"^ 
 
 ^•% 
 
 
T-S 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 2734.R79504 
 
 Old ways and new storiesby Viola Rosebor 
 
 3 1924 022 036 986 
 
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/cu31924022036986 
 
OLD WAYS AND NEW 
 
.4 
 
OLD WAYS AND NEW 
 
 STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 VIOLA ROSEBORO' 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1802 
 
Copyright, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 
 TK£ 0£VINNE PRESS. 
 
TO MY MOTHER, 
 
 MY EARLIEST AND STILL MY BEST 
 COMPANION IN THE BLESSED 
 WORLD OF LETTERS, I WISH TO 
 INSCRIBE THIS, MY FIRST BOOK. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I The Clown and the Missionary 1 
 
 II Bentley's System 19 
 
 III A Jest of Fate 48 
 
 IV The Last Maechbanks 75 
 V The Reign op Reason 95 
 
 VI Nannie's Career 117 
 
 VII The Force op Example 133 
 
 VIII Rudolph 149 
 
 IX The Village Alien 164 
 
 X The Girl and the Problem 191 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 T was a sunny May morning, and the 
 Baltic was steaming out of New York 
 bay for Liverpool. It was the old 
 ship's last trip in these waters, and 
 she made it under special conditions. 
 She was given up entirely to second- 
 class passengers, who of course, as a result, had in 
 some respects first-class accommodations. The con- 
 sequence was a social mixture perhaps a shade odder 
 and more varied than is usually seen. Two weeks be- 
 fore, my friend Miss MUman had happened to see this 
 arrangement advertised, and we had suddenly and hap- 
 pily discovered that at the rates given we could afford 
 to drop work (our painting and writing) for a month 
 or two and together "run over to the other side." 
 
 We were on deck in that May sunsliine, our hands 
 full of flowers, — for our friends had graciously ignored 
 our lowly second-class estate in their farewells, — the 
 bright waters dancing around us, the workaday world 
 behind us, enchanted lands of romance and beauty be- 
 fore us, and at our elbows a new and heterogeneous 
 representation of the dear, dull, supremely interesting 
 
2 THE CLOWN AND THE MIS8I0NAEY. 
 
 human race. By the time we had spent an eternity 
 of two days in a universe of water and sky, we had 
 discovered beneath the prevailingly commonplace ex- 
 teriors various pleasing features among our fellow- 
 passengers. The Irish ward politician's obvious moral 
 heinousness, taken together with his tender devotion 
 to a little sick wife, gave us an enjoyable incongruity; 
 we relished the simple and profound moral patronage 
 we received from a trio of professional feminine phil- 
 anthropists, well-meaning souls, dripping with self-es- 
 teem, who were going over to investigate the workings 
 of some society for the promotion of some sort of good 
 works; we delighted in their genuine horror of a stun- 
 ning, bouncing, good-looking young woman who was 
 said to be an actress, but whose normal position, it 
 was perfectly clear, was at the head of a column of 
 lightly-clad Amazons in a Kiralfy spectacle, and we 
 liked her as a perfect specimen of her kind; but we had 
 most pleasure in the simple admiration and respect 
 we felt for a shabby, gentle, intelligent missionary 
 from China, who was on his way to a great Exeter 
 Hall meeting in Loudon, and in the curiosity aroused 
 in us by a dumb, wooden youth with watery, pale 
 eyes and a red head, who looked rough and "horsey," 
 and whom we repeatedly saw sitting in his state- 
 room — it was opposite ours — reading a small Bible. 
 
 We thought it piquant when we found he knew the 
 spectacular Amazon, but that was but the beginning 
 of satisfactions, for we soon discovered that he was 
 himself a circus clown. 
 
 To look upon a little dull, faithful-looking creature 
 •like that, to see him absorbed in reading a pocket 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 3 
 
 edition of the Holy Scriptures, and to be able to reflect 
 that he lived by the violent vivacities of a sawdust buf- 
 foon, was a privilege that, among other things, made 
 me laugh till I cried. Perhaps the step from the one 
 expression to the other was shorter than usual. 
 
 The sight of him gave me new thoughts as to the 
 possible value of rites, of formal observances. There 
 was nothing in his aspect as he read to suggest keen 
 intellectual or spiritual activity; on the contrary, I 
 could imagine him turning two leaves at once and 
 being never the wiser — or the less wise. The occa- 
 sion was plainly one of ceremony, but it was equally 
 plain that it was ceremony observed with religious 
 feeling, and without going into the gloomy question 
 of how far religious feeling may be removed from a 
 sense of moral obligations, I felt very sure to such 
 a boy as this, English or American, and unflattered 
 by the public opinion of his world, the ceremony of 
 Bible reading was morally conserving. 
 
 The third day out I did a highly reprehensible thing. 
 I had seen the clown on deck as I came down to my 
 state-room, and when near the open door of his I saw 
 the Bible lying on one of the theatrical trunks with 
 which the place was filled. The temptation was irre- 
 sistible. I took it up and opened it at the front fly- 
 leaf. Yes, there was the inscription in a half -formed, 
 school-girlish Italian hand — American school-girls 
 wrote something like it forty years ago: 
 
 To my Beloved Brother Teddy, from his loving Sister Emmy. 
 Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. 
 
 I called softly to Amy, and held up the page. 
 
4 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 " How could you be such a br — " " Brute," she was 
 going to call me, but she stopped to avail herself of 
 my misconduct and to read the words, and then we 
 laid the book where I had found it and slipped 
 away. 
 
 " Yes," she said, as we exchanged a look and a smile, 
 " it would have been a pity to miss that because of 
 any small scruples. And now you 'd better stop; a 
 little circus clown traveling over the earth like that 
 is too picturesque an object for investigation. He '11 
 never come up to the situation." 
 
 I thought she was probably right; still my curiosity 
 was not slaked. 
 
 During the several years spent by myself "on the 
 stage" I had occasionally come in touch with circus 
 people. To some extent they recruit the stage, and 
 though actors affect a great superiority, there is a 
 degree of common understanding, and, on occasion, of 
 good-fellowship between all show folks. I consider 
 myself to hold rather originally favorable opinions of 
 the sawdust performers as compared to other nomads, 
 but I am not accustomed to see religion flourish among 
 any such class, except, semi-occasionaUy, in the case of 
 Roman Catholics. One effect of Puritanism on Prot- 
 estantism has been to unfit it for many Christ-like 
 ministrations which the old church still better or worse 
 performs. It was the loneliness of the little clown's 
 religious aspirations that touched me most. I reflected 
 on how many good people would be disconcerted to 
 hear of them, on how many would feel that in some 
 mysterious way such aspirations most irritatingly and 
 unjustly weakened their own position of condemn a- 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONAEY. 5 
 
 tion toward clowns and circuses in particular, and 
 the world, the flesh, and the devil at large. 
 
 I smiled at the thought. I was lying on deck in 
 my steamer-chair, and just then the captain of the 
 Amazons, in much nautical splendor of blue serge and 
 white anchors, whirled down the deck and collided in 
 front of me with the shabby missionary. 
 
 The girl turned pale. It was pleasing to see the 
 awe with which the cloth inspired her; in the con- 
 fusion of her apologies she dropped a pack of cards. 
 The missionary picked them up, and with a kindly, 
 faintly humorous smile handed them to her, and she 
 got herself off expeditiously, though, so to speak, with 
 much sail taken in. 
 
 It occurred to me that perhaps this preacher did not 
 illustrate the points I had been making against the 
 pious. "We had arrived at a bowing acquaintance, 
 the missionary and I, and now when he glanced my 
 way I smiled my recognition of the moment's accident. 
 He smiled, too, and said, "When I first went to China 
 I found that for the work I wanted to do I must dress 
 like a Chinaman." The conclusion of his thought, that 
 the clerical broadcloth might still interfere with his 
 usefulness, he expressed only by a quizzical glance 
 down the deck toward the young lady whose normal 
 costume was tights. 
 
 Later in the long, fair, ocean-girt day, as the ship 
 glided on between two still, blue wonder worlds, — the 
 water was like satin, — Amy brought her water-color 
 box on deck and began to sketch. 
 
 Everybody was on deck ; the clown, with a white, 
 beU-shaped soft hat pulled down to his ears, and his 
 
6 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 hands in his pockets, was doggedly taking a constitu- 
 tional and chewing a toothpick, 
 
 I was planning to use my past connection with the 
 stage to help me to his acquaintance, when it appeared 
 that we were to win that privilege through a quite 
 different appeal. As I lay, drowsy with content, watch- 
 ing the dashes of color brighten Amy's pad, I became 
 aware that Teddy Catty (that was his delightful name) 
 was circling about us, his pale, white-lashed little eyes 
 blinking fixedly — if you wiU permit the paradox — 
 upon Amy's work. 
 
 I looked up at him amicably as he came nearer. He 
 touched his hat ; there was a touch of the grotesque, 
 something clownish, in his very organization, and 
 the way he touched his hat was faintly funny, was 
 dimly Audrey-like. He came nearer shyly, cleared 
 his throat, and said, with a very good accent and in 
 quite the usual English way: 
 
 " Beg pardon, I hope you 'U excuse me for watch- 
 ing, but I take such an interest when I see any one 
 painting." 
 
 " Do you paint ? " I concluded my reply. 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no, indeed, but I have a sister who does. 
 She paints wonderfully." Then, lowering his voice, 
 he added hesitatingly, as if it were really immodest 
 to speak of so much glory, " She has a picture in the 
 Royal Academy this year." 
 
 Now this was exactly what I wanted to hear about. 
 Amy was painting away; she had recognized the 
 clown's presence by a civil glance only, so I encour- 
 aged him to draw up a stool and wait till her sketch 
 was done. 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 7 
 
 I soon learned mucli of the little all that my week's 
 acquaintance with him disclosed. The sight of a girl 
 painting had melted him into a mood as communi- 
 cative as a child's, and he only wanted a sympathetic 
 audience to enjoy with him the music of Emmy's 
 name. Yes, the heroine of the Royal Academy and 
 the dear giver of the little Bible were one — she was 
 Teddy Catty's only sister. 
 
 Let me give such an outline of their history as I can, 
 in orderly sequence. 
 
 The father had been in charge of the workroom of 
 a china-painting firm. " That 's all knocked off now," 
 said Teddy Catty; and he explained lamely and naively 
 how people wanted " high art " nowadays, and how 
 consequently his father's old firm had gone out of 
 business ; his father had been with it forty years, and 
 " he died pretty soon after he lost his place." 
 
 The motherhad been a baUet-girl before shemarried, 
 and she had numbers of relatives in various branches 
 of the " show business." The children, four of them, 
 were all put on the stage in pantomimes and such 
 things when they were little. Of the family there were 
 now left only the one brother and sister. 
 
 No, Emmy was not on the stage, "not in no way." 
 Though his accent was so good the little clown's gram- 
 mar was not upon a dull level of correctness. " Emmy 
 never exactly liked the stage, her mother never exactly 
 wanted her to go on it," and just when they did not 
 know what she should do, she solved the problem the 
 old way, and married, — married a scene-painter at the 
 Lyceum Theater. 
 
 " You may know by that that he 's a good one ; he 
 
8 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 was only in a small position when Emmy married him, 
 but he 's one of the head ones now. Then, you know, 
 he knew some real artist painters, and Emmy, — she 
 did n't have any children, — and she thought she 'd 
 like to learn to paint pictures; and she did. Her hus- 
 band's awful proud of her." 
 
 It was the fifth day out, when, after much narra- 
 tive that — as is the way of talk — did not advance the 
 story, we reached this point. 
 
 We were again on deck, and Amy and I were lying 
 in our chairs gazing over a tossing dark sea at a red 
 sunset, while Teddy Catty sat facing us. 
 
 " You would n't think Emmy was my sister," he said. 
 " She 's like another kind. She 's a beauty, and she 's 
 just like a swell, a nice swell, in her ways, and then 
 she 's good. My, she 's good ! " 
 
 " Is she religious ? " I ventured. 
 
 " Now you know, — yes, — but then it 's hard to say 
 exactly what different people mean," and the boy gave 
 himself up with grave pleasure to the serious business 
 of accurately informing us as to Emmy's spiritual life. 
 " She is as religious as she can be one way," he went 
 on, "and then the other she only goes as far as she can 
 without feeling as if she was throwing over the rest of 
 us. Her husband he thinks religious people ain't his 
 kind, and of course I 'm nowhere with 'em, and Emmy 
 can't make herself up to contract with them that de- 
 spises us. You would n't believe what she thinks of me, 
 you would n't indeed. So she just goes without reli- 
 gion except what she can get reading the Bible and — " 
 half hesitating, and softening his tone — " and praying. 
 She says she believes we can be good that way. She 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 9 
 
 wants me to try. She is — good, good. I wish, though, 
 she could be with real religious people, some kind. Our 
 grandmother, one of 'em, was a great chapel-goer. She 
 was an Independent. I think Emmy would be happier 
 that way." 
 
 He turned his face toward the angry gloom of the 
 sea and the fading western sky, and we were aU silent. 
 "What a comforting glimpse of human nature ! What 
 a touching, beautiful hint of human history in that 
 disorderly Bohemian world was this the clown had 
 given ns ! Not typical, perhaps, of anything less than 
 the deep heart of man, but none the less typical of 
 that because of its irrational, incongruous, half-comic 
 setting. 
 
 Presently Amy said, with an odd little accession of 
 formal courtesy in her tone, " I hope, Mr. Catty, you 
 have a picture of your sister that you can show us. I 
 should Kke to know how she looks." 
 
 Yes, he had her picture in his state-room; he wanted 
 us to see it. 
 
 The limitless night was darkening around us in 
 momentary pulsations ; we left the wild, soul-search- 
 ing scene for the petty, pretty glare of the cabin. 
 While we were drinking our tea, Teddy Catty brought 
 us the photograph. 
 
 It seemed out of harmony now with the fleshly reac- 
 tion from the infinite things of the spirit that had just 
 come upon us ; we had to give our poor flagging souls 
 a tug to make them respond to the unconscious awe 
 that looked. Madonna-like, upon us. Ton never saw 
 a little child's face more deeply, simply serious. And 
 yet — I find myself saying "and yet" — it was of the 
 
10 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONAEY. 
 
 most typical, modern London sort, with delicate, high, 
 regular features, flat cheeks, and strong, smooth struc- 
 tural lines — beautiful, but with an over-civilized, so- 
 phisticated beauty curiously at variance with the pure, 
 tender goodness of the expression, and, in some ob- 
 scure way, making it the more touching. 
 
 The next day I took the picture to show to the mis- 
 sionary. He smiled benevolently as I told of the quaint 
 brother and sister, but being a missionary and not an 
 artist, and seeing nothing to do for them, his mind in- 
 clined to wander. Yet once or twice afterward, as he 
 walked the deck with one of his smaR children by the 
 hand, — he always had one with him when he did not 
 have two, — he tried to join in our conversation with 
 Teddy Catty; but when he saw the little fellow draw 
 back overawed, he readily enough, with a shade of re- 
 lief, perhaps, abandoned the gentle attack. 
 
 This trio was not often in session, so to say, for 
 Teddy Catty was very modest, and was scrupulously 
 careful not to intrude upon us ; but he was sure to be 
 within beckoning distance whenever Amy was sketch- 
 ing. The sight exercised an absurd fascination upon 
 him. 
 
 It was easy to see that he regarded me as of an alto- 
 gether inferior race of beings as compared to Amy; 
 with me he could talk on occasion, but to her he could 
 scarcely more than speak when he was spoken to. This 
 dumb shyness, together with his professional position, 
 puzzled Amy. 
 
 " Do you suppose," said she, " that he is anything of 
 a clown, that honest little owl ? " 
 
 In truth there seemed nothing clown-like about 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 11 
 
 Teddy Catty except the clowmshuess of which I have 
 spoken, the touch of oddity that made his identity 
 seem a little humorous. But thefi I had seen suc- 
 cessful comedians flourisli on nothing more than a 
 lesser degree of the same thing, and I knew too, what 
 is always puzzling to the world, that the possession of 
 the technique of any art enables the possessor to mold 
 into expression much of his nature which he may lack 
 either freedom, will, or desire to express in his life ; 
 so you see I was not surprised when my interest in 
 Teddy Catty's artistic side was gratified by a chance 
 verdict — but not a worthless one — that he was a good 
 clown. It came from the spectacular Amazonian cap- 
 tain on the occasion of my first conversation with her. 
 It happened one afternoon, as I was walking on deck, 
 that I stumbled, and simultaneously the ship gave a 
 lurch, and I was thrown upon the histrionic Amazo- 
 nian breast. Upon such a provocation to unreasoning 
 resentment her boundless good nature instantly as- 
 serted itself, with pleasure in the opportunity, and 
 then in an instant more she realized another oppor- 
 tunity — she would gratify a thirst for knowledge. 
 Having helped me to my feet, she hurried to say: 
 
 " I 've heard Teddy Catty speak about you ; he said 
 you 've been on the stage yourself. He 's awful taken 
 up seeing that friend of yours paint, ain't he ? He 's 
 dead proud of that sister of his a-painting. Did you 
 know anything about him before you came on board? 
 Did n't you ever see him in the ring ? He 's a good 
 clown, a real good one. They say he '11 get with 
 Barnum next, likely. There 's some fun to him — 
 not all just as if you 'd pulled a string. I tell him 
 
12 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 he ought to go on the stage — comic opera. He can't 
 sing much, but that don't matter for a funny man. 
 I 've been in comic opera some, not a principal of 
 course — but I can get more with the Kiralf ys and in 
 pantomime over here," with a toss of the head toward 
 the bow of the ship. 
 
 After having dreamed away half a lifetime in this 
 little world upon the waters, and having all but for- 
 gotten previous states of existence, — at the end of ten 
 days, that is, — we anchored off Queenstown. There, 
 according to expectation, we met a party of pleasant 
 acquaintances of both sexes, and straightway we sank 
 — rose? — were transformed from the lofty epicene 
 patrons of Teddy Catty into something perhaps more 
 like conventional young ladies than some old-fash- 
 ioned people would suppose possible. 
 
 It is strange now to think how uniinpressively on 
 this changed mood fell the news that Teddy Catty at 
 Queenstown had met dark sorrow — a letter had come 
 telling him his sister was dead. Not that we were in- 
 different. No ; I remember feeling his bereavement 
 with one of those appalling thumps of realization that 
 visit most of us often enough to point the blessing of 
 our usual "wadding of stupidity." But, after all, this 
 heart-stopping sensation — as usual, I think — came 
 rather from a sudden vision of the tragic conditions 
 of all life than from direct, simple sympathy with 
 Teddy Catty. Poor Teddy Catty had all at once 
 become a very remote little figure, all but invisible, 
 and there was so much to talk over with our friends : 
 news was to be heard, experiences were to be ex- 
 changed, and plans to be made — a sudden develop- 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 13 
 
 meiit for us of a full world out of nebulous space. 
 Still, in the midst of all this pleasant pother we could 
 but gaze upon the door that shut in the little clown 
 and his sorrow, and feel momentarily rebuked for life 
 and its inevitable frivolities. 
 
 It was a relief when his room-mate, a young man 
 — we knew nothing more about him — came to me, 
 and with stammering, misplaced apologies asked if I 
 thought, if I supposed, that the missionary would 
 not mind, or did I. think he would mind — "Does 
 Mr. Catty want to see the missionary?" I asked, 
 with a sense of relief; and I went gladly to summon 
 him. 
 
 The missionary was, as usual, occupied with his 
 numerous little ones ; his wife had been sick through- 
 out the voyage, and had scarcely left her state-room. 
 
 He turned his bowed head a little from me as he 
 listened, as if he were steeling himself against a per- 
 sonal misfortune. 
 
 " He begins where we leave off," I said to myself, as 
 I looked upon his pity-moved face. 
 
 He came back to me after he had taken the children 
 to his wife, and said, " If I can comfort this poor boy 
 through the word and love of my Master, — there is no 
 other comfort, — I 'U not forget it 's to you I owe the 
 opportunity" — there was self-reproach in the mission- 
 ary's tone — "I never should have known anything 
 about him." 
 
 It seemed that it took three or four people in this 
 
 case to make one Good Samaritan. It happened, as it 
 
 is always happening in this fantastic life, that though 
 
 I wished to ask the missionary about his interview 
 
 2 
 
14 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONAKY. 
 
 ynth. Teddy Catty, and had of course rational human 
 motives for such an interest in the lad, one puerile 
 triviality after another preoccupied me, so that I had 
 just a word with him before the ship's company parted 
 at Liverpool. 
 
 We were in the custom-house. The missionary's 
 wife, thin, pale, shabby, quietly executive and a lady, 
 kept order among her children in a corner of the great 
 bare, over-lighted, ugly place, and beside her sat Teddy 
 Catty, with his hat pulled over his eyes. 
 
 I felt that I could not speak to him there, — to do 
 so would, it seemed, emphasize the cruel, bold publicity 
 of the place, — so I went to where the missionary stood 
 over his bags and boxes — a queer lot — and asked him, 
 if the worthlessness of the words did not choke him, 
 to teU the boy good-by for us, and to say that we felt 
 for him. I stopped short, shamed with the thought 
 of how little we felt, realizing for once not only the 
 powerlessness of human sympathy, but its painfully 
 absurd deficiency in quantity, the unnecessary thick- 
 ness of our wadding of stupidity. Then I reflected, 
 as I stood there, that this whole little episode of 
 our acquaintance with the missionary and the clown, 
 so slight, yet so dyed in the primary colors of life, 
 its grotesqueness and comedy and inconsequence, 
 its mystery and tragedy, was ending, or rather, as 
 is the way of life, fading, passing, like a cloud, into 
 something else, and that soon the quaint pair would 
 exist for me no more ; and I rebelled against the muta- 
 bility of existence. I said to the missionary : " I shall 
 be in London in a week or two. I don't suppose I '11 
 ever be the least good to you or to Teddy Catty, and 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 15 
 
 there is no reason in keeping up such an acquaintance 
 as ours ; but for no smaller reason than that we are all 
 human beings — " The missionary's eyes responded 
 so adequately with humor and a good deal beside that 
 for a moment it did not occur to me to finish my sen- 
 tence, and then I concluded, "let me come to see you 
 or your wife a moment to hear how things are. You '11 
 probably know something of Teddy Catty for as much 
 as a fortnight longer." 
 
 Yes, he thought his friendship with the clown 
 might survive all-devouring time so long, and he said 
 he would be glad to see me again. 
 
 Yet I had been in London a week, and had not looked 
 up my fellow-passengers, when one day, as Amy and 
 I were going through the amazingly crowded rooms 
 of the Royal Academy, whom should we see but the 
 clown ! He was sitting on one of the divans, dressed 
 in the conventional mourning of a law-loving English- 
 man, a frock-coat and a crape-banded silk hat dignify- 
 ing Teddy Catty's little figure. We saw him furtively 
 wipe his eyes as he gazed at the gilt-and-canvas-cov- 
 ered wall before him, and we knew Emmy's picture 
 was there. We soon found it; it was a little one, 
 hung rather high, and, like several thousand others in 
 that. home of English art, it was of a baby, and, again 
 like the majority of them, it was a poor picture — dull, 
 conventional. Whatever had been in poor Emmy's 
 heart when she painted it was concealed under a false, 
 frigid method faithfully carried out. 
 
 Teddy's face worked convulsively for a moment 
 when he saw us, then he pointed out the picture and 
 gave us his place to sit in while we gazed. There was 
 
16 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 plainly no need of talking about it; he did not think 
 of comment as becoming the occasion. 
 
 " It belonged to one of the dressers in the theater," 
 he said softly after a time. " She had a lot of children, 
 and her husband died, and — Emmy — Emmy helped 
 her, and she was tremendously fond of that baby. She 
 used to keep it at the house days and days to get 
 chances to paint it." Teddy's voice failed him again. 
 
 After a while, in the moving of the throng, he got 
 a seat beside us, and I noted as if it were something 
 surprising that in taking it he arranged his coat-tails 
 with the same little odd f unniness of movement as of 
 old ; it did seem quite strange for a moment that his 
 grief had not lifted him into ideal grace. He looked 
 from one to the other of us, and said, "I was going 
 to try some way to see you ladies, but the missionary 
 said you were going tp come to see him. I wanted 
 to tell you that I 'm going back with him to China, 
 and I 'd never have known him if it had n't been for 
 you." 
 
 "Going with him?" 
 
 "Yes, Miss Milman ; I 'm going to see if I can help 
 him — help him be a missionary, you know." Teddy's 
 unfamiliarity with the phrases of the "work" pleased 
 my ear. " I 've got a little money," he went on, " and 
 I feel as if I 'd like to do something — something reli- 
 gious sometime, and it seems as if this was my chance. 
 I fancy Emmy would like it. But I never could turn 
 in with church or chapel people here at home, I know 
 I could n't. They think a circus man ought to repent 
 a lot, you know, and that I ought to throw over the 
 show business for good, and I don't see how I can, and 
 
THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 17 
 
 I don't know that I want to. Long as Emmy did n't 
 cut it altogether, I don't know as I want to." 
 
 "But — what — how are you going to manage out 
 in China?" 
 
 " Why, you know the missionary 's different from 
 most religious folks ; he just takes things naturally ; 
 and I 've some money by me, and Emmy left me a 
 little — " He stopped a moment and stared fixedly into 
 space, then, shifting his position a little, went on in a 
 different tone : " I can go out there, and then he says 
 he can give me things to do for him as a lay worker, — 
 that's what he calls it, — and that I can be some use 
 to him, and that it '11 be easier for me to be in good 
 standing there than here. I don't care how it is, but 
 I 'd like to stay with him awhile and do something 
 some way for religion, you know, the real thing. Yes," 
 in answer to a question, " I suppose I '11 come back 
 and go in the circus after my money 's all gone. They 'd 
 never want to support me as if I was a real missionary. 
 I would n't be worth it ; but they 'U let me be a Chris- 
 tian there." 
 
 We shook hands with Teddy Catty at the door of 
 Burlington House, and I saw him no more ; but when 
 I called on the missionary he confirmed the story of 
 these queer plans. 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " Teddy seems so little capable of 
 the ordinary ways of entering into and feeling about 
 the religious life that I don't know what channel of 
 usefulness would be open to him here. He wants to 
 come with me, and it seems to me it is a good step ; 
 things are simpler out there. About his coming back 
 — I don't think he '11 come back. I think in time he 
 
18 THE CLOWN AND THE MISSIONARY. 
 
 cau be taken fully into the work. If he does return, 
 why, he '11 have a fuller religious experience than he 
 has now to faU back on." 
 
 And so, thanks somewhat to two highly modern 
 young women professing grave philosophical doubts 
 of the wisdom of foreign missions, this curious trans- 
 action came actually to pass, and the only circus clown 
 I ever knew, without renouncing what I shall call his 
 art, sailed away to China as a Christian missionary. . 
 
 No philosophical doubts could stop us from bidding 
 him God-speed, nor have they quenched, since that 
 day, a high degree of interest in Chinese missions. 
 
 Teddy Catty has not yet returned. We feel it would 
 be piquant to see him again fill his place in the ring, 
 but, withal, other than artistic sentiments will make 
 us contented if the missionary's prediction come true, 
 and the circus knows him no more. 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 i 
 
 •1 
 
 WAS at work in my little den at 
 the " Evening Appeal " office. The 
 paper had just gone to press, but I 
 was hurrying to finish before going 
 home a " special" for the next day's 
 issue. 
 
 Through my open door I could see the dingy desks 
 of the so-caUed editorial room, most of them vacated 
 now, and from the farthest corner came the drone 
 of a proof-reader. G-lancing at this familiar scene, I 
 stopped my writing a moment as my eyes rested on 
 his copy-holder. Instead of the rough young hobble- 
 dehoy who usually filled that place, there sat the most 
 young girl-like of young girls, making a sunshine in 
 the grimy place. She had soft light-brown hair drawn 
 smoothly back into the decentest of little knots ; she 
 turned toward me the neatest of little profiles; and she 
 devoted herself to her copy with the gentlest bend of 
 her smaU head. Just as I was idly recalling the fact 
 that old Martin the proof-reader had once confided to 
 me his desire to get this position for a daughter of 
 his, Bentley, the "star" reporter of the "Appeal," came 
 striding in and toward me. 
 
 19 
 
20 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 " Spare me a minute from the tariff?" he questioned, 
 standing in my doorway, pushing his silk hat to the 
 back of his red head with one hand, and resting the 
 other, which held a lighted cigar, against the door- 
 frame. 
 
 When I had declared my willingness to lay aside 
 for a time those political labors with which it pleased 
 Mr. Bentley to imagine me always occupied, he took 
 off his hat and laid it with his cigar on the steam- 
 heater outside, came in and seated himself astride my 
 vacant chair, and for a moment stared at me in silence 
 over the back of it. 
 
 When he spoke he said : " I 'm going to ask a favor 
 of you. Miss Addington, and I wish by a large major- 
 ity that it was you going to ask one of me. Oh, yes, 
 I know ; you 're a mighty nice, pleasant, accommo- 
 dating little girl, — that 's aside from my wanting 
 something out of you just now, — but you don't have 
 it any too soft down here, anyhow, and now I'm going 
 to ask you — I 'm ashamed of myself. But — well, let 
 me open with the curtain-music, and work up to the 
 last farewell by degrees. The beginning is" — he 
 stopped, waited an instant, got up and turned his 
 chair around, sat down properly, and took up his sen- 
 tence again as if he had never dropped it — " that I 'm 
 in love with and want to marry that little nimini-pim- 
 ini, white-faced girl of old Martin's out there," — then 
 relaxing a little from the uncommon seriousness with 
 which this was said, — "and I 'd give a hundred dol- 
 lars to be able, without arousing suspicion, to get hold 
 of that seat that Calvert has there by her. That ain't 
 sentiment, 'I-would-I-were-a-glove-upon-that-hand ' 
 
/1->1 
 
 WA 
 
 r.i| 
 
 jiH' ■'i"i"n!i"iii|iiM "ill' 
 
 ... ,,,J .1 .•.\.M,;.>,., 
 ij.ii I ,■ 
 
 j]|||||||l|"i|i||i ■ ■ 'll'liriiijiiji'r'fiiii.ii'i 
 I AM GOING TO ASK A FAVOR OF YOU." 
 
22 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 kind of business; it 's pure science. That desk is the 
 strategic key to the whole campaign. I 'm not in with 
 Calvert ; we 've been hating each other too long for 
 me to be able to work up an intimacy with him now 
 just previous to asking him to give me his desk, and 
 it would be too thin, anyhow. There is no way to get 
 that desk — here comes the climax," — Bentley stopped, 
 and looked at me deprecatingly, appeaHngly; I was 
 amused to see that he could command such an expres- 
 sion, — "unless" — he stopped again, scowled, and drew 
 a long breath in burlesque of his own discomfort and 
 his resolution, and, as he would have said, took the 
 plunge — " you 'd be so angel white as to let him come 
 in here. He 's been wanting to do that this long time, 
 not altogether because of his secret desire to be near 
 you, but he thinks it would be nice to be in here away 
 from the lower orders, and convenient to the encyclo- 
 pedias that he gets his little pieces out of." 
 
 The "Appeal's " limited library was in the room I 
 occupied. Expression of my willingness to share my 
 seclusion with Mr. Calvert did not still Bentley's de- 
 sire further to explain and justify himself. 
 
 " You see," he went on, " I 've got the campaign all 
 planned out, though I can't explain it in a word. I'm 
 perfectly willing to explain it, however. I 'm even 
 willing to admit that it would be a pleasure to me to 
 do so. I 'm too old and tough to talk about this kind 
 of thing to a man, but there 's a sensible diminution 
 of a dangerous pressure in letting off to you a little." 
 
 I shall utterly fail in giving any idea of Bentley 
 unless I am able to convey an impression of the per- 
 sonal unconsciousness that characterized his conver- 
 
BENTLBY-S SYSTEM. 23 
 
 sation. He expressed himself in the way that was 
 easiest to him — that is to say, as much as possible by 
 established formulas intelligently applied, sometimes 
 slang, sometimes quotations that became slang in his 
 mouth; but though he often felt the humor of his 
 own ideas, his verbal clothing of them rarely enough 
 attracted his attention. 
 
 He turned a look at once grave and quizzical through 
 the door and upon the copy-holder. 
 
 " Nothing 's going to change me about wanting that 
 little piece of propriety out there but getting her," he 
 remarked. 
 
 " No, not altogether quite so sudden as you might 
 think," he said when I expressed my interest in the 
 speed with which he had discovered his intentions ; 
 "she was here last month for a week — when you 
 were off doing the woman's convention. I have n't 
 ever gotten her out of my head since. It was sudden 
 enough, and I 'm hit hard enough. I 'm going to put 
 my system to work now for all it 's worth." He 
 turned back to me, hitched his chair half around so 
 that the distracting picture in the other room was out 
 of his range of vision, and went on : 
 
 " You 've heard that there is a right and a wrong 
 way of doing everything. Well, my system is the 
 one right way of going courting — when you're court- 
 ing a woman, that is ; I 'm sorry it 's not fitted to be 
 
 more use to you. I 've got faith in it, or I 'd be " 
 
 He shook his head slowly in a manner significant of 
 a most uncertain frame of mind. "You can see with 
 half an eye," he continued in a moment, " that that 
 little thing there has n't been put through any mill 
 
24 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 that would make her think — put her on the lookout 
 to get married. She is n't that kind, anyhow. That 's 
 why — one why — I want her, and of course that 's the 
 very reason I ain't likely to get her. This world 's run 
 that way." 
 
 Bentley gazed far out of the window, his upright 
 red hair looking even more astonished than usual as 
 the countenance it surmounted took on an uncom- 
 monly grim expression. Then, without moving his 
 head, he brought his eyes back to mine, looking at 
 me sidewise with a return of something of his usual 
 twinkle, a twinkle in eclipse, and declared : 
 
 " It 's the system I 'm asking you to pay tribute to. 
 I 'm free to confess, Miss Addington " — here a faint, 
 incredible shade of embarrassment seemed to cross 
 Bentley's countenance — "that I never truly loved 
 
 before ; but yet " Bentley lifted and knitted his 
 
 brows as he scratched his head with one finger, and 
 looked silently at me. 
 
 I was constrained to say, "Why, yes, Mr. Bentley; 
 'but yet '" 
 
 " Egg-zactly," he answered heartily ; " you are the 
 sort of person I like to talk to. Well, now, my system 
 is applicable in dealing with any young lady whose 
 good will you wish to gain — whose good will you 
 wish to gain," Bentley repeated, brightening with en- 
 joyment of the felicity of this phrase. 
 
 " I 've had it in shape pretty nearly ever since my 
 coming-out sociable at Cranberry Center. Not with 
 unvarying success; I don't say that; but it's done 
 its part, it 's done it weU. It is n't as if a profes- 
 sional beauty were using it exactly ; I know that. I 
 
BENTLEY'8 SYSTEM. 25 
 
 have faith in it — I always have had, that is; but now 
 the sight of that white mouse out there takes all the 
 starch out of me. Curious, is n't it, though I don't 
 suppose " 
 
 "I think, Mr. Bentley," I interrupted, "that you 
 are talking against time to put off telling me what 
 your system is." 
 
 " Get there every time, don't you ? " said Bentley, 
 admiringly. Then fixing a queer look upon me, in 
 which again appeared that amazing suggestion of 
 shyness, he said slowly : 
 
 " Hang around, and say nothing ; hang around in- 
 dustriously" — pause — "and say nothing, till more 
 or less urgently invited to. You press the button and 
 we do the rest; these directions are capable of fifty 
 different adjustments to suit the most complicated 
 case." Bentley was speaking these last sentences half 
 abstractedly, and watching my face anxiously. 
 
 As the mystic significance of this formula pene- 
 trated my brain I was moved to mirth — mirth that 
 was not lessened by the fact that I was visited by a 
 sudden illuminated vision of the system's possible 
 workings in practice — a vision which at once con- 
 vinced me of its value. 
 
 I wiped my eyes, and gave my hand to Bentley, 
 assiiring him that I believed he was master of a great 
 secret. 
 
 "You do really?" he broke forth eagerly and seri- 
 ously. " Say, Miss Addington, you would n't guy a 
 fellow in my fix now, would you? That 's only the 
 opening of the campaign, but that 's the great critical 
 period, don't you think? That 's the merit of the 
 3 
 
26 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 system, it attacks the opposing sex (opposing sex — 
 not bad, is it ?) through their curiosity, see, and they 
 quit being so all-fired opposing, early. Generally you 
 can count on 'em to become helpful pretty soon — 
 helpful in some degree ; then 's the time for the next 
 move. I 'm not much at explaining these psycho- 
 logical phenomena, but the system 's all right. ' This 
 conviction is arrived at through a priori reasoning, 
 and is confirmed by subsequent observation.' " Bent- 
 ley stood up as he delivered this last sentence, and 
 looked down upon me with a pleasant combination 
 of sad appeal and humorous patronage; he was quot- 
 ing from my maiden editorial, a document that had 
 filled him with mysterious mirth. 
 
 I began to arrange my papers for departure, as- 
 suring him in the mean while of my good will 
 toward his enterprise — that seemed the right word 
 for it. 
 
 He apologized for taking so much of my time, and 
 yet further explained his needs and plans, as, for in- 
 stance, his "scheme" for letting Calvert know that 
 the way was clear for him to change his desk, while 
 he was standing feeling for a match, and I was put- 
 ting on my hat and coat. 
 
 " You see," he said finally, barring my way a mo- 
 ment at the open door, " it is hopeless for me to try 
 to hang around in Hoboken — that's where old Martin 
 lives. I don't say I 'm sorry; anything but Hoboken. 
 But there it is ; it is perfectly clear that however I 
 might walk in the letter I 'd blow the whole spirit 
 of the system the minute I stepped my foot into the 
 parental flat. It 's too late to do the Damon and 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 27 
 
 Pythias act with old Martin. I 'm forced to abuse 
 your generosity. Thank you, thank you ; it 's been 
 a boon to talk to you, it has indeed. I '11 work the 
 racket with Calvert a little slow ; may be a day or two 
 before I get it around to him that the coast is clear. 
 Then I '11 have to wait iipon occasion for a good ex- 
 cuse to jump down there and take his place. If the 
 ofiice gets on to me there 's no telling what '11 be to 
 pay. Good day, good day; I'd jump at the chance to 
 help you get married." 
 
 Bentley picked up his hat and his cigar, put the 
 one on the back of his head and the other in his 
 mouth, just as he gave me what was in spirit a cour- 
 teous, grateful little nod of farewell. 
 
 Old Martin's little girl still bent her pretty head 
 studiously over her copy without a hair's-breadth's 
 variation of attitude. 
 
 Calvert had just come in and seated himself in 
 scowling introspective preoccupation at his desk. 
 
 That was the last I saw of the office for three 
 months. On the way home, through the untimely 
 movement of a car, I sprained my ankle, and for a 
 weary while was confined to the house. 
 
 In a few days, however, I began work again, writ- 
 ing as I lay on a sofa, and depending on messenger- 
 boys and visits of mingled business and condolence 
 from other members of the stafif to keep me in touch 
 with the ofi&ce. 
 
