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 THE GIFT OF 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PS 1202.A3 1916 
 
 The stories of H C. Bunner.First series 
 
 3 1924 021 995 802 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021995802 
 
BOOKS BY H. C. BUNNER 
 
 LOVE IN OLD CLOATHES and Other Stories. 
 
 Illustrated . net $i.s5 
 
 JERSEY STREET AND JERSEY LANE. Urban 
 and Suburban Sketches. Illustrated, ismo 
 
 net 1.25 
 
 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE. 
 lUustrated . ... net 1.25 
 
 STORIES: FIRST SERIES. The Story of a 
 New York House. The Midge, Jersey Street 
 and Jersey Lane. i2ino . ... net 1.25 
 
 STORIES: SECOND SERIES. Love in Old 
 Cloathes and Other Stories, Zadoc Pine and 
 Other Stories. i2mo net 1.25 
 
 POEMS. With an Introduction by Brander 
 
 Matthews, izmo net 1.75 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
THE STORIES OF H. C. BUNNER 
 
 FIEST SERIES 
 
THEN OUT OF THE DOOR CAME JACOB DOLPH 
 
THE STORIES 
 
 OF 
 
 H. C. BUNNER 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 WITH AN INTHODUCTOKT NOTE 
 BY 
 
 BRANDER MATTHEWS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1916 
 
K-^sms 
 
 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 Copyright, 1887. by 
 
 Charles Scribner's sons 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 A. L. BUNNER 
 
 THE MIDGE 
 
 Copyright, 1866, by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Copyright, 1914, by 
 
 A. L. BXTNNER 
 
 JERSEY STREET AND JERSEY LANE 
 
 Copyright, 1896, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNBR'S SONS 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by 
 
 Charles Scribner's sons 
 
To 
 
 A. L. B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAGE 
 
 Introductory Note ix 
 
 The Story of a New York House , . 1 
 
 The Midge 106 
 
 Jersey and Mulberry 324 
 
 Tiemann's to Tubby Hook 342 
 
 The Bowery and Bohemia 361 
 
 The Story of a Path 378 
 
 The Lost Child 395 
 
 A Letter to Town 420 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 It is now more than a quarter of a century since 
 the most of the stories now gathered into this vol- 
 ume were first published. In the superabundant 
 productivity of our writers of fiction the compe- 
 tition is incessant and deadly. Few, indeed, are 
 the novels and the briefer tales which can hold 
 their own even for a decade, and fewer yet are 
 those which have to be brought out in new editions 
 in response to the popular demand a score of years 
 after their author has let the pen slip from his 
 hand for the last time. This is the fortunate fate 
 which has now befallen the short-stories of H. C. 
 Bunner. 
 
 He was born at Oswego, New York, on August 3, 
 1855, and he died at Nutley, New Jersey, on May 
 11, 1896, cut short in a literary career wherein he 
 had not attained to his full power. He had had a 
 thorough schooling and prepared for Columbia Col- 
 lege, which he was unable to enter — to his abiding 
 regret. After a brief experience in an importing 
 house, he became a newspaper man. When Puck 
 began to be published in English he joined its staff, 
 
 ix 
 
X INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 and he soon became its editor, a post which he held 
 to the end of his life. Puck was the earliest to 
 succeed of all the many American attempts to 
 establish a comic weekly ; and in large measure its 
 success was due to Bunner, — to his fertility, to his 
 resourcefulness, to his insight and to his unfailing 
 taste. 
 
 To Puck first and then to one or another of the 
 leading American magazines Bunner began to con- 
 tribute verse. Most of his poetry is to be classed 
 as vers de societe, as "familiar verse," to use Cow- 
 per's apt phrase. These lighter lyrics of his had 
 the brevity, the brilliancy and the buoyancy which 
 are the specific characteristics of this kind of 
 verse. They had humor and good humor; they 
 often had restrained pathos, suggesting the tear 
 which hangs unfailing above the smile. While it 
 is by his vers de societe that Bunner made good 
 his place among our lyrists, he was able to prove 
 himself a true poet by verse of a larger purport. 
 
 He was also the author of several novels and of 
 several volumes of short-stories. His prose was 
 the prose of a poet, pure and pellucid ; his style had 
 both clarity and color. He became a master of 
 the art of the short-story, finding his profit in a 
 loving study of Boccaccio and Maupassant. Even 
 those of his longer tales which stretch out almost 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE xi 
 
 to the dimensions of a novel, were really only 
 short-stories writ large; they had the unity, the 
 swiftness, the singleness of purpose which is the 
 distinguishing characteristic of this form of fiction. 
 
 No selection from the masterpieces of the Amer- 
 ican short-story would he justified that was not en- 
 riched by at least one example of Bunner's art, at 
 once firm and delicate. It would matter little 
 whether the choice fell on "Zadoc Pine" or on 
 "Love in Old Cloathes," or on "As One Having 
 Authority." Each of these tales has its own 
 charm and its own fragrance; all of them are 
 models of story-telling; and any one of them can 
 withstand comparison, in its own fashion, with the 
 best in this form of fiction, with any example 
 selected from Hawthorne or Poe, Bret Harte or 
 Cable. They are novel in topic, fresh in atmos- 
 phere, individual in treatment and ingenious in 
 construction. 
 
 All Bunner's short-stories reveal a fertility of 
 invention playfully delighting in its own exercise. 
 What could be more whimsically adroit and auda- 
 cious than the open making-up of "A Second- 
 Hand Story," before the eyes of the reader, so to 
 speak, with its weaving of the plot out of whole 
 cloth, as the phrase is. Yet invention is only a 
 minor possession for the writer of fiction unless it 
 
xii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 is sustained by the larger interpreting imagina- 
 tion, whicli only can people a narrative with 
 human beings, vital and unforgettable in the man- 
 ner that "As One Having Authority" is illumined 
 with the towering figure of the venerable bishop, 
 projected with an intimate understanding of 
 human nature. 
 
 While Bunner had sat at the feet of the Euro- 
 pean masters of fiction to spy out the secrets of the 
 craft, his own subjects were chosen almost without 
 exception from the life of his own country. What 
 could be more intensely American than the narra- 
 tive of the adventures of Zadoc Pine, with its per- 
 suasive portrayal of the man's native gumption, 
 his unvaunting self-respect, his sturdy kindliness? 
 This vision of unmitigated and essential Ameri- 
 canism is set before us in a tale which is also a 
 tract, if we choose so to take it, — a tract setting 
 forth the stern duty of self-help and of resolute 
 independence. 
 
 Not only were Bunner 's studies from life 
 sketched from our own life here in America ; many 
 if not most of them, were also studies of New 
 York, the city of his ancestors and of his own abid- 
 ing love — although he had not been born in it, nor 
 was he to die in it. Thirty years ago colonialism 
 still lingered in our literature. There were not a 
 
INTRODUCTOEY NOTE xiii 
 
 few among us who doubted whether this sprawling 
 metropolis of ours, so varied in its aspects and so 
 tumultuous in its manifestations, would ever 
 prove to be a fertile field for fiction. Here Bunner 
 was truly a pioneer ; he drove a furrow of his own 
 in soil scarcely even scratched before he tilled it; 
 and if the later crop is to-day more abundant this 
 is, in some measure, at least, because all can grow 
 the flower now, for all have got the seed. 
 
 Bbandeb Matthews. 
 March, 1916. 
 
THE STORY 
 OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 i^T HEAE," said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, 
 I seated at her breakfast-table, and watch- 
 ing the morning sunlight dance on the 
 front of the great Burrell house on the opposite 
 side of Pine Street, "that the Dolphs are going to 
 build a prodigious fine house out of town — some- 
 where up near the Rynders's place." 
 
 "And I hear," said Abram Van Riper, laying 
 down last night's Evening Post, "that Jacob 
 Dolph is going to give up business. And if he 
 does, it's a disgrace to the town." 
 
 It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van 
 Riper was getting well over what he considered 
 the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and 
 hearty; his business was flourishing; his boy was 
 turning out all that should have been expected of 
 one of the Van Riper stock ; the refracted sunlight 
 from the walls of the stately house occupied by the 
 Cashier of the Bank of the United States lit with 
 a subdued secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver 
 on the breakfast-table — the squat teapot and slop- 
 bowl, the milk-pitcher, that held a quart, and the 
 
 1 
 
2 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 apostle-spoon in the broken loaf-sugar on the Delft 
 plate. Abram Van Eiper was decorously happy, 
 as a New York merchant should be. In all other 
 respects, he was pleased to think, he was what a 
 New York merchant should be, and the word of the 
 law and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in 
 his house. 
 
 "I'm sure," Mrs. Van Riper began again, some- 
 what querulously, "I can't see why Jacob Dolph 
 shouldn't give up business, if he's so minded. 
 He's a monstrous fortune, from all I hear — a good 
 hundred thousand dollars." 
 
 "A hundred thousand dollars!" repeated her 
 husband, scornfully. "Ay, and twice twenty 
 thousand pounds on the top of that. He's done 
 well, has Dolph. All the more reason he should 
 stick to his trade ; and not go to lolling in the sun, 
 like a runner at the Custom-House door. He's 
 not within ten years of me, and here he must build 
 his country house, and set up for the fine gentle- 
 man. Jacob Dolph ! Did I go on his note, when 
 he came back from France, brave as my master, in 
 '94, or did I not? And where 'ud he have raised 
 twenty thousand in this town, if I hadn 't ? What 's 
 got into folks nowadays ? Damn me if I can see ! ' ' 
 
 His wife protested in wifely fashion. "I'm 
 sure. Van Riper," she began, "you've no need to 
 fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who 
 have some conceit of being genteel. It's only 
 proper pride of Mr. Dolph to have a country 
 
 house, and " (her voice faltering a little, 
 
 timorously) "ride in and — and out r'^ 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 3 
 
 "Ridel" snorted Mr. Van Riper. "In a car- 
 riage, maybe!" 
 
 "In a carriage, Van Eiper. You may think to 
 ride in a carriage is like being the Pope of Rome ; 
 but there's some that knows better. And if you'd 
 set up your carriage," went on the undaunted 
 Mrs. Van Riper, "and gone over to Greenwich 
 Street two years ago, as I'd have had you, and 
 made yourself friendly with those people there, 
 I'd have been on the Orphan Asylum Board at this 
 very minute; and you would " 
 
 Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by heart, in 
 all its variations. He knew perfectly well what 
 it would end in, this time, although he was not a 
 man of quick perception: "He would have been 
 a member of the new Historical Society." 
 
 "Yes," he thought to himself, as he found hia 
 hat and shuffled out into Pine Street; "and John 
 Pintard would have had my good check in his 
 pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine Street is 
 fine enough for me." 
 
 Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy 
 than he would have acknowledged even to himself. 
 He was a man who had kept his shop open all 
 through Clinton's occupancy and who had had no 
 trouble with the British. And when they had 
 gone he had had to do enough to clear his skirts of 
 any smirch of Toryism, and to implant in his own 
 breast a settled feeling of militant Americanism. 
 He did not like it that the order of things should 
 change — and the order of things was changing. 
 The town was growing out of all knowledge of 
 
4 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 itself. Here they had their Orphan Asylum, and 
 their Botanical Garden, and their Historical 
 Society ; and the Jews were having it all their own 
 way ; and now people were talking of free schools, 
 and of laying out a map for the upper end of the 
 town to grow on, in the "system" of straight 
 streets and avenues. To the devil with systems 
 and avenues ! said he. That was all the doing of 
 those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would 
 be when they brought their plaguy frigate here 
 in the first fever year — '93 — and the fools 
 marched up from Peck's Slip after a red night- 
 cap, and howled their cut-throat song all night 
 long. 
 
 It began to hum itself in his head as he walked 
 toward Water Street — Qa ira — ga ira — les aris- 
 tocrats a la lanterne. A whiff of the wind that 
 blew through Paris streets in the terrible times 
 had come across the Atlantic and tickled his dull 
 old Dutch nostrils. 
 
 But something worse than this vexed the con- 
 servative spirit of Abram Van Riper. He could 
 forgive John Pintard — whose inspiration, I think, 
 foreran the twentieth century — ^his fancy for free 
 schools and historical societies, as he had forgiven 
 him for his sidewalk-building fifteen years before ; 
 he could proudly overlook the fact that the women 
 were busying themselves with all manner of wild 
 charities; he could be contented though he knew 
 that the Hebrew Hart was president of that 
 merchants' club at Baker's, of which he himself 
 would fain have been a member. But there was 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 5 
 
 something in the air that he could neither forgive 
 nor overlook, nor be contented with. 
 
 There was a change coming over the town — a 
 change which he could not clearly define, even in 
 his own mind. There was a great keeping of 
 carriages, he knew. A dozen men had bought 
 carriages, or were likely to buy them at any time. 
 The women were forming societies for the 
 improvement of this and that. And he, who had 
 moved up-town from Dock Street, was now in an 
 old-fashioned quarter. All this he knew, but the 
 something which made him uneasy was more 
 subtile. 
 
 Within the last few years he had observed an 
 introduction of certain strange distinctions in the 
 social code of the town. It had been vaguely 
 intimated to him — perhaps by his wife, he could 
 not remember — ^that there was a difference 
 between his trade and Jacob Dolph's trade. He 
 was a ship-chandler. Jacob Dolph sold timber. 
 Their shops were side by side; Jacob Dolph's 
 rafts lay in the river in front of Abram Van 
 Riper 's shop, and Abram Van Riper had gone on 
 Jacob Dolph's note, only a few years ago. Yet, it 
 seemed that it was genteel of Jacob Dolph to sell 
 timber, and it was not genteel of Abram Van 
 Riper to be a ship-chandler. There was, then, a 
 difference between Jacob Dolph and Abram Van 
 Riper — a difference which, in forty years, Abram 
 Van Riper had never conceived of. There were 
 folks who held thus. For himself, he could not 
 understand it. What difference there was 
 
6 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 between selling the wood to make a ship, and 
 selling the stores to go inside of her, he could not 
 understand. 
 
 The town was changing for the worse; he saw 
 that. He did not wish — God forbid! — that his 
 son John should go running about to pleasure- 
 gardens. But it would be no more than neigh- 
 borly if these young bucks who went out every 
 night should ask him to go with them. Were 
 William Irving 's boys and Harry Brevoort and 
 those young Kembles too fine to be friends with 
 his boy? Not that he'd go with them a-roUicking 
 — no, not that — but 'twould be neighborly. It was 
 all wrong, he thought; they were going whither 
 they knew not, and wherefore they knew not ; and 
 with that he cursed their airs and their graces, 
 and pounded down to the Tontine, to put his name 
 at the head of the list of those who subscribed for 
 a testimonial service of plate, to be presented to 
 our esteemed fellow-citizen and valued associate, 
 Jacob Dolph, on his retirement from active 
 business. 
 
 Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting forth 
 from his house in State Street, whose pillared 
 balcony, rising from the second floor to the roof, 
 caught a side glance of the morning sun, that 
 loved the Battery far better than Pine Street. 
 He had his little boy by the hand — ^young Jacob, 
 his miniature, his heir, and the last and only living 
 one of his eight children. Mr. Dolph walked with 
 his stock thrust out and the lower end of his 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 7 
 
 waistcoat drawn in — ^he was Colonel Dolph, if he 
 liad cared to keep the title; and had come hack 
 from Monmouth with a hole in his hip that gave 
 him a bit of a limp, even now in eighteen-hundred- 
 and-seven. He and the boy marched forth like an 
 army with a small but enthusiastic left wing, into 
 the poplar-studded Battery. The wiad blew 
 fresh off the bay; the waves beat up agaiust the 
 sea-wall, and swirled with a chuckle under Castle 
 Garden bridge. A large brig was coming up 
 before the wind, all her sails set, as though she 
 were afraid — and she was — of British frigates 
 outside the Hook. Two or three fat little boats, 
 cat-rigged, after the good old New York fashion, 
 were beating down toward Staten Island, to hunt 
 for the earliest blue-fish. 
 
 The two Dolphs crossed the Battery, where the 
 elder bowed to his friends among the merchants 
 who lounged about the city's pleasure-ground, 
 lazily chatting over their business affairs. Then 
 they turned up past Bowling Green into Broad- 
 way, where Mr. Dolph kept on bowing, for half the 
 town was out, taking the fresh morning for mar- 
 keting and all manner of shopping. Everybody 
 knew Jacob Dolph afar off by his blue coat with 
 the silver buttons, his nankeen waistcoat, and his 
 red-cheeked Indian silk neckcloth. He made it a 
 sort of uniform. Captain Beare had brought him 
 a bolt of nankeen and a silk kerchief every year 
 since 1793, when Mr. Dolph gave him credit for 
 the timber of which the Ursa Minor was built. 
 
 And everybody seemed willing to make 
 
8 THE STOEY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 acquaintance witli young Jacob's London-made 
 kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color, and 
 with his lavender silk coat, and with his little 
 chapeau de Paris. Indeed, young Jacob was quite 
 the most prominent moving spectacle on Broad- 
 way, until they came to John Street, and saw 
 something rolling down the street that quite cut 
 the yellow kerseymeres out of all popular 
 attention. 
 
 This was a carriage, the body of which was 
 shaped like a huge section of a cheese, set up on 
 its small end upon broad, swinging straps between 
 two pairs of wheels. It was not unlike a piece of 
 cheese in color, for it was of a dull and faded 
 grayish-green, like mould, relieved by pale-yellow 
 panels and gilt ornaments. It was truly an inter- 
 esting structure, and it attracted nearly as much 
 notice on Broadway in 1807 as it might to-day. 
 But it was received with far more reverence, for it 
 was a court coach, and it belonged to the Des 
 Anges family, the rich Huguenots of New 
 Rochelle. It had been built in Prance, thirty 
 years before, and had been sent over as a present 
 to his brother from the Count des Anges, who had 
 himself neglected to make use of his opportunities 
 to embrace the Protestant religion. 
 
 When the white-haired old lady who sat in this 
 coach, with a very little girl by "her side, saw Mr. 
 Dolph and his son, she leaned out of the window 
 and signalled to the old periwigged driver to stop, 
 and he drew up close to the sidewalk. And then 
 Mr. Dolph and his son came up to the window and 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 9 
 
 took off their hats, and made a great low bow and 
 a small low bow to the old lady and the little girl. 
 
 "Madam Des Anges," said Mr. Dolph, with an 
 idiom which he had learned when he was presented 
 at the court of Louis the Sixteenth, "has surely 
 not driven down from New Rochelle this morning? 
 That would tax even her powers." 
 
 Madam Des Anges did not smile — she had no 
 taste for smiling — but she bridled amiably. 
 
 "No, Mr. Dolph," she replied; "I have been 
 staying with my daughter-in-law, at her house at 
 King's Bridge, and I have come to town to put my 
 little granddaughter to school. She is to have the 
 privilege of being a pupil of Mme. Dumesnil." 
 
 Madam Des Anges indicated the little girl with 
 a slight movement, as though she did not wish to 
 allow the child more consideration than a child 
 deserved. The little girl turned a great pair of 
 awed eyes, first on her grandmother, and then on 
 the gentlemen, and spoke no word. Young Jacob 
 Dolph stared hard at her, and then contemplated 
 his kerseymeres with lazy satisfaction. He had 
 no time for girls. And a boy who had his breeches 
 made in London was a boy of consequence, and 
 need not concern himself about every one he saw. 
 
 "And this is your son, I make no doubt," went 
 on Madam Des Anges ; "you must bring him to see 
 us at King's Bridge, while we are so near you. 
 These young people should know each other." 
 
 Mr. Dolph said he would, and showed a becom- 
 ing sense of the honor of the invitation; and he 
 made young Jacob say a little speech of thanks, 
 
10 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 which he did with a doubtful grace ; and then Mr. 
 Dolph sent his compliments to Madam Des Anges ' 
 daughter-in-law, and Madam Des Anges sent her 
 compliments to Mrs. Dolph, and there was more 
 stately bowing, and the carriage lumbered on, 
 with the little girl looking timorously out of the 
 window, her great eyes fixed on the yellow kersey- 
 meres, as they twinkled up the street. 
 
 "Papa," said young Jacob, as they turned the 
 corner of Ann Street, "when may I go to a boys' 
 school? I'm monstrous big to be at Mrs. Kil- 
 master's. And I don't like to be a girl-boy." 
 
 "Are you a girl-boy?" inquired his father, 
 smiling. 
 
 "Aleck Cameron called me one yesterday. He 
 said I was a girl-boy because I went to dame- 
 school. He called me Missy, too!" the boy went 
 on, with his breast swelling. 
 
 "We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smiling 
 again; and they walked on in silence to Mrs. Kil- 
 master's door, where he struck the knocker, and a 
 neat mulatto girl opened the narrow door. Then 
 he patted his boy on the head and bade him good- 
 by for the morning, and told him to be a good boy 
 at school. He took a step or two and looked back. 
 Young Jacob lingered on the step, as if he had a 
 further communication to make. He paused. 
 
 "I thumped him," said young Jacob, and the 
 narrow door swallowed him up. 
 
 Mr. Dolph continued on his walk up Broadway. 
 As he passed the upper end of the Common he 
 looked with interest at the piles of red sandstone 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 11 
 
 among the piles of white marble, where they were 
 buildiag the new City Hall. The Council had 
 ordered that the rear or northward end of the 
 edifice should be constructed of red stone ; because 
 red stone was cheap, and none but a few sub- 
 urbans would ever look down on it from above 
 Chambers Street. Mr. Dolph shook his head. 
 He thought he knew better. He had watched the 
 growth of trade; he knew the room for further 
 growth; he had noticed the long converging lines 
 of river-front, with their unbounded accommo- 
 dation for wharves and slips. He believed that 
 the day would come — and his own boy might see 
 it — ^when the business of the city would crowd the 
 dwelling-houses from the river side, east and west, 
 as far, maybe, as Chambers Street. He had no 
 doubt that the boy might find himself, forty years 
 from then, in a populous and genteel neighbor- 
 hood. Perhaps he foresaw too much; but he had 
 a jealous yearning for a house that should be a 
 home for him, and for his child, and for his grand- 
 children. He wanted a place where his wife might 
 have a garden ; a place which the boy would grow 
 up to love and cherish, where the boy might bring 
 a wife some day. And even if it were a little out 
 of town — ^why, his wife did not want a rout every 
 night ; and it was likely his old friends would come 
 out and see him once in a while, and smoke a pipe 
 in his garden and eat a dish of strawberries, 
 perhaps. 
 
 As he thought it all over for the hundredth time, 
 weighing for and against in his gentle and 
 
12 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 deliberative mind, lie strolled far out of town. 
 There was a house here and there on the road — a 
 house with a trim, stiff little garden, full of pink 
 and white and hlue flowers in orderly, clam-shell- 
 bordered beds. But it was certainly, he had to 
 admit, as he looked about him, very countrified 
 indeed. It seemed that the city must lose itself if 
 it wandered up here among these rolling meadows 
 and wooded hills. Yet even up here, half way to 
 Greenwich Village, there were little outposts of 
 the town — clumps of neighborly houses, mostly of 
 the poorer class, huddling together to form small 
 nuclei for sporadic growth. There was one on his 
 right, near the head of Collect Street. Perhaps 
 that quizzical little old German was right, who 
 had told him that King's Bridge property was a 
 rational investment. 
 
 He went across the hill where Grand Street 
 crosses Broadway, and up past what was then 
 North and is to-day Houston Street, and then 
 turned down a straggling road that ran east and 
 west. He walked toward the Hudson, and passed 
 a farmhouse or two, and came to a bare place 
 where there were no trees, and only a few tangled 
 bushes and ground-vines. 
 
 Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting 
 him. As he came near, the man arose. 
 
 "Ah, it's you, Weeks? And have you the 
 plan?" 
 
 "Yes, Colonel — Mr. Dolph. I've put the win- 
 dow where you want it — that is, my brother Levi 
 did — though I don't see as you're going to have 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 13 
 
 mucli trouble in looking over anything that's 
 likely to come between you and the river." 
 
 Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment and 
 studied it with loving interest. It had gone back 
 to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and his brother Levi, 
 the architect, for the twentieth time, perhaps. 
 Was there ever an architect's plan put in the 
 hands of a happy nest-builder where the windows 
 did not go up and down from day to day, and the 
 doors did not crawl all around the house, and the 
 veranda did not contract and expand like a sensi- 
 tive plant; or where the rooms and closets and 
 corridors did not march backward and forward 
 and in and out at the bidding of every fond, 
 untutored whim? 
 
 "It's a monstrous great big place for a country- 
 house, Mr. Dolph," said Ezra Weeks, as he looked 
 over Jacob Dolph 's shoulder at the drawings of 
 the house, and shook his head with a sort of pity- 
 ing admiration for the projector's audacity. 
 
 They talked for a while, and looked at the site 
 as if they might see more in it than they saw 
 yesterday, and then Weeks set off for the city, 
 pledged to hire laborers and to begin the work on 
 the morrow. 
 
 "I think I can get you some of that stone that's 
 going into the back of the City Hall, if you say so, 
 Mr. Dolph. That stone was bought cheap, you 
 know — ^bought for the city." 
 
 ' ' See what you can do. Weeks, ' * said Mr. Dolph ; 
 and Mr. Weeks went whistling down the road. 
 
 Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective 
 
14 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 domain. He kicked a wild blackberry busb aside, 
 to look at the head of a stake, and tried to realize 
 that that would be the corner of his house. He 
 went to where the parlor fireplace would be, and 
 stared at the grass and stones, wondering what it 
 would be like to watch the fire flickering on the 
 new hearth. Then he looked over toward the 
 Hudson, and saw the green woods on Union Hill 
 and the top of a white sail over the high river- 
 bank. He hoped that no one would build a large 
 house between him and the river. 
 
 He lingered so long that the smoke of midday- 
 dinners was arising from Greenwich Village when 
 he turned back toward town. When he reached 
 the Commons on his homeward way he came 
 across a knot of idlers who were wasting the hour 
 of the noontide meal in gaping at the unfinished 
 municipal building. 
 
 They were admiringly critical. One man was 
 vociferously enthusiastic. 
 
 "It's a marvellous fine building, say I, sir! 
 Worthy of the classic shades of antiquity. If 
 Europe can show a finer than that will be when 
 she's done, then, in my opinion, sir, Europe is 
 doing well." 
 
 "You admire the architecture, Mr. Huggins?" 
 asked Mr. Dolph, coming up behind him. Mr. 
 Huggins turned around, slightly disconcerted, 
 and assumed an amiability of manner such as can 
 only be a professional acquirement among us poor 
 creatures of human nature. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Dolph— Colonel, I should say! I 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 15 
 
 have purposed to do myself the honor of present- 
 ing myself at your house this afternoon, Colonel 
 Dolph, to inquire if you did not desire to have 
 your peruke frisee. For I had taken the liberty 
 of observing you in conversation with Madam Des 
 Anges this morning, in her equipage, and it had 
 occurred to me that possibly the madam might be 
 a-staying with you." 
 
 "Madam Des Anges does not honor my house 
 this time, Huggins," returned Mr. Dolph, with an 
 indulgent little laugh; "and my poor old peruke 
 will do very well for to-day." 
 
 There was a perceptible diminution in Mr. 
 Huggins 's ardor; but he was still suave. 
 
 "I hope the madam is in good health," he 
 remarked. 
 
 "She is, I believe," said Mr. Dolph. 
 
 "And your good lady, sir? I have not had the 
 pleasure of treating Mrs. Dolph professionally for 
 some time, sir, I " 
 
 Mr. Dolph was wary. "I don't think Mrs. 
 Dolph is fond of the latest modes, Huggins. But 
 here comes Mr. Van Riper. Perhaps he will have 
 his peruke frisee." 
 
 Mr. Huggins got out of a dancing-master's pose 
 with intelligent alacrity, bade Mr. Dolph a hasty 
 "Good-afternoon!" and hurried off toward his 
 shop, one door above Wall Street. Mr. Van Riper 
 did not like "John Richard Desbrosses Huggins, 
 Knight of the Comb." 
 
 There was something else that Mr. Van Riper 
 did not like. 
 
16 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 ' ' Hullo, Dolph ! " he hailed his friend. ' * What 's 
 this I hear about you building a preposterous tom- 
 fool of a town-house out by Greenwich? Why 
 don't you hire that house that Burr had, up 
 near Lispenard's cow-pasture, and be done with 
 it?" 
 
 Mr. Dolph seized his chance. 
 
 "It's not so preposterous as all that. By the 
 way, talking of Burr, I hear from Eichmond that 
 he'll positively be tried next week. Did you know 
 that young Irving — ^William's son, the youngest, 
 the lad that writes squibs — has gone to Eichmond 
 for the defence?" 
 
 "William Irving 's son might be in better busi- 
 ness," grunted Mr. Van Eiper, for a moment 
 diverted. "If we'd got at that devil when he 
 murdered poor Hamilton — 'fore gad, we'd have 
 saved the trouble of trying him. Do you remem- 
 ber when we was for going to Philadelphia after 
 him, and there the sly scamp was at home all the 
 time up in his fine house, a-sitting in a tub of 
 water, reading French stuff, as cool as a cow- 
 cumber, with the whole town hunting for him?" 
 Then he came back. "But that house of yours. 
 You haven't got this crazy notion that New York's 
 going to turn into London while you smoke your 
 pipe, have you? You're keeping some of your 
 seven business senses, ain't you?" 
 
 "I don't know," Mr. Dolph mildly defended his 
 hobby; "there is a great potentiality of growth in 
 this city. Here's an estimate that John Pintard 
 made the other day " 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 17 
 
 "John Pintard! He's another like you!" said 
 Mr. Van Riper. 
 
 "Well, look at it for yourself," pleaded the be- 
 liever in New York's future. 
 
 Mr. Van Riper took the neatly written paper, 
 and simply snorted and gasped as he read this : 
 
 statistical. 
 
 By the numeration of the inhabitants of this city, recently 
 published, the progress of population for the last 5 years appears 
 to be at the rate of 25 per cent. Should our city continue to 
 increase in the same proportion during the present century, the 
 aggregate number at its close will far exceed that of any other 
 city in the Old World, Pekin not excepted, as will appear from 
 the following table. Progress of population in the city of New 
 York, computed at the rate of 25 per cent, every 5 years: 
 
 1805 75,770 1855 705,650 
 
 1810 ^5,715 1860 882,062 
 
 1815 110,390 1865 1,102,577 
 
 1820 147,987 1870 1,378,221 
 
 1825 184,923 1875 1,722,776 
 
 1830 231,228 1880 2,153,470 
 
 1835 289,035 1885 2,691,837 
 
 1840 361,293 1890 3,364,796 
 
 1845 451,616 1895 4,205,995 
 
 1850 564,520 1900 5,257,493 
 
 When he had read it through he was a-quiver- 
 ing, crimson with that rage of Conservative indig- 
 nation which is even more fervent than the flames 
 of Radical enthusiasm. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "there's seventy-five thousand 
 people in this town, and there'll be seventy-five 
 thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes on. And 
 there's seventy-five thousand maggots in your 
 brain, and seventy-five thousand in John Pin- 
 tard 's ; and if you two live to see nineteen hundred, 
 
18 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 you'll have twice five million two hundred and 
 fifty-seven thousand four hundred and ninety- 
 three — whatever that may be!" And he thrust 
 the paper back at Jacob Dolph, and made for the 
 Tontine and the society of sensible men. 
 
 The house was built, in spite of Abram Van 
 Riper 's remonstrance. It had a "stone front, 
 almost flush with the road, and brick gable-ends, 
 in each one of which, high up near the roof, stood 
 an arched window, to lift an eyebrow to the sun, 
 morning and evening. But it was only a country- 
 house, after all; and the Dolphs set up their 
 carriage and drove out and in, from June to 
 September. 
 
 There was a garden at the side, where Mrs. 
 Dolph could have the flowers her heart had 
 yearned after ever since Jacob Dolph brought 
 her from her home at Rondout, when she was 
 seventeen. 
 
 Strengthened by the country air — so they said — 
 young Jacob grew clean out of his dame-school 
 days and into and out of Columbia College, and 
 was sent abroad, a sturdy youth, to have a year's 
 holiday. It was to the new house that he came 
 back the next summer, with a wonderful stock of 
 fine clothes and of finer manners, and with a pair 
 of mustaches that scandalized everybody but 
 Madam Des Anges, who had seen the like in 
 France when she visited her brother. And a very 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 19 
 
 fine young buck was young Jacob, altogether, with 
 his knowledge of French and his ignorance of 
 Dutch, and a way he had with the women, and 
 another way he had with the men, and his heirship 
 to old Jacob Dolph's money and his two houses. 
 For they stayed in the old house until 1822. 
 
 It was a close, hot night in the early summer; 
 there was a thick, warm mist that turned now and 
 then into a soft rain; yet every window in the 
 Dolphs ' house on State Street was closed. 
 
 It had been a hideous day for New York. From 
 early morning until long after dark had set in, the 
 streets had been filled with frightened, disordered 
 crowds. The city was again stricken with the old, 
 inevitable, ever-recurring scourge of yellow fever, 
 and the people had lost their heads. In every 
 house, in every office and shop, there was hasty 
 packing, mad confusion, and wild flight. It was 
 only a question of getting out of town as best one 
 might. Wagons and carts creaked and rumbled 
 and rattled through every street, piled high with 
 household chattels, up-heaped in blind haste. 
 Women rode on the swaying loads, or walked 
 beside with the smaller children in their arms. 
 Men bore heavy burdens, and children helped 
 according to their strength. There was only one 
 idea, and that was flight — ^from a pestilence whose 
 coming might have been prevented, and whose 
 course could have been stayed. To most of these 
 poor creatures the only haven seemed to be Green- 
 
20 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 wich Village ; but some sought the scattered settle- 
 ments above; some crossed to Hoboken; some to 
 Bushwick; while others made a long journey to 
 Staten Island, across the bay. And when they 
 reached their goals, it was to beg or buy lodgings 
 anywhere and anyhow; to sleep in cellars and 
 garrets, in barns and stables. 
 
 The panic was not only among the poor and 
 ignorant. Merchants were moving their offices, 
 and even the Post Office and the Custom House 
 were to be transferred to Greenwich. There were 
 some who remained faithful throughout all, and 
 who labored for the stricken, and whose names are 
 not even written in the memory of their fellow- 
 men. But the city had been so often ravaged 
 before, that at the first sight there was one mere 
 animal impulse of flight that seized upon all alike. 
 
 At one o'clock, when some of the better streets 
 had once more taken on their natural quiet, an ox- 
 cart stood before the door of the Dolphs' old 
 house. A little behind it stood the family car- 
 riage, its lamps unlit. The horses stirred un- 
 easily, but the oxen waited in dull, indifferent 
 patience. Presently the door opened, and two 
 men came out and awkwardly bore a plain coffin to 
 the cart. Then they mounted to the front of the 
 cart, hiding between them a muffled lantern. 
 They wore cloths over the lower part of their 
 faces, and felt hats drawn low over their eyes. 
 Something in their gait showed them to be sea- 
 faring men, or the like. 
 
 Then out of the open door came Jacob Dolph, 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 21 
 
 moving with a feeble shuffle between his son and 
 his old negro coachman — ^this man and his wife the 
 only faithful of all the servants. The young man 
 put his father in the carriage, and the negro went 
 back and locked the doors and brought the keys to 
 his young master. He mounted to the box, and 
 through the darkness could be seen a white towel 
 tied around his arm — the old badge of servitude's 
 mourning. 
 
 The oxen were started up, and the two vehicles 
 moved up into Broadway. They travelled with 
 painful slowness ; the horses had to be held in to 
 keep them behind the cart, for the oxen could be 
 only guided by the whip, and not by word of 
 mouth. The old man moaned a little at the pace, 
 and quivered when he heard the distant sound of 
 hammers. 
 
 "What is it?" he asked, nervously. 
 
 "They are boarding up some of the streets," 
 said his son; "do not fear, father. Everything is 
 prepared; and if we make no noise, we shall not 
 be troubled." 
 
 "If we can only keep her out of the Potter's 
 Field— the Potter 's Field ! ' ' cried the father ; " I '11 
 thank God — ^I'll ask no more — ^I'U ask no more!" 
 
 And then he broke down and cried a little, 
 feebly, and got his son's hand in the darkness and 
 put on his own shoulder. 
 
 It was nearly two when they came to St. Paul's 
 and turned the corner to the gate. It was dark 
 below, but some frenzied fools were burning tar- 
 barrels far down Ann Street, and the light flick- 
 
22 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 ered on the top of the church spire. They crossed 
 the churchyard to where a shallow grave had been 
 dug, half way down the hill. The men lowered 
 the body into it ; the old negro gave them a little 
 rouleau of coin, and they went hurriedly away into 
 the night. 
 
 The clergyman came out by and by, with the 
 sexton behind him. He stood high up above the 
 grave, and drew his long cloak about him and 
 lifted an old pomander-box to his face. He was 
 not more foolish than his fellows; in that evil 
 hour men took to charms and to saying of spells. 
 Below the grave and apart, for the curse rested 
 upon them, too, stood Jacob Dolph and his son, the 
 old man leaning on the arm of the younger. Then 
 the clergyman began to read the service for the 
 burial of the dead, over the departed sister — and 
 wife and mother. He spoke low; but his voice 
 seemed to echo in the stillness. He came forward 
 with a certain shrinking, and cast the handful of 
 dust and ashes into the grave. When it was done, 
 the sexton stepped forward and rapidly threw in 
 the earth until he had filled the little hollow even 
 with the ground. Then, with fearful precaution, 
 he laid down the carefully cut sods, and smoothed 
 them until there was no sign of what had been 
 done. The clergyman turned to the two mourners, 
 without moving nearer to them, and lifted up his 
 hands. The old man tried to kneel; but his son 
 held him up, for he was too feeble, and they bent 
 their heads for a moment of silence. The clergy- 
 man went away as he had come ; and Jacob Dolph 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 23 
 
 and his son went back to the carriage. When his 
 father was seated, young Jacob said to the coach- 
 man: "To the new house." 
 
 The heavy coach swung into Broadway, and 
 climbed up the hill out into the open country. 
 There were lights still burning in the farmhouses, 
 bright gleams to east and west, but the silence of 
 the damp summer night hung over the sparse 
 suburbs, and the darkness seemed to grow more 
 intense as they drove away from the city. The 
 trees by the roadside were almost black in the gray 
 mist ; the raw, moist smell of the night, the damp 
 air, chilly upon the high land, came in through the 
 carriage windows. Young Jacob looked out and 
 noted their progress by familiar landmarks on the 
 road, but the old man sat with his head bent on his 
 new black stock. 
 
 It was almost three, and the east was beginning 
 to look dark, as though a storm were settling there 
 in the grayness, when they turned down the 
 straggling street and drew up before the great 
 dark mass that was the new house. The carriage- 
 wheels gritted against the loose stones at the edge 
 of the roadway, and the great door of the house 
 swung open. The light of one wavering candle- 
 flame, held high above her head, fell on the black 
 face of old Chloe, the coachman's wife. There 
 were no candles burning on the high-pitched stair- 
 way ; all was dark behind her in the empty house. 
 
 Young Jacob Dolph helped his father to the 
 ground, and between the young man and the negro 
 old Jacob Dolph wearily climbed the steps. Chloe 
 
24 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 lifted lier apron to her face, and turned to lead 
 them up the stair. Her husband went out to Ms 
 horses, shutting the door softly after him, between 
 Jacob Dolph's old life and the new life that was to 
 begin in the new house. 
 
II 
 
 WHEN young Jacob Dolph came down to 
 breakfast the next morning lie found his 
 father waiting for him in the breakfast- 
 room. The meal was upon the table. Old Chloe 
 stood with her black hands folded upon her white 
 apron, and her pathetic negro eyes following the 
 old gentleman as he moved wistfully about the 
 room. 
 
 Father and son shook hands in silence, and 
 turned to the table. There were three chairs in 
 their accustomed places. They hesitated a half- 
 second, looking at the third great armchair, as 
 though they waited for the mistress of the house 
 to take her place. Then they sat down. It was 
 six years before any one took that third chair, but 
 every morning Jacob Dolph the elder made that 
 little pause before he put himself at the foot of the 
 table. 
 
 On this first morning there was very little said 
 and very little eaten. But when they had made an 
 end of sitting at the table old Jacob Dolph said, 
 with something almost like testiness in his husky 
 voice : 
 
 "Jacob, I want to sell the house." 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 25 
 
26 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 "The old house, I mean; I shall never go back 
 there. ' ' 
 
 His son looked at him with a further inquiry. 
 He felt a sudden new apprehension. The father 
 sat back in his easy-chair, drumming on the arms 
 with nervous fingers. 
 
 "I shall never go back there," he said again. 
 
 "Of course you know best, sir," said young 
 Jacob, gently; "but would it be well to be pre- 
 cipitate? It is possible that you may feel differ- 
 ently some time " 
 
 "There is no 'some time' for me !" broke in the 
 old man, gripping the chair-arms, fiercely; "my 
 time's done — done, sir!" 
 
 Then his voice broke and became plaintively 
 kind. 
 
 "There, there! Forgive me, Jacob, boy. But 
 it 's true, my boy, true. The world 's done, for me ; 
 but there's a world ahead for you, my son, thank 
 God! I'll be patient — I'll be patient. God has 
 been good to me, and I haven't many years to 
 wait, in the course of nature." 
 
 He looked vacantly out of the window, trying to 
 see the unforeseen with his mental sight. 
 
 "While I'm here, Jacob, let the old man have 
 his way. It's a whimsey; I doubt 'tis hardly 
 rational. But I have no heart to go home. Let 
 me learn to live my life here. 'Twill be easier." 
 
 "But do you think it necessary to sell, sir? 
 Could you not hold the house? Are you certain 
 that you would like to have a stranger living 
 there?" 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 27 
 
 **I care not a pin who lives within those four 
 walls now, sir !" cried the elder, with a momentary 
 return of his vehemence. "It's no house to me 
 now. Sell it, sir, sell it I — if there 's any one will give 
 money for it at a time like this. Bring every stick 
 of furniture and every stitch of carpet up here; 
 and let me have my way, Jacob — ^it won't be for 
 long." 
 
 He got up and went blindly out of the room, and 
 his son heard him muttering, "Not for long — not 
 for long, now," as he wandered about the house 
 and went aimlessly into room after room. 
 
 Old Jacob Dolph had always been an indulgent 
 parent, and none kinder ever lived.' But we 
 should hardly call him indulgent to-day. Good as 
 he was to his boy, it had always been with the 
 goodness of a superior. It was the way of his 
 time. A half -century ago the child's position was 
 equivocal. He lived by the grace of God and his 
 parents, and their duty to him was rather a duty 
 to society, born of an abstract morality. Love 
 was given him, not as a right, but as an indulgence. 
 And young Jacob Dolph, in all his grief and anx- 
 iety, was guiltily conscious of a secret thrill of 
 pleasure — ^natural enough, poor boy — in his sud- 
 den elevation to the full dignity of manhood, and 
 his father's abdication of the headship of the 
 house. 
 
 A little later in the day, urged again by the old 
 gentleman, he put on his hat and went to see 
 Abram Van Riper. Mr. Van Riper was now, 
 despite his objections to the pernicious institution 
 
28 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 of country-liouses, a near neighbor of tlie Dolphs. 
 He had yielded, not to fashion, but to yellow fever, 
 and at the very first of the outbreak had bought 
 a house on the outskirts of Greenwich Village, 
 and had moved there in unseemly haste. He had 
 also registered an unnecessarily profane oath 
 that he would never again live within the city 
 limits. 
 
 When young Jacob Dolph came in front of the 
 low, hip-roofed house, whose lower story of 
 undressed stone shone with fresh whitewash, Mr. 
 Van Eiper stood on his stoop and checked his 
 guest at the front gate, a dozen yards away. 
 From this distance he jabbed his big gold-headed 
 cane toward the young man, as though to keep 
 him off. 
 
 "Stay there, sir — ^you, sir, you Jacob Dolph!" 
 he roared, brandishing the big stick. "Stand 
 back, I tell you! Don't come in, sir! Good-day, 
 sir — good-day, good-day, good-day!" (This hur- 
 ried excursus was in deference to a sense of social 
 duty.) "Keep away, confound you, keep away — 
 consume your body, sir, stay where you are ! ' ' 
 
 "I'm not coming any nearer, Mr. Van Riper," 
 said Jacob Dolph, with a smile which he could not 
 help. 
 
 ' ' I can 't have you in here, sir, ' ' went on Mr. Van 
 Riper, with no abatement of his agitation. "I 
 don't want to be inhospitable; but I've got a wife 
 and a son, sir, and you 're infectious — damn it, sir, 
 you 're infectious ! ' ' 
 
 "I'll stay where I am, Mr. Van Riper," said 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 29 
 
 young Jacob, smiling again. "I only came with a 
 message from my father. ' ' 
 
 * * With a what ? " screamed Mr. Van Riper. ' ' I 
 can't have — oh, ay, a message! Well, say it then 
 and be off, like a sensible youngster. Consume it, 
 man, can't you talk farther out in the street?" 
 
 When Mr. Van Riper learned his visitor's mes- 
 sage, he flung his stick on the white pebbles of the 
 clam-shell-bordered path, and swore that he. Van 
 Riper, was the only sane man in a city of lunatics, 
 and that if Jacob Dolph tried to carry out his plan 
 he should be shipped straightway to Blooming- 
 dale. 
 
 But young Jacob had something of his father's 
 patience, and, despite the publicity of the inter- 
 view, he contrived to make Mr. Van Riper under- 
 stand how matters stood. To tell the truth. Van 
 Riper grew quite sober and manageable when he 
 realized that his extravagant imputation of 
 insanity was not so wide of the mark as it might 
 have seemed, and that there was a possibility that 
 his old friend 's mind might be growing weak. He 
 even ventured a little way down the path and 
 permitted Jacob to come to the gate while they 
 discussed the situation. 
 
 "Poor old Dolph — poor old Jacob !" he groaned. 
 "We must keep him out of the hands of the 
 sharks, that we must!" He did not see young 
 Jacob's irrepressible smile at this singular exten- 
 sion of metaphor. * ' He mustn't be allowed to sell 
 that house in open market — ^never, sir ! Confound 
 it, I'll buy it myself before I'll see him fleeced !" 
 
30 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 In the end he agreed, on certain strict conditions 
 of precaution, to see young Jacob the next day and 
 discuss ways and means to save the property. 
 
 "Come here, sir, at ten, and I'll see you in the 
 sitting-room, and we'll find out what we can do for 
 your father — curse it, it makes me feel bad; by 
 gad, it does! Ten to-morrow, then — and come 
 fumigated, young man, don't you forget that — 
 come fumigated, sir!" 
 
 It was Van Eiper who bought the property at 
 last. He paid eighteen thousand dollars for it. 
 This was much less than its value ; but it was more 
 than any one else would have given just at that 
 time, and it was all that Van Eiper could afford. 
 The transaction weighed on the purchaser's mind, 
 however. He had bought the house solely out of 
 kindness, at some momentary inconvenience to 
 himself; and yet it looked as though he were 
 taking advantage of his friend's weakness. 
 Abram Van Eiper was a man who cultivated a 
 clear conscience, of a plain, old-fashioned sort, and 
 the necessity for self-examination was novel and 
 disagreeable to him. 
 
 Life lived itself out at Jacob Dolph's new house 
 whether he liked it or not The furniture came 
 up-town, and was somewhat awkwardly disposed 
 about its new quarters; and in this unhomelike 
 combination of two homes old Mr. Dolph sat him- 
 self down to finish his stint of life. He awoke 
 each morning and found that twenty-four hours of 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 31 
 
 sleep and waking lay before him, to be got through 
 in their regular order, just as they were lived 
 through by men who had an interest in living. He 
 went to bed every night, and crossed off one from 
 a tale of days of which he could not know the 
 length. 
 
 Of course his son, in some measure, saved his 
 existence from emptiness. He was proud of 
 young Jacob — ^fond and proud. He looked upon 
 him as a prince of men, which he was, indeed. He 
 trusted absolutely in the young man, and his trust 
 was well placed. And he knew that his boy loved 
 him. But he had an old man's sad consciousness 
 that he was not necessary to Jacob — that he was 
 an adjunct, at the best, not an integral part of this 
 younger existence. He saw Jacob the younger 
 gradually recovering from his grief for the 
 mother who had left them ; and he knew that even 
 so would Jacob some day recover from grief when 
 his father should have gone. 
 
 He saw this; but it is doubtful if he felt it 
 acutely. Nature was gradually dulling his sensi- 
 bilities with that wonderful anaesthetic of hers, 
 which is so much kinder to the patient than it is to 
 his watching friends. After the first wild freak 
 of selling the house, he showed, for a long time, no 
 marked signs of mental impairment, beyond his 
 lack of interest in the things which he had once 
 cared about — even in the growth of the city he 
 loved. And in a lonely and unoccupied man, 
 sixty-five years of age, this was not unnatural. 
 It was not unnatural, even, if now and then he was 
 
32 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 whimsical, and took odd fancies and prejudices. 
 But nevertheless the work was going on within 
 his brain, little by little, day by day. 
 
 He settled his life into an almost mechanical 
 routine, of which the most active part was his daily 
 walk down into the city. At first he would not go 
 beyond St. Paul's churchyard; but after awhile he 
 began to take timorous strolls among the old busi- 
 ness streets where his life had been passed. He 
 would drop into the offices of his old friends, and 
 would read the market reports with a pretence of 
 great interest, and then he would fold up his spec- 
 tacles and put them in their worn leather case, and 
 walk slowly out. He was always pleased when 
 one of the younger clerks bowed to him and said, 
 "Good-day, Mr. Dolph!" 
 
 It was in the fourth year of his widowhood that 
 he bethought himself of young Jacob's need of a 
 more liberal social life than he had been leading. 
 The boy went about enough ; he was a good deal of 
 a beau, so his father heard; and there was no 
 desirable house in the town that did not welcome 
 handsome, amiable young Dolph. But he showed 
 no signs of taking a wife unto himself, and in those 
 days the bachelor had only a provisional status in 
 society. He was expected to wed, and the whole 
 circle of his friends chorused yearly a deeper 
 regret for the lost sheep, as time made that detest- 
 able thing, an "old bachelor," of him. 
 
 Young Jacob was receiving many courtesies and 
 was making no adequate return. He felt it him- 
 self, but he was too tender of his father's change- 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 33 
 
 less grief to urge him to open the great empty 
 house to their friends. The father, however, felt 
 that it was his duty to sacrifice his own desire for 
 solitude, and, when the winter of 1825 brought 
 home the city's wandering children — there were 
 not so many of the wandering sort in 1825 — ^he 
 insisted that young Jacob should give a dinner to 
 his friends among the gay young bachelors. That 
 would be a beginning; and if all went well they 
 would have an old maiden aunt from Philadelphia 
 to spend the winter with them, and help them to 
 give the dinner parties which do not encourage 
 bachelorhood, but rather convert and reform the 
 coy celibate. 
 
 The news went rapidly through the town. The 
 Dolph hospitality had been famous, and this was 
 taken for a signal that the Dolph doors were to 
 open again. There was great excitement in Hud- 
 son Street and St. John's Park. Maidens, bend- 
 ing over their tambour-frames, working secret 
 hopes and aspirations in with their blossoming 
 silks and worsted, blushed, with faint speculative 
 smiles, as they thought of the vast social possi- 
 bilities of the mistress of the grand Dolph house. 
 Young bachelors, and old bachelors, too, rolled 
 memories of the Dolph Madeira over longing 
 tongues. 
 
 The Dolph cellar, too, had been famous, and just 
 at that period New Yorkers had a fine and fanciful 
 taste in wine, if they had any self-respect what- 
 ever. 
 
 I think it must have been about then that Mr. 
 
34 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 Dominick Lyncli began his missionary labors 
 among the smokers and drinkers of tbis city; be 
 wbo bougbt a vineyard in France and the Vuelta 
 Abajo plantations in Cuba, solely to teacb tbe 
 people of bis beloved New York wbat was tbe 
 positively proper tbing in wines and cigars. If it 
 was not tben, it could not have been mucb later 
 that Mr. Dolpb bad got accustomed to receiving, 
 every now and tben, an unordered and unexpected 
 consignment of wines or Havana cigars, sent up 
 from Little Dock Street — or wbat we call Water 
 Street now, tbe lower end of it. And I am sure 
 tbat be paid Mr. Lyncb's bill witb glowing pride; 
 for Mr. Lyncb extended tbe evangelizing band of 
 culture to none but tbose of pre-eminent social 
 position. 
 
 It was to be quite a large dinner; but it was 
 noticeable tbat none of tbe young men wbo were 
 invited bad engagements of regrettable priority. 
 
 Jacob Dolpb tbe elder looked more interested in 
 life tban be bad looked in four years wben be 
 stood on tbe beartbrug in tbe drawing-room and 
 received bis son's guests. He was a bold figure 
 among all tbe young men, not only because be was 
 tall and wbite-baired, and for tbe moment erect, 
 and of a noble and gracious cast of countenance, 
 but because be clung to bis old style of dress — ^bis 
 knee-breecbes and silk stockings, and bis long coat, 
 black, for tbis great occasion, but of tbe "sbad- 
 belly ' ' pattern. He wore bis bigb black stock, too, 
 and bis snow-wbite bair was gathered behind into 
 a loose peruke. 
 
THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 35 
 
 The young men wore trousers, or pantaloons, as 
 they mostly called them, strapped under their 
 varnished boots. Their coats were cut like our 
 dress-coats, if you can fancy them with a wild 
 amplitude of collar and lapel. They wore large 
 cravats and gaudy waistcoats, and two or three 
 of them who had been too much in England 
 came with shawls or rugs around their shoul- 
 ders. 
 
 They were a fashionable lot of people, and this 
 was a late dinner, so they sat down at six o'clock 
 in the great dining-room — ^not the little breakfast- 
 room — ^with old Jacob Dolph at one end of the 
 table and young Jacob Dolph at the other. 
 
 It was a pleasant dinner, and the wine was good, 
 and the company duly appreciative, although 
 individually critical. 
 
 Old Jacob Dolph had on his right an agreeable 
 French count, just arrived in New York, who was 
 creating a furor; and on his left was Mr. Philip 
 Waters, the oldest of the young men, who, being 
 thirty-five, had a certain consideration for old age. 
 But old Jacob Dolph was not quite at his ease. 
 He did not understand the remarkable decorum of 
 the young men. He himself belonged to the age of 
 "bumpers and no heel-taps," and nobody at his 
 board to-night seemed to care about drinking 
 bumpers, even out of the poor, little, new-fangled 
 claret-glasses, that held only a thimbleful apiece. 
 He had never known a lot of gentlemen, all by 
 themselves, to be so discreet. Before the evening 
 was over he became aware of the fact that he was 
 
36 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 the only man wlio was proposing toasts, and then 
 he proposed no more. 
 
 Things had changed since he was a young buck, 
 and gave bachelor parties. Why, he could remem- 
 ber seeing his own good father — an irreproachable 
 gentleman, surely — ^lock the door of his dining- 
 room on the inside — ay, at just such a dinner as 
 this — and swear that no guest of his should go out 
 of that room sober. And his word had been kept. 
 Times were changing. He thought, somehow, 
 that these young men needed more good port in 
 their veins. 
 
 Toward the end of the festivities he grew silent. 
 He gave no more toasts, and drank no more 
 bumpers, although he might safely have put 
 another bottle or two under his broad waistcoat. 
 But he leaned back in his chair, and rested one 
 hand on the table, playing with his wineglass in 
 an absent-minded way. There was a vague smile 
 on his face; but every now and then he knit his 
 heavy gray brows as if he were trying to work 
 out some problem of memory. Mr. Philip Waters 
 and the French count were talking across him ; he 
 had been in the conversation, but he had dropped 
 out some time before. At last he rose, with his 
 brows knit, and pulled out his huge watch, and 
 looked at its face. Everybody turned toward him, 
 and, at the other end of the table, his son half rose 
 to his feet. He put the watch back in his pocket, 
 and said, in his clear, deep voice: "Gentlemen, I 
 think we will rejoin the ladies." 
 
 There was a little impulsive stir around the 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 37 
 
 table, and then he seemed to understand that he 
 had wandered, and a frightened look came over his 
 face. He tottered backward, and swayed from 
 side to side. Mr. Philip "Waters and the French- 
 man had their arms behind him before he could 
 fall, and in a second or two he had straightened 
 himself up. He made a stately, tremulous 
 apology for what he called his "infelicitous 
 absence of mind, ' ' and then he marched off to bed 
 by himself, suffering no one to go with him. 
 
 A little while later in the evening, Mr. Philip 
 Waters, walking down Broadway "(which thor- 
 oughfare was getting to have a fairly suburban 
 look), informed the French count that in his, Mr. 
 Waters 's, opinion, young Jacob Dolph would own 
 that house before long. 
 
 Young Jacob Dolph 's father insisted on repeti- 
 tions of the bachelor dinner, but he never again 
 appeared in the great dining-room. When there 
 was a stag-party he took his own simple dinner at 
 five o'clock and went to bed early, and lay awake 
 until his son had dismissed the last mild reveller, 
 and he could hear the light, firm, young footstep 
 mounting the stairs to the bedroom door opposite 
 his own. 
 
 That was practically the end of it for old Jacob 
 Dolph. The maiden aunt, who had been invited, 
 was notified that she could not come, for Mr. Dolph 
 was not well enough to open his house that winter. 
 But it was delicately intimated to her that if he 
 grew worse she might still be sent for, and that 
 
38 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 alleviated her natural disappointment. She liked 
 to give parties; but there is also a chastened joy 
 for some people in being at the head of a house of 
 mourning. 
 
 Old Mr. Dolph grew no worse physically, except 
 that he was inclined to make his daily walks 
 shorter, and that he grew fonder of sitting at 
 home in the little breakfast-room, where the sun 
 shone almost all day long, and where Mrs. Dolph 
 had once been fond of coming to sew. Her little 
 square work-table of mahogany stood there still. 
 There the old gentleman liked to dine, and often 
 he dined alone. Young Jacob was in great 
 demand all over town, and his father knew that he 
 ought to go out and amuse himself. And the young 
 man, although he was kind and loving, and never 
 negligent in any office of respect or affection, had 
 that strong youth in him which makes it impossible 
 to sit every day of the week opposite an old man 
 whose world had slipped by him, who knew 
 nothing of youth except to love it and wonder at it. 
 
 In the morning, before he went out for his daily 
 tramp into town, old Jacob would say to young 
 Jacob : 
 
 "I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my boy?" 
 
 And young Jacob would say, "Yes, sir," or 
 "No, sir, I think not. Mrs. Des Anges was in 
 town yesterday, and she asked me to ride up there 
 to-day and dine. And Diana" (Diana was his big 
 black mare) "needs a little work; she's getting 
 badly out of condition. So, if it doesn't matter to 
 
THE STOEY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 39 
 
 you, sir, I'll just run up tliere and get back before 
 the moon sets." 
 
 And the father would answer that it didn't mat- 
 ter, and would send his best respects, through 
 Mrs. Des Anges at King's Bridge, to Madam Des 
 Anges at New Rochelle ; and at night he would sit 
 down alone to his dinner in the breakfast-room, 
 served by old Chloe, who did her humble best to 
 tempt his appetite, which was likely to be feeble 
 when Master Jacob was away. 
 
 Master Jacob had taken to riding to King's 
 Bridge of late. Sometimes he would start out 
 early in the morning, just about the time when 
 young Van Riper was plodding by on his way to 
 the shop. Young Van Riper liked to be at the 
 shop an hour earlier than his father. Old Mr. 
 Dolph was always up, on these occasions, to see 
 his son start off. He loved to look at the boy, in 
 his English riding-boots and breeches, astride of 
 black Diana, who pranced and curvetted up the 
 unpaved road. Young Jacob had her well in 
 hand, but he gave her her head and let her play 
 until they reached Broadway, where he made her 
 strike a rattling regular pace until they got well 
 up the road ; and then she might walk up Bloom- 
 ingdale way or across to Hickory Lane. 
 
 If he went up by the east he was likely to dis- 
 mount at a place which you can see now, a little 
 west and south of McComb's Dam Bridge, where 
 there is a bit of rocky hollow, and a sort of hori- 
 zontal cleft in the rocks that has been called a cave, 
 
40 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 and a water-washed stone above, whose oddly 
 shaped depression is called an Indian's footprint. 
 He would stop there, because right in that hollow, 
 as I can tell you myself, grew, in his time as in 
 mine, the first of the spring flowers. It was full of 
 violets once, carpeted fairly with the pale, delicate 
 petals. 
 
 And up toward the west, on a bridle-path 
 between the hills and the river, as you came 
 toward Fort Washington, going to Tubby Hook — 
 we are refined nowadays, and Tubby Hook is 
 ' ' Inwood ' ' — Heaven help it ! — there were wonder- 
 ful flowers in the woods. The wind-flowers came 
 there early, nestling under the gray rocks that 
 sparkled with garnets; and there bloomed great 
 bunches of Dutchman 's-breeches — not the thin 
 sprays that come ia the late New England spring, 
 but huge clumps that two men could not enclose 
 with linked hands; great masses of scarlet and 
 purple, and — ^mostly — of a waxy white, with 
 something deathlike in their translucent beauty. 
 There, also, he would wade into the swamps 
 around a certain little creek, lured by a hope of the 
 jack-in-the-pulpit, to find only the odorous and dis- 
 appointing skunk-cabbage. And there the woods 
 were full of the aroma of sassafras, and of birch 
 tapped by the earliest woodpecker, whose drum- 
 ming throbbed through the young man's deep and 
 tender musing. 
 
 And — strange enough for a young man who 
 rides only to exercise his black mare — he never 
 came out of those woods Avithout an armful of 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 41 
 
 columbine or the like. And — strange enough for 
 any young man in this world of strange things — 
 when he sat down at the table of Mrs. Des Anges, 
 in her pleasant house near Harlem Creek, Miss 
 Aline Des Anges wore a bunch of these columbines 
 at her throat. Miss Aline Des Anges was a slim 
 girl, not very tall, with great dark eyes that fol- 
 lowed some people with a patient wistfulness. 
 
 One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob 
 found his father in the breakfast-room, and said 
 to him: 
 
 "Father, I am going to marry Aline Des 
 Anges." 
 
 His father, who had been dozing in the sun by 
 the south window, raised his eyes to his son's face 
 with a kindly, blank look, and said, thoughtfully : 
 
 "Des Anges. That's a good family, Jacob, and 
 a wonderful woman, Madam Des Anges. Is she 
 alive yet?" 
 
 When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and 
 strong and well, heard of this, she said : 
 
 "It is the etiquette of France that one family 
 should make the proposition to the other family. 
 Under the circumstances I will be the family that 
 proposes. I will make a precedent. The Des 
 Anges make precedents. ' ' 
 
 And she rode down to the Dolph house in the 
 family carriage — the last time it ever went out — 
 and made her "proposition" to Jacob Dolph the 
 
42 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 elder, and he brightened up most wonderfully, 
 until you would have thought him quite his old 
 self, and he told her what an honor he esteemed 
 the alliance, and paid her compliments a hundred 
 words long. 
 
 And in May of the next year, King's Bridge 
 being out of the question, and etiquette being 
 waived at the universal demand of society, the 
 young couple stood up in the drawing-room of the 
 Dolph house to be wed. 
 
 The ceremony was fashionably late — seven 
 o'clock in the evening. And after it was over, and 
 the young couple had digested what St. Paul had 
 to say about the ordinance of wedlock, and had 
 inaudibly promised to do and be whatever the 
 domine required of them, they were led by the half- 
 dozen groomsmen to the long glass between the 
 front windows, and made to stand up there, with 
 their faces toward the company, and to receive 
 the congratulations of a mighty procession of 
 friends, who all used the same formulas, ex- 
 cept the very old ones, who were delicately in- 
 delicate. 
 
 The bridegroom wore a blue coat and trousers, 
 and a white satin waistcoat embroidered with 
 silver-thread roses and lilies-of-the-valley. The 
 coat was lined with cream-colored satin, quilted in 
 a most elaborate pattern; and his necktie was of 
 satin, too, with embroidered ends. His shirt was 
 a miracle of fine linen. As to the bride, she was 
 in white satin and lace, and at her throat she wore 
 a little bunch of late white columbines, for which 
 
THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 43 
 
 Mr. Jacob Dolph the younger had scoured the 
 woods near Fort Washington. 
 
 There was to be a grand supper, later ; and the 
 time of waiting was filled up with fashionable con- 
 versation. 
 
 That dear old doctor, who was then a dear young 
 doctor, and whose fine snow-crowned face stood in 
 later years as an outward and visible sign of all 
 that was brave, kindly, self-sacrificing, and benevo- 
 lent in the art of healing, was seated by Madam 
 Des Anges, and was telling her, in stately phrase, 
 suited to his auditor, of a certain case of heroism 
 with which he had met in the course of his prac- 
 tice. Mr. Blank, it appeared, had been bitten by 
 a dog that was supposed to be possessed by the 
 rabies. For months he had suffered the agonies 
 of mental suspense and of repeated cauterizing of 
 the flesh, and during those months had concealed 
 his case from his wife, that he might spare her 
 pain — suffering in silence enough to unnerve most 
 men. 
 
 "It was heroic," said Dr. F. 
 
 Madam Des Anges bowed her gray head approv- 
 ingly. 
 
 "I think," she said, "his conduct shows him to 
 be a man of taste. Had he informed his wife of 
 his condition, she might have experienced the most 
 annoying solicitude ; and I am informed that she is 
 a person of feeble character." 
 
 The doctor looked at her, and then down at the 
 floor; and then he asked her if she did not hope 
 that Almaviva Lynch would bring Garcia back 
 
44 THE STOEY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 again, with that marvellous Italian opera, which, 
 as he justly observed, captivated the eye, charmed 
 the ear, and awakened the profoundest emotions 
 of the heart. 
 
 And at that Madam Des Anges showed some 
 animation, and responded that she had listened to 
 some pleasing operas in Paris; but she did not 
 know that they were of Italian origin. 
 
 But if Madam Des Anges was surprised to learn 
 that any good thing could come out of any other 
 country than France, there was another surprise 
 in store for her, and it did not long impend. 
 
 It was only a little while after this that her 
 grandson-in-law, finding her on his right and 
 Abram Van Eiper on his left — ^he had served out 
 his time as a statue in front of the mirror — ^thought 
 it proper to introduce to Madam Des Anges his 
 father's old friend, Mr. Van Eiper. Mr. Van 
 Eiper bowed as low as his waistcoat would allow, 
 and courteously observed that the honor then ac- 
 corded him he had enjoyed earlier in the evening 
 through the kind offices of Mr. Jacob Dolph, senior. 
 
 Madam Des Anges dandled her quizzing-glass 
 as though she meant to put it up to her eye, and 
 said, in a weary way : 
 
 * ' Mr. — ah — ^Van Eiper must pardon me. I have 
 not the power of remembering faces that some peo- 
 ple appear to have ; and my eyes — ^my eyes are not 
 strong." 
 
 Old Van Eiper stared at her, and he turned a 
 turkey-cock purple all over his face, down to the 
 double chin that hung over his white neckerchief. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 45 
 
 "If your ladyship has to buy spectacles," he 
 sputtered, "it needn't be on my account." 
 
 And he stamped off to the sideboard and tried to 
 cool his red-hot rage with potations of Jamaica 
 rum. There his wife found him. She had drawn 
 near when she saw him talking with the great 
 Madam Des Anges, and she tad heard, as she stood 
 hard by and smiled unobtrusively, the end of that 
 brief conversation. Her face, too, was flushed — 
 a more fiery red than her flame-colored satin dress. 
 
 She attacked him in a vehement whisper. 
 
 "Van Riper, what are you doing? I'd almost 
 believe you'd had too much liquor, if I didn't know 
 you hadn't had a drop. Will you ever learn what 
 gentility is? D'ye want us to live and die like 
 toads in a hole? Here you are with your ill man- 
 ners, offending Madam Des Anges, that everybody 
 knows is the best of the best, and there's an end of 
 all likelihood of ever seeing her and her folks, and 
 two nieces unmarried and as good girls as ever 
 was, and such a connection for your son, who 
 hasn't been out of the house it's now twelve 
 months — except to this very wedding here, and 
 you've no thought of your family when once you 
 lose that mighty fine temper of yours, that you 're 
 so prodigious proud of; and where you'll end us, 
 Van Riper, is more than I know, I vow." 
 
 But all she could get out of Van Riper was : 
 
 * ' The old harridan ! She '11 remember my name 
 this year or two to come, I'll warrant ye!" 
 
 It was all over at last, and old black Julius, who 
 
46 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 had been acting as a combination of link-boy and 
 major-domo at tbe foot of tbe front steps, extin- 
 guished his lantern, and went to bed, some time 
 before a little white figure stole up the stairs and 
 slipped into a door that Chloe — ^black Chloe — held 
 open. 
 
 And the next day Jacob Dolph the elder handed 
 the young bride into the new travelling-carriage 
 with his stateliest grace, and Mr. and Mrs. Jacob 
 Dolph, junior, rolled proudly up the road, through 
 Bloomingdale, and across King's Bridge — stop- 
 ping for luncheon at the Des Anges house — over 
 to New Rochelle, where the feminine head of the 
 house of Des Anges received them at her broad 
 front door, and where they had the largest room 
 in her large, old-fashioned house, for one night. 
 Madam Des Anges wished to keep them longer, 
 and was authoritative about it. But young Jacob 
 settled the question of supremacy then and there, 
 with the utmost courtesy, and Madam Des Anges, 
 being great enough to know that she was beaten, 
 sent off the victor on the morrow, with his trem- 
 bling accomplice by his side, and wished them bon 
 voyage as heartily as she possibly could. 
 
 So they started afresh on their bridal tour, and 
 very soon the travelling carriage struck the old 
 Queen Anne's Road, and reached Yonkers. And 
 there, and from there up to Fishkill, they passed 
 from one country-house to another, bright particu- 
 lar stars at this dinner and at that supper, staying 
 a day here and a night there, and having just the 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 47 
 
 sort of sociable, public, restless, rattling good time 
 that neither of them wanted. 
 
 At every country-house where they stayed a day 
 they were pressed to stay a week, and always the 
 whole neighborhood was routed out to pay them 
 social tribute. The neighbors came in by all man- 
 ner of conveyances. One family of aristocrats 
 started at six o 'clock in the morning, and travelled 
 fourteen miles down the river in an ox-cart, the 
 ladies sitting bolt upright, with their hair elabo- 
 rately dressed for the evening's entertainment. 
 And once a regular assembly ball was given in 
 their honor, at a town-hall, the use of which was 
 granted for the purpose specified by unanimous 
 vote of the town council. Of course, they had a 
 very good time; but then there are various sorts 
 of good times. Perhaps they might have selected 
 another sort for themselves. 
 
 There is a story that, on their way back, they 
 put up for several days at a poor little hostelry 
 under the hills below Peekskill, and spent their 
 time in wandering through the woods and picking 
 wild-flowers; but it lacks confirmation, and I 
 should be sorry to believe that two well-brought-up 
 young people would prefer their own society to 
 the unlimited hospitality of their friends in the 
 country. 
 
 Old Jacob Dolph, at home, had the great house 
 all to himself ; and, although black Chloe took ex- 
 cellent care of his material comforts, he was rest- 
 less and troubled. He took most pleasure in a 
 
48 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 London almanac, on whose smudgy pages lie 
 checked off the days. Letters came as often as the 
 steamboat arrived from Albany, and he read them, 
 after his fashion. It took him half the week to 
 get through one missive, and by that time another 
 had arrived. But I fear he did not make much out 
 of them. Still, they gave him one pleasure. He 
 endorsed them carefully with the name of the 
 writer, and the date of receipt, and then he laid 
 them away in his desk, as neatly as he had filed 
 his business letters in his old days of active life. 
 
 Every night he had a candle alight in the hall- 
 way; and if there were a far-off rumble of car- 
 riage-wheels late at night, he would rise from his 
 bed — he was a light sleeper, in his age — and steal 
 out into the corridor, hugging his dressing-robe 
 about him, to peer anxiously down over the balus- 
 ters till the last sound and the last faint hope of 
 his son's return had died away. 
 
 And, indeed, it was late in July when the travel- 
 ling-carriage once more drew up in front of the 
 Dolph house, and old Julius opened the door, and 
 old Mr. Dolph welcomed them, and told them that 
 he had been very lonely in their absence, and that 
 their mother — and then he remembered that their 
 mother was dead, and went into the house with his 
 head bowed low. 
 
Ill 
 
 ST. JOHN'S PARK and Hudson Street and all 
 well-bred New York, for that matter, had its 
 fill of the Dolph hospitality the next winter. 
 It was dinner and ball and rout and merry-making 
 of one sort or another, the season through. The 
 great family sleighs and the little bachelor sleighs 
 whirred and jingled up to the Dolph door surely 
 two, and sometimes four, evenings in every week, 
 and whirred and jingled away again at intensely 
 fashionable hours, such as plain folk used for 
 sleeping. 
 
 They woke up Abram Van Eiper, did the rev- 
 ellers northward bound to country houses on the 
 river-side, and, lying deep in his featherbed, he 
 directed his rumbling imprecations at the panes of 
 glass, that sparkled with frost in the mild moon- 
 light. 
 
 "Oh, come, maidens, come, o'er the blue, rolling wave, 
 The lovely should still be the care of the brave — 
 Trancadillo, trancadillo, traneadillo, dillo, dillo, dillo ! ' ' 
 
 sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they sped 
 out of hearing. 
 
 ' ' Trancadillo ! ' ' rumbled Mr. Van Eiper. " I 'd 
 like to trancadillo them, consume 'em!" and then 
 he cursed his old friend's social circle for a parcel 
 
 49 
 
50 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 of trumpery fools and Mrs. Van Riper, lying by 
 his side, sighed softly with chastened regret and 
 hopeless aspiration. 
 
 But everybody else — everybody who was any- 
 body — blessed the Dolphs and the Dolphs' cellar, 
 and their man-servant and their maid-servant, and 
 their roasted ox and their saddle of venison, and 
 the distinguished stranger who was within their 
 gates; and young Mrs. Dolph was made as wel- 
 come as she made others. 
 
 For the little girl with the great dark eyes took 
 to all this giddiness as naturally as possible — after 
 her quiet fashion. The dark eyes sparkled with 
 subdued pleasure that had no mean pride in it 
 when she sat at the head of her great mahogany 
 table, and smiled at the double row of bright faces 
 that hemmed in the gorgeous display of the Dolph 
 silver and china and fine linen. And it was won- 
 derful how charming were the famous Des Anges 
 manners, when they were softened and sweetened 
 by so much grace and beauty. 
 
