the quarter-past
+nine train, and Harry will meet him and bring him over at once--by ten
+o'clock, he says, or a few minutes later."
+
+Sissy's brows contracted for a moment: she was calculating the time.
+"What is it now?" she said.
+
+"Twenty minutes to eight."
+
+Fourteen hours and a half! The whole night between herself and Percival!
+The darkness must come and must go, the sun must set and must again be
+high in the heavens, before he could stand by her side. It seemed to
+Sissy as if she were going down into the blackness of an awful gulf,
+where Death was waiting for her. Would she have strength to escape him,
+to toil up the farther side, and to reach the far-off to-morrow and
+Percival? "Aunt Harriet," she said, "shall I live till then? I want to
+speak to him."
+
+"Yes, my darling--indeed you will. Don't talk so: you will break my
+heart. Perhaps God will spare you."
+
+"No," said Sissy--"no."
+
+Between eight and nine Hardwicke was summoned again. Mrs. Latimer wanted
+some one to go to Latimer's Court, to take the latest news and to say
+that it was impossible she could return that night. "You see they went
+away before Dr. Grey came," she said. "I have written a little note. Can
+you find me a messenger?"
+
+"I will either find one or I will go myself," he replied.
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean to trouble you. And wait a moment, for Mrs. Middleton
+wants him to go on to her house. She will come and speak to you when I
+go back to the poor girl."
+
+"How is Miss Langton?"
+
+"I hardly know. I think she is wandering a little: she talked just now
+about some embroidery she has been doing--asked for it, in fact."
+
+"When Dr. Grey was obliged to go he didn't think there would be any
+change before he came back, surely?" said Hardwicke anxiously.
+
+"No. But she can't know what she is saying, can she? Poor girl! she will
+never do another stitch." Mrs. Latimer fairly broke down. The unfinished
+embroidery which never could be finished brought the truth home to her.
+It is hard to realize that a life with its interlacing roots and fibres
+is broken off short.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Latimer, don't! don't!" Harry exclaimed, aghast at her tears.
+"For dear Mrs. Middleton's sake!" He rushed away, and returned with
+wine. "If you give way what will become of us?"
+
+She was better in a few minutes, and able to go back, while Harry waited
+in quiet confidence for Mrs. Middleton. He was not afraid of a burst of
+helpless weeping when she came. She was gentle, yielding, delicate, but
+there was something of the old squire's obstinacy in her, and in a
+supreme emergency it came out as firmness. She looked old and frail as
+she stepped into the passage and closed the door after her. Her hand
+shook, but her eyes met his bravely and her lips were firm.
+
+"You'll have some wine too," he said, pouring it out as a matter of
+course. "You can drink it while you tell me what I am to do."
+
+She took the glass with a slight inclination of her head, and explained
+that she wanted an old servant who had been Sissy's nurse when she was a
+little child. "Mrs. Latimer is very kind," she said, "but Sissy will
+like her own people best. And Sarah would be broken-hearted--" She
+paused. "Here is a list of things that I wish her to bring."
+
+"Mrs. Latimer thought Miss Langton was not quite herself," he said
+inquiringly.
+
+"Do you mean because she talked of her work? Oh, I don't think so. She
+answers quite sensibly--indeed, she speaks quite clearly. That was the
+only thing."
+
+"Then is it down in the list, this needlework? Or where is it to be
+found?"
+
+"You will bring it?" said Mrs. Middleton. "Well, perhaps--"
+
+"If she should ask again," he said.
+
+"True. Yes, yes, bring it." She told him where to find the little case.
+"The fancy may haunt her. How am I to thank you, Harry?"
+
+"Not at all," he said. "Only let me do what I can."
+
+It was nearly eleven before Hardwicke had accomplished his double errand
+and returned with Sarah. The stars were out, the ruins of the priory
+rose in great black masses against the sky, the farmhouse windows
+beneath the overhanging eaves were like bright eyes gazing out into the
+night. Dr. Grey had come back in the interval, and had seen his patient.
+There was nothing new to say, and nothing to be done, except to make the
+path to the grave as little painful as might be. He was taking a nap in
+Mr. Greenwell's arm-chair when the young man came in, but woke up clear
+and alert in a moment. "Ah, you have come?" he said, recognizing the old
+servant. "That's well: you'll save your mistress a little. Only, mind,
+we mustn't have any crying. If there is anything of that sort you will
+do more harm than good."
+
+Sarah deigned no reply, but passed on. Mrs. Middleton came out to meet
+them. Sissy had not spoken. She lay with her eyes shut, and moaned now
+and then. "Are you going home, Harry?" said the old lady.
+
+"Only into the village: I've got a room at the Latimer Arms. It isn't
+two minutes' walk from here, so I can be fetched directly if I'm
+wanted."
+
+"And you will be sure to meet the train?"
+
+"I will: you may depend upon me. But I shall come here first."
+
+"Good-night, then. Go and get some rest."
+
+Hardwicke went off to look for Archie Carroll. He found him in the
+square flagged hall, sitting on the corner of a window-seat, with his
+head leaning against the frame, among Mrs. Greenwell's geraniums. "Come
+along, old fellow," said Harry.
+
+There was only a glimmering candle, and the hall was very dim. Archie
+got up submissively and groped his way after his guide. "Where are we
+going?" he asked as the door was opened.
+
+"To a little public-house close by. We couldn't ask the Greenwells to
+take us in."
+
+As they went out into the road the priory rose up suddenly on the left
+and towered awfully above them. Carroll shuddered, drew closer to his
+companion and kept his eyes fixed on the ground. "I feel as if I were
+the ghost of myself, and those were the ghosts of the ruins," he said as
+he hurried past.
+
+The flight of fancy was altogether beyond Hardwicke: "You've been
+sitting alone and thinking. There has been nothing for you to do, and I
+couldn't help leaving you. Here we are."
+
+They turned into the little sanded parlor of the ale-house. Hardwicke
+had looked in previously and given his orders, and supper was laid ready
+for them. He sat down and began to help himself, but Archie at first
+refused to eat.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Harry. "You have had nothing since the beginning of the
+day. We must not break down, any of us." And with a little persuasion he
+prevailed, and saw the lad make a tolerable supper and drink some brandy
+and water afterward. "Vile brandy!" said Hardwicke as he set his tumbler
+down. Archie was leaning with both elbows on the table, gazing at him.
+His eyes were heavy and swollen, and there were purple shadows below
+them.
+
+"Mr. Hardwicke," he said, "you've been very good to me. Do you think it
+was my fault?"
+
+"Do I think what was your fault?"
+
+"_This!_" Archie said--"to-day."
+
+"No--not if I understand it."
+
+"Ray said if he had been there--"
+
+"I wish he had been. But we must not expect old heads on young
+shoulders. How did it happen?"
+
+"We climbed up on the wall, and she was saying how narrow and broken it
+was, and I picked some of that stuff and called to her, and as she
+looked back--"
+
+Hardwicke groaned. "It was madly imprudent," he said. "But I don't blame
+you. You didn't think. Poor fellow! I only hope you won't think too much
+in future. Come, it's time for bed."
+
+"I don't want to sleep," Archie answered: "I can't sleep."
+
+"Very well," said Hardwicke. "But I must try and get a little rest. They
+had only one room for us, so if you can't sleep you'll keep quiet and
+let a fellow see what he can do in that line. And you may call me in the
+morning if I don't wake. But don't worry yourself, for I shall."
+
+"What time?" said Carroll.
+
+"Oh, from five to six--not later than six."
+
+But in half an hour it was Carroll who lay worn out and sleeping
+soundly, and Hardwicke who was counting the slow minutes of that
+intolerable night.
+
+Sarah had been indignant that Dr. Grey should tell her not to cry. But
+when Sissy looked up with a gentle smile of recognition, and instead of
+calling her by her name said "Nurse," as she used to say in old times,
+the good woman was very near it indeed, and was obliged to go away to
+the window to try to swallow the lump that rose up in her throat and
+almost choked her.
+
+Mrs. Middleton sat by her darling's bedside. She had placed the little
+work-case in full view, and presently Sissy noticed it and would have it
+opened. The half-finished strip of embroidery was laid within easy reach
+of hand and eye. She smiled, but was not satisfied. "The case," she
+said. Her fingers strayed feebly among the little odds and ends which it
+contained, and closed over something which she kept.
+
+Then there was a long silence, unbroken till Sissy was thirsty and
+wanted something to drink. "What time?" she said when she had finished.
+
+"Half-past twelve."
+
+"It's very dark."
+
+"We will have another candle," said Aunt Harriet.
+
+"No: the candle only makes me see how dark it is all round."
+
+Again there was silence, but not so long this time. And again Sissy
+broke it: "Aunt Harriet, he is coming now."
+
+"Yes, darling, he is coming."
+
+"I feel as if I saw the train, with red lights in front, coming through
+the night--always coming, but never any nearer."
+
+"But it _is_ nearer every minute. Percival is nearer now than when you
+spoke."
+
+Sissy said "Yes," and was quiet again till between one and two. Then
+Mrs. Middleton perceived that her eyes were open. "What is it, dear
+child?" she said.
+
+"The night is so long!"
+
+"Sissy," said Aunt Harriet softly, "I want you to listen to me. A year
+ago, when Godfrey died and I talked about the money that I hoped to
+leave you one day, you told me what you should like me to do with it
+instead, because you had enough and you thought it was not fair. I
+didn't quite understand then, and I would not promise. Do you remember?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sissy, shall I promise now? I've been thinking about it, and I've no
+wish on earth but to make you happy. Will it make you happier if I
+promise now that it shall be as you said?"
+
+"Yes," said Sissy with eager eyes.
+
+"Then I do promise: all that is mine to leave he shall have."
+
+Sissy answered with a smile. "Kiss me," she said. And so the promise was
+sealed. After that the worst of the night seemed somehow to be over.
+Sissy slept a little, and Aunt Harriet nodded once or twice in the
+easy-chair. Starting into wakefulness after one of these moments, she
+saw the outline of the window faintly defined in gray, and thanked God
+that the dawn had come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+BY THE EXPRESS.
+
+
+Mr. Hardwicke, not knowing Percival Thorne's precise address, had
+telegraphed to Godfrey Hammond, begging him to forward the message
+without delay. A couple of days earlier Hammond had suddenly taken it
+into his head that he was tired of being in town and would go away
+somewhere. In a sort of whimsical amusement at his own mood he decided
+that the Land's End ought to suit a misanthrope, and promptly took a
+ticket for Penzance as a considerable step in the right direction.
+
+It made no difference to Percival, for Hammond had left full directions
+with a trustworthy servant in case any letters should come for Mr.
+Thorne, and the man sent the message on to Brenthill at once. But it
+made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the
+telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard
+Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds
+screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks far below.
+
+But with Percival there was no delay. The message found him in Bellevue
+street, though he did not return there immediately after his parting
+with Judith. He wanted the open air, the sky overhead, movement and
+liberty to calm the joyful tumult in heart and brain. He hastened to the
+nearest point whence he could look over trees and fields. The prospect
+was not very beautiful. The trees were few--some cropped willows by a
+mud-banked rivulet and a group or two of gaunt and melancholy elms. And
+the fields had a trodden, suburban aspect, which made it hardly needful
+to stick up boards describing them as eligible building-ground. Yet
+there was grass, such as it was, and daisies sprinkled here and there,
+and soft cloud-shadows gliding over it. Percival's unreal and fantastic
+dream had perished suddenly when Judith put her hand in his. Now, as he
+walked across these meadows, he saw a new vision, that dream of noble,
+simple poverty, which, if it could but be realized, would be the fairest
+of all.
+
+When he returned from his walk, and came once more to the well-known
+street which he was learning to call "home," he was so much calmer that
+he thought he was quite himself again. Not the languid, hopeless self
+who had lived there once, but a self young, vigorous, elate, rejoicing
+in the present and looking confidently toward the future.
+
+  This I can tell,
+  That all will go well,
+
+was the keynote of his mood. He felt as if he trod on air--as if he had
+but to walk boldly forward and every obstacle must give way. The door of
+No. 13 was open, and a boy who had brought a telegram was turning away
+from it. Hurrying in with eager eyes and his face bright with unspoken
+joy, Percival nearly ran up against Mrs. Bryant and Emma, whose heads
+were close together over the address on the envelope.
+
+"Lor! Mr. Thorne, how you startled me! It's for you," said his landlady.
+
+He went up the stairs two at a time, with his message in his hand. Here
+was some good news--not for one moment did he dream it could be other
+than good news--come to crown this day, already the whitest of his life.
+He tore the paper open and read it by the red sunset light, hotly
+reflected from a wilderness of tiles.
+
+He read it twice--thrice--caught at the window-frame to steady himself,
+and stood staring vaguely at the smoke which curled upward from a
+neighboring chimney. He was stunned. The words seemed to have a meaning
+and no meaning. "This is not how people receive news of death, surely?"
+he thought. "I suppose I am in my right senses, or is it a dream?"
+
+He made a strong effort to regain his self-command, but all certainties
+eluded him. This was not the first time that he had taken up a telegram
+and believed that he read the tidings of Sissy's death. He had
+misunderstood it now as then. It could not be. But why could he not
+wake?
+
+"Ashendale." Yes, he remembered Ashendale. He had ridden past the ruins
+the last day he ever rode with Sissy, the day that Horace came home. It
+belonged to the Latimers--to Walter Latimer. And Sissy was dying at
+Ashendale!
+
+All at once he knew that it was no dream. But the keen edge of pain
+awoke him to the thought of what he had to do, and sent him to hunt
+among a heap of papers for a time-table. He drew a long breath. The
+express started at 10.5, and it was now but twenty minutes past eight.
+
+He caught up his hat and hurried to the office. Mr. Ferguson, who seldom
+left much before that time, was on the doorstep. While he was getting
+into his dog-cart Percival hastily explained that he had been summoned
+on a matter of life and death. "Sorry to hear it," said the lawyer as he
+took the reins--"hope you may find things better than you expect. We
+shall see you again when you come back." And with a nod he rattled down
+the street. Percival stood on the pavement gazing after him, when he
+suddenly remembered that he had no money. "I might have asked him to
+give me my half week's salary," he reflected. "Not that that would have
+paid my fare."
+
+A matter of life and death! Sissy waiting for him at Ashendale, and no
+money to pay for a railway-ticket! It would have been absurd if it had
+not been horrible. What had he to sell or pawn? By the time he could go
+to Bellevue street and return would not the shops be shut? It was a
+quarter to nine already. He did not even know where any pawnbroker
+lived, nor what he could take to him, and the time was terribly short.
+He was hurrying homeward while these thoughts passed through his mind
+when Judith's words came back to him: "I have a pound or two to spare,
+and I feel quite rich." He took the first turning toward Miss
+Macgregor's house.
+
+Outside her door he halted for a moment. If they would not let him see
+Judith, how was he to convey his request? He felt in his pocket, found
+the telegram and pencilled below the message, "Sissy Langton was once to
+have been my wife: we parted, and I have never seen her since. I have
+not money enough for my railway-fare: can you help me?" He folded it
+and rang the bell.
+
+No, he could not see Miss Lisle. She was particularly engaged. "Very
+well," he said: "be so good as to take this note to her, and I will wait
+for the answer." His manner impressed the girl so much that, although
+she had been carefully trained by Miss Macgregor, she cast but one
+hesitating glance at the umbrella-stand before she went on her errand.
+
+Percival waited, eager to be off, yet well assured that it was all right
+since it was in Judith's hands. Presently the servant returned and gave
+him a little packet. The wax of the seal was still warm. He opened it
+where he stood, and by the light of Miss Macgregor's hall-lamp read the
+couple of lines it contained:
+
+     "I cannot come, but I send you all the money I have. I pray God you
+     may be in time. Yours, JUDITH."
+
+There were two sovereigns and some silver. He told the girl to thank
+Miss Lisle, and went out into the dusk as the clocks were striking nine.
+Ten minutes brought him to Bellevue street, and rushing up to his room
+he began to put a few things into a little travelling-bag. In his haste
+he neglected to shut the door, and Mrs. Bryant, whose curiosity had been
+excited, came upon him in the midst of this occupation.
+
+"And what may be the meaning of this, Mr. Thorne, if I may make so bold
+as to ask?" she said, eying him doubtfully from the doorway.
+
+Percival explained that he had had bad news and was off by the express.
+
+Mrs. Bryant's darkest suspicions were aroused. She said it was a likely
+story.
+
+"Why, you gave me the telegram yourself," he answered indifferently
+while he caught up a couple of collars. He was too much absorbed to heed
+either Mrs. Bryant or his packing.
+
+"And who sent it, I should like to know?"
+
+Percival made no answer, and she began to grumble about people who had
+money enough to travel all over the country at a minute's notice if they
+liked, and none to pay their debts--people who made promises by the
+hour together, and then sneaked off, leaving boxes with nothing inside
+them, she'd be bound.
+
+Thus baited, Percival at last turned angrily upon her, but before he
+could utter a word another voice interposed: "What are you always
+worrying about, ma? Do come down and have your supper, and let Mr.
+Thorne finish his packing. He'll pay you every halfpenny he owes you:
+don't you know that?" And the door was shut with such decision that it
+was a miracle that Mrs. Bryant was not dashed against the opposite wall.
+"Come along," said Lydia: "there's toasted cheese."
+
+Percival ran down stairs five minutes later with his bag in his hand. He
+turned into his sitting-room, picked up a few papers and thrust them
+into his desk. He was in the act of locking it when he heard a step
+behind him, and looking round he saw Lydia. She had a cup of tea and
+some bread and butter, which she set down before him. "You haven't had a
+morsel since the middle of the day," she said. "Just you drink this. Oh,
+you must: there's lots of time."
+
+"Miss Bryant, this is very kind of you, but I don't think--"
+
+"Just you drink it," said Lydia, "and eat a bit too, or you'll be good
+for nothing." And while Percival hastily obeyed she glanced round the
+room: "Nobody'll meddle with your things while you're gone: don't you
+trouble yourself."
+
+"Oh, I didn't suspect that any one would," he replied, hardly thinking
+whether it was likely or not as he swallowed the bread and butter.
+
+"Well, that was very nice of you, I'm sure, _I_ should have suspected a
+lot if I'd been you," said Lydia candidly. "But nobody shall. Now, you
+aren't going to leave that tea? Why, it wants twenty minutes to ten, and
+not six minutes' walk to the station!"
+
+Percival finished the tea: "Thank you very much, Miss Bryant."
+
+"And I say," Lydia pursued, pulling her curl with less than her usual
+consideration for its beauty, "I suppose you _have_ got money enough?
+Because if not, I'll lend you a little. Don't you mind what ma says, Mr.
+Thorne. I know you're all right."
+
+"You are very good," said Percival. "I didn't expect so much kindness,
+and I've been borrowing already, so I needn't trouble you. But thank you
+for your confidence in me and for your thoughtfulness." He held out his
+hand to Lydia, and thus bade farewell to Bellevue street.
+
+She stood for a moment looking after him. Only a few hours before she
+would have rejoiced in any small trouble or difficulty which might have
+befallen Mr. Thorne. But when he turned round upon her mother and
+herself as they stood at his door, her spite had vanished before the
+sorrowful anxiety of his eyes. She had frequently declared that Mr.
+Thorne was no gentleman, and that she despised him, but she knew in her
+heart that he _was_ a gentleman, and she was ashamed of her mother's
+behavior. Lydia was capable of being magnanimous, provided the object of
+her magnanimity were a man. I doubt if she could have been magnanimous
+to a woman. But Percival Thorne was a young and handsome man, and though
+she did not know what his errand might be, she knew that she was not
+sending him to Miss Lisle. Standing before his glass, she smoothed back
+her hair with both hands, arranged the ribbon at her throat and admired
+the blue earrings and a large locket which she wore suspended from a
+chain. Even while she thought kindly of Mr. Thorne, and wished him well,
+she was examining her complexion and her hands with the eye of a critic.
+"I don't believe that last stuff is a mite of good," she said to
+herself; "and it's no end of bother. I might as well pitch the bottle
+out of the window. It was just as well that he'd borrowed the money of
+some one else, but I'm glad I offered it. I wonder when he'll come
+back?" And with that Lydia returned to her toasted cheese.
+
+Percival had had a nervous fear of some hinderance on his way to the
+station. It was so urgent that he should go by this train that the
+necessity oppressed him like a nightmare. An earthquake seemed a not
+improbable thing. He was seriously afraid that he might lose his way
+during the five minutes' walk through familiar streets. He imagined an
+error of half an hour or so in all the Brenthill clocks. He hardly knew
+what he expected, but he felt it a relief when he came to the station
+and found it standing in its right place, quietly awaiting him. He was
+the first to take a ticket, and the moment the train drew up by the
+platform his hand was on the door of a carriage, though before getting
+in he stopped a porter to inquire if this were the express. The porter
+answered "Yes, sir--all right," with the half smile of superior
+certainty: what else could it be? Thorne took his place and waited a few
+minutes, which seemed an eternity. Then the engine screamed, throbbed,
+and with quickening speed rushed out into the night.
+
+A man was asleep in one corner of the carriage, otherwise Percival was
+alone. His nervous anxiety subsided, since nothing further depended upon
+him till he reached town, and he sat thinking of Sissy and of that brief
+engagement which had already receded into a shadowy past. "It was a
+mistake," he mused, "and she found it out before it was too late. But I
+believe her poor little heart has been aching for me, lest she wounded
+me too cruelly that night. It wasn't her fault. She would have hid her
+fear of me, poor child! if she had been able. And she was so sorry for
+me in my trouble! I don't think she could be content to go on her way
+and take her happiness now while my life was spoilt and miserable. Poor
+little Sissy! she will be glad to know--"
+
+And then he remembered that it was to a dying Sissy that the tidings
+of marriage and hope must be uttered, if uttered at all. And he sat
+as it were in a dull dream, trying to realize how the life which
+in the depths of his poverty had seemed so beautiful and safe was
+suddenly cut short, and how Sissy at that moment lay in the darkness,
+waiting--waiting--waiting. The noise of the train took up his thought,
+and set it to a monotonous repetition of "Waiting at Ashendale! waiting
+at Ashendale!" If only she might live till he could reach her! He seemed
+to be hurrying onward, yet no nearer. His overwrought brain caught up
+the fancy that Death and he were side by side, racing together through
+the dark, at breathless, headlong speed, to Sissy, where she waited for
+them both.
+
+Outside, the landscape lay dim and small, dwarfed by the presence of the
+night. And with the lights burning on its breast, as Sissy saw them in
+her half-waking visions, the express rushed southward across the level
+blackness of the land, beneath the arch of midnight sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+     Quand on a trouve ce qu'on cherchait, on n'a pas le temps de le
+     dire: il faut mourir.--J. JOUBERT.
+
+
+When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and
+the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody,
+Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it
+back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields,
+and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke,
+who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and
+a couple of minutes later she joined him.
+
+"How is she? How has she passed the night?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought.
+You were very right to send for Percival."
+
+Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him
+before. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm off to fetch him in about an hour and
+a half."
+
+"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.
+
+"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall
+hear, unless he is out."
+
+"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me.
+And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."
+
+She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before,
+and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up
+at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a
+young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem.
+And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of
+her June!
+
+Hardwicke let himself out through the little wicket-gate, and went back
+to the Latimer Arms. He entered the bedroom without disturbing Archie,
+who lay with his sunburnt face on the white pillow, smiling in his
+sleep. He could not find it in his heart to arouse him. The boy's lips
+parted, he murmured a word or two, and seemed to sink into a yet deeper
+slumber. Hardwicke went softly out, gave the landlady directions about
+breakfast, and returned, watch in hand. "I suppose I must," he said to
+himself.
+
+But he stopped short. Carroll stirred, stretched himself, his eyes were
+half open: evidently his waking was a pleasant one. But suddenly the
+unfamiliar aspect of the room attracted his attention: he looked eagerly
+round, a shadow swept across his face, and he turned and saw Hardwicke.
+"It's true!" he said, and flung out his arms in a paroxysm of despair.
+
+Harry walked to the window and leant out. Presently a voice behind him
+asked, "Have you been to the farm, Mr. Hardwicke?"
+
+"Yes," said Harry. "But there is no news. She passed a tolerably quiet
+night: there is no change."
+
+"I've been asleep," said Archie after a pause. "I never thought I should
+sleep." He looked ashamed of having done so.
+
+"It would have been strange if you hadn't: you were worn out."
+
+"My watch has run down," the other continued. "What is the time?"
+
+"Twenty minutes past seven. I want to speak to you, Carroll. I think you
+had better go home."
+
+"Home? To Fordborough? To Raymond?"
+
+"No. Really home, to your own people. You can write to your cousin. You
+don't want to go back to him?"
+
+Archie shook his head. Then a sudden sense of injustice to Fothergill
+prompted him to say, "Ray was never hard on me before."
+
+"You mustn't think about that," Hardwicke replied. "People don't weigh
+their words at such times. But, Carroll, you can do nothing here--less
+than nothing. You'll be better away. Give me your address, and I'll
+write any news there is. Look sharp now, and you can go into Fordborough
+with me and catch the up train."
+
+As they drove through the green lanes, along which they had passed the
+day before, Archie looked right and left, recalling the incidents of
+that earlier drive. Already he was better, possessing his sorrow with
+greater keenness and fulness than at first, but not so miserably
+possessed by it. Hardly a word was spoken till they stood on the
+platform and a far-off puff of white showed the coming train. Then he
+said, "I shall never forget your kindness, Mr. Hardwicke. If ever
+there's anything I can do--"
+
+"You'll do it," said Harry with a smile.
+
+"That I will! And you'll write?"
+
+Hardwicke answered "Yes." He knew too well _what_ it was he promised to
+write to say a word more.
+
+It was a relief to him when Carroll was gone and he could pace the
+platform and watch for the London train. He looked through the open
+doorway, and saw his dog-cart waiting in the road and the horse tossing
+his head impatiently in the sunshine. Through all his anxiety--or rather
+side by side with his anxiety--he was conscious of a current of interest
+in all manner of trivial things. He thought of the price he had given
+for the horse five months before, and of Latimer's opinion of his
+bargain. He noticed the station-master in the distance, and remembered
+that some one had said he drank. He watched a row of small birds sitting
+on the telegraph-wires just outside the station, and all at once the
+London train came gliding rapidly and unexpectedly out of the cutting
+close by, and was there.
+
+A hurried rush along the line of carriages, with his heart sinking lower
+at every step, a despairing glance round, and he perceived the man he
+came to meet walking off at the farther end of the platform. He came up
+with him as he stopped to speak to a porter.
+
+"Ah! I am in time, then?" said Percival when he looked round in reply to
+Hardwicke's hurried greeting.
+
+"Yes, thank God! I promised to drive you over to Ashendale at once."
+
+Percival nodded, and took his place without a word. Not till they were
+fairly started on their journey did he turn to his companion. "How did
+it happen?" he asked.
+
+Hardwicke gave him a brief account of the accident. He listened eagerly,
+and then, just saying "It's very dreadful," he was silent again. But it
+was the silence of a man intent on his errand, leaning slightly forward
+as if drawn by a powerful attraction, and with eyes fixed on the point
+where he would first see the ruins of Ashendale Priory above the trees.
+Hardwicke did not venture to speak to him. As the man whom Sissy Langton
+loved, Percival Thorne was to him the first of men, but, considered from
+Hardwicke's own point of view, he was a fellow with whom he had little
+or nothing in common--a man who quoted poetry and saw all manner of
+things in pictures and ruins, who went out of his way to think about
+politics, and was neither Conservative nor Radical when all was done--a
+man who rather disliked dogs and took no interest in horses. Hardwicke
+did not want to speak about dogs, horses or politics then, but the
+consciousness of their want of sympathy was in his mind.
+
+As they drove through the village they caught a passing glimpse of a
+brougham. "Ha! Brackenhill," said Thorne, looking after it. They dashed
+round a corner and pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Hardwicke took
+no pains to spare the noise of their arrival. He knew very well that the
+sound of wheels would be music to Sissy's ears.
+
+A tall, slim figure, which even on that June morning had the air of
+being wrapped up, passed and repassed in the hall within. As the two
+young men came up the path Horace appeared in the porch. Even at that
+moment the change which a year had wrought in him startled Percival. He
+was a mere shadow. He had looked ill before, but now he looked as if he
+were dying.
+
+[Illustration: "SEE HERE, SISSY," SAID PERCIVAL, "WE ARE FRIENDS."--Page
+698.]
+
+"She will not see me," he said to Hardwicke. His voice was that of a
+confirmed invalid, a mixture of complaint and helplessness. He ignored
+his cousin.
+
+"She will see you now that Percival has come," said Mrs. Middleton,
+advancing from the background. "She will see you together."
+
+And she led the way. Horace went in second, and Percival last, yet he
+was the first to meet the gaze of those waiting eyes. The young men
+stood side by side, looking down at the delicate face on the pillow. It
+was pale, and seemed smaller than usual in the midst of the loosened
+waves of hair. On one side of the forehead there was a dark mark, half
+wound, half bruise--a mere nothing but for its terrible suggestiveness.
+But the clear eyes and the gentle little mouth were unchanged. Horace
+said "Oh, Sissy!" and Sissy said "Percival." He could not speak, but
+stooped and kissed the little hand which lay passively on the coverlet.
+
+"Whisper," said Sissy. He bent over her. "Have you forgiven him?" she
+asked.
+
+"Yes." The mere thought of enmity was horrible to him as he looked into
+Sissy's eyes with that spectral Horace by his side.
+
+"Are you sure? Quite?"
+
+"Before God and you, Sissy."
+
+"Tell him so, Percival."
+
+He stood up and turned to his cousin. "Horace!" he said, and held out
+his hand. The other put a thin hot hand into it.--"See here, Sissy,"
+said Percival, "we are friends."
+
+"Yes, we're friends," Horace repeated. "Has it vexed you, Sissy? I
+thought you didn't care about me. I'm sorry, dear--I'm very sorry."
+
+Aunt Harriet, standing by, laid her hand on his arm. She had held aloof
+for that long year, feeling that he was in the wrong. He had not acted
+as a Thorne should, and he could never be the same to her as in old
+days. But she had wanted her boy, nevertheless, right or wrong, and
+since Percival had pardoned him, and since it was partly Godfrey's
+hardness that had driven him into deceit, and since he was so ill, and
+since--and since--she loved him, she drew his head down to her and
+kissed him. Horace was weak, and he had to turn his face away and wipe
+his eyes. But, relinquishing Percival's hand, he held Aunt Harriet's.
+
+Percival stooped again, in obedience to a sign from Sissy. "Ask him to
+forgive me," she said.
+
+"He knows nothing, dear."
+
+"Ask him for me."
+
+"Horace," said Percival, "Sissy wants your forgiveness."
+
+"I've nothing to forgive," said Horace. "It is I who ought to ask to be
+forgiven. It was hard on me when first you came to Brackenhill, Percy,
+but it has been harder on you since. I hardly know what I said or did on
+that day: I thought you'd been plotting against me."
+
+"No, no," said Sissy--"not he."
+
+"No, but I did think so.--Since then I've felt that, anyhow, it was not
+fair. I suppose I was too proud to say so, or hardly knew how,
+especially as the wrong is past mending. But I do ask your pardon now."
+
+"You have it," said Percival. "We didn't understand each other very
+well."
+
+"But I never blamed you, Sissy--never, for one moment. I wasn't so bad
+as that. I've watched for you now and then in Fordborough streets, just
+to get a glimpse as you went by. I thought it was you who would never
+forgive me, because of Percival."
+
+"He has forgiven," said Sissy. But her eyes still sought Percival's.
+
+"Look here, Horace," he said. "There was a misunderstanding you knew
+nothing of, and Sissy feels that she might have cleared it up. It _was_
+cleared up at last, but I think it altered my grandfather's manner to
+you for a time. If you wish to know the whole I will tell you. But since
+it is all over and done with, and did not really do you any harm, if you
+like best"--he looked steadily at Horace--"that we should forgive and
+forget on both sides, we will bury the past here to-day."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Horace. "Sissy may have made a mistake, but she never
+meant me any harm, I know."
+
+"Don't! don't! Oh, Horace, I did, but I am sorry."
+
+"God knows I forgive you, whatever it was," he said.
+
+"Kiss me, Horace."
+
+He stooped and kissed her, as he had kissed her many a time when she was
+his little pet and playmate. She kissed him back again, and smiled:
+"Good-bye, Horry!"
+
+Mrs. Middleton interposed. "This will be too much for her," she
+said.--"Percival, she wants you, I see: be careful." And she drew Horace
+gently away.
+
+Percival sat down by the bedside. Presently Sarah came in and went to
+the farther end of the room, waiting in case she should be wanted. Sissy
+was going to speak once, but Percival stopped her: "Lie still a little
+while, dear: I'm not going away."
+
+She lay still, looking up at this Percival for whom she had watched and
+waited through the dreary night, and who had come to her with the
+morning. And he, as he sat by her side, was thinking how at that time
+the day before he was in the office at Brenthill. He could hardly
+believe that less than twenty-four hours had given him the assurance of
+Judith's love and brought him to Sissy's deathbed. He was in a strangely
+exalted state of mind. His face was calm as if cast in bronze, but a
+crowd of thoughts and feelings contended for the mastery beneath it. He
+had eaten nothing since the night before, and had not slept, but his
+excitement sustained him.
+
+He met Sissy's eyes and smiled tenderly. How was it that he had
+frightened her in old days? Could he ever have been cruel to one so
+delicate and clinging? Yet he must have been, since he had driven away
+her love. She was afraid of him: she had begged to be free. Well, the
+past was past, but at least no word nor look of his should frighten or
+grieve the poor child now.
+
+After a time she spoke: "You have worked too hard. Isn't it that you
+wanted to do something great?"
+
+"That isn't at all likely," said Percival with a melancholy smile. "I'm
+all right, Sissy."
+
+"No, you are pale. You wanted to surprise us. Oh, I guessed! Godfrey
+Hammond didn't tell me. I should have been glad if I could have waited
+to see it."
+
+"Don't talk so," he entreated. "There will be nothing to see."
+
+"You mustn't work too hard--promise," she whispered.
+
+"No, dear, I won't."
+
+"Percival, will you be good to me?"
+
+"If I can I will indeed. What can I do?"
+
+"I want you to have my money. It is my own, and I have nobody." Sissy
+remembered the terrible mistake she had once made, and wanted an
+assurance from his own lips that her gift was accepted.
+
+Percival hesitated for a moment, and even the moment's hesitation
+alarmed her. It was true, as she said, that she had nobody, and her
+words opened a golden gateway before Judith and himself. Should he tell
+her of that double joy and double gratitude? He believed that she would
+be glad, but it seemed selfish and horrible to talk of love and marriage
+by that bedside. "I wish you might live to need it all yourself, dear,"
+he answered, and laid his hand softly on hers. The strip of embroidery
+caught his eye. "What's this?" he said in blank surprise. "And your
+thimble! Sissy, you mustn't bother yourself about this work now." He
+would have drawn it gently away.
+
+The fingers closed on it suddenly, and the weak voice panted: "No,
+Percival. It's mine. That was before we were engaged: you spoilt my
+other."
+
+"O God!" he said. In a moment all came back to him. He remembered the
+summer day at Brackenhill--Sissy and he upon the terrace--the work-box
+upset and the thimble crushed beneath his foot. He remembered her pretty
+reproaches and their laughter over her enforced idleness. He remembered
+how he rode into Fordborough and bought that little gold thimble--the
+first present he ever made her. All his gifts during their brief
+engagement had been scrupulously returned, but this, as she had said,
+was given before. And she was dying with it in her hand! She had loved
+him from first to last.
+
+"Percival, you will take my money?" she pleaded, fearing some
+incomprehensible scruple.
+
+"For God's sake, Sissy! I must think a moment." He buried his face in
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, you are cruel!" she whispered.
+
+How could he think? Sissy loved him--had always loved him. It was all
+plain to him now. He had been blind, and he had come back to find out
+the truth the day after he had pledged himself to Judith Lisle!
+
+"Don't be unkind to me, Percival: I can't bear it, dear."
+
+How could he stab her to the heart by a refusal of that which he so
+sorely needed? How could he tell her of his engagement? How could he
+keep silence, and take her money to spend it with Judith?
+
+"Say 'Yes,' Percival. It is mine. Why not? why not?"
+
+He spoke through his clasped hands: "One moment more."
+
+"I shall never ask you anything again," she whispered. "Oh, Percival, be
+good to me!"
+
+He raised his head and looked earnestly at her. He must be true, happen
+what might.
+
+"Sissy, God knows I thank you for your goodness. I sha'n't forget it,
+living or dying. If only you might be spared--"
+
+"No, no. Say 'Yes,' Percival."
+
+"I will say 'Yes' if, when I have done, you wish it still. But it must
+be 'Yes' for some one besides myself. Dear, don't give it to me to make
+amends in any way. You have not wronged me, Sissy. Don't give it to me,
+dear, unless you give it to Judith Lisle."
+
+As he spoke he looked into her eyes. Their sweet entreaty gave place to
+a flash of pained reproach, as if they said "So soon?" Then the light in
+them wavered and went out. Percival sprang up. "Help! she has fainted!"
+
+Sarah hurried from her post by the window, and the sound of quick
+footsteps brought back Mrs. Middleton. The young man stood aside,
+dismayed. "She isn't dead?" he said in a low voice.
+
+Aunt Harriet did not heed him. A horrible moment passed, during which he
+felt himself a murderer. Then Sissy moaned and turned her face a little
+to the wall.
+
+"Go now: she cannot speak to you," said Mrs. Middleton.
+
+"I can't. Only one more word!"
+
+"What do you mean? What have you done? You may wait outside, and I will
+call you. She cannot bear any more now: do you want to kill her
+outright?"
+
+He went. There was a wide window-seat in the passage, and he dropped
+down upon it, utterly worn out and wretched. "What have I done?" he
+asked himself. "What made me do it? She loved me, and I have been a
+brute to her. If I had been a devil, could I have tortured her more?"
+
+Presently Mrs. Middleton came to him: "She cannot see you now, but she
+is better."
+
+He looked up at her as he sat: "Aunt Harriet, I meant it for the best.
+Say what you like: I was a brute, I suppose, but I thought I was doing
+right."
+
+"What do you mean?" Her tone was gentler: she detected the misery in
+his.
+
+Percival took her hand and laid it on his forehead. "You can't think I
+meant to be cruel to our Sissy," he said. "You will let me speak to
+her?"
+
+She softly pushed back his hair. After all, he was the man Sissy loved.
+"What was it?" she asked: "what did you do?"
+
+He looked down. "I'm going to marry Miss Lisle," he said.
+
+She started away from him: "You told her that? God forgive you,
+Percival!"
+
+"I should have been a liar if I hadn't."
+
+"Couldn't you let her die in peace? It is such a little while! Couldn't
+you have waited till she was in her grave?"
+
+"Will she see me? Just one word, Aunt Harriet." And yet while he pleaded
+he did not know what the one word was that he would say. Only he felt
+that he must see her once more.
+
+"Not now," said Mrs. Middleton. "My poor darling shall not be tortured
+any more. Later, if she wishes it, but not now. She could not bear it."
+
+"But you will ask her to see me later?" he entreated. "I must see her."
+
+"What is she to you? She is all the world to me, and she shall be left
+in peace. It is all that I can do for her now. You have been cruel to
+her always--always. She has been breaking her heart for you: she lived
+through last night with the hope of your coming. Oh, Percival, God knows
+I wish we had never called you away from Miss Lisle!"
+
+"Don't say that."
+
+"Go back to her," said Aunt Harriet, "and leave my darling to me. We
+were happy at Brackenhill till you came there."
+
+He sprang to his feet: "Aunt Harriet! have some mercy! You know I would
+die if it could make Sissy any happier."
+
+"And Miss Lisle?" she said.
+
+He turned away with a groan, and, leaning against the wall, put his hand
+over his eyes. Mrs. Middleton hesitated a moment, but her haste to
+return to Sissy triumphed over any relenting feelings, and she left him,
+pausing only at the door to make sure of her calmness.