 I had been at home perhaps a month when one day 
 Mr. Maloney, a gentleman who had filled by turns 
 many different positions in the "Appeal" office, each, 
 as a rule, being less important than the last, was 
 
28 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 iishered in. The joy of gossip lighted up his bleary- 
 blue eyes. 
 
 "And how are you, Miss Addington?" he began — 
 he had a charming touch of brogue — "And indeed it 's 
 enough to make the Old One himself sorry for yon to 
 see what a good time you get out of the worst of occa- 
 sions. That is a bit of a paradox, you are saying, and 
 so is every other true thing that ever was remarked 
 in this topsyturvy world; and you are the one that 's 
 got the philosophical head on your shoulders to find 
 that out long ago, without waiting for an observant 
 old blind mole like me to tell you. Yes; I 'm an illus- 
 tration — allow me." — Maloney shakily stooped to pick 
 up my pen. — "I can serve as an illustration when 
 you write your celebrated treatise on the paradoxical. 
 And now don't interrupt me for the space of a min- 
 iite; you 're a sad chatterbox, Miss Addington." He 
 stopped and laid an unmanicured forefinger against 
 his grizzled temple. " I 'm preparing the way to a 
 graceful transition ; I would be telling you something 
 that is for your amusement. I am an observant old 
 mole, I was saying, and now I can't be giving you one 
 particle of useful information as to whether or no the 
 boss is going to sell the paper out to the Republicans 
 next week, nor as to what will become of you and me 
 if he does, though I dare say there are other blind 
 moles that have discovered all that; but I'm about to 
 tell you that that big brute Bentley is in love with 
 that old proof-reader's little girl, and none in the 
 offtce knows it but me and him, and it 's ten to one I 
 know it best ! Yes ; sure I thought you 'd be grateful 
 to me for a little diversion like that. It 's not every 
 
BBNTLEY'S SYSTEM. 29 
 
 day you can see, or even hear, what a brass monkey 's 
 like when it 's in love. Its experience much more re- 
 sembles that of a white man than you would ever 
 imagine, and that 's the truth. No; he 's not trying, 
 as he would say himself, worse luck to him — he 's not 
 just trying to mash her; he 's in love, I 'm telling 
 you, and his feelings are not dissimilar to those de- 
 picted by Tom Moore and other poets that the hulking 
 ignoramus never heard of — and there is the para- 
 doxical for you. Me bald spot was bigger than a 
 trade dollar before I could have believed such a con- 
 tradiction possible; so think what an inexplicable 
 surprise it must be to him, that has no more power of 
 ratiocination than me blackthorn there. I have been 
 industriously gathering the evidence for days, tiU me 
 conviction was complete, before I 'd come to tell you. 
 
 " Well, now, the first I noticed was the way he went 
 white and red when she came to speak to him about 
 his copy one day. It fills me with rage to think of 
 that, it does indeed. To think of him having the 
 additional impudence to exhibit a capacity for chang- 
 ing color like a girl ! '' 
 
 Maloney stayed an hour, and I am sure missed an 
 assignment, telling me with infinite relish of detail all 
 the ins and outs of Bentley's manoeuvers. 
 
 "He used to write exceptionally clear copy, you 
 know," said he ; " he has no more education than me 
 pet cat, but he can write like a grocer's clerk, and he 
 used to do it. I 've edited his copy for all he makes 
 such big money. When old Sheffield was managing 
 he used to call on me to help him out when he was 
 incapacitated with drink. He said — but it 's no 
 
30 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 matter what he said ; his betters have said more. But 
 I 've edited Bentley's copy when it was clear as print, 
 and now, if you 'U believe me, it looks little better 
 than your own, begging your pardon. That makes 
 business now and again with the proof-reader, you 
 understand, and somehow he 's hoeus-poeused things 
 till it seems as if Martin read nearly aU his stuff ; but 
 I 've not found out how he manages that." Maloney 
 added the last sentence in a tone of apologetic regret. 
 
 " Does the little girl notice all this, do you think ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 "Indeed and I wish you were down there to say 
 yourself. How can I tell ? The little white still ones 
 like that — the Old One himself can make out nothing 
 about them. And Bentley 's sly, wonderful sly, all 
 around. I don't understand him, though ; how should 
 ever an Irishman comprehend the way of the likes 
 of him with his brass and his slyness ? Wh}"- don't 
 he go at it like a man, and display to aU. the world 
 that he 's in love up to his eyes, and he 's proud of it? 
 That 's what a woman likes, be she old or be she 
 young." 
 
 Overweighted as I was with Bentley's secret, I was 
 tempted to edge upon it by discussing this point, and 
 I said that undoubtedly a woman was apt to like that 
 kind of tribute, but I was not sure that it always fol- 
 lowed that it made her like the man equally. 
 
 "And if he can give her what she likes, ought not 
 he to be satisfied, I say, and if she does not like him 
 so ardently, is n't there the less chance that he '11 
 marry her to the sorrow of both of 'em ? " 
 
 I told Maloney that he made my head ache, and be 
 
BENTLBY'S SYSTEM. 31 
 
 went away, pledging me to secrecy about Bentley. 
 Nevertheless I was not wholly surprised when the 
 next visitor from the ofSce quoted Maloney as author- 
 ity for the news that Mr. Bentley "was making — that 
 is, he was paying attention, not exactly paying atten- 
 tion, but Mr. Maloney thought he was going to pay 
 attention to that Miss Martin." 
 
 This visitor was the managing editor's type-writer, 
 an elderly young woman, not bad-looking, but with a 
 constrained manner, grayish hair, and a deep-lying 
 desire for human intercourse that should be labeled 
 intellectual, or, in her own phrase, to be sociable and 
 improve herself with literary people — literary people 
 being, in her opinion, any who earned a living by the 
 use or abuse of the written symbols of language. 
 
 " Mr. Maloney says that Mr. Bentley is — that he 
 cares about her," she said tentatively, sitting uncom- 
 fortably on the edge of her chair. 
 
 I conquered the inevitable throb of resentment that 
 I felt at the discovery, faintly expected though it was, 
 that Maloney was just as confidential with the type- 
 writer as with me. As I had felt myself rarely gracious 
 in appreciating Maloney's out-at-elbows charm, and 
 had credited him with a becoming sense of my kind- 
 ness, this required an instant's communion with 
 my higher self, and then I was rewarded by a de- 
 lighted perception of how utterly like Maloney it was 
 to lapse into intimate conversation with any petti- 
 coated object within his orbit. The appeal that these 
 storied garments would always make to him was 
 now reinforced, too, by that false sense of masculine 
 dignity which makes men slow to gossip of familiar 
 
32 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 personalities with one another. Even Maloney felt 
 constrained for a time to give his really interesting 
 and curious news only to the patronised sex, though, 
 to do the staff of the "Appeal " justice, the time soon 
 came when the artificial ice was broken, and Bentley's 
 hopes, fears, and prospects seemed to occupy them 
 night and day, to the manifest gain in color, vivacity, 
 and value of their conversation. 
 
 Bentley had not been to see me since my accident, 
 though he had sent me a bottle of champagne. I am 
 sure I don't know how Bentley's sympathy ever found 
 vent on occasions when a gift of champagne could 
 not express it ; perhaps such occasions never arose. 
 Soon after the type-writer's call I got a letter from 
 him. He said : 
 
 Have thought about elevating up to your maiden bower to see 
 how you are, but I hear, anyhow, every day, and, judging by 
 the way old Maloney blows about cheering your fevered brow, 
 I conclude you get about as much "Appeal" ofSee as you can 
 stand. Then I 've got that girl on the brain so bad that I 'm no 
 good. If I saw you I 'd talk about nothing else. I 'm working 
 the system for all it 's worth. There 's nothing else for me to 
 do. I 'U send you a bulletin semi-occasionally. I lose so much 
 sleep about the thing myself, I feel as if the suspense were hold- 
 ing you back too. 
 
 I gave her my buttonhole bouquet day before yesterday. I 've 
 come down to dressing like a regular cane-sucker. She put it 
 in a glass of water. Then I never let on 1 knew she was alive 
 for thirty-three hours and a half. To-day I broke out in a fresh 
 place, and asked her to have a glass of beer when the men got 
 some at noon. That was coming things too close together, but 
 I was nearly laid up with the strain of not looking at her for so 
 long, and that type-writing girl, the old one, was here, and I 
 gave her a drink, too. You see this is all according to the sys- 
 tem intellectually interpreted, the principle of the core of the 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 33 
 
 system being to keep yourself before the public and not show 
 your hand. That white rabbit did the unconscious act as if 
 she 'd been born before the footlights. She 's a tough one. It 
 must be put on ; she must have her little attention turned my 
 way some, don't you think? I 've been keeping this thing up 
 steady, but I 'm afraid I 'm losing my fine touch, and she not 
 breathed yet. It makes my head swim, Miss Addington. 
 
 I guess you 're putting up a thanksgiving prayer by this time 
 because I have been keeping away from you. All right, put up 
 another whUe you 're about it on account of the fact that I 'm 
 going to stay away. And I '11 make my other bulletins shorter ; 
 so there 's another item. 
 
 If you 'd think of something I oould do for you it would be 
 the best assignment I '11 get this month. I 'm in just as bad a 
 fix as to obligations as if you were being bored by Calvert every 
 day. You '11 have it all the worse in the end ; by the time you 
 get back he '11 believe he owns that room, and he '11 only let you 
 in as a thundering favor. 
 
 Bentley's next btdletin was made out in orthodox 
 form: 
 
 SLIGHT VICTOEY. 
 
 The Besieged weakens so far as to snub Besieger. After the 
 beer Besieger went into his shell. Forgot to say good morning. 
 Opened the window without asking permission. Besieged in 
 subsequent conversations was sternly businesslike in a mousy 
 manner. 
 
 N. B. After all, that 's about her usual act, so probably 
 there 's nothing in it after all. I wish a sprained ankle was all 
 there was the matter with me. 
 
 Yours truly, B. Bentlet. 
 
 The next voiced a surprising proposition. 
 
 I am thinking [it read] of doing the ancient honorable and 
 saying something to old Martin. I don't know anything more 
 about the little clock-works that run that tame lamb of his than 
 I did at first. You might as well try to agitate a Waterbury ; 
 
34 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 but the office seems to be getting on to me, cur-r-rses on 'em, and 
 I 'm afraid Martin may get fidgety. I bet it 's that gabby old 
 Irishwoman of yours that 's been giving me away. I 'd thrash 
 him for the cash he 's got in his clothes, just on the chance, if 
 any one would guarantee that it would pay for a drink. Then if 
 I blow off to him (Martin), ten to one he 'U develop a colossal 
 genius for making an ass of himself eighteen difEerent ways. 
 
 This was the last I heard directly from Bentley for 
 several weeks. In the mean time I occasionally had 
 news of him from other people. An offtce-boy came 
 up for copy one day, and after he had gotten it con- 
 tinued to hang around in an engaging manner. He 
 was a nice boyish boy, and spent his spare time writ- 
 ing to some one whom he addressed as "Miss Tooty 
 Fareman, dear Miss." 
 
 He was unnaturally careless of these letters (as of 
 aU other matters personal and professional), and once, 
 before realizing what it was, I read the opening sen- 
 tence of one. It ran, " The Hours I spend away from 
 Thee Tooty are no good whatever, but I know you 
 don't feel truely as I do." So you see he was prepared 
 by experience to take an interest in the game of love 
 wherever he saw it. 
 
 " Well, Jimmy, how are things going at the oflSce?" 
 I asked, by way of being friendly, while he stood 
 irresolutely by the door. 
 
 " They say — they say Mr. Bentley 's in love with 
 that Martin girl," said Jimmy, his tone even more 
 than his phrasing showing that his callow contempt 
 for feminine kind stiU included all of the sex but 
 Miss Fareman or her successor. 
 
 " Do you think he is ? " I asked. 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 35 
 
 " When I look at her I dou't," he asserted. " She 
 don't amount to nothin', but Mr. Bentley acts kind 
 of queer. He keeps looking at her when he thinks 
 n6body don't see him ; he don't notice me. He stops 
 still sometimes and stares right before him till some- 
 thin' makes him jump. I think that 's a bad sign, 
 don't you, Miss Addington ? " 
 
 At last the time came when I was able to make a 
 little trip down-town. I went to the ofSce, but not 
 to the editorial rooms, because they could be reached 
 only by means of a short flight of steps after leaving 
 the elevator, and I did not want to attempt the climb. 
 My errand was with that great person known here as 
 " the boss." 
 
 The boss's name was J. B. Higgens. He was a big- 
 brained, big-bodied, coarse-flbered, powerful old fel- 
 low, with a good deal of human nature in him. And 
 though all the other women, and most of the men, in 
 his employ stood in terror of him, I did not, and so 
 I did not, like them, altogether hate him. He was 
 highly skeptical of good always and anywhere, but 
 yet he had too much sense not to know that distrust 
 can overleap the mark, can be tripped in its own net, 
 and it always pleased me to see his suspicions both 
 sustained and held in check by his sagacity. 
 
 He met me with his gray eyes peering alertly out 
 from under his shaggy eyebrows and over his puffy 
 purple cheeks, to see whether after all I had really 
 been having such a bad time with that ankle. I had 
 come down to fight out a little question of salary, and 
 Mr. Higgens met me as both counsel and plaintiff on 
 the other side. The contest and its results are matters 
 
36 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 aside from this history, but we are concerned with the 
 touch of humanness that now and again, against his 
 will and his theories, diversified his simple brutality, 
 and to which we owe another glimpse of Bentley. 
 
 "The boss" always began an interview with me by 
 a distinct declaration, in manner, that I was an em- 
 ployee, and only an employee, and that he utterly re- 
 fused to take the slightest notice of the fact that I was 
 also a woman. A helpless sense of his own small, 
 much-degraded, much-outraged, but stUl not quite 
 eradicated masculine instinct of chivalry toward wo- 
 men underlay and mainly produced this bluster, and 
 a little tact could usually be counted upon to still it, 
 and even to play upon his weakness so far as to in- 
 sure the poor woman before him something like fair 
 treatment — a thing he was by no means in the habit 
 of according except on the self -respectful and unques- 
 tionably justifiable ground of immediate self-interest. 
 
 The queer thing was that this novel experience of 
 disloyalty to his principles nearly always pleased him 
 for a few minutes; he found it pleasant until the 
 predatory habits of a lifetime devoted to "business" 
 closed in upon him again, perhaps bringing about a 
 reactionary irritation. To-day, when the question of 
 salary was settled, he dropped back in his leather 
 chair and began a little conversation. He was always 
 above the familiar, cheap affectation of being impos- 
 sibly busy. 
 
 He asked where I lived, as he had done more than 
 once before, and what rent I paid, and what kind of 
 a doctor I had, and then he said inconsequently, with 
 his own odd compound of humor, suspicion, scorn. 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 37 
 
 and simple human interest: "You '11 be getting mar- 
 ried some of these days just like any other fool. They 
 say that ass Bentley is in love up there," pointing 
 with a rough, fat thumb to the ceiling. 
 
 "I knew he 'd turned almighty no account lately," 
 he went on; "so when I got hold of this I sent for 
 him and gave him some good advice; but he told me 
 he wanted to marry the girl. I had a notion to dis- 
 miss him on the spot." 
 
 He drew down his overhanging brows and looked 
 at me as piercingly as if he were moved by some 
 weightier motive than a simple elephantine, unscru- 
 pulous desire to betray me into an amusing burst of 
 sentiment. 
 
 I only said how justifiable such a step would be, 
 and how right he was in publishing Mr. Bentley's 
 unworthy sentiments. His temper ruffled a little. 
 
 "A good deal more justifiable than you 'd think," 
 he asserted aggressively. "I wish I 'd never knocked 
 under to hire women." 
 
 "Oh, well," I replied soothingly, "you can comfort 
 yourself with the reflection that you did it only to 
 save money." 
 
 He shot another scowling, scrutinizing glance at me. 
 
 " Do you know the girl ? " he asked. 
 
 No, I said ; I had never spoken to her. 
 
 " She must be a queer fool," went on the man of 
 reason. "Why don't she haul him in and get the 
 thing over with ? She can't expect to do any better." 
 
 I said that perhaps she did not want to marry him. 
 My employer snorted with genuine irritation. 
 
 " Want ! What else are you women always want- 
 4 
 
38 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 ing 1 " And then he added, after obviously swallowr 
 ing an oath, a special courtesy I much appreciated, 
 " Unless there is every reason why you should want 
 it, unless you 'd be some good to somebody married ; 
 then it 's a fact there is no telling what fine scruples 
 you '11 set up; there 's no counting — " Then, inter- 
 rupting himself, he said, with a change of tone, and a 
 return to his habitual grim rudeness of manner, a 
 rudeness differing from that he had previously shown 
 in this conversation, inasmuch as it put an end to 
 interchange, " I don't like lovering around the shop. 
 I ain't going to stand much of it." And with that he 
 began to shuffle the papers on his desk in aggressive 
 unconsciousness of my existence. 
 
 I got some pleasure out of the familiar comedy of 
 this dismissal and my own manner of exit, but still it 
 gave now, as always, a little special emphasis to the 
 distaste I felt for the down-town world, and I found 
 myself hurrying through my battle of business in the 
 counting-room, which was complicated by a frank es- 
 tablished system of small thefts from employees, that 
 I might the sooner get home, out of this wilderness 
 of primitive savagery modernly disguised, into a world 
 where civilization has made a little progress. I was 
 so glad to be in my own flat that not till after dinner 
 did I let my mind turn back to the afternoon's in- 
 cidents and inspect certain reflections which I was 
 half conscious I had made. I now discovered that I 
 thought Bentley's courtship might cost more than it 
 would come to. There had been something very sin- 
 ister in Higgens's manner while making his final re- 
 marks; he had disclosed then an irritation he had 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 39 
 
 masked before. I knew he would not discharge Bent- 
 ley, If he had been going to do that he would never 
 have hinted at it as a possibility ; and why should he 
 get rid of Bentley when Bentley would not care a rap, 
 and some other paper would receive the acquisition 
 of a highly enterprising and gifted reporter ? No ; it 
 was old Martin who would suffer, and to old Martin 
 the loss of his place would be a sadly important mat- 
 ter. He was past the age when men easily find new 
 masters; he had been in the "Appeal" offlce a deal 
 longer than the boss himself ; he was just the kind 
 of faithful old fixture that the boss had a tempera- 
 mental tendency to oust, despite even the whisper- 
 ings of self-interest, and self-interest could not be 
 counted on for much service here — fair proof-readers 
 are not rare. 
 
 I forgot Martin for a minute in the pleasure of 
 contemplating the folly of the philosophers who call 
 self-interest the dominating motive of man, seeing 
 that proposition just then in the light of the fact that 
 self-interest was the one principle that Higgens pro- 
 posed to himself, and that he lived in a world most 
 cunningly calculated to stiffen his adherence to it, and 
 that yet his whims, whims for showing his authority, 
 for humiliating those who seemed to be living inde- 
 pendent of his permission, for expressing his incon- 
 sistent dislike of low-toned temperaments, even, as I 
 have before pointed out, for indulging occasionally in 
 the exercise of the forbidden decencies of his nature 
 — that yet all these caprices, and others, frequently 
 swerved him from the straight and simple course that 
 he proposed to himself ; then I came back to the point 
 
40 BBNTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 that was making itself clear — that I could not bear 
 to think of poor old Martin getting into trouble. At 
 last, not being able to rid myself of this uneasiness 
 by the obvious consideration that it was none of my 
 business, I sat down and wrote a succinct statement 
 of my conversation with Higgens and of my fears to 
 Bentley, concluding with a piece of gratuitoiis advice 
 to the effect that he had better find some way of adapt- 
 ing his system to the exigencies of the boss's temper, 
 or abandon it for some less noticeable and generally 
 irritating method of attack. 
 
 The next day he made a short call upon me. 
 
 His red hair was as aggressively upright as ever, 
 his clothes as new, his silk hat as shiny, but still there 
 was a drooping sadness about the whole figure of the 
 man that these characteristic and contrasting details 
 only emphasized. 
 
 He brought his hat into my little drawing-room, 
 and deposited it with absent-minded automatic cau- 
 tion well under one corner of the sofa on which he sat. 
 
 He could hardly force himself from the contempla- 
 tion of his own woes long enough to ask me mechan- 
 ically : 
 
 " How 's your game 1 foot ?" — Bentley had his 
 
 own ideas of the proprieties — and he did not even 
 affect to listen to my reply. " Bet I 'm dished," he 
 said, with a tragic note in his voice. After a pause he 
 went on : "I've got to cut loose from the system, and 
 without that I ain't got no self-confidence — I ain't 
 got no self-confidence," he repeated with abstracted 
 solemnity. 
 
 I looked up to catch the conscious twinkle that I 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 41 
 
 involuntarily expected after this unprecedented state- 
 ment, but it was not forthcoming. In the stress of 
 this hour Bentley felt that he had come upon a dis- 
 heartening lack in his nature. "The system ain't 
 fazed her not a nickel's worth. She 's just where she 
 was six weeks ago." 
 
 " Maybe not," I ventured. 
 
 "Aw, yes, she is; she ain't a second Sarah Bern- 
 hardt." A moment's silence, and then he went gloom- 
 ily on : "I 've out with it to old Martin, and now I 'm 
 going to out with it to her, sink or swim. I swore old 
 Martin to secrecy, and I guess he 's been all right 
 there; he seemed too ashamed to be likely to talk 
 about it." 
 
 " Did he; did he reaUy?" I exclaimed, laughing with 
 the pleasure of coming on this phase of Martin, and 
 forgetful for the moment of my sympathy with Bent- 
 ley. "Tell me about it." 
 
 Bentley gave me a look in which vague reproach 
 and vague sympathy mingled; he too in his way had 
 an artistic enjoyment of life, and before he realized 
 that he was descending from the pedestal where he 
 and sorrow sat, he found himself telling how Martin 
 was not up to the ancient honorable methods, and 
 felt as shy as if some one were proposing marriage to 
 himself. "At last," said Bentley, "he piped his eye 
 and said he had a large family, but he never could 
 bear to have Linnie — that 's its little name — think 
 he wanted to get rid of her. He seemed to think, if I 
 was doing the ancient honorable so far, I 'd be sure 
 to go the whole animal, and want my bride whether 
 she wanted me or not. I told him I was n't ancient 
 
42 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 and honorable to that extent. I drew the line at the 
 girl ; I 'd court her, if he pleased, entirely for myself, 
 and she and I would settle things between us. I was 
 only showing him my hand, not asking any help in 
 the game. I was glad I spoke to him, because for 
 one thing it showed — well, for several reasons, though 
 she could n't ever have been spoiled and made like 
 some, anyhow. Much good it all is to me," he went 
 on dejectedly, "when she dissembles her love and 
 kicks me down-stairs." He looked far out of the 
 window and over the chimney-tops. 
 
 He had passed the light-hearted stage in which he 
 liked to characterize the girl he loved in the names 
 he gave her, and in his depression was taking refuge 
 with all mankind in the significant pronoun. 
 
 I was moved to apologize for having added to his 
 perplexities. He waved me aside. "O cracky, I don't 
 want to lose old Martin his place, and I bet you 're 
 right about it. That old" — Bentley paused and drew 
 two long dashes in the air — " he 's capable of any- 
 thing; besides," his voice sinking to a graver note, 
 " I 'd 'bout made up my mind to take the jump any- 
 how. It 's just as weU. The system 's broken down. 
 I never thought she caved in a hair's-breadth but 
 once, and I guess I was wrong then. Anyhow, she 
 never did it again, and one swallow don't make a sum- 
 mer. Good-by ; I might as well go." 
 
 He began to look for his hat in a preoccupied way. 
 I got it from under the sofa for him, and he left. 
 
 Two days later I received this telegram : 
 
 The country saved. B. Bentley. 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 43 
 
 This was followed by a note asking me to let him 
 bring his " girl " up to see me. I doubted whether 
 Linnie Martin cared as much to come as he cared to 
 have her; but her father and I had always been good 
 friends, — that is, we had always taken particular 
 pains to be civil to each other and to exchange confi- 
 dences about the weather when, as might happen 
 twice a month, our paths crossed, — so I hoped this 
 would in some measure neutralize the dislike of me 
 that the recital of my amiable influence upon her des- 
 tiny would naturally inspire. 
 
 Bentley brought her to the flat very soon, staying 
 only a few minutes himself, but taking pains to assure 
 me that the office was perfectly in the dark as to the 
 outcome of his courtship, and that all the affectation 
 of indifference could do was being done to soothe Mr. 
 Higgens. " That is," said Bentley, pointing with his 
 thumb, "she 's doing just like she always did, and 
 I 'm doing just like her." Next week, he said, she 
 would leave the office. 
 
 Bentley wore a new aspect; there were, though my 
 report of the interview so far may not show it, touches 
 of dignity and deference and reticence in his manner 
 and expression that, though they did not change his 
 familiar guise or tone to a casual glance or a half- 
 listening ear, were novel and pleasing to an acuter 
 observation. 
 
 He soon declared that he must go out to " see a 
 man," and said he would come back for Linnie in half 
 an hour. He came to me and, with a speaking gaze 
 charged with confidential communications, wrung my 
 hand till he brought tears to my eyes and to his own. 
 
44 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 He made it clear that he was giving me the glory of 
 his success — an honor to which I had not the least 
 claim ; but I understood the state of mind in which 
 it pleased him to lavish his weUing gratitude to things ' 
 in general upon some definite and tangible object. 
 
 Then he left me alone with the small woman who 
 had been causing all this pother. 
 
 You could see in every line of her attitude and in 
 every detail of her neat, appropriate gown and jacket 
 and hat what an example of the discreet virtues and 
 the pleasing proprieties she was born to be. 
 
 I gazed upon her with appreciative admiration min- 
 gled with fear, for I was not inspired with the greatest 
 confidence in her powers of conversation, though she 
 had gotten through her greetings nicely enough. I 
 did her injustice : she was entertaining. Despite all 
 her innate sense of propriety and reserve, she was 
 sufiBciently moved by her engagement to want to talk 
 about it and " him " ; and this state of mind always 
 may be confidently counted upon to furnish enter- 
 tainment of one kind or another. 
 
 She first said, prettily, that Mr. Bentley had told 
 her how kind I had been in thinking about her father. 
 " It would be awful bad for pa to lose his place," she 
 said, and I must explain that the written words do 
 much injustice to the effect of her soft speech. " I 
 think it will be better for me to stop going there as 
 soon as I can, and then Mr. Higgens — if he don't see 
 me to remind him — he'll forget aU about — about 
 what he did n't like." And she looked down, and 
 carefully measured off small sections of her pocket- 
 handkerchief, and flushed a little. 
 

 
 'SHE SPOKE OP HEK ENGAGEMENT." 
 
46 BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 
 
 I was struck with her comprehension of Higgens's 
 childishness, typical hard-hearted business potentate 
 that he was, and said so: 
 
 Her color rose and faded a time or two before she 
 said, as she measured her handkerchief yet more 
 scrupulously : 
 
 " Mr, Bentley says you were very kind to him, that 
 you helped him get that — that desk." And she 
 looked up with a slight, shy smile. 
 
 Yes, I said ; I thought I knew Mr. Bentley's designs 
 some time before she did. I began to see that it 
 would be like stopping a process of nature to take 
 her away from this subject. 
 
 "I did n't know them till two days ago," she said, 
 looking attentively at the toes of the boots crossed in 
 front of her, and as if she had more in her mind than 
 she was saying. I waited. " I felt — I don't know 
 how." 
 
 " Did you fall in love at first sight too, as Mr. Bent- 
 ley did?" 
 
 She shook her head in silence. " No 'm," she said 
 after a moment ; " I thought he was the — the plain- 
 est gentleman in the offtce when I first went there, 
 though of course — raising her voice a little — "I 
 could see he was very ^«e-looking ; but I did n't know 
 how smart he was then, and how everybody thought 
 of him. That is n't what makes me care for him 
 though," she added quickly. 
 
 " Well, now," I asked judicially, " what does make 
 you care for him ? That wUl be very interesting to 
 hear." 
 
 This scientific method of inquiry seemed to suit her 
 
BENTLEY'S SYSTEM. 47 
 
 t 
 
 own sense of the serious value of the investigation. 
 She turned her head on one side, and looked at me 
 with an expression of intent intellectual preoccupa- 
 tion, as a pigeon might look if it gave its mind to 
 mathematics. 
 
 " I don't think I can tell exactly," she said at last, 
 with an inflection that recognized the mystery and 
 novelty of this inability. "At least,'' she went on 
 painstakingly and slowly — "of course I ought to 
 care for him, when he 's so — so nice, but I don't know 
 as I can tell just what made me think about it first, 
 only he acted so queer. Sometimes for a long time — " 
 She stopped, cogitated, then went on. " Sometimes 
 it seemed as if he felt one way, and sometimes as if 
 he did n't; that made me think about him at first, I 
 suppose, and then he just went on acting queer all 
 the time." 
 
 The system — was not this a disclosure that the 
 system had done its work after all? 
 
 "And you went on thinking about him more and 
 more," I said. "Mr. Bentley did not think you 
 thought about him at all." 
 
 " He don't think so now," said Linnie Martin. " I 
 did n't care for him — much — till — until he asked 
 me, and I don't think gentlemen ought to know — 
 ought to know everything." 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 IT was eight o'clock on 
 a clean-washed, clear- 
 
 cut, sun-bathed October morn- 
 in g when my mother and I climbed 
 into the second-best buggy behind old 
 white Telly for a twenty-mile drive " up 
 the country." The Judge waved us a 
 iiourtly adieu; little Tom and his sister 
 hooked themselves on behind to go with 
 us to the big gate, the opening of which 
 turnished them with a reason for being; 
 -Liint SaUy called out from the back 
 gallery last messages to Cousin Nancy; 
 the negroes collected at doors and win- 
 dows to see us off, and we roUed gently away into the 
 fairy-land of unfamiliar roads. 
 
 Our route wound here and there past fodder-stacked 
 corn-fields, brier-grown old pastures, irregular old 
 farm-houses sleeping in the sunshine, populous negro 
 cabins, and, last and best, through vine-tangled, en- 
 chanting, enchanted woods. The country we traversed 
 had for our esthetic interests the advantage of being 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 49 
 
 poor and sparsely settled ; as we went on it became 
 still rougher and lonelier. When the sun set behind 
 us we were at a fork in the road, in the fullest uncer- 
 tainty as to our proper route, and with the last house 
 three miles behind us. 
 
 Our last instruction had been to "Jes keep the plain, 
 big road right on to Squire Claymore's." 
 
 One road, so far as we could see, was as big as the 
 other. One led down into a swampy wood that looked 
 in the failing light as if it might be all too fruitful of 
 adventure. The other took its way over a high, open 
 country and seemed safer and pleasanter, and on this 
 ground we logically chose it. Soon the open country 
 ended, and we found ourselves in something worth 
 calling a forest; it grew denser and darker as we ad- 
 vanced; the night was settling down upon us. 
 
 " There are immense tracts like this up here in the 
 barrens," said my mother in a voice that assumed the 
 tone of a philosophical statement, but which rebel- 
 liouslyvibratedwith a growing uneasiness. "I thought 
 back there, when we first got into the woods, that the 
 road looked like an old unused track. I suppose we 
 might drive on so all night." 
 
 Just then there appeared at Telly's head the dark 
 figure of a man. Vague horrors — thoughts of escaped 
 convicts, desperate negroes — pressed on my brain, but 
 my mother showed that she had not forgotten back- 
 woods manners and methods and pluck. She stopped 
 the buggy, and in tones as friendly and confident as 
 she could make them asked where we were. 
 
 "Wale, ma'm," said the dim and dreadful figure, in 
 an amiable masculine drawl, "it air called 'twext four 
 5 
 
50 A JEST OF PATE. 
 
 an' five miles to Squar' Claymore's, though it air my 
 conviction it air nearer five than four. Your road lay 
 p'intedly the other way about from the way you air 
 a-comin'. I would say to you that you stand a power- 
 ful pore chance of gettin' to the Squar's to-night, an' 
 I should be proud to have you stay at my house. Jes 
 drive along a yard or two: there 's my house, an' sech 
 as 't is you air freely welcome to it." 
 
 Before us was a clearing, and in the midst stood a 
 well-built, double log-house the open doors and win- 
 dows of which poured out upon the night the rich 
 and changeful lights of hickory fires. The sight was 
 good to the eyes. We gladly accepted its master's 
 invitation, and alighted. 
 
 In this haven of quiet and homely comfort I met 
 one of our "blind and blundering race" whose history 
 "the Aristophanes of Heaven" doubtless found un- 
 commonly amusing. She hardly seemed food for 
 Olympian mirth that night, she was such a serious, 
 modest little maid. Of course she was fair to look 
 upon, else who would care to write her story ? 
 
 She was too grave in line to be exactly pretty, and 
 too slight and small to be beautiful, and the word 
 handsome was made for earthlier beings; but with 
 her severe linsey-woolsey gown defining her figure so 
 sweetly that a sculptor might have joyed in it, and 
 with her straight, pure yellow hair in a knot that was 
 Greek without knowing it, and with her knitting to 
 give her grace, she filled me with delight. I longed 
 to hurl her straightway into some vague bright 
 romance. 
 
 My mother fell to talking with the loquacious father 
 
A JEST OP FATE. 51 
 
 of early days in Tennessee, of old settlers, and pan- 
 thers, and early politics. She had warmed to him 
 from the moment she saw Henry Clay's picture above 
 the door. The sons sat about in heavy hospitable dis- 
 comfort ; the fat mother dozed in the corner. I roasted 
 before the fire tiU I was drunk with sleepiness, and 
 Patsy, the yellow-haired little damsel, was detailed to 
 show me to bed. She led me from the fire-lighted 
 room across a passage, roofed, but not closed at the 
 ends, where for a moment we were in the dark still 
 night, and could see, over the close black woods, the 
 sparkling stars, and could hear distant wild noises. 
 
 With serious courtesy she showed me into a big 
 square room like the one we had left, and like it abun- 
 dantly furnished and decorated by a blazing fire. Two 
 fonr-post bedsteads, piled high with feather-beds and 
 adorned with gorgeous clean patchwork, stood in im- 
 posing array one behind the other at one side. An 
 ancient colored picture of a family of albinos hung 
 against the naked wood of the wall. A low splint- 
 bottom chair was drawn up to a scrupulously swept 
 hearth. The crisp night air had waked me up. Patsy 
 and I eyed each other. 
 
 ". Don't you want to sit down here with me awhile V 
 I said. 
 
 " Yessum," said Patsy, seating herself demurely, but 
 with bright eyes; and not tiU. she was quite settled 
 did she add in a deprecatory tone, " but I 'm af eard 
 I 'm keepin' you up; I reckon you 'd ought to be goin' 
 to bed atter your journey." 
 
 Patsy was a backwoodsman, and with all her de- 
 mureness was devoid of the shyness characteristic of 
 
52 A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 that very different person, the merely rural citizen. I 
 thought her interest in Strathboro' extraordinary, as 
 she gently plied me with questions about that sleepy 
 little town. 
 
 "Strathboro' Is mighty enticin', I reckon ; you don't 
 live there neither, do you ? You 've lots of kinsfolks 
 there, though, hain't you 1 I 've heern as Judge Kil- 
 braith have a marvel of a house. He 's your uncle, 
 ain't he? 
 
 "His boys is small, ain't they? Miz Claymore's 
 is mighty nigh growed up " ; and here Patsy paused 
 in her soft prattle to get her knitting out of her 
 pocket. I was keeping her going as tactfully as I 
 could. 
 
 " Your cousin Walter air mightily interested in the 
 farm. He do think, I heern the men say, that he can 
 improve the Ian'. Your cousin Elmore air makin' a 
 lawyer of hisself, they say, down to Strathboro'." 
 
 She was a brave little maid and as full of skilled 
 duplicity as a mother-bird, but nature played her a 
 cruel trick, and as on the last word she lifted her eyes 
 from a troublesome stitch in her knitting a tidal wave 
 of a blush drowned her. I bent studiously over the 
 shoe I was unbuttoning, and said yes, that Elmore 
 was studying law with my uncle, Judge Kilbraith, 
 and that he did this and wore that and intended the 
 other, all in the most incidental manner. I thought 
 the pleasure of hearing about him would soonest ef- 
 face the bitter consciousness of the blush. In taking 
 this course I suppressed my own sentiments. 
 
 I detested my cousin Elmore Claymore. He was a 
 curious being, as beautiful as an angel, with straight. 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 53 
 
 strong features, large, limpid, dark-lashed gray eyes, 
 an exquisite smile, and a wonderful inexplicable imi- 
 tation intellect. I don't think any one ever quite un- 
 derstood what he was and what he was not, and by 
 the mass of his acquaintances the sham character of 
 his cerebration was never detected. He made speeches 
 at meetings — election meetings, town meetings, tem- 
 perance meetings, and Sunday-school picnics. All ora- 
 torical opportunities were embraced, and his speeches 
 were full of metaphor and alliteration, and were in- 
 formed with a really splendid temperamental fire — 
 which had nothing whatever to do with his ideas, or 
 rather which successfully survived their absence. 
 
 Southerners of all classes worship intellect, and are 
 much given to regarding it as something quite too 
 bright and good for human nature's daily food, and 
 not to be judged by the coarse logic of every-day ex- 
 istence. Nowhere else is the failure of the man who 
 " would have done great things in Paradise " looked 
 upon with such kindly respect; and this beautiful 
 trait, the awe of what they can see and can't see over, 
 serves well many a harebrained crank and rattle- 
 headed charlatan. 
 
 Elmore Claymore was not exactly either a crank 
 or a charlatan. He had flashes of appreciation and 
 curious flickerings of thought through his rhetoric. 
 Of course he was made to be an actor if only he had 
 ever heard of such a thing ; it is odd to think, with 
 his beauty and his ardor, what a great man he might 
 have become. In the world in which he lived I saw 
 nothing before him but ignominious failure; it did 
 not seem to me that he had the mental coherence to 
 
54 A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 see that the whole of a thing is equal to the sum of 
 all its parts. 
 
 I could fancy him going off: "What is the whole 
 of a thing equal to ? What can it be equal to in this 
 land of equality, in this reunited Union, but to its 
 own unity, each individual in one common brother- 
 hood?" and with luminously pale face and glowing 
 leyes feeling that he had made a step toward bridging 
 the bloody chasm of civil war. 
 
 My uncle, John Kilbraith, a grimly humorous and 
 somewhat cynical personage, saw through Elmore 
 completely. He was, I believe, the chief joy of Uncle 
 John's life : to see the impression that he made on 
 people, to watch him sway a crowd with his passion- 
 ate, sounding swash, to observe his deepening regard 
 for himself, were pleasures which never palled. 
 
 I burst forth one day, in the presence of several 
 people, with my estimate of Elmore's powers, and he 
 stopped me with a look. 
 
 When we were alone he said : " Remember, if you 
 could unmask Elmore and have him recognized as a 
 fool, you 'd deal him a death-blow, and his mother as 
 well." 
 
 " But, uncle," said I, " you — don't you suppose — 
 you must — that life will unmask him? You don't 
 think he can go on through actual affairs and be esti- 
 mated as these school-girls estimate him ? " 
 
 Judge Kilbraith looked at me with curious scorn. 
 