 "Who would have thought she had it in her?" 
 said the young ladies down in St. John's Park. 
 "You remember her, don't you, what a shy lit- 
 tle slip of a thing she was when we were at old 
 Dumesnil's together? Who was it used to say 
 that she had had the life grandmothered out of 
 her?" 
 
 "Fine little creature, that wife of Dolph 's," said 
 the young men as they strolled about in Niblo's 
 Garden. "Dolph wouldn't have had the road all 
 to himself if that old dragon of a grandmother had 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 51 
 
 given the girl half a chance. 'Gad, she's an old 
 grenadier! They say that Dolph had to put her 
 through her facings the day after he was married, 
 and that he did it in uncommon fine style, too." 
 
 "He's a lucky devil, that Dolph," the younger 
 ones would sigh. "Nothing to do, all the money 
 he wants, pretty wife, and the best wine in New 
 York ! I wish my old man would cut the shop and 
 try to get an education in wine." 
 
 Their devotion to the frivolities of fashion not- 
 withstanding, the young Dolphs were a loving, and, 
 in a way, a domestic couple. Of course, every- 
 body they knew had to give them a dinner or a 
 ball, or pay them some such social tribute, and 
 there were a myriad calls to be received and re- 
 turned; but they found time for retired commun- 
 ings, even for long drives in the sleigh which, many 
 a time in young Jacob Dolph 's bachelor days, had 
 borne the young man and a female companion — 
 not always the same companion, either — ^up the 
 Bloomingdale Eoad. And in the confidences of 
 those early days young Jacob learned what his 
 gentle little wife told him — ^without herself realiz- 
 ing the pathos of it — ^the story of her crushed, un- 
 childlike youth, loveless till he came, her prince, 
 her deliverer. Dolph understood it ; he had known, 
 of course, that she could not have been happy 
 under the regime of Madam Des Anges ; but when 
 he heard the simple tale in all its monotonous 
 detail, and saw spread out before him this poor 
 young life, with its thousand little disappoint- 
 ments, submissions, abnegations, and undeserved 
 
52 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 punisliments and needless restrictions, a generous 
 rage glowed in his heart, and perhaps sprang once 
 in a while to his indiscreet lips; and out of this 
 grew a deeper and maturer tenderness than his 
 honeymoon love for the sweet little soul that he 
 had at first sought only for the dark eyes through 
 which it looked out upon its joyless world. 
 
 It is unwise to speak in profane language, it is 
 injudicious to speak disrespectfully of old age, yet 
 the Recording Angel, if he did not see fit to let a 
 tear fall upon the page, perchance found it con- 
 venient to be mending his pen when young Jacob 
 Dolph once uttered certain words that made his 
 wife cry out: 
 
 "Oh, Jacob, don't, please don't. She didn't 
 mean it!" 
 
 This is only a supposition. Perhaps Madam 
 Des Anges really had meant well. But oh, how 
 much happier this world would be if all the people 
 who "mean well" and do ill would only take to 
 meaning ill and doing well ! 
 
 Jacob Dolph the elder took but a doubtful part 
 in all the festivities. The cloud that had hung 
 dimly over him had begun to show little rifts ; but 
 the dark masses between the rifts were thicker and 
 heavier than ever. It was the last brief convul- 
 sive struggle of the patient against the power of 
 the anaesthetic, when the nervous hand goes up to 
 put the cloth away from the mouth, just before the 
 work is done and consciousness slips utterly away. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 53 
 
 and life is no more for the sufferer, thougli Ms 
 heart beat and the breath be warm between his 
 lips. 
 
 When he was bright he was almost like his old 
 self, and these delusive periods came oftenest when 
 he met some old friend, or in quiet morning hours 
 when his daughter — so he always called her — sat 
 at his feet in the sunny breakfast-room, and sewed 
 and listened, or perhaps read to him from Scott's 
 latest novel. 
 
 He may have had some faint sub-consciousness 
 of his condition, for although he took the deepest 
 interest in the balls and the dinners, he would 
 never appear before his son's guests except when 
 he was at his best and brightest. But he loved to 
 sit, withdrawn in a corner, watching the young life 
 that fluttered through the great rooms, smiling to 
 hirdself, and gently pleased if some old crony 
 sought him out and talked of old times — ^the older 
 the times were, the better he remembered them. 
 Indeed, he now recalled some things that he had 
 not thought of since his far-off boyhood. 
 
 In truth, the younger Dolphs often had small 
 heart in their festal doings. But the medical sci- 
 ence of the day, positive, self-satisfied, and blinded 
 by all manner of tradition, gave them, through its 
 ministers, cruelly false hopes of the old man's ulti- 
 mate recovery. Besides, they could not well order 
 things otherwise. The extravagant hospitality of 
 the day demanded such ceremonial, and to have 
 abated any part of it would only have served to 
 grieve and to alarm the object of their care. 
 
54 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 The whole business was a constant pride and joy 
 to old Mr. Jacob Dolph. When there was a dinner 
 to be given, he would follow Aline as she went 
 about the house superintending the preparations 
 of her servants, in her flowered apron of black silk, 
 with her bunch of keys — ^honest keys, those, a good 
 four inches long, with tongues as big as a domino 
 — jingling at her side. He would himself overlook 
 the making ready of the wines, and give oft-re- 
 peated instructions as to the proper temperature 
 for the port, and see that the champagne was put 
 on ice in the huge octagonal cellaret in the dining- 
 room corner. And when all was ready, as like as 
 not he would kiss Aline on the forehead, and say ; 
 
 "I have a headache to-night, my dear, and I 
 think I shall take my dinner in my room. ' ' 
 
 And he would go feebly up stairs, and when old 
 Julius, who always waited upon him, brought up 
 his tray, he would ask : 
 
 "Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody 
 come?" 
 
 And Julius would invariably reply, with pro- 
 found African dignity : 
 
 "Mons'us gran' dinneh, seh! 'B fines' dinneh 
 I eveh witness', seh! I have stood behin' you' 
 chai', seh, this thutty y 'ah, an' I neveh see no such 
 a gran' dinneh, Misteh Do'ph, seh!" 
 
 "Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton, in 
 State Street, Julius," the old man would put in. 
 
 "Excep' that, seh," Julius would gravely reply: 
 "that was a pol-litical dinneh, seh; an' of co'se, a 
 pol'litical dinneh — " an expressive pause — "but 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 55 
 this he' is sho'ly a mons'us fine dinneh, seh." 
 
 His bodily vigor was unimpaired, however, and 
 except that his times of entire mental clearness 
 grew fewer and briefer as the months went on, 
 there was little change in the old gentleman when 
 the spring of 1829 came. He was not insane, he 
 was not idiotic, even at the worst. It seemed to 
 be simply a premature old age that clouded his 
 faculties. He forgot many things, he was weakly 
 absent-minded, often he did not recognize a famil- 
 iar face, and he seemed ever more and more dis- 
 inclined to think and to talk. He liked best to sit 
 in silence, seemingly unconscious of the world 
 about him ; and if he was aroused from his dreamy 
 trance, his wandering speech would show that his 
 last thought — and it might have entered his mind 
 hours before, at the suggestion of some special 
 event — ^was so far back in the past that it dealt 
 with matters beyond his son's knowledge. 
 
 He was allowed to do as he pleased, for in the 
 common affairs of daily life he seemed to be able 
 to care for himself, and he plaintively resented 
 anything that looked like guardianship. So he 
 kept up his custom of walking down into the city, 
 at least as far as St. Paul's. It was thought to be 
 safe enough, for he was a familiar figure in the 
 town, and had friends at every turn. 
 
 But one afternoon he did not return in time for 
 dinner. Young Jacob was out for his afternoon 
 ride, which that day had taken him in the direction 
 
56 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 of the good doctor's house. And when he had 
 reached the house, he found the doctor likewise 
 mounted for a ride. The doctor was going up to 
 Bond Street — the Dolphs' quarter was growing 
 fashionable already — ^to look at a house near 
 Broadway that he had some thoughts of buying, 
 for he was to be married the coming winter. So 
 they had ridden back together, and after a long 
 examination of the house, young Jacob had ridden 
 off for a gallop through the country lanes ; and it 
 was five o'clock, and dinner was on the table, when 
 he came to his father's house and learned from 
 tearful Aline that his father was missing. 
 
 The horse was at the stable door when young 
 Jacob mounted him once more and galloped off to 
 Bond Street, where he found the doctor just ready 
 to turn down the Bowery; and they joined forces 
 and hurried back, and down Broadway, inquiring 
 of the people who sat on their front stoops — it was 
 a late spring evening, warm and fair — if they had 
 seen old Mr. Dolph that day. 
 
 Many had seen him as he went down; but no one 
 could remember that the old gentleman had come 
 back over his accustomed path. At St. Paul's, the 
 sexton thought that Mr. Dolph had prolonged his 
 walk down the street. Further on, some boys had 
 seen him, still going southward. The searchers 
 stopped at one or two of the houses where he might 
 have called ; but there was no trace of him. It was 
 long since old Jacob Dolph had made a formal call. 
 
 But at Bowling Green they were hailed by Mr. 
 Philip Waters, who came toward them with more 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 57 
 
 excitement in his mien than a young man of good 
 society often exhibited. 
 
 "I was going for a carriage, Dolph," he said: 
 "your father is down there in the Battery Park, 
 and I'm afraid — I'm afraid he's had a stroke of 
 paralysis. ' ' 
 
 They hurried down, and found him lying on the 
 grass, his head on the lap of a dark-skinned, ear- 
 ringed Spanish sailor. He had been seen to fall 
 from the bench near by, another maritime man in 
 the crowd about him explained. 
 
 "It was only a minit or two ago," said the hon- 
 est seafarer, swelled with the importance that be- 
 longs to the narrator of a tale of accident and 
 disaster. "He was a-settin' there, had been for 
 two hours 'most, just a-starin' at them houses over 
 there, and all of a sudden chuck forward he went, 
 right on his face. And then a man come along that 
 knowed him, and said he'd go for a kerridge, or 
 I'd 'a' took him on my sloop — she's a-layin' here 
 now, with onions from "Weathersfield — and treated 
 him well; I see he wa'n't no disrespectable charac- 
 ter. Here, Pedro, them's the old man's folks 
 — ^let 'em take him. A-settin' there nigh on 
 two hours, he was, just a-studyin' them houses. 
 B'long near here?" 
 
 Young Jacob had no words for the Connecticut 
 captain. Waters had arrived, with somebody's 
 carriage, confiscated on the highway, and they 
 gently lifted up the old gentleman and set off 
 homeward. They were just in time, for Waters 
 had been the earliest of the evening promenaders 
 
58 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 to reacli the Battery. It was dinner hour — or sup- 
 per hour for many — and the park was given up to 
 the lounging sailors from the river-side streets. 
 
 The doctor 's face was dark. 
 
 * ' No, it is not paralysis, ' ' he said. * * Let us pro- 
 ceed at once to your own home, Mr. Dolph. In 
 view of what I am now inclined to consider his con- 
 dition, I think it would be the most advisable 
 course." 
 
 He was as precise and exact in his speech even 
 then, as he was later on, when years had given an 
 innocent, genial pomposity to his delivery of his 
 rounded sentences. 
 
 They put old Jacob Dolph to bed in the room 
 which he had always occupied, in his married as 
 in his widowed days. He never spoke again ; that 
 day, indeed, he hardly moved. But on the next he 
 stirred uneasily, as though he were striving to 
 change his position. The doctor bled him, and 
 they shifted him as best they could, but he seemed 
 no more comfortable. So the doctor bled him 
 again ; and even that did no good. 
 
 About sunset. Aline, who had watched over him 
 with hardly a moment's rest, left the room for a 
 quarter of an hour, to listen to what the doctors 
 had to say — there were four of them in the draw- 
 ing-room below. When she and her husband en- 
 tered the sick-room again, the old man had moved 
 in his bed. He was lying on his side, his face to 
 the windows that looked southward, and he had 
 raised himself a little on his arm. There was a 
 troubled gaze in his eyes, as of one who strains to 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 59 
 
 see sometliing that is unaccountably missing from 
 his sight. He turned his head a little, as though 
 to listen. Thus gazing, with an inward and spir- 
 itual vision only, at the bay that his eyes might 
 never again see, and listening to the waves whose 
 cadence he should hear no more, the troubled look 
 faded into one of inscrutable peace, and he sank 
 back into the hollow of his son's arm and passed 
 away. 
 
 The next time that the doctor was in the house 
 it was of a snowy night a few days after New 
 Year's Day. It was half -past two o'clock in the 
 morning, and Jacob Dolph — ^no longer Jacob Dolph 
 the younger — ^had been pacing furiously up and 
 down the long dining-room — that being the longest 
 room in the house — ^when the doctor came down 
 stairs, and addressed him with his usual unruffled 
 precision : 
 
 "I will request of you, Dolph, a large glass of 
 port. I need not suggest to you that it is unneces- 
 sary to stint the measure, for the hospitality of 
 this house is " 
 
 "How is she, doctor? For God's sake, tell me 
 — ^is she — is she " 
 
 "The hospitality of this house is prover — " the 
 precise doctor recommenced. 
 
 "Damn the hospitality!" cried Jacob Dolph: 
 "I mean — oh, doctor — ^tell me — ^is anything 
 wrong?" 
 
 "Should I request of you the cup of amity and 
 geniality, Mr. Dolph, were there cause for any- 
 
60 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 thing save rejoicing in this house?" demanded the 
 physician, with amiable severity. "I had thought 
 that my words would have conveyed " 
 
 "It's all over?" 
 
 "And bravely over!" And the doctor nodded 
 his head with a dignified cheerfulness. 
 
 "And may I go to her?" 
 
 "You may, sir, after you have given me my glass 
 of port. But remember, sir " 
 
 Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle 
 and a glass, and thrust them into the doctor's hand, 
 and started for the door. 
 
 "But remember, sir," went on the unperturbed 
 physician, "you must not agitate or excite her. A 
 gentle step, a tranquil tone, and a cheerful and en- 
 couraging address, brief and affectionate, will be 
 all that is permitted." 
 
 Dolph listened in mad impatience, and was over 
 the threshold before the doctor's peremptory call 
 brought him back. 
 
 "What is it now?" he demanded, impatiently. 
 
 The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder 
 and reproach. 
 
 " It is a male child, sir, ' ' he said. 
 
 Jacob Dolph crept up the stairs on tiptoe. As 
 he paused for a moment in front of a door at the 
 head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of an- 
 other Dolph. 
 
 "There's no help for it — ^I've got to do it," said 
 Jacob Dolph. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 61 
 
 It was another wintry morning, just after break- 
 fast. The snow was on the ground, and the sleigh- 
 bells up in Broadway sent down a faint jingling. 
 Ten winters had come and gone, and Mr. Dolph 
 was as comfortably stout as a man should be who 
 is well fed and forty. He stood with his back to 
 the fire, pulling at his whiskers — which formed 
 what was earlier known as a Newgate collar — ^with 
 his right thumb and forefinger. His left thumb 
 was stuck in the armhole of his flowered satin 
 waistcoat, black and shiny. 
 
 Opposite him sat a man of his own age, clean- 
 shaven and sharp-featured. He had calm, some- 
 what cold, gray eyes, a deliberate, self-contained 
 manner of speaking, and a pallid, dry complexion 
 that suited with his thin features. His dress was 
 plain, although it was thoroughly neat. He had 
 no flowered satin waistcoat; but something in his 
 bearing told you that he was a man who had no 
 anxiety about the narrow things of the counting- 
 room; who had no need to ask himself how much 
 money was coming in to-morrow. And at the 
 same time you felt that every cent of whatever 
 might be to-morrow's dues would find its way to 
 his hands as surely as the representative figures 
 stood on his ledger's page. It was young Mr. Van 
 Riper — ^but he, too, had lost his right to that title, 
 not only because of his years, but because, in the 
 garret of the house in Greenwich Village, a cob- 
 web stretched from one of the low beams to the 
 head of old Abram Van Riper 's great walking- 
 stick, which stood in the corner where it had been 
 
62 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 placed, with other nibbish, the day after Abram 
 Van Riper 's funeral. 
 
 "I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be 
 helped," Mr. Van Riper observed, thoughtfully. 
 
 "It can't be helped." 
 
 "I can give you your price, of course," Van 
 Riper went on, with deliberation; "but equally of 
 course, it won't be anything like what the property 
 will bring in the course of a few years." 
 
 Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered, 
 somewhat testily: 
 
 "I'm not making a speculation of it." 
 
 Mr. Van Riper was unmoved. 
 
 "And I'm not making a speculation of you, 
 either," he said, calmly; "I am speaking only for 
 your own benefit, Dolph." 
 
 Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, strode 
 to the window and back again, and then said, with 
 an uneasy little laugh : 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you're quite 
 right, of course. The fact is, I've got to do it. I 
 must have the money, and I must have it now." 
 
 Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin. 
 
 "Is it necessary to raise the money in that par- 
 ticular way? You are temporarily embarrassed 
 — ^I don't wish to be obtrusive — ^but why not bor- 
 row what you need, and give me a mortgage on 
 the house?" 
 
 Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain 
 floridity ; but at this he blushed a hot red. 
 
 "Mortgage on the house? No, sir," he said, 
 with emphasis. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 63 
 
 "Well, any other security, then," was Van 
 Riper 's indifferent amendment. 
 
 Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window and 
 back again, staring hard at the carpet, and knit- 
 ting his brows. 
 
 Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm until 
 his friend spoke once more. 
 
 "I might as well tell you the truth, Van Riper," 
 he said, at last ; " I Ve made a fool of myself. I've 
 lost money, and I've got to pocket the loss. As to 
 borrowing, I've borrowed all I ought to borrow. 
 I won't mortgage the house. This sale simply 
 represents the hole in my capital." 
 
 Something like a look of surprise came into Mr. 
 Van Riper 's wintry eyes. 
 
 "It's none of my business, of course," he 
 observed; "but if you haven't any objection to 
 telling me " 
 
 * ' What did it ? What does for everybody nowa- 
 days? Western lands and Wall Street — ^that's 
 about the whole story. Oh, yes, I know — I ought 
 to have kept out of it. But I didn't. I was 
 nothing better than a fool at such business. I'm 
 properly punished. ' ' 
 
 He sighed as he stood on the hearthrug, his 
 hands under his coat-tails, and his head hanging 
 down. He looked as though many other thoughts 
 were going through his mind than those which he 
 expressed. 
 
 "I wish," he began again, "that my poor old 
 father had brought me up to business ways. I 
 might have kept out of it all. College is a good 
 
64 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 thing for a man, of course; but college doesn't 
 teacli you tow to buy lots in western cit- 
 ies — especially when the western cities aren't 
 built." 
 
 ' ' College teaches you a good many other things, 
 though," said Van Riper, frowning slightly, as he 
 put the tips of his long fingers together; "I wish 
 I'd had your chance, Dolph. My boy shall go to 
 Columbia, that's certain." 
 
 ^^Your boy?" queried Dolph, raising his eye- 
 brows. 
 
 Van Riper smiled. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "my boy. You didn't know I 
 had a boy, did you ? He 's nearly a year old. ' ' 
 
 This made Mr. Jacob Dolph kick at the rug once 
 more, and scowl a little. 
 
 "I'm afraid I haven't been very neighborly. 
 Van Riper " he began; but the other inter- 
 rupted him, smiling good-naturedly. 
 
 "You and I go different ways, Dolph," he said. 
 "We're plain folks over in Greenwich Village, and 
 you — ^you're a man of fashion." 
 
 Jacob Dolph smiled — not very mirthfully. Van 
 Riper 's gaze travelled around the room, quietly 
 curious. 
 
 "It costs money to be a man of fashion, 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 "Yes," said Dolph, "it does." 
 
 There was silence for a minute, which Van Riper 
 broke. 
 
 "If you've got to sell, Dolph, why, it's a pity; 
 but I'll take it. I'll see Ogden to-day, and we can 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 65 
 
 finish the business whenever you wish. But in my 
 opinion, you'd do better to borrow." 
 
 Dolph shook his head. 
 
 "I've been quite enough of a fool," he replied. 
 
 * ' Well, ' ' said Mr. Van Riper, rising, ' ' I must get 
 to the office. You'll hear from Ogden to-morrow. 
 I'm sorry you've got into such a snarl; but — " his 
 lips stretched into something like a smile — "I 
 suppose you'll know better next time. Good- 
 day." 
 
 After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to the 
 door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down the stairs and into 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 "Did he take it?" she asked. 
 
 "Of course he took it," Dolph answered, bit- 
 terly, "at that price." 
 
 "Did he say anything," she inquired again, 
 "about its being hard for us to — to sell it?" 
 
 "He said we had better not sell it now — ^that it 
 would bring more a few years hence." 
 
 "He doesn't understand," said Mrs. Dolph. 
 
 "He couldn't understand," said Mr. Dolph. 
 
 Then she went over to him and kissed him. 
 
 "It's only selling the garden, after all," she 
 said; "it isn't like selling our home." 
 
 He put his arm around her waist, and they 
 walked into the breakfast-room, and looked out on 
 the garden which to-morrow would be theirs no 
 longer, and in a few months would not be a garden 
 at all. 
 
66 THE STORY OP A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 High walls hemmed it in — the walls of the 
 houses which had grown up around them. A few 
 stalks stood up out of the snow, the stalks of old- 
 fashioned flowers — ^hollyhock and larkspur and 
 Joh's-tears and the like — and the lines of the beds 
 were defined by the tiny hedges of box, with the 
 white snow-powder sifted into their dark, shiny 
 green. The bare rose-bushes were there, with 
 their spikes of thorns, and little mounds of snow 
 showed where the glories of the poppy-bed had 
 bloomed. 
 
 Jacob Dolph, looking out, saw the clear summer 
 sunlight lying where the snow lay now. He saw 
 his mother moving about the path, cutting a flower 
 here and a bud there. He saw himself, a little boy 
 in brave breeches, following her about, and looking 
 for the harmless toads, and working each into one 
 of the wonderful legends which he had heard from 
 the old German gardener across the way. He saw 
 his father, too, pacing those paths of summer 
 evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded their pink 
 heads, and glancing up, from time to time, at his 
 mother as she sat knitting at that very window. 
 And, last of all in the line, yet first in his mind, he 
 saw his wife tripping out in the fresh morning, to 
 smile on the flowers she loved, to linger lovingly 
 over the beds of verbena, and to pick the little 
 nosegay that stood by the side of the tall coffee- 
 urn at every sunamer-morning breakfast. 
 
 And the wife, looking out by his side, saw that 
 splendid boy of theirs running over path and bed, 
 glad of the flowers and the air and the freedom. 
 
THE STORY OP A NEW YORK HOUSE 67 
 
 full of young life and boyish sprightliness, his long 
 hair floating behind him, the light of hope and 
 youth in his bright face. 
 
 And to-morrow it would be Van Riper 's; and 
 very soon there would be houses there, to close up 
 the friendly window which had seen so much, 
 which had let so much innocent joy and gladness 
 into the old breakfast-room; and there would be 
 an end of flower-bordered paths and nodding 
 hollyhocks. She put her face upon her husband's 
 shoulder, and cried a little, though he pretended 
 not to know it. When she lifted it, somehow she 
 had got her eyes dry, though they were painfully 
 bright and large. 
 
 "It isn't like selling our house," she said. 
 
IV 
 
 JACOB DOLPH got out of the Broadway stage 
 at Bowling Green, followed by Eustace Dolph. 
 Eustace Dolph at twenty-two was no more like 
 his father than his patrician name was like simple 
 and scriptural Jacob. The elder Dolph was a per- 
 sonable man, certainly; a handsome man, even, 
 who looked to be nearer forty than fifty-two ; and 
 he was well dressed — perhaps a trifle out of the 
 mode — and carried himself with a certain genial 
 dignity, and with the lightness of a man who has 
 not forgotten that he has been a buck in his time. 
 But Eustace was distinctly and unmistakably a 
 dandy. There are superficial differences, of 
 course, between the dandy of 1852 and the dandy 
 of 1887 ; but the structural foundation of all types 
 of dandy is the same through all ages. Back of 
 the clothes — ^back of the ruffles, or the bright neck- 
 cloth, or the high pickardil — ^which may vary with 
 the time or the individual, you will ever find 
 clearly displayed to your eyes the obvious and 
 unmistakable spiritual reason for and cause of the 
 dandy — and it is always self-assertion pushed 
 beyond the bounds of self-respect. 
 
 Now, as a matter of fact, young Eustace's gar- 
 ments were not really worse than many a man has 
 worn from simple, honest bad taste. To be sure, 
 
 68 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 69 
 
 the checked pattern of his trousers was for size 
 like the design of a prison grating; he had a coat 
 so blue that it shimmered in the sunlight ; his neck- 
 tie was of purple satin, and fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made and fringed, and decked with gems fast- 
 ened by little gold chains to other inferior guard- 
 ian gems ; and his waistcoat was conf ected of satin 
 and velvet and damask all at once ; yet you might 
 have put all these things on his father, and, 
 although the effect would not have been pleasant, 
 you would never have called the elder gentleman a 
 dandy. In other words, it was Why young 
 Eustace wore his raiment that made it dandified, 
 and not the inherent gorgeousness of the raiment 
 itself. 
 
 The exchange of attire might readily have been 
 made, so far as the size of the two men was con- 
 cerned. But only in size were they alike. There 
 was nothing of the Dolph in Eustace's face. He 
 bore, indeed, a strong resemblance to his maternal 
 great-grandmother, now many years put away 
 where she could no longer trouble the wicked, and 
 where she had to let the weary be at rest. (And 
 how poor little Aline had wept and wailed over 
 that death, and lamented that she had not been 
 more dutiful as a child!) But his face was not 
 strong, as the face of Madam Des Anges had been. 
 Some strain of a weaker ancestry reappeared in it, 
 and, so to speak, changed the key of the expres- 
 sion. What had been pride in the old lady bor- 
 dered on superciliousness in the young man. 
 What had been sternness became a mere haughti- 
 
70 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 ness. Yet it was a handsome face, and pleasant, 
 too, when the young smile came across it, and you 
 saw the white, small teeth and the bright, intelli- 
 gent light in the dark eyes. 
 
 The two men strolled through the Battery, and 
 then up South Street, and so around through Old 
 Slip. They were on business ; but this was also a 
 pleasure trip to the elder. He walked doubly in 
 spirit through those old streets — a boy by his 
 father's side, a father with his son at his elbow. 
 He had not been often in the region of late years. 
 You remember, he was a man of pleasure. He 
 was one of the first-fruits of metropolitan growth 
 and social culture. His father had made an idler 
 and dilettante of him. It was only half a life at 
 best, he thought, happy as he had been ; blessed as 
 he was in wife and child. He was going to make 
 a business man of his own boy. After all, it was 
 through the workers that great cities grew. Per- 
 haps we were not ripe yet for that European 
 institution, the idler. He himself had certain 
 accomplishments that other Americans had not. 
 He could fldner, for instance. But to have to 
 flaner through fifty or sixty or seventy years 
 palled on the spirit, he found. And one thing was 
 certain, if any Dolph was ever to be an accom- 
 plished -flaneur, and to devote his whole life to that 
 occupation, the Dolph fortune must be vastly 
 increased. Old Jacob Dolph had miscalculated. 
 The sum he had left in 1829 might have done very 
 well for the time, but it was no fortune to idle on 
 among the fashionables of 1852. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 71 
 
 Something of this Mr. Dolph told his son; but 
 the young man, although he listened with respect- 
 ful attention, appeared not to take a deep interest 
 in his father's reminiscences. Jacob Dolph 
 fancied even that Eustace did not care to be 
 reminded of the city's day of small things. 
 Perhaps he had something of the feeling of the 
 successful struggler who tries to forget the shab- 
 biness of the past. K this were the case, his pride 
 must have been chafed, for his father was eloquent 
 in displajdng the powers of an uncommonly fine 
 memory; and he had to hear all about the slips, 
 and the Fly Market, and the gradual extension of 
 the water-front, and the piles on which the old 
 Tontine was built, and the cucumber-wood pipes 
 of the old water-company, still lying under their 
 feet. Once, at least, he showed a genuine enjoy- 
 ment of his father's discourse, and that was when 
 it ran on the great retinue of servants in which 
 Jacob Dolph the elder had indulged himself. I 
 think he was actually pleased when he heard that 
 his grandfather had at one time kept slaves. 
 
 Wandering in this way, to the running accom- 
 paniment of Mr. Dolph 's lecture, they came to 
 Water Street, and here, as though he were 
 reminded of the object of their trip, the father 
 summed up his reminiscences in shape for a neat 
 moral. 
 
 "The city grows, you see, my boy, and we've got 
 to grow with it. I 've stood still ; but you shan 't. " 
 
 "Well, governor," said the younger man, "I'll 
 be frank with you. I don't like the prospect." 
 
72 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 "You will — ^you will, my boy. You'll live to 
 thank me." 
 
 "Very likely you're right, sir; I don't deny it; 
 but, as I say, I don't like the prospect. I don't 
 see — ^with all due respect, sir — ^how any gentleman 
 can like trade. It may be necessary, and of course 
 I don't think it's lowering, or any of that nonsense, 
 you know; but it can't be pleasant. Of course, if 
 your governor had to do it, it was all right ; but I 
 don't believe he liked it any better than I should, 
 or he wouldn't have been so anxious to keep you 
 out of it. ' ' 
 
 ' ' My poor father made a great mistake, Eustace. 
 He would admit it now, I'm sure, if he were alive." 
 
 "Well, sir, I'm going to try it, of course. I'll 
 give it a fair trial. But when the two years are 
 up, sir, as we agreed, I hope you won't say any- 
 thing against my going into the law, or — ^well, 
 yes — " he colored a little — "trying what I can 
 do on the Street. I know what you think about it, 
 sir," he went on, hastily; "but there are two sides 
 to the question, and it's my opinion that, for an 
 intelligent man, there's more money to be made 
 up there in Wall Street in one year than can be 
 got out of haggling over merchandise for a life- 
 time. ' ' 
 
 Jacob Dolph grew red in the face and shook his 
 head vigorously. 
 
 "Don't speak of it, sir, don't speak of it!" he 
 said, vehemently. "It's the curse of the country. 
 If you have any such infernal opinions, don't vent 
 them in my presence, sir. I know what I am talk- 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 73 
 
 ing about. Keep clear of Wall Street, sir. It is 
 the straight road to perdition. ' ' 
 
 They entered one of a row of broad-fronted 
 buildings of notable severity and simplicity of 
 architecture. Four square stone columns upheld 
 its brick front, and on one of these faded gilt 
 letters, on a ground of dingy black, said simply : 
 
 ABRAM VAN RIPER'S SON. 
 
 There was no further announcement of Abram 
 Van Riper 's Son's character, or of the nature of 
 his business. It was assumed that all people knew 
 who Abram Van Riper 's Son was, and that his 
 (Abram Van Riper 's) ship-chandlery trade had 
 long before grown into a great "commission mer- 
 chant's" business. 
 
 It was full summer, and there were no doors 
 between the pillars to bar entrance to the gloomy 
 cavern behind them, which stretched in semi- 
 darkness the whole length and width of the build- 
 ing, save for a narrow strip at the rear, where, 
 behind a windowed partition, clerks were writing 
 at high desks, and where there was an inner and 
 more secluded pen for Abram Van Riper 's son. 
 
 In the front of the cave, to one side, was a hoist- 
 way, where bales and boxes were drawn up from 
 the cellar or swung twisting and twirling to the 
 lofts above. Amidships the place was strewn 
 with small tubs, matting-covered bales and boxes, 
 coils of bright new rope, and odd-looking packages 
 of a hundred sorts, all of them with gaping wounds 
 
74 THE STOBY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 in their envelopes, or otherwise having their 
 pristine integrity wounded. From this it was not 
 difficult to guess that these were samples of mer- 
 chandise. Most of them gave forth odors upon 
 the air, odors ranging from the purely aromatic, 
 suggestive of Oriental fancies or tropic dreams of 
 spice, to the positively offensive — ^the latter varie- 
 ties predominating. 
 
 But certain objects upon a long table were so 
 peculiar in appearance that the visitors could not 
 pass them by with a mere glance of wonder. They 
 looked like small leather pies, badly warped in the 
 baking. A clerk in his shirt sleeves, with his 
 straw hat on one side of his head, whistled as he 
 cut into these, revealing a livid interior, the color 
 of half-cooked veal, which he inspected with care. 
 Eustace was moved to positive curiosity. 
 
 "What are they?" he inquired of the clerk, 
 pride mingling with disgust in his tone, as he 
 caught a smell like unto the smell which might 
 arise from raw smoked salmon that had lain three 
 days in the sun. 
 
 "Central American," responded the clerk, with 
 brevity, and resumed his whistling of 
 
 "My name is Jake Keyset, I was bom in Spring Garden; 
 To make me a preacher my father did try." 
 
 "Central American what?" pursued the 
 inquirer. 
 
 "Rubber!" said the clerk, with a scorn so deep 
 and far beyond expression that the combined pride 
 of the Dolphs and the Des Anges wilted into 
 
THE STOBY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 75 
 
 silence for the moment. As they went on toward 
 the rear office, while the clerk gayly whistled the 
 notes of 
 
 " It '8 no use a-blowing, for I am a hard 'un — 
 I 'm bound to be a butcher, by heavens, or die ! ' ' 
 
 Eustace recovered sufficiently to demand of his 
 father : 
 
 "I say, sir, shall I have to handle that damned 
 stuff?" 
 
 "Hush!" said his senior; "here's Mr. Van 
 Riper." 
 
 Mr. Van Riper came to the office door to wel- 
 come them, with his thin face set in the form of a 
 smile. 
 
 "Ah!" he said, "here's the young man, is he? 
 Fine big fellow, Dolph. Well, sir, so you are 
 going to embrace a mercantile career, are you? 
 That's what they call it in these fine days, Dolph." 
 
 "I am going to try to, sir," replied the young 
 man. 
 
 * ' He will. Van Riper, ' ' put in his father, hastily ; 
 "he'll like it as soon as he gets used to it— I know 
 he will." 
 
 "Well," returned Mr. Van Riper, with an 
 attempt at facetious geniality, "we'll try to get his 
 nose down to the grindstone, we will. Come into 
 my office with me, Dolph, and I'll hand this young 
 gentleman over to old Mr. Daw. Mr. Daw will 
 feel his teeth — eh, Mr. Daw? — see what he doesn't 
 know — Show's that — Mr. Daw? You remember 
 Mr. Daw, Dolph — ^used to be with your father 
 
76 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 before lie went out of business — ^been with us ever 
 since. Let's see, how long is that, Daw? Most 
 fifty years, ain't it?" 
 
 Mr. Daw, who looked as though he might have 
 been one hundred years at the business, wheeled 
 around and descended with stiff deliberation from 
 his high stool, holding his pen in his mouth as he 
 solemnly shook hands with Jacob Dolph, and 
 peered into his face. Then he took the pen from 
 his mouth. 
 
 "Looks like his father," was Mr. Daw's com- 
 ment. "Forty-five years the twenty-ninth of this 
 month, sir. You was a little shaver then. I 
 remember you comin' into the store and whittlin' 
 timber with your little jack-knife. I was only 
 eleven years with your father, sir — eleven years 
 and six months — went to him when I was fourteen 
 years old. That's fifty-six years and six months 
 in the service of two of the best houses that ever 
 was in New York — an' I can do my work with any 
 two young shavers in the town — ain't missed a day 
 in nineteen years now. Your father hadn't never 
 ought to have gone out of business, Mr. Dolph. 
 He did a great business for those days, and he had 
 the makin' of a big house. Goin' to bring your 
 boy up like a good New York merchant, hey? 
 Come along with me, young man, and I'll see if 
 you're half the man your grandfather was. He 
 hadn't never ought to have given up business, Mr. 
 Dolph. But he was all for pleasurin', an' the 
 playhouses, an' havin' fine times. Come along, 
 young man. What's your name?" 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 77 
 
 "Eustace Dolph." 
 
 "Hm! Jacob's better." 
 
 And be led the neopbyte away. 
 
 "Curious old case," said Mr. Van Riper, dryly. 
 "Best accountant in New York. See tbat bigb 
 stool of bis ? — can 't get bim off it. Five years ago 
 I gave bim a low desk abd an armebair. In one 
 week be was back again, roosting up there. Said 
 be didn't feel comfortable with his feet on the 
 ground. He thought that sort of thing might do 
 for aged people, but he wasn't made of cotton- 
 batting." 
 
 Thus began Eustace Dolph's apprenticeship to 
 business, and mightily ill he liked it. 
 
 There came a day, a winter day in 1854, when 
 there was a great agitation among what were then 
 called the real old families of New York. I cannot 
 use the term "fashionable society," because that 
 is more comprehensive, and would include many 
 wealthy and ambitious families from New Eng- 
 land, who were decidedly not of the Dolpbs' set. 
 And then, the Dolpbs could hardly be reckoned 
 among the leaders of fashion. To live on or near 
 the boundaries of fashion's domain is to lower 
 your social status below the absolute pitch of per- 
 fection, and fashion in 1854 drew the line pretty 
 sharply at Bleecker Street. Above Bleecker 
 Street the cream of the cream rose to the surface ; 
 below, you were ranked as skim milk. The social 
 world was spreadiug up into the wastes sacred to 
 
78 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 the circus and the market-garden, although, if 
 Admiral Farragut had stood on his sea-legs where 
 he stands now, he might have had a fairly clear 
 view of Chelsea Village, and seen Alonzo Cush- 
 man 11., or Alonzo Cushman III,, perhaps, going 
 around and collecting his rents. 
 
 But the old families still fought the tide of trade, 
 many of them neck-deep and very uncomfortable. 
 They would not go from St. John's Park, nor from 
 North Moore and Grand Streets. They had not 
 the bourgeois conservatism of the Greenwich "Vil- 
 lagers, which has held them in a solid phalanx 
 almost to this very day; hut still, in a way, they 
 resented the up-town movement, and resisted it. 
 So that when they did have to buy lots in the high- 
 numbered streets they had to pay a fine price for 
 them. 
 
 It was this social party that was stirred by a 
 bit of scandal about the Dolphs. I do not know 
 why I should call it scandal ; yet I am sure society 
 so held it. For did not society whisper it, and nod 
 and wink over it, and tell it in dark corners, and 
 chuckle, and lift its multitudinous hands and its 
 myriad eyebrows, and say in innumerable keys: 
 "Well, upon my word!" and "Well, I should 
 
 think !" and "Who would ever have thought 
 
 of such a thing?" and the like? Did not society 
 make very funny jokes about it, and did not 
 society's professional gossips get many an invita- 
 tion to dinner because they professed to have 
 authentic details of the way Mr. and Mrs. Dolph 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 79 
 
 looked when they spoke about it, and just what 
 they had to say for themselves? 
 
 And yet it was nothing more than this, that Mr, 
 Dolph, being fifty-four, and his wife but a few 
 years younger, were about to give to the world 
 another Dolph. It was odd, I admit; it was 
 unusual; if I must go so far, it was, I suppose, 
 unconventional. But I don't see that it was neces- 
 sary for Mr. Philip "Waters to make an epigram 
 about it. It was a very clever epigram ; but if you 
 had seen dear old Mrs. Dolph, with her rosy cheeks 
 and the gray in her hair, knitting baby-clothes 
 with hands which were still white and plump and 
 comely, while great dark eyes looked timorously 
 into the doubtful, fear-clouded future, I think you 
 would have been ashamed that you had even 
 listened to that epigram. 
 
 The expected event was of special and personal 
 interest to only three people — for, after all, when 
 you think of it, it was not exactly society's busi- 
 ness — and it affected them in widely different 
 ways. 
 
 Jacob Dolph was all tenderness to his wife, and 
 all sympathy with her fears, with her nervous 
 apprehensions, even with her morbid forebodings 
 of impossible ills. He did not repine at the seclu- 
 sion which the situation forced upon them, 
 although his life for years had been given up to 
 society's demands, until pleasure-seeking and 
 pleasure-giving had grown into a routine, which 
 occupied his whole mind. His wife saw him more 
 
80 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 than she had for many years. Clubs and card- 
 parties had few temptations for him now; he sat 
 at home and read to her and talked to her, and did 
 his best to follow the injunctions of the doctor, and 
 "create and preserve in her a spirit of cheerful 
 and hopeful tranquillity, free of unnecessary 
 apprehension." 
 
 But when he did go to the club, when he was in 
 male society, his breast expanded, and if he had to 
 answer a polite inquiry as to Mrs. Dolph's health, 
 I am afraid that he responded: "Mrs. Dolph is 
 extremely well, sir, extremely well ! ' ' with a pride 
 which the moralists will tell you is baseless, 
 unworthy, and unreasonable. 
 
 As for Aline herself, no one may know what 
 timorous hopes stirred in her bosom and charmed 
 the years away, and brought back to her a lovely 
 youth that was almost girlish in its innocent, half- 
 frightened gladness. Outside, this great, wise, 
 eminently proper world that she lived in girded at 
 the old woman who was to bear a child, and 
 laughed behind tasselled fans, and made wondrous 
 merry over Nature's work; but within the old 
 house she sat, and sewed upon the baby-clothes, or, 
 wandering from cupboard to cupboard, found the 
 yellowing garments, laid away more than a score 
 of years before — the poor little lace-decked trifles 
 that her first boy had worn; and she thanked 
 heaven, in her humble way, that twenty-four years 
 had not taken the love and joy of a wife and a 
 mother out of her heart. 
 
 She could not find all her boy's dresses and toys, 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 81 
 
 for she was open-handed, and had given many of 
 them away to people who needed them. This 
 brought about an odd encounter. The third per- 
 son who had a special interest in the prospect of 
 the birth of a Dolph was young Eustace, and he 
 found nothing in it wherewith to be pleased. For 
 Eustace Dolph was of the ultra-fashionables. He 
 cared less for old family than for new ideas, and 
 he did not let himself fall behind in the march of 
 social progress, even though he was, as he 
 admitted with humility bom of pride, only a poor 
 devil of a down-town clerk. If his days were occu- 
 pied, he had his nights to himself, and he length- 
 ened them to suit himself. At first this caused his 
 mother to fret a little; but poor Aline had come 
 into her present world from the conventional 
 seclusion of King's Bridge, and her only authority 
 on questions of masculine license was her husband. 
 He, being appealed to, had to admit that his own 
 hours in youth had been late, and that he supposed 
 the hours of a newer generation should properly 
 be later still. Mr. Dolph forgot, perhaps, that 
 while his early potations had been vinous, those of 
 the later age were distinctly spirituous ; and that 
 the early morning cocktail and the midnight 
 brandy-and-soda were abominations unknown to 
 his own well-bred youth. With port and sherry 
 and good Bordeaux he had been familiar all his 
 life ; a dash of liqueur after dinner did not trouble 
 his digestion; he found a bottle of champagne a 
 pleasant appetizer and a gentle stimulant; but 
 whiskey and gin were to him the drinks of the 
 
82 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 vulgar; and rum and brandy stood on his side- 
 board only to please fiercer tastes tban Ms own. 
 Perhaps, also, he was ignorant of the temptations 
 that assail a young man in a great city, he who had 
 grown up in such a little one that he had at one 
 time known every one who was worth knowing 
 in it. 
 
 However this may have been, Eustace Dolph 
 ruled for himself his going out and his coming in. 
 He went further, and chose his own associates, not 
 always from among the scions of the "old fami- 
 lies." He found those excellent young men 
 ' ' slow, ' ' and he selected for his own private circle 
 a set which was mixed as to origin and unani- 
 mously frivolous as to tendency. The foreign 
 element was strongly represented. Bright young 
 Irishmen of excellent families, and mysterious 
 French and Italian counts and marquises, bor- 
 rowed many of the good gold dollars of the Dolphs, 
 and forgot to return an equivalent in the local 
 currency of the O'Beagans of Castle Eeagan, or 
 the D 'Arcy de Montmorenci, or the Montescudi di 
 Bajocchi. Among this set there was much merry- 
 making when the news from the Dolph household 
 sifted down to them from the gossip-sieve of the 
 best society. They could not very well chaff 
 young Dolph openly, for he was muscular and 
 high-tempered, and, under the most agreeable con- 
 ditions, needed a fight of some sort every six 
 months or so, and liked a bit of trouble in between 
 fights. But a good deal of low and malicious 
 humor came his way, from one source or another. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 83 
 
 and he, with, the hot and concentrated egotism of 
 youth, thought that he was in a ridiculous and try- 
 ing position, and chafed over it. 
 
 There had been innuendos and hints and glanc- 
 ing allusions, but no one had dared to make any 
 direct assault of wit, until one evening young 
 Haskins came into the club "a little flushed with 
 wine." (The "wine" was brandy.) It seems 
 that young Haskins had found at home an ivory 
 rattle which had belonged to Eustace twenty years 
 before, and which Mrs. Dolph had given to Mrs. 
 Haskins when Eustace enlarged his horizon in the 
 matter of toys. 
 
 Haskins being, as I have said, somewhat flushed 
 with brandy, came up to young Dolph, who was 
 smoking in the window, and meditating with 
 frowning brows, and said to him : 
 
 "Here, Dolph, I've done with this. You'd bet- 
 ter take it back — it may be wanted down your 
 way." 
 
 There was a scene. Fortunately, two men were 
 standing just behind Dolph, who were able to 
 throw their arms about him, and hold him back for 
 a few seconds. There would have been further 
 consequences, however, if it had not been that 
 Eustace was in the act of throwing the rattle back 
 at Haskins when the two men caught him. Thus 
 the toy went wide of its mark, and fell in the lap of 
 Philip Waters, who, old as he was, generally chose 
 to be in the company of the young men at the club ; 
 and then Philip Waters did something that almost 
 atones, I think, for the epigram. 
 
84 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 He looked at the date on the rattle, and then he 
 rose up and went between the two young men, and 
 spoke to Haskins. 
 
 "Young man," he said, "when Mrs. Jacob 
 Dolph gave your mother this thing, your father 
 had just failed for the second time in three years. 
 He had come to New York about five years before 
 from Hartford, or Providence, or — Succotash, or 
 whatever his confounded town was. Mr. Jacob 
 Dolph got Mr. Van Riper to give your father an 
 extension on his note, or he would have gone to the 
 debtors ' prison down by the City Hall. As it was, 
 he had to sell his house, and the coat off his back, 
 for all I know. If it hadn't been for the Dolphs, 
 devil the rattle you'd have had, and you wouldn't 
 have been living in Bond Street to-day. ' ' 
 
 After which Mr. Philip Waters sat down and 
 read the evening paper ; and when young Haskins 
 was able to speak he asked young Dolph 's pardon, 
 and got it — at least, a formal assurance that he 
 had it. 
 
 The baby was born in the spring, and everybody 
 said she was the image of her mother. 
 
 There will come a day, it may be, when advanc- 
 ing civilization will civilize sleighing out of exist- 
 ence, as far as New York is concerned. Year 
 after year the days grow fewer that will let a 
 cutter slip up beyond the farthest of the "road- 
 houses" and cross the line into Westchester. 
 People say that the climate is changing; but close 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YOBK HOUSE 85 
 
 observers recognize a sympathy between the 
 decrease of snow-storms and the increase of refine- 
 ment — that is, a sympathy in inverse ratio; a 
 balanced progress in opposite directions. As we 
 grow further and further beyond even old-world 
 standards of polite convention, as we formalize 
 and super-formalize our codes, and steadily elimi- 
 nate every element of amusement from our 
 amusements. Nature in strict conformity represses 
 her joyous exuberance. The snow-storm of the 
 past is gone, because the great public sleigh that 
 held twenty-odd merrymakers in a shell like a 
 circus band-wagon has gone out of fashion among 
 all classes. Now we have, during severe winters, 
 just enough snow from time to time to bear the 
 light sleigh of the young man who, being in good 
 society, is also horsy. When he finds the road 
 vulgar, the poor plebeian souls who go sleighing 
 for the sport of it may sell their red and blue 
 vehicles, for Nature, the sycophant of fashion, will 
 snow no more. 
 
 But they had "good old-fashioned" snow- 
 storms eighty years after the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, and one had fallen upon New York that 
 tempted Mrs. Jacob Dolph to leave her baby, ten 
 months old, in the nurse's charge, and go out with 
 her husband in the great family sleigh for what 
 might be the last ride of the season. 
 
 They had been far up the road — to Arcularius 's, 
 maybe, there swinging around and whirling back. 
 They had flown down the long country road, and 
 back into the city, to meet — it was early in the 
 
86 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 day — the great procession of sleighing folk 
 streaming northward up Broadway. It was one 
 of New York's great, irregular, chance-set carni- 
 vals, and every sleigh was out, from the "exqui- 
 site's" gilded chariot, a shell hardly larger than a 
 fair-sized easy-chair,, to the square, low-hung red 
 sledge of the butcher-boy, who braved it with the 
 fashionables, his Schneider-made clothes on his 
 burly form, and his girl by his side, in her best 
 Bowery bonnet. Everybody was a-sleighing. 
 The jingle of countless bells fell on the crisp air in 
 a sort of broken rhythm — a rude tempo rubato. 
 It was fashionable then. But we — ^we amuse our- 
 selves less boisterously. 
 
 They drew up at the door of the Dolph house, 
 and Jacob Dolph lifted his wife out of the sleigh, 
 and carried her up the steps into the breakfast- 
 room, and set her down in her easy-chair. He was 
 bending over her to ask her if her ride had done 
 her good, when a servant entered and handed htm 
 a letter marked "Immediate." 
 
 He read it, and all the color of the winter's day 
 faded out of his face. 
 
 "I've got to go down to Van Riper 's," he said, 
 ' ' at once ; he wants me. ' ' 
 
 "Has anything happened to — to Eustace!" his 
 wife cried out. 
 
 "He doesn't say so — I suppose — I suppose it's 
 only business of some sort," her husband said. 
 His face was white. "Don't detain me, dear. 
 I'll come back as soon as — as soon as I can get 
 through." 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 87 
 
 He kissed her, and was gone. Half an liour 
 later lie sat in the office of Abram Van Riper 's 
 Son. 
 
 There was no doubting it, no denying it, no 
 palliating it even. The curse had come upon the 
 house of Jacob Dolph, and his son was a thief and 
 a fugitive. 
 
 It was an old story and a simple story. It was 
 the story of the Haskins 's million and the Dolphs ' 
 hundred thousand ; it was the story of the boy with 
 a hundred thousand in prospect trying to spend 
 money against the boy with a million in sight. It 
 was the story of cards, speculation — another name 
 for that sort of gambling which is worse than any 
 on the green cloth — and what is euphemistically 
 known as wine. 
 
 There was enough oral and documentary evi- 
 dence to make the whole story hideously clear to 
 Jacob Dolph, as he sat in that dark little pen of 
 Van Riper 's and had the history of his son's fall 
 spelled out to him, word by word. The boy had 
 proved himself apt and clever in his office work. 
 His education had given him an advantage over 
 all the other clerks, and he had learned his duties 
 with wonderful ease. And when, six months 
 before, old Mr. Daw had let himself down from his 
 stool for the last time, and had muffled up his thin 
 old throat in his great green worsted scarf, and 
 had gone home to die, young Dolph had been put 
 temporarily in his place. In those six months he 
 had done his bad work. Even Van Riper admitted 
 that it must have been a sudden temptation. But 
 
88 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 — lie had yielded. In those six months fifty thou- 
 sand dollars of Abram Van Riper 's money had 
 gone into the gulf that yawned in Wall Street; 
 fifty thousand dollars, not acquired by falsifying 
 the books, but filched outright from the private 
 safe to which he had access ; fifty thousand dollars, 
 in securities which he had turned into money, act- 
 ing as the confidential man of the house. 
 
 When Jacob Dolph, looking like a man of eighty, 
 left the private office of Mr. Van Riper he had two 
 things to do. One was to tell his wife, the other 
 was to assign enough property to Van Riper to 
 cover the amount of the defalcation. Both had 
 been done before night. 
 
V 
 
 IT is to be said for society that there was very- 
 little chuckling and smiling when this fresh 
 piece of news about the Dolphs came out. Nor 
 did the news pass from house to house like wild- 
 fire. It rather leaked out here and there, perco- 
 lating through barriers of friendly silence, slip- 
 ping from discreet lips and repeated in anxious 
 confidence, with all manner of qualifications and 
 hopeful suppositions and suggestions. As a 
 matter of fact, people never really knew just what 
 Eustace Dolph had done, or how far his wrong- 
 doing had carried him. All that was ever posi- 
 tively known was that the boy had got into trouble 
 down-town, and had gone to Europe. The exact 
 nature of the trouble could only be conjectured. 
 The very brokers who had been the instruments of 
 young Dolph 's ruin were not able to separate his 
 authorized speculations from those which were 
 illegitimate. They could do no more than guess, 
 from what they knew of Van Eiper's conservative 
 method of investment, that the young man's 
 unfortunate purchases were made for himself, and 
 they figured these at fifty-five thousand odd hun- 
 dred dollars. 
 
 Somebody, who looked up the deed which Jacob 
 Dolph executed that winter day, found that he had 
 
 89 
 
90 THE STORY OF A NEW YOEK HOUSE 
 
 transferred to Van Eiper real estate of more than 
 tliat value. 
 
 No word ever came from the cold lips of Abram 
 Van Eiper 's son ; and his office was a piece of all 
 but perfect machinery, which dared not creak 
 when he commanded silence. And no one save 
 Van Eiper and Dolph, and their two lawyers, knew 
 the whole truth. Dolph never spoke about it to 
 his wife, after that first night. It was these five 
 people only who knew that Mr. Jacob Dolph had 
 parted with the last bit of real estate that he 
 owned, outside of his own home, and they knew 
 that his other property was of a doubtful sort, that 
 could yield at the best only a very limited income — 
 hardly enough for a man who lived in so great a 
 house, and whose doors were open to all his friends 
 nine months in the year. 
 
 Yet he stayed there, and grew old with an age 
 which the years have not among their gifts. 
 When his little girl was large enough to sit upon 
 his knee, her small hands clutched at a snowy- 
 white mustache, and she complained that his 
 great, dark, hollow eyes never would look "right 
 into hers, away down deep." Yet he loved her, 
 and talked more to her perhaps than to any one 
 else, not even excepting Aline. 
 
 But he never spoke to her of the elder brother 
 whom she could not remember. It was her mother 
 who whispered something of the story to her, and 
 told her not to let papa know that she knew of it, 
 for it would grieve him. Aline herself knew 
 nothing about the boy save that he lived, and lived 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 91 
 
 a criminal. Jacob himself could only have told 
 her that their son was a wandering adventurer, 
 known as a blackleg and sharper in every town in 
 Europe. 
 
 The doors of the great house were closed to aU 
 the world, or opened only for some old friend, who 
 went away very soon out of the presence of a sad- 
 ness beyond all solace of words, or kindly look, or 
 hand-clasp. And so, in something that only the 
 grace of their gentle lives relieved from absolute 
 poverty, those three dwelt in the old house, and 
 let the world slip by them. 
 
 There was no sleep for any one of the little 
 household in the great house on the night of the 
 14th of July, 1863. Doors and blinds were closed ; 
 only a light shone through the half -open slats at a 
 second-story window, and in that room Aline lay 
 sick, almost unto death, her white hair loosed from 
 its usual dainty neatness, her dark eyes turning 
 with an unmeaning gaze from the face of the little 
 girl at her side to the face of her husband at the 
 foot of her bed. Her hands, wrinkled and small, 
 groped over the coverlet, with nervous twitchings, 
 as every now and then the howls or the pistol- 
 shots of the mob in the streets below them fell on 
 her ear. And at every such movement the lips of 
 the girl by her pillow twitched in piteous sym- 
 pathy. About half-past twelve there was sharp 
 firing in volleys to the southward of them, that 
 threw the half -conscious sufferer into an agony of 
 supersensitive disturbance. Then there came a 
 
92 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 silence that seemed unnaturally deep, yet it was 
 only the sileilce of a summer night in the deserted 
 city streets. 
 
 Through it they heard, sharp and sudden, with 
 something inexplicably fearful about it, the patter 
 of running feet. They had heard that sound often 
 enough that night and the night before ; but these 
 feet stopped at their own door, and came up the 
 steps, and the runner beat and pounded on the 
 heavy panels. 
 
 Father and child looked in each other's eyes, and 
 then Jacob Dolph left his post at the foot of the 
 bed, and, passing out of the room, went down the 
 stairs with deliberate tread, and opened the door. 
 
 A negro's face, almost gray in its mad fear, 
 stared into his with a desperate appeal which the 
 lips could not utter. Dolph drew the man in, and 
 shut the door behind him. The negro leaned, 
 trembling and exhausted, against the wall. 
 
 "I knowed you'd take me in, Mist' Dolph," he 
 panted; "I'm feared they seen me, though — ^they 
 was mighty clost behind." 
 
 They were close behind him, indeed. In half a 
 minute the roar of the mob filled the street with 
 one terrible howl and shriek of animal rage, heard 
 high above the tramp of half a thousand feet ; and 
 the beasts of disorder, gathered from all the city's 
 holes and dens of crime, wild for rapine and out- 
 rage, burst upon them, sweeping up the steps, 
 hammering at the great door, crying for the blood 
 of the helpless and the innocent. 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 93 
 
 Foreign faces, almost all! Irish, mostly; but 
 there were heavy, ignorant German types of fea- 
 ture uplifted under the gas-light; sallow, black- 
 mustached Magyar faces; thin, acute, French 
 faces — all with the stamp of old-world ignorance 
 and vice upon them. 
 
 The door opened, and the white-haired old 
 gentleman, erect, haughty, with brightening eyes, 
 faced the leader of the mob — a great fellow, black- 
 bearded, who had a space to himself on the stoop, 
 and swung his broad shoulders from side to side. 
 
 "Have you got a nigger here?" he began, and 
 then stopped short, for Jacob Dolph was looking 
 upon the face of his son. 
 
 Vagabond and outcast, he had the vagabond's 
 quick wit, this leader of infuriate crime, and some 
 one good impulse stirred in him of his forfeited 
 gentlehood. He turned savagely upon his fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 * ' He ain 't here ! " he roared. ' * I told you so — I 
 saw him turn the corner." 
 
 "Shtap an' burrn the bondholder's house!" 
 yelled a man behind, Eustace Dolph turned 
 round with a furious, threatening gesture. 
 
 "You damned fool!" he thundered; "he's no 
 bondholder — he's one of us. Go on, I tell you! 
 Will you let that nigger get away ? " 
 
 He half drove them down the steps. The old 
 man stepped out, his face aflame under his white 
 hair, his whole frame quivering. 
 
 "You lie, sir!" he cried; but his voice was 
 
94 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 drowned in the howl of the mob as it swept around 
 the corner, forgetting all things else in the mad- 
 ness of its hideous chase. 
 
 When Jacob Dolph returned to his wife's 
 chamber, her feeble gaze was lifted to the ceiling. 
 At the sound of his footsteps she let it fall dimly 
 upon his face. He was thankful that, in that last 
 moment of doubtful quickening, she could not read 
 his eyes; and she passed away, smiling sweetly, 
 one of her white old hands in his, and one in her 
 child's. 
 
 Age takes small account of the immediate flight 
 of time. To the young, a year is a mighty span. 
 Be it a happy or an unhappy year that youth looks 
 forward to, it is a vista that stretches far into the 
 future. And when it is done, this interminable 
 year, and youth, just twelve months older, looks 
 back to the first of it, what a long way off it is! 
 What tremendous progress we have have made! 
 How much more we know! How insufficient 
 are the standards by which we measured the 
 world a poor three hundred and sixty-five days 
 back! 
 
 But age has grown habituated to the flight of 
 time. Years ? we have seen so many of them that 
 they make no great impression upon us. What ! is 
 it ten years since young Midas first came to the 
 counting room, asking humbly for an entry-clerk's 
 place — ^he who is now the head of the firm? Bless 
 us ! it seems like yesterday. Is it ten years since 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 95 
 
 we first put on that coat? Why, it must be clean 
 out of the fashion by this time. 
 
 But age does not carry out the thought, and ask 
 if itself be out of fashion. Age knows better. A 
 few wrinkles, a stoop in the back, a certain slow- 
 ness of pace, do not make a man old at sixty — ^nor 
 at seventy, neither ; for now you come to think of 
 it, the ten years we were speaking of is gone, and 
 it is seventy now, and not sixty. Seventy ! Why, 
 'tis not to be thought of as old age — save when it 
 may be necessary to rebuke the easy arrogance of 
 youth. 
 
 The time had come to Jacob Dolph when he 
 could not feel that he was growing old. He was 
 old, of course, in one sense. He was sixty-one 
 when the war broke out ; and they had not allowed 
 him to form a regiment and go to the front at its 
 head. But what was old for a soldier in active 
 service was not old for a well-preserved civilian. 
 True, he could never be the same man again, now 
 that poor Aline was gone. True, he was growing 
 more and more disinclined for active exercise, and 
 he regretted he had led so sedentary a life. But 
 though '64 piled itself up on '63, and '65 on top 
 of that, these arbitrary divisions of time seemed 
 to him but trivial. 
 
 Edith was growing old, perhaps ; getting to be a 
 great girl, taller than her mother and fairer of 
 complexion, yet not unlike her, he sometimes 
 thought, as she began to manage the affairs of the 
 house, and to go about the great shabby mansion 
 with her mother's keys jingling at her girdle. 
 
96 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 For the years went on crawling one over the other, 
 and soon it was 1873, and Edith was eighteen 
 years old. 
 
 One rainy day in this year found Jacob Dolph in 
 Wall Street. Although he himself did not think so, 
 he was an old man to others, and kindly hands such 
 as were to be found even in that infuriate crowd, 
 had helped him up the marble steps of the Sub- 
 Treasury and had given him lodgment on one of 
 the great blocks of marble that dominate the 
 street. From where he stood he could see Wall 
 Street, east and west, and the broad plaza of 
 Broad Street to the south, filled with a compact 
 mass of men, half hidden by a myriad of umbrel- 
 las, rain-soaked, black, glinting in the dim light. 
 So might a Roman legion have looked, when each 
 man raised his targum above his head and came 
 shoulder to shoulder with Ms neighbor for the 
 assault. 
 
 There was a confused, ant-like movement in the 
 vast crowd, and a dull murmur came from it, ris- 
 ing, in places, into excited shouts. Here and there 
 the fringe of the mass swelled up and swept 
 against the steps of some building, forcing, or 
 trying to force, an entiy. Sometimes a narrow 
 stream of men trickled into the half-open door- 
 way; sometimes the great portals closed, and then 
 there was a mad outcry and a low groan, and the 
 foremost on the steps suddenly turned back, and 
 in some strange way slipped through the throng 
 and sped in all directions to bear to hushed or 
 clamorous offices the news that this house or that 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 97 
 
 bank had * * suspended payment. " " Busted, ' ' the 
 panting messengers said to white-faced mer- 
 chants ; and in the slang of the street was conveyed 
 the message of doom. The great panic of 1873 
 was upon the town — the outcome of long years of 
 unwarranted self-confidence, of selfish extrava- 
 gance, of conscienceless speculation — and, as hour 
 after hour passed hy, fortunes were lost in the 
 twinkling of an eye, and the bread was taken out 
 of the mouths of the helpless. 
 
 After Jacob Dolph had stood for some time, 
 looking down upon the tossing sea of black um- 
 brellas, he saw a narrow lane made through the 
 crowd in the wake of a little party of clerks and 
 porters, bearing aid perhaps to some stricken bank. 
 Slipping down, he followed close behind them. 
 Perhaps the jostling hundreds on the sidewalk 
 were gentle with him, seeing that he was an old 
 man; perhaps the strength of excitement nerved 
 him, for he made his way down the street to the 
 flight of steps leading to the door of a tall white 
 building, and he crowded himself up among the 
 pack that was striving to enter. He had even got 
 so far that he could see the line pouring in above 
 his head, when there was a sudden cessation of 
 motion in the press, and one leaf of the outer iron 
 doors swung forward, meeting the other, already 
 closed to bar the crush, and two green-painted 
 panels stood, impassable, between him and the last 
 of the Dolph fortune. 
 
 One howl and roar, and the crowd turned back 
 on itself, and swept him with it. In five minutes 
 
98 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 a thousand offices knew of the greatest failure of 
 the day; and Jacob Dolph was leaning — weak, 
 gasping, dazed — against the side wall of a hallway 
 in William Street, with two stray office-boys star- 
 ing at him out of their small, round, unsjrmpathetic 
 eyes. 
 
 Let us not ask what wild temptation led the old 
 man back again to risk all he owned in that hellish 
 game that is played in the narrow street. We may 
 remember this : that he saw his daughter growing 
 to womanhood in that silent and almost deserted 
 house, shouldered now by low tenements and 
 wretched shops and vile drinking-places ; that he 
 may have pictured for her a brighter life in that 
 world that had long ago left him behind it in his 
 bereaved and disgraced loneliness ; that he had had 
 some vision of her young beauty fulfilling its 
 destiny amid sweeter and fairer surroundings. 
 And let us not forget that he knew no other means 
 than these to win the money for which he cared 
 little ; which he found absolutely needful. 
 
 After Jacob Dolph had yielded for the last time 
 to the temptation that had conquered him once 
 before, and had ruined his son's soul; after that 
 final disastrous battle with the gamblers of Wall 
 Street, wherein he lost the last poor remnant of 
 the great Dolph fortune, giving up with it his 
 father's home forever, certain old bread of his 
 father's casting came back to him upon strange 
 waters. 
 
 Abram Van Riper came to the daughter of the 
 house of Dolph, a little before it became certain 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 99 
 
 that the house must be sold, and told her, in his 
 dry way, that he had to make a business communi- 
 cation to her, for he feared that her father was 
 hardly capable of understanding such matters any 
 longer. She winced a little ; but he took a load off 
 her heart when he made his slow, precise explana- 
 tion. The fact was, he said, that the business 
 transactions between her father and himself, con- 
 sequent upon the defalcation of her brother 
 Eustace, had never been closed, in all these seven- 
 teen years. (Edith Dolph trembled.) It was 
 known at the time that the property transferred by 
 her father rather more than covered the amount of 
 her brother's — peculation. But her father's 
 extreme sensitiveness had led him to avoid a pre- 
 cise adjustment, and as the property transferred 
 was subject to certain long leases, he, Mr. Van 
 Riper, had thought it best to wait until the prop- 
 erty was sold and the account closed, to settle the 
 matter with Mr. Dolph. This had lately been 
 done, and Mr. Van Riper found that, deducting 
 charges, and interest on his money at seven per 
 cent., he had made by the transaction six thousand 
 three hundred and seventy dollars. This sum, he 
 thought, properly belonged to Mr. Dolph. And if 
 Miss Dolph would take the counsel of an old friend 
 of her father's, she would leave the sum in charge 
 of the house of Abram Van Riper 's Sons. The 
 house would invest it at ten per cent. — he stopped 
 and looked at Edith, but she only answered him 
 with innocent eyes of attention — and would pay 
 her six hundred and thirty-seven dollars annually 
 
100 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 in quarterly payments. It might be of assistance 
 to Mr. Dolph in his present situation. 
 
 It was of assistance. They lived on it, father 
 and daughter, with such aid as Decorative 
 Art — ^just introduced to this country — gave in 
 semi-remunerative employment for her deft fin- 
 gers. 
 
 Abram Van Riper, when he left the weeping, 
 grateful girl, marched out into the street, turned 
 his face toward what was once Greenwich Village, 
 and said to his soul : 
 
 "I think that will balance any obligation my 
 father may have put himself under in buying that 
 State Street house too cheap. Now then, old gen- 
 tleman, you can lie easy in your grave. The Van 
 Ripers ain't beholden to the Dolphs, that's sure." 
 
 A few years ago — shall we say as many as 
 ten? — there were two small rooms up in a quiet 
 street in Harlem, tenanted by an old gentleman 
 and a young gentlewoman ; and in the front room, 
 which was the young woman's room by night, but 
 a sort of parlor or sitting-room in the daytime, the 
 old gentleman stood up, four times a year, to have 
 his collar pulled up, and his necktie set right, and 
 his coat dusted off by a pair of small white hands, 
 so that he might be presentable when he went down 
 town to collect certain moneys due him. 
 
 They were small rooms, but they were bright 
 and cheerful, being decorated with sketches and 
 studies of an artistic sort, which may have been 
 
THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 101 
 
 somewhat crude and uncertain as to treatment, but 
 were certainly pleasant and feminine. Yet few 
 saw them save the young woman and the old man. 
 The most frequent visitor was a young artist from 
 the West, who often escorted Miss Dolph to and 
 from the Art League rooms. His name was 
 Rand ; he had studied in Munich ; he had a future 
 before him, and was making money on his pros- 
 pects. He might just as well have lived in 
 luxurious bachelor quarters in the lower part of 
 the city ; but, for reasons of his own, he preferred 
 to live in Harlem. 
 
 Old Mr. Dolph insisted on going regularly every 
 quarter-day to the office of the Van Riper Estate, 
 "to collect," as he said, "the interest due him." 
 Four times a year he went down town on the 
 Eighth Avenue cars, where the conductors soon 
 learned to know him by his shiny black broadcloth 
 coat and his snow-white hair. His daughter was 
 always uneasy about these trips; but her father 
 could not be dissuaded from them. To him they 
 were his one hold on active life — the all-important 
 events of the year. It would have broken his ten- 
 der old heart to tell him that he could not go to 
 collect his "interest." And so she set his necktie 
 right, and he went. 
 
 When he got out of the car at Abingdon Square 
 he tottered, in his slow, old way, to a neat structure 
 which combined modern jauntiness with old-time 
 solidity, and which was labelled simply: "Office of 
 the Van Riper Estate," and there he told the 
 smilingly indulgent clerk that he thought he would 
 
102 THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 "take it in cash, this time," and, taking it in cash, 
 went forth. 
 
 And then he walked down through Greenwich 
 Village into New York city, and into the street 
 where stood the house that his father had huilt. 
 Thus he had gone to view it four times a year, 
 during every year save the first, since he had 
 given it up. 
 
 He had seen it go through one stage of deca- 
 dence after another. First it was rented, by its 
 new owner, to the Jewish pawnbroker, with his 
 numerous family. Good, honest folk they were, 
 who tried to make the house look fine, and the five 
 daughters made the front stoop resplendent of 
 summer evenings. But they had long ago moved 
 up-town. Then it was a cheap boarding-house, 
 and vulgar and flashy men and women swarmed 
 out in the morning and in at eventide. Then it 
 was a lodging-house, and shabby people let them- 
 selves out and in at all hours of the day and night. 
 And last of all it had become a tenement-house, 
 and had fallen into line with its neighbors to left 
 and right, and the window-panes were broken, and 
 the curse of misery and poverty and utter degra- 
 dation had fallen upon it. 
 
 But still it lifted its grand stone front, still it 
 stood, broad and great, among all the houses in the 
 street. And it was the old man's custom, after 
 he had stood on the opposite sidewalk and gazed 
 at it for a while, to go to a little French cafe a 
 block to the eastward, and there to take a glass of 
 vermouth gomme — ^it was a mild drink, and pleas- 
 
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 103 
 
 ing to an old man. Sometimes he chanced to find 
 some one in this place who would listen to his talk 
 about the old house — ^he was very grand ; but they 
 were decent people who went to that cafe, and 
 perhaps would go back with him a block and look 
 at it. We would not have talked to chance peo- 
 ple in an east-side French cafe. But then we have 
 never owned such a house, and lost it — and every- 
 thing else. 
 
 Late one hot summer afternoon young Rand sat 
 in his studio, working enthusiastically on a "com- 
 position." A new school of art had invaded New 
 York, and compositions were everything, for the 
 moment, whether they composed anything or noth- 
 ing. He heard a nervous rattling at his door- 
 knob, and he opened the door. A young woman 
 lifted a sweet, flushed, frightened face to his. 
 
 "Oh, John," she cried, "father hasn't come 
 home yet, and it's five o'clock, and he left home at 
 nine." 
 
 John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and got 
 into his coat. 
 
 "We'll find him; don't worry, dear," he said. 
 
 They found him within an hour. The great city, 
 having no further use for the old Dolph house, was 
 crowding it out of existence. With the crashing 
 of falling bricks, and the creaking of the tackle 
 that swung the great beams downward, the old 
 house was crumbling into a gap between two high 
 walls. Already you could see through to where 
 the bright new bricks were piled at the back to 
 
104 THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 
 
 build the huge eight-story factory that was to take 
 its place. But it was not to see this demolition 
 that the crowd was gathered, filling the narrow 
 ' street. It stood, dense, ugly, vulgar, stolidly in- 
 tent, gazing at the windows of the house opposite 
 — a poor tenement house. 
 
 As they went up the steps they met the young 
 hospital surgeon, going back to his ambulance. 
 
 "You his folks?" he inquired. "Sorry to tell 
 you so, but I can't do any good. Sunstroke, I sup- 
 pose — ^may have been something else — ^but it's col- 
 lapse now, and no mistake. You take charge, 
 sir?" he finished, addressing Eand. 
 
 Jacob Dolph was lying on his back in the bare 
 front room on the first floor. His daughter fell 
 on her knees by his side, and made as though she 
 would throw her arms around him; but, looking 
 in his face, she saw death quietly coming upon him, 
 and she only bent down and kissed him, while her 
 tears wet his brow. 
 
 Meanwhile a tall Southerner, with hair half way 
 down his neck, and kindly eyes that moved in uni- 
 son with his broad gestures, was talking to Rand. 
 
 "I met the ol' gentleman in the French cafe, 
 neah heah," he said, "and he was jus' honing to 
 have me come up and see his house, seh — ^house he 
 used to have. Well, I came right along, an' when 
 we got here, sure 'nough, they's taihin' down that 
 house. Neveh felt so bad in all my life, seh. He 
 wasn't expectin' of it, and I 'lowed 'twuz his old 
 home like, and he was right hahd hit, fo' a fact. 
 He said to me, 'Good-day, seh,' sezee; 'good-day, 
 
THE STOEY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE 105 
 
 seh,' he says to me, an' then he starts across the 
 street, an' first thing I know, he falls down flat on 
 his face, seh. Saw that theah brick an' mortar 
 comin' down, an' fell flat on his face. This hyeh 
 pill-man 'lowed 'twuz sunstroke; but a Southern 
 man like I am don't need to be told what a gentle- 
 man's feelings are when he sees his house a-torn 
 down — no, seh. If you ever down oweh way, seh, 
 I'd be right glad^ " 
 
 But Eand had lifted Edith from the floor, for 
 her father would know her no more, and had 
 passed out of this world, unconscious of all the 
 squalor and ruin about him ; and the poor girl was 
 sobbing on his shoulder. 
 
 He was very tender with her, very sorry for her 
 — ^but he had never known the walls that fell across 
 the way; he was a young man, an artist, with a 
 great future before him, and the world was young 
 to him, and she was to be his wife. 
 