+
+Noon came and passed. Sissy had spoken once to bid them take the
+needlework away. "I've done with it," she said. Otherwise she was
+silent, and only looked at them with gentle, apathetic eyes when they
+spoke to her. Dr. Grey came and went again. On his way out he noticed
+Percival, looked keenly at him, but said nothing.
+
+Henry Hardwicke's desire to be useful had prompted him to station
+himself on the road a short distance from the farm, at the turning from
+the village. There he stopped people coming to inquire, and gave the
+latest intelligence. It was weary work, lounging there by the wayside,
+but he hoped he was serving Sissy Langton to the last. He could not even
+have a cigar to help to pass the time, for he had an idea that Mrs.
+Middleton disliked the smell of smoke. He stared at the trees and the
+sky, drew letters in the dust with the end of a stick, stirred up a
+small ants' nest, examined the structure of a dog-rose or two and some
+buttercups, and compared the flavors of different kinds of leaves. He
+came forward as Dr. Grey went by. The doctor stopped to tell him that
+Miss Langton was certainly weaker. "But she may linger some hours yet,"
+he added; and he was going on his way when a thought seemed to strike
+him. "Are you staying at the farm?" he asked.
+
+"No: they've enough without me. I'm at the little public-house close
+by."
+
+"Going there for some luncheon?"
+
+Hardwicke supposed so.
+
+"Can't you get young Thorne to go with you? He looks utterly exhausted."
+
+Hardwicke went off on his mission, but he could not persuade him to
+stir. "All right!" he said at last: "then I shall bring you something to
+eat here." Percival agreed to that compromise, and owned afterward that
+he felt better for the food he had taken.
+
+The slow hours of the afternoon went wearily by. The rector of
+Fordborough came; Dr. Grey came again; Mrs. Latimer passed two or three
+times. The sky began to grow red toward the west once more, and the
+cawing rooks flew homeward, past the window where Percival sat waiting
+vainly for the summons which did not come.
+
+Hardwicke, released from his self-imposed duty, came to see if Percival
+would go with him for half an hour or so to the Latimer Arms. "I've got
+a kind of tea-dinner," he said--"chops and that sort of thing. You'd
+better have some." But it was of no use. So when he came back to the
+house the good-natured fellow brought some more provisions, and begged
+Lucy Greenwell to make some tea, which he carried up.
+
+"Where are you going to spend the night?" asked Harry, coming up again
+when he had taken away the cup and plate.
+
+"Here," said Percival. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head and
+one leg drawn up on the seat. His face was sharply defined against the
+square of sunset sky.
+
+Hardwicke stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at him. "But
+you can't sleep here," he said.
+
+"That doesn't matter much. Sleeping or waking, here I stay."
+
+A sudden hope flashed in his eyes, for the door of Sissy's room opened,
+and, closing it behind her, Mrs. Middleton came out and looked up and
+down the passage. But she called "Harry" in a low voice, and Percival
+leant back again.
+
+Harry went. Mrs. Middleton had moved a little farther away, and stood
+with her back toward Percival and one hand pressed against the wall to
+steady herself. Her first question was an unexpected one: "Isn't the
+wind getting up?" Her eyes were frightened and her voice betrayed her
+anxiety.
+
+"I don't know--not much, I think." He was taken by surprise, and
+hesitated a little.
+
+"It is: tell me the truth."
+
+"I am--I will," he stammered. "I haven't thought about it. There is a
+pleasant little breeze, such as often comes in the evening. I don't
+really think there's any more."
+
+"It isn't rising, then?"
+
+"Wait a minute," said Hardwicke, and hurried off. He did not in the
+least understand his errand, but it was enough for him that Mrs.
+Middleton wanted to know. If she had asked him the depth of water in the
+well or the number of trees on the Priory farm, he would have rushed
+away with the same eagerness to satisfy her. His voice was heard in the
+porch, alternating with deeper and less carefully restrained tones. Then
+there was a sound of steps on the gravel-path. Presently he came back.
+Mrs. Middleton's attitude was unchanged, except that she had drawn a
+little closer to the wall. But though she had never looked over her
+shoulder, she was uneasily conscious of the young man half sitting, half
+lying in the window-seat behind her.
+
+"Greenwell says it won't be anything," Hardwicke announced. "The glass
+has been slowly going up all day yesterday and to-day, and it is rising
+still. He believes we have got a real change in the weather, and that it
+will keep fine for some time."
+
+"Thank God!" said Mrs. Middleton. "Do you think I'm very mad?"
+
+"Not I," Harry answered in a "theirs-not-to-reason-why" manner.
+
+"A week or two ago," she said, "my poor darling was talking about dying,
+as you young folks will talk, and she said she hoped she should not die
+in the night, when the wind was howling round the house. A bitter winter
+night would be worst of all, she said. It won't be _that_ but I fancied
+the wind was getting up, and it frightened me to think how one would
+hear it moaning in this old place. It is only a fancy, of course, but
+she might have thought of it again lying there."
+
+Hardwicke could not have put it into words, but the fancy came to him
+too of Sissy's soul flying out into the windy waste of air.
+
+"Of course it is nothing--it is nonsense," said Mrs. Middleton. "But if
+it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!--if it might be!"
+She stopped with a catching in her voice.
+
+Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs.
+Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be
+any wind."
+
+"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."
+
+"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a
+brief silence.
+
+"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the
+night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you
+persuade him to go away?"
+
+"Mr. Thorne?"
+
+She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see
+him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of
+his waiting there?"
+
+Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and
+persuade him. He won't stir for me."
+
+"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."
+
+"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do
+any good."
+
+Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I
+shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable
+decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later,
+regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting
+the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival,
+however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last
+he was left alone.
+
+Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the
+light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was
+the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton,
+watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a
+lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear,
+more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so
+wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.
+
+Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he
+had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he
+have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night
+by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her--
+
+  If she love me, this believe,
+  I will die ere she shall grieve;
+
+and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire
+had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end
+of all.
+
+His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance
+of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for
+thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it--could not
+help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was
+worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no
+mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was
+so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back
+to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his
+future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery.
+Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive
+him!
+
+As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly
+and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window
+at his side--a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud
+were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon
+gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and
+phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the
+heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled
+with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.
+
+Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in,
+widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a
+golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow
+smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she
+encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot
+of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.
+
+Mrs. Middleton obeyed. The sound of unfastening the casement awoke
+Sarah, who was resting in an easy-chair. She sat up and looked round.
+
+The breeze had died away, as Harry had foretold it would, and that day
+had dawned as gloriously as the two that had preceded it. A lark was
+soaring and singing--a mere point in the dome of blue.
+
+Sissy lay and looked a while. Then she said, "Brackenhill?"
+
+Aunt Harriet considered for a moment before she replied: "A little to
+the right, my darling."
+
+The dying eyes were turned a little to the right. Seven miles away, yet
+the old gray manor-house rose before Aunt Harriet's eyes, warm on its
+southern slope, with its shaven lawns and whispering trees and the long
+terrace with its old stone balustrade. Perhaps Sissy saw it too.
+
+"Darling, it is warm and light," the old lady said at last.
+
+Sissy smiled. Her eyes wandered from the window. "Aunt, you promised,"
+she whispered.
+
+"Yes, dear--yes, I promised."
+
+There was a pause. Suddenly, Sissy spoke, more strongly and clearly than
+she had spoken for hours: "Tell Percival--my love to Miss Lisle."
+
+"Fetch him," said Mrs. Middleton to Sarah, with a quick movement of her
+hand toward the door. As the old woman crossed the room Sissy looked
+after her. In less than a minute Percival came in. His dark hair was
+tumbled over his forehead, and his eyes, though passionately eager, were
+heavy with sleep. As he came forward Sissy looked up and repeated
+faintly, like an echo, "My love to Miss Lisle, Percival." Her glance met
+his and welcomed him. But even as he said "Sissy!" her eyes closed, and
+when, after a brief interval, they opened again, he was conscious of a
+change. He spoke and took her hand, but she did not heed. "She does not
+know me!" he said.
+
+Her lips moved, and Aunt Harriet stooped to catch the faint sound. It
+was something about "Horry--coming home from school."
+
+Hardly knowing what she said--only longing for one more look, one smile
+of recognition, one word--Aunt Harriet spoke in painfully distinct
+tones: "My darling, do you want Horace? Shall we send for Horace?"
+
+No answer. There was a long pause, and then the indistinct murmur
+recommenced. It was still "Horry," and "Rover," and presently they
+thought she said "Langley Wood."
+
+"Horace used to take her there for a treat," said Mrs. Middleton.--"Oh,
+Sissy, don't you know Aunt Harriet?"
+
+Still, from time to time, came the vague murmur of words. It was
+dark--the trees--she had lost--
+
+Percival stood in silent anguish. There was to him a bitterness worse
+than the bitterness of death in the sound of those faint words. Sissy
+was before him, yet she had passed away into the years when she did not
+know him. He might cry to her, but she would not hear. There was no word
+for him: the Sissy who had loved him and pardoned him was dead. This was
+the child Sissy with whom Horace had played at Brackenhill.
+
+The long bright morning seemed an eternity of blue sky, softly rustling
+leaves, birds singing and golden chequers of sunlight falling on walls
+and floor. Dr. Grey came in and stood near. The end was at hand, and yet
+delayed. The sun was high before the faint whispers of "Auntie," and
+"Horry," ceased altogether, and even then there was an interval during
+which Sissy still breathed, still lingered in the borderland between
+living and dying. Eagerly though they watched her, they could not tell
+the moment when she left them.
+
+It was late that afternoon. Hardwicke lounged with his back against the
+gate of the orchard and his hands in his pockets. When he lifted his
+eyes from the turf on which he stood he could see the white blankness of
+a closed window through the boughs.
+
+He was sorely perplexed. Not ten minutes earlier Mrs. Latimer had been
+there, saying, "Something should be done: why does not Mr. Thorne go to
+her? Or could Dr. Grey say anything if he were sent for? I'm sure it
+isn't right that she should be left so."
+
+Mrs. Middleton was alone with her dead in that darkened room. She was
+perfectly calm and tearless. She only demanded to be left to herself.
+Mrs. Latimer would have gone in to cry and sympathize, but she was
+repulsed with a decision which was almost fierce. Sarah was not to
+disturb her. She wanted nothing. She wanted nobody. She must be by
+herself. She was terrible in her lonely misery.
+
+Hardwicke felt that it could not be his place to go. Somewhere in the
+priory ruins was Percival Thorne, hiding his sorrow and himself: should
+he find him and persuade him to make the attempt? But Harry had an
+undefined feeling that Mrs. Middleton did not want Percival.
+
+He stood kicking at a daisy-root in the grass, feeling himself useless,
+yet unwilling to desert his post, when a hand was pressed on his
+shoulder and he started round. Godfrey Hammond was on the other side of
+the gate, looking just as cool and colorless as usual.
+
+"Thank God you're come, Mr. Hammond!" Harry exclaimed, and began to
+pour out his story in such haste that it was a couple of minutes before
+Godfrey fully understood him. The new-comer listened attentively, asking
+a question or two. He brushed some imperceptible dust from his gray
+coat-sleeve, and sticking his glass in his eye he surveyed the
+farmhouse.
+
+"I think I should like to see Mrs. Middleton at once," he said when
+Hardwicke had finished.
+
+Sarah showed him the way, but he preferred to announce himself. He
+knocked at the door.
+
+"Who is there?" said the voice within.
+
+"It is I, Godfrey Hammond: I may come in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He opened the door and saw her sitting by the bedside, where something
+lay white and straight and still. She turned her head as he entered,
+then stood up and came a step or two to meet him. "Oh, Godfrey!" she
+said in a low voice, "she died this morning."
+
+He put his arm about her. "I would have been here before if I could," he
+said.
+
+"I knew it." She trembled so much that he drew her nearer, supporting
+her as tenderly as if he were her son, though his face above her was
+unmoved as ever.
+
+"She died this morning," Mrs. Middleton repeated. She hid her face
+suddenly and burst into a passion of tears. "Oh, Godfrey! she was hurt
+so! she was hurt so! Oh my darling!"
+
+"We could not wish her to linger in pain," he said softly.
+
+"No, no. But only this morning, and I feel as if I had been alone for
+years!"
+
+Still, through her weeping, she clung to him. His sympathy made a faint
+glimmer of light in the darkness, and her sad eyes turned to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+AFTERWARD.
+
+
+There is little more to write. Four years, with their varying seasons,
+their endless procession of events, their multitude of joys and sorrows,
+have passed since Sissy died. Her place in the world, which seemed so
+blank and strange in its first vacancy, is closed up and lost in the
+crowding occupations of our ordinary life. She is not forgotten, but she
+has passed out of the light of common day into the quiet world of years
+gone by, where there is neither crowd nor haste, but soft shadows and
+shadowy sunshine, and time for every tender memory and thought. Even
+Aunt Harriet's sorrow is patient and subdued, and she sees her darling's
+face, with other long-lost faces, softened as in a gentle dream. She
+looks back to the past with no pain of longing. At seventy-eight she
+believes that she is nearer to those she loves by going forward yet a
+little farther. Nor are these last days sad, for in her loneliness
+Godfrey Hammond persuaded her to come to him, and she is happy in her
+place by his fireside. He is all that is left to her, and she is wrapped
+up in him. Nothing is good enough for Godfrey, and he says, with a
+smile, that she would make the planets revolve round him if she could.
+It is very possible that if she had her will she might attempt some
+little rearrangement of that kind. Her only fear is lest she should ever
+be a burden to him. But that will never be. Godfrey likes her delicate,
+old-fashioned ways and words, and is glad to see the kind old face which
+smiled on him long ago when he was a lad lighted up with gentle pleasure
+in his presence now. When he bids her good-night he knows that she will
+pray before she lies down, and he feels as if his home and he were the
+better for those simple prayers uttered night and morning in an unbroken
+sequence of more than seventy years. There is a tranquil happiness in
+that house, like the short, golden days of a St. Martin's summer or the
+November blooming of a rose.
+
+In the February after Sissy's death Godfrey went to Rookleigh for a day,
+to be present at a wedding in the old church where the bridegroom had
+once lingered idly in the hot summer-time and pictured his marriage to
+another bride. That summer afternoon was not forgotten. Percival,
+standing on the uneven pavement above the Shadwells' vault, remembered
+his vision of Sissy's frightened eyes even while he uttered the words
+that bound him to Judith Lisle. But those words were not the less true
+because the thought of Sissy was hidden in his heart for ever.
+
+Since that day Percival has spent almost all his time abroad, leading
+such a life as he pictured long ago, only the reality is fairer than the
+day-dream, because Judith shares it with him. Together they travel or
+linger as the fancy of the moment dictates. Percival does not own a
+square yard of the earth's surface, and therefore he is at liberty to
+wander over it as he will. He is conscious of a curious loneliness about
+Judith and himself. They have no child, no near relations: it seems as
+if they were freed from all ordinary ties and responsibilities. His
+vague aspirations are even less definite than of old; yet, though his
+life follows a wandering and uncertain track, fair flowers of
+kindliness, tolerance and courtesy spring up by that wayside. Judith and
+he do not so much draw closer day by day as find ever new similarity of
+thought and feeling already existing between them. His heart turns to
+her as to a haven of peace; all his possibilities of happiness are in
+her hands; he rests in the full assurance that neither deed nor word of
+hers can ever jar upon him; in his darker moods he thinks of her as
+clear, still sunlight, and he has no desire apart from her. Yet when he
+looks back he doubts whether his life can hold another moment so supreme
+in love and anguish as that moment when he looked into Sissy's eyes for
+the last time and knew himself forgiven.
+
+
+
+
+SOME ASPECTS OF CONTEMPORARY ART.
+
+
+The art of the present day succeeds to the art of past centuries not
+immediately nor by an insensible gradation. It is preceded by an
+interval of absolute deadness in matters artistic. Sixty years ago art
+in almost every branch was a sealed book to the majority of even
+well-educated persons, and contentedly contemplated by them as such. All
+love for it, with all knowledge of its history and all desire for its
+development, was for a generation or two confined to a few professed
+followers and a few devoted patrons, the mass of mankind thinking of it
+not at all. But slowly a revival came in the main centres of
+civilization--not much sooner in one than in another, though somewhat
+differently in each. In Germany we see it beginning with the famous
+Teutonic colony at Rome, reverent in spirit, cautious in method, severe
+in theory, restrained in style--culminating, on the one hand, in the
+academic pietism of Overbeck, on the other in the deliberate majesty of
+Cornelius. In France the new life begins with the successors of David,
+strenuous, impetuous, jealous and innovating, Ingres and outline waging
+deadly battle with color and Delacroix. In England architectural
+enthusiasm gave the first impulse, the "Gothic Revival" becoming the
+basis of all subsequent work.
+
+If, before noting the points of difference between one branch and
+another of this modern art, we try to find the characteristics in which
+these branches resemble one another, and by which they collectively are
+distinguished from earlier developments, we find the most prominent one
+to be self-consciousness--not necessarily self-conceit, but the inward
+consciousness that they _are_, and the endeavor to realize just what
+they are. With these comes, when the art is conscientious, a desire to
+discover the noblest goal and to formulate the best methods of reaching
+it. Some, casting the horoscope for this struggling art of ours, find
+in these facts a great discouragement, believing that the vital germ of
+art is spontaneity--believing that there cannot again be a genuine form
+of art until there arise a fresh race of artists, unfed by the
+mummy-wheat of tradition, unfettered by the cere-cloths of criticism.
+Others, more sanguine, believe that spontaneity has done all it can, and
+that its place is in the future to be worthily filled by a wide
+eclecticism. Let us inquire what testimony as to the value of
+spontaneity and the influence of self-consciousness in art may be
+gathered from the methods and results of the past, and what from a
+contrast between the different contemporary schools in their methods and
+their results. Painting, as most prominently before our eyes and minds
+just now, will principally concern us.
+
+To the making of every work of art go three things and no more--the
+material worked upon, the hand that works, and the intellect or
+imagination which guides that hand. When the proportion is perfect
+between the three, the work of art is perfect of its kind. But in the
+different kinds of art the necessary proportion is not the same. In
+music, for example, the medium is at its lowest value, the imagination
+at its highest. In architecture, on the other hand, material is most
+important. Musicians use the vibration of string and atmosphere,
+sculptors use bronze and marble, painters use color and canvas, poets
+use rhythm and rhyme, as vehicles to express their ideas. The
+architect's ideas are for the sake of his material. He takes his
+material as such, and embellishes it with his ideas--creates beauty
+merely by disposing its masses and enriching its surface. But in all and
+each of these processes, whether mind predominate or matter, there comes
+in as a further necessary factor the actual technical manipulation.
+Poetic visions and a noble mother-tongue do not constitute a man a poet
+if he cannot treat that language nobly according to the technique of his
+art. Nor, though Ariel sing in his brain and the everlasting harp of the
+atmosphere wait for him, is he a musician if he have not a sensitive
+ear and a knowledge of counter-point. More notably yet does the
+hand--and in this as a technical term I include the other bodily powers
+which go to form technical skill,--more notably yet does the hand come
+in play with the painter. Here the material is little, the imagination
+mighty indeed, but less overwhelming than with poet and musician; but
+the technique, the God-given and labor-trained cunning of retina and
+wrist, how all-important! often how all-sufficing!
+
+In all criticism it is necessary first to reflect which of these three
+factors--intellectual power, physical endowment or propitious
+material--is most imperious. When we find this factor most perfectly
+developed, and the others, though subordinate, neither absent nor
+stunted, we shall find the art nearest to perfection. And the conditions
+of race and climate and society which most helpfully develop that factor
+without injuring the others are the conditions which will best further
+that art. And the critic who lays most stress on that factor, and is
+content to miss, if necessary, though noting the loss, a certain measure
+of the other two in order more entirely to gain the one that is
+vitalest, is the critic whose words are tonic. And he who, blending the
+province of the arts, calling them all with vagueness "art," exalts and
+demands the same factor first in all of them, must be detrimental, no
+matter how great his sincerity and his knowledge.
+
+Before weighing any contemporary thing in the balance let us mark out in
+the past some standards of comparison. For it is useless to speculate
+upon theoretical methods if we can discover the actual methods employed
+by those whose art, if not ideally perfect, is yet so far beyond our
+present power as to be quite perfectly ideal. It needs no discussion to
+prove that to find the utmost that has been actually accomplished by
+human endeavor we must turn in sculpture and in language to Greece, in
+music to Germany, in architecture to Greece or to mediaeval Europe as our
+taste may pull, and in painting to the Italians.
+
+The primary conception of art in its productive energy is as a certain
+inspiration. How did that inspiration work in those whom we acknowledge
+to have received it in fullest measure? If we think a moment we shall
+say, "Involuntarily"--by a sort of _possession_ rather than a voluntary
+intellectual effort. The sculpture of the Greeks, their tragedies and
+their temples, were all wrought simply, without effort, without
+conscious travailing, by a natural evolution, not by a potent
+egg-hatching process of instructive criticism and morbid self-inspection
+and consulting of previous models, native and foreign. Architectural
+motives were gathered from Egypt and the East, from Phoenicia and
+Anatolia, but they were worked in as material, not copied as patterns;
+and the architecture is as original as if no one had ever built before.
+Phidias and Praxiteles and the rest shaped and chiselled, aiming at
+perfection no doubt, trying to do their best, but without troubling
+themselves as to what that best "ought" to be. Criticism was rife in
+Athens of all places, but it was a criticism of things existing, not of
+things problematically desirable. Statue and temple-front were
+criticised, not sculptor and architect--surely not sculpture and
+architecture in the abstract. Not sculptors and architects, that is,
+when the question was of their works. The men came in for their share of
+criticism, but on a different count. Theseus and Athene were judged as
+works of art, not as lame though interesting revelations of Phidias's
+soul. And be sure no faintest sin of the chisel was excused on the plea
+that Phidias meant more than he could express, and so bungled in the
+expression. Nor was the plea advanced that such bungling after the
+infinite was better than simple perfection in the attainable. An artist
+was called upon to be an artist, not a poet nor a philosopher nor a
+moralist. When Plato confounded them all in a splendid confusion of
+criticism the fruit-time had gone by. There was left but to expatiate on
+the hoard which summer had bequeathed, or to speculate, if he chose, on
+the possible yield of a future and most problematical year.
+
+In the rich Italian summer one sees the same thing. Men paint because
+they must--because put at anything else they come back to art as iron to
+the magnet. Not because art is lovely, nor because to be an artist is a
+desirable or a noble or a righteous thing, but because they are artists
+born, stamped, double-dyed, and, kick as they might, they could be
+nothing else--if not artists creative, yet artists critical and
+appreciative. Truly, they think and strive over their art, write
+treatises and dogmas and speculations, vie with and rival and outdo each
+other. But it is their _art_ they discuss, not themselves, not one
+another--technical methods, practical instruction, questions of pigment
+and model and touch, of perspective and chiaroscuro and varnish, not
+psychological aesthetics, biographical and psychical explanations as to
+facts of canvas and color. What is done is what is to be criticised.
+What can be done technically is what should be done theoretically, and
+what cannot be done with absolute and perfect technical success is out
+of the domain of art once and for ever. As the Greek did not try to
+carve marble eyelashes, so no Venetian tried to put his conscience on a
+panel. All Lionardo could see of Mona Lisa's soul he might paint, not
+all he could feel of Lionardo's. Mr. Ruskin himself quotes Duerer's note
+that Raphael sent him his drawings, not to show his soul nor his
+theories, but simply _seine Hand zu weisen_--to prove his touch. In
+Raphael's touch was implied Raphael's eye, and those two made the artist
+Raphael.
+
+Nothing strikes one more in these men than the oblivion of self in their
+work. Only one of the first-rank men was self-conscious, and he, the
+most mighty as a man, is by no means the first as an artist. And even
+Michael Angelo had not the self-consciousness of to-day: it requires a
+clique of commentators and a brotherhood of artists equally infected to
+develop that. But just so far as he tried to put his mighty self into
+his work, just so far he failed of artistic perfection; and not every
+one is Michael Angelo to make even failure beautifully colossal. In
+architecture, which in his day was already a dead art to be galvanized,
+not alive and manly like the art of the painter, his self-consciousness
+shows most strongly and his failure is most conspicuous. Here he did not
+create, but avowedly composed--set himself deliberately to study the
+past and to decide what was best for the future. And upon none but him
+rests the blame of having driven out of the semi-unconscious,
+semi-original Renaissance style what elements of power it had, and sent
+it reeling down through two centuries crazed with conceit and distorted
+with self-inspection.
+
+On the unconscious development of mediaeval architecture, due to no one
+man, but to a universal interest in and appreciation of the art, it is
+unnecessary to dwell. Nor need we for present purposes seek further
+illustration farther afield. Let us take time now to look more narrowly
+at the art of to-day, and try to mark the different shapes it has taken
+with different nations.
+
+The most decided school is in France: her artists, many in number,
+confine, whether involuntarily or not, their individual differences
+within sharply-marked and easily-noted limits. In Germany the schools
+are two--one of so-called historical painting at Munich, one of what we
+may name domestic painting at Duesseldorf. This last may be put on one
+side as having no specially obtrusive characteristics, and by German
+pictures will be meant those of the Munich and Vienna type, whether
+actually from the studios of Munich and Vienna or not. In English
+contemporary art can one pretend to find a school at all in any true
+sense of the word? What we do find is a very widespread art-literature
+and talk of art, a large number of working artists varying in
+temperament, and a vast horde of amateurs, who are not content to be
+patrons, but yearn also to be practisers of art.
+
+In England theories of art are more carefully discussed and more widely
+diffused than they are in any other country. But they are theories of an
+essentially untechnical, amateurish, literary kind. The English critic
+calls all law and philosophy, all rules of morals and manners, of
+religion and political economy and science and scientific aesthetics, to
+aid his critical faculty when he needs must speak of pictures. In
+Germany there is also much theorizing, but of a different kind. It is
+not so much the whole physical and psychical cosmos that the German
+critic studies as the past history of art in its most recondite phases
+and most subtle divergences. Upon this he draws for information as to
+the value of the work before him. On the other hand, we shall find
+French art-criticism to be almost purely technical.
+
+As the critics differ, so do the criticised by the natural law of
+national coherence. An English painter is apt to be primarily an
+embodied theory of one sort or another; which theory is more or less
+directly connected with his actual work as a painter. A German painting
+is apt to be scientifically composed on theory also, but a theory drawn
+from the study of art _per se_, not of the whole world external to art.
+The work of a Frenchman, like the criticism of his commentator, is
+primarily technical.
+
+Because both German work and English work are theoretical compared with
+French, I do not wish to imply that technically they are on a par. Aside
+from the difference of imaginative power in the two nations, which
+renders German conceptions more valuable in every way than contemporary
+English ideas, there is a great difference in the technical training of
+the two groups of artists. German work often shows technical qualities
+as notable as those we find in France, though of another kind. The noble
+physical endowment of an artist--that by reason of which, and by reason
+of which alone, he _is_ an artist--is twofold: power of eye and power of
+hand. By power of the eye I mean simple vision exalted into a special
+gift, a special appreciation of line, an ultra delicate and profound
+perception of color, and an exact, unconscious memory. This last is not
+imagination nor imaginative memory, but an automatic power, if I may so
+say, of the retina--as unconscious as is the pianist's memory of his
+notes, and as unerring. It is not the power to fix in the mind by
+conscious effort the objects before one, and to recall them
+deliberately, inch by inch, at any time, but the power, when the brush
+pauses trembling for the signal, to put down unerringly facts learned
+God knows where, or imagined God knows how. Automatic, I repeat, this
+power must be. The tongue might not be able to tell, nor the mind
+deliberately to recall in cold blood, what was the depth of blue on a
+distant hill or the vagueness of its outlines, or what the anatomical
+structure of a mistress's fingers. But the brush knows, as nothing but
+the brush of an artist can; and when it comes to painting them, aerial
+perspective and anatomical detail _must_ come right. This is the first
+and the great endowment. And the second is like unto it in--Shall I use
+the fashionable artistic slang and say _preciousness_? It is the gift of
+a dexterous hand, winged with lightness and steady as steel, sensitive
+as a blind man's finger-tips, yet unerring in its stroke as the piston
+of a steamship. This is a gift as well as the other, but it can, far
+more than the other, be improved and developed by practice and patience.
+Both gifts in equal perfection constitute a technical master. It is
+hardly necessary to say that no man--certainly no nation--can to-day
+claim the highest measure of both. The French are most highly gifted
+with the first, the Germans with the second. In the latter, patience and
+science, working upon a natural aptitude, have developed great strength
+and accuracy of wrist, and with this the power of composition and
+design, purity and accuracy of outline, and good chiaroscuro. But the
+whole race is deficient in a sense of color. Its work is marked by
+crudeness and harshness, or at the best reticence--splendor without
+softness or inoffensiveness without charm. In cases where much is
+attempted in color--as in what is undoubtedly one of the best of
+contemporary paintings, Knille's _Tannhaeuser and Venus_ in the Berlin
+Gallery--the success is by no means on a par with the great excellence
+of drawing and composition. In France the eye for color is present--I
+will not say as in Venice, but to a greater degree than in the two other
+nations.
+
+If we leave now professional painters and professional critics and turn
+to the untrained public, we shall find, of course, all our modern faults
+more evident. The English public is pre-eminently untechnical in its
+judgments, pre-eminently literary or moral. But the French and the
+German public approximate more to the English--as is natural--than do
+their respective artists. I use the word _literary_ as it has often been
+used by others in characterizing the popular art-criticism of the
+time--and in England much of the professional criticism also--to denote
+a prominence given to the subject, the idea, the story--_l'anecdote_, as
+a French critic calls it--over the purely painter's work of a picture.
+It denotes the theory that a picture is not first to please the sense,
+but to catch the fancy or the intellect or to touch the heart. This
+feeling, which in France turns toward sensationalism, in England toward
+sentimentality, is something other than the interest which attaches to
+historical painting as the record of facts--in itself not the highest
+interest one can find in a work of art. If we think back for a moment, we
+shall see how different from either of these moods was the mood in which
+the great Italians painted. Some "subject" of course a painting must
+have that is not a portrait, but these men chose instinctively--hardly,
+it is to be supposed, theoretically--such subjects as were most familiar
+to their public, and therefore least likely to engage attention
+primarily, and to the exclusion of the absolute pictorial value of the
+painting as such. We never find Titian telling anecdotes. His portraits
+are quiescence itself--portraits of men and women standing in the
+fulness of beauty and strength to be painted by Titian. We do not find
+likenesses snatched in some occurrence of daily life or in some dramatic
+action of historical or biographical importance. Even Raphael's great
+frescoes are symbolical more truly than historical, expressing the
+significance of a whole series of events rather than literally rendering
+one single event. The first remark of many who, accustomed to the
+literary interest of modern pictures, are for the first time making
+acquaintance with the old masters, is, that the galleries are so
+unexcitingly monotonous: the subjects are not interesting. Portraits,
+scenes from sacred history or Greek mythology,--that is all among the
+Italians. Desiring nothing but beauty of line and color, and
+expressiveness provided it was beautiful, they sought a subject merely
+as the _raison d'etre_ of beauty. Raphael could paint the Madonna and
+Child a score of times, and Veronese his _Marriages of Cana_, and all of
+them Magdalenes and St. Sebastians by the dozen, without thinking of
+finding fresh subjects to excite fresh interest. Nor does this
+restricted range of subjects imply, under the hand of a master,
+monotony. There is more unlikeness in Raphael's Madonnas than in the
+figures of any modern artist, whatever their variety of name and action.
+Even a century later than Raphael, among the Flemings and Hollanders,
+the best pictures are the simplest, the least dependent for their
+interest upon anything dramatic or anecdotal in their subject. The
+triumphs of the Dutch school are the portraits of the guilds. The
+masterpieces of Rubens are his children and single figures and biblical
+scenes, not his _Marie de Medicis_. And what of Rembrandt is so perfect
+as his _Saskia with the Pink_ at Dresden? If we have a photograph even
+of such a picture as this constantly before us, with a modern picture of
+anecdotal interest, no matter how vivid and pleasant that interest may
+have been at first, it is not hard to predict which will please us
+longest--which will grow to be an element in the happiness of every day,
+while the other becomes at last _fade_ and insipid. This even if we
+suppose its technical excellence to be great. How, then, shall such
+interest take the place of technical excellence?
+
+This modern love of _l'anecdote_ is not exactly the cause perhaps, nor
+yet the effect, of the self-consciousness of modern art, but it goes
+hand in hand with it: they are manifestations of the same spirit in the
+two different spheres of worker and spectator.
+
+But it may be said, If Michael Angelo was self-conscious, it was
+because he first caught the infection of modern times. Life, the world,
+the nineteenth century, are self-conscious through and through. It is
+impossible to be otherwise. It is impossible for a world which has lived
+through what ours has, which has recorded its doings and sufferings and
+speculations for our benefit, ever to be naive or spontaneous in
+anything. Inspiration unsought and unquestioned is a thing of the past.
+Study, reflection, absorption, eclecticism,--these are the watchwords of
+the future. If this were granted, many would still think it an open
+question whether art of the highest kind would in the future be possible
+or not. But is by no means necessary to grant it, for we have had in the
+most learned and speculative of nations an art in our century--still
+surviving, indeed, in our very midst--the growth of which has been as
+rapid and the flowering as superb as the growth and bloom of sculpture
+in Greece or of painting in Italy. I mean, of course, music in Germany.
+And if we think a moment we shall see that its growth was as
+unpremeditated, its direction and development as unbiassed by theories,
+its votaries as untroubled with self-consciousness, as if they had been
+archaic sculptors or builders of the thirteenth century. Bach, Haydn,
+Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, what sublime unconsciousness of their
+own personality as the personality of artists and as influencing art!
+Does Richard Wagner seem at first sight to be a glaring exception to
+such a rule--seem to strive more than any other artist in any branch of
+art to be critic as well--seem, perhaps, to be most notably
+self-conscious even in an age of self-consciousness? The most highly
+gifted of the generation as an artist, his musical talent developed
+spontaneously, irresistibly. It had thus developed before he began to
+reason about it, to justify in theory that which had approved itself in
+fact. His power lies in the union we find in him of musician and
+dramatist. His dogmatizing and theorizing expatiate not on the way he
+works in either art, but on the propriety of combining the two. Not his
+theories, but his artist's instinct, taught him how to do it as it is
+done in the _Meistersinger_. His theories try to explain his work, but
+by just so much as his work is consciously founded on his theories, by
+just so much is it less perfect than it would have been had he preserved
+his unconsciousness. The fact of his self-consciousness tends in many
+eyes to mark him as the rearguard of a line of artists, the pioneer of a
+generation of critical musicians. May Liszt perhaps serve as a sample of
+such--learned, critical, self-conscious, productive, but unoriginal? And
+the worst sign in Germany is less that the young musicians copy Wagner
+than that they copy him not instinctively and by nature, but
+theoretically and of deliberate intent, exalting his theories to rank
+beside his work.
+
+It seems at first strange that, music being at once the glory and the
+recreation of the whole German nation, and a knowledge of it being
+native to the vast majority of individual Germans, there is little
+existing musical criticism--none as compared with the abounding German
+criticism on every other branch of art and every other subject under the
+sun. The field offered here to the cobweb-spinning German brain is wide
+and attractive. It seems strange that it should be as yet uncultivated,
+unless we fall back on the theory that art at its vitalest is of
+necessity uncritical, and that where an inborn love of, and aptitude
+for, an art exists with a daily enjoyment of its technical perfection,
+we shall be least likely to find it elaborately criticised
+theoretically. Where practice is abundantly satisfactory theories are
+superfluous.
+
+Below, though still in the same category with, the musical gift of the
+Germans we may cite the literary gift of the English. For though this
+may not be the greatest literary epoch of England, yet it will not be
+denied that the greatest of English aptitudes is for literature. The
+wide appreciation of it in England is unmatched by a like appreciation
+of any other form of art. The growth of English novel-writing and its
+healthy development, accompanied, it may be, by many fungus-growths due
+to over-fertility, afford us the spectacle of a contemporary yet
+spontaneous English art, unforced by hothouse cultivation, uninfluenced
+by theories. A century or so hence the hearty, unconscious bloom of
+narrative literature in our day and language may seem as strange as
+seems to us the spontaneous blossoming of Venetian painting, of Greek
+sculpture, or of architecture in the Ile de France. An Englishman of
+to-day who thinks painters can be spun out of theories would surely
+laugh with instinctive knowledge of the veritable requirements of their
+art if one were to propose supplying novelists or poets in a similar
+way.
+
+If we thus acknowledge that two kinds of art--and those two requiring
+the greatest amount of imaginative power--can flourish with spontaneity
+even in so self-conscious a civilization as ours, we shall fail to see
+in that civilization a sufficient _a priori_ reason why the same might
+not have been the case with painting. If, however, still keeping to our
+own day, we look for the reverse of this picture, we shall find some
+approach to it in the condition of the painter's art in England. Here
+theory runs wild, practice falls far behind, and a great part of the
+practice that exists is inspired and regulated by theory. Artists are
+especially self-conscious, and the public, while much concerned with
+things artistic and fed on daily food of art-theory and speculation, is
+specially devoid of an innate artistic sense and an educated faculty for
+appreciating technical perfection.
+
+In England, more even than on the Continent or with ourselves, is there
+a passion for story-telling with the brush, a desire to give ideas
+instead of pictures, a denial of the fact that the main object of a
+picture is to please the eye just as truly and as surely as the main
+object of a symphony is to please the ear. If we look through the
+catalogue of a Royal Academy exhibition, we notice the preponderance of
+scenes illustrative of English or other literature--of canvases that
+tell a story or point a moral or bear a punning or a sentimental title.
+And we notice the great number of quotations introduced into the
+catalogue without any actual explanatory necessity. Even landscapes are
+dragged into the domain of sentiment, and Mr. Millais, who copies Nature
+with the exactest reverence, cannot call his brook a brook, but "The
+sound of many waters;" and a graveyard is not named a graveyard, but
+"Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap;" and instead of
+_Winding the Clock_ we are told "The clock beats out the life of little
+men." A canvas representing "untrodden snow" must be ticketed, for
+increase of interest, "Within three miles of Charing Cross." Another is
+marked, "Christmas Eve: a welcome to old friends. (See _Silas Marner_.)"
+And so on, _ad infinitum_. May one not say _ad nauseam_ before a piece
+of marble labelled "Baby doesn't like the water," or a canvas by Faed,
+R. A., called "Little cold tooties," or the portrait by the president of
+the Academy of a child on her pony denoted not only by the child's name
+in full, but her pony's also?
+
+Prominent also at a first visit to a London exhibition stands out the
+hesitancy; of English artists to deal with large canvases and life-size
+figures--their strict confinement to _genre_ of a domestic or bookishly
+archaeological type. This is not the place to discuss the causes of such
+a fact, nor to insist on the lack of certain technical qualities in even
+the best English work. Such discussions can only be profitable when the
+originals are at hand to recriticise the criticism.
