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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2009 [EBook #29184]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
+
+
+MAY, 1875.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by J. B.
+LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.
+
+
+
+
+UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.
+
+
+TWO PAPERS.--I.
+
+[Illustration: DIAMOND CLIFF: SUNSET.]
+
+The lot of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not
+an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the
+rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the
+American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with
+a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not
+adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which
+penetrates through doors that do not fasten and windows that do not fit
+as snugly as they should. The continual and monotonous drip of the
+rain, which ripples in streams or falls drop by drop on the pavement of
+the yards or of the street, is also highly depressing to the spirits
+when one is held an involuntary prisoner in the ground-floors of the
+houses, and must perforce listen to it for hours.
+
+If, led by inclination or compelled by necessity, you go into the
+street, you find the space between the sidewalks transformed into a
+miniature river. In some of the streets the pavements are more than
+three feet high, and pedestrians walk on them as on the tow-path of a
+canal, passing from one side of the torrent to the other on small wooden
+crossings. The comfort that is derived elsewhere in inclement weather
+from fires may not be hoped for in Buenos Ayres, for the bed-rooms are
+rarely provided with fireplaces, and in cases where they do possess them
+the chimneys are liable to smoke dreadfully when the north-west wind
+sweeps over the city.
+
+The natives, accustomed to these features of the rainy season in La
+Plata, look with indifference on the forlorn condition of the stranger
+within their gates, and the foreigner, thus left to struggle against the
+coalition of the elements with the thoughtless or selfish indifference
+of the native population, must resign himself with patience and
+resignation until the three months of watery affliction shall have
+passed away.
+
+It was at a time when the reign of Pluvius was at its height, and Buenos
+Ayres daily wept blinding tears, as it were, from every roof and gable
+for its sins, that M. X----, the head of a commercial house in the city,
+put a most welcome question to one of the attachés of the establishment,
+M. Forgues, a Frenchman, who just then was suffering from the grievous
+burden of ennui.
+
+"See here," he said: "I want somebody to go up into Paraguay to collect
+an outstanding debt. Are you the man for my purpose?"
+
+M. Forgues readily accepted the commission, for as the head of the house
+spoke a vision passed through his mind of Paraguay with its old Jesuit
+missions, its mysterious and despotic dictators, and its legends of the
+terrible war waged by Lopez against Brazil, the Argentine Confederation
+and the Banda Oriental. And, moreover, the venture promised relief from
+the horrors of the rainy season in Buenos Ayres.
+
+When Francisco Solano Lopez, late president of Paraguay, fell on the
+field on March 1, 1870, at the head of a few hundred followers, the
+survivors of that courageous army of sixty thousand men with which in
+1865 he had begun his five years' struggle, he had left behind him a
+devastated country, a decimated people and an impoverished population.
+It is to this land, almost remote enough from the pathway of our modern
+civilization to partake of the mystery of an unknown interior; where
+Nature has lavished her beauties with open hand; where a brilliant
+vegetation alternates with noble forests, solitudes that have rarely
+echoed the footfall of civilized man, and vast plains dotted with
+palms--a country of mountainous reaches in which the jaguar roams at
+will, of great lagoons, the home of a primitive race dwelling for the
+most part in villages,--to this land it is that we shall follow M.
+Forgues on his journey of more than a thousand miles, and see with his
+eyes its life and scenery.
+
+From Buenos Ayres the traveler, issuing from the Rio de la Plata,
+ascends the Parana by steamer to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay; and
+on the morning after the conversation with his principal M. Forgues
+embarked on the Republica, a low-pressure steamboat furnished with a
+walking-beam, and similar in its architecture and equipments to the
+passenger steamers in use on the waters of the Northern and Middle
+States of the Union.
+
+After steaming two hours the Republica reaches the vast delta of the
+Parana, skirting the Tigre Islands, a lovely group formed by the
+numerous winding mouths of the river. The month is August, and a
+charming effect is produced by the forests of palms, orange trees and
+wild peach trees, the latter rosy with blossoms, which cover the
+islands. The wild peach of the clingstone variety is almost the only
+fruit of the province of Buenos Ayres, and when the season for gathering
+it comes, a multitude of boats from the city may be seen moored in the
+high grasses along the shores of the Tigre Islands, while the
+_barqueros_ collect the peaches, which are free to whoever will pluck
+them, fill their boats and return to the capital to sell them.
+
+[Illustration: DELTA OF THE PARANA.]
+
+[Illustration: TIGER ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE PARANA.]
+
+The Republica ascends the river through the branch called the Parana de
+las Palmas, up which Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1525, when in a schooner
+of a hundred tons burden he penetrated to the heart of South America. It
+passes, to the left, a hamlet, Campana, the prominent feature of which
+is a handsome white building resembling a _palazzo_ of Italy, and which,
+built on an elevation, dominates the other houses; Zarate, where are
+situated a number of _saladeros_, or salting-places for the salting of
+the hides of the province; and finally the mouth of the Baradero River,
+a small stream which leads to a village of the same name, the home of a
+prosperous colony of Swiss settlers.
+
+Higher up, on the right shore, lies the drowsy old town of San Pedro,
+founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, and which is chiefly
+noticeable as having been at a standstill since that period, although
+within the past three or four years it has begun to show signs of
+development, one of which is a project to cut a ship-canal across a
+narrow reach of sand which separates the lagoon on which the town is
+built from the river, so as to give passage to Transatlantic vessels.
+
+At San Pedro the steamer emerges from the Parana de las Palmas and
+enters the main channel of the river. A notable locality a few leagues
+above San Pedro is the Obligado, where the Parana becomes so narrow that
+the channel lies within pistol-shot of the right bank. The Obligado is
+interesting in an historical point of view as having been the scene in
+1845 of a fierce engagement wherein the English and French fleets ran
+the gauntlet of the Argentine batteries there, which attempted to
+prevent their passage. One of the English vessels, under a withering
+fire, cut a chain that barred the channel. A humorous sequel to this
+brilliant feat of arms is this, that since that occurrence every French
+sailor, and especially every deserter from the French merchant marine
+who goes to La Plata, boasts that he "assisted" at the affair. He will
+narrate all the details in the most bombastic manner to any pecuniarily
+prosperous fellow-countryman who will listen to him, and will then close
+with a proposition that he and his compatriot shall "take something."
+The payment for the score naturally falls to the lot of the listener or
+victim, and hence has arisen a saying among Frenchmen in La Plata:
+"Distrust the gentleman who was at the combat of the Obligado."
+
+Twenty-four hours after leaving Buenos Ayres the steamer stops at
+Rosario, having previously passed the town of San Nicolas de los
+Arragos, with its ten thousand inhabitants, its picturesque cathedral
+flanked with a white tower on either side, its progressive tramways or
+horse-cars, and its reputation for furnishing an excellent article of
+hides, the province being celebrated for the quality of its cattle.
+
+Rosario is the second port of the confederation. It stands a short
+distance away from the river on a barranca or cliff. Passengers on
+landing are conveyed in horse-cars to the town, which is laid out in
+handsome streets and built up with charming and comfortable houses. The
+barn-like church, of the "horrible Jesuit style," as M. Forgues calls it
+(the heavy style of architecture common to nearly all the church
+edifices of South America), is very ugly, and as to the "faithful
+_élégantes_" who worshiped in it, our traveler did not deem them as
+handsome as their sisters of Buenos Ayres. Much of Rosario's increasing
+prosperity is owing to the railroad which connects it with the interior
+town of Cordova to the west. This road also extends down the Parana to a
+point about half-way to Buenos Ayres. When completed to the latter city
+and to its western terminus, which will be at no distant day, Buenos
+Ayres, on the Atlantic, will be connected with Valparaiso, in Chili, on
+the Pacific. There is also a line of English steamers which ply directly
+between Rosario and the English ports.
+
+At Rosario the Republica takes on passengers, coal and freight, and
+resumes her voyage. Above the city, the cliffs, increasing in height,
+attain an altitude of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. They are
+composed entirely of a hard brown earth having the appearance of
+pulverized chocolate; and the river, rushing between them, assumes a
+dirty, brownish hue for many miles. In their shadow, as the steamer
+passes, lie a Brazilian gunboat and two monitors of the same
+nationality: one of the latter is deeply dented in places where she was
+struck by Paraguayan cannon-balls.
+
+[Illustration: PUBLIC SQUARE IN PARANA.]
+
+About twelve hours' distance from Rosario the Diamante, or Diamond
+Cliff, is reached. Here the cliffs that line the left bank culminate.
+They are especially interesting to the geologist because of their
+extraordinary richness in fossils of various kinds. Fragments of the
+megatherium and of the glyptodon have been found there, but the most
+important discovery of all was a very complete skeleton of the former
+animal--the most complete in existence, in fact--which now adorns the
+museum at Buenos Ayres. The village of Diamante, with a population of
+five or six hundred souls, is situated near by. Twenty hours later the
+Republica arrives at Parana, a handsome city, formerly the capital of
+the confederation. The removal of the seat of government to Buenos Ayres
+was a great blow to the prosperity of the old capital. Once the
+diplomatic corps had their residences there. The climate of the place is
+delicious, and under its balmy influence the orange tree flourishes in
+the open air and bears fruit of exquisite flavor. The country around
+Parana is very picturesque, and the town itself, though since it has
+ceased to be the Argentine capital it presents an appearance of
+emptiness, is very gay. Among its attractions are a theatre and a fine
+public square adorned with shade trees. The community has musical
+tastes, and nearly every second house contains a piano--a fact of which
+the stranger strolling through the place is kept constantly aware. Many
+of the streets are paved and macadamized.
+
+[Illustration: A BLANCO INSURGENT.]
+
+Parana is the chief city of the province of Entre Rios, the people of
+which are possessed of a fierce spirit of independence, and, like the
+Basques of Spain, claiming the right to administer their domestic
+affairs in their own way, they are often in insurrection against the
+central government at Buenos Ayres, which resorts to force to check
+their "separatist" tendencies. Within four years two or three efforts at
+revolution have been made on the part of the people of Entre Rios under
+Lopez Jordan, their principal leader, General Mitre, and others. One
+year previous to the journey we are now describing our traveler had gone
+from Buenos Ayres to Parana on business. In consequence of a municipal
+election having gone in favor of the government candidates by a majority
+of thirty votes, a fresh insurrection had just broken out in the city,
+and when M. Forgues reached his destination he found the national troops
+in possession of Parana, which was closely besieged by the Blancos or
+"Whites," as the insurgents were called from their trappings, to
+distinguish them from the Colorados or "Reds," which was the name given
+to the Buenos Ayres party. On the occasion of this visit he had need to
+seek the insurgent camp in furtherance of his mission, which was to
+obtain possession of eight thousand hides that were within the
+insurgents' lines. He returned to Parana, after successfully conducting
+the negotiations, with a sketch of one of the mounted Blancos, a
+picturesque, stately fellow, with the proud bearing of a brigand, having
+enormous spurs on his heels, a white band around his hat, and armed with
+a lance and a long cavalry sword.
+
+[Illustration: A SALADERO ON THE PARANA.]
+
+Immediately opposite Parana, on the other side of the river, which in
+this part is very wide, is the city of Santa Fé, the point of export for
+all the region occupied by the foreign agricultural colonies of the
+confederation--to wit, the Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans and Belgians. The
+chief industry in which these colonists are engaged is the cultivation
+of wheat, of which enormous quantities are raised and converted into
+flour on the spot, as there are several steam flour-mills in the
+district. The flour is shipped from Santa Fé and sold in Rosario or
+Buenos Ayres. These colonists number about thirteen thousand. Santa Fé
+is a remarkably indolent town--the most indolent in the world, says M.
+Forgues. Its chief features are its great plaza, its church and the
+palace of the governor of Gran Chaco. Back of the country occupied by
+the colonists begins the land of the Chaco Indians. They enjoy the
+reputation of being savages, but as an example of the delicate line of
+demarkation in La Plata between the extreme of civilization and the
+extreme of savage life our traveler relates that riding thirty leagues
+to visit a tribe of wild Indians, he found the chief with a _poncho_ of
+Manchester manufacture on his shoulders, a pair of gaiters from Latour,
+Rue Montorgueil, Paris, on his feet, and a hospitable glass of Hamburg
+gin in his hand.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF PARANA FROM THE RIVER.]
+
+Leaving Parana, the steamer passes, at a short distance above the city,
+the _saladero_ of Messrs. Carbo y Carril, a picturesque spot situated on
+a cliff. From this point a fine view is obtained of Parana in the
+distance, stretching along its high barranca, with its white houses and
+belfries in bold relief against the blue sky, and borrowing from the
+elevation on which it stands a delusively majestic aspect.
+
+As the Republica ascends the river the cliffs continue to be the
+prevailing feature of the shore-scenery. A Brazilian passenger steamer,
+one of a line of steamers which ply between Cuyaba in the Brazilian
+province of Matto Grosso and Montevideo, is met descending the stream.
+This line, established by the government of Brazil to maintain
+communication between its central South American possessions and the
+large cities of the coast, receives an imperial subsidy of nine thousand
+francs a month. A _saladero_ is passed, and then a village. The river is
+thick with trees with twisted roots and short branches, floating
+downward to the ocean. Then the appearance of the banks changes: the
+cliffs gradually slope to a level with the river, and vegetation begins
+to line the shore, first in the shape of bushes, next of undergrowth,
+and finally of lofty forest trees, some of them dead, and with a wall
+of tangled foliage overhead.
+
+Passing Esquina, a hamlet at the mouth of the Rio Corrientes, vast
+volumes of smoke rising behind the trees on the right bank proclaim that
+the Indians of Gran Chaco are "burning a forest in order to roast a
+quarter of venison." Here the steamer's course lies among islands
+covered partly with undergrowth and partly with forests. In the shadow
+of the tall trees on one of the most lovely of these islands is seen
+from the deck a quaint, barefooted company consisting of two men, a
+woman and three small children, who have just stepped ashore from two
+boats made from the hollowed-out trunks of trees. Two dogs accompany
+them. The adults of the party are clothed in rags. These people are
+_monteros_, and are members of a tribe of gypsies who haunt the islands
+of the Parana. They live a life of lordly independence, subsisting as
+best they can, sleeping when fatigued wherever they may be when
+drowsiness overtakes them, eating whatever comes to hand, drinking the
+water of the river in the absence of anything stronger, and keeping
+themselves warm by firing a forest from time to time. At the moment the
+Republica hurries past they are preparing their evening meal, the
+material for which, a _carpincho_, a sort of aquatic hog, lies at their
+feet. The chief of the gypsy party stares at the steamer with bewildered
+eyes, and at the noise made by the paddles a great terror seizes on a
+colony of monkeys in the branches of the trees.
+
+The town of La Goya, with a population of five thousand, is the next
+place of importance reached. A few miles above this point is a famous
+_saladero_, that of El Rincon de los Sotos (the "Fool's Corner"), which
+belongs to a fellow-countryman of M. Forgues, and which, after the
+_saladero_ of Baron Liebig in Uruguay, is the most extensive in the
+valley of the Rio de la Plata. Here are slaughtered as many as fifteen
+hundred head of cattle a day. Nor far distant from it is the
+landing-place for the animals, a pretty spot which M. Forgues sketched
+_en passant_.
+
+The Republica is approaching Corrientes, the last of the Argentine towns
+on the left bank of the Parana, and situated eighteen miles below the
+point at which the Paraguay unites with that stream. Now alligators
+appear, stretched lazily on the sand and basking in the sun, with their
+ugly black bodies resembling logs partly submerged. The river assumes a
+new aspect, widening into great sheets of water dotted with flat islands
+lying far apart, and in its lake-like proportions justifying the
+Guaranian meaning of its name--"like the sea." So far-reaching indeed
+are these expanses of water that when a brisk south-east wind rises
+large vessels in them roll and pitch as in the open bay. The belfries of
+Corrientes will loom before the eyes of the company on the Republica at
+ten o'clock the next morning, and in the mean time, and until the sun
+shall rise, the steamer is moored before a small island. In that balmy
+and odorous night myriads of insects cloistered in the leafy shades fill
+the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm
+of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river
+the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise
+of a great city far away, with its gaslights twinkling merrily.
+
+At Corrientes the Parana abruptly diverges to the east, marking the
+northern boundary of Argentine territory, and separating the latter from
+Paraguay. From the river the port presents a spectacle of groups of
+rocks of some beauty, and of palms and orange-trees growing close to the
+water's edge. Beyond the foliage are seen the belfries of several
+churches built after the prevailing fashion. Among them is visible also
+a handsome turret of Moorish architecture, which rears itself aloft with
+a charming effect. This building is the cabildo, or court-house, and
+dates from 1812. Near by is seen a white memorial pillar, built on the
+site of the cross that the first Spanish settlers planted in 1588. The
+population of Corrientes is about twenty thousand. From the country
+around are procured the best oranges grown in the confederation, and the
+city is the mart for the woods from the Paraguayan, Chaco and Corrientes
+forests which are exported for manufacturing purposes.
+
+[Illustration: GYPSIES OF THE ISLANDS IN THE PARANA.]
+
+The elbow formed by the junction of the Parana and the Paraguay is
+called by the natives _Las Tres Bocas_, or "The Three Mouths." From 1812
+to 1865, under the rule of the dictators, this avenue of approach to
+Paraguay remained closed. But the fortunes of the last war opened it
+permanently, and the Republica quietly steams into the great
+water-highway that leads to Asuncion through the passes of the Cerrito.
+At the mouth of the river is the island of Cerrito, formerly the
+Paraguayan Gibraltar, and now the Gibraltar of the Brazilians, who
+maintain there a garrison and an arsenal for the equipment of their
+navy.
+
+After passing the Cerrito the Paraguay winds in its course and becomes
+narrow--the width not exceeding twelve hundred feet--and of greater
+depth than the Parana. Hereabout and above are spots made memorable by
+the obstinate defence of the late President Lopez and the brave
+endurance of his people. On the right are the famous batteries of
+Curupaiti, where Lopez with thirty thousand Paraguayans and one hundred
+and fifty cannon resisted for eight months the attempts of the united
+Brazilian and Argentine forces to turn him out. But at last the
+condition of affairs became critical, and on a dark night he silently
+abandoned Curupaiti with his army, leaving his fires burning, wooden
+images of men on the ramparts, logs in the embrasures in lieu of cannon,
+and decamped to occupy a similar intrenched position at Humaita, six
+leagues above, where for five months longer he checked the advance of
+the allies. So adroitly was this change of position effected that the
+Brazilian commander was unaware of the abandonment of the place until
+four days after its desertion. To-day at Humaita a ruined belfry casts
+its melancholy shadow on the long-contested field of battle.
+
+Leaving Humaita behind, the mouth of the Vermejo, a stream which tinges
+the Paraguay with the hue of its clay-colored waters, is reached and
+passed: then Villa del Pilar, a forlorn hamlet, where a few dejected
+inhabitants crouch in the shade of shattered houses. Next a magnificent
+forest of palms appears. In front the yellow sand of the shore is
+covered with alligators, which lie about in groups. From the boat M.
+Forgues fires at these, and a little later he tries his skill on a
+jaguar, which, however, with a fierce growl, scampers off, and is lost
+to sight in the mazes of the high grass beyond. These localities and
+Villa Oliva, which is next passed, are all on the left bank, the
+opposite side of the river being peopled only by the wandering Indians
+of Gran Chaco. A short distance above is the small and once prosperous
+town of Villeta, whence are shipped in season boatloads of oranges, but
+which at present is a mass of ruins that bear ample testimony to the
+excellent aim of the Brazilian gunners.
+
+Just before a turn in the river reveals the presence of Asuncion the
+Republica steams by the Cerro de Lambare, a cone-shaped hill about three
+hundred and twenty feet high, covered with so dense a growth of bushes
+that no one has ever succeeded in climbing to its summit. The
+river-channel in its length between this elevation and Asuncion still
+contains remains of the obstructions which Lopez placed there to check
+the progress of the Brazilian fleet and protect the city. As the steamer
+rounds the bend the Paraguayan capital comes in sight. A prominent and
+historical object in the medley of houses is the high tower of Lopez's
+château, dominating the rest of the city, and now gilded with the rays
+of the setting sun. A portion of its top is missing, a shell having
+carried it away during the war. Two discharges of cannon from the deck
+of the Republica announce the arrival, and in due time the steamer,
+which draws too much water to approach the quay, is anchored two hundred
+yards from the shore, having happily concluded her voyage of a thousand
+miles, which has consumed nearly seven days.
+
+The view from deck is a most picturesque one. In a little while a
+flotilla of small boats, headed by the armed tender of the port-captain,
+puts out from the quay and swarms around the steamer. Some of the boats
+contain citizens who are expecting the arrival of friends, and in others
+are hucksters, who jabber and gesticulate in frantic recommendation of
+their fruits and small wares. Immediately in front is the custom-house
+with its colonnade of white pillars, resembling a cloister. To the left
+Lopez's palace rears its shattered tower, and on the right hand is the
+arsenal, which serves as the barracks for the three or four thousand
+troops composing the Brazilian army of occupation. Near it is the
+horse-car station, connected by the street-cars with the station of the
+Asuncion and Paraguari railroad, a line about twenty-five leagues in
+length. Carts drawn by horses move slowly to and fro on the quay. Here
+and there along the shore, with the look of skeletons about them, are
+frames of unfinished ships: one of them is an iron vessel which was in
+process of construction, under the orders of Lopez, at the breaking out
+of the war in 1865. The Brazilian conquerors have left these vessels in
+the condition in which they found them.
+
+[Illustration: LANDING PLACE FOR CATTLE, PARANA RIVER.]
+
+When the war supervened, Asuncion and all Paraguay, under the despotic
+but intelligent sway of Lopez, were moving rapidly in the path of
+progress. In fact, twelve years ago no country in La Plata was blessed
+with so flourishing and perfected a system of industry as Paraguay. But
+the war came, waged by the allies expressly to destroy for ever the
+dictatorial authority wielded by Lopez; Paraguay was invaded and
+overrun; and the fierce and destructive character of the contest has
+left shattered walls in the capital, and in the interior the blackened
+ruins of ranchos. These traces of the terrible conflict give a
+melancholy aspect to the city, and its future is further shadowed by the
+hopelessness of the people, who seem to have no heart to repair the
+damage done to the houses.
+
+[Illustration: THE HILL OF LAMBARE.]
+
+In coming to Asuncion, M. Forgues had taken on himself a commission far
+more troublesome than that of collecting the money due to the commercial
+house with which he was connected; and this was to deliver into the
+hands of the French _chargé d'affaires_ at Buenos Ayres, the comte A. de
+C----, who happened to be at the time in Asuncion, the despatch-bag of
+the legation, which had been consigned to his care by the French consul
+in the former city. Behold, then, our traveler, as, accompanied by the
+captain of the Republica, he sets foot on the quay, intent on relieving
+himself of his precious valise, the possession of which is doubly
+embarrassing because of its very preciousness. He has a hope that he may
+meet the _chargé_ at the Progreso Club, whither he is going, but whether
+he is to be met or not, he does not dare to leave behind him the valise,
+which to him is a veritable Old Man of the Sea. Night has fallen when
+they leave the steamer. The dark, sandy streets are badly graded, and he
+stumbles repeatedly on the uneven brick pavements which line them, at
+every step anathematizing the valise, which is far from being a light
+burden. The club-house was the residence of Lopez before the allied
+armies occupied the city. From its seclusion he went forth to meet his
+death at Cerro Cora. In the parlor is a large mirror with gilded
+mouldings, and the dining-room walls are hung with painted paper
+representing in vivid colors, and with much gilding and silvering,
+scenes from French history, in which musqueteers, courtiers and the
+cardinal de Richelieu figure. A large and notable company is present,
+among them many high civil functionaries, but the _chargé d'affaires_ is
+not there. In the billiard-room the honorable minister of finance plays
+a game with the honorable minister of the interior. They are both of
+unpretending manners, polite and affable, and during the pauses of the
+game they call for and drink their beer in true democratic fashion. M.
+Forgues learns that his _chargé_ lives two leagues out of town, and,
+hugging his exasperating valise--which, we may here remark, was
+delivered safely to the _chargé_ next day--he returns in company with
+the captain to the steamer, where, seated on the deck, he listens with
+horror to the stories told by a citizen of divers murders committed in
+the town and vicinity, one of the victims, a French pioneer, having been
+slain lately at his _quinta_, or small farm, just on the other side of
+the river, by the fierce Indians of Gran Chaco, whose camp-fires, about
+six miles distant, even while they are conversing, light up one-fourth
+of the horizon in that direction.
+
+M. Forgues, introduced to General Vedia, who commands the Argentine
+forces in Paraguay, is invited by that officer to go with him to Villa
+Occidental, a town situated a few miles above Asuncion on the river, and
+capital of the new province of Gran Chaco, claimed by the Argentine
+Confederation. He accepts. The voyage is made in a small Argentine
+gunboat, with its guard of thirty Argentine soldiers dressed in gray
+linen, with green facings to their coats, and armed with Minié rifles.
+This detachment is on its way to Villa Occidental to relieve the guard
+at that place, which has been on duty for eight days protecting the
+infant capital of Gran Chaco against the incursions of the Indians of
+the province. Around them are grouped a number of Paraguayan women,
+clad in the costume of the country--a chemise and a white rebozo--which
+gives them a certain statuesque appearance. The general and M. Forgues
+are received with military honors at Villa Occidental by the commandant
+of the place and his garrison of three soldiers. A walk of ten minutes
+brings them to the spot, a short distance out of the village, where
+twenty years ago was established a colony of Frenchmen who had been sent
+out from France by the late President Lopez at the time of the
+dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, his father. The elder Lopez, it
+appears, desired agriculturists from France, and the younger Lopez, who
+was then in that country, despatched to him two or three hundred
+bootblacks, organ-grinders, street vagabonds, etc. whom he had collected
+on the quays of Bordeaux and in the suburbs of Paris. Carlos Antonio was
+at first grieved to see the class of immigrants that had been forwarded
+as tillers of the soil, but he became furious when he discovered that
+his unwelcome colonists had brought with them certain dangerous ideas of
+liberty which threatened to excite a mutinous spirit among his docile
+Paraguayans. He therefore assembled them at a spot near Villa
+Occidental, and placed them under the control of the governor of the
+province of Gran Chaco, in spite of the protests of the French consul.
+Here they were treated with the utmost cruelty. They were bastinadoed
+and otherwise punished for the most trivial offences. Many died under
+these inflictions. Of the few survivors some endeavored to escape
+through the forests of Gran Chaco to Bolivia and Peru. Three were
+caught, brought back and tortured, while the others, of whom no tidings
+were ever received afterward, probably perished of hunger or were killed
+by the Indians or jaguars. All that now remains of this ill-starred
+enterprise is a few half-decayed palm-tree posts symmetrically planted
+in the ground on the site of the unfortunate colony of New Bordeaux.
+
+Villa Occidental is at present merely a village of eight hundred or one
+thousand inhabitants. Its greatness, if it is ever to be great, lies in
+the future. General Vedia, having ample room at his command for a
+metropolitan experiment, has laid it out in long avenues seventy-five
+feet wide, with a view to its future magnificence when it shall have
+become the outlet of the northern regions of the Argentine Confederation
+and the emporium of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN ASCUNCION.]
+
+At Villa Occidental, M. Forgues meets a fellow-countryman, who belongs
+to the class of adventurers who flourish in the wake of great wars. His
+name is Auriguau, and he was once a soldier in the Franco-Spanish free
+corps which fought against Lopez in the campaign of 1870. His head is
+filled with sublime ideas, and his pocket is empty. He has come to
+Villa Occidental to propose to General Vedia the formation of a
+military corps, of which he shall be chief, composed of his old
+companions-in-arms, to serve against the Indians of Gran Chaco. He
+explains his plan with much enthusiasm, and then begs our traveler to
+present him with his gun, his revolver, his money, his hat, and even his
+boots.
+
+M. Forgues is of course General Vedia's guest for the night. As he is
+about to dismiss the soldier who has conducted him to his chamber, which
+is on the ground-floor of the house, an unexpected visitor glides into
+the room through the open door. This visitor is a snake three feet long.
+The soldier kills him, turns him on his back, and calmly remarks that he
+is one of the most dangerous specimens of his kind in the neighborhood.
+M. Forgues's curiosity is aroused. "Are there many like this in the
+houses here?" he asks. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no," replies the
+soldier philosophically, retiring from the presence. M. Forgues goes to
+sleep to dream of a snake for a bedfellow, and to be bitten by
+mosquitoes of a peculiarly virulent kind through the cords of his
+hammock.
+
+[Illustration: AN EARLY LESSON IN SMOKING.]
+
+At early dawn our traveler is up and his toilet is made. Before the door
+silently file the women of the colony on their way to the bank of the
+river. Each bears on her head a large jug of red clay ornamented with
+fanciful designs, the clay resembling that of which the bowl of an
+Arab's pipe is made. When these jugs are empty the women carry them in a
+pretty way inclining to one side, as the French soldier wears his
+_képi_. This gives to their walk an air of ease and nonchalance that is
+extremely graceful. They are draped after a charming fashion in a piece
+of white cotton called the rebozo, which is scrupulously clean, and they
+walk one behind the other in bare feet and with elastic step. Their
+garment consists of a white cotton chemise embroidered around the neck
+and at the top of the sleeves with black worsted. It is cut very low in
+the neck, leaving a part of the breast bare, and descends to a point
+below the knee. A cotton cord tied around the waist keeps the chemise to
+the figure, and serves as girdle and corset at the same time. The space
+between the top of the chemise and the belt is used as a receptacle for
+cigars, money, and generally for all the small objects that elsewhere
+people carry in their pockets. The rebozo is worn over the head and
+shoulders, with the ends thrown back over the left shoulder. As they
+thus pass in single file, the customary mode of walking with the
+Guaranian women, nothing can be more coquettish than the pose of the
+jugs on their heads. They resemble an ancient bas-relief. Some of them
+have admirable figures, and nearly all have fine teeth. Though the type
+of the race is not a handsome one, owing to the high cheek-bones and
+square chin, many individuals are pretty. Their large dark eyes are
+shaded with heavy eyebrows, and their hair is as black as the crow's
+wing, but very coarse, notwithstanding the constant attention which its
+owners devote to it. Add to this, and spoiling all, an immense cigar in
+each mouth, for the Paraguayan women all smoke incessantly. Even
+children of tender years smoke, and the only ones exempt from the habit
+are babes at the breast. Indeed, M. Forgues remembers to have seen a
+Guaranian mother, with her little one straddling her hip, endeavoring to
+quiet the child's cries by placing between its lips the half-chewed end
+of her cigar. Among the women of this class marriages are rare. Their
+principal characteristics are attachment to the companions whom they
+have chosen, a scrupulous cleanliness, great reserve in speaking,
+superstition, industry and intelligence.
+
+The general awakes. Horses are brought bridled and saddled for a ride,
+and the two set out in the direction of the mouth of the Rio Confuso,
+about five miles distant from the village. The road crosses a vast
+plain shaded here and there with a few palms of small growth. After half
+an hour's ride they reach a saw-mill, the property of an eccentric
+Italian named Perucchino, who had served in his time as an officer of
+the Italian volunteers of Montevideo under Garibaldi, at the period of
+the latter's residence in South America. Perucchino receives them with
+_evvivas_, gestures, and with even more than the usual demonstrations of
+the Italian character, and invites them into his house, before which are
+planted three cannon mounted on a large piece of timber. His bed-room is
+an arsenal, supplied with enough old muskets, veterans of the war of
+independence, rusty swords and pikes, to arm fifteen men. He loves
+noise, and in proof thereof, after killing two chickens for breakfast
+with two separate discharges of a dangerous-looking double-barreled
+rifle--dangerous to him who fires it--he announces that the meal is
+ready with a discharge of one of the cannon at the door--a noisy
+proclamation which causes M. Forgues to jump in his seat. The breakfast,
+consisting of chicken and corn and rice omelettes, washed down with
+heavy Spanish wine, disappears as if by magic under the eager appetites
+of the guests. Perucchino has been dwelling in this solitude of Gran
+Chaco for three years with his wife, a Spanish woman. With two
+fellow-countrymen to assist him, he has worked indefatigably, and at the
+time of this visit his considerable property has greatly improved. In
+two years more, when his fields of corn, tobacco and sugar-cane shall
+begin to yield a return, the ex-beggar of Montevideo will be in the
+enjoyment of a yearly income of fifteen thousand francs.
+
+At noon M. Forgues and the general return to Villa Occidental under a
+burning sun, and in the evening they embark for Asuncion on the gunboat,
+accompanied by the relieved garrison of thirty men. M. Forgues
+regretfully leaves this little colony, so peaceful and verdurous. As he
+is about to embark some one runs after him and overtakes him. It is
+Auriguau, who asks him for his traveling-bag and his pipe, and takes
+possession, without asking, of his tobacco, promising him in return a
+present of an entire museum of curiosities, among which are enumerated
+tiger robes, dried butterflies and some enormous snakes, and in addition
+a complete collection of all the woods of Gran Chaco, the total
+approximate value of which is about forty thousand francs.
+
+[Illustration: ROAD TO TRINIDAD.]
+
+The return journey is along the Chaco side of the Paraguay. Here and
+there on the sandbanks amid which the boat threads its way are sunk two
+or three hulls of vessels covered with a rich growth of vegetation. They
+represent so many incipient islands. It is amusing to observe the
+soldiers and their wives busily employed in extinguishing the burning
+cinders and sparks--small beginnings of conflagrations--which have been
+deposited in their hair and on their clothing and bundles from the
+wood-fed furnaces of the gunboat.
+
+The scenery in the vicinity of Asuncion is very fine, and possesses a
+special feature of its own with the dark shadows of the trees falling on
+a reddish-yellow sand. Immense avenues lead out in a straight line from
+the city. They are from seventy to eighty feet wide, but the sand is so
+deep in them and in the streets that men and horses sink in it above the
+ankle. Since the war the people have had very few horses, and have been
+compelled to import them; and it very often happens that newly-arrived
+saddle and draught horses die from exhaustion consequent on their
+efforts to gallop in the streets and country roads. One of the most
+charming of these avenues leads to the church of the Trinidad in the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+Sugar-cane grows to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the
+methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary
+kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane
+contains, and as the sugar is made chiefly by private individuals for
+their own use, and rarely reaches the market, this industry, which
+should be a great source of revenue to the country, languishes. The
+sugar used in Asuncion comes from Europe and Brazil. The cost of
+machinery probably has been the obstacle to the establishment of a
+sugar-house of sufficient importance to supply the people with all the
+sugar of home manufacture they may require. The cane when cut is ground
+between three large cylinders made of a hard wood--a process which,
+instead of extracting the juice from the cane, leaves two-thirds of it
+in the half-crushed stalk. The portion thus expressed flows through a
+sort of wooden trench into pails, which are emptied as fast as they
+become full into a large vat, under which a fire is constantly kept
+burning. In this receptacle it is boiled for a considerable time, but
+owing to the carelessness of those in charge of the vat about a third of
+it is spilled on the ground. What is left is reduced to a kind of sugary
+molasses, to which is given the name of "honey." Some of the
+cane-growers distill with rude alembics a sort of sweet liquor from the
+cane-juice, which is called _caña_. Another distillation is from the
+juice of oranges, and is called _caña de naranja_. In the manufacture of
+the latter birds of various kinds--ducks, paroquets, young chickens,
+etc.--are sometimes placed in the liquor to be distilled, and the
+curious mixture that results is known as _caña de substancia_, and is
+much affected by gourmets.
+
+Life in Asuncion is remarkably monotonous. It is a long course of
+_maté_-drinking varied with meals, the inevitable siesta and cigars. The
+_maté_ is the popular beverage of the country, as it is of nearly the
+whole of South America. It is a tea of less fragrance but more strength
+than the Chinese product, and is made of the _yerba_, the leaf of the
+Paraguayan holly, which grows in immense profusion in the Cordillera of
+Caaguazu in the interior. The Paraguayan women are active and
+industrious, but the men elevate the _far niente_ into an institution.
+The people rise early to enjoy the freshness of the morning, but at noon
+they make up for their loss of sleep by indulging in a three hours'
+siesta in the heat of the day. A singular fact, however, regarding the
+climate is, that at Buenos Ayres, where the temperature is a third less
+heated than in Asuncion, the heat is more overpowering than in the
+latter city, and that one perspires far less in Asuncion than in the
+Argentine capital.
+
+While in Asuncion, M. Forgues attended a Te Deum which was sung at the
+cathedral to celebrate the anniversary of the proclamation of Brazilian
+independence, and a ball given by the Brazilian general in the house
+that was formerly the residence of the somewhat famous Madame Lynch, a
+star of the Parisian demi-monde whom the late President Lopez had
+brought with him from Paris and installed in Asuncion as his favorite.
+Each of these events was interesting in its way--the former as showing
+how completely Brazilian supremacy shadows Paraguayan authority even in
+the very capital of Paraguay, and the latter as offering our traveler a
+glimpse of Paraguayan "high life" under its most favorable auspices.
+
+[Illustration: A SUGAR-HOUSE.]
+
+The cathedral is one of the masterpieces of M. Forgues's _bête noire_,
+the Jesuit style of architecture. On the occasion of the Te Deum the
+altar is brilliant with light. Silver plates cover it, as they do all
+its accessories. Behind it is a carved wainscoting painted red and green
+and gilded profusely, while in a niche is a small effigy of the Blessed
+Virgin. At the beginning of the service a curtain rises to the sound of
+music and exposes this niche to view. The Brazilian minister, M.
+d'Azambuja, is the "marquis of Carabas" of Asuncion, and hence, as the
+representative of the nation that conquered Paraguay, he enjoys his
+privileges, one of which, apparently, is to keep the ceremony waiting
+for half an hour, while the president of the republic, his cabinet
+ministers, the foreign representatives and the officers of the army of
+occupation who are present twiddle their thumbs, the Paraguayan
+officials showing in their faces their sense of the Brazilian's want of
+respect. Finally the minister arrives in a coach-and-four. The vehicle
+is of the hackney-coach variety. The horses stop in the thick sand in
+the middle of the street, unable or unwilling to go farther, and the
+coachman in gold-lace livery jumps from his seat and opens the door of
+the coach, exhibiting as he does so, in consequence of the inopportune
+displacement of his coat-tails, a very undiplomatic spectacle in the way
+of soiled stockings. The minister, however, makes amends for the
+lackey's shortcomings, for he is brilliantly attired in white cassimere
+breeches and a marquis's coat with embroidery, while a three-cornered
+chapeau with white plumes adorns his head. As he descends from his
+carriage the guard presents arms, and a horrible noise ensues of two
+brass bands--one military and one marine--playing different tunes on
+every separate instrument in the hands of the performers, while the
+discharge of petards mingles with military commands. Amid all this
+tumult and under a broiling sun the Brazilian minister makes a majestic
+entrance into the cathedral, passing solemnly through the line of
+authorities to the place of honor.
+
+The celebration of Brazil's independence opens with a salvo of petards
+at the door, after which follows a medley of trombones, flutes,
+triangles and big drums, the whole dominated by an exasperating tenor
+voice. With the exception of the president of the republic, his cabinet,
+who wear scarfs of the Paraguayan colors--blue, white and red--and the
+officiating priests, there is not a Paraguayan in the church. Lovers of
+noise and of the excitement of festivals though they be, the people thus
+protest mutely against a ceremony that exalts their conquerors and
+recalls their own powerless condition.
+
+The ball given by the Brazilian general was, as before stated, at the
+house once occupied by Madame Lynch--Madame Elisa, as they call her in
+Paraguay--where that functionary resided. The best society of the
+capital, composed exclusively of the families of the higher officials,
+attended, and what was curious was that most of the women present in
+their ball-room attire, three years before, owing to the exigencies of
+war, had little more than a brief garment wherewith to protect
+themselves from the inclemencies of the weather. The dancing goes on in
+the parlor of the establishment and under the verandah which surrounds
+the courtyard. At the first glance, the parlor in its adornments
+presents the appearance of a _salon_ of the Faubourg St. Germain, with
+silken hangings vivid in color on the walls, gilded stucco-work on the
+ceiling, and a brilliant carpet under foot. But on closer inspection all
+these splendors are seen to be merely a stage-decoration, for the
+effects--with the exception of the carpet--have been produced by some
+skillful wandering artist with his paintbrush and an adequate supply of
+gold-leaf. The illusion, however, is complete for a few minutes. The
+women--among whom are some handsome representatives of Paraguayan
+beauty--have wonderfully graceful manners. Their complexions are dark,
+their eyes large and black, and their hair of the color of ebony. The
+_décolleté_ style prevails in the cut of the dresses, which are made
+simply, and generally present the combination of white and black. The
+dances are those of Europe, and as the women dance a smile parts their
+lips.
+
+This is the bright side of the picture of the feminine element at the
+ball. The reverse of the medal is not so satisfactory, for at the door
+of entrance, seated on chairs or standing along the wall, are collected
+groups of old women with wrinkled faces and coarse gray hair negligently
+tucked on the tops of their heads with combs. These elders, rolled up,
+rather than wrapped, in shawls of various sombre hues, and who look on
+listlessly as if in a daze, are the mothers of the smiling dancers. It
+is dreadful, however, to observe their proceedings when refreshments are
+handed round, for suddenly a singular agitation is observable among
+them, their long thin arms shoot from under their tightly-drawn shawls,
+they rush for the refreshments as they are carried past them, and
+swallow the liquids while stowing away supplemental cakes under their
+wrappings. Casting his eyes toward the centre of the room, where the
+young beauties are separating at the close of the dance, the observer
+notices that several of them are directing their steps away from the
+parlor to their retiring room. They have departed to smoke at their
+ease.
+
+Reference has been made to the scantiness of the attire of the
+Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are
+related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation
+and sternness with which Lopez conducted his military operations,
+bringing untold woe on his own people in his savage resolve to retard at
+any cost the advance of the army of invasion. When the allies captured
+Humaita, Lopez, retreating, decided to convert the country lying in the
+enemy's front into a desert. He issued a proclamation ordering the
+entire population living south of Asuncion to retire with all their
+animals toward the interior, and to follow him into the cordillera,
+eighty leagues to the east of the city. This order applied to all
+classes without exception, the families of high dignitaries, ministers
+and superior officers being included as well as the humbler sort. The
+result was a terrified hegira of the people _en masse_, while behind
+them the Paraguayan rear-guard destroyed houses and whatever could
+afford shelter or subsistence to the enemy, leaving only bare fields
+where once had flourished prosperous estancias and peaceful villages.
+Terrible scenes ensued. Twenty-four hours' notice only was given to the
+people to leave their homes. Delinquents and laggards were sabred
+mercilessly or killed with lance-thrusts. This mode of massacre was
+preferred, as it was a saving of valuable powder and shot. Women and
+children were slaughtered in this way, as well as infirm old men. No
+provision had been made to feed the famishing multitude that sought the
+cordillera, and thousands of the homeless wretches died of starvation
+and exposure in the mountains, where all that the women and children
+could obtain in the way of food was oranges and roots. There were
+numerous instances of cannibalism among these starving people, and our
+traveler was shown a woman in Asuncion who had eaten a portion of her
+sister to allay the pangs of hunger.
+
+The effect on the allies of this frightful course was to compel them to
+pay a fabulous price for provisions and for their transportation to the
+army. Another effect was that at times, in the heat of the pursuit of
+Lopez's forces, after an engagement the bodies of the soldiers who had
+been killed in the battle were left to rot where they fell, as there
+were no civilians to bury them. On one occasion, after a heavy skirmish,
+two or three hundred slain Argentines remained unburied, the army having
+marched forward in pursuit of the retreating Paraguayans. The horrors of
+this campaign were relieved by one prosaic fact, which in itself bridges
+the chasm between the terrible and the ridiculous: this was, that the
+allied troops were accompanied amid all these scenes of carnage by a
+poor Italian organ-grinder, carrying his organ on his back, who played
+during the halts in the march while the Brazilian soldiers danced to his
+music.
+
+When the war ended with the death of Lopez at Cerro Cora, women, even of
+the richest and most influential families, returned to their homes
+nearly naked: the large majority made their reappearance in a still more
+forlorn plight. The population of the republic, which had numbered about
+one million three hundred thousand at the beginning of the conflict, had
+dwindled to two hundred thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand.
+These were mainly women and children, for the men were nearly all dead,
+and of the few male adults in the population the majority have
+immigrated to the country since the war. The national army, which under
+Lopez was sixty thousand strong, comprised at the time of M. Forgues's
+visit two hundred and fifty youths of fifteen or sixteen years of age,
+clad in the cast-off uniform of the French mobiles of 1870 and 1871. Of
+the Paraguayan children made orphans by the war, hundreds now live in
+Argentine families, either as adopted children or as servants. They were
+picked up by the Argentine soldiers during the flight of their parents
+to the mountains, their mothers having perished of fatigue or hunger,
+and Lopez's horsemen having spared them through pity or indifference to
+continued slaughter.
+
+The sequel of the resistance of Lopez surpasses in gloomy details almost
+any similar struggle recorded in history. It has already been shown how
+women and children died by thousands or survived to poverty and want.
+But to understand the melancholy story at its worst, one should visit
+the valley of the Aquidaban River, where Lopez fought his last fight, or
+follow the line of his army's march from its camp at Panadero to the
+encampment at Cerro Cora, where he perished miserably. A traveler in
+that part of Paraguay--not M. Forgues, but Keith Johnston, the
+geographer--who visited these localities in the summer and autumn of
+1874, says that the march of the army in its final retreat can still be
+traced by the heaps of human bones, with rusty swords or guns or
+weather-stained saddles lying beside them, under every little
+shade-giving tree. These skeletons he saw everywhere at very short
+intervals. Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded
+by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark
+forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked
+by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched
+his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his
+brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was
+guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough,
+entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. Exactly how
+Lopez died is a matter of dispute in Paraguay. There are those in that
+country who revere his memory, and their story of his death represents
+him as issuing from his tent at the approach of the enemy and valiantly
+engaging them single-handed, while he bade his few adherents seek safety
+in flight. According to this account, he fell gloriously after slaying
+many Brazilians, refusing quarter and declaring his devotion to his
+country with his dying breath. The generally accepted report, however,
+is that he made a fruitless endeavor to escape from his encampment, and,
+overtaken by a Brazilian horseman, died in a matter-of-fact way from a
+lance-thrust. His grave is in that wild and lonely valley. At first a
+wooden cross marked the spot where he lies, but this has disappeared,
+and a bush, one of many that grow around, is pointed out as growing
+above it.
+
+Even at this day, though more than four years have elapsed since the
+enactment of that tragedy, the scene remains as the Brazilians left it.
+The wrecks of the camp lie thickly on every side--bones of men, broken
+weapons, ammunition and the débris of gun-carriages, baggage-carts and
+boxes. This region is the heart of the country occupied by the Cangua
+Indians, a peaceable tribe who speak the Guarani language, without the
+admixture of Spanish words which prevails in the language as spoken in
+the more civilized parts of Paraguay. They rarely leave their forest
+homes except to seek a market for their wax, which they exchange for
+tobacco and other commodities. Their complexion is a dark brown, and the
+men, who usually go armed with bows and iron-tipped lances, wear a
+splinter of a substance like amber, about two inches in length, run
+through a hole in their under lips. In the almost inaccessible country
+of these Indians is situated the great cascade of the Panama River,
+known as the Gran Salto de la Guayra. This Paraguayan Niagara is the
+object of a superstitious reverence on the part of the Indians, who deem
+it the gateway to the infernal regions, and hence fear to approach it.
+The waters fall into a deep gorge with a roaring sound which may be
+heard twelve miles away, while splendid rainbows are generated in the
+clouds of spray that rise from the depths.
+
+
+
+
+THREE FEATHERS.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+SOME OLD FRIENDS.
+
+When they heard that Wenna was coming down the road they left Mr.
+Roscorla alone: lovers like to have their meetings and partings
+unobserved.
+
+She went into the room, pale and yet firm: there was even a sense of
+gladness in her heart that now she must know the worst. What would he
+say? How would he receive her? She knew that she was at his mercy.
+
+Well, Mr. Roscorla at this moment was angry enough, for he had been
+deceived and trifled with in his absence; but he was also anxious, and
+his anxiety caused him to conceal his anger. He came forward to her with
+quite a pleasant look on his face: he kissed her and said, "Why, now,
+Wenna, how frightened you seem! Did you think I was going to scold you?
+No, no, no! I hope there is no necessity for that. I am not
+unreasonable, or over-exacting, as a younger man might be: I can make
+allowances. Of course I can't say I liked what you told me when I first
+heard of it; but then I reasoned with myself: I thought of your lonely
+position, of the natural liking a girl has for the attentions of a young
+man, of the possibility of any one going thoughtlessly wrong. And really
+I see no great harm done. A passing fancy--that is all."
+
+"Oh, I hope that is so!" she cried suddenly with a pathetic earnestness
+of appeal. "It is so good of you, so generous of you to speak like
+that!" For the first time she ventured to raise her eyes to his face.
+They were full of gratitude.
+
+Mr. Roscorla complimented himself on his knowledge of women: a younger
+man would have flown into a fury. "Oh dear, yes! Wenna," he said
+lightly, "I suppose all girls have their fancies stray a little bit from
+time to time; but is there any harm done? None whatever. There is
+nothing like marriage to fix the affections, as I hope you will discover
+ere long--the sooner the better, indeed. Now we will dismiss all those
+unpleasant matters we have been writing about."
+
+"Then you do forgive me? You are not really angry with me?" she said;
+and then, finding a welcome assurance in his face, she gratefully took
+his hand and touched it with her lips.
+
+This little act of graceful submission quite conquered Mr. Roscorla, and
+definitely removed all lingering traces of anger from his heart. He was
+no longer acting clemency when he said, with a slight blush on his
+forehead, "You know, Wenna, I have not been free from blame, either.
+That letter--it was merely a piece of thoughtless anger; but still it
+was very kind of you to consider it canceled and withdrawn when I asked
+you. Well, I was in a bad temper at that time. You cannot look at things
+so philosophically when you are far away from home: you feel yourself so
+helpless, and you think you are being unfairly--However, not another
+word. Come, let us talk of all your affairs, and all the work you have
+done since I left."
+
+It was a natural invitation, and yet it revealed in a moment the
+hollowness of the apparent reconciliation between them. What chance of
+mutual confidence could there be between these two? He asked Wenna if
+she had been busy in his absence; and the thought immediately occurred
+to him that she had had at least sufficient leisure to go walking about
+with young Trelyon. He asked her about the sewing club, and she stumbled
+into the admission that Mr. Trelyon had presented that association with
+six sewing-machines. Always Trelyon, always the recurrence of that
+uneasy consciousness of past events which divided these two as
+completely as the Atlantic had done! It was a strange meeting after that
+long absence.
+
+"It is a curious thing," he said rather desperately, "how marriage
+makes a husband and wife sure of each other. Anxiety is all over then.
+We have near us, out in Jamaica, several men whose wives and families
+are here in England, and they accept their exile there as an ordinary
+commercial necessity. But then they put their whole minds into their
+work, for they know that when they return to England they will find
+their wives and families just as they left them. Of course, in the
+majority of cases the married men there have taken their wives out with
+them. Do you fear a long sea-voyage, Wenna?"
+
+"I don't know," she said rather startled.
+
+"You ought to be a good sailor, you know."
+
+She said nothing to that: she was looking down, dreading what was
+coming.
+
+"I am sure you must be a good sailor. I have heard of many of your
+boating adventures. Weren't you rather fond, some years ago, of going
+out at night with the Lundy pilots?"
+
+"I have never gone a long voyage in a large vessel," Wenna said rather
+faintly.
+
+"But if there was any reasonable object to be gained an ordinary
+sea-voyage would not frighten you?"
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"And they have really very good steamers going to the West Indies."
+
+"Oh, indeed!"
+
+"First rate! You get a most comfortable cabin."
+
+"I thought you rather--in your description of it--in your first
+letter--"
+
+"Oh," said he, hurriedly and lightly (for he had been claiming sympathy
+on account of the discomfort of his voyage out), "perhaps I made a
+little too much of that. Besides, I did not make a proper choice in
+time. One gains experience in such matters. Now, if you were going out
+to Jamaica, I should see that you had every comfort."
+
+"But you don't wish me to go out to Jamaica?" she said, almost
+retreating from him.
+
+"Well," said he with a smile, for his only object at present was to
+familiarize her with the idea, "I don't particularly wish it unless the
+project seems a good one to you. You see, Wenna, I find that my stay
+there must be longer than I expected. When I went out at first the
+intention of my partners and myself was that I should merely be on the
+spot to help our manager by agreeing to his accounts at the moment, and
+undertaking a lot of work of that sort, which otherwise would have
+consumed time in correspondence. I was merely to see the whole thing
+well started, and then return. But now I find that my superintendence
+may be needed there for a long while. Just when everything promises so
+well I should not like to imperil all our chances simply for a year or
+two."
+
+"Oh no, of course not," Wenna said: she had no objection to his
+remaining in Jamaica for a year or two longer than he had intended.
+
+"That being so," he continued, "it occurred to me that perhaps you might
+consent to our marriage before I leave England again, and that, indeed,
+you might even make up your mind to try a trip to Jamaica. Of course we
+should have considerable spells of holiday if you thought it was worth
+while coming home for a short time. I assure you you would find the
+place delightful--far more delightful than anything I told you in my
+letters, for I'm not very good at describing things. And there is a fair
+amount of society."
+
+He did not prefer the request in an impassioned manner. On the contrary,
+he merely felt that he was satisfying himself by carrying out an
+intention he had formed on his voyage home. If, he had said to himself,
+Wenna and he became friends, he would at least suggest to her that she
+might put an end to all further suspense and anxiety by at once marrying
+him and accompanying him to Jamaica.
+
+"What do you say?" he said with a friendly smile. "Or have I frightened
+you too much? Well, let us drop the subject altogether for the present."
+
+Wenna breathed again.
+
+"Yes," said he good-naturedly, "you can think over it. In the mean time
+do not harass yourself about that or anything else. You know I have
+come home to spend a holiday."
+
+"And won't you come and see the others?" said Wenna, rising with a glad
+look of relief on her face.
+
+"Oh yes, if you like," he said; and then he stopped short, and an angry
+gleam shot into his eyes: "Wenna, who gave you that ring?"
+
+"Oh, Mabyn did," was the frank reply; but all the same Wenna blushed
+hotly, for that matter of the emerald ring had not been touched upon.
+
+"Mabyn did?" he repeated, somewhat suspiciously. "She must have been in
+a generous mood."
+
+"When you know Mabyn as well as I do, you will find out that she always
+is," said Miss Wenna quite cheerfully: she was indeed in the best of
+spirits to find that this dreaded interview had not been so very
+frightful after all, and that she had done no mortal injury to one who
+had placed his happiness in her hands.
+
+When Mr. Roscorla, some time after, set out to walk by himself up to
+Basset Cottage, whither his luggage had been sent before him, he felt a
+little tired. He was not accustomed to violent emotions, and that
+morning he had gone through a good deal. His anger and anxiety had for
+long been fighting for mastery, and both had reached their climax that
+morning. On the one hand, he wished to avenge himself for the insult
+paid him, and to show that he was not to be trifled with; on the other
+hand, his anxiety lest he should be unable to make up matters with Wenna
+led him to put an unusual value upon her. What was the result, now that
+he had definitely won her back to himself? What was the sentiment that
+followed on these jarring emotions of the morning?
+
+To tell the truth, a little disappointment. Wenna was not looking her
+best when she entered the room: even now he remembered that the pale
+face rather shocked him. She was more insignificant--perhaps it is the
+best word--than he had expected. Now that he had got back the prize
+which he thought he had lost, it did not seem to him, after all, to be
+so wonderful.
+
+And in this mood he went up and walked into the pretty little cottage
+which had once been his home. "What!" he said to himself, looking in
+amazement at the small, old-fashioned parlor, and at the still smaller
+study filled with books, "is it possible that I ever proposed to myself
+to live and die in a hole like this?--my only companion a cantankerous
+old fool of a woman, my only occupation reading the newspapers, my only
+society the good folks of the inn?"
+
+He thanked God he had escaped. His knocking about the world for a bit
+had opened up his mind. The possibility of his having in time a handsome
+income had let in upon him many new and daring ambitions.
+
+His housekeeper, having expressed her grief that she had just posted
+some letters to him, not knowing that he was returning to England,
+brought in a number of small passbooks and a large sheet of blue paper.
+
+"If yü baint too tired, zor, vor to look over the accounts, 'tis all
+theear but the pultry that Mr.--"
+
+"Good Heavens, Mrs. Cornish!" said he, "do you think I am going to look
+over a lot of grocers' bills?"
+
+Mrs. Cornish not only hinted in very plain language that her master had
+been at one time particular enough about grocers' bills and all other
+bills, however trifling, but further proceeded to give him a full and
+minute account of the various incidental expenses to which she had been
+put through young Penny Luke having broken a window by flinging a stone
+from the road; through the cat having knocked down the best tea-pot;
+through the pig having got out of its stye, gone mad, and smashed a
+cucumber-frame; and so forth and so forth. In desperation Mr. Roscorla
+got up, put on his hat and went outside, leaving her at once astonished
+and indignant by his want of interest in what at one time had been his
+only care.
+
+Was this, then, the place in which he had chosen to spend the rest of
+his life, without change, without movement, without interest? It seemed
+to him at the moment a living tomb. There was not a human being within
+sight. Far away out there lay the gray-blue sea--a plain without a speck
+on it. The great black crags at the mouth of the harbor were voiceless
+and sterile: could anything have been more bleak than the bare uplands
+on which the pale sun of an English October was shining? The quiet
+crushed him: there was not a nigger near to swear at, nor could he, at
+the impulse of a moment, get on horseback and ride over to the busy and
+interesting and picturesque scene supplied by his faithful coolies at
+work.
+
+What was he to do on this very first day in England, for example? Unpack
+his luggage, in which were some curiosities he had brought home for
+Wenna?--there was too much trouble in that. Walk about the garden and
+smoke a pipe, as had been his wont?--he had got emancipated from these
+delights of dotage. Attack his grocers' bills?--he swore by all his gods
+that he would have nothing to do with the price of candles and cheese,
+now or at any future time. The return of the exile to his native land
+had already produced a feeling of deep disappointment: when he married,
+he said to himself, he would take very good care not to sink into an
+oyster-like life in Eglosilyan.
+
+About a couple of hours after, however, he was reminded that Eglosilyan
+had its small measure of society by the receipt of a letter from Mrs.
+Trelyon, who said she had just heard of his arrival, and hastened to ask
+him whether he would dine at the Hall, not next evening, but the
+following one, to meet two old friends of his, General and Lady Weekes,
+who were there on a brief visit.
+
+"And I have written to ask Miss Rosewarne," Mrs. Trelyon continued, "to
+spare us the same evening, so that we hope to have you both. Perhaps you
+will kindly add your entreaties to mine."
+
+The friendly intention of this post-script was evident, and yet it did
+not seem to please Mr. Roscorla. This Sir Percy Weekes had been a friend
+of his father's, and when the younger Roscorla was a young man about
+town, Lady Weekes had been very kind to him, and had nearly got him
+married once or twice. There was a great contrast between those days and
+these. He hoped the old general would not be tempted to come and visit
+him at Basset Cottage.
+
+"Oh, Wenna," said he carelessly to her next morning, "Mrs. Trelyon told
+me she had asked you to go up there to-morrow evening."
+
+"Yes," Wenna said, looking rather uncomfortable. Then she added quickly,
+"Would it displease you if I did not go? I ought to be at a children's
+party at Mr. Trewhella's."
+
+This was precisely what Mr. Roscorla wanted; but he said, "You must not
+be shy, Wenna. However, please yourself: you need have no fear of vexing
+me. But I must go, for the Weekeses are old friends of mine."
+
+"They stayed at the inn two or three days in May last," said Wenna
+innocently. "They came here by chance, and found Mrs. Trelyon from
+home."
+
+Mr. Roscorla seemed startled. "Oh!" said he. "Did they--did they--ask
+for me?"
+
+"Yes, I believe they did," Wenna said.
+
+"Then you told them," said Mr. Roscorla with a pleasant smile--"you told
+them, of course, why you were the best person in the world to give them
+information about me?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!" said Wenna, blushing hotly: "they spoke to Jennifer."
+
+Mr. Roscorla felt himself rebuked. It was George Rosewarne's express
+wish that his daughters should not be approached by strangers visiting
+the inn as if they were officially connected with the place: Mr.
+Roscorla should have remembered that inquiries would be made of a
+servant.
+
+But, as it happened, Sir Percy and his wife had really made the
+acquaintance of both Wenna and Mabyn on their chance visit to
+Eglosilyan; and it was of these two girls they were speaking when Mr.
+Roscorla was announced in Mrs. Trelyon's drawing-room the following
+evening. The thin, wiry, white-moustached old man, who had wonderfully
+bright eyes and a great vivacity of spirits for a veteran of
+seventy-four, was standing in front of the fire, and declaring to
+everybody that two such well-accomplished, smart, talkative and
+lady-like young women he had never met with in his life: "What did you
+say the name was, my dear Mrs. Trelyon? Rosewarne, eh?--Rosewarne? A
+good old Cornish name--as good as yours, Roscorla. So they're called
+Rosewarne? Gad! if her ladyship wants to appoint a successor, I'm
+willing to let her choice fall on one of those two girls."
+
+Her ladyship, a dark and silent old woman of eighty, did not like, in
+the first place, to be called her ladyship, and did not relish, either,
+having her death talked of as a joke.
+
+"Roscorla, now--Roscorla, there's a good chance for you, eh?" continued
+the old general. "We never could get you married, you know--wild young
+dog! Don't you know the girls?"
+
+"Oh yes, Sir Percy," Mr. Roscorla said with no great good-will: then he
+turned to the fire and began to warm his hands.
+
+There was a tall young gentleman standing there who in former days would
+have been delighted to cry out on such an occasion, "Why, Roscorla's
+going to marry one of 'em!" He remained silent now.
+
+He was very silent, too, throughout the evening, and almost anxiously
+civil toward Mr. Roscorla. He paid great attention when the latter was
+describing to the company at table the beauties of West Indian scenery,
+the delights of West Indian life, the change that had come over the
+prospects of Jamaica since the introduction of coolie labor, and the
+fashion in which the rich merchants of Cuba were setting about getting
+plantations there for the growth of tobacco. Mr. Roscorla spoke with the
+air of a man who now knew what the world was. When the old general asked
+him if he were coming back to live in Eglosilyan after he had become a
+millionaire, he laughed, and said that one's coffin came soon enough
+without one's rushing to meet it. No: when he came back to England
+finally, he would live in London; and had Sir Percy still that old
+walled-in house in Brompton?
+
+Sir Percy paid less heed to these descriptions of Jamaica than Harry
+Trelyon did, for his next neighbor was old Mrs. Trelyon, and these two
+venerable flirts were talking of old acquaintances and old times at Bath
+and Cheltenham, and of the celebrated beauties, wits and murderers of
+other days, in a manner which her silent ladyship did not at all seem to
+approve. The general was bringing out all his old-fashioned
+gallantry--compliments, easy phrases in French, polite attentions: his
+companion began to use her fan with a coquettish grace, and was vastly
+pleased when a reference was made to her celebrated flight to Gretna
+Green.
+
+"Ah, Sir Percy," she said, "the men were men in those days, and the
+women women, I promise you: no beating about the bush, but the fair word
+given and the fair word taken; and then a broken head for whoever should
+interfere--father, uncle or brother, no matter who; and you know our
+family, Sir Percy, our family were among the worst--"
+
+"I tell you what, madam," said the general, hotly, "your family had
+among 'em the handsomest women in the west of England; and the
+handsomest men, too, by Gad! Do you remember Jane Swanhope--the Fair
+Maid of Somerset they used to call her--that married the fellow living
+down Yeovil way who broke his neck in a steeplechase?"
+
+"Do I remember her?" said the old lady. "She was one of my bridemaids
+when they took me up to London to get married properly after I came
+back. She was my cousin on the mother's side, but they were connected
+with the Trelyons too. And do you remember old John Trelyon of
+Polkerris? and did you ever see a man straighter in the back than he was
+at seventy-one, when he married his second wife? That was at Exeter, I
+think. But there, now, you don't find such men and women in these times;
+and do you know the reason of that, Sir Percy? I'll tell you: it's the
+doctors. The doctors can keep all the sickly ones alive now: before it
+was only the strong ones that lived. Dear, dear me! when I hear some of
+those London women talk, it is nothing but a catalogue of illnesses and
+diseases. No wonder they should say in church, 'There is no health in
+us:' every one of them has something the matter, even the young girls,
+poor things! and pretty mothers they're likely to make! They're a misery
+to themselves; they'll bring miserable things into the world; and all
+because the doctors have become so clever in pulling sickly people
+through. That's my opinion, Sir Percy. The doctors are responsible for
+five-sixths of all the suffering you hear of in families, either through
+illness or the losing of one's friends and relatives."
+
+"Upon my word, madam," the general protested, "you use the doctor badly.
+He is blamed if he kills people, and he is blamed if he keeps them
+alive. What is he to do?"
+
+"Do? He can't help saving the sickly ones now," the old lady admitted,
+"for relatives will have it done, and they know he can do it; but it's a
+great misfortune, Sir Percy, that's what it is, to have all these sickly
+creatures growing up to intermarry into the good old families that used
+to be famous for their comeliness and strength. There was a man--yes, I
+remember him well--that came from Devonshire: he was a man of good
+family too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said I to
+myself, Wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this man
+comes up to our country, there's one or other of the Trelyons will try
+his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George--you
+remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his own son
+there?--'George,' I said, 'if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these parts,
+mind you have nothing to do with him, for wrestling is not fit for
+gentlemen.' 'All right, mother,' said he, but he laughed, and I knew
+what the laugh meant. My dear Sir Percy, I tell you the man hadn't a
+chance: I heard of it all afterward. George caught him up before he
+could begin any of his tricks and flung him on to the hedge; and there
+were a dozen more in our family who could have done it, I'll be bound."
+
+"But then, you know, Mrs. Trelyon," Mr. Roscorla ventured to say,
+"physical strength is not everything that is needed. If the doctors
+were to let the sickly ones die, we might be losing all sorts of great
+poets and statesmen and philosophers."
+
+The old lady turned on him: "And do you think a man has to be sickly to
+be clever? No, no, Mr. Roscorla: give him better health and you give him
+a better head. That's what we believed in the old days. I fancy, now,
+there were greater men before this coddling began than there are
+now--yes, I do; and if there is a great man coming into the world, the
+chances are just as much that he'll be among the strong ones as among
+the sick ones. What do you think, Sir Percy?"
+
+"I declare you're right, madam," said he gallantly. "You've quite
+convinced me. Of course, some of 'em must go: I say, Let the sickly ones
+go."
+
+"I never heard such brutal, such murderous sentiments expressed in my
+life before," said a solemn voice; and every one became aware that at
+last Lady Weekes had spoken. Her speech was the signal for universal
+silence, in the midst of which the ladies got up and left the room.
+
+Trelyon took his mother's place and sent round the wine. He was
+particularly attentive to Mr. Roscorla, who was surprised. Perhaps,
+thought the latter, he is anxious to atone for all this bother that is
+now happily over.
+
+If the younger man was silent and preoccupied, that was not the case
+with Mr. Roscorla, who was already assuming the airs of a rich person,
+and speaking of his being unable to live in this district or that
+district of London, just as if he expected to purchase a lease of
+Buckingham Palace on his return from Jamaica.
+
+"And how are all my old friends in Hans Place, Sir Percy?" he cried.
+
+"You've been a deserter, sir--you've been a deserter for many a year
+now," the general said gayly, "but we're all willing to have you back
+again to a quiet rubber after dinner, you know. Do you remember old John
+Thwaites? Ah, he's gone now--left one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
+to build a hospital, and only five thousand pounds to his sister. The
+poor old woman believed some one would marry her when she got the whole
+of her brother's money--so I'm told--and when the truth became known,
+what did she do? Gad, sir! she wrote a novel abusing her own brother. By
+the way, that reminds me of a devilish good thing I heard when I was
+here last--down at the inn, you know. What's the name of the girls I was
+talking about? Well, her ladyship caught one of them reading a novel,
+and not very well pleased with it, and says she to the young lady,
+'Don't you like that book?' Then says the girl--let me see what was it?
+Gad! I must go and ask her ladyship."
+
+And off he trotted to the drawing-room. He came back in a couple of
+minutes. "Of course," said he. "Devilish stupid of me to forget it.
+'Why,' said the young lady, 'I think the author has been trying to keep
+the fourth commandment, for there's nothing in the book that has any
+likeness to anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or the
+heavens under the earth.'"
+
+"The waters under the earth."
+
+"I mean the waters, of course. Gad! her ladyship was immensely tickled."
+
+"Which of the two young ladies was it, Sir Percy? The younger, I
+suppose?" said Mr. Roscorla.
+
+"No, no, the elder sister of course," said Trelyon.
+
+"Yes, the elder one it was--the quiet one; and an uncommon nice girl she
+is. Well, there's Captain Walters, the old sea-dog! still to the fore;
+and his uniform too. Don't you remember the uniform with the red cuffs
+that hasn't been seen in the navy for a couple of centuries, I should
+think? His son's got into Parliament now--gone over to the Rads and the
+workingmen, and those fellows that are scheming to get the land divided
+among themselves--all in the name of philosophy: and it's a devilish
+fine sort of philosophy; that is, when you haven't a rap in your pocket,
+and when you prove that everybody who has must give it up. He came to my
+house the other day, and he was jawing away about primogeniture, and
+entail, and direct taxation, and equal electoral districts, and I don't
+know what besides. 'Walters,' said I--'Walters, you've got nothing to
+share, and so you don't mind a general division. When you have, you'll
+want to stick to what's in your own pocket.' Had him there, eh?"
+
+The old general beamed and laughed over his smartness: he was conscious
+of having said something that, in shape at least, was like an epigram.
+
+"I must rub up my acquaintance in that quarter," said Roscorla, "before
+I leave again. Fortunately, I have always kept up my club subscription;
+and you'll come and dine with me, Sir Percy, won't you, when I get to
+town?"
+
+"Are you going to town?" said Trelyon quickly.
+
+"Oh yes, of course."
+
+"When?"
+
+The question was abrupt, and it made Roscorla look at the young man as
+he answered. Trelyon seemed to him to be very much harassed about
+something or other.
+
+"Well, I suppose in a week or so: I am only home for a holiday, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, you'll be here for a week?" said the younger man submissively.
+"When do you think of returning to Jamaica?"
+
+"Probably at the beginning of next month. Fancy leaving England in
+November--just at the most hideous time of the year--and in a week or
+two getting out into summer again, with the most beautiful climate and
+foliage and what not all around you! I can tell you a man makes a great
+mistake who settles down to a sort of vegetable life anywhere: you don't
+catch me at that again."
+
+"There's some old women," observed the general, who was so anxious to
+show his profundity that he quite forgot the invidious character of the
+comparison, "who are just like trees--as much below the ground as above
+it. Isn't that true, eh? They're a deal more at home among the people
+they have buried than among those that are alive. I don't say that's
+your case, Roscorla. You're comparatively a young man yet: you've got
+brisk health. I don't wonder at your liking to knock about. As for you,
+young Trelyon, what do you mean to do?"
+
+Harry Trelyon started. "Oh," said he with some confusion, "I have no
+immediate plans. Yes, I have: don't you know I have been cramming for
+the civil service examinations for first commissions?"
+
+"And what the devil made the War Office go to those civilians?" muttered
+the general.
+
+"And if I pull through I shall want all your influence to get me
+gazetted to a good regiment. Don't they often shunt you on to the First
+or Second West Indians?"
+
+"And you've enough money to back you, too," said the general. "I tell
+you what it is, gentlemen, if they abolish the purchase of commissions
+in the army--and they're always talking about it--they don't know what
+they'll bring about. They'll have two sets of officers in the army--men
+with money who like a good mess, and live far beyond their pay, and men
+with no money at all, who've got to live on their pay; and how can they
+afford the regimental mess out of that? But Parliament won't stand it,
+you'll see. The war minister will be beaten if he brings it on--take my
+word for that."
+
+The old general had probably never heard of a royal warrant and its
+mighty powers.
+
+"So you're going to be one of us?" he said to Trelyon. "Well, you've a
+smart figure for a uniform. You're the first of your side of the family
+to go into the army, eh? You had some naval men among you, eh?"
+
+"I think you'd better ask my grandmother," said young Trelyon with a
+laugh: "she'll tell you stories about 'em by the hour together."
+
+"She's a wonderful woman that--a wonderful old creature!" said the
+general, just as if he were a sprightly young fellow talking of the
+oldest inhabitant of the district. "She's not one of them that are half
+buried: she's wide enough awake, I'll be bound. Gad! what a handsome
+woman she was when I saw her first! Well, lads, let's join the ladies:
+I'm none of your steady-going old topers. Enough's as good's a
+feast--that's my motto. And I can't write my name on a slate with my
+knuckles, either."
+
+And so they went into the large, dimly-lit red chamber where the women
+were having tea round the blazing fire. The men took various chairs
+about; the conversation became general; old Lady Weekes feebly
+endeavored to keep up her eyelids. In about half an hour or so Mrs.
+Trelyon happened to glance round the room. "Where's Harry?" said she.
+
+No one apparently had noticed that Master Harry had disappeared.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+A DARK CONSPIRACY.
+
+Now, when Harry Trelyon drove up to the Hall after leaving Wenna
+Rosewarne in the road he could not tell why he was vexed with her. He
+imagined somehow that she should not have allowed Mr. Roscorla to come
+home; and to come home just at this moment, when he, Trelyon, had stolen
+down for a couple of days to have a shy look at the sweet-heart who was
+so far out of his reach! She ought to have been alone. Then she ought
+not to have looked so calm and complacent on going away to meet Mr.
+Roscorla: she ought to have been afraid. She ought to have--In short,
+everything was wrong, and Wenna was largely to blame.
+
+"Well, grandmother," said he as they drove through the avenue, "don't
+you expect every minute to flush a covey of parsons?"
+
+He was angry with Wenna, and so he broke out once more in his old vein.
+
+"There are worse men than the parsons, Harry," the old lady said.
+
+"I'll bet you a sovereign there are two on the doorstep."
+
+He would have lost. There was not a clergyman of any sort in or about
+the house.
+
+"Isn't Mr. Barnes here?" said he to his mother.
+
+Mrs. Trelyon flushed slightly as she said, "No, Harry, Mr. Barnes is not
+here, nor is he likely to visit here again."
+
+Now, Mr. Roscorla would at once have perceived that a strange little
+story lay behind that simple speech, but Mr. Harry, paying no attention
+to it, merely said he was heartily glad to hear of it, and showed his
+gratitude by being unusually polite to his mother during the rest of his
+stay.
+
+"And so Mr. Roscorla has come back?" his mother said. "General Weekes
+was asking about him only yesterday. We must see if he will come up to
+dinner the night after to-morrow; and Miss Rosewarne also."
+
+"You may ask her--you ought to ask her--but she won't come," said he.
+
+"How do you know?" Mrs. Trelyon said with a gentle wonder. "She has been
+here very often of late."
+
+"Have you let her walk up?"
+
+"No, I have generally driven down for her when I wanted to see her; and
+the way she has been working for these people is extraordinary--never
+tired, always cheerful, ready to be bothered by anybody, and patient
+with their suspicions and simplicity beyond belief. I am sure Mr.
+Roscorla will have an excellent wife."
+
+"I am not at all sure that he will," said her son, goaded past
+endurance.
+
+"Why, Harry," said his mother, with her eyes wide open, "I thought you
+had a great respect for Miss Rosewarne."
+
+"I have," he said abruptly--"far too great a respect to like the notion
+of her marrying that old fool."
+
+"Would you rather not have him to dinner?"
+
+"Oh, I should like to have him to dinner."
+
+For one evening, at least, this young man considered, these two would be
+separated. He was pretty sure that Roscorla would come to meet General
+Weekes: he was positive that Wenna would not come to the house while he
+himself was in it.
+
+But the notion that, except during this one evening, his rival would
+have free access to the inn, and would spend pleasant hours there, and
+would take Wenna with him for walks along the coast, maddened him. He
+dared not go down to the village for fear of seeing these two together.
+He walked about the grounds or went away over to the cliffs, torturing
+his heart with imagining Roscorla's opportunities. And once or twice he
+was on the point of going straight down to Eglosilyan, and calling on
+Wenna, before Roscorla's face, to be true to her own heart, and declare
+herself free from this old and hateful entanglement.
+
+In these circumstances his grandmother was not a good companion for him.
+In her continual glorification of the self-will of the Trelyons, and her
+stories of the wild deeds they had done, she was unconsciously driving
+him to some desperate thing against his better judgment.
+
+"Why, grandmother," he said one day, "you hint that I am a nincompoop
+because I don't go and carry off that girl and marry her against her
+will. Is that what you mean by telling me of what the men did in former
+days? Well, I can tell you this, that it would be a deal easier for me
+to try that than not to try it. The difficulty is in holding your hand.
+But what good would you do, after all? The time has gone by for that
+sort of thing. I shouldn't like to have on my hands a woman sulking
+because she was married by force. Besides, you can't do these mad freaks
+now: there are too many police-courts about."
+
+"By force? No," the old lady said. "The girls I speak of were as glad to
+run away as the men, I can tell you, and they did it, too, when their
+relations were against the match."
+
+"Of course, if both he and she are agreed, the way is as smooth now as
+it was then: you don't need to care much for relations."
+
+"But, Harry, you don't know what a girl thinks," this dangerous old lady
+said. "She has her notions of duty, and her respect for her parents, and
+all that; and if the man only went and reasoned with her he would never
+carry the day; but just as she comes out of a ball-room some night, when
+she is all aglow with fun and pleasure, and ready to become romantic
+with the stars, you see, and the darkness, then just show her a
+carriage, a pair of horses, a marriage license, and her own maid to
+accompany her, and see what will happen! Why, she'll hop into the
+carriage like a dicky-bird: then she'll have a bit of a cry, and then
+she'll recover, and be mad with the delight of escaping from those
+behind her. That's how to win a girl, man! The sweet-hearts of these
+days think too much, that's about it: it's all done by argument between
+them."
+
+"You're a wicked old woman, grandmother," said Trelyon with a laugh.
+"You oughtn't to put such notions into the head of a well-conducted
+young man like me."
+
+"Well, you're not such a booby as you used to be, Harry," the old lady
+admitted. "Your manners are considerably improved, and there was much
+room for improvement. You're growing a good deal like your grandfather."
+
+"But there's no Gretna Green now-a-days," said Trelyon as he went
+outside, "so you can't expect me to be perfect, grandmother."
+
+On the first night of his arrival at Eglosilyan he stole away in the
+darkness down to the inn. There were no lamps in the steep road, which
+was rendered all the darker by the high rocky bank with its rough masses
+of foliage: he feared that by accident some one might be out and meet
+him. But in the absolute silence under the stars he made his way down
+until he was near the inn, and there in the black shadow of the road he
+stood and looked at the lighted windows. Roscorla was doubtless
+within--lying in an easy-chair, probably, by the fire, while Wenna sang
+her old-fashioned songs to him. He would assume the air of being one of
+the family now, only holding himself a little above the family. Perhaps
+he was talking of the house he meant to take when he and Wenna married.
+
+That was no wholesome food for reflection on which this young man's mind
+was now feeding. He stood there in the darkness, himself white as a
+ghost, while all the vague imaginings of what might be going on within
+the house seemed to be eating at his heart. This, then, was the comfort
+he had found by secretly stealing away from London for a day or two! He
+had arrived just in time to find his rival triumphant.
+
+The private door of the inn was at this moment opened: a warm glow of
+yellow streamed out into the darkness.
+
+"Good-night," said some one: was it Wenna?
+
+"Good-night," was the answer; and then the figure of a man passed down
+the road.
+
+Trelyon breathed more freely: at last his rival was out of the house.
+Wenna was now alone: would she go up into her own room and think over
+all the events of the day? And would she remember that he had come to
+Eglosilyan, and that she could, if any such feeling arose in her heart,
+summon him at need?
+
+It was very late that night before Trelyon returned: he had gone all
+round by the harbor and the cliffs and the high-lying church on the
+hill. All in the house had gone to bed, but there was a fire burning in
+his study, and there were biscuits and wine on the table. A box of
+cigars stood on the mantelpiece. Apparently, he was in no mood for the
+indolent comfort thus suggested. He stood for a minute or two before the
+fire, staring into it, and seeing other things than the flaming coals
+there; then he moved about the room in an impatient and excited fashion;
+finally, with his hand trembling a little bit, he sat down and wrote
+this note:
+
+"DEAR MOTHER: The horses and carriage will be at Launceston Station by
+the first train on Saturday morning. Will you please send Jakes over for
+them? And bid him take the horses up to Mr. ----'s stables, and have
+them fed, watered and properly rested before he drives them over. Your
+affectionate son, HARRY TRELYON."
+
+Next morning, as Mabyn Rosewarne was coming briskly up the Trevenna
+road, carrying in her arms a pretty big parcel, she was startled by the
+appearance of a young man, who suddenly showed himself overhead, and
+then scrambled down the rocky bank until he stood beside her.
+
+"I've been watching for you all the morning, Mabyn," said Trelyon.
+"I--I want to speak to you. Where are you going?"
+
+"Up to Mr. Trewhella's. You know his granddaughter is very nearly quite
+well again, and there is to be a great gathering of children there
+to-night to celebrate her recovery. This is a cake I am carrying that
+Wenna has made herself."
+
+"Is Wenna to be there?" Trelyon said eagerly.
+
+"Why, of course," said Mabyn petulantly. "What do you think the children
+could do without her?"
+
+"Look here, Mabyn," he said. "I want to speak to you very particularly.
+Couldn't you just as well go round by the farm-road? Let me carry your
+cake for you."
+
+Mabyn guessed what he wanted to speak about, and willingly made the
+circuit by a more private road leading by one of the upland farms. At a
+certain point they came to a stile, and here they rested. So far,
+Trelyon had said nothing of consequence.
+
+"Oh, do you know, Mr. Trelyon," Mabyn remarked quite innocently, "I have
+been reading such a nice book--all about Jamaica."
+
+"So you're interested about Jamaica too?" said he rather bitterly.
+
+"Yes, much. Do you know that it is the most fearful place for storms in
+the whole world--the most awful hurricanes that come smashing down
+everything and killing people? You can't escape if you're in the way of
+the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses and twists out the
+plantain trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of
+canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are
+carried right up into the streets of Kingston. There!"
+
+"But why does that please you?"
+
+"Why," she said with proud indignation, "the notion of people talking as
+if they could go out to Jamaica and live for ever, and come back just
+when they please--it is too ridiculous! Many accidents may happen. And
+isn't November a very bad time for storms? Ships often get wrecked going
+out to the West Indies, don't they?"
+
+At another time Trelyon would have laughed at this bloodthirsty young
+woman: at this moment he was too serious. "Mabyn," said he, "I can't
+bear this any longer--standing by like a fool and looking on while
+another man is doing his best to marry Wenna: I can't go on like this
+any longer. Mabyn, when did you say she would leave Mr. Trewhella's
+house to-night?"
+
+"I did not say anything about it. I suppose we shall leave about
+ten--the young ones leave at nine."
+
+"You will be there?"
+
+"Yes, Wenna and I are to keep order."
+
+"Nobody else with you?"
+
+"No."
+
+He looked at her rather hesitatingly. "And supposing, Mabyn," he said
+slowly--"supposing you and Wenna were to leave at ten, and that it is a
+beautiful clear night, you might walk down by the wood instead of the
+road; and then, supposing that you came out on the road down at the
+foot, and you found there a carriage and pair of horses--"
+
+Mabyn began to look alarmed.
+
+"And if I was there," he continued more rapidly, "and I said to Wenna
+suddenly, 'Now, Wenna, think nothing, but come and save yourself from
+this marriage. There is your sister will come with you; and I will drive
+you to Plymouth.'"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Trelyon!" Mabyn cried with a sudden joy in her face, "she would
+do it! she would do it!"
+
+"And you, would you come too?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes!" the girl cried, full of excitement. "And then, Mr. Trelyon, and
+then?"
+
+"Why," he cried boldly, "up to London at once--twenty-four hours' start
+of everybody--and in London we are safe. Then, you know, Mabyn--"
+
+"Yes, yes, Mr. Trelyon!"
+
+"Don't you think now that we two could persuade her to a quick
+marriage--with a special license, you know? You could persuade her, I am
+sure, Mabyn."
+
+In the gladness of her heart Mabyn felt herself at this moment ready to
+fall on the young man's neck and kiss him. But she was a properly
+conducted young person, and so she rose from the big block of slate on
+which she had been sitting and managed to suppress any great intimation
+of her abounding joy. But she was very proud, all the same, and there
+was a great firmness about her lips as she said, "We will do it, Mr.
+Trelyon--we will do it. Do you know why Wenna submits to this
+engagement? Because she reasons with her conscience and persuades
+herself that it is right. When you meet her like that, she will have no
+time to consider."
+
+"That is what my grandmother says," Trelyon said with a triumphant
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, she was a girl once," Mabyn replied sagely. "Well, well, tell me
+all about it. What arrangements have you made? You haven't got the
+special license?"
+
+"No," said he, "I didn't make up my mind to try this on till last night.
+But the difference of a day is nothing when you are with her. We shall
+be able to hide ourselves away pretty well in London, don't you think?"
+
+"Of course," cried Mabyn, confidently. "But tell me more, Mr. Trelyon.
+What have you arranged? What have you done?"
+
+"What could I do until I knew whether you'd help me?"
+
+"You must bring a fearful amount of wraps with you."
+
+"Certainly--more than you'll want, I know. And I sha'n't light the lamps
+until I hear you coming along, for they would attract attention down in
+the valley. I should like to wait for you elsewhere, but if I did that
+you couldn't get Wenna to come with you. Do you think you will get her
+to come even there?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Mabyn cheerfully: "nothing easier. I shall tell her she's
+afraid, and then she would walk down the face of Black Cliff. By the
+way, Mr. Trelyon, I must bring something to eat with me, and some
+wine--she will be so nervous, and the long journey will tire her."
+
+"You will be at Mr. Trewhella's, Mabyn: you can't go carrying things
+about with you."
+
+"I could bring a bit of cake in my pocket," Mabyn suggested, but this
+seemed even to her so ludicrous that she blushed and laughed, and agreed
+that Mr. Harry should bring the necessary provisions for the wild
+night-ride to Plymouth.
+
+"Oh, it does so please me to think of it!" she said with a curious
+anxious excitement as well as gladness in her face. "I hope I have not
+forgotten to arrange anything. Let me see: we start at ten; then down
+through the wood to the road in the hollow--oh, I hope there will be
+nobody coming along just then!--then you light the lamps; then you come
+forward to persuade Wenna. By the way, Mr. Trelyon, where must I go?
+Shall I not be dreadfully in the way?"
+
+"You? You must stand by the horses' heads. I sha'n't have my man with
+me. And yet they're not very fiery animals: they'll be less fiery, the
+unfortunate wretches! when they get to Plymouth."
+
+"At what time?"
+
+"About half-past three in the morning if we go straight on," said he.
+
+"Do you know a good hotel there?" said the practical Mabyn.
+
+"The best one is by the station; but if you sleep in the front of the
+house, you have the whistling of engines all night long, and if you
+sleep in the back, you overlook a barracks, and the confounded
+trumpeting begins about four o'clock, I believe."
+
+"Wenna and I won't mind that--we shall be too tired," Mabyn said. "Do
+you think they could give us a little hot coffee when we arrive?"
+
+"Oh yes. I'll give the night-porter a sovereign a cup: then he'll offer
+to bring it to you in buckets. Now, don't you think the whole thing is
+beautifully arranged, Mabyn?"
+
+"It is quite lovely!" the girl said joyously, "for we shall be off with
+the morning train to London, while Mr. Roscorla is pottering about
+Launceston Station at midday. Then we must send a telegram from
+Plymouth, a fine dramatic telegram; and my father, he will swear a
+little, but be quite content; and my mother--do you know, Mr. Trelyon, I
+believe my mother will be as glad as anybody. What shall we say?--'To
+Mr. Rosewarne, Eglosilyan: We have fled. Not the least good pursuing us.
+May as well make up your mind to the inevitable. Will write to-morrow.'
+Is that more than the twenty words for a shilling?"
+
+"We sha'n't grudge the other shilling if it is," the young man said.
+"Now you must go on with your cake, Mabyn. I am off to see after the
+horses' shoes. Mind, as soon after ten as you can--just where the path
+from the wood comes into the main road."
+
+Then she hesitated, and for a minute or two she remained thoughtful and
+silent, while he was inwardly hoping that she was not going to draw
+back. Suddenly she looked up at him with earnest and anxious eyes. "Oh,
+Mr. Trelyon," she said, "this is a very serious thing. You--you will be
+kind to our Wenna after she is married to you?"
+
+"You will see, Mabyn," he answered gently.
+
+"You don't know how sensitive she is," she continued, apparently
+thinking over all the possibilities of the future in a much graver
+fashion than she had done. "If you were unkind to her it would kill her.
+Are you quite sure you won't regret it?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure of that," said he--"as sure as a man may be. I
+don't think you need fear my being unkind to Wenna. Why, what has put
+such thoughts into your head?"
+
+"If you were to be cruel to her or indifferent," she said slowly and
+absently, "I know that would kill her. But I know more than that: _I
+would kill you._"
+
+"Mabyn," he said, quite startled, "whatever has put such thoughts into
+your head?"
+
+"Why," she said passionately, "haven't I seen already how a man can
+treat her? Haven't I read the insolent letters he has sent her? Haven't
+I seen her throw herself on her bed, beside herself with grief?
+And--and--these are things I don't forget, Mr. Trelyon. No, I have got a
+word to say to Mr. Roscorla yet for his treatment of my sister; and I
+will say it. And then--" The proud lips were beginning to quiver.
+
+"Come, come, Mabyn," said Trelyon gently, "don't imagine all men are the
+same. And perhaps Roscorla will have been paid out quite sufficiently
+when he hears of to-night's work. I sha'n't bear him any malice after
+that, I know. Already, I confess, I feel a good deal of compunction as
+regards him."
+
+"I don't at all--I don't a bit," said Mabyn, who very quickly recovered
+herself whenever Mr. Roscorla's name was mentioned. "If you only can get
+her to go away with you, Mr. Trelyon, it will serve him just right.
+Indeed, it is on his account that I hope you will be successful. I--I
+don't quite like Wenna running away with you, to tell you the truth. I
+would rather have her left to a quiet decision, and to a marriage with
+everybody approving. But there is no chance of that. This is the only
+thing that will save her."
+
+"That is precisely what I said to you," Trelyon said eagerly, for he was
+afraid of losing so invaluable an ally.
+
+"And you will be very, very kind to her?"
+
+"I'm not good at fine words, Mabyn. You'll see."
+
+She held out her hand to him and pressed his warmly: "I believe you will
+be a good husband to her; and I know you will get the best wife in the
+whole world."
+
+She was going away when he suddenly said, "Mabyn!"
+
+She turned.
+
+"Do you know," said he, rather shamefacedly, "how much I am grateful to
+you for all your frank, straightforward kindness--and your help--and
+your courage?"
+
+"No, no," said the young girl good-humoredly. "You make Wenna happy, and
+don't consider me."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+UNDER THE WHITE STARS.
+
+During the whole glad evening Wenna had been queen of the feast, and her
+subjects had obeyed her with a joyous submission. They did not take
+quite so kindly to Mabyn, for she was sharp of tongue and imperious in
+her ways, but they knew that they could tease her elder sister with
+impunity--always up to the well-understood line at which her authority
+began. That was never questioned.
+
+Then at nine o'clock the servants came, some on foot and some on
+dog-carts, and presently there was a bundling of tiny figures in rugs
+and wraps, and Wenna stood at the door to kiss each of them and say
+good-bye. It was half-past nine when that performance was over.
+
+"Now, my dear Miss Wenna," said the old clergyman, "you must be quite
+tired out with your labors. Come into the study; I believe the tray has
+been taken in there."
+
+"Do you know, Mr. Trewhella," said Mabyn boldly, "that Wenna hadn't time
+to eat a single bit when all those children were gobbling up cake?
+Couldn't you let her have a little bit--a little bit of cold meat, now?"
+
+"Dear! dear me!" said the kind old gentleman in the deepest distress,
+"that I should not have remembered!"
+
+There was no use in Wenna protesting. In the snug little study she was
+made to eat some supper; and if she got off with drinking one glass of
+sherry, it was not through the intervention of her sister, who
+apparently would have had her drink a tumblerful.
+
+It was not until a quarter past ten that the girls could get away.
+
+"Now I must see you young ladies down to the village, lest some one
+should run away with you," the old clergyman said, taking down his
+top-coat.
+
+"Oh no, you must not--you must not indeed, Mr. Trewhella!" Mabyn said
+anxiously. "Wenna and I always go about by ourselves; and far later than
+this, too. It is a beautiful, clear night. Why--"
+
+Her impetuosity made her sister smile. "You talk as if you would rather
+like to be run away with, Mabyn," she said. "But indeed, Mr. Trewhella,
+you must not think of coming with us. It is quite true what Mabyn
+says."
+
+And so they went out into the clear darkness together, and the door was
+shut, and they found themselves in the silent world of the night-time,
+with the white stars throbbing overhead. Far away in the distance they
+could hear the murmur of the sea.
+
+"Are you cold, Mabyn, that you tremble so?" said the elder sister.
+
+"No, only a sort of shiver in coming out into the night-air."
+
+Whatever it was, it was soon over. Mabyn seemed to be unusually
+cheerful. "Wenna," she said, "you're afraid of ghosts."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"I know you are."
+
+"I'm not half as much afraid of ghosts as you are, that's quite
+certain."
+
+"I'll bet you you won't walk down through the wood."
+
+"Just now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, I'll not only go down through the wood, but I'll undertake to be
+home before you, though you've a broad road to guide you."
+
+"But I did not mean you to go alone."
+
+"Oh," said Wenna, "you propose to come with me? Then it is you who are
+afraid to go down by yourself? Oh, Mabyn!"
+
+"Never mind, Wenna: let's go down through the wood, just for fun."
+
+So the two sisters set out arm in arm, and through some spirit of
+mischief Wenna would not speak a word. Mabyn was gradually overawed by
+the silence, the night, the loneliness of the road, and the solemn
+presence of the great living vault above them. Moreover, before getting
+into the wood they had to skirt a curious little dingle, in the hollow
+of which are both a church and churchyard. Many a time the sisters had
+come up to this romantic dell in the spring-time to gather splendid
+primroses, sweet violets, the yellow celandine, and other wild flowers
+that grew luxuriantly on its steep banks; and very pretty the old church
+looked then, with the clear sunshine of April streaming down through the
+scantily-leaved trees into this sequestered spot. Now the deep hole was
+black as night, and they could only make out a bit of the spire of the
+church as it appeared against the dark sky. Nay, was there not a sound
+among the fallen leaves and underwood down there in the direction of the
+unseen graves?
+
+"Some cow has strayed in there, I believe," said Mabyn in a somewhat low
+voice, and she walked rather quickly until they got past the place and
+out on to the hill over the wooded valley.
+
+"Now," said Wenna cheerfully, not wishing to have Mabyn put in a real
+fright, "as we go down I am going to tell you something, Mabyn. How
+would you like to have to prepare for a wedding in a fortnight?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mabyn promptly, even fiercely.
+
+"Not if it was your own?"
+
+"No. Why, the insult of such a request!"
+
+According to Mabyn's way of thinking it was an insult to ask a girl to
+marry you in a fortnight, but none to insist on her marrying you the day
+after to-morrow.
+
+"You think that a girl could fairly plead that as an excuse--the mere
+time to get one's dresses and things ready?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna far more seriously, "it is not of dresses I am
+thinking at all; but I shudder to think of getting married just now. I
+could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what is past; and
+until that is done how could I marry any man?"
+
+"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that," her sister cried. "You
+can be so wise and reasonable when you choose. Of course you are quite
+right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get married
+before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone?"
+
+"Oh no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."
+
+Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm: "To Jamaica! To take you away from
+the whole of us! Why--Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're
+not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you
+know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the
+most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the
+woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't
+think you are going to Jamaica just yet."
+
+"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I
+think of getting married in any case at present. But then--don't you
+see, Mabyn?--Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways--"
+
+"Yes, certainly."
+
+"--and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If I were to
+tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting married just
+now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue me out of it:
+then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a girl may fairly
+refuse in point of time--"
+
+"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married
+properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in
+three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it
+is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to
+marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you
+send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."
+
+Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid
+of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."
+
+"Yes, and he'll have more cause to be before he's much older," said
+Mabyn confidently.
+
+They could not continue their conversation just then, for they were
+going down the side of the hill between short trees and bushes, and the
+path was only broad enough for one, while there were many dark places
+demanding caution.
+
+"Seen any ghosts yet?" Wenna called out to Mabyn, who was behind her.
+
+"Ghosts, sir? Ay, ay, sir! Heave away on the larboard beam. I say,
+Wenna, isn't it uncommon dark?"
+
+"It is uncommonly dark?"
+
+"Gentlemen always say uncommon, and all the grammars are written by
+gentlemen. Oh, Wenna, wait a bit: I've lost my brooch."
+
+It was no _ruse_, for a wonder: the brooch had indeed dropped out of her
+shawl. She felt all over the dark ground for it, but her search was in
+vain.
+
+"Well, here's a nice thing! Upon my--"
+
+"Mabyn!"
+
+"Upon my--trotting pony: that was all I was going to say. Wenna, will
+you stay here for a minute, and I'll run down to the foot of the hill
+and get a match?"
+
+"How can you get a match at the foot of the hill? You'll have to go on
+to the inn. No, tie your handkerchief round the foot of one of the
+trees, and come up early in the morning to look."
+
+"Early in the morning?" said Mabyn. "I hope to be in--I mean asleep
+then."
+
+Twice she had nearly blurted out the secret, and it is highly probable
+that her refusal to adopt Wenna's suggestion would have led her sister
+to suspect something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against
+the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was
+grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along
+through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated
+wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to
+the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to
+be unnerved.
+
+"Keeping a lookout ahead?" Wenna called.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir! No ghosts on the weather quarter! Ship drawing twenty
+fathoms and the mate fast asleep. Oh, Wenna, my hat!"
+
+It had been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young
+trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being
+released from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes and
+briers.
+
+"Well I'm--No, I'm not!" said Mabyn as she picked out the hat from among
+the thorns and straightened the twisted feather. Then she set out again,
+impatient over these delays, and yet determined not to let her courage
+sink.
+
+"Land ahead yet?" called out Wenna.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir, and the Lizard on our lee. Wind south-south-west and the
+cargo shifting a point to the east. Hurrah!"
+
+"Mabyn, they'll hear you a mile off."
+
+It was certainly Mabyn's intention that she should be heard at least a
+quarter of a mile off, for now they had got down to the open, and they
+could hear the stream some way ahead of them, which they would have to
+cross. At this point Mabyn paused for a second to let her sister
+overtake her: then they went on arm-in-arm.
+
+"Oh, Wenna," she said, "do you remember 'young Lochinvar'?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Didn't you fall in love with him when you read about him? Now, there
+_was_ somebody to fall in love with! Don't you remember when he came
+into Netherby Hall, that
+
+    The bride-maidens whispered, ''Twere better by far
+    To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar'?
+
+And then you know, Wenna--
+
+    One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+    When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
+    So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,
+    So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+    'She is won! we are gone--over bank, bush and scaur!
+    They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+That _was_ a lover now!"
+
+"I think he was a most impertinent young man," said Wenna.
+
+"I rather like a young man to be impertinent," said Mabyn boldly.
+
+"Then there won't be any difficulty about fitting you with a husband,"
+said Wenna with a light laugh.
+
+Here Mabyn once more went on ahead, picking her steps through the damp
+grass as she made her way down to the stream. Wenna was still in the
+highest of spirits.
+
+"Walking the plank yet, boatswain?" she called out.
+
+"Not yet, sir," Mabyn called in return. "Ship wearing round a point to
+the west, and the waves running mountains high. Don't you hear 'em,
+captain?"
+
+"Look out for the breakers, boatswain."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir. All hands on deck to man the captain's gig! Belay away
+there! Avast! Mind, Wenna, here's the bridge."
+
+Crossing over that single plank in the dead of night was a sufficiently
+dangerous experiment, but both these young ladies had had plenty of
+experience in keeping their wits about them in more perilous places.
+
+"Why are you in such a hurry, Mabyn?" Wenna asked when they had crossed.
+
+Mabyn did not know what to answer: she was very much excited, and
+inclined to talk at random merely to cover her anxiety. She was now very
+late for the appointment, and who could tell what unfortunate
+misadventure Harry Trelyon might have met with?
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Why don't you admire young Lochinvar?
+Wenna, you're like the Laodiceans."
+
+"Like the what?"
+
+"Like the Laodiceans, that were neither cold nor hot. Why don't you
+admire young Lochinvar?"
+
+"Because he was interfering with another man's property."
+
+"That man had no right to her," said Mabyn, talking rather wildly, and
+looking on ahead to the point at which the path through the meadows went
+up to the road. "He was a wretched animal, I know: I believe he was a
+sugar-broker, and had just come home from Jamaica."
+
+"I believe," said Wenna--"I believe that young Lochinvar--" She stopped.
+"What's that?" she said. "What are those two lights up there?"
+
+"They're not ghosts: come along, Wenna," said Mabyn, hurriedly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us go up to this road, where Harry Trelyon, tortured with anxiety
+and impatience, is waiting. He had slipped away from the house pretty
+nearly as soon as the gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room after
+dinner, and on some excuse or other had got the horses put to a light
+and yet roomy Stanhope phaeton. From the stable-yard he drove by a back
+way into the main road without passing in front of the Hall: then he
+quietly walked the horses down the steep hill and round the foot of the
+valley to the point at which Mabyn was to make her appearance.
+
+But he dared not stop there, for now and again some passer-by came along
+the road; and even in the darkness Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses would be
+recognized by any of the inhabitants of Eglosilyan, who would naturally
+wonder what Master Harry was waiting for. He walked them a few hundred
+yards one way, then a few hundred yards the other; and ever, as it
+seemed to him, the danger was growing greater of some one from the inn
+or from the Hall suddenly appearing and spoiling the whole plan.
+
+Half-past ten arrived, and nothing could be heard of the girls. Then a
+horrible thought struck him that Roscorla might by this time have left
+the Hall, and would he not be coming down to this very road on his way
+up to Basset Cottage? This was no idle fear: it was almost a matter of
+certainty.
+
+The minutes rolled themselves out into ages: he kept looking at his
+watch every few seconds, yet he could hear nothing from the wood or the
+valley of Mabyn's approach. Then he got down into the road, walked a few
+yards this way and that, apparently to stamp the nervousness out of his
+system, patted the horses, and finally occupied himself in lighting the
+lamps. He was driven by the delay into a sort of desperation. Even if
+Wenna and Mabyn did appear now, and if he was successful in his prayer,
+there was every chance of their being interrupted by Roscorla, who had
+without doubt left the Hall some time before.
+
+Suddenly he stopped in his excited walking up and down. Was that a faint
+"Hurrah!" that he heard in the distance. He went down to the stile at
+the junction of the path and the road, and listened attentively. Yes, he
+could hear at least one voice, as yet a long way off, but now he had no
+more doubt. He walked quickly back to the carriage. "Ho, ho, my
+hearties!" he said, stroking the heads of the horses, "you'll have a
+Dick Turpin's ride to-night."
+
+All the nervousness had gone from him now: he was full of a strange
+sort of exultation--the joy of a man who feels that the crisis in his
+life has come, and that he has the power and courage to face it.
+
+He heard them come up through the meadow to the stile: it was Wenna who
+was talking--Mabyn was quite silent. They came along the road.
+
+"What is this carriage doing here?" Wenna said.
+
+They drew still nearer.
+
+"They are Mrs. Trelyon's horses, and there is no driver."
+
+At this moment Harry Trelyon came quickly forward and stood in the road
+before her, while Mabyn as quickly went on and disappeared. The girl was
+startled, bewildered, but not frightened; for in a second he had taken
+her by the hand, and then she heard him say to her, in an anxious, low,
+imploring voice, "Wenna, my darling, don't be alarmed. See here: I have
+got everything ready to take you away; and Mabyn is coming with us; and
+you know I love you so that I can't bear the notion of your falling into
+that man's hands. Now, Wenna, don't think about it. Come with me. We
+shall be married in London: Mabyn is coming with you."
+
+For one brief second or two she seemed stunned and bewildered: then,
+looking at the carriage, and the earnest suppliant before her, the whole
+truth appeared to flash in upon her. She looked wildly round. "Mabyn--"
+she was about to say, when he guessed the meaning of her rapid look:
+
+"Mabyn is here. She is quite close by--she is coming with us. My
+darling, won't you let me save you? This indeed is our last chance,
+Wenna."
+
+She was trembling so that he thought she would fall; and he would have
+put his arms round her, but that she drew back, and in so doing she got
+into the light, and then he saw the immeasurable pity and sadness of her
+eyes.
+
+"Oh, my love," she said with the tears running down her face, "I love
+you! I will tell you that now, when we speak for the last time. See, I
+will kiss you; and then you will go away."
+
+"I will not go away--not without you--this night. Wenna, dearest, you
+have let your heart speak at last: now let it tell you what to do."
+
+"Oh, must I go? Must I go?" she said; and then she looked wildly round
+again.
+
+"Mabyn!" called out Trelyon, half mad with joy and triumph--"Mabyn, come
+along! Look sharp! jump in! This way, my darling!"
+
+And he took the trembling girl and half lifted her into the carriage.
+
+"Oh, my love, what am I doing for you this night?" she said to him with
+her eyes swimming in tears.
+
+But what was the matter with Mabyn? She was just putting her foot on the
+iron step when a rapidly approaching figure caused her to utter a cry of
+alarm, and she stumbled back into the road again. The very accident that
+Trelyon had been anticipating had occurred: here was Mr. Roscorla,
+bewildered at first, and then blind with rage when he saw what was
+happening before his eyes. In his desperation and anger he was about to
+lay hold of Mabyn by the arm when he was sent staggering backward half a
+dozen yards.
+
+"Don't interfere with me now, or by God I will kill you!" Trelyon said
+between his teeth, and then he hurried Mabyn into the carriage.
+
+What was the sound then that the still woods heard under the throbbing
+stars through the darkness that lay over the land? Only the sound of
+horses' feet, monotonous and regular, and not a word of joy or sorrow
+uttered by any one of the party thus hurrying on through the night.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.
+
+
+I.--CAMP--IN THREE LIGHTS.
+
+    Against the darkness sharply lined
+      Our still white tents gleamed overhead,
+    And dancing cones of shadow cast
+      When sudden flashed the camp-fire red,
+
+    Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
+      And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
+    While half a century's silent growth
+      Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
+
+    Pile on the logs! A flickering spire
+      Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives,
+    And as we track its leaping sparks,
+      Behold in heaven the North-light lives!
+
+    An arch of deep supremest blue,
+      A band above of silver shade,
+    And, like the frost-work's crystal spears,
+      A thousand lances grow and fade,
+
+    Or shiver, touched with palest tints
+      Of pink and blue, and changing die,
+    Or toss in one triumphant blaze
+      Their golden banners up the sky,
+
+    With faint, swift, silken murmurings,
+      A noise as of an angel's flight,
+    Heard like the whispers of a dream
+      Across the cool clear northern night.
+
+    Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,
+      The wild auroral ghost-lights die,
+    And stealing up the distant wood
+      The moon's white spectre floats on high,
+
+    And lingering sets in awful light
+      A blackened pine tree's ghastly cross,
+    Then swiftly pays in silver white
+      The faded fire, the aurora's loss.
+
+    EDWARD KEARSLEY.
+
+
+
+
+OVERWORKED WOMEN.
+
+
+In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain
+coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that
+respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they
+will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed
+them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work
+that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or
+die. They have hands which are large and horny: they have faces somewhat
+like those of men, but coarse, hideous and furrowed with the lines of
+exposure. They speak, they have a language, but their words are few and
+relate only to the heavy drudgery which is before them. These humble and
+debased animals are women.
+
+I remember, while traveling some years ago through the State of
+Pennsylvania with Mr. Foster, who was then the Vice-President of the
+United States, we saw from the window of the railway-carriage in which
+we were sitting a woman barelegged and at work in the fields. She was
+digging potatoes on some mountain-patch.
+
+"Thank God," said Mr. Foster, "that I never saw such a sight in my own
+country before!"
+
+According to the census of 1870 there were in the United States, out of
+a total population of 38,500,000, less than 400,000 females occupied in
+the labor of agriculture, either as field-hands or indoor workers. Of
+this number, 373,332 were hired laborers, and 22,681 the cultivators of
+their own lands. All of the former, and two-thirds of the latter, were
+freed-women in the late Slave States, and only 7994 females were
+employed in agriculture, either as laborers or proprietors, in or out of
+doors, in the Free States.
+
+The States in which these few farm-women of the North were chiefly found
+were Wisconsin, which claimed 1387; Pennsylvania, 1279; and Illinois,
+1034. In Pennsylvania the farm-women belonged almost exclusively to the
+population known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch," descendants of the
+Hessians and other Germans who settled in the State at the close of the
+Revolutionary War; in Illinois and Wisconsin they were recent immigrants
+from Europe, chiefly Germans, and for the most part, it is presumed,
+widows, who preferred to till the land left by their husbands rather
+than part with it.
+
+With the exception of these trifling numbers, which, including even the
+freed-women, amount to but seven per cent. of the whole number of males
+employed in agriculture, it may be said, with entire correctness, that
+in the United States woman has been raised above the necessity of
+field-labor.
+
+This is so far from being the case in Europe that in some countries all
+the women, except the few belonging to the aristocratic and bourgeois
+classes, are employed in the fields. One-third of the entire rural
+laboring population of Prussia and one-half of that of Russia are
+females. The following figures are from official sources:
+
+COUNTRY.                   Total population.  Total occupied
+                                              in agriculture.
+United States, 1870        38,558,371         5,922,471
+Prussia, 1867              19,607,710         3,286,954
+Europ. Russia, exclud.
+  Baltic Provs., 1863      59,097,859         26,362,435
+
+
+Of whom                         Percentage of female
+Males.          Females.       to male agriculturists.
+ 5,525,503      396,968           7
+ 2,232,741     1,054,213         47
+
+13,444,842    12,917,593         98
+
+To every 100 men employed in field-work, there are in Russia 98 women,
+in Prussia 47, and in the United States but 7; and of the latter, nearly
+all are freed-women of the African race. I have heard men sneer at this
+statement, which I regard as matter for boasting--men who regretted it
+was true: "You Americans make too much of your women. You educate them
+above their rank in life, dress them like dolls and keep them for show.
+They are idle, and become enfeebled and vicious, and their progeny, if
+indeed they have any, partake of the same characteristics."
+
+It is not alone foreigners who hold this language. There is among our
+own countrymen a growing class of admirers of what they are pleased to
+term the robust female, and "robust" with this class means hard-worked.
+
+We have already seen the debased condition to which field-work,
+apparently, has reduced the peasant-women of continental Europe: we have
+seen that they resemble animals as much as they do women, so heavy and
+unremitting is the toil with which they are burdened.
+
+"This only makes them hardy," cries the advocate of the robust school,
+who believes that hard work is good for everybody, even for women, yet
+carefully avoids it himself--avoids even hard thinking, which might
+teach him better doctrine. "It is thus that women become the mothers of
+a race of heroes."
+
+Heroes! Moon-calves, rather; but we shall see.
+
+Mr. Harris-Gastud in his late report to the British Foreign Office on
+Prussia, after mentioning the north-eastern provinces of that country,
+and the immorality, drunkenness and thieving propensities of its
+peasantry, thus continues (p. 361): "The system of contract laborers,
+under obligation to bring one or two other laborers into the field, is
+in some measure responsible for the immorality, inasmuch as the one or
+two, so to speak, gang-laborers, are usually girls, who live in the same
+room as the family. Children are not carefully tended and reared. The
+wives are obliged to work daily throughout summer and autumn, and on
+many properties in winter also. They go very early to work, are free
+half an hour before midday to prepare the dinner and do other household
+work, and return to work till sunset. The children come badly off.
+Often there is no older child to take charge of the little ones, who are
+consequently left to themselves in the house. A direct result is the
+great mortality of children. From 1858 to 1861 there died in the
+province of Prussia, out of a total population of 2,190,072, an annual
+average of 21,290 children under one year, and of 40,845 children under
+ten years, being 0.97 and 1.86 per cent. of the population; whereas in
+the Rhine province, with a population of 2,112,959, the percentages were
+0.57 and 1.12 respectively."
+
+In 1870 in the United States, with a total population in town and
+country of 38,558,371, the number of deaths of children under one year
+was 110,445, and under ten years 229,542, being 0.29 and 0.59
+respectively. In other words, where one child dies in the United States,
+_two_ die in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and _more than three_ in
+one of the north-eastern provinces.
+
+I was in Berlin in the autumn of 1872, when there was a meeting there of
+the emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria. Every preparation had been
+made for this august convocation, among others that of banishing from
+the streets all unpleasant sights. Yet on that occasion, when Unter den
+Linden was crowded with carriages and horsemen and well-dressed people,
+when Russia and Austria were dashing about in open barouches, with
+outriders before and guardsmen behind, and the eye encountered on all
+sides the bravery of military uniforms and arms and waving pennants, I
+saw in a side-street a woman drawing a hand-cart laden with some heavy
+substance that was piled up to the height of four or five feet above the
+rails of the cart. Beside this poor slave, who withal carried an infant
+upon her back which could not have been more than a few weeks old,
+struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor wretch! I
+thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as
+a _widow_, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not
+over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking hag I never saw the
+picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some
+pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to
+chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there he was, walking leisurely
+_behind_ the cart, with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe and
+gazing at the sights along the route.
+
+If we would know the origin of this brutality to women wherever it is
+practiced, we must look for it in the history of slavery, for there we
+shall always find it. It was not the peasant-man who first brutalized
+his wife and daughter, but the lord. If the ancient rights of the
+peasantry had not been molested, and an oppressive system of feudal
+exactions forced upon men who once were free and owners of the soil they
+tilled, the slavery of women could hardly have occurred. It is now
+nearly seventy years since the first decree that eventually resulted in
+the abolition of serfdom in Prussia was promulgated, and time is rapidly
+effacing many of the social evils which that institution entailed. But
+this is not the case with Russia, where emancipation was only declared
+ten years ago, and is not completed even yet. The causes that
+superinduce the degradation and debasement of women can therefore still
+be seen at work in that country, and are thus depicted by an
+eye-witness. He is speaking of the condition of the peasantry of Russia
+subsequent to the decree of emancipation, and so far as my own
+observation in that country goes, I can corroborate all that he says:
+"Their food begins to get scantier and scantier, and toward spring they
+get more and more famished. The officer of government (who since the act
+of emancipation replaces the officer of the lord of the manor) comes and
+energetically demands the payment of arrears. Driven to desperation, the
+peasant acknowledges to the mayor of the village the cause of his want
+of punctuality--viz., the demands made upon him by his family, and
+particularly by his wife. 'Give her a good thrashing,' is the advice of
+the mayor. The mujik goes home, ties his wife by her hair to the tail of
+a cart, and flogs her unmercifully with a whip. At a convenient
+opportunity he will give his mother a knock or two on the head with a
+log of wood. If any member of the family should die from privation, his
+death is attributed to fate." Passing to the description of a village
+community of higher civilization, the author continues: "The chief
+features of such a village are fewer thrashings, a more perceptible
+tendency to personal adornment on the part of the women, a larger number
+of bachelors, and the existence even of old maids--_i. e._, in the sense
+only of unmarried women. In such villages _fêtes_ are held each Sunday,
+and all the village games, accompanied by much kissing, terminate in the
+coarsest sensuality. Immorality prevails, followed by infanticide."
+(_Condition of the Laboring Classes of Russia_, by N. Flerofski, 1869.)
+
+For the sake of obtaining an additional laborer in the family it was
+customary for the Russian serf to marry his son of tender years to a
+woman of riper age, particularly in households where the father had
+become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female
+laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this
+circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a
+social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored
+the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood
+in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless
+wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial
+amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce itself;
+for the son, grown to a ripe age and bound to a wife now old and
+wrinkled, would revenge himself by treating his own son in the manner in
+which he had been treated himself.
+
+Says Flerofski: "Women who assist in floating barges down the rivers
+from the province of Vologda (in North-eastern Russia, three hundred to
+five hundred miles above Nijni-Novgorod) to Nijni-Novgorod receive two
+and a half roubles (about $2) for the journey. Both men and women work
+until they become exhausted, and return back to their villages on foot.
+Their master, the contractor, who is bound to support them until they
+return, hastens as much as possible their homeward tramp, in order to
+save expense, compelling them to walk eighty versts (fifty-five miles) a
+day along village roads and byways. They will sometimes have to wade for
+twenty miles through water and mud up to their knees.... The peasant is
+ready to carry any burden, to suffer anything, to impose any privations
+on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to
+obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will
+not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the
+rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex,
+the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage.
+Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days
+and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The
+laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his
+daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or
+involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care
+is to place her where she can earn some money."
+
+In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be
+found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and
+children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and
+pay the taxes. They fill the offices of _starosta_ (policeman) and
+tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On
+the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence
+that branch of the service has taken the name of _sarafannaya_ or
+"petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages
+of Amazons--the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked
+women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.
+
+The terrible burdens which the government and social system of Russia
+heap upon the peasant-man can best be realized from a description of its
+effects upon the unhappy creature whom this man, himself a slave in all
+but name, may treat--nay, almost must treat--as a slave. To pay the
+quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to
+mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre--a price which falls to forty
+cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn
+an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his
+body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders
+at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his
+poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that
+is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that
+will save him from starvation. Starvation! Why? Because should he fail
+to pay, the lord has the power, and will not fail, to seize every piece
+of property which the peasant has in the world--his cow, his bed, his
+clothing, even the uncut corn upon his little field, the very bread from
+off his table. Where is that lord? Has he no heart, no mercy? Alas! he
+is far away, in Vienna, in Rome, in Paris. He is at the Carnival, the
+opera, the club-house. He has presented a diamond necklace to Schneider,
+he has bought a new race-horse, he has lost fifty thousand francs at
+_rouge et noir_. Meanwhile, his agent and the law do his cruel bidding
+far away at home upon the bleak plains of Russia, and the peasant works
+under them as Damocles sat under the sword.
+
+In such peril and fear shall the woman stand idle? Idle she never is,
+even from inclination, her household duties, the care of the young, the
+ministration to the sick and feeble, the preparation of the daily meal,
+being sufficient to keep her fully employed. But shall she stop at these
+when failure on the man's part may to-morrow sweep away not only the few
+articles of clothing and the one or two of furniture they possess, but
+also the food which is to last them during the coming year? The thought
+is death itself. She must go to the fields. No matter how young her
+child, nor how near to death her aged mother or father; no matter how
+rigorous the climate or deficient her clothing: she must go to the
+fields. They are miles away, perhaps--for in Russia, serfdom, the
+communal system and other circumstances have forced the peasantry to
+live in villages--but go she must, with the child on her back or left
+ailing and uncared-for in the hut, with the sick or dying behind her and
+misery all around. Arrived at the scene of her unnatural labors, she
+applies herself to them with an energy which despair alone could
+engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes
+weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood;
+she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is
+ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights.
+Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in
+harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times,
+but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it
+scarcely more than doubles the perilous investment. Then this poor
+creature casts herself upon the earth and weeps, for are not both parent
+and child dead from exposure, from insufficient food, from the lack of
+that attention which she alone could have conferred? The links that
+bound her poor, rugged, but still woman's heart to both the sad past and
+the hopeful future are severed, and she is almost alone in the world.
+But her husband returns, and his joyful looks reanimate her. He has
+succeeded. The tax is paid, and they are free for another year. But at
+what a cost!
+
+This sketch is far from being exaggerated. Too often does it happen that
+despite these sacrifices the tax is not paid. Says Flerofski: "Along
+that road walks a peasant's family in sorrowful procession, shedding
+bitter tears. Is it a funeral? No, it is only the last calf being led
+for sale with the aid of the local authorities. It is necessary to levy
+rents with strictness, for are not the proprietors already ruined?" (He
+means, ironically, by the emancipation of the serfs.) "And, in fact,
+were it not for the deep impression thus made on the peasant, did he not
+know that his last food-giving beast would be taken from him, his last
+pot of milk carried out of his hut, although wanted for his newborn
+child, which would perish without it, the landed proprietors could not
+collect the tenth part of their rents."
+
+In 1856 the Rev. T. Giliarofski, gold-medalist and corresponding member
+of the Russian Geographical Society, published an inquiry into the
+frequency and causes of infant mortality in the province of Novgorod,
+the results of which are true to this day concerning the greater part of
+Central, Eastern and Northern Russia. Let those who believe that it is
+wise and merciful to subject women to hard work read the ghastly story.
+In the first place, the reverend author mentions the notorious fact that
+the statistics of illegitimate births in Russia, in which they are
+stated to be but one-thirtieth of all the births, are kept down by the
+great prevalence of certain practices, to which it is not necessary to
+make further allusion here than to say that they put to shame all the
+implications contained in Dr. Storer's erroneous pamphlet as to the
+habits of Massachusetts women. Next, the Russian priest states that the
+number of births is nearly the same in each month of the year, and that
+out of 10,000 children born, 5537 die during the month of their birth.
+Three out of four registered births in the months of July and August are
+deaths before the termination of those months severally. By the twelfth
+month death summons three-fourths, five-sevenths, or even six-sevenths,
+of the infants born in some districts of Novgorod.
+
+Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is
+the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible
+destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of
+harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their
+newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by
+old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour
+rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men,
+having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are
+only exceptionally capable of rearing their children by the natural
+process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four
+hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger
+feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases
+poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the
+infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them
+to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the
+child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even
+this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce
+internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a
+like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to
+what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical
+capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.
+
+Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant
+mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to
+the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or
+outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial
+unattended--perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which
+will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct
+of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her
+unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard
+field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by
+the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these
+women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time,
+even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse?
+None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals.
+Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source
+arise new perils for their miserable offspring. On the third day after
+birth it is considered necessary to baptize the child by complete
+immersion in water, from which it is held by the Russian Church to be a
+sin to remove the chill. A large proportion of the deaths of infants in
+the colder months of the year are attributed by native writers to this
+cause.
+
+Mothers who have been able to suckle their own children generally wean
+them at the expiration of twelve months, and popular custom, which takes
+rank as a superstition, has appointed two days in the year for that
+purpose--one in July, the other in January. Both of these periods are
+unfavorable to the child: in July the cattle are mostly afflicted with
+disorders, and their milk is hurtful; in January they give but little
+milk. Various devices, more or less prejudicial to health, are resorted
+to by the mother to effect a purpose to which the grossest ignorance and
+superstition alone impel her. One of the mildest of these is separation
+from her child for a week or longer: frequently she returns to find it a
+corpse.
+
+And now let us see what sort of men are born of these overworked women.
+According to the statistical tables of Brun and Zernof, the number of
+persons of both sexes alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty was in
+Russia only 265 in 1000; in the United States in 1870 the number was
+558. In Great Britain there are 548 adults to every 1000 population, and
+in Belgium 518; so that Russia, which, from the subjection of the weaker
+sex and their exposure to hardship, should, according to some persons,
+produce the greatest number of heroes, in fact produces but half as many
+adults, heroes or otherwise, as the other countries named, where women
+do but little field-labor.
+
+Even among those who from their ages are to be classed in Russia as
+productive, great allowance must be made for physical incapacity. A
+large number of the men are afflicted with deformity or disease: many of
+them can scarcely drag themselves along. Out of 174,000 men brought up
+from the villages to recruiting centres to supply the annual contingent
+(84,000 men) of 1868, more than one-fourth (44,000) were rejected for
+disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. In
+Prussia, the other principal European country where women are compelled
+to field-work, out of every 1000 men liable to military service in 1864,
+no less than 467 were rejected for disease and other physical defects,
+not inclusive of short stature. These are the heroes whom female slavery
+brings forth!
+
+Woman is an invalid, says Michelet, therefore she must not work. Woman
+is not an invalid, therefore she is willing to work, and does work. But
+that work has its proper sphere at the domestic hearth; and so long as
+fortune does not lift the family above the cares of daily want, or
+genius elevate the individual to the rank of teacher or leader, there
+should it be suffered to remain.
+
+    ALEXANDER DELMAR.
+
+
+
+SPRING JOY
+
+
+    The wet red glebe shines in the April light,
+      The gray hills deepen into green again;
+    The rainbow hangs in heaven; thin vapors white
+
+    Drift o'er the blue, and freckle hill and plain
+      With many moving shades; the air is strong
+    With earth's rich exhalations after rain.
+
+    Like a new note breaks forth the ancient song
+      Of spring-tide birds, with fresh hope, fresh delight.
+    Low o'er the fields the marsh-hawk sails along;
+
+    Aloft small flocks of pigeons wing their flight;
+      Alive with sound and movement is the air;
+    The short young grass with sunlight rain is bright;
+
+    The cherry trees their snow-white garlands wear;
+      The garden pranks itself with leaf and flower;
+    Quick with live seeds the patient earth lies bare.
+
+    Oh joy! to see in this expectant hour
+      The spirit of life, as on creation's day,
+    Striving toward perfect form! No fear hath power,
+
+    No sense of failure past hath strength to sway
+      The immortal hope which swells within the breast,
+    That this new earth matures not toward decay,
+
+    But toward a beauty hitherto unguessed,
+      A harvest never dreamed. These mild bright skies,
+    This lovely uncompleted world, suggest
+
+    A powerful joy, a thrill of high surprise,
+      Which no fruition ever may inspire,
+    Albeit each bud should flower, each seed should rise.
+
+    EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+HOW LADY LOUISA MOOR AMUSED HERSELF.
+
+
+I.
+
+The earl of Birndale was the magnate of the district. He was a tall,
+strong, coarse-looking man: had he chanced to have been born in the
+position of a coal-heaver, no one would have been surprised if he had
+been hauled up before a magistrate for beating his wife or for squaring
+his fists at any time and at any person as the humor seized him; or if
+he had been a wharf-porter, he would have heaved a load on his shoulders
+and carried it in a way to make puny specimens of the race sick with
+envy. But he was born the son of an earl, and the coal-heaver
+propensities had been trained and trimmed in patrician fashion. An earl
+on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the
+earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the
+least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with
+him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His
+physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had
+brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of
+forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization
+goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. And
+he never walked about his property without a hammer and nails, so that
+if he came to any fence broken or breaking down, he could mend it, as
+was very right and proper; but when people hear of an earl, they connect
+the title with something lofty in the way of employment, and it is
+certain that the village joiner would have mended the fences better than
+the earl. But no doubt it was an innocent amusement, and _noblesse_ did
+not _oblige_ the earls of Birndale: every man of them had always done
+what was right in his own eyes. Why, the brother whom this earl had
+succeeded passed a good deal of his time knitting, but he was the only
+one of his race that had taken to that peaceful, aged-woman-looking
+employment: the rest had not knitted anything except their brows, and
+all of them had been pretty good at that.