 Still, looking down, he saw that sweetly calm, 
 listening look, that makes beautiful the faces of 
 the dead, come over the face of Jacob Dolph, as 
 though he, lying there, heard the hammers of the 
 workmen breaking down his father's house, brick 
 by brick — and yet the sound could no longer jar 
 upon his ear or grieve his gentle spirit. 
 
THE MIDGE 
 I 
 
 IT was quiet in the Brasserie Pigault, It was a 
 snowy night, for one thing, the air full of a 
 damp, heavy fall of broad white flakes. And 
 then there had been a bad fire down in Grand 
 Street, and the frivolous and pleasure-seeking por- 
 tion of the quarter 's population had gone down to 
 see the wounded people taken out of the ruins. 
 
 So business was dull at the Brasserie Pigault. 
 Undeservedly dull, for the only stains on the dim 
 walls were the stains of time : the table-tops shone 
 like century-polished mahogany, the lusty, friendly 
 fire glowed through the red eyes of the great stove, 
 the sand on the floor was crystal-bright, and bright 
 were Madame Pigault 's black eyes, as she sat 
 knitting behind the desk, and looked toward the 
 window, where a fantail of gas-jets lit up allur- 
 ingly the legend which, when you once got inside, 
 read: 
 
 .TJUADiq.l 
 
 naia j^aPAj 
 
 » c 
 
 QUA SamWAfla ,83HIW 3nn 
 
 .8/iuaupij; 
 
 106 
 
THE MIDGE 107 
 
 It was only a beer-saloon, of course ; but there 
 were a comfort and cleanliness about it that were 
 almost homelike. And, just for this dull hour, the 
 room was filled with the charm of that sacred yet 
 sociable quiet which the male animal of our species 
 loves to establish in whatever serves him for club- 
 room. 
 
 There were little noises, but they were of a gen- 
 tle sort. From time to time there was the joggle 
 of falling coal in the big stove ; and then Louis, the 
 waiter, set it right with a subdued rattling. Some- 
 times a gas-jet flared and wheezed and whistled 
 until madame's knitting-needles clicked on the 
 counter, and Louis flew across the room just as the 
 vicious spurt of flame made up its mind to subside. 
 More often than this, a glass clinked against the 
 shining brass faucet of the keg, and there was a 
 "whish !" of beer, quickly drowned in its own bub- 
 bling overflow. And almost regularly every ten 
 minutes, the crash of shuffling dominoes came from 
 where Mr. Martin and M. Ovide Marie, the curly- 
 haired music-teacher from Amity Street, were 
 playing. 
 
 Just across the room from Mr. Martin and M. 
 Marie, at the table under the corresponding gas- 
 light, sat the Doctor. His overcoat, with its mili- 
 tary-looking cape, was thrown back over his shoul- 
 ders, his elbows were planted on the table, and his 
 head was propped up between the closed fists. A 
 good American face it was, too, that looked at you 
 over those lean, sinewy, nervous American knuck- 
 les. A hatchet-face, if you will, but a pleasant 
 
108 THE MIDGE 
 
 face for all that — strong and fine, witli tlie lines of 
 good stock in it, with force in the clear gray eye 
 and humor in the curl of the mouth. A gentle face 
 — babies pawed the air to get at it as soon as they 
 saw it — and yet, looking at it, you could quite un- 
 derstand that this was the same Captain Peters 
 who, in 1863, carried despatches straight through 
 Quantrell's lines to that interesting arm of the 
 IJ. S. forces which at that time was fighting fire 
 with fire, up and down Missouri. 
 
 Nobody ever called him Captain nowadays, 
 though. Between Broadway and the North River, 
 from Washington Square nearly to Canal Street, 
 old residents hailed him as "Doctor," and with 
 the sensitive modesty of the genuine soldier, he 
 accepted the civilian title, and said nothing about 
 his captaincy or his record. Besides, it was Fate, 
 he thought, that he should be a doctor after some 
 fashion. All the Evert Peterses for five genera- 
 tions back (and there the count stopped) had 
 been doctors. This last Evert Peters had had 
 no liking for a physician's life; but no choice had 
 been given him. When he was old enough to go to 
 medical college, to medical college he went, and 
 there he stayed until six weeks before final exam- 
 ination, when his father died. Then he gave his 
 books and kit to his chum, went back to Oneida, 
 buried his father, took himself to Troy, and set to 
 work studying civil engineering. Then the war 
 broke out, and he found what little he knew of 
 medicine and civil-engineering coming handy in 
 ways he never dreamed of. When he came home 
 
THE MIDGE 109 
 
 from the war, he sought out the quiet region where 
 what is now the French Quarter of New York 
 merges into Greenwich Village, and there settled 
 himself for a week or two, to look about him. And 
 then Ovide Bocage, working in the planing-mill in 
 Prince street, got his hand into the machinery, and 
 would have lost three fingers if it had not been for 
 the timely surgery of the young man just home 
 from the war. And so the young man was grate- 
 fully called ' ' the Doctor. ' ' The ' ' week or two ' ' had 
 become fourteen years, the pale brown hair of the 
 "young man" had grown paler yet with streaks of 
 gray, the great city had grown up and left their 
 quarter far down town, but still the people there- 
 about called Evert Peters ' * the Doctor, ' ' and he oc- 
 cupied a well-established yet ill-defined place in the 
 community, something between the physician and 
 the priest, a sort of amateur ally and adjunct of two 
 professions, accepted by both and recognized by 
 neither; but very dearly loved by all with whom 
 he had to do. 
 
 He knew what was wanted, sitting cozily that 
 night in the Brasserie Pigault, when he heard Piero 
 open the door, put his head in, and shout : 
 
 "Ohe, m'sieu' le docteur!" 
 
 Piero had the singsong of the sea in his cheery 
 hail. He was a Franco-Italian, and the first voyage 
 he ever made was his voyage to this country, in 
 1867, on the bark Mariana III. As the rest of the 
 Mariana's burden consisted of Cette wines and Por- 
 tuguese sailors, it must have been Piero 's personal 
 virtue that saved her from going down in an unre- 
 
110 THE MIDGE 
 
 grettable shipwreck. Since his arrival Piero had 
 never left the French quarter ; but, with the aid of 
 a pair of rings in his ears and a roll in his walk, he 
 contrived to give a maritime flavor to his life ; and 
 when he entered a room, as far as he possibly could 
 he made you feel that he was just opening the door 
 of your cabin to smile on you with his storm- 
 beaten brown face and report all snug aloft. 
 
 "What's the matter, Piero?" inquired the Doc- 
 tor, with a harmless scowl bringing his bushy gray 
 eyebrows closer together. 
 
 "Ooman goin' die," Piero answered, grinning 
 with all his white teeth: "goin' die bad, down 
 'OustonStrit." 
 
 "Why don't you go for Dr. Milhaud? It's his 
 business, you marine chissy-cat," said the Doctor, 
 trying to be irritable. "How often have I got to 
 tell you that I won't interfere with a regular phy- 
 sician unless it's a case of necessity?" 
 
 "Yes," grinned Piero, catching at the last 
 word: " Necess 'tairee, vair necess'tairee. She 
 goin' die, ev-vair-ee time, shu'." 
 
 The Doctor rose from his table with a little sigh 
 of discomfort and a glance at his half -drunk glass 
 of beer, and then he resolutely buttoned his coat. 
 
 ' ' Where 's Dr. Milhaud ? Down at the fire ? " 
 
 "Yes, sair. Down to ze fi-er. Two men burn', 
 free kill', le petit Coquerel knock' down by engine ; 
 guess lose leg," Piero explained, with great cheer- 
 fulness. "Docf Milhaud got 'em boce, dem fell's 
 ouat bin burn ' — zey don 't ouant go to no hospital. ' ' 
 
 "More fools they," observed the Doctor, lead- 
 
THE MIDGE 111 
 
 ing the way to the door, touching his hat as he 
 passed Mme. Pigault. Piero cast a longing, sug- 
 gestive eye at the bar, and followed him out where 
 the. silent flakes sifted down on them out of the 
 moist blackness above. 
 
 "Who is it now, Piero?" inquired the Doctor, as 
 he strode on, tall and straight, towering above 
 Piero, who rolled along as though he had the whole 
 Spanish Main surging in his legs. 
 
 "Zat Poland lady, wiz ze li'l gal. Her hosban' 
 he die two mont' ago." 
 
 ' ' Why, Piero, ' ' — the Doctor knit his brows again, 
 — "that woman's in the last stages of consumption, 
 sure enough. Milhaud told me about her. You 
 don't want me to go there; you want the priest." 
 
 "No, she don' ouant no prist," and Piero shook 
 his head vigorously: "she sen' fo' you." 
 
 "What's her religion?" 
 
 "Ma foi, I guess she don' got no God nor 
 nossin'. I say to her: 'I get you prist.' — She 
 say: 'You get me prist; prist bring my hosban' 
 back, eh?' I say: 'No; if you got hosban', ouat 
 you ouant of prist? if you no got you' hosban' no 
 mo', zen you ouant prist. Zat ouat prist good 
 f ' — talk good ouen you ain ' got ouat you ouant. ' ' ' 
 
 The Doctor laughed softly. 
 
 "Zen M'sieu' Goubaud — she bo'd wiz M'sieu' 
 Goubaud, he biggin talkin', an' he say: 'You 
 ea;-cuse me, madame ; you die somevair else, I don' 
 care ouaire you go; you die he', in my 'ouse, you 
 got go heaven. Eef you no have prist, you have 
 prodestan'; if you no have prodestan', you have 
 
112 THE MIDGE 
 
 Doct' Pittair.' Zen she say: 'I take Doct' 
 Pittair,' an' M'sieu' Groubaud, he sen' me fo' 
 you." 
 
 It was an old story for the Doctor. Many was 
 the poor outcast, afraid to face priest or clergy- 
 man, who had consented to open his sin-laden heart 
 to the good-natured stranger who was nothing 
 more than a sympathetic fellow-sinner. This was 
 a sort of duty for which the Doctor considered 
 himself utterly unfit; but which chance forced 
 upon him. He went through it all with a grimly 
 humorous hope that some good, in some unseen 
 direction, might come of it all. For himself, he 
 could find, as he said, no sense in it. "Far as I 
 can see," he remarked once, "I'm getting my 
 system saturated with the smell of cabbage, and 
 helping a lot of cussed scoundrels to die easy, when 
 it would be a sight healthier for their eternal souls 
 to take hold and wrastle with their iniquity, and 
 die with some sort of understanding of what their 
 prospects are. I'm afraid some of those fellows 
 that I've sent off so slick and pleasant wouldn't 
 thank me for it now." 
 
 In Houston Street, the dampness and heaviness, 
 and the lifeless fall of the snowflakes, were enough 
 to depress the spirits of even the children, who had 
 long ceased to skylark about the areas and base- 
 ments and up and down the sharp-pitched steps. 
 Beer saloons and groceries kept the street awake 
 with patches of light ; but the weight of the dull, 
 damp weather was over everything. 
 
 M. Goubaud was a dealer in feathers, and the 
 
THE MIDGE 113 
 
 smell of his stock penetrated to tlie uttermost 
 corner of the rickety building in which he kept 
 shop and stored lodgers. But it was lost among 
 a dozen other smells in the close back room to 
 which Piero led the Doctor. Few sick-rooms are 
 sweet, but in this one was an element of unusual 
 offensiveness in the musky cheap perfume which 
 rose from an open trunk in one corner where some 
 bits of gaudy silk and satin showed bright and 
 sharp amid the dirt and grime around them. 
 
 "Theatrical, of course," said the Doctor to him- 
 self. He sat down by the bed while Piero intro- 
 duced him : 
 
 "Docf Pittair!" announced the sea-farer, his 
 head half-way in the door: "All same prist!" and 
 he vanished. 
 
 Emaciated and death-stricken, it was beautiful 
 still, the face that lay pale against the soiled blue 
 ticking of the pillow. Young, too, the Doctor 
 noticed ; scant thirty. A lovely creature she must 
 have been, ten years before, when there was color 
 in those tea-rose cheeks, rosy fire in the pale, 
 shapely lips, life in the tangled mass of dark hair 
 damp with death. Her great black eyes opened as 
 he looked at her, and in the first flash it seemed as 
 though he saw her as she must have been. Then 
 they closed again wearily ; they had taken no notice 
 of his presence. 
 
 Madame Goubaud, sallow, lean and unsjonpa- 
 thetic, bent her hard mechanic face over the sick 
 woman, and raspingly appealed to her to wake up 
 and say her last words to the good doctor. 
 
114 THE MIDGE 
 
 The thin face moved on the pillow in a pettish 
 way, and the eyes remained obstinately closed. 
 
 "Maman!" 
 
 This came from a child, a girl, a thin, small 
 reproduction of the dying woman; a little dark- 
 haired, dark-eyed thing, who had slipped up in 
 front of the visitor, and stood, frowning anxiously 
 as she looked at the invalid. Her meagre, nervous 
 hands grasped a medicine-bottle and a spoon. 
 
 "Maman!" she said again with a vehement 
 severity of tone, while her pale lips trembled: 
 "Maman! parle done! ce n'est pas gentil, ^a — tu 
 le sais bien!" She turned to the Doctor in 
 explanation and dropped into an English of her 
 own. The voice was childish ; but the manner, the 
 management of emphasis and inflection, were 
 absurdly mature. 
 
 "It is with a sick as with a crazy, monsieur. 
 You must treat them as the children. It is no use 
 to reason with them. Maman! tu m'ecoutes?" 
 
 The mother opened her great eyes again, and 
 stared at the Doctor, at first vacantly, then with a 
 fretful summoning of intelligence. 
 
 "C'est M. Peters," said the child, encourag- 
 ingly. Her English words she pronounced cor- 
 rectly, with perhaps the least faintly perceptible 
 trace of a French accent. But the French seemed 
 to slip more easily to her tongue. 
 
 The mother was opening and closing her fever- 
 ish lips, as though to indicate that her mouth was 
 dry and choking. The Doctor noted in the act 
 that little touch of exaggeration and appeal which 
 
THE kiDGE 115 
 
 marks tlie undisciplined invalid. The child put a 
 spoonful of water between her mother's lips and 
 carefully tilted it, standing patiently, with knit 
 brows and watchful eyes, until it was all drunk. 
 
 "You spik Franch?" inquired the woman, 
 hoarsely. The Doctor bowed. His French had 
 never recovered from the accent he had painfully 
 learned at school ; but he had been long enough in 
 the French quarter to accustom his ears to a 
 language that he heard more frequently than his 
 own ; and he could generally follow what was said 
 to him, were it said in anything short of a Basque 
 patois. It was a rapid talker who could force him 
 to help himself out with an occasional "pah si 
 vite!" or "ifcesA;er-c'est-que-ga." 
 
 But he had a hard task this time. The woman's 
 story was brief, and her speech was slow, but so 
 improbable seemed what she had to say, so inco- 
 herent and confused was her manner of saying it, 
 that when, at the end, she drew from under the 
 pillow and thrust at him a loose handful of dirty, 
 creased and crumpled letters and papers, the 
 Doctor took them mechanically, while he stared at 
 the stranger with puzzled eyes, wondering whether 
 she was delirious or he was dazed. 
 
 Her name was Mrs. Eustace Talbot. Her hus- 
 band — ^her dead husband — ^had been a great singer, 
 though no one knew an artist in this accursed 
 country. She was going to die, she knew. She 
 was only thirty; but that was thirty years too 
 much, and she was going to die. It was better so ; 
 there was a good God, after all, for he sometimes 
 
116 THE MIDGE 
 
 let people die. When she was dead, she wanted to 
 have her child sent to England, to her husband's 
 people. Her uncle, Sir Eichard Talbot, would 
 care for the little one. He was a great man — a 
 very rich man — ^if it was any trouble to M. le 
 docteur, he would be well paid for it. He was a 
 demon. Sir Eichard; but at least he was not 
 canaille; he would take the child out of this 
 canaille atmosphere that had killed her poor father 
 and her poor mother. Sir Eichard had a palace ; 
 he would take the child to his palace; she would 
 learn to forget her miserable father and mother ; 
 it was best; she could only remember them as 
 living among canaille — and so — ^the papers would 
 tell all to M. le docteur — so let her die in peace. 
 
 This was told brokenly, excitement struggling 
 with weakness. It ended in a piteous and feeble 
 outcry over her sad case, over her unhappy life; 
 and then she turned her back on Dr. Peters, with a 
 movement of the shoulders that seemed to dismiss 
 him and the world together. There was so much 
 of the spoiled child in it, so much of hysterical 
 affectation and exaggeration, that if the Doctor 
 had not seen the unmistakable signs of death in 
 the damp face, he would have taken it for an 
 extreme case of invalid malingering. 
 
 All the while the little girl stood by the bedside, 
 her large, dark, anxious eyes fixed on her mother. 
 Their look of distressed comprehension was pain- 
 fully mature ; but her upper lip quivered in child- 
 ish fashion, and her breast heaved with big 
 breaths that were almost sobs. She still held the 
 
THE MIDGE 117 
 
 spoon, and at each breath it clicked softly against 
 the glass in her other hand. She said not a word, 
 and her gaze never once dropped from the sick 
 woman's face. 
 
 The Doctor left the bedside and sat down under 
 the one meagre gas-jet to glance over the letters. 
 He was not ready to believe this story of rich and 
 titled connections. But it was true, seemingly. 
 He slowly shuffled over the soiled papers, lifting 
 them up to the dim light, and they bore out the tale. 
 They were mainly short notes from Sir Richard 
 Talbot, of Pollard Hall, Stonehill, Kent, to his 
 brother in Paris. They were of an unfriendly 
 tone, refusing or grudgingly allowing repeated de- 
 mands for money. But they left no doubt that 
 there was a Sir Richard Talbot, and that he had 
 had a scapegrace brother named Eustace, and that 
 this Eustace was an opera-singer. 
 
 He had scarcely run through them when he 
 heard a new sound from the bed, and Mme. Gou- 
 baud bent quickly to look in the changing face. 
 The Doctor crossed the room, but not before the 
 child had thrown herself forward on the bed in a 
 storm of tears and caressing cries and wild 
 appeals to the spirit that was slipping away in 
 dumb unconsciousness. She knew it ; she had seen 
 it before, inexorable death. There was no hope in 
 her instinctive outcry ; she saw, with wide, staring 
 eyes, the light sink out of the face and leave a hard, 
 dull gray, a blank strangeness ; and she knew what 
 it meant. 
 
 She turned in quick, understanding obedience 
 
118 THE MIDGE 
 
 when the Doctor drew her to him and held her face 
 against his breast. For a moment it rested there 
 motionless, and then her sobs broke forth, and her 
 slim body shook and quivered in Dr. Peters 's arms. 
 He pressed her closer, and she clung to him and 
 made no attempt to look behind her. 
 
 Madame Goubaud peered sharply into the still 
 face, crossed herself, pressed her toilworn thumb 
 down on the half-closed eyelids, and then, much 
 as she might have corded up a bundle of feathers, 
 passed an old red print handkerchief under the 
 dead chin, and tied the ends in a knot on top of 
 the head. 
 
 Dr. Peters lifted up the girl in his arms. She 
 yielded herself to him, keeping her face away 
 from the bed until she could hide her eyes on 
 his shoulder. He carried her out of the room. 
 Alphonsine, the homely-faced, good-natured ap- 
 prentice of the house of Goubaud, offered to 
 take la pauvre petite in her own bed that night. 
 They climbed the steep stairs to the little attic 
 room where Alphonsine shivered of winter nights 
 until, under the collection of rags that served her 
 for a coverlid, she generated the animal warmth 
 of healthful sleep. 
 
 It was a poor place for the child, bleak and bare 
 and wind-ridden, and the desperate poverty of the 
 tattered bed-clothes caught the Doctor's eye; but 
 he thought of Mme. Goubaud 's soulless, hard face 
 downstairs, and he left the little one to the com- 
 fort and protection of Alphonsine 's broad bosom. 
 
II 
 
 THE snow had ceased, the wind had risen, and 
 the thermometer had fallen, when the Doc- 
 tor set out for his home. It was late, too, 
 past twelve, but he went out of his way to the little 
 French undertaker's iu Grand street. The under- 
 taker was not in bed; he was "confectioning" an 
 important commission, as he informed his visitor, 
 and he crimped a piece of discolored satin and 
 smiled cheerfully as he promised, with encourag- 
 ing redundancy of assurances, that he would go 
 around in the morning, and supply that hideously 
 meagre attempt at a funeral which just saves the 
 pride of the poor from the keen disgrace of the 
 Potter's Field. A pine cofiSn, a hearse, one hack, 
 and a share of a grave in some Grod-forsaken 
 cemetery in New Jersey — ^you can have all these 
 for twenty dollars. 
 
 And, that being settled, Dr. Peters went on to 
 Washington Square, on the dark south side of 
 which he found one late light glimmering in a high 
 window. The house in which it shone stood a 
 little back from the street, and looked even darker 
 and gloomier than those about it. The one pale 
 light did not give an idea of home; there was 
 nothing of expectant welcome about it; it rather 
 suggested a weary and uncanny wakefulness, and 
 
 119 
 
120 THE MIDGE 
 
 made the Doctor feel that he ought to have been in 
 bed hours before. 
 
 He let himself in "with a great old-fashioned 
 brass key, and toiled up the silent stairs, passing 
 out of the region of perpetual cabbage only when 
 he reached the third story. 
 
 He opened the door of his own private domain 
 with some apprehension ; but he found a bit of fire 
 still in the grate — a fire of anthracite, clinkery, 
 gassy, and dull, yet capable of revivification, and 
 after a temporary eclipse under the blower, it 
 brightened up and gave forth warmth after its 
 kind. 
 
 The Doctor got into his slippers and his old 
 "house-coat," while the fire was rekindling, and, 
 late as it was, he lit his pipe and sat down with his 
 soles close to the grate, to look over the papers in 
 his pocket, for in addition to those he had received 
 from Mrs. Talbot, M. Goubaud had seen fit to 
 entrust him with a bundle of scrap-books, letters 
 and odd documents found in the trunk with the 
 theatrical raiment. 
 
 In the hour that he sat before the fire, he got at 
 no more than the bare outlines of a story that in 
 after years he was able to round out and fill up; 
 but he had enough knowledge of the weak side of 
 human nature to form in that brief glance a judg- 
 ment which better knowledge only confirmed. 
 
 He found out that Eustace Reginald Hunt Hunt 
 Talbot was the son of Sir Hugh Talbot, vaguely 
 described in various clippings from French papers 
 as "un nobleman anglais." His mother was a 
 
THE MIDGE 121 
 
 Frenchwoman, the daughter of a rich banker, 
 Cesar Galif et. He had an uncle, Antoine Galifet, 
 a Gascon, supposed to be a man of vast wealth. 
 Uncle Antoine desired that his nephew Eustace 
 should be brought up in Prance, and it appeared 
 that the Talbot family was very willing to oblige 
 Uncle Antoine. There was reason, indeed, to 
 believe that they were glad to get rid of Eustace, 
 and that Eustace had given them cause for such 
 gladness. He was sent to France at twelve years 
 of age, put through pension and college, and 
 turned loose in Paris ten years after he left Eng- 
 land. Uncle Antoine had probably had some little 
 schemes of his own for shaping the future of his 
 nephew; but, whatever they may have been, they 
 came to naught. From 1852 to 1862, Mr. Eustace 
 Talbot, whom his French friends, by some Gallic 
 association of ideas, called M. le vicomte de Talbot, 
 was a man-about-town in Paris. He had an allow- 
 ance from Uncle Antoine, just large enough to 
 make him wish that it was larger, and when he was 
 very deeply in debt he applied to his fath:;r in Eng- 
 land, who generally sent him half the money he 
 asked for, and just twice as much advice as he had 
 use for. There was nothing to show that he had 
 much to do with the "serious" society of Paris; 
 he was a club man, a little of a rake, a little of a 
 gambler, a handsome, amiable, superficially clever, 
 and fairly accomplished young buck. He found 
 his associates among the fast young Frenchmen 
 who were in the theatre-lobbies when they were not 
 in the theatre dressing-rooms, and among that 
 
122 THE MIDGE 
 
 interesting class of aristocratic Englishmen who 
 occasionally found it convenient to pass a few 
 months in Paris, waiting for something or other to 
 "blow over." He was a good shot, a fair fencer, 
 and an amateur singer — a tenor — of some repute. 
 Various "Chronicles of the Day" spoke of him as 
 "le Mario du Cercle Anglais." There were two 
 or three silvery, rouged daguerreotypes of him, 
 taken about this time, and they showed him as 
 with a black moustache and black whiskers — a sort 
 of modified Newgate collar — much black, curly 
 hair, a swelling chest and a flashing eye, and most 
 marvelous waistcoats. He was doubtless a hand- 
 some man, in a consciously Byronic way. 
 
 Somewhere about 1857 Uncle Antoine died, and 
 his vast wealth turned out to be a modest patri- 
 mony, to which he had added not one sou, in the 
 course of a long, frugal and industrious life as a 
 gentleman-farmer. Mr. Eustace Talbot, who had 
 grumbled at his allowance, grumbled still more 
 when he received his inheritance, and showed his 
 contempt for the pitiful sum by spending it all in 
 four or five years. In 1862 he found himself 
 stranded. His father was dead, and his brother 
 Eichard was now the head of the house. And 
 Brother Richard, when applied to for ready 
 money, honored the draft with even more advice 
 and even less money than had seemed proper to his 
 excellent father. So it came to pass that Mr. 
 Eustace Talbot, being thirty-four, somewhat faded 
 as a buck and as a social success in the Paris clubs, 
 having many debts and no more credit, and being 
 
THE MIDGE 123 
 
 possessed still of a reasonably pleasing face and 
 figure, and a nice little voix de salon, well culti- 
 vated, went on the stage, and made a successful 
 first appearance at the Italiens, singing a small 
 part in Mario's company. 
 
 Hereabouts in the story the documentary 
 material became voluminous, whUe the solid 
 information to be derived therefrom grew dispro- 
 portionately meagre. There were dozens of news- 
 paper paragraphs, polite criticisms and undis- 
 guised puffs, so worded as to feed the vanity of 
 the man at and of whom they were written, and to 
 show to the cold and unprejudiced reader that the 
 poor devil had made a second-class, second-rate 
 success for the moment. 
 
 Then, in 1865, before the success, such as it was, 
 had quite faded away, Mr. Eustace Talbot mar- 
 ried Mile. Lodoiska Leczynska. There was little 
 to be learned about Mile. Leczynska. The Doctor, 
 who had seen Mrs. Talbot die an hour before, could 
 readily believe what the Petit Figaro said of her 
 in 1865 — that she was seventeen years of age, 
 ravishingly beautiful, svelte and brune, and that 
 she belonged to an aristocratic family of Poland. 
 But that was all that the Doctor was destined to 
 know of her origin — all, perhaps, that she herself 
 knew. Talbot had found her, a mere child, in 
 some little foreign colony quartered in Bohemian 
 Paris — a respectable, decent, poverty-stricken, 
 artistic, pretentious little set of people — ^there was 
 enough in the notices of the wedding to show that 
 much — and he had married her out of hand. It 
 
124 THE MIDGE 
 
 was a love-matcli, pure and simple, and the love, at 
 least, lasted : not in its first flush of ideal beauty, 
 perhaps ; but it lasted. 
 
 Sir Eichard, in England, stormed. He thought 
 his brother had disgraced the family name when 
 he took to the stage ; but this marriage was some- 
 thing not to be forgiven. His wounded pride led 
 him to button his pocket all the closer. 
 
 Then the hard times came to the Eustace Tal- 
 bots. For the first year they found life a merry 
 game enough. They were poor; but it was with 
 the picturesque, easy-going poverty of Bohemia. 
 Their hardships were picknicking hardships, and 
 they rather enjoyed roughing it. Talbot procured 
 engagements to sing in the Provinces, and he had 
 an Englishman's faculty for getting credit, and so 
 they went merrily through the twelve-month. But 
 at the end of it the baby was born — they christened 
 her Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot, and she 
 weighed seven pounds when she went to the font — 
 and after that it was poverty out and out, bare, 
 hard, shabby, degrading, worrying, toilsome 
 troubled, ugly poverty. The provinces had grown 
 tired of M. le vicomte de Talbot, with his swelling 
 chest and his voix de salon and his handsome 
 dandy face, with the crow's feet around the cor- 
 ners of his eyes. Paris laughed at him when he 
 tried to get back into grand opera; and when he 
 got down to singing in vaudeville at the "Folies 
 Sylphides," Paris absolutely refused to laugh at 
 him, and voted him a bore. 
 
 And so, at last, they had to go on the road in 
 
THE MIDGE 125 
 
 frank vagabondage, and they wandered hither and 
 thither, all over Europe, going anywhere where 
 anybody would pay for the well-meant labors of a 
 gentlemanly amateur who had once sung with 
 Mario at the Salle Ventadour, and who would now 
 give you "la Pipe de Mon Oncle" or "Mariette, 
 Mariette, Ousque la crevette?" and other pleasing 
 ballads of the day, at five francs a ballad. Spas, 
 baths, gambling-places, seaside towns, they tried 
 them all, and their beggarly pilgrimage took them 
 north, south, east and west. And all the time the 
 little voix de salon grew thinner and reedier, the 
 crow's-feet sank deeper, the marvelous waistcoats 
 grew shabbier and duller. 
 
 The seven-pound baby was growing up and 
 going through the education of Bohemia. The 
 wife was sickly, helpless, loving, faithful, and for- 
 ever complaining. Talbot carried his shabby 
 gentility with a swagger, gambled a little, drank a 
 little, sometimes made his wife more or less 
 jealous, and never forgot — or said he never for- 
 got — that he was an artist, an English gentleman, 
 and one whom the world had used most vilely. 
 
 They were a happy family, too. They were all 
 satisfied with themselves, and rich in complacent 
 self-conceit, and they hung together loyally. 
 True, Mr. Eustace Talbot's vanity occasionally 
 marred the harmony; but only to bring about a 
 completer unison, for his wife extracted a certain 
 proud satisfaction from any testimony to the 
 charms of the husband whom she had learned to 
 worship as a demigod when she was a school-girl 
 
126 THE MIDGE 
 
 and he was a dashing young buck of thirty-seven. 
 He must have had crow's-feet then; he certainly 
 had them now ; but she had never seen them. 
 
 It did not require much imagination to picture 
 the life they led — slipshod, needy, happy-go-lucky; 
 pretentious at its very slovenliest; full of disap- 
 pointments, humiliations and embarrassments. 
 And through it all, in cheap lodging-houses and 
 cheaper hotels, vulgarized by the enforced famili- 
 arities of poverty, much tried, often disillusioned, 
 love sat down and rose up with them, and sweet- 
 ened their bitter bread. 
 
 America was the end of it. Europe was 
 exhausted after ten or eleven years of assiduous 
 debt-sowing, and they turned to the land of gold 
 and barbarians, where artists and gentlemen must 
 certainly be at a premium. Sir Richard was 
 called upon for help — positively for the last time — 
 and he doled out fifty pounds for the privilege of 
 having three thousand miles between himself and 
 his brother. 
 
 They were not long in finding out that America 
 is no place for an artist. After many rebuffs, the 
 thin voix de salon piped its last — given a chance 
 out of pure charity — in a wretched Bowery 
 theatre, where the gallery-boys "guyed" it with 
 cruel applause. And in the very first of the winter 
 a young clerk at Bellevue Hospital grinned as he 
 wrote down in his report to the Bureau of Vital 
 Statistics the elaborate name of Eustace Reginald 
 Hunt Hunt Talbot, dead of typhoid fever. 
 
 The rest Dr. Peters knew, of his own personal 
 
THE MIDGE 127 
 
 knowledge — except that he never knew, nor cared 
 to know by what hideous shifts and devices the few 
 dollars left out of Sir Eichard's fifty pounds had 
 carried mother and child over the three months 
 since the father had fallen sick. 
 
 The Doctor's fire was out. He kicked it, and 
 brought down a shower of white ashes and grey 
 cinders. He rose, and, gathering up the papers 
 with a long-drawn whistle that ended in a sigh, he 
 put them in his desk; and as he did so he said 
 aloud — he had the old bachelor's habit of brief 
 soliloquy — "Queer world, by jingo — ^powerful 
 queer world ! ' ' 
 
 Then, as had been his habit every night for 
 thirteen years, he stalked into the work-room that 
 lay behind his "living-room," and looked at the 
 accumulation of wrought metal that represented 
 his work since 1865, when he set out to invent the 
 ideal cannon. He laid a caressing hand upon the 
 latest of his models, and looked at it for a moment, 
 knitting his brows, as though he thought that per- 
 haps the secret of success might be revealed to him 
 in that glance. It was not, and he turned away, 
 with a grim half -smile, and crossed the living-room 
 again to the little hall-bedroom where his bachelor 
 couch, virginal white, awaited him. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE Doctor awoke the next morning with a 
 special sense of duty to be performed. His 
 days were monotonous enough to make this 
 feeling somewhat of a pleasant surprise. The 
 day, indeed, generally brought its duty of charity 
 or benevolence; but it mostly took the form of a 
 casual call upon his sympathy, the precise nature 
 of which he could not foresee. And, as a rule, he 
 had to minister only to accidental and temporary 
 needs. As he himself put it, it was somebody 
 everlastingly breaking legs at odd times. 
 
 But this time he felt that he had a case on his 
 hands. He had had no chance to accept or refuse 
 the trust Mrs. Talbot had sought to impose upon 
 him. Death had settled that matter. To shirk 
 the obligation now would be, he thought, to take 
 an unfair advantage of a dead woman. Lodoiska 
 Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot was to be handed over to 
 her uncle in England, and he was to do it. He 
 made no more question of that than he would have 
 made fifteen years before had the work been 
 allotted to him by order of his superior officer. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to get an appro- 
 priation from the French Benevolent Society, for 
 the burying of the mother and for the maintenance 
 of the child until such time as Sir Eichard Talbot 
 
 128 
 
THE MIDGE 129 
 
 should take charge of her. Old Luise, who "did 
 for" him, brought the Doctor's breakfast — a 
 scanty and uninviting meal of fried eggs and 
 baker's bread — at half -past seven; and at eight he 
 was at the rooms of the Benevolent Society, and 
 the chirrupy, bald-headed little Secretary was 
 inquiring what he could do for his "good fran' 
 Pittairss." 
 
 His good friend Peters had been' on similar 
 errands many a time before, and went about the 
 business with good-humored patience. The Secre- 
 tary lifted his shoulders and raised his eyebrows 
 and threw up his hands with little gestures of 
 deprecation, and cast a faint shade of polite doubt 
 on each separate statement, while the Doctor told 
 his story and made his requests. It looked very 
 discouraging; but it meant nothing; it was all a 
 matter of form. And after a proper time the 
 Secretary expressed himself satisfied that, in spite 
 of her name (for the father had always sung as 
 "Eustace Talbot"), the orphan waif was a 
 genuine child of France, and, as such, entitled 
 to relief at the hands of the Society. That it was 
 the Society's duty to bury the mother he was not 
 so clear. He wanted to compromise the matter. 
 
 "Doctor Pittairss," he said, with a humorous 
 grimace of hopeless persuasion : "You ar-r-r reech 
 — ^we 'av moch to do — ^manny sings to o^-ten' to — 
 w'y you don't help us — eh? You give 'alf, eh?" 
 
 "Not much," the Doctor placidly replied: "this 
 is none of my funeral, Peloubet. ' ' 
 
 "All a-'ight," chirruped the little Secretary: 
 
130 THE MIDGE 
 
 **se more you !/lmmery-can millionaires you 'ave 
 monnee, se more you ar-r-r stingy, an' se more you 
 talk slangue. Vair' well." His tone changed, 
 and he laid a friendly hand on the Doctor's 
 shoulder: "Eet is all a-'ight, my fran'. I sink 
 sair will be no trobble. "We bary se mosser, I sink. 
 I let you know, anny 'ow. Catholique, eh?" 
 
 "No," said the Doctor, speaking promptly out 
 of his profound ignorance : ' ' Protestant. ' ' 
 
 The Secretary's face fell. This statement 
 seemed to open the question of nationality once 
 more — that is, he tried to look as though he 
 thought it did. But this was again only a matter of 
 form. The Secretary knew Dr. Peters well, and he 
 had handled Dr. Peters 's money, and the success 
 of the application had been a foregone conclusion. 
 He wore a doubtful froAvn as he saw the Doctor to 
 the door; but within an hour he had put the 
 Benevolent machinery in motion, and it was settled 
 that the expenses of Mrs. Talbot's funeral were to 
 be met by the Society, and that the child's board 
 was to be paid at Mme. Goubaud's for three weeks 
 at least, by which time Sir Richard might be heard 
 from. Dr. Peters was to attend to that part of the 
 business, they had agreed. It was the Doctor's 
 own proposition. He felt that there was no neces- 
 sity for further exposure of the skeletons in the 
 Talbot's family closet. 
 
 The cold clearing of the night before had given 
 way to a day of broken weather — pale sunshine 
 and sharp snow-flurries. The dry little crystals 
 tickled the Doctor's face as he strode across Wash- 
 
THE MIDGE 131 
 
 ington Square to find the Reverend Theodore 
 Beatty Pratt, who was the clergyman in charge of 
 the Mission Chapel of the Church of St. Grregorius. 
 
 He did not feel quite easy in his mind about 
 getting Pratt to perform the funeral service, 
 although it seemed to be, on the whole, the best 
 thing to do. He had a tender conscience, and it 
 hurt him to think that perhaps, in spite of her 
 petulant cynicism, the dead woman had been a 
 Catholic at heart, and that she might have resented 
 the idea of being laid to rest with alien rites. But 
 then he did not wish to go to Father Dube. Dube 
 was worth a dozen of Pratt; but Dube had his 
 peculiarities. He was a hard-worked, consci- 
 entious priest, much wearied in spirit, and in his 
 two hundred pounds of flesh, by the endless needs 
 of his ever-straggling flock, and he drew the line of 
 indulgence at impenitent death. It was enough, 
 he thought, for people to neglect religion and 
 morality and soap-and- water all their lives ; when 
 they came to die, the least they could do was to die 
 in the church, and give their poor old pastor a 
 chance to do something for their immortal souls 
 at the one time when they couldn't possibly undo 
 it themselves. 
 
 This was Father Dube's idea, although he never 
 formulated it exactly in this way. And so Dr. 
 Peters felt a little delicacy about calling upon him 
 to say mass for a stranger who had gone out of the 
 world in a distinctly irreligious frame of mind. 
 And Pratt would do just as well. It would never 
 occur to Pratt to inquire whether or no the 
 
132 THE MIDGE 
 
 departed sister over whom he was to read the 
 service had really been a good Church-of -England 
 woman. He lived in a state of mild surprise at 
 the fact that there actually were people in this 
 world who did not belong to the Church of Eng- 
 land. If Dr. Peters asked him to read the service 
 for the burial of the dead, he would read it, as a 
 matter of course. He talked to the Doctor, when- 
 ever they met, about abstruse points of ecclesias- 
 tical law and custom, and he did his duty in the 
 parish, and went away, afterward, when he was 
 called to other fields of labor, without once dream- 
 ing that Peters had never understood the first 
 word of his deliverances. 
 
 Dr. Peters 's religious views had the haziness of 
 extreme catholicity. In his childhood, when his 
 parents were pillars of the Episcopal church in 
 their little village in Oneida county, he had been 
 brought up to look upon a Romanist as something 
 nearly as bad as a Jew, in a different way, and not 
 very far removed in guilt from the heathen. 
 Later life, and much experience of sore-tried 
 humanity, had taught him a lesson of wider 
 charity. He had grown to thiak better of all 
 creeds — and less of any particular one. Now, he 
 was Father Dube's friend, and the friend of the 
 Reverend Theodore Beatty Pratt, and the friend 
 of Brother Strong, of the Bethel. And he liked 
 the Roman Catholic priest best of the three. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Pratt, seated in his study at 
 a very big desk, stroked his thin brown whiskers 
 and rubbed his prominent nose, as he dubiously 
 
THE MIDGE 133 
 
 assented to Dr. Peters 's proposition that the 
 woman should be buried that day. He had never 
 quite reconciled himself, he said, to the almost 
 indecent haste so frequently practiced in the 
 inhumation of the dead among the poorer classes. 
 He would not go so far as to caU it irreligious; 
 but it certainly was repugnant to proper feel- 
 ing. 
 
 "Well, you see, Mr. Pratt," said the Doctor, 
 taking him patiently, as he had taken the Secretary 
 of the Benevolent Society, "it can't very well be 
 helped. We can't ask those Goubaud people to 
 keep the body of a strange woman there. They 
 are poor, you know, and they've had a great deal 
 of trouble with the family already. And then 
 they're Catholics." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Mr. Pratt. 
 
 "And there's the child. It'll be better for her 
 to get it all over at once, don't you think so? 
 Eemember Biedermann's little girl, who stole 
 down in the night and sat by her father's coffin, 
 and went out of her head! She hasn't been right 
 since." 
 
 The Eeverend Mr. Pratt vaguely remembered 
 the occurrence. The Biedermann's were of 
 Father Dube's flock. 
 
 "There's no doubt about it," he observed: 
 "those unfortunate people" (he meant the Cath- 
 olics) "go to the other extreme, and postpone the 
 last offices in a very unwise way." 
 
 " It 's hard on the children, ' ' the Doctor went on ; 
 "and then, you know, it isn't as if we meant to 
 
134 THE MIDGE 
 
 show any disrespect. You know how it is among 
 the poor, Mr. Pratt." 
 
 "Indeed I do; indeed I do," said Mr. Pratt, 
 promptly. He smiled complacently. 
 
 "Well, I'll be there at four o'clock, Dr. Peters. 
 I 'm sure people ought to be very grateful to you — 
 taking all this trouble about things. It's my duty, 
 of course — it's the field in which I expect — and 
 hope — to be of service. But I'm sure it shows a 
 very humane spirit in you, Dr. Peters, it does 
 indeed. ' ' 
 
 The little undertaker had to receive his final 
 directions, and then the Doctor took his noonday 
 sandwich and glass of beer at the Brasserie 
 Pigault, and went home to write a laborious letter 
 to Sir Richard Talbot. This task took much time, 
 for Dr. Peters had the true American sensitiveness 
 about risking a possible snub. He would have 
 chatted with the first tramp he met on a country 
 road ; but he did not like to introduce himself to an 
 English baronet, even to do the baronet a favor. 
 Moreover, he had to make it very clear to this 
 aristocratic stranger that he, Peters, was a dis- 
 interested agent in the business. 
 
 "Can't tell anything about Englishmen," he 
 reflected; "he might want to 'tip me 'arf-a-crown, ' 
 or something." 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock when he went to the 
 house of Groubaud. All preparations had been 
 made, and his first inquiry was for the child. She 
 was by her mother's coffin, Alphonsine told him 
 
THE MIDGE 135 
 
 with sympathy both effusive and honest — ^the poor 
 little one, it was heart-rending, she did not cry, — 
 she was not a child at all — and she would eat 
 nothing. But it was cruel ! she would eat nothing 
 at all — ^not even candy. Alphonsine had pur- 
 chased her seven cents' worth of candy; but she 
 would not eat it. Perhaps she would eat if M. le 
 docteur spoke to her. 
 
 "Let her be," he said; "she'll eat when nature 
 tells her to. She'll come to it in time — she's 
 young. There's candy yet in the world for her. 
 But I'll go up and see if I ain't clumsy enough to 
 make her cry. That's much more necessary." 
 
 When he entered the room up stairs the child 
 was sitting by the coflSn, as Alphonsine had said ; 
 but she rose instantly and came to meet him before 
 he could cross the threshold, stretching out her 
 small hand in silence, giving him one glance as she 
 did so, and then lowering her tearless dark eyes. 
 It was an absolutely unchildlike greeting, and it 
 conveyed a subtle hint that she did not wish him to 
 come nearer to her dead. 
 
 He sat down on a chair by the door and drew 
 her to him. She passively yielded as he put his 
 arm about her ; but when he made a motion to lift 
 her to his knee, she stopped him with a quick 
 instinctive little gesture. There was something of 
 gentle, innocent rebuke in her attitude, as though 
 he had made light of her grief. 
 
 "My dear," he began, softly and somewhat 
 nervously, "we must take your mother away from 
 you before very long." 
 
136 THE MIDGE 
 
 "When?" she asked, without looking at Mm. 
 
 "The clergyman will be here at four o'clock," 
 
 * ' So soon ? ' ' she cried, with a little shiver, and a 
 quick look of appeal and question. 
 
 * ' Yes, my dear. It 's the best way. Yes, I know 
 it's hard; but it would be harder if we were to put 
 it off. And now you'll be a brave girl, won't you, 
 and " 
 
 She would not let him finish, but broke in with 
 her oddly mature self-restraint : 
 
 "Yes. Better. I see. They do not want her 
 here. It is well." 
 
 "'Tisn't that, my child. Madame Goubaud 
 does not mean to be unkind " 
 
 "I know. She knows not better. I compre- 
 hend, monsieur." 
 
 The Doctor felt curiously embarrassed. He 
 wished she would act like a child. A vague 
 idea passed through his mind, that he would 
 like to know whether she had ever played with a 
 doll. 
 
 "How old are you?" he asked, in perplexity. 
 
 "I have twelve years," she answered curtly. 
 Then, after a pause, with a sudden petulance, — "I 
 am no more a child. ' ' 
 
 The Doctor smiled. She was a child, after all. 
 
 "Well, now," he said, "I'm forty, and I'm a 
 good deal of a child yet." 
 
 She gave him another quick, timid look, as if 
 apprehensive of some levity or insincerity. 
 
 "Yes, my dear," he went on, holding her more 
 firmly within his arm — she did not resist: "I'm a 
 
THE MIDGE 137 
 
 good deal older than you, and I've got gray 
 hairs — look at 'em — ^but I should feel sorry, I 
 should, if I got too old to remember what it was to 
 be a child. Gray hairs don't make a man old. I 
 know how I felt when I was just your age, and I 
 know just how you feel now. I lost my own 
 mother when I was two years older than you are, 
 and I remember all about it, as if it was yesterday. 
 I'd like to tell you how it was." 
 
 He paused a moment. 
 
 "Shall I tell you about it?" 
 
 She kept her face averted and her eyes cast 
 down ; but she nodded assent. 
 
 ' ' She 'd been sick a long time ; but when she died, 
 it was very sudden, and I wasn't there. I've often 
 wished since then I'd been there to kiss her good- 
 bye, or help take care of her, or do something to 
 show that I loved her. But I didn't know any-» 
 thing about it until they told me. And then I 
 felt — I can't tell you how I felt. But it seemed to 
 me as if I was the lonesomest boy on earth. And I 
 didn't dare to cry, either : I'd have felt a lot better 
 if I could have cried; but I didn't dare to. My 
 father was a severe, stern sort of man, and he 
 didn't believe in people's crying, or laughing, 
 either. If I'd have cried, he'd have sent me to 
 bed. And I couldn't stand that — ^lying in bed and 
 thinking how lonesome I was. Besides, I was 
 fourteen years old, and I thought I was too big a 
 boy to cry." 
 
 He stole a glance at the pale face. He saw that 
 the child was listening to him. 
 
138 THE MIDGE 
 
 "Well, I went out in the yard, just to get away 
 from the people. Folks in my time were a sort of 
 hard — I don't think they quite understood us 
 young ones — ^they didn't seem to care much about 
 us. So I went out into the yard. And there was 
 an old nigger, named Japhet, who used to chop 
 wood for my father. Uncle Japhe, we called him. 
 He was out there in the woodshed. And when he 
 saw me, what do you think that old nigger did? 
 Why, he didn't say one word — he just caught hold 
 of me and hauled me right up to him, with an arm 
 around my head, and my face against his ragged 
 old coat, and he held me there, and I just cried — 
 cried like a baby, and with that old nigger holding 
 on to me. It couldn 't bring mother back, but ' ' 
 
 She was melting. Her head was still bent 
 down ; but he could hear her breath come short and 
 quick ; and with one hand she plucked at his coat- 
 sleeve, pinching the cloth between her fingers, let- 
 ting it slip and picking it up again as if she found 
 relief in the mechanical action. 
 
 "It didn't seem so lonesome then, when I had 
 Uncle Japhe, for all he was only an old nigger. 
 There's lots of help in this world, if we'll only 
 just let ourselves be helped. Don't you think 
 so?" 
 
 He slipped his arm around her neck, and with 
 a sudden sob that was almost a cry, she pressed 
 her face against his breast. But just then 
 the door opened, and she struggled free, and 
 stood up, her eyes moist and her teeth together, 
 
THE MIDGE 139 
 
 to face the Reverend Theodore Beatty Pratt. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Pratt stood in the doorway, 
 looking disapprovingly on two small candles that 
 flickered at the head of the coffin. He had confided 
 his overcoat to M. Goubaud, who stood behind him. 
 He had moreover impressed M. Goubaud into the 
 service of the Church ; and had made the unwilling 
 Frenchman assist him in putting on his surplice. 
 M. Goubaud 's face expressed disgust, subdued by 
 politeness. He did not like the appearance of a 
 Protestant clergyman in his Catholic house; and 
 he was inclined to look on the Church of England 
 ritual with critical contempt. 
 
 Mr. Pratt waited a moment to make up his mind 
 that it would be inadvisable to demand the sup- 
 pression of the candles, and then advanced with 
 amiable dignity and laid his hand on the girl's 
 head. 
 
 "You are very young, my child," he said, sol- 
 emnly, "to bear such a heavy weight of affliction." 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 "We cannot tell, any of us, why these trials are 
 sent," he further observed, and then, becoming 
 conscious of the little one's complete unrespon- 
 siveness, he concluded, blandly : 
 
 "I will talk with you at some future time, my 
 chUd. Dr. Peters ?" 
 
 Dr. Peters answered with a look of assent. 
 Everything was ready. The little undertaker and 
 his assistant were posted near the door, and the 
 household of Goubaud, domestic and operative, 
 
140 THE MIDGE 
 
 had filed in and ranged along the walls of the small 
 room; the workmen hiding their hands behind 
 their backs, the palms outward. Alphonsine 
 rolled her round red arms in her apron, and looked 
 tearfully across at the little orphan, who still stood 
 by the Doctor's side, erect and silent. She did not 
 lean against him; but as the service went on, she 
 let his arm draw closer about her, and when the 
 ashes fell from the clergyman's hand upon the 
 coffin top, she caught her friend's fingers in an 
 impulsive clutch. 
 
 Even poor Pratt's thin voice could not spoil the 
 beauty of the words he spoke. As his high tones 
 rang out through the silent house, in rhythmic rise 
 and fall, the little man seemed to take on some- 
 thing of the dignity of the greater spirits whose 
 speech he echoed. Peters sat and listened, and for- 
 got the cold little room, the dull, poverty-stricken 
 faces around him, the ghastly pine coffin on its 
 staring trestles : memory slipping back to the coun- 
 try church on summer Sundays, where the wind 
 shook the leaves about the open casements, the 
 birds twittered outside, all through service and ser- 
 mon, while the old pastor 's sonorous cadences fell 
 on the unheeding ears of a yellow-haired boy, sit- 
 ting in the front pew, his restless legs swinging half 
 a foot above the floor, his whole boy's soul yearning 
 to be out in the fields and the fresh air, angrily 
 resenting the necessity of wasting a morning of 
 sunshine and clear sky. He looked down at the 
 subdued young face at his side, and pitied the child 
 who had so soon learned the lesson of self-restraint 
 
THE MIDGE 141 
 
 and patience. After tor hand had grasped his, 
 she let it lie there through the brief service ; but 
 she did not cry, and her eyes never once left the 
 coflBn. When the last word was said, she went 
 unresistingly with Alphonsine, and put on her 
 worn little hat and jacket. 
 
 There was one shabby carriage behind the 
 shabby hearse. Mme. Goubaud, in her Sunday 
 clothes, got in first, and took the child on the seat 
 with her. Then the Eev. Mr. Pratt climbed in, and 
 M. Goubaud followed. Business was dull, and the 
 chance of riding in state as chief mourners at a 
 funeral — even a Protestant funeral — ^was not to be 
 missed. This had been Mme. Goubaud 's opinion, 
 and when Mme. Goubaud thought that anything 
 justified an interruption of business, her husband 
 never questioned the propriety of her decision. 
 Her face bore a look of stern importance as she 
 sat on the back seat of the carriage and gazed 
 fixedly before her, ignoring a staring world. 
 
 Dr. Peters stood irresolutely on the sidewalk. 
 Mr. Pratt looked as if he expected his fellow 
 church-member to be one of the party; but there 
 was no place for the Doctor, unless he took the 
 child on his lap, and he hesitated. The driver 
 settled it by starting up his horses, and the Doctor 
 turned away, but not too soon to see the girl look 
 up with pained, surprised eyes, that mutely 
 accused him of deserting her. 
 
 "I ought to have gone," he said to himself. 
 But it was too late, the carriage was rattling down 
 the street after the jolting hearse, and he could 
 
142 THE MIDGE 
 
 only stare at it until it grew gray behind a veil of 
 whirling snowflakes. 
 
 "I ought to have gone," he thought, and the 
 remembrance of that piteous look went with him 
 all the rest of the day. 
 
IV 
 
 HE found it hard to get rid of that look. He 
 was not sentimental; he had always had 
 that understanding with himself, that he 
 was not sentimental. And there are those who 
 would call his code of morals lax. But there were 
 some matters in which he had an uneasy, child- 
 like sensitiveness of conscience. To be suspected, 
 even, of the most trivial carelessness in the pay- 
 ment of his debts; to be thought unkind or dis- 
 courteous to children and women, — these things 
 wounded him sorely. Not that he very greatly 
 troubled himself about the world's opinion of him, 
 but that any suggestion of remissness in these par- 
 ticulars filled him with self-accusing doubts. It 
 was a part of his old-bachelor fussiness, perhaps. 
 
 Therefore he was troubled to think that he had 
 left the child to the charitable offices of the Gou- 
 baud family and the Eeverend Mr. Pratt, at the 
 most trying ordeal of the day. They all meant 
 well, those three people, but they were a good deal 
 like the folks who had made his boyhood gloomy. 
 They did not understand children. Being a child 
 himself, the Doctor felt this strongly. He thought 
 of the long, cold ride to the New Jersey cemetery; 
 the unrelieved ugliness of the hurried interment, 
 the probable remarks of the Eeverend Mr. Pratt 
 
 143 
 
144 THE MIDGE 
 
 on the way home, and he felt that he could have 
 smoothed the rough path of the little girl with the 
 long name, if he had taken her on his knee in the 
 carriage. Well, it could not be helped now; but, 
 all the same, he was uncomfortable. He went 
 home and tried to work, but he made a poor hand 
 at it. 
 
 The light was bad, for one thing, and he was not 
 in the mood for work upon the cannon. He 
 reflected, with some perturbation of spirit, that he 
 had of late been conscious of a certain lack of 
 interest in the cannon. The perfection of that 
 invention had been his hobby for thirteen years. 
 He had worked over it, thought over it, pottered 
 and played with it. It had stimulated his ambition 
 and amused him in his idleness. To be sure, it 
 had never come to anything, and it gave no signs 
 of coming to anything. It had changed its form 
 over and over again, but somehow it was always a 
 little behind the latest discoveries in gun building. 
 The Doctor tried to keep up with the march of 
 progress, but he was always — he frankly admitted 
 to himself — far back in the tail of the procession. 
 Once he had got a small appropriation from the 
 government ; and he had built his gun and taken it 
 to Fort Hamilton for trial, and there it had burst. 
 It had not injured any one, because, as the inventor 
 grimly remarked, no one had had faith enough in it 
 to stand near it when it went off. There was a 
 flaw in the casting; it was not his fault; but the 
 appropriation was exhausted, and the gun was 
 untried; and before he could apply for another 
 
THE MIDGE 145 
 
 appropriation, the march of progress made it 
 necessary to reinvent the gun after the latest 
 fashion. 
 
 He had gone at it cheerfully enough, and 
 modeled and remodeled, and it was only recently 
 that he had begun to feel as if his patient tinkering 
 was but a sham sort of work. 
 
 "Great Scott!" he thought, in dismal amuse- 
 ment, "am I getting too old to make-believe any 
 longer?" 
 
 It really looked as though he had reached a 
 second time that sad period when we realize that 
 our toys are not toys, and not — ^what was it that 
 we thought them? 
 
 The Doctor's domain was extensive. Five 
 years after his return from the war he had taken 
 the two upper floors of the old house, on a fifteen 
 years' lease. He had tried to get a lease for a 
 longer term, but even the conservative old German 
 who was his landlord knew that rents would go up 
 as the years went on; and fifteen years was the 
 longest period for which he would agree to let Dr. 
 Peters have the rooms at the modest rate that they 
 then commanded. 
 
 He had wanted a home, this lonely bachelor 
 stranded after the great war. Bachelors some- 
 times want homes ; they even long for them with a 
 conscious, understanding, intelligent desire that 
 their married friends never credit them with. 
 "You don't know what it is to have a home," says 
 Smith, who married at twenty-five, to Jones, who 
 is unmarried at forty. But Jones does know what 
 
146 THE MIDGE 
 
 it would be to have a home, for does he not know 
 what it is not to have a home? Ay, far more than 
 complacent Smith, who made his nest from mere 
 blind instinct, long before he could have become 
 conscious of his own need of a nest — far more 
 than happy, comfortable, satisfied Smith, does this 
 lone bird of celibacy of a Jones know of the 
 superiority of a consecrated abiding-place to his 
 cold, casual twig. 
 
 There is always soinething comically, dismally 
 pathetic about the bachelor 's attempt to construct 
 a home. I was once at the performance of an 
 opera attempted by a weak little theatrical troupe 
 that was in bad luck. The tenor had failed them 
 at the last moment, so a good-looking supernumary 
 stood up in the tenor 's clothes while the poor hard- 
 working, middle-aged soprano sang both parts of 
 their duets. That is what the bachelor tries to 
 do — to sing both parts of a duet. 
 
 It is always a failure ; and so the Doctor found 
 it. He had his bed-room, his sitting-room and his 
 work-room, and upstairs was his kitchen and his 
 servants' room. They were all good rooms, each 
 after its kind. They were furnished as he liked ; 
 they were warm enough in winter and cool enough 
 in summer. Each one had four walls, a floor and 
 a ceiling. And yet they were not a home ; and he 
 had not been a day in them before he knew this. 
 
 For a little while he tried to discover and supply 
 the elusive deficiency ; but after a time he realized 
 that the upholsterer could not do it for him; that 
 it. was not a matter of easy chairs, of pictures on 
 
THE MIDGE 147 
 
 the walls; that the light and warmth that were 
 lacking were not born of lamps and fires. It was a 
 twig, after all; not a nest; and he made up his 
 mind to it. 
 
 He had furnished his kitchen with elaborate 
 care, reproducing, as far as memory would serve 
 him, the generous equipment of the old Dutch 
 household in which he had passed his boyhood. 
 He had a fancy to install there the blackest and 
 oldest Virginia negress that he could find ; but he 
 never carried out the scheme. The shriveled Ger- 
 man woman whom he had engaged to " do for ' ' him 
 temporarily continued to do for him; and now, 
 after eight years, it seemed probable that she 
 would continue to do for him as long as he could 
 sustain life on her cooking. 
 
 He threw down his tools and wandered listlessly 
 about the rooms. In the sitting-room he noticed 
 how faded was the green reps covering the furni- 
 ture, and how worn was the old-fashioned Brussels 
 carpet. He glanced through the open door of the 
 bed-room. It looked what it was — a place to sleep 
 in. No one would ever have thought of stretching 
 out on that painfully clean and prim little bed to 
 while away an afternoon with pipe and book. He 
 stared out of the window at Washington Square, 
 and saw the bare trees waiting sullenly in the gray 
 twilight for the next snow-squall to buffet them 
 about and rack and rattle their poor dry twigs. 
 
 All these things he observed without fairly 
 realizing their ugliness ; but with a vague sense of 
 lonely discomfort, which he did not quite un- 
 
148 THE MIDGE 
 
 derstand. It had been growing on him of late. 
 
 "Perhaps it's Luise's cooking," he thought: 
 "I ought to be inured to it; but maybe it's like 
 arsenic or morphine — sort of cumulative poison. 
 I guess I'm getting dyspeptic." 
 
 He went up stairs to take a look at the kitchen 
 and see if he could conjure up again his old dream 
 of a "nigger cook" of his own. Perhaps that 
 might be the salvation of his bachelor life, after all. 
 
 It was a good kitchen, there was no doubt about 
 that. Luise had never brought out its possibilities. 
 There was a huge range, that would have cooked 
 a dinner for a regiment. Hanging up on the wall 
 was the Dutch oven that he had had made eight 
 years ago, on the model of the one in his mother 's 
 house, sketched from memory. Luise had never 
 used the Dutch oven. There were ample cup- 
 boards, stocked with yellow crockery, bowls and 
 pitchers and shallow dishes, more than Luise could 
 ever use. And she grumbled at having to keep 
 them clean. The back hall-bedroom had been 
 fitted up for a pantry. It was quite as large as his 
 mother's pantry; and he had fondly dreamed of 
 filling it with jars of jam and preserves and 
 pickles, and of ranging pallid disks of pie on the 
 long shelves. The jars were there, along with the 
 pie-plates — ^yes, there was even a great stick of 
 sealing-wax to seal the preserves up with, in the 
 old-fashioned way — ^but jars and plates were 
 empty. 
 
 The whole place really seemed to cry aloud for a 
 good plain cook. He pondered, as he descended 
 
THE MIDGE 149 
 
 the stairs, over the problem. Could he get the cook, 
 and would she, once got, realize his fond dreams'? 
 And — coming down to a necessary preliminary — 
 had he the moral courage to get rid of Luise? 
 
 He was sensible of a guilty feeling of shame and 
 fear when Luise brought him his dinner that night. 
 He looked at her shamefacedly as he tried to make 
 up his mind whether any other woman could be 
 quite as ugly as she was, or whether nature held 
 somewhere among her monstrosities and mistakes 
 a pendant to that parboiled face. 
 
 He tried to think charitably of Luise ; but there 
 was no room for doubt about the dinner. It was 
 simply bad. Many people like German cooking; 
 but nobody could like Luise 's German cooking. 
 She had a way of announcing the names of the 
 dishes, as she set them down with a vicious slam, 
 and she had told him that the viand of the evening 
 was a "Wiener Schnitzel." He credited her with 
 forethought in this, for if she had not done so, he 
 would not have been able to guess the fact that 
 what was before him had once been a veal cutlet. 
 
 He smoked two pipes after his dinner, and then 
 he went around to the Brasserie Pigault. For 
 fourteen years he had gone to the Brasserie 
 Pigault. When he first set up his bachelor estab- 
 lishment, he had resolved to stay at home of nights, 
 and for a month or two the Brasserie had missed 
 him, and he had sat in his green reps easy-chair, 
 that was not, and never could have been meant to 
 be easy, before his meagre little hard-coal fire. 
 But it was not staying at home, after all; it was 
 
150 THE MIDGE 
 
 only staying in the house ; and by and by he went 
 back to the Brasserie Pigault, which was a home 
 indeed, after its sort, to him and to many another 
 lonely bachelor. 
 
 If you put it that a man habitually spends his 
 evenings in a beer-shop, it does not sound well. It 
 not only suggests orgies and deep potations, but it 
 is low. One thinks of Robert Burns, of the police- 
 reports, of neglected wives waiting at home, of 
 brawls and drunkenness and of a cheap grade of 
 tobacco. 
 
 This is largely due to the influence of a number 
 of estimable gentlemen who wander about this 
 broad land, patronizing second-class hotels and 
 denouncing in scathing terms the Demon Drink. 
 They sternly refuse to admit any distinction be- 
 tween one place where liquor is sold and another 
 place where liquor is sold. Yet I think the most 
 vehement of these public-spirited men would be 
 inclined to acknowledge that there is a bright side 
 to the beer question if he could be induced to pass 
 a few evenings, non-prof essionally, in such a place 
 as the Brasserie Pigault. 
 
 True, he could not see there the red-eyed con- 
 tention that furnishes him with so much useful ora- 
 torical material. No upraised bludgeon, no gleam- 
 ing stiletto would gladden his eyes. No degraded 
 specimen of humanity would point a prohibition- 
 ist 's moral by going to sleep on the floor. No 
 ribaldry would agreeably shock his expectant ears. 
 
 He would see Mme. Pigault, neat and' comely, 
 knitting behind her desk. He would see Mr. Mar- 
 
THE MIDGE 151 
 
 tin and M. Ovide Marie at their everlasting game 
 of dominoes. He would see little Potain, whose 
 wife died two years ago, after forty-seven years of 
 married life, and who would be more lonely than 
 he is, if it were not for Mme. Pigault's hospitality, 
 drinking his one glass of vermouth gomme, and 
 reading all the papers without missing a column. 
 He would see poor old Parker Prout, the artist, 
 who has been painting all day long for the Nassau 
 Street auction shops — they will not hang Prout 's 
 pictures, even at the National Academy — and who 
 has come to the Brasserie Pigault to buy one glass 
 of beer for himself, and to wait and hope that 
 somebody will come in who will buy another for 
 him. He would see good-natured Jack Wilder, the 
 bright young reporter of the Morning Record, 
 dropping in to perform that act of charity, and to 
 square accounts by mildly chaffing old Prout about 
 the art which he still loves, after forty years of 
 servitude to the auctioneer and the maker of 
 chromo-lithographs. He would see Dr. Peters tak- 
 ing his regular rations — ^two glasses of lager, the 
 first of each keg — and studying the Courrier to 
 keep up his French. 
 
 And on this particular night there was a rare 
 guest to be seen under Mme. Pigault's roof, for 
 Father Dube came in, big, ponderous and genial, 
 rubbing his fat red hands, and smiling a sociable 
 benediction upon the place and all within it. 
 
 Mme. Pigault, alert and flattered, rose to wel- 
 come him, and he unbuttoned his heavy overcoat, 
 with its great cape, and leaned on the desk to chat 
 
152 THE MIDGE 
 
 with her for a moment. How was the baby and 
 little Eulalie? And business was always good? 
 That was to be expected. People knew where they 
 were comfortable, and everybody was comfortable 
 chez Mme. Pigault. And now he saw his good 
 friend the Doctor sitting there. The Doctor 
 looked as if he would like a little game of dominoes. 
 He would go and challenge his good friend the 
 Doctor. And yes, why not? He would take a 
 glass of that excellent Chablis of Mme. Pigault 's, 
 that he had tasted when he had last visited Mme. 
 Pigault. Was it so long ago as Easter? Ah, but 
 the time goes ! And an old man is slow. He can- 
 not see his friends as often as he could wish. And 
 Mme. Pigault, being prosperous and blessed by 
 heaven, had no need of him. Ah, the Doctor is 
 waiting. And Mme. Pigault will not forget the 
 Chablis? 
 
 And so this simple-minded old priest, who knew 
 no better than to sit down in his parishioner's 
 brasserie and take a glass of wine and play a game 
 of dominoes with a heretic, lumbered over to the 
 Doctor's table, and struggled out of his overcoat, 
 with Louis's help, and sat down opposite his good 
 friend Peters. And Louis bustled eagerly about, 
 and opened a new bottle of the Chablis, and 
 brought the box with the best dominoes, that Mme. 
 Pigault took from her desk; and cleaned a slate; 
 and Mme. Pigault looked on proudly as her favor- 
 ite customer and her spiritual guide shuffled and 
 drew. 
 
 Father Dube had come to this country at the age 
 
THE MIDGE 153 
 
 of twelve; and it was his boast that his English 
 was as good as his French, for if the English was 
 a trifle stiff, the French was not quite academic. 
 
 "I hear, ' ' he said, ' ' that you have been poaching 
 on my preserves, and stealing a whole French fam- 
 ily from my fold." 
 
 There was just a trace of the foreigner in the 
 precision and emphasis with which he brought out 
 the figure of speech, in conversational quotation 
 marks. It was a joke of long standing between 
 these two that the priest on one side and the Doctor 
 and the Eeverend Mr. Pratt on the other, were en- 
 gaged in an active warfare of proselytism. 
 
 "No, sir," the Doctor answered, smiling, "I 
 deny the imputation. The family you refer to has 
 long been a pillar of the Church of England." 
 
 "It is for that reason, then," Father Dube sug- 
 gested, slyly, "that the French Benevolent Society 
 has taken charge of the case. I saw Peloubet this 
 afternoon." 
 
 The Doctor flushed a little. 
 
 "The mother was bom in France, as near as I 
 can find out; and the child certainly was. But 
 they're Protestants, all the same." 
 
 The priest's broad hand was stretched across 
 the table, overturning and exposing half-a-dozen 
 of the dominoes he had been laboriously standing 
 on end, and he gently patted the Doctor's sleeve. 
 
 "My good friend, that is all right. I know. I 
 know. It is your 'set,' is it not?" 
 
 The Doctor smiled and flushed a little redder, 
 conscious of his own sensitiveness. 
 
154 THE MIDGE 
 
 "Double-six. Oh, you want me to keep the 
 slate ? ' ' Father Dube had pushed it across to him. 
 "I say, Dube, I'm glad you spoke of it. I want" 
 to ask you something." 
 
 "Fifteen. What is it?" 
 
 "It's about the child." The Doctor was silent 
 for a minute, knitting his brows as he played on 
 mechanically. "I don't know that I've done par- 
 ticularly well in letting the Society leave her where 
 she is. You know that Goubaud family better 
 than I do." 
 
 ' ' They are decent people. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, I know that. But, you see, here's the way 
 it is. This child's a girl — ^thin little thing, about 
 twelve years old or so, and high strung — the most 
 high-strung, old-fashioned, queer little witch I ever 
 saw. And old woman Goubaud — well, she isn't 
 exactly what you'd call high-strung herself." 
 
 "If I know what you mean by 'high-strung' — 
 no." 
 
 "Nervous — sensitive — delicate — all that kind of 
 thing. These people, — these Talbots, — seem to 
 have been pretty poor ; but they were rather a swell 
 lot at the start, and I don't think this mite has been 
 accustomed to any sort of rough, unsympathetic 
 treatment. I shouldn't like to leave her there if 
 I thought the old woman was going to make it hard 
 for her. ' ' 
 
 "I shall have to draw." The priest shrugged 
 his shoulders, and took a pinch of snuff, offering 
 the box to the Doctor, who bowed, and waved it 
 away. The proffer had been made and declined 
 
THE MIDGE 155 
 
 many hundred times in the course of their inti- 
 macy. ' ' The destruction of the poor is their pov- 
 erty," the Father went on: "poverty is hard, and 
 they have grown hard in their poverty. They do 
 not mean it, — ^but — what will you have ? They are 
 poor. Why do you not send the child to your mis- 
 sion? Your friend, Mr. Pratt — " 
 
 "The mission's no place for a child like that. 
 There's too much promiscuous Mary Ann and 
 Sairey Jane there. Those tough little cats would 
 worry the life out of her. I had half a notion of 
 getting Madame Pigault here to take care of her 
 up stairs. Threes, is it? Now I've got to draw. 
 What, with stray kids and bad cards at dominoes, 
 there's no rest for a quiet, respectable citizen. 
 What do you think of bringing her here? It's a 
 nice place up stairs, and I don't believe Madame 
 Pigault will instill ideas of intemperance into her 
 youthful mind. " 
 
 "It would be well," assented the priest, after 
 another pinch of snuff, and an interval of reflec- 
 tion. "But, perhaps you would do better to wait 
 and see how the child gets along. It is only for 
 a few weeks, I understand; and perhaps she will 
 not be unhappy there. You must not forget that 
 it will be much for Goubaud to have the money the 
 Society will pay for her board. He is an hon- 
 est, hard-working man, that Goubaud, and he 
 scarcely makes enough in the year to pay his rent 
 and live." 
 
 "I'll go round there in the morning, and see," 
 said the Doctor, trying to dismiss the subject from 
 
156 THE MIDGE 
 
 Ms mind: "Ten! and that's domino, I believe. 
 My cards weren't so unlucky, after all. ' ' 
 
 A strong wind from the northeast brought the 
 faint sound of St. George's bells down to Wash- 
 ington Square, as the Doctor turned out of South 
 Fifth avenue. It was as though Stuyvesant 
 Square, snugly locked up for the night, sent a mid- 
 night message of reproach to the broader and more 
 democratic ground whose hard walks knew no rest 
 from echoing footsteps, in light or dark. Here 
 the branches swayed and creaked in the night 
 breeze, the gas-lamps flickered and winked; from 
 time to time a tramp, or, from the foul streets 
 below and to the eastward, something worse, in 
 woman's shape, hurried across the bleak space, 
 along the winding asphalt, walking over the Pot- 
 ter's Field of the past, on their way to Potter's 
 Fields to be. 
 
 He had staid at the brasserie longer than was 
 his wont, having this night a dull dread of the 
 lonely hour before bed-time, to be spent in his 
 green reps chair ; of the dim anthracite fire, of the 
 encompassing silence. 
 
 He heard his great key click in the locks of the 
 outer door, and the sound was peculiarly depress- 
 ing. He cut short a sigh, set his teeth, and smiled 
 a grim smile as he toiled up the long stairs through 
 the dead darkness. At the top of his own flight 
 a cold, faint half-light filtered down from the sky- 
 light of the little old-fashioned dome that rose 
 
THE MIDGE 157 
 
 above the stairway, built through, the story above. 
 By this dull grayness he was able to see two bun- 
 dles, a small one, and one comparatively larger, 
 lying in front of his door. As he approached, the 
 larger bundle stood up. The Doctor started in 
 surprise. 
 
 "C'est moi," said the figure, which scarcely 
 reached above the handle of the door. 
 
 * ' What ? ' ' demanded the Doctor. 
 
 "C'est moi," the figure repeated, in a tone of 
 perfectly satisfying explanation ; and as she tried 
 to struggle out of the folds of an enormous 
 water-proof cloak, the Doctor realized that it was 
 Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot. 
 
 "C'est moi," she said. 
 
<^"¥ ¥ THAT is the matter?" asked the Doc- 
 ^/^/ tor, falling back on the stock question 
 ' " which is the Anglo-Saxon's refuge in 
 all cases of bewilderment, mystery or surprise. 
 
 "There is nothing is the matter," returned the 
 girl, with composure. 
 
 "What do you want?" 
 
 * ' I want to enter. ' ' 
 
 She pointed to the door, her white finger just 
 emerging from the folds of the waterproof. The 
 Doctor unlocked his portal; she gathered up her 
 small bundle and walked in. He followed her, 
 leaving the door open. Within, the gas burned 
 low, and as he stood with his hands in his pockets, 
 stooping to look into her pale, small face, her 
 meagre proportions seemed to him more meagre 
 still. She looked up at him with an anxious ques- 
 tion in her eyes, and he stared blankly at her. 
 