 "You don't know much about actual affairs, do 
 you ? When you do you '11 find out that it is not in 
 this world that they reduce men to their fighting 
 weight. That 's an illusion. Some affaix'S may. You 'd 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 55 
 
 think war would as much as anything, but it did n't. 
 Ask any soldier if the best men got the best places. 
 I suppose a professor of mathematics must know 
 something of his business, and in the dry-goods trade 
 an eye on the market may be imperative ; but though 
 a lawyer does n't have as good a chance as a doctor 
 to be a fraud, I can tell you that there are more things 
 than law or logic that decide his fate. Elmore stands 
 a good chance for a good living. Lawyers may have 
 their opinion about him, but as long as he has juries 
 on his side it will not become the lawyers to express 
 themselves; and until he gets a chance to establish 
 himself with the juries the less his kinsfolk do to dis- 
 count him the better for the family." 
 
 Patsy listened and knitted as I chattered on about 
 my various relatives, particularly Elmore, and she oc- 
 casionally brought forth a question or remark. 
 
 " Miz Claymore 's mighty proud. She air good to 
 rale pore white folks and to niggahs, but she 's ha'sh 
 and proud with 'e neighbors which ain't pore and 
 ain't quality," she said once. She trusted herself no 
 more on the fatal name, and this apt and true charac- 
 terization of Cousin Nancy, whose darkest dread was 
 that of becoming or having any of her children be- 
 come one with the people around her, was her nearest 
 approach to the subject of Elmore or her relations 
 with him or his family. She did not quite recover 
 her equanimity, and when she went to go the faint 
 color crept reminiscently up her snowdrop face. 
 
 Evidently this homespun small person belonged to 
 the class of women in whom sex and pride are forever 
 united as one thing ; whose sense of femininity and 
 
56 A JEST OP PATE. 
 
 dignity are one. To have her heart's blood thus turn 
 rank and successful traitor to her heart's secret — it 
 struck me as a small tragedy. After she had gone I lay 
 deep cuddled in my clean, fresh feather-bed, watching 
 the firelight flicker on the big polished cherry knobs 
 of my four-post bedstead, trying to see the case in the 
 humorous light which I felt it should by rights pres- 
 ent. But no ; the humor was there certainly, but my 
 mind steadfastly refused to be amused, and I slipped 
 into sleep with a weird confusion in my dreams be- 
 tween Patsy knitting steadfastly by the fire and the 
 sweet ringing notes of the fatal horn in " Hemani." 
 
 Naturally the next morning the whole matter 
 looked very commonplace. Only Patsy's fresh and 
 gentle loveliness, as she came in with a bucket of 
 spring water, saved me from so reacting on my 
 own emotions as faintly to detest her ; so much are 
 we ourselves akin to the capricious powers we rail 
 against. But I melted completely when she stood 
 gazing at me silently and wistfully as I put the last 
 touches to my toilet while old Telegraph and the 
 buggy awaited us at the door. All the yearning and 
 wonder about the great world of Strathboro', all my 
 fascination as its representative, and more still as a 
 kinswoman of Elmore's, were expressed in her seri- 
 ous, fine little face. 
 
 To me it was anything but an anticlimax when she 
 touched with reverent finger my jacket and half whis- 
 pered, "Air that the fashion ? " 
 
 The poor little daughter of Eve, with her heavy 
 heart, and yet room in it for this sweet interest in 
 that great abstraction, the Fashion ! 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 57 
 
 Before I left I promised to send her patterns of 
 every visible garment I wore. I saw her again sooner 
 than I expected ; indeed, there was then little reason 
 to suppose we should meet again. 
 
 "We were to stay but a week at Cousin Nancy's, and 
 we would then pass over the utmost boundary of her 
 world into that unimagined universe beyond Strath- 
 boro'. Cousin Nancy's sternly handsome profile grew 
 sterner when I attempted to gossip lightly about our 
 hosts the Nonlys. Through a long and lonely life she 
 had too conscientiously asserted her class superiority 
 — such as it was — against poverty and a mesalliance 
 and an untoward environment to find it practicable 
 to approach the subject of the Nonlys in this easy, 
 matter-of-course, undefining way. Moreover, it ap- 
 peared that the Nonlys were in a measure disgraced 
 among their own class. 
 
 " Bob Nonly is a distiller," said Cousin Nancy finally 
 and with a final air. Up to a recent date the temper- 
 ance sentiments of the South found their chief if not 
 their sole expression in the social ostracism of all 
 but the largest and most prosperous of the dealers in 
 spirituous liquors. The thoroughgoing nature of 
 this. ban atoned by severity upon the weak for its 
 relaxation in favor of the strong, and relieved most 
 minds of any sense of further obligation to the morals 
 of the question. 
 
 Bob Nonly, we were told, now found his associates 
 chiefly among the neighboring mountaineers, whose 
 code on whisky-making is even more liberal than the 
 Government's; and his children were growing up 
 "with little more manners or learning than if they 
 
58 A JEST OP FATE. 
 
 lived on the mountain themselves," proceeded Cousin 
 Nancy, warming to the subject with human interest 
 despite herself. 
 
 Two days later Elmore unexpectedly appeared 
 from Strathboro'. I was sitting wrapped in a shawl 
 on the lop-sided old porch steps, watching the sunset 
 between the two holly-trees at the paintless old gate. 
 Elmore came riding up, managing a little flourish of 
 a dramatic entrance even after such a journey. He 
 hitched his horse at the gate, — he missed the luxury 
 and effect of throwing the reins to one of Judge Kil- 
 braith's negroes, — and came up to me with a smile 
 like an angel's for sweetness and light. 
 
 "Are you enjoying the beauties of nature, cousin?" 
 quoth he. 
 
 " I am watching the sun go down," I said. 
 
 He turned and looked long and silently, his soft 
 hat in his hand on his hip, — you would have loved 
 him if you 'd seen him, — and then he said, " I 've 
 come up to drink at this fountain with you for a few 
 days." 
 
 That night, as I was roasting a sweet potato in the 
 ashes and Elmore was attitudinizing and watching me, 
 I said : 
 
 " We spent our first night up here with one of your 
 neighbors; we got lost, and were taken in by the 
 Nonlys." 
 
 Aha, my young man, so! He did not stir; his 
 expression did not obviously change ; but, more sig- 
 nificant, he grew fixed and still where he stood. 
 
 " I was delighted with them all, but I fell in love 
 with the girl," I went on. 
 
A JEST OF PATE. 59 
 
 " For the Lord's sake, Adeline, don't go to talking 
 about Nouly girls here," broke in Cousin Nancy 
 sharply from the other side of the fireplace, and giv- 
 ing one quick glance at Elmore ; " there are entirely 
 too many such around here. I should think you and 
 Elmore could find plenty of Strathboro' young people 
 to talk about." 
 
 My chief occupation this week was going on long, 
 irregular rambles over the rough, wild country. The 
 loveliest place I found was a little lonely, laurel-em- 
 bowered spot around a moss-banked spring, where 
 summer longest tarried. After two visits of course I 
 felt that I had created it and that it existed only for 
 me. How far egotism may mislead one I found when 
 I discovered that it was a lovers' trysting-place. 
 
 I was coming through the woods with old Tige, the 
 yellow farm dog, at my heels, when suddenly through 
 the bushes I saw Elmore and Patsy ! More than that, 
 he was at that moment kissing her, and doing it very 
 prettily, I must admit. 
 
 In such case there can be no question that it is the 
 miserable intruder who is most to be pitied. Lovers 
 are buoyed up by the complacency peculiar to their 
 state. 
 
 They saw me when it was just too late. For some mo- 
 ments my own discomfort occupied all my thoughts; 
 when I saw anything it was that Elmore was much 
 disconcerted, and that Patsy, despite her conflicting 
 emotions, was not. Patsy plainly felt that her blush 
 at last was justified. She had not expressed unmaid- 
 enly emotion about an indifferent stranger, but quite 
 maidenly emotion about her own lover, and amid 
 
60 A JEST OF PATE. 
 
 sentiments now she was shyly pleased to have things 
 set right before me. No conventional views about 
 clandestine love-affairs imposed upon Patsy; in fact, 
 I don't suppose she had ever heard of any. All be- 
 trothals are, I believe, more or less clandestine among 
 her class until actual preparations for the wedding 
 begin, and the most advanced individualism regard- 
 ing matrimonial contracts prevails in this otherwise 
 imevolved society. 
 
 "I am very unfortunate," I stammered. "I beg 
 your pardon a thousand times; but, as I have dis- 
 covered the secret, I trust you 'U accept my congratu- 
 lations, Elmore," and I found myself with one arm 
 around Patsy and my hand in his. 
 
 Elmore was very white, but he had an instinct for 
 ceremonial that came to his aid. 
 
 I expressed myself quite sincerely in what I said. 
 My interpretation of the situation was based princi- 
 pally on the absence of any shade of real mortification 
 in little Patsy's pretty confusion and alarm; the alarm 
 was shown in anxious glances at Elmore, and had ref- 
 erence to himself alone. She turned her face, glow- 
 ing and dewy, up to me, and then buried it on my 
 shoulder in the prettiest way. 
 
 Elmore looked dubiously and with some bewilder- 
 ment at me, and then with a gleam of something like 
 spontaneous tenderness at her.' These occasional notes 
 of sincerity in the midst of his unconscious artificiality 
 always particularly aggravated my feeling against 
 him, they so interfered with a ready comprehensible 
 summing up of him. A man of straw it is easy enough 
 to consider, but a man of straw with organs, passions. 
 
A JEST OP FATE. 61 
 
 affections, this is what tests the knowledge of human 
 nature. 
 
 Naturally I took myself and the discreet Tige away 
 as soon as I could. That evening, as the stars were 
 coming out, I went and stood beside Elmore at the 
 lonely old gate under the holly-tree. A whippoorwill 
 was calling in the woods close by. 
 
 " Though I can't see any good reason for it," I be- 
 gan, "I feel dreadfully guilty about disturbing you 
 to-day." 
 
 He turned with an uneasy look around and a softly 
 whispered, "Sh-h-h-h!" 
 
 "Indeed, Elmore, you need not be so uncomfortable; 
 I need hardly say I hope that I shall be very careful 
 not to expose a secret I have found out in this way. 
 I know that you must be meaning to act for the best; 
 how could you help it with such a dear little girl to 
 guard ! " 
 
 He looked at me dubiously. 
 
 "She is mighty uneducated," he advanced tenta- 
 tively. 
 
 "She is one in a million. She has an exquisite 
 nature and a charming, rational, observant mind" 
 (" much as appearances are against her in falling in 
 love with you," I put in mentally), " and her beauty is 
 delightful." 
 
 Elmore's pleased surprise overtopped other feelings 
 for the moment. He had a great faith in my opinion. 
 Had I not spent a winter in Nashville, besides various 
 unguessable experiences in that dim, unpleasant, but 
 impressive world, " the North " ? 
 
 "I think she has a fine native intellect," he said 
 6 
 
62 A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 finally — he always wanted to talk to me about intel- 
 lect. " But of course before I can marry her she wiU 
 have to be educated some way, and then my mother 
 would rather see me dead." 
 
 " No doubt, but that is a reflection that belonged to 
 an earlier stage of the game. I am afraid there are 
 sad possibilities of constancy in the small Patsy, and 
 that she will wait for you indefinitely instead of throw- 
 ing you speedily over, as she should do." 
 
 Elmore stared. 
 
 " Patsy is so clever that I don't doubt that if you 
 began tutoring her a little yourself, you could very 
 soon help her to the essential thing — an ability to 
 speak and write Engli^sh as well as the people you '11 
 take her among." 
 
 "I think that is probably a good suggestion, cou- 
 sin; I shall consider the feasibility of putting it in 
 practice." 
 
 It was now dark, but I could see my kinsman's 
 melancholy poet's profile cut against the western sky, 
 and to look at it made me melancholy too. I was glad 
 to leave him and the falling dews and the disconsolate 
 whippoorwill and go into the firelighted house, toast 
 my toes, and tell myself that it was not my affair. 
 I saw that Patsy's fate hung on painfully slender 
 chances, and I was young enough to credit my im- 
 pression of the seriousness of the issue for her. I 
 resented the way I was disquieting myself on her 
 account. 
 
 That resentment was rather gratuitous, for Heaven 
 knows I ceased to concern myself about her soon 
 enough. We came to New York for the winter, and 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 63 
 
 my own life closed in around me, and in two weeks 
 all the world I had left behind was become like the 
 creation of a dream. 
 
 The next summer we returned South and went to a 
 little embryonic mountain resort where half a dozen 
 old friends of my mother's, with their sons and daugh- 
 ters, formed the company. We had not seen any one 
 from Strathboro', and Elmore and Patsy were still in 
 dreamland to me, when one noonday, as I came out of 
 the dining-room upon the vine-shaded gallery, one of 
 the servants came to me and said : 
 
 "Merky's little Ellen say. Miss Ad'line, dat dere 
 young white gal down to de kaleebit spring as is 
 wantin' to see you. I tell Merky be mighty becomin' 
 in dat young white gal to come up hyah to you, but 
 she say dat she rekested dat you be tole dat she de- 
 sire yoh 'sistance. She done tole dat little Ellen huh 
 name, but law, dat chile ! she ain't got no mo' hayd 
 on huh " 
 
 I got my hat and started for the chalybeate spring 
 with a misgiving heart. I knew it was Patsy. Yes, 
 there she stood, in a copperas-dyed cotton riding- 
 skirt, her white, Sunday sunbonnet fallen back, as 
 she strained her eyes up the wrong path. 
 
 "Patsy!" 
 
 "0 — O Miss Adeline ! You 're mighty good to come 
 to me. It were fearful bold an' presumin' in me to send 
 for ye, an' ask ye to come hyer to me. I crave your 
 pardon ! You 're so good ! I 've come up from the 
 valley to speak to ye. I did n't know where else on 
 the airth to go, an' I hyern from the preacher that 
 you-uns were hyer." 
 
64 A JEST OF PATE. 
 
 "Sit down, Patsy — no, come; we will walk over 
 toward the blufif ; then we wiU not be disturbed." 
 
 I took her hand as if she were four years old, and, 
 comforted and reassured, as if she were four, she 
 walked with me. "We sat down on a big log a few 
 rods seemingly from the end of the earth, a great 
 sky breaking through the trees at our feet. 
 
 "Now," I said, "tell me all about it." 
 
 " It 's schoolin'," she answered solemnly, laying her 
 hand upon my knee and gazing in my face. 
 
 " Oh, it certainly might be worse. What is it, Patsy, 
 dear — you want to go to school?" 
 
 " I 've worrited Pappy tell he is plum wore out, an' 
 he now say he air willin' to put me to school to git 
 shed of me. Yes, Miss Adeline, he sartainly have give 
 his consent, but Miss — Miss Adeline, we don't know 
 the fust thing about it, whar to go, nor nothin'; an' 
 ef Pappy have to worry about it, he '11 gin up the 
 whole project. Now he 's made up his mine he won't 
 begrudge the money, but I 'm skeered of his bein' 
 worrited. When I foun' he was comin' up the moun- 
 ting, I put in to come along an' ask you to holp me, 
 for I never forgot how good ye were to me, an' how, 
 though bein' kinsfolks to Elmore, ye pardoned me." 
 
 Her face, with its brimming eyes, was turned up to 
 mine again in her own irresistible flower fashion. 
 
 "Elmore teached me some," she said presently. 
 
 " I wonder you did n't make up your mind to go to 
 Strathboro' to school, where you 'd be near Elmore," 
 I said. 
 
 She flushed. "I reckon — I — ye see I could n't 
 abear bein' there an' not havin' Elmore take no notice 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 65 
 
 of me ; an'," she hurried on to say, " I could n't abear 
 to let him make trouble for hisself by lettin' people 
 see his feelin's as long as I am so unlearned an' back- 
 ward. I make Elmore be mighty keerful — keer- 
 fuUer than he likes." 
 
 We settled upon a cheap country " academy " in an 
 adjoining county, where I thought she would be as 
 little discounted as anywhere, and where the head 
 teacher was an acquaintance of mine, whom I hoped 
 to stir up to a little special sympathy and interest. 
 
 Patsy returned home that afternoon, riding behind 
 her father, as she came; but she repeated her visit 
 several times during the summer. That season had 
 now sunk into the position of a mere forerunner to 
 the autumn, when school began. I had a beautiful 
 time overseeing her dresses and making her look 
 pretty. She was a very superior sort of doll. Once 
 she stayed all night at our cottage. The way in which 
 she waited and watched for suggestions and examples 
 of etiquette at table and elsewhere, yet managed while 
 pursuing that arduous occupation to preserve her 
 own soft, bright, unconscious bearing, was a bit of 
 social skill such as a court might not match in a year, 
 
 I am aware how improbable this sounds to the un- 
 sentimental observer of country girls, but there was 
 much that was childlike about Patsy — among other 
 things, she was plastic like a child. Then, too, if she 
 was from the backwoods she was also Southern, which 
 in this connection means that wide-reaching, deep- 
 reaching Puritanism had played small part in check- 
 ing her natural instincts of social grace. 
 
 Our acquaintances were told nothing about her, 
 
66 A JEST OP PATE. 
 
 but they, particularly tlie elders, let her pass with a 
 graciousness born of experience of life in a poor and 
 thinly populated and aristocratic country, where any- 
 body may be akin to anybody, and where kinship 
 counts — a state of society similar to that in Scotland, 
 especially the Scotland of the past. I feared, though, 
 that the callow school-girls even at Coffee's Academy 
 would be less elastic. 
 
 I gave little Miss all the points on grammar that it 
 seemed she could digest, and she made wonderfully 
 good use of them. One day I said, " Do you and 
 Elmore write to each other ? " 
 
 She colored, and bent over her sewing. The tears 
 had sprung to her eyes, but if I had not been a brute 
 in the way I watched her 1 never should have known 
 it, she recovered herself so gallantly. In an instant 
 she answered steadfastly: 
 
 "Oh, no. He writes to me onct in a while, but in 
 course he don't like to do aU the writin', an' ye see my 
 letters would shame him, an' I don't want to make him 
 consider how ignorant I am — when I 'm not there," 
 she added, half archly, wholly pathetically. 
 
 She realized any meanness in Elmore's attitude only 
 so dimly and confusedly that she could not be mean 
 enough herself to give the charge a hearing. He was 
 full of a sort of devotion and subjection to her spell 
 when he was with her, and of course was assertive of 
 his faithfulness in proportion to his own distrust of 
 it. Of course, too, he was also proportionately anxious 
 about hers. 
 
 "He keeps a-sayin' to me to be true to him," she 
 said once. "I'd rather he'd feel sure without askin'." 
 
A JEST OP FATE. 67 
 
 She had plenty of dignity of chajpacter,but how was 
 that to teach her to release a lover like this? It sim- 
 ply made her feel his neglects like wounds, without 
 even the solace of indignation. 
 
 Patsy was far from loquacious, but at times when 
 favoring conditions started her chirping and twitter- 
 ing she brought forth discriminating remarks. In 
 talking of her brothers she said : 
 
 "Ab have the mos' sense, but what 's that when Eb 
 have all the determination?" 
 
 I wondered how it would be when this coherent in- 
 telligence was brought to bear on Elmore's colossal 
 incoherence on something like equal terms. Or could 
 there ever be an approach to equal terms so long as 
 he had those eyes and that smile? They even warped 
 my satisfaction in declaring him a fool. 
 
 One day Patsy's father twirled his shapeless old 
 white hat in his hands in uncommon discomfort as he 
 said to me: 
 
 "I don't feel no ways at ease in my mine about this 
 schooHn' business for my little gal. Patsy have the 
 bes' head in the house, the bes' head in the house I 
 alius say; I set powerful store by her; she could 'a' 
 had schoolin' before ef I hed seen the good of it for 
 her. Bf we could all be schooled an' live in Strath- 
 boro' there might be profit in it. I 'd go through fire 
 an' water to make that little gal happy, but I kint feel 
 at ease in my mine about makin' her differ from all 
 her kith an' kin. I don't see the nex' step satisfactory. 
 I don't see the nex' step." 
 
 Sure enough, what would it be? In September my 
 mother and I again left Tennessee. We went abroad. 
 
68 A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 and were gone three years. It was as if we had spent 
 that time on another planet. Our foreign post-offices 
 effectually estopped in our Tennessee friends any pos- 
 sible impulses to write to us. 
 
 After we returned to America we got an enumera- 
 tion of events covering the three years, in four pages, 
 from my Aunt Sally Kilbraith. 
 
 Cousin Williain Anderson is married to one of the Merriam 
 girls — the second one. Abe Tuekerman has sold his place, and 
 is going to Texas. Cousin William has bought it. Elmore Clay- 
 more is dead ; died a year and a half ago. 
 
 Two months later we sat with the good Aunt Sally 
 around the wood fire in her own room. Uncle John 
 smoked his pipe in the corner. 
 
 "Poor Elmore," said Aunt SaUy, as she was com- 
 pleting a chapter of details about his death and burial. 
 " You did not know of his engagement, did you ? " 
 
 " No," said my mother. " "Was he engaged to be 
 married ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes ; but it was not generally known at aU ; 
 is n't now ; it 's quite a secret ; but, dear me, I don't 
 see any reason for not telling you, so long as you 
 don't speak about it. The girl got us to promise not 
 to let it be known among people here. She is John 
 Penkerman's youngest ; Edith is her name. It would 
 have been counted a mighty good match for Elmore. 
 John made a deal of money in those Texas lands, and 
 Edith 's pretty, but I never called her a good match 
 for anybody." 
 
 " Why not ? " said my mother, with a courteous ef- 
 fort at interest. She knew nothing of the other story. 
 
A JEST OF PATE. 69 
 
 " Why, because she is a two-faced, cold, calculating 
 little cat. She loves admiration and to show her 
 power; that 's aU she ever loved; and she has n't 
 been any too nice, in her way of getting what she 
 wanted, either. She had no brains ; she had to man- 
 age her men — Mr. Kilbraith! Adeline and Martha 
 are prudent, if I 'm not. You might let me free my 
 mind ; they '11 be ofif to the ends of the earth pretty 
 soon, and what they 've heard about people in Strath- 
 boro' will make no difference one way or the other. 
 You see I hate the girl, — Lena, child, put your foot 
 on that spark, — but you don't have to stretch the 
 truth to find plenty to say against her. She 'd been 
 flirting with Tom, Dick, and Harry ever since she was 
 fifteen; her looks turned her mammy's head, to begin 
 with. She 'd been engaged to half a dozen, more or 
 less, but some way she did n't get married. At last 
 Elmore was put on the list ; he was bedazzled with 
 the idea of marrying Edith Penkerman. He did n't 
 know enough, poor fool, to understand that other 
 men looked upon her as being too much of a belle. 
 She and her mother thought, I reckon, that she might 
 do worse ; so they kept him in reserve. Don't shake 
 your head at me, Mr. Kilbraith ; you know I 'm quot- 
 ing your own words. Well, they kept the engage- 
 ment mighty secret — gave Elmore some rose-water 
 reason, you know. When he died, lo and behold, they 
 were more anxious to keep it quiet than ever, and in 
 less than a year she married this Tom M'Grath, who 
 was hangin' round her all the time, and is a better 
 match than Elmore was. See? I did n't care so 
 tremendous much about Elmore ; 't is n't that ; but 
 
70 A JEST OF FATE. 
 
 that kind of a female creature, the smooth, pretty, 
 plausible ones — Lord ! " 
 
 During the week I learned that there was then on 
 the place a negro woman who had been for years 
 Cousin Nancy's servant. Recently she had married 
 one of my uncle's hands, and was living in a cabin at 
 the back of the orchard. I made occasion to call 
 upon her. 
 
 " La, yes. Miss Leny," said she, after seating me in 
 her splint-bottom chair before a riff-raff fire; "Miss 
 Patsy 's livin'; leastwise dat wah my information at 
 las' accoun's. Dey do circalate de repohts dat she ain't 
 long f oh dis wohl ; _ an' 'deed I reckon what she ain't. 
 Mighty funny, Miss Leny, how you come to 'member 
 a little slip of poah-white folksy gal like dat all dis 
 time, gallivantin' roun' de wohl like you is too. What 
 Miss Patsy goin' to die ob ? 
 
 " La, Miss Leny, she nebah wah no 'count ahtah she 
 went off seekin' lahnin' at dat ah boahdin'-school, I 
 know a 'ooman what hab a dahtah, a yellah gal, what 's 
 hiahd out at dat school, an' she say dat little Patsy, she 
 say she wuk huhsef to def at dat school f'om staht. 
 She study an' study huh book much as any two gals, 
 an' not bein' use to it, it woh upon huh;, but dat wahn't 
 de whole ob what broke huh down. You know, Miss 
 Leny, when Mahs Elmore die ? Well, she home f om 
 de school foh Sunday dat day when de news come, an' 
 she 'sisted on comin' down yuh to de f un'ral ; an' when 
 huh pappy he won't bring huh, she go an' ax a place 
 in Squiah Monsen's wagon, an' dey say what she dat 
 white an' still an' cur'os lookin' out ob huh eyes dat 
 dey was sohey foh huh, an' dey was wonderin' whed- 
 
"COUSIN nancy's servant.' 
 
72 A JEST OP FATE. 
 
 dah she was cahin' enti'ly 'bout Mahs Elmore, ah 
 wheddah she was jes uatchly wohn out wid school 
 lahnin'. Den dey reckon she wahn't cahin' so much 
 'bout Mahs Elmore, 'cause she nebah cry na nothin' at 
 de grabe — dat what Miss Monsen's Milly done tole 
 me. But enhow she kotch cole on de way home, — it 
 wuz cole weddah, — an' den she hab de lung-f evah an' 
 spit blood. She got up out o' dat, but she ain't nebah 
 quit spittin' blood. She boun' to die 'foh great space 
 o' time. Don't you want to roas' sweet tater in de 
 ashes. Miss Leny, like you use ? La, no. Miss Leny, 
 she ain't at home. She up on de mount'n. Huh pappy 
 mighty exuhcised 'bout huh, an' he meek huh stay 
 dah, 'cause she don' spit so much blood up dah ; an' 
 lawsy massy. Miss Leny, what you 'magine — dat gal, 
 dat little snoopin' white-headed gal ob Tim Nonly's, 
 ez teachin' school on dat mount'n ! Yessum, she ez 
 at de Ridge, whah you an' Miss Matt was dat summah. 
 I reckon 't is quite poss'ble dat dat gal do know 'nough 
 to teach dat mount'n trash. No, 'm; I don' s'pose 
 she well 'nough, but Miss Monsen's MiUy she say she 
 mighty res'less tell she know she got dat school. 
 Likely huh pappy ain't so much money ahtah huh 
 schoolin' an' doctorin' to pay huh boahd up dah." 
 
 It was spring before I got to the mountain. The 
 day was soft, though the trees here on the summit 
 were still bare, as I walked through a demoralized bit 
 of encroaching forest to the httle pen of a schoolhouse 
 where Patsy Nonly was spending her last stores of 
 mortal strength. 
 
 The children were tumbling out, dismissed for the 
 day, as I came in sight. When I stood at the door, I 
 
A JEST OF FATE. 73 
 
 saw her, little Patsy, half sitting, half lying, on a 
 bench against the wall. 
 
 Yes, she was ill, she was changed, she was older ; 
 but what was the meaning of the exquisite, soft hap- 
 piness illuminating her face through its weariness 1 
 
 She opened her eyes — large and dark they looked 
 — and with a little cry came toward me. The tears 
 were running unheeded down her cheeks when she 
 slipped into my arms. 
 
 " Miss Adeline, Miss Adeline ! Ah, how glad I am 
 you come ; you come in time for me to see you. Now 
 I can speak to you; I can speak his name, my Elmore's 
 name, to some one." 
 
 She slipped down on the floor and buried her face 
 in my lap. She did not know ! 
 
 When she looked up she was shining through her 
 tears. 
 
 "You must n't think I 'm unhappy because I cry," 
 she said. "I 'm goin' to him soon. God has been 
 mighty good to me. But no one but you knows my 
 heart is in the other world. It would n't 'a' seemed 
 right to make his people mad at him by tellin' what 
 he was to me after he was gone, and it 's been 'most 
 more than I had strength for to mourn him in secret, 
 and to look forward to seein' him in secret also. But 
 I 'm happy. Miss Adeline ; God 's mighty good to me ! " 
 
 I arranged to return to the valley the next morning. 
 I could not face this situation. For a while I was in 
 fear lest in some way she should learn the truth. I 
 felt that the opportunity for so supreme and humor- 
 ous a cruelty was one that chance would hardly miss. 
 But I drew reason to my aid, and remembering how 
 7 
 
74 A JEST OF PATE. 
 
 little ordinary gossip would shake her faith, and how 
 short the time she had to live, it seemed probable that 
 she would be allowed to die in peace. 
 
 Then — then? 
 
 There is an interrogation for you ! I wanted to es- 
 cape saying good-by to her, biit after I was in the little 
 wagon that was to carry me down the greening moun- 
 tain "she came for a last word. 
 
 She was worn and wan, but the look of a person 
 with a happy secret was in her eyes. She carried a 
 mass of the early wild pink azaleas ; she had gathered 
 them herself, — it was a beautiful, life-stirring spring 
 day, — and her errand was to ask me to lay these for 
 her sake on Elmore Claymore's grave. 
 
THE LAST MARCHBANKS. 
 
 YOU will just step over there 
 to Miss Addington's desk, she 
 will talk with you, madam," 
 I heard the managing editor 
 say in tones a little more gen- 
 tle than were usual to him. 
 I looked up from my half- 
 finished sentence, and saw 
 coming toward me, as if 
 propelled by the wave of 
 the editorial hand, a little, 
 shabby, dainty, delicate old 
 lady. Her wTiite withered 
 face was charmingly pretty in 
 those fundamental lines upon 
 which time has least effect. 
 Resentment swelled within me. The managing 
 editor always put it off on me to deal with the piteous 
 feminine non-competents continually trickling in and 
 out of the office. 
 
 " I 'm afraid I 'm taking up your time, when you 
 are very busy," said the lady, with a gracious little 
 
 75 
 
76 THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 
 
 " society " manner, in which, nevertheless, a tremor of 
 timidity and anxiety was all too evident. 
 
 Lo, she was a Southerner ; there was no mistaking 
 that gentle drawl on the vowels and suppression of 
 the consonants. I shall not try to reproduce the 
 peculiarity of her speech ; the written letters cannot 
 convey what it was,- except as you know it already, 
 and they seem to coarsen it. 
 
 She had a manuscript with her that she hoped 
 might be adapted to the columns of the "Evening 
 Appeal"; she always enjoyed the "Appeal" so very 
 much. 
 
 Her manuscript was devoted to picturing details 
 of life on a Southern plantation in the autumn. She 
 had tried to make it timely ; she had heard that that 
 was desirable for daily papers. It was not about the 
 far South, but told of things as they might be in Ten- 
 nessee or Kentucky, the sorghum -pressing, and sweet- 
 potato digging, and hog-killing 
 
 " Oh, I know it all so well," I broke forth. 
 
 " You, do you ? Why, my dear child, are you from 
 the South'?"' 
 
 How can I tell you all she put into those words? — 
 the glad recognition of a matter-of-course friend and 
 ally ; the faint, half -tender reproach that I was so de- 
 moralized that she did not know me at once for a 
 compatriot; and the surprise at finding a Southern 
 girl there in that office, surrounded by men, and work- 
 ing away as one of them. 
 
 She, who had shown no consciousness of anything 
 anomalous in my position before now, glanced about 
 the ugly place, even at the upturned desk drawer I 
 
78 THE LAST MAKCHBANKS. 
 
 was using for a footstool, and put out a little, crooked 
 old hand to pat me pityingly and reassuringly. 
 
 When she found I was from Tennessee, and that my 
 name was Addington, we were straightway launched 
 on a tide of interchange and reminiscence. 
 
 I was not surprised to find we knew all about each 
 other's families : I had dimly supposed we did when 
 I heard her speak. AU Southerners do know, or 
 know of, all the rest, and I had been given of late 
 years rather to escaping than seeking those kindly 
 intimacies they establish as a matter of course when 
 they meet away from home. The exigencies of life 
 had forced me to appreciate them more in the abstract 
 than in the concrete. 
 
 But only a brute could have withheld a cordial 
 response from this little gentlewoman, and moreover 
 her name stood for a good deal to my imagination. 
 It was, she told me, Fanny Marchbanks Overman. 
 
 I suppose she had been Mrs. Overman nearly forty 
 years ; but, being a Southerner, she was stiU to herself 
 and her friends Fanny Marchbanks as well. 
 
 The Marchbanks part was what interested me. My 
 grandfather's most intimate friend, and his partner 
 for many years, had been Judge Marchbanks; and 
 even in my half-foreign bringing up I had learned 
 the traditions of that Stout old Whig's loyalty and 
 shrewdness and eccentricity. I had heard too of his 
 daughter; had heard of her as the brilliant young 
 belle who had been my mother's chUdish ideal of 
 beauty; and now, after all these years and genera- 
 tions and upheavals, here were Fanny Marchbanks 
 and I meeting in the office of the New York " Even- 
 
THE LAST MAKCHBANKS. 79 
 
 ing Appeal," and she was a poor old woman wanting 
 to sell an unmarketable manuscript. 
 
 That manuscript — the thought of it fell upon me 
 like a pall. The worst was her confidence in me, in 
 my acceptance of it ; I had been stealing glances at it 
 while she told me what a " polished gentleman " my 
 grandfather was, and how smooth my mother wore 
 her hair when she was a little girl. 
 
 I saw it would be as much as my position was worth 
 to hand it to the managing editor. 
 
 I asked her if she had been doing much writing in 
 New York. 
 
 Yes, she had been writing here for a year and a half. 
 She had written some stories for one of the dying old 
 fashion magazines ; she had had a Southern sketch in 
 a good weekly; she had sent some letters to her 
 Church paper in the South ; she had even had some 
 negro anecdotes published in one of the "comic" 
 journals ! 
 
 I could guess what that dear, simple, girl-like old 
 thing had gone through ; the struggle and the poverty 
 and the heart-straining anxiety it had cost to acliieve 
 this much. Now she wanted to do more: she wanted 
 to get into other lines of writing, and she thought 
 there must be a great field in the daily papers ; and 
 she looked up at me with the light of hope and the 
 waver of fear in her faded, pretty old eyes. 
 
 A bright thought came to save me from despair — 
 if only she could be made to share it. A Tennessee 
 senator had just made some kind of sensation in Con- 
 gress. I said: "You know Senator Lawton, don't 
 you? Then why can't you take this paper and fix it 
 
80 THE LAST MABCHBANKS. 
 
 all up as happening on Senator Lawton's place — 
 you 've been there ? You can easily make it accurate 
 then. You see, if you can make it fit in with some- 
 thing that is going on, that the papers are full of just 
 now, it wUl go ; it is hardly enough to make it simply 
 about the present season, though that is well ; but if 
 you show what the Lawtons' home is like, I am sure 
 you can sell it to 'The Earth,' and they will pay you 
 better than this paper will." 
 
 She looked pitifully dubious. " You don't think it 
 would be infringing on the laws of hospitality ? " she 
 said. 
 
 "You don't need to be personal and Jenkinsy," I 
 hastened to assure her; "and you might write to 
 Colonel Lawton for permission to tell about his sor- 
 ghum-presses." 
 
 She smiled in a relieved, reassured way. She lis- 
 tened with deep attention to aU I had to say. She 
 had a wonderful adaptability; she caught a new 
 idea as to what was wanted in a way that was highly 
 encouraging. 
 
 "I know what you mean," she said, "about the new, 
 curt, quick way of writing. I have noticed it in the 
 papers, only I thought perhaps it was because they 
 could n't write any other way. But I can try to do it 
 too, if that is what they like up here in the North. 
 And I '11 tell anything about the Lawton place that 
 seems unobjectionable. I 'm glad you think he won't 
 dislike it. And now, my dear, I '11 take myself away. 
 I am sure you are giving me far too much time ; but 
 you can just teU them, my child, that you don't see 
 one every day up here who knows all about you 
 
THE LAST MARCHBANKS. 81 
 
 for three generations. Dear, dear, it does seem too 
 bad to leave you here all by yourself so, and you so 
 young. What would your grandfather th — But 
 then your grandfather would be very proud of your 
 talents, Adeline, and he was a man who knew that 
 we have to adapt ourselves to circumstances; and 
 I 'm sure these — gentlemen all seem very — very in- 
 offensive." And she overlooked the hard-working, 
 scribbling crowd bent over their desks. 
 
 Softly fluttering over me in this fashion to the very 
 elevator door, she finally took her leave. 
 
 I soon learned what seemed all the main facts of her 
 little story ; her great, tragic, human story, filled, as 
 everybody's story is, with experiences at once terrible 
 and commonplace. 
 
 She had been left a widow, with two little children, 
 while still a young woman ; the children, boys, had 
 both died only a few years later, and she had spent 
 most of her life as a childless widow in her widowed 
 father's house. She was his only child. He had died 
 near the beginning of the war ; most of their property 
 had been lost. Mrs. Overman had since then made 
 what shift she could ; and now, in her old age, with a 
 courage rooted in inborn gallantry of soul, and also 
 in ignorance of this rough world, she had come to this 
 strange land "the North "to try to make her living 
 by writing. 
 
 How foreign and far away this part of our common 
 country seemed to her probably only a Southerner 
 can realize. Fundamental ideas affect many ramifica- 
 tions of feeling as well as thought, and the weakness 
 of the idea of nationality at the South sharpens many 
 
82 THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 
 
 a homesick pang in many a traveler and exile still in 
 his own country. 
 
 That Mrs. Overman succeeded as well as she did 
 was a continual marvel to me. There was a daunt- 
 lessness about the frail, delicate, lady-bred old woman 
 that made me proud of the civilization — if you wiU 
 permit the word — that had produced her. 
 
 I sympathize with the point of view that finds 
 Southern aristocratic pretensions humorous; they 
 certainly had far less basis of material splendor than 
 the simple-minded aristocrats themselves imagined; 
 and I doubt not that there is and will be in the future 
 something better in this world than any kind of aris- 
 tocracy; but for the blessings of a commercial de- 
 mocracy we pay a good deal, and my provincial little 
 old woman exemplified the high-hearted virtues of the 
 old r6gime in her union of fine pride, courage, cheer- 
 fulness, and gentleness as nobly as if her claims to 
 blue blood were based on something more imposing 
 than an ancestry of two or three generations of back- 
 woods dignitaries ; the obligations of an aristocracy 
 were strong upon her. 
 
 I a little dreaded visiting her in her boarding-house. 
 I thought I knew what it would be like, and I felt 
 that it would be rather wretched to see her in the midst 
 of its cheap frivolities and poor pretensions; but I 
 found she had discovered for herself a place very dif- 
 ferent from my imagin ation — not vulgar, though off er- 
 ing hardships enough to such an one as Miss Fanny, as 
 we must now in common friendliness begin to call her. 
 
 "It is a woman's boarding-house, dear; a business 
 woman's house," she explained to me as we sat side by 
 
THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 83 
 
 side on an immense hair- cloth sofa in the clean, mourn- 
 ful, self-respecting parlor. 
 