+
+There had been statesmen of the race, and there had been blackguards,
+and there had been some of them who combined both characters in their
+own persons. This earl had been in Parliament, for a short time even in
+the cabinet, and for several years he had been governor in one of the
+colonies; and in each of these positions he had made a respectable
+figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his
+son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."
+If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong
+will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when
+accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the
+Tories--not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one
+line of politics--and he held that most men need to be governed, and
+that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was
+an illustrious example. But since his return from abroad he had not
+taken, or desired to take, a lead in political matters: he preferred
+living quietly on his estates, and for the greater part of the year at
+Birns Castle, as the seat of the Birndale family was called, the village
+in its neighborhood being known as "The Birns."
+
+Birns Castle was an ambitious building, and really had accomplished its
+design of looking "lordly," as the guidebooks say. When you entered it
+by the main entrance, you stepped into a large hall lighted from the
+roof, and looking up to such a height was very grand: all round this
+hall there ran a gallery, and when high carnival was held at the castle,
+in this gallery servants, retainers and other privileged persons were
+stationed to see the nobility and gentry dancing below; and it was all
+"mighty fine," as Pepys would have said. It was even more than mighty
+fine on the occasion of the marriage of Lady Mary, the earl's eldest
+daughter, to an English duke, the duke of Dover. From her father down to
+the poorest and farthest-off relations of the Birndale family this
+marriage had made the nerves of every one tingle with delight. But,
+alas! grand as the marriage was, it had not turned out a happy one:
+there had been no violent outbreak nor any public scandal, but the duke
+and duchess saw as little of each other as possible: they both visited
+now and then at Birns Castle, but never together. The duke appeared to
+enjoy himself, and so, for that matter, did the duchess, but each went
+his and her way. Besides the duchess of Dover, the earl had two
+daughters, Ladies Helen and Louisa: he had no son, and his wife had been
+dead some years.
+
+When there happened to be no company at the castle the young ladies felt
+it decidedly dull. It was true they had no end of china, old and new,
+foreign and of home manufacture; they had a gallery of paintings
+worth--it is better not to say how much--but the work of old masters and
+new, besides ancestors looking at them from every wall; they had
+drawing-rooms swarming with every unnecessary of life; they had the
+spacious and lofty hall with armor and swords and spears and shields,
+"all useful," as an auctioneer would say--"all useful, gentlemen, for
+decorative purposes"--with trophies of the chase in its milder home
+forms and as carried on in African or Bengal jungles; they had a library
+filled from floor to ceiling with books containing, it is to be
+presumed, the life-blood of master spirits, but they did not often tap
+the vessels. The earl himself valued his library, but he was not a
+reading man either. In short, they were in the unhappy position of
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at.
+
+
+II.
+
+At one end of the Birns village stood a house, small, not comparatively,
+but positively--a house out of which you could emerge and be
+astonished--if you were young or had anything of the genius which is
+always young--at Birns Castle, which is greatly to be preferred to
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at, as has
+been remarked by a high authority in connection with another castle.
+There was no dullness in this house, although only four people lived in
+it, but they were all busy always. It was surrounded by a wall which
+enclosed not only the house, but a garden, a miniature courtyard and a
+stable: the premises were small, but complete and compact, and the
+owners were very well pleased with them. On the gate leading to the
+house was a brass plate with the name "Dr. Brunton" on it. He was the
+doctor of the place, and had only recently settled in it: he was young
+and enthusiastic. If a man wants to spend and to be spent in doing good,
+he has every opportunity as a country doctor, but if he wants to make
+money, he has no opportunity at all. However, people who are young and
+enthusiastic don't think much about money, and Dr. Brunton did not, nor
+did his sister, who lived with him and attended to affairs in-doors.
+They had one female servant and a man for the stable and garden.
+
+They were very happy, this brother and sister--happy to be together, for
+they had no very near relations, and they suited each other well; and
+happy because they had not been accustomed to great things, and were not
+ambitious. Of matrimony neither of them had ever thought, at least on
+their own account, or if they had it was as a possible thing in the far
+distance. Happy, busy, satisfied people don't readily think of change,
+and certainly they don't seek for it; but it may come to them from very
+unexpected quarters.
+
+Mary Brunton had a young lady friend who visited her now and then, but
+it never occurred to her as at all likely that this friend of hers and
+her brother would draw together. If the idea had struck her, it is
+difficult to say whether she would have been pleased or displeased--a
+little of both, perhaps: she would have known that she ought to be
+pleased, but she would not have enjoyed being supplanted in her
+brother's affections, as she could not have helped feeling she would be.
+
+Miss Robertson herself, the young lady in question, was not little and
+dark, with a talent for keeping every one right and sacrificing herself
+on all hands; neither was she tall and fair and handsome, with manners
+petulant and somewhat haughty; but she had one quality which is rather
+coming into fashion among heroines--namely, pliable affections.
+
+    How happy could she be with either, were t' other dear charmer away!
+
+When visiting at The Birns she could be exceedingly happy with Dr.
+Brunton: she had a great admiration for him, and having heard him spoken
+of as a rising man, and a series of clever papers which he had
+contributed to a medical journal having got unqualified praise, she was
+disposed to appreciate him, being one of the many people who can always
+appreciate what has been appreciated. Very likely, Dr. Brunton might
+have secured her and her fortune--which was not a trifle, and would have
+been a large addition to his income--if he had tried to do so, but he
+did not try: her attractions, personal and otherwise, did not strike him
+at all. It might have been well if they had: at least it is
+possible--one can't tell. She made a good wife in an ordinary way to the
+man who got her, and a good wife in an ordinary way is a blessing. A
+man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good
+dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the
+comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with
+the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too
+high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt
+to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day
+comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. Perhaps this
+is the reason that good wives in an ordinary way are so thickly sown,
+for which let us be truly thankful. But, though Miss Robertson had not
+by any means embarked the whole of her affections in one venture, she
+would not have objected to making some impression on her host, and if
+she had, it is possible, as has been said, that it might have been well
+for him.
+
+As the doctor went in at his gate one day he found a gypsy-looking woman
+at the front door selling, or endeavoring to sell, baskets to Miss
+Robertson; but that young lady had the good sense never to buy what she
+did not need, and also she had an idea of the value of household
+articles (both qualifications of the good wife in an ordinary way), and
+knew that the woman was asking three prices for her goods: at least, in
+the end she was ready and even anxious to take a third of what she had
+first named as the price of her wares. And as Dr. Brunton came on the
+scene she was saying, "Or if ye hae ony auld coat o' the maister's, I'll
+gie ye the choice o' my baskets for 't."
+
+"What is it? What are you about?" said the doctor as he came toward
+them.
+
+"I was just sayin' to yer wife, sir, that if--"
+
+"My wife!" said Dr. Brunton, laughing: "I have no wife, and don't want
+one."
+
+"Ay but, sir," said the woman, taking the solemn oracular tone of a
+sibyl, being in the habit of combining fortune-telling with
+basket-selling if she thought she saw an opportunity, "it'll no be as ye
+like: it'll be as it's ordained. A bonnie lassie'll maybe ask ye yet,
+an' ye'll no say na; an' I could tell ye mair about it if ye want to
+hear."
+
+"Come, move off," said the doctor, tossing a coin to her, "and try some
+better trade."
+
+"If I had been a beauty," said Miss Robertson, "I should have thought
+the woman personal, and have taken offence."
+
+"Why," said he, looking at her as if to form an opinion, "you're well
+enough."
+
+Now in her heart Miss Robertson thought she looked considerably better
+than well enough, but Dr. Brunton was honest and said just what he
+thought.
+
+"Well enough for what?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, well enough in the way of looks, I mean."
+
+"But not so intensely beautiful as to be justified in making a
+matrimonial offer?"
+
+"You can exercise your discretion as to that."
+
+"Indiscretion perhaps?" she said.
+
+"Either," said he.
+
+
+III.
+
+"I think, Mary," Miss Robertson said to her friend, "you don't need to
+be afraid of your brother marrying in a hurry."
+
+"Afraid?" said Mary.
+
+"Yes. Now, confess you wouldn't like it. You would not like to be
+shunted, you know."
+
+"Well I should not, but I should like to see him happy, and if he got a
+good wife--"
+
+"Ay, but what wife would you think good enough for him? There's the
+rub."
+
+"I hope he'll be wisely guided," Mary said.
+
+"So do I; but, as I said, I don't think you need be afraid: he won't be
+in a hurry--he does not even care for a flirtation."
+
+"Oh no: my brother is always in earnest whatever he does--in thorough
+earnest. I don't think he could even imagine such a thing as a
+flirtation."
+
+"Well, he is very much stupider than I take him to be if he couldn't."
+
+"He is not stupid: it is the want of stupidity or silliness that makes
+trifling of that kind impossible to him," said Mary.
+
+"It's a pity," her friend said. "What's the use of taking things so
+seriously? I think a little flirtation a nice amusement, very much
+suited to young people."
+
+"To some young people: I should not like to try it. I should be sure to
+burn my fingers."
+
+"Singe your heart, you mean; but it goes off in a little, I suppose, for
+I can't speak from experience."
+
+"No, I trust not."
+
+"Do you know," said Miss Robertson, "that I have a great ambition for
+your brother? I think it a thousand pities that he should settle here. I
+am far more ambitious for him than you are, or than I believe he is for
+himself."
+
+"It seemed the best opening that offered at the time," said Mary.
+
+"A far inferior man would suit this place just as well. He'll work
+himself to death, and nobody be the wiser or the better, whereas if he
+had been in town he would have come to the surface, and might have been
+driving his carriage shortly. That little thick-set, red-haired,
+bulldog-looking man that was here the other night--Dr. What's-his-name,
+your nearest medical neighbor?--that's the kind of man for a country
+doctor. He has the bodily strength and the rough-and-ready manners for
+the place: he is not too bright or good for human nature's daily drugs.
+Were you present when he told about his attendance on Sir James Grieve,
+the great man of his district?"
+
+"No, I did not hear him speak of that."
+
+"Sir James had a cold, and there was an ado made about it as if there
+had not been another man in the world. The doctor was nights in the
+house, and there were consultations and forms and ceremonies, and as
+many fykes, he said, and his time was uselessly taken up, and other
+patients neglected; and he could not charge at all in proportion. Even
+as it was, Sir James went over every item of his account singly, and had
+it explained. Imagine your brother going through all that if the earl of
+Birndale takes a cold!"
+
+"He would not go through it: he would give what attendance he thought
+necessary, and if his charge were called in question he would decline
+payment altogether: that's what he would do."
+
+"And how would it work, do you think?"
+
+"It would work well: upright, honorable dealing always works well in the
+long run."
+
+"But in the short? Why, the displeasure of the earl would be enough to
+ruin him. Upright, honorable conduct is often its own reward. Now, our
+little red-haired friend can put his manners in a strait-jacket for a
+time and accommodate himself to the whims of the gentry; and he is not
+squeamish in money-matters, so that he gets money, and enough of it."
+
+"James is very contented here, and he likes better to live in the
+country than in the town: so do I, but I must say I could wish him to
+achieve reputation; it may be wrong, but I wish it;" and her eyes
+sparkled.
+
+"Wrong!" said Miss Robertson: "it's perfectly right, and what he should
+do and will do; only, as I said, I think it a pity he settled here."
+
+"I like reputation," said Mary, "because it is the result of great
+ability well and thoroughly used: I hope mine is not a vulgar ambition."
+
+"Oh dear, no!" said Miss Robertson; "but a quack has often a far greater
+reputation than an honest man."
+
+"Well, but people are always known sooner or later."
+
+"Yes, sooner or later," echoed Miss Robertson: "I hope your brother will
+be known sooner."
+
+"Do you know," said Mary, "we are so happy as we are that it is a shame
+to wish for anything better or different: I really don't know two
+happier people."
+
+"Just allow me to be a third: I am very happy too. The idea of calling
+this world a vale of tears!"
+
+"By the way," said Mary, "did you see the Ladies Moor ride past to-day?
+It is the first time I have seen them. I think I never saw such a face
+as the youngest has: they say her sister, the duchess of Dover, is a
+great beauty, but surely she can't be more lovely than Lady Louisa."
+
+"Yes, I met them when I was walking, and I was as much struck as you: I
+am sure they don't get their beauty from their father: he is a
+coarse-looking man."
+
+"I don't know where they get it, but they have it, certainly," said
+Mary: "that girl will drive some people crazy yet."
+
+"Do you think beauty has so much power?" asked Miss Robertson.
+
+"Oh, power! I know nothing like it: it is an intense pleasure to me to
+see a face like Lady Louisa's."
+
+"And yet beauty has not brought happiness to the duchess of Dover."
+
+"We need not moralize about it," said Mary. "She is unhappy, not because
+of her beauty, but in spite of it; besides, though she and her husband
+don't get on together, she may have other sources of happiness. It would
+give me great happiness to know that people got pleasure by merely
+looking at me."
+
+"Her Grace of Dover may have got accustomed to that kind of pleasure by
+this time. I hope her sister may have a happier lot: it must be horridly
+provoking to be a duchess and unhappy," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"'Provoking' is hardly the word for the situation, I think," said Mary.
+
+"To seem to have a thing and not to have it is very provoking," Miss
+Robertson said; "besides, other people may hope for some turn of affairs
+that will make things better, but what can she hope for? Why, she has
+everything this world can give."
+
+"Her case seems a very sad one--all glitter and no gold," Miss Brunton
+said.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Dr. Brunton had been attending an old woman who kept one of the gates of
+the castle-grounds and lived in the lodge. It was the least frequented
+of all the entrances to the castle, and the least important. The gate
+was rustic, and the lodge was rustic and thatched, and looked like a big
+beehive, standing as it did at the corner of a fir plantation, the trees
+coming up almost to its walls and overshadowing it entirely. It seemed
+an eerie, solitary place for one lone woman to inhabit, but she had been
+there for many years, and, whatever she had or wanted, time had come and
+time had gone. It was a place where you might have thought Death would
+have called early any day if he was passing, in case he might forget it
+altogether; but he had not, and not only did he not forget it, but he
+had come to this house months ago, and hovered about since as if he had
+nothing to do elsewhere, or as if he could not have despatched his
+business in a moment. At this very time he was seizing some of the great
+ones of the earth with little ceremony, for rank and wealth can't keep
+him waiting in an anteroom till they are ready to receive him: if they
+could, he might get leave to wait long enough. How was it worth his
+while to look in on this poor woman every night and show her his face as
+king of terrors, and yet hang back from enforcing his rights?
+
+Another elderly woman, lonely like herself, had been got to wait on her.
+Women of this kind are not scarce: as life closes in on them they drift
+away into little remote houses in the country, or into single rooms up
+three or four stairs in towns, like the leaves of autumn that have had
+their spring and summer, and are only waiting for the kindly mother
+earth to absorb them again. It looks but a dreary last chapter in their
+lives, yet it may not be so. In one such instance, at least, which had
+been utterly obscure and unknown but that it stood within the charmed
+circle of genius, it was not so--that of Christophine, the eldest sister
+of Schiller, who, after a self-denying life, died the last survivor of
+her family in her ninety-first year, having lived in the loneliness of
+widowhood for thirty years on the slenderest of means, yet, we are told,
+"in a noble, humbly admirable, and even happy and contented manner;" and
+there are many such women. But Bell Thomson, the keeper of this outlying
+lodge of the earl's, had no chance of the bull's eye from the lantern of
+genius throwing her into a strong permanent light, nor had the friend
+who had come to be with her. Happily, the pathetic in their
+circumstances did not strike themselves as it might strike others, and
+no doubt they had their own interests and enjoyments. At this time they
+looked forward to the doctor's daily visit, not merely in the
+expectation of gathering hope and comfort from his words, but because
+they liked the man himself: he was kind and courteous even to poor old
+women, and it was a break in the continuous monotony of their lives.
+
+It chanced on one occasion that the doctor did not get the length of the
+lodge till toward the gloaming, having been occupied the whole day: he
+was tired, and rather reluctant to hear the minute history of Bell's
+sensations for the last twenty-four hours, but he did drive up to the
+lodge, and, leaving his gig at the gate, walked in. "How is this?" he
+said to Bell: "are you alone? what's become of your nurse?"
+
+"Oh, she had to gang hame for an hour or twa, but I'm no my lane: a
+lassie offered to bide wi' me till Ann cam back."
+
+"That's right," said the doctor, and he talked for a little. "Now," he
+said, "you're better to-day than you were yesterday, just admit that."
+
+"Weel, I'm nae waur, but, doctor, ye aye see me at my best, come when ye
+like. Whether it's you comin' in that sets me up a wee I dinna ken, but
+I'm aye lighter when ye're here than ony other time."
+
+"I must try and act the other way," he said: "it won't do for me to
+rival my own medicine."
+
+He turned round and saw standing with her back to him, and looking out
+at the little window, a girl, apparently the daughter of one of the
+neighboring hinds, as farm-servants who live in the cottages on a farm
+are called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short
+enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that
+were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton
+short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her
+neck. This was her dress--the dress common to female farm-servants,
+which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all
+the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a thing
+of the past now, the more's the pity! Her hair was all drawn behind and
+twisted up at the back of her head, where it was fastened by a little
+common horn comb: she had also a string of amber glass beads round her
+neck.
+
+This girl turned round and looked at the doctor with a simple stare of
+curiosity, such as her class fix on a stranger.
+
+The doctor was startled, he almost uttered a low cry of admiration: the
+face was perfect, heavenly, indescribable.
+
+Bell, who was sitting up in bed supported by pillows, said, "Isn't she a
+bonnie lassie, doctor?"
+
+"Hoot!" said the girl--"hoot, Bell! that's nae news. Could ye no tell us
+something we dinna ken?"
+
+From some lips this might have been an impertinent remark: from hers it
+had the most piquant charm of simplicity.
+
+The doctor, having recovered from his first thrill of surprise, said,
+"Where do you live, my good girl?"
+
+"Wi' my faither, sir," she said simply.
+
+"Who is your father?" he asked.
+
+"He is ane o' our neighbors," Bell answered.
+
+"Just up the gate a bit," the girl said.
+
+"Over at Claygates?" said the doctor.
+
+"A wee bit farrer yont, sir," the girl said, and disappeared into an
+inner room.
+
+"I wonder I never saw her before," the doctor said to his patient.
+
+"Weel, she's worth seeing: she's--"
+
+But the rustic beauty reappeared, and Bell did not speak further.
+
+Dr. Brunton's visit had exceeded its ordinary limits, and he rose to go.
+The girl opened the door for him, and as he was passing out he said to
+her, "Are you often here?"
+
+"Gey an' often: Bell's an auld friend o' my mither's, and I run over to
+speir for her aye when I've time."
+
+"Shall you be here to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, ay: I'll be here the morn and the next day, and maybe the day
+after: I'll be often here as lang as I'm at hame."
+
+"And where will you be when you are not at home?"
+
+"Weel, sir"--and she hesitated a little--"weel, sir, where can the like
+o' me be but at service? We hae nae muckle choice, folk like us."
+
+"Choice!" thought the doctor. "At service! Why, to be served by a being
+wearing such a face must be like being waited on by an angel: she might
+have her choice of the crowned heads of Europe."
+
+He sprang into his gig: all his sense of fatigue had vanished, and a new
+and strange feeling had taken possession of him.
+
+"And they are going to send her to service!" he said to himself. "What a
+shame!"
+
+And yet he knew he was unreasonable. As she herself had said, what
+choice was there in her rank of life? and it was only her beautiful face
+that made it seem at all out of place; but what an _only_ that was!
+"Why," he thought, "I have been five and twenty years in the world, and
+I have never seen a face to match it--never!"
+
+At dinner that day Dr. Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till
+his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.
+
+"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."
+
+"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as
+I ever saw."
+
+"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day--a hind's daughter--so
+beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty
+is a thing to be spoken about."
+
+"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please
+another," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"But she is not good-looking--I tell you no one would speak of good
+looks in connection with her--she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and
+she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and
+bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants
+education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite
+uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently,
+but she has no want of natural ability: everything she said proved
+that."
+
+"I am afraid you have fallen in love," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"I am afraid of it," he said.
+
+"I think hardly," said his sister. "I think you have more sense, James,
+than to be taken with a pretty face belonging to a young lady who can
+neither read nor write."
+
+"Millions of people can read and write," said he, "but how many have a
+face like hers?"
+
+"I must find her out and have a look at her," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"Wait, James," said Mary, "till you see Lady Louisa."
+
+"Lady Louisa may be anything she likes," said he, "but it is impossible
+she can match this peasant-girl without a single grace of dress or
+culture. I never saw anything like her--never."
+
+"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to
+be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful
+gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."
+
+"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one
+would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she
+does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's
+shop at least by this time."
+
+"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.
+
+
+V.
+
+On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the
+lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be
+bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this
+visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had
+floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the
+most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the
+celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened
+patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her
+out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself
+that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty
+sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on
+the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and
+slightly sheepish in manner as before.
+
+"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.
+
+"Na, I couldna coom."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."
+
+"What do you do? Can you read well?"
+
+"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the
+newspapers."
+
+"Can you write?"
+
+"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae
+time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of
+the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window--innocently,
+simply, appealingly, the doctor felt--and from that moment he was a lost
+man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.
+
+"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to
+service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"
+
+"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be
+content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun
+bide wi' my faither."
+
+"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"
+
+"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."
+
+The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.
+
+"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"
+
+"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."
+
+"And what do they do?"
+
+"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when
+she's awa'."
+
+"She can't be so beautiful as you?"
+
+"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much
+simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the
+window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put
+on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were
+married."
+
+"Are you fond of beads?"
+
+"Oh, ay--they set a body off, divn't they?"
+
+"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near
+you."
+
+"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."
+
+"I always speak the truth."
+
+"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's
+with childish simplicity.
+
+"You can trust me?" he said.
+
+"What about, sir?"
+
+"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"
+
+"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."
+
+"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"
+
+"Oh, far away--away up on the English hand."
+
+"What is her husband?"
+
+"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's
+thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."
+
+"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of
+this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse
+working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her
+days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not
+be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made
+him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to
+some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing"
+her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this
+man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not
+have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and
+reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen
+to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard.
+He was in a dream.
+
+After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was
+sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My
+bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."
+
+"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.
+
+"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been
+out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching,
+followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight,
+and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals
+they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him
+and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it
+piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly
+roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing
+till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the
+girl with the amber beads!
+
+Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for
+Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his
+house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the
+passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the
+Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?--did you?"
+
+"Yes," he said shortly.
+
+"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."
+
+"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or
+two unless it's something urgent."
+
+Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think:
+he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he
+had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had
+purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to
+love and protect while he lived,--she had disappeared like the mists of
+the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the
+daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been
+laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it
+was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to
+be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she
+superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter
+of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the
+pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of
+phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone
+it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was
+excessively clever, down to twisting her hands in her apron, which she
+was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when
+it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would
+at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from
+heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no
+doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once:
+his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could
+not follow.
+
+He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been
+taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the
+world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If
+only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady
+Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to
+him--when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look
+at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not
+the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might
+possibly win and wear!
+
+While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door
+and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and
+read:
+
+                                               "THE CASTLE, Tuesday.
+
+     "DEAR DOCTOR BRUNTON: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make
+     it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at
+     the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be
+     able to read this.
+
+     "I am yours sincerely,
+
+     "LOUISA MOOR."
+
+
+
+He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly
+and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it
+possible--was it in the least degree possible--that she really cared for
+him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see
+when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.
+
+He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the
+amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to
+his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said
+somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."
+
+"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring
+ever so little.
+
+"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of
+the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in
+her short-gown and amber beads--"do you know that my visits here are of
+no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is
+certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more
+seldom than I have done."
+
+"Will you?" she said softly.
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"No you won't," she said pleadingly--"not if I wish you to come."
+
+"Do you wish me to come?"
+
+"Certainly I wish it."
+
+"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"
+
+"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her
+well attended to."
+
+The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his
+mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll
+see her every day," meaning his patient.
+
+Which he did--not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted
+in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the
+peasant-girl, or in any other rôle she chose to assume: it was an
+amusement she was fond of.
+
+Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he
+called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he
+felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what
+chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did
+not--But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had
+matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed.
+Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for
+love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain
+man--he was the reverse--but he held that human beings were men and
+women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank
+should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the
+corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which
+his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.
+
+One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to
+him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she
+might be back in a little.
+
+"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane,
+after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour,"
+the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like
+o' her?"
+
+"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat
+down by the bedside, and did _not_ listen to the history of Bell's last
+severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement
+outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he
+saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the
+impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain
+snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled,
+and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A
+basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for
+her visit.
+
+When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a
+puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"
+
+She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was
+moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.
+
+"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"
+
+"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"
+
+"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be
+thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."
+
+"Then how do you live?"
+
+"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle
+tea or the like--that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa:
+she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"
+
+"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your
+comfort."
+
+"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket.
+Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."
+
+The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a
+carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw
+what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and
+passed on.
+
+The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady
+Louisa came in.
+
+"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not
+have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my
+money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it,
+as it is."
+
+"I don't understand," he said.
+
+"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"
+
+"Yes: was _she_ an impostor?"
+
+"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it
+on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and
+wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her
+head like the pearled old woman.
+
+"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.
+
+"It was the truth," the doctor said--"nothing but the truth."
+
+"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"
+
+
+VII.
+
+Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady
+Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's
+house."
+
+"Why?" said Lady Helen.
+
+"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a
+place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village
+street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."
+
+"They may easily be as happy as people who live in big houses, but what
+excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want
+anything?"
+
+"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."
+
+"Won't it seem impertinent?"
+
+"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the
+doctor won't be in at this hour."
+
+They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which
+was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of
+the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to
+his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would _she_ be there or
+would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty,
+but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety:
+she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point
+of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure
+you would be out at this hour."
+
+"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."
+
+"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know
+everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely
+to be in or out."
+
+"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."
+
+"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be
+accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for
+speaking nonsense--"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should
+like to know her."
+
+"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house.
+I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house
+should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the
+public two days a week all summer--Wednesdays and Saturdays, I
+think--and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If
+not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as
+sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."
+
+"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for
+jailer--an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible
+for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."
+
+"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.--You must not believe all
+she says, Dr. Brunton."
+
+"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"
+
+"Why do you _not_ want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.
+
+"I do want to see it."
+
+"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see
+ours--curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."
+
+"This, then, is our chief apartment."
+
+"You live, move and have your being here?"
+
+"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."
+
+"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms,
+and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."
+
+Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few
+minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her
+brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were
+standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as
+if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."
+
+"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he
+said.
+
+In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the
+earl to dine at the castle.
+
+The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh
+blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his
+very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them
+before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did
+not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much
+in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so
+must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both
+interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the
+earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace
+in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require
+strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so
+that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many
+instances--which only of late had stuck to his memory--of ladies of rank
+who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his
+thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of
+gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should
+this not be his case? Why, indeed?
+
+It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first
+staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe
+him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way;
+and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the
+boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the
+estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with
+the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his
+question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of
+hope.
+
+"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got
+home--"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you
+to marry her yet?"
+
+"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa
+might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."
+
+Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what
+kind of an evening had you?"
+
+"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is
+well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing
+gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are
+the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully
+interesting."
+
+The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so
+well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it
+please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every
+day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its
+level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people
+whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She
+lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a
+child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered
+the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the
+end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the
+atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his
+afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and
+hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in
+the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller
+air.
+
+"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the
+door, just to see how things are looking?"
+
+"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would
+she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.
+
+"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run
+home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."
+
+"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you:
+I have a visit to make near the castle."
+
+"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.
+
+They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the
+castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the
+doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.
+
+"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again?
+Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town
+yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And was it good?"
+
+"It is like, I believe."
+
+"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to
+see it."
+
+"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of
+collecting the photos of people I know."
+
+They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had
+come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit
+down--neither proposed that--but they stood a moment at this spot. The
+waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as
+great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living
+orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of
+savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of
+masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly
+ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but
+as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the
+waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed
+leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it
+that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank
+behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic
+Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and
+weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent,
+it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the
+afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but
+the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the
+dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it
+looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other
+side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early
+part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead;
+innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the
+azure dome.
+
+"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and
+fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the
+flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"
+
+"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.
+
+"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."
+
+"Should you?"
+
+"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of
+traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all
+romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him,
+and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the
+stream.
+
+"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty--"stay only a moment!" But
+she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic
+wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand
+to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared
+through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.
+
+"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.
+
+Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease
+and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to
+earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every
+obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when
+he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa
+seemed the most wild and improbable dream.
+
+He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph--had she
+not almost asked for it?--and as he did it he felt that according as it
+should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great
+wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the
+probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was,
+the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have
+prevented sleep.
+
+In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the
+lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the
+soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a
+tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed
+since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the
+fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was
+significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.
+
+It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with
+the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being
+over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?
+
+
+VIII.
+
+At the very time Dr. Brunton was thinking of this, the family at the
+castle were sitting at breakfast, and the letter-bag came in. As the
+earl was looking over the letters he said, "Here's a thick despatch for
+you, Loo: open it, and tell me what it is?" She opened it.
+
+"Well?" said her father.
+
+"It is a likeness of the doctor," she said.
+
+"The doctor! what doctor?"
+
+"Oh, Dr. Brunton--he who lives in the village. He has been here several
+times, you remember?"
+
+"I remember perfectly. How is his likeness sent to you? who sends it?"
+
+"Himself probably, but I have not read the letter yet."
+
+"Don't read it: hand it to me," he said sternly.
+
+The duchess and Lady Helen were listening to this dialogue, and watching
+the rising wrath of their father and the cool, calm bearing of Loo.
+
+The earl read the letter, then rose and flung it and the carte into the
+fire. "The man is a vain fool," he said--"a perfect fool!"
+
+"I don't see that, papa. I should have wished to have his likeness: I am
+not sure that I did not say so to him. I sometimes meet him in the
+cottages of the people about."
+
+"Do you know the kind of insult you have brought upon yourself?"
+
+"I have brought no insult on myself, and I know of none."
+
+"In that letter he asked you to be his wife."
+
+"The thing is not possible," she said, starting from her chair: "he
+must be mad. _I_ his wife! Why, he'll want the moon down to put into his
+gig-lanterns next."
+
+"If it were not for the laws of the country," said the earl, his face
+red with wrath--"if it were not for the laws of the country, I would
+shoot that man as I would shoot a partridge."
+
+Lady Louisa rose and left the room: her sister Mary followed her. "Loo,"
+she said, "you have been doing wrong."
+
+"Not that I know of, Mary."
+
+"Dr. Brunton would never have written or sent his carte if he had not
+been led on to do it somehow."
+
+"He never was led on by me: he may have been by his own vanity; only I
+did not think he was so stupid."
+
+"I don't say he was wise, but I say you have been foolish: you have done
+a thing you had no right to do."
+
+"I have done nothing. Is it reasonable to blame me because a man wrote a
+foolish letter? His vanity is egregious: to think I was going to forget
+my rank to marry him! I always gave him credit for more brains."
+
+"Maybe you thought your rank entitled you to amuse yourself as you
+liked."
+
+"No, I didn't, but I certainly thought it enough to prevent him
+forgetting himself so far as he seems to have done. I wish I had seen
+that letter: I wonder how he expressed himself? It is a ridiculous
+mistake, but I'll soon put it right."
+
+"To love, and have your love flung back with contempt, is something more
+than a ridiculous mistake. It is--" and the duchess stopped with a
+quaver in her voice, and failed to go on: perhaps she was speaking from
+experience that she was so strongly affected.
+
+In the afternoon, at the usual time, Lady Louisa set out to walk to the
+lodge; not that she did not know of what had happened, for she had heard
+of that, but she thought it not unlikely that Dr. Brunton might be there
+on the chance of meeting her, and the sooner this misunderstanding was
+put right the better, especially as they were on the eve of leaving
+Birns for London, and she might as well make things straight before
+going. She was right in her calculations: Dr. Brunton was walking on
+the road outside the park-gate, in the hope that Lady Louisa, not
+knowing of the old woman's death, might come to visit her as before.
+
+She came up as frankly as was her custom and shook hands, and there was
+no unusual expression in her face whatever; but the doctor had too much
+at stake, was feeling far too keenly, to be capable of sharp observation
+at this time, and he said, hardly knowing what he was saying, "My
+patient here does not need me any longer."
+
+"Yes, I heard of her death," Lady Louisa said.
+
+A great flash of joy thrilled him: she had come here, then, for no other
+end than to meet him. He had difficulty in controlling himself. "You
+have got my letter?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I got it."
+
+He was silent as he stood before her.
+
+"I got it," she repeated, "but I did not read it: papa took it from me
+and read it, and put it and the carte into the fire. I won't tell you
+what he said, but I agreed with him, and came to say that you had made a
+ridiculous mistake."
+
+He was still silent.
+
+"You knew," she went on--"you must have known from the first--that I
+cared no more for you than I do for the shoe below my foot. Could you
+think for a moment that I would demean myself by coming here to meet you
+or any one else? Could you think it? It is impossible. That is all I
+have to say."
+
+"All?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes, all. But I am sorry you should have made such a mistake--very
+sorry."
+
+"Thank you," he said, bowing his head; and they each turned and went
+different ways.
+
+Dr. Brunton went home. "Is Miss Robertson still here?" he said to his
+sister.
+
+"To be sure she is: she was not speaking of going away."
+
+"Then send her away--send her away as soon as you can."
+
+"Indeed! Have you taken a dislike to her?"
+
+"No, but I want to be alone, in my own house at least."
+
+"Oh, James, has anything happened?" she said anxiously, struck by his
+look and tone.
+
+"Nothing--nothing but what has happened often before, I dare say"--and
+he laughed in a way painful to his sister to hear--"to other men, and is
+not much thought of; but my organization is different. Mary, I feel as
+if I shall lose my reason: I am dazed;" and he burst into tears.
+
+Mary was dazed for the moment too: in all her life she had never seen
+her brother like this. The peculiar gleam in his eye was altogether new
+to her: could there be truth in what he said? Was it the glitter of
+insanity that shone in his eyes? But she could not admit the idea.
+
+In a small place like Birns the frequent meeting of Lady Louisa and Dr.
+Brunton had not passed unnoticed, and had, of course, been the subject
+of remark, and Mary guessed what had happened, and felt sure that Lady
+Louisa had been guilty of heartless thoughtlessness, to give it the
+mildest name. Oh, how from her inmost heart she wished they had never
+seen her, or that she had exercised her folly on some one better able to
+bear the consequences of it! How to commit the inhospitality of
+suggesting her friend's departure Mary did not know, but it chanced that
+Miss Robertson proposed it herself, having received a letter which made
+her eager to get home; and the brother and sister were left alone to do
+battle with the threatened calamity.
+
+For months Dr. Brunton struggled like a man against the dark cloud that
+was settling down upon him, but at last he said, "It's all in vain,
+Mary; my mind is going from me; my memory is gone already; I forget
+everything, even the most important engagement; and when a man told me
+of a sad death to-day I burst out laughing: I could not help it. Mary,"
+he said in a kind of cowering whisper, "I know what the end will be."
+
+"No, you don't: no one knows what the end of anything will be. We'll
+leave this place, James; we'll go and travel about; we'll sell off
+everything--I'll manage that--and when you are better you can begin
+life again elsewhere."
+
+"Take me away from this place," he said with a kind of cry: "I'm not fit
+to go about among people."
+
+And they went away, and moved from place to place, but still the malady
+grew, till at last, unutterably mournful as it was, Mary felt it a
+relief when he ceased to be capable of watching the progress of it
+himself: his misery at least was over. Thereafter he slipped into
+perfect mindlessness, happy and harmless, but hopelessly mindless and
+vacant. Meantime, Lady Louisa Moor made a very brilliant marriage to a
+marquis, the eldest son of a duke, the account of which Mary Brunton
+read in the newspapers while watching her brother's face with its
+meaningless smile. How her heart swelled! and she burst into a passion
+of weeping. She threw her arm round him as if to shield him from evil as
+she said, "Oh, Jamie, nothing can reach you now--nothing." He looked at
+her with the look that was always so touching, as if he were vainly
+trying to remember or comprehend: that occasional look of effort was the
+only remnant left of all his powers of mind.
+
+The duchess of Dover asked her sister the marchioness one day if she
+knew what had become of Dr. Brunton.
+
+"No," said she, "I don't. He has left the Birns, I know."
+
+"Shortly after he wrote that letter to you he became insane," said the
+duchess: she put the information in that form, fearful that her sister
+would be overwhelmed with self-reproach.
+
+"He was insane before he wrote it," said the young marchioness: "only
+insanity could excuse such presumption. Men don't go mad from
+disappointed love, or women either, I believe, unless there's a
+predisposition to madness. He must have had that, and any other accident
+in his life would have brought it out as well as his foolish fancy for
+me. If he had been thrown from his gig, or had two or three of his
+patients die on his hands at once, the effect would have been the same;"
+and she passed easily to other topics.
+
+The marchioness was wonderfully beautiful, and she was clever and
+ambitious, and took and kept a very conspicuous place in her sphere; but
+her amusements were sometimes costly in their nature, whether she
+thought so or not. THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."
+
+
+
+
+WALPURGIS NIGHT.
+
+
+      Three travelers making haste,
+    And whisp'ring of some errand of their own,
+    With arms enlinked and garments backward blown,
+      Across a twilight waste.
+
+      Three gibbets dumb and tall,
+    Against the east, with scrawny arms, outlined;
+    Far off a lonely tower, left behind,
+      With silver cross and ball.
+
+      And distant, round and dim,
+    Behind the waste, behind the gibbets high,
+    The witches' moon, with filmy bloodshot eye,
+      Peering above the rim!
+
+    W. W. YOUNG.
+
+
+
+
+FRÉDÉRIC LEMAITRE.
+
+
+"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw," wrote Dickens from Paris
+twenty years ago, "I saw last night at the Ambigu." The actor was
+Frédéric Lemaitre, and the part he played was that of Georges de Germany
+in the drama of _Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler_. At this time
+(February, 1855) Lemaitre was already so old a man that Dickens was
+surprised to see him still playing, and the part was one which the actor
+had created originally twenty-eight years before that. He first played
+it at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre in 1827, close upon half a century
+ago. "Never," continues Dickens, "did I see anything in art so exaltedly
+horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so well made up and so
+light and active that he really looked sufficiently young. But in the
+last two, when he had grown old and miserable, he did the finest things,
+I really believe, that are within the power of acting. Two or three
+times a great cry of horror went all round the house. When he met in the
+inn-yard the traveler whom he murders, and first saw his money, the
+manner in which the crime came into his head--and eyes--was as truthful
+as it was terrific. This traveler, being a good fellow, gives him wine.
+You should see the dim remembrance of his better days that comes over
+him as he takes the glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he
+were going to touch the other man's, or do some airy thing with it, and
+then stops and flings the contents down his hot throat, as if he were
+pouring it into a limekiln. But this was nothing to what follows after
+he has done the murder, and comes home with a basket of provisions, a
+ragged pocket full of money, and a badly-washed, bloody right hand,
+which his little girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had
+hurt his hand, his going aside, turning himself round, and looking over
+all his clothes for spots was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really
+scared one. He called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when
+he saw the color was one of the things which brought out the curious cry
+I have spoken of from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody
+mist, and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything
+except making his fortune by staking this money and a faint dull kind of
+love for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's self by
+saying enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him
+come near its finest points in anything else. He said two things in a
+way that would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his wife,
+when he has exultingly shown her the money, and she has asked him how he
+got it--'I found it;' and the other to his old companion and tempter,
+when he charged him with having killed that traveler, and he suddenly
+went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't
+I who murdered him--it was misery!' And such a dress! such a face! and,
+above all, such an extraordinarily guilty, wicked thing as he made of a
+knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick from the moment
+when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write pages
+about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got half boastful
+of that walking-staff to himself, and half afraid of it, and didn't know
+whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end, or to hate it
+and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the inn-yard
+drinking with the traveler; and this horrible stick got between them
+like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he could put
+the money to."
+
+It will be a surprise to many readers to learn that Frédéric Lemaitre is
+still living and still playing. On the evening of March 25, 1874, I went
+to this same old theatre of the Ambigu to see him play Feuillantin in
+_Le Portier du Numero 15_. The part is that of an old man, and the
+actor played it "in his habit as he lived," without artificial make-up
+or wig. His own long iron-gray hair floated on the air; the wrinkles in
+his old face were painted there by the hand of Time; his voice was
+cracked and broken, and his gait that of advanced age. I had formed the
+impression, beforehand, that Lemaitre was simply a tottering old wreck,
+a painful and pitiable sight; and I went to the theatre prepared to be
+saddened by the spectacle of a ruin. A ruin it was, perhaps, but what a
+grand and impressive one! The old man was magnificent! So far from
+exciting pity, he roused in me feelings of the warmest enthusiasm. So
+far from seeming to ask for sympathy, he compelled admiration by force
+of his splendid pantomime, in witnessing which one forgot he had no
+voice, or remembered it only to see in the fact a fitting feature of the
+old _portier_ he was playing. In the midst of my admiration for the
+actor, however, I studied the man himself; and I saw that he dominated
+his fellow-actors with a will of the most imperious sort. He swept along
+the action of the piece, and manipulated the rather poor company of
+actors who moved about him, with a leonine agility of movement and an
+autocratic command of the scene which showed that even in his old age he
+was no subject for patronizing sympathy. There was a meek, white-faced
+young lady who played the part of granddaughter to the old _portier_,
+and I transferred my pity to her; for the way Lemaitre hauled her hither
+and thither by her slender wrists (not in simulated rudeness, for she
+was the pet of the old _portier's_ heart, but simply in the actor's
+imperative arrangements of tableaux), and the manner in which he dragged
+her young head with his iron arms to his broad breast in affectionate
+but rough and picturesque embrace, were enough to wear on the nerves of
+the stoutest young woman; and this one was as frail in form as she was
+fair in face.
+
+A day or two later I had an opportunity of observing more closely the
+hero of fifty years of mimic life. It was in the green-room of the
+Ambigu, half an hour before the curtain rose on his fiftieth
+performance of the _portier_, and the old man was in his shirt-sleeves
+and with his apparel otherwise disordered. Learning that we were from
+America, he invited us to sit for a moment in his dressing-room, which
+adjoined the green-room, and waved us toward the door with as grand a
+gesture as if he were Hamlet saying "Lead on! I'll follow thee." The
+dressing-room was a pleasant little box (in French stage-parlance, by
+the way, a player's dressing-room is always called his _loge_), with the
+walls covered with portraits of theatrical and other celebrities. The
+impression Lemaitre made on me at this time was more that which might be
+made by an American statesman of the old school--a Clay, a Webster, an
+Adams--than that one would expect from a mere mouther of other people's
+words. However, I am wrong to apply this term to Lemaitre, who was in
+the truest sense an _author_. But of this later. He was full of a sort
+of sad dignity, and the burden of his conversation was, "I am no longer
+young." He inquired curiously concerning America, but when it was
+suggested that he should visit our country, shook his head: "No; I am
+too old to cross the sea now." The above passage from Dickens was
+referred to, but he had never heard of it: he said, however, that
+Monsieur Dickens had once sent him some novels to read, and by his tone
+did not imply that he was at all flattered by the admiration of the
+Englishman. For in truth Lemaitre was already a spoiled child of
+adulation years before Charles Dickens became famous; and now that
+Dickens was nearly four years dead, the old actor still lived, and
+remembered that every admiring adjective known to the French language
+had been showered upon himself: what mattered a few more in the English
+language? Looking in the tired, watery old eyes of the man sitting
+before me with his hands thrust deep in his pockets--and what
+magnificent, fiery, great black billiard-balls of eyes they must have
+been in his youth!--looking at the skinny folds which years had gathered
+about his aged jaws, it was still, strange to say, perfectly easy to
+realize the fascinating man Lemaitre had been in his prime, the
+tremendous power for swaying the emotions of his auditors which once
+abode in that rugged frame.
+
+Frédéric Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had
+been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the
+Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is
+easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning
+to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of
+seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his
+equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age
+of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification
+the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when
+he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the
+resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking.
+
+Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the
+boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty
+years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him
+a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be
+educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and
+began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was
+assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his
+first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du
+Crime, called the Variétés Amusantes--a theatre long since dead. They
+were playing a piece with three actors, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_. As
+in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under
+a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived
+first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her
+veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody
+jaws. The lion was Frédéric Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance
+on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got
+into a dispute in a neighboring café, and could not appear on account of
+the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him
+home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of
+mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the
+lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened
+himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you
+like."--"You?"--"I, who know the part."--"Well roared, lion!" quoth the
+manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a
+speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of
+indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most
+energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next
+night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.
+
+Yet he was at this period as handsome as Antinöus, with an elegant and
+slender but powerful figure, waving black hair, expressive and noble
+features, a beautiful complexion, wide forehead, flashing dark eyes, and
+a carriage full of grace and poetry. Rare personal beauty and
+extraordinary strength were striking physical advantages for the stage:
+the mental qualities were as yet but faintly shadowed forth.
+
+On the conclusion of his studies at the Conservatoire young Lemaitre
+sought admission to the classic Odéon Theatre, and would have failed had
+not the tragedian Talma perceived what others could not, and insisted
+that the young man had in him the making of a great actor. He made his
+"serious" début at the Odéon, and remained at this theatre five months,
+but without producing any special impression as an actor. Then removing
+to the Ambigu, he suddenly achieved a startling and brilliant success,
+and created the first of that long list of parts which have since won
+worldwide celebrity, and been played in every polite tongue, in every
+civilized land. This was Robert Macaire in _L'Auberge des Adrets_. It is
+no exaggeration to say that Lemaitre _created_ this part, though this
+verb is used in our day in very slipshod fashion. Robert Macaire was the
+creation of Lemaitre, and not of the authors of the play. At the
+rehearsals he repeatedly declared that the part was "impossible," and
+that the public would never receive it as the authors had written it.
+The event justified his opinion: the piece was hissed outrageously. But
+it was redeemed on the second night through the audacity of Lemaitre,
+who, in strolling about the streets during the day in no very pleasant
+frame of mind, racked his brains for an expedient for saving the
+fortunes of the theatre. Suddenly he perceived a strange creature
+standing before the open-air shop of a cake-seller--an outré individual,
+clad in indescribable clothing. In some former day the man's garments
+had been elegant and fashionable, but they were now dropping to pieces.
+Misery and debauchery could be read in every stain upon them, but the
+wearer seemed not to have lost a particle of his self-esteem. Standing
+proudly in a pair of boots all run down at the heel and riddled with
+holes, a greasy and misshapen felt hat perched on one ear, he daintily
+broke with the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake,
+carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as
+if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from
+the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it,
+dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up
+the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the
+flesh-and-blood reality of the conception of Robert Macaire which had
+been running through his brain during the rehearsals of the new piece.
+That evening the actor appeared on the stage with a coat, hat and boots
+modeled on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner
+of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity;
+and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like
+metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece obtained a marvelous
+success.
+
+The management of the Ambigu, appreciating the service Lemaitre had
+rendered the theatre, immediately raised his salary to a high figure,
+and from that day, as the saying is, his fortune was made. Saturday is
+the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first
+illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a
+whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces.
+Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly
+through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the
+theatre.
+
+One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit
+and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his
+refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris,
+if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the
+abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery. A
+well-known journalist of the time, counting on his success with less
+eccentric artists, called one day at Lemaitre's residence and suggested
+that the actor should smooth over the rough places of criticism by a
+liberal _douceur_. Lemaitre refused. "It is but a small matter to you,"
+said this gentle literary bandit: "a thousand or twelve hundred francs a
+year--what does so trifling a sum signify to one who has your splendid
+income? And thanks to this modest subvention you will be constantly well
+treated in my columns." To which Lemaitre replied, "Monsieur, I will not
+be eulogized for gold: other eulogies or none." Two days later a
+slashing article against Lemaitre appeared in the columns over which the
+blackmailer had control. Lemaitre made no complaint, but knowing that it
+would not be long ere his assailant would visit the green-room of the
+theatre according to French custom, he waited in patience. A night or
+two later the critic appeared. Lemaitre walked up to him, made a low
+bow, and while the crowd in the green-room were attending to see what
+would follow, slapped the fellow's face. Naturally, this liberty was
+resented by the journalist, who struck back at Lemaitre; but the actor,
+who was gifted with extraordinary muscular power, took both the man's
+hands in one of his own, and holding him thus, said to the witnesses of
+the scene, "To-morrow, if it is necessary, I will fight this
+_misérable_; but before all I desire to treat him in your presence as he
+merits--that is to say as a vulgar scoundrel." With this he dragged the
+blackmailer to the door and kicked him out.
+
+The part of Georges de Germany, which Dickens saw played in 1856, was
+Lemaitre's second great creation. Those who saw him in this part in his
+younger days so rave about it that even Dickens's warm eulogy seems cool
+in comparison. Such unheard-of developments of passion and disorder!
+such incredible fire and magnetism! such subjugation of a vast audience
+to his will!--language fails to express the rapturous accounts which
+those old Frenchmen now living who saw him then will give you with many
+a roll upward of the eyes, many a hopeless shake of head and shrug of
+shoulder and agitation of outstretched hand.
+
+Boiling over with health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre
+now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given
+Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But
+his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his
+physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which
+the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor
+can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French
+bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's
+character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's
+feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his
+fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a
+thing.
+
+There is a gray-haired and toothless old woman at present engaged in
+that menagerie of old women, the old-clo' market of the Temple in Paris,
+who might go wandering back with Lemaitre into that dead past of his if
+he wanted company. Fifty years ago she was a ruddy-cheeked young girl
+from the provinces, who had come up to Paris with a little fortune of
+thirty thousand francs, which a relative had left her. Going one night
+to the theatre where Lemaitre was playing, she became fascinated with
+Georges de Germany, and went to see him evening after evening.
+Forty-five nights in succession she attended the theatre to weep, to
+shudder and to admire, and ended by offering the actor her heart, her
+hand and her fortune. Lemaitre accepted the heart, but declined the
+hand; and as for the fortune, pooh! What did he want of the lady's
+pin-money? Nevertheless, six weeks saw the end of her little fortune,
+and left her with a quantity of elegant dresses and a few diamonds.
+Waking up one morning from her dream, she betook herself to the old
+market of the Temple, and began to try and get her money back. She is
+said to be worth a good deal more to-day than Lemaitre is.
+
+In the drama of _Faust_ Lemaitre's genius took a new development in
+creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which
+balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By
+every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to
+give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he
+could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came
+into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it
+that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our
+day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly
+flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly
+hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the
+glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave
+an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he
+walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the
+passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he
+stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the
+artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last."
+
+It does not seem wonderful at the present day that Robert Macaire or
+Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are
+so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the
+part; but he who _creates_ the idea that is afterward accepted as a
+matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In
+our day and country the actor who creates _one_ rôle in the way Lemaitre
+created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip
+Van Winkle--Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the
+parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don Cæsar de Bazan, Gennaro,
+Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to
+American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have
+played them since.
+
+When Macaire, Germany and Mephisto had successively dawned on the
+delighted consciousness of the Parisians--those most insatiate of all
+theatre-goers--Lemaitre had won the sceptre of the Paris stage. He
+reigned over the public with despotic sway, and the public adored its
+theatrical monarch. With his subjects he could do anything, take any
+liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in
+which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting
+with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as
+"harlequin's cloak"--in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass
+knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining
+it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frédéric," cried an employé: "it's the
+gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas!
+Let's see what will happen." With this he turned the knob and plunged
+the whole theatre into darkness. Two thousand Frenchmen and women cried
+out in alarm and consternation. Great was their indignation and savage
+their inquiries as to the cause of the occurrence. But no sooner were
+they informed that Lemaitre had committed this hangable feat than the
+joke seemed charming, and when he came on the stage in the following act
+they received him with bravos and joyous laughs.
+
+Lemaitre was indeed a spoiled child of the public, and his prodigious
+success began to have the effect which success often has upon us poor
+mortals. He became impatient of all restraint, jealous of all honor
+offered to his confrères. The Ambigu won him away from the Porte
+Saint-Martin after a short time, and on the stage of his first successes
+he was supported by Madame Dorval, one of the finest actresses the
+French stage has known. These two dramatic powers did wonders, and the
+public divided its applause between them. This did not suit the petted
+genius. He complained to the manager. "Your horrible _claque_ splits my
+ears," he cried in a fury: "I expect you to get rid of it at once. Or if
+not--" Before his _ultimatum_ was pronounced Madame Dorval appeared.
+"Are you crazy?" she said to the manager: "what is the use of these
+imbeciles with their hand-clapping? Drive them all away from the
+theatre, and leave the real public to its own impressions. If your
+Romans[B] do not at once disappear, I play no more."--"Nor I," said
+Lemaitre.--"So be it," said the manager: "the claque shall be
+discharged."
+
+Such a bold step in a Paris theatre was almost unheard of. What! try to
+run a theatre without the regular corps of hired applauders? The thing
+was incredible. But the leading artists demanded it, and the manager
+notified his claqueurs that their pay was stopped. That night not a
+ripple of applause disturbed the monotony of the performance. The
+public, left to itself, and accustomed to have a gang of paid worthies
+to start the applause at the right moment, applauded neither Lemaitre
+nor Dorval, nor any of the other players. "It is evident," said Lemaitre
+to himself, "that people who admire my acting fear being mistaken for
+hired claqueurs if they express their enthusiasm. I must arrange that."
+He therefore quietly caused to be planted a few judicious claqueurs
+about the house at his own expense, and that night bravos and
+hand-clappings were bestowed on Lemaitre alone. This suited the actor's
+notions to a nicety. Not so with the actress, however. "These people
+have no taste," she thought; "but that can't last." So she arranged
+privately for a small claque of her own, and that night she also was
+applauded. But this sort of game was one which the smaller players of
+the theatre could take a hand in, too. And on the third night, strange
+to say, there was applause for everything and everybody; all the
+performers had "ovations" in turn; even the ballet-girls had a share in
+the general glory so liberally bestowed. "What is the meaning of this?"
+demanded Lemaitre and Dorval of the manager: "did you not promise that
+your claque should be discharged?" The manager shrugged his shoulders.
+"My claque is discharged," said he; "and now there are, I perceive,
+three claques instead of one--yours, madame's and the whole company's.
+Nothing could be fairer."
+
+It may seem strange that our actor, who dealt so roughly with the critic
+who suggested bribery, should have condescended to pay men for applause.
+But custom regulates our sense of honor. The claque is an institution so
+openly recognized in French theatres that the proudest dramatic or lyric
+temple in Paris would not know what to do without it. Even the classic
+Théâtre Français and the frigid Odéon, which are in great part supported
+by the government, and about which hangs the purest odor of high art,
+have each a regularly organized claque, which is paid to applaud, and
+which holds its rehearsals with the same solemnity that the players do,
+in order to introduce at the proper moment a gust of hand-clapping, a
+burst of laughter, or cries of "Bravo! bravo!" There is no concealment
+whatever about their operations. The claqueurs occupy conspicuous seats
+in every theatre, and it is often quite an entertainment in itself to
+watch their goings on. The leader gives the signal to begin and the sign
+to stop; and if any man of his band applauds too idly, that man is
+openly rebuked, and instructed by vehement gesture to do his duty
+better.
+
+But, as has been said, Lemaitre was growing spoiled as a man by his
+success as an artist. He rebelled against the idea that any person
+should be admired on the scene where he was king, and he carried this
+feeling to the absurdest lengths. In one of his plays he had to bring in
+the corpse of his young brother (of the story), and the actor who played
+this part identified himself so well with the immobility of the last
+sleep that the public, struck with astonishment, broke in upon one of
+Lemaitre's finest speeches with cries of bravo for the little dead
+brother. "This is a very impertinent rascal," muttered Lemaitre, "who
+makes himself applauded in my very arms. I shall punish him for it."
+Leaning over the supposed corpse while speaking his lines, he blew into
+the dead boy's nostrils. Not a movement! Then pretending to yield to
+despair--always in consonance with the part he was playing--Lemaitre
+pulled the hair of the defunct with frantic gestures. Not a muscle
+stirred! Whereupon Lemaitre seemed to break down utterly under his
+grief, let go of the body, and it fell hard upon the stage like an inert
+mass. The effect was superb. The whole house applauded, the bravos
+became frantic, the great actor was hoist with his own petard. Lemaitre
+passed the night in solemn reflection on the seriousness of the case.
+The result was that at the next representation, while carrying in his
+little dead brother, he delicately tickled him under the arms. The
+unhappy defunct could not stand this. He came to life, burst out
+laughing, and was heartily hissed, while Lemaitre, the picture of solemn
+grief, inly chuckled at the success of his efforts to destroy rivalry.
+
+But, notwithstanding his superb egotism and his jealousy of applause,
+Lemaitre was capable of mocking at himself in a most amusing manner. At
+one of the last representations of _Robert Macaire_ he expected to be
+called before the curtain at the end of the play. He was not, however;
+whereupon he ordered the curtain to be raised and came forward with his
+gravest air. "Gentlemen," said he, addressing the audience, "I desire to
+know if M. Auguste is not here." M. Auguste does not answer, and the
+spectators look at each other in surprise. "M. Antoine!" Silence again.
+"Well, gentlemen, I am the victim of the dishonesty of the chef and
+sous-chef of the claque. I gave them forty francs this morning to call
+me out, and neither of them is here. You perceive, gentlemen, how
+grossly I have been swindled."
+
+After his fame had grown to greatness Lemaitre reappeared on the classic
+stage of the Odéon, the scene of his earliest efforts. Here he played a
+number of parts, including Othello. But the actor had in his mind an
+idea which haunted him. It was that his favorite rôle of Robert Macaire
+had not had all the development of which it was capable. He associated
+with himself two authors, Antier and Saint-Amant, who accepted his ideas
+and wove them into a new play under his direction, bearing the name of
+his thieving hero. The success the piece achieved was something
+prodigious. All Paris ran to see it, and it was played for an
+unparalleled length of time. Lemaitre was so in love with the part that
+he used often to play it off the stage. Thus, one day at the Café de
+Malte they brought him his bill after breakfast. He arose, threw ten
+francs on the counter, and was leaving. "But the bill is ten francs
+fifty," said the café-master. "Very good," said Lemaitre: "the fifty
+centimes are for the garçon." The stage and caricature have since
+dressed up this _mot_ in various forms, but Lemaitre was its first
+publisher. During this same winter of 1836 he was skating one afternoon
+on the basin in the Luxembourg garden, where he was the object of great
+admiration for his graceful evolutions. Presently one of a group of
+women, as he passed near, recognized him and cried out, "My fifteen
+francs, Monsieur Frédéric: have you forgotten my fifteen francs?" The
+actor stopped. The woman was his former hostess of the Latin quarter,
+with whom he had lived in the days of his impecuniosity during his first
+connection with the Odéon. Putting on the air of Robert Macaire,
+Lemaitre replied, "Your fifteen francs, madam? You are mighty
+impertinent. Under the alcove in my room I left an old wig. That wig
+cost me thirty-five francs: you owe me a louis. I will send for it
+to-morrow." And he skated calmly away. Next day, however, the hostess
+received her due.
+
+After having played this wicked and trivial thief so long that people
+began to say (as they say now of the creator of Rip Van Winkle) that he
+could not play anything else, Lemaitre startled the town with a new
+creation, utterly distinct from anything he had hitherto done. From
+depicting the most abject rascality he passed in a moment, as it seemed,
+to the representation of delicacy of sentiment and grandeur of soul in
+Alexandre Dumas's play of _Richard d'Arlington_, and again as Gennaro in
+Victor Hugo's _Lucretia Borgia_. Yet the wild dissipation of the man's
+life was never so great as at this precise period of his career. Harel,
+the manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte
+Saint-Martin), was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after
+him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was
+indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine.
+Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid
+his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul
+Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his
+restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste with the intelligence
+that the curtain was just going up, would cry, "_Diable!_ And I haven't
+a sou in my pocket! Here's the bill. Carry it to Harel, and tell him
+they are keeping me here as a hostage." Though grinding his teeth with
+rage, the manager never failed to send the necessary sum for the release
+of his principal actor. At other times, when Lemaitre had breakfasted
+copiously, he did not dine, but the manager's purse then ran another
+peril. His actor would arrive at the theatre in a carriage, after having
+been driven about for five or six hours "for the benefit of his
+digestion," as he said, but never did he have the necessary sum to
+settle with the _cocher_, and again Harel paid before Lemaitre would get
+out of the vehicle. At other times during an _entr' acte_ Lemaitre would
+disappear from the theatre, and when the curtain was ready to go up
+again could nowhere be found. "Frédéric! where is Frédéric?" the
+distracted manager would cry. Frédéric was down stairs in the café under
+the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always
+losing. "Monsieur Frédéric, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush
+in to say. "_Ciel!_ What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply.
+"I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost."
+Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts of the theatre were large,
+he did not dare complain much of these forced presents of money:
+Lemaitre called them his perquisites. He had a profound contempt for his
+manager's slippery financial manoeuvres. Harel was really almost as
+eccentric in his own way as Lemaitre was in his. The history of some of
+his subterfuges with his creditors would make a curious chapter. One day
+he stuck up the following notice in the theatre: "To-morrow the
+box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter
+before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at
+half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax.
+
+"My dear Frédéric," said Harel one night to the actor, "I have a
+proposition to make to you that will not displease you."--"Very good:
+tell it me to-morrow at breakfast." The next day they breakfasted, as
+our hero always breakfasted in those days, on truffles and champagne.
+Harel's proposition was this: "My project is to diminish your salary
+one-half."--"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you
+mocking me?"--"The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded
+Harel.--"How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for
+it. What the devil do you do with your money?"--"My dear fellow," quoth
+Harel, "what do you do with yours?"--"Ah! that's different: I have no
+account to give to anybody but myself."--"But come, let us not get
+angry," said Harel: "I will continue to pay you the whole sum, while
+appearing to give you but half of it. In this way I shall be at liberty
+to cut down the other salaries, and the theatre can go on." Lemaitre
+arose, looked Harel straight in the eyes, and answered, "You have the
+secret of sobering a man by a single phrase. So you think me capable--"
+Harel interrupted him hurriedly, not relishing the angry light in the
+actor's eyes: "No, no--not at all: I was joking."--"Ah, you were joking?
+_Eh bien_, your joke is a horribly bad one. Pray don't repeat it."
+
+Lemaitre was not deceived by the manager's sudden change of base. Three
+days afterward he revenged himself by a cutting bit of sarcasm. It was
+in Harel's own office. A young and well-dressed man presented himself,
+carrying a roll of manuscript. At sight of Lemaitre he drew back
+modestly, but Harel bade him remain, and asked him if he brought a
+drama. "Yes," answered the young man.--"Your own?"--"Yes."--"Then you
+have a reputation, doubtless?"--"No, it is my first piece."--"Ah," said
+the manager, who had taken note of the fact that the young author was
+far from shabby-looking, "in that case you are no doubt aware of the
+conditions. The essential thing with us managers always is to raise the
+receipts over the expenses."--"I understand that, sir."--"We prudent
+managers are obliged to refuse the pieces of all authors who have not
+yet achieved success, unless they will guarantee us the expenses that
+the rehearsal of the piece will entail upon us."--"That is my
+intention," was the young man's reply.--"Then we shall be able to
+understand each other. Your piece is in five acts?"--"In three,
+sir."--"Five acts would not have cost you a sou more." The conversation
+continued in this strain until the young author had signed a contract to
+pay ten thousand francs. With the spirit of a Shylock, Harel made out an
+account of actors, actresses, costumes, musicians, etc. that would have
+given gooseflesh to a less anxious and less wealthy author. Lemaitre
+remained sitting in a corner of the room until the manager arose to
+conduct the young man to the door: then he went up to them, laid his
+hand on Harel's shoulder, and said, "Why do you let him go? He has got
+his watch yet."
+
+When Victor Hugo wrote _Ruy Blas_ he informed the director of the
+Renaissance--for which theatre the piece was intended--that the only
+actor who could play the part of Ruy was Lemaitre. The result was
+another of his wonderful creations, which set all Paris wild with
+excitement. Those who have admired Fechter in this part will perhaps be
+surprised to hear that in Paris his performance was pronounced but a
+faint imitation of Lemaitre's. Soon after this Lemaitre's despotic and
+ungovernable disposition began to get him into trouble with the law. He
+quarreled with the manager of the Renaissance, and was compelled by a
+judicial condemnation to play his part. Later, he threw up the principal
+part in _Zacharie_, and compelled the manager to post up an
+announcement, after repeated postponements and disappointments of the
+public, that Lemaitre refused to play, and the theatre was closed in
+consequence. The press took sides with the manager. Threatened again
+with the terrors of the law, Lemaitre consented to play. He came on the
+stage and was greeted with a storm of hisses. With imperturbable
+coolness he advanced to the footlights and with hand on heart said, "I
+am really confused, embarrassed, gentlemen, by the enthusiastic
+reception you have so kindly given me. Pray receive the expressions of
+my gratitude, and believe that I will place at the service of this drama
+all my good will and my best efforts." Thereupon the wind changed: that
+weather-cock, the French public, whirled around and applauded to the
+echo.
+
+Lemaitre did not often speak to his audience with so much
+submissiveness. Sometimes he treated them to such impertinences that he
+brought the police on him. After these theatrical escapades he not
+unfrequently slept in the station-house. He once made a bet that he
+could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry.
+No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences,
+their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance
+of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however,
+and the action was received in silence. This indulgence encouraging him,
+he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no
+expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket:
+the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor
+advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down
+grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible
+functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig
+from his pocket and threw it at the _souffleur's_ head: a frightful
+tumult followed. The pit climbed over the footlights, determined to make
+the insolent actor offer apologies: he refused. The play was stopped,
+and the commissaire of the theatre sent the offending actor to prison,
+where he remained thirty-nine days. When he got out again Lemaitre
+hastened to make his peace with the public. It was easy enough. He had
+only to act in the superb manner of which he was master, and everything
+was forgiven.
+
+The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic
+dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that
+theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comédie Française. He made
+his début at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in _Frédégonde et
+Brunehaut_. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who
+sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Française, holding
+their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre,
+and endeavored to drive him from the stage. But the audience with a
+tumult of applause stifled the rancor of the classic phalanx of
+orchestra-ancients. Lemaitre afterward, in _Othello_, conquered even the
+prejudices of these stern stage-censors, and they applauded with the
+rest. The actor was in his place at the Comédie Française, because it is
+by common consent the leading theatre of the world; but the man was
+sadly out of his element there. In the "House of Molière" there is an
+atmosphere of respectability as severe among the artists as that of the
+most dignified college in America, and the stage is bound round with a
+solemn network of dignified forms and sacred traditions, amid which
+Lemaitre chafed and fretted like a caged lion. His strolling-player
+instincts, his lack of self-respect, his bacchanalian habits and his
+irregularities generally unfitted him for association with the scholarly
+and correct-lived men who for the most part formed the company. Lemaitre
+felt ill at ease there, and conceived the idea that the _sociétaires_
+did not respect him enough. The actors of the Comédie Française are of
+two bodies--the first and controlling one in the councils of the theatre
+being composed of men who are participators in the profits of the house
+as well as recipients of salaries. They are an extremely dignified body
+of artists, with the utmost reverence for the proprieties of life. For
+these _sociétaires_ Lemaitre entertained a profound dislike, and loved
+to sneer at them and ridicule their dignity. One day these artists were
+giving a grand dinner to some manager when a knock was heard at the door
+of the banquet-hall. "Who is there?" cried several voices.--"A man,"
+answered Lemaitre outside, "who wishes to have some converse with you,
+and tell you once for all what he has on his heart." So saying, he
+entered, threw off his cloak, and appeared before the company dressed
+simply in a shirt-collar and a pair of stockings.
+
+Lemaitre returned to the Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the
+rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably
+delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by
+Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its
+weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece
+obtained a great success. In the _Ragpicker of Paris_, a sort of honest
+Robert Macaire, written by Félix Pyat for Lemaitre, this extraordinary
+actor went through another transformation not less striking than some
+which had preceded it. He engaged the lamplighter of the theatre to wear
+the ragpicker's costume for three weeks, so that it might be suitably
+dirty. He went every day into the low cabarets of the Rue Mouffetard,
+where ragpickers congregated in great numbers (and still do), in order
+to study from nature the peculiarities of the race. One day, as he was
+chatting with his models, familiarizing himself with their characters
+and manners, he was recognized by one of them, who immediately
+communicated his discovery to his companions. The report spread up and
+down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three
+hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as
+many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had
+seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to
+drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him;
+they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing
+the idea of such an ovation, Lemaitre jumped through a window and took
+to flight.
+
+It was not until he had passed the age of fifty that Lemaitre began in
+the least to modify the excesses of his career, either on or off the
+stage. He still indulged in bacchanalian orgies; he still broke out at
+times into those violations of the stage proprieties which are so
+startling to any audience, but which are to a French audience something
+bordering on the incredible and awful. He was already an old man when he
+was playing one evening at Amiens, on a provincial tour, in
+_Tragaldabas_, a play written for him by M. Vacquerie, who shared Victor
+Hugo's exile at Jersey. At a certain point in the piece the actor is
+supposed to drink champagne. Now, dramatic managers are obliged to be
+economical about such things as food and drink, and generally replace
+the sparkling vintage by another liquid quite as gaseous, but less
+agreeable to the palate. Lemaitre put the glass to his lips, made a
+horrible grimace, spit out the mouthful, and to the consternation of the
+audience cried out, "Where is the manager of this theatre? Send me the
+manager instantly!" Great excitement behind the scenes: the manager
+arrives. "Approach," says the actor to him gravely, and he walks upon
+the stage in full view of the audience. "What is the meaning of this bad
+joke, Mr. Manager? Do you think me capable of being your accomplice in
+the wickedness of deceiving the public!" "Deceive the public! I!"
+stammers the manager.--"Yes, sir, you:" then addressing the pit,
+"Gentlemen, you think I am drinking champagne. No, it is seltzer-water."
+At this there was a roar of laughter, and the manager, deeming it wise
+to humor the joke, promised to go and get real champagne. During the
+time he was gone--when necessarily the action of the piece was brought
+to a standstill--Lemaitre entertained his audience with a dissertation
+on seltzer-water and the consciencelessness of managers.
+
+With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often
+said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous
+class which attends theatres in _our_ times, and that managers of the
+present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of
+theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far
+as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in
+question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in
+America to-day--at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is
+supposed to be most preserved--could not for a moment compare, in the
+severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its
+requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with.
+And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious
+popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the
+_répétition générale_ of _Toussaint L'Ouverture_ the cream of artistic
+Paris was present. The members of the Comédie Française came in force;
+Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists,
+painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on _this_ solemn
+night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play
+to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some
+trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play,
+or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over
+Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience
+with him as by storm.
+
+Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He
+abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his
+health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a
+good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue.
+He devoted himself to his children--of whom he had four--with exemplary
+care and solicitude. The Antinöus of former days is now, as has been
+said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but
+voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so
+expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when
+acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a
+loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was
+playing in a piece called _The Black Doctor_ at the time, and did not
+intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who
+was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat
+again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla mârrr montââât tojors"
+("Et la mer montait toujours"--"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered
+and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes
+without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully
+fifteen years Frédéric Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.
+
+No stage reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's.
+Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile.
+This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations,
+each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the
+other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face,
+his fiery eyes, his trembling lip, there seems still energy enough for a
+hundred ordinary actors of merit; and yet he gives to any part he essays
+the minute attention to details, the unwearying patience, which would in
+themselves almost win success for an incarnation of commonplace.
+
+    WIRT SIKES.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] The Conservatoire de Musique et de Déclamation lyrique is a
+municipal and governmental institution in the French capital, founded
+for the gratuitous instruction of youth of both sexes in singing, music
+and declamation. It accommodates six hundred pupils, and has a library
+of eight thousand volumes.
+
+[B] A cant name among the French for the claque.
+
+
+
+
+THE SONG-WIND.
+
+
+    I stand in a climate of spring,
+      Overblown by a wind from the South,
+    With joy unspeakable thrilled,
+      Ineffable song in my mouth;
+    For the wind is a breeze of delight,
+      And its blowing is rhythmic and fleet;
+    It comes from the heart of the South.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It comes like the breath of a dream
+      Blown through the still regions of sleep;
+    It comes from the islands of love,
+      Lying midmost the tropical deep;
+    It has the fresh smell of sea-grass,
+      It is woven of coolness and heat,
+    Fruit-flavored and burdened with spice.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It stirs the high tops of the trees,
+      With greenness and fragrance o'erfraught,
+    Through which the swift sun-glories glance
+      Like flashes of wonderful thought;
+    It touches the rose till it burns
+      Like love in a heart made complete;
+    It kisses the world into flower.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    A breath of all ages it is,
+      From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind;
+    Through the years, like a shuttle of gold,
+      Runs the wonder of song on the wind--
+    The wonder of flute and of lyre,
+      A music made mellow and meet
+    For Sappho, the princess of song.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    O Sappho! O love-laden soul!
+      A thrill in the rushes there is,
+    And the sea breaks into loud song
+      That throbs with the pulse of the breeze;
+    And singers, remembering thee,
+      Cast their crowns and their lyres at their feet,
+    For the South wind rewakens thy song.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It blows with a rustle of palms
+      And a sound of the laurel and bay,
+    Far voices and clapping of hands,
+      Like applause at the end of a play:
+    It strengthens the poet like wine,
+      And clothes him from head unto feet
+    In the power and glory of life.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It lifts the gold hair of a girl
+      Till it shines in the sun like a flame,
+    It flows through the locks of a man
+      Toiling hard at his song and his fame;
+    It is heavy with music of birds;
+      It has whispers no lips can repeat:
+    The angels float by on its tide.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    Ah, world! while the South wind prevails--
+      With flowers and rushes and streams,
+    Intrude not a sound of thy wheels,
+      But leave me alone with my dreams--
+    My reveries born of this breeze;
+      And my life, though lowly it be,
+    Will be happier far than a king's
+      If the South wind, the song-wind kiss me!
+
+    JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
+
+
+
+
+NORTHWARD TO HIGH ASIA.
+
+
+From Calcutta my route was northward to Thibet, to reach, if possible,
+its capital city of Lhassa, residence of the Grand Lama of the
+Booddhists--the pontifical sovereign of Eastern Asia. My journey thither
+was planned by the way of Sikkim, and thence through the Cholah Pass in
+the Himalaya range. I was most anxious to reach a city so interestingly
+described by the Abbé Huc nearly thirty years ago, and to learn
+something further about the present condition and prospects of the
+"Snowy Region of the North" and the lofty table-lands of Central Asia,
+so seldom visited by European travelers.
+
+The cars of the East Indian Railway carry one in a single night 220
+miles to the town of Sahibgunge and the banks of the Ganges. The first
+sight of the sacred river excited in me but little enthusiasm. It was
+about a mile in width, shallow and very muddy, with a swift current and
+dreary sandy banks, where huge crocodiles were basking in the sun. Its
+religious character among the Hindoos is well known. Though highly
+esteemed from its source to its mouth, there are some particular places
+more eminently sacred than others--as Benares, Allahabad and
+Hurdwar--and to these pilgrims resort from great distances to perform
+their ablutions and carry off water to be used in future ceremonies. The
+Ganges water is also valued for its supposed medicinal properties, and
+in the British courts of justice witnesses of the Brahmanical faith are
+sworn upon it.
+
+Having been ferried across the sacred flood, I journeyed onward in what
+is termed a _shigram_--simply a large palanquin on wheels drawn by two
+horses. As I reclined at length upon its cushion-covered bottom, I could
+see that the country through which we passed was an immense plain, and a
+clump of bamboos or an occasional palm alone hinted at an Oriental and
+a tropical landscape. The trees were mostly banians, peepuls and
+mangoes, and there were many large fields of rice and corn. The native
+huts were made of bamboo reeds and mud, with straw-thatched roofs. A
+view of their interiors was of course forbidden me on account of that
+cursed system of caste which prevails from Peshawur to Rangoon and from
+Cashmere and Thibet to Cape Cormorin and Ceylon. The road was
+macadamized and shaded by rows of immense trees. The tricky and balky
+horses (Mongol ponies) delayed us considerably, but it was very amusing
+to see the methods employed to coax or coerce them. A groom held in his
+hand a piece of bamboo about two feet in length, at the extremity of
+which was fastened a strong looped horsehair cord, which was twisted
+around the ear of a fractious beast, and a very little power applied a
+few paces in advance generally removed all scruples as to its progress.
+Horses who would not back into the shafts were assisted by a rope
+secured round a hind leg, and one who would not start forward was
+suddenly persuaded to change its mind through a similar combination of
+rope and pressure applied to a fore leg. Often one native would take a
+wheel, others would push from behind, some would lift one of the fore
+feet of the obstinate brutes, a few would take their heads, and then,
+after much alternate fondling and beating, off we would go at a very
+break-neck speed for perhaps a mile, when the horses would quiet down
+into an easy trot for the remainder of the stage.
+
+About twelve o'clock on the first night a very provoking yet amusing
+incident happened. I had some time previously covered myself with my
+blankets and closed the sliding doors of the vehicle, as it was a bitter
+cold night, and had been enjoying a sound sleep, when, waking suddenly,
+I found the shigram standing in the middle of the road, but without
+either horses, coachman or groom. I had heard that such an event will
+occasionally happen in Indian dak-posting and so endeavored not to be
+disconcerted. Alighting from the shigram, I walked toward a fire which
+was just discernible through the trees, and found my missing coachman
+taking a comfortable smoke and a quiet chat with half a dozen
+bullock-drivers, friends of his, who were camping there for the night. I
+approached the social group with the feelings of a ghoul, shook my fists
+in the coachman's face and talked exceedingly loud, making free use of
+all the bad words in Bengalee of which my then limited vocabulary would
+admit, placing particular emphasis upon the scathing _soour_ ("pig") and
+the withering _gudha_ ("fool")--epithets more dreaded by the Hindoos
+than the most profane oaths. The man jabbered something in his native
+tongue, about as intelligible to me as if spoken in the language of the
+Bechuanas of South Africa or in that of our Sioux Indians. Returning to
+the shigram, I quietly prepared myself to await the issue. But the
+effects of my furious philippic had been complete, and in less than ten
+minutes the ponies were harnessed and we were again on our way.
+
+In the morning I stopped at a dak-bungalow for breakfast. The word _dak_
+means post or stage, and the bungalows are inns for the accommodation of
+post-travelers built by government at distances of about twenty miles
+apart. They are of one story, and usually contain some half dozen
+apartments for sitting, dining and sleeping, besides dressing- and
+bath-rooms. These bungalows are under the direction of a _khansamah_, or
+native butler, who hires a small corps of servants to attend the wants
+of travelers. If you bring provisions, the khansamah will have them
+cooked for you, or he will supply you with a limited bill of fare,
+charging for each dish according to an official scale with which every
+bungalow is furnished. Any traveler can obtain rooms in a dak-bungalow
+during twenty-four hours, for which he must pay one rupee (fifty cents),
+and no one can claim shelter for more than this period should the
+bungalow be full or should other travelers arrive.
+
+On the afternoon of the following day we reached the foot of the hills
+and the terminus of the shigram travel. The Himalayas in view were bold
+and sharp in outline, and densely wooded to their very tops, and my
+route lay directly over the nearer range, which was something more than
+a mile in height. You may ascend the foot-hills by palanquin or pony.
+For the former, previous application is necessary, as relays of bearers
+must be arranged on the road. There are eight bearers, four of whom
+carry you at a time. They have two movements--a sharp trot, and a long
+even step as a rest from the regular gait--but neither is very enjoyable
+to the occupant of the palanquin after a few hours' trial. They relieve
+each other every half mile. The stages are about eight miles in length,
+at the end of each of which an entire new set of bearers is obtained. On
+comparatively good and level roads these bearers will average four miles
+an hour: in ascending or descending steep mountains the rate of speed is
+of course somewhat less. I chose a mountain-pony, a wiry and vicious
+little fellow, and engaged a coolie to carry my baggage to a village
+thirty miles distant for the grand recompense of one rupee.
+
+Soon after starting I met people of both sexes who were neither Hindoos
+nor Mohammedans, but bore a strong resemblance to the Chinese. The men
+were short, stout and muscular, and their faces wore a stolid and almost
+stupid look, which was not at all improved by their long black hair or
+by their filthy garments and persons. The women, however, were rather
+good-looking, not concealing the face as in the plains. These people
+were natives of Nepaul and Bhotan, independent states of India. After a
+ride of five or six miles I passed a _terai_, a great jungle infested by
+tigers and elephants; so at least my companion, a devout follower of the
+Prophet, informed me. This terai consisted of rank grass fifteen feet in
+height, thick underbrush and some few huge trees; and so dense was it
+that a passage could only be made with an axe. It is always advisable to
+pass through such places during the daytime. At Kurseong there was a
+good hotel, the Clarendon, kept by an old New Yorker, who told me he had
+left America fifteen years before, and during that period had traveled
+all over the world, had made a great deal of money in Western Africa in
+the palm-oil trade, and had finally "settled down" (or rather _up_) in
+India. He started the first tea-plantation in the Himalayas, and is
+reported to be worth at present more than a million rupees.
+
+The coolie, a Nepaulese, carried my baggage up the mountains at a sharp
+trot, and reached the hotel but two hours after my own arrival. It was a
+wonderful exhibition of strength and endurance. The distance was thirty
+miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The
+hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to
+such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to
+Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of
+the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese. They were
+splendid-looking men, shorty but thick-set and very muscular, with
+olive-brown skins, piercing black eyes, long glossy hair and regular and
+handsome features. One of this class of men (Hindoo hill-tribes) will
+carry thirty _seers_ (sixty pounds) upon his back, or twenty-five seers
+upon his head, up the hills for fifty miles, without rest or food, in
+twenty-four hours; his charge for which is but one rupee--a special
+instance of the astonishingly cheap labor of all India.
+
+The road ran the whole distance on the face of almost perpendicular
+hills, and for the greater part of the way was guarded by a low wall on
+the dangerous side. The scenery was most grand, and I already felt well
+repaid for the arduous journey from Calcutta. Some views were, however,
+rather frightful. Imagine a ride on the very brink of a precipice
+thirty-five hundred feet in depth, with the hills rising abruptly on the
+other hand twenty-five hundred feet in height above you. The tops of the
+distant and lofty mountains were all hidden in the clouds, but the
+scenery of the valleys beneath one's feet was very beautiful. The
+immense fields of tea planted in rectangular rows, the dark-green and
+dense foliage of the forests, with here a planter's dwelling or a
+factory glistening in the morning's sun, and there perhaps a little
+silvery waterfall or a bubbling brook, and great black shadows cast by
+the clouds, made a truly impressive picture. And yet, though already on
+hills more than a mile in height, I had only gained this altitude in
+order to obtain glimpses of much higher and grander mountains, nearly a
+hundred miles distant.
+
+Just before reaching Darjeeling there is a military cantonment, where
+some troops are stationed for the active duty of protecting Her
+Majesty's northern Indian boundaries. The officers' residences and the
+barracks are situated on the top and upon the precipitous sides of a
+small hill, and bridle-paths wind between, and flower-gardens and
+ornamental trees are to be seen grouped about each dwelling. Darjeeling
+is distant about three hundred and fifty miles almost due north from
+Calcutta, of which it is regarded as the sanitarium, though, owing to
+the hardships of the journey from that city, the more distant Simla is
+quite as often resorted to by the invalided officials, merchants and
+troops of Hindostan. The feasibility of building a railroad to
+Darjeeling has long been discussed, and it appears that the engineering
+difficulties, though great, can nevertheless be overcome; but no active
+steps have as yet been taken toward the attainment of so desirable an
+object. The European residents of the town of Darjeeling number about
+fifty, and there are perhaps four times as many tea-planters in the
+surrounding country.
+
+The next day being Sunday, and the day on which marketable supplies are
+brought into town for the whole week, the proprietor of my hotel took me
+to see the bazaar. It much resembled others visited in and near
+Calcutta, but I was surprised at the variety of European vegetables
+offered for sale: there were peas, onions, potatoes, squashes, lettuce,
+radishes, turnips and many kinds of grain, including that peculiarly
+Yankee "institooshun" pop-corn. The bazaar was held out of doors in a
+public square, with a few shops of dry goods around, and a most terrible
+din arose from the motley crowd there assembled. In one place a number
+of soldiers from the cantonments were bidding on some glassware offered
+at auction, and in another mothers of families and _khansamahs_ were
+bustling about engaging their necessary household supplies. Here was a
+wretched beggar, with a grotesque mask on his face, dancing before some
+of the merchants, who gave him a few potatoes in exchange for his
+contortions. The people embraced Hindoos, Mohammedans, Bhoteeas,
+Nepaulese and Sikkimites, and presented every variety of dress and
+figure, having seemingly but one feature or possession in common, and
+that was a very prominent display of unclean skin and raiment. The
+Nepaulese women wore bracelets and necklaces of Indian coins, besides
+silver anklets, finger- and nose-rings, gold earrings and beads, and
+each had also suspended from her neck a silver snuff-box. These boxes
+were three or four inches square, made of the purest metal, and
+handsomely carved and embossed.
+
+At Darjeeling I learned that my plan of traveling to Lhassa was not
+feasible--that the Talé Lama ("sea of wisdom") and the great palace, and
+a city whose three productions, according to Chinese travelers, are
+lamas, women and dogs--many of whose streets are lined with houses built
+of ox and rams' horns; and a people whose mode of salutation is by
+uncovering the head, thrusting out the tongue and scratching the right
+ear, and whose manner of disposal of their dead is by cutting the
+corpses in pieces and giving them to "sacred dogs," raised and nurtured
+in convents for the express purpose--would have to be known only through
+the reports of others. The Thibetan traders in Darjeeling reported that
+the _Pugla Diwan_ of Sikkim had become a great man in Thibet, and had
+seized everything _en route_ from Lhassa during the year, and, having
+stored all in huge warehouses, would allow nothing to pass into Sikkim
+and Bengal. Previous travelers and missionaries had all of them entered
+the country in the disguise of priests or of Chinese or Mogul traders,
+having a knowledge of the Thibetan or some allied language; and even
+then so greatly fearing detection as to be unable to learn very much of
+the condition and capabilities of the land or the habits and usages of
+the people. That foreigners should be so rigorously excluded from Thibet
+is doubtless owing to Chinese influence--to the fear and jealousy of
+British power and possession in the East, the southern boundaries being
+rigorously guarded by a _cordon_ of Chinese garrison-stations on the
+highlands of the Himalayas.
+
+I might approach nearer, or perhaps ascend the great mountain
+Kanchinjinga, which is about fifty miles distant from Darjeeling, though
+there are no roads over or around the intervening hills, and the journey
+would have to be undertaken on foot, and tents, provisions and a large
+retinue of servants would be necessary. And then, at best, but the
+snow-limit or a little higher could be reached (hardly two-thirds the
+distance to the summit), and therefore the interest of the trip would
+scarcely compensate for its hardships. Instead of this, the proprietor
+of the hotel proposed a little excursion on horseback into Sikkim, the
+country of the Lepchas. It is ten or twelve miles to the bottom of the
+valley, and the road (or rather bridle-path) winds around the hills
+forward and back, but constantly descending, until at length the Rungeed
+River is reached. Some of the precipices were frightful to look over,
+and I clutched the reins tightly, braced myself in the saddle, and
+almost held my breath as the pony trotted quietly along a path three
+feet in width and often lying at an angle of 45°; but there was no
+danger, unless it might perhaps be from the sliding away of part of the
+road, since the ponies are mountain-bred and very sure-footed. The views
+were extremely grand, and the distances from peak to peak so immense
+that the mind was almost lost to detail. Much of the land is cleared of
+forest trees and covered with tea-plants: cinchona also is cultivated,
+and with great success.
+
+The Rungeed is a small mountain-torrent, a branch of the Peesta, which
+latter empties its waters into the great Brahmapootra ("son of Brahma").
+It serves as a boundary-line between Bengal and Sikkim. Crossing this
+stream at a height of about thirty feet, there is a bamboo-cane
+suspension bridge three hundred feet in length, which was built entirely
+by the natives. It is intended for foot-passengers, and will safely
+support a dozen people at a time. It consists of sixteen bamboo canes,
+of the size of the finger, on either side. The bottom is formed of three
+very large stems of bamboo, and a sort of wickerwork extends from these
+upward to the supporting canes, which are about six feet from side to
+side, and may in crossing just be grasped by the hands. The bridge has a
+peculiar oscillating motion, which increases so much at the centre,
+together with an up-and-down movement, that, with a sight of the
+fiercely rushing water beneath, the traveler's head is apt to become
+giddy.
+
+Crossing to the other side, I met in the forests an English gentleman,
+who informed me he was just returning from a two weeks' tour through
+Sikkim. It was Colonel Manwaring of H. M.'s Indian army, who was engaged
+in compiling under government orders a dictionary of the Lepcha tongue.
+Salutations over, Briton like, he pressed me at once to drink, asked if
+I would try a native beer, and upon my assenting ordered a quantity of
+_chi_ (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It
+proved a nutritious and exhilarating though not intoxicating beverage,
+and we drank it _à la_ Sikkimite, warm, through a reed a foot in length
+and from a joint of bamboo holding perhaps a couple of quarts. The
+colonel informed me that the Lepcha language is very copious, expressive
+and beautiful, abounding largely in metaphor. The number of words is
+very extraordinary, and requires a person to be something of a
+geologist, botanist and zoologist--in short, to understand very many of
+the sciences and not a few of the arts--in order to learn perfectly this
+curious tongue. His labors among the people he described as very trying
+and discouraging. He had been employed upon the dictionary more than
+three years, and it was not nearly completed. We rode slowly up the
+hills, and reached the inn late in the evening.
+
+I had waited nearly a week for a clear day on which to view the highest
+mountain-peaks in the world, and had almost despaired of success when on
+the last morning of my stay, upon looking from my window at daybreak, I
+saw that although the valleys and sides of some of the hills were
+covered with clouds and fog, still a lofty peak near Darjeeling showed
+its face distinctly and for the first time during my visit. Remembering
+that this mountain was over two miles in height, perhaps Mount
+Kanchinjinga might be in sight, but I hardly dared entertain the
+thought. It was my last chance, for I intended to return to the plains
+in the afternoon; so, jumping into my clothes, pulling on my hat and
+snatching up my field-glass, I walked, or rather ran, to the other side
+of the hill for an unobstructed view. Suddenly turning a sharp bend in
+the road, I saw through the trees a clearly-defined, substantial-looking
+cloud--was it a cloud, though?--and rushing forward a dozen paces, lo
+and behold! one of the highest mountain-summits on the globe stood
+unveiled before me! I confess never in my travels to have experienced
+like sensations of awe and reverence. My eyes involuntarily filled with
+tears, and I stood completely lost in wonder and admiration.
+
+It was early morning. The sun had newly risen, though not yet visible,
+and threw a flood of rosy light upon the gigantic snow-tipped pinnacles,
+causing them to glisten like polished white marble. The valley below,
+four or five thousand feet deep, was filled with an ocean of silvery
+clouds, which majestically rolled and rose upon the forest-clad sides of
+the great mountains as far as the limit of perpetual snow; and from this
+fleecy mass as a border towered aloft against an azure-hued sky the
+magnificent form of Kanchinjinga. For miles in each direction the
+thickly-wooded sub-hills were in sight, but all interest centred in the
+never-by-man-trodden peak before and above me. A dread and awful silence
+seemed to pervade the air, and the total absence of life or motion lent
+an almost supernatural glamour to the scene. For nearly two hours I sat
+as one entranced, until the sun gently lifted the clouds from the
+valleys, and as with a silver-wrought screen shut off from my eyes the
+most impressive sight they ever beheld. During this marvelous exhibition
+the "littleness of man" had been made very painfully lucid. Yet,
+perhaps, there is nothing so calculated to raise the thoughts, enlarge
+the mind or purify the heart as the contemplation of the sublime and
+beautiful in Nature.
+
+Kanchinjinga, properly speaking, consists of three peaks, which are
+sharp, serrated, precipitous, and apparently composed of solid rock from
+the snow-limit to the summit. Its immense height is not thoroughly
+appreciated by the traveler for two causes--its great distance (fifty
+miles "as the crow flies"), and the fact that the point of observation
+is itself one-fourth the height of the mountain. Had I risen earlier and
+ridden to Mount Senchal, fifteen hundred feet above Darjeeling, I
+_might_ have obtained a view of Mount Everest, which is nearly thirty
+thousand feet in perpendicular height above the sea (about five and a
+half miles), and is the supremest point upon our globe, while Mount
+Kanchinjinga, which until quite recently was supposed to be the higher
+of the two, is found to be of about eight hundred feet less altitude.
+Mount Everest is a single peak, a cone, and appears like a small white
+tent above the clouds, but in grandeur and sublimity it is excelled by
+Kanchinjinga. Well do the Himalaya Mountains bear out the meaning of
+their name--the "abode of snow"--for on their southern slopes in some
+places the snow-line descends to fourteen thousand feet. The mean
+elevation of this remarkable range is double that of the Alps, and many
+of its passes to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia are higher
+than the summit of Mont Blanc. Huge glaciers of smooth ice, though none
+so vast as those of the Alps, are numerous in parts of this stupendous
+mountain-chain, and even descend from the regions of perpetual snow to
+eleven thousand feet. Though the Andes of South America present a
+mountain-system twice the length of the Himalayas, still in respect to
+altitude the former are much surpassed by the latter. Mount Dwalaghiri
+in Nepaul is of nearly the same height as Kanchinjinga: then, there are
+two peaks which attain twenty-six thousand feet; four about twenty-four
+thousand feet; and over twenty that reach an elevation exceeding twenty
+thousand feet!
+
+Leaving Darjeeling, I visited one of the large tea-gardens near the
+terai at the foot of the hills. The best of land may be purchased at ten
+rupees per acre, and an average-sized plantation embraces about two
+hundred acres. The prospective garden must be cleared of its forest and
+jungle, which is an arduous task, but when once it is in order one
+native can properly cultivate an acre. The best teas are raised upon the
+tops of the hills, upward of seven thousand feet above the sea-level.
+Good tea can only be grown under two conditions: these are moisture and
+heat, and hence the southern slopes of the Himalayas are admirably
+adapted to its cultivation, for during the middle of the day the sun is
+warm, and at night there are very copious dews. The laborers employed
+are all natives, and one or two Europeans only are necessary to
+superintend the largest plantation. The indigenous tea-plant was first
+discovered in Assam (the north-eastern district of Bengal) in the year
+1830. From there it was introduced into Cachar and Darjeeling, and from
+these places into the hills in the north-western part of Hindostan. In
+1850 the English government founded plantations in the Kangra Valley,
+about one hundred and twenty miles from Lahore, on the borders of
+Cashmere, which proved so successful that many were soon established in
+various other localities. Cinchona (_Cinchona calisaya_) also succeeds
+well upon the hills, and is being extensively grown, as, owing to the
+prevalence of fevers of all kinds, quinine is in great demand throughout
+India.
+
+Reaching the Ganges again without accident or noteworthy event, I
+traveled on westward up its rich valley, and soon entered upon the great
+plain of Hindostan (embracing an area of half a million square miles),
+which, though nearly treeless, contains some of the most fertile soil on
+the globe. There were clusters of huts and dilapidated mosques at short
+intervals, and the natives might be seen at work in the fields with
+their antiquated wooden ploughs, the bent limbs of trees, or engaged in
+cutting _paddy_ (rice in the husk), or hoeing poppy-plants, or digging
+little drains. Wherever we met them they would stop work, drop
+everything, and gaze at the railway train, which seemed to them
+apparently as strange a sight as if it had just dropped down from the
+clouds.
+
+In Hindostan, land is owned either by government or by the native rajahs
+and nawabs. That belonging to the former is leased to a class of people
+called _zemindars_ (the word means "landholder," "landkeeper"), and they
+sublet it to another class styled _ryots_ (the "husbandmen,"
+"peasants"), who are the real tillers of the soil. A well-to-do zemindar
+will rent two thousand acres of land, for which he pays about four
+_annas_ (twelve cents) an acre. The hardships of the ryots are
+great--they are treated like slaves, and can barely make a
+subsistence--but among the zemindars are numbered some of the wealthiest
+men in the country: one, for instance, owns fifty square miles of
+fertile land, all wrung from the labor of the poor peasants. Formerly
+these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but
+latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the
+before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement
+been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.
+
+As we rolled along, on both sides of the railroad as far as the eye
+could see were immense fields of wheat and barley, paddy, tobacco,
+mustard, the castor-oil plant, millet, maize, the poppy, indigo and
+sugar-cane. Wheat and barley are not sown broadcast as with us, but in
+drills a few inches apart: both grains are consumed in the
+country--little or none is exported. The paddy resembles rye or wheat
+when growing, the rice-kernels being contained in husks at the top of
+the spires. The plant requires a wet loamy soil (such as is best offered
+in Cambodia and Siam, the former being styled "the Asiatic storehouse of
+rice"), and there is but one crop in the year. The mustard-plants which
+we saw were about two feet in height, and bore small yellow flowers as
+crests. The oil and the table article of commerce are made by grinding
+the seeds in mills constructed for the purpose. The castor-oil plant is
+a green and succulent shoot about six feet in height, with white flowers
+hanging in bunches like hops. Maize is never fed to cattle as in
+America, but is all consumed by the poorer classes of natives. But most
+interesting were the poppy-plants. These are raised in oblong patches of
+ground surrounded by low mud walls for retaining the water which is
+essential to their growth. The plants are quite small, with green leaves
+at the base, from which rise tall stalks with bulb-like tops, the pod of
+the flower. At the proper season, when ripe, incisions are made in these
+bulbs--simple scratches--by drawing two needles across them toward
+evening, and the juice, which exudes during the night, is scraped off in
+the morning and collected in shells. This operation is performed upon
+all sides of the bulb, and then the juice is sent in earthenware jars to
+Bankipore to be manufactured into opium by drying in the sun and various
+other processes. When quite prepared it is pressed into balls, boxed and
+exported to China, to the great emolument of the British Indian
+government, in whose hands the trade is a monopoly (it deriving
+one-twelfth of its entire income from this traffic alone), and to the
+fearful moral and physical degradation of the Chinese.
+
+Patna is one of the oldest cities in India. It extends for a mile and a
+half along the south bank of the Ganges, which is here five miles in
+width in the rainy season. It consists properly of but a single street
+eight miles in length and thirty feet in width, with numerous short
+byways. Patna contains about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants,
+and was formerly a place of such considerable trade that the English,
+French, Dutch and Danes had factories here, though few European
+merchants remain at the present day. I found the streets crowded with
+gayly-dressed, vivacious Mohammedans and Hindoos and solemn,
+gruff-looking Afghans. Some were on foot; some on horseback, astride
+splendid horses brought from the Deccan; many rode in _eckas_, a few in
+_baillies_--two varieties of native vehicle. The dwellings in the city,
+built of mud with tiled roofs, were mostly but one story in height. In
+those of two stories the lower is rented as a shop to the merchants (or
+used as such by the owners), and in the upper the family dwells, as is
+customary in our cities. The stores were of all denominations, but the
+manufactures were principally of cotton goods and earthenware, which
+latter is made in feeble imitation of European crockery. The smell of
+the curry and _ghee_ (clarified butter) in some shops was intensely
+disagreeable, and the numerous shelves of _metai_ (sweets compounded of
+sugar, butter and flour, and of which the natives are very fond) looked
+anything but inviting to a _gora-log_ (a fair-complexioned person). It
+is generally supposed that the Hindoos never use intoxicating beverages,
+but I passed several liquor-shops and saw three or four men drunk in the
+streets. The drink in general request is the fermented juice of the
+_taul_ or Indian palm tree, which, though mild and soft to the palate,
+is yet very acrid and baneful to the stomach.
+
+There is an old granary in Patna, a large beehive-shaped structure of
+brick and plaster, at a guess two hundred feet in diameter by one
+hundred feet in height and twelve feet in thickness. Two stair-cases of
+one hundred and fifty steps each wind upward to its summit on either
+side, giving the building from a distance the appearance of a huge brick
+cork-screw. These steps were intended to be used for carrying up the
+grain, the building being filled through a small aperture at the top,
+and up them Shah Maharaj, the present premier of Nepaul, is said once
+to have ridden his pony--a most daring feat of horsemanship and nerve.
+On one side were two large stone tablets with inscriptions--the one in
+Persian, the other in English. They simply stated that the granary was
+erected in 1786 as part of a general plan ordered by the
+governor-general and council of India for the perpetual prevention of
+famine. It has never yet, however, been filled with grain, but has been
+employed as a military magazine. From the summit a fine view of the
+surrounding country is to be had, comprising plains and forests, stately
+bungalows and flowery "compounds," vegetable gardens, native huts, and
+in the distance the sacred Ganges, with its stony bed more than half
+exposed.
+
+Formerly, famines were not infrequent in Hindostan, which was owing to
+an insufficient fall of rain at the proper season and consequent failure
+of the crops. One occurred in the year 1770, in which thirty millions of
+people are said to have perished in the valley of the Ganges. This Patna
+granary was doubtless one of a number which it was intended should be
+built throughout the country and filled with grain in times of plenty to
+supply the people in case of famine, like those in the cities of ancient
+Egypt which Joseph filled with corn in the seven years of plenteousness
+and opened in the seven years of dearth, when "famine waxed sore in the
+land." But the building of the Ganges Canal and the railroads have
+rendered it almost impossible that a widespread calamitous famine should
+again occur in this section of India--the former by providing a more
+thorough system of irrigation, and the latter by affording means for the
+rapid and easy transportation of food from one province to another. The
+extent of the recent famine has been grossly exaggerated. Had certain
+public works--the construction of railroads and other sources of
+communication and of canals for the irrigation of the rice-fields--which
+the government contemplated prior to the outbreak of the distress, been
+completed, probably no reckless, sensational reports of "a disaster
+which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have reached
+our ears.
+
+In the long street already mentioned as extending from Bankipore to
+Patna is situated the government opium manufactory and warehouse. March
+and April are the months in which opium is made: at the time of my visit
+it was being packed and prepared for shipment to China. The various
+buildings are of brick, and the grounds are surrounded by a high wall.
+Entering one of the gates, I passed a Sepoy sentinel, and a little
+farther on some stone barracks. I then entered one of the largest
+buildings, and found about a hundred natives, with a European
+superintendent, busily engaged in weighing and packing the drug. The
+juice of the poppy-plant is brought in by the farmers from the
+surrounding country in stone jars, and has the appearance of thick tar.
+It is placed in large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun.
+Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling
+cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the
+poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in
+thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and
+the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves
+with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers
+(four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each.
+They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin partitions, rolled in
+poppy-leaves. There were forty balls in a box, which was worth when
+filled twelve hundred and eighty rupees or six hundred and forty
+dollars. About three thousand natives were employed in this manufactory.
+
+From Patna I went on to Benares, the Mecca of Hindooism, where for the
+space of two weeks I was royally fêted by Maharajah Isuree Pershod,
+chief of the four great castes of the Hindoos.
+
+    FRANK VINCENT, JR.
+
+
+
+
+BEHIND THEIR FANS.
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE DROZ.
+
+
+Last evening I was guilty of a very shameful action. I hid behind a
+curtained door and listened to a conversation, and, what makes it still
+more unpardonable in me, I cannot help telling you what I heard. It was
+this.
+
+I had been at the ball about half an hour when I saw in a corner of the
+parlor, through the door which leads into the conservatory, a little
+group of three young girls arrayed in billows of white muslin, who were
+talking behind their fans with so much animation that it was impossible
+not to notice them.
+
+These three girls had reached that age when young women's hands are
+slender but still rosy, when their forms have still that charming
+delicacy which some people call thinness and others youthfulness, and
+when their movements have that excessive suppleness which is like
+awkwardness, but which it would be the height of art to imitate. Leaning
+back with easy grace in their arm chairs, which were drawn up close
+together, they were laughing unrestrainedly. Already women and
+coquettes, they would from time to time stretch out their well-gloved
+hands and pat their ample draperies with a thousand graceful little
+gestures. They were already mistresses of the art of looking at things
+without seeing them, of laughing when they were not amused, of showing
+their white teeth while smoothing their gloves at the wrist, and while
+modestly looking down of giving a vibration to their voices like the
+striking of glass, which cannot fail to attract attention. They had,
+too, the trick of stopping short in the midst of a movement and posing
+that you might see the turn of a shoulder or a graceful arm, and of
+turning their profile to you to show a pretty nose, of catching up their
+skirts and turning away with a movement like a frightened dove till the
+ear alone is visible, and replying, "Oh, how you frightened me!" when
+you have said nothing to them but "How do you do?" Then their way of
+prattling unceasingly without rhyme or reason, or when both ideas and
+words fail them of exclaiming, "Oh! oh! oh! yes, indeed!" while stroking
+their hair!
+
+Ah, dear little creatures! I love them just as they are, so knowing and
+so pure, so gracious and so skillful. I really love these little angels
+who make their entrance into the great world between two polkas--who go
+to a ball instead of going to bed--who broke their doll into pieces two
+days ago, and now think of painting themselves under the eyes like
+mamma--who know to a louis the price of a cashmere shawl--are
+connoisseurs in diamonds, look men straight in the eye, are all worn out
+when Lent comes, and who during Holy Week, after devoutly nibbling a bit
+of salmon salad, run off to their religious exercises in boots with
+tassels and with their hair powdered. I love these little painted lambs
+as one loves roses in December or green peas in the middle of January.
+There is simplicity even in their excessive self-possession--something,
+at any rate, which reminds one of green apples which one longs to taste.
+
+They are already women--in fact, they were when they were born--but
+still one guesses at their motives, reads their little thoughts:
+sometimes, too, one finds a clue which is like a revelation. They are--
+
+But pardon me, young ladies! I am afraid I am going too far: perhaps as
+you turn over these pages you will recall the gentleman who was looking
+at you so attentively the other evening. Perhaps you will recognize
+yourselves, however imperfect the sketch may be, and then--But it is too
+late now not to tell you all.
+
+I slyly opened the library-door, and, turning to the left, I made my way
+to the conservatory, and stationed myself directly behind you, near the
+door, in the folds of the curtain, and there I heard it all. I did even
+more than that: in coming away I snapped off a branch of camellia. What
+follows is merely the work of a reporter: if memory or skill is lacking,
+forgive me and I will do better another time.
+
+"No," said the youngest, looking at her pink satin slipper, "I mean the
+one with the decoration in his buttonhole: don't you see him? He is
+standing by the mantelpiece, by the side of the big bald man in a white
+waistcoat."
+
+"Why, the big bald man is not a colonel--no indeed. I know him very
+well: he comes to see papa. It's Mr. Thingamy--some queer name. After
+every visit of his we find two casters off the easy-chair. Mamma says
+he's clever, papa says he's not: as for me, I think he smells of
+pomade."
+
+"Where does he put his pomade? He has hardly three hairs on his head."
+
+"Yes, but they curl, my dear. I am sure he ought to wear a little
+crimson velvet cap with tassels. Dear me! how I do hate a man as fat as
+that! Papa, who is slender in comparison with this bear, seems to me a
+little--when he is shaving--Well, if it was not papa, I should like to
+plane him down a little."
+
+"But, girls, I don't mean the stout one: I mean the one by his side,
+with an aquiline nose and moustaches. There, he is taking an ice. He
+seems to be a lion. Now he's blowing his nose: he's Colonel C----."
+
+"Oh yes, I see. Dear me! how hard he blows his nose! Your colonel has a
+cold: one can hear him from here--ha! ha!"
+
+"There is nothing strange in his having a cold: he has just come from
+Africa: see how tanned he is. Well, my dear, he _is_ a lion."
+
+"Then he is an attaché?"
+
+"Oh, how stupid you are! I said he is a lion because he fought like a
+tiger, and he--"
+
+"Then say he is a tiger, and have done with it."
+
+--(Shrugging her shoulders) "and that at the battle of
+Rapata--Ratapa--or Patara--I can't remember exactly what, but it was a
+frightful battle--where the Arabs bit the dust--That's it, word for
+word, as papa read it aloud the other day out of the paper."
+
+"Why did they bite the dust?"
+
+"Why, because they were so angry. You know when you are in a
+passion--Well, in this battle the colonel received a cannon-ball or
+bullet--I don't remember which--in his left shoulder, and they could not
+extract it, so he returned to France very ill."
+
+"How terrible those battles must be!"
+
+"It is the day after a battle that is terrible. Just think of it! They
+found this poor colonel under a mountain of dead men at the very moment
+the wild beasts were going to devour him like the missionary in the
+_Propagation of the Faith_. Being swallowed by a crocodile is indeed
+terrible."
+
+"That's nothing. When you think you have before you a man with an iron
+machine in his shoulder that you could hardly lift, you can't help
+shivering. Oh, it's fine to be a soldier: in fact, you may call it the
+noblest profession. To begin with, every one respects them, and their
+life is full of triumph."
+
+"Yes, in time of war, but in time of peace--in time of peace--well, they
+talk over the way they got their wounds, and the band plays while they
+are at dinner. It seems the colonel can have the band play whenever he
+wants to."
+
+"Naturally, since it's his band."
+
+"Well, all that is very nice, and besides that you make calls on the
+wife of the prefect, the receiver-general and the bishop."
+
+"On the bishop's wife? What are you talking about? Ha! ha!" (She takes
+off her gloves and begins to bite her nails.)
+
+"I did not say the bishop's wife: you are a naughty girl."
+
+"Besides, it's only a general's wife who makes calls on the prefect's
+wife, like that."
+
+"I only began with the colonel: one soon gets to be general. Do you
+suppose that Colonel C----, for instance, won't be a general soon?"
+
+"As for me, I would rather marry a general at once."
+
+"Yes, but a general does not get married in uniform."
+
+"Why not, if you ask him to? That is something fine--a general at the
+altar. There is nothing more imposing than the military at church. Their
+gold epaulettes seem to go well with the organ. At the church of the
+Carmelites there are always one or two officers, but they are little
+ones, and they do not have the same effect. You did not know I was at
+the church of the Carmelites on Advent Sunday? Oh, there was a good
+father there who preached: it was indescribable!--Why don't you wear a
+braid across the top of your head? My dear child, everybody wears them:
+won't your mamma let you?"
+
+"It is not that, but you can't possibly make a braid to go over the top
+and then two rolls behind, all out of your own hair."
+
+"Well, you can get false hair. Ha! ha! what an innocent lamb you are!
+You can get false hair, my dear child."
+
+"Yes, but papa won't let me: he says I'm too young to begin."
+
+"What a pity! As for me, I had no trouble about it. Mamma said, 'It's
+vexatious, but what can you do, my child? You can't go to a ball in a
+cap;' and so we went and bought two beautiful blond braids."
+
+"Why two?"
+
+"Let me finish.--See, there is Madame de V---- coming in: do you hear
+the door creaking?--Well, as I was saying, I had to buy two braids, for
+the very simple reason that I lost the first. It was very funny. We had
+hired a coupé for the day, papa having taken ours for himself: he always
+does. We started off for the hairdresser's in this hired carriage. I
+bought a superb braid, and they wrapped it up nicely for me. I got into
+the coupé and put my little parcel up against the window, you know,
+under the strap that you pull it up and down by. That was all very nice,
+but when we got home, and I was looking for my parcel before getting
+out, no parcel was to be found. I made a great fuss, and mamma did too.
+Only think! it had slipped in by the glass of the window, and had fallen
+into the inside of the door. I suppose it's still there. There's no way
+of getting it again, you see, so I had to buy another braid" (bending
+down her head coquettishly), "which I have the honor of introducing to
+you: it is thick, of a good color--one of the very best."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could have one, but I'm afraid I sha'n't before I'm
+married.--See, there is Jeanne bowing to us. Oh, that everlasting dress
+of hers! Doesn't she look like a fright with that pink pom-pon in her
+hair and her red nose? She's a kind-hearted girl, but then that pink!
+Pink never looks well with light hair. It always looks to me like salmon
+with white sauce. Ha! ha! Speaking of salmon, by the way, you left too
+early the other evening: we had such a supper, my dear!"
+
+"Oh, how lovely Juliette looked! Didn't she? What a lovely head she has!
+I would give ten years of my life to have a head like hers. Ten years,
+dear me! yes, gladly: life isn't such very good fun, after all. And how
+becoming that headdress was to her!"
+
+"It was really magnificent: you know it came from Persia."
+
+"Did it, really? From Persia? I heard it came from--you know the place,
+ever so far off, where the colonies are. And how about her marriage?"
+
+"It's broken off: she said no, and it's all settled."
+
+"But the trousseau? Mamma saw the three cashmere shawls, three wonders!
+One had red ground with little figures on it--you know the sort they're
+wearing now: that shawl was really eloquent. I think that sort of thing
+is like music, it delights one so."
+
+"That was very fine--three cashmeres, and diamonds too, and she said
+no?"
+
+"She said no, and she was right, for it seems he limped frightfully."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"The gentleman, of course."
+
+"But, my dear girl, people always give three cashmeres. Only think a
+minute: the long cashmere for calls in winter--well, that's one; then
+you must have a square one: it would kill you to wear a long cashmere
+in hot weather; and then you could not refuse a third to go to the bath
+or to mass in--well, that makes three, don't you see? I would not be
+married with fewer. No, thank you, I wouldn't go about looking like a
+chambermaid. No, indeed I wouldn't."
+
+"Did the gentleman limp very badly? For, after all, he was a consul."
+
+"Oh, as to that, his position is a magnificent one. It seems that in the
+country where he is consul people are carried in palanquins."
+
+"That's the least thing they can do for lame people. As for me, I think
+she has done quite right. I have a horror of deformed people: one is
+never sure that it may not be something catching. Do you remember Sister
+Adelaide at the convent, who had one leg shorter than the other? Well, I
+wouldn't have sat down in her chair for a hundred thousand francs."
+
+"What would you have done if you had had to marry her?"
+
+"How silly you are!--Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to
+ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is
+stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in
+time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abbé
+Julien, who used to hear our catechisms, and who was always saying, 'Not
+another word, my children'?"
+
+"Yes, he does look like him, especially when he is waltzing: he has the
+same eyes. As for me, I don't like a man who looks like a priest. That
+is not saying anything against priests, my dear. In the first place, a
+man ought to have brown moustaches: without them he is not worth looking
+at. Have you seen my brother's moustaches since he left Saint-Cyr? That
+is the kind of moustaches I like--pointed, pointed and waxed. I used to
+do them for him last summer, and I fully understand them."
+
+"Ernest is a fine-looking young man; and then he's so strong."
+
+"I hate a Hercules. M. de Saint-Flair is not handsome, is he? Well, I
+can see very well how he fascinated Adèle with his pale face, thin hair
+and his look of illness."
+
+"Your M. de Saint-Flair looks as if he were just getting over a fever.
+When he is sitting round in the corners I am always tempted to offer him
+a bowl of gruel."
+
+"Oh, that's all very well, but as for distinction, I don't see any one
+who comes up to him. And then, too, they say he writes poetry."
+
+"Still, I must say I prefer M. de P----."
+
+"What an idea! M. de P----! He's a perfect barrel, and besides he's
+forty-six or forty-eight years old."
+
+"Well, my dear, a man has to be as old as that to be able to offer a
+woman an acceptable position. It's not at all bad to be the wife of a
+banker."
+
+At this moment the music began, and the men came forward to ask my
+little neighbors to dance. They accepted languidly, with a
+half-indifferent air. The gentlemen placed their opera-hats on the
+chairs the ladies had left, and they all advanced, talking, to join the
+dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned
+herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a
+little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps
+there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their
+manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath,
+but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning
+themselves went on with their conversation.
+
+"That gentleman dances very well, but he's a queer creature: he talked
+to me about geography. Do you know the principal town in the department
+of the Eastern Pyrenees?"
+
+"No I have forgotten. Dear me! how warm I am! I danced with that partner
+of yours the other evening: he talked about geography to me too. Isn't
+it strange that some partners always say the same thing over and over
+again?"
+
+"Oh, there is mamma making me a sign that it is time to go home. Oh
+dear! no indeed! It will be like the other evening, when we should have
+gone to bed as early as the hens if mamma hadn't been asked for the
+German. Tell your cousin to ask mamma to dance, and to ask me. I like
+him very much: he at least makes you laugh, even if you don't understand
+very well what he is talking about. He seems sometimes to be making fun
+of you, but that's no matter: he's very nice; and then, too, he holds
+you firmly while dancing, so that you feel perfectly comfortable."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward two o'clock in the morning, after having looked through M. de
+B.'s collection of etchings and played a game of whist, I returned to my
+station behind the three girls. Two were bravely drinking a glass of
+claret, and the third a cup of chocolate. They were laughing so loud
+while leaning back in their chairs, and so talking all together, that I
+could scarcely catch what they said, but I saw by their loosened hair
+and the brilliancy of their eyes, and their feverish agitation, that
+they had not wasted their time. Their mothers, who were quite as
+animated, had collected together, and three or four gentlemen had
+gathered round them saying a thousand charming bits of nonsense. The
+gayety had become so fast and furious in that corner that I despaired of
+hearing anything more, so I went back to the ante-chamber.
+
+What charming women my adorable little girls will have become in a few
+years!
+
+Pray do not think that the fever of pleasure, that candlelight and love
+of waltzing will at all impair the solid treasures which a good
+education has stored up in their little hearts. This very night when
+they go to bed these three little angels will piously fold their hands
+beneath the quilt, so as to keep warm, and will thank Heaven for all
+that has been done for them, and will beg that they may not catch a
+horrible cold in the head which will prevent their going to the opera
+to-morrow. Then, having kissed the little gold medal which protects them
+from fire and spraining their ankles, and makes them dance in time, they
+will fall fast asleep to the dim murmur of a waltz, like a bird in his
+nest.
+
+    T. S. PERRY.
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN ART-WORKSHOP IN UMBRIA.
+
+
+I met with a book on Italy some little time ago by an American author,
+whose name was not given--or if it was, I have forgotten it, and beg his
+pardon for the negligence--of which this was the first sentence: "Art is
+fast asleep in Italy, and that is why Italy is called the cradle of
+Art." If the statement be not altogether accurate, it is neatly said
+enough. But I am afraid that the facts of the case go farther than one
+would wish to believe toward bearing out the severe critic's judgment.
+Assuredly, the arts if not fast asleep, are but beginning to arouse
+themselves from a very long and lethargic nap in their classic
+cradle-land. But I think that signs are not wanting that they _are_
+beginning to shake off their slumber, and that when they shall have
+effectually done so, it will once again become evident to the world that
+this Italian race is very specially endowed with those gifts and
+qualities which go to make up the artistic temperament and to fit eye
+and head for artistic creation. A recent visit to an Italian
+country-town, one of the secondary centres of population in the
+Peninsula, has done much to confirm the correctness of these views, and
+has at the same time introduced me to some circumstances and scenes so
+interesting, and lying so far out of the path of the experiences and
+ideas of our ordinary nineteenth-century world, that I cannot but think
+some account of them will be acceptable to the general reader, and
+especially worthy of the attention of lovers of art.
+
+The town in question is Perugia, where I spent a week in the early part
+of last February, and which boasts the best inn in all Central Italy,
+ruled by a clever and notable English landlady, who has entirely
+un-Italian notions of a good fire and warm rooms. Let travelers, whether
+in winter or in summer, ask for the "Hotel Brufani," disregarding the
+fact that, being recently established, it is not mentioned in some of
+the guidebooks, and they will, I am very sure, thank me for the
+recommendation.
+
+There is an immense wealth of fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth
+century Umbrian art to be seen in Perugia, besides some of the most
+interesting extant remains of Etruscan antiquity. But I am not going to
+trespass on the domain of the guidebooks, though, truth to say, the best
+of them are very defective in completeness as well as accuracy of
+information. Nor are the professional local _ciceroni_ much more to be
+trusted. They will indeed probably show the traveler all or almost all
+that there is to be seen. But he must guard himself against accepting
+their statements in the matter of names and dates, and such like
+archæological particulars. If the stranger can have the good fortune to
+make the acquaintance of Signor Adamo Rossi, the accomplished and
+learned archivist and librarian of the municipal library, he will hardly
+fail to bring away with him from this centre of the old Umbrian
+art-world a considerably larger stock of ideas and information upon the
+subject than he carried thither with him.
+
+But now for the special experience which it is my present object to
+share with the reader. We went as a matter of course into the Duomo or
+cathedral. We did not enter the huge old church in the hope of seeing
+its special and much-boasted treasure, "the marriage-ring of the Virgin
+Mary." And if such had been our object, it would have been baffled, for
+the ring in its casket of mediæval jeweler's work (which really is
+worth seeing, as far as may be judged from engravings of it) is only
+shown on St. Joseph's Day; and being locked up under Heaven knows how
+many different keys, all in the custody of an equal number of
+ecclesiastical bigwigs, no human power short, I suppose, of that of the
+pope in person, can get at the relic on any other occasion. But what we
+did see--what instantly arrested and riveted our attention--was a modern
+painted window which has been put up for the adornment of the chapel
+where the ring is kept. It is by far the finest specimen of modern
+painted glass which I have seen in any country; and I have seen a great
+deal of all the manufactures, English, Belgian and Bavarian, which have
+recently been competing for the approval of the artistic world. The
+window in question in the cathedral at Perugia fills a plain Gothic arch
+seven mètres in height by one mètre eighty-five centimètres in width,
+and it is divided into two parts by a slender column of stone eighteen
+centimètres broad. The window which fills this space is occupied by a
+representation of one subject only, the Virgin and Child in--or rather
+sitting in front of--the stable; Saint Joseph leaning on his staff and
+gazing at the Divine Infant; a knot of shepherds in adoration, some
+bringing gifts and others playing on bagpipes, exactly similar to the
+instruments still used in the Neapolitan Apennines; other figures in the
+middle distance; beyond these a delicious bit of mountain-landscape; "a
+glory" above; and in the arch of the window a half-figure representation
+of God the Father. The composition, drawing and disposition of this
+design, which I had subsequently an opportunity of examining in the
+cartoon, is truly masterly. The figure of the Virgin, with long flowing
+locks of the richest and most sunny auburn, is of very great beauty and
+quite Peruginesque in style and conception. Her figure and the others in
+the immediate foreground are somewhat above life-size, so that the
+Virgin would be, if standing, about six feet in height, and the male
+figures in proportion. Those in the middle distance are about ordinary
+life-size. And in all of them there is that dignity of pose and
+conception inseparable from perfect unself-conscious simplicity which is
+so prevalent in the Italian art up to the period of the end of Raphael's
+first manner, which he began to lose in his second, and from which his
+successors strayed ever farther as the generations succeeded each other.
+The fullness and richness of coloring of the glass leaves really nothing
+to be desired. It is as brilliant, as jewel-like, and at the same time
+as free from opacity and heaviness, as the best ancient glass; and it is
+mainly in these respects that it so far excels the productions of other
+makers of painted glass. The landscape is treated with a pellucid
+delicacy and accuracy of truth which I have seen very rarely equaled in
+ancient windows. In a word, we were absolutely struck dumb with
+astonishment at finding such a work in such a place. And it may be
+imagined that this surprise was in no small degree increased, and a
+vivid sentiment of interest and curiosity added to it, when we were told
+on inquiry that this magnificent work of an art which was but recently
+deemed all but lost was produced wholly and entirely in Perugia, and,
+far more astonishing still, by the brain and hands of one single artist!
+In other countries--in England, at Munich, at Brussels--a cartoon
+prepared by an artist who has not the smallest knowledge of
+glass-painting or its special needs and limitations is taken to a
+_factory_, where a variety of artificers are employed in carrying out
+the various processes needed for the completion of the product. But in
+this case the conception of the design, the preparation of the cartoon,
+the selection of the colors, the arrangement of the glass, the coloring
+and burning of it, all are the work of one brain and one pair of hands.
+
+Our next demand, after again admiring in all its details the work, was
+to see the man who was the author of it, and our desire was very readily
+gratified.
+
+We have all heard much of the circumstances and conditions, so different
+from those of our day, under which the old Italian art-workers of the
+palmy days of art lived and worked. We have read Vasari's naïve
+gossiping, and have endeavored to picture to ourselves the life and
+surroundings of the craftsman of a time when the line which is
+now-a-days supposed to divide the artist from the artisan did not exist
+or was ignored. We have followed the patient investigations which
+Leonardo, while his brain was teeming with forms of beauty and new
+creations, did not disdain to expend on matters which we in these days
+deem the province of the colorman. We have been delighted by Cellini's
+simple accounts of his methods of subjecting matter to the conceptions
+of his brain, uncaring and unconscious whether such methods involved
+processes that belonged to high art or low art, fine art or not
+fine--caring only for the beauty that his handiwork was to create. The
+modern "studio" is a phrase that claims greater affinity with strictly
+intellectual processes, but in the days and generations when immortal
+works were being produced in every little town throughout the central
+part of Italy, the men who created them were content to call the place
+in which they worked a _bottega_--"a shop." And the blacksmith who
+wrought with sturdy arm and hammer the ironwork that museums now contend
+against each other for the possession of, and pay for as if it were
+gold--the wood-carver who produced by his free fancy the gems which our
+best artists are content to servilely copy--the sculptor who would sign
+works that now make the cities that possess them famous--the _lapicido_
+("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel
+produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same
+Perugia--the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to
+shame the coarser and heavier work of our time--the painter for whose
+presence at their courts princes were bidding against each other,--all
+these alike lived and labored in a _bottega_, and would have scorned the
+notion of calling themselves or imagining themselves other than
+craftsmen.
+
+Well, we sought and easily found an introduction to the artist who had
+produced the new window in the cathedral. His name is Signor Francesco
+Moretti. A common friend accompanied us to his workshop-studio. It is
+situated in a part of a suppressed convent, or some such place, which
+has come into the hands of the municipality, and a vast chamber in which
+has been placed at the disposition of the artist. The _locale_ itself
+has an Old-World look about it. A huge stair, up which you might almost
+drive a coach and four, ascends from a cloister running round a
+quadrangle. At the top of this we knocked at a great door, which looked
+wormeaten and decayed. It was opened by a little boy, and strange and
+striking indeed was the scene that presented itself. The room is an
+immense and very lofty one, reaching to the rafters of the building. It
+is lighted by one enormous window to the north, giving the artist just
+the light his work requires. On one wall, opposite to the window, was
+the cartoon which Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been
+admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a
+perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are
+not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head
+of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church
+in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an
+evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops
+for the most part were in the days when Saint Donato gave his life for
+the faith. The window for which this drawing has been made will be a
+circular one in the centre of the west front of the church in Arezzo.