 "Well," he said at last, "I don't want to seem 
 inhospitable in any way, but if you'll kindly ex- 
 plain- 
 
 <'i 
 
 'I cannot stay with those Goubaud," she said, 
 with sudden agitation. 
 
 "Have they been treating you ill?" The 
 Doctor's gray eyes began to light up. 
 "No — not that. They do not mean to be bad. 
 158 
 
THE MIDGE 159 
 
 But they are different. They are not — ^how you 
 say it ? — they are not like we others. La Goubaud, 
 she say to me this morning: 'Go out. Play with 
 the children. You get not your mother back, 
 whether or no you are sulky. 8ois sage. Play 
 with the children!' " Her voice broke with an 
 angry sob. "Me! Play with the children!" 
 There was a woman's scorn in her voice. "Play 
 my mother come back, perhaps? Make pretence 
 she was not dead? She treats me in infant. I 
 cannot bear it, monsieur. You comprehend? I 
 cannot bear it." 
 
 The Doctor stood gazing at her in puzzled hope- 
 lessness. 
 
 "I run away to you. I pack up my things in 
 this bag. The bag belong to la Goubaud. I take 
 it back to-morrow. Alphonsine, she is hete, but 
 she is good; she lend me her waterproof — see? 
 so I run away to you." 
 
 She had got clear of the great garment by this 
 time, and she shook it to the floor and stood out, 
 thinner and smaller than ever. 
 
 "But, my dear child," the Doctor began: "you 
 can't stay here, you know — " 
 
 "Yes! let me stay here. You will not send me 
 away?" She clasped her hands together ner- 
 vously, as she stood in front of him, her anxious, 
 eager eyes searching his face, her mouth twitch- 
 ing painfully. "You will let me stay, monsieur. 
 It is a so short time! And I shall die there" — 
 with a little shudder: "I tell you, I die there. 
 You let me stay. I make myself useful. I know 
 
160 THE MIDGE 
 
 mucli, monsieur; I cook, I keep the place clean, 
 I sew your clothes. I do all that for my parents, 
 when they have been alive. I take care of you 
 when you are sick. I am good nurse — ^very 
 good nurse. You are sick sometimes, eh?" 
 
 She made the inquiry with painful eagerness. 
 He smiled as he slowly shook his head; and her 
 face fell, 
 
 "I am sorry," she said, simply; and then she 
 beamed with sudden hope. 
 
 "I cook for you. You do not know how good 
 I cook. Alphonsine, she teU me you live all alone ; 
 maybe you want a cook. Very well. I be your 
 cook. Yes, I am small, I know ; but you see I know 
 how to cook — I promise you. I make you omelette 
 aux confitures, same I used to make for my father. 
 You ever eat omelette aux confitures? " 
 
 The Doctor pulled himself together. 
 
 "Look here," he said; "I want to have a talk 
 with you." 
 
 "No!" she cried, imperatively, seized with a 
 quick mistrust, "I do not want that you have a 
 talk with me. You mean to tell me to go back to 
 laGoubaud, eh?" 
 
 "No, I don't." 
 
 "You let me stay here — ^with you?" she began 
 again, coaxingly, with wide, brightening eyes. 
 * ' Just a little time — to try? If I am not good, you 
 send me back." 
 
 The Doctor gave vent to a husky exclamation 
 that sounded like profanity. 
 
 "Come here," he said, holding out his hands. 
 
THE MIDGE 161 
 
 * ' No, ' ' she insisted : ' ' you tell me what you do ! " 
 
 He turned and shut the door, and the child 
 promptly walked up to him and placed two cold 
 hands in his. He led her to the armchair, and 
 sat down and made her stand in front of him, while 
 he inspected her with curious interest. Her eyes 
 were old ; but her face, in spite of its thinness and 
 pallor, had a certain almost babyish prettiness 
 about it, sensitive and delicate. There was enough 
 of the mother's look in it to give promise of greater 
 beauty. And through all her grief and anxiety, he 
 could see traces of an expression of sweet, win- 
 some, childish wilfulness, which suggested the in- 
 nocent and instinctive coquetry of a kitten. Her 
 hair, thick, dark, soft and wavy — ^the mother's hair 
 — hung heavily around her face and down her back, 
 and against it he saw her sallow, thin neck, with its 
 tense cords. A scanty ruffle of cheap lace hung 
 loosely about her throat; and he noticed her nar- 
 row chest, made yet narrower by the pleats of her 
 shabby black frock. He looked hard at her, and 
 she looked hard at him, and he saw that she was 
 unmistakably in earnest. 
 
 "You shan't go back to Goubaud's, I promise 
 you that, ' ' he said at last : ' * and you shan 't go any- 
 where where you don't want to go. But as for 
 staying here — well, I don't think that can be man- 
 aged. I'm a young bachelor, you see, and I'm 
 afraid it wouldn't be — proper." 
 
 She knit her brows. 
 
 "I did not think of that. But then, you are not 
 young. You are not old, old — ^but you are not 
 
162 THE MIDGE 
 
 young. ' ' Then, with a sudden illumination : " But 
 if I am your cook, it is proper. A cook — that is 
 convenable, monsieur. ' ' 
 
 ' ' But I have a cook. At least, ' ' he corrected 
 
 himself, — "she's a kind of a cook." 
 
 ' ' She cooks bad ? Very bad ?' ' 
 
 "I guess that's about the size of it." 
 
 * ' Well ! ' ' she solved the problem with a definitive 
 shrug of her shoulders, "send her away. Take 
 me. Yon do not believe I can cook? I cook you 
 a supper — now!" 
 
 "I haven't the slightest doubt of your powers 
 as a cook," laughed the Doctor: "but if I dis- 
 charge Luise, what am I going to do when you 
 leave me? You'll have to go to your uncle in a 
 few weeks." 
 
 She settled that question with the same prompti- 
 tude and ease. 
 
 ' * I don 't go to my uncle, then. I don 't care. It 
 is all the same. I stay here with you. ' ' 
 
 "But your uncle will have something to say 
 about that." 
 
 "He don't care, either, I guess. If he take me, 
 I cost him money. He don't like that people cost 
 him money. He let me stay here if you say so. ' ' 
 
 "Well," said the Doctor, "we'll see about it. I 
 don't doubt that I shall be satisfied with your cook- 
 ing; but perhaps you won't like the place your- 
 self." 
 
 She shook her head wisely. 
 
 ' ' That is all right. I like it. Then I stay ? ' ' 
 
 "You've got to stay for to-night, sure. I 
 
THE MIDGE 163 
 
 shouldn't know what to do with you, at this hour. 
 And now I don't know where to put you." 
 
 "I go in the cook's room." 
 
 The Doctor laughed aloud. 
 
 "I guess not. There's no bed there, and it's 
 colder than seventeen north poles stood on end. 
 You'd freeze to death there; and you're cold 
 enough already. Here, sit down here and warm 
 yourself while I see where to stow you." 
 
 He got up and slipped the child into his place. 
 Then he stirred the fire into life, and put her feet 
 on the fender, first taking off her shoes, which were 
 worn to such an extent that they were both pic- 
 turesque and pathetic. 
 
 "Now you stay there and warm yourself, and 
 I'll see about quarters. Great Scott !" he said, as 
 he held up the shoes, "if you're going to be my 
 cook you 've got to get a new pair of those things, 
 for the credit of the establishment." 
 
 If he had not been bending down when he re- 
 moved her shoes, he would have seen that she col- 
 ored painfully. He saw the color deepening now, 
 and he wished he had not spoken. "Well," he 
 went on, rather awkwardly, "I don't suppose you 
 could have known that I made it a point to be par- 
 ticular about my cook's shoes — just a sort of a way 
 I have. Now, let's see. I guess I can make you 
 comfortable for the night, somehow or other. This 
 is your traveling-bag?" he asked, lifting the blue 
 ticking sack that she had brought with her. ' ' Well, 
 when I was down South, the boys called me 'Po- 
 tato-bag Peters,' one time, because I had to tote 
 
164 THE MIDGE 
 
 my traps around in an old potato-sack. Just as 
 good, you know, as a fancy satchel, and holds a 
 lot more. Have you got your what-you-may-call- 
 'em in here?" 
 
 "M ?" 
 
 "Your — ah — ^your night things, whatever they 
 are," he explained, hastily and uncomfortably. 
 
 The red on the child 's face mounted to the roots 
 of her hair. 
 
 "N — n " she began, and then finished reso- 
 lutely— "Yes!" 
 
 He felt himself rebuked, and he grew nearly as 
 red as the forlorn, poverty-stricken waif in his 
 easy chair. It was ridiculous for a veteran of the 
 Doctor's age to flush up like a school-girl; but he 
 did it now and then, and was always ashamed of it. 
 
 He moved about in silence for a minute or two, 
 looking for extra bed-clothes to put on the big 
 horse-hair sofa in the corner — the one relic of the 
 Oneida homestead which he possessed. From the 
 depths of a dark closet his guest heard him, after 
 a while, calling down the vengeance of heaven upon 
 the head of Luise ; but in the end he found the mis- 
 laid drapery, and emerged with his burden. The 
 child leaped to her feet, and, after one rueful 
 glance at the two pink toes that peeped from Jier 
 black stockings, pattered across the floor to him, 
 and took the bed-clothes in charge as he dropped 
 them on the floor. 
 
 "It is for me," she said, with feminine superi- 
 ority: "you do not know how." 
 
 He had to stand aside, even his assistance 
 
THE MIDGE 165 
 
 scorned, as she rapidly and neatly made up a bed 
 on tlie sofa. Her easy adaptation of the means to 
 the end gave the impression of a thorough ac- 
 quaintance with the exigencies of poverty in the 
 matter of "shake-downs." 
 
 It was all done before the Doctor could have got 
 one sheet stretched evenly, and then she gave the 
 completed work the two little pats and the smooth- 
 ing stroke with which the true woman always pol- 
 ishes off her bed-making. She turned to the 
 Doctor, and he nodded approbation. 
 
 "Now, young woman," he inquired, beginning 
 to feel a certain familiarity with his new acquaint- 
 ance, ' ' do you suppose you could eat some crack- 
 ers and cheese before you turn in?" 
 
 Again a hint of painful color crept into her wan 
 face ; but this time she looked him in the eye, and 
 said that she could eat some crackers and cheese. 
 
 She did eat some crackers and cheese — a great 
 many crackers and a great deal of cheese, in a way 
 that showed that she was hungry. The Doctor 
 went up stairs in the dark, and found some milk 
 in the ice-box — ^Luise had never been able to see 
 any good reason why milk should be fresh, when 
 freshness involved going out in the early morning 
 and getting a new supply — and he brought it down, 
 and his guest made quite a fair supper, sitting 
 perched up in the big green reps chair, with her 
 feet to the fire, the bare toes that protruded from 
 the black stockings occasionally drawing them- 
 selves up in modest consciousness of their uncon- 
 ventional nudity. 
 
166 THE MIDGE 
 
 But in the middle of it all she broke down, and 
 choked on a drink of milk, and burst into a passion 
 of tears, crying: "0 ma mere, ma mere — ma 
 pauvre petite mere!" The Doctor went to her 
 side, and she threw her arms about him, but in- 
 stantly pushed him away, and fumbled for her 
 pocket, and found a poor little ball of a handker- 
 chief, with which she mopped up her tears. Her 
 breast heaved still, and her breath was tremulous ; 
 but she tried to take up her talk where she had left 
 it. She had been telling him about her abilities as 
 a cook, and she endeavored to go on and enlighten 
 him about a certain FranQois in a hotel at Biarritz, 
 who had taught her to make a marvelous tisane 
 for the sick. She had lost the thread of her nar- 
 rative, however, and the Doctor felt it incumbent 
 upon him to keep up his end of the conversation. 
 
 So he told her about some amateur cooking he 
 had done in war-times — he was not in the habit of 
 talking of war-times ; but he was short of a subject 
 — and he dilated on his enjoyment of a certain 
 sandwich or stratified structure of crackers, pork, 
 molasses and smoked beef, until her feminine hor- 
 ror at the unholy fare filled her young mind to the 
 exclusion of deeper emotions. 
 
 Then he suggested that it was time to go to bed, 
 and he made a move to carry her bag into his room. 
 But she would not hear of the arrangement. Her 
 protest was vehement, decided, and in the end it 
 was successful. She would sleep on the sofa, and 
 the Doctor should sleep in his own bed. And when 
 the argument closed, the Doctor felt himself dis- 
 
THE MIDGE 167 
 
 missed from tlie room. She did not express her- 
 self in words ; but there was xa her manner a dis- 
 tinct feminine intimation that his further lingering 
 would be in bad taste. Conquered and embar- 
 rassed, he retreated. 
 
 But a couple of hours later he got up, slipped 
 into his old red-flannel dressiag-gown, and stole 
 into the sittiag-room to see if his charge was 
 asleep. He only went near enough to the couch 
 to hear her regular, soft breathing, and then he tip- 
 toed back, turning hurriedly into his own room, as 
 though he felt that his presence profaned the in- 
 nocent maiden slumber that was a strange new 
 thing under his roof. 
 
 He woke the next morning with a glad, foolishly 
 expectant feeliag which he could not have ex- 
 plained to himself. He remembered, though, a 
 similar sensation when the winter dawn looked into 
 his narrow attic room, in the days of his boyhood, 
 and reminded him that singing-school was to be 
 held that night, and that he should probably see 
 Alida Jansen home. 
 
 Ten minutes later, as he was taking his morning 
 dip in the bath-room at the rear of the hall, he 
 heard a sound of violent contention coming from 
 the regions above. He paused knee-deep in the 
 water and listened. One voice was unquestionably 
 that of Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot. The 
 other was what the voice of Luise might be raised 
 to the w**^ of dissonance by extreme rage. He had 
 
168 THE MIDGE 
 
 stepped softly past the closed door of Ms sitting- 
 room, as he went to his bath, for fear of waking 
 the sleeping child ; but it seemed that the child was 
 not sleeping. He huddled on some clothes and 
 hurried up stairs, appearing in the kitchen in his 
 shirt-sleeves, to act as mediator in a combat that 
 was growing fiercer each moment. 
 
 The small usurper was in position of vantage, 
 her back to the range, her feet wide apart, planted 
 firmly on the hearthstone, her left hand grasping 
 a frying-pan, while her right gesticulated freely. 
 She was talking with a fiery volubility and a com- 
 mand of language — such language as it was — that 
 for the moment had silenced old Luise. 
 
 "Imbecile of a German — ^bete! idiot! va! If I 
 knew to use your language for the beasts, I would 
 tell you what you are. Go, I tell you! Nobody 
 want you here. You are dis-s-s-charged ! You 
 have no ears then, you insane, that you stand there 
 and mock yourself of me? Go, then ! get yourself 
 out, or I forget myself — j 'te dirai des injures, you 
 
 hear me ! You are no more cook — I am cook ' ' 
 
 here she caught sight of the Doctor. "Tell her 
 she is no more cook. She will not go. Tell 
 her she shall go. Tell her in her ac-cur-sed 
 tongue!" 
 
 "Ah!" gasped the Doctor, himself appalled by 
 this vigor of utterance, and too much taken aback 
 to remember that maudite gains strength when 
 translated by "accursed." 
 
 "Am I not your cook, eh? You engage me last 
 night, eh! Then tell her that she shall go. Im- 
 
THE MIDGE 169 
 
 becile" — this triumphantly to Luise — *'tu vas 
 voir. ' ' 
 
 The light of a great and beautiful possibility- 
 broke upon the Doctor's mind. Here was his 
 chance, his heaven-sent chance, of getting rid of 
 Luise forever. It would be flying ia the face of 
 Providence to neglect it. He chastened a broad 
 grin to a pleasantly humorous smile, and said 
 placidly : 
 
 "Yes, that's so. Sorry for this little misunder- 
 standing; but it's a fact, Luise. This young lady 
 — ^I mean, this is my new cook. I ought to have 
 told you before that I was thinking of changing; 
 but she arrived, rather unexpectedly, and " 
 
 "Dot chi-yilt?" Luise shrieked. 
 
 "That young woman, yes. Of course, I ought 
 to have given you a month's warning; but I guess 
 we can make it even with a month's cash — how '11 
 that do ? Sorry to lose you, Luise ; but the fact is, 
 I've come to the conclusion that I like younger 
 cooking — see? Suppose you call on me to-night, 
 and I'll settle accounts with you? "We'll make it 
 all satisfactory, somehow, Luise," he finished, feel- 
 ing his heart begin to fail him. 
 
 The successful combatant in front of the fire 
 gave her frying-pan an airy twirl of victory, and 
 set it down on the stove with a slam. "N-i, 
 ni," she said: "c'est fini!" and she folded her 
 hands on her apron, waiting for her rival to 
 depart. 
 
 Luise stood one stricken moment speechless, and 
 then she turned and cluttered to the door. As she 
 
170 THE MIDGE 
 
 grasped the post and swung herself out, she turned 
 to level a threatening finger at the Doctor. 
 
 "I kess you goin' crazy!" she hissed, and she 
 disappeared. 
 
 Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot gazed at the 
 Doctor, the flush of indignation fading from her 
 cheeks. She bobbed her small head significantly 
 and closed one eye in the wink of fellowship. 
 
 "Good," she said: "no more Luise!" 
 
 "But how about my breakfast?" demanded the 
 Doctor. 
 
 "Your breakfast," she replied, looking at the 
 clock: "it will be ready in fifteen minutes — if you 
 go down stairs," she added severely. "You go 
 down stairs, you put on your coat, you read your 
 journal — ^you brush your hair, perhaps" — ^with a 
 quick glance at the top of his head — ' ' and I come 
 with breakfast before you are ready." 
 
 He departed submissively and finished his 
 dressing. The fifteen minutes had spread out to 
 twenty, and he was just taking down his pipe to 
 stay his stomach with nicotine, when he heard a 
 fumbling at the door-knob. He put the pipe away 
 guiltily, and opened to his new cook, who was 
 nearly hidden behind the loaded breakfast-tray. 
 
 She permitted him to set it on the floor, and then 
 she made him stand aside while she set the table. 
 When the board was spread, he gravely invited her 
 to a seat, and, after a moment's hesitation, in 
 which she glanced with hungry eyes at the works 
 of her hands, she graciously accepted, and, climb- 
 ing into a chair opposite her host, she named over 
 
THE MIDGE 171 
 
 the edibles, not as Luise had of old ; but with the 
 gusto of an artist. 
 
 She had not boasted vainly. There was an 
 omelette, golden, light and tender; there were a 
 few bits of crisp bacon; there was a bunch of 
 radishes coyly tucked in a napkin folded to simu- 
 late a rose ; there was a little pile of anchovy toast, 
 and there was a pot of coffee, clear and strong, 
 such as the Doctor had not tasted in many a morn- 
 ing. 
 
 "I kept you waiting a little," she said apolo- 
 getically ; ' ' and it is not all as I would like ; but it is 
 not my fault. That Luise, she is — ^how you say? — 
 untidy. She puts the things allwheres and 
 nowheres. ' ' 
 
 The Doctor assured her that he was perfectly 
 satisfied, and he proved it by his attention to the 
 repast. But as he ate, it slowly dawned on his 
 man's mind that the delicacies before him were 
 not usually among the provisions of the unin- 
 ventive Luise. 
 
 "Where did you get these — these extras?" he 
 inquired, indicating them with a comprehensive 
 sweep of his hand. 
 
 "I got up and went out and gbt them before 
 you were awake," she answered, proudly: "I got 
 them at Breitenbach, the grocery around the 
 corner. ' ' 
 
 "But I haven't an account there!" he said, in 
 dismay. 
 
 "No, I know. But I did not know what was 
 your place, and they knew you there. They would 
 
172 THE MIDGE 
 
 not believe me that I came from you, and they 
 would send a German boy with me back, but when 
 he came here, he has seen that it was all right, and 
 he has left the things. You can pay, can you not? 
 he will give credit. ' ' 
 
 The Doctor suppressed his comments on this 
 revelation. "And that?" he further inquired, 
 pointing to the butter-dish. It was ingeniously 
 swaddled in a napkin, and from one corner of the 
 napkin peeped a large carnation-pink. She 
 blushed a little, and smiled knowingly. "Oh, 
 that," she said; "I got that from the boy. He 
 had it in his buttonhole; so I was very nice with 
 him, and I asked him for it, and he has given it to 
 me. One flower, even," she explained, "it is so 
 good on the table. It gives the appetite." 
 
VI 
 
 HT THINK," said the Doctor, an hour later, 
 I when he had read his paper and meditated 
 over his pipe, while his new aid washed the 
 breakfast-things, and made his bed and dusted the 
 rooms, "I rather think that I'll do the marketing 
 while you 're in charge of the establishment. You 
 can tell me what you want, and I'll get it. It's 
 more in my line anyway, and it strikes me that — 
 that I'm a little more up to the exigencies of the 
 situation." 
 
 This last phrase evidently exerted on his hear- 
 er's mind the influence of the mysterious and 
 incomprehensible. She gave it deliberate con- 
 sideration, and finally felt herself safe in assent- 
 ing. Perhaps, she admitted, it would be better. 
 
 They proceeded to lay out a dinner, which im- 
 pressed the Doctor as being of dangerously large 
 proportions. It began with bouillon, went on with 
 fried smelts, rose to the height of a cutlet, and 
 passed to coffee and cheese, through an omelette 
 souffle. The plan also involved the introduction 
 of various vegetables. 
 
 It was arranged that the Doctor was not to be 
 home to luncheon, whereat the new cook was 
 pleased. She acknowledged that if there was one 
 weak spot in her culinary education, it was in the 
 
 173 
 
174 THE MIDGE 
 
 matter of luncheon. She kindly explained that 
 the French system of late breakfasting rendered 
 luncheon unnecessary, and she seemed disposed to 
 dwell on the superiority of that plan until she 
 found her American friend hopelessly unre- 
 sponsive. 
 
 His list having been made out, the Doctor took 
 M. Groubaud's sack and Alphonsine's waterproof, 
 and set out. He stopped at Breitenbach's to settle 
 his bill and dash the hopes of Breitenbach, who 
 would have been more than glad to write Dr. 
 Peters 's name on his books. He saw Mme. Gou- 
 baud, who grumbled sourly at the flight of her 
 boarder, even after the Doctor had paid the price 
 of three weeks' board for Miss Talbot, out of his 
 own pocket. He also found means of surrep- 
 titiously returning her cloak to Alphonsine, with a 
 little cash compensation for her kindness to the 
 child. And, when all this was done, he went off to 
 see his friend at the rooms of the Benevolent 
 Society. 
 
 The little secretary took a gloomy view of the 
 young lady's contumacy. He did not see how the 
 Society could countenance such independent action 
 on the part of one of its wards. It was irregular 
 and improper, and he thoroughly disapproved 
 of it. 
 
 "We've got to do something with her, all the 
 same, Peloubet," said the Doctor. "She can't 
 stay with me, and she won't stay at Goubaud's, and 
 she oughtn't to." 
 
 "W'y can she not stay wiz you?" inquired 
 
THE MIDGE 175 
 
 Peloubet, in extravagant protest: "you 'ave a 
 grand apar-r-rtment — ^you a-r-r so reech you don' 
 know w 'at to do wiz your monnee — w'y can she not 
 stay wiz you?" 
 
 "Great Scott, Peloubet — ^I can't have a child 
 in my place, there — especially a child of that 
 peculiar sex. ' ' 
 
 "Bah! It is but two — free wicks. She is your 
 niece ; she is come to mek you a visit. You ar-r-r 
 old enough to be an uncle, eh?" 
 
 "I'm old enough to be most anything, I sup- 
 pose," returned the Doctor^ with a rather grim 
 smile; "but I'm not the uncle of the whole Benevo- 
 lent Society. There'snotwo ways about it. I got 
 you into this scrape, and I'U take whatever trouble 
 there is to be taken; but I've got to find some 
 decent woman to look after the child, and it must 
 be done with the sanction of the Society. It 's all 
 the same to you to whom you pay her board. It 
 must be done, and it'll have to be done right off. 
 If that infant settles herself down in my quarters 
 much more firmly, I shan't be able to get her out 
 with an ox-chain. ' ' 
 
 "Bot she mos' go w'ere we send her," said the 
 Secretary. 
 
 "But she won't, if she don't feel like it." 
 
 "You mos' mek her go." 
 
 "Well, I don't know that I should want to make 
 her go, if she stayed any longer," said the Doctor, 
 half to himself. Then he got up to depart. 
 
 "All right, Peloubet, I'll hunt around and find 
 a place for her, and then I'll report to you, and if 
 
176 THE MIDGE 
 
 it's satisfactory, we'll transfer the young woman 
 after dinner. I expect she'll break her heart if she 
 isn't allowed to cook that dinner." He had told 
 the Secretary of the child's fancy that she could be 
 the cook in his bachelor establishment. 
 
 Dr. Peters spent the rest of the daylight in a 
 twofold search — ^looking for a temporary home for 
 his charge, and also for a cook for himself. Mme. 
 Pigault finally helped him out of both of his diffi- 
 culties. Her sister, in Harlem, would take the 
 child to board — ^her sister was a milliner, and the 
 place would be better for the little one than here 
 where there were so many men forever coming and 
 going — ^nice, respectable men they were ; but, enfin, 
 men. And she knew of a cook, did Mme. Pigault, a 
 certaiQ filise, a French Alsatian, who was all 
 there was of most perfect in the way of a cook. 
 
 These things being off his mind, the Doctor went 
 home. Lodoiska Agnes looked down on him from 
 the top of the kitchen stairway, and told him that 
 dinner would be ready at six, and that she had 
 caught a mouse in the trap, and had let him go 
 again. It was only five, so he took off his coat 
 and went to filing away in his work-room, where a 
 little light still lingered. It was the large back- 
 room, looking out on two vacant lots, that 
 stretched through to Third Street. In the summer 
 time there was no pleasanter room in all that quar- 
 ter; for the yards were green and bright, and a 
 beautiful tree stood in one of them, spreading and 
 flourishing as fairly as if it had been miles out in 
 the country, and serving as a screen between the 
 
THE MIDGE 177 
 
 house and the noise and ugliness of the newly-built 
 elevated railroad. But the room itself was bare 
 and unfurnished, save for the work-bench and 
 racks that held the odds and ends of models and 
 castings. And the outlook to-day was not over- 
 cheerful, for the tree was stripped of its leaves, 
 and the trains went crashing by, their lighted win- 
 dows glaring in the twilight. 
 
 He had lit the gas, and was still filing away and 
 whistling to himself, when his cook came in. She 
 had been setting the table in the sitting-room, and 
 she paid him a brief visit to tell him that it was 
 time to get ready for his dinner. 
 
 She inquired into the nature of his labors, perch- 
 ing herself on the largest casting that stood 
 against the wall. He told her what he was doing; 
 and she instantly got off the casting, and expressed 
 her disapprobation. 
 
 Why did he wish to make a cannon, to kill peo- 
 ple? It was cruel; it was not gentil. She would 
 not like that. She did not like it. 
 
 Dr. Peters explained that cannons were useful in 
 time of war, when one's country was attacked; 
 but she was not satisfied. Yes, she knew all 
 about that. The Prussians, who, she incidentally 
 remarked, were hogs, had attacked France. She 
 did not remember it ; it was many years ago, and 
 she was very little then; but she had been told 
 about it, and she had seen the mischief they had 
 done. But herself, she thought that the French 
 were as bad as the Prussians. They had cannons, 
 too, and they had used them, although they must 
 
178 THE MIDGE 
 
 have known that it would set fire to their houses 
 and knock down the trees and ruin everything. 
 She did not like cannons at all. She had seen them 
 fired, not to kill people, of course ; but just to pass 
 the time. The smoke and the flame were very- 
 pretty ; but the noise was not good. If they could 
 have the smoke and the flame without the noise — 
 well ! But for killing people — it had not the com- 
 mon sense. Why could he not make something 
 else? 
 
 What should he make? the Doctor asked her. 
 He was ready to invent anything she desired; he 
 didn't care particularly about cannons. What 
 should it be? She pondered awhile, and then sug- 
 gested "something to eat." 
 
 This recalling her to her duties, she took herself 
 off upstairs ; and the Doctor made his simple toilet 
 in preparation for dinner. He saw, when he 
 entered the sitting-room, that places were set for 
 two, from which he concluded that his new domes- 
 tic was either enough of a democrat, or enough of 
 an aristocrat, to see no impropriety in dining with 
 her employer. 
 
 She came down, presently, bearing the soup- 
 tureen, which she placed in front of the head of the 
 house. She swung herself into her chair opposite 
 him, and began a voluble discourse on the demerits 
 of the departed Luise, as shown in the deplorable 
 condition of the kitchen and pantry. The Doctor 
 ladled out the bouillon, gave the culinary artist her 
 plate, and then stared hard at his own, as he filled 
 it. He took a spoonful and elevated it for closer 
 
THE MIDGE 179 
 
 examination. It was of a fine straw-color, and the 
 pattern on the bottom of the plate shone through in 
 undimmed blueness. To the taste the broth sug- 
 gested faintly the flavor of beef -tea; but it gave no 
 hint of sustenance. 
 
 The monologue on the sins of Luise went on 
 across the table; but it was less fluent, and there 
 were awkward, conscious breaks in it. The face 
 bent over the hot, thin decoction changed from red 
 to white and back to red again. The Doctor said 
 nothing; being painfully at a loss. Finally the 
 small face was raised, and she addressed him with 
 a brave assumption of ease, while a tear glistened 
 in each eye. 
 
 "This bouillon is not good, I don't think. You 
 find it thin, do you not?" 
 
 "Well," hazarded the Doctor, "it's a little that 
 way, seems to me." 
 
 "Nevermind. We will not eat it. I will take it 
 away. The next time I will make it more strong. ' ' 
 
 She slipped to the ground, and, taking the plate 
 from him, gathered up her own and the soup- 
 tureen, and hurried from the room with them, 
 clearly desirous of getting them out of sight as 
 soon as possible. When she returned she brought 
 the smelts. There was a perceptible decrease of 
 confidence in her manner ; but she became herself 
 again when it proved that the smelts were good 
 beyond cavil. They were well fried ; they lay in a 
 clean napkin, and there was a sprig of parsley so 
 ingeniously tucked into each gaping mouth that it 
 looked like a tiny green nosegay, of which, and 
 
180 THE MIDGE 
 
 himself to boot, the smelt was making general 
 tender. 
 
 The smelts having established their claim to 
 respect, it was with unconcealed pride that the 
 cook marched upstairs to get the veal cutlet. The 
 maintenance of her social as well as her domestic 
 functions caused long waits between the courses, 
 but although it was ten minutes before her reap- 
 pearance, both she and the Doctor felt that the 
 success of the smelts justified her in expecting the 
 indulgence to be accorded to an artist. 
 
 The cutlet was brown and pleasing to the eye. 
 A paper rose grew from the island of bone in the 
 middle. Lodoiska Agnes called her host's atten- 
 tion to it, and described the process of making 
 paper roses. Then the Doctor, his eyes politely 
 fixed on the person speaking to him, cut into the 
 cutlet. There was a courteous smile of divided 
 interest on his face, but it vanished as an agonized 
 contortion swept over the child's features, and a 
 cry of pain and horror came from her quivering 
 lips. He glanced down where she was looking, at 
 his knife and fork. He thought that he must have 
 been guilty of some hideous slip, and he half- 
 expected to see a severed finger lying in the plat- 
 ter. But even as he looked, the girl, with a bitter 
 cry of shame and grief, spread out her little hands, 
 trying to hide the dish from his sight. ' ' No, no ! " 
 she wailed : "you shall not see it ! I will not that 
 you shall see it ! " 
 
 He could not help himself; a smile came on his 
 face. The incision had disclosed the inner depths 
 
THE MIDGE 181 
 
 of the cutlet. The bread-crumb crust was 
 browned; but below was only the hideous, livid, 
 raw pink of uncooked meat. 
 
 There was nothing but child left in her now. In 
 her utter humiliation and despair, she let him take 
 her up in his arms and kiss and console and caress 
 her after a fatherly fashion. She hid her face on 
 his shoulder, hanging to him by the lapels of his 
 coat, and she sobbed and moaned, and brokenly 
 bewailed her failure, and then cried aloud for her 
 father and mother. 
 
 He let her have it out, and when the spasmodic 
 violence of her distress had abated, he made her 
 sit on his knee and listen to the assurances that it 
 was all right; that they could make a very good 
 dinner without the cutlet; that he didn't mind it 
 in the least, if she didn't. He pressed his lips to 
 her hot cheeks, where the salt tears trickled down 
 even while a faint, dim gleam of hope once more 
 began to dawn in her eyes. He smoothed her hair, 
 and she dried her tears with his faded silk hand- 
 kerchief, and after a bit they organized a joint 
 expedition to the kitchen, where the cutlet was 
 stowed away under the sink, and where they made 
 coffee, with which and the crackers and cheese, 
 they descended to the dining-room. The omelette 
 souffle was postponed to another occasion; and 
 they got on very well without it, and were sur- 
 prised to find how far crackers and cheese could go 
 as a substitute for a dinner. 
 
 When it was all finished, and the table was 
 cleared off, she came readily to sit on his lap as he 
 
182 THE MIDGE 
 
 smoked his pipe. Here she fell into a brown study, 
 and, after a couple of minutes of silence, she sud- 
 denly turned to him, put her arms about his neck, 
 and kissed him. It was an offering so deliberate, 
 frank and sweetly declarative of affection that the 
 Doctor blushed. She was chary of her kisses, he 
 afterwards found out; but when she gave them, 
 she meant them. 
 
 But she was quite willing now to be kissed, and 
 she accepted and even invited petting with the 
 most childlike simplicity. Like the Widow 
 Malone, she seemed to feel that submission to an 
 initial aggression involved and demanded full sur- 
 render. Her mature reserve had vanished with 
 the downfall of her dignity ; and she put her head 
 in the hollow of his shoulder and nestled up to him 
 as though she were six instead of twelve. 
 
 All the time she chattered, telling him, in a 
 rambling, desultory way, the story of her life. 
 And a queer story of genteel tramphood it was, 
 full of details of curious shifts of poverty, accounts 
 of strange lodgings and stranger companionships, 
 tales of friendly cooks and waiters and odd vaga- 
 bonds of the father's profession, and tales of 
 unfriendly landlords and hard-hearted purveyors 
 of provisions. 
 
 Incoherent as was her recital — and she stopped 
 often to cry quietly over her lost father and 
 mother — it was deeply interesting to the Doctor. 
 It gave him pictures of a life of which he knew 
 little, it made comprehensible to him the odd men- 
 tal and moral development of this little being who 
 
THE MIDGE 183 
 
 could not fairly be classed either with children or 
 with women. 
 
 The clock struck nine — his usual hour for going 
 to Pigault's; but he thought he would wait awhile 
 to-night, until it should be time for the child to go 
 to bed. Ten o'clock came, and the little one was 
 still lying in his arms, with her head on his 
 shoulder, and they were talking like old friends. 
 For the time being, her reminiscences had come to 
 an end, and she was catechizing him. She wanted 
 to know where he had been, and what he had done, 
 and he tried to tell her, with all the awkwardness 
 of a man who has made it his rule in life not to 
 talk about himself. He told her of the old home- 
 stead in the north of the state, of his stern, precise, 
 formal father. Doctor Peters, the great man of 
 their little town; of his mother, what little he 
 remembered of her; of his simple, uneventful, 
 meagre boyhood ; of his brief career as a student of 
 medicine, and then he came to the War. 
 
 Volunteer though he had been, he was a thor- 
 ough-going old soldier in certain things ; and it was 
 not easy for him to begin to talk about the War. 
 But when he did begin, he forgot himself, and now 
 he told story after story, to which the child on his 
 lap listened in fascinated absorption. They were 
 only such stories of the camp and field as any 
 veteran of the great war could tell ; but they had 
 that charm which lies in every soldier's story, and 
 his hearer forgot her dislike of cannons and her 
 feminine objections to the waste of human life in 
 listening to him. 
 
184 THE MIDGE 
 
 He stopped suddenly, ashamed of Ms entliiisi- 
 astic freedom of speech. It was past eleven 
 o 'clock. He told Lodoiska Agnes that she ought to 
 be in bed. She looked somewhat surprised; but 
 made no remonstrance. 
 
 Sliding down from his knee, she stood a moment 
 in meditation, and then asked : 
 
 "What is it that you want for breakfast?" 
 
 Before she had finished the question, the tears 
 of shame came into her eyes. He gathered her up 
 again, and told her that he would like nothing 
 better than another breakfast just such as she had 
 given him that morning. He had not had such a 
 breakfast in many years, he declared, with the con- 
 vincing fervor of truth, and he did not see how it 
 could be improved upon. 
 
 "I cannot cook for you," she murmured, sadly; 
 "I do not cook so good as I have thought I could 
 cook." 
 
 ' ' Well, ' ' he said, " I '11 tell you what it is. I 've 
 been thinking about this cooking business, and I 
 think I see what we've got to do. You're going 
 away after a while, you know" — she slipped a 
 finger into his buttonhole, and he stroked her 
 small hand as it hung there — "and I shall have to 
 get a cook who '11 stay here. See ? Now you know 
 aU about cooking — though of course you aren't 
 just ready to take hold of a bachelor establish- 
 ment and do all the work yourself — 'twasn't to be 
 expected of you. So I thought I'd engage a cook — 
 just a plain, common cook, and you could kind of 
 hang around and break her in — oversee her and — 
 
THE MIDGE 185 
 
 and — boss her. You'd be the housekeeper, as it 
 were — head of the establishment, and all that. I 
 think it 's rather more in your line. And then you 
 could take your meals with me, quiet and comfort- 
 able. What do you think of the scheme ? ' ' 
 
 "Oh, yes," she cried, her eyes dilating, "that 
 would be good." 
 
 "Yes," he went on, "I've engaged the cook, and 
 she's coming to-morrow, and you can take right 
 hold and " 
 
 He stopped short. What was he doing? This 
 was a pretty way to prepare her for her transfer 
 to the milliner's in Harlem. He had been voicing 
 a wild fancy, and he had not realized how far he 
 was going. She saw his embarrassment. 
 
 ' ' Why do you stop ? Go on. ' ' 
 
 "Well," he began, feebly, "I was just think- 
 ing " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Well — ^you mightn't like the place." 
 
 "Oh, yes," she said with decision: "I will like 
 it. I would like to stay with you. I like you bet- 
 ter than any one — except — except " 
 
 He drew her closer to him in token of under- 
 standing; but he did not attempt to account to 
 himself for a certain internal wincing that he felt 
 at the clause of limitation. The human animal is 
 naturally and healthily a jealous animal. 
 
 "It is then omelette and anchovy toast?" she 
 concluded, considering the question settled. ' ' And 
 you like the radish always, eh ? " 
 
 He felt pitifully weak as he assented, promising 
 
186 THE MIDGE 
 
 himself that to-morrow lie would tell her that she 
 must go away. 
 
 ' ' Good-night, ' ' he said, as he rose. She frankly- 
 lifted up her mouth to be kissed, and as he bent 
 over her he wished in his soul that he had done his 
 duty and had it over. He felt almost like a traitor 
 as he touched her lips, thinking of what he was 
 hiding from her. 
 
 When he was in his own room, he sat down on 
 the edge of his bed and pondered. What was 
 going to happen to-morrow, when he told her that 
 she must leave him? She evidently had no idea of 
 anything of the sort. Even the going to Europe 
 was to her something remote, not worthy of pres- 
 ent consideration. His conscience troubled him. 
 He had done wrong in letting her tie herself up to 
 him and to this temporary home. What would she 
 think of him when he sent her up to the milliner's 
 shop in Harlem? And what would she think of the 
 milliner 's shop ? He had once seen Mme. Pigault 's 
 sister — a busy, fussy, commonplace little French- 
 woman; not at all like good Mme. Pigault. She 
 was only a modified, improved and prosperous 
 Mme. Goubaud. He felt instinctively that the 
 child would not like her. 
 
 Well, it was of no use, his sitting there and 
 thinking it over. The thing must be done to-mor- 
 row, and another time he would be more careful. 
 But, he reflected, in mingled relief and regret, he 
 was not likely another time to encounter another 
 Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot. 
 
 He rose, and was about to begin undressing. 
 
THE MIDGE 187 
 
 wlieii he noticed that his dressing-gown was miss- 
 ing. It always hung at the foot of the bed ; but he 
 remembered that he had left it in the bathroom 
 that morning when he went up to arbitrate the 
 quarrel between his two cooks, and that he had 
 subsequently seen it in the sitting-room, where 
 Lodoiska Agnes had draped it picturesquely over 
 the end of the sofa. 
 
 He tapped at the door. There was no answer, 
 and he opened it softly and slipped in. The gas 
 was still burning, and there, before the fire, the 
 child sat in his big armchair, toasting her bare 
 feet. She was wrapped in the red dressing gown, 
 which stood out in hideous discord with the green 
 reps. 
 
 "Well, I'll be— blest!" exclaimed the Doctor; 
 "aren't you in bed yet?" 
 
 Startled, she jumped down and faced him, 
 huddling the too ample garment about her in a way 
 that suggested a desire to conceal some more inti- 
 mate deficiencies of attire. 
 
 ' ' No, ' ' she said, " I am not fatigued. I go to bed 
 always — twelve, one o'clock sometimes." 
 
 "Not here you don't," the Doctor corrected her 
 vigorously: "if you want to stay here you've got 
 to turn in when the drum beats. Pile right into 
 bed, young woman, and leave that article of 
 clothing where I can get at it, or I'll have to tie a 
 blanket around me to get to my bath in the 
 morning." 
 
 She turned obediently to the couch, which she 
 had already prepared for the night. 
 
188 THE MIDGE 
 
 ' * All right. You come back in two seconds, you 
 find it there, on the chair. ' ' 
 
 She waited for Mm to go, but he lingered in a 
 new perplexity. 
 
 "I say," he commenced, hesitatingly, "aren't 
 you in the habit — ^I suppose you are — but — don't 
 you generally say something before you go to 
 bed?" 
 
 "Say what?" 
 
 "Why, say a prayer, or something. Most peo- 
 ple do it — when they ain't grown up," the spirit of 
 truth compelled him to add. 
 
 She opened her eyes, and shook her head.^ 
 
 "No — ^not me — never." 
 
 "Didn't your mother teach you to say your 
 prayers?" 
 
 She shook her head again, bewildered. 
 
 "No." 
 
 He felt dimly that a moral responsibility 
 devolved upon him, and that he was not quite up to 
 it, at the moment. He turned away in uncomfort- 
 able irresolution. She called him back. 
 
 "You want me to say prayers?" she asked. 
 
 ' ' Why — yes. Seems to me it would be better. ' ' 
 
 "All right, if you want." 
 
 And in an instant she had dropped on her knees, 
 the great red dressing-gown puffing out around her, 
 and before the Doctor could quite grasp the situa- 
 tion, she had rattled through an "Ave Maria, 
 gratia plena. ' ' Then, still on her knees, she looked 
 up at him and calmly inquired, "How many?" 
 
 "That's enough," said the Doctor, and returned 
 
THE MIDGE 189 
 
 to Ms own room. "Maybe it's too mucli," he 
 reflected. He had no idea of taking her religious 
 training in hand; but when he fell asleep, a little 
 later, his brain was drowsily working to recon- 
 struct the exact wording of a simple formula of his 
 childhood, which had somehow slipped his memory 
 in the course of years, and which began : 
 
 "Now I lay me down to sleep; 
 I pray the Lord my Bonl to keep." 
 
 Yes, he had actually forgotten the third line. 
 He knew the Ave Maria better. He had heard it 
 oftener in sick-rooms and hospitals. Oneida 
 County was a long way from the French quarter 
 of New York. 
 
VII 
 
 PELOUBET was more discouraging than ever 
 when Dr. Peters informed him that he pro- 
 posed to make the Talbot child his guest until 
 her relatives sent for her. The Doctor had come 
 to this decision while smoking his after-breakfast 
 pipe. He had debated the question within himself 
 all night, and had satisfied himself a dozen times 
 over that there was nothing to do but to order 
 Lodoiska Agnes to put herself in charge of the 
 milliner. He was considering ways and means of 
 avoiding or mitigating the necessarily consequent 
 "scene," when it suddenly dawned upon his mind 
 that he had not the slightest intention of doing 
 anything of the sort ; and, greatly relieved in spirit, 
 he marched off to Peloubet to tell him so. 
 
 Peloubet was really doubtful this time. He had 
 made the suggestion the day before, but it was only 
 in a jocular way — just as he had talked about the 
 Doctor's vast wealth. This serious acceptance of 
 the idea staggered him. He was a good, sensible, 
 liberal-minded man, but he was a Frenchman, and 
 he had a Frenchman's ideas and prejudices. The 
 Frenchman in him had a struggle with reason and 
 experience before he gave his grave and dubious 
 consent. After all, though, there was nothing to 
 be said against the proposition. Dr. Peters could 
 
 190 
 
THE MIDGE 191 
 
 liave qualified in any court as a proper guardian 
 for the child — and it was a saving to the Society. 
 "You will ripport ev-ver-y wick, eh?" he said: 
 "Eet is a fo'malitee — ^jos' write me a line — ^I put 
 it on ze file." 
 
 The temporary guardian of Lodoiska Agnes 
 felt an almost boyish light-heartedness as he 
 trudged from butcher to baker, and from baker 
 to grocer, that cold, sharp, clear morning, exe- 
 cuting domestic commissions. He felt that he was 
 having fun ; that he was going to have fun. Per- 
 haps he felt also that he had not behaved exactly 
 like a rational, sober, sensible man, forty years 
 old; but the boy in him rather enjoyed its own 
 assertion of independence. He was not at all sure 
 that he didn't want to run away from the man of 
 forty, and forget his dull adult rule. 
 
 He was at home by one o'clock, with his arms 
 full of bundles, and when he reached his hallway, 
 he whistled "Boots and Saddles" up the kitchen 
 stairs. There was no reply, and then he remem- 
 bered that he had a parcel to stow away in his own 
 room. He put it on the upper shelf of the closet, 
 and went up stairs after Lodoiska Agnes. She 
 was not in the kitchen. "Here! young woman!" 
 he called, and glanced vainly into the pantry. He 
 waited for the answer that did not come, and then 
 he looked in the servant's room, in front. There 
 was no trace of the small housekeeper. He ran 
 down stairs and glanced through the rooms. She 
 was not there. He looked hastily in every corner, 
 but she was not there. Up stairs again, he called 
 
192 THE MIDGE 
 
 her, and got no answer. "Here! young one! — 
 you — ^Lo-do-is-ka!" he cried. Perhaps she had 
 gone out on some errand. But just then he 
 remembered that her outer garments, which were 
 a jacket and a little black straw hat, were still at 
 Mme. Goubaud's. They had been hanging in the 
 old woman's room when she took her flight, and 
 Mme. Goubaud had promised to send them around, 
 and had not kept her promise. He knew that, for 
 Alphonsine had come out to thank him as he passed 
 through Houston Street that afternoon, and she 
 had bewailed her mistress's bad faith. A sick 
 feeling came over him. He looked around to see if 
 a window was open. What a fool he was ! Prob- 
 ably the child had gone down stairs to scrape 
 acquaintance with the tenants of the lower 
 kitchens. Yes, that was it. She was lonely, and 
 she had gone down stairs. He would descend 
 and see. Then came the thought that he might 
 not find her there, and he cast one more hopeless 
 glance into the depths of the pantry. 
 
 When Dr. Peters had first undertaken to imitate, 
 on the top floor of a New York lodging-house, the 
 New Netherlands homestead kitchen of his boy- 
 hood, he had a vivid memory of his mother's 
 pickle-jar. That memory represented it as a 
 stoneware crock of colossal size. He pictured it 
 to incredulous dealers as being about a yard in 
 diameter. They one and all assured him that no 
 such crock had ever been known in the New York 
 market. He expressed his unflattering opinion of 
 the New York market, and continued his search. 
 
THE MIDGE 193 
 
 Finally, an enterprising man had one made for 
 Mm. It came, about a year after his plan of 
 housekeeping had faded into an unsubstantial 
 dream. It was twenty-four inches across the top, 
 and stood nearly three feet high. He then per- 
 ceived that the family of a Biblical patriarch could 
 not have needed such a pickle- jar. And he remem- 
 bered also that he had never cared much for 
 pickles. He paid the bill, and he put the crock 
 on its side, in a corner of the pantry's lowest shelf. 
 There it lay, year after year, doomed to be for- 
 ever pickle-less. 
 
 There it lay now, with Lodoiska Agnes in it. 
 She was seated on a stool, her head and shoulders 
 and arms within the vast hollow of that crock. 
 The Doctor, his heart suddenly light once more, 
 went to her and gently pulled her out. She had 
 been crying ; her face was wet with tears and her 
 hair was wildly "mussed." 
 
 "What's the matter?" he asked. 
 
 "Maman," she replied, simply. 
 
 She cried a little more on his shoulder, and con- 
 sented to be comforted. "I was alone," she said, 
 "and I wanted to be in the night." 
 
 He lavished caresses upon her with a warmth 
 that she did not quite understand, and that was 
 something of a revelation to the Doctor himself. 
 He told her eagerly how the Benevolent Society 
 had consented to let her stay with him until her 
 uncle should want her. She listened, but with no 
 great interest. She had never contemplated any 
 other order of things. He told her more about 
 
194 THE MIDGE 
 
 filise, who was coming that afternoon. He 
 had stopped at Mme. Pigault's to get the 
 bundle now in his room; but he said nothing 
 about that. 
 
 Soon they were chatting cheerfully over their 
 housekeeping schemes. He made a diversion to 
 tell her how frightened he had been when he could 
 not find her ; and he remembered how he had strug- 
 gled with her polysyllabic first name. 
 
 "By the way," he asked, "what am I going to 
 call you?" 
 
 "My name? Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Tal- 
 bot. It is long ; but it is nice, don 't you think ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I know;" and he laughed: "it's a nice 
 name; but it won't do for family use. 'Lodoiska' 
 is too long, and I don't know what to call it for 
 short, and you don't seem to me to be 'Agnes,' 
 somehow; and I can't call you either of the 
 Hunts." 
 
 " 'Lodoiska' is a nice name," she observed, 
 gravely. 
 
 "Yes, but it's altogether too much of a name for 
 a little midget like you. ' ' 
 
 "What is a midget?" she inquired. 
 
 "Why — " he hesitated: "a midget — a midget is 
 a little thing like you. ' ' 
 
 She was standing before him as he leaned 
 against the table, holding her hands. She cer- 
 tainly was very small. 
 
 "Why," he went on; "you're not even a midget 
 — ^you 're a midge. ' ' 
 
 ' ' ' Midge, ' ' ' she said, giving the word a curiously 
 
THE MIDGE 195 
 
 pretty little French turn, " 'Midge' is a nice 
 
 "It's not usually given to girls, though. What 
 — ^what did — what are you usually called?" 
 
 "Cherie," she said, "or petite, or — you know — 
 just some name like that. They said that same 
 thing what you said about Lodoiska — ^it is too long. 
 I think you call me 'Midge' — I like that name. 
 It is not everybody has it." 
 
 "I should think not," he assented, smiling. 
 ' ' ' Midge '— ' Midge '—well, it isn 't so bad. We '11 
 try it." 
 
 "And now," she began, looking calmly up at 
 him, "what I call you, eh?" 
 
 "My name is Evert Peters." 
 
 "Doctor Evert Peters!" 
 
 "Well, they call me so." 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 " 'Doctor,' " she repeated : "I like not that. It 
 is too much physic. Peters — no. I call you 
 Ev-ert." 
 
 He smiled at the dainty un-English accentua- 
 tion. 
 
 "Ev-ert," she said again: "Yes, that is good. 
 I call you Ev-ert." 
 
 The innocent audacity of the idea caught his 
 fancy. How many years it was since any one had 
 called him "Evert"! and it had a pretty sound as 
 she spoke it. Yes, she should call him "Evert" — 
 for three weeks. 
 
 " 'Evert' it is!" he said, gayly, and caught her 
 up and kissed her. 
 
196 THE MIDGE 
 
 Elise came later in tlie afternoon, a tidy, grizzled 
 little woman, with a face like a small and well-dis- 
 posed gargoyle. The housekeeper was pleased 
 with her, and they got on pleasantly together, set- 
 ting amiably to work to prepare dinner. 
 
 The result of the collaboration was satisfactory. 
 At six o'clock the Doctor and the Midge sat down 
 to a modest, but well-cooked meal, the serving 
 whereof, having been left to the Midge, was graced 
 with numerous refinements, unsubstantial in them- 
 selves, but appetizing in conjunction with the 
 labors of filise. She herself called his attention 
 to them, with frank pleasure in her skill, and gave 
 him hints of the way in which these accomplish- 
 ments had been acquired. 
 
 There was a napkin folded so as to resemble a 
 snail-shell, with the snail's horned head peeping 
 out. 
 
 "That," she asserted, "is a — ^what is then the 
 word in English? — a chef-d'oeuvre. The other 
 things all the world can do ; but that is the Art, you 
 understand — that is an invention. It was Alcide 
 who inventioned that. Alcide was our waiter at 
 the hotel at Nice. Not at Mme. Cavelli — that 
 was the little pension — ^boarding-house — where 
 we went first — ^but up at the hotel. We have 
 gone there after Papa had his great luck at 
 Monaco. ' ' 
 
 "Eh?" broke in the Doctor, with his fork poised 
 in the air. 
 
 "He made much money at Monaco — at the Bank. 
 
THE MIDGE 197 
 
 Three thousand francs. It was not for long. He 
 had bad luck next week." 
 
 "Gambling?" 
 
 It was her turn to say " Eh ? " 
 
 * ' What do you mean by ' luck ' ? " 
 
 "Oh! He made money at the play — at the table. 
 They play cards there — ^thousands — oh, thousands 
 of people, all at the same tune. Sometimes they 
 make much money. Most times they lose. The 
 bank makes all the money most times. It is 
 amusing." 
 
 The Doctor distinctly heard the call of duty. 
 
 "In this country we think it's wrong to do that 
 — ^to play cards for money." 
 
 "You think that? That is amusing, too," she 
 said, with pleasant indifference. 
 
 The Doctor was silent. He felt himself helpless. 
 He did not try to illuminate with the rushlight of 
 an impromptu disquisition on the sin of gambling 
 the vast moral darkness that this answer revealed. 
 But he tried to sound the profundity of her igno- 
 rance ; and he led the conversation by slow degrees 
 to the subject of religion, and made some desultory 
 inquiries into the faith of her parents. The topic 
 did not interest the Midge, and she gave him but 
 scanty information before she skipped away to 
 some more congenial theme. Maman was a 
 Catholic, she said; but she did not go to confes- 
 sion. Maman said tJiat was superstitious, and 
 Papa said so too. Papa was a Church of Eng- 
 land man. That was the only church for a gentle- 
 man, he said. He did not go to church, of course ; 
 
198 THE MIDGE 
 
 there were no churches of that kind anywhere they 
 had been. Yes, that was strange; but Papa said 
 there were none. Papa knew a great many 
 priests. He liked them when they played piquet. 
 She liked them too, herself. Pere Mathieu was 
 very nice. He always gave her bonbons. Some- 
 times he brought the bonbons in the same pocket 
 with his tobacco, and that was not nice. But it 
 was good of him, all the same. Pere Mathieu 
 drank too much wine. And then she asked the 
 Doctor if he did not think it was bad to drink too 
 much wine. 
 
 At nine o'clock he told her that he was going 
 around to the Brasserie Pigault for an hour. The 
 announcement was made with some awkwardness ; 
 but it was received with a cheerful submission that 
 rather disappointed him. If he had known 
 more of womankind, it might have put him on 
 his guard. 
 
 She got him his hat and coat, and she mentioned 
 a number of small occupations with which she pro- 
 posed to while away the period of his desertion. 
 She accepted her prospective loneliness meekly 
 and uncomplainingly, making no manner of 
 remonstrance. But when he left her, she stood at 
 the head of the stairs and watched him go. He 
 reached the lower hall and lingered a moment to 
 hear her turn back in his room and shut the door. 
 But he caught no sound from above, and he went 
 out with the uncomfortable feeling that the lonely 
 little figure was still standing there, at the top of 
 the stairs, looking down the way he had gone. 
 
THE MIDGE 199 
 
 The comforts of the Brasserie Pigault did not 
 appeal to him that evening. He had gone there 
 as a matter of principle, feeling that there was 
 something weak in breaking up his regular habits, 
 even to please himself. Yet he could not enjoy his 
 beer while he had the unpleasant feeling that took 
 possession of him as he thought of the lonely 
 Midge at the top of the dark stairs. He refused 
 to play a game of dominoes with Mr. Martin, and 
 then he felt still more uncomfortable, as he saw 
 the poor old gentleman sit watching the door, in 
 hopes that M. Ovide Marie, or some other friendly 
 soul, would come in to play with him. 
 
 Dr. Peters read two columns of editorials in one 
 of the morning papers. When he had finished the 
 two columns, he found that he had paid no atten- 
 tion whatever to the meaning of the words. He 
 was thoroughly dissatisfied with himself. He 
 decided to go home and go to bed. It was early, 
 of course ; but then he could stroll slowly back, and 
 perhaps walk a few blocks up Fifth Avenue. It 
 was a fine night, and not cold. The brasserie was 
 close and warm. A saunter in the open air would 
 be just the thing for him. But when he was once 
 in the street, he walked home as straight and as 
 fast as he could. 
 
 The Midge welcomed him with a kiss, making 
 him bend down so that she might put her arms 
 about his neck. His attitude was sjmabolic, and 
 he recognized the fact. He knew why he had come 
 home; he knew that she knew it, and he fielt that 
 he was being rewarded for good behavior. It was 
 
200 THE MIDGE 
 
 his turn for submission. He accepted his subju- 
 gation in penitent gladness. 
 
 She invited him to sit down in the easy-chair, 
 and she climbed on his knee and tucked her head 
 under his ear ; and they sat there chatting for an 
 hour. She treated him to various small caresses 
 from time to time. It was very pleasant; but he 
 remembered the case of the butcher's boy, and he 
 began to have a dim idea of what she meant by 
 "being nice" to people. It disturbed him a little. 
 He had not known that they began so young. 
 
 Lacking any positive knowledge on the subject, 
 the Doctor concluded that half -past ten was a good 
 hour for a child of twelve to go to bed ; so at half- 
 past ten she prepared her temporary couch, by his 
 orders. Then he sent her into the hall-way to 
 turn out the gas, and he made a hurried trip to his 
 own room and back. After he had bidden her 
 good-night, and had closed the door behind him, 
 she found on her bed a package. Mme. Pigault 
 had acted as the Doctor's agent in purchasing the 
 contents. They supplied certain crying needs in 
 the Midge's wardrobe. Presumably they an- 
 swered their purpose. But never, not on the mor- 
 row, or at any time thereafter, did she make the 
 slightest mention of them. 
 
 It was not three days before the Doctor woke to 
 an uneasy consciousness that he had made a grave 
 misstep. He had to acknowledge to himself that 
 an attachment of the affections was beginniag to 
 
THE MIDGE 201 
 
 bind tim to this waif who must in a couple of 
 weeks be sent across the ocean to her natural 
 guardians and protectors. And when he admitted 
 to his reason that the attachment was growing, 
 within his heart he knew that it had grown — the 
 mischief was done. And the worst of it was — she 
 was the worst of it. There was nothing of the 
 coxcomb about Dr. Peters. He was rather mod- 
 estly distrustful of all proffered affection, from 
 man, woman or child. He knew, moreover, how 
 often a child's fondness is a mere cat-like adapta- 
 tion to agreeable conditions. But he perceived in 
 this child an ardent temperament and a precocious 
 decision of character that gave her likes and dis- 
 likes the weight and value of maturity. And that 
 she was seriously fond of him, already, there was 
 no doubt. She was a waif, and she was tying her- 
 self up to him as the one thing stable and trust- 
 worthy in a stormy world. 
 
 Seeing all this, dreading the parting close at 
 hand, he proceeded to make the situation worse 
 day by day. When a strong will is once handed 
 over to the control of the ill-regulated ajBfections, 
 those beggars-on-horseback are wont to ride their 
 prey pretty hard. With a complete abandonment 
 of discretion and common-sense. Dr. Peters de- 
 voted all his time to the society of a weird, strange, 
 heathenish infant, of foreign extraction, who did 
 not belong to him, and who had dangerously cling- 
 ing ways about her. 
 
 After his overthrow on the second evening after 
 her arrival, he made up his mind to give up 
 
202 THE MIDGE 
 
 the Brasserie Pigault during the Midge's stay. 
 Pretty soon he found that he was giving up every- 
 thing else in the way of individual initiative. If 
 he went to walk, he took her with him. If he 
 worked at his gun, it was only when she conde- 
 scended to perch on his work-bench and chatter to 
 him. Work was neglected when it struck her 
 vagrant fancy that they both would be better em- 
 ployed looking in the shop-windows on Broadway, 
 or inspecting the steamers at the West Street 
 piers. 
 
 It was very foolish; it was worse than foolish, 
 he guiltily admitted to himself when he thought it 
 over at night, after the little one had gone to bed. 
 It was a self-indulgence likely to bring cruel con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Look at it whatever way he might, he could only 
 reproach himself. His conscience told him of the 
 wrong he was doing the child, and his reason had 
 no adequate excuse to offer. True, he had been 
 lonely. He had not known the measure of his own 
 loneliness until her advent opened his eyes. She 
 filled his days so full of bright companionship that 
 he began to realize how empty they had been be- 
 fore she came; how much emptier they would be 
 after she had gone. And yet — did he want to keep 
 her with him? No, he had to answer himself. 
 How could he take charge of this untutored mind, 
 assume the vast responsibility of her education, 
 moral and mental, take upon himself the burden 
 of shaping her life ? Of course, there was no need 
 of thinking of it — it was not a possibility to be 
 
THE MIDGE 203 
 
 considered — ^but if even in the speculation of fancy- 
 he was forced to acknowledge that he did not care 
 to have the child for his own, what right had he to 
 treat her as though she were indeed his? 
 
 But ten days slipped away, and two weeks, be- 
 fore he finally cast up accounts with himself. He 
 had made two or three attempts to hold her off at 
 arm's length, by way of preparing her for the ap- 
 proaching separation. They had been pitiful fail- 
 ures. She had only nestled the closer, each time. 
 And now, he reflected, it was too late. The order 
 of separation must come in a week. Conscience 
 should be silent for that week, while he and the 
 Midge enjoyed their comradeship. And con- 
 science acquiesced with base and treacherous read- 
 iness, until three days or so before the letter from 
 Europe was due, rising up then to torment him 
 with refreshed vigor. 
 
 The letter should have arrived on a Saturday. 
 It did not come then, nor on Monday, nor on Tues- 
 day. He felt nervous and unstrung. He took to 
 excessive smoking. The Midge concluded that he 
 was sick, and consoled him with caresses which he 
 received in shame and abasement of spirit. He 
 wished the letter would appear, to end the matter ; 
 but he clung to each hour of suspense, and when it 
 turned up on Wednesday, he was no more ready 
 for it than he had been a fortnight before. 
 
 It was a brief letter; but it was clear and ex- 
 plicit. Sir Eichard Talbot did not feel himself in 
 a position to undertake the care of Mrs. Hugh Tal- 
 
204 THE MIDGE 
 
 bot's child. He had already extended to his un- 
 fortunate brother all the assistance in his power. 
 The claims upon him were such that he did not feel 
 justified in going to any further expense. He 
 begged leave to inform Dr. Peters that his broth- 
 er's marriage had been made against the wishes 
 of his family, and that he, Sir Eichard, could not 
 consent to consider himself as in any way respon- 
 sible for the maintenance of his brother's child. 
 If, however, the child could be placed in a respect- 
 able orphan asylum, not under the charge of 
 Eomanists or Dissenters — this was a positive con- 
 dition — Sir Eichard would pay any necessary fees. 
 If Dr. Peters would communicate with Sir Eich- 
 ard 's lawyers, whose address was enclosed, he 
 would find them fully advised. They would also 
 be prepared to make good to Dr. Peters any ex- 
 penditure of money or time which he might have 
 been obliged to make on account of the child. 
 
 "By thunder!" said the Doctor to himself, "he 
 did want to 'tip me 'arf-a-crown, ' for a fact." 
 
 Sir Eichard 's niece came into the room while the 
 Doctor was tearing up the letter and dropping the 
 pieces into the fire. 
 
 "Midge," he said, "how would you like to stay 
 with me — I mean for good and all — forever ? ' ' 
 
 "But certainly I will stay with you forever," 
 she said, rubbing her cheek against his coatsleeve : 
 "What is it you have thought?" 
 
 "I thought you were going to your uncle in 
 England." 
 
THE MIDGE 205 
 
 Slie pursed her lips and shook her head in airy, 
 contemptuous negation. 
 
 "No," she said, "I never have meant to go 
 there. I have meant to stay with you." 
 
VIII 
 
 IT was done. Tlie move was made, and, like a 
 wise commander, the Doctor burned Ms ships 
 without procrastination. That day he called 
 upon Peloubet, and the next day Sir Eichard's 
 lawyers were notified that the child was in charge 
 of the French Benevolent Society, and that she 
 would be properly cared for without cost to Sir 
 Eiehard. And the lawyers informed their client 
 of this fact, and frankly advised him to take no 
 further steps in the matter. He took none. 
 
 The Doctor went before the Board of Control of 
 the Society, established his respectability and re- 
 sponsibility, and was formally made the guardian 
 of Lodoiska Agnes Hunt Hunt Talbot. And then, 
 to finish his work, he took the Midge to Mme. 
 Pigault, a dressmaker was called in, and the three 
 of them "confectioned" a wardrobe. The Midge 
 had a voice in all that was said, and the wardrobe 
 did not lack the stamp of her individuality. She 
 wanted to have some mourning dresses; but the 
 Doctor emphatically objected, and so she gave up 
 the idea and went in for artistic arrangements of 
 red ribbon. 
 
 So it was finished ; the last scruple of conscience 
 was satisfied; there was no act left undone in 
 formal confirmation and establishment of his im- 
 
 206 
 
THE MIDGE 207 
 
 pulsive adoption of the child. What he had under- 
 taken hastily he had carried out with honest 
 deliberation. And now he could afford to ask 
 himself about the wisdom of it. 
 
 There is, I believe, a disease known as "en- 
 gaged-fright." It is said to attack young men 
 and women who are betrothed, when they realize 
 that in the game of matrimony they have put their 
 stakes upon the table, and the wheel is spinning. 
 In some instances, it forces them to snatch their 
 money back, and withdraw from the game. But 
 in the majority of cases, they struggle against the 
 sensation, feeling that they have gone too far to 
 get out honorably or comfortably, and they leave 
 it to time and married life to "pinch into its 
 pUulous smallness the cobweb of pre-matrimonial 
 acquaintance." Thus do many blunder into hap- 
 piness. 
 
 The Doctor's feelings were not unlike those of 
 a very unsettled young man in wholly different 
 circumstances. If his doubts could have affected 
 his action, he would have been positively unhappy. 
 But he reflected, with a shameful satisfaction in 
 the moral weakness of his defense, that, for better 
 or worse, the matter was settled ; he had onlyto do 
 his best, and trust that all would be well. 
 
 But doubts rose up to harass him in such num- 
 bers that in the midst of his trouble he had a 
 humorous suspicion of the morbid and fantastic 
 nature of their origin. 
 
 No possible suggestion of future misfortune was 
 spared him. What did he know, after all, of this 
 
208 THE MIDGE 
 
 child? What inherited traits might she not have 
 that would cause him trouble hereafter? "What 
 ugliness of character might she not develop, to put 
 herself outside of his affection and regard? And 
 even if she were all that she should be, what guar- 
 antee could he give himself that his own fondness 
 for her would not some day wear out in the sel- 
 fishness of age? Was he not unwise to open the 
 gate of that quiet garden-plot of his life, to let in 
 a stranger from the street, who would share with 
 him his secluded walks? Had he not been in sole 
 possession too long to bear such intrusion with 
 lasting good grace? 
 
 He asked himself such questions as these. He 
 even went further, and questioned the sincerity 
 and genuineness of the child's affection for him. 
 From this he came back to sanity, when he per- 
 ceived the depths of cynical speculation in which 
 the idea involved him. 
 
 But when the unprofitable self -torment was put 
 aside, enough remained to worry him. The Midge 
 had shown no evil tendencies whatever; but she 
 dwelt serenely in an atmosphere of pagan un- 
 morality, doing right only by natural impulse and 
 an innate sense of ethical good taste. He did not 
 feel sure that he was competent to undertake her 
 education ; and if he were, he did not know where 
 to begin. 
 
 The time to come dismayed him. In ten or a 
 dozen years she would become of marriageble age. 
 Where was he to find her a husband? The Doctor 
 was not socially ambitious, nor given to overmuch 
 
THE MIDGE 209 
 
 observation of class distinctions ; but he could see 
 that his little circle of casual acquaintances was 
 not likely to furnish forth an eligible husband for 
 a young woman of rather delicate clay. And if 
 she did not marry, what then? When he himself 
 came to die, at sixty or seventy — the Doctor 
 thought that he would be ready to die at sixty or 
 seventy — ^was he to leave her in mature but un- 
 protected maidenhood? 
 
 When a man is in a morbid state such as this, 
 and is trying to keep his internal irritation to him- 
 self, a chance abrasion from the outside penetrates 
 his self-consciousness with peculiar cruelty. He 
 feels that the world knows, or is likely to know, 
 what a pitiable thing he is; and every trifling 
 annoyance to his pride seems like a wound at the 
 hand of malicious contempt. Madame Pigault un- 
 wittingly stabbed the Doctor under the fifth rib, 
 and he himself gave the blade a twist. 
 
 He had dropped in to pay the dressmaker's bill, 
 and lingering a moment to chat, for he felt some- 
 what of a deserter under the Pigault roof, his 
 awkwardness in his new position betrayed him 
 into a clumsy jest. 
 
 "I feel rather strange, Madame Pigault," he 
 said, "entertaining a young lady in my bachelor's 
 hall. But I guess I'm old enough. You don't 
 think people will talk, do you?" 
 
 "What shall they talk?" demanded Mme. 
 Pigault, with sympathetic warmth. "They can 
 only say that you are very good. We other 
 women, we will not speak bad of you. It is not 
 
210 THE MIDGE 
 
 every man, voyes-vous, Monsieur le Docteur, who 
 is generous like you. "We know that — ^we know 
 what they are, the men. May the good God have 
 pity on us ! But we know what they are. They 
 will only say you have behaved noble." 
 
 The Doctor murmured a confused acknowledg- 
 ment, and digested the compliment when he got 
 out in the street. His cheeks burnt when he un- 
 derstood it. 
 
 " I 'm damned, ' ' he said to himself, * ' if they ain 't 
 beasts!" 
 
 They were aliens and strangers. He had lived 
 among them for fifteen years ; but they were aliens 
 and strangers, after all. He could never be quite 
 at home with them; they could never be to him 
 exactly as his own people. There was always a 
 difference — a something at bottom that was irrec- 
 oncilable with perfect understanding or friend- 
 ship. Here was this woman, a religious woman, 
 a good wife, a good mother, calmly and as a 
 matter of course putting this hideous interpre- 
 tation on his simple action. Had they, then, no 
 decent, natural clean-mindedness ? He remem- 
 bered how in his boyhood he had walked to morn- 
 ing church by his mother's side, and how they had 
 passed the French Canadians who formed a little 
 colony near by, strolling home from mass. His 
 mother had looked the other way as they went by ; 
 but he had stared at them in contempt mingled 
 with a certain awe at the audacity of creatures 
 who could dare to live and breathe, and yet refuse 
 to conform to the correct standard of Protestant 
 
THE MIDGE 211 
 
 America. Was there not, indeed, some justifica- 
 tion for his chUdish narrowness of mind? Was 
 not the stamp of a hopeless inferiority upon the 
 race? 
 
 He was vexed and hurt; but after a while his 
 sense of justice asserted itself. He had convicted 
 Mme. Pigault of wronging him with an unclean 
 suspicion; but he had to give her credit for the 
 charity that pardoned the imputed sin, and cor- 
 dially approved the supposed penitential repara- 
 tion. He could not help thinking that he was 
 lucky to live in a community where such a misun- 
 derstanding could not possibly put an innocent 
 child under a cruel social ban. 
 
 He had another remembrance of Oneida County. 
 He remembered when Injun Jane came down from 
 the Eeservation to sell baskets. She brought her 
 boy with her, and none of the boys of the town 
 would play with him. Everybody knew that he 
 was the son of Pete Doolittle, who owned the farm 
 back of the Peters 's, and who had also a family of 
 young Doolittles, born with the sanction of society 
 and religion. But nobody would play with Injun 
 Jane's Joe, and so while she sold baskets at the 
 kitchen door, he stood alone in the road, a bright, 
 slim boy, not much browner than the other coun- 
 try-bred youngsters, noticeably different only in 
 his black, coarse, straight hair, like a colt's mane. 
 He was proud and silent, and he made no attempt 
 to speak to any of them; but twanged his won- 
 derful snakewood bow and sent arrow after arrow 
 through a knot-hole. It was his one form of silent 
 
212 THE MIDGE 
 
 self-assertion, and the other boys in their hearts 
 envied his skill, as they hung over the fences and 
 jeered at him as loudly as they dared to. Evert 
 Peters had been one of those mean boys in his 
 time, and he thought of it with shame. Yet he 
 knew that it had not been from inborn meanness 
 in him, or in Visscher Jansen, or in Phil Doolittle. 
 They had merely reflected the sentiment of the 
 elder community. It seemed that there were ex- 
 pansions of Christian charity in the French quar- 
 ter of New York that were unknown in Oneida 
 County. 
 
 There were plenty of annoyances for the Doctor, 
 in his new capacity of guardian; but he did not 
 doubt and suffer wholly as one without hope. He 
 might arraign himself for his unwise soft-hearted- 
 ness; but he continued to be soft-hearted, and he 
 enjoyed the consequences. He felt that he was 
 having a good time, a better time, in every way, 
 than he could ever remember before. Viewed as 
 a responsibility, the Midge undeniably caused him 
 uneasiness; but considered as a companion, she 
 was unmixed and unlimited fun. Even when the 
 companion gave way to the fatherless, motherless 
 child, and she sobbed on his shoulder, her personal 
 grief never put her apart from him. He had al- 
 ways the knowledge that his love and tenderness 
 were a consolation to her, and her every outburst 
 of grief for those she had lost made her somehow 
 more his own. 
 