+
+More striking than anything to be seen in 1877 at the Royal Academy was
+the small collection of pictures at the Grosvenor Gallery, organized and
+controlled by a noble amateur--himself a painter also--with the avowed
+intention of exhibiting the latest and most eccentric phases of English
+art. To a Londoner the opening day was interesting, as revealing the
+newest works of the most conspicuous London artists. To a stranger fresh
+from continental pictures, old and new, eager to see the touch of hands
+so often described in print, it was a revelation not only of a few men's
+work, but of the tendency of a national art and the artistic
+temperament of a whole people. Superficially, these pictures seemed the
+exact opposite of those at the conservative Academy--as aberrant as the
+latter were commonplace. But to one who knew them as the work of a
+fashionable, highly-educated clique they seemed merely a reaction of the
+same spirit that produced the elder style. In striving to get out of the
+rut of commonplace which had so long held in its grip the wheels of
+English art, not originality, so much as deliberate, sought-out
+eccentricity, was the result. The scale of work, starting from the
+original bathos of domestic sentimentality, runs up to the veriest
+contortions of affected mediaevalism, rarely striking out a note of
+common sense. Simple English art is the apotheosis of the British
+middle-class spirit, of Mr. Arnold's "Philistinism." English art
+departing from this spirit shows, not Mr. Arnold's "sweetness and
+light," not calmness, repose, sureness of self, unconsciousness of its
+own springs of life, but theories running into vague contradictions, a
+far-fetched abnormalness, a morbid conception of beauty, a defiant
+disregard of the fact that a public exists which judges by common sense
+and the eye, not by a fine-spun confusion of theories and an undefined
+but omnipotent and deified "aesthetic sense" non-resident in the optic
+nerve. Mr. Whistler's pictures to-day, cleverly as he can paint if he
+will, are not pictures--I do not mean in fact, which is certainly
+true--but in title. They are "Natures in Black and Gold," or "In Blue
+and Silver," or "In Blue and Gold," or "Arrangements in Black," or
+"Harmonies in Amber and Brown." Here we have the desperate reaction from
+the idea that _l'anecdote_ is everything to the idea that it is
+sufficient to represent nothing (poetically conceived!) with little
+color and less form, with the vaguest and slightest and most untechnical
+technique. It is hard to say which would most puzzle Titian
+redivivus--"Little cold tooties," or a blue-gray wash with a point or
+two of yellow, bearing some imaginary resemblance to the Thames with its
+gaslights, and called a "Nocturne in Blue and Gold."
+
+The French "impressionalist" clique, similar in spirit to these
+Englishmen, though less outre in practice, is not by any means of so
+great importance in France as they are in England. It has more than once
+been remarked in England that the old-fashioned amateur--patron and
+critic, _kenner_--is dying out, and that his modern substitute must not
+only choose, but experiment--not only admire, but be admired. This
+spirit, spreading through a nation, will not make it a nation of
+artists, but will make the nation's artists amateurs. No critic, no
+amateur, is more loath to try his own hand than the one who most deeply
+and rightly appreciates the skill of others, and the rare and God-given
+and difficult nature of that skill. The confusion of amateur with
+professional work lowers the standard, so there will be every year fewer
+to tell the mass of the nation that most useful of truths--how earnest a
+thing is true art, and how rare a native appreciation of its truest
+worth.
+
+There is no place where the interest excited by national art is so
+widespread, where the exhibitions are so crowded, where they so regulate
+times and seasons, annual excursions to and departures from town, as in
+England. Yet there is no place where the interest in art seems to a
+stranger so factitious, so much a matter of fashion and custom, of
+instinctive following of chance-appointed bell-wethers. It would
+scarcely be a matter of surprise if the whole thing should collapse
+through some pin-thrust of rival interest or excitement, and next year's
+exhibition be a desert, next year's artists paint their theories and
+their souls for unregarding eyes, or rather for unheeding brains. Have
+we not an apology for such a suggestion in the history of the rage for
+Gothic architecture, so thoroughly demonstrated in every possible
+theoretical and philosophical way to be the only proper style for
+Englishmen present or future, so devotedly and exclusively followed for
+a while by the profession, only to be suddenly abandoned for its fresher
+rivals, the so-called styles of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne?
+
+In the throngs that flocked to the opening of the Royal Academy, waiting
+hours before the doors were opened, fighting and struggling for a
+foothold on the stairs, eager to be the first to see, though there were
+weeks of opportunities ahead--in the rare recurrence through the hum of
+the vast criticising crowd of a word of technical judgment or sober
+artistic criticism--it was easy to recognize the same spirit that
+confuses morality with chair-legs, that finds a knocker more "sincere"
+and "right" than a door-bell, that insists as upon a vital necessity
+that the heads of all nails should be visible and that all lines should
+be straight, and would as soon have a shadow on its conscience as in the
+pattern of wall-paper. Nowhere was decorative art so non-existent a few
+years ago as in England--nowhere is it so universally dwelt upon to-day.
+Yet it is easy to see how entirely the revival is a child of theory and
+books and teachers and rules--how little owing to a spontaneous
+development of art-instinct in the people, a spontaneous desire for more
+beauty in their surroundings, a spontaneous knowledge of how it is best
+to be obtained.
+
+The literary and un-painterlike--if I may use such an awkward
+term--nature of English art is shown perhaps more forcibly in its
+critics than in artists or public. One is especially struck in reading
+criticisms of whatever grade with the excessive prominence given to the
+artist's personality. The work of this year is judged not so much by its
+excellence as by comparison with the work of last year. A----'s
+pictures, and B----'s and C----'s and D----'s, are interesting and
+valuable mainly as showing A----'s improvement, or B----'s falling off,
+or C----'s unexpected change of theme, or D----'s fine mind and delicate
+sensibilities.
+
+Mr. Ruskin is without doubt the most remarkable of English critics, and
+summarizes so many opposite theories and tendencies that his pages may
+in some sort be taken as an epitome of the whole matter. It would be
+impossible to abstract from their great bulk any consecutive or
+consistent system of thought or precept. His influence has been mainly
+by isolated ideas of more or less truth and value. It is impossible here
+to analyze his work. Such is the mixed tissue of his woof that the
+captive princess who was set to sort a roomful of birds' feathers had
+scarcely a harder task than one who should try to separate and classify
+his threads, some priceless and steady, some rotten, false, misleading.
+Morals, manners, religion, political economy, are mixed with art in
+every shape--art considered theoretically and technically, historically,
+philosophically and prophetically. Various as are his views on these
+varying subjects, on no one subject even do they remain invariable. Yet
+such is the charm of his style, delightfully sarcastic, and eloquent as
+a master's brush, so vividly is each idea presented in itself, that,
+each idea being enjoyed as it comes, all seem at first of equal value.
+We realize neither the fallacy of many taken singly nor the conflict of
+all taken together. His points are often cleverly and faithfully put,
+and our attention is so riveted on this cleverness and faithfulness that
+we take for granted the rightness of his deductions, slovenly, illogical
+or false though they may be. What we most remark in his books is how the
+purely artistic element in his nature--of a very high grade and very
+true instincts--is dwarfed of full development and stunted of full
+results by the theorizing literary bent which he has in common with his
+time and people. In theorizing even on truly-felt and clearly-stated
+facts, in explaining their origin and unfolding their effects, his
+guidance is least valuable. We may more safely ask him _what_ than
+_why_. His influence on English art has been great at the instant:
+whether it will be permanent is doubtful. At one time it was said that
+without having read his books one could tell by an inspection of the
+Royal Academy walls what Mr. Ruskin had written in the past year. Now,
+the most notable exponents of his teaching, whether consciously so or
+not, are on the one hand the shining lights of the Grosvenor
+Gallery--hierophants of mysticism and allegory and symbolism and
+painted souls and moral beauty expressed in the flesh, copying Ruskin's
+_Botticelli_ line for line, forgetting that what was naivete in him, and
+in him admirable, because all before him had done so much less well,
+becomes to-day in them the direst affectation, is reprehensible in them
+because many before them have done so much better. On the other hand, we
+have a naturalistic throng which follows Mr. Ruskin's precepts when he
+overweights the other side of the scale and says that art should "never
+exist alone, never for itself," never except as "representing a
+true"--defined as actually-existing--"thing or decorating a useful
+thing;" when he declares that every attempt by the imagination to "exalt
+or refine healthy humanity has weakened or caricatured it." Mr. Ruskin
+bade men "go to Nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her
+laboriously and trustingly, having no other thought but how best to
+penetrate her meaning, _rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and
+scorning nothing_;" and Mr. Hamerton was literally obeying him when he
+exiled himself for five years in a hut on an island in a bleak Scotch
+lake to learn faithfully to portray the shores of that single lake. Was
+it thus that Titian studied in his youth, and learned how, years after
+in Venice, to paint the chestnuts and the hills of Cadore a
+thousand-fold more artistically and more truly, because more abstractly
+and more ideally, than could all the "pre-Raphaelite" copyists of
+to-day? Thus we see the two extremes of Mr. Ruskin's teaching--see him
+at one time exalting imagination and feeling over the pictorial part of
+art, at another degrading art into the servilest copying.
+
+Observers may disagree as to whether these cognate
+things--self-consciousness in the artist, aesthetic philosophizing in the
+critic, and the taste for a literary rather than a pictorial value in
+the public--are on the increase or on the decrease in the various
+centres of art. Annual exhibitions--a significant illustration of our
+high-pressure life in art as in other things--would seem to tend toward
+deepening these faults. Attention must be attracted at all hazards, and
+the greater the number of exhibitors and the average attractiveness of
+their canvases the greater becomes the temptation to shine, not by
+excellence, but by eccentricities of treatment, or, still more, by the
+factitious interest of a "telling" subject. Is it due, perhaps, to this
+constant desire for notoriety on the part of the artist, and for more
+and more excitement on the part of the public, that in all modern
+schools, landscape art, as less possibly influenced by such a state of
+things, stands ahead of the art which has humanity for its subject? It
+is scarcely possible to find in France to-day a figure-painter who is a
+Daubigny, still less a Jules Dupre. Next to these unquestionably stand
+such animal-painters as Bonheur and Troyon; and it would be hard among
+the youngest file of artists to find a figure-painter who in his line
+should rival Van Marcke in his. In England also landscape ranks ahead,
+and it is perhaps in comparing it with French landscape that the
+difference between the schools is most truly though not most glaringly
+displayed. Even here, and in the allied fields of animal-painting, the
+desire for _l'anecdote_ creeps in, and Landseer with all his talent
+often prostitutes his brush in the attempt to make his brutes the centre
+of dramatic action, and forces into them semi-human characteristics in
+order to extract from them tales or ideas of human interest. It was not
+thus that Veronese painted dogs or Franz Snyders his lions and
+boars--not thus that the Greeks have put the horse into art. Nor, to
+take the best contemporary comparison, is it thus that Barye's bronzes
+are designed.
+
+Landscape brings us inevitably to Turner. The most highly gifted of all
+English artists, past or present, his genius was hardly a logical
+outcome of the contemporary spirit of his nation. We have no right to
+say this of an artist, no right to call him anomalous, while we are
+still in doubt as to whether he may be only the advance-guard of a new
+national art, the herald of a new avatar. But when he with his
+generation dies, when another generation develops and bears fruit, and
+a third is beginning to blossom, and he still seems anomalous, it is
+fair to hold him exceptional in his country's art, rather than
+characteristic thereof. Together with wonderful endowments of eye and
+hand, and a prodigious power of work, Turner's earlier works show us an
+unconscious development and a healthy oblivion of his own personality.
+But later the fatal modern fever entered his blood, ending in something
+very like delirium. From a painter he became a theorist, contaminated by
+a rush of criticism alike indiscriminate in praise and injudicious in
+blame. We shall see the baleful effects of modern methods if we look, in
+the wonderful series at the National Gallery, first at the pictures
+painted when Turner was an artist thinking of painting, then to those
+done when he was a self-conscious experimentalist thinking of
+Turner--Turner worshipped by Ruskin, Turner sick with envy of the
+Dutchmen and defiance of Claude.
+
+I have but a line to give to the one or two other men of abnormally
+splendid gifts whom this century has seen. Henri Regnault's
+extraordinary talent was extinguished almost at the first spark, and it
+is beyond prophecy to tell what it might have produced. His
+eccentricities seem to have been quite genuine, due to an overflow of
+power rather than to posing or grimace. His love of his art, his passion
+for color, were almost frantic in their intensity, but sincere. A
+certain exaggerated phrase of his is but the protest of reaction against
+the literary painting, the erudite and philosophical art, of his time.
+"La vie," he cries, "etant courte, il faut peindre tant qu'on a des
+yeux. Donc on ne doit pas les fatiguer a lire des stupides journaux." A
+crude way of putting the idea that to be an artist one needs but art.
+
+Another wonderful talent is Hans Makart. Such an eye for color, it is
+quite safe to say, has not been born since Veronese. Had he been born at
+Venice among his peers, forced to work instead of experiment, outvied
+instead of foolishly extolled, surrounded by artists to surpass him if
+he tripped for a single instant, instead of critics to laud his most
+glaring faults and amateurs to pay thousands for his spoiled paper, we
+should have had another name to use as explanatory of genius. As it is,
+he is, according to present indications, utterly spoiled. Only those who
+know how he can draw if he will, how he has painted--portraits best,
+perhaps--when he would, are vexed beyond endurance by the folly and the
+carelessness and the sins he chooses to give us. It has been said that
+Raphael Mengs was a born genius spoiled by the coldness, the
+pseudo-classicism, the artificiality and eclecticism of the eighteenth
+century. A companion portrait is Hans Makart, ruined by the
+amateurishness, the rhapsodizing, the theorizing, the morbid
+self-consciousness of the nineteenth.
+
+The so-called Spanish school of to-day is as yet too new for us to see
+exactly whither it tends. Its passion for glaring, metallic, aniline
+compound tints--tints that "scream," to use a French phrase--its horror
+of all shade and depth and of pure and simple colors, are, however, most
+certainly unhealthy. It is a diseased eye that in the desire for violent
+color loses all memory of chiaroscuro.
+
+I have left till now unnoticed the contemporary Netherland artists,
+though their works are perhaps more entirely satisfactory than those of
+either of the three schools we have discussed. But their characteristics
+are less markedly distinct, less available for comparison, and can be
+best noted and appraised by a previously-gained knowledge of the
+peculiarities of English, French and German painting. The Belgian school
+is most closely allied to the French, and in technique is often its
+equal. In landscape and cattle-painting the types are similar, while
+Belgian figure-painting gains by the lack of the element which a French
+critic notes when he says modern art has become _mondain--surtout
+demi-mondain_. Nowhere does contemporary art seem so healthy and sane,
+so sure of itself, so consonant with the best nature and gifts of the
+people, as in the Netherlands: nowhere are its ideals so free from
+morbidness, affectation or sentimentality. Is it perhaps that in the
+studios of Amsterdam, in the great school of Antwerp, even in the
+galleries of Brussels, one is somewhat out of the wildest stream of
+modern life--less driven to analysis and theorizing and
+self-consciousness than in London, Paris or Munich? Whatever is cause,
+whatever effect, the Netherland school shows two things side by
+side--the least measure of self-consciousness, and the soundest
+contemporary painting: if not the most effective, it is, I think, the
+most full of promise. There seems to be forming the most healthy
+national soil for the development of future genius.
+
+In conclusion, it may be noted that we in America, whose art is just
+beginning even to strive, are subjected to a somewhat strange cross-fire
+of influences. Lineally the children of England, we are spiritually and
+by temperament in many things her opposites. Our taste in art seems to
+turn resolutely away from her. For each hundred of French and score of
+German pictures that comes to us, how many come from England? What can
+one who has not crossed the sea learn of English pictures from our
+private collections and picture-dealers' shops? Was not all we knew
+prior to the Exhibition of 1876 gleaned from _Vernon Gallery_ plates and
+Turner's _Rogers_ or _Rivers of France_? But while our dealers and
+students and millionaires throng the studios of Paris and Munich, and
+our eyes are being daily educated to demand above all things
+_technique_, our brains are constantly being worked upon by a stream of
+art-literature from England. Taste pulls us one way--identity of English
+speech, with consequent openness to English ideas, pulls us the other.
+Pictures preach one thing, books another. Our boy who has worked in
+Paris comes home to try to realize Ruskin. Both influences are too new,
+and our art is as yet too unsteady, for any one to guess as to the
+ultimate result. One thing only can be unreservedly inculcated: Let us
+shun self-analyzation, self-consciousness, morbidness, affectation,
+attitudinizing. Let us look ahead as little as possible, keeping our
+eyes on our brushes and on the world of beauty around us. One thing
+only can with safety be predicted: If we are, or are to be, a people of
+artists, creative or appreciative as the case may be, we shall learn
+whatever of technique the world has to teach us, and shall improve upon
+it, and we shall perhaps digest the small measure of theory for which we
+have appetites left. But if we are _not_ artists, actual or future,
+technique will be impossible, and will seem undesirable. We shall
+greedily fill our stomachs with the wind of art-philosophy, shall work
+with the reason instead of with the eye and the fingers, shall symbolize
+our aspirations, our theorizings, our souls and our consciences, and
+fondly dream we are painting pictures. Or we shall copy with a hopeless
+effort after literalness the first face or weed we meet, and call the
+imperfect, mechanical result a work of art.
+
+  M. G. VAN RENSSELAER.
+
+
+
+
+THREE WATCHES
+
+
+  I sat in the silence, in moonlight that gathered and glowed
+    Far over the field and the forest with tender increase:
+  The low, rushing winds in the trees were like waters that flowed
+    From sources of passionate joy to an ocean of peace.
+  And I watched, and was glad in my heart, though the shadows were deep,
+    Till one came and asked me: "Say, why dost thou watch through the
+        night?"
+  And I said, "I am watching my joy. They who sorrow may sleep,
+    But the soul that is glad cannot part with one hour of delight."
+
+  Again in the silence I watched, and the moon had gone down;
+    The shadows were hidden in darkness; the winds had passed by;
+  The midnight sat throned, and the jewels were bright in her crown,
+    For stars glimmered softly--oh softly!--from depths of the sky.
+  And I sighed as I watched all alone, till again came a voice:
+    "Ah! why dost thou watch? Joy is over, and sorrow is vain."
+  And I said, "I am watching my grief. Let them sleep who rejoice,
+    But the spirit that loves cannot part with one hour of its pain."
+
+  Once more I sat watching, in darkness that fell like a death--
+    The deep solemn darkness that comes to make way for the dawn:
+  I looked on the earth, and it slept without motion or breath,
+    And blindly I looked on the sky, but the stars were withdrawn.
+  And the voice spoke once more: "Cease thy watching, for what dost
+        thou gain?"
+    But I said, "I am watching my soul, to this darkness laid bare.
+  Let them sleep to whom love giveth joy, to whom love giveth pain,
+    But the soul left alone cannot part with one moment of prayer."
+
+  MARION COUTHOUY.
+
+
+
+
+SISTER SILVIA.
+
+
+Monte Compatri is one of the eastern outlying peaks of the Alban
+Mountains, and, like so many Italian mountains, has its road climbing to
+and fro in long loops to a gray little city at the top. This city of
+Monte Compatri is a full and busy hive, with solid blocks of houses, and
+the narrowest of streets that break now and then into stairs. For those
+old builders respected the features of a landscape as though they had
+been the features of a face, and no more thought of levelling
+inequalities of land than of shaving down or raising up noses. When a
+man had a house-lot in a hollow, he built his house there, and made
+Steps to go down to it: his neighbor, who owned a rocky knoll, built his
+house at the top, and made stairs to go up to it. Moreover, if the land
+was a bit in the city, the house was made in the shape of it, and was as
+likely to have corners in obtuse or acute as in right angles.
+
+The inhabitants of Monte Compatri have two streets of which they are
+immensely proud--the Lungara, which wriggles through the middle of the
+town, and the Giro, which makes the entire circuit of the town, leaving
+outside only the rim of houses that rise from the edge of the mountain,
+some of them founded on the natural rock, others stretching roots of
+masonry far down into the earth.
+
+One of these houses on the Giro had for generations been in the
+possession of the Guai family. One after another had held it at an easy
+rent from Prince Borghese, the owner of the town. The vineyard and
+orchard below in the Campagna they owned, and from those their wealth
+was derived. For it was wealth for such people to have a house full of
+furniture, linen and porcelain--where, perhaps, a connoisseur might have
+found some rare bits of old china--besides having a thousand scudi in
+bank.
+
+In this position was the head of the family when he died, leaving a
+grown-up son and daughter, and his wife about to become a mother for the
+third time.
+
+"Pepina shall have her portion in money, since she is to marry soon,"
+the father said. "Give her three hundred scudi in gold and a hundred in
+pearls. The rest of the money shall be for my wife to do as she likes
+with. For the little one; when it shall come, Matteo shall put in the
+bank every year thirty scudi, and when it shall be of age, be it girl or
+boy, he shall divide the land equally with it."
+
+So said Giovanni Guai, and died, and his wife let him talk
+uncontradicted, since it was for the last time. They had lived a stormy
+life, his heavy fist opposed to her indefatigable tongue, and she
+contemplated with silent triumph the prospect of being left in
+possession of the field. Besides, would he not see afterward what she
+did--see and be helpless to oppose? So she let him die fancying that he
+had disposed of his property.
+
+"The child is sure to be a girl," she said afterward, "and I mean her to
+be a nun. The land shall not be cut up. Matteo shall be a rich man and
+pile up a fortune. He shall be the richest man in Monte Compatri, and a
+girl shall not stand in his way."
+
+Nature verified the mother's prophecy and sent a little girl. Silvia
+they called her, and, since she was surely to be a nun, she grew to be
+called Sister Silvia by everybody, even before she was old enough to
+recognize her own name.
+
+The house of the Guai, on its inner wall, opened on the comparatively
+quiet Giro. From the windows and door could be heard the buzz and hum of
+the Lungara, where everybody--men, women, children, cats and dogs--were
+out with every species of work and play when the sun began to decline.
+This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family.
+They could see their neighbors even when they were at work in their
+houses, and could exchange gossip and stir the polenta at the same
+time. The other side of the house they avoided. It was lonely and it was
+sunny. For Italians would have the sun, like the Lord, to be for ever
+knocking at the door and for ever shut out. It must shine upon their
+outer walls, but not by any means enter their windows.
+
+As years passed, however, there grew to be one exception in this regard.
+Sister Silvia loved not the town with its busy streets, nor the front
+windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own
+chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with
+knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear
+mass. There her mother accompanied her--a large, self-satisfied woman
+beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her
+mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his
+black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to
+encounter the two black eyes of Matteo Guai. It was understood that the
+knife in his belt was sharp, and that no scruple of conscience would
+stand between him and any vengeance he might choose to take for any
+affront he might choose to imagine.
+
+After mass, then, and the little work her mother permitted the girl to
+do for health's sake, Silvia sat alone by her window and looked out on
+the splendor which her eyes alone could appreciate. There lay the
+Campagna rolling and waving for miles and miles around, till the
+Sabines, all rose and amethyst, hemmed it in with their exquisite wall,
+and the sea curved a gleaming sickle to cut off its flowery passage, or
+the nearer mountains stood guard, almost covered by the green spray it
+threw up their rocky sides. She sat and stared at Rome while her busy
+fingers knit--at the wonderful city where she was one day to go and be a
+nun, where the pope lived and kings came to worship him. In the morning
+light the Holy City lay in the midst of the Campagna like her mother's
+wedding-pearls when dropped in a heap on their green cushion; and Silvia
+knelt with her face that way and prayed for a soul as white, for she
+was to be the spouse of Christ, and her purity was all that she could
+bring Him as a dowry. But when evening came, and that other airy sea of
+fine golden mist flowed in from the west, and made a gorgeous blur of
+all things, then the city seemed to float upward from the earth and rise
+toward heaven all stirring with the wings of its guardian angels, and
+Silvia would beg that the New Jerusalem might not be assumed till she
+should have the happiness of being in it.
+
+But there was a lovely view nearer than this visionary one, though the
+little nun seldom looked at it. If she should lean from her window she
+would see the mountain-side dropping from the gray walls of her home,
+with clinging flowery vines and trees growing downward, while the olives
+and grapevines of the Campagna came to meet them, setting here and there
+a precarious little garden halfway up the steep. Just under her window
+an almost perpendicular path came up, crept round the walls and entered
+the town. But no one ever used this road now, for a far wider and better
+one had been constructed at the other side of the mountain, and all the
+people came up that way when the day's work was over in the Campagna.
+
+One summer afternoon Silvia's reveries were broken by her mother's voice
+calling her: "Silvia, come and prepare the salad for Matteo."
+
+It was an extraordinary request, but the girl went at once without
+question. She seized upon every opportunity to practise obedience in
+preparation for that time when her life would be made up of obedience
+and prayer.
+
+Her mother was sitting by one of the windows talking with Matteo, who
+had just came up from the Campagna. He had an unsocial habit of eating
+alone, and, as he ate nothing when down in the vineyard, always wanted
+his supper as soon as he came up. The table was set for him with
+snow-white cloth and napkin, silver knife, fork and spoon, a loaf of
+bread and a decanter of golden-sparkling wine icy cold from the grotto
+hewn in the rock beneath the house; and he was just eating his
+_minestra_ of vegetables when his sister came in. At the other end of
+the long table was a head of crisp white lettuce lying on a clean linen
+towel, and two bottles--one of white vinegar, the other of oil as sweet
+as cream and as bright as sunshine. Monte Compatri had no need to send
+to Lucca for oil of olives while its own orchards dropped such streams
+of pure richness.
+
+The room was large and dingy. The brick floor had never known other
+cleansing than sprinkling and sweeping, the yellow-washed walls had
+become with time a pale, mottled brown, the paint had disappeared under
+a fixed dinginess which the dusting-brush alone could not remove, and
+the glass of the windows had never been washed except by the rain. Yet,
+for all that, the place had an air of cleanliness. For though these
+people do not clean their houses more than they clean their yards, yet
+their clothing and tables and beds are clean. Plentiful white linen,
+stockings like snow, and bright dishes and metals give a look of
+freshness and show well on the dim background. Heavy walnut presses,
+carved and black with age, stood against the walls, drinking-glasses and
+candlesticks sparkled on a dark bureau-top, there was a bright picture
+or two, and the sunlighted tinware of a house at the other side of the
+street threw a cluster of tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the
+window. Silvia received these sun-blossoms on her head when she placed
+herself at the lower end of the table. She pushed the sleeves of her
+white sack back from her slim white arms, and began washing the
+lettuce-leaves in a bowl of fresh water and breaking them in the towel.
+The leaves broke with a fine snap and dropped in pieces as stiff as
+paper into a large dark-blue plate of old Japanese ware. A connoisseur
+in porcelain would have set such a plate on his drawing-room wall as a
+picture.
+
+"How does Claudio work?" the mother asked of her son.
+
+"He works well," Matteo replied. "He is worth two of our common fellows,
+if he _is_ educated."
+
+"Nevertheless, I should not have employed him," the mother said. "He
+has disobeyed and disappointed his parents, and he should be punished.
+They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to
+educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay
+them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood,
+and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set one's
+will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough for
+anything. There should be a prison where parents could put the children
+who disobey them."
+
+The Sora Guai spoke sternly, and looked as if she would not have
+hesitated to put a refractory child in the deepest of dungeons.
+
+"He was a fool, but he earns his money," Matteo responded, and, drawing
+a plate of deliciously fried frogs toward him, began to gnaw them and
+throw the bones on the floor.
+
+Silvia gave him the salad, and poured wine and water into the tumbler
+for him, while his mother went to the kitchen for a dish of fricasseed
+pigeons.
+
+"There's no onion in the salad," Matteo grumbled when she came back.
+
+Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white little
+onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.
+
+"Forgive me, Matteo," she said. "I was distracted by the thought of
+Claudio. It seems such a terrible thing."
+
+"It would be a much more terrible thing if it were a girl who
+disobeyed," Matteo growled. He did not like that girls should criticise
+men.
+
+"So it would," the girl responded with meek readiness.
+
+"I don't know why I feel so tired to-day," the mother said, sinking into
+a chair again. "My bones ache as if I had been working in the vineyard
+all day."
+
+"You are not ill, mamma?" exclaimed Silvia, blushing with alarm.
+
+The answer was a hesitating one: "I don't see what can ail me. It
+wouldn't be anything, only that I am so tired without having done much."
+
+"Perhaps it's the weather, mamma," Silvia suggested.
+
+Gentle as she was, she had adopted the ruthless and ungrateful Italian
+custom of ascribing every ache and pain of the body to some almost
+imperceptible change in their too beautiful weather. The smallest cloud
+goes laden with more accusations than it holds drops of rain, and the
+ill winds that blow nobody any good blow through those shining skies
+from morning till night and from night till morning again.
+
+The Sora Guai was sicker than she dreamed. It was not the summer sun
+that scorched her so, nor the _scirocco_ that made her head so heavy.
+What malaria she had found to breathe on the mountain-top it would be
+hard to say; but the dreaded _perniciosa_ had caught her in its grasp,
+and she was doomed. The fever burned fiercely for a few days, and when
+it was quenched there was nothing left but ashes.
+
+And thus died the only earthly thing to which Sister Silvia's heart
+clung. The mother had been stern, but the daughter was too submissive to
+need correction. She had never had any will of her own, except to love
+and obey. Collision between them was therefore impossible, and the
+daughter felt as a frail plant growing under a shadowing tree might feel
+if the tree were cut down. She was bare to every wind that blew. She had
+no companions of her own age--she had no companion of any age, in
+fact--and she had not been accustomed to think for herself in the
+smallest thing.
+
+She had got bent into a certain shape, however, and her brother and
+sister felt quite safe on her account. Everybody knew that she was to be
+a nun of the Perpetual Adoration; that she was soon to go to the convent
+of Santa Maria Maddalena on the Quirinal in Rome; and that, once entered
+there, she would never again see a person from outside. The
+town's-people were accustomed to the wall of silence and seclusion which
+had already grown up about her, and they did not even seek to salute her
+when they met her going to and from church in the morning. To these
+simple citizens, ignorant but reverential, Sister Silvia's lowered
+eyelids were as inviolate as the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
+Besides, to help their reverence, there were the fierce black eyes and
+strange reputation of Matteo. So when, a day or two after her mother's
+death, his sister begged him to accompany her to church in the early
+morning, and leave her in the care of some decent woman there, Matteo
+replied that she might go by herself.
+
+She set out for the first time alone on what had ever been to her a _via
+sacra_, and was now become a _via dolorosa_, where her tears dropped as
+she walked. And going so once, she went again. Pepina, the elder sister,
+a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but she was too
+much taken up with work, the care of her two children and looking out
+for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and after a few weeks
+the young girl went as unheeded as a matron in her daily walk.
+
+At home her life was nearly the same. She mended the clothes from the
+washing and knit stockings, and sat at her window and looked off over
+the Campagna toward Rome.
+
+One evening she sat there before going to bed and watched the moonlight
+turn all the earth to black and silver under the purple sky--a black
+like velvet, so deep and soft was it, and a silver like white fire,
+clear and splendid, yet beautifully soft. She was feeling desolate, and
+her tears dropped down, now and then breaking into sobs. It had been
+pleasant to sit there alone when she knew that her mother was below
+stairs, strong, healthy and gay. All that life had been as the oil over
+which her little flame burned. Lacking it, she grew dim, just as the
+floating wick in her little blue vase before the Madonna grew dim when
+the oil was gone.
+
+As she wept and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew conscious
+of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human voice, clear
+and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in little
+snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came nearer
+and paused beneath a fig tree, and the words grew distinct.
+
+"Pieta, signore, di me dolente," it sang.
+
+Silvia leaned out of the window and looked down at the singer. His face
+was lifted to the white moonlight, and seemed in its pallid beauty a
+concentration of the moonlight. Only his face was visible, for the
+shadow of the tree hid all his figure. One might almost have expected to
+catch a glimmer of two motionless wings bearing up that face, so fair it
+was.
+
+To Silvia it was as if another self, who grieved also, but who could
+speak, were uttering all her pain, and lightening it so. She recognized
+Claudio's voice. He was the chief singer in the cathedral, and sang like
+an angel. She was afraid that Claudio had done very wrong in not being a
+priest, but, for all that, she had often found her devotion increased by
+his singing. The Christmas night would not have been half so joyful
+lacking his _Adeste Fideles_; the _Stabat Mater_ sung by him in Holy
+Week made her tears of religious sorrow burst forth afresh; and when on
+Easter morning he sang the _Gloria_ it had seemed to her that the
+heavens were opening.
+
+For all that, however, he had been to her not a person, but a voice.
+That he should come here and express her sorrow made him seem different.
+For the first time she looked at his face. By daylight it was thin and
+finely featured, and of a clear darkness like shaded water, through
+which the faintest tinge of color is visible. In this transfigurating
+moonlight it became of a luminous whiteness.
+
+The song ended, the singer turned his head slightly and looked up at
+Silvia's window. She did not draw back. There was no recognition of any
+human sympathy with him, and no slightest consciousness of that airy and
+silent friendship which had long been weaving itself over the tops of
+the mountains that separated them. How could she know that Claudio had
+sung for her, and that it had been the measure of his success to see her
+head droop or lift as he sang of sorrow and pain or of joy and triumph?
+The choir had their post over the door; and, besides, she never glanced
+up even in going out. Therefore she gazed down into his uplifted face
+with a sweet and sorrowful tranquillity, her soul pure and candid to its
+uttermost depths.
+
+For Claudio, who had sung to express his sympathy for her, but had not
+dreamed of seeing her, it was as if the dark-blue sky above had opened
+and an angel had looked out when he saw her face. He could only stretch
+his clasped hands toward her.
+
+The gesture made her weep anew, for it was like human kindness. She hid
+her face in her handkerchief, and he saw her wipe the tears away again
+and again.
+
+Claudio remembered a note he carried. It had been written the night
+before--not with any hope of her ever seeing it, but, as he had written
+her hundreds of notes before, pouring out his heart into them because it
+was too full to bear without that relief. He took the note out, but how
+should he give it to her? The window was too far above for him to toss
+so light a thing unless it should be weighted with a stone; and he could
+not throw a stone at Silvia's window. He held it up, and, that she might
+see it more clearly, tore up a handful of red poppies and laid it white
+on the blossoms that were a deep red by night.
+
+Silvia understood, and after a moment's study dropped him down the ball
+of her knitting; and soon the note came swaying up through the still air
+resting on its cushion of poppies, for Claudio had wound the thread
+about both flowers and letter.
+
+He smiled with an almost incredulous delight as he saw the package
+arrive safely at its destination and caught afterward the faint red
+light of the lamp that Silvia had taken down from before her Madonna to
+read the note by. Since she was a little thing only five or six years
+old his heart had turned toward her, and her small white face had been
+to him the one star in a dim life. He still kept two or three tiny
+flowers she had given him years before when his family and hers were
+coming together down from Monte San Silvestro at the other side of
+Monte Compatri. The two children, with others, had stopped to stick
+fresh flowers through the wire screen before the great crucifix halfway
+up the mountain, and Silvia had given Claudio these blossoms. He had
+laid them away with his treasures and relics--the bit of muslin from the
+veil of Our Lady of Loretto, the almost invisible speck from the cord of
+St. Francis of Assisi and the little paper of the ashes of Blessed
+Joseph Labre. In those days he was the little priest and she the little
+nun, and their companions stood respectfully back for them. Now he was
+no more the priest, and she was up there in her window against the sky
+reading the note he had written her.
+
+This is what the note said:
+
+"My heart is breaking for your sorrow. Why should such eyes as yours be
+permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those tears away? Oh that I
+might catch them as they fall! Drop me down a handkerchief that has been
+wet with them, that I may keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in
+which I can console you and spend my life to serve you."
+
+She read with a mingling of consolation and astonishment. Why, this was
+more than her mother cared for her! But perhaps men were really more
+strongly loving than women. It would seem so, since God, who knows all,
+when He wanted to express His love to mankind, took the form of a man,
+not of a woman. Then she considered whether, and how, she should answer
+this note, and the result of her considering was this, written hastily
+on a bit of paper in which some Agnus Dei had been wrapped:
+
+     "I do not know what I ought to write to you, but I thank you for
+     your kindness. It comforts me, and I have need of comfort. I think,
+     though, that it may be wrong for you to speak of my handkerchief as
+     if it were a relic. Relics are things which have belonged to the
+     saints, and I am not a saint at all, though I hope to become one. I
+     frequently do wrong. Spend your life in serving God, and pray for
+     me. You pray in singing, and your singing is very sweet.
+
+     SILVIA."
+
+It seemed to her a simple and merely polite note. To him it was as the
+spark to a magazine of powder. All the possibilities of his life, only
+half hoped or half dreamed of, burst at once into a flame of certainty.
+She had need of comfort, and he comforted her! His voice was sweet to
+her, and his singing was a prayer!
+
+Silvia should not be a nun. She should break the bond imposed by her
+mother, as he had broken that imposed by his parents. She should be his
+wife, and they would live in Rome. He knew that his voice would find
+bread for them.
+
+All this flashed through his mind as he read, and pressed to his lips
+the handkerchief which she had dropped down to him, though it was not a
+relic. He lifted his arms upward toward her window with a rapturous joy,
+as if to embrace her, but she did not look out again. A little scruple
+for having deprived the Madonna for a moment of her lamp had made her
+resolve to say at once a decade of the rosary in expiation. He waited
+till the sound of closing doors and wandering voices told that the
+inhabitants gathered for the evening in the Lungara were separating to
+their homes, then went reluctantly away. Matteo would be at home, and
+Matteo's face might look down at him from that other window beside
+Silvia's. So he also went home, with the moonlight between his feet and
+the ground and stars sparkling in his brain. He felt as if his head were
+the sky.
+
+This was an August night. One day in October, Matteo told his sister
+that she was to go to Rome with him the next morning to pass a month
+with a family they knew there, and afterward begin her noviciate in the
+convent of the Sacramentarians at Monte Cavallo. He had received a
+letter from the Signora Fantini, who would receive her and do everything
+for her. He and Pepina had no time, now that the vintage had begun, to
+attend to such affairs, even if they knew how.
+
+Silvia grew pale. She had not expected to go before the spring, and now
+all was arranged without a word being said to her, and she was to go
+without saying good-bye to any one.
+
+Matteo's sharp eyes were watching her. "You will be ready to start at
+seven o'clock," he said: "I must be back to-morrow night."
+
+"Yes, Matteo," she faltered, hesitated a moment, then ventured to add,
+"I did not expect to go so soon."
+
+"And what of that?" he demanded roughly. "You were to go at the proper
+time, and the proper time is to-morrow."
+
+She trembled, but ventured another word: "I should like to see my
+confessor first."
+
+"He will come here this evening to see you," her brother replied: "I
+have already talked with him. You have nothing else to do. Pepina will
+pack your trunk while you are talking with the priest."
+
+Silvia had no more to say. She was bound hand and foot. Besides, she was
+willing to go, she assured herself. It was her duty to obey her parents,
+or the ones who stood in their place and had authority over her. Matteo
+said she must go; therefore it was her duty to go, and she was willing.
+
+But the willing girl looked very pale and walked about with a very
+feeble step, and it was hard work to keep the tears that were every
+moment rising to her eyes from falling over her cheeks. It was such a
+pitiful face, indeed, that Father Teodoli, when he came just before Ave
+Maria, asked if Silvia were ill.
+
+"She has had a toothache," Matteo said quickly, and gave his sister a
+glance.
+
+"And what have you done for it, my child?" the priest asked kindly.
+
+"Nothing," Silvia faltered out.
+
+"I will leave you to give Silvia all the advice she needs," Matteo said
+after the compliments of welcome were over. "I have to go down the
+Lungara for men to work in the vineyard to-morrow.--Silvia, come and
+shut the door after me: there is too much draught here."
+
+Silvia followed her brother to the door, trembling for what he might say
+or do. Well she knew that his command was given only that he might have
+a chance to speak with her alone.
+
+"Mind what you say to your confessor," he whispered, grasping her arm
+and speaking in her ear. "You are to be a nun: you wish to be, and you
+are willing to set out to-morrow. Tell him no nonsense--do you hear?--or
+it will be worse for you. I shall know every word you say. If he asks if
+you had a toothache say Yes. Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, Matteo."
+
+She went back half fainting, and did as she had been commanded. If there
+had been any little lurking impulse to beg for another week or month, it
+died of fear. If she had any confession to make of other wishes than
+those chosen for her, she postponed it. Matteo might be behind the door
+listening, or in the next room or at the window. It seemed to her that
+he could make himself invisible in order to keep guard over her.
+
+So the priest talked a little, learned nothing, gave some advice,
+recommended himself to her prayers, gave her his benediction, and went.
+Then Pepina called her to see the trunk all packed with linen that had
+been laid by for her for years, and Matteo, who had really been lurking
+about the house, told her to go to bed, and himself really went off this
+time to the Lungara. Pepina's lover came for her to sit out on the
+doorstep with him, and Silvia was left alone. Nobody cared for her. All
+had other interests, and they forgot her the moment she was out of their
+sight. Worse, even: they wanted her to be for ever out of their sight,
+that they might never have to think of her.