+Other designs, large and small, were hung with a total disregard of
+symmetry or order on the wide white walls, and among them an infinity of
+plaster casts of almost every part of the human body. The floor and
+furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer
+an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the
+utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable
+and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the
+rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves,
+containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the
+stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian
+Nights' tales, destined to produce such marvelous effects. Other
+suspicious-looking flasks, wearing a warning touch-me-not air, contained
+chemical agents of varied kinds and properties. And everywhere, upon,
+among and under all this heterogeneous litter, was glass of every
+kind--plain glass, colored glass of every hue under the sun, unshaped
+panes of glass, glass cut into every imaginable form. And all to any eye
+save that of the master seemed to be a very type of orderless confusion.
+On a large easel backed against the abundant light from the great window
+was the partly-completed portion of another work, also destined for
+Arezzo, consisting of two life-sized figures of Saint John the Baptist
+and Saint Francis. They appeared to me to be treated in a somewhat more
+archaic style than the subject of the window in the cathedral, but were
+in no degree inferior in truth and accuracy of drawing and brilliancy of
+color.
+
+Above all, on one side of the room, were the furnaces in which the great
+work of burning in the colors is achieved. Does the reader know under
+what conditions of difficulty this part of the work is performed? When
+the harmony of the coloring of a picture, especially in a branch of art
+in which color goes for so much, has been duly considered and determined
+on, it would not do to have that which was intended for a scarlet robe
+turning out a crimson one, nor a brilliant emerald-green changed to a
+bottle-green, nor, even yet more fatal, the delicate azures and lilacs
+and grays of a distant landscape changed to comparative opacity, or
+indeed altered by the shadow of a half-tint from that which the artist's
+eye has designed for them. But if this is so with respect to the hues of
+drapery or of landscape, it is easy to imagine how much more fatal would
+be the slightest alteration of tint in those pieces of the glass which
+are destined to represent the naked portions of the human body--in the
+faces, the hands, the feet. And when, bearing these considerations in
+mind, we further learn that the very smallest degree of heat in excess
+of that which is required for the purpose in hand, or the very smallest
+deficiency in the heat, or the greater or less degree of rapidity with
+which this heat is communicated to the glass--any variation from the
+exact point needed in each of these conditions--will without fail have
+the effect of altering the result, it may be imagined how great are the
+difficulties with which the artist has to struggle. And let it be
+remembered that in other establishments for the revival of this
+beautiful art the great modern principle of the division of labor is
+called into aid in producing the result. The man whose business it is to
+manage the furnace does this alone. All the power of his intelligence,
+all the rule-of-thumb derived from his practice, is devoted to this
+alone. Unable to do anything else, he has acquired the art of heating a
+furnace to the exact degree needed. It is hardly necessary to insist on
+the greatness of the change in the conditions when this specialty has to
+be undertaken by the same brain and hands which perform equally all the
+purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The
+conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would
+surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of
+manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other
+hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the
+division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence
+attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The
+individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning
+hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in
+the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so
+much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is _per se_ a more
+beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter
+is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's
+brain--that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production
+of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the
+wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the
+Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has
+been no division of labor in the production of it.
+
+Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop,
+appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the
+visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this
+nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations
+of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the
+master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward
+circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden
+time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion.
+Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side
+of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman,
+with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well
+recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions
+of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man--that one
+might, _a priori_, have been quite sure of--delighted to talk of his
+work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness,
+enthusiasm and unreserve--utterly above the affectation of mystery or
+secresy as to his _modus operandi_, and quite ready to say to all the
+world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly
+say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that
+genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and the
+specialty of genius, and is the true workman's patent of gentlemanhood.
+
+Our talk was long and various, and the subject-matter of it did not tend
+to dispel the illusion that we were by means of some strange
+magic-lantern taking a peep into a resuscitated bit of the old
+cinquecento art-life, so full were the mind and heart of the artist of
+the special art-glories of his native city. Social philosophers have
+much to say against the restricted nature of that intensely
+concentrated form of patriotism in which the love and pride in one's
+own native place--one's _paese_, as the old Italian phrase went--is a
+species of religion. But it would not be difficult to show that the
+objections these philosophers adduce would, if carried out logically, be
+fatal to the reasonableness of all patriotism. Pure philanthropy no
+doubt is a very grand sentiment, but, somehow or other, it has never as
+a motive-power produced the great achievements that the narrower
+sentiment of love of country has produced. And I am inclined to believe
+that in the case, at all events, of ordinary people the love of one's
+own "paese"--that church-steeple patriotism that it has become a fashion
+with a certain school of politicians to deride--is very often a yet
+stronger passion and a more powerful incentive to great deeds than even
+the love of country in a larger sense. Such was undoubtedly the case
+during the great days of Italian hegemony in literature and the arts. It
+is difficult for those who have not made a special study of the subject
+to conceive the strength of the tie that during the whole of the
+mediæval period, and for a couple of centuries beyond it, bound every
+Italian citizen to the special community of which he was a member. The
+fact and the consideration that he was an Italian in no degree stirred
+his sympathies or moved his imagination, but that he was a Venetian, a
+Florentine, a Pisan, or even that he was an Aretine, a Bolognese, a
+Comasque, a Sienese or a Perugian, was all in all to him. The tie, save
+perhaps in the cases of some of the greater of the historical families,
+was a stronger one than even that of family. The Capulet or the Montague
+may have felt that his place in the world was marked as such, but the
+simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would
+have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked
+because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the
+surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being,
+and from his cradle to his grave, that what he _was_ in the world, and
+what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact that
+he was a constituent part of this, that or the other civic community.
+His fellow-citizens were his friends; and it but too naturally followed
+that the members of other, and especially of neighboring communities,
+were his enemies: even in the best times, and in the case of the best
+and largest natures, they were his rivals. The relative superiority of
+his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the
+strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on
+whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which
+Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but
+who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own
+city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be
+deemed a narrow one--Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the
+denizen of so many foreign homes--could speak of the degeneration of the
+pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of _foreigners_ whose
+native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence it
+may be estimated how smaller minds and narrower natures would feel on
+the subject. Each townsman felt that he was the heir to all the glories
+achieved or inherited by his community. Each artist, each workman who
+attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was
+increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body
+of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the
+jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on
+the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those
+inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a
+moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats!
+Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political
+economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how
+matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions
+of that order of things!
+
+Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire
+to belittle the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival
+cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all
+courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art.
+But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms
+than any of her rival cities in the great olden time--that her artistic
+history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent
+study--this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an
+instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced
+Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but
+erroneously called Giannicola _Manni_) and so many others. Signor
+Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving
+study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino,
+unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the
+Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely
+Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor
+Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present
+day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that
+mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty
+grace--often much out of place--which must be admitted to be a marking
+characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about
+Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat
+dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to
+figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in
+cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that
+Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree;
+but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and,
+above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his
+full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman,
+rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective
+in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be
+denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are
+due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me
+to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor
+Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the
+value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great
+Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity
+which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my
+readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses
+certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and
+will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of
+_Lippincott's_ till next year.
+
+We were talking, as I have said, of Perugino and his works, apropos of
+the spirit in which those of Signor Moretti have been conceived, and our
+friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English
+magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school
+in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and
+piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian
+painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been
+reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned
+professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to
+ask him if his estimate of this quality in Perugino's works differed
+from that of the English writer.
+
+"Only in that it is rather amusing," said he, "to hear those special
+qualities attributed to the work of a man who had no belief whatsoever,
+and no sympathy with the devotional feeling he is thought to have
+expressed so well."
+
+The statement was quite new to me, as it will probably be to every
+reader of these lines; and with no little surprise I asked whether the
+professor were drawing an inference from any general circumstances of
+probability, or whether he had any documentary evidence to support his
+assertion. I was aware that Signor Adamo Rossi is one of the most
+accomplished and indefatigable readers of archives in Italy, especially
+on the subject of Umbrian art, and I was sure that if any documentary
+evidence were in existence which could throw any light on the facts, he
+would be in possession of it.
+
+"Documentary evidence!" cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little
+anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village
+about half-way between Città di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the
+by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the
+well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town,
+has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and
+like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter of
+course, and would have proceeded to administer the last sacraments, but
+the apparently dying artist refused to avail himself of the priest's
+ministry in any way. He absolutely declined to confess, saying that he
+had a mind to see whether one did not fare quite as well where he was
+going without any such practices."
+
+Somewhat later he did die, and his infidelity was then so notorious that
+he was refused burial in holy ground. He obtained the rites of Christian
+burial eventually, it is true, but it was under the following somewhat
+amusing circumstances, as appears from a notarial contract, the original
+draft of which Signor Rossi has recently discovered. This very curious
+document is the legal record and stipulation of a contract between the
+prior of the Augustinian monastery in Perugia and the son of Perugino.
+It is recited that whereas a portion of the sum due from the convent to
+the deceased artist for a series of pictures painted for the convent of
+the Augustines (these works, with the exception of one part of them
+stolen by the French, and now, I believe, in the Musée at Lyons, are to
+be seen at the present day in the Pinacotheca of Perugia, and very grand
+they are) had not been paid at the time of the painter's death, it was
+now hereby agreed between the prior and the representative of the
+creditor that in consideration of five ducats in money paid down, and on
+condition that the prior should at his own cost cause the remains of the
+artist to be transported from the place where they lay in unhallowed
+ground to Perugia, and should there give them Christian burial in the
+church of his convent of the Augustines, the outstanding balance of the
+debt should be considered to be thereby discharged and canceled. I may
+mention that this curious anecdote, together with a variety of other
+interesting matter respecting Perugino and the other artists of the
+Umbrian school, will be found in a volume by Professor Adamo Rossi, to
+be published in 1876 under the auspices of the Italian government
+commission for the preservation and publication of historical documents
+regarding Tuscany and Umbria.
+
+It will be admitted that the professor's documentary evidence throws a
+very singular and instructive light on the speculations of the
+transcendental rhapsodists who are never weary of going into ecstasies
+over the profound and touching piety of the works inspired by the vivid
+and simple belief of the "ages of faith."
+
+"But there _is_," I ventured to object, after having heard the
+professor's anecdotes, "an unmistakable expression of devout feeling to
+be seen in many of Perugino's faces."
+
+"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of
+the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to
+conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and
+feature, in those who did."
+
+Perugino was therefore giving us _not_ the outcome of his own heart and
+emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would
+be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart
+and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account
+for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in
+Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in
+the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his
+successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a
+_piccolo possidente_ (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own
+fields, and in all respects little removed from the condition of a
+_contadine_, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by
+his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del
+Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes
+by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of
+brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little
+of strong volition--the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and
+thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to
+have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or
+elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without
+some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and
+martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the
+explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also
+the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of
+himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the
+expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?
+
+Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art,
+his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that
+have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is
+far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room
+opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of
+a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the
+Dominicans in Perugia, on which he has been, and will for the next two
+years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as
+regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy--a noble work of the later
+but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into
+which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it
+will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost
+equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we
+saw restored are very grand. I do not know who the original artist may
+have been--I think that it is not known--but, whoever he was, the design
+of the figures is as simply grand and as free from affectation as could
+be wished. And whether the restorer found the remains of the almost
+destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect,
+or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it
+is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style
+are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following
+of the manner of his great townsman.
+
+One other reason besides the object of directing the attention of the
+lovers of art to the works of a real and genuine artist has led me to
+think it desirable to make Signor Moretti and his workshop known to
+American and English readers. The custom, an excellent one, of putting
+up in churches or other public buildings painted windows as memorials of
+those lost to their country or to those dear to them has become common
+on both sides of the Atlantic; and I am sure that I am giving good
+counsel to any persons contemplating such an undertaking in recommending
+them to pay a visit to Signor Moretti's studio at Perugia before finally
+deciding on giving their commissions.
+
+    T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.
+
+
+"America is the paradise of women," is a foreign proverb that must
+frequently recur to every American woman who travels or resides in the
+Old World. Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear
+of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising
+from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an
+incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often
+related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a
+specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly
+exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic.
+
+Once, when I was a very young girl, it became necessary for me to take a
+journey of several hundred miles to visit a near relative who lived in
+the State of Pennsylvania, a little over the New York border. It
+happened that I was obliged to go alone and in an inclement season of
+the year, but the circumstances were imperative, and my love of
+traveling prevented any anticipation of fear or danger.
+
+The morning of the third day after my departure from home found me
+seated at breakfast in the large hotel at Corning, N. Y., which stands
+within a few steps of the Corning and Blossburg railway-station. From
+the conversation going on around me, I inferred that several of the
+guests besides myself were going by the Blossburg train, but I could not
+see the point of the landlord's jokes on the subject, which, however,
+appeared to be fully understood and heartily appreciated by my
+neighbors. He laughed and chuckled, and repeatedly wished us all
+patience and perseverance to carry us safely through the trials in store
+for us; and when we started in a body for the station, he followed us to
+the door and called out that he would be sure to have a nice hot supper
+of beefsteak and fried potatoes awaiting us on our return.
+
+The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one
+passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked
+very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious
+appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way
+was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were
+as good as we had a right to expect.
+
+The travelers consisted of eight or ten sportsmen equipped with rifles
+and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other
+a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly
+gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer
+addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little
+milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest
+fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school.
+There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car,
+whose business it was to attend to the fire.
+
+At eleven o'clock the train started with a great jerk, and crept slowly
+out of the town. The motion was very disagreeable; the seats were hard;
+the air was stuffy, and became after a while almost unbearable from the
+accumulated breaths and the dry heat of the stove, into which the negro
+was continually thrusting more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of
+the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers
+and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape.
+Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the
+landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little
+milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his
+allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only this is an old road,
+and there have been so many break-downs on it that Mr. Smith likes to
+make fun of all the Blossburg passengers."
+
+"But is anything the matter now?" I asked.
+
+"No: we always creep along this way. You see, the distance is only
+eighteen miles, or nobody could stand it. I always feel as though I
+should fly out of my skin the whole way; but, after all, it is better
+than a stage in cold weather. They are going to build a new road soon."
+
+She had scarcely finished speaking when the train, which had been moving
+more and more slowly, came to a dead stop. There was no station in
+sight, nor any house or other sign of human occupation. We were in the
+woods: a high hill was close against us on one side, and on the other a
+steep embankment went down to the shore of a rapid stream that ran
+through the valley. After waiting several minutes in vain for the train
+to move on, one of the hunters went out to see what was the matter, and
+came back laughing with the news that a piece had fallen out of the
+bottom of the boiler, so that the water had put out the fire, and there
+was no chance of our getting any farther until the boiler was mended.
+Whereupon all the men rushed out to watch the progress of affairs, and
+remained away for a time that seemed to us an age. At last they came
+dropping back, one after another, each later arrival bringing more
+encouraging news of the prospect of a speedy start, until finally the
+same hunter who had announced the disaster appeared, saying that it was
+all right and we should now go ahead. In the profound stillness of the
+forest we could hear the hissing of the steam, and presently came the
+welcome whistle; then two or three pantings of the engine and that
+preparatory jarring of the whole train which precedes its regular
+motion, and then all was still again. The same impatient hunter went out
+again, and returned--this time not laughing--to inform us that as soon
+as the water had begun to boil the hole had broken open again, and put
+out the fire as before. Again all the men rushed out: even the
+half-torpid negro in the corner became excited and followed the
+procession of males, while we "womanites" waited in patience for the
+sequel of the calamity.
+
+It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was
+drawing near its close. The frequent opening and shutting of the door
+had replaced the heavy atmosphere with a stream of cold air, at first
+very refreshing, but soon uncomfortably cool, especially as the stove
+had for some time ceased to give out heat, the negro, with the
+improvidence that characterizes his race, having burned up the fuel as
+fast as possible, without taking into account the probability of
+detention. We began, too, to be dreadfully hungry, and not one of us had
+brought any lunch, as we had fully expected to arrive at the end of the
+railway-journey by dinner-time. To crown our miseries, the sky, which
+had lowered above us gray and heavy all day, began to relieve itself in
+a thick fall of snow.
+
+The widow vented her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery
+little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying
+that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to
+enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our
+experience began after a time to seem rather tedious.
+
+At last we heard our fellow-passengers approaching, all talking together
+and apparently much excited. They brought bad news. The old engine could
+not be properly mended, and it was useless to try to fire up again; we
+had come only six miles, and it was twelve miles farther to the nearest
+station; the conductor and engineer had decided to go on, to prevent the
+evening train from starting, and to obtain another engine to remove our
+train; but considering the distance they must go, and the heavy storm
+that was coming on, they could not probably get back before morning. So
+there we were, on a high ridge of road just wide enough to hold the
+track; a mountain on one side of us and a deep river on the other; no
+house in sight, and no way of getting at it if there had been one; our
+fire gone out; nothing to eat or drink; night coming on, and the snow
+falling as it seems to me I never saw it fall before or since.
+
+The hunters made short work of the problem. They decided to follow the
+train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up
+their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the
+mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the
+level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three
+remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. The old gentleman
+mentioned that he was one of the directors of the road, and therefore
+felt a degree of responsibility in our unfortunate circumstances;
+moreover, as a man, he could not think of leaving three helpless women
+to take care of themselves in such a dilemma, and he was sure the young
+men must share this feeling; to which appeal they gave a hearty assent.
+As neither of my companions seemed ready to speak, I ventured to thank
+the gentlemen for their kindness, and to ask what we could do to lighten
+their task--whether we could not go to some house near by, or even walk
+back to Corning. But the brisk little milliner exclaimed, "I know the
+whole road, and there isn't a house anywhere in this neighborhood. About
+a mile back there is one in sight, but it is away over marshes and
+fields, and the road is built so high up that we can't possibly get down
+the bank; besides, it's a poor little hut when you get there, and I
+don't believe the people could take us in."
+
+Here the widow burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the
+parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way
+the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we
+might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a
+snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was not to be thought of.
+
+They went out to see what could be done, and we awaited their decision
+in great anxiety, the widow bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never
+begun the journey, and the milliner rehearsing numerous other
+misfortunes which had befallen the Blossburg train when she had been a
+passenger; not one of which, however, had proved such a "fix" as we were
+in now.
+
+Before long the Judge returned, calling out in a cheerful voice, "We
+have it! We are going to put you into the hinder baggage-car, and give
+you a ride back to Corning. So pick up your traps and follow me: it is
+only a few steps through the snow, and then you will be as snug as
+possible."
+
+We gladly followed our leader out of the cold, dismal car, and he helped
+us, one after another, over the narrow passage separating the track from
+the ditch, until we came to the open space between the train and the
+baggage-car, which the young men had detached and pushed a few steps
+back. It was a queer little car--like an enormous goods-box set upon
+end--and the interior was nearly filled with trunks, barrels and freight
+of various kinds. But by pushing about and piling up the things room was
+made for us, and two of the smaller boxes were left near the door to
+serve as seats, which the two elder women were invited to occupy, while
+I, as the youngest and smallest of the company, was assisted by the
+director to climb up into a rocking-chair that stood on the top of a
+hogshead in the corner, where I had an excellent seat, except that I was
+obliged to crouch a little in order not to hit my head against the
+ceiling.
+
+Having disposed of us, the three gentlemen set themselves to the work of
+pushing the car back toward Corning. They could only move it by resting
+their hands against the sill of the open door and then pressing forward
+with all their might, their feet being braced against the earth, so that
+their bodies seemed almost in a horizontal position. After once starting
+it, they were in hopes to be able to keep it in motion without much
+difficulty. But the task proved to be a harder one than they had
+anticipated. The car was strongly built and cumbrous in itself, and the
+freight it carried was heavy, to say nothing of our additional weight.
+Then, too, the snow had fallen to the depth of several inches, clogging
+the wheels and encumbering the footsteps of the men and darkness added
+to the difficulty.
+
+After struggling along for a considerable time there was a pause for
+rest and consultation. Just then a light twinkled far over the meadows,
+probably in the little hut which the milliner had described; and it was
+decided that the two young men should go there and try to borrow a
+horse. Accordingly, they scrambled down the steep bank, while the
+director shook the snow off his clothes and came into the car to rest
+until their return. We did our best to be hospitable. The milliner
+wanted him to take her seat on the box, and I offered to descend from my
+perch and let him have the rocking-chair; but he refused both proposals,
+and, finding a small barrel in an opposite corner, seated himself upon
+it and declared that he was quite comfortable. He seemed to look upon
+the whole adventure as a good joke, and we thought we could do no less
+than be merry also; so we chatted and laughed and told stories, and at
+last, discovering that he was very fond of music, I sang several songs,
+with which he expressed himself highly pleased. When I say _we_, I mean
+the little milliner and myself, for I am ashamed to say that the widow
+was all the while discontented and cross, maintaining a sullen silence,
+excepting when she broke it to grumble over our misfortunes, and
+appearing totally insensible to the generous kindness of our protectors,
+who could so easily have taken care of themselves if we had not been in
+their way.
+
+By and by we heard footsteps and voices, and the two young men
+reappeared with a farmer's boy leading a horse. But, oh, misery! the lad
+had forgotten the rope which he was told to bring, and there was no
+other way but for him to go back to the farm for it. Reproaches were
+useless, and so the lad was despatched for the missing rope, with a
+warning that he was to come back "in less than no time;" and the young
+men joined us in the car, glad to find shelter from the snow, although
+there was scarcely any room for them to stand, and none at all for them
+to sit down. The horse, too, seemed inclined to join our group, as one
+of the young men held him by the bridle so that his head was inside the
+door.
+
+The director gave such brilliant accounts of the entertainment he had
+enjoyed during the absence of his companions that they bewailed their
+deprivation most bitterly, nor would they be comforted until the
+milliner had repeated her story of "Mrs. Perkins's Tea-party" and I had
+sung over again all my songs. As soon as the boy reported himself the
+three gentlemen hurried out to superintend the hitching up. We could see
+nothing of what was going on, excepting now and then a bright gleam cast
+by the lantern across the snow opposite our open door, but we could hear
+all that was said, and we soon learned that there was more trouble in
+store for us. The horse would not go. It was not that the load was too
+much for him, for when all was ready the three men came back to their
+old place and started the car, with the intention of helping the horse
+all the way. But it was of no use: he would not stir a step. Perhaps he
+disliked the look of the wagon; more likely, he was afraid to walk upon
+the timbers; at all events, he refused to budge an inch. The boy
+chirruped and hallooed and swore; the men pushed the car until it came
+up to the horse's heels; but he only kicked and baulked, and would not
+draw. There was nothing to be done but to dismiss the beast and his
+driver, and try again. So the three gallant knights went bravely to
+work, and we watched them, ashamed of our helplessness, and yet feeling
+that it was out of our power to prevent their self-sacrifice. The most
+that we could do was to keep up their spirits by cheerful talk and merry
+songs; and I must say that when not contrasted with their greater merit
+our courage in keeping up the semblance of gayety is not to be despised,
+considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and
+darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast.
+Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really
+incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally gayer
+women succeeded in doing.
+
+For myself, wretch that I was, I enjoyed, away up in my rocking-chair,
+many a stolen moment of pure fun during the intervals my forced jollity
+for the benefit of others. There was a comical side to the adventure
+which made me shake with suppressed laughter even more than with cold.
+The whole affair of the horse was so ridiculous! The long journey in
+search of him, the forgetting of the rope, and finally the utter failure
+of the plan through the obstinacy of the sagacious beast! I laughed till
+the tears ran down my cheeks while listening to the discussions going on
+outside. And then to see those long-suffering men pushing our lumbering
+old car, with their six hands in a row on the doorsill, and their feet
+stretched so far out behind as to look almost as though not belonging to
+their bodies, the more so because their clothing was entirely white with
+snow! Once, one of them slipped and fell down flat, and I only laughed
+the harder, though feeling all the while that I could have beaten myself
+for my want of gratitude. The sighings of the patient little milliner,
+who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the
+occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner,
+only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible
+because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my
+companions should become aware of my inexcusable levity.
+
+In one of the pauses for rest the young lawyer gave a shout on
+discovering an apple in his coat-pocket. But instead of eating it
+himself or sharing it with his fellow-laborers, he cut it into three
+pieces and handed it to us, together with a snowball to quench our
+thirst; and then they all set to work again as bravely as though they
+themselves had just been refreshed with food and drink.
+
+But good-will was not all that was necessary to make their enterprise
+successful. Their strength was giving out, and on seeing the gleam of
+another light at a distance it was thought best to try to procure
+another horse. Again the two young men set off across the meadows, and
+again the good old Judge came into the car and took his seat on top of
+the barrel. But the sequel of the second endeavor was more satisfactory
+than the first had been. The young men returned with a lively young
+horse, which, after being duly fastened with the rope that this boy had
+not forgotten, started off at a good pace as soon as the car had been
+got underway. He seemed to draw the load so easily that the three
+exhausted men thought they might rest a while, and so they all piled
+into the car and drew the door partly to, in order to keep out the cold
+wind, which had begun to blow quite hard. They, poor souls! rejoiced
+greatly over their change of base, and imagined themselves in wonderful
+luck; while we, the former occupants, realized that our misery had a
+lower depth than we had yet experienced, since we were nearly stifled by
+the confined air, and at the same time chilled to the very marrow of our
+bones by the close proximity of those animated bundles of melting snow.
+But an unexpected piece of good-fortune fell to us all just then. The
+Judge, while swinging his foot over the side of his barrel, happened to
+strike one of them against a small object that tumbled over and rolled
+away between the boxes. He sprang down to the floor in a moment.
+"Hurrah!" he cried: "I believe I have run down a keg of oysters." A
+match was lighted and the precious freight hunted for. It turned out to
+be not oysters, but a tin box of oyster-crackers. "Never mind," said the
+Judge: "it is something to eat, at any rate, and the owner will never
+need it as much as we do. What's the use of being a director of the road
+if one cannot help himself to the property once in a while?" So saying,
+he pried open the box, the young lawyer keeping the matches going in
+order to give him light, and soon the contents were distributed among
+the company. While we were munching away at our dry food, now and then
+varying the fare by a pull at a snowball, the driver gave a shout and
+the car suddenly stopped.
+
+On going out the men were told that we had come to a culvert, over which
+the horse could not go, and so one of the party unhitched the horse and
+led him carefully down the steep bank and up the other side on to the
+track again, while the others pushed the car across the partially-open
+space. Then the horse was hitched up anew, the car started, and our
+guests again darkened the doorway. But the culverts multiplied, and as
+the same process must be gone through with each one, the gentlemen gave
+up trying to come under shelter between-times, and patiently plodded
+along in the deep snow behind the car.
+
+By and by the horse began to show signs of giving out, and the old mode
+of pushing was resorted to in order to help him. But he was young and
+easily tired, and finally the driver said he must not draw any more; so
+he was unhitched, the boy was paid and dismissed, the men bent their
+weary backs again to grasp the low doorsill, and we creaked along more
+slowly than ever.
+
+At last the lights of Corning became visible, and the work immediately
+stopped. We were within about a mile of the town, and the director now
+proposed that his two companions should go on and return with a
+conveyance, while he remained in charge of us. This was done, and in
+less time than it had taken to procure a steed for our railway vehicle
+our deliverers appeared in the road below us, looking very grand in a
+large sleigh carrying lamps, filled with fur robes, and drawn by two
+fiery black horses that promised to bring our prolonged discomforts to a
+speedy close. But how to reach this tantalizing object? The railway was
+on an embankment, and between us and the road was another ridge, a deep
+ditch filled with half-frozen water lying between. The young men debated
+for a few moments, and at last went to a neighboring fence and broke off
+a long board, which they brought and laid across from the track to the
+ridge; and then one of them stood nearly knee-deep in the ditch and
+supported the board on his shoulder, while the other climbed up the
+ridge and told the director to hand us over, one at a time, as far as
+his arm would extend, and he would reach out to us from the other side.
+In this way we all passed over safely, and had no further mishap,
+excepting that once the horses became unmanageable, and we came very
+near being run away with on our way to the hotel.
+
+As we drove up to the door the landlord appeared, rubbing his hands and
+chuckling, just as he had done on our departure, and crying out, "Didn't
+I tell you I should see you again to-day? and it hasn't struck twelve
+yet! And I told you, too, that I would have a good supper of beefsteak
+and fried potatoes ready: there they are smoking hot in the dining-room
+this blessed minute; so come and eat."
+
+The deliciousness of that meal I will not attempt to describe, nor the
+comfort of the night's rest that followed it. Before separating from our
+generous companions we three women (for even the widow came out strong
+after the trouble was over) tried to express in some degree our
+gratitude for their extreme kindness, but they laughed at the very idea
+of any obligation on our side, and declared that the pleasure of our
+society had far outweighed the hardships of the journey.
+
+As a fitting sequel to this story I will add that the next morning the
+two young gentlemen (one of whom resided in the town which I was
+intending to visit, and knew my relations well) hired a sleigh and
+invited me to drive across the country to my destination with them. And
+about a week after my arrival I was surprised by a visit from the
+director, who said that, having business in the county, he had come
+twenty miles out of his way to see the little girl who had been so
+cheerful and good-humored under so severe a trial of fortitude as was
+our railroad disaster among the Pennsylvania hills. I believe that the
+noble old gentleman really thought me more deserving of praise than
+himself; and I am certain that not one of the three ever considered that
+there was anything wonderful in having thus sacrificed their comfort and
+risked their health in behalf of three women, insignificant in
+themselves and having no claim, not even that of previous acquaintance,
+upon their attention and care.
+
+    E.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.
+
+
+Among the English statesmen of a century ago, William, earl of
+Shelburne, seems to us to have a peculiar claim upon the recollection of
+citizens of the United States--one, too, that involves none of those
+offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say,
+Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a
+man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently,
+protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove
+thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in
+office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy
+never of cowardly concession, but of just expediency, the impending
+storm, and then, when it had burst, to withstand and counteract its
+fury; and the last great act of whose public life was to conclude the
+struggle which he had always deprecated and deplored.
+
+It is therefore with no ordinary interest that we welcome the first
+installment of a work[C] whose promise--and, we at once cordially add,
+performance--heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable
+flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose
+administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present
+biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his
+subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his
+great-grandfather's papers at Lansdowne House, but to those of two other
+most important actors in the British drama of a century ago--Lord Bute,
+"the favorite," and Henry Fox; and these documents, pieced together and
+set side by side, throw upon the events to which they relate, and the
+motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and
+convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind
+of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day
+a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches,
+his version of this or that historical transaction--to tell us, with the
+authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter
+Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr.
+B.'s conduct in the knowledge that he was all along intriguing for that;
+but how often it happens that when, by good luck, the contemporaneous
+documentary evidence of correspondence, private memoranda and the like
+is forthcoming, the off-hand allegations of the memoir-writer are in
+infinite particulars tried and found wanting in correctness, and
+sometimes fall refuted altogether! More than one notable instance of
+this will strike the historical student in reading this first volume of
+Lord Shelburne's _Life_; and in the eventful and disputed years which
+Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has yet to chronicle it may safely be assumed
+that he will have plenty to say in the way of correction and explanation
+of previous histories of the time.
+
+An autobiographical fragment, composed by Lord Shelburne in his closing
+years, and found among the Shelburne papers at Lansdowne House, presents
+with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be
+desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second
+George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the
+bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of
+seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward
+earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) and marquis
+of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin. "I spent the four first years, of my
+life" (he tells us) "in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under
+the government of an old grandfather [Thomas Fitzmaurice, earl of
+Kerry], who reigned, or rather tyrannized, equally over his own family,
+and the neighboring country as if it was his family, in the same manner
+as I suppose his ancestors, lords of Kerry, had done for generations
+since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family one hundred
+thousand acres in those remote parts in consideration of their services
+against the Irish, with the title of barons of Kerry.... My grandfather
+did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to
+make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character
+which can be imagined--obstinate and inflexible: he had not much
+understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no
+education except what he had in the army, where he served in his youth,
+with a good degree of reputation for personal bravery and activity. He
+was a handsome man, and, luckily for me and mine, married a very ugly
+woman, who brought into his family whatever degree of sense may have
+appeared in it, and whatever wealth is likely to remain in it." In 1741
+the stern grandfather died, and in the course of the next ten years the
+grandson picked up such bits of education as an Irish public school of
+the period, supplemented by a clerical private tutor, might afford. At
+sixteen he went to Christ Church, Oxford (in those days boys were
+commonly taking their degrees at the universities at an age when they
+would now be well content to have won their way into a school sixth
+form), and there read law, history, Demosthenes, and "by myself a great
+deal of religion."
+
+And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of
+his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and
+character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry
+into public life. No one, we take it, will be disposed to quarrel with
+the interruption, for it gives us, in the space of a few pages, a
+picture of men and manners which, painted as it is by the mature hand of
+a shrewd contemporary observer, cannot but form a most important
+addition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of
+this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the
+making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm
+and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly
+no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected
+with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified
+with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his
+sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder--we had almost said more
+bitterly--than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just
+as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal
+explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of
+attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord
+Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his
+trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without
+demolishing poor Lord Melcombe _en passant_. "The prince's life (he
+says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord
+Melcombe's diary--a man who passed his life with great men whom he did
+not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but
+recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never
+could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness
+and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only
+serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with
+where power is lodged."
+
+The elder Pitt--with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted
+in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the
+beginning of the war of independence--comes in for his full share of
+severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive.
+Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was
+insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and
+patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded
+consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which
+may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on
+any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to
+anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally
+ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family
+beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly
+had no sentiment in it. The transaction at the time of his resignation
+does not carry with it an absolute indifference as to money or other
+advantages, nor did there appear in any of his subsequent negotiations,
+in or out of power, that he went beyond what was necessary to satisfy
+the people at the time or to secure his wished-for situation. In truth,
+it was his favorite maxim that a little new went a great way.... I was
+in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time
+that I was secretary of state included, he minister, and necessarily was
+with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of
+water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the
+way of business. I went to see him afterward in Somersetshire, where I
+fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed
+me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as
+a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head,
+thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well
+bred, and preserved all the manners of the _vieille cour_, with a degree
+of pedantry, however, in his conversation, especially when he affected
+levity, I never found him when I have gone to him--which was always by
+appointment--with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone
+in a drawing-room waiting the hour of appointment, and in the country
+with his hat and stick in his hand."
+
+All this, it must not be forgotten, was written in the year 1801, long
+after the writer had finally retired from the battlefield of politics,
+upon which, at the period when his own account of his youth breaks off,
+he had not yet made his first essay. Some practical experience of actual
+battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his
+appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when,
+between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the
+Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of
+a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a
+year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined
+the army and went on foreign service. Here he had the good-fortune to
+come under the chivalrous General Wolfe, whom he eulogizes in terms the
+genuine warmth and heartiness of which is all the more striking from the
+contrast with his generally severe judgments upon his contemporaries. At
+the battle of Minden in 1759, and again at Kloster Kampen in the
+following year, he displayed conspicuous personal courage, which was
+rewarded, on his return to England, with the rank of colonel and the
+court appointment of _aide-de-camp_ to the new king, George III.
+
+Hardly had camp been exchanged for court when circumstances offered the
+young Lord Fitzmaurice his first introduction to a kind of political
+employ which was to be thenceforward, through a series of years, his
+frequent and peculiar function. Lord Bute, the favorite, had begun to
+climb the ladder of ministerial office, and had cast his eyes upon that
+unscrupulous and greedy but undeniably able politician, Henry Fox, as
+the man most desirable for his purpose by way of a House-of-Commons
+ally. Owing, very possibly, to the fact that there existed some
+connection between Fox and Fitzmaurice's father, Lord Fitzmaurice fell
+into the place of intermediary between the parties to this negotiation,
+which had hardly passed out of its first stage when the death of his
+father removed him, now Lord Shelburne, to the House of Lords before he
+had ever taken the family seat, into which he had been elected at the
+last general election, in the lower House. The negotiation was
+successfully carried through. Fox named his price--a peerage for his
+wife--and after considerable haggling got it, and in return undertook a
+position which Shelburne announced to Bute in a letter dated October
+31, 1761, as follows: "Mr. Fox will attend [the House of Commons] every
+day, and will, either by silence or by speaking, as he finds it prudent
+according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your lordship
+wishes, and will enter into no sort of engagement with any one else
+whatever." But before the year was out Bute found himself in want of a
+closer and more positive support on the part of Fox than he had in the
+first instance contracted for. The peace party, which he (Bute) headed,
+had at last the close of the continental war full in sight, peace
+preliminaries were about to be laid before Parliament, but there was a
+prospect of the war party fighting over the terms proposed by ministers,
+and Bute felt that he must have a strong leader to champion his treaty
+in the House of Commons. Fox was his man for the place, and Shelburne
+was again commissioned to treat with him. The details of a negotiation
+of this kind are not of a character to call for very particular
+attention a century afterward, but the letters between the parties--many
+of them now for the first time published--are not without considerable
+interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of
+their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less
+perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless
+one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most
+thorough _bona fides_, always ensure the conduct of the common agent
+against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular
+negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's
+offer (through Shelburne) to Fox was the leadership of the Commons, with
+a peerage for himself to follow. Fox at the time held the very lucrative
+post of paymaster-general--lucrative, because in those days it was
+deemed a perfectly legitimate practice for the paymaster to make a
+private profit out of the investment of the public moneys for the time
+being under his control. Shelburne appears to have assumed--and so,
+indeed, it was only natural to assume--that Fox would not dream of
+accepting high office in the ministry without at the same time resigning
+his extra-ministerial berth at the Pay Office; and there is evidence
+that such--at first, at any rate--was Fox's own intention. The king was
+given to understand that Fox's resignation of the Pay Office would be a
+term of the proposed arrangements, and consented to them on that
+footing; and then all at once Fox came out in the character of Injured
+Innocent, protested that he had never meant to resign, that he had all
+along intended to have his cake as well as eat it, and that Shelburne
+had entrapped and betrayed him. The story goes, but on what authority
+history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's
+conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox
+retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?"
+The correspondence and the other evidence which, with a pardonable
+jealousy for his ancestor's fair fame, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice sets out
+with much detail in his biography, requires, we think, at the very
+least, that a verdict of "Not proven" should be entered in Shelburne's
+favor; but a man who chooses to make personal negotiation his specialty
+must not be surprised to find his tact sometimes called trickery, and
+his double agency set down as double dealing. It is certain that the
+part he played in the Bute-Fox negotiations entailed upon Shelburne
+imputations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely
+dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley
+Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a
+prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon
+him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously
+maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could
+conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, _for
+Malagrida was a very good sort of man_."
+
+Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his
+favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new
+ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the
+spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no
+less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to
+get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than
+Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be
+jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which,
+however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition
+to the peerage of Great Britain; and also--reasonably enough, one is
+inclined to say--that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office
+rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in
+one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it
+must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his
+parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but
+he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English
+Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger
+Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of
+three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his
+friend--who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time
+aside--a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the
+presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and
+entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration.
+Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in
+which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he
+took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out
+Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and
+most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had
+hardly been a month at the Board of Trade when a communication from Lord
+Egremont, the "Southern" secretary of state, directed his particular
+attention to this subject.
+
+The North American colonies--or, as they were commonly called,
+plantations--labored in those days, in their relation with the
+home-country, under the inconveniences of a system of dual government.
+The Board of Trade was the working colonial office, framed instructions
+to the governors, gave information and advice, and carried on the
+every-day colonial business generally; but the secretary of state for
+the southern department, whose sphere of supervision embraced all the
+colonies wherever situate, had always a permanent right to interfere in
+and control the conduct of colonial affairs. It was in virtue of this
+right that in May, 1763, Secretary Lord Egremont took the initiative in
+setting the Board of Trade to work to solve the problem of how best to
+arrange for the administration of the wide area of North American
+territory that the peace had transferred from French to British rule.
+His instructions were short and pointed. "The questions (he wrote) which
+relate to North America in general are--1st, What new governments should
+be established there? what form should be adopted for such a government?
+and where the capital or residence of each governor should be fixed?
+2dly, What military establishment will be sufficient? what new forts
+should be erected? and which, if any, may it be expedient to demolish?
+3dly, In what way, least burdensome and most palatable to the colonies,
+can they contribute toward the support of the additional expense which
+must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangement
+which your lordships shall propose?" Mark the "3dly." It is interesting,
+as illustrating the ideas and circumstances which led to the famous
+Stamp Act, to see how completely Lord Egremont's question assumes not
+only the right of the mother-country to tax her colonies, but the
+probable expediency of her actually exercising that right. In his reply,
+Shelburne, while admitting the revenue question to be a "point of the
+highest importance," practically evaded it on the plea of the inability
+of the board to form a satisfactory opinion without further materials.
+With regard to the new territory, his advice, which was followed, was,
+in effect, not to attempt to annex the whole of the north-western
+acquisitions, but to form a new colony of Canada, limited by definite
+geographical boundaries.
+
+"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen
+in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West
+against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would
+claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen
+of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without
+charging them with this in addition. However impossible it was in
+practice to dam up the ever-advancing tide of the English race, it was
+equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of
+dispossessing the still powerful savage nations, which were bound to
+England by numerous conventions, and were regarded for the most part as
+subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of
+Boston, or even of London, to the protection of his government. To
+adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period
+of the struggle which can have but one result is a task as difficult as
+it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of
+attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent because
+they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and
+attempting to protect the ever-retiring bounds of the Indian
+reservations."
+
+But the march of events was soon to take the responsibility of the
+"settlement" (save the mark!) of American affairs out of the hands of
+Shelburne. He had joined the ministry more because of the insistance of
+his friend, Bute, the potent cabinet-maker, than from any general
+sympathy with the views of the men with whom he had to act; and every
+week put him more and more out of touch with them. He protested formally
+to Egremont against the dual government of the colonies, and when the
+latter tried to shelve the question by professing fatigue, curtly told
+him--what was true enough--that he must expect more if the affairs of
+America were to be put in order. He questioned the legality of the
+action of his colleagues, the Triumvirate (Grenville, Halifax and
+Egremont), in ordering the arrest of Wilkes of _North Briton_ fame.
+But, oddly enough, considerations of a wholly different character
+appear to have influenced his actual resignation of office. Bute,
+nominally in retirement, but really playing the _rôle_ of ministerial
+wirepuller-in-ordinary, had a surprising fancy for devising unlikely
+combinations; and now he was minded to conjure with the still potent
+name of Pitt. Once more, and, as it happened, for the last time, he
+sought the service of Shelburne as negotiator, and once more Shelburne,
+undeterred by past experiences, undertook the difficult position. Pitt
+nibbled, and for a time seemed about to bite, but in the end he drew off
+unhooked; whereupon (at the beginning of September, 1763) Shelburne
+immediately resigned the Board of Trade. What his real motive in taking
+this step was, his own letters do not at all clearly show. Doubtless he
+felt his uncordial relations with his colleagues irksome, but we can
+also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise
+over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the
+trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the
+arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all
+subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of
+Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only
+statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly,
+Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply
+infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no
+secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his
+post of royal _aide-de-camp_, and when he appeared at court snubbed him
+pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit,
+and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased.
+
+For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof
+from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his
+estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents
+(which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up
+to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls
+them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political
+clubs of _littérateurs_. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at
+this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen
+years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the
+happiness of mankind."
+
+But it was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and
+practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when
+a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures
+as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his
+banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous
+Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates
+on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have
+offered a persistent and uncompromising opposition; but at the end of
+April, 1765, he appeared in his place in Parliament to deliver a
+vigorous speech against the Regency Bill, and showed the courage of his
+opinions by leading a minority of eight into the lobby. To Rockingham,
+now at the head of the ministry, it was obvious that Shelburne, despite
+his years--he was barely eight-and-twenty--was a personage whose support
+was worth conciliating, and in July he offered to replace him in the
+Board of Trade. The offer was declined, and not unnaturally. Shelburne
+had always, with Pitt, protested against the policy of the Stamp Act,
+and could hardly have sat in a cabinet which, domineered over by the
+king, was preparing to carry it into execution. We may surmise, too,
+that he was not unalive to the advantages of a waiting game, and that,
+closely allied with Pitt as he had now become, and heartily believing in
+him, he was unwilling to take office on any other than what we may call
+the Pitt platform. Indeed, he himself says as much in writing to Pitt, a
+few months afterward, apropos of the Rockingham overtures: "My answer
+was very short and very frank--that, independent of my connection, I was
+convinced, from my opinion of the state of the court, as well as the
+state of affairs everywhere; no system could be formed, durable and
+respectable, if Mr. Pitt could not be prevailed on to direct and head
+it." In the same letter--the date is about December, 1765--he tells
+Pitt, "'Tis you, sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to
+this anarchy, if anything can. I am satisfied your own judgment will
+best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will
+excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends
+greatly upon you whether they become opinions, but, by all I find from
+some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than
+its present state; and though it is my private opinion it would be well
+for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a
+repeal [of the Stamp Act] effecting that if it is not accompanied with
+some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately
+following such a concession."
+
+Whatever the faults and weaknesses of the Rockingham administration of
+1765-66--and they were many--their moral courage in proposing and
+carrying through the repeal of the Stamp Act ought to stand weightily to
+their credit. The king was well known to be vehemently averse to the
+slightest tampering with the act; and it is difficult for any body of
+statesmen, even where--which here was anything but the case--public
+opinion unanimously admits that a false step has been taken, to face the
+obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it.
+However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne
+supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did
+even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only
+four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the
+well-known declaratory resolution. _Sic vos non vobis._ Though the
+Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it was the popular
+belief that Pitt had been the real moving cause in the matter. Pitt, and
+none other, was demanded by the national voice. The king reluctantly
+yielded. Pitt marched into the royal closet with words of profoundest
+deference upon his tongue and the stern triumph of a conqueror in his
+heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not
+even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other
+hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of
+state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George
+III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as
+best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new
+arrangement appears from an interesting letter from him to Guerchy in
+London, which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice quotes from a copy at Lansdowne
+House. His conclusion is: "Alors le ministère d'Angleterre aura une
+certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple,
+l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-être l'étourderie de my Lord
+Shelburne quoique gouverné par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il
+ne l'étoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham à pris une charge trop forte
+d'être le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this
+critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously
+nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of
+Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so long
+been distinctively the Great Commoner, Shelburne at nine-and-twenty
+essaying the grave responsibilities of a secretaryship of state, the
+first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a
+close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war
+of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of
+freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most
+liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be
+expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities,
+and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and
+judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of
+Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most
+American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of
+the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his
+office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his
+character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received
+its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph
+of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly
+advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the
+king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to
+finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition
+that British parliamentary government has seen;--are not all these
+things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and
+authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future
+volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a
+most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the
+principal--we cannot add famous--actors in the conduct of the war; we
+mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for
+cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry,
+and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his
+plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of
+the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly
+responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe
+upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force
+which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which
+together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation,
+considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally
+unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any
+general plan for bringing about a reconciliation. The best plan which
+was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold.
+The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be
+accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person
+who is not conversant with the negligence of office to comprehend.
+Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out
+of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or
+Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his
+office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both
+these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair
+copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a
+very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they
+despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others
+could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which,
+however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the
+vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General
+Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen
+colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater
+fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years
+before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved
+himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose
+general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a
+newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic
+commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is
+insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive
+indication?--
+
+    All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,
+    His lordship gave the word, but could no more:
+    Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,
+    Of such a general to demand the care.
+    To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D]
+    He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.
+    'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,
+    Quickly deciding which was best to save,
+    Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.
+
+Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him
+solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the
+domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for
+some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne,
+which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to
+us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented,
+however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and
+associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the
+habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history,
+politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some
+chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons,
+another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act
+in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at
+the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies
+afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her
+"a sermon out of Barrow against judging others--a very necessary lesson
+delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord
+Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of
+his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of
+which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre
+during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we
+conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the
+service that is rendered to history by the publication of such
+biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary
+evidence carefully collected, besides correcting the hasty and generally
+biased assertions of irresponsible contemporary chroniclers, forms the
+only trustworthy foundation for the judgment of the impartial historian.
+
+    W. D. R.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] _Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First Marquess of
+Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence._ By Lord
+EDMOND FITZMAURICE. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan & Co., London and New
+York, 1875.
+
+[D] Brigadier-general Mostyn.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+SOCIETY IN PARIS.
+
+
+If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines
+pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or
+public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we
+bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that
+hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the
+eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance.
+Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our
+cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a
+projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in
+croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is
+peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not
+in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a
+new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our
+grand entertainments two great rushes take place--the one toward the
+dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front
+door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy
+at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and
+a snare.
+
+In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the
+water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element
+of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary
+consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to
+refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer
+she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup
+and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial
+point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or
+thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments
+on a larger scale, such as _soirées musicales_, evening receptions,
+etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually
+handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the
+grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed
+entirely of cold dishes--chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise
+sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra
+magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the
+matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a
+ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of
+the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The
+substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia
+suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half
+a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and
+Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of
+champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a
+Parisian open his eyes--ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the
+foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such
+prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia
+banquet.
+
+It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of
+food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great
+encouragement to the givers of soirées in general. With us, to entertain
+as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of
+care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very
+wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite
+fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is
+worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event
+can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la
+Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she
+shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in
+pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week,
+when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she
+organizes a little soirée twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or
+sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited.
+The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good
+amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a
+bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or
+artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or
+herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the
+cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are
+handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away
+groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford
+to give her friends _pâté de foie gras_ and hothouse strawberries, and
+they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If
+she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends
+whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite
+them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which
+she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much
+like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole
+refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would
+be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.
+
+The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent
+feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the
+same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses,
+which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven
+o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either
+private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary
+to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to
+pass the remainder of the evening--a practice which proves that in
+Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our
+own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an
+American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in"
+after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not,
+after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on
+the face of the earth in _all_ respects. That pleasant willingness to
+accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate
+hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of
+American society would do well to study after the example set by their
+Parisian brethren.
+
+A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one
+of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but
+the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions.
+Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true
+French _cordon bleu_. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity
+displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all
+manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket
+formed of brown _nougat_ was handed round. It was filled with apricots
+moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another
+the basket was of white _nougat_, and the ice-cream was colored and
+moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large
+silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the
+stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was
+untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest,
+together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk
+was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice,
+while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the
+vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive.
+The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less
+extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for
+the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient, except on
+occasions of extra magnificence and importance.
+
+The official balls at the Élysée, of which two or three are usually
+given every winter, are very informal in character. The American
+traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the
+medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into
+as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid
+over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Élysée. Madame
+MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room,
+which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of
+which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a
+perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the
+host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at
+liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the
+state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or
+thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a
+supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening,
+there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers
+and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet
+liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes,
+combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less
+so than were the official fêtes given under the Empire, when the superb
+apartments of the Hôtel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand
+ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Élysée is much
+too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these
+festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that
+after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of
+Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the
+grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of
+the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year,
+but still great enough to render a ball at the Élysée anything but a
+comfortable form of enjoyment.
+
+There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or
+private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that
+is the card-playing--nay, to put it accurately, the actual
+gambling--which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not
+pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic
+an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of
+Baden-Baden and of Homburg--the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on
+the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the
+intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in
+silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner
+during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which
+American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John
+Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the
+amusements in the back parlor of the White House.
+
+But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it
+runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all
+entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and
+beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in
+America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and
+all-important feature. Two great points are _de rigueur_ in a
+Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be
+fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two
+qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more
+minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress,
+and _vice versâ_; while in America the same toilette is considered
+appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over
+twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the
+dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The
+same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is
+proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is
+inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the
+opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate
+for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at
+the Grand Opéra or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she
+takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter
+how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is
+entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones
+alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered,
+caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry,
+those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly
+_vraisemblable_ splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is
+rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a
+superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa
+at the Élysée. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police,
+where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself.
+Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the
+proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was
+accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon
+proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious _trouvaille_
+was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his _Maison
+Neuve_, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball
+ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently
+sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of
+_clinquante_ which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to
+the lovers of correct taste in dress.
+
+Another striking feature of European society to an American is the
+predominance of old women therein--ladies of sixty or seventy years of
+age, very much coiffées, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems.
+This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager
+with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with
+many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago
+have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is
+not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against
+American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both
+sexes. Well, after all, it is better so--that is, so far as balls and
+dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more
+beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in
+white brocade or rose-pink satin.
+
+    L. H. H.
+
+
+NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.
+
+The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a
+good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two
+instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is
+cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly,
+compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and
+assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while
+the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of
+ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could
+emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of
+the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time;
+whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its
+communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no
+speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.
+
+What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the
+forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few
+languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will
+begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type
+of the Semitic race--the Hebrew. The history of the Jews--at any rate as
+it is set forth in their own sacred Books--is pre-eminently the history
+of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of
+_conscience_. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most
+of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in
+some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main
+object of the Lawgiver--keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this
+bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as
+the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the
+conscience unaccused--to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
+with God." To this bear witness the plaints--the like of which no other
+ancient literature furnishes--of their royal Psalmist, the type of what
+was best and noblest in his race--plaints which mourned not so much
+outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt
+conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else
+was bright--plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine
+became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament
+found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the _de profundis_ of
+all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as
+he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race
+could not be more clearly shown by volumes.
+
+With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were
+counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of
+other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods
+and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit
+him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the
+"blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance
+of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen
+watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were
+hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego
+his _tête-à-tête_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the
+cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim
+seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.
+
+    Man tanzt, man schwätzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:
+    Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?
+
+might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the
+gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for
+he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and
+his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one;
+and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to
+his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been
+no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of
+exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had
+higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind:
+witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylæ and the fields of
+Marathon and Platæa. But when the serious business of life gave time,
+wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and
+from him, then, what greeting so natural as [Greek: Chaire!] ("Rejoice!"
+"Be happy!")?
+
+As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to
+the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do
+not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of
+
+          Non possum ferre, Quirites,
+    Græcam Urbem,
+
+Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,
+
+    Non est Romano cuiquam locus hîc, ubi regnat
+    Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,
+
+although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler
+antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman--when the
+spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which
+used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of
+the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by
+turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless
+adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law,
+mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded
+sanctions--who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter
+Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The
+charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures
+were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period--he who used his
+ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers.
+Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as
+was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in
+ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the
+"Mavortia moenia" would stand for ever. To him the state was
+everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working
+member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private
+right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and
+whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as
+a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No
+wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign
+poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had
+spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the
+customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!")
+at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.
+
+To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a
+greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided
+in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no
+people are _appearances_ more studied or cared for. Courage,
+undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical
+Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the
+field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can
+have a good _mise en scène_ for its exhibition. Deportment is the great
+thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly
+intercourse--even though one may know that feelings are not very
+deep--by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing
+things?--so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races,
+which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any
+rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a
+regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as
+"Être de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to
+either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman
+in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid
+of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our
+English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall
+rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist,
+Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but
+under each or all, whether for good or evil, _manners_ will rule until
+the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say,
+naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you _carry_ yourself?")?
+
+If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask
+your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter
+you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all
+probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a
+mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an
+exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"?
+He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder
+gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which
+involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that
+tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope
+Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides,
+to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the
+factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr.
+Diedrich Knickerbocker in his _History of New York_," as a grave
+historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and
+the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the
+gravity, of the Teuton--his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of
+the minutiæ of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner
+consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet,
+plodding thoroughness--a looking at things in all their bearings, an
+exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of
+fact or of speculation, a constant striving to _find out_ all about
+whatever he takes in hand--is not this one of his most marked
+characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be,
+if he is gravely polite, "Wie _befinden_ Sie sich?" ("How do you _find_
+yourself?")?
+
+Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less
+than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the
+representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose
+inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and
+having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained
+courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy
+going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the
+main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of
+the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the
+New; whose Anglo-Saxon _homes_ are models of what is nowhere else so
+readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy
+inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own--a
+compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he
+has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the
+same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than
+his salutation, "How do you _do_?"?
+
+    J. A. H.
+
+
+SEASONABLE READING.
+
+I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper--a summer study,
+intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his
+understanding--and timed the production of it so that it should appear
+during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright
+firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor,
+endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general
+reader"--in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice"
+or "the general ignorance"--notified me in January that he would prefer
+to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be
+regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under
+green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought
+it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay
+before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general
+ignorance, my little protest.
+
+Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that
+the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an
+eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs,
+symbols--all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward,
+when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are
+used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory
+more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an
+interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If
+the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from
+all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was
+studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves
+are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes
+utilized--they cannot be reproduced--by art, are another thing, and
+these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without
+except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American
+would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the
+good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in
+the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the
+picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a
+proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do
+to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him
+at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain
+of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want
+the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and
+then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before
+a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering and
+inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.
+
+Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can
+be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively
+account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed
+Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is
+as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one
+will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of
+Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art,
+our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the
+atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in
+"seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring
+being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a
+vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing,
+as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If
+editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain
+articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months
+after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor
+at least who considers the necessity a virtue.
+
+    C. H.
+
+[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine
+should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be
+the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide
+a grateful relief--like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold
+one--from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite
+seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and
+seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a
+feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or
+the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more
+intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer
+pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with
+plentiful libations of cool drinks--a tantalizing spectacle that drew a
+storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor
+whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to
+revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.--ED.]
+
+
+A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.
+
+The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia
+is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its
+management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they
+are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world,
+before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the
+land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and
+individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be
+made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever
+witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond
+to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart.
+Aside from the museum proper--the collection of past and present
+manufactures, past and present implements of industry--every day should
+witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which
+took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid
+field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines--one English,
+one French (from Algiers), and one American--were the weapons of the
+contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from
+every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine
+machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and
+raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in
+seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in
+twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American
+machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a
+single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect
+shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most
+gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers,
+all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening
+shouts of applause.
+
+
+SHRIMPS.
+
+Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man,
+but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was
+still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive
+qualities--may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose
+imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms
+and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human
+bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered
+with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected.
+Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after
+once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may
+not be the common shrimp (_Crangon vulgaris_).
+
+Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in
+France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water,
+pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long
+stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from
+the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water.
+It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which
+resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the
+old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the
+short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and
+passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages
+serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it
+stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its
+head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes
+of the tail are subjected to the same process.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+     The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.
+     Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.
+     Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+     The Poems of William Blake, comprising Songs of Innocence and
+     of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches and some
+     Copyright Poems not in any other edition. London: Basil Montagu
+     Pickering.
+
+It does not add to the mere delight of reading Blake's poems to know
+that in point of time they preceded the writings of Cowper, Wordsworth
+and Burns, but assuredly it enhances our estimation of their merit, and
+should have great weight in determining the literary rank of their
+author. His first volume, called _Poetical Sketches_, printed only for
+private circulation after lying for six years in manuscript, appeared in
+1783, and then only by dint of the kindly efforts of influential and
+prosperous friends, notably Flaxman the sculptor. The _Sketches_ were
+written between the ages of twelve and twenty. The _Songs of Innocence
+and Experience_ appeared between 1787 and 1794, and were united in one
+volume in the latter year. It is by the poems contained in these two
+volumes, although he published or left in manuscript many other
+compositions, most of which are collected in one or the other of the
+editions now before us, that he is best known. During his lifetime his
+writings never achieved any general literary success. It fared with his
+poems as with his paintings, only in a minor degree: they were highly
+esteemed by the initiated, by his personal friends, by a few men whose
+keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of
+the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public,
+on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as
+well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book.
+His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither
+of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron
+tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been
+written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird
+was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve
+years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the
+general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after
+(eleven years ago) a more general interest was created in his work, both
+as artist and poet, by a long and elaborate biography of him written by
+Mr. Gilchrist, and accompanied by a selection from his poems made by Mr.
+Rossetti. Subsequent to this publication appeared a voluminous critical
+essay on his genius by Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former of
+these two books was calculated to induce and foster a more general
+knowledge and appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much
+for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of
+praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the
+effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the
+writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different
+character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make
+acquaintance with them.
+
+But the best and most efficient introduction that a true poet can have
+is the general publication of his works. Let them speak for themselves
+to lovers of poetry, and no other prophet or expounder is needed. This
+is no place for extended comment on Blake's characteristics as a poet.
+His best songs are worthy to be ranked with those of the early
+Elizabethan dramatists, and they are not like them as a copy is like an
+original, but rather resemble them as the inspirations of a kindred
+genius. To find the superiors of some of Blake's songs we must go to
+Shakespeare. The faults of his best poems are always superficial, and
+often mere errors of carelessness and of the absence of literary
+workmanship, but the hand that strikes the keynote is the hand of a
+master. Such pieces as the "Lines to the Evening Star," the songs
+beginning "Memory, hither come," "How sweet I roamed from field to
+field!" "Love and Harmony combine," and the "Address to the Muses," in
+the _Sketches_, are full of melody and sweetness, and have a certain
+lyrical perfection in which Blake excels; while in the _Songs of
+Innocence_ the poems called "Night" and "Ah Sunflower!" seem to be
+equally beautiful. "A Little Boy Lost," in the _Songs of Experience_, is
+perhaps the best known of all the poems, and is quoted, with an
+unlicensed change of title, in Mr. Emerson's _Parnassus_. The disorder
+of Blake's mind, which was a very real and positive fact, undoubtedly
+had a detrimental effect on his work, both in art and literature; and
+there is often a sense of "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh"
+as he touches on some one of the subjects which were potent to disturb
+his brain. But when he sings for the love of singing, with no memory of
+the outer world and its terrible problems, the solving of which lay
+heavy on his heart and brain, then he is all sweetness, melody and
+harmony, and gives us not only the delight of his exquisite verses, but
+that other joy that comes from the sense of breathing an atmosphere of
+devotion, purity, and genial sweetness.
+
+
+     Les Pléiades. Par le comte de Gobineau. Stockholm and Paris.
+
+The author of this book has traveled extensively, and has been a keen
+observer of men and manners, as well as a diligent student of history
+and ethnography. He has represented his government in countries so
+remote and contrasted as Persia and Sweden, has made antiquarian
+researches in the islands of the Mediterranean, has visited parts of
+America, and has won reputation as a scholar and writer by a number of
+works on such abstruse questions as Oriental philosophy and religion,
+the cuneiform inscriptions and the distinctions of race. The present
+book is merely a novel, yet it was clearly intended to embody the
+deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper
+study of mankind," both individually and collectively. The nature of
+man, how it is affected by diversity of circumstances, by nationality,
+descent, rank and occupation, by the relations of class to class, of
+society to the individual, of personal will to a controlling
+destiny,--this may be said to form the _motive_ of the volume; and
+though such action as there is in it takes place chiefly at the court of
+one of the minor states of Germany, this narrow field was evidently
+selected on a similar principle to that of the Greek drama, with its
+"unities" of time and place and the narratives and explanations of the
+Chorus. The discussions in the book embrace all the problems of
+history, the characters are of different nationalities, and are all
+enriched by the fruits of culture and travel, and the story is a series
+of crucial tests by which, as we are to infer, the author's theories are
+verified. This plan is not absolutely novel. Goethe had adopted a still
+slighter though far happier framework for his ripest thoughts and
+profoundest observations. Yet even Goethe's exquisite art was at fault
+when he sought to extend the original design; and if the first part of
+_Wilhelm Meister_ is the most perfectly constructed work in the whole
+range of literature, the second is merely a heap of precious materials,
+with here and there such groupings and dispositions as indicate how
+details had been conceived, while the general plan refused to shape
+itself in the master's mind. Count Gobineau's failure is of a different
+kind. His story is not only grotesque in construction, but inartistic in
+all its parts. In every group of incidents there is the same lack of
+harmony and completeness as in the adaptation and subordination of each
+to the whole. Nor, with all the author's knowledge of life and of men,
+has he succeeded in creating characters recognizable as life-like and as
+veritable originals. Single features are well drawn, certain
+temperaments are keenly analyzed, but the whole conception is never
+firm, consistent and complete. The simplest, like old Lanze and his
+daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like
+Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Théodore, waver between familiar types
+and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the
+Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such
+defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not
+a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not
+of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections
+which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if
+not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays
+in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an
+eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a _sauce piquante_ what
+would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from
+which the title of the book is derived, and which is expounded at length
+in the opening chapters, would bear a rigid examination, or was even
+meant to be taken seriously, may be doubted. It is, at all events, very
+poorly illustrated by the characters and events selected to exemplify
+it.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to
+Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. With illustrations. New York: Henry
+Holt & Co.
+
+The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance. By Henry
+Edward, Archbishop of Westminister. New York: Catholic Publication
+Society.
+
+Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army. By George H.
+Boyland. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
+
+The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama. By Alfred Austin. Edinburgh and
+London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons.
+
+Young Folks' History of the United States. By T. W. Higginson.
+Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
+
+Baby Died To-day, and Other Poems. By the late William Leighton. London:
+Longmans, Green & Co.
+
+Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Vol. I. of German Classics. New York: G.
+P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Types and Emblems: A Collection of Sermons. By C. H. Spurgeon. New York:
+Sheldon & Co.
+
+The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill, M.D. New York: G. P.
+Putnam's Sons.
+
+A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James
+R. Osgood & Co.
+
+Christian Belief and Life. By A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Ezra Stiles Gannet: A Memoir. By his son, W. C. Gannet. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Recollections and Suggestions. By John, Earl Russell. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Birds of the North-west. By Elliot Coues. Washington: Government
+Printing-office.
+
+Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws. By W. B. Weeden. Boston: Roberts
+Bros.
+
+Victor La Tourette: A Novel. By a Broad Churchman. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Domus Dei. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son.
+
+Poems of Twenty Years. By Laura W. Johnson. New York: De Witt C. Lent.
+
+Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+Mistress Judith. By C. C. Frazer Tytler. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+Generalship: A Tale. By George Roy. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29184-8.txt or 29184-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 15, May, 1875.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2009 [EBook #29184]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<h1><span class="smcap">Lippincott's Magazine</span></h1>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h2><i>POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.</i></h2>
+
+
+<h3>MAY, 1875.</h3>
+
+<h4>Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by <span class="smcap">J. B.
+Lippincott &amp; Co.</span>, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.</h4>
+
+
+<p class="notes">Transcriber's notes: Minor typos have been corrected. Table of contents has been
+generated for HTML version.</p>
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#UP_THE_PARANA_AND_IN_PARAGUAY"><b>UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THREE_FEATHERS"><b>THREE FEATHERS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#CAMP-FIRE_LYRICS"><b>CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#OVERWORKED_WOMEN"><b>OVERWORKED WOMEN.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#SPRING_JOY"><b>SPRING JOY</b></a><br />
+<a href="#HOW_LADY_LOUISA_MOOR_AMUSED_HERSELF"><b>HOW LADY LOUISA MOOR AMUSED HERSELF.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WALPURGIS_NIGHT"><b>WALPURGIS NIGHT.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#FREDERIC_LEMAITRE"><b>FR&Eacute;D&Eacute;RIC LEMAITRE.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#THE_SONG-WIND"><b>THE SONG-WIND.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#NORTHWARD_TO_HIGH_ASIA"><b>NORTHWARD TO HIGH ASIA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#BEHIND_THEIR_FANS"><b>BEHIND THEIR FANS.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_MODERN_ART-WORKSHOP_IN_UMBRIA"><b>A MODERN ART-WORKSHOP IN UMBRIA.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#A_STORY_OF_AMERICAN_CHIVALRY"><b>A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.</b></a><br />
+<a href="#WILLIAM_EARL_OF_SHELBURNE"><b>WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.</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>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="UP_THE_PARANA_AND_IN_PARAGUAY" id="UP_THE_PARANA_AND_IN_PARAGUAY"></a>UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>TWO PAPERS.&mdash;I.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image01.jpg" width="600" height="431" alt="DIAMOND CLIFF: SUNSET." title="" />
+<span class="caption">DIAMOND CLIFF: SUNSET.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The lot of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not
+an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the
+rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the
+American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with
+a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not
+adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which
+penetrates through doors that do not fasten and windows that do not fit
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span>as snugly as they should. The continual and monotonous drip of the
+rain, which ripples in streams or falls drop by drop on the pavement of
+the yards or of the street, is also highly depressing to the spirits
+when one is held an involuntary prisoner in the ground-floors of the
+houses, and must perforce listen to it for hours.</p>
+
+<p>If, led by inclination or compelled by necessity, you go into the
+street, you find the space between the sidewalks transformed into a
+miniature river. In some of the streets the pavements are more than
+three feet high, and pedestrians walk on them as on the tow-path of a
+canal, passing from one side of the torrent to the other on small wooden
+crossings. The comfort that is derived elsewhere in inclement weather
+from fires may not be hoped for in Buenos Ayres, for the bed-rooms are
+rarely provided with fireplaces, and in cases where they do possess them
+the chimneys are liable to smoke dreadfully when the north-west wind
+sweeps over the city.</p>
+
+<p>The natives, accustomed to these features of the rainy season in La
+Plata, look with indifference on the forlorn condition of the stranger
+within their gates, and the foreigner, thus left to struggle against the
+coalition of the elements with the thoughtless or selfish indifference
+of the native population, must resign himself with patience and
+resignation until the three months of watery affliction shall have
+passed away.</p>
+
+<p>It was at a time when the reign of Pluvius was at its height, and Buenos
+Ayres daily wept blinding tears, as it were, from every roof and gable
+for its sins, that M. X&mdash;&mdash;, the head of a commercial house in the city,
+put a most welcome question to one of the attach&eacute;s of the establishment,
+M. Forgues, a Frenchman, who just then was suffering from the grievous
+burden of ennui.</p>
+
+<p>"See here," he said: "I want somebody to go up into Paraguay to collect
+an outstanding debt. Are you the man for my purpose?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Forgues readily accepted the commission, for as the head of the house
+spoke a vision passed through his mind of Paraguay with its old Jesuit
+missions, its mysterious and despotic dictators, and its legends of the
+terrible war waged by Lopez against Brazil, the Argentine Confederation
+and the Banda Oriental. And, moreover, the venture promised relief from
+the horrors of the rainy season in Buenos Ayres.</p>
+
+<p>When Francisco Solano Lopez, late president of Paraguay, fell on the
+field on March 1, 1870, at the head of a few hundred followers, the
+survivors of that courageous army of sixty thousand men with which in
+1865 he had begun his five years' struggle, he had left behind him a
+devastated country, a decimated people and an impoverished population.
+It is to this land, almost remote enough from the pathway of our modern
+civilization to partake of the mystery of an unknown interior; where
+Nature has lavished her beauties with open hand; where a brilliant
+vegetation alternates with noble forests, solitudes that have rarely
+echoed the footfall of civilized man, and vast plains dotted with
+palms&mdash;a country of mountainous reaches in which the jaguar roams at
+will, of great lagoons, the home of a primitive race dwelling for the
+most part in villages,&mdash;to this land it is that we shall follow M.
+Forgues on his journey of more than a thousand miles, and see with his
+eyes its life and scenery.</p>
+
+<p>From Buenos Ayres the traveler, issuing from the Rio de la Plata,
+ascends the Parana by steamer to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay; and
+on the morning after the conversation with his principal M. Forgues
+embarked on the Republica, a low-pressure steamboat furnished with a
+walking-beam, and similar in its architecture and equipments to the
+passenger steamers in use on the waters of the Northern and Middle
+States of the Union.</p>
+
+<p>After steaming two hours the Republica reaches the vast delta of the
+Parana, skirting the Tigre Islands, a lovely group formed by the
+numerous winding mouths of the river. The month is August, and a
+charming effect is produced by the forests of palms, orange trees and
+wild peach trees, the latter rosy with blossoms, which cover the
+islands. The wild peach of the clingstone variety is almost the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span> only
+fruit of the province of Buenos Ayres, and when the season for gathering
+it comes, a multitude of boats from the city may be seen moored in the
+high grasses along the shores of the Tigre Islands, while the
+<i>barqueros</i> collect the peaches, which are free to whoever will pluck
+them, fill their boats and return to the capital to sell them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image04.jpg" width="600" height="399" alt="DELTA OF THE PARANA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">DELTA OF THE PARANA.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image05.jpg" width="600" height="391" alt="TIGER ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE PARANA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">TIGER ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE PARANA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Republica ascends the river through the branch called the Parana de
+las Palmas, up which Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1525, when in a schooner
+of a hundred tons burden he penetrated to the heart of South America. It
+passes, to the left, a hamlet, Campana, the prominent feature of which
+is a handsome white building resembling a <i>palazzo</i> of Italy, and which,
+built on an elevation, dominates the other houses; Zarate, where are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span>
+situated a number of <i>saladeros</i>, or salting-places for the salting of
+the hides of the province; and finally the mouth of the Baradero River,
+a small stream which leads to a village of the same name, the home of a
+prosperous colony of Swiss settlers.</p>
+
+<p>Higher up, on the right shore, lies the drowsy old town of San Pedro,
+founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, and which is chiefly
+noticeable as having been at a standstill since that period, although
+within the past three or four years it has begun to show signs of
+development, one of which is a project to cut a ship-canal across a
+narrow reach of sand which separates the lagoon on which the town is
+built from the river, so as to give passage to Transatlantic vessels.</p>
+
+<p>At San Pedro the steamer emerges from the Parana de las Palmas and
+enters the main channel of the river. A notable locality a few leagues
+above San Pedro is the Obligado, where the Parana becomes so narrow that
+the channel lies within pistol-shot of the right bank. The Obligado is
+interesting in an historical point of view as having been the scene in
+1845 of a fierce engagement wherein the English and French fleets ran
+the gauntlet of the Argentine batteries there, which attempted to
+prevent their passage. One of the English vessels, under a withering
+fire, cut a chain that barred the channel. A humorous sequel to this
+brilliant feat of arms is this, that since that occurrence every French
+sailor, and especially every deserter from the French merchant marine
+who goes to La Plata, boasts that he "assisted" at the affair. He will
+narrate all the details in the most bombastic manner to any pecuniarily
+prosperous fellow-countryman who will listen to him, and will then close
+with a proposition that he and his compatriot shall "take something."
+The payment for the score naturally falls to the lot of the listener or
+victim, and hence has arisen a saying among Frenchmen in La Plata:
+"Distrust the gentleman who was at the combat of the Obligado."</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-four hours after leaving Buenos Ayres the steamer stops at
+Rosario, having previously passed the town of San Nicolas de los
+Arragos, with its ten thousand inhabitants, its picturesque cathedral
+flanked with a white tower on either side, its progressive tramways or
+horse-cars, and its reputation for furnishing an excellent article of
+hides, the province being celebrated for the quality of its cattle.</p>
+
+<p>Rosario is the second port of the confederation. It stands a short
+distance away from the river on a barranca or cliff. Passengers on
+landing are conveyed in horse-cars to the town, which is laid out in
+handsome streets and built up with charming and comfortable houses. The
+barn-like church, of the "horrible Jesuit style," as M. Forgues calls it
+(the heavy style of architecture common to nearly all the church
+edifices of South America), is very ugly, and as to the "faithful
+<i>&eacute;l&eacute;gantes</i>" who worshiped in it, our traveler did not deem them as
+handsome as their sisters of Buenos Ayres. Much of Rosario's increasing
+prosperity is owing to the railroad which connects it with the interior
+town of Cordova to the west. This road also extends down the Parana to a
+point about half-way to Buenos Ayres. When completed to the latter city
+and to its western terminus, which will be at no distant day, Buenos
+Ayres, on the Atlantic, will be connected with Valparaiso, in Chili, on
+the Pacific. There is also a line of English steamers which ply directly
+between Rosario and the English ports.</p>
+
+<p>At Rosario the Republica takes on passengers, coal and freight, and
+resumes her voyage. Above the city, the cliffs, increasing in height,
+attain an altitude of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. They are
+composed entirely of a hard brown earth having the appearance of
+pulverized chocolate; and the river, rushing between them, assumes a
+dirty, brownish hue for many miles. In their shadow, as the steamer
+passes, lie a Brazilian gunboat and two monitors of the same
+nationality: one of the latter is deeply dented in places where she was
+struck by Paraguayan cannon-balls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image08.jpg" width="600" height="296" alt="PUBLIC SQUARE IN PARANA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">PUBLIC SQUARE IN PARANA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>About twelve hours' distance from Rosario the Diamante, or Diamond
+Cliff, is reached. Here the cliffs that line the left bank culminate.
+They are especially interesting to the geologist because of their
+extraordinary richness in fossils of various kinds. Fragments of the
+megatherium and of the glyptodon have been found there, but the most
+important discovery of all was a very complete skeleton of the former
+animal&mdash;the most complete in existence, in fact&mdash;which now adorns the
+museum at Buenos Ayres. The village of Diamante, with a population of
+five or six hundred souls, is situated near by. Twenty hours later the
+Republica arrives at Parana, a handsome city, formerly the capital of
+the confederation. The removal of the seat of government to Buenos Ayres
+was a great blow to the prosperity of the old capital. Once the
+diplomatic corps had their residences there. The climate of the place is
+delicious, and under its balmy influence the orange tree flourishes in
+the open air and bears fruit of exquisite flavor. The country around
+Parana is very picturesque, and the town itself, though since it has
+ceased to be the Argentine capital it presents an appearance of
+emptiness, is very gay. Among its attractions are a theatre and a fine
+public square adorned with shade trees. The community has musical
+tastes, and nearly every second house contains a piano&mdash;a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span> fact of which
+the stranger strolling through the place is kept constantly aware. Many
+of the streets are paved and macadamized.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<img src="images/image09.jpg" width="365" height="500" alt="A BLANCO INSURGENT." title="" />
+<span class="caption">A BLANCO INSURGENT.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Parana is the chief city of the province of Entre Rios, the people of
+which are possessed of a fierce spirit of independence, and, like the
+Basques of Spain, claiming the right to administer their domestic
+affairs in their own way, they are often in insurrection against the
+central government at Buenos Ayres, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span> resorts to force to check
+their "separatist" tendencies. Within four years two or three efforts at
+revolution have been made on the part of the people of Entre Rios under
+Lopez Jordan, their principal leader, General Mitre, and others. One
+year previous to the journey we are now describing our traveler had gone
+from Buenos Ayres to Parana on business. In consequence of a municipal
+election having gone in favor of the government candidates by a majority
+of thirty votes, a fresh insurrection had just broken out in the city,
+and when M. Forgues reached his destination he found the national troops
+in possession of Parana, which was closely besieged by the Blancos or
+"Whites," as the insurgents were called from their trappings, to
+distinguish them from the Colorados or "Reds," which was the name given
+to the Buenos Ayres party. On the occasion of this visit he had need to
+seek the insurgent camp in furtherance of his mission, which was to
+obtain possession of eight thousand hides that were within the
+insurgents' lines. He returned to Parana, after successfully conducting
+the negotiations, with a sketch of one of the mounted Blancos, a
+picturesque, stately fellow, with the proud bearing of a brigand, having
+enormous spurs on his heels, a white band around his hat, and armed with
+a lance and a long cavalry sword.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="600" height="231" alt="A SALADERO ON THE PARANA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">A SALADERO ON THE PARANA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Immediately opposite Parana, on the other side of the river, which in
+this part is very wide, is the city of Santa F&eacute;, the point of export for
+all the region occupied by the foreign agricultural colonies of the
+confederation&mdash;to wit, the Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans and Belgians. The
+chief industry in which these colonists are engaged is the cultivation
+of wheat, of which enormous quantities are raised and converted into
+flour on the spot, as there are several steam flour-mills in the
+district. The flour is shipped from Santa F&eacute; and sold in Rosario or
+Buenos Ayres. These colonists number about thirteen thousand. Santa F&eacute;
+is a remarkably indolent town&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span> most indolent in the world, says M.
+Forgues. Its chief features are its great plaza, its church and the
+palace of the governor of Gran Chaco. Back of the country occupied by
+the colonists begins the land of the Chaco Indians. They enjoy the
+reputation of being savages, but as an example of the delicate line of
+demarkation in La Plata between the extreme of civilization and the
+extreme of savage life our traveler relates that riding thirty leagues
+to visit a tribe of wild Indians, he found the chief with a <i>poncho</i> of
+Manchester manufacture on his shoulders, a pair of gaiters from Latour,
+Rue Montorgueil, Paris, on his feet, and a hospitable glass of Hamburg
+gin in his hand.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="600" height="229" alt="VIEW OF PARANA FROM THE RIVER." title="" />
+<span class="caption">VIEW OF PARANA FROM THE RIVER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Leaving Parana, the steamer passes, at a short distance above the city,
+the <i>saladero</i> of Messrs. Carbo y Carril, a picturesque spot situated on
+a cliff. From this point a fine view is obtained of Parana in the
+distance, stretching along its high barranca, with its white houses and
+belfries in bold relief against the blue sky, and borrowing from the
+elevation on which it stands a delusively majestic aspect.</p>
+
+<p>As the Republica ascends the river the cliffs continue to be the
+prevailing feature of the shore-scenery. A Brazilian passenger steamer,
+one of a line of steamers which ply between Cuyaba in the Brazilian
+province of Matto Grosso and Montevideo, is met descending the stream.
+This line, established by the government of Brazil to maintain
+communication between its central South American possessions and the
+large cities of the coast, receives an imperial subsidy of nine thousand
+francs a month. A <i>saladero</i> is passed, and then a village. The river is
+thick with trees with twisted roots and short branches, floating
+downward to the ocean. Then the appearance of the banks changes: the
+cliffs gradually slope to a level with the river, and vegetation begins
+to line the shore, first in the shape of bushes, next of undergrowth,
+and finally of lofty forest trees,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span> some of them dead, and with a wall
+of tangled foliage overhead.</p>
+
+<p>Passing Esquina, a hamlet at the mouth of the Rio Corrientes, vast
+volumes of smoke rising behind the trees on the right bank proclaim that
+the Indians of Gran Chaco are "burning a forest in order to roast a
+quarter of venison." Here the steamer's course lies among islands
+covered partly with undergrowth and partly with forests. In the shadow
+of the tall trees on one of the most lovely of these islands is seen
+from the deck a quaint, barefooted company consisting of two men, a
+woman and three small children, who have just stepped ashore from two
+boats made from the hollowed-out trunks of trees. Two dogs accompany
+them. The adults of the party are clothed in rags. These people are
+<i>monteros</i>, and are members of a tribe of gypsies who haunt the islands
+of the Parana. They live a life of lordly independence, subsisting as
+best they can, sleeping when fatigued wherever they may be when
+drowsiness overtakes them, eating whatever comes to hand, drinking the
+water of the river in the absence of anything stronger, and keeping
+themselves warm by firing a forest from time to time. At the moment the
+Republica hurries past they are preparing their evening meal, the
+material for which, a <i>carpincho</i>, a sort of aquatic hog, lies at their
+feet. The chief of the gypsy party stares at the steamer with bewildered
+eyes, and at the noise made by the paddles a great terror seizes on a
+colony of monkeys in the branches of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>The town of La Goya, with a population of five thousand, is the next
+place of importance reached. A few miles above this point is a famous
+<i>saladero</i>, that of El Rincon de los Sotos (the "Fool's Corner"), which
+belongs to a fellow-countryman of M. Forgues, and which, after the
+<i>saladero</i> of Baron Liebig in Uruguay, is the most extensive in the
+valley of the Rio de la Plata. Here are slaughtered as many as fifteen
+hundred head of cattle a day. Nor far distant from it is the
+landing-place for the animals, a pretty spot which M. Forgues sketched
+<i>en passant</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Republica is approaching Corrientes, the last of the Argentine towns
+on the left bank of the Parana, and situated eighteen miles below the
+point at which the Paraguay unites with that stream. Now alligators
+appear, stretched lazily on the sand and basking in the sun, with their
+ugly black bodies resembling logs partly submerged. The river assumes a
+new aspect, widening into great sheets of water dotted with flat islands
+lying far apart, and in its lake-like proportions justifying the
+Guaranian meaning of its name&mdash;"like the sea." So far-reaching indeed
+are these expanses of water that when a brisk south-east wind rises
+large vessels in them roll and pitch as in the open bay. The belfries of
+Corrientes will loom before the eyes of the company on the Republica at
+ten o'clock the next morning, and in the mean time, and until the sun
+shall rise, the steamer is moored before a small island. In that balmy
+and odorous night myriads of insects cloistered in the leafy shades fill
+the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm
+of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river
+the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise
+of a great city far away, with its gaslights twinkling merrily.</p>
+
+<p>At Corrientes the Parana abruptly diverges to the east, marking the
+northern boundary of Argentine territory, and separating the latter from
+Paraguay. From the river the port presents a spectacle of groups of
+rocks of some beauty, and of palms and orange-trees growing close to the
+water's edge. Beyond the foliage are seen the belfries of several
+churches built after the prevailing fashion. Among them is visible also
+a handsome turret of Moorish architecture, which rears itself aloft with
+a charming effect. This building is the cabildo, or court-house, and
+dates from 1812. Near by is seen a white memorial pillar, built on the
+site of the cross that the first Spanish settlers planted in 1588. The
+population of Corrientes is about twenty thousand. From the country
+around are procured the best oranges grown in the confederation, and the
+city is the mart for the woods from the Paraguayan, Chaco and Corrientes
+forests which are exported for manufacturing purposes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image14.jpg" width="600" height="353" alt="GYPSIES OF THE ISLANDS IN THE PARANA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">GYPSIES OF THE ISLANDS IN THE PARANA.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The elbow formed by the junction of the Parana and the Paraguay is
+called by the natives <i>Las Tres Bocas</i>, or "The Three Mouths." From 1812
+to 1865, under the rule of the dictators, this avenue of approach to
+Paraguay remained closed. But the fortunes of the last war opened it
+permanently, and the Republica quietly steams into the great
+water-highway that leads to Asuncion through the passes of the Cerrito.
+At the mouth of the river is the island of Cerrito, formerly the
+Paraguayan Gibraltar, and now the Gibraltar of the Brazilians, who
+maintain there a garrison and an arsenal for the equipment of their
+navy.</p>
+
+<p>After passing the Cerrito the Paraguay winds in its course and becomes
+narrow&mdash;the width not exceeding twelve hundred feet&mdash;and of greater
+depth than the Parana. Hereabout and above are spots made memorable by
+the obstinate defence of the late President Lopez and the brave
+endurance of his people. On the right are the famous batteries of
+Curupaiti, where Lopez with thirty thousand Paraguayans and one hundred
+and fifty cannon resisted for eight months the attempts of the united
+Brazilian and Argentine forces to turn him out. But at last the
+condition of affairs became critical, and on a dark night he silently
+abandoned Curupaiti with his army, leaving his fires burning, wooden
+images of men on the ramparts, logs in the embrasures in lieu of cannon,
+and decamped to occupy a similar intrenched position at Humaita, six
+leagues above, where for five months longer he checked the advance of
+the allies. So adroitly was this change of position effected that the
+Brazilian commander was unaware of the abandonment of the place until
+four days after its desertion. To-day at Humaita a ruined belfry casts
+its melancholy shadow on the long-contested field of battle.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Humaita behind, the mouth of the Vermejo, a stream which tinges
+the Paraguay with the hue of its clay-colored waters, is reached and
+passed: then Villa del Pilar, a forlorn hamlet, where a few dejected
+inhabitants crouch in the shade of shattered houses. Next a magnificent
+forest of palms appears. In front the yellow sand of the shore is
+covered with alligators, which lie about in groups. From the boat M.
+Forgues fires at these, and a little later he tries his skill on a
+jaguar, which, however, with a fierce growl, scampers off, and is lost
+to sight in the mazes of the high grass beyond. These localities and
+Villa Oliva, which is next passed, are all on the left bank, the
+opposite side of the river being peopled only by the wandering Indians
+of Gran Chaco. A short distance above is the small and once prosperous
+town of Villeta, whence are shipped in season boatloads of oranges, but
+which at present is a mass of ruins that bear ample testimony to the
+excellent aim of the Brazilian gunners.</p>
+
+<p>Just before a turn in the river reveals the presence of Asuncion the
+Republica steams by the Cerro de Lambare, a cone-shaped hill about three
+hundred and twenty feet high, covered with so dense a growth of bushes
+that no one has ever succeeded in climbing to its summit. The
+river-channel in its length between this elevation and Asuncion still
+contains remains of the obstructions which Lopez placed there to check
+the progress of the Brazilian fleet and protect the city. As the steamer
+rounds the bend the Paraguayan capital comes in sight. A prominent and
+historical object in the medley of houses is the high tower of Lopez's
+ch&acirc;teau, dominating the rest of the city, and now gilded with the rays
+of the setting sun. A portion of its top is missing, a shell having
+carried it away during the war. Two discharges of cannon from the deck
+of the Republica announce the arrival, and in due time the steamer,
+which draws too much water to approach the quay, is anchored two hundred
+yards from the shore, having happily concluded her voyage of a thousand
+miles, which has consumed nearly seven days.</p>
+
+<p>The view from deck is a most picturesque one. In a little while a
+flotilla of small boats, headed by the armed tender of the port-captain,
+puts out from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span> quay and swarms around the steamer. Some of the boats
+contain citizens who are expecting the arrival of friends, and in others
+are hucksters, who jabber and gesticulate in frantic recommendation of
+their fruits and small wares. Immediately in front is the custom-house
+with its colonnade of white pillars, resembling a cloister. To the left
+Lopez's palace rears its shattered tower, and on the right hand is the
+arsenal, which serves as the barracks for the three or four thousand
+troops composing the Brazilian army of occupation. Near it is the
+horse-car station, connected by the street-cars with the station of the
+Asuncion and Paraguari railroad, a line about twenty-five leagues in
+length. Carts drawn by horses move slowly to and fro on the quay. Here
+and there along the shore, with the look of skeletons about them, are
+frames of unfinished ships: one of them is an iron vessel which was in
+process of construction, under the orders of Lopez, at the breaking out
+of the war in 1865. The Brazilian conquerors have left these vessels in
+the condition in which they found them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 592px;">
+<img src="images/image17.jpg" width="592" height="229" alt="LANDING PLACE FOR CATTLE, PARANA RIVER." title="" />
+<span class="caption">LANDING PLACE FOR CATTLE, PARANA RIVER.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the war supervened, Asuncion and all Paraguay, under the despotic
+but intelligent sway of Lopez, were moving rapidly in the path of
+progress. In fact, twelve years ago no country in La Plata was blessed
+with so flourishing and perfected a system of industry as Paraguay. But
+the war came, waged by the allies expressly to destroy for ever the
+dictatorial authority wielded by Lopez; Paraguay was invaded and
+overrun; and the fierce and destructive character of the contest has
+left shattered walls in the capital, and in the interior the blackened
+ruins of ranchos. These traces of the terrible conflict give a
+melancholy aspect to the city, and its future is further shadowed by the
+hopelessness of the people, who seem to have no heart to repair the
+damage done to the houses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image18.jpg" width="600" height="298" alt="THE HILL OF LAMBARE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE HILL OF LAMBARE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In coming to Asuncion, M. Forgues had taken on himself a commission far
+more troublesome than that of collecting the money due to the commercial
+house with which he was connected; and this was to deliver into the
+hands of the French <i>charg&eacute; d'affaires</i> at Buenos Ayres, the comte A. de
+C&mdash;&mdash;, who happened to be at the time in Asuncion, the despatch-bag of
+the legation, which had been consigned to his care by the French consul
+in the former city. Behold, then, our traveler, as, accompanied by the
+captain of the Republica, he sets foot on the quay, intent on relieving
+himself of his precious valise, the possession of which is doubly
+embarrassing because of its very preciousness. He has a hope that he may
+meet the <i>charg&eacute;</i> at the Progreso Club, whither he is going, but whether
+he is to be met or not, he does not dare to leave behind him the valise,
+which to him is a veritable Old Man of the Sea. Night has fallen when
+they leave the steamer. The dark, sandy streets are badly graded, and he
+stumbles repeatedly on the uneven brick pavements which line them, at
+every step anathematizing the valise, which is far from being a light
+burden. The club-house was the residence of Lopez before the allied
+armies occupied the city. From its seclusion he went forth to meet his
+death at Cerro Cora. In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span> parlor is a large mirror with gilded
+mouldings, and the dining-room walls are hung with painted paper
+representing in vivid colors, and with much gilding and silvering,
+scenes from French history, in which musqueteers, courtiers and the
+cardinal de Richelieu figure. A large and notable company is present,
+among them many high civil functionaries, but the <i>charg&eacute; d'affaires</i> is
+not there. In the billiard-room the honorable minister of finance plays
+a game with the honorable minister of the interior. They are both of
+unpretending manners, polite and affable, and during the pauses of the
+game they call for and drink their beer in true democratic fashion. M.
+Forgues learns that his <i>charg&eacute;</i> lives two leagues out of town, and,
+hugging his exasperating valise&mdash;which, we may here remark, was
+delivered safely to the <i>charg&eacute;</i> next day&mdash;he returns in company with
+the captain to the steamer, where, seated on the deck, he listens with
+horror to the stories told by a citizen of divers murders committed in
+the town and vicinity, one of the victims, a French pioneer, having been
+slain lately at his <i>quinta</i>, or small farm, just on the other side of
+the river, by the fierce Indians of Gran Chaco, whose camp-fires, about
+six miles distant, even while they are conversing, light up one-fourth
+of the horizon in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>M. Forgues, introduced to General Vedia, who commands the Argentine
+forces in Paraguay, is invited by that officer to go with him to Villa
+Occidental, a town situated a few miles above Asuncion on the river, and
+capital of the new province of Gran Chaco, claimed by the Argentine
+Confederation. He accepts. The voyage is made in a small Argentine
+gunboat, with its guard of thirty Argentine soldiers dressed in gray
+linen, with green facings to their coats, and armed with Mini&eacute; rifles.
+This detachment is on its way to Villa Occidental to relieve the guard
+at that place, which has been on duty for eight days protecting the
+infant capital of Gran Chaco against the incursions of the Indians of
+the province. Around them are grouped a number of Paraguayan women,
+clad in the costume of the country&mdash;a chemise and a white rebozo&mdash;which
+gives them a certain statuesque appearance. The general and M. Forgues
+are received with military honors at Villa Occidental by the commandant
+of the place and his garrison of three soldiers. A walk of ten minutes
+brings them to the spot, a short distance out of the village, where
+twenty years ago was established a colony of Frenchmen who had been sent
+out from France by the late President Lopez at the time of the
+dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, his father. The elder Lopez, it
+appears, desired agriculturists from France, and the younger Lopez, who
+was then in that country, despatched to him two or three hundred
+bootblacks, organ-grinders, street vagabonds, etc. whom he had collected
+on the quays of Bordeaux and in the suburbs of Paris. Carlos Antonio was
+at first grieved to see the class of immigrants that had been forwarded
+as tillers of the soil, but he became furious when he discovered that
+his unwelcome colonists had brought with them certain dangerous ideas of
+liberty which threatened to excite a mutinous spirit among his docile
+Paraguayans. He therefore assembled them at a spot near Villa
+Occidental, and placed them under the control of the governor of the
+province of Gran Chaco, in spite of the protests of the French consul.
+Here they were treated with the utmost cruelty. They were bastinadoed
+and otherwise punished for the most trivial offences. Many died under
+these inflictions. Of the few survivors some endeavored to escape
+through the forests of Gran Chaco to Bolivia and Peru. Three were
+caught, brought back and tortured, while the others, of whom no tidings
+were ever received afterward, probably perished of hunger or were killed
+by the Indians or jaguars. All that now remains of this ill-starred
+enterprise is a few half-decayed palm-tree posts symmetrically planted
+in the ground on the site of the unfortunate colony of New Bordeaux.</p>
+
+<p>Villa Occidental is at present merely a village of eight hundred or one
+thousand inhabitants. Its greatness, if it is ever to be great, lies in
+the future. General Vedia,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span> having ample room at his command for a
+metropolitan experiment, has laid it out in long avenues seventy-five
+feet wide, with a view to its future magnificence when it shall have
+become the outlet of the northern regions of the Argentine Confederation
+and the emporium of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image21.jpg" width="600" height="301" alt="A STREET IN ASCUNCION." title="" />
+<span class="caption">A STREET IN ASCUNCION.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Villa Occidental, M. Forgues meets a fellow-countryman, who belongs
+to the class of adventurers who flourish in the wake of great wars. His
+name is Auriguau, and he was once a soldier in the Franco-Spanish free
+corps which fought against Lopez in the campaign of 1870. His head is
+filled with sublime ideas, and his pocket is empty. He has come to
+Villa Occidental to propose to General Vedia the formation of a
+military corps, of which he shall be chief, composed of his old
+companions-in-arms, to serve against the Indians of Gran Chaco. He
+explains his plan with much enthusiasm, and then begs our traveler to
+present him with his gun, his revolver, his money, his hat, and even his
+boots.</p>
+
+<p>M. Forgues is of course General Vedia's guest for the night. As he is
+about to dismiss the soldier who has conducted him to his chamber, which
+is on the ground-floor of the house, an unexpected visitor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span> glides into
+the room through the open door. This visitor is a snake three feet long.
+The soldier kills him, turns him on his back, and calmly remarks that he
+is one of the most dangerous specimens of his kind in the neighborhood.
+M. Forgues's curiosity is aroused. "Are there many like this in the
+houses here?" he asks. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no," replies the
+soldier philosophically, retiring from the presence. M. Forgues goes to
+sleep to dream of a snake for a bedfellow, and to be bitten by
+mosquitoes of a peculiarly virulent kind through the cords of his
+hammock.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 255px;">
+<img src="images/image22.jpg" width="255" height="500" alt="AN EARLY LESSON IN SMOKING." title="" />
+<span class="caption">AN EARLY LESSON IN SMOKING.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At early dawn our traveler is up and his toilet is made. Before the door
+silently file the women of the colony on their way to the bank of the
+river. Each bears on her head a large jug of red clay ornamented with
+fanciful designs, the clay resembling that of which the bowl of an
+Arab's pipe is made. When these jugs are empty the women carry them in a
+pretty way inclining to one side, as the French soldier wears his
+<i>k&eacute;pi</i>. This gives to their walk an air of ease and nonchalance that is
+extremely graceful. They are draped after a charming fashion in a piece
+of white cotton called the rebozo, which is scrupulously clean, and they
+walk one behind the other in bare feet and with elastic step. Their
+garment consists of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span> a white cotton chemise embroidered around the neck
+and at the top of the sleeves with black worsted. It is cut very low in
+the neck, leaving a part of the breast bare, and descends to a point
+below the knee. A cotton cord tied around the waist keeps the chemise to
+the figure, and serves as girdle and corset at the same time. The space
+between the top of the chemise and the belt is used as a receptacle for
+cigars, money, and generally for all the small objects that elsewhere
+people carry in their pockets. The rebozo is worn over the head and
+shoulders, with the ends thrown back over the left shoulder. As they
+thus pass in single file, the customary mode of walking with the
+Guaranian women, nothing can be more coquettish than the pose of the
+jugs on their heads. They resemble an ancient bas-relief. Some of them
+have admirable figures, and nearly all have fine teeth. Though the type
+of the race is not a handsome one, owing to the high cheek-bones and
+square chin, many individuals are pretty. Their large dark eyes are
+shaded with heavy eyebrows, and their hair is as black as the crow's
+wing, but very coarse, notwithstanding the constant attention which its
+owners devote to it. Add to this, and spoiling all, an immense cigar in
+each mouth, for the Paraguayan women all smoke incessantly. Even
+children of tender years smoke, and the only ones exempt from the habit
+are babes at the breast. Indeed, M. Forgues remembers to have seen a
+Guaranian mother, with her little one straddling her hip, endeavoring to
+quiet the child's cries by placing between its lips the half-chewed end
+of her cigar. Among the women of this class marriages are rare. Their
+principal characteristics are attachment to the companions whom they
+have chosen, a scrupulous cleanliness, great reserve in speaking,
+superstition, industry and intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>The general awakes. Horses are brought bridled and saddled for a ride,
+and the two set out in the direction of the mouth of the Rio Confuso,
+about five miles distant from the village. The road crosses a vast
+plain shaded here and there with a few palms of small growth. After half
+an hour's ride they reach a saw-mill, the property of an eccentric
+Italian named Perucchino, who had served in his time as an officer of
+the Italian volunteers of Montevideo under Garibaldi, at the period of
+the latter's residence in South America. Perucchino receives them with
+<i>evvivas</i>, gestures, and with even more than the usual demonstrations of
+the Italian character, and invites them into his house, before which are
+planted three cannon mounted on a large piece of timber. His bed-room is
+an arsenal, supplied with enough old muskets, veterans of the war of
+independence, rusty swords and pikes, to arm fifteen men. He loves
+noise, and in proof thereof, after killing two chickens for breakfast
+with two separate discharges of a dangerous-looking double-barreled
+rifle&mdash;dangerous to him who fires it&mdash;he announces that the meal is
+ready with a discharge of one of the cannon at the door&mdash;a noisy
+proclamation which causes M. Forgues to jump in his seat. The breakfast,
+consisting of chicken and corn and rice omelettes, washed down with
+heavy Spanish wine, disappears as if by magic under the eager appetites
+of the guests. Perucchino has been dwelling in this solitude of Gran
+Chaco for three years with his wife, a Spanish woman. With two
+fellow-countrymen to assist him, he has worked indefatigably, and at the
+time of this visit his considerable property has greatly improved. In
+two years more, when his fields of corn, tobacco and sugar-cane shall
+begin to yield a return, the ex-beggar of Montevideo will be in the
+enjoyment of a yearly income of fifteen thousand francs.</p>
+
+<p>At noon M. Forgues and the general return to Villa Occidental under a
+burning sun, and in the evening they embark for Asuncion on the gunboat,
+accompanied by the relieved garrison of thirty men. M. Forgues
+regretfully leaves this little colony, so peaceful and verdurous. As he
+is about to embark some one runs after him and overtakes him. It is
+Auriguau, who asks him for his traveling-bag and his pipe, and takes
+possession,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span> without asking, of his tobacco, promising him in return a
+present of an entire museum of curiosities, among which are enumerated
+tiger robes, dried butterflies and some enormous snakes, and in addition
+a complete collection of all the woods of Gran Chaco, the total
+approximate value of which is about forty thousand francs.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image25.jpg" width="600" height="398" alt="ROAD TO TRINIDAD." title="" />
+<span class="caption">ROAD TO TRINIDAD.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The return journey is along the Chaco<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span> side of the Paraguay. Here and
+there on the sandbanks amid which the boat threads its way are sunk two
+or three hulls of vessels covered with a rich growth of vegetation. They
+represent so many incipient islands. It is amusing to observe the
+soldiers and their wives busily employed in extinguishing the burning
+cinders and sparks&mdash;small beginnings of conflagrations&mdash;which have been
+deposited in their hair and on their clothing and bundles from the
+wood-fed furnaces of the gunboat.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery in the vicinity of Asuncion is very fine, and possesses a
+special feature of its own with the dark shadows of the trees falling on
+a reddish-yellow sand. Immense avenues lead out in a straight line from
+the city. They are from seventy to eighty feet wide, but the sand is so
+deep in them and in the streets that men and horses sink in it above the
+ankle. Since the war the people have had very few horses, and have been
+compelled to import them; and it very often happens that newly-arrived
+saddle and draught horses die from exhaustion consequent on their
+efforts to gallop in the streets and country roads. One of the most
+charming of these avenues leads to the church of the Trinidad in the
+outskirts of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Sugar-cane grows to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the
+methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary
+kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane
+contains, and as the sugar is made chiefly by private individuals for
+their own use, and rarely reaches the market, this industry, which
+should be a great source of revenue to the country, languishes. The
+sugar used in Asuncion comes from Europe and Brazil. The cost of
+machinery probably has been the obstacle to the establishment of a
+sugar-house of sufficient importance to supply the people with all the
+sugar of home manufacture they may require. The cane when cut is ground
+between three large cylinders made of a hard wood&mdash;a process which,
+instead of extracting the juice from the cane, leaves two-thirds of it
+in the half-crushed stalk. The portion thus expressed flows through a
+sort of wooden trench into pails, which are emptied as fast as they
+become full into a large vat, under which a fire is constantly kept
+burning. In this receptacle it is boiled for a considerable time, but
+owing to the carelessness of those in charge of the vat about a third of
+it is spilled on the ground. What is left is reduced to a kind of sugary
+molasses, to which is given the name of "honey." Some of the
+cane-growers distill with rude alembics a sort of sweet liquor from the
+cane-juice, which is called <i>ca&ntilde;a</i>. Another distillation is from the
+juice of oranges, and is called <i>ca&ntilde;a de naranja</i>. In the manufacture of
+the latter birds of various kinds&mdash;ducks, paroquets, young chickens,
+etc.&mdash;are sometimes placed in the liquor to be distilled, and the
+curious mixture that results is known as <i>ca&ntilde;a de substancia</i>, and is
+much affected by gourmets.</p>
+
+<p>Life in Asuncion is remarkably monotonous. It is a long course of
+<i>mat&eacute;</i>-drinking varied with meals, the inevitable siesta and cigars. The
+<i>mat&eacute;</i> is the popular beverage of the country, as it is of nearly the
+whole of South America. It is a tea of less fragrance but more strength
+than the Chinese product, and is made of the <i>yerba</i>, the leaf of the
+Paraguayan holly, which grows in immense profusion in the Cordillera of
+Caaguazu in the interior. The Paraguayan women are active and
+industrious, but the men elevate the <i>far niente</i> into an institution.
+The people rise early to enjoy the freshness of the morning, but at noon
+they make up for their loss of sleep by indulging in a three hours'
+siesta in the heat of the day. A singular fact, however, regarding the
+climate is, that at Buenos Ayres, where the temperature is a third less
+heated than in Asuncion, the heat is more overpowering than in the
+latter city, and that one perspires far less in Asuncion than in the
+Argentine capital.</p>
+
+<p>While in Asuncion, M. Forgues attended a Te Deum which was sung at the
+cathedral to celebrate the anniversary of the proclamation of Brazilian
+independence, and a ball given by the Brazilian general in the house
+that was formerly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span> the residence of the somewhat famous Madame Lynch, a
+star of the Parisian demi-monde whom the late President Lopez had
+brought with him from Paris and installed in Asuncion as his favorite.
+Each of these events was interesting in its way&mdash;the former as showing
+how completely Brazilian supremacy shadows Paraguayan authority even in
+the very capital of Paraguay, and the latter as offering our traveler a
+glimpse of Paraguayan "high life" under its most favorable auspices.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/image28.jpg" width="600" height="301" alt="A SUGAR-HOUSE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">A SUGAR-HOUSE.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The cathedral is one of the masterpieces of M. Forgues's <i>b&ecirc;te noire</i>,
+the Jesuit style of architecture. On the occasion of the Te Deum the
+altar is brilliant with light. Silver plates cover it, as they do all
+its accessories. Behind it is a carved wainscoting painted red and green
+and gilded profusely, while in a niche is a small effigy of the Blessed
+Virgin. At the beginning of the service a curtain rises to the sound of
+music and exposes this niche to view. The Brazilian minister, M.
+d'Azambuja, is the "marquis of Carabas" of Asuncion, and hence, as the
+representative of the nation that conquered Paraguay, he enjoys his
+privileges, one of which, apparently, is to keep the ceremony waiting
+for half an hour, while the president of the republic, his cabinet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span>
+ministers, the foreign representatives and the officers of the army of
+occupation who are present twiddle their thumbs, the Paraguayan
+officials showing in their faces their sense of the Brazilian's want of
+respect. Finally the minister arrives in a coach-and-four. The vehicle
+is of the hackney-coach variety. The horses stop in the thick sand in
+the middle of the street, unable or unwilling to go farther, and the
+coachman in gold-lace livery jumps from his seat and opens the door of
+the coach, exhibiting as he does so, in consequence of the inopportune
+displacement of his coat-tails, a very undiplomatic spectacle in the way
+of soiled stockings. The minister, however, makes amends for the
+lackey's shortcomings, for he is brilliantly attired in white cassimere
+breeches and a marquis's coat with embroidery, while a three-cornered
+chapeau with white plumes adorns his head. As he descends from his
+carriage the guard presents arms, and a horrible noise ensues of two
+brass bands&mdash;one military and one marine&mdash;playing different tunes on
+every separate instrument in the hands of the performers, while the
+discharge of petards mingles with military commands. Amid all this
+tumult and under a broiling sun the Brazilian minister makes a majestic
+entrance into the cathedral, passing solemnly through the line of
+authorities to the place of honor.</p>
+
+<p>The celebration of Brazil's independence opens with a salvo of petards
+at the door, after which follows a medley of trombones, flutes,
+triangles and big drums, the whole dominated by an exasperating tenor
+voice. With the exception of the president of the republic, his cabinet,
+who wear scarfs of the Paraguayan colors&mdash;blue, white and red&mdash;and the
+officiating priests, there is not a Paraguayan in the church. Lovers of
+noise and of the excitement of festivals though they be, the people thus
+protest mutely against a ceremony that exalts their conquerors and
+recalls their own powerless condition.</p>
+
+<p>The ball given by the Brazilian general was, as before stated, at the
+house once occupied by Madame Lynch&mdash;Madame Elisa, as they call her in
+Paraguay&mdash;where that functionary resided. The best society of the
+capital, composed exclusively of the families of the higher officials,
+attended, and what was curious was that most of the women present in
+their ball-room attire, three years before, owing to the exigencies of
+war, had little more than a brief garment wherewith to protect
+themselves from the inclemencies of the weather. The dancing goes on in
+the parlor of the establishment and under the verandah which surrounds
+the courtyard. At the first glance, the parlor in its adornments
+presents the appearance of a <i>salon</i> of the Faubourg St. Germain, with
+silken hangings vivid in color on the walls, gilded stucco-work on the
+ceiling, and a brilliant carpet under foot. But on closer inspection all
+these splendors are seen to be merely a stage-decoration, for the
+effects&mdash;with the exception of the carpet&mdash;have been produced by some
+skillful wandering artist with his paintbrush and an adequate supply of
+gold-leaf. The illusion, however, is complete for a few minutes. The
+women&mdash;among whom are some handsome representatives of Paraguayan
+beauty&mdash;have wonderfully graceful manners. Their complexions are dark,
+their eyes large and black, and their hair of the color of ebony. The
+<i>d&eacute;collet&eacute;</i> style prevails in the cut of the dresses, which are made
+simply, and generally present the combination of white and black. The
+dances are those of Europe, and as the women dance a smile parts their
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>This is the bright side of the picture of the feminine element at the
+ball. The reverse of the medal is not so satisfactory, for at the door
+of entrance, seated on chairs or standing along the wall, are collected
+groups of old women with wrinkled faces and coarse gray hair negligently
+tucked on the tops of their heads with combs. These elders, rolled up,
+rather than wrapped, in shawls of various sombre hues, and who look on
+listlessly as if in a daze, are the mothers of the smiling dancers. It
+is dreadful, however, to observe their proceedings when refreshments are
+handed round, for suddenly a singular agitation is observable among
+them, their long thin arms shoot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span> from under their tightly-drawn shawls,
+they rush for the refreshments as they are carried past them, and
+swallow the liquids while stowing away supplemental cakes under their
+wrappings. Casting his eyes toward the centre of the room, where the
+young beauties are separating at the close of the dance, the observer
+notices that several of them are directing their steps away from the
+parlor to their retiring room. They have departed to smoke at their
+ease.</p>
+
+<p>Reference has been made to the scantiness of the attire of the
+Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are
+related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation
+and sternness with which Lopez conducted his military operations,
+bringing untold woe on his own people in his savage resolve to retard at
+any cost the advance of the army of invasion. When the allies captured
+Humaita, Lopez, retreating, decided to convert the country lying in the
+enemy's front into a desert. He issued a proclamation ordering the
+entire population living south of Asuncion to retire with all their
+animals toward the interior, and to follow him into the cordillera,
+eighty leagues to the east of the city. This order applied to all
+classes without exception, the families of high dignitaries, ministers
+and superior officers being included as well as the humbler sort. The
+result was a terrified hegira of the people <i>en masse</i>, while behind
+them the Paraguayan rear-guard destroyed houses and whatever could
+afford shelter or subsistence to the enemy, leaving only bare fields
+where once had flourished prosperous estancias and peaceful villages.
+Terrible scenes ensued. Twenty-four hours' notice only was given to the
+people to leave their homes. Delinquents and laggards were sabred
+mercilessly or killed with lance-thrusts. This mode of massacre was
+preferred, as it was a saving of valuable powder and shot. Women and
+children were slaughtered in this way, as well as infirm old men. No
+provision had been made to feed the famishing multitude that sought the
+cordillera, and thousands of the homeless wretches died of starvation
+and exposure in the mountains, where all that the women and children
+could obtain in the way of food was oranges and roots. There were
+numerous instances of cannibalism among these starving people, and our
+traveler was shown a woman in Asuncion who had eaten a portion of her
+sister to allay the pangs of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on the allies of this frightful course was to compel them to
+pay a fabulous price for provisions and for their transportation to the
+army. Another effect was that at times, in the heat of the pursuit of
+Lopez's forces, after an engagement the bodies of the soldiers who had
+been killed in the battle were left to rot where they fell, as there
+were no civilians to bury them. On one occasion, after a heavy skirmish,
+two or three hundred slain Argentines remained unburied, the army having
+marched forward in pursuit of the retreating Paraguayans. The horrors of
+this campaign were relieved by one prosaic fact, which in itself bridges
+the chasm between the terrible and the ridiculous: this was, that the
+allied troops were accompanied amid all these scenes of carnage by a
+poor Italian organ-grinder, carrying his organ on his back, who played
+during the halts in the march while the Brazilian soldiers danced to his
+music.</p>
+
+<p>When the war ended with the death of Lopez at Cerro Cora, women, even of
+the richest and most influential families, returned to their homes
+nearly naked: the large majority made their reappearance in a still more
+forlorn plight. The population of the republic, which had numbered about
+one million three hundred thousand at the beginning of the conflict, had
+dwindled to two hundred thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand.
+These were mainly women and children, for the men were nearly all dead,
+and of the few male adults in the population the majority have
+immigrated to the country since the war. The national army, which under
+Lopez was sixty thousand strong, comprised at the time of M. Forgues's
+visit two hundred and fifty youths of fifteen or sixteen years of age,
+clad in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span> the cast-off uniform of the French mobiles of 1870 and 1871. Of
+the Paraguayan children made orphans by the war, hundreds now live in
+Argentine families, either as adopted children or as servants. They were
+picked up by the Argentine soldiers during the flight of their parents
+to the mountains, their mothers having perished of fatigue or hunger,
+and Lopez's horsemen having spared them through pity or indifference to
+continued slaughter.</p>
+
+<p>The sequel of the resistance of Lopez surpasses in gloomy details almost
+any similar struggle recorded in history. It has already been shown how
+women and children died by thousands or survived to poverty and want.
+But to understand the melancholy story at its worst, one should visit
+the valley of the Aquidaban River, where Lopez fought his last fight, or
+follow the line of his army's march from its camp at Panadero to the
+encampment at Cerro Cora, where he perished miserably. A traveler in
+that part of Paraguay&mdash;not M. Forgues, but Keith Johnston, the
+geographer&mdash;who visited these localities in the summer and autumn of
+1874, says that the march of the army in its final retreat can still be
+traced by the heaps of human bones, with rusty swords or guns or
+weather-stained saddles lying beside them, under every little
+shade-giving tree. These skeletons he saw everywhere at very short
+intervals. Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded
+by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark
+forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked
+by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched
+his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his
+brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was
+guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough,
+entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. Exactly how
+Lopez died is a matter of dispute in Paraguay. There are those in that
+country who revere his memory, and their story of his death represents
+him as issuing from his tent at the approach of the enemy and valiantly
+engaging them single-handed, while he bade his few adherents seek safety
+in flight. According to this account, he fell gloriously after slaying
+many Brazilians, refusing quarter and declaring his devotion to his
+country with his dying breath. The generally accepted report, however,
+is that he made a fruitless endeavor to escape from his encampment, and,
+overtaken by a Brazilian horseman, died in a matter-of-fact way from a
+lance-thrust. His grave is in that wild and lonely valley. At first a
+wooden cross marked the spot where he lies, but this has disappeared,
+and a bush, one of many that grow around, is pointed out as growing
+above it.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this day, though more than four years have elapsed since the
+enactment of that tragedy, the scene remains as the Brazilians left it.
+The wrecks of the camp lie thickly on every side&mdash;bones of men, broken
+weapons, ammunition and the d&eacute;bris of gun-carriages, baggage-carts and
+boxes. This region is the heart of the country occupied by the Cangua
+Indians, a peaceable tribe who speak the Guarani language, without the
+admixture of Spanish words which prevails in the language as spoken in
+the more civilized parts of Paraguay. They rarely leave their forest
+homes except to seek a market for their wax, which they exchange for
+tobacco and other commodities. Their complexion is a dark brown, and the
+men, who usually go armed with bows and iron-tipped lances, wear a
+splinter of a substance like amber, about two inches in length, run
+through a hole in their under lips. In the almost inaccessible country
+of these Indians is situated the great cascade of the Panama River,
+known as the Gran Salto de la Guayra. This Paraguayan Niagara is the
+object of a superstitious reverence on the part of the Indians, who deem
+it the gateway to the infernal regions, and hence fear to approach it.
+The waters fall into a deep gorge with a roaring sound which may be
+heard twelve miles away, while splendid rainbows are generated in the
+clouds of spray that rise from the depths.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THREE_FEATHERS" id="THREE_FEATHERS"></a>THREE FEATHERS.</h2>
+
+<h3>BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE."</h3>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h3>
+
+<h4>SOME OLD FRIENDS.</h4>
+
+<p>When they heard that Wenna was coming down the road they left Mr.
+Roscorla alone: lovers like to have their meetings and partings
+unobserved.</p>
+
+<p>She went into the room, pale and yet firm: there was even a sense of
+gladness in her heart that now she must know the worst. What would he
+say? How would he receive her? She knew that she was at his mercy.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Mr. Roscorla at this moment was angry enough, for he had been
+deceived and trifled with in his absence; but he was also anxious, and
+his anxiety caused him to conceal his anger. He came forward to her with
+quite a pleasant look on his face: he kissed her and said, "Why, now,
+Wenna, how frightened you seem! Did you think I was going to scold you?
+No, no, no! I hope there is no necessity for that. I am not
+unreasonable, or over-exacting, as a younger man might be: I can make
+allowances. Of course I can't say I liked what you told me when I first
+heard of it; but then I reasoned with myself: I thought of your lonely
+position, of the natural liking a girl has for the attentions of a young
+man, of the possibility of any one going thoughtlessly wrong. And really
+I see no great harm done. A passing fancy&mdash;that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I hope that is so!" she cried suddenly with a pathetic earnestness
+of appeal. "It is so good of you, so generous of you to speak like
+that!" For the first time she ventured to raise her eyes to his face.
+They were full of gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Roscorla complimented himself on his knowledge of women: a younger
+man would have flown into a fury. "Oh dear, yes! Wenna," he said
+lightly, "I suppose all girls have their fancies stray a little bit from
+time to time; but is there any harm done? None whatever. There is
+nothing like marriage to fix the affections, as I hope you will discover
+ere long&mdash;the sooner the better, indeed. Now we will dismiss all those
+unpleasant matters we have been writing about."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do forgive me? You are not really angry with me?" she said;
+and then, finding a welcome assurance in his face, she gratefully took
+his hand and touched it with her lips.</p>
+
+<p>This little act of graceful submission quite conquered Mr. Roscorla, and
+definitely removed all lingering traces of anger from his heart. He was
+no longer acting clemency when he said, with a slight blush on his
+forehead, "You know, Wenna, I have not been free from blame, either.
+That letter&mdash;it was merely a piece of thoughtless anger; but still it
+was very kind of you to consider it canceled and withdrawn when I asked
+you. Well, I was in a bad temper at that time. You cannot look at things
+so philosophically when you are far away from home: you feel yourself so
+helpless, and you think you are being unfairly&mdash;However, not another
+word. Come, let us talk of all your affairs, and all the work you have
+done since I left."</p>
+
+<p>It was a natural invitation, and yet it revealed in a moment the
+hollowness of the apparent reconciliation between them. What chance of
+mutual confidence could there be between these two? He asked Wenna if
+she had been busy in his absence; and the thought immediately occurred
+to him that she had had at least sufficient leisure to go walking about
+with young Trelyon. He asked her about the sewing club, and she stumbled
+into the admission that Mr. Trelyon had presented that association with
+six sewing-machines. Always Trelyon, always the recurrence of that
+uneasy consciousness of past events which divided these two as
+completely as the Atlantic had done! It was a strange meeting after that
+long absence.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a curious thing," he said rather<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span> desperately, "how marriage
+makes a husband and wife sure of each other. Anxiety is all over then.
+We have near us, out in Jamaica, several men whose wives and families
+are here in England, and they accept their exile there as an ordinary
+commercial necessity. But then they put their whole minds into their
+work, for they know that when they return to England they will find
+their wives and families just as they left them. Of course, in the
+majority of cases the married men there have taken their wives out with
+them. Do you fear a long sea-voyage, Wenna?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said rather startled.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be a good sailor, you know."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing to that: she was looking down, dreading what was
+coming.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you must be a good sailor. I have heard of many of your
+boating adventures. Weren't you rather fond, some years ago, of going
+out at night with the Lundy pilots?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have never gone a long voyage in a large vessel," Wenna said rather
+faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"But if there was any reasonable object to be gained an ordinary
+sea-voyage would not frighten you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not."</p>
+
+<p>"And they have really very good steamers going to the West Indies."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"First rate! You get a most comfortable cabin."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you rather&mdash;in your description of it&mdash;in your first
+letter&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said he, hurriedly and lightly (for he had been claiming sympathy
+on account of the discomfort of his voyage out), "perhaps I made a
+little too much of that. Besides, I did not make a proper choice in
+time. One gains experience in such matters. Now, if you were going out
+to Jamaica, I should see that you had every comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"But you don't wish me to go out to Jamaica?" she said, almost
+retreating from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he with a smile, for his only object at present was to
+familiarize her with the idea, "I don't particularly wish it unless the
+project seems a good one to you. You see, Wenna, I find that my stay
+there must be longer than I expected. When I went out at first the
+intention of my partners and myself was that I should merely be on the
+spot to help our manager by agreeing to his accounts at the moment, and
+undertaking a lot of work of that sort, which otherwise would have
+consumed time in correspondence. I was merely to see the whole thing
+well started, and then return. But now I find that my superintendence
+may be needed there for a long while. Just when everything promises so
+well I should not like to imperil all our chances simply for a year or
+two."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, of course not," Wenna said: she had no objection to his
+remaining in Jamaica for a year or two longer than he had intended.</p>
+
+<p>"That being so," he continued, "it occurred to me that perhaps you might
+consent to our marriage before I leave England again, and that, indeed,
+you might even make up your mind to try a trip to Jamaica. Of course we
+should have considerable spells of holiday if you thought it was worth
+while coming home for a short time. I assure you you would find the
+place delightful&mdash;far more delightful than anything I told you in my
+letters, for I'm not very good at describing things. And there is a fair
+amount of society."</p>
+
+<p>He did not prefer the request in an impassioned manner. On the contrary,
+he merely felt that he was satisfying himself by carrying out an
+intention he had formed on his voyage home. If, he had said to himself,
+Wenna and he became friends, he would at least suggest to her that she
+might put an end to all further suspense and anxiety by at once marrying
+him and accompanying him to Jamaica.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you say?" he said with a friendly smile. "Or have I frightened
+you too much? Well, let us drop the subject altogether for the present."</p>
+
+<p>Wenna breathed again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he good-naturedly, "you can think over it. In the mean time
+do not harass yourself about that or anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span> else. You know I have
+come home to spend a holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"And won't you come and see the others?" said Wenna, rising with a glad
+look of relief on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, if you like," he said; and then he stopped short, and an angry
+gleam shot into his eyes: "Wenna, who gave you that ring?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mabyn did," was the frank reply; but all the same Wenna blushed
+hotly, for that matter of the emerald ring had not been touched upon.</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn did?" he repeated, somewhat suspiciously. "She must have been in
+a generous mood."</p>
+
+<p>"When you know Mabyn as well as I do, you will find out that she always
+is," said Miss Wenna quite cheerfully: she was indeed in the best of
+spirits to find that this dreaded interview had not been so very
+frightful after all, and that she had done no mortal injury to one who
+had placed his happiness in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Roscorla, some time after, set out to walk by himself up to
+Basset Cottage, whither his luggage had been sent before him, he felt a
+little tired. He was not accustomed to violent emotions, and that
+morning he had gone through a good deal. His anger and anxiety had for
+long been fighting for mastery, and both had reached their climax that
+morning. On the one hand, he wished to avenge himself for the insult
+paid him, and to show that he was not to be trifled with; on the other
+hand, his anxiety lest he should be unable to make up matters with Wenna
+led him to put an unusual value upon her. What was the result, now that
+he had definitely won her back to himself? What was the sentiment that
+followed on these jarring emotions of the morning?</p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, a little disappointment. Wenna was not looking her
+best when she entered the room: even now he remembered that the pale
+face rather shocked him. She was more insignificant&mdash;perhaps it is the
+best word&mdash;than he had expected. Now that he had got back the prize
+which he thought he had lost, it did not seem to him, after all, to be
+so wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>And in this mood he went up and walked into the pretty little cottage
+which had once been his home. "What!" he said to himself, looking in
+amazement at the small, old-fashioned parlor, and at the still smaller
+study filled with books, "is it possible that I ever proposed to myself
+to live and die in a hole like this?&mdash;my only companion a cantankerous
+old fool of a woman, my only occupation reading the newspapers, my only
+society the good folks of the inn?"</p>
+
+<p>He thanked God he had escaped. His knocking about the world for a bit
+had opened up his mind. The possibility of his having in time a handsome
+income had let in upon him many new and daring ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>His housekeeper, having expressed her grief that she had just posted
+some letters to him, not knowing that he was returning to England,
+brought in a number of small passbooks and a large sheet of blue paper.</p>
+
+<p>"If y&uuml; baint too tired, zor, vor to look over the accounts, 'tis all
+theear but the pultry that Mr.&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Heavens, Mrs. Cornish!" said he, "do you think I am going to look
+over a lot of grocers' bills?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Cornish not only hinted in very plain language that her master had
+been at one time particular enough about grocers' bills and all other
+bills, however trifling, but further proceeded to give him a full and
+minute account of the various incidental expenses to which she had been
+put through young Penny Luke having broken a window by flinging a stone
+from the road; through the cat having knocked down the best tea-pot;
+through the pig having got out of its stye, gone mad, and smashed a
+cucumber-frame; and so forth and so forth. In desperation Mr. Roscorla
+got up, put on his hat and went outside, leaving her at once astonished
+and indignant by his want of interest in what at one time had been his
+only care.</p>
+
+<p>Was this, then, the place in which he had chosen to spend the rest of
+his life, without change, without movement, without interest? It seemed
+to him at the moment a living tomb. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span> not a human being within
+sight. Far away out there lay the gray-blue sea&mdash;a plain without a speck
+on it. The great black crags at the mouth of the harbor were voiceless
+and sterile: could anything have been more bleak than the bare uplands
+on which the pale sun of an English October was shining? The quiet
+crushed him: there was not a nigger near to swear at, nor could he, at
+the impulse of a moment, get on horseback and ride over to the busy and
+interesting and picturesque scene supplied by his faithful coolies at
+work.</p>
+
+<p>What was he to do on this very first day in England, for example? Unpack
+his luggage, in which were some curiosities he had brought home for
+Wenna?&mdash;there was too much trouble in that. Walk about the garden and
+smoke a pipe, as had been his wont?&mdash;he had got emancipated from these
+delights of dotage. Attack his grocers' bills?&mdash;he swore by all his gods
+that he would have nothing to do with the price of candles and cheese,
+now or at any future time. The return of the exile to his native land
+had already produced a feeling of deep disappointment: when he married,
+he said to himself, he would take very good care not to sink into an
+oyster-like life in Eglosilyan.</p>
+
+<p>About a couple of hours after, however, he was reminded that Eglosilyan
+had its small measure of society by the receipt of a letter from Mrs.