 She had, moreover, in her vehement, earnest 
 nature, a faculty of feeling one thing at a time 
 
THE MIDGE 213 
 
 which helped her greatly through the first hard 
 weeks. When she put aside her sorrow, she de- 
 voted herself to what she had in hand wholly and 
 thoroughly. When she thought of pleasing or 
 serving her protector, she gave him her eager 
 affection to the utter exclusion of every other 
 interest. He got into the habit of slipping in to 
 look at her an hour or two after she had gone to 
 bed, and he often found her awake and crying 
 softly to herself. But when he sat down by her 
 side and began to soothe her, she resolutely dried 
 her tears, and turned her whole attention to him, 
 and he became, for the time, the one important 
 being in her small world. So her housekeeping, 
 which was something between work and play, was 
 all-engrossing while she was about it. Her sense 
 of loss was loyally strong and lasting; but its 
 manifestations were intense and exclusive, and 
 when it had found its relief, she took up her new 
 life in the same spirit of loyalty. 
 
 She certainly put her whole soul into the fur- 
 nishing of her bed-room. It was the large back 
 room. The Doctor had given it up to her, and had 
 taken his models and tools to the front hall-room 
 up stairs. This was only a temporary arrange- 
 ment, so far as his work was concerned ; but he had 
 come to the conclusion that it would be well to let 
 the work go, for a little while. He would come 
 back to it with a fresh zest, and he might thus 
 accomplish more. And he was not quite certain 
 in his own mind whether it was worth while to go 
 on with the cannon or not. His original idea 
 
214 THE MIDGE 
 
 seemed to liave grown antiquated. And at one 
 time he had had some notion of trying to simplify 
 the mechanism of the sewing-machine. Perhaps 
 it might be wise to look into the sewing-machine 
 question once more. At any rate, he could do 
 nothing until the Midge was really settled, and 
 their various plans of home-making were carried 
 out. 
 
 The room was certainly very pretty when the 
 Midge at last took possession. He was surprised 
 to see how his own conception of what a room 
 should be had been disregarded with pleasing 
 effect. There was a Frenchy chintz-pattern paper 
 on the walls, with a darker dado — ^this was the 
 Doctor's first experience of a dado — and there 
 were curtains and portieres of cretonne. Cre- 
 tonne and portieres were also new words to him. 
 He could not quite remember how these things had 
 been done. The tradesmen had suggested them, 
 to the best of his remembrance; the Midge had 
 approved, with a prompt exhibition of easy famil- 
 iarity with such matters ; he had disapproved, and, 
 somehow, there the things were, and he was sat- 
 isfied. He had wanted black walnut furniture, 
 and had sternly objected to mahogany with brass 
 trimmings as being old-fashioned; but he had 
 yielded to the supercilious scorn of the dealers and 
 the strong backing the Midge gave them, and there 
 was the mahogany and brass, just like that which 
 he had seen in his boyhood, except that it was more 
 shiny. .There was only one thing in the room that 
 he had bought uncontrolled and unaided, and that 
 
THE MIDGE 215 
 
 was the brass bedstead, with its light chintz-draped 
 tester. And he never would have bought that if 
 the Midge had not casually and artlessly described 
 such a bed, which she had seen in a stolen peep 
 into the apartments of some royal personage in a 
 French watering-place hotel. 
 
 The general effect was creditable to the Midge. 
 He had had to chasten her somewhat extravagant 
 taste in certain particulars. She had expressed a 
 yearning, repressed at his especial desire, for 
 white and gold ; and he felt that he had not been 
 too firm. He had been obliged to deny her a 
 bisque clock, representing a pannier of roses ; and 
 he had stood out against a waxed floor. But, look- 
 ing on the work as a whole, it dawned upon him 
 that the Midge had some lights in matters of taste 
 which had never been revealed to his artistic con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 Yet there were some of her fancies that were 
 quite incomprehensible to him. While they were 
 in the way of furnishing, they made some radical 
 changes in the sitting-room, to its great improve- 
 ment ; and for the uneasy easy-chair of faded green 
 reps, they substituted a leather-covered structure 
 that was as comfortable as it was big. But the 
 Midge insisted on taking the discarded piece of 
 furniture into her pretty, new room, and, despite 
 his protests, she had a slip-cover of chintz made 
 for it, and put the ungainly thing in a sunny corner 
 by the window and sat in it to sew and to study. 
 
 For she had begun a course of study. She had 
 at first expressed a doubt as to there being any- 
 
216 THE MIDGE 
 
 thing left for her to learn ; but after a test examina- 
 tion, the Doctor had become convinced that not 
 only must her education be taken in hand at once, 
 but he must take it in hand himself. No school 
 was fitted to cope with such a bewildering combina- 
 tion of knowledge and ignorance. In simple arith- 
 metic she had great proficiency. She could calcu- 
 late with marvelous rapidity in French, Grerman, 
 English and American currency. She had, so to 
 speak, an empirical knowledge of European geog- 
 raphy. She could read fluently in French and 
 English. But she had never regarded it as neces- 
 sary or expedient to learn to spell in either lan- 
 guage. He asked her to give him a specimen of 
 her handwriting. She evaded compliance at the 
 moment, but the next morning, when he left the 
 house, he found this note hid in his hat : 
 
 Mi dire everte 
 
 i louve you bot i louve not tie riting 
 i can djiographie a ritmatique franche ingliche and a litle 
 too couque bot not the riting seau wel 
 
 i dounot thingue it is goude for a wouman too nau too muche 
 howe too rite 
 
 i am your afectuous frend 
 
 midj 
 
 When he had got this insight into her system 
 of phonetics, he went out and bought a lot of 
 school-books, and he began his task of instruction 
 with many forebodings. But she soon relieved his 
 fears. She saw that he desired it, and she studied 
 hard. She learned only too rapidly; but she re- 
 tained a fair proportion of what she learned. Of 
 
THE MIDGE 217 
 
 course, he had to make some allowance for her 
 habits of independent thought. To the end she 
 retained a profound contempt for the unpractical 
 character of the man who wrote the spelling-book. 
 
 "Acme, apostroph', asth-ma," she said, running 
 her finger down the column, "what shall he want 
 of such words like those? I never shall say them. 
 Apple, acorn, ashes — ^there is the sense. If you 
 go take a walk in the country, you see acorns, you 
 see apples. But you never shall say: 'See the 
 beautiful apostroph' ' — 'look at the fine asth-ma.' 
 It is a stupidness, to write such words that nobody 
 wiU say." 
 
 The spelling-book was a humiliation for the 
 Midge, and in self-defense she sought to vindicate 
 her claim to intellectual maturity by demanding 
 some French books to read. The Doctor went to 
 the little "Librairie" with the blue sign, in South 
 Fifth avenue, and bought a couple of volumes of 
 the Bibliotheque Eose — the "Memoires d'un Ane" 
 and "I'Auberge de I'Ange Gardien." She con- 
 temptuously rejected both as childish and wholly 
 beneath her. She wanted novels. So late one 
 afternoon he made a solitary excursion to Bren- 
 tano's. 
 
 The winter was nearly over. It was a soft, 
 moist, slushy day — ^toward the end of February. 
 The city was soaked in soiled snow, rapidly melt- 
 ing into soiled water. The shop doors were open, 
 and through them came the rumble of stage-ridden 
 Broadway, pierced by the high, shrill, humming 
 ring of the car- wheels on the rails. A thin stream 
 
218 THE MIDGE 
 
 of handsomely dressed women trickled in, swerved 
 from counter to counter, and trickled out. Here 
 and there, browsing on the fields of outspread 
 books and pamphlets, were odd-looking men ; men 
 who would have been noticed in a crowd, each for 
 some eccentricity or individuality of dress or per- 
 sonal appearance; men whom one would have 
 called "professional," without exactly knowing 
 why. In the "music department," a piano was 
 pealing forth the latest waltz, and a dozen pretty 
 bonneted heads nodded in time with its measure. 
 The well-dressed clerks moved leisurely about, 
 chatting in a friendly way with old customers. It 
 did not look like a shop. The whole thing sug- 
 gested an afternoon reception ; and the clerks car- 
 ried out the idea. They looked like a reception 
 committee. The Doctor felt somewhat as though 
 he were intruding upon a semi-private social af- 
 fair. He hardly knew which way to turn, or how 
 to go about his business of book-buying. 
 
 There was a pretty young woman at the desk. 
 She had a sweet and kindly face, and the Doctor 
 addressed himself to her. She pointed with her 
 pen to the far-off counter where the French books 
 were sold, and when he reached it, a courteous 
 young Frenchman laid before him a half dozen of 
 the latest importations. The covers were enough 
 for the Doctor. 
 
 "Here!" he expostulated, "this won't do. I 
 want something for a young lady — pour une jeune 
 fille — see? This isn't the sort of thing at all." 
 
 But the courteous young Frenchman had been 
 
THE MIDGE 219 
 
 carried off by a group of rather too well-dressed 
 men, with handsome, over-fed faces, who seemed 
 to be in search of just that "sort of thiag," in a 
 more exalted degree. 
 
 "Try this!" said a voice over his head. The 
 Doctor looked up bewildered, and saw on the top 
 of a small step-ladder, set against the bookshelves 
 on the wall, a broad-shouldered young man in a 
 rough tweed suit, with a cloth traveling cap on 
 the side of his head. He had a handsome, happy, 
 boyish face, with curling fair hair and blue eyes, 
 strikingly dark for his complexion. On his upper 
 lip was what might some day be a moustache, and 
 under it he showed, as he smiled, white, even 
 teeth. He looked down at the Doctor and the blue 
 eyes laughed with amiable mischief. For a mo- 
 ment he stood holding out a book, and then he 
 poised himself on one toe and skipped down from 
 his perch much as a cat comes down a wall, land- 
 ing almost as lightly. 
 
 "This is the sort of thing you want, I guess," he 
 said: "there isn't a blush in it — perfectly safe." 
 He handed the Doctor a copy of Sardou's "Perle 
 Noire," and he smiled again as his eye ran over 
 the volumes that had been proffered by the cour- 
 teous Frenchman. 
 
 "Pretty hard lot he gave you, didn't he? But 
 then French novels mostly are a pretty hard lot, 
 Captain." 
 
 "Why do you call me Captain?" the Doctor 
 asked, sternly. He felt a certain irritation. He 
 would not have cared to own to himself that any 
 
220 THE MIDGE 
 
 part of it was attributable to the stranger's display 
 of athletic, exuberant youtb. Yet one has to be a 
 little older than the Doctor was to look quite kindly 
 upon a boy in his first years of spring and snap. 
 
 ' ' Well — ^you are a captain, aren 't you 1 ' ' laughed 
 the young man : " or you have been, anyway. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Not since you were in baby-clothes, ' ' returned 
 the Doctor, grimly. The youth flushed under the 
 rebuke, and frankly apologized. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir," he said; "I had no 
 right to be so fresh with a man of your — to talk 
 like that, I mean. But I was sure you were a mili- 
 tary man, or had been — ^I knew it by the way you 
 carried yourself. I'm in the navy — that is, I'm 
 just out of the school-ship" — ^he flushed again — 
 "and I want to get transferred to the army, if I 
 can — so you see I've got my head a little turned 
 on the military question. ' ' 
 
 He smiled, and the Doctor smiled in return. 
 
 "That's all right," he said, "only I'm not ac- 
 customed to using a title. I was only a volunteer 
 captain, anyway, and colonels and majors are so 
 cheap, nowadays, that a captain is nowhere." 
 
 "They were somewhere, though, when you were 
 a captain," suggested the boy, with an admiring 
 look in his eyes : " I wish I 'd had a chance at the 
 business then — only I was in baby-clothes;" and 
 again he colored and laughed. 
 
 "No, you don't," demurred the Doctor; "you 
 wouldn't have liked it. It was too — ^mussy. Did 
 you tell me this book was all correct and proper?" 
 
 "Straight as a string, sir. How old — ^I beg 
 
THE MIDGE 221 
 
 your pardon — ^but how old, about, is the young 
 lady? I might find you something else." 
 
 "Let me see," mused the Doctor, aloud, "let me 
 see. She was born twelve or thirteen years ago. 
 That'll make her — say about eighteen or twenty, 
 now, as far as I can calculate." 
 
 The young man stared in frank amazement. 
 
 "You see," the Doctor went on, "she's a rather 
 peculiar young woman. You can't tie her down 
 to years, the way you would any one else. If you 
 want to put it in plain, solid figures, she's only 
 twelve or so. But sometimes I think she's a little 
 older than I am myself. I'm not sure that I can 
 get literature aged enough for her. At any rate, 
 she wants regular grown-up French novels, and 
 she's got to have them — ^if they can be got full- 
 blown and respectable." 
 
 He checked himself with a frown. What was 
 he doing, running on thus like a garrulous proud 
 parent, in the presence of a perfect stranger ! It 
 was small consolation to reflect that he had been 
 talking to himself, rather than to the stranger. 
 
 But the young man set things right with his 
 cheery, friendly laugh, and in five minutes the 
 two were ransacking the shop for virtuous French 
 fiction. 
 
 When their search was ended, the afternoon 
 reception was well-nigh over. In the streets the 
 gas-lamps blazed brightly through the heavy dusk, 
 flickering in a chill, raw wind that had suddenly 
 come up from the East river. The Doctor but- 
 toned his coat, but the young man seemed quite 
 
222 THE MIDGE 
 
 comfortable in Ms tweed suit, as they strode down 
 University Place together. 
 
 He gave the Doctor Ms card — "Paul Hatha- 
 way, U. S. N." — and the Doctor, who had no card, 
 imparted his name. 
 
 It was Mr. Paul Hathaway 's first card-plate, 
 beyond a doubt. His giving the card was un- 
 necessary, for one thing, and, for another, he 
 took it out of a very new and very tightly packed 
 card-case. And in his giving of it there was a 
 certain touch of conscious importance that be- 
 trayed the novelty of the act. The Doctor felt 
 sure that he had the first card out of the hundred 
 that Brentano had delivered that afternoon. 
 
 Mr. Paul Hathaway did all the talking. He 
 spoke of himself, of the school-ship, of the short 
 "leave," to come to an end the next week, of 
 how he had employed it in making sketching-tours 
 around New York — ^he was a bad amateur artist, 
 he explained. 
 
 They parted at Eighth Street, Paul Hathaway 
 going off to his East Side lodging; and the Doctor, 
 as he looked at the light sailor-like swaying of 
 the broad shoulders vanishing in the wintry dark- 
 ness, felt something of his first unreasonable feel- 
 ing of irritation coming back to him. Why should 
 the spring go out of a man's walk in the slipping 
 away of a few miserable, unnoticed years? 
 
 The books that the Doctor brought the Midge 
 that night were a mixed lot. There was "la Perle 
 Noire," "la Petite Fadette," "le Eoman d'un 
 Jeune Homme Pauvre," "Paul et Virgiuie," 
 
THE MIDGE 223 
 
 Feuillet's "Sybille," "un Philosophe sous les 
 Toits" and "Elizabeth, ou les Exiles de Siberie" 
 — ^he bad read, in bis boybood, "Eilisabetb, or tbe 
 Exiles of Siberia," and be was pleased to think, 
 as he did, that it had been translated into French. 
 
 The Midge received these offerings with vary- 
 ing favor. Her criticism on "Misabeth" was 
 decided. She called it "rococo." 
 
 Some months later, the Doctor happened to take 
 up "Sybille," and, after glancing at a page or two, 
 he read it through. When he had read it through, 
 he put it in the fire. From that time on he was 
 the implacable foe of French fiction in the house- 
 hold. 
 
IX 
 
 THE winter slipped away and spring was 
 upon the land. The Doctor found trouble 
 in making himself believe that it was six 
 months since Ms fortress had been invaded by the 
 conquering queen whose sweetly imperious rule he 
 was glad to own. He had looked upon the time 
 as a period of preparation, of making ready to 
 settle down under the new order of things. It was 
 only the green of the grass and the blossoms on 
 the trees that brought to him a realizing sense of 
 the fact that the new order had been established 
 long before, and that as to settling down, there 
 was no such thing as absolute settling down while 
 this growing, changing, ever-developing young life 
 formed a part of his own. He could never come to 
 an understanding with her, as he had come to an 
 understanding with himself. However well he 
 might grow to know her, her own highly original 
 individuality must take its own course of evolu- 
 tion, and there were surprises for him all along 
 the course. 
 
 Being brought up with a round turn by the 
 change of the seasons, he took account of stock, 
 after a fashion. He found himself best able to 
 realize the changes in the Midge and the changes 
 in his own surroundings by considering the aston- 
 
 224 
 
THE MIDGE 225 
 
 ishing dimness that shrouded the past. It was 
 hard for him to remember that things had ever 
 been otherwise than they were now. The meagre 
 loneliness of his life seemed something of ten or 
 twenty years back. There was nothing in the 
 Midge to-day to suggest the pathetic figijre of the 
 previous December. She was rather plump now, 
 was the Midge; certainly pretty; well-dressed, 
 with a contented, comfortable air about her that 
 might have made her uninteresting if it had not 
 been for her inborn coquetry. She had just 
 enough whimsical airiness to carry off her self- 
 complacency, which was great for one of her size. 
 
 She had changed in other ways, too. A distinct 
 Frenchiness of idiom was never to be wholly eradi- 
 cated from her conversation; but she was no 
 longer positively incorrect in speech, except under 
 stress of excitement. When once her pride had 
 been awakened, she had put all her energy into the 
 task of self -improvement ; and she modeled her 
 language so closely on that of the Doctor that he 
 was obliged to reform his own vocabulary and 
 give heed to many neglected subtleties of English 
 grammar. 
 
 In fact, she made the Doctor her model to an 
 extent that alarmed him. Except in matters of 
 dress and gastronomy, she adopted him and all his 
 codes, whole and complete. She had evidently 
 become aware of the existence of standards, 
 moral and social, superior to those of her infant 
 years. She had discovered that to this new world 
 into which she had come, the life her parents had 
 
226 THE MIDGE 
 
 led was something positively objectionable. The 
 feminine mind makes naturally for the respect- 
 able; and the Midge accepted the new standards 
 and secretly felt ashamed of the old. When she 
 spoke of her parents now, it was never to recount 
 their vagabond adventures ; she made pitiful little 
 attempts to dress them up in her memory as rather 
 nice and important people, emphasizing every- 
 thing that was dignified and well-bred about them, 
 and tenderly covering up all that was mean and 
 poor. 
 
 The Doctor was glad of this. The rehabilita- 
 tion of the Talbot family amused him, and touched 
 his sense of the pathetic. He was glad, further, 
 to note her quick acceptance of his cherished prin- 
 ciples of conduct. He had a military character, 
 in some things. He was scrupulously truthful, 
 punctiliously faithful in the discharge of duty, 
 exact, prompt, temperate, and just, as far as in 
 him lay. Or at least he tried to be all these, and 
 he made a fairly good job of it for a common mor- 
 tal. And the child imitated him at a distance, and 
 with a feminine difference. 
 
 But this very imitation gave him a new cause 
 for uneasiness. Dr. Peters was reasonably well 
 satisfied with his moral code. It had cost him 
 enough to construct it, in bitter struggle with 
 temptation and perplexity. He had tried it; he 
 had lived by it; and he knew that, subject to fre- 
 quent revision, and followed in due humility, it 
 was a good, practicable, working code. But back 
 of the code was the making of all codes, and the 
 
THE MIDGE 227 
 
 standard by which all codes must be judged. And 
 while in that regard he was at ease, how was it 
 with his charge ? He had his religion. It was not 
 a creed, nor a system, nor a formula of any sort. 
 It was something compounded of hope and fancy 
 and speculation, that satisfied his spiritual crav- 
 ings. It was the private adjustment that every 
 thinking man makes with his own immortalities. 
 But he knew that it was practically incommuni- 
 cable. He could not write it out, as he might have 
 written out his views on conduct, and hand the 
 schedule to his pupil to be learned over night. It 
 was the growth of individual experience and indi- 
 vidual thought. It belonged to him. and to him 
 alone. 
 
 Now, was he not in honor bound to provide a re- 
 ligion for the Midge? He could not expect her to 
 construct one for herself. Women, as far as he 
 knew, had their religions supplied to them ready 
 made, and were supposed to take them without 
 questioning. His mother had accepted the Thirty- 
 nine Articles. If she had discovered on her death- 
 bed that there was a fortieth that should have been 
 accepted with the others, in the first instance, and 
 had been left out by mistake, she would have ac- 
 cepted it without asking what it was. 
 
 He found himself facing the religions of the 
 world, and called upon to select one to fit a child 
 — one that she would not grow out of; one that 
 would last her through a life that might be long 
 or short, calm or troubled, happy or miserable. 
 He was only a plain man, who had been a medical 
 
228 THE MIDGE 
 
 student, a civil engineer, a volunteer soldier, a 
 would-be inventor, and an amateur doctor. He 
 felt humbly ignorant and bewildered. He wished 
 that he knew more — or less. 
 
 What complicated the matter was the consid- 
 eration that, even if his conscience would allow 
 it, he could not pick out a creed at random and 
 present it to his charge. He had never faced the 
 great question which men in general prefer to ig- 
 nore: Do women reason? He did not face it 
 now. But he knew that the Midge had some ap- 
 palling logical processes among her intellectual 
 functions. And he reflected, with a chilled dis- 
 may, that her final test of anything which he asked 
 her to believe would be to ask him if he believed it 
 himself. 
 
 It was an awkward situation for the Doctor. 
 When the Midge first came to him, the necessity 
 of improving her physical health had been of the 
 first importance. She was nervous and feeble, 
 and all his efforts had been to the one end of mak- 
 ing her sound and strong. Sunday had been their 
 chosen day for excursions and open-air exercise. 
 In the winter, they had made little trips to Cen- 
 tral Park, or had taken sleigh-rides, when there 
 was any snow. And now that the spring had 
 come, and was fast changing to summer, they had 
 taken their Sundays to invade Westchester, Staten 
 Island, and the suburbs of Brooklyn and Jersey 
 City. 
 
 When he told her that these outings, the crown- 
 ing joy of her week, must be abandoned, and that 
 
THE MIDGE 229 
 
 she must go to church, she acquiesced ; but her dis- 
 appointment was unconcealable. 
 
 He took her to the chapel where the Reverend 
 Mr. Pratt preached. Mr. Pratt was surprised to 
 see them there. He had always supposed that Dr. 
 Peters attended divine service somewhere up 
 town. 
 
 They went three times to Mr. Pratt's chapel. 
 The second and third Sundays, Dr. Peters noticed 
 that the Midge's lips were moving silently through 
 all the time of service and sermon. As soon as 
 they were out of church she eagerly addressed 
 him: 
 
 "Do we need to go any more? I know it now." 
 
 "Know what?" demanded the Doctor. 
 
 "All those things they say. It is the same 
 every Sunday. I have learned them all by heart 
 — ^I will say them to you, and you can see." 
 
 "But they aren't the same thing every time, 
 Midge. The lessons are different, and so is the 
 collect." 
 
 "Well, we can read those at home. I will learn 
 those, too, if you want." 
 
 "But the sermon's different. Mr. Pratt has a 
 new sermon every Sunday." 
 
 "Oh, Mis-ter Pratt!" she returned, with inno- 
 cent scorn; "do you care what he says, Ev-ert? 
 He is no priest — Elise has told me so." 
 
 Further investigation convinced the Doctor that 
 the Midge would never receive the ministrations 
 of the Eeverend Mr. Pratt in a proper spirit. She 
 had disliked him at their first meeting, and she 
 
230 THE MIDGE 
 
 had since learned the opinion held of him in the 
 quarter, where he was looked upon as an elegant 
 amateur of religion, not to be mentioned in the 
 same breath with faithful, conscientious Father 
 Dube, or even with energetic, soul-amassing 
 Brother Strong, of the Bethel. 
 
 They went no more to the chapel, and the out- 
 ings began again; but on rainy Sundays the Doc- 
 tor slipped out by himself about eleven o'clock, 
 each day visiting a new church, and listening at- 
 tentively to the prayers and the preaching. 
 
 He heard, in the course of that summer and the 
 ensuing fall, a great deal of very interesting dis- 
 course ; but he did not come across any variety of 
 religious instruction that seemed to him to fit the 
 Midge's case. 
 
 In the autumn he came to the conclusion that he 
 was beginning his search at the wrong end. The 
 Midge was, after all, a child, and she needed the 
 education of a child. He sent her to the Sunday- 
 school of the chapel. 
 
 The Sunday-school scheme was a complete fail- 
 ure ; but it brought about a better understanding. 
 After the second Sunday of attendance, the Midge 
 revolted, and vigorously. 
 
 "It is a nonsense, Ev-ert," she said, excitedly; 
 "vois-tu, they have given me this little yellow 
 thing to learn" — and she held up a printed text — 
 "and I can learn ten hundred of those in a day. 
 And they have told me such histories! — of an old 
 man who is mocked of the little boys, and, fgure- 
 toi, there are bears come out of a forest and eat 
 
THE MIDGE 231 
 
 them up ! Is it that I am a child, to be told such 
 stories like that?" 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" groaned the Doctor, "why, that 
 was Elijah — or Elisha — I forgot which. Why, he 
 was a prophet." 
 
 "I do not know what was his business; but he 
 had no hair. And I am not a little boy who is rude 
 to old gentlemen. Why do they tell me such 
 stories?" 
 
 "My dear," said the Doctor, "you needn't go 
 to the Sunday-school any more. I'm going to take 
 this business in hand myself. It seems to be laid 
 out for me to do work out of my line, and I'm go- 
 ing to stumble right on." 
 
 He got down from his bookshelf his mother's 
 Bible, which stood between "Gummere's Survey- 
 ing" and "Peveril of the Peak," and that day he 
 began a course of readings from the Scripture, 
 accompanied with comment and criticism of a 
 varied and often original nature, remembered tra- 
 dition struggling uncertainly with independent 
 thought. 
 
 The Midge was interested at last. She was al- 
 ways willing to sit on the ground, with her head 
 on his knee, and to listen wisely to his reading and 
 to his remarks. 
 
 Her ingrained skepticism led her to ask for his 
 personal confirmation of the story of Eve and the 
 serpent. 
 
 "My dear," he answered, gravely, "we can't 
 tell people to believe things, or not to believe. 
 Everybody has to act for himself or herself. My 
 
232 THE MIDGE 
 
 mother died believing every word of this, from 
 cover to cover. I'm in a sort of a mixed condi- 
 tion, myself. When you get older — the subject is 
 a little extensive for you, just at present — you can 
 form your own conclusions, and I'll try my best 
 to help you. Just now, all that you and I have 
 got to do is to get all the good we can out of it. 
 As to the serpent — well, some people have said 
 that this is a sort of a fable, as it were ; and they 
 say the moral is that a young woman may some- 
 times know too much, or think she does." 
 The Midge was silent. 
 
 It was a soft September day, and the foliage in 
 the parks was just beginning to thin out and look 
 pale in the warm sunlight, when Dr. Peters, cross- 
 ing Washington Square, found Father Dube sit- 
 ting on a bench, with a smile on his round face as 
 he watched a small flock of brown birds hopping 
 and tumbling about a crust of bread. 
 
 "Hello, Dube!" he hailed his friend, "I didn't 
 know you ever loafed." 
 
 "But I do," said the priest, his smile growing 
 kinder, though it was not a cheerful smile, "I am 
 capable not only of loafing, but of idle thoughts. 
 I have been wishing that that I were a sparrow." 
 
 "I don't wish you were a sparrow," rejoined 
 the Doctor, sitting down on the bench beside him, 
 "for I want to ask your advice, and I'm not ask- 
 ing advice of sparrows." 
 
 "I am not a sparrow," said Father Dube, his 
 
THE MIDGE 233 
 
 smile fading out; "I am a priest, and I will give 
 advice to any one who wants it. That is what I 
 am here for. Sometimes I think that it is all I am 
 good for." 
 
 "I hope you are good for my case," the Doctor 
 began ; and he went on to tell the story of his per- 
 plexity and his audacious attempt to solve the 
 problem for himself. 
 
 "I don't know just what I want you to say," he 
 concluded, "and I don't suppose there's anything 
 you can say, but one thing. If you've got any 
 light on the subject, I wish you'd shed it for the 
 benefit of a humble heretic. You and I don't talk 
 quite the same language ; but I guess you can sort 
 of make signs that I can understand. ' ' 
 
 Father Dube clasped one knee with his locked 
 hands, and looked hard at the sparrows. There 
 was a shade of depression on his face, and he 
 spoke slowly and in a tone of sad gentleness. 
 
 "I suppose you think you know what I will say. 
 Eh? That is it? 'Make her a Catholic' Well, 
 no, I do not say it." 
 
 He paused for a moment. 
 
 "You cannot make her a good Catholic, while 
 she is under your influence ; while she believes in 
 you. You can not make her a member of the 
 Church of England. You know it. It is impos- 
 sible. You can make her go to the altar, and say 
 her prayers — ^but you know that that is not 
 religion, if her heart is not there. For an in- 
 telligent person, that is worse than no religion 
 at all. The worst enemy of the Church is he 
 
234 THE MIDGE 
 
 who kisses the cross and doubts in his heart." 
 
 The priest's tone was stern, almost severe; but 
 it changed to genial tenderness as he turned to the 
 Doctor and laid a hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "It is God who makes Catholics — ^it is not Dr. 
 Peters or Father Dube. Leave it to Him. Per- 
 haps you do not believe in Him? I do not know. 
 I have known you for many years; but I do not 
 know your thoughts. I know your heart, how- 
 ever ; and what you have told me — that is all right. 
 Go on — teach her what you know — ^make her a 
 good woman. That is all you can do. Do not try 
 to do more. You will not do it well. ' ' 
 
 He rose, and clasping his hands behind him 
 spoke with repressed excitement. 
 
 "My friend, it is not every one who shall say to 
 himself : 'I shall serve.' Look at me. I am sixty 
 years old, and I am a mistake." He looked Dr. 
 Peters straight in the eye. "When I was young, 
 I thought I had a vocation for the priesthood. I 
 was full of enthusiasm. I had read of the mar- 
 tyrs, of the soldiers of the Church. I said : I too, 
 will serve her. "Well — it is now forty years, and 
 I know that I had no vocation. I had only ambi- 
 tion. I am of a nature that is not fit for a priest. 
 I love my ease, I indulge myself. I am tired. I 
 could not be tired if I had been called to my 
 work. Look you, Peters — ^me, a priest of God 
 — it is distasteful to me to go among these 
 poor and ignorant — ^my heart is not in my 
 work. ' ' 
 
 "You manage to control your distaste pretty 
 
THE MIDGE 235 
 
 well," said the Doctor, warmly. "Don't talk in 
 that way about yourself. I know what you do for 
 those people." 
 
 "I do my work; but another would do it better. 
 They like me, yes; because I am easy with them. 
 They know I have not the heart to be stern. They 
 can put me off with any story. Anything is good 
 enough for old Dube. It is not men like me who 
 represent the dignity and authority of the Church. 
 There is Father Quinlan" — ^he pointed across the 
 square — "they respect him." 
 
 Quinlan was the priest of a neighboring parish. 
 
 " Quinlan 's a brute, begging his pardon," said 
 the Doctor. 
 
 "But they fear him, they respect him," 
 repeated the old man, stubbornly. He was silent 
 for a moment, and then he broke forth again, with 
 uncontrollable vehemence. 
 
 "I am a soldier of the Church — ^yes. But what 
 am I for a soldier? I am a sentinel — put out far 
 in the forest. What do I see of Her victories, of 
 Her grandeur, of Her glory? What have I done 
 for Her?" 
 
 His kind old face was draisTi with lines of pain. 
 He looked upward, as if for some answer from the 
 skies. After a moment, he came to himself with 
 a heavy sigh. 
 
 "That is all wrong, of course," he said "You 
 wonder that I should speak so to you — to you who 
 are not of the Church. Well, you can understand 
 me better than some who are of the Church. I 
 have done wrong, however. And you came to ask 
 
236 THE MIDGE 
 
 me for advice. Well, I have given it. Good-bye, 
 my friend." 
 
 He walked solemnly away, his head bent, hia 
 hands clasped behind him; the autumn sunlight 
 falling on him as he walked down the avenue of 
 trees. 
 
 When the Doctor reached home, the Midge was 
 at the sitting-room window. 
 
 "I saw you and Father Dube in the square," 
 she observed: "you were talking a great deal. 
 What was it about?" 
 
 "Oh, of all sorts of things, Midge," he replied: 
 "vocation, and religion and human error, and 
 various things." 
 
 The Midge meditated briefly. 
 
 "Ev-ert," she said, "if you want me to, I will 
 be a Catholic. But it is a nonsense." 
 
 "I don't think it's necessary, my dear." 
 
 "Well, what do you want that I shall be, then? ' ' 
 
 The Doctor crossed the room, and, taking her 
 face between his hands, lifted it up, so that he 
 could look into her eyes. Then he asked : 
 
 ' ' Midge, do you love me ? " 
 
 "You know I dol" she answered, opening her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Right clean through, honest and true?" 
 
 "Why, Ev-ert — ^you know Yes." 
 
 "And you're going to be a good girl?" 
 
 "Yes," she assented, in opened-eyed wonder. 
 
 The Doctor looked at her long and earnestly. 
 
 "Well," he said at last, "I guess you are." 
 
THE fall went, and winter came, and Decem- 
 ber, and it was a year since the Midge had 
 entered the apartments of Dr. Peters. Then 
 another year went by, and another, and a fourth 
 Christmas came. Late on Christmas eve he 
 slipped a gold watch and a huge package of candy 
 into her slim, blue stocking, that swung from the 
 sitting-room mantel. He scowled as he tried to 
 think that he and the Midge were three years 
 older. 
 
 "Ain't either," he soliloquized; "not so far as 
 I'm concerned. I'm three years younger, if I'm 
 anything." 
 
 But he glanced ruefully at the long stocking. 
 
 ^^She grows," he thought. 
 
 Their life was so regular and uneventful that 
 they marked the movement of time only by the rec- 
 ord of the calendar — the annual holidays and the 
 changes of the seasons. Yet the Midge was 
 undoubtedly growing. She now wrote and spelled 
 French and English so well that she could never 
 have passed for a girl educated in a fashionable 
 school. She had begun to make obscure refer- 
 ences to a serious and impending future of "long 
 dresses." Her hair no longer hung down her 
 neck. It was braided into two neat tails, which 
 
 237 
 
238 THE MIDGE 
 
 were spliced together with effective ribbons, and 
 these tails displayed a tendency to crawl up into 
 a coil on the back of her head. Once or twice, 
 even, the coil had given place to a loose knot. But 
 the appearances of the knot were only tentative, 
 so far. 
 
 Her education was getting to that dangerous 
 point of ambitious beginning when young ladies' 
 educations are generally "finished." She was 
 studying painting and music. It was good old 
 Parker Prout who taught her the art of Nassau 
 Street. Somebody once said of Parker Prout 
 that he succeeded as a teacher because he also 
 served his pupils as an Awful Example. Prout 
 came twice a week, and, under his tuition, the 
 Midge learned to paint water-colors, touching in 
 their simplicity of composition and their free use 
 of the primary colors. Her skies were blue, her 
 trees were green and her sun was yellow when it 
 was not red ; and you could always tell just where 
 one thing left off and another began, in her pic- 
 tures. She was very well satisfied with them, and 
 so was the Doctor. He said they indicated the 
 possession of a cheerful disposition. 
 
 Other twice a week came Professor Max Mann- 
 heim, who tortured himself into paroxysms of 
 harmless rage in trying to teach her to play the 
 piano. 
 
 "Du lieber Gott in Himmel!" he would shriek: 
 " Iss dot a chordt off A ? W 'at shall you do if you 
 shall not sink? I do not esk zet you hef fing-erss 
 — ^I do not esk zet you hef arms — ^I do not esk zet 
 
THE MIDGE 239 
 
 you hef hentss — ^bot play mit ze kray metter ofE 
 your prain — only oncel La, la, la!" — ^with a 
 staccato hammering of three of the piano keys, as 
 though he had the obstinate gray matter of the 
 Midge's brain under his wiry fingers. The 
 Midge herself merely smiled on him in amiable 
 calm, either recognizing in all this a form of 
 vehement impatience, or accepting it as something 
 inseparable from the inculcation of the art of 
 music. After the hour of turmoil was over, they 
 were good friends, and the Professor frequently 
 took her to afternoon concerts, where Dr. Peters 
 could not have been dragged with ox-chains. She 
 liked the concerts fairly well, especially when they 
 ran to what the Professor called the "tresh" of 
 Strauss and Waldteufel and Abt. 
 
 In these three years the Midge had become a 
 sturdy young thing, not tall — that she never would 
 be — ^but plump and mature of figure for a girl in 
 her sixteenth year. Nor did her water-colors 
 belie her disposition, for she was cheerful and 
 contented, and her youthful vivacity was appar- 
 ently undimmed by any consciousness that she had 
 no friends or associates under forty years of age. 
 
 It was in the fourth spring of her stay that the 
 Doctor noticed a puzzling change in her. She 
 began to moult, as he put it. Her health was excel- 
 lent; but there was a marked diminution in her 
 usually large fund of energy and enthusiasm. 
 She seemed to lose her interest in their long walks, 
 and in their Sunday rambles. She preferred to sit 
 at home and read, or at least she said she did. 
 
240 THE MIDGE 
 
 After a while he noticed that when she had a book 
 in her hand she was not always reading. 
 
 The Doctor's affectionate diagnosis of the case 
 was wholly unsatisfactory. He felt that she had 
 something on her mind; but delicate questioning 
 and gentle overtures to confidential communion 
 brought him no nearer to finding out what the 
 something was. As time went on, she became 
 fickle of mood. Sometimes she fairly purred in 
 kitten-like felicity. And the next day she would 
 "moult" again. "I know the world is hollow," 
 thought the Doctor, "but she can't have found it 
 out yet. That comes later." 
 
 One day he found her crying, and he demanded 
 an explanation. She gave him none, but slipped 
 silently out of his grasp and went into her own 
 room. It was the first time that she had ever been 
 anything but gentle and submissive to him. He 
 refrained from following her ; but he made up his 
 mind that radical remedial measures were in 
 order ; and in a manner it eased his mind to reflect 
 that the extravagance of this manifestation made 
 it almost certain that there was a physical cause 
 for her morbid state of mind. "Malaria, I 
 believe," he pondered: "I suppose that means 
 moving up town. Something's got to be done, and 
 right now. She'd never act in that way if she 
 wasn't sick. Malaria, for certain. I presume 
 I'd have had it, living in this region, if I ever had 
 anything — except an appetite." 
 
 But he had a greater shock before him than the 
 discovery of malaria. An hour later the Midge 
 
THE MIDGE 241 
 
 came gravely and sadly from her room and stood 
 in front of him, lifting a face painfully set and old 
 for a child of sixteen. 
 
 ' ' I am sorry I went away from you like that, ' ' she 
 said, gently. "I did not mean to be — ^notnice. But I 
 was f eelingvery badly. I was making up my mind. ' ' 
 
 "Making up your mind?" he repeated, smiling. 
 
 "Yes. I want to go away." 
 
 " To go away? Where ? ' ' 
 
 She stood with her hands hanging down by her 
 sides, and her figure drooped as though she were 
 tired. 
 
 " I do not know. That we must find out. Some 
 place — some asylum, or some place where I can 
 do some work." 
 
 " Midge 1" the Doctor cried, "what do you 
 mean?" 
 
 She threw up her hands with a nervous gesture 
 and drew a quick breath of pain. 
 
 "No, I know what you will say! But I can not 
 stay here more. I know it — I did not know it 
 once ; but I know it now — it is all wrong. I have 
 no right to be here. I am no relation to you — I am 
 nobody at all. You have just found me, and I 
 have made you take care of me because you are 
 too good to send me away. I have been selfish, 
 and I have taken it all; but I knew not better 
 when I came here. I was ignorant. Now I know, 
 and I will be selfish no longer. I will go away — 
 no ! no ! — ^you shall not tell me to stay. It is not 
 right that I stay. You must let me go!" 
 
 The Doctor had a fleeting vision of the room as 
 
242 THE MIDGE 
 
 it had looked on the night when the Midge first 
 entered it, and of the pitiful little form in the 
 long black waterproof. It gave him a shock to 
 connect that picture with the girl who stood now 
 on nearly the same spot. He reached out and 
 put his hands on her shoulders, though at first 
 she shrank a little from his grasp. 
 
 "Midge," he said, holding her firmly and speak- 
 ing with slow decision, "you can go away if you 
 want to. If you are tired of living here " 
 
 "Ah! no." 
 
 "If you feel that you have got to go, I won't 
 hinder you. You can do as you please." 
 
 Her lips closed tightly, and her face grew whiter. 
 
 ' ' But, look here ! I want you to understand one 
 thing. You may go — ^but if you go, I go too. Do 
 you understand that? Wherever you go, I'm 
 going too — see?" 
 
 A queer little cry came from her. It was almost 
 joyous, yet it seemed to have a sob behind it. 
 
 "My dear child," he went on, holding her 
 tighter as she shrunk away, "let's settle this thing 
 once for all. You don't appear to know that you 
 are talking right down wickedly. What's the use 
 of telling me that you don't belong to me? You 
 do! What could I do without you? I couldn't 
 get along — you ought to know that. You aren't 
 under any obligations to me — I'm under obliga- 
 tions to you. That's the way it stands. Now, 
 just look at the matter reasonably. I'm an old 
 man " 
 
 * ' You are not an old man ! ' ' she broke in ; " I will 
 
THE MIDGE 243 
 
 not have you call yourself an old man. You are 
 forty-four years and seven months old. That is 
 not old! That is nothing." 
 
 "It's something, my dear," he said, staring into 
 vacancy over her head. "I'm too old to make 
 new friends. Now, you're my best friend. You 
 aren't any relation of mine — that's true. But 
 you're a good deal more to me than any relation I 
 ever had, and I'm going to hang on to you and 
 keep you and own you, do you grasp that fact? 
 So don't you ever talk again about leaving me, 
 unless you want to make me talk to you pretty 
 seriously. You hear that?" 
 
 She heard it in silence. He took her on his lap 
 and set to work to reason it out. He told her that 
 he had no kindred who had claims upon him, that 
 he was free to do as he liked with his own, that his 
 income, though it was not. extravagantly large, was 
 more than he could ever spend upon himself — 
 more than sufficient for both of them. She lis- 
 tened, and yielded gently, almost wearily. There 
 was a trace of something like humiliation in her 
 manner, however, as she sat with bowed head and 
 heard him patiently. But in the end she gave the 
 promise he required of her, never to mention the 
 subject again, and to put the thought out of her 
 mind, as far as possible. 
 
 "When this was done, and the Doctor's mind was 
 relieved, he wanted to go on with a few further 
 comments and reflections, gathering up the loose 
 end of their talk ; but she showed a distinct desire 
 to close the conversation, and left her place upon 
 
244 THE MIDGE 
 
 his knee to prepare the table for dinner, for the 
 afternoon was passing into evening. 
 
 Afterwards she went to her room. She always 
 made some pleasing and significant change in her 
 attire for the evening meal. The Dodtor was 
 striding up and down the room, after his fashion, 
 when she suddenly emerged. Her listless, fatigued 
 manner had gone ; she was tremulous, tearful and 
 excited, and she threw herself upon him, binding 
 him in her arms with a violent eagerness. 
 
 "I have been wrong," she cried; "yes, I have 
 been wrong to you. I have been ungrateful, and I 
 have pained you. I did not mean it. I do not 
 want to go away from you. I will never go away 
 from you unless you want me to. You have not 
 understood me. I have been wrong ; but you have 
 not understood me. I only mean to do what you 
 would have me. Yes, I do belong to you, Evert, I 
 will do whatever you say, now and always. If you 
 ever say to me to go, I will go ; and if you say to 
 me stay, I will stay. I want you to hear me, 
 Evert. Always, always, always! I will do just 
 what you say. Always I will do just what you 
 want. You can tell me nothing that I will not 
 do — and I will be glad, if you say it. Do you 
 know that, Evert?" 
 
 She trembled convulsively as she clung to him. 
 He saw that she was agitated beyond the limit of 
 her childish strength, and he soothed her with all 
 possible gentleness, until the wild excitement gave 
 place to unnerved exhaustion, and she let herself 
 be petted and caressed like a baby. 
 
THE MIDGE 245 
 
 He scarcely understood it all; but he made 
 certain that she needed fatherly care and tonic 
 medicines, and for weeks thereafter she had both, 
 administered to the best of his ability. It was 
 some time before the treatment showed good 
 effects ; but by midsummer he saw with pride that 
 she had been brought back to sanity, and he dis- 
 continued the use of the tonic medicines; though 
 he relaxed nothing in his fatherly care. 
 
 They went out of town a good deal during the 
 summer, making little trips to the Catskills and 
 to the Jersey coast, spending a few days at a time 
 in these airings. He did not feel that he could 
 afford to give more, for he had got to work upon 
 the sewing machine improvement; and, besides, 
 he was always needed in the quarter — although he 
 was not called upon so often as he had been in 
 earlier days. There seemed to be a general 
 understanding among the poor people that he was 
 now a man of family, and that his time was no 
 longer wholly at their service. Yet he went 
 among them often, and sometimes, now, the Midge 
 went with him, and she showed a creditable readi- 
 ness and intelligence as a nurse. 
 
 They had a way of dining out, once in a while, 
 to break the monotony of a long succession of 
 household repasts. One fine day in November, 
 filise wanted to go to Hoboken, to the christening 
 of her cousin's ninth child, and they were glad to 
 let her off, and to avail themselves of the excuse 
 
246 THE MIDGE 
 
 to go forth and take their dinner in a restaurant. 
 
 It was a true day of Indian summer — summer 
 surely enough, although its radiance rested on 
 bare trees and grass out of which the life had 
 faded ; and though the cool blue of the higher sky, 
 and the soft haze on the horizon, seen down the 
 long vista of the city street, gave no suggestion of 
 summer's sensuous languors. 
 
 The day before, the Midge had celebrated her 
 sixteenth birthday, and they agreed to regard this 
 dinner as an extension and continuation of the 
 celebration. 
 
 It was a modest feast — only a plain tahle-d'hote 
 dinner, eaten in the heart of the quarter, at a cost 
 of half-a-doUar apiece. They had tried more 
 elaborate dinners, at the great hotels up-town ; but 
 they preferred the simpler joys of Charlemagne's 
 restaurant. They both possessed that element of 
 Bohemianism which belongs to all good fellows — 
 the Midge was a good fellow, as well as the 
 Doctor. 
 
 Charlemagne's is a thing of the past; but he 
 was a jolly king of cheap eating-house keepers 
 while he lasted. He gave a grand and whole- 
 some dinner for fifty cents. The first items were 
 the pot-au-feu and bouilli. If the pot-au-feu was 
 thin, the bouilli was so much the richer. And 
 if the bouilli was something woodeny, why, you had 
 had all the better pot-au-feu before it. Then came 
 an entree — calves' brains, perhaps, or the like; a 
 roti, a vegetable or two coming with it; a good 
 salad, chicory or lettuce or plaintain, a dessert of 
 
THE MIDGE 247 
 
 timely fruits, a choice of excellent cheese, and a cup 
 of honest black coffee. And with all this you got 
 bread ad libitum and a half bottle of drinkable 
 wine, that had never paid duty, for it came from 
 California, though it called itself Bordeaux. And 
 if you were inclined to extravagant luxury, you 
 might respond to the invitation of the small 
 placards on the wall, and "Ask for the Little 
 Pot." And, having asked for the little pot, you 
 got a tiny china cup, shaped like a pipkin, which 
 held two or three brandied cherries, steeping in 
 their luscious juice. It cost you ten cents more, 
 and it gave a dollar's worth of flavor to your demi- 
 tasse of coffee 
 
 It was not aristocratic, M. Charlemagne's little 
 place in Houston Street; the table-cloths were 
 coarser than the wrappings of Egyptian mum- 
 mies ; there was little to show that the spoons and 
 forks had ever been plated; there was no cere- 
 mony among the diners, and shirt-sleeves were 
 always en regie. And the great bowl of soup was 
 passed around that every guest might help him- 
 self, much as it might have been done in the time 
 of the proprietor's namesake. But everything 
 was clean, and all things were decent and well- 
 ordered within that respectable resort. Poor 
 French clerks and saving French tradesmen 
 mostly frequented it. Now and then there was 
 a table-full of newspaper men, actors, artists and 
 unclassified Bohemians, who atoned for their 
 uncontrollable noisiness by amusing all the graver 
 patrons of the house with their ready mirth and 
 
248 THE MIDGE 
 
 ephemeral wit, always generously loud enough to 
 be at the service of the whole room. 
 
 Madame Charlemagne, holding the pot-au-feu 
 breast-high, hailed the Doctor and the Midge as 
 they entered, and called upon M. Charlemagne to 
 find seats for them. 
 
 M. Charlemagne, rotund and jovial, with the 
 air of a comic cook in an opera bouffe, showed 
 them to a little table between the fireplace and 
 the window. 
 
 There was one other person already at the 
 table — a young man. Looking up after his soup, 
 it struck the Doctor that he had seen the young 
 man before, somewhere. He had only a vague 
 sense of knowing the broad shoulders, the bright 
 young face and the moustache that was still as 
 small as anything can be that has a right to be 
 called a moustache. The young man, with the 
 color of confusion in his cheeks, directed toward 
 the Doctor' a smile of recognition, and toward the 
 Doctor's companion a look of awkward apology. 
 Dr. Peters felt sure he had seen him before. He 
 would have contented himself with a nod in 
 acknowledgment; but the ingenuous embarrass- 
 ment in the young face appealed to his sympathy. 
 
 "I think I've met you before " he began, 
 
 doubtfully. 
 
 "Oh, yes, in — that is, I think so — don't you 
 remember? One afternoon, two or three years 
 ago — ^you were buying French books — for a young 
 lady." He added this last clause with impulsive 
 eagerness, and then blushed furiously. 
 
THE MIDGE 249 
 
 * * Oh, yes, ' ' said the Doctor. ' ' I remember now. 
 In the navy, eh ? But your name has slipped me. ' ' 
 
 "Hathaway," returned the young man, 
 promptly; "Paul Hathaway. That was just 
 before I sailed for South America. We had quite 
 a talk together, don't you recollect." 
 
 "Why, yes," said the Doctor, beginning to 
 recall some of the results of that talk, in the way 
 of purchase of French literature. 
 
 "I hope," the young man boldly pushed on, "I 
 hope you liked the books you bought. Were they 
 what you wanted?" 
 
 He glanced furtively at the Midge, who was 
 eating her houilli very daintily, and utterly ignor- 
 ing his presence. 
 
 "Well, no," the Doctor responded, slowly, a 
 smile curling the corners of his mouth; "I can't 
 just say they were, exactly — not all of them. ' ' 
 
 "Weren't they — ^weren't they satisfactory to 
 the young lady?" 
 
 He was fiery red in the face with this; but the 
 Doctor did not notice it, seemingly. His smile of 
 amusement grew broader. 
 
 "I don't know about that," he said; "I didn't 
 hear her say anything much about them — but 
 maybe she can tell you better for herself. This is 
 the young lady." 
 
 He indicated the Midge. It was rather comic 
 to him to think that the child for whom he had 
 bought novels three years before, was now so near 
 to being indeed a young lady. He saw that he 
 must introduce Mr. Hathaway to the Midge, and 
 
250 • THE MIDGE 
 
 he smiled again as he fitted her rarely used 
 patronymic to his simple formula of introduction. 
 
 "Mr. — Mr. — Hathaway, isn't it? — this is Miss 
 Talbot, who wanted the books." 
 
 It amused him to think of the Midge as Miss 
 Talbot. But if he took the formality somewhat 
 lightly, the Midge made up for it by the dignity 
 with which she received the intimation of Mr. 
 Hathaway 's existence. She smiled condescend- 
 ingly, as she ate her bouilli, and listened to the 
 young man's remarks on French literature. 
 
 Mr. Hathaway was frankly talkative. From 
 French literature he skipped to talking about him- 
 self, and he had much interesting information to 
 impart concerning his three years' cruise in the 
 tropics. He had been at Valparaiso a long time, 
 and he described Valparaiso with enthusiastic 
 admiration. Valparaiso led him to talk about 
 Paris, and that brought the Midge out, and the 
 Doctor was able to withdraw from the conversa- 
 tion and devote himself to his dinner, while the 
 younger people chatted of Europe and European 
 ways. To hear the Midge talk, you would have 
 thought that she had been a fashionable tourist 
 with many years' experience of the Continent. 
 
 Incidentally, it came out that Mr. Hathaway 
 was at home on sick-leave. He had been hurt in 
 the course of some gun-practice at Newport, early 
 that summer. The Midge had thawed, by this 
 time, and she gave his sufferings the tribute of a 
 dainty little "Oh!" — ^which expression of sym- 
 pathy he manfully disclaimed. He had not been 
 
THE MIDGE 251 
 
 hurt much, he explained ; it was really nothing at 
 all — only a game leg for a few weeks — and he was 
 all right now. Oh, yes, he was all right — only 
 the day before yesterday he had taken a twenty 
 mile walk, to get a little sketching, along the 
 Bronx. 
 
 The Midge called the Doctor's attention to this 
 fact. They, too, had recently been wandering 
 along the tortuous course of the river Bronx. It 
 was an interesting coincidence. And she also told 
 the Doctor that Mr. Hathaway had been engaged in 
 gun-practice. She drew his notice to this with a 
 proud sense of safety, for she knew that he was 
 wholly weaned from his old schemes of blood- 
 thirsty invention. 
 
 Dr. Peters heard her remarks rather absent- 
 mindedly. He had been thinking while the other 
 two talked. He thought that Mr. Hathaway was a 
 very kindly young man, to be willing to spend so 
 much time on a child. And he saw that the Midge 
 was enjoying the conversation.. She was posi- 
 tively vivacious — ^brighter than he had seen her in 
 some time. She had never quite recovered her 
 high spirits since her sickness in the spring. Now 
 her eyes sparkled, and she ran on so fluently that 
 he was afraid she would bore her new acquaint- 
 ance. It struck him, for the first time, that she 
 did not see enough of young people. Hathaway, 
 of course, was too old for her ; but if he was con- 
 siderate enough to talk with her, and if it did her 
 good — ^why, where would be the harm in asking 
 him to come and see them, once in a while? It 
 
252 THE MIDGE 
 
 would be a change for the Midge — perhaps for 
 him, too. 
 
 He asked Mr. Hathaway to call. Mr. Hatha- 
 way said he would, and when they left the res- 
 taurant, he walked with them to their door, so 
 that he might not forget their number. 
 
 Two days later, he called. He made himself 
 very entertaining, and when he told of his long and 
 lonely sketching-tramps, the doctor invited him 
 to join their expedition for the next Sunday. He 
 accepted the invitation with agreeable readiness. 
 
 After he had gone, the Doctor felt that his act 
 had been somewhat impulsive. 
 
 "I ought to have asked you first. Midge, 
 whether you wanted to have him go. I was rather 
 thoughtless, I guess. How do you feel about it? 
 I won't do it again unless you say so." 
 
 The Midge raised her eyebrows and let them fall 
 in a doubtful frown. 
 
 "Just you and I — that is what I like best. Evert. 
 But if you think he will be pleasant — it is for you 
 to say. You like him? — ^you think he is nice?" 
 
 "Why, yes; he seems a straightforward, honest 
 sort of fellow. Don't think so?" 
 
 "I do not know." She shrugged her shoulders 
 as she looked in the glass and adjusted her hair. 
 "It is too soon to say." 
 
 The next Sunday was fine, and they went to Fort 
 Hamilton, the three of them. Down there, the sea 
 breezes had kept the grass green, and had left a 
 few leaves on the trees. They wandered along 
 the bluff, and admired the English beauty of Clif- 
 
THE MIDGE 253 
 
 ton spire, nestling against the Staten Island hills 
 opposite. They went up to the Fort, and saw the 
 place where the Doctor's gun had been tried; and 
 the Doctor told the story of the failure, with 
 humor chastened by retrospection. Mr. Hatha- 
 way informed them as to the rig of the craft at 
 anchor in the Narrows and up the bay, and spoke 
 of foreign ports which he had seen. They had a 
 good early dinner, which they ate in a jovial frame 
 of mind, at the queer old half -inn half -boarding- 
 house under the bluff; and a little before seven 
 o'clock they took the rattling, swaying dummy for 
 Brooklyn, and were at home in gas-lit New York 
 just as the church bells began to ring for evening 
 service. 
 
 "Well, Midge," said the Doctor, later in the 
 evening, "how was it? Shall I ask him again?" 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "I do not want to say, Evert. You must do as 
 you please. It is nothing to me. But you have 
 not said anything about my hair." 
 
 "What do you want me to say about your hair? 
 Your hair's all right — oh, I see! What has 
 become of the pig-tails?" 
 
 "They are not the fashion now. Don't you 
 think this way is more pretty?" 
 
XI 
 
 IF it had been left to the Doctor to say whether 
 or no Mr. Paul Hathaway should be encour- 
 aged to continue his visits, the chilly indiffer- 
 ence displayed by the Midge might have settled 
 the question in the negative. But it was not left 
 to the Doctor. Mr. Hathaway took the matter 
 into his own hands. He had received one invita- 
 tion, and he needed no more. He simply came, 
 and continued to come, and as he was thoroughly 
 agreeable, and as they always enjoyed his visits, 
 there seemed to be no reason why he should do 
 otherwise. 
 
 The exigencies of social intercourse demand 
 that we should know who our friends are, and 
 whence they come. Mr. Hathaway supplied all 
 the necessary data in his case. He was frank and 
 open, and when he talked about himself, it was 
 with the indifferent ease with which he might have 
 discoursed on the peculiarities of the port of Rio 
 Janeiro. He was the son of a Pennsylvania 
 clergyman, who had been also a school teacher. 
 His parents were dead, the uncle who had brought 
 him up was dead; he had passed his boyhood on 
 the school-ship, and he was now in the navy. That 
 was all his story. As he put it, he was a regular 
 out-and-out, thoroughgoing, plain, unvarnished 
 
 254 
 
THE MIDGE 255 
 
 waif. Nobody owned him, and nobody seemed 
 anxions to take possession of Hm. He had no 
 prospects of promotion in the navy, and he was as 
 tired of it as a man conld be at twenty-three. He 
 had wanted to exchange into the army, because 
 there he would have more leisure, and more time 
 for sketching. Sketching was about the best fun 
 he knew. Of course, he couldn't really do any- 
 thing at it ; but, still, it was fun. Only he saw no 
 prospect of getting into the army. Lieutenancies 
 were not lying around loose. He supposed he 
 would have to go back to the Wequetequoch, when 
 his sick leave expired. And perhaps it was all he 
 was good for, after all. Certainly the Peters 
 household would be tired of him by that time. Oh, 
 it was very kind of them to say that they wouldn't ; 
 but they hadn't tried it yet. They would have 
 two months more of him. 
 
 In the first of their acquaintance, when he had 
 heard that the Midge painted in water-colors, he 
 had promised to bring his sketches around to show 
 her. On his first visit she exhibited her own 
 works, and reminded him of his promise; but 
 somehow or other, from day to day he forgot to 
 produce the pictures. It was only on the friendly 
 insistence of the Doctor that he finally brought a 
 package of sketches for their inspection. And 
 immediately afterward the Midge's portfolio dis- 
 appeared from the sitting-room. 
 
 Mr. Hathaway 's modesty had over-served him 
 in this instance. He drew uncormnonly well, and 
 his work had that quality of confidence and spirit 
 
256 THE MIDGE 
 
 which picture dealers and some art-critics call 
 chic. The next afternoon that he looked in at the 
 Peters establishment — ^he had got to "looking in" 
 by this time — the Midge was painting, and much to 
 his embarrassment, and against his will, he found 
 himself gently but firmly placed in the position of 
 a superior critic and adviser — a sort of amateur 
 teacher, in fact. 
 
 This initial introduction of a visitor into the 
 family accomplished itself without friction and 
 with pleasant results. The Doctor saw that their 
 previous "twofold solitude" had been a mistake. 
 He began to ask people to come to see them. He 
 knew but few who were desirable as familiar asso- 
 ciates, and there were none of them very young or 
 very entertaining; but he did his best with these 
 few. He got Parker Prout and Professor Mann- 
 heim to drop in of an evening, and when they took 
 kindly to the idea, as they did after a first trial, he 
 was surprised to see how much more there was in 
 them than came out in their professional hours, or 
 even in their time of recreation at the Brasserie 
 Pigault, where he had first met them. Father 
 Dube, too, was willing to give them an evening 
 from time to time, and he taught the Midge to play 
 dominoes. The Doctor seriously reproached him- 
 self that he had not thought to instruct her in that 
 innocent and mildly exciting game. But then it 
 seemed to him that he had neglected the Midge in 
 various ways. There were possibilities in life 
 with which he had done nothing to make her 
 familiar. He had not noticed her growth, or the 
 
THE MIDGE 257 
 
 fact that his own world was somewhat narrow for 
 her. 
 
 This was borne in upon Dr. Peters when the 
 Eeverend Mr. Pratt loomed up as one of the possi- 
 bilities of life. He was invited one night to play 
 whist with Parker Prout, Professor Mannheim 
 and the Doctor. The Midge abhorred whist, and 
 so Paul Hathaway kept her company in a far cor- 
 ner while the game went on. Mr. Pratt played 
 whist, not because he liked it, but because he con- 
 sidered it one of the approved and accepted forms 
 of amusement which it was his duty, as a clergy- 
 man of the Church of England, to encourage. He 
 passed a jovial evening, for him. He drank a 
 glass of sherry and ginger-ale; although, as he 
 observed, the use of strong liquor did not agree 
 with him. 
 
 Presumably, however, he did not suffer from 
 remorse or indigestion on the morrow, for he 
 began to pay frequent calls, and showed an 
 amiable interest in the welfare of Dr. Peters and 
 Miss Talbot. 
 
 "Miss Talbot" she did not remain long to any 
 of the little group. Her father's name had long 
 been unfamiliar to her own ears, and she did not 
 seem inclined to insist upon her right to it. The 
 Doctor and Prout called her "Midge"; Mann- 
 heim hailed her as "Mitsh," which was as near as 
 he could come to it ; and the two younger men had 
 to find more suitably respectful modes of address. 
 Mr. Pratt selected "Miss Lodoiska," without 
 sparing one syllable, and Hathaway called her 
 
258 THE MIDGE 
 
 "Miss Lois." This was a bold and original 
 device, and he had the name to himself. 
 
 From the time that he first heard her called 
 "Miss Lodoiska," the Doctor became conscious 
 of a new discomfort. He had to recognize not 
 only the fact that she was "Miss" Lodoiska, but 
 the fact that others recognized that fact. 
 
 The Beverend Theodore Beatty Pratt recog- 
 nized it. Before he had been long a visitor in that 
 top floor on Washington Square, he became aware, 
 to some extent, of the deficiencies in her religious 
 education. He never grasped the whole hideous 
 truth, but he learned enough to make him deeply 
 concerned for her. He tried to get her to teach a 
 class in the Sunday-school, by way of making up 
 for what she herself should have been taught, and, 
 failing in this, he asked her to read a few books 
 which he desired to select for her. She did not 
 refuse, and he brought the books, and came from 
 time to time to talk them over with her. He did 
 nearly all the talking himself ; but then his opinions 
 were unimpeachably correct. 
 
 If it had begun and ended witH tEe books, the 
 Doctor would have been well pleased. But the 
 books were only a small part of it. Mr. Pratt's 
 communications stretched out into expansions of 
 personality, and confidences. He told the Midge 
 of his private hopes and ambitions. He told her 
 of his early life in a small Ohio village, of the 
 struggles of his youth, of the sacrifices which his 
 mother had made to send him to college, of the 
 
THE MIDGE 259 
 
 pride with which she looked upon his present 
 position. And, worst of all, he told Miss Lodoiska 
 of his first and only love-affair and its unfortunate 
 ending. 
 
 The Doctor knew more or less of this, and he 
 was displeased and disturbed. He thought that 
 Pratt was very wrong to talk so to a girl of the 
 Midge's age. And even if she was not quite a 
 child — and he was willing to admit that she had 
 got beyond the point where she could be called a 
 child and nothing more — she was certainly not old 
 enough for that sort of thing. Pratt was old 
 enough, himself, to know better. And he was 
 young enough to make his indiscretion possibly 
 dangerous. And the Doctor was displeased with 
 the Midge for listening to such talk. Why she 
 wanted to listen to Pratt at all, he could not under- 
 stand. But she certainly did listen. 
 
 The Doctor knew little of social diplomacy. He 
 had tact and diplomacy in dealing with the poor 
 and miserable; but he felt himself at a loss in a 
 matter like this. He gave Mr. Pratt two or three 
 hints so broad that no man free from an absolutely 
 guilty conscience could have understood them; and 
 he made some disparaging remarks about Pratt to 
 the Midge. These she received in silence, which . 
 was the only way she ever expressed disapproval 
 of anything he did. This annoyed and perplexed 
 him more than he would have been willing to con- 
 fess to himself. And so it came about that 
 there grew up a misunderstanding — ^undefined, 
 
260 THE MIDGE 
 
 unavowed ; but a misunderstanding — between him- 
 self and her; and their life was not just what it 
 had been before. 
 
 The Doctor was greatly relieved when he 
 learned that Mr. Pratt was about to leave New 
 York. There was to be a change in the manage- 
 ment of the mission. Mr. Pratt's charge had been 
 only temporary in its nature, though he had held it 
 for some years ; and he had not been successful in 
 his labors. The trustees were dissatisfied, and he 
 himself felt that he was out of place. So he had 
 accepted a call to a church in Ohio, near his native 
 place. He was very thankful for the call, and 
 very glad of the prospect of having a church of his 
 own. And he could see his mother, from time to 
 time, by driving twenty-five miles. He never 
 thought to inquire whether the dissatisfaction of 
 the trustees of the mission had anything to do with 
 the procurement of the call. He only knew that he 
 was called to a field of labor for which he felt 
 himself better suited. 
 
 He came one afternoon to bid the Midge good- 
 bye. He brought her several books which he 
 wanted her to read. He spoke of his prospects 
 and of what he hoped to accomplish. He told her 
 he wished he had been able to be of more service 
 to her, as a spiritual guide, than he had been, and 
 when he rose to go he stood for a moment or two 
 limply shaking her hand. 
 
 "I suppose," he said, "it doesn't seem very 
 attractive to you, the idea of living in a little 
 country village, away out in Ohio?" 
 
THE MIDGE 261 
 
 "No," she answered frankly, "it must be a 
 bore. I hope you will like it better than I should. 
 It must be a great bore. ' ' 
 
 "There is so much to be done," he said. 
 
 ' ' Well, I hope you will do it. It is nice of you to 
 go, you know. Yes," she added, reflectively, "I 
 am sure it is nice of you to go. ' ' 
 
 He looked hard at her, and then turned away, 
 and, saying "Good-bye," went down the stairs. 
 He was a poor little fellow, poor of intellect, poor 
 of soul; but he was man enough to read and 
 respect the high unconsciousness of her maiden 
 eyes. 
 
 When the Doctor came home that evening — he 
 had been out buying tools for his sewing-machine 
 model-making — the Midge greeted him with a 
 rapturous smile, such as she had not given him in 
 weeks. 
 
 "Oh, Evert," she said, "Mr. Pratt has gone." 
 
 "Well?" returned the Doctor, rather unsympa- 
 thetieally. 
 
 "I'm so glad!" 
 
 "You're glad?" 
 
 "Why, of course." 
 
 "Well, I don't see precisely why 'of course.' 
 I thought you had been pretty thick of late, you 
 two." 
 
 "Oh, I had to be polite to him, you know. I 
 did dislike him so." 
 
 "Your logic beats me, Midge," said the Doctor, 
 
262 THE MIDGE 
 
 with an uneasy smile. "If you didn't like him, 
 why didn't you show it?" 
 
 "Don't you understand?" she asked, looking at 
 him in mild surprise. "I did not want to be 
 unjust, any more than you would." 
 
 The Doctor pondered. 
 
 "Well, I suppose there is something in that." 
 
 "Of course — don't you see? And he would 
 come to me and tell me all about his mother, and 
 how she has had meat only once a week, so that 
 he might go to college and be a clergyman. And 
 I was very sorry for his mother, and it was very 
 nice of her — ^but you have no idea. Evert, how he 
 has bored me." 
 
 The Doctor's brows were wrinkled. 
 
 "I thought you were interested in his conversa- 
 tion." 
 
 "Interested! But it was a bore — oh, a bore." 
 
 "You managed to conceal it pretty well," he 
 observed, grimly. 
 
 She gave him a surprised look, and then her 
 face changed. She went swiftly to him and 
 touched him on the shoulder. He had been look- 
 ing gloomily out of the window, and he turned 
 toward her. 
 
 "Evert! you have not thought — I liked that 
 man?" 
 
 "Why," be began, uncomfortably, "I thought 
 you seemed to have taken a sort of fancy to his 
 society " 
 
 "Oh, Evert!" 
 
 "I'm not finding fault, my dear. You've a 
 
THE MIDGE 263 
 right to choose your own friends, and " 
 
 "But I could never have him for a friend! 
 How could you have thought that? Why, Evert, 
 he was not nice at all. You did not like him your- 
 self, did you?" 
 
 "I didn't like him — ^no, not exactly. I won't 
 say I disliked him, though. He was a good 
 enough little fellow, I suppose." 
 
 ' ' Grood ! I am not so sure he was good. That 
 is as you look at it. I should not want to have you 
 good like that. Why, Evert, do you know, he was 
 engaged to a girl out there, and when he found 
 that if he married her he could not afford to study 
 and be a clergyman, he has gone to her and broken 
 it off? What do you think of that?" 
 
 The Doctor smiled with more mirthfulness than 
 before. 
 
 "That's his own business, my dear — ^his and 
 the young woman's." 
 
 "But he has gone to her and told her about it, 
 and how he had to choose between her and be- 
 ing a clergyman, and they have prayed together, 
 and he has made her think the way he did, and 
 she has let him go. For me, I think it was a 
 shame. I think it was cruel — and I have told 
 him so." 
 
 The Doctor laughed outright this time. 
 
 "Well, just there I think you exceeded your 
 duty, Midge. That was a question of morals 
 that it isn't for us to pass on. And it seems that 
 the young woman consented." 
 
264 THE MIDGE 
 
 ' ' That was because she was a woman. But she 
 was not young. She was thirty. " 
 
 "Then she was old enough to know her own 
 mind." 
 
 "But would i/ou have done such a thing?" 
 demanded the Midge, indignantly: "would you 
 give up a woman you have loved, for anything 
 — for anything in the world? I think it is 
 wicked ! ' ' 
 
 "I'm not speaking for myself. Midge. But I'm 
 not running Mr. Pratt's conscience. I dare say he 
 thought it was right, or he wouldn't have done 
 it." 
 
 * ' He thought it was right — maybe. But he ought 
 not to have thought it was right. You know it was 
 wrong, Evert ; and you would never have told me 
 to do such a thing. Only you are so good to other 
 people, you will never say they are wrong. But 
 now do you see why I disliked him?" 
 
 "You don't seem to have approved of him, for 
 a fact," said the Doctor, putting his arm around 
 her. 
 
 "And don't you see why I had to be nice to him? 
 For he thought he was right, and that was what 
 made it so — disgusting. Don't you understand 
 why I let him talk to me, Evert?" she pressed, 
 nestling up to him. 
 
 "Because you are a woman?" suggested the 
 Doctor, laughing. 
 
 "Ah, now you are making fun of me," she said, 
 smiling herself as she slipped out of his arm. 
 
THE MIDGE 265 
 
 "And I have to set the table for dinner. See — it 
 is ten minutes of six. You must go and get your- 
 self ready; and I have not changed my dress. 
 Only do not ever tell me again that he could be 
 my friend." 
 
xn 
 
 THE January wind blew in through the open 
 front door of the old house on Washington 
 Square, and brought a smell of cooking up 
 to Dr. Peters 's top floor, one morning shortly after 
 New Year's. Most of the smell proceeded from 
 the lower regions ; but some of it was an importa- 
 tion, a separate smell hanging around a tousled, 
 smudgy, hunted-looking little boy, who did not 
 need a label to tell the experienced eye that he was 
 the male "slavey" of a New York boarding-house 
 of the third or fourth class. It is not every cheap 
 boarding-house that has such an attendant on its 
 domestic staff; but those that do keep him in use 
 as boots, scullion, errand-boy, and in several other 
 capacities, and he is just such a soiled and harried 
 creature as stood before Dr. Peters that sharp 
 morning, rubbing his blue nose with the sleeve of 
 his thin jacket. 
 
 "The gen'l'm'n said to give it to you very per- 
 tickler, ' ' he said, in one breath. 
 
 The note which he handed to the Doctor read 
 thus: 
 
 "Deab Dk. Peters— Can I see you at once, and privately? 
 I am in no end of trouble. I will meet you anywhere you say — 
 but I don't want to have any one know it. 
 
 "In haste, yours, 
 
 "Paul Hathaway. " 
 266 
 
THE MIDGE 267 
 
 The Doctor sent a line in reply: "Come here in 
 half-an-hour — we shall be alone," and the boy 
 went down stairs three steps at a time tossing a 
 coin into the air and singing a paean of his own to 
 an air of the day : 
 
 "O-o-oh! dat dime he gimme, 
 0-o-oh dat dime he gimme, 
 
 Good old chump wid a mustash on — 
 Golden slippers in de mawn ! ' ' 
 
 The Doctor listened, smiled, half-sighed, and 
 smiled again. Then he turned from the door, and 
 faced the Midge, dressed to go out for her house- 
 hold shopping. She had long been considered 
 "equal to the exigencies of the situation." 
 
 She was very pretty to look at, and rather patri- 
 cian, in her way, as she stood, erect and graceful, 
 in her trim seal-skin sacque, a neat, Frenchy bon- 
 net on her small, shapely, well-poised head. 
 
 "I shall not be long. Evert," she said. 
 
 "Well," he suggested, "you needn't hurry 
 home this morning." 
 
 She showed her white, even little teeth in a mis- 
 chievous smile. 
 
 "Oh, you are tired of my society!" 
 
 "Not exactly tired. Midge — only a little 
 fatigued, so to speak. No, dear — ^there's some- 
 body coming here on business. And if you want to 
 take the opportunity to call on your dressmaker 
 and see if there aren't some new duds that you 
 absolutely don't need — why, you've got a good 
 
268 THE MIDGE 
 
 "Ah., nol" she persisted, maliciously: "You 
 cannot deceive me. You want to get rid of me. 
 Very well, I will stay out until you are anxious to 
 have me back, and put an advertisement in the 
 papers — 'Midge: Return to your penitent Evert. 
 I will never turn you out again — E. P.' " 
 
 As might have been expected, to a young woman 
 of the Midge's sense of humor, the "personal" 
 columns of a well-known morning paper had no 
 terrors. She finished her imaginary quotation 
 with a saucy, dainty nod and wink, and marched 
 off to her shopping. 
 