 " Miss Mary Barnwell told me about it before I came 
 on here. You never saw Miss Mary, did you 1 Your 
 mother knew her ; she is a lovely woman ; she was 
 Timothy Barnwell's daughter, that endowed the col- 
 lege in Wexville, and Miss Mary teaches there; she 
 comes on to New York in the summer sometimes, and 
 she stops here. It made me feel so much more at home 
 to come to a place I 'd heard Mary tell about, and I 
 think it is very sheltered and protected to be in a 
 house without gentlemen — when one is quite alone so." 
 
 It was a big, old-fashioned house, and the large 
 rooms were divided up into long and narrow ones by 
 wooden partitions ; and each contained two little iron 
 bedsteads. _ The inhabitants of the business woman's 
 boarding-house were united as room-mates without 
 reference to anything but a rigidly inspected respecta- 
 bility all around (surely none but the most respectable 
 of women ever wanted to live there), but each was 
 given a bed to herself. 
 
 Miss Fanny found it a Httle painful to explain these 
 things to me, and a faint red spot came in each with- 
 ered, delicate old cheek as she said : " It seems a little 
 like what they call an institution up here, does n't it ? 
 But it is n't. The landlady is a New England woman ; 
 her name is Martin, and you see she has planned to 
 have the cheapest place that — that — a nice person 
 can live in ; and you see it is n't so bad, for it is clean, 
 and it is quite comfortable, I assure you; and you 
 know you are sure that your room-mate is respect- 
 able, and everything is arranged for it, so you have a 
 
84 THE LAST MARCHBANKS. 
 
 great deal more privacy than you would think. I 
 must take you to my room," she went on, " to show 
 you my father's portrait. Oh, yes, I always have that 
 with me ; and you must be able to say you know how 
 Judge Marchbanks looked." 
 
 " Of course," she said, on the stairs, " these North- 
 erners are very strange. The lady I am with is named 
 Miss Boggs. You 'd think she was — well, rather a 
 common sort of person, from very plain people, you 
 know, on first meeting her; but she is very highly 
 educated ; she is studying medicine. She has n't the 
 polish one finds m our people, but I am sure she has 
 a very fine character, and she is religious, and — and 
 settled in her views ; not in the least like we used to 
 be apt to imagine at the South." 
 
 She was interrupted by arriving at her door. Miss 
 Boggs was not in. Looking very large, upon the 
 walls of the cell-like little place, hung the portrait in 
 its dingy gilt frame, — you know the kind, — the cloth- 
 ing like solidified smoke, the linen as if molded out of 
 vapor, and the flesh suggesting painted wood; yet 
 the creature who painted it had not succeeded iu 
 evading his subject altogether, ample as were his 
 incapacities, and something of the man, the large- 
 minded, able, romantic man that I had heard of, was 
 in it, I even thought I could see in it qualities I 
 already knew in Miss Fanny, especially the receptiv- 
 ity, the openness to new ideas that made her seem so 
 young, and made it possible for her to wage such 
 battle as she had entered upon. 
 
 I could imagine, as I looked at the picture, that the 
 Judge, if put down alive in the queer room, would 
 
"miss fanny flecked at the frame with hbk handkeeohief." 
 8 
 
86 THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 
 
 make some sort of intelligent effort to comprehend 
 the conditions around him. 
 
 Miss Fanny flecked at the frame with her pocketr 
 handkerchief, she carried me to one side and the other 
 to see the picture, and she impressively told me the 
 name of the poor soul who painted it. Then she sat 
 herself down in front of it, and told me about the 
 Polk and Clay campaign in which Judge Marchbanks 
 and my grandfather had "stumped" the State to- 
 gether — trying politely but fruitlessly to remember 
 as many instances of triumph and adulation for my 
 ancestor as for hers. That both gentlemen were on 
 the losing side in that contest had never occurred to 
 her as dimming their honors. 
 
 I always remember her as she looked that day, like 
 some quaint little priestess before a shrine. She sat 
 in a chair close against the wall, that in the narrow 
 room she might be able to see the picture opposite ; 
 her white hair was crimped a little and drawn softly 
 back in a very good compromise between old styles 
 and new, — Miss Fanny was not the person to cling 
 to the old for its own sake, — and at her wrists and 
 neck were, of all things, bits of " thread " lace. Her 
 figure was girlish rather than otherwise, and pretty 
 too, with its nice flat back ; but the old black gown 
 was skimpy and shabby, and that made me sorry, 
 because I knew the little woman was not and never 
 would be indifferent to her dress. As she talked 
 away so proudly, so feelingly of " my father," I won- 
 dered what place in memory had all the rest of her 
 long past ; the wifehood and widowhood and mother- 
 hood, the common, blessed warm joys, and common, 
 
THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 87 
 
 crushing griefs that fate had bestowed upon her, and 
 which, good and ill alike, she — so little and tender 
 still — had survived. All seemed to have sunk out of 
 sight, to be buried, and only the first ties to be still 
 active and operative despite time and death. I re- 
 flected that after all she had spent most of her life 
 with her father, that it was as his daughter she had 
 chiefly found her title to existence, but I did not know 
 at that time the thing that really explained her special 
 devotion to him — the fact that she was then spend- 
 ing herself in his service, for his good name. The 
 filial tie was reinforced now by one yet stronger, by 
 perhaps the firmest of human bonds, that which binds 
 the server to the served, and at last something like 
 a mother's love mingled with the daughter's loyal 
 adoration of the long-dead man. 
 
 I stayed to dinner with her — supper she called it, 
 and in fact the bald little meal might as well be 
 termed the one as the other ; but she was unapolo- 
 getically hospitable and graceful over it. 
 
 It was not till I came to go home that Miss Fanny's 
 adaptability failed her. " O my child, I cannot let 
 you go out into the street alone. It is bad enough 
 for me ; but you, I can't think of it at all." 
 
 " Very well, then. Miss Fanny ; I 'U ring for a 
 messenger boy." 
 
 "What for, dear?" 
 
 " To go home with me." 
 
 " A messenger boy ? " 
 
 " Why, yes ; that is what we do when we are too 
 proper to go alone." 
 
 " Mercy on me ! My lamb, it is to save you from 
 
88 THE LAST MARCHBANKS. 
 
 messenger boys and their like that I 'm going with 
 you myself." 
 
 " It is perfectly safe anywhere in this part of the 
 town," volunteered Miss Boggs, a big-boned, dust- 
 colored young woman reading a calf-bound volume 
 at a drop-light. 
 
 "Yes, Miss Boggs, I know, I suppose it is, and I 
 think it is lovely to see you Northern girls so strong- 
 minded and independent. You could go anywhere ; 
 but you see Adeline was not brought up to take care 
 of herself as you were, and I feel a sense of responsi- 
 bility for her. I ought to be a fairy godmother to 
 her, but I can at least take care of her when she is 
 my guest." And she went on getting out her shawl, 
 and settling her bonnet, with the cheery decision of a 
 dear, damaged old canary-bird. 
 
 Miss Boggs looked at me with curiosity ; she had 
 not recognized me as a fragile young Southern blos- 
 som before. 
 
 Let me give myself the pleasure of saying that I 
 sent my protectress home in a cab, a form of luxury 
 which in the course of our acquaintance I found she 
 particularly appreciated. She never became accus- 
 tomed to the city streets, she went about always in a 
 flutter of fear and nervousness; yet she must have 
 done a deal of " going" to get together her little articles 
 and sell them. I saw her down-town sometimes pick- 
 ing her way about among the rushing crowds and 
 cars and trucks; going through the great buildings, 
 with their incoming and outgoing streams of human- 
 ity eddying around the rows of elevator doors; and 
 in the grimy newspaper offices, where the air was 
 
THE LAST MAKCHBANKS. 89 
 
 tense with silent activities; and as I looked at the 
 quaint figure, the gentle, half -frightened, high-bred 
 old face, I wondered why she was there. She must 
 have lived some way since the war ; why did she not 
 go on now as she had before, and satisfy her am- 
 bitions if she had them, by such ladylike efforts with 
 genteel journals as she had made in the past, which 
 had brought her much neighborhood consideration 
 and a little money, and which did not tear her away 
 from the dingy, dignified, green old home where she 
 was born, and the simple, fixed, old-time life in which 
 she was surrounded by friendliness, albeit most of the 
 friends were gone ? 
 
 It was gallant, yes, surely there was something to 
 stir the blood in seeing so frail, so unarmed a crea- 
 ture take up the gage of battle against such odds; 
 but it was painful, too. I all but resented the pangs 
 she gave me. One day I said to myself, " This is 
 worse than living one's own struggle over again," 
 and that was a bitter saying. I was standing in one 
 room of a newspaper office when I saw her enter an 
 adjoining one. She went up to the managing editor's 
 desk with her little soft, unbusinesslike manner, and 
 seemed to be asking something. The man did not look 
 up: if he had he surely would have spoken differently ; 
 but he was desperately busy, and he simply put his 
 hand in a pigeon-hole and drew out a package of 
 manuscript, saying irritably, as he gave it a shove 
 along the desk, " Not a thing there that 's worth a 
 cent to us." 
 
 Oh, just the most ordinary business incident in the 
 world ; but poor little Fanny Marchbanks Overman ! 
 
90 THE LAST MARCHBANK8. 
 
 She took up her papers — I noticed again how old her 
 hands looked — and moved away as if she did not quite 
 see where she was going. I drew back out of sight. 
 There are some pains that sympathy can only double. 
 
 I often had Miss Fanny at the little flat I kept with 
 a friend, a girl who painted and taught. She never 
 came to regard our establishment as a normal one, 
 and she always hovered about me with a futile over- 
 flow of maternal care that was not in the least checked 
 because it reversed the facts of our relationship. 
 
 "My baby chUd," she exclaimed beneath her breath, 
 as she first sat down in our microscopic reception-room 
 and looked about her, "to think of your trying to live 
 in all these Yankee ways. I hope you take good care 
 of her," she said to Amy, patting me softly. Amy 
 looked blank for an instant. 
 
 She had an air of relief as well as pleasure when 
 she found me one night dressing for a reception. All 
 her innate love of the decorative and romantic came 
 bubbling forth. "Ah, how becoming that is to you!" 
 she exclaimed. " My father used to say that it was a 
 test of blood and raising for people to dress up ; that 
 if there was anything common in them it would come 
 out when they were in their best clothes. And shall 
 you see any of the gentlemen of your office?" she 
 asked, in an elaborately incidental way; and disap- 
 pointment was in her face when I said I hardly thought 
 I should. 
 
 "And they don't any of them come to see you," she 
 went on. "I suppose you don't let them." 
 
 " Dear Miss Fanny, it has never come up. I don't 
 think any of them ever thought of coming to see me." 
 
THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 91 
 
 " Dear me I Well, these Northern men are beyond 
 me. I never knew of any gentlemen before who did 
 not think of paying some attention to a charming girl 
 whom they had the privilege of knowing." 
 
 Amy, who was standing behind Miss Fanny's chair, 
 turned her eyes and hands to heaven, and then for 
 one instant placed her palms in an attitude of bene- 
 diction above Miss Fanny's infantine old head. 
 
 "I suppose you have to have your meals according 
 to these New York ways, with your dinner in the 
 evening, on Miss Amy's account," she said. 
 
 " Yes," I replied, "Amy prefers it so." It was a safe 
 assertion, though I had never heard her express her- 
 self on the subject. Like the true Southerner she 
 was, Miss Fanny never ceased to regard New York as 
 the outside, phenomenal thing, and the standards of 
 "Wexville aS the normal and accepted ones, although 
 in her writing she flexibly enough assumed the other 
 tone. That was mental; the maintenance of ancient 
 standards personally was inarticulately felt to be a 
 matter of loyalty and character. 
 
 Miss Fanny and I each experienced some good luck 
 about the same time. 
 
 The " Evening Appeal" found occasion to send me 
 abroad, and Miss Fanny obtained a little regular work 
 — the superintendence of the correspondents' column 
 on a weekly paper. This brought her in only the most 
 trivial sum, four or five dollars a week ; but it did not 
 take much time, and I knew from experience how 
 happy was the change from total uncertainty to even 
 this sum assured. 
 
 I hoped to see her make herself a little more com- 
 
92 THE LAST MARCHBAJSTKS. 
 
 fortable and treat herself to a new gown. But when 
 I sailed she came to see me off in the same over- 
 brushed little outfit of rusty black that she had worn 
 the day I first saw her. 
 
 A number of people visited me at the dock that day, 
 and it has been a bitterly intruding thought since that 
 I did not give Miss Fanny all the attention that God 
 knows was in my heart for her ; and it does not soften 
 that reflection, but brings the keener pang, to remem- 
 ber that she was too much absorbed and delighted by 
 my momentary social importance to have any thought 
 of herself. 
 
 She went about giving my acquaintances disjointed 
 bits of my history, personal and ancestral ; and tell- 
 ing them with tears in her eyes how brave I was living 
 here in New York, away from everything I 'd been 
 used to, and starting off now all alone on this voyage, 
 though I was naturally of the most shrinking and fem- 
 inine disposition. Dear Miss Fanny ! 
 
 I did very little letter-writing during the eight 
 months I was gone. I heard from Miss Fanny only 
 once; but she was one of those who had urged that I 
 spend none of my precious time reading or writing 
 letters, so I was not surprised at her silence. 
 
 When I came back I went to the " business woman's 
 boarding-house " the day after landing to look her up. 
 Amy had just returned from a four months' absence 
 herself —this was in September — and could give me 
 no news of her. 
 
 The square was dusty and deserted ; the house as 
 I went in seemed peculiarly desolate in its orderly 
 gloom. The servant was a new one ; she had never 
 
THE LAST MARCHBANKS. 93 
 
 heard of Mrs. Overman, and an indefinite dread began 
 to gather around me. I sent for Mrs. Martin. 
 
 She came in colorless, sad dignity, and stood silently 
 before me. 
 
 " TeU me," I said. 
 
 " She died in this house three months ago." 
 
 She sat down. 
 
 " I am sorry you were not here. It was a beautiful, 
 easy death. She was not sick. We just found her 
 lying on her bed one day with a letter in her hand, 
 dead." 
 
 In the midst of aU the formless thoughts and feel- 
 ings crowding upon me I was pierced by a foolish 
 grief that my little woman should die on one of those 
 prison-like cots, so strange and unhomely to her. 
 
 " The letter," Mrs. Martin went steadily on, after a 
 moment's silence, " I had buried with her, but I kept 
 a copy of it. This is it." 
 
 I half hesitated. 
 
 " I don't think you need mind reading it," she said. 
 
 It was very brief. In half a dozen lines Anthony 
 Stottman acknowledged the receipt of a final payment 
 of fifty dollars as wiping out the principal and interest 
 of a debt of three thousand dollars left unpaid in the 
 settling up of Judge Marchbanks's estate. 
 
 Ah, it was*brief,.but to what years of pinching and 
 struggle, and high and tender purpose, that awkward 
 paper testified. I saw all those years in a heart-burst- 
 ing moment's glance. It was love as much as honor 
 that had sustained little Fanny Marchbanks through 
 that long task, so little in itself, so Titanic for her ; 
 no stain must rest on the great name her father left 
 
94 THE LAST MAECHBANKS. 
 
 behind him. Through more years than I had lived 
 every hour must have been colored to her by this 
 heroic resolution. It had become her reason for liv- 
 ing. "When she had accomplished this end, the shock 
 of revolution in her outlook, the withdrawal of the 
 great motive, had been too much ; the light that had 
 been sustained so long ceased. Mrs. Martin told me 
 that Mrs. Overman had been restless, had almost 
 ceased to write for two weeks before her death, 
 although she seemed well. 
 
 Yes, I knew, I knew how, as with a child, the thought 
 of her great achievement had absorbed her, and how 
 she could not be at ease till the sensible testimony of 
 it was in her hand. That brought her ease indeed. 
 Truly it was a beautiful way to die. 
 
 "Where — where did you bury her?" I forced my- 
 self to ask. 
 
 "I was at my wit's end. Miss Addington. Those 
 I might have learned something from about her rela- 
 tives were out of town, and I did n't know which way 
 to turn ; but at last I put her in my own plot, where 
 I shall lie some day myself. I thought you would 
 come after a while and tell me what to do. She left 
 nothing but a few dollars, seven or eight, but I had 
 things done decently. I know Mrs. Overman was a 
 lady, and that letter showed she was sonifething more. 
 Miss Addington. I was glad to pay her respect." 
 Mrs. Martin concluded with firm downright reflec- 
 tions, — God bless her! 
 
 Miss Fanny had won for herself, in her last strange 
 need, hospitality instead of charity, and with her letter 
 on her bosom she might well be an honored guest. 
 
THE REIGN OF REASON. 
 
 |T will be rather a good thing, Adeline, 
 if you will go up there for a week or 
 two; it will strengthen me in that 
 part of the county." 
 
 Politics are still eminently respec- 
 table in Tennessee, and my brother, 
 whom I was visiting, was a candidate for a congres- 
 sional nomination. He was encouraging me to make 
 a visit to some kinsfolk of ours. He put forth mo- 
 tives of policy, but the truth was he was much attached 
 to Cousin Betsey Blunt, whom he looked upon with 
 pride as a particularly able woman; and he longed 
 to have me pay her the compliment of a visit. Mrs. 
 Blunt had been left a widow at the close of the war, 
 with two little children, and no other dependence than 
 a rough farm in a rougher country, some twenty-five 
 miles "back" from Strathboro'. 
 
 She had taken the situation gallantly ; and now her 
 children were both grown, and her hard days past. 
 One, the daughter, was married, and had gone to 
 Texas; but the other, the younger, Jimmy, was still 
 with her. 
 
 9S 
 
96 THE EEIGN OF EBA80N. 
 
 I had been at her house years before, when I was a 
 little girl, and still remembered it as a sort of place 
 of enchantment, so deeply and delightfully had its 
 remoteness and primitiveness impressed me. I was 
 pleased enough at the prospect of going there again. 
 One of those queer little railroads that seem to wander 
 so amiably and aimlessly about the rural districts of 
 the South passed within eight miles of the place. 
 
 It was arranged that at this point Jimmy should 
 meet me. When I got off the train I found myself on 
 a moss-grown platform in the midst of a pretty wood- 
 land. "While the conductor was courteously keeping 
 his train waiting to incLuire into my situation, a tall 
 young man in a " butternut " jeans suit rode out of 
 the woods, leading a saddled horse behind him. He 
 lifted his shapeless, dun-colored soft hat to me ; and 
 the conductor, expressing a confidence that I was now 
 " all right," returned to the care of his dozen other 
 passengers. It was not hard, when I gave my mind 
 to it, to recognize in the young man the Jimmy of old. 
 His pretty brown eyes had not changed, — indeed you 
 could see at a first glance that they looked just as 
 they did when he was a baby, — and his brown curls 
 had a familiar " set " on his head. They were oddly 
 long to modern eyes (I insist that modernness is a 
 matter of place as well as of time), but they were very 
 becoming to his regular, nice, simple face. It was not 
 a strong face : when I saw Cousin Betsey, I seemed to 
 find its weakness explained, though not by the law of 
 heredity. 
 
 The extra horse carried a side-saddle, and was in- 
 tended for me. Jimmy had even brought a brown 
 
98 THE EEIGN OF REASON. 
 
 cotton riding-skirt with him. I untied the various 
 secret strings about my dress skirt, put on the cotton 
 outfit, and mounted. It was in the autumn, and the 
 ride through the mellow radiance of the woods and 
 fields was a dreamy delight. Jimmy had the true 
 backwoods capacity for silence ; it is akin to an In- 
 dian's, and a thing to be much appreciated after the 
 laborious twaddle of villagers in whom the sense of 
 social responsibilities is painfully developing. After 
 the inevitable exchange of inquiries as to the health 
 of aU our tribe, conversation was dismissed as an idle 
 and exhaustive exercise. 
 
 I was too much absorbed in other enjoyment to 
 choose that time for studying my old playmate ; and 
 I had almost forgotten that his powers of commu- 
 nication were greater than his horse's, when, as we 
 came to the top of a little hiU, he pointed to a log 
 house beyond and below, starting, it seemed, out of 
 the woods and into a big, irregular, unkempt field, 
 and said : 
 
 " There 's a mighty nice girl lives in that place." 
 
 I could do nothing less than show an interest in 
 a person so directly and impressively brought to my 
 attention. Jimmy pursued the theme with simple 
 pleasure. 
 
 " Her f ambly ain't much," he said. " Her father 's 
 only a renter, and his father was a squatter, but that 
 girl is an uncommon girl. She is a well-behaved girl, 
 and she 's that healthy and strong there 's nothin' she 
 ain't equal to. She 's got a masterful head, too. Her 
 name 's Ellen Tod." 
 
 "Is she pretty?" 
 
THE EEIGN OP EEASON. 99 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, I suppose she is," Jimmy responded 
 dispassionately. " She 's so counted ; but her looks 
 
 — her looks," he repeated, seeking a fitting conclusion, 
 " it 's not them I 'm thinkin' about." 
 
 My less sternly disciplined mind was already wan- 
 dering from Ellen Tod to the loveliness around me, 
 
 — the blending colors, soft-floating leaves, and blue 
 vistas, — and I let the talk drop. There would be 
 plenty of time for canvassing the probabilities of a 
 mesalliance with the house of Tod. 
 
 A mile or two more brought us to the home in 
 which Jimmy was born — the ambitious house Henry 
 Blunt had spent his substance building for his bride, 
 while sanguine in his belief in the future of the coun- 
 try, and in his own. The piteous vanity of human fore- 
 sight was emphasized when he was killed in battle a 
 few years afterward; and the modest tide of sectional 
 growth and prosperity of later times had, through all 
 its variations, left this part of the county an unaffected 
 island in the midst of it; yet the "big house" had 
 not been altogether a bad investment. It had con- 
 ferred a certain distinction on its inhabitants; through 
 their hard times it had served as a substantial testi- 
 mony to the dignity of their past, and as such Cousin ' 
 Betsey had prized it. I remember as a child having 
 heard my mother try to persuade her to sell out and 
 come elsewhere, where there would be a chance for 
 her to educate her children; and as I recalled her 
 replies, while we were riding through the primeval 
 woods which formed a rude park in front of the 
 house, both their wisdom and its oddly antiquated 
 quality struck me. She said that her children were 
 
100 THE REIGN OF REASON. 
 
 not very " smart "; that they were not going to make 
 any great figure in the world ; that the most education 
 could do for them would be to make them as good as 
 other people, to keep them from being looked down 
 upon ; and that if they stayed where they were, these 
 points would be gained anyhow. 
 
 " They can learn to read and write here," she said ; 
 " and I don't believe they '11 make much use of that. 
 I 'm not a fool, but I never cared about books ; and 
 they, neither of them, nor both together, have as much 
 brains as I have. I don't know how it comes; you 
 know what their father was " (I remember how oddly 
 her voice broke there, and how it returned to its usual 
 metallic vibrations as she went on); "but there they 
 are, and such as they are I think they will be happier 
 and stand higher here than anywhere else. As for 
 me, I have to work hard ; but I 'd have to do that 
 anyway, and I 'd rather do it where I 'm looked up to. 
 No," she continued in answer to my mother again, "I 
 can live here as contented as I '11 ever be. I don't 
 s'pose you know anythin' about what it is to me that 
 my husband 's dead" (her tones were firm enough 
 now) ; " and as for my children, they are good children, 
 if they ain't very gifted, and I '11 leave 'em fixed in a 
 way that suits 'em well. I 've thought it all out." 
 
 In front of the house was a board fence, — it took the 
 place of a decaying paling, I remembered, — and at its 
 gate, as we rode up, stood Cousin Betsey. She was al- 
 ways a little woman, and the years seemed to be mak- 
 ing her smaller. She was thin and dark, with straight 
 features, black hair stUl unstreaked with gray, and the 
 palest and keenest of light-blue eyes — altogether a no- 
 
THE REIGN OF REASON. 101 
 
 ticeable figure. She met me with familiar, undemon- 
 strative kindliness, as if I were still the child she had 
 known. I think her manner would have been exactly 
 the same if she had never seen me at all; it was not 
 as an individual that she thought of me, but as the 
 daughter and the granddaughter of those who be- 
 longed to the past. In my visits South I always find 
 a great restfulness in this general predominance of 
 background in what I may caU my pictorial effects. 
 
 The house was just as I had seen it last. I remem- 
 bered the carpet in Cousin Betsey's room, a striped 
 wool carpet woven on a hand-loom, and I was pleased 
 to find I still admired it. The same andirons I had 
 left there sustained the smoldering log in the fire- 
 place; the same simple-minded old colored prints of 
 properly curled children and military and political 
 heroes were on the walls; the "duck-legged" chair — 
 it had sustained a surgical operation — still stood 
 in its old corner. Doubtless it was a favorite yet 
 with the small mistress, who had had it cut down jEor 
 her convenience in nursing her children. 
 
 I flew to see if even a certain speck in one of the 
 window-panes had survived the years, and was filled 
 with unreasoning wonder and delight on finding 
 it. It had been one of those queer treasures chil- 
 dren develop out of the most untoward materials, 
 and I had called it "my buzzard," Heaven only 
 knows why. 
 
 " Yes, here it is," I called out to Cousin Betsey — 
 " the buzzard Jimmy and I quarreled about once. I 
 said it was mine, and he said it was his, and you 
 spanked him and told me I was the one who deserved 
 
102 THE EEIGN OF REASON. 
 
 a whipping, but as you could n't give it to me, you 'd 
 have to stop the fuss by punishing him." 
 
 " It must have been Mary," said Cousin Betsey, with 
 grim humor. " Jimmy never would have stood up to 
 it if it had been his. Jimmy is a queer son for me to 
 have. Most of his spankings were for not sticking up 
 for himself. They don't seem to have done him much 
 good. He 's as soft and helpless as men think women 
 ought to be. I don't know where he 'd be if I 'd 'a' 
 been that kind." 
 
 I reflected to myself that, in all probability, he at 
 least would have been a more assertive person, the 
 law of action and reaction appearing with peculiar 
 obviousness in the relations of parents and children. 
 
 " But," Cousin Betsey proceeded reflectively, " every- 
 thin' bein' as it is, it don't make so very much differ- 
 ence about Jimmy. Sometimes I worry about Mary. 
 She 's gone off, and sometimes it seems to me as if I 
 might have done better by her — might have had her 
 mingle more with other folks, and see more — if I 'd 
 known how it was going to be ; but I did n't,f and 
 what she is lays with her husband now anyhow. But 
 for Jimmy, I want him to marry a girl that lives near 
 by ; she '11 have some land of her own, and I 've made 
 this farm a good one. I have n't worked out my land 
 like the men around here, and they '11 get on. Jimmy 
 won't be as likely to throw away what he 's got in his 
 hand as many a boy that shows off better." 
 
 " Is he in love with the girl V I asked, seating my- 
 self for an interesting interview in the duck-legged 
 chair. 
 
 Cousin Betsey reached for her knitting, and went 
 
THE REIGN OF REASON. 103 
 
 through some elaborate adjustments of needles be- 
 fore she said: 
 
 " I reckon he 'U be in love enough to do. He ain't 
 egzactly an idiot, and the girl is a nice girl and a 
 pretty girl, and she likes him. I 've seen that plain 
 enough, and that is all I was studyin' about. Jimmy 
 would never have stir enough about him to do his 
 own courtin' anyhow, and he '11 be pleased enough to 
 have a girl like Milly Giles make up to him." 
 
 The next that I heard about Jimmy's matrimonial 
 prospects was from himself. He was going for a load 
 of wood one morning, and I went with him, sometimes 
 sitting behind the oxen, sometimes walking with him 
 beside them, or making little excursions from the 
 faintly marked track into the woods after late ferns in 
 sheltered n ooks or f or seductive bunches of wild grapes. 
 
 Jimmy was as pleasant a companion on such a trip 
 as the oxen themselves ; indeed he was better, as good 
 as a dog. After he had loaded his wagon, he sat down 
 on a log to rest, gazing benevolently upon me as I 
 grubbed about for hickory-nuts. I gave up the hunt, 
 and sat down too ; near by the oxen, loose from the 
 wagon, were taking what pleasure they could under 
 the trying, though poetically vaunted, condition of a 
 dual unity. 
 
 "Cousin Betsey is talking of having Milly Giles 
 come over to make a visit while I am here,'' I said. 
 " Do you think she '11 come ? Do you like her ? " 
 
 "Miss Milly is a mighty nice young lady," said 
 Jimmy slowly ; " she is prettj"^, and she comes of very 
 good fambly. But," Jimmy proceeded, hewing his 
 way through these unfamiliar paths of expression 
 
104 THE EEiaN OF REASON. 
 
 with obvious difaculty, " I don't believe maw means 
 sure enough to ask her a-visitin' while you 're here. 
 Miss Milly is wearin'. She talks a heap sometimes, 
 and she don't have no trouble bearin' herself in com- 
 pany, but stiU she 's wearin' ; and maw she thinks so 
 too. I 'm mighty nigh sure maw would n't have her 
 come when you is here." 
 
 "What is it makes her wearing?" I persisted. 
 " Tell me how." 
 
 Jimmy seemed to sink a shaft into his consciousness 
 and wait for returns. 
 
 " It 's somethin' like tryin' to drink the foam on the 
 top of the milk-bucket — as if you might start drinkin' 
 when it was foam clean to the bottom." 
 
 " Cousin Betsey wants you to marry her," I stated 
 in brutal young fashion. 
 
 Jimmy took off his hat, scratched his curly head, 
 and knitted his faint brows as he dug his heel into the 
 mold and gazed fixedly on the operation. " Yessum," 
 he said ; " yessum, I 'm afraid she does." 
 
 "WeU, will you?" 
 
 Jimmy looked at me as one of the oxen might if I 
 had prodded him. " You 'member that girl I told you 
 about the first day you come ? I showed you where 
 she lived? Miss Ellen Tod? WeU," Jimmy concluded, 
 seeming to feel that he was submitting a problem as 
 hopeless as I was likely to hear, " I want to marry 
 that girl." 
 
 " Oh, you are in love with her, are you ? " 
 
 " No, 'm ; I can't say as I am, Jimmy replied judi- 
 cially, although the color crept up his face. " I ain't 
 influenced by that ; Miss Ellen 's a good match." 
 
THE EEIGN OF EEASON. 105- 
 
 " Milly Giles 's a good match too, is n't she ? " I 
 said, when I had recovered from this blow to my 
 romanticism. 
 
 "Miss Milly ain't what I 'd call a good match." 
 Jimmy again drew down his faint, hlond brows in the 
 exertion of cerebration and expression. " She 's got 
 some prop'ty, but prop'ty ain't everythin'. Miss Milly 's 
 a nice young lady, but she ain't no worker, and she ain't 
 no head for management; and then she 's wearin'. 
 Where 's the good of aH that there land if — " Jimmy 
 finished his appeal by implication, fixing his limpid 
 eyes upon me. 
 
 " Most people would think Ellen Tod a bad match." 
 
 " That 's narrow-mindedness," Jimmy declared with 
 uncommon decision. " Miss Ellen would make a splen- 
 did wife. If that ain't bein' a good match — " He 
 again came to a full and impressive stop. 
 
 "But would Cousin Betsey think so? Does she 
 know you care about — that you want to marry her?" 
 
 Jimmy mopped his brow with his sleeve. 
 
 " No, 'm; no, 'm," he said ; " and for the Lord's sake 
 don't say nothin'. I don't know what to do. Maw 's 
 terrible masterful, but — but — Miss Ellen, she 's 
 mighty patient, but she 's powerful sot, too." And 
 with this pregnant suggestion of his own helplessness 
 between antagonistic forces the discussion concluded, 
 and I began to try to repair the damage I had done 
 his cheerfulness by asking about his oxen. 
 
 Idleness begot in me a curiosity to see Ellen Tod, 
 so one day I asked Jimmy to take me to visit her. 
 
 " I 'U be proud to do it," he replied, without explain- 
 ing whom his pride complimented. When he next 
 
106 THE EEIGN OF REASON. 
 
 went to mill I went along, and was put down at the 
 door of the little log house below the hill. 
 
 " There 's no need of lettin' her know you are 
 comin'," Jimmy had told me, " for she and the house 
 is always as spick and as span as all the comp'ny in 
 the world could make 'em." 
 
 The house stood an eighth of a mile back from the 
 road, and a wagon-track led up to and away from it 
 in a wide semicircle worthy a drive before a palace ; 
 it was all unfenced, the wild greenness pressing up 
 to the doorway. As we approached, a tall, broad- 
 shouldered young woman came to the low, open door. 
 I had time to take a good look at her, and it was a 
 pleasant exercise. She stood with one hand on her 
 hip, in an attitude of such simplicity and ease as the 
 rustic obtains only in Ms most uncorrupted estate. 
 Her smooth, dark hair was parted and brought down 
 behind her ears into a knot of eminent decency ; her 
 features were good, strong, rather large, and were set 
 off by a fine ruddy complexion. She came out to the 
 wagon as we stopped and put up her hand to Jimmy. 
 "Howdy," she said — not smiling, but fixing her gray 
 eyes upon him with what was like maternal tender- 
 ness. 
 
 "Howdy, Miss Ellen," Jimmy answered, equally 
 grave. " This is my cousin, Miss Addington — Miss 
 Tod, Cousin Adeline." 
 
 "I wanted to stop off and stay with you, if I might, 
 while Jimmy goes to mill." 
 
 " I 'm pleased to see you," said Ellen Tod. " Wait, 
 and 1 11 bring a chair for you " — a chair to help me 
 alight. 
 
THE REIGN OF EEASON. 107 
 
 Jimmy was right as to the spickness and spanness 
 of Ellen and her house. Her innate superiority was 
 shown in her dress, which was of that standard dark 
 purple calico which knows no North, no South, and 
 it was made without a furbelow anywhere ; it was a 
 model of the chief garment of modern woman reduced 
 to its simplest elements, but it was beautifully clean, 
 and was perfect in its way, even the unrelieved band 
 around the neck being becoming to so handsome a 
 column. That touchstone of the Southern house- 
 keeper, the hearth, was swept so clean that its scoured 
 stones attracted the eye, and the big bed in one corner 
 of the room was radiant in brilliant patchwork. After 
 I entered, Ellen returned a moment to the wagon and 
 shook hands with the departing Jimmy, who was to 
 return in a couple of hours. For that time Ellen and 
 I were left to each other's uninterrupted society, for 
 her father was away at work, and she and he com- 
 posed the family. She was a charming hostess, full 
 of hospitality and with an effortless gift of sUence 
 almost equal to Jimmy's own. 
 
 She took my hat, allowed me to sit in the back 
 doorway which looked out into the near woods, and 
 brought me a glass of cool buttermilk from the 
 bucket in the spring. My soid was satisfied when 
 she got out a big spinning-wheel and went to work. 
 I wondered if she spun when Jimmy came, and was 
 inclined to think that no woman could be ignorant of 
 the charming esthetic possibilities of the occupation. 
 I could imagine Jimmy sinking into a deep and deeper 
 daze of pleasure as he watched the swift, light-moving 
 figure passing to and fro, while the big wheel whirled. 
 
108 
 
 THE EEIGN OF EEASON. 
 
 MISS ELLEN. 
 
 I tried to get up the courage to talk to her about 
 Jimmy, but I could n't ; she was too big and grown 
 up; she made me feel too small and light-minded. 
 She actually smiled at me, however, when the wagon 
 returned. I felt now as if a handshaking all around 
 were justified, for it seemed as if I had spent a pleas- 
 ant, dreamy, drowsy lifetime in that back door. 
 
THE REIGN OF REASON. 109 
 
 " I ain't very lively company ; I never was," Ellen 
 said as I put on my hat, scarcely apologetically, but 
 as if the fact were an undeniable drawback. She took 
 Jimmy some buttermilk, — he did not leave the wagon, 
 — and I delayed my appearance while he drank it. 
 
 " I don't know as I '11 ever see you again," she said, 
 as she gravely gave me her hand ; " but I 'm glad you 
 come, and I wish you well. Take care of yourself," 
 she said as we started, including me in the kindly 
 gaze she turned on Jimmy. 
 
 I did see her again, but before the second meeting 
 pousin Betsey had learned of her as a possible daugh- 
 ter-in-law. I came in from a tramp the day before I 
 left, and found mother and son closing a terrible and 
 portentous interview. Poor Jimmy was sitting in his 
 mother's room with his bowed head supported in his 
 hands and his every line expressing crushed suffering, 
 but withal hardly so limp as might have been ex- 
 pected. The little masterful mother stood with her 
 knotted hands on the back of a chair in front of her, 
 gazing at her boy with a touch of bewilderment in 
 her pale, stern, lawyer-like face. 
 
 I started back from the door I had opened. 
 
 " Come in, Adeline," she said ; " come in. Like as 
 not it 's no news to you that this poor fool I brought 
 into the world wants to marry a low-down girl over 
 there in the hollow, without a second gown to her 
 back, and no more raisin' than one of my heifers." 
 
 Jimmy did not stir. 
 
 "If he could get himself up to tell me so, he 's likely 
 told everybody else first. You need n't say nothin'. I 
 don't want to know. what you know or what you don't; 
 10 
 
110 THE EBIGN OF REASON. 
 
 but I want to tell you — you are young and foolish — 
 that you 've done a right cruel thing if you Ve given 
 him encouragement in his folly, or if you ever do. I 
 can't believe he ever would have named such a thing 
 to me if somebody like you had n't give him some sus-: 
 tainment." 
 
 I felt a guilty thud in my breast as those luminous 
 pale eyes fixed themselves upon me. I had not meant 
 to give encouragement, but I saw now that Cousin 
 Betsey was probably right, and that my liking for 
 Ellen had helped Jimmy to the courage shown in 
 this declaration; he had an immense regard for my 
 opinion. 
 
 "James," she said, "look at me." Jimmy raised a 
 haggard, pain-dazed face. " James, I 'm goin' to say 
 before Adeline what I 've told you I 'd do if you won't 
 give up this — girl. Will you give her up ? " 
 
 Jimmy half gasped. "Mother," he began, then 
 stopped ; a dead silence ; its tensity was painful, like 
 a physical sensation. "Mother, if you 'd just know 
 her, if " 
 
 " I knew her father and mother before her, before 
 you was born. My father kept her grandfather from 
 starvin' to death ; more 's the pity, since it brings this 
 shame upon me now. Her mother was a nameless 
 brat. I know her enough." 
 
 " No, 'm, no, 'm ; you don't. Ellen 's not them. 
 She 'd make the best wife " 
 
 " Much you know or care about her making a good 
 wife. You can't take me in. You 're in love with 
 her." 
 
 "No, 'm ; no. Maw. I 'm not that bewitched " 
 
THE EEIGN OF REASON. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " Will you, or won't you, give her up ? " 
 Jimmy staggered to his feet and to the door. 
 "Mother, mother," he repeated slowly under his 
 breath as if it were a sort of prayer. 
 
 "if he maeeies that girl he is no son op mine." 
 
 " stop," she said. " Adeline," — she took me by the 
 arm, — " I say to you that if he marries that girl he is 
 no son of mine, and I 'U never treat him as one, dead 
 or alive." 
 
 The door closed behind Jimmy, and Cousin Betsey 
 sank into a chair, and let her hands fall as they would. 
 
112 THE EEIGN OP REASON. 
 
 one in her lap, and one at her side. I knelt beside 
 her and tried to stanch my tears. Cousin Betsey had 
 all a man's preference for an unemotional atmosphere, 
 and the first thing she said was to tell me to bring her 
 knitting. 
 