+Trelyon, who said she had just heard of his arrival, and hastened to ask
+him whether he would dine at the Hall, not next evening, but the
+following one, to meet two old friends of his, General and Lady Weekes,
+who were there on a brief visit.</p>
+
+<p>"And I have written to ask Miss Rosewarne," Mrs. Trelyon continued, "to
+spare us the same evening, so that we hope to have you both. Perhaps you
+will kindly add your entreaties to mine."</p>
+
+<p>The friendly intention of this post-script was evident, and yet it did
+not seem to please Mr. Roscorla. This Sir Percy Weekes had been a friend
+of his father's, and when the younger Roscorla was a young man about
+town, Lady Weekes had been very kind to him, and had nearly got him
+married once or twice. There was a great contrast between those days and
+these. He hoped the old general would not be tempted to come and visit
+him at Basset Cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Wenna," said he carelessly to her next morning, "Mrs. Trelyon told
+me she had asked you to go up there to-morrow evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Wenna said, looking rather uncomfortable. Then she added quickly,
+"Would it displease you if I did not go? I ought to be at a children's
+party at Mr. Trewhella's."</p>
+
+<p>This was precisely what Mr. Roscorla wanted; but he said, "You must not
+be shy, Wenna. However, please yourself: you need have no fear of vexing
+me. But I must go, for the Weekeses are old friends of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"They stayed at the inn two or three days in May last," said Wenna
+innocently. "They came here by chance, and found Mrs. Trelyon from
+home."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Roscorla seemed startled. "Oh!" said he. "Did they&mdash;did they&mdash;ask
+for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I believe they did," Wenna said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you told them," said Mr. Roscorla with a pleasant smile&mdash;"you told
+them, of course, why you were the best person in the world to give them
+information about me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, no!" said Wenna, blushing hotly: "they spoke to Jennifer."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Roscorla felt himself rebuked. It was George Rosewarne's express
+wish that his daughters should not be approached by strangers visiting
+the inn as if they were officially connected with the place: Mr.
+Roscorla should have remembered that inquiries would be made of a
+servant.</p>
+
+<p>But, as it happened, Sir Percy and his wife had really made the
+acquaintance of both Wenna and Mabyn on their chance visit to
+Eglosilyan; and it was of these two girls they were speaking when Mr.
+Roscorla was announced in Mrs. Trelyon's drawing-room the following
+evening. The thin, wiry, white-moustached old man, who had wonderfully
+bright eyes and a great vivacity of spirits for a veteran of
+seventy-four, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span> standing in front of the fire, and declaring to
+everybody that two such well-accomplished, smart, talkative and
+lady-like young women he had never met with in his life: "What did you
+say the name was, my dear Mrs. Trelyon? Rosewarne, eh?&mdash;Rosewarne? A
+good old Cornish name&mdash;as good as yours, Roscorla. So they're called
+Rosewarne? Gad! if her ladyship wants to appoint a successor, I'm
+willing to let her choice fall on one of those two girls."</p>
+
+<p>Her ladyship, a dark and silent old woman of eighty, did not like, in
+the first place, to be called her ladyship, and did not relish, either,
+having her death talked of as a joke.</p>
+
+<p>"Roscorla, now&mdash;Roscorla, there's a good chance for you, eh?" continued
+the old general. "We never could get you married, you know&mdash;wild young
+dog! Don't you know the girls?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, Sir Percy," Mr. Roscorla said with no great good-will: then he
+turned to the fire and began to warm his hands.</p>
+
+<p>There was a tall young gentleman standing there who in former days would
+have been delighted to cry out on such an occasion, "Why, Roscorla's
+going to marry one of 'em!" He remained silent now.</p>
+
+<p>He was very silent, too, throughout the evening, and almost anxiously
+civil toward Mr. Roscorla. He paid great attention when the latter was
+describing to the company at table the beauties of West Indian scenery,
+the delights of West Indian life, the change that had come over the
+prospects of Jamaica since the introduction of coolie labor, and the
+fashion in which the rich merchants of Cuba were setting about getting
+plantations there for the growth of tobacco. Mr. Roscorla spoke with the
+air of a man who now knew what the world was. When the old general asked
+him if he were coming back to live in Eglosilyan after he had become a
+millionaire, he laughed, and said that one's coffin came soon enough
+without one's rushing to meet it. No: when he came back to England
+finally, he would live in London; and had Sir Percy still that old
+walled-in house in Brompton?</p>
+
+<p>Sir Percy paid less heed to these descriptions of Jamaica than Harry
+Trelyon did, for his next neighbor was old Mrs. Trelyon, and these two
+venerable flirts were talking of old acquaintances and old times at Bath
+and Cheltenham, and of the celebrated beauties, wits and murderers of
+other days, in a manner which her silent ladyship did not at all seem to
+approve. The general was bringing out all his old-fashioned
+gallantry&mdash;compliments, easy phrases in French, polite attentions: his
+companion began to use her fan with a coquettish grace, and was vastly
+pleased when a reference was made to her celebrated flight to Gretna
+Green.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Sir Percy," she said, "the men were men in those days, and the
+women women, I promise you: no beating about the bush, but the fair word
+given and the fair word taken; and then a broken head for whoever should
+interfere&mdash;father, uncle or brother, no matter who; and you know our
+family, Sir Percy, our family were among the worst&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you what, madam," said the general, hotly, "your family had
+among 'em the handsomest women in the west of England; and the
+handsomest men, too, by Gad! Do you remember Jane Swanhope&mdash;the Fair
+Maid of Somerset they used to call her&mdash;that married the fellow living
+down Yeovil way who broke his neck in a steeplechase?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I remember her?" said the old lady. "She was one of my bridemaids
+when they took me up to London to get married properly after I came
+back. She was my cousin on the mother's side, but they were connected
+with the Trelyons too. And do you remember old John Trelyon of
+Polkerris? and did you ever see a man straighter in the back than he was
+at seventy-one, when he married his second wife? That was at Exeter, I
+think. But there, now, you don't find such men and women in these times;
+and do you know the reason of that, Sir Percy? I'll tell you: it's the
+doctors. The doctors can keep all the sickly ones alive now: before it
+was only the strong ones that lived. Dear, dear me! when I hear some of
+those London women talk, it is nothing but a catalogue of illnesses and
+diseases.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span> No wonder they should say in church, 'There is no health in
+us:' every one of them has something the matter, even the young girls,
+poor things! and pretty mothers they're likely to make! They're a misery
+to themselves; they'll bring miserable things into the world; and all
+because the doctors have become so clever in pulling sickly people
+through. That's my opinion, Sir Percy. The doctors are responsible for
+five-sixths of all the suffering you hear of in families, either through
+illness or the losing of one's friends and relatives."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my word, madam," the general protested, "you use the doctor badly.
+He is blamed if he kills people, and he is blamed if he keeps them
+alive. What is he to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do? He can't help saving the sickly ones now," the old lady admitted,
+"for relatives will have it done, and they know he can do it; but it's a
+great misfortune, Sir Percy, that's what it is, to have all these sickly
+creatures growing up to intermarry into the good old families that used
+to be famous for their comeliness and strength. There was a man&mdash;yes, I
+remember him well&mdash;that came from Devonshire: he was a man of good
+family too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said I to
+myself, Wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this man
+comes up to our country, there's one or other of the Trelyons will try
+his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George&mdash;you
+remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his own son
+there?&mdash;'George,' I said, 'if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these parts,
+mind you have nothing to do with him, for wrestling is not fit for
+gentlemen.' 'All right, mother,' said he, but he laughed, and I knew
+what the laugh meant. My dear Sir Percy, I tell you the man hadn't a
+chance: I heard of it all afterward. George caught him up before he
+could begin any of his tricks and flung him on to the hedge; and there
+were a dozen more in our family who could have done it, I'll be bound."</p>
+
+<p>"But then, you know, Mrs. Trelyon," Mr. Roscorla ventured to say,
+"physical strength is not everything that is needed. If the doctors
+were to let the sickly ones die, we might be losing all sorts of great
+poets and statesmen and philosophers."</p>
+
+<p>The old lady turned on him: "And do you think a man has to be sickly to
+be clever? No, no, Mr. Roscorla: give him better health and you give him
+a better head. That's what we believed in the old days. I fancy, now,
+there were greater men before this coddling began than there are
+now&mdash;yes, I do; and if there is a great man coming into the world, the
+chances are just as much that he'll be among the strong ones as among
+the sick ones. What do you think, Sir Percy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I declare you're right, madam," said he gallantly. "You've quite
+convinced me. Of course, some of 'em must go: I say, Let the sickly ones
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"I never heard such brutal, such murderous sentiments expressed in my
+life before," said a solemn voice; and every one became aware that at
+last Lady Weekes had spoken. Her speech was the signal for universal
+silence, in the midst of which the ladies got up and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>Trelyon took his mother's place and sent round the wine. He was
+particularly attentive to Mr. Roscorla, who was surprised. Perhaps,
+thought the latter, he is anxious to atone for all this bother that is
+now happily over.</p>
+
+<p>If the younger man was silent and preoccupied, that was not the case
+with Mr. Roscorla, who was already assuming the airs of a rich person,
+and speaking of his being unable to live in this district or that
+district of London, just as if he expected to purchase a lease of
+Buckingham Palace on his return from Jamaica.</p>
+
+<p>"And how are all my old friends in Hans Place, Sir Percy?" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been a deserter, sir&mdash;you've been a deserter for many a year
+now," the general said gayly, "but we're all willing to have you back
+again to a quiet rubber after dinner, you know. Do you remember old John
+Thwaites? Ah, he's gone now&mdash;left one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
+to build a hospital, and only five thousand pounds to his sister.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span> The
+poor old woman believed some one would marry her when she got the whole
+of her brother's money&mdash;so I'm told&mdash;and when the truth became known,
+what did she do? Gad, sir! she wrote a novel abusing her own brother. By
+the way, that reminds me of a devilish good thing I heard when I was
+here last&mdash;down at the inn, you know. What's the name of the girls I was
+talking about? Well, her ladyship caught one of them reading a novel,
+and not very well pleased with it, and says she to the young lady,
+'Don't you like that book?' Then says the girl&mdash;let me see what was it?
+Gad! I must go and ask her ladyship."</p>
+
+<p>And off he trotted to the drawing-room. He came back in a couple of
+minutes. "Of course," said he. "Devilish stupid of me to forget it.
+'Why,' said the young lady, 'I think the author has been trying to keep
+the fourth commandment, for there's nothing in the book that has any
+likeness to anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or the
+heavens under the earth.'"</p>
+
+<p>"The waters under the earth."</p>
+
+<p>"I mean the waters, of course. Gad! her ladyship was immensely tickled."</p>
+
+<p>"Which of the two young ladies was it, Sir Percy? The younger, I
+suppose?" said Mr. Roscorla.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, the elder sister of course," said Trelyon.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the elder one it was&mdash;the quiet one; and an uncommon nice girl she
+is. Well, there's Captain Walters, the old sea-dog! still to the fore;
+and his uniform too. Don't you remember the uniform with the red cuffs
+that hasn't been seen in the navy for a couple of centuries, I should
+think? His son's got into Parliament now&mdash;gone over to the Rads and the
+workingmen, and those fellows that are scheming to get the land divided
+among themselves&mdash;all in the name of philosophy: and it's a devilish
+fine sort of philosophy; that is, when you haven't a rap in your pocket,
+and when you prove that everybody who has must give it up. He came to my
+house the other day, and he was jawing away about primogeniture, and
+entail, and direct taxation, and equal electoral districts, and I don't
+know what besides. 'Walters,' said I&mdash;'Walters, you've got nothing to
+share, and so you don't mind a general division. When you have, you'll
+want to stick to what's in your own pocket.' Had him there, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The old general beamed and laughed over his smartness: he was conscious
+of having said something that, in shape at least, was like an epigram.</p>
+
+<p>"I must rub up my acquaintance in that quarter," said Roscorla, "before
+I leave again. Fortunately, I have always kept up my club subscription;
+and you'll come and dine with me, Sir Percy, won't you, when I get to
+town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to town?" said Trelyon quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was abrupt, and it made Roscorla look at the young man as
+he answered. Trelyon seemed to him to be very much harassed about
+something or other.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I suppose in a week or so: I am only home for a holiday, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you'll be here for a week?" said the younger man submissively.
+"When do you think of returning to Jamaica?"</p>
+
+<p>"Probably at the beginning of next month. Fancy leaving England in
+November&mdash;just at the most hideous time of the year&mdash;and in a week or
+two getting out into summer again, with the most beautiful climate and
+foliage and what not all around you! I can tell you a man makes a great
+mistake who settles down to a sort of vegetable life anywhere: you don't
+catch me at that again."</p>
+
+<p>"There's some old women," observed the general, who was so anxious to
+show his profundity that he quite forgot the invidious character of the
+comparison, "who are just like trees&mdash;as much below the ground as above
+it. Isn't that true, eh? They're a deal more at home among the people
+they have buried than among those that are alive. I don't say that's
+your case, Roscorla. You're comparatively a young man yet: you've got
+brisk health. I don't wonder at your liking to knock about. As for you,
+young Trelyon, what do you mean to do?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Harry Trelyon started. "Oh," said he with some confusion, "I have no
+immediate plans. Yes, I have: don't you know I have been cramming for
+the civil service examinations for first commissions?"</p>
+
+<p>"And what the devil made the War Office go to those civilians?" muttered
+the general.</p>
+
+<p>"And if I pull through I shall want all your influence to get me
+gazetted to a good regiment. Don't they often shunt you on to the First
+or Second West Indians?"</p>
+
+<p>"And you've enough money to back you, too," said the general. "I tell
+you what it is, gentlemen, if they abolish the purchase of commissions
+in the army&mdash;and they're always talking about it&mdash;they don't know what
+they'll bring about. They'll have two sets of officers in the army&mdash;men
+with money who like a good mess, and live far beyond their pay, and men
+with no money at all, who've got to live on their pay; and how can they
+afford the regimental mess out of that? But Parliament won't stand it,
+you'll see. The war minister will be beaten if he brings it on&mdash;take my
+word for that."</p>
+
+<p>The old general had probably never heard of a royal warrant and its
+mighty powers.</p>
+
+<p>"So you're going to be one of us?" he said to Trelyon. "Well, you've a
+smart figure for a uniform. You're the first of your side of the family
+to go into the army, eh? You had some naval men among you, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'd better ask my grandmother," said young Trelyon with a
+laugh: "she'll tell you stories about 'em by the hour together."</p>
+
+<p>"She's a wonderful woman that&mdash;a wonderful old creature!" said the
+general, just as if he were a sprightly young fellow talking of the
+oldest inhabitant of the district. "She's not one of them that are half
+buried: she's wide enough awake, I'll be bound. Gad! what a handsome
+woman she was when I saw her first! Well, lads, let's join the ladies:
+I'm none of your steady-going old topers. Enough's as good's a
+feast&mdash;that's my motto. And I can't write my name on a slate with my
+knuckles, either."</p>
+
+<p>And so they went into the large, dimly-lit red chamber where the women
+were having tea round the blazing fire. The men took various chairs
+about; the conversation became general; old Lady Weekes feebly
+endeavored to keep up her eyelids. In about half an hour or so Mrs.
+Trelyon happened to glance round the room. "Where's Harry?" said she.</p>
+
+<p>No one apparently had noticed that Master Harry had disappeared.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h3>
+
+<h4>A DARK CONSPIRACY.</h4>
+
+<p>Now, when Harry Trelyon drove up to the Hall after leaving Wenna
+Rosewarne in the road he could not tell why he was vexed with her. He
+imagined somehow that she should not have allowed Mr. Roscorla to come
+home; and to come home just at this moment, when he, Trelyon, had stolen
+down for a couple of days to have a shy look at the sweet-heart who was
+so far out of his reach! She ought to have been alone. Then she ought
+not to have looked so calm and complacent on going away to meet Mr.
+Roscorla: she ought to have been afraid. She ought to have&mdash;In short,
+everything was wrong, and Wenna was largely to blame.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, grandmother," said he as they drove through the avenue, "don't
+you expect every minute to flush a covey of parsons?"</p>
+
+<p>He was angry with Wenna, and so he broke out once more in his old vein.</p>
+
+<p>"There are worse men than the parsons, Harry," the old lady said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you a sovereign there are two on the doorstep."</p>
+
+<p>He would have lost. There was not a clergyman of any sort in or about
+the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Mr. Barnes here?" said he to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trelyon flushed slightly as she said, "No, Harry, Mr. Barnes is not
+here, nor is he likely to visit here again."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, Mr. Roscorla would at once have perceived that a strange little
+story lay behind that simple speech, but Mr. Harry, paying no attention
+to it, merely said he was heartily glad to hear of it, and showed his
+gratitude by being unusually polite to his mother during the rest of his
+stay.</p>
+
+<p>"And so Mr. Roscorla has come back?" his mother said. "General Weekes
+was asking about him only yesterday. We must see if he will come up to
+dinner the night after to-morrow; and Miss Rosewarne also."</p>
+
+<p>"You may ask her&mdash;you ought to ask her&mdash;but she won't come," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" Mrs. Trelyon said with a gentle wonder. "She has been
+here very often of late."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you let her walk up?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have generally driven down for her when I wanted to see her; and
+the way she has been working for these people is extraordinary&mdash;never
+tired, always cheerful, ready to be bothered by anybody, and patient
+with their suspicions and simplicity beyond belief. I am sure Mr.
+Roscorla will have an excellent wife."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not at all sure that he will," said her son, goaded past
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Harry," said his mother, with her eyes wide open, "I thought you
+had a great respect for Miss Rosewarne."</p>
+
+<p>"I have," he said abruptly&mdash;"far too great a respect to like the notion
+of her marrying that old fool."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you rather not have him to dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I should like to have him to dinner."</p>
+
+<p>For one evening, at least, this young man considered, these two would be
+separated. He was pretty sure that Roscorla would come to meet General
+Weekes: he was positive that Wenna would not come to the house while he
+himself was in it.</p>
+
+<p>But the notion that, except during this one evening, his rival would
+have free access to the inn, and would spend pleasant hours there, and
+would take Wenna with him for walks along the coast, maddened him. He
+dared not go down to the village for fear of seeing these two together.
+He walked about the grounds or went away over to the cliffs, torturing
+his heart with imagining Roscorla's opportunities. And once or twice he
+was on the point of going straight down to Eglosilyan, and calling on
+Wenna, before Roscorla's face, to be true to her own heart, and declare
+herself free from this old and hateful entanglement.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances his grandmother was not a good companion for him.
+In her continual glorification of the self-will of the Trelyons, and her
+stories of the wild deeds they had done, she was unconsciously driving
+him to some desperate thing against his better judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, grandmother," he said one day, "you hint that I am a nincompoop
+because I don't go and carry off that girl and marry her against her
+will. Is that what you mean by telling me of what the men did in former
+days? Well, I can tell you this, that it would be a deal easier for me
+to try that than not to try it. The difficulty is in holding your hand.
+But what good would you do, after all? The time has gone by for that
+sort of thing. I shouldn't like to have on my hands a woman sulking
+because she was married by force. Besides, you can't do these mad freaks
+now: there are too many police-courts about."</p>
+
+<p>"By force? No," the old lady said. "The girls I speak of were as glad to
+run away as the men, I can tell you, and they did it, too, when their
+relations were against the match."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, if both he and she are agreed, the way is as smooth now as
+it was then: you don't need to care much for relations."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Harry, you don't know what a girl thinks," this dangerous old lady
+said. "She has her notions of duty, and her respect for her parents, and
+all that; and if the man only went and reasoned with her he would never
+carry the day; but just as she comes out of a ball-room some night, when
+she is all aglow with fun and pleasure, and ready to become romantic
+with the stars, you see, and the darkness, then just show her a
+carriage, a pair of horses, a marriage license, and her own maid to
+accompany her, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span> see what will happen! Why, she'll hop into the
+carriage like a dicky-bird: then she'll have a bit of a cry, and then
+she'll recover, and be mad with the delight of escaping from those
+behind her. That's how to win a girl, man! The sweet-hearts of these
+days think too much, that's about it: it's all done by argument between
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a wicked old woman, grandmother," said Trelyon with a laugh.
+"You oughtn't to put such notions into the head of a well-conducted
+young man like me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you're not such a booby as you used to be, Harry," the old lady
+admitted. "Your manners are considerably improved, and there was much
+room for improvement. You're growing a good deal like your grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's no Gretna Green now-a-days," said Trelyon as he went
+outside, "so you can't expect me to be perfect, grandmother."</p>
+
+<p>On the first night of his arrival at Eglosilyan he stole away in the
+darkness down to the inn. There were no lamps in the steep road, which
+was rendered all the darker by the high rocky bank with its rough masses
+of foliage: he feared that by accident some one might be out and meet
+him. But in the absolute silence under the stars he made his way down
+until he was near the inn, and there in the black shadow of the road he
+stood and looked at the lighted windows. Roscorla was doubtless
+within&mdash;lying in an easy-chair, probably, by the fire, while Wenna sang
+her old-fashioned songs to him. He would assume the air of being one of
+the family now, only holding himself a little above the family. Perhaps
+he was talking of the house he meant to take when he and Wenna married.</p>
+
+<p>That was no wholesome food for reflection on which this young man's mind
+was now feeding. He stood there in the darkness, himself white as a
+ghost, while all the vague imaginings of what might be going on within
+the house seemed to be eating at his heart. This, then, was the comfort
+he had found by secretly stealing away from London for a day or two! He
+had arrived just in time to find his rival triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>The private door of the inn was at this moment opened: a warm glow of
+yellow streamed out into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," said some one: was it Wenna?</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," was the answer; and then the figure of a man passed down
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>Trelyon breathed more freely: at last his rival was out of the house.
+Wenna was now alone: would she go up into her own room and think over
+all the events of the day? And would she remember that he had come to
+Eglosilyan, and that she could, if any such feeling arose in her heart,
+summon him at need?</p>
+
+<p>It was very late that night before Trelyon returned: he had gone all
+round by the harbor and the cliffs and the high-lying church on the
+hill. All in the house had gone to bed, but there was a fire burning in
+his study, and there were biscuits and wine on the table. A box of
+cigars stood on the mantelpiece. Apparently, he was in no mood for the
+indolent comfort thus suggested. He stood for a minute or two before the
+fire, staring into it, and seeing other things than the flaming coals
+there; then he moved about the room in an impatient and excited fashion;
+finally, with his hand trembling a little bit, he sat down and wrote
+this note:</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mother</span>: The horses and carriage will be at Launceston Station by
+the first train on Saturday morning. Will you please send Jakes over for
+them? And bid him take the horses up to Mr. &mdash;&mdash;'s stables, and have
+them fed, watered and properly rested before he drives them over. Your
+affectionate son, <span class="smcap">Harry Trelyon</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Next morning, as Mabyn Rosewarne was coming briskly up the Trevenna
+road, carrying in her arms a pretty big parcel, she was startled by the
+appearance of a young man, who suddenly showed himself overhead, and
+then scrambled down the rocky bank until he stood beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been watching for you all the morning, Mabyn," said Trelyon.
+"I&mdash;I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span> want to speak to you. Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up to Mr. Trewhella's. You know his granddaughter is very nearly quite
+well again, and there is to be a great gathering of children there
+to-night to celebrate her recovery. This is a cake I am carrying that
+Wenna has made herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Wenna to be there?" Trelyon said eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course," said Mabyn petulantly. "What do you think the children
+could do without her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Mabyn," he said. "I want to speak to you very particularly.
+Couldn't you just as well go round by the farm-road? Let me carry your
+cake for you."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn guessed what he wanted to speak about, and willingly made the
+circuit by a more private road leading by one of the upland farms. At a
+certain point they came to a stile, and here they rested. So far,
+Trelyon had said nothing of consequence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do you know, Mr. Trelyon," Mabyn remarked quite innocently, "I have
+been reading such a nice book&mdash;all about Jamaica."</p>
+
+<p>"So you're interested about Jamaica too?" said he rather bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, much. Do you know that it is the most fearful place for storms in
+the whole world&mdash;the most awful hurricanes that come smashing down
+everything and killing people? You can't escape if you're in the way of
+the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses and twists out the
+plantain trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of
+canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are
+carried right up into the streets of Kingston. There!"</p>
+
+<p>"But why does that please you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," she said with proud indignation, "the notion of people talking as
+if they could go out to Jamaica and live for ever, and come back just
+when they please&mdash;it is too ridiculous! Many accidents may happen. And
+isn't November a very bad time for storms? Ships often get wrecked going
+out to the West Indies, don't they?"</p>
+
+<p>At another time Trelyon would have laughed at this bloodthirsty young
+woman: at this moment he was too serious. "Mabyn," said he, "I can't
+bear this any longer&mdash;standing by like a fool and looking on while
+another man is doing his best to marry Wenna: I can't go on like this
+any longer. Mabyn, when did you say she would leave Mr. Trewhella's
+house to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say anything about it. I suppose we shall leave about
+ten&mdash;the young ones leave at nine."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Wenna and I are to keep order."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody else with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her rather hesitatingly. "And supposing, Mabyn," he said
+slowly&mdash;"supposing you and Wenna were to leave at ten, and that it is a
+beautiful clear night, you might walk down by the wood instead of the
+road; and then, supposing that you came out on the road down at the
+foot, and you found there a carriage and pair of horses&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn began to look alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>"And if I was there," he continued more rapidly, "and I said to Wenna
+suddenly, 'Now, Wenna, think nothing, but come and save yourself from
+this marriage. There is your sister will come with you; and I will drive
+you to Plymouth.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Trelyon!" Mabyn cried with a sudden joy in her face, "she would
+do it! she would do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you, would you come too?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" the girl cried, full of excitement. "And then, Mr. Trelyon, and
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he cried boldly, "up to London at once&mdash;twenty-four hours' start
+of everybody&mdash;and in London we are safe. Then, you know, Mabyn&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, Mr. Trelyon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think now that we two could persuade her to a quick
+marriage&mdash;with a special license, you know? You could persuade her, I am
+sure, Mabyn."</p>
+
+<p>In the gladness of her heart Mabyn felt herself at this moment ready to
+fall on the young man's neck and kiss him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span> But she was a properly
+conducted young person, and so she rose from the big block of slate on
+which she had been sitting and managed to suppress any great intimation
+of her abounding joy. But she was very proud, all the same, and there
+was a great firmness about her lips as she said, "We will do it, Mr.
+Trelyon&mdash;we will do it. Do you know why Wenna submits to this
+engagement? Because she reasons with her conscience and persuades
+herself that it is right. When you meet her like that, she will have no
+time to consider."</p>
+
+<p>"That is what my grandmother says," Trelyon said with a triumphant
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she was a girl once," Mabyn replied sagely. "Well, well, tell me
+all about it. What arrangements have you made? You haven't got the
+special license?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said he, "I didn't make up my mind to try this on till last night.
+But the difference of a day is nothing when you are with her. We shall
+be able to hide ourselves away pretty well in London, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," cried Mabyn, confidently. "But tell me more, Mr. Trelyon.
+What have you arranged? What have you done?"</p>
+
+<p>"What could I do until I knew whether you'd help me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must bring a fearful amount of wraps with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly&mdash;more than you'll want, I know. And I sha'n't light the lamps
+until I hear you coming along, for they would attract attention down in
+the valley. I should like to wait for you elsewhere, but if I did that
+you couldn't get Wenna to come with you. Do you think you will get her
+to come even there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes," said Mabyn cheerfully: "nothing easier. I shall tell her she's
+afraid, and then she would walk down the face of Black Cliff. By the
+way, Mr. Trelyon, I must bring something to eat with me, and some
+wine&mdash;she will be so nervous, and the long journey will tire her."</p>
+
+<p>"You will be at Mr. Trewhella's, Mabyn: you can't go carrying things
+about with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I could bring a bit of cake in my pocket," Mabyn suggested, but this
+seemed even to her so ludicrous that she blushed and laughed, and agreed
+that Mr. Harry should bring the necessary provisions for the wild
+night-ride to Plymouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it does so please me to think of it!" she said with a curious
+anxious excitement as well as gladness in her face. "I hope I have not
+forgotten to arrange anything. Let me see: we start at ten; then down
+through the wood to the road in the hollow&mdash;oh, I hope there will be
+nobody coming along just then!&mdash;then you light the lamps; then you come
+forward to persuade Wenna. By the way, Mr. Trelyon, where must I go?
+Shall I not be dreadfully in the way?"</p>
+
+<p>"You? You must stand by the horses' heads. I sha'n't have my man with
+me. And yet they're not very fiery animals: they'll be less fiery, the
+unfortunate wretches! when they get to Plymouth."</p>
+
+<p>"At what time?"</p>
+
+<p>"About half-past three in the morning if we go straight on," said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know a good hotel there?" said the practical Mabyn.</p>
+
+<p>"The best one is by the station; but if you sleep in the front of the
+house, you have the whistling of engines all night long, and if you
+sleep in the back, you overlook a barracks, and the confounded
+trumpeting begins about four o'clock, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>"Wenna and I won't mind that&mdash;we shall be too tired," Mabyn said. "Do
+you think they could give us a little hot coffee when we arrive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes. I'll give the night-porter a sovereign a cup: then he'll offer
+to bring it to you in buckets. Now, don't you think the whole thing is
+beautifully arranged, Mabyn?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is quite lovely!" the girl said joyously, "for we shall be off with
+the morning train to London, while Mr. Roscorla is pottering about
+Launceston Station at midday. Then we must send a telegram from
+Plymouth, a fine dramatic telegram; and my father, he will swear a
+little, but be quite content; and my mother&mdash;do you know, Mr. Trelyon, I
+believe my mother will be as glad as anybody.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span> What shall we say?&mdash;'To
+Mr. Rosewarne, Eglosilyan: We have fled. Not the least good pursuing us.
+May as well make up your mind to the inevitable. Will write to-morrow.'
+Is that more than the twenty words for a shilling?"</p>
+
+<p>"We sha'n't grudge the other shilling if it is," the young man said.
+"Now you must go on with your cake, Mabyn. I am off to see after the
+horses' shoes. Mind, as soon after ten as you can&mdash;just where the path
+from the wood comes into the main road."</p>
+
+<p>Then she hesitated, and for a minute or two she remained thoughtful and
+silent, while he was inwardly hoping that she was not going to draw
+back. Suddenly she looked up at him with earnest and anxious eyes. "Oh,
+Mr. Trelyon," she said, "this is a very serious thing. You&mdash;you will be
+kind to our Wenna after she is married to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will see, Mabyn," he answered gently.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know how sensitive she is," she continued, apparently
+thinking over all the possibilities of the future in a much graver
+fashion than she had done. "If you were unkind to her it would kill her.
+Are you quite sure you won't regret it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am quite sure of that," said he&mdash;"as sure as a man may be. I
+don't think you need fear my being unkind to Wenna. Why, what has put
+such thoughts into your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you were to be cruel to her or indifferent," she said slowly and
+absently, "I know that would kill her. But I know more than that: <i>I
+would kill you.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn," he said, quite startled, "whatever has put such thoughts into
+your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," she said passionately, "haven't I seen already how a man can
+treat her? Haven't I read the insolent letters he has sent her? Haven't
+I seen her throw herself on her bed, beside herself with grief?
+And&mdash;and&mdash;these are things I don't forget, Mr. Trelyon. No, I have got a
+word to say to Mr. Roscorla yet for his treatment of my sister; and I
+will say it. And then&mdash;" The proud lips were beginning to quiver.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Mabyn," said Trelyon gently, "don't imagine all men are the
+same. And perhaps Roscorla will have been paid out quite sufficiently
+when he hears of to-night's work. I sha'n't bear him any malice after
+that, I know. Already, I confess, I feel a good deal of compunction as
+regards him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't at all&mdash;I don't a bit," said Mabyn, who very quickly recovered
+herself whenever Mr. Roscorla's name was mentioned. "If you only can get
+her to go away with you, Mr. Trelyon, it will serve him just right.
+Indeed, it is on his account that I hope you will be successful. I&mdash;I
+don't quite like Wenna running away with you, to tell you the truth. I
+would rather have her left to a quiet decision, and to a marriage with
+everybody approving. But there is no chance of that. This is the only
+thing that will save her."</p>
+
+<p>"That is precisely what I said to you," Trelyon said eagerly, for he was
+afraid of losing so invaluable an ally.</p>
+
+<p>"And you will be very, very kind to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not good at fine words, Mabyn. You'll see."</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to him and pressed his warmly: "I believe you will
+be a good husband to her; and I know you will get the best wife in the
+whole world."</p>
+
+<p>She was going away when he suddenly said, "Mabyn!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said he, rather shamefacedly, "how much I am grateful to
+you for all your frank, straightforward kindness&mdash;and your help&mdash;and
+your courage?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no," said the young girl good-humoredly. "You make Wenna happy, and
+don't consider me."</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXV.</h3>
+
+<h4>UNDER THE WHITE STARS.</h4>
+
+<p>During the whole glad evening Wenna had been queen of the feast, and her
+subjects had obeyed her with a joyous submission. They did not take
+quite so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span> kindly to Mabyn, for she was sharp of tongue and imperious in
+her ways, but they knew that they could tease her elder sister with
+impunity&mdash;always up to the well-understood line at which her authority
+began. That was never questioned.</p>
+
+<p>Then at nine o'clock the servants came, some on foot and some on
+dog-carts, and presently there was a bundling of tiny figures in rugs
+and wraps, and Wenna stood at the door to kiss each of them and say
+good-bye. It was half-past nine when that performance was over.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my dear Miss Wenna," said the old clergyman, "you must be quite
+tired out with your labors. Come into the study; I believe the tray has
+been taken in there."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Mr. Trewhella," said Mabyn boldly, "that Wenna hadn't time
+to eat a single bit when all those children were gobbling up cake?
+Couldn't you let her have a little bit&mdash;a little bit of cold meat, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear! dear me!" said the kind old gentleman in the deepest distress,
+"that I should not have remembered!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no use in Wenna protesting. In the snug little study she was
+made to eat some supper; and if she got off with drinking one glass of
+sherry, it was not through the intervention of her sister, who
+apparently would have had her drink a tumblerful.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until a quarter past ten that the girls could get away.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I must see you young ladies down to the village, lest some one
+should run away with you," the old clergyman said, taking down his
+top-coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, you must not&mdash;you must not indeed, Mr. Trewhella!" Mabyn said
+anxiously. "Wenna and I always go about by ourselves; and far later than
+this, too. It is a beautiful, clear night. Why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her impetuosity made her sister smile. "You talk as if you would rather
+like to be run away with, Mabyn," she said. "But indeed, Mr. Trewhella,
+you must not think of coming with us. It is quite true what Mabyn
+says."</p>
+
+<p>And so they went out into the clear darkness together, and the door was
+shut, and they found themselves in the silent world of the night-time,
+with the white stars throbbing overhead. Far away in the distance they
+could hear the murmur of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold, Mabyn, that you tremble so?" said the elder sister.</p>
+
+<p>"No, only a sort of shiver in coming out into the night-air."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever it was, it was soon over. Mabyn seemed to be unusually
+cheerful. "Wenna," she said, "you're afraid of ghosts."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you are."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not half as much afraid of ghosts as you are, that's quite
+certain."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet you you won't walk down through the wood."</p>
+
+<p>"Just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, I'll not only go down through the wood, but I'll undertake to be
+home before you, though you've a broad road to guide you."</p>
+
+<p>"But I did not mean you to go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Wenna, "you propose to come with me? Then it is you who are
+afraid to go down by yourself? Oh, Mabyn!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Wenna: let's go down through the wood, just for fun."</p>
+
+<p>So the two sisters set out arm in arm, and through some spirit of
+mischief Wenna would not speak a word. Mabyn was gradually overawed by
+the silence, the night, the loneliness of the road, and the solemn
+presence of the great living vault above them. Moreover, before getting
+into the wood they had to skirt a curious little dingle, in the hollow
+of which are both a church and churchyard. Many a time the sisters had
+come up to this romantic dell in the spring-time to gather splendid
+primroses, sweet violets, the yellow celandine, and other wild flowers
+that grew luxuriantly on its steep banks; and very pretty the old church
+looked then, with the clear sunshine of April streaming down through the
+scantily-leaved trees into this sequestered spot. Now the deep hole was
+black<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span> as night, and they could only make out a bit of the spire of the
+church as it appeared against the dark sky. Nay, was there not a sound
+among the fallen leaves and underwood down there in the direction of the
+unseen graves?</p>
+
+<p>"Some cow has strayed in there, I believe," said Mabyn in a somewhat low
+voice, and she walked rather quickly until they got past the place and
+out on to the hill over the wooded valley.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Wenna cheerfully, not wishing to have Mabyn put in a real
+fright, "as we go down I am going to tell you something, Mabyn. How
+would you like to have to prepare for a wedding in a fortnight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said Mabyn promptly, even fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Not if it was your own?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Why, the insult of such a request!"</p>
+
+<p>According to Mabyn's way of thinking it was an insult to ask a girl to
+marry you in a fortnight, but none to insist on her marrying you the day
+after to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>"You think that a girl could fairly plead that as an excuse&mdash;the mere
+time to get one's dresses and things ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna far more seriously, "it is not of dresses I am
+thinking at all; but I shudder to think of getting married just now. I
+could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what is past; and
+until that is done how could I marry any man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that," her sister cried. "You
+can be so wise and reasonable when you choose. Of course you are quite
+right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get married
+before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm: "To Jamaica! To take you away from
+the whole of us! Why&mdash;Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're
+not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you
+know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the
+most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the
+woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't
+think you are going to Jamaica just yet."</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I
+think of getting married in any case at present. But then&mdash;don't you
+see, Mabyn?&mdash;Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If I were to
+tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting married just
+now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue me out of it:
+then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a girl may fairly
+refuse in point of time&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married
+properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in
+three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it
+is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to
+marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you
+send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."</p>
+
+<p>Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid
+of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and he'll have more cause to be before he's much older," said
+Mabyn confidently.</p>
+
+<p>They could not continue their conversation just then, for they were
+going down the side of the hill between short trees and bushes, and the
+path was only broad enough for one, while there were many dark places
+demanding caution.</p>
+
+<p>"Seen any ghosts yet?" Wenna called out to Mabyn, who was behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Ghosts, sir? Ay, ay, sir! Heave away on the larboard beam. I say,
+Wenna, isn't it uncommon dark?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is uncommonly dark?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen always say uncommon, and all the grammars are written by
+gentlemen. Oh, Wenna, wait a bit: I've lost my brooch."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was no <i>ruse</i>, for a wonder: the brooch had indeed dropped out of her
+shawl. She felt all over the dark ground for it, but her search was in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, here's a nice thing! Upon my&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn!"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my&mdash;trotting pony: that was all I was going to say. Wenna, will
+you stay here for a minute, and I'll run down to the foot of the hill
+and get a match?"</p>
+
+<p>"How can you get a match at the foot of the hill? You'll have to go on
+to the inn. No, tie your handkerchief round the foot of one of the
+trees, and come up early in the morning to look."</p>
+
+<p>"Early in the morning?" said Mabyn. "I hope to be in&mdash;I mean asleep
+then."</p>
+
+<p>Twice she had nearly blurted out the secret, and it is highly probable
+that her refusal to adopt Wenna's suggestion would have led her sister
+to suspect something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against
+the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was
+grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along
+through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated
+wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to
+the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to
+be unnerved.</p>
+
+<p>"Keeping a lookout ahead?" Wenna called.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir! No ghosts on the weather quarter! Ship drawing twenty
+fathoms and the mate fast asleep. Oh, Wenna, my hat!"</p>
+
+<p>It had been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young
+trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being
+released from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes and
+briers.</p>
+
+<p>"Well I'm&mdash;No, I'm not!" said Mabyn as she picked out the hat from among
+the thorns and straightened the twisted feather. Then she set out again,
+impatient over these delays, and yet determined not to let her courage
+sink.</p>
+
+<p>"Land ahead yet?" called out Wenna.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir, and the Lizard on our lee. Wind south-south-west and the
+cargo shifting a point to the east. Hurrah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn, they'll hear you a mile off."</p>
+
+<p>It was certainly Mabyn's intention that she should be heard at least a
+quarter of a mile off, for now they had got down to the open, and they
+could hear the stream some way ahead of them, which they would have to
+cross. At this point Mabyn paused for a second to let her sister
+overtake her: then they went on arm-in-arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Wenna," she said, "do you remember 'young Lochinvar'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you fall in love with him when you read about him? Now, there
+<i>was</i> somebody to fall in love with! Don't you remember when he came
+into Netherby Hall, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The bride-maidens whispered, ''Twere better by far<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar'?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then you know, Wenna&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So light to the saddle before her he sprung!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'She is won! we are gone&mdash;over bank, bush and scaur!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That <i>was</i> a lover now!"</p>
+
+<p>"I think he was a most impertinent young man," said Wenna.</p>
+
+<p>"I rather like a young man to be impertinent," said Mabyn boldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there won't be any difficulty about fitting you with a husband,"
+said Wenna with a light laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Here Mabyn once more went on ahead, picking her steps through the damp
+grass as she made her way down to the stream. Wenna was still in the
+highest of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"Walking the plank yet, boatswain?" she called out.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, sir," Mabyn called in return. "Ship wearing round a point to
+the west, and the waves running mountains high. Don't you hear 'em,
+captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look out for the breakers, boatswain."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir. All hands on deck to man the captain's gig! Belay away<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span>
+there! Avast! Mind, Wenna, here's the bridge."</p>
+
+<p>Crossing over that single plank in the dead of night was a sufficiently
+dangerous experiment, but both these young ladies had had plenty of
+experience in keeping their wits about them in more perilous places.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are you in such a hurry, Mabyn?" Wenna asked when they had crossed.</p>
+
+<p>Mabyn did not know what to answer: she was very much excited, and
+inclined to talk at random merely to cover her anxiety. She was now very
+late for the appointment, and who could tell what unfortunate
+misadventure Harry Trelyon might have met with?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Why don't you admire young Lochinvar?
+Wenna, you're like the Laodiceans."</p>
+
+<p>"Like the what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like the Laodiceans, that were neither cold nor hot. Why don't you
+admire young Lochinvar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because he was interfering with another man's property."</p>
+
+<p>"That man had no right to her," said Mabyn, talking rather wildly, and
+looking on ahead to the point at which the path through the meadows went
+up to the road. "He was a wretched animal, I know: I believe he was a
+sugar-broker, and had just come home from Jamaica."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," said Wenna&mdash;"I believe that young Lochinvar&mdash;" She stopped.
+"What's that?" she said. "What are those two lights up there?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're not ghosts: come along, Wenna," said Mabyn, hurriedly.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Let us go up to this road, where Harry Trelyon, tortured with anxiety
+and impatience, is waiting. He had slipped away from the house pretty
+nearly as soon as the gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room after
+dinner, and on some excuse or other had got the horses put to a light
+and yet roomy Stanhope phaeton. From the stable-yard he drove by a back
+way into the main road without passing in front of the Hall: then he
+quietly walked the horses down the steep hill and round the foot of the
+valley to the point at which Mabyn was to make her appearance.</p>
+
+<p>But he dared not stop there, for now and again some passer-by came along
+the road; and even in the darkness Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses would be
+recognized by any of the inhabitants of Eglosilyan, who would naturally
+wonder what Master Harry was waiting for. He walked them a few hundred
+yards one way, then a few hundred yards the other; and ever, as it
+seemed to him, the danger was growing greater of some one from the inn
+or from the Hall suddenly appearing and spoiling the whole plan.</p>
+
+<p>Half-past ten arrived, and nothing could be heard of the girls. Then a
+horrible thought struck him that Roscorla might by this time have left
+the Hall, and would he not be coming down to this very road on his way
+up to Basset Cottage? This was no idle fear: it was almost a matter of
+certainty.</p>
+
+<p>The minutes rolled themselves out into ages: he kept looking at his
+watch every few seconds, yet he could hear nothing from the wood or the
+valley of Mabyn's approach. Then he got down into the road, walked a few
+yards this way and that, apparently to stamp the nervousness out of his
+system, patted the horses, and finally occupied himself in lighting the
+lamps. He was driven by the delay into a sort of desperation. Even if
+Wenna and Mabyn did appear now, and if he was successful in his prayer,
+there was every chance of their being interrupted by Roscorla, who had
+without doubt left the Hall some time before.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he stopped in his excited walking up and down. Was that a faint
+"Hurrah!" that he heard in the distance. He went down to the stile at
+the junction of the path and the road, and listened attentively. Yes, he
+could hear at least one voice, as yet a long way off, but now he had no
+more doubt. He walked quickly back to the carriage. "Ho, ho, my
+hearties!" he said, stroking the heads of the horses, "you'll have a
+Dick Turpin's ride to-night."</p>
+
+<p>All the nervousness had gone from him now: he was full of a strange
+sort<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span> of exultation&mdash;the joy of a man who feels that the crisis in his
+life has come, and that he has the power and courage to face it.</p>
+
+<p>He heard them come up through the meadow to the stile: it was Wenna who
+was talking&mdash;Mabyn was quite silent. They came along the road.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this carriage doing here?" Wenna said.</p>
+
+<p>They drew still nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"They are Mrs. Trelyon's horses, and there is no driver."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Harry Trelyon came quickly forward and stood in the road
+before her, while Mabyn as quickly went on and disappeared. The girl was
+startled, bewildered, but not frightened; for in a second he had taken
+her by the hand, and then she heard him say to her, in an anxious, low,
+imploring voice, "Wenna, my darling, don't be alarmed. See here: I have
+got everything ready to take you away; and Mabyn is coming with us; and
+you know I love you so that I can't bear the notion of your falling into
+that man's hands. Now, Wenna, don't think about it. Come with me. We
+shall be married in London: Mabyn is coming with you."</p>
+
+<p>For one brief second or two she seemed stunned and bewildered: then,
+looking at the carriage, and the earnest suppliant before her, the whole
+truth appeared to flash in upon her. She looked wildly round. "Mabyn&mdash;"
+she was about to say, when he guessed the meaning of her rapid look:</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn is here. She is quite close by&mdash;she is coming with us. My
+darling, won't you let me save you? This indeed is our last chance,
+Wenna."</p>
+
+<p>She was trembling so that he thought she would fall; and he would have
+put his arms round her, but that she drew back, and in so doing she got
+into the light, and then he saw the immeasurable pity and sadness of her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my love," she said with the tears running down her face, "I love
+you! I will tell you that now, when we speak for the last time. See, I
+will kiss you; and then you will go away."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not go away&mdash;not without you&mdash;this night. Wenna, dearest, you
+have let your heart speak at last: now let it tell you what to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, must I go? Must I go?" she said; and then she looked wildly round
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Mabyn!" called out Trelyon, half mad with joy and triumph&mdash;"Mabyn, come
+along! Look sharp! jump in! This way, my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>And he took the trembling girl and half lifted her into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my love, what am I doing for you this night?" she said to him with
+her eyes swimming in tears.</p>
+
+<p>But what was the matter with Mabyn? She was just putting her foot on the
+iron step when a rapidly approaching figure caused her to utter a cry of
+alarm, and she stumbled back into the road again. The very accident that
+Trelyon had been anticipating had occurred: here was Mr. Roscorla,
+bewildered at first, and then blind with rage when he saw what was
+happening before his eyes. In his desperation and anger he was about to
+lay hold of Mabyn by the arm when he was sent staggering backward half a
+dozen yards.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't interfere with me now, or by God I will kill you!" Trelyon said
+between his teeth, and then he hurried Mabyn into the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>What was the sound then that the still woods heard under the throbbing
+stars through the darkness that lay over the land? Only the sound of
+horses' feet, monotonous and regular, and not a word of joy or sorrow
+uttered by any one of the party thus hurrying on through the night.</p>
+
+<h4>[TO BE CONTINUED.]</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CAMP-FIRE_LYRICS" id="CAMP-FIRE_LYRICS"></a>CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.&mdash;CAMP&mdash;IN THREE LIGHTS.</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Against the darkness sharply lined<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Our still white tents gleamed overhead,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dancing cones of shadow cast<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When sudden flashed the camp-fire red,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While half a century's silent growth<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Went up in cheery flame and smoke.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Pile on the logs! A flickering spire<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And as we track its leaping sparks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Behold in heaven the North-light lives!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An arch of deep supremest blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A band above of silver shade,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like the frost-work's crystal spears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thousand lances grow and fade,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or shiver, touched with palest tints<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of pink and blue, and changing die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or toss in one triumphant blaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their golden banners up the sky,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With faint, swift, silken murmurings,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A noise as of an angel's flight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard like the whispers of a dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Across the cool clear northern night.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The wild auroral ghost-lights die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stealing up the distant wood<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The moon's white spectre floats on high,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And lingering sets in awful light<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A blackened pine tree's ghastly cross,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then swiftly pays in silver white<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The faded fire, the aurora's loss.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6"><span class="smcap">Edward Kearsley.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="OVERWORKED_WOMEN" id="OVERWORKED_WOMEN"></a>OVERWORKED WOMEN.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain
+coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that
+respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they
+will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed
+them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work
+that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or
+die. They have hands which are large and horny: they have faces somewhat
+like those of men, but coarse, hideous and furrowed with the lines of
+exposure. They speak, they have a language, but their words are few and
+relate only to the heavy drudgery which is before them. These humble and
+debased animals are women.</p>
+
+<p>I remember, while traveling some years ago through the State of
+Pennsylvania with Mr. Foster, who was then the Vice-President of the
+United States, we saw from the window of the railway-carriage in which
+we were sitting a woman barelegged and at work in the fields. She was
+digging potatoes on some mountain-patch.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God," said Mr. Foster, "that I never saw such a sight in my own
+country before!"</p>
+
+<p>According to the census of 1870 there were in the United States, out of
+a total population of 38,500,000, less than 400,000 females occupied in
+the labor of agriculture, either as field-hands or indoor workers. Of
+this number, 373,332 were hired laborers, and 22,681 the cultivators of
+their own lands. All of the former, and two-thirds of the latter, were
+freed-women in the late Slave States, and only 7994 females were
+employed in agriculture, either as laborers or proprietors, in or out of
+doors, in the Free States.</p>
+
+<p>The States in which these few farm-women of the North were chiefly found
+were Wisconsin, which claimed 1387; Pennsylvania, 1279; and Illinois,
+1034. In Pennsylvania the farm-women belonged almost exclusively to the
+population known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch," descendants of the
+Hessians and other Germans who settled in the State at the close of the
+Revolutionary War; in Illinois and Wisconsin they were recent immigrants
+from Europe, chiefly Germans, and for the most part, it is presumed,
+widows, who preferred to till the land left by their husbands rather
+than part with it.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of these trifling numbers, which, including even the
+freed-women, amount to but seven per cent. of the whole number of males
+employed in agriculture, it may be said, with entire correctness, that
+in the United States woman has been raised above the necessity of
+field-labor.</p>
+
+<p>This is so far from being the case in Europe that in some countries all
+the women, except the few belonging to the aristocratic and bourgeois
+classes, are employed in the fields. One-third of the entire rural
+laboring population of Prussia and one-half of that of Russia are
+females. The following figures are from official sources:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>COUNTRY.</td><td align='left'>Total population.</td><td align='left'>Total occupied in agriculture.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>United States, 1870</td><td align='left'>38,558,371</td><td align='left'>5,922,471</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Prussia, 1867</td><td align='left'>19,607,710</td><td align='left'>3,286,954</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Europ. Russia, exclud.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;&nbsp;Baltic Provs., 1863</td><td align='left'>59,097,859</td><td align='left'>26,362,435</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Of whom Males.</td><td align='left'>Females.</td><td align='left'>Percentage of female to male agriculturists.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> 5,525,503</td><td align='left'>396,968</td><td align='left'>7</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'> 2,232,741</td><td align='left'>1,054,213</td><td align='left'>47</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>13,444,842</td><td align='left'>12,917,593</td><td align='left'>98</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>To every 100 men employed in field-work, there are in Russia 98 women,
+in Prussia 47, and in the United States but 7; and of the latter, nearly
+all are freed-women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span> of the African race. I have heard men sneer at this
+statement, which I regard as matter for boasting&mdash;men who regretted it
+was true: "You Americans make too much of your women. You educate them
+above their rank in life, dress them like dolls and keep them for show.
+They are idle, and become enfeebled and vicious, and their progeny, if
+indeed they have any, partake of the same characteristics."</p>
+
+<p>It is not alone foreigners who hold this language. There is among our
+own countrymen a growing class of admirers of what they are pleased to
+term the robust female, and "robust" with this class means hard-worked.</p>
+
+<p>We have already seen the debased condition to which field-work,
+apparently, has reduced the peasant-women of continental Europe: we have
+seen that they resemble animals as much as they do women, so heavy and
+unremitting is the toil with which they are burdened.</p>
+
+<p>"This only makes them hardy," cries the advocate of the robust school,
+who believes that hard work is good for everybody, even for women, yet
+carefully avoids it himself&mdash;avoids even hard thinking, which might
+teach him better doctrine. "It is thus that women become the mothers of
+a race of heroes."</p>
+
+<p>Heroes! Moon-calves, rather; but we shall see.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harris-Gastud in his late report to the British Foreign Office on
+Prussia, after mentioning the north-eastern provinces of that country,
+and the immorality, drunkenness and thieving propensities of its
+peasantry, thus continues (p. 361): "The system of contract laborers,
+under obligation to bring one or two other laborers into the field, is
+in some measure responsible for the immorality, inasmuch as the one or
+two, so to speak, gang-laborers, are usually girls, who live in the same
+room as the family. Children are not carefully tended and reared. The
+wives are obliged to work daily throughout summer and autumn, and on
+many properties in winter also. They go very early to work, are free
+half an hour before midday to prepare the dinner and do other household
+work, and return to work till sunset. The children come badly off.
+Often there is no older child to take charge of the little ones, who are
+consequently left to themselves in the house. A direct result is the
+great mortality of children. From 1858 to 1861 there died in the
+province of Prussia, out of a total population of 2,190,072, an annual
+average of 21,290 children under one year, and of 40,845 children under
+ten years, being 0.97 and 1.86 per cent. of the population; whereas in
+the Rhine province, with a population of 2,112,959, the percentages were
+0.57 and 1.12 respectively."</p>
+
+<p>In 1870 in the United States, with a total population in town and
+country of 38,558,371, the number of deaths of children under one year
+was 110,445, and under ten years 229,542, being 0.29 and 0.59
+respectively. In other words, where one child dies in the United States,
+<i>two</i> die in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and <i>more than three</i> in
+one of the north-eastern provinces.</p>
+
+<p>I was in Berlin in the autumn of 1872, when there was a meeting there of
+the emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria. Every preparation had been
+made for this august convocation, among others that of banishing from
+the streets all unpleasant sights. Yet on that occasion, when Unter den
+Linden was crowded with carriages and horsemen and well-dressed people,
+when Russia and Austria were dashing about in open barouches, with
+outriders before and guardsmen behind, and the eye encountered on all
+sides the bravery of military uniforms and arms and waving pennants, I
+saw in a side-street a woman drawing a hand-cart laden with some heavy
+substance that was piled up to the height of four or five feet above the
+rails of the cart. Beside this poor slave, who withal carried an infant
+upon her back which could not have been more than a few weeks old,
+struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor wretch! I
+thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as
+a <i>widow</i>, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not
+over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span> hag I never saw the
+picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some
+pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to
+chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there he was, walking leisurely
+<i>behind</i> the cart, with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe and
+gazing at the sights along the route.</p>
+
+<p>If we would know the origin of this brutality to women wherever it is
+practiced, we must look for it in the history of slavery, for there we
+shall always find it. It was not the peasant-man who first brutalized
+his wife and daughter, but the lord. If the ancient rights of the
+peasantry had not been molested, and an oppressive system of feudal
+exactions forced upon men who once were free and owners of the soil they
+tilled, the slavery of women could hardly have occurred. It is now
+nearly seventy years since the first decree that eventually resulted in
+the abolition of serfdom in Prussia was promulgated, and time is rapidly
+effacing many of the social evils which that institution entailed. But
+this is not the case with Russia, where emancipation was only declared
+ten years ago, and is not completed even yet. The causes that
+superinduce the degradation and debasement of women can therefore still
+be seen at work in that country, and are thus depicted by an
+eye-witness. He is speaking of the condition of the peasantry of Russia
+subsequent to the decree of emancipation, and so far as my own
+observation in that country goes, I can corroborate all that he says:
+"Their food begins to get scantier and scantier, and toward spring they
+get more and more famished. The officer of government (who since the act
+of emancipation replaces the officer of the lord of the manor) comes and
+energetically demands the payment of arrears. Driven to desperation, the
+peasant acknowledges to the mayor of the village the cause of his want
+of punctuality&mdash;viz., the demands made upon him by his family, and
+particularly by his wife. 'Give her a good thrashing,' is the advice of
+the mayor. The mujik goes home, ties his wife by her hair to the tail of
+a cart, and flogs her unmercifully with a whip. At a convenient
+opportunity he will give his mother a knock or two on the head with a
+log of wood. If any member of the family should die from privation, his
+death is attributed to fate." Passing to the description of a village
+community of higher civilization, the author continues: "The chief
+features of such a village are fewer thrashings, a more perceptible
+tendency to personal adornment on the part of the women, a larger number
+of bachelors, and the existence even of old maids&mdash;<i>i. e.</i>, in the sense
+only of unmarried women. In such villages <i>f&ecirc;tes</i> are held each Sunday,
+and all the village games, accompanied by much kissing, terminate in the
+coarsest sensuality. Immorality prevails, followed by infanticide."
+(<i>Condition of the Laboring Classes of Russia</i>, by N. Flerofski, 1869.)</p>
+
+<p>For the sake of obtaining an additional laborer in the family it was
+customary for the Russian serf to marry his son of tender years to a
+woman of riper age, particularly in households where the father had
+become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female
+laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this
+circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a
+social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored
+the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood
+in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless
+wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial
+amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce itself;
+for the son, grown to a ripe age and bound to a wife now old and
+wrinkled, would revenge himself by treating his own son in the manner in
+which he had been treated himself.</p>
+
+<p>Says Flerofski: "Women who assist in floating barges down the rivers
+from the province of Vologda (in North-eastern Russia, three hundred to
+five hundred miles above Nijni-Novgorod) to Nijni-Novgorod receive two
+and a half roubles (about $2) for the journey. Both men and women work
+until they become exhausted, and return back to their villages<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span> on foot.
+Their master, the contractor, who is bound to support them until they
+return, hastens as much as possible their homeward tramp, in order to
+save expense, compelling them to walk eighty versts (fifty-five miles) a
+day along village roads and byways. They will sometimes have to wade for
+twenty miles through water and mud up to their knees.... The peasant is
+ready to carry any burden, to suffer anything, to impose any privations
+on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to
+obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will
+not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the
+rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex,
+the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage.
+Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days
+and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The
+laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his
+daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or
+involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care
+is to place her where she can earn some money."</p>
+
+<p>In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be
+found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and
+children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and
+pay the taxes. They fill the offices of <i>starosta</i> (policeman) and
+tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On
+the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence
+that branch of the service has taken the name of <i>sarafannaya</i> or
+"petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages
+of Amazons&mdash;the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked
+women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.</p>
+
+<p>The terrible burdens which the government and social system of Russia
+heap upon the peasant-man can best be realized from a description of its
+effects upon the unhappy creature whom this man, himself a slave in all
+but name, may treat&mdash;nay, almost must treat&mdash;as a slave. To pay the
+quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to
+mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre&mdash;a price which falls to forty
+cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn
+an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his
+body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders
+at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his
+poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that
+is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that
+will save him from starvation. Starvation! Why? Because should he fail
+to pay, the lord has the power, and will not fail, to seize every piece
+of property which the peasant has in the world&mdash;his cow, his bed, his
+clothing, even the uncut corn upon his little field, the very bread from
+off his table. Where is that lord? Has he no heart, no mercy? Alas! he
+is far away, in Vienna, in Rome, in Paris. He is at the Carnival, the
+opera, the club-house. He has presented a diamond necklace to Schneider,
+he has bought a new race-horse, he has lost fifty thousand francs at
+<i>rouge et noir</i>. Meanwhile, his agent and the law do his cruel bidding
+far away at home upon the bleak plains of Russia, and the peasant works
+under them as Damocles sat under the sword.</p>
+
+<p>In such peril and fear shall the woman stand idle? Idle she never is,
+even from inclination, her household duties, the care of the young, the
+ministration to the sick and feeble, the preparation of the daily meal,
+being sufficient to keep her fully employed. But shall she stop at these
+when failure on the man's part may to-morrow sweep away not only the few
+articles of clothing and the one or two of furniture they possess, but
+also the food which is to last them during the coming year? The thought
+is death itself. She must go to the fields. No matter how young her
+child, nor how near to death her aged mother or father; no matter how
+rigorous the climate or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span> deficient her clothing: she must go to the
+fields. They are miles away, perhaps&mdash;for in Russia, serfdom, the
+communal system and other circumstances have forced the peasantry to
+live in villages&mdash;but go she must, with the child on her back or left
+ailing and uncared-for in the hut, with the sick or dying behind her and
+misery all around. Arrived at the scene of her unnatural labors, she
+applies herself to them with an energy which despair alone could
+engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes
+weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood;
+she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is
+ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights.
+Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in
+harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times,
+but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it
+scarcely more than doubles the perilous investment. Then this poor
+creature casts herself upon the earth and weeps, for are not both parent
+and child dead from exposure, from insufficient food, from the lack of
+that attention which she alone could have conferred? The links that
+bound her poor, rugged, but still woman's heart to both the sad past and
+the hopeful future are severed, and she is almost alone in the world.
+But her husband returns, and his joyful looks reanimate her. He has
+succeeded. The tax is paid, and they are free for another year. But at
+what a cost!</p>
+
+<p>This sketch is far from being exaggerated. Too often does it happen that
+despite these sacrifices the tax is not paid. Says Flerofski: "Along
+that road walks a peasant's family in sorrowful procession, shedding
+bitter tears. Is it a funeral? No, it is only the last calf being led
+for sale with the aid of the local authorities. It is necessary to levy
+rents with strictness, for are not the proprietors already ruined?" (He
+means, ironically, by the emancipation of the serfs.) "And, in fact,
+were it not for the deep impression thus made on the peasant, did he not
+know that his last food-giving beast would be taken from him, his last
+pot of milk carried out of his hut, although wanted for his newborn
+child, which would perish without it, the landed proprietors could not
+collect the tenth part of their rents."</p>
+
+<p>In 1856 the Rev. T. Giliarofski, gold-medalist and corresponding member
+of the Russian Geographical Society, published an inquiry into the
+frequency and causes of infant mortality in the province of Novgorod,
+the results of which are true to this day concerning the greater part of
+Central, Eastern and Northern Russia. Let those who believe that it is
+wise and merciful to subject women to hard work read the ghastly story.
+In the first place, the reverend author mentions the notorious fact that
+the statistics of illegitimate births in Russia, in which they are
+stated to be but one-thirtieth of all the births, are kept down by the
+great prevalence of certain practices, to which it is not necessary to
+make further allusion here than to say that they put to shame all the
+implications contained in Dr. Storer's erroneous pamphlet as to the
+habits of Massachusetts women. Next, the Russian priest states that the
+number of births is nearly the same in each month of the year, and that
+out of 10,000 children born, 5537 die during the month of their birth.
+Three out of four registered births in the months of July and August are
+deaths before the termination of those months severally. By the twelfth
+month death summons three-fourths, five-sevenths, or even six-sevenths,
+of the infants born in some districts of Novgorod.</p>
+
+<p>Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is
+the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible
+destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of
+harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their
+newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by
+old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour
+rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men,
+having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are
+only exceptionally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span> capable of rearing their children by the natural
+process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four
+hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger
+feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases
+poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the
+infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them
+to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the
+child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even
+this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce
+internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a
+like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to
+what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical
+capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant
+mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to
+the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or
+outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial
+unattended&mdash;perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which
+will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct
+of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her
+unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard
+field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by
+the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these
+women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time,
+even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse?
+None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals.
+Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source
+arise new perils for their miserable offspring. On the third day after
+birth it is considered necessary to baptize the child by complete
+immersion in water, from which it is held by the Russian Church to be a
+sin to remove the chill. A large proportion of the deaths of infants in
+the colder months of the year are attributed by native writers to this
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>Mothers who have been able to suckle their own children generally wean
+them at the expiration of twelve months, and popular custom, which takes
+rank as a superstition, has appointed two days in the year for that
+purpose&mdash;one in July, the other in January. Both of these periods are
+unfavorable to the child: in July the cattle are mostly afflicted with
+disorders, and their milk is hurtful; in January they give but little
+milk. Various devices, more or less prejudicial to health, are resorted
+to by the mother to effect a purpose to which the grossest ignorance and
+superstition alone impel her. One of the mildest of these is separation
+from her child for a week or longer: frequently she returns to find it a
+corpse.</p>
+
+<p>And now let us see what sort of men are born of these overworked women.
+According to the statistical tables of Brun and Zernof, the number of
+persons of both sexes alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty was in
+Russia only 265 in 1000; in the United States in 1870 the number was
+558. In Great Britain there are 548 adults to every 1000 population, and
+in Belgium 518; so that Russia, which, from the subjection of the weaker
+sex and their exposure to hardship, should, according to some persons,
+produce the greatest number of heroes, in fact produces but half as many
+adults, heroes or otherwise, as the other countries named, where women
+do but little field-labor.</p>
+
+<p>Even among those who from their ages are to be classed in Russia as
+productive, great allowance must be made for physical incapacity. A
+large number of the men are afflicted with deformity or disease: many of
+them can scarcely drag themselves along. Out of 174,000 men brought up
+from the villages to recruiting centres to supply the annual contingent
+(84,000 men) of 1868, more than one-fourth (44,000) were rejected for
+disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. In
+Prussia, the other principal European country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span> where women are compelled
+to field-work, out of every 1000 men liable to military service in 1864,
+no less than 467 were rejected for disease and other physical defects,
+not inclusive of short stature. These are the heroes whom female slavery
+brings forth!</p>
+
+<p>Woman is an invalid, says Michelet, therefore she must not work. Woman
+is not an invalid, therefore she is willing to work, and does work. But
+that work has its proper sphere at the domestic hearth; and so long as
+fortune does not lift the family above the cares of daily want, or
+genius elevate the individual to the rank of teacher or leader, there
+should it be suffered to remain.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Alexander Delmar.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="SPRING_JOY" id="SPRING_JOY"></a>SPRING JOY</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The wet red glebe shines in the April light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The gray hills deepen into green again;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rainbow hangs in heaven; thin vapors white<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Drift o'er the blue, and freckle hill and plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With many moving shades; the air is strong<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With earth's rich exhalations after rain.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like a new note breaks forth the ancient song<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of spring-tide birds, with fresh hope, fresh delight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Low o'er the fields the marsh-hawk sails along;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Aloft small flocks of pigeons wing their flight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Alive with sound and movement is the air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The short young grass with sunlight rain is bright;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The cherry trees their snow-white garlands wear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The garden pranks itself with leaf and flower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick with live seeds the patient earth lies bare.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oh joy! to see in this expectant hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The spirit of life, as on creation's day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Striving toward perfect form! No fear hath power,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">No sense of failure past hath strength to sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The immortal hope which swells within the breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That this new earth matures not toward decay,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">But toward a beauty hitherto unguessed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A harvest never dreamed. These mild bright skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This lovely uncompleted world, suggest<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A powerful joy, a thrill of high surprise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which no fruition ever may inspire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Albeit each bud should flower, each seed should rise.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24"><span class="smcap">Emma Lazarus.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="HOW_LADY_LOUISA_MOOR_AMUSED_HERSELF" id="HOW_LADY_LOUISA_MOOR_AMUSED_HERSELF"></a>HOW LADY LOUISA MOOR AMUSED HERSELF.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>The earl of Birndale was the magnate of the district. He was a tall,
+strong, coarse-looking man: had he chanced to have been born in the
+position of a coal-heaver, no one would have been surprised if he had
+been hauled up before a magistrate for beating his wife or for squaring
+his fists at any time and at any person as the humor seized him; or if
+he had been a wharf-porter, he would have heaved a load on his shoulders
+and carried it in a way to make puny specimens of the race sick with
+envy. But he was born the son of an earl, and the coal-heaver
+propensities had been trained and trimmed in patrician fashion. An earl
+on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the
+earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the
+least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with
+him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His
+physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had
+brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of
+forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization
+goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. And
+he never walked about his property without a hammer and nails, so that
+if he came to any fence broken or breaking down, he could mend it, as
+was very right and proper; but when people hear of an earl, they connect
+the title with something lofty in the way of employment, and it is
+certain that the village joiner would have mended the fences better than
+the earl. But no doubt it was an innocent amusement, and <i>noblesse</i> did
+not <i>oblige</i> the earls of Birndale: every man of them had always done
+what was right in his own eyes. Why, the brother whom this earl had
+succeeded passed a good deal of his time knitting, but he was the only
+one of his race that had taken to that peaceful, aged-woman-looking
+employment: the rest had not knitted anything except their brows, and
+all of them had been pretty good at that.</p>
+
+<p>There had been statesmen of the race, and there had been blackguards,
+and there had been some of them who combined both characters in their
+own persons. This earl had been in Parliament, for a short time even in
+the cabinet, and for several years he had been governor in one of the
+colonies; and in each of these positions he had made a respectable
+figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his
+son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."
+If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong
+will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when
+accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the
+Tories&mdash;not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one
+line of politics&mdash;and he held that most men need to be governed, and
+that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was
+an illustrious example. But since his return from abroad he had not
+taken, or desired to take, a lead in political matters: he preferred
+living quietly on his estates, and for the greater part of the year at
+Birns Castle, as the seat of the Birndale family was called, the village
+in its neighborhood being known as "The Birns."</p>
+
+<p>Birns Castle was an ambitious building, and really had accomplished its
+design of looking "lordly," as the guidebooks say. When you entered it
+by the main entrance, you stepped into a large hall lighted from the
+roof, and looking up to such a height was very grand: all round this
+hall there ran a gallery, and when high carnival was held at the castle,
+in this gallery servants, retainers and other privileged persons were
+stationed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span> to see the nobility and gentry dancing below; and it was all
+"mighty fine," as Pepys would have said. It was even more than mighty
+fine on the occasion of the marriage of Lady Mary, the earl's eldest
+daughter, to an English duke, the duke of Dover. From her father down to
+the poorest and farthest-off relations of the Birndale family this
+marriage had made the nerves of every one tingle with delight. But,
+alas! grand as the marriage was, it had not turned out a happy one:
+there had been no violent outbreak nor any public scandal, but the duke
+and duchess saw as little of each other as possible: they both visited
+now and then at Birns Castle, but never together. The duke appeared to
+enjoy himself, and so, for that matter, did the duchess, but each went
+his and her way. Besides the duchess of Dover, the earl had two
+daughters, Ladies Helen and Louisa: he had no son, and his wife had been
+dead some years.</p>
+
+<p>When there happened to be no company at the castle the young ladies felt
+it decidedly dull. It was true they had no end of china, old and new,
+foreign and of home manufacture; they had a gallery of paintings
+worth&mdash;it is better not to say how much&mdash;but the work of old masters and
+new, besides ancestors looking at them from every wall; they had
+drawing-rooms swarming with every unnecessary of life; they had the
+spacious and lofty hall with armor and swords and spears and shields,
+"all useful," as an auctioneer would say&mdash;"all useful, gentlemen, for
+decorative purposes"&mdash;with trophies of the chase in its milder home
+forms and as carried on in African or Bengal jungles; they had a library
+filled from floor to ceiling with books containing, it is to be
+presumed, the life-blood of master spirits, but they did not often tap
+the vessels. The earl himself valued his library, but he was not a
+reading man either. In short, they were in the unhappy position of
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>At one end of the Birns village stood a house, small, not comparatively,
+but positively&mdash;a house out of which you could emerge and be
+astonished&mdash;if you were young or had anything of the genius which is
+always young&mdash;at Birns Castle, which is greatly to be preferred to
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at, as has
+been remarked by a high authority in connection with another castle.
+There was no dullness in this house, although only four people lived in
+it, but they were all busy always. It was surrounded by a wall which
+enclosed not only the house, but a garden, a miniature courtyard and a
+stable: the premises were small, but complete and compact, and the
+owners were very well pleased with them. On the gate leading to the
+house was a brass plate with the name "Dr. Brunton" on it. He was the
+doctor of the place, and had only recently settled in it: he was young
+and enthusiastic. If a man wants to spend and to be spent in doing good,
+he has every opportunity as a country doctor, but if he wants to make
+money, he has no opportunity at all. However, people who are young and
+enthusiastic don't think much about money, and Dr. Brunton did not, nor
+did his sister, who lived with him and attended to affairs in-doors.
+They had one female servant and a man for the stable and garden.</p>
+
+<p>They were very happy, this brother and sister&mdash;happy to be together, for
+they had no very near relations, and they suited each other well; and
+happy because they had not been accustomed to great things, and were not
+ambitious. Of matrimony neither of them had ever thought, at least on
+their own account, or if they had it was as a possible thing in the far
+distance. Happy, busy, satisfied people don't readily think of change,
+and certainly they don't seek for it; but it may come to them from very
+unexpected quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Brunton had a young lady friend who visited her now and then, but
+it never occurred to her as at all likely that this friend of hers and
+her brother would draw together. If the idea had struck her, it is
+difficult to say whether she would have been pleased or displeased&mdash;a
+little of both, perhaps: she would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span> have known that she ought to be
+pleased, but she would not have enjoyed being supplanted in her
+brother's affections, as she could not have helped feeling she would be.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Robertson herself, the young lady in question, was not little and
+dark, with a talent for keeping every one right and sacrificing herself
+on all hands; neither was she tall and fair and handsome, with manners
+petulant and somewhat haughty; but she had one quality which is rather
+coming into fashion among heroines&mdash;namely, pliable affections.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How happy could she be with either, were t' other dear charmer away!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When visiting at The Birns she could be exceedingly happy with Dr.
+Brunton: she had a great admiration for him, and having heard him spoken
+of as a rising man, and a series of clever papers which he had
+contributed to a medical journal having got unqualified praise, she was
+disposed to appreciate him, being one of the many people who can always
+appreciate what has been appreciated. Very likely, Dr. Brunton might
+have secured her and her fortune&mdash;which was not a trifle, and would have
+been a large addition to his income&mdash;if he had tried to do so, but he
+did not try: her attractions, personal and otherwise, did not strike him
+at all. It might have been well if they had: at least it is
+possible&mdash;one can't tell. She made a good wife in an ordinary way to the
+man who got her, and a good wife in an ordinary way is a blessing. A
+man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good
+dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the
+comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with
+the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too
+high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt
+to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day
+comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. Perhaps this
+is the reason that good wives in an ordinary way are so thickly sown,
+for which let us be truly thankful. But, though Miss Robertson had not
+by any means embarked the whole of her affections in one venture, she
+would not have objected to making some impression on her host, and if
+she had, it is possible, as has been said, that it might have been well
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>As the doctor went in at his gate one day he found a gypsy-looking woman
+at the front door selling, or endeavoring to sell, baskets to Miss
+Robertson; but that young lady had the good sense never to buy what she
+did not need, and also she had an idea of the value of household
+articles (both qualifications of the good wife in an ordinary way), and
+knew that the woman was asking three prices for her goods: at least, in
+the end she was ready and even anxious to take a third of what she had
+first named as the price of her wares. And as Dr. Brunton came on the
+scene she was saying, "Or if ye hae ony auld coat o' the maister's, I'll
+gie ye the choice o' my baskets for 't."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? What are you about?" said the doctor as he came toward
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"I was just sayin' to yer wife, sir, that if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My wife!" said Dr. Brunton, laughing: "I have no wife, and don't want
+one."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay but, sir," said the woman, taking the solemn oracular tone of a
+sibyl, being in the habit of combining fortune-telling with
+basket-selling if she thought she saw an opportunity, "it'll no be as ye
+like: it'll be as it's ordained. A bonnie lassie'll maybe ask ye yet,
+an' ye'll no say na; an' I could tell ye mair about it if ye want to
+hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, move off," said the doctor, tossing a coin to her, "and try some
+better trade."</p>
+
+<p>"If I had been a beauty," said Miss Robertson, "I should have thought
+the woman personal, and have taken offence."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said he, looking at her as if to form an opinion, "you're well
+enough."</p>
+
+<p>Now in her heart Miss Robertson thought she looked considerably better
+than well enough, but Dr. Brunton was honest and said just what he
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Well enough for what?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well enough in the way of looks, I mean."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But not so intensely beautiful as to be justified in making a
+matrimonial offer?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can exercise your discretion as to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Indiscretion perhaps?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Either," said he.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>"I think, Mary," Miss Robertson said to her friend, "you don't need to
+be afraid of your brother marrying in a hurry."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid?" said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Now, confess you wouldn't like it. You would not like to be
+shunted, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well I should not, but I should like to see him happy, and if he got a
+good wife&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, but what wife would you think good enough for him? There's the
+rub."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he'll be wisely guided," Mary said.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I; but, as I said, I don't think you need be afraid: he won't be
+in a hurry&mdash;he does not even care for a flirtation."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no: my brother is always in earnest whatever he does&mdash;in thorough
+earnest. I don't think he could even imagine such a thing as a
+flirtation."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is very much stupider than I take him to be if he couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"He is not stupid: it is the want of stupidity or silliness that makes
+trifling of that kind impossible to him," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity," her friend said. "What's the use of taking things so
+seriously? I think a little flirtation a nice amusement, very much
+suited to young people."</p>
+
+<p>"To some young people: I should not like to try it. I should be sure to
+burn my fingers."</p>
+
+<p>"Singe your heart, you mean; but it goes off in a little, I suppose, for
+I can't speak from experience."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I trust not."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said Miss Robertson, "that I have a great ambition for
+your brother? I think it a thousand pities that he should settle here. I
+am far more ambitious for him than you are, or than I believe he is for
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed the best opening that offered at the time," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"A far inferior man would suit this place just as well. He'll work
+himself to death, and nobody be the wiser or the better, whereas if he
+had been in town he would have come to the surface, and might have been
+driving his carriage shortly. That little thick-set, red-haired,
+bulldog-looking man that was here the other night&mdash;Dr. What's-his-name,
+your nearest medical neighbor?&mdash;that's the kind of man for a country
+doctor. He has the bodily strength and the rough-and-ready manners for
+the place: he is not too bright or good for human nature's daily drugs.
+Were you present when he told about his attendance on Sir James Grieve,
+the great man of his district?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I did not hear him speak of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Sir James had a cold, and there was an ado made about it as if there
+had not been another man in the world. The doctor was nights in the
+house, and there were consultations and forms and ceremonies, and as
+many fykes, he said, and his time was uselessly taken up, and other
+patients neglected; and he could not charge at all in proportion. Even
+as it was, Sir James went over every item of his account singly, and had
+it explained. Imagine your brother going through all that if the earl of
+Birndale takes a cold!"</p>
+
+<p>"He would not go through it: he would give what attendance he thought
+necessary, and if his charge were called in question he would decline
+payment altogether: that's what he would do."</p>
+
+<p>"And how would it work, do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would work well: upright, honorable dealing always works well in the
+long run."</p>
+
+<p>"But in the short? Why, the displeasure of the earl would be enough to
+ruin him. Upright, honorable conduct is often its own reward. Now, our
+little red-haired friend can put his manners in a strait-jacket for a
+time and accommodate himself to the whims of the gentry; and he is not
+squeamish in money-matters, so that he gets money, and enough of it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"James is very contented here, and he likes better to live in the
+country than in the town: so do I, but I must say I could wish him to
+achieve reputation; it may be wrong, but I wish it;" and her eyes
+sparkled.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong!" said Miss Robertson: "it's perfectly right, and what he should
+do and will do; only, as I said, I think it a pity he settled here."</p>
+
+<p>"I like reputation," said Mary, "because it is the result of great
+ability well and thoroughly used: I hope mine is not a vulgar ambition."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh dear, no!" said Miss Robertson; "but a quack has often a far greater
+reputation than an honest man."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but people are always known sooner or later."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sooner or later," echoed Miss Robertson: "I hope your brother will
+be known sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said Mary, "we are so happy as we are that it is a shame
+to wish for anything better or different: I really don't know two
+happier people."</p>
+
+<p>"Just allow me to be a third: I am very happy too. The idea of calling
+this world a vale of tears!"</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," said Mary, "did you see the Ladies Moor ride past to-day?
+It is the first time I have seen them. I think I never saw such a face
+as the youngest has: they say her sister, the duchess of Dover, is a
+great beauty, but surely she can't be more lovely than Lady Louisa."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I met them when I was walking, and I was as much struck as you: I
+am sure they don't get their beauty from their father: he is a
+coarse-looking man."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know where they get it, but they have it, certainly," said
+Mary: "that girl will drive some people crazy yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think beauty has so much power?" asked Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, power! I know nothing like it: it is an intense pleasure to me to
+see a face like Lady Louisa's."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet beauty has not brought happiness to the duchess of Dover."</p>
+
+<p>"We need not moralize about it," said Mary. "She is unhappy, not because
+of her beauty, but in spite of it; besides, though she and her husband
+don't get on together, she may have other sources of happiness. It would
+give me great happiness to know that people got pleasure by merely
+looking at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Her Grace of Dover may have got accustomed to that kind of pleasure by
+this time. I hope her sister may have a happier lot: it must be horridly
+provoking to be a duchess and unhappy," said Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"'Provoking' is hardly the word for the situation, I think," said Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"To seem to have a thing and not to have it is very provoking," Miss
+Robertson said; "besides, other people may hope for some turn of affairs
+that will make things better, but what can she hope for? Why, she has
+everything this world can give."</p>
+
+<p>"Her case seems a very sad one&mdash;all glitter and no gold," Miss Brunton
+said.</p>
+
+
+<h3>IV.</h3>
+
+<p>Dr. Brunton had been attending an old woman who kept one of the gates of
+the castle-grounds and lived in the lodge. It was the least frequented
+of all the entrances to the castle, and the least important. The gate
+was rustic, and the lodge was rustic and thatched, and looked like a big
+beehive, standing as it did at the corner of a fir plantation, the trees
+coming up almost to its walls and overshadowing it entirely. It seemed
+an eerie, solitary place for one lone woman to inhabit, but she had been
+there for many years, and, whatever she had or wanted, time had come and
+time had gone. It was a place where you might have thought Death would
+have called early any day if he was passing, in case he might forget it
+altogether; but he had not, and not only did he not forget it, but he
+had come to this house months ago, and hovered about since as if he had
+nothing to do elsewhere, or as if he could not have despatched his
+business in a moment. At this very time he was seizing some of the great
+ones of the earth with little ceremony, for rank and wealth can't keep
+him waiting in an anteroom till they are ready to receive him: if they
+could, he might get leave to wait<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span> long enough. How was it worth his
+while to look in on this poor woman every night and show her his face as
+king of terrors, and yet hang back from enforcing his rights?</p>
+
+<p>Another elderly woman, lonely like herself, had been got to wait on her.
+Women of this kind are not scarce: as life closes in on them they drift
+away into little remote houses in the country, or into single rooms up
+three or four stairs in towns, like the leaves of autumn that have had
+their spring and summer, and are only waiting for the kindly mother
+earth to absorb them again. It looks but a dreary last chapter in their
+lives, yet it may not be so. In one such instance, at least, which had
+been utterly obscure and unknown but that it stood within the charmed
+circle of genius, it was not so&mdash;that of Christophine, the eldest sister
+of Schiller, who, after a self-denying life, died the last survivor of
+her family in her ninety-first year, having lived in the loneliness of
+widowhood for thirty years on the slenderest of means, yet, we are told,
+"in a noble, humbly admirable, and even happy and contented manner;" and
+there are many such women. But Bell Thomson, the keeper of this outlying
+lodge of the earl's, had no chance of the bull's eye from the lantern of
+genius throwing her into a strong permanent light, nor had the friend
+who had come to be with her. Happily, the pathetic in their
+circumstances did not strike themselves as it might strike others, and
+no doubt they had their own interests and enjoyments. At this time they
+looked forward to the doctor's daily visit, not merely in the
+expectation of gathering hope and comfort from his words, but because
+they liked the man himself: he was kind and courteous even to poor old
+women, and it was a break in the continuous monotony of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It chanced on one occasion that the doctor did not get the length of the
+lodge till toward the gloaming, having been occupied the whole day: he
+was tired, and rather reluctant to hear the minute history of Bell's
+sensations for the last twenty-four hours, but he did drive up to the
+lodge, and, leaving his gig at the gate, walked in. "How is this?" he
+said to Bell: "are you alone? what's become of your nurse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she had to gang hame for an hour or twa, but I'm no my lane: a
+lassie offered to bide wi' me till Ann cam back."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said the doctor, and he talked for a little. "Now," he
+said, "you're better to-day than you were yesterday, just admit that."</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, I'm nae waur, but, doctor, ye aye see me at my best, come when ye
+like. Whether it's you comin' in that sets me up a wee I dinna ken, but
+I'm aye lighter when ye're here than ony other time."</p>
+
+<p>"I must try and act the other way," he said: "it won't do for me to
+rival my own medicine."</p>
+
+<p>He turned round and saw standing with her back to him, and looking out
+at the little window, a girl, apparently the daughter of one of the
+neighboring hinds, as farm-servants who live in the cottages on a farm
+are called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short
+enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that
+were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton
+short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her
+neck. This was her dress&mdash;the dress common to female farm-servants,
+which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all
+the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a thing
+of the past now, the more's the pity! Her hair was all drawn behind and
+twisted up at the back of her head, where it was fastened by a little
+common horn comb: she had also a string of amber glass beads round her
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>This girl turned round and looked at the doctor with a simple stare of
+curiosity, such as her class fix on a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was startled, he almost uttered a low cry of admiration: the
+face was perfect, heavenly, indescribable.</p>
+
+<p>Bell, who was sitting up in bed supported by pillows, said, "Isn't she a
+bonnie lassie, doctor?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hoot!" said the girl&mdash;"hoot, Bell! that's nae news. Could ye no tell us
+something we dinna ken?"</p>
+
+<p>From some lips this might have been an impertinent remark: from hers it
+had the most piquant charm of simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, having recovered from his first thrill of surprise, said,
+"Where do you live, my good girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wi' my faither, sir," she said simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is your father?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He is ane o' our neighbors," Bell answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Just up the gate a bit," the girl said.</p>
+
+<p>"Over at Claygates?" said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"A wee bit farrer yont, sir," the girl said, and disappeared into an
+inner room.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder I never saw her before," the doctor said to his patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, she's worth seeing: she's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But the rustic beauty reappeared, and Bell did not speak further.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Brunton's visit had exceeded its ordinary limits, and he rose to go.
+The girl opened the door for him, and as he was passing out he said to
+her, "Are you often here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Gey an' often: Bell's an auld friend o' my mither's, and I run over to
+speir for her aye when I've time."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall you be here to-morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay: I'll be here the morn and the next day, and maybe the day
+after: I'll be often here as lang as I'm at hame."</p>
+
+<p>"And where will you be when you are not at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, sir"&mdash;and she hesitated a little&mdash;"weel, sir, where can the like
+o' me be but at service? We hae nae muckle choice, folk like us."</p>
+
+<p>"Choice!" thought the doctor. "At service! Why, to be served by a being
+wearing such a face must be like being waited on by an angel: she might
+have her choice of the crowned heads of Europe."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang into his gig: all his sense of fatigue had vanished, and a new
+and strange feeling had taken possession of him.</p>
+
+<p>"And they are going to send her to service!" he said to himself. "What a
+shame!"</p>
+
+<p>And yet he knew he was unreasonable. As she herself had said, what
+choice was there in her rank of life? and it was only her beautiful face
+that made it seem at all out of place; but what an <i>only</i> that was!
+"Why," he thought, "I have been five and twenty years in the world, and
+I have never seen a face to match it&mdash;never!"</p>
+
+<p>At dinner that day Dr. Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till
+his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as
+I ever saw."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day&mdash;a hind's daughter&mdash;so
+beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty
+is a thing to be spoken about."</p>
+
+<p>"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please
+another," said Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"But she is not good-looking&mdash;I tell you no one would speak of good
+looks in connection with her&mdash;she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and
+she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and
+bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants
+education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite
+uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently,
+but she has no want of natural ability: everything she said proved
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you have fallen in love," said Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid of it," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I think hardly," said his sister. "I think you have more sense, James,
+than to be taken with a pretty face belonging to a young lady who can
+neither read nor write."</p>
+
+<p>"Millions of people can read and write," said he, "but how many have a
+face like hers?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must find her out and have a look at her," said Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, James," said Mary, "till you see Lady Louisa."</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Louisa may be anything she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span> likes," said he, "but it is impossible
+she can match this peasant-girl without a single grace of dress or
+culture. I never saw anything like her&mdash;never."</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to
+be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful
+gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."</p>
+
+<p>"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one
+would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she
+does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's
+shop at least by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.</p>
+
+
+<h3>V.</h3>
+
+<p>On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the
+lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be
+bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this
+visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had
+floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the
+most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the
+celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened
+patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her
+out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself
+that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty
+sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on
+the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and
+slightly sheepish in manner as before.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Na, I couldna coom."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you do? Can you read well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the
+newspapers."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you write?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae
+time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of
+the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window&mdash;innocently,
+simply, appealingly, the doctor felt&mdash;and from that moment he was a lost
+man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to
+service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be
+content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun
+bide wi' my faither."</p>
+
+<p>"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do they do?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when
+she's awa'."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't be so beautiful as you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much
+simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the
+window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put
+on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were
+married."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you fond of beads?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay&mdash;they set a body off, divn't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I always speak the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's
+with childish simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"You can trust me?" he said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What about, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, far away&mdash;away up on the English hand."</p>
+
+<p>"What is her husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's
+thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of
+this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse
+working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her
+days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not
+be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made
+him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to
+some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing"
+her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this
+man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not
+have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and
+reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen
+to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard.
+He was in a dream.</p>
+
+<p>After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was
+sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My
+bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.</p>
+
+<p>"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.</p>
+
+
+<h3>VI.</h3>
+
+<p>Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been
+out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching,
+followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight,
+and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals
+they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him
+and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it
+piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly
+roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing
+till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the
+girl with the amber beads!</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for
+Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his
+house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the
+passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the
+Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?&mdash;did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or
+two unless it's something urgent."</p>
+
+<p>Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think:
+he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he
+had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had
+purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to
+love and protect while he lived,&mdash;she had disappeared like the mists of
+the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the
+daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been
+laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it
+was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to
+be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she
+superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter
+of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the
+pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of
+phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone
+it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was
+excessively clever, down to twisting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span> her hands in her apron, which she
+was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when
+it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would
+at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from
+heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no
+doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once:
+his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could
+not follow.</p>
+
+<p>He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been
+taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the
+world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If
+only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady
+Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to
+him&mdash;when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look
+at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not
+the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might
+possibly win and wear!</p>
+
+<p>While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door
+and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and
+read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="right">"<span class="smcap">The Castle</span>, Tuesday.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Doctor Brunton</span>: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make
+it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at
+the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be
+able to read this.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"I am yours sincerely,<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Louisa Moor.</span>"</p></div>
+
+<p>He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly
+and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it
+possible&mdash;was it in the least degree possible&mdash;that she really cared for
+him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see
+when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.</p>
+
+<p>He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the
+amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to
+his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said
+somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."</p>
+
+<p>"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring
+ever so little.</p>
+
+<p>"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of
+the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in
+her short-gown and amber beads&mdash;"do you know that my visits here are of
+no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is
+certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more
+seldom than I have done."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you?" she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I will."</p>
+
+<p>"No you won't," she said pleadingly&mdash;"not if I wish you to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish me to come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I wish it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her
+well attended to."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his
+mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll
+see her every day," meaning his patient.</p>
+
+<p>Which he did&mdash;not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted
+in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the
+peasant-girl, or in any other r&ocirc;le she chose to assume: it was an
+amusement she was fond of.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he
+called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he
+felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what
+chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did
+not&mdash;But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had
+matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed.
+Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for
+love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain
+man&mdash;he was the reverse&mdash;but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span> he held that human beings were men and
+women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank
+should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the
+corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which
+his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.</p>
+
+<p>One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to
+him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she
+might be back in a little.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane,
+after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour,"
+the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like
+o' her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat
+down by the bedside, and did <i>not</i> listen to the history of Bell's last
+severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement
+outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he
+saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the
+impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain
+snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled,
+and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A
+basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for
+her visit.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a
+puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was
+moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"</p>
+
+<p>"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be
+thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then how do you live?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle
+tea or the like&mdash;that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa:
+she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your
+comfort."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket.
+Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a
+carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw
+what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady
+Louisa came in.</p>
+
+<p>"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not
+have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my
+money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it,
+as it is."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes: was <i>she</i> an impostor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it
+on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and
+wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her
+head like the pearled old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"It was the truth," the doctor said&mdash;"nothing but the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"</p>
+
+
+<h3>VII.</h3>
+
+<p>Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady
+Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said Lady Helen.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a
+place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village
+street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."</p>
+
+<p>"They may easily be as happy as people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span> who live in big houses, but what
+excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want
+anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't it seem impertinent?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the
+doctor won't be in at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which
+was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of
+the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to
+his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would <i>she</i> be there or
+would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty,
+but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety:
+she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point
+of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure
+you would be out at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know
+everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely
+to be in or out."</p>
+
+<p>"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be
+accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for
+speaking nonsense&mdash;"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should
+like to know her."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house.
+I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house
+should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the
+public two days a week all summer&mdash;Wednesdays and Saturdays, I
+think&mdash;and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If
+not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as
+sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for
+jailer&mdash;an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible
+for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."</p>
+
+<p>"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.&mdash;You must not believe all
+she says, Dr. Brunton."</p>
+
+<p>"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you <i>not</i> want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.</p>
+
+<p>"I do want to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see
+ours&mdash;curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."</p>
+
+<p>"This, then, is our chief apartment."</p>
+
+<p>"You live, move and have your being here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms,
+and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few
+minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her
+brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were
+standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as
+if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."</p>
+
+<p>"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the
+earl to dine at the castle.</p>
+
+<p>The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh
+blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his
+very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them
+before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did
+not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much
+in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so
+must be stupid indeed if he can't say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span> something that shall be both
+interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the
+earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace
+in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require
+strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so
+that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many
+instances&mdash;which only of late had stuck to his memory&mdash;of ladies of rank
+who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his
+thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of
+gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should
+this not be his case? Why, indeed?</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first
+staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe
+him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way;
+and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the
+boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the
+estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with
+the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his
+question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of
+hope.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got
+home&mdash;"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you
+to marry her yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa
+might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what
+kind of an evening had you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is
+well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing
+gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are
+the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully
+interesting."</p>
+
+<p>The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so
+well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it
+please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every
+day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its
+level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people
+whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She
+lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a
+child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered
+the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the
+end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the
+atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his
+afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and
+hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in
+the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller
+air.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the
+door, just to see how things are looking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would
+she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run
+home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you:
+I have a visit to make near the castle."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.</p>
+
+<p>They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the
+castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the
+doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again?
+Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town
+yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And was it good?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is like, I believe."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to
+see it."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of
+collecting the photos of people I know."</p>
+
+<p>They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had
+come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit
+down&mdash;neither proposed that&mdash;but they stood a moment at this spot. The
+waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as
+great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living
+orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of
+savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of
+masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly
+ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but
+as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the
+waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed
+leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it
+that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank
+behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic
+Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and
+weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent,
+it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the
+afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but
+the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the
+dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it
+looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other
+side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early
+part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead;
+innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the
+azure dome.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and
+fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the
+flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."</p>
+
+<p>"Should you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of
+traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all
+romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him,
+and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the
+stream.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty&mdash;"stay only a moment!" But
+she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic
+wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand
+to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared
+through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.</p>
+
+<p>"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease
+and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to
+earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every
+obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when
+he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa
+seemed the most wild and improbable dream.</p>
+
+<p>He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph&mdash;had she
+not almost asked for it?&mdash;and as he did it he felt that according as it
+should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great
+wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the
+probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was,
+the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have
+prevented sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the
+lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the
+soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span> the midst of a
+tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed
+since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the
+fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was
+significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with
+the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being
+over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?</p>
+
+
+<h3>VIII.</h3>
+
+<p>At the very time Dr. Brunton was thinking of this, the family at the
+castle were sitting at breakfast, and the letter-bag came in. As the
+earl was looking over the letters he said, "Here's a thick despatch for
+you, Loo: open it, and tell me what it is?" She opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" said her father.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a likeness of the doctor," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor! what doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Dr. Brunton&mdash;he who lives in the village. He has been here several
+times, you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember perfectly. How is his likeness sent to you? who sends it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Himself probably, but I have not read the letter yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't read it: hand it to me," he said sternly.</p>
+
+<p>The duchess and Lady Helen were listening to this dialogue, and watching
+the rising wrath of their father and the cool, calm bearing of Loo.</p>
+
+<p>The earl read the letter, then rose and flung it and the carte into the
+fire. "The man is a vain fool," he said&mdash;"a perfect fool!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see that, papa. I should have wished to have his likeness: I am
+not sure that I did not say so to him. I sometimes meet him in the
+cottages of the people about."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know the kind of insult you have brought upon yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have brought no insult on myself, and I know of none."</p>
+
+<p>"In that letter he asked you to be his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"The thing is not possible," she said, starting from her chair: "he
+must be mad. <i>I</i> his wife! Why, he'll want the moon down to put into his
+gig-lanterns next."</p>
+
+<p>"If it were not for the laws of the country," said the earl, his face
+red with wrath&mdash;"if it were not for the laws of the country, I would
+shoot that man as I would shoot a partridge."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Louisa rose and left the room: her sister Mary followed her. "Loo,"
+she said, "you have been doing wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of, Mary."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Brunton would never have written or sent his carte if he had not
+been led on to do it somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"He never was led on by me: he may have been by his own vanity; only I
+did not think he was so stupid."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't say he was wise, but I say you have been foolish: you have done
+a thing you had no right to do."</p>
+
+<p>"I have done nothing. Is it reasonable to blame me because a man wrote a
+foolish letter? His vanity is egregious: to think I was going to forget
+my rank to marry him! I always gave him credit for more brains."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe you thought your rank entitled you to amuse yourself as you
+liked."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't, but I certainly thought it enough to prevent him
+forgetting himself so far as he seems to have done. I wish I had seen
+that letter: I wonder how he expressed himself? It is a ridiculous
+mistake, but I'll soon put it right."</p>
+
+<p>"To love, and have your love flung back with contempt, is something more
+than a ridiculous mistake. It is&mdash;" and the duchess stopped with a
+quaver in her voice, and failed to go on: perhaps she was speaking from
+experience that she was so strongly affected.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, at the usual time, Lady Louisa set out to walk to the
+lodge; not that she did not know of what had happened, for she had heard
+of that, but she thought it not unlikely that Dr. Brunton might be there
+on the chance of meeting her, and the sooner this misunderstanding was
+put right the better, especially as they were on the eve of leaving
+Birns for London, and she might as well make things straight before
+going. She was right in her calculations: Dr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span> Brunton was walking on
+the road outside the park-gate, in the hope that Lady Louisa, not
+knowing of the old woman's death, might come to visit her as before.</p>
+
+<p>She came up as frankly as was her custom and shook hands, and there was
+no unusual expression in her face whatever; but the doctor had too much
+at stake, was feeling far too keenly, to be capable of sharp observation
+at this time, and he said, hardly knowing what he was saying, "My
+patient here does not need me any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I heard of her death," Lady Louisa said.</p>
+
+<p>A great flash of joy thrilled him: she had come here, then, for no other
+end than to meet him. He had difficulty in controlling himself. "You
+have got my letter?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I got it."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent as he stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>"I got it," she repeated, "but I did not read it: papa took it from me
+and read it, and put it and the carte into the fire. I won't tell you
+what he said, but I agreed with him, and came to say that you had made a
+ridiculous mistake."</p>
+
+<p>He was still silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew," she went on&mdash;"you must have known from the first&mdash;that I
+cared no more for you than I do for the shoe below my foot. Could you
+think for a moment that I would demean myself by coming here to meet you
+or any one else? Could you think it? It is impossible. That is all I
+have to say."</p>
+
+<p>"All?" he echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all. But I am sorry you should have made such a mistake&mdash;very
+sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, bowing his head; and they each turned and went
+different ways.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Brunton went home. "Is Miss Robertson still here?" he said to his
+sister.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure she is: she was not speaking of going away."</p>
+
+<p>"Then send her away&mdash;send her away as soon as you can."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed! Have you taken a dislike to her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I want to be alone, in my own house at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, James, has anything happened?" she said anxiously, struck by his
+look and tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;nothing but what has happened often before, I dare say"&mdash;and
+he laughed in a way painful to his sister to hear&mdash;"to other men, and is
+not much thought of; but my organization is different. Mary, I feel as
+if I shall lose my reason: I am dazed;" and he burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was dazed for the moment too: in all her life she had never seen
+her brother like this. The peculiar gleam in his eye was altogether new
+to her: could there be truth in what he said? Was it the glitter of
+insanity that shone in his eyes? But she could not admit the idea.</p>
+
+<p>In a small place like Birns the frequent meeting of Lady Louisa and Dr.
+Brunton had not passed unnoticed, and had, of course, been the subject
+of remark, and Mary guessed what had happened, and felt sure that Lady
+Louisa had been guilty of heartless thoughtlessness, to give it the
+mildest name. Oh, how from her inmost heart she wished they had never
+seen her, or that she had exercised her folly on some one better able to
+bear the consequences of it! How to commit the inhospitality of
+suggesting her friend's departure Mary did not know, but it chanced that
+Miss Robertson proposed it herself, having received a letter which made
+her eager to get home; and the brother and sister were left alone to do
+battle with the threatened calamity.</p>
+
+<p>For months Dr. Brunton struggled like a man against the dark cloud that
+was settling down upon him, but at last he said, "It's all in vain,
+Mary; my mind is going from me; my memory is gone already; I forget
+everything, even the most important engagement; and when a man told me
+of a sad death to-day I burst out laughing: I could not help it. Mary,"
+he said in a kind of cowering whisper, "I know what the end will be."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't: no one knows what the end of anything will be. We'll
+leave this place, James; we'll go and travel about; we'll sell off
+everything&mdash;I'll manage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span> that&mdash;and when you are better you can begin
+life again elsewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away from this place," he said with a kind of cry: "I'm not fit
+to go about among people."</p>
+
+<p>And they went away, and moved from place to place, but still the malady
+grew, till at last, unutterably mournful as it was, Mary felt it a
+relief when he ceased to be capable of watching the progress of it
+himself: his misery at least was over. Thereafter he slipped into
+perfect mindlessness, happy and harmless, but hopelessly mindless and
+vacant. Meantime, Lady Louisa Moor made a very brilliant marriage to a
+marquis, the eldest son of a duke, the account of which Mary Brunton
+read in the newspapers while watching her brother's face with its
+meaningless smile. How her heart swelled! and she burst into a passion
+of weeping. She threw her arm round him as if to shield him from evil as
+she said, "Oh, Jamie, nothing can reach you now&mdash;nothing." He looked at
+her with the look that was always so touching, as if he were vainly
+trying to remember or comprehend: that occasional look of effort was the
+only remnant left of all his powers of mind.</p>
+
+<p>The duchess of Dover asked her sister the marchioness one day if she
+knew what had become of Dr. Brunton.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said she, "I don't. He has left the Birns, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Shortly after he wrote that letter to you he became insane," said the
+duchess: she put the information in that form, fearful that her sister
+would be overwhelmed with self-reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"He was insane before he wrote it," said the young marchioness: "only
+insanity could excuse such presumption. Men don't go mad from
+disappointed love, or women either, I believe, unless there's a
+predisposition to madness. He must have had that, and any other accident
+in his life would have brought it out as well as his foolish fancy for
+me. If he had been thrown from his gig, or had two or three of his
+patients die on his hands at once, the effect would have been the same;"
+and she passed easily to other topics.</p>
+
+<p>The marchioness was wonderfully beautiful, and she was clever and
+ambitious, and took and kept a very conspicuous place in her sphere; but
+her amusements were sometimes costly in their nature, whether she
+thought so or not. <span class="smcap">The Author of "Blindpits.</span>"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="WALPURGIS_NIGHT" id="WALPURGIS_NIGHT"></a>WALPURGIS NIGHT.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Three travelers making haste,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And whisp'ring of some errand of their own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With arms enlinked and garments backward blown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Across a twilight waste.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">Three gibbets dumb and tall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the east, with scrawny arms, outlined;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far off a lonely tower, left behind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With silver cross and ball.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">And distant, round and dim,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behind the waste, behind the gibbets high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The witches' moon, with filmy bloodshot eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Peering above the rim!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24"><span class="smcap">W. W. Young.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="FREDERIC_LEMAITRE" id="FREDERIC_LEMAITRE"></a>FR&Eacute;D&Eacute;RIC LEMAITRE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw," wrote Dickens from Paris
+twenty years ago, "I saw last night at the Ambigu." The actor was
+Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Lemaitre, and the part he played was that of Georges de Germany
+in the drama of <i>Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler</i>. At this time
+(February, 1855) Lemaitre was already so old a man that Dickens was
+surprised to see him still playing, and the part was one which the actor
+had created originally twenty-eight years before that. He first played
+it at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre in 1827, close upon half a century
+ago. "Never," continues Dickens, "did I see anything in art so exaltedly
+horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so well made up and so
+light and active that he really looked sufficiently young. But in the
+last two, when he had grown old and miserable, he did the finest things,
+I really believe, that are within the power of acting. Two or three
+times a great cry of horror went all round the house. When he met in the
+inn-yard the traveler whom he murders, and first saw his money, the
+manner in which the crime came into his head&mdash;and eyes&mdash;was as truthful
+as it was terrific. This traveler, being a good fellow, gives him wine.
+You should see the dim remembrance of his better days that comes over
+him as he takes the glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he
+were going to touch the other man's, or do some airy thing with it, and
+then stops and flings the contents down his hot throat, as if he were
+pouring it into a limekiln. But this was nothing to what follows after
+he has done the murder, and comes home with a basket of provisions, a
+ragged pocket full of money, and a badly-washed, bloody right hand,
+which his little girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had
+hurt his hand, his going aside, turning himself round, and looking over
+all his clothes for spots was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really
+scared one. He called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when
+he saw the color was one of the things which brought out the curious cry
+I have spoken of from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody
+mist, and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything
+except making his fortune by staking this money and a faint dull kind of
+love for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's self by
+saying enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him
+come near its finest points in anything else. He said two things in a
+way that would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his wife,
+when he has exultingly shown her the money, and she has asked him how he
+got it&mdash;'I found it;' and the other to his old companion and tempter,
+when he charged him with having killed that traveler, and he suddenly
+went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't
+I who murdered him&mdash;it was misery!' And such a dress! such a face! and,
+above all, such an extraordinarily guilty, wicked thing as he made of a
+knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick from the moment
+when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write pages
+about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got half boastful
+of that walking-staff to himself, and half afraid of it, and didn't know
+whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end, or to hate it
+and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the inn-yard
+drinking with the traveler; and this horrible stick got between them
+like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he could put
+the money to."</p>
+
+<p>It will be a surprise to many readers to learn that Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Lemaitre is
+still living and still playing. On the evening of March 25, 1874, I went
+to this same old theatre of the Ambigu to see him play Feuillantin in
+<i>Le Portier du Numero 15</i>. The part is that of an old man, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span> the
+actor played it "in his habit as he lived," without artificial make-up
+or wig. His own long iron-gray hair floated on the air; the wrinkles in
+his old face were painted there by the hand of Time; his voice was
+cracked and broken, and his gait that of advanced age. I had formed the
+impression, beforehand, that Lemaitre was simply a tottering old wreck,
+a painful and pitiable sight; and I went to the theatre prepared to be
+saddened by the spectacle of a ruin. A ruin it was, perhaps, but what a
+grand and impressive one! The old man was magnificent! So far from
+exciting pity, he roused in me feelings of the warmest enthusiasm. So
+far from seeming to ask for sympathy, he compelled admiration by force
+of his splendid pantomime, in witnessing which one forgot he had no
+voice, or remembered it only to see in the fact a fitting feature of the
+old <i>portier</i> he was playing. In the midst of my admiration for the
+actor, however, I studied the man himself; and I saw that he dominated
+his fellow-actors with a will of the most imperious sort. He swept along
+the action of the piece, and manipulated the rather poor company of
+actors who moved about him, with a leonine agility of movement and an
+autocratic command of the scene which showed that even in his old age he
+was no subject for patronizing sympathy. There was a meek, white-faced
+young lady who played the part of granddaughter to the old <i>portier</i>,
+and I transferred my pity to her; for the way Lemaitre hauled her hither
+and thither by her slender wrists (not in simulated rudeness, for she
+was the pet of the old <i>portier's</i> heart, but simply in the actor's
+imperative arrangements of tableaux), and the manner in which he dragged
+her young head with his iron arms to his broad breast in affectionate
+but rough and picturesque embrace, were enough to wear on the nerves of
+the stoutest young woman; and this one was as frail in form as she was
+fair in face.</p>
+
+<p>A day or two later I had an opportunity of observing more closely the
+hero of fifty years of mimic life. It was in the green-room of the
+Ambigu, half an hour before the curtain rose on his fiftieth
+performance of the <i>portier</i>, and the old man was in his shirt-sleeves
+and with his apparel otherwise disordered. Learning that we were from
+America, he invited us to sit for a moment in his dressing-room, which
+adjoined the green-room, and waved us toward the door with as grand a
+gesture as if he were Hamlet saying "Lead on! I'll follow thee." The
+dressing-room was a pleasant little box (in French stage-parlance, by
+the way, a player's dressing-room is always called his <i>loge</i>), with the
+walls covered with portraits of theatrical and other celebrities. The
+impression Lemaitre made on me at this time was more that which might be
+made by an American statesman of the old school&mdash;a Clay, a Webster, an
+Adams&mdash;than that one would expect from a mere mouther of other people's
+words. However, I am wrong to apply this term to Lemaitre, who was in
+the truest sense an <i>author</i>. But of this later. He was full of a sort
+of sad dignity, and the burden of his conversation was, "I am no longer
+young." He inquired curiously concerning America, but when it was
+suggested that he should visit our country, shook his head: "No; I am
+too old to cross the sea now." The above passage from Dickens was
+referred to, but he had never heard of it: he said, however, that
+Monsieur Dickens had once sent him some novels to read, and by his tone
+did not imply that he was at all flattered by the admiration of the
+Englishman. For in truth Lemaitre was already a spoiled child of
+adulation years before Charles Dickens became famous; and now that
+Dickens was nearly four years dead, the old actor still lived, and
+remembered that every admiring adjective known to the French language
+had been showered upon himself: what mattered a few more in the English
+language? Looking in the tired, watery old eyes of the man sitting
+before me with his hands thrust deep in his pockets&mdash;and what
+magnificent, fiery, great black billiard-balls of eyes they must have
+been in his youth!&mdash;looking at the skinny folds which years had gathered
+about his aged jaws, it was still, strange to say, perfectly easy to
+realize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</a></span> the fascinating man Lemaitre had been in his prime, the
+tremendous power for swaying the emotions of his auditors which once
+abode in that rugged frame.</p>
+
+<p>Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had
+been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the
+Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is
+easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning
+to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of
+seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his
+equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age
+of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification
+the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when
+he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the
+resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the
+boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty
+years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him
+a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be
+educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> and
+began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was
+assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his
+first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du
+Crime, called the Vari&eacute;t&eacute;s Amusantes&mdash;a theatre long since dead. They
+were playing a piece with three actors, called <i>Pyramus and Thisbe</i>. As
+in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under
+a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived
+first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her
+veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody
+jaws. The lion was Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance
+on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got
+into a dispute in a neighboring caf&eacute;, and could not appear on account of
+the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him
+home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of
+mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the
+lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened
+himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you
+like."&mdash;"You?"&mdash;"I, who know the part."&mdash;"Well roared, lion!" quoth the
+manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a
+speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of
+indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most
+energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next
+night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was at this period as handsome as Antin&ouml;us, with an elegant and
+slender but powerful figure, waving black hair, expressive and noble
+features, a beautiful complexion, wide forehead, flashing dark eyes, and
+a carriage full of grace and poetry. Rare personal beauty and
+extraordinary strength were striking physical advantages for the stage:
+the mental qualities were as yet but faintly shadowed forth.</p>
+
+<p>On the conclusion of his studies at the Conservatoire young Lemaitre
+sought admission to the classic Od&eacute;on Theatre, and would have failed had
+not the tragedian Talma perceived what others could not, and insisted
+that the young man had in him the making of a great actor. He made his
+"serious" d&eacute;but at the Od&eacute;on, and remained at this theatre five months,
+but without producing any special impression as an actor. Then removing
+to the Ambigu, he suddenly achieved a startling and brilliant success,
+and created the first of that long list of parts which have since won
+worldwide celebrity, and been played in every polite tongue, in every
+civilized land. This was Robert Macaire in <i>L'Auberge des Adrets</i>. It is
+no exaggeration<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</a></span> to say that Lemaitre <i>created</i> this part, though this
+verb is used in our day in very slipshod fashion. Robert Macaire was the
+creation of Lemaitre, and not of the authors of the play. At the
+rehearsals he repeatedly declared that the part was "impossible," and
+that the public would never receive it as the authors had written it.
+The event justified his opinion: the piece was hissed outrageously. But
+it was redeemed on the second night through the audacity of Lemaitre,
+who, in strolling about the streets during the day in no very pleasant
+frame of mind, racked his brains for an expedient for saving the
+fortunes of the theatre. Suddenly he perceived a strange creature
+standing before the open-air shop of a cake-seller&mdash;an outr&eacute; individual,
+clad in indescribable clothing. In some former day the man's garments
+had been elegant and fashionable, but they were now dropping to pieces.
+Misery and debauchery could be read in every stain upon them, but the
+wearer seemed not to have lost a particle of his self-esteem. Standing
+proudly in a pair of boots all run down at the heel and riddled with
+holes, a greasy and misshapen felt hat perched on one ear, he daintily
+broke with the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake,
+carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as
+if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from
+the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it,
+dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up
+the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the
+flesh-and-blood reality of the conception of Robert Macaire which had
+been running through his brain during the rehearsals of the new piece.
+That evening the actor appeared on the stage with a coat, hat and boots
+modeled on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner
+of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity;
+and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like
+metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece obtained a marvelous
+success.</p>
+
+<p>The management of the Ambigu, appreciating the service Lemaitre had
+rendered the theatre, immediately raised his salary to a high figure,
+and from that day, as the saying is, his fortune was made. Saturday is
+the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first
+illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a
+whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces.
+Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly
+through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the
+theatre.</p>
+
+<p>One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit
+and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his
+refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris,
+if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the
+abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery. A
+well-known journalist of the time, counting on his success with less
+eccentric artists, called one day at Lemaitre's residence and suggested
+that the actor should smooth over the rough places of criticism by a
+liberal <i>douceur</i>. Lemaitre refused. "It is but a small matter to you,"
+said this gentle literary bandit: "a thousand or twelve hundred francs a
+year&mdash;what does so trifling a sum signify to one who has your splendid
+income? And thanks to this modest subvention you will be constantly well
+treated in my columns." To which Lemaitre replied, "Monsieur, I will not
+be eulogized for gold: other eulogies or none." Two days later a
+slashing article against Lemaitre appeared in the columns over which the
+blackmailer had control. Lemaitre made no complaint, but knowing that it
+would not be long ere his assailant would visit the green-room of the
+theatre according to French custom, he waited in patience. A night or
+two later the critic appeared. Lemaitre walked up to him, made a low
+bow, and while the crowd in the green-room were attending to see what
+would follow, slapped the fellow's face. Naturally, this liberty was
+resented by the journalist, who struck back at Lemaitre; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</a></span> the actor,
+who was gifted with extraordinary muscular power, took both the man's
+hands in one of his own, and holding him thus, said to the witnesses of
+the scene, "To-morrow, if it is necessary, I will fight this
+<i>mis&eacute;rable</i>; but before all I desire to treat him in your presence as he
+merits&mdash;that is to say as a vulgar scoundrel." With this he dragged the
+blackmailer to the door and kicked him out.</p>
+
+<p>The part of Georges de Germany, which Dickens saw played in 1856, was
+Lemaitre's second great creation. Those who saw him in this part in his
+younger days so rave about it that even Dickens's warm eulogy seems cool
+in comparison. Such unheard-of developments of passion and disorder!
+such incredible fire and magnetism! such subjugation of a vast audience
+to his will!&mdash;language fails to express the rapturous accounts which
+those old Frenchmen now living who saw him then will give you with many
+a roll upward of the eyes, many a hopeless shake of head and shrug of
+shoulder and agitation of outstretched hand.</p>
+
+<p>Boiling over with health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre
+now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given
+Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But
+his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his
+physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which
+the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor
+can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French
+bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's
+character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's
+feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his
+fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>There is a gray-haired and toothless old woman at present engaged in
+that menagerie of old women, the old-clo' market of the Temple in Paris,
+who might go wandering back with Lemaitre into that dead past of his if
+he wanted company. Fifty years ago she was a ruddy-cheeked young girl
+from the provinces, who had come up to Paris with a little fortune of
+thirty thousand francs, which a relative had left her. Going one night
+to the theatre where Lemaitre was playing, she became fascinated with
+Georges de Germany, and went to see him evening after evening.
+Forty-five nights in succession she attended the theatre to weep, to
+shudder and to admire, and ended by offering the actor her heart, her
+hand and her fortune. Lemaitre accepted the heart, but declined the
+hand; and as for the fortune, pooh! What did he want of the lady's
+pin-money? Nevertheless, six weeks saw the end of her little fortune,
+and left her with a quantity of elegant dresses and a few diamonds.
+Waking up one morning from her dream, she betook herself to the old
+market of the Temple, and began to try and get her money back. She is
+said to be worth a good deal more to-day than Lemaitre is.</p>
+
+<p>In the drama of <i>Faust</i> Lemaitre's genius took a new development in
+creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which
+balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By
+every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to
+give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he
+could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came
+into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it
+that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our
+day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly
+flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly
+hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the
+glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave
+an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he
+walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the
+passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he
+stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the
+artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last."</p>
+
+<p>It does not seem wonderful at the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</a></span> day that Robert Macaire or
+Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are
+so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the
+part; but he who <i>creates</i> the idea that is afterward accepted as a
+matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In
+our day and country the actor who creates <i>one</i> r&ocirc;le in the way Lemaitre
+created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip
+Van Winkle&mdash;Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the
+parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don C&aelig;sar de Bazan, Gennaro,
+Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to
+American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have
+played them since.</p>
+
+<p>When Macaire, Germany and Mephisto had successively dawned on the
+delighted consciousness of the Parisians&mdash;those most insatiate of all
+theatre-goers&mdash;Lemaitre had won the sceptre of the Paris stage. He
+reigned over the public with despotic sway, and the public adored its
+theatrical monarch. With his subjects he could do anything, take any
+liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in
+which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting
+with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as
+"harlequin's cloak"&mdash;in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass
+knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining
+it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric," cried an employ&eacute;: "it's the
+gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas!
+Let's see what will happen." With this he turned the knob and plunged
+the whole theatre into darkness. Two thousand Frenchmen and women cried
+out in alarm and consternation. Great was their indignation and savage
+their inquiries as to the cause of the occurrence. But no sooner were
+they informed that Lemaitre had committed this hangable feat than the
+joke seemed charming, and when he came on the stage in the following act
+they received him with bravos and joyous laughs.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaitre was indeed a spoiled child of the public, and his prodigious
+success began to have the effect which success often has upon us poor
+mortals. He became impatient of all restraint, jealous of all honor
+offered to his confr&egrave;res. The Ambigu won him away from the Porte
+Saint-Martin after a short time, and on the stage of his first successes
+he was supported by Madame Dorval, one of the finest actresses the
+French stage has known. These two dramatic powers did wonders, and the
+public divided its applause between them. This did not suit the petted
+genius. He complained to the manager. "Your horrible <i>claque</i> splits my
+ears," he cried in a fury: "I expect you to get rid of it at once. Or if
+not&mdash;" Before his <i>ultimatum</i> was pronounced Madame Dorval appeared.
+"Are you crazy?" she said to the manager: "what is the use of these
+imbeciles with their hand-clapping? Drive them all away from the
+theatre, and leave the real public to its own impressions. If your
+Romans<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> do not at once disappear, I play no more."&mdash;"Nor I," said
+Lemaitre.&mdash;"So be it," said the manager: "the claque shall be
+discharged."</p>
+
+<p>Such a bold step in a Paris theatre was almost unheard of. What! try to
+run a theatre without the regular corps of hired applauders? The thing
+was incredible. But the leading artists demanded it, and the manager
+notified his claqueurs that their pay was stopped. That night not a
+ripple of applause disturbed the monotony of the performance. The
+public, left to itself, and accustomed to have a gang of paid worthies
+to start the applause at the right moment, applauded neither Lemaitre
+nor Dorval, nor any of the other players. "It is evident," said Lemaitre
+to himself, "that people who admire my acting fear being mistaken for
+hired claqueurs if they express their enthusiasm. I must arrange that."
+He therefore quietly caused to be planted a few judicious claqueurs
+about the house at his own expense, and that night bravos and
+hand-clappings were bestowed on Lemaitre alone. This suited the actor's
+notions to a nicety. Not so with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</a></span> the actress, however. "These people
+have no taste," she thought; "but that can't last." So she arranged
+privately for a small claque of her own, and that night she also was
+applauded. But this sort of game was one which the smaller players of
+the theatre could take a hand in, too. And on the third night, strange
+to say, there was applause for everything and everybody; all the
+performers had "ovations" in turn; even the ballet-girls had a share in
+the general glory so liberally bestowed. "What is the meaning of this?"
+demanded Lemaitre and Dorval of the manager: "did you not promise that
+your claque should be discharged?" The manager shrugged his shoulders.
+"My claque is discharged," said he; "and now there are, I perceive,
+three claques instead of one&mdash;yours, madame's and the whole company's.
+Nothing could be fairer."</p>
+
+<p>It may seem strange that our actor, who dealt so roughly with the critic
+who suggested bribery, should have condescended to pay men for applause.
+But custom regulates our sense of honor. The claque is an institution so
+openly recognized in French theatres that the proudest dramatic or lyric
+temple in Paris would not know what to do without it. Even the classic
+Th&eacute;&acirc;tre Fran&ccedil;ais and the frigid Od&eacute;on, which are in great part supported
+by the government, and about which hangs the purest odor of high art,
+have each a regularly organized claque, which is paid to applaud, and
+which holds its rehearsals with the same solemnity that the players do,
+in order to introduce at the proper moment a gust of hand-clapping, a
+burst of laughter, or cries of "Bravo! bravo!" There is no concealment
+whatever about their operations. The claqueurs occupy conspicuous seats
+in every theatre, and it is often quite an entertainment in itself to
+watch their goings on. The leader gives the signal to begin and the sign
+to stop; and if any man of his band applauds too idly, that man is
+openly rebuked, and instructed by vehement gesture to do his duty
+better.</p>
+
+<p>But, as has been said, Lemaitre was growing spoiled as a man by his
+success as an artist. He rebelled against the idea that any person
+should be admired on the scene where he was king, and he carried this
+feeling to the absurdest lengths. In one of his plays he had to bring in
+the corpse of his young brother (of the story), and the actor who played
+this part identified himself so well with the immobility of the last
+sleep that the public, struck with astonishment, broke in upon one of
+Lemaitre's finest speeches with cries of bravo for the little dead
+brother. "This is a very impertinent rascal," muttered Lemaitre, "who
+makes himself applauded in my very arms. I shall punish him for it."
+Leaning over the supposed corpse while speaking his lines, he blew into
+the dead boy's nostrils. Not a movement! Then pretending to yield to
+despair&mdash;always in consonance with the part he was playing&mdash;Lemaitre
+pulled the hair of the defunct with frantic gestures. Not a muscle
+stirred! Whereupon Lemaitre seemed to break down utterly under his
+grief, let go of the body, and it fell hard upon the stage like an inert
+mass. The effect was superb. The whole house applauded, the bravos
+became frantic, the great actor was hoist with his own petard. Lemaitre
+passed the night in solemn reflection on the seriousness of the case.
+The result was that at the next representation, while carrying in his
+little dead brother, he delicately tickled him under the arms. The
+unhappy defunct could not stand this. He came to life, burst out
+laughing, and was heartily hissed, while Lemaitre, the picture of solemn
+grief, inly chuckled at the success of his efforts to destroy rivalry.</p>
+
+<p>But, notwithstanding his superb egotism and his jealousy of applause,
+Lemaitre was capable of mocking at himself in a most amusing manner. At
+one of the last representations of <i>Robert Macaire</i> he expected to be
+called before the curtain at the end of the play. He was not, however;
+whereupon he ordered the curtain to be raised and came forward with his
+gravest air. "Gentlemen," said he, addressing the audience, "I desire to
+know if M. Auguste is not here." M. Auguste does not answer, and the
+spectators<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</a></span> look at each other in surprise. "M. Antoine!" Silence again.