 She had scarcely got out of the house when 
 Hathaway entered. One glance told the Doctor 
 that the "no end of trouble" was no exaggeration. 
 The color had gone out of the handsome face, and 
 the blue eyes were filled with the over-burdening, 
 all-absorbing anxiety of the young spirit in its 
 first encounter with misfortune, when the 
 moment's cloud makes black the whole universe, 
 and there never, no, never, was such another woe 
 upon earth. 
 
 "What's the matter, Hathaway?" 
 
 "Everything's the matter!" said the young 
 man, dropping into a chair ; " I 'm a scamp and a 
 blackguard, and I'm being punished as I deserve. 
 That's what's the matter." 
 
 "Oh, come, my boy — it's not so bad as all 
 that." 
 
 "Yes it is. I haven't the slightest claim on 
 your sympathy, or — or — any one's sympathy. I 
 don't know why I've got the audacity to come to 
 
THE MIDGE 269 
 
 you, and if you tell me that you can't help me — 
 why, I'll admit it's all I'm worth." 
 
 "Well, well," said the Doctor, encouragingly, 
 "let's have the whole damnation. What is it?" 
 
 Hathaway silently handed him a letter. It was 
 written on thin paper, in a foreign hand, and dated 
 from Valparaiso. The English was most un-Eng- 
 lish; but the meaning of the communication was 
 clear. The Doctor read it through carefully. 
 
 "Is this true?" he asked. 
 
 "Yes," answered the boy. He sat with his 
 elbows on his knees, resting his forehead on his 
 hands. 
 
 The Doctor shook his head, gave a long, low 
 whistle of dismay, and walked to the window, 
 where he stood for a minute staring vacantly out 
 at the wind-swept square. 
 
 "Well," he said at last, "you'd better tell me 
 all about it." 
 
 "There isn't much to tell," Hathaway began, in 
 a choking tone, as if it hurt him to talk. * ' We were 
 at Valparaiso a good deal, off and on. We were 
 up and down the coast all through those rows they 
 had down there — ^it was two years ago, you know. 
 And we got to going — a lot of us fellows — to this 
 old man's house — this Garcia. We found out 
 afterward that it was a regular gambling-place, in 
 a shy sort of way, and he got about all the money 
 we had — 'twasn't much. And I got terribly gone 
 on this girl — she was his eldest daughter, and she 
 was handsome — ^beautiful — in that Southern way. 
 I don't want to see anybody like her again, though. 
 
270 THE MIDGE 
 
 I was in love with her — or I thought I was — I 
 don't know. I know I was a fool about it. The 
 fellows all said so. And I suppose I did ask her 
 to marry me — yes, I did — but that was only in the 
 first of it, when I didn 't know what sort of girl she 
 was. Afterward — why, I never thought she'd 
 dream of such a thing as holding me to it. I'd cut 
 my throat before I 'd think of it. ' ' He clinched his 
 hands and fairly shuddered. 
 
 The Doctor looked over the letter again. 
 
 "Is it genuine, do you think, this business? Or 
 is it blackmail?" 
 
 "I don't know," the young man groaned. 
 
 "What's the standing of the family?" 
 
 "It's hard to say. I don't know what to tell 
 you. They have been respectable, certainly — I 
 guess they had a good deal of money once. The 
 old man is nothing but a shark and a sharper now, 
 and I suppose they're a pretty bad lot all around. 
 But I can't go to work to prove that, you know." 
 
 "Let's see" — the Doctor referred once more to 
 the letter: "when does he say he'll send his 
 charges to Washington?" 
 
 "They must be there now. You see, he 
 threatens to do it if he doesn't hear from me 
 within two months. And it's dated in October. 
 You see, he thought I was on the Wequetequock, 
 at Eio, and she hasn't been at Eio. The accursed 
 thing has lain there over one mail and then been 
 forwarded. I got it last night. ' ' 
 
 "But you haven't heard from Washington?" 
 
 "I haven't yet; but I shall soon enough; and it 
 
THE MIDGE 271 
 
 will be the end of me, Doctor. They're lax enough 
 about most things, in the navy; but that's the kind 
 of thing they won 't stand from a fellow in my posi- 
 tion. They'll make an example of me, just as they 
 did of Willy Blackford. Oh, it's a bad business, 
 Doctor." 
 
 "Yes, it is," said Dr. Peters, laying his hand 
 on the bowed shoulder; "but we must try to make 
 the best of it. Come, look up and look it in the 
 face." 
 
 Hathaway did look up, after a moment. 
 
 "By Jove, Doctor, you're a good man!" 
 
 "Never mind about that. Let's get at the facts 
 in the case. I want to know all about it. How old 
 was this — this friend of yours?" 
 
 "I don't know." A tinge of red came into his 
 pale cheeks, "The boys said she was thirty; but 
 I don't believe she was more than twenty-six 
 or so." 
 
 "And you were — ^how old?" 
 
 "I was twenty-one the day we first got to Val- 
 paraiso." 
 
 "That's two years ago?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Why have they waited so long to follow you 
 up?" 
 
 "I suppose they thought we were coming back. 
 We went down the coast to look after some 
 privateer, or something, and then we got orders to 
 come home. I can't explain it." 
 
 "Looks crooked," said the Doctor, cheer- 
 fully. 
 
272 THE MIDGE 
 
 He continued his examination, with encouraging 
 results. Things began to look better, at least 
 from the point of view of morality. Hathaway 
 was frank and self-accusatory. He made no 
 attempt to justify himself ; and it was evident that 
 he had done wrong. But it was also evident that 
 it was the wrong-doing of an inexperienced, 
 impulsive boy, under the influence of a woman 
 much older than himself, and with whom he was 
 foolishly in love. It seemed probable that he was 
 the victim of a family conspiracy. He had had, at 
 the time, a few hundred dollars, a legacy from his 
 uncle, and he had spent it all at Valparaiso. This 
 might have given ground for a belief that he was 
 wealthier than most of his set. 
 
 He was utterly penitent, humble and ashamed; 
 that was certain. It was not merely the fear of 
 the consequences ; the wound he had dealt his own 
 honor and his own sense of self-respect seemed to 
 trouble him more than anything else. 
 
 "It isn't the being discharged," he moaned. 
 "I'm willing enough to get out of the service — but 
 it 's the going out in this awful way. Or, if I were 
 accused falsely, I shouldn't mind it so much. But 
 I feel so mean and degraded — I can't look any- 
 body in the face." 
 
 "It's not so sure that you are going out of the 
 service," Dr. Peters put in. "And you've got to 
 look me in the face while we resolve ourselves into 
 a committee on ways and means." 
 
 They began to talk of the possibilities of help 
 to be got from Hathaway 's superior oflScers. He 
 
THE MIDGE 273 
 
 had been something of a favorite on ship-board, he 
 owned, with another blush. 
 
 ' * Captain Chester is as good an old boy as ever 
 walked, and I know he'd give me a hand, if he 
 could. But he got into trouble in Blackford's 
 ease, and I believe he got an awful wigging from 
 General Beecham, and " 
 
 "Beecham? General Beecham?" repeated the 
 Doctor, "not Buel Beecham — ? he's no sailor." 
 
 "That's the man. I know he's no sailor; but 
 he's a grand mogul in the Navy department, all 
 the same : and he sits up there at Washington and 
 bullyrags old men who were in the service before 
 he was born, and who have forgotten more about 
 their business than he ever knew." 
 
 "Buel Beecham," said Dr. Peters, meditatively. 
 "Buel Beecham — General Buel Beecham. You 
 don't say so!" 
 
 "He's a terrible old martinet, you know. And 
 they all ko-tow to him. It was he who said that 
 Willy Blackford must be made an example of, and 
 that he 'd see that it was done. Oh, he '11 look after 
 me." 
 
 The Doctor crossed the room to the mantelpiece, 
 filled his pipe, lit it, and smoked a good three min- 
 utes — ^three minutes is a long time — in solemn 
 silence. Hathaway sat with his hands in his pock- 
 ets, gazing into the fire, a heavy despair on his 
 young face. There was no sound in the room, 
 save the Midge's latest adopted kitten, "scratch- 
 ing for luck" on the table leg. When she had 
 scratched and stretched enough, she stole over to 
 
274 THE MIDGE 
 
 Hathaway, and rubbed against his feet. He 
 looked down at her and stooped to caress her, and 
 then suddenly drew back with a nervous start, 
 sprang to his feet and stood irresolutely looking 
 from the Doctor to the door, and back again. 
 
 The Doctor rose and spoke deliberately. 
 
 "Hathaway, I'm going to Washington." 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 "I'm going to Washington to-night. Whether 
 this charge is pressed now or hereafter, it's none 
 too soon to look after the case. I think I may be 
 able to do something for you. Mind! I don't 
 promise you anything. But I may have the power 
 to help you, and if I can I will. ' ' 
 
 "Oh, Doctor — Doctor Peters!" the young man 
 began — "what can I say to " 
 
 "You can't say anything. Don't try to. All I 
 want to hear from you is this — " he came closer, 
 and took hold of Hathaway by both shoulders. 
 They were nearly of a height, the young man and 
 the older. 
 
 ' ' I want you to promise me one thing. Never — 
 never again to give yourself a chance to ask your- 
 self whether you've acted like an honorable man 
 or not." 
 
 "I promise, so help me God!" cried Paul Hath- 
 away, with the tears in his blue eyes. 
 
 "Midge," said the Doctor that evening, "I'm 
 going to Washington." 
 "To Washington? And when?" She looked 
 
THE MIDGE 275 
 
 up witli a bright anticipation of pleasure in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "To-morrow." 
 
 "Oh! I can't get ready so soon." 
 
 "There is no occasion for you to get ready, my 
 dear. "Who said anjrthing about your going? ' ' 
 
 "But you aren't going anywhere without me, 
 are you?" She opened her eyes wide. 
 
 "I am, though. Yes, dear" — ^he put his arm 
 about her — "it's a business trip, unfortunately. 
 We'll make a pleasure-trip of it some day; but 
 this time I shall have to go alone. I'm not par- 
 ticularly hankering after the job, anyway; but I'll 
 have to attend to it all by myself. ' ' 
 
 "It isn't — the gun?" She spoke with a shade 
 of incredulous apprehension. 
 
 ' * No, it isn 't the gun. Fact is ' ' he frowned, 
 
 and spoke hesitatingly, "it is not my own business 
 at all. It's something I've taken in hand for 
 young Hathaway." 
 
 "Oh, how good of you. Evert! Is it about his 
 getting out of the navy?" 
 
 "Well — ^yes. It's more or less connected with 
 that." 
 
 She laid down her book, and rose and came to 
 him, taking his hand and patting it with a sort of 
 admiring caress. 
 
 "And you are going to help him? You are so 
 nice, Evert! You are always doing such things. 
 What is it that he wants you to do?" 
 
 The Doctor frowned again, in perplexity. 
 
 "I don't think I can exactly tell you, Midge. 
 
276 THE MIDGE 
 
 He — ^he wouldn't like it. It's a matter of private 
 business, and — and — I'm sure lie wouldn't want 
 to have me talk about it." 
 
 She moved away with a short "Oh!" and the 
 Doctor stood in uncomfortable doubt. 
 
 "Of course, I did not mean to ask, if it is any- 
 thing private," the Midge began again, after a 
 moment. "I did not know. If he has told you 
 not to tell me " 
 
 "Oh, no, he didn't," the Doctor interrupted, 
 hastily. "Nothing of the sort. He didn't say a 
 word about you. Only — it's a private sort of 
 thing — and I don't feel at liberty to talk about it 
 without his permission." 
 
 He was really at a loss. He had never had a 
 secret from the Midge, and the situation was very 
 unpleasant to him. He wanted to give her some 
 hint that Hathaway was in trouble; but he knew 
 her too well to risk it. He could foresee the ques- 
 tions she would ask him. She would not inquire 
 into the nature of the difficulty; but, sooner or 
 later, she would ask if Hathaway had done any- 
 thing wrong, and she would receive his answer 
 with absolute confidence. What was he to say? 
 
 "It isn't that I don't trust you. Midge," he be- 
 gan, awkwardly ; but she came back to him with a 
 bright laugh, and rubbed her cheek against his 
 shoulder, and talked to him as though he were a 
 child. 
 
 "Oh, you dear old thing — I understand! Did 
 you think I was angry?" She grasped the lapels 
 of his coat, and pretended to shake him. "It is 
 
THE MIDGE 277 
 
 just like you. You are the soul of honor, and you 
 are just conscience all over, and I am glad of it. 
 There!" — and she kissed him — "What do I want 
 to know about your Mr. Paul Hathaway? Go and 
 get your traveling-bag, and I will pack it for you. 
 How many shirts do you want!" 
 
 The next evening Dr. Peters was in Washington. 
 He slept that night at a hotel, and went down to 
 breakfast the next morning at the common table, 
 where no Midge sat opposite him, bright and fresh 
 in flowery Watteau morning-wrapper. He did 
 not like it at all, and in spite of his strange sur- 
 roundings, through all his sense of discomfort and 
 disturbance, he somehow felt as if it were the 
 Midge who had gone away from him, and not he 
 who had left the Midge behind. 
 
XIII 
 
 GENERAL BUEL BEECHAM sat at Ms 
 desk and listened rather impatiently to 
 Dr. Peters. General Beecham was gray- 
 bearded, with a thin, cold, rather handsome face 
 — a New England face ; the face of a man certainly 
 self-conscious, seMsh perhaps, intelligent, deter- 
 mined, and strong in the kind of pride that comes 
 dangerously close to morbid vanity. 
 
 The Doctor was talking slowly but earnestly, in 
 his low, even voice. General Beecham listened; 
 but he played with a paper-knife, and looked out of 
 the window, where the January breeze was whirl- 
 ing a thin faint fall of snow hither and thither. 
 
 "I really don't see what I have to do with this 
 matter," he said irritably, as the Doctor paused. 
 "I have no connection at all with the case, Mr. — 
 Mr. Peters. You appear to think that it rests 
 with me to determine what shall be done. You are 
 in error. And even if — even if I had the influence 
 you suppose me to have, I should see no reason — 
 no reason whatever — for interfering. I am sorry 
 for your young friend, of course; but, as far as 
 I can judge from what you have said, he is un- 
 questionably guilty of a grave offense against the 
 honor of the service, and an offense that calls for 
 exemplary punishment. I certainly should not let 
 
 278 
 
THE MIDGE 279 
 
 my private feeling of pity for the young man in- 
 terfere with, my obvious duty as a public officer. 
 And I may say, Mr. — Mr. — excuse me — Mr. Peters, 
 that if you knew to whom you were speaking, you 
 would hardly proffer such a request." He had 
 worked himself up into something like indignation 
 — a sublimated testiness, as though he felt that he 
 ought to feel offended. 
 
 "I rather think I know you. General Beecham," 
 said Dr. Peters, in the same quiet, slow way. 
 
 General Beecham 's lower jaw suddenly set itself 
 against the upper with a peculiar and significant 
 firmness. 
 
 "I don't understand you, sir." 
 
 The Doctor was unmoved. 
 
 "Seems to me I've met you before. General. 
 I was in the soldiering way once myself, and you 
 were a colonel then. Met you only once; but I 
 think you'll remember it if I recall the circum- 
 stances to you. You inquired my name then, and, 
 if my memory is correct, I didn't give it to you. 
 But I guess you remember me, all the same. You 
 had your quarters at old Mammy Chapin's then, 
 back of Vicksburg, and the time I met you was the 
 time I took a young man to you who had made a 
 bad slip, and who was sorry for it afterwards." 
 
 "Yes," said General Beecham: "I think I 
 know you now." 
 
 He spoke almost mechanically. His face had 
 suddenly grown stern and troubled. He sat per- 
 fectly still, holding the paper-knife balanced in his 
 hand, his eyes still staring out of the window, 
 
280 THE MIDGE 
 
 where the snow-powder whirled in the wind. The 
 Doctor followed his gaze with a glance as absent 
 and absorbed. He did not see the snow or the 
 January sky. His memory was full of a day of 
 summer heat, of dust-laden air, trembling under 
 an intolerable glare of blue sky. 
 
 Captain Evert Peters, U. S. A., had been riding 
 up the road that ran over the hills near the river, 
 stretched across the broad depression that lay be- 
 tween them and the rise of ground far to the west, 
 and disappeared on the hazy horizon. 
 
 He had been over a year at the front; but he 
 had no stomach for the ride along that road. 
 There had been some sharp fighting down below, 
 near the old Waters place ; the federal attack had 
 been repulsed three or four hours before, and ever 
 since daybreak the wounded had been coming in, 
 some in ambulances, some in ox-carts. The heavy 
 vehicles labored along in a low-hanging cloud of 
 dust. Captain Peters, riding leisurely back to- 
 ward his quarters, got sick of passing the long 
 train with its endless succession of suffering faces. 
 They were silent, the most of the wounded, but 
 they were hot and thirsty and worn out with pain 
 and fatigue ; and sometimes they groaned or swore 
 or asked vainly for the water that was not at hand. 
 Just as he turned from the road to follow a bridle- 
 path that led across the fields, a team of oxen 
 lumbered by, drawing a heavy wagon. In the bot- 
 tom lay three men, one with a blanket over his legs. 
 A negro drove, sitting sidewise on the high seat, 
 his legs swinging over the front wheels. He 
 
THE MIDGE 281 
 
 was whistling with amiable cheerfulness; but he 
 stopped his music to answer a low moan from the 
 man with the blanket over his legs. 
 
 "D'r ain't none, honey," he said, soothingly: 
 "I done top you a piece back dah wa'n't none. 
 I'm dreffle dry myse'f, honey — fo' Gf^awd I wisht 
 I had some water my se 'f — ^I do, shuah. ' ' His tone 
 had an exaggerated earnestness, as if he were 
 sympathizing with a child, and he spoke of his own 
 need of water as a consoling consideration. 
 
 Captain Peters shook his canteen — it was 
 empty. With a sigh for the cruelty of it all — ^he 
 had got beyond the first case-hardened period of 
 soldierly indifference — ^he jerked his horse's head 
 to one side and left the road behind him. 
 
 "Seems as though they ought to have water, 
 anyway," he said to himself. 
 
 The bridle-path ran through a piece of woods, 
 and Captain Peters took off his cap as he entered 
 the quiet shade. His eyes rested gratefully on the 
 cool spaces among the trees. He felt for a mo- 
 ment a sense of relaxation; of being out of the 
 ugly business; a more than physical relief. It 
 was only for a moment, however; the sight of a 
 man and a horse ahead of him brought him up with 
 tense muscles and alert nerves. 
 
 The man stood by the horse, tightening the sad- 
 dle-girth. He was hardly a man, the captain saw, 
 at a second glance. He was tall and well built; 
 but he could not well have been sixteen years old. 
 His clothes were ragged and worn, and much too 
 small for him. The strained, patched shirt of 
 
282 THE MIDGE 
 
 blue flannel was too tight at the collar to button 
 around his neck, and the short sleeves showed half 
 of his white forearm. The clothes and the man 
 did not belong together. The man gave the lie 
 to his garments. 
 
 Captain Peters had a good minute in which to 
 make these observations. His horse had stepped 
 softly on the grass, and the boy did not look up 
 until he had finished his work at the girth. Then 
 he turned on the Captain a handsome, thin-fea- 
 tured young face, that went from a ghastly white 
 to a furious red. The Captain knew the face. He 
 had seen it two days before, at the railroad station. 
 
 "That's Beecham's boy," some one had said. 
 "He's come down to serve on the general's staff, 
 with his father. Beecham took him out of school 
 to bring him here. ' ' 
 
 "Looks too pretty for practical use," some one 
 else had commented. 
 
 "Young man," said Captain Peters, gravely, 
 "what are you doing here?" 
 
 The boy began to pull at the girth again, his face 
 away from the speaker. 
 
 "I don't know what business that is of yours, 
 sir," he replied with tremulous insolence. 
 
 "7 do," said the Captain: "elk!" 
 
 He gave a click with Sis tongue, at which his 
 horse raised his head. The boy started, and, look- 
 ing up, followed with his eyes the line in which the 
 young ofiScer's outstretched forefinger pointed. 
 There was a small morocco traveling satchel lying 
 
THE MIDGE 283 
 
 on the ground at the feet of Beecham's boy. 
 
 "Pick that up," said Captain Peters, calmly: 
 "lead that horse of yours — that girth '11 do as it 
 is — and come along with me. ' ' 
 
 "And suppose I won't?" asked the boy, his 
 blood once more in his cheeks. 
 
 "I'll shoot you, my son," said the Captain. 
 
 Young Beecham looked at him, and breathed 
 hard and fast for a few irresolute moments. 
 
 "What right have you ?" he began. 
 
 "It's no use talking, my boy," the Captain in- 
 terrupted, with grim good nature; "Anybody has 
 got the right. Does your father know what you 're 
 doing!" 
 
 The question, suddenly and vigorously put, was 
 too much for the boy. He threw up his hands in 
 a wild way, and his voice was broken with half- 
 hysterical sobs, as he cried out : 
 
 "No! I don't care! no, he doesn't. Yes, I'm 
 running way. That 's it. You may call me a cow- 
 ard or anything else you want to. I don't care — 
 I don't care, I say! I can't stand it. It makes 
 me sick. I didn't know what it was — I thought I 
 wanted to come here — but I didn't know what it 
 was. I'm not afraid of being killed — if any one 
 says so, he's a liar. I'd rather die than see it all. 
 Oh, it's awful — awful!" He pressed his palms 
 to his eyes, his fingers clutching his head. "I've 
 been up since five o'clock, watching them come 
 in,*' he went on; "and it almost drove me crazy. 
 For God's sake, take me anywhere — anywhere 
 
284 THE MIDGE 
 
 where I won't see them. I don't care what you 
 do with me — send me to prison — only let me get 
 away from this terrible place." 
 
 The Captain's voice gave no hint of either sym- 
 pathy or disdain, as he said : 
 
 "Get on that horse, young man, and come along 
 with me." 
 
 The boy obeyed, silently. He hung his head. 
 His eyes were wet with the ready tears of youth. 
 They rode on together through the woods, hearing 
 no sound save the breaking of dry twigs under 
 their horses' hoofs, and the rustle and whirr of 
 an occasional frightened bird, flying away at their 
 approach. 
 
 Finally the Captain spoke. 
 
 "Who gave you those clothes?" 
 
 "These clothes?" the boy repeated, anxiously. 
 
 "Your father's servant, wasn't it? — the nig- 
 ger." 
 
 Young Beecham lifted his head. 
 
 "I shan't tell you," he said. "You have no 
 right to ask me that." 
 
 "Just so," the Captain assented; "that's a fact. 
 I haven't." 
 
 They passed out of the woods in silence, and 
 struck the road. They were not pushing their 
 horses; but the pace at which they traveled 
 brought them up with the rear of the ambulance 
 train in a few minutes. The last wagon was the 
 one which Captain Peters had noticed when he left 
 the road. Something had caused it to drop be- 
 hind the others. As they came alongside it, the 
 
THE MIDGE 285 
 
 Captain remembered the wounded man who had 
 asked for water. 
 
 "Is there anything in your canteen?" he de- 
 manded, turning to the boy, who was staring at the 
 wagon load with a sickened fascination. 
 
 Beecham took the tin flask from his pocket. 
 "There's water in it," he said. 
 
 Captain Peters rode up and hailed the negro 
 driver, who was whistling still, but somewhat less 
 cheerily, as though the burden and heat of the 
 day were beginning to wear on him, too. He 
 stopped his team, and the Captain thrust the flask 
 over the side of the wagon. Two of the occupants 
 were sitting propped up against the back of the 
 seat. One was wounded in the shoulder, and the 
 other was badly cut about the head, which was 
 swathed in rough bandages. Both of them drank, 
 acknowledging the attention with eager grunts. 
 The negro looked on with mutely yearning eyes. 
 When the second man handed the canteen back it 
 was empty. The Captain glanced at the third 
 man, the one who had lain with a blanket over his 
 legs. The blanket covered his whole body now, 
 and his upturned face. 
 
 The man with the wounded shoulder saw Cap- 
 tain Peters 's glance, and spoke. 
 
 "Ee don't want no water no more." 
 
 The other sufferer lifted his head, swaddled in 
 dirty white, directed a wink of sinister humor at 
 the Captain, and said to his comrade : 
 
 "How do you know he don't, Pete?" 
 
 The Captain looked at young Beecham. He 
 
286 THE MIDGE 
 
 was shaking with an aguish tremor. They hur- 
 ried on, riding down the long line ; and until they 
 had taken the cross-road that led to Colonel 
 Beecham's quarters, the boy kept his head averted, 
 looking off the road to the bare and dusty 
 fields. 
 
 When they came in sight of the little hill on 
 which the old Waters house stood, Beecham grew 
 pale and made a motion to check his horse. He 
 saw the Captain looking at him, and he pressed 
 on. But his boy's face expressed an emotion of 
 mortal anguish. He was suffering as only young 
 things can suffer. 
 
 There was a little clump of bushes and low trees 
 near the gate of the place. When they reached 
 it, Peters spoke, as quietly as ever. 
 
 ' ' Stay here till I come back. You hear me ? ' ' 
 
 The boy nodded, with an effort. Captain Peters 
 rode up to the house, and in five minutes he had 
 said what he had to say to Colonel Beecham, and 
 the two men were walking down to the spot where 
 the boy stood, motionless as death, with his tor- 
 tured white face turned expectantly toward them. 
 
 General Beecham was more than twenty years 
 older, his black beard had gone gray, a score of 
 years of ambition and successful struggle had 
 hardened his handsome features ; but the face that 
 stared in blank misery out of the window of the 
 office in Washington was the same face that when 
 Peters had last seen it had reflected the shame 
 
THE MIDGE 287 
 
 and agony of that younger face that to-day was 
 but a memory. 
 
 General Beecham's eyes did not leave the win- 
 dow as he spoke to the Doctor, in a harsh, con- 
 strained voice, picking his words with evident dis- 
 taste for speaking at all. 
 
 "At the time I met you, Captain Peters — ^pardon 
 me — ^you are Captain Peters still?" 
 
 "Plain 'mister,' now," said the Doctor. 
 
 "Captain Peters," the General resumed, with 
 a slight inclination of his head, and a quietly dig- 
 nified insistence in his tone: "I told you, at that 
 time, that you had put me under the greatest 
 obligation of my life. It has been the only obli- 
 gation of my life. I have never " 
 
 "Excuse me!" broke in the Doctor; and at his 
 tone General Beecham started and wheeled round 
 in his chair, his eyes opening wider as they rested 
 on the speaker. "I told you at that time. Gen- 
 eral Beecham, that you were under no obligation 
 whatever to me. What I did, I did not do to 
 oblige you, or to oblige any one ; but because I felt 
 that the boy had a right to be judged mercifully." 
 
 There was nearly a minute of silence between 
 the two men. Then General Beecham got up and 
 went to the window and drummed on the pane. 
 
 "Do you know — about my boy — afterwards?" 
 he asked, slowly. 
 
 "In Virginia?" 
 
 "Yes. He led his company, you know, when 
 Mcllvaine was shot?" 
 
 "I heard about it," said the Doctor. 
 
288 THE MIDGE 
 
 General Beecham came back from the win- 
 dow. 
 
 "I have a letter here," he began, with an anx- 
 ious eagerness in his manner, "which Crawford — 
 Colonel John Crawford — ^you know him? — wrote 
 me at the time. I'd like you to see it." 
 
 His fingers were shaky as he took out his wallet 
 and drew from it a discolored paper, folded and 
 cracked at the folds. He spread it out carefully, 
 almost tenderly, before he gave it to the Doctor. 
 Then he smiled in a wan way. " I 've often wanted 
 to meet you. Captain," he went on: "to show it 
 to you. He was only seventeen then. He would 
 have been thirty-nine this January, if " 
 
 The Doctor pretended to read the paper on his 
 lap; but he had no heart to try to make sense of 
 it. He only remembered afterward that old-fash- 
 ioned Colonel Crawford wrote: "An act of such 
 exceptional Gallantry, performed by one so Young, 
 merits the highest commendation from his Su- 
 perior Officer." 
 
 General Beecham was again drumming on the 
 window-pane. 
 
 "I thank you. Captain Peters," he said, some- 
 what awkwardly, "for pointing out to me that it 
 was my duty to look at this matter in a rather 
 more Christian light — to — to make allowances. I 
 suppose we all — we all need these reminders from 
 time to time. This has been painful to me, of 
 course ; but I am glad to have had the opportunity 
 of letting you know how Buel — how my boy re- 
 trieved his — " he paused — "his error." 
 
THE MIDGE 289 
 
 "I knew it before," said the Doctor, rising; "or 
 I should not have spoken." 
 
 General Beecham dropped into his seat, and 
 stroked his gray beard with a thin, nervous hand. 
 
 "Of course, of course, you understand. Captain 
 Peters — after what you have said, I shall certainly 
 look into this matter, and I shall see what can be 
 done for your young friend. Your opinion of the 
 case must naturally go a long way with me. And 
 you must pardon me if — if I did not take this view 
 of it, at first. The clemency of the department 
 has been so outrageously abused — are you staying 
 in Washington for any length of time?" 
 
 "I leave to-night," the Doctor told him. 
 
 "I should have liked to — ^to show you something 
 — ^well, never mind." 
 
XIV 
 
 THE weary trip from Baltimore to New York 
 came hard on the Doctor. A sense of de- 
 pression for which he could not account 
 weighed on him with a discomfort that was almost 
 physical. He had succeeded in his mission ; yet he 
 felt downcast and troubled. He tried to reason 
 it out with himself, but he could not. Perhaps, he 
 thought, it was the stirring up of old memories 
 that had made him feel old himself. Perhaps it 
 was merely the natural effect of a first absence 
 from home and from the dear child whose presence 
 made all that he meant when he said to himself, 
 "home." 
 
 " It 's my stomach, ' ' he concluded, as he got out 
 of a University Place car at Houston Street. 
 "I'll go to Pigault's and get a nip of brandy to 
 settle those sawdust sandwiches at Wilmington. 
 I shall frighten the Midge if I go home like 
 this." 
 
 Pigault's had changed within the past year or 
 so. It was no longer a brasserie — it was rather an 
 American bar-room. The little crowd that had 
 formerly come, night after night, to drink mild 
 potations of beer and play long games of dominoes, 
 had somehow melted away. The Doctor had been 
 the first to depart; then M. Marie had gone up 
 
 290 
 
THE MIDGE 291 
 
 town, to teach in a fasHonable school (and ulti- 
 mately to run away with a German brewer's 
 daughter, and to be forgiven and made a slave of 
 authority among the slaves in the brewery count- 
 iag-room) ; Mr. Martin was dead, and little Potain 
 was in the lunatic asylum on Blackwell's Island, 
 all day long reading a newspaper aloud to an im- 
 aginary wife. And, for one reason or another, 
 they had all deserted the place. The "young fel- 
 lows" of the quarter had it pretty well to them- 
 selves now. There was a pool-table in the rear of 
 the room. Mme. Pigault sat no more behind the 
 desk. A barkeeper with a black moustache and 
 a white apron mixed drinks with agility and 
 despatch, shoved his compositions to one set of 
 customers with his left hand, and grasped a fresh 
 bottle in his right as he hailed the next lot with, 
 "Well, gents, what '11 it be?" 
 
 Half way down the counter swung a screen, 
 shutting off the further half from the sight of 
 people at the door. There was a general deterior- 
 ation, moral and material, about the place ; but this 
 was its last and worst sign. 
 
 The Doctor, who had all his life drank what he 
 had a right to drink in the face of all the world, 
 carefully placed himself between the screen and 
 the door, and asked for a "pony" of brandy. As 
 the barkeeper poured it out, he heard a familiar 
 voice at the other side of the screen. Bending for- 
 ward enough to glance down the bar, he saw Piero 
 and young Goubaud, the puffy-faced, weak, ab- 
 sinthe-drinking son of the house of Goubaud. 
 
292 THE MIDGE 
 
 The place had indeed run down. The Doctor 
 was no aristocrat, neither had the line of caste 
 been sharply drawn in the old brasserie, as he re- 
 membered it ; but such a couple as this would never 
 have been allowed to hang over the bar in the days 
 when Mme. Pigault's comely presence graced the 
 other side of that piece of furniture. Goubaud's 
 voice was husky, and Piero was talking so loud 
 and laughing so much, that the Doctor felt sure 
 that the man of maritime ways was taking a sail- 
 or 's privilege. 
 
 At the moment, he was urgently asserting that 
 some one was a good man. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said, "he is a good man. I know 
 'im — ten — ^fifteen — twenty yeah. He good man — 
 fairs ' rate boss vair ' damn good man. ' ' 
 
 Young Goubaud had his doubts about this, and 
 expressed them with thick earnestness, reiterat- 
 ing after the fashion of a man who exploits an old 
 grievance. 
 
 "I do' know," he grumbled, "I do' know 'bout 
 zat. I tell you, seh, I do' know 'bout zat. Ouat 
 fo' he ouant take money out my pipple's pocket 
 fo'? I tell you, M'sieu' Piero, I tell you, seh, he 
 don't had no right fo' to take zat ge'l away f 'om 
 w'eh she ouas sen' to bo'd. I tell you, M'sieu' 
 Piero, zat ouas not ho-no-ra-ble — no. My poo' 
 f azzer, zat take ze money out f 'om his pocket, same 
 you put yo' hand in an' take it out." 
 
 "Ouell," said Piero, consolingly, "zat all a-ight 
 now — ^he don' kip her no mo', I guess. Zat young 
 
THE MIDGE 293 
 
 fel', he take her away prit' soon, I guess. She 
 laike young man betteh as oP man." 
 
 "Zat se'v him raight, M'sieu' Piero," said 
 young Goubaud, with Ehadamanthine severity: 
 "I tell you, M'sieu' Piero, I tell you " 
 
 Piero laughed loudly, the humor of the situation 
 growing on him. 
 
 "I guess he don' kip her fo' himse'f no more — 
 young fel' get her — ol' man ain't got no show." 
 And he laughed still more noisily. 
 
 The Doctor, facing the screen, half raised his 
 clenched fists. Then a look of disgust came over 
 his face; the steely fire went out of his eyes, and 
 he turned away, and walked out of the place ut- 
 terly sick at heart. 
 
 The barkeeper looked at the untouched glass 
 and the quarter of a dollar lying beside it. He 
 poured the brandy back into the bottle. * ' Old gent 
 seems to be pretty well rattled," he said to him- 
 self. Then he put the quarter in the till, took out 
 ten cents in change, and carefully put the ten cents 
 under the cheese-safe at the end of the bar, where 
 there were various other coins already deposited. 
 
 The Doctor could hardly bear to go on his way 
 and meet the Midge, yet he did, and so controlled 
 himself that she saw only his obvious fatigue and 
 exhaustion. She made him go through the mo- 
 tions of eating a bit of supper, and gave him a 
 glass of the hottest hot punch that affection and 
 
294 THE MIDGE 
 
 boiling water could produce, and then sent Mm 
 to bed. Sbe had asked him nothing about the 
 business on which he had gone — ^not even whether 
 he had been successful or no. She had only ex- 
 pressed her delight at having him back, treating 
 him royally to her rare kisses, and rallying him 
 brightly on his desertion of her. And he had taken 
 caresses and had returned them, with a sense of 
 absolute shame, with a feeling of guilt, as though 
 he were receiving something under false pretenses. 
 When he got into his own room — he did not go 
 to bed — ^he tried to think it all over. It was shock- 
 ing — ^it was shameful — but he had to admit that it 
 was something that he should have foreseen. It 
 was a vile thing that there should be people to talk 
 and think as those two louts in the bar-room had 
 talked and thought. But then he had always 
 known what the world was. Was any one to 
 blame — except himself — ^because he had found out 
 what he ought to have expected, if he had used his 
 brains? lie had been watching the Midge, fur- 
 tively, in the half hour during which she had let 
 him sit up and be nursed and petted. But he had 
 had no need to make the inspection. From the 
 moment that he had heard Piero's speech the 
 Midge had ceased to be the Midge to him — she had 
 become a woman. He marveled how it was that 
 he had looked at her before and had made no more 
 of her sex than if she had been his sister, or a 
 piece of furniture. He could never think of her 
 in that way again. She was a woman. She was 
 not only a woman, but a pretty woman. And more 
 
THE MIDGE 295 
 
 than that, she was a charming and fascinating 
 woman, radiant with that mysterious power which 
 is given to some women irrespective of beauty or 
 cleverness — the power of making men admire and 
 love and worship and long for them. 
 
 He had seen it all before, of course, but he had 
 not been conscious that he saw. Now he saw, in- 
 deed. He had looked at her a thousand times with 
 fond affection, as she moved about the rooms, 
 busying herself with little duties, singing softly to 
 herself, fetching and carrying this or that for his 
 comfort and convenience. But she had been in a 
 way, a part of him, a part of his life. He had had 
 no consciousness of her as a distinct being — as one 
 of the women who make up the other half of our 
 world. Now, all of a sudden, he could look at her 
 from a distance, and take note and cognizance of 
 her as though she were a stranger. Now, for the 
 first time, it meant something to him that she was 
 graceful as she moved, as she lifted her head, as 
 she turned her delicate white wrists ; that her face 
 was full of quick changing expressions; that her 
 voice had tones like music, mysteriously ex- 
 pressive, provoking, alluring; that she could, when 
 she pleased, turn to him and make manifest in her 
 whole bearing a thought of love or tenderness that 
 was in itself a caress. He did not formulate this 
 in clean-cut thought; but as an emotion it was 
 forcibly present and real to him. And in all the 
 whirl of puzzled feeling and thinkiug in which he 
 found himself, one idea came over and over again 
 to him, and he drove it angrily away, and tried to 
 
296 THE MIDGE 
 
 put it aside, and was ashamed that it should come 
 back to him — over and over again. 
 
 The next day he went to see Paul Hathaway. 
 Mr. Hathaway was living in a certain caravansary 
 in Clinton Place, that did not call itself a lodging 
 house, but that had "furnished rooms to let." It 
 had been a grand old house in its time. The ma- 
 hogany folding-doors were there still, though they 
 never rolled back in their grooves, opening the 
 great archway between the two parlors; for an 
 actress had the back parlor, and a chiropodist was 
 in front. A great many people knew that old 
 house who would not care to boast of their ac- 
 quaintance with it. Many lively and rather dis- 
 reputable young Bohemians, and many dull and 
 respectable dry-goods clerks have occupied those 
 dingy rooms. The men who gave that word "Bo- 
 hemian" its meaning to New Yorkers, men who 
 live now only as traditions; men who have re- 
 formed themselves into Philistine solidity, men 
 who have made themselves great and honored in 
 literature; men who are still staking body and 
 soul against drink and poverty and general degra- 
 dation — scores of such men have taken their turn 
 in that queer lodging-house, and have gone on 
 their hurried way through youth. 
 
 Many a bright boy has clattered over the mar- 
 ble pavement of that great hall-way, swung him- 
 self up the mighty spiral staircase, bolted into his 
 little room on the third or fourth floor, and found 
 
THE MIDGE 297 
 
 the letter there from the great magazine, fespect- 
 fuUy declining his poem. Then he has cursed the 
 magazine for a ring-ridden humbug, run by a 
 clique of selfish, old-fashioned harpies of litera- 
 ture, in league with that hypocritical dunderhead, 
 the complimentary, polite, regretful, manuscript- 
 returning editor. And he has dashed off, of a 
 Saturday night, maybe, to forget it and seek a 
 happier world in the wretched holes so near at 
 hand, with vile drink and with viler company. 
 And on the morrow he has wakened to find ia a 
 headache and an empty purse the result of all 
 such experiments in consolation, and he has sent 
 off a letter to — ^well, the likeliest man he knew, 
 asking for a dollar or two, for God's sake: and 
 if the dollar or two came, he has bought brandy 
 and soda, and has sat him down to write a poem 
 on his headache, which he has sent to the maga- 
 zine he cursed the night before, and to which he 
 has sworn a hundred times never to apply again, 
 and from which he surely gets back that liberal- 
 spirited lay. And if the dollar or two did not 
 come, why, he lay in bed, and listened to the 
 church-bells, and crawled out when the freshness 
 of the day was gone, to wait, breakfastless, for 
 dinner-time. 
 
 What becomes of such boys? One whom I 
 knew, lodging in that very house, is now a "prom- 
 inent" leather-dealer in the swamp. He would 
 draw his check for a thousand dollars if I would 
 let him destroy that scrap-book of his poems now 
 in my possession. Another is the distinguished 
 
298 THE MIDGE 
 
 and successful litterateur — there is a point where 
 a successful writer ceases to be a literary man and 
 clearly becomes a litterateur — ^who is now in Eu- 
 rope, purchasing choice olive-wood for his library 
 shelves. A third is in a little cemetery near 
 Schenectady, where the Seneca grass fills the wind 
 with its old-time scent all summer long. 
 
 The Doctor climbed the long dark sweep of three 
 stairs, and entered Hathaway 's tiny room, where 
 the yellow walls were Covered with water-color 
 sketches. There were other sketches tied up in 
 a bundle, and the open trunk was evidently in proc- 
 ess of packing. The Doctor saw it and smiled. 
 He had been a boy, and had discounted Fate, in 
 his time. 
 
 Hathaway looked haggard and tired; but his 
 eyes were brighter, for the Doctor had sent him 
 a cheery note from Washington, and his sky had 
 begun to clear already. Still, he was very humble 
 and gentle, and his humility and submission 
 seemed strangely out of keeping with his bright, 
 aggressive youth. 
 
 He gave the Doctor his one chair, and sat on the 
 bed, which was not yet made up, while he listened 
 to the report. He thanked his friend gratefully 
 and simply; but his cheerfulness did not come back 
 to him. He went over his story again, and the 
 Doctor learned of a number of palliative facts 
 which the boy had been too proud to adduce in his 
 own defense while his fate was in the balance. 
 
 When it was done, the Doctor sat looking at the 
 young man, as he lay half-stretched-out on the 
 
THE MIDGE 299 
 
 tumbled bed. Neither spoke for a while, and then 
 Hathaway said, staring hard at the small pillow, 
 out of which he was trying to pluck a feather : 
 
 "I suppose, after this, sir, that you'U object — 
 that is, that you won't want— that you had rather 
 I wouldn't see Miss Lois — ^Miss Talbot." 
 
 The Doctor rose, thrust his hands into his 
 trousers pockets, and stood looking down at his 
 boots. 
 
 "No," he said, after a while, drawing in his 
 breath through his closed lips, and speaking 
 thoughtfully : "no, my boy, I had rather you would 
 see her. That is, if it's going to prevent you from 
 seeing — the kind of thing you have seen." 
 
 "You're too — too devilish good to me. Dr. 
 Peters," cried the boy. 
 
 "Nonsense," said the Doctor, absent-mindedly. 
 He was thinking how the Midge and he between 
 them could be of help to young Hathaway. 
 
 "Do you, don't you think — perhaps I ought — " 
 the young man began, stammering. The Doctor 
 smUed. 
 
 "I think not, Hathaway," he said: "there's no 
 reason why she should ever know anything about 
 it. It's closed and done with now, and you know 
 more than you did, and we might as well drop 
 the subject. Besides" — ^his face grew grave — 
 "women can not be made to look at these things as 
 men do. You don't want to think of it." He 
 grew graver still as he considered the possibility. 
 He knew the Midge's code of honor — ^his own, 
 passed through the close, small filter of a woman's 
 
300 THE MIDGE 
 
 ignorant purity. He shook Ms head and put the 
 question aside. "Come around to-morrow even- 
 ing," he said: "I shall probably have heard from 
 Washington by that time." 
 
 When Hathaway came around that next even- 
 ing, the Doctor had heard from Washington. 
 General Beecham wrote that Mr. Hathaway would 
 be permitted to resign, without further investiga- 
 tion into the charges already preferred, and that 
 Senor Garcia had been informed that if he was 
 wise he would refrain from pressing his demands, 
 and would thus avoid certain inquiries which our 
 representatives would otherwise be instructed to 
 make into his financial transactions with certain 
 gentlemen in the naval service of the United 
 States. 
 
 The letter enclosed to Captain Peters an item 
 from a newspaper of 1864, giving an account of 
 the erection of a tablet in the college chapel at 
 Williamstown, to the memory of Lieutenant Buel 
 Beecham, the gallant young soldier, who fell in 
 the Battle of the Wilderness — a tribute from his 
 affectionate classmates. 
 
 As he was on his way home from Clinton Place, 
 the Doctor met Father Dube, slowly pacing down 
 past the dreary gray front of the University build- 
 ing, which looked, that dull winter day, more than 
 ever like some huge pasteboard toy. 
 
 The two men greeted each other warmly, for 
 they had not met often of late. 
 
THE MIDGE 301 
 
 "I have not seen you in an age," said the 
 Father, pressing Doctor Peters 's hand. ' ' Give me 
 news of yourself, and of the little one. She is not 
 married yet, eh?" 
 
 "No," replied the Doctor, uneasily; "I can't 
 find any man good enough for her." 
 
 "No," assented Father Dube; "I know but one, 
 and he is — ^too modest." 
 
 His eyes made his meaning clear. The Doctor 
 flushed hotly. Dube laid a large hand on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 "Why should I not say it," he remonstrated, 
 kindly. "I am sure it would be for the best, for 
 both of you. It is only we priests who ought not 
 to marry. For you others, it is a duty." 
 
 "You oughtn't to talk in that way to a man of 
 my age, Dube," said the Doctor. He was awk- 
 ward and uncomfortable, and conscious of him- 
 self. 
 
 "Of your age? What is your age? You are 
 forty — ^forty-five ? ' ' 
 
 "Forty-six." 
 
 "Bah! what is that? You are young — ^you are 
 strong; you lead a good life — ^you are young. I 
 am sixty-four. It is not so terrible to be sixty- 
 four. Why should you not marry? Why not? 
 Will some stranger — the first boy you meet — ^will 
 he be so kind to her as you? Ah, well, I have 
 said enough. You will not come to me when you 
 marry. But I will bless you all the same. Good- 
 bye, my friend." 
 
 The Doctor walked rapidly across the Park. 
 
302 THE MIDGE 
 
 He felt like a boy, like a fool, but Ms heart was 
 beating fast, and he was saying to himself, while 
 his cheeks burnt : 
 
 "Why not?— why not?" 
 
XV 
 
 WHY not? He had refused to entertain 
 the thought ; he had turned it away from 
 him and bade it begone. But it had 
 been brought back to him, and now that he was 
 forced to let it in, and to look it in the face, what 
 was there about it that should make him refuse it 
 hospitality? It was not a mean or unworthy 
 thought — it seemed, indeed, when once he looked 
 at it face to face, simple, natural and beautiful. 
 After all, wherein was it strange? When a man 
 and a woman loved each other, they married. 
 And did not he love this woman, and did not she 
 love him? Only — was it with the same love? 
 
 Ah, he was gone. From the moment that he 
 asked himself that question, and that the answer- 
 ing doubt came with its sudden chill to his heart, 
 the Doctor had. slipped from the safe ground of 
 pure reason, and was groping about in that dim 
 wild dreamland of uncertainty in which, since time 
 began, every lover has walked his appointed time; 
 in which every lover shall walk until time shall 
 end. There are no exemptions or exceptions, 
 there are no classes or conditions for those who 
 enter that strange limbo. Great or small, wise or 
 foolish, they wander hither and thither in the mist, 
 led by flickering lights and great revealing flashes, 
 
 303 
 
304 THE MIDGE 
 
 cast down in deathly darkness, and wakened again 
 by a warm glow on the far horizon. And so they 
 must wander, until they go out of the place by one 
 of two gates. And for those that go out by the 
 one gate, the light of the morning is on their faces ; 
 and for those that go out by the other gate, may 
 God have pity on them ! 
 
 He was no better off now, for all his years and 
 his brains and his doctoring and his soldiering, 
 than the veriest boy that ever tied his heart to a 
 ribbon or went at night to look at a common brick- 
 and-mortar house because of a woman sleeping 
 somewhere in it. 
 
 He had to ask the same question of Fate, and 
 to ask it with the same knowledge that the answer 
 could not be affected by any will or wish of his of 
 the woman he loved. It was to be, or it was not to 
 be, and he, and she, perhaps, must wait for the 
 revelation. 
 
 He was at his own door before he knew it, and 
 he found himself wondering how he should meet 
 the Midge. Two minutes later, he found himself 
 meeting her and talking with her calmly and 
 quietly, without embarrassment, without confu- 
 sion, with no sense of awkwardness whatever. 
 
 For the first time he looked at this comrade of 
 years, at this child grown a woman under his care ; 
 and knew that he wanted her for his wife. As far 
 as he could make out, he ought to have been ner- 
 vous and constrained. Perhaps he ought to have 
 been ashamed of himself. But, as a matter of 
 fact, he was not nervous, or constrained, or 
 
THE MIDGE 305 
 
 ashamed. He did not understand the change in 
 his own attitude ; but he was conscious of it. An 
 hour before, he had blushed at the mere idea. 
 Now he was as shameless about it as if he had 
 been King Cophetua and she a beggar-maid with 
 no choice in the matter. 
 
 In truth, as he looked at her and listened to her, 
 he was aware within himself of a certain feeling 
 of triumphant superiority. It was for him to take 
 this dear and lovely creature by the hand and to 
 say to her : "You thought that this was all — this 
 sweet companionship and tender affection. But 
 there is more — infinitely more and infinitely bet- 
 ter, and I will lead you to it." 
 
 The Midge went to bed early that evening, as 
 though in obedience to some unspoken wish of his. 
 He wanted to be alone; to "have a think," and 
 he had it, by the fire, far into the night. He had 
 looked forward to this hour of self-counsel, but 
 when it came, it was not what he had expected it 
 would be. He had thought that he would reason 
 out with himself the question of his right to love 
 the Midge. He found that he regarded that ques- 
 tion as settled; that he looked upon it as an ac- 
 cepted premise, upon which he could base — ^upon 
 which he was basing his calculations for the future. 
 He was surprised at this ; he had not yet realized 
 that when a man is in love, his intellectual facul- 
 ties are handed over to the control of the mys- 
 terious power within him which takes him in 
 charge and makes an inspired fool of him; and 
 that he himself does not know how he will argue 
 
306 THE MIDGE 
 
 out the simplest problem in the privacy of his 
 own mind. But it seemed to him that, in some 
 mysterious way, he had quite settled this one 
 thing. Indeed, if he thought at all of the past, it 
 was only to try to trace this new love back over 
 the lines of the old; to identify the two, and to 
 prove to himself that, they had always been the 
 same; that from the first he had loved her with 
 this very love, that had only been disguised as 
 something like parental affection until the time 
 came for its disclosure as a greater and higher 
 thing. 
 
 But most of his thoughts — which were not 
 thoughts, he found ; rather imaginings — dealt with 
 the present and the future. 
 
 One idea came to him, at first with a chill, then 
 with a sudden glow of pleased and suggestive an- 
 ticipation — that she did not know all this : that she 
 must be taught' to love — ^must be wooed. He must 
 begin a courtship. Indeed, he felt as though he 
 had yet to be introduced to the woman he had to 
 court. 
 
 Just here, the Doctor's memory took an odd 
 backward twist. He remembered certain boyish 
 thoughts of a certain Alida Jansen, and he under- 
 stood now why he had been glad when he woke up 
 in his little attic bed-room, and thought that sing- 
 ing-school was to be held that night. 
 
 The courtship began the next day, but not quite 
 in the way the Doctor had planned. He was much 
 surprised to find that his manner toward the 
 Midge had already changed, unconsciously and 
 
THE MIDGE 307 
 
 involuntarily. It distinctly asserted a masterful 
 superiority. 
 
 Beyond this, lie did not make any active move. 
 And for the next few days, in fact, for the next 
 few weeks, he had business other than his own to 
 attend to — and it was his custom to attend to other 
 people's business before his own. Mr. Paul Hath- 
 away, now out of the navy, had to be established 
 in life as a self-supporting citizen. This was 
 done, after a little while, more successfully than 
 the Doctor could have hoped. The sympathies of 
 Parker Prout and Jack Wilder being enlisted, 
 Hathaway sold some sketches in Nassau Street, 
 and got some odd jobs on the Morning Record, 
 which was now "illustrated," with outline cuts, 
 conceived in the utmost simplicity of art. 
 
 But all this involved a great deal of consulta- 
 tion and discussion and speculation among the 
 three of them — for the Midge was at once called 
 into their councils. Hathaway called almost 
 every day, and they held long debates over the 
 smallest move he took. The Midge was a modest 
 authority in matters of art, and the Doctor was 
 general business-adviser. .The Doctor felt a par- 
 ticular pride in acquitting himself well of his 
 duties. It seemed to him that he was doing him- 
 self credit in the eyes of the Midge, and he was 
 proud and pleased when he conducted Mr. Hath- 
 away 's affairs to a fortunate issue. 
 
 And Hathaway 's affairs certainly flourished. 
 Everybody pronounced his sketches clever, and his 
 draughtmanship worthy of an older hand. Parker 
 
308 THE MIDGE 
 
 Prout said lie was going to be a great artist, and 
 there was no doubt whatever that he was facile, 
 adaptive and intelligent. Before the spring was 
 far advanced, he was earning a modest living for 
 himself, and had repaid a small loan from the 
 Doctor. 
 
 So encouraging were Mr. Hathaway 's prospects 
 that in March he engaged in a grand competition. 
 The New York Monthly proposed to send a ship 
 around the world; and a famous writer was to 
 recount the history of the voyage. The illustra- 
 tions were to be made by a famous artist, assisted 
 by a novice in art. All novices in art were invited 
 to compete for the honor, by sending sketches to 
 a chosen committee of artists. The only condi- 
 tions were that they should be native born and 
 under thirty years of age. "With both of these 
 conditions Mr. Hathaway could comply. He sent 
 in his sketches, and in due time was notified that 
 he was one of five most promising contestants, and 
 that the prize would be awarded to the one of these 
 best qualified, by nature and training, for the 
 work. Mr. Hathaway presented himself before 
 the committee with a fluttering but confident heart. 
 
 This came about toward the end of the month, 
 and the breath of April was in the air when, one 
 warm evening, the Doctor and the Midge sat be- 
 fore the ghost of a fire. He felt honestly and 
 innocently proud of having been able to help 
 Hathaway, and he could hold it in no longer. 
 
 "I think our young friend is pretty fairly 
 launched — Hathaway, I mean," he said. 
 
THE MIDGE 309 
 
 The Midge was sewing, bending low over her 
 work, so that the gaslight fell on her dark hair. 
 She paused to give a woman's speculative, ob- 
 servant look at the stuff in her lap before she re- 
 sponded. 
 
 "You think it is all right for him — for the 
 future?" she said. 
 
 "I think it's a sure thing for him — ^he's almost 
 certain to get it. ' ' 
 
 ' ' Then he will go away ? ' ' 
 
 "Why, yes. But it's only for a year or so. 
 He'll enjoy the voyage." 
 
 The Midge said nothing. 
 
 "It's a grand opportunity for any young man," 
 he went on, meditatively; "it will be the making 
 of him in his — ^his business." 
 
 "Is it not dangerous?" hazarded the young 
 woman. 
 
 The Doctor fairly laughed. 
 
 "My dear child!" he remonstrated, "after a 
 man has been knocking about for years in one of 
 those old tubs that we call men-of-war! Why 
 he '11 think he 's safer than he 's ever been before in 
 his life." 
 
 Dr. Peters filled and lit his pipe before the 
 Midge spoke again. 
 
 "Evert," she said, "I do not wish to ask too 
 much, or what I should not. But there was some 
 trouble that he was in — Mr. Hathaway — ^when you 
 went to Washington. It was trouble, was it not ? ' ' 
 
 "Why, yes," he answered, doubtfully. 
 
 "I do not want to know," she hurried on. 
 
310 THE MIDGE 
 
 ' ' what it was — I do not ask that. But was it — was 
 it something — ^it was nothing against him? — noth- 
 ing wrong." 
 
 The Doctor had been prepared for this, in some 
 sort, from the first ; but it cost him a quick mental 
 wrench to get his conscience and his logic in accord 
 as he replied, with great firmness and decision : 
 
 ' ' No, my dear. ' ' 
 
 He held himself justified in saying this. What- 
 ever wrong had been done, it was repented of, 
 atoned for, and would never be repeated. To the 
 Doctor it was as though it had not been. What 
 right had he even to speak of a cancelled sin as 
 a present fact? 
 
 "No," he said once more: "if there had been 
 anything of that kind, my dear — anything to make 
 us alter our relations toward the lad, I should 
 have told you. But there was not. He was in- 
 discreet, I suppose; but — well, we're all more or 
 less fools, all the humans made on any pattern 
 known up to date; and he isn't any such startling 
 variety of fool that we need to be too particular 
 with him. No, no, he's a good boy, my dear." 
 
 "I am glad," she said softly, resting her chin 
 on her hand as she looked into the fire. "That 
 there was nothing had — that is well. I could not 
 bear it." 
 
 She spoke with emphasis. The Doctor, still 
 smoking meditatively, nodded approvingly. 
 
 "I know how you feel about those things, my 
 love," he said. 
 
 She began again, a little nervously. 
 
THE MIDGE 311 
 
 "Evert, it — it — ^you do not tMnk it strange that 
 I ask such a question about Ms private affairs? 
 He would not think it was something I had no 
 right to ask about?" 
 
 "I should think he'd feel very much flattered at 
 the interest you take in him," the Doctor replied, 
 reassuringly. "Indeed, I think you have been 
 particularly friendly and kind to him, Midge. He 
 ought to be grateful to you." 
 
 She rose quickly, and came and seated herself 
 on the arm of his chair. 
 
 "No, it is you who have been good to him — ^you 
 need not tell me — ^I know it. You are good to 
 everybody, Evert." She bent over and kissed 
 him. He smiled with a deep gratification. It was 
 this praise that he had wanted beyond any other 
 reward for well-doing. "You have done every- 
 thing for him. Evert." 
 
 "No, my dear," he corrected her, with a pleased 
 generosity, "he's done pretty well everything for 
 himself. You can't do much for a man. He's got 
 to do the doing, in the end. Hathaway 's a fine 
 fellow. I hope he '11 come back from this trip and 
 settle down and make a position for himself, right 
 here where we can see him. And we shan't be 
 sorry that we gave him a lift when he first needed 
 it, shall we, little one?" He took her disengaged 
 hand in his. The other fluttered to and fro a 
 dangling trail of fancy-work. The Doctor glanced 
 at the flimsy stuff with careless interest, and 
 smiled. He thought how happy he could be, in all 
 the years to come, sitting thus by the fire and 
 
312 THE MIDGE 
 
 seeing her work inexplicable things in soft mate- 
 rials of which he did not even know the names. 
 
 She did not answer his question directly; but 
 rose, freeing herself with a motion that was almost 
 a caress, and returned to her seat. 
 
 "You are too good to everybody, Evert," she 
 said, giving her head a sad little shake: "you do 
 not know it; but you are too good. Sometimes 
 you make me- wish you were not so good.' 
 
 The Doctor smiled. "I'm not so good, Midge," 
 he said. "You may find me considerable of a 
 bother yet. But I'm glad I've been able to be of 
 some use to that boy Hathaway. And I rather 
 think his future's settled — ^that is, in a business 
 way. I'd like to see him safely married, though. 
 He needs it." 
 
 "Why do you think he needs it?" asked the 
 Midge, quietly. 
 
 The heap of glowing coals in the grate fell with 
 a little crash into a flickering crater. The Doctor 
 stopped to pile up the fire before he replied. 
 
 "Everybody needs it, my dear. When it's a 
 good thing at all, it's the best thing in the world. 
 I should like to have that boy have a fireside — " 
 he bent over and poked vigorously at the half- 
 kindled cannel — "a fireside, a fireside — ^that's the 
 thing. I don't mean only a grate, and coal and 
 stuff — there 's a woman goes with every real, genu- 
 ine fireside. That's what he wants — ^that's what 
 — 'most everybody else wants — a woman. A 
 woman. Midge. A man's only half a man if one 
 half of him ain't a woman. That's one of the 
 
THE MIDGE 313 
 
 truths a man's got to learn; and I've noticed" — 
 he smiled at the fire — "that Providence generally 
 provides him with a teacher." 
 
 He sat, bending forward, playing with the poker, 
 patting the lumps of cannel till they gently cracked 
 into clean fissures that coaxed the wandering 
 flames. He was talking as though he were talking 
 to himself. The Midge rose abruptly, gathering 
 up her work, and moved toward the door of her 
 room. 
 
 "I'm tired. Evert," she said, in the hushed un- 
 dertone that women use when their thoughts are 
 apart from their speech. ' ' I think I '11 go to bed. ' ' 
 
 For a moment he made no effort to detain her ; 
 then he stretched out his hand and said : 
 
 "Aren't you going to bid me good-night?" 
 
 She turned back quickly — her hand was on the 
 handle of the door — and kissed him on the fore- 
 head. Then she withdrew, with a pleasant rus- 
 tling of garments. He sat still, smiling at the fire, 
 until the sudden sharp ring of the door-bell below 
 fell on his ear. He heard it sleepily, sitting back 
 and listening with a pleased, absent-minded smile 
 — pleased at his own thoughts. Vaguely he heard 
 some one stumble up the stairs ; then there was a 
 knock at the door, and he rose to take a crumpled 
 note from a sleepy messenger-boy. 
 
 The note was this : 
 
 "March 31st. 
 "My dear Doctor: — 
 
 "I have got the appointment. The committee accepted me 
 without discussion. And now I have something to say to you 
 
314 THE MIDGE 
 
 that will give you pain; but I cannot help it. I do not feel that 
 I have the right to speak to her without your permission; but I 
 want to come tomorrow, early, to ask Lois to be my wife. I 
 know what this must be to you — ^but will you forgive me if I 
 take her from you? I know that you look upon her as a daugh- 
 ter. I know how selfish I must seem, and, believe me, I know 
 what I owe to you. I feel sure that she will say Yes — and if I 
 could feel as sure that you would give us both your blessing, I 
 should be happy. 
 
 "Gratefully and truly yours, 
 
 "Paul Hathaway." 
 
XVI 
 
 HE heard the sleepy messenger-boy thump his 
 doubtful way down the stairs, as he read 
 the last lines of the note. 
 
 Of course. "Why had he not known it before — 
 why had he not seen it before? He felt as if he 
 had been asleep a long time, getting a respite from 
 the burden of some awful truth, and had suddenly 
 awakened to a chill dawning of inevitable con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 He thought of it with a horror-stricken sense of 
 shame, as of some omitted duty. What had he 
 done — ^what had he been about to do? He had 
 meant to ask this woman to be his wife — this 
 woman who loved another man. It came to him 
 with a ghastly, cold clearness that she would have 
 struggled with herself, would have fought down 
 her love for duty's sake, and would have married 
 him, loving this other man, to be miserable all 
 life long. 
 
 The cold draught from the still open door blew 
 in on him. He was dimly conscious of it; but it 
 seemed nothing to him beside the deeper chill that 
 had penetrated to his inmost being, paralyzing his 
 soul. In a blind, mechanical way he rose and 
 moved across the room and shut the door. He 
 thought that he staggered; but he was not sure. 
 
 315 
 
316 THE MIDGE 
 
 His consciousness of himself seemed far removea 
 from the flesh-and-blood automaton that got up 
 from its seat and went to shut a door and stop a 
 draught. 
 
 He had held the letter in his hand all the time. 
 It was in his hand when he sat down again. "With 
 an absolutely involuntary motion, he raised it to 
 the level of his eyes two or three times, and each 
 time his eyes wandered away, seeing nothing save 
 some most commonplace and meaningless bit of 
 their surroundings — a corner of the mantelpiece, 
 the bow of the ribbon that tied the window-cur- 
 tains back, his pipe, lying on the table, half full of 
 lifeless gray ashes. 
 
 He felt this an unpardonable weakness, and 
 pulled himself together, with scowling brows. He 
 read the letter half through, and then had to read 
 it over again. He had understood the words, as 
 each one had come under his eye; but they had 
 been only words. They had meant nothing be- 
 yond signs and sounds. He read them now with a 
 stem determination to drive their sense into his 
 head. 
 
 He distinctly felt, as he began, that he was doing 
 something hopeless, futile; a mere makeshift to 
 fill up the time until he could command himself. 
 But he had not read the third sentence through 
 before his heart sprung up in him with a wild 
 intoxication of joy. What was it, after all ? This 
 boy wanted to marry the woman he himself loved. 
 Well, what of that? Had he not been warned of 
 it? Wasit not to be expected? Did it follow that 
 
THE MIDGE 317 
 
 she loved MmF What reason had he to suppose 
 that any such absurd, wild thing was possible? 
 He passed his hand over his eyes, like a man who 
 tries to clear away a dream. He must have been 
 mad to think of it. Faintly and feebly, he laughed 
 aloud to himself, and sighed in weary relief. He 
 had been nervous; that was it; he had dwelt so 
 long and so earnestly on this one thought that he 
 had grown morbid and excitable, and he had lost 
 his self-control. It was an impossibility, an ab- 
 surdity, and he must have been strangely weak to 
 consider it at all. 
 
 Then he reflected that he would have to consider 
 it, and this brought a certain cheering strength 
 to him. To have something to reason out, some- 
 thing to employ his faculties, gave him a hold on 
 himself. He got up again, and walked up and 
 down the room, and tried to think it all over. 
 What did he know positively? That Paul Hath- 
 away was in love with the Midge ; that Hathaway 
 thought the Midge loved him. Did she love Hath- 
 away? He could not believe that he could have 
 been so blind as not to have seen it if she did. Yet, 
 he remembered, and his heart sank, he had been so 
 blind as not to see that Hathaway was in love. 
 Had he not been blind in every direction? For 
 the idea had been suggested to him, weeks before. 
 But then he remembered how that idea had been 
 suggested, and how he had put it out of his mind 
 entirely, as an unworthy thought. He had set it 
 aside out of pure loyalty to young Hathaway. He 
 had refused even to think that this boy, whom he 
 
318 • THE MIDGE 
 
 had made his friend, could dream of stealing away 
 from him the woman in whom his life was wrapped 
 up. 
 
 And now he had it, in Hathaway 's own hand, 
 that this inconceivable thing was a positive fact. 
 He grew hot with sudden anger. What right had 
 this pink-and-white boy to come in with his boyish 
 love, his boyish passion, his boyish, arrogant hope, 
 to dare to think of taking this woman from him? 
 And suppose — suppose she loved the boy? Well, 
 again, what of it? Should a boy-and-girl fancy 
 such as that weigh against a man's love — ^his own 
 love, grown from the smallest beginnings, grown 
 naturally into a great, consuming passion, some- 
 thing that, sooner or later, however she might mis- 
 take herself now, she must answer to? 
 
 He grew hotter and hotter as he walked up and 
 down. Anger gave him a strange fluency of 
 thought. He saw with vivid clearness how he had 
 loved the child and the woman with a love that 
 had changed not in nature, but only in growth. 
 He did not think of what he had done for her ; but 
 only of what he had tried to be to her — how he had 
 studied her tastes, her capacities, her tendencies ; 
 how he had conscientiously tried to teach her the 
 best that he knew, to make of her the best that was 
 in her to be. 
 
 And now this boy — this Hathaway — came in 
 smug and smiling, and self-complacent, with his 
 little sixpenny, sentimental fancy — this fellow who 
 a year or two before had been swearing love 
 and promising marriage to the common coquette 
 
THE MIDGE 319 
 
 of a South American naval station. Great God! 
 but he would put an end to this profanation — ^he, 
 an honest man, with but one love to his life. 
 Whatever pain it cost her, for the moment, what- 
 ever she or any one might think of it, at least this 
 thing should not be. He knew, to an absolute 
 certainty, that he had only to tell her what he 
 knew, and Paul Hathaway would go out of her life 
 forever. He knew she would never forgive such 
 an outrage against love and honor. He knew 
 what she was and what he himself had taught her, 
 and that she could never forgive as he — fool that 
 he was — ^had forgiven. 
 
 He remembered what she had once said. "Yes, 
 I do belong to you, Evert, I will do whatever you 
 say, now and always." 
 
 He strode wildly across the room to her door, 
 meaning to throw it open — it was never locked — 
 to go to her bedside, as he had gone many a time 
 before to watch over her in some childish sickness, 
 and there to tell her the truth, and leave her to 
 struggle with and kill whatever love she might 
 have for this fellow. But he stopped suddenly, 
 with his hand on the door, every muscle in him 
 cold and quivering, and he knew that he could not 
 go into that room. Until that moment he had not 
 known how he loved. He had thought of his love 
 as a simple and natural affection; the growth of 
 years; a mere development of an earlier fatherly 
 tenderness. He knew now that it was the love of 
 a man who wants a woman for his wife; and he 
 knew that never, unless this woman were his wife, 
 
320 THE MIDGE 
 
 could lie cross the sill of her chamber, and look 
 upon her as she lay asleep. 
 
 He turned back and went to the window, and 
 looked out. It was faintly misty. The light of 
 the morning sun was somewhere high in the heav- 
 ens, and its dull refraction lit up all things with 
 an even, cold light that had no life in it. He saw 
 the great vacanf^ Square, and the broad, red brick 
 houses opposite. Their marble facings stared out, 
 a dull, damp white. 
 
 If the body of your dearest friend lay in your 
 house, there would be times when it was nothing 
 but a corpse to you — something lifeless and not 
 human, that claims a mocking identity with the 
 man you loved; that is he, and is not he. You 
 want to get it away, out of sight, this cold gray 
 thing, that must always come between you and 
 your remembrance of him you knew when he lived 
 and breathed and moved, and had color in his 
 cheeks and light in his eyes. A feeling akin to 
 this took hold on the Doctor as he looked out of the 
 window into this dim foredawn that was not so 
 much night as a dead day. 
 
 The day came, misty, veiled, and softly bright. 
 It woke up the flocks of swallows in the great 
 Square; it put touches of gold on the budding 
 b:fanches of the trees; it lit up the generous red 
 brick houses with a rosy radiance not their own. 
 It found the Doctor still looking out of the window, 
 with his forehead resting against the frame. He 
 
THE MIDGE 321 
 
 was weary, for it aroused Mm from a sort of 
 stupor ; and in this stupor, as he half remembered, 
 he had thought over, in inconsecutive, irregular 
 moments of thought, the most of his life — ^had seen 
 the Midge grow up by his side, through childhood, 
 girlhood, to womanhood and to the time of parting. 
 For, with a sudden comprehension of the nature 
 of his love for her, there had come a quick, instinc- 
 tive conviction that she never had loved him in 
 that way; that she never could love him in that 
 way. He did not know how he knew this ; but it 
 came to him as a fact, which he accepted as one ' 
 accepts the fact that death has come into the 
 house. 
 
 There were certain things left for him to do in ' 
 this world. There was one thing most prominent 
 at the moment — to go into his own room, and lie 
 down, and sleep, or make some pretense of sleep- 
 ing, until such time as morning should begin for 
 other people. It was one of the things he had to 
 do, and he did it. All his life long he had done 
 the things he had to do, and this was one of the 
 last things that could greatly vex him on this side 
 of the grave. 
 
 Two hours later there was a ring at the door 
 below that awoke him; a sound of feet on the 
 stairs, and a knock at the door of his sitting-room. 
 He heard filise tell the visitor to wait for Miss 
 Lodoiska, and heard her tramping heavily around 
 to the side-door of the Midge's room. 
 
322 THE MIDGE 
 
 He arose from the bed on whicli he was lying, 
 and made himself presentable, and went into the 
 sitting-room. Paul Hathaway was there, flushed 
 and excited. He shook hands with him, and said 
 a few commonplace words. Then he heard a step 
 in the next room, and his heart leapt up to hear 
 it. The door opened, and the Midge came out, 
 and he saw her eyes meet Paul Hathaway 's with 
 that wonderful lightening of love which cannot be 
 mistaken. 
 
 "I haven't slept well, Midge," he said: "I'm 
 going out for a walk before breakfast. ' ' 
 
 He stopped as he went toward the door to take 
 up his hat and coat that lay upon the sofa. 
 
 "Hathaway, my boy " he began, not quite 
 
 knowing why or how he spoke. The Midge ran 
 to kiss him a quick, impulsive good-bye, and then 
 turned to Hathaway, and the Doctor went out to 
 take his walk. 
 
 They were married in June, when Washington 
 Square was all one flush of green. Hathaway 
 gave up the voyage around the world. The Doc- 
 tor made that the only condition, in giving his con- 
 sent. And he himself so arranged matters that 
 compliance with the condition was easy. It was 
 a quiet wedding, in the old sitting-room. There 
 were only two people present, beside the Doctor — 
 Parker Prout and Professor Mannheim — and they 
 brought their wedding gifts with them. Parker 
 Prout had one of his own pictures — a picture on 
 
THE MIDGE 323 
 
 which he had worked very hard — and Mannheim 
 brought a stack of precious music — ^he, and no one 
 else, knew how precious it was to him. 
 
 And when it was over, and they had gone away, 
 the two of them, to a certain little house up-town, 
 which the Doctor had inspected long ago, when he 
 himself thought of moving from the rooms in 
 Washington Place, he went up stairs and looked 
 at the empty kitchen — ^he had sent filise out to take 
 a half day's holiday. 
 
 Then he went into the big pantry. In the corner, 
 on the shelf, still lay the crock in which the Midge 
 had hidden her head, heavy with childish grief, 
 years before. The old stool stood before it. He 
 sat down on it, and rested his hot forehead on the 
 cool rim of the jar. 
 
 And that's the end of the story. 
 
I 
 
 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 FOUND this letter and comment in an evening 
 paper, some time ago, and I cut the slip out 
 and kept it for its cruelty : 
 
 To THE Editor op the Evening . 
 
 SiE: In yesterday's issue you took occasion to speak of the 
 organ-grinding nuisance, about which I hope you will let me ask 
 you the following questions: Why must decent people all over 
 town suffer these pestilential beggars to go about torturing our 
 senses, and practically blackmailing the listeners into paying them 
 to go away? Is it not a most ridiculous excuse on the part of the 
 police, when ordered to arrest these vagrants, to tell a citizen 
 that the city license exempts these public nuisances from arrest f 
 Let me ask. Can the city by any means legalize a common-law 
 misdemeanor? If not, how can the city authorities grant ex- 
 emption to these sturdy beggars and vagrants by their paying 
 for a license? The Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Pro- 
 cedure, it seems, provide for the punishment of gamblers, dive- 
 keepers, and other disorderly persons, among whom organ-grinders 
 fall, as being people who beg, and exhibit for money, and create 
 disorder. If this is so, why can the police not be forced to in- 
 tervene and forbid them their outrageous behavior? — for these 
 fellows do not only not know or care for the observance of the 
 city ordinance, which certainly is binding on them, but, relying 
 on a fellow-feeling of vulgarity with the mob, resist all attempts 
 made to remove them from the exercise of their most fearful beg- 
 gary, which is not even tolerated any longer at Naples. 
 