+
+But no: there was one who did not forget her--who would perhaps now have
+heard that she was going away, and be waiting in the mountain-path for
+her. She hastened to her room, locked the door and went to the window.
+He made a gesture of haste, and she dropped the ball down to him. This
+was not the second time that their conversation had been held by means
+of a thread. Indeed, they had come to talk so every night. At first it
+had been a few words only, and Silvia's unconsciousness and her
+sincerity in her intention to follow her mother's will had imposed
+silence on the young man. But little by little he had ventured, and she
+had understood; and within the last week there had been no concealments
+between them, though Silvia still resisted all his prayers to change her
+resolution and brave her brother.
+
+His first note was in her hands in a moment:
+
+"Is it possible that what I hear is true? I will not believe it: I will
+not let you go."
+
+"Yes, and I must go," she wrote back. "I have to start at seven in the
+morning. Dear Claudio, be resigned: there is no help for it."
+
+"Silvia, why will you persist in ruining your life and mine? It is a
+sin. Say that you are too sick to go to-morrow. Stay in bed all day, and
+by night I will have a rope-ladder for you to come down to me. We can
+run away and hide somewhere."
+
+"I cannot. We could never hide from Matteo: he would find us out and
+kill us both."
+
+"I will go to the Holy Father and tell him all. We could be in Rome
+early in the morning if we should walk all night."
+
+"Matteo would hear us: he hears everything. We should never reach Rome.
+He would find us wherever we might be hidden. If we were dead and buried
+he would pull us out of the ground to stab us. I must go. I have sinned
+in having so much intercourse with you. Be resigned, Claudio. Be a good
+man, and we shall meet in heaven. The earth is a terrible place: I am
+afraid of it. I want to shut myself up in the convent and be at peace. I
+fear so much that I tremble all the time. Say addio."
+
+"I cannot. Will you stay in bed to-morrow, and let me try if I cannot go
+to Rome?"
+
+"Say addio, Claudio. I dare not stay here any longer: I hear some one
+outside my door. I say addio to you now. I shall not drop the ball
+again."
+
+She did not even draw it up again, for the thread caught on a nail in
+the wall and broke. And at the same time there was a knock at her door.
+
+"Silvia, why do you not go to bed?" Matteo called out: "I hear you up."
+
+"I am going now," she made haste to answer, and in her terror threw
+herself on the bed without undressing. She wondered if Matteo could hear
+her heart beat through the wall or see how she was shaking.
+
+The next morning at seven o'clock Silvia and her brother took their
+seats in the clumsy coach that goes from Monte Compatri to Rome whenever
+there are passengers enough to fill it, and after confused leavetakings
+from all but the one she wished most to see they set out. Claudio was
+invisible. In fact, he had lain on the ground all night beneath her
+window, and now, hidden in a tree, was watching the winding road for an
+occasional glimpse of the carriage as it bore his love away.
+
+The peasants of Italy, when they see the Milky Way stretching its
+wavering, cloudy path across the sky, shining as if made up of the
+footprints of innumerable saints, say that it is the road to Jerusalem.
+The road to the New Jerusalem has no such pallid and spiritual glory:
+its colors are those of life. No death but that of martyrdom, with its
+rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown, is figured there. Life,
+and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few
+blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the _dolce far niente_ of poverty
+that neither works nor starves,--they lie all along the road.
+
+Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey.
+She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though all
+the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of St.
+John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon _Angelus_,
+and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door and Silvia in
+the kind lady's arms. It seemed to the girl that she had found her
+mother again. That this lady was more gracious, graceful, kind and
+beautiful than her mother had ever been she would not think. She was
+simply another mother. And when Matteo had gone away home again, not
+too soon, and when, after a few days' sightseeing, the signora,
+suspecting that the continued sadness of her young guest had some other
+cause than separation from her brother and sister, sought persistently
+and artfully to win her secret, Silvia told her all with many tears. She
+was going to be a nun because her mother had said that she must; and she
+was willing to be a nun--certainly she was willing. But, for all that,
+if it could have been so, she would have been so happy with Claudio, and
+she never should be quite happy without him.
+
+"Then you must not be a nun," the signora said decidedly. "The thing is
+all wrong. You have no vocation. You should have said all this before."
+
+For already the signora had taken Silvia to see the Superior at Monte
+Cavallo, who had promised to receive the young novice in three weeks,
+and had told her what work she could perform in the convent. "You are
+not strong, I think," she had said, "but you can knit the stockings. All
+have to work."
+
+And Monsignor Catinari, whose business it was to examine all candidates
+for the conventual life, had held a long conversation with her and gone
+away perfectly satisfied.
+
+But when the signora proposed to undo all this, Silvia was wild with
+terror. No, no, she would be a nun. Her mother had said so, she wished
+it, and Matteo would kill her if she should refuse.
+
+"Leave it all to me," the signora said, and laid her motherly hand on
+the trembling little ones held out to her in entreaty. "We will look out
+for that. Matteo shall not hurt you or Claudio. I am going to send for
+Monsignor Catinari again, and you must tell him the truth this time. And
+then we will see what can be done in the case. Don't look so terrified,
+child. Do you think that Matteo rules the world?"
+
+Poor little Silvia could not be reassured, for to her other terrors was
+now added Monsignor Catinari's possible wrath. To her, men were objects
+of terror. The doctrine of masculine supremacy, so pitilessly upheld in
+Italy, was exaggerated to her mind by her brother's character; and
+though she believed that help was sometimes possible, she also believed
+that it often came too late, as in the case of poor Beatrice Cenci. They
+might stand between her and Matteo, but if he had first killed her, what
+good would it do? She had a fixed idea that he would kill her.
+
+Monsignor Catinari was indeed much provoked when the signora told him
+the true story of the little novice.
+
+"Just see what creatures girls are!" he exclaimed. "How are we to know
+if they have a vocation or not? That girl professed herself both willing
+and desirous to be a nun."
+
+He did not scold Silvia, however. When he saw her pretty frightened face
+his heart relented. "You have told me a good many lies, my child," he
+said, "but I forgive you, since they were not intended in malice. We
+will say no more about it. I learn from the signora that this Claudio is
+a good young man, so the sooner you are married the better. Cheer up: we
+will have you a bride by the first week of November; and if Claudio has
+such a wonderful voice, he can make his way in Rome."
+
+The reassurances of a man were more effectual than those of a woman.
+
+"At last I believe! at last I fear no more!" Silvia cried, throwing
+herself into the arms of the Signora Fantini when the Monsignor was
+gone. "Oh how beautiful the earth is! how beautiful life is!"
+
+"We will then begin immediately to enjoy life," the signora replied.
+"Collation is ready, and Nanna has bought us some of the most delicious
+grapes. See how large and rich they are! One could almost slice them.
+There! these black figs are like honey. Try one now, before your soup.
+The macaroni that will be brought in presently was made in the
+house--none of your Naples stuff, made nobody knows how or by whom. What
+else Nanna has for us I cannot say. She was very secret this morning,
+and I suspect that means riceballs seasoned with mushrooms and hashed
+giblets of turkey. She always becomes mysterious when those are in
+preparation. Eat well, child, and get a little flesh and color before
+Claudio comes."
+
+They made a merry breakfast, with the noon sun sending its golden arrows
+through every tiniest chink of the closed shutters and an almost summer
+heat reigning without. Then there was an hour of sleep, then a drive to
+the Pincio to see all the notable people who came up there to look at or
+speak to each other while the sun sank behind St. Peter's. And in the
+evening after dinner they went to the housetop to see the fireworks
+which were being displayed for some festa or other; and later there was
+music, and then to bed.
+
+Life became an enchantment to the little bride-elect, as life in Italy
+will become to any one who has not too heavy a cross to bear. For peace
+in this beautiful land means delight, not merely the absence of pain.
+How the sun shone! and how the fountains danced! What roses bloomed
+everywhere! what fruits of Eden were everywhere piled! How soft the
+speech was! and how sweet the smiles! And when it was discovered that
+Silvia had a beautiful voice, so that she and Claudio would be like a
+pair of birds together, then it seemed to her that a nest of twigs on a
+tree-branch would be all that she could desire.
+
+They took her to see the pope on one of those days. It was as if they
+had taken her to heaven. To her he was the soul of Rome, the reason why
+Rome was; and when she saw his white figure against the scarlet
+background of cardinals she remembered how Rome looked against the rosy
+Campagna at sunset from her far-away window in Monte Compatri.
+
+"A little _sposa_, is she?" the pope said when Monsignor Catinari
+presented her.--"I bless you, my child: wear this in memory of me." He
+gave her a little gold medal from a tiny pocket at his side, laid his
+hand on her head and passed on. It was too much: she had to weep for
+joy.
+
+Then, when the audience was over, they took her through the museum and
+library, and some one gave her a bunch of roses out of the pope's
+private garden, and she was put into a carriage and driven home, her
+heart beating somewhere in her head, her feet winged and her eyes
+dazzled.
+
+There was a rapturous letter from Claudio awaiting her, and by that she
+knew that it was not all a dream. She rattled the paper in her hands as
+she sat with her eyes shut, half dreaming, to make sure and keep sure
+that she was not to wake up presently to bitterness. Claudio would come
+to Rome in a week, and perhaps they would be married before he should go
+back. There was no letter from Matteo. So much the better.
+
+One golden day succeeded another, and Silvia changed from a lily to a
+rose with marvellous rapidity. She was not a ruddy, full-leaved rose,
+though, but like one of those delicate ones with clouds of red on them
+and petals that only touch the calyx, as if they were wings and must be
+free to move. She was slim and frail, and her color wavered, and her
+head had a little droop, and her voice was low. She had always been the
+stillest creature alive; and now, full of happiness as she was, her
+feelings showed themselves in an uneasy stirring, like that of a flower
+in which a bee has hidden itself. After the first outburst she did not
+so much say that she was happy as breathe and look it.
+
+One noonday, when life seemed too beautiful to last, and they all sat
+together after breakfast, the signora, her daughter and Silvia, too
+contented to say a word, the door opened, and Matteo Guai came in with a
+black, smileless face, and not the slightest salutation for his sister.
+He had come to take Silvia home, he replied briefly to the signora's
+compliments. She must be ready in an hour. The vintage was suffering by
+his absence, and it was necessary that he should return at once.
+
+Signora Fantini poured out the most voluble exclamations, prayers and
+protests. She had forty engagements for Silvia. They had had only a few
+days' visit from her, and she was to have stayed a month. They would
+themselves accompany her to Monte Compatri later if it was necessary
+that she should go. But, in fine, Monsignor Catinari did not expect her
+to return.
+
+"I am the head of the family, and my sister has to obey me till she is
+married," Matteo replied doggedly. "I suppose that Monsignor Catinari
+will not deny that. The Church always supports the authority of the
+master of the family."
+
+"Why, of course," the signora replied, rather confused by this
+irresistible argument, "you have the right, and no one will resist you.
+But as a favor now--" and the signora assumed her most coaxing smile,
+and even advanced a plump white hand to touch Matteo's sleeve.
+
+She might as well have tried to bewitch and persuade the bronze Augustus
+on the Capitoline Hill.
+
+"Things are changed since it was promised that Silvia should stay a
+month with you," Matteo replied. "There is work at home for her to do.
+Since she is not to be a nun, she must work. Let her be ready to start
+in an hour: my carriage is waiting at the door. I am going out into the
+piazza for a little while. I will send a man up for her trunk when I am
+ready to start."
+
+Silvia uttered not a word. At sight of her brother she had sunk back in
+her chair white and speechless. On hearing his voice she had closed her
+eyes.
+
+He half turned to her before going out, looking at her out of the
+corners of his evil eyes, a cold, strange smile wreathing his lips. "So
+you are not going to be a nun?" he said.
+
+She did not respond. Only the quiver of her lowered eyelids and a slight
+shiver told that she knew he was addressing her.
+
+Matteo went out, and the signora, at her wits' end, undertook to
+encourage Silvia. There was no time to see Monsignor Catinari or to
+appeal to any authority; and if there were, it would have availed
+nothing perhaps. Almost any one would have said that the girl's terrors
+were fanciful, and that it was quite natural her brother, who would lose
+five hundred scudi by her change of purpose, should require her to work
+as other girls of her condition worked.
+
+"Cheer up and go with him, _figlia mia_," she said, "and leave all to
+me. I will see Monsignor Catinari this very evening, and post a letter
+to you before I go to bed. If Matteo is unkind to you, we will have you
+taken away from him at once. And, in any case, you shall be married in a
+few weeks at the most, as Monsignor promised. Don't cry so: don't say
+that you cannot go. I am sorry and vexed, my dear, but I see no way but
+for you to go. Depend upon me. No harm shall come to you. I will myself
+come to Monte Compatri within the week, and arrange all for you.
+Besides, recollect that you will see Claudio: he is there waiting for
+you. Perhaps you may see him this very evening."
+
+The Signora Fantini's efforts to cheer and reassure the sister were as
+ineffectual as her efforts to persuade the brother had been. Silvia
+submitted because she had no strength to resist.
+
+"O Madonna mia!" she kept murmuring, "he will kill me! he will kill me!
+O Madonna mia! pray for me."
+
+When an Italian says that he will come back in an hour, you may look for
+him after two hours. Matteo was no exception to the rule. It was already
+mid-afternoon when the porter came up and said that Silvia's brother was
+waiting for her below.
+
+The signora gave her a tumbler half full of _vin santo_, which she kept
+for special occasions--a strong, delicious wine with the perfume of a
+whole garden in it. "Drink every drop," she commanded: "it will give you
+courage. You had better be a little tipsy than fainting away. And put
+this bottle into your pocket to drink when you have need on the way."
+
+More dead than alive, Silvia was placed in the little old-fashioned
+carriage that Matteo had hired to come to Rome in, and her brother took
+his seat beside her. The Signora Fantini and her daughter leaned from
+the window, kissing their hands to her and shaking their handkerchiefs
+as long as she was in sight. And as long as she was in sight they saw
+her pale face turned backward, looking at them. Then the tawny stone of
+a church-corner hid her from their eyes for ever.
+
+Who knows or can guess what that drive was? The two passed through
+Frascati, and Matteo stopped to speak to an acquaintance there. They
+drove around Monte Porzio, and Matteo stopped again, to buy a glass of
+wine and some figs. He offered some to his sister, but she shook her
+head.
+
+"She is sleepy," her brother said to the man of whom he had bought.
+"Give me another tumbler of wine: it isn't bad."
+
+"It is the last barrel I have of the vintage of two years ago," the man
+replied. "It was a good vintage. If the signorina would take a drop she
+would sleep the better. Besides, the night is coming on and there is a
+chill in the air."
+
+Silvia opened her eyes and made the little horizontal motion with her
+fore finger which in Italy means no.
+
+"She will sleep well enough," Matteo said, and drove on.
+
+Night was coming on, and they had no more towns to pass--only a bit more
+of lonely level road and the lonely road that wound to and fro up the
+mountain-side. At the best, they could not reach home before ten
+o'clock. The road went to and fro--sometimes open, to give a view of the
+Campagna and the Sabine Mountains, and Soracte swimming in a lustrous
+dimness on the horizon; sometimes shut in closely by trees, that made it
+almost black in spite of the moon. For the moon was low and gave but
+little light, being but a crescent as yet. There was a shooting star now
+and then, breaking out like a rocket with a trail of sparks or slipping
+small and pallid across the sky.
+
+One of these latter might have been poor Silvia's soul slipping away
+from the earth. It went out there somewhere on the mountain-side. Matteo
+said the carriage tilted, and she, being asleep, fell out before he
+could prevent. Her temple struck a sharp rock, and Claudio missed his
+bride.
+
+He had to keep quiet about it, though. What could he prove? what could
+any one prove? Where knives are sharp and people mind their own
+business, or express their opinions only by a shrug of the shoulders and
+a grimace, how is a poor boy, how is even a rich man or a rich woman, to
+come at the truth in such a case? Besides, the truth would not have
+brought her back, poor little Silvia!
+
+  MARY AGNES TINCKER.
+
+
+
+
+A SPANISH STORY-TELLER
+
+
+In these days of pessimism in literature, when Tourgueneff and
+Sacher-Masoch represent man as the victim of blind Chance and
+annihilation his greatest happiness, it is pleasant to turn to a writer
+who still believes in God, his country and the family, and recognizes an
+overruling Providence that directs the world. It is not strange that
+these old-fashioned ideas should be found in Spain, where, in spite of
+much ignorance and superstition, the lower classes are deeply religious
+in the best sense of the word, and distinguished for their patriotism
+and intense love for their homes.
+
+Antonio de Trueba, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1821 at
+Montellano, a little village in Biscay. He thus describes the home of
+his childhood in the preface to his collected poems: "On the brow of one
+of the mountains that surround a valley of Biscay there are four little
+houses, white as four doves, hidden in a grove of chestnut and walnut
+trees--four houses that can only be seen at a distance when the autumn
+has removed the leaves from the trees. There I spent the first fifteen
+years of my life. In the bottom of the valley there is a church whose
+belfry pierces the arch of foliage and rises majestic above the ash and
+walnut trees, as if to signify that the voice of God rises above
+Nature; and in that church two masses were said on Sunday--one at
+sunrise and the other two hours later. We children rose with the song of
+the birds and went down to the first mass, singing and leaping through
+the shady oak-groves, while our elders came down later to high mass.
+While our parents and grand-parents were attending it I sat down beneath
+some cherry trees that were opposite my father's house--for from that
+spot could be seen the whole valley that ended in the sea--and shortly
+after four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that
+hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long
+braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to
+their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine,
+under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders
+chatted and enjoyed our pleasure."
+
+The young poet's parents were simple tillers of the soil, who gave their
+son a meagre education. In one of his letters he says that his father's
+library consisted of the _Fueros de Viscaya_ (the old laws of Biscay),
+the _Fables_ of Samaniego, _Don Quixote_, some ballads brought from
+Valmaseda or Bilbao, and two or three lives of the saints. Antonio seems
+to have had from his earliest childhood an ardent love of poetry, and in
+the passage quoted above he mentions his own compositions. He continues
+by saying, "I remember one day one of those girls was very sad because
+her sweetheart was going away for a long time. She wanted a song to
+express her grief, and I composed one at her request. A few days later
+she did not need my aid to sing her sorrow: in proportion as it had
+increased her ability to sing it herself had also increased, for poetry
+is the child of feeling. Her songs, as well as those I composed, soon
+became popular in the valley."
+
+When the poet was fifteen years old the civil war waged by Don Carlos
+was desolating Spain. The inhabitants of Biscay espoused his cause, but
+Antonio's parents were unwilling to expose their son to the dangers he
+must run if he remained at home, and therefore decided to send him to a
+distant relative in Madrid who kept a hardware-shop. "One night in
+November," says Trueba, "I departed from my village, perhaps--my
+God!--never to return. I descended the valley with my eyes bathed in
+tears. The cocks began to crow, the dogs barked, the owls hooted in the
+mountains, the wind moaned in the tops of the walnut trees, and the
+river roared furiously rushing down the valley; but the inhabitants of
+the village slept peaceably, except my parents and brothers, who from
+the window followed weeping the sound of my footsteps, about to be lost
+in the noise of the valley. I was just leaving the last house of the
+village when one of those girls who had so often sought me under the
+cherry trees approached the window and took leave of me sobbing. On
+crossing a hill, about to lose the valley from my sight, I heard a
+distant song, and stopped. That same girl was sending me her last
+farewell in a song as beautiful as the sentiment that inspired it."
+
+Antonio devoted himself to his duties during the day and pursued his
+studies with eagerness during the night. What he suffered from
+home-sickness the reader can easily imagine. All through his later works
+are scattered reminiscences of those unhappy years in Madrid, when his
+memory fondly turned to the mountains and cherry-groves of his beloved
+Encartaciones.[1] Often dreaming of the country, which, he says, is his
+perpetual dream, he imagined the moment in which God would permit him to
+return to the valley in which he was born. "When this happens, I say to
+myself, my brow will be wrinkled and my hair gray. The day on which I
+return to my native valley will be a festal day, and on crossing the
+hill from which I can behold the whole valley, I shall hear the bells
+ringing for high mass. How sweetly will resound in my ears those bells
+that so often rilled my childhood with delight! I shall enter the
+valley, my heart beating, my breathing difficult and my eyes bathed with
+tears of joy. There will be, with its white and sonorous belfry, the
+church where the holy water of baptism was poured upon the brows of my
+parents and my own; there will be the walnut and chestnut trees beneath
+whose shade we danced on Sunday afternoons; there will be the wood where
+my brothers and I looked for birds' nests and made whistles out of the
+chestnut and walnut bark; there, along the road, will be the apple trees
+whose fruit my companions and I knocked off with stones when we went to
+school; there will be the little white house where my grand-parents, my
+father, my brothers and I were born; there will be all that does not
+feel or breathe. But where will be, my God, all those who with tears in
+their eyes bade me farewell so many years ago? I shall follow the valley
+down: I shall recognize the valley, but not its inhabitants. Judge
+whether there will be among sorrows a greater sorrow than mine! The
+people gathered in the portico of the church waiting for mass to begin
+will look over the wall along the road, and others will look out of the
+windows, all to see the stranger pass. And they will not know me, and I
+shall not know them, for those children and those youths and those old
+men will not be the old men nor the youths nor the children whom I left
+in my native valley. I shall follow sadly the valley down. 'All that has
+felt,' I shall exclaim, 'has changed or died. What is it that preserves
+here pure and immaculate the sentiments which I inspired?' And then some
+village-woman will sing one of those songs in which I enclosed the
+deepest feelings of my soul, and on hearing her my heart will want to
+leap from my breast, and I shall fall on my knees, and, if emotion and
+sobs do not stifle my voice, I shall exclaim, 'Holy and thrice holy,
+blessed and thrice blessed, poetry which immortalizes human sentiment!'"
+
+Antonio after a time left his relative's shop to enter another in the
+same business, from which he was relieved by the owner's financial
+difficulties. He then determined to devote himself to literature, and
+became a writer for the papers. In 1852 he published _Libro de Cantares_
+(_Book of Songs_), which at once made his name a household word
+throughout Spain. He tells us that most of the poems in it were composed
+mentally while dreaming of his native country and wandering about the
+environs of Madrid, "wherever the birds sing and the people display
+their virtues and their vices, for the noble Spanish people have a
+little of everything." He warns his readers not to expect from him what
+he cannot give them: "Do not seek in this book erudition or culture or
+art. Seek recollections and feeling, and nothing more. Fifteen years ago
+I left my solitary village: these fifteen years, instead of singing
+under the cherry trees of my native country, I sing in the midst of the
+Babylon which rises on the banks of the Manzanares; and,
+notwithstanding, I still amuse myself with counting from here the trees
+that shade the little white house where I was born, and where, God
+willing, I shall die: my songs still resemble those of fifteen years
+ago. What do I understand of Greek or Latin, of the precepts of Horace
+or of Aristotle? Speak to me of the blue skies and seas, of birds and
+boughs, of harvests and trees laden with golden fruit, of the loves and
+joys and griefs of the upright and simple villagers, and then I shall
+understand you, because I understand nothing more than this."
+
+These poems are what the author calls them, nothing more--pure and
+simple records of the life of the people around him, their loves and
+griefs, their hopes and disappointments. The most usual metre is the
+simple Spanish _asonante_, or eight-syllable trochaic verse, with the
+vowel rhyme called _asonante_.[2] They are pervaded by a tender spirit
+of melancholy, very different from the _Weltschmerz_ of Heine, with some
+of whose lyrics the Spanish poet's _cantares_ may be compared without
+losing anything by the comparison. In one poem he says: "In the depths
+of my heart are great sorrows: some of them are known to men, others to
+God alone. But I shall rarely mention my griefs in my songs, for I have
+no hope that they can be alleviated; and where is the mortal who, in
+passing through this valley, has not encountered among the flowers some
+sharp thorn?" In the same poem he says: "All ask me, Who taught you to
+sing? No one: I sing because God wills it--I sing like the birds;" and
+he explains his method by a touching incident. One evening he was
+singing on the bank of the Manzanares when he saw a child smiling on the
+breast of its mother. The poet went and caressed it, and the child threw
+its arms about Antonio's neck and turning to its mother cried, "Mother,
+Antonio, he of the songs, is a blind man who sees."[3] The poet
+continues: "I am a blind man who sees: that angel told the truth. With
+my guitar resting on my loving heart, you may see me wandering from the
+city to the valley, from the cabin of the poor to the palace of the
+great, weeping with those who weep, singing with those who sing, for my
+rude guitar is the lasting echo of all joys and all sorrows. I shall
+sing my songs in the simple language of the laborer and the soldier, of
+the children and the mothers, of those who have not frequented learned
+schools.... In this language I shall extol the faith and the holy
+combats of the soldiers of Christ with the sacrilegious Saracen; I shall
+sing the heroic efforts of our fathers to conquer the proud legions of
+Bonaparte; and the beauty of the skies, and the flowers of the valley,
+and love and innocence--all that is beautiful and great--will find a
+lasting echo in my rude guitar."
+
+Many of these songs are ingenious variations on a theme supplied by some
+old and well-known poem, a few lines of which are woven into each
+division of the new song.
+
+The success of the _Libro de los Cantares_ was immediate and great; the
+first three editions were exhausted in a few months; the duc de
+Montpensier wished to defray the expenses of the fourth, and Queen
+Isabella of the fifth; since then others have followed. Some years later
+the poet married, and since then has written chiefly in prose.
+
+In 1859 appeared a volume of short tales entitled _Rose-colored Stories_
+(_Cuentos de Color de Rosa_): these were followed by _Tales of the
+Country_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), _Popular Tales_ (_Cuentos popolares_),
+_Popular Narrations_ (_Narraciones popolares_), _Tales of Various
+Colors_, _Tales of the Dead and Living_, etc.[4]
+
+Before examining in detail any of these collections it may be well to
+learn the author's views of his task and definition of his subject. In
+the introduction to the _Popular Tales_ he says, addressing his friend
+Don Jose de Castro y Serrano: "The object of this preface is simply to
+tell you why I have given the name of _Popular Tales_ to those contained
+in this volume, what I understand by popular literature, and why I write
+tales instead of writing novels or comedies or cookbooks. There are two
+reasons why I have called these tales popular. First, because many of
+them are told by the people; and, secondly, because in retelling them I
+have used the simple and plain style of the people.... In my conception,
+popular literature can be defined in this manner: That literature which
+by its simplicity and clearness is within the reach of the intelligence
+of the people.... However, in popular literature the simplicity of form
+is not enough: it is necessary to reproduce Nature, because if not
+reproduced there will be no truth in it; and if there is no truth in it
+the people will not believe it; and if they do not believe it they will
+not feel it. For my part, I take such pains in studying Nature, in order
+that my pictures may be true, that I fear you will accuse me of
+extravagance, and will laugh at me when you read the two examples I am
+going to cite. On a very severe night in January I was writing in the
+fourth story of the street Lope de Vega, No. 32, the tale which I named
+_De Patas en el Infierno_ ('The Feet in Hell'), and when a detail
+occurred which consisted in explaining the changes in the sound made by
+water in filling a jar at a fountain, I found that I had never studied
+these changes, and I did not have in the house at that moment water
+enough to study them. The printers were going to send for the story
+early in the morning, and it must be finished that night. Do you know
+what I did to get out of my difficulty? At three o'clock in the morning,
+facing the darkness, rain and wind, I went to the little fountain near
+by with a jar under my cloak, and spent a quarter of an hour there
+listening to the sound of the water as it fell into the jar. A short
+time after I was preparing to write the rural tale called _Las Siembras
+y las Cosechas_ ('Seed-time and Harvest'), and the description of a
+sunrise in the country entered into my plan. I had often seen the sun
+rise in the country, but it was necessary to contemplate and study anew
+that beautiful spectacle in order to describe it exactly; and early one
+morning, long before the dawn, accompanied by two friends, I went to the
+hills of Vicalvaro, where we made some good studies, but were very much
+frightened by some thieves who attacked us knife in hand, believing we
+were people who carried watches."
+
+These words of the author reveal better than we could explain his aim
+and method. He is a follower of Fernan Caballero, in so far as he has
+devoted himself to illustrate the every-day life of the Spanish people.
+The former writer has filled her pages with brilliant pictures of the
+life of Andalusia. Her canvas is, however, larger than Trueba's: she
+depicts the society of the South in all its grades; Trueba has chosen a
+more limited circle on which he has lavished all his care.
+
+The volume of _Rose-colored Tales_ is in many respects the best that
+Trueba has produced. The dedication to his wife explains the title and
+reveals the author's optimistic views. He says: "I call them
+_Rose-colored Tales_ because they are the reverse of that pessimistic
+literature which delights in representing the world as a boundless
+desert in which no flower blooms, and life as a perpetual night in which
+no star shines. I, poor son of Adam, in whom the curse of the Lord on
+our first parents has not ceased to be accomplished a single day since
+the time when, still a child, I left my beloved valley of the
+Encartaciones,--I shall love this life, and shall not believe myself
+exiled in the world while God, friendship, love and the family exist in
+it, while the sun shines on me every morning, while the moon lights me
+every night and the flowers and birds visit me every day."
+
+The scene of all the stories of this collection is in the Encartaciones,
+and an examination of a few of them will make us acquainted with the
+usual range of characters and the author's mode of treatment. The first
+is entitled "The Resurrection of the Soul" (_La Resurreccion del Alma_),
+and opens with an account of the village of C----, one of the fifteen
+composing the Encartaciones. Here lived Santiago and Catalina, the
+latter a foundling whom Santiago's parents had found at their door one
+winter morning. The good people, who had always desired a daughter,
+cared tenderly for the little stranger, and she grew up with their son,
+who was a few years older. It had been decided that when Santiago was
+fifteen he should go to his uncle in Mexico; which country, for the
+simple inhabitants of Biscay, is still "India," and the retired
+merchants who return to spend their last days in their native towns are
+"Indians"--a class that often play an important part in the denouement
+of Trueba's simple plots. At the beginning of the story the two children
+(Santiago was nearly fifteen) had gone off to play and allowed the goats
+to get into the fields. The angry father is about to punish Catalina,
+who has assumed all the blame, but his wife mollifies him by reminding
+him that they have received a piece of good news. Ramon good-humoredly
+says, "You women always have your own way," and proceeds to tell a story
+to illustrate it. We give it as an example of the popular tales that
+Trueba often weaves into his stories:
+
+"Once upon a time, when Christ went through the world healing the sick
+and raising the dead, a woman came out to meet him and said to him,
+seizing hold of his cloak and weeping like a Magdalen, 'Lord, do me the
+favor to come and raise my husband, who died this morning.'
+
+"'I cannot stop,' answered the Lord. 'I am going to perform a great
+miracle--that is, find a good mother among the women who are fond of
+bull-fights; but everything will turn out well if the ass doesn't stop.
+All I can do for you is that if you take it into your head to raise your
+husband, your husband will be raised.'
+
+"And indeed the wife took it into her head that her husband must be
+raised, and her husband was raised, for even the dead can't resist the
+whims of women."
+
+The good news that Ramon had received was a letter from his brother, who
+wished Santiago to be sent to him by the first steamer leaving Bilbao.
+It was the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, when Santiago,
+accompanied by his father, prepared to start for Bilbao.
+
+"Quica, who until the moment of departure had not shed a tear, because
+she had only seen her son on the way to happiness, as you saw yours,
+disconsolate mother, who now see only a sepulchre in the
+Americas,--Quica now wept without restraint. Poor Catalina had wept so
+much for a month and a half that there were no tears left in her eyes:
+she did not weep, but she felt the faintness and sorrow which the dying
+must experience. Santiago's eyes were moist at times, but soon shone
+with joy.
+
+"'Come, come! You are like a lot of crying children,' exclaimed Ramon,
+tearing his son from the arms of Quica and Catalina. 'One would say that
+it is a matter to cry over. Don't you see me? I too have a soul in my
+soul-case....'
+
+"And indeed he had, for tears as large as nuts rolled from his eyes.
+Santiago and Ramon departed. Quica and Catalina sorrowfully followed
+them with their eyes until they crossed a neighboring hill. Then the
+young girl made an almost supernatural effort to calm herself, and said,
+'Mother, I am going to take the sheep to the mountain.'
+
+"'Do what you wish, my daughter,' answered Quica mechanically.
+
+"It was Catalina's custom to open, the gate every morning to a flock of
+sheep and lead them a stone's throw from the farmhouse, where she left
+them alone; but this day she went with them as far as the hill that
+Ramon and Santiago had just crossed, and from that hill she went on to
+the next and the next, with her eyes always fixed on the road to Bilbao,
+until, overcome by fatigue and dying with grief, she bowed her beautiful
+head, and instead of retracing her steps to the farmhouse of Ipenza, she
+went to the church in the valley and fell on her knees before the altar
+of the Virgin of Solitude."
+
+Santiago reaches Mexico in safety, and is kindly received by his uncle,
+who dies ten years later and leaves him an immense fortune. Santiago at
+once plunges into every species of dissipation, and soon destroys his
+health. His physician recommends him as a last resort to return to his
+native country and try the effect of the mountain-air. Meanwhile,
+Catalina had grown up one of the prettiest girls of the village, and
+Santiago's parents had died, leaving her a handsome dowry and the use of
+the farm until it should be claimed by Santiago.
+
+"One dark and rainy night Santiago returned to his home, broken down in
+health and profoundly weary of life. Catalina receives him, and is
+amazed at his changed appearance.
+
+"'Are you ill, Santiago?' asked Catalina with infinite tenderness.
+
+"'Yes--ill in body and mind.'
+
+"'How do you feel, brother of my heart?'
+
+"'I do not feel anything: that is my greatest misfortune.'"
+
+In truth, the unfortunate Santiago had lost all the better feelings of
+his heart. His return to the home of his innocent boyhood failed to
+evoke any pure and noble sentiments: his heart continued paralyzed,
+cold, indifferent to everything. But it was impossible for him to remain
+in this condition under the influence of Catalina. He gradually began to
+take an interest in the life around him and employ his wealth for the
+benefit of his neighbors. Gradually, he awoke from his lethargy and
+became well in body and mind. As the reader can imagine, the story
+closes with his marriage to Catalina, who had such a great share in his
+recovery.
+
+In the story called "From One's Country to Heaven" (_Desde la Patria al
+Cielo_) the author's endeavors show that the surest happiness is to be
+found in one's native village. He begins with an ironical description of
+the village of S---- in the Encartaciones, in which he depicts the
+simplicity of the inhabitants and their backwardness, in regard to the
+spirit of the age. In this village lived, among others, Teresa, a poor
+widow, and her only child, Pedro. One day, while passing the palace of a
+wealthy "Indian," he called her and said he was obliged to return to
+America, and wished her to take care of his house during his absence.
+The poor woman now saw herself relieved from want and able to educate
+her son. The latter found in the rich library of the "Indian" food for
+many years of study, and soon became dissatisfied with his quiet life in
+the village, and eager to travel and see the countries about which he
+had read such charming tales. He soon grew to despise everything around
+him, and treated with scorn his neighbor Rose, who had long loved him
+tenderly.
+
+One day news arrived from Mexico that the "Indian" had died, leaving to
+Teresa his palace at S---- and a large sum of money besides. Pedro was
+now able to fulfil his dreams of travel, and started on his journey. He
+first visits the Pass of Roncesvalles, and is nearly killed by the
+indignant Frenchmen whom he asks about the defeat of Charlemagne and the
+Twelve Peers. Pedro then proceeds to Bayonne, where he is so shocked by
+the sight of young girls selling their hair to the highest bidder that
+he determines to leave France, and we next find him in a Swiss chalet,
+where he is disgusted by the lack of cleanliness. His feelings can be
+imagined when he finds that the peasants have no popular traditions and
+are not acquainted even with the name of William Tell. In despair, Pedro
+directs his course to Germany, but finds no sylphs or sirens on the
+banks of the Rhine, while maidens with blue eyes and golden hair are no
+more abundant there than elsewhere. Greece next receives the wanderer,
+who hears in Athens of railroads and consolidated funds: on Olympus he
+finds a guano manufactory, and on Pindus a poet writing
+fourteen-syllable endecasyllabics. He visits with a similar
+disenchantment Constantinople, and then makes his way to England. There
+poor Pedro is disgusted by the sordid, selfish spirit of the people. An
+absurd scene at a village church fills him with horror. The bare walls
+of the temple chill his heart, and after the service a domestic quarrel
+between the curate and his jealous wife caps the climax and Pedro flees
+to America. On landing in New York he is robbed of his watch: the thief
+is arrested, but gives the watch to the magistrate, keeping the chain
+for himself, and Pedro is condemned to pay the costs and the damages
+suffered by the thief's character. On returning that evening from the
+theatre he is garroted and robbed of all he has with him. The landlord
+tells him that no one thinks of going out at night without a pair of
+six-shooters, and adds that what happens in New York is nothing to what
+goes on at Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans. The next day he reads an
+editorial in the _New York Herald_ advising American merchants to
+repudiate their foreign debts. He then determines to visit the different
+States, and on passing through the South thanks God that slavery is
+unknown in Europe. Railroad accidents, murders and political and social
+corruption cause him to regard with profound horror the young republic,
+which seems to him old in vice, and he starts for South America, the
+Spanish part of which reminds him of a virgin overwhelmed with
+misfortunes, but still full of youth and faith. In Vera Cruz, Pedro
+visits the sepulchre of the "Indian" to whom he owes his fortune. A
+letter from his mother is awaiting him there, and he bursts into tears,
+and sails at once for his beloved home, which he reaches one beautiful
+Sunday morning in May. His meeting with his mother takes place in the
+church, and there also he sees Rose, whose constancy is now rewarded.
+The story closes with the lines from Lista: "Happy he who has never seen
+any other stream than that of his native place, and, an old man, sleeps
+in the shade where he played a boy!"
+
+Another story of the same collection, and one of the author's best, is
+entitled _Juan Paloma_. The principal characters are Don Juan de
+Urrutia, nicknamed Juan Paloma ("dovelike"), a wealthy and crusty old
+bachelor, and Antonio de Molinar, a poor peasant, and his wife. The
+moral of the story is in Don Juan's last words: "Blessed be the family!"
+and in Juana's remark: "Alas for him who lives alone in the world, for
+only his dogs will weep for him when he dies!"
+
+The other stories of this volume, "The Mother-in-Law," "The Judas of the
+Household" and "I Believe in God," all contain many charming scenes. In
+the last a young girl is educated by an infidel father, and after his
+death marries Diego, a village lad. She becomes a mother, but still
+retains in her heart the seeds of atheism sown there by her father. Her
+child, a girl, becomes ill, and a doctor is sent for from Bilbao.
+
+"The doctor was long in coming, and Ascensita was devoured by impatience
+and uncertainty. He arrived at last, and examined the child attentively,
+observing a deep silence, which caused the poor mother the most
+sorrowful anxiety.
+
+"'Will the daughter of my heart recover?' Ascensita asked him in tears.
+'For God's sake, speak to me frankly, for this uncertainty is more cruel
+than the death of my daughter.'
+
+"'Senora,' answered the doctor, 'God alone can save the child.'
+
+"Ascensita fell senseless by the side of the cradle containing her
+dying child. When she returned to herself Diego alone was at her side.
+The unhappy mother placed her ear to the child's lips, and perceived
+that it still breathed.
+
+"'Diego,' she exclaimed, 'take care of the child of my soul!' and flying
+down the stairs hastened to a hermitage near by, and falling on her
+knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin!
+pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven
+since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore
+her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!'
+
+"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with
+joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and
+call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also
+gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.
+
+"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and
+hope in His mercy!'
+
+"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina,
+bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."
+
+The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.
+
+In the _Popular Narrations_, Trueba works up themes already popular
+among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to
+suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook
+some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the
+narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are
+the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others
+imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to
+the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or
+collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted
+themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from
+mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales
+almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This
+system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although
+they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter
+worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected
+by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the
+sphere of art should be without."
+
+The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St.
+Peter's Doubts" (_Las Dudas de San Pedro_) is as old as the _Gesta
+Romanorum_ (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's
+_Hermit_. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (_Un Siglo en un Momento_),
+is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth
+and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another,
+_Tragaldabas_, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's _Household Tales_,
+where it figures as "Godfather Death."