+"Well, gentlemen, I am the victim of the dishonesty of the chef and
+sous-chef of the claque. I gave them forty francs this morning to call
+me out, and neither of them is here. You perceive, gentlemen, how
+grossly I have been swindled."</p>
+
+<p>After his fame had grown to greatness Lemaitre reappeared on the classic
+stage of the Od&eacute;on, the scene of his earliest efforts. Here he played a
+number of parts, including Othello. But the actor had in his mind an
+idea which haunted him. It was that his favorite r&ocirc;le of Robert Macaire
+had not had all the development of which it was capable. He associated
+with himself two authors, Antier and Saint-Amant, who accepted his ideas
+and wove them into a new play under his direction, bearing the name of
+his thieving hero. The success the piece achieved was something
+prodigious. All Paris ran to see it, and it was played for an
+unparalleled length of time. Lemaitre was so in love with the part that
+he used often to play it off the stage. Thus, one day at the Caf&eacute; de
+Malte they brought him his bill after breakfast. He arose, threw ten
+francs on the counter, and was leaving. "But the bill is ten francs
+fifty," said the caf&eacute;-master. "Very good," said Lemaitre: "the fifty
+centimes are for the gar&ccedil;on." The stage and caricature have since
+dressed up this <i>mot</i> in various forms, but Lemaitre was its first
+publisher. During this same winter of 1836 he was skating one afternoon
+on the basin in the Luxembourg garden, where he was the object of great
+admiration for his graceful evolutions. Presently one of a group of
+women, as he passed near, recognized him and cried out, "My fifteen
+francs, Monsieur Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric: have you forgotten my fifteen francs?" The
+actor stopped. The woman was his former hostess of the Latin quarter,
+with whom he had lived in the days of his impecuniosity during his first
+connection with the Od&eacute;on. Putting on the air of Robert Macaire,
+Lemaitre replied, "Your fifteen francs, madam? You are mighty
+impertinent. Under the alcove in my room I left an old wig. That wig
+cost me thirty-five francs: you owe me a louis. I will send for it
+to-morrow." And he skated calmly away. Next day, however, the hostess
+received her due.</p>
+
+<p>After having played this wicked and trivial thief so long that people
+began to say (as they say now of the creator of Rip Van Winkle) that he
+could not play anything else, Lemaitre startled the town with a new
+creation, utterly distinct from anything he had hitherto done. From
+depicting the most abject rascality he passed in a moment, as it seemed,
+to the representation of delicacy of sentiment and grandeur of soul in
+Alexandre Dumas's play of <i>Richard d'Arlington</i>, and again as Gennaro in
+Victor Hugo's <i>Lucretia Borgia</i>. Yet the wild dissipation of the man's
+life was never so great as at this precise period of his career. Harel,
+the manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte
+Saint-Martin), was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after
+him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was
+indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine.
+Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid
+his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul
+Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his
+restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste with the intelligence
+that the curtain was just going up, would cry, "<i>Diable!</i> And I haven't
+a sou in my pocket! Here's the bill. Carry it to Harel, and tell him
+they are keeping me here as a hostage." Though grinding his teeth with
+rage, the manager never failed to send the necessary sum for the release
+of his principal actor. At other times, when Lemaitre had breakfasted
+copiously, he did not dine, but the manager's purse then ran another
+peril. His actor would arrive at the theatre in a carriage, after having
+been driven about for five or six hours "for the benefit of his
+digestion," as he said, but never did he have the necessary sum to
+settle with the <i>cocher</i>, and again Harel paid before Lemaitre would get
+out of the vehicle. At other times during an <i>entr' acte</i> Lemaitre would
+disappear from the theatre, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</a></span> when the curtain was ready to go up
+again could nowhere be found. "Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric! where is Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric?" the
+distracted manager would cry. Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric was down stairs in the caf&eacute; under
+the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always
+losing. "Monsieur Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush
+in to say. "<i>Ciel!</i> What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply.
+"I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost."
+Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts of the theatre were large,
+he did not dare complain much of these forced presents of money:
+Lemaitre called them his perquisites. He had a profound contempt for his
+manager's slippery financial man&oelig;uvres. Harel was really almost as
+eccentric in his own way as Lemaitre was in his. The history of some of
+his subterfuges with his creditors would make a curious chapter. One day
+he stuck up the following notice in the theatre: "To-morrow the
+box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter
+before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at
+half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric," said Harel one night to the actor, "I have a
+proposition to make to you that will not displease you."&mdash;"Very good:
+tell it me to-morrow at breakfast." The next day they breakfasted, as
+our hero always breakfasted in those days, on truffles and champagne.
+Harel's proposition was this: "My project is to diminish your salary
+one-half."&mdash;"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you
+mocking me?"&mdash;"The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded
+Harel.&mdash;"How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for
+it. What the devil do you do with your money?"&mdash;"My dear fellow," quoth
+Harel, "what do you do with yours?"&mdash;"Ah! that's different: I have no
+account to give to anybody but myself."&mdash;"But come, let us not get
+angry," said Harel: "I will continue to pay you the whole sum, while
+appearing to give you but half of it. In this way I shall be at liberty
+to cut down the other salaries, and the theatre can go on." Lemaitre
+arose, looked Harel straight in the eyes, and answered, "You have the
+secret of sobering a man by a single phrase. So you think me capable&mdash;"
+Harel interrupted him hurriedly, not relishing the angry light in the
+actor's eyes: "No, no&mdash;not at all: I was joking."&mdash;"Ah, you were joking?
+<i>Eh bien</i>, your joke is a horribly bad one. Pray don't repeat it."</p>
+
+<p>Lemaitre was not deceived by the manager's sudden change of base. Three
+days afterward he revenged himself by a cutting bit of sarcasm. It was
+in Harel's own office. A young and well-dressed man presented himself,
+carrying a roll of manuscript. At sight of Lemaitre he drew back
+modestly, but Harel bade him remain, and asked him if he brought a
+drama. "Yes," answered the young man.&mdash;"Your own?"&mdash;"Yes."&mdash;"Then you
+have a reputation, doubtless?"&mdash;"No, it is my first piece."&mdash;"Ah," said
+the manager, who had taken note of the fact that the young author was
+far from shabby-looking, "in that case you are no doubt aware of the
+conditions. The essential thing with us managers always is to raise the
+receipts over the expenses."&mdash;"I understand that, sir."&mdash;"We prudent
+managers are obliged to refuse the pieces of all authors who have not
+yet achieved success, unless they will guarantee us the expenses that
+the rehearsal of the piece will entail upon us."&mdash;"That is my
+intention," was the young man's reply.&mdash;"Then we shall be able to
+understand each other. Your piece is in five acts?"&mdash;"In three,
+sir."&mdash;"Five acts would not have cost you a sou more." The conversation
+continued in this strain until the young author had signed a contract to
+pay ten thousand francs. With the spirit of a Shylock, Harel made out an
+account of actors, actresses, costumes, musicians, etc. that would have
+given gooseflesh to a less anxious and less wealthy author. Lemaitre
+remained sitting in a corner of the room until the manager arose to
+conduct the young man to the door: then he went up to them, laid his
+hand on Harel's shoulder, and said, "Why do you let him go? He has got
+his watch yet."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Victor Hugo wrote <i>Ruy Blas</i> he informed the director of the
+Renaissance&mdash;for which theatre the piece was intended&mdash;that the only
+actor who could play the part of Ruy was Lemaitre. The result was
+another of his wonderful creations, which set all Paris wild with
+excitement. Those who have admired Fechter in this part will perhaps be
+surprised to hear that in Paris his performance was pronounced but a
+faint imitation of Lemaitre's. Soon after this Lemaitre's despotic and
+ungovernable disposition began to get him into trouble with the law. He
+quarreled with the manager of the Renaissance, and was compelled by a
+judicial condemnation to play his part. Later, he threw up the principal
+part in <i>Zacharie</i>, and compelled the manager to post up an
+announcement, after repeated postponements and disappointments of the
+public, that Lemaitre refused to play, and the theatre was closed in
+consequence. The press took sides with the manager. Threatened again
+with the terrors of the law, Lemaitre consented to play. He came on the
+stage and was greeted with a storm of hisses. With imperturbable
+coolness he advanced to the footlights and with hand on heart said, "I
+am really confused, embarrassed, gentlemen, by the enthusiastic
+reception you have so kindly given me. Pray receive the expressions of
+my gratitude, and believe that I will place at the service of this drama
+all my good will and my best efforts." Thereupon the wind changed: that
+weather-cock, the French public, whirled around and applauded to the
+echo.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaitre did not often speak to his audience with so much
+submissiveness. Sometimes he treated them to such impertinences that he
+brought the police on him. After these theatrical escapades he not
+unfrequently slept in the station-house. He once made a bet that he
+could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry.
+No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences,
+their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance
+of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however,
+and the action was received in silence. This indulgence encouraging him,
+he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no
+expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket:
+the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor
+advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down
+grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible
+functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig
+from his pocket and threw it at the <i>souffleur's</i> head: a frightful
+tumult followed. The pit climbed over the footlights, determined to make
+the insolent actor offer apologies: he refused. The play was stopped,
+and the commissaire of the theatre sent the offending actor to prison,
+where he remained thirty-nine days. When he got out again Lemaitre
+hastened to make his peace with the public. It was easy enough. He had
+only to act in the superb manner of which he was master, and everything
+was forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic
+dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that
+theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise. He made
+his d&eacute;but at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in <i>Fr&eacute;d&eacute;gonde et
+Brunehaut</i>. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who
+sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Fran&ccedil;aise, holding
+their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre,
+and endeavored to drive him from the stage. But the audience with a
+tumult of applause stifled the rancor of the classic phalanx of
+orchestra-ancients. Lemaitre afterward, in <i>Othello</i>, conquered even the
+prejudices of these stern stage-censors, and they applauded with the
+rest. The actor was in his place at the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise, because it is
+by common consent the leading theatre of the world; but the man was
+sadly out of his element there. In the "House of Moli&egrave;re" there is an
+atmosphere of respectability as severe among the artists as that of the
+most dignified college in America, and the stage is bound round with a
+solemn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</a></span> network of dignified forms and sacred traditions, amid which
+Lemaitre chafed and fretted like a caged lion. His strolling-player
+instincts, his lack of self-respect, his bacchanalian habits and his
+irregularities generally unfitted him for association with the scholarly
+and correct-lived men who for the most part formed the company. Lemaitre
+felt ill at ease there, and conceived the idea that the <i>soci&eacute;taires</i>
+did not respect him enough. The actors of the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise are of
+two bodies&mdash;the first and controlling one in the councils of the theatre
+being composed of men who are participators in the profits of the house
+as well as recipients of salaries. They are an extremely dignified body
+of artists, with the utmost reverence for the proprieties of life. For
+these <i>soci&eacute;taires</i> Lemaitre entertained a profound dislike, and loved
+to sneer at them and ridicule their dignity. One day these artists were
+giving a grand dinner to some manager when a knock was heard at the door
+of the banquet-hall. "Who is there?" cried several voices.&mdash;"A man,"
+answered Lemaitre outside, "who wishes to have some converse with you,
+and tell you once for all what he has on his heart." So saying, he
+entered, threw off his cloak, and appeared before the company dressed
+simply in a shirt-collar and a pair of stockings.</p>
+
+<p>Lemaitre returned to the Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the
+r&ocirc;le of Don C&aelig;sar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably
+delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by
+Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its
+weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece
+obtained a great success. In the <i>Ragpicker of Paris</i>, a sort of honest
+Robert Macaire, written by F&eacute;lix Pyat for Lemaitre, this extraordinary
+actor went through another transformation not less striking than some
+which had preceded it. He engaged the lamplighter of the theatre to wear
+the ragpicker's costume for three weeks, so that it might be suitably
+dirty. He went every day into the low cabarets of the Rue Mouffetard,
+where ragpickers congregated in great numbers (and still do), in order
+to study from nature the peculiarities of the race. One day, as he was
+chatting with his models, familiarizing himself with their characters
+and manners, he was recognized by one of them, who immediately
+communicated his discovery to his companions. The report spread up and
+down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three
+hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as
+many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had
+seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to
+drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him;
+they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing
+the idea of such an ovation, Lemaitre jumped through a window and took
+to flight.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he had passed the age of fifty that Lemaitre began in
+the least to modify the excesses of his career, either on or off the
+stage. He still indulged in bacchanalian orgies; he still broke out at
+times into those violations of the stage proprieties which are so
+startling to any audience, but which are to a French audience something
+bordering on the incredible and awful. He was already an old man when he
+was playing one evening at Amiens, on a provincial tour, in
+<i>Tragaldabas</i>, a play written for him by M. Vacquerie, who shared Victor
+Hugo's exile at Jersey. At a certain point in the piece the actor is
+supposed to drink champagne. Now, dramatic managers are obliged to be
+economical about such things as food and drink, and generally replace
+the sparkling vintage by another liquid quite as gaseous, but less
+agreeable to the palate. Lemaitre put the glass to his lips, made a
+horrible grimace, spit out the mouthful, and to the consternation of the
+audience cried out, "Where is the manager of this theatre? Send me the
+manager instantly!" Great excitement behind the scenes: the manager
+arrives. "Approach," says the actor to him gravely, and he walks upon
+the stage in full view of the audience. "What is the meaning of this bad
+joke, Mr. Manager?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</a></span> Do you think me capable of being your accomplice in
+the wickedness of deceiving the public!" "Deceive the public! I!"
+stammers the manager.&mdash;"Yes, sir, you:" then addressing the pit,
+"Gentlemen, you think I am drinking champagne. No, it is seltzer-water."
+At this there was a roar of laughter, and the manager, deeming it wise
+to humor the joke, promised to go and get real champagne. During the
+time he was gone&mdash;when necessarily the action of the piece was brought
+to a standstill&mdash;Lemaitre entertained his audience with a dissertation
+on seltzer-water and the consciencelessness of managers.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often
+said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous
+class which attends theatres in <i>our</i> times, and that managers of the
+present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of
+theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far
+as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in
+question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in
+America to-day&mdash;at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is
+supposed to be most preserved&mdash;could not for a moment compare, in the
+severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its
+requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with.
+And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious
+popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the
+<i>r&eacute;p&eacute;tition g&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i> of <i>Toussaint L'Ouverture</i> the cream of artistic
+Paris was present. The members of the Com&eacute;die Fran&ccedil;aise came in force;
+Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists,
+painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on <i>this</i> solemn
+night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play
+to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some
+trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play,
+or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over
+Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience
+with him as by storm.</p>
+
+<p>Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He
+abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his
+health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a
+good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue.
+He devoted himself to his children&mdash;of whom he had four&mdash;with exemplary
+care and solicitude. The Antin&ouml;us of former days is now, as has been
+said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but
+voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so
+expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when
+acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a
+loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was
+playing in a piece called <i>The Black Doctor</i> at the time, and did not
+intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who
+was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat
+again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla m&acirc;rrr mont&acirc;&acirc;&acirc;t tojors"
+("Et la mer montait toujours"&mdash;"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered
+and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes
+without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully
+fifteen years Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.</p>
+
+<p>No stage reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's.
+Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile.
+This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations,
+each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the
+other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face,
+his fiery eyes, his trembling lip, there seems still energy enough for a
+hundred ordinary actors of merit; and yet he gives to any part he essays
+the minute attention to details, the unwearying patience, which would in
+themselves almost win success for an incarnation of commonplace.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Wirt Sikes.</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The Conservatoire de Musique et de D&eacute;clamation lyrique is a
+municipal and governmental institution in the French capital, founded
+for the gratuitous instruction of youth of both sexes in singing, music
+and declamation. It accommodates six hundred pupils, and has a library
+of eight thousand volumes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> A cant name among the French for the claque.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="THE_SONG-WIND" id="THE_SONG-WIND"></a>THE SONG-WIND.</h2>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">I stand in a climate of spring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Overblown by a wind from the South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With joy unspeakable thrilled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ineffable song in my mouth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the wind is a breeze of delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And its blowing is rhythmic and fleet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It comes from the heart of the South.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It comes like the breath of a dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blown through the still regions of sleep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It comes from the islands of love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Lying midmost the tropical deep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It has the fresh smell of sea-grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It is woven of coolness and heat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fruit-flavored and burdened with spice.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It stirs the high tops of the trees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With greenness and fragrance o'erfraught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through which the swift sun-glories glance<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like flashes of wonderful thought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It touches the rose till it burns<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like love in a heart made complete;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It kisses the world into flower.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A breath of all ages it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the years, like a shuttle of gold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Runs the wonder of song on the wind&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wonder of flute and of lyre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A music made mellow and meet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Sappho, the princess of song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">O Sappho! O love-laden soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A thrill in the rushes there is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sea breaks into loud song<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That throbs with the pulse of the breeze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And singers, remembering thee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Cast their crowns and their lyres at their feet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For the South wind rewakens thy song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It blows with a rustle of palms<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a sound of the laurel and bay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far voices and clapping of hands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like applause at the end of a play:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It strengthens the poet like wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And clothes him from head unto feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the power and glory of life.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">It lifts the gold hair of a girl<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till it shines in the sun like a flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It flows through the locks of a man<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Toiling hard at his song and his fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is heavy with music of birds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It has whispers no lips can repeat:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The angels float by on its tide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ah, world! while the South wind prevails&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With flowers and rushes and streams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intrude not a sound of thy wheels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But leave me alone with my dreams&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My reveries born of this breeze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And my life, though lowly it be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will be happier far than a king's<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">If the South wind, the song-wind kiss me!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i24"><span class="smcap">James Maurice Thompson.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="NORTHWARD_TO_HIGH_ASIA" id="NORTHWARD_TO_HIGH_ASIA"></a>NORTHWARD TO HIGH ASIA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>From Calcutta my route was northward to Thibet, to reach, if possible,
+its capital city of Lhassa, residence of the Grand Lama of the
+Booddhists&mdash;the pontifical sovereign of Eastern Asia. My journey thither
+was planned by the way of Sikkim, and thence through the Cholah Pass in
+the Himalaya range. I was most anxious to reach a city so interestingly
+described by the Abb&eacute; Huc nearly thirty years ago, and to learn
+something further about the present condition and prospects of the
+"Snowy Region of the North" and the lofty table-lands of Central Asia,
+so seldom visited by European travelers.</p>
+
+<p>The cars of the East Indian Railway carry one in a single night 220
+miles to the town of Sahibgunge and the banks of the Ganges. The first
+sight of the sacred river excited in me but little enthusiasm. It was
+about a mile in width, shallow and very muddy, with a swift current and
+dreary sandy banks, where huge crocodiles were basking in the sun. Its
+religious character among the Hindoos is well known. Though highly
+esteemed from its source to its mouth, there are some particular places
+more eminently sacred than others&mdash;as Benares, Allahabad and
+Hurdwar&mdash;and to these pilgrims resort from great distances to perform
+their ablutions and carry off water to be used in future ceremonies. The
+Ganges water is also valued for its supposed medicinal properties, and
+in the British courts of justice witnesses of the Brahmanical faith are
+sworn upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Having been ferried across the sacred flood, I journeyed onward in what
+is termed a <i>shigram</i>&mdash;simply a large palanquin on wheels drawn by two
+horses. As I reclined at length upon its cushion-covered bottom, I could
+see that the country through which we passed was an immense plain, and a
+clump of bamboos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</a></span> or an occasional palm alone hinted at an Oriental and
+a tropical landscape. The trees were mostly banians, peepuls and
+mangoes, and there were many large fields of rice and corn. The native
+huts were made of bamboo reeds and mud, with straw-thatched roofs. A
+view of their interiors was of course forbidden me on account of that
+cursed system of caste which prevails from Peshawur to Rangoon and from
+Cashmere and Thibet to Cape Cormorin and Ceylon. The road was
+macadamized and shaded by rows of immense trees. The tricky and balky
+horses (Mongol ponies) delayed us considerably, but it was very amusing
+to see the methods employed to coax or coerce them. A groom held in his
+hand a piece of bamboo about two feet in length, at the extremity of
+which was fastened a strong looped horsehair cord, which was twisted
+around the ear of a fractious beast, and a very little power applied a
+few paces in advance generally removed all scruples as to its progress.
+Horses who would not back into the shafts were assisted by a rope
+secured round a hind leg, and one who would not start forward was
+suddenly persuaded to change its mind through a similar combination of
+rope and pressure applied to a fore leg. Often one native would take a
+wheel, others would push from behind, some would lift one of the fore
+feet of the obstinate brutes, a few would take their heads, and then,
+after much alternate fondling and beating, off we would go at a very
+break-neck speed for perhaps a mile, when the horses would quiet down
+into an easy trot for the remainder of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>About twelve o'clock on the first night a very provoking yet amusing
+incident happened. I had some time previously covered myself with my
+blankets and closed the sliding doors of the vehicle, as it was a bitter
+cold night, and had been enjoying a sound sleep, when, waking suddenly,
+I found the shigram standing in the middle of the road, but without
+either horses, coachman or groom. I had heard that such an event will
+occasionally happen in Indian dak-posting and so endeavored not to be
+disconcerted. Alighting from the shigram, I walked toward a fire which
+was just discernible through the trees, and found my missing coachman
+taking a comfortable smoke and a quiet chat with half a dozen
+bullock-drivers, friends of his, who were camping there for the night. I
+approached the social group with the feelings of a ghoul, shook my fists
+in the coachman's face and talked exceedingly loud, making free use of
+all the bad words in Bengalee of which my then limited vocabulary would
+admit, placing particular emphasis upon the scathing <i>soour</i> ("pig") and
+the withering <i>gudha</i> ("fool")&mdash;epithets more dreaded by the Hindoos
+than the most profane oaths. The man jabbered something in his native
+tongue, about as intelligible to me as if spoken in the language of the
+Bechuanas of South Africa or in that of our Sioux Indians. Returning to
+the shigram, I quietly prepared myself to await the issue. But the
+effects of my furious philippic had been complete, and in less than ten
+minutes the ponies were harnessed and we were again on our way.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning I stopped at a dak-bungalow for breakfast. The word <i>dak</i>
+means post or stage, and the bungalows are inns for the accommodation of
+post-travelers built by government at distances of about twenty miles
+apart. They are of one story, and usually contain some half dozen
+apartments for sitting, dining and sleeping, besides dressing- and
+bath-rooms. These bungalows are under the direction of a <i>khansamah</i>, or
+native butler, who hires a small corps of servants to attend the wants
+of travelers. If you bring provisions, the khansamah will have them
+cooked for you, or he will supply you with a limited bill of fare,
+charging for each dish according to an official scale with which every
+bungalow is furnished. Any traveler can obtain rooms in a dak-bungalow
+during twenty-four hours, for which he must pay one rupee (fifty cents),
+and no one can claim shelter for more than this period should the
+bungalow be full or should other travelers arrive.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the following day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</a></span> we reached the foot of the hills
+and the terminus of the shigram travel. The Himalayas in view were bold
+and sharp in outline, and densely wooded to their very tops, and my
+route lay directly over the nearer range, which was something more than
+a mile in height. You may ascend the foot-hills by palanquin or pony.
+For the former, previous application is necessary, as relays of bearers
+must be arranged on the road. There are eight bearers, four of whom
+carry you at a time. They have two movements&mdash;a sharp trot, and a long
+even step as a rest from the regular gait&mdash;but neither is very enjoyable
+to the occupant of the palanquin after a few hours' trial. They relieve
+each other every half mile. The stages are about eight miles in length,
+at the end of each of which an entire new set of bearers is obtained. On
+comparatively good and level roads these bearers will average four miles
+an hour: in ascending or descending steep mountains the rate of speed is
+of course somewhat less. I chose a mountain-pony, a wiry and vicious
+little fellow, and engaged a coolie to carry my baggage to a village
+thirty miles distant for the grand recompense of one rupee.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after starting I met people of both sexes who were neither Hindoos
+nor Mohammedans, but bore a strong resemblance to the Chinese. The men
+were short, stout and muscular, and their faces wore a stolid and almost
+stupid look, which was not at all improved by their long black hair or
+by their filthy garments and persons. The women, however, were rather
+good-looking, not concealing the face as in the plains. These people
+were natives of Nepaul and Bhotan, independent states of India. After a
+ride of five or six miles I passed a <i>terai</i>, a great jungle infested by
+tigers and elephants; so at least my companion, a devout follower of the
+Prophet, informed me. This terai consisted of rank grass fifteen feet in
+height, thick underbrush and some few huge trees; and so dense was it
+that a passage could only be made with an axe. It is always advisable to
+pass through such places during the daytime. At Kurseong there was a
+good hotel, the Clarendon, kept by an old New Yorker, who told me he had
+left America fifteen years before, and during that period had traveled
+all over the world, had made a great deal of money in Western Africa in
+the palm-oil trade, and had finally "settled down" (or rather <i>up</i>) in
+India. He started the first tea-plantation in the Himalayas, and is
+reported to be worth at present more than a million rupees.</p>
+
+<p>The coolie, a Nepaulese, carried my baggage up the mountains at a sharp
+trot, and reached the hotel but two hours after my own arrival. It was a
+wonderful exhibition of strength and endurance. The distance was thirty
+miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The
+hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to
+such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to
+Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of
+the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese. They were
+splendid-looking men, shorty but thick-set and very muscular, with
+olive-brown skins, piercing black eyes, long glossy hair and regular and
+handsome features. One of this class of men (Hindoo hill-tribes) will
+carry thirty <i>seers</i> (sixty pounds) upon his back, or twenty-five seers
+upon his head, up the hills for fifty miles, without rest or food, in
+twenty-four hours; his charge for which is but one rupee&mdash;a special
+instance of the astonishingly cheap labor of all India.</p>
+
+<p>The road ran the whole distance on the face of almost perpendicular
+hills, and for the greater part of the way was guarded by a low wall on
+the dangerous side. The scenery was most grand, and I already felt well
+repaid for the arduous journey from Calcutta. Some views were, however,
+rather frightful. Imagine a ride on the very brink of a precipice
+thirty-five hundred feet in depth, with the hills rising abruptly on the
+other hand twenty-five hundred feet in height above you. The tops of the
+distant and lofty mountains were all hidden in the clouds, but the
+scenery of the valleys beneath one's feet was very beautiful. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</a></span>
+immense fields of tea planted in rectangular rows, the dark-green and
+dense foliage of the forests, with here a planter's dwelling or a
+factory glistening in the morning's sun, and there perhaps a little
+silvery waterfall or a bubbling brook, and great black shadows cast by
+the clouds, made a truly impressive picture. And yet, though already on
+hills more than a mile in height, I had only gained this altitude in
+order to obtain glimpses of much higher and grander mountains, nearly a
+hundred miles distant.</p>
+
+<p>Just before reaching Darjeeling there is a military cantonment, where
+some troops are stationed for the active duty of protecting Her
+Majesty's northern Indian boundaries. The officers' residences and the
+barracks are situated on the top and upon the precipitous sides of a
+small hill, and bridle-paths wind between, and flower-gardens and
+ornamental trees are to be seen grouped about each dwelling. Darjeeling
+is distant about three hundred and fifty miles almost due north from
+Calcutta, of which it is regarded as the sanitarium, though, owing to
+the hardships of the journey from that city, the more distant Simla is
+quite as often resorted to by the invalided officials, merchants and
+troops of Hindostan. The feasibility of building a railroad to
+Darjeeling has long been discussed, and it appears that the engineering
+difficulties, though great, can nevertheless be overcome; but no active
+steps have as yet been taken toward the attainment of so desirable an
+object. The European residents of the town of Darjeeling number about
+fifty, and there are perhaps four times as many tea-planters in the
+surrounding country.</p>
+
+<p>The next day being Sunday, and the day on which marketable supplies are
+brought into town for the whole week, the proprietor of my hotel took me
+to see the bazaar. It much resembled others visited in and near
+Calcutta, but I was surprised at the variety of European vegetables
+offered for sale: there were peas, onions, potatoes, squashes, lettuce,
+radishes, turnips and many kinds of grain, including that peculiarly
+Yankee "institooshun" pop-corn. The bazaar was held out of doors in a
+public square, with a few shops of dry goods around, and a most terrible
+din arose from the motley crowd there assembled. In one place a number
+of soldiers from the cantonments were bidding on some glassware offered
+at auction, and in another mothers of families and <i>khansamahs</i> were
+bustling about engaging their necessary household supplies. Here was a
+wretched beggar, with a grotesque mask on his face, dancing before some
+of the merchants, who gave him a few potatoes in exchange for his
+contortions. The people embraced Hindoos, Mohammedans, Bhoteeas,
+Nepaulese and Sikkimites, and presented every variety of dress and
+figure, having seemingly but one feature or possession in common, and
+that was a very prominent display of unclean skin and raiment. The
+Nepaulese women wore bracelets and necklaces of Indian coins, besides
+silver anklets, finger- and nose-rings, gold earrings and beads, and
+each had also suspended from her neck a silver snuff-box. These boxes
+were three or four inches square, made of the purest metal, and
+handsomely carved and embossed.</p>
+
+<p>At Darjeeling I learned that my plan of traveling to Lhassa was not
+feasible&mdash;that the Tal&eacute; Lama ("sea of wisdom") and the great palace, and
+a city whose three productions, according to Chinese travelers, are
+lamas, women and dogs&mdash;many of whose streets are lined with houses built
+of ox and rams' horns; and a people whose mode of salutation is by
+uncovering the head, thrusting out the tongue and scratching the right
+ear, and whose manner of disposal of their dead is by cutting the
+corpses in pieces and giving them to "sacred dogs," raised and nurtured
+in convents for the express purpose&mdash;would have to be known only through
+the reports of others. The Thibetan traders in Darjeeling reported that
+the <i>Pugla Diwan</i> of Sikkim had become a great man in Thibet, and had
+seized everything <i>en route</i> from Lhassa during the year, and, having
+stored all in huge warehouses, would allow nothing to pass into Sikkim
+and Bengal. Previous travelers and missionaries had all of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</a></span> entered
+the country in the disguise of priests or of Chinese or Mogul traders,
+having a knowledge of the Thibetan or some allied language; and even
+then so greatly fearing detection as to be unable to learn very much of
+the condition and capabilities of the land or the habits and usages of
+the people. That foreigners should be so rigorously excluded from Thibet
+is doubtless owing to Chinese influence&mdash;to the fear and jealousy of
+British power and possession in the East, the southern boundaries being
+rigorously guarded by a <i>cordon</i> of Chinese garrison-stations on the
+highlands of the Himalayas.</p>
+
+<p>I might approach nearer, or perhaps ascend the great mountain
+Kanchinjinga, which is about fifty miles distant from Darjeeling, though
+there are no roads over or around the intervening hills, and the journey
+would have to be undertaken on foot, and tents, provisions and a large
+retinue of servants would be necessary. And then, at best, but the
+snow-limit or a little higher could be reached (hardly two-thirds the
+distance to the summit), and therefore the interest of the trip would
+scarcely compensate for its hardships. Instead of this, the proprietor
+of the hotel proposed a little excursion on horseback into Sikkim, the
+country of the Lepchas. It is ten or twelve miles to the bottom of the
+valley, and the road (or rather bridle-path) winds around the hills
+forward and back, but constantly descending, until at length the Rungeed
+River is reached. Some of the precipices were frightful to look over,
+and I clutched the reins tightly, braced myself in the saddle, and
+almost held my breath as the pony trotted quietly along a path three
+feet in width and often lying at an angle of 45&deg;; but there was no
+danger, unless it might perhaps be from the sliding away of part of the
+road, since the ponies are mountain-bred and very sure-footed. The views
+were extremely grand, and the distances from peak to peak so immense
+that the mind was almost lost to detail. Much of the land is cleared of
+forest trees and covered with tea-plants: cinchona also is cultivated,
+and with great success.</p>
+
+<p>The Rungeed is a small mountain-torrent, a branch of the Peesta, which
+latter empties its waters into the great Brahmapootra ("son of Brahma").
+It serves as a boundary-line between Bengal and Sikkim. Crossing this
+stream at a height of about thirty feet, there is a bamboo-cane
+suspension bridge three hundred feet in length, which was built entirely
+by the natives. It is intended for foot-passengers, and will safely
+support a dozen people at a time. It consists of sixteen bamboo canes,
+of the size of the finger, on either side. The bottom is formed of three
+very large stems of bamboo, and a sort of wickerwork extends from these
+upward to the supporting canes, which are about six feet from side to
+side, and may in crossing just be grasped by the hands. The bridge has a
+peculiar oscillating motion, which increases so much at the centre,
+together with an up-and-down movement, that, with a sight of the
+fiercely rushing water beneath, the traveler's head is apt to become
+giddy.</p>
+
+<p>Crossing to the other side, I met in the forests an English gentleman,
+who informed me he was just returning from a two weeks' tour through
+Sikkim. It was Colonel Manwaring of H. M.'s Indian army, who was engaged
+in compiling under government orders a dictionary of the Lepcha tongue.
+Salutations over, Briton like, he pressed me at once to drink, asked if
+I would try a native beer, and upon my assenting ordered a quantity of
+<i>chi</i> (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It
+proved a nutritious and exhilarating though not intoxicating beverage,
+and we drank it <i>&agrave; la</i> Sikkimite, warm, through a reed a foot in length
+and from a joint of bamboo holding perhaps a couple of quarts. The
+colonel informed me that the Lepcha language is very copious, expressive
+and beautiful, abounding largely in metaphor. The number of words is
+very extraordinary, and requires a person to be something of a
+geologist, botanist and zoologist&mdash;in short, to understand very many of
+the sciences and not a few of the arts&mdash;in order to learn perfectly this
+curious tongue. His labors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</a></span> among the people he described as very trying
+and discouraging. He had been employed upon the dictionary more than
+three years, and it was not nearly completed. We rode slowly up the
+hills, and reached the inn late in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>I had waited nearly a week for a clear day on which to view the highest
+mountain-peaks in the world, and had almost despaired of success when on
+the last morning of my stay, upon looking from my window at daybreak, I
+saw that although the valleys and sides of some of the hills were
+covered with clouds and fog, still a lofty peak near Darjeeling showed
+its face distinctly and for the first time during my visit. Remembering
+that this mountain was over two miles in height, perhaps Mount
+Kanchinjinga might be in sight, but I hardly dared entertain the
+thought. It was my last chance, for I intended to return to the plains
+in the afternoon; so, jumping into my clothes, pulling on my hat and
+snatching up my field-glass, I walked, or rather ran, to the other side
+of the hill for an unobstructed view. Suddenly turning a sharp bend in
+the road, I saw through the trees a clearly-defined, substantial-looking
+cloud&mdash;was it a cloud, though?&mdash;and rushing forward a dozen paces, lo
+and behold! one of the highest mountain-summits on the globe stood
+unveiled before me! I confess never in my travels to have experienced
+like sensations of awe and reverence. My eyes involuntarily filled with
+tears, and I stood completely lost in wonder and admiration.</p>
+
+<p>It was early morning. The sun had newly risen, though not yet visible,
+and threw a flood of rosy light upon the gigantic snow-tipped pinnacles,
+causing them to glisten like polished white marble. The valley below,
+four or five thousand feet deep, was filled with an ocean of silvery
+clouds, which majestically rolled and rose upon the forest-clad sides of
+the great mountains as far as the limit of perpetual snow; and from this
+fleecy mass as a border towered aloft against an azure-hued sky the
+magnificent form of Kanchinjinga. For miles in each direction the
+thickly-wooded sub-hills were in sight, but all interest centred in the
+never-by-man-trodden peak before and above me. A dread and awful silence
+seemed to pervade the air, and the total absence of life or motion lent
+an almost supernatural glamour to the scene. For nearly two hours I sat
+as one entranced, until the sun gently lifted the clouds from the
+valleys, and as with a silver-wrought screen shut off from my eyes the
+most impressive sight they ever beheld. During this marvelous exhibition
+the "littleness of man" had been made very painfully lucid. Yet,
+perhaps, there is nothing so calculated to raise the thoughts, enlarge
+the mind or purify the heart as the contemplation of the sublime and
+beautiful in Nature.</p>
+
+<p>Kanchinjinga, properly speaking, consists of three peaks, which are
+sharp, serrated, precipitous, and apparently composed of solid rock from
+the snow-limit to the summit. Its immense height is not thoroughly
+appreciated by the traveler for two causes&mdash;its great distance (fifty
+miles "as the crow flies"), and the fact that the point of observation
+is itself one-fourth the height of the mountain. Had I risen earlier and
+ridden to Mount Senchal, fifteen hundred feet above Darjeeling, I
+<i>might</i> have obtained a view of Mount Everest, which is nearly thirty
+thousand feet in perpendicular height above the sea (about five and a
+half miles), and is the supremest point upon our globe, while Mount
+Kanchinjinga, which until quite recently was supposed to be the higher
+of the two, is found to be of about eight hundred feet less altitude.
+Mount Everest is a single peak, a cone, and appears like a small white
+tent above the clouds, but in grandeur and sublimity it is excelled by
+Kanchinjinga. Well do the Himalaya Mountains bear out the meaning of
+their name&mdash;the "abode of snow"&mdash;for on their southern slopes in some
+places the snow-line descends to fourteen thousand feet. The mean
+elevation of this remarkable range is double that of the Alps, and many
+of its passes to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia are higher
+than the summit of Mont Blanc. Huge glaciers of smooth ice, though none
+so vast as those of the Alps, are numerous in parts of this stupendous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</a></span>
+mountain-chain, and even descend from the regions of perpetual snow to
+eleven thousand feet. Though the Andes of South America present a
+mountain-system twice the length of the Himalayas, still in respect to
+altitude the former are much surpassed by the latter. Mount Dwalaghiri
+in Nepaul is of nearly the same height as Kanchinjinga: then, there are
+two peaks which attain twenty-six thousand feet; four about twenty-four
+thousand feet; and over twenty that reach an elevation exceeding twenty
+thousand feet!</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Darjeeling, I visited one of the large tea-gardens near the
+terai at the foot of the hills. The best of land may be purchased at ten
+rupees per acre, and an average-sized plantation embraces about two
+hundred acres. The prospective garden must be cleared of its forest and
+jungle, which is an arduous task, but when once it is in order one
+native can properly cultivate an acre. The best teas are raised upon the
+tops of the hills, upward of seven thousand feet above the sea-level.
+Good tea can only be grown under two conditions: these are moisture and
+heat, and hence the southern slopes of the Himalayas are admirably
+adapted to its cultivation, for during the middle of the day the sun is
+warm, and at night there are very copious dews. The laborers employed
+are all natives, and one or two Europeans only are necessary to
+superintend the largest plantation. The indigenous tea-plant was first
+discovered in Assam (the north-eastern district of Bengal) in the year
+1830. From there it was introduced into Cachar and Darjeeling, and from
+these places into the hills in the north-western part of Hindostan. In
+1850 the English government founded plantations in the Kangra Valley,
+about one hundred and twenty miles from Lahore, on the borders of
+Cashmere, which proved so successful that many were soon established in
+various other localities. Cinchona (<i>Cinchona calisaya</i>) also succeeds
+well upon the hills, and is being extensively grown, as, owing to the
+prevalence of fevers of all kinds, quinine is in great demand throughout
+India.</p>
+
+<p>Reaching the Ganges again without accident or noteworthy event, I
+traveled on westward up its rich valley, and soon entered upon the great
+plain of Hindostan (embracing an area of half a million square miles),
+which, though nearly treeless, contains some of the most fertile soil on
+the globe. There were clusters of huts and dilapidated mosques at short
+intervals, and the natives might be seen at work in the fields with
+their antiquated wooden ploughs, the bent limbs of trees, or engaged in
+cutting <i>paddy</i> (rice in the husk), or hoeing poppy-plants, or digging
+little drains. Wherever we met them they would stop work, drop
+everything, and gaze at the railway train, which seemed to them
+apparently as strange a sight as if it had just dropped down from the
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>In Hindostan, land is owned either by government or by the native rajahs
+and nawabs. That belonging to the former is leased to a class of people
+called <i>zemindars</i> (the word means "landholder," "landkeeper"), and they
+sublet it to another class styled <i>ryots</i> (the "husbandmen,"
+"peasants"), who are the real tillers of the soil. A well-to-do zemindar
+will rent two thousand acres of land, for which he pays about four
+<i>annas</i> (twelve cents) an acre. The hardships of the ryots are
+great&mdash;they are treated like slaves, and can barely make a
+subsistence&mdash;but among the zemindars are numbered some of the wealthiest
+men in the country: one, for instance, owns fifty square miles of
+fertile land, all wrung from the labor of the poor peasants. Formerly
+these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but
+latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the
+before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement
+been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.</p>
+
+<p>As we rolled along, on both sides of the railroad as far as the eye
+could see were immense fields of wheat and barley, paddy, tobacco,
+mustard, the castor-oil plant, millet, maize, the poppy, indigo and
+sugar-cane. Wheat and barley are not sown broadcast as with us, but in
+drills a few inches apart: both grains<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</a></span> are consumed in the
+country&mdash;little or none is exported. The paddy resembles rye or wheat
+when growing, the rice-kernels being contained in husks at the top of
+the spires. The plant requires a wet loamy soil (such as is best offered
+in Cambodia and Siam, the former being styled "the Asiatic storehouse of
+rice"), and there is but one crop in the year. The mustard-plants which
+we saw were about two feet in height, and bore small yellow flowers as
+crests. The oil and the table article of commerce are made by grinding
+the seeds in mills constructed for the purpose. The castor-oil plant is
+a green and succulent shoot about six feet in height, with white flowers
+hanging in bunches like hops. Maize is never fed to cattle as in
+America, but is all consumed by the poorer classes of natives. But most
+interesting were the poppy-plants. These are raised in oblong patches of
+ground surrounded by low mud walls for retaining the water which is
+essential to their growth. The plants are quite small, with green leaves
+at the base, from which rise tall stalks with bulb-like tops, the pod of
+the flower. At the proper season, when ripe, incisions are made in these
+bulbs&mdash;simple scratches&mdash;by drawing two needles across them toward
+evening, and the juice, which exudes during the night, is scraped off in
+the morning and collected in shells. This operation is performed upon
+all sides of the bulb, and then the juice is sent in earthenware jars to
+Bankipore to be manufactured into opium by drying in the sun and various
+other processes. When quite prepared it is pressed into balls, boxed and
+exported to China, to the great emolument of the British Indian
+government, in whose hands the trade is a monopoly (it deriving
+one-twelfth of its entire income from this traffic alone), and to the
+fearful moral and physical degradation of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Patna is one of the oldest cities in India. It extends for a mile and a
+half along the south bank of the Ganges, which is here five miles in
+width in the rainy season. It consists properly of but a single street
+eight miles in length and thirty feet in width, with numerous short
+byways. Patna contains about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants,
+and was formerly a place of such considerable trade that the English,
+French, Dutch and Danes had factories here, though few European
+merchants remain at the present day. I found the streets crowded with
+gayly-dressed, vivacious Mohammedans and Hindoos and solemn,
+gruff-looking Afghans. Some were on foot; some on horseback, astride
+splendid horses brought from the Deccan; many rode in <i>eckas</i>, a few in
+<i>baillies</i>&mdash;two varieties of native vehicle. The dwellings in the city,
+built of mud with tiled roofs, were mostly but one story in height. In
+those of two stories the lower is rented as a shop to the merchants (or
+used as such by the owners), and in the upper the family dwells, as is
+customary in our cities. The stores were of all denominations, but the
+manufactures were principally of cotton goods and earthenware, which
+latter is made in feeble imitation of European crockery. The smell of
+the curry and <i>ghee</i> (clarified butter) in some shops was intensely
+disagreeable, and the numerous shelves of <i>metai</i> (sweets compounded of
+sugar, butter and flour, and of which the natives are very fond) looked
+anything but inviting to a <i>gora-log</i> (a fair-complexioned person). It
+is generally supposed that the Hindoos never use intoxicating beverages,
+but I passed several liquor-shops and saw three or four men drunk in the
+streets. The drink in general request is the fermented juice of the
+<i>taul</i> or Indian palm tree, which, though mild and soft to the palate,
+is yet very acrid and baneful to the stomach.</p>
+
+<p>There is an old granary in Patna, a large beehive-shaped structure of
+brick and plaster, at a guess two hundred feet in diameter by one
+hundred feet in height and twelve feet in thickness. Two stair-cases of
+one hundred and fifty steps each wind upward to its summit on either
+side, giving the building from a distance the appearance of a huge brick
+cork-screw. These steps were intended to be used for carrying up the
+grain, the building being filled through a small aperture at the top,
+and up them Shah Maharaj,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</a></span> the present premier of Nepaul, is said once
+to have ridden his pony&mdash;a most daring feat of horsemanship and nerve.
+On one side were two large stone tablets with inscriptions&mdash;the one in
+Persian, the other in English. They simply stated that the granary was
+erected in 1786 as part of a general plan ordered by the
+governor-general and council of India for the perpetual prevention of
+famine. It has never yet, however, been filled with grain, but has been
+employed as a military magazine. From the summit a fine view of the
+surrounding country is to be had, comprising plains and forests, stately
+bungalows and flowery "compounds," vegetable gardens, native huts, and
+in the distance the sacred Ganges, with its stony bed more than half
+exposed.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly, famines were not infrequent in Hindostan, which was owing to
+an insufficient fall of rain at the proper season and consequent failure
+of the crops. One occurred in the year 1770, in which thirty millions of
+people are said to have perished in the valley of the Ganges. This Patna
+granary was doubtless one of a number which it was intended should be
+built throughout the country and filled with grain in times of plenty to
+supply the people in case of famine, like those in the cities of ancient
+Egypt which Joseph filled with corn in the seven years of plenteousness
+and opened in the seven years of dearth, when "famine waxed sore in the
+land." But the building of the Ganges Canal and the railroads have
+rendered it almost impossible that a widespread calamitous famine should
+again occur in this section of India&mdash;the former by providing a more
+thorough system of irrigation, and the latter by affording means for the
+rapid and easy transportation of food from one province to another. The
+extent of the recent famine has been grossly exaggerated. Had certain
+public works&mdash;the construction of railroads and other sources of
+communication and of canals for the irrigation of the rice-fields&mdash;which
+the government contemplated prior to the outbreak of the distress, been
+completed, probably no reckless, sensational reports of "a disaster
+which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have reached
+our ears.</p>
+
+<p>In the long street already mentioned as extending from Bankipore to
+Patna is situated the government opium manufactory and warehouse. March
+and April are the months in which opium is made: at the time of my visit
+it was being packed and prepared for shipment to China. The various
+buildings are of brick, and the grounds are surrounded by a high wall.
+Entering one of the gates, I passed a Sepoy sentinel, and a little
+farther on some stone barracks. I then entered one of the largest
+buildings, and found about a hundred natives, with a European
+superintendent, busily engaged in weighing and packing the drug. The
+juice of the poppy-plant is brought in by the farmers from the
+surrounding country in stone jars, and has the appearance of thick tar.
+It is placed in large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun.
+Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling
+cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the
+poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in
+thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and
+the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves
+with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers
+(four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each.
+They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin partitions, rolled in
+poppy-leaves. There were forty balls in a box, which was worth when
+filled twelve hundred and eighty rupees or six hundred and forty
+dollars. About three thousand natives were employed in this manufactory.</p>
+
+<p>From Patna I went on to Benares, the Mecca of Hindooism, where for the
+space of two weeks I was royally f&ecirc;ted by Maharajah Isuree Pershod,
+chief of the four great castes of the Hindoos.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Frank Vincent, Jr.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="BEHIND_THEIR_FANS" id="BEHIND_THEIR_FANS"></a>BEHIND THEIR FANS.</h2>
+
+<h3>FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE DROZ.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Last evening I was guilty of a very shameful action. I hid behind a
+curtained door and listened to a conversation, and, what makes it still
+more unpardonable in me, I cannot help telling you what I heard. It was
+this.</p>
+
+<p>I had been at the ball about half an hour when I saw in a corner of the
+parlor, through the door which leads into the conservatory, a little
+group of three young girls arrayed in billows of white muslin, who were
+talking behind their fans with so much animation that it was impossible
+not to notice them.</p>
+
+<p>These three girls had reached that age when young women's hands are
+slender but still rosy, when their forms have still that charming
+delicacy which some people call thinness and others youthfulness, and
+when their movements have that excessive suppleness which is like
+awkwardness, but which it would be the height of art to imitate. Leaning
+back with easy grace in their arm chairs, which were drawn up close
+together, they were laughing unrestrainedly. Already women and
+coquettes, they would from time to time stretch out their well-gloved
+hands and pat their ample draperies with a thousand graceful little
+gestures. They were already mistresses of the art of looking at things
+without seeing them, of laughing when they were not amused, of showing
+their white teeth while smoothing their gloves at the wrist, and while
+modestly looking down of giving a vibration to their voices like the
+striking of glass, which cannot fail to attract attention. They had,
+too, the trick of stopping short in the midst of a movement and posing
+that you might see the turn of a shoulder or a graceful arm, and of
+turning their profile to you to show a pretty nose, of catching up their
+skirts and turning away with a movement like a frightened dove till the
+ear alone is visible, and replying, "Oh, how you frightened me!" when
+you have said nothing to them but "How do you do?" Then their way of
+prattling unceasingly without rhyme or reason, or when both ideas and
+words fail them of exclaiming, "Oh! oh! oh! yes, indeed!" while stroking
+their hair!</p>
+
+<p>Ah, dear little creatures! I love them just as they are, so knowing and
+so pure, so gracious and so skillful. I really love these little angels
+who make their entrance into the great world between two polkas&mdash;who go
+to a ball instead of going to bed&mdash;who broke their doll into pieces two
+days ago, and now think of painting themselves under the eyes like
+mamma&mdash;who know to a louis the price of a cashmere shawl&mdash;are
+connoisseurs in diamonds, look men straight in the eye, are all worn out
+when Lent comes, and who during Holy Week, after devoutly nibbling a bit
+of salmon salad, run off to their religious exercises in boots with
+tassels and with their hair powdered. I love these little painted lambs
+as one loves roses in December or green peas in the middle of January.
+There is simplicity even in their excessive self-possession&mdash;something,
+at any rate, which reminds one of green apples which one longs to taste.</p>
+
+<p>They are already women&mdash;in fact, they were when they were born&mdash;but
+still one guesses at their motives, reads their little thoughts:
+sometimes, too, one finds a clue which is like a revelation. They are&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But pardon me, young ladies! I am afraid I am going too far: perhaps as
+you turn over these pages you will recall the gentleman who was looking
+at you so attentively the other evening. Perhaps you will recognize
+yourselves, however imperfect the sketch may be, and then&mdash;But it is too
+late now not to tell you all.</p>
+
+<p>I slyly opened the library-door, and, turning to the left, I made my way
+to the conservatory, and stationed myself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</a></span> directly behind you, near the
+door, in the folds of the curtain, and there I heard it all. I did even
+more than that: in coming away I snapped off a branch of camellia. What
+follows is merely the work of a reporter: if memory or skill is lacking,
+forgive me and I will do better another time.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the youngest, looking at her pink satin slipper, "I mean the
+one with the decoration in his buttonhole: don't you see him? He is
+standing by the mantelpiece, by the side of the big bald man in a white
+waistcoat."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the big bald man is not a colonel&mdash;no indeed. I know him very
+well: he comes to see papa. It's Mr. Thingamy&mdash;some queer name. After
+every visit of his we find two casters off the easy-chair. Mamma says
+he's clever, papa says he's not: as for me, I think he smells of
+pomade."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does he put his pomade? He has hardly three hairs on his head."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but they curl, my dear. I am sure he ought to wear a little
+crimson velvet cap with tassels. Dear me! how I do hate a man as fat as
+that! Papa, who is slender in comparison with this bear, seems to me a
+little&mdash;when he is shaving&mdash;Well, if it was not papa, I should like to
+plane him down a little."</p>
+
+<p>"But, girls, I don't mean the stout one: I mean the one by his side,
+with an aquiline nose and moustaches. There, he is taking an ice. He
+seems to be a lion. Now he's blowing his nose: he's Colonel C&mdash;&mdash;."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I see. Dear me! how hard he blows his nose! Your colonel has a
+cold: one can hear him from here&mdash;ha! ha!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing strange in his having a cold: he has just come from
+Africa: see how tanned he is. Well, my dear, he <i>is</i> a lion."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he is an attach&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how stupid you are! I said he is a lion because he fought like a
+tiger, and he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then say he is a tiger, and have done with it."</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;(Shrugging her shoulders) "and that at the battle of
+Rapata&mdash;Ratapa&mdash;or Patara&mdash;I can't remember exactly what, but it was a
+frightful battle&mdash;where the Arabs bit the dust&mdash;That's it, word for
+word, as papa read it aloud the other day out of the paper."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did they bite the dust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, because they were so angry. You know when you are in a
+passion&mdash;Well, in this battle the colonel received a cannon-ball or
+bullet&mdash;I don't remember which&mdash;in his left shoulder, and they could not
+extract it, so he returned to France very ill."</p>
+
+<p>"How terrible those battles must be!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the day after a battle that is terrible. Just think of it! They
+found this poor colonel under a mountain of dead men at the very moment
+the wild beasts were going to devour him like the missionary in the
+<i>Propagation of the Faith</i>. Being swallowed by a crocodile is indeed
+terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nothing. When you think you have before you a man with an iron
+machine in his shoulder that you could hardly lift, you can't help
+shivering. Oh, it's fine to be a soldier: in fact, you may call it the
+noblest profession. To begin with, every one respects them, and their
+life is full of triumph."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in time of war, but in time of peace&mdash;in time of peace&mdash;well, they
+talk over the way they got their wounds, and the band plays while they
+are at dinner. It seems the colonel can have the band play whenever he
+wants to."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally, since it's his band."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, all that is very nice, and besides that you make calls on the
+wife of the prefect, the receiver-general and the bishop."</p>
+
+<p>"On the bishop's wife? What are you talking about? Ha! ha!" (She takes
+off her gloves and begins to bite her nails.)</p>
+
+<p>"I did not say the bishop's wife: you are a naughty girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, it's only a general's wife who makes calls on the prefect's
+wife, like that."</p>
+
+<p>"I only began with the colonel: one soon gets to be general. Do you
+suppose that Colonel C&mdash;&mdash;, for instance, won't be a general soon?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"As for me, I would rather marry a general at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but a general does not get married in uniform."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, if you ask him to? That is something fine&mdash;a general at the
+altar. There is nothing more imposing than the military at church. Their
+gold epaulettes seem to go well with the organ. At the church of the
+Carmelites there are always one or two officers, but they are little
+ones, and they do not have the same effect. You did not know I was at
+the church of the Carmelites on Advent Sunday? Oh, there was a good
+father there who preached: it was indescribable!&mdash;Why don't you wear a
+braid across the top of your head? My dear child, everybody wears them:
+won't your mamma let you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that, but you can't possibly make a braid to go over the top
+and then two rolls behind, all out of your own hair."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you can get false hair. Ha! ha! what an innocent lamb you are!
+You can get false hair, my dear child."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but papa won't let me: he says I'm too young to begin."</p>
+
+<p>"What a pity! As for me, I had no trouble about it. Mamma said, 'It's
+vexatious, but what can you do, my child? You can't go to a ball in a
+cap;' and so we went and bought two beautiful blond braids."</p>
+
+<p>"Why two?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me finish.&mdash;See, there is Madame de V&mdash;&mdash; coming in: do you hear
+the door creaking?&mdash;Well, as I was saying, I had to buy two braids, for
+the very simple reason that I lost the first. It was very funny. We had
+hired a coup&eacute; for the day, papa having taken ours for himself: he always
+does. We started off for the hairdresser's in this hired carriage. I
+bought a superb braid, and they wrapped it up nicely for me. I got into
+the coup&eacute; and put my little parcel up against the window, you know,
+under the strap that you pull it up and down by. That was all very nice,
+but when we got home, and I was looking for my parcel before getting
+out, no parcel was to be found. I made a great fuss, and mamma did too.
+Only think! it had slipped in by the glass of the window, and had fallen
+into the inside of the door. I suppose it's still there. There's no way
+of getting it again, you see, so I had to buy another braid" (bending
+down her head coquettishly), "which I have the honor of introducing to
+you: it is thick, of a good color&mdash;one of the very best."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish I could have one, but I'm afraid I sha'n't before I'm
+married.&mdash;See, there is Jeanne bowing to us. Oh, that everlasting dress
+of hers! Doesn't she look like a fright with that pink pom-pon in her
+hair and her red nose? She's a kind-hearted girl, but then that pink!
+Pink never looks well with light hair. It always looks to me like salmon
+with white sauce. Ha! ha! Speaking of salmon, by the way, you left too
+early the other evening: we had such a supper, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how lovely Juliette looked! Didn't she? What a lovely head she has!
+I would give ten years of my life to have a head like hers. Ten years,
+dear me! yes, gladly: life isn't such very good fun, after all. And how
+becoming that headdress was to her!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was really magnificent: you know it came from Persia."</p>
+
+<p>"Did it, really? From Persia? I heard it came from&mdash;you know the place,
+ever so far off, where the colonies are. And how about her marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's broken off: she said no, and it's all settled."</p>
+
+<p>"But the trousseau? Mamma saw the three cashmere shawls, three wonders!
+One had red ground with little figures on it&mdash;you know the sort they're
+wearing now: that shawl was really eloquent. I think that sort of thing
+is like music, it delights one so."</p>
+
+<p>"That was very fine&mdash;three cashmeres, and diamonds too, and she said
+no?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said no, and she was right, for it seems he limped frightfully."</p>
+
+<p>"Who did?"</p>
+
+<p>"The gentleman, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear girl, people always give three cashmeres. Only think a
+minute: the long cashmere for calls in winter&mdash;well, that's one; then
+you must have a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</a></span> square one: it would kill you to wear a long cashmere
+in hot weather; and then you could not refuse a third to go to the bath
+or to mass in&mdash;well, that makes three, don't you see? I would not be
+married with fewer. No, thank you, I wouldn't go about looking like a
+chambermaid. No, indeed I wouldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the gentleman limp very badly? For, after all, he was a consul."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as to that, his position is a magnificent one. It seems that in the
+country where he is consul people are carried in palanquins."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the least thing they can do for lame people. As for me, I think
+she has done quite right. I have a horror of deformed people: one is
+never sure that it may not be something catching. Do you remember Sister
+Adelaide at the convent, who had one leg shorter than the other? Well, I
+wouldn't have sat down in her chair for a hundred thousand francs."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you have done if you had had to marry her?"</p>
+
+<p>"How silly you are!&mdash;Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to
+ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is
+stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in
+time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abb&eacute;
+Julien, who used to hear our catechisms, and who was always saying, 'Not
+another word, my children'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he does look like him, especially when he is waltzing: he has the
+same eyes. As for me, I don't like a man who looks like a priest. That
+is not saying anything against priests, my dear. In the first place, a
+man ought to have brown moustaches: without them he is not worth looking
+at. Have you seen my brother's moustaches since he left Saint-Cyr? That
+is the kind of moustaches I like&mdash;pointed, pointed and waxed. I used to
+do them for him last summer, and I fully understand them."</p>
+
+<p>"Ernest is a fine-looking young man; and then he's so strong."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate a Hercules. M. de Saint-Flair is not handsome, is he? Well, I
+can see very well how he fascinated Ad&egrave;le with his pale face, thin hair
+and his look of illness."</p>
+
+<p>"Your M. de Saint-Flair looks as if he were just getting over a fever.
+When he is sitting round in the corners I am always tempted to offer him
+a bowl of gruel."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all very well, but as for distinction, I don't see any one
+who comes up to him. And then, too, they say he writes poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I must say I prefer M. de P&mdash;&mdash;."</p>
+
+<p>"What an idea! M. de P&mdash;&mdash;! He's a perfect barrel, and besides he's
+forty-six or forty-eight years old."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear, a man has to be as old as that to be able to offer a
+woman an acceptable position. It's not at all bad to be the wife of a
+banker."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the music began, and the men came forward to ask my
+little neighbors to dance. They accepted languidly, with a
+half-indifferent air. The gentlemen placed their opera-hats on the
+chairs the ladies had left, and they all advanced, talking, to join the
+dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned
+herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a
+little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps
+there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their
+manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath,
+but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning
+themselves went on with their conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"That gentleman dances very well, but he's a queer creature: he talked
+to me about geography. Do you know the principal town in the department
+of the Eastern Pyrenees?"</p>
+
+<p>"No I have forgotten. Dear me! how warm I am! I danced with that partner
+of yours the other evening: he talked about geography to me too. Isn't
+it strange that some partners always say the same thing over and over
+again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there is mamma making me a sign that it is time to go home. Oh
+dear! no indeed! It will be like the other evening, when we should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</a></span>
+gone to bed as early as the hens if mamma hadn't been asked for the
+German. Tell your cousin to ask mamma to dance, and to ask me. I like
+him very much: he at least makes you laugh, even if you don't understand
+very well what he is talking about. He seems sometimes to be making fun
+of you, but that's no matter: he's very nice; and then, too, he holds
+you firmly while dancing, so that you feel perfectly comfortable."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Toward two o'clock in the morning, after having looked through M. de
+B.'s collection of etchings and played a game of whist, I returned to my
+station behind the three girls. Two were bravely drinking a glass of
+claret, and the third a cup of chocolate. They were laughing so loud
+while leaning back in their chairs, and so talking all together, that I
+could scarcely catch what they said, but I saw by their loosened hair
+and the brilliancy of their eyes, and their feverish agitation, that
+they had not wasted their time. Their mothers, who were quite as
+animated, had collected together, and three or four gentlemen had
+gathered round them saying a thousand charming bits of nonsense. The
+gayety had become so fast and furious in that corner that I despaired of
+hearing anything more, so I went back to the ante-chamber.</p>
+
+<p>What charming women my adorable little girls will have become in a few
+years!</p>
+
+<p>Pray do not think that the fever of pleasure, that candlelight and love
+of waltzing will at all impair the solid treasures which a good
+education has stored up in their little hearts. This very night when
+they go to bed these three little angels will piously fold their hands
+beneath the quilt, so as to keep warm, and will thank Heaven for all
+that has been done for them, and will beg that they may not catch a
+horrible cold in the head which will prevent their going to the opera
+to-morrow. Then, having kissed the little gold medal which protects them
+from fire and spraining their ankles, and makes them dance in time, they
+will fall fast asleep to the dim murmur of a waltz, like a bird in his
+nest.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">T. S. Perry.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_MODERN_ART-WORKSHOP_IN_UMBRIA" id="A_MODERN_ART-WORKSHOP_IN_UMBRIA"></a>A MODERN ART-WORKSHOP IN UMBRIA.</h2>
+
+
+<p>I met with a book on Italy some little time ago by an American author,
+whose name was not given&mdash;or if it was, I have forgotten it, and beg his
+pardon for the negligence&mdash;of which this was the first sentence: "Art is
+fast asleep in Italy, and that is why Italy is called the cradle of
+Art." If the statement be not altogether accurate, it is neatly said
+enough. But I am afraid that the facts of the case go farther than one
+would wish to believe toward bearing out the severe critic's judgment.
+Assuredly, the arts if not fast asleep, are but beginning to arouse
+themselves from a very long and lethargic nap in their classic
+cradle-land. But I think that signs are not wanting that they <i>are</i>
+beginning to shake off their slumber, and that when they shall have
+effectually done so, it will once again become evident to the world that
+this Italian race is very specially endowed with those gifts and
+qualities which go to make up the artistic temperament and to fit eye
+and head for artistic creation. A recent visit to an Italian
+country-town, one of the secondary centres of population in the
+Peninsula, has done much to confirm the correctness of these views, and
+has at the same time introduced me to some circumstances and scenes so
+interesting, and lying so far out of the path of the experiences and
+ideas of our ordinary nineteenth-century<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</a></span> world, that I cannot but think
+some account of them will be acceptable to the general reader, and
+especially worthy of the attention of lovers of art.</p>
+
+<p>The town in question is Perugia, where I spent a week in the early part
+of last February, and which boasts the best inn in all Central Italy,
+ruled by a clever and notable English landlady, who has entirely
+un-Italian notions of a good fire and warm rooms. Let travelers, whether
+in winter or in summer, ask for the "Hotel Brufani," disregarding the
+fact that, being recently established, it is not mentioned in some of
+the guidebooks, and they will, I am very sure, thank me for the
+recommendation.</p>
+
+<p>There is an immense wealth of fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth
+century Umbrian art to be seen in Perugia, besides some of the most
+interesting extant remains of Etruscan antiquity. But I am not going to
+trespass on the domain of the guidebooks, though, truth to say, the best
+of them are very defective in completeness as well as accuracy of
+information. Nor are the professional local <i>ciceroni</i> much more to be
+trusted. They will indeed probably show the traveler all or almost all
+that there is to be seen. But he must guard himself against accepting
+their statements in the matter of names and dates, and such like
+arch&aelig;ological particulars. If the stranger can have the good fortune to
+make the acquaintance of Signor Adamo Rossi, the accomplished and
+learned archivist and librarian of the municipal library, he will hardly
+fail to bring away with him from this centre of the old Umbrian
+art-world a considerably larger stock of ideas and information upon the
+subject than he carried thither with him.</p>
+
+<p>But now for the special experience which it is my present object to
+share with the reader. We went as a matter of course into the Duomo or
+cathedral. We did not enter the huge old church in the hope of seeing
+its special and much-boasted treasure, "the marriage-ring of the Virgin
+Mary." And if such had been our object, it would have been baffled, for
+the ring in its casket of medi&aelig;val jeweler's work (which really is
+worth seeing, as far as may be judged from engravings of it) is only
+shown on St. Joseph's Day; and being locked up under Heaven knows how
+many different keys, all in the custody of an equal number of
+ecclesiastical bigwigs, no human power short, I suppose, of that of the
+pope in person, can get at the relic on any other occasion. But what we
+did see&mdash;what instantly arrested and riveted our attention&mdash;was a modern
+painted window which has been put up for the adornment of the chapel
+where the ring is kept. It is by far the finest specimen of modern
+painted glass which I have seen in any country; and I have seen a great
+deal of all the manufactures, English, Belgian and Bavarian, which have
+recently been competing for the approval of the artistic world. The
+window in question in the cathedral at Perugia fills a plain Gothic arch
+seven m&egrave;tres in height by one m&egrave;tre eighty-five centim&egrave;tres in width,
+and it is divided into two parts by a slender column of stone eighteen
+centim&egrave;tres broad. The window which fills this space is occupied by a
+representation of one subject only, the Virgin and Child in&mdash;or rather
+sitting in front of&mdash;the stable; Saint Joseph leaning on his staff and
+gazing at the Divine Infant; a knot of shepherds in adoration, some
+bringing gifts and others playing on bagpipes, exactly similar to the
+instruments still used in the Neapolitan Apennines; other figures in the
+middle distance; beyond these a delicious bit of mountain-landscape; "a
+glory" above; and in the arch of the window a half-figure representation
+of God the Father. The composition, drawing and disposition of this
+design, which I had subsequently an opportunity of examining in the
+cartoon, is truly masterly. The figure of the Virgin, with long flowing
+locks of the richest and most sunny auburn, is of very great beauty and
+quite Peruginesque in style and conception. Her figure and the others in
+the immediate foreground are somewhat above life-size, so that the
+Virgin would be, if standing, about six feet in height, and the male
+figures in proportion. Those in the middle distance are about ordinary
+life-size.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</a></span> And in all of them there is that dignity of pose and
+conception inseparable from perfect unself-conscious simplicity which is
+so prevalent in the Italian art up to the period of the end of Raphael's
+first manner, which he began to lose in his second, and from which his
+successors strayed ever farther as the generations succeeded each other.
+The fullness and richness of coloring of the glass leaves really nothing
+to be desired. It is as brilliant, as jewel-like, and at the same time
+as free from opacity and heaviness, as the best ancient glass; and it is
+mainly in these respects that it so far excels the productions of other
+makers of painted glass. The landscape is treated with a pellucid
+delicacy and accuracy of truth which I have seen very rarely equaled in
+ancient windows. In a word, we were absolutely struck dumb with
+astonishment at finding such a work in such a place. And it may be
+imagined that this surprise was in no small degree increased, and a
+vivid sentiment of interest and curiosity added to it, when we were told
+on inquiry that this magnificent work of an art which was but recently
+deemed all but lost was produced wholly and entirely in Perugia, and,
+far more astonishing still, by the brain and hands of one single artist!
+In other countries&mdash;in England, at Munich, at Brussels&mdash;a cartoon
+prepared by an artist who has not the smallest knowledge of
+glass-painting or its special needs and limitations is taken to a
+<i>factory</i>, where a variety of artificers are employed in carrying out
+the various processes needed for the completion of the product. But in
+this case the conception of the design, the preparation of the cartoon,
+the selection of the colors, the arrangement of the glass, the coloring
+and burning of it, all are the work of one brain and one pair of hands.</p>
+
+<p>Our next demand, after again admiring in all its details the work, was
+to see the man who was the author of it, and our desire was very readily
+gratified.</p>
+
+<p>We have all heard much of the circumstances and conditions, so different
+from those of our day, under which the old Italian art-workers of the
+palmy days of art lived and worked. We have read Vasari's na&iuml;ve
+gossiping, and have endeavored to picture to ourselves the life and
+surroundings of the craftsman of a time when the line which is
+now-a-days supposed to divide the artist from the artisan did not exist
+or was ignored. We have followed the patient investigations which
+Leonardo, while his brain was teeming with forms of beauty and new
+creations, did not disdain to expend on matters which we in these days
+deem the province of the colorman. We have been delighted by Cellini's
+simple accounts of his methods of subjecting matter to the conceptions
+of his brain, uncaring and unconscious whether such methods involved
+processes that belonged to high art or low art, fine art or not
+fine&mdash;caring only for the beauty that his handiwork was to create. The
+modern "studio" is a phrase that claims greater affinity with strictly
+intellectual processes, but in the days and generations when immortal
+works were being produced in every little town throughout the central
+part of Italy, the men who created them were content to call the place
+in which they worked a <i>bottega</i>&mdash;"a shop." And the blacksmith who
+wrought with sturdy arm and hammer the ironwork that museums now contend
+against each other for the possession of, and pay for as if it were
+gold&mdash;the wood-carver who produced by his free fancy the gems which our
+best artists are content to servilely copy&mdash;the sculptor who would sign
+works that now make the cities that possess them famous&mdash;the <i>lapicido</i>
+("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel
+produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same
+Perugia&mdash;the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to
+shame the coarser and heavier work of our time&mdash;the painter for whose
+presence at their courts princes were bidding against each other,&mdash;all
+these alike lived and labored in a <i>bottega</i>, and would have scorned the
+notion of calling themselves or imagining themselves other than
+craftsmen.</p>
+
+<p>Well, we sought and easily found an introduction to the artist who had
+produced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</a></span> the new window in the cathedral. His name is Signor Francesco
+Moretti. A common friend accompanied us to his workshop-studio. It is
+situated in a part of a suppressed convent, or some such place, which
+has come into the hands of the municipality, and a vast chamber in which
+has been placed at the disposition of the artist. The <i>locale</i> itself
+has an Old-World look about it. A huge stair, up which you might almost
+drive a coach and four, ascends from a cloister running round a
+quadrangle. At the top of this we knocked at a great door, which looked
+wormeaten and decayed. It was opened by a little boy, and strange and
+striking indeed was the scene that presented itself. The room is an
+immense and very lofty one, reaching to the rafters of the building. It
+is lighted by one enormous window to the north, giving the artist just
+the light his work requires. On one wall, opposite to the window, was
+the cartoon which Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been
+admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a
+perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are
+not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head
+of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church
+in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an
+evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops
+for the most part were in the days when Saint Donato gave his life for
+the faith. The window for which this drawing has been made will be a
+circular one in the centre of the west front of the church in Arezzo.
+Other designs, large and small, were hung with a total disregard of
+symmetry or order on the wide white walls, and among them an infinity of
+plaster casts of almost every part of the human body. The floor and
+furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer
+an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the
+utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable
+and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the
+rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves,
+containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the
+stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian
+Nights' tales, destined to produce such marvelous effects. Other
+suspicious-looking flasks, wearing a warning touch-me-not air, contained
+chemical agents of varied kinds and properties. And everywhere, upon,
+among and under all this heterogeneous litter, was glass of every
+kind&mdash;plain glass, colored glass of every hue under the sun, unshaped
+panes of glass, glass cut into every imaginable form. And all to any eye
+save that of the master seemed to be a very type of orderless confusion.
+On a large easel backed against the abundant light from the great window
+was the partly-completed portion of another work, also destined for
+Arezzo, consisting of two life-sized figures of Saint John the Baptist
+and Saint Francis. They appeared to me to be treated in a somewhat more
+archaic style than the subject of the window in the cathedral, but were
+in no degree inferior in truth and accuracy of drawing and brilliancy of
+color.</p>
+
+<p>Above all, on one side of the room, were the furnaces in which the great
+work of burning in the colors is achieved. Does the reader know under
+what conditions of difficulty this part of the work is performed? When
+the harmony of the coloring of a picture, especially in a branch of art
+in which color goes for so much, has been duly considered and determined
+on, it would not do to have that which was intended for a scarlet robe
+turning out a crimson one, nor a brilliant emerald-green changed to a
+bottle-green, nor, even yet more fatal, the delicate azures and lilacs
+and grays of a distant landscape changed to comparative opacity, or
+indeed altered by the shadow of a half-tint from that which the artist's
+eye has designed for them. But if this is so with respect to the hues of
+drapery or of landscape, it is easy to imagine how much more fatal would
+be the slightest alteration of tint in those pieces of the glass which
+are destined to represent the naked portions of the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</a></span> body&mdash;in the
+faces, the hands, the feet. And when, bearing these considerations in
+mind, we further learn that the very smallest degree of heat in excess
+of that which is required for the purpose in hand, or the very smallest
+deficiency in the heat, or the greater or less degree of rapidity with
+which this heat is communicated to the glass&mdash;any variation from the
+exact point needed in each of these conditions&mdash;will without fail have
+the effect of altering the result, it may be imagined how great are the
+difficulties with which the artist has to struggle. And let it be
+remembered that in other establishments for the revival of this
+beautiful art the great modern principle of the division of labor is
+called into aid in producing the result. The man whose business it is to
+manage the furnace does this alone. All the power of his intelligence,
+all the rule-of-thumb derived from his practice, is devoted to this
+alone. Unable to do anything else, he has acquired the art of heating a
+furnace to the exact degree needed. It is hardly necessary to insist on
+the greatness of the change in the conditions when this specialty has to
+be undertaken by the same brain and hands which perform equally all the
+purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The
+conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would
+surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of
+manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other
+hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the
+division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence
+attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The
+individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning
+hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in
+the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so
+much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is <i>per se</i> a more
+beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter
+is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's
+brain&mdash;that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production
+of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the
+wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the
+Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has
+been no division of labor in the production of it.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop,
+appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the
+visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this
+nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations
+of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the
+master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward
+circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden
+time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion.
+Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side
+of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman,
+with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well
+recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions
+of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man&mdash;that one
+might, <i>a priori</i>, have been quite sure of&mdash;delighted to talk of his
+work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness,
+enthusiasm and unreserve&mdash;utterly above the affectation of mystery or
+secresy as to his <i>modus operandi</i>, and quite ready to say to all the
+world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly
+say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that
+genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and the
+specialty of genius, and is the true workman's patent of gentlemanhood.</p>
+
+<p>Our talk was long and various, and the subject-matter of it did not tend
+to dispel the illusion that we were by means of some strange
+magic-lantern taking a peep into a resuscitated bit of the old
+cinquecento art-life, so full were the mind and heart of the artist of
+the special art-glories of his native city. Social philosophers have
+much to say against the restricted nature of that intensely
+concentrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</a></span> form of patriotism in which the love and pride in one's
+own native place&mdash;one's <i>paese</i>, as the old Italian phrase went&mdash;is a
+species of religion. But it would not be difficult to show that the
+objections these philosophers adduce would, if carried out logically, be
+fatal to the reasonableness of all patriotism. Pure philanthropy no
+doubt is a very grand sentiment, but, somehow or other, it has never as
+a motive-power produced the great achievements that the narrower
+sentiment of love of country has produced. And I am inclined to believe
+that in the case, at all events, of ordinary people the love of one's
+own "paese"&mdash;that church-steeple patriotism that it has become a fashion
+with a certain school of politicians to deride&mdash;is very often a yet
+stronger passion and a more powerful incentive to great deeds than even
+the love of country in a larger sense. Such was undoubtedly the case
+during the great days of Italian hegemony in literature and the arts. It
+is difficult for those who have not made a special study of the subject
+to conceive the strength of the tie that during the whole of the
+medi&aelig;val period, and for a couple of centuries beyond it, bound every
+Italian citizen to the special community of which he was a member. The
+fact and the consideration that he was an Italian in no degree stirred
+his sympathies or moved his imagination, but that he was a Venetian, a
+Florentine, a Pisan, or even that he was an Aretine, a Bolognese, a
+Comasque, a Sienese or a Perugian, was all in all to him. The tie, save
+perhaps in the cases of some of the greater of the historical families,
+was a stronger one than even that of family. The Capulet or the Montague
+may have felt that his place in the world was marked as such, but the
+simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would
+have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked
+because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the
+surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being,
+and from his cradle to his grave, that what he <i>was</i> in the world, and
+what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact that
+he was a constituent part of this, that or the other civic community.
+His fellow-citizens were his friends; and it but too naturally followed
+that the members of other, and especially of neighboring communities,
+were his enemies: even in the best times, and in the case of the best
+and largest natures, they were his rivals. The relative superiority of
+his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the
+strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on
+whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which
+Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but
+who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own
+city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be
+deemed a narrow one&mdash;Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the
+denizen of so many foreign homes&mdash;could speak of the degeneration of the
+pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of <i>foreigners</i> whose
+native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence it
+may be estimated how smaller minds and narrower natures would feel on
+the subject. Each townsman felt that he was the heir to all the glories
+achieved or inherited by his community. Each artist, each workman who
+attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was
+increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body
+of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the
+jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on
+the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those
+inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a
+moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats!
+Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political
+economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how
+matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions
+of that order of things!</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire
+to belittle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</a></span> the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival
+cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all
+courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art.
+But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms
+than any of her rival cities in the great olden time&mdash;that her artistic
+history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent
+study&mdash;this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an
+instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced
+Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but
+erroneously called Giannicola <i>Manni</i>) and so many others. Signor
+Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving
+study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino,
+unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the
+Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely
+Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor
+Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present
+day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that
+mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty
+grace&mdash;often much out of place&mdash;which must be admitted to be a marking
+characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about
+Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat
+dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to
+figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in
+cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that
+Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree;
+but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and,
+above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his
+full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman,
+rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective
+in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be
+denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are
+due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me
+to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor
+Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the
+value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great
+Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity
+which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my
+readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses
+certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and
+will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of
+<i>Lippincott's</i> till next year.</p>
+
+<p>We were talking, as I have said, of Perugino and his works, apropos of
+the spirit in which those of Signor Moretti have been conceived, and our
+friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English
+magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school
+in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and
+piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian
+painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been
+reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned
+professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to
+ask him if his estimate of this quality in Perugino's works differed
+from that of the English writer.</p>
+
+<p>"Only in that it is rather amusing," said he, "to hear those special
+qualities attributed to the work of a man who had no belief whatsoever,
+and no sympathy with the devotional feeling he is thought to have
+expressed so well."</p>
+
+<p>The statement was quite new to me, as it will probably be to every
+reader of these lines; and with no little surprise I asked whether the
+professor were drawing an inference from any general circumstances of
+probability, or whether he had any documentary evidence to support his
+assertion. I was aware that Signor Adamo Rossi is one of the most
+accomplished and indefatigable readers of archives in Italy, especially
+on the subject of Umbrian art, and I was sure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</a></span> that if any documentary
+evidence were in existence which could throw any light on the facts, he
+would be in possession of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Documentary evidence!" cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little
+anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village
+about half-way between Citt&agrave; di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the
+by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the
+well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town,
+has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and
+like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter of
+course, and would have proceeded to administer the last sacraments, but
+the apparently dying artist refused to avail himself of the priest's
+ministry in any way. He absolutely declined to confess, saying that he
+had a mind to see whether one did not fare quite as well where he was
+going without any such practices."</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat later he did die, and his infidelity was then so notorious that
+he was refused burial in holy ground. He obtained the rites of Christian
+burial eventually, it is true, but it was under the following somewhat
+amusing circumstances, as appears from a notarial contract, the original
+draft of which Signor Rossi has recently discovered. This very curious
+document is the legal record and stipulation of a contract between the
+prior of the Augustinian monastery in Perugia and the son of Perugino.
+It is recited that whereas a portion of the sum due from the convent to
+the deceased artist for a series of pictures painted for the convent of
+the Augustines (these works, with the exception of one part of them
+stolen by the French, and now, I believe, in the Mus&eacute;e at Lyons, are to
+be seen at the present day in the Pinacotheca of Perugia, and very grand
+they are) had not been paid at the time of the painter's death, it was
+now hereby agreed between the prior and the representative of the
+creditor that in consideration of five ducats in money paid down, and on
+condition that the prior should at his own cost cause the remains of the
+artist to be transported from the place where they lay in unhallowed
+ground to Perugia, and should there give them Christian burial in the
+church of his convent of the Augustines, the outstanding balance of the
+debt should be considered to be thereby discharged and canceled. I may
+mention that this curious anecdote, together with a variety of other
+interesting matter respecting Perugino and the other artists of the
+Umbrian school, will be found in a volume by Professor Adamo Rossi, to
+be published in 1876 under the auspices of the Italian government
+commission for the preservation and publication of historical documents
+regarding Tuscany and Umbria.</p>
+
+<p>It will be admitted that the professor's documentary evidence throws a
+very singular and instructive light on the speculations of the
+transcendental rhapsodists who are never weary of going into ecstasies
+over the profound and touching piety of the works inspired by the vivid
+and simple belief of the "ages of faith."</p>
+
+<p>"But there <i>is</i>," I ventured to object, after having heard the
+professor's anecdotes, "an unmistakable expression of devout feeling to
+be seen in many of Perugino's faces."</p>
+
+<p>"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of
+the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to
+conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and
+feature, in those who did."</p>
+
+<p>Perugino was therefore giving us <i>not</i> the outcome of his own heart and
+emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would
+be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart
+and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account
+for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in
+Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in
+the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his
+successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a
+<i>piccolo possidente</i> (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own
+fields, and in all respects<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</a></span> little removed from the condition of a
+<i>contadine</i>, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by
+his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del
+Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes
+by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of
+brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little
+of strong volition&mdash;the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and
+thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to
+have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or
+elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without
+some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and
+martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the
+explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also
+the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of
+himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the
+expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?</p>
+
+<p>Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art,
+his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that
+have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is
+far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room
+opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of
+a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the
+Dominicans in Perugia, on which he has been, and will for the next two
+years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as
+regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy&mdash;a noble work of the later
+but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into
+which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it
+will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost
+equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we
+saw restored are very grand. I do not know who the original artist may
+have been&mdash;I think that it is not known&mdash;but, whoever he was, the design
+of the figures is as simply grand and as free from affectation as could
+be wished. And whether the restorer found the remains of the almost
+destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect,
+or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it
+is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style
+are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following
+of the manner of his great townsman.</p>
+
+<p>One other reason besides the object of directing the attention of the
+lovers of art to the works of a real and genuine artist has led me to
+think it desirable to make Signor Moretti and his workshop known to
+American and English readers. The custom, an excellent one, of putting
+up in churches or other public buildings painted windows as memorials of
+those lost to their country or to those dear to them has become common
+on both sides of the Atlantic; and I am sure that I am giving good
+counsel to any persons contemplating such an undertaking in recommending
+them to pay a visit to Signor Moretti's studio at Perugia before finally
+deciding on giving their commissions.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">T. Adolphus Trollope.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="A_STORY_OF_AMERICAN_CHIVALRY" id="A_STORY_OF_AMERICAN_CHIVALRY"></a>A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"America is the paradise of women," is a foreign proverb that must
+frequently recur to every American woman who travels or resides in the
+Old World. Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear
+of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising
+from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an
+incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often
+related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a
+specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly
+exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when I was a very young girl, it became necessary for me to take a
+journey of several hundred miles to visit a near relative who lived in
+the State of Pennsylvania, a little over the New York border. It
+happened that I was obliged to go alone and in an inclement season of
+the year, but the circumstances were imperative, and my love of
+traveling prevented any anticipation of fear or danger.</p>
+
+<p>The morning of the third day after my departure from home found me
+seated at breakfast in the large hotel at Corning, N. Y., which stands
+within a few steps of the Corning and Blossburg railway-station. From
+the conversation going on around me, I inferred that several of the
+guests besides myself were going by the Blossburg train, but I could not
+see the point of the landlord's jokes on the subject, which, however,
+appeared to be fully understood and heartily appreciated by my
+neighbors. He laughed and chuckled, and repeatedly wished us all
+patience and perseverance to carry us safely through the trials in store
+for us; and when we started in a body for the station, he followed us to
+the door and called out that he would be sure to have a nice hot supper
+of beefsteak and fried potatoes awaiting us on our return.</p>
+
+<p>The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one
+passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked
+very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious
+appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way
+was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were
+as good as we had a right to expect.</p>
+
+<p>The travelers consisted of eight or ten sportsmen equipped with rifles
+and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other
+a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly
+gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer
+addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little
+milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest
+fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school.
+There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car,
+whose business it was to attend to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o'clock the train started with a great jerk, and crept slowly
+out of the town. The motion was very disagreeable; the seats were hard;
+the air was stuffy, and became after a while almost unbearable from the
+accumulated breaths and the dry heat of the stove, into which the negro
+was continually thrusting more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of
+the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers
+and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape.
+Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the
+landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little
+milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his
+allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only this is an old road,
+and there have been so many break-downs on it that Mr. Smith likes to
+make fun of all the Blossburg passengers."</p>
+
+<p>"But is anything the matter now?" I asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No: we always creep along this way. You see, the distance is only
+eighteen miles, or nobody could stand it. I always feel as though I
+should fly out of my skin the whole way; but, after all, it is better
+than a stage in cold weather. They are going to build a new road soon."</p>
+
+<p>She had scarcely finished speaking when the train, which had been moving
+more and more slowly, came to a dead stop. There was no station in
+sight, nor any house or other sign of human occupation. We were in the
+woods: a high hill was close against us on one side, and on the other a
+steep embankment went down to the shore of a rapid stream that ran
+through the valley. After waiting several minutes in vain for the train
+to move on, one of the hunters went out to see what was the matter, and
+came back laughing with the news that a piece had fallen out of the
+bottom of the boiler, so that the water had put out the fire, and there
+was no chance of our getting any farther until the boiler was mended.
+Whereupon all the men rushed out to watch the progress of affairs, and
+remained away for a time that seemed to us an age. At last they came
+dropping back, one after another, each later arrival bringing more
+encouraging news of the prospect of a speedy start, until finally the
+same hunter who had announced the disaster appeared, saying that it was
+all right and we should now go ahead. In the profound stillness of the
+forest we could hear the hissing of the steam, and presently came the
+welcome whistle; then two or three pantings of the engine and that
+preparatory jarring of the whole train which precedes its regular
+motion, and then all was still again. The same impatient hunter went out
+again, and returned&mdash;this time not laughing&mdash;to inform us that as soon
+as the water had begun to boil the hole had broken open again, and put
+out the fire as before. Again all the men rushed out: even the
+half-torpid negro in the corner became excited and followed the
+procession of males, while we "womanites" waited in patience for the
+sequel of the calamity.</p>
+
+<p>It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was
+drawing near its close. The frequent opening and shutting of the door
+had replaced the heavy atmosphere with a stream of cold air, at first
+very refreshing, but soon uncomfortably cool, especially as the stove
+had for some time ceased to give out heat, the negro, with the
+improvidence that characterizes his race, having burned up the fuel as
+fast as possible, without taking into account the probability of
+detention. We began, too, to be dreadfully hungry, and not one of us had
+brought any lunch, as we had fully expected to arrive at the end of the
+railway-journey by dinner-time. To crown our miseries, the sky, which
+had lowered above us gray and heavy all day, began to relieve itself in
+a thick fall of snow.</p>
+
+<p>The widow vented her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery
+little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying
+that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to
+enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our
+experience began after a time to seem rather tedious.</p>
+
+<p>At last we heard our fellow-passengers approaching, all talking together
+and apparently much excited. They brought bad news. The old engine could
+not be properly mended, and it was useless to try to fire up again; we
+had come only six miles, and it was twelve miles farther to the nearest
+station; the conductor and engineer had decided to go on, to prevent the
+evening train from starting, and to obtain another engine to remove our
+train; but considering the distance they must go, and the heavy storm
+that was coming on, they could not probably get back before morning. So
+there we were, on a high ridge of road just wide enough to hold the
+track; a mountain on one side of us and a deep river on the other; no
+house in sight, and no way of getting at it if there had been one; our
+fire gone out; nothing to eat or drink; night coming on, and the snow
+falling as it seems to me I never saw it fall before or since.</p>
+
+<p>The hunters made short work of the problem. They decided to follow the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</a></span>
+train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up
+their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the
+mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the
+level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three
+remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. The old gentleman
+mentioned that he was one of the directors of the road, and therefore
+felt a degree of responsibility in our unfortunate circumstances;
+moreover, as a man, he could not think of leaving three helpless women
+to take care of themselves in such a dilemma, and he was sure the young
+men must share this feeling; to which appeal they gave a hearty assent.
+As neither of my companions seemed ready to speak, I ventured to thank
+the gentlemen for their kindness, and to ask what we could do to lighten
+their task&mdash;whether we could not go to some house near by, or even walk
+back to Corning. But the brisk little milliner exclaimed, "I know the
+whole road, and there isn't a house anywhere in this neighborhood. About
+a mile back there is one in sight, but it is away over marshes and
+fields, and the road is built so high up that we can't possibly get down
+the bank; besides, it's a poor little hut when you get there, and I
+don't believe the people could take us in."</p>
+
+<p>Here the widow burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the
+parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way
+the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we
+might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a
+snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was not to be thought of.</p>
+
+<p>They went out to see what could be done, and we awaited their decision
+in great anxiety, the widow bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never
+begun the journey, and the milliner rehearsing numerous other
+misfortunes which had befallen the Blossburg train when she had been a
+passenger; not one of which, however, had proved such a "fix" as we were
+in now.</p>
+
+<p>Before long the Judge returned, calling out in a cheerful voice, "We
+have it! We are going to put you into the hinder baggage-car, and give
+you a ride back to Corning. So pick up your traps and follow me: it is
+only a few steps through the snow, and then you will be as snug as
+possible."</p>
+
+<p>We gladly followed our leader out of the cold, dismal car, and he helped
+us, one after another, over the narrow passage separating the track from
+the ditch, until we came to the open space between the train and the
+baggage-car, which the young men had detached and pushed a few steps
+back. It was a queer little car&mdash;like an enormous goods-box set upon
+end&mdash;and the interior was nearly filled with trunks, barrels and freight
+of various kinds. But by pushing about and piling up the things room was
+made for us, and two of the smaller boxes were left near the door to
+serve as seats, which the two elder women were invited to occupy, while
+I, as the youngest and smallest of the company, was assisted by the
+director to climb up into a rocking-chair that stood on the top of a
+hogshead in the corner, where I had an excellent seat, except that I was
+obliged to crouch a little in order not to hit my head against the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>Having disposed of us, the three gentlemen set themselves to the work of
+pushing the car back toward Corning. They could only move it by resting
+their hands against the sill of the open door and then pressing forward
+with all their might, their feet being braced against the earth, so that
+their bodies seemed almost in a horizontal position. After once starting
+it, they were in hopes to be able to keep it in motion without much
+difficulty. But the task proved to be a harder one than they had
+anticipated. The car was strongly built and cumbrous in itself, and the
+freight it carried was heavy, to say nothing of our additional weight.
+Then, too, the snow had fallen to the depth of several inches, clogging
+the wheels and encumbering the footsteps of the men and darkness added
+to the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>After struggling along for a considerable time there was a pause for
+rest and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</a></span> consultation. Just then a light twinkled far over the meadows,
+probably in the little hut which the milliner had described; and it was
+decided that the two young men should go there and try to borrow a
+horse. Accordingly, they scrambled down the steep bank, while the
+director shook the snow off his clothes and came into the car to rest
+until their return. We did our best to be hospitable. The milliner
+wanted him to take her seat on the box, and I offered to descend from my
+perch and let him have the rocking-chair; but he refused both proposals,
+and, finding a small barrel in an opposite corner, seated himself upon
+it and declared that he was quite comfortable. He seemed to look upon
+the whole adventure as a good joke, and we thought we could do no less
+than be merry also; so we chatted and laughed and told stories, and at
+last, discovering that he was very fond of music, I sang several songs,
+with which he expressed himself highly pleased. When I say <i>we</i>, I mean
+the little milliner and myself, for I am ashamed to say that the widow
+was all the while discontented and cross, maintaining a sullen silence,
+excepting when she broke it to grumble over our misfortunes, and
+appearing totally insensible to the generous kindness of our protectors,
+who could so easily have taken care of themselves if we had not been in
+their way.</p>
+
+<p>By and by we heard footsteps and voices, and the two young men
+reappeared with a farmer's boy leading a horse. But, oh, misery! the lad
+had forgotten the rope which he was told to bring, and there was no
+other way but for him to go back to the farm for it. Reproaches were
+useless, and so the lad was despatched for the missing rope, with a
+warning that he was to come back "in less than no time;" and the young
+men joined us in the car, glad to find shelter from the snow, although
+there was scarcely any room for them to stand, and none at all for them
+to sit down. The horse, too, seemed inclined to join our group, as one
+of the young men held him by the bridle so that his head was inside the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>The director gave such brilliant accounts of the entertainment he had
+enjoyed during the absence of his companions that they bewailed their
+deprivation most bitterly, nor would they be comforted until the
+milliner had repeated her story of "Mrs. Perkins's Tea-party" and I had
+sung over again all my songs. As soon as the boy reported himself the
+three gentlemen hurried out to superintend the hitching up. We could see
+nothing of what was going on, excepting now and then a bright gleam cast
+by the lantern across the snow opposite our open door, but we could hear
+all that was said, and we soon learned that there was more trouble in
+store for us. The horse would not go. It was not that the load was too
+much for him, for when all was ready the three men came back to their
+old place and started the car, with the intention of helping the horse
+all the way. But it was of no use: he would not stir a step. Perhaps he
+disliked the look of the wagon; more likely, he was afraid to walk upon
+the timbers; at all events, he refused to budge an inch. The boy
+chirruped and hallooed and swore; the men pushed the car until it came
+up to the horse's heels; but he only kicked and baulked, and would not
+draw. There was nothing to be done but to dismiss the beast and his
+driver, and try again. So the three gallant knights went bravely to
+work, and we watched them, ashamed of our helplessness, and yet feeling
+that it was out of our power to prevent their self-sacrifice. The most
+that we could do was to keep up their spirits by cheerful talk and merry
+songs; and I must say that when not contrasted with their greater merit
+our courage in keeping up the semblance of gayety is not to be despised,
+considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and
+darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast.
+Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really
+incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally gayer
+women succeeded in doing.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, wretch that I was, I enjoyed, away up in my rocking-chair,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</a></span>
+many a stolen moment of pure fun during the intervals my forced jollity
+for the benefit of others. There was a comical side to the adventure
+which made me shake with suppressed laughter even more than with cold.
+The whole affair of the horse was so ridiculous! The long journey in
+search of him, the forgetting of the rope, and finally the utter failure
+of the plan through the obstinacy of the sagacious beast! I laughed till
+the tears ran down my cheeks while listening to the discussions going on
+outside. And then to see those long-suffering men pushing our lumbering
+old car, with their six hands in a row on the doorsill, and their feet
+stretched so far out behind as to look almost as though not belonging to
+their bodies, the more so because their clothing was entirely white with
+snow! Once, one of them slipped and fell down flat, and I only laughed
+the harder, though feeling all the while that I could have beaten myself
+for my want of gratitude. The sighings of the patient little milliner,
+who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the
+occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner,
+only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible
+because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my
+companions should become aware of my inexcusable levity.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the pauses for rest the young lawyer gave a shout on
+discovering an apple in his coat-pocket. But instead of eating it
+himself or sharing it with his fellow-laborers, he cut it into three
+pieces and handed it to us, together with a snowball to quench our
+thirst; and then they all set to work again as bravely as though they
+themselves had just been refreshed with food and drink.</p>
+
+<p>But good-will was not all that was necessary to make their enterprise
+successful. Their strength was giving out, and on seeing the gleam of
+another light at a distance it was thought best to try to procure
+another horse. Again the two young men set off across the meadows, and
+again the good old Judge came into the car and took his seat on top of
+the barrel. But the sequel of the second endeavor was more satisfactory
+than the first had been. The young men returned with a lively young
+horse, which, after being duly fastened with the rope that this boy had
+not forgotten, started off at a good pace as soon as the car had been
+got underway. He seemed to draw the load so easily that the three
+exhausted men thought they might rest a while, and so they all piled
+into the car and drew the door partly to, in order to keep out the cold
+wind, which had begun to blow quite hard. They, poor souls! rejoiced
+greatly over their change of base, and imagined themselves in wonderful
+luck; while we, the former occupants, realized that our misery had a
+lower depth than we had yet experienced, since we were nearly stifled by
+the confined air, and at the same time chilled to the very marrow of our
+bones by the close proximity of those animated bundles of melting snow.
+But an unexpected piece of good-fortune fell to us all just then. The
+Judge, while swinging his foot over the side of his barrel, happened to
+strike one of them against a small object that tumbled over and rolled
+away between the boxes. He sprang down to the floor in a moment.
+"Hurrah!" he cried: "I believe I have run down a keg of oysters." A
+match was lighted and the precious freight hunted for. It turned out to
+be not oysters, but a tin box of oyster-crackers. "Never mind," said the
+Judge: "it is something to eat, at any rate, and the owner will never
+need it as much as we do. What's the use of being a director of the road
+if one cannot help himself to the property once in a while?" So saying,
+he pried open the box, the young lawyer keeping the matches going in
+order to give him light, and soon the contents were distributed among
+the company. While we were munching away at our dry food, now and then
+varying the fare by a pull at a snowball, the driver gave a shout and
+the car suddenly stopped.</p>
+
+<p>On going out the men were told that we had come to a culvert, over which
+the horse could not go, and so one of the party unhitched the horse and
+led him carefully down the steep bank and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</a></span> up the other side on to the
+track again, while the others pushed the car across the partially-open
+space. Then the horse was hitched up anew, the car started, and our
+guests again darkened the doorway. But the culverts multiplied, and as
+the same process must be gone through with each one, the gentlemen gave
+up trying to come under shelter between-times, and patiently plodded
+along in the deep snow behind the car.</p>
+
+<p>By and by the horse began to show signs of giving out, and the old mode
+of pushing was resorted to in order to help him. But he was young and
+easily tired, and finally the driver said he must not draw any more; so
+he was unhitched, the boy was paid and dismissed, the men bent their
+weary backs again to grasp the low doorsill, and we creaked along more
+slowly than ever.</p>
+
+<p>At last the lights of Corning became visible, and the work immediately
+stopped. We were within about a mile of the town, and the director now
+proposed that his two companions should go on and return with a
+conveyance, while he remained in charge of us. This was done, and in
+less time than it had taken to procure a steed for our railway vehicle
+our deliverers appeared in the road below us, looking very grand in a
+large sleigh carrying lamps, filled with fur robes, and drawn by two
+fiery black horses that promised to bring our prolonged discomforts to a
+speedy close. But how to reach this tantalizing object? The railway was
+on an embankment, and between us and the road was another ridge, a deep
+ditch filled with half-frozen water lying between. The young men debated
+for a few moments, and at last went to a neighboring fence and broke off
+a long board, which they brought and laid across from the track to the
+ridge; and then one of them stood nearly knee-deep in the ditch and
+supported the board on his shoulder, while the other climbed up the
+ridge and told the director to hand us over, one at a time, as far as
+his arm would extend, and he would reach out to us from the other side.
+In this way we all passed over safely, and had no further mishap,
+excepting that once the horses became unmanageable, and we came very
+near being run away with on our way to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>As we drove up to the door the landlord appeared, rubbing his hands and
+chuckling, just as he had done on our departure, and crying out, "Didn't
+I tell you I should see you again to-day? and it hasn't struck twelve
+yet! And I told you, too, that I would have a good supper of beefsteak
+and fried potatoes ready: there they are smoking hot in the dining-room
+this blessed minute; so come and eat."</p>
+
+<p>The deliciousness of that meal I will not attempt to describe, nor the
+comfort of the night's rest that followed it. Before separating from our
+generous companions we three women (for even the widow came out strong
+after the trouble was over) tried to express in some degree our
+gratitude for their extreme kindness, but they laughed at the very idea
+of any obligation on our side, and declared that the pleasure of our
+society had far outweighed the hardships of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>As a fitting sequel to this story I will add that the next morning the
+two young gentlemen (one of whom resided in the town which I was
+intending to visit, and knew my relations well) hired a sleigh and
+invited me to drive across the country to my destination with them. And
+about a week after my arrival I was surprised by a visit from the
+director, who said that, having business in the county, he had come
+twenty miles out of his way to see the little girl who had been so
+cheerful and good-humored under so severe a trial of fortitude as was
+our railroad disaster among the Pennsylvania hills. I believe that the
+noble old gentleman really thought me more deserving of praise than
+himself; and I am certain that not one of the three ever considered that
+there was anything wonderful in having thus sacrificed their comfort and
+risked their health in behalf of three women, insignificant in
+themselves and having no claim, not even that of previous acquaintance,
+upon their attention and care.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+E.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="WILLIAM_EARL_OF_SHELBURNE" id="WILLIAM_EARL_OF_SHELBURNE"></a>WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Among the English statesmen of a century ago, William, earl of
+Shelburne, seems to us to have a peculiar claim upon the recollection of
+citizens of the United States&mdash;one, too, that involves none of those
+offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say,
+Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a
+man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently,
+protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove
+thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in
+office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy
+never of cowardly concession, but of just expediency, the impending
+storm, and then, when it had burst, to withstand and counteract its
+fury; and the last great act of whose public life was to conclude the
+struggle which he had always deprecated and deplored.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore with no ordinary interest that we welcome the first
+installment of a work<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> whose promise&mdash;and, we at once cordially add,
+performance&mdash;heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable
+flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose
+administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present
+biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his
+subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his
+great-grandfather's papers at Lansdowne House, but to those of two other
+most important actors in the British drama of a century ago&mdash;Lord Bute,
+"the favorite," and Henry Fox; and these documents, pieced together and
+set side by side, throw upon the events to which they relate, and the
+motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and
+convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind
+of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day
+a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches,
+his version of this or that historical transaction&mdash;to tell us, with the
+authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter
+Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr.
+B.'s conduct in the knowledge that he was all along intriguing for that;
+but how often it happens that when, by good luck, the contemporaneous
+documentary evidence of correspondence, private memoranda and the like
+is forthcoming, the off-hand allegations of the memoir-writer are in
+infinite particulars tried and found wanting in correctness, and
+sometimes fall refuted altogether! More than one notable instance of
+this will strike the historical student in reading this first volume of
+Lord Shelburne's <i>Life</i>; and in the eventful and disputed years which
+Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has yet to chronicle it may safely be assumed
+that he will have plenty to say in the way of correction and explanation
+of previous histories of the time.</p>
+
+<p>An autobiographical fragment, composed by Lord Shelburne in his closing
+years, and found among the Shelburne papers at Lansdowne House, presents
+with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be
+desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second
+George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the
+bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of
+seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward
+earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) and marquis
+of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin. "I spent the four first years, of my
+life" (he tells us) "in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under
+the government of an old grandfather [Thomas Fitzmaurice,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</a></span> earl of
+Kerry], who reigned, or rather tyrannized, equally over his own family,
+and the neighboring country as if it was his family, in the same manner
+as I suppose his ancestors, lords of Kerry, had done for generations
+since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family one hundred
+thousand acres in those remote parts in consideration of their services
+against the Irish, with the title of barons of Kerry.... My grandfather
+did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to
+make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character
+which can be imagined&mdash;obstinate and inflexible: he had not much
+understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no
+education except what he had in the army, where he served in his youth,
+with a good degree of reputation for personal bravery and activity. He
+was a handsome man, and, luckily for me and mine, married a very ugly
+woman, who brought into his family whatever degree of sense may have
+appeared in it, and whatever wealth is likely to remain in it." In 1741
+the stern grandfather died, and in the course of the next ten years the
+grandson picked up such bits of education as an Irish public school of
+the period, supplemented by a clerical private tutor, might afford. At
+sixteen he went to Christ Church, Oxford (in those days boys were
+commonly taking their degrees at the universities at an age when they
+would now be well content to have won their way into a school sixth
+form), and there read law, history, Demosthenes, and "by myself a great
+deal of religion."</p>
+
+<p>And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of
+his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and
+character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry
+into public life. No one, we take it, will be disposed to quarrel with
+the interruption, for it gives us, in the space of a few pages, a
+picture of men and manners which, painted as it is by the mature hand of
+a shrewd contemporary observer, cannot but form a most important
+addition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of
+this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the
+making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm
+and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly
+no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected
+with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified
+with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his
+sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder&mdash;we had almost said more
+bitterly&mdash;than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just
+as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal
+explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of
+attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord
+Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his
+trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without
+demolishing poor Lord Melcombe <i>en passant</i>. "The prince's life (he
+says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord
+Melcombe's diary&mdash;a man who passed his life with great men whom he did
+not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but
+recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never
+could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness
+and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only
+serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with
+where power is lodged."</p>
+
+<p>The elder Pitt&mdash;with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted
+in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the
+beginning of the war of independence&mdash;comes in for his full share of
+severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive.
+Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was
+insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and
+patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded
+consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which
+may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</a></span> on
+any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to
+anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally
+ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family
+beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly
+had no sentiment in it. The transaction at the time of his resignation
+does not carry with it an absolute indifference as to money or other
+advantages, nor did there appear in any of his subsequent negotiations,
+in or out of power, that he went beyond what was necessary to satisfy
+the people at the time or to secure his wished-for situation. In truth,
+it was his favorite maxim that a little new went a great way.... I was
+in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time
+that I was secretary of state included, he minister, and necessarily was
+with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of
+water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the
+way of business. I went to see him afterward in Somersetshire, where I
+fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed
+me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as
+a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head,
+thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well
+bred, and preserved all the manners of the <i>vieille cour</i>, with a degree
+of pedantry, however, in his conversation, especially when he affected
+levity, I never found him when I have gone to him&mdash;which was always by
+appointment&mdash;with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone
+in a drawing-room waiting the hour of appointment, and in the country
+with his hat and stick in his hand."</p>
+
+<p>All this, it must not be forgotten, was written in the year 1801, long
+after the writer had finally retired from the battlefield of politics,
+upon which, at the period when his own account of his youth breaks off,
+he had not yet made his first essay. Some practical experience of actual
+battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his
+appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when,
+between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the
+Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of
+a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a
+year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined
+the army and went on foreign service. Here he had the good-fortune to
+come under the chivalrous General Wolfe, whom he eulogizes in terms the
+genuine warmth and heartiness of which is all the more striking from the
+contrast with his generally severe judgments upon his contemporaries. At
+the battle of Minden in 1759, and again at Kloster Kampen in the
+following year, he displayed conspicuous personal courage, which was
+rewarded, on his return to England, with the rank of colonel and the
+court appointment of <i>aide-de-camp</i> to the new king, George III.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had camp been exchanged for court when circumstances offered the
+young Lord Fitzmaurice his first introduction to a kind of political
+employ which was to be thenceforward, through a series of years, his
+frequent and peculiar function. Lord Bute, the favorite, had begun to
+climb the ladder of ministerial office, and had cast his eyes upon that
+unscrupulous and greedy but undeniably able politician, Henry Fox, as
+the man most desirable for his purpose by way of a House-of-Commons
+ally. Owing, very possibly, to the fact that there existed some
+connection between Fox and Fitzmaurice's father, Lord Fitzmaurice fell
+into the place of intermediary between the parties to this negotiation,
+which had hardly passed out of its first stage when the death of his
+father removed him, now Lord Shelburne, to the House of Lords before he
+had ever taken the family seat, into which he had been elected at the
+last general election, in the lower House. The negotiation was
+successfully carried through. Fox named his price&mdash;a peerage for his
+wife&mdash;and after considerable haggling got it, and in return undertook a
+position which Shelburne announced to Bute in a letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</a></span> dated October
+31, 1761, as follows: "Mr. Fox will attend [the House of Commons] every
+day, and will, either by silence or by speaking, as he finds it prudent
+according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your lordship
+wishes, and will enter into no sort of engagement with any one else
+whatever." But before the year was out Bute found himself in want of a
+closer and more positive support on the part of Fox than he had in the
+first instance contracted for. The peace party, which he (Bute) headed,
+had at last the close of the continental war full in sight, peace
+preliminaries were about to be laid before Parliament, but there was a
+prospect of the war party fighting over the terms proposed by ministers,
+and Bute felt that he must have a strong leader to champion his treaty
+in the House of Commons. Fox was his man for the place, and Shelburne
+was again commissioned to treat with him. The details of a negotiation
+of this kind are not of a character to call for very particular
+attention a century afterward, but the letters between the parties&mdash;many
+of them now for the first time published&mdash;are not without considerable
+interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of
+their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less
+perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless
+one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most
+thorough <i>bona fides</i>, always ensure the conduct of the common agent
+against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular
+negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's
+offer (through Shelburne) to Fox was the leadership of the Commons, with
+a peerage for himself to follow. Fox at the time held the very lucrative
+post of paymaster-general&mdash;lucrative, because in those days it was
+deemed a perfectly legitimate practice for the paymaster to make a
+private profit out of the investment of the public moneys for the time
+being under his control. Shelburne appears to have assumed&mdash;and so,
+indeed, it was only natural to assume&mdash;that Fox would not dream of
+accepting high office in the ministry without at the same time resigning
+his extra-ministerial berth at the Pay Office; and there is evidence
+that such&mdash;at first, at any rate&mdash;was Fox's own intention. The king was
+given to understand that Fox's resignation of the Pay Office would be a
+term of the proposed arrangements, and consented to them on that
+footing; and then all at once Fox came out in the character of Injured
+Innocent, protested that he had never meant to resign, that he had all
+along intended to have his cake as well as eat it, and that Shelburne
+had entrapped and betrayed him. The story goes, but on what authority
+history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's
+conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox
+retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?"
+The correspondence and the other evidence which, with a pardonable
+jealousy for his ancestor's fair fame, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice sets out
+with much detail in his biography, requires, we think, at the very
+least, that a verdict of "Not proven" should be entered in Shelburne's
+favor; but a man who chooses to make personal negotiation his specialty
+must not be surprised to find his tact sometimes called trickery, and
+his double agency set down as double dealing. It is certain that the
+part he played in the Bute-Fox negotiations entailed upon Shelburne
+imputations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely
+dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley
+Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a
+prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon
+him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously
+maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could
+conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, <i>for
+Malagrida was a very good sort of man</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his
+favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new
+ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the
+spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</a></span> of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no
+less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to
+get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than
+Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be
+jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which,
+however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition
+to the peerage of Great Britain; and also&mdash;reasonably enough, one is
+inclined to say&mdash;that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office
+rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in
+one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it
+must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his
+parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but
+he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English
+Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger
+Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of
+three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his
+friend&mdash;who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time
+aside&mdash;a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the
+presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and
+entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration.
+Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in
+which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he
+took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out
+Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and
+most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had
+hardly been a month at the Board of Trade when a communication from Lord
+Egremont, the "Southern" secretary of state, directed his particular
+attention to this subject.</p>
+
+<p>The North American colonies&mdash;or, as they were commonly called,
+plantations&mdash;labored in those days, in their relation with the
+home-country, under the inconveniences of a system of dual government.
+The Board of Trade was the working colonial office, framed instructions
+to the governors, gave information and advice, and carried on the
+every-day colonial business generally; but the secretary of state for
+the southern department, whose sphere of supervision embraced all the
+colonies wherever situate, had always a permanent right to interfere in
+and control the conduct of colonial affairs. It was in virtue of this
+right that in May, 1763, Secretary Lord Egremont took the initiative in
+setting the Board of Trade to work to solve the problem of how best to
+arrange for the administration of the wide area of North American
+territory that the peace had transferred from French to British rule.
+His instructions were short and pointed. "The questions (he wrote) which
+relate to North America in general are&mdash;1st, What new governments should
+be established there? what form should be adopted for such a government?
+and where the capital or residence of each governor should be fixed?
+2dly, What military establishment will be sufficient? what new forts
+should be erected? and which, if any, may it be expedient to demolish?
+3dly, In what way, least burdensome and most palatable to the colonies,
+can they contribute toward the support of the additional expense which
+must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangement
+which your lordships shall propose?" Mark the "3dly." It is interesting,
+as illustrating the ideas and circumstances which led to the famous
+Stamp Act, to see how completely Lord Egremont's question assumes not
+only the right of the mother-country to tax her colonies, but the
+probable expediency of her actually exercising that right. In his reply,
+Shelburne, while admitting the revenue question to be a "point of the
+highest importance," practically evaded it on the plea of the inability
+of the board to form a satisfactory opinion without further materials.
+With regard to the new territory, his advice, which was followed, was,
+in effect, not to attempt to annex the whole of the north-western
+acquisitions, but to form a new colony of Canada, limited by definite
+geographical boundaries.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen
+in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West
+against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would
+claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen
+of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without
+charging them with this in addition. However impossible it was in
+practice to dam up the ever-advancing tide of the English race, it was
+equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of
+dispossessing the still powerful savage nations, which were bound to
+England by numerous conventions, and were regarded for the most part as
+subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of
+Boston, or even of London, to the protection of his government. To
+adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period
+of the struggle which can have but one result is a task as difficult as
+it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of
+attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent because
+they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and
+attempting to protect the ever-retiring bounds of the Indian
+reservations."</p>
+
+<p>But the march of events was soon to take the responsibility of the
+"settlement" (save the mark!) of American affairs out of the hands of
+Shelburne. He had joined the ministry more because of the insistance of
+his friend, Bute, the potent cabinet-maker, than from any general
+sympathy with the views of the men with whom he had to act; and every
+week put him more and more out of touch with them. He protested formally
+to Egremont against the dual government of the colonies, and when the
+latter tried to shelve the question by professing fatigue, curtly told
+him&mdash;what was true enough&mdash;that he must expect more if the affairs of
+America were to be put in order. He questioned the legality of the
+action of his colleagues, the Triumvirate (Grenville, Halifax and
+Egremont), in ordering the arrest of Wilkes of <i>North Briton</i> fame.
+But, oddly enough, considerations of a wholly different character
+appear to have influenced his actual resignation of office. Bute,
+nominally in retirement, but really playing the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of ministerial
+wirepuller-in-ordinary, had a surprising fancy for devising unlikely
+combinations; and now he was minded to conjure with the still potent
+name of Pitt. Once more, and, as it happened, for the last time, he
+sought the service of Shelburne as negotiator, and once more Shelburne,
+undeterred by past experiences, undertook the difficult position. Pitt
+nibbled, and for a time seemed about to bite, but in the end he drew off
+unhooked; whereupon (at the beginning of September, 1763) Shelburne
+immediately resigned the Board of Trade. What his real motive in taking
+this step was, his own letters do not at all clearly show. Doubtless he
+felt his uncordial relations with his colleagues irksome, but we can
+also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise
+over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the
+trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the
+arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all
+subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of
+Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only
+statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly,
+Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply
+infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no
+secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his
+post of royal <i>aide-de-camp</i>, and when he appeared at court snubbed him
+pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit,
+and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased.</p>
+
+<p>For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof
+from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his
+estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents
+(which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up
+to London to enjoy the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</a></span> society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls
+them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political
+clubs of <i>litt&eacute;rateurs</i>. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at
+this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen
+years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the
+happiness of mankind."</p>
+
+<p>But it was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and
+practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when
+a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures
+as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his
+banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous
+Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates
+on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have
+offered a persistent and uncompromising opposition; but at the end of
+April, 1765, he appeared in his place in Parliament to deliver a
+vigorous speech against the Regency Bill, and showed the courage of his
+opinions by leading a minority of eight into the lobby. To Rockingham,
+now at the head of the ministry, it was obvious that Shelburne, despite
+his years&mdash;he was barely eight-and-twenty&mdash;was a personage whose support
+was worth conciliating, and in July he offered to replace him in the
+Board of Trade. The offer was declined, and not unnaturally. Shelburne
+had always, with Pitt, protested against the policy of the Stamp Act,
+and could hardly have sat in a cabinet which, domineered over by the
+king, was preparing to carry it into execution. We may surmise, too,
+that he was not unalive to the advantages of a waiting game, and that,
+closely allied with Pitt as he had now become, and heartily believing in
+him, he was unwilling to take office on any other than what we may call
+the Pitt platform. Indeed, he himself says as much in writing to Pitt, a
+few months afterward, apropos of the Rockingham overtures: "My answer
+was very short and very frank&mdash;that, independent of my connection, I was
+convinced, from my opinion of the state of the court, as well as the
+state of affairs everywhere; no system could be formed, durable and
+respectable, if Mr. Pitt could not be prevailed on to direct and head
+it." In the same letter&mdash;the date is about December, 1765&mdash;he tells
+Pitt, "'Tis you, sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to
+this anarchy, if anything can. I am satisfied your own judgment will
+best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will
+excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends
+greatly upon you whether they become opinions, but, by all I find from
+some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than
+its present state; and though it is my private opinion it would be well
+for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a
+repeal [of the Stamp Act] effecting that if it is not accompanied with
+some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately
+following such a concession."</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the faults and weaknesses of the Rockingham administration of
+1765-66&mdash;and they were many&mdash;their moral courage in proposing and
+carrying through the repeal of the Stamp Act ought to stand weightily to
+their credit. The king was well known to be vehemently averse to the
+slightest tampering with the act; and it is difficult for any body of
+statesmen, even where&mdash;which here was anything but the case&mdash;public
+opinion unanimously admits that a false step has been taken, to face the
+obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it.
+However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne
+supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did
+even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only
+four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the
+well-known declaratory resolution. <i>Sic vos non vobis.</i> Though the
+Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it was the popular
+belief that Pitt had been the real moving cause in the matter. Pitt, and
+none other, was demanded by the national voice. The king reluctantly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</a></span>
+yielded. Pitt marched into the royal closet with words of profoundest
+deference upon his tongue and the stern triumph of a conqueror in his
+heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not
+even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other
+hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of
+state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George
+III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as
+best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new
+arrangement appears from an interesting letter from him to Guerchy in
+London, which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice quotes from a copy at Lansdowne
+House. His conclusion is: "Alors le minist&egrave;re d'Angleterre aura une
+certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple,
+l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-&ecirc;tre l'&eacute;tourderie de my Lord
+Shelburne quoique gouvern&eacute; par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il
+ne l'&eacute;toit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham &agrave; pris une charge trop forte
+d'&ecirc;tre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this
+critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously
+nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of
+Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so long
+been distinctively the Great Commoner, Shelburne at nine-and-twenty
+essaying the grave responsibilities of a secretaryship of state, the
+first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a
+close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war
+of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of
+freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most
+liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be
+expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities,
+and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and
+judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of
+Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most
+American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of
+the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his
+office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his
+character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received
+its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph
+of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly
+advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the
+king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to
+finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition
+that British parliamentary government has seen;&mdash;are not all these
+things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and
+authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future
+volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a
+most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the
+principal&mdash;we cannot add famous&mdash;actors in the conduct of the war; we
+mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for
+cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry,
+and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his
+plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of
+the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly
+responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe
+upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force
+which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which
+together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation,
+considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally
+unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any
+general plan for bringing about a reconciliation. The best plan which
+was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold.
+The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be
+accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person
+who is not conversant with the negligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</a></span> of office to comprehend.
+Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out
+of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or
+Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his
+office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both
+these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair
+copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a
+very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they
+despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others
+could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which,
+however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the
+vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General
+Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen
+colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even <i>a priori</i>, greater
+fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years
+before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved
+himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality&mdash;of whose
+general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a
+newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic
+commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is
+insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive
+indication?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His lordship gave the word, but could no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of such a general to demand the care.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quickly deciding which was best to save,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him
+solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the
+domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for
+some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne,
+which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to
+us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented,
+however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and
+associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the
+habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history,
+politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some
+chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons,
+another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act
+in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at
+the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies
+afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her
+"a sermon out of Barrow against judging others&mdash;a very necessary lesson
+delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord
+Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of
+his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of
+which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre
+during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we
+conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the
+service that is rendered to history by the publication of such
+biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary
+evidence carefully collected, besides correcting the hasty and generally
+biased assertions of irresponsible contemporary chroniclers, forms the
+only trustworthy foundation for the judgment of the impartial historian.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+W. D. R.
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> <i>Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First
+Marquess of Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and
+Correspondence.</i> By Lord <span class="smcap">Edmond Fitzmaurice</span>. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan
+&amp; Co., London and New York, 1875.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Brigadier-general Mostyn.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="OUR_MONTHLY_GOSSIP" id="OUR_MONTHLY_GOSSIP"></a>OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOCIETY IN PARIS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines
+pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or
+public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we
+bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that
+hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the
+eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance.
+Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our
+cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a
+projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in
+croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is
+peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not
+in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a
+new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our
+grand entertainments two great rushes take place&mdash;the one toward the
+dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front
+door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy
+at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and
+a snare.</p>
+
+<p>In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the
+water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element
+of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary
+consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to
+refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer
+she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup
+and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial
+point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or
+thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments
+on a larger scale, such as <i>soir&eacute;es musicales</i>, evening receptions,
+etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually
+handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the
+grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed
+entirely of cold dishes&mdash;chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise
+sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra
+magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the
+matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a
+ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of
+the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The
+substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia
+suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half
+a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and
+Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of
+champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a
+Parisian open his eyes&mdash;ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the
+foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such
+prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia
+banquet.</p>
+
+<p>It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of
+food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great
+encouragement to the givers of soir&eacute;es in general. With us, to entertain
+as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of
+care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very
+wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite
+fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is
+worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event
+can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la
+Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</a></span> she
+shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in
+pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week,
+when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she
+organizes a little soir&eacute;e twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or
+sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited.
+The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good
+amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a
+bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or
+artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or
+herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the
+cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are
+handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away
+groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford
+to give her friends <i>p&acirc;t&eacute; de foie gras</i> and hothouse strawberries, and
+they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If
+she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends
+whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite
+them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which
+she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much
+like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole
+refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would
+be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent
+feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the
+same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses,
+which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven
+o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either
+private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary
+to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to
+pass the remainder of the evening&mdash;a practice which proves that in
+Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our
+own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an
+American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in"
+after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not,
+after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on
+the face of the earth in <i>all</i> respects. That pleasant willingness to
+accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate
+hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of
+American society would do well to study after the example set by their
+Parisian brethren.</p>
+
+<p>A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one
+of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but
+the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions.
+Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true
+French <i>cordon bleu</i>. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity
+displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all
+manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket
+formed of brown <i>nougat</i> was handed round. It was filled with apricots
+moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another
+the basket was of white <i>nougat</i>, and the ice-cream was colored and
+moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large
+silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the
+stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was
+untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest,
+together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk
+was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice,
+while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the
+vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive.
+The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less
+extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for
+the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</a></span> except on
+occasions of extra magnificence and importance.</p>
+
+<p>The official balls at the &Eacute;lys&eacute;e, of which two or three are usually
+given every winter, are very informal in character. The American
+traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the
+medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into
+as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid
+over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the &Eacute;lys&eacute;e. Madame
+MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room,
+which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of
+which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a
+perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the
+host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at
+liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the
+state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or
+thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a
+supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening,
+there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers
+and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet
+liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes,
+combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less
+so than were the official f&ecirc;tes given under the Empire, when the superb
+apartments of the H&ocirc;tel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand
+ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The &Eacute;lys&eacute;e is much
+too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these
+festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that
+after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of
+Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the
+grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of
+the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year,
+but still great enough to render a ball at the &Eacute;lys&eacute;e anything but a
+comfortable form of enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or
+private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that
+is the card-playing&mdash;nay, to put it accurately, the actual
+gambling&mdash;which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not
+pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic
+an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of
+Baden-Baden and of Homburg&mdash;the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on
+the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the
+intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in
+silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner
+during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which
+American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John
+Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the
+amusements in the back parlor of the White House.</p>
+
+<p>But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it
+runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all
+entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and
+beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in
+America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and
+all-important feature. Two great points are <i>de rigueur</i> in a
+Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be
+fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two
+qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more
+minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress,
+and <i>vice vers&acirc;</i>; while in America the same toilette is considered
+appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over
+twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the
+dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The
+same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is
+proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is
+inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span>
+opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate
+for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at
+the Grand Op&eacute;ra or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she
+takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter
+how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is
+entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones
+alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered,
+caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry,
+those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly
+<i>vraisemblable</i> splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is
+rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a
+superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa
+at the &Eacute;lys&eacute;e. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police,
+where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself.
+Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the
+proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was
+accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon
+proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious <i>trouvaille</i>
+was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his <i>Maison
+Neuve</i>, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball
+ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently
+sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of
+<i>clinquante</i> which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to
+the lovers of correct taste in dress.</p>
+
+<p>Another striking feature of European society to an American is the
+predominance of old women therein&mdash;ladies of sixty or seventy years of
+age, very much coiff&eacute;es, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems.
+This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager
+with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with
+many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago
+have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is
+not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against
+American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both
+sexes. Well, after all, it is better so&mdash;that is, so far as balls and
+dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more
+beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in
+white brocade or rose-pink satin.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+L. H. H.
+</p>
+
+<h3>NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a
+good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two
+instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is
+cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly,
+compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and
+assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while
+the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of
+ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could
+emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of
+the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time;
+whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its
+communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no
+speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.</p>
+
+<p>What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the
+forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few
+languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will
+begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type
+of the Semitic race&mdash;the Hebrew. The history of the Jews&mdash;at any rate as
+it is set forth in their own sacred Books&mdash;is pre-eminently the history
+of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of
+<i>conscience</i>. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most
+of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in
+some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main
+object<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span> of the Lawgiver&mdash;keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this
+bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as
+the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the
+conscience unaccused&mdash;to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
+with God." To this bear witness the plaints&mdash;the like of which no other
+ancient literature furnishes&mdash;of their royal Psalmist, the type of what
+was best and noblest in his race&mdash;plaints which mourned not so much
+outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt
+conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else
+was bright&mdash;plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine
+became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament
+found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the <i>de profundis</i> of
+all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as
+he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race
+could not be more clearly shown by volumes.</p>
+
+<p>With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were
+counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of
+other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods
+and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit
+him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the
+"blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance
+of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen
+watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were
+hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego
+his <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the
+cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim
+seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man tanzt, man schw&auml;tzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the
+gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for
+he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and
+his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one;
+and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to
+his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been
+no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of
+exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had
+higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind:
+witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopyl&aelig; and the fields of
+Marathon and Plat&aelig;a. But when the serious business of life gave time,
+wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and
+from him, then, what greeting so natural as &#935;&#945;&#953;&#961;&#949;! ("Rejoice!"