 E. 
 
 New York, February 20th. 
 
 [Our correspondent's appeal should be addressed to the Board 
 of Aldermen and the Mayor. They consented to the licensing of 
 
 the grinders in the face of a popular protest. — Ed. Evening .] 
 
 324 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 325 
 
 Now certainly that was not a good letter to 
 write, and is not a pleasant letter to read ; but the 
 worst of it is, I am afraid that you can never make 
 the writer of it understand why it is unfair and 
 unwise and downright cruel. 
 
 For I think we can figure out the personality of 
 that writer pretty easily. She is a nice old or 
 middle-aged lady, unmarried, of course; well-to- 
 do, and likely to leave a very comfortable fortune 
 behind her when she leaves all worldly things ; and 
 accustomed to a great deal of deference from her 
 nephews and nieces. She is occasionally subject 
 to nervous headaches, and she wrote this letter 
 while she had one of her headaches. She had 
 been lying down and trjdng to get a wink of sleep 
 when the organ-grinder came under the window. 
 It was a new organ and very loud, and its organ- 
 grinder was proud of it and ground it with aU his 
 might, and it was certainly a very aimoying instru- 
 ment to delicate ears and sensitive nerves. 
 
 Now, she might have got rid of the nuisance at 
 once by a very simple expedient. If she had sent 
 Abigail, her maid, down to the street, with a dime, 
 and told her to say: "Sicka lady, no playa," poor 
 Pedro would have swung his box of whistles over 
 his shoulder and trudged contentedly on. But, 
 instead, she sent Abigail down without the dime, 
 and with instructions to threaten the man with 
 immediate arrest and imprisonment. And Abigail 
 went down and scolded the man with the more 
 vigor that she herself had been scolded all day on 
 account of the headache. And so Pedro just 
 
326 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 grinned at her in his exasperating furrin way, and 
 played on until he got good and ready to go. Then 
 he went, and the old lady sat down and wrote that 
 letter, and gave it to Abigail to post. 
 
 Later in the afternoon the old lady drove out, 
 and the fresh air did her a world of good, and she 
 stopped at a toy store and bought some trifles for 
 sister Mary's little gi^l, who had the measles. 
 Then she came home, and after dinner she read 
 Mr. Jacob Riis's book, "How the Other Half 
 Lives;" and she shuddered at the picture of the 
 Jersey Street slums on the title page, and shud- 
 dered more as she read of the fourteen people 
 packed in one room, and of the suffering and 
 squalor and misery of it all. And then she made 
 a memorandum to give a larger check to the char- 
 itable society next time. Then she went to bed, 
 not forgetting first to read her nightly chapter in 
 the gospel of the carpenter's son of Nazareth. 
 And she had quite forgotten all about the coarse 
 and unchristian words she had written in the letter 
 that was by that time passing through the hands 
 of the weary night-shift of mail-clerks doAvn in the 
 General Post-office. And when she did read it in 
 print, she was so pleased and proud of the fluency 
 of her own diction, and so many of her nephews 
 and nieces said so many admiring things about 
 what she might have done if she had only gone in 
 for literature, that it really never occurred to her 
 at all to think whether she had been any more just 
 and charitable than the poor ignorant man wh© 
 had annoyed her. 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 327 
 
 She was especially pleased with, the part that 
 had the legal phraseology in it, and with the scorn- 
 ful rebuke of the police for their unwillingness to 
 disobey municipal ordinances. This was founded 
 partly on something that she had heard nephew 
 John say once, and partly on a general idea she 
 has that the present administration has forcibly 
 usurped the city government. 
 
 Now, I have no doubt that when the organ 
 grinder went home at night, he and his large 
 family laid themselves down to rest in a back 
 room of the Jersey Street slum, and if it be so, I 
 may sometimes see him when I look out of a cer- 
 tain window of the great red-brick building where 
 my office is, for it lies on Mulberry Street, between 
 Jersey and Houston. My own personal and pri- 
 vate window looks out on Mulberry Street. It is 
 in a little den at the end of a long string of low 
 partitioned offices stretching along the Mulberry 
 Street side ; and we who tenant them have looked 
 out of the windows for so many years that we have 
 got to know, at least by sight, a great many of the 
 dwellers thereabouts. We are almost in the very 
 heart of that "mob" on whose "fellow-feeling of 
 vulgarity" the fellows who grind the organ rely to 
 sustain them in their outrageous behavior. And, 
 do you know, as we look out of those windows, year 
 after year, we find ourselves growing to have a 
 fellow-feeling of vulgarity with that same mob. 
 
 The figure and form which we know best are 
 those of old Judge Phoenix — ^for so the office-jester 
 named him when we first moved in, and we have 
 
328 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 known him by that name? ever since. He is a fat 
 old Irishman, with a clean-shaven face, -who stands 
 summer and winter in the side doorway that opens, 
 next to the little grocery opposite, on the alley-way 
 to the rear tenement. Sunamer and winter he is 
 buttoned to his chin in a faded old black overcoat. 
 Alone he stands for the most part, smoking his 
 black pipe and teetering gently from one foot to 
 the other. But sometimes a woman with a shawl 
 over her head comes out of the alley-way and 
 exchanges a few words with him before she goes to 
 the little grocery to get a loaf of bread, or a half 
 pint of milk, or to make that favorite purchase of 
 the poor — three potatoes, one turnip, one carrot, 
 four onions, and the handful of kale — a "b'ilin'." 
 And there is also another old man, a small and 
 bent old man, who has some strange job that occu- 
 pies odd hours of the day, who stops on his way to 
 and from work to talk with the Judge. For hours 
 and hours they talk together, till one wonders how 
 in the course of years they have not come to talk 
 themselves out. What can they have left to talk 
 about? If they had been Mezzofanti and Macau- 
 lay, talking in all known languages on all known 
 topics, they ought certainly to have exhausted the 
 resources of conversation long before this time. 
 
 Judge Phoenix must be a man of independent 
 fortune, for he toils not, neither does he spin, and 
 the lilies of the field could not lead a more simple 
 vegetable life, nor stay more contentedly in one 
 place. Perhaps he owns the rear tenement. I 
 suspect so, for he must have been at one time in the 
 
JERSEY AND MULBEERY 329 
 
 labor-contract business. This, of course, is a 
 mere guess, founded upon the fact that we once 
 found the Judge away from his post and at work. 
 It was at the time they were repaving Broadway 
 with the great pavement. We discovered the 
 Judge at the corner of Bleeeker Street perched on 
 a pile of dirt, doing duty as sub-section boss. He 
 was talking to the drivers of the vehicles that went 
 past him, through the half -blockaded thoroughfare, 
 and he was addressing them, after the true pro- 
 fessional contractor's style, by the names of their 
 loads. 
 
 "Hi there, sand," he would cry, "git along 
 lively ! Stone, it's you the boss wants on the other 
 side of the street! Dhry-goods, there's no place 
 for ye here ; take the next turn ! " It was a proud 
 day for the old Judge, and I have no doubt that he 
 talks it over still with his bent old crony, and 
 boasts of vain deeds that grow in the telling. 
 
 Judge Phoenix is not, however, without mute 
 company. Fair days and foul are all one to the 
 Judge, but on fair days his companion is brought 
 out. In front of the grocery is a box with a 
 sloping top, on which are little bins for vegetables. 
 In front of this box, again, on days when it is not 
 raining or snowing, a little girl of five or six comes 
 out of the grocery and sets a little red chair. 
 Then she brings out a smaller girl yet, who may be 
 two or three, a plump and puggy little thing ; and 
 down in the red chair big sister plunks little sister, 
 and there till next meal-time little sister sits and 
 never so much as offers to move. She must have 
 
330 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 been trained to this unchildlike self -imprisonment, 
 for she is lusty and strong enough. Big sister 
 works in the shop, and once in a while she comes 
 out and settles little sister more comfortably in 
 her red chair; and then little sister has the sole 
 moment of relief from a monotonous existence. 
 She hammers on big sister 's face with her fat little 
 hands, and with such skill and force does she direct 
 the blows that big sister often has to wipe lier 
 streaming eyes. But big sister always takes it in 
 good part, and little sister evidently does it, not 
 from any lack of affection, but in the way of 
 healthy exercise. Then big sister wipes little sis- 
 ter's nose and goes back into the shop. I suppose 
 there is some compact between them. 
 
 Of course there is plenty of child life all up and 
 down the sidewalk on both sides, although little 
 sister never joins in it. My side of the street 
 swarms with Italian children, most of them from 
 Jersey Street, which is really not a street, but an 
 alley. Judge Phoenix's side is peopled with small 
 Germans and Irish. I have noticed one peculiar 
 thing about these children: they never change 
 sides. They play together most amicably in the 
 middle of the street or in the gutter, but neither 
 ventures beyond its neutral ground. 
 
 Judge Phcenix and little sister are by far the 
 most interesting figures to be seen from my win- 
 dows, but there are many others whom we know. 
 There is the Italian barber whose brother dropped 
 dead while shaving a customer. You would never 
 imagine, to see the simple and unaffected way in 
 
JEESEY AND MULBEERY 331 
 
 which he comes out to take the air once in a while, 
 standing on the steps of his basement, and twirling 
 his tin-backed comb in idle thought, that he had 
 had such a distinguished death in his family. But 
 I don't let him shave me. 
 
 Then there is Mamie, the pretty girl in the win- 
 dow with the lace-curtains, and there is her 
 epileptic brother He is insane, but harmless, and 
 amusing, although rather trying to the nerves. 
 He comes out of the house in a hurry, walks 
 quickly up the street for twenty or thirty feet, 
 then turns suddenly, as if he had forgotten some- 
 thing, and hurries back, to reappear two minutes 
 later from the basement door, only to hasten 
 wildly in another direction, turn back again, 
 plunge into the basement door, emerge from the 
 upper door, get half way down the block, forget it 
 again, and go back to make a new combination of 
 doors and exits. Sometimes he is ten or twenty 
 minutes in the house at one time. Then we sup- 
 pose he is having a fit. Now, it seems to me that 
 that modest retirement shows consideration and 
 thoughtfulness on his part. 
 
 In the window next to Mamie's is a little, putty- 
 colored face, and a still smaller white face, that 
 just peeps over the sill. One belongs to the 
 mulatto woman's youngster. Her mother goes 
 out scrubbing, and the little girl is alone all day. 
 She is so much alone, that the sage-green old 
 bachelor in the second den from mine could not 
 stand it, last Christmas time, so he sent her a doll 
 on the sly. That's the other face. 
 
332 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 Then there is the grocer, who is a groceress, and 
 the groceress 's husband. I wish that man to 
 understand, if his eye ever falls upon this page — 
 for wrapping purposes, we will say — that, in the 
 language of Mulberry Street, I am on to him. He 
 has got a job recently, driving a bakery wagon, 
 and he times his route so that be can tie up in front 
 of his wife's grocery every day at twelve o'clock, 
 and he puts in a solid hour of his employer's time 
 helping his wife through the noonday rush. But 
 he need not fear. In the interests of the higher 
 morality I suppose I ought to go and tell his 
 employer about it. But I won't. My morals are 
 not that high. 
 
 Of course we have many across-the-street 
 friends, but I cannot tell you of them all. I will 
 only mention the plump widow who keeps the 
 lunch-room and bakery on the Houston Street 
 corner, where the boys go for their luncheon. It 
 is through her that many interesting details of 
 personal gossip find their way into this office. 
 
 Jersey Street, or at least the rear of it, seems to 
 be given up wholly to the Italians. The most 
 charming tenant of Jersey Street is the lovely 
 Italian girl, who looks like a Jewess, whose mis- 
 sion in life seems to be to hang all day long out of 
 her window and watch the doings in the little stone 
 flagged courts below her. In one of these an old 
 man sometimes comes out, sits him down in a 
 shady corner, and plays on the Italian bagpipes, 
 which are really more painful than any hand-organ 
 that ever was made. After a while his wife opens 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 333 
 
 hostilities with him from her window. I suppose 
 she is reproaching him for an idle devotion to art, 
 but I cannot follow the conversation, although it 
 is quite loud enough on both sides. But the hand- 
 some Italian girl up at the window follows the 
 changes of the strife with the light of the joy of 
 battle in her beautiful dark eyes, and I can tell 
 from her face exactly which of the old folk is 
 getting the better of it. 
 
 But though the life of Jersey and Mulberry 
 Streets may be mildly interesting to outside spec- 
 tators who happen to have a fellow-feeling of 
 vulgarity with the mob, the mob must find it rather 
 monotonous. Jersey Street is not only a blind 
 alley, but a dead one, so far as outside life is con- 
 cerned, and Judge Phoenix and little sister see 
 pretty much the same old two-and-sixpence every 
 day. The bustle and clamor of Mulberry Bend 
 are only a few blocks below them, but the Bend is 
 an exclusive slum; and Police Headquarters — the 
 Central Office — is a block above, but the Central 
 Office deals only with the refinements of artistio 
 crime, and is not half so interesting as an ordinary 
 police station. The priests go by from the school 
 below, in their black robes and tall silk hats, 
 always two by two, marching with brisk, business- 
 like tread. An occasional drunken man or woman 
 wavers along, but generally their faces and their 
 conditions are both familiar. Sometimes two 
 men hurry by, pressing side by side. If you have 
 seen that peculiar walk before you know what it 
 means. Two light steel rings link their wrists 
 
334 JEESEY AND MULBEERY 
 
 together. The old man idly watches them until 
 they disappear in the white marble building on the 
 next block. And then, of course, there is always a 
 thin stream of working folk going to and fro upon 
 their business. 
 
 In spring and in fall things brighten up a little. 
 These are the seasons of processions and religious 
 festivals. Almost every day then, and sometimes 
 half a dozen times a day, the Judge and the baby 
 may see some Italian society parading through the 
 street. Fourteen proud sons of Italy, clad in mag- 
 nificent new uniforms, bearing aloft huge silk 
 banners, strut magnificently in the rear of a Ger- 
 man band of twenty-four pieces, and a drum-corps 
 of a dozen more. Then, too, come the religious 
 processions, when the little girls are taken to their 
 first communion. Six sturdy Italians struggle 
 along under the weight of a mighty temple or 
 pavilion, all made of colored candles — ^not the 
 dainty little pink trifles with rosy shades of per- 
 forated paper, that light our old lady's dining 
 table — ^but the great big candles of the Eomish 
 Church (a church which, you may remember, is 
 much affected of the mob, especially in times of 
 suffering, sickness, or death) ; mighty candles, six 
 and eight feet tall, and as thick as your wrist, of 
 red and blue and green and yellow, arranged in 
 artistic combinations around a statue of the 
 Virgin. From this splendid structure silken rib- 
 bons stream in all directions, and at the end of 
 each ribbon is a little girl — generally a pretty little 
 girl — in a white dress bedecked with green bows. 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 335 
 
 And each little girl leads by the hand one smaller 
 than herself, sometimes a toddler so tiny that you 
 marvel that it can walk at all. Some of the little 
 ones are bare-headed, but most of them wear the 
 square head-cloth of the Italian peasant, such as 
 their mothers and grandmothers wore in Italy. 
 At each side of the girls marches an escort of 
 proud parents, very much mixed up with the boys 
 of the families, who generally appear in their 
 usual street dress, some of them showing through 
 it in conspicuous places. And before and behind 
 them are bands and drum-corps, and societies with 
 banners, and it is all a blare of martial music and 
 primary colors the whole length of the street. 
 
 But these are Mulberry Street's brief carnival 
 seasons, and when their splendor is departed the 
 block relapses into workaday dulness, and the pro- 
 cession that marches and countermarches before 
 Judge Phoenix and little sister in any one of the 
 long hours between eight and twelve and one and 
 six is something like this : 
 
 Up Down 
 
 Detective taking prisoner to 
 Central Office. 
 
 Messenger boy. Chinaman. 
 
 Two priests. '^^o tousepainters. 
 
 Jewish sweater, with coats on Boy with basket, 
 his shoulder. Boy with tin beer-pails on a 
 
 Carpenter. stick. 
 
 Another Chinaman. 
 
 Drunken woman (a regular). 
 
 Glass-put-in man. 
 
336 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 Up Down 
 
 Washerwoman with clothes. 
 Poor woman with market- 
 ^'i^'^*'*- Drunken man. 
 
 Undertaker 's man carrying 
 trestles. 
 
 Butcher's boy. T^ i i- • ^ i 
 
 Detective coming back 
 
 Two priests. from Central Office alone. 
 
 Such is the daily march of the mob in Mulberry 
 Street near the mouth of Jersey's bliad alley, and 
 such is its outrageous behavior as observed by a 
 presumably decent person from the windows of the 
 big red-brick building across the way. 
 
 Suddenly there is an explosion of sound under 
 the decent person's window, and a hand-organ 
 starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a down 
 grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing 
 notes. Then it gets down to work, and its harsh, 
 high-pitched, metallic drone makes the street ring 
 for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned 
 by a chorus of shrill, small voices. The person — 
 I am afraid his decency begins to drop off him 
 here — ^leans on his broad window-sill and looks 
 out. The street is filled with children of every 
 age, size, and nationality; dirty children, clean 
 children, well-dressed children, and children in 
 rags, and for every one of these last two classes 
 put together a dozen children who are neatly and 
 cleanly but humbly clad — the children of the self- 
 respecting poor. I do not know where they have 
 all swarmed from. There were only three or four 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 337 
 
 in sight just before the organ came ; now there are 
 several dozen in the crowd, and the crowd is grow- 
 ing. See, the women are coming out in the rear 
 tenements. Some male passers-by line up on the 
 edge of the sidewalk and look on with a superior 
 air. The Italian barber has come all the way up 
 his steps, and is sitting on the rail. Judge Phoenix 
 has teetered forward at least half a yard, and 
 stands looking at the show over the heads of a 
 little knot of women hooded with red plaid shawls. 
 The epileptic boy comes out on his stoop and stays 
 there at least three minutes before the area-way 
 swallows him. Up above there is a head in almost 
 every casement. Mamie is at her window, and the 
 little mulatto child at hers. There are only two 
 people who do not stop to look on and listen. One 
 is a Chinaman, who stalks on with no expression 
 at all on his blank face ; the other is the boy from 
 the printing-office with a dozen foaming cans of 
 beer on his long stick. But he does not leave 
 because he wants to. He lingers as long as he 
 can, in his passage through the throng, and dis- 
 appears in the printing-house doorway with his 
 head screwed half way around on his shoulders. 
 He would linger yet, but the big foreman would 
 call him "Spitzbube!" and would cuif his ears. 
 
 The children are dancing. The organ is playing 
 "On the Blue Alsatian Mountains," and the little 
 heads are bobbing up and down to it in time as true 
 as ever was kept. Watch the little things ! They 
 are really waltzing. There is a young one of four 
 years old. See her little worn shoes take the step 
 
338 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 and keep it! Dodworth or DeGarmo could not 
 have taught her better. I wonder if either of 
 them ever had so young a pupil. And she is 
 dancing with a girl twice her size. Look at that 
 ring of children — all girls — waltzing round hand 
 in hand ! How is that for a ladies' chain? Well, 
 well, the heart grows young to see them. And 
 now look over to the grocery. Big sister has come 
 out and climbed on the vegetable-stand, and is 
 sitting in the potatoes with little sister in her lap. 
 Little sister waves her fat, red arms in the air and 
 shrieks in babyish delight. The old women with 
 the shawls over their heads are talking together, 
 crooning over the spectacle in their Irish way : 
 
 "Thot's me Mary Ann, I was tellin' ye about, 
 Mrs. Rafferty, dancin' wid the little one in the 
 green apron." 
 
 "It's a foine sthring o' childher ye have, Mrs. 
 Finn!" says Mrs. Rafferty, nodding her head as 
 though it were balanced on wires. And so the 
 dance goes on. 
 
 In the centre of it all stands the organ-grinder, 
 swarthy and black-haired. He has a small, clear 
 space so that he can move the one leg of his organ 
 about, as he turns from side to side, gazing up at 
 the windows of the brick building where the great 
 wrought-iron gl-iffins stare back at him from their 
 lofty perches. His anxious black eyes rove from 
 window to window. The poor he has always with 
 him, but what will the folk who mould public 
 opinion in great griffin-decorated buildings do for 
 him? 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 339 
 
 I think we will throw him down a few nickels. 
 Let us tear off a scrap of newspaper. Here is a 
 
 bit from the society column of the Evening . 
 
 That wUl do excellently well. We will screw the 
 money up in that, and there it goes, clinJc! on the 
 pavement below. There, look at that grin! 
 Wasn't it cheap at the price? 
 
 I wish he might have had a monkey to come up 
 and get the nickels. We shall never see the organ 
 grinder's monkey in the streets of New York 
 again. I see him, though. He comes out and 
 visits me where I live among the trees, whenever 
 the weather is not too cold to permit him to travel 
 with his master. Sometimes he comes in a bag, 
 on chilly days ; and my own babies, who seem to be 
 born with the fellow-feeling of vulgarity with the 
 mob, invite him in and show him how to warm his 
 cold little black hands in front of the kitchen 
 range. 
 
 I do not suppose, even if it were possible to get 
 our good old maiden lady to come down to Mul- 
 berry Street and sit at my window when the organ 
 grinder comes along, she could ever learn to look 
 at the mob with friendly, or at least kindly, eyes ; 
 but I think she would learn — and she is cordially 
 invited to come — ^that it is not a mob that rejoices 
 in "outrageous behavior," as some other mobs 
 that we read of have rejoiced — notably one that 
 gave a great deal of trouble to some very "decent 
 people" in Paris toward the end of the last 
 century. And I think that she even might be 
 induced to see that the organ-grinder is following 
 
340 JERSEY AND MULBERRY 
 
 an honest trade, pitiful as it be, and not exercising 
 a "fearful beggary." He cannot be called a beg- 
 gar who gives something that to him, and to 
 thousands of others, is something valuable, in 
 return for the money he asks of you. Our organ 
 grinder is no more a beggar than is my good friend 
 Mr. Henry Abbey, the honestest and best of 
 operatic impresarios. Mr. Abbey can take the 
 American opera house and hire Mr. Seidl and 
 
 Mr. to conduct grand opera for your delight 
 
 and mine, and when we can afford it we go and 
 listen to his perfect music, and, as our poor con- 
 tributions cannot pay for it all, the rich of the land 
 meet the deficit. But this poor, footsore child of 
 fortune has only his heavy box of tunes and a 
 human being's easement in the public highway. 
 Let us not shut him out of that poor right because 
 once in a while he wanders in front of our doors 
 and offers wares that offend our finer taste. It is 
 easy enough to get him to betake himself else- 
 where, and, if it costs us a few cents, let us not 
 ransack our law-books and our moral philosophies 
 to find out if we cannot indict him for constructive 
 blackmail, but consider the nickel or the dime a 
 little tribute to the uncounted weary souls who 
 love his strains and welcome his coming. 
 
 For the editor of the Evening was wrong 
 
 when he said that the Board of Aldermen and the 
 Mayor consented to the licensing of the organ 
 grinder "in the face of a popular protest." 
 There was a protest, but it was not a popular pro- 
 test, and it came face to face with a demand that 
 
JERSEY AND MULBERRY 341 
 
 was popular. And the Mayor and the Board of 
 Aldermen did rightly, and did as should be done in 
 this American land of ours, when they granted the 
 demand of the majority of the people, and refused 
 to heed the protest of a minority. For the people 
 who said yea on this question were as scores of 
 thousands or hundreds of thousands to the thou- 
 sands of people who said nay ; and the vexation of 
 the few hangs light in the balance against even the 
 poor scrap of joy which was spared to innumerable 
 barren lives. 
 
 And so permit me to renew my invitation to the 
 old lady. 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 IF you ever were a decent, healthy boy, or if you 
 can make believe that you once were such a 
 boy, you must remember that you were once in 
 love with a girl a great deal older than yourself. 
 I am not speaking of the big school-girl with whom 
 you thought you were in love, for one little while — 
 just because she wouldn't look at you, and treated 
 you like a little boy. She had, after all, but a 
 tuppenny temporary superiority to you ; and, after 
 all, in the bottom of your irritated little soul, you 
 knew it. You knew that, proud beauty that she 
 was, she might have to lower her colors to her 
 little sister before that young minx got into the 
 first class and — comparatively — ^long dresses. 
 
 No, I am talking of the girl you loved who was 
 not only really grown up and too old for you, but 
 grown up almost into old-maidhood, and too old 
 perhaps for anyone. She was not, of course, 
 quite an old maid, but she was so nearly an old 
 maid as to be out of all active competition with 
 her juniors — ^which permitted her to be her nat- 
 ural, simple self, and to show you the real charm 
 of her womanhood. Neglected by the men, not yet 
 old enough to take to coddling young girls after 
 the manner of motherly old maids, she found a 
 hearty and genuine pleasure in your boyish f riend- 
 
 342 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 343 
 
 ship, and you — you adored her. You saw, of 
 course, as others saw, the faded dulness of her 
 complexion; you saw the wee crow's-feet that 
 gathered in the corners of her eyes when she 
 laughed ; you saw the faint touches of white among 
 the crisp little curls over her temples ; you saw that 
 the keenest wind of Fall brought the red to her 
 cheeks only in two bright spots, and that no soft 
 Spring air would ever bring her back the rosy, pink 
 flush of girlhood: you saw these things as others 
 saw them — ^no, indeed, you did not ; you saw them as 
 others could not, and they only made her the more 
 dear to you. And you were having one of the 
 best and most valuable experiences of your boy- 
 hood, to which you may look back now, whatever 
 life has brought you, with a smile that has in it 
 nothing of regret, of derision, or of bitterness. 
 
 Suppose that this all happened long ago — that 
 you had left a couple of quarter posts of your 
 course of three-score-years-and-ten between that 
 young lover and your present self; and suppose 
 that the idea came to you to seek out and revisit 
 this dear faded memory. And suppose that you 
 were foolish enough to act upon the idea, and went 
 in search of her and found her — ^not the wholesome, 
 autumn-nipped comrade that you remembered, a 
 shade or two at most frostily touched by the winter 
 of old age — ^but a berouged, beraddled, bedizened 
 old make-believe, with wrinkles plastered thick, 
 and skinny shoulders dusted white with powder — 
 ah, me, how you would wish you had not gone ! 
 
 And just so I wished that I had not gone, when, 
 
344 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 the other day, I was tempted back to revisit the 
 best beloved of all the homes of my nomadic boy- 
 hood. 
 
 I remembered four pleasant years of early youth 
 when my lot was cast in a region that was singu- 
 larly delightful and grateful and lovable, although 
 the finger of death had already touched its pros- 
 perity and beauty beyond all requickening. 
 
 It was a fair countryside of upland and plateau, 
 lying between a majestic hill-bordered river and 
 an idle, wandering, marshy, salt creek that flowed 
 almost side by side with its nobler companion for 
 several miles before they came together at the 
 base of a steep, rocky height, crowned with thick 
 woods. This whole country was my playground, 
 a strip some four or five miles long, and for the 
 most of the way a mile wide between the two 
 rivers, with the rocky, wooded eminence for its 
 northern boundary. 
 
 In the days when the broad road that led from 
 the great city was a famous highway, it had run 
 through a country of comfortable farm-houses and 
 substantial old-fashioned mansions standing in 
 spacious grounds of woodland and meadow. 
 These latter occupied the heights along the great 
 river, like a lofty breastwork of aristocracy, 
 guarding the humbler tillers of the soil in the more 
 sheltered plains and hollows behind them. The 
 extreme north of my playground had been, within 
 my father's easy remembering, a woodland wild 
 enough to shelter deer; and even in my boyhood 
 there remained patches of forest where once in a 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 345 
 
 while the sharp-eyed picked up gunflints and brass 
 buttons that had been dropped among those very 
 trees by the marauding soldiery of King George 
 III. of tyrannical memory. There was no deer 
 there when I was a boy. Doer go naturally with 
 a hardy peasantry, and not naturally, perhaps, but 
 artificially, with the rich and great. But deer 
 cannot coexist with a population composed of 
 what we call "People of Moderate Means." It is 
 not in the eternal fitness of things that they should. 
 
 For, as I first knew our neighborhood, it was a 
 suburb as a physical fact only. As a body politic, 
 we were a part of the great city, and those twain 
 demons of encroachment. Taxes and Assessments, 
 had definitively won in their battle with both the 
 farmers and the country-house gentry. To the 
 south, the farms had been wholly routed out of 
 existence. A few of the old family estates were 
 kept up after a fashion, but it was only as the 
 officers of a defeated garrison are allowed to take 
 their own time about leaving their quarters. 
 Along the broad highway some of them lingered, 
 keeping up a poor pretence of disregarding new 
 grades and levels, and of not seeing the little 
 shanties that squatted under their very windows, 
 or the more offensive habitations of a more pre- 
 tentious poverty that began to range themselves 
 here and there in serried blocks. 
 
 Poor people of moderate means! Nobody 
 wants you, except the real estate speculator, and 
 he wants you only to empty your light pockets for 
 you, and to leave you to die of cheap plumbing in 
 
346 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 the poor little sliam of a house that he builds to 
 suit your moderate means and his immoderate 
 greed. Nowhere are you welcome, except where 
 contractors are digging new roads and blasting 
 rocks and filling sunken lots with ashes and tin 
 cans. The random goat of poverty browses on the 
 very confines of the scanty, small settlement of 
 cheap gentility where you and your neighbors — 
 people of moderate means like yourself — huddle 
 together in your endless, unceasing struggle for a 
 home and self-respect. You know that your smug, 
 mean little house, tricked out with machine-made 
 scroll-work, and insufficiently clad in two coats of 
 ready-mixed paint, is an eyesore to the poor old 
 gentleman who has sold you a corner of his 
 father 's estate to build it on. But there it is — the 
 whole hard business of life for the poor — for the 
 big poor and the little poor, and the unhappiest of 
 all, the moderately poor. He must sell strip after 
 strip of the grounds his father laid out with such 
 loving and far-looking pride. You must buy your 
 narrow strip from him, and raise thereon your 
 tawdry little house, calculating the cost of every 
 inch of construction in hungry anxiety of mind. 
 And then you must sit down in your narrow front 
 room to stare at the squalid shanty of the poor 
 man who has squatted right in your sight, on the 
 land condemned for the new avenue ; to wish that 
 the street might be cut through and the unsightly 
 hovel taken away — and then to groan in spirit as 
 you think of the assessment you must pay when 
 the street is cut through. 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 347 
 
 And yet you must live, oh, people of moderate 
 means ! You have your loves and your cares, your 
 tastes and your ambitions, your hopes and your 
 fears, your griefs and your joys, just like the 
 people whom you envy and the people who envy 
 you. As much as any of them, you have the 
 capacity for pain and for pleasure, for loving and 
 for being loved, that gives human beings a right to 
 turn the leaves of the book of life and spell out its 
 lessons for themselves. I know this; I know it 
 well; I was beginning to find it out when I first 
 came to that outpost suburb of New York, in the 
 trail of your weary army. 
 
 But I was a boy then, and no moderateness of 
 earthly means could rob me of my inheritance in 
 the sky and the woods and the fields, in the sun and 
 the snow and the rain and the wind, and in every 
 day's weather, of which there never was any kind 
 made that has not some delight in it to a healthful 
 body and heart. And on this inheritance I drew 
 such great, big, liberal, whacking drafts that, I 
 declare, to this very day, some odd silver pieces of 
 the resultant spending-money keep turning up, 
 now and then, in forgotten pockets of my mind. 
 
 The field of my boyish activity was practically 
 limited by the existing conditions of the city's 
 growth. With each year there was less and less 
 temptation to extend that field southward. The 
 Bloomingdale Eoad, with its great arching wil- 
 lows, its hospitable old road-houses withdrawn 
 from the street and hidden far down shady lanes 
 that led riverward — the splendid old highway 
 
348 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 retained something of its charm; but day by day 
 the gridiron system of streets encroached upon it, 
 and day by day the shanties and cheap villas 
 crowded in along its sides, between the old farm- 
 steads and the country-places. And then it led 
 only to the raw and unfinished Central Park, and 
 to the bare waste and dreary fag-end of a New 
 York that still looked upon Union Square as an 
 uptown quarter. Besides that, the lone scion of 
 respectability who wandered too freely about the 
 region just below Manhattanville, was apt to get 
 his head most beautifully punched at the hands of 
 some predatory gang of embryonic toughs from 
 the shanties on the line of the aqueduct. 
 
 That is how our range — mine and the other 
 boys' — was from Tiemann's to Tubby Hook; that 
 is, from where ex-Mayor Tiemann's fine old house, 
 with its long conservatories, sat on the edge of the 
 Manhattanville bluff and looked down into the 
 black mouths of the chimneys of the paint-works 
 that had paid for its building, up to the little inn 
 near the junction of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the 
 Hudson Eiver. Occasionally, of course, the 
 delight of the river front tempted us further down. 
 There was an iron-mill down there (if that is the 
 proper name for a place where they make pig 
 iron), whose operations were a perpetual joy to 
 boyhood's heart. The benevolent lovers of the 
 picturesque who owned this mill had a most 
 entrancing way of making their castings late in 
 the afternoon, so as to give a boy a chance to coast 
 or skate, an hour after school closed, before it was 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 349 
 
 time to slip down to the grimy building on the 
 river's bank, and peer through the arched door- 
 way into the great, dark, mysterious cavern with 
 its floor of sand marked out in a pattern of 
 trenches that looked as if they had been made by 
 some gigantic double-toothed comb — a sort of 
 right-angled herringbone pattern. The darkness 
 gathered outside, and deepened still faster within 
 that gloomy, smoke-blackened hollow. The work- 
 men, with long iron rods in their hands, moved 
 about with the cautious, expectant manner of men 
 whose duty brings them in contact with a daily 
 danger. They stepped carefully about, fearful of 
 injuring the regular impressions in the smooth 
 sand, and their looks turned ever with a certain 
 anxiety to the great black furnace at the northern 
 end of the room, where every now and then, at the 
 foreman's order, a fiery eye would open itself for 
 inspection and close sullenly, making everything 
 seem more dark than it was before. At last — 
 sometimes it was long to wait — ^the eye would open, 
 and the foreman, looking into it, would nod; and 
 then a thrill of excitement ran through the work- 
 men at their stations and the boys in the big door- 
 way; and suddenly a huge red mouth opened 
 beneath the eye, and out poured the mighty flood 
 of molten iron, glowing with a terrible, wonderful, 
 dazzling color that was neither white nor red, nor 
 rose nor yellow, but that seemed to partake of 
 them all, and yet to be strangely different from any 
 hue that men can classify or name. Down it 
 flowed upon the sanded floor, first into the broad 
 
350 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 trench in front of the furnace, then down the long 
 dorsals of the rectangular herring-bones, spread- 
 ing out as it went into the depressions to right and 
 left, until the mighty pattern of fire shone in its 
 full length and breadth on the floor of sand; and 
 the workmen, who had been coaxing the sluggish, 
 lava-like flood along with their iron rods, rested 
 from their labors and wiped their hot brows, while 
 a thin cloud of steamy vapor floated up to the be- 
 grimed rafters. Standing in the doorway we could 
 watch the familiar pattern — the sow and pigs, it 
 was called — die down to a dull rose red, and then 
 we would hurry away before blackness came upon 
 it and wiped it clean out of memory and imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Below the foundry, too, there was a point of land 
 whereon were certain elevations and depressions 
 of turf -covered earth that were by many, and most 
 certainly by me, supposed to be the ruins of a Eev- 
 olutionary fort. I have heard long and warm dis- 
 cussions of the nature and history of these mounds 
 and trenches, and I believe the weight of authority 
 was against the theory that they were earthworks 
 thrown up to oppose the passage of a British fleet. 
 But they were good enough earthworks for a boy. 
 
 Just above Tiemann's, on the lofty, protrudent 
 corner made by the dropping of the highroad into 
 the curious transverse valley, or swale, which at 
 125th Street crosses Manhattan Island from east 
 to west, stood, at the top of a steep lawn, a mansion 
 imposing still in spite of age, decay, and sorry 
 days. The great Ionic columns of the portico, 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 351 
 
 which stood the whole height and breadth of the 
 front, were cracked in their length, and rotten in 
 base and capital. The white and yellow paint was 
 faded and blistered. Below the broad flight of 
 crazy front-steps the grass grew rank in the gravel 
 walk, and died out in brown, withered patches on 
 the lawn, where only plantain and sorrel throve. 
 It was a sad and shabby old house enough, but even 
 the patches of newspaper here and there on its 
 broken window-panes could not take away a cer- 
 tain simple, old-fashioned dignity from its weath- 
 er-beaten face. 
 
 Here, the boys used to say, the Crazy Woman 
 lived ; but she was not crazy. I knew the old lady 
 well, and at one time we were very good friends. 
 She was the last daughter of an old, once prosper- 
 ous family ; a woman of bright, even brilliant mind, 
 unhinged by misfortune, disappointment, loneli- 
 ness, and the horrible fascination which an inher- 
 ited load of litigation exercised upon her. The 
 one diversion of her declining years was to let vari- 
 ous parts and portions of her premises, on any 
 ridiculous terms that might suggest themselves, to 
 any tenants that might offer ; and then to eject the 
 lessee, either on a nice point of law or on general 
 principles, precisely as she saw fit. She was al- 
 most invariably successful in this curious game, 
 and when she was not, she promptly made friends 
 with her victorious tenant, and he usually ended by 
 liking her very much. 
 
 Her family, if I remember rightly, had distin- 
 guished itself in public service. It was one of 
 
352 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 those good old American houses where the men- 
 children are born with politics in their veins — ^that 
 is, with an inherited sense of citizenship, and a 
 conscious pride in bearing their share in the civic 
 burden. The young man just out of college, who 
 has got a job at writing editorials on the Purifica- 
 tion of Politics, is very fond of alluding to such 
 men as "indurated professional office-holders." 
 But the good old gentleman who pays the young 
 ex-collegian's bills sometimes takes a great deal of 
 pleasure — in his stupid, old-fashioned way — in 
 uniting with his fellow-merchants of the Swamp or 
 Hanover Square, to subscribe to a testimonial to 
 some one of the best abused of these "indurated" 
 sinners, in honor of his distinguished services in 
 lowering some tax-rate, in suppressing some nui- 
 sance, in establishing some new municipal safe- 
 guard to life or property. This blood in her may, 
 in some measure, account for the vigor and en- 
 thusiasm with which this old lady expressed her 
 sense of the loss the community had sustained in 
 the death of President Lincoln, in April of 1865. 
 
 Summoning two or three of us youngsters, and a 
 dazed Irish maid fresh from Castle Garden and a 
 three weeks' voyage in the steerage of an ocean 
 steamer, she led us up to the top of the house, to 
 one of those vast old-time garrets that might have 
 been — and in country inns occasionally were — 
 turned into ball-rooms, with the aid of a few lights 
 and sconces. Here was stored the accumulated 
 garmenture of the household for generation upon 
 generation; and as far as I could discover, every 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 353 
 
 member of that family had been born into a pro- 
 found mourning that had continued unto his or her 
 latest day, unmitigated save for white shirts and 
 petticoats. These we bore down by great armfuls 
 to the front portico, and I remember that the ope- 
 ration took nearly an hour. When at length we 
 had covered the shaky warped floor of the long 
 porch with the strange heaps of black and white — 
 linens, cottons, silks, bombazines, alpacas, ging- 
 hams, every conceivable fabric, in fashion or out 
 of fashion that could be bleached white or dyed 
 black — the old lady arranged us in working order, 
 and, acting at once as directress and chief worker, 
 with incredible quickness and dexterity she rent 
 these varied and multiform pieces of raiment into 
 broad strips, which she ingeniously twisted, two or 
 three together, stitching them at the ends to other 
 sets of strips, until she had formed immensely long 
 rolls of black and white. Mounting a tall ladder, 
 with the help of the strongest and oldest of her as- 
 sistants, she wound the great tall white columns 
 with these strips, fastening them in huge spirals 
 from top to bottom, black and white entwined. 
 Then she hung ample festoons between the pillars, 
 and contrived something painfully ambitious in the 
 way of rosettes for the cornice and frieze. 
 
 Then we all went out in the street and gazed at 
 the work of our hands. The rosettes were a fail- 
 ure, and the old lady admitted it. I have forgotten 
 whether she said they looked "mangy," or 
 "measly," or "peaky;" but she conveyed her idea 
 in some such graphic phrase. But I must ask you 
 
354 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 to believe me when I tell you that, from the distant 
 street, that poor, weather-worn old front seemed to 
 have taken on the very grandeur of mourning, with 
 its great, clean, strong columns simply wreathed in 
 black and snowy white, that sparkled a little here 
 and there in the fitful, cold, spring sunlight. Of 
 course, when you drew near to it, it resolved itself 
 into a bewildering and somewhat indecent con- 
 fusion of black petticoats, and starched shirts, and 
 drawers, and skirts, and baby-clothes, and chem- 
 ises, and dickies, and neck-cloths, and handker- 
 chiefs, all twisted up into the most fantastic trap- 
 pings of woe that ever decked a genuine and patri- 
 otic grief. But I am glad, for myself, that I can 
 look at it all now from even a greater distance than 
 the highway at the foot of the lawn. 
 
 I must admit that, even in my day, the shops and 
 houses of the Moderate Means colony had so 
 fringed the broad highway with their trivial, com- 
 monplace, weakly pretentious architecture, that 
 very little of the distinctive character of the old 
 road was left. Certainly, from Tiemann's to the 
 Deaf and Dumb Asylum — about two miles of 
 straight road — there was little that had any saving 
 grace of honorable age, except here and there 
 where some pioneer shanty had squatted itself long 
 enough to have acquired a pleasant look of faded 
 shabbiness. The tavern and the stage-office, it is 
 true, kept enough of their old appearance to make 
 a link between those days and the days when 
 swarms of red-faced drovers, with big woollen 
 comfortables about their big necks, and with fat, 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 355 
 
 greasy, leather wallets stuffed full of bank-notes, 
 gathered noisily there, as it was their wont to 
 gather at all the "Bull's Head Taverns" in and 
 around New York. The omnibuses that crawled 
 out from New York were comparatively modern — 
 that is, a Broadway 'bus rarely got ten or fifteen 
 years beyond the period of positive decrepitude 
 without being shifted to the Washington Heights 
 line. But under the big shed around the corner 
 still stood the great old George Washington coach 
 — a structure about the size and shape of a small 
 canal-boat, with the most beautiful patriotic pic- 
 tures all over it, of which I only remember Lord 
 Cornwallis surrendering his sword in the politest 
 and most theatrical manner imaginable, although 
 the poignancy of his feelings had apparently 
 turned his scarlet uniform to a pale orange. This 
 magnificent equipage was a trifle rheumaticky 
 about its underpinning, but, drawn by four, six, or 
 eight horses, it stiU took the road on holidays ; and 
 in winter, when the sleighing was unusually fine, 
 with its wheels transformed into sectional runners 
 like a gigantic bob-sled, it swept majestically out 
 upon the road, where it towered above the flock of 
 flying cutters whose bells set the air a-jingle from 
 Bloomingdale to King 's Bridge. 
 
 But if the beauty of Broadway as a country high- 
 road had been marred by its adaptation to the exi- 
 gencies of a suburb of moderate means, we boys 
 felt the deprivation but little. To right and to left, 
 as we wandered northward, five minutes' walk 
 would take us into a country of green lanes and 
 
356 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 meadows and marshland and woodland; where 
 houses and streets were as yet too few to frighten 
 away that kindly old Dame Nature who was always 
 so glad to see us. If you turned to the right — to 
 the east, that is — you found the laurel-bordered 
 fields where we played baseball — I don't mean that 
 the fields sprouted with laurels for us boys in those 
 old days of 29 to 34 scores, but that the Kalmia lati- 
 folia crowned the gray rocks that cropped out all 
 around. Farther up was the wonderful and mys- 
 terious old house of Madame Jumel — Aaron 
 Burr's Madame Jumel — set apart from all other 
 houses by its associations with the fierce, vindictive 
 passions of that strange old woman, whom, it 
 seems to me, I can still vaguely remember, seated 
 very stiff and upright in her great old family car- 
 riage. At the foot of the heights, on this side, the 
 Harlem Eiver flowed between its marshy margins 
 to join Spuyten Duyvil Creek — the Harlem with its 
 floats and boats and bridges and ramshackle docks, 
 and all the countless delights of a boating river. 
 Here also was a certain dell, half-way up the 
 heights overlooking McComb 's Dam Bridge, where 
 countless violets grew around a little spring, and 
 where there was a real cave, in which, if real 
 pirates had not left their treasure, at least real 
 tramps had slept and left a real smell. And on top 
 of the cave there was a stone which was supposed 
 to retain the footprint of a prehistoric Indian. 
 From what I remember of that footprint I am in- 
 clined to think that it must have been made by the 
 foot of a derrick, and not by that of an Indian. 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 357 
 
 But it was on the other side of the Island, be- 
 tween the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and Tubby 
 Hook, and between the Eidge and the River, that I 
 most loved to ramble. Here was the slope of a 
 woodland height running down to a broad low 
 strip, whose westernmost boundary was the rail- 
 road embankment, beyond which lay the broad blue 
 Hudson, with Fort Lee and the first up-springing 
 of the Palisades, to be seen by glimpses through 
 the tree-trunks. This was, I think, the prettiest 
 piece of flower-spangled wildwood that I have ever 
 seen. For centuries it had drained the richness of 
 that long and lofty ridge. The life of lawns and 
 gardens had gone into it; the dark wood-soil had 
 been washed from out the rocks on the brow of the 
 hill ; and down below there, where a vagrom brook- 
 let chirped its way between green stones, the 
 wholesome soil bloomed forth in grateful luxuri- 
 ance. From the first coming of the anemone and 
 the hepatica, to the time of the asters, there was 
 always something growing there to delight the 
 scent or the sight ; and most of all do I remember 
 the huge clumps of Dutchman 's-breeches — the 
 purple and the waxy white as well as the honey- 
 tipped scarlet. 
 
 There were little sunlit clearings here, and I well 
 recall the day when, looking across one of these, I 
 saw something that stood awkwardly and conspic- 
 uously out of the young wood-grass — a raw stake 
 of pine wood, and beyond that, another stake, and 
 another; and parallel with these another row, 
 marking out two straight lines, until the bushes hid 
 
358 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 them. The surveyors had begun to lay out the 
 line of the new Boulevard, on which you may now 
 roll in your carriage to Inwood, through the wreck 
 of the woods where I used to scramble over rock 
 and tree-trunk, going toward Tubby Hook. 
 
 It was on the grayest of gray November days 
 last year that I had the unhappy thought of re- 
 visiting this love of my youth. I followed famil- 
 iar trails, guided by landmarks I could not forget 
 — although they had somehow grown incredibly 
 poor and mean and shabby, and had entirely lost a 
 certain dignity that they had until then kept quite 
 clearly in my remembrance. And behold, they 
 were no longer landmarks except to me. A change 
 had come over the face of this old playground of 
 mine. It had forgotten the withered, modest 
 grace of the time when it was middle-aged, and 
 when I was a boy. It was checkered and grid- 
 ironed with pavements and electric lights. The 
 Elevated Railroad roared at its doors behind 
 clouds of smoke and steam. Great, cheerless, 
 hideously ornate flat buildings reared their zinc- 
 tipped fronts toward the gray heaven, to show the 
 highest aspirations of that demoralized suburb in 
 the way of domestic architecture. To right, to 
 left, every way I turned, I saw a cheap, tawdry, 
 slipshod imitation of the real city — or perhaps I 
 should say, of all that is ugliest and vulgarest, 
 least desirable, and least calculated to endure, in 
 the troubled face of city life. I was glad to get 
 away ; glad that the gray mist that rolled up from 
 the Hudson River hid from my sight within its 
 
TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 359 
 
 fleecy bosom some details of that vulgar and piti- 
 ful degradation. One place alone I found as I had 
 hoped to find it. Ex-Mayor Tiemann's house was 
 gone, his conservatory was a crumbling ruin ; the 
 house we decked for Lincoln's death was a filthy 
 tenement with a tumble-down gallery where the 
 old portico had stood, and I found very little on 
 my upward pilgrimage that had not experienced 
 some change — for the worse, as it seemed to me. 
 The very cemetery that belongs to old Trinity had 
 dandified itself with a wonderful wall and a still 
 more wonderful bridge to its annex — or appendix, 
 or extension, or whatever you call it. But just 
 above it is a little enclosure that is called a park — 
 a place where a few people of modest, old-fash- 
 ioned, domestic tastes had built their houses to- 
 gether to join in a common resistance against the 
 encroachments of the speculator and the nomad 
 house-hunter. I found this little settlement un- 
 disturbed, uninvaded, save by a sort of gentle 
 decay that did it no ill-service, in my eyes. The 
 pale dust was a little deeper in the roadways that 
 had once been paved with limestone, a few more 
 brown autumn leaves had fallen ia the corners of 
 the fences, the clustered wooden houses all looked 
 a little more rustily respectable in their reserved 
 and sleepy silence — a little bit more, I thought, as 
 if they sheltered a colony of old maids. Other- 
 wise it looked pretty much as it did when I first 
 saw it, well nigh thirty years ago. 
 
 To see if there were anything alive in that misty, 
 dusty, faded little abode of respectability, I rang 
 
360 TIEMANN'S TO TUBBY HOOK 
 
 at the door of one house, and found some inquiries 
 to make concerning another one that seemed to be 
 untenanted. 
 
 It was a very pretty young lady who opened the 
 door for me, with such shining dark eyes and with 
 so bright a red in her cheeks, that you felt that she 
 could not have been long in that dull, old-time spot, 
 where life seemed to be all one neutral color. She 
 answered my questions kindly, and then, with 
 something in her manner which told me that 
 strangers did not often wander in there, she said 
 that it was a very nice place to live in. I told her 
 that I knew it had been a very nice place to live in. 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 ONE day a good many years ago an old gen- 
 tleman from Eondout-on-the-Hudson — 
 then plain Rondout— was walking up 
 Broadway seeing the sights. He had not been in 
 New York in ten or twelve years, and although he 
 was an old gentleman who always had a cask of 
 good ale in his cellar in the winter-time, yet he had 
 never tasted the strange German beverage called 
 lager-beer, which he had heard and read about. 
 So when he saw its name on a sign he went in and 
 drank a mug, sipping it slowly and thoughtfully, 
 as he would have sipped his old ale. He found it 
 refreshing — peculiar — and, well, on the whole, 
 very refreshing indeed, as he considerately told 
 the proprietor. 
 
 But what interested him more than the beer was 
 the sight of a group of young men seated around a 
 table drinking beer, reading — and — ^yes, actually 
 writing verses, and bandying very lively jests 
 among themselves. The old gentleman could not 
 help hearing their conversation, and when he went 
 out into the street he shook his head thoughtfully. 
 "I wonder what my father would have said to 
 that?" he reflected. "Young gentlemen sitting 
 in a pot-house at high noon and turning verses 
 like so many ballad-mongers ! Well, well, well, if 
 
 361 
 
362 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 those are the ways of lager-beer drinkers, I'll 
 stick to my good old ale !" 
 
 And greatly surprised would that honest old 
 gentleman have been to know that the presence of 
 that little group of poets and humorists attracted 
 as much custom to good Mr. Pfaff 's beer-saloon as 
 did his fresh, cool lager ; and that young men, and, 
 for the matter of that, men not so young, stole in 
 there to listen to their contests of wit, and to wish 
 and yearn and aspire to be of their goodly com- 
 pany. For the old gentleman little dreamed, as 
 he went on his course up Broadway, that he had 
 seen the first Bohemians of New York, and that 
 these young men would be written about and 
 talked about and versified about for generations to 
 come. Unconscious of this honor he went on to 
 Fourteenth Street to see the new square they were 
 laying out .there. 
 
 Perhaps nothing better marks the place where 
 the city of New York got clean and clear out of 
 provincial pettiness into metropolitan tolerance 
 than the advent of the Bohemians. Twenty-five 
 years earlier they would have been a scandal and a 
 reproach to the town. Not for their literature, 
 or for their wit, or for their hard drinking, or 
 even for their poverty; but for their brotherhood, 
 and for their calm indifference to all the rest of 
 the world whom they did not care to receive into 
 their kingdom of Bohemia. There is human 
 nature in this ; more human nature than there is in 
 most provincialism. Take a community of one 
 hundred people and let any ten of its members 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 363 
 
 join themselves together and dictate the terms on 
 which an eleventh may be admitted to their band. 
 The whole remaining eighty-nine wUl quarrel for 
 the twelfth place. But take a community of a 
 thousand, and let ten such internal groups be 
 formed, and every group will have to canvass 
 more or less hard to increase its number. For the 
 other nine hundred people, being able to pick and 
 choose, are likely to feel a deep indifference to the 
 question of joining any segregation at all. If 
 group No. 2 says, * ' Come into my crowd, I under- 
 stand they don't want you in No. 1," the individual 
 replies : "What the deuce do I care about No. 1 or 
 you either? Here are Nos. 4, 5, 6, and 7 all beg- 
 ging for me. If you and No. 1 keep on in your 
 conceit you'll find yourselves left out in the cold." 
 
 And as it frequently happens to turn out that 
 way, the dweller in a great city soon learns, in the 
 first place, that he is less important than he 
 thought he was ; in the second place, that he is less 
 unimportant than some people would like to have 
 him think himself. All of which goes to show that 
 when New Yorkers looked with easy tolerance, and 
 some of them with open admiration, upon the 
 Bohemians at Pfaff 's saloon, they had come to be 
 citizens of no mean city, and were making metro- 
 politan growth. 
 
 A Bohemian may be defined as the only kind of 
 gentleman permanently in temporary difficulties 
 who is neither a sponge nor a cheat. He is a type 
 that has existed in all ages and always will exist. 
 He is a man who lacks certain elements necessary 
 
364 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 to success in this world, and wlio manages to keep 
 fairly even with the world, by dint of ingenious 
 shift and expedient ; never fully succeeding, never 
 wholly failing. He is a man, in fact, who can't 
 swim", but can tread water. But he never, never, 
 never calls himself a Bohemian — at least, in a 
 somewhat wide experience, I have known only two 
 that ever did, and one of these was a baronet. As 
 a rule, if you overhear a man approach his 
 acquaintance with the formula, "As one Bohemian 
 to another, ' ' you may make up your mind that that 
 man means an assault upon the other man's 
 pocket-book, and that if the assault is successful 
 the damages will never be repaired. That man is 
 not a Bohemian; he is a beat. Your true Bohe- 
 mian always calls himself by some euphemistic 
 name. He is always a gentleman at odds with for- 
 tune, who rolled in wealth yesterday and will to- 
 morrow, but who at present is willing to do any 
 work that he is sure will make him immortal, and 
 that he thinks may get him the price of a supper. 
 And very often he lends more largely than he bor- 
 rows. 
 
 Now the crowd which the old gentleman saw in 
 the saloon — and he saw George Arnold, Fitz- 
 James O'Brien, and perhaps N. P. Shepard — ^was 
 a crowd of Bohemians rather by its own christeil- 
 ing than by any ordinary application of the word. 
 They were aU young men of ability, recognized in 
 their profession. Of those who have died, two at 
 least have honor and literary consideration to- 
 day ; of those who lived, some have obtained celeb- 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 365 
 
 rity, and all a reasonable measure of success. 
 Miirger's Bohemians would have called them 
 Philistines. But they have started a tradition 
 that will survive from generation unto generation ; 
 a tradition of delusion so long as the glamor of 
 poetry, romance, and adventure hang around the 
 mysteriously attractive personality of a Bohe- 
 mian. Ever since then New York has had, and 
 always will have, the posing Bohemian and his 
 worshippers. 
 
 Ten or fifteen years ago the "French Quarter" 
 got its literary introduction to New York, and the 
 fact was revealed that it was the resort of real 
 Bohemians — ^young men who actually lived by 
 their wit and their wits, and who talked brilliantly 
 over fifty-cent table-d'hote dinners. This was the 
 signal for the would-be Bohemian to emerge from 
 his dainty flat or his oak-panelled studio in Wash- 
 ington Square, hasten down to Bleecker or Hous- 
 ton Street, there to eat chicken badly braise, fried 
 chuck-steak, and soggy spaghetti, and to drink 
 thin blue wine and chicory-coffee that he might 
 listen to the feast of witticism and flow of soul that 
 he expected to find at the next table. If he found 
 it at all, he lost it at once. If he made the 
 acquaintance of the young men at the next table, 
 he found them to be young men of his own sort — 
 agreeable young boys just from Columbia and 
 Harvard, who were painting impressionless pic- 
 tures for the love of Art for Art's sake, and living 
 very comfortably on their paternal allowances. 
 Any one of the crowd would think the world was 
 
366 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 coining to pieces if he woke up in the morning to 
 wonder where he could get his breakfast on credit, 
 and wonder where he could earn enough money to 
 buy his dinner. Yet these innocent youngsters 
 continue to pervade "The Quarter," as they call 
 it ; and as time goes on, by much drinking of ponies 
 of brandy and smoking of cigarettes, they get to 
 fancy that they themselves are Bohemians. And 
 when they get tired of it all and want some- 
 thing good to eat, they go up to Delmonico's and 
 get it. 
 
 And their Bohemian predecessors, who sought 
 the French fifty-cent restaurants as their highest 
 attainable luxury — what has become of them? 
 They have fled before that incursion as a flock of 
 birds before a whirlwind. They leave behind 
 them, perhaps, a few of the more mean-spirited 
 among them, who are willing to degenerate into 
 fawners on the rich, and habitual borrowers of 
 trifling sums. But the true Bohemians, the men 
 who have the real blood in their veins, they must 
 seek some other meeting-place where they can 
 pitch their never-abiding tents, and sit at their 
 humble feasts to recount to each other, amid ap- 
 preciative laughter, the tricks and devices and 
 pitiful petty schemes for the gaining of daily bread 
 that make up for them the game and comedy of 
 life. Tell me not that Ishmael does not enjoy the 
 wilderness. The Lord made him for it, and he 
 would not be happy anywhere else. 
 
 There was one such child of fortune once, who 
 brought his blue eyes over from Ireland. His 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 367 
 
 harmless and gentle life closed after too many 
 years of direst misfortune. But as long as lie 
 wandered in the depths of poverty there was one 
 strange and mysterious thing about him. His 
 clothes, always well brushed and well carried on a 
 gallant form, often showed cruel signs of wear, 
 especially when he went for a winter without an 
 overcoat. But shabby as his garments might 
 grow, empty as his pockets might be, his linen was 
 always spotless, stiff, and fresh. Now everybody 
 who has ever had occasion to consider the matter 
 knows that by the aid of a pair of scissors the life 
 of a collar or of a pair of cuffs can be prolonged 
 almost indefinitely — apparent miracles had been 
 performed in this way. But no pair of scissors 
 win pay a laundry bill ; and finally a committee of 
 the curious waited upon this student of economics 
 and asked him to say how he did it. He was 
 proud and delighted to tell them. 
 
 "I-I-I'U tell ye, boys," he said, in his pleasant 
 Dublin brogue, "but 'twas I that thought it out. I 
 wash them, of course, in the basin — that's easy 
 enough; but you'd think I'd be put to it to iron 
 them, wouldn't ye, now? Well, I've invinted a 
 substischoot for ironing — it's me big books. 
 Through all me vicissichoods, boys, I kept me 
 Bible and me dictionary, and I lay the collars and 
 cuffs in the undher one and get the leg of the 
 bureau on top of them both — and you'd be sur- 
 prised at the artistic effect." 
 
 There is no class in society where the sponge, 
 the toady, the man who is willing to receive 
 
368 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 socially without giving in return, is more quickly- 
 found out or more heartily disowned than among 
 the genuine Bohemians. He is to them a traitor, 
 he is one who plays the game unfairly, one who is 
 willing to fill his belly by means to which they will 
 not resort, lax and fantastic as is their social code. 
 Do you know, for instance, what "Jackaling" is in 
 New York? A Jackal is a man generally of good 
 address, and capable of a display of good fellow- 
 ship combined with much knowledge of literature 
 and art, and a vast and intimate acquaintance with 
 writers, musicians, and managers. He makes it 
 his business to haunt hotels, theatrical agencies, 
 and managers' ofiSces, and to know whenever, in 
 his language, "a new jay comes to town." The 
 jay he is after is some man generally from the 
 smaller provincial cities, who has artistic or 
 theatrical aspirations and a pocketful of money. 
 It is the Jackal's mission to turn this jay into an 
 "angel." Has the gentleman from Lockport 
 come with the score of a comic opera under his 
 arm, and two thousand dollars in his pocket? 
 Two thousand dollars will not go far toward the 
 production of a comic opera in these days, and the 
 jay finds that out later; but not until after the 
 Jackal has made him intimately acquainted with a 
 very gentlemanly and experienced manager who 
 thinks that it can be done for that price with strict 
 economy. Has the young man of pronounced 
 theatrical talent arrived from Keokuk with gold 
 and a thirst for fame? The Jackal knows just the 
 dramatist who will write him the play that he 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 369 
 
 ought to star in. Does the wealthy and important 
 person from Podunk desire to back something 
 absolutely safe and sure in the line of theatrical 
 speculation? The Jackal has the very thing for 
 which he is looking. And in all these, and in all 
 similar contingencies, it is a poor Jackal who does 
 not get his commission at both ends. 
 
 The Jackal may do all these things, but he may 
 not, if he is treated, fail to treat in return. I do 
 not mean to say at all that Jackaling is a business 
 highly esteemed, even in darkest Bohemia, but it 
 is considered legitimate, and I hope that no gen- 
 tleman doing business in Wall Street, or on the 
 Consolidated Exchange, will feel too deeply 
 grieved when he learns the fact. 
 
 But where have the real Bohemians fled to from 
 the presence of the too-well-disposed and too- 
 wealthy children of the Benedick and the Holbein? 
 Not where they are likely to find him, you may be 
 sure. The true Bohemian does not carry his true 
 address on his card. In fact, he is delicate to the 
 point of sensitiveness about allowing any publicity 
 to attach to his address. He communicates it con- 
 fidentially to those with whom he has business 
 dealings, but he carefully conceals it from the pry- 
 ing world. As soon as the world knows it he 
 moves. I once asked a chief of the Bohemian 
 tribe whose residence was the world, but whose 
 temporary address was sometimes Paris, why he 
 had moved from the Quartier Latin to a place in 
 Montmartre. 
 
 "Had to, my dear fellow," he answered, with 
 
370 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 dignity; "why if you live over on that side of the 
 river they'll call you a Bohemian!" 
 
 In Paris the home of wit in poverty has been 
 moved across the Seine to the south side of the hill 
 up which people climb to make pilgrimages to the 
 Moulin Rouge and the church of St. Pierre de 
 Montmartre. In New York it has been moved 
 not only across that river of human intercourse 
 that we call Broadway — a river with a tidal ebb 
 and flow of travel and traffic — ^but across a wilder, 
 stranger, and more turbulent flood called the 
 Bowery, to a region of which the well-fed and 
 prosperous New Yorker knows very, very little. 
 
 As more foreigners walk on the Bowery than 
 walk on any other street in New York ; and as more 
 different nationalities are represented there than 
 are represented in any other street in New York ; 
 and as the foreigners all say that the Bowery is 
 the most marvellous thoroughfare in the world, I 
 think we are justified in assuming that there is lit- 
 tle reason to doubt that the foreigners are entirely 
 right in the matter, especially as their opinion 
 coincides with that of every American who has 
 ever made even a casual attempt to size up the 
 Bowery. 
 
 No one man can thoroughly know a great city. 
 People say that Dickens knew London, but I am 
 sure that Dickens would never have said it. He 
 knew enough of London to know that no one 
 human mind, no one mortal life can take in the 
 complex intensity of a metropolis. Try to count 
 a million, and then try to form a conception of the 
 
THE BOWEEY AND BOHEMIA 371 
 
 impossibility of learning all the ins and outs of 
 the domicile of a million men, women, and children. 
 I have met men who thought they knew New York, 
 but I have never met a man — except a man from a 
 remote rural district — ^who thought he knew the 
 Bowery. There are agriculturists, however, all 
 over this broad land who have entertained that 
 supposition and acted on it — ^but never twice. 
 The sense of humor is the saving grace of the 
 American people. 
 
 I first made acquaintance with the Bowery as a 
 boy through some lithographic prints. I was in- 
 terested in them, for I was looking forward to 
 learning to shoot, and my father had told me that 
 there used to be pretty good shooting at the upper 
 end of the Bowery, though, of course, not so good 
 as there was farther up near the Block House, or 
 in the wood beyond. Besides, the pictures showed 
 a very pretty country road with big trees on both 
 sides of it, and comfortable farmhouses, and, I 
 suppose, an inn with a swinging sign. I was dis- 
 appointed at first, when I heard it had been all 
 built up, but I was consoled when the glories of the 
 real Bowery were unfolded to my youthful mind, 
 and I heard of the butcher-boy and his red sleigh ; 
 of the Bowery Theatre and peanut gallery, and the 
 gods, and Mr. Eddy, and the war-cry they made of 
 his name — and a glorious old war-cry it is, better 
 than any college cries ever invented: "Hi, Eddy- 
 eddy-eddy-eddy-eddy-eddy-eddy-eddy-eddy ! " of 
 Mose and his silk locks; of the fire-engine fights, 
 and Big Six, and "Wash-her-downl" of the pump 
 
372 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 at Houston Street; of what happened to Mr. 
 Thackeray when he talked to the tough ; of many 
 other delightful things that made the Bowery, to 
 my young imagination, one long avenue of ro- 
 mance, mystery, and thrilling adventure. And 
 the first time I went in the flesh to the Bowery was 
 to go with an elderly lady to an optician's shop. 
 
 "And is this — ^Yarrow? — This the stream 
 Of which my fancy cherished. 
 So faithfully, a waMng dreamt 
 An image that hath perished! 
 O that some minstrel's harp were near, 
 To utter notes of gladness, 
 And chase this silence from the air. 
 That fills my heart with sadness ! ' ' 
 
 But the study of the Bowery that I began that 
 day has gone on with interruption for a good many 
 years, and I think now that I am arriving at the 
 point where I have some faint glimmerings of the 
 littleness of my knowledge of it as compared with 
 what there is to be known. I do not mean to say 
 that I can begin to size the disproportion up with 
 any accuracy, but I think I have accomplished a 
 good deal in getting as far as I have. 
 
 The Bowery is not a large place, for I think that, 
 properly speaking, it is a place rather than a 
 street or avenue. It is an irregularly shaped 
 ellipse, of notable width in its widest part. It be- 
 gins at Chatham Square, which lies on the parallel 
 of the sixth Broadway block above City Hall, and 
 loses its identity at the Cooper Union where Third 
 and Fourth Avenues begin, so that it is a scant 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 373 
 
 mile in all. But it is the alivest mile on the face 
 of the earth. And it either bounds or bisects that 
 square mile that the statisticians say is the most 
 densely populated square mile on the face of the 
 globe. This is the heart of the New York tene- 
 ment district. As the Bowery is the Broadway of 
 the East Side, the street of its pleasures, it would 
 be interesting enough if it opened up only this one 
 densely populated district. But there is much 
 more to contribute to its infinite variety. It 
 serves the same purpose for the Chinese colony in 
 Mott, Pell, and Doyers Streets, and for the Italian 
 swarms in Mulberry Bend, the most picturesque 
 and interesting slum I have ever seen, and I am an 
 ardent collector of slums. I have missed art gal- 
 leries and palaces and theatres and cathedrals 
 (cathedrals particularly) in various and sundry 
 cities, but I don't think I ever missed a slum. 
 Mulberry Bend is a narrow bend in Mulberry 
 Street, a tortuous ravine of all tenement houses, 
 and it is so full of people that the throngs going 
 and coming spread off the sidewalk nearly to the 
 middle of the street. There they leave a little 
 lane for the babies to play in. No, they never 
 get run over. There is a perfect understanding 
 between the babies and the peddlers who drive 
 their wagons in Mulberry Bend. The crowds are 
 in the street partly because much of the sidewalk 
 and aU of the gutter is taken up with venders' 
 stands, which give its characteristic feature to 
 Mulberry Bend. There are displayed more and 
 stranger wares than uptown people ever heard of. 
 
374 THE BOWEEY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 Probably the edibles are in the majority, cer- 
 tainly they are the queerest part of the show. 
 There are trays and bins there in the Bend, con- 
 taining dozens and dozens of things that you 
 would never guess were meant to eat if you didn't 
 happen to see a ham or a string of sausages or 
 some other familiar object among them. But the 
 color of the Bend — and its color is its strong 
 point — comes from its display of wearing ap- 
 parel and candy. A lady can go out in Mul- 
 berry Bend and purchase every article of ap- 
 parel, external or private and personal, that 
 she ever heard of, and some that she never heard 
 of, and she can get them of any shade or hue. If 
 she likes what they call "Liberty" colors — soft, 
 neutral tones — she can get them from the second- 
 hand dealers whose goods have all the softest of 
 shades that age and exposure can give them. But 
 if she likes, as I do, bright, cheerful colors, she can 
 get tints in Mulberry Bend that you could warm 
 your hands on. Reds, greens, and yellows pre- 
 ponderate, and Nature herself would own that the 
 Italians could give her points on inventing green 
 and not exert themselves to do it. The pure ar- 
 senical tones are preferred in the Bend, and, by 
 the bye, anybody who remembers the days when 
 ladies wore magenta and solferino, and wants to 
 have those dear old colors set his teeth on edge 
 again, can go to the Bend and find them there. 
 The same dye-stuffs that are popular in the dress- 
 goods are equally popular in the candy, and candy 
 is a chief product of Mulberry Bend. It is piled 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 375 
 
 up in reckless profusion on scores of stands, here, 
 there, and everywhere, and to call the general ef- 
 fect festal, would be to speak slightingly of it. 
 The stranger who enters Mulberry Bend and sees 
 the dress-goods and the candies is sure to think 
 that the place has been decorated to receive him. 
 No, nobody will hurt you if you go down there and 
 are polite, and mind your own business, and do not 
 step on the babies. But if you stare about and 
 make comments, I think those people will be justi- 
 fied in suspecting that the people uptown don't 
 always know how to behave themselves like ladies 
 and gentlemen, so do not bring disgrace on your 
 neighborhood, and do not go in a cab. You will 
 not bother the babies, but you will find it trying to 
 your own nerves. 
 
 There is a good deal of money in Mulberry 
 Street, and some of it overflows into the Bowery. 
 From this street also the Baxter Street variety of 
 Jews find their way into the Bowery. These are 
 the Jew toughs, and there is no other type of Jew 
 at all like them in all New York's assortment of 
 Hebrew types, which cannot be called meagre. Of 
 the Jewish types New York has, as the printers 
 say, "a full case." 
 
 But it is on the other side of the Boweiy that 
 there lies a world to which the world north of 
 Fourteenth Street is a select family party. I 
 could not give even a partial list of its elements. 
 Here dwell the Polish Jews with their back-yards 
 full of chickens. The police raid those back-yards 
 with ready assiduity, but the yards are always 
 
376 THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 
 
 promptly replenished. It is the police against a 
 religion, and the odds are against the police. The 
 Jew will die for it, if needs be, hut his chickens 
 must be killed kosher way and not Christian way, 
 but that is only the way of the Jews: the Hun- 
 garians, the Bohemians, the Anarchist Russians, 
 the Scandinavians of all sorts who come up from 
 the wharfs, the Irish, who are there, as every- 
 where, the Portuguese Jews, and all the rest of 
 them who help to form that city within a city — 
 have they not, all of them, ways of their own ? I 
 speak of this Babylon only to say that here and 
 there on its borders, and, once in a way, in its very 
 heart, are rows or blocks of plain brick houses, 
 homely, decent, respectable relics of the days when 
 the sturdy, steady tradesfolk of New York built 
 here the homes that they hoped to leave to their 
 children. They are boarding- and lodging-houses 
 now, poor enough, but proud in their respectabil- 
 ity of the past, although the tide of ignorance, 
 poverty, vice, filth, and misery is surging to their 
 doors and their back-yard fences. And here, in 
 hall bedrooms, in third-story backs and fronts, and 
 in half-story attics, live the Bohemians of to-day, 
 and with them those other stragglers of poverty 
 who are destined to become "successful men" in 
 various branches of art, literature, science, trade, 
 or finance. Of these latter our children will speak 
 with hushed respect, as men who rose from small 
 beginnings ; and they will go into the school-read- 
 ers of our grandchildren along with Benjamin 
 Franklin and that contemptible wretch who got to 
 
THE BOWERY AND BOHEMIA 377 
 
 be a banker because he picked up a pin, as ex- 
 amples of what perseverance and industry can 
 accomplish. From what I remember I foresee 
 that those children will hate them. 
 
 I am not going to give you the addresses of the 
 cheap restaurants where these poor, cheerful 
 children of adversity are now eating goulasch and 
 Kartoffelsalad instead of the spaghetti and tripe 
 a la mode de Caen of their old haunts. I do not 
 know them, and if I did, I should not hand them 
 over to the mercies of the intrusive young men 
 from the studios and the bachelors' chambers. I 
 wish them good digestion of their goulasch: for 
 those that are to climb, I wish that they may keep 
 the generous and faithful spirit of friendly pov- 
 erty ; for those that are to go on to the end in fruit- 
 less struggle and in futile hope, I wish for them 
 that that end may come in some gentle and hap- 
 pier region lying to the westward of that black tide 
 that ebbs and flows by night and day along the 
 Bowery Way. 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 IN one of his engaging essays Mr. John Bur- 
 roughs tells of meeting an English lady in 
 Holyoke, Mass., who complained to him that 
 there were no foot-paths for her to walk on, 
 whereupon the poet-naturalist was moved to an 
 eloquent expression of his grief over America's 
 inferiority in the foot-path line to the "mellow 
 England" which in one brief month had won him 
 for her own. Now I know very little of Holyoke, 
 Mass., of my own knowledge. As a lecture-town I 
 can say of it that its people are polite, but ex- 
 tremely undemonstrative, and that the lecturer is 
 expected to furnish the refreshments. It is quite 
 likely that the English lady was right, and that 
 there are no foot-paths there. 
 