+
+The volume of _Popular Tales_ contains nineteen stories of the most
+varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The
+Three Counsels" (_Los Consejos_), in which a soldier whose time of
+service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of
+advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what
+does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on
+his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and
+thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as _Ofero_,
+the legend of St. Christopher, and _Casilda_, the story of the Moorish
+king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from
+Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (_La
+Mujer del Arquitecto_), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another,
+"The Prince without a Memory" (_El Principe Desmemoriado_), is taken
+from Gracian Dantisco's _Galateo Espanol_.
+
+We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the
+stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best.
+He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones
+or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories
+in the volume entitled _Rural Tales_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), which
+contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are
+generally longer than the others--one, "Domestic Happiness" (_La
+Felicidad domestica_), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time
+and Harvest" (_Las Siembras y las Cosechas_) is a charming story of Pepe
+and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the
+latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the
+collection, however--and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has
+written--is the one called "The Style is the Man" (_El Estilo es el
+Hombre_), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it
+by an analysis.
+
+We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He
+has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life
+of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and
+in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with
+a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his
+attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though
+some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled
+_Chapters of a Book_ (_Capitulos de un Libro_). Trueba resided at this
+period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste
+during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has
+published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some
+of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his
+poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best
+of this class of literature--with Auerbach's _Tales of the Black
+Forest_, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author,
+whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always
+apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a
+type of the best class of Spaniards--a class that will some day win for
+their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory
+than that founded on conquest.
+
+  T. F. CRANE.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH WINDING WAYS.
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+My first meeting with Georgy Lenox on the seashore was not my last. The
+habits of the family made it easy for us to have our interviews
+uninterrupted, and probably unperceived, for although we were all early
+risers we rarely met each other till breakfast-time. Helen went to her
+father's room at half-past seven, and they read and talked together
+until my mother called them at nine o'clock. As for my mother, purest of
+all women as she was, she felt she was not pure enough to meet the new
+day until she had spent an hour at her Bible and on her knees in prayer.
+There is a light that comes out of the west sometimes toward evening
+after a stormy day which seems to be sent straight from the fount of
+light itself. Such light was always in my mother's eyes when I kissed
+her good-morning, and I knew it had come to her as she knelt on bended
+knees. She was tranquil in these days with a Heaven-born tranquillity,
+but I know now that she had a pang of dread for every throb of love.
+
+She spoke to me once of my increasing intimacy with Georgina. "There is
+nothing you are concealing from me, Floyd?" she said, her brown eyes
+reading my face.
+
+She had come to my bedside after I had gone to rest for the night,
+impelled by a restlessness to be certain that all was well with her dear
+ones before she could close her eyes.
+
+"I cannot think what you mean, mother," I answered. "I have nothing to
+conceal."
+
+She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she
+baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win
+you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh,
+why is she here?"
+
+"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."
+
+"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the
+house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and
+treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together
+but that she hates us every one."
+
+I thought my mother fanciful, and told her that she was prejudiced
+against the girl, who had grown up from infancy under her eyes.
+
+"I know her better than you do, mother," I affirmed stubbornly.
+
+She smiled a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she
+gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do
+you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you
+would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know
+each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the
+men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other.
+Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set
+her wishes upon?"
+
+I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something
+like anger against her growing in my heart.
+
+"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any
+girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox
+is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."
+
+My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it
+was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence
+between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained--indeed, we were
+more than ever gentle and tender in our ways ... but there was a subject
+which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and
+there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to
+read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.
+
+But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of
+any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point
+that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The
+young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth,
+beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed
+that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and
+proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory
+fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the
+watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels
+filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an
+air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no
+one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half
+so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her
+with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it
+a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with
+a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire
+carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself
+direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.
+
+I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over
+poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find
+there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken
+possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her
+husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of her love for him of
+which he had never dreamed. There was the young girl's journal before
+she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were
+the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her
+great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I
+believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible
+maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of
+his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost
+had cause to regret that he had seen them.
+
+"She never told me of her premonition of death," he said to my mother
+over and over again. "She seemed very glad and proud that she was going
+to bring me a little child."
+
+Helen had run off with her blue velvet-covered book.
+
+"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but
+these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these
+he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him
+again and again.
+
+The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's
+health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had
+filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he
+remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a
+bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly,
+and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat,
+until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died
+young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was
+of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a
+good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like
+to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by
+motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"
+
+"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a
+symptom of advancing age, James."
+
+I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her
+father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her
+superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love
+for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the
+charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She
+was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I
+often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox
+could be more winning, sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was
+for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes
+wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little
+sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When
+she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with
+coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her,
+and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices,
+although I scolded her for them now and then.
+
+"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a
+tame cat yet."
+
+"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I
+do the man who places my chair."
+
+"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night,
+when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at
+his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you,
+and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight
+services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have
+wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had
+raised the cover of the instrument."
+
+"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He
+thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let
+him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he
+called me Miss Helen this morning!"
+
+"What did you tell him?"
+
+"I told him nothing: I looked----"
+
+"I pity him then: I know how you can look."
+
+"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young
+gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."
+
+"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle.
+Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I
+shall admire you."
+
+"Really, now?"
+
+"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show
+nothing but kindness to my friends.
+
+  Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;
+  But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,
+
+is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."
+
+"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me
+to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"
+
+"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must
+have the first, best, dearest place."
+
+"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You
+come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because
+I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.
+
+"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young
+men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."
+
+And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree
+that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through
+inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my
+suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a
+little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never
+displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he
+quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse
+patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face
+of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed
+would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject.
+However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it
+well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less
+cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe
+that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's
+attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.
+
+"When he gets his conge he cannot complain of having received
+encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that
+he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique
+her with a show of devotion to Helen?"
+
+"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there
+is nothing of that sort."
+
+"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my
+wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man
+had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little
+employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice
+brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss
+Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened:
+sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a
+coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a
+score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to
+have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in
+return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will
+manage her affairs for her, as for us all."
+
+I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach
+continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous
+no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek
+an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world
+when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment
+on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in
+fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who
+had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the
+whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a
+comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most
+beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive
+themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I
+did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk,
+not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until
+Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed
+to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two
+more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly
+self-distrustful.
+
+Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over
+again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and
+glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those
+mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual
+relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had
+colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many
+people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's
+influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental
+society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine
+had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for
+details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results
+easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable
+beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose
+that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good
+taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything
+concerning Mr. Floyd--his friends abroad, his habits, his _vie intime_
+at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he
+was minister at ----. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days,
+but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what
+she wished.
+
+But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me,
+wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I
+lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she
+seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours,
+only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another
+direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a
+woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive,
+mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in
+my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was
+demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined
+to follow her into society.
+
+It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest.
+I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of
+the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every
+card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of
+pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim
+in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover.
+Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing
+sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and
+the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly
+from the recollection of that time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+I had gone with Georgina to a picnic one day at her request, meeting her
+at the house of Mrs. Woodruff, with whom she was staying for a
+fortnight, at the Point. The picnic meant merely a drive for miles back
+into the country and a lunch in the woods prepared by a French cook, but
+it was a delightful road through shadows of tall forest trees, the glare
+of sunlight alternating with green copsewood coolness. They were cutting
+the grass and clover in the fields, and the air was fresh with the scent
+of new-mown hay: half the land on either side of us was covered with
+ripening grain, and the light breeze that played perpetually over it
+gave us endless shimmerings and glimmerings of wonderful light almost as
+beautiful as the tints that play over the sea.
+
+I had every need to find the beauty of the summer gracious to me that
+day. It was but another of many days when every throb of my feeling for
+Georgy Lenox became an anguish hard to bear. She was opposite me as we
+rode through the fair country, but she neither looked at nor spoke to
+me. I was much lionized, however, by Mrs. Woodruff, a pretty, faded,
+coquettish woman, who had been balancing herself on the very edge of
+proprieties for years, but who still, thanks to a certain weariness she
+compelled in men, was yet safe enough in her position as a matron.
+Georgy's companion was a titled foreigner just then a favorite at the
+Point, but of whom I need not speak.
+
+"Did you ask me to come that I might hear you talk with the count?" I
+asked her when once that day I had a chance to address her.
+
+"But the count would talk to me," she returned, laughing. "Do you
+suppose I care for him? I think him the most odious man I know, with his
+waxed moustache, his small green eyes, his wicked mouth and teeth. But
+Mrs. Woodruff is dying for him, and half the women here hate me in their
+hearts because he pays me attention. I like you infinitely better,
+Floyd."
+
+"Then come away and sit upon the rocks with me."
+
+"Oh, I cannot afford to do those romantic, compromising things. You see
+that, as we are both staying at The Headlands, where everybody's
+curiosity is centred this summer, we are much observed, much commented
+upon."
+
+"It seems to me you are not at all afraid of compromising yourself with
+other men."
+
+"Now you are cross and jealous. Perhaps if you betrayed a little less
+interest in me you might make me less afraid of concession. And you must
+not watch me so: the count himself spoke about your eyes ready to burn
+me with their melancholy fire."
+
+"Hang the count!"
+
+"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go
+away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."
+
+There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of
+them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like
+school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms;
+but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me
+neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have
+sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no
+homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed
+around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They
+seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts
+why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to
+come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair
+and sweet, seem depolarized?
+
+Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She
+understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she
+practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the
+count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times,
+however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of
+observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his
+presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with
+Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran
+whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by
+other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses
+tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.
+
+Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured
+into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten
+ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his _pate_ spoiled.
+
+"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss
+Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a
+seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they
+meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a
+_belle heritiere_ and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if
+one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of
+us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light
+to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect
+for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake--no faith in their
+value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract
+admirers."
+
+"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."
+
+"I _am_ out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's
+sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."
+
+"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to
+make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just
+this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak
+tree?"
+
+He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he
+returned.
+
+"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your
+call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young
+lady you allude to."
+
+He looked crestfallen for a moment: then his thorough coxcombry resumed
+its sway. "You see," said he, with a consummate air of reserve, "you
+know nothing about the affair at all, Randolph."
+
+"You'd much better drop the subject, Thorpe," I remarked: "I assure you
+it's much safer let alone."
+
+I contrived to live through the long hours of the day. At sunset we
+drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche
+to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of
+us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which
+was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it
+with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange
+yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom
+together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines
+of trembling light away, away into remote horizons. We all enjoyed the
+drive, although none of us spoke until we got down from the cart at the
+steps of the hotel.
+
+"That was the best part of the day," observed my cousin Frank. "What
+good times we fellows might have if there were no women to disturb us!"
+
+Thorpe growled some inarticulate assent or dissent, as the case might
+be, and went up to his room, while Frank and I had our cigars out on the
+piazza.
+
+A dance at Mrs. Woodruff's was to follow the picnic, and thither we
+resorted about ten o'clock and found the chairs placed for a German.
+Georgy Lenox was there, radiant in a ravishing toilette, waiting for
+Frank to lead the cotillon with her. She nodded to me pleasantly as she
+took her seat. I was angry with myself for my disappointment, doubly
+angry with her for causing it. It cost me my self-respect to be so
+utterly at her mercy. What did I gain by following her into this gay
+coterie but pang upon pang of humiliation and pain? Why did I come,
+indeed? It was not the first time she had broken her promises to me. Yet
+what could I expect of her? Bright, gay, dazzling creature that she was,
+warm and eager in her love of vigorous life, could she sit down with me
+in a corner and talk while the rest of the world palpitated and glowed
+and whirled around her to the music of the waltz, which stirred even my
+crippled limbs with a wild wish for voluptuous swaying motion in rhythm
+with the melodious melancholy strain? No, I could not blame her: I was
+merely out of my place. Let me go home and remember what a gulf of
+disparity separated me from my fellows.
+
+So I walked out of the house through the grounds into the street, and
+along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I
+overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the
+house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen
+by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.
+
+I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night,
+and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was
+like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my
+face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and
+my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a
+boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful
+stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of
+which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story.
+Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a
+pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr.
+Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an
+end.
+
+"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.
+
+"Why, no! Has he? so early?"
+
+"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."
+
+She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might
+sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed
+by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through
+dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.
+
+"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the
+Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was
+coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love
+to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant
+flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw
+her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be
+stout in five years."
+
+"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."
+
+"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.
+
+"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has
+hands that I kiss"--and he kissed them--"the most beautiful hands in the
+world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless,
+there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers
+her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."
+
+"I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief
+attribute in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any
+feet."
+
+"That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room
+but every man there knows the color of her stockings."
+
+"I am ashamed of you, papa!--Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite
+horrid."
+
+"Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands,
+what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?"
+
+"Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other
+people ever to think of me in that way at all."
+
+"Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps."
+
+"I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself."
+
+"Not even Floyd?"
+
+"Floyd would never be silly," Helen said indignantly. "Floyd likes me
+because we are old friends: he knew grandpa and you, papa, and all
+that."
+
+"You are easily satisfied if you are contented with affection on the
+score of your aged relatives."
+
+"How soundly he sleeps!" murmured Helen; and I knew that she bent close
+to me as she spoke, for I could feel the warmth of her young cheeks.
+Half to frighten her, half because I wanted to see how she looked as she
+regarded me, I suddenly opened my eyes.
+
+"You weren't asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite
+unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear
+everything we said?"
+
+"Indeed, Helen," I said, "I was fast asleep, I do believe, until you
+confessed your affection for me. You did not expect me to sleep through
+that?"
+
+She stared at me blankly, then looked at the others with dilating eyes.
+"Did I say anything about that?" she asked, growing pale even to her
+lips and tears gathering in her eyes.
+
+"Why, no, you foolish child!" said her father, drawing her upon his
+knee: "he is only teasing you. As if anybody had any affection for one
+of the Seven Sleepers!--Well, Floyd, how happened you to come back so
+soon? The carriage was going for you at midnight.--Here, Mills, Mr.
+Randolph has already returned, and the coachman may go to bed."
+
+"The day was pretty long," I returned. "I had had enough of it, and so
+set out and walked back. I was well tired out when I came in, and that
+put me to sleep."
+
+"It was a shame for you to walk so far," exclaimed Helen imperiously:
+"you are not strong enough for such an effort. There are eight horses in
+the stables, every one of them pawing in his stall, longing for a
+gallop, and for you to be obliged to walk four miles! Don't do such a
+dreadful thing again, Floyd."
+
+I sprang up and limped about, feeling impatient and cross. "In spite of
+my poor leg," I returned, "I am a fair walker. Don't set me down as a
+helpless cripple, Helen."
+
+I was bitter and wrathful still, or I trust I was too magnanimous to
+have wounded her so.
+
+"Floyd!" exclaimed my mother in a tone of reproof; but I did not turn,
+and went down the long suite of parlors and stood at the great window
+which overlooked the sea. It was all open to the summer night, and the
+lace curtains waved to and fro in the breeze. Solemnly came up the
+rhythmic flow of the waves as they beat against the rocks. I pushed
+aside the draperies and looked out at the wide expanse of waters lying,
+it seemed, almost at my feet, for everything else but the great silver
+plain of sea was in shadow. Above, the moon had it all her own way
+to-night: the constellations shone pale, and seemed weary of the
+firmament which at other times they span and compass with their myriad
+splendors. Mars moved in a stately way straight along above the southern
+horizon to his couch in the west: even his red light was dim.
+
+But what stillness and peace seemed possible beneath this throbbing sea?
+I sighed as I listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the great
+golden pathway of the moon across the silver waters. I knew that some
+one had followed me and stood timidly behind me: I guessed it was Helen,
+but did not know until a slim satin hand stole into mine, for surely it
+was not my mother's hand. Hers was warm and firm in its pressure: the
+touch of this was soft and cool like a rose-leaf. I held the hand close,
+but did not turn.
+
+"Floyd!" she whispered timidly, "dear Floyd!"
+
+"I hear you, Helen," I returned wearily.
+
+"Are you angry with me? Do not be angry."
+
+"I am only angry with myself: I am not behaving well to-night."
+
+She came in front of me and looked up in my face. "I don't want you to
+think," she said in a little faint trembling voice, "that--that I--that
+I--" She quite broke down.
+
+"I really don't know what you mean, Helen."
+
+"Floyd," she cried passionately, "I think I would die before I would
+wilfully hurt your feelings!"
+
+"Why, my poor little girl," said I, quite touched at the sight of her
+quivering face and the sound of her impassioned voice, "you did not hurt
+my feelings for an instant. What I said was in answer to my own
+thoughts. I like to say such things to myself at times, and remember
+that I do not possess the advantages of other men. Besides, facts are
+facts: I am lame. I cannot dance, and although I can walk, it is with a
+limping gait: I should be a poor fellow in a foot-race. I don't suppose
+that my being a cripple will forfeit me anything in the kingdom of
+heaven, but, nevertheless, it obliges me to forego a good many pleasures
+here on earth."
+
+"You are not a cripple!" she burst out impetuously. "You have every
+advantage! What is it that you cannot dance? I despise men who whirl
+about like puppets: I have never seen them waltzing but they must make
+themselves ridiculous. I am glad you cannot dance: you are on the level
+of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty
+things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with
+an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful
+although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes
+as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager
+voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you just the
+same. Why, Floyd, what do you think it is to me that, as you say, you do
+not possess the advantages of other men? Have you forgotten how it all
+came about? I was a little girl then, but there is nothing that happened
+yesterday clearer to my memory than that terrible morning when I cost
+you so dear. I know how I felt--as if forsaken by the world. I wondered
+if God looked down and saw me, alone, in danger, blind and dizzy and
+trembling, so that again and again I seemed to be slipping away from
+everything that held me. I could not have stayed one minute more had I
+not heard your voice. You were so strong, so kind, Floyd! When you
+reached me your hands were bleeding, your face scratched and torn, your
+breath came in great pants, but you looked at me and smiled. And then
+you carried me to the top and put me in safety, and I let you go down,
+down, down!" She was quite speechless, and leaned her cheek against my
+hand, which she still held, and wet it freely with her tears.
+
+"If you mind your lameness," she said brokenly, with intervals of
+sobs--"if you feel that Fate is cruel to you--that there is any reason
+why you cannot be perfectly happy--then I wish," she exclaimed with
+energy, "that I had never been born to do you this great injury. I love
+my life, I love papa, I love your mother and you, and it seems to me as
+if I were going to be a very happy woman; but still, if you carry any
+regret for that day in your heart, I wish I had died when I was so sick
+before you came: I wish I lay up there on the hill with the grass
+growing over me."
+
+What was anybody to do with this overwrought, fanciful child? She was so
+wonderfully pretty too, with her great dark, melancholy eyes, her
+flushed, tear-stained cheeks, her rich rare lips! "Oh, Helen," I
+murmured, holding her close to me, "I don't want you to go under the
+green grass: I'm very glad you are alive. I would have broken all my
+bones in your service that day and welcome, so that you might be well
+and unhurt. Come, now, cheer up: I am going to be a pleasanter fellow
+than I have been of late. Dry your eyes, dear. Your father will be
+laughing at you. Come, let us go and take a stroll in the moonlight: it
+is quite wicked not to indulge in a little romance on a sweet midsummer
+night like this."
+
+When I had gone to my room that night, and sat, still bitter, still
+discontented, looking off through my open window toward the Point, and
+wondering who was looking in Georgy Lenox's starry eyes just
+then--thinking, with a feeling about my forehead like a band of burning
+iron, that some man's arm was sure to be about her waist, her face
+upturned to his, her floating golden hair across his shoulder as they
+danced,--while, I say, such fancies held a firm clutch over my brain and
+senses, devouring me with the throes of an insane jealousy, my mother
+came in and sat down beside me.
+
+"My dear boy," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, "I am going to
+give you a caution. You must remember that Helen, with all her frankness
+and impetuosity, is still no child. Don't win her heart unthinkingly."
+
+I felt the blood rush to my face, and I think I had never in all my life
+experienced such embarrassment.
+
+"I'm not such a coxcomb, mother, as to believe any girl could fall in
+love with me--Helen above all others."
+
+She smiled, with a little inward amusement in her smile. "You must
+remember," she said again softly, "that Helen is not a child, and you
+surely would not make her suffer."
+
+"Why, mother," I gasped, "we are just like brother and sister: our
+intimacy is the habit of years."
+
+"Good-night, my son," my mother said, and went away still smiling: "I
+have perfect faith in your magnanimity."
+
+I remembered with a flash of guilty self-consciousness one or two
+little circumstances about our talk by the window two hours before which
+I have not set down here. It had seemed an easy task to soothe the
+child. If there had been any absurdity like that my mother hinted at,
+would she--could I-- No, never! She was a careless child, with fits of
+coldness, imperious tenderness and generosity. Not a woman at all. The
+idea was quite distasteful to me that Helen was a grown-up woman with
+whom I must be on my guard.
+
+However, Helen's manner to me next day and at all times was calculated
+to assure any man that she was a wilful, self-sustained young creature
+of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to
+him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a
+crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the
+black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he
+laid them carefully away in his pocket-book.
+
+"Miss Floyd," said I, "here is another rose. Don't honor that poor
+skeleton of a vanished flower."
+
+She saw the accident which had befallen her rose, and took mine from me
+and replaced her ornament with a fresh blossom. "Give me the poor stem,"
+said I as she was about to throw it away.
+
+"What is that for?" she asked, staring at me as I placed it in my
+buttonhole. "What do you want of the poor old thing?"
+
+And, mistrusting some mischief beneath my sentimental behavior, she was
+quite tart with me the entire evening, and would not speak to Thorpe at
+all, but sat demurely between my mother and Mr. Floyd, her eyes nailed
+on some embroidery, and behaving altogether like a spoiled child of
+twelve years old.
+
+Georgy Lenox had returned from her visit at Mrs. Woodruff's, and seemed
+a little quiet and weary of late. I was not so much at her service as
+before, but had begun to console myself by teaching in song what, like
+other young poets, I had experienced in suffering. I thank Heaven that
+no eyes but my own ever beheld the tragedy I wrote that summer: still,
+I am a little tender-hearted over it yet, and believe that it was, after
+all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to
+find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my
+own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After
+all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter
+about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought
+since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other standpoint
+save the necessity of fighting them. Most of our fiercest struggles for
+life have no adequate reason: it is not so necessary for us to live as
+we think it is. That we do not get what we want, or that we sink beneath
+our load of trouble, signifies little in the aggregate of the world's
+history. But, all the same, our cries of despair go up to Heaven, and
+there seems no need in the universe so absolute, so final, as that we
+ourselves should live and be happy.
+
+It is hard for a man of middle age, with a cool brain and tranquillized
+passions, to retrace the history of his youth. There is much that he
+must smile over--much, too, which is irksome for him to dwell upon. Many
+experiences which in their freshness seemed holy and sacred, in after
+years, stripped of their disguise of false sentiment and the aureole
+with which they were invested by youthful imagination, become absolutely
+loathsome--just as when we see tamely by daylight the tawdry stage which
+last night made a world for us full of all the paraphernalia of high
+romanticism--silver and velvet robes, plumed hats, dim woodland vistas
+and the echo of a distant high note, youthful beauty, rope-ladders,
+balconies, daggers, poison, and passionate love-strains. This skeleton
+framework of the illusion, these well-worn contrivances, tarnished gold
+lace and mock splendors, disenchant us sadly, and what we took for
+
+  Horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
+  Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
+  Blow, bugle: answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying,
+
+is now discovered to be a cheap-trumpet imitation of the enchanted
+notes we dreamed of hearing.
+
+After Miss Lenox returned from the Point she was, as I have said, a
+little pensive: this little shadow upon the splendor of her beauty lent
+a subtlety and charm to her manner. If there had been a fault in her
+loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light
+seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her
+eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness
+about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it
+had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give
+herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams of her, yet
+never one where I thought she could have given me the infinite softness
+of a caressing touch or feel the motherly quality which lies at the
+bottom of every true woman's love for man. Now the splendor of her eyes
+was veiled, her smile was half melancholy, her voice less clear and
+ringing.
+
+When a man loves a woman, and her mood changes and softens, he reads but
+one meaning in her tenderness; and it was not long before I had begun
+fully to believe that there was hope for me. There seemed to be no one
+to meddle in my wooing. True, Judge Talbot came constantly to the house
+to see Miss Lenox, and lacked none of the signs by which we read a man's
+errand in his demeanor; but I did not fear any rivalry from him. Youth,
+at any rate, is something in itself, independent of other advantages: no
+wonder it vaunts itself and believes in its own power. That Georgy would
+think for an instant of giving herself to this man did not seriously
+occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men
+whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was
+broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together,
+his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy
+formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He
+was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation of
+holding an iron grip over everything he claimed, and never letting it
+go. He had been married in early life, and now had sons and daughters
+past the age of the girl upon whom he was eagerly pressing his suit.
+
+He came to dinner now and then, and over his wine he was noisy,
+boisterous and bragging. He had been in Congress with Mr. Floyd years
+before, and, though of different parties, they had innumerable
+recollections in common, and, much as I disliked Mr. Talbot, I
+recognized his cleverness in anecdote and the clearness and conciseness
+of his narratives. I could endure him among men, but with women he was
+odious, and, for some reasons occult and inexplicable to any man, plumed
+himself upon his success with them. He understood himself too well, and
+relied too entirely upon his natural abilities, to make any effort to
+hide his gross ignorance upon all subjects requiring either literary or
+mental culture. He had been eminently successful without any such
+acquirements in every field he entered, and consequently considered them
+non-essentials in a man's career--very good to have, like the cream and
+confectionery at dessert, tickling the palates of women and children,
+but eschewed by sensible men. He had travelled twice over Europe, seeing
+everything with the voracious curiosity of a strong man eager to get his
+money's worth: after his experience of cities rich in high historic
+charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished
+lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable
+marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places
+where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in
+certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to
+grapple with the difficulties of foreign tongues.
+
+No, it did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr.
+Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify
+him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at
+table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and
+then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought
+I overmatched her heavy admirer.
+
+As I have said, I had turned to composition as an amusement, an
+occupation, and perhaps a refuge from feelings which were rapidly
+becoming an ever-present pain. I recall one day when I had sat for hours
+at my desk writing busily, utterly wrapped up in my fancies--so
+engrossed, indeed, that when I had finished my work I looked with
+astonishment at my watch and discovered that it was long past two
+o'clock. I rose and went to the window, pushed aside the curtains and
+threw open the blinds, and gazed out. I overlooked the garden, which was
+deserted except by the bees and humming-birds busy among the flowers.
+The mid-day heat had passed, and a breeze rustled the leaves and moaned
+in the pine trees. It was a fair world, and I felt what one often
+experiences in coming back to reality after high emotion--a sort of
+strangeness in the beauty of tree and grass and sea and wood.
+
+While I stood there some one advanced along the garden-path, looked up,
+saw me and beckoned. It was but a moment's effort to join her, and
+almost before I had realized what I was doing I was beside Miss Lenox in
+the garden.
+
+"Come and sit down in the arbor," she said softly.
+
+"No," I returned, remembering that I had sworn to myself not to yield to
+her caprices, "I am going for a walk."
+
+She regarded me pensively. "May I go?" she asked.
+
+"Oh yes, you may go, Georgy," I said with a little laugh. "I am only too
+happy, I am afraid, if you ask to go anywhere with me."
+
+"Don't take me where it is wet," she observed simply, "for I have on
+thin slippers;" and she stretched out a little foot.
+
+"I will take care of you," I answered her.
+
+She took up the folds of her full white dress in her hands, and we set
+out. The mood was upon me to take the old paths across the sloping
+uplands into the woods on the hill that Helen and I had tramped over so
+often in our childhood. Beneath us lay the sea, a wide plain of placid
+waters, blue in the foreground, with opal tints playing over it as it
+spread out toward the horizon; above us were the woods luxuriant in
+their midsummer verdure, silent except for the occasional note of a wild
+bird; and about us were the green fields, fresh mown of late, with
+thickets of grape and wild convolvulus and star-wreathed
+blackberry-vines making a luxuriant tangle over the fences.
+
+Georgy walked before me in the narrow path, and I followed closely,
+watching her fine free movements, the charm of her figure in its plain
+white morning-dress bound at the waist with a purple ribbon. Her
+golden-yellow hair lay in curls upon her shoulders: now and then I
+caught a glimpse of the contour of her face as she half turned to see if
+I were close behind her. Neither of us spoke for a long time.
+
+My own thoughts flew about like leaves in a wind, but I wondered of what
+she was thinking. Although I had known her all my life, she was not easy
+for me to understand; or rather my impressions of her at this time were
+so colored by the passion of my own hopes that it was impossible for me
+to find a clew to her real feelings. Perhaps she was thinking of Jack:
+she was thinking--I was sure she was thinking--of something sweet, sad
+and strange, or she could not have looked so beautiful.
+
+Suddenly she stopped in her walk and uttered a little cry. "It is wet
+here," she cried with vexation: "we must turn back, Floyd."
+
+"I said I would take care of you," I exclaimed quickly, and putting my
+arms about her I raised her and carried her safely over the spot where a
+hundred springs trickled up to the surface and made a morass of the
+luxuriant grass. I did not set her down at once. For weeks now, sleeping
+and waking, I had been haunted by a fierce longing to hold her to my
+heart as I held her now, and it was not so easy to put by so great a
+joy. When at last I reached the stile I released her, and she sat down
+on the stone and looked at me with a half smile.
+
+"If you call that taking care of me, Floyd--" said she, shaking her
+head.
+
+"You are not angry with me, Georgina?"
+
+"How could I be angry with you?" she said, putting out her hand to me
+and speaking so kindly that I dared to press her little rosy palm to my
+lips. "But how strong you are, Floyd! You carried me like a feather's
+weight, and yet I am tall and very heavy. You know how to take care of
+me, indeed."
+
+"If I might always take care of you!" I said, my heart beating and the
+blood rushing to my face. "I can carry you home if you will. Don't you
+remember about the Laird of Bothwick declaring that no man should marry
+his daughter save the one who should carry her three miles up the
+mountain-side? If I could have such a chance with you!"
+
+"But about the daughter of the old laird: did she find a lover so strong
+as to carry her to the mountain-top?"
+
+"Yes: one of her suitors took her in his arms and strode along, crying,
+'Love gives me strength--love gives me speed.' However, he was not happy
+after all, poor fellow! When he reached the goal he died. How could he
+have died then?"
+
+"What did the young lady do?" inquired Georgy, laughing. "I suppose
+another lover rode by her side as she walked home, and that she married
+him for his pains. That is the way the brave men of the world are
+rewarded, Floyd. Don't be too generous, nor too strong, nor too
+self-forgetful. You will gain nothing by it."
+
+"Do you mean that I shall not gain you, Georgy?"
+
+"Oh, I said nothing about myself. Why do you ask me all these questions
+as soon as we are alone? I am afraid sometimes to let you talk to me,
+although there are few people in the world whom I like so well to have
+near me. Women will always love you dearly, Floyd. You are so gentle, so
+harmonious with pleasant thoughts and pleasant doings: you seem less
+selfish and vain than other men. You deserve that some woman should
+make you very happy, Floyd."
+
+"There is but one woman who can do it, Georgy."
+
+"I am not so sure of that. I do not know why you think of me at all:
+what is it about me that attracts you? Helen is younger than I am--a
+hundred times more beautiful. No, sir, you need make no such
+demonstrations. If you like my poor face best, it is because we are old
+friends, and you are so true, so kind, to the old memories. Do not
+interrupt me yet. I think you are blind to your own interests when you
+pass Helen by: she is so rich that if you marry her you can live a life
+like a prince."
+
+"But if I do not wish to lead a prince's life, Georgy?" said I, a little
+nettled at the indifference which must prompt such comparisons of Helen
+to herself. "Nothing could induce me to marry a rich woman, even if
+Helen were to be thought of by a poor fellow like me. I have no vague
+dreams about the future: my hopes are clear and definite. I want a
+career carved by my own industry, my own taste: I want--above all
+things, I want--the wife of whom I am always thinking."
+
+"And who is she, my poor boy?"
+
+"You know very well, Georgy," I returned, throwing myself beside her and
+gazing up into her face. "Since I was a little fellow in Belfield, and
+used to look out of the school-room window with Jack Holt, and see you
+going past the church with your red jacket and your curls on your
+shoulders, I have had just one dream of the girl I could love so well
+that I could die for her. I used to lie on the hilltop then and fancy
+myself a bold knight on a white steed who should gallop down those
+sunshiny streets and seize you in his arms, raise you to the saddle and
+carry you away into Fairyland to live with him for ever. My longing has
+not changed: I want the same thing still."
+
+"But when I was to marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina,
+looking at me with that new pensiveness she had learned of late.
+
+"You knew my heart very little. When Jack told me that you were still
+free, I hated myself, my joy, my renewal of hope, seemed so
+contemptibly little in contrast with his great despair. I would not have
+wronged him. God knows, I pity him when I remember what he has lost!
+Still, I too loved you as a child: I never had it in my power to serve
+you, but I had no other thought but you. Why may it not be, dear? Who
+can love you better than I do? Even although I am not rich, who will
+take better care of you than I shall? I am sure you love me a little. Do
+not put the feeling by, but think of it: do not deny it--let it have its
+chance."
+
+She rose with an absent air. "We must go on," she said dreamily; and I
+helped her over the stile, and we walked slowly through the wood. She
+leaned upon my arm, but her face was downcast, and her broad hat
+concealed it from me.
+
+"I wish," I said after a time, "you would let me know some of those
+thoughts."
+
+She looked up at me pale but smiling. "Do you know, Floyd," she
+murmured, "I do think you could make me happy if anybody could."
+
+"Promise me that I may have the chance. End now, Georgy, all your
+doubts, all my fears. You will be happier so."
+
+"But we should be poor!" she cried sharply. "I could not be contented to
+marry a poor man. You may be clever, Floyd--I do not know much about
+cleverness in men--but, all the same, it is hard for a man to make money
+until he has worked for many, many years. I could not wait for you. I am
+older than you, and everybody is wondering why, with all my
+opportunities, I have not married. You'd much better give me up," she
+added, looking into my face steadily and smiling, although her lip
+trembled, "and let Mr. Talbot have me. He is rich, and can marry me at
+once. He is waiting for my answer now, and it is best that I should, as
+you say, end it all."
+
+I shuddered as this pang disturbed my warm bliss. "For Heaven's sake,
+don't joke, Georgy!" I exclaimed. "I can't even hear you allude to the
+possibility of marrying such a man as that with equanimity. I am not so
+poor. Mr. Floyd--" But, after all, I could not tell her of Mr. Floyd's
+generosity to me: it seemed like basing calculations upon his death to
+assure her that the course of events was to bring me a fortune.
+
+She looked at me with eagerness. "Tell me now," she said, putting her
+hand upon my arm. "If you love me, Floyd, you cannot keep a secret from
+me."
+
+To describe the beauty of her face, the fascination of her manner, the
+thrill of her touch, words are quite powerless, mere pen-scratches. If
+any man could have withstood her, I was not that man. Shame to relate, I
+soon had told her everything--that Mr. Floyd had for years placed an
+ample income at my disposal--that I had seen his will, which gave me,
+without restriction, a clear third of his fortune.
+
+She was meditative for a while. "But," she said then with a trifle of
+brusqueness, "if you marry me he will be angry and change all that: he
+does not like me. He has different plans for you: he wants you to marry
+Helen."
+
+"Don't say that," I cried, "for I love Mr. Floyd so well, I owe him so
+much, I could refuse him nothing."
+
+"You mean that if he asked you to marry Helen you would give me up,
+would take her?" she retorted with a flaming color on her cheeks and a
+gleam in her eyes. "You do not care for me, then. You are merely
+playing with me: you love her, after all."
+
+"Now, that is nonsense, Georgy," I said gently, for through her jealousy
+I had the first glimpse, I fancied, of something like real love for me;
+"and I do not like to hear Helen's name bandied about in this way. You
+may be sure that she will stand in no need of suitors: I shall never be
+one of them. Now, then, who is it that is coquetting? You know whom I
+love--what I want. I am very much in earnest--unsettled in heart and
+mind, body, soul and spirit, until I have your answer. Tell me, Georgy
+darling, is it or is it not to be?"
+
+But I was to have no answer that day. Miss Lenox said it was very
+tiresome hearing me reiterate that dreary question, and that she saw
+raspberries in the thicket which I must gather for her. Although, when
+she had eaten them, she let me kiss the lovely stained lips, I was still
+far enough from knowing whether they were mine or not--whether she liked
+to raise my ardent dreams merely to disappoint them, or whether at heart
+it was, as she sometimes hinted, that she did care for me with something
+of the intimate, clinging habit which bound _me_ so closely to _her_.
+
+  ELLEN W. OLNEY.
+
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+DAWN IN THE CITY.
+
+
+    The city slowly wakes:
+    Her every chimney makes
+  Offering of smoke against the cool white skies:
+    Slowly the morning shakes
+    The lingering shadowy flakes
+  Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes.
+
+    A breath through heaven goes:
+    Leaves of the pale sweet rose
+  Are strewn along the clouds of upper air.
+    Healer of ancient woes,
+    The palm of dawn bestows
+  On feverish temples peace, comfort on grim despair.
+
+    Now the celestial fire
+    Fingers the sunken spire;
+  Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down;
+    Brushes the maze of wire,
+    Dewy, electric lyre,
+  And with a silent hymn one moment fills the town.
+
+    Over emergent roofs
+    A sound of pattering hoofs
+  And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd:
+    Scared by the piteous droves,
+    A shoal of skurrying doves,
+  Veering, around the island of the church has whirred.
+
+    Soon through the smoky haze,
+    The park begins to raise
+  Its outlines clearer into daylit prose:
+    Ever with fresh amaze
+    The sleepless fountains praise
+  Morn, that has gilt the city as it gilds the rose.
+
+    High in the clearer air
+    The smoke now builds a stair
+  Leading to realms no wing of bird has found:
+    Things are more foul, more fair;
+    A distant clock, somewhere,
+  Strikes, and the dreamer starts at clear reverberant sound.
+
+    Farther the tide of dark
+    Drains from each square and park:
+  Here is a city fresh and new create,
+    Wondrous as though the ark
+    Should once again disbark
+  On a remoulded world its safe and joyous freight.
+
+    Ebbs all the dark, and now
+    Life eddies to and fro
+  By pier and alley, street and avenue:
+    The myriads stir below,
+    As hives of coral grow--
+  Vaulted above, like them, with a fresh sea of blue.
+
+  CHARLES DE KAY.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.
+
+IV.--MACHINERY.
+
+[Illustration: APPLEBY'S STEAM-CRANE, WITH FIXED JIB FOR USE ON
+TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT TRACK.]
+
+
+The machinery in the Paris Exposition covers a larger space than any
+other of the eight departments of material, machinery and products which
+occupy the buildings and annexes. The ninth department, Horticulture, is
+outdoors on the grounds or in greenhouses. Foreign machinery has about
+half the space, and French machinery the remainder. Few countries are
+without annexes, the space allotted to each, though supposed to be
+ample, being utterly insufficient to hold the multitude of objects
+presented.
+
+In preference to taking the classes of machinery in turn, and visiting
+the various nations in search of exemplars of the classes in rotation,
+it will be more interesting to take the nations in order and arrive at
+an idea of the rate and direction of their relative progress, modified
+so largely by the respective natural productions of the countries and by
+the habits and degrees of civilization of their inhabitants. When put to
+a trial of its strength, each nation naturally brings forward the
+matters in which it particularly excels.
+
+Prominent in the section of the Netherlands, the name so descriptive of
+the land where not less than two hundred and twenty-three thousand acres
+are below the level of the sea and kept constantly drained by artificial
+means, are the engineering and mechanical devices for the reclamation
+and preservation of land, the formation of outlet-canals for the centres
+of commerce, and the bridging of the rivers and estuaries which
+intersect the maritime portions of the country. Some of the models and
+relief-maps were shown in the Netherlands section in the Main Building
+at Philadelphia, but the exhibition is more perfect here, as much has
+been added in the two intervening years.