 " Oh, why, why," I said, "did you say such a terrible 
 thing?" 
 
 " I said it because I thought it would stop him if 
 anything would," she answered with a firm mouth, 
 though her fingers were a little shaky as she handled 
 her needles. 
 
 "But if it does n't?" 
 
 " If it does n't, he knows what to look for." 
 
 " Cousin Betsey, I 've seen her : she seems nice ; I 
 believe she would be a good wife " 
 
 " Adeline, get up ; I don't want to hear any more 
 foolishness. I 'm the one that 's likely to know who 'd 
 make a good wife for my son, if it 's a good wife you 
 are both so bent on. I 've taken care of him a good 
 many years." 
 
 " Don't you love him ? Don't you want him to be 
 happy?" 
 
 " Of course I do ; that 's why I ' ve done what I could 
 to stop this thing." 
 
 The needles were clicking well by this time. 
 
 " But if he marries, and you do as you say, you '11 
 make him miserable." 
 
 " I 'U do what I say. I 'veliad to say it for his good, 
 and I 'd have to do it not to be a liar. Howsomever, 
 there 's no use livin' through the thing before it hap- 
 pens. I don't seem to see Jimmy gettin' himself up 
 to go and disobey me. He 'd never have the spunk." 
 
THE REIGN OF REASON. 113 
 
 And Cousin Betsey, with that almost appalling good 
 sense so characteristic of her, insisted on returning to 
 the serene tone of every-day life. She treated Jimmy 
 for the twenty -four hours that I was still with them in 
 exactly her usual manner, which was placidly kind, so 
 far as it was anything, though it took less account of 
 him as an individual entity than probably even the 
 humblest of us, in his place, would have preferred. 
 
 Jimmy was much depressed, but he was in awe of 
 his mother, and felt bound to puU himself together 
 and respond to her attitude as far as possible. 
 
 It was an evident relief to him when he and I were 
 once more started on horseback for the station, and 
 he was at liberty in the woods, to be as miserable as 
 he liked. He longed to have me do something for 
 him, he did not know what, — say something, suggest 
 something, — and he turned his dog-like brown eyes 
 upon me with a heart-breaking force of appeal in 
 them. But I was too conscious of the gravity of 
 the situation to venture a word upon it. While we 
 were waiting, however, on the little platform, with 
 the falling leaves fluttering around us, he broke 
 forth: 
 
 "Cousin Adeline, you can see what a good wife 
 Ellen would make for me, can't you ? You need n't 
 say anythin' — I know you do; any one has got to 
 that knows her. It ain't that I 'm in love with her, 
 like maw said. But I don't see how I can let EUen 
 go. I don't see how I can." 
 
 I longed to probe his consciousness to see if any 
 perception of obligation to Ellen could be aroused to 
 reinforce his abiding sense of the necessity of EUen 
 
114 THE REIGN OF REASON. 
 
 to him, SO it was just as well that the rickety little 
 engine eame meandering around the corner just then ; 
 leave-takings and responses to the cordial, hospitable 
 greetings of the conductor occupied all the time I felt 
 justified in delaying the other passengers, and I left 
 without committing any new indiscretions. 
 
 One day in the following April I was in the old 
 flower-garden, wholly absorbed in the care of the 
 Camomile-bed, when one of the servants came out 
 to me sajdng that there was "some mighty cur'us 
 'pearin' comp'ny up to de house," and that they had 
 asked for me. 
 
 I did not, to tell the truth, think of Jimmy and 
 Ellen, but when I found them, the moment my eyes fell 
 on them it seemed as if I had been expecting them all 
 along. They had refused to go into the house, and 
 were waiting for me on the back " gallery " ; as I 
 came up their horses were just being led off to the 
 stables. The look of people about to be married was 
 upon them : I am a clergyman's daughter and I rec- 
 ognized it, even though I did not quite see why they 
 had come to Strathboro' for this purpose. 
 
 Jimmy began explaining at once ; he gave an array 
 of reasons for his presence here, of which I seemed to 
 be offered my choice. He did not want any of the 
 preachers around his home to incur his mother's en- 
 mity by performing the ceremony, he and EUen felt 
 like coming to see me, they thought a little journey 
 would be nice, and he desired my brother's advice 
 about some matter of business. 
 
 Ellen put in that they did not want me to incur 
 Cousin Betsey's wrath either; they had come to see 
 
THE REIGN OP EEA80N. 115 
 
 me, but they 'd go to the house of the preacher I 
 should recommend. 
 
 They had, as I said, the air of people about to be 
 married, but with a curious reversal of parts ; Jimmy 
 was full of the cheerfulness of a storm- tossed traveler 
 who has found port, while poor Ellen's bearing ex- 
 pressed the awe-struck sense of responsibility which 
 generally oppresses the bridegroom. I seated them 
 in the dining-room at such a lunch as Aunt 'Merky 
 was able, in her phrase, to " scare up," and went into 
 a place apart to commune with my own mind. 
 
 My brother and his wife were away ; I was alone in 
 authority; how could I turn out these waifs to get 
 married in the desolation of a strange parsonage par- 
 lor, when I felt sure that a touching gravitation to- 
 ward sympathy was all that had brought them so 
 far? Here was a chance to play a little part in a 
 romance, to manage, to be important and benevolent. 
 
 I became infected with the passionate reasonable- 
 ness characteristic of all the principles in the affair. 
 I said : " Brother Arthur is away, he '11 not have to 
 bear any of the responsibility ; they are going to get 
 married anyhow ; Cousin Betsey can't hurt me ; and, 
 after all, Jimmy is quite right about it. Ellen wiU 
 make him a beautiful wife — go to, I will be a pa- 
 troness ! " 
 
 After the ceremony — besides the servants in the 
 doorway, only the most sentimental old lady in the 
 village and myself witnessed it — Ellen had a little 
 experience which I trust has never been repeated; 
 she broke down from her usual care-taking, all-sus- 
 taining, maternal self into a frightened, helpless 
 
116 THE EEIGN OF REASON. 
 
 woman who wanted to be comforted by somebody- 
 stronger than herself. She di'opped down upon the 
 sofa, and began to cry softly upon Jimmy's shoulder. 
 Poor Jimmy felt then that matrimony was indeed a 
 strange estate whose mysteries developed with in- 
 credible promptness, and in the most unexpected 
 ways. He looked so pitifully bafiled and bewildered 
 that Ellen, when she saw his face, straightened up 
 into her more characteristic phase, and slipped her 
 hand into his to comfort him. It was not a tra- 
 ditional bridal scene, but it seemed to me a very 
 natural and touching one. 
 
 There was nothing for Jimmy to do, of course, but 
 to sink to the station of a renter. He went in on 
 shares with his father-in-law that year, and lived in 
 the neat little cabin I had visited. 
 
 My brother recently passed through that part of 
 the county, and he reports that Betsey has taken the 
 surprising but simple course of treating Jimmy as 
 she might treat any poor neighbor whom she had 
 long known, even letting him land on good though not 
 unbusinesslike terms ; but never breaking either the 
 letter or the spirit of her vow. Amos thinks this suits 
 both mother and son admirably. As for Jimmy, he 
 says, he has more confidence of manner than of old, 
 despite his social fall; and that he wears such a look 
 of contentment as any other woman in Cousin Bet- 
 sey's place would sorely resent. 
 
 After a four-years' experience of Ellen as a wife 
 the one conviction of Jimmy's life seems justified. 
 
NANNIE'S CAREER. 
 
 "T is now a year since I made my last 
 visit to Tennessee, and I had then 
 been away four years. 
 
 During the interval Strathboro' 
 had gone over to the New South ! 
 I was surprised, and, it must be con- 
 fessed, not wholly pleased. I had 
 always supposed that Strathboro' 
 would be the last place to come under modern in- 
 fluences. There is no chance for it to become com- 
 mercial, and since the war it has droned along like a 
 town in a dream. On this last visit I spent most 
 of my time with Mrs. Caldwell, a cousin of my 
 mother. When I entered her dear, big, dingy old 
 house, by way of its absurd, majestic, wooden-pillared 
 portico, and passed into its wide, dim hall, I was 
 vaguely conscious of innovation in the air, and when 
 I reached the guest-chamber, to which I was at once 
 conducted, it burst upon me: here was the New 
 South in the unexpected form of beribboned tidies, 
 bits of draperies, things Kensington stitched, and a 
 fancy crocheted rug lay on the foot of the great old 
 
 117 
 
118 NANNIE'S CAEEEK. 
 
 canopied bedstead. I was glad they had not gotten 
 rid of the bedstead ; ' it had satisfied my earliest ideas 
 of splendor. 
 
 I looked about me in sorrow, for aU this array 
 of fashionable fripperies seemed as foreign and out 
 of place in Strathboro' as it would be on a Mexican 
 hacienda. 
 
 " I see, Adeline, you are noticing my new things," 
 said Mrs. Caldwell. " I suppose you see such a great 
 deal handsomer in New York ; but when I was on to 
 the meeting of the W. C. T. U. in Minneapolis I saw 
 how pretty Northern wom& made their houses, and 
 ours looked so bare when I came back that I had 
 Nannie learn some such work. I can't do anything 
 myself except the French embroidery we learned at 
 boarding-school in my day, and it is n't the kind that 's 
 the style now. It is a great improvement, is n't it? — 
 brightens the old house up. Your Aunt Evelina has 
 prettier things than I have; she went on to Minne- 
 apolis too. She was a delegate, from Boontown." 
 
 "A delegate ? " I was greatly bewildered. 
 
 " Yes, from their branch of the W. C. T. U." 
 
 "TheW. C. T. U. what?" 
 
 Mrs. Caldwell dropped her one hundred and seven- 
 ty-five pounds into a chair, and stared at me, wounded 
 amazement painted on her handsome, middle-aged, 
 aquiline countenance. 
 
 "Adeline," she said. "Adeline," she repeated, " you 
 don't mean to tell me that you have no interest in the 
 Woman's Christian Temperance Union ? — you living 
 up there in the North where the glorious work is so 
 much less obstructed." 
 
NANNIE'S CAREER. 119 
 
 " Indeed I have a great respect and a great deal of 
 latent interest, Cousin Anne," I interrupted. " It has 
 not come exactly in my way to know much about it, 
 but I reported the proceedings of the meeting in New 
 York one day, and they seemed to me curiously im- 
 portant and significant." 
 
 "You did n't join?" Cousin Anne still stared at 
 me in touching melancholy. 
 
 " Why, no ; it did n't exactly occur to me." 
 
 I saw Cousin Anne put by the temptation to lecture 
 me immediately as if it had been a palpable thing 
 visibly pushed ; she did it with a sigh, and then de- 
 voted herself to her hospitalities, as one who had long 
 recognized that she lived in the midst of a stiff-necked 
 and froward generation. It was marvelous to see how 
 these Strathboro' women — an important minority of 
 them, that is — loved this organization. It was, every- 
 thing of important occupation, of wide interest, of ex- 
 panded life, to them. Prejudices of section, of sex, of 
 society, went down before it. It was represented by 
 women who could not be ignored or ostracized, and 
 who banded themselves together for a sacred cause ; 
 and as they would do unheard-of things, old codes 
 must needs burst to fragments, and the unheard-of be 
 permitted. The men in their relation to the movement 
 it was a joy to contemplate — there was something so 
 primally and helplessly masculine and chivalrous in 
 the big sheepish way most of them stood back, and 
 lifted never a hand to stop proceedings such as all 
 their lives they had declared, and believed them- 
 selves sincere in declaring, they would sooner die 
 than permit. 
 
120 NANNIE'S CAREER. , 
 
 I found my position in Strathboro' changed; hith- 
 erto, the fact that I was the daughter of my father 
 and mother had caused the unknown mysteries of a 
 New York newspaper woman's life to be graciously 
 forgiven me and considerately overlooked, but now 
 everywhere there was a new and vivid interest in 
 what I may sum up as Advanced Womanhood, and 
 advanced womanhood, alas ! I was considered to rep- 
 resent. Our present concern with all this lies in the 
 fact that Cousin Anne's eighteen-year-old daughter, 
 the most domestic, conservative, well-ordered little 
 creature I ever saw, was predestined by her mother 
 to join the ranks of advanced womanhood, and I was 
 expected to assist at the sacrifice. 
 
 During my staj'^ with them Cousin Anne was visited 
 by her sister, Mrs. Framley. 
 
 Mrs. Framley was generally spoken of as " a char- 
 acter," and she enjoyed living up to her reputation. 
 Her own children were all sons, and she always tacitly 
 assumed the absence of daughters to be a proof of her 
 own superior good sense ; but naturally this state of 
 things gave her the greater freedom of opinion as to 
 how less admirable people should manage theirs. The 
 second day after she came she opened up the subject 
 of Nannie. 
 
 "Anne," said she, pinning the shirt she was making 
 by hand to her knee, and stitching energetically, "why 
 has n't Nannie got some beaux? I 've never seen a 
 sign of a young man about the place ? What is the 
 matter 1 She is pretty enough." 
 
 Cousin Anne was writing at a little table, attending 
 to business for the W. C. T. U. She did not answer 
 
NANNIE'S CAEEEE. 121 
 
 for a moment ; then she said, a little stiffly : " S't' El- 
 len" (abbreviated form of Sister Ellen), " I don't in- 
 tend Nannie to waste her time on beaux ; she 's got 
 enough to do attending to her studies. I 'm having 
 her keep them up ; I have not let her come out yet." 
 
 "Come out! m-m-m. You and I never did come 
 out, Anne ; but when we were girls we managed to 
 have a mighty good time, and first or last half the 
 young men in the county were courting us. If there 
 is anything better worth a girl's while than that, I 've 
 never heard of it." 
 
 "I propose that Nannie shall find things better 
 worth the while of a rational being in such a world 
 as this," Cousin Anne replied. 
 
 " I never heard before that Nannie or any other 
 girl of eighteen was a rational being. I pity her if 
 she is. Do you mean her to be an old maid 1 " 
 
 Cousin Anne sealed an envelop with elaborate care. 
 This was an essentially uncomfortable question: every 
 inbred prejudice and many native sentiments rose up 
 within her against the suggestion; and yet every in- 
 stinct of expansion, of moral dignity, of ambition, tied 
 her to the course she had vaguely blocked out, and it 
 was certainly not a part of that program that Nannie 
 should marry soon ; and how was it to be supposed 
 that the strange, triumphant, world-manipulating 
 creature Nannie was to become could ever be accom- 
 modated within the matrimonial harbor ? Something 
 like this in chaotic, dim form distressed her mind, 
 but she stuck on a stamp with decision, and finally 
 said: 
 
 " I don't know whether or not she will ever marry, 
 11 
 
122 NANNIE'S CAREER. 
 
 S't' Ellen, but at least she shall have my help to be- 
 come a noble woman, helping the world onward." 
 
 "A noble woman ! O Lord ! I 'm a noble woman, 
 Anne ; only you 'd never see it, just because I 've got 
 common sense. Well, weU ! Yankee notions down 
 here must be a mighty sight worse than they are at 
 home, for somehow or another they do seem to keep 
 on marrying up there, and the girls have some little 
 frolic, to judge by what I hear, before they go into 
 the business of turning the world upside down. Are 
 you going to make a preacher, or a W. C. T. U. lec- 
 turer, out of Nannie ? She 's got such a gift of gab, 
 she 'd do for either one." 
 
 Dear Cousin Anne's Roman features were touched 
 with an infantile grief, and the tears came to her fine 
 eyes as she said, " I did n't think you 'd ever make 
 fun of Nannie, S't' Ellen ; I thought you admired her 
 being so quiet." 
 
 " So I do, so I do, Anne," said the softened sister ; 
 " but that 's the very reason I don't like to see her 
 spoiled and kept out of her natural amusements. 
 What are you going to do with her anyhow, right 
 away, next thing ? " 
 
 Cousin Anne resumed her air of dignified firmness, 
 and replied that Nannie was going North with me for 
 the winter. 
 
 " What are you going to do with her when you get 
 her up there, Adeline ? " 
 
 " Cousin Anne thinks she will have a good chance 
 to look about her and choose some work or profession 
 to devote herself to." 
 
 " Upon my word ! " Cousin Ellen abandoned the 
 
NANNIE'S CAREER. 123 
 
 shirt, and dropped her hands into her lap. " Why, 
 the ehUd 's got enough to live on, and I reckon that 's 
 all she asks." 
 
 Just then Nannie, looking very young and pink and 
 pretty in her white frock, came to the door. 
 
 The mother gave her sister a warning glance. 
 
 " I won't do any harm," was the direct reply. " Come 
 in here, Nannie, child ; you don't think your old aunt 
 will bite, do you?" 
 
 The girl put her hand into the one outstretched to 
 her with the manner of a good child. 
 
 " So you are going off to Yankeeland, are you ? and 
 get to be a strong-minded >voman, like Adeline here?" 
 Nannie smiled sweetly upon me. 
 
 "What are you going to do up there, honey?" 
 
 " Mamma thinks I '11 know better when I get there," 
 said Nannie, a faint shade crossing her face. 
 
 " Gro fetch me a drink, in the big gourd ; that 's a 
 dear. Well, Anne," she continued, when the girl was 
 out of hearing, "you and Nannie are about as pre- 
 cious a pair of babes in the woods as ever I saw. But, 
 after all, Adeline's not as big a fool as she looks, and 
 I reckon you won't do anything worse for the time 
 being than waste money and spoil Nannie's fun ; I 
 don't believe Adeline's friends — the men aU seem to 
 be fifty or older — will be very lively for her. And 
 I should think," she added maliciously, " you 'd be 
 afraid they would undermine her principles; there 
 don't seem to be many W. C. T. U. people among 
 'em." But Cousin Anne had talked all this over with 
 me, and had settled her course. 
 
 I wrote to my friend Amy Milman, a young painter 
 
124 NANNIE'S CAEEEE. 
 
 who shared my little flat, to engage a certain bedroom 
 from our neighbors in the front apartments, and I 
 came on North with Nannie. 
 
 Amy, who knew something of the state of the case, 
 met her with maternal graciousness, and then took 
 me aside, closed a door upon us, and asked what in 
 the world I intended to do with her. 
 
 " I don't intend to do anything," I declared ; "I am 
 simply the tool of circumstances. Probably she will 
 stay here awhile, and go home all comfortably enough 
 and take up the life that suits her there." 
 
 " No, she won't," stated Amy, with solemn emphasis. 
 " We are aiding — you are, that is — and abetting 
 in unfitting one human creature for life. She won't 
 belong anywhere after she 's tried an independent 
 existence here awhile. She '11 be neither fowl, fish, 
 nor flesh." 
 
 " Well," I pleaded, " don't try to wake up my con- 
 science about it all, Amy dear ; it can do nothing but 
 distress me. I said all I could to Cousin Anne. I 
 wanted this visit to be regarded as just an outing, a 
 lark ; but no, the child has been loaded down with 
 the obligation to find a life-work. And by that her 
 mother means what she calls a career, something at 
 once dazzling and " 
 
 "What did her mother say when you talked to 
 her?" 
 
 " Say? Why, asked how I should like to marry and 
 live in Strathboro' all my life myself; and told me 
 that Nannie is very literary in her tastes, more so 
 than any girl in her class, and that one of her essays 
 had been published in the Strathboro' what d' you 
 
NANNIE'S CAEEER. 125 
 
 call it weekly, and that she loved to see a woman 
 eager to help on her sisters, and " 
 
 " Stop ! Do you think she 's got a bit of talent for 
 anything in the world ! " 
 
 "Not an atom, that I can discover, except — what 
 is it James says ? — the talent for being the nicest of 
 little girls." 
 
 "Maybe if she has not a bit it won't be so bad. 
 Don't worry, anyhow, you poor girl. Go bring her 
 into the sitting-room and we 'U have some tea, and 
 I '11 give you some newspaper stuff." 
 
 Alas ! poor Nannie had never drunk tea in her life, 
 and I think the very sight of us engaged in such a 
 curious rite increased her homesickness. She was, 
 of course, terribly homesick, everything — our little 
 rooms, our way of life, our talk, the very outlook 
 from the windows — was all so crushingly strange. 
 She was benumbed for weeks, and her one comfort, 
 her mother's letters, were after aH but a sorry com- 
 fort, for they bristled with questions as to the pro- 
 gress of her ambitions for the future. Poor Nannie ! 
 I think at last she began to realize what an awful 
 thing it is to be asked to make a career offhand, as it 
 were. It was worse than Miss Haversham's demand 
 that her little visitor should play. But Nannie was a 
 self-contained little soul, and at last escaped from her 
 worst throes, and began to come into relation with the 
 life around her without having unbosomed herself to 
 anybody. She came down with me to the ofi&ce of the 
 "Appeal " several times, and sat hours in that grimy 
 sanctum, very proper as to attitudes and very natty 
 as to dress, but she voiced no impressions, and gave 
 
126 NANNIE'S CAREBE. 
 
 utterance to no opinions as to her fitness for journal- 
 ism. I was bound to be grateful for tbat. She also 
 spent hours in Amy's studio, and I thought it would 
 be much better for her to go in for painting than for 
 writing, 
 
 " "Why ? " demanded Amy, argumentatively, defen- 
 sively. 
 
 " Oh, it will give her time," I said. " There is a 
 regular way of studying it. No one expects to suc- 
 ceed in that at once. Her disappointments and mor- 
 tifications will reach her so much more slowly. She 
 could even spend a lifetime, under favorable circum- 
 stances, puttering away at it, and not be much the 
 wiser as to her unfitness." 
 
 But she said nothing as to taking up painting. 
 Cousin Anne wrote to me to ask if it was not time 
 she was concentrating herself, if her life-work had 
 not yet disclosed itself. I pleaded for time for her. 
 
 Nannie was too honest to play at a vocation ; she 
 evidently took her position with fearful seriousness. 
 
 It took me seriously. It was beginning to weigh 
 upon me like a nightmare, when one evening brought 
 at least the relief of fresh developments. Carlton 
 Darby, a painter whom Amy professionally adored, 
 and who took an interest in her and her work, came 
 in to spend an hour with us. I, too, had a great 
 liking for Carlton Darby, both professionally and 
 personally, He was a big, simple, quiet creature, who 
 never seemed to have discovered the fact of his own 
 existence, though he had a delightfully fresh eye for 
 the existence of a good many other things. 
 
 Nannie was brought in, of course, and listened with 
 
NANNIE'S CAREER. 127 
 
 her usual perfect decorum to the talk about back- 
 grounds and foregrounds and color motives and 
 modern feeling. He handed her a cup of tea — she 
 had learned to sip that beverage by this time — 
 and he shook hands with her when he went away, 
 but he did not seem to have really seen her, a fact 
 that is little credit to those powers of observation 
 I have remarked upon. Nannie's perceptions were the 
 better subject for praise this time. As I toasted my- 
 self over our one open fire after Amy had gone to bed, 
 Nannie came and sat down by me. After gazing long 
 into the sinking coals she broke the silence by saying : 
 
 "Mr. Darby is a great painter, is n't he?" 
 
 " He 's a mighty good one anyhow," I answered. It 
 always seemed natural to talk Tennessee to Nannie. 
 
 " Does he take pupils ? " she asked. 
 
 " Dear me, I 'm afraid not. However, I don't know 
 but he might. Do you want to study with him ? " 
 
 "It seems as if I must be making up my mind, 
 does n't it, Cousin Adeline ? Mamma thinks I 'm wast- 
 ing the winter, and she counts on it so. I think I 'd 
 like to paint better than anything I know of. Mr. 
 Darby makes it so interesting when he talks about 
 it, does n't he 1 He made me feel like I understood, 
 though it 's aU mixed up in my mind now. Do you 
 think I could ever paint any, Cousin Adeline ? I was 
 such a good scholar at school, except in arithmetic 
 and algebra: you would n't need them in painting, 
 would you ? But up here I don't seem as bright as 
 mamma used to think I was." 
 
 The gentle little mouth looked dangerously tremu- 
 lous, and I hastened to steady it with a kiss, and to 
 
128 NANNIE'S CAEBEE. 
 
 declare that we 'd see at once if she could not have 
 lessons from Carlton Darby. 
 
 At least that was better than having her plunged 
 into medicine, which was Cousin Anne's latest sug- 
 gestion. I went to see Mr. Darby the next day. Amy 
 was so inhumanly full of her sense of the sacredness 
 of paint that I knew she would be no effective ally, 
 so I went alone to the pleasant old workshop studio. 
 The painter, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door. He 
 gave me a chair in silence, gravely put on his coat as 
 if he were performing some established ceremony, and 
 then sat down on a three-legged stool in front of me. 
 
 "How are you, and how is Miss Milman?" he asked, 
 after a moment's delay, when I did not, as usual, find 
 a way to open the conversation myself. 
 
 "I wish you 'd ask about the other member of our 
 household," I exclaimed. "It would give me a chance 
 to begin what I have to say ! " 
 
 "The other mem — oh, the little Tennessee girl. 
 Yes, I remember her now." 
 
 " Do you think you remember her well enough to 
 be ready to take her as a pupil ? " 
 
 "A pupil? — in painting?" The accent was not re- 
 assuring. " Now Miss Addington, you know — hold 
 on, though, I don't know. There is a girl here. Miss 
 Rosamond Giles — do you know her? She 's got 
 talent, the real thing. She 's wanting to study with 
 me, and her people won't let her unless I have a class. 
 Your little girl would make a class, don't you think ? 
 I 'd like to teach Miss Giles; I think I could do a good 
 deal for her. She 's done some quite stunning little 
 things already. Your — what 's her name? — Miss 
 
NANNIE'S CAEEEB. 129 
 
 Caldwell could come along and learn what she could. 
 What is she taking it up for ? Oh, well, I don't sup- 
 pose it will do her any special harm. Send her along. 
 I '11 find out when Miss Giles can come. Her mother 
 said she 'd consent if I had some other pupils, and I 
 guess one will do." 
 
 " Do you think Darby is at all in love with Rosa- 
 mond GUes?" I asked Amy when I got home. "He 
 seemed quite filled with enthusiasm about teaching 
 her. He never thought of Nannie except as a means 
 to that end." 
 
 " Miss Giles is a mighty gifted young painter, worse 
 luck to her!" murmured Amy, as she went on making 
 dabs at the canvas before her, and dividing scowling 
 stares between it and her " arrangement" at the other 
 end of the room. 
 
 Owing to Mr. Darby's special interest in Miss Giles, 
 Nannie had the privilege of going to the studio every 
 day. She spent three hours there, and the heavenly 
 bodies were not more prompt and constant in their 
 movements than was she. 
 
 I did not suppose Mr. Darby and Miss Giles cared 
 to be disturbed by a visitor, and was glad enough to 
 find a reason for dismissing Nannie in her would-be 
 professional capacity from my mind. So, as Cousin 
 Anne was satisfied, and the child seemed contented, 
 I bothered not a whit as to what she was doing. I 
 supposed it was nothing; but in that supposition 
 I stupidly failed to take account of those powers of 
 self-defense with which naturalists tell us every crea- 
 ture is, in some fashion, endowed. 
 
 About ten weeks after the lessons began there was 
 
130 NANNIE'S CAEEBE. 
 
 a rap at my door late one night, and Nannie came in, 
 looking uncommonly blooming and softly bright. 
 
 "I have something to tell you, Cousin Adeline," 
 she said, stopping in the center of the room, with her 
 proper little hands clasped together before her belt, 
 and her gentle eyes fixed mysteriously upon mine. 
 
 And, if you please, her news was that she was en- 
 gaged to be married to Carlton Darby. 
 
 How ardently I embraced her, with what respect 
 I gazed at her; I felt a sense of gratitude to things 
 in general. 
 
 How well the old solution still served, after all. 
 What a loosening was here of the hard knots which 
 the march of civilization, the evolution of society, and 
 a misguided parent had been tying for those patient 
 small fingers. 
 
 Conversation with Nannie was impossible : she was 
 mute and deaf, absorbed in her own emotions ; so I 
 tucked her away in her bed — she was staring out 
 into space with shining, unseeing eyes when I turned 
 out the gas — and betook myself to Amy. 
 
 Not to have patronized the enthusiasm that waked 
 her from her first nap would have been more than 
 human. 
 
 "My dear girl," she began, "do I hear you talking 
 as if marriage were a convenience ? One would think 
 you had just gotten the eldest of seven plain daugh- 
 ters off your hands. And you always think so much 
 about your social problems ; this is not an answer, it 
 is just an accident." 
 
 Then dropping this affectation of a coldness no 
 woman ever felt at such news, she broke forth: 
 
NANNIE'S CAKEEE. 131 
 
 " But how do you suppose it came about? He cer- 
 tainly has not courted her here; I never gave him 
 the chance — the few times he has come. I did n't 
 suppose he cared to speak to her. When he comes to 
 see you to-morrow I 'd claim it as my right to know 
 all the details, if I were you. He '11 think that is 
 customary if you tell him so ; I know he will. But 
 what are you going to say to Mrs. CaldwelH How 
 about your stewardship ? This is n't advanced 
 womanhood." 
 
 I replied that at least Nannie had taken highly in- 
 dependent modern ground in conducting her matri- 
 monial alliance ; her mother would have to take that 
 as her contribution to the cause of universal eman- 
 cipation. 
 
 I did not derive much information from my in- 
 terview with Mr. Darby. He sat in our little parlor, 
 looking ridiculously large and radiant and quiet, and 
 seemed to find all talk superfluous. He was as finely 
 unapologetic as possible, but he did ask me in the 
 undertone of an aside if he ought not to write to Mrs. 
 Caldwell. Mrs. Caldwell gave no trouble. She took 
 a somewhat grieved, reproachful tone for a time; but 
 Mr. Darby was an eligible man, so far as Strathboro' 
 standards could be applied to him, and the inherent 
 delight of seeing a daughter happily married really 
 overflooded aU the superficial ambitions of her later 
 years, and even, I doubt not, cheered her under the 
 affliction of Mrs. Pramley's satisfaction in the turn of 
 events. She did write to Nannie and to me that at 
 least in thus marrying a painter Nannie would be 
 enabled to continue her study of art; but Nannie 
 
132 NANNIE'S CAREER. 
 
 said to me, with that complete conclusiveness that 
 even the veriest mouse of a woman assumes in such 
 situations: 
 
 " Mr. Darby does not wish me to try to paint if I. 
 don't want to, and I don't think I do. He wants to 
 paint me, and he says a sympathetic model is half 
 a painter's battle, and I would rather help him that 
 way." 
 
 Meanwhile Amy, roused to an exceptional and 
 praiseworthy interest in contemporaneous human life, 
 had speedily visited Miss Giles for the express pur- 
 pose of hearing what she could of Nannie's courtship. 
 Miss GUes could tell her very little ; but this igno- 
 rance was in itself highly interesting, for she was just 
 recovering from a four weeks' illness, of which, if you 
 will believe me, the Machiavellian Nannie had told 
 us never a word. 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 ^T was in the old time, and it 
 was the old story. A man and 
 a maid sat under a tree, a lit- 
 tle stream at their feet, and the 
 lush summer all around. The 
 land was wild and beautiful; 
 the cultivated fields to be seen 
 by a bird above their heads 
 were only little, irregular islands grouped through 
 the sea of forest. Near the pair — that is, not 
 half a mile away — stood the largest and best farm- 
 house within many miles; it had a "frame" addi- 
 tion built in front of the older log structure, a big, 
 rough, grassy yard, and at one side a garden equally 
 divided between flowers and vegetables. 
 
 Two stout dames sat on the back gallery, one knit- 
 ting, one with folded hands. 
 
 " I tell you, Betty," said the idle one, " I don't give 
 my approval to the way you 're a-lettin' Lucindy carry 
 on. That gal is the talk of the county." 
 
 "Now, Sist' Emmy," replied the other in an ag- 
 grieved, long-suffering tone, " that 's a turrible way 
 
 12 133 
 
134 THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 to talk ; it 's onjust. ' The talk of the county,' " she 
 repeated, flaring into a little unusual vigor of utter- 
 ance, "sounds as if the poor child had done something 
 disrespectable, and Lord knows I don't know sence 
 when there 's a law in the land that a gyirl 's got to 
 marry afore she 's ready." 
 
 "The trouble with that gal," said Sist' Emmy, 
 " 'pears to be that she won't git married when she is 
 ready." 
 
 It was the belief of her relatives that Mrs. Emme- 
 line Sirams persisted in saying " gal " for the express 
 purpose of mortifying and irritating them, and that 
 she particularly loved to so designate Lucinda, Lu- 
 cinda being the source of certain innovations in the 
 family English. 
 
 " There she sits out there," said Mrs. Simms, point- 
 ing to the pair visible as small blots under the dis- 
 tant, feathery walnut-tree, " a-lettin' that poor fool 
 spark her, and as like as not a-lettin' him 'p'int the day 
 ag'in, and then she '11 go kick over the traces onct more 
 at the last minute, and — talk about bein' the talk of 
 the county, do you reckon, Betsey Ann, that anythin' is 
 a-goin' to be more talked about on the footstool than 
 a gal breakin' off her weddin' after they 've begun to 
 bake the cake ? Do you ? " 
 
 " Now, Sist' Emmy," began Lucinda's mother, ex- 
 actly as before, " you know there was mighty little 
 cake baked; you 'd jest come, and had n't fairly got 
 into the fruit-cake, and Lucindy never let it get that 
 far afore, and she won't ag'in, 'cept she 's goin' through 
 with it. You f orgit the f eelin's of a gyirl. They don't 
 alluz know their own minds. Ethan Simms is only 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 135 
 
 your nephew by luavriage, and Lucindy 's your own 
 blood niece, and my feelin's is hurt, Sist' Emmy — " 
 
 " Betty Ann, don't begin like that. You know I 'm 
 as fond of Lucindy as if she was my own child ; but 
 you never did have no gover'ment, and I do say that 
 to have all this courtin' startin' up ag'in with that 
 eejet — I think the man 's bewitched — when it was 
 sean'al enough to have the weddin' broke off after the 
 invites was out" — Mrs. Simms stopped an instant, 
 then escaped the labyrinth of her own sentences by 
 cutting through them directly to the main matter — 
 " The gal ought to be made to drop him or take him." 
 
 " Seems as ef it 's more Ethan's business than y — 
 than anybody else's, and he 'pears mighty anxious 
 not to be dropped, whether he 's taken or not." 
 
 " Humph ! Ethan 's a plumb eejet — far be any de- 
 nyin' of that from me ; but Lucindy is full as eager 
 about keepin' him danglin' as he is, and you don't lift 
 your finger about it. I doa't know why the Lord 
 sends fam'blies to women with no gover'ment, but he 
 most certainly do." 
 
 Of course her own caprices were also being dis- 
 cussed by Lueinda and her lover under the wal- 
 nut-tree. Truth to tell, these caprices had always 
 furnished them with conversational material, a com- 
 modity which otherwise they often must have lacked. 
 
 For four years they had been " courtin'," and three 
 times a wedding-day had been set. The last time, 
 only three months before, the usual retreat by the 
 unstable Lueinda had been delayed, as we have al- 
 ready learned, until publicity and general condemna- 
 tion were its well-merited portion. 
 
136 THE FORCE OP EXAMPLE. 
 
 Lucinda now stood under the walnut-tree a lament- 
 ably attractive and appealing figure of a culprit. She 
 was only a slip of a thing, though her nineteen years 
 were quoted warningly to her; there were few un- 
 married girls in the settlement so old. 
 
 Little, tricksy brown curls had slipped from the 
 bands and knots she tried so hard to keep smooth; 
 her brown eyes were swimming in tears, which were 
 falling one by one over brown cheeks as round as a 
 child's ; she knotted her hands in her apron, though 
 it was her best one, and just ironed, as she said : 
 
 " I do care about you, Ethan ; you know I do. I 
 want to marry you some time, you know I do ; but 
 — but I don't seem ready to settle down right off. It 
 looks sort o' dreadful — everything all fixed one way 
 then for the rest of your life. I like being a gyirl." 
 On this last word this frivolous young person caught 
 her breath and began to sob. 
 
 " You would n't think that a- way ef you cared for 
 me," said the seated Ethan, gloomily, prudently keep- 
 ing his honest, dust-colored head turned from the 
 melting sight beside him. 
 
 " I would too-oo ; a gyirl ain't like a man." 
 
 " No, 'm ; yer right, they ain't. It says in all the 
 books that women is withouten no heart, and man's 
 destroyer. That 's the 'pinion of the wise men." 
 
 It was sunset before the two could abandon the de- 
 lights of quarreling and return to the house. There 
 the stir of getting a company supper made a picture of 
 kaleidoscopic activity, half homely, half weird, against 
 the soft twilight of the woods and fields ; from the 
 kitchen a broad, shifting flare of firelight shone forth, 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 137 
 
 through which dark, turbaned figures flitted deftly- 
 back and forth carrying covered dishes, while chil- 
 dren and dogs of all colors and sizes appeared and 
 disappeared on every side. Mrs. Todd, Lucinda's 
 mother, treated Ethan with an effusive hospitality 
 intended to atone for what we might caU the heated 
 indifference shown by her sister. 
 
 It shows how absorbing and delightful a topic was 
 Lucinda's misconduct that this afternoon it had dis- 
 placed the natural theme of the hour, and that a good 
 one too. Mrs. Simms and Ethan were stopping over- 
 night with the Todds on their way to a wedding. 
 Lucinda was to go with them, and on the morrow the 
 three were to set out. A horseback journey of thirty- 
 five miles more was the price — or the premium — for 
 this social experience. 
 
 " Ef you had any proper shame," said Mrs, Simms 
 that night after the candle was out, taking an unfair 
 advantage of the fact that she was sharing Lucinda's 
 bed, " you 'd be too humbled to show your face at a 
 weddin ' — and with Ethan too ! I 'd never show my 
 face with you if Milly Anson war n't my own cousin's 
 stepdaughter, and her mammy's fam'bly aU bein' so 
 dreadful thin-skinned about the way Sarah's kin treats 
 her. Now, praise the Lord, this is the last upsettin' 
 botheration Sarah '11 have to have with MiUy, and 
 she 's been trial enough, for a more addle-pated fly- 
 up-the-creek than that pasty-faced gal this settlement 
 ain't never seed. Howsomever," Mrs. Simms quickly 
 added, remembering her text, " 't ain't becomin' in me 
 to talk, long 's she ain't never done nothin' to ekal 
 my own flesh-and-blood niece. I tried hard enough 
 
138 THE FORCE OP EXAMPLE. 
 
 yesterday to get that fool of a boy to go on with me 
 to old Squire Hunt's for the night, but he jest vowed 
 that he 'd come here or nary a step to no weddin' 
 would he stir. He ain't no respeck for hisself. I 
 can't see what use a woman 's .got for sich a sowf 
 mush of a man." 
 
 This bait failed of a bite. Mindful of the morn- 
 ing's early start, Lucinda was successfully giving her 
 exclusive attention to the business of getting to sleep. 
 She was not going to disturb herself. She might shed 
 tears of repentance when with Ethan ; she had none 
 to spend for Aunt Emmy's delectation. Probably she 
 comprehended that Aunt Emmy was well pleased at 
 the worst. She adored Lucinda, and loved dearly to 
 see her have her own way ; her vanity was gratified 
 for the whole sex at the daring with which the girl 
 risked the loss of a lover, and kept him, and she had 
 an unsurpassed opportunity for the dear joy of hec- 
 toring her younger sister — the poor lady without 
 " gover'ment." In fact she was never better pleased 
 in her life. 
 