 I wish to say, however, that I know the English 
 lady. I know her — ^many, many of her — and I 
 have met her a-many times. I know the enchanted 
 fairyland in which her wistful memory loves to 
 linger. Often and often have I watched her 
 father's wardian-case grow into "papa's hot 
 houses;" the plain brick house that he leases, out 
 Notting Hill way, swell into "our family man- 
 sion," and the cottage that her family once occu- 
 pied at Stoke Wigglesworth change itself into "the 
 country place that papa had to give up because it 
 
 378 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 379 
 
 took so much of his time to see that it was properly- 
 kept up." And long experience in this direction 
 enables me to take that little remark about the 
 foot-paths, and to derive from it a large amount 
 of knowledge about Holyoke and its surroundings 
 that I should not have had of my own getting, for 
 I have never seen Holyoke except by night, nor 
 am I like to see it again. 
 
 From that brief remark I know these things 
 about Holyoke: It is surrounded by a beautiful 
 country, with rolling hills and a generally diversi- 
 fied landscape. There are beautiful green fields, 
 I am sure. There is a fine river somewhere 
 about, and I think there must be waterfalls and 
 a pretty little creek. The timber must be very 
 fine, and probably there are some superb New 
 England elms. The roads must be good, uncom- 
 monly good; and there must be unusual facilities 
 for getting around and picknicking and finding 
 charming views and all that sort of thing. 
 
 Nor does it require much art to learn all this 
 from that pathetic plaint about the foot-paths. 
 For the game of the Briton in a foreign land is 
 ever the same. It changes not from generation 
 unto generation. Bid him to the feast and set 
 before him all your wealth of cellar and garner. 
 Spread before him the meat, heap up for him the 
 fruits of the season. Weigh down the board with 
 every vegetable that the gardener's art can bring 
 to perfection in or out of its time — white-potatoes, 
 sweet-potatoes, lima-beans, string-beans, fresh 
 peas, sweet-corn, lettuce, cauliflower, Brussels 
 
380 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 sprouts, tomatoes, muskmelons and watermelons 
 — all you will — ^no word will you hear from him 
 till he has looked over the whole assortment and 
 discovered that you have not the vegetable mar- 
 row, and that you do not raise it. Then he will 
 break forth and cry for his vegetable marrow. 
 All these things are naught to him if he cannot 
 have his vegetable marrow, and he will tell you 
 about the exceeding goodness and rarity of the 
 vegetable marrow, until you will figure it in your 
 mind like unto the famous mangosteen fruit of the 
 Malay Peninsula, he who once eats whereof tastes 
 never again any other fruit of the earth, finding 
 them all as dust and ashes by the side of the man- 
 gosteen. 
 
 That is to say, this will happen unless you have 
 eaten of the vegetable marrow, and have the pres- 
 ence of mind to recall to the Briton's memory the 
 fact that it is nothing but a second-choice summer 
 squash; after which the meal will proceed in 
 silence. Just so might Mr. Burroughs have 
 brought about a sudden change in the topic of con- 
 versation by telling the English lady that where 
 the American treads out a path he builds a road 
 by the side of it. 
 
 To tell the truth, I think that the English foot- 
 path is something pathetic beyond description. 
 The better it is, the older, the better worn, the 
 more it speaks with a sad significance of the long 
 established inequalities of old-world society. It 
 means too often the one poor, pitiful right of a 
 poor man, the man who must walk all his life, to 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 381 
 
 go hither and thither through the rich man's 
 country. The lady may walk it for pleasure if 
 she likes, but the man who walks it because he 
 must, turns up a little byrpath leading from it to 
 a cottage that no industry or thrift will make his 
 own; and for him to aspire to a roadway to his 
 front-door would be a gross piece of impertinence 
 in a man of his station. It is the remembrance of 
 just such right-of-way foot-paths as the English 
 lady's sad heart yearned after that reconciles me 
 to a great many hundreds of houses that have 
 recently been built in the State of New Jersey 
 after designs out of books that cost all the way 
 from twenty-five cents to a dollar. Archi- 
 tecturally these are very much inferior to the 
 English cottager's home, and they occasionally 
 waken thoughts of incendiarism. But the people 
 who live in them are people who insist on having 
 roads right to their front-doors, and I have heard 
 them do some mighty interesting talking in town- 
 meeting about the way those roads shall be laid 
 and who shall do the laying. 
 
 As I have before remarked, I am quite willing 
 to believe that Holyoke is a pathless wilderness, 
 in the English lady's sense. But when Mr. Bur- 
 roughs makes the generalization that there are no 
 foot-paths in this country, it seems to me he must 
 be letting his boyhood get too far away from him. 
 
 For there are foot-paths enough, certainly. Of 
 course an old foot-path in this country always 
 serves to mark the line of a new road when the 
 people who had worn it take to keeping horses. 
 
382 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 But there are thousands of miles of paths criss- 
 crossing the countryside in all of our older 
 States that will never see the dirt-cart or the stone 
 crusher in the lifetime of any man alive to-day. 
 
 Mr. Burroughs — especially when he is pub- 
 lished in the dainty little Douglas duodecimos — 
 is one of the authors whose books a busy man 
 reserves for a pocket-luxury of travel. So it was 
 that, a belated reader, I came across his lament 
 over our pathlessness, some years after my having 
 had a hand — or a foot, as you might say — in the 
 making of a certain cross-lots foot-way which led 
 me to study the windings and turnings of the 
 longer countryside walks until I got the idea of 
 writing "The Story of a Path." I am sorry to 
 contradict Mr. Burroughs, but, if there are no 
 foot-paths in America, what becomes of the many 
 good golden hours that I have spent in well-tracked 
 woodland ways and in narrow foot-lanes through 
 the wind-swept meadow grass? I cannot give 
 these up ; I can only wish that Mr. Burroughs had 
 been my companion in them. 
 
 A foot-path is the most human thing in inani- 
 mate nature. Even as the print of his thumb 
 reveals the old offender to the detectives, so the 
 path teUs you the sort of feet that wore it. Like 
 the human nature that created it, it starts out to 
 go straight when strength and determination 
 shape its course, and it goes crooked when weak- 
 ness lays it out. Until you begin to study them 
 you can have no notion of the differences of char- 
 acter that exist among foot-paths. One line of 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 383 
 
 trodden earth seems to you the same as another. 
 But look! Is the path you are walking on fairly 
 straight from point to point, yet deflected to avoid 
 short rises and falls, and is it worn to grade? 
 That is, does it plough a deep way through little 
 humps and hillocks something as a street is cut 
 down to grade? If you see this path before you, 
 you may be sure that it is made by the heavy 
 shuflBe of workingmen's feet. A path that wavers 
 from side to side, especially if the turns be from 
 one bush to another, and that is only a light trail 
 making an even line of wear over the inequalities 
 of the ground — that is a path that children make. 
 The path made by the business man — ^the man 
 who is anxious to get to his work at one end of 
 the day, and anxious to get to his home at the 
 other — is generally a good piece of engineering. 
 This type of man makes more paths in this coun- 
 try than he does in any other. He carries his 
 intelligence and hia energy into every act of life, 
 and even in the half-unconscious business of 
 making his own private trail he generally man- 
 ages to find the line of least resistance in getting 
 from one given point to another. 
 
 This is the story of a path : 
 
 It is called Reub Levi's Path, because Eeuben 
 Levi Dodd is supposed to have made it, some time 
 in 1830 or thereabout, when he built his house on 
 the hill. But it is much older than Eeuben Levi. 
 He probably thought he was telling the truth 
 when, forty years ago, he swore to having broken 
 the path himself twenty years before, through the 
 
384 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 Jacobus woods, down tlie Mil and across the flat 
 lands that then belonged to the Onderdoncks, and 
 again through the Ogden woods to the county 
 road; but he forgot that on the bright June day 
 when he first started to find a convenient way 
 through the woods and over the broad lowland 
 fields from his own front-door to that of his 
 father-in-law, Evert Ogden, and then through Mr. 
 Ogden 's patch of woods to the little town on the 
 bank of the Passaic — ^he forgot that for a little 
 part of the way he had had the help of a man 
 whose feet had long before done with walking the 
 paths of earth. 
 
 The forest, for it was a forest then, was full of 
 heavy underwood and brush, and he had no choice 
 but to dodge his way between the clumps. But 
 when he got out to the broad open space on the 
 brow of the hill, where no trees had ever grown, 
 he found an almost tropical growth of wild grass 
 and azalea, with bull-brier twining over every- 
 thing in every direction. He found it worse than 
 the dense woods. 
 
 "Drat the pesky stuff," he said to himself; 
 "ain't there no way through it?" Then as he 
 looked about he spied a line no broader than his 
 hand at the bottom, that opened clean through 
 the bull-brier and the bushes across the open to 
 where the trees began again on the down-slope of 
 the hill. Grass was growing in it, but he knew 
 it for an old trail. 
 
 *"Twas Pelatiah Jinks made that, I'll bet a 
 shilling," he said to himself, remembering the 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 385 
 
 lonely old trapper who had dwelt on that moun- 
 tain in his father's time He had once seen old 
 man Jinks' powder-horn, with its elaborate carv- 
 ing, done in the long solitary hours when the old 
 man sat weather-bound in his lofty hermitage. 
 
 "Jest like the old critter to make a bee-line 
 track like that. But what in thunder did he want 
 to go that way across the clearing for? I'm much 
 obleeged to him for his trail, but it ain't headed 
 right for town." 
 
 No, it was not. But young Dodd did not 
 remember that the trees whose tops he saw just 
 peeping over the hill were young things of forty 
 years' growth that had taken the place of a line 
 of ninety-year-old chestnuts that had died down 
 from the top and been broken down by the wind 
 shortly after old Pelatiah died. The line that the 
 old man had made for himself took him straight 
 to the one little hillock where he could look over 
 this tall screen and get his bearings afresh by the 
 glint of the Passiac's water in the woody valley 
 below, for at no other spot along that ridge was 
 the Passaic visible. 
 
 Now in this one act of Eeuben Levi Dodd you 
 can see the human nature that lies at the bottom 
 of all path-making. He turned aside from his 
 straight course to walk in the easy way made by 
 another man, and then fetched a compass, as they 
 used to say in the Apostle Paul's time, to get back 
 to his straight bearings. Old Pelatiah had a 
 good reason for deviating from his straight line 
 to the town ; young Dodd had none, except that it 
 
386 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 was wiser to go two yards around than to go one 
 yard straight through the bull-brier. Young 
 Dodd had a powder-horn slung from his shoulder 
 that morning, and the powder-horn had some 
 carving on it, but it was not like the carving on old 
 Pelatiah's horn. There was a letter R, cut with 
 many flourishes, a letter L cut but wanting most of 
 its flourishes, and a letter D half finished, and 
 crooked at that, and without the first trace of a 
 flourish. That was the way his powder-horn 
 looked that day, for that was the way it looked 
 when he died, and his son sold it to a dealer in 
 antiquities. 
 
 Young Dodd and his wife found it lonely living 
 up there on the hill-top. They were the first who 
 had pushed so far back from the river and the 
 town. Mrs. Dodd, who had an active and ambi- 
 tious spirit in her, often reproached her husband 
 for his neglect to make their home more accessible 
 to her old friends in the distant town. 
 
 "If you'd take a bill-hook," she would say, 
 "and clean up that snake-fence path of yours a 
 little, maybe folks would climb up here to see us 
 once in a blue moon. It's all well enough for you 
 with your breeches, but how are women folks to 
 trail their frocks through that brush?" 
 
 Reub Levi would promise and promise, and 
 once he did take his hook and chop out a hundred 
 yards or so. But things did not mend until Big 
 Bill TurnbuU, known all over the county as the 
 Hard Job Man, married a widow with five chil- 
 dren, bought a little patch of five or six acres next 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 387 
 
 to Dodd's big farm, built a log-cabin for himself 
 and his family, and settled down there. 
 
 Now TurnbuU's log-cabin was so situated that 
 the line of old Pelatiah's path through the bull- 
 brier, extended about an eighth of a mile, would 
 just reach the front-door. TurnbuU saw this, and 
 it was at that point that he tapped Eeub Levi's 
 foot-path to the town. But he did his tapping 
 after his own fashion. He took his wife's red 
 flannel petticoat and tied it to a sapling on the top 
 of the mound that the old hunter used to climb, 
 and then with bill-hook and ax he cut a straight 
 swath through the woods. He even cut down 
 through the roots and took out the larger stones. 
 
 "That's what you'd ought to have done long 
 ago, Reuben Levi Dodd," said his wife, as she 
 watched this manifestation of energy. 
 
 "Guess I didn't lose much by waiting," Eeub 
 Levi answered, with a smile that did not look as 
 self-satisfied as he tried to make it. "I'd a-had 
 to do it myself, and now the other fellow's done 
 it for me." 
 
 And thereafter he took Bill Turnbull's path just 
 where it touched the corner of his own cleared 
 land. But Malvina Dodd, to the day of her death, 
 never once walked that way, but, going and com- 
 ing, took the winding track that her husband had 
 laid out for her when their home was built. 
 
 The next maker of the path was a boy not ten 
 years old. His name was Philip Wessler, and he 
 was a charity boy of German parentage, who had 
 been adopted by an eccentric old man in the town, 
 
388 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 an herb-doctor. This calling was in more repute 
 in those days than it is now. Old Doctor Van 
 Wagener was growing feeble, and he relied on the 
 boy, who was grateful and faithful, to search for 
 his stock of simples. When the weather was 
 favorable they would go together through the 
 Ogden woods, and across the meadows to where 
 the other woods began at the bottom of the hill. 
 Here the old man would sit down and wait, while 
 the boy climbed the steep hillside, and ranged 
 hither and thither in his search for sassafras and 
 liverwort, and a hundred and one plants, flowers, 
 and herbs, in which the doctor found virtue. 
 When he had collected his bundle he came running 
 down the path to where the doctor sat, and left 
 them for the old man to pick and choose from, 
 while he darted off after another load. 
 
 He did a boy's work with the path. Steep 
 grades were only a delight to him, and so in the 
 course of a year or two he trod out, or jumped 
 out, a series of break-neck short-cuts. William 
 TurnbuU — people called him William now, since 
 he had built a clap-board house, and was using the 
 log-cabin for a barn — ^William TurnbuU, observ- 
 ing these short-cuts, approved of their purpose, 
 but not of their method. He went through the 
 woods once or twice on odd days after his hay 
 was in, and did a little grading with a mattock. 
 Here and there he made steps out of flat stones. 
 He told his wife he thought it would be some 
 handier for her, and she told him — they were both 
 from Connecticut — that it was quite some handier. 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 389 
 
 and tliat it was real thoughtful of him; and that 
 she didn't want to speak no ill of the dead, but if 
 her first man had been that considerate he 
 wouldn't never have got himself drowned going 
 pickerel fishing in March, when the ice was so soft 
 you'd suppose rational folks would keep off of it. 
 
 This path was a path of slow formation. It 
 was a path that was never destined to become a 
 road. It is only in mathematics that a straight 
 line is the shortest distance between two points. 
 The grade through the Jacobus woods was so 
 steep that no wagon could have been hauled up it 
 over the mud roads of that day and generation. 
 Lumber, groceries, and all heavy truck were taken 
 around by the road that made a clean sweep 
 around the hill, and was connected with the Dodd 
 and TurnbuU farms by a steep but short lane 
 which the workmen had made when they built the 
 Dodd house. The road was six miles to the 
 path's three, but the drive was shorter than the 
 walk. 
 
 There was a time when it looked as though the 
 path might really develop into a road. That was 
 the time when the township, having outgrown the 
 county roads, began to bliild roads for itself. 
 But, curiously enough, two subjects of Great 
 Britain settled the fate of that New Jersey path. 
 The controversy between Telford and Macadam 
 was settled so long ago in Macadam's favor, that 
 few remember the point of difference between 
 those two noted engineers. Briefly stated, it was 
 this: Mr. Telford said it was, and Mr. Macadam 
 
390 THE STOEY OF A PATH 
 
 said it was not, necessary to put a foundation of 
 large flat stones, set on end, under a broken-stone 
 road. Eeuben Levi's township, like many other 
 New Jersey townships, sided with Mr. Telford, 
 and made a mistake that cost thousands of dollars 
 directly, and millions indirectly. To-day New 
 Jersey can show the way to all her sister States in 
 road-building and road-keeping. But the money 
 she wasted on costly Telford pavements is only 
 just beginning to come back to her, as she spreads 
 out mile after mile of the economical Macadam. 
 Eeuben Levi's township squandered money on a 
 few miles of Telford, raised the tax-rate higher 
 than it had ever been before, and opened not one 
 inch of new road for fifteen years thereafter. 
 And within that fifteen years the canal came up 
 on one side, opening a way to the great manufac- 
 turing town, ten miles down the river; and then 
 the town at the end of the path was no longer the 
 sole base of supplies. Then the railroad came 
 around on the other side of the hill, and put a 
 flag-station just at the bottom of what had come to 
 be known as Dodd's Lane. And thus by the 
 magic of nineteenth-century science New York 
 and Newark were brought nearer to the hill-side 
 farm than the town three miles away. 
 
 But year by year new feet trod the path. The 
 laborers who cut the canal found it and took it 
 when they left their shanty camp to go to town 
 for Saturday-night frolics. Then William Turn- 
 bull, who had enlarged his OAvn farm as far as he 
 found it paid, took to buying land and building 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 391 
 
 houses in the valley beyond. Eeub Levi laughed 
 at him, but he prospered after a way he had, and 
 built up a thriving little settlement just over the 
 canal. The people of this little settlement soon 
 made a path that connected with Reuben Levi's, 
 by way of William TurnbuU's, and whenever busi- 
 ness or old associations took them to town they 
 helped to make the path longer and broader. 
 
 By and by the regular wayfarers found it out — 
 the peddlers, the colporteurs, the wandering por- 
 trait-painters, the tinkers and clock-menders, the 
 runaway apprentices, and all the rest of the old 
 time gentry of the road. And they carried the 
 path on still farther — down the river to Newark. 
 
 It is not wholly to be told, "The Story of the 
 Path." So many people had to do with its 
 making in so many ways that no chronicle could 
 tell all the meanings of its twists and turns and 
 straight lines. There is one little jog in its course 
 to-day, where it went around a tree, the stump of 
 which rotted down into the ground a quarter of a 
 century ago. Why do we walk around that use- 
 less bend to-day? Because it is a path, and 
 because we walk in the way of human nature. 
 
 The life of a tree may be a hundred years or 
 two hundred years and yet be long life. But the 
 days of the age of a man are threescore and ten, 
 and though some be so strong that they come to 
 fourscore, yet the strong man may be stricken 
 down in the flower of his strength, if it be the will 
 of the Lord. 
 
 When William TurnbuU came to die he was but 
 
392 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 twoscore years and five, but for all he was so 
 young the people of the township gathered from 
 far and near, for he had been a helpful man all his 
 days, and those whom he had helped remembered 
 that he would help them no more. Four men and 
 four women sat up with the dead, twice as many 
 as the old custom called for. One of the men was 
 a Judge, two had been Chosen Freeholders, and 
 the fourth was his hired man. There was no 
 cemetery in the township, and his tomb had been 
 built at the bottom of the hill, looking out on the 
 meadows which he had just made his own — the 
 last purchase of his life. 
 
 There were two other pall-bearers to carry him 
 on their shoulders to the place beyond which no 
 man goes. These two, when they left the house 
 on the night before the funeral, walked slowly and 
 thoughtfully down the path together. They 
 looked over every step of the way with to-mor- 
 row's slow and toilsome march in their minds. 
 When they came to the turn by Pelatiah's mound 
 they paused. 
 
 "We can't never get him round that bend," 
 said one. "That ain't no way to start down the 
 hill. Best is I come here first thing in the morn- 
 ing and cut a way through this bull-brier straight 
 across the angle, then we can see ahead where 
 we're going. Put them two light men behiud, and 
 you and me at the head, and we can manage it. 
 My! what a man he was, though! Why, I seen 
 him take the head of a coffin all by himself once." 
 
 This man was a near neighbor of the TurnbuUs, 
 
THE STORY OF A PATH 393 
 
 for now they had a number of neighbors ; Reuben 
 Levi Dodd had been selling small farms off his big 
 farm — somehow he had never made the big farm 
 a success. There are many services of men to 
 man that country neighbors make little of, though 
 to the dwellers in great cities they might seem 
 strange burdens. At five o'clock the next morn- 
 ing Warren Freeman, the pall-bearer, went out 
 and mowed and hacked a path through the tangled 
 field from midway of old Pelatiah's trail down to 
 a short-cut made by the doctor's charity boy, who 
 was to-day a Judge. This Judge came out of the 
 silent house, released by the waking hour, from 
 his vigil with the dead. He watched his fellow 
 pall-bearer at work. 
 
 "I used to go down that path on the dead run 
 twenty years ago," said he, "when I was working 
 for Dr. Van Wagener and he used to send me up 
 here gathering herbs." 
 
 "You'll go down it on the dead walk to-morrow, 
 Jedge," said the other, pausing in his work, "and 
 you want to step mighty careful, or one fun'l will 
 breed another." 
 
 Life, death, wedlock, the lingering of lovers, the 
 waywardness of childish feet, the tread of weary 
 toil, the slow, swaying walk of the mother, with 
 her babe in her arms, the measured steps of the 
 bearer of the dead, the light march of youth and 
 strength and health — all, all have helped to beat 
 out the strange, wandering line of the old path; 
 and to me, who love to find and to tread its turns, 
 the current of their human life flows still along 
 
394 THE STORY OF A PATH 
 
 its course, in the dim spaces under the trees, or 
 out where the sunshine and the wind are at play 
 upon the broad, bright meadows. 
 
THE LOST CHILD 
 
 THE best of life in a great city is that it 
 breeds a broad and tolerant catholicity of 
 spirit: the best of country life is that it 
 breeds the spirit of helpful, homely, kindly neigh- 
 borliness. The suburban-dweller, who shares in 
 both lives, is perhaps a little too ready to pride 
 himself in having learned the lesson of the great 
 metropolis, but the other and homelier lesson is 
 taught so gradually and so unobtrusively, that he 
 often learns it quite unconsciously ; and goes back, 
 perhaps, to his old existence in the city, only to 
 realize that a certain charm has gone out of life 
 which he misses without knowing just what he 
 has lost. He thinks, perhaps, it is exercise he 
 lacks. And it is, indeed — the exercise of certain 
 gentle sympathies, that thrive as poorly in the 
 town's crowded life as the country wild-flowers 
 thrive .in the flower-pots of tenement-house 
 windows. 
 
 It was between three and four o'clock of an 
 August night — a dark, warm, hazy night, breath- 
 less, heavy and full of the smell of grass and trees 
 and dew-moistened earth, when a man galloped up 
 one of those long suburban streets, where the 
 houses stand at wide intervals, each behind its 
 trim lawn, or old-fashioned flower-garden, 
 
 395 
 
396 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 relieved, even in the darkness, against a great 
 rear-wood screen of lofty trees. Up the drive- 
 way of one of these he turned, his horse's hoof 
 beats dropping clear and sharp on the hard 
 macadam. He reined up at the house and rapped 
 a loud tattoo with the stock of his whip on a pillar 
 of the veranda. 
 
 It was a minute or two before the noise, loud as 
 it was, had reached the ears of two sleepers in the 
 bedroom, just above his head. A much less 
 startling sound would have awakened a whole city 
 household; but slumber in the country has a 
 slumber of its own: in summer time a slumber 
 born of night-air, laden with the odors of vegeta- 
 tion, and silent except for the drowsy chirp of 
 birds that stir in vine and tree. The wife awoke 
 first, listened for a second, and aroused her hus- 
 band, who went to the window. He raised the 
 screen and looked out. 
 
 "Who is it?" he said, without nervousness or 
 surprise, though ten years before in his city home 
 such a summons might have shaken his spirit with 
 anxious dread. 
 
 "I'm Latimer," said the man on the horse, 
 briefly. "That boy of Penrhyn's — the little one 
 with the yellow hair — is lost. He got up and 
 slipped out of the house, somehow, about an hour 
 ago, they think, and they've found one of his play- 
 things nearly half a mile down the Romneytown 
 Eoad." 
 
 "Where shall I meet you?" asked the man at 
 the window. 
 
THE LOST CHILD 397 
 
 "At the Gun-Club grounds on the hill," replied 
 Latimer; "we've sent a barrel of oil up there for 
 the lanterns. So long, Halford. Is Dirck at 
 home?" 
 
 "Yes," said Halford; and without another 
 word Latimer galloped into the darkness, and in 
 a minute the sound of his tattoo was heard on the 
 hollow pillars of the veranda of the house next 
 door. 
 
 This was the summons — a bare announcement 
 of an event without appeal, request, suggestion, 
 or advice. None of these things was needed. 
 Enough had been said between the two men, though 
 they knew each other only as distant neighbors. 
 Each knew well what that summons meant, and 
 what duty it involved. 
 
 The rat-tat of Latimer's crop had hardly 
 sounded before a cheery young voice rang out on 
 the air. 
 
 "All right, old man ! I heard you at Halford 's. 
 Go ahead." 
 
 It was Dirck 's voice. Dirck had another name, 
 a good long Holland-Dutch one, but everybody, 
 even the children, called hitn by his Christian 
 name, and as he had lived to thirty without getting 
 one day older than eighteen, we will consider the 
 other Dutch name unnecessary. Dirck and Hal- 
 ford were close friends and close neighbors. 
 They were two men who had reached a point of 
 perfect community of tastes and inclinations, 
 though they came together in two widely different 
 starting-places — ^though they were so little alike 
 
398 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 to outward seeming that they were known among 
 their friends as "the mismates." Though one 
 was forty and the other but thirty, each had 
 closed a career, and was somewhat idly seeking a 
 new one. As Dirck expressed it, "We two fel- 
 lows had played our games out, and were waiting 
 till we strike another that was high enough for 
 our style. We ain't playing limit games." 
 
 Two very different games they had been, but 
 neither had been a small one. Dirck had started 
 in with a fortune to "do" the world — the whole 
 world, nothing else would suit him. He had been 
 all over the globe. He had lived among all man- 
 ner of peoples. He had ridden everything 
 ridable, shot everything shootable, climbed 
 everything climbable, and satisfied himself, as he 
 said, that the world was too small for any par- 
 ticular use. At the end of his travels he had a 
 little of his fortune left, a vast amount of experi- 
 ence, the constitution of a red Indian, and a 
 vocabulary so vast and so peculiar that it 
 stunned and fascinated the stranger. Halford 
 was a New York la^\^er, gray, clean-shaven, and 
 sharp of feature. His "game" had made him 
 famous and might have made him wealthy, but 
 he cared neither for fame nor wealth. For 
 twenty years he had fought a host of great cor- 
 porations to establish one single point of law. 
 His antagonist had vainly tried to bribe him, and 
 as vainly to bully him. He had been assaulted, 
 his life had been threatened, and altogether, as 
 he admitted, the game had been lively enough to 
 
THE LOST CHILD 399 
 
 keep him interested; but having once won the 
 game he tired of that style of play altogether. 
 He picked out a small but choice practice which 
 permitted him to work or be idle pretty much as 
 the fancy took him. These were two odd chums 
 to meet in a small suburban town, there to lead 
 quiet and uneventful lives, and yet they were the 
 two most contented men in the place. 
 
 Halford was getting into his clothes, but really 
 with a speed and precision which got the job over 
 before his impetuous next-door neighbor had got 
 one leg of his riding-breeches on. Mrs. Halford 
 sat up in bed and expressed her feeling to her 
 husband, who had never been known to express 
 his. 
 
 "Oh, Jack," she said, "isn't it awful? Would 
 you ever have thought of such a thing! They 
 must have been awfully careless ! Oh, Jack, you 
 will find him, won't you? Jack, if such a thing 
 happened to one of our children I should go wild ; 
 I'll never get over it myself if he isn't found. 
 Oh, you don't know how thankful I lam that we 
 didn't lose our Eichard that waylilOh, Jack, 
 dear, isn't it too horrible for anything!" 
 
 Jack simply responded, with no trace of emo- 
 tion in his voice: 
 
 "It's the hell!" 
 
 And yet in those three words Jack Halford 
 expressed, in his own way, quite as much as his 
 wife had expressed in hers. More, even, for 
 there was a grim promise in his tone that com- 
 forted her heart. 
 
400 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 Mrs. Halford's feelings being expressed and in 
 some measure relieved, she promptly became 
 practical. 
 
 "I'll fill your flask, of course, dear. Brandy, 
 I suppose? And what shall we women take up to 
 the Gun Club besides blankets and clean 
 clothes?" 
 
 Mrs. Halford's husband always thought before 
 he spoke, and she was not at all surprised that 
 he filled his tobacco-pouch before he answered. 
 When he did speak he knew what he had to say. 
 
 "First something to put in my pocket for 
 Dirck and me to eat. We can't fool with coming 
 home to breakfast. Second, tell the girls to send 
 up milk to the Gun Club, and something for you 
 women to eat." 
 
 "Oh, I shan't want anything to eat," cried 
 Mrs. Halford. 
 
 "You must eat," said her husband, simply, 
 "and you must make the rest of them eat. You 
 might do all right without it, but I wouldn't trust 
 the rest dfcthem. You may need all the nerve 
 you've golr' 
 
 "Yes, dear," said his wife, submissively. She 
 had been with her husband in times of danger, 
 and she knew he was a leader to be followed. 
 "I'll have sandwiches and coffee and tea; I can 
 make them drink tea, anyway." 
 
 "Third," went on Jack Halford, as if he had 
 not been interrupted, "bring my field-glass with 
 you. Dirck and I will range together along the 
 river. If I put up a white handkerchief any- 
 
THE LOST CHILD 401 
 
 where down there, you stay where you are and we 
 will come to you. If I put up this red one, come 
 right down with blankets and brandy in the first 
 carriage you can get hold of. Get on the north 
 edge of the hill and you can keep a line on us 
 almost anywhere." 
 
 "Couldn't you give us some signal, dear, to tell 
 us if— if— if it's all right?" 
 
 "If it was all wrong," replied the husband, 
 "you wouldn't want the mother to learn it that 
 way. I'll signal to you privately, however. If 
 it's all right, I'll wave the handkerchief; if I 
 move it up and down, you'll understand." 
 
 Two minutes later he bade her good-by at the 
 door. 
 
 "Now remember," he said, "white means wait, 
 red means ride." 
 
 And having delivered himself of this simple 
 mnemonic device, he passed out into the 
 darkness. 
 
 At the next gate he met Dirck and the two 
 sprang into step together, and waljjd up the 
 street with the steady, stretching tr^d of men 
 accustomed to walking long distances. They 
 said "Hello !" as they met, and their further con- 
 versation was brief. 
 
 "River," said Halford; "what do you think?" 
 
 "River, sure," said the other; "a lot of those 
 younger boys have- been taking the youngsters 
 down there lately. I saw that kid down there 
 last week, and I'll bet a dollar his mother would 
 swear that he'd never seen the river." 
 
402 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 "Then we won't say anything about it to her," 
 said Halford, and they reached along in silence. 
 
 Before them, when they came to the end of the 
 road, rose a hill with a broad plateau on its 
 stomach. Here through the dull haze of the 
 morning they saw smoky-orange lights beginning 
 to flicker uncertainly as the wind that heralds the 
 sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass 
 under their feet was flecked with little grayish- 
 silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard 
 the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As 
 they went farther up the hill a hum of voices 
 came from above; the voices of people, men and 
 women, mingled and consonant like the voices of 
 the birds, but with a certain tone of trouble and 
 expectancy. Every now and then one individual 
 voice or another would domuiate the general 
 murmur, and would be followed by a quick 
 flutter of sound denoting acquiescence or dis- 
 agreement. From this they knew that most of 
 their neighbors had arrived before them, having 
 been sumii^iaed earlier in the journey of the mes- 
 sengers sem out from the distant home of the lost 
 child. 
 
 On the crown of the hill stood a curious struc- 
 ture, actually small, but looming large in the 
 grayness. The main body of the building was 
 elevated upon posts, and was smaller at the 
 bottom than where the spreading walls met the 
 peaked roof. This roof spread out on both sides 
 into broad verandas, and under these two wing- 
 like shelters some three or four score of people 
 
THE LOST CHILD 403 
 
 were clustered ia little groups. Lanterns and 
 hand-lamps dimly lit up faces that showed 
 strange in the unfamiliar illumination. There 
 were women with shawls over their shoulders and 
 women with shawls over their heads. Some of the 
 men were in their shirt-sleeves, some wore shoot- 
 ing-coats, and a few had overcoats, though the 
 night was warm. But no stranger arriving on the 
 scene could have taken it for a promiscuous or 
 accidental assemblage. There was a movement in 
 unison, a sympathetic stir throughout the little 
 crowd that created a common interest and a com- 
 mon purpose. The arrival of the two men was 
 hailed with that curious sound with which such a 
 gathering greets a desired and attended acces- 
 sion — not quite the sigh of relief, hut the quick, 
 nervous expulsion of the breath that tallies the 
 coming of the expected. These were two of the 
 men to be counted on, and they were there. 
 
 Every little community such as this knows its 
 leaders, and now that their number was complete, 
 the women drew together by themselves save for 
 two or three who clearly took equal direction with 
 the men; and a dozen in all, perhaps, gathered in 
 a rough circle to discuss the organization of the 
 search. 
 
 It was a brief discussion. A majority of the 
 members of the group had formed decided opinions 
 as to the course taken by the wandering child, and 
 thus a division into sub-groups came about at 
 once. This left various stretchings of territory 
 uncovered, and these were assigned to those of the 
 
404 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 more decided minority who were best acquainted 
 with the particular localities. When the division 
 of labor was completed, the men had arranged to 
 start out in such directions as would enable them 
 to range and view the whole countryside for the 
 extreme distance of radius to which it was sup- 
 posed the boy could possibly have travelled. The 
 assigimaent of Halford and Dirck to the river 
 course was prompt, for it was known that they 
 habitually hunted and fished along that line. The 
 father of the boy, who stood by, was reminded of 
 this fact, for a curious and doubtful look came into 
 his face when he heard two of the most active and 
 energetic men in the town set aside to search a 
 region where he had no idea that his boy could 
 have strayed. Some excuse was given also for the 
 detailing of two other men of equal ability to take 
 the range immediately above the river bank, and 
 within hailing distance of those in the marshes by 
 the shore. Had his mind not been in the daze of 
 mortal grief and perplexity, he would have 
 grasped the sinister significance of this precau- 
 tion ; but he accepted it in dull and hopeless confi- 
 dence. "When after they had set forth he told his 
 wife of the arrangements made, and she heard the 
 names of the four men who had been appointed to 
 work near the riverside, she pulled the faded old 
 Paisley shawl (that the child's nurse had 
 wrapped about her) across her swollen eyes, and 
 moaned, "The river, the river — oh, my boy, my 
 boy!" 
 Perhaps the men heard her, for being all in place 
 
THE LOST CHILD 405 
 
 to take their several directions, they made a cer- 
 tain broken start and were off into the darkness at 
 the base of the hill, before the two or three of their 
 sex who were left in charge of the women had 
 fairly given the word. The tramp of men's feet 
 and horses' hoofs died down into the shadowy 
 distance. The women went inside the spacious old 
 corn-crib that had been turned into a gun-club 
 shooting-box, and there the mother laid her face on 
 the breast of her best friend, and clung to her 
 without a sound, only shuddering once and again, 
 and holding her with a convulsive grip. The other 
 women moved around, and busied themselves with 
 little offices, like the making of tea and the trim- 
 ming of lamps, and talked among each other in a 
 quiet way with the odd little upward inflections 
 with which women simulate cheerfulness and hope, 
 telling tales of children who had been lost and had 
 been found again aU safe and unscathed, and 
 praising the sagacity and persistence of certain 
 of the men engaged in the search. Mr. Latimer, 
 they said, was almost like a detective, he had such 
 an instinct for finding things and people. Mr. 
 Brown knew every field and hollow on the Brook- 
 field Eoad. Mr. MacDonald could see just as well 
 in the darkness as in the daytime ; and all the talk 
 that reached the mother's ears was of this man's 
 skill of woodcraft, of that man's knowledge of the 
 country, or of another's unfailing cleverness or 
 tirelessness. 
 
 Outside, the two or three men in charge stood by 
 the father in their own way. It had been agreed 
 
406 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 that lie should wait at the hilltop to learn if a trail 
 had been found. He was a good fellow, but not 
 helpful or capable; and it was their work to 
 "jolly" him, as they called it; to keep his hope up 
 with cheering suggestions, and with occasional 
 judicious doses of whiskey from their flasks. For 
 themselves, they did not drink ; though their voices 
 were low and steady they were more nervous than 
 the poor sufferer they guarded, numbed and child- 
 ish in his awful grief and apprehension. They 
 were waiting for the sounds of the beginning of the 
 search far below, and presently these sounds 
 came, or rather one sound, a hollow noise, change- 
 ful, uneven, yet of cruel monotony. It was a cry 
 of ' ' Willy ! Willy ! Willy ! ' ' rising out of that gray- 
 black depth, a cry of many voices, a cry that came 
 from far and near, a cry at which the women 
 huddled closer together and pressed each other's 
 hands, and looked speechless love and pity at the 
 woman who lay upon her best friend's breast, 
 clutching it tighter and tighter. Of the men out- 
 side, the father leaned forward and clutched the 
 arm of his chair. The others saw the great drops 
 of sweat roll from his brow, and they turned their 
 faces away from him and swore inaudibly. 
 
 Then, as the deep below began to be alive with 
 a faint dim light reflected from the half awakened 
 heaven, the voices died away in the distance, and 
 in their place the leaves of the great trees rustled 
 and the birds twittered to the coming morn. 
 
 The day broke with the dull red that prophesies 
 
THE LOST CHILD 407 
 
 heat. As the hours wore on the prophecy was 
 fulfilled. The moisture of the dew and the river 
 mist rose toward the hot sky and vanished, but the 
 dry haze remained and the low sun shone through 
 it with a peculiar diffusion of coppery light. Even 
 when it reached the zenith, the warm, faintly yel- 
 low dimness still rose high above the horizon, 
 throwing its soft spell upon all objects far or near, 
 and melting through the dim blue on the dis- 
 tant hilltop into the hot azure of the great dome 
 above. 
 
 For an hour the watchers on the hiU remained 
 undisturbed, talking in undertones. For the most 
 part, they speculated on the significance of the 
 faint sounds that came up from below. Some- 
 times they could trace the crash of a horse through 
 dry underbrush; sometimes a tumultuous clamor 
 of commanding voices would tell them that a flat 
 boat was being worked across a broad creek or a 
 pond; sometimes a hardly audible whirr, and the 
 metallic clinking of a bicycle bell would tell them 
 that the wheelmen were speeding on the search. 
 But for the best part of the time only nature's 
 harmony of sounds came up through the ever- 
 lightening gloom. 
 
 But with the first of daylight came the neighbors 
 who had not been summoned, and they, of course, 
 came running. It was also noticeable of this con- 
 tingent that their attire was somewhat studied, and 
 showed more or less elaborate preparation for 
 starting on the already started hunt. Noticeable 
 also it was, that after much sagacious questioning 
 
408 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 and profoundly wise discussion, the most of the 
 newcomers either hung about peering out into the 
 dawn and making startling discoveries at various 
 points, or else went back to their houses to get 
 bicycles, or horses, or forgotten suspenders. The 
 little world of a suburban town sorts itself out 
 pretty quickly and pretty surely. There are the 
 men who do and the men who don't; and very few 
 of the men who did, in that particular town, were 
 in bed half an hour after the loss of that child was 
 known. 
 
 But, after all, the late arrivals were useful in 
 their way, and their wives, who came along later, 
 were still more useful. The men were fertile in 
 suggestions for tempting and practicable break- 
 fasts; and the women actually brought the food 
 along; and by the time that the world was well 
 alight, the early risers were bustling about and 
 serving coffee and tea, and biscuits and fruit, and 
 keeping up that semblance of activity and employ- 
 ment that alone can carry poor humanity through 
 long periods of suspense and anxiety. And the 
 first on the field were the last to eat and the least 
 critical of their fare. 
 
 It was eight o'clock when the first party of 
 searchers returned to the hill. There were eight 
 of them. They stopped a little below the crib and 
 beckoned to Penrhyn to come down to them. He 
 went, white-faced and a little unsteady on his feet ; 
 his guardians followed him and joined with the 
 group in a busy serious talk that lasted perhaps 
 five minutes — ^but vastly longer to the women who 
 
THE LOST CHILD 409 
 
 watched them from above. Then Penrhyn and 
 two men went hastily down the hill, and the others 
 came up to the crib and eagerly accepted the offer 
 of a hasty breakfast. 
 
 They had little to tell, and that little only served 
 to deepen the doubt and trouble of the hour. Of 
 all the complications of unkind chance the 
 searchers had to face the worst and the most 
 puzzling. As in many towns of old settlement a 
 road ran around the town, roughly circumscribing 
 it, much as the boulevards of Paris anciently cir- 
 cumscribed the old fortifications of that city. It 
 was little more than a haphazard connection of 
 roads, lanes, and avenues, each one of which had 
 come into existence to serve some particular end, 
 and the connection had ended in forming a circuit 
 that practically defined the town limits. It had 
 been made certain that the boy had wandered this 
 whole round, and that he had not left it by any one 
 of the converging roads which he must have 
 crossed. Nor could the direction of his wandering 
 be ascertained. The hard, dry macadam road, 
 washed clean by a recent rainfall, showed no trace 
 of his light, infantile footprints. But sure it was 
 that he had been on the road not one hour, but two 
 or three at least, and that he had started out with 
 an armful of his tiny belongings. Here they had 
 found his small pocket-handkerchief, there a gray 
 giraffe from his Noah's ark; in another place a 
 noseless doll that had descended to him from his 
 eldest sister; then a top had been found — a top 
 that he could not have spun for years to come. 
 
410 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 Would the years ever come when that lost boy 
 should spin tops? 
 
 There were other little signs which attested his 
 passage around the circle — freshly broken stalks 
 of milkweed, shreds of his brightly figured cotton 
 dress on the thorns of the wayside blackberries, 
 and even in one place the print of a muddy and 
 bloody little hand on a white gate-post. 
 
 There is no search more difScult than a search 
 for a lost child five or six years of age. We are 
 apt to think of these wee ones as feeble creatures, 
 and we forget that their physical strength is pro- 
 portionally much greater than that of grown-up 
 people. We forget also that the child has not 
 learned to attribute sensations of physical dis- 
 comfort to their proper sources. The child knows 
 that it suffers, but it does not know why. It is 
 conscious of a something wrong, but the little 
 brain is often unable to tell whether that some- 
 thing be weariness or hunger. If the wandering 
 spirit be upon it, it wanders to the last limit of 
 physical power, and it is surprising indeed to find 
 how long it is before that limit is reached. A 
 healthy, muscular infant of this age has been 
 known to walk nearly eight or ten miles before 
 becoming utterly exhausted. And when exhaus- 
 tion comes, and the tiny form falls in its tracks, 
 how small an object it is to detect in the great 
 world of outdoors ! A little bundle of dusty gar- 
 ments in a ditch, in a wayside hollow, in tall grass, 
 or among the tufts and hummocks of a marsh — 
 how easy it is for so inconspicuous an object to 
 
THE LOST CHILD 411 
 
 escape the eye of the most zealous searcher ! A 
 young animal lost cries incessantly ; the lost child 
 cries out his pitiful little cry, finds itself lifted to 
 no tender bosom, soothed by no gentle voice, and 
 in the end wanders and suffers in helpless, hope- 
 less silence. 
 
 As the morning wore on Dirck and Halford beat 
 the swampy lands of the riverside with a thor- 
 oughness that showed their understanding of the 
 difficulty of their work, and their conviction that 
 the child had taken that direction. This convic- 
 tion deepened with every hour, for the rest of the 
 countryside was fairly open and well populated, 
 and there the search should have been, for such a 
 search, comparatively easy. Yet the sun climbed 
 higher and higher in the sky, and no sound of guns 
 fired in glad signal reached their ears. Hither 
 and thither they went through the hot lowlands, 
 meeting and parting again, with appointments to 
 come together in spots known to them both, or 
 separating without a word, each knowing well 
 where their courses would bring them together. 
 From time to time they caught glimpses of their 
 companions on the hills above, who, from their 
 height, could see the place of meeting on the still 
 higher hill, and each time they signalled the news 
 and got back the despairing sign that meant 
 "None yet!" 
 
 News enough there was, but not the news. Mrs. 
 Penrhyn still stayed, for her own house was so 
 situated that the child could not possibly return to 
 it, if he had taken the direction that now seemed 
 
412 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 certain, without passing through the crowd of 
 searchers, and intelligence of his discovery must 
 reach her soonest at that point. Perhaps there 
 was another reason, too. Perhaps she could not 
 bear to return to that silent house, where every 
 room held some reminder of her loss. Certainly 
 she remained at the Club, and perhaps she got 
 some unreasoning comfort out of the rumors and 
 reports that came to that spot from every side. It 
 was but the idle talk that springs up and flies about 
 on such occasions, but now and then it served as a 
 straw for her drowning hope to clutch at. Word 
 would come of a farmer who had seen a strange 
 child in his neighbor's wagon. Then would come 
 a story of an innkeeper who had driven into town 
 to ask if anybody had lost a boy. Then somebody 
 would bring a report at third or fourth hand of a 
 child rescued alive from the river. Of course 
 story after story, report after report, came to 
 nothing. The child seen in the wagon was a girl 
 of fourteen. The innkeeper had come to town to 
 ask about the lost child, but it was only because he 
 had heard the report and was curious. A child 
 indeed had been rescued from the river, but the 
 story was a week old. And so it went, and the hot 
 sun rose to its zenith and declined, and the coppery 
 haze grew dim, and the shadows lengthened, and 
 the late afternoon was come with its awful threat 
 of impending night. 
 
 Dirck and Halford, down in the riverside marsh, 
 saw that dreaded change fall upon the landscape, 
 and they paused in their search and looked at one 
 
THE LOST CHILD 413 
 
 another silently. They had been ceaselessly at 
 work all day, and the work had left its marks on 
 them. Their faces were burnt to a fiery red, they 
 were torn and scratched in the brambles, their 
 clothes were soaked in mud and water to the waist, 
 and they had been bitten and stung by insects until 
 they looked as though some strange fever had 
 broken out on them. 
 
 They had just met after a long beat, each having 
 described the half of a circle around a piece of 
 open water, and had sunk down in utter weariness 
 on a little patch of dry ground, and for a minute 
 looked at each other in silence. Then the younger 
 man spoke. 
 
 "Hal," he said, "he never came this far." 
 
 By way of answer the other drew from his 
 pocket a child's shoe, worn and wet, and held it up. 
 
 "Where did you find it?" asked Dirck. 
 
 "Eight over there," said Halford, "near that 
 old wagon-trail. ' ' 
 
 Dirck looked at him with a question in his 
 eyes, which found its answer in the grave incli- 
 nation of the elder's head. Then Dirck shook his 
 head and whistled — one long, low, significant 
 whistle. 
 
 ' ' "Well, ' ' he said, ' ' I thought so. Any trail ? ' ' 
 
 "Not the least," replied Halford. "There's a 
 strip of thick salt grass there, over two yards wide, 
 and I found the shoe right in the middle of it. It 
 was lying on its side when I found it, not caught in 
 the grass." 
 
 "Then they were carrying him, sure," said 
 
414 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 Dirck, decisively. "Now then, the question is, 
 which way. ' ' 
 
 The two men went over to the abandoned road- 
 way, a mere trail of ruts, where, in years before, 
 ox-teams had hauled salt hay. Up and down the 
 long strip of narrow grass that bordered it, they 
 went backward and forward, hunting for traces of 
 men's feet, for they knew by this time, almost 
 beyond doubt, that the child was in the hands of 
 tramps. The "tramp-hole" is an institution in 
 all suburban regions which are bordered by 
 stretches of wild and unfrequented country. 
 These tramp-holes or camps are the headquarters 
 of bands of wanderers who come year after year 
 to dwell sometimes for a week, sometimes for 
 months. The same spot is always occupied, and 
 there seems to be an understanding among all the 
 bands that the original territory shall not be 
 exceeded. The tramps who establish these 
 "holes" are invariably professionals, and never 
 casual vagabonds ; and apparently they make it a 
 point of honor to conduct themselves with a cer- 
 tain propriety while they are in camp. Curiously 
 enough, too, they seem to come to the tramp-hole, 
 mainly for the purpose of doing what it is sup- 
 posed that a tramp never does, namely: washing 
 themselves and their clothes. I have seen on a 
 chill November day, in one of these places, half a 
 dozen men, naked to the waist, scrubbing them- 
 selves, or drying their wet shirts before the fire. I 
 have always found them perfectly peaceable, and I 
 have never known them to accost lonely passers-by, 
 
THE LOST CHILD 415 
 
 or women or children. If a shooting or fishing 
 party comes along, however, large enough to put 
 any accusation of terrorism out of the question, it 
 is not uncommon for the "hoboes ' ' to make a polite 
 suggestion that the poor man would be the better 
 for his beer ; and so well is the reputation of these 
 queer camps established that the applicant gen- 
 erally receives such a collection of five-cent pieces 
 as will enable him to get a few quarts for himself 
 and his companions. 
 
 Still, in spite of the mysterious system of gov- 
 ernment that sways these banded wanderers on the 
 face of the earth, it happens occasionally that the 
 tramp of uncontrollable instincts finds his way into 
 the tramp-hole, and there, if his companions are 
 not numerous or strong enough to withstand him, 
 commits some outrage that excites popular indig- 
 nation and leads to the utter abolition of one of the 
 few poor outdoor homes that the tramp can call his 
 own, by the grace and indulgence of the world of 
 workers. That such a thing had happened now 
 the two searchers for the lost child feared with an 
 unspeakable fear. 
 
 Dirck straightened himself up after a careful 
 inspection of the strip of salt grass turf, and look- 
 ing up at the ridge, blew a loud, shrill whistle on 
 his two fingers. There was no answer. They had 
 gone a full mile beyond call of their followers. 
 
 "I'll tell you what, old man," said Dirck, with 
 the light of battle coming into his young eyes, 
 "we'll do this thing ourselves." His senior 
 smiled, but even as he smiled he knit his brows. 
 
416 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 "I'll go you, my boy," he said, "so far as to 
 look them up at the canal-boats. If they are not 
 there we've got to go back and start the rest off. 
 It may be a question of horses, and it may be a 
 question of telegraphing." 
 
 "Well, let's have one go at them, anyway," said 
 Dirck. He was no less tender-hearted than his 
 companion ; he wanted to find the child, but also he 
 wanted, being young and strong and full of fight, 
 to hunt tramps. 
 
 There were three tramp-holes by the river- 
 side, but two were sheltered hollows used only in 
 the winter-time. The third was a collection of 
 abandoned canal-boats on the muddy strand of the 
 river. Most of them were hopeless wrecks; in 
 three or four a few patches of deck remained, 
 enough to afford lodgment and shelter to the reek- 
 less wayfarers who made nothing of sleeping close 
 to the polluted waters that permeated the rotten 
 hulks with foul stains and fouler smells. 
 
 From the largest of these long, clumsy carcasses 
 of boats came a sound of muffled laughter. The 
 two searchers crept softly up, climbed noiselessly 
 to the deck and looked down the hatchway. The 
 low, red sun poured in through a window below 
 them, leaving them in shadow and making a pic- 
 ture in red light and black shades of the strange 
 group below. 
 
 Surrounded by ten tramps; ten dirty, uncouth, 
 unshaven men of the road, sat the little Penrhyn 
 
THE LOST CHILD 417 
 
 boy, his little night-shirt much travel-stained and 
 torn, his fat legs scratched and bruised, his soiled 
 cheeks showing the traces of tears, his lips dyed 
 with the juices of the berries he had eaten on his 
 way, but happy, happy, happy — ^happier perhaps 
 than he had ever been in his life before ; for in his 
 hand he held a clay pipe which he made persistent 
 efforts to smoke, while one of the men, a big black- 
 bearded animal who wore three coats, one on top 
 of the other, gently withdrew it from his lips each 
 time that the smoke grew dangerously thick. And 
 the whole ten of them, sitting around him in their 
 rags and dirt, cheered him and petted him and 
 praised him, even as no polite assemblage had ever 
 worshipped him before. No food, no drink could 
 have been so acceptable to that delicately nurtured 
 child of the house of Penrhyn as the rough admira- 
 tion of those ten tramps. Whatever terrors, 
 sufferings, or privations he had been through 
 were all forgotten, and he crowed and shrieked 
 with hysterical laughter. And when his two 
 rescuers dropped down into the hole, instead 
 of welcoming them with joy, he grabbed one of the 
 collars of the big brute with the three coats and 
 wept in dire disappointment and affright. 
 
 "Fore God, boss!" said the spokesman of the 
 gang, the sweat standing out on his brow, "we 
 didn't mean him no harm, and we wouldn't have 
 done him no harm neither. We found de little 
 blokey over der in the ma'sh yonder, and we tuk 
 him in and fed him de best we could. We was 
 goin' to take him up to the man what keeps the 
 
418 THE LOST CHILD 
 
 gin-mill up the river there, for we hadn't no 
 knowledge of where he come from, and we didn't 
 want to get none of you folks down on us. I know 
 we oughter have took him up two hours ago, but 
 he was f oolin ' that funny-like that we all got kinder 
 stuck on it, see, and we kinder didn't want to shake 
 him. That's all there was to it, boss. God in 
 heaven be my judge, I ain't lyin', and that's the 
 truth!" 
 
 The faces of the ten tramps could not turn 
 white, but they did show an ashen fear under their 
 eyes — a deadly fear of the two men for whom any 
 one of them would have been more than a match, 
 but who represented the world from which they 
 were outcasts, the world of Home, of whose most 
 precious sweetness they had stolen an hour's 
 enjoyment — the world so strong and terrible to 
 avenge a wrong to its best beloved. 
 
 Then the silence was broken by the voice of the 
 child, wailing piteously : 
 
 "I don't want to be tooken away from the 
 raggedty gentlemen!" 
 
 Dirck still looked suspicious as he took the 
 weeping child, but Half ord smiled grimly, thought- 
 fully and sadly, as he put his hand in his pocket 
 and said: "I guess it's all right, boys, but I think 
 you'd better get away for the present. Take this 
 and get over the river and out of the county. The 
 people have been searching for this baby all day, 
 and I don't know whether they'll listen to my 
 friend and me." 
 
THE LOST CHILD 419 
 
 The level red light had left the valleys and low 
 places, and lit alone the hilltop where the mother 
 was watching, when a great shout came out of the 
 darkness, spreading from voice to voice through 
 the great expanse helow, and echoed wildly from 
 above, thrilling men's blood and making hearts 
 stand still; and as it rose and swelled and grew 
 toward her out of the darkness, the mother knew 
 that her lost child was found. 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 
 
 Febnseed Station, 
 Atlantis Co., New ■ 
 
 February 30, 189—. 
 
 MY DEAR MODESTUS:— You write me 
 that circumstances have decided you to 
 move your household from New York to 
 some inexpensively pleasant town, village or ham- 
 let in the immediate neighborhood, and you ask 
 me the old, old innocent question : 
 
 "Shall I like suburban life?" 
 
 This question I can answer most frankly and 
 positively : 
 
 "No, certainly not. You will not like it at 
 all." 
 
 There is no such thing as liking a country life — 
 for I take it that you mean to remove to the real 
 suburban countryside, and not to one of those 
 abominable and abhorrent deserts of paved streets 
 laid out at right angles, and all supplied with 
 sewers and electric light wires and water-mains 
 before the first lonely house escapes from the 
 house-pattern books to tempt the city dweller out 
 to that dreary, soulless waste which has all the 
 modern improvements and not one tree. I take it, 
 I say, that you are going to no such cheap back- 
 extension of a great city, but that you are really 
 
 420 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 421 
 
 going among the trees and water-coursec, severing 
 all ties with the town, save the railway's glittering 
 lines of steel — or, since I have thought of it I 
 might as well say the railway ties. 
 
 If that is what your intent is, and you carry it 
 out firmly, you are going to a life which you can 
 never like, but which you may learn to love. 
 
 How should it be possible that you should enjoy 
 taking up a new life, with new surroundings, new 
 anxieties, new responsibilities, new duties, new di- 
 versions, new social connections — ^new conditions 
 of every kind — after living half a lifetime in New 
 York? It is true that, being a born New Yorker, 
 you know very little indeed of the great city you 
 live in. You know the narrow path you tread, 
 coming and going, from your house to your office, 
 and from your office to your house. It follows, as 
 closely as it may, the line of Broadway and Fifth 
 Avenue. The elevated railroads bound it down- 
 town; and uptown fashion has drawn a line a few 
 hundred yards on either side, which you have only 
 to cross, to east or to west, to find a strange exposi- 
 tion of nearsightedness come upon your friends. 
 Here and there you do, perhaps, know some little 
 by-path that leads to a club or a restaurant, or to a 
 place of amusement. After a number of books 
 have been written at you, you have ventured timor- 
 ously and feebly into such unknown lands as 
 Greenwich Village ; or that poor, shabby, elbowing 
 stretch of territory that used to be interesting, in a 
 simple way, when it was called the French Quarter. 
 It is now supposed to be the Bohemian Quarter, 
 
422 A LETTER TO TOWN 
 
 and rising young artists invite parties of society- 
 ladies to go down to its table d'hote restaurants, 
 and see the desperate young men of the bachelor- 
 apartments smoke cigarettes and drink California 
 claret without a sign of trepidation. 
 
 As I say, that is pretty near all you know of the 
 great, marvellous, multitudinous town you live in 
 — a city full of strange people, of strange occupa- 
 tions, of strange habits of life, of strange contrasts 
 of wealth and poverty; of a new life of an inde- 
 scribable crudity, and of an old life that breeds to- 
 day the very atmosphere of the historic past. 
 Your feet have never strayed in the side paths 
 where you might have learned something of the in- 
 finite and curious strangeness of this strange city. 
 
 But, after all, this is neither here nor there. 
 You have accustomed yourself to the narrow dor- 
 sal strip that is all New York to you. Therein are 
 contained the means of meeting your every need, 
 and of gratifying your every taste. There are 
 your shops, your clubs, your libraries, your 
 schools, your theatres, your art-galleries, and the 
 houses of all your friends, except a few who have 
 ventured a block or so outside of that magic line 
 that I spoke of a little while ago. And now you 
 are not only going to cross that line yourself, but to 
 pass the fatal river beyond it, to burn your boats 
 behind you, and to settle in the very wilderness. 
 And you ask me if you will like it I 
 
 No, Modestus, you will not. You have made up 
 your mind, of course, to the tedium of the two rail- 
 way journeys every weekday, and when you have 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 423 
 
 made friends with your fellow-commuters, you 
 get to like it, for your morning trip in will take the 
 place with you of your present afternoon call at 
 your club. And you are pretty sure to enjoy the 
 novelty of the first few months. You have moved 
 out in the spring, and, dulled as your perceptions 
 are by years of city life, you cannot fail to be 
 astonished and thrilled, and perhaps a little bit 
 awed, at the wonder of that green awakening. 
 And when you see how the first faint, seemingly 
 half-doubtful promise of perfect growth is ful- 
 filled by the procession of the months, you your- 
 self will be moved with the desire to work this 
 miracle, and to make plants and flowers grow at 
 your own will. You will begin to talk of what you 
 are going to do next year — for you have taken a 
 three years' lease, I trust — if only as an evidence 
 of good faith. You will lay out a tract for your 
 flower garden and your vegetable garden, and you 
 will borrow your neighbor's seed-catalogue, and 
 you will plan out such a garden as never blossomed 
 since Eden. 
 
 And in your leisure days, of course, you will 
 enjoy it more or less. You will sit on your broad 
 veranda in the pleasant mornings and listen to the 
 wind softly brushing the tree-tops to and fro, and 
 look at the blue sky through the leaf -framed spaces 
 in the cool, green canopy above you; and as you 
 remember the cruel, hot, lifeless days of summer 
 in your town house, when you dragged through the 
 weeks of work that separated you from the wife 
 and children at the seaside or in the mountains — 
 
424 A LETTEE TO TOWN 
 
 then, Modestus, you must look upon what is before 
 you, and say : it is good. 
 
 It is true that you can't get quite used to the 
 sensation of wearing your tennis flannels at your 
 own domestic breakfast table, and you cannot help 
 feeling as if somebody had stolen your clothes, and 
 you were going around in your pajamas. But 
 presently your friend — for of course you have fol- 
 lowed the trail of a friend, in choosing your new 
 abode — your friend drops in clad likewise, and you 
 take the children and start off for a stroll. As the 
 pajama-feeling wears off, you become quite en- 
 thusiastic. You tell your friend that this is the 
 life that you always wanted to lead; that a man 
 doesn't really live in the city, but only exists; that 
 it is a luxury to breathe such air, and enjoy the 
 peaceful calm and perfect silence. Away inside 
 of you something says that this is humbug, for, the 
 fact is, the perfect silence strikes you as some- 
 what lonesome, and it even scares you a little. 
 Then your children keep running up to you with 
 strange plants and flowers, and asking you what 
 they are; and you find it trying on the nerves to 
 keep up the pretence of parental omniscience, and 
 yet avoid the too-ready corrections of your friend. 
 
 "Johnny-jumper!" he says, scornfully, when 
 you have hazarded a guess out of your meagre bo- 
 tanical vocabulary : "Why, man, that's no Johnny- 
 jumper, that's a wild geranium." Then he ad- 
 dresses himself to the other inquiring youngster : 
 "No, my boy, that's not a chestnut; that's an 
 acorn. You won't get chestnuts till the fall, and 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 425 
 
 then you '11 get them off the chestnut trees. That 's 
 an oak." 
 
 And so the walk is not altogether pleasant for 
 you, and you find it safest to confine your remarks 
 on country life to generalizations concerning the 
 air and the silence. 
 
 No, Modestus, do not think for a moment that I 
 am making game of you. Your friend would be 
 no more at home at the uptown end of your little 
 New York path than you are here in his little 
 town; and he does not look on your ignorance of 
 nature as sternly as you would look upon his un- 
 familiarity with your familiar landmarks. For 
 his knowledge has grown upon him so naturally 
 and unconsciously, that he hardly esteems it of any 
 value. 
 
 But you can have no idea of the tragicomical 
 disadvantage at which you will find yourself placed 
 during your first year in the country — that is, the 
 suburban country. You know, of course, when 
 you move into a new neighborhood in the city you 
 must expect to find the local butcher and baker and 
 candlestick maker ready to fall upon you, and to 
 tear the very raiment from your back, until they 
 are assured that you are a solvent permanency — 
 and you have learned how to meet and repel their 
 attacks. When you find that the same thing is 
 done in the country, only in a different way, which 
 you don't in the least understand, you will begin to 
 experience a certain feeling of discouragement. 
 Then, the humorous papers have taught you to 
 look upon the Suburban Furnace as part of the 
 
426 A LETTER TO TOWN 
 
 machinery or property of a merry jest; and you 
 will be shocked to discover that to the newcomer 
 it is a stern and cold reality. I use the latter ad- 
 jective deliberately and advisedly. There will 
 surely come an awful night when you will get home 
 from New York with Mrs. Modestus in the mid- 
 night train, too tired for anything but a drowsy 
 chat by the lingering embers of the library fire 
 over the festivities of the evening. You will open 
 your broad hospitable door, and enter an abode of 
 chill and darkness. Your long-slumbering house- 
 hold has let fires and lights go out ; the thermome- 
 ter in the children's room stands at forty-five de- 
 grees, and there is nothing for you to do but to de- 
 scend to the cellar, arrayed in your wedding gar- 
 ments, and try your unskilful best to coax into 
 feeble circulation a small, faintly throbbing heart 
 of fire that yet glows far down in the fire-pot's 
 darksome internals. Then, when you have done 
 what you can at the unwonted and unwelcome task, 
 you will see, by the feeble candle-light, that your 
 black dress-coat is gray with fine cinder dust, and 
 that your hands are red and raw from the handling 
 of heavy implements of toil. And then you will 
 think of city home-comings after the theatre or the 
 ball; of the quiet half -hour in front of the dying 
 cannel ; of the short cigar and the little nightcap, 
 and of the gentle passage bedward, so easy in that 
 warm and slumberous atmosphere that you hardly 
 know how you have passed from weariness to 
 peaceful dreams. And there will come to your 
 spirit a sudden passion of humiliation and revolt 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 427 
 
 that will make you say to yourself : This is the end ! 
 
 But you know perfectly well that it is not the 
 end, however ardently you may wish that it was. 
 There still remain two years of your un-subletable 
 lease; and you set yourself, courageously and 
 firmly, to serving out the rest of your time. You 
 resolve, as a good prisoner, to make the best of it. 
 You set to work to apply a little plain common- 
 sense to the problem of the furnace — and find it 
 not so difficult of partial solution after all. You 
 face your other local troubles with a determination 
 to minimize them at least. You resolve to check 
 your too open expressions of dissatisfaction with 
 the life you are leading. You hardly know why 
 you do this, but you have, half -unconsciously, read 
 a gentle hint in the faces of your neighbors ; and 
 as you see those kindly faces gathering oftener and 
 oftener about your fire as the winter nights go on, 
 it may, perhaps, dawn upon your mind that the ex- 
 istence you were so quick to condenm has grown 
 dear to some of them. 
 
 But, whether you know it or not, that second 
 year in the suburban house is a crisis and turning- 
 point in your life, for it will make of you either a 
 city man or a suburban, and it will surely save you 
 from being, for all the rest of your days, that hide- 
 ous betwixt-and-between thing, that uncanny crea- 
 tion of modern days of rapid transit, who fluctu- 
 ates helplessly between one town and another ; be- 
 tween town and city, and between town and city 
 again, seeking an impossible and unattainable per- 
 fection, and scattering remonstrant servant-maids 
 
428 A LETTER TO TOWN 
 
 and disputed bills for repairs along Ms cheerless 
 track. 
 
 You have learned that the miseries of country 
 life are not dealt out to you individually, but that 
 they belong to the life, just as the troubles you fled 
 from belong to the life of a great city. Of course, 
 the realization of this fact only serves to make you 
 see that you erred in making so radical a change in 
 the current of your life. You perceive only the 
 more clearly that as soon as your appointed time is 
 up, you must reestablish yourself in urban condi- 
 tions. There is no question about it ; whatever its 
 merits may be — and you are willing to concede that 
 they are many — ^it is obvious that country life does 
 not suit you, or that you do not suit country life, 
 one or the other. And yet — somehow incompre- 
 hensibly — the understanding that you have only 
 shifted the burden you bore among your old neigh- 
 bors has put a strangely new face on things, and 
 has made you so readily tolerant that you are 
 really a little surprised at yourself. 
 
 The winter goes by; the ever welcome glory of 
 the spring comes back, and with it comes the 
 natural human longing to make a garden, which is 
 really, although we treat it lightly, a sort of humble 
 first-cousin to the love of children. In your own 
 breast you repress this weakness. Why taste of a 
 pleasure which in another short year you mean to 
 put permanently out of your reach? But there is 
 no resisting the entreaties of your children, nor 
 your wife's ready interest in their schemes, and 
 you send for Pat Brannigan, and order a garden 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 429 
 
 made. Of course, it is only for the children, but it 
 is strange how readily a desire to please the little 
 ones spreads into a broader benevolence. When 
 you look over your wife's list of plants and seeds, 
 you are surprised to find how many of them are 
 perennials. "They will please the next tenants 
 here," says your wife; "think how nice it would 
 have been for us to find some flowers all already 
 for us, when we came here !" This may possibly 
 lead you to reflecting that there might have been 
 something, after all, in your original idea of sup- 
 pressing the gardening instinct. 
 
 But there, after a while, is the garden — ^f or these 
 stories of suburban gardens where nothing grows, 
 are all nonsense. True, the clematis and the 
 moonflower obstinately refuse to clothe your cot 
 with beauty ; the tigridia bulbs rot in the ground, 
 and your beautiful collection of irises produces a 
 pitiful pennyworth of bloom to an intolerable 
 quantity of leaves. But the petunias and the 
 sweet-williams, and the balsams, and all the other 
 ill-bred and obtrusive flowers leap promptly into 
 life and vigor, and fight each other for the owner- 
 ship of the beds. And the ever-faithful and 
 friendly nasturtium comes early and stays late, 
 and the limp morning-glory may always be counted 
 upon to slouch familiarly over everything in sight, 
 window-blinds preferred. But, bless your dear 
 urban soul, what do you know about the relative 
 values of flowers ? When Mrs. Overtheway brings 
 your wife a bunch of her superbest gladioli, you 
 complacently return the compliment with a half- 
 
430 A LETTEE TO TOWN 
 
 bushel of magenta petunias, and you wonder tliat 
 she does not show more enthusiasm over the gift. 
 
 In fact, during the course of the summer you 
 have grown so friendly with your garden that, as 
 you wander about its tangled paths in the late fall 
 days, you cannot help feeling a twinge of yearning 
 pain that makes you tremble to think what weak- 
 ness you might have been guilty of had you not 
 already burned your bridges behind you, and told 
 the house agent that nothing would induce you to 
 renew the lease next spring. You remember how 
 fully and carefully you explained to him your posi- 
 tion in the matter. With a glow of modest pride 
 you recall the fact that you stated your case to him 
 so convincingly, that he had to agree with you that 
 a city life was the only life you and your family 
 could possibly lead. He understood fully how 
 much you liked the place and the people, and how, 
 if this were only so, and that were only the other 
 way, you would certainly stay. And you feel if 
 the house agent agrees with you against his own 
 interest, you must be right in your decision. Ah, 
 dear Modestus! You know little enough about 
 flowers; but oh, how little, little, little you know 
 about suburban house agents ! 
 
 Let us pass lightly over the third winter. It is 
 a period of hesitation, perplexity, expectancy, and 
 general awkwardness. You are, and you are not. 
 You belong nowhere, and to no one. You have re- 
 nounced your new allegiance, and you really do not 
 know when, how, or at what point you are going to 
 take up the old one again. And, in point of fact, 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 431 
 
 you do not regard this particular prospect with 
 feelings of complete satisfaction. You remember, 
 with a troubled conscience, the long list of social 
 connections which you have found it too trouble- 
 some to keep up at long range. I say you, for I am 
 quite sure that Mrs. Modestus will certify me that 
 it was You and not She, who first declared that it 
 was practically impossible to keep on going to the 
 Smith's dinners or the Brown's receptions. You 
 don't know this, my dear Modestus, but I assure 
 you that you may take it for granted. You re- 
 member also that your return must carry with it 
 the suggestion of the ignominy of defeat, and you 
 know exactly the tone of kindly contemptuous, 
 mildly assumed superiority with which your 
 friends will welcome you back. And the approach- 
 ing severance of your newer ties troubles your 
 mind in another way. Your new friends do not try 
 to dissuade you from going (they are too wise in a 
 suburban way for that), but they say, and show in 
 a hundred ways, that they are sorry to think of 
 losing you. And this forbearance, so different 
 from what you have to expect at the other end of 
 your moving, reproaches and pains while it touches 
 your heart. These people were all strangers to 
 you two years and a half ago; they are chance 
 rather than chosen companions. And yet, in this 
 brief space of time — ^filled with little neighborly 
 offices, with faithful services and tender sympa- 
 thies in hours of sickness, and perhaps of death, 
 with simple, informal companionship — ^you have 
 grown into a closer and heartier friendship with 
 
432 A LETTER TO TOWN 
 
 them than you have ever known before, save with 
 the one or two old comrades with whose love your 
 life is bound up. When you learned to leave your 
 broad house-door open to the summer airs, you 
 opened, unconsciously, another door; and these 
 friends have entered in. 
 
 It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in early April, 
 but not exactly an April afternoon, rather one of 
 those precocious days of delicious warmth and full, 
 summer-like sunshine, that come to remind us that 
 May and June are close behind the spring showers. 
 You and Mrs. Modestus sit on the top step of your 
 front veranda, just as you sat there on such a day, 
 nearly three years ago. As on that day, you are 
 talking of the future ; but you are in a very differ- 
 ent frame of mind to-day. In a few short weeks 
 you will be adrift upon a sea of domestic uncer- 
 tainty. For weeks you have visited the noisy city, 
 hunting the proud and lofty mansion and the tor- 
 tuous and humiliating flat, and it has all come to 
 this — a steam-heated "family-hotel," until such 
 time when you can find summer quarters ; and then, 
 with the fall, a new beginning of the weary search. 
 And then — and then 
 
 Coming and going along the street, your friends 
 and neighbors give you cheery greeting, to which 
 you respond somewhat absent-mindedly. You can 
 hear the voices of your children and their little 
 neighbor-friends playing in the empty garden plot. 
 Your talk flags. You do not know just what you 
 
A LETTER TO TOWN 433 
 
 are tHnking about; still less do you know what 
 your wife is thinking about — ^but you know that 
 you wish the children would stop laughing, and 
 that the people would stop going by and nodding 
 pleasantly. 
 
 And now comes one who does not go by. He 
 turns in at the gate and walks up the gravel path. 
 He smiles and bows at you as if the whole world 
 were sunshine — a trim little figure, dressed with 
 such artistic care that there is a cheerfulness in the 
 crease of his trousers and suavity in his very shirt- 
 front. He greets Mrs. Modestus with a world of 
 courtesy, and then he sits confidentially down by 
 your side and says: "My dear sir, I am come to 
 talk a little busiaess with you." 
 
 No, you will not talk business. Your mind is 
 firmly made up. Nothing will induce you to renew 
 the lease. 
 
 "But, my dear sir," he says, with an enthusiasm 
 that would be as boisterous as an ocean wave, if it 
 had not so much oil on its surface: "I don't want 
 you to renew the lease. I have a much better plan 
 than that ! I want you to buy the house!" 
 
 And then he goes on to tell you all about it ; ho^ 
 the estate must be closed up ; how the house may be 
 had for a song; and he names a figure so small that 
 it gives you two separate mental shocks; first, to 
 realize that it is within your means ; second, to find 
 that he is telling the truth. 
 
 He goes on talking softly, suggestively, telling 
 you what a bargain it is, telling you all the things 
 you have put out of your mind for many months ; 
 
434 A LETTER TO TO^N 
 
 telling you — telling you nothing, and well he knows 
 it. Three years of life under that roof have done 
 his pleading for him. 
 
 Then your wife suddenly reaches out her hand 
 and touches you furtively. 
 
 "Oh, buy it," she whispers, huskily, "if you 
 can." And then she gathers up her skirts and 
 hurries into the house. 
 
 Then a little later you are all in the library, and 
 you have signed a little plain strip of paper, 
 headed "Memorandum of Sale." And then you 
 and the agent have drunk a glass of wine to bind 
 the bargain, and then the agent is gone, and you 
 and your wife are left standing there, looking at 
 each other with misty eyes and questioning smiles, 
 happy and yet doubtful if you have done right or 
 wrong. 
 
 But what does it matter, my dear Modestus ? 
 
 For you could not help yourselves. 
 
Ijililiill I