+
+The works for the drainage of the Haarlemmer Meer illustrate the means
+employed for the last great drainage-work completed. This lake had an
+area of 45,230 acres, an average depth of seventeen feet below low
+water, and was drained between 1848 and 1853. Being diked to exclude the
+waters which naturally flowed into it, three large engines were built in
+different places around it, and the work of pumping out 800,000,000 tons
+of water commenced. The engines have cylinders of twelve feet diameter,
+and are capable of lifting 2,000,000 tons of water in twenty-four hours
+from the depth of seventeen feet to the level of the _boezem_, or
+catch-water basin, of the district. The boezem carries the water to the
+sea, into which it discharges by sluices at Katwyk on the North Sea and
+at Sparndam and Halfweg on the Y, or the southern end of the Zuyder Zee.
+The land reclaimed is now in excellent tillage, and one farm on the
+tract is referred to in agricultural journals as one of the three model
+farms of the world. The three engines are called the Leeghwater, the
+Cruquius and the Lynden, from three celebrated engineers who had at
+different times proposed plans for draining the Haarlemmer Meer.
+Proposals for its drainage were made by one of these engineers as far
+back as 1663. The next enterprise in hand is the drainage of the
+southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, which is stated to have an average
+depth of thirteen feet, and it is intended to cut it off by a dike from
+the northern basin and erect sufficient engines around it to pump it out
+in thirteen years at the rate of a foot a year, working night and day.
+
+Another engineering device, very necessary in a land where foundations
+are so frequently built under water, is the enclosed caisson with
+compressed air, as shown in detail in this exhibit. It was originally
+invented by M. Triger to keep the water expelled from the sheet-iron
+cylinders which he sunk through quick-sands in reaching the
+coal-measures in the vicinity of the river Loire in France. The seams of
+coal in this district lie under a stratum of quicksand from fifty-eight
+to sixty-six feet in thickness, and they had been inaccessible by all
+the ordinary modes of mining previously practised. The system has been
+much amplified and improved since, especially in sinking the foundations
+of the St. Louis and the New York East River bridges, and does not
+require specific description. An improved air-lock, by which access is
+given from the exterior to the working chamber at the part where the men
+work in an atmosphere sufficiently condensed to exclude water from the
+lower open end--like a tumbler inverted in water--is the principal
+addition which America has made to the device.
+
+We need not go abroad to find long bridges, but the great bridge, with
+three immense iron trusses and eight smaller ones, over the Wahal near
+Bommell would be respectable anywhere. Our Louisville bridge is a
+parallel example for length, but the truss is different.
+
+The dikes and jetties of the new embouchure of the Meuse embrace the
+same features of extending a river's banks into deep water, and by
+confining the stream making it scour out its own bed, as now so
+successfully practised by Captain Eads in one of the passes of the
+Mississippi River. Limbs and saplings made into gabions and staked
+together form mattresses, and by loading with stone are sunk in
+position. They soon become silted up, and are practically solid. Others
+are made and laid upon them _ad libitum_, and at last raise the crest
+above the level of the sea, the last course being laid with the
+advantage of high-water spring tides. This foundation supports courses
+of pitched masonry on its side, and these protect the stone or gravel
+embankment, which forms a roadbed. The river's water, instead of, as
+formerly, depositing its silt at the embouchure as its motion is
+arrested on reaching the open sea, carries its silt along and deposits
+it farther out: if a favorable shore-current occurs, it is swept away
+laterally, and so disposed of.
+
+The maritime canal of Amsterdam is another late success of this
+remarkable people, which leads the world in dikes and drainage of low
+lands, as the Italian does in the art and area of irrigation. The
+present canal may satisfy the great and still rising commerce of
+Amsterdam, the previous ship-canal, fifty-one miles in length, built in
+1819-25 at a cost of $4,250,000, and deep and wide enough to float two
+passing frigates, having proved insufficient.
+
+Belgium is happily situated, and well provided by Nature and art to
+enter into any competitive trial. With admirable skill, great provision
+of iron and coal and a people of economical habits that permit them to
+work at low wages without being impoverished, she is, besides working
+up her own abundant material, rolling the iron of England into rails,
+and making it into locomotives for Great Britain, whose own people lack
+the work thus done abroad. The "Societe Cockerill-Seraing" has an
+enormous space devoted to the machinery for the exploitation of iron.
+Compressed forgings in car-wheels and other shapes are piled on the
+floor, and a whole railway rail-rolling mill train is shown in motion.
+Two of the rolls are stated to have rolled 10,500 tons of steel rails,
+and are in apparent good order yet.
+
+[Illustration: WHEELOCK'S AUTOMATIC CUT-OFF STEAM-ENGINE.]
+
+The Belgium system of sinking shafts for mines and wells, invented by
+Kind and Chaudron, exhibited here as in Philadelphia, attracts great
+attention from its gigantic proportions. Imagine an immense
+boring-chisel (_trepan_), weighing 26,000 pounds and with a breadth of
+over six feet, worked up and down by machinery, the steel studs on its
+face stamping the rocks into dust, so that they can be removed with a
+bucket with bottom valves which is dropped into the hole and is worked
+up and down until the detritus and water, if any, creep into it, when it
+is withdrawn and emptied. The repetition of these processes makes the
+shaft of two metres diameter. Then comes the larger trepan, with a width
+of 4.80 metres, and repeats the process on a larger scale. This enormous
+chisel weighs 44,000 pounds. The system is much in favor, and forty-five
+shafts have been thus sunk between 1854 and 1877 in Belgium, France,
+England and Germany. Cast-iron lining is lowered in sections as the
+shaft deepens, the sections being added at the top and bolted together.
+
+The Belgian exhibit contains also one of those immense paper-machines
+invented by the brothers Fourdrinier about fifty years ago, and now used
+almost universally for the best class of machine-made papers. They are
+used by Wilcox at Glen Falls, Delaware county, Penn., in making the
+government note and bond paper, and are a marvel of art. The Frenchmen
+who invented the machine brought it into use in England, but they were
+much hampered and discouraged by difficulties, and it was never a
+pecuniary success to them. It was a legacy to the future, and they have
+joined the army of martyrs to mechanical science. The machine in the
+Belgian section is one hundred and thirty feet long, and the Swiss
+machine, near by, is nearly as large. The French, with their customary
+ingenuity, have reduced the proportions very considerably. The Swiss
+machine makes paper one metre and a half wide.
+
+The remainder of the Belgian exhibit of machinery may be summarized:
+rock drills on the principle of those used at Mont Cenis; the
+gas-engines of Otto; machine tools, lathes, drills and planers; a very
+curious machine for cutting bevel or straight gears, built by a firm at
+Liege, and worthy of attention by Mr. Sellers or Mr. Corliss, whose
+ingenious machines for the same purpose were at Philadelphia; the
+woollen machinery of Celestine Martin of Verviers, which I recollect to
+have seen in Philadelphia also; multitubular boilers, rudder propeller,
+and hand fire-engines Then we see a number of locomotives and tramway
+engines, rail and street cars, winding, mining, crane and portable
+engines, and a full set of vacuum-pans for sugar, with engines,
+centrifugal filters and hydraulic presses. A glance at Guibal's great
+mine-ventilator fan, fifty feet in diameter and with ten wooden vanes,
+and we may quit the section of Belgium, which is the next largest after
+England of all the foreign departments here.
+
+The exhibition of Denmark is principally agricultural machinery, its
+iron ploughs being copies of the English, and its reapers of the
+American, while the dairy machines and apparatus are its own, and very
+excellent.
+
+The embroidering-machine of Hurtu & Hautin is shown working in the Swiss
+section, and is a great success. The web or cloth to be embroidered is
+stretched between horizontal rollers in a vertical frame which hangs
+suspended in the machine from the shorter end of a lever above. On each
+side of this floating frame is a track on which a carriage alternately
+approaches and recedes. Each carriage carries as many nippers in a row
+as equals the number of needles, which in this case is two hundred and
+twelve. The needles have an eye in the middle and are pointed at each
+end. The carriage advances, the nippers holding the threaded needles,
+and pushes them through the cloth: the nippers on the other side are
+waiting to receive them and shut upon them, those which have just thrust
+them into the cloth opening automatically; the second carriage retreats
+and draws the silk through the cloth with the requisite tightness, and
+then comes forward, thrusting the other end of the needles through the
+cloth to be grasped by the nippers on the first carriage, and so on. The
+frame holding the cloth is moved by an arrangement of levers under the
+control of the operator, who conducts a tracer point on the long end of
+the lever over the design, which is suspended before him. The frame
+moves in obedience to the action of the tracer, but in a minified
+degree, and each needle repeats on a scale of one-twentieth the design
+over which the tracer is moved step by step between each stitch. Thus
+two hundred and twelve embroideries according to a prescribed pattern
+are made by each needle; and, in fact, though it was not stated, to
+avoid complicating the description, a second row of a similar number of
+needles is carried by the same carriages and operates upon a second web
+stretched between another pair of rollers in the same floating frame.
+The object of the rollers is to reel off new cloth as the embroidery
+progresses and to reel on the work done. A similar machine is shown in
+the French section, in the Salle de l'Ecole Militaire.
+
+The Jacquard loom is shown in many sections--Swiss, French, United
+States, English and others--principally upon silk handkerchiefs and
+motto-ribbons. The exhibit of carpet-weaving is far inferior to the
+Philadelphian. The Swiss exhibit of machinery for making paper of wood
+pulp is very large and ample, but the Belgian annex shows the finest and
+largest varieties of paper so made to be found in the Exposition. The
+paper, white and of various colors, made from about forty trees and
+twenty different straws, grasses and forage-plants, is shown in large
+rolls.
+
+Of Russia there is not much to say except as regards the work of the
+Ecole Imperiale Technique de Moscou. This is a remarkable
+exemplification of tools, methods of work, parts of engines and
+machines, all finished with extreme care and fitted with great nicety.
+It is fuller than it was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are
+readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary
+engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military
+and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges and an excellent
+lifeboat, systeme de Bojarsky.
+
+Austria comes with no more striking exhibit than the malteries and
+breweries of Nobak Freres and Fritze. The immense extent of the
+magazines for barley and hops; the size and height of the malteries,
+where by continuous processes the grain is damped, sprouted and dried
+and the malt ground; the number and capacity of the various vessels in
+which the infusions of malt and hops are made and mixed; and the
+apparently interminable series of engines, pumps and pipes by which the
+steam and liquids are conducted,--are confusing until some study
+evolves order out of the apparent confusion. The wort is cooled
+artificially, time being a great object as well as the saving of aroma,
+and the yet innocent liquid is poured in a torrent into the
+fermentation-vats, where Nature will have her own way and eliminate the
+ingredients which convert the mawkish wort into the sparkling and
+refreshing beer. Four hundred and fifty of these establishments have
+been erected by this firm in Europe; which must be some comfort to
+those, not vignerons, who think the prospects of the vine are materially
+clouded by the _Phylloxera_.
+
+But Austria is not beery alone. She has fine exhibits in horology,
+electric and pneumatic telegraphy, and in tools, grain-mills, gang-saw
+mills, and machines for making paper bags. More important, as some might
+say, are the admirable locomotives and stationary engines, cars,
+fire-engines, and her collection of iron-work, in which are exhibited
+cast-iron car-wheels, made by Ganz & Co. of Buda-Pesth, which have been
+in use twenty-one years and have run without apparent severe injury a
+distance of 549,108 kilometres, or nearly 280,700 miles.
+
+The beet-root sugar interest is becoming very important in Austria, but
+the evidences of the Exhibition indicate that the diffusion-process
+holds better credit there than in France, where it is not approved of.
+The rotative apparatus shown is an immense affair, with a series of
+eight tall tanks arranged on a circular carriage and rotating on a
+vertical axis, so as to bring each in turn to the charging and
+discharging positions. Each tank has its own system of pumps. Beet-root
+is difficult to exploit for various reasons, chemical and other. Like
+the vine, it is particular in its nutriment, requires great skill to
+remove extraneous substances, and can hardly be handled by the French
+system without a set of machinery costing about eighty thousand dollars.
+
+From Austria to Spain is but a step, but it is not productive of much
+information in the matter we have in hand. A beaming-machine for cotton
+warps, red, white and yellow, stands solitary in its section, and next
+to it is a model of a _cirque de taureau_, composed of nineteen thousand
+pieces of tin laboriously put together without solder, as if that were a
+merit, and stated to be the work of two years. In the arena the wooden
+bull regards with indifference two mounted cavaliers and seven footmen
+in various provoking attitudes. Near by are various machines and presses
+for the treatment of grapes and olives, grinders and presses in variety,
+a sugar-cane press and a turbine. Barcelona would seem to be the most
+enterprising of Spanish cities. Several exemplifications of the
+excellent iron of Catalonia and Biscay suggest the direction in which
+Spain has taken its most important industrial start of late years. An
+admirable model of the quay of the copper-mining company of the Rio
+Tinto is another evidence in the same line which the maps, plans and
+ores amply corroborate.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE STONE-CRUSHER.]
+
+Two steps, in violation of all preconceived geographical notions, but in
+obedience to the Exposition authorities, land us in China, where we find
+things mechanical in much the same state of progress as Marco Polo
+viewed them some centuries since. The silk tissues brought from the far
+East were famous in the days of the Roman magnificence, and here is the
+loom. The marvel is how such a web can be made on such a rough machine.
+A blue silk warp of delicate threads is in the loom, which has nine
+heddles, and the partly-finished fabric shows a woof consisting of a
+narrow gilded strip of paper. The sheen of the figured goods is
+something remarkable. It is a parallel case to that of the shawls of
+Kashmir, where the natives, trained for generations, succeed in
+producing by great care and unlimited expenditure of time fabrics with
+which the utmost elaboration of our machinery scarcely enables us to
+compete.
+
+The machine for the whitening of rice by the removal of the brown
+coating from the pure white grain is similar to that shown from Siam at
+the Centennial, but, unlike the latter, the faces of the two round
+horizontal wooden blocks which act as mill-stones are serrated, whereas
+the Siamese rubbers were made of sun-dried clay, the serrations
+consisting of bamboo strips inserted in the clay while yet plastic. The
+motion is similar, not being continuously revolving, but reciprocatory,
+and the method is customary in all the rice-eating regions except India,
+and is well known in parts of the latter, though not universal. The
+grain of Eastern Asia, including India and Malaysia, is almost
+universally rice, of which two, and even three, crops a year are raised
+in some regions, and the processes of cooking are simple among these
+vegetarians, the variation consisting principally in the choice of
+condiments or of certain additional esculents or fruits in their season.
+The grinding of grain is, however, universally known, though meal forms
+but a small proportion of the daily food. The mortar and pestle in the
+Chinese section show the more usual method, and there, as in some parts
+of India, the pestle is placed on the end of a poised horizontal beam
+which is worked by the foot of the operator at the end opposite to the
+pestle.
+
+We meet in the Chinese section with the original of our fanning-mill or
+winnowing-machine for grain. Though China has had the same machines for
+centuries, we have not knowingly copied many of them. The fanning-mill,
+porcelain and the _cheng_ may be fairly credited to her. The last is the
+original of all our free-reed musical instruments. It is shown here, and
+was also at the Centennial, and it was the carrying of one overland to
+Russia, where it fell into the hands of Kratzenstein, the organ-builder
+to Queen Catharine II., which initiated the free reed in Europe, and led
+to the accordions, concertinas, harmoniums and parlor organs which
+perhaps afford the cheapest and loudest music for a given expenditure of
+muscle and wind of anything we have.
+
+The spinning and winding machinery of China is simple enough, but so
+much like that of our great-grandmothers that it does not arrest
+particular attention. It is otherwise with the irrigating-machine, which
+in its various modifications produces, by the fruitfulness induced, the
+food of scores of millions in China, India, Syria and Egypt--the cogged
+wheel on a vertical axis, with an ox travelling beneath it, and a
+horizontal shaft moved thereby and carrying an endless chain of pots or
+buckets, either hanging from the cord or moving in an inclined chute.
+
+The ploughs, harrows, rakes, flails, spades, hoes and forks are of the
+usual clumsy description, not to be apprehended by the reader without
+cuts, and many of them only reasonably effective even in the mellow soil
+repeatedly stirred and occasionally flooded with water. The seed-drill
+for planting one row, with a share on each side to turn soil on to the
+grain, is an anticipation of some later inventions nearer home. The
+thresher is a square frame drawn over the grain--which is spread upon
+the bare ground--and is furnished on its under side with steel blades
+which not only shell the grain out of the ear, but also reduce the straw
+into chaff, which is desirable, as storing for feed more conveniently.
+Southern nations have but little conception of our use of hay. Grain for
+the man and straw for the beast is the usual division. The ancient Roman
+_tribulum_ and the modern Syrian _morej_, were or are similar, and the
+"sharp" threshing instrument of Isaiah may be seen to-day in the Tunis
+exhibit, being a frame of boards with sharp flint spalls inserted into
+its under surface.
+
+We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese
+manufactures--sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc., showing the stages of
+cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market--but
+perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the
+ancient island of Zipango.
+
+Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the
+rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place
+among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any
+liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which
+attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring
+silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets,
+and cutlery of native shapes.
+
+[Illustration: TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.]
+
+The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time
+immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain
+Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given
+place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name
+of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before
+Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened
+between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage
+in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand
+and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank
+movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of
+the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a
+patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin
+Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near
+the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the
+eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of
+John Schoener, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had
+Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and
+south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus
+died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three
+hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our
+group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are
+one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among
+the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the
+sleep of centuries.
+
+Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes,
+but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for
+example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made
+the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by his twin
+wolf-nursling, but it is the plough of Bocchi Gaetano of Parma, is
+twelve feet long and weighs something under half a ton. Another, hard
+by, is two feet longer and has but one handle. Efforts are evident,
+however, to assimilate the country to the portions of Europe more
+advanced in mechanical matters. When we reflect upon how much we owe to
+Italy, we can but wish her well, but we cannot delay long with her in a
+search for objects of mechanical interest except to examine her models
+of tunnels, manner of scaffolding, boring and blasting. The Mont Cenis
+tunnel must stand as the grandest work of its kind until that of Saint
+Gothard is finished. An exemplification by a model constructed to a
+scale of the electric ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton
+gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and
+the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each
+impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is
+stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to
+pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be
+proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery
+Building at the Centennial the eight-inch armor-plating made by Cammell
+of Sheffield, tested in one case by nine spherical shots overlapping,
+making an indentation of 3.12 inches with balls from a seven-inch gun
+driven by thirty pounds of powder at a range of seventy feet. They are
+here again, and so is the nine-inch armor with a much deeper indentation
+from a chilled Palisser bolt. Here is also a new-comer, John Brown,
+whose armor of four and a half inches of steel welded on to the same
+thickness of iron resists the Palisser bolt, which only penetrates the
+thickness of the steel. What might happen to it with a pointed steel
+bolt from a sixty- or one-hundred-ton gun is another matter. To set our
+minds at rest as to what would occur in the event supposed comes Sir
+Joseph Whitworth, who exhibits his gun with polygonal rifling, the bore
+being a hexagon with rounded corners. The projectiles are moulded of the
+same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of
+these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half
+pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half
+inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth
+fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred
+and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting
+charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton gun, and
+penetrated iron sixteen inches thick and twelve inches of oak backing.
+The shell remained entire and was only slightly distorted. The question
+seems to be answered, unless the plates are made twenty inches thick,
+and that is impossible on a vessel to be manoeuvred.
+
+Sweden comes next, and the scene changes; for the weapon which suggested
+the remarks was only, as it were, one gun in a garden. Instead of wine
+and olives we find iron and furs. Except some Indian steels, there is no
+better metal than that of Sweden, and horse-shoe nails are made of it
+all over Europe and the United States. Iron in ore, pig, rails, bars,
+rods, wire; iron in tools, files, wheels, balls, shells, pans, boilers,
+stoves, springs; iron _ad lib_.
+
+The agricultural machines of Sweden, like those of Denmark, are copies
+of the American and English, and the same is true to a large extent of
+the engines, saw-mills, water-wheels and wood-working machinery. The
+statement would not be true of the very elaborate exercising-machines
+(_la gymnastique medicale mecanique_) invented by Gustave Zander of
+Stockholm. They embrace every conceivable variety of effort, and also
+another class of applications which may be termed shampooing, as they
+consist of kneading and rubbing. Among the twenty machines are those
+designed for flexing, stretching and extending the limbs, for kneading
+the back and neck, for rubbing the body and limbs to induce circulation
+and simulate the effect of exercise in the cases of weak persons or
+those confined to their beds by casualties. Some of these were in
+Philadelphia in 1876.
+
+Steering-apparatus and gun-harpoons for whaling testify to the maritime
+character of the people, as do the boats and ropes. The great exhibit
+of _pate de bois_ shows the anxiety of the people to turn their
+extensive forests to good account in the markets of the world. White
+pine seems to be the principal wood thus used. Norway and Sweden have
+been shipping timber for some centuries, and yet seem to need no laws to
+restrain the denudation of their hills; certainly not to encourage
+rainfall. Bergen has 88.13 inches per annum, which is just double that
+of Philadelphia, and four inches greater than that of Sitka, where the
+people say it is always raining. Of course these figures are small when
+compared to spots on the Himalayas, where Hooker observed a fall of 470
+inches in seven months, and on one occasion 30 inches in four hours; the
+latter equal to the average annual rainfall of France.
+
+The American machinery, which occupies a position between Norway and
+England, is creditable in kind and quality, but fails very far in giving
+a correct idea of the multiplicity of our industries. Almost the only
+evidence of our textile manufactures are two of Tilt's Jacquard
+silk-weaving looms. The telephones of Edison and Gray excite unremitting
+astonishment and admiration, and have both received the highest possible
+awards. Our wood-working is practically shown in a large variety by Fay
+& Co. of Cincinnati, and one or two other special machines by other
+makers. The Wheelock engine, which drives all the machinery in our
+section of the main building, has very properly been awarded a grand
+prize. It is all that can be desired in an engine, and has a singular
+simplicity of construction, with few working parts. It is the same which
+drove the machinery in the Agricultural Building at the Centennial. The
+steam is admitted and exhausted by a valve at each end of the cylinder
+placed directly below the port. The cut-off valve is behind the main
+valve: the mechanism for operating the valves is on the outside of the
+steam-chest, and easily accessible. The valves and seats are made
+tapering in their general diameter, and the pressure of steam comes on
+one side, also acting to keep the collar in contact with the sleeve.
+
+[Illustration: TWEDDELL'S HYDRAULIC RIVETING-MACHINE.]
+
+The Waltham Watch Company is considered by some of the most influential
+European journals as the most important in the American section on
+account of the revolution it is making in that important industry. When
+the Swiss commissioner went home from the Centennial he published a
+letter fairly throwing up the sponge, and when the company's exhibit
+appeared for the first time in Europe at an international exposition it
+was regarded as carrying the war into Africa. The American system of
+making by machinery all the parts of an article--say, of a watch--of a
+given grade by means of gauges and templets, so that the parts may be
+"assembled," and of such singular exactitude in their making that any
+part may be replaced by the corresponding piece of any other watch of
+the same grade, has in this manufactory attained its highest results,
+greatest precision and most perfect illustration. The whole collection
+of watches was sold within a few weeks after the opening. The latest
+improvements in the balance to secure perfect isochronism under varying
+conditions of temperature would delight the soul of Harrison, who worked
+from 1728 to 1761 on the problem of a compensator for the changes of
+rate due to the expansion and contraction of the metal, and received the
+reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling offered by the Board of
+Longitude.
+
+Tiffany's exhibit has been admired and patronized, but is not quite
+within my range of subjects. Darling, Brown & Sharpe have their
+machine-tools and gauges, Bliss & Williams their presses and dies. We
+have the Baxter, Snyder and Lovegrove portable engines, Taylor's and
+Aultman's agricultural engines. Our railroad exhibit is not very full:
+we have a Philadelphia and Reading coal-burning locomotive, a Pullman
+car, the Westinghouse brake, Stephenson's street-cars, car-wheels from
+Baldwin's and Lobdell's: the latter also sends calender-rolls of
+remarkable quality. As a sort of set-off to the Austrian car-wheels
+which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell
+has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and
+Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size
+and purpose, and of a finish and an accuracy which have become
+proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery;
+Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen & Roeder's
+riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,--are a few more of
+the representative machines.
+
+Sewing-machines are not in as great variety in the American section as
+they were in Philadelphia. There are, however, enough of American and
+European to foot up about eighty exhibitors. Wheeler & Wilson's have
+been awarded the grand prize, and there are various medals for others,
+both home and foreign--the American machine, Cole's and Wardwell's among
+the number. The various hardware exhibits, such as the Disston saws,
+Ames shovels, Collins axes, Batcheller forks, Russell & Erwin builders'
+hardware, as well as the Remington, Colt, Winchester, Sharpe and Owen
+Jones rifles and revolvers, and the Gatling and Gardner guns, are a
+little on one side of my present line of subjects.
+
+The United States has preserved its ancient reputation in its
+agricultural machinery. We are especially strong in the class which we
+term "harvesters," the name including reapers, automatic binders,
+mowers, horse-rakes and hay-loaders. Our baling-presses also are in
+advance of competitors. A juryman may perhaps stand excused for
+supposing that more than an average amount of interest is felt in the
+machinery which happens to be in his class, but on Class
+76--"agricultural implements in motion and in the field"--additional
+interest was conferred by a series of competitive trials extending from
+July 22 to August 12, and embracing reapers, mowers, steam and ordinary
+ploughs, hay-presses, threshing-machines especially, but also including
+all the other machines for working in the ground, gathering crops and
+the storage and preparation of feed for animals. In this series of
+competitive trials eight different countries entered the lists. The
+prizes were twelve _objets d'art_ placed at the disposal of Monsieur
+Tisseraud, the "director-general of agriculture and horticulture of
+France," and the jury selected to attend the trials. Eleven of them were
+accorded to machines of "exceptional merit," the idea of novelty being
+included in the definition of the term. These _objets d'art_ are Sevres
+vases worth one thousand francs each, and in view of their exceptional
+value, and the large share that America has in the award, a list of the
+names may very properly be appended.[5] Several hundred machines
+competed: for instance, twenty-six reapers, sixteen mowers, fifty-four
+ploughs, and so on of numerous kinds of agricultural implements and
+machines for working in the soil, gathering crops and for the work of
+the homestead and barn.
+
+Last on the foreign side is the British machinery, and the collection is
+very much larger and more varied than any of the preceding. There are
+few lines of manufacture which are not represented here. Machines for
+working in iron and other metals, for sawing and fashioning wood, for
+the ginning, breaking or carding of cotton, flax, wool, jute and hemp,
+for working in stone, glass, leather and paper, are shown. Then, again,
+the finished productions; prime motors, such as stationary engines,
+locomotives and fire-engines; lifting-machines for solids or liquids,
+cranes, jacks, elevators, pumps, each in endless variety.
+
+Prominent in the hall, and employed in driving the machinery, is the
+large double compound horizontal engine of Galloway of Manchester. This
+form of engine is coming to the front, as is evinced especially in the
+marine service. Maudslay & Sons of London exhibit a model of the
+four-cylinder marine compound engine as fitted on the "White Star line"
+vessels, the Germanic, Britannic, Oceanic, Baltic and Adriatic, and on
+the steamers of the "Compagnie Generale Transatlantique," the Ville de
+Havre, Europe, France, Amerique, Labrador, Canada. The vessels of the
+New York and Bremen line have the same class of engines, built in
+Greenock, Scotland.
+
+Amid so large a mass of machinery one can but select the most prominent,
+and among these we may choose such as, while not necessarily imposing in
+size, are suggestive of ideas which we may find valuable for home
+introduction. Appleby & Sons lead the world in the completeness and
+capacity of their great cranes and lifts for docks and wharves,
+machine-shops, erection of buildings, and travelling cranes for railways
+or common roads. We must make one exception--the elevators for hotels
+and warehouses, in which America is in advance of all other countries.
+While we have many varieties of these, we must give credit where it is
+due, and the _ascenseur Edoux_ of Paris is the original of all those in
+which the cage is placed upon a plunger that descends into a vertical
+cylinder into which water is forced to elevate the plunger, and from
+which it is withdrawn to allow the plunger and cage to descend. Very
+fine specimens of this class of elevator are in the New York Post-office
+building. The gantry crane of Messrs. Appleby Bros. of London is the
+most complete engine of its kind in the world. It was originally
+constructed for the growing requirements of the docks of the
+North-eastern Railway Company of England at Middlesborough. The term
+"gantry" is applied to the movable scaffold or frame, which in this case
+rests upon a pair of rails twenty-three feet apart, one of them being
+close to the edge of the quay. The clear height is seventeen and a half
+feet, which allows the uninterrupted passage of locomotives and all
+kinds of rolling-stock on each of the two lines of rails which are
+spanned by the gantry. The crane is designed for a working load of five
+tons, with a maximum radius of twenty-one feet from the centre of the
+crane-post to the plumb-line of the lifting chain, with a capacity for
+altering the radius by steam to a minimum of fourteen feet. The crane
+has capacity to (1) lift and lower; (2) turn round completely in either
+direction simultaneously with the lifting and lowering; (3) alter the
+radius by raising or lowering the jib-head; (4) travel along the rails
+by its own steam-power. All these motions are easily worked by one man,
+who attends to the boiler. The travelling motion is transmitted from the
+crane-engines by suitable gear and shafts to the travelling wheels, and
+warping-drums or capstans are fitted on a countershaft on the inner side
+of each frame, which drums can be driven independently of the travelling
+wheels for moving trucks into position below the crane as they are
+required for loading and unloading. Smaller cranes may pass with their
+loads below the gantry, and a number of these large cranes may be
+assembled so as each to work at the different hatchways of a large
+screw steamer, or two may be associated together for any exceptionally
+heavy lift. The value of elevation of the crane is not only in allowing
+the loaded cars to be brought on tracks beneath it, but in giving it
+capacity to work over the sides of large vessels, which when light may
+rise twenty feet above the level of the quay, and to load or discharge
+from trucks on two lines of rails on the land-side of the gantry,
+overhead of the trucks on the two lines which run below the gantry.[6]
+
+Blake's stone-breaker, though only represented by model in the United
+States section, where it belongs, is shown by two English firms; and
+though some Europeans profess to have improved upon its details, no
+efficient substitute has been found for it, but it remains the premium
+stone-crusher of the world, and has rendered services in the
+exploitation of gold quartz and silver ores, and in the crushing of
+stones for public works and for concretes, which can hardly be
+exaggerated. In testimony taken in the United States in 1872 it was put
+in evidence that five hundred and nine machines then in service effected
+a direct saving over hand-labor of five million five hundred thousand
+dollars per annum.
+
+Steam-pumps are here in force--direct by Tangye and others, and rotary
+by both of the Gwynnes, whose name has been so long and is so intimately
+associated with this class of machines.
+
+The emery-wheels of Thompson, Sterne & Co. of Glasgow have the same
+variety of form and application usual with us, but the firm claims that
+while it uses the true corundum emery of Naxos, the American article is
+only a refractory iron ore, which soon loses its sharpness and becomes
+inefficient. This is a question of efficiency or of veracity which we
+leave to the trade. The machine adapted as a tool-grinder has six
+emery-wheels for varying characters of work. Four are assorted for
+gauges of different radii, for moulding-irons, etc. One has a square
+face for plane-irons, chisels, etc. One is an emery hone to replace the
+water-of-Ayr stone.
+
+In examining the English locomotives exhibited two things were apparent:
+one half of them have adopted the outside cylinders and wrist-pins on
+the drivers, three out of four have comfortable cabs for the engineers.
+These are, as we view them, sensible changes. Outside-cylinder engines
+are also coming into extensive use in France. The machine tools shown by
+Sharp, Stewart & Co. of Manchester are remarkably well made, and their
+locomotive in the same space is an evidence of the efficiency of the
+tools.
+
+The exhibit of hydraulic-machine tools by Mr. R. H. Tweddell is a very
+admirable one, and shows a multitude of stationary and portable forms in
+which the idea is developed so as to reach the varying requirements.
+When work is more conveniently held to the machines, the latter are
+adapted to reach it whether presented vertically or horizontally, or
+with one arm inside of it, as with boilers and flue-pipes. When it is
+more convenient to handle the riveter, the latter is suspended from a
+crane and swung up to its work, and the peculiarity of the various sizes
+and shapes for different kinds of work is remarkable. The cut shows one
+of the latest for riveting girders.
+
+The Ingram rotary perfecting press, on which the _Illustrated London
+News_ is worked off, prints from a web of paper of the usual length, and
+is claimed as the final triumph in the line of inventors, which is thus
+stated in England: Nicholson, Koenig, Applegarth and Cowper, Hoe and
+Walter. We should be disposed to add a few names to the list, among
+which would be Bullock and Campbell. A is the roll of paper, containing
+a length of, say, two miles; B B the type and impression cylinders for
+printing the inner form; C C calendering rollers to remove the
+indentation of the inner form type; D D the outer form type and
+impression cylinders; E E cylinders with a saw-tooth knife and an
+indentation respectively to perforate the sheet between the papers; F F
+rollers to hold the sheet while the snatching-rollers G G, which run at
+an increased speed, break the paper off where it has been indented by E
+E. The folder is in duplicate to give time to work, as each only takes
+half the papers. The vibrating arm H delivers the sheets alternately to
+K and J, which are carrying-tapes leading to two folding-machines. If
+the sheets are not required to be folded, the arm H is moved to its
+highest position, and there fixed, without stopping the machine: it then
+delivers the sheets to the roller L, and by means of a blast of air and
+a flyer they are laid on a table provided for them.
+
+The rise of British factory-life and great energy in manufacturing began
+with the invention of the spinning-frame by Arkwright, the power-loom by
+Cartwright, the spinning-jenny by Hargreaves, and the mule by
+Crompton--all within a space of twenty years ending 1785. To these must
+be added the steam-engine by Watt, which made it possible to drive the
+machinery, and the gin by Eli Whitney, which made it possible to get
+cotton to spin. Much as iron has loomed up lately, the working of the
+various fibres--cotton, wool, flax, hemp and jute--constitutes the pet
+industry of her people, and very elaborate and beautiful are the
+machines at the Exposition, especially attractive and less commonly
+known being those for working long or combing wool, flax, hemp and jute.
+The United States is not doing as much as it ought in the working of
+these fibres, and the money which is paid for the purchase of foreign
+linens and fabrics made of other materials than cotton and wool might,
+some economists think, be employed at home in making them. The day will
+come probably, but does not seem to be hastening very fast, when we
+shall conclude to make our own linens, as we have within a comparatively
+few years past determined in regard to all the staple varieties of
+carpets.
+
+[Illustration: INGRAM'S ROTARY PERFECTING PRINTING-MACHINE.]
+
+One of the most important machines in the Exposition, from the American
+point of view, is the "double Macarthy roller-gin," exhibited by Platt
+Brothers & Co. of Oldham, England. It is a curious instance of how
+machines sometimes revert to their original types. The oldest machine
+for ginning cotton is undoubtedly the roller-gin, and it was known in
+India, China and Malaysia long before Vasco da Gama turned the Cape of
+Good Hope and opened the trade of the East to the Portuguese and their
+successors. The common roller-gin of Southern Asia was shown at the
+Centennial from Hindostan, Java and China, and is exhibited here from
+Java. It has a pair of rollers about the size of broomsticks, close
+together and turning in different directions, which pinch and draw the
+fibre through, while the seeds are prevented from passing by the
+closeness of the rollers. Whitney's invention of the saw-gin in 1794
+revolutionized the business and changed the whole domestic aspect of our
+Southern States. In it the fibre is picked from the seed by means of
+saw-teeth projecting through slits in the side of the chamber in which
+the seed-cotton is placed. But the roller-gin has again come upon the
+stage, and with the late improvements is likely to become the gin of the
+future. When the close of our civil war put an end to the "cotton
+famine," as it was called, in Europe, and American cotton resumed its
+place in the market, the export of the East Indian and Egyptian cottons
+would have been immediately suppressed if they had not possessed the
+roller-gin in those countries. Ten thousand of the double Macarthy gin
+are used in India, and five thousand of the single roller-gin in Egypt.
+It is understood that the saw-gin is used in but a single district in
+India. While the saw-gin injures any variety of cotton by cutting,
+tearing, napping and tangling the fibres, its action upon the long and
+fine staple called "sea island" is ruinous, and the roller-gin alone is
+suitable for working it. The slow action of the single roller-gin,
+cleaning about one hundred and fifty pounds of lint per day, made its
+cultivation too expensive, but the double roller-gin will clean nine
+hundred pounds in ten hours, or one hundred and twenty pounds an hour of
+the common upland short-staple cotton. It is thought by Southern members
+of the United States commission that the introduction of the double
+roller-gin into our country would greatly increase the profitableness of
+the culture of cotton, and especially of the "sea island," which is at
+present much neglected, and in the growth of which we need fear no
+rivalry. Each roller is made of walrus leather, and rotates in contact
+with a fixed knife, dragging by its rough surface the fibres of cotton
+between itself and the knife. A grating holds the seed-cotton. Besides
+these parts there are moving knives to which are attached a grid or
+series of fingers. At each elevation of the moving knives, the grids
+attached thereto lift the cotton to the elevation of the fixed
+knife-edge and of the exposed surface of the rollers: on the descent of
+each moving knife the seeds which have become separated from the fibre
+are disentangled by the prongs of the moving grid passing between those
+of the lower or fixed grid about seven hundred and fifty times per
+minute, and are by this rapidity of action flirted out.
+
+It would be scarcely fair to neglect altogether the English annex in
+which all the agricultural implements are exhibited, nor that which
+contains its carriages. So much commercial intercourse, so many journals
+published in the respective countries, have made each pretty well
+acquainted with the agricultural machines and methods of the other. The
+principal difference is in the splendid plant for steam-ploughing
+exhibited by Fowler & Son and by Aveling & Porter, and in the great
+number and variety of the machines and apparatus for preparing food for
+animals--chaff-cutters, oat- and bean-bruisers and crushers,
+oilcake-grinders, boilers and steamers for feed and mills for rough
+grinding of grain.
+
+A shed by the annex contains two curious machines for working stone--one
+a dresser, belonging to Brunton & Triers, which has a large wheel and a
+number of planetary cutters whose disk edges as they revolve cut the
+stone against which they impinge. The other machine, by Weston & Co., is
+for planing stone mouldings. The stone-drills are in the same annex;
+also the Smith and the Hardy brakes, the former of which is the European
+rival of the Westinghouse, acting upon the vacuum principle, and already
+in possession of so many of the lines in Europe that it proves a serious
+competitor.
+
+Perhaps nothing in the French Exposition excites more surprise in the
+minds of those who are conversant with technical matters than the
+immense advance of the French since 1867 in the matter of machinery. The
+simple statement of the names of the exhibitors, their residences and
+the subject-matter occupies a large volume, and the quality and variety
+are equal to the quantity.
+
+Reference has been made to the web perfecting printing-machine in the
+English section, but quite a number are shown in the French department,
+three of them by Marinoni of Paris, one of which prints the journal _La
+France_, eighteen thousand an hour. It prints, cuts, counts, folds and
+piles the papers. Another by the same maker prints twenty thousand an
+hour of the _Weekly Dispatch_ (English paper), and counts and piles them
+in heaps of one hundred each. A third works on the _Petit Journal_,
+printing forty thousand per hour with two forms. Alauzet & Co. have also
+a web perfecting press, _a double touche_, for illustrated papers and
+book-printing. This wets, prints, cuts, counts and folds in octavo four
+thousand per hour of super-royal size. They also show a double railway
+topographic press, printing in two colors. Vauthier's roller-press is
+arranged to work on an endless roll of paper or on sheets fed in as
+usual, and prints in six colors. Electro shells are secured in position
+on the respective rollers, which are in horizontal series, and the paper
+is conducted by tapes to the rollers in succession. The French section
+shows a great variety of polychrome, lithographic and zincographic
+printing-machines, and also a great number of ordinary job and card
+presses, the most interest, however, centring in the large number and
+variety of the web perfecting presses for newspapers and for bill-work
+where long numbers are required.