 The sun was just rising next day when the three 
 horses were brought up to the great wooden block by 
 the front gate ; and such a day as it was, all gold- 
 lighted blue and gold-steeped dewy greenness. 
 
 " What 's keepin' Lucindy 1 Does the gal think 
 we 're jest a-goin' to the fork of the road, and that 
 she 's got halfen the day to spend puttin' a ridin'- 
 skyert over her head?" fussed Mrs. Simms, as she 
 gathered up the copperas-dyed cotton folds of her 
 own traveling-costume and gave a final adjusting 
 punch to the saddle-bags. 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 139 
 
 " Lucindy ! Lucindy ! come out here," called her 
 mother, sharply, desiring to demonstrate her denied 
 powers of family discipline. "What air you doin' 
 keepin' everybody waitin'? Put down that baby; 
 you 're only gettin' him ready to cry when he sees 
 you 're a-goin'. You, Rose, take that baby roun' to 
 the kitchen ; now pick up that snack-basket and come , 
 along." 
 
 " She ought to be goin' to her own weddin', ought n't 
 she?" said Ethan to the sympathetic mother, as he 
 lifted his bright-faced, springing sweetheart into the 
 saddle. No horse-blocks for them, if you please. 
 
 " I would n't be goin' ef it was my own ; I 'd be 
 stayin', and I 'd have to lose aU this yer blessed ridin'," 
 said she. That small saying was afterward remem- 
 bered, and was quoted for years among the Todds 
 as if it were a witticism ; but now it passed without 
 more notice than an irrelevant speech. 
 
 " Well, bless you, honey," said her mother, as she 
 settled her skirts for her. Surely it was not to be ex- 
 pected that government should always prevail, and 
 crossness be the rule of life. 
 
 Lucinda was not without a show of reason in reck- 
 oning this ride as a pleasure overbalancing the pomp 
 and pride of matrimony. All day they ambled on, 
 with only woods and fields about them, and were 
 oftenest and longest in the depths of the sun-threaded, 
 fragrant forest twilight, everything but the road be- 
 neath their feet untouched, pristine, primal, as if man 
 had never been. Ah, who has such journeys now ! 
 
 Aunt Emmy was as softly accommodating as poor 
 Mrs. Todd herself could have been, and often covered 
 
140 THE FOKCE OF EXAMPLE; 
 
 mile after mile, riding on ahead, without once direct- 
 ing her tunnel of a sunbonnet behind her. Lucinda's 
 bonnet was generally hanging backward over her 
 shoulders. Poor Lucinda's reputation for beauty was 
 sadly injured by her brown skin,— milky whiteness 
 was of all things most admired in her world, — but 
 she took the sweet with the bitter, and absolved her- 
 self from the elaborate swathings and bleachings 
 which were the community's chief tribute to esthetic 
 interests. 
 
 " A little more or a little less don't matter when 
 one dip more would have sent me to the kitchen any- 
 how," she declared, when entreated to return from 
 the light of heaven into the cavernous depths of the 
 prevailing sunbonnet. Even Ethan did not know 
 she was a beauty, but thought it was by some special 
 warping of perception that she seemed so to him. 
 
 It was not only in the matter of complexion that 
 Lucinda was out of joint with her lot in life. She 
 had a touch of imagination; had vague desires to 
 see something beyond her world, to try something 
 beyond, to have some chance at the unknown — de- 
 sires which seemed all unshared by any other being. 
 She was a world away from unhappiness ; it was only 
 by some obscure movement of soul that she was 
 frightened when she saw the opportunities of the 
 future about to narrow down to the familiar lot of 
 Ethan's wife. That was the root of all this extrava- 
 gant coquetry that looked so haughty ; she could not 
 have told why, but she was frightened. 
 
 Certainly she did not much consider Ethan. As 
 Mrs. Simms complained, she would not leave him any 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 141 
 
 more than she would take him ; but, truly, with the 
 world as it is, and a bit of a girl with her life to shape 
 with such a load of biddings and forbiddings upon 
 her, who expects her to rise to fair dealing with free 
 and sovereign man ? Certainly Lucinda did not ex- 
 pect it of herself. She never dreamed of such a thing. 
 She vaguely intended to marry Ethan some time, if — 
 maybe — but — in the mean time she had no notion of 
 permitting him to discover that there was any other 
 woman in the world — not while she had eyes, and 
 such long lashes as well, and was really very fond of 
 the good Ethan. Pity him ? What affectation ! He 
 was the most entertained man in seven counties. 
 Moreover, he won the game ; but this is anticipating. 
 
 The travelers went twenty-five miles the first day, 
 and then, all unannounced, descended upon a " neigh- 
 bor" for the night. Returned prodigals could not 
 have been more heartily welcomed ; much squawking 
 and fiuttering among the chickens roosting in the 
 apple-trees in the back yard followed their arrival, 
 and testified eloquently as to the supper that they 
 were to enjoy ; but our business lies now at the end 
 of the journey. 
 
 Truly Mrs. Simms had expressed herself with her 
 customary insight and exactness when she called Milly 
 Anson a pasty-faced, addle-pated fly-up-the-creek. 
 
 On all sides it was felt as an especial evidence 
 of providential consideration that MUly had gotten a 
 husband — or the promise of one. Here again I see 
 strange evidence of the absence of just consideration 
 for the masculine part of the race. No one could re- 
 gard it as good fortune for a man to have Milly An- 
 
142 THE FOECE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 son as a wife, but his immediate female relatives alone 
 were occupied with his fate. 
 
 Milly was now swimming in all the importance of 
 the occasion — an importance which too often unduly 
 elates the most pleasing woman, and which affected 
 Milly in a way and degree well fitted to madden any ob- 
 server — especially if she were an unmarried woman. 
 
 The most famous cake-maker of the county, who 
 had been lording it in the kitchen for a week, was by 
 no means unmarried, and she had the toleration born 
 of a large experience of brides elect; yet even she 
 found Milly unendurable. 
 
 " I have been asked to bake the cake at eleben wed- 
 din's sence I married my fust husband," said she, 
 afterward, " not only for my own kin but among the 
 Gileses and Simmonses and down to Strathboro' and 
 over the Ridge, and I 've seen a heap of fool gyirls, 
 but I 'U. gin up that Milly Anson that week was a 
 notch beyond any on 'em. I stood her jest as long 
 as I could, and at last I broke out on her. It was jest 
 the day before the thing was to come off, and she 
 kep' teeterin' and titterin' in and out, a-jarrin' the 
 floor and makin' my heart come in my mouth for fear 
 my last big pound-cake in the oven would fall, and 
 I 'd told her more 'n a dozen times that very day to 
 stay in the house; but no, sir, she would keep comin' 
 to say how strange her feelin's was, and that she knew 
 she never could I'arn Tummas's ways, and she never 
 would 'd done it ef Tummas had n't pestered her into 
 it, — Tom Simmons ! Lor' ! — and lastly she bounced 
 in on to me, catchin' hold o' me, and me with my hands 
 all in the flour, and says she, ' Cousin Liz, I 'm so 
 skeered ! I 'm gettin' so skeered ! ' says she. Now it's 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 143 
 
 my conviction that she 'd made up her mind then as 
 to what she was goin' to do, and was sure enough get- 
 tin' a little fidgety ; but in course I never had no such 
 reflection then, and I 'd had all I could stomach. 
 ' Milly Anson,' says I, ' there 's no need of your bein' 
 any bigger eejet then the Lord made you; stop 
 a-clutchin' on to me. I 'm wore out with yoiu* per- 
 tenses. Ef Tom Simmons '11 marry you, more fool he; 
 but you better have a thankful heart, and I reckon 
 you have. As for bein' skeered, I wish you was 
 skeered enough to break your appetite, and stop you 
 from eatin' them snowballs fast as I git the frostin' 
 on 'em. Tou 're a livin' example of the truth of the 
 Bible and the wisdom of King Solomon,' says I ; ' for 
 he tells how the yearth is disquieted for three things, 
 yea, four which it cannot bear,' says I, — for I seen 
 that quotin' the Bible ag'in' her was strikin' her mor'n 
 anythin' else, — ' a servant when he reigneth,' I went 
 on, ' a fool when he 's filled with meat, an handmaiden 
 that 's heir to her mistress, and an ojeous woman 
 when she 's married, or thinks she 's goin' to be. 
 It 's the same thing. And now ef you think I made 
 that up out 'n my own head, you go 'n' read your 
 Bible long enough and you '11 I'arn better. 'T any 
 rate, git back to the house, and don't you step your 
 foot into this kitchen ag'in,' says I, ' for,' says I, hol- 
 lerin' after her, — she 'd done started, tryin' to keep 
 laughin', like 't was a joke, — ' ef you does,' says I, 
 ' nary a table will I set for you. I 'm tellin' you the 
 truth, and you know what things is likely to be with- 
 outen me,' says I." 
 
 The famous cake-maker had relieved herself, but 
 truth and scripture stiU failed to make a new Milly, 
 
144 THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 as a little time was to show. It was the afternoon 
 of the wedding-day when Lucinda arrived ; the cere- 
 mony was to be performed that evening. The house 
 was already fuU of guests, and was like a hive of 
 swarming bees, such a buzzing, and hurrying, and 
 scurrying was there, for toilets were in the making, 
 and many a white dress, brought, like Lucinda's own, 
 in saddle-bags, must now be ironed out, be the kitchen- 
 quarters filled with never so much anxiety and tur- 
 moil of their own. 
 
 The men, more or less unhappy and stranded, tried 
 to keep out of the way, and stayed chiefly out of 
 doors. Despite intermittent, decorous efforts to save 
 himself for the great moment, the bridegroom was 
 painfully conspicuous among them, being a marked 
 and solitary man by reason of his " store " clothes. 
 
 Ethan Simms was exactly the sort of male creature 
 that looks upon such eminence as a thing hard to 
 bear ; but now, as the common fate of bridegrooms, 
 he gazed at that long-tailed, brass-buttoned blue coat 
 with heavy-hearted envy. He was sadly depressed 
 about his love-affair. He was an excellent fellow, 
 and there is evidence of it in the fact that he had 
 moments of sympathizing with Lucinda's reluctance 
 to marry him. 
 
 " Marvel is that she ever thinks she wUl," he would 
 say to himself. But final reflections always supported 
 him in his desires, as is the way with final reflections, 
 and he would conclude that nothing better than wed- 
 ding him was likely to come to her. That he argued 
 it out with his passion shows the reasonable temper 
 of the man, and who would have liked him better 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. ' 145 
 
 for arriving at any other conclusion? Certainly no 
 woman. 
 
 Twilight found him sitting alone on the fence, 
 smoking, and meditating means for bringing Lu- 
 cinda to the altar. 
 
 " Bf it ware once done," he said to himself, as he 
 brought his long legs to the ground, knocked the 
 ashes out of his pipe, and returned it to his pocket, 
 " she 'd be better content nor she is now ; but she is 
 that skittish, and she sees through me that quick, 
 that I don't know to the Lawd what sort o' devices 
 to faU upon ! " 
 
 In the house the candles were now lighted. Sleek- 
 ringleted young women came forth in groups, family 
 potentates disappeared, the store-clothed bridegroom 
 was followed a moment by the arriving parson, and 
 then he too became invisible. The air was tense with 
 expectation. Low, eager talk about tucks and em- 
 broidery, " fine Swiss " and " clocked stockings," was 
 drawing the women's heads together. Finally this 
 died out. The parson was spirited away to the fate- 
 ful upper regions. Still no bride and bridegroom ; 
 the delay was extraordinary. Opinions that it was 
 outrageous were brewing; for supper, you see, was 
 still to come. An odd uneasiness was in the air. In 
 fact, to make a long story short, Milly Anson had 
 chosen this hour to declare that she would not be 
 married to Thomas Simmons, not she ! 
 
 Tears, revilings, corporal shakings, threats of im- 
 mediate death from her father, given with a truly aw- 
 ful sincerity of mien, all availed nothing. Milly was 
 a weak creature, and had capacities for stubbornness 
 
140 THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 to be found in no other. She had long dreamed 
 of following in Lucinda's footsteps. The notoriety 
 which had been thrust upon Lucinda by the gossip- 
 starved community shone before her as a prize to be 
 achieved ; and moreover, there was a half-covert and 
 most reprehensible relish in the men's talk about that 
 young damsel's frowardness that acted as a bellows 
 upon the flame of folly in Milly's bosom. At last she 
 had seized her opportunity, she was capping all that 
 had ever been heard of reluctant maidens. "When the 
 storm broke over her she was frightened ; things did 
 not seem exactly as she had forecast. "Tummas," 
 for instance, was unbecomingly inexpressive and in- 
 active amid all these violent energies ; but, partlybe- 
 cause she was frightened, she clung immovably to 
 the one thiug that in all the confusion she seemed 
 able to grasp — the course of conduct marked out in 
 happier moments. Her poor little aborted powers of 
 reasoning had of course left her at the first onslaught, 
 and now to give way seemed to her darkened con- 
 sciousness to be abandoning her only plank amid the 
 whirling waters. 
 
 Imagine Lucinda's feelings. A well of bitterness 
 were they within her, as she sat trying to look un- 
 conscious of any special relation to the catastrophe, 
 while the company ebbed and surged about her in 
 suppressed but delicious excitement. But even now, 
 from all sides, she felt eyes turning upon her ; to be 
 forever bracketed with this fool was sickening. And 
 peppering her other emotions was undeniably a sense 
 of infringement — Milly Anson of all people to imi- 
 tate her ! 
 
THE FORCE OF EXAMPLE. 147 
 
 At last such guests as could leave that night tore 
 themselves away. Our trio were not among them. 
 Till morning they must spend the weary, broken, 
 dream-haunted hours in the midst of the shattered 
 household. They kept apart, and spoke little. Lu- 
 cinda writhed to see how plainly her aunt and Ethan 
 recognized the special shame for their little party in 
 this bigger shame, and how plainly they showed their 
 recognition. She denied to herself first its existence, 
 and then its justice, and denounced Aunt Emmy and 
 Ethan for a "pair of ninnies, goin' round with their 
 heads hangin' 'bout somethin' they had nothin' in this 
 mortal world to do with." Yes, it was true; for once 
 other considerations outweighed A»nt Emmy's appe- 
 tite for sensation, and she was humbled. 
 
 Lucinda got up at dawn; she was pale, and her 
 mouth was shut with a firmness quite absurd on such 
 a becurved little face. Before the sun rose she suc- 
 ceeded in getting hold of Ethan; she dragged him 
 out of doors and into the dewy grass for private con- 
 verse. The sleepiness left his eyes when she faced 
 him and said fiercely, "I want to go to Strathboro' 
 and git married — Just as soon as you can saddle up." 
 
 The poor man's head whirled; a hundred things 
 seeming to demand consideration and time sprang to 
 his mind, and withal his arms ached to catch this 
 small Amazon off the ground and to his breast. But 
 he was a wise one, was Ethan ; he held himself quite 
 stiU — as he might if a bird had lighted on his head — 
 until he could answer quietly that he 'd go right off 
 and see about the horses. 
 
 " Ton tell Aunt Emmy," said Lucinda, airily. 
 
148 THE FOBCE OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 "Lord a'mighty!" broke forth Aunt Emmy in 
 tones of real irritation, dropping into a chair in the 
 deserted best room, "I never hearn of anythin' so 
 outdacious in all my days. Let her come home and 
 be married like a Christian. I should think we 'd had 
 enough crazy Janein' to do us the rest of our bom 
 lives. I ain't goin' to have her mammy sayin' I — " 
 
 " Good Gawd ! " broke in Ethan, " have I got to go 
 and co'te you as long as I been co'tin' Lucindy 'fore 
 I kin git married? Can't you see, Aunt Em, that I 
 das n't stand foolin' and argufyin' with that gyirl? 
 Don't you know I 've got to take her when I can git 
 her? An' ef it ain't now, there 's no sayin' on the 
 wide yearth when 't will be. Lawd ! Lawd! " 
 
 Ethan mopped his brow on his sleeve. " Shorely, 
 shorely. Aunt Em, 'fc ain't goin' to be you as '11 knock 
 over the bucket altogether? There 's no tellin' what 
 Lucindy '11 do next, ef she 's riled. Bless you ; thanky, 
 thanky ! Don't say nothin' to her ; don't say nothin 
 no way; jest help her to git ready as ef she got 
 married at Strathboro' every day in the week." 
 
 It is pleasant to know that in this case too the im- 
 possible became possible, and that, 'twixt nature, use, 
 and honest purposes, Lucinda's marriage was not a 
 failure, and that she, selfish human that she was, 
 never regretted an experiment which cost poor MUly 
 Anson dear indeed ; for only after years of obloquy 
 and sorrow, vain efforts and journeyings to the "Eely- 
 nois," — a far country, — ^was a husband for her at last 
 secured. 
 
RUDOLPH. 
 
 There was the Door to which I found no Key, 
 There was the Veil through which I could not see. 
 
 Omar KhatyAm. 
 
 ^E are taught, I believe, by the best 
 critical authority that the essence of 
 tragedy lies in the conflict of Will 
 and Fate, or rather in the victory of 
 Fate over the more or less consciously 
 struggling individual; and that the catastrophe, to 
 be truly Greek, must in some way result from deeds 
 morally significant. But is there not an appallingly 
 tragic element in the action of Fate, when, as we so 
 often know it, the catastrophe has no relation to re- 
 sponsibilities anywhere; when it is but a blind bolt, 
 falling blindly, stopping, crushing, annihilating, with- 
 out more moral significance than is in the rain which 
 falls alike on the just and on the unjust? Is it not 
 because this is too appalling, because it frightens us 
 as children are frightened in the dark, that we cling 
 
 149 
 
150 RUDOLPH. 
 
 SO closely to those instances of human history in 
 which deed and doom are bound together by brief 
 and simple sequences? 
 
 It is a very unimposing little figure that is most 
 deeply associated in my mind with that other and 
 more mysterious tragedy, in which the fine, and sane, 
 and true are overpowered by that blank, meaningless, 
 and terrible power we call Chance. 
 
 One spring day, years ago, it happened that for a 
 few hours I, myself only a school-girl, was given 
 charge of an unfamiliar village school. It was in 
 a mongrel Southern mountain town, where some 
 coal-mines were lamely contributing to the foundar 
 tions of that New South which as yet the Old South 
 scarcely grudgingly admitted as a possibility. The 
 school was made up of such a variety of elements 
 as probably could not have been matched, at that 
 time, in any school-room south of the Ohio River. 
 There were "Yankee" children from the Bast and the 
 West, mountain-born and Southern-born children (the 
 mountaineer is Southern only in a shallow geograph- 
 ical sense), even children with a brogue and a touch 
 of broad Lancashire dialect; but in this crowd, so 
 heterogeneous for the South, so homogeneous com- 
 pared to the mixtures the North is forced to venture 
 upon, there was but one child who spoke the Eng- 
 lish language with a foreign accent. 
 
RUDOLPH. 151 
 
 To me, as I struggled with the opening class, they 
 all seemed conspicuously united by a common dull- 
 ness. This class was of the older scholars, and they 
 were studying "Peter Parley's Universal History," — 
 that absurd yet admirable little book, superseded, 
 generations ago, everywhere but in forgotten and be- 
 nighted Southern nooks by works paralyzingly full 
 and distressingly accurate. The lesson was about 
 Prussia. That torpor which nature enables all but 
 the liveliest children to take on, as a protection 
 against the horrors of the school-room, pervaded the 
 class; the big girls and boys sat about in attitudes of 
 heavy woodenness, answering questions, when they 
 could answer them at all, as if badly constructed, 
 insufflcient machinery were for the moment put in 
 motion. I was casting about in my mind as to what 
 would bring them to life, when, as I quoted something 
 from the lesson about the Zing of Prussia (the book 
 dated much further back than the seventies), I heard 
 the shyest, softest, eagerest young voice say, — as if 
 the barriers of repression had perforce given way, — 
 "He 's Emperor now." 
 
 I turned to see to whom all these lesson-words meant 
 facts, thoughts, something else than gibberish, with a 
 sense of unreasonably grateful refreshment. There he 
 was, a broad-shouldered, dark-eyed little boy, about 
 twelve years old, who was seated, when school opened, 
 half-way back in the long, grimy room, but who was 
 now wriggling with vitality, suppressed interest, and 
 an overpowered but abiding sense of misconduct, on a 
 seat just behind the recitation-benches, — drawn there, 
 evidently, by a force similar in its imperiousness to 
 gravitation itself. 
 
152 KUDOLPH. 
 
 "He 's Dutch/' remarked a boy in the class, in a 
 tone explanatory, but not lowered. 
 
 "What ^s your name?" I asked. 
 
 "Rudolph, ma'am." (It seemed that, for purposes 
 of convenience, the regular teacher had found " Ru- 
 dolph" name enough, and had pointedly refused to 
 struggle with further Teutonic syllables.) 
 
 "Well, Rudolph, come out here, and tell these big 
 boys and girls about how the King came to be made 
 Emperor. Come, sit there." 
 
 But Rudolph had found an opportunity for some- 
 thing more dear than humiliating others. His bright 
 dark eyes were fastened upon me as he slipped from 
 the one seat into the other, saying, "The war it was 
 that made so, was not? The Emperor is bigger than 
 the King? They want the German — the German 
 one to be big, my father say. Who — how it come 
 done — what Herr Bismarck do?" 
 
 The child sat on the edge of tlie bench, bending 
 toward me as he poured forth his questions, as if the 
 major part of his young life had hitherto been spent 
 in a fruitless search for the facts of the German con- 
 solidation. I listened, divided betwixt admiration and 
 terror. Needless to say, I did not find time to satis- 
 fy all his exhaustive questionings, but I told him to 
 come and see me after school, and we would see what 
 we could do. Before the class was dismissed I found 
 that there was nothing very special in Rudolph's in- 
 terest in the Emperor and Bismarck; that he brought 
 this same insatiable curiosity, this same large, intelli- 
 gent comprehension of the existence of uncompre- 
 hended causes, to other subjects. 
 
RUDOLPH. 153 
 
 Before noon I was enjoying quite a delightful small 
 excitement about the child. What so thrilling as dis- 
 covery, and what discovery so thrilling as to find a 
 mind? Rudolph came into two more classes: one in 
 spelling, where he was recklessly and hopelessly ra- 
 tional and consistent; and one struggling with the 
 tedium of long division, where he was slow, patient, 
 and sorely afflicted. At noon my little brief authority 
 ended. I left Rudolph plunging about the playground 
 in a game of "base," — rather clumsy, something of 
 a butt in the sport, and perfectly hearty and good- 
 natured. 
 
 Before he came to me in the afternoon I had learned 
 something about him. He was known among the 
 men of our household, I found, through his habit of 
 "hanging around" where any talk about the mines 
 was going on, and, oddly enough, because of his 
 notably courteous ways at the post-offtee and the 
 "store," places where the miners were given to tacitly 
 asserting their superiority to all other classes. His 
 father and mother were Germans, I was first told; 
 but Jim, a small cousin, said the father was "half 
 Byetalian," and further informed me that Rudolph 
 was "no good," that he could n't catch a ball. 
 
 "But he 's very nice and good-natured, is n't he?" 
 I inquired, weakly longing to hear only praises of my 
 discovery. 
 
 My young man stared. "Yaw," he drawled, in un- 
 comprehending derision, and disappeared around the 
 corner of the porch on his hands. 
 
 I was sitting on the porch when Rudolph came, — 
 a little awkward, but withal much more pleased than 
 
154 RUDOLPH. 
 
 shy, stopping to wipe his bare feet on the grass, and 
 before he was fairly under the roof taking off his 
 shapeless rag of a hat, with a bright smile of greeting. 
 I had gathered together some old illustrated papers of 
 the time of the Franco-Prussian war ; he fell upon them. 
 
 "I before one did see, a long time; it had a picture 
 of another Emperor, Max — Maxmillan? he that was 
 killed, is it not so? How — how could that come 
 when he was Emperor? Was he not the biggest?" 
 
 Rudolph soon recognized the necessity of limiting 
 his field of research, and began to put me through a 
 most exhaustive examination on Franco-German pol- 
 itics. He did not find me altogether satisfactory; my 
 knowledge was too superficial and too qualified. He 
 caught continually at main lines of causation, which 
 could be followed only by going far afield. 
 
 "Why wished the French Emperor to fight?" he 
 finally asked, with a touch of sternness, when I had 
 tried to describe the diplomatic pretenses by which 
 the war was precipitated. 
 
 "People thought that he was afraid the French 
 nation were getting tired of him, that they might 
 begin to ask again why he should be Emperor; and 
 so he wanted to give them something else to think 
 about, and to please them by making them victorious." 
 
 Rudolph pondered. "You know not surely? " 
 
 "No; of course he would not say things like that, 
 nor would the men who worked for him, even if they 
 believed they knew his thoughts." 
 
 "It must been something that way, is it not? You 
 think it would been better he not try and be smart 
 so?" He sat with his grimy little forefinger on a 
 
RUDOLPH. 155 
 
 portrait of Napoleon III., and looked at me as eagerly 
 as if it were the end of a fairy-tale he was awaiting. 
 
 " Hullo, Dutchy ! " called Jim from the doorway. 
 
 " Hullo ! " answered Rudolph pleasantly, but with 
 the same air of deeply unconscious patronage with 
 which one would pat a dog while thinking of some- 
 thing else. 
 
 "Miss Mollycoddle, Miss Mollycoddle ! " shouted the 
 other, as he tore away and over the fence. 
 
 "He I goes fish with sometime," said Rudolph, as 
 if in explanation and apology for the faniiliar rude- 
 ness of this address. 
 
 " He should not speak to you so," I said. 
 
 Rudolph grinned. The remarks of young animals 
 like that did not seem to him in any way related to 
 emotional experience. 
 
 After he had exhausted both me and himself in his- 
 torical research, I began asking him about his home; 
 and he biightened again, and told me that he had a 
 little sister, who was "scMn,^' — "You know schb'n, 
 that is better than English word," — and that she was 
 fair, with hair and eyes like a Christmas doll, and 
 that she loved to ride upon his back. Three years 
 old she was. 
 
 " I must go," he suddenly broke out, starting up ; 
 "she will want to go ride to our spring; I forget," 
 and he smiled confidentially at me, and then stood 
 twisting his hat, with a sense of needed ceremonial of 
 which he was ignorant. "I much thank you. Oh, 
 yes, I come again. I like it much. Giiten Abend," 
 and he ducked his black head to me, and then to 
 my mother, whom he saw standing, shining with 
 
X56 RUDOLPH. 
 
 benevolence in an inner doorway; then he scurried 
 down the long porch, and I heard Jim challenge 
 him for a race. 
 
 "Jim wUl beat him," said my mother indignantly, 
 from the window to which she had hurried. 
 
 The radiant-faced little lad had won our hearts. 
 
 I was afraid of growing sentimental about him, 
 and tried to view him coldly; but in tmth it was im- 
 possible not to feel enthusiasm for such an example 
 of humanity. He revived one's belief in the possibility 
 of the j-ace. I feel now that I might give my tale a 
 greater vraisemblance by in some way belittling him, 
 the expedient of inadequacy, but obligations stronger 
 than artistic ones are upon me. 
 
 I soon made my way to the despoiled hillside, half- 
 poor village, half-bare woods, where was Rudolph's 
 home. It was a neat little cabin, and I was pleased 
 to find the family all there, — the little Teutonic blonde 
 sister, the work-worn, dust-colored, plain mother, and 
 the big, dark father, with his touch of Latin vivacity 
 appearing and disappearing beneath his gravity. 
 
 Rudolph gazed at me, pleased and proud and pos- 
 sessive, possessive of everybody, and sUently brought 
 the little passive sister to my elbow, that I might 
 better note her charms. 
 
 I sent him off to fill my bottle with water from 
 the sulphur spring, so that I could talk better about 
 himself. 
 
 "I think Rudolph is a very remarkable boy," I be- 
 gan; "a very, very smart boy," I added, in my effort 
 to make myself comprehended. 
 
 "Yas," said the father briefly, from the doorstep 
 
RUDOLPH. 157 
 
 where he stood, "he iss great, — great here, ^eat here." 
 He touched first his forehead, then his breast. 
 
 The mother, who could speak no English, showed 
 by her softening countenance, as she looked at us and 
 then after the boy, that she understood. 
 
 "I come to America for he. I know not that he 
 get much good, but I try." 
 
 " He 'U be great in himself, anyhow." 
 
 "Tas, dat iss so," spoken with tranquil solemnity. 
 "Not many is bom dat way as he, aier — I wish he 
 get ed-u-ca-tion." The word had been well learned. 
 "He not get much here?" turning a gaze of troubled 
 inquiry upon me. He told me how he was afraid to 
 go now to a place with better schools, for fear he 
 could not find work. He could do no skilled labor. 
 He longed to get Rudolph a place in the machine- 
 shops, but the boy was not clever with his "hands. 
 Perhaps he could never rise much above his father 
 unless he got " one ed-u-ca-tion." 
 
 I said there was small fear; he 'd find his way to 
 a very practical education; he 'd know many things 
 before he was grown. 
 
 The man's face brightened, and he showed his white 
 teeth as he nodded and said a f eW words to the mother, 
 who nodded and smiled too. 
 
 " He ask, ask always," he said. 
 
 The small sister now started down the hiU, making 
 her legs fly until she met the returning brother, and 
 was lifted on his back, where, when he arrived, she 
 hung, dumb, solemn, and round-eyed as before. 
 
 I arranged that Rudolph should come and see me 
 often, and laboriously suppressed my tendency to 
 14 
 
158 RUDOLPH. 
 
 make vague promises and prophecies as to Lis future. 
 Who knew what could or could not be counted upon 
 in this disjointed world ? 
 
 The captivating thing about Rudolph's mind was 
 the curious absence of any touch of precocity; it was 
 as normal as a blackbird's; all its peculiarity seemed 
 to lie in its superior soundness, reasonableness, and 
 activity; things were real to him; phenomena needed 
 to be accounted for. He was always trying to ac- 
 complish the explanation, striking for the roots of 
 things. He had a sleepless desire to find out. His 
 interest in history — it did not, by the way, reach the 
 point of enabling him to derive pabulum from the 
 usual historical classics — was as simple in its way as 
 Jim's in the story of a 'possum hunt; the difference 
 was that Rudolph had the qualities that enabled him 
 to grasp the verity of the larger games, while poor 
 Jim could only comprehend the existence of things 
 akin to his experience. 
 
 I tried, of course, a hundred youthful experiments 
 with this delightful mind, and came to the conclusion 
 that it was not an artist's organ ; that it was meant 
 for the conduct of large affairs at first hand, not for 
 any plastic or poetic after-interpretation of them. Not 
 that he was without appreciation of such interpreta- 
 tions; on the contrary, he was appreciative of more 
 things than any one I ever knew; he was alive to 
 the interest of every form of mental activity pre- 
 sented to him. He was a choice champion for days 
 in the woods, and would lie silent for hours on the 
 high brinks of those far, fair blue gulfs with which 
 the valleys encompass the mountain. 
 
 But he was mastered by the thirst for large know- 
 
RUDOLPH. 159 
 
 ledge of human undertakings. He probably had more 
 actual acquaintance with the mines than had my 
 cousin, the president of the company; and though 
 arithmetic was a painful thing to him, he would enter 
 into computations as to the operations, and by sheer 
 force of reasoning would push his calculations be- 
 yond the point of his school-room acquirements. 
 
 The chestnuts were brown in their caskets when, 
 one day, one memorable day, I went nutting with Ru- 
 dolph and Jim. We had two or three hours of the 
 simplest, purest delight, all turned into three harmless 
 young animals, with but one idea in the world, — 
 chestnuts. 
 
 There is nothing like some such primitive pursuit 
 to bring the heart close to Nature, for getting past 
 the rhapsodical and wordy state, and becoming one 
 with her; a hundred deep, starved, hereditary instincts 
 are once more gratified. But Nature is an appalling 
 mother. 
 
 The place we chieflj^ haunted was a chestnut grove 
 near the edge of the cliffs; and just here the forma- 
 tion was unusual. The mountain sloped rapidly down 
 toward the valley for a little distance, instead of de- 
 scending from its full height by the usual perpendicu- 
 lar cliff; but this steep slope broke off abruptly above 
 a straight wall of granite, far below which again 
 waved the delicate crests of the great trees. The turf 
 and small woodland growths extended down the slope 
 nearly to the brink; but before it was reached the 
 scanty soil failed, and at last was the living rock of 
 the mountain-side, dark, unworn by frost or time, 
 now damp and smooth. 
 
 In that simplicity of absorption, the pleasure of 
 
160 RUDOLPH. 
 
 which I have been vaunting, I followed a rolling nut 
 (such a big one!) down close to the danger-line,— too 
 close. The slight hold of the mosses and grasses on 
 which I stood gave way, my hand uprooted the bush 
 I held, my feet slipped from under me, and I lay face 
 down on that smooth sloping surface, without a thing 
 within reach to support a child. I kept myself from 
 slipping only by a certain strain of muscular pressure. 
 Below was the gulf, whose far-off depths were filled 
 with the beautiful, visible music of waving branches; 
 above me, the late yellow sunlight shone brilliantly 
 between the dark trunks of other trees, and beneath 
 them stood two white-faced little boys. Rudolph was 
 nearest me, — half-way down the slope. I saw a whole 
 heartf ul of history take place within him, as I gazed. 
 The first stroke of terror was followed by a heavier, 
 for between the two, in a long second's time, the child 
 found out he loved me. He had never thought of 
 lotting me before; rather, as love goes not by think- 
 ing, he had been deflected by no pulsation of con- 
 scious love toward me. I was a pleasant factor in a 
 diversified universe; I was not the father, nor the 
 mother, nor the little sister. But suddenly, here and 
 now, as I lay there beneath the fair sky, helpless and 
 in mortal danger, Rudolph's heart went out to me; 
 he loved me, and he loved me greatly, with a flashing, 
 backward, heart-bursting realization that I had been 
 good to him. These are many words, but three 
 changing expressions, melting swiftly into each other 
 on the child's ashen face, told it all. 
 
 Jim did the best he could; it was useless, but it 
 was all his lights and bis gifts were equal to. He 
 
RUDOLPH. 161 
 
 could run, and he ran, far and fast, starting at once, 
 with only a half-choked word and a nod to Rudolph, 
 and taking himself off in good shape, though he was 
 so white. 
 
 Rudolph and I were alone, and already my power 
 to cling to the rock was weakening. 
 
 I tried to wriggle myself upward; I slipped a very 
 little further down. Rudolph now nodded reassur- 
 ingly at me, saying in a queer, low voice, "In one 
 minute," as he ran a short distance to where a lot of 
 poles lay cut for some purpose. He came back drag- 
 ging one. The nearest point to me that offered firm 
 anchorage was where, at one side and somewhat above 
 me, stood a young hemlock in a cleft in the rock. Ru- 
 dolph selected the spot in an instant, but the distance 
 between me and it was greater than the length of the 
 pole. He immediately stripped off his coarse cotton 
 shirt. Splitting one sleeve in two, he knotted the 
 parts firmly around the tree. He tore a strip off the 
 garment; he tied that, with a loop hanging, just above 
 the butt-end of the pole. By holding to the shirt 
 bound to the tree, he could extend his range perhaps 
 a foot; the loop at the end of the pole gave him a few 
 inches more. He clutched the shirt, put his other 
 hand through the loop and twisted it about his wrist, 
 slipped toward me as far as he could on his knees, and 
 pushed me the pole. Not a moment had been lost. 
 I could reach it, if I caught quick and firm, before I 
 had time to slip, after relaxing my pressure on the 
 rock. There was nothing else to do. 
 
 A minute later I sat at the foot of the hemlock, and 
 Death had once more fled into the far dim haze of the 
 
162 EUDOLPH. 
 
 unrealized future, but I was cold with the feel of his 
 breath upon me. It seemed hours before two haggard- 
 faced men rode up on unsaddled, foaming horses. 
 
 That night, as the household sat around the fii-e- 
 place, all having with me, I think, a little special re- 
 alization of life's "hnman richness like the rose," in 
 contrast to a "cold, abysmal, blank, alien eternity," I 
 said to my cousin, the head of our family, that now 
 he could hardly refuse to listen to my prayer that 
 something be done for Rudolph, that he be given 
 some opportunity. 
 
 "I certainly cannot, my child," he replied. "What 
 do you want done?" 
 
 "We had better talk to him about it," I said; " he 
 is the wisest person for that question, by all odds. I 
 think if he chooses quite freely, it wiU be to go to 
 some decent school for a year; then he will know 
 better how to decide for the next year." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said my kinsman thoughtfully, looking 
 at Jim, curled up asleep on the floor like a little dog, 
 " I think you are right, that he wiU absorb knowledge 
 through the pores of his skin. He is a remarkable 
 boy, — undoubtedly a very remarkable boy. Make 
 yourself easy, my little girl; we can't neglect him 
 now," and he patted my head as he rose from his 
 chair. 
 
 The next day came the end, — the stupid, meaning- 
 less, miserable end. I cannot dwell upon it. 
 
 Rudolph was coming through one of the little pe- 
 ninsulas of woodland that here and there invaded the 
 straggling village. He caught his foot in a vine, 
 
RUDOLPPI. 163 
 
 staggered against a tree, appeared to regain his foot- 
 hold, and then sank down. Some boys at a distance 
 saw this, but what was it to call for special attention? 
 They went on. 
 
 It seems to have been more than half an hour later 
 that a man coming along the path found the child, 
 dead. He lay under the soft drifting bright leaves, 
 in a pool of blood. He had cut his wrist with a big 
 sharp knife, his pride, which he had open in his hand 
 when he stumbled. An artery was severed ; he had 
 bled to death. 
 
 By such fantastic fooling did Chance take the life 
 that the day before had been gallantly risked for mine, 
 and so were stilled the heart and brain to whose 
 power I owe all these happy years. 
 
 For a decade has passed since, alone in the sweet 
 checkered autumn simshine, the rarest child, the most 
 hope-stirring human being, I ever knew lay dying. 
 Would that these pages might give some shadowy 
 glimpse of that noble and splendid little figure, and 
 defy ever so faintly and ineffectually the hideous reck- 
 lessness of the Fate that thus quenched such a life ! 
 
 He was buried in the small unkempt graveyard on 
 the hill. I have not seen the spot since that winter. 
 Perhaps half a dozen people in the world, within as 
 many years, have remembered that he once lived. 
 Beyond these his memory is faded from the earth, as 
 though he had never been. 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 • N August sun was beating down on 
 Strathboro'. The little town wore 
 a strange aspect. An intelligent 
 bird, coming from afar, and flying 
 over houses, yards, and gardens, 
 might have realized something cu- 
 rious in the look of things. 
 The square surrounding the court-house and lined 
 with shops was utterly deserted; the shop-shutters 
 were generally up, and the court-house, which had no 
 shutters, showed the need of them in many a shat- 
 tered pane of glass, which gave it an air of degraded 
 desolation. Both in the square and beyond, grass 
 and weeds overgrew in a disorderly, squalid way, 
 many an unaccustomed spot. The ample gardens 
 behind the houses were oftenest a tangle of luxuriant 
 untrained growths; the asparagus-beds flung out 
 their feathery foliage in great spreading masses, and 
 against them the ironweed and ragweed and James- 
 town-weed grew tall and lusty, and among these 
 climbed wild morning-glories. At one side, perhaps, 
 would be a little patch of cultivated ground, where a 
 
 164 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 165 
 
 few sweet-potatoes and a little corn took up most of 
 the room. 
 