+"Be happy!")?</p>
+
+<p>As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to
+the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do
+not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">Non possum ferre, Quirites,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gr&aelig;cam Urbem,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non est Romano cuiquam locus h&icirc;c, ubi regnat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler
+antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman&mdash;when the
+spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which
+used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of
+the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by
+turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless
+adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law,
+mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded
+sanctions&mdash;who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter
+Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The
+charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures
+were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period&mdash;he who used his
+ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span>
+Ph&oelig;bus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as
+was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in
+ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the
+"Mavortia m&oelig;nia" would stand for ever. To him the state was
+everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working
+member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private
+right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and
+whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as
+a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No
+wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign
+poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had
+spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the
+customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!")
+at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.</p>
+
+<p>To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a
+greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided
+in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no
+people are <i>appearances</i> more studied or cared for. Courage,
+undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical
+Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the
+field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can
+have a good <i>mise en sc&egrave;ne</i> for its exhibition. Deportment is the great
+thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly
+intercourse&mdash;even though one may know that feelings are not very
+deep&mdash;by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing
+things?&mdash;so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races,
+which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any
+rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a
+regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as
+"&Ecirc;tre de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to
+either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman
+in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid
+of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our
+English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall
+rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist,
+Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but
+under each or all, whether for good or evil, <i>manners</i> will rule until
+the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say,
+naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you <i>carry</i> yourself?")?</p>
+
+<p>If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask
+your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter
+you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all
+probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a
+mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an
+exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"?
+He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder
+gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which
+involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that
+tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope
+Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides,
+to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the
+factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr.
+Diedrich Knickerbocker in his <i>History of New York</i>," as a grave
+historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and
+the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the
+gravity, of the Teuton&mdash;his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of
+the minuti&aelig; of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner
+consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet,
+plodding thoroughness&mdash;a looking at things in all their bearings, an
+exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of
+fact or of speculation, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span> constant striving to <i>find out</i> all about
+whatever he takes in hand&mdash;is not this one of his most marked
+characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be,
+if he is gravely polite, "Wie <i>befinden</i> Sie sich?" ("How do you <i>find</i>
+yourself?")?</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less
+than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the
+representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose
+inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and
+having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained
+courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy
+going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the
+main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of
+the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the
+New; whose Anglo-Saxon <i>homes</i> are models of what is nowhere else so
+readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy
+inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own&mdash;a
+compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he
+has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the
+same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than
+his salutation, "How do you <i>do</i>?"?</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+J. A. H.
+</p>
+
+<h3>SEASONABLE READING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper&mdash;a summer study,
+intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his
+understanding&mdash;and timed the production of it so that it should appear
+during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright
+firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor,
+endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general
+reader"&mdash;in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice"
+or "the general ignorance"&mdash;notified me in January that he would prefer
+to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be
+regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under
+green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought
+it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay
+before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general
+ignorance, my little protest.</p>
+
+<p>Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that
+the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an
+eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs,
+symbols&mdash;all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward,
+when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are
+used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory
+more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an
+interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If
+the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from
+all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was
+studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves
+are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes
+utilized&mdash;they cannot be reproduced&mdash;by art, are another thing, and
+these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without
+except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American
+would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the
+good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in
+the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the
+picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a
+proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do
+to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him
+at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain
+of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want
+the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and
+then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before
+a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span> and
+inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.</p>
+
+<p>Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can
+be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively
+account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed
+Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is
+as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one
+will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of
+Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art,
+our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the
+atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in
+"seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring
+being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a
+vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing,
+as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If
+editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain
+articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months
+after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor
+at least who considers the necessity a virtue.</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">C. H.</p>
+
+
+<p>[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine
+should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be
+the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide
+a grateful relief&mdash;like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold
+one&mdash;from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite
+seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and
+seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a
+feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or
+the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more
+intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer
+pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with
+plentiful libations of cool drinks&mdash;a tantalizing spectacle that drew a
+storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor
+whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to
+revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span>]</p>
+
+<h3>A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.</h3>
+
+<p>The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia
+is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its
+management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they
+are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world,
+before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the
+land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and
+individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be
+made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever
+witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond
+to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart.
+Aside from the museum proper&mdash;the collection of past and present
+manufactures, past and present implements of industry&mdash;every day should
+witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which
+took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid
+field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines&mdash;one English,
+one French (from Algiers), and one American&mdash;were the weapons of the
+contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from
+every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine
+machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and
+raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in
+seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in
+twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American
+machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a
+single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect
+shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most
+gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span> three reapers,
+all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening
+shouts of applause.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SHRIMPS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man,
+but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was
+still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive
+qualities&mdash;may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose
+imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms
+and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human
+bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered
+with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected.
+Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after
+once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may
+not be the common shrimp (<i>Crangon vulgaris</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in
+France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water,
+pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long
+stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from
+the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water.
+It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which
+resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the
+old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the
+short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and
+passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages
+serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it
+stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its
+head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes
+of the tail are subjected to the same process.</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 Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.
+Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.
+Boston: Roberts Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>The Poems of William Blake, comprising Songs of Innocence and
+of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches and some
+Copyright Poems not in any other edition. London: Basil Montagu
+Pickering.</p></div>
+
+<p>It does not add to the mere delight of reading Blake's poems to know
+that in point of time they preceded the writings of Cowper, Wordsworth
+and Burns, but assuredly it enhances our estimation of their merit, and
+should have great weight in determining the literary rank of their
+author. His first volume, called <i>Poetical Sketches</i>, printed only for
+private circulation after lying for six years in manuscript, appeared in
+1783, and then only by dint of the kindly efforts of influential and
+prosperous friends, notably Flaxman the sculptor. The <i>Sketches</i> were
+written between the ages of twelve and twenty. The <i>Songs of Innocence
+and Experience</i> appeared between 1787 and 1794, and were united in one
+volume in the latter year. It is by the poems contained in these two
+volumes, although he published or left in manuscript many other
+compositions, most of which are collected in one or the other of the
+editions now before us, that he is best known. During his lifetime his
+writings never achieved any general literary success. It fared with his
+poems as with his paintings, only in a minor degree: they were highly
+esteemed by the initiated, by his personal friends, by a few men whose
+keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of
+the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public,
+on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as
+well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book.
+His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span> neither
+of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron
+tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been
+written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird
+was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve
+years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the
+general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after
+(eleven years ago) a more general interest was created in his work, both
+as artist and poet, by a long and elaborate biography of him written by
+Mr. Gilchrist, and accompanied by a selection from his poems made by Mr.
+Rossetti. Subsequent to this publication appeared a voluminous critical
+essay on his genius by Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former of
+these two books was calculated to induce and foster a more general
+knowledge and appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much
+for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of
+praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the
+effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the
+writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different
+character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make
+acquaintance with them.</p>
+
+<p>But the best and most efficient introduction that a true poet can have
+is the general publication of his works. Let them speak for themselves
+to lovers of poetry, and no other prophet or expounder is needed. This
+is no place for extended comment on Blake's characteristics as a poet.
+His best songs are worthy to be ranked with those of the early
+Elizabethan dramatists, and they are not like them as a copy is like an
+original, but rather resemble them as the inspirations of a kindred
+genius. To find the superiors of some of Blake's songs we must go to
+Shakespeare. The faults of his best poems are always superficial, and
+often mere errors of carelessness and of the absence of literary
+workmanship, but the hand that strikes the keynote is the hand of a
+master. Such pieces as the "Lines to the Evening Star," the songs
+beginning "Memory, hither come," "How sweet I roamed from field to
+field!" "Love and Harmony combine," and the "Address to the Muses," in
+the <i>Sketches</i>, are full of melody and sweetness, and have a certain
+lyrical perfection in which Blake excels; while in the <i>Songs of
+Innocence</i> the poems called "Night" and "Ah Sunflower!" seem to be
+equally beautiful. "A Little Boy Lost," in the <i>Songs of Experience</i>, is
+perhaps the best known of all the poems, and is quoted, with an
+unlicensed change of title, in Mr. Emerson's <i>Parnassus</i>. The disorder
+of Blake's mind, which was a very real and positive fact, undoubtedly
+had a detrimental effect on his work, both in art and literature; and
+there is often a sense of "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh"
+as he touches on some one of the subjects which were potent to disturb
+his brain. But when he sings for the love of singing, with no memory of
+the outer world and its terrible problems, the solving of which lay
+heavy on his heart and brain, then he is all sweetness, melody and
+harmony, and gives us not only the delight of his exquisite verses, but
+that other joy that comes from the sense of breathing an atmosphere of
+devotion, purity, and genial sweetness.</p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Les Pl&eacute;iades. Par le comte de Gobineau. Stockholm and Paris.</p></div>
+
+<p>The author of this book has traveled extensively, and has been a keen
+observer of men and manners, as well as a diligent student of history
+and ethnography. He has represented his government in countries so
+remote and contrasted as Persia and Sweden, has made antiquarian
+researches in the islands of the Mediterranean, has visited parts of
+America, and has won reputation as a scholar and writer by a number of
+works on such abstruse questions as Oriental philosophy and religion,
+the cuneiform inscriptions and the distinctions of race. The present
+book is merely a novel, yet it was clearly intended to embody the
+deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper
+study of mankind," both individually and collectively. The nature of
+man, how it is affected by diversity of circumstances, by nationality,
+descent, rank and occupation, by the relations of class to class, of
+society to the individual, of personal will to a controlling
+destiny,&mdash;this may be said to form the <i>motive</i> of the volume; and
+though such action as there is in it takes place chiefly at the court of
+one of the minor states of Germany, this narrow field was evidently
+selected on a similar principle to that of the Greek drama, with its
+"unities" of time and place and the narratives and explanations of the
+Chorus. The discussions in the book embrace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span> all the problems of
+history, the characters are of different nationalities, and are all
+enriched by the fruits of culture and travel, and the story is a series
+of crucial tests by which, as we are to infer, the author's theories are
+verified. This plan is not absolutely novel. Goethe had adopted a still
+slighter though far happier framework for his ripest thoughts and
+profoundest observations. Yet even Goethe's exquisite art was at fault
+when he sought to extend the original design; and if the first part of
+<i>Wilhelm Meister</i> is the most perfectly constructed work in the whole
+range of literature, the second is merely a heap of precious materials,
+with here and there such groupings and dispositions as indicate how
+details had been conceived, while the general plan refused to shape
+itself in the master's mind. Count Gobineau's failure is of a different
+kind. His story is not only grotesque in construction, but inartistic in
+all its parts. In every group of incidents there is the same lack of
+harmony and completeness as in the adaptation and subordination of each
+to the whole. Nor, with all the author's knowledge of life and of men,
+has he succeeded in creating characters recognizable as life-like and as
+veritable originals. Single features are well drawn, certain
+temperaments are keenly analyzed, but the whole conception is never
+firm, consistent and complete. The simplest, like old Lanze and his
+daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like
+Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Th&eacute;odore, waver between familiar types
+and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the
+Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such
+defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not
+a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not
+of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections
+which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if
+not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays
+in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an
+eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a <i>sauce piquante</i> what
+would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from
+which the title of the book is derived, and which is expounded at length
+in the opening chapters, would bear a rigid examination, or was even
+meant to be taken seriously, may be doubted. It is, at all events, very
+poorly illustrated by the characters and events selected to exemplify
+it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Books_Received" id="Books_Received"></a><i>Books Received.</i></h2>
+
+
+<p>Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to
+Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. With illustrations. New York: Henry
+Holt &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance. By Henry
+Edward, Archbishop of Westminister. New York: Catholic Publication
+Society.</p>
+
+<p>Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army. By George H.
+Boyland. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama. By Alfred Austin. Edinburgh and
+London: Wm. Blackwood &amp; Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Young Folks' History of the United States. By T. W. Higginson.
+Illustrated. Boston: Lee &amp; Shepard.</p>
+
+<p>Baby Died To-day, and Other Poems. By the late William Leighton. London:
+Longmans, Green &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Vol. I. of German Classics. New York: G.
+P. Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Types and Emblems: A Collection of Sermons. By C. H. Spurgeon. New York:
+Sheldon &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill, M.D. New York: G. P.
+Putnam's Sons.</p>
+
+<p>A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James
+R. Osgood &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>Christian Belief and Life. By A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Ezra Stiles Gannet: A Memoir. By his son, W. C. Gannet. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Recollections and Suggestions. By John, Earl Russell. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Birds of the North-west. By Elliot Coues. Washington: Government
+Printing-office.</p>
+
+<p>Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws. By W. B. Weeden. Boston: Roberts
+Bros.</p>
+
+<p>Victor La Tourette: A Novel. By a Broad Churchman. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Domus Dei. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham &amp; Son.</p>
+
+<p>Poems of Twenty Years. By Laura W. Johnson. New York: De Witt C. Lent.</p>
+
+<p>Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Mistress Judith. By C. C. Frazer Tytler. New York: Henry Holt &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>Generalship: A Tale. By George Roy. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke &amp; Co.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29184-h.htm or 29184-h.zip *****
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8746 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature
+and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: June 21, 2009 [EBook #29184]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
+
+OF
+
+_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE._
+
+
+MAY, 1875.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by J. B.
+LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
+Washington.
+
+
+
+
+UP THE PARANA AND IN PARAGUAY.
+
+
+TWO PAPERS.--I.
+
+[Illustration: DIAMOND CLIFF: SUNSET.]
+
+The lot of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not
+an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the
+rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the
+American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with
+a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not
+adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which
+penetrates through doors that do not fasten and windows that do not fit
+as snugly as they should. The continual and monotonous drip of the
+rain, which ripples in streams or falls drop by drop on the pavement of
+the yards or of the street, is also highly depressing to the spirits
+when one is held an involuntary prisoner in the ground-floors of the
+houses, and must perforce listen to it for hours.
+
+If, led by inclination or compelled by necessity, you go into the
+street, you find the space between the sidewalks transformed into a
+miniature river. In some of the streets the pavements are more than
+three feet high, and pedestrians walk on them as on the tow-path of a
+canal, passing from one side of the torrent to the other on small wooden
+crossings. The comfort that is derived elsewhere in inclement weather
+from fires may not be hoped for in Buenos Ayres, for the bed-rooms are
+rarely provided with fireplaces, and in cases where they do possess them
+the chimneys are liable to smoke dreadfully when the north-west wind
+sweeps over the city.
+
+The natives, accustomed to these features of the rainy season in La
+Plata, look with indifference on the forlorn condition of the stranger
+within their gates, and the foreigner, thus left to struggle against the
+coalition of the elements with the thoughtless or selfish indifference
+of the native population, must resign himself with patience and
+resignation until the three months of watery affliction shall have
+passed away.
+
+It was at a time when the reign of Pluvius was at its height, and Buenos
+Ayres daily wept blinding tears, as it were, from every roof and gable
+for its sins, that M. X----, the head of a commercial house in the city,
+put a most welcome question to one of the attaches of the establishment,
+M. Forgues, a Frenchman, who just then was suffering from the grievous
+burden of ennui.
+
+"See here," he said: "I want somebody to go up into Paraguay to collect
+an outstanding debt. Are you the man for my purpose?"
+
+M. Forgues readily accepted the commission, for as the head of the house
+spoke a vision passed through his mind of Paraguay with its old Jesuit
+missions, its mysterious and despotic dictators, and its legends of the
+terrible war waged by Lopez against Brazil, the Argentine Confederation
+and the Banda Oriental. And, moreover, the venture promised relief from
+the horrors of the rainy season in Buenos Ayres.
+
+When Francisco Solano Lopez, late president of Paraguay, fell on the
+field on March 1, 1870, at the head of a few hundred followers, the
+survivors of that courageous army of sixty thousand men with which in
+1865 he had begun his five years' struggle, he had left behind him a
+devastated country, a decimated people and an impoverished population.
+It is to this land, almost remote enough from the pathway of our modern
+civilization to partake of the mystery of an unknown interior; where
+Nature has lavished her beauties with open hand; where a brilliant
+vegetation alternates with noble forests, solitudes that have rarely
+echoed the footfall of civilized man, and vast plains dotted with
+palms--a country of mountainous reaches in which the jaguar roams at
+will, of great lagoons, the home of a primitive race dwelling for the
+most part in villages,--to this land it is that we shall follow M.
+Forgues on his journey of more than a thousand miles, and see with his
+eyes its life and scenery.
+
+From Buenos Ayres the traveler, issuing from the Rio de la Plata,
+ascends the Parana by steamer to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay; and
+on the morning after the conversation with his principal M. Forgues
+embarked on the Republica, a low-pressure steamboat furnished with a
+walking-beam, and similar in its architecture and equipments to the
+passenger steamers in use on the waters of the Northern and Middle
+States of the Union.
+
+After steaming two hours the Republica reaches the vast delta of the
+Parana, skirting the Tigre Islands, a lovely group formed by the
+numerous winding mouths of the river. The month is August, and a
+charming effect is produced by the forests of palms, orange trees and
+wild peach trees, the latter rosy with blossoms, which cover the
+islands. The wild peach of the clingstone variety is almost the only
+fruit of the province of Buenos Ayres, and when the season for gathering
+it comes, a multitude of boats from the city may be seen moored in the
+high grasses along the shores of the Tigre Islands, while the
+_barqueros_ collect the peaches, which are free to whoever will pluck
+them, fill their boats and return to the capital to sell them.
+
+[Illustration: DELTA OF THE PARANA.]
+
+[Illustration: TIGER ISLAND, MOUTH OF THE PARANA.]
+
+The Republica ascends the river through the branch called the Parana de
+las Palmas, up which Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1525, when in a schooner
+of a hundred tons burden he penetrated to the heart of South America. It
+passes, to the left, a hamlet, Campana, the prominent feature of which
+is a handsome white building resembling a _palazzo_ of Italy, and which,
+built on an elevation, dominates the other houses; Zarate, where are
+situated a number of _saladeros_, or salting-places for the salting of
+the hides of the province; and finally the mouth of the Baradero River,
+a small stream which leads to a village of the same name, the home of a
+prosperous colony of Swiss settlers.
+
+Higher up, on the right shore, lies the drowsy old town of San Pedro,
+founded in the middle of the seventeenth century, and which is chiefly
+noticeable as having been at a standstill since that period, although
+within the past three or four years it has begun to show signs of
+development, one of which is a project to cut a ship-canal across a
+narrow reach of sand which separates the lagoon on which the town is
+built from the river, so as to give passage to Transatlantic vessels.
+
+At San Pedro the steamer emerges from the Parana de las Palmas and
+enters the main channel of the river. A notable locality a few leagues
+above San Pedro is the Obligado, where the Parana becomes so narrow that
+the channel lies within pistol-shot of the right bank. The Obligado is
+interesting in an historical point of view as having been the scene in
+1845 of a fierce engagement wherein the English and French fleets ran
+the gauntlet of the Argentine batteries there, which attempted to
+prevent their passage. One of the English vessels, under a withering
+fire, cut a chain that barred the channel. A humorous sequel to this
+brilliant feat of arms is this, that since that occurrence every French
+sailor, and especially every deserter from the French merchant marine
+who goes to La Plata, boasts that he "assisted" at the affair. He will
+narrate all the details in the most bombastic manner to any pecuniarily
+prosperous fellow-countryman who will listen to him, and will then close
+with a proposition that he and his compatriot shall "take something."
+The payment for the score naturally falls to the lot of the listener or
+victim, and hence has arisen a saying among Frenchmen in La Plata:
+"Distrust the gentleman who was at the combat of the Obligado."
+
+Twenty-four hours after leaving Buenos Ayres the steamer stops at
+Rosario, having previously passed the town of San Nicolas de los
+Arragos, with its ten thousand inhabitants, its picturesque cathedral
+flanked with a white tower on either side, its progressive tramways or
+horse-cars, and its reputation for furnishing an excellent article of
+hides, the province being celebrated for the quality of its cattle.
+
+Rosario is the second port of the confederation. It stands a short
+distance away from the river on a barranca or cliff. Passengers on
+landing are conveyed in horse-cars to the town, which is laid out in
+handsome streets and built up with charming and comfortable houses. The
+barn-like church, of the "horrible Jesuit style," as M. Forgues calls it
+(the heavy style of architecture common to nearly all the church
+edifices of South America), is very ugly, and as to the "faithful
+_elegantes_" who worshiped in it, our traveler did not deem them as
+handsome as their sisters of Buenos Ayres. Much of Rosario's increasing
+prosperity is owing to the railroad which connects it with the interior
+town of Cordova to the west. This road also extends down the Parana to a
+point about half-way to Buenos Ayres. When completed to the latter city
+and to its western terminus, which will be at no distant day, Buenos
+Ayres, on the Atlantic, will be connected with Valparaiso, in Chili, on
+the Pacific. There is also a line of English steamers which ply directly
+between Rosario and the English ports.
+
+At Rosario the Republica takes on passengers, coal and freight, and
+resumes her voyage. Above the city, the cliffs, increasing in height,
+attain an altitude of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. They are
+composed entirely of a hard brown earth having the appearance of
+pulverized chocolate; and the river, rushing between them, assumes a
+dirty, brownish hue for many miles. In their shadow, as the steamer
+passes, lie a Brazilian gunboat and two monitors of the same
+nationality: one of the latter is deeply dented in places where she was
+struck by Paraguayan cannon-balls.
+
+[Illustration: PUBLIC SQUARE IN PARANA.]
+
+About twelve hours' distance from Rosario the Diamante, or Diamond
+Cliff, is reached. Here the cliffs that line the left bank culminate.
+They are especially interesting to the geologist because of their
+extraordinary richness in fossils of various kinds. Fragments of the
+megatherium and of the glyptodon have been found there, but the most
+important discovery of all was a very complete skeleton of the former
+animal--the most complete in existence, in fact--which now adorns the
+museum at Buenos Ayres. The village of Diamante, with a population of
+five or six hundred souls, is situated near by. Twenty hours later the
+Republica arrives at Parana, a handsome city, formerly the capital of
+the confederation. The removal of the seat of government to Buenos Ayres
+was a great blow to the prosperity of the old capital. Once the
+diplomatic corps had their residences there. The climate of the place is
+delicious, and under its balmy influence the orange tree flourishes in
+the open air and bears fruit of exquisite flavor. The country around
+Parana is very picturesque, and the town itself, though since it has
+ceased to be the Argentine capital it presents an appearance of
+emptiness, is very gay. Among its attractions are a theatre and a fine
+public square adorned with shade trees. The community has musical
+tastes, and nearly every second house contains a piano--a fact of which
+the stranger strolling through the place is kept constantly aware. Many
+of the streets are paved and macadamized.
+
+[Illustration: A BLANCO INSURGENT.]
+
+Parana is the chief city of the province of Entre Rios, the people of
+which are possessed of a fierce spirit of independence, and, like the
+Basques of Spain, claiming the right to administer their domestic
+affairs in their own way, they are often in insurrection against the
+central government at Buenos Ayres, which resorts to force to check
+their "separatist" tendencies. Within four years two or three efforts at
+revolution have been made on the part of the people of Entre Rios under
+Lopez Jordan, their principal leader, General Mitre, and others. One
+year previous to the journey we are now describing our traveler had gone
+from Buenos Ayres to Parana on business. In consequence of a municipal
+election having gone in favor of the government candidates by a majority
+of thirty votes, a fresh insurrection had just broken out in the city,
+and when M. Forgues reached his destination he found the national troops
+in possession of Parana, which was closely besieged by the Blancos or
+"Whites," as the insurgents were called from their trappings, to
+distinguish them from the Colorados or "Reds," which was the name given
+to the Buenos Ayres party. On the occasion of this visit he had need to
+seek the insurgent camp in furtherance of his mission, which was to
+obtain possession of eight thousand hides that were within the
+insurgents' lines. He returned to Parana, after successfully conducting
+the negotiations, with a sketch of one of the mounted Blancos, a
+picturesque, stately fellow, with the proud bearing of a brigand, having
+enormous spurs on his heels, a white band around his hat, and armed with
+a lance and a long cavalry sword.
+
+[Illustration: A SALADERO ON THE PARANA.]
+
+Immediately opposite Parana, on the other side of the river, which in
+this part is very wide, is the city of Santa Fe, the point of export for
+all the region occupied by the foreign agricultural colonies of the
+confederation--to wit, the Swiss, Piedmontese, Germans and Belgians. The
+chief industry in which these colonists are engaged is the cultivation
+of wheat, of which enormous quantities are raised and converted into
+flour on the spot, as there are several steam flour-mills in the
+district. The flour is shipped from Santa Fe and sold in Rosario or
+Buenos Ayres. These colonists number about thirteen thousand. Santa Fe
+is a remarkably indolent town--the most indolent in the world, says M.
+Forgues. Its chief features are its great plaza, its church and the
+palace of the governor of Gran Chaco. Back of the country occupied by
+the colonists begins the land of the Chaco Indians. They enjoy the
+reputation of being savages, but as an example of the delicate line of
+demarkation in La Plata between the extreme of civilization and the
+extreme of savage life our traveler relates that riding thirty leagues
+to visit a tribe of wild Indians, he found the chief with a _poncho_ of
+Manchester manufacture on his shoulders, a pair of gaiters from Latour,
+Rue Montorgueil, Paris, on his feet, and a hospitable glass of Hamburg
+gin in his hand.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF PARANA FROM THE RIVER.]
+
+Leaving Parana, the steamer passes, at a short distance above the city,
+the _saladero_ of Messrs. Carbo y Carril, a picturesque spot situated on
+a cliff. From this point a fine view is obtained of Parana in the
+distance, stretching along its high barranca, with its white houses and
+belfries in bold relief against the blue sky, and borrowing from the
+elevation on which it stands a delusively majestic aspect.
+
+As the Republica ascends the river the cliffs continue to be the
+prevailing feature of the shore-scenery. A Brazilian passenger steamer,
+one of a line of steamers which ply between Cuyaba in the Brazilian
+province of Matto Grosso and Montevideo, is met descending the stream.
+This line, established by the government of Brazil to maintain
+communication between its central South American possessions and the
+large cities of the coast, receives an imperial subsidy of nine thousand
+francs a month. A _saladero_ is passed, and then a village. The river is
+thick with trees with twisted roots and short branches, floating
+downward to the ocean. Then the appearance of the banks changes: the
+cliffs gradually slope to a level with the river, and vegetation begins
+to line the shore, first in the shape of bushes, next of undergrowth,
+and finally of lofty forest trees, some of them dead, and with a wall
+of tangled foliage overhead.
+
+Passing Esquina, a hamlet at the mouth of the Rio Corrientes, vast
+volumes of smoke rising behind the trees on the right bank proclaim that
+the Indians of Gran Chaco are "burning a forest in order to roast a
+quarter of venison." Here the steamer's course lies among islands
+covered partly with undergrowth and partly with forests. In the shadow
+of the tall trees on one of the most lovely of these islands is seen
+from the deck a quaint, barefooted company consisting of two men, a
+woman and three small children, who have just stepped ashore from two
+boats made from the hollowed-out trunks of trees. Two dogs accompany
+them. The adults of the party are clothed in rags. These people are
+_monteros_, and are members of a tribe of gypsies who haunt the islands
+of the Parana. They live a life of lordly independence, subsisting as
+best they can, sleeping when fatigued wherever they may be when
+drowsiness overtakes them, eating whatever comes to hand, drinking the
+water of the river in the absence of anything stronger, and keeping
+themselves warm by firing a forest from time to time. At the moment the
+Republica hurries past they are preparing their evening meal, the
+material for which, a _carpincho_, a sort of aquatic hog, lies at their
+feet. The chief of the gypsy party stares at the steamer with bewildered
+eyes, and at the noise made by the paddles a great terror seizes on a
+colony of monkeys in the branches of the trees.
+
+The town of La Goya, with a population of five thousand, is the next
+place of importance reached. A few miles above this point is a famous
+_saladero_, that of El Rincon de los Sotos (the "Fool's Corner"), which
+belongs to a fellow-countryman of M. Forgues, and which, after the
+_saladero_ of Baron Liebig in Uruguay, is the most extensive in the
+valley of the Rio de la Plata. Here are slaughtered as many as fifteen
+hundred head of cattle a day. Nor far distant from it is the
+landing-place for the animals, a pretty spot which M. Forgues sketched
+_en passant_.
+
+The Republica is approaching Corrientes, the last of the Argentine towns
+on the left bank of the Parana, and situated eighteen miles below the
+point at which the Paraguay unites with that stream. Now alligators
+appear, stretched lazily on the sand and basking in the sun, with their
+ugly black bodies resembling logs partly submerged. The river assumes a
+new aspect, widening into great sheets of water dotted with flat islands
+lying far apart, and in its lake-like proportions justifying the
+Guaranian meaning of its name--"like the sea." So far-reaching indeed
+are these expanses of water that when a brisk south-east wind rises
+large vessels in them roll and pitch as in the open bay. The belfries of
+Corrientes will loom before the eyes of the company on the Republica at
+ten o'clock the next morning, and in the mean time, and until the sun
+shall rise, the steamer is moored before a small island. In that balmy
+and odorous night myriads of insects cloistered in the leafy shades fill
+the air with murmurs and drowsy noises. Behind the dark foliage a swarm
+of fireflies illumines the gloom, until to the looker-on in the river
+the depths of the solitary island take to themselves the fantastic guise
+of a great city far away, with its gaslights twinkling merrily.
+
+At Corrientes the Parana abruptly diverges to the east, marking the
+northern boundary of Argentine territory, and separating the latter from
+Paraguay. From the river the port presents a spectacle of groups of
+rocks of some beauty, and of palms and orange-trees growing close to the
+water's edge. Beyond the foliage are seen the belfries of several
+churches built after the prevailing fashion. Among them is visible also
+a handsome turret of Moorish architecture, which rears itself aloft with
+a charming effect. This building is the cabildo, or court-house, and
+dates from 1812. Near by is seen a white memorial pillar, built on the
+site of the cross that the first Spanish settlers planted in 1588. The
+population of Corrientes is about twenty thousand. From the country
+around are procured the best oranges grown in the confederation, and the
+city is the mart for the woods from the Paraguayan, Chaco and Corrientes
+forests which are exported for manufacturing purposes.
+
+[Illustration: GYPSIES OF THE ISLANDS IN THE PARANA.]
+
+The elbow formed by the junction of the Parana and the Paraguay is
+called by the natives _Las Tres Bocas_, or "The Three Mouths." From 1812
+to 1865, under the rule of the dictators, this avenue of approach to
+Paraguay remained closed. But the fortunes of the last war opened it
+permanently, and the Republica quietly steams into the great
+water-highway that leads to Asuncion through the passes of the Cerrito.
+At the mouth of the river is the island of Cerrito, formerly the
+Paraguayan Gibraltar, and now the Gibraltar of the Brazilians, who
+maintain there a garrison and an arsenal for the equipment of their
+navy.
+
+After passing the Cerrito the Paraguay winds in its course and becomes
+narrow--the width not exceeding twelve hundred feet--and of greater
+depth than the Parana. Hereabout and above are spots made memorable by
+the obstinate defence of the late President Lopez and the brave
+endurance of his people. On the right are the famous batteries of
+Curupaiti, where Lopez with thirty thousand Paraguayans and one hundred
+and fifty cannon resisted for eight months the attempts of the united
+Brazilian and Argentine forces to turn him out. But at last the
+condition of affairs became critical, and on a dark night he silently
+abandoned Curupaiti with his army, leaving his fires burning, wooden
+images of men on the ramparts, logs in the embrasures in lieu of cannon,
+and decamped to occupy a similar intrenched position at Humaita, six
+leagues above, where for five months longer he checked the advance of
+the allies. So adroitly was this change of position effected that the
+Brazilian commander was unaware of the abandonment of the place until
+four days after its desertion. To-day at Humaita a ruined belfry casts
+its melancholy shadow on the long-contested field of battle.
+
+Leaving Humaita behind, the mouth of the Vermejo, a stream which tinges
+the Paraguay with the hue of its clay-colored waters, is reached and
+passed: then Villa del Pilar, a forlorn hamlet, where a few dejected
+inhabitants crouch in the shade of shattered houses. Next a magnificent
+forest of palms appears. In front the yellow sand of the shore is
+covered with alligators, which lie about in groups. From the boat M.
+Forgues fires at these, and a little later he tries his skill on a
+jaguar, which, however, with a fierce growl, scampers off, and is lost
+to sight in the mazes of the high grass beyond. These localities and
+Villa Oliva, which is next passed, are all on the left bank, the
+opposite side of the river being peopled only by the wandering Indians
+of Gran Chaco. A short distance above is the small and once prosperous
+town of Villeta, whence are shipped in season boatloads of oranges, but
+which at present is a mass of ruins that bear ample testimony to the
+excellent aim of the Brazilian gunners.
+
+Just before a turn in the river reveals the presence of Asuncion the
+Republica steams by the Cerro de Lambare, a cone-shaped hill about three
+hundred and twenty feet high, covered with so dense a growth of bushes
+that no one has ever succeeded in climbing to its summit. The
+river-channel in its length between this elevation and Asuncion still
+contains remains of the obstructions which Lopez placed there to check
+the progress of the Brazilian fleet and protect the city. As the steamer
+rounds the bend the Paraguayan capital comes in sight. A prominent and
+historical object in the medley of houses is the high tower of Lopez's
+chateau, dominating the rest of the city, and now gilded with the rays
+of the setting sun. A portion of its top is missing, a shell having
+carried it away during the war. Two discharges of cannon from the deck
+of the Republica announce the arrival, and in due time the steamer,
+which draws too much water to approach the quay, is anchored two hundred
+yards from the shore, having happily concluded her voyage of a thousand
+miles, which has consumed nearly seven days.
+
+The view from deck is a most picturesque one. In a little while a
+flotilla of small boats, headed by the armed tender of the port-captain,
+puts out from the quay and swarms around the steamer. Some of the boats
+contain citizens who are expecting the arrival of friends, and in others
+are hucksters, who jabber and gesticulate in frantic recommendation of
+their fruits and small wares. Immediately in front is the custom-house
+with its colonnade of white pillars, resembling a cloister. To the left
+Lopez's palace rears its shattered tower, and on the right hand is the
+arsenal, which serves as the barracks for the three or four thousand
+troops composing the Brazilian army of occupation. Near it is the
+horse-car station, connected by the street-cars with the station of the
+Asuncion and Paraguari railroad, a line about twenty-five leagues in
+length. Carts drawn by horses move slowly to and fro on the quay. Here
+and there along the shore, with the look of skeletons about them, are
+frames of unfinished ships: one of them is an iron vessel which was in
+process of construction, under the orders of Lopez, at the breaking out
+of the war in 1865. The Brazilian conquerors have left these vessels in
+the condition in which they found them.
+
+[Illustration: LANDING PLACE FOR CATTLE, PARANA RIVER.]
+
+When the war supervened, Asuncion and all Paraguay, under the despotic
+but intelligent sway of Lopez, were moving rapidly in the path of
+progress. In fact, twelve years ago no country in La Plata was blessed
+with so flourishing and perfected a system of industry as Paraguay. But
+the war came, waged by the allies expressly to destroy for ever the
+dictatorial authority wielded by Lopez; Paraguay was invaded and
+overrun; and the fierce and destructive character of the contest has
+left shattered walls in the capital, and in the interior the blackened
+ruins of ranchos. These traces of the terrible conflict give a
+melancholy aspect to the city, and its future is further shadowed by the
+hopelessness of the people, who seem to have no heart to repair the
+damage done to the houses.
+
+[Illustration: THE HILL OF LAMBARE.]
+
+In coming to Asuncion, M. Forgues had taken on himself a commission far
+more troublesome than that of collecting the money due to the commercial
+house with which he was connected; and this was to deliver into the
+hands of the French _charge d'affaires_ at Buenos Ayres, the comte A. de
+C----, who happened to be at the time in Asuncion, the despatch-bag of
+the legation, which had been consigned to his care by the French consul
+in the former city. Behold, then, our traveler, as, accompanied by the
+captain of the Republica, he sets foot on the quay, intent on relieving
+himself of his precious valise, the possession of which is doubly
+embarrassing because of its very preciousness. He has a hope that he may
+meet the _charge_ at the Progreso Club, whither he is going, but whether
+he is to be met or not, he does not dare to leave behind him the valise,
+which to him is a veritable Old Man of the Sea. Night has fallen when
+they leave the steamer. The dark, sandy streets are badly graded, and he
+stumbles repeatedly on the uneven brick pavements which line them, at
+every step anathematizing the valise, which is far from being a light
+burden. The club-house was the residence of Lopez before the allied
+armies occupied the city. From its seclusion he went forth to meet his
+death at Cerro Cora. In the parlor is a large mirror with gilded
+mouldings, and the dining-room walls are hung with painted paper
+representing in vivid colors, and with much gilding and silvering,
+scenes from French history, in which musqueteers, courtiers and the
+cardinal de Richelieu figure. A large and notable company is present,
+among them many high civil functionaries, but the _charge d'affaires_ is
+not there. In the billiard-room the honorable minister of finance plays
+a game with the honorable minister of the interior. They are both of
+unpretending manners, polite and affable, and during the pauses of the
+game they call for and drink their beer in true democratic fashion. M.
+Forgues learns that his _charge_ lives two leagues out of town, and,
+hugging his exasperating valise--which, we may here remark, was
+delivered safely to the _charge_ next day--he returns in company with
+the captain to the steamer, where, seated on the deck, he listens with
+horror to the stories told by a citizen of divers murders committed in
+the town and vicinity, one of the victims, a French pioneer, having been
+slain lately at his _quinta_, or small farm, just on the other side of
+the river, by the fierce Indians of Gran Chaco, whose camp-fires, about
+six miles distant, even while they are conversing, light up one-fourth
+of the horizon in that direction.
+
+M. Forgues, introduced to General Vedia, who commands the Argentine
+forces in Paraguay, is invited by that officer to go with him to Villa
+Occidental, a town situated a few miles above Asuncion on the river, and
+capital of the new province of Gran Chaco, claimed by the Argentine
+Confederation. He accepts. The voyage is made in a small Argentine
+gunboat, with its guard of thirty Argentine soldiers dressed in gray
+linen, with green facings to their coats, and armed with Minie rifles.
+This detachment is on its way to Villa Occidental to relieve the guard
+at that place, which has been on duty for eight days protecting the
+infant capital of Gran Chaco against the incursions of the Indians of
+the province. Around them are grouped a number of Paraguayan women,
+clad in the costume of the country--a chemise and a white rebozo--which
+gives them a certain statuesque appearance. The general and M. Forgues
+are received with military honors at Villa Occidental by the commandant
+of the place and his garrison of three soldiers. A walk of ten minutes
+brings them to the spot, a short distance out of the village, where
+twenty years ago was established a colony of Frenchmen who had been sent
+out from France by the late President Lopez at the time of the
+dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, his father. The elder Lopez, it
+appears, desired agriculturists from France, and the younger Lopez, who
+was then in that country, despatched to him two or three hundred
+bootblacks, organ-grinders, street vagabonds, etc. whom he had collected
+on the quays of Bordeaux and in the suburbs of Paris. Carlos Antonio was
+at first grieved to see the class of immigrants that had been forwarded
+as tillers of the soil, but he became furious when he discovered that
+his unwelcome colonists had brought with them certain dangerous ideas of
+liberty which threatened to excite a mutinous spirit among his docile
+Paraguayans. He therefore assembled them at a spot near Villa
+Occidental, and placed them under the control of the governor of the
+province of Gran Chaco, in spite of the protests of the French consul.
+Here they were treated with the utmost cruelty. They were bastinadoed
+and otherwise punished for the most trivial offences. Many died under
+these inflictions. Of the few survivors some endeavored to escape
+through the forests of Gran Chaco to Bolivia and Peru. Three were
+caught, brought back and tortured, while the others, of whom no tidings
+were ever received afterward, probably perished of hunger or were killed
+by the Indians or jaguars. All that now remains of this ill-starred
+enterprise is a few half-decayed palm-tree posts symmetrically planted
+in the ground on the site of the unfortunate colony of New Bordeaux.
+
+Villa Occidental is at present merely a village of eight hundred or one
+thousand inhabitants. Its greatness, if it is ever to be great, lies in
+the future. General Vedia, having ample room at his command for a
+metropolitan experiment, has laid it out in long avenues seventy-five
+feet wide, with a view to its future magnificence when it shall have
+become the outlet of the northern regions of the Argentine Confederation
+and the emporium of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN ASCUNCION.]
+
+At Villa Occidental, M. Forgues meets a fellow-countryman, who belongs
+to the class of adventurers who flourish in the wake of great wars. His
+name is Auriguau, and he was once a soldier in the Franco-Spanish free
+corps which fought against Lopez in the campaign of 1870. His head is
+filled with sublime ideas, and his pocket is empty. He has come to
+Villa Occidental to propose to General Vedia the formation of a
+military corps, of which he shall be chief, composed of his old
+companions-in-arms, to serve against the Indians of Gran Chaco. He
+explains his plan with much enthusiasm, and then begs our traveler to
+present him with his gun, his revolver, his money, his hat, and even his
+boots.
+
+M. Forgues is of course General Vedia's guest for the night. As he is
+about to dismiss the soldier who has conducted him to his chamber, which
+is on the ground-floor of the house, an unexpected visitor glides into
+the room through the open door. This visitor is a snake three feet long.
+The soldier kills him, turns him on his back, and calmly remarks that he
+is one of the most dangerous specimens of his kind in the neighborhood.
+M. Forgues's curiosity is aroused. "Are there many like this in the
+houses here?" he asks. "Sometimes yes, sometimes no," replies the
+soldier philosophically, retiring from the presence. M. Forgues goes to
+sleep to dream of a snake for a bedfellow, and to be bitten by
+mosquitoes of a peculiarly virulent kind through the cords of his
+hammock.
+
+[Illustration: AN EARLY LESSON IN SMOKING.]
+
+At early dawn our traveler is up and his toilet is made. Before the door
+silently file the women of the colony on their way to the bank of the
+river. Each bears on her head a large jug of red clay ornamented with
+fanciful designs, the clay resembling that of which the bowl of an
+Arab's pipe is made. When these jugs are empty the women carry them in a
+pretty way inclining to one side, as the French soldier wears his
+_kepi_. This gives to their walk an air of ease and nonchalance that is
+extremely graceful. They are draped after a charming fashion in a piece
+of white cotton called the rebozo, which is scrupulously clean, and they
+walk one behind the other in bare feet and with elastic step. Their
+garment consists of a white cotton chemise embroidered around the neck
+and at the top of the sleeves with black worsted. It is cut very low in
+the neck, leaving a part of the breast bare, and descends to a point
+below the knee. A cotton cord tied around the waist keeps the chemise to
+the figure, and serves as girdle and corset at the same time. The space
+between the top of the chemise and the belt is used as a receptacle for
+cigars, money, and generally for all the small objects that elsewhere
+people carry in their pockets. The rebozo is worn over the head and
+shoulders, with the ends thrown back over the left shoulder. As they
+thus pass in single file, the customary mode of walking with the
+Guaranian women, nothing can be more coquettish than the pose of the
+jugs on their heads. They resemble an ancient bas-relief. Some of them
+have admirable figures, and nearly all have fine teeth. Though the type
+of the race is not a handsome one, owing to the high cheek-bones and
+square chin, many individuals are pretty. Their large dark eyes are
+shaded with heavy eyebrows, and their hair is as black as the crow's
+wing, but very coarse, notwithstanding the constant attention which its
+owners devote to it. Add to this, and spoiling all, an immense cigar in
+each mouth, for the Paraguayan women all smoke incessantly. Even
+children of tender years smoke, and the only ones exempt from the habit
+are babes at the breast. Indeed, M. Forgues remembers to have seen a
+Guaranian mother, with her little one straddling her hip, endeavoring to
+quiet the child's cries by placing between its lips the half-chewed end
+of her cigar. Among the women of this class marriages are rare. Their
+principal characteristics are attachment to the companions whom they
+have chosen, a scrupulous cleanliness, great reserve in speaking,
+superstition, industry and intelligence.
+
+The general awakes. Horses are brought bridled and saddled for a ride,
+and the two set out in the direction of the mouth of the Rio Confuso,
+about five miles distant from the village. The road crosses a vast
+plain shaded here and there with a few palms of small growth. After half
+an hour's ride they reach a saw-mill, the property of an eccentric
+Italian named Perucchino, who had served in his time as an officer of
+the Italian volunteers of Montevideo under Garibaldi, at the period of
+the latter's residence in South America. Perucchino receives them with
+_evvivas_, gestures, and with even more than the usual demonstrations of
+the Italian character, and invites them into his house, before which are
+planted three cannon mounted on a large piece of timber. His bed-room is
+an arsenal, supplied with enough old muskets, veterans of the war of
+independence, rusty swords and pikes, to arm fifteen men. He loves
+noise, and in proof thereof, after killing two chickens for breakfast
+with two separate discharges of a dangerous-looking double-barreled
+rifle--dangerous to him who fires it--he announces that the meal is
+ready with a discharge of one of the cannon at the door--a noisy
+proclamation which causes M. Forgues to jump in his seat. The breakfast,
+consisting of chicken and corn and rice omelettes, washed down with
+heavy Spanish wine, disappears as if by magic under the eager appetites
+of the guests. Perucchino has been dwelling in this solitude of Gran
+Chaco for three years with his wife, a Spanish woman. With two
+fellow-countrymen to assist him, he has worked indefatigably, and at the
+time of this visit his considerable property has greatly improved. In
+two years more, when his fields of corn, tobacco and sugar-cane shall
+begin to yield a return, the ex-beggar of Montevideo will be in the
+enjoyment of a yearly income of fifteen thousand francs.
+
+At noon M. Forgues and the general return to Villa Occidental under a
+burning sun, and in the evening they embark for Asuncion on the gunboat,
+accompanied by the relieved garrison of thirty men. M. Forgues
+regretfully leaves this little colony, so peaceful and verdurous. As he
+is about to embark some one runs after him and overtakes him. It is
+Auriguau, who asks him for his traveling-bag and his pipe, and takes
+possession, without asking, of his tobacco, promising him in return a
+present of an entire museum of curiosities, among which are enumerated
+tiger robes, dried butterflies and some enormous snakes, and in addition
+a complete collection of all the woods of Gran Chaco, the total
+approximate value of which is about forty thousand francs.
+
+[Illustration: ROAD TO TRINIDAD.]
+
+The return journey is along the Chaco side of the Paraguay. Here and
+there on the sandbanks amid which the boat threads its way are sunk two
+or three hulls of vessels covered with a rich growth of vegetation. They
+represent so many incipient islands. It is amusing to observe the
+soldiers and their wives busily employed in extinguishing the burning
+cinders and sparks--small beginnings of conflagrations--which have been
+deposited in their hair and on their clothing and bundles from the
+wood-fed furnaces of the gunboat.
+
+The scenery in the vicinity of Asuncion is very fine, and possesses a
+special feature of its own with the dark shadows of the trees falling on
+a reddish-yellow sand. Immense avenues lead out in a straight line from
+the city. They are from seventy to eighty feet wide, but the sand is so
+deep in them and in the streets that men and horses sink in it above the
+ankle. Since the war the people have had very few horses, and have been
+compelled to import them; and it very often happens that newly-arrived
+saddle and draught horses die from exhaustion consequent on their
+efforts to gallop in the streets and country roads. One of the most
+charming of these avenues leads to the church of the Trinidad in the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+Sugar-cane grows to perfection in this part of Paraguay, but as the
+methods employed in the manufacture of sugar are of the most rudimentary
+kind, resulting in the loss of eighty per cent. of the juice the cane
+contains, and as the sugar is made chiefly by private individuals for
+their own use, and rarely reaches the market, this industry, which
+should be a great source of revenue to the country, languishes. The
+sugar used in Asuncion comes from Europe and Brazil. The cost of
+machinery probably has been the obstacle to the establishment of a
+sugar-house of sufficient importance to supply the people with all the
+sugar of home manufacture they may require. The cane when cut is ground
+between three large cylinders made of a hard wood--a process which,
+instead of extracting the juice from the cane, leaves two-thirds of it
+in the half-crushed stalk. The portion thus expressed flows through a
+sort of wooden trench into pails, which are emptied as fast as they
+become full into a large vat, under which a fire is constantly kept
+burning. In this receptacle it is boiled for a considerable time, but
+owing to the carelessness of those in charge of the vat about a third of
+it is spilled on the ground. What is left is reduced to a kind of sugary
+molasses, to which is given the name of "honey." Some of the
+cane-growers distill with rude alembics a sort of sweet liquor from the
+cane-juice, which is called _cana_. Another distillation is from the
+juice of oranges, and is called _cana de naranja_. In the manufacture of
+the latter birds of various kinds--ducks, paroquets, young chickens,
+etc.--are sometimes placed in the liquor to be distilled, and the
+curious mixture that results is known as _cana de substancia_, and is
+much affected by gourmets.
+
+Life in Asuncion is remarkably monotonous. It is a long course of
+_mate_-drinking varied with meals, the inevitable siesta and cigars. The
+_mate_ is the popular beverage of the country, as it is of nearly the
+whole of South America. It is a tea of less fragrance but more strength
+than the Chinese product, and is made of the _yerba_, the leaf of the
+Paraguayan holly, which grows in immense profusion in the Cordillera of
+Caaguazu in the interior. The Paraguayan women are active and
+industrious, but the men elevate the _far niente_ into an institution.
+The people rise early to enjoy the freshness of the morning, but at noon
+they make up for their loss of sleep by indulging in a three hours'
+siesta in the heat of the day. A singular fact, however, regarding the
+climate is, that at Buenos Ayres, where the temperature is a third less
+heated than in Asuncion, the heat is more overpowering than in the
+latter city, and that one perspires far less in Asuncion than in the
+Argentine capital.
+
+While in Asuncion, M. Forgues attended a Te Deum which was sung at the
+cathedral to celebrate the anniversary of the proclamation of Brazilian
+independence, and a ball given by the Brazilian general in the house
+that was formerly the residence of the somewhat famous Madame Lynch, a
+star of the Parisian demi-monde whom the late President Lopez had
+brought with him from Paris and installed in Asuncion as his favorite.
+Each of these events was interesting in its way--the former as showing
+how completely Brazilian supremacy shadows Paraguayan authority even in
+the very capital of Paraguay, and the latter as offering our traveler a
+glimpse of Paraguayan "high life" under its most favorable auspices.
+
+[Illustration: A SUGAR-HOUSE.]
+
+The cathedral is one of the masterpieces of M. Forgues's _bete noire_,
+the Jesuit style of architecture. On the occasion of the Te Deum the
+altar is brilliant with light. Silver plates cover it, as they do all
+its accessories. Behind it is a carved wainscoting painted red and green
+and gilded profusely, while in a niche is a small effigy of the Blessed
+Virgin. At the beginning of the service a curtain rises to the sound of
+music and exposes this niche to view. The Brazilian minister, M.
+d'Azambuja, is the "marquis of Carabas" of Asuncion, and hence, as the
+representative of the nation that conquered Paraguay, he enjoys his
+privileges, one of which, apparently, is to keep the ceremony waiting
+for half an hour, while the president of the republic, his cabinet
+ministers, the foreign representatives and the officers of the army of
+occupation who are present twiddle their thumbs, the Paraguayan
+officials showing in their faces their sense of the Brazilian's want of
+respect. Finally the minister arrives in a coach-and-four. The vehicle
+is of the hackney-coach variety. The horses stop in the thick sand in
+the middle of the street, unable or unwilling to go farther, and the
+coachman in gold-lace livery jumps from his seat and opens the door of
+the coach, exhibiting as he does so, in consequence of the inopportune
+displacement of his coat-tails, a very undiplomatic spectacle in the way
+of soiled stockings. The minister, however, makes amends for the
+lackey's shortcomings, for he is brilliantly attired in white cassimere
+breeches and a marquis's coat with embroidery, while a three-cornered
+chapeau with white plumes adorns his head. As he descends from his
+carriage the guard presents arms, and a horrible noise ensues of two
+brass bands--one military and one marine--playing different tunes on
+every separate instrument in the hands of the performers, while the
+discharge of petards mingles with military commands. Amid all this
+tumult and under a broiling sun the Brazilian minister makes a majestic
+entrance into the cathedral, passing solemnly through the line of
+authorities to the place of honor.
+
+The celebration of Brazil's independence opens with a salvo of petards
+at the door, after which follows a medley of trombones, flutes,
+triangles and big drums, the whole dominated by an exasperating tenor
+voice. With the exception of the president of the republic, his cabinet,
+who wear scarfs of the Paraguayan colors--blue, white and red--and the
+officiating priests, there is not a Paraguayan in the church. Lovers of
+noise and of the excitement of festivals though they be, the people thus
+protest mutely against a ceremony that exalts their conquerors and
+recalls their own powerless condition.
+
+The ball given by the Brazilian general was, as before stated, at the
+house once occupied by Madame Lynch--Madame Elisa, as they call her in
+Paraguay--where that functionary resided. The best society of the
+capital, composed exclusively of the families of the higher officials,
+attended, and what was curious was that most of the women present in
+their ball-room attire, three years before, owing to the exigencies of
+war, had little more than a brief garment wherewith to protect
+themselves from the inclemencies of the weather. The dancing goes on in
+the parlor of the establishment and under the verandah which surrounds
+the courtyard. At the first glance, the parlor in its adornments
+presents the appearance of a _salon_ of the Faubourg St. Germain, with
+silken hangings vivid in color on the walls, gilded stucco-work on the
+ceiling, and a brilliant carpet under foot. But on closer inspection all
+these splendors are seen to be merely a stage-decoration, for the
+effects--with the exception of the carpet--have been produced by some
+skillful wandering artist with his paintbrush and an adequate supply of
+gold-leaf. The illusion, however, is complete for a few minutes. The
+women--among whom are some handsome representatives of Paraguayan
+beauty--have wonderfully graceful manners. Their complexions are dark,
+their eyes large and black, and their hair of the color of ebony. The
+_decollete_ style prevails in the cut of the dresses, which are made
+simply, and generally present the combination of white and black. The
+dances are those of Europe, and as the women dance a smile parts their
+lips.
+
+This is the bright side of the picture of the feminine element at the
+ball. The reverse of the medal is not so satisfactory, for at the door
+of entrance, seated on chairs or standing along the wall, are collected
+groups of old women with wrinkled faces and coarse gray hair negligently
+tucked on the tops of their heads with combs. These elders, rolled up,
+rather than wrapped, in shawls of various sombre hues, and who look on
+listlessly as if in a daze, are the mothers of the smiling dancers. It
+is dreadful, however, to observe their proceedings when refreshments are
+handed round, for suddenly a singular agitation is observable among
+them, their long thin arms shoot from under their tightly-drawn shawls,
+they rush for the refreshments as they are carried past them, and
+swallow the liquids while stowing away supplemental cakes under their
+wrappings. Casting his eyes toward the centre of the room, where the
+young beauties are separating at the close of the dance, the observer
+notices that several of them are directing their steps away from the
+parlor to their retiring room. They have departed to smoke at their
+ease.
+
+Reference has been made to the scantiness of the attire of the
+Paraguayan women at one period of the war. Some terrible facts are
+related in connection with this matter, showing the horrible desperation
+and sternness with which Lopez conducted his military operations,
+bringing untold woe on his own people in his savage resolve to retard at
+any cost the advance of the army of invasion. When the allies captured
+Humaita, Lopez, retreating, decided to convert the country lying in the
+enemy's front into a desert. He issued a proclamation ordering the
+entire population living south of Asuncion to retire with all their
+animals toward the interior, and to follow him into the cordillera,
+eighty leagues to the east of the city. This order applied to all
+classes without exception, the families of high dignitaries, ministers
+and superior officers being included as well as the humbler sort. The
+result was a terrified hegira of the people _en masse_, while behind
+them the Paraguayan rear-guard destroyed houses and whatever could
+afford shelter or subsistence to the enemy, leaving only bare fields
+where once had flourished prosperous estancias and peaceful villages.
+Terrible scenes ensued. Twenty-four hours' notice only was given to the
+people to leave their homes. Delinquents and laggards were sabred
+mercilessly or killed with lance-thrusts. This mode of massacre was
+preferred, as it was a saving of valuable powder and shot. Women and
+children were slaughtered in this way, as well as infirm old men. No
+provision had been made to feed the famishing multitude that sought the
+cordillera, and thousands of the homeless wretches died of starvation
+and exposure in the mountains, where all that the women and children
+could obtain in the way of food was oranges and roots. There were
+numerous instances of cannibalism among these starving people, and our
+traveler was shown a woman in Asuncion who had eaten a portion of her
+sister to allay the pangs of hunger.
+
+The effect on the allies of this frightful course was to compel them to
+pay a fabulous price for provisions and for their transportation to the
+army. Another effect was that at times, in the heat of the pursuit of
+Lopez's forces, after an engagement the bodies of the soldiers who had
+been killed in the battle were left to rot where they fell, as there
+were no civilians to bury them. On one occasion, after a heavy skirmish,
+two or three hundred slain Argentines remained unburied, the army having
+marched forward in pursuit of the retreating Paraguayans. The horrors of
+this campaign were relieved by one prosaic fact, which in itself bridges
+the chasm between the terrible and the ridiculous: this was, that the
+allied troops were accompanied amid all these scenes of carnage by a
+poor Italian organ-grinder, carrying his organ on his back, who played
+during the halts in the march while the Brazilian soldiers danced to his
+music.
+
+When the war ended with the death of Lopez at Cerro Cora, women, even of
+the richest and most influential families, returned to their homes
+nearly naked: the large majority made their reappearance in a still more
+forlorn plight. The population of the republic, which had numbered about
+one million three hundred thousand at the beginning of the conflict, had
+dwindled to two hundred thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand.
+These were mainly women and children, for the men were nearly all dead,
+and of the few male adults in the population the majority have
+immigrated to the country since the war. The national army, which under
+Lopez was sixty thousand strong, comprised at the time of M. Forgues's
+visit two hundred and fifty youths of fifteen or sixteen years of age,
+clad in the cast-off uniform of the French mobiles of 1870 and 1871. Of
+the Paraguayan children made orphans by the war, hundreds now live in
+Argentine families, either as adopted children or as servants. They were
+picked up by the Argentine soldiers during the flight of their parents
+to the mountains, their mothers having perished of fatigue or hunger,
+and Lopez's horsemen having spared them through pity or indifference to
+continued slaughter.
+
+The sequel of the resistance of Lopez surpasses in gloomy details almost
+any similar struggle recorded in history. It has already been shown how
+women and children died by thousands or survived to poverty and want.
+But to understand the melancholy story at its worst, one should visit
+the valley of the Aquidaban River, where Lopez fought his last fight, or
+follow the line of his army's march from its camp at Panadero to the
+encampment at Cerro Cora, where he perished miserably. A traveler in
+that part of Paraguay--not M. Forgues, but Keith Johnston, the
+geographer--who visited these localities in the summer and autumn of
+1874, says that the march of the army in its final retreat can still be
+traced by the heaps of human bones, with rusty swords or guns or
+weather-stained saddles lying beside them, under every little
+shade-giving tree. These skeletons he saw everywhere at very short
+intervals. Cerro Cora is described as a splendid amphitheatre surrounded
+by hills, with precipitous sides of red sandstone, and crowned with dark
+forests. Here and there amid the undulations are grassy knolls flanked
+by palm trees, and in one of these Lopez, driven to desperation, pitched
+his tent with a handful of followers. Madame Lynch, his children and his
+brother were with him. The single pass that led to this hiding-place was
+guarded with cannon, but the Brazilian horsemen, strangely enough,
+entered the retreat unperceived and surprised its occupants. Exactly how
+Lopez died is a matter of dispute in Paraguay. There are those in that
+country who revere his memory, and their story of his death represents
+him as issuing from his tent at the approach of the enemy and valiantly
+engaging them single-handed, while he bade his few adherents seek safety
+in flight. According to this account, he fell gloriously after slaying
+many Brazilians, refusing quarter and declaring his devotion to his
+country with his dying breath. The generally accepted report, however,
+is that he made a fruitless endeavor to escape from his encampment, and,
+overtaken by a Brazilian horseman, died in a matter-of-fact way from a
+lance-thrust. His grave is in that wild and lonely valley. At first a
+wooden cross marked the spot where he lies, but this has disappeared,
+and a bush, one of many that grow around, is pointed out as growing
+above it.
+
+Even at this day, though more than four years have elapsed since the
+enactment of that tragedy, the scene remains as the Brazilians left it.
+The wrecks of the camp lie thickly on every side--bones of men, broken
+weapons, ammunition and the debris of gun-carriages, baggage-carts and
+boxes. This region is the heart of the country occupied by the Cangua
+Indians, a peaceable tribe who speak the Guarani language, without the
+admixture of Spanish words which prevails in the language as spoken in
+the more civilized parts of Paraguay. They rarely leave their forest
+homes except to seek a market for their wax, which they exchange for
+tobacco and other commodities. Their complexion is a dark brown, and the
+men, who usually go armed with bows and iron-tipped lances, wear a
+splinter of a substance like amber, about two inches in length, run
+through a hole in their under lips. In the almost inaccessible country
+of these Indians is situated the great cascade of the Panama River,
+known as the Gran Salto de la Guayra. This Paraguayan Niagara is the
+object of a superstitious reverence on the part of the Indians, who deem
+it the gateway to the infernal regions, and hence fear to approach it.
+The waters fall into a deep gorge with a roaring sound which may be
+heard twelve miles away, while splendid rainbows are generated in the
+clouds of spray that rise from the depths.
+
+
+
+
+THREE FEATHERS.
+
+BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF "A PRINCESS OF THULE."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+SOME OLD FRIENDS.
+
+When they heard that Wenna was coming down the road they left Mr.
+Roscorla alone: lovers like to have their meetings and partings
+unobserved.
+
+She went into the room, pale and yet firm: there was even a sense of
+gladness in her heart that now she must know the worst. What would he
+say? How would he receive her? She knew that she was at his mercy.
+
+Well, Mr. Roscorla at this moment was angry enough, for he had been
+deceived and trifled with in his absence; but he was also anxious, and
+his anxiety caused him to conceal his anger. He came forward to her with
+quite a pleasant look on his face: he kissed her and said, "Why, now,
+Wenna, how frightened you seem! Did you think I was going to scold you?
+No, no, no! I hope there is no necessity for that. I am not
+unreasonable, or over-exacting, as a younger man might be: I can make
+allowances. Of course I can't say I liked what you told me when I first
+heard of it; but then I reasoned with myself: I thought of your lonely
+position, of the natural liking a girl has for the attentions of a young
+man, of the possibility of any one going thoughtlessly wrong. And really
+I see no great harm done. A passing fancy--that is all."
+
+"Oh, I hope that is so!" she cried suddenly with a pathetic earnestness
+of appeal. "It is so good of you, so generous of you to speak like
+that!" For the first time she ventured to raise her eyes to his face.
+They were full of gratitude.
+
+Mr. Roscorla complimented himself on his knowledge of women: a younger
+man would have flown into a fury. "Oh dear, yes! Wenna," he said
+lightly, "I suppose all girls have their fancies stray a little bit from
+time to time; but is there any harm done? None whatever. There is
+nothing like marriage to fix the affections, as I hope you will discover
+ere long--the sooner the better, indeed. Now we will dismiss all those
+unpleasant matters we have been writing about."
+
+"Then you do forgive me? You are not really angry with me?" she said;
+and then, finding a welcome assurance in his face, she gratefully took
+his hand and touched it with her lips.
+
+This little act of graceful submission quite conquered Mr. Roscorla, and
+definitely removed all lingering traces of anger from his heart. He was
+no longer acting clemency when he said, with a slight blush on his
+forehead, "You know, Wenna, I have not been free from blame, either.
+That letter--it was merely a piece of thoughtless anger; but still it
+was very kind of you to consider it canceled and withdrawn when I asked
+you. Well, I was in a bad temper at that time. You cannot look at things
+so philosophically when you are far away from home: you feel yourself so
+helpless, and you think you are being unfairly--However, not another
+word. Come, let us talk of all your affairs, and all the work you have
+done since I left."
+
+It was a natural invitation, and yet it revealed in a moment the
+hollowness of the apparent reconciliation between them. What chance of
+mutual confidence could there be between these two? He asked Wenna if
+she had been busy in his absence; and the thought immediately occurred
+to him that she had had at least sufficient leisure to go walking about
+with young Trelyon. He asked her about the sewing club, and she stumbled
+into the admission that Mr. Trelyon had presented that association with
+six sewing-machines. Always Trelyon, always the recurrence of that
+uneasy consciousness of past events which divided these two as
+completely as the Atlantic had done! It was a strange meeting after that
+long absence.
+
+"It is a curious thing," he said rather desperately, "how marriage
+makes a husband and wife sure of each other. Anxiety is all over then.
+We have near us, out in Jamaica, several men whose wives and families
+are here in England, and they accept their exile there as an ordinary
+commercial necessity. But then they put their whole minds into their
+work, for they know that when they return to England they will find
+their wives and families just as they left them. Of course, in the
+majority of cases the married men there have taken their wives out with
+them. Do you fear a long sea-voyage, Wenna?"
+
+"I don't know," she said rather startled.
+
+"You ought to be a good sailor, you know."
+
+She said nothing to that: she was looking down, dreading what was
+coming.
+
+"I am sure you must be a good sailor. I have heard of many of your
+boating adventures. Weren't you rather fond, some years ago, of going
+out at night with the Lundy pilots?"
+
+"I have never gone a long voyage in a large vessel," Wenna said rather
+faintly.
+
+"But if there was any reasonable object to be gained an ordinary
+sea-voyage would not frighten you?"
+
+"Perhaps not."
+
+"And they have really very good steamers going to the West Indies."
+
+"Oh, indeed!"
+
+"First rate! You get a most comfortable cabin."
+
+"I thought you rather--in your description of it--in your first
+letter--"
+
+"Oh," said he, hurriedly and lightly (for he had been claiming sympathy
+on account of the discomfort of his voyage out), "perhaps I made a
+little too much of that. Besides, I did not make a proper choice in
+time. One gains experience in such matters. Now, if you were going out
+to Jamaica, I should see that you had every comfort."
+
+"But you don't wish me to go out to Jamaica?" she said, almost
+retreating from him.
+
+"Well," said he with a smile, for his only object at present was to
+familiarize her with the idea, "I don't particularly wish it unless the
+project seems a good one to you. You see, Wenna, I find that my stay
+there must be longer than I expected. When I went out at first the
+intention of my partners and myself was that I should merely be on the
+spot to help our manager by agreeing to his accounts at the moment, and
+undertaking a lot of work of that sort, which otherwise would have
+consumed time in correspondence. I was merely to see the whole thing
+well started, and then return. But now I find that my superintendence
+may be needed there for a long while. Just when everything promises so
+well I should not like to imperil all our chances simply for a year or
+two."
+
+"Oh no, of course not," Wenna said: she had no objection to his
+remaining in Jamaica for a year or two longer than he had intended.
+
+"That being so," he continued, "it occurred to me that perhaps you might
+consent to our marriage before I leave England again, and that, indeed,
+you might even make up your mind to try a trip to Jamaica. Of course we
+should have considerable spells of holiday if you thought it was worth
+while coming home for a short time. I assure you you would find the
+place delightful--far more delightful than anything I told you in my
+letters, for I'm not very good at describing things. And there is a fair
+amount of society."
+
+He did not prefer the request in an impassioned manner. On the contrary,
+he merely felt that he was satisfying himself by carrying out an
+intention he had formed on his voyage home. If, he had said to himself,
+Wenna and he became friends, he would at least suggest to her that she
+might put an end to all further suspense and anxiety by at once marrying
+him and accompanying him to Jamaica.
+
+"What do you say?" he said with a friendly smile. "Or have I frightened
+you too much? Well, let us drop the subject altogether for the present."
+
+Wenna breathed again.
+
+"Yes," said he good-naturedly, "you can think over it. In the mean time
+do not harass yourself about that or anything else. You know I have
+come home to spend a holiday."
+
+"And won't you come and see the others?" said Wenna, rising with a glad
+look of relief on her face.
+
+"Oh yes, if you like," he said; and then he stopped short, and an angry
+gleam shot into his eyes: "Wenna, who gave you that ring?"
+
+"Oh, Mabyn did," was the frank reply; but all the same Wenna blushed
+hotly, for that matter of the emerald ring had not been touched upon.
+
+"Mabyn did?" he repeated, somewhat suspiciously. "She must have been in
+a generous mood."
+
+"When you know Mabyn as well as I do, you will find out that she always
+is," said Miss Wenna quite cheerfully: she was indeed in the best of
+spirits to find that this dreaded interview had not been so very
+frightful after all, and that she had done no mortal injury to one who
+had placed his happiness in her hands.
+
+When Mr. Roscorla, some time after, set out to walk by himself up to
+Basset Cottage, whither his luggage had been sent before him, he felt a
+little tired. He was not accustomed to violent emotions, and that
+morning he had gone through a good deal. His anger and anxiety had for
+long been fighting for mastery, and both had reached their climax that
+morning. On the one hand, he wished to avenge himself for the insult
+paid him, and to show that he was not to be trifled with; on the other
+hand, his anxiety lest he should be unable to make up matters with Wenna
+led him to put an unusual value upon her. What was the result, now that
+he had definitely won her back to himself? What was the sentiment that
+followed on these jarring emotions of the morning?
+
+To tell the truth, a little disappointment. Wenna was not looking her
+best when she entered the room: even now he remembered that the pale
+face rather shocked him. She was more insignificant--perhaps it is the
+best word--than he had expected. Now that he had got back the prize
+which he thought he had lost, it did not seem to him, after all, to be
+so wonderful.
+
+And in this mood he went up and walked into the pretty little cottage
+which had once been his home. "What!" he said to himself, looking in
+amazement at the small, old-fashioned parlor, and at the still smaller
+study filled with books, "is it possible that I ever proposed to myself
+to live and die in a hole like this?--my only companion a cantankerous
+old fool of a woman, my only occupation reading the newspapers, my only
+society the good folks of the inn?"
+
+He thanked God he had escaped. His knocking about the world for a bit
+had opened up his mind. The possibility of his having in time a handsome
+income had let in upon him many new and daring ambitions.
+
+His housekeeper, having expressed her grief that she had just posted
+some letters to him, not knowing that he was returning to England,
+brought in a number of small passbooks and a large sheet of blue paper.
+
+"If yue baint too tired, zor, vor to look over the accounts, 'tis all
+theear but the pultry that Mr.--"
+
+"Good Heavens, Mrs. Cornish!" said he, "do you think I am going to look
+over a lot of grocers' bills?"
+
+Mrs. Cornish not only hinted in very plain language that her master had
+been at one time particular enough about grocers' bills and all other
+bills, however trifling, but further proceeded to give him a full and
+minute account of the various incidental expenses to which she had been
+put through young Penny Luke having broken a window by flinging a stone
+from the road; through the cat having knocked down the best tea-pot;
+through the pig having got out of its stye, gone mad, and smashed a
+cucumber-frame; and so forth and so forth. In desperation Mr. Roscorla
+got up, put on his hat and went outside, leaving her at once astonished
+and indignant by his want of interest in what at one time had been his
+only care.
+
+Was this, then, the place in which he had chosen to spend the rest of
+his life, without change, without movement, without interest? It seemed
+to him at the moment a living tomb. There was not a human being within
+sight. Far away out there lay the gray-blue sea--a plain without a speck
+on it. The great black crags at the mouth of the harbor were voiceless
+and sterile: could anything have been more bleak than the bare uplands
+on which the pale sun of an English October was shining? The quiet
+crushed him: there was not a nigger near to swear at, nor could he, at
+the impulse of a moment, get on horseback and ride over to the busy and
+interesting and picturesque scene supplied by his faithful coolies at
+work.
+
+What was he to do on this very first day in England, for example? Unpack
+his luggage, in which were some curiosities he had brought home for
+Wenna?--there was too much trouble in that. Walk about the garden and
+smoke a pipe, as had been his wont?--he had got emancipated from these
+delights of dotage. Attack his grocers' bills?--he swore by all his gods
+that he would have nothing to do with the price of candles and cheese,
+now or at any future time. The return of the exile to his native land
+had already produced a feeling of deep disappointment: when he married,
+he said to himself, he would take very good care not to sink into an
+oyster-like life in Eglosilyan.
+
+About a couple of hours after, however, he was reminded that Eglosilyan
+had its small measure of society by the receipt of a letter from Mrs.
+Trelyon, who said she had just heard of his arrival, and hastened to ask
+him whether he would dine at the Hall, not next evening, but the
+following one, to meet two old friends of his, General and Lady Weekes,
+who were there on a brief visit.
+
+"And I have written to ask Miss Rosewarne," Mrs. Trelyon continued, "to
+spare us the same evening, so that we hope to have you both. Perhaps you
+will kindly add your entreaties to mine."
+
+The friendly intention of this post-script was evident, and yet it did
+not seem to please Mr. Roscorla. This Sir Percy Weekes had been a friend
+of his father's, and when the younger Roscorla was a young man about
+town, Lady Weekes had been very kind to him, and had nearly got him
+married once or twice. There was a great contrast between those days and
+these. He hoped the old general would not be tempted to come and visit
+him at Basset Cottage.
+
+"Oh, Wenna," said he carelessly to her next morning, "Mrs. Trelyon told
+me she had asked you to go up there to-morrow evening."
+
+"Yes," Wenna said, looking rather uncomfortable. Then she added quickly,
+"Would it displease you if I did not go? I ought to be at a children's
+party at Mr. Trewhella's."
+
+This was precisely what Mr. Roscorla wanted; but he said, "You must not
+be shy, Wenna. However, please yourself: you need have no fear of vexing
+me. But I must go, for the Weekeses are old friends of mine."
+
+"They stayed at the inn two or three days in May last," said Wenna
+innocently. "They came here by chance, and found Mrs. Trelyon from
+home."
+
+Mr. Roscorla seemed startled. "Oh!" said he. "Did they--did they--ask
+for me?"
+
+"Yes, I believe they did," Wenna said.
+
+"Then you told them," said Mr. Roscorla with a pleasant smile--"you told
+them, of course, why you were the best person in the world to give them
+information about me?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!" said Wenna, blushing hotly: "they spoke to Jennifer."
+
+Mr. Roscorla felt himself rebuked. It was George Rosewarne's express
+wish that his daughters should not be approached by strangers visiting
+the inn as if they were officially connected with the place: Mr.
+Roscorla should have remembered that inquiries would be made of a
+servant.
+
+But, as it happened, Sir Percy and his wife had really made the
+acquaintance of both Wenna and Mabyn on their chance visit to
+Eglosilyan; and it was of these two girls they were speaking when Mr.
+Roscorla was announced in Mrs. Trelyon's drawing-room the following
+evening. The thin, wiry, white-moustached old man, who had wonderfully
+bright eyes and a great vivacity of spirits for a veteran of
+seventy-four, was standing in front of the fire, and declaring to
+everybody that two such well-accomplished, smart, talkative and
+lady-like young women he had never met with in his life: "What did you
+say the name was, my dear Mrs. Trelyon? Rosewarne, eh?--Rosewarne? A
+good old Cornish name--as good as yours, Roscorla. So they're called
+Rosewarne? Gad! if her ladyship wants to appoint a successor, I'm
+willing to let her choice fall on one of those two girls."
+
+Her ladyship, a dark and silent old woman of eighty, did not like, in
+the first place, to be called her ladyship, and did not relish, either,
+having her death talked of as a joke.
+
+"Roscorla, now--Roscorla, there's a good chance for you, eh?" continued
+the old general. "We never could get you married, you know--wild young
+dog! Don't you know the girls?"
+
+"Oh yes, Sir Percy," Mr. Roscorla said with no great good-will: then he
+turned to the fire and began to warm his hands.
+
+There was a tall young gentleman standing there who in former days would
+have been delighted to cry out on such an occasion, "Why, Roscorla's
+going to marry one of 'em!" He remained silent now.
+
+He was very silent, too, throughout the evening, and almost anxiously
+civil toward Mr. Roscorla. He paid great attention when the latter was
+describing to the company at table the beauties of West Indian scenery,
+the delights of West Indian life, the change that had come over the
+prospects of Jamaica since the introduction of coolie labor, and the
+fashion in which the rich merchants of Cuba were setting about getting
+plantations there for the growth of tobacco. Mr. Roscorla spoke with the
+air of a man who now knew what the world was. When the old general asked
+him if he were coming back to live in Eglosilyan after he had become a
+millionaire, he laughed, and said that one's coffin came soon enough
+without one's rushing to meet it. No: when he came back to England
+finally, he would live in London; and had Sir Percy still that old
+walled-in house in Brompton?
+
+Sir Percy paid less heed to these descriptions of Jamaica than Harry
+Trelyon did, for his next neighbor was old Mrs. Trelyon, and these two
+venerable flirts were talking of old acquaintances and old times at Bath
+and Cheltenham, and of the celebrated beauties, wits and murderers of
+other days, in a manner which her silent ladyship did not at all seem to
+approve. The general was bringing out all his old-fashioned
+gallantry--compliments, easy phrases in French, polite attentions: his
+companion began to use her fan with a coquettish grace, and was vastly
+pleased when a reference was made to her celebrated flight to Gretna
+Green.
+
+"Ah, Sir Percy," she said, "the men were men in those days, and the
+women women, I promise you: no beating about the bush, but the fair word
+given and the fair word taken; and then a broken head for whoever should
+interfere--father, uncle or brother, no matter who; and you know our
+family, Sir Percy, our family were among the worst--"
+
+"I tell you what, madam," said the general, hotly, "your family had
+among 'em the handsomest women in the west of England; and the
+handsomest men, too, by Gad! Do you remember Jane Swanhope--the Fair
+Maid of Somerset they used to call her--that married the fellow living
+down Yeovil way who broke his neck in a steeplechase?"
+
+"Do I remember her?" said the old lady. "She was one of my bridemaids
+when they took me up to London to get married properly after I came
+back. She was my cousin on the mother's side, but they were connected
+with the Trelyons too. And do you remember old John Trelyon of
+Polkerris? and did you ever see a man straighter in the back than he was
+at seventy-one, when he married his second wife? That was at Exeter, I
+think. But there, now, you don't find such men and women in these times;
+and do you know the reason of that, Sir Percy? I'll tell you: it's the
+doctors. The doctors can keep all the sickly ones alive now: before it
+was only the strong ones that lived. Dear, dear me! when I hear some of
+those London women talk, it is nothing but a catalogue of illnesses and
+diseases. No wonder they should say in church, 'There is no health in
+us:' every one of them has something the matter, even the young girls,
+poor things! and pretty mothers they're likely to make! They're a misery
+to themselves; they'll bring miserable things into the world; and all
+because the doctors have become so clever in pulling sickly people
+through. That's my opinion, Sir Percy. The doctors are responsible for
+five-sixths of all the suffering you hear of in families, either through
+illness or the losing of one's friends and relatives."
+
+"Upon my word, madam," the general protested, "you use the doctor badly.
+He is blamed if he kills people, and he is blamed if he keeps them
+alive. What is he to do?"
+
+"Do? He can't help saving the sickly ones now," the old lady admitted,
+"for relatives will have it done, and they know he can do it; but it's a
+great misfortune, Sir Percy, that's what it is, to have all these sickly
+creatures growing up to intermarry into the good old families that used
+to be famous for their comeliness and strength. There was a man--yes, I
+remember him well--that came from Devonshire: he was a man of good
+family too, and they made such a noise about his wrestling. Said I to
+myself, Wrestling is not a fit amusement for gentlemen, but if this man
+comes up to our country, there's one or other of the Trelyons will try
+his mettle. And well I remember saying to my eldest son George--you
+remember when he was a young man, Sir Percy, no older than his own son
+there?--'George,' I said, 'if this Mr. So-and-so comes into these parts,
+mind you have nothing to do with him, for wrestling is not fit for
+gentlemen.' 'All right, mother,' said he, but he laughed, and I knew
+what the laugh meant. My dear Sir Percy, I tell you the man hadn't a
+chance: I heard of it all afterward. George caught him up before he
+could begin any of his tricks and flung him on to the hedge; and there
+were a dozen more in our family who could have done it, I'll be bound."
+
+"But then, you know, Mrs. Trelyon," Mr. Roscorla ventured to say,
+"physical strength is not everything that is needed. If the doctors
+were to let the sickly ones die, we might be losing all sorts of great
+poets and statesmen and philosophers."
+
+The old lady turned on him: "And do you think a man has to be sickly to
+be clever? No, no, Mr. Roscorla: give him better health and you give him
+a better head. That's what we believed in the old days. I fancy, now,
+there were greater men before this coddling began than there are
+now--yes, I do; and if there is a great man coming into the world, the
+chances are just as much that he'll be among the strong ones as among
+the sick ones. What do you think, Sir Percy?"
+
+"I declare you're right, madam," said he gallantly. "You've quite
+convinced me. Of course, some of 'em must go: I say, Let the sickly ones
+go."
+
+"I never heard such brutal, such murderous sentiments expressed in my
+life before," said a solemn voice; and every one became aware that at
+last Lady Weekes had spoken. Her speech was the signal for universal
+silence, in the midst of which the ladies got up and left the room.
+
+Trelyon took his mother's place and sent round the wine. He was
+particularly attentive to Mr. Roscorla, who was surprised. Perhaps,
+thought the latter, he is anxious to atone for all this bother that is
+now happily over.
+
+If the younger man was silent and preoccupied, that was not the case
+with Mr. Roscorla, who was already assuming the airs of a rich person,
+and speaking of his being unable to live in this district or that
+district of London, just as if he expected to purchase a lease of
+Buckingham Palace on his return from Jamaica.
+
+"And how are all my old friends in Hans Place, Sir Percy?" he cried.
+
+"You've been a deserter, sir--you've been a deserter for many a year
+now," the general said gayly, "but we're all willing to have you back
+again to a quiet rubber after dinner, you know. Do you remember old John
+Thwaites? Ah, he's gone now--left one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
+to build a hospital, and only five thousand pounds to his sister. The
+poor old woman believed some one would marry her when she got the whole
+of her brother's money--so I'm told--and when the truth became known,
+what did she do? Gad, sir! she wrote a novel abusing her own brother. By
+the way, that reminds me of a devilish good thing I heard when I was
+here last--down at the inn, you know. What's the name of the girls I was
+talking about? Well, her ladyship caught one of them reading a novel,
+and not very well pleased with it, and says she to the young lady,
+'Don't you like that book?' Then says the girl--let me see what was it?
+Gad! I must go and ask her ladyship."
+
+And off he trotted to the drawing-room. He came back in a couple of
+minutes. "Of course," said he. "Devilish stupid of me to forget it.
+'Why,' said the young lady, 'I think the author has been trying to keep
+the fourth commandment, for there's nothing in the book that has any
+likeness to anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or the
+heavens under the earth.'"
+
+"The waters under the earth."
+
+"I mean the waters, of course. Gad! her ladyship was immensely tickled."
+
+"Which of the two young ladies was it, Sir Percy? The younger, I
+suppose?" said Mr. Roscorla.
+
+"No, no, the elder sister of course," said Trelyon.
+
+"Yes, the elder one it was--the quiet one; and an uncommon nice girl she
+is. Well, there's Captain Walters, the old sea-dog! still to the fore;
+and his uniform too. Don't you remember the uniform with the red cuffs
+that hasn't been seen in the navy for a couple of centuries, I should
+think? His son's got into Parliament now--gone over to the Rads and the
+workingmen, and those fellows that are scheming to get the land divided
+among themselves--all in the name of philosophy: and it's a devilish
+fine sort of philosophy; that is, when you haven't a rap in your pocket,
+and when you prove that everybody who has must give it up. He came to my
+house the other day, and he was jawing away about primogeniture, and
+entail, and direct taxation, and equal electoral districts, and I don't
+know what besides. 'Walters,' said I--'Walters, you've got nothing to
+share, and so you don't mind a general division. When you have, you'll
+want to stick to what's in your own pocket.' Had him there, eh?"
+
+The old general beamed and laughed over his smartness: he was conscious
+of having said something that, in shape at least, was like an epigram.
+
+"I must rub up my acquaintance in that quarter," said Roscorla, "before
+I leave again. Fortunately, I have always kept up my club subscription;
+and you'll come and dine with me, Sir Percy, won't you, when I get to
+town?"
+
+"Are you going to town?" said Trelyon quickly.
+
+"Oh yes, of course."
+
+"When?"
+
+The question was abrupt, and it made Roscorla look at the young man as
+he answered. Trelyon seemed to him to be very much harassed about
+something or other.
+
+"Well, I suppose in a week or so: I am only home for a holiday, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, you'll be here for a week?" said the younger man submissively.
+"When do you think of returning to Jamaica?"
+
+"Probably at the beginning of next month. Fancy leaving England in
+November--just at the most hideous time of the year--and in a week or
+two getting out into summer again, with the most beautiful climate and
+foliage and what not all around you! I can tell you a man makes a great
+mistake who settles down to a sort of vegetable life anywhere: you don't
+catch me at that again."
+
+"There's some old women," observed the general, who was so anxious to
+show his profundity that he quite forgot the invidious character of the
+comparison, "who are just like trees--as much below the ground as above
+it. Isn't that true, eh? They're a deal more at home among the people
+they have buried than among those that are alive. I don't say that's
+your case, Roscorla. You're comparatively a young man yet: you've got
+brisk health. I don't wonder at your liking to knock about. As for you,
+young Trelyon, what do you mean to do?"
+
+Harry Trelyon started. "Oh," said he with some confusion, "I have no
+immediate plans. Yes, I have: don't you know I have been cramming for
+the civil service examinations for first commissions?"
+
+"And what the devil made the War Office go to those civilians?" muttered
+the general.
+
+"And if I pull through I shall want all your influence to get me
+gazetted to a good regiment. Don't they often shunt you on to the First
+or Second West Indians?"
+
+"And you've enough money to back you, too," said the general. "I tell
+you what it is, gentlemen, if they abolish the purchase of commissions
+in the army--and they're always talking about it--they don't know what
+they'll bring about. They'll have two sets of officers in the army--men
+with money who like a good mess, and live far beyond their pay, and men
+with no money at all, who've got to live on their pay; and how can they
+afford the regimental mess out of that? But Parliament won't stand it,
+you'll see. The war minister will be beaten if he brings it on--take my
+word for that."
+
+The old general had probably never heard of a royal warrant and its
+mighty powers.
+
+"So you're going to be one of us?" he said to Trelyon. "Well, you've a
+smart figure for a uniform. You're the first of your side of the family
+to go into the army, eh? You had some naval men among you, eh?"
+
+"I think you'd better ask my grandmother," said young Trelyon with a
+laugh: "she'll tell you stories about 'em by the hour together."
+
+"She's a wonderful woman that--a wonderful old creature!" said the
+general, just as if he were a sprightly young fellow talking of the
+oldest inhabitant of the district. "She's not one of them that are half
+buried: she's wide enough awake, I'll be bound. Gad! what a handsome
+woman she was when I saw her first! Well, lads, let's join the ladies:
+I'm none of your steady-going old topers. Enough's as good's a
+feast--that's my motto. And I can't write my name on a slate with my
+knuckles, either."
+
+And so they went into the large, dimly-lit red chamber where the women
+were having tea round the blazing fire. The men took various chairs
+about; the conversation became general; old Lady Weekes feebly
+endeavored to keep up her eyelids. In about half an hour or so Mrs.
+Trelyon happened to glance round the room. "Where's Harry?" said she.
+
+No one apparently had noticed that Master Harry had disappeared.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+A DARK CONSPIRACY.
+
+Now, when Harry Trelyon drove up to the Hall after leaving Wenna
+Rosewarne in the road he could not tell why he was vexed with her. He
+imagined somehow that she should not have allowed Mr. Roscorla to come
+home; and to come home just at this moment, when he, Trelyon, had stolen
+down for a couple of days to have a shy look at the sweet-heart who was
+so far out of his reach! She ought to have been alone. Then she ought
+not to have looked so calm and complacent on going away to meet Mr.
+Roscorla: she ought to have been afraid. She ought to have--In short,
+everything was wrong, and Wenna was largely to blame.
+
+"Well, grandmother," said he as they drove through the avenue, "don't
+you expect every minute to flush a covey of parsons?"
+
+He was angry with Wenna, and so he broke out once more in his old vein.
+
+"There are worse men than the parsons, Harry," the old lady said.
+
+"I'll bet you a sovereign there are two on the doorstep."
+
+He would have lost. There was not a clergyman of any sort in or about
+the house.
+
+"Isn't Mr. Barnes here?" said he to his mother.
+
+Mrs. Trelyon flushed slightly as she said, "No, Harry, Mr. Barnes is not
+here, nor is he likely to visit here again."
+
+Now, Mr. Roscorla would at once have perceived that a strange little
+story lay behind that simple speech, but Mr. Harry, paying no attention
+to it, merely said he was heartily glad to hear of it, and showed his
+gratitude by being unusually polite to his mother during the rest of his
+stay.
+
+"And so Mr. Roscorla has come back?" his mother said. "General Weekes
+was asking about him only yesterday. We must see if he will come up to
+dinner the night after to-morrow; and Miss Rosewarne also."
+
+"You may ask her--you ought to ask her--but she won't come," said he.
+
+"How do you know?" Mrs. Trelyon said with a gentle wonder. "She has been
+here very often of late."
+
+"Have you let her walk up?"
+
+"No, I have generally driven down for her when I wanted to see her; and
+the way she has been working for these people is extraordinary--never
+tired, always cheerful, ready to be bothered by anybody, and patient
+with their suspicions and simplicity beyond belief. I am sure Mr.
+Roscorla will have an excellent wife."
+
+"I am not at all sure that he will," said her son, goaded past
+endurance.
+
+"Why, Harry," said his mother, with her eyes wide open, "I thought you
+had a great respect for Miss Rosewarne."
+
+"I have," he said abruptly--"far too great a respect to like the notion
+of her marrying that old fool."
+
+"Would you rather not have him to dinner?"
+
+"Oh, I should like to have him to dinner."
+
+For one evening, at least, this young man considered, these two would be
+separated. He was pretty sure that Roscorla would come to meet General
+Weekes: he was positive that Wenna would not come to the house while he
+himself was in it.
+
+But the notion that, except during this one evening, his rival would
+have free access to the inn, and would spend pleasant hours there, and
+would take Wenna with him for walks along the coast, maddened him. He
+dared not go down to the village for fear of seeing these two together.
+He walked about the grounds or went away over to the cliffs, torturing
+his heart with imagining Roscorla's opportunities. And once or twice he
+was on the point of going straight down to Eglosilyan, and calling on
+Wenna, before Roscorla's face, to be true to her own heart, and declare
+herself free from this old and hateful entanglement.
+
+In these circumstances his grandmother was not a good companion for him.
+In her continual glorification of the self-will of the Trelyons, and her
+stories of the wild deeds they had done, she was unconsciously driving
+him to some desperate thing against his better judgment.
+
+"Why, grandmother," he said one day, "you hint that I am a nincompoop
+because I don't go and carry off that girl and marry her against her
+will. Is that what you mean by telling me of what the men did in former
+days? Well, I can tell you this, that it would be a deal easier for me
+to try that than not to try it. The difficulty is in holding your hand.
+But what good would you do, after all? The time has gone by for that
+sort of thing. I shouldn't like to have on my hands a woman sulking
+because she was married by force. Besides, you can't do these mad freaks
+now: there are too many police-courts about."
+
+"By force? No," the old lady said. "The girls I speak of were as glad to
+run away as the men, I can tell you, and they did it, too, when their
+relations were against the match."
+
+"Of course, if both he and she are agreed, the way is as smooth now as
+it was then: you don't need to care much for relations."
+
+"But, Harry, you don't know what a girl thinks," this dangerous old lady
+said. "She has her notions of duty, and her respect for her parents, and
+all that; and if the man only went and reasoned with her he would never
+carry the day; but just as she comes out of a ball-room some night, when
+she is all aglow with fun and pleasure, and ready to become romantic
+with the stars, you see, and the darkness, then just show her a
+carriage, a pair of horses, a marriage license, and her own maid to
+accompany her, and see what will happen! Why, she'll hop into the
+carriage like a dicky-bird: then she'll have a bit of a cry, and then
+she'll recover, and be mad with the delight of escaping from those
+behind her. That's how to win a girl, man! The sweet-hearts of these
+days think too much, that's about it: it's all done by argument between
+them."
+
+"You're a wicked old woman, grandmother," said Trelyon with a laugh.
+"You oughtn't to put such notions into the head of a well-conducted
+young man like me."
+
+"Well, you're not such a booby as you used to be, Harry," the old lady
+admitted. "Your manners are considerably improved, and there was much
+room for improvement. You're growing a good deal like your grandfather."
+
+"But there's no Gretna Green now-a-days," said Trelyon as he went
+outside, "so you can't expect me to be perfect, grandmother."
+
+On the first night of his arrival at Eglosilyan he stole away in the
+darkness down to the inn. There were no lamps in the steep road, which
+was rendered all the darker by the high rocky bank with its rough masses
+of foliage: he feared that by accident some one might be out and meet
+him. But in the absolute silence under the stars he made his way down
+until he was near the inn, and there in the black shadow of the road he
+stood and looked at the lighted windows. Roscorla was doubtless
+within--lying in an easy-chair, probably, by the fire, while Wenna sang
+her old-fashioned songs to him. He would assume the air of being one of
+the family now, only holding himself a little above the family. Perhaps
+he was talking of the house he meant to take when he and Wenna married.
+
+That was no wholesome food for reflection on which this young man's mind
+was now feeding. He stood there in the darkness, himself white as a
+ghost, while all the vague imaginings of what might be going on within
+the house seemed to be eating at his heart. This, then, was the comfort
+he had found by secretly stealing away from London for a day or two! He
+had arrived just in time to find his rival triumphant.
+
+The private door of the inn was at this moment opened: a warm glow of
+yellow streamed out into the darkness.
+
+"Good-night," said some one: was it Wenna?
+
+"Good-night," was the answer; and then the figure of a man passed down
+the road.
+
+Trelyon breathed more freely: at last his rival was out of the house.
+Wenna was now alone: would she go up into her own room and think over
+all the events of the day? And would she remember that he had come to
+Eglosilyan, and that she could, if any such feeling arose in her heart,
+summon him at need?
+
+It was very late that night before Trelyon returned: he had gone all
+round by the harbor and the cliffs and the high-lying church on the
+hill. All in the house had gone to bed, but there was a fire burning in
+his study, and there were biscuits and wine on the table. A box of
+cigars stood on the mantelpiece. Apparently, he was in no mood for the
+indolent comfort thus suggested. He stood for a minute or two before the
+fire, staring into it, and seeing other things than the flaming coals
+there; then he moved about the room in an impatient and excited fashion;
+finally, with his hand trembling a little bit, he sat down and wrote
+this note:
+
+"DEAR MOTHER: The horses and carriage will be at Launceston Station by
+the first train on Saturday morning. Will you please send Jakes over for
+them? And bid him take the horses up to Mr. ----'s stables, and have
+them fed, watered and properly rested before he drives them over. Your
+affectionate son, HARRY TRELYON."
+
+Next morning, as Mabyn Rosewarne was coming briskly up the Trevenna
+road, carrying in her arms a pretty big parcel, she was startled by the
+appearance of a young man, who suddenly showed himself overhead, and
+then scrambled down the rocky bank until he stood beside her.
+
+"I've been watching for you all the morning, Mabyn," said Trelyon.
+"I--I want to speak to you. Where are you going?"
+
+"Up to Mr. Trewhella's. You know his granddaughter is very nearly quite
+well again, and there is to be a great gathering of children there
+to-night to celebrate her recovery. This is a cake I am carrying that
+Wenna has made herself."
+
+"Is Wenna to be there?" Trelyon said eagerly.
+
+"Why, of course," said Mabyn petulantly. "What do you think the children
+could do without her?"
+
+"Look here, Mabyn," he said. "I want to speak to you very particularly.
+Couldn't you just as well go round by the farm-road? Let me carry your
+cake for you."
+
+Mabyn guessed what he wanted to speak about, and willingly made the
+circuit by a more private road leading by one of the upland farms. At a
+certain point they came to a stile, and here they rested. So far,
+Trelyon had said nothing of consequence.
+
+"Oh, do you know, Mr. Trelyon," Mabyn remarked quite innocently, "I have
+been reading such a nice book--all about Jamaica."
+
+"So you're interested about Jamaica too?" said he rather bitterly.
+
+"Yes, much. Do you know that it is the most fearful place for storms in
+the whole world--the most awful hurricanes that come smashing down
+everything and killing people? You can't escape if you're in the way of
+the hurricane. It whirls the roofs off the houses and twists out the
+plantain trees just like straws. The rivers wash away whole acres of
+canes and swamp the farms. Sometimes the sea rages so that boats are
+carried right up into the streets of Kingston. There!"
+
+"But why does that please you?"
+
+"Why," she said with proud indignation, "the notion of people talking as
+if they could go out to Jamaica and live for ever, and come back just
+when they please--it is too ridiculous! Many accidents may happen. And
+isn't November a very bad time for storms? Ships often get wrecked going
+out to the West Indies, don't they?"
+
+At another time Trelyon would have laughed at this bloodthirsty young
+woman: at this moment he was too serious. "Mabyn," said he, "I can't
+bear this any longer--standing by like a fool and looking on while
+another man is doing his best to marry Wenna: I can't go on like this
+any longer. Mabyn, when did you say she would leave Mr. Trewhella's
+house to-night?"
+
+"I did not say anything about it. I suppose we shall leave about
+ten--the young ones leave at nine."
+
+"You will be there?"
+
+"Yes, Wenna and I are to keep order."
+
+"Nobody else with you?"
+
+"No."
+
+He looked at her rather hesitatingly. "And supposing, Mabyn," he said
+slowly--"supposing you and Wenna were to leave at ten, and that it is a
+beautiful clear night, you might walk down by the wood instead of the
+road; and then, supposing that you came out on the road down at the
+foot, and you found there a carriage and pair of horses--"
+
+Mabyn began to look alarmed.
+
+"And if I was there," he continued more rapidly, "and I said to Wenna
+suddenly, 'Now, Wenna, think nothing, but come and save yourself from
+this marriage. There is your sister will come with you; and I will drive
+you to Plymouth.'"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Trelyon!" Mabyn cried with a sudden joy in her face, "she would
+do it! she would do it!"
+
+"And you, would you come too?" he demanded.
+
+"Yes!" the girl cried, full of excitement. "And then, Mr. Trelyon, and
+then?"
+
+"Why," he cried boldly, "up to London at once--twenty-four hours' start
+of everybody--and in London we are safe. Then, you know, Mabyn--"
+
+"Yes, yes, Mr. Trelyon!"
+
+"Don't you think now that we two could persuade her to a quick
+marriage--with a special license, you know? You could persuade her, I am
+sure, Mabyn."
+
+In the gladness of her heart Mabyn felt herself at this moment ready to
+fall on the young man's neck and kiss him. But she was a properly
+conducted young person, and so she rose from the big block of slate on
+which she had been sitting and managed to suppress any great intimation
+of her abounding joy. But she was very proud, all the same, and there
+was a great firmness about her lips as she said, "We will do it, Mr.
+Trelyon--we will do it. Do you know why Wenna submits to this
+engagement? Because she reasons with her conscience and persuades
+herself that it is right. When you meet her like that, she will have no
+time to consider."
+
+"That is what my grandmother says," Trelyon said with a triumphant
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, she was a girl once," Mabyn replied sagely. "Well, well, tell me
+all about it. What arrangements have you made? You haven't got the
+special license?"
+
+"No," said he, "I didn't make up my mind to try this on till last night.
+But the difference of a day is nothing when you are with her. We shall
+be able to hide ourselves away pretty well in London, don't you think?"
+
+"Of course," cried Mabyn, confidently. "But tell me more, Mr. Trelyon.
+What have you arranged? What have you done?"
+
+"What could I do until I knew whether you'd help me?"
+
+"You must bring a fearful amount of wraps with you."
+
+"Certainly--more than you'll want, I know. And I sha'n't light the lamps
+until I hear you coming along, for they would attract attention down in
+the valley. I should like to wait for you elsewhere, but if I did that
+you couldn't get Wenna to come with you. Do you think you will get her
+to come even there?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Mabyn cheerfully: "nothing easier. I shall tell her she's
+afraid, and then she would walk down the face of Black Cliff. By the
+way, Mr. Trelyon, I must bring something to eat with me, and some
+wine--she will be so nervous, and the long journey will tire her."
+
+"You will be at Mr. Trewhella's, Mabyn: you can't go carrying things
+about with you."
+
+"I could bring a bit of cake in my pocket," Mabyn suggested, but this
+seemed even to her so ludicrous that she blushed and laughed, and agreed
+that Mr. Harry should bring the necessary provisions for the wild
+night-ride to Plymouth.
+
+"Oh, it does so please me to think of it!" she said with a curious
+anxious excitement as well as gladness in her face. "I hope I have not
+forgotten to arrange anything. Let me see: we start at ten; then down
+through the wood to the road in the hollow--oh, I hope there will be
+nobody coming along just then!--then you light the lamps; then you come
+forward to persuade Wenna. By the way, Mr. Trelyon, where must I go?
+Shall I not be dreadfully in the way?"
+
+"You? You must stand by the horses' heads. I sha'n't have my man with
+me. And yet they're not very fiery animals: they'll be less fiery, the
+unfortunate wretches! when they get to Plymouth."
+
+"At what time?"
+
+"About half-past three in the morning if we go straight on," said he.
+
+"Do you know a good hotel there?" said the practical Mabyn.
+
+"The best one is by the station; but if you sleep in the front of the
+house, you have the whistling of engines all night long, and if you
+sleep in the back, you overlook a barracks, and the confounded
+trumpeting begins about four o'clock, I believe."
+
+"Wenna and I won't mind that--we shall be too tired," Mabyn said. "Do
+you think they could give us a little hot coffee when we arrive?"
+
+"Oh yes. I'll give the night-porter a sovereign a cup: then he'll offer
+to bring it to you in buckets. Now, don't you think the whole thing is
+beautifully arranged, Mabyn?"
+
+"It is quite lovely!" the girl said joyously, "for we shall be off with
+the morning train to London, while Mr. Roscorla is pottering about
+Launceston Station at midday. Then we must send a telegram from
+Plymouth, a fine dramatic telegram; and my father, he will swear a
+little, but be quite content; and my mother--do you know, Mr. Trelyon, I
+believe my mother will be as glad as anybody. What shall we say?--'To
+Mr. Rosewarne, Eglosilyan: We have fled. Not the least good pursuing us.
+May as well make up your mind to the inevitable. Will write to-morrow.'
+Is that more than the twenty words for a shilling?"
+
+"We sha'n't grudge the other shilling if it is," the young man said.
+"Now you must go on with your cake, Mabyn. I am off to see after the
+horses' shoes. Mind, as soon after ten as you can--just where the path
+from the wood comes into the main road."
+
+Then she hesitated, and for a minute or two she remained thoughtful and
+silent, while he was inwardly hoping that she was not going to draw
+back. Suddenly she looked up at him with earnest and anxious eyes. "Oh,
+Mr. Trelyon," she said, "this is a very serious thing. You--you will be
+kind to our Wenna after she is married to you?"
+
+"You will see, Mabyn," he answered gently.
+
+"You don't know how sensitive she is," she continued, apparently
+thinking over all the possibilities of the future in a much graver
+fashion than she had done. "If you were unkind to her it would kill her.
+Are you quite sure you won't regret it?"
+
+"Yes, I am quite sure of that," said he--"as sure as a man may be. I
+don't think you need fear my being unkind to Wenna. Why, what has put
+such thoughts into your head?"
+
+"If you were to be cruel to her or indifferent," she said slowly and
+absently, "I know that would kill her. But I know more than that: _I
+would kill you._"
+
+"Mabyn," he said, quite startled, "whatever has put such thoughts into
+your head?"
+
+"Why," she said passionately, "haven't I seen already how a man can
+treat her? Haven't I read the insolent letters he has sent her? Haven't
+I seen her throw herself on her bed, beside herself with grief?
+And--and--these are things I don't forget, Mr. Trelyon. No, I have got a
+word to say to Mr. Roscorla yet for his treatment of my sister; and I
+will say it. And then--" The proud lips were beginning to quiver.
+
+"Come, come, Mabyn," said Trelyon gently, "don't imagine all men are the
+same. And perhaps Roscorla will have been paid out quite sufficiently
+when he hears of to-night's work. I sha'n't bear him any malice after
+that, I know. Already, I confess, I feel a good deal of compunction as
+regards him."
+
+"I don't at all--I don't a bit," said Mabyn, who very quickly recovered
+herself whenever Mr. Roscorla's name was mentioned. "If you only can get
+her to go away with you, Mr. Trelyon, it will serve him just right.
+Indeed, it is on his account that I hope you will be successful. I--I
+don't quite like Wenna running away with you, to tell you the truth. I
+would rather have her left to a quiet decision, and to a marriage with
+everybody approving. But there is no chance of that. This is the only
+thing that will save her."
+
+"That is precisely what I said to you," Trelyon said eagerly, for he was
+afraid of losing so invaluable an ally.
+
+"And you will be very, very kind to her?"
+
+"I'm not good at fine words, Mabyn. You'll see."
+
+She held out her hand to him and pressed his warmly: "I believe you will
+be a good husband to her; and I know you will get the best wife in the
+whole world."
+
+She was going away when he suddenly said, "Mabyn!"
+
+She turned.
+
+"Do you know," said he, rather shamefacedly, "how much I am grateful to
+you for all your frank, straightforward kindness--and your help--and
+your courage?"
+
+"No, no," said the young girl good-humoredly. "You make Wenna happy, and
+don't consider me."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+UNDER THE WHITE STARS.
+
+During the whole glad evening Wenna had been queen of the feast, and her
+subjects had obeyed her with a joyous submission. They did not take
+quite so kindly to Mabyn, for she was sharp of tongue and imperious in
+her ways, but they knew that they could tease her elder sister with
+impunity--always up to the well-understood line at which her authority
+began. That was never questioned.
+
+Then at nine o'clock the servants came, some on foot and some on
+dog-carts, and presently there was a bundling of tiny figures in rugs
+and wraps, and Wenna stood at the door to kiss each of them and say
+good-bye. It was half-past nine when that performance was over.
+
+"Now, my dear Miss Wenna," said the old clergyman, "you must be quite
+tired out with your labors. Come into the study; I believe the tray has
+been taken in there."
+
+"Do you know, Mr. Trewhella," said Mabyn boldly, "that Wenna hadn't time
+to eat a single bit when all those children were gobbling up cake?
+Couldn't you let her have a little bit--a little bit of cold meat, now?"
+
+"Dear! dear me!" said the kind old gentleman in the deepest distress,
+"that I should not have remembered!"
+
+There was no use in Wenna protesting. In the snug little study she was
+made to eat some supper; and if she got off with drinking one glass of
+sherry, it was not through the intervention of her sister, who
+apparently would have had her drink a tumblerful.
+
+It was not until a quarter past ten that the girls could get away.
+
+"Now I must see you young ladies down to the village, lest some one
+should run away with you," the old clergyman said, taking down his
+top-coat.
+
+"Oh no, you must not--you must not indeed, Mr. Trewhella!" Mabyn said
+anxiously. "Wenna and I always go about by ourselves; and far later than
+this, too. It is a beautiful, clear night. Why--"
+
+Her impetuosity made her sister smile. "You talk as if you would rather
+like to be run away with, Mabyn," she said. "But indeed, Mr. Trewhella,
+you must not think of coming with us. It is quite true what Mabyn
+says."
+
+And so they went out into the clear darkness together, and the door was
+shut, and they found themselves in the silent world of the night-time,
+with the white stars throbbing overhead. Far away in the distance they
+could hear the murmur of the sea.
+
+"Are you cold, Mabyn, that you tremble so?" said the elder sister.
+
+"No, only a sort of shiver in coming out into the night-air."
+
+Whatever it was, it was soon over. Mabyn seemed to be unusually
+cheerful. "Wenna," she said, "you're afraid of ghosts."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"I know you are."
+
+"I'm not half as much afraid of ghosts as you are, that's quite
+certain."
+
+"I'll bet you you won't walk down through the wood."
+
+"Just now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, I'll not only go down through the wood, but I'll undertake to be
+home before you, though you've a broad road to guide you."
+
+"But I did not mean you to go alone."
+
+"Oh," said Wenna, "you propose to come with me? Then it is you who are
+afraid to go down by yourself? Oh, Mabyn!"
+
+"Never mind, Wenna: let's go down through the wood, just for fun."
+
+So the two sisters set out arm in arm, and through some spirit of
+mischief Wenna would not speak a word. Mabyn was gradually overawed by
+the silence, the night, the loneliness of the road, and the solemn
+presence of the great living vault above them. Moreover, before getting
+into the wood they had to skirt a curious little dingle, in the hollow
+of which are both a church and churchyard. Many a time the sisters had
+come up to this romantic dell in the spring-time to gather splendid
+primroses, sweet violets, the yellow celandine, and other wild flowers
+that grew luxuriantly on its steep banks; and very pretty the old church
+looked then, with the clear sunshine of April streaming down through the
+scantily-leaved trees into this sequestered spot. Now the deep hole was
+black as night, and they could only make out a bit of the spire of the
+church as it appeared against the dark sky. Nay, was there not a sound
+among the fallen leaves and underwood down there in the direction of the
+unseen graves?
+
+"Some cow has strayed in there, I believe," said Mabyn in a somewhat low
+voice, and she walked rather quickly until they got past the place and
+out on to the hill over the wooded valley.
+
+"Now," said Wenna cheerfully, not wishing to have Mabyn put in a real
+fright, "as we go down I am going to tell you something, Mabyn. How
+would you like to have to prepare for a wedding in a fortnight?"
+
+"Not at all," said Mabyn promptly, even fiercely.
+
+"Not if it was your own?"
+
+"No. Why, the insult of such a request!"
+
+According to Mabyn's way of thinking it was an insult to ask a girl to
+marry you in a fortnight, but none to insist on her marrying you the day
+after to-morrow.
+
+"You think that a girl could fairly plead that as an excuse--the mere
+time to get one's dresses and things ready?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna far more seriously, "it is not of dresses I am
+thinking at all; but I shudder to think of getting married just now. I
+could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what is past; and
+until that is done how could I marry any man?"
+
+"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that," her sister cried. "You
+can be so wise and reasonable when you choose. Of course you are quite
+right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get married
+before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone?"
+
+"Oh no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."
+
+Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm: "To Jamaica! To take you away from
+the whole of us! Why--Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're
+not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you
+know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the
+most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the
+woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't
+think you are going to Jamaica just yet."
+
+"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I
+think of getting married in any case at present. But then--don't you
+see, Mabyn?--Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways--"
+
+"Yes, certainly."
+
+"--and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If I were to
+tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting married just
+now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue me out of it:
+then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a girl may fairly
+refuse in point of time--"
+
+"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married
+properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in
+three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it
+is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to
+marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you
+send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."
+
+Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid
+of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."
+
+"Yes, and he'll have more cause to be before he's much older," said
+Mabyn confidently.
+
+They could not continue their conversation just then, for they were
+going down the side of the hill between short trees and bushes, and the
+path was only broad enough for one, while there were many dark places
+demanding caution.
+
+"Seen any ghosts yet?" Wenna called out to Mabyn, who was behind her.
+
+"Ghosts, sir? Ay, ay, sir! Heave away on the larboard beam. I say,
+Wenna, isn't it uncommon dark?"
+
+"It is uncommonly dark?"
+
+"Gentlemen always say uncommon, and all the grammars are written by
+gentlemen. Oh, Wenna, wait a bit: I've lost my brooch."
+
+It was no _ruse_, for a wonder: the brooch had indeed dropped out of her
+shawl. She felt all over the dark ground for it, but her search was in
+vain.
+
+"Well, here's a nice thing! Upon my--"
+
+"Mabyn!"
+
+"Upon my--trotting pony: that was all I was going to say. Wenna, will
+you stay here for a minute, and I'll run down to the foot of the hill
+and get a match?"
+
+"How can you get a match at the foot of the hill? You'll have to go on
+to the inn. No, tie your handkerchief round the foot of one of the
+trees, and come up early in the morning to look."
+
+"Early in the morning?" said Mabyn. "I hope to be in--I mean asleep
+then."
+
+Twice she had nearly blurted out the secret, and it is highly probable
+that her refusal to adopt Wenna's suggestion would have led her sister
+to suspect something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against
+the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was
+grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along
+through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated
+wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to
+the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to
+be unnerved.
+
+"Keeping a lookout ahead?" Wenna called.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir! No ghosts on the weather quarter! Ship drawing twenty
+fathoms and the mate fast asleep. Oh, Wenna, my hat!"
+
+It had been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young
+trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being
+released from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes and
+briers.
+
+"Well I'm--No, I'm not!" said Mabyn as she picked out the hat from among
+the thorns and straightened the twisted feather. Then she set out again,
+impatient over these delays, and yet determined not to let her courage
+sink.
+
+"Land ahead yet?" called out Wenna.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir, and the Lizard on our lee. Wind south-south-west and the
+cargo shifting a point to the east. Hurrah!"
+
+"Mabyn, they'll hear you a mile off."
+
+It was certainly Mabyn's intention that she should be heard at least a
+quarter of a mile off, for now they had got down to the open, and they
+could hear the stream some way ahead of them, which they would have to
+cross. At this point Mabyn paused for a second to let her sister
+overtake her: then they went on arm-in-arm.
+
+"Oh, Wenna," she said, "do you remember 'young Lochinvar'?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Didn't you fall in love with him when you read about him? Now, there
+_was_ somebody to fall in love with! Don't you remember when he came
+into Netherby Hall, that
+
+    The bride-maidens whispered, ''Twere better by far
+    To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar'?
+
+And then you know, Wenna--
+
+    One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
+    When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
+    So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,
+    So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
+    'She is won! we are gone--over bank, bush and scaur!
+    They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.
+
+That _was_ a lover now!"
+
+"I think he was a most impertinent young man," said Wenna.
+
+"I rather like a young man to be impertinent," said Mabyn boldly.
+
+"Then there won't be any difficulty about fitting you with a husband,"
+said Wenna with a light laugh.
+
+Here Mabyn once more went on ahead, picking her steps through the damp
+grass as she made her way down to the stream. Wenna was still in the
+highest of spirits.
+
+"Walking the plank yet, boatswain?" she called out.
+
+"Not yet, sir," Mabyn called in return. "Ship wearing round a point to
+the west, and the waves running mountains high. Don't you hear 'em,
+captain?"
+
+"Look out for the breakers, boatswain."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir. All hands on deck to man the captain's gig! Belay away
+there! Avast! Mind, Wenna, here's the bridge."
+
+Crossing over that single plank in the dead of night was a sufficiently
+dangerous experiment, but both these young ladies had had plenty of
+experience in keeping their wits about them in more perilous places.
+
+"Why are you in such a hurry, Mabyn?" Wenna asked when they had crossed.
+
+Mabyn did not know what to answer: she was very much excited, and
+inclined to talk at random merely to cover her anxiety. She was now very
+late for the appointment, and who could tell what unfortunate
+misadventure Harry Trelyon might have met with?
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Why don't you admire young Lochinvar?
+Wenna, you're like the Laodiceans."
+
+"Like the what?"
+
+"Like the Laodiceans, that were neither cold nor hot. Why don't you
+admire young Lochinvar?"
+
+"Because he was interfering with another man's property."
+
+"That man had no right to her," said Mabyn, talking rather wildly, and
+looking on ahead to the point at which the path through the meadows went
+up to the road. "He was a wretched animal, I know: I believe he was a
+sugar-broker, and had just come home from Jamaica."
+
+"I believe," said Wenna--"I believe that young Lochinvar--" She stopped.
+"What's that?" she said. "What are those two lights up there?"
+
+"They're not ghosts: come along, Wenna," said Mabyn, hurriedly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us go up to this road, where Harry Trelyon, tortured with anxiety
+and impatience, is waiting. He had slipped away from the house pretty
+nearly as soon as the gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room after
+dinner, and on some excuse or other had got the horses put to a light
+and yet roomy Stanhope phaeton. From the stable-yard he drove by a back
+way into the main road without passing in front of the Hall: then he
+quietly walked the horses down the steep hill and round the foot of the
+valley to the point at which Mabyn was to make her appearance.
+
+But he dared not stop there, for now and again some passer-by came along
+the road; and even in the darkness Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses would be
+recognized by any of the inhabitants of Eglosilyan, who would naturally
+wonder what Master Harry was waiting for. He walked them a few hundred
+yards one way, then a few hundred yards the other; and ever, as it
+seemed to him, the danger was growing greater of some one from the inn
+or from the Hall suddenly appearing and spoiling the whole plan.
+
+Half-past ten arrived, and nothing could be heard of the girls. Then a
+horrible thought struck him that Roscorla might by this time have left
+the Hall, and would he not be coming down to this very road on his way
+up to Basset Cottage? This was no idle fear: it was almost a matter of
+certainty.
+
+The minutes rolled themselves out into ages: he kept looking at his
+watch every few seconds, yet he could hear nothing from the wood or the
+valley of Mabyn's approach. Then he got down into the road, walked a few
+yards this way and that, apparently to stamp the nervousness out of his
+system, patted the horses, and finally occupied himself in lighting the
+lamps. He was driven by the delay into a sort of desperation. Even if
+Wenna and Mabyn did appear now, and if he was successful in his prayer,
+there was every chance of their being interrupted by Roscorla, who had
+without doubt left the Hall some time before.
+
+Suddenly he stopped in his excited walking up and down. Was that a faint
+"Hurrah!" that he heard in the distance. He went down to the stile at
+the junction of the path and the road, and listened attentively. Yes, he
+could hear at least one voice, as yet a long way off, but now he had no
+more doubt. He walked quickly back to the carriage. "Ho, ho, my
+hearties!" he said, stroking the heads of the horses, "you'll have a
+Dick Turpin's ride to-night."
+
+All the nervousness had gone from him now: he was full of a strange
+sort of exultation--the joy of a man who feels that the crisis in his
+life has come, and that he has the power and courage to face it.
+
+He heard them come up through the meadow to the stile: it was Wenna who
+was talking--Mabyn was quite silent. They came along the road.
+
+"What is this carriage doing here?" Wenna said.
+
+They drew still nearer.
+
+"They are Mrs. Trelyon's horses, and there is no driver."
+
+At this moment Harry Trelyon came quickly forward and stood in the road
+before her, while Mabyn as quickly went on and disappeared. The girl was
+startled, bewildered, but not frightened; for in a second he had taken
+her by the hand, and then she heard him say to her, in an anxious, low,
+imploring voice, "Wenna, my darling, don't be alarmed. See here: I have
+got everything ready to take you away; and Mabyn is coming with us; and
+you know I love you so that I can't bear the notion of your falling into
+that man's hands. Now, Wenna, don't think about it. Come with me. We
+shall be married in London: Mabyn is coming with you."
+
+For one brief second or two she seemed stunned and bewildered: then,
+looking at the carriage, and the earnest suppliant before her, the whole
+truth appeared to flash in upon her. She looked wildly round. "Mabyn--"
+she was about to say, when he guessed the meaning of her rapid look:
+
+"Mabyn is here. She is quite close by--she is coming with us. My
+darling, won't you let me save you? This indeed is our last chance,
+Wenna."
+
+She was trembling so that he thought she would fall; and he would have
+put his arms round her, but that she drew back, and in so doing she got
+into the light, and then he saw the immeasurable pity and sadness of her
+eyes.
+
+"Oh, my love," she said with the tears running down her face, "I love
+you! I will tell you that now, when we speak for the last time. See, I
+will kiss you; and then you will go away."
+
+"I will not go away--not without you--this night. Wenna, dearest, you
+have let your heart speak at last: now let it tell you what to do."
+
+"Oh, must I go? Must I go?" she said; and then she looked wildly round
+again.
+
+"Mabyn!" called out Trelyon, half mad with joy and triumph--"Mabyn, come
+along! Look sharp! jump in! This way, my darling!"
+
+And he took the trembling girl and half lifted her into the carriage.
+
+"Oh, my love, what am I doing for you this night?" she said to him with
+her eyes swimming in tears.
+
+But what was the matter with Mabyn? She was just putting her foot on the
+iron step when a rapidly approaching figure caused her to utter a cry of
+alarm, and she stumbled back into the road again. The very accident that
+Trelyon had been anticipating had occurred: here was Mr. Roscorla,
+bewildered at first, and then blind with rage when he saw what was
+happening before his eyes. In his desperation and anger he was about to
+lay hold of Mabyn by the arm when he was sent staggering backward half a
+dozen yards.
+
+"Don't interfere with me now, or by God I will kill you!" Trelyon said
+between his teeth, and then he hurried Mabyn into the carriage.
+
+What was the sound then that the still woods heard under the throbbing
+stars through the darkness that lay over the land? Only the sound of
+horses' feet, monotonous and regular, and not a word of joy or sorrow
+uttered by any one of the party thus hurrying on through the night.
+
+[TO BE CONTINUED.]
+
+
+
+
+CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.
+
+
+I.--CAMP--IN THREE LIGHTS.
+
+    Against the darkness sharply lined
+      Our still white tents gleamed overhead,
+    And dancing cones of shadow cast
+      When sudden flashed the camp-fire red,
+
+    Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,
+      And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,
+    While half a century's silent growth
+      Went up in cheery flame and smoke.
+
+    Pile on the logs! A flickering spire
+      Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives,
+    And as we track its leaping sparks,
+      Behold in heaven the North-light lives!
+
+    An arch of deep supremest blue,
+      A band above of silver shade,
+    And, like the frost-work's crystal spears,
+      A thousand lances grow and fade,
+
+    Or shiver, touched with palest tints
+      Of pink and blue, and changing die,
+    Or toss in one triumphant blaze
+      Their golden banners up the sky,
+
+    With faint, swift, silken murmurings,
+      A noise as of an angel's flight,
+    Heard like the whispers of a dream
+      Across the cool clear northern night.
+
+    Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,
+      The wild auroral ghost-lights die,
+    And stealing up the distant wood
+      The moon's white spectre floats on high,
+
+    And lingering sets in awful light
+      A blackened pine tree's ghastly cross,
+    Then swiftly pays in silver white
+      The faded fire, the aurora's loss.
+
+    EDWARD KEARSLEY.
+
+
+
+
+OVERWORKED WOMEN.
+
+
+In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain
+coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that
+respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they
+will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed
+them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work
+that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or
+die. They have hands which are large and horny: they have faces somewhat
+like those of men, but coarse, hideous and furrowed with the lines of
+exposure. They speak, they have a language, but their words are few and
+relate only to the heavy drudgery which is before them. These humble and
+debased animals are women.
+
+I remember, while traveling some years ago through the State of
+Pennsylvania with Mr. Foster, who was then the Vice-President of the
+United States, we saw from the window of the railway-carriage in which
+we were sitting a woman barelegged and at work in the fields. She was
+digging potatoes on some mountain-patch.
+
+"Thank God," said Mr. Foster, "that I never saw such a sight in my own
+country before!"
+
+According to the census of 1870 there were in the United States, out of
+a total population of 38,500,000, less than 400,000 females occupied in
+the labor of agriculture, either as field-hands or indoor workers. Of
+this number, 373,332 were hired laborers, and 22,681 the cultivators of
+their own lands. All of the former, and two-thirds of the latter, were
+freed-women in the late Slave States, and only 7994 females were
+employed in agriculture, either as laborers or proprietors, in or out of
+doors, in the Free States.
+
+The States in which these few farm-women of the North were chiefly found
+were Wisconsin, which claimed 1387; Pennsylvania, 1279; and Illinois,
+1034. In Pennsylvania the farm-women belonged almost exclusively to the
+population known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch," descendants of the
+Hessians and other Germans who settled in the State at the close of the
+Revolutionary War; in Illinois and Wisconsin they were recent immigrants
+from Europe, chiefly Germans, and for the most part, it is presumed,
+widows, who preferred to till the land left by their husbands rather
+than part with it.
+
+With the exception of these trifling numbers, which, including even the
+freed-women, amount to but seven per cent. of the whole number of males
+employed in agriculture, it may be said, with entire correctness, that
+in the United States woman has been raised above the necessity of
+field-labor.
+
+This is so far from being the case in Europe that in some countries all
+the women, except the few belonging to the aristocratic and bourgeois
+classes, are employed in the fields. One-third of the entire rural
+laboring population of Prussia and one-half of that of Russia are
+females. The following figures are from official sources:
+
+COUNTRY.                   Total population.  Total occupied
+                                              in agriculture.
+United States, 1870        38,558,371         5,922,471
+Prussia, 1867              19,607,710         3,286,954
+Europ. Russia, exclud.
+  Baltic Provs., 1863      59,097,859         26,362,435
+
+
+Of whom                         Percentage of female
+Males.          Females.       to male agriculturists.
+ 5,525,503      396,968           7
+ 2,232,741     1,054,213         47
+
+13,444,842    12,917,593         98
+
+To every 100 men employed in field-work, there are in Russia 98 women,
+in Prussia 47, and in the United States but 7; and of the latter, nearly
+all are freed-women of the African race. I have heard men sneer at this
+statement, which I regard as matter for boasting--men who regretted it
+was true: "You Americans make too much of your women. You educate them
+above their rank in life, dress them like dolls and keep them for show.
+They are idle, and become enfeebled and vicious, and their progeny, if
+indeed they have any, partake of the same characteristics."
+
+It is not alone foreigners who hold this language. There is among our
+own countrymen a growing class of admirers of what they are pleased to
+term the robust female, and "robust" with this class means hard-worked.
+
+We have already seen the debased condition to which field-work,
+apparently, has reduced the peasant-women of continental Europe: we have
+seen that they resemble animals as much as they do women, so heavy and
+unremitting is the toil with which they are burdened.
+
+"This only makes them hardy," cries the advocate of the robust school,
+who believes that hard work is good for everybody, even for women, yet
+carefully avoids it himself--avoids even hard thinking, which might
+teach him better doctrine. "It is thus that women become the mothers of
+a race of heroes."
+
+Heroes! Moon-calves, rather; but we shall see.