+
+France has a right to exemplify the Jacquard in its fulness, for it is
+hers. The original machine of Vaucanson and that of Jacquard are in the
+Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, as well as a long series of
+exemplifications of successive improvements. The Grand Maison de Blanc
+of Paris has a large one, making an immense linen cloth of damask
+figures, all in white, and representing what I took at first to be an
+allegorical picture of all the nations bringing their gifts to the
+Exposition. I found afterward that it was called _Fees du Dessert_. It
+is about three metres wide, and just as long as you please to make it,
+but the pattern is repeated every five metres. The design, on paper, is
+hung against the wall, and is twelve by eight metres, all laid off in
+squares of twelve millimetres, and these again into smaller ones exactly
+a square millimetre in size. The number of small squares on the sheet of
+paper is ninety-six million, which represents the number of the
+intersections of the warp and woof in the pattern. There are nine
+thousand and sixty-six perforated cards in the Jacquard arrangement for
+floating the threads which form the damask pattern, and the whole
+machine stands on a space of about twenty by twelve feet and is eighteen
+feet high. It is worked by one man, without steam-power, the shifting of
+the harness being done by two foot-levers and the shuttle thrown by a
+pull-cord.
+
+We may here observe the looms that weave the marvellously fine silk
+gauzes realizing such fanciful Indian names as "morning mist," which
+poetically express the lightness of a web that when spread upon the
+grass is not visible unless one stoops down and examines closely. To
+even name the various looms here would be to make a list of ribbons,
+velvets, cloths and other tissues. The subsidiary machines for dressing
+the fabrics are here also--for napping, teasling, shearing, stretching
+and brushing, for measuring, folding and packing.
+
+The other modes of making fabrics shown are a machine for making
+fishing-nets of great width, and a number of knitting-machines, from the
+stocking-frame of eighty years ago to the small domestic machine, and
+the larger one with nine hundred needles in the circumference and making
+a circular seamless fabric eighteen inches in diameter. The march of
+improvement is eminently shown here, where an old man is patiently
+knitting a flat web of ten inches with a series of five motions between
+the rows of stitches, while just by are the circular machines, whose
+motions are so rapid that the clicks of the needles merge into a whir,
+and a man is able to attend to six machines, making one hundred and
+thirty pounds of knitted goods per day.
+
+Passing the large exhibit of machines for the working of fibres
+preliminary to the loom--the carding, roving, spinning, reeling and
+warping--and the allied but different machines which make wire-cloths of
+different meshes and size, we come to the ropemaking-machines for hemp
+and wire, which are shown principally in their products, the
+manufacture taking an amount of room and material which could hardly be
+expected to be efficiently shown in a crowded building where space is
+valuable.
+
+The French plant for boring small shafts to find water or obtain
+sections of the strata, and the larger ones for sinking large ones for
+mines, are shown by several exhibitors. The annular drills remove
+cylindrical sections of the strata from ten to sixty centimetres in
+diameter: the large chisels resemble those described in the Belgian
+exhibit, having a diameter of four metres and a weight of twenty-five
+thousand kilos.
+
+The department of mining has some excellent large models of mining
+districts, in which the face of the country is represented with the
+natural undulations, the villages, roads, fields and streams, and made
+in removal-sections which expose the underlying strata, the galleries,
+drifts and shafts of the subterranean world.
+
+An attempt to describe the steam-engines, of such various size, shape,
+position and capacity, would exhaust all the space permissible in a
+magazine article.
+
+The wood-working tools of France are excellent, and our manufacturers
+must look well to their laurels. We have as yet the advantage in
+compactness and simplicity, with adjustability and adaptation to varying
+classes of work. The band-saw is claimed as a French invention, and the
+crowds around the workman who saws a roomful of dolls' furniture out of
+a single block as large as one's fist are as great here as they were at
+Philadelphia. The Blanchard lathe for turning irregular forms is here in
+a variety of forms. This is an interesting object of study, as
+illustrating the usual course of invention, in which a master-hand
+grasps a subject which has been suggested in an incomplete and
+comparatively ineffective manner from time to time by others. De la Hire
+and Condamine during the last century described lathes adapted to turn
+irregular shapes, and the scoring-machine for ships' blocks invented by
+Brunel and made by Maudslay for Chatham dockyard in England, 1802-8,
+was as perfect an exemplification of the idea as the nature of the work
+to be done required. Blanchard, however, in 1819 gave the finishing
+stroke, and the lathe will bear his name for long years. Inventors of
+three nations attacked the problem, and each aided the result.
+
+Brickmaking, diamond-cutting; machines for making paper bags, envelopes,
+cuffs and collars; distilleries, sugar-mills, with the successive
+apparatus of vacuum-pans, pumps and centrifugal filters; soap, stearine,
+paraffine, wax, candle, candy and chocolate machines and
+apparatus,--succeed each other, and we next find ourselves in a busy
+factory of cheap jewelry, Exposition souvenirs and medals, chains and
+charms. The leather machinery is deserving of a careful description, but
+it would be too technical perhaps, and there is no romance in the
+handling of wet hides, the scraping, currying, stretching and pommelling
+which even the thickness, prepare the surface and develop the pliability
+of the leather. Near this is the boot- and shoe-making, sewing and
+cable-screw wire machines, but none for pegging. Sewing-machines, copies
+of the various American forms, occupy the end of the hall.
+
+Separate buildings around the grounds and on both banks of the Seine
+contain groups of machinery at which we can but glance. Two long
+pavilions have agricultural machines, and one each is appropriated to
+materials for railways, to civil engineering, pumps, gas-works, the
+forges of Terre Noire, the iron-works of Creusot, the ministry of public
+works, stoves, the government manufacture of tobacco, navigation,
+life-saving apparatus of floats and boats, fire-engines and ceramics.
+Add to these two annexes, each one thousand feet long, containing
+locomotives, cars, street-cars, telegraph-apparatus and many acres of
+the surplus machinery of all classes excluded from the large building
+for want of room, and a person may form some adequate idea of the
+immense extent and variety of this wonderful collection.
+
+  EDWARD H. KNIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+THE COLONEL'S SENTENCE: AN ALGERIAN STORY.
+
+
+"I've known many clever fellows in my time," said Paul Dupont, French
+sous-lieutenant in the --th of the line, as he sat sipping his coffee in
+front of the Hotel de la Regence at Algiers, "but by far the cleverest
+man I ever met was our old colonel, Henri de Malet. People said he ought
+to have been an _avocat_, but that was giving him but half his due, for
+I'll be bound he could have outflanked any lawyer that ever wore a gown.
+In his latter days he always went by the name of 'Solomon the Second;'
+and if you care to hear how he came by it I'll tell you.
+
+"Before he came to us De Malet was military commandant at Oran, and it
+was there that he did one of his best strokes--outgeneralling a
+camel-driver from Tangier, one of those thorough-paced Moorish rascals
+of whom the saying goes, 'Two Maltese to a Jew, and three Jews to a
+Moor,' Now this Tangerine, when pulled up for some offence or other,
+swore that he wasn't Muley the camel-driver at all, but quite another
+man; and as his friends all swore the same, and he had managed to alter
+his appearance a bit before he was arrested, he seemed safe to get off.
+But our colonel wasn't to be done in that way. He pretended to dismiss
+the case, and allowed the fellow to get right out into the street as if
+all was over; and then he suddenly shouted after him, 'Muley the
+camel-driver, I want to speak to you.' The old rogue, hearing his own
+name, turned and came back before he could recollect himself; and so he
+was caught in spite of all his cunning.
+
+"The fame of this exploit went abroad like wildfire, and it got to be a
+saying among us, whenever we heard of any very clever trick, that it was
+'one of Colonel de Malet's judgments;' and so, when he was transferred
+from Oran to Algiers, it was just as if we all knew him already,
+although none of us had ever seen him before. But it wasn't long before
+we got a much better story than that about him; for one night a man
+dined at our mess who had known the colonel out in India, and told us a
+grand tale of how he had astonished them all at Pondicherry. It seems
+that some things had been stolen from the officers' quarters, and nobody
+could tell who had done it. The first thing next morning the colonel
+went along the line at early parade, giving each of the native soldiers
+a small strip of bamboo; and then he said, very solemnly, 'My children,
+there is a guilty man among us, and it has been revealed to me by Brahma
+himself how his guilt is to be made clear. Let every man of you come
+forward in his turn and give me his piece of bamboo; and the thief, let
+him do what he may, will have the longest piece.'
+
+"Now, you know what superstitious hounds those Asiatic fellows always
+are; and when they heard this announcement they all looked at each other
+like children going to be whipped. The colonel took the bamboos one
+after another, as solemnly as if he were on a court-martial, but when
+about a dozen men had gone past he suddenly sprang forward and seized
+one of them by the throat, shouting at the full pitch of his voice, 'You
+are the man!'
+
+"Down went the fellow on his knees and yelled for mercy, confessing that
+he _was_ the man, sure enough. As for the rest, they looked as
+frightened as if all the gods in the caverns of Elephanta had come
+flying down among them at once; and from that day forth they salaamed to
+the very ground at the mere sight of the colonel half a mile off.
+
+"'How on earth did you manage that, colonel?' asked the senior major, a
+great fat fellow, as stupid as a carp.[7]
+
+"'Nothing simpler, my dear fellow,' answered De Malet, laughing. 'The
+strips were all exactly the same length, and the thief, fearing to get
+the longest piece, betrayed himself by _biting off the end_.'
+
+"This, as you may think, added a good deal to the colonel's reputation;
+and when we had that affair with the Bedouins at Laghouat we soon saw
+that he could fight as well as manoeuvre. In the thick of the skirmish
+one of the rogues, seeing De Malet left alone, flew at him with drawn
+yataghan, but the colonel just dropped on his horse's neck and let the
+blow pass over him, and then gave point and ran the fellow right through
+the body, as neatly as any fencing-master could have done it. You may be
+sure we thought none the less of him after that; but all this was
+nothing to what was coming.
+
+"Well, De Malet had been with us about a year when the railway was begun
+from Algiers to Blidah, and the directing engineer happened to be one of
+my greatest friends, Eugene Latour, as good a fellow as I ever met. It
+was quite a fete with us whenever he dined at mess, for his jokes and
+good stories kept every one brisk; and then to hear him sing! _ma foi_,
+it was wonderful! One minute some rattling refrain that seemed to set
+the very chairs dancing, and then suddenly a low, sad air that fairly
+brought the tears into your eyes. They were in mine, I know, every time
+I heard him sing those last two verses of 'The Conscript's Farewell:'
+
+  I thought to gain rich spoils--I've gained
+    Of bullets half a score:
+  I thought to come back corporal--
+    I shall come back no more.
+
+  Feed my poor dog, I pray thee, Rose,
+    And with him gentle be:
+  He'll miss his master for a while--
+    Adieu! remember me![8]
+
+"Well, as I was saying, Eugene had been put over the work, and I don't
+know where they could have found a better man for it. Whether it poured
+with rain or came on hot enough to cook a cutlet without fire, it was
+all one to him: there he was at his post, looking after everything,
+with his eyes in ten places at once. You may think that under such a
+chief the laborers had no chance of idling; and everything was getting
+on splendidly when one morning, as he was standing on the parapet of a
+bridge, his foot slipped and down he went, I don't know how far. The
+fall would have killed him outright if by good luck there hadn't
+happened to be an Arab underneath (the only time that an Arab ever _was_
+of any use, I should say), and Eugene, alighting upon _him_, broke his
+own fall and the Bedouin's neck to boot.
+
+"Now, if there had been nobody there to tell tales, this wouldn't have
+mattered a pin, for an Arab more or less is no such great matter; but,
+as ill-luck would have it, there were three or four more of the rascals
+near enough to see what had happened, and of course they raised a
+hue-and-cry directly. And when it was noised abroad that a Christian dog
+(as they politely call us) had killed a Mussulman, you should have seen
+what an uproar there was! The people came running together like vultures
+when a camel drops down in the desert, and there was a yelling and
+dancing and shaking of fists that made one's very head turn round. Poor
+Eugene would have been torn to pieces on the spot if the guard hadn't
+formed round him and defended him; and the only way we could pacify the
+mob was to promise them justice from the district magistrate; so away to
+the magistrate we all went.
+
+"Now, I dare say Mr. Magistrate was a very good fellow in his way, and I
+don't want to say a word against him, but still, it must be owned that
+he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble
+of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once
+under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of
+his wits; and the only thing _he_ thought of was how to shift the
+responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders as fast as possible. So
+he said (and it was very lucky he did, as it turned out) that Latour,
+being in government employ, must be tried by military law; and he
+packed them all off to the commandant, who, as I've told you, was no
+other than Colonel de Malet.
+
+"It was no easy matter for the colonel to get at the facts of the case,
+for all the rascals kept shrieking at once, one louder than another; but
+at last, bit by bit, he managed to get a pretty clear idea of what had
+happened; and then he said, very solemnly, 'A French officer does his
+duty, let it be what it will. You have come here for justice, and
+justice you shall have.'
+
+"There was a great roar of triumph from the crowd, and poor Eugene
+looked as blank as a thief in the Salle de la Police.
+
+"'Before I pass sentence, however,' pursued De Malet, 'I wish to ask
+this young man' (pointing to the son of the dead Arab, who was the
+ringleader of all the mischief) 'whether he will accept of any
+compromise.'
+
+"'No, no!' yelled the young brigand--'life for life!'
+
+"'So be it,' said the colonel gravely, 'and you, by Mussulman law, are
+your father's destined avenger. Therefore, let the engineer be taken
+back to the very spot where his victim was standing, and do you go up to
+the top of the parapet and _jump down upon him_!'
+
+"_Tonnerre de ciel!_ what a roar of laughter there was! The very Arabs
+couldn't help joining in. As to the young villain himself, he stood
+stock-still for a moment, and then flew out of the court like a madman;
+and that was the last of him. We gave Eugene a famous supper that night
+at the Cafe Militaire in honor of his escape; and the story was in all
+the papers next morning, headed 'A Judgment of Solomon.' And from that
+day to the end of his life Colonel de Malet never went by any other name
+among us but 'Solomon the Second.'"
+
+  DAVID KER.
+
+
+
+
+STARLIGHT
+
+
+          How dark against the sky
+  Loom the great hills! Over the cradled stream
+    They lean their dusky shadows lovingly,
+          Watching its happy dream.
+
+          The oil-well's little blaze
+  Gleams red and grand against the mountain's dark:
+    Yon star, seen through illimitable haze,
+          Is dwindled to a spark.
+
+          Far greater to my eye
+  The swimming lights of yonder fishing-boat
+    Than worlds that burn in night's immensity--
+          So huge, but so remote.
+
+          Ah, I have loved a star
+  That beckoned sweetly from its distant throne,
+    Forgetting nearer orbs that fairer are,
+          And shine for me alone.
+
+          Better the small and near
+  Than the grand distant with its mocking beams--
+    Better the lovelight in thine eyes, my dear,
+          Than all ambition's dreams.
+
+  CHARLES QUIET.
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1878 IN VENEZUELA.
+
+
+On Friday evening, the 12th of April, 1878, we were collected, as usual,
+in our drawing-room in Caracas, and were in the act of welcoming an old
+friend who had just returned from Europe, when there came suddenly a
+crash, a reverberation--a something as utterly impossible to convey the
+impression of as to describe the movement which followed, or rather
+accompanied, it, so confused, strange and unnatural was the entire
+sensation. It was like the rush of many waters, the explosion of
+cannon--like anything the imagination can conceive; and at the same time
+the earth appeared to leap beneath our feet, then swayed to and fro with
+an oscillating motion: the panes of glass rattled in the windows, the
+beams of the flooring above creaked ominously; lamps, chandeliers and
+girandoles vibrated and trembled like animated creatures. The great
+bells of the cathedral suddenly rang out a spontaneous peal of alarm
+with a sonorous, awe-inspiring clang, while the clock in the tower
+struck the ill-timed hour with a solemn, unearthly reverberation.
+
+This was but the work of a few seconds: a few more and Caracas would
+have been a heap of ruins, as in the earthquake of 1812. But even in
+these short moments we had time, horror-stricken and pallid with terror
+as we were, to cry out, "An earthquake! an earthquake!"--to seize upon
+our European friend, who did not seem to realize the danger, to drag him
+from the chair which he was just about to take, I pushing him before me,
+while my sister pulled him by the arm down the long drawing-room into
+the corridor which surrounds the central court, while still the earth
+rocked beneath our feet and everything around us trembled with the
+vibration.
+
+By this time the city was thoroughly alarmed. Cries of "Misericordia!
+misericordia!" resounded on every side, and every one prophesied another
+and a greater shock. These fears were not entirely uncalled for, for at
+twenty minutes past nine there was a second, and several more before
+daybreak, although none proved to be as severe as the first.
+
+In a short time carriages began to roll by in all directions, bearing
+the more timorous to the villages and plantations outside of the city:
+the open public squares or _plazas_ filled rapidly with the excited
+population, especially when telegram after telegram began to arrive from
+La Guayra, Puerto Cabello, Valencia, La Vittoria and the intervening
+towns--all having felt the violence of the shock, and anxious lest the
+capital might have been destroyed. This proof of the extent of the _onda
+seismica_, as the scientists termed it, served to increase the general
+alarm. Tents were improvised in the plazas, composed of blankets,
+counterpanes, etc., stretched across ropes attached to the trees in the
+square, those who had no such appliances at hand remaining all night
+upon the public benches or upon more comfortable seats which they caused
+to be transported for their accommodation.
+
+The scene in the principal square of Caracas, the Plaza Bolivar--upon
+which front the cathedral on the eastern side, the palace of the
+archbishop on the southern, the presidential residence (called the _Casa
+Amarilla_, or "Yellow House") on the western, and a number of other
+public buildings on the northern--was one which under less terrifying
+circumstances would have been most imposing, for the archbishop left his
+palace and descended by the great stairway into the plaza, accompanied
+by a train of his attending priests, to raise the fainting spirits of
+the terrified multitude, who, with pallid faces upraised to Heaven or
+crouched upon the bare ground in attitudes of supplication, implored
+mercy from on high. And inasmuch as calamitous events, such as the
+appearance of comets, earthquakes or pestilences, are usually the
+signal for great moral reforms, doubtless many a promise of a purer life
+was registered in that hour of terror by those self-accused by their
+quickened consciences.
+
+The archbishop--who is a young man, devout, fervent and sincere, a very
+anchorite in his habits and mode of life, thin, spare of frame, and with
+features eloquent with the fire of intellect, morally and physically the
+splendid ideal of what a true priest ought to be--wandered among his
+flock, exhorting, comforting, admonishing and cheering them; while the
+_Hermandades_, a religious brotherhood, headed by their color-bearer,
+upon whose banner the effigy of the Virgin, their patron saint, was
+emblazoned, walking two by two in procession in the long gowns of their
+order--some red, some black, some white--and each carrying a lighted
+taper, traversed the plazas and paraded the streets the whole night. The
+glimmering light of the tapers falling upon these dusky shrouded forms
+in the gloom of this awful night, the melancholy refrain of the prayers
+which they chanted as they passed through the awestruck city, the
+lessening glimpses of the flickering tapers as the train passed solemnly
+by into some distant street,--all served rather to intensify than to
+tranquillize the alarm.
+
+The excitement and agitation of the people were so great that no one
+thought of going to bed: those who, like ourselves, went neither to the
+country nor to the open squares, sat in their windows and compared their
+experiences or gathered news from every passer-by; for they feared to
+separate from their families, lest a worse shock might overtake some one
+of them apart from the rest. Besides this, the danger in the streets was
+greater than at home, because of their narrowness and the likelihood of
+the walls on either side toppling over upon pedestrians.
+
+The night had been beautifully clear, and the moon brilliant as it is
+only in the tropics, but toward midnight the weather became cloudy and a
+drizzling rain fell at intervals, driving us within doors between one
+and two o'clock, but only to lie down fully dressed upon our beds, with
+lights burning and doors left open, so as the more readily to facilitate
+our escape if necessary. One or two slight shocks recurred during the
+night, but morning dawned at last, finding us unhurt; and with returning
+day our courage too returned, so _darkness_ "doth make cowards of us
+all." It was then ascertained that the cathedral had sustained some
+slight damage; the image of the Virgin in the church of the Candelaria
+had been thrown to the ground and broken to pieces; and the National
+Pantheon, the observatory of the new university and other public
+buildings, with many houses, had been injured, but none thrown down and
+no lives lost.
+
+No one, however, could dwell long in lamentation over these accidents
+when the news reached us the next morning of the terrible calamity which
+had overtaken the beautiful valley of the Tuy. This valley lies to the
+south of the city of Caracas, at an elevation of twelve or fifteen
+hundred feet above the sea, and is noted for being one of the most
+fertile of the many rich agricultural districts in which Venezuela
+abounds. The river Tuy, two hundred miles in length and navigable for
+about forty miles, flows through the centre, fertilizing the soil and
+causing it to become the granary of the capital, its abundant crops
+usually sufficing, in fact, for the consumption of the whole province.
+Indeed, were there more public highways its surplus products might find
+their way to still more distant portions of the republic. The whole
+valley is studded with towns, villages and plantations: of the former,
+the principal are Ocumare, Charallave, Santa Teresa, Santa Lucia and
+Cua.
+
+The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing
+of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward
+the vast _Llanos_ or plains, and being also the emporium of many
+extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as
+coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo. There too had been transported enormous
+timber from the still virgin forests--timber of the most valuable kind,
+whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the
+city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance
+of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the
+generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of
+society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many
+of the principal families of the country--gentlemen at the head of
+wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large
+estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode.
+Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as
+regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American
+towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled
+the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.
+
+Such was the state of things in this smiling valley when, at the same
+moment precisely at which we in Caracas felt the shock of the
+earthquake, all the above-mentioned towns--Ocumare, Santa Lucia,
+Charallave, etc.--were shaken to their foundations. The latter
+especially suffered greatly, for not a house was left uninjured or safe
+to inhabit, although the occupants had time to escape. But Cua--unhappy
+Cua!--was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a
+single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were
+buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was
+reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no
+sign. The heat had become so intense between seven and eight o'clock
+that numbers of persons were seated outside of the houses or had betaken
+themselves to the open squares to endeavor to seize a breath of fresh
+air, while many of the lower classes were sleeping under the open sky;
+to which fact, indeed, they owed their lives. The only habitations which
+survived the violence of the shock were the huts of the poor, being what
+is called _bajareque_, made of posts driven into the earth and otherwise
+formed of a species of wild cane tied together and cemented with mud
+and straw, these primitive dwellings being usually considered
+earthquake-proof.
+
+Besides the extraordinary heat, a friend of ours, who was riding from
+his plantation into the town, observed another indication of some
+disturbance in the usual processes of Nature. While crossing the river
+he noticed that the fishes were leaping in great numbers out of the
+water, and called the attention of several persons to the fact. They
+attributed this, however, to the discomfort occasioned by the intense
+heat, for the temperature of the water had increased so much that it had
+become disagreeable to drink.
+
+The gentleman to whom I have alluded, Don Tomas de la G----, describes
+the subterranean noise at Cua during the earthquake as something
+terrific, like the discharge of hundreds of cannon, while the earth rose
+simultaneously under his feet. There are two kinds of earthquakes--that
+of _trepidacion_, which comes directly from below, with an upward
+motion; the other, _de oscilacion_, where the earth sways to and fro
+like a pendulum, and which is generally less dangerous. Unfortunate Cua
+experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town
+being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and
+overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was
+happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed
+into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to
+quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. All was
+so sudden that few were saved by their own exertions, those who survived
+having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the
+counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It
+was as if the city had been lifted up _en masse_, and then thrown back
+with the foundations uppermost--upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la
+G---- happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock
+came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the
+tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; then suddenly
+reversing its course in an exactly opposite direction, it flung him off
+to a great distance, bruising him severely. While clinging to the tree
+he beheld the church in front of him, a new and handsome edifice,
+literally lifted up bodily into the air and then overturned with an
+appalling crash, "not one stone left upon another." If this had occurred
+an hour or two previously, hundreds would have perished within the
+walls, for there had been religious services in the church until a late
+hour, it being the Friday before Holy Week, termed by Spanish Catholics
+_Viernes del Concilio_.
+
+Don Tomas de la G---- described the whole scene as something too
+terrible for the imagination to conceive. After the stupendous crash
+caused by the falling of the houses, for a few moments there ensued an
+awful silence: then, amid the impenetrable darkness caused by the cloud
+of dust from the fallen walls, which totally obscured the murky light of
+a clouded moon, there arose a cry of anguish from those without--a wail
+as of one great voice of stricken humanity; then the answering smothered
+groan of those buried beneath the ruins--a cry like nothing human,
+rising as it did from the very bowels of the earth.
+
+There ensued a scene the harrowing details of which can never be fully
+given--the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or
+imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar.
+Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already
+rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so
+faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter
+still, until those who were working for the release of the captive
+became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay
+beneath their feet. No light could be obtained in this stifling Erebus
+of dust and darkness: all means of obtaining light had been buried in
+the undistinguishable mass, and where lighted lamps were overturned in
+the crash they had set fire to beams and rafters in the houses, and
+many who escaped being crushed were burned to death. Even proper
+instruments were wanting, and the number of persons who had collected to
+assist in the work of searching the debris was totally inadequate to the
+occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as
+the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I
+am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the
+upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts
+such as I have described, were generally uninjured.
+
+One of the richest commercial houses in Cua was owned by three German
+gentlemen, brothers. The eldest, having married a Spanish American lady
+of the place, had lately built himself a magnificent mansion, and one of
+his brothers resided with him. The lady was seated between her
+brother-in-law and husband when the shock came: a huge beam from the
+ceiling fell across her brother-in-law and literally divided him in two,
+while the side wall, falling at the same time, buried her husband from
+her sight. She herself was saved by the great packages of hemp and
+tobacco which fell around her and prevented the wall from crushing her.
+Blinded by the darkness and choked by the dust, she yet managed with the
+only hand at liberty to tear an opening which allowed her to breathe,
+and through which she called for help. Faint accents answered her: they
+were the tones of her husband's failing voice. She called to him to have
+courage--that she had hopes of release. "No," he replied, "I am dying,
+but do not give way. Live for our child's sake." As well as her
+agitation and distress would permit she endeavored to sustain him with
+words of encouragement, but in vain. About fifteen minutes passed in
+this sad colloquy: the replies came more and more slowly, more and more
+painfully, and then they ceased: the imprisoned lady comprehended in her
+lonely agony that she was a widow. She, a living, breathing woman, fully
+conscious of her awful anguish, lay helpless between the stiff and stark
+corpses of her husband and brother-in-law, and quite ignorant of the
+fate of her infant child, which had been left in another part of the
+house. Her cries were heard at last by a muleteer, who made some efforts
+to release her, but alone and in the darkness he could accomplish
+little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had
+returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks
+were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over
+upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer
+from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was
+indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was
+willing to risk his life in her behalf. One or two remained with him,
+and they succeeded at last in releasing her, but were obliged to cut her
+clothes from her body, as they seemed immovably nailed to the floor, the
+Good Samaritan of a muleteer covering her with his own cloak. The bodies
+of her husband, brother-in-law, two clerks and several servants were
+recovered the next day and buried.
+
+Another lady was found, when the ruins of her house were cleared away,
+upon her knees, with her children surrounding her in the same
+attitude--all dead! Their bodies were uninjured, so that it is probable
+that they were suffocated by the dust of the falling walls. A gentleman
+named Benitez, who had been standing at the door of his house, ran into
+the centre of the street and fell upon his knees: a little boy from the
+opposite doorway rushed in his terror into Benitez's arms. At that
+moment the two houses fell, and in this attitude the bodies of the man
+and the child were found the following day. A bride of twenty-four hours
+was killed with three of her children by a previous marriage. A fourth
+child was supposed also to have been killed, but on the third day a
+soldier who was passing the house pierced a basket which was among the
+ruins with his bayonet out of curiosity, when to his amazement a
+childish voice cried out, "_Tengo hambre_" ("I am hungry"), and the
+basket being lifted a living child was discovered, thus almost
+miraculously saved.
+
+One lady was crushed to death under the weight of the body of her
+daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was
+dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter,
+and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the
+death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of
+death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the
+terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid
+corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the
+most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr.
+Acosta, now of Paris, one of the favored circle of the ex-queen Isabella
+of Spain, with his wife, who was Miss Carroll, a sister of the present
+governor of Maryland.
+
+The Acosta family suffered perhaps more than any other, no less than
+fourteen of its members having perished, among them Dona Rosa, a still
+young and remarkably handsome woman, with her son, a lad of fifteen, and
+her baby grandchild. It was to save the life of this grandchild that
+Dona Rosa forfeited her own, as she ran into the house to snatch it from
+its cradle. Of the same family two little boys had fallen asleep at
+their play: one lay upon a sofa, and the other had crept beneath it. The
+earthquake literally turned the room upside down, the sofa being
+overturned by the falling wall, the child beneath thrown out and killed
+by the descending rafters, while the boy who had been sleeping upon it
+fell beneath the lounge, and, being thus protected, actually remained in
+this position uninjured for the greater part of two days. He had been
+numbered with the many dead in that house of sorrow, and was only found
+when the mourning survivors were searching for his remains to inter
+them--alive, but insensible, and entirely unable to give any account of
+what had befallen him.
+
+Every member of the police force, twenty-five in number, was killed,
+together with nine prisoners under guard.
+
+But it is impossible to give an adequate description of that night of
+horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those
+that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally
+distressing.
+
+The survivors encamped upon the banks of the river Tuy, where they might
+well repeat those tender lines of the Psalmist: "By the waters of
+Babylon we sat down and wept." Even the discomfort of the heavy rains
+which set in could make no impression upon hearts bowed down and crushed
+by the terrible calamity which had swept away their all--home, friends,
+everything that makes life worth having--at one quick blow. Not a house
+was left standing in their beautiful city: even the outlines of the
+streets were no longer visible: it was with the greatest difficulty that
+any particular building or locality could be recognized.
+
+Tents of various materials were improvised upon the river-side,
+sheltering without regard to age, sex or social condition the wounded,
+and even the dead. Many were in a state of delirium, some in the agonies
+of death, hundreds weeping for their lost friends and relatives, and
+many unable to recognize the recovered bodies on account of their having
+been burned beyond recognition by the fire caused by the upsetting of
+petroleum lamps. For the first two days the bodies were buried in the
+usual manner, but on the third decomposition had set in to such an
+extent that it was found necessary to burn them. An eye-witness
+exclaims: "Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful,
+the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so
+profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the
+bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together
+with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the
+stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being
+touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced
+decomposition." The body of a little child was thrown upon this funeral
+pile, when suddenly the eyes opened, and the voice cried out, "_Pan!
+pan!_" ("Bread! bread!") Imagine the feelings of the spectators at
+beholding how nearly the little creature had been immolated!
+
+The explosion and principal strength of the subterranean forces were
+concentrated in the town of Cua and within a radius of four or five
+leagues (twelve or fifteen miles) around it. Within this distance great
+chasms of various widths had opened, all running from east to west. From
+some of these streams of a fetid liquid issued, intermingled with a
+grayish-tinted earth, which caused many persons to surmise that a
+volcano was about to burst forth, especially as the earthquake-shocks
+still continued for many days, accompanied by loud subterranean reports.
+Although the catastrophe was confined to the valley of the Tuy, the
+shocks were felt for many hundred miles in every direction, even as far
+as Barquesimeto and other places toward the Cordilleras.
+
+As the population of Cua had entirely deserted the city and encamped
+upon the river-side, and as large sums of money and other valuables were
+known to be buried beneath the ruins, some heartless, lawless wretches
+took advantage of the unprotected state of things, under pretence of
+assisting in the work of extricating the victims, to appropriate
+everything that they could secrete without being discovered. Only one of
+the public officials, General E----, had escaped: the police had
+perished. It was a situation where only prompt and stringent measures
+could avail. General E----, therefore, with Don Tomas de la G----, whom
+I have before mentioned, assumed the responsibility of issuing a most
+energetic order of the day, and Don Tomas was commissioned by the
+general to draw up the document. In relating the anecdote to me, Don
+Tomas avers that the order had to be drawn upon the back of a letter
+which he discovered in his pocket, and that great delay was caused by
+its being an impossibility to procure ink. A poor black woman, however,
+hearing of his perplexity, announced that her son had been learning to
+write, and that as her _rancho_ or hut was still standing, the bottle
+of ink would probably be found tied to a nail in the wall, as well as
+the pen; that is, provided the thieves had not made away with it, of
+which she appeared to be somewhat suspicious. She consented to go for
+the articles herself, stipulating, however, that Don Tomas and one or
+two others should accompany her, believing, apparently, that numbers
+would guarantee her against injury from the earthquake. The ink was
+found where she had described it, but, unfortunately, no pen. Here was
+another dilemma! She bethought herself at last that a neighbor of hers
+possessed a pen; so the party was obliged to retrace its steps to the
+encampment for further information. The neighbor was sufficiently
+generous to lend the pen, but stoutly refused to re-enter the stricken
+city. She described its _locale_, however, as being between a rafter and
+a _cana_ in the roof at the entrance of her hut. The thieves, it proved
+upon investigation, had spared the precious implement, although,
+probably, if they had surmised the use to which it was to be put, that
+of fulminating destruction to their machinations, they might not have
+been so honest. All difficulties having been at length overcome, the
+important document was drawn up, and duly published the following
+morning by _bando_--that is, by sound of the trumpet, drum and fife--a
+body of citizens doing duty in lieu of troops, and the individual with
+the most stentorian lungs thundering forth the edict from where the
+corner of the streets might have been supposed to be. The proclamation
+was to the effect that any person or persons discovered robbing houses
+or insulting females should be shot on the spot, without trial or
+benefit of clergy. This measure of lynch law had the desired effect, and
+proved sufficient to maintain order until the arrival of a corps of
+three hundred soldiers sent by the government for that purpose.
+
+As soon as the disaster was made known, General Alcantara, the president
+of the republic, sent carts laden with provisions, blankets, shoes,
+hats, etc., besides money, and coaches to convey the unfortunate Cuans
+to their friends in the adjacent towns. The president also recommended
+the unfortunate people of Cua to the generosity of Congress, which was
+then in session. A sum of one hundred thousand dollars for rebuilding
+the city was immediately voted--a large sum for so impoverished a
+nation--and subscriptions from neighboring states, as well as private
+ones, have been most liberal. But these are but a drop in the bucket.
+Some of the finest plantations in the country surrounded Cua--coffee,
+sugar, cocoa, indigo, etc.--all with handsome mansions and expensive
+offices, with stores, sugar-mills and steam-engines, many of them worth
+from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars. After the disastrous 12th no
+one for many miles in the vicinity slept under roof, but all encamped on
+the adjacent plains: not even the rainy season, which soon set in with
+great violence, sufficed to drive them from their hastily-contrived
+shelter. From the 12th of April to the 30th there were ninety-eight or
+ninety-nine shocks of earthquake.
+
+In Caracas too the people still continued to sleep in the public
+squares, although the capital had hitherto escaped the greatest violence
+of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the
+population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain
+astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Briceno by name,
+had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed
+by the ominous title, "_Vigilemos!_" (_Let us watch!_). He prophesied
+that on the 17th of April, at twenty-nine minutes past one, there would
+certainly occur a great _cataclismo_, connecting the movements of the
+moon with the occurrence of earthquakes, and assuring the populace that
+at that hour this heavenly body would be in the precise position to
+produce this extraordinary _cataclismo_, whatever that might prove to
+be. The public excitement was intense, but the fatal day and hour
+arrived, passed, and found the city still safe and unharmed.
+
+  ISABELLA ANDERSON.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+THE HISS AND ITS HISTORY.
+
+     "I warrant thee, if I do not act it, they will hiss me."--_Merry
+     Wives of Windsor._
+
+
+Hissing is a custom of great antiquity. Cicero, in his _Paradoxes_, says
+that "if an actor lose the measure of a passage in the slightest degree,
+or make the line he utters a syllable too short or too long by his
+declamation, he is instantly hissed off the stage." Nor was hissing
+confined to the theatre, for in one of his letters Cicero refers to
+Hortensius as an orator who attained old age without once incurring the
+disgrace of being hissed. Pliny notes that some of the lawyers of his
+day had paid applauders in court, who greeted the points of their
+patron's speech with an _ululatus_, or shrill yell. This Roman manner of
+denoting approval seems akin to the practice of the Japanese, who give a
+wild shriek as a sign of approbation, and hoot and howl to show their
+displeasure. But the sound of the goose--the simple hiss--is the most
+frequently-employed symbol of dissent. "Goose" is, in theatrical
+parlance, to hiss; and Dutton Cook, in his entertaining _Book of the
+Play_, remarks that the bird which saved the Capitol has ruined many a
+drama.
+
+The dramatist is of all creative artists the most unfortunate. He can
+never present himself directly to his critics; he must be seen through a
+medium over which he has but slight control; he must depend wholly on
+the actors of his play, and too often he is leaning on a reed. Colman
+accused John Kemble of having been the cause of the original failure of
+_The Iron Chest_, and Ben Jonson published his _New Inn_ as a comedy
+"never acted, but most negligently played by some of the king's
+servants, and more squeamishly beheld and censured by others, the king's
+subjects, 1629; and now, at last, set at liberty to the readers, His
+Majesty's servants and subjects, to be judged of, 1631."
+
+Nor are Colman and Jonson alone in their tribulations. Sheridan was
+hissed, and so were Goldsmith and Fielding and Coleridge and Godwin and
+Beaumarchais and About and Victor Hugo and Scribe and Sardou, and many
+another, including Charles Lamb, who cheerfully hissed his own _Mr. H_.
+
+The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for
+he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his
+characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's
+_Tannhaeuser_ led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few
+evenings, and its failure the composer has never been willing to let the
+world forget. Rossini was more philosophical. On its first performance
+the _Barber of Seville_, like the comedy of Beaumarchais, whence its
+libretto is taken, was a failure; and when the curtain fell, Rossini,
+who had led the orchestra, turned to the audience and calmly clapped his
+hands. The anger at this openly-expressed contempt for public opinion
+did not prevent the opera from gradually gaining ground, until by the
+end of the week it was a marked success. Had it been a failure, the
+composer would have borne it easily: Mr. Edwards informs us that when
+Rossini's _Sigismondo_ was violently hissed at Venice he sent a letter
+to his mother with a picture of a large _fiasco_ (bottle). His _Torvaldo
+e Dorliska_, which was brought out soon afterward, was also hissed, but
+not so much. This time Rossini sent his mother a picture of a
+_fiaschetto_ (little bottle).
+
+Nor is it, in modern times, authors or actors alone who are subject to
+the hiss. The orator may provoke it by a bold speech in support of an
+unpopular measure or an unpopular man. But here the hisser is not so
+safe, nor the hissee--to coin a convenient word--so defenceless. The
+orator is not hampered by the studied words of a written part: he has
+the right of free speech, and he may retort upon his sibilant
+surrounders. Macready records that on one occasion, when Sheil was
+hissed, he "extorted the applause of his assailants by observing to
+them, 'You may hiss, but you cannot sting.'" Even finer was the retort
+of Coleridge under similar circumstances: "When a cold stream of truth
+is poured on red-hot prejudices, no wonder they hiss."
+
+Sir William Knighton declares that George II. never entered a theatre
+save in fear and trembling from dread of hearing a single hiss, which,
+though it were at once drowned in tumultuous applause, he would lie
+awake all night thinking about, entirely forgetful of the enthusiasm it
+had evoked. He must have felt as Charles Lamb did, who wrote: "A hundred
+hisses (hang the word! I write it like kisses--how different!)--a
+hundred hisses outweigh a thousand claps. The former come more directly
+from the heart." It is hard to entirely agree with Lamb here. Hissing
+seems to me to proceed for the most part from ill-temper, or at least
+from the dissatisfaction of the head. Applause is often the outburst of
+the heart, the gush of a feeling, an enthusiasm incapable of restraint.