 Not a man was to be seen anywhere, but now and 
 again a sunbouneted woman, or several sunbonneted 
 women together, would pass from one house to another. 
 
 Inside the houses, or on their shaded galleries, 
 groups — stiU altogether feminine — were gathered, 
 talking with an air curiously uniting listlessness and 
 restlessness, apathy and anxiety. 
 
 The truth was they had special immediate cause for 
 fear, but they had suffered so long and so much in 
 similar ways, that in many the capacity for keen feel- 
 ing was blunted. Yet they would have told you they 
 suffered none the less because they suffered dully. 
 
 It was in 1863. The Federal forces under General 
 Paine were in possession of this part of Tennessee, 
 and he had his headquarters at TuUahoma, not fif- 
 teen miles away. 
 
 Strathboro' had been well stripped of men for 
 many a day, even the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old 
 boys were away fighting; but until this morning a 
 few male persons were to be seen about, and though 
 usually they were old or sick or deformed, the sight 
 was a comfort to the weary eyes of the womankind. 
 Rightly or wrongly, they now involuntarily felt as 
 never before the superiority of the dominating sex ; 
 it was they who were fighting out this war, and even 
 the least awe-inspiring man represented the power 
 that carried Fate in its hand. And now, to-day, here 
 they were, left without a man — a white man, that 
 is — in Strathboro'. No — not literally without one: 
 Uncle BiUy Caldwell, aged eighty-two, stiU sat at 
 
166 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 home in his big chair, quivering and bewildered, 
 and Blossier, the Frenchman, was also left behind. 
 
 This peculiar state of things was brought about 
 bj' General Paine in his efforts to stop sudden rebel 
 raids upon his bridges, railroads, and telegraph-wires. 
 These attacks were always made and the offenders 
 gone before punishment coiild reach them, and, under 
 fresh provocation, General Paine had conceived the 
 idea of holding the few remaining and helpless male 
 citizens of Strathboro' responsible for the doings of 
 the soldiers he could not catch. So, this morning an 
 armed squad had descended upon the disheartened 
 little town, and had marched off to Tullahoma the 
 lame, the halt, and the blind. Falstaff's army was a 
 robust body compared to this handful of mutinous 
 spirits. 
 
 Uncle Billy Caldwell was not only eighty-two, but 
 he weighed nearly three hundred pounds; if taken, he 
 was obviously sure to die on the way, and that would 
 inevitably cause some delay and inconvenience, so 
 it was plainly discreet that he be left behind; but as 
 to the Frenchman, there was no logical reason for 
 the leniency shown him; it was simply that the Anglo- 
 Saxon conquerors had, in common with the Anglo- 
 Saxon conquered, so deep a feeling of his foreignness, 
 that he seemed outside of human-kind. The question 
 of taking him to Tullahoma was dismissed with a 
 grin, as it might have been had it referred to one of 
 Uncle Billy's ancient hounds. But old Blossier him- 
 self naturally took no such view of the matter. He 
 understood English very imperfectly, but he believed 
 that France was honored in his person ; and he had 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 167 
 
 his ragged straw hat pressed to his bosom as he 
 bowed low to the officer in command, before begin- 
 ning to express, as best he could, between the two 
 languages, his gratified sense of their regard for la 
 belle France, when lo, he raised his head, and officer 
 and men were gone, hurrying, backs toward him, up 
 the street! 
 
 Strathboro' people would have considered old Blos- 
 sier crazy if they had not felt, obscurely, that such 
 an opinion included an admission that he had once 
 been sane, an admission so unthinkable that they con- 
 tented themselves with explaining everything on the 
 ground that he was a Frenchman. 
 
 Yes, he was a Frenchman; that was still clear to 
 even his poor confused brain, though little else auto- 
 biographical was. He was not old in years, not much 
 more than forty, but the adjective was more than an 
 epithet, it was descriptive of his relation to life. 
 How he had drifted to Strathboro' he would have 
 found it hard to tell. He had dim memories of bar- 
 ricades and dangers and swelling emotions in his 
 youth, and he cherished them, and around them gath- 
 ered vague sentiments of patriotism that still stirred 
 within him at the mention of France and of Liberty; 
 but the changes of the years had been too much for 
 his powers of synthesis. He had been hustled through 
 too many and too varied scenes ; he could not untangle 
 the coil of memory; he was confused; he gave it up; 
 he lived on from day to day. 
 
 For five years he had so lived in Strathboro'. He 
 maintained himself by doing odd jobs of many kinds, 
 nursing the sick, laying out gardens — particularly 
 
168 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 flower-gardens — and tending them, mending furni- 
 ture, painting indoor wood-work, making odd toys — 
 children particularly adored them. In fact, he did all 
 these things and others uncommonly well, else, in this 
 slave-owning community, he would have had nothing 
 to do. He never had much, and the war had not 
 increased his income, but he lived, someway, in the 
 queer little hut he had built himself in a worn-out 
 abandoned field at "the edge of town," and he had so 
 far redeemed a portion of the exhausted land as to 
 have a flourishing bit of garden at his door, which of 
 course was a great help for the summer. He did not 
 return in kind the good-natured curious contempt 
 Strathboro' felt for him ; no, in his muddled way he 
 was cosmopolitan, and felt for his neighbors a regard 
 that in some cases was almost affection ; and now to- 
 day as he stood in the middle of the old turnpike 
 and watched his feeble and saddened fellow-towns- 
 men as they started with their armed escort upon 
 their long hot march, his heart yearned with anxiety 
 for them; he had nursed Mr. Patten through that 
 spell of typhoid fever that had left him so weak; he 
 remembered Jimmy Pembroke's broken leg, never 
 properly set, and how much walking always started 
 it hurting; he looked up at the lofty head of old 
 Judge Caldwell with pitying awe, and wondered how 
 the soldiers could thus humiliate dignity and worth ; 
 but it was when his eye turned back to the hollow- 
 eyed, staring women, hanging over gates, and out of 
 windows, and forth from gallery steps to see the last 
 of the prisoners, that his feelings choked him. He 
 alone was left to care for them. 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 169 
 
 In after years this whole incident took a humorous 
 tone in Strathboro' traditions, but the comical side of 
 it was pretty well lost sight of at the time. Several 
 citizens, on suspicion of aiding in the depredations of 
 soldiers and bushwhackers, had been shot recently, 
 in that same TuUahoma camp, and now the wrathful 
 general was swearing he would keep his communi- 
 cations open if he had to kill every man along the 
 whole line of the railroad. The sunlight seemed a 
 glare rather than a radiance in Strathboro' that day. 
 
 Over the hill the marching men passed out of sight, 
 leaving a faint trail of dust, like smoke, behind them. 
 Blossier went up the street and stopped at Mrs. Pem- 
 broke's gate. She was a widow, and Jimmy, whose 
 lame leg Blossier so sorrowfully remembered, was 
 her only son. She sat on her front steps, her gray, 
 disordered head in her hands. Blossier bared his, as 
 he stood there, silent. 
 
 " Oh, they did n't take you ! " was Miss Catherine's 
 salutation when she finally saw him. 
 
 " Non, madame, I rest here for to protect ze ladies. 
 I am rejoice to aid you of any manifere. Zee gouvern- 
 ment regard my country, voild je — how you say — 
 I is here. Command Blossier, madame." 
 
 " There ain't anything you can do," said Miss Gath- 
 ering, wearily, and she got up and went in the house ; 
 she thought it hard that she must be bothered by old 
 Blossy just then. 
 
 As evening drew on, Blossier reflected that in the 
 
 long silent stretch of the night would lie the severest 
 
 trial to "the ladies'" strained nerves. He put himself 
 
 in their place, and conjured up what he conceived to be 
 
 15 
 
170 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 the fears hovering in their imaginations. His good 
 ofilees had not been rejected always, during the day. 
 He had helped one woman with her fretful sick child; 
 he had brought wood and water for others who were 
 deserted by their servants ; — but what could he do at 
 night? 
 
 He was sitting in his cabin, gazing westward into 
 a serene, cloudless, primrose sky ; as he got up and 
 turned indoors, his eye fell on a queer, big something 
 in a dark bag in a dusky corner ; — he had an inspira- 
 tion ! In that bag was an old viol, a double-bass, a 
 relic of a time, draped in the mists of antiquity, when 
 Blossier had " assisted" in a theatrical orchestra. 
 
 Perhaps few instruments are less adapted to the 
 purposes of a strolling serenader than a double-bass, 
 but as Blossier caught sight of his, it was to a night 
 of serenading that he dedicated it. He would sys- 
 tematically patrol the town, and from that double- 
 bass should issue strains assuring the poor ladies 
 that a friend was near and on the watch. 
 
 To be sure, as he considered the scheme, he felt keen- 
 ly the musical limitations of a double-bass. He knew 
 that his was not even good of its kind. He had re- 
 gretted before that Fate, at the time she made music 
 his resource, had not thrown a more companionable 
 instrument into his hands, but never before did he 
 feel its galling deficiencies as now. Why, a fife would 
 be better ! 
 
 Blossier felt the picturesque and poetical element 
 in his plan, and that it was odious to be obliged to 
 depend on such means for its execution. However, 
 there was no chance of getting a fife and learning to 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 171 
 
 play it within an hour, so he soon contrived more 
 optimistic views of the case as it stood. A bass-viol 
 gave forth at all events a very strong masculine 
 sound, well calculated to convey assurances of pro- 
 tection ! 
 
 He put himself again into his ragged coat, again 
 took up his ragged straw hat, and started forth to 
 inform the ladies of his intentions ; there would be 
 nothing comforting in it if in the night that heavy 
 scraping boom took them unawares — " tout au con- 
 traire," he said gravely to himself. 
 
 It was not hard to spread the news ; the women 
 were concentrating their weakness for the night ; 
 scattered relatives were flocking together to spend it 
 at the most central house of the clan; the women 
 living on the outskirts of the village came over the 
 bridge, or down the turnpike, or up the stage-road 
 as the case might be, to lodge for the time being with 
 neighbors more closely neighbored than themselves. 
 The general trepidation passed the bounds of reason; 
 many Strathboro' households had been exclusively 
 feminine for many months, — yes, years; their natu- 
 ral protectors had been long endangered beyond the 
 chances of this misadventure, but, with a solidarity 
 of sentiment that did them credit, the women all 
 agreed to suffer in kind with those who had special 
 cause for alarm, and uncommon fear prevailed. 
 
 Blossier was a little man, a little, thin, dim, hay- 
 colored man, but with so French a face, and of a type 
 so associated in our minds with dark coloring, that it 
 seemed as if he must have faded to his present tints 
 after centuries of exposure to the weather. 
 
172 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 The viol was much taller than he was, and of 
 course, after he began his patrol at ten o'clock, he 
 soon found more reasons than sentimental ones for 
 wishing it something else. 
 
 On his first round he stopped in front of every door 
 on one side of the street, and boomed forth a few 
 deeply buzzing bars of the Marseillaise, or still more 
 unfamiliar and dislocated strains from " OrpMe aux 
 Unfers." 
 
 He had vague doubts as to the appropriateness of 
 Offenbach, but the jolly fragments he remembered 
 titillated his own Gallic nerves so delightfully after 
 the emotional tension of the song of patriotism 
 and the exhaustion of carrying the viol, that he con- 
 cluded the ladies too must surely find them cheering. 
 
 Some of them confessed afterward that they were 
 comforted by these sounds as of a gigantic bumble- 
 bee in musical practice; others said they were so 
 queer and foreign-like they made them lonesomer 
 than before; they fairly "loved" to hear even that 
 old fiddle grumble out an attempt at Dixey, or "Juli- 
 anna Johnson coming to Town." The night wore 
 on. 
 
 And O, how slow that keen-eyed star 
 
 Has tracked the chilly gray ; 
 What, watching yet ! how very far 
 The morning lies away! 
 
 Mrs. Pembroke, moved by a half-conscious remorse 
 for her daylight ungraciousness, came out to her gate 
 as Blossier stopped there for the second time, and 
 asked him in to have " a dram and a suack." 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 173 
 
 Pretty Miss Molly Boon called to him once, as he 
 went by her mother's house, and asked him to come in 
 and help her move a sick child. Miss Molly gave him 
 a cup of coffee. The east was gray with the welling 
 dawn when Blossier, weai-y enough, stopped before 
 the last house at the end of a street, — his bow arm 
 dropped, his eyes fastened themselves on a corner of 
 the house — yes — there it was, fire ! a curling spit of 
 flame leaped, vivid in the darkness, around the corner, 
 above the floor of the porch. 
 
 The double-bass fell. Blossier ran up the walk; 
 before he could reach the house the sneaking flame 
 had grown bolder, it had fastened itself into the 
 wooden pUlar by the wall; he shouted; he threw a 
 stone at the door as he ran ; around the corner the 
 fire was bursting up from a pile of debris against the 
 wall ; it caught like teeth in the dry clap-boards, the 
 porch-pillar was burning. Blossier ran in upon the 
 blazing stuff; he had torn off his coat and wrapped 
 it around his fists, and he kicked and knocked the 
 brands far out into the gravel walk and the grass. 
 Two women were now beside him. It looked as if the 
 house would go; the little flames were burning mer- 
 rily, — that meant most of the town would go, for a fine 
 dawn wind was springing up. They brought buckets 
 of water and a ladder, and meanwhile Blossier was 
 whipping the fire with a shovel he had caught from 
 one of them; he contrived to command the women 
 without losing a second; he made them pour water 
 from the floor above ; he fought like a fiend ; sud- 
 denly a memory of the barricades rose clear and 
 
174 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 sharp within him as he had not remembered them 
 for years ; the spirit of war swelled like a trumpet's 
 note within the little man, and his soul responded 
 to its own cry for the salvation of " lesfemmes et Us 
 enfants." 
 
 It was a sight to see the alien, old Blossy, in the 
 weird growing light, his life in his hand, his clothes 
 burning upon him, his face scorched and smoke- 
 blackened, fighting, at the close quarters of a death- 
 struggle, an enemy that was not his enemy, gaining 
 a victory that did not save him ! 
 
 The joyous light was pouring over the summer 
 earth in delicate, elating wavelets when the last flame 
 flickered out, and Blossier fell amid the cinders as if 
 he too were gone. 
 
 The crying women — one white, one black — bent 
 over him. The old negress started to lift him, but 
 her mistress caught her arm. 
 
 " A'nt 'Cindy," she said, " take his feet," and she 
 pushed the servant aside and stooped herself over 
 the ghastly face. 
 
 "Miss Jane," said the other, "I kin tote him by 
 m'se'f . You 's too trembly — " 
 
 " I '11 help tote this man into my house myself, A'nt 
 'Cindy," was Jane M'Grath's answer, and together 
 they lifted their burden. 
 
 " Into the spare room," said she in the hall. Her 
 voice was clear and hard, while her tears, falling like 
 quiet rain on Blossier's face, were making little white 
 blots and streaks there. 
 
 In the beginning of the conflict, Mrs. M'Grath had 
 set her five-year-old daughter on the gravel walk by 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 175 
 
 the frout gate, out of harm's way, and told her to stay 
 there. There she still sat, crying lustilj'. 
 
 " G-o over after Miss Mary Bell Croft," Miss Jane 
 now commanded Aunt 'Cindy, "and take Janey with 
 you, and leave her there ; the children '11 look after 
 her awhile." 
 
 As she spoke she was cutting his clothes away from 
 Blossier ; his arms seemed badly burnt — she saw this 
 had better be done before he became conscious. 
 
 " Do you know the news ? " called Mrs. Pembroke 
 to Mrs. Kitchens, across the way, hurrying out to the 
 front gate, while her breakfast was being put on the 
 table. " The town came within an ace of burning to 
 the ground, lock, stock, and barrel, last night. Jane 
 M'Grrath's house was afire, and old Blossy — Mr. Blossy 
 I reckon I feel like calling him to-day — put it out, and 
 he got burnt mighty bad. Old A'nt 'Cindy came over 
 hours ago to fetch Mary Bell to come help Jane fix 
 him. They ain't got no idea how it caught. The ehil-. 
 dren, A'nt 'Cindy's grandchildren, and little Janey had 
 been piling up some rubbish 'gainst the wall, making 
 a play-house, and that was where the fire begun. You 
 never can tell what children are up to, — like as not 
 they 'd been trying to roast corn or something. There 
 was a right smart south wind blowing early, and if 
 Jane's house had got fairly caught — No, 'Cindy said 
 they did n't think Blossy was burnt dangerous. Yes, 
 you 're right ; he is lucky to be in Jane's hands. Jane 
 ain't smart, but she 's mighty clever. It 's a wonder I 
 did n't see the whole thing. I was up and down all 
 over the house most of the night, and I heard that 
 
176 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 poor thing scraping and bomming on that there big 
 fiddle of his, all over the town. Yes, it was kind o' 
 company, but I lay down 'bout daybreak, and got to 
 snoozing, after 'while. Mary and little Mary stayed 
 mighty still. I never heard 'em up and down none 
 after eleven o'clock, but Mary says she never slept 
 two hours. But I tell you, a man never has the wife 
 that '11 worry over him like his mother. I feel like 
 I '11 -walk to TuUahoma myself to-day, if I can't find 
 out something 'bout Jimmy any other way," and Miss 
 Catherine wiped her eyes as she turned toward the 
 house, calling " Yes, I 'm coming," in answer to a sec- 
 ond shrill warning that breakfast was waiting, and 
 leaving Mrs. Kitchens still struggling to get in her 
 account of how she spent the night. 
 
 This was about as much impression as the incident 
 of the fire made anywhere : the town had come near 
 burning down, but it had n't — old Blossy had saved 
 it. There was something a little embarrassing about 
 this : it made the usual tone about him seem, just at 
 the time, ungracious; yet what other tone was there 
 to take ? 
 
 Anyhow, Jane M'Grath was taking care of him, and 
 if she wanted help she knew where to ask for it, and 
 — when were the men coming home from TuUahoma, 
 and how were things with them 1 
 
 Yes, it was well for Blossier that it was Jane 
 M'Grath's house he had saved; it was well that it was 
 on her, and not another, fell most directly the debt of 
 gratitude that the whole village owed him, but which 
 the village was too stupid and insensible, too preoc- 
 cupied and too selfish, to realize and acknowledge. 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 177 
 
 Jaue M'Grath was accounted in Strathboro' a partic- 
 ularly duU woman. Strathboro' cared a good deal 
 for what it called smartness, and carefully classified 
 all examples thereof as either bright or deep; but 
 Jane M'Grath, whom they had known all her life, 
 was, as was well known, not smart, neither bright 
 nor deep, though she was clever, — that is, good-na- 
 tured, kindly, easy to get on with. Jane was more 
 than good-natured, she was good — good with that 
 positive quality of character that cheapens every- 
 thing else in this world by comparison; and she 
 ■was the furthest thing in the world from a fool, 
 she was a wise woman. 
 
 Strathboro' did not count the conduct of life 
 among the achievements of smartness, though it 
 valued that too, and gave Jane a certain meed of 
 appreciation as a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. 
 
 Jane put her views of life's duties into no words. 
 She did not think in words; she made about as 
 much use of language as your horse might, for con- 
 venience, if he could. 
 
 One day, as Blossier, his swathed hands on a pil- 
 low before him, sat in a big wooden rocking-chair, 
 in a wide, dim, breezy hall, sunshiny outdoors before 
 and behind him, it occurred to him that he was get- 
 ting well too fast. Janey, according to orders, was 
 playing on the gallery, within sound of his voice, so 
 that he could call her "if he wanted anything," — 
 not that Blossier had been known to want anything 
 since he had been in the house. 
 
 Aunt 'Cindy's voice, softened by the distance to 
 the kitchen, rose and fell on the pleasant air in reli- 
 
178 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 gious fervor; and up-stairs Jane M'Grath's footsteps 
 could be heard. The men had all come back from 
 Tullahoma a week before, but Andy M'Grath was 
 not among them; he had been in the field a year, 
 and two more were to elapse before he should return. 
 Jane felt that the entire weight of their debt to Blos- 
 sier devolved for the time upon her. 
 
 Janey's moon-face appeared at the door — she felt 
 it incumbent on her to come and look at her charge 
 occasionally ; then, seized with a sudden impulse, she 
 clambered down the steps, disappeared, and in a 
 moment was laboriously climbing back again, with a 
 very big marigold in her hand. She trotted to Blos- 
 sier, her bare feet softly patting the bare floor, started 
 to hold it out to him, remembered the swathed 
 hands, and held it up, tip-toeing, to his nose, — flowers 
 were to be smelled in Janey's creed, without petty 
 distinctions as to odors. 
 
 " Merci," smiled Blossier, as she laid the happy 
 yellow thing on his pillowed lap; "ne comprenez- 
 vous pas ? Won ? " 
 
 The child stood looking in his face, grave and 
 silent, ready to see what this odd creature would 
 do next. 
 
 Jane had come down the stairs, and was standing 
 looking on ; at the same moment then and there, 
 she and Blossier each became possessed of an idea 
 — small ones to be sure, but destined to become 
 pregnant. 
 
 Blossier's blinking little lashless eyes (the lashes 
 had been white, so their absence made no great dif- 
 ference in his appearance) were fixed on the curl-rags 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 179 
 
 that tied up Janey's straight brown locks. Jane her- 
 self was a simple, plain body, not given to consider- 
 ing the decorative side of life, but she did sorely 
 want curly hair for her child! Blossier's mind re- 
 verted to a hair-dresser he had once known in New 
 Orleans — if he only had such a pair of tongs as that 
 man used he was sure he could, when his hands got 
 well, curl Janey's hair to a marvel; and how pleas- 
 ant it would be to come and do it every day. Vague 
 vistas of usefulness to this worshipful hostess opened 
 up cheer in gly before him. 
 
 The dear dumb Jane was remembering certain 
 Strathboro' girls who had gone to boarding-schools 
 where they had studied French, — everybody knew 
 they had; it was often mentioned in their honor, — but 
 she had heard some very smart people — Judge Cald- 
 well, for instance — say they did n't believe they could 
 speak it, and Judge Caldwell mentioned that he had 
 Northern kinfolk who got French nurses for their 
 children, so that they learned to talk French when 
 they were little — why (this preface and conclusion 
 came all but simultaneously in Jane's mind), why 
 could n't Janey learn it from Mr. Blossy, and why 
 could n't other children learn from Mr. Blossy (she 
 had a pang here at giving up the hope of a lonely 
 eminence of learning for Janey), and thus Mr. Blossy 
 be lifted to the dignity and prosperity of a teacher ! 
 That might indeed be a payment on the debt of 
 gratitude ! 
 
 Janey looked at her marigold with thoughts of re- 
 claiming it, it seemed unappropriated, unappreciated, 
 lying there on the pillow; and then she heard the 
 
180 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 coaxing voice of Aunt 'Cindy's small granddaugh- 
 ter, calling from the big crape-myrtle tree, — she was 
 not allowed to trespass further upon the front yard, — 
 " Janey, Janey, I got a pooty fur ye, Janey," and she 
 trotted off to bestow her society where it was most 
 prized. 
 
 Jane may not have been blessed with many ideas, 
 but she gave profound attention to those that did 
 visit her. She pondered all day on the possibility 
 of Blossier becoming a teacher of French, and af- 
 ter supper she went over to consult Mrs. Pembroke 
 about it. 
 
 " Of course," she said, after she was seated on the 
 gallery in the starlight, and had introduced her sub- 
 ject, " nobody can do much with the war going on, 
 but I 'm willing to make some sacrifices for Janey, 
 and Mr. Blossy would n't expect much; we could just 
 share what we 've got with him till times are better. 
 I 'm afraid he 's been awful pore lately. And after 
 all, the town would 'a' bcten most burned down sure, 
 if it had n't been for him, sure for a heap more as 
 for me." 
 
 Miss Catherine had no little children to be in- 
 structed, so Jane with difflculty and hitches got out 
 so much suggestion of Strathboro's obligations. 
 
 " That 's aJI true, Jane," replied Miss Catherine 
 cheerfully, "but everybody ain't as anxious to rec- 
 ollect them kind of things as you, and as your 
 mother was before you, I remember now how she 
 cherished that old Mammy Dinah of yourn, jusb for 
 the way she nussed you when you had that terrible 
 typhoid sickness when you was little. Seemed like 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 181 
 
 she could n't do enough for that niggah when she 
 got old and wuthless. Good niggah she was, too." 
 
 There was a pause, and, just as Miss Catherine was 
 again taking up the thread of reminiscence, Jane 
 interrupted : 
 
 "Mr. Blossy ain't a niggah, and it seems kinda 
 dreadful to see a white man live like he does here in 
 Strathboro'. It ain't as if he was a real poor-white 
 either. He 's got education, I 've heard tell. He 
 reads French newspapers. He 's got some now at 
 my house." 
 
 "WeU, he 's a foreigner, you know, Jane. You 
 never can tell anything about them like other peo- 
 ple. He 's been here doing niggah's work years, but it 
 don't seem exactly like any other white man doing it. 
 He 's just a Frenchman first or last, and for them 
 that wants to learn French, I reckon that 's what 
 they want. I s'pose it would be a good thing for the 
 pore old body, but you can't do much, Jane, with the 
 war going on, and the Lord only knows — " then 
 loyalty to disloyalty sealed her lips against the first 
 expression of doubt as to the conclusion and after- 
 tale of the conflict. As to the present she was right. 
 There was small interest in Strathboro' in those days 
 in the acquirement of French by any means whatso- 
 ever. Jane accepted this fact and went her own way. 
 
 Long before poor Andy M'Grath, gaunt and tat- 
 tered and despairing and beaten, came back to his 
 home, Strathboro' had become familiar with the sight 
 of Blossier going about his work with a tiny figure 
 by his side — a little girl with the most marvelous 
 double rows of brown curls under her corn-ghuck 
 16 
 
182 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 hat; curls as stiff and slick and regular as if they 
 had been done out of wood with a turning-lathe. 
 Strathboro' admired the curls unanimously, but an 
 accomplishment of their owner filled them with an 
 even livelier interest. That little thing could speak 
 French, talk it right along with old Blossy ! 
 
 The pair were continually called upon to demon- 
 strate the fact. 
 
 "When old Mrs. Famley came in from the country 
 to stay with her dau|hter-in-law, she was not to be 
 convinced by the ordinary exhibition. 
 
 "You, Mr. Blossy," said she, "you go clean out 
 there by that there crape-myrtle, and stay there 
 where I can see you. Janey, you tell Mr. Blossy 
 when he comes back to give me my stick — tell him 
 in French." Jauey was a little mystified, but she was 
 used to exhibiting her French, so she successfully 
 performed the feat required of her, and when Blos- 
 sier, with a bow, handed the old lady her staff, more 
 witnesses than one had a new realization that the 
 strange tongue was not a meaningless jargon. 
 
 Andy M'Grath's soul was as much like Jane's as 
 one corn-field pea is like another. The Infinite mind 
 doubtless saw distinctions between them, and Jane 
 knew that Andy took more sugar in his coffee than 
 she did, and Andy knew that she would spank Janey 
 sometimes when he would not, but so far as other 
 human beings were concerned, they might as well 
 have had interchangeable identities. When they got 
 married Mrs. Pembroke remarked to Mrs. Kitchens 
 that it was curious to see two such good, dumb, 
 clever, say-nothing bodies marry each other; but 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 183 
 
 then, slie added, perhaps it would have been more 
 curious yet if they had not. 
 
 Of course Andy accepted Blossier in exactly 
 Jane's spirit. He felt a little at a loss as to how 
 to conduct himself with a Frenchman, finding 
 himself without social traditions on that point, but 
 he had the best will in the world to adapt him- 
 self as well as he could to any new etiquette re- 
 quired. Neither he nor Jane had a touch of the 
 usual sore contempt for ways new to them — so 
 little may a large spirit be dependent on experience 
 or intellectuality. 
 
 Andy had been home a week, and it was the even- 
 ing after they had first persuaded Blossier to sup with 
 them. Janey, her curls tumbled into merely human 
 tresses, but presumably dreaming French dreams, lay 
 in her trundle-bed ; and, close by, Jane and Andy sat 
 at the window, cooling off, and, as they said, " talk- 
 ing things over." Jane now opened up the subject 
 she had had so long at heart. 
 
 " 'Pears, Andy, like Mr. Blossy 's too good to be 
 doing niggah's work all the time. Of course with a 
 Frenchman things is different, but seems like if he 
 can teach Janey he might teach others." 
 
 " It 'pears like it would be more fitting," said Andy, 
 seizing the idea. 
 
 " It 's called a smart thing to know French; there 's 
 Babe Tucker." 
 
 " Blossy must know aU about it," responded Andy 
 again. 
 
 "Yes, I heard Judge Caldwell say years ago that 
 he was educated." 
 
184 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 " It 's bad time now, Jane." 
 
 " I know that, Andy, but we can just try and get 
 him started. The war 's over, and people got to edu- 
 cate their children quick if they 're going to 't all." 
 
 " French is extry." 
 
 " Well, Blossy 's right here, and a heap of houses 
 beside ourn would 've burnt down if he had n't been. 
 It won't cost much. He 'U be better off, anyhow, than 
 working aU the time like a niggah. You talk to 
 your brother Ben, Andy ; he '11 like to have his girls 
 as smart as Janey," concluded the self-sacrificing 
 Jane, with a sigh. 
 
 Ten years from that night Judge Caldwell was 
 saying to a guest, a lawyer from West Tennessee, 
 "Yes, sir, Strathboro' can show more people, old 
 and young, accomplished in the French tongue, sir, 
 than any town — a larger proportion, sir, so ac- 
 complished, than any town in the State. There are 
 numerous children in Strathboro' that talk French 
 with each other together at their play, sir, some- 
 times. In fact there is a little niggah here about 
 the house somewhere now that I heard saying — 
 you, 'Liza, where 's that pickaninny of yours?" 
 the Judge interrupted himself to call to a servant 
 passing the door. 
 
 "She done sleep, jedge." 
 
 " Very well, never mind." 
 
 "WeU, sir, I must let you hear that little darky 
 talk French in the morning. It sounds comic, it 
 does indeed. She picked it up from my grandchil- 
 dren. Strathboro' always had a literary taste. This 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 185 
 
 county has produced a large proportion of the great 
 men of Middle Tennessee, Mr. Hunter, — a large pro- 
 portion even take the whole State together, sir, — and 
 owing to the circumstances I have related to you, a ri- 
 valry in the French language and literature sprang 
 up among our people, — ladies and children, that is, 
 chiefly, — till now, sir, almost as many of them have 
 read ' Corinne,' sir, Madame de Stael's masterpiece, 
 as are familiar with the 'Beulah,' or 'St. Elmo' of 
 our own Miss Evans." 
 
 The Judge spoke truly. It had come about that 
 learniug French was the game the town most af- 
 fected; and Blossier was, of conrse, the teacher. 
 
 The tone about him had not greatly changed; a 
 familiarity with French had tiot much decreased 
 Strathboro's sense of the anomalous in the existence 
 of a Frenchman; but the face of life had greatly 
 altered to Blossier. Stimulated by the gentle prod- 
 dings of Jane M'Grath he had studied to fit himself 
 for his new calling, and it had come about that he 
 had developed a little genuine simple interest in ex- 
 ercising his few wits, and (bless him !) was enjoy- 
 ing the sweets of the intellectnal life. 
 
 Moreover, though the tone of the town about him 
 had not much altered, nevertheless its tone to him 
 was necessarily, in the new circumstances, more 
 friendly and considerate, and that deeply touched 
 and pleased the little man. 
 
 He still lived by himself, but now it was in " the 
 office," in Mrs. Pembroke's yard, and so he was 
 within the pale of civilization, and could be looked 
 after if he fell sick. Jane had not rested till that 
 
186 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 possibility was provided for. But Fate is apt to 
 pass over the possibilities scrupulously provided 
 for ; Blossier had aever spent a day in bed since 
 he recovered from his burns, when one autumn the 
 dear Jane herself sickened and died, and was laid 
 away in that shadow village always growing, grow- 
 ing silently and ominously, by Strathboro's side. 
 
 Poor Andy M'Grath was indeed left, as Aunt 
 'Cindy said, like the half of a pair of scissors. 
 Yes, that was it; he was now a something absurdly 
 useless, unnaturally unfit for existence, a something 
 to provoke the mirth of Olympus. 
 
 How strange a thing, still strange in its awful 
 familiarity, that a creature so inoffensive, living in 
 dumb, helpless good faith the life thrust on him, 
 could seem so played upon! 
 
 At the funeral, after Jane -was laid in the ground 
 and the earth was well heaped over her, Andy turned 
 his poor bewildered pain-dazed eyes upon the faces 
 about him, and amid their wearied assumption of 
 solemnity, beneath which the usual easy little in- 
 terest in the commonplace was already asserting 
 itself, he saw Blossier, his features working convul- 
 sively, as he gazed with eyes that did not see upon 
 the hideous mound. 
 
 It was not in Andy to feel resentment against 
 the others; perhaps he too realized, in the depths 
 of his wordless consciousness, that poor humanity 
 could hardly exist except as it is "well wadded 
 with stupidity"; but his- heart went out to Blossier, 
 and was eased a little at the sight of his grief. 
 
 He went to him and took his hand, and without 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 187 
 
 a word the two men, the two piteous old children, 
 went away together from Jane's grave. 
 
 Months went by, and Strathboro' became used to 
 seeing them together, and had almost ceased to gos- 
 sip about the queer taste Andy showed, when one 
 June day new fuel fed the flame of popular criticism. 
 
 The week before Blossier had overheard one of his 
 pupUs, a middle-aged, unmarried lady, any, in his 
 class, to her nearest neighbor, that "it was a plum 
 shame the way poor Mrs. M'Grath's little girls was 
 running wild with nobody but Aunt 'Cindy to look 
 after 'em, and she so old she did n't know what she 
 was doing anyhow," and that it was her "'pinion that 
 pore Miss Jane would rather they had a step-ma than 
 to have 'em left with no raisin' at all like that." 
 
 Jane had left four daughters. This little incident 
 gave Blossier food for profound reflection. He re- 
 fleeted to some purpose. That night instead of going 
 and sitting on the gallery steps, after supper, with 
 Andy, as usual, he stopped outside the front gate, and 
 called with a portentous, mysterious air, " Mees-tere 
 Andee, Mees-tere Andee, — non, non ! " in answer to 
 the invitation to enter, and then he beckoned, still 
 mysteriously, with sidelong, backward nods of the 
 head, for Andy to come to him. " Howdy ? " gaid he 
 when Andy reached the gate, now assuming a light, 
 degagd air, totally inconsistent with his previous 
 manner, "come chez-moi, these eve-ning." 
 
 When Andy was seated on the steps of the "of&ce," 
 Blossier brought him a mint-julep, and with a glass 
 of cheap claret for himself — the one luxury of his 
 prosperity — sat himself down in the doorway. 
 
188 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 " Mighty nice," said Andy politely; " get your mint 
 close by?" 
 
 But Blossier was so absorbed in trying to arrange 
 his thoughts for presentation that he forgot to 
 answer. 
 
 " Mees-tere Andee," he at last began, " your leetle 
 daughtere air-r much upon my meditation. I weis 
 zey have »e bess condition possible." 
 
 Andy stopped with the uplifted glass half-way to 
 his mouth, and began with a troubled countenance 
 to scrupulously study its contents. 
 
 "My fatere was one taileur, Mees-tere Andee," 
 Blossier inexplicably proceeded, putting his glass 
 down on the step, and talking eagerly with out- 
 stretched palms, "and my moo-tere was — was — 
 she make tay, mose delicate wiz fln-gere, et mot, 
 me — I help, I help bote when I leetle, when I 
 biggere." 
 
 Andy had forgotten his glass now, and was staring 
 and yet trying to look polite and not too conscious 
 of the strangeness of French ways. 
 
 "And Mees-tere Andee, my fin-gere also, alway, 
 even now — I sew for my clo'es my-se'f alway, you 
 not know? I know I do ainy t'ing zat way 
 easee, beautiful; and ze manure, ze politeness, ah, 
 Mees-tere Andee, you know ze French peepul zey 
 have ze manihre ; I teach ze leetle daughtere all, I 
 keep ze houze, I sew de clo'es, so not in Strathboro' 
 is such clo'es, Mees-tere Andee, si vous — peremeet 
 me, Mees-tere Andee, come chez vous to your houze, — 
 you comprehend 1 " 
 
 By this time Blossier was standing on the walk in 
 
THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 189 
 
 front of Andy, rapidly pantomiming his ideas, and 
 pleading with gesture as well as voice, as if begging 
 that children of his own should be cared and labored 
 for by Andy. For a moment Andy stared on in si- 
 lence, and Blossier's heart was in his mouth, then he 
 got up, caught and wrung the Frenchman's hand an 
 instant, dropped it, and turning his back pulled his 
 old soft hat over his face. 
 
 Two days later Btrathboro' had the enormous ex- 
 citement of seeing Blossiei-'s household gods — a queer 
 little cart-load they made — moved to Andy M'Grath's 
 house, and behind the cart walked Blossier, carrying 
 our old friend the double-bass. 
 
 So was established the oddest household south of 
 Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
 It was a year before Strathboro' sounded the full 
 depths of its oddity, and ceased to vibrate with the 
 excitement of fresh discovery. Blossier took com- 
 pletely a woman's place in the household economy, 
 and the world has rarely seen few more touchingly 
 funny sights than that little man sitting cross-legged 
 on the floor of Jane's old sitting-room making femi- 
 nine fripperies of an unmistakably Parisian charac- 
 ter, frivolous and modish, airy and coquettish, to be 
 worn by his favorite, the faithful but stolid Janey. 
 He sits there yet, bald, a little shaky, annoyingly dim 
 of sight, but still enjoying turning out, for Janey's 
 babies now, such dainty confections of laces and 
 ribbons as no other fingers in Strathboro' have ever 
 concocted. Strathboro' has long ago accepted Andy 
 M'Grath's establishment — for Andy still heads it — 
 as one of its peculiar possessions, and takes much 
 
190 THE VILLAGE ALIEN. 
 
 pride iu it; and Jimmy Pendleton, wlio buys goods 
 in Memphis, or one of Judge Caldwell's granddaugh- 
 ters, who is a belle and visits the best people from 
 Louisville to New Orleans, or any of the most trav- 
 eled residents of the place, will teR you again and 
 again that the fame of its French and its Frenchman 
 has gone abroad as far as west Tennessee and south- 
 ern Kentucky and even northern Alabama. 
 