+
+Mr. Harris-Gastud in his late report to the British Foreign Office on
+Prussia, after mentioning the north-eastern provinces of that country,
+and the immorality, drunkenness and thieving propensities of its
+peasantry, thus continues (p. 361): "The system of contract laborers,
+under obligation to bring one or two other laborers into the field, is
+in some measure responsible for the immorality, inasmuch as the one or
+two, so to speak, gang-laborers, are usually girls, who live in the same
+room as the family. Children are not carefully tended and reared. The
+wives are obliged to work daily throughout summer and autumn, and on
+many properties in winter also. They go very early to work, are free
+half an hour before midday to prepare the dinner and do other household
+work, and return to work till sunset. The children come badly off.
+Often there is no older child to take charge of the little ones, who are
+consequently left to themselves in the house. A direct result is the
+great mortality of children. From 1858 to 1861 there died in the
+province of Prussia, out of a total population of 2,190,072, an annual
+average of 21,290 children under one year, and of 40,845 children under
+ten years, being 0.97 and 1.86 per cent. of the population; whereas in
+the Rhine province, with a population of 2,112,959, the percentages were
+0.57 and 1.12 respectively."
+
+In 1870 in the United States, with a total population in town and
+country of 38,558,371, the number of deaths of children under one year
+was 110,445, and under ten years 229,542, being 0.29 and 0.59
+respectively. In other words, where one child dies in the United States,
+_two_ die in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and _more than three_ in
+one of the north-eastern provinces.
+
+I was in Berlin in the autumn of 1872, when there was a meeting there of
+the emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria. Every preparation had been
+made for this august convocation, among others that of banishing from
+the streets all unpleasant sights. Yet on that occasion, when Unter den
+Linden was crowded with carriages and horsemen and well-dressed people,
+when Russia and Austria were dashing about in open barouches, with
+outriders before and guardsmen behind, and the eye encountered on all
+sides the bravery of military uniforms and arms and waving pennants, I
+saw in a side-street a woman drawing a hand-cart laden with some heavy
+substance that was piled up to the height of four or five feet above the
+rails of the cart. Beside this poor slave, who withal carried an infant
+upon her back which could not have been more than a few weeks old,
+struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor wretch! I
+thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as
+a _widow_, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not
+over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking hag I never saw the
+picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some
+pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to
+chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there he was, walking leisurely
+_behind_ the cart, with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe and
+gazing at the sights along the route.
+
+If we would know the origin of this brutality to women wherever it is
+practiced, we must look for it in the history of slavery, for there we
+shall always find it. It was not the peasant-man who first brutalized
+his wife and daughter, but the lord. If the ancient rights of the
+peasantry had not been molested, and an oppressive system of feudal
+exactions forced upon men who once were free and owners of the soil they
+tilled, the slavery of women could hardly have occurred. It is now
+nearly seventy years since the first decree that eventually resulted in
+the abolition of serfdom in Prussia was promulgated, and time is rapidly
+effacing many of the social evils which that institution entailed. But
+this is not the case with Russia, where emancipation was only declared
+ten years ago, and is not completed even yet. The causes that
+superinduce the degradation and debasement of women can therefore still
+be seen at work in that country, and are thus depicted by an
+eye-witness. He is speaking of the condition of the peasantry of Russia
+subsequent to the decree of emancipation, and so far as my own
+observation in that country goes, I can corroborate all that he says:
+"Their food begins to get scantier and scantier, and toward spring they
+get more and more famished. The officer of government (who since the act
+of emancipation replaces the officer of the lord of the manor) comes and
+energetically demands the payment of arrears. Driven to desperation, the
+peasant acknowledges to the mayor of the village the cause of his want
+of punctuality--viz., the demands made upon him by his family, and
+particularly by his wife. 'Give her a good thrashing,' is the advice of
+the mayor. The mujik goes home, ties his wife by her hair to the tail of
+a cart, and flogs her unmercifully with a whip. At a convenient
+opportunity he will give his mother a knock or two on the head with a
+log of wood. If any member of the family should die from privation, his
+death is attributed to fate." Passing to the description of a village
+community of higher civilization, the author continues: "The chief
+features of such a village are fewer thrashings, a more perceptible
+tendency to personal adornment on the part of the women, a larger number
+of bachelors, and the existence even of old maids--_i. e._, in the sense
+only of unmarried women. In such villages _fetes_ are held each Sunday,
+and all the village games, accompanied by much kissing, terminate in the
+coarsest sensuality. Immorality prevails, followed by infanticide."
+(_Condition of the Laboring Classes of Russia_, by N. Flerofski, 1869.)
+
+For the sake of obtaining an additional laborer in the family it was
+customary for the Russian serf to marry his son of tender years to a
+woman of riper age, particularly in households where the father had
+become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female
+laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this
+circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a
+social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored
+the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood
+in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless
+wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial
+amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce itself;
+for the son, grown to a ripe age and bound to a wife now old and
+wrinkled, would revenge himself by treating his own son in the manner in
+which he had been treated himself.
+
+Says Flerofski: "Women who assist in floating barges down the rivers
+from the province of Vologda (in North-eastern Russia, three hundred to
+five hundred miles above Nijni-Novgorod) to Nijni-Novgorod receive two
+and a half roubles (about $2) for the journey. Both men and women work
+until they become exhausted, and return back to their villages on foot.
+Their master, the contractor, who is bound to support them until they
+return, hastens as much as possible their homeward tramp, in order to
+save expense, compelling them to walk eighty versts (fifty-five miles) a
+day along village roads and byways. They will sometimes have to wade for
+twenty miles through water and mud up to their knees.... The peasant is
+ready to carry any burden, to suffer anything, to impose any privations
+on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to
+obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will
+not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the
+rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex,
+the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage.
+Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days
+and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The
+laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his
+daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or
+involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care
+is to place her where she can earn some money."
+
+In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be
+found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and
+children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and
+pay the taxes. They fill the offices of _starosta_ (policeman) and
+tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On
+the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence
+that branch of the service has taken the name of _sarafannaya_ or
+"petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages
+of Amazons--the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked
+women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.
+
+The terrible burdens which the government and social system of Russia
+heap upon the peasant-man can best be realized from a description of its
+effects upon the unhappy creature whom this man, himself a slave in all
+but name, may treat--nay, almost must treat--as a slave. To pay the
+quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to
+mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre--a price which falls to forty
+cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn
+an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his
+body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders
+at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his
+poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that
+is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that
+will save him from starvation. Starvation! Why? Because should he fail
+to pay, the lord has the power, and will not fail, to seize every piece
+of property which the peasant has in the world--his cow, his bed, his
+clothing, even the uncut corn upon his little field, the very bread from
+off his table. Where is that lord? Has he no heart, no mercy? Alas! he
+is far away, in Vienna, in Rome, in Paris. He is at the Carnival, the
+opera, the club-house. He has presented a diamond necklace to Schneider,
+he has bought a new race-horse, he has lost fifty thousand francs at
+_rouge et noir_. Meanwhile, his agent and the law do his cruel bidding
+far away at home upon the bleak plains of Russia, and the peasant works
+under them as Damocles sat under the sword.
+
+In such peril and fear shall the woman stand idle? Idle she never is,
+even from inclination, her household duties, the care of the young, the
+ministration to the sick and feeble, the preparation of the daily meal,
+being sufficient to keep her fully employed. But shall she stop at these
+when failure on the man's part may to-morrow sweep away not only the few
+articles of clothing and the one or two of furniture they possess, but
+also the food which is to last them during the coming year? The thought
+is death itself. She must go to the fields. No matter how young her
+child, nor how near to death her aged mother or father; no matter how
+rigorous the climate or deficient her clothing: she must go to the
+fields. They are miles away, perhaps--for in Russia, serfdom, the
+communal system and other circumstances have forced the peasantry to
+live in villages--but go she must, with the child on her back or left
+ailing and uncared-for in the hut, with the sick or dying behind her and
+misery all around. Arrived at the scene of her unnatural labors, she
+applies herself to them with an energy which despair alone could
+engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes
+weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood;
+she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is
+ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights.
+Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in
+harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times,
+but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it
+scarcely more than doubles the perilous investment. Then this poor
+creature casts herself upon the earth and weeps, for are not both parent
+and child dead from exposure, from insufficient food, from the lack of
+that attention which she alone could have conferred? The links that
+bound her poor, rugged, but still woman's heart to both the sad past and
+the hopeful future are severed, and she is almost alone in the world.
+But her husband returns, and his joyful looks reanimate her. He has
+succeeded. The tax is paid, and they are free for another year. But at
+what a cost!
+
+This sketch is far from being exaggerated. Too often does it happen that
+despite these sacrifices the tax is not paid. Says Flerofski: "Along
+that road walks a peasant's family in sorrowful procession, shedding
+bitter tears. Is it a funeral? No, it is only the last calf being led
+for sale with the aid of the local authorities. It is necessary to levy
+rents with strictness, for are not the proprietors already ruined?" (He
+means, ironically, by the emancipation of the serfs.) "And, in fact,
+were it not for the deep impression thus made on the peasant, did he not
+know that his last food-giving beast would be taken from him, his last
+pot of milk carried out of his hut, although wanted for his newborn
+child, which would perish without it, the landed proprietors could not
+collect the tenth part of their rents."
+
+In 1856 the Rev. T. Giliarofski, gold-medalist and corresponding member
+of the Russian Geographical Society, published an inquiry into the
+frequency and causes of infant mortality in the province of Novgorod,
+the results of which are true to this day concerning the greater part of
+Central, Eastern and Northern Russia. Let those who believe that it is
+wise and merciful to subject women to hard work read the ghastly story.
+In the first place, the reverend author mentions the notorious fact that
+the statistics of illegitimate births in Russia, in which they are
+stated to be but one-thirtieth of all the births, are kept down by the
+great prevalence of certain practices, to which it is not necessary to
+make further allusion here than to say that they put to shame all the
+implications contained in Dr. Storer's erroneous pamphlet as to the
+habits of Massachusetts women. Next, the Russian priest states that the
+number of births is nearly the same in each month of the year, and that
+out of 10,000 children born, 5537 die during the month of their birth.
+Three out of four registered births in the months of July and August are
+deaths before the termination of those months severally. By the twelfth
+month death summons three-fourths, five-sevenths, or even six-sevenths,
+of the infants born in some districts of Novgorod.
+
+Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is
+the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible
+destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of
+harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their
+newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by
+old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour
+rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men,
+having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are
+only exceptionally capable of rearing their children by the natural
+process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four
+hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger
+feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases
+poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the
+infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them
+to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the
+child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even
+this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce
+internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a
+like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to
+what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical
+capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.
+
+Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant
+mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to
+the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or
+outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial
+unattended--perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which
+will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct
+of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her
+unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard
+field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by
+the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these
+women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time,
+even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse?
+None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals.
+Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source
+arise new perils for their miserable offspring. On the third day after
+birth it is considered necessary to baptize the child by complete
+immersion in water, from which it is held by the Russian Church to be a
+sin to remove the chill. A large proportion of the deaths of infants in
+the colder months of the year are attributed by native writers to this
+cause.
+
+Mothers who have been able to suckle their own children generally wean
+them at the expiration of twelve months, and popular custom, which takes
+rank as a superstition, has appointed two days in the year for that
+purpose--one in July, the other in January. Both of these periods are
+unfavorable to the child: in July the cattle are mostly afflicted with
+disorders, and their milk is hurtful; in January they give but little
+milk. Various devices, more or less prejudicial to health, are resorted
+to by the mother to effect a purpose to which the grossest ignorance and
+superstition alone impel her. One of the mildest of these is separation
+from her child for a week or longer: frequently she returns to find it a
+corpse.
+
+And now let us see what sort of men are born of these overworked women.
+According to the statistical tables of Brun and Zernof, the number of
+persons of both sexes alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty was in
+Russia only 265 in 1000; in the United States in 1870 the number was
+558. In Great Britain there are 548 adults to every 1000 population, and
+in Belgium 518; so that Russia, which, from the subjection of the weaker
+sex and their exposure to hardship, should, according to some persons,
+produce the greatest number of heroes, in fact produces but half as many
+adults, heroes or otherwise, as the other countries named, where women
+do but little field-labor.
+
+Even among those who from their ages are to be classed in Russia as
+productive, great allowance must be made for physical incapacity. A
+large number of the men are afflicted with deformity or disease: many of
+them can scarcely drag themselves along. Out of 174,000 men brought up
+from the villages to recruiting centres to supply the annual contingent
+(84,000 men) of 1868, more than one-fourth (44,000) were rejected for
+disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. In
+Prussia, the other principal European country where women are compelled
+to field-work, out of every 1000 men liable to military service in 1864,
+no less than 467 were rejected for disease and other physical defects,
+not inclusive of short stature. These are the heroes whom female slavery
+brings forth!
+
+Woman is an invalid, says Michelet, therefore she must not work. Woman
+is not an invalid, therefore she is willing to work, and does work. But
+that work has its proper sphere at the domestic hearth; and so long as
+fortune does not lift the family above the cares of daily want, or
+genius elevate the individual to the rank of teacher or leader, there
+should it be suffered to remain.
+
+    ALEXANDER DELMAR.
+
+
+
+SPRING JOY
+
+
+    The wet red glebe shines in the April light,
+      The gray hills deepen into green again;
+    The rainbow hangs in heaven; thin vapors white
+
+    Drift o'er the blue, and freckle hill and plain
+      With many moving shades; the air is strong
+    With earth's rich exhalations after rain.
+
+    Like a new note breaks forth the ancient song
+      Of spring-tide birds, with fresh hope, fresh delight.
+    Low o'er the fields the marsh-hawk sails along;
+
+    Aloft small flocks of pigeons wing their flight;
+      Alive with sound and movement is the air;
+    The short young grass with sunlight rain is bright;
+
+    The cherry trees their snow-white garlands wear;
+      The garden pranks itself with leaf and flower;
+    Quick with live seeds the patient earth lies bare.
+
+    Oh joy! to see in this expectant hour
+      The spirit of life, as on creation's day,
+    Striving toward perfect form! No fear hath power,
+
+    No sense of failure past hath strength to sway
+      The immortal hope which swells within the breast,
+    That this new earth matures not toward decay,
+
+    But toward a beauty hitherto unguessed,
+      A harvest never dreamed. These mild bright skies,
+    This lovely uncompleted world, suggest
+
+    A powerful joy, a thrill of high surprise,
+      Which no fruition ever may inspire,
+    Albeit each bud should flower, each seed should rise.
+
+    EMMA LAZARUS.
+
+
+
+
+HOW LADY LOUISA MOOR AMUSED HERSELF.
+
+
+I.
+
+The earl of Birndale was the magnate of the district. He was a tall,
+strong, coarse-looking man: had he chanced to have been born in the
+position of a coal-heaver, no one would have been surprised if he had
+been hauled up before a magistrate for beating his wife or for squaring
+his fists at any time and at any person as the humor seized him; or if
+he had been a wharf-porter, he would have heaved a load on his shoulders
+and carried it in a way to make puny specimens of the race sick with
+envy. But he was born the son of an earl, and the coal-heaver
+propensities had been trained and trimmed in patrician fashion. An earl
+on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the
+earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the
+least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with
+him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His
+physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had
+brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of
+forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization
+goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. And
+he never walked about his property without a hammer and nails, so that
+if he came to any fence broken or breaking down, he could mend it, as
+was very right and proper; but when people hear of an earl, they connect
+the title with something lofty in the way of employment, and it is
+certain that the village joiner would have mended the fences better than
+the earl. But no doubt it was an innocent amusement, and _noblesse_ did
+not _oblige_ the earls of Birndale: every man of them had always done
+what was right in his own eyes. Why, the brother whom this earl had
+succeeded passed a good deal of his time knitting, but he was the only
+one of his race that had taken to that peaceful, aged-woman-looking
+employment: the rest had not knitted anything except their brows, and
+all of them had been pretty good at that.
+
+There had been statesmen of the race, and there had been blackguards,
+and there had been some of them who combined both characters in their
+own persons. This earl had been in Parliament, for a short time even in
+the cabinet, and for several years he had been governor in one of the
+colonies; and in each of these positions he had made a respectable
+figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his
+son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."
+If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong
+will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when
+accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the
+Tories--not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one
+line of politics--and he held that most men need to be governed, and
+that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was
+an illustrious example. But since his return from abroad he had not
+taken, or desired to take, a lead in political matters: he preferred
+living quietly on his estates, and for the greater part of the year at
+Birns Castle, as the seat of the Birndale family was called, the village
+in its neighborhood being known as "The Birns."
+
+Birns Castle was an ambitious building, and really had accomplished its
+design of looking "lordly," as the guidebooks say. When you entered it
+by the main entrance, you stepped into a large hall lighted from the
+roof, and looking up to such a height was very grand: all round this
+hall there ran a gallery, and when high carnival was held at the castle,
+in this gallery servants, retainers and other privileged persons were
+stationed to see the nobility and gentry dancing below; and it was all
+"mighty fine," as Pepys would have said. It was even more than mighty
+fine on the occasion of the marriage of Lady Mary, the earl's eldest
+daughter, to an English duke, the duke of Dover. From her father down to
+the poorest and farthest-off relations of the Birndale family this
+marriage had made the nerves of every one tingle with delight. But,
+alas! grand as the marriage was, it had not turned out a happy one:
+there had been no violent outbreak nor any public scandal, but the duke
+and duchess saw as little of each other as possible: they both visited
+now and then at Birns Castle, but never together. The duke appeared to
+enjoy himself, and so, for that matter, did the duchess, but each went
+his and her way. Besides the duchess of Dover, the earl had two
+daughters, Ladies Helen and Louisa: he had no son, and his wife had been
+dead some years.
+
+When there happened to be no company at the castle the young ladies felt
+it decidedly dull. It was true they had no end of china, old and new,
+foreign and of home manufacture; they had a gallery of paintings
+worth--it is better not to say how much--but the work of old masters and
+new, besides ancestors looking at them from every wall; they had
+drawing-rooms swarming with every unnecessary of life; they had the
+spacious and lofty hall with armor and swords and spears and shields,
+"all useful," as an auctioneer would say--"all useful, gentlemen, for
+decorative purposes"--with trophies of the chase in its milder home
+forms and as carried on in African or Bengal jungles; they had a library
+filled from floor to ceiling with books containing, it is to be
+presumed, the life-blood of master spirits, but they did not often tap
+the vessels. The earl himself valued his library, but he was not a
+reading man either. In short, they were in the unhappy position of
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at.
+
+
+II.
+
+At one end of the Birns village stood a house, small, not comparatively,
+but positively--a house out of which you could emerge and be
+astonished--if you were young or had anything of the genius which is
+always young--at Birns Castle, which is greatly to be preferred to
+living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at, as has
+been remarked by a high authority in connection with another castle.
+There was no dullness in this house, although only four people lived in
+it, but they were all busy always. It was surrounded by a wall which
+enclosed not only the house, but a garden, a miniature courtyard and a
+stable: the premises were small, but complete and compact, and the
+owners were very well pleased with them. On the gate leading to the
+house was a brass plate with the name "Dr. Brunton" on it. He was the
+doctor of the place, and had only recently settled in it: he was young
+and enthusiastic. If a man wants to spend and to be spent in doing good,
+he has every opportunity as a country doctor, but if he wants to make
+money, he has no opportunity at all. However, people who are young and
+enthusiastic don't think much about money, and Dr. Brunton did not, nor
+did his sister, who lived with him and attended to affairs in-doors.
+They had one female servant and a man for the stable and garden.
+
+They were very happy, this brother and sister--happy to be together, for
+they had no very near relations, and they suited each other well; and
+happy because they had not been accustomed to great things, and were not
+ambitious. Of matrimony neither of them had ever thought, at least on
+their own account, or if they had it was as a possible thing in the far
+distance. Happy, busy, satisfied people don't readily think of change,
+and certainly they don't seek for it; but it may come to them from very
+unexpected quarters.
+
+Mary Brunton had a young lady friend who visited her now and then, but
+it never occurred to her as at all likely that this friend of hers and
+her brother would draw together. If the idea had struck her, it is
+difficult to say whether she would have been pleased or displeased--a
+little of both, perhaps: she would have known that she ought to be
+pleased, but she would not have enjoyed being supplanted in her
+brother's affections, as she could not have helped feeling she would be.
+
+Miss Robertson herself, the young lady in question, was not little and
+dark, with a talent for keeping every one right and sacrificing herself
+on all hands; neither was she tall and fair and handsome, with manners
+petulant and somewhat haughty; but she had one quality which is rather
+coming into fashion among heroines--namely, pliable affections.
+
+    How happy could she be with either, were t' other dear charmer away!
+
+When visiting at The Birns she could be exceedingly happy with Dr.
+Brunton: she had a great admiration for him, and having heard him spoken
+of as a rising man, and a series of clever papers which he had
+contributed to a medical journal having got unqualified praise, she was
+disposed to appreciate him, being one of the many people who can always
+appreciate what has been appreciated. Very likely, Dr. Brunton might
+have secured her and her fortune--which was not a trifle, and would have
+been a large addition to his income--if he had tried to do so, but he
+did not try: her attractions, personal and otherwise, did not strike him
+at all. It might have been well if they had: at least it is
+possible--one can't tell. She made a good wife in an ordinary way to the
+man who got her, and a good wife in an ordinary way is a blessing. A
+man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good
+dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the
+comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with
+the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too
+high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt
+to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day
+comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. Perhaps this
+is the reason that good wives in an ordinary way are so thickly sown,
+for which let us be truly thankful. But, though Miss Robertson had not
+by any means embarked the whole of her affections in one venture, she
+would not have objected to making some impression on her host, and if
+she had, it is possible, as has been said, that it might have been well
+for him.
+
+As the doctor went in at his gate one day he found a gypsy-looking woman
+at the front door selling, or endeavoring to sell, baskets to Miss
+Robertson; but that young lady had the good sense never to buy what she
+did not need, and also she had an idea of the value of household
+articles (both qualifications of the good wife in an ordinary way), and
+knew that the woman was asking three prices for her goods: at least, in
+the end she was ready and even anxious to take a third of what she had
+first named as the price of her wares. And as Dr. Brunton came on the
+scene she was saying, "Or if ye hae ony auld coat o' the maister's, I'll
+gie ye the choice o' my baskets for 't."
+
+"What is it? What are you about?" said the doctor as he came toward
+them.
+
+"I was just sayin' to yer wife, sir, that if--"
+
+"My wife!" said Dr. Brunton, laughing: "I have no wife, and don't want
+one."
+
+"Ay but, sir," said the woman, taking the solemn oracular tone of a
+sibyl, being in the habit of combining fortune-telling with
+basket-selling if she thought she saw an opportunity, "it'll no be as ye
+like: it'll be as it's ordained. A bonnie lassie'll maybe ask ye yet,
+an' ye'll no say na; an' I could tell ye mair about it if ye want to
+hear."
+
+"Come, move off," said the doctor, tossing a coin to her, "and try some
+better trade."
+
+"If I had been a beauty," said Miss Robertson, "I should have thought
+the woman personal, and have taken offence."
+
+"Why," said he, looking at her as if to form an opinion, "you're well
+enough."
+
+Now in her heart Miss Robertson thought she looked considerably better
+than well enough, but Dr. Brunton was honest and said just what he
+thought.
+
+"Well enough for what?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, well enough in the way of looks, I mean."
+
+"But not so intensely beautiful as to be justified in making a
+matrimonial offer?"
+
+"You can exercise your discretion as to that."
+
+"Indiscretion perhaps?" she said.
+
+"Either," said he.
+
+
+III.
+
+"I think, Mary," Miss Robertson said to her friend, "you don't need to
+be afraid of your brother marrying in a hurry."
+
+"Afraid?" said Mary.
+
+"Yes. Now, confess you wouldn't like it. You would not like to be
+shunted, you know."
+
+"Well I should not, but I should like to see him happy, and if he got a
+good wife--"
+
+"Ay, but what wife would you think good enough for him? There's the
+rub."
+
+"I hope he'll be wisely guided," Mary said.
+
+"So do I; but, as I said, I don't think you need be afraid: he won't be
+in a hurry--he does not even care for a flirtation."
+
+"Oh no: my brother is always in earnest whatever he does--in thorough
+earnest. I don't think he could even imagine such a thing as a
+flirtation."
+
+"Well, he is very much stupider than I take him to be if he couldn't."
+
+"He is not stupid: it is the want of stupidity or silliness that makes
+trifling of that kind impossible to him," said Mary.
+
+"It's a pity," her friend said. "What's the use of taking things so
+seriously? I think a little flirtation a nice amusement, very much
+suited to young people."
+
+"To some young people: I should not like to try it. I should be sure to
+burn my fingers."
+
+"Singe your heart, you mean; but it goes off in a little, I suppose, for
+I can't speak from experience."
+
+"No, I trust not."
+
+"Do you know," said Miss Robertson, "that I have a great ambition for
+your brother? I think it a thousand pities that he should settle here. I
+am far more ambitious for him than you are, or than I believe he is for
+himself."
+
+"It seemed the best opening that offered at the time," said Mary.
+
+"A far inferior man would suit this place just as well. He'll work
+himself to death, and nobody be the wiser or the better, whereas if he
+had been in town he would have come to the surface, and might have been
+driving his carriage shortly. That little thick-set, red-haired,
+bulldog-looking man that was here the other night--Dr. What's-his-name,
+your nearest medical neighbor?--that's the kind of man for a country
+doctor. He has the bodily strength and the rough-and-ready manners for
+the place: he is not too bright or good for human nature's daily drugs.
+Were you present when he told about his attendance on Sir James Grieve,
+the great man of his district?"
+
+"No, I did not hear him speak of that."
+
+"Sir James had a cold, and there was an ado made about it as if there
+had not been another man in the world. The doctor was nights in the
+house, and there were consultations and forms and ceremonies, and as
+many fykes, he said, and his time was uselessly taken up, and other
+patients neglected; and he could not charge at all in proportion. Even
+as it was, Sir James went over every item of his account singly, and had
+it explained. Imagine your brother going through all that if the earl of
+Birndale takes a cold!"
+
+"He would not go through it: he would give what attendance he thought
+necessary, and if his charge were called in question he would decline
+payment altogether: that's what he would do."
+
+"And how would it work, do you think?"
+
+"It would work well: upright, honorable dealing always works well in the
+long run."
+
+"But in the short? Why, the displeasure of the earl would be enough to
+ruin him. Upright, honorable conduct is often its own reward. Now, our
+little red-haired friend can put his manners in a strait-jacket for a
+time and accommodate himself to the whims of the gentry; and he is not
+squeamish in money-matters, so that he gets money, and enough of it."
+
+"James is very contented here, and he likes better to live in the
+country than in the town: so do I, but I must say I could wish him to
+achieve reputation; it may be wrong, but I wish it;" and her eyes
+sparkled.
+
+"Wrong!" said Miss Robertson: "it's perfectly right, and what he should
+do and will do; only, as I said, I think it a pity he settled here."
+
+"I like reputation," said Mary, "because it is the result of great
+ability well and thoroughly used: I hope mine is not a vulgar ambition."
+
+"Oh dear, no!" said Miss Robertson; "but a quack has often a far greater
+reputation than an honest man."
+
+"Well, but people are always known sooner or later."
+
+"Yes, sooner or later," echoed Miss Robertson: "I hope your brother will
+be known sooner."
+
+"Do you know," said Mary, "we are so happy as we are that it is a shame
+to wish for anything better or different: I really don't know two
+happier people."
+
+"Just allow me to be a third: I am very happy too. The idea of calling
+this world a vale of tears!"
+
+"By the way," said Mary, "did you see the Ladies Moor ride past to-day?
+It is the first time I have seen them. I think I never saw such a face
+as the youngest has: they say her sister, the duchess of Dover, is a
+great beauty, but surely she can't be more lovely than Lady Louisa."
+
+"Yes, I met them when I was walking, and I was as much struck as you: I
+am sure they don't get their beauty from their father: he is a
+coarse-looking man."
+
+"I don't know where they get it, but they have it, certainly," said
+Mary: "that girl will drive some people crazy yet."
+
+"Do you think beauty has so much power?" asked Miss Robertson.
+
+"Oh, power! I know nothing like it: it is an intense pleasure to me to
+see a face like Lady Louisa's."
+
+"And yet beauty has not brought happiness to the duchess of Dover."
+
+"We need not moralize about it," said Mary. "She is unhappy, not because
+of her beauty, but in spite of it; besides, though she and her husband
+don't get on together, she may have other sources of happiness. It would
+give me great happiness to know that people got pleasure by merely
+looking at me."
+
+"Her Grace of Dover may have got accustomed to that kind of pleasure by
+this time. I hope her sister may have a happier lot: it must be horridly
+provoking to be a duchess and unhappy," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"'Provoking' is hardly the word for the situation, I think," said Mary.
+
+"To seem to have a thing and not to have it is very provoking," Miss
+Robertson said; "besides, other people may hope for some turn of affairs
+that will make things better, but what can she hope for? Why, she has
+everything this world can give."
+
+"Her case seems a very sad one--all glitter and no gold," Miss Brunton
+said.
+
+
+IV.
+
+Dr. Brunton had been attending an old woman who kept one of the gates of
+the castle-grounds and lived in the lodge. It was the least frequented
+of all the entrances to the castle, and the least important. The gate
+was rustic, and the lodge was rustic and thatched, and looked like a big
+beehive, standing as it did at the corner of a fir plantation, the trees
+coming up almost to its walls and overshadowing it entirely. It seemed
+an eerie, solitary place for one lone woman to inhabit, but she had been
+there for many years, and, whatever she had or wanted, time had come and
+time had gone. It was a place where you might have thought Death would
+have called early any day if he was passing, in case he might forget it
+altogether; but he had not, and not only did he not forget it, but he
+had come to this house months ago, and hovered about since as if he had
+nothing to do elsewhere, or as if he could not have despatched his
+business in a moment. At this very time he was seizing some of the great
+ones of the earth with little ceremony, for rank and wealth can't keep
+him waiting in an anteroom till they are ready to receive him: if they
+could, he might get leave to wait long enough. How was it worth his
+while to look in on this poor woman every night and show her his face as
+king of terrors, and yet hang back from enforcing his rights?
+
+Another elderly woman, lonely like herself, had been got to wait on her.
+Women of this kind are not scarce: as life closes in on them they drift
+away into little remote houses in the country, or into single rooms up
+three or four stairs in towns, like the leaves of autumn that have had
+their spring and summer, and are only waiting for the kindly mother
+earth to absorb them again. It looks but a dreary last chapter in their
+lives, yet it may not be so. In one such instance, at least, which had
+been utterly obscure and unknown but that it stood within the charmed
+circle of genius, it was not so--that of Christophine, the eldest sister
+of Schiller, who, after a self-denying life, died the last survivor of
+her family in her ninety-first year, having lived in the loneliness of
+widowhood for thirty years on the slenderest of means, yet, we are told,
+"in a noble, humbly admirable, and even happy and contented manner;" and
+there are many such women. But Bell Thomson, the keeper of this outlying
+lodge of the earl's, had no chance of the bull's eye from the lantern of
+genius throwing her into a strong permanent light, nor had the friend
+who had come to be with her. Happily, the pathetic in their
+circumstances did not strike themselves as it might strike others, and
+no doubt they had their own interests and enjoyments. At this time they
+looked forward to the doctor's daily visit, not merely in the
+expectation of gathering hope and comfort from his words, but because
+they liked the man himself: he was kind and courteous even to poor old
+women, and it was a break in the continuous monotony of their lives.
+
+It chanced on one occasion that the doctor did not get the length of the
+lodge till toward the gloaming, having been occupied the whole day: he
+was tired, and rather reluctant to hear the minute history of Bell's
+sensations for the last twenty-four hours, but he did drive up to the
+lodge, and, leaving his gig at the gate, walked in. "How is this?" he
+said to Bell: "are you alone? what's become of your nurse?"
+
+"Oh, she had to gang hame for an hour or twa, but I'm no my lane: a
+lassie offered to bide wi' me till Ann cam back."
+
+"That's right," said the doctor, and he talked for a little. "Now," he
+said, "you're better to-day than you were yesterday, just admit that."
+
+"Weel, I'm nae waur, but, doctor, ye aye see me at my best, come when ye
+like. Whether it's you comin' in that sets me up a wee I dinna ken, but
+I'm aye lighter when ye're here than ony other time."
+
+"I must try and act the other way," he said: "it won't do for me to
+rival my own medicine."
+
+He turned round and saw standing with her back to him, and looking out
+at the little window, a girl, apparently the daughter of one of the
+neighboring hinds, as farm-servants who live in the cottages on a farm
+are called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short
+enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that
+were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton
+short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her
+neck. This was her dress--the dress common to female farm-servants,
+which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all
+the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a thing
+of the past now, the more's the pity! Her hair was all drawn behind and
+twisted up at the back of her head, where it was fastened by a little
+common horn comb: she had also a string of amber glass beads round her
+neck.
+
+This girl turned round and looked at the doctor with a simple stare of
+curiosity, such as her class fix on a stranger.
+
+The doctor was startled, he almost uttered a low cry of admiration: the
+face was perfect, heavenly, indescribable.
+
+Bell, who was sitting up in bed supported by pillows, said, "Isn't she a
+bonnie lassie, doctor?"
+
+"Hoot!" said the girl--"hoot, Bell! that's nae news. Could ye no tell us
+something we dinna ken?"
+
+From some lips this might have been an impertinent remark: from hers it
+had the most piquant charm of simplicity.
+
+The doctor, having recovered from his first thrill of surprise, said,
+"Where do you live, my good girl?"
+
+"Wi' my faither, sir," she said simply.
+
+"Who is your father?" he asked.
+
+"He is ane o' our neighbors," Bell answered.
+
+"Just up the gate a bit," the girl said.
+
+"Over at Claygates?" said the doctor.
+
+"A wee bit farrer yont, sir," the girl said, and disappeared into an
+inner room.
+
+"I wonder I never saw her before," the doctor said to his patient.
+
+"Weel, she's worth seeing: she's--"
+
+But the rustic beauty reappeared, and Bell did not speak further.
+
+Dr. Brunton's visit had exceeded its ordinary limits, and he rose to go.
+The girl opened the door for him, and as he was passing out he said to
+her, "Are you often here?"
+
+"Gey an' often: Bell's an auld friend o' my mither's, and I run over to
+speir for her aye when I've time."
+
+"Shall you be here to-morrow?"
+
+"Oh, ay: I'll be here the morn and the next day, and maybe the day
+after: I'll be often here as lang as I'm at hame."
+
+"And where will you be when you are not at home?"
+
+"Weel, sir"--and she hesitated a little--"weel, sir, where can the like
+o' me be but at service? We hae nae muckle choice, folk like us."
+
+"Choice!" thought the doctor. "At service! Why, to be served by a being
+wearing such a face must be like being waited on by an angel: she might
+have her choice of the crowned heads of Europe."
+
+He sprang into his gig: all his sense of fatigue had vanished, and a new
+and strange feeling had taken possession of him.
+
+"And they are going to send her to service!" he said to himself. "What a
+shame!"
+
+And yet he knew he was unreasonable. As she herself had said, what
+choice was there in her rank of life? and it was only her beautiful face
+that made it seem at all out of place; but what an _only_ that was!
+"Why," he thought, "I have been five and twenty years in the world, and
+I have never seen a face to match it--never!"
+
+At dinner that day Dr. Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till
+his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.
+
+"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."
+
+"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as
+I ever saw."
+
+"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day--a hind's daughter--so
+beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty
+is a thing to be spoken about."
+
+"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please
+another," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"But she is not good-looking--I tell you no one would speak of good
+looks in connection with her--she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and
+she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and
+bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants
+education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite
+uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently,
+but she has no want of natural ability: everything she said proved
+that."
+
+"I am afraid you have fallen in love," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"I am afraid of it," he said.
+
+"I think hardly," said his sister. "I think you have more sense, James,
+than to be taken with a pretty face belonging to a young lady who can
+neither read nor write."
+
+"Millions of people can read and write," said he, "but how many have a
+face like hers?"
+
+"I must find her out and have a look at her," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"Wait, James," said Mary, "till you see Lady Louisa."
+
+"Lady Louisa may be anything she likes," said he, "but it is impossible
+she can match this peasant-girl without a single grace of dress or
+culture. I never saw anything like her--never."
+
+"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to
+be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.
+
+"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful
+gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."
+
+"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one
+would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she
+does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's
+shop at least by this time."
+
+"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.
+
+
+V.
+
+On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the
+lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be
+bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this
+visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had
+floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the
+most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the
+celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened
+patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her
+out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself
+that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty
+sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on
+the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and
+slightly sheepish in manner as before.
+
+"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.
+
+"Na, I couldna coom."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."
+
+"What do you do? Can you read well?"
+
+"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the
+newspapers."
+
+"Can you write?"
+
+"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae
+time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of
+the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window--innocently,
+simply, appealingly, the doctor felt--and from that moment he was a lost
+man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.
+
+"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to
+service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"
+
+"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be
+content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun
+bide wi' my faither."
+
+"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"
+
+"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."
+
+The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.
+
+"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"
+
+"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."
+
+"And what do they do?"
+
+"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when
+she's awa'."
+
+"She can't be so beautiful as you?"
+
+"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much
+simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the
+window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put
+on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were
+married."
+
+"Are you fond of beads?"
+
+"Oh, ay--they set a body off, divn't they?"
+
+"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near
+you."
+
+"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."
+
+"I always speak the truth."
+
+"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's
+with childish simplicity.
+
+"You can trust me?" he said.
+
+"What about, sir?"
+
+"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"
+
+"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."
+
+"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"
+
+"Oh, far away--away up on the English hand."
+
+"What is her husband?"
+
+"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's
+thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."
+
+"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of
+this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse
+working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her
+days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not
+be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made
+him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to
+some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing"
+her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this
+man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not
+have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and
+reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen
+to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard.
+He was in a dream.
+
+After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was
+sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My
+bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."
+
+"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.
+
+"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.
+
+
+VI.
+
+Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been
+out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching,
+followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight,
+and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals
+they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him
+and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it
+piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly
+roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing
+till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the
+girl with the amber beads!
+
+Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for
+Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his
+house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the
+passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the
+Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?--did you?"
+
+"Yes," he said shortly.
+
+"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."
+
+"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or
+two unless it's something urgent."
+
+Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think:
+he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he
+had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had
+purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to
+love and protect while he lived,--she had disappeared like the mists of
+the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the
+daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been
+laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it
+was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to
+be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she
+superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter
+of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the
+pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of
+phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone
+it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was
+excessively clever, down to twisting her hands in her apron, which she
+was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when
+it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would
+at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from
+heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no
+doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once:
+his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could
+not follow.
+
+He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been
+taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the
+world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If
+only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady
+Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to
+him--when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look
+at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not
+the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might
+possibly win and wear!
+
+While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door
+and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and
+read:
+
+                                               "THE CASTLE, Tuesday.
+
+     "DEAR DOCTOR BRUNTON: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make
+     it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at
+     the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be
+     able to read this.
+
+     "I am yours sincerely,
+
+     "LOUISA MOOR."
+
+
+
+He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly
+and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it
+possible--was it in the least degree possible--that she really cared for
+him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see
+when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.
+
+He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the
+amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to
+his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said
+somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."
+
+"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring
+ever so little.
+
+"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of
+the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in
+her short-gown and amber beads--"do you know that my visits here are of
+no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is
+certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more
+seldom than I have done."
+
+"Will you?" she said softly.
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"No you won't," she said pleadingly--"not if I wish you to come."
+
+"Do you wish me to come?"
+
+"Certainly I wish it."
+
+"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"
+
+"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her
+well attended to."
+
+The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his
+mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll
+see her every day," meaning his patient.
+
+Which he did--not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted
+in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the
+peasant-girl, or in any other role she chose to assume: it was an
+amusement she was fond of.
+
+Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he
+called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he
+felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what
+chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did
+not--But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had
+matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed.
+Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for
+love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain
+man--he was the reverse--but he held that human beings were men and
+women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank
+should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the
+corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which
+his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.
+
+One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to
+him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she
+might be back in a little.
+
+"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane,
+after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour,"
+the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like
+o' her?"
+
+"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat
+down by the bedside, and did _not_ listen to the history of Bell's last
+severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement
+outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he
+saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the
+impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain
+snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled,
+and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A
+basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for
+her visit.
+
+When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a
+puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"
+
+She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was
+moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.
+
+"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"
+
+"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"
+
+"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be
+thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."
+
+"Then how do you live?"
+
+"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle
+tea or the like--that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa:
+she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"
+
+"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your
+comfort."
+
+"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket.
+Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."
+
+The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a
+carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw
+what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and
+passed on.
+
+The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady
+Louisa came in.
+
+"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not
+have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my
+money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it,
+as it is."
+
+"I don't understand," he said.
+
+"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"
+
+"Yes: was _she_ an impostor?"
+
+"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it
+on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and
+wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her
+head like the pearled old woman.
+
+"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.
+
+"It was the truth," the doctor said--"nothing but the truth."
+
+"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"
+
+
+VII.
+
+Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady
+Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's
+house."
+
+"Why?" said Lady Helen.
+
+"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a
+place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village
+street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."
+
+"They may easily be as happy as people who live in big houses, but what
+excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want
+anything?"
+
+"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."
+
+"Won't it seem impertinent?"
+
+"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the
+doctor won't be in at this hour."
+
+They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which
+was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of
+the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to
+his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would _she_ be there or
+would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty,
+but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety:
+she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point
+of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure
+you would be out at this hour."
+
+"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."
+
+"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know
+everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely
+to be in or out."
+
+"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."
+
+"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be
+accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for
+speaking nonsense--"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should
+like to know her."
+
+"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house.
+I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house
+should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the
+public two days a week all summer--Wednesdays and Saturdays, I
+think--and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If
+not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as
+sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."
+
+"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for
+jailer--an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible
+for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."
+
+"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.--You must not believe all
+she says, Dr. Brunton."
+
+"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"
+
+"Why do you _not_ want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.
+
+"I do want to see it."
+
+"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see
+ours--curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."
+
+"This, then, is our chief apartment."
+
+"You live, move and have your being here?"
+
+"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."
+
+"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms,
+and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."
+
+Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few
+minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her
+brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were
+standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as
+if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."
+
+"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he
+said.
+
+In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the
+earl to dine at the castle.
+
+The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh
+blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his
+very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them
+before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did
+not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much
+in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so
+must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both
+interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the
+earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace
+in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require
+strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so
+that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many
+instances--which only of late had stuck to his memory--of ladies of rank
+who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his
+thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of
+gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should
+this not be his case? Why, indeed?
+
+It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first
+staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe
+him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way;
+and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the
+boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the
+estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with
+the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his
+question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of
+hope.
+
+"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got
+home--"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you
+to marry her yet?"
+
+"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa
+might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."
+
+Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what
+kind of an evening had you?"
+
+"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is
+well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing
+gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are
+the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully
+interesting."
+
+The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so
+well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it
+please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every
+day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its
+level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people
+whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She
+lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a
+child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered
+the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the
+end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the
+atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his
+afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and
+hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in
+the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller
+air.
+
+"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the
+door, just to see how things are looking?"
+
+"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would
+she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.
+
+"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run
+home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."
+
+"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you:
+I have a visit to make near the castle."
+
+"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.
+
+They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the
+castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the
+doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.
+
+"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again?
+Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town
+yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And was it good?"
+
+"It is like, I believe."
+
+"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to
+see it."
+
+"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."
+
+"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of
+collecting the photos of people I know."
+
+They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had
+come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit
+down--neither proposed that--but they stood a moment at this spot. The
+waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as
+great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living
+orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of
+savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of
+masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly
+ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but
+as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the
+waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed
+leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it
+that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank
+behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic
+Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and
+weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent,
+it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the
+afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but
+the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the
+dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it
+looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other
+side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early
+part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead;
+innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the
+azure dome.
+
+"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and
+fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the
+flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"
+
+"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.
+
+"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."
+
+"Should you?"
+
+"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of
+traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all
+romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him,
+and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the
+stream.
+
+"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty--"stay only a moment!" But
+she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic
+wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand
+to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared
+through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.
+
+"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.
+
+Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease
+and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to
+earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every
+obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when
+he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa
+seemed the most wild and improbable dream.
+
+He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph--had she
+not almost asked for it?--and as he did it he felt that according as it
+should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great
+wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the
+probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was,
+the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have
+prevented sleep.
+
+In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the
+lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the
+soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a
+tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed
+since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the
+fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was
+significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.
+
+It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with
+the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being
+over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?
+
+
+VIII.
+
+At the very time Dr. Brunton was thinking of this, the family at the
+castle were sitting at breakfast, and the letter-bag came in. As the
+earl was looking over the letters he said, "Here's a thick despatch for
+you, Loo: open it, and tell me what it is?" She opened it.
+
+"Well?" said her father.
+
+"It is a likeness of the doctor," she said.
+
+"The doctor! what doctor?"
+
+"Oh, Dr. Brunton--he who lives in the village. He has been here several
+times, you remember?"
+
+"I remember perfectly. How is his likeness sent to you? who sends it?"
+
+"Himself probably, but I have not read the letter yet."
+
+"Don't read it: hand it to me," he said sternly.
+
+The duchess and Lady Helen were listening to this dialogue, and watching
+the rising wrath of their father and the cool, calm bearing of Loo.
+
+The earl read the letter, then rose and flung it and the carte into the
+fire. "The man is a vain fool," he said--"a perfect fool!"
+
+"I don't see that, papa. I should have wished to have his likeness: I am
+not sure that I did not say so to him. I sometimes meet him in the
+cottages of the people about."
+
+"Do you know the kind of insult you have brought upon yourself?"
+
+"I have brought no insult on myself, and I know of none."
+
+"In that letter he asked you to be his wife."
+
+"The thing is not possible," she said, starting from her chair: "he
+must be mad. _I_ his wife! Why, he'll want the moon down to put into his
+gig-lanterns next."
+
+"If it were not for the laws of the country," said the earl, his face
+red with wrath--"if it were not for the laws of the country, I would
+shoot that man as I would shoot a partridge."
+
+Lady Louisa rose and left the room: her sister Mary followed her. "Loo,"
+she said, "you have been doing wrong."
+
+"Not that I know of, Mary."
+
+"Dr. Brunton would never have written or sent his carte if he had not
+been led on to do it somehow."
+
+"He never was led on by me: he may have been by his own vanity; only I
+did not think he was so stupid."
+
+"I don't say he was wise, but I say you have been foolish: you have done
+a thing you had no right to do."
+
+"I have done nothing. Is it reasonable to blame me because a man wrote a
+foolish letter? His vanity is egregious: to think I was going to forget
+my rank to marry him! I always gave him credit for more brains."
+
+"Maybe you thought your rank entitled you to amuse yourself as you
+liked."
+
+"No, I didn't, but I certainly thought it enough to prevent him
+forgetting himself so far as he seems to have done. I wish I had seen
+that letter: I wonder how he expressed himself? It is a ridiculous
+mistake, but I'll soon put it right."
+
+"To love, and have your love flung back with contempt, is something more
+than a ridiculous mistake. It is--" and the duchess stopped with a
+quaver in her voice, and failed to go on: perhaps she was speaking from
+experience that she was so strongly affected.
+
+In the afternoon, at the usual time, Lady Louisa set out to walk to the
+lodge; not that she did not know of what had happened, for she had heard
+of that, but she thought it not unlikely that Dr. Brunton might be there
+on the chance of meeting her, and the sooner this misunderstanding was
+put right the better, especially as they were on the eve of leaving
+Birns for London, and she might as well make things straight before
+going. She was right in her calculations: Dr. Brunton was walking on
+the road outside the park-gate, in the hope that Lady Louisa, not
+knowing of the old woman's death, might come to visit her as before.
+
+She came up as frankly as was her custom and shook hands, and there was
+no unusual expression in her face whatever; but the doctor had too much
+at stake, was feeling far too keenly, to be capable of sharp observation
+at this time, and he said, hardly knowing what he was saying, "My
+patient here does not need me any longer."
+
+"Yes, I heard of her death," Lady Louisa said.
+
+A great flash of joy thrilled him: she had come here, then, for no other
+end than to meet him. He had difficulty in controlling himself. "You
+have got my letter?" he said.
+
+"Yes, I got it."
+
+He was silent as he stood before her.
+
+"I got it," she repeated, "but I did not read it: papa took it from me
+and read it, and put it and the carte into the fire. I won't tell you
+what he said, but I agreed with him, and came to say that you had made a
+ridiculous mistake."
+
+He was still silent.
+
+"You knew," she went on--"you must have known from the first--that I
+cared no more for you than I do for the shoe below my foot. Could you
+think for a moment that I would demean myself by coming here to meet you
+or any one else? Could you think it? It is impossible. That is all I
+have to say."
+
+"All?" he echoed.
+
+"Yes, all. But I am sorry you should have made such a mistake--very
+sorry."
+
+"Thank you," he said, bowing his head; and they each turned and went
+different ways.
+
+Dr. Brunton went home. "Is Miss Robertson still here?" he said to his
+sister.
+
+"To be sure she is: she was not speaking of going away."
+
+"Then send her away--send her away as soon as you can."
+
+"Indeed! Have you taken a dislike to her?"
+
+"No, but I want to be alone, in my own house at least."
+
+"Oh, James, has anything happened?" she said anxiously, struck by his
+look and tone.
+
+"Nothing--nothing but what has happened often before, I dare say"--and
+he laughed in a way painful to his sister to hear--"to other men, and is
+not much thought of; but my organization is different. Mary, I feel as
+if I shall lose my reason: I am dazed;" and he burst into tears.
+
+Mary was dazed for the moment too: in all her life she had never seen
+her brother like this. The peculiar gleam in his eye was altogether new
+to her: could there be truth in what he said? Was it the glitter of
+insanity that shone in his eyes? But she could not admit the idea.
+
+In a small place like Birns the frequent meeting of Lady Louisa and Dr.
+Brunton had not passed unnoticed, and had, of course, been the subject
+of remark, and Mary guessed what had happened, and felt sure that Lady
+Louisa had been guilty of heartless thoughtlessness, to give it the
+mildest name. Oh, how from her inmost heart she wished they had never
+seen her, or that she had exercised her folly on some one better able to
+bear the consequences of it! How to commit the inhospitality of
+suggesting her friend's departure Mary did not know, but it chanced that
+Miss Robertson proposed it herself, having received a letter which made
+her eager to get home; and the brother and sister were left alone to do
+battle with the threatened calamity.
+
+For months Dr. Brunton struggled like a man against the dark cloud that
+was settling down upon him, but at last he said, "It's all in vain,
+Mary; my mind is going from me; my memory is gone already; I forget
+everything, even the most important engagement; and when a man told me
+of a sad death to-day I burst out laughing: I could not help it. Mary,"
+he said in a kind of cowering whisper, "I know what the end will be."
+
+"No, you don't: no one knows what the end of anything will be. We'll
+leave this place, James; we'll go and travel about; we'll sell off
+everything--I'll manage that--and when you are better you can begin
+life again elsewhere."
+
+"Take me away from this place," he said with a kind of cry: "I'm not fit
+to go about among people."
+
+And they went away, and moved from place to place, but still the malady
+grew, till at last, unutterably mournful as it was, Mary felt it a
+relief when he ceased to be capable of watching the progress of it
+himself: his misery at least was over. Thereafter he slipped into
+perfect mindlessness, happy and harmless, but hopelessly mindless and
+vacant. Meantime, Lady Louisa Moor made a very brilliant marriage to a
+marquis, the eldest son of a duke, the account of which Mary Brunton
+read in the newspapers while watching her brother's face with its
+meaningless smile. How her heart swelled! and she burst into a passion
+of weeping. She threw her arm round him as if to shield him from evil as
+she said, "Oh, Jamie, nothing can reach you now--nothing." He looked at
+her with the look that was always so touching, as if he were vainly
+trying to remember or comprehend: that occasional look of effort was the
+only remnant left of all his powers of mind.
+
+The duchess of Dover asked her sister the marchioness one day if she
+knew what had become of Dr. Brunton.
+
+"No," said she, "I don't. He has left the Birns, I know."
+
+"Shortly after he wrote that letter to you he became insane," said the
+duchess: she put the information in that form, fearful that her sister
+would be overwhelmed with self-reproach.
+
+"He was insane before he wrote it," said the young marchioness: "only
+insanity could excuse such presumption. Men don't go mad from
+disappointed love, or women either, I believe, unless there's a
+predisposition to madness. He must have had that, and any other accident
+in his life would have brought it out as well as his foolish fancy for
+me. If he had been thrown from his gig, or had two or three of his
+patients die on his hands at once, the effect would have been the same;"
+and she passed easily to other topics.
+
+The marchioness was wonderfully beautiful, and she was clever and
+ambitious, and took and kept a very conspicuous place in her sphere; but
+her amusements were sometimes costly in their nature, whether she
+thought so or not. THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."
+
+
+
+
+WALPURGIS NIGHT.
+
+
+      Three travelers making haste,
+    And whisp'ring of some errand of their own,
+    With arms enlinked and garments backward blown,
+      Across a twilight waste.
+
+      Three gibbets dumb and tall,
+    Against the east, with scrawny arms, outlined;
+    Far off a lonely tower, left behind,
+      With silver cross and ball.
+
+      And distant, round and dim,
+    Behind the waste, behind the gibbets high,
+    The witches' moon, with filmy bloodshot eye,
+      Peering above the rim!
+
+    W. W. YOUNG.
+
+
+
+
+FREDERIC LEMAITRE.
+
+
+"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw," wrote Dickens from Paris
+twenty years ago, "I saw last night at the Ambigu." The actor was
+Frederic Lemaitre, and the part he played was that of Georges de Germany
+in the drama of _Thirty Years, or the Life of a Gambler_. At this time
+(February, 1855) Lemaitre was already so old a man that Dickens was
+surprised to see him still playing, and the part was one which the actor
+had created originally twenty-eight years before that. He first played
+it at the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre in 1827, close upon half a century
+ago. "Never," continues Dickens, "did I see anything in art so exaltedly
+horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so well made up and so
+light and active that he really looked sufficiently young. But in the
+last two, when he had grown old and miserable, he did the finest things,
+I really believe, that are within the power of acting. Two or three
+times a great cry of horror went all round the house. When he met in the
+inn-yard the traveler whom he murders, and first saw his money, the
+manner in which the crime came into his head--and eyes--was as truthful
+as it was terrific. This traveler, being a good fellow, gives him wine.
+You should see the dim remembrance of his better days that comes over
+him as he takes the glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he
+were going to touch the other man's, or do some airy thing with it, and
+then stops and flings the contents down his hot throat, as if he were
+pouring it into a limekiln. But this was nothing to what follows after
+he has done the murder, and comes home with a basket of provisions, a
+ragged pocket full of money, and a badly-washed, bloody right hand,
+which his little girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had
+hurt his hand, his going aside, turning himself round, and looking over
+all his clothes for spots was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really
+scared one. He called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when
+he saw the color was one of the things which brought out the curious cry
+I have spoken of from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody
+mist, and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything
+except making his fortune by staking this money and a faint dull kind of
+love for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's self by
+saying enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him
+come near its finest points in anything else. He said two things in a
+way that would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his wife,
+when he has exultingly shown her the money, and she has asked him how he
+got it--'I found it;' and the other to his old companion and tempter,
+when he charged him with having killed that traveler, and he suddenly
+went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out, 'It wasn't
+I who murdered him--it was misery!' And such a dress! such a face! and,
+above all, such an extraordinarily guilty, wicked thing as he made of a
+knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick from the moment
+when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write pages
+about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got half boastful
+of that walking-staff to himself, and half afraid of it, and didn't know
+whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end, or to hate it
+and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the inn-yard
+drinking with the traveler; and this horrible stick got between them
+like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he could put
+the money to."
+
+It will be a surprise to many readers to learn that Frederic Lemaitre is
+still living and still playing. On the evening of March 25, 1874, I went
+to this same old theatre of the Ambigu to see him play Feuillantin in
+_Le Portier du Numero 15_. The part is that of an old man, and the
+actor played it "in his habit as he lived," without artificial make-up
+or wig. His own long iron-gray hair floated on the air; the wrinkles in
+his old face were painted there by the hand of Time; his voice was
+cracked and broken, and his gait that of advanced age. I had formed the
+impression, beforehand, that Lemaitre was simply a tottering old wreck,
+a painful and pitiable sight; and I went to the theatre prepared to be
+saddened by the spectacle of a ruin. A ruin it was, perhaps, but what a
+grand and impressive one! The old man was magnificent! So far from
+exciting pity, he roused in me feelings of the warmest enthusiasm. So
+far from seeming to ask for sympathy, he compelled admiration by force
+of his splendid pantomime, in witnessing which one forgot he had no
+voice, or remembered it only to see in the fact a fitting feature of the
+old _portier_ he was playing. In the midst of my admiration for the
+actor, however, I studied the man himself; and I saw that he dominated
+his fellow-actors with a will of the most imperious sort. He swept along
+the action of the piece, and manipulated the rather poor company of
+actors who moved about him, with a leonine agility of movement and an
+autocratic command of the scene which showed that even in his old age he
+was no subject for patronizing sympathy. There was a meek, white-faced
+young lady who played the part of granddaughter to the old _portier_,
+and I transferred my pity to her; for the way Lemaitre hauled her hither
+and thither by her slender wrists (not in simulated rudeness, for she
+was the pet of the old _portier's_ heart, but simply in the actor's
+imperative arrangements of tableaux), and the manner in which he dragged
+her young head with his iron arms to his broad breast in affectionate
+but rough and picturesque embrace, were enough to wear on the nerves of
+the stoutest young woman; and this one was as frail in form as she was
+fair in face.
+
+A day or two later I had an opportunity of observing more closely the
+hero of fifty years of mimic life. It was in the green-room of the
+Ambigu, half an hour before the curtain rose on his fiftieth
+performance of the _portier_, and the old man was in his shirt-sleeves
+and with his apparel otherwise disordered. Learning that we were from
+America, he invited us to sit for a moment in his dressing-room, which
+adjoined the green-room, and waved us toward the door with as grand a
+gesture as if he were Hamlet saying "Lead on! I'll follow thee." The
+dressing-room was a pleasant little box (in French stage-parlance, by
+the way, a player's dressing-room is always called his _loge_), with the
+walls covered with portraits of theatrical and other celebrities. The
+impression Lemaitre made on me at this time was more that which might be
+made by an American statesman of the old school--a Clay, a Webster, an
+Adams--than that one would expect from a mere mouther of other people's
+words. However, I am wrong to apply this term to Lemaitre, who was in
+the truest sense an _author_. But of this later. He was full of a sort
+of sad dignity, and the burden of his conversation was, "I am no longer
+young." He inquired curiously concerning America, but when it was
+suggested that he should visit our country, shook his head: "No; I am
+too old to cross the sea now." The above passage from Dickens was
+referred to, but he had never heard of it: he said, however, that
+Monsieur Dickens had once sent him some novels to read, and by his tone
+did not imply that he was at all flattered by the admiration of the
+Englishman. For in truth Lemaitre was already a spoiled child of
+adulation years before Charles Dickens became famous; and now that
+Dickens was nearly four years dead, the old actor still lived, and
+remembered that every admiring adjective known to the French language
+had been showered upon himself: what mattered a few more in the English
+language? Looking in the tired, watery old eyes of the man sitting
+before me with his hands thrust deep in his pockets--and what
+magnificent, fiery, great black billiard-balls of eyes they must have
+been in his youth!--looking at the skinny folds which years had gathered
+about his aged jaws, it was still, strange to say, perfectly easy to
+realize the fascinating man Lemaitre had been in his prime, the
+tremendous power for swaying the emotions of his auditors which once
+abode in that rugged frame.
+
+Frederic Lemaitre was born at Havre on the 21st of July, 1798, and had
+been on the stage thirty years at the time when Dickens saw him at the
+Ambigu. As he was at that time already nearly sixty years old, it is
+easy to believe what some have asserted, that his powers were beginning
+to wane. Seeing him, therefore, in the year 1874, at the age of
+seventy-six, still an actor of such fascination that I hardly know his
+equal in Paris, and reading Dickens's account of his acting at the age
+of fifty-eight, the most cautious critic may accept without modification
+the extravagant stories told of the power he had over his audience when
+he was still young. Similar stories are related of Edmund Kean, and the
+resemblance in the private characters of the two men is most striking.
+
+Lemaitre's father was an architect. There is nothing to show that the
+boy displayed extraordinary mimetic genius. He was already about twenty
+years old when his father, yielding to his wishes, and perceiving in him
+a certain taste for declamation, brought him to Paris that he might be
+educated for the stage. He was admitted to the Conservatoire[A] and
+began his studies. He was not a very brilliant student, though he was
+assiduous in his devotion to study. During his pupilage he secured his
+first engagement as an actor at a little theatre on the Boulevard du
+Crime, called the Varietes Amusantes--a theatre long since dead. They
+were playing a piece with three actors, called _Pyramus and Thisbe_. As
+in the Babylonian anecdote, the lovers of the play agreed to meet under
+a mulberry tree at some distance from the town. Thisbe, who arrived
+first, was surprised by a lion: she fled, and was about to hide when her
+veil fell, and the lion seized it and tossed it about in his bloody
+jaws. The lion was Frederic Lemaitre, who thus made his first appearance
+on any stage on all fours. One night the actor who played Pyramus got
+into a dispute in a neighboring cafe, and could not appear on account of
+the exceeding warmth of the discussion, which resulted in sending him
+home with a broken head. The manager was in a highly excited state of
+mind. "Who the devil will play my Pyramus?" he cried. Whereupon the
+lion, who was waiting on all fours to make his entrance, straightened
+himself, took off his head, and said, "I'll play it if you
+like."--"You?"--"I, who know the part."--"Well roared, lion!" quoth the
+manager: "I accept your offer." This was Lemaitre's first essay in a
+speaking part. It was greeted by the indulgent audience with cries of
+indignation, peltings of apples, insults, hisses, whatever could most
+energetically express disapprobation of the lion turned lover. The next
+night Lemaitre resumed his dramatic career as a wild beast.
+
+Yet he was at this period as handsome as Antinoeus, with an elegant and
+slender but powerful figure, waving black hair, expressive and noble
+features, a beautiful complexion, wide forehead, flashing dark eyes, and
+a carriage full of grace and poetry. Rare personal beauty and
+extraordinary strength were striking physical advantages for the stage:
+the mental qualities were as yet but faintly shadowed forth.
+
+On the conclusion of his studies at the Conservatoire young Lemaitre
+sought admission to the classic Odeon Theatre, and would have failed had
+not the tragedian Talma perceived what others could not, and insisted
+that the young man had in him the making of a great actor. He made his
+"serious" debut at the Odeon, and remained at this theatre five months,
+but without producing any special impression as an actor. Then removing
+to the Ambigu, he suddenly achieved a startling and brilliant success,
+and created the first of that long list of parts which have since won
+worldwide celebrity, and been played in every polite tongue, in every
+civilized land. This was Robert Macaire in _L'Auberge des Adrets_. It is
+no exaggeration to say that Lemaitre _created_ this part, though this
+verb is used in our day in very slipshod fashion. Robert Macaire was the
+creation of Lemaitre, and not of the authors of the play. At the
+rehearsals he repeatedly declared that the part was "impossible," and
+that the public would never receive it as the authors had written it.
+The event justified his opinion: the piece was hissed outrageously. But
+it was redeemed on the second night through the audacity of Lemaitre,
+who, in strolling about the streets during the day in no very pleasant
+frame of mind, racked his brains for an expedient for saving the
+fortunes of the theatre. Suddenly he perceived a strange creature
+standing before the open-air shop of a cake-seller--an outre individual,
+clad in indescribable clothing. In some former day the man's garments
+had been elegant and fashionable, but they were now dropping to pieces.
+Misery and debauchery could be read in every stain upon them, but the
+wearer seemed not to have lost a particle of his self-esteem. Standing
+proudly in a pair of boots all run down at the heel and riddled with
+holes, a greasy and misshapen felt hat perched on one ear, he daintily
+broke with the extreme tips of his fingers a piece from a penny cake,
+carried it to his lips with the delicate air of a dandy, and ate it as
+if he were an Epicurean philosopher. His collation over, he drew from
+the pocket of his coat a torn rag, wiped his hands elaborately upon it,
+dusted his costume airily and then resumed his leisurely promenade up
+the boulevard. "I've got him!" cried Lemaitre; for here he saw the
+flesh-and-blood reality of the conception of Robert Macaire which had
+been running through his brain during the rehearsals of the new piece.
+That evening the actor appeared on the stage with a coat, hat and boots
+modeled on those of the man on the boulevard. He reproduced the manner
+of this ragged fashionable, his grotesque calm, his ridiculous dignity;
+and having induced his fellow-actor, Serres, to get up a like
+metamorphosis for the part of Bertrand, the piece obtained a marvelous
+success.
+
+The management of the Ambigu, appreciating the service Lemaitre had
+rendered the theatre, immediately raised his salary to a high figure,
+and from that day, as the saying is, his fortune was made. Saturday is
+the usual pay-day in French theatres, and it was one of the first
+illustrations of the eccentricity of Lemaitre's character that he took a
+whim to have himself paid every Saturday in silver five-franc pieces.
+Then throwing over his shoulder the bag of money, he would walk proudly
+through the crowd which was waiting to see him at the door of the
+theatre.
+
+One of the earliest developments of Lemaitre's independence of spirit
+and contempt of the honeyed adjectives of critics was displayed in his
+refusal to pay those amiable taxes which are so much the rule in Paris,
+if not in all European cities. Generous enough in his own way with the
+abundant earnings of his art, Lemaitre declined to pay for puffery. A
+well-known journalist of the time, counting on his success with less
+eccentric artists, called one day at Lemaitre's residence and suggested
+that the actor should smooth over the rough places of criticism by a
+liberal _douceur_. Lemaitre refused. "It is but a small matter to you,"
+said this gentle literary bandit: "a thousand or twelve hundred francs a
+year--what does so trifling a sum signify to one who has your splendid
+income? And thanks to this modest subvention you will be constantly well
+treated in my columns." To which Lemaitre replied, "Monsieur, I will not
+be eulogized for gold: other eulogies or none." Two days later a
+slashing article against Lemaitre appeared in the columns over which the
+blackmailer had control. Lemaitre made no complaint, but knowing that it
+would not be long ere his assailant would visit the green-room of the
+theatre according to French custom, he waited in patience. A night or
+two later the critic appeared. Lemaitre walked up to him, made a low
+bow, and while the crowd in the green-room were attending to see what
+would follow, slapped the fellow's face. Naturally, this liberty was
+resented by the journalist, who struck back at Lemaitre; but the actor,
+who was gifted with extraordinary muscular power, took both the man's
+hands in one of his own, and holding him thus, said to the witnesses of
+the scene, "To-morrow, if it is necessary, I will fight this
+_miserable_; but before all I desire to treat him in your presence as he
+merits--that is to say as a vulgar scoundrel." With this he dragged the
+blackmailer to the door and kicked him out.
+
+The part of Georges de Germany, which Dickens saw played in 1856, was
+Lemaitre's second great creation. Those who saw him in this part in his
+younger days so rave about it that even Dickens's warm eulogy seems cool
+in comparison. Such unheard-of developments of passion and disorder!
+such incredible fire and magnetism! such subjugation of a vast audience
+to his will!--language fails to express the rapturous accounts which
+those old Frenchmen now living who saw him then will give you with many
+a roll upward of the eyes, many a hopeless shake of head and shrug of
+shoulder and agitation of outstretched hand.
+
+Boiling over with health, radiant with youth, full of vigor, Lemaitre
+now began to lead a life of extravagance which would almost have given
+Bacchus the delirium tremens and driven Hercules into a consumption. But
+his excesses seemed to take away nothing from the magnificence of his
+physical beauty, and he was petted by the fair sex in a manner to which
+the coddlings of a young English unmarried curate are as nothing. Nor
+can it be said that the actor was quite an anchorite: few French
+bachelors are. It is not meet to dwell on this phase of Lemaitre's
+character at length, perhaps; but I should hardly envy the old man's
+feelings in these days when, sitting by his lonely hearth, he lets his
+fancy wander among the ruins of the dead past, if he ever does such a
+thing.
+
+There is a gray-haired and toothless old woman at present engaged in
+that menagerie of old women, the old-clo' market of the Temple in Paris,
+who might go wandering back with Lemaitre into that dead past of his if
+he wanted company. Fifty years ago she was a ruddy-cheeked young girl
+from the provinces, who had come up to Paris with a little fortune of
+thirty thousand francs, which a relative had left her. Going one night
+to the theatre where Lemaitre was playing, she became fascinated with
+Georges de Germany, and went to see him evening after evening.
+Forty-five nights in succession she attended the theatre to weep, to
+shudder and to admire, and ended by offering the actor her heart, her
+hand and her fortune. Lemaitre accepted the heart, but declined the
+hand; and as for the fortune, pooh! What did he want of the lady's
+pin-money? Nevertheless, six weeks saw the end of her little fortune,
+and left her with a quantity of elegant dresses and a few diamonds.
+Waking up one morning from her dream, she betook herself to the old
+market of the Temple, and began to try and get her money back. She is
+said to be worth a good deal more to-day than Lemaitre is.
+
+In the drama of _Faust_ Lemaitre's genius took a new development in
+creating the part of Mephistopheles. The feature of the part which
+balked and baffled him was the infernal laugh indicated by Goethe. By
+every expedient that mimicry could suggest day after day he studied to
+give forth that terrible laugh, but all his efforts were useless: he
+could not satisfy his conception with his execution. Then the idea came
+into his head to abandon the laugh altogether, and substitute for it
+that diabolical grimace which every Mephisto of the grand opera in our
+day strives again to repeat. But, unless all testimony is to be utterly
+flouted, there has never since been seen a grimace so inexpressibly
+hideous and terrifying as that of Lemaitre. He practiced it before the
+glass for days, and at last, succeeding in a play of muscles which gave
+an expression to his face as sinister and frightful as he wished, he
+walked to the window of his room to try the effect of it upon the
+passers-by in the street. A woman who chanced to look up at him while he
+stood there grinning fell to the ground in a swoon. "Good!" said the
+artist, turning away from the window: "I have succeeded at last."
+
+It does not seem wonderful at the present day that Robert Macaire or
+Mephistopheles should be played in the manner which all play-goers are
+so familiar with, and recognize as the correct mode of embodying the
+part; but he who _creates_ the idea that is afterward accepted as a
+matter of course is a very different being from him who repeats it. In
+our day and country the actor who creates _one_ role in the way Lemaitre
+created a score is a made man in his profession. Jefferson created Rip
+Van Winkle--Sothern created Dundreary. But Lemaitre, in addition to the
+parts already named, created Ruy Blas, Don Caesar de Bazan, Gennaro,
+Corporal Cartouche, and a host of others familiar as household words to
+American play-goers through the grand army of his imitators who have
+played them since.
+
+When Macaire, Germany and Mephisto had successively dawned on the
+delighted consciousness of the Parisians--those most insatiate of all
+theatre-goers--Lemaitre had won the sceptre of the Paris stage. He
+reigned over the public with despotic sway, and the public adored its
+theatrical monarch. With his subjects he could do anything, take any
+liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in
+which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting
+with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as
+"harlequin's cloak"--in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass
+knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining
+it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the
+gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, then? Lucky gas!
+Let's see what will happen." With this he turned the knob and plunged
+the whole theatre into darkness. Two thousand Frenchmen and women cried
+out in alarm and consternation. Great was their indignation and savage
+their inquiries as to the cause of the occurrence. But no sooner were
+they informed that Lemaitre had committed this hangable feat than the
+joke seemed charming, and when he came on the stage in the following act
+they received him with bravos and joyous laughs.
+
+Lemaitre was indeed a spoiled child of the public, and his prodigious
+success began to have the effect which success often has upon us poor
+mortals. He became impatient of all restraint, jealous of all honor
+offered to his confreres. The Ambigu won him away from the Porte
+Saint-Martin after a short time, and on the stage of his first successes
+he was supported by Madame Dorval, one of the finest actresses the
+French stage has known. These two dramatic powers did wonders, and the
+public divided its applause between them. This did not suit the petted
+genius. He complained to the manager. "Your horrible _claque_ splits my
+ears," he cried in a fury: "I expect you to get rid of it at once. Or if
+not--" Before his _ultimatum_ was pronounced Madame Dorval appeared.
+"Are you crazy?" she said to the manager: "what is the use of these
+imbeciles with their hand-clapping? Drive them all away from the
+theatre, and leave the real public to its own impressions. If your
+Romans[B] do not at once disappear, I play no more."--"Nor I," said
+Lemaitre.--"So be it," said the manager: "the claque shall be
+discharged."
+
+Such a bold step in a Paris theatre was almost unheard of. What! try to
+run a theatre without the regular corps of hired applauders? The thing
+was incredible. But the leading artists demanded it, and the manager
+notified his claqueurs that their pay was stopped. That night not a
+ripple of applause disturbed the monotony of the performance. The
+public, left to itself, and accustomed to have a gang of paid worthies
+to start the applause at the right moment, applauded neither Lemaitre
+nor Dorval, nor any of the other players. "It is evident," said Lemaitre
+to himself, "that people who admire my acting fear being mistaken for
+hired claqueurs if they express their enthusiasm. I must arrange that."
+He therefore quietly caused to be planted a few judicious claqueurs
+about the house at his own expense, and that night bravos and
+hand-clappings were bestowed on Lemaitre alone. This suited the actor's
+notions to a nicety. Not so with the actress, however. "These people
+have no taste," she thought; "but that can't last." So she arranged
+privately for a small claque of her own, and that night she also was
+applauded. But this sort of game was one which the smaller players of
+the theatre could take a hand in, too. And on the third night, strange
+to say, there was applause for everything and everybody; all the
+performers had "ovations" in turn; even the ballet-girls had a share in
+the general glory so liberally bestowed. "What is the meaning of this?"
+demanded Lemaitre and Dorval of the manager: "did you not promise that
+your claque should be discharged?" The manager shrugged his shoulders.
+"My claque is discharged," said he; "and now there are, I perceive,
+three claques instead of one--yours, madame's and the whole company's.
+Nothing could be fairer."
+
+It may seem strange that our actor, who dealt so roughly with the critic
+who suggested bribery, should have condescended to pay men for applause.
+But custom regulates our sense of honor. The claque is an institution so
+openly recognized in French theatres that the proudest dramatic or lyric
+temple in Paris would not know what to do without it. Even the classic
+Theatre Francais and the frigid Odeon, which are in great part supported
+by the government, and about which hangs the purest odor of high art,
+have each a regularly organized claque, which is paid to applaud, and
+which holds its rehearsals with the same solemnity that the players do,
+in order to introduce at the proper moment a gust of hand-clapping, a
+burst of laughter, or cries of "Bravo! bravo!" There is no concealment
+whatever about their operations. The claqueurs occupy conspicuous seats
+in every theatre, and it is often quite an entertainment in itself to
+watch their goings on. The leader gives the signal to begin and the sign
+to stop; and if any man of his band applauds too idly, that man is
+openly rebuked, and instructed by vehement gesture to do his duty
+better.
+
+But, as has been said, Lemaitre was growing spoiled as a man by his
+success as an artist. He rebelled against the idea that any person
+should be admired on the scene where he was king, and he carried this
+feeling to the absurdest lengths. In one of his plays he had to bring in
+the corpse of his young brother (of the story), and the actor who played
+this part identified himself so well with the immobility of the last
+sleep that the public, struck with astonishment, broke in upon one of
+Lemaitre's finest speeches with cries of bravo for the little dead
+brother. "This is a very impertinent rascal," muttered Lemaitre, "who
+makes himself applauded in my very arms. I shall punish him for it."
+Leaning over the supposed corpse while speaking his lines, he blew into
+the dead boy's nostrils. Not a movement! Then pretending to yield to
+despair--always in consonance with the part he was playing--Lemaitre
+pulled the hair of the defunct with frantic gestures. Not a muscle
+stirred! Whereupon Lemaitre seemed to break down utterly under his
+grief, let go of the body, and it fell hard upon the stage like an inert
+mass. The effect was superb. The whole house applauded, the bravos
+became frantic, the great actor was hoist with his own petard. Lemaitre
+passed the night in solemn reflection on the seriousness of the case.
+The result was that at the next representation, while carrying in his
+little dead brother, he delicately tickled him under the arms. The
+unhappy defunct could not stand this. He came to life, burst out
+laughing, and was heartily hissed, while Lemaitre, the picture of solemn
+grief, inly chuckled at the success of his efforts to destroy rivalry.
+
+But, notwithstanding his superb egotism and his jealousy of applause,
+Lemaitre was capable of mocking at himself in a most amusing manner. At
+one of the last representations of _Robert Macaire_ he expected to be
+called before the curtain at the end of the play. He was not, however;
+whereupon he ordered the curtain to be raised and came forward with his
+gravest air. "Gentlemen," said he, addressing the audience, "I desire to
+know if M. Auguste is not here." M. Auguste does not answer, and the
+spectators look at each other in surprise. "M. Antoine!" Silence again.
+"Well, gentlemen, I am the victim of the dishonesty of the chef and
+sous-chef of the claque. I gave them forty francs this morning to call
+me out, and neither of them is here. You perceive, gentlemen, how
+grossly I have been swindled."
+
+After his fame had grown to greatness Lemaitre reappeared on the classic
+stage of the Odeon, the scene of his earliest efforts. Here he played a
+number of parts, including Othello. But the actor had in his mind an
+idea which haunted him. It was that his favorite role of Robert Macaire
+had not had all the development of which it was capable. He associated
+with himself two authors, Antier and Saint-Amant, who accepted his ideas
+and wove them into a new play under his direction, bearing the name of
+his thieving hero. The success the piece achieved was something
+prodigious. All Paris ran to see it, and it was played for an
+unparalleled length of time. Lemaitre was so in love with the part that
+he used often to play it off the stage. Thus, one day at the Cafe de
+Malte they brought him his bill after breakfast. He arose, threw ten
+francs on the counter, and was leaving. "But the bill is ten francs
+fifty," said the cafe-master. "Very good," said Lemaitre: "the fifty
+centimes are for the garcon." The stage and caricature have since
+dressed up this _mot_ in various forms, but Lemaitre was its first
+publisher. During this same winter of 1836 he was skating one afternoon
+on the basin in the Luxembourg garden, where he was the object of great
+admiration for his graceful evolutions. Presently one of a group of
+women, as he passed near, recognized him and cried out, "My fifteen
+francs, Monsieur Frederic: have you forgotten my fifteen francs?" The
+actor stopped. The woman was his former hostess of the Latin quarter,
+with whom he had lived in the days of his impecuniosity during his first
+connection with the Odeon. Putting on the air of Robert Macaire,
+Lemaitre replied, "Your fifteen francs, madam? You are mighty
+impertinent. Under the alcove in my room I left an old wig. That wig
+cost me thirty-five francs: you owe me a louis. I will send for it
+to-morrow." And he skated calmly away. Next day, however, the hostess
+received her due.
+
+After having played this wicked and trivial thief so long that people
+began to say (as they say now of the creator of Rip Van Winkle) that he
+could not play anything else, Lemaitre startled the town with a new
+creation, utterly distinct from anything he had hitherto done. From
+depicting the most abject rascality he passed in a moment, as it seemed,
+to the representation of delicacy of sentiment and grandeur of soul in
+Alexandre Dumas's play of _Richard d'Arlington_, and again as Gennaro in
+Victor Hugo's _Lucretia Borgia_. Yet the wild dissipation of the man's
+life was never so great as at this precise period of his career. Harel,
+the manager of the theatre where he was now playing (the Porte
+Saint-Martin), was obliged almost every night to send emissaries after
+him to the restaurant opposite the play-house, where Lemaitre was
+indulging in monstrous dinners and was usually hilarious with wine.
+Harel, it must be mentioned, was a very penurious man, who never paid
+his people when he could postpone it, and whose meanness of soul
+Lemaitre delighted to excoriate. Often when dining bountifully at his
+restaurant, the actor being sent for in hot haste with the intelligence
+that the curtain was just going up, would cry, "_Diable!_ And I haven't
+a sou in my pocket! Here's the bill. Carry it to Harel, and tell him
+they are keeping me here as a hostage." Though grinding his teeth with
+rage, the manager never failed to send the necessary sum for the release
+of his principal actor. At other times, when Lemaitre had breakfasted
+copiously, he did not dine, but the manager's purse then ran another
+peril. His actor would arrive at the theatre in a carriage, after having
+been driven about for five or six hours "for the benefit of his
+digestion," as he said, but never did he have the necessary sum to
+settle with the _cocher_, and again Harel paid before Lemaitre would get
+out of the vehicle. At other times during an _entr' acte_ Lemaitre would
+disappear from the theatre, and when the curtain was ready to go up
+again could nowhere be found. "Frederic! where is Frederic?" the
+distracted manager would cry. Frederic was down stairs in the cafe under
+the theatre playing games where the stakes were high, and almost always
+losing. "Monsieur Frederic, the curtain is up!" the prompter would rush
+in to say. "_Ciel!_ What can I do?" the imperturbable actor would reply.
+"I can't leave here, my dear fellow: I must win back what I've lost."
+Poor Harel had to pay again. As the receipts of the theatre were large,
+he did not dare complain much of these forced presents of money:
+Lemaitre called them his perquisites. He had a profound contempt for his
+manager's slippery financial manoeuvres. Harel was really almost as
+eccentric in his own way as Lemaitre was in his. The history of some of
+his subterfuges with his creditors would make a curious chapter. One day
+he stuck up the following notice in the theatre: "To-morrow the
+box-office will be open from three-quarters past two until a quarter
+before three for the payment of claims." The box-office was besieged at
+half-past two by a crowd of creditors who had failed to see the hoax.
+
+"My dear Frederic," said Harel one night to the actor, "I have a
+proposition to make to you that will not displease you."--"Very good:
+tell it me to-morrow at breakfast." The next day they breakfasted, as
+our hero always breakfasted in those days, on truffles and champagne.
+Harel's proposition was this: "My project is to diminish your salary
+one-half."--"What!" cried Lemaitre in very natural surprise, "are you
+mocking me?"--"The theatre is on the verge of bankruptcy," pleaded
+Harel.--"How can that be? I have earned more than a million francs for
+it. What the devil do you do with your money?"--"My dear fellow," quoth
+Harel, "what do you do with yours?"--"Ah! that's different: I have no
+account to give to anybody but myself."--"But come, let us not get
+angry," said Harel: "I will continue to pay you the whole sum, while
+appearing to give you but half of it. In this way I shall be at liberty
+to cut down the other salaries, and the theatre can go on." Lemaitre
+arose, looked Harel straight in the eyes, and answered, "You have the
+secret of sobering a man by a single phrase. So you think me capable--"
+Harel interrupted him hurriedly, not relishing the angry light in the
+actor's eyes: "No, no--not at all: I was joking."--"Ah, you were joking?
+_Eh bien_, your joke is a horribly bad one. Pray don't repeat it."
+
+Lemaitre was not deceived by the manager's sudden change of base. Three
+days afterward he revenged himself by a cutting bit of sarcasm. It was
+in Harel's own office. A young and well-dressed man presented himself,
+carrying a roll of manuscript. At sight of Lemaitre he drew back
+modestly, but Harel bade him remain, and asked him if he brought a
+drama. "Yes," answered the young man.--"Your own?"--"Yes."--"Then you
+have a reputation, doubtless?"--"No, it is my first piece."--"Ah," said
+the manager, who had taken note of the fact that the young author was
+far from shabby-looking, "in that case you are no doubt aware of the
+conditions. The essential thing with us managers always is to raise the
+receipts over the expenses."--"I understand that, sir."--"We prudent
+managers are obliged to refuse the pieces of all authors who have not
+yet achieved success, unless they will guarantee us the expenses that
+the rehearsal of the piece will entail upon us."--"That is my
+intention," was the young man's reply.--"Then we shall be able to
+understand each other. Your piece is in five acts?"--"In three,
+sir."--"Five acts would not have cost you a sou more." The conversation
+continued in this strain until the young author had signed a contract to
+pay ten thousand francs. With the spirit of a Shylock, Harel made out an
+account of actors, actresses, costumes, musicians, etc. that would have
+given gooseflesh to a less anxious and less wealthy author. Lemaitre
+remained sitting in a corner of the room until the manager arose to
+conduct the young man to the door: then he went up to them, laid his
+hand on Harel's shoulder, and said, "Why do you let him go? He has got
+his watch yet."
+
+When Victor Hugo wrote _Ruy Blas_ he informed the director of the
+Renaissance--for which theatre the piece was intended--that the only
+actor who could play the part of Ruy was Lemaitre. The result was
+another of his wonderful creations, which set all Paris wild with
+excitement. Those who have admired Fechter in this part will perhaps be
+surprised to hear that in Paris his performance was pronounced but a
+faint imitation of Lemaitre's. Soon after this Lemaitre's despotic and
+ungovernable disposition began to get him into trouble with the law. He
+quarreled with the manager of the Renaissance, and was compelled by a
+judicial condemnation to play his part. Later, he threw up the principal
+part in _Zacharie_, and compelled the manager to post up an
+announcement, after repeated postponements and disappointments of the
+public, that Lemaitre refused to play, and the theatre was closed in
+consequence. The press took sides with the manager. Threatened again
+with the terrors of the law, Lemaitre consented to play. He came on the
+stage and was greeted with a storm of hisses. With imperturbable
+coolness he advanced to the footlights and with hand on heart said, "I
+am really confused, embarrassed, gentlemen, by the enthusiastic
+reception you have so kindly given me. Pray receive the expressions of
+my gratitude, and believe that I will place at the service of this drama
+all my good will and my best efforts." Thereupon the wind changed: that
+weather-cock, the French public, whirled around and applauded to the
+echo.
+
+Lemaitre did not often speak to his audience with so much
+submissiveness. Sometimes he treated them to such impertinences that he
+brought the police on him. After these theatrical escapades he not
+unfrequently slept in the station-house. He once made a bet that he
+could take off his wig on the stage without his audience getting angry.
+No American play-goer, unacquainted with the temper of French audiences,
+their reverence for stage decorum, can fully appreciate what a defiance
+of public sentiment this was on Lemaitre's part. He did it, however,
+and the action was received in silence. This indulgence encouraging him,
+he took the wig off again and wiped his face with it: still no
+expression from the audience. Lemaitre then put the wig in his pocket:
+the audience remained silent. Surprised at their indulgence, the actor
+advanced to the prompter's hole at the front of the stage, bent down
+grotesquely, took out his snuff-box and offered some to the invisible
+functionary: the audience broke out in a fury. Lemaitre drew the wig
+from his pocket and threw it at the _souffleur's_ head: a frightful
+tumult followed. The pit climbed over the footlights, determined to make
+the insolent actor offer apologies: he refused. The play was stopped,
+and the commissaire of the theatre sent the offending actor to prison,
+where he remained thirty-nine days. When he got out again Lemaitre
+hastened to make his peace with the public. It was easy enough. He had
+only to act in the superb manner of which he was master, and everything
+was forgiven.
+
+The great genius of the actor finally triumphed over the erratic
+dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that
+theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comedie Francaise. He made
+his debut at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in _Fredegonde et
+Brunehaut_. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who
+sit in solemn state in the orchestra-stalls of the Francaise, holding
+their seats from year to year by subscription, cabaled against Lemaitre,
+and endeavored to drive him from the stage. But the audience with a
+tumult of applause stifled the rancor of the classic phalanx of
+orchestra-ancients. Lemaitre afterward, in _Othello_, conquered even the
+prejudices of these stern stage-censors, and they applauded with the
+rest. The actor was in his place at the Comedie Francaise, because it is
+by common consent the leading theatre of the world; but the man was
+sadly out of his element there. In the "House of Moliere" there is an
+atmosphere of respectability as severe among the artists as that of the
+most dignified college in America, and the stage is bound round with a
+solemn network of dignified forms and sacred traditions, amid which
+Lemaitre chafed and fretted like a caged lion. His strolling-player
+instincts, his lack of self-respect, his bacchanalian habits and his
+irregularities generally unfitted him for association with the scholarly
+and correct-lived men who for the most part formed the company. Lemaitre
+felt ill at ease there, and conceived the idea that the _societaires_
+did not respect him enough. The actors of the Comedie Francaise are of
+two bodies--the first and controlling one in the councils of the theatre
+being composed of men who are participators in the profits of the house
+as well as recipients of salaries. They are an extremely dignified body
+of artists, with the utmost reverence for the proprieties of life. For
+these _societaires_ Lemaitre entertained a profound dislike, and loved
+to sneer at them and ridicule their dignity. One day these artists were
+giving a grand dinner to some manager when a knock was heard at the door
+of the banquet-hall. "Who is there?" cried several voices.--"A man,"
+answered Lemaitre outside, "who wishes to have some converse with you,
+and tell you once for all what he has on his heart." So saying, he
+entered, threw off his cloak, and appeared before the company dressed
+simply in a shirt-collar and a pair of stockings.
+
+Lemaitre returned to the Porte Saint-Martin, and soon after created the
+role of Don Caesar de Bazan, a part in which he was indescribably
+delightful, and of which he was the real author. The play, written by
+Dumanoir and Dennery, was roundly condemned by the critics for its
+weakness, but the actor created prodigious effects, and the piece
+obtained a great success. In the _Ragpicker of Paris_, a sort of honest
+Robert Macaire, written by Felix Pyat for Lemaitre, this extraordinary
+actor went through another transformation not less striking than some
+which had preceded it. He engaged the lamplighter of the theatre to wear
+the ragpicker's costume for three weeks, so that it might be suitably
+dirty. He went every day into the low cabarets of the Rue Mouffetard,
+where ragpickers congregated in great numbers (and still do), in order
+to study from nature the peculiarities of the race. One day, as he was
+chatting with his models, familiarizing himself with their characters
+and manners, he was recognized by one of them, who immediately
+communicated his discovery to his companions. The report spread up and
+down the Rue Mouffetard like wild-fire. In a few minutes two or three
+hundred ragpickers had assembled about the door of the cabaret, and as
+many as could get in crowded about the wonderful actor whom they had
+seen from their perch in the gallery of the theatre. They pressed him to
+drink with them; they poured out their compliments and praises on him;
+they wanted to carry him in triumph through the streets. Not relishing
+the idea of such an ovation, Lemaitre jumped through a window and took
+to flight.
+
+It was not until he had passed the age of fifty that Lemaitre began in
+the least to modify the excesses of his career, either on or off the
+stage. He still indulged in bacchanalian orgies; he still broke out at
+times into those violations of the stage proprieties which are so
+startling to any audience, but which are to a French audience something
+bordering on the incredible and awful. He was already an old man when he
+was playing one evening at Amiens, on a provincial tour, in
+_Tragaldabas_, a play written for him by M. Vacquerie, who shared Victor
+Hugo's exile at Jersey. At a certain point in the piece the actor is
+supposed to drink champagne. Now, dramatic managers are obliged to be
+economical about such things as food and drink, and generally replace
+the sparkling vintage by another liquid quite as gaseous, but less
+agreeable to the palate. Lemaitre put the glass to his lips, made a
+horrible grimace, spit out the mouthful, and to the consternation of the
+audience cried out, "Where is the manager of this theatre? Send me the
+manager instantly!" Great excitement behind the scenes: the manager
+arrives. "Approach," says the actor to him gravely, and he walks upon
+the stage in full view of the audience. "What is the meaning of this bad
+joke, Mr. Manager? Do you think me capable of being your accomplice in
+the wickedness of deceiving the public!" "Deceive the public! I!"
+stammers the manager.--"Yes, sir, you:" then addressing the pit,
+"Gentlemen, you think I am drinking champagne. No, it is seltzer-water."
+At this there was a roar of laughter, and the manager, deeming it wise
+to humor the joke, promised to go and get real champagne. During the
+time he was gone--when necessarily the action of the piece was brought
+to a standstill--Lemaitre entertained his audience with a dissertation
+on seltzer-water and the consciencelessness of managers.
+
+With regard to similar stories related of the elder Booth, it is often
+said now-a-days that his audiences were not made up of the decorous
+class which attends theatres in _our_ times, and that managers of the
+present day would not for a moment tolerate such insolent violations of
+theatrical discipline. This may be possible as regards Booth, but so far
+as it relates to Lemaitre it affords no explanation of the anecdotes in
+question. For the severest theatrical audience that can be gathered in
+America to-day--at Wallack's, at Booth's, or wherever decorum is
+supposed to be most preserved--could not for a moment compare, in the
+severity of its artistic judgments and the sternness of its
+requirements, with the audiences which Lemaitre so boldly trifled with.
+And the fact illustrates, as nothing else could, the prodigious
+popularity of the man and the marvelous power of his art. At the
+_repetition generale_ of _Toussaint L'Ouverture_ the cream of artistic
+Paris was present. The members of the Comedie Francaise came in force;
+Lamartine occupied a stage-box; the house was full of poets, novelists,
+painters, artists and authors of every description. Yet on _this_ solemn
+night Lemaitre had one of his explosions of temper, and stopped the play
+to publicly scold the stage-carpenter for setting a scene wrong in some
+trifling detail. The incident was destructive to the power of the play,
+or would have been in an ordinary case; but before the evening was over
+Lemaitre regained perfect control of himself and swept his audience
+with him as by storm.
+
+Before passing his sixtieth year Lemaitre turned over a new leaf. He
+abandoned his dissipated habits and set to work to take care of his
+health and his morals. Better late than never. He had always borne a
+good reputation for generosity: he now set about winning one for virtue.
+He devoted himself to his children--of whom he had four--with exemplary
+care and solicitude. The Antinoeus of former days is now, as has been
+said, but a ruin, but what a magnificent ruin! He has no voice, but
+voice seems hardly necessary to him, so eloquent is his pantomime, so
+expressive are his features, so full of fire his great black eyes when
+acting. Several years ago, while still in his full vigor, he sustained a
+loss of his teeth, which temporarily destroyed his articulation. He was
+playing in a piece called _The Black Doctor_ at the time, and did not
+intermit his representations on account of his misfortune. But one who
+was present on the occasion relates that the audience heard him repeat
+again and again, in ever-varying tones, "Ellla marrr montaaat tojors"
+("Et la mer montait toujours"--"And the sea still rose!"), and shuddered
+and sobbed under the pathos of his tones for more than twenty minutes
+without appearing to notice the absurdity of the language. And for fully
+fifteen years Frederic Lemaitre has now been playing without a voice.
+
+No stage reputation in the century he lives in has equaled this actor's.
+Talma and Rachel, if as great as he, were not so complete, so versatile.
+This sketch has mentioned but a few of his many marvelous creations,
+each so rich in individuality, each so marked and so distinct from the
+other, and each in its turn so original and novel. In his proud face,
+his fiery eyes, his trembling lip, there seems still energy enough for a
+hundred ordinary actors of merit; and yet he gives to any part he essays
+the minute attention to details, the unwearying patience, which would in
+themselves almost win success for an incarnation of commonplace.
+
+    WIRT SIKES.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] The Conservatoire de Musique et de Declamation lyrique is a
+municipal and governmental institution in the French capital, founded
+for the gratuitous instruction of youth of both sexes in singing, music
+and declamation. It accommodates six hundred pupils, and has a library
+of eight thousand volumes.
+
+[B] A cant name among the French for the claque.
+
+
+
+
+THE SONG-WIND.
+
+
+    I stand in a climate of spring,
+      Overblown by a wind from the South,
+    With joy unspeakable thrilled,
+      Ineffable song in my mouth;
+    For the wind is a breeze of delight,
+      And its blowing is rhythmic and fleet;
+    It comes from the heart of the South.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It comes like the breath of a dream
+      Blown through the still regions of sleep;
+    It comes from the islands of love,
+      Lying midmost the tropical deep;
+    It has the fresh smell of sea-grass,
+      It is woven of coolness and heat,
+    Fruit-flavored and burdened with spice.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It stirs the high tops of the trees,
+      With greenness and fragrance o'erfraught,
+    Through which the swift sun-glories glance
+      Like flashes of wonderful thought;
+    It touches the rose till it burns
+      Like love in a heart made complete;
+    It kisses the world into flower.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    A breath of all ages it is,
+      From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind;
+    Through the years, like a shuttle of gold,
+      Runs the wonder of song on the wind--
+    The wonder of flute and of lyre,
+      A music made mellow and meet
+    For Sappho, the princess of song.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    O Sappho! O love-laden soul!
+      A thrill in the rushes there is,
+    And the sea breaks into loud song
+      That throbs with the pulse of the breeze;
+    And singers, remembering thee,
+      Cast their crowns and their lyres at their feet,
+    For the South wind rewakens thy song.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It blows with a rustle of palms
+      And a sound of the laurel and bay,
+    Far voices and clapping of hands,
+      Like applause at the end of a play:
+    It strengthens the poet like wine,
+      And clothes him from head unto feet
+    In the power and glory of life.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    It lifts the gold hair of a girl
+      Till it shines in the sun like a flame,
+    It flows through the locks of a man
+      Toiling hard at his song and his fame;
+    It is heavy with music of birds;
+      It has whispers no lips can repeat:
+    The angels float by on its tide.
+      Oh, the South wind, the song-wind is sweet!
+
+    Ah, world! while the South wind prevails--
+      With flowers and rushes and streams,
+    Intrude not a sound of thy wheels,
+      But leave me alone with my dreams--
+    My reveries born of this breeze;
+      And my life, though lowly it be,
+    Will be happier far than a king's
+      If the South wind, the song-wind kiss me!
+
+    JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
+
+
+
+
+NORTHWARD TO HIGH ASIA.
+
+
+From Calcutta my route was northward to Thibet, to reach, if possible,
+its capital city of Lhassa, residence of the Grand Lama of the
+Booddhists--the pontifical sovereign of Eastern Asia. My journey thither
+was planned by the way of Sikkim, and thence through the Cholah Pass in
+the Himalaya range. I was most anxious to reach a city so interestingly
+described by the Abbe Huc nearly thirty years ago, and to learn
+something further about the present condition and prospects of the
+"Snowy Region of the North" and the lofty table-lands of Central Asia,
+so seldom visited by European travelers.
+
+The cars of the East Indian Railway carry one in a single night 220
+miles to the town of Sahibgunge and the banks of the Ganges. The first
+sight of the sacred river excited in me but little enthusiasm. It was
+about a mile in width, shallow and very muddy, with a swift current and
+dreary sandy banks, where huge crocodiles were basking in the sun. Its
+religious character among the Hindoos is well known. Though highly
+esteemed from its source to its mouth, there are some particular places
+more eminently sacred than others--as Benares, Allahabad and
+Hurdwar--and to these pilgrims resort from great distances to perform
+their ablutions and carry off water to be used in future ceremonies. The
+Ganges water is also valued for its supposed medicinal properties, and
+in the British courts of justice witnesses of the Brahmanical faith are
+sworn upon it.
+
+Having been ferried across the sacred flood, I journeyed onward in what
+is termed a _shigram_--simply a large palanquin on wheels drawn by two
+horses. As I reclined at length upon its cushion-covered bottom, I could
+see that the country through which we passed was an immense plain, and a
+clump of bamboos or an occasional palm alone hinted at an Oriental and
+a tropical landscape. The trees were mostly banians, peepuls and
+mangoes, and there were many large fields of rice and corn. The native
+huts were made of bamboo reeds and mud, with straw-thatched roofs. A
+view of their interiors was of course forbidden me on account of that
+cursed system of caste which prevails from Peshawur to Rangoon and from
+Cashmere and Thibet to Cape Cormorin and Ceylon. The road was
+macadamized and shaded by rows of immense trees. The tricky and balky
+horses (Mongol ponies) delayed us considerably, but it was very amusing
+to see the methods employed to coax or coerce them. A groom held in his
+hand a piece of bamboo about two feet in length, at the extremity of
+which was fastened a strong looped horsehair cord, which was twisted
+around the ear of a fractious beast, and a very little power applied a
+few paces in advance generally removed all scruples as to its progress.
+Horses who would not back into the shafts were assisted by a rope
+secured round a hind leg, and one who would not start forward was
+suddenly persuaded to change its mind through a similar combination of
+rope and pressure applied to a fore leg. Often one native would take a
+wheel, others would push from behind, some would lift one of the fore
+feet of the obstinate brutes, a few would take their heads, and then,
+after much alternate fondling and beating, off we would go at a very
+break-neck speed for perhaps a mile, when the horses would quiet down
+into an easy trot for the remainder of the stage.
+
+About twelve o'clock on the first night a very provoking yet amusing
+incident happened. I had some time previously covered myself with my
+blankets and closed the sliding doors of the vehicle, as it was a bitter
+cold night, and had been enjoying a sound sleep, when, waking suddenly,
+I found the shigram standing in the middle of the road, but without
+either horses, coachman or groom. I had heard that such an event will
+occasionally happen in Indian dak-posting and so endeavored not to be
+disconcerted. Alighting from the shigram, I walked toward a fire which
+was just discernible through the trees, and found my missing coachman
+taking a comfortable smoke and a quiet chat with half a dozen
+bullock-drivers, friends of his, who were camping there for the night. I
+approached the social group with the feelings of a ghoul, shook my fists
+in the coachman's face and talked exceedingly loud, making free use of
+all the bad words in Bengalee of which my then limited vocabulary would
+admit, placing particular emphasis upon the scathing _soour_ ("pig") and
+the withering _gudha_ ("fool")--epithets more dreaded by the Hindoos
+than the most profane oaths. The man jabbered something in his native
+tongue, about as intelligible to me as if spoken in the language of the
+Bechuanas of South Africa or in that of our Sioux Indians. Returning to
+the shigram, I quietly prepared myself to await the issue. But the
+effects of my furious philippic had been complete, and in less than ten
+minutes the ponies were harnessed and we were again on our way.
+
+In the morning I stopped at a dak-bungalow for breakfast. The word _dak_
+means post or stage, and the bungalows are inns for the accommodation of
+post-travelers built by government at distances of about twenty miles
+apart. They are of one story, and usually contain some half dozen
+apartments for sitting, dining and sleeping, besides dressing- and
+bath-rooms. These bungalows are under the direction of a _khansamah_, or
+native butler, who hires a small corps of servants to attend the wants
+of travelers. If you bring provisions, the khansamah will have them
+cooked for you, or he will supply you with a limited bill of fare,
+charging for each dish according to an official scale with which every
+bungalow is furnished. Any traveler can obtain rooms in a dak-bungalow
+during twenty-four hours, for which he must pay one rupee (fifty cents),
+and no one can claim shelter for more than this period should the
+bungalow be full or should other travelers arrive.
+
+On the afternoon of the following day we reached the foot of the hills
+and the terminus of the shigram travel. The Himalayas in view were bold
+and sharp in outline, and densely wooded to their very tops, and my
+route lay directly over the nearer range, which was something more than
+a mile in height. You may ascend the foot-hills by palanquin or pony.
+For the former, previous application is necessary, as relays of bearers
+must be arranged on the road. There are eight bearers, four of whom
+carry you at a time. They have two movements--a sharp trot, and a long
+even step as a rest from the regular gait--but neither is very enjoyable
+to the occupant of the palanquin after a few hours' trial. They relieve
+each other every half mile. The stages are about eight miles in length,
+at the end of each of which an entire new set of bearers is obtained. On
+comparatively good and level roads these bearers will average four miles
+an hour: in ascending or descending steep mountains the rate of speed is
+of course somewhat less. I chose a mountain-pony, a wiry and vicious
+little fellow, and engaged a coolie to carry my baggage to a village
+thirty miles distant for the grand recompense of one rupee.
+
+Soon after starting I met people of both sexes who were neither Hindoos
+nor Mohammedans, but bore a strong resemblance to the Chinese. The men
+were short, stout and muscular, and their faces wore a stolid and almost
+stupid look, which was not at all improved by their long black hair or
+by their filthy garments and persons. The women, however, were rather
+good-looking, not concealing the face as in the plains. These people
+were natives of Nepaul and Bhotan, independent states of India. After a
+ride of five or six miles I passed a _terai_, a great jungle infested by
+tigers and elephants; so at least my companion, a devout follower of the
+Prophet, informed me. This terai consisted of rank grass fifteen feet in
+height, thick underbrush and some few huge trees; and so dense was it
+that a passage could only be made with an axe. It is always advisable to
+pass through such places during the daytime. At Kurseong there was a
+good hotel, the Clarendon, kept by an old New Yorker, who told me he had
+left America fifteen years before, and during that period had traveled
+all over the world, had made a great deal of money in Western Africa in
+the palm-oil trade, and had finally "settled down" (or rather _up_) in
+India. He started the first tea-plantation in the Himalayas, and is
+reported to be worth at present more than a million rupees.
+
+The coolie, a Nepaulese, carried my baggage up the mountains at a sharp
+trot, and reached the hotel but two hours after my own arrival. It was a
+wonderful exhibition of strength and endurance. The distance was thirty
+miles and the weight of the burden nearly eighty pounds. The
+hill-tribes, breathing a cool and invigorating air, are alone equal to
+such displays of vigor and endurance. Some time afterward, in going to
+Simla in the Western Himalayas, I employed coolies who were possessed of
+the same wonderful stamina as these Nepaulese. They were
+splendid-looking men, shorty but thick-set and very muscular, with
+olive-brown skins, piercing black eyes, long glossy hair and regular and
+handsome features. One of this class of men (Hindoo hill-tribes) will
+carry thirty _seers_ (sixty pounds) upon his back, or twenty-five seers
+upon his head, up the hills for fifty miles, without rest or food, in
+twenty-four hours; his charge for which is but one rupee--a special
+instance of the astonishingly cheap labor of all India.
+
+The road ran the whole distance on the face of almost perpendicular
+hills, and for the greater part of the way was guarded by a low wall on
+the dangerous side. The scenery was most grand, and I already felt well
+repaid for the arduous journey from Calcutta. Some views were, however,
+rather frightful. Imagine a ride on the very brink of a precipice
+thirty-five hundred feet in depth, with the hills rising abruptly on the
+other hand twenty-five hundred feet in height above you. The tops of the
+distant and lofty mountains were all hidden in the clouds, but the
+scenery of the valleys beneath one's feet was very beautiful. The
+immense fields of tea planted in rectangular rows, the dark-green and
+dense foliage of the forests, with here a planter's dwelling or a
+factory glistening in the morning's sun, and there perhaps a little
+silvery waterfall or a bubbling brook, and great black shadows cast by
+the clouds, made a truly impressive picture. And yet, though already on
+hills more than a mile in height, I had only gained this altitude in
+order to obtain glimpses of much higher and grander mountains, nearly a
+hundred miles distant.
+
+Just before reaching Darjeeling there is a military cantonment, where
+some troops are stationed for the active duty of protecting Her
+Majesty's northern Indian boundaries. The officers' residences and the
+barracks are situated on the top and upon the precipitous sides of a
+small hill, and bridle-paths wind between, and flower-gardens and
+ornamental trees are to be seen grouped about each dwelling. Darjeeling
+is distant about three hundred and fifty miles almost due north from
+Calcutta, of which it is regarded as the sanitarium, though, owing to
+the hardships of the journey from that city, the more distant Simla is
+quite as often resorted to by the invalided officials, merchants and
+troops of Hindostan. The feasibility of building a railroad to
+Darjeeling has long been discussed, and it appears that the engineering
+difficulties, though great, can nevertheless be overcome; but no active
+steps have as yet been taken toward the attainment of so desirable an
+object. The European residents of the town of Darjeeling number about
+fifty, and there are perhaps four times as many tea-planters in the
+surrounding country.
+
+The next day being Sunday, and the day on which marketable supplies are
+brought into town for the whole week, the proprietor of my hotel took me
+to see the bazaar. It much resembled others visited in and near
+Calcutta, but I was surprised at the variety of European vegetables
+offered for sale: there were peas, onions, potatoes, squashes, lettuce,
+radishes, turnips and many kinds of grain, including that peculiarly
+Yankee "institooshun" pop-corn. The bazaar was held out of doors in a
+public square, with a few shops of dry goods around, and a most terrible
+din arose from the motley crowd there assembled. In one place a number
+of soldiers from the cantonments were bidding on some glassware offered
+at auction, and in another mothers of families and _khansamahs_ were
+bustling about engaging their necessary household supplies. Here was a
+wretched beggar, with a grotesque mask on his face, dancing before some
+of the merchants, who gave him a few potatoes in exchange for his
+contortions. The people embraced Hindoos, Mohammedans, Bhoteeas,
+Nepaulese and Sikkimites, and presented every variety of dress and
+figure, having seemingly but one feature or possession in common, and
+that was a very prominent display of unclean skin and raiment. The
+Nepaulese women wore bracelets and necklaces of Indian coins, besides
+silver anklets, finger- and nose-rings, gold earrings and beads, and
+each had also suspended from her neck a silver snuff-box. These boxes
+were three or four inches square, made of the purest metal, and
+handsomely carved and embossed.
+
+At Darjeeling I learned that my plan of traveling to Lhassa was not
+feasible--that the Tale Lama ("sea of wisdom") and the great palace, and
+a city whose three productions, according to Chinese travelers, are
+lamas, women and dogs--many of whose streets are lined with houses built
+of ox and rams' horns; and a people whose mode of salutation is by
+uncovering the head, thrusting out the tongue and scratching the right
+ear, and whose manner of disposal of their dead is by cutting the
+corpses in pieces and giving them to "sacred dogs," raised and nurtured
+in convents for the express purpose--would have to be known only through
+the reports of others. The Thibetan traders in Darjeeling reported that
+the _Pugla Diwan_ of Sikkim had become a great man in Thibet, and had
+seized everything _en route_ from Lhassa during the year, and, having
+stored all in huge warehouses, would allow nothing to pass into Sikkim
+and Bengal. Previous travelers and missionaries had all of them entered
+the country in the disguise of priests or of Chinese or Mogul traders,
+having a knowledge of the Thibetan or some allied language; and even
+then so greatly fearing detection as to be unable to learn very much of
+the condition and capabilities of the land or the habits and usages of
+the people. That foreigners should be so rigorously excluded from Thibet
+is doubtless owing to Chinese influence--to the fear and jealousy of
+British power and possession in the East, the southern boundaries being
+rigorously guarded by a _cordon_ of Chinese garrison-stations on the
+highlands of the Himalayas.
+
+I might approach nearer, or perhaps ascend the great mountain
+Kanchinjinga, which is about fifty miles distant from Darjeeling, though
+there are no roads over or around the intervening hills, and the journey
+would have to be undertaken on foot, and tents, provisions and a large
+retinue of servants would be necessary. And then, at best, but the
+snow-limit or a little higher could be reached (hardly two-thirds the
+distance to the summit), and therefore the interest of the trip would
+scarcely compensate for its hardships. Instead of this, the proprietor
+of the hotel proposed a little excursion on horseback into Sikkim, the
+country of the Lepchas. It is ten or twelve miles to the bottom of the
+valley, and the road (or rather bridle-path) winds around the hills
+forward and back, but constantly descending, until at length the Rungeed
+River is reached. Some of the precipices were frightful to look over,
+and I clutched the reins tightly, braced myself in the saddle, and
+almost held my breath as the pony trotted quietly along a path three
+feet in width and often lying at an angle of 45 deg.; but there was no
+danger, unless it might perhaps be from the sliding away of part of the
+road, since the ponies are mountain-bred and very sure-footed. The views
+were extremely grand, and the distances from peak to peak so immense
+that the mind was almost lost to detail. Much of the land is cleared of
+forest trees and covered with tea-plants: cinchona also is cultivated,
+and with great success.
+
+The Rungeed is a small mountain-torrent, a branch of the Peesta, which
+latter empties its waters into the great Brahmapootra ("son of Brahma").
+It serves as a boundary-line between Bengal and Sikkim. Crossing this
+stream at a height of about thirty feet, there is a bamboo-cane
+suspension bridge three hundred feet in length, which was built entirely
+by the natives. It is intended for foot-passengers, and will safely
+support a dozen people at a time. It consists of sixteen bamboo canes,
+of the size of the finger, on either side. The bottom is formed of three
+very large stems of bamboo, and a sort of wickerwork extends from these
+upward to the supporting canes, which are about six feet from side to
+side, and may in crossing just be grasped by the hands. The bridge has a
+peculiar oscillating motion, which increases so much at the centre,
+together with an up-and-down movement, that, with a sight of the
+fiercely rushing water beneath, the traveler's head is apt to become
+giddy.
+
+Crossing to the other side, I met in the forests an English gentleman,
+who informed me he was just returning from a two weeks' tour through
+Sikkim. It was Colonel Manwaring of H. M.'s Indian army, who was engaged
+in compiling under government orders a dictionary of the Lepcha tongue.
+Salutations over, Briton like, he pressed me at once to drink, asked if
+I would try a native beer, and upon my assenting ordered a quantity of
+_chi_ (a drink made of fermented millet) from a hut near at hand. It
+proved a nutritious and exhilarating though not intoxicating beverage,
+and we drank it _a la_ Sikkimite, warm, through a reed a foot in length
+and from a joint of bamboo holding perhaps a couple of quarts. The
+colonel informed me that the Lepcha language is very copious, expressive
+and beautiful, abounding largely in metaphor. The number of words is
+very extraordinary, and requires a person to be something of a
+geologist, botanist and zoologist--in short, to understand very many of
+the sciences and not a few of the arts--in order to learn perfectly this
+curious tongue. His labors among the people he described as very trying
+and discouraging. He had been employed upon the dictionary more than
+three years, and it was not nearly completed. We rode slowly up the
+hills, and reached the inn late in the evening.
+
+I had waited nearly a week for a clear day on which to view the highest
+mountain-peaks in the world, and had almost despaired of success when on
+the last morning of my stay, upon looking from my window at daybreak, I
+saw that although the valleys and sides of some of the hills were
+covered with clouds and fog, still a lofty peak near Darjeeling showed
+its face distinctly and for the first time during my visit. Remembering
+that this mountain was over two miles in height, perhaps Mount
+Kanchinjinga might be in sight, but I hardly dared entertain the
+thought. It was my last chance, for I intended to return to the plains
+in the afternoon; so, jumping into my clothes, pulling on my hat and
+snatching up my field-glass, I walked, or rather ran, to the other side
+of the hill for an unobstructed view. Suddenly turning a sharp bend in
+the road, I saw through the trees a clearly-defined, substantial-looking
+cloud--was it a cloud, though?--and rushing forward a dozen paces, lo
+and behold! one of the highest mountain-summits on the globe stood
+unveiled before me! I confess never in my travels to have experienced
+like sensations of awe and reverence. My eyes involuntarily filled with
+tears, and I stood completely lost in wonder and admiration.
+
+It was early morning. The sun had newly risen, though not yet visible,
+and threw a flood of rosy light upon the gigantic snow-tipped pinnacles,
+causing them to glisten like polished white marble. The valley below,
+four or five thousand feet deep, was filled with an ocean of silvery
+clouds, which majestically rolled and rose upon the forest-clad sides of
+the great mountains as far as the limit of perpetual snow; and from this
+fleecy mass as a border towered aloft against an azure-hued sky the
+magnificent form of Kanchinjinga. For miles in each direction the
+thickly-wooded sub-hills were in sight, but all interest centred in the
+never-by-man-trodden peak before and above me. A dread and awful silence
+seemed to pervade the air, and the total absence of life or motion lent
+an almost supernatural glamour to the scene. For nearly two hours I sat
+as one entranced, until the sun gently lifted the clouds from the
+valleys, and as with a silver-wrought screen shut off from my eyes the
+most impressive sight they ever beheld. During this marvelous exhibition
+the "littleness of man" had been made very painfully lucid. Yet,
+perhaps, there is nothing so calculated to raise the thoughts, enlarge
+the mind or purify the heart as the contemplation of the sublime and
+beautiful in Nature.
+
+Kanchinjinga, properly speaking, consists of three peaks, which are
+sharp, serrated, precipitous, and apparently composed of solid rock from
+the snow-limit to the summit. Its immense height is not thoroughly
+appreciated by the traveler for two causes--its great distance (fifty
+miles "as the crow flies"), and the fact that the point of observation
+is itself one-fourth the height of the mountain. Had I risen earlier and
+ridden to Mount Senchal, fifteen hundred feet above Darjeeling, I
+_might_ have obtained a view of Mount Everest, which is nearly thirty
+thousand feet in perpendicular height above the sea (about five and a
+half miles), and is the supremest point upon our globe, while Mount
+Kanchinjinga, which until quite recently was supposed to be the higher
+of the two, is found to be of about eight hundred feet less altitude.
+Mount Everest is a single peak, a cone, and appears like a small white
+tent above the clouds, but in grandeur and sublimity it is excelled by
+Kanchinjinga. Well do the Himalaya Mountains bear out the meaning of
+their name--the "abode of snow"--for on their southern slopes in some
+places the snow-line descends to fourteen thousand feet. The mean
+elevation of this remarkable range is double that of the Alps, and many
+of its passes to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia are higher
+than the summit of Mont Blanc. Huge glaciers of smooth ice, though none
+so vast as those of the Alps, are numerous in parts of this stupendous
+mountain-chain, and even descend from the regions of perpetual snow to
+eleven thousand feet. Though the Andes of South America present a
+mountain-system twice the length of the Himalayas, still in respect to
+altitude the former are much surpassed by the latter. Mount Dwalaghiri
+in Nepaul is of nearly the same height as Kanchinjinga: then, there are
+two peaks which attain twenty-six thousand feet; four about twenty-four
+thousand feet; and over twenty that reach an elevation exceeding twenty
+thousand feet!
+
+Leaving Darjeeling, I visited one of the large tea-gardens near the
+terai at the foot of the hills. The best of land may be purchased at ten
+rupees per acre, and an average-sized plantation embraces about two
+hundred acres. The prospective garden must be cleared of its forest and
+jungle, which is an arduous task, but when once it is in order one
+native can properly cultivate an acre. The best teas are raised upon the
+tops of the hills, upward of seven thousand feet above the sea-level.
+Good tea can only be grown under two conditions: these are moisture and
+heat, and hence the southern slopes of the Himalayas are admirably
+adapted to its cultivation, for during the middle of the day the sun is
+warm, and at night there are very copious dews. The laborers employed
+are all natives, and one or two Europeans only are necessary to
+superintend the largest plantation. The indigenous tea-plant was first
+discovered in Assam (the north-eastern district of Bengal) in the year
+1830. From there it was introduced into Cachar and Darjeeling, and from
+these places into the hills in the north-western part of Hindostan. In
+1850 the English government founded plantations in the Kangra Valley,
+about one hundred and twenty miles from Lahore, on the borders of
+Cashmere, which proved so successful that many were soon established in
+various other localities. Cinchona (_Cinchona calisaya_) also succeeds
+well upon the hills, and is being extensively grown, as, owing to the
+prevalence of fevers of all kinds, quinine is in great demand throughout
+India.
+
+Reaching the Ganges again without accident or noteworthy event, I
+traveled on westward up its rich valley, and soon entered upon the great
+plain of Hindostan (embracing an area of half a million square miles),
+which, though nearly treeless, contains some of the most fertile soil on
+the globe. There were clusters of huts and dilapidated mosques at short
+intervals, and the natives might be seen at work in the fields with
+their antiquated wooden ploughs, the bent limbs of trees, or engaged in
+cutting _paddy_ (rice in the husk), or hoeing poppy-plants, or digging
+little drains. Wherever we met them they would stop work, drop
+everything, and gaze at the railway train, which seemed to them
+apparently as strange a sight as if it had just dropped down from the
+clouds.
+
+In Hindostan, land is owned either by government or by the native rajahs
+and nawabs. That belonging to the former is leased to a class of people
+called _zemindars_ (the word means "landholder," "landkeeper"), and they
+sublet it to another class styled _ryots_ (the "husbandmen,"
+"peasants"), who are the real tillers of the soil. A well-to-do zemindar
+will rent two thousand acres of land, for which he pays about four
+_annas_ (twelve cents) an acre. The hardships of the ryots are
+great--they are treated like slaves, and can barely make a
+subsistence--but among the zemindars are numbered some of the wealthiest
+men in the country: one, for instance, owns fifty square miles of
+fertile land, all wrung from the labor of the poor peasants. Formerly
+these zemindars were merely the superintendents of the land, but
+latterly they have been declared its hereditary proprietors, and the
+before fluctuating dues of government have under a permanent settlement
+been unalterably fixed in perpetuity.
+
+As we rolled along, on both sides of the railroad as far as the eye
+could see were immense fields of wheat and barley, paddy, tobacco,
+mustard, the castor-oil plant, millet, maize, the poppy, indigo and
+sugar-cane. Wheat and barley are not sown broadcast as with us, but in
+drills a few inches apart: both grains are consumed in the
+country--little or none is exported. The paddy resembles rye or wheat
+when growing, the rice-kernels being contained in husks at the top of
+the spires. The plant requires a wet loamy soil (such as is best offered
+in Cambodia and Siam, the former being styled "the Asiatic storehouse of
+rice"), and there is but one crop in the year. The mustard-plants which
+we saw were about two feet in height, and bore small yellow flowers as
+crests. The oil and the table article of commerce are made by grinding
+the seeds in mills constructed for the purpose. The castor-oil plant is
+a green and succulent shoot about six feet in height, with white flowers
+hanging in bunches like hops. Maize is never fed to cattle as in
+America, but is all consumed by the poorer classes of natives. But most
+interesting were the poppy-plants. These are raised in oblong patches of
+ground surrounded by low mud walls for retaining the water which is
+essential to their growth. The plants are quite small, with green leaves
+at the base, from which rise tall stalks with bulb-like tops, the pod of
+the flower. At the proper season, when ripe, incisions are made in these
+bulbs--simple scratches--by drawing two needles across them toward
+evening, and the juice, which exudes during the night, is scraped off in
+the morning and collected in shells. This operation is performed upon
+all sides of the bulb, and then the juice is sent in earthenware jars to
+Bankipore to be manufactured into opium by drying in the sun and various
+other processes. When quite prepared it is pressed into balls, boxed and
+exported to China, to the great emolument of the British Indian
+government, in whose hands the trade is a monopoly (it deriving
+one-twelfth of its entire income from this traffic alone), and to the
+fearful moral and physical degradation of the Chinese.
+
+Patna is one of the oldest cities in India. It extends for a mile and a
+half along the south bank of the Ganges, which is here five miles in
+width in the rainy season. It consists properly of but a single street
+eight miles in length and thirty feet in width, with numerous short
+byways. Patna contains about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants,
+and was formerly a place of such considerable trade that the English,
+French, Dutch and Danes had factories here, though few European
+merchants remain at the present day. I found the streets crowded with
+gayly-dressed, vivacious Mohammedans and Hindoos and solemn,
+gruff-looking Afghans. Some were on foot; some on horseback, astride
+splendid horses brought from the Deccan; many rode in _eckas_, a few in
+_baillies_--two varieties of native vehicle. The dwellings in the city,
+built of mud with tiled roofs, were mostly but one story in height. In
+those of two stories the lower is rented as a shop to the merchants (or
+used as such by the owners), and in the upper the family dwells, as is
+customary in our cities. The stores were of all denominations, but the
+manufactures were principally of cotton goods and earthenware, which
+latter is made in feeble imitation of European crockery. The smell of
+the curry and _ghee_ (clarified butter) in some shops was intensely
+disagreeable, and the numerous shelves of _metai_ (sweets compounded of
+sugar, butter and flour, and of which the natives are very fond) looked
+anything but inviting to a _gora-log_ (a fair-complexioned person). It
+is generally supposed that the Hindoos never use intoxicating beverages,
+but I passed several liquor-shops and saw three or four men drunk in the
+streets. The drink in general request is the fermented juice of the
+_taul_ or Indian palm tree, which, though mild and soft to the palate,
+is yet very acrid and baneful to the stomach.
+
+There is an old granary in Patna, a large beehive-shaped structure of
+brick and plaster, at a guess two hundred feet in diameter by one
+hundred feet in height and twelve feet in thickness. Two stair-cases of
+one hundred and fifty steps each wind upward to its summit on either
+side, giving the building from a distance the appearance of a huge brick
+cork-screw. These steps were intended to be used for carrying up the
+grain, the building being filled through a small aperture at the top,
+and up them Shah Maharaj, the present premier of Nepaul, is said once
+to have ridden his pony--a most daring feat of horsemanship and nerve.
+On one side were two large stone tablets with inscriptions--the one in
+Persian, the other in English. They simply stated that the granary was
+erected in 1786 as part of a general plan ordered by the
+governor-general and council of India for the perpetual prevention of
+famine. It has never yet, however, been filled with grain, but has been
+employed as a military magazine. From the summit a fine view of the
+surrounding country is to be had, comprising plains and forests, stately
+bungalows and flowery "compounds," vegetable gardens, native huts, and
+in the distance the sacred Ganges, with its stony bed more than half
+exposed.
+
+Formerly, famines were not infrequent in Hindostan, which was owing to
+an insufficient fall of rain at the proper season and consequent failure
+of the crops. One occurred in the year 1770, in which thirty millions of
+people are said to have perished in the valley of the Ganges. This Patna
+granary was doubtless one of a number which it was intended should be
+built throughout the country and filled with grain in times of plenty to
+supply the people in case of famine, like those in the cities of ancient
+Egypt which Joseph filled with corn in the seven years of plenteousness
+and opened in the seven years of dearth, when "famine waxed sore in the
+land." But the building of the Ganges Canal and the railroads have
+rendered it almost impossible that a widespread calamitous famine should
+again occur in this section of India--the former by providing a more
+thorough system of irrigation, and the latter by affording means for the
+rapid and easy transportation of food from one province to another. The
+extent of the recent famine has been grossly exaggerated. Had certain
+public works--the construction of railroads and other sources of
+communication and of canals for the irrigation of the rice-fields--which
+the government contemplated prior to the outbreak of the distress, been
+completed, probably no reckless, sensational reports of "a disaster
+which had no parallel in the history of human misery" would have reached
+our ears.
+
+In the long street already mentioned as extending from Bankipore to
+Patna is situated the government opium manufactory and warehouse. March
+and April are the months in which opium is made: at the time of my visit
+it was being packed and prepared for shipment to China. The various
+buildings are of brick, and the grounds are surrounded by a high wall.
+Entering one of the gates, I passed a Sepoy sentinel, and a little
+farther on some stone barracks. I then entered one of the largest
+buildings, and found about a hundred natives, with a European
+superintendent, busily engaged in weighing and packing the drug. The
+juice of the poppy-plant is brought in by the farmers from the
+surrounding country in stone jars, and has the appearance of thick tar.
+It is placed in large tanks, well worked up, and then dried in the sun.
+Next, cases are made about six inches in diameter, resembling
+cannon-balls, of alternate layers of thin poppy-leaves, of the
+poppy-flowers and of the liquid juice, and these are an inch in
+thickness. The whole interior is then filled with the viscous fluid, and
+the balls are placed to dry in earthenware cups upon immense shelves
+with which many entire buildings are filled. The balls weighed two seers
+(four pounds), and were worth thirty-two rupees (sixteen dollars) each.