+No wonder that the retired actor longs for a sniff of the footlights and
+for the echo of the reverberating plaudits to the accompaniment of which
+he formerly bowed himself off.
+
+Indeed, applause is the breath of an actor's nostrils. Without it good
+acting is almost impossible. Actors, like other artists, need
+encouragement. Applause gives heart, and, as Mrs. Siddons said, "better
+still--breath." Mrs. Siddons's niece has put on record her views, as
+valuable as her famous relative's: "'Tis amazing how much an audience
+loses by this species of hanging back, even when the silence proceeds
+from unwillingness to interrupt a good performance: though in reality it
+is the greatest compliment an actor can receive, yet he is deprived by
+that very stillness of half his power. Excitement is reciprocal between
+the performer and the audience: he creates it in them, and receives it
+back again from them."
+
+To one set of actors a hiss takes the place of applause. It is the
+highest compliment which can be paid to a "heavy villain," for it bears
+witness to the truth with which he has sustained his character.
+
+Sometimes the performer mistakes reproof for approval. An amateur
+singer, describing to her father the great success she had achieved at
+her first concert, concluded by saying, "Some Italians even took me for
+Pasta."--"Yes," corroborated her mother: "before she had sung her second
+song they all cried, 'Basta! basta!'" ("Enough! enough!")
+
+Pasta herself is the heroine of an amusing anecdote. She gave her
+servant, a simple _contadina_, an order for the opera on a night when
+she appeared in one of her greatest parts. That evening the great prima
+donna surpassed herself; she was recalled time and again; the audience
+were wildly enthusiastic; almost every number was encored. Returning
+home, she wearily asked her maid how she had enjoyed the play. "Well,
+the play, ma'am, was fine, but I felt sorry for _you_," was the
+reply.--"For me, child! And why?"--"Well, ma'am," said the waiting-maid,
+"you did everything so badly that the people were always shouting and
+storming at you, and making you do it all over again."
+
+There are situations even worse than Pasta's, as Pauline Lucca has
+recently discovered in Vienna, where she was fined fifty florins for
+violating the law which forbids the recognition of applause. It seems
+cruel to mulct a pretty prima donna for condescending to acknowledge an
+encore.
+
+Whether or not it be law in Austria to prevent a courtesy and a smile,
+rewarding the enthusiasm of an audience, it is certainly law in England
+and France that a dissatisfied spectator shall be at liberty to express
+his dissatisfaction. It has been held by the Court of Queen's Bench
+that, while any conspiracy against an actor or author is of course
+illegal, yet the audience have a lawful right to express their feelings
+at the performance either by applause or by hisses. The Cour de
+Cassation of France has decided in the same way. When Forrest,
+therefore, hissed Macready for introducing a fancy dance in _Hamlet_, he
+was doing what he had a legal right to do, though the ultimate result
+of it was the Astor Place riot and the death of many. In ancient Rome
+the right to hiss seems also to have existed in its fulness. Suetonius
+in his life of Augustus informs us that Pylades was banished not only
+from Rome, but from Italy, for having pointed with his finger at a
+spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the eyes of the whole
+audience upon him. But as time passed on, and Nero took the imperial
+crown and chose to exhibit it himself to the public on the stage, all
+the spectators were bound to applaud under penalty of death.
+
+The French law forbids disturbance of any kind except when the curtain
+is up. In France the boisterousness of the Dublin gallery-boy would
+hardly be tolerated. The Parisians would have been amazed at a recent
+incident of the Irish stage. When Sophocles' tragedy of _Antigone_ was
+produced at the Theatre Royal with Mendelssohn's music, the gallery
+"gods" were greatly pleased, and, according to their custom, demanded a
+sight of the author. "Bring out Sapherclaze," they yelled. The manager
+explained that Sophocles had been dead two thousand years and more, and
+could not well come. Thereat a small voice shouted from the gallery,
+"Then chuck us out his mummy."
+
+There is a delicious tradition that Mrs. Siddons, when playing in
+Dublin, was once interrupted with cries for "Garry Owen! Garry Owen!"
+She did not heed for some time, but, bewildered at last and anxious to
+conciliate, she advanced to the footlights and with tragic solemnity
+asked, "What is Garry Owen? Is it anything I can do for you?"
+
+Actors are not always willing to stand baiting quietly: they turn and
+rend their tormentors. Mrs. Siddons herself took leave of a barbarian
+audience with the words, "Farewell, ye brutes!" George Frederick Cooke,
+describing his own failings, said: "On Monday I was drunk, and appeared,
+but they didn't like that and hissed me. On Wednesday I was drunk, so I
+didn't appear; and they didn't like that. What the devil would they
+have?" Once at Liverpool, when he was drunk and did appear, they didn't
+like it. He reeled across the stage and was greeted by a storm of
+hisses. With savage grandeur he turned on them: "What! do you hiss
+me--me, George Frederick Cooke? You contemptible money-getters, you
+shall never again have the honor of hissing me. Farewell! I banish you!"
+He paused, and then added, with contemptuous emphasis, "There is not a
+brick in your dirty town but is cemented by the blood of a negro."
+Edmund Kean treated one of his audiences with less vigor, but with equal
+contempt. The spectators were noisy and insulting, but they called him
+out at the end of the piece. "What do you want?" he asked.--"You! you!"
+was the reply.--"Well, here I am!" continuing after a pause, with
+characteristic insolence: "I have acted in every theatre in the United
+Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, I have acted in all the principal
+theatres throughout the United States of America, but in my life I never
+acted to such a set of ignorant, unmitigated brutes as I now see before
+me."
+
+  J. B. M.
+
+
+
+
+A NEW TOPIC OF CONVERSATION.
+
+
+There can be no doubt but what the increase of interest in the
+decorative arts has lightened the general tone of society in our cities.
+"I buy everything new that I can find," a lady remarked the other day
+when her bric-a-brac was praised: "not that I care anything in especial
+for this sort of thing, but because it is such a blessing to have
+something to talk about." One shudders now to remember the drawing-rooms
+of a generation ago--a colorless, cold, negative background for social
+life; rich sweeping curtains of damask satin and lace muffling the
+windows; impossible sofas and impracticable chairs gilded and elaborated
+into the most costly hideousness; an entire suite of rooms utterly
+barren of interest; a place given over to the taste of the upholsterer;
+nothing on any hand which contained a suggestion of life or emotion,
+thought or effort; every sign of occupation banished--nothing tolerated
+save the dullest uniformity, which depressed originality into inanity.
+
+No wonder that this barrenness of household resource had its effect upon
+women, and that every one complained of the meagre results of ordinary
+social intercourse. Now-a-days, when tables are crowded with
+bric-a-brac, cabinets laden with porcelain and faience, and richly-hung
+walls brightened with plaques and good pictures, the female mind has
+received a fresh impulse, almost an inspiration, which will show clear
+results before many years have passed.
+
+Enthusiasm for bric-a-brac and pottery, for embroidery and general
+decorative art, is strongest among practical and unimaginative
+people--people who know little or nothing of the world of thought opened
+by books, and who have hitherto been somewhat disheartened by a
+conviction of their own dulness. To them the present mania is an
+undoubted lease of the finer uses of intellect, and their mental
+horizons have widened until the prose of their lives is brightened into
+poetry. Every one now-a-days feels the stirring of the artistic impulse,
+and is able in some way to gratify it.
+
+The American mind is always extravagant, and is certain to aim at too
+much and leap too high, and in this renaissance of decorative art carry
+its admiration of the beautiful and rare entirely too far in one
+direction--in the matter of dress at least. The costly velvets and
+satins and silks, which outweigh and surpass in beauty those of the
+early centuries, are seen on every side cut up and tortured into
+intricate and perplexing fashions of toilette. In the olden times these
+fabrics were wisely considered too rich to be altered from one
+generation to another, but were passed from mother to daughter as an
+inheritance. So far as the ornamentation of her own person is concerned,
+the American woman is too expensive and prodigal in her ideas, and
+wastes on the fashion of the hour what ought to grace a lifetime.
+
+But in turning her talent to the fitting-up of her house the American
+woman is apt to be thrifty, ingenious and economical; and since she has
+learned what decorative art really is, she works miracles of cleverness
+and beauty. And, as we began by saying, it is a real blessing to have a
+new topic of conversation. True, there can be nothing more fatiguing to
+those who are free from the mania for pottery and porcelain than a
+discussion between china-lovers and china-hunters concerning, for
+instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain
+from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt
+to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of
+knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly
+and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed
+so easily? Far from it. "This is _real_ crackle," the collector insists,
+with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his
+specimen; and then and there you have the history of crackle and the
+points of difference between the imitation and the real. And in glancing
+at his collection your tongue must not trip nor your eye confound
+styles. It requires a literal mind, besides a good memory and practised
+observation, to be an expert, and diffused and generalized knowledge
+amounts to little.
+
+We have in mental view a lady who five years ago possessed apparently
+neither powers of thought nor capacity for expression, but who has,
+since she became a collector of china and antique furniture, developed
+into a tireless talker. Formerly she sat in her pale gray-and-blue rooms
+dressed faultlessly, "splendidly null," and you sought in vain for a
+topic which could warm her into interest or thaw out a sign of life from
+her. Now her rooms are studies, so picturesquely has she arranged her
+cabinets of china, her Oriental rugs and hangings, and her Queen Anne
+furniture; and she herself seems a new creature, so transfused is she by
+this fine fire of enthusiasm which illuminates her face and warms her
+tongue into eloquence. There is no dearth of subjects now. The briefest
+allusion to the Satsuma cup on the table beside you, and the lady, well
+equipped with matter, starts out on a tireless recapitulation of the
+delights and fatigues of collecting. She is a better woman and a much
+less dull one from this blossom of sympathy and interest with something
+outside of the old meaningless conditions of her life.
+
+We all remember that it was a point of etiquette inculcated in our youth
+never to make allusion to the furniture and fittings of the houses where
+we paid visits. That rule is far more honored in the breach than in the
+observance now-a-days. It would show chilling coldness not to inquire if
+our fair friend herself embroidered the curtains of velvet and
+mummy-cloth which drape her doors and windows, and if that plaque were
+really painted by one of the Society of Decorative Art, and not imported
+from Doulton.
+
+It would, in fact, seem as if this initiation in fresh ideas and
+aims--which, even if trivial, are higher than the old uncreative forms
+of occupation and interest--was an answer to the yearning of the
+feminine mind for something to sweep thoughts and impulses into a
+current which results in action. And certainly any action which lends
+interest, worth and beauty to domestic life, which draws out talent and
+promotes culture, is deserving of all encouragement.
+
+  L. W.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE TROCADERO.
+
+
+There is no portion of the Paris Exhibition of 1878 which has excited
+more attention or attracted more visitors than has the Palace of the
+Trocadero. Yet few of the visitors who pass beneath its lofty portals
+ever imagine that the site of the sumptuous edifice is haunted by
+historical associations of no slight degree of interest. In fact, before
+the palace "rose like an exhalation" at the bidding of the skilled
+architects employed by the government few persons knew anything about
+the Trocadero at all. That lofty eminence, incomparably the finest
+building-site in Paris, with its graduated slopes gay with flowers and
+verdure, has long been a favorite lounging-place for Parisian artisans
+when out for a holiday, or for tourists seeking for a good view of the
+city and shrinking from the fatigue of climbing to the top of the Arc de
+Triomphe. Yet no one seemed to know anything of its history, or even why
+a hill in Paris should bear the name of a Spanish fort. And yet, to a
+certain extent, the spot is one of genuine historical interest.
+Successively a feudal manor, a royal domain, a cloister, and the site of
+unrealized projects of the later monarchs of France, religion, ambition,
+sorrow and glory have there at different times sought a refuge or a
+pedestal.
+
+The Trocadero occupies a part of the site of the ancient village of
+Chaillot, whose existence can be traced back to the eleventh century. In
+its earlier days this village was celebrated for its vineyards and
+gardens and for its enchanting view; which last charm its site still
+retains. It was bestowed by Louis XI. on the historian Philippe de
+Comines, from whose heirs the domain was purchased by Catherine de
+Medicis. The building-loving queen caused a palace to be erected there,
+but of that edifice no trace now remains. After the death of the queen,
+Chaillot and its palace became the property of the President Janin, who
+probably tore down and rebuilt the royal abode, as he is accused in the
+memoirs of the time of being largely possessed by a mania for pulling
+down and rebuilding all the mansions in his possession. An engraving of
+the edifice as he left it exists in the Bibliotheque Nationale. It shows
+a very charming structure in the Renaissance style, erected, apparently,
+at a point halfway down the slope, since there are two lines of terraces
+behind it, as well as many in front.
+
+The next owner of the domain of Chaillot was Francois de Bassompierre,
+former friend and boon-companion of Henri IV. He did not occupy it very
+long, being sent to the Bastile by Cardinal de Richelieu a very few
+years after the purchase was completed. During his imprisonment he lent
+Chaillot to his sister-in-law, Madame de Nemours. One day Richelieu sent
+to the Bastile to request his prisoner to let him occupy Chaillot as a
+summer abode. Bassompierre accordingly sent word to his sister-in-law
+that she must make way for the all-powerful minister. Richelieu
+remained at Chaillot for over six weeks, and declared that the furniture
+of the apartments was far finer than anything in that line which the
+king possessed.
+
+The sad figure of Henriette Marie, the widowed queen of Charles I. of
+England, and youngest daughter of Henri IV., comes next upon the scene.
+She it was who, having purchased Chaillot after her return to France,
+established there the convent of Les Dames de la Visitation. A chapel
+was added to the extensive structure left behind by her father's old
+comrade, and it was in that chapel that her funeral sermon was preached
+by Bossuet--one of the first of those marvellous pieces of funereal
+eloquence which more than aught else have contributed to render his name
+immortal.
+
+Next we have a vision of Louise de la Valliere, "like Niobe, all tears,"
+flying to the arms of the abbess of the Visitandines for refuge from the
+anguish of beholding the insolent De Montespan enthroned in her place.
+It took all the eloquence and persuasive powers of Colbert to induce the
+fair weeper to return with him to Versailles. She yielded at last, but
+not without many sad forebodings that were destined to be only too
+perfectly fulfilled. "When I left the king before, he came for me: now,
+he sends for me," she sighed. She bade farewell to the abbess, assuring
+her that she would speedily return. But when, after three years more of
+suffering and humiliation, she finally retired to a convent, she did not
+enter that of the Visitandines, but that of the Carmelites, then
+situated in the Faubourg St. Jacques.
+
+In 1707 a dispute between the Superior of the Visitandines and the
+officers of the king led to the abolition of the feudal privileges of
+Chaillot, and it was created a suburb of the city of Paris. Henceforward
+the quiet convent belongs no more to history. From the windows of their
+cells the nuns could behold the laying out of the Champ de Mars and the
+erection of the new military school decreed by Louis XV. But they were
+not destined to witness the Festival of the Republic, which took place
+on the Champ de Mars, since in 1790 the convent was suppressed and the
+nuns dispersed. The buildings still remained, and were devoted to
+various public uses till they were swept away to give place to the
+gigantic project of the First Napoleon, whose plans, had they been
+carried out, would have totally changed that quarter of Paris and
+rendered it one of the most beautiful portions of the city.
+
+Percier and Fontaine, the architects of the emperor, have left behind
+them a full account of the projects of their imperial master relative to
+the heights of Chaillot. Being commissioned to erect a palace at Lyons,
+they opposed the idea on account of the difficulty of finding a suitable
+site for the projected building, and proposed instead the hill of
+Chaillot as being the finest site that it was possible to find in
+France. Their proposition was accepted: the buildings then occupying the
+height were purchased and torn down, and the works were commenced. The
+plan of Napoleon was a grandiose one, including not only the palace, to
+which he gave the name of his son, calling it the "Palace of the King of
+Rome," but also a series of buildings filling up three out of the four
+sides of the Champ de Mars, including two barracks, a military hospital
+and a palace of archives, as well as edifices for schools of art and
+industry. As to the palace itself, it was to have a frontage of over
+fourteen hundred feet on the Quai de Billy--an extent which is about
+that of the present Palace of the Trocadero. The whole of the plain of
+Passy, which was but little built upon at that epoch, was to be
+transformed into a wooded park stretching to and including the Bois de
+Boulogne. The grounds surrounding the palace were to be joined to the
+Avenue de Neuilly, to the Arc de Triomphe and to the high road of St.
+Germain by wide avenues bordered with trees.
+
+This splendid project was destined never to be realized. Hardly had the
+foundations of the palace been laid when the disastrous campaign of
+Moscow put an end to the works. Money was wanted for soldiers and
+ammunition more than for palaces and parks. After the battle of
+Leipsic, Napoleon had the idea of making of his scarcely-commenced
+palace a Sans Souci like that of Frederick the Great--a quiet retreat
+where he could escape from the toils and cares of empire. But hardly had
+the works been recommenced on this diminished basis when the abdication
+of the emperor and his exile to Elba came to put a stop to them anew,
+and this time a decisive one; for, though a few workmen were employed in
+levelling the grounds and building the walls during the Hundred Days,
+there was neither spirit nor conviction in the work: the illusions of
+other days had fled, and were not to be revived. It was impossible for
+even the most sanguine partisans of Napoleon to imagine that the palace
+would ever be completed and receive him as a tenant.
+
+Under the Restoration it was decided to utilize the deserted foundations
+and to erect thereon a barrack. The laying of the cornerstone of the new
+edifice was made the occasion of a solemn festival in honor of the
+successes of the French army in Spain. The day chosen was the
+anniversary of the taking of the fort of the Trocadero at Cadiz by the
+duc d'Angouleme, and the better to mark the occasion the height on which
+the new barrack was to stand was solemnly rebaptized by the name of the
+fort in question. The programme of the fete was long and elaborate. It
+consisted of a representation of the taking of the Trocadero, a sham
+battle in which twenty battalions of the royal guard took part. Then
+came the laying of the cornerstone, which duty was performed by the
+dauphin and dauphiness. But the projected barrack of the Bourbons shared
+the fate of the palace of Napoleon. It was never built, and for nearly
+thirty years the ruins of the abandoned foundations and terraces were
+left to be picturesquely clothed with weeds and wild grasses. Only the
+name bestowed upon the height remained, and it was still called the
+Trocadero.
+
+Under the Second Empire the laying out of the numerous handsome avenues
+which extend around the Arc de Triomphe, and have it for a centre,
+necessitated the clearing and levelling of the deserted site. It was at
+first proposed to erect there a monument in commemoration of the
+victories of Magenta and Solferino, and the plans were actually drawn
+up: it was to have consisted of a lofty column, surpassing in its
+dimensions any similar monument in Paris. At the base of this column a
+fountain and a vast cascade were to be constructed, and the slope was to
+have been laid with turf and planted with trees. But this project, too,
+came to naught, and the Exhibition of 1867 only impelled the authorities
+into grading and laying out the ground, strengthening and repairing the
+flights of steps that led to the summit, and embellishing it with
+grass-plats and flower-beds. Later, the project was conceived by
+Napoleon III. of erecting on the summit of the Trocadero a Grecian
+temple in white marble, destined to receive the busts of the great men
+of France with commemorative inscriptions--a project which the downfall
+of the Second Empire found unrealized. The ancient site of the village
+of Chaillot seemed like one of those spots of which we read in monkish
+legends, which are haunted by a demon that destroys the work and blights
+the existence of whoever attempts to build upon them. Palace, barracks,
+monument and temple alike never existed, and were but the shadowy
+precursors of disaster to their projectors. It was reserved for the
+Third Republic to break the evil spell, and to crown the picturesque and
+historic eminence with an edifice worthy of the beauty of the site and
+of its associations with the past.
+
+  L. H. H.
+
+
+
+
+SWISS ENGINEERING.
+
+
+Switzerland, of all the countries of Europe, presents the most grave and
+numerous obstacles to intercommunication. The number and size of the
+mountains and glaciers, the depth of the valleys, the torrential
+character of the rivers,--everything unites to make the highways cost
+enormously in money, while the feats of skill they necessitate are "the
+triumph of civil engineers, the wonder of tourists, the despair of
+shareholders and the burden of budgets." Among these triumphs are the
+viaduct of Grandfey; the railroads that climb the Righi and the
+Uetliberg; the Axen tunnel and quay; and the Gotthard tunnel, over nine
+miles long--a solid granite bore through a mountain. One that was
+honored by a national celebration on the 16th of last August was the
+reclaiming from the water of the vast plain called Seeland, the
+territory occupying the triangle bounded by the river Aar and the Lakes
+of Bienne, Neufchatel and Morat. It was wholly under water, and had
+slowly emerged after many centuries; but despite an extensive system of
+drainage the land was never dry enough for serious cultivation. In rainy
+years it was even covered with water, making, with the three lakes, a
+sheet nearly twenty-five miles square.
+
+The great work celebrated last August was no less than the changing the
+bed of the Aar and the lowering of the three lakes mentioned. The Aar in
+this region is about the size of the Seine at Paris or of the Hudson at
+Troy, but it is subject to sudden floods that are the terror of dwellers
+and property-owners along its borders. A Swiss colonel named La Nicca
+was the author of the grand scheme for reclaiming Seeland. The
+proposition he made was accepted in 1867, and, thanks to the sacrifices
+of the citizens in the communes and cantons immediately interested, and
+also to a heavy national subsidy, the enterprise was commenced, and so
+vigorously and ably prosecuted that in ten years it was finished.
+
+To-day the Aar, turned out of its ancient bed near Aarsberg, runs nearly
+west instead of north-east toward Soleure, and empties into Lake Bienne
+near its middle. The new bed or canal made for this river is over five
+and a half miles long, and some of the way it is three hundred and
+twenty-eight feet deep. But this is only a part of the work. Another
+vast canal, also over five and a half miles long, at the eastern
+extremity of the lake, not far from the pretty village of Bienne,
+receives the overflow not only of Lake Bienne, but of Neufchatel and
+Morat, which are all three connected by broad canals, and are now in
+communication with the Rhine by steam navigation. The canal at the
+eastern extremity of Lake Bienne opens into the Aar some seven miles
+below where that river was cut off. It is in fact the bed of the river
+Thiele, deepened and reconstructed.
+
+The deepening of the bed of the Thiele, the natural outlet of Lake
+Bienne, was effected according to principles that would ensure the
+lowering of the water-level of all the three lakes some ten feet! Thus a
+vast territory of swampy land, which once bore only reeds, now yields
+abundant harvests of grain and fruits. Of course the lowering of these
+three lakes had to be effected gradually, for the volume of water
+removed--no less than three thousand two hundred and eighty million
+cubic feet--represents a stupendous force. By this enterprise the whole
+plain of Seeland has become higher than the surface of the lakes, and
+consequently drains into them naturally. Already a beautiful village,
+Witzwyl, has sprung up, surrounded by some seven hundred and fifty
+thousand acres of fine arable land reclaimed from a forbidding,
+malaria-exhaling marsh.
+
+  M. H.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+     The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of the History and Manufacture of
+     Pottery and Porcelain. By Jennie J. Young. New York: Harper &
+     Brothers.
+
+
+"More crockery!" exclaims one aweary of the ceramic craze. "And the
+biggest book of all!--the winding-up shower, let us hope," quoth another
+non-sympathizer.
+
+This portly octavo, with its four hundred and sixty-four wood-cuts, a
+seemingly exhaustive compend of the subject, may indeed be accepted as
+the peroratory rain destined to give the soil its last preparation for
+the rich growth to follow under a clear and sunny sky. What pen and
+print can do to perfect the requisite conditions for a Periclean age of
+pottery must by this time have been done. The case is summed up and
+stated. The issue rests with the jury of millions who use and admire
+burnt clay. Their wants, their sense of beauty and their purse will
+render the verdict. We might more safely and properly say that they will
+render a number of verdicts, all in their way and sphere just and true,
+since in no one of the arts so much as in this of all times and all
+nations is it so difficult to subject the infinitude of styles and
+fancies to one rigid canon. That the Greek vase is an absolute exemplar
+in grace and elegance of form every one hastens to concede. But who
+would hesitate to give up a part of what the Greeks have bequeathed us
+rather than lose the marvellous filigree in clay of "Henri Deux," the
+rich realism of Palissy or the wild and delightful riot of line and
+color and unequalled delicacy of manipulation presented to us by the
+Japanese? One and the same eye, as highly and soundly educated as you
+please, may be charmed almost equally by works of each of these schools
+and of others not here named; and that almost without wishing to see the
+peculiar merits of each combined and merged in one. A perfect eclectic
+vase is not to be expected, if desired, any more than a fruit or a wine
+which shall unite the best flavors of all orchards or all vintages. What
+can be done is to strive in that direction, as the French cook seeks, by
+"composing," to attain in one supreme _plat_ the _ne plus ultra_ of
+sapidity. We shall not be able, any more than he, to reach that climax
+or to dull the charm of variety. The fusing of the Greek brain and the
+Oriental eye and finger in the alembic of Western Europe and the New
+World will still continue to be attempted.
+
+Trade, the great amalgamator, is promoting this end. Chinese porcelain
+has long been sent to Japan for decoration, the resemblance between the
+styles of the two countries, due primarily to race, being thus
+increased. American biscuit is sent to England for the like purpose; and
+we read with more surprise that the unfinished ware of Dresden seeks
+ornamentation in the same country, whence it is returned to be placed
+upon the market as true Meissen. A firm of New Yorkers, again, have
+migrated to France and built up the beautiful fabric of Limoges with the
+aid of French artists. The craftsmen of Japan and China are year by year
+borrowing Western forms and methods, as comparison of the ancient and
+modern work of those nations will show clearly enough.
+
+While national idiosyncrasies the most opposite and the most widely
+separated in every sense ally themselves in behalf of progress,
+individual effort is encouraged by the reflection that no walk of art
+offers a more open field to original genius. Della Robbia, Bernart,
+Palissy and Wedgwood each found his own material and created his own
+school. Neither of them possessed the facilities, educational or
+mechanical, now at the command of hundreds. Neither had as wide or as
+eager a market for his productions as the coming artist in clay may
+command. Surely, such an artist is at this moment maturing his powers in
+some one of the scores of training institutions which have sprung up,
+under public or private auspices, within the past quarter of a century.
+Thorwaldsen was not a man of great originative genius, and nothing at
+all of a potter, troubling himself little about hard or soft paste or
+this or the other glaze; but he infused the love of classic form into
+the bleakest corners of Scandinavia, and made her youth modellers of
+terra-cotta into shapes unexcelled by any imitators of the antique. The
+prize awaits him who should, upon such knowledge and discipline, graft a
+study of Oriental designs, an eye for color, an independent fancy, and
+such minute precision of manual dexterity as seems the hardest thing of
+all for the Western to acquire. He will not have, like his great
+forerunners, to invent his material. Science does not repress, it
+invites and assists him. It offers him mineral colors and modes of
+graduating heat unknown to them. All the secrets of porcelain are open
+to him; and were they not, Europe did all her best things in ceramics
+before she was able to make a porcelain teacup. He may find room for
+improvement in material too. Pottery is the most durable of fabrics so
+long as it is not broken. But it is fragile, as bronze is not. Why may
+not that defect be remedied, as other defects have been by the Japanese
+and our bank-note printers in that particularly evanescent texture,
+paper? Some day, perhaps, burnt clay will be held together by threads of
+asbestos as greenbacks are by threads of silk and the sun-burned
+Egyptian bricks were by straw. Malleable glass we have already. Why not
+malleable faience?
+
+The book before us presents the art, its history, its processes and its
+results in a manner every way satisfactory. Its account is full without
+being prolix. The author's taste is catholic enough. The different
+styles are placed before the reader side by side, with an evident
+purpose to do justice to all of them. There is little of the jargon of
+the connoisseur. Marks are curtly dismissed with the sound dictum that
+"the art and not the mark should be studied." Much use is made of the
+engravings, which are more closely connected with the text than,
+unfortunately, is generally the case in illustrated works. They are
+strictly illustrations of it, and serve as good a purpose in that way as
+cuts without the aid of color could well do. Nothing is more difficult
+to reproduce than a first-class work in clay or porcelain. Color,
+drawing, form, surface and texture present a compound of difficulties
+not to be completely overcome by the resources of the graver, the camera
+and the printer in colors. Only on the shelves of the museum can it be
+studied understandingly. It must speak for itself. The chromo undertakes
+to duplicate, with more or less success, the painting in oil or fresco,
+but the vase is a picture and something more. It is the joint product of
+the painter and the sculptor, and the substance whereon they bestow
+their labor has a special and varying beauty of its own.
+
+In the pages devoted to the history of American pottery we confess that
+we have been chiefly attracted by its antiquities. The specimens given
+of remains from all parts of the two continents show at a glance their
+common origin. They all come unmistakably from the hands of the same
+Indian, civilized or savage. The Moquis, the Mound-builders, the Aztecs
+and the Peruvians all wrought their mother, Earth, into the same
+fashion, and adorned her countenance, purified by fire, with scrolls and
+colors in the same taste. The pigments employed have proved as lasting
+as those in the Egyptian tombs, and the forms are often as graceful as
+in a majority of the Phoenician vessels found in Cyprus. In the
+representation of the human head the Peruvian artist, so far as we may
+judge from these relics, excelled his rival of Tyre and Sidon.
+
+That this will become a handbook on the subject of which it treats
+cannot be doubted. If we might venture to suggest an amendment to the
+second edition, it would be the addition to the illustrations of two or
+three figures carefully executed in colors--Greek, Japanese and Sevres.
+
+
+     Like unto Like. By Sherwood Bonner. (Library of American Fiction.)
+     New York: Harper & Brothers.
+
+Sherwood Bonner has been singularly happy in her choice of a subject for
+this, her first novel. She has broken new ground on that Southern soil
+which seemed already for literary purposes wellnigh worn out, and she
+has touched upon a period in the struggle between North and South which,
+so far as we know, has been little treated by novelists. The antagonists
+are represented not in the smoke of battle, but at that critical and
+awkward moment when the first steps toward reconciliation are being
+made. A proud but sociable little Mississippi town is shown in the act
+of half-reluctantly opening its doors to the officers of a couple of
+Federal regiments stationed within its bounds. The situation is
+portrayed with much spirit and humor, as well as with the most perfect
+_good_-humor. Thoroughly Southern as the novel is, it is not narrowly
+so: its pictures of Southern society are drawn from within, and show its
+writer's sympathy with Southern feeling, yet its tone, even in touching
+on the most tender spots, is entirely dispassionate, and at the same
+time free from any apparent effort to be so.
+
+The first chapter introduces us to a triad of charming girls, whose
+careless talk soon turns upon the soldiers' expected arrival in Yariba
+and the proper reception to be given them by the Yariba damsels. Betty
+Page, Mary Barton and Blythe Herndon are, in a sense, typical girls, and
+represent the three orders in which nearly all girlhood may be
+classified--namely, frivolous girls, good girls, and clever girls or
+girls with ideas. Ideas are represented by Blythe Herndon, whose
+outspoken verdict in favor of tolerance and forgetfulness of the past
+draws upon her the patriotic indignation of Miss Betty Page. How long
+the fair disputants preserve the jewel of consistency forms the _motif_
+of the book. Betty dances and flirts, neglects her loyal young Southern
+lover--who, we hope, is consoled by Mary--and finally surrenders to a
+handsome moustache and the Union with a happy unconsciousness of any
+abandonment of her principles. Blythe, with her ardent nature and
+youthful attitude of intolerance toward intolerance, is easily attracted
+by the intellectual freedom which appears to open before her in the
+conversation of an enthusiastic New England radical. Her mind is,
+however, not wholly thrown off its balance by this vision of culture:
+she awakens to the fact that the breach is wider than she had at first
+dreamed, and shrinks from the sacrifice not only of prejudice, but of
+first principles and affections, which is demanded of her. Lovers who
+are separated by hereditary or political strife have ever been a
+favorite theme with poet and romancer. In the majority of instances
+these unhappy beings have regarded the barrier between them as a useless
+obstacle erected by a perverse Fate in the way of their happiness. But
+Mr. Roger Ellis adheres with narrow obstinacy to the least article of
+his broad political creed, without a particle of consideration for the
+different one in which Blythe has been nurtured. He flourishes the
+American flag in his conversation in true stump-orator style, kisses
+black babies in the street--when, as Betty Page remarks, no man was ever
+known to kiss a white baby if he could help it--and refuses to eat
+without the company at table of a little black _protege_.
+
+Plot there is none in _Like unto Like_, and of incident very little.
+Light, often sparkling, conversations and charming bits of description
+follow each other in ready succession like beads upon a string. Lack of
+incident is atoned for by charm of writing, and in the vivacity of the
+scenes the reader disregards the slenderness of the connecting thread,
+or perhaps forgets to look for it. The style is easy and pleasant, while
+free from the slips to which "easy writers" are so prone. Of bright,
+witty sayings a number could easily be gathered as samples, but the
+readers would still have to be referred to the book for many more.
+Perhaps the main charm of _Like unto Like_ lies in its description of
+the quaint life in Southern provincial towns, where the people "all talk
+to each other as if they were members of one family," where married
+ladies are still called by their friends "Miss Kate," "Miss Janey," or
+"Miss Ada," and where, "when a youth and maiden promise to marry each
+other, they become possessed immediately with a wild desire to conceal
+their engagement from all the world." There clings to the book a
+suggestion of that Southern accent which in the mouth of a pretty woman
+has such a piquant foreign sound.
+
+
+     His Heart's Desire: A Novel. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
+
+We can complain of no lack of plot or paucity of incidents in _His
+Heart's Desire_. Were the material less ably handled we should suggest
+an unnecessary redundancy, but we hesitate to pronounce superfluous
+anything which is so exactly fitted, so neatly dove-tailed into the main
+structure, as is each incident and character in the present novel. About
+a dozen individual and more or less finished personages contribute their
+life-histories to the book, yet each of these lives has some bearing
+upon that of the heroine, Nora St. John, and notwithstanding these
+intricacies the plot never becomes confused. It has been too firmly
+grasped by the author's mind to be a puzzle to the reader's. Its various
+ramifications are never allowed to get into a "snarl:" the mystery all
+turns upon a single point which we will not spoil the reader's pleasure
+by mentioning, and, arrived at the last pages, the various threads of
+the story unwind themselves easily and naturally like a single coil. The
+same skill is displayed in the management of the characters. Though
+drawn with unequal power, many of them being seized with much vividness,
+whilst others must be accounted failures, they are well grouped.
+Numerous as the figures are, they never crowd or jostle each other, and
+elaborated as they are in many cases, all are subordinate to that of
+Nora, whose character and story stand out in a strong relief not easy to
+obtain upon so varied a background. This character is finely conceived
+and drawn with real power, being impressive by the very truth of the
+rendering, for she is not invested with any strikingly heroic qualities.
+A strong, passionate nature made cold by suffering and the constant
+struggle to keep the secret of her one season of passion from rising
+again to confront her--a woman of forty, who has no longer any illusions
+or pleasure, in whose character intense pride is the only motive-power
+left, and even pride is weary of its loneliness and the assaults made
+upon it--Nora excites interest, and even pity, by her position and by
+the aspect of a strong nature under subdued but real suffering. In the
+later pages of the book, and notably in the scene with Mr. Sistare, in
+which revelations are made by both, the changes gradual or sudden in her
+feelings and thought are portrayed with the delicacy of light and shade,
+the picturesqueness and self-forgetfulness, with which a fine actress
+renders a part. This dramatic quality is perhaps the most striking trait
+in _His Heart's Desire_. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic, full
+of passion, striking in situation, and showing a rather rare
+accomplishment--that of conducting a dialogue which shall be equally
+brilliant on both sides without resembling a monologue.
+
+In praising this novel so highly we do not forget its faults. But,
+though perhaps as numerous as its merits, they are by no means equal to
+them in importance. Something of naturalness and simplicity has been
+sacrificed to the exigences of the plot; and, while the higher truth is
+adhered to in the principal scenes and characters, some of the minor
+ones appear to us rather highly colored. By distributing the fatal gift
+of beauty with a less lavish hand the author might, we think, have
+subdued this color: a few commonplace figures would have added to the
+naturalness of the scene.
+
+Sensational the book may be pronounced from a glance through its chain
+of incidents, yet neither by its tone nor its writing does it belong to
+the class which we call sensational. Its tone is earnest and sincere,
+grave social questions being handled with a purity and feeling which
+makes the book, in spite of its apparent unconsciousness of purpose, a
+distinctly moral one.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+     Books for Bright Eyes, embracing "On the Farm," "More Happy Days,"
+     "Mountain-Tops," "One Day in our Long Vacation." By Mrs. M. E.
+     Miller. New York: American Tract Society.
+
+
+     Cross's Eclectic Short-hand: A New System, adapted both to general
+     use and to verbatim reporting. By J. George Cross, A. M. Chicago:
+     S. C. Griggs & Co.
+
+
+     The Waverley Dictionary: An Alphabetical Arrangement of all the
+     Characters in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. By May Rogers.
+     Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.
+
+
+     The French Revolution. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine. Translated by
+     John Durand. (First Volume.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+
+     Maximum Stresses in Framed Bridges. By Professor William Cain,
+     A. M., C. E. (Van Nostrand's Science Series.) New York: D. Van
+     Nostrand.
+
+
+     The Ethics of Positivism: A Critical Study. By Giacomo Barzellotti,
+     Professor of Philosophy, Florence. New York: Charles P. Somerby.
+
+
+     Grammar-Land; or, Grammar in Fun for the Children of
+     Schoolroom-shire. By M. L. Nesbitt. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+
+     The Family Christian Almanac for 1879. By Professor George W.
+     Coakley. New York: American Tract Society.
+
+
+     American Colleges: Their Students and Work. By Charles F. Thwing.
+     New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     A Story or Two from an Old Dutch Town. By Robert Lowell. Boston:
+     Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+     Life and Adventure in Japan. By E. Warren Clark. New York: American
+     Tract Society.
+
+
+     Cupid and the Sphinx. By Harford Flemming. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     The Old House Altered. By George C. Mason. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus. Boston:
+     Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+     Handsome Harry. By Sarah E. Chester. New York: American Tract
+     Society.
+
+
+     Thanatopsis. By William Cullen Bryant. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     Modern Frenchmen. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts
+     Brothers.
+
+
+     What is the Bible? By J. T. Sunderland. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+     Sons.
+
+
+     Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     Sibyl Spencer. By James Kent. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+
+     Songs of Italy. By Joaquin Miller. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This is the name given from time immemorial to that part of Biscay
+that extends from Bilbao to the eastern boundaries of the province of
+Santander. It contains fifteen thousand inhabitants, and abounds in
+minerals, fruit and grain. The original Basque language, owing to the
+constant intercourse with Castile, has yielded to the Spanish, which,
+however, is mixed with many Basque words and expressions.
+
+[2] That is, a similarity of the final vowel or last two vowels. Thus,
+jardin_e_r_o_s and du_e_n_o_ amist_a_d and sac_a_r are considered to
+rhyme.
+
+[3] The word _ciego_, "blind man," is also used to denote the blind
+ballad-singers with whom the country abounds.
+
+[4] The first four of the above-mentioned volumes, together with the
+_Libro de los Cantares_, have been published by Brockhaus in his
+_Colleccion de Autores Espanoles_, Leipzig, vols. vi., xviii., xix.,
+xxvi., and xxxiii.
+
+[5] Special awards of objects of art to competitors in the trials of
+agricultural implements in the field:
+
+  McCormick (grand prize), binding reaper, United States.
+  Wood, binding reaper, United States.
+  Osborne, binding reaper, United States.
+  Johnston, reaper, United States.
+  Whiteley, mower, United States.
+  Dederick, hay-press, United States.
+  Mabille, Chicago hay-press, France.
+  Meixmoron-Dombasle, gang-plough, France.
+  Deere, gang-plough, United States.
+  Aveling & Porter, steam-plough, England.
+  Albaret, electric light for field-work at night, France.
+
+[6] The cut shows a smaller crane, which has a fixed jib for use on a
+permanent or temporary track.
+
+[7] Why this unfortunate fish should be so distinguished I have never
+been able to learn, but the saying is universal in the French army.
+
+[8] This is a paraphrase rather than a translation, the patois of the
+original being impossible to render exactly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878, by Various
+
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