 Janey only, of the children, — with her husband 
 and her children, — lives in the old place; the rest 
 are married and scattered, and Andy and Blossier 
 seem to depend on each other more and more as the 
 years go by. They never had anything to say to each 
 other, and they have nothing now, but they love to 
 sit side by side on the gallery on summer evenings, 
 or by the open fire in winter, as might two rough- 
 coated, long-acquainted old dogs, and with no more 
 sense of failure of companionship in the silence. 
 Each understands how past and present are min- 
 gled in the other's mind, as Janey's children tum- 
 ble about, night-gowned for their final romp ; and 
 each knows the dear figure that as wife or patron 
 saint is ever in the other's thoughts, though Jane 
 M'Grath has been buried so long that even in this 
 small world she is become to others little more than 
 a name on a tombstone; and together these two 
 look forward quite trustfully to the time when their 
 names also shall be on tombstones. And, surely, if 
 there is assurance for the merciful and the meek and 
 the pure in heart, for the salt of the earth in short, 
 as to that veiled and awful door through which poor 
 humanity is always crowding, they may be assured. 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 i 
 
 ® 1 1 
 
 T 'S a great problem, of course," said 
 Miss Nancy Randolph Rutledge, 
 folding her hands in front of her 
 portly person, "yet I can but feel 
 that in this case Beulah has chosen 
 wisely. Genius has more rights in 
 some ways, and in some it has less. She should n't 
 feel that she is free to fold her talent in a napkin ; 
 she does n't." 
 
 "No, no," murmured little Mrs. Garner; "but it 
 seems mighty hard, and — and dif&eult, does n't it? 
 Do you think she minded giving him up very much ? 
 They had been engaged so long," she added apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 " She 's absorbed in her art," replied Miss Nancy, 
 impressively ; " her life is consecrated to it." 
 
 The pair were sitting in Miss Nancy's flat in 97th 
 Street, and the room in itself was a biography. The 
 walls were hung with what Miss Nancy called (and I 
 capitalize according to her sentiment) Ancestral Por- 
 traits — five of them, and wonderful things they were. 
 In one comer was a tiny, brown old Erard piano, 
 the first firard ever made, I should think. It was 
 
192 THE aiBL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 stiH capable of sending forth an odd, pleasant eigh- 
 teenth-century-like tinkle. Some battered old pieces 
 of silver, a cake-basket and a tea-pot taking tlie 
 honors, stood in solemn dignity on the elaborate, 
 shiny, new hardwood mantelpiece. 
 
 Miss Nancy Rutledge was an elderly and unmar- 
 ried lady, but if you allow yourself to turn toward- 
 her any of your usual slighting and condescending 
 sentiments for spinsters, you are offering her the 
 first patronage she ever received in this world. Miss 
 Nancy, in the kindest, most unconscious way, patron- 
 ized creation. Never out of the South was an un- 
 married woman so generally and simply allowed 
 precedence over all matrons as was given Miss 
 Nancy in her own world. It was not that these 
 Southerners loved marriage less, — far from it, — 
 but that they loved intellect more ; and intellect was 
 what Miss Nancy tacitly and firmly claimed to have, 
 was supposed to have, and did have, the amount 
 thereof in question declining slightly with each suc- 
 cessive step of this statement. 
 
 Miss Nancy had come north to live off the enemy 
 amid the prayers and plaudits of admiring friends, 
 and their prayers and plaudits had echoed around 
 her throughout the five years in which she had gal- 
 lantly triumphed over bankruptcy in New York. In 
 that time she had played many parts: she had writ- 
 ten for the papers ; had taught mathematics in a 
 school ; had assisted in the editorship of a new and 
 impecunious paper devoted, as its title-page stated, 
 to developing the resources of the South; and had 
 given lectures on the history of Virginia in the par- 
 
THE QIEL AND THE PKOBLEM. 193 
 
 lors of some rich people who could never forget — 
 though sometimes sorely tempted — that they were 
 born south of Mason and Dixon's line; and of late, in 
 the midst of work upon a life of General Lee, for the 
 Southern subscription trade, she had found a new 
 resource in the care of a small proportion of that 
 army of Southern girls which is now constantly en- 
 camped among us. She had three in the house with 
 her, and devoted some attention to several living else- 
 where. The office of chaperon suited Miss Nancy; 
 according to her all her girls were lovely, most of 
 them beautiful, — "perfect belles at home," — and the 
 pleasure of devoting her stores of garnered wisdom 
 to their service renewed her joy in life. She was 
 benevolent, sincerely so, and believed, with a good 
 showing of reason, in her power to guide and in- 
 struct humanity at large, and also was humanly sus- 
 ceptible to the charms of appreciation. The very 
 groundwork of Miss Nancy's claims was common 
 sense ; you could see that in every line of her ma- 
 tronly figure, and hear it in every note of her pleas- 
 ant, hearty voice, and in her large-featured face and 
 bright gray eyes common sense was enthroned. 
 
 But, contrary to popular prejudice, human beings 
 are constantly rendered unknown quantities by the 
 possession of quite contradictory qualities, and Miss 
 Nancy, to tell the truth, had been subject in her life 
 to a few enthusiasms which left her common sense 
 — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse — far 
 behind. One among those young ladies whom she 
 now called "her girls" was the object of a venera- 
 tion that must be considered to have had its rise in 
 17 
 
194 THE GIEL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 the romantic, the higher, side of Miss Nancy's nature. 
 She had known her since she was in long clothes, but 
 not till about a year before this conversation with 
 Mrs. Garner did she honor her with more notice than 
 lay in that general, amiable patronage of which I 
 have spoken, and which she constantly dispensed 
 about her like a perfume — bergamot, say. This girl 
 was, of course, the heroine of Mrs. Garner's specula- 
 tions, so you already know that she had genius, an 
 art, and a lover — a decent equipment, I take it, for 
 her position as my heroine. 
 
 A little more than a year before. Miss Nancy had 
 visited Beulah's mother, and during that visit she 
 had conceived an entirely new idea of Beulah. Beu- 
 lah, like every other Southern girl at home, was gen- 
 erally — according to the formula — voted mighty 
 sweet, and right pretty, — that is, pretty a little, — 
 but it was only recently that she had developed any 
 special claims to distinction. Now Miss Nancy found 
 that she was an artist, not fully fledged perhaps, — 
 oh, no; to be sure not, — but unmistakably an artist; 
 and to that title, which Miss Nancy gave only to 
 painters and sculptors, she bowed with the most 
 curious and common blind reverence in the world. 
 It would be impossible to exaggerate the simplicity 
 of Miss Nancy's attitude toward these arts; in a 
 word, it was of that familiar sort which feels an 
 oil-painting to be an oil-painting, and a very impos- 
 ing thing too. Of course Beulah did not make oil- 
 paintings; with all her genius she had not yet 
 arrived at that stage — but let us go back for a 
 moment to the beginning of her artistic career. 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PEOBLEM. 195 
 
 When the Baptist Female College of her town 
 added a new drawing-master to its " faculty," several 
 young ladies of society, Beulah among the number, 
 had been moved by the fame of his accomplishments 
 so far to renew their connection with the school as to 
 take a course of lessons from him. Beulah always 
 had had clever fingers; she had done beautiful "tat- 
 ting" when she was only a little girl, and now she 
 distinguished herself in the drawing-class; she was 
 soon drawing her own embroidery patterns, and be- 
 ginning her ascent of that pinnacle of fame on which 
 ere long she was to sit enthroned. 
 
 She enjoyed this new outlet for her abundant en- 
 ergies, and in the nature of things she enjoyed the 
 new consideration she won. She began to feel a 
 certain tradition-born awe of her own gifts. Her 
 position toward art was exactly Miss Nancy's own ; 
 she felt for it, or rather for the name, the super- 
 stitious, unsympathetic veneration which some phi- 
 losophers explain as a result of art's dependence on 
 religion in the middle ages. At any rate, when 
 Beulah found herself making a recognizable sketch 
 of the water-pitcher, — for the new master was very 
 advanced, and insisted on study from the object, — her 
 heart palpitated with the magnitude of the dreams 
 of glory that floated in upon her mind. Then came 
 Miss Nancy. Miss Nancy gazed upon the water- 
 pitcher and the flower embroidery patterns with 
 profound emotion. She urged Beulah to come to 
 New- York and have the best instruction, and finally 
 Beulah came. By chance she feU upon the plan of 
 going to the Art Students' League; and now she 
 
196 THE GIEL AIO) THE PROBLEM. 
 
 had had one season's instruction there, and was 
 beginning her second year. 
 
 Naturally within this year her ideas had undergone 
 some changes, but for the greatest change of all — 
 the determination not to marry Tom M'Grrath — the 
 League could hardly be held directly responsible. 
 Southerners have a pleasant reputation for friend- 
 liness with strangers, because they so readily suppose 
 others to be " nice people," various evidences of nice- 
 ness being more conclusive in the old Southern world 
 than they are at present in New York ; but if South- 
 erners do not feel sure that you are of their own kind, 
 if they are even puzzled as to where you belong (ac- 
 cording to their remarkably simple ideas of classifi- 
 cation), they are little likely to be friendly, not being 
 apt to care for social experiments. AU this is but a 
 preface to the statement that Beulah had scant ac- 
 quaintance with her fellow-students. She thought the 
 young women generally given to queer clothes, and 
 that the young men lacked what she called "polish"; 
 polish in her language meaning — though perhaps 
 she had never thought of it — deference of women. 
 So the dear girl let her social chances for League as- 
 sociations, with aU their educational influences, slip 
 by her in the gentlest, firmest little way in the world 
 — in exactly a nice nineteen-year-old way, in fact. 
 She was a dear girl, and she showed it in failing to 
 become utterly insufferable under the adulation that 
 now — away from the League — surged around her. 
 This it was that might be said to have brought about 
 the momentous change I have mentioned — this adula- 
 tion and Miss Nancy's hearty and insistent fostering 
 
THE aiEL AND THE PEOBLEM. 197 
 
 of all the dreams it excited. Miss Nancy had just 
 been explaining Beulah's present position to Mrs. 
 Garner. Mrs. Garner was a friend who lived in Beu- 
 lah's home county, and was now visiting New York. 
 
 " She took a great many sketches home with her 
 last summer," said Miss Nancy, "and everybody was 
 astonished. I reckon a great many people felt that 
 it was a great pity to see a girl with gifts like that 
 just settle down into the ordinary humdrum." 
 
 "The duties of a wife and mother," began Mrs. 
 Garner, with slightly agitated solemnity — she was 
 very humble with Miss Nancy, but the "ordinary 
 humdrum " was a phrase that provoked even her to 
 turn to the arsenal of platitudes for a weapon. She 
 had it in her heart to try to remind Miss Nancy that 
 the most important ofSces of life were the very ones 
 she had never been called upon to fill. 
 
 But little could she cope with Miss Nancy, who, se- 
 cretly amused, swam beneficently on with the conver- 
 sation, wishing to soothe the little woman's feelings, 
 and without the faintest conception of the malice of 
 her intentions — "The duties of a wife and mother 
 are sacred, Molly; but without her art Beulah, though 
 she is a sweet girl, might likely enough be a hum- 
 drum person. I don't think she has the feeling for 
 duty that you have, for instance, and that you al- 
 ways had, Molly; but her art lifts her above her- 
 self. For a long time she seemed to have less feeling 
 about her talent than her friends did ; but I talked 
 to her — I did that much. I would not urge her one 
 way or the other about her marriage, but I wanted 
 her to realize what a great trust a gift like that was. 
 
198 THE GIEL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 and to make her choice solemnly. It is n't even as 
 if Tom M'Grrath were going to live in Virginia ; in 
 Texas she will be out of the way of instruction, and 
 of all those associations that would stimulate her 
 and give her something to work for. And then 
 we know, under the best of circumstances — " Miss 
 Nancy shook her head and sighed. Despite expressed 
 views as to its desirability, in her secret heart she 
 really could but look on matrimony as an abyss that 
 swallowed up many high hopes ; in her day she had 
 put such a deal of enthusiasm into teaching girls 
 who — got married. 
 
 "So she made up her mind?" said Mrs. Garner, 
 with a suspended inflection. 
 
 "Yes; at last. Her pa and ma did n't urge her 
 one way or the other. I think Mrs. Hunt herself 
 would a little rather she had married — she 's very 
 conservative, you know ; but Mr. Hunt never wanted 
 her to, anyhow, and they both felt the responsibility 
 of the great future there was before her. I reckon 
 she settled it just before she came back." And then 
 it was that Miss Nancy had admitted the harmoniz- 
 ing of woman's development and woman's sphere to 
 be a great problem. 
 
 Presently Beulah entered; she was just home from 
 her work at the League rooms, and had a sketch- 
 book under her arm. Mrs. Garner got up to greet 
 her in a little flutter of excitement. 
 
 " Beulah, you 've become a great woman since I 
 saw you." 
 
 Beulah stooped a little to kiss her, and said se- 
 renely, " I 'm just beginning. Miss Molly." 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PBOBLEM. 199 
 
 " I SO long to see some of your wonderful things. 
 You '11 show me some, won't you ? " 
 
 "You are very kind; I'll be delighted to," said 
 Beulah, and, excusing herself a moment, she went to 
 her room, laid aside her coat and hat, ran a comb 
 through the dark curls on her forehead, powdered 
 her face afresh, and then, without loss of time, got out 
 an armful of sketches and studies from the bottom of 
 her wardrobe, and, smiling and polite, walked back 
 to Mrs. Garner. She sat down beside her, drew up a 
 chair to rest the pile upon, and showed them all to 
 her, conscientiously, one by one, telling her in the 
 mean time which were the hour sketches, and which 
 had had a favorable word from her teachers — telling, 
 in short, in the most instinctively calculated manner 
 all the things that Mrs. G-arner would understand as 
 reflecting credit upon herself. 
 
 " This girl did n't have a very nice complexion, did 
 she? — that's why you 've made it so dark and red- 
 dish, is n't it?" said Mrs. G-arner, hesitatingly, after 
 various half-articulate murmurs of admiration. She 
 could not repress a little automatic effort to find out 
 why these things, which were so much less pretty 
 than the pictures in an illustrated weekly, were so 
 much more wonderful, a fact she never dreamed of 
 questioning. 
 
 " Oh, no," said Beulah ; " she had a very nice com- 
 plexion, but the light was not strong on it, and then 
 yon see these things are done in such a hurry we only 
 try to get the figure, the action." 
 
 It did not annoy her in the least when people did 
 not understand ; she liked to explain a little, and she 
 
200 THE GIEL AND THE PEOBLEM. 
 
 never doubted their admiration — their admiration 
 of her for making the pictures. She was quite astute 
 enough to feel that the admiration of the things 
 themselves was not always a spontaneous burst; it 
 did not disturb her that many of her friends suffered 
 a little disappointment with themselves over the dull- 
 ness of their sensations before real hand-paintings; 
 she realized that the tradition of their value remained 
 unshaken. 
 
 Mrs. Grarner looked at the last drawing, and then 
 leaned back and gazed with emotion upon Beulah — 
 Beulah looking so pleasant and simple behind the 
 collection of her complete works. 
 
 "It 's very wonderful — wonderful," Mrs. Garner 
 murmured, shaking her head slowly, and thinking of 
 more things than one. 
 
 Beulah smiled sweetly. 
 
 " And it makes you very happy, does it, dear ? " 
 
 Beulah detected a thread of curiosity in the ques- 
 tion that she resented, but she still smiled as she rose 
 with the works on her arm, and said : 
 
 "Yes, indeed. Miss Molly; I could not be happy 
 without my art." And Miss Nancy nodded her ap- 
 proval. 
 
 Life went on serenely in our household for several 
 months after this. Southern visitors continually 
 dropped in, and all, like Mrs. G-arner, were treated to 
 a sight of Beulah's productions. Miss Nancy called 
 for them if no one else did, and she was apt to give 
 an awe-inspiring hint, when Beulah was out of the 
 room, as to the sacrifices the girl had made for her 
 art's sake. After a while a change began to show in 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 201 
 
 Beulah; she worked harder than ever, she painted 
 early and late, and she grew more and more silent, 
 and on Sunday, when she could not paint, more and 
 more restless. She was no longer content to hide her 
 story-book in her lap for solace while she dutifully 
 and patiently sat and preserved the look of listening 
 through long chapters of Jeremiah read aloud by 
 short-sighted Miss Nancy. 
 
 " I 'm afraid, Beulah, my child," said Miss Nancy, 
 solemnly, one morning, stopping and laying her open 
 book upon her lap — " I 'm much afraid you ai-e let- 
 ting your delight in an earthly gift and your love of 
 an earthly art draw you away from your interest in 
 things eternal." 
 
 Beulah had been fidgeting from one window to 
 another, after having three times found excuses for 
 leaving the room ; now she still stood at a window, 
 and answered, without turning around, " I 'm afraid 
 I am. Miss Nancy." But afterward she sat down and 
 remained quiet through the next chapter, though 
 sustained by no other distraction than her own 
 thoughts. To do Beulah justice, she was always 
 willing to do as much through one chapter; that, 
 she said, she had been raised to. 
 
 Miss Nancy had not expressed her fears fully. 
 What she said to Beulah was what she said to her- 
 self, but down in the depths of her being lurked a 
 faint uneasiness that she did not acknowledge. It 
 was very annoying the way one person and another 
 began to remark that Beulah was not looking well, 
 that she was losing flesh. How could she look well 
 when even after dinner, at home, she got out paper 
 
202 THE GIRI/ AND THE PEOBLBM. 
 
 and charcoal and fell again upon the work that had 
 occupied her all day ? Genius, of course, often did 
 burn itself out in that way, but she had always felt 
 that she had reason to hope Beulah was better bal- 
 anced. She was so far shaken out of her usual noble 
 poise as to protest crossly, several times, against so 
 much work; but one night after one of these scold- 
 ings she heard the girl walking up and down in the 
 drawing-room till three o'clock in the morning, and 
 instead of the sense of intolerant outrage with which 
 she would usually have greeted such a performance, 
 an odd forbearance feU upon her. After a month, in 
 which Beulah's appetite and color did not improve, 
 Miss Nancy got a letter in which, among other bits 
 of gossip, she read this : " Mary has had a letter 
 from her nephew from San Antonio, and he says 
 he has heard that Tom M'Grath is courting a girl 
 in Houston ; that people think it wOl be a match." 
 Miss Nancy's heart lightened; if you wUl believe 
 it, she thought to herself that now Beulah's pride 
 would come to her rescue, and make her forget a 
 man who had so soon forgotten her. This hope 
 was her first admission to herself of her fears, and 
 you see from it that Miss Nancy had exalted ideas as 
 to the offlces and possibilities of womanly pride, and 
 also that she had the usual feminine and profound 
 attachment to the most romantic ideal of constancy 
 — constancy under the most discouraging circum- 
 stances — for men. She meditated on how easily 
 and lightly to put before Beulah the base fickle- 
 ness of the discarded one, but the more she thought 
 about it the less she knew how to do it. If ever 
 
THE GIEL AND THE PROBLEM. 203 
 
 there was an old maid in every fiber of her being it 
 was the hearty, wholesome, large-minded Miss Nancy, 
 and consequently her theories of love and love-affairs 
 were of the most assured, definite, comprehensive 
 character; but there was something about Beulah 
 these days that gave her pause, and for once in a 
 lifetime penetrated her soul with an unacknow- 
 ledged but dreadful doubt of her own complete un- 
 derstanding of all the mysteries of human life. 
 
 Before she found a way to speak to Beulah of Tom 
 M'Grrath's lightness, she got a letter from Beulah's 
 mother mentioning the same subject as a hearsay re- 
 port, and adding that she had written of it to Beu- 
 lah — why, she did not say, and who knows? 
 
 The day that this letter came Beulah did not come 
 home to dinner. It was eight o'clock when Miss 
 Nancy heard the door of the flat hall open, and, 
 hurrying to the parlor entrance with unaccustomed 
 speed, saw Beulah dragging herself wearily into her 
 own tiny bedroom. A feeling of relief was succeeded 
 by a righteous and tempered in&ignation in Miss 
 Nancy's heart. She had not intimated to the other 
 girls that Beulah's absence was to her unexpected; 
 on the contrary, so far as was consistent with her 
 ideas of Presbyterian doctrine, she had intimated 
 exactly the other thing. She was disposed to main- 
 tain something like boarding-school discipline over 
 her girls, and they, she well knew, with their associ- 
 ations, were all too likely to imbibe the odious doc- 
 trines of youthful feminine freedom with which the 
 dreadful Sunday papers reeked. She now thought 
 that to go at once and speak to Beulah alone would 
 
204 THE GIBL AND THE PEOBLEM. 
 
 be the best way of maintaining discipline. She 
 knocked at the door, and, immediately opening it, 
 found herself face to face with a very white, wide- 
 eyed young woman, who stood in front of her chap- 
 eron as if barring the way. 
 
 "Beulah, my dear child," began Miss Nancy, in 
 her most sadly serious way, her hands resting upon 
 her stomach, "I cannot feel that this evening you 
 have treated me or my household with the respect 
 that is my due, and I feel that it is for your own — " 
 
 " Because I did not come home to dinner ? " Beulah 
 broke in, in an unfamiliar, hard voice, and without 
 the slightest apparent consciousness of the rudeness 
 of her interruption. " I beg your pardon ; I am very 
 sorry." 
 
 " Where have you been, Beulah ? " said Miss Nancy, 
 still trying to live up to her standard of an ideal 
 disciplinarian. 
 
 " Been 1 " Beulah repeated, pushing her hair away 
 from her forehead, and looking through space. "I 
 don't know ; oh, I have been walking." She brought 
 her eyes back to Miss Nancy's, and then added 
 quickly, "I had my lunch very late; I don't want 
 any dinner. I have been takiag a little exercise in 
 the park." 
 
 This explanation was a small concession to duty 
 and decency, to be sure, but Miss Nancy's well-trained 
 ear was conscious of a singular indifference in the 
 girl's tone. She was uncomfortable, she felt like 
 retreating, she did retreat; but not till "she had cov- 
 ered that move by saying: " Very well, Beulah, but I 
 don't expect this to occur again ; it is not proper con- 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 205 
 
 duct. I will go and fix you a plate of bread and but- 
 ter, and make you a cup of coffee, and bring them to 
 you. It is my duty" — raising her voice a trifle in 
 answer to Beulah's impatient wave of protest — "to 
 see that you do not injure your health by your own 
 — your own folly. I shall expect you to eat some- 
 thing." 
 
 Miss Nancy's inward sense of weakness had driven 
 her into an irritation uncommon with her. She was 
 now moved to martyr herself to Beulah's bad behav- 
 ior, and proceeded to arrange the little lunch instead 
 of asking the servant to do it. "When she returned 
 with a tray in her hand, she opened the door without 
 knocking. Beulah was seated on the floor with her 
 writing-desk in her lap ; she closed it as Miss Nancy 
 came in, but for a moment she did not get up. When 
 she awoke to the demands of courtesy she fulfilled 
 them rather scantilj', and Miss Nancy carried herself 
 out with unsoftened dignity. She did not disturb 
 Beulah again that night, although she kept an eye on 
 the girl's transom long after she herself went to bed, 
 and at one o'clock saw the gas burning in that room 
 with the complex emotions of a householder, a guar- 
 dian of youth, and a good woman who, despite her- 
 self, feared that a great mistake had been made, and 
 that she shared the responsibility for it. 
 
 During the next week her uneasiness declined; life 
 went on comfortably enough. Beulah worked hard, 
 but she ate her meals and talked to people, and alto- 
 gether behaved more like a Christian than she had 
 done in a long time. 
 
 " Thank heaven ! that girl has come to her senses," 
 18 
 
206 THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 said Miss Nancy to herself, and her complacency as a 
 guide, philosopher, and friend renewed its strength 
 like the eagle. But the week after this did not begin 
 so well. On its last day Beulah came home at three 
 o'clock in the afternoon, a yery unusual thing. One of 
 the other girls met her as she came in and exclaimed 
 about her white face. A minute later she heard a 
 heavy fall in Beulah's room, and, rushing in, saw her, 
 looking so pitifully slight and young in her sore 
 trouble, lying unconscious on the floor. When Beu- 
 lah came to herself she would say nothing to any one. 
 She simply lay there, white as her pillow, with her 
 eyes shut, shaking her head sometimes with a little 
 suffering scowl when she was spoken to. Miss Nancy 
 was absolutely cowed; she was too far gone to put 
 down the little buzz of sympathetic and interested 
 gossip going on around her, for you may be sure 
 these other girls had their ideas of the trouble, 
 though, to do Beulah justice, she had made no con- 
 fidences, and was temperamentally attached to the 
 dignity of secrecy. 
 
 But the time had come when her well-ordered per- 
 sonal reserve was to break down. One of the girls — 
 the one she liked best — was detailed to sit with her, 
 and the other went about her affairs, and when Miss 
 Nancy stole away from the eye of man, the little 
 nurse laid her curly head down on the foot of the 
 bed and broke into sobs. It was a most heterodox 
 thing for a nurse to do, but Beulah opened her eyes, 
 and then held out her arms, and as the two young 
 things clasped each other, she fell into a wild weep- 
 ing that was the most merciful thing in the world. 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 207 
 
 " I knew it would come, I knew it, Patty," she cried 
 at last in a loud, strained whisper— "I knew it. I 
 knew I 'd suffer like this some time. I did n't at first ; 
 I did n't mind. I did n't feel as if I cared about 
 being married. They said I'd be a great artist; I 
 wanted to be, but I knew this would come. I did not 
 say it to myself, but I knew." 
 
 After a while she talked a little more calmly, and 
 poured into Patty's small, palpitating bosom a deal 
 of innocent young history. 
 
 "We'd been engaged ever since we were nothing 
 but children," she said, holding tight to Patty's hand, 
 and drawing herself toward her, as if she felt that in 
 some way Patty might help her. " He wanted to be 
 married before, but I thought I 'd rather be a girl a 
 little longer; and then came the painting, and Miss 
 Nancy and everybody said I 'd — oh, what does it 
 matter, what does all that matter? When you are 
 engaged a long time like that you get to think you 
 don't care so much, but it 's only because 'way down 
 you care more. And Tom never said a hard word to 
 me; maybe he didn't mind — but he did, oh, he did 
 then. Why should he remember, when I could do 
 such a thing ? " 
 
 Wide-eyed Patty opened her brave little mouth to 
 speak, and the way Beulah half raised herself, lean- 
 ing forward with eyes straining to read what she 
 should say before the words were formed, was a 
 heart-sickening revelation of distraught, hopeless 
 hopes of help. 
 
 "Tell him, tell him now," whispered Patty; but she 
 was frightened enough when Beulah flung her hand 
 
208 THE GIEL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 away, and, burying her face in the pillows, sought 
 to stifle a burst of hysterical cries. "When she could 
 Beulah pressed her hand an instant again, but begged 
 her to go away — go away, and make everybody leave 
 her alone. 
 
 The next morning when Miss Nancy went in and 
 found her still lying as she had left her, but with 
 open eyes that some way looked as if she had not 
 closed them through aU the night, she said that she 
 must send for a doctor. Beulah turned her head, 
 looked at her, and then said very distinctly: 
 
 "Miss Nancy, you must not send for a doctor till 
 I tell you to. When I can I '11 see one, if I need ; but 
 I have got to manage my own life now. Please leave 
 me alone. Thank you for your kindness." And she 
 turned her face to the wall. 
 
 Miss Nancy could only pulse with an indignation 
 that her other emotions were powerless to override ; 
 but she had an indefinable fear of a conflict, and she 
 went away and stayed away. Beulah lay there silent 
 aU day. It was after dinner when Patty, going into 
 the dimly lighted room again, heard her speak. 
 
 " Patty," she said, in a wooden, steady voice, " I 
 have written. That 's what 's so terrible." 
 
 " When?" asked the intelligent Patty. 
 
 " More than two weeks ago." 
 
 " AU sorts of things happen to letters." 
 
 "Not really, not in thousands and thousands of 
 times. Why should he answer me? I knew he 
 would n't." 
 
 " He will," said Patty, with the inflection proper to 
 an axiomatic statement. 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 209 
 
 " Do you think so — do you, Patty?" Beulah, the 
 elder, the genius, the once self-contained, kind men- 
 tor of the younger girl, spoke now as if Patty were 
 an oracle of heaven. 
 
 Patty was equal to the position. " I know it," she 
 said. Then, as Beulah's eyes besought her for more, 
 she went on : " Probably he was away, and did n't 
 get the letter for some time, and then probably he 
 set in to arrange to come right up North to see you, 
 and did n't think about writing. Men do like that; 
 pa does. Why, maybe he 's coming now ; or maybe 
 he's gotten here to-night after it seemed too late to 
 call on you, and is waiting till in the morning." 
 
 Little did Patty realize, in her infantine castle- 
 building, what she was laying out for herself. 
 
 "Do you think so?" cried Beulah, softly. Then 
 she said in a voice more like every- day life, but vi- 
 brating with suppressed excitement: "Where is Miss 
 Nancy?" 
 
 "In the dining-room." 
 
 " No one else there ? " 
 
 "No," said Patty, wondering. 
 
 " Come," said Beulah, getting up and catching at 
 Patty's shoulder for support. 
 
 " Oh, you must n't ! " wailed the little girl. 
 
 "Be good to me now; help me, Patty," said Beu- 
 lah, starting for the door ; and then Patty went with 
 her to the dining-room. 
 
 Beulah propped herself against the table when she 
 got there, and Miss Nancy started toward her, forget- 
 ting her grievances, and crying affectionately : " My 
 child , my child ! " 
 
210 THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 " Please sit down, Miss Nancy ; don't let me give 
 any more trouble than I must. " I know I am fear- 
 fully selfish now. I can't help it. No, I can't sit 
 down, not now; in a moment. I am going to be 
 more selfish than ever." 
 
 Beulah had spoken with self-control, but now her 
 legs seemed to give way under her, and she sat down 
 upon the floor, and with all her effort she could not 
 get her breath without a gasping struggle. 
 
 " You '11 think I 'm crazy ; so I am, mighty near, 
 but I 'm trying to get hold of myself ; I wUl, Miss 
 Nancy ; only do something for me." She was speak- 
 ing faster and faster, but with breaks and pauses, 
 catching hold of the other woman's dress, after im- 
 periously stilling all effort to stop or lift her. 
 
 " Oh, do one great thing," she hurried on ; " go to 
 the hotels — and see if Tom M'Grath is here." She 
 bent her face into her hands. " Don't do anything 
 but just that : find out if he is here, and if I know 
 you are doing it, that you 've done it, whether he is 
 or not, I won't lose my mind." Her voice sank in a 
 whisper. 
 
 Miss Nancy had already been saying, " Yes, yes, 
 Beulah," and now she lifted her up, assuring her that 
 she would start at once, and Beulah lay down upon 
 the old sofa, where Miss Nancy thought she would 
 get a rest from her own bed. But she had one more 
 thing to ask. 
 
 " I want Patty to go with you, Miss Nancy," she 
 said. 
 
 " My dear child, I cannot," Miss Nancy began. 
 
 "Miss Nancy," Beulah interrupted, ''I can't let you 
 
THE GIEL AND THE PEOBLEM. 211 
 
 go alone ; you can't take Anne if she 's out ; please 
 take Patty with you ; she '11 be willing to go, I know 
 she will. It 's bad enough to have you go. I '11 
 never get over the shame of it ; how can I stand it if 
 you go alone ? " 
 
 Just then Patty, who had stepped out of the room, 
 returned, and Beulah appealed to her. Yes; she 
 would gladly go with Miss Nancy. 
 
 " Very well, then," Miss Nancy agreed, in a muffled 
 manner, and disappeared. She had gone so far in 
 reversing all her ideas and standards that a little 
 more or less did not matter much ; but she was em- 
 barrassed at the loss of her own identity. 
 
 When she was gone Beulah called Patty to her, and, 
 holding her hand hard between both her own, said : 
 "Patty, you are not to let her — " she stopped and 
 her face flushed — "you are not to let her — let Mr. 
 M'Grath know — if you should find him. You know 
 how a woman would feel, don't you ? " 
 
 Patty solemnly nodded her whirling young head. 
 
 "Miss Nancy does n't," Beulah went on. "She just 
 thinks about what 's proper, and she 's too seared 
 now to care about that, or she would n't go. But I 
 could n't live and have Tom know, — that is, have 
 him think I meant him to know, — you understand. 
 Keep her from — exposing me, Patty," and Beulah 
 sank back upon her sofa. 
 
 So you see what faith Beulah put in those views of 
 womanly pride and dignity which we have seen her 
 disappoint. 
 
 In a few minutes Miss Nancy, not knowing in her 
 ignorance how wildly hopeless a search she was be- 
 
212 THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 ginning, started out with Patty into the stormy 
 March night, upon her mission. 
 
 With what dignity of mien Miss Nancy quelled the 
 hotel clerks; with what persistence she pursued them ; 
 finally with what helplessness she succumbed to the 
 madness of the chase, under the hallucination that by 
 a sufiScient display of determination she could force 
 Tom M'Grath to materialize — all this in time came 
 to be recounted by Patty with gusto; but on this 
 night her relish of it was slight, and before they 
 came home, at three o'clock in the morning, she had 
 fallen into a weary, dream-like apathy. From this 
 you will infer, correctly, that their efforts were fruit- 
 less. Beulah heard this in silence, and silence she 
 maintained. 
 
 Miss Nancy now contemplated the step she dreaded 
 most — sending for Beulah's mother. But here again 
 she was paralyzed by fear of the girl's stubborn resis- 
 tance, and dread of the effect opposition might have 
 on her. Never before had Miss Nancy viewed self- 
 will — outside of herself — as aught but something to 
 be righteously and immediately put down ; never be- 
 fore had she doubted her power to put it down in any 
 one subject to her authority legally or spiritually. 
 Now her soul was full of darkness. The next morn- 
 ing while she was lying down, and Patty was sleeping, 
 the door-bell rang, and the servant brought a tele- 
 gram to the girl who was in the parlor pretending to 
 study, but who was really reveling in bewildered, 
 sympathetic, delighted speculation upon the house- 
 hold tragedy. The telegram was for Beulah, and she 
 carried it to her, pleased with the chance of entering 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 213 
 
 the forbidden chamber. Beulah did not answer when 
 she rapped ; she went in, and Beulah did not stir till 
 she heard the word " telegram " ; then she sat up and 
 tried to open it, but it fell from her shaking fingers; 
 she picked it up and tried again ; she could not com- 
 mand the clever little hands whose skill had wrought 
 her all this woe. With an effort she held out the 
 envelop to the other girl. " Read it," she said. 
 
 In a twinkle it was open, and she heard these 
 words : 
 
 "Been on ranch. Am coming to you. On road 
 now. Tom." 
 
 "Thank you," said Beulah, with sweet civility, 
 taking the telegram. "I am so much obliged; a 
 telegram is so alarming, you know, and then it 's 
 always nothing at all," and she smiled, though her 
 breath was coming a little hard, and nodded a po- 
 lite dismissal. 
 
 In half an hour she came out of her room, clothed 
 and in her right mind, and sought Miss Nancy. Kiss- 
 ing her cheek, she said : 
 
 "I feel very much better. Miss Nancy. I am so 
 sorry for all the trouble and anxiety I have given 
 you. You 've been so good — I shall never forget. 
 Is Patty up? Poor little Patty, I must go speak 
 to her." Then from the doorway : " I 've just had 
 a telegram from Mr. M'Grrath, Miss Nancy. He 's 
 on his way to New York," and she disappeared. 
 
 And then Miss Nancy at that late day learned the 
 real aptness of the worn old phrase about being torn 
 by conflicting emotions. 
 
214 THE GIEL AND THE PBOBLEM. 
 
 Between this time and that of Mr. M'Grath's ar- 
 rival, Beulah, after all her storms, found herself 
 moved to sit down over her sketches in tender con- 
 templation of the glories she was foregoing, the 
 glories of personal aggrandizement, though she never 
 thought of putting it that way. In the secret cham- 
 bers of her mind the phrase about " all for love and 
 the world well lost " reiterated itself with a pensive, 
 sweet personal application, and she sighed occasion- 
 ally out of the fullness of her joy of sacrifice. 
 
 Meanwhile she was missing her classes at the 
 League; but it happened, for a wonder, that her 
 name came up between two of her teachers there, 
 in a private discussion of their sorrows. 
 
 "Life would be more cheerful," said one young 
 man, "if being D. F.'s did n't seem to insure their 
 turning their attention to art. They undertake it 
 not only when they 've no eye, and no feeling, but 
 with broken matches for fingers." 
 
 " I don't think those are the worst," said the other. 
 " They don't get out into the light to do much harm. 
 I hate 'em worst when they 've got the fingers and 
 nothing else, and are ready pretty soon to help fill 
 the maw of the Philistine. There 's that Virginia 
 girl I pointed out to you — Hunt 's her name, I be- 
 lieve. She has n't an atom of talent, or even real in- 
 telligence about art — no color, hopelessly bad in her 
 drawing, but she 's got a sort of superficial facility." 
 And he went on condemning Beulali, wbose self-sat- 
 isfaction had roused his ire, to a life that he declared 
 below an honest washerwoman's in dignity. 
 
 When Mr. M'Grath arrived, before he had been in 
 
THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 215 
 
 the parlor twenty minutes, he wanted to take Beulah 
 out walking, — to the puzzled vexation of the ladies 
 who had vacated it for the lovers' convenience. Beu- 
 lah came to the dining-room where the household 
 was assembled, as self-possessed as ever, and asked 
 Patty to go with her. Miss Nancy could only snort 
 feebly, so cowed was she by all that had passed ; and 
 when Beulah said that Tom was most anxious to 
 meet her, though he was in something of a hurry 
 just now, and that he hoped to see her in an nour 
 or so, when they all came back, she put on a mollified 
 air, and counseled Patty to go. 
 
 While they were putting on their hats, Beulah 
 said, as she carefully adjusted hers, and, with her 
 eyes on the mirror, stuck in a long pin: 
 
 " Patty, I don't think Miss Nancy would be quite 
 so horrid as to tell Tom anything, — to talk to him 
 about things, you know, — do you!" 
 
 "N-o-o," said Patty, staring at the face in the 
 glass; "I 'm sure she would n't." 
 
 "I reckon I '11 just not give her much chance," 
 said Beulah, abstractedly, as she put on her gloves. 
 
 When they returned Mr, M'Grath was introduced 
 to Miss Nancy. He was a taU young man with a 
 firm-set mouth, pleasant dark eyes, and a broad soft 
 hat. 
 
 " Now I 'H return the favor," he said, when his ac- 
 quaintance with the lady was properly established; 
 "I '11 introduce you to my wife. Sit right down 
 here, Miss Nancy. You must n't lay it up against 
 her if you think we have n't treated you just right. 
 It was n't her fault. You know you 've got a mighty 
 
216 THE GIRL AND THE PROBLEM. 
 
 lot of influence over her, Miss Nancy, and tlie truth 
 is, I was n't right sure it all worked my way, — yes, I 
 know, — and I was n't right sure she 'd find me as 
 valuable in the hand as in the bush, so I just in- 
 sisted that we get this business fixed before we said 
 anything to you about it. I feel bad about the pic- 
 tures, too. Miss Nancy. I know you were right about 
 all that, — I know you were, — but, you see, we 'd got- 
 ten ourselves into a tangle before we knew she was a 
 genius, and it was too late — " His voice dropped 
 into a sad little affectionate cadence as he fixed his 
 eyes on the floor. Then he looked up at Beulah. " I 
 can't say I 'm sorry. Miss Nancy, but I 'm willing to 
 be a little sorry for her, and I '11 lay out to make it 
 up to her as far as I can. If she can paint any in 
 Texas, she shall." 
 
 Beulah smiled, and as she smiled she sighed a little 
 sigh. 
 
 THE END.