+They were packed in long wooden boxes with thin partitions, rolled in
+poppy-leaves. There were forty balls in a box, which was worth when
+filled twelve hundred and eighty rupees or six hundred and forty
+dollars. About three thousand natives were employed in this manufactory.
+
+From Patna I went on to Benares, the Mecca of Hindooism, where for the
+space of two weeks I was royally feted by Maharajah Isuree Pershod,
+chief of the four great castes of the Hindoos.
+
+    FRANK VINCENT, JR.
+
+
+
+
+BEHIND THEIR FANS.
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF GUSTAVE DROZ.
+
+
+Last evening I was guilty of a very shameful action. I hid behind a
+curtained door and listened to a conversation, and, what makes it still
+more unpardonable in me, I cannot help telling you what I heard. It was
+this.
+
+I had been at the ball about half an hour when I saw in a corner of the
+parlor, through the door which leads into the conservatory, a little
+group of three young girls arrayed in billows of white muslin, who were
+talking behind their fans with so much animation that it was impossible
+not to notice them.
+
+These three girls had reached that age when young women's hands are
+slender but still rosy, when their forms have still that charming
+delicacy which some people call thinness and others youthfulness, and
+when their movements have that excessive suppleness which is like
+awkwardness, but which it would be the height of art to imitate. Leaning
+back with easy grace in their arm chairs, which were drawn up close
+together, they were laughing unrestrainedly. Already women and
+coquettes, they would from time to time stretch out their well-gloved
+hands and pat their ample draperies with a thousand graceful little
+gestures. They were already mistresses of the art of looking at things
+without seeing them, of laughing when they were not amused, of showing
+their white teeth while smoothing their gloves at the wrist, and while
+modestly looking down of giving a vibration to their voices like the
+striking of glass, which cannot fail to attract attention. They had,
+too, the trick of stopping short in the midst of a movement and posing
+that you might see the turn of a shoulder or a graceful arm, and of
+turning their profile to you to show a pretty nose, of catching up their
+skirts and turning away with a movement like a frightened dove till the
+ear alone is visible, and replying, "Oh, how you frightened me!" when
+you have said nothing to them but "How do you do?" Then their way of
+prattling unceasingly without rhyme or reason, or when both ideas and
+words fail them of exclaiming, "Oh! oh! oh! yes, indeed!" while stroking
+their hair!
+
+Ah, dear little creatures! I love them just as they are, so knowing and
+so pure, so gracious and so skillful. I really love these little angels
+who make their entrance into the great world between two polkas--who go
+to a ball instead of going to bed--who broke their doll into pieces two
+days ago, and now think of painting themselves under the eyes like
+mamma--who know to a louis the price of a cashmere shawl--are
+connoisseurs in diamonds, look men straight in the eye, are all worn out
+when Lent comes, and who during Holy Week, after devoutly nibbling a bit
+of salmon salad, run off to their religious exercises in boots with
+tassels and with their hair powdered. I love these little painted lambs
+as one loves roses in December or green peas in the middle of January.
+There is simplicity even in their excessive self-possession--something,
+at any rate, which reminds one of green apples which one longs to taste.
+
+They are already women--in fact, they were when they were born--but
+still one guesses at their motives, reads their little thoughts:
+sometimes, too, one finds a clue which is like a revelation. They are--
+
+But pardon me, young ladies! I am afraid I am going too far: perhaps as
+you turn over these pages you will recall the gentleman who was looking
+at you so attentively the other evening. Perhaps you will recognize
+yourselves, however imperfect the sketch may be, and then--But it is too
+late now not to tell you all.
+
+I slyly opened the library-door, and, turning to the left, I made my way
+to the conservatory, and stationed myself directly behind you, near the
+door, in the folds of the curtain, and there I heard it all. I did even
+more than that: in coming away I snapped off a branch of camellia. What
+follows is merely the work of a reporter: if memory or skill is lacking,
+forgive me and I will do better another time.
+
+"No," said the youngest, looking at her pink satin slipper, "I mean the
+one with the decoration in his buttonhole: don't you see him? He is
+standing by the mantelpiece, by the side of the big bald man in a white
+waistcoat."
+
+"Why, the big bald man is not a colonel--no indeed. I know him very
+well: he comes to see papa. It's Mr. Thingamy--some queer name. After
+every visit of his we find two casters off the easy-chair. Mamma says
+he's clever, papa says he's not: as for me, I think he smells of
+pomade."
+
+"Where does he put his pomade? He has hardly three hairs on his head."
+
+"Yes, but they curl, my dear. I am sure he ought to wear a little
+crimson velvet cap with tassels. Dear me! how I do hate a man as fat as
+that! Papa, who is slender in comparison with this bear, seems to me a
+little--when he is shaving--Well, if it was not papa, I should like to
+plane him down a little."
+
+"But, girls, I don't mean the stout one: I mean the one by his side,
+with an aquiline nose and moustaches. There, he is taking an ice. He
+seems to be a lion. Now he's blowing his nose: he's Colonel C----."
+
+"Oh yes, I see. Dear me! how hard he blows his nose! Your colonel has a
+cold: one can hear him from here--ha! ha!"
+
+"There is nothing strange in his having a cold: he has just come from
+Africa: see how tanned he is. Well, my dear, he _is_ a lion."
+
+"Then he is an attache?"
+
+"Oh, how stupid you are! I said he is a lion because he fought like a
+tiger, and he--"
+
+"Then say he is a tiger, and have done with it."
+
+--(Shrugging her shoulders) "and that at the battle of
+Rapata--Ratapa--or Patara--I can't remember exactly what, but it was a
+frightful battle--where the Arabs bit the dust--That's it, word for
+word, as papa read it aloud the other day out of the paper."
+
+"Why did they bite the dust?"
+
+"Why, because they were so angry. You know when you are in a
+passion--Well, in this battle the colonel received a cannon-ball or
+bullet--I don't remember which--in his left shoulder, and they could not
+extract it, so he returned to France very ill."
+
+"How terrible those battles must be!"
+
+"It is the day after a battle that is terrible. Just think of it! They
+found this poor colonel under a mountain of dead men at the very moment
+the wild beasts were going to devour him like the missionary in the
+_Propagation of the Faith_. Being swallowed by a crocodile is indeed
+terrible."
+
+"That's nothing. When you think you have before you a man with an iron
+machine in his shoulder that you could hardly lift, you can't help
+shivering. Oh, it's fine to be a soldier: in fact, you may call it the
+noblest profession. To begin with, every one respects them, and their
+life is full of triumph."
+
+"Yes, in time of war, but in time of peace--in time of peace--well, they
+talk over the way they got their wounds, and the band plays while they
+are at dinner. It seems the colonel can have the band play whenever he
+wants to."
+
+"Naturally, since it's his band."
+
+"Well, all that is very nice, and besides that you make calls on the
+wife of the prefect, the receiver-general and the bishop."
+
+"On the bishop's wife? What are you talking about? Ha! ha!" (She takes
+off her gloves and begins to bite her nails.)
+
+"I did not say the bishop's wife: you are a naughty girl."
+
+"Besides, it's only a general's wife who makes calls on the prefect's
+wife, like that."
+
+"I only began with the colonel: one soon gets to be general. Do you
+suppose that Colonel C----, for instance, won't be a general soon?"
+
+"As for me, I would rather marry a general at once."
+
+"Yes, but a general does not get married in uniform."
+
+"Why not, if you ask him to? That is something fine--a general at the
+altar. There is nothing more imposing than the military at church. Their
+gold epaulettes seem to go well with the organ. At the church of the
+Carmelites there are always one or two officers, but they are little
+ones, and they do not have the same effect. You did not know I was at
+the church of the Carmelites on Advent Sunday? Oh, there was a good
+father there who preached: it was indescribable!--Why don't you wear a
+braid across the top of your head? My dear child, everybody wears them:
+won't your mamma let you?"
+
+"It is not that, but you can't possibly make a braid to go over the top
+and then two rolls behind, all out of your own hair."
+
+"Well, you can get false hair. Ha! ha! what an innocent lamb you are!
+You can get false hair, my dear child."
+
+"Yes, but papa won't let me: he says I'm too young to begin."
+
+"What a pity! As for me, I had no trouble about it. Mamma said, 'It's
+vexatious, but what can you do, my child? You can't go to a ball in a
+cap;' and so we went and bought two beautiful blond braids."
+
+"Why two?"
+
+"Let me finish.--See, there is Madame de V---- coming in: do you hear
+the door creaking?--Well, as I was saying, I had to buy two braids, for
+the very simple reason that I lost the first. It was very funny. We had
+hired a coupe for the day, papa having taken ours for himself: he always
+does. We started off for the hairdresser's in this hired carriage. I
+bought a superb braid, and they wrapped it up nicely for me. I got into
+the coupe and put my little parcel up against the window, you know,
+under the strap that you pull it up and down by. That was all very nice,
+but when we got home, and I was looking for my parcel before getting
+out, no parcel was to be found. I made a great fuss, and mamma did too.
+Only think! it had slipped in by the glass of the window, and had fallen
+into the inside of the door. I suppose it's still there. There's no way
+of getting it again, you see, so I had to buy another braid" (bending
+down her head coquettishly), "which I have the honor of introducing to
+you: it is thick, of a good color--one of the very best."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could have one, but I'm afraid I sha'n't before I'm
+married.--See, there is Jeanne bowing to us. Oh, that everlasting dress
+of hers! Doesn't she look like a fright with that pink pom-pon in her
+hair and her red nose? She's a kind-hearted girl, but then that pink!
+Pink never looks well with light hair. It always looks to me like salmon
+with white sauce. Ha! ha! Speaking of salmon, by the way, you left too
+early the other evening: we had such a supper, my dear!"
+
+"Oh, how lovely Juliette looked! Didn't she? What a lovely head she has!
+I would give ten years of my life to have a head like hers. Ten years,
+dear me! yes, gladly: life isn't such very good fun, after all. And how
+becoming that headdress was to her!"
+
+"It was really magnificent: you know it came from Persia."
+
+"Did it, really? From Persia? I heard it came from--you know the place,
+ever so far off, where the colonies are. And how about her marriage?"
+
+"It's broken off: she said no, and it's all settled."
+
+"But the trousseau? Mamma saw the three cashmere shawls, three wonders!
+One had red ground with little figures on it--you know the sort they're
+wearing now: that shawl was really eloquent. I think that sort of thing
+is like music, it delights one so."
+
+"That was very fine--three cashmeres, and diamonds too, and she said
+no?"
+
+"She said no, and she was right, for it seems he limped frightfully."
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"The gentleman, of course."
+
+"But, my dear girl, people always give three cashmeres. Only think a
+minute: the long cashmere for calls in winter--well, that's one; then
+you must have a square one: it would kill you to wear a long cashmere
+in hot weather; and then you could not refuse a third to go to the bath
+or to mass in--well, that makes three, don't you see? I would not be
+married with fewer. No, thank you, I wouldn't go about looking like a
+chambermaid. No, indeed I wouldn't."
+
+"Did the gentleman limp very badly? For, after all, he was a consul."
+
+"Oh, as to that, his position is a magnificent one. It seems that in the
+country where he is consul people are carried in palanquins."
+
+"That's the least thing they can do for lame people. As for me, I think
+she has done quite right. I have a horror of deformed people: one is
+never sure that it may not be something catching. Do you remember Sister
+Adelaide at the convent, who had one leg shorter than the other? Well, I
+wouldn't have sat down in her chair for a hundred thousand francs."
+
+"What would you have done if you had had to marry her?"
+
+"How silly you are!--Don't look over there: I see M. Pincette coming to
+ask us to dance. The more I see of him, the more I detest him. He is
+stupid, he is fair, his whiskers are too large, he doesn't dance in
+time: he has no attractions. Don't you think he looks like the Abbe
+Julien, who used to hear our catechisms, and who was always saying, 'Not
+another word, my children'?"
+
+"Yes, he does look like him, especially when he is waltzing: he has the
+same eyes. As for me, I don't like a man who looks like a priest. That
+is not saying anything against priests, my dear. In the first place, a
+man ought to have brown moustaches: without them he is not worth looking
+at. Have you seen my brother's moustaches since he left Saint-Cyr? That
+is the kind of moustaches I like--pointed, pointed and waxed. I used to
+do them for him last summer, and I fully understand them."
+
+"Ernest is a fine-looking young man; and then he's so strong."
+
+"I hate a Hercules. M. de Saint-Flair is not handsome, is he? Well, I
+can see very well how he fascinated Adele with his pale face, thin hair
+and his look of illness."
+
+"Your M. de Saint-Flair looks as if he were just getting over a fever.
+When he is sitting round in the corners I am always tempted to offer him
+a bowl of gruel."
+
+"Oh, that's all very well, but as for distinction, I don't see any one
+who comes up to him. And then, too, they say he writes poetry."
+
+"Still, I must say I prefer M. de P----."
+
+"What an idea! M. de P----! He's a perfect barrel, and besides he's
+forty-six or forty-eight years old."
+
+"Well, my dear, a man has to be as old as that to be able to offer a
+woman an acceptable position. It's not at all bad to be the wife of a
+banker."
+
+At this moment the music began, and the men came forward to ask my
+little neighbors to dance. They accepted languidly, with a
+half-indifferent air. The gentlemen placed their opera-hats on the
+chairs the ladies had left, and they all advanced, talking, to join the
+dancers. I followed them with my eyes through the crowd. Each abandoned
+herself with charming grace to her partner's arm, turning her head a
+little to one side, her hair floating on the waves of the waltz. Perhaps
+there was exaggerated ease and a trace of childish awkwardness in their
+manner. In ten minutes they came back to their places, out of breath,
+but with bright eyes. They took up their fans again, and while fanning
+themselves went on with their conversation.
+
+"That gentleman dances very well, but he's a queer creature: he talked
+to me about geography. Do you know the principal town in the department
+of the Eastern Pyrenees?"
+
+"No I have forgotten. Dear me! how warm I am! I danced with that partner
+of yours the other evening: he talked about geography to me too. Isn't
+it strange that some partners always say the same thing over and over
+again?"
+
+"Oh, there is mamma making me a sign that it is time to go home. Oh
+dear! no indeed! It will be like the other evening, when we should have
+gone to bed as early as the hens if mamma hadn't been asked for the
+German. Tell your cousin to ask mamma to dance, and to ask me. I like
+him very much: he at least makes you laugh, even if you don't understand
+very well what he is talking about. He seems sometimes to be making fun
+of you, but that's no matter: he's very nice; and then, too, he holds
+you firmly while dancing, so that you feel perfectly comfortable."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward two o'clock in the morning, after having looked through M. de
+B.'s collection of etchings and played a game of whist, I returned to my
+station behind the three girls. Two were bravely drinking a glass of
+claret, and the third a cup of chocolate. They were laughing so loud
+while leaning back in their chairs, and so talking all together, that I
+could scarcely catch what they said, but I saw by their loosened hair
+and the brilliancy of their eyes, and their feverish agitation, that
+they had not wasted their time. Their mothers, who were quite as
+animated, had collected together, and three or four gentlemen had
+gathered round them saying a thousand charming bits of nonsense. The
+gayety had become so fast and furious in that corner that I despaired of
+hearing anything more, so I went back to the ante-chamber.
+
+What charming women my adorable little girls will have become in a few
+years!
+
+Pray do not think that the fever of pleasure, that candlelight and love
+of waltzing will at all impair the solid treasures which a good
+education has stored up in their little hearts. This very night when
+they go to bed these three little angels will piously fold their hands
+beneath the quilt, so as to keep warm, and will thank Heaven for all
+that has been done for them, and will beg that they may not catch a
+horrible cold in the head which will prevent their going to the opera
+to-morrow. Then, having kissed the little gold medal which protects them
+from fire and spraining their ankles, and makes them dance in time, they
+will fall fast asleep to the dim murmur of a waltz, like a bird in his
+nest.
+
+    T. S. PERRY.
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN ART-WORKSHOP IN UMBRIA.
+
+
+I met with a book on Italy some little time ago by an American author,
+whose name was not given--or if it was, I have forgotten it, and beg his
+pardon for the negligence--of which this was the first sentence: "Art is
+fast asleep in Italy, and that is why Italy is called the cradle of
+Art." If the statement be not altogether accurate, it is neatly said
+enough. But I am afraid that the facts of the case go farther than one
+would wish to believe toward bearing out the severe critic's judgment.
+Assuredly, the arts if not fast asleep, are but beginning to arouse
+themselves from a very long and lethargic nap in their classic
+cradle-land. But I think that signs are not wanting that they _are_
+beginning to shake off their slumber, and that when they shall have
+effectually done so, it will once again become evident to the world that
+this Italian race is very specially endowed with those gifts and
+qualities which go to make up the artistic temperament and to fit eye
+and head for artistic creation. A recent visit to an Italian
+country-town, one of the secondary centres of population in the
+Peninsula, has done much to confirm the correctness of these views, and
+has at the same time introduced me to some circumstances and scenes so
+interesting, and lying so far out of the path of the experiences and
+ideas of our ordinary nineteenth-century world, that I cannot but think
+some account of them will be acceptable to the general reader, and
+especially worthy of the attention of lovers of art.
+
+The town in question is Perugia, where I spent a week in the early part
+of last February, and which boasts the best inn in all Central Italy,
+ruled by a clever and notable English landlady, who has entirely
+un-Italian notions of a good fire and warm rooms. Let travelers, whether
+in winter or in summer, ask for the "Hotel Brufani," disregarding the
+fact that, being recently established, it is not mentioned in some of
+the guidebooks, and they will, I am very sure, thank me for the
+recommendation.
+
+There is an immense wealth of fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth
+century Umbrian art to be seen in Perugia, besides some of the most
+interesting extant remains of Etruscan antiquity. But I am not going to
+trespass on the domain of the guidebooks, though, truth to say, the best
+of them are very defective in completeness as well as accuracy of
+information. Nor are the professional local _ciceroni_ much more to be
+trusted. They will indeed probably show the traveler all or almost all
+that there is to be seen. But he must guard himself against accepting
+their statements in the matter of names and dates, and such like
+archaeological particulars. If the stranger can have the good fortune to
+make the acquaintance of Signor Adamo Rossi, the accomplished and
+learned archivist and librarian of the municipal library, he will hardly
+fail to bring away with him from this centre of the old Umbrian
+art-world a considerably larger stock of ideas and information upon the
+subject than he carried thither with him.
+
+But now for the special experience which it is my present object to
+share with the reader. We went as a matter of course into the Duomo or
+cathedral. We did not enter the huge old church in the hope of seeing
+its special and much-boasted treasure, "the marriage-ring of the Virgin
+Mary." And if such had been our object, it would have been baffled, for
+the ring in its casket of mediaeval jeweler's work (which really is
+worth seeing, as far as may be judged from engravings of it) is only
+shown on St. Joseph's Day; and being locked up under Heaven knows how
+many different keys, all in the custody of an equal number of
+ecclesiastical bigwigs, no human power short, I suppose, of that of the
+pope in person, can get at the relic on any other occasion. But what we
+did see--what instantly arrested and riveted our attention--was a modern
+painted window which has been put up for the adornment of the chapel
+where the ring is kept. It is by far the finest specimen of modern
+painted glass which I have seen in any country; and I have seen a great
+deal of all the manufactures, English, Belgian and Bavarian, which have
+recently been competing for the approval of the artistic world. The
+window in question in the cathedral at Perugia fills a plain Gothic arch
+seven metres in height by one metre eighty-five centimetres in width,
+and it is divided into two parts by a slender column of stone eighteen
+centimetres broad. The window which fills this space is occupied by a
+representation of one subject only, the Virgin and Child in--or rather
+sitting in front of--the stable; Saint Joseph leaning on his staff and
+gazing at the Divine Infant; a knot of shepherds in adoration, some
+bringing gifts and others playing on bagpipes, exactly similar to the
+instruments still used in the Neapolitan Apennines; other figures in the
+middle distance; beyond these a delicious bit of mountain-landscape; "a
+glory" above; and in the arch of the window a half-figure representation
+of God the Father. The composition, drawing and disposition of this
+design, which I had subsequently an opportunity of examining in the
+cartoon, is truly masterly. The figure of the Virgin, with long flowing
+locks of the richest and most sunny auburn, is of very great beauty and
+quite Peruginesque in style and conception. Her figure and the others in
+the immediate foreground are somewhat above life-size, so that the
+Virgin would be, if standing, about six feet in height, and the male
+figures in proportion. Those in the middle distance are about ordinary
+life-size. And in all of them there is that dignity of pose and
+conception inseparable from perfect unself-conscious simplicity which is
+so prevalent in the Italian art up to the period of the end of Raphael's
+first manner, which he began to lose in his second, and from which his
+successors strayed ever farther as the generations succeeded each other.
+The fullness and richness of coloring of the glass leaves really nothing
+to be desired. It is as brilliant, as jewel-like, and at the same time
+as free from opacity and heaviness, as the best ancient glass; and it is
+mainly in these respects that it so far excels the productions of other
+makers of painted glass. The landscape is treated with a pellucid
+delicacy and accuracy of truth which I have seen very rarely equaled in
+ancient windows. In a word, we were absolutely struck dumb with
+astonishment at finding such a work in such a place. And it may be
+imagined that this surprise was in no small degree increased, and a
+vivid sentiment of interest and curiosity added to it, when we were told
+on inquiry that this magnificent work of an art which was but recently
+deemed all but lost was produced wholly and entirely in Perugia, and,
+far more astonishing still, by the brain and hands of one single artist!
+In other countries--in England, at Munich, at Brussels--a cartoon
+prepared by an artist who has not the smallest knowledge of
+glass-painting or its special needs and limitations is taken to a
+_factory_, where a variety of artificers are employed in carrying out
+the various processes needed for the completion of the product. But in
+this case the conception of the design, the preparation of the cartoon,
+the selection of the colors, the arrangement of the glass, the coloring
+and burning of it, all are the work of one brain and one pair of hands.
+
+Our next demand, after again admiring in all its details the work, was
+to see the man who was the author of it, and our desire was very readily
+gratified.
+
+We have all heard much of the circumstances and conditions, so different
+from those of our day, under which the old Italian art-workers of the
+palmy days of art lived and worked. We have read Vasari's naive
+gossiping, and have endeavored to picture to ourselves the life and
+surroundings of the craftsman of a time when the line which is
+now-a-days supposed to divide the artist from the artisan did not exist
+or was ignored. We have followed the patient investigations which
+Leonardo, while his brain was teeming with forms of beauty and new
+creations, did not disdain to expend on matters which we in these days
+deem the province of the colorman. We have been delighted by Cellini's
+simple accounts of his methods of subjecting matter to the conceptions
+of his brain, uncaring and unconscious whether such methods involved
+processes that belonged to high art or low art, fine art or not
+fine--caring only for the beauty that his handiwork was to create. The
+modern "studio" is a phrase that claims greater affinity with strictly
+intellectual processes, but in the days and generations when immortal
+works were being produced in every little town throughout the central
+part of Italy, the men who created them were content to call the place
+in which they worked a _bottega_--"a shop." And the blacksmith who
+wrought with sturdy arm and hammer the ironwork that museums now contend
+against each other for the possession of, and pay for as if it were
+gold--the wood-carver who produced by his free fancy the gems which our
+best artists are content to servilely copy--the sculptor who would sign
+works that now make the cities that possess them famous--the _lapicido_
+("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel
+produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same
+Perugia--the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to
+shame the coarser and heavier work of our time--the painter for whose
+presence at their courts princes were bidding against each other,--all
+these alike lived and labored in a _bottega_, and would have scorned the
+notion of calling themselves or imagining themselves other than
+craftsmen.
+
+Well, we sought and easily found an introduction to the artist who had
+produced the new window in the cathedral. His name is Signor Francesco
+Moretti. A common friend accompanied us to his workshop-studio. It is
+situated in a part of a suppressed convent, or some such place, which
+has come into the hands of the municipality, and a vast chamber in which
+has been placed at the disposition of the artist. The _locale_ itself
+has an Old-World look about it. A huge stair, up which you might almost
+drive a coach and four, ascends from a cloister running round a
+quadrangle. At the top of this we knocked at a great door, which looked
+wormeaten and decayed. It was opened by a little boy, and strange and
+striking indeed was the scene that presented itself. The room is an
+immense and very lofty one, reaching to the rafters of the building. It
+is lighted by one enormous window to the north, giving the artist just
+the light his work requires. On one wall, opposite to the window, was
+the cartoon which Signor Moretti had executed for the window we had been
+admiring. It is of the size of the original, and is in all respects a
+perfectly and highly finished drawing in black and white. The colors are
+not shown on it. On an easel near it was the drawing of a colossal head
+of Saint Donato, bishop and martyr, destined for a window for a church
+in Arezzo. It is full of life and vigor. The head is that of an
+evidently born and Nature-ordained ruler of men. And such Rome's bishops
+for the most part were in the days when Saint Donato gave his life for
+the faith. The window for which this drawing has been made will be a
+circular one in the centre of the west front of the church in Arezzo.
+Other designs, large and small, were hung with a total disregard of
+symmetry or order on the wide white walls, and among them an infinity of
+plaster casts of almost every part of the human body. The floor and
+furniture of the vast chamber seemed to the eye of a stranger to offer
+an inextricable and wellnigh indescribable medley of objects in the
+utmost confusion. Quaint-looking bottles and jars of every conceivable
+and inconceivable form, and of many more than all the colors of the
+rainbow, were on all sorts of tables and brackets and shelves,
+containing the coloring-matters which, when let out from beneath the
+stoppers that held them down, were, like imprisoned genii in the Arabian
+Nights' tales, destined to produce such marvelous effects. Other
+suspicious-looking flasks, wearing a warning touch-me-not air, contained
+chemical agents of varied kinds and properties. And everywhere, upon,
+among and under all this heterogeneous litter, was glass of every
+kind--plain glass, colored glass of every hue under the sun, unshaped
+panes of glass, glass cut into every imaginable form. And all to any eye
+save that of the master seemed to be a very type of orderless confusion.
+On a large easel backed against the abundant light from the great window
+was the partly-completed portion of another work, also destined for
+Arezzo, consisting of two life-sized figures of Saint John the Baptist
+and Saint Francis. They appeared to me to be treated in a somewhat more
+archaic style than the subject of the window in the cathedral, but were
+in no degree inferior in truth and accuracy of drawing and brilliancy of
+color.
+
+Above all, on one side of the room, were the furnaces in which the great
+work of burning in the colors is achieved. Does the reader know under
+what conditions of difficulty this part of the work is performed? When
+the harmony of the coloring of a picture, especially in a branch of art
+in which color goes for so much, has been duly considered and determined
+on, it would not do to have that which was intended for a scarlet robe
+turning out a crimson one, nor a brilliant emerald-green changed to a
+bottle-green, nor, even yet more fatal, the delicate azures and lilacs
+and grays of a distant landscape changed to comparative opacity, or
+indeed altered by the shadow of a half-tint from that which the artist's
+eye has designed for them. But if this is so with respect to the hues of
+drapery or of landscape, it is easy to imagine how much more fatal would
+be the slightest alteration of tint in those pieces of the glass which
+are destined to represent the naked portions of the human body--in the
+faces, the hands, the feet. And when, bearing these considerations in
+mind, we further learn that the very smallest degree of heat in excess
+of that which is required for the purpose in hand, or the very smallest
+deficiency in the heat, or the greater or less degree of rapidity with
+which this heat is communicated to the glass--any variation from the
+exact point needed in each of these conditions--will without fail have
+the effect of altering the result, it may be imagined how great are the
+difficulties with which the artist has to struggle. And let it be
+remembered that in other establishments for the revival of this
+beautiful art the great modern principle of the division of labor is
+called into aid in producing the result. The man whose business it is to
+manage the furnace does this alone. All the power of his intelligence,
+all the rule-of-thumb derived from his practice, is devoted to this
+alone. Unable to do anything else, he has acquired the art of heating a
+furnace to the exact degree needed. It is hardly necessary to insist on
+the greatness of the change in the conditions when this specialty has to
+be undertaken by the same brain and hands which perform equally all the
+purely mental and all the purely mechanical portions of the work. The
+conditions of the problem may be assimilated to those which would
+surround the search for a first-rate astronomer who was also capable of
+manufacturing first-rate mathematical instruments. And yet, on the other
+hand, let the inevitable results of applying the principle of the
+division of labor to the fine arts be considered. Mechanical excellence
+attained at the cost of artistic deadness is and must be the result. The
+individuality, the soul of the artist, the expression which his cunning
+hand can put into his work, is found to have been lost, evaporated in
+the process. What is the special value, of which the world has heard so
+much lately, of an etching? A first-rate engraving is _per se_ a more
+beautiful thing than an etching; but the value, the charm of the latter
+is that it is the work of the hand which was directed by the designer's
+brain--that, in a word, there is no division of labor in the production
+of the result. And it is impossible to avoid the conviction that the
+wonderfully artistic feeling and power which pervades the work in the
+Duomo of Perugia are due in a great measure to the fact that there has
+been no division of labor in the production of it.
+
+Truly, it was a remarkable and striking scene, that strange workshop,
+appealing very powerfully to the imagination, and carrying the
+visitor very forcibly out of the ordinary surroundings of this
+nineteenth-century world, and back to the habits, ways and associations
+of the great centuries of art. There in the midst of it was the
+master-spirit, the artist; and in truth he was, mere outward
+circumstances of costume apart, a worthy representative of the olden
+time, and one well calculated to carry on and complete the illusion.
+Signor Francesca Moretti is a man, I should suppose, on the better side
+of forty, of a tall, stalwart figure, such as becomes a genuine workman,
+with a bearded face which, put a velvet toque above it, might well
+recall some of the heads which the wood-cut blocks in the old editions
+of Vasari have preserved for us. A modest, unassuming man--that one
+might, _a priori_, have been quite sure of--delighted to talk of his
+work and of the processes connected with them, doing so with frankness,
+enthusiasm and unreserve--utterly above the affectation of mystery or
+secresy as to his _modus operandi_, and quite ready to say to all the
+world, "Do the same if you will, and better if you can." I need hardly
+say that he received us with the utmost courtesy, and with that
+genuinely unaffected simplicity of manner which is the heritage and the
+specialty of genius, and is the true workman's patent of gentlemanhood.
+
+Our talk was long and various, and the subject-matter of it did not tend
+to dispel the illusion that we were by means of some strange
+magic-lantern taking a peep into a resuscitated bit of the old
+cinquecento art-life, so full were the mind and heart of the artist of
+the special art-glories of his native city. Social philosophers have
+much to say against the restricted nature of that intensely
+concentrated form of patriotism in which the love and pride in one's
+own native place--one's _paese_, as the old Italian phrase went--is a
+species of religion. But it would not be difficult to show that the
+objections these philosophers adduce would, if carried out logically, be
+fatal to the reasonableness of all patriotism. Pure philanthropy no
+doubt is a very grand sentiment, but, somehow or other, it has never as
+a motive-power produced the great achievements that the narrower
+sentiment of love of country has produced. And I am inclined to believe
+that in the case, at all events, of ordinary people the love of one's
+own "paese"--that church-steeple patriotism that it has become a fashion
+with a certain school of politicians to deride--is very often a yet
+stronger passion and a more powerful incentive to great deeds than even
+the love of country in a larger sense. Such was undoubtedly the case
+during the great days of Italian hegemony in literature and the arts. It
+is difficult for those who have not made a special study of the subject
+to conceive the strength of the tie that during the whole of the
+mediaeval period, and for a couple of centuries beyond it, bound every
+Italian citizen to the special community of which he was a member. The
+fact and the consideration that he was an Italian in no degree stirred
+his sympathies or moved his imagination, but that he was a Venetian, a
+Florentine, a Pisan, or even that he was an Aretine, a Bolognese, a
+Comasque, a Sienese or a Perugian, was all in all to him. The tie, save
+perhaps in the cases of some of the greater of the historical families,
+was a stronger one than even that of family. The Capulet or the Montague
+may have felt that his place in the world was marked as such, but the
+simple burgher who, had he not been entitled to call himself so, would
+have been little better than a pariah, one whom all might have kicked
+because he had no friends, a mere waif on the turbulent current of the
+surging and unruly life of those days, felt in every fibre of his being,
+and from his cradle to his grave, that what he _was_ in the world, and
+what all that he cared for in the world depended on, was the fact that
+he was a constituent part of this, that or the other civic community.
+His fellow-citizens were his friends; and it but too naturally followed
+that the members of other, and especially of neighboring communities,
+were his enemies: even in the best times, and in the case of the best
+and largest natures, they were his rivals. The relative superiority of
+his own city in arts, in arms and in glory of every kind was the
+strongest sentiment and most fondly-cherished belief of all those men on
+whom the world now looks back as forming the diadem by virtue of which
+Italy claims to have led the van of modern European civilization, but
+who in their own estimation belonged wholly and exclusively to their own
+city. If Dante, the range of whose intellectual sympathies can hardly be
+deemed a narrow one--Dante the exile, whose chequered life made him the
+denizen of so many foreign homes--could speak of the degeneration of the
+pure Florentine blood by the admixture of that of _foreigners_ whose
+native place was some five or ten miles outside the walls of Florence it
+may be estimated how smaller minds and narrower natures would feel on
+the subject. Each townsman felt that he was the heir to all the glories
+achieved or inherited by his community. Each artist, each workman who
+attained to praise and excellence in his craft, felt that he was
+increasing the store of those glories, and was deserving well of a body
+of compatriots who would lovingly appreciate his works and be the
+jealous guardian of his fame. Dreadful that men living within walls on
+the eastern slope of a valley should be bred to hatred of those
+inhabiting other walls on the opposite slope, and be ever ready at a
+moment's notice and on the smallest cause to fly at the others' throats!
+Contrary to every principle alike of morality, religion, political
+economy and social science! All true; and yet how wonderful, how
+matchless was the amount of deathless work produced under the conditions
+of that order of things!
+
+Doubtless, Signor Francesco Moretti would not feel the smallest desire
+to belittle the works of any contemporary artist of the still rival
+cities around him. Doubtless he would fraternize with any such with all
+courtesy and a genuine sentiment of the universal brotherhood of art.
+But that Perugia was not greater and more glorious in arts and in arms
+than any of her rival cities in the great olden time--that her artistic
+history is not the richest, her school the most worthy of persistent
+study--this it would be too much to expect him to think possible for an
+instant. And accordingly our talk was of the school that had produced
+Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Pintusicchio, Perugino, Giannicola (generally but
+erroneously called Giannicola _Manni_) and so many others. Signor
+Moretti's own style has very evidently been formed on a long and loving
+study of the works of Pietro Vannucci, more generally known as Perugino,
+unquestionably the greatest of the school. The delicious figure of the
+Virgin in his great window in the cathedral is thoroughly and entirely
+Peruginesque. Yet in the treatment especially of his male figures Signor
+Moretti has profited by the wider range of study possible at the present
+day, and by the juster feeling springing from it, to avoid that
+mannerism and too constantly recurring affectation of dainty
+grace--often much out of place--which must be admitted to be a marking
+characteristic of Perugino. There is a sturdy unself-consciousness about
+Signor Moretti's figures which is incompatible with the somewhat
+dandified airs and attitudinizing which Perugino often attributes to
+figures to whom such characteristics seem the least appropriate, and in
+cases where they would be least expected. It cannot be denied that
+Perugino's figures are dignified, and that in a very remarkable degree;
+but they are so by virtue of bearing, of proportion, of grace, and,
+above all, of expression of face and feature; and in the case of his
+full-length figures especially it is the dignity of a fine gentleman,
+rather than that of a grand nature, objective and in no wise subjective
+in its thoughts and preoccupations. In a word, it cannot, I think, be
+denied that the grandeur and dignity of Perugino's men and women are
+due rather to outward than to inward characteristics. It occurred to me
+to reflect whether certain portions of our conversation in Signor
+Moretti's studio might not, while illustrating in a singular manner the
+value of much of the current talk of the present day about the great
+Umbrian painter, throw at the same time some light on the peculiarity
+which I have been mentioning. And I am the more tempted to give my
+readers the gist of the conversation alluded to in that it discloses
+certain interesting facts and anecdotes which are new to the world, and
+will not be made known to any other part of it save the readers of
+_Lippincott's_ till next year.
+
+We were talking, as I have said, of Perugino and his works, apropos of
+the spirit in which those of Signor Moretti have been conceived, and our
+friend Signor Adamo Rossi was present. I had been reading an English
+magazine article in which, after the manner of a certain English school
+in literature and art, a great deal was said of the spirituality and
+piety of sentiment which are thought to characterize the great Umbrian
+painter's works, and I cited some of the remarks which I had been
+reading. I saw a somewhat wicked smile mantling on the learned
+professor's face and a merry twinkle shining in his eye, which led me to
+ask him if his estimate of this quality in Perugino's works differed
+from that of the English writer.
+
+"Only in that it is rather amusing," said he, "to hear those special
+qualities attributed to the work of a man who had no belief whatsoever,
+and no sympathy with the devotional feeling he is thought to have
+expressed so well."
+
+The statement was quite new to me, as it will probably be to every
+reader of these lines; and with no little surprise I asked whether the
+professor were drawing an inference from any general circumstances of
+probability, or whether he had any documentary evidence to support his
+assertion. I was aware that Signor Adamo Rossi is one of the most
+accomplished and indefatigable readers of archives in Italy, especially
+on the subject of Umbrian art, and I was sure that if any documentary
+evidence were in existence which could throw any light on the facts, he
+would be in possession of it.
+
+"Documentary evidence!" cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little
+anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village
+about half-way between Citta di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the
+by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the
+well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town,
+has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and
+like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter of
+course, and would have proceeded to administer the last sacraments, but
+the apparently dying artist refused to avail himself of the priest's
+ministry in any way. He absolutely declined to confess, saying that he
+had a mind to see whether one did not fare quite as well where he was
+going without any such practices."
+
+Somewhat later he did die, and his infidelity was then so notorious that
+he was refused burial in holy ground. He obtained the rites of Christian
+burial eventually, it is true, but it was under the following somewhat
+amusing circumstances, as appears from a notarial contract, the original
+draft of which Signor Rossi has recently discovered. This very curious
+document is the legal record and stipulation of a contract between the
+prior of the Augustinian monastery in Perugia and the son of Perugino.
+It is recited that whereas a portion of the sum due from the convent to
+the deceased artist for a series of pictures painted for the convent of
+the Augustines (these works, with the exception of one part of them
+stolen by the French, and now, I believe, in the Musee at Lyons, are to
+be seen at the present day in the Pinacotheca of Perugia, and very grand
+they are) had not been paid at the time of the painter's death, it was
+now hereby agreed between the prior and the representative of the
+creditor that in consideration of five ducats in money paid down, and on
+condition that the prior should at his own cost cause the remains of the
+artist to be transported from the place where they lay in unhallowed
+ground to Perugia, and should there give them Christian burial in the
+church of his convent of the Augustines, the outstanding balance of the
+debt should be considered to be thereby discharged and canceled. I may
+mention that this curious anecdote, together with a variety of other
+interesting matter respecting Perugino and the other artists of the
+Umbrian school, will be found in a volume by Professor Adamo Rossi, to
+be published in 1876 under the auspices of the Italian government
+commission for the preservation and publication of historical documents
+regarding Tuscany and Umbria.
+
+It will be admitted that the professor's documentary evidence throws a
+very singular and instructive light on the speculations of the
+transcendental rhapsodists who are never weary of going into ecstasies
+over the profound and touching piety of the works inspired by the vivid
+and simple belief of the "ages of faith."
+
+"But there _is_," I ventured to object, after having heard the
+professor's anecdotes, "an unmistakable expression of devout feeling to
+be seen in many of Perugino's faces."
+
+"Therein," replied the professor, "you have a measure of the power of
+the man's imagination. If he felt no devotion himself, he was able to
+conceive the frame of mind, and consequent expression of face and
+feature, in those who did."
+
+Perugino was therefore giving us _not_ the outcome of his own heart and
+emotions, as Beato Angelico did, but only his imagination of what would
+be under certain given circumstances the outcome of another man's heart
+and emotions. Now, may not the same exercise of the imagination account
+for those special mannerisms which have been noticed as observable in
+Perugino's figures? The great Umbrian painter was not a man who lived in
+the companionship and intimacy of the great and noble, as several of his
+successors of a generation or two later did. He was the son of a
+_piccolo possidente_ (a small landowner), doubtless cultivating his own
+fields, and in all respects little removed from the condition of a
+_contadine_, or peasant. Look at the speaking portrait of the artist by
+his own hand which hangs on the wall of the Collegio dell' arti del
+Cambio in Perugia, the walls of which are covered with immortal frescoes
+by him. It is a broad, bluff, open face, with abundance of
+brain-development, with plenty of shrewd intelligence, and not a little
+of strong volition--the presentation of a strong, highly-gifted and
+thoroughly self-radiant character, but the last face in the world to
+have belonged to a man accustomed to sacrifice much to the graces or
+elegancies of life. Yet this is the man who may be accused, not without
+some show of reason, of having deemed it desirable to array saints and
+martyrs in the attitudinizing airs of dancing-masters. Is not the
+explanation of the inconsistency to be found in the fact that here also
+the artist was representing not what he felt and was conscious of
+himself, but what his imagination told him was likely to be the
+expression of the feelings and consciousness of others?
+
+Much as Signor Moretti has of Peruginesque in the treatment of his art,
+his figures, especially his male figures, are free from the faults that
+have been signalized. There is a robust simplicity about them that is
+far removed from affectation of any kind. In a small darkened room
+opening off his studio he showed us some portions of his restoration of
+a painted window belonging to the east end of the church of the
+Dominicans in Perugia, on which he has been, and will for the next two
+years be engaged, for the municipality of the city. The window is, as
+regards dimensions, the finest in all Italy--a noble work of the later
+but still brilliant period of the art. The state of dilapidation into
+which it had been allowed to fall was such that, coming restored as it
+will from Signor Moretti's workshop, it will in many parts be almost
+equivalent to a new work. The five or six full-sized figures which we
+saw restored are very grand. I do not know who the original artist may
+have been--I think that it is not known--but, whoever he was, the design
+of the figures is as simply grand and as free from affectation as could
+be wished. And whether the restorer found the remains of the almost
+destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect,
+or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it
+is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style
+are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following
+of the manner of his great townsman.
+
+One other reason besides the object of directing the attention of the
+lovers of art to the works of a real and genuine artist has led me to
+think it desirable to make Signor Moretti and his workshop known to
+American and English readers. The custom, an excellent one, of putting
+up in churches or other public buildings painted windows as memorials of
+those lost to their country or to those dear to them has become common
+on both sides of the Atlantic; and I am sure that I am giving good
+counsel to any persons contemplating such an undertaking in recommending
+them to pay a visit to Signor Moretti's studio at Perugia before finally
+deciding on giving their commissions.
+
+    T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.
+
+
+
+
+A STORY OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY.
+
+
+"America is the paradise of women," is a foreign proverb that must
+frequently recur to every American woman who travels or resides in the
+Old World. Whenever in my Transatlantic journeyings I witness, or hear
+of, or experience any flagrant act of discourtesy, or injustice arising
+from contempt of the weaker sex, I am reminded by contrast of an
+incident which occurred to me in early youth, and which I have often
+related to astonished, almost incredulous, hearers in Europe, as a
+specimen of the truly chivalrous sentiments and behavior commonly
+exhibited by men toward women in every part of our great republic.
+
+Once, when I was a very young girl, it became necessary for me to take a
+journey of several hundred miles to visit a near relative who lived in
+the State of Pennsylvania, a little over the New York border. It
+happened that I was obliged to go alone and in an inclement season of
+the year, but the circumstances were imperative, and my love of
+traveling prevented any anticipation of fear or danger.
+
+The morning of the third day after my departure from home found me
+seated at breakfast in the large hotel at Corning, N. Y., which stands
+within a few steps of the Corning and Blossburg railway-station. From
+the conversation going on around me, I inferred that several of the
+guests besides myself were going by the Blossburg train, but I could not
+see the point of the landlord's jokes on the subject, which, however,
+appeared to be fully understood and heartily appreciated by my
+neighbors. He laughed and chuckled, and repeatedly wished us all
+patience and perseverance to carry us safely through the trials in store
+for us; and when we started in a body for the station, he followed us to
+the door and called out that he would be sure to have a nice hot supper
+of beefsteak and fried potatoes awaiting us on our return.
+
+The train comprised only the engine and a few coal-cars, one
+passenger-car, and two smaller cars for luggage. Altogether, it looked
+very shabby and old-fashioned in comparison with the luxurious
+appointments of the trains upon the more important lines; but the way
+was short and the passengers were few, so that the accommodations were
+as good as we had a right to expect.
+
+The travelers consisted of eight or ten sportsmen equipped with rifles
+and other accoutrements; two young men, one of them a lawyer, the other
+a merchant (as I discovered from their conversation); an elderly
+gentleman, evidently of wealth and position, whom the young lawyer
+addressed as "Judge;" a middle-aged widow from Chicago; a brisk little
+milliner on her way back to some Pennsylvania village with the latest
+fashions from New York; and myself, a lively girl just out of school.
+There was also a negro huddled up in the farthest corner of the car,
+whose business it was to attend to the fire.
+
+At eleven o'clock the train started with a great jerk, and crept slowly
+out of the town. The motion was very disagreeable; the seats were hard;
+the air was stuffy, and became after a while almost unbearable from the
+accumulated breaths and the dry heat of the stove, into which the negro
+was continually thrusting more coal. The hunters, in the forward part of
+the car, exchanged remarks now and then: the rest of us read newspapers
+and looked out of the windows at the monotonous winter landscape.
+Wondering at the snail's pace at which we moved, I recalled the
+landlord's mysterious jokes, and at last ventured to ask the little
+milliner, who sat in the next seat to mine, what he meant by his
+allusions. "Oh, it was nothing," she replied; "only this is an old road,
+and there have been so many break-downs on it that Mr. Smith likes to
+make fun of all the Blossburg passengers."
+
+"But is anything the matter now?" I asked.
+
+"No: we always creep along this way. You see, the distance is only
+eighteen miles, or nobody could stand it. I always feel as though I
+should fly out of my skin the whole way; but, after all, it is better
+than a stage in cold weather. They are going to build a new road soon."
+
+She had scarcely finished speaking when the train, which had been moving
+more and more slowly, came to a dead stop. There was no station in
+sight, nor any house or other sign of human occupation. We were in the
+woods: a high hill was close against us on one side, and on the other a
+steep embankment went down to the shore of a rapid stream that ran
+through the valley. After waiting several minutes in vain for the train
+to move on, one of the hunters went out to see what was the matter, and
+came back laughing with the news that a piece had fallen out of the
+bottom of the boiler, so that the water had put out the fire, and there
+was no chance of our getting any farther until the boiler was mended.
+Whereupon all the men rushed out to watch the progress of affairs, and
+remained away for a time that seemed to us an age. At last they came
+dropping back, one after another, each later arrival bringing more
+encouraging news of the prospect of a speedy start, until finally the
+same hunter who had announced the disaster appeared, saying that it was
+all right and we should now go ahead. In the profound stillness of the
+forest we could hear the hissing of the steam, and presently came the
+welcome whistle; then two or three pantings of the engine and that
+preparatory jarring of the whole train which precedes its regular
+motion, and then all was still again. The same impatient hunter went out
+again, and returned--this time not laughing--to inform us that as soon
+as the water had begun to boil the hole had broken open again, and put
+out the fire as before. Again all the men rushed out: even the
+half-torpid negro in the corner became excited and followed the
+procession of males, while we "womanites" waited in patience for the
+sequel of the calamity.
+
+It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was
+drawing near its close. The frequent opening and shutting of the door
+had replaced the heavy atmosphere with a stream of cold air, at first
+very refreshing, but soon uncomfortably cool, especially as the stove
+had for some time ceased to give out heat, the negro, with the
+improvidence that characterizes his race, having burned up the fuel as
+fast as possible, without taking into account the probability of
+detention. We began, too, to be dreadfully hungry, and not one of us had
+brought any lunch, as we had fully expected to arrive at the end of the
+railway-journey by dinner-time. To crown our miseries, the sky, which
+had lowered above us gray and heavy all day, began to relieve itself in
+a thick fall of snow.
+
+The widow vented her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery
+little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying
+that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to
+enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our
+experience began after a time to seem rather tedious.
+
+At last we heard our fellow-passengers approaching, all talking together
+and apparently much excited. They brought bad news. The old engine could
+not be properly mended, and it was useless to try to fire up again; we
+had come only six miles, and it was twelve miles farther to the nearest
+station; the conductor and engineer had decided to go on, to prevent the
+evening train from starting, and to obtain another engine to remove our
+train; but considering the distance they must go, and the heavy storm
+that was coming on, they could not probably get back before morning. So
+there we were, on a high ridge of road just wide enough to hold the
+track; a mountain on one side of us and a deep river on the other; no
+house in sight, and no way of getting at it if there had been one; our
+fire gone out; nothing to eat or drink; night coming on, and the snow
+falling as it seems to me I never saw it fall before or since.
+
+The hunters made short work of the problem. They decided to follow the
+train-hands to the next village, twelve miles off; so they picked up
+their guns and knapsacks, and sprang over the ditch that lay on the
+mountain side of the track and wound along the base of the hill to the
+level beyond where the train had stopped. After they were gone the three
+remaining men proceeded to discuss the situation. The old gentleman
+mentioned that he was one of the directors of the road, and therefore
+felt a degree of responsibility in our unfortunate circumstances;
+moreover, as a man, he could not think of leaving three helpless women
+to take care of themselves in such a dilemma, and he was sure the young
+men must share this feeling; to which appeal they gave a hearty assent.
+As neither of my companions seemed ready to speak, I ventured to thank
+the gentlemen for their kindness, and to ask what we could do to lighten
+their task--whether we could not go to some house near by, or even walk
+back to Corning. But the brisk little milliner exclaimed, "I know the
+whole road, and there isn't a house anywhere in this neighborhood. About
+a mile back there is one in sight, but it is away over marshes and
+fields, and the road is built so high up that we can't possibly get down
+the bank; besides, it's a poor little hut when you get there, and I
+don't believe the people could take us in."
+
+Here the widow burst out crying, and the gentlemen, taking up the
+parable, said that we could not walk to Corning. A good part of the way
+the road was built over marshes and laid only upon timbers, so that we
+might easily meet with some accident; besides, six miles in such a
+snowstorm, and with empty stomachs! No, it was not to be thought of.
+
+They went out to see what could be done, and we awaited their decision
+in great anxiety, the widow bemoaning her fate and wishing she had never
+begun the journey, and the milliner rehearsing numerous other
+misfortunes which had befallen the Blossburg train when she had been a
+passenger; not one of which, however, had proved such a "fix" as we were
+in now.
+
+Before long the Judge returned, calling out in a cheerful voice, "We
+have it! We are going to put you into the hinder baggage-car, and give
+you a ride back to Corning. So pick up your traps and follow me: it is
+only a few steps through the snow, and then you will be as snug as
+possible."
+
+We gladly followed our leader out of the cold, dismal car, and he helped
+us, one after another, over the narrow passage separating the track from
+the ditch, until we came to the open space between the train and the
+baggage-car, which the young men had detached and pushed a few steps
+back. It was a queer little car--like an enormous goods-box set upon
+end--and the interior was nearly filled with trunks, barrels and freight
+of various kinds. But by pushing about and piling up the things room was
+made for us, and two of the smaller boxes were left near the door to
+serve as seats, which the two elder women were invited to occupy, while
+I, as the youngest and smallest of the company, was assisted by the
+director to climb up into a rocking-chair that stood on the top of a
+hogshead in the corner, where I had an excellent seat, except that I was
+obliged to crouch a little in order not to hit my head against the
+ceiling.
+
+Having disposed of us, the three gentlemen set themselves to the work of
+pushing the car back toward Corning. They could only move it by resting
+their hands against the sill of the open door and then pressing forward
+with all their might, their feet being braced against the earth, so that
+their bodies seemed almost in a horizontal position. After once starting
+it, they were in hopes to be able to keep it in motion without much
+difficulty. But the task proved to be a harder one than they had
+anticipated. The car was strongly built and cumbrous in itself, and the
+freight it carried was heavy, to say nothing of our additional weight.
+Then, too, the snow had fallen to the depth of several inches, clogging
+the wheels and encumbering the footsteps of the men and darkness added
+to the difficulty.
+
+After struggling along for a considerable time there was a pause for
+rest and consultation. Just then a light twinkled far over the meadows,
+probably in the little hut which the milliner had described; and it was
+decided that the two young men should go there and try to borrow a
+horse. Accordingly, they scrambled down the steep bank, while the
+director shook the snow off his clothes and came into the car to rest
+until their return. We did our best to be hospitable. The milliner
+wanted him to take her seat on the box, and I offered to descend from my
+perch and let him have the rocking-chair; but he refused both proposals,
+and, finding a small barrel in an opposite corner, seated himself upon
+it and declared that he was quite comfortable. He seemed to look upon
+the whole adventure as a good joke, and we thought we could do no less
+than be merry also; so we chatted and laughed and told stories, and at
+last, discovering that he was very fond of music, I sang several songs,
+with which he expressed himself highly pleased. When I say _we_, I mean
+the little milliner and myself, for I am ashamed to say that the widow
+was all the while discontented and cross, maintaining a sullen silence,
+excepting when she broke it to grumble over our misfortunes, and
+appearing totally insensible to the generous kindness of our protectors,
+who could so easily have taken care of themselves if we had not been in
+their way.
+
+By and by we heard footsteps and voices, and the two young men
+reappeared with a farmer's boy leading a horse. But, oh, misery! the lad
+had forgotten the rope which he was told to bring, and there was no
+other way but for him to go back to the farm for it. Reproaches were
+useless, and so the lad was despatched for the missing rope, with a
+warning that he was to come back "in less than no time;" and the young
+men joined us in the car, glad to find shelter from the snow, although
+there was scarcely any room for them to stand, and none at all for them
+to sit down. The horse, too, seemed inclined to join our group, as one
+of the young men held him by the bridle so that his head was inside the
+door.
+
+The director gave such brilliant accounts of the entertainment he had
+enjoyed during the absence of his companions that they bewailed their
+deprivation most bitterly, nor would they be comforted until the
+milliner had repeated her story of "Mrs. Perkins's Tea-party" and I had
+sung over again all my songs. As soon as the boy reported himself the
+three gentlemen hurried out to superintend the hitching up. We could see
+nothing of what was going on, excepting now and then a bright gleam cast
+by the lantern across the snow opposite our open door, but we could hear
+all that was said, and we soon learned that there was more trouble in
+store for us. The horse would not go. It was not that the load was too
+much for him, for when all was ready the three men came back to their
+old place and started the car, with the intention of helping the horse
+all the way. But it was of no use: he would not stir a step. Perhaps he
+disliked the look of the wagon; more likely, he was afraid to walk upon
+the timbers; at all events, he refused to budge an inch. The boy
+chirruped and hallooed and swore; the men pushed the car until it came
+up to the horse's heels; but he only kicked and baulked, and would not
+draw. There was nothing to be done but to dismiss the beast and his
+driver, and try again. So the three gallant knights went bravely to
+work, and we watched them, ashamed of our helplessness, and yet feeling
+that it was out of our power to prevent their self-sacrifice. The most
+that we could do was to keep up their spirits by cheerful talk and merry
+songs; and I must say that when not contrasted with their greater merit
+our courage in keeping up the semblance of gayety is not to be despised,
+considering that we had been sitting still for hours in cold and
+darkness, and had had nothing to eat or drink since our early breakfast.
+Even the one disconsolate member of our company was perhaps really
+incapable of exerting herself so much as we younger and naturally gayer
+women succeeded in doing.
+
+For myself, wretch that I was, I enjoyed, away up in my rocking-chair,
+many a stolen moment of pure fun during the intervals my forced jollity
+for the benefit of others. There was a comical side to the adventure
+which made me shake with suppressed laughter even more than with cold.
+The whole affair of the horse was so ridiculous! The long journey in
+search of him, the forgetting of the rope, and finally the utter failure
+of the plan through the obstinacy of the sagacious beast! I laughed till
+the tears ran down my cheeks while listening to the discussions going on
+outside. And then to see those long-suffering men pushing our lumbering
+old car, with their six hands in a row on the doorsill, and their feet
+stretched so far out behind as to look almost as though not belonging to
+their bodies, the more so because their clothing was entirely white with
+snow! Once, one of them slipped and fell down flat, and I only laughed
+the harder, though feeling all the while that I could have beaten myself
+for my want of gratitude. The sighings of the patient little milliner,
+who sat near the door with her precious bandboxes around her, and the
+occasional moans and groans of the fretful widow in her dark corner,
+only ministered to my mirth, which was probably the more irresistible
+because I was obliged to smother it with the greatest care lest my
+companions should become aware of my inexcusable levity.
+
+In one of the pauses for rest the young lawyer gave a shout on
+discovering an apple in his coat-pocket. But instead of eating it
+himself or sharing it with his fellow-laborers, he cut it into three
+pieces and handed it to us, together with a snowball to quench our
+thirst; and then they all set to work again as bravely as though they
+themselves had just been refreshed with food and drink.
+
+But good-will was not all that was necessary to make their enterprise
+successful. Their strength was giving out, and on seeing the gleam of
+another light at a distance it was thought best to try to procure
+another horse. Again the two young men set off across the meadows, and
+again the good old Judge came into the car and took his seat on top of
+the barrel. But the sequel of the second endeavor was more satisfactory
+than the first had been. The young men returned with a lively young
+horse, which, after being duly fastened with the rope that this boy had
+not forgotten, started off at a good pace as soon as the car had been
+got underway. He seemed to draw the load so easily that the three
+exhausted men thought they might rest a while, and so they all piled
+into the car and drew the door partly to, in order to keep out the cold
+wind, which had begun to blow quite hard. They, poor souls! rejoiced
+greatly over their change of base, and imagined themselves in wonderful
+luck; while we, the former occupants, realized that our misery had a
+lower depth than we had yet experienced, since we were nearly stifled by
+the confined air, and at the same time chilled to the very marrow of our
+bones by the close proximity of those animated bundles of melting snow.
+But an unexpected piece of good-fortune fell to us all just then. The
+Judge, while swinging his foot over the side of his barrel, happened to
+strike one of them against a small object that tumbled over and rolled
+away between the boxes. He sprang down to the floor in a moment.
+"Hurrah!" he cried: "I believe I have run down a keg of oysters." A
+match was lighted and the precious freight hunted for. It turned out to
+be not oysters, but a tin box of oyster-crackers. "Never mind," said the
+Judge: "it is something to eat, at any rate, and the owner will never
+need it as much as we do. What's the use of being a director of the road
+if one cannot help himself to the property once in a while?" So saying,
+he pried open the box, the young lawyer keeping the matches going in
+order to give him light, and soon the contents were distributed among
+the company. While we were munching away at our dry food, now and then
+varying the fare by a pull at a snowball, the driver gave a shout and
+the car suddenly stopped.
+
+On going out the men were told that we had come to a culvert, over which
+the horse could not go, and so one of the party unhitched the horse and
+led him carefully down the steep bank and up the other side on to the
+track again, while the others pushed the car across the partially-open
+space. Then the horse was hitched up anew, the car started, and our
+guests again darkened the doorway. But the culverts multiplied, and as
+the same process must be gone through with each one, the gentlemen gave
+up trying to come under shelter between-times, and patiently plodded
+along in the deep snow behind the car.
+
+By and by the horse began to show signs of giving out, and the old mode
+of pushing was resorted to in order to help him. But he was young and
+easily tired, and finally the driver said he must not draw any more; so
+he was unhitched, the boy was paid and dismissed, the men bent their
+weary backs again to grasp the low doorsill, and we creaked along more
+slowly than ever.
+
+At last the lights of Corning became visible, and the work immediately
+stopped. We were within about a mile of the town, and the director now
+proposed that his two companions should go on and return with a
+conveyance, while he remained in charge of us. This was done, and in
+less time than it had taken to procure a steed for our railway vehicle
+our deliverers appeared in the road below us, looking very grand in a
+large sleigh carrying lamps, filled with fur robes, and drawn by two
+fiery black horses that promised to bring our prolonged discomforts to a
+speedy close. But how to reach this tantalizing object? The railway was
+on an embankment, and between us and the road was another ridge, a deep
+ditch filled with half-frozen water lying between. The young men debated
+for a few moments, and at last went to a neighboring fence and broke off
+a long board, which they brought and laid across from the track to the
+ridge; and then one of them stood nearly knee-deep in the ditch and
+supported the board on his shoulder, while the other climbed up the
+ridge and told the director to hand us over, one at a time, as far as
+his arm would extend, and he would reach out to us from the other side.
+In this way we all passed over safely, and had no further mishap,
+excepting that once the horses became unmanageable, and we came very
+near being run away with on our way to the hotel.
+
+As we drove up to the door the landlord appeared, rubbing his hands and
+chuckling, just as he had done on our departure, and crying out, "Didn't
+I tell you I should see you again to-day? and it hasn't struck twelve
+yet! And I told you, too, that I would have a good supper of beefsteak
+and fried potatoes ready: there they are smoking hot in the dining-room
+this blessed minute; so come and eat."
+
+The deliciousness of that meal I will not attempt to describe, nor the
+comfort of the night's rest that followed it. Before separating from our
+generous companions we three women (for even the widow came out strong
+after the trouble was over) tried to express in some degree our
+gratitude for their extreme kindness, but they laughed at the very idea
+of any obligation on our side, and declared that the pleasure of our
+society had far outweighed the hardships of the journey.
+
+As a fitting sequel to this story I will add that the next morning the
+two young gentlemen (one of whom resided in the town which I was
+intending to visit, and knew my relations well) hired a sleigh and
+invited me to drive across the country to my destination with them. And
+about a week after my arrival I was surprised by a visit from the
+director, who said that, having business in the county, he had come
+twenty miles out of his way to see the little girl who had been so
+cheerful and good-humored under so severe a trial of fortitude as was
+our railroad disaster among the Pennsylvania hills. I believe that the
+noble old gentleman really thought me more deserving of praise than
+himself; and I am certain that not one of the three ever considered that
+there was anything wonderful in having thus sacrificed their comfort and
+risked their health in behalf of three women, insignificant in
+themselves and having no claim, not even that of previous acquaintance,
+upon their attention and care.
+
+    E.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM, EARL OF SHELBURNE.
+
+
+Among the English statesmen of a century ago, William, earl of
+Shelburne, seems to us to have a peculiar claim upon the recollection of
+citizens of the United States--one, too, that involves none of those
+offensive associations that cluster round the names of, let us say,
+Grenville and North. For in looking at Lord Shelburne's career we see a
+man whose clear-sighted judgment from the first, and consistently,
+protested against that system of high-handed imperialism which drove
+thirteen reluctant colonies into a war of independence; who both in
+office and out of office did his utmost, first to avert, by a policy
+never of cowardly concession, but of just expediency, the impending
+storm, and then, when it had burst, to withstand and counteract its
+fury; and the last great act of whose public life was to conclude the
+struggle which he had always deprecated and deplored.
+
+It is therefore with no ordinary interest that we welcome the first
+installment of a work[C] whose promise--and, we at once cordially add,
+performance--heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable
+flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose
+administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present
+biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his
+subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his
+great-grandfather's papers at Lansdowne House, but to those of two other
+most important actors in the British drama of a century ago--Lord Bute,
+"the favorite," and Henry Fox; and these documents, pieced together and
+set side by side, throw upon the events to which they relate, and the
+motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and
+convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind
+of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day
+a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches,
+his version of this or that historical transaction--to tell us, with the
+authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter
+Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr.
+B.'s conduct in the knowledge that he was all along intriguing for that;
+but how often it happens that when, by good luck, the contemporaneous
+documentary evidence of correspondence, private memoranda and the like
+is forthcoming, the off-hand allegations of the memoir-writer are in
+infinite particulars tried and found wanting in correctness, and
+sometimes fall refuted altogether! More than one notable instance of
+this will strike the historical student in reading this first volume of
+Lord Shelburne's _Life_; and in the eventful and disputed years which
+Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has yet to chronicle it may safely be assumed
+that he will have plenty to say in the way of correction and explanation
+of previous histories of the time.
+
+An autobiographical fragment, composed by Lord Shelburne in his closing
+years, and found among the Shelburne papers at Lansdowne House, presents
+with a vividness of detail and verisimilitude that leaves nothing to be
+desired the outlines of the first twenty years of his life. The Second
+George had been ten years on the throne, the Young Pretender, alike the
+bugbear and the consolidator of the House of Hanover, was a stripling of
+seventeen, when, in the summer of 1737, William Fitzmaurice, afterward
+earl of Shelburne (the name by which history best knows him) and marquis
+of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin. "I spent the four first years, of my
+life" (he tells us) "in the remotest part of the south of Ireland, under
+the government of an old grandfather [Thomas Fitzmaurice, earl of
+Kerry], who reigned, or rather tyrannized, equally over his own family,
+and the neighboring country as if it was his family, in the same manner
+as I suppose his ancestors, lords of Kerry, had done for generations
+since the time of Henry II., who granted to our family one hundred
+thousand acres in those remote parts in consideration of their services
+against the Irish, with the title of barons of Kerry.... My grandfather
+did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to
+make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character
+which can be imagined--obstinate and inflexible: he had not much
+understanding, but strong nerves and great perseverance, and no
+education except what he had in the army, where he served in his youth,
+with a good degree of reputation for personal bravery and activity. He
+was a handsome man, and, luckily for me and mine, married a very ugly
+woman, who brought into his family whatever degree of sense may have
+appeared in it, and whatever wealth is likely to remain in it." In 1741
+the stern grandfather died, and in the course of the next ten years the
+grandson picked up such bits of education as an Irish public school of
+the period, supplemented by a clerical private tutor, might afford. At
+sixteen he went to Christ Church, Oxford (in those days boys were
+commonly taking their degrees at the universities at an age when they
+would now be well content to have won their way into a school sixth
+form), and there read law, history, Demosthenes, and "by myself a great
+deal of religion."
+
+And here our autobiographer abruptly turns aside from the incidents of
+his own story to sketch the antecedents, existing condition and
+character of the politics and politicians of the time of his first entry
+into public life. No one, we take it, will be disposed to quarrel with
+the interruption, for it gives us, in the space of a few pages, a
+picture of men and manners which, painted as it is by the mature hand of
+a shrewd contemporary observer, cannot but form a most important
+addition to our stock of knowledge of those times. The literary style of
+this piece of writing shows Lord Shelburne to have had in him the
+making of a successful memoirist. Gossip, anecdote, passages of sarcasm
+and epigram are mingled in skillful proportions; and there is certainly
+no waste of the milk of human kindness. Pitt (Lord Chatham) is dissected
+with ruthless elaboration: half a dozen minor statesmen are scarified
+with a single sentence apiece. Horace Walpole himself, with all his
+sinister acidity, nowhere hits harder--we had almost said more
+bitterly--than does Lord Shelburne in this short sketch of his. But just
+as an English House of Commons loves nothing so well as a "personal
+explanation," so the personalities of literature have a way of
+attracting us in the direct ratio of their piquancy and severity. Lord
+Shelburne has quite a gift of killing two birds with one stone in his
+trenchant criticisms. He cannot crush George III.'s father without
+demolishing poor Lord Melcombe _en passant_. "The prince's life (he
+says) may be judged in some degree from the account given of it in Lord
+Melcombe's diary--a man who passed his life with great men whom he did
+not know, and in the midst of affairs which he never comprehended, but
+recites facts from which others may draw deductions which he never
+could. The prince's activity could only be equaled by his childishness
+and his falsehood. His life was such a tissue of both as could only
+serve to show that there is nothing which mankind will not put up with
+where power is lodged."
+
+The elder Pitt--with whom, it will be remembered, Lord Shelburne acted
+in the memorable events that immediately preceded and accompanied the
+beginning of the war of independence--comes in for his full share of
+severe animadversion, but the portrait is undeniably vigorous and alive.
+Here is a specimen: "It was the fashion to say that Mr. Pitt was
+insolent, impetuous, romantic, a despiser of money, intrigue and
+patronage, ignorant of the characters of men, and one who disregarded
+consequences. Nothing could be less just than the whole of this, which
+may be judged by the leading features of his life, without relying on
+any private testimony. He certainly was above avarice, but as to
+anything else, he only repressed his desires and acted; he was naturally
+ostentatious to a degree of ridicule; profuse in his house and family
+beyond what any degree of prudence could warrant. His marriage certainly
+had no sentiment in it. The transaction at the time of his resignation
+does not carry with it an absolute indifference as to money or other
+advantages, nor did there appear in any of his subsequent negotiations,
+in or out of power, that he went beyond what was necessary to satisfy
+the people at the time or to secure his wished-for situation. In truth,
+it was his favorite maxim that a little new went a great way.... I was
+in the most intimate political habits with him for ten years, the time
+that I was secretary of state included, he minister, and necessarily was
+with him at all hours in town and country, without drinking a glass of
+water in his house or company, or five minutes' conversation out of the
+way of business. I went to see him afterward in Somersetshire, where I
+fell into more familiar habits with him, which continued and confirmed
+me in all that I have said. He was tall in his person, and as genteel as
+a martyr to the gout could be, with the eye of a hawk, a little head,
+thin face, long aquiline nose, and perfectly erect. He was very well
+bred, and preserved all the manners of the _vieille cour_, with a degree
+of pedantry, however, in his conversation, especially when he affected
+levity, I never found him when I have gone to him--which was always by
+appointment--with so much as a book before him, but always sitting alone
+in a drawing-room waiting the hour of appointment, and in the country
+with his hat and stick in his hand."
+
+All this, it must not be forgotten, was written in the year 1801, long
+after the writer had finally retired from the battlefield of politics,
+upon which, at the period when his own account of his youth breaks off,
+he had not yet made his first essay. Some practical experience of actual
+battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his
+appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when,
+between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the
+Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of
+a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a
+year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined
+the army and went on foreign service. Here he had the good-fortune to
+come under the chivalrous General Wolfe, whom he eulogizes in terms the
+genuine warmth and heartiness of which is all the more striking from the
+contrast with his generally severe judgments upon his contemporaries. At
+the battle of Minden in 1759, and again at Kloster Kampen in the
+following year, he displayed conspicuous personal courage, which was
+rewarded, on his return to England, with the rank of colonel and the
+court appointment of _aide-de-camp_ to the new king, George III.
+
+Hardly had camp been exchanged for court when circumstances offered the
+young Lord Fitzmaurice his first introduction to a kind of political
+employ which was to be thenceforward, through a series of years, his
+frequent and peculiar function. Lord Bute, the favorite, had begun to
+climb the ladder of ministerial office, and had cast his eyes upon that
+unscrupulous and greedy but undeniably able politician, Henry Fox, as
+the man most desirable for his purpose by way of a House-of-Commons
+ally. Owing, very possibly, to the fact that there existed some
+connection between Fox and Fitzmaurice's father, Lord Fitzmaurice fell
+into the place of intermediary between the parties to this negotiation,
+which had hardly passed out of its first stage when the death of his
+father removed him, now Lord Shelburne, to the House of Lords before he
+had ever taken the family seat, into which he had been elected at the
+last general election, in the lower House. The negotiation was
+successfully carried through. Fox named his price--a peerage for his
+wife--and after considerable haggling got it, and in return undertook a
+position which Shelburne announced to Bute in a letter dated October
+31, 1761, as follows: "Mr. Fox will attend [the House of Commons] every
+day, and will, either by silence or by speaking, as he finds it prudent
+according to the occasion, do his best to forward what your lordship
+wishes, and will enter into no sort of engagement with any one else
+whatever." But before the year was out Bute found himself in want of a
+closer and more positive support on the part of Fox than he had in the
+first instance contracted for. The peace party, which he (Bute) headed,
+had at last the close of the continental war full in sight, peace
+preliminaries were about to be laid before Parliament, but there was a
+prospect of the war party fighting over the terms proposed by ministers,
+and Bute felt that he must have a strong leader to champion his treaty
+in the House of Commons. Fox was his man for the place, and Shelburne
+was again commissioned to treat with him. The details of a negotiation
+of this kind are not of a character to call for very particular
+attention a century afterward, but the letters between the parties--many
+of them now for the first time published--are not without considerable
+interest from the light they throw upon the characters and motives of
+their writers. The position of a go-between is always more or less
+perilous; his task, however well performed, is generally a thankless
+one; nor in such matters can the adeptest diplomacy, joined to the most
+thorough _bona fides_, always ensure the conduct of the common agent
+against misapprehension and sore feelings. Of this the particular
+negotiation of which we are now speaking is a typical instance. Bute's
+offer (through Shelburne) to Fox was the leadership of the Commons, with
+a peerage for himself to follow. Fox at the time held the very lucrative
+post of paymaster-general--lucrative, because in those days it was
+deemed a perfectly legitimate practice for the paymaster to make a
+private profit out of the investment of the public moneys for the time
+being under his control. Shelburne appears to have assumed--and so,
+indeed, it was only natural to assume--that Fox would not dream of
+accepting high office in the ministry without at the same time resigning
+his extra-ministerial berth at the Pay Office; and there is evidence
+that such--at first, at any rate--was Fox's own intention. The king was
+given to understand that Fox's resignation of the Pay Office would be a
+term of the proposed arrangements, and consented to them on that
+footing; and then all at once Fox came out in the character of Injured
+Innocent, protested that he had never meant to resign, that he had all
+along intended to have his cake as well as eat it, and that Shelburne
+had entrapped and betrayed him. The story goes, but on what authority
+history saith not, that Bute afterward owned to Fox that Shelburne's
+conduct in this transaction had been a "pious fraud," and that Fox
+retorted, "I can see the fraud plainly enough, but where is the piety?"
+The correspondence and the other evidence which, with a pardonable
+jealousy for his ancestor's fair fame, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice sets out
+with much detail in his biography, requires, we think, at the very
+least, that a verdict of "Not proven" should be entered in Shelburne's
+favor; but a man who chooses to make personal negotiation his specialty
+must not be surprised to find his tact sometimes called trickery, and
+his double agency set down as double dealing. It is certain that the
+part he played in the Bute-Fox negotiations entailed upon Shelburne
+imputations of duplicity which he never succeeded in entirely
+dissipating. The king himself wrote of him as "the Jesuit of Berkeley
+Square," alluding, no doubt, to the nickname "Malagrida" (the name of a
+prominent Italian Jesuit of the day) which somebody had fastened upon
+him, and which served Goldsmith as the text of that deliciously
+maladroit remark of his to the earl: "Do you know, I never could
+conceive the reason why they call your lordship Malagrida, _for
+Malagrida was a very good sort of man_."
+
+Bute, however, obviously retained undiminished confidence in his
+favorite agent, for in his arrangements for the formation of a new
+ministry under the ostensible headship of George Grenville in the
+spring of 1763, he not only employed Shelburne in negotiations with no
+less than seven politically important personages, but he even wished to
+get him the seals of secretary of state. This, however, was more than
+Grenville would consent to. He objected that the old peers would be
+jealous of the elevation of the representative of a family which,
+however great its note in Ireland, was a comparatively recent addition
+to the peerage of Great Britain; and also--reasonably enough, one is
+inclined to say--that Shelburne's youth and total inexperience of office
+rendered it advisable that he should at least try his 'prentice hand in
+one of the lower administrative offices. Shelburne was at this time, it
+must be remembered, only five-and-twenty years of age. A man of his
+parts and rank and opportunities might rise rapidly in those days, but
+he had hitherto had absolutely no official training; and the English
+Parliament had not yet seen, what it was soon to see in the younger
+Pitt, a chancellor of the exchequer of the almost undergraduate age of
+three-and-twenty. However, Bute persisted in forcing upon his
+friend--who appears to have been not unwilling to stand for the time
+aside--a place in the new ministry, and he accordingly accepted the
+presidency of the Board of Trade, was sworn a privy councillor, and
+entered the cabinet of the so-called "Triumvirate" administration.
+Immediately he found himself called upon to face American questions in
+which he was destined to play so important a part. Some time before he
+took office, Fox, in one of his shrewd letters to Bute, had marked out
+Shelburne as a man pre-eminently fitted to effect "that greatest and
+most necessary of all schemes, the settlement of America;" and he had
+hardly been a month at the Board of Trade when a communication from Lord
+Egremont, the "Southern" secretary of state, directed his particular
+attention to this subject.
+
+The North American colonies--or, as they were commonly called,
+plantations--labored in those days, in their relation with the
+home-country, under the inconveniences of a system of dual government.
+The Board of Trade was the working colonial office, framed instructions
+to the governors, gave information and advice, and carried on the
+every-day colonial business generally; but the secretary of state for
+the southern department, whose sphere of supervision embraced all the
+colonies wherever situate, had always a permanent right to interfere in
+and control the conduct of colonial affairs. It was in virtue of this
+right that in May, 1763, Secretary Lord Egremont took the initiative in
+setting the Board of Trade to work to solve the problem of how best to
+arrange for the administration of the wide area of North American
+territory that the peace had transferred from French to British rule.
+His instructions were short and pointed. "The questions (he wrote) which
+relate to North America in general are--1st, What new governments should
+be established there? what form should be adopted for such a government?
+and where the capital or residence of each governor should be fixed?
+2dly, What military establishment will be sufficient? what new forts
+should be erected? and which, if any, may it be expedient to demolish?
+3dly, In what way, least burdensome and most palatable to the colonies,
+can they contribute toward the support of the additional expense which
+must attend their civil and military establishments upon the arrangement
+which your lordships shall propose?" Mark the "3dly." It is interesting,
+as illustrating the ideas and circumstances which led to the famous
+Stamp Act, to see how completely Lord Egremont's question assumes not
+only the right of the mother-country to tax her colonies, but the
+probable expediency of her actually exercising that right. In his reply,
+Shelburne, while admitting the revenue question to be a "point of the
+highest importance," practically evaded it on the plea of the inability
+of the board to form a satisfactory opinion without further materials.
+With regard to the new territory, his advice, which was followed, was,
+in effect, not to attempt to annex the whole of the north-western
+acquisitions, but to form a new colony of Canada, limited by definite
+geographical boundaries.
+
+"American historians," remarks Lord Shelburne's biographer, "have seen
+in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West
+against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would
+claim the independence which their position would favor. The statesmen
+of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without
+charging them with this in addition. However impossible it was in
+practice to dam up the ever-advancing tide of the English race, it was
+equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of
+dispossessing the still powerful savage nations, which were bound to
+England by numerous conventions, and were regarded for the most part as
+subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of
+Boston, or even of London, to the protection of his government. To
+adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period
+of the struggle which can have but one result is a task as difficult as
+it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of
+attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent because
+they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and
+attempting to protect the ever-retiring bounds of the Indian
+reservations."
+
+But the march of events was soon to take the responsibility of the
+"settlement" (save the mark!) of American affairs out of the hands of
+Shelburne. He had joined the ministry more because of the insistance of
+his friend, Bute, the potent cabinet-maker, than from any general
+sympathy with the views of the men with whom he had to act; and every
+week put him more and more out of touch with them. He protested formally
+to Egremont against the dual government of the colonies, and when the
+latter tried to shelve the question by professing fatigue, curtly told
+him--what was true enough--that he must expect more if the affairs of
+America were to be put in order. He questioned the legality of the
+action of his colleagues, the Triumvirate (Grenville, Halifax and
+Egremont), in ordering the arrest of Wilkes of _North Briton_ fame.
+But, oddly enough, considerations of a wholly different character
+appear to have influenced his actual resignation of office. Bute,
+nominally in retirement, but really playing the _role_ of ministerial
+wirepuller-in-ordinary, had a surprising fancy for devising unlikely
+combinations; and now he was minded to conjure with the still potent
+name of Pitt. Once more, and, as it happened, for the last time, he
+sought the service of Shelburne as negotiator, and once more Shelburne,
+undeterred by past experiences, undertook the difficult position. Pitt
+nibbled, and for a time seemed about to bite, but in the end he drew off
+unhooked; whereupon (at the beginning of September, 1763) Shelburne
+immediately resigned the Board of Trade. What his real motive in taking
+this step was, his own letters do not at all clearly show. Doubtless he
+felt his uncordial relations with his colleagues irksome, but we can
+also hardly doubt that the attraction Pitt was beginning to exercise
+over him formed a material factor in his resolve. Freed from the
+trammels of office, Shelburne boldly stood forward as an opponent of the
+arbitrary and fatuous course which the Grenville ministry, all
+subservience to the king's wishes, adopted in the miserable business of
+Wilkes. Jeremy Bentham has said of Shelburne that he was the only
+statesman he ever heard of who did not fear the people. Certainly,
+Shelburne on this occasion showed, with an unmistakableness that simply
+infuriated George III., that he did not fear the court. The king made no
+secret of his displeasure. He dismissed the ex-minister even from his
+post of royal _aide-de-camp_, and when he appeared at court snubbed him
+pointedly by pretending not to notice his presence. Bute followed suit,
+and from this time all intercourse between him and Shelburne ceased.
+
+For upward of a year after these events Shelburne kept entirely aloof
+from the world of politics, busying himself with the management of his
+estates in the country, collecting a vast number of historical documents
+(which are now in the British Museum), and every now and then coming up
+to London to enjoy the society of the "young orators" (as Walpole calls
+them) who frequented his house in Hill street, and the non-political
+clubs of _litterateurs_. Benjamin Franklin was among his visitors at
+this time, and the two, as Shelburne in a letter to Franklin nineteen
+years afterward reminds him, "talked upon the means of promoting the
+happiness of mankind."
+
+But it was not in nature that a man of Shelburne's energetic and
+practical temperament should long be content to remain in his tent when
+a Grenville was afield with such (to say the least) debatable measures
+as the taxation of the colonies and the Regency Bill inscribed upon his
+banner. His marriage happening to occur just at the time when the famous
+Stamp Act was in the House of Lords kept Shelburne away from the debates
+on that measure, to which we may be sure he would, if present, have
+offered a persistent and uncompromising opposition; but at the end of
+April, 1765, he appeared in his place in Parliament to deliver a
+vigorous speech against the Regency Bill, and showed the courage of his
+opinions by leading a minority of eight into the lobby. To Rockingham,
+now at the head of the ministry, it was obvious that Shelburne, despite
+his years--he was barely eight-and-twenty--was a personage whose support
+was worth conciliating, and in July he offered to replace him in the
+Board of Trade. The offer was declined, and not unnaturally. Shelburne
+had always, with Pitt, protested against the policy of the Stamp Act,
+and could hardly have sat in a cabinet which, domineered over by the
+king, was preparing to carry it into execution. We may surmise, too,
+that he was not unalive to the advantages of a waiting game, and that,
+closely allied with Pitt as he had now become, and heartily believing in
+him, he was unwilling to take office on any other than what we may call
+the Pitt platform. Indeed, he himself says as much in writing to Pitt, a
+few months afterward, apropos of the Rockingham overtures: "My answer
+was very short and very frank--that, independent of my connection, I was
+convinced, from my opinion of the state of the court, as well as the
+state of affairs everywhere; no system could be formed, durable and
+respectable, if Mr. Pitt could not be prevailed on to direct and head
+it." In the same letter--the date is about December, 1765--he tells
+Pitt, "'Tis you, sir, alone, in everybody's opinion, can put an end to
+this anarchy, if anything can. I am satisfied your own judgment will
+best point out the time when you can do it with most effect. You will
+excuse me, I am sure, when I hazard my thoughts to you, as it depends
+greatly upon you whether they become opinions, but, by all I find from
+some authentic letters from America, nothing can be more serious than
+its present state; and though it is my private opinion it would be well
+for this country to be back where it was a year ago, I even despair of a
+repeal [of the Stamp Act] effecting that if it is not accompanied with
+some circumstances of a firm conduct, and some system immediately
+following such a concession."
+
+Whatever the faults and weaknesses of the Rockingham administration of
+1765-66--and they were many--their moral courage in proposing and
+carrying through the repeal of the Stamp Act ought to stand weightily to
+their credit. The king was well known to be vehemently averse to the
+slightest tampering with the act; and it is difficult for any body of
+statesmen, even where--which here was anything but the case--public
+opinion unanimously admits that a false step has been taken, to face the
+obloquy and sneers sure to attend upon any proposal to retrace it.
+However, the repealing measure was proposed and carried, Shelburne
+supporting the ministers with all his might, though, doubting as he did
+even the abstract right of England to tax her colonies, he with only
+four other peers divided the House against them on the question of the
+well-known declaratory resolution. _Sic vos non vobis._ Though the
+Rockingham administration repealed the Stamp Act, it was the popular
+belief that Pitt had been the real moving cause in the matter. Pitt, and
+none other, was demanded by the national voice. The king reluctantly
+yielded. Pitt marched into the royal closet with words of profoundest
+deference upon his tongue and the stern triumph of a conqueror in his
+heart, and proceeded to form an administration in which there was not
+even the offer of a place for Rockingham. For Shelburne, on the other
+hand, he immediately sent, and offered him the seals of secretary of
+state. Such an appointment must have been a bitter pill indeed to George
+III., but Pitt stood firm, and the king had to swallow his dislike as
+best he might. What Choiseul, the French minister, thought of the new
+arrangement appears from an interesting letter from him to Guerchy in
+London, which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice quotes from a copy at Lansdowne
+House. His conclusion is: "Alors le ministere d'Angleterre aura une
+certaine consistance; sans cela, avec l'opposition de my Lord Temple,
+l'ineptie de M. Conway, la jeunesse et peut-etre l'etourderie de my Lord
+Shelburne quoique gouverne par M. Pitt, il ne sera pas plus fort qu'il
+ne l'etoit ci-devant. My Lord Chatham a pris une charge trop forte
+d'etre le gouverneur de tout le monde et le protecteur de tous." At this
+critical point, the mosaic administration (as Burke felicitously
+nicknamed it) just formed, Pitt entering the House of Lords as earl of
+Chatham, to the annoyed surprise of the multitude to whom he had so long
+been distinctively the Great Commoner, Shelburne at nine-and-twenty
+essaying the grave responsibilities of a secretaryship of state, the
+first volume of the biography before us comes, most tantalizingly, to a
+close. We stand on the threshold of the ever-memorable events of the war
+of independence, and our appetite is keenly whetted for the feast of
+freshly interesting details which, though Mr. Bancroft has enjoyed most
+liberal access to the papers at Lansdowne House, may confidently be
+expected to be brought to light by one possessed of the opportunities,
+and, as the volume before, us abundantly shows, the diligence and
+judgment of Lord Shelburne's present biographer. The main outlines of
+Shelburne's career throughout the war are familiar, doubtless, to most
+American readers. How he dissented from his colleagues' treatment of
+the American difficulty, and was driven, in consequence, to resign his
+office; how, in opposition, he struggled with all the energy of his
+character against the policy of North; how, when that policy received
+its deathblow in the surrender of Cornwallis, he had the quiet triumph
+of seeing the king come over to the views which he had so long vainly
+advocated; how, placed at the head of affairs, he arranged and got the
+king's consent to preliminaries of peace; and how, before he had time to
+finish his work, he was overthrown by the most disgraceful coalition
+that British parliamentary government has seen;--are not all these
+things written in a hundred history books? But pending the detailed and
+authentic narrative of these things that we shall look for in a future
+volume of this new life of Shelburne, we have here, by anticipation, a
+most powerful sketch, by Shelburne's own hand, of one of the
+principal--we cannot add famous--actors in the conduct of the war; we
+mean the notorious Lord George Sackville, who, after being cashiered for
+cowardice at Minden, was whitewashed by the first Rockingham ministry,
+and thenceforward so boldly held up his head again, and traded on his
+plausible gravity of manner and family connections, that in the heat of
+the war the court actually got him appointed to the peculiarly
+responsible post of American secretary. Shelburne is terribly severe
+upon his conduct. "He sent out (writes Shelburne) the greatest force
+which this country ever assembled, both of land and sea forces, which
+together perhaps exceeded the greatest effort ever made by any nation,
+considering the distance and all other circumstances, but was totally
+unable to combine the operations of the war, much less to form any
+general plan for bringing about a reconciliation. The best plan which
+was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold.
+The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be
+accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person
+who is not conversant with the negligence of office to comprehend.
+Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out
+of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or
+Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his
+office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both
+these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair
+copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a
+very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they
+despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others
+could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which,
+however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the
+vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General
+Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen
+colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater
+fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years
+before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved
+himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose
+general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a
+newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic
+commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is
+insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive
+indication?--
+
+    All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,
+    His lordship gave the word, but could no more:
+    Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,
+    Of such a general to demand the care.
+    To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D]
+    He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.
+    'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,
+    Quickly deciding which was best to save,
+    Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.
+
+Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him
+solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the
+domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for
+some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne,
+which her great-grandson has been able to lay before us. They picture to
+us a quietly-ordered, rather serious home, pretty constantly frequented,
+however, by company, as one would expect from the many interests and
+associations of its busy-minded master. He seems to have been in the
+habit of treating his wife, in private, to solid readings in history,
+politics and theology. One morning breakfast is followed by some
+chapters of Thucydides, the next by part of one of Abernethy's sermons,
+another day "Lord Shelburne read to us a paper concerning the Stamp Act
+in America;" while on a fourth occasion Lady Shelburne, after dining at
+the French ambassador's and going to a couple of gossipy assemblies
+afterward, comes home to her lord, who very appropriately reads to her
+"a sermon out of Barrow against judging others--a very necessary lesson
+delivered in very persuasive and pleasing terms." More of Lord
+Shelburne's private life we shall no doubt learn in the second volume of
+his biography, in which we are promised "a picture of the society of
+which Bowood [Lord Shelburne's country-seat in Wiltshire] was the centre
+during the latter part of the century." Here, for the present, we
+conclude by registering once more our cordial appreciation of the
+service that is rendered to history by the publication of such
+biographies of leading men as that treated of in this paper. Documentary
+evidence carefully collected, besides correcting the hasty and generally
+biased assertions of irresponsible contemporary chroniclers, forms the
+only trustworthy foundation for the judgment of the impartial historian.
+
+    W. D. R.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] _Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterward First Marquess of
+Lansdowne, with Extracts from his Papers and Correspondence._ By Lord
+EDMOND FITZMAURICE. Vol. 1., 1737-66. Macmillan & Co., London and New
+York, 1875.
+
+[D] Brigadier-general Mostyn.
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
+
+SOCIETY IN PARIS.
+
+
+If there is one point in social matters wherein Philadelphia shines
+pre-eminent, it is in the matter of entertainments, whether private or
+public. A lavish and generous hospitality rules our actions whenever we
+bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that
+hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the
+eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance.
+Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our
+cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a
+projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in
+croquettes. There may be a flaw in our diamonds, but our butter is
+peerless. Our balls have their culminating point in the supper, and not
+in the German. We invite our best friends more willingly to partake of a
+new dish than to meet some distinguished stranger. And at most of our
+grand entertainments two great rushes take place--the one toward the
+dining-room when supper is announced, and the other out of the front
+door when the banquet is ended, when repleted Nature finds no more joy
+at the thought of terrapin, and when champagne has become a delusion and
+a snare.
+
+In far different style do people entertain on the other side of the
+water. In Paris, that very paradise of cookery, the substantial element
+of balls and parties is either wholly wanting or is but a very secondary
+consideration. A Parisienne will bid you to her house, and leave you to
+refresh exhausted Nature with a cup of tea and a sponge-cake. In summer
+she may vary the entertainment by offering you a glass of currant syrup
+and water. She would consider herself as utterly ruined in a financial
+point of view did she conceive that an assemblage of some twenty or
+thirty people would require anything more substantial. At entertainments
+on a larger scale, such as _soirees musicales_, evening receptions,
+etc., ices, coffee, sandwiches and a variety of small cakes are usually
+handed round during the course of the evening; and that is all. At the
+grandest of grand balls the supper is almost invariably composed
+entirely of cold dishes--chicken, filet of beef, fish with mayonnaise
+sauce, etc., with ices, cakes and delicious bon-bons. If extra
+magnificence in the matter of viands is aimed at, it is sought in the
+matter of unseasonable and consequently costly delicacies. Thus, at a
+ball which was given during the month of February last the feature of
+the supper was strawberries served in unlimited profusion. The
+substantiality, the abundance, the variety of one of our Philadelphia
+suppers, with its terrapin, its croquettes, its oysters dressed in half
+a dozen styles, its game and sweetbreads and chicken salad, its ices and
+Charlotte Russe and meringues, its fruits and flowers, its oceans of
+champagne, rivers of hock and lakes of claret punch, would make a
+Parisian open his eyes--ay, and his mouth as well. For, be it known, the
+foreigners who scorn suppers in their native land lay aside all such
+prejudices with marvelous celerity when bidden to a Philadelphia
+banquet.
+
+It must, however, be confessed that this simplicity in the matter of
+food which is characteristic of French entertainments is a great
+encouragement to the givers of soirees in general. With us, to entertain
+as other people do requires not only a lengthy purse, but a degree of
+care and forethought in the preparation for any festivity which is very
+wearing on body and mind alike. If Mrs. Quakercity wishes to invite
+fifty people to her house, her soul is vexed within her and her body is
+worn to a shadow with the magnitude of her preparations before the event
+can take place. Not so with Madame la Marquise. The purse of Madame la
+Marquise is but slender and her rooms are small. Nevertheless, she
+shrinks not from bidding her friends come to see her. Either she has, in
+pleasant sociable fashion, a regular reception-evening, once a week,
+when she is "at home" to all her friends and acquaintances, or else she
+organizes a little soiree twice or thrice during the season. Fifty or
+sixty people, as many as her rooms will conveniently hold, are invited.
+The mistress of the house provides something in the way of some good
+amateur music, a charade or two acted in almost professional style, a
+bit of declamation, or possibly the presence of some literary or
+artistic lion. Everybody comes, and everybody tries to make himself or
+herself as agreeable as possible. Nobody turns up his or her nose at the
+cup of tea, the delicately cut sandwiches, the tiny cakes that are
+handed round during the course of the evening. Nobody goes away
+groaning, "Heavens! how hungry I am!" Madame la Marquise cannot afford
+to give her friends _pate de foie gras_ and hothouse strawberries, and
+they neither expect to have them nor blame her for not offering them. If
+she were obliged to offer costly and delicate viands to her friends
+whenever she invited them to her house, she would not be able to invite
+them at all. They recognize the fact, and enjoy the hospitality which
+she offers them without expecting anything more. But I should very much
+like to see a reception at home where tea and sandwiches formed the sole
+refreshments of the evening. The comments of the departing guests would
+be more audible than flattering to the hostess, I am afraid.
+
+The dinner-parties which form in Paris, as with us, a very prominent
+feature of social life, are far less heavy in character than are the
+same class of entertainments with us. They consist of fewer courses,
+which are served more rapidly. The guests are usually invited at seven
+o'clock, and are seldom detained at table after ten. Music, either
+private or professional, usually fills up the evening. It is customary
+to invite a certain number of guests to come in after a grand dinner to
+pass the remainder of the evening--a practice which proves that in
+Parisian society people are far less "cantankerous" than they are in our
+own. I can scarcely picture to myself a state of affairs wherein an
+American belle or society-man would consider an invitation to "come in"
+after dinner as anything but an insult. Which proves that we are not,
+after all, as we pride ourselves upon being, the most sensible people on
+the face of the earth in _all_ respects. That pleasant willingness to
+accept invitations as they are really meant, and to appreciate
+hospitality for its own sake, is a social lesson that the members of
+American society would do well to study after the example set by their
+Parisian brethren.
+
+A Parisian dinner-party is far less conducive to indigestion than is one
+of our own. Not only are the courses fewer, as I before remarked, but
+the viands are less rich in quality and are served in smaller portions.
+Delicacy of flavor, and not solidity, is the result aimed at by a true
+French _cordon bleu_. There is also considerable taste and ingenuity
+displayed in serving the ices, which are brought to the table in all
+manner of pretty and fanciful forms. Thus, at one dinner-party a basket
+formed of brown _nougat_ was handed round. It was filled with apricots
+moulded in peach-tinted ice and of delicious apricot flavor. At another
+the basket was of white _nougat_, and the ice-cream was colored and
+moulded to represent pink and crimson roses. On another occasion a large
+silver dish was borne in, on which was placed a bundle of asparagus, the
+stalks held together by a broad blue satin ribbon. The ribbon was
+untied, the stalks fell apart, and one was served to each guest,
+together with a rich sauce from a silver sauce-boat. The asparagus-stalk
+was composed of vanilla ice-cream, and the green part of pistacchio ice,
+while the sauce was a delicately flavored cream. The imitation of the
+vegetable was perfect in every particular, and was thoroughly deceptive.
+The floral decorations at dinner-parties are usually on a far less
+extensive scale than with us. A single basket tastefully arranged for
+the centre of the table is considered quite sufficient, except on
+occasions of extra magnificence and importance.
+
+The official balls at the Elysee, of which two or three are usually
+given every winter, are very informal in character. The American
+traveler who wishes to attend must send in his or her name through the
+medium of the American minister. The invitation-lists are divided into
+as many sections as there are balls to be given, so as to avoid
+over-crowding in the comparatively small salons of the Elysee. Madame
+MacMahon and the marshal receive their guests in a small reception-room,
+which is the first of the suite of apartments on the first floor, all of
+which are thrown open to the public on such occasions. They receive in a
+perfectly simple and informal manner. Each guest on entering bows to the
+host and hostess without any form of presentation, and is then at
+liberty to wander about at will. The apartments thrown open comprise the
+state suites on the first and second floors, numbering some twenty or
+thirty rooms in all. A temporary gallery is erected to serve as a
+supper-room, and there refreshments are served all through the evening,
+there being no set hour for supper, as with us. The profusion of flowers
+and lights, the crowd of powdered footmen in the white and scarlet
+liveries of the marshal, the delightful music and splendid toilettes,
+combine to make these balls very elegant and attractive, though far less
+so than were the official fetes given under the Empire, when the superb
+apartments of the Hotel de Ville and of the Tuileries formed the grand
+ball-rooms for the hospitalities of the government. The Elysee is much
+too small to accommodate the crowds that usually rush to these
+festivals. The heat and crush are excessive, and it is recorded that
+after the great ball last year wisps of costly laces, shreds of
+Chantilly, rags of old point, scraps of point de Bruxelles strewed the
+grand staircase from top to bottom. The crowd, owing to the division of
+the invitation-lists of which I have spoken, is less dense this year,
+but still great enough to render a ball at the Elysee anything but a
+comfortable form of enjoyment.
+
+There is one feature about Parisian entertainments, whether public or
+private, which is apt to strike a stranger very unpleasantly; and that
+is the card-playing--nay, to put it accurately, the actual
+gambling--which forms one of the amusements of the evening. It is not
+pleasant to behold in the salons of the President of the French Republic
+an accurate reproduction in miniature of the departed glories of
+Baden-Baden and of Homburg--the shaded lamps, throwing a lurid light on
+the "board of green cloth," the piles of gold, the shifting cards, the
+intent faces of the players, and the groups of gazers looking on in
+silence. Vast sums are, I am told, often lost and won in this manner
+during a single evening. This, at least, is a reproach from which
+American entertainments of the highest class are certainly free. John
+Morrisey may take his seat in Congress, but he does not direct the
+amusements in the back parlor of the White House.
+
+But if French society is unexacting in the matter of refreshments, it
+runs to waste in regard to dress. The toilettes worn at all
+entertainments of any extent and formality far surpass in costliness and
+beauty any festal garbs which feminine humanity can contrive to don in
+America. In this birthplace of dress, dress is a pre-eminent and
+all-important feature. Two great points are _de rigueur_ in a
+Frenchwoman's toilette: it must always be appropriate, and always be
+fresh. It may not be costly, it may not be elaborate, but those two
+qualities must not be lacking. And they shade things off so much more
+minutely than they do with us. A ball-dress cannot be a dinner-dress,
+and _vice versa_; while in America the same toilette is considered
+appropriate for both occasions. If a dinner-party is to number over
+twelve guests, a low-necked dress is admissible; otherwise, the
+dinner-dress must be made with open corsage and half-long sleeves. The
+same shade of glove is not suitable at a wedding-reception that is
+proper for a formal call. The handsomest of walking-dresses is
+inadmissible to receive calls in or to wear out in the evening to the
+opera or to a small party. The very length of skirt that is appropriate
+for each festive occasion is regulated by the laws of fashion. A lady at
+the Grand Opera or Les Italiens must not wear her opera-cloak after she
+takes her seat in the theatre: it is considered only a wrap, no matter
+how magnificent or costly it may be. Fancy jewelry of all kinds is
+entirely out of fashion, and is seen no more: pearls and precious stones
+alone are worn on full-dress occasions. This rule has, it is whispered,
+caused a great increase in the trade of dealers in imitation jewelry,
+those who cannot afford the real article taking refuge in the highly
+_vraisemblable_ splendors of wax-lined pearls and paste diamonds. It is
+rumored that after one of the great official balls of last season a
+superb diamond necklace was found behind one of the cushions of a sofa
+at the Elysee. It was placed in the hands of the prefect of the police,
+where it remained for some time without any claimant presenting herself.
+Finally, it was decided that the ornament should be sold and the
+proceeds applied to the relief of the poor of Paris. A jeweler was
+accordingly summoned, who, by the application of acids and a file, soon
+proved conclusively to the authorities that the precious _trouvaille_
+was a worthless piece of imitation. Sardou's heroine in his _Maison
+Neuve_, who sells her small real diamonds in order to appear at a ball
+ablaze with paste, is a true character of the epoch, and was evidently
+sketched from real life. But the disappearance of the masses of
+_clinquante_ which used to be worn some years ago is a positive boon to
+the lovers of correct taste in dress.
+
+Another striking feature of European society to an American is the
+predominance of old women therein--ladies of sixty or seventy years of
+age, very much coiffees, tremendously dressed and glittering with gems.
+This element is far from being an attractive one. A venerable dowager
+with white roses and lilies of the valley in her frizzed gray hair, with
+many diamonds and pearls displayed upon a neck which should long ago
+have retired into the deep obscurity of kerchief and high corsage, is
+not a charming object. It has been made a subject of reproach against
+American society that it is given up so entirely to the youth of both
+sexes. Well, after all, it is better so--that is, so far as balls and
+dancing-parties are concerned. Seventeen in white tarletan is a far more
+beauteous and appropriate ornament for a ball-room than is seventy in
+white brocade or rose-pink satin.
+
+    L. H. H.
+
+
+NATIONAL FORMS OF GREETING.
+
+The general structure of a language is admitted on all hands to be a
+good index of the character of the people using it. To cite but two
+instances: the firm, compact, stern mould in which a Latin sentence is
+cast seems only the natural mode of expression for those who so firmly,
+compactly and sternly carried their eagles in triumph over the world and
+assembled the deities of conquered nations in their own Pantheon; while
+the marvelous grace and flexibility spread like a transparent veil of
+ravishing beauty over the well-posed members of a Greek sentence could
+emanate, from no source so naturally as the gay, beauty-loving sons of
+the Hellenes, whose conceptions of beauty are the ideals for all time;
+whose flexible wit needed, as it created, the vehicle of its
+communication; and whose philosophical acumen could flash out in no
+speech less capable of manifesting delicate shades of thought.
+
+What is thus true of language in general has a concentrated truth in the
+forms of speech used in greetings. Let us compare these in a few
+languages, ancient and modern, and see if the fact be not so. We will
+begin with the most familiar, as it is the best and most enduring, type
+of the Semitic race--the Hebrew. The history of the Jews--at any rate as
+it is set forth in their own sacred Books--is pre-eminently the history
+of a race singled out by an overruling Power for the education of
+_conscience_. To this bear witness the laws of the Two Tables, and most
+of those other laws, purely ceremonial, whose apparent triviality in
+some particulars is at any rate a mode of symbolizing what was the main
+object of the Lawgiver--keeping the heart and conscience pure. To this
+bear witness the indignant denunciations of their prophets, as well as
+the impassioned pleadings to return to a better mind and keep the
+conscience unaccused--to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly
+with God." To this bear witness the plaints--the like of which no other
+ancient literature furnishes--of their royal Psalmist, the type of what
+was best and noblest in his race--plaints which mourned not so much
+outward adversity or physical suffering as the pain of a hurt
+conscience, a realization of guilt which threw a pall over all that else
+was bright--plaints which, as that secluded education in Palestine
+became handed down to posterity and diffused wherever the Old Testament
+found its way, have been adopted by humanity as the _de profundis_ of
+all hearts conscious of guilt. And what was the Hebrew's salutation as
+he met his brother or his friend? "Peace!" The inner life of the race
+could not be more clearly shown by volumes.
+
+With the Greek it was different. His heaven and his earth were
+counterparts of each other. Even his Zeus Terpikeraunos seemed fonder of
+other occupations than hurling his flashing bolts. The Father of gods
+and men disdained not (when nectar and ambrosia perhaps began to surfeit
+him) to lead the dwellers of Olympus on festive journeys to the
+"blameless Ethiops," and there pass a week or two in revels. No chance
+of a quiet flirtation would he miss if only he could escape the keen
+watchfulness of Hera; and not unfrequently, if such escape were
+hopeless, would he run the risk of a curtain-lecture rather than forego
+his _tete-a-tete_. And for the other "greater gods," if we except the
+cold Pallas Athene and the stately spouse of Zeus, their principal aim
+seemed to be to have a jolly time of it.
+
+    Man tanzt, man schwaetzt, man kocht, man trinkt, man liebt:
+    Nun sage mir, wo es was Besseres giebt?
+
+might serve popularly as the Greek's notion of the occupations of the
+gods when they were not quarreling with each other; and no wonder, for
+he simply peopled Olympus with exaggerated counterparts of himself and
+his fellows. Life to him was nothing if it was not a fast and merry one;
+and to make it so were pressed into the service not only what catered to
+his sensual nature (and, truly, if Faust had been a Greek there had been
+no need of Mephistopheles), but all the charms of art, all the powers of
+exuberant fancy, all the keen delights of literary culture. He had
+higher aspirations than mere enjoyment, even of an elevated kind:
+witness Salamis and Mycale, the Pass of Thermopylae and the fields of
+Marathon and Plataea. But when the serious business of life gave time,
+wine, flowers and lovely women were uppermost in his thoughts. To and
+from him, then, what greeting so natural as [Greek: Chaire!] ("Rejoice!"
+"Be happy!")?
+
+As we pass from the shadows of the Acropolis and the Acrocorinthus to
+the crests and valleys of the Seven Hills, the tone is changed. We do
+not speak of the degenerate days when, after his indignant burst of
+
+          Non possum ferre, Quirites,
+    Graecam Urbem,
+
+Juvenal, in speaking of Rome itself, says,
+
+    Non est Romano cuiquam locus hic, ubi regnat
+    Protogenes aliquis, vel Diphilus, aut Erimarchus,
+
+although even then the Latin speech retained forms of a nobler
+antiquity. We speak rather of those times when Rome was Roman--when the
+spirit which framed the speech still pervaded the commonwealth which
+used the speech. To the citizen of that time the idea of the chief of
+the Olympian gods was not of a rollicking despot, angry and jovial by
+turns, a delighter in thunderbolts, a cloud-compeller, a reckless
+adulterer: he was the awful personification of the majesty of law,
+mighty to impose its decrees and mighty to avenge its disregarded
+sanctions--who, brought near to the city, was worshiped as Jupiter
+Capitolinus, majestic as the conservator of civil and social order. The
+charms of art, the graces of song, the effeminacy of festal pleasures
+were little recked of by the Roman of the Roman period--he who used his
+ancestral speech in the meanings imposed upon its terms by his fathers.
+Phoebus Apollo and Pallas Athene were not so much revered by him as
+was Mars of the visage stern and the bloody hand, to whom he gloried in
+ascribing the blood of Romulus, protected by whom he believed the
+"Mavortia moenia" would stand for ever. To him the state was
+everything, the citizen nothing, save in so far as he was a working
+member of the state. No private pleasure, no private gain, no private
+right was admitted which stood in the way of the common weal; and
+whatever privileges one might have, belonged to him not as a man, but as
+a Roman, reflecting in his own person the sacred being of the state. No
+wonder that in spite of all reverses, and until absorption of foreign
+poisons had vitiated the blood of her sons or fratricidal strife had
+spilled it, Rome saw the world at her feet. No wonder, too, that the
+customary greeting of those who used her speech was "Salus!" ("Health!")
+at meeting, and "Vale!" ("Be strong!") at parting.
+
+To pass from ancient nations to modern. No race has had, in its way, a
+greater influence upon European civilization than the French, many-sided
+in character, and whose language is that of modern diplomacy. By no
+people are _appearances_ more studied or cared for. Courage,
+undoubtedly, is possessed by the men, but a Frenchman (the typical
+Frenchman, that is) is better pleased if his courage, whether on the
+field of battle, in the private encounter or the civic assembly, can
+have a good _mise en scene_ for its exhibition. Deportment is the great
+thing; and in social life who can deny what charm is given to friendly
+intercourse--even though one may know that feelings are not very
+deep--by the studious attention to a pleasant way of saying or doing
+things?--so different from the heedless bluntness of some other races,
+which, even while it may proceed from no unkindness, yet gives, at any
+rate, the impression of disregard for the feelings of others. What a
+regard to appearances is not revealed in such common expressions as
+"Etre de mauvaise tournure" and "Avoir bonne tournure," as applied to
+either man or woman? And as for the women, who can excel a Frenchwoman
+in the art of looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid
+of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our
+English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall
+rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist,
+Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but
+under each or all, whether for good or evil, _manners_ will rule until
+the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say,
+naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you _carry_ yourself?")?
+
+If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask
+your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter
+you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all
+probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a
+mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an
+exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"?
+He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder
+gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which
+involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that
+tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope
+Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides,
+to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the
+factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr.
+Diedrich Knickerbocker in his _History of New York_," as a grave
+historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and
+the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the
+gravity, of the Teuton--his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of
+the minutiae of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner
+consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet,
+plodding thoroughness--a looking at things in all their bearings, an
+exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of
+fact or of speculation, a constant striving to _find out_ all about
+whatever he takes in hand--is not this one of his most marked
+characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be,
+if he is gravely polite, "Wie _befinden_ Sie sich?" ("How do you _find_
+yourself?")?
+
+Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less
+than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the
+representatives of that sturdy race whose commerce is worldwide; whose
+inventions have revolutionized ways and means of getting and doing and
+having things; whose enterprise is boundless; whose self-contained
+courage is resistless in onset as it is strong in resistance; whose busy
+going to and fro, or whose steady home-work, always has an eye to the
+main chance; whose stateliness as shown in the conservative wealth of
+the Old England is matched by its progressiveness as developed in the
+New; whose Anglo-Saxon _homes_ are models of what is nowhere else so
+readily found, "home comforts," won by hard work or conserved by happy
+inheritance. Has not the Anglo-Saxon a character all his own--a
+compound, doubtless, of the good (and often the bad) elements which he
+has absorbed with his natural acquisitiveness from others? And can the
+same number of words better gather up the sum and substance of it than
+his salutation, "How do you _do_?"?
+
+    J. A. H.
+
+
+SEASONABLE READING.
+
+I once wrote for a monthly magazine an out-door paper--a summer study,
+intended to enliven the reader's feeling rather than enlighten his
+understanding--and timed the production of it so that it should appear
+during the winter. The thought that it would be read only by bright
+firesides cheered me not a little in the writing. The editor,
+endeavoring to propitiate that thoughtless creature, "the general
+reader"--in matters of art but another name for "the general prejudice"
+or "the general ignorance"--notified me in January that he would prefer
+to hold the contribution till summer came again, when it would be
+regarded as "more appropriate, and just the thing to be read under
+green arbors and spreading beeches." I was glad to know that he thought
+it just the thing to be read anywhere, but nevertheless resolved to lay
+before the general reader, or the general prejudice, or the general
+ignorance, my little protest.
+
+Most people are aware that the effects of Nature are so evanescent that
+the painter generally makes his study as if he were observing an
+eclipse. Down go a few strokes; into the spaces go notes, signs,
+symbols--all in the shortest kind of shorthand. Six months afterward,
+when the picture is made amid other scenes, the sketch and notes are
+used, to be sure, so far as they go, but the artist uses his good memory
+more. All people know that a book or canvas gives us not Nature, but an
+interpretation, a translation, a few selections, a memory of Nature. If
+the work be good, we are glad to abstract our eyes, for the time, from
+all else. We can do this best when the scene from which the work was
+studied is shut farthest away from sight. Summer landscapes themselves
+are one thing, and we enjoy them in summer: such landscapes
+utilized--they cannot be reproduced--by art, are another thing, and
+these we enjoy at the winter fireside, when the eye sees nothing without
+except leaden clouds and effacing snow. Not even the average American
+would take a landscape-painting under his arm if he wished to get the
+good of it, and go set it up in the glare of an open harvestfield or in
+the darkness of a deep wood, although these objects may have made the
+picture. He would enjoy Nature just as well, no doubt, during such a
+proceeding, but would he get the good of art? What would the painter do
+to the critic or buyer who subjected his work to such a test? Poison him
+at the very least. And this is what the literary artist should complain
+of, rather than desire, at the hands of an editor. He should not want
+the little bit that he selected, narrowed, intensified, idealized, and
+then imperfectly transcribed from memory, brought out and set up before
+a reader whose eye is filled at every glance with the overpowering and
+inexhaustible realities of Nature herself.
+
+Just the thing to read in the blistering days of July, if anything can
+be read then, is a graphic description of a snowstorm, or a lively
+account of the way a polar bear invaded the ice-hut of a benumbed
+Eskimo, or a history of the Washington Monument: something cold. Ice is
+as grateful in your dog-day literature as in your August julep. No one
+will hold that at such a time he prefers to contemplate a picture of
+Sahara or of a frying-pan. On the same principle, let us have, in art,
+our green leaves and warm colors amid the frosts of midwinter. Only the
+atmospheric extremes, summer and winter, can be seriously considered in
+"seasoning" periodical literature, the months our almanacs call spring
+being neither one thing nor another. In capricious April, however, a
+vision of golden and placid October would seem to be the proper thing,
+as would the freshness of May in the mellow melancholy of autumn. If
+editors receive more censures than compliments for publishing certain
+articles, into which the element of "news" does not enter, six months
+after the seasons of which they treat, there is one obscure contributor
+at least who considers the necessity a virtue.
+
+    C. H.
+
+[According to the theory of "C. H.," the Christmas number of a magazine
+should be filled with midsummer idyls, while Christmas carols would be
+the appropriate reading in July or August. He thinks this would provide
+a grateful relief--like ice on a hot day or a blazing log on a cold
+one--from the effects of any intensity of temperature in the opposite
+seasons. But this is confounding sensations with mere conceptions, and
+seeking to "cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a
+feast." The ice cools and the fire warms, but a description of one or
+the other in place of the reality would make its absence only the more
+intolerable. Reynolds the dramatist tells us that one of his summer
+pieces was damned, owing to a scene in which the actors were served with
+plentiful libations of cool drinks--a tantalizing spectacle that drew a
+storm of hisses from the hot and thirsty audience. We hope the editor
+whom "C. H." has so inconsiderately assailed may not be tempted to
+revenge himself by exposing his contributor to a similar mishap.--ED.]
+
+
+A HINT FOR THE CENTENNIAL.
+
+The interest in the approaching Centennial celebration at Philadelphia
+is daily widening and extending, and if those entrusted with its
+management prove themselves competent for the work, and show that they
+are duly inspired with its breadth and its significance to the world,
+before the end of the present year there will not be a hamlet in the
+land whose citizens are not made prouder of their nationality and
+individually anxious to contribute something to its glory. It should be
+made the grandest occasion of the kind which the world has ever
+witnessed, for if it be anything less than that, it will fail to respond
+to the honest aspirations and generous pride of the American heart.
+Aside from the museum proper--the collection of past and present
+manufactures, past and present implements of industry--every day should
+witness some grand tournament, like that trial of grain-reapers which
+took place at the exposition at Paris in 1855. The scene was a splendid
+field of grain forty miles from the city. Three machines--one English,
+one French (from Algiers), and one American--were the weapons of the
+contest. The audience was a crowd of curious witnesses gathered from
+every quarter of the globe. At a signal from the judges' stand the fine
+machines started and moved each over its allotted acre, cutting down and
+raking the grain like magic. The Algerian machine did its work in
+seventy-two minutes, the English in sixty-six, and the American in
+twenty-two minutes! A French journal at the time said of the American
+machine, "It did its work in the most exquisite manner, not leaving a
+single spear ungathered, and it discharged the grain in the most perfect
+shape, as if placed by hand for the binders. It finished its piece most
+gloriously." The contest was finally narrowed down to three reapers,
+all American, and the champion won its laurels amid the most deafening
+shouts of applause.
+
+
+SHRIMPS.
+
+Some one has said that he who first swallowed an oyster was a brave man,
+but many will agree that the one who first devoured a shrimp bodily was
+still braver. Not but that the shrimp may possess desirable nutritive
+qualities--may indeed be exceedingly palatable to those whose
+imaginations are proof against the sight of its jointed legs and arms
+and its ugly physiognomy. But in India, at least, where dead human
+bodies are often seen floating down the sacred Ganges literally covered
+with these crustaceans, the appetite for them must be sensibly affected.
+Many of Her Majesty's subjects there will never touch a shrimp after
+once witnessing this spectacle in the Ganges. The animal, however, may
+not be the common shrimp (_Crangon vulgaris_).
+
+Catching shrimps for market is quite an extensive industry, and in
+France mostly pursued by women, who wade knee deep into the water,
+pushing before them a net sewed around a hoop at the end of a long
+stick. A pannier or bag tied around the waist receives the animals from
+the net. In winter the shrimp retires from the beach into deeper water.
+It is then caught in boats with nets, made now of galvanized wire, which
+resists the action of the sea-water and is a great improvement upon the
+old twine net. In feeding, the shrimp grasps its minute prey by the
+short rake-like appendages between the legs proper and the tail, and
+passes it along up to its claws, and then to the mouth. These appendages
+serve also as a brush when the shrimp makes its toilet. To do this it
+stands as high as it can on the tips of its long legs, and bends its
+head and claws under its body, and when these are duly brushed the lobes
+of the tail are subjected to the same process.
+
+
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
+
+
+     The Poetical Works of William Blake, Lyrical and Miscellaneous.
+     Edited, with a prefatory memoir, by William Michael Rossetti.
+     Boston: Roberts Brothers.
+
+     The Poems of William Blake, comprising Songs of Innocence and
+     of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches and some
+     Copyright Poems not in any other edition. London: Basil Montagu
+     Pickering.
+
+It does not add to the mere delight of reading Blake's poems to know
+that in point of time they preceded the writings of Cowper, Wordsworth
+and Burns, but assuredly it enhances our estimation of their merit, and
+should have great weight in determining the literary rank of their
+author. His first volume, called _Poetical Sketches_, printed only for
+private circulation after lying for six years in manuscript, appeared in
+1783, and then only by dint of the kindly efforts of influential and
+prosperous friends, notably Flaxman the sculptor. The _Sketches_ were
+written between the ages of twelve and twenty. The _Songs of Innocence
+and Experience_ appeared between 1787 and 1794, and were united in one
+volume in the latter year. It is by the poems contained in these two
+volumes, although he published or left in manuscript many other
+compositions, most of which are collected in one or the other of the
+editions now before us, that he is best known. During his lifetime his
+writings never achieved any general literary success. It fared with his
+poems as with his paintings, only in a minor degree: they were highly
+esteemed by the initiated, by his personal friends, by a few men whose
+keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of
+the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public,
+on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as
+well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book.
+His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither
+of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron
+tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been
+written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird
+was ever more careless of auditors than Blake. It was not until twelve
+years after his death that a selection from his poems was given to the
+general public by the elder Pickering, and twenty-four years after
+(eleven years ago) a more general interest was created in his work, both
+as artist and poet, by a long and elaborate biography of him written by
+Mr. Gilchrist, and accompanied by a selection from his poems made by Mr.
+Rossetti. Subsequent to this publication appeared a voluminous critical
+essay on his genius by Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former of
+these two books was calculated to induce and foster a more general
+knowledge and appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much
+for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of
+praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the
+effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the
+writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different
+character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make
+acquaintance with them.
+
+But the best and most efficient introduction that a true poet can have
+is the general publication of his works. Let them speak for themselves
+to lovers of poetry, and no other prophet or expounder is needed. This
+is no place for extended comment on Blake's characteristics as a poet.
+His best songs are worthy to be ranked with those of the early
+Elizabethan dramatists, and they are not like them as a copy is like an
+original, but rather resemble them as the inspirations of a kindred
+genius. To find the superiors of some of Blake's songs we must go to
+Shakespeare. The faults of his best poems are always superficial, and
+often mere errors of carelessness and of the absence of literary
+workmanship, but the hand that strikes the keynote is the hand of a
+master. Such pieces as the "Lines to the Evening Star," the songs
+beginning "Memory, hither come," "How sweet I roamed from field to
+field!" "Love and Harmony combine," and the "Address to the Muses," in
+the _Sketches_, are full of melody and sweetness, and have a certain
+lyrical perfection in which Blake excels; while in the _Songs of
+Innocence_ the poems called "Night" and "Ah Sunflower!" seem to be
+equally beautiful. "A Little Boy Lost," in the _Songs of Experience_, is
+perhaps the best known of all the poems, and is quoted, with an
+unlicensed change of title, in Mr. Emerson's _Parnassus_. The disorder
+of Blake's mind, which was a very real and positive fact, undoubtedly
+had a detrimental effect on his work, both in art and literature; and
+there is often a sense of "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh"
+as he touches on some one of the subjects which were potent to disturb
+his brain. But when he sings for the love of singing, with no memory of
+the outer world and its terrible problems, the solving of which lay
+heavy on his heart and brain, then he is all sweetness, melody and
+harmony, and gives us not only the delight of his exquisite verses, but
+that other joy that comes from the sense of breathing an atmosphere of
+devotion, purity, and genial sweetness.
+
+
+     Les Pleiades. Par le comte de Gobineau. Stockholm and Paris.
+
+The author of this book has traveled extensively, and has been a keen
+observer of men and manners, as well as a diligent student of history
+and ethnography. He has represented his government in countries so
+remote and contrasted as Persia and Sweden, has made antiquarian
+researches in the islands of the Mediterranean, has visited parts of
+America, and has won reputation as a scholar and writer by a number of
+works on such abstruse questions as Oriental philosophy and religion,
+the cuneiform inscriptions and the distinctions of race. The present
+book is merely a novel, yet it was clearly intended to embody the
+deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper
+study of mankind," both individually and collectively. The nature of
+man, how it is affected by diversity of circumstances, by nationality,
+descent, rank and occupation, by the relations of class to class, of
+society to the individual, of personal will to a controlling
+destiny,--this may be said to form the _motive_ of the volume; and
+though such action as there is in it takes place chiefly at the court of
+one of the minor states of Germany, this narrow field was evidently
+selected on a similar principle to that of the Greek drama, with its
+"unities" of time and place and the narratives and explanations of the
+Chorus. The discussions in the book embrace all the problems of
+history, the characters are of different nationalities, and are all
+enriched by the fruits of culture and travel, and the story is a series
+of crucial tests by which, as we are to infer, the author's theories are
+verified. This plan is not absolutely novel. Goethe had adopted a still
+slighter though far happier framework for his ripest thoughts and
+profoundest observations. Yet even Goethe's exquisite art was at fault
+when he sought to extend the original design; and if the first part of
+_Wilhelm Meister_ is the most perfectly constructed work in the whole
+range of literature, the second is merely a heap of precious materials,
+with here and there such groupings and dispositions as indicate how
+details had been conceived, while the general plan refused to shape
+itself in the master's mind. Count Gobineau's failure is of a different
+kind. His story is not only grotesque in construction, but inartistic in
+all its parts. In every group of incidents there is the same lack of
+harmony and completeness as in the adaptation and subordination of each
+to the whole. Nor, with all the author's knowledge of life and of men,
+has he succeeded in creating characters recognizable as life-like and as
+veritable originals. Single features are well drawn, certain
+temperaments are keenly analyzed, but the whole conception is never
+firm, consistent and complete. The simplest, like old Lanze and his
+daughter Lina, are intrinsically commonplace; the most elaborated, like
+Madame Tonska and the duke Jean-Theodore, waver between familiar types
+and questionable shadows; and those that, like Laudon and the
+Gennevilliers, promise better results, are imperfectly developed. Such
+defects would be fatal in a novel of the ordinary kind. But this is not
+a novel of the ordinary kind. The real staple of the book consists not
+of the incidents and the characters, but of discussions and reflections
+which sparkle with wit, with shrewd observation, and with ingenious if
+not absolutely profound speculation. There are a hundred little essays
+in it, compact with thought and bristling with epigram, that have an
+eighteenth-century flavor, and suffuse with a _sauce piquante_ what
+would otherwise have been a flavorless dish. Whether the theory from
+which the title of the book is derived, and which is expounded at length
+in the opening chapters, would bear a rigid examination, or was even
+meant to be taken seriously, may be doubted. It is, at all events, very
+poorly illustrated by the characters and events selected to exemplify
+it.
+
+
+
+
+_Books Received._
+
+
+Africa: The History of Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to
+Livingstone. By Charles H. Jones. With illustrations. New York: Henry
+Holt & Co.
+
+The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance. By Henry
+Edward, Archbishop of Westminister. New York: Catholic Publication
+Society.
+
+Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army. By George H.
+Boyland. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
+
+The Tower of Babel: A Poetical Drama. By Alfred Austin. Edinburgh and
+London: Wm. Blackwood & Sons.
+
+Young Folks' History of the United States. By T. W. Higginson.
+Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.
+
+Baby Died To-day, and Other Poems. By the late William Leighton. London:
+Longmans, Green & Co.
+
+Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Vol. I. of German Classics. New York: G.
+P. Putnam's Sons.
+
+Types and Emblems: A Collection of Sermons. By C. H. Spurgeon. New York:
+Sheldon & Co.
+
+The Maintenance of Health. By J. M. Fothergill, M.D. New York: G. P.
+Putnam's Sons.
+
+A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James
+R. Osgood & Co.
+
+Christian Belief and Life. By A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Ezra Stiles Gannet: A Memoir. By his son, W. C. Gannet. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Recollections and Suggestions. By John, Earl Russell. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Birds of the North-west. By Elliot Coues. Washington: Government
+Printing-office.
+
+Morality of Prohibitory Liquor Laws. By W. B. Weeden. Boston: Roberts
+Bros.
+
+Victor La Tourette: A Novel. By a Broad Churchman. Boston: Roberts
+Brothers.
+
+Domus Dei. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Philadelphia: P. F. Cunningham & Son.
+
+Poems of Twenty Years. By Laura W. Johnson. New York: De Witt C. Lent.
+
+Protection and Free Trade. By Isaac Butts. New York: G. P. Putnam's
+Sons.
+
+Mistress Judith. By C. C. Frazer Tytler. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
+
+Generalship: A Tale. By George Roy. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
+Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, MAY, 1875 ***
+
+***** This file should be named 29184.txt or 29184.zip *